Patrick L. Boyd

Notes from Ron Kirk's perfomance at Hitt Auditorium

I originally intended to go Monday night, then had to work late and decide to pass - because I knew Ron Kirk was speaking (whom I do not care for) and I knew it would probably be the typical Dog-and-Pony-City-of-Dallas-Save-Our-Money-Grubbing-Private-Limited-Access-Tollroad kind of event.

After I got home and settled in, about 7:20PM I received a phone call conducting a 'survey' about how I would vote on this very issue. Let me tell you it was not in favor of the VoteYes side - in other words the questions were clearly skewed in favor of the Tollroad, even though the caller presented themselves as 'un-biased'. Well, I told them that I was NOT in favor of their Tollroad.

So I high-tailed it down to Hitt Auditorium. Iwas right. It was typical Ron Kirk, waxing poetic and being all grandiose about the Trinity Tollroad Project. Does that man know how to answer any simple yes or no question? And who IS his Geppetto?

Here are a few things I came away with:

1) When Charles Allen stood up to ask a question, Kirk pointed out Charles was from the VoteYes side. As soon as Charles asked why they did not allow anyone from the VoteYes side to be present, Kirk interrupted Charles and would not let Charles ask any more questions.

2) The Tollr oad is meant to be built BEFORE anything is done on Stemmons, the I-30 Downtown Canyon, I-35E thru Oak Cliff, I-30 over the Trinity, and so on.

Why do we need a reliever for these projects when there was no reliever for Central or the LBJ-Central Interchange?

3) According to Kirk (and these are just about his words verbatim) it is the people like Angela Hunt and the 'negative-naysayers' that caused:

A - the Central Expressway Project to take so long to get done. So we should have shut up 20 years ago and let TXDOT double-deck Central?

B - DART Rail to take so long and that's why we don't have service out to the airport yet (forgetting that that has always been the plan in that the rail service can't bring people from an airport onto a rail service that goes nowhere). He blamed citizens of Dallas for causing the suburbs to not have their rail service yet.

Kirk also had bad things to say about former City Councilman Max Goldbalt, one of this cities best ever politicians, criticizing Mr Goldbalt for suggesting Monorail as an early idea before DART Rail.

C - He blamed citizens of Dallas for causing the DFW Airport to be delayed for 25 years.

4) There was a video during his speech from North Texas Tollraod Authority that showed what the Trinity Toll Road would look like from the Trinity Park. When I went home, Ilooked at the site. Last time I checked, it SAID the video was only a simulation and things could change.

Guess what? When you play the video on the NTTA.org web site it states, and I am taking this right off their web site:

Disclaimer:

This visual aid was created for illustrative purposes only and is an approximation of the appearance and design of the proposed Trinity Parkway and certain park features. The information used for this visual aid is still under development, and is subject to comment, change, and approval by various federal and state agencies, as well as the Dallas City Council and the NTTA Board of Directors. A final alternative for the proposed Trinity Parkway – whether and where to build the project – has not been selected pursuant to the ongoing environmental study process.

http://www.ntta.org/AboutUs/Projects/TrinitySketchBoard.htm

5) One thing I didn't know that I have had concerns about is IF the Tollroad is built in between the levees would Semi-Trucks and 18-Wheelers be allowed on the Tollroad and the agent from NNTA said that the City of Dallas had written it into the Charter that Trucks would not be allowed on the toll road. (Editor's comments: Yes. It is intended to feed trucks right through the city directly to the Inland Port.)

6) Kirk compared the project to like how he and his wife are adding on to their house. Except NOBODY asks for money from a bank to remodel or build a house without having an almost 100% complete set of building plans. With the Bond Election of 1998, the opposite of that is exactly what we did:

Ask for citizens of Dallas to approve a Bond Package BEFORE we had any kind of plan in place!

7) The VoteNO side keeps saying that Angela Hunt and the TrinityVoteYES side don't offer any alternatives to the Trinity River Toll Road and that if it were to be moved onto Industrial that it would now cost more that it would have back in 1998. DUH!

Dallas voters were never even offered that option. The Powers that be (the Dallas City Council, TXDOT, NTTA and others) made that decision for us.

There is the option of NOT building the toll road and letting TXDOT rebuild Stemmons, the I-30 Canyon, and I-35E south of downtown without a private reliever route.

Since Stemmons Freeway doesn't even go through a residential neighborhood (like Central Expressway then maybe double-decking Stemmons or burying it under ground wouldn't be a bad idea. Maybe more costly, but isn't that worth getting the toll road out of the river floodway? Were Dallas voters ever offered that option?

There's vocal concern about how a double-decked Stemmons would look. But ask yourself: how high do you think the interchange is going to be when the Mix-Master in southwest Downtown Dallas is rebuilt? You only have to look at the High-Five Interchange or anyplace where the Bush Toll Road crosses another Highway to see how tall this interchange is going to be in downtown Dallas. Can you say BEHEMOTH!

Bottom-line is this: I came away just as against the toll road in our Park as I was before last night. Ron Kirk wants to blame all the Citizens of Dallas for trying to stand up for something they believe in and that we can't make decisions on our own without the guidance of the people who build concrete roads and make money off of them. He thinks Dallas' citizens are extremely inept.

BTW - if you haven't looked at what our neighbor to the west is doing with their Trinity River Park through downtown Ft Worth, check out their web site and look for the high speed, private, limited access toll road to their park. You wont find one. As usual, Ft. Worth is set to upstage Dallas on another project once again.

http://www.trinityrivervision.org/TRVWEB/Default.aspx

Oh and there was one nice thing Kirk had to say about Angela Hunt (amongst all the bad things he had to say about her and the TrinityVoteYes organization) - he said that she was his City Council person and he voted for her and she was a good City Council Person - except she's very wrong on this issue.

Regards, Patrick L. Boyd