Trinity Parkway Public Comment Period Extended

Plano, TX – The public comment period on the Trinity Parkway has been extended until June 30 to allow more time for the public to review and comment on the Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (SDEIS). The Federal Highway Administration made this decision after they received requests for extensions at and after the Trinity Parkway public hearing held on May 5.

The public comment period is a stage of the environmental review process when the comments are sought from the general public about the project. Initially, the public comment period was scheduled to end on May 15.

Written comments may be submitted via mail to:
NTTA, Attn: Corridor Manager
Re: Trinity Parkway Project
P.O. Box 260729
Plano, TX, 75026

Written comments also will be accepted by e-mail at trinityparkway@ntta.org. All comments must be received or postmarked on or before Tuesday, June 30, 2009, to be included in the public hearing record.

Those interested in reviewing the SDEIS can do so on-line at http://www.ntta.org/AboutUs/Projects/TrinityParkway.htm.

I won’t use the word “sham” because it’s loaded and a little heavy-handed. But here’s what happened:

There was an open house from 4pm – 7pm, when the public could wander around inside the Dallas Convention Center Arena, gander at maps and charts and such, and ask questions of NTTA and TXDOT staff.

At 7pm, the public hearing portion of the evening was to begin. Well, that’s what the flyer said, but that’s not exactly what happened. From 7pm-8:40pm, we were treated to a mind-numbing barrage of slides and information presented by staff, none of which was new to anyone who’s been watching this issue.

After the slideshow, there was a 20 minute intermission.

After that, elected and appointed officials got to speak (I spoke and so did Michael Morris of the North Central Texas Council of Governments).

THEN, finally, at about 9:15 or so, the public got to speak. By this time, more than half the crowd had left, exhausted and drained.

The night was best summed up by former Councilmember John Loza, who so eloquently explains:

“[A]s one who attended last night, the arena wasn’t the only Soviet-style aspect. The whole meeting itself was like a Soviet version of “letting the people speak”. Two and a half hours of eye-glazing, ass-numbing bureaucratic speak followed by a chance for us poor plebes to speak for three minutes while being glared at by one of the bureaucrats herself.

This is the type of thing that turns people off to government. This seemed like such a sham (yeah, I said it). Just going through the motions to be able to tick off the “held public hearing” box on the federal government’s transportation application.

If the goal was to get as much public input as possible, here’s what should have happened: They should have done the slidewhow from 5pm to 6:30pm so that the people who wanted that info could have gotten it. The public hearing, where actual, public comment was taken, should have started at 6:30pm so those of us who just wanted to put our comment into the public record could do so some time before midnight. Most importantly, they should have publicized the agenda and explained ahead of time how the meeting was going to work.

First, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that Dallas’ levees failed to meet their new, post-Katrina safety standards. The Corps also discovered sand in our levees, which presents a problem for toll road construction. Further, the Corps indicated concerns about allowing the toll road’s large concrete piers to pierce the levees, which could weaken them.

In addition, the North Texas Tollway Authority acknowledged that there is a billion dollar funding gap for the toll road. No additional funding sources have been identified.

Despite these serious problems, the city refuses to consider other locations for the toll road that would allow us to move forward on other long-delayed aspects of the Trinity Project, including critical levee improvements, the highly anticipated Trinity Park, and the desperately-needed reconstruction of S.M. Wright Freeway.

If you are concerned about the city’s decision to construct the Trinity Toll Road in our floodway, you will have the opportunity to make your voice heard. The federal government has yet to sign off on this location, and part of their analysis includes public input.

At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, May 5, the North Texas Tollway Authority and the Texas Department of Transportation will hold a public hearing at the Dallas Convention Center Arena (650 S. Griffin St., Dallas, 75202). I hope you will plan to attend and speak on this issue. (There is no need to sign up ahead of time.)

In the editorial, I recommend we close the I-635 loop on the west side of the city by linking the western portion of Loop 12 to I-20. A couple of folks were quick to point out the fact that Loop 12 already connects to I-20 via Spur 408.

They are correct, of course, but I was proposing a different route, one along Walton Walker Boulevard. The original editorial I sent to the Dallas Morning News was nearly a thousand words, which they kindly informed me was too long by a mere 400 words. I spent a couple of hours chopping away, trying to keep the same basic premise without losing the gist of my points, and came in right at their maximum. In the original editorial I sent them, I more thoroughly described the connection:

“Complete the 635 Loop by connecting I-20 with Walton Walker and the western portion of Loop 12. This will give inland port and NAFTA Trade Corridor traffic a simpler, faster route around Downtown instead of through it.”

I decided to remove the Walton Walker reference for brevity’s sake, assuming it was clear that the missing link I was proposing was an eastern route connecting Loop 12 to I-20, not a western route that already existed. Now I realize I should have kept in those three words for clarity.

Another edit from the original editorial had to do with the nature of our proposed Trinity Park:

“Making the Trinity an amazing place for people to gather isn’t about building a white water rafting course or constructing iconic bridges. It’s about creating great access to an already remarkable swath of greenspace. If we focus on creating entry points to the park, people – and adjacent development – will come.”

Today, the only way I know of to get to the park from the Downtown side is from Sylvan Ave. We could build all the lakes in the world down there, but without access, the park will remain as vacant as it is today (save for Crow Park at Sylvan Avenue). The park is already amazing as it is. The lakes will add to that. But in the meantime, all we need to do is add the planned trails, put in vehicular ramps and parking areas, and create pedestrian and bicycle linkages. That will go a long way towards opening up the park.

Join me at a Dallas City Council meeting five years from now:

It’s 2014. Under Mayor Tom Leppert’s plan, the Trinity toll road should have opened last year, but its construction hasn’t even begun. It remains mired in federal safety analyses due to concerns about its effect on Dallas’ levees. The North Texas Tollway Authority bowed out in early 2011 when it determined it could not fund the now $2.4 billion project.

City staff reluctantly informs the council and mayor that there is no way to bridge the enormous funding gap. The buckets of money once touted to finance the road have been spent on other more critical transportation needs in the region. Less than half of the city’s $84 million in bond funds for the road remains.

Trinity levee improvements have not been completed. Not a shovel of dirt has been turned to bring the Trinity Park to life, and no lakes exist within the floodway. Now that plans for the park have been all but scrapped, the residential and mixed-use developments once planned along Industrial Boulevard have been abandoned.

The city manager chooses her words carefully, but the meaning is clear: The Trinity toll road is dead. With millions of taxpayer dollars and years of staff time wasted, the city must now reconcile itself to nearly two decades without a park, without levee enhancements and without traffic improvements.

That is our future, unless we act now. Before wasting another minute or spending another dime on what has clearly become an unworkable route, we can chart a new course. It’s time to implement a new plan – Plan B – premised on eliminating the toll road from the Trinity River floodway. Rather than continuing on a course that promises more delay and uncertainty, Plan B will allow us to move forward.

Here is my vision for Plan B:

1. Flood control

• Fix our levees without further delay.

2. Transportation

• Move forward immediately with TxDOT’s Project Pegasus, which will help unsnarl traffic in the Mixmaster and Canyon.

• Fix Dead Man’s Curve in South Dallas and transform S.M. Wright into a beautiful boulevard.

• Complete the Interstate 635 loop by connecting Interstate 20 with the western portion of Loop 12. This will give the Inland Port and NAFTA Trade Corridor traffic a simpler, faster route around downtown instead of through it.

• Expedite mass transit alternatives that get cars off our congested downtown freeways. Work with DART to create additional light rail routes.

3. Trinity Park

• Proceed with federal approval for the park lakes and quickly construct the planned trails.

• Open it to residents by creating safe, protected pedestrian and bicycle routes to the park from downtown and Oak Cliff. Construct planned parking facilities in and near the park.

We can no longer allow the toll road’s delay and uncertainty to prevent Dallas from moving forward in addressing our transportation and flood control needs and in fulfilling the promise of a great park. Plan B will allow us to finally realize the dream of the Trinity River project.

Some city leaders refuse to acknowledge the need for Plan B, dismissing concerns about the toll road as defeatist. This approach appears less and less prudent as problems with the toll road compound and its billion-dollar funding gap grows.

I hope our city leadership will recognize the need to chart a new course, one that fulfills promises rather than defers them. We owe it to Dallas residents who have begun to lose faith in this project and our city government. Much has changed since the toll road referendum, and I’m ready to work with the mayor and the rest of the council to begin Plan B today.

Together, we can finally get the dirt flying on the Trinity River project.

I was surprised that our levees failed to meet the new standards since the Mayor just got back from lobbying our Congressional delegation to pressure the Corps into speeding up their safety evaluation of the Trinity toll road, which is to be built within the levees. If you’ve been following this issue, you know that no major road like this has ever been built within a levee system. Knowing that our levees do not meet the Corps’ new safety standards, I think it’s irresponsible to lobby the Corps to speed up what should be a thoughtful, deliberate safety review of an untested engineering design like the toll road. Rushing to pour millions of tons of concrete into an already unsafe levee system is a dangerous plan that could have dire consequences.

In light of the Corps’ safety analysis, it is clear that we need to fix our levees NOW. Not next year, not five years from now, not after a catastrophic flood, but today. But the toll road is holding up our levee improvements. We cannot fix all the safety problems with our levees until the design of this toll road is completed. As long as the toll road is part of the equation, all those parts have to be built to work together, and if we don’t have the design for the road, we can’t plan the design for the levees, and we certainly can’t fix them.

The fact is, this toll road project is dead. There’s no funding for it. Despite the Mayor’s assurances during the Trinity referendum to the contrary, the NTTA just admitted that the toll road is facing a billion dollar funding shortfall. If the Corps is allowed to do their job without political manipulation, the toll road will likely face even more delays as a result of their new safety review. If we continue on this course, if we ignore the obvious warning signs and stubbornly plow ahead, the safety needs of our levees will continue to languish and be held hostage by this white elephant of a toll road for years to come. The dirt will not fly. The Mayor’s 2013 deadline for toll road completion will come and go, the toll road cost will double again, and the funding gap will increase exponentially.

In another ten years, 2019, future city officialls will reluctantly admit that putting the toll road between the levees is not a viable, fundable option. The toll road will finally die with a whimper, and we will have wasted twenty years and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars without the levee improvements we so desperately need. It’s time to change course and admit today that this toll road won’t work, and find a better way to address our transporation needs without delaying or compromising the safety of our flood levees.

On the night of Friday, June 22, starting at midnight until Monday, June 25, at 5:00 a.m., the south end of the Tollway will be closed northbound from IH-35E to Mockingbird and southbound from Northwest Highway to the southern end of the Tollway. The Cedar Springs Road Bridge, in both directions, will also be closed during this time. On Monday morning, the Tollway and the Cedar Springs Road Bridge will both be open to two-way traffic.

NTTA construction crews will be demolishing the old Cedar Springs Road Bridge, placing drainage lines under the Tollway to prevent flooding during heavy storms, hanging bridge beams for the bridge over Oak Lawn Avenue and performing pavement repairs on the IH-35E ramp northbound to the Tollway.

“The best news is that on Monday morning, when we reopen the Tollway, we will also be reopening the new Cedar Springs Bridge to two-way traffic,” said Mark Bouma, NTTA’s Director of Engineering. “Over the weekend of the 23rd, we will be performing several different projects to reduce the necessity for additional closures and customer inconvenience.”

On the Tollway, southbound motorists will have to exit at Northwest Highway or sooner. The southbound entrance ramps at Lovers Ln., Mockingbird Ln. and Lemmon Ave. will be closed. Southbound entrance ramps from Walnut Hill, Royal Lane and Forest Lane will also be closed due to the short distance before they have to exit. Northbound Tollway entrances at Harry Hines Blvd., IH-35E and Wycliff Ave. will be closed and northbound traffic will not be able to enter the Tollway until Mockingbird Lane. Signage will be placed on the Tollway in several places to notify motorists of the closure.

“We hope to cause minimal inconvenience, but we are excited about this project because, when complete, it will result in a safer commute for motorists. Safety is a top priority at the NTTA,” Bouma said.

During these closures, motorists should plan ahead, seek alternative routes and expect delays. IH-35E and Central Expressway serve as viable alternatives to the Tollway during this time.

This project is part of a $50 million dollar renovation to the 40-year-old South end of the Tollway. It is one of several projects and major construction efforts being undertaken by the NTTA to improve mobility in north Texas. Other major projects include: the Tollway Extension Phase 3 from State Highway 121 to U.S. 380 in Collin County, the Lewisville Lake Toll Bridge in Denton County, the eastern extension of the President George Bush Turnpike, the Southwest Parkway in Tarrant County and the Trinity Parkway near downtown Dallas.

All efforts are subject to weather conditions.