Fort Worth Tex-Rail plans to split from Dallas area Cotton Belt Plan (Plano: real estate)

[Exult.Q36]

Mayor Betsy Price said that while she would be interested in learning about any plans for private development that could make public dollars stretch further, she doesn't want the Cotton Belt project to cause any further delays on the TEX Rail plan, which has been discussed since 2005.

Mainly, Price and other Fort Worth officials say that if TEX Rail is awarded federal money they don't want any of the funds being transferred to other portions of the Cotton Belt project in the Dallas area.

Read more here: Fort Worth may back split plan for Cotton Belt rail line | Your Commute | News from Fort...


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Fort Worth's TEX Rail Progress - Citizens For Modern Transit

[Made_it_To_the_Metroplex]

I'm not familiar with the politics of all this, etc. but that sounds reasonable... Unless they're trying to change things in mid-stream.

[TheOverdog]

I'm not surprised. Ft Worth lags the Dallas market by a huge amount in terms of commerical real estate and office buildings. In fact NW Plano has more than 2X the office space of Ft Worth's CBD according to this report from Transunion, and nearly as much as all of Ft Worth.

Ft Worth has a lot to lose in any partnership with N Dallas, so they need to spend their money wisely to get their business base connected and growing. If Ft Worth joined the Cotton Belt line and the N Dallas cities on the Cotton Belt line banded together, they would have more business power and the priority of funds would strongly lie on the east end of the Metroplex. Ft Worth and Dallas are sister cities in many ways, but Dallas is definitely the business king of the two. It sucks for the Cotton Belt line of course.

http://www.transwestern.net/Market-R...%20Outlook.pdf

[SIZE=1][LEFT]Upper Tollway/West Plano 179 buildings with 21,162,438 sq ft[/LEFT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=1][SIZE=1][LEFT]Fort Worth CBD 73 buildings with 10,795,333 sq ft[/SIZE]
[SIZE=1] [/LEFT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=1][/SIZE][/SIZE]

I don't think this is the end of the Cotton Belt though. The TexRail line more or less follows the Cotton Belt path and the airport seems like a pretty smart location for a transfer station if one is needed. It sort of just depends on if the federal funds that Ft Worth is taking makes it unlikely (or not) that the Cotton Belt side would also get Fed Funds....probably but who knows?

[rantanamo]

The Cotton Belt on the Dallas side has been in the works for a while. Lots of hard fought opposition, but finally a solid plan. The Fort Worth Side is mainly concerned with completing the west side of the project first if i am to understand correctly from recent articles. They want to Fed dollars to do it and don't want that money spread out over the whole line from Plano to Summer Creek.

The Dallas side doesn't have the public funding, but has been meeting with private developers who want to build it now and even wants to build a train manufacturing plant here. From my understanding of recent articles, the developer wants to mix his dollars with the fed dollars and get the whole thing done. Not sure what's right or wrong here. If the developer is for real, I would think FW would want to get it all done now. Costs will only go up later and you may never get that funding or the connections later.

[Made_it_To_the_Metroplex]

Originally Posted by rantanamo

The Cotton Belt on the Dallas side has been in the works for a while. Lots of hard fought opposition, but finally a solid plan. The Fort Worth Side is mainly concerned with completing the west side of the project first if i am to understand correctly from recent articles. They want to Fed dollars to do it and don't want that money spread out over the whole line from Plano to Summer Creek.

The Dallas side doesn't have the public funding, but has been meeting with private developers who want to build it now and even wants to build a train manufacturing plant here. From my understanding of recent articles, the developer wants to mix his dollars with the fed dollars and get the whole thing done. Not sure what's right or wrong here. If the developer is for real, I would think FW would want to get it all done now. Costs will only go up later and you may never get that funding or the connections later.

Interesting. Public/private joint ventures are better IMHO than pure-governmental boondoggles, so I say go for it! Also agree about the sooner vs later anaylsis. "Pay me now, or pay me later".... Later is always worse.

[gsupstate]

Originally Posted by rantanamo

The Cotton Belt on the Dallas side has been in the works for a while. Lots of hard fought opposition, but finally a solid plan. The Fort Worth Side is mainly concerned with completing the west side of the project first if i am to understand correctly from recent articles. They want to Fed dollars to do it and don't want that money spread out over the whole line from Plano to Summer Creek.

The Dallas side doesn't have the public funding, but has been meeting with private developers who want to build it now and even wants to build a train manufacturing plant here. From my understanding of recent articles, the developer wants to mix his dollars with the fed dollars and get the whole thing done. Not sure what's right or wrong here. If the developer is for real, I would think FW would want to get it all done now. Costs will only go up later and you may never get that funding or the connections later.

Interesting. Sounds like if Ft. Worth wants to build the west side first, then they are only looking at their best interest and not the best interest of the metroplex.

[JJG]

Originally Posted by gsupstate

Interesting. Sounds like if Ft. Worth wants to build the west side first, then they are only looking at their best interest and not the best interest of the metroplex.

I'm just now seeing this.

The TEXRail was planned and made SPECIFICALLY for Fort Worth, not the rest of the Metroplex. So yeah, of course it's being built for the west side... because it's ONLY for the west side.
(why is this on a Dallas sub-forum?)