New Fort Worth Panther Island Bridge Propaganda Nonsense

Saw that which you see here this morning on the front page of the online version of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Anyone who has any awareness of the Fort Worth public works project which has become known simply as The Boondoggle would easily guess what someone with that awareness would think when seeing the article's headline of A Panther Island bridge in downtown Fort Worth may be done sooner than expected.

Done sooner than expected? Those three simple little bridges being built over dry land began construction with a celebratory TNT explosion way back in 2014.

Over half a decade ago.

With an, even then, bizarrely long four year bridge building project timeline, for three simple little bridges, built over dry land.

Four years is longer than it took to build the Golden Gate Bridge, over actual deep, fast moving water. It is difficult to find any engineering feat of significant bridge building, anywhere in the world, which has taken longer than four years.

And here we have Fort Worth's newspaper of record telling its readers that one of those bridges may be done sooner than expected.

In the article we learn that that sooner than expected completion is the middle of 2021.

Here is the paragraph where we learn that completion date info...

Work on the North Main Street bridge, one of three needed for the Panther Island project, may be done by the middle of 2021, Doug Rademaker, a senior project manager for the city, told the project’s board of directors Wednesday. Rademaker wouldn’t put a firm end date on the bridge construction, but said based on the work already finished it appears to be significantly ahead of the its projected December 2021 completion date.

Significantly ahead of its December 2021 completion date? 2021 is 7 years after the bridge construction began, with a then four year project timeline. How can a phrase like "significantly ahead" be used to describe this?

Another doozy from this article...

Traffic may be allowed on the bridges before they’re completely finished.

Traffic on unfinished bridges. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.

The following paragraph in this latest Star-Telegram propaganda article about The Boondoggle is another head scratcher...

Once scheduled to open in 2017, the bridges were delayed by design issues, and officials have pushed the completion date back several times.

What? Once scheduled to open in 2017, a mere three years after that TNT explosion? Design issues pushed back the completion date several times? The Star-Telegram has never investigated and explained to its readers precisely what those design issues have been.

Design issues with simple little bridges being built over dry land, which look like freeway overpasses?

 What are those design issues?

Don't the people of Fort Worth deserve and need to know what the design issues have been with those bridges they may one day be driving over, even before the construction is completed?

So perplexing that something like this goes on and on and on, with no real end in sight. Still not funded, awaiting magic money from the future, for a project which those who foisted it on the town claimed was a vitally needed flood control and economic development plan.

Soon to enter the third decade of that imaginary "vitally needed" project not being anywhere near completion, not even able to build three simple little bridges in a timely fashion...

Fort Worth's Clyde Picht On America's Biggest Boondoggle

Earlier today I blogged a blogging titled The Incredible Alternative Universe Of J.D. Granger & America's Biggest Boondoggle, part of which contained some common sense from Fort Worth's Clyde Picht.

I will copy and paste the Clyde Picht part of the blogging...

And then a paragraph of common sense from Clyde Picht...

Former City Councilman Clyde Picht, who has long questioned aspects of the project and is running for the water district board, said J.D. Granger's appointment is "asking for criticism" and that his knowledge of water district issues is "certainly more limited than most people."

The quote above from Clyde Picht was from nine years ago.

Read what the wise Clyde Picht had to say about the same subject nine years later on his blog, in a blogging titled The Squeal of all Squeals, part of which I will copy below....

Where in this country can you find a pork barrel project that causes squeals all the way to the pig farms in Iowa?

Where can you find a project that was originally estimated to cost $360 million and has ballooned to over $900 million (2009 dollars) and is sure to nearly double that amount?

Where can you find a director for a billion dollar plus water and engineering project that was enlisted from the ranks of the DA's office without so much as a personnel search?

Where can you find a billion dollar plus project that was not funded by bonds and without voter approval?

Where can you find a billion dollar plus project that was started by spending hundreds of millions even though required government money has never been allocated for the federal share?

Where can you find a billion dollar plus project that has no voter input or oversight and that participating governmental entities claim to have no oversight or control?

Well right here in river city - Trinity River city that is. Panther Island, Trinity Uptown, or Central City development - call it what whatever the Trinity River Vision Authority thinks will give it new life and authenticity.

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I don't care if some characterize Clyde Picht as a right wing Republican cracker type.

Unlike most right wing Republican cracker types, Clyde Picht often makes a lot of sense and often says stuff that I think should be listened to.

I have met Clyde Picht several times, once whilst manning a booth at the Prairie Fest, once at a protest meeting ordering food and drinks at the Woodshed Smokehouse, and other times, where Clyde Picht seemed so smart, likable, articulate and reasonable, to me, that I assumed he was a progressive, liberal Democrat type, til I was informed otherwise.....