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In the timeline of major projects that reshape cities, two years is usually a mere blip. People's attitudes have to change, and politicians have to come around to the idea that, for once, leaving things as they are is not the safest route to re-election. Bureaucratic machinery shifts gears, various pockets must be searched for money.Two years ago, the notion of modern streetcars was barely on the radar screen in Cowtown. The Fort Worth Transportation Authority didn't want to touch it. Mayor Mike Moncrief showed little interest in any mass transit system, citing costs and his perception that Fort Worth citizens wouldn't support it.
Not that improving public mass transit was completely off the agenda. But regional leaders wanted to put their muscle behind commuter lines between the big cities or cities and airports, not some short lines that would just move people around within Fort Worth's central city. How could a modern streetcar that ran about three miles from the Cultural District to downtown have any real effect on packed freeways and air quality? Why would anyone park their cars and use such a system?
But since then, the climate for such a system has changed dramatically. The Fort Worth City Council appointed a Modern Streetcar Study Committee, which has been meeting for the past six months. Moncrief, most council members, and dozens of business leaders and city staffers made a trip to the Pacific Northwest in October to study how cities like Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland have implemented modern streetcar routes.
They liked what they saw, and now, shazaam! It seems that they're ready to act. The committee's finding: "[A] streetcar system is desirable for Fort Worth." Next week, the panel is due to present its final report to the city council, recommending where the streetcars would travel and how they could be paid for. There seems to be little opposition on the council; in fact, the only disagreement has been among council members fighting for a line in their districts.
According to several sources, Moncrief is on board with the plan. Newly elected councilman Joel Burns and councilman Sal Espino met with Moncrief in February to persuade the mayor that Fort Worth needs this streetcar system. Moncrief was open to the idea, Burns said, and was so impressed with the streetcar systems in the Northwest that he has indicated he wants the streetcar system to have a high priority in Fort Worth. As usual, Moncrief didn't return calls from Fort Worth Weekly asking for comment.
So how did Cowtown go from having virtually no interest in any kind of mass transit to "we have to do this as soon as possible"? There are a number of factors at play: gas prices, more urban infill development, air quality issues, and a growing willingness by the public to leave their cars at home if offered the right mass transit options.
But another factor is much bigger, and that's Fort Worth's penchant for doing what real estate developers want. A decade ago, most developers wanted no mass transit near their properties. Their reasoning was simple and unspoken: Mass transit was a poor people's thing.
"There was always a perception in Fort Worth that all the designs for development had to [give primary consideration to] the needs of the car," with "parking at the front door," said Fran McCarthy, a member of the streetcar committee and a developer who works mostly in the Hospital District.
"But the city was doing more and more high-density developments, mostly in the Hospital and Cultural districts," he said. "The developers of those projects knew that we had to find more efficient ways to move people around within the city. Our problem always was public perception. People had no idea what the mass transit options were, because they had no experience with it."
A group of developers, including McCarthy; Phillip Poole, who works mostly in the Hospital and Cultural districts; and Tom Struhs, whose recent projects have helped transform the Samuels Avenue neighborhood, started working to change those perceptions. A Fort Worth Weekly cover story in May 2006 apparently helped as well. The article, "Late at the Station," examined why Fort Worth had such a bad mass transit system compared to other cities of similar size. One example used in the story was the short modern streetcar line in Portland, which had spawned more than $3 billion in economic development since 2001.
"After the Weekly story ran, a lot of business leaders started talking about how we might take a run at developing some urban mass transit options again," said Don Scott, another leader of the group, who was then president of the nonprofit Fort Worth South Inc. and is now on the streetcar committee. Scott explained that the city had done studies on light rail lines in 1998 and 2002, but they fell off the drawing board because the city did not have the high-density areas needed to support such a plan.
"But so many things had changed since those studies were done," Scott said. "The business community began to see this was something the city needed on so many different levels. Our challenge was to find ways to convince the political leadership and the general public that this was something they needed to invest in."
How did they do all that convincing? They made an end run around the city council's disinterest, by pushing the issue with a downtown redevelopment committee.
The group used the Central City Redevelopment Committee to make their case. The council-appointed committee is usually involved only in making sure that downtown keeps growing. But about two years ago, they began putting the streetcar question on the agenda of the panel's monthly meetings.
In October 2007, the streetcar advocates took their ideas to the city council. In January the committee released a proposal suggesting that Fort Worth needed a modern streetcar system - but it wasn't just a typewritten report. It was a 20-page glossy "white paper," with color photos and graphs, and they distributed it to businesses and political leaders throughout the city. Shortly after that, the council appointed the streetcar committee. Then in October came the Pacific Northwest road trip, partially funded by the Fort Worth Real Estate Council.
There was a lot of quiet lobbying behind the scenes, and the group produced materials not done by or endorsed by the city council or city staff. In the beginning, the council and downtown business interests, such as Sundance Square Inc., were wary.
Many downtown leaders feared that streetcars sharing the roadways with cars would worsen traffic problems rather than reducing them. They wondered if a streetcar system might take away parking revenues. And the city was facing financial shortfalls, so a multi-million-dollar modern streetcar system seemed unlikely to be approved.
The council asked the streetcar committee to propose the route for one starter line. But the panel came up with three: one running from downtown to the Hospital District, another to the Cultural District, and a third that would make a loop within downtown. Future lines might run to the Stockyards and out to Texas Wesleyan University along East Rosedale Street. The panel is proposing that the system be funded from a mix of sources, mostly existing tax-increment-financing districts, but also with some state and federal funding and an expansion of another taxing mechanism called public improvement districts.