Friday, July 18, 2008

Fort Worth officials visit Dallas for rail inspiration

By Kevin Buchanan of West and Clear

So, by now you may have heard that a group of 50 Fort Worthians, including Mayor MC Moncrizzle and the Official Streetcar Study Group (I’d pay up to and including a dollar to see a band with that name), took a trip to (Unnamed City To The East) yesterday to take a look at Mockingbird Station, the first TOD (Transit-Oriented Development) ever built in Big (UCTTE), to get some inspiration for Fort Worth’s planned streetcar circulator system. Of course, Mockingbird Station is built on a DART light rail line, which is not really similar to our proposed streetcar circulator, but their heart’s in the right place. The study group plans to take a trip to visit Portland next and have a look at their streetcar system, which is directly what ours would be based on.

I have to say, it warms the cockles of this New Urbanist’s heart when I hear that the Mayor dropped some fresh beats that he’d never attempted before. I never thought I’d hear him say this sentence:

“The future people mover in this region is regional rail, commuter rail, light rail and streetcars,” Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief told the crowd after a 20-minute walking tour.

Perhaps there’s a hint of a fresh new sound from MC Moncrizzle. I mean, from my perspective, he’s just acknowledging the reality of this ever-changing world in which we live in, but sometimes just an acknowledgment of reality by a participant of the politik is a good step. Perhaps after all our past false starts, the return of Fort Worth streetcars might come true this time. Surrounding His Honorable Freshness (which I think is a great nickname for the Mayor. I don’t know why I think that, though…) with a group of people who really understand the importance of the streetcar circulator might be what it takes to sway him.

(Personally, I’m imagining the Mayor surrounded by the developers and urbanists on the streetcar study group. He’s the innocent fresh face in town, just getting a job working the docks, unloading crates of fish. These developers and urbanists, see, are all characters in some picaresque novel, hanging around the docks in their striped shirts and berets. The whole thing’s sort of a “can they steal the mayor’s innocence” sort of deal, and the answer is yes, they can. By the end of the story, Moncrief’s smoking thin black cigarettes and hanging out at the local cinema during the Jean-Luc Godard festival. Metaphorically speaking.)

And thank all the various gods for the presence of Phillip Poole of the TownSite Company (a local urban developer), who reiterates the difference between the commuter rail that His Honorable Freshness preferred originally and the streetcar:

May seem like a small deal, but after hearing several city officials seem to confuse the purpose of a streetcar with the purpose of other rail systems, I’m glad that’s a point that’s not being lost. The streetcar and the commuter rail lines aren’t competitors - they’re interlocking pieces of a complete Transit Toolkit.

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