It’s been a year since TEXRail launched. Why aren’t more commuters riding the trains?
One year ago, the TEXRail commuter train service began hauling passengers between downtown Fort Worth and DFW Airport, with multiple stops in North Richland Hills and Grapevine.
By most measurements, TEXRail has been a success since it launched Jan. 10, 2019, supporters say. The presence of the rail line is opening up large swathes of Northeast Tarrant County for transit-oriented development, and introducing mass transportation to a part of the region that has been traditionally dominated by single-occupant car travel.
But even so, the number of passengers riding TEXRail is nowhere near the level that transit planners and supporters originally forecast. According to documents filed with the Federal Transit Administration in TEXRail’s applications for federal grant funding, TEXRail was expected to have about 8,300 riders per day by the end of its first year.
But instead, today the typical TEXRail ridership is closer to 2,000 passengers per day — less than a fourth of the original forecast.
TEXRail officials say those initial projections created by computer models in the past decade aren’t necessarily an important measurement of success in the first year. And, they are confident that ridership along the 27-mile corridor will continue to steadily grow in 2020 and for years to come.
“We see the ridership ramping up. That month-to-month growth is not falling off,” said Jon-Erik “A.J.” Arjanen, vice president and chief operating officer for rail at Trinity Metro, the Fort Worth-based transit agency that owns TEXRail. “That tells us we have positive things to look forward to.”
December was the busiest month so far for TEXRail, with a record 51,217 paying passengers. That works out to about 1,652 passengers per day on average — although weekdays tend to be busier than weekends.
On a busy weekday, more than 3,000 passengers may board trains, Arjanen said.
Keller resident Julie Potter rode TEXRail on Thursday from the Smithfield Station in North Richland Hills to Grapevine’s Main Street, where her company, Lonesome Dove Design, was removing Christmas decorations that had been hanging in the city’s historical center.
“It was a smooth ride, and it was clean,” said Potter, who lives in the Keller area.
She had noticed the train station’s proximity to Grapevine’s historical city center, and decided to give it a try.
But she also noted that she was one of only three riders on the train at the time — and, like her, one of those other riders was trying TEXRail for the first time, too.
Other factors
Other factors have contributed to the lower-than-expected ridership figures, officials said.
One key reason is that TEXRail didn’t begin the year with its full fleet of rail cars, which are built in Utah by Switzerland-based Stadler Rail. Instead, the rail line began with only five sets of cars, and for the first seven months of the year ran trains only every hour during peak periods.
By late July, TEXRail had received its eighth and final set of rail cars, and expanded peak period service to every half-hour. Increasing the frequency of service dramatically improves the chances that more prospective riders will try the trains, Trinity Metro officials said.
Also, many of the transit-oriented projects that likely will boost future ridership in north Fort Worth and neighboring cities such as North Richland Hills and Grapevine are still under development, so it may be a few years before the benefits are reflected in ridership numbers.
Trinity Metro is still forecasting growth to 13,700 riders per day by 2035, as originally spelled out in a federal document. That level of ridership would make TEXRail a much more popular service than the Trinity Railway Express, another commuter rail service that opened in 1996 and operates six days a week from downtown Fort Worth to Dallas.
But the projections could change.
The North Central Texas Council of Governments, the Dallas-Fort Worth region’s official planning body, used computer modeling to help TEXRail officials come up with a ridership forecast. Later this year, officials at the council of governments will review the work that was done on TEXRail and possibly update the projections, said Michael Morris, the agency’s transportation director.
Morris added that he believes TEXRail is “still in the growing period,” and it’s too soon to measure ridership.
“I love the quality of the ride,” Morris said. “I love the land use that’s occurring (near train stations).”
In all, TEXRail recorded 545,345 riders in 2019, Trinity Metro figures show. The trains ran on schedule 99.15 percent of the time.
Busiest stations
Some other TEXRail factoids:
- The busiest station Sunday through Friday is the easternmost station at DFW Airport’s Terminal B.
- On Saturdays, the busiest station is at Grapevine’s Main Street. Restaurants and other shops in the city’s historical district report dramatically increased sales since TEXRail opened.
- Fort Worth’s Central Station (the main stop downtown) is the third busiest station.
- The fourth busiest is Smithfield Station in North Richland Hills.
- Fort Worth’s T&P Station (also downtown) is on the western terminus of the rail line and is the fifth busiest stop.
What the future holds
For 2020, Trinity Metro aims to expand TEXRail ridership using several strategies, including a planned expansion of the EasyRide program, in which companies can offer free or discounted transit passes as a perk for employees.
Trinity Metro also hopes to market TEXRail as a convenient option for tourists who can catch the trains at DFW Airport and ride to their hotels in downtown Fort Worth — eliminating the need to take a ride-sharing service or rent a car and deal with traffic on Metroplex roads.
Also, Dallas Area Rapid Transit, a public transit agency on the east side of the region, is working on its DART Silver Line project that essentially will extend TEXRail as far northeast as Plano — essentially doubling the length of the rail corridor. The Silver Line project is scheduled for completion in late 2022.
