Tolls on Mockingbird Lane? Let's burst that bubble

How much fun would it be to pay tolls to use Mockingbird Lane starting here at Hillcrest?

Here is another example of how out of touch the City Council is with reality. Highland Park officials have come up with a plan to charge non-bubble residents to drive on Mockingbird Lane through Highland Park.

So what did Linda Koop, one of the council's top transportation people, say? Did she laugh and joke that it sounded like a very bubble-like idea? Did she threaten to put toll booths up at the Highland Park borders in retaliation? Did she say it was one of the dumbest ideas she had ever heard?

Nope. She is paraphrased as saying that Highland Park  planners would have to be careful that their efforts don't lead to heavier traffic on crowded streets nearby.

Would someone please remind Koop who she works for?

There are any number of reasons why this idea, part of a new hip and trendy urban planning concept called congestion pricing, is horrible. And none of these include the fact that it's exactly the sort of elitist crap most of us expect from Highland Park.

First, it's a toll on a public road designed to protect the couple of thousand people who live on Mockingbird at the expense of the 18,000 who drive it but who don't live there. That's not exactly democratic, especially since the town gets state tax money for highway maintenance. In fact, the town wanted to use federal money to pay for a study to examine the plan.

Second, no one has yet figured out whether congestion pricing is effective in reducing traffic for the sake of reducing traffic. London is usually cited as the best example, but any success there has always been tied to the city's world-class mass transit system. London uses congestion pricing to get cars off the street to reduce pollution, pushing drivers to the Tube. Obviously, Mockingbird drivers couldn't opt for mass transit. Plus, one look at a Mapsco shows there really aren't any other east-west alternatives south of Northwest Highway -- which, surprise, surprise, is in Dallas, and not the Park Cities.

Third, we just got done hearing our city leaders talk about city-suburban synergies in the Trinity toll road election. If we're going to build the damn thing to make it easier for suburbanites to get to Dallas, why should we allow suburbanites to make life more difficult for Dallas drivers?

Fourth, think of the precedent this establishes. If Highland Park can do it, what will prevent Garland or Plano or Arlington from doing it?

Now is the time for Mayor Park Cities to show whose side he is on in any city-suburban dispute. It's an opportunity to demonstrate to those of us who doubt his commitment to Dallas that he does care more about the city than he cares about what his pals at the Dallas Country Club think -- which, surprise, surprise, is on the part of Mockingbird that would be tolled.

Technorati Tags: Mockingbird Lane,toll roads,congestion pricing,Tom Leppert,Highland Park

Comments

[jd]

They are confusing "congesting pricing" with "fascism":-)

The city of Dallas provides waste water treatment services to HP. If they implement congestion pricing we should quite literally not take that s**t.

[nancy wilson]

I think the city of Dallas also contributed towards the current Mockingbird construction phase. It's just another one of HP's tactics to keep others out of HP. Have you not seen the "Wall" being build along Northwest Highway around UP? It looks like the Great Wall of China.

[James Parker]

If Mockingbird is to be a "neighborhood street," then it doesn't need an entrance or exit ramp from Central or the Tollway. For that matter, it should just be walled off from the outside world like every other residential street in the Bubble.

Of course, the notion that Mockingbird is a "neighborhood street" is a lie, and always has been. And I for one have no sympathy for someone who moves into a house on Mockingbird and then pretends to be shocked by the fact that 18,000 cars a day pass by their abode. After all, why do you think you paid 25% less for that house than you would have for a similar house just one block over?

[Mark]

If you are coming from East Dallas to go to Love Field, you have virtually no choice but to drive on Mockingbird. It's not "convenient" to drive through their snotty, elitest city, to the contrary, the Park Cities is simply in the way and they intentionally make it difficult for commuters. I say start charging to leave the Park Cities. As is normal, they think only of themselves and not of the larger community in which they live and work.

[Observist]

Nobody bought a house on Mockingbird when it was a disused country lane, only to be shocked, SHOCKED! to see it "evolve" into a mid-major East-West through route. It's not like there are endless cars racing through at 50mph... just the fact that it is a mostly 2-lane road with plenty of stop lights, stop signs and a school zone is enough to limit the amount of traffic that will ever be on that road. That and the tendency of HP cops to ticket people for going 26 in a 25, if they're driving the wrong kind of car.

[Observist]

Dallas could make them pay every time they leave the compound - put tollbooths at every street going into or out of HP and charge only non-Dallas residents. HP residents want to drive on NW Hwy? Pay the man! Knox St? Pay the man! Oak Lawn? Pay the man!

[JKR]

OK I've been warning y'all about them for years, so it's nice to see the nefarious narcoleptic nabobs laid bare before 'the general public'.

[Edie]

On the subject of driving to Love Field, I find it very un-mass-transit friendly that DART doesn't run a bus directly from all the rail stations to Love Field. In fact, DART doesn't run a bus from ANY rail station except the central one downtown to Love Field. In fact, only ONE bus is dedicated to going to Love Field, and that bus runs from downtown. What are they thinking? I would have thought Love Field would have been the first place the DART rail lines were laid to, but not even the buses go there! I wrote them about it and received a nice letter some months letter saying at one time they ran one from Mockingbird, but not anymore. It just seems crazy. And you can't tell me the City is doing all they can to alleviate traffic on Mockingbird or any other thoroughfare when this sort of obvious oversight is going on. I mean, don't most major cities pretty much begin their mass transit planning by connecting people to airports and other transporation centers??

[Desert Rat]

Observist, we're on the same wavelength! Those snobs need Dallas more than Dallas needs Highland Park. They couldn't take it if they couldn't shop at NorthPark.

Say, Jeff, what does Mayor Park Cities say about all this?? Bet he has no comment................

[Dallas]

I'm a teacher at a Dallas ISD School and I have a great idea for all HP's bull crap. We should bus my high school students into highland park, give them all $2-3 for a coke and let them just hang out in HP for a few weeks during the summer. That will make those RACIST A$$H@TS in HP crap in their pants. Will this get anything accomplished? No, but it would still be fun.