TxDOT just gave Dallas the road map to its future, if the City Council doesn't screw it up

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Desperado waiting for a train: Every day this man hops the wall at the Victory Station to get to and from work. (Courtesy James Frye)

On Friday, the Texas Department of Transportation released a draft of its CityMAP study — you know, the one that says maybe we should tear down or at least move a few of the highways and overpasses that destroyed neighborhoods back when that was a thing. It’s an epic document, 341 pages of light poolside reading. But here’s a pro tip: Skip to Page 152. Amid all the illustrations of the possible, the probable and the do-it-now-able — which, knowing the Dallas City Council, won’t be done soon-able at all — is a photo of the here and now that says everything you need to know about how screwed up getting around in this town can be.

It’s a picture of a guy climbing a wall to get to Victory Station, where train-riders catch DART light rail and the Trinity Railway Express near the American Airlines Center. An honest-to-Guy-Clark desperado waiting for a train.

“It’s sad,” said the man who took that picture  – James Frye, a landscape architect and one of the bright minds hired by Texas transportation commissioner Victor Vandergriff to compile CityMAP. That’s one way of putting it: sad. Or infuriating.

Frye and his team had gone down to what’s called Lowest Stemmons to investigate ways to connect downtown to Victory Park to the Design District to the Trinity River. They were walking up and down Interstate 35E when Frye espied a man crossing the frontage road on the west side. He disappeared into the drainage tunnel beneath the freeway and re-emerged on the Victory side. Frye noticed there was a wooden plank leaning against the concrete wall separating the station from a drainage ditch. The man used it to climb the wall and hop the fence.

At first Frye thought he was homeless. But, no: The man, wearing an orange shirt and dark slacks, opened his bag, pulled out his iPad and began to work. Frye approached the man, who thought he was in trouble.

“I said, ‘Do you do this every day?’” Frye recalled Tuesday morning. “He said, ‘Every day.’ He lifted his shoes and said, ‘There’s the mud to prove it.’” … [visit site to read more]

Reposted via Dallas City Hall News