No federal funding for Fort Worth streetcars?

UPDATED at 10:40 a.m.

GRAPEVINE -- The proposal to bring back streetcars to central Fort Worth may have been snubbed in its effort to win federal stimulus funds, Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley said.

Fort Worth and Dallas submitted a $96 million joint application for federal TIGER grant funds for their respective streetcar programs -- and on Wednesday (the first anniversary of the Recovery Act) Dallas was awarded $23 million.

Fort Worth got zilch, Whitley said. However, Whitley said officials were still checking into whether the money can be used for streetcar planning in both cities. The award actually goes to the North Central Texas Council of Governments, the official planning body for the whole region.

If Fort Worth doesn't get a slice of the pie, Whitley said the culprit would be petty politics. Tarrant County is SLIGHTLY redder than Democrat-blue Dallas County. He said it was time for people in both parties to start working together to solve transportation problems.

"You happen to be in the reddest of counties," Whitley told about 500 people at the Northeast Tarrant County Transportation Summit Wednesday morning in Grapevine. "The only county redder than Tarrant County in the U.S. is Orange County in California. The happenstance that we were eliminated I'm sure is coincidental. We've got to stop the partisanship. We've got to start going what's best for the region, and stop putting up with this ..."

One other explanation may be that the award was meant for both cities, but that Dallas was the only city listed ... perhaps an oversimplification, often held by many nonresidents that the entire North Texas region is "Dallas."

In Fort Worth, the idea would be to reconnect the downtown area with the museum district and medical district with electrified streetcars -- modernized versions of the trolleys that were removed from the area decades ago.

-- Gordon.

Comments

[Carl]

This is a perfect example of why everyone needs to vote anti-incumbent in all the upcoming elections. Reguardless of what office they hold or even if you like the incumbent, They should be voted out. If they are in office now, Vote them out! or this will never stop.

[Alberto Knox]

Streetcars are a poor use of transportation dollars. Tarrant county got 55% of the stimulus dollars spent for transportation in Texas (per the Star Telegram 1/15/10).

Blaming politics and "incumbents" because your pet project didn't get funded is disingenuous at best.

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[AndyN]

Alberto, please be accurate in your spreading of misinformation. Tarrant County got 55% of stimulus dollars spent for traffic signalization (a $6 million fund - $3.3 million for traffic lights). A far cry from 55% of stimulus dollars spent on all transportation in Texas. One would hope that the cities that won traffic light money did so on the basis of need and not politics. Fort Worth has a strong project which has a better chance to reach the stated goals of the TIGER grants than the Dallas project, which was included in the application as an after thought.

[Brian Miller]

As a Dallas resident I think Ft. Worth should have gotten some too. Sorry. I like the idea of a street car because I hate driving in North Texas. I would rather ride a train or street car and just relax for outings. Keep moving forward because not everyone in Dallas is out for only Dallas' interests.

Politics is what runs this country sadly enough. If DFW worked together better maybe a more integrated public transportation system could emerge.

As far as a poor use of dollars that would be constantly keeping up the poorly built roads in Texas.

[FWCitizen]

NEVER ENTER A "PARTNERSHIP" WITH DALLAS!
Politics are involved but not what Glen Whitley thinks. I won't be surprised to discover Dallas sabotaged the Fort Worth plan benind the scenes in order to get all the funding for themselves. On a semi-related note, DART is demanding cost-prohibitive access rates on the Cotton Belt in order to block the Fort Worth T's commuter rail project. This back-stabbing by Dallas has been going on since 1875. NEVER ENTER A "PARTNERSHIP" WITH DALLAS!