Update: The FHWA has sent a letter to Trinity Industries demanding that it submit the ET-Plus guardrail terminals it has sold to highway departments nationwide since at least 1999 to further safety testing, a major reversal from the federal agencies’ until-now steadfast support for Trinity. If the company, which lost a federal trial on Monday, refuses to test the guardrail components anew, FHWA officials say they might suspend the company’s ability to sell its product to state highway departments.

WASHINGTON — The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials said today it wants the federal government to conduct new tests of the guardrail caps made by Dallas-based Trinity Industries.

Worries about the safety of the energy-absorbing caps — sold by Trinity across the country to state highway departments for use on highway and interstate guardrails nationwide — have come under fire in the past year as a whistle-blower case accusing the company of defrauding the federal government moved forward in a federal court in Marhsall.

A jury assessed $175 million in damages against the company Monday, an amount that under federal statute will triple — and with as much as $200 million or more in additional fines.

Meanwhile, the Federal Highway Administration has said it will review the safety record of Trinity’s products. A few minutes ago, AASHTO announced it would strongly support that happen. Here’s the organization’s statement:

WASHINGTON – The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials today supported Federal Highway Administration’s request that Texas-based guardrail manufacturer Trinity Industries Inc., maker of the ET-Plus guardrail end treatment, re-test the device to ensure that it meets eligibility requirements for use on federal-aid projects.

“Safety of the traveling public is of paramount concern to state departments of transportation and AASHTO. We support FHWA’s actions to have the manufacturer re-verify, through appropriate crash-testing procedures, whether the ET-Plus guardrail end treatment meets the requirements to remain eligible for use on federal-aid projects,” said Bud Wright, AASHTO executive director. “Additionally, in support of continuously improving safety by our member departments on their roadways, we look forward to the results of an FHWA review of the performance of the ET-Plus guardrail end treatment.”

At his state-of-downtown-Dallas speech today Mayor Mike Rawlings spent a few minutes touting high-speed rail linking Houston and Dallas (especially as it related to The Cedars and Union Station and the land on that end of downtown). Said Rawlings, according to those who were in the room, a 90-minute train ride from downtown to Kenny & Ziggy’s Deli is in our not-so-distant future. But, of course, we shall see.

There is, however, a sneak peek in your very near future. According to this newly launched website from, among others, the Federal Railroad Administration, the Texas Department of Transportation and the private company hoping to build the thing, the Texas Central High-Speed Railway, a handful of public meetings are scheduled in coming weeks as part of the environmental impact study process, which, we noted in June, will take a look at the possible routes between here and there. And the first one’s in Dallas — at the Infomart, to be specific — on October 21. Then they start working their way south — from Corsicana to Teague to Bryan to Huntsville to Houston, where the roadshow wraps October 29.

The schedule for all the meetings will be the same. There will be an open house from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., during which folks will be able to browse maps and pictures that aren’t yet online. Then the folks behind this proposal will make their pitch from 6:30 to 7; after that the public will have an hour to say its piece.

We’ve been told the new website will have more information sooner than later, because, frankly, it couldn’t have much less. See you October 21.

Tom Schieffer, senior adviser to the Texas Central Railway, and his model train (Ben Torres/Special contributor)

The debate over the Trinity River toll road captured the focus of Dallas like few other votes have in recent years. In 2007, voters rejected a proposal that would have kept it out of the proposed Trinity River riverfront park. Here, then Mayor Tom Leppert debates with Council member Angela Hunt. Photo by Sonya Hebert.

WASHINGTON — Brandon Formby’s compelling coverage of the shifting discussion of the merits of the Trinity River toll road sparked my attention this morning, giving my cup of coffee an extra jolt. Michael Morris, the transportation director over at the NCTCOG, is defending the controversial toll road, after all these years, against findings in a new federal report that suggests its traffic benefits would be much less than once thought.

I returned to the DMN in June of 2007, five months ahead of the referendum that Angela Hunt and others had rallied and politicked and grass rooted into existence, against the great push back from the people who normally call the shots in Dallas. She lost and the toll road supporters won, at least that’s how it looked that day.

Seven years later, and the road is not much closer to reality, and the energy behind it seems to have seeped out like helium from a leaky balloon. But still its champions press on.

As a reporter I heard the arguments for and against as often and in as much technical detail as most anyone in the city not actually charged with building it. I came away thinking the road was neither the savior its boosters believed it was nor the unquestionable boondoggle seen by its opponents. I tended to think the city was right to aim high with the overall Trinity River corridor and that Hunt’s insistence that we ought to instead scale back all those plans and focus on nuts and bolts safety was too small. The road debate seemed to be a proxy of some kind in that overall battle.

But what I never understood — and reading Brandon’s spot-on coverage from the past few days, still don’t — is why those folks who want to transform the riverfront have put so much energy, credibility, and civic capital into insisting the road be done, too. It seems forever ago now, but the first sane thing I heard about the Trinity River toll road from City Hall happened when I asked Mike Rawlings about it when he was running for mayor. He’s for the road, he said, but he’s not all-in, and would be open to changing the city’s position if facts showed it was a mistake. Made sense to me, but boy did he get pushback.

The year 2007 was a big one for transportation planner Michael Morris, beginning with a vote by he RTC to award the Spanish firm Cintra the rights to develop the richest toll road in Texas history, the Sam Rayburn Tollway. That was a big priority for Gov. Rick Perry, seen hear at the news conference with Morris. Months later, the plan was reversed when NTTA, over Morris's initial objections, was later allowed to assume the contract. Photo by Ricky Moon.

Seven long years after that stormy vote, and you don’t have to agree that the road was a terrible idea to come to the conclusion that the Trinity River toll road plan has become our own, bloodless version of Vietnam’s Battle of Hamburger Hill. So much spent for so very little.

Morris defended the road to Brandon on economic development grounds. I hadn’t heard much about that in the past, so I went back and looked at the arguments he gave back in 2007. That’s when Morris asked for a special vote from the Regional Transportation Council to go on the road as a full-throated policy advocate for the toll road. He took with him a top 10 list of why the road must be built to meetings of voters and business folks all over the city. It was, quite literally, Michael Morris’s toll road show. He felt that strongly about it.

On that list of 10 reasons, economic development was mentioned so scantly, I almost missed it altogether. Way down on No. 9, he notes that taken together the flood safety of the improved levees, the beautiful parks and lakes that are part of the overall plan and, yes, the mobility promised by the toll road would = economic development for Dallas.

That seems like a pretty slender stave upon which to lean all of the weight of such a massively divisive project on, but yet the project still hovers over the North Texas landscape like a bloated dirigible whose walls can’t be punctured, no matter how many slings and arrows attack it.

Morris on Toll Road