Dallas City Council Member Chad West seemed beat. It was six hours into Wednesday’s marathon meeting, and the top engineer of the Texas Department of Transportation’s Dallas district was presenting a perfunctory update on its plans to remove and trench I-345, the elevated highway between downtown and Deep Ellum that we’ve written so much about.

In May, the City Council gave the state permission to rip out the freeway and rebuild it below grade, with a few caveats. But those caveats—the most significant of which included directing city employees to find money to pay an outside expert to study something different for the road—didn’t really matter. I-345 is owned by the state, and the governor won’t allow TxDOT to remove lanes from freeways. The traffic must flow.

Councilmember West first asked how to remove his name from the Council’s unanimous vote in support of the state’s plan last year. Then he tried to understand why city employees had not, in his mind, followed instructions to research doing something different with this 1.4-mile stretch of land in the city center. But once West and his colleagues gave their OK last year, the game was over.

The project has expanded in scope and cost. It will actually impact 2.8 miles of roadway, and it will cost at least $1.65 billion, up from $1 billion. The state and the feds will pay for the construction, but the city is on the hook to build and engineer decks over the sunken highway, upon which some sort of development can be built.

There is an inevitability to major transportation projects like this one. The agencies that represent interests beyond the city’s are ultimately the ones that make these decisions. The City Council gets to work the margins.

Case in point: most of Wednesday’s meeting was a discussion about building a seven-story-tall high-speed rail line through downtown, near Reunion Tower and the Hyatt Regency. The rail would take riders to Arlington and Fort Worth. That discussion, too, felt like the Dallas City Council will not be able to change the minds of the transportation planners who also represent suburban interests. They want this thing built.

Michael Morris, the head transportation official for the region, made clear that he is planning for another 4 million North Texans over the next two decades. The city of Dallas is just a piece of the larger puzzle. There are legitimate questions about how the changes to I-345 and the potential of high-speed rail will impact major development plans in Dallas.

But like West seemed to realize, there is only so much Dallas can do. We play the game, we don't deal the cards.