The cynicism and lack of good faith here is astounding. The mayors office invited council members to this breakfast - on the second day of National League of Cities when at least half of us will be out of town. So, hes really interested in our opinions apparently. For the umpteenth time, there is no redesign possible! Any real change to the design would send the entire project back to regulatory square one. Federal regulatory approval would be pushed off for years. So, what in the hell is Trinity Commons raising money for? A coat of paint on the looming floodwall? I dont think thats what context sensitivity means. The good news here for those of us on the Nice list is that Trinity Commons is to fundraising as Roscoe P. Coltrane is to police work. Separate from the regulatory infeasibility, redesigning the project to be slower or smaller in any way only decreases the economic feasibility. Theres already a gap of AT LEAST $700mm between the financing that can be paid for by tolls and the cost of construction. So theyre down in Austin looking for your tax dollars to fix a project that would embarrass Bernie Madoff, but public opinion has turned so hard against this project and toll roads in general that theyre getting stiff armed wherever they go. So whats the point? Why are they pretending that a meandering parkway is still possible? Just guessing, but Id say that theyre going to drag Krieger down here and a few other experts, and pay them to say that maybe theres an intermediate design that could generate some level of tolling but would check 3 of 5 or 6 of 10 characteristics of context sensitivity. Then hold hands, wave at camera, confetti, rah rah. Afterward, theyll have to explain that, because the regulatory process has gone so far along, theyre going to go ahead and pursue APPROVAL for Alignment 3C, but they wouldnt DREAM of building it. Trust us. Incompatible with the jugglers and the zip line, dontcha know. Then they ramp up efforts to get TXDOT to give em something, anything so that they can just turn dirt. Just get one piece of yellow iron down there in that floodway before council turns over and pulls its head out of ... you know. The pitch to TXDOT is on the basis that they responded to the criticism of the Nice and now the project is 100% (OK 85%) Krieger-approved! Then the project is started. Politically, its much harder to kill a project that is underway than to avoid starting it. But the problem is that the economics of the project havent changed. Theyre going to have to go back to the trough because shrinking the project increases the funding gap, and you see, taxpayers, since they already started and they got full approval for Alignment 3C and all, the easiest thing to do is just build the full-size, honking, Underwater Zombie Tollway. Its the only thing that makes financial sense. You wouldnt want to put MORE tax dollars in would you? And have you seen the traffic around here? Its not that they lied; its that circumstances changed. cityhallblog.dallasnews/2014/11/on-wednesday-rawlings-to-call-for-time-out-that-will-allow-outsiders-to-re-examine-design-of-trinity-river-toll-road.html/
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 00:02:49 +0000
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