Dec 15, 2008
By: Kevin Buchanan
As an aside to our earlier post: another big milestone towards the modern streetcar system occurs tomorrow – the Streetcar Study Committee will present its official recommendations to the City Council. I hope to hear from some of my committee contacts afterwards with an update on how things went. Looking forward to good news.
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Okay, Kevin, I’m keeping my fingers crossed and I will check back here to see how it went. I thought it was fascinating to hear FWW say that the real reason the streetcars are gaining ground is because Real Estate People want them. Apparently, they’ve (streetcars, not realtors) become cool. Or maybe just the common man is getting concerned about gas prices.
It seems that many members of the local real estate investment, development, and sales communities have really warmed to the idea of what the modern street car system can do for our central city. I imagine the shear cost of housing each automobile for real estate projects must have something to do with their interest. There would be massive cost savings if we, as a city, can build new denser districts with fewer parking stalls than have conventionally been provided in the last 30 years. At $20-$40,000 per parking stall, reducing the number by even 10% is meaningful – particularly when much of the cost is borne by the TIFs or PIDs – the cash can go toward other things like the street car system, sidewalks, or other infrastructure. Smart.
Considering the cost of light rail (Millions of dollars per mile) and limited mobility (you can not alter the route without spending millions more per mile)
Why not just get some really cool buses (not land barges, but more like resort tour coaches) We have some of these buses in Fort Worth right now, they look like street cars but are not & limit their travel route to match the proposed routes, announce their presence & see how this works. I bet Fort Worth could experiment with this & fine tune the routes as needed by the community & Bank the extra money saved by NOT spending Millions of dollars per mile
Commuter rail costs about $3 million to $25 million per mile to get up and running. Light rail like the DART system comes in at $20 million to $60 million per mile. Modern streetcars cost anywhere from $10 million to $40 million per mile. Where Fort Worth will go for that money is still up for debate.
The city staff figures the cost of the Fort Worth system on the high side, averaging $40 million per mile. But with more than 60 cities in the U.S. pursuing streetcar systems (both modern and historic), those costs could come down. And Fort Worth and Dallas — which is also planning some streetcar lines to link downtown with close-in developments like Victory Park — have begun talks about combining their design expenses and car purchases to save some money.
I call it the Stevethemechanic@yahoo.com Common sense plan
Unfortunately, the common sense of using buses because they’re not “limited to one route” doesn’t actually have the desired result. None of those buses – even the fake trolley ones – will be able to have the ridership and development & growth impact of the streetcar, and part of the reason is because they aren’t on a fixed route. The “buses are more flexible” bit that is often brought up by fixed-guideway opponents is actually one of the weaknesses of the bus in many situations, such as this one.
Steve does bring up a good question that I haven’t really heard a good answer to: Where is the funding coming from? Is it secured yet?
I don’t bring up the question as a critic. More as a proponent asking a devil’s advocate question; I fear this project will languish and lose momentum in the current funding climate for public projects.
Brandon,
TIF funds will likely make up the lion’s share, with the rest coming from a variety of other sources such as Public Improvement District, gas revenue, etc.
I will be talking with one of the committee members soon and will get a little more info together at that time.