Start Trinity plan, Kirk says

He fears lake project could languish amid debate over proposed parkway

Dallas should build a lake, trails and other amenities along the Trinity River without waiting to learn whether money can be found for a new tollway on the levees, Mayor Ron Kirk said Tuesday. "I am absolutely committed to the larger Trinity project," Mr. Kirk said, and "absolutely not" willing to let it languish while highway builders scramble for funding for the proposed Trinity Parkway.

Wednesday, officials of the North Texas Tollway Authority will brief the Dallas City Council on the status of the proposed parkway. Late last week, officials disclosed that the projected cost of the road has increased by more than $200 million. Mr. Kirk said that price increase doesn't mean the tollway won't be built, but he acknowledged that the project's short-term prospects are uncertain, at best. "We're where we've always been - with every community in the state," Mr. Kirk said. "There are always more projects than TxDOT [the Texas Department of Transportation] has money" to build.

State and regional transportation officials say the parkway is needed to unsnarl chronic traffic congestion downtown, especially in the "mixmaster" interchange between Interstates 30 and 35E. But, with a passel of other urgent projects to fund - including reconstruction of the LBJ Freeway - TxDOT told the city in 1997 that it could not tackle the river road for several years. That's where the tollway authority came in. The hope was that if the highway became a toll road, the agency could infuse money into the project and put it on a fast track, to be finished by 2008. After more than a year of detailed study, however, consultants determined that the cheapest possible alignment for the highway would cost at least $620 million, rather than the roughly $400 million originally anticipated. The route preferred by the city, inside the levees with four lanes on either side of the Trinity, would cost $669 million. Previous estimates had put its cost at $439 million.

As part of the larger Trinity project, Dallas voters approved $84 million for the highway. The tollway authority estimates it could kick in at least $150 million. That would require TxDOT to pick up roughly $400 million - and the state agency has quailed at much smaller figures in the past. Mr. Kirk said he still believes that a major highway running along the river is the only viable long-term fix for downtown's traffic woes. But whether that is a low-speed parkway, as some would prefer, or the high-speed highway designed by the tollway authority is an open question, he said. "We have to examine all our options," the mayor said. It's quite feasible, he said, to excavate the lake and put the dirt on the levees in readiness for whatever kind of road might eventually go there. However, a parkway with a 45-mph speed limit would not attract enough motorists - or generate enough toll revenue - to justify the tollway authority's involvement, the agency's executive director, Jerry Hiebert said. "The feasibility for us being involved in something other than a limited-access tollway are probably not very good," he said. The agency is continuing to review the project and expects to hold public hearings in the spring, Mr. Hiebert said. "There continues to be a great deal of interest, and, in most places. support for this kind of project," he said.

The President George Bush Turnpike, stretching across parts of Collin, Denton and Dallas counties, cost almost $1 billion and wouldn't have been built if TxDOT hadn't paid for the frontage roads and major interchanges at Central Expressway and Interstate 35E, Mr. Hiebert said. The state also lent the tollway authority $135 million for the project. "Everybody understood from the very beginning, from a cost perspective, this [the Trinity Parkway] would have to be a regional effort. Tolls are only going to pay for a portion of the project," Mr. Hiebert said. The highway's future may hinge on how badly the state wants it in place to serve as an alternate route when TxDOT embarks on extensive renovations to the downtown interstates and the mixmaster. With the city and the tollway agency offering to shoulder roughly half the costs, Mr. Hiebert said, "this region is doing everything it can to make this project attractive."