(The following story by David Hendricks appeared on the San Antonio Express-News website on September 11.)
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — The San Antonio-Austin commuter rail project has fallen behind schedule.
Instead of starting in 2009 or 2010, the goal as of 2005, the Austin-San Antonio Intermunicipal Commuter Rail District now believes it can begin at least limited service in the 2011-12 time frame.
Progress is painfully slow for the 19-member district board, which met last week in San Antonio. It was the first meeting since May because there wasn’t much to act on during the summer.
Everything still depends on Union Pacific Corp., which owns nearly all the tracks and the right-of-way along the 110-mile route that the commuter rail board wants to serve. It stretches from just south of Georgetown to San Antonio’s South Side.
The commuter rail, however, cannot carry passengers on the tracks used by UP’s freight trains. The Texas Department of Transportation has not produced a plan, as hoped two years ago, for new tracks for UP east of the Interstate 35 corridor. The costs would have been shared by the state and the railroad. That would have freed up the existing tracks for the passenger service.
The district now hopes to negotiate joint use of UP’s right-of-way, with new passenger tracks paralleling the existing freight tracks at least 80 percent of the distance. Nearly all the bridges would have to be shared by the passenger and freight trains, though.
Improvements would be made, especially at street-rail crossings, that could speed up UP’s freight business, district officials said. The track improvements could entice UP into cooperating with the commuter rail district.
The district concurrently is working on a plan to come up with the hundreds of millions of dollars, probably more than half a billion, needed for stations, equipment and new tracks.
Board members discussed applying for a variety of federal and state funds that could help. The public, in one way or another, will have to foot the bill, and not just through fares.
The board conducted an in-depth discussion last week about the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which has the most advanced mass transportation system in the state. That metroplex’s economic development leaders have done a magnificent job of selling to the public the benefits of mass transportation, which it now needs to expand.
The metroplex plans to approach the 2009 session of the Legislature with a proposal to juggle its local sales tax structure. That could increase revenue to build new rail lines.
One question pending for the San Antonio-Austin operation is whether to try to piggyback its public funding onto Dallas-Fort Worth’s legislation or to approve its plan separately. TxDOT is up for sunset review in 2009, meaning area lawmakers could have some leverage in pursuing various funding schemes. Toll roads will be such a hot issue in the sunset bill that lots of horse trading is likely.
San Antonio and Austin residents probably will not have to face a sales tax election, though, to pay for the commuter rail system. Instead, district officials prefer to study tax increment financing. TIF districts could divert sales tax revenue that would come from new commercial developments that would surround the train stations. About 15 stations are likely, five of them in or near San Antonio.
The diverted sales tax revenue, along with fare revenue once operations start, could repay bonds used to construct the train stations and tracks. In the TIF system, the public still pays, just in a less obvious and painful way and without raising local sales tax rates.
That’s the plan, highly simplified, for now. Will it happen, though? Or will 2012 arrive with the project still five years in the future?
“We’ve passed that point,” said Ross Milloy, who as president of the Austin-San Antonio Corridor Council provides staff for the rail district board. “It’s a question of when, not if. We think the 2011-12 time frame is realistic.”