Don’t expect another Trinity toll road townhall meeting
Last night’s townhall meeting in North Oak Cliff on the Trinity River toll road was civil, informative and well attended.
Don’t expect another one.
The pro-toll road speakers were Michael Morris, of the council of governments, former city manager Mary Suhm and Trinity Commons president Craig Holcomb.
Suhm, a person I’ve never known to lack confidence, looked as if she was about to order her last meal. She didn’t say a word until an hour into the program.
On the other side of the stage were planner Patrick Kennedy, council member Scott Griggs and architect Bob Meckfessel.
State Rep. Rafael Anchia was a deft and fair moderator. He challenged assumptions on both sides. Much of what I heard was familiar.
But I zeroed in on three moments. One was a major surprise, one seems just untrue and the last was a huge disappointment.
The surprise came from Morris. For a long, long time, we’ve put the price of the toll road at something between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion, with most people who are smart about the highway business telling us the bigger number is the real number. Isn’t it always?
Last night, Morris said that the road could come in at something less than a billion dollars. I nearly dropped my pen. The transportation director of the North Texas Council of Governments blithely shaved a half billion dollars off the price of the road after years of debate and study have set the higher figure in the public mind. Where did he get this estimate? Not from the work on the road that has been done to date. That would be the 30 percent design that NTTA has completed.
That leads us to the second point, from Holcomb. He told us that no matter what NTTA designs, the final design of the road really rests in the legal power of the city of Dallas and its Balanced Vision Plan. Well, not really. NTTA is designing this road. What it thinks it can build and pay for is what it will build. The design it has so far is way, way outside of what many of us think is acceptable. The city may have power to say no thanks. But if a pro-road council is seated – the sort of council we have now and the sort of council that powerful people want to see seated again – the sort of design NTTA has been building toward is what we will get. So I take Holcomb’s point as a bit of political pirouetting. It is dangerous to believe.
The point that made me sorry came from Suhm. I observed Mary Suhm for a long time at Dallas City Hall. I watched her work herself ragged for this city. She asked a lot of her people. She gave a lot more of herself. Believe it or don’t; it makes no difference. I know she loves Dallas. I also know she’s usually the smartest person in the room. So I can’t understand why she doesn’t get it.
Last night, she said that Dallas needs this road, basically for economic justice. People on the southern side deserve to be able to get to jobs in the north. That’s true on its face. It would be nice to shave some commute times for people in the south. Here’s the problem with her argument though. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THIS CITY HAS DONE FOR DECADES AND IT HASN’T HELPED!
What is Central Expressway? What is the Dallas North Tollway? We built the roads into the north, and farther and farther they ran. Did it help the south? No. It accelerated its decline.
Yesterday, I was in BonTon with Daron Babcock, at the farm he is building near the old Turner Courts area. He told me about men who ride on a bus for hours to get a job up north, the only place they can find work. They lie and say they have a car so they can get the job. If they get the job, they scrap to get the car (Babcock says 30 percent interest is common and I believe it.)
When the car note comes, they can’t pay on the wages they make. So they lose the car. Then they lose the job. Other men in the community look at what happened and say, why try?
Another road north doesn’t fix that problem. Suhm should know that. What fixes that problem? Opening up opportunities that have been shut down in those neighborhoods.
Look at South Dallas. It is an absolutely beautiful part of our city. Have you been on Park? Have you been on South? These are some of our best neighborhoods, covered over in years of neglect and poverty.
What if those precious dollars, those millions and millions of dollars, went not to a new road, but to correcting the mistake of an old one?
What if we looked at Interstate-30 and asked, how can bring South Dallas back into our city? How can we tear down a division that strangled opportunity? How can we help the people who have invested their lives here build wealth from the land under them?
We can do it by committing ourselves to making a long canyon of I-30 and putting decks above it. That would bring us the national attention that some here seem to crave so much. More important, it would spell a new era for a huge swath of southern Dallas. It would give the highway planners some more lanes. And it would unite us in a vision of our future city.
Last night’s townhall was helpful. There won’t be another one. The politics are too obvious. The people of Dallas don’t want this road. The people who do won’t want to face that.