Dallas Fort Worth Urban Forum

itsjrd1964 wrote:When will those Panther Island bridges be open? Not as soon as commuters might hope

Bridges on North Main Street and on Jacksboro Highway are going in as part of the Panther Island project, but long delays have put off work. Parallel detours have been in use during the work on both bridges. Now it will be the middle of 2020 or into 2021 before the bridges might be done.

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/loca ... 65575.html

joshua.dodd wrote:

itsjrd1964 wrote:When will those Panther Island bridges be open? Not as soon as commuters might hope

Bridges on North Main Street and on Jacksboro Highway are going in as part of the Panther Island project, but long delays have put off work. Parallel detours have been in use during the work on both bridges. Now it will be the middle of 2020 or into 2021 before the bridges might be done.

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/loca ... 65575.html

This is absurd. These bridges should have top priority and full funding in place before anything else.

KCHornedFrog wrote:Has anyone heard anything about this project recently?

Urban Toreador wrote:Another boondoggle. Anyone want to wager if it will be over budget and not completed on time?

zaphod wrote:I always got the impression that people in charge (both government and private sector) in DFW are impulsive and over-the-top and sometimes in coming up with "world class" plans they bite off more than they can chew.

Sometimes it works out, like DFW airport, Reunion Tower, DART, Cowboys Stadium, but it can also create weird half-baked results like the Las Colinas Urban Center, the post-apocalyptic ruin where "Midtown Dallas" was supposed to be, the Trinity signature Bridges over some grass and a drainage ditch pretending to be a river, the Kay Bailey Convention Center Heliport/Garage asphalt wasteland, the "urban renewal" of downtown Fort Worth to create the giant ugly convention center arena, freeway tangles, etc.

Panther Island is headed towards being the latter.

zaphod wrote:I always got the impression that people in charge (both government and private sector) in DFW are impulsive and over-the-top and sometimes in coming up with "world class" plans they bite off more than they can chew.

Sometimes it works out, like DFW airport, Reunion Tower, DART, Cowboys Stadium, but it can also create weird half-baked results like the Las Colinas Urban Center, the post-apocalyptic ruin where "Midtown Dallas" was supposed to be, the Trinity signature Bridges over some grass and a drainage ditch pretending to be a river, the Kay Bailey Convention Center Heliport/Garage asphalt wasteland, the "urban renewal" of downtown Fort Worth to create the giant ugly convention center arena, freeway tangles, etc.

Panther Island is headed towards being the latter.

I45Tex wrote:;) It's well established that the origin of FW's association with panthers was the published Dallas newspaperman's slur that a wild panther* had been seen (fast asleep, even?) in the street in Fort Worth in broad daylight simply because Fort Worth had so little going on there to deter it. So they might have been tempting fate to name a new neighborhood after that and expect it not to happen again zZz

* we still have bobcats, but that specimen was almost certainly a mountain lion. I imagine that the Trinity River pre-flood-control was still really wooded and integrated with its East Texas wetland forests, even that far west; but panthers are not really a thing in Texas, whereas there are sightings of black mountain lion looking creatures in East Texas to this day.