(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 527: Planning Connections in Panther City

This week we’re joined by Kelly Porter, Assistant Director Tranportation & Public Works for the City of Fort Worth. We talk about the city’s incredible growth, its first ever comprehensive transportation plan, plans for Panther Island and Butler Place as well as dreams for high speed rail.

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Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript:

Nice. What did you take away from all those other places? I really enjoyed Philly and feeling in a way globally centered by being on the East coast and being, six hours away from Europe and being able to go to New York on a day trip, be an hour from the mountains, an hour from the beach.

That was all great. And getting to live my truth as a planner and getting to take transit and ride my bike and, live a very multimodal life in a row house. So that was awesome. Good exposure. Houston you being from there, it’s something you just have to really be there to appreciate the diversity of people thought food.

The free enterprise is you start to realize how that city works and it’s got this international feel to it in a way, even in ways you wouldn’t expect it. And so I, I adore Houston because it actually, since it’s still relatively affordable, was able me to give me a good step up into life. And then Austin was fun.

It’s nice being close to the hill country and access to nature and the music scene and getting to do a lot of good pet bike planning there and regional planning. It was a lot to learn there and Project Connect was coming up, so that was nice. But also working with some of the suburban community. On some of their kind of transitional one and be a little bit more multimodal, walkable, and also thinking about their tax base and what they’re doing.

So I worked with San Marcus and Georgetown on a couple of studies, and now I’m back here in Fort Worth. So I think there was something I could take from every single place that I was, you know what actually works with Houston and it doesn’t have quote unquote land use zoning. But it’s got a of regulation.

And what works there, what doesn’t work, and so you’re able to understand the market pretty well when you get to work in a place like Houston. Especially going between Houston, Austin and Philly, I did learn, I’d much rather be working in a city that’s on the upswing than working the city, especially Philly.

It starts to rebound by the time I got there, but managing declines a whole lot harder. In a different way. And so that was quite neat to me. But even as a child, I lived in the San Jose area in California, so just knowing that there is places where you could play outside all day and not burn up in the heat was nice.

That was some good exposure as a kid understanding how different places work and function. And I think one thing that stood in me in Prairie View is that when you do go to these places, you want to be able to bring those things that you love back home. And so that’s what I’m getting you do now.

She was in driver’s ed, and so I got her handbook and learned all the traffic signs in it, and then that turned into my dad taking me to intersections and hitting the pedestrian light buttons and learning how that worked. And then it turned into a love with maps and learning. He got me a best Western atlas that they had in the hotels.

When you would travel from work sometimes. So I got to learn a lot of the interstate highway system and learn how to get places. And in first grade they would play a game called Stump Kelly, where they would ask me a city and say, how do you get there from Fort Worth? How do you get to la?

You get caught. I 20 to, I 10 and this, that, and the other. And so I, I got that fascination and my aunt bought me an atlas. That was Nationwide McNally 1992 Atlas. And so geography and Maps became a big passion. And every year for Christmas, I would get Atlas. My mom and dad got me a worth map. Which is old school.

And then I got a Dallas Mapsco, 1987 and 1985 and actually have him here with me. And so I learned all the roads on how to get around Fort Worth. And then eventually Dallas when I got the Dallas Mapsco, you know that love of maps and transportation and roads, being a road geek, don’t tell anybody, but, and then one day I was sitting at a restaurant with a family member.

We’re looking at all the traffic. We are out in the Fort Worth suburbs in Arlington, and traffic on Cooper Street was just terrible. And she said, Arlington’s just got a problem with city planning. I like six years. I said, what is the city planning you talk about? And from there, I know I wanted to be a city planner.

And then that love of transportation turned into understanding a little bit more about urban design and land use and then economic development. Because really I looked at. Planning as a tool for using that talent or that passion I had for good in the world. And so from there I was able to get an internship at TxDOT when I was in high school and learn about roadway materials and stuff.

And then doing more community kind development at my time at Prairie View and in the Houston area. And when I got to grad school, since I felt like I got to dibble and dabble with a little bit urban design, a little bit of economic development stuff, environmental planning, when I was in grad school.

Yeah, it’s been a passion my whole life. Not great at sports, not a great dancer, but city planning is my jam, so it’s not something that I really fell into. It was something I’ve always wanted to be.

It’s funny ’cause when I was in second or third grade, one of the exercises that you do is we roll out a carpet or map that you can draw on, and it’s a map. So you have to tell your teacher like, oh, how am I gonna get to the store? How am I gonna get here? And so that was like the first thing where I was like, oh.

Maps, this is cool, right? This is what I am interested in. And so I love that you got all those atlases and stuff. And did you ever wanna just make maps as I ended up doing GIS and stuff. Did you ever wanna be that person or did you just I

I really wanted to get into placemaking and into systems and all that. And I think was interesting though, my first year at Prairie View, or first semester I did architecture. And I said, that is too much building and drawing for me. And so I went over to sociology and geography ’cause I wanted to get more into policy and those other things.

And some people say I was the original GPS ’cause back in the day, people used to call me to ask me how to get places. And so geography I think was really my jam and the policy front in the zoning. And how do you actually make something happen? How does this work? There’s gotta be more than just the vision, but how do.

Part of the exciting thing about my job here and how my career has taken me is I’ve gotten not only into the vision part, but also what are the things that actually make something go vertical or actually impact people’s lives in a tangible manner. So it’s been part of my journey.

And she says, decorate Like Kelly been decorated since I was 12. And one day I did a parklet for a nonprofit I was working with and a business said, Hey, I like the way you decorated this. It’s in decoration. This is urban design. I didn’t go totally on them, yeah. Sometimes it’s, are you an event planner?

Are you an engineer? You get that a lot. It just depends on who you’re talking to when, but it’s very rarely has it been, oh, so you do zoning and subdivision and transportation planning and project development. The only time I’ve gotten that is when somebody’s oh yeah, because my wife’s a city planner or my brother’s a city planner.

So yeah, it’s it’s not a very well understood field all the time, but people know when it’s impacting them.

Maybe I wish it was that simple.

It is a central city fourth largest city now in the state of Texas. Toggling between 10th, 11, 12th in the nation. When I was born, back in the day, Fort Worth was probably right about 400,000 or so, 19 9400, 40 7,000 Century 19 people. Today we’re over a million people. So you know, when you grow up in a Houston or Fort Worth, you think growth is normal.

Everything flying up around you and the amount of change of especially rural to urban, suburban conversion is it’s actually pretty unprecedented in some ways. But, we are essential city in Texas. We anchor Fort Worth in its kind of greater surroundings that we define through our planning process.

It’s like about 3 million people. So about some size in Denver, Charlotte, and you had Dallas in the mix. We’re about 8 million people. I like to say that because in theory Houston really is the biggest centered region in the state, but they, worth together. And Houstonians have to be some of the worst offenders of when you say, what were they say?

Are you from Dallas? No, don’t do that.

We’ve got also the largest passenger hub for Amtrak in the state of Texas because we are the convergence of the Texas Eagle. It turns into Sunset Limited, I think three times a week, and then the Heartland Flyer up to Oklahoma City, and then we have that airport called DFW is ours. It gets you to five continents.

So we’re a very globally connected city. We are trying to look at ourselves now in this 21st century sense, where I think for years before we were born, for Worth and Dallas had somewhat of a distinct identity. But over time with the Metroplex, they’ve grown into kind of one large urban. Mega.

And so now I think we’re going back to understanding how we serve as continued, serve as a regional center and a statewide center, but also thinking more broadly on the national and even global stage with that world-class airport that we have high speed rail and other things being connected and being the tip of that mega region.

Because I think we know with mega regions especially, you have those trip pairs like Dallas Fort Worth to Houston, Barcelona, Madrid. How do we play up on that now with high speed rail? And we’ve been working through some of that. So we really are thinking about what does Fort Worth become in the 21st century as on its own, in a way, as a true global and national player economically.

And then also from standpoint.

And I just always found that fascinating. That, is very specific, very focused on that history also of Fort Worth, which is at the Stockyards and the Chisholm Trail. Everything we learned about in seventh grade, Texas history, just, thinking about that as well as a cultural phenomenon.

Fort Worth’s place in Texas.

Even, going to Houston, we probably have more of a tendency to say to some degree our roots are southern, but they’re definitely western. I had uncles and great grand PAs that were cowboys and whatnot, which has a very let’s say very broad breadth of what that means. But certainly we are the gateway to the west.

When you go west of Fort Worth, you don’t hit another city of our size until Denver and Phoenix. And so it truly is the beginning of that frontier and so that’s part of it. So sure barbecue stockyards are part of our culture, but we also have a huge, and the greater forer, including the suburbs.

We have a huge Ian population, Pacific Islander population, Vietnamese. Of course, African American, Hispanic Americans and Latinos of all walks of life, central America or whatnot are here. So it’s definitely a very diverse city, and I believe in the last census became more diverse. So we’ve always been politan, especially when you think about the Asian business issues we have out in Arlington to Thea here in the Leonian area.

Out in the Saginaw area or whatnot, and we’re getting our first, I think H Markt. So there’s that. But then you brought that up, growing up here, you got access to the Kimball, to the Carter, and to all these world class museums as well. That’s definitely part of our culture. The Jubilee Theater with its African American theater shows that it puts on, grew up in that.

Had a cousin that was an actor in that. So arts and culture. Plays and the theater, the opera, the ballet, we have all that here in Fort Worth. We don’t have to go east or south for that. And so that is something that is in our DNA, no matter who you are and where you are, that you had access to.

Arts and culture and people come all the world to see our museums and to see our deco downtown, the loyal bus in the eighties. Hit Houston hard. It hit us, but it also preserved a lot of our older buildings as well. And so we actually benefited from having kind of this still very walkable, architecturally interesting downtown in a way.

So arts and culture are definitely a big scene as part of that. The modern West is what you’ll see it called sometimes. It is a mix of both. And also the fact that the work west was a very diverse place with who were cowboys and all that. That’s all part of being here. We have a cowgirl, so I think challenge some of the.

Stereotypes to where, yeah, it’s part of who we are, but it’s also modern, urban, and we keep taking.

And so when you think about that’s adding the city of Los Angeles to our population, or essentially growing by 50%. And you look to the right of you at another person. It’s pretty much what it is for every two cars another car will be on the road. So at the end of the day, there’s no reason of 12 million people that moves all the way with just cars.

We’re gonna have to diversify on how people get around, whether that’s through transit, walking, biking, or looking at even at broadband as a form of transportation. To bring goods to people looking at other types of modes, considering freight with that as well. So absolutely connecting those people and goods to markets and to services is gonna be incredibly important as we go forward.

And there’s no way we can just build our way out of adding 4 million people in here with just a one size fits all solution.

And so Panther City is one of Cow Town’s nicknames in addition to Funky Town and all these other great nicknames we had. So you’ll see Panther Islands as one of the developments we’re working on. It was something that somebody thought would be an insult from to the east, and we turned that into.

In addition to that, looking at our trails and bicycle network, all with that. In addition, you mentioned bike share a minute ago. We have bike share expansion happening under Trinity Metro Transit Agency, but also a lot of our bicycle projects now that are on system are looking at or on street or really looking at hardening our bicycle infrastructure.

We bike lanes, we’re trying to make sure they’re protected, and we’re also looking at our bike lanes just. Bicycle facilities, but also potentially facility for just micro modes in general, whether you’re riding a scooter or probably even more importantly, in some cases, candle law, autonomous food delivery vehicles or grocery delivery vehicles, start to use those.

So that becomes part of our ongoing infrastructure and getting more use outta that system that everybody can use. And also making sure high quality and high comfort for folks. So that’s part of moving a million that pet bike, freight and roadway component. Transit is incredibly important with that because you can’t totally build your way outta congestion with all these people coming to our region and of course with economic growth or whatnot.

So transit will be important to that. The mayor with her vision has laid out a path forward to where I think you’re referencing the Urban Rail Committee. Which brought business leaders together, the transit, the city, the NCT cog, to really think about what a urban starter system focused on a streetcar would look like, was the proxy.

But really the report clearly is out. We really wanna look at all modes as part of a comprehensive networking system that’s gonna make sense for the city of Fort Worth. And so interesting enough, the timing was really great with that. The mayor kicking that off because N ct, our NPOs also doing their Transit 2.0 study, which.

Helps the region as a whole, bringing the translations together in the cities, really understand, okay, with these 4 million people coming, this is a regional issue. How do we think about how transit is funded, how it’s operated, and how it’s a usable part of connecting the region around Dallas Fort Worth as a whole.

The funding part’s a big conversation as part of that in discussion, but all these different pieces coming together has been. Incredibly important to think about what do we end up being as part of moving a million? We’re doing a deeper dive into the central area of Fort Worth, where we’re calling that connecting the core, which is looking at those mobility needs in the downtown area, connecting an area called Butler Place, creating more access to that.

That’s 40 acres of land that was formerly public housing under for the most part, one owner. Near our downtown. And so how do we provide more access to that to leverage that opportunity to be a great mixed use development opportunity at that site right near downtown? We’re also looking at, when you’re thinking about adding in all these new people and jobs, and based on our current plans in Fort Worth, I.

Okay, what does mobility system downtown need to look like from a core capacity standpoint? So we’re looking at, of course, new connections across some of our barriers, like the river and the railroads. How do we bridge those barriers to either create more access and recreational access to the river to compliment, our park system here downtown.

Also service flood control, but also create better connections between the central area so we’re not choked off by congestion. And then also how does that facilitate pedestrian and bicycle with the right kinds of trips. Are actually highly comfortable and safe to where it’s not like you’re feeling like a pioneer out on the road trying to make a walk from one district to another around downtown.

How do we circulate people around certain areas and street cars play a lot of big issues, especially around districts looping people into, around certain districts. And then from a core capacity standpoint, how do you move? That many more people through our downtown in our central area. How do you allocate space?

So one thing we found is that there’s only so much space that we have at the surface level. And so we are going to have to be thinking about how do we add capacity, additional connections for not only roadways and pet bike, but also transit. Where does it belong? And one of the key things we learned through our moving a million work through the first of outreach is people want time savings.

So how do we actually make, if we have transit, how’s it. The rest of the system as well. And we’re learning a lot and we’re still in learning mode and we’re going into kind of conceptual mode now and we expect to have more solid recommendations sometime later in the summer. But there’s some good data points that are coming out of.

What we’re learning through all these processes, we’re really actually identifying a lot of our challenges head on and saying, Hey, how do we solve it? And something that you’ll hear my team say a lot as we’re talking to elected officials or whatnot, is all the easy projects are done. And so how do we think big and bold about moving people and goods around and through our city?

And we have an opportunity to actually. Learn from other places like Austin, Nashville, and other places that are boomed before we have our, we’re already booming, before we have our big downtown boom, which is already starting to happen. How do we plan for that? So transportation isn’t the reason why it slows down or can’t continue in the way that it needs to evolve.

Provide that travel time savings, and then people look at them a little bit as an albatross. Some cities have been successful with it. We’re seeing Kansas City as being very successful with their line. Portland obviously has been successful with their line, but it also is in mixed traffic. So I think that mixed rail dedicated lane provisions, especially in downtowns is really important.

And so it’s interesting to hear people’s. Say that because we also talk about these projects in terms of economic development, right? And so I think that was one of the big pushes for the study as well, is how do use the transportation system to create economic development?

And sometimes it’s just actually making sure that people can get places faster so that facilitates the economic development instead of worrying about how many buildings are gonna be built along the corridor, et cetera, like things like that. So I’m interested to see how that turns out for you all, because it’s something that’s been on my mind quite a lot since we wrote that book and since we’ve been pushing street cars in cities around the country.

We have a, what we’re calling tech-based rapid transit that we’re putting out towards East, and so we’re with do. Ensure that transit is competitive. One thing we did ask people too is, hey, would you rather get someplace going 50 miles an hour hitting every red light? Or would you rather go someplace getting 35 miles an hour hitting every green light or 30 miles an hour or whatever, but you get there faster ’cause you’re hitting green lights.

Everybody goes with the green light one. And so we’re trying to think about those things. Something we have to acknowledge here though is that in our preliminary analysis. There’s only so much capacity we have right now and we are gonna have to add capacity to the system. And it’s just a matter of how do we add that?

And so thinking about that time savings, especially in a place where, you know, in New York or Chicago Transit, a lot of times is gonna be faster just because, but here in Fort Worth, when you add in parking and other things, how do you think about the total trip and so about that and the neat thing about Worth is.

Mild manner. Good old Fort Worth woman. Worked at the phone company. She was telling me about her trip to work one day. This is recently just as we were talking and she’s yeah, Kelly, to avoid parking, I would park downtown here at the Tandy lot. ’cause Fort Worth had its own private subway.

Park at the Tandy lot, take the subway into the Tandy Center. Then I would walk upstairs, take the free bus down Houston Street. ’cause we used to have a free zone with transit downtown and get to the phone company and I’m like, my mom just completed a multimodal trip. And so how do we think about those things as part of what we’re doing?

And yet, economic development and workforce is gonna be certainly a big part of it. But how do we learn from other places? How do we wanna improve on that? Do we want the same thing that are some of our sister cities like Denver and Portland with their transit mall downtown, where now they’re thinking like, oh my gosh, operationally, how do we deal with this?

How do we deal with these short blocks? How do we deal with this? How do we deal with that? Yeah. With their success. Or can we build something else that we don’t have to deal with that? And so those from the trade-offs we’re gonna have to make on being able to not only build out a system, phase it, and also future proof it to work and continue to grow the city’s needs.

And so one big thing that our mayor is thinking about, we don’t have a lot of OM costs. And so we’re not hitting that wall like these older legacy systems are. And so how do we think smart about that? How do we think about maintenance? How do we think about sourcing and how do we think about what’s gonna be usable to the most people?

So we get to ask ourselves those questions. Yeah, we’re a later bloomer with some of the urban transit, but we get to learn from a lot of our peers and we have great partners with our NPO and our transit agency, and a really open-minded council to solving different issues.

And it’s a totally different vibe and a totally different, way of looking at infrastructure. And I’m sure that your way of thinking about it as well comes from being in Philadelphia for a little while from that perspective.

And so that’s something we’re gonna be thoughtful about. And so a lot of the story we’re telling with this movement in a million and connected core studies, that land use component that builds that market for varying modes. Also ties back to.

Your transportation systems in general. And so part of what we’re saying is that, our downtown in certain key areas across the city really needs to perform very well. In order for us to be, continue to be, one of our goals is to be one of the best one cities in the best. And so to maintain a reasonable tax structure and services, we’re gonna have to, how do we get more?

Taxable value per square foot in the right places so that it’s not so cost burdensome to residents that have been here for a very long time. And our small businesses have the backbone of what we do. So it certainly is telling that, hey, what we build and how we grow and develop in certain places definitely impacts our ability to fund everything.

And now with the kind of the federal situation, not knowing where that’s gonna go, having a good local lead-based plan and state-based plan is really a good thing to have these days, to know how we’re gonna be able to sustain ourselves long term.

The redevelopment of that space is going to be whenever that takes off, just intelligently planning that district seems like something that will add to, the tech space be beneficial for the city and also just be, a really cool redevelopment project that people can look at from around the world.

That’s the Central City project. And then Panther Islands kind of the urban design and development concept on top of that. And I wouldn’t call it a second downtown. I call it more of an extension of our central core area. And the cool thing about Fort Worth is with there being 4 million people moving to the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area, and probably at least a third of those, moving our side of the metroplex, there is room for everyone.

So we don’t have to think about cannibalization. So between Panther Island and then the Butler Place work, which I encourage you to go to ww dot access butler place plan.com, I believe is what it is, there’s plenty of room to rethink. How do we, instead of, as many units going out on the prairies to the north.

How do we accommodate for people that may want that type of townhouse or condominium or urban lifestyle here in the central city that also does things for the tax base? So Panther Island is a visionary thing that kind of blends water management like the Dutch did with also great urban design and a dense urban use.

I think Butler Place also brings its own opportunities to better connect Butler Place with downtown, which. We’re also doing some work in the southeast downtown area that’s centered around the convention center expansion, high-speed rail, as well as the new Texas a and m campus. And so there’s also opportunities there.

So we’re really, I think, being very thoughtful and careful about downtown and the areas around it. The central area of the city really having a prominent future in the city of Fort Worth, and it doesn’t. It just means there’s gonna be additional options. That product that we’re building here may not be as readily available.

And so with the Panther Islands, the Butler place downtown for Worth itself near South Side, west seventh, that’s adding to that appeal and those options, and that’s really what we’re all about here in Texas, is giving people choices and options.

I was a little worried though about kind of the strangulation by highway. It is surrounded on three sides. And I’m wondering like from a public health perspective, how do you develop a property like that’s inside of the highways and, continue to allow people to breathe fresh air with the problems with particulates and the roadways that are surrounding it?

So it does have this rich history there. And kids from all over the city went to I and then, but essentially a lot of that study is try right. That went there. That was part of our renewal for the neighborhood. Then when the interstate went through, it actually tore down some of the public housing.

So it’s like double whammy. Yeah. And so this is opportunity to really reconnect that and create more access and kind of think about writing some of those wrongs. And now it’s this big opportunity ’cause it’s largely under one landowner to do better connections there. Yeah, there’ll probably be concepts for deck parks and connections over to the river.

Better connections to downtown with walking, biking, and multimodal or whatnot. Green space is something that our mayor is certainly part of. I’m glad you brought that up. ’cause we have a good natured green space program and open space program here at the city of Fort Worth. That’s not only looking at areas, to preserve out on the fringes, like with some of our ranches and prairies, but also creating more open space and green space right in center.

Certainly flood control, certainly thinking about air quality and environmental quality in general. And so I think we have some real opportunities to bridge some of those gaps and to reconnect some of these spaces and places. The other thing about other places cut off from the downtown, from by the railroads for probably longer than it’d even been there.

And so now we can even create new connections. So we are looking as part of that planning effort at connecting over to the parks, some of the biggest parks probably in the city, which includes Gateway Park and then also the connections across the freeways over into downtown. And then transit will also, more than likely play somewhat of a important role in there as an amenity for folks that may be living in working there, but also our convention goers and students that you know, may live across there and then go to conventions or go to the new campus a m or down to Texas Wesleyan.

So there’s a lot of opportunity to think about public health with that and bridging some of those gaps. So we are certainly being very cognizant of that and tech been a really partner in helping us look at creating that economic development opportunity at that.

We saw recently in San Antonio where the state basically took back a state road because they were trying to do a road diet on it. And so I know that TxDOT staff is not, the Texas Transportation Commission. Or the governor of the state of Texas. But that political kind of interference comes into play sometimes when you’re talking about maybe creating capacity for bikes and for transit and for more people versus, capacity for more cars.

And I think that’s where we are. And I think that’s where tech that is too. They still have a policy where they do accommodate all modes. On their facilities and every entity can think about how, what that means for them. But we are being very thoughtful in working with tech within their policy on different types of projects.

I think, in Dallas there’s good examples of deck parks over some of their. Roadways, which certainly have helped bridge gaps. If anything, on East Lancaster corridor, we’re getting really nice wide sidewalks and shared paths along it to help. And so I think at the end of the day, we’re just focusing on how we can partner together to move people across.

And I think the big key is focusing on what we can do. Can do. And we’re actually, I think, able to do a lot of really cool things to accommodate all people. Based on that kind of, let’s focus on really what we can do and best possible and been really partner. At least listening to ideas and trying to be accommodating and it also helps.

Having a good NPON CT CO has been absolutely wonderful in helping us not only get things funded and built, but also helping us navigate, how to do things with the different parties at playing in our different policy angles.

We saw that Amtrak was looking for potential partners to work on this program with, and I’m curious what the feeling is like in Fort Worth and in Dallas about the potential for this project.

And right now our preferred option is coming underground with high-speed rail. That’s our preferred option, but that’s in the environmental process with NCT. So we’re already starting to look at how does that serve as a catalyst to where now you’ve got students at a and m downtown Fort Worth that can take a morning class in Fort Worth and then go back to main campus taking EVA class and then come back to Fort Worth.

Or if there’s ever the expansion down to, Austin, San Antonio, which has also been looked at in and actually though Laredo in Monterey and then Monterey City. I. Now we’re connected to the largest metropolitan area in the continent, in the hemisphere. Really so big vision. So we’re super excited about it.

It creates a unique opportunity that only a handful of places in the world actually get to have is that type of mega regional connectivity. And we see ourselves at, really what we say is being the Texas Nexus. For all that wonderful connectivity. We’ve been, looking at how that really is a new gateway into the city because then you can connect to text row, you connect to the other Amtrak services.

We think that one seat ride to Houston’s really important to not have that transferring in Dallas. That’s. So that’s what CO’s been working on and trying to figure that out. We think it’s important to the region. Something we’ve had to continue to say is that, although we have commuter rail line that’s gonna be double tracked between fourth and Dallas, that’s not the same as being on the high speed rail line.

It’s as one of my professors at Penn to say. That sucking sounding here is all the economic activity going to where that high speed rail station is, and so we wanna make sure that we have it, we’re on it, and it just makes sense for us to have it. We’re already the largest Amtrak hub in the state of Texas, so people are already using rail here.

The one seat ride between here and Bryan College Station and Houston is gonna be really important. The potential to connect down to Austin, San Antonio, and then. As well. And so we see that being key to us being a 21st century global player. Michael Morris says, you know that this is our generation’s DFW airport, and I tend to agree.

I’m sure you’ve taken high speed role in more than one country. I’ve taken it in Taiwan and Spain. And yeah, the fact that you can go 350 miles, two and a half hours between Madrid and Barcelona, and they’ve been able to reduce the amount of air trips between, there’s still planes. You can still come on a plane if you want to, but you can also take the train.

And it’s about finding those options and it’s a different market. And so we’ve already started doing our planning around there. Even think about, hey, would there be a way that you could get off the train and from Bryan College Station, you had a connection to D FW Airport? Guess what? You’re downtown.

Head to the airport and have your check back there for you. Or if there was a huge convention happening and essentially the connection went fourth in Dallas, would facilitate connections to our convention centers. Would you be able to have kind of a multiple location convention and it’s connected through high speed rail, I mean thinking all kinds of big deals, but we see it as not only added spice to our.

Already, already successfully, but really key to us being the global player and adding a certain premium. We’re totally excited about it. Our council’s very supportive of it and we’re doing some work around it. The type of planning work we’re doing is also accounting for if it could take a while, we’re uncoupling some of these other great multi.

Transportation projects and development projects, misuse development and other thing concepts. We decoupling that from high speed rail to understanding that these things can happen on their own without a high speed rail. But one thing we’re gonna be studying over the summer is what is that factor of premium?

That high speed road adds to that mix.

Is connecting the places where you can go in a very short amount of time. I. Here in California, I’m in San Francisco and that discussion about California highs speed rail, I wish it was faster, but when it’s finished, it’ll be amazing to get between the places where we want to go. My sister lives in Bakersfield.

I’d love to go and visit on a highs speeded rail line. And making those happen would be amazing. And it’s funny ’cause I remember as a kid watching the Southwest Airlines commercials, right? Where it’s like they have a clock going and it’s every 20 minutes you miss your flight and you hit your snooze button and you can just get on the next one.

And I feel this is like the real snooze button hitter, right? Oh, absolutely. The ability just to hop on a high speed train between Houston and the Metroplex, and it’s just like a huge deal, and I think that it might finally come to pass, which is very exciting.

You’re going to have something else besides I 45 and I 35 and 2 87 and Highway six and some commuter flights between, four airports or three airports. It’s key to really our success. No other agglomeration of cities this big. Doesn’t have a rail option. California’s building theirs.

And although people may say what they want to about California, it’s happening. There’s, it’s under construction and the East coast the same thing. And I think it looks like there may be some momentum building between Detroit, Windsor, and Montreal and Canada starting to be talked about more too.

It is key to the success of moving these large amounts of people from point to point. And when you think about, you being in the Bay Area, you know a lot of the reason why you have the San Jose Silicon Valley effect and the Berkeley effect was that connectivity and being able to move ideas between places and people and opportunity.

And so it’s really critical. Essentially it would not be unreasonable for, people do it today. They commute from Bakersfield to LA or Modesto to San Jose, or Stockton to San Jose. They do it all the time, but it’s a whole lot less of a super commute when you add high speed row the mix, especially, it’s only a few times a week.

So you’re absolutely right. And I will say this, even my California, even starting the Central Valley. Fresno and Bakersfield really aren’t small places, so you gotta start somewhere. And I think that one good thing about being here in Texas, us both being in Texas, we know when we put our minds to something, we typically get it done.

And so I’m really hoping that it happens because, the scale of development and potential, especially from a tax revenue and just a good sustainable tax. Live years difference between where we are today from when you do at high speed rail, it makes, you’re talking about this interesting like a Denver Union Station, which is phenomenal with Amtrak and Commuter Rail versus a Hudson Yards when you start to throwing in high speed rail and real connectivity through it.

So we, we do need to think about that and I think the thing in Fort Worth is then seeing the right places are gonna make sense in the metroplex, and I think that helps create that framework for density and economic activity in the right places.

And it’s spawned basically, it feels a whole set of suburbs around it as well because of the, number of people that probably work there. And the access that it has. But high-speed rail is something different. It goes into the downtown and it connects people that way. And so I think that’s really fascinating too.

I did want to ask you a question about freight too, because I think that’s really interesting. When I was in, in grad school, I went to Haslet. And we did a presentation on the possibilities of future TOD. This was in like 2002 2005 actually, maybe it was. And it’s, it’s a small town, but it’s right outside of Alliance Texas.

The Freight Logistics center up there. And so I’m wondering about how that plays into your transportation planes too, because that’s such a huge thing now is the discussion about freight and moving goods and services and the e-commerce of it all. And so I’m curious how that plays into some of the discussions that you’re having about transportation in Fort Worth.

Energy use of modes and stuff. It’s all technology, right? And so freight, we’re really thinking about it from a standpoint of really multimodal. So you know, you’ve got our really good rail infrastructure in the alliance area in the north side of Fort Worth. You’ve got the rail infrastructure and interstate infrastructure, and then you’ve also got the airport infrastructure.

All those things lot with our partner out. Has done a lot of the development around that area on how do we move people in goods. Some of it’s coming through Fort Worth. Some of it’s being dredged and offloaded onto other mows, like from, rail from the port to a plane or to a truck or whatnot. So we’re thinking through that.

We’re thinking about automation a lot. And so we have a big project that we’re working at with HASLET and NCT, cog and TDOT on kind. We’re on the smart port connector zone, some our mobile innovation zone where we’re really thinking about the managed links on I 35 and how those could be used potentially and on Highway one 70 to be able to, start to pilot platooning freight.

In those corridor, and then we worked with a company called cnu that is setting up dedicated lanes on one of our arterials that will connect from flyovers off of one 70. That partnerships got a built grant for to connect them onto these autonomous vehicle lanes. Some of the first in the country, not the first, but some that would, can then connect you into the Burlington Northern Fe railroad terminal and the airport and all that other stuff.

So automation is a big part of it. Part of what we’ve acknowledged is although we think we have a ton of land, we have a lot of land, but an efficient use of it is, in that kind of more constrained zone. ’cause probably when he went out there. Just when I out, when I country

And so how do we use automation as a way to. Get more out of the system. And so that’s the only way we can really grow capacity there for our growing needs in our region is using automation, whether it’s, in the warehouses itself, whether it’s containing heavy freight to a certain zone that stays within that zone between the rail and the warehouses and going to smaller vehicles.

There’s also a private bridge that’s being constructed to connect the rail zone over to the land side of things as well. And that automation will be really important, and that’s also a safety benefit. And then on the urban side, is every little autonomous, like food delivery vehicle, I don’t know exactly what we wanna call ’em, little micro vehicles that are delivering food or groceries to people is not a truck or a car.

On my roadway. And so that’s another way to add space and use our capacity better and provide actually services to people. So for now, you’re in a food desert and you’ve got good broadband, which I talked about that being a transportation mode. Now we can get you either seen by a doctor virtually, or you can get something delivered to your house and you’re in this food desert, now you get groceries, deliver to your house with this micro vehicle that’s using.

What was a bicycle lane is now a green lane or something. Same thing that can get something over to your house. And so we’re thinking about freight from a nationwide and international supply chain component to also recognizing that many cases, big trucks don’t necessarily belong in cities in the same way.

Other things is how do you break those up into smaller vehicles that then can make the deliveries and how do we use our curve space differently? So I can keep going on and on about all the ways we’re gonna look at freight. But heavy freight’s a big part of this, and the logistics and goods movement and passing through in Railside and Airside and all that stuff.

And then also the delivery component. And so I’m actually learning a lot about that because that’s not stuff that teaches in planning school generally. No.

’cause curb space, a big thing we talk about in the business now. And just factoring in how to, how do all those things fit together And that’s helping us utilize our space better so we are not forgetting that freight is critical to our economy and just critical to quality of life.

What are you looking forward to the most?

I’m excited that this is the city’s first ever master transportation plan I’m getting to work on. So there’s. Excitement. Nerdy excitement into that. But I am excited to see what innovations we come up with. And I think Fort Worth has an interesting opportunity to be the city that, yeah, we had to have an historic center that was built around walking and biking and things like that, like most cities were, and then, but for the most part we’re fairly auto oriented place.

I think I’m excited to see how we balance that formula of creating more options on how people get around. Selling walkability and multimodality as options and freedom. How does that show up in our city? And really seeing what impacts that has. So it may not be wholesale, quote unquote suburban retrofitting, but hey, in some of these underperforming areas that are over parked.

How do we actually look at creating more walkability and those become denser nos that can connect into the existing neighborhoods that may be single family that people have had vested interest in. We’re preserving that, but we’re also able to build density in the right places. I’m excited to have that conversation and to build policy around providing more options for people, then feeling like people are forced to do anything.

So I think it’s an exciting conversation to have and the fact that we’re doing the planning now is really exciting. To think about what we want to be and how we want to be and centering it. Really around the freedom to be able to move and to travel in various ways, which is really what we all,

Where can folks find out more about what you’re working on?

We did some core plan on Berry Street. We’re also on corridor plan on which suburban arterial I to mention to Jeff is, with Berry Street. With McCart, we’re also not only looking to rebuild those corridors as more, multimodal in nature, we’re also doing the form-based code with them.

So those are cool capital projects. So we’re actually doing the zoning with it as part of the process and also doing thorough floor plan amendments. So it’s the complete package. It’s not just the pretty plan With watercolors, it’s. Actually the full package of policy that goes to create more of that walkable mixed use, more economically vibrant environments, while also preserving some of the neighborhoods around them.

So it’s exciting, but all that can be found on our cities moving a million website or for the 2050 comp plan that we’re working on, comprehensive plan and other things. There’s, I believe it’s Connect fort worth.com.

It’s LinkedIn. I’m on X and blue sky, but I’m pretty quiet on those, I’d say, but I certainly say LinkedIn and then they can get me a transportation at Fort Worth, Texas do gov. That’s where my whole team has access to that emails. We all look at that inbox right there, and we’ll be able to get back with you.