Fort Worth communities prepare for new rail line, planning TODs

Stops expected to boost growth

Wendy Natt, Apr 08, 09.

Planning and transportation officials, developers, and community business leaders are working on plans for mixed-use, transit-oriented developments at some of the coming rail stops along Fort Worth Transportation Authority’s Southwest to Northeast line (sw2neRAIL), from which they expect a strong boost to local economic growth, says a story in the Fort Worth Business Press.

The 37-mile long commuter rail line will extend from Southwest Fort Worth through several major activity areas in the city, on into rapidly growing NE Tarrant County, and terminate at the Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport.

Transportation Authority Director Curvie Hawkins expects that high ridership on the Southwest - Northeast line will help drive economic development at the rail stops, as it has in Tarrant County, along the Trinity Railway Express. The type of economic development that occurs at each stop will differ, depending on the choices of landowners and the interests of the surrounding community, says Fort Worth Transportation Authority president Dick Ruddell.

For example, Ruddell notes that at the Texas Christian University station at Berry Street, the Berry Street Initative - a local economic development organization dedicated to the idea of revitalizing Berry Street - has many ideas for how best to develop that area in anticipation of the rail station. He believes that the new T station “will prod their development along.”

North Richland Hills is working on a transportation-oriented development code, in anticipation of the the city’s two planned sw2neRAIL stops, both of which are located in the middle of a “hodgepodge of zoning…from residential to industrial,” according to the city’s planning and development director, John Pitstick.

Watch an aerial video tour of the Southwest-to-Northeast Rail Corridor: