Get the Facts!

Q.  What's the background of the Trinity River Project?
The Trinity River project has changed significantly from what voters approved in 1998.

In 1998, the city showed voters images of magnificent lakes, trails, and promenades to convince them to approve spending $246 million for the Trinity River Project.

Today, there are no lakes or promenades gracing the Downtown Trinity Park.  Nearly all of the Downtown Trinity Park amenities -- the promenade, the water source for the lakes, interior access roads -- remain unfunded.

What is funded, however, is a high-speed toll road that will be located inside the park.

A:  The 1998 ballot for the Trinity River Project stated:

"The issuance of $246,000,000 general obligation Trinity River Corridor Project bonds, the project to include floodways, levees, waterways, open space, recreational facilities, the Trinity River Parkway and related street improvements, and other related, necessary, and incidental improvements to the Trinity River Corridor."

Referendum opponents claim that everyone in 1998 knew the so-called "parkway" was really a high-speed, limited access toll road.  If so, why didn't the city just put that on the ballot?  That's at most three more words.  Could it be that road backers figured that "Trinity Parkway" sounded more innocuous than "toll road" and that voters would be less likely to approve a "toll road" than a pastoral-sounding "parkway"?

Q.  Is TrinityVote against building a reliever route for I-35 and the mixmaster?
A.  No, we just don't want it in the park.

Q.  Where exactly will the proposed toll road go?
A.  The proposed toll road will connect Highway 183 to Highway 175.  Between Hampton Road and I-45, the toll road will be located within the park on the Downtown side, next to the levee (the green hill on the Downtown side of the Trinity basin).  It will extend more than 500 feet into the park in some places. 

Q.  What will the toll road look like?
A.  Inside the park, the toll road will be six lanes with four shoulders, for a total of ten lanes.  The size of the toll road has grown from 70 feet as it was designed in 2003 to over 120 feet today.  That's just the width of the lanes.  The actual footprint of the road will jut out up to 500 feet into the park, significantly reducing our parkland and the size of our lakes.  Not to mention being really loud and stinky.

Q.  Why does the City want to put the toll road in the park?
A.  In April 2005, the Dallas City Council examined several alternative locations for the toll road.  The Council ultimately voted to put the toll road in the park because, at the time, it was considered the least expensive location (parkland is free) AND because it would not displace any businesses.

It's important to remember that according to an economic analysis reported in the Dallas Morning News, the value of the parkland that the City of Dallas is giving to the North Texas Tollway Authority is more than HALF A BILLION DOLLARS.  Yet Dallas won't get a single penny from any of the tolls collected.

Since the parkland was FREE to the NTTA, why would they seriously consider any other route or location?

Q.  How much is this toll road going to cost to build?
A.  Originally in 1998, the toll road was going to cost $394 million.  That was supposed to account for inflation and cost increases.  Today, however, the estimated cost is over $1 billion.  City officials acknowledge they don't know how much this toll road is going to end up costing taxpayers.  They do admit that the cost will continue to rise above $1 billion.  Considering it's already more than $600 million over budget, and that much of the cost increase is a result of problems with its location in the floodway, isn't it time we took a look at moving the road out of the park?

Q.  I keep hearing about the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Who are they and how are they involved with this project?
A.  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is a federal agency that oversees and helps fund flood control projects.  They have final approval over what gets built in the Trinity floodway.  Their primary concern is to make sure that our levees (those tall, grassy hills on each side of the Trinity River basin) are safe and will protect our city during a flood.  They will be helping us improve our levees by making them taller and extending levees where there weren't any.

Initially, the city wanted to put the toll road on top of the levees.  The Corps rejected that proposal due to concerns that doing so would make the levee less stable.  The city revised its plans again, moving the toll road a little bit off the levee. In October 2006, the Corps informed the city that those plans were unacceptable and that the toll road would have to be moved completely off the levee.  The new plan for the toll road pushes it even farther into the park.

The Corps has also advised the North Texas Tollway Authority (the organization that will oversee the construction and maintenance of the toll road) that the Corps must have the right to tear down sections of the toll road in order to do maintenance on the levee.  The Tollway Authority has acknowledged that it will be very difficult to persuade investors to fund a toll road that may be torn down periodically.

Q.  Why has our Downtown Trinity Park taken so long to build?
A.  The current environmental restrictions and floodway issues associated with the toll road have effectively ground this project to a halt. These problems have made the toll road more than twice as expensive and the construction process three times as long. Removing the toll road from the floodway will allow for a road with more capacity and a much earlier completion date for both the park and the traffic reliever route.

Q.  Won't the toll road provide access to the park?
A.  No.  The toll road will NOT provide any direct access to the park. There are no entrance or exit ramps into and out of the park.  None of the access roads for the park are funded.  Ninety-five percent of all the transportation money from the 1998 bond is allocated to the toll road and bridges, and there are no funds left over to construct park access roads.

Take a look at some of Halff Associates' engineering plans from February 2007.  Measuring from the top of the levee to the end of the "mini-levee" on the other side of the toll road, these drawings show the toll road jutting 430' to 500' into the park.Q: Wasn't the original size of the entire toll road 70 feet? And now is it more than 120 feet?

A: Yes, according to the 2003 Balanced Vision Plan designed by Mayor Miller's experts, the road was going to be only 70 feet wide.   However, the March 2007 engineering plans from Halff Associates show the toll road being 120 feet wide.

Q: Won't The Trinity Parkway significantly reduce the parkland and the size of our lakes? And won't it be noisy and cause noxious odors?
A: The City's presentation to the Trinity River Corridor Council Committee on Feb. 20, 2007 shows that the Downtown Trinity parkland will be reduced from 136 acres to 91 acres (that's one-third) when the toll road is moved farther into the park.

Referendum opponents are mixing apples and oranges when they start claiming that the toll road is only taking up an itsy bitsy teeny tiny smidgeon of the billion acre Trinity River floodway.  The "entire floodplain" is not part of the Downtown Trinity Park.  There is a very specific area that will be designed and implemented and maintained parkland.  This is the same area that was touted in 1998 bond campaign literature showing lakes and sailboats.  Suddenly, when the toll road starts eating up more of the park, the entire floodplain somehow gets counted as parkland.  But that wasn't what the city was saying in February 2007 when they admitted the parkland was being reduced by one-third.

NTTA/Corps Issues
--Corps Changing Guidelines
--Corps has indicated that their guidelines involving construction in and around levees may be changing in the near future
--NTTA is concerned that their current efforts to use existing guidelines will be negated by the new guidelines.
--NTTA & FHWA heads (Washington, D.C. meeting in February) to discuss this issue as well
--NTTA hopes to get a waiver or exception to prevent further modification of their current plans

Since Katrina happened in the past, and since the Corps "has indicated that their guidelines involving construction in and around levees may be changing in the near future," that would make any future guidelines (wait for it)....POST-Katrina guidelines.  And based on that briefing, it sounds to us like the NTTA will "seek a waiver" if the Corps' guidelines change in the future.

We're also fascinated by the statement that "the Parkway construction will actually provide greater protection for our levees."  Says who?  That's a pretty bold statement, especially since the Corps of Engineers forced the NTTA and city to move the road away from the levees just six months ago, fearing that the road would weaken our levee system:

Dallas officials and North Texas Tollway Authority project managers are working to tweak the alignment of the proposed Trinity Parkway, after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determined it might compromise the Trinity River's eastern levee. ...

Col. Martin, who took over the Fort Worth office this summer, said the first parkway sketches he saw "could've potentially violated the structural integrity" of the eastern levee, along which the tollway is designed to run.
            --Dallas Morning News, November 17, 2006

Q: Weren't voters were promised access to the park from the Parkway? Is there funding for access to the park?
A: Yes.  "When the roadway bond proposal was put to voters in 1998, the parkway was to be a 45-mph road with left-turn lanes allowing motorists to exit directly into the park." (Dallas Morning News, Feb. 27, 2000)

"State planners and community leaders originally envisioned the Trinity Parkway as a free-access roadway with a 45-mph speed limit. But the City Council has endorsed a plan to make the Trinity Parkway a toll road, which would enable the project to get quicker funding and to be completed in eight years rather than 13."
                 --Dallas Morning News, Sept. 17, 1998

Again, referendum opponents are conflating two different issues:  access roads and access ramps.  They claim the NTTA will fund access ramps.  What about the access roads?  How will people get around once they're in the park?  The dirty little secret is there is no funding, zero dollars, for building access roads in the park (check out page 2 at the bottom):

Internal park roads, bridges & parking:
                         Total Cost: $49,831,555
                         Funded:  $0
--City of Dallas, Overall Project Costs and Funding for Trinity River Project

But that's what folks thought they were getting when they voted on the Trinity Parkway in 1998.

Q: Can't the city can use the Corps' federal funds to dig out the lakes, even if we don't have a toll road in the park.
A: In an April 19, 2007 draft letter from Corps Colonel Chris Martin to Angela Hunt (obtained through open records requests), he stated:  "It is possible that if the Parkway is not constructed within the Floodway, and if the proper type of soil is found in the areas identified by the City for lake excavations, this soil could be used to raise the existing levees."

Q: Didn't most voters in 1998 believe the Trinity Parkway to be a low speed access road for the park?
A:  "When the roadway bond proposal was put to voters in 1998, the parkway was to be a 45-mph road with left-turn lanes allowing motorists to exit directly into the park.  But the state, which was to foot most of the highway bill, said it couldn't tackle the project for at least a decade. So the city asked the tollway authority to consider building the road as a tollway."
                      --Dallas Morning News, Feb. 27, 2000

"Officials have proposed posting a 45-mph speed limit and banning trucks on the new road. They also have promised that the highway will have plenty of on- and off-ramps leading to parks along the river and nearby commercial areas."
                      --Dallas Morning News, May 13, 1998

The Trinity Parkway reliever route would comprise of an eight-lane split parkway...with a posted speed limit of 45 mph....The Trinity Parkway reliever route would be constructed a s lower speed parkway design rather than a freeway design, allowing left turn exits towards the river floodway...The parkway design would incorporate access locations directly from the parkway lanes into the adjacent park area, serving ingress and egress at several locations as determined by the City of Dallas.
                      --Texas Department of Transportation Major Transportation Investment Study,
                         March 1998

So it does sound like in 1998, the Trinity Parkway was planned "to be a low speed access road for the park.