Dallas voters endorse Trinity Parkway tollroad and in Seattle WA reject taxes for unsound transit

Good news for tolling in two referenda held Tuesday. In Dallas TX a referendum to block the Trinity Parkway tollroad was defeated 53% to 47%. About 80k people cast votes in the ballot out of about 500k eligible voters in the city of Dallas. The campaign was fiercely fought.

The effort to stop the tollroad was led by Angela Hunt a 35 year old lawyer and populist council member from the rough near inner north suburbs where the road will go. Her theme was "Keep their tollroad out of our park" - an effort to mobilize us versus them sentiment among an angry base of voters.

Most prominent supporter of the tollroad was the mayor of Dallas Tom Leppert. He made the case that the road was essential to relieving congestion on the I-35E and in inner areas. The Parkway will go for 14.7km (9.1mi) along the eastern side of the floodplain of the Trinity River from north of the downtown to the south of it.

Trucks would be banned from the parkway, New York style.

It will be 3+3 lanes in the northern part and 2+2 lanes for now to the south. The design has six intermediate interchanges.

The parkway will be an alternate to I-35 E in its northern part and a new route in from the south, plus a smoother bypass of the city. The etxra capacity cannot be provided at comparable cost elsewhere.

Michael Morris, the transport director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments said the Trinity Parkway was a vital link in the planned highway network.

Angela Hunt's "our park" theme was far fetched. There is no park, normally just a small creek in a wretched eroded flood plain about 650m (2100ft) wide.

The construction of a workable city park is an elaborate plan to re-engineer the whole flood plain with artificial lakes and levees, playing fields, trails, nature reserves, new wetlands, all heavily landscaped, along with fancy new bridges, lookouts. The tollroad would be set down in a terrace created on the side of the eastern levee to mask it and the noise of traffic. It would be protected by a wall at a height calculated to protect the road from a 100 year flood.

The tollroad construction is key to raising the money to build key segments of the park.

Estimated cost of the road is $1.3b. It has long been a project of the North Texas Tollway Authority.

see http://www.ntta.org/AboutUs/Projects/TrinityParkway.htm

The project has gone through a decade of public outreach, alternatives analyses and environmental study and permitting.

http://www.trinityrivercorridor.org/html/transportation_improvements.html

The antis stuff is here

http://www.trinityvote.com/

Seattle - unsound transit soundly defeated

In the Seattle area a ballot measure that would have increased sales and car taxes to spend $31b on light rail called "Sound Transit" and $16b on free roads was defeated by voters by a 55/45 margin.

The tax scheme had the name Roads and Transit Package, perhaps an effort to emphasize roads, the more popular part. Trouble was it made the acronym RAT so opponents called it the "RAT tax" and their organization "Kill the RAT tax."

see http://www.killtherattax.org/

COMMENT: Light rail has the potential to do perhaps one percent of the transport task in an area like Seattle but those who supported this ballot wanted to devote two thirds of spending to it. When rubber tired vehicles on roadway pavement can invariably provide better service, and greater flexibility at much lower cost, rail transit is inherently UNsound.

The defeat of higher taxes opens the way for pricing and toll proposals.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-11-07