I’m here for you, Eric. First, let’s review where we are. Yesterday the Federal Highway Administration gave a thumbs-up to the overall Trinity Project, in a long-awaited revised environment report. It answered objections by the Corps of Engineers to the proposed tollroad “in painstaking detail.” So what we have now is a battle of two bureaucracies, which was not helped by the discovery of sand deposits in the levees themselves that could weaken access roads to the bridges. And, of course, that happens just as the steel finally arrives from Italy to begin construction of the first Calatrava bridge.
Nothing good is easy. But the Corps new objections are not likely to be appeased. After Katrina, they may changed the rules in the middle of the game, but who can blame them?
The FHA is crucial to the overall Trinity project. It was the late Robert Hoffman’s insight in creating The Dallas Plan back in 1992-1994 that transportation dollars were the missing element in solving the problem of the Trinity River as a barrier dividing Dallas. Federal dollars are there to help relieve Stemmons congestion. But the escalation of costs to solve the Corp’s objections is a very big hiccup. Even the FHA says so. So the time may be approaching to go to Plan B, which is Industrial. The problem with Industrial is eminent domain: those warehouses and businesses will not go quietly into the night. So the question is: which of the two is ultimately less expensive, relieves the most traffic in the most efficient manner, and achieves the Corp’s goal of rebuilding and protecting the levees?
At the core, this is an engineering problem, and only then a public policy question. The DMN, Dallas Observer, D Magazine, and everyone else can opine all we like, but it makes no difference until the engineers finally determine the facts and revise the costs. We have a tendency in this town to argue public policy until we’re red in the face, while changing nobody’s mind about anything. For once, let’s step back. It’s frustrating, it’s slow, and it’s bureaucratic, but it is in the design and engineering and inter-agency negotiations that Dallas avoids turning an already massive project into a financial sinkhole like the Big Dig.
So I’m withholding judgment until we finally get all the facts. But if I were City Manager Mary Suhm, I’d have Plan B ready to go and in my back pocket.
23 comments
I’ve got a totally crazy idea, how about we just do nothing and put the money into beefing up our rail and trolley system. Eventually people will get so fed up with sitting in traffic that they will switch to alternate transportation methods and though traffic will move to off-peek times.
I take Stemmons from Downtown to Las Colinas everyday to and from work and frankly I never thought the traffic was that bad anyways. It’s not great but it’s not crippling either.
ALong the line of John M’s comment above, one thing I don’t understand about the Trinity Parkway as traffic reliever line of thinking is that if the NTTA usage projections don’t suggest that the road will be profitable, how is thing going to be a reliever of mixmaster traffic?
Also, on the same subject, if the tollroad is needed to fund the project because it the excuse that brings in federal dollars, then why not see the Corps requirements to upgrade the levees as the same excuse to get federal dollars. Didn’t Angela Hunt point out that to bring the levees up to standard a whole lot of dirt will be needed which could be dug out for the lakes?
Again I must ask…where are the traffic studies that show how much traffic relief the toll road will provide from Stemmons? It seems most Stemmons users going through the mixmaster either continue on IH35 or use IH30 east or west. The new toll road connects upper IH35 near Mockingbird to IH45 and US 175 in SE Dallas. It doesn’t have ramps for IH35 south of downtown or IH30 at all. Check the NTTA site yourself.
ChuckE, you’re right. The proposed Tollway is a shortcut from Irving to Balch Springs. How does that relieve Stemmons?
How about a response? Surely someone pushing for the tollroad has one – even if it is the BS being used to wrench the bucks from Washington to fund this low-traffic traffic-reliever. Oh wait: “heads down, move forward.”
I’m for beefing up the rail system, but something has to be done regarding the roads. The traffic coming in from Oak Cliff to Dallas and beyond is awful.
This road has entrances/exits in South Dallas, and Oak Cliff. Many people on this side of the river work past downtown.
I know many things have to take place, but we need the road as well as more rail. You don’t “frustrate” people into using one means of transportation or the other, you do a good job at provided all means of transport.
Shouldn’t there be some discussion here about how:
a) The mayor insisted that the Army Corps of Engineers signed off on the Trinity when that clearly was not that case.
b And that Angela Hunt–and for that matter, my old colleague, Jim Schutze–turned out to be exactly right: That a toll road between the levees was hazardous and obscenely expensive.
I understand that there is a lot more at stake here that declaring who won a debate. But don’t we need to do that before we move on? And don’t we need to hold people accountable for public assurances and campaign promises that turned out to be false, if not flat-out dishonest?
A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change … NO! How did Matt Pulle get in?!
But isn’t the proposed road an additional barrier?
Figure out a way to flood the Trinity Bottoms and keept the water level high, open casino boats downtown and run ferries north and south from downtown. It’s the cheapest easiest way and sand won’t matter.
Wait, what? A. Hunt and J. Schutze knew about the sand deposits in the levees?
Here’s a Plan B for you, Wick: Run the Trinity Parkway (with tolls) along the old river channel. The right of way already exists, and the parkway could be landscaped to look like the Turtle Creek corridor (without cross streets).
Go underground or double deck the existing roadways with other walkways or tunnels under the roadways to the Trinity area. Dig between the levees and (1) use the dirt to strengthen them, (2) use the trench (a really large one) just dug to route the Trinity under the levels of the current floodplain and cover the trench at a level equal to or lower than the existing floodplain (you end up with a tunnel under the existing plain), and (3) divert some clean Trinity water from upstream to make a lake like Towne Lake in Austin. You’d have a beautiful clean lake not at the mercy of annual rains and flooding, bringing development to the surrounding area.
How far upstream do you have to go to find clean Trinity water?
a toll road would further divide south dallas. How much money will be put in future budgets to clean all parks after a flood?
The traffic counts werent’ there 10 years ao when we were debating this thing. As someone else has pointed it goes from Irving to Balch Springs. I kept asking the question then — why? If the traffic count isn’t there — who benefits. Unfortunately, with our property records, it is impossible to “follow the money” on this boondoggle.
And Wick — cheerleader that you were then — one hopes for a little more mea culpa.
It doesn’t even give me much pleasure to say “I told you so” because we have wasted so much political capital and real capital on this ill-fated, ill-conceived boondoggle.
ChuckE, You can’t go that far upstream — you’ll wind up trying to navigate through the Greater Kidneys.
Wanting to remember why this park is so cool and worth all this fus, I went to the Trinity River site to look at the pretty renderings. The pdf crashed my computer. Thought that was appropriate.
1. The entity anointed by the feds to do transportation planning for this region seems to think the Trinity Parkway is needed.
2. Does no one remember that the citizenry relatively recently decided not to kill the thing?
3. I certainly hope this place isn’t turning into Communistic, atheistic Red China, where the will of the people is ignored.
J Paul…
What Schutze and Hunt said during the 2007 referendum–if I can generalize–was that a toll road between the levees was unprecedented, dangerous and costly. And, it also went against what we know about flood control in light of Katrina, which happened two full years before the Trinity vote.
But it’s probably more important to talk about who was wrong than who was right. Leppert, Caraway and every other member of the council painted Hunt as either naive or willfully obstructionist. They claimed that they had the funding in place from the NTTA and that the Army Corps of Engineers had signed off on the deal. As it turned out, their lack of prescience would’ve alarmed Paul Wolfowitz.
The question now is figuring out–to touch up the old Watergate line– when did they know that what they were saying was wrong? Was it while they were campaigning–and condescending to everyone who opposed them–or was it shortly thereafter?
I didn’t cover the Trinity campaign as prolifically and capably as Schutze, Sam Merten and Eric Celeste did but I remember what the pro-toll road people said–and how they acted. And the fact of the matter is that they either lied or didn’t know what they were talking about. Meanwhile, the people who raised reasonable and fact-based claims against the road, including Sam Coats, Sandy Greyson, as well as Hunt, were treated like fools and irritants.
I don’t think they deserve an apology. This is politics and they’re all adults. But I don’t think we should forget that they were right. And maybe this time around let them help lead us out of this mess.
OK. I’ll shut up now.
Why Industrial? The west side of the river, past the levies, is far more economical because of lower property values, would bring much needed development funds to West Dallas, and if designed right, could lead to a lot of new privately funded project there.
The problem with my plan is that it would require the taking of some houses, but few of them are owner occupied, so it’s not as big of a hurdle as one would think.
Having lived in Boston for the last 12 years of Big Dig construction — I thought it interesting that no one is talking about how that project, and this project differ:
The Big Dig’s purpose was to “REMOVE” the roadway that divided the city. Make no mistake about it — it was all about aesthetics. Sure, there were some ancillary benefits to traffic patterns (but, many of those could have been achieved with much less extensive efforts).
Boston does have a fantastic green-belt along a water-way. And in case you haven’t been there — there are *NO* highways disrupting that setting (yes, there is a surface road on either side of the river).
The trinity basin is a *MUCH* larger piece of greenway, and sticking a giant roadway in the middle of it will *NOT* have the affect of “bringing together the two sides”. In order to do that, you’d need a much smaller gap to bridge, and you’d have to ensure that there wasn’t a giant highway running through it.
I hope Dallas get a lot of benefit from this — but this is already looking to be the Big Dig Texas style….
Tommy — the letter you put up is from the North Texas Council of Governments — a voluntary group of North Texas governments.
They are not traffic planners — but rather cheerleaders. And even Tx Dot often cheerleads rather than does real assessment, after all, they have to build to justify their existence. And they always ask the question “how can we move more cars” — not “how can we move more people”. The question you ask, dictates your answer. And in their case, it is build, build, build those roads.
And as described by Matt — the recent vote was based on a series of — if not outright llies — pretty strong falsehoods on behalf of Mayor Leppert and his team.