Recapping Media Reaction to Tear Down Proposal for I-345 in Dallas

Mark Lamster’s recent article makes an argument for reasoned debate about a plan to remove I-345, which he first reported in October of last year. “While I understand the tearout plan is controversial, and that reasonable individuals may marshal legitimate arguments against it, the kind of public discussion we need is one based on facts and reasoned discussion, not divisive misdirection.”

Lamster details the divisive misdirection as follows:

• “The first response was condescending dismissal. ‘You can usually count on crazy-town proposals to die on their own,’ wrote one columnist in this paper, incredulous that anyone might take this ‘time-waster’ seriously.”
• “[Respondents], becoming ever more desperate, have issued forth with a series of red herrings and straw men in the hopes of derailing discussion.” (The red herring, in this case, is a conspiracy theory regarding the Trinity River Toll Road.)
• “Michael Morris, the transportation director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments…saw fit to throw down the race card, baselessly suggesting that the plan’s proponents are a cabal of wealthy white folks from North Dallas with no concern (or support) from minority South Dallas.”
• There's a “fallacious supposition” inherent to a new column by Tod Robberson, “who concludes that the tearout plan would ‘make life nice and convenient for a special class of people at the expense of Dallas’s poorest and most inconvenienced.’”

Lamster also makes the point that it is, “in particular, incumbent on the plan’s proponents to make a convincing case that the tear-out plan will not be a doomsday scenario for those commuters who live in South Dallas and work in the north.”