The experiment: part two

Time for an update on the experiment as the week winds down. We successfully drove only one car for the rest of the week. The only other challenge that presented itself was that I needed to meet the A/C repairman on Wednesday afternoon. So Amy just came and picked me up at White Rock station and dropped me at the house for the afternoon. No biggie.

Let’s just say this: I’ll probably have the Passat listed on cars.com and craigslist by sometime next week. I think we're ready to become a one-car family. Know anyone who needs a late model low mileage sedan?

This is going to be interesting.

Pro toll-road mailer

I got my first piece of propaganda from the pro-toll road campaign in the mail yesterday. It is a lovely glossy fold out thing that describes all the awful things that will happen if the referendum is passed in November. On the front cover is their biggest claim (and shot at their nemesis Angela Hunt): "Don't let Angela Hunt send more than $1 billion down the river..."

Not sure why this makes me mad. We've been expecting this. But misinformation chaps my hide. The state and federal dollars for this road will not be relinquished if this road is moved outside of the levees. It will have to be redesigned and some things will have to change, but none other than "Vote No" Honorary Co-Chair U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson has clarified for us that the money for the levees and flood control is not in jeopardy should the location of this road change. The money for the park and lakes was secured in the 1998 bond election.

The flier implies (without explicitly saying so) that the entire project: the flood control, the lakes, the park, the hike and bike trails, the nature preserve, etc. is all at risk if this referendum passes. This is not true. The bonds have been approved and the work continues on all those other things if the toll road is removed.

Among the other claims in the flier:

• Claim: This vote was forced by a "small but vocal" group. In a city of over 1 million people, 50,000-80,000 (the number of certified signatures and the total number of signatures on the petition) may seem small, but it is more than the number of people who voted for our fearless mayor who wants to shove the road down our throats as Bill DeOre so vividly illustrated. If all of those folks come to the polls in November, Mayor Tom's vision of a paved river bottom will remain a fantasy.
• Claim: Voting Yes means new taxes. This is the big bogeyman. The claim states: "More than 90% of the cost of the Trinity Parkway is being paid through state funding. If we lose this funding then Dallas taxpayers may be left to pay for Angela Hunt's new road design." First of all, it is not Angela Hunt's responsibility to design or align this tollway. Hunt is trying to protect the park that was voted for back in 1998. Apparently several people thought that was a vote for a roads project. So we have a disagreement. Secondly, notice the use of the words "if" and "may." This is not a very strong statement. It is a scare tactic reinforcing the claim on the front that we could lose $1 billion in funding. If the state wants a road, the state's going to help pay for a road.
• Claim: Voting Yes means delayed flood protection because of a delay in the "project" if the road must be redesigned. Let's all recall that a road in the flood plain displaces water and makes flooding worse. I don't think these folks are too concerned about flood protection. The Corps of Engineers has said that they will have the right to remove portions of this road in the future if necessary to perform levee repair. This claim is part of the argument that all the pieces of this project are so intertwined and inextricably linked that to remove the road threatens the entire project. Again, the funding for flood control is secure. Let's build the best flood control we can and not seek waivers from the Corps of Engineers to use pre-Katrina standards just so we can have a highway in our flood plain.
• Claim: Voting Yes means more traffic. I suspect that there will be more traffic regardless of where this road is located or if it is built at all. More roads encourage more people to drive. This "reliever route" further encourages people to live in the 'burbs and drive their SUVs from Southlake to their office downtown. What if we used our scarce resources to speed up the DART light rail build out? That would be forward thinking.

There is another picture included of the lovely four-lane road (it will actually be six lanes) with about 6 cars on it with pretty vegetation surrounding it (weakening the levees) meandering next to our park next door. Gee, what could that park look like without that road there?

I ordered a yard sign from TrinityVote yesterday. I will probably make a donation today to help them combat the misinformation in this flier. I'm excited about the potential for the grass roots of this city to deal a David vs. Goliath blow to all the politicians and the big money interests who want to pave our park. I really think it could happen. That's right, Molly Ivins, Dallas might be ready to start rooting for David!

UPDATE:
Making a donation to TrinityVote is very easy - they have a PayPal account linked from their website. I had a more difficult time getting their "Volunteer" form to work, which is where you request a yard sign.

Also, good balanced reporting from the Advocate neighborhood magazine today. Check it out.

Bill DeOre strikes again

I can't believe the Dallas Morning News let this guy get away. Great political cartoonist. Originally posted at dallasblog.

Trinity Updates

Mayor Tom and Angela Hunt debated the toll road last night. Ms. Hunt's big applause line, when being pressed to offer an alternate route for the road:

"There are lots of places we can put this road, and only one place we can put the park," she said. "So where is your alternative for the park?"

Also, here is a good post from Jeff Siegel last week over at the Advocate blog. It is from a discussion with State Senator John Corona, who is of course pro toll-road. But he's honest about it. He would prefer a free road outside the park, but knows that it must have some private funding and therefore the land needs to be free to make it "commercially viable." I guess the tax payers will be picking up the tab as the price continues to spiral. It appears to be all about fixing the I30-I35 mixmaster according to this post. I recall Jim Schutze addressing the contention that this road is needed before the mixmaster can be fixed and I believe his opinion was this was a myth.

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson also joined the pro-toll road folks last week. Earlier this year she blew a hole in the pro-toll road crowd's assertion that if we don't build the road where it is planned all the financing will dry up. She's not backing off that statement, but has reversed herself on the vote. Now she thinks a vote on the placement of the road is a waste of time and money. She has been assimilated. Too bad.

UPDATE:
Check out Matt Pulle's reporting of the debate over at Unfair Park. It appears that the audience was overwhelmingly anti-toll road and was cheering Angela Hunt and Sandy Greyson at every turn. Also read the third comment down by a reader named Jason Eric. Great post. He illustrates very well the divide between the old way of thinking (build more roads) and the new way Dallas needs to be thinking (more mass transit).

The experiment

Can my family comfortably exist with only one car? That is the question of the week. Passat is spending the week in the garage. I am already taking the train to work every day, so it is mostly a question of getting dropped off at the train station rather than parking my vehicle in the parking lot every day, costing me depreciation, a car payment, and insurance. About 2.5 miles from the house to the train station. Should be pretty easy, right?

When we unveiled this plan to our parents, their first reactions were "do you need money?" Now I'd be lying if I didn't say this plan was prompted by financial concerns. But it isn't just that. It's about being a good steward of our resources, doing what's right for our family, and making do with less.

And I might just replace the heavy German 6-cylinder sedan with a fuel sipping 2-wheeler. There is an active campaign underway (by my kids' grandparents) to convince me that a scooter is terribly dangerous. But I can assure one and all that I would wear a helmet and drive almost the entire harrowing 2.5 miles on residential streets. This is only feasible if I feel relatively confident that I could secure such a vehicle at the park and ride against thievery, so the jury's still out.

But this week is the one car, no scooter experiment.

Day 1 was Monday. We ran into this. DART rail was running massive delays due to weekend construction that took a tad too long. After we figured out what was going on, my wonderful wife and kids drove me downtown. Crisis averted and only about 45 minutes late for work. But were the commuting gods trying to tell us something? (They'll have to do better than that; we're stubborn.)

Day 2. Tuesday. French toast (and a smoke alarm to let us know it was ready) this morning - wife is taking the experiment very seriously if she's cooking breakfast. (She's a fantastic cook, but we eat cold cereal in the mornings around here.) Got to the station early and downtown at the normal time. Wife and kids not yet bitter that they have to leave the house at the same time I do. I did have a bit of a wait in the afternoon as my ride was late. No big deal. It wasn't that hot out and I had my iPod and the Week in Review section from the Sunday Times.

So far so good. I really think the 1 car family idea will not be too bad since we have such good public transportation to downtown. It's going to bite us in the ass though when we both need to go somewhere that the trains don't go. Stay tuned for further results of experiment week.

Do not forget your fallen sons and daughters

If you haven't already seen this, check out Frisco, Texas native Alex Horton's blog, Army of Dude. Horton is a soldier back home from his deployment in Iraq and has written some great stuff about the war and how his deployment has changed his view of it 180 degrees. Here is a sample from a recent post:

-------------------------------------------------------
After losing two friends and over a dozen comrades, I have this to say:

Do not wage war unless it is absolutely, positively the last ditch effort for survival.I was a struggling senior in high school when the invasion took place, and I supported it. I was mesmerized by the way we raced across the desert and took Baghdad in less than a month. War was a sleek, glossy commercial on TV, and we always won at the end. It’s easy to be for a war when you have absolutely no connection with it. Patriotism lead me to believe what we were doing was right and noble. What a difference a deployment can make.

The public can do something about this. It doesn’t have to be a hopeless cause forever. Write your Congressmen, go to a rally, read as much as you can about Iraq to see it for what it is: a place men go to lose their minds and their lives. And most importantly, love your children. Teach them that war is not honorable, it’s no plaything cast with an indifferent hand. It’s the most terrible thing man ever brought to the world. My generation didn’t learn from Vietnam, but the next one can learn from us. The memories and spirit of Chevy and Jesse compel you, America. Do not forget your fallen sons.
---------------------------------------------------------

When this war is over, it will be a better day
When this war is over, it will be a better day
But it won't bring back all those poor boys in the grave.
-Eric Clapton/J.J. Cale

Watercolor artists find work in Big D

Dallas’ Only Daily newspaper printed its third front page Trinity toll road story of the week today. This one was accompanied inside the paper by a lovely watercolor rendering of a toll road. Unfortunately the News did not reproduce it on their web site so I can’t paste it here. (My better half thinks we could use a nice watercolor painting of a toll road to pretty up the living room.) It is tree-lined and has lovely landscaping all around it. The NTTA also released a video of computer generated animation showing what the toll road might or might not look like. There is a disclaimer before the video stating that the project may not resemble the video. Mayor Tom “feel(s) very comfortable” that the renderings are accurate.

Naturally the good guys say that these pictures completely misrepresent the project. Angela Hunt, whom the Morning News has been keeping busy this week, responds. From the article:

…District 14 Dallas City Council member Angela Hunt, the toll road's leading opponent and architect of the toll road proposition before voters in November, argued that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers won't allow trees to be planted in the sides of the river levees as depicted in the anti-proposition campaign's toll road renderings.

A verdant median also disappears if the toll road is expanded from an initial four lanes to six, Ms. Hunt argued.

Members of the Dallas city staff acknowledged as much Tuesday during a meeting of the City Council's Trinity River Corridor Committee.

So it seems that the message of the pro toll road people is to show us pretty pictures of roads, and how they don’t really intrude on the park. Meanwhile, they still don’t know how much it’s going to cost or exactly how they’re going to do it. I can’t emphasize that enough. There seems to be no plan of how to protect this road from flooding while not obstructing the flow of the river during flooding.

Over in the blogosphere, I am noticing a trend to favor the "city versus suburb" argument, which I mentioned in my initial manifesto (point 3). Several commenters at the Observer and Advocate blogs have gravitated to the idea that this highway is for suburbanites commuting to their downtown offices. The lovely community of Southlake is often invoked as a place where people will benefit from a new commuter highway. Well, it appears at least one of the residents of Southlake has caught on that this project is good for him. Dan Quinto writes this in the DMN letters section today:

If improving the quality of life of North Texas residents is the point of the Trinity River Project, then consider the 200,000 commuters who would benefit daily from the increased beauty and reduced stress of their daily commute using the Trinity toll road.

I cannot think of any recreational or pedestrian use that would match that benefit alone. Roadways are as much a part of urban life as great public spaces. Treating our roadways with the same care and affection will benefit both our cities and our lives.

Well, there you have it. Dallas should give away their parkland in order to build Dan a nicer road from his house to his office and improve his quality of life. His letter actually illustrates nicely how short-sighted this project is. There is no recreational or pedestrian use that would match the benefit of getting Mr. Quinto back home to Southlake faster and in style. To Mr. Quinto of Southlake, roadways are just as important as great public spaces. Even if I were to agree, I would have to take issue with a roadway running through a great public space.

Fortunately the residents of Southlake will not be voting in the referendum. The park users will.