Dallas-Fort Worth— Streetcar Stimulus To Be Sought

Rail Transit Online, July 2009

A joint application for $95 million in federal stimulus funding will be filed by Dallas and Fort Worth with support from the North Central Texas Council of Governments. The money would come from the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program and would be used for already-planned projects in both cities.

Fort Worth has given preliminary approval for an ambitious $250-million, three-line streetcar scheme that includes a downtown loop, a route along West Seventh Street to the Will Rogers Center and the University of North Texas campus, and a segment on South Main Street with spurs to Evans Avenue and Rosedale Street and to the medical district along Magnolia and Eighth avenues. Subsequent lines would be built further along East Rosedale and on North Main Street to the Stockyards.

Dallas has two streetcar proposals for the downtown area, one a $6.5-million extension of the heritage McKinney Avenue Transit Authority system and the other a city-sponsored circulator network feeding light rail stations.

If the federal grant comes through, construction on some of the lines could be underway by 2012, officials say, although it hasn't been decided which would be started first or how to divide the money. "It's really important that Dallas and Fort Worth work together and go after federal dollars," Fort Worth Councilwoman Kathleen Hicks told the Star Telegram. "We should have been doing this a long time ago."

Added Fort Worth Councilman Joel Burns on July 16, "It's a huge shift. Until a few days ago, we were talking about still being in the planning process in 2012." Transit officials believe that the joint application will have a greater impact in Washington because it will show regional solidarity in solving mobility problems. The deadline for filing is Sept. 19.