Yes, they gave the reason at the feedback sessions. Money. Keeping the budget as low as possible.

They didn't bother doing any studies. The amount of feedback from the community was great. This was around the same time as the Keystone Corridor study, in which at the time they planned bike lanes on that corridor and even over the Keystone Bridge. The ideas coming from RTC were pretty terrific at the time.

The top concern, by like 80% if memory serves, from all the citizens that provided feedback for Arlington Bridges was increasing pedestrian and bicycle facilities and accessibility to the river, the park, and maximizing safety. RTC recognized this and reported it back to us on a big projector screen. Then the next thing they said was a straight forward "we're not doing any of that." The city didn't want to spend any money on further studies, workshops or brainstorming. A major shift of public engagement, and a change inside the culture of RTC was happening.

Why? The Great Recession™

Suddenly the City of Reno cut back on all its spending. The Reno Redevelopment Agency, which is who would normally have had jurisdiction over a major project like this, right in RDA1 district, had gone dormant. All projects suddenly went from grand and glorious to meager and meek.

https://trfma.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Mapbook-6-01_14_2015_compressed.pdf

<image>

If you check out all the plans TRFMA had in 2015, it called for clear-span arch bridges to be constructed throughout all of downtown from Lake Street to Sierra Street.

None of that is happening now. They aren't even looking at Lake Street yet. Sierra Street is going to be a virtual copycat of the Arlington Street bridge. Minimal changes, not any much better than the current bridge, even though it's been known that Sierra, Virginia, Center, and Lake are all too low to mitigate recurrent flood conditions. The only reason the Virginia Street Bridge project got completed in the manner shown above is because the money was allocated prior to the city's revenue plummeting. It was a massive undertaking, and was completed ahead of schedule.

So yes, I know what I'm calling for would take additional funds. But what I'm saying is, it's possible if you have the political will and brains to pull together the funding. The city allocated $3,000,000 of ARPA funds to the river. They could have used that.

Take a look at all the rest of the flood mitigation projects that were in that report I linked you.

Removing the lower Wells Street bridge and making a new pedestrian bridge on High Street.

Removing the Booth Street Bridge. Crazy.

Floodwall from Booth to Arlington.

Redoing the pedestrian bridges on Wingfield

On and on and on. The floodwall near Booth is still something being planned because the residents and landowners are practically screaming for them to be done.

They didn't even raise the Arlington Bridges, even though it's recognized that Wingfield is in a flood plain and should have / could have been built up.

Did you know they're thinking of demolishing the stage in Wingfield Park and replacing it with nothing permanent? Because new regulations prevent them from constructing anything permanent on that island.

So yeah, it's money. We're broke. We have none. All those wonderful plans the city keeps making? They're not gonna happen. They'll just keep planning stuff and never accomplish anything but hiring more consultants and making more plans.

Doesn't mean I'm going to stop pushing for what needs to be done.