A Virtual Tour of the Fort Worth Streetcar

With the Streetcar Study Committee and the city’s Planning and Development department making their official recommendations to the City Council today to move forward with the Fort Worth Modern Streetcar system, I thought it’d be a good time to create a detailed walkthrough of the planned starter route and the sort of places you can expect it to take you when it opens sometime in the coming 2-5 years (if all goes well). So, I created a path in Google Earth and “flew” around the streetcar starter system, to help connect the routes with the real world.

So, here we go. Let’s begin with an overview from on high of the whole starter system. Click any of the images for a bigger view.

A couple of notes before we get down to details – there are still a few tweaks to be made on the routes here pending engineering. Most notably, the Downtown loop could be on a couple of alternate streets, different from what I’ve got here. This will at least show you the gist of the Downtown routing (the extended routes are more firmly set). Also, this map makes no attempt to depict stops and single vs. double tracking. Stops will for the most part be ever 1/2 mile or so.

As you can see, the starter system includes a Downtown loop, a short extention up Samuels Avenue to the Trinity Bluff neighborhood, a route down 7th Street to the Cultural District, and a route into the Near Southside. Let’s zoom in to Downtown to get a look at the sort of things the streetcar will be taking passengers past.

Again, the Downtown route is perhaps most nebulous while we await more engineering, but it will use Lancaster on the south end, either Commerce or Calhoun on the east side, 1st, 2nd, Weatherford, or Belknap on the north end, and Houston or Throckmorton on the west side. For the purposes of illustration, these graphics assume Lancaster, Commerce, 1st, and Houston.

As you can see, the lines would effectively tie together what I will call the County Government District at the north end of Downtown, Sundance Square, what I’ll call the City Government District located around City Hall, and the South Downtown/Convention Center district. It would also allow for easy transfers from the T&P Station and the ITC. This Downtown loop would form the core from which all other lines would radiate out from.

Here’s a look from the other end of Downtown.

Let’s now head northeast from Downtown along the extension into Uptown and Trinity Bluff.

This short line would run through the Pecan Place developments and the booming Trinity Bluff developments as well as right in front of Charles Nash Elementary on Samuels. It would also create more interest in development across the vacant lots between Uptown/Trinity Bluff and Sundance Square. It’ll also pass by the site near Pecan Place where rumors of a Sundance Square grocery market have been heard.

Now, let’s head west out of Downtown towards the Cultural District.

Here, we’re passing west through the Upper West Side district of Downtown, an area long underutilized beyond the Firestone and AMLI apartments and a few individual office buildings. The streetcar line could spur a round of infill in the Upper West Side, filling out the area’s many vacant properties. The western route would also pass by Burnett Plaza, the city’s largest office building, and residential properties like the Firestone Apartments, Westview Condos, The Neil P. at Burnett Park, and the Historic Electric Building.

We’re now passing into the edge of the Cultural District as the streetcar runs past Trinity Park and into the heart of several developments. Here, it passes by Montgomery Plaza, SoSeven (the current phase of construction does not appear in this Google Earth view, unfortunately), and the AMLI 7th Street Station Apartments. You can see the Cultural District loop up ahead, which we’re about to get to.

Here, we’re in the Cultural District loop. The line runs down 7th into the heart of the Museum Place development, then turn on Montgomery as it passes through the University of North Texas Health Science Center. At Lancaster, it turns again, and passes the Amon Carter Museum, the Fort Worth Community Arts Center (and just down the street from the new Museum of Science and History and the Cowgirl Museum), the Kimbell Art Museum, the Will Rogers Memorial Center, Casa Mañana, and the Modern Art Museum. It crosses University and passes Farrington Field, the large parking lot behind which would make an effective park & ride. It then turns up Currie, passing through the center of the West 7th development by Cypress Equities and passing directly in front of Fred’s before turning back onto 7th Street to return to Downtown.

Forgive the jump, because now we’re headed south out of Downtown into the Near Southside. The line runs down South Main, through what is known as South Main Village. One of the city’s designated Urban Villages, South Main is a world of many vacant historic buildings and empty lots that has been neglected for a long time. The streetcar would undoubtedly help spur the redevelopment of this area – and already, some smaller scaled developments are in the planning or already underway along the planned line. Some of them are noted here – the Sawyer Building apartments at South Main and Daggett, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Engineers block nearby, 311 Bryan Lofts, South Village Lofts, and the former Motheral Printing site which is the home of a planned mixed-use development.

As the line heads south, it passes the Rahr Brewery and Vandervoort’s Dairy as well as passing a short distance from the restored Leuda-May Apartments and the small neighborhood springing up around them.

At South Main and Rosedale, a short extension breaks off to the east. Let’s follow it for a moment.

The short extension down East Rosedale serves a couple of purposes. It links the system to Evans & Rosedale Village, another designated Urban Village marked for infill redevelopment. It is also a promise to the long-neglected east side that the system isn’t going to leave them out of the loop – this line will later be extended out East Rosedale to Texas Wesleyan University and the Polytechnic Heights neighborhood.

Let’s rejoin the Near Southside line as it heads south from Rosedale.

After heading down South Main a couple of more blocks, the system turns onto Magnolia Avenue as it meets up with John Peter Smith Hospital. One of the goals of the Near Southside route was to tie all the major hospitals into the line, so here’s JPS, just a block away.

Now we’re getting into the heart of Magnolia. Magnolia’s character, and the existance of the Fairmount neighborhood adjacent to it, are directly due to the original Fort Worth streetcar from the early 1900s – Magnolia and Fairmount were one of the most notable “streetcar neighborhoods” of Fort Worth. The street’s renaissance of the last few years as a walkable urban center makes it a natural for seeing a return of the transit mode that created it in the first place. Here, the streetcar is passing things like The Fairmount Live, Paris Coffee Shop, the Modern Drug Village lofts, Southside Bank, Hot Damn! Tamales, the Magnolia Green development’s Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders and Village Homes Townhomes, Magnolia Green Park, Yucatan Taco Stand, the Lofts of St. Mary’s development, and more.

Continuing down Magnolia, we’re now passing destinations like Palermo’s and the Salon Upstairs, Junsuree Thai, Texana and Oleander Place Townhomes, Cartan’s Shoes, the restored Max Mehl Building, and the Fairmount Neighborhood and places in it like De Zavala Elementary and the LaSalle Apartments.

As we approach Baylor All-Saints Hospital, the streetcar passes more Magnolia destinations like The Chat Room Pub, Sundance Scooters, Spiral Diner, Lili’s Bistro, Panther City Bicycles, Nonna Tata, The Usual, Starr Tincup, Benito’s, and Ellerbe Fine Foods as well as creating an easy walk to Baylor and King Tut. At Magnolia & 7th Avenue, the streetcar turns up 7th to head north.

The streetcar continues up 7th Avenue to Terrell, where it makes connections with Plaza Medical Center, Cook Children’s, and Harris Methodist Hospital. At this point, it reverses direction and returns to Magnolia to head back downtown.

So there you have it – a detailed look at what the Fort Worth modern streetcar starter system will look like. The city’s planning department makes its official report to the City Council today, and I expect the council to vote to move ahead with engineering, funding, and the like. Look for more news on the streetcar project ahead.