Honkin' Mad

Stadler officials pitch rail cars to TEX Rail project in Dallas Fort Worth

@gdickson

Stadler Rail officials are in North Texas this week making their pitch to the Fort Worth Transportation Authority, which is planning to build a 37-mile TEX Rail commuter line from southwest Fort Worth to Grapevine and DFW Airport.

Should high-speed rail stop in Dallas, or DFW Airport?

@gdickson

The fate of a proposed high-speed rail line from Houston to Dallas-Fort Worth rests on whether area leaders can decide amonst themselves where to put the dang station.

DART seeks expansion into Arlington

Make no mistake about it. Dallas Area Rapid Transit is recruiting Arlington to be its next member city. 

Bill would let Arlington join Dallas Area Rapid Transit

@gdickson

A bill has been filed that would make it possible for Arlington to join Dallas Area Rapid Transit.

Senate Bill 1461 by state Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, would clear up confusion about what cities are eligible to join the agency, which operates more than 90 miles of light rail, co-owns the Trinity Railway Express and runs a massive bus system. The bill specifies that a city is eligible to join a transit authority if any part of the city "is located in a county that is adjacent to a county in which the authority has territory."

 DART is headquartered in Dallas County, next door to Arlington in Tarrant County.

A companion bill, HB 3642, was filed in the House by state Rep. Linda Harper-Brown, R-Irving. The bills were filed Thursday and Friday, just before the deadline for non-emergency and non-local bills during the legislative session.

Arlington and DART officials are courting each other these days. Arlington later this year hopes to roll out bus service between its downtown area and the TRE's CentrePort train station, in a two-year pilot project funded by business leaders and the University of Texas at Arlington.

DART, meanwhile, is aggressively seeking new cities to enter its fold. Arlington is an obvious choice, with more than 300,000 residents and a reputation as the nation's largest city without full-fledged transit service.

But Arlington voters have rejected transit three times since 1980. Even so, DART and the T are proposing to run Arlington's two-year bus service for just $700,000 a year - if Arlington agrees to hold an election asking residents to join DART within four years.

Under current law cities must be in the same county where DART is located, or adjacent to a current DART  city. There was some sentiment that DART can already claim to be located in Tarrant County, since the agency co-owns the TRE and makes daily runs from Fort Worth to Dallas.

Also, DART owns the Cotton Belt railroad tracks in Fort Worth, where the proposed TEX Rail line is tentatively scheduled to begin operating in 2016.

But DART officials are seeking clarity to ensure they can bring Arlington and perhaps other Metroplex cities into the fold, DART board member Mark Enoch of Rowlett said.

"We have assets in Tarrant County, with the TRE. We have liabiilty there, employees there," he said. "But one of the issues we're looking at it, we're asking legislators to clear up that law."

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Cotton Belt commuter rail plan in peril?

@gdickson

As the Star-Telegram's man at City Hall, Scott Nishimura, reported last night, the Fort Worth City Council has rejected a resolution supporting the proposed 62-mile Cotton Belt commuter rail project.

The move raises serious questions about whether supporters of the ambitious Cotton Belt plan can manage to get a bill through the current legislative session making it legal to create a special tax district in 13 cities and three counties. The filing deadline for non-emergency bills is Friday.

From Fort Worth's point of view, the Cotton Belt project was getting in the way of the TEX Rail project. TEX Rail is a proposed 37-mile commuter rail line from southwest Fort Worth to the north end of Dallas Fort Worth Airport. It essentially would serve as the western half (or slightly more than half) of the Cotton Belt project.

But the effort to bring in private financing for the Cotton Belt project - mainly to make up for a lack of transit funding on the Dallas side - was overshadowing the effort to apply for federal new-start transit funds on the western side.

"It would have muddied up the TEX Rail project," Fort Worth Councilman Jungus Jordan said Wednesday morning, just before a Tarrant Regional Transportation Coalition meeting began. Besides, Jordan added, "There's nothing in there (the Cotton Belt plan) that we can't do on our own with special tax districts, PIDs, TIFs."

Those following the Cotton Belt project had said the expected a pair of North Texas senators, Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, and John Carona, R-Dallas, to file a bill making it possible to build the Cotton Belt line. But Davis said last month she was waiting to hear from all the cities along the line to ensure the project had local support.

Fort Worth's action Tuesday night would seem to give Davis and Carona the answer they needed. The vote in Fort Worth was 6-2-1, with Mayor Betsy Price absent.

Councilmen Joel Burns and Danny Scarth voted against Jordan's motion to reject the Cotton Belt support.

The Cotton Belt corridor is expected to take at least $2.7 billion to develop. An unidentified team of companies has notified the North Central Texas Council of Governments that they wish to develop the line, using property values and station development along the corridor to repay their investment.

But on the western half of the Cotton Belt project, the Fort Worth Transportation Authority is vigorously pursuing TEX Rail, which by itself is expected to cost $1 billion, with up to half possibly coming from a federal new-starts grant.

The Cotton Belt project would encompass everything in the TEX Rail line, plus an additional 25 miles to the northeast to Plano or Richardson. The project would boldly connect Metroplex neighborhoods such as Fort Worth's Texas Christian University, Grapevine's historical Main Street and Dallas County's Addison Circle - places that today seem far apart.

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Fort Worth, T officials work on TEX Rail master plan

How much passenger rail will be available for Fort Worth residents 10, 20 or 30 years from now? It's a difficult question to answer today, but Fort Worth officials hope to make things easier by creating a master plan for the Fort Worth Transportation Authority.

TEX Rail project, passenger rail, subject of joint Fort Worth council, T meeting

The video and audio recording of the Feb. 20, 2013 joint meeting between the Fort Worth City Council and Fort Worth Transportation Authority (the T) concerning future passenger rail plans, particularly the TEX Rail project.

Fort Worth Transportation Authority (the T) picks new leaders

@gdickson

Businessman Scott Mahaffey was elected chairman of the newly reformed Fort Worth Transportation Authority board.

The nine-member board - meeting on its own for the first time Monday afternoon -  held a paper ballot. Six members voted for Mahaffey, two for Carter Burdette and one for Neftali Ortiz.

Mahaffey pledged to be an active leader, and to be accessible by phone or in person to other board members. "We will be an inclusive board, where everybody has a seat at the table," he said. "We have a massive job in front of us. A lot is expected of us from citizens. A lot is expected of us from the City Council."

Before the vote, Mahaffey and Burdette made brief comments of less than a minute, touting their business and civic experience. Ortiz took another tact, using a 10-minute Power Point presentation that laid out how he would restructure the T and accomplish goals years ahead of schedule.

In all, choosing a chair took nearly 25 minutes, with board members going through an unusual paper ballot procedure. The matter was further delayed when some board members realized they had the wrong agenda folders.

The T board, with eight new members appointed by Fort Worth and the ninth member appointed by Tarrant County, then took about another hour to go through a regular agenda.

Items approved by the board included:

• A $600,000 change order to consulting firm CH2M Hill for management of the proposed TEX Rail commuter line. The change was needed because in December, the previous T board agreed to use a new, more modern type of rail car known as a diesel multiple unit, and the T's in-house staff needed outside expertise to understand how to procure the new vehicles.
• Approval of a memorandum of understanding with the Fort Worth City Council designed to improve the board's transparency and satisfy council members that progress is being made on the region's transit goals. The city particularly wants to ensure that the TEX Rail project, a proposed 37-mile line cutting diagonally across Tarrant County from southwest Fort Worth to the north end of DFW Airport, opens by 2016.
• A legislative report from the T's government affairs expert, Shawna Russell, who sought to assuage concerns that the federal government's impending sequestration - a cut of roughly $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years, if Congress and President Obama can't reach a resolution - will hamper public transportation. Instead, she said, transit is typically paid for out of the highway fund, which is somewhat separate from other parts of the federal budget.

"One bright source for us is the majority of our funding is secured and not affected," Russell told the board. She did say it was possible that the T's application for federal funds for TEX Rail could be stalled if the federal cut affect staffing at the Federal Transit Administration, which is currently reviewing the T's application.

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Self-driving Google car a huge hit at Texas Transportation Forum

@gdickson

AUSTIN – Some of the best transportation thinkers in Texas and across the United States are being upstaged this week by a car that drives itself.

About 1,400 people are attending the eighth annual Texas Transportation Forum through Tuesday in Austin. But while those experts meet in Hilton conference rooms and grapple with tough issues such as how to handle an increase in freight-hauling trucks on the roads, or how to pay for highways under a tightened state budget, it’s the Google “self-driving car” parked outside the downtown Austin hotel’s entrance that’s getting the most hubbub.

“It would probably do a better job driving than we do,” quipped Linda Thomas of Longview (pictured above), who on Monday afternoon took turns shooting snapshots of the Google car with her husband, Charles.

The car is among a fleet of about 10 vehicles developed during the past eight years by researchers at Google and Stanford University. Google representatives said that on Tuesday they plan to take the car, a Lexus hybrid, for a spin on Austin-area roads, including infamously congested Interstate 35.

Lawmakers and selected other state officials will be offered demonstration rides in the car, as part of Google’s effort to get the public sector more comfortable with an automobile that needs no driver. Although Texas and most other states don’t have laws specifically banning self-driving cars, only three states – Nevada, California and Florida – have passed laws specifically allowing them.

Officials said it’s too early to say whether Texas lawmakers would be asked to consider such as law during the ongoing legislative session.

Typically, a person sits in the driver’s seat, but the car does its own acceleration, braking and steering and can even change lanes. It “sees” the road using laser technology, and has a maximum speed of about 85 mph, although Google officials assured onlookers Monday that the vehicle wouldn’t be pushed to its limits during the Texas demos.

A member of the Google team will sit in the driver’s seat during demonstrations, although that person won’t operate the car controls unless there’s an emergency, one company official said.

On Tuesday, Google product manager Anthony Levandowski is scheduled to take part in a panel discusssion about how transportation is reshaping transportation options.

Glen Hiemstra, a futurist and author of several books on long-term trends, told forum attendees on Monday that the self-driving car technology is advancing quickly. Just three or four years ago, he said, Google’s small fleet of test cars could only travel a few city blocks, but now they can traverse California highways and even San Francisco’s famously curvy and steep Lombard Street. “I think it’s going to be one of the more significant developments in the next 10 to 15 years,” he said.

The forum is hosted by the Texas Department of Transportation. Guest speakers include elected officials, industry leaders and cutting-edge scientists and researchers.

On Monday, the impact of increased shipments through the Panama Canal, which is undergoing a $5.2 billion expansion, was a featured topic. Experts disagree whether the expansion will increase container shipments to Texas, with many predicting that Los Angeles ports will still be preferred.

But Silvia Marucci, a senior specialist with the Panama Canal Authority, said the expansion will make it much easier for natural gas companies in Fort Worth’s Barnett Shale and many other shale plays to export their products through Texas gulf ports.

“The development of the shale plays in the United States has taken us all by surprise,” she said during a panel discussion. “We expect to see the major trade routes develo from the U.S. Gulf to Asia, The Panama Canal is becoming part of the energy supply chain.”

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Google self-driving car makes Texas debut

Google's famous self-driving car is making its Texas debut. I'm covering the eighth annual Texas Transportation Forum, a two-day affair at the Austin Hilton. The Google car, a Lexus hybrid, is parked at the hotel entrance. Word is that some VIPs may get a demonstration of the car. I don't know if that means the self-driving car will maneuver its way around the downtown Austin streets, but we'll see ;-)