(The following story by Leslie Wimmer appeared on the Fort Worth Business Press website on March 31.)
FORTH WORTH, Texas — Money, time and public interest.
Transportation officials in Seattle have faced these issues since 1996 while building a regional commuter rail system similar to North Texas’ planned system.
Portions of the 260 miles of North Texas commuter rail will operate by adding high-speed commuter train cars onto existing freight rail line.
One particular corridor set to open in five years runs parallel to Interstate 35W, and would use existing Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight line. For now, the corridor is planned to be used only during events at Texas Motor Speedway, said Chad Edwards, principal transportation planner for the North Central Texas Council of Governments. The rail service will alleviate traffic and air quality problems from idling cars coming to and leaving Speedway events, he said.
Although the line is planned solely for events now, if public interest grows and if a need is found to increase routes for employees at Alliance or for stops at growing retail spots in North Fort Worth, commuter rail cars will be added, Edwards said.
“Maybe [the corridor] will have two trains with four cars each, or maybe three trains with three cars each, that’ll have to be identified at a later date,” Edwards said. “That’s the nice thing about this type of transit. You can always add capacity, as opposed to the roadway, it’s not very easy to add another lane of traffic to the road.”
The I-35W corridor of Burlington Northern’s freight line is busy and has several obstacles that commuter rail planners will face, said Rich Wessler, director of passenger train operations with Burlington Northern.
“There are several impediments on that route to providing a very good passenger service, and some of those obstacles are our yard at Alliance, our auto facility at Alliance, our Saginaw yard, our North Yard, which is in North Fort Worth, then there’s two interlockings where other railroads cross our tracks north of downtown and at Tower 55, which is right downtown,” Wessler said.
At a Tarrant Regional Transportation Coalition meeting on March 5, area transportation leaders voted to make creating funding legislation a priority for Texas’ next legislative session, which starts in January of 2009.
Areas in North Texas’ commuter rail plan with the most immediate need for service will be built first, and as areas grow, including north Fort Worth, service plans will increase and construction dates will change, Edwards said.
“Right now, the ridership [along I-35W] doesn’t show the need for a daily service similar to TRE,” Edwards said. “Special events designation doesn’t mean it’s going to be that way forever. The area of North Fort Worth and into Justin, Alliance Airport, is totally booming. Lots of houses and population and retail growth. With new demographics to go into our transportation model, that will help identify when to increase the priority. And should we change the designation from special events to a daily service that will all come within the next few years.”
Seattle-based transportation company Sound Transit began planning commuter rail lines that would add cars onto Burlington Northern freight lines between Seattle and Tacoma in 1996, said Martin Young, Sound Transit operations manager.
The company has both daily scheduled commuter routes and special event routes to Seattle Mariner and Seahawk games, Young said. The entire rail system spans three counties.
The most important part of creating a smooth construction plan that did not impact Burlington Northern’s freight was creating staggered construction and rail schedule phases to slowly increase the number of commuter cars and stops along rail lines, he said.
“It was critical that we negotiated with BNSF,” Young said. “There are a lot of different moving parts when it comes to integration of commuters service into a heavily used freight corridor. The key to our success was a phased approach, we had goals for how much service we wanted to offer, but we didn’t come to BNSF and say: ‘We need 18 trains opening day.’”
Sound Transit gradually phased in more commuter rail cars as space was added, which made construction and planning easier, Young said.
A challenge that lasted throughout the first few years of Sound Transit’s rail service was informing area residents about regional rail and gaining public interest, he said.
“We had not had commuter rail service in our region in 60 years, people were familiar with buses, they certainly loved their cars, but it took some time to really get the message out that a train is a great way to get to work,” Young said.
Funding was an issue that increased construction time by a few years for Sound Transit’s lines, Young said.