A Desire Named Streetcars

Fort Worth and Dallas officials shift their mass transit emphasis to streetcars, and hope that federal stimulus money could get their projects underway by 2012.

Comments

[Binh]

I seriously doubt that Fort Worth and Dallas officials are shifting their mass transit emphasis to streetcars. Other than a circulator route in Fort Worth and who-knows-what (MATA? OCTA?) in Dallas, DART is still focused on light-rail, buses, HOV, and commuter rail. The T is still drunk on the BRT kool-aid and focused almost exclusively on buses (with a dash of commuter rail on the side). I hear that The T has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the streetcar proposal.

[Gordon]

Yeah, there's definition some tension there between the two schools of thought: streetcars versus commuter rail. Logic would indicate that commuter rail is more geared toward getting people from work to jobs in the larger region, and that's good for the majority of workers who don't live close enough to their jobs to take streetcrs. Whereas the streetcar concept is more economic development ... seeing as how the streetcars aren't filling a transit vacuum. On the contrary, the streetcars would run along some of the few places in Fort Worth where there is actually some comprehensive bus service. So the presence of streetcars would change the T's whole mission.