Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings announced in May his support for construction of a long delayed Trinity Parkway toll road and on Thursday he reaffirmed his support in a memo and 22-pages of supporting documents.
The Trinity River Parkway project is a proposed 10-mile, 6-lane, controlled-access toll road that is expected to relieve congestion on Interstate 35 and Interstate 30 as well as other busy roadways in Dallas.
Long-time opponent, Councilwoman Angela Hunt, has said he mayor is wrong on all of his reasons for supporting the road and that he should support Project Pegasus which would widen the existing roadways through downtown Dallas.
"This doesn't make sense financially. It's not going to fix our traffic problems, we need to move forward on Project Pegasus and finally get some traffic relief," Hunt said in May.
In a statement released by the mayor's office Thursday, Rawlings said he asked the Texas Department of Transportation to verify existing data "to answer a key question for Dallas citizens: 'Should the City of Dallas focus its efforts on building elements of the Pegasus Project rather than the Trinity Parkway because of better increased capacity in the more cost efficient manner?'"
Rawlings said the agency reported that the Trinity Parkway, completed separately, would allow new capacity for 132,000 vehicles per day and cost a total of $1.47 billion ($167 million per mile).
Meanwhile, the Pegasus Project, completed separately, would allow new capacity for 93,300 vehicles per day and a cost of $1.2 billion ($184 per mile).
Rawlings went on to say that while neither project is funded yet, the Trinity Parkway is more likely to receive funding because it would be a tolled roadway where Project Pegasus would not be a toll road.
"In short, my answer to the question that has been raised 'Is Pegasus 'better' in the short term than the Parkway?' is simply, no…We must move in haste to build our Trinity Parkway," Rawlings said in Thursday's memo.
Rawlings prepared statement was 23 pages including the memo and the data he received from TxDOT, you can read it by CLICKING HERE.
NBC 5's Ken Kalthoff contributed to this report.
