I've been kind of surprised to not see any discussion on this board about the approved tolled highway along the Trinity River. The majority of people I've talked to are against it for a plethora of reasons - cost, ruining green/park space, etc. but the mayor's office and city council seem to think it's the silver bullet to fix downtown's traffic woes.

So, what are y'all's thoughts about the tollroad?

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It's an idiotic money-sink that no amount of protesting will stop because it's the pet of the people in charge. It will make no long term difference in terms of traffic reduction and is just a continuation of the trend towards toll roads which is becoming (already was, really) a serious blight on this city. Can't drive anywhere without paying 5 bucks. I'd rather politicians stop toasting to low taxes and prepare a properly funded infrastructure budget for once than continuing to subsidize private companies and leaving it to us to pay for it anyways.

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/thread won

Today the Mayor's "Dream Team" came out against the high speed tollroad in favor of a much smaller scaled road complimenting the parks. A lot of people are still very skeptical that this will change anything, and fear this is just a smoke screen. We'll know more on Thursday as the City Council will be asked to vote whether or not to move forward on this smaller version of the road.

"Beasley said the toll road's own traffic estimates indicate there's no need for the city to build anything more than a smaller version of the road at least for coming decades"

"The recommendations now go to the City Council, which on Thursday will decide whether or not to put together a team to look at what it would take to implement the suggestions into the road's first phase of
construction."

http://transportationblog.dallasnews.com/2015/04/trinity-parkways-new-goal-market-the-planned-parks.html/

While I'm reassured that the "Dream Team" came out against the road as designed and approved by the Federal Highway Administration, I'm still not pleased. The article from D-Magazine summed up my hesitation very succinctly:

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First, the optimistic view: back in November, I somewhat facetiously suggested that the mayor forming this Dream Team was his way of generating cover while he backed out of the toll road. Maybe I was right. Even though between then and now he has voiced his support for the toll road, even though he voiced his support in his remarks before he introduced Beasley, he's really against it. This was his plan all along. On Thursday, when he asks the Council to study how the Dream Team's recommendations can be implemented, he'll say, "Gee, guys. I've been wrong about this toll road all along. Larry has shown me that. This road isn't about people from southern Dallas getting to their jobs. It's not about flood control. Like Larry says, it's all about connecting to the park. We have to shift our paradigm and think about the project from the perspective of the park."

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Next, the pessimistic view: what we saw today was great. A bunch of hired guns are trying to save us from ourselves. The mayor and the toll roaders are using them (as Angela Hunt has said) to make the toll road a non-issue in the upcoming elections. "Hey, we're looking at how to implement the Dream Team's recommendations. We want "a gracious and harmonious all-American parkway." Enough toll roaders remain on the Council to start pouring concrete. The concrete becomes the six- to eight-lane monster.

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I really don't trust Mike Rawlings. He's continued to push for the road even when studies and research have proven his points very wrong. I don't trust city council, either. They don't have the greatest record with the Trinity over the last 17 years.

We'll see what happens, but I fully expect the large tollroad to be built. I'll only feel relieved when the mayor formally withdraws NTTA's design "Alternative 3C" from the Federal Highway Administration.

I believe there was a referendum on it in '09ish that it passed. I would suspect that many who voted for it at the time feel differently today. Six years later no dirt has moved. I guess we came be thankful for the ineptitude of government in this case.

Seems there are few that are still for it at this point. It reminds me of the 345 debate. Why should the city of Dallas spend large amounts of money to facilitate travel through the city and/or encourage people to live in the suburbs?

I'm still amazed they are trying to put anything between the levees, including the parks, trails and other aspects of the corridor project. Hard to imagine recently, but the river does fill the levee banks every 3-4 years with flood waters, how much cleanup and rebuilding are you dealing with when it happens?

I don't understand this project. We've seen across the country that expansion of highway lanes and creation of new highways slightly improves traffic flow in the short term but has the opposite impact long term as more people move further out thinking there's plenty of road capacity. Then, another option comes in proposing to make the road a parkway that would provide absolutely no traffic release. If it isn't a viable traffic release it wouldn't support itself as a toll road and we have already heard the city can't pay for it on its own.

Neither direction seems to be supported by the facts offered by both sides.

If you're going to build it and forget the park idea, then it might as well be a major highway so the tolls will cover the cost. If its going to be built to complement the parks, then everybody needs to recognize what it is - a scenic route.

I don't have any skin in this game but think all public arguments made so far are nonsense.

I was outspoken here and contributed and worked towards defeating this thing the first time. It was always an awful idea that won because it had just the right limousine liberal appeal of a ZOMG A PARK and Tea Party love for funding everything without taxes (tolls). The perfect extremist storm hit and it got passed.

It's symbolic with everything that's wrong with the city.

You're right Greener, it doesn't make sense. This is a very good article from Peter Simek of D Magazine explaining how the whole project was born of a compromise of two sides that really could never coincide. The good news, however, for Dallas residents, is that there are 6 seats on the City Council up for grabs in the May 9 election. Not sure it has ever happened that so many seats are open in any one election. It the best opportunity to ever to put people in place to kill this thing for good.

http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2015/04/17/what-can-we-learn-about-the-trinity-river-project-from-yesterdays-dallas-city-council-meeting/

By a vote of 13-2, Dallas City Council voted to kill the tollroad.

http://keranews.org/post/dallas-city-council-kills-trinity-parkway-once-and-all?_ga=2.129895436.1860256843.1502297100-313453570.1502297098

Remember when they changed the name of industrial to account for how awesome that area would be?

Can they change it back?

Very happy they finally killed this tollroad. Now, I'm sure the fight over the Trinity park will last just as long as the fight over this tollroad.

Excellent news and probably one of the last good things this mostly now liberal city council will do.

I do like Angela Hunt's park idea of doing a "minimalist" park build vs the gaudy, feature driven park in some of the other versions that have been proposed.

Can you imagine if this city took a Harvey type event with that stupid toll road making it worse? Thank god they killed it.