The Dallas City Council killed the controversial Trinity River toll road project once and for all Wednesday, but council members supported the management plan for a Trinity Park.
The traffic relieving roadway along the river was approved by Dallas voters twice in 1998 and 2007, but Wednesday the majority of City Council members decided the latest traffic projections do not support the $2 billion cost.
Former Dallas City Councilwoman Angela Hunt led the unsuccessful 2007 referendum campaign against the road. She was there Wednesday to see the new result.
"Since 2007, we've known this road does not decrease traffic. It does not improve our mobility as a city. It does not make way for all the other critical transportation projects that are already being built without the toll road. And we've also known it is going to destroy our greatest natural asset, the Trinity Park," Hunt said. "What we didn't have was the political will to do something about it. And today we did."
The vote was 13 to 2 against the road, with Mayor Mike Rawlings and other past supporters voting against it this time.
The council then took up the plan Rawlings supported to create a Local Government Corporation to build and manage a Trinity River Park.
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Councilman Philip Kingston was in the 9 to 6 minority, voting against the LGC plan. Kingston said the details were not thoroughly vetted. He called the proposal "rushed and slapdash."
Councilman Dwaine Caraway made the motion to approve the Trinity Park LGC.
"All my life I've been passing across that Trinity River and all I could see was tissue paper and a smell running underneath my nose. And now that I've passed 60 years old, in my lifetime I would hope and I expect to see something happen," Caraway said.
The park would span 200 acres along the Trinity River in the shadow of downtown Dallas.
"That's an enormous central park for Dallas," said Michael Ablon, chairman of the LGC formed to spearhead the project. "It also has the opportunity to tether the neighborhood together, which is tremendous, to undo the unintended consequences the levees did."
Landscape architect Michael Van Valenburgh is designing the park. He also designed Brooklyn Park.
The LGC will accept a $50 million gift promised last year by the Harold Simmons family and work to raise $200 million more. Construction could be three years away.
Dallas City Attorney Larry Casto said $46 million earmarked for a road from the 1998 bond referendum can be reprogrammed for other purposes.
NBC 5's Noelle Walker contributed to this report.
