More misdirection on the Trinity River toll road
The naysayers are trying to do it again. They want to squander opportunity and growth in Dallas. They just don’t get it, simple souls.
Fortunately for us, our betters are at the ready to spare us once more from ourselves. You know, the well-off and far-sighted who made sure we didn’t foolishly double-deck Central Expressway or pass up on DART.
Wait. That wasn’t the actual history was it? In fact, it was some scrappy neighborhood activists from the M Streets who started the movement against very powerful interests that backed doubling Central. And it was a coalition of people who foresaw an urban future for Dallas who pushed forward DART, indeed some of the same people who wanted Central sunk to spare some of our greatest neighborhoods.
The alternate history was presented this morning by Mayor Mike Rawlings during an uncomfortable event in West Dallas where no photographs were permitted and no questions brooked.
This was the mayor’s speech calling for us to re-envision the Trinity River toll road that – survey says – most people in Dallas just don’t want.
Rawlings wants us to take a time out. There is an opportunity, a crucial pivot point, he said, where we can still build a road that people like.
This takes for granted that people don’t like the road they are being offered – a contradiction of the party line that we all voted for this twice so what’s the problem.
But we will set that aside I guess. Rawlings told us today that the Dallas Citizens Council, the Dallas Regional Chamber, The Real Estate Council, Downtown Dallas Inc., the Stemmons Business Corridor gang and, naturally, anonymous donors, will pay for six people who aren’t from Dallas to help us create a vision that we can all accept.
This isn’t a plan for the naysayers, he told us. It’s for the broad-minded who have the sense to see that the road is a great opportunity.
The road might have been a great opportunity once upon a time. It might have been something that didn’t divide us. But, really from the beginning, we were misinformed. The Harvard designer Alex Krieger, who is among the six, told Robert Wilonsky yesterday that highway planners essentially patted him on the head back in the late 90s when he was asking for a slow 4-lane road.
“We felt we were involved in a process that would be sensitive to the context of the road,” Krieger said. “But the whole time the highway builders were nodding at us: ‘Parkway, sure, fine, whatever.’”
This morning’s event felt a bit patronizing too. This wasn’t for the hard-core agginers, Rawlings told us. You can’t reach those folks, he said.
But how many of those folks were willing to put their trust in the city in 1998 and again in 2007? How many of them believed what they were told? Why did they switch? Why did they lose faith? Don’t we deserve to understand that?
Apparently not. Let’s just say we will hit reset and get on board one more time.
I’m afraid I can’t. It’s not that I’m against re-thinking things or re-envisioning them or hearing people out.
It’s the politics. I’ve been around it too long. I know that there is a council election coming up in May. I know that some candidates backed by the groups listed above are going to have to answer some hard questions about what they think about this road. I know it’s easier to be able to say “I’m for the mayor’s process” than to say “I’m for the toll road.”
The second answer is a political loser in Dallas today. The first one might buy you the sort of time that, if you have the money, will see you edge onto the council. An anti-road council would spell the end of this deal. The people who want the road know that.
Is that cynical? I’m sorry if it is. It’s real politics. It’s the only path this road has.