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Transit advocates push for rail reinvestment zones
Posted Saturday, Oct. 23, 2010
By Gordon Dickson
gdickson@star-telegram.com

Transportation advocates are considering using reinvestment zones, a popular financial vehicle used to rebuild neighborhoods and promote development, to spur passenger rail service in cities that are looking for alternatives to traffic jams.

Rail advocates say they'll push during the legislative session that begins in January to expand the state law that allows cities or counties to create reinvestment zones. The zones use increases in property tax proceeds to pay for development. The change would allow the creation of transportation reinvestment zones for commuter train projects.

A reinvestment zone like that could speed up construction of the proposed commuter rail line from southwest Fort Worth to Grapevine and Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. It could also lead to development of the Cotton Belt line to Wylie, northeast of Dallas.

Supporters hope the public views transportation reinvestment zones as a more palatable way to pay for rail than raising taxes and fees. Rail projects are typically paid for with local sales taxes and federal grants backed by motor fuels taxes, but recent attempts to raise taxes for transit have failed.

"It is important to note that a transportation reinvestment zone does not result in a tax increase," Brian Cassidy, an Austin lawyer who has represented regional mobility authorities and other entities involved in toll projects, told a state Senate committee during a recent hearing.

How it works

As rail stations are built, and commercial and residential development springs up around them, increased property values in the area begin to generate additional property taxes, Cassidy said. If a reinvestment zone could be created near those stations, the new tax revenue could be placed into an account to pay off the station's initial costs.

"It is merely a specific dedication of the incremental tax revenues generated within the boundaries" of a transportation reinvestment zone, he said.

Not everyone is ready to embrace the idea.

Fort Worth Councilman Jungus Jordan is a strong rail supporter, but he worries that the city already has 11 tax increment financing districts, which use property taxes in an area for public improvements. The more money that goes into any kind of special tax district, the less money available for citywide services.

Jordan also opposes sending new property tax revenue to a governing body outside the city's control. For example, under current law if counties create a transportation reinvestment zone, a road utility district must be created to oversee the activity in the zone.

"I think we're going to have to pay close attention to who's in charge of the money and how it's used," he said.

Patchwork rail system

But the zeal for transportation reinvestment zones is an example of how local governments are scrambling to put together a 251-mile network of passenger rail lines in North Texas, despite a lack of funding.

In several corners of the Metroplex, officials are working to launch the first new rail project since DART opened its light-rail system in 1996, and then joined forces with the Fort Worth Transportation Authority to extend the Trinity Railway Express to Fort Worth in 2001.

In Denton, a project known as the A Train is scheduled to open in late spring. The train, which will run from Denton to Carrollton and connect to light-rail service in Dallas, is expected to cost $325 million -- and most of that will be paid for by tolls collected on the Sam Rayburn Tollway.

In Tarrant, Dallas and Collin counties, regional planners are searching for alternatives to fund not only the proposed rail line in the Fort Worth area, but also an eastern section of the corridor known as the Cotton Belt Line, which extends 62 miles from the Stockyards to Wylie northeast of Dallas.

A group known as Partnership for Livable Communities was hired this year by the North Central Texas Council of Governments to draft a creative financing plan for the Cotton Belt project.

The group includes Fort Worth urban planner Scott Polikov, president of Gateway Planning Group, as well as former state Rep. Mike Krusee of Austin. They're being pressed into action because Dallas Area Rapid Transit, which owns the Cotton Belt Line, doesn't anticipate having the funds to build the project for decades.

Polikov declined to discuss details of what funding options may be pursued for the Cotton Belt, but he did say forming a transportation reinvestment zone "is certainly an option, but it's just one of many we're looking at."

The Fort Worth Transportation Authority, which has been planning the southwest Fort Worth-to-Grapevine line since at least 2001, is falling behind in its quest to have the service open by 2014.

The T had hoped to apply for an estimated $260 million federal new-starts transit grant nearly a year ago, but the process has been bogged down in a dispute between the council of governments and Federal Transit Administration over a technical issue. The two sides disagree on what type of computer model to use to estimate ridership on the line -- a complicated but important step that is used to determine whether the project qualifies for federal funds.

In Dallas, efforts to extend two light-rail lines languished before being rescued by a sudden influx of federal funding. DART last year got $78.4 million in federal stimulus funds to speed up construction of the Green Line, which is scheduled to meet Denton County's A Train in Carrollton early next year.

DART also received $61 million in federal funds in 2009 for the Orange Line, which is expected to connect to the T's commuter rail line on the north end of D/FW Airport by 2014.

Catching up to growth

Because these projects are being built piecemeal, it is taking years longer than expected to get the trains to the neighborhoods where people will ride them, supporters say. Meanwhile, highways remain clogged, as the effort to relieve congestion is outpaced by growth.

Using property taxes to pay for rail may be the region's best chance to get the problem under control, officials said.

"We need stable, long-term financing, year to year," T President Dick Ruddell said.

Gordon Dickson, 817-390-7796

http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/10...-for-rail.html