Greetings to you, Unfair Friends, from City Hall, where the Quality of Life Committee kicked off their meeting about trash and trails today just after noon o'clock -- and after David Neumann gave a clowny and enthused interview to a TV camera. Willis Winters, Assistant Director of Parks and Recreation began with a PowerPoint presentation about Dallas' trail system. The death of a woman on the Katy Trail last fall has the city scrambling to improve safety. The QOL committee listened intently to Winters from their fancy new chairs, especially Pauline Medrano, who wanted clarification: how many miles of trail does Dallas have? The answer: 104 glorious miles of sweet, sweet nature. And concrete. And what-have-you.
Winters had some immediate points of action: working with DPD to increase police presence, implementing trail and street crossing improvements, updating safety guidelines. Later points of action include a trail advertising campaign, re-striping. In the long term, Winters said he's looking at continuing implementation of the trail master plan and 911 advisory signs along trails.
Those of you following along at home can check out the trail safety presentations yourselves. Winters noted that they're increasing police presence at Katy Trail from 3:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays, and continuing patrols on White Rock, which are the two heaviest trafficked trails in Dallas. Winters touched on meetings to determine "trail etiquette guidelines," which they're continuing to "tweak."
Winters also presented new trail signs to the committee -- "please don't take them out of context" -- he said. He promised, "these signs make sense." Super promise.
"Very importantly," said Winters, the Dallas Bike Plan will be a huge
part of making the trails safer. Now, we're on to questions from the
council, and ole' Sheffie Kadane is up first.
"That was a good presentation, and a lot!" said Kadane, who is as excited about this trail as I've ever seen him about anything. He wondered about separate-but-parallel biking and walking trails, which currently only exists on the Katy Trail but could be installed in future trails. "Could you implement them together and have one a soft trail and a hard trail and one wider?" Winters told him they were looking into the best way to do it.
Kadane also wanted to know about the Santa Fe Trail crossing at Munger -- it's a rough one, he says. Winters: "It'll be studied, and through a combination of pavement marking, signage and lighting," they're working to make it safer. Ah, studies. How Dallas does love them.
Neumann's up now! Join me in the comments
for further updates.
