Trinity Parkway in 2001: Faster Traffic, Harder Park Access?

01 / Getting into the park

A road beside a park was not necessarily a road into it

A driver could pass Dallas’s proposed river park without being able to turn directly into it. That simple access problem sat behind the Trinity debate in June 2001. The original low-speed parkway had become a high-speed, limited-access tollway in the planning process, and those two roads would serve the surrounding land differently.

Victoria Loe Hicks reported on a community workshop where Patrick Phillips of Economic Research Associates discussed the economic implications. His preference was for the earlier concept:

That was a consultant’s assessment of the opportunity, not a measured increase in property values. A riverside park could make nearby homes, offices and businesses more attractive. A road that allowed convenient access to the park could support that relationship; a highway designed primarily for through trips could complicate it.

02 / Speed and toll income

The financing plan had changed the kind of road

The change to a tollway had been intended to bring in the North Texas Tollway Authority and accelerate construction. The agency determined that a high-speed limited-access road was necessary to generate enough toll revenue. In other words, the proposed method of paying for the road had helped determine its design.

That explains why the city could not simply select the slower concept while treating financing as a separate detail. The November cost report and Kirk’s subsequent park-first proposal had already exposed the limits of toll funding. By June, the question included what Dallas might give up locally in order to attract that funding.

The archived Trinity route and status account preserves the planned eight-lane bypass and the site’s contemporary response to this very study. It also records that other inputs were still needed before an alignment decision. Phillips’s economic analysis was one contribution to a decision that also needed land-use and environmental findings.

03 / Where the road went

Not every property would experience the tollway alike

Phillips did not say the tollway would uniformly damage development. Near entrances and exits, it might encourage economic activity. Elsewhere, it might reduce the park’s accessibility. His team had not determined the net effect. A useful appraisal needed to follow the actual access points, not apply one conclusion to the whole river corridor.

Five alignments were under consideration. Options inside or outside the levees placed highway lanes alongside the river. Two others followed Industrial Boulevard, either at ground level with service roads or elevated. The Industrial options would avoid the same obstruction to riverside park access, but would displace existing businesses and cost nearly twice as much.

The September 2000 aerial photograph shows a slice of that setting: river and open ground on one side, streets, buildings and freeway ramps on the other. The image’s original purpose was to identify the site of a separate Woodall Rogers bridge.

Choosing a developed corridor meant dealing with places already in use. Moving the highway away from the park would not move its costs and effects away from everyone; it would bring a different set of properties into the discussion.

04 / The decision ahead

Dallas had to decide which benefit it valued more

Phillips distinguished the park’s potential to support nearby development from a tollway’s regional traffic benefit. He cited low-speed roads beside green spaces in Boston, Washington and Chicago as examples. The appeal was access: drivers could leave the parallel road and reach the green space. Dallas was considering a highway whose entry and exit points would serve a different kind of trip.

Even the higher-priced Industrial alternatives required a timing calculation. If improved park access produced greater long-term benefits, could those benefits justify the initial cost, and how long would they take? The consultant had not answered that question. A promise of eventual gains did not tell the city how to finance construction now.

The team aimed to assemble economic, land-use and environmental information by year’s end. The council would vote, while the final alignment decision would rest with the tollway agency. Phillips left the choice between regional mobility and local development to elected officials. The two goals could overlap, but the location and access rules of this road would determine where they did—and where they didn’t.