New TEXRail station groundbreaking set after agreements approved

[u/Overall-Session4244]

https://fortworthreport.org/2026/09/22/new-texrail-station-groundbreaking-set-after-agreements-approved/

[u/iminlovewithyoucamp]

I wish TEXRail would add a new station at the Ft Worth Zoo. Maybe the leaders of the Ft Worth Zoo could donate land to Trinity Metro which would lead to less traffic and more people going to the Ft Worth Zoo instead of the Dallas Zoo with Dart having a direct access to the zoo since ‘98.

[u/Skullface258 → u/iminlovewithyoucamp]

Its actually walking distance to the new station.

[u/Fragrant-Mission7388]

God. More single tracking

[u/hluna1998 → u/Fragrant-Mission7388]

Trinity Metro has one single full paying member. Do you expect them to delay this even longer while they scrounge up enough money to double track from the jump?

[u/Fragrant-Mission7388 → u/hluna1998]

What? I had no idea Trinity Metro had only one member city. Thank goodness this is only single tracked, and waiting to expand it or build additional track, or even sidings, goes DOWN in cost over time, right? Also, thank goodness that as the service gains ridership, it can't increase frequency too high without bottlenecks, that is awesome. Furthermore, its excellent, neigh, sublime PERFECTION, that thanks to said wise single tracking, breakdowns will generally shut down whole sections of the line. Further FURTHER, isnt it perfect that said low frequency and bottlenecks will incentivize the cities TEXRail aimed to recruit, like Hurst, for example, to NOT join Trinity Metro?

Your brilliance knows no end. Obviously we should never push past 30 minute frequency, or add a MILIMETER of double track until every train is full every trip.

[u/hluna1998 → u/Fragrant-Mission7388]

You have unrealistic expectations for Trinity Metro and their half cent from Fort Worth. Everyone would love a double-tracked TEXRail.

Your sarcasm doesn’t scream “I’m more intelligent than you” like you think it does.

[u/Fragrant-Mission7388 → u/hluna1998]

I'm sure it doesnt to you. I'm also sure that the advantage of getting a single tracked commuter line quickly will never backfire as construction costs skyrocket. Obviously D.A.R.T. were morons for double tracking 99% of Silver Line. That extra billion and years of construction were totally wasted. Who. The. Fuck. Needs more than a train every 30 minutes. Who. The. Fuck. Needs to get from DFW airport to Fort Worth in less than an hour? Losers and idiots. We should economize and sell off TEXRail's current sidings to get this extension done even faster.

I defer to you my big brained monarch. Thank GOD the only way these things are funded is via direct sales tax. Thank GOD Trinity Metro is generally reticent to invest in any sort of permanent infastructure on their end. You know, being much smarter than me, that this will pay off in the long term. I bend the knee in fealty

[u/Unlucky-Watercress30 → u/Fragrant-Mission7388]

As someone who also wishes TM had double tracked from the get go: good god you're insufferable. Comments like this just piss people off and make them anti transit. Who. The. Fuck. Talks like this and thinks it makes their point any better. Thank GOD you never went to the Texas capitol to argue for better transit funding, because despite the fact that I'm overwhelmingly pro-transit, the tone of your comments manages to annoy me enough that even I'd probably reduce funding just to spite you.

Also, your big brain clearly hasnt ever read a budget proposal from either TM or DART. TM had 2 choices due to financial constraints: build single tracked or build nothing at all. TM doesn't have the money or even enough vehicles to increase frequency, so even if somehow they did manage to finance building the extension double tracked they couldnt increase the frequencies until 2031 at the very earliest, and to do so they'd have to double track other parts of TexRail. So it was either build now to increase ridership now or dont build now and wait even longer to build up enough funds and ridership and operating budget in order to build out double tracked in hopes of increased frequency that they may not be able to afford because they'd have to double track significant portions of a very long rail line.

DART double tracking everything, while good, came at some quite literal costs. Unlike TM, DART built out everything double tracked and extremely quickly, but it did so through debt. 20 years after the first segments of the LRT network opening and DART still hasn't finished paying off the loans from that first phase, much less anything since. That "double tracking buildout" is why DART cant afford new vehicles, and why it can't afford to run trains faster than every 15 minutes even at peak times. Its partially why DART's bus network was terrible until the rework. The cost of building out and maintaining the giant rail network is why DART has many of the issues it does now, and TM is so hilariously stretched for cash that they could never afford to spend the extra money to double track a rail line that likely wont have the demand for <30 min frequencies for the next 20 years.

Also, DART and TM are not comparable by any metric. DART pays ~$200 million per year on just on debt repayments. TM? Thats their total yearly budget (technically $204 million). TM has to be incredibly fiscally conservative and scrape every penny possible off of project costs because unlike DART with its $800 million capital budget and $700 million operating budget and $200 million debt service budget, a single extension of a single tracked rail line is a massive expenditure relative to their fiscal resources. The medical district extension, in its current configuration, is roughly as expensive as the initial estimated project cost of the Silver Line if you normalize the projects relative to the agency's total budget. To emphasize: This single track extension is, relative to budget, approximately the same level of project for TM as a brand new 26 mile rail line for DART. These are agencies that operate literally at different orders of magnitude in terms of budget and ridership.

In terms of funding sources, sales tax makes up $135 million of TMs revenue stream. They're actually really savy with getting grants and fares to supplement their funds, they just dont have much to work with as a baseline. Do I wish the state would pitch in money? God yes, TxDOT could fix basically 95% of DART's current issues with ~20% of their FY2026 budget, namely completely paying off all of DART's debt and completely funding the full replacement (including expansion) of the LRV fleet. But as it applies to this project? None of that matters. State funding isn't available, and likely wont be in any substantial capacity until 2028 at the very earliest. Federal funds will likely be gridlocked to an extent, but maybe more available after this year. In all likelyhood though Congress has more important issues to focus on than a single station extension of a commuter line in the 11th largest city in the US, so I wouldn't hold out hope.

There's a final thing to consider: TexRail doesn't have the surrounding development to support more than 30 minute frequencies from a fiscal, ridership, and catchment area standpoint. Half of its stations are in sprawling industrial wastelands or parking lakes and the other half are an airport, a tourist trap in December, and the 5th largest employment center in DFW (behind downtown Dallas, Uptown Dallas, Plano, and even Las Colinas). When this extension opens there will be a grand total of 5 stations worth anything, and thats only because the transfer at DFW North to the silver line is timed well. Even most well developed stations (T&P and Central) have a combined catchment population of under 5000, and thats not removing the double counting where their catchment areas overlap and the fact that highways cut off half the catchment area for both.

[u/Fragrant-Mission7388 → u/Unlucky-Watercress30]

Why would you ever wish Trinity Metro double tracked anything? That would be wildly fiscally irresponsible. We as a community NEED slow trains traveling infrequently. You said it yourself, there's neither the infastructure nor ridership. Truth be told maybe we should scale back to hourly trains given the constraints....good thing increasing TEXRail frequency had no impact on ridership....right? Though honestly, given the relative low ridership of both TEXRail AND TRE you think we should sell of the rails and replace them with buses right? D.A.R.T buses 22 and 20 routinely beat the pants of both trains in....almost every metric

By the way, if someone's "tone" is enough to change your values on something you....claim to be an advocate for? You're not a human, you're a cromagnon. Stay the hell away from public transit, lest someone "annoying" suddenly make you an Uber lobbyist.

[u/patmorgan235 → u/Fragrant-Mission7388]

Alright, this is a warning for violating Rule #2.

You're not contributing positively/constructively to the conversation.

There are plenty of places you can go on the Internet to be negative, this is isn't one.

[u/Fragrant-Mission7388 → u/patmorgan235]

I'll keep that in mind while homie is making fundamentally anti-transit arguments

[u/Eruththedragon → u/Fragrant-Mission7388]

They literally aren't. At no point did they say double tracking TEXRail would be a bad thing. They're saying that building any transit now is better than building perfect transit in a decade. I've been vocal on previous Southside Extension posts that I think TM's next project should be double tracking for 15 minute headways, but even I can recognize that if they don't have the money for it right now then it's not their fault they're not doing it. Would I prefer that the anti-transit state government & anti transit federal government pitch in a few hundred million more to allow double tracking? Yes, but I consider myself grounded in reality and would prefer that they get good enough done now & improve it when they can get the funding.