Sunbelt Cities Look to Light Rail to Connect the DotsBy Jane Holtz Kay Could this be the post-automobile century? Look around and you'll see light rail lines rolling off into the Phoenix desert; stretching along the Dallas plains; breaking ground in Salt Lake City, in planning for Houston, and drawing crowds in Denver. Whether "rail lite" or a "new wave," this phenomenon marks the fourth generation of rail. The 19th century brought the first and primary generation, the gas-short 1970s defined the second, and the early 1980s and '90s expansion led by San Diego and Portland, the third. NOW, new lines are being built in the most car-oriented cities in the nation. Sprawl is the enemy, and local dollars are the engine. "It's growing," says Jeffrey Boothe, chair of the 55-city New Starts Working Group, a national coalition of transit agencies and organizations. According to the American Public Transit Association (APTA), applicants for federal "new starts" money have doubled from 200 in the early 1990s. With so many new applicants, the Federal Transit Administration has run short of funds to meet the demand, shifting from a federal-state funding ratio of 80-20 to 50-50. The Converts Phoenix and Houston, the last holdouts and largest cities lacking rail, have recently voted to move ahead. When Denver opened its 8.7-mile southwest corridor line in July, some 25,000 riders showed up on the very first day--and 35,000 on day two.
"It's gotten to the point where almost every city wants rail," says George Haikalis, president of the Institute for Rational Mobility in New York City. Today's fourth and enlarged constituency of rail supporters ranges from the National Park Service, which wants to rim Grand Canyon, to middle-America Minneapolis, to office-park studded Silicon Valley. The several thousand people who attended the annual Rail-Volution conference in Dallas last year and Denver this month attest to the zeal for riding rail. Watchwords Only don't call them "streetcars" or "trolleys." It's "light rail," or "LRT," say their builders. If there is one thing that characterizes the latest transit missionaries, it's their urge to separate themselves from the time-worn streetcars in the urban corridors their populations left behind. Take Phoenix and Dallas. These newly converted light rail communities share the common characteristics of a paltry, car-glutted downtown combined with sprawl and the minimal density that makes the communities along the way barely worth a dot on any self-respecting transit map. Consult a diagram of Phoenix's forthcoming Valley Connections light rail or Dallas's up-and-running DART line and you are more likely to see jagged single lines--spiders joined to spiders--than the traditional hub-and-spoke or star systems of urban rail. But these NEW WEST cities also share congestion, poor air quality, and burgeoning populations. Not to mention, opponents of new roads--not only those that one Michigan road builder calls "the sandal-wearing quiche-eating "freakazoids" but also neighbors of more moderate persuasion who insist on pricey sound walls and plantings. "People have recognized that they don't have a lot of options," says Wulf Grote, project director of Phoenix's LRT. And then there is ISTEA. While this 1991 law required planning bodies (COGs and MPOs), flexible funds, and enhancements that haven't quite lived up to expectations, its mandate that state departments of transportation perform a rigorous cost test for alternatives to every road project has slowed the pace of highway building, says STPP's executive director Roy Kienitz. If they can do it.... What's happening in Phoenix and Dallas--poster children of sprawl--can happen elsewhere. Phoenix is now doing preliminary engineering for a new line, and Dallas is expanding its four-year-old DART line.
In both Phoenix and Dallas, light rail benefited from a shift in demographics: the young seeking a livelier lifestyle and the old seeking an alternative to the automobile. Whether the light rail systems can stem sprawl, whether they can use their popularity to counter highway subsidies or not, the trend is there. So, of course, is the difficulty in getting the public to adopt, and pay for, public transit. Phoenix: from ballot to drawing board It wasn't exactly a cockfight, but voters in Phoenix's 450-square mile transit service area went several rounds before saying "yes" to a .04 sales tax to fund the project. (See "Planning News," June 2000.) In 1997, reeling from a 122-vote defeat (out of 110,000 cast), Phoenix's transit supporters decided to focus on outreach, says Jimmy Sue Olsen, principal planner with the Regional Planning Authority (RPTA). Campaigners mailed out a six-page, Transit 2000 document filled with maps, graphs, and diagrams for new bus, rail, and public transit. Officials organized 10 public meetings in a two-year period, as well as consulting with businesses. "What they were finding at all the meetings was that the employers were having a hard time getting workers," says Steve Beard, deputy project director of the RPTA, and "a lot of people were getting tired of sprawl." With Mayor Skip Rimska finally coming on board to help raise some $1.4 million and a meager $10,000 coming from the opposition, the "Vote Yes" crowd handily defeated the "De-Rail the Tax" interests. The current bare bones system, which lacked Sunday bus service until this summer, was essentially overhauled when Phoenix voted two-to-one to allocate 34 percent of the $1.6 billion, 20-year transit plan to light rail while enhancing the bus system. "Light rail l, Nimby's 0," Railway Age wrote in describing the vote. "How often do you get a chance to contribute to something like that?" asks Deputy Mayor Jack Tevlin, looking proudly at the framed newspaper clip of the election night, when he serenaded the crowd with a rendition of "I've been working on the railroad." The route as it has emerged for the first 20-mile segment stretches in a sort of capped "L" shape with the downtown core at the right angle and the road heading east towards Sky Harbor International Airport, then reaching the town of Tempe, home to Arizona State University. Tempe passed a .05 tax to share in the system. Designed to run at 10-to-15-minute intervals for some 18,000 passengers a day, the system is pinned to "activity" stops at population centers, replicating the bus route along Central Avenue, the city's highest employment concentration. Other extensions could include Mesa, Glendale, and Scottsdale. Recent neighborhood meetings have brought Phoenix residents together to define these stops. "A first," Marc Soronson, manager of environmental planning for the RPTA, describes the participatory process. "It's snowballing," says Neal Manske, public transit director, in describing Phoenix's "embryonic" village planning. Some insiders are less sanguine. "A pretty anemic amount," former Mayor Terry Goddard says of the estimated 18,000 riders expected to use the first leg of the Phoenix system. Goddard, who served from 1984 to 1990, is dismayed that the system will not hook into an existing terminal at Sky Harbor Airport to benefit from its 33 million flyers a year. Hurdles Several factors could GROUND the Phoenix system's AMBITIONS: the city's thinly settled neighborhoods, its asphalt-wrapped malls, and the less-than-vibrant downtown. Michael Beyard, Vice President of the Urban Land Institute, agrees that light rail "can be a very powerful focus in terms of combating sprawl," but insists that infill and wider "smart growth" policies are essential. "Just creating the transit is not going to create this sort of development," says Beyard. It's no panacea, all involved agree. a planner for the City of Phoenix "It's going to take some work," says Katherine Wisehart, a planner for the city of Phoenix. "Rail isn't a panacea. You're talking about changing a culture Concerned about far flung development at the fringes, the Sierra Club has secured a Citizens Growth Management Initiative that will appear on next month's (November) ballot--with 160,000 signatures in favor of growth boundaries and impact fees. "The idea of Phoenix is just to let things happen," says Sandy Bahr, conservation coordinator for the Sierra Club's Arizona chapter, calling the city "the epitome of leapfrog" development. Magnets like the vast new Del Webb community of Anthem to the north, with its 35,000 acres of walled single-family houses plus a new supermall, seem the ultimate in unabated sprawl and unsupported transit. "An environmental nightmare," says Goddard. Some Phoenix planners do point to positive new approaches: an overlay zoning district, parking ordinances, and transit-oriented guidelines in the works as well as infill. "We're already seeing development interest along the light rail corridor," says Joy Mee, assistant director of planning. "It's going to take more than light rail to make it work," she says, "but it's a contributor." Mark McLaren, landscape architect, planner, and RPTA facility consultant, notes the stronger market for multi-family housing and sees some shift in the city from the 'snowbird' values of the 1950s to a condo/loft community with conservationist leanings. "It happened in Texas and it's going to happen here," he says .
A railroad crossroads city grown to maturity after World War II, Dallas has established its new corridor along the old one. Lacking the growth and land-use controls of Portland or San Diego, DART has shown what a modern city driven by the private sector can do for rail (or vice versa). Good design helps. DART's first transit stops won a U.S. Department of Transportation honor award in June for the HOK Planning Group, which produced the prototype. Sasaki Associates transit mall is widely praised. Daily ridership is over 38,000, and construction has never ceased. It may not be a moment too soon. The DART service area population is l.8 million, but 2.8 million more residents are expected in the metro area by 2025. Dallas is "one of the few cities that's dealing with sprawl," says Sheila Holbrook-White of Texas Civic Action. She also notes with approval that DART built its first leg in the south part of the Dallas metro area, where a preponderance of lower income people could benefit-and, of course, provide the most riders. Douglas Allen, DART's vice-president of planning and development, points to some telling numbers; $860 million to build the DART line; $800 million dollars in development within walking distance of the DART today Another study by a University of North Texas economist cited a rise of 25 percent in property values around the stations between its 1996 opening and the beginning of this year. DART's point man for transit oriented development in the system's 700-square-mile service area is Jack Wierzenski, AICP, senior manager of planning studies and economic development. "It's always crowded," he notes happily as we visit neighborhood stations. "Each [station] is unique," he says. "Each has a sense of place." Wierzenski's list of loft conversions ranges from the handsome 1924 Santa Fe Union station to emptied out 1950s offices like the Southland Center tower, now the Adams' Mark, a $200 million, 1,900-room hotel. Jack Guerra, chief planner for the city, applauds the preservation, citing the Republic Tower, a one-million-square-foot 1950s building, soon to hold offices, retail, and perhaps residences. Guerra credits DART with making "downtown an agreeable place to live." Soft spots Although this rider spent a not atypical 20 minutes at midday waiting for a train in the sub-surface Mockingbird station three miles from downtown Dallas, this particular stop is considered one of DART's most successful, with pricey apartments (penthouses at $5,000 a month), offices, retail stores, a restaurant, and an eight-screen Angelica theater to come. DART obliges developers to tuck cars and parking lots out of sight at the Mockingbird station, eliminating some unsightly spaces. Even farther out, at the Galatyn Park Station, 12 miles from downtown, in the town of Richardson, DART will wrap its transit plaza with a performing arts center, a Nortel office building and other mixed uses. This piece of the "Telecom Corridor," due for completion in 2002, will have no parking. Other fringe area transit stations seem less likely to generate car-free facilities, however, since DART uses persuasion, not muscle, to influence developers. Also, the need for cooperation among 13 communities contributes to a system that ranges from meager to incomplete, depending on your perspective. "We're not a real restrictive environment here, and it really takes a success to attract developers," Wierzenski says. That free-for-all development plus a downtown more defined by underground tunnels than surface amenities, means that walking through portions of the well-groomed, four-station Downtown Transitway Mall is hardly your ultimate urban experience. "Moles underground," says Sue Bauman, vice president of marketing and communications. Extending the system along ever longer tracks also suggests a lack of commitment to rail's need for density. "Rail isn't a panacea. You're talking about changing a culture," as Wisehart put it. "The downtown is on a slow but steady track, but it's got a long way to go," says Christine Carlyle, the city's former assistant director of planning and development charged with orchestrating revitalization. With five streets under construction and planners laboring to infuse stores and restaurants, the core could resuscitate, she says. "I don't think it's going to come back over night," Carlyle says. "It's a slow process. Still, rail is a natural asset. It can bring things into the center." Big D As in Phoenix, Dallas's extensive land area complicates the transit picture. "Talk of a growth ring is heard," says Carlyle, "but Dallas doubled its land mass in the sixties and seventies and that makes it difficult." Thus, transit-oriented planning is slow here, as in other Sunbelt cities, and highway building constant, symbolized by the attempt to construct the hotly contested $120 million Southwest Parkway by the Trinity River, vigorously opposed by neighborhood groups (See "Wasteland to Waterfront," May 2000.) "This ain't Portland, I can tell you," Bauman concedes. "Texans are beginning to see sprawl is not good. But this is a very independent part of the country." Moreover, light rail officials and boosters hesitate to admit to any inherent conflict between roads and rail. "Choice," is their motto. Optimism reigns. Housing has taken off, with 13,000 residences recorded within a mile radius of the central business district. "Dot.comers like lofts, like rail," says Wierzenski. "The notion in the West is that people have 'the New Choice,'" says Tad Savenour, a consultant who's gained an overview by integrating art work for rail lines in Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City and elsewhere. Above all, he says, "light rail is not about getting people out of their cars but creating nodes of development. It has to be a value-added experience." Long Haul Will the western mentality of limitless space--and limitless choice--change as the population continues to boom? Although U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) blocked long-term funding for Houston's light rail line, the city is going ahead funded by a sales tax while Austin has a transit initiative election in November. "We're good," says Holbrook-White. Dallas remains the new model for such upstart lines. Starting in 1982, when concerns for the swelling suburbs motivated some Texans to try to rein in development, advocates toiled through five campaigns to get a vote for a one percent sales tax. "Texas in general and Dallas in particular is not the kind of city that you'd think would take rail to its heart," Bauman says, "but we couldn't build our way out with concrete." With the passage of a one percent tax last summer, DART has indeed embraced rail. Seventy-seven percent of the voters okayed long-term funding--some $3.1 billion on 52 miles of extensions to Carrollton, fast-growing Las Colinas, and Pleasant Grove, plus light rail to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. "Faster or slower we're going ahead," Bauman described Dallas' future confidently before the August balloting. Today, the forward march of "the biggest bond ever passed in the state of Texas," confirmed her optimism. "It's all good news," says Bauman. Originally published in Planning Magazine, October 2000.
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Nationwide, APTA cites a record 4.8 percent increase in ridership for the first quarter of the year, the highest peak in annual ridership since 1960. Locally initiated, community funded, and supported by federal funds, the first decade under the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (now TEA-21) saw an increase of 44.2 percent in rail miles of light rail track. Transit ridership is up a total of 15 percent in terms of trips in the last three years (compared to driving at eight percent), says the Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP) in Washington, D.C.
Phoenix, a weakling in public transportation, passed its first vote for light rail in March and is now in preliminary engineering for its first 20-miles and holding meetings with neighbors for its 22-station starter segment to begin construction in 2003 and open three years later. Dallas, with its impressive 1996 installation of 20 miles of tracks (and 24 more in the pipeline), its stylish new cars, handsome stations, and transit-oriented projects, is the new mecca after Portland and San Diego.
Dallas Does DART