Last week, during the discussion about the Trinity toll road and the Dream Team’s recommendations about how not to screw up the whole project, District 11 Councilman Lee Kleinman said he felt like his balls were in a vise. Today he has an op-ed in the DMN that shows how clouded a man’s thinking can become when he focuses too much on his wedding tackle. As a concerned citizen, you should read the entire piece, but let me just point out one passage. In dispelling what he calls “myths” about the proposed high-speed, six-lane Trinity toll road, Kleinman writes: “A local example of compatibility is at White Rock Lake, where a six-lane state highway goes through the park (State Highway 78, also known as Garland Road).”
I happen to live not far from White Rock. I ride around the lake less often than I should but apparently more frequently than Councilman Kleinman does. Because I know that Garland Road runs along the lake’s southern shore for about three blocks. I pointed this out on Twitter last night. Kleinman responded: “Referring to Loop 12 / NW Highway, w/ grade separated trail parallel and paddle options underneath (DMN edited).” Whether the paper really does execute such editing moves without consulting authors or whether the councilman is throwing the paper under the bus on account of the pressure on his kleinbits — I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter.
Here’s a view of what he claims he meant to refer to. It’s a stretch of Northwest Highway on the north end of the lake. Here’s a view of what it looked like when the elevated road was under construction. If this is his six-lane highway that “goes through the park,” then he’s talking about half a mile of road (the proposed Trinity toll road is 9 miles). And, yes, the bike path laid next to the road at White Rock is great. There was once nothing like it for riders and runners circumnavigating the lake. But no one uses that short stretch of path to hang out and enjoy a park. Because it’s not a park at that location. It’s a high-traffic corridor. And no one (or practically no one) paddles through that area, as Kleinman suggests. Because there’s a six-lane elevated road running through it.
Either Lee Kleinman hasn’t spent much time around White Rock Lake or he’s trying to deceive readers of the DMN. OR — there is one more explanation — he’s a satirist who, upon his retirement, hopes to join the great Al Petrasek in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas.
I should add one more point. White Rock Lake Park does have a road that runs through it. It’s called Lawther. It’s exactly the sort of road that Larry Beasley described in his Dream Team presentation. It provides access to a park. It’s gentle and meandering. If your balls were in a vise, it’s exactly the sort of place where you’d go to find some relief.
Update (9:17) I got word from a DMN editor that they erroneously inserted the parenthetical about Garland Road. A correction will run in tomorrow’s paper. The online version has already been corrected. But as I say, it doesn’t matter. That half-mile stretch of Northwest Highway technically does “run through” White Rock Lake Park, but only a sophist would say it does. And that area certainly isn’t a park.
