Angela Hunt and concerned Dallas residents hold press conference regarding proposed toll road in Trinity Park

by Laura Seewoester

Dallas City Councilmember Angela Hunt and members of TrinityVote held a press conference at Trammel Crow Park this afternoon to announce that they will seek a referendum to move the proposed toll road out of Trinity Park completely. TrinityVote is a coalition of citizens that still hope to see the park, the whole park and nothing but the park, they voted for almost a decade ago.

In 1998, the citizens of Dallas voted to approve funds for the Trinity River Project. This project consists of an urban park area with lakes, a cleaned up Trinity River, parks and even sailboats. Flash forward nine years, and this future urban sanctuary is right smack in the middle of a battle between the City of Dallas and TrinityVote and everything takes place in between the levees that keep the streets of Dallas from flooding. The City of Dallas with the North Texas Tollway Authority is proposing a tollway, to extend from US 175 to the 183 I35 interchange, to help relieve traffic downtown. The tollway, however, has been recently readjusted to take up 1/3 of Trinity Park due to concerns the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have over the proximity of the tollway to the levees in the Trinity Park area that also acts as floodplains. If the tollway is placed in the original location, the safety of Dallas citizens is at risk.

Supporters of the tollway claim that voters did agree to putting a road in the middle of the park, however Mike Davis, from Dallas Progess says the original road was a "4 lane, 45 mph non-intrusive parkway." Davis says they have little by little made the park smaller, and the tollway bigger.

In order to put this issue on the ballot in November, TrinityVote must obtain ten percent of Dallas voters signatures, which is roughly 50,000 supporters. They will start getting signatures April 30, the day early voting starts for this May's elections, and will be set up at all voting locations.

Unfortunately, neither Angela Hunt nor the citizens with TrinityVote have made any suggestions of where the tollway should be placed, or what should be done to relieve some of the downtown traffic if the tollway is scrapped all together.