FORT WORTH — For the first time, Fort Worth officials unveiled a plan showing how a limited streetcar system could be built, including preliminary routes and a way to pay for it.

It would still take about five years and $250 million to build the 12-mile system, and there’s a significant funding gap, according to Andy Taft, chairman of an 18-member task force that studied the idea.

But the plan is significant because it shows that a streetcar system is possible, he said.

"The committee identified within a pretty tight margin how we could possibly do it," Taft said. "It’s where we take Fort Worth, Texas, to the next step."

The task force and city staff recommended hiring a consultant with transit experience to help with the project. The plan recommends starting with a limited system:

A loop in downtown Fort Worth

A route along West Seventh Street to the Will Rogers Center and the University of North Texas campus

A route down South Main Street with a spur to Evans Avenue and Rosedale Street, and a connection to the medical district along Magnolia and Eighth avenues.

The plan has broad support among the City Council — whose members inspected similar systems in Seattle; Tacoma, Wash.; and Portland, Ore., earlier this year.

Being left out

Council members Kathleen Hicks and Sal Espino, though, questioned why the original routes left out low-income neighborhoods on the north and southeast sides of town.

"That area of the city has the highest ridership of public transit," Hicks said.

Future routes would run further along East Rosedale to serve southeast Fort Worth and along North Main Street to the Stockyards on the north side.

The trains would run on existing streets and are designed to supplement buses and other forms of transit. It would be a separate system from commuter trains, such as the Trinity Railway Express, that run on existing railroad tracks and are intended to carry large numbers of people over long distances.

Working together

Councilman Joel Burns said it’s important that the different systems work together.

"It’s got to be right outside the door. That’s the way you get a nurse who lives in Bedford to ride the TRE, get the streetcar and take it to his or her job at the hospital," he said.

The biggest source of capital funding — $89 million — would come from the existing tax increment financing districts that already pay for extra amenities. The downtown improvement district also would kick in money.

About $97 million would come from the city, Tarrant County, gas well revenue and hotel taxes. But that level of funding would require expanding the tax districts and possibly changing state law to allow an increase in hotel taxes.

The funding gap — $64 million — is equivalent to the cost of three miles of track, Taft said.