Feb 25, 2010
Mayor Moncrief’s State of the City Address: Car-Centric Planning a Mistake
By: Kevin Buchanan
Edit: Added the full transcript of the Mayor’s discussion related to this topic.
Mayor Moncrief has given his State of the City address, and one of the items he discussed was the city’s transportation and planning. The mayor stated in no uncertain terms that Fort Worth is facing severe transportation challenges, that they stem from too many years of car-first planning, and that Fort Worth can no longer be designed and built in a car-centric fashion – topics certainly familiar to Fort Worthology readers:
Commuter Rail, street cars, and other alternative modes of transportation also remain a priority for me and this City Council. Unfortunately, Fort Worth and other major metropolitan areas are finding out the hard way what a mistake it was to design and build cities around automobiles years ago. Friends, we cannot continue to focus solely on building more roads for more vehicles. That’s counter productive at best.
Business as usual is dead!
North Texas requires a transportation overhaul. No more band-aides, no more patches—a complete overhaul!
Regrettably, it’s becoming more and more obvious that we cannot depend on the state or federal government to help us in the near term. In fact, there is no guarantee of any new money to build any new roads in Texas after 2012.
Frankly, I’m tired of talking about this. This afternoon, workers at BNSF…employees at Lockheed Martin or Bell Textron…even many of you in this room will leave work and then sit…and sit…and sit in traffic. It’s a frustrating daily routine that carries a great cost once you consider the impacts to our quality of life, our environment, our air, and our ability to attract and keep new business investment.
If this is a mobility crisis—and I believe it is—then it must be treated like one!
In the spirit of the early Fort Worth pioneers who took it upon themselves to pick up shovels and extend the first rail line to our city, it’s time that we took matters in our own hands. It is clear to me that we are not going to get where we need to be by relying only on help from the feds or the state.
We are going to have to pull ourselves out of the ditch!
In the coming weeks, I will appoint an 11-member Blue Ribbon Task Force. I will charge this body with returning specific recommendations to the full City Council on how we fix or relieve pressure on Fort Worth’s aging transportation infrastructure.
At least the Mayor gets it….
amen
Does Fort Worth have the tax base to build out rail on its own? I don’t get the feeling that it does. I’m one of the few that thinks that Fort Worth and Arlington need to merge, if anything it would help better compete with Dallas and the other cities in the top 50 population. Of course I believe that the mass transit should be a regional issue rather than a municipal issue, this whole Fort Worth versus Dallas thing is stale. The true facts are that most of the traffic is going West to East and South to North.
[...] theme of today's post from the Streetsblog Network is mayors who talk sense. First, at Fort Worthology, Kevin Buchanan files a report on what Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief had to say in his State of [...]
[...] theme of today's post from the Streetsblog Network is mayors who talk sense. First, at Fort Worthology, Kevin Buchanan files a report on what Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief had to say in his State of [...]
Fort worth doesn’t have the taxation to do what needs to be done. The current rail plans, which are reagiinal, call for a .5 of a cent on sales tax and the plans estimated completion date is 2050. Then add in the fact that people are saving more money and not spending it you can conclude that the tax revenues are lacking in the area. If we really want to be serious about these plans we need to have seriouse taxation overhaul. At least we will have biking in 3 years.
First time commenter, and new Fort Worth resident. Kevin, your efforts on this blog are outstanding, and your perspective/reporting has had a lot to do with my positive expectations for Fort Worth.
I was mightily heartened when I read your accounting of this event. Imagine my surprise when I read about the same event in the FW Business Press.
http://www.fwbusinesspress.com/display.php?id=12035
LOL. What a difference in the focus of the MSM. I wasn’t even sure that ya’ll were at the same meeting!
[...] theme of today's post from the Streetsblog Network is mayors who talk sense. First, at Fort Worthology, Kevin Buchanan files a report on what Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief had to say in his State of [...]
Here’s a thought: ditch the Southwest Parkway and use the money to build a network of streetcars and light rail. Seems like a no-brainer.
Okay, this is great stuff. I think Streetfilms needs to come visit Ft. Worth to talk with the mayor. We do good stuff and Mayors all across the country are really starting to get it. See here:
http://www.streetfilms.org/biking-to-work-with-seattles-mayor-mike-mcginn/
Fort Worth and especially Arlington is so behind the curve on this issue. It is really serious. We will lose the best and brightest in citizens and businesses and be left as a backwater if we do not change our planning paradigm overall, especially w/r/t public transport.
Other small and medium sized cities are way ahead in their thinking about planning and transportation.
[...] of Columbus, Ohio, wants to turn the town into Bike City, USA, while Forth Worth’s mayor says car-centric planning was a mistake. Being for bikes and transit isn’t the same as being anti-car. Illinois considers [...]
I don’t live in Fort Worth now, but I grew up there, and my dad worked as a traffic engineer for the city during that time (which means that he likely contributed to the transportation plans for the city, to some degree). I’ll check in with him to get his opinion on the Mayor’s hopes for revitalizing alternative transportation for the city. (BTW – I read about this post through the Streetsblog network).
Widespread education on this subject will help greatly. If the population generally supports the concept of shifting our transportation mix away from a pure auto-focus, it will make the shift occur much faster. If the 80-90% of the population that doesn’t pay attention to urban planning (as almost anyone who reads this blog does) opposes the shift because they view it as inconvenient, it will take much longer to adopt. The Mayor’s leadership on this is a good sign of the increasing prominence of this topic locally. Let’s keep it up. Thanks Kevin for your work on this.