Who Killed the Streetcar? The State of Fort Worth's Public Transit

Suburb of Dallas. It was shocking to hear Jeff Davis, chairman of the Trinity Metro Board of Directors and one of the city’s biggest public transportation advocates, say those three words when speaking of Fort Worth.

It’s a label normally, if not often, applied by non-Texan ignoramuses or those green with envy. And when used to describe Fort Worth, it’s cringe-inducing, blood-boiling, and elicits one of two reactions: a curt correction or a suggestion to the offending party to put up their dukes. There are no two ways about it, there exists no greater insult to Fort Worth than to refer to the city as a “suburb of Dallas.”

While we might not like to hear it, Davis said it — three times, in fact — and he said it with good reason. “I’m not from here; I was born in Greenland,” he says. “It allows me to see and say things that people from Fort Worth don’t want to talk about.”

What triggered this brutally honest appraisal of Fort Worth was a conversation about the city’s public transportation. Or, as Davis puts it, the city going decades with “a lack of leadership, a lack of vision, and an apathy that allowed the city to drift.”

Davis has been at this, fighting for public transit, a while. “Fifteen years, pretty much full time,” he says. And the way Davis sees it, a city without safe, reliable, robust public transit isn’t a city at all. For a place to call itself a bona fide world-class city takes more than an area code and a few bus routes — heck, even Paris, Texas, has one of those. So, if Fort Worth doesn’t invest in public transit and kick its old habits of expanding suburban sprawl and paving more asphalt, the city could be in a lot of trouble.

While Trinity Metro, Fort Worth’s Metro Transit Agency, can tout a couple of hundred vehicles — including buses — and an impressive rail line from downtown to DFW Airport, its budget and capabilities pale when compared to similar cities. According to their 2024 budgets, of the five most populated cities in Texas with Metro Transit Agencies (Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio), Fort Worth spends the least amount on public transit, per capita, than any of its in-state peers.

And it’s not even close. According to the National Transit Data Base, Trinity Metro spends $100 per capita compared to Dallas’ $227 per capita and Austin’s $213 per capita.

Trinity Metro does the best with what it has at its disposal, which, comparatively, is not a heck of a lot. And without monetary investment for capital improvements, “the community is drifting into being a suburb of Dallas. We’ve fallen flat,” Davis says.

But why so dramatic? Why do empty buses and a lack of an urban rail system have Davis seemingly on the verge of sounding the death knell for the city? Well, according to Davis, “Public transit is the answer to every problem of our community.” He reiterated, “Every problem.”

While some might assume a decrease in the city’s carbon footprint is the main catalyst, advocacy for public transit is not solely based on a desire for improved air quality — though it helps in that respect, too. You name it — economic growth, equity, congestion, public safety, education, affordable housing, public health, attracting young talent, even improved cultural identity — a more convenient, sustainable way to get from point A to point B has positive effects that go far beyond the city’s ozone levels. Ultimately, public transit measures its success by the overall welfare of the community it’s serving.

But improvement is more than building rails, buying buses, or increasing ride-shares. These flashy, expensive items do nothing if the community doesn’t buy-in and change its overall mindset. According to Davis, shifting how we think about a city and the way its communities develop and function is what will bring about improvement.

The ugly truth is, by and large, young people — ones who will remain in this city long after the boomers, Gen Xers, and millennials are gone — have little interest in cookie-cutter homes on the edge of the suburban sprawl. “Some people want the white picket fence, and I’m happy for them, and I appreciate that, but that’s not what the talent wants right now,” Davis says. “They want to be with their friends. They have fewer kids and have them later in life. Unless you start investing in public transit and creating the placemaking that these kids want, which involves music, restaurants, living, and working, they won’t come [to Fort Worth]. And from a data guy like me, it’s frustrating because so few people understand the need to invest.”

Once millennials aged into earning incomes and making life choices, the generation led a migration back to urban areas, where they sought proximity to food, entertainment, and their place of employment. They were less concerned with square footage and more concerned with convenience. Thus, urban areas have grown by 13% since 2000. What’s happening among young, well-educated professionals — those whom cities openly court and market themselves to make residents — is an inverted sprawl.

“We know that whole market segments, whole industries are built around public transportation that doesn’t exist here,” says Richard Andreski, president and CEO of Trinity Metro. “There are types of industries that attract certain talent that is looking for that urban living where one can get around without a car. It’s a box that needs to be checked for young talent to move to a new city.”

The reasons to move to Fort Worth are plentiful, but, right now, public transportation isn’t one of them. And without that as part of our pitch to young talent, this could become one of the biggest thorns in the city’s side.

Mayor Mattie Parker appears attuned to the dire situation Davis paints. In May of this year, Parker announced the creation of the Urban Rail Committee Supporting Economic Development and Tourism, which will research and determine the city’s public transit needs and make recommendations. While the committee will be looking at the potential need and feasibility of a rail system between the city’s entertainment districts — Downtown, Stockyards, Cultural District, etc. — the true purpose of the committee appears to be far broader. “It is about tourism and economic development,” Parker said when announcing the committee. “But I think there’s a huge element to also meeting the needs of the population that lives here, that enjoys those entertainment districts.”

Ann Zadeh, a former Fort Worth councilwoman and member of the committee, admits that she was initially unsure of how her fellow committee members felt about investing in public transit. “I went in there thinking that I was going to have to convince half of the committee of the idea that having multimodal urban choices was something that we should be doing,” Zadeh says. “And I was pleasantly surprised to find that, no, everybody agrees that we need to do something besides widening roads and having everybody driving around in their cars.

“We’re not urban transit planners, so we won’t be designing any systems. But we’re talking with people who are professionals about what the options are and making recommendations, and then hopefully being advocates to share, inform, educate, and build support.”

My act of driving an unnecessarily large SUV from the bricks of Camp Bowie to meet him at a downtown coffee shop (which did happen) seems like the bane of Jeff Davis’ existence. Like Parker’s plan, he envisions a city where one can hop on an urban rail at any of the city’s walkable districts to get downtown — it’s all music to his ears and an incredible relief.

“[Mayor Mattie Parker] is a breath of fresh air,” Davis says. “Just having the willingness to listen to data, to look at other communities who’ve done this kind of thing — that openness hasn’t been there historically in Fort Worth.”

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Putting Down Routes

Smoke billowed into the night sky as large flames consumed TCU’s main academic building, and not a soul in Fort Worth could see it. This was in March 1910, and in this year of our Lord, Fort Worth’s beloved Horned Frogs were operating out of a few impressive brick buildings 90 miles south in Waco.

The fire, whose origins remain a mystery, destroyed the university’s main academic building. And when overzealous firefighters applied their efforts to the structures that had yet to ignite, the flooding and water damage made those buildings similarly unusable.

Looking for a new home, the school was suddenly the coveted darling of a host of suitors. Dallas, Gainesville, Waco, and Fort Worth found themselves in a bidding war for the university. Ultimately, $200,000 and a trolley stop at the university’s new campus sealed the deal.

In a bit of retroactive irony, one of Fort Worth’s most prized institutions moved to this city because of its public transportation system.

And few were more pleased than the Star Telegram’s editorial staff. “Factory stacks and glowing furnaces and armies of labor cannot alone make a great city,” read a July 1, 1910, editorial. “A city to achieve basic greatness must have churches and schools for the toiling, aspiring children of men . . . Without intending perhaps to do so, Fort Worth in her educational institutions is taking her surest and best course to greatness and fame.”

At the time, Fort Worth had one of Texas’ most extensive streetcar systems that, according to historian Quentin McGown, amounted to over 40 miles of streetcar lines.

Streetcars, once the mightiest mode of mass public transit, first came to Fort Worth in 1876. “It was a one-line, mule-drawn streetcar that went up and down Main Street,” local historian Richard Selcer says. “Then, in 1889, they electrified it, which, in many ways, ushered in the arrival of civilization as we know it.”

The introduction of such mobility — most of the city suddenly accessible without breaking a sweat — was the introduction of the modern metropolitan area. Like all cities — yes, before World War II, all cities had streetcars — Fort Worth real-estate developers began building nearby suburbs around streetcar lines. “Starting late 1890s and into the early 20th century, streetcar lines boomed,” Selcer says. “They were built everywhere.” This rudimentary form of mass transit and its extensive lines through every major city was one of the biggest catalysts for growth in the United States. It’s exhibit A when one introduces the theory of mass transit affecting positive economic outcomes.

Interestingly, streetcars found their place among cities organically — they weren’t owned or operated by local governments but, rather, private enterprise. They were filling a need, used extensively, and were profitable for a short time. In Fort Worth, the many streetcar lines and companies had been bought out or consolidated into the Northern Texas Traction Company, which even opened an interurban line between Dallas and Fort Worth in 1902. But things would quickly go south for the streetcar, as the biggest mode of mass transit suddenly had fierce competition: the automobile. And these new, four-wheeled vehicles used the same roads that were initially set up for streetcars, horses, and mules. And not dissimilar to today, where there were automobiles, there was congestion, and streetcars were no longer operating efficiently. Thus, with fewer folks hopping on streetcar lines, the once mighty Northern Texas Traction Company was no longer turning a profit and ceased operations in 1937. And automobiles were now free to roam the streets of Fort Worth without the obstruction of poky streetcars.

As streetcars struggled to turn profits nationwide, some cities, Boston and San Francisco, to name a couple, took over their private mass transit systems as early as the 1920s. Other cities replaced their operating streetcars with buses beginning in 1923, and New York would take over their city’s then-private subway system in 1940.

Fort Worth, as with most cities not located on the coasts, scoffed at such an idea and doubled down on roads, cars, and trucks, creating massive, multilane highways and thoroughfares that made public transportation unnecessary for those who could afford monthly automobile payments and tanks full of gasoline. Such freedom to put keys in an ignition and take off also had a hand in creating the suburban sprawl, as cities began to devour land with strip malls and large plots of residential spaces in areas once considered the boondocks.

While this evolution made a logical public transportation system more difficult, Fort Worth did begin public transit operations — taking over a previously private bus service — in 1978 with the establishment of the City Transit Service (CITRAN). In 1983, voters approved the formation of The T, which would eventually become Trinity Metro, and levied a half-cent sales tax to finance the new Mass Transit Agency.

That year, 1983, was a big year for mass transit in Texas. Across the metroplex, Dallas voters formed the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) and doubled Trinity Metro’s funding with a 1-cent sales tax, while Houston residents managed to resoundingly defeat an effort to create a subway system for the city — it would eventually open a light rail system, METRORail, in 2004, eight years after DART’s light rail.

“Mass Transit Suddenly Big in Texas,” a New York Times article from Aug. 21, 1983, rightly yet smugly commented on the transit happenings out west as if looking at us through a cage at a zoo. “Interested parties outside Dallas may have looked on with some bewilderment last week as local officials took the first steps toward implementing a 27-year, $8.9 billion mass transit plan that included a $3.4 billion, 160-mile rail system to be built entirely with local funds,” the Peter Applebome-penned article read. “After all, transportation planning in Texas generally has meant highway expansions, and this sprawling, auto-dominated city never has been accused of being a leader in mass transit.”

Fort Worth, meanwhile, had the Tandy Center Subway, a privately-owned tram on a .7-mile track originally built by Leonard’s Department Store in 1963. The tram’s purpose was to make it easier for customers to travel to and from the department store and its massive parking lots. And, yes, it even went underground. In 1967, Tandy Corporation purchased the store and its parking lots, where it built its corporate headquarters that included a shopping mall at its base. Tandy would retain the subway, but it would cease operation in August 2002, and this nostalgic ride into a shopping mall remains the closest Fort Worth has gotten to an urban rail.

For many, their first foray into public transit in Fort Worth, if the Tandy Center Subway doesn’t count, came via the Trinity Railway Express (TRE), a rail to Dallas that opened in 1996. The TRE was a partnership between Trinity Metro and DART — each owning 50% — which used a former Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad line to offer public transit between the two cities. The second-to-last stop lets riders off in front of the American Airlines Center, making it ideal for attending Mavericks or Stars games. “I often talk to people, and they don’t know about the TRE to Dallas,” councilman Michael Crain says. “And I’ll say, ‘When I had to go to work in Dallas, I would get on it. I’d get an hour’s worth of work on the train, and I wasn’t worrying about driving in traffic going there or coming back.’”

The streetcar would make another brief, and ultimately teasing, appearance in 2010 when a proposed idea with a $25 million federal grant attached to it was making the rounds. The project would have ultimately cost $88 million, and the route would have made a six-mile round-trip journey through north Fort Worth, downtown, and the Near Southside.

Despite venturing through obvious activity centers, the measure failed 5-3 in a council vote, with councilmembers voicing concern over the project competing with the planned TEXRail to DFW Airport and that the streetcar would have served only 4% of the city’s population.

Then-mayor Mike Moncrief, who the previous year had appointed a 20-member Modern Streetcar Task Force, would vote with the majority, effectively killing the streetcar.

If a college could talk, one wonders what 1910 TCU would have to say about this.

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The Half-Cent Hurdle 

Richard Andreski, who’s been at the helm of Trinity Metro for two years, came to Fort Worth having previously run the rail and bus system in Connecticut — one of those coastal spots whose public transit is so good, so well oiled, that it’d be unfair to compare them to a Texas city.

While the systems are night and day, Andreski, like a new football coach taking over an 0-17 team, likes the challenge.

“We have a blank canvas, and I love the blank canvas,” Andreski says. “We can dream, we can think of what it ought to look like. In Connecticut and other places, you have a legacy system that goes back well over a hundred years, and change is very incremental. Here, it’s not incremental at all. I mean, we can dream here, which I’m excited by that.”

That said, for Andreski to act on his dreams, he’s going to have more than a few hurdles with which to contend, the biggest of which is the Trinity Metro budget.

State tax law allows cities to apply an additional 2-cent sales tax to the statewide 6.25-cent sales tax. But, the city is prohibited from allocating more than 1 cent of this tax to fund their Metro Transit Agencies. Texas’ four most populous cities — Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Austin — apply the entirety of the revenue from that 1-cent tax to their public transit systems.

The next most populous city, Fort Worth — only 1,000 residents shy of Austin according to a 2023 census estimate — applies half of that toward public transit — a half-cent. To keep the math simple, this means Trinity Metro receives half the revenue, per capita, of their slightly more populous peers. This is the same amount Metro Transit Agencies in Corpus Christi, Denton, and Laredo receive, each with populations less than half of Fort Worth’s. And, because Trinity Metro is designated a Metro Transit Agency, the application of this sales tax is in lieu of receiving state funding for any projects.

The half-cent that would otherwise go to Trinity Metro is allocated to the Crime Control and Prevention District, which funds crime prevention and intervention programs for local nonprofits. But objections have been raised over how the Fort Worth Police Department has apportioned these funds.

“In my experience, that half-cent has become pretty much absorbed into the public safety budget in a way that they rely upon it,” Ann Zadeh says. “So, it’s not necessarily doing what it was originally intended to do, and that was to work with local nonprofits on crime prevention.”

The Fort Worth Police Department receives its budget from the general fund, which totaled $299 million in 2024 and is not connected with the separate CCPD budget. While the CCPD has a distinct mission geared toward work with nonprofits, its 2024 funding application included $41 million for equipment and technology — including a $4 million helicopter replacement program — and $17 million for recruitment and training. Funds going toward partnering nonprofits totaled $11.9 million of the $130 million budget request.

“Enforcement will always be part of what we do as long as people are breaking the law,” Police Chief Neil Noakes said at a 2022 public hearing about the Crime Control and Prevention District. “We do everything we can to provide people with the resources and tools they need to be successful.”

The district was first approved in 1995, and voters reapproved the district in five-year increments through 2020 when voters elected to continue the district for 10 years, meaning it won’t appear on the ballot again until 2030. Fort Worth is the only city with an MTA to apply a portion of the 2-cent sales tax to such a district.

“My understanding at the time is that there was a serious crime problem that needed to be addressed,” says Zadeh, who was the District 9 councilwoman from 2014 to 2020. “I was in office when staff came to the council to suggest that we make the vote on [the CCPD] every 10 years instead of every five years. And I voiced concern and opposition to that because I felt like we needed to be moving in a direction to free up that other half-cent to put toward transit, but there weren’t enough other people who agreed.”

According to the FBI Crime Data, Fort Worth’s violent crime rate hit an all-time high in 1992, when its rate was more than double the national average. Since the CCPD was enacted in 1995, the violent crime rate has steadily and substantially dropped to a point where the rate is now below the national average.

With the CCPD remaining through 2030 — and even then unlikely to lose substantial support — Trinity Metro’s funding will remain far behind its in-state peers. But, according to Andreski, it’s not just Texas markets to which Fort Worth compares unfavorably.

“We’ve benchmarked against current peer and aspirational peer cities around the country,” Andreski says. “And we are investing approximately $100 per capita here. That compares not so favorably to our peers.”

Andreski was quick to point out that he’s not speaking about cities on the coasts — an unfair comparison. He’s saying cities like Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Charlotte (strangely not considered a coastal town), Louisville, and Cincinnati, all spend substantially more per capita than Fort Worth. “You go down the list,” Andreski continues, “They’re spending two or two-and-half times as much. So, they’re spending $200 to $250 per capita.”

But, how can this be, I ask. How are these cities’ public transit systems able to secure such a budget?

“It’s a combination of factors,” Andreski says. “They’re set up differently, and in certain places they’re funded through sales tax, property tax, other mechanisms we’re not recommending. It’s really not my prerogative to say how to fund transit. What I can tell you is that we are woefully behind the competition, and it’s not by a small margin. We’re not spending what we should for a city that’s growing with this much congestion.”

Yet dipping into the city council-controlled general fund to supplement Trinity Metro’s current budget appears to be a fool’s errand. Other programs are unlikely to see cuts, and the mere suggestion of raising property taxes, which account for 76% of the general fund revenues available to public transit, would likely result in a political death sentence for the city’s mayor and majority conservative city council. Mayor Mattie Parker even touted lowering the property tax rate as one of her objectives during the annual State of the City address in October.

And with that, the avenues by which Trinity Metro can receive funding appear to be getting fewer and fewer. But, according to District 3 councilman Michael Crain, this young, open-minded city council, despite a conservative constituency, might provide some light at the end of the tunnel.

“Resources are one of those things, and I think we as a city have to decide what is a priority, and I know there’s strong advocates for more public transportation,” Crain says. “And I would say this is probably the first time we have a city council that’s a little younger, a little more well-traveled, a little more exposed. That’s not a knock on any sort of past councils, but I think we’re at this at the right time, and it’s ripe to have this conversation and listen to citizens. What do they see next? How do they envision a public transportation system in the city of Fort Worth?”

Regardless of where their next big check might be coming from, Andreski will continue to work magic with what he has.

One of the biggest issues he faces is that none of the revenue from the half-cent sales tax gets applied to capital improvement projects. It’s all for operational costs — to keep whatever they bought or built running. Thus, with no new taxes, Trinity Metro’s best bet to get funding for new projects is through federal grants. And, with recent infrastructure programs opening money in D.C., public transit authorities are chomping at the bit to get their projects financed.

A big chunk of what funded TEXRail, which opened in 2019, came from federal grants. And, according to Andreski, the project, once completed, came in at $80 million under budget and ahead of schedule. And Trinity Metro can apply that $80 million to the second phase of the TEXRail project.

The plan was to take the TEXRail, whose southern-most station is currently T&P, and continue the line into the hospital district. However, even with the $80 million in savings applied to the second phase, they’re still $43 million short. And that’s $43 million Trinity Metro will have to raise.

Jeff Davis recalls having a meeting a couple of years ago about the TEXRail extension.

“I was before the council talking about it, and one of the council members says, ‘We can’t afford that. It’s just too much money.’ I’m sitting here going, we’re accessing 50,000 jobs by getting to the hospital district. We’re going to increase ridership. All the advantages that occur with transit. Urban rail in the United States is typically worth a billion dollars a mile. So, if you’re going to have to think about what role we’re going to play in the future of this great community, and if you’re going to put your big boy pants on, put ‘em on, strap ‘em on, have a vision, and let’s hold hands and get it together.”

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How to Build a City 101

Fort Worth prides itself on growth. We have a tendency to treat every new person who moves within the city limits as a small victory and check in on the latest census bureau data like it’s the AP Poll. “We just jumped Austin and are up to 11 now.”

People want to live here, which must mean the city’s great. And that’s positive, right?

“Fort Worth is just really, really spread out,” says Chuck Marohn, a civil engineer and founder and president of Minnesota-based nonprofit Strong Towns. “It has all the hallmarks of that style of development, a kind of obsession with growth because when you have that type of development pattern, you need to continue to grow, grow to kind of feed the machine. Cities built in that way tend to really struggle financially, especially when some of the bills start coming due.”

Strong Towns is a nonprofit that advocates for cities to take a smarter, more sustainable approach to development to avoid financial and safety pitfalls. In other words, and as it relates to this article, stop building roads; create walkable, all-in-one neighborhoods; and invest in public transit.

According to Marohn, if Fort Worth continues down the six-lane, asphalt road it’s currently on, in 20 years, we’ll be just like California — perhaps the only thing worse than being a suburb of Dallas.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in California, and this is the thing that California’s been saying for decades,” Marohn says. “It’s growing here. It’s never going to stop growing. Growth is inevitable. More grow, grow, grow. I’ve always felt like the conversation and the development pattern in Texas is just 20 years behind California.”

Seas of parking lots, asphalt jungles, sprawling developments as far as the eye can see, and a lack of robust, efficient public transit. This is the Inland Empire. This is also Fort Worth.

And how did we end up 20 years behind?

The climate. Texas was too hot pre-air conditioning, Marohn explains. California got a head start because of the nice weather.

But Marohn says it’s not too late for Fort Worth to turn things around. Cowtown doesn’t have to suffer the embarrassing fate of becoming California, but it must make some incremental changes.

First, according to Marohn, before we make too many drastic shifts in our transit plan, like adding an urban rail, we need to build walkable neighborhoods — developments where people live, work, and are entertained. While we can’t plow everything down and start from scratch, things are certainly too segmented and rigid in Fort Worth — this area of town is where you work; this area of town is where you eat; this area of town is where you play. We need to break down those barriers. And, conveniently enough, these all-in-one neighborhoods are the exact kind of developments that attract young talent.

“When you don’t have neighborhoods that are walkable, it is really hard to make transit work,” Marohn explains. “It just becomes a really expensive taxi service.”

In the world of public transit, rail is the big, shiny, sexy thing. It’s what can get a group of citizens (a voting block, if you will) jazzed about the idea. But it’s not necessarily what Fort Worth should do first. For rail to work, one needs stops on a line, and these stops need to be walkable neighborhoods. It doesn’t make sense for an urban rail to drop one off at the front gates of Mira Vista. But, with time, these stops will develop.

And there are already a few developments coming down the pike and a couple others that could be ready for prime time. The upcoming Evans and Rosedale urban village on the city’s east side, yet another mixed-use development on West Seventh, the continuing growth in the Near Southside, the evolving Stockyards, and the long-awaited Panther Island all seem primed to become stops on a future urban rail.

As a city getting on the right path, we’re still a newborn — we have to crawl before we can walk and walk before we can urban rail.

Richard Andreski appears to be on the same page as Marohn.

“I think there’s probably an interim step or two [before we get urban rail]” he says. “I don’t quite see the equivalent of an underground metro system at this point in our history. But I see a lot of opportunity in the high-impact, lower-cost category.” This includes buses, On-Demand, and eventually, automated vehicles. “I think all those things begin to build critical mass,” Andreski says. “And then what you’re talking about to me is sort of that multigenerational look.”

For now, Trinity Metro is focusing on the right things and the right ways to grow public transit and increase ridership in Fort Worth.

“We’re leaning into the winners, and then we’re finding different ways to serve the markets where we don’t have the ridership demand that we need to support highly frequent service,” Andreski says.

One of the ways their servicing such areas is with On-Demand, an Uber-like taxi service that allows riders to request rides within specific service boundaries via the GoPass mobile app. Only, instead of slightly outrageous Uber fees, On-Demand is only $2.

In late August, Trinity Metro unveiled the new Orange Line, a bus decked out in cowhide seats that blares country music and shuttles people between downtown and the Stockyards. In case you didn’t know where it was taking you, the whole side of the bus says “Stockyards.”

“We need to be more innovative,” Andreski says when asked about the Orange Line. “We need to try different things, experiment, learn from those tests. And one of the opportunities that jumped off the page was the fact that we have anywhere from 8-to 10-million annual visitors up at the Stockyards every year, and they’re not riding the transit system to get there by and large.”

Other potential projects abound — bullet trains to Dallas and bullet trains to [fill in Texas city here] — but focusing on services like On-Demand and the convenient Orange Line are brilliant ways to introduce both residents and visitors to a public transit they either didn’t know existed or never thought to take. It gets Trinity Metro’s foot in the door. And, once ridership increases, it becomes easier for mayors, council members, and city managers to understand the need to invest in the system.

But no matter how you slice it, Fort Worth is either 20 years away from catching up or 20 years away from becoming California. Hopefully by then, Fort Worth will at least get out from under the thumb of Dallas suburbia.

One should clarify that when Davis says Fort Worth is or is going to become a suburb of Dallas, he says it out of love, like a father scolding a child for lying or fighting at school — ‘If you keep this up, it’s gonna be a tough life for you.’ You can’t deny Davis’ passion.

“We’ve got to get together, figure out what kind of city we want to be first,” Davis says. “I think the assets that we have, we can be one of the greatest cities in the United States. And I mean that not just population wise, but culture wise. But you got to invest. You got to have the vision. And if you don’t do that, we’re just going to be a suburb of Dallas.”