Rails in the Pavement - Fort Worth's Streetcar Proposal

While Fort Worth has made great steps forward on heavier rail systems, first with the Trinity Railway Express and now with the upcoming Southwest-to-Northeast Line, those systems are primarily concerned with moving across longer city-to-city type distances. What’s been missing is a proposal to do something greater for central city urban mobility, something beyond The T’s little-used (and in some ways rather lackluster) bus system.

Until now.

For several months now, a proposal has been working its way through the city’s ether to bring back Fort Worth’s streetcar system, silenced long ago and replaced with the bus. Decades ago, Fort Worth had one of the finest streetcar systems in the entire country, with routes linking downtown to many dense, walkable “streetcar suburbs” like the Magnolia/Fairmount/Ryan Place area, the west side, and places like the Stockyards. Now, with Fort Worth witnessing the success that modern streetcar systems are having in places like Portland, work is underway on returning these central city circulator vehicles to the neighborhoods around downtown.

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It’s important to clarify what’s being discussed here. This is not, as it is sometimes called, a “light rail” system; at least, not in the same vein as a system like DART’s trains, Portland’s MAX, or Houston’s light rail. Those systems use heavier trains and run in dedicated right-of-ways, requiring significantly higher costs and timeframes to build and requiring their own dedicated land in many cases. Fort Worth’s proposed system is a genuine streetcar system, running on-street. It’s quicker and cheaper to build, and in this case and for this purpose, a more appropriate design. This isn’t being designed to travel the long distances a DART train travels, and its nimble design will allow it to get into neighborhoods easily and effectively.