Rail North Texas: An Innovative Approach to Communicating Complex Funding Issues

摘要

The Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Planning Organization developed an interactive revenue tool to communicate with local policy officials, state legislators, and the public about potential revenue sources needed to fund the Rail North Texas initiative. Rail North Texas is an effort to bring more than 250 additional miles of passenger rail to North Central Texas by the year 2030. It was determined that current revenue sources would not be able to fund these lines; therefore regional leaders were tasked with identifying alternative methods to fund the much needed passenger rail system. As a result, an interactive revenue tool was developed to identify new revenue sources, rates, and potential income from these sources. The revenue tool effectively communicates complex financial information to a variety of audiences. Additionally, it allows policy officials, state legislators, and the public to see the impact of prospective funding decisions. This paper briefly describes background on past and present efforts to increase passenger rail in the Dallas-Fort Worth region. The paper also details the development of an interactive funding tool used during the present rail initiative, Rail North Texas, to communicate detailed funding information with a variety of audiences.