Dallas City Council members hit the brakes on a proposed elevated high-speed passenger rail line that would connect with Arlington and Fort Worth.
The council, including Mayor Eric Johnson, approved a resolution 14-0, with council member Jaime Resendez absent. The June 12 action pauses the project for at least four months as city officials conduct a long-range economic impact study to determine the effects of the rail project in the Central Business District.
Council member Jesse Moreno said there are still many unanswered questions about the project, currently proposed to run along the Interstate 30 corridor.
“This is a critical part of downtown Dallas,” he said, adding that the city is investing major funding for downtown projects such as the expansion of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center.
In their resolution, council members said, “the City Council does not support construction of any above ground passenger rail lines through downtown and adjacent areas aside from streetcar projects.”
Furthermore, the resolution states that the council “will reconsider the Dallas to Fort Worth high speed rail alignment upon completion of the economic impact study.”
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Concerns about the high-speed rail project first surfaced at the December 2023 Regional Transportation Council meeting, the independent transportation policy group of the North Central Texas Council of Governments.
Fort Worth Mayor Pro Tem Gyna Bivens, who chairs the Regional Transportation Council, said she wasn’t bothered by the Dallas resolution.
“I don’t have any criticism about any entity, but I think a study will show the need for high-speed rail in the region,” Bivens told the Fort Worth Report. “People thought we’d never have the Chisholm Trail (Parkway) … There’s a challenge I haven’t seen at the RTC that everybody doesn’t come out a winner.”
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Dallas raised concerns about the proposed seven-story high, elevated rail line that would cut through planned downtown redevelopment work, including the new $3.7 billion convention center.
Stops in Fort Worth and Arlington would be underground, an issue that concerned Dallas officials.
The North Central Texas Council of Governments explored an underground option in Dallas, transportation director Michael Morris previously told the Fort Worth Report, but that option didn’t work for the “one-seat ride” approach that could eventually connect Fort Worth to Houston through Dallas.
“You would defeat the whole purpose of having a high-speed rail to have the seamless connection because you’d have a 40-minute travel time penalty, so we just need time for people to understand that,” Morris said.
Morris did not immediately return a call from the Fort Worth Report on June 12.
Ghassan “Gus” Khankarli, Dallas transportation director, said the study will look at positives and negatives of the project as well as alternative alignments for the proposed rail route.
“In this case, there may be two or three alignments to look at,” he said.
The study, Khankarli said, would provide “clarity and consistency” on the ramifications of high speed rail.
See here for the previous update. I can understand the concerns, especially for seven-story-high rail line. This study could clarify things and help move them forward, or it could be the first of many delaying tactics. We’ll have to see.
The local government agency pushing the project is not terribly concerned at this time.
Elected leaders serving on the Regional Transportation Council said they will work together to develop a rail plan that will benefit North Texas as a whole, as the population is expected to double from about 8 million to more than 15 million by 2050, according to RTC growth estimates presented at a June 13 meeting.
“We have to move forward,” Michael Morris, RTC director of transportation, said after Dallas City Council member Cara Mendelsohn asked for a July 11 workshop on the project to be rescheduled, as the Dallas council will be on a break at that time.
Morris cited the Dallas resolution that calls for a four-month economic impact study to determine the positive and negative aspects of the plan, including whether an elevated rail line is feasible for downtown Dallas.
Mendelsohn suggested that Morris’ reluctance to change the workshop date was “some kind of retribution” for the Dallas resolution approved June 12 — prompting outgoing RTC chair Gyna Bivens, the Fort Worth mayor pro tempore, to demand that transportation council members “act with proper decorum.”
“To have respect, you have to give it,” Bivens said. “We’re not going to let this Dallas-Fort Worth thing get in the way.”
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, elected as the new RTC chair, said, “This is going to have regional implications. … Whatever the case is, it’s not just one city.”
Arlington Mayor Jim Ross said council members from the DFW’s third-largest city plan to attend the July 11 workshop, although they will also be on a recess.
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Members of the Regional Transportation Council, an independent policy group of the North Central Texas Council of Governments, cited regional cooperation for the project.
In a statement read by Bivens at the RTC meeting, Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker said she is dedicated to improving the city, which is now the 12th largest in the nation.
“Fort Worth remains the fastest-growing large city in the country, attracting people and businesses from across the United States,” Parker said. “High-speed rail is an integral part of our transportation future and it will include Tarrant County.
“The regional long-term success of DFW is connected to regional partnerships, such as the high-speed rail project, as the region is poised to be the third-largest metro region in the country by 2030 – with a majority of the growth occurring west,” the mayor said. “Collectively, our success is dependent on world class mobility solutions that connect not just DFW but the entire state of Texas.”
Fort Worth Mayor Parker’s statement is here on her Instagram page, also reported by the Star-Telegram. This line is intended to connect to the long-awaited Texas Central line from Dallas to Houston, so we would like this all to get worked out. But as noted before, these things take time. Lots and lots and lots of time.