12/18/03  Guest Editorial

"I voted for a lake, and all I got was a goofy bridge."

Suspension Bridge to Ray?s

It?s been fascinating to watch the Council morph the focus of the Trinity Corridor towards highways and bridges ? and away from any meaningful interface with the river itself.

After all, we were promised a town lake in the bond election.  I still have the brochure to prove it ?

                 ?like the River Walk in San Antonio?.  

When faced with a challenge this big, the council may have succumbed to the edifice complex, substituting a monumental bridge as a sort of consolation prize for the project as envisioned. As a shameless re-cycling of his other work, the proposed Calatrava bridge goes from the bus station at the end of the shortest freeway in the state, Woodall Rogers, to Singleton in Oak Cliff, a modest industrial thoroughfare.

Fortunately, this architectural wonder will greatly facilitate visits to my favorite sporting goods store - Ray?s.  Although he no longer holds court from a stool behind the gun displays, Ray might have known that a suspension bridge is overkill for the Trinity.

Suspension bridges are  designed to span deep wide rivers like the Hudson, or San Francisco Bay.

A beam bridge, like the one on Continental Street, does about as good a job as anyone could expect of linking Singleton to downtown.

The design of the proposed ?signature bridge? is pretty but close enough to the Spanish architect?s other work that when it becomes a postcard people may wonder what city it is in. 

Once the river plain is turned into an expressway, the opportunities for "enhancing" the river will become just so much highway landscaping - best viewed at 70 miles an hour. The natural environment of the river will be compromised in the bargain.

Highways and flood plains don?t mix, particularly on rainy days.  

What is really missing from the approved plan is any strong linear connection that would encourage development adjacent to the river. The riverfront boulevards along the levees that sold me on the bonds are gone from the plan.  Relegated to Phase Whenever.

If the bridges are built without anticipating interchanges for such roadways, they will stay gone.  With them, any realistic hopes for offices, retail and residences fronting a river park. Look at it this way - what if Central Expressway had been built inside the Turtle Creek flood plain? 

For the sake of a suspension bridge and a highway, we may be giving up on the river for nature, for recreation and for riverside development. Quite a change from what we set out to do. Of course, those pictures of town lake in the bond brochures were just the spin to sell the bonds.

The Trinity functions as a giant open storm sewer for the Metroplex ? at full flood with run-off during a rain, its flow sustained by treated sewage during droughts. How you build a large lake and accommodate a toll way in this problematic space is beyond the hydrologists. They just did not bother to tell us until after the bonds were approved. 

So the lakes have become ?water features? that will have to be pumped like swimming pools.  Instead of boulevards to foster development on both sides of the river, all we get is a ?signature bridge? to Ray?s gun store on Singleton.  

Thanks, but we can do better than that.

It may not be the River Walk in San Antonio, or Town Lake in Austin, but the potential for riverfront development deserves better, Oak Cliff and Dallas deserve better.

Let?s not settle for a consolation prize, no matter how grandiose.