By Bill Zeeble, KERA 90.1 reporter
Dallas, TX – Bill Zeeble, KERA 90.1 reporter: Since 1980, two public transit proposals have failed in Arlington. In the 17 years since the last one lost, the city's population has ballooned to more than 350,000. So has the need for a van and shuttle bus system, money to study light rail, and a better connector to the Trinity Railway Express, according to Arlington City Council member Pat Remington. Remington says those transportation elements will become reality if voters approve the May 4th proposal to create the Arlington Transit Authority and levy a tax of a quarter of 1% to fund it. He says the resulting $11 million a year will end up helping a lot of people in Arlington.
Pat Remington, Arlington City Council member: If they're senior citizens and can't drive and are completely dependent on some sort of para-transit service, a public transit system gives them independence. Our tourist industry, the largest in the state, second only to the city of San Antonio, shows us tourism can be enhanced dramatically if we have public transit in our city.
Zeeble: Remington also says more than 20,000 students attend the University of Texas at Arlington, and could use public transportation to get to jobs, interviews, or even stores around town. Martin Ellsworth, a UTA student, favors the transit proposal.
Martin Ellsworth, UTA student, co-chair of Arlington In Motion: I've lived in El Paso and San Antonio. Both have means of transit for students. Coming to Arlington, a city of this size, especially with Dallas and Fort Worth both having transit, you'd never dream Arlington didn't. It's a rude wake-up call when you get here.
Zeeble: Opponents of the transit proposal say the rude awakening will hit those who approve this package, only to find in a few years that it's a failure.
Bill Eastland, leader of SMART: The bus system will carry very few commuters. It's not going to provide any more service than we would provide under the current city budget.
Zeeble: Bill Eastland, an Arlington tax accountant, leads the transit opposition group called SMART - Sensible Mobility and Rail Transit. He predicts the bus system will move only a few hundred people a week on a couple selected routes, not up to 17,000, as proponents claim. Advocates do acknowledge their plan is years away from moving that many people, and admit the system will not result in transit on a mass scale. Eastland just calls the project inefficient, and a financial black hole. Worst of all, he says the system will draw exactly the kinds of people Arlington does not want.
Eastland: It'll be attractive for the welfare class to move here, those not here already. The welfare parents want their kids to go to better schools and safer neighborhoods. If they feel like they have a better way to get around, many will move here from Dallas and Fort Worth. This'll create more demand for Section 8 housing. We already have too much.
Zeeble: Attorney Pat Montes, chair of the Arlington Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, doesn't buy that. She says individuals, poor or not, don't move anywhere based primarily on a city's public transportation system. In fact, she says such a system could help the unemployed find jobs, because it could get them to those jobs. At the same time though, she says corporations care about public transportation.
Pat Montes, chair, Arlington Hispanic Chamber of Commerce: Big companies do base their decision on moving into town when they can offer benefits to employees, and part of those benefits is that there's transit. In most big cities there is a transit system.
Zeeble: This issue has apparently not been a major force in the four council races also on Saturday's ballot, but for those driven by this issue, they claim now's the time to put public transportation in Arlington, to catch up with neighboring cities, and prepare for the city's future population growth. For KERA 90.1, I'm Bill Zeeble.
Bill Zeeble can be reached through email: bzeeble@kera.org.