What Is Kathleen Hicks Doing In Europe While Fort Worth Loses Its Streetcar?

Last night Fort Worth's City Council voted to stop studying whether or not it made sense for Fort Worth to build a little 6 mile round trip streetcar system, made up of 3 streetcars, carrying around 2,000 people a day.

I was astonished to learn this morning that $821,000 was spent on the now aborted study.

That is a lot of money. Who got that money, I could not help but wonder? They could have paid me $500 and I could have told whoever needed to know that the Fort Wort Steetcar was not a viable idea at this point in time.

How much did Fort Worth spend studying the obviously flawed Santa Fe Rail Market Boondoggle before that long defunct project actually went ahead to its fruitless fruition? For $500 I would also have gladly told whoever needed to know that the Santa Fe Rail Market was a seriously flawed idea based on erroneous misconceptions.

The thing that really caught my eye in this morning's news about last night's Fort Worth City Council streetcar vote, was that Mayor Mike Moncrief had to break a 3/3 tie due to District 8 Councilwoman, Kathleen Hicks being out of the country.

In Europe. On City of Fort Worth business.

I think I live in Ms. Hicks' district.

What in this impossibly strange world could Kathleen Hicks be doing in Europe that is somehow City of Fort Worth business. Who is paying for this junket in this city that can't keep its libraries and swimming pools open?

Is Kathleen Hicks over in Europe studying European Public Markets, getting ready for a Part II of the Santa Fe Rail Market Boondoggle? Remember how that particular boondoggle was supposedly modeled after public markets in Europe and Seattle's Pike Place Market. Yet somehow what Fort Worth ended up with bore no resemblance to anything in Seattle. Or Europe.

Maybe Kathleen Hicks is over in Europe studying how it is that no European city has an embarrassing eyesore across the street from its courthouse, like Fort Worth's Heritage Park, with Heritage Park being one of the few unique things that used to be a good embellishment to downtown Fort Worth, but is now a boarded up, rundown mess overlooking the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle.

In Hollywood you can go on a bus tour of the scenes of various Hollywood areas of notoriety and scandal. I wonder if any tourist dollars could be made by taking tourists on bus tours of Fort Worth's various boondoggles? Maybe Molly the Trolley could be used in this endeavor.

Seattle's SLUT & Texas SLUTs

There is talk here in Fort Worth of building a short street car trolley type line from, I think, downtown to what is called the Cultural District. Fort Worth has so much culture they had to designate a district to put it in.

I've noticed over the years there is a lot of talk about a lot of things here in Fort Worth. Mostly it's of the all Hat and no Cattle type. That is Texas-speak meaning to Talk Big, but get nothing done.

For years I've been hearing about Fort Worth ruining the confluence of two forks of the Trinity River to make a little lake and some canals. All that's happened with that project is some hapless souls have had their businesses taken by eminent domain, leaving a part of Fort Worth looking forlorn as the buildings await removal and water covering where they sat.

Every once in awhile one of Fort Worth's Hats does turn into Cattle, that then gets slaughtered. Like when Fort Worth, with big misleading hoopla, opened this thing called the Sante Fe Rail Market, promoting it as being modeled after Seattle's Pike Place Market, public markets in Europe, and elsewhere, and being the first such market in Texas. All of which were BIG LIES, the reality being it was a teeny little food court type thing bearing no resemblance to Pike Place or any other successful operation.

Seattle got a new streetcar line that started running on December 12, 2007. Fort Worth sent a delegation to check it out awhile back. Seattle's new streetcar line is called South Lake Union Streetcar, but the locals took to calling it South Lake Union Trolley. SLUT for short. Attempts to get the locals to quit called the streetcars the SLUT have failed. I think the story goes that it was originally officially named South Lake Union Trolley, then when the unfortunate acronym was realized, Trolley was changed to Streetcar, but it was too late, SLUT had stuck.

I doubt Fort Worth will get its own version of a SLUT. But there have been SLUT type transport systems in Fort Worth and Texas in the past. From 1908 til 1948 the Texas Electric Railway ran from Dennison to Waco, linking small Texas towns to the big cities, like Dallas and Fort Worth.

There were Interurban lines, like the Texas Electric Railway, all over the country. But, gradually universal ownership of cars put the lines out of business. It is sort of ironic that all those cars, jamming roads all over the country, is causing a return to the past.

Seattle's SLUT line has been successful beyond predictions, with over a half million people on board during the first year. There were many who did not think new streetcar lines in Seattle was a good plan. But the SLUT has been so successful the Seattle city council voted in support of creating a larger multi-line Seattle streetcar network, extending to Ballard, the University of Washington, Seattle Center, First Hill, Capitol Hill and the Central District.

One big difference between building something, like a streetcar trolley system in Seattle, and doing so in Fort Worth, is in Seattle they have what is known as a public debate. Then they have what is known as a public vote. As in the new First Hill Streetcar line to the First Hill and Capitol Hill neighborhoods was approved and funded as part of Sound Transit Proposition 1, approved by voters in November of 2008.

In Fort Worth the people have not been allowed to vote on a likely boondoggle called the Trinity River Vision that will give the city a little lake, some canals and an unneeded flood diversion channel. The Vision is that of the good ol' boy network that controls Fort Worth. Conducting public business in this manner, with no public votes, is called doing it "The Fort Worth Way."

Some Fort Worth people are realizing there might be a better way to get things done than "The Fort Worth Way". But their numbers are few and their chances are slim.