Dallas’s Trinity Plan in 2000: Could the Park Go First?

01 / The lake could start

Ron Kirk wanted the Trinity park to keep moving

Dallas could dig a lake without first finding hundreds of millions of dollars for a toll road. That was Mayor Ron Kirk’s argument in November 2000, after the Trinity Parkway’s revised estimate unsettled the larger river project. He wanted trails, a lake and other amenities to advance while highway officials worked on financing.

Victoria Loe Hicks and Tony Hartzel’s November 15 report followed the cost report four days earlier. The city’s preferred highway design was now estimated at $669 million, compared with $439 million previously. Kirk still supported a major road along the river, but he did not want uncertainty over that road to hold up everything else.

His proposed construction sequence had a particularly concrete detail: excavate the lake, then place the removed earth on the levees in preparation for whichever road might eventually be selected. Kirk described that as feasible: work on the park could also prepare ground for the road, while leaving the final highway choice open.

02 / Why a tollway?

The tollway authority had been brought in to shorten the wait

The road was supposed to give traffic an alternative to the downtown I-30–I-35E Mixmaster. State and regional officials saw that bypass as useful in ordinary operation and during future work on downtown highways. But in 1997, TxDOT had told Dallas that competing demands meant the river road would have to wait several years.

Toll financing offered another source of money and the prospect of completion by 2008. After detailed study, however, even the least expensive alignment was estimated at $620 million. The tollway authority expected to contribute at least $150 million, alongside the city’s voter-approved $84 million. A very large state contribution remained necessary.

Executive director Jerry Hiebert’s statement explains the limit of the arrangement. The tollway agency could contribute money supported by paying motorists; it could not turn every benefit of a river project into toll revenue.

03 / Two kinds of road

A slower parkway would change who could help pay

Kirk left open whether the eventual road should be a low-speed parkway or the high-speed facility the tollway authority was designing. That flexibility was useful for the city’s planning, but the agency’s involvement was less flexible. Hiebert said a 45-mph road would not attract enough traffic or toll income to justify its participation.

The speed question therefore had a financial consequence. A slower road could be considered, but the city could not assume the same tollway contribution would follow it. The choice affected the potential funder as well as the design.

The September 2000 Woodall Rogers terminus photograph gives a period view of another road approaching the river corridor. Its original caption anticipated a separate bridge extension. Traffic signals and yield signs sit at the end of the through road. For all the talk about future connections, this one still brought drivers to Industrial Boulevard.

The Trinity planning page places the proposed bypass around downtown and preserves the site’s concerns about its cost. Reading that account beside Kirk’s proposal shows why the park and road could share a corridor while needing different schedules.

04 / The state’s part

The Bush Turnpike showed what state participation could mean

Hiebert pointed to the President George Bush Turnpike as a regional precedent. He said TxDOT had paid for frontage roads and major interchanges at Central Expressway and I-35E, and had lent the authority $135 million. In his account, the nearly billion-dollar turnpike would not have been built without that help.

This was a useful comparison because the proposed Trinity road also needed to connect with an existing freeway system. State participation could buy specific pieces of a toll project, rather than simply cover whatever the toll authority could not afford. The report did not contain a comparable commitment for Trinity.

Kirk wanted the river amenities to proceed without waiting for that unresolved commitment. A difficult design question would remain: would the road serve people heading into the park, or chiefly drivers passing downtown? The June 2001 economic discussion would put that difference at the center of the debate.