Unveiling the Future of High-Speed Rail with Dallas Councilman Omar Narvaez

Hi, I'm Kandi Evans, and this is Dallas Dirt. Today, I'm very excited to talk with one of the prime members of our Dallas City Council. This is Omar Navarez, and he and I actually kind of knew each other about 2017, would you say, when we first met? we've known each other for quite a while, and I've got to see him on the council, but this is your time.

So Omar, so glad to have you. Thank you for coming. Well, thank you, Candy. And it has been a little bit, 2017 seems, we both look the same though.

Oh, absolutely. So we'd probably look younger. Both of us. You know, I, added this gray hair.

I know. Shoot. It's fun. Yeah, exactly.

So this, this is a. That ice storm and this is, you know, when we had that, social unrest that happened a few years ago. the, website that was when we all lost our website. That we lost our internet.

the back. Yeah, the back. There's a lot of it from, the tornado, you know, because that also started, that landed first in my district and went further from there. So, you know, my district is District 6.

Well, that's huge. You, District 6, it's really big, but no one ever knows the boundaries of their district. they're, like, imagine, there's these invisible lines that, literally split our city into 14 different sections. And I always want to know, Who did that drawing?

That's the story. Well, it's the city council at some point. we now have a commission made up of appointed citizens from, the city that the council, all 14 members and the mayor appoint. somebody from within the city of Dallas.

where are your boundaries? So my boundaries are, 30 from downtown to the Irving border or Grand Prairie border. Grand Prairie and the Irving border is my western end. take, 635 from the Irving border straight across town to I 35.

I 35 south, everything west of that. And then at about Empire Central, just a hair over that, past that and going north, And then I jump across 35, just north of where the Trinity goes up that way, And I go over to Denton Road and I pick up everything north from there, to Northwest Highway or yes, towards Northwest Highway, and everything north from there. I also have Dallas Love Field and, one half of a neighborhood just east of there called Elm Thicket North Park. If you leave Dallas on 635 and go west and, Cypress waters, which is just Beltline road.

You take, take it north and, two blocks north. you're back in the city of Dallas it's like an island of the city. interesting story. How the city, you know, That's a nine year lawsuit.

Absolutely. Dallas won. So if you think we won or we lost, but we won. the Billingsley Company has some really great apartments there.

Lots of apartments. Lots of office building. Yeah. it brings in about 20 million in tax revenue.

A year now through the property tax and of course there's some sales tax comes out of there because of restaurants and, shopping a little bit, you know, and then there's the Cove, which had some really exciting concerts during the summer and they've done a phenomenal, job. every developer wishes they had, a hundred acres of blank, space to create their own, it's like a little town there. Yes. I love it out there.

It's really fantastic. it's, it's really pretty. And that is Hello, back then. For us right now.

For the city right now, because everything's brand new. Because your infrastructure is good. I'm in District 11, as you know, and I ran two and a half times. that's true.

I used to give the districts a name. District 11 looks like Gumby. So what does your district look like? An amoeba, maybe?

Maybe. maybe like one of those spinners that has the little Things that go, opposite ways, on the edges. Maybe like a hurricane, you know, that has the little things going opposite. cause it's got this big ol fat middle, and then these two little spokes that go out.

We can give them names, you know? Yeah, they could be named. We would have had so much fun on Council, we would have named every district. everybody calls us the West Dallas district, but it's Northwest Dallas, you know, and it's Love Field and Cypress Waters, everybody always refers to it as the West Dallas District, it is where a lot's going on, but really the vast majority is not in West Dallas, even though West Dallas is hugely important, because about 60, 65 percent of the residents live in West Dallas, and then the hard part about my district is then they are also spread out because there's some in the Design District, there's some in Midway Hollows, some in, I You know, the left field area with Elm Thicket North Park.

And then you have Cypress Waters where a few thousand people live. and then of course you have the actual Northwest Dallas. so all the rest of them are just kind of hodgepodge. And so that makes things a little bit difficult.

And then we have one half of Arcadia Park, which is Loop 12 and 30 South, just right south of there. It's a lot of traveling around. and then on top of that, we have the vast majority of the industrial in West Dallas. We have a vast amount of commercial, Lots of warehouses, right?

of warehouses, lots of office building, lots of, shopping centers, lots of just everything. And, we have medical, and now we have the new bio labs, at Pegasus Park, and it's an exciting district. Is the medical district? No, that's actually in District 2, but I have the biomedical and the bio labs at Pegasus Park, which is huge.

We got it through the federal government. so that's the place where all the quality control is being handled as well as the research for, new, new everything in the medical field. I think that that. Pegasus, and then the medical district is one of the most exciting districts in Dallas, like going forward, those two areas.

And the funny thing is that that medical district is what brought us to Dallas. You know, when I was camping out for four years while my husband did his residence. Yes. And so we, I mean, I've spent four years there.

I used to, you know, haul Burger King and stuff in, you know, midnight when they were hungry, you know. And Hey, Amy, during the pandemic, thank goodness for, South in District 2 in Oak Lawn. I mean, it was the only place open You could go buy 45, 50 pizzas and, deliver them to the hospital so the nurses and the medical staff could have something to eat for dinner No, they were on the clock There was so much going on. My eight years, because I have seven months left, out of eight years, isn't it crazy?

You did. those eight years were probably the most amazing. Well, and speaking of which, I don't think, another council person or another council has gone to Japan as you all just did about a week ago, which is very cool and different. I don't think they've done it for what?

12 years. You know, the, so city staff does go on international trips. So, there was a contingent that went to Japan probably about a year and a half, two years ago. But for council members, there hadn't been an international trip the entire time I was on council.

I'm sorry. until maybe six months ago, seven months ago, three or four council members went to Mexico City to go see, el parque de Chupotapec, which is the, Chupotapec park. which is equivalent to our Central Park in New York, but Central Park in New York is a dwarf compared to El Bosque de Chapultepec. And so, I mean, this place is How many acres?

my gosh, thousands upon thousands. Really? And it's amazing. I mean, there's no way you could go through it all.

Just like Central Park. No way you could do it all. There's the only castle in North America the Castillo is there. it's the only real castle ever built in the Americas.

And then you have their anthropology museum, which is just amazing, and all these different museums, different things to do. It's a really cool place and because of the parks that we're doing, we're expanding parks like crazy here in the city of Dallas. And now we are, the city of Dallas, which is something that I'm proud of and I hope our residents are, we're now named the number one park system in the state of Texas. so that's a big deal.

Now we got to figure out how to pay for it, and how to keep doing that because maintenance is a real thing. parks don't just stay beautiful We all have our neighborhood park that may have, an old slide or a swing set that's broken or something needs paint or a fence needs to be repaired. we need to report those and just to always tell people, please call 9 1 1 or if you don't want to call 9 1 1, you can do it through the mobile app. You can also do it, through your computer.

cause you know, sometimes 3 1 1, takes a while to listen to, I mean, to, for them to answer, If you report it, it will get done, and I know that people go, Yeah, but then I saw that y'all put, you know, like, it's already been, you know, you take it offline that it's completed, and that's this problem in our system where the 311 person Has already sent it to the correct department. So it closes it in 311. It closes it in code, but that doesn't mean it's done. And so I think that's the disconnect we are trying to figure out You leave, you want code to take care of it.

Code will put, they've closed it. Cause sometimes to close it, all code needs to do is go, Oh, that was a fire issue. like you saw a fire hydrant broken. You import it.

Well, the fire department now has it, they're going to repair it or whatever they have to do to fix it, replace it, whatever. But code is done. So that's, an issue in our system. So they could synchronize that I wish they could, so that you see, okay, yeah, code's closed it, I've submitted to the right person.

Fire has it, here's where they're at, or, the police department or, whatever department it is that's handling it because I think the big problem is residents see it. And they're just like, there they go again. They didn't get anything done. Easy solution.

You call it pending, not close. Just like we do when we blog. maybe we need bloggers to come this time. How did you, let's talk about Japan What did you see there that you think we're going to benefit from.

me tell you, Sue, the city of Dallas, we're the only city in Texas right now whose train station has been federally approved, we've passed everything, so now we gotta get the money and start turning dirt, Houston's still working on theirs, all the rest of the country have not. Nobody's achieved what Dallas has achieved so far. We're ready to go in Dallas from down to Houston. what I learned being the chair of transportation and infrastructure for the city.

is the economic impact. benefit of the station and high speed rail if you do it right. the Japanese have done an amazing job, of their transportation oriented developments. We call them TODs.

and that's something we've started working on with DART, because DART has a lot of big surface parking lots for park and ride some are really utilized and utilized well, like the one at Mockingbird Station. Mockingbird Station would be a great example of a transportation oriented development. So you could have apartments and Apartments, office space, Retail, condos. And then you want to make sure that station has connectivity to other modes of transportation.

So, the station will be huge, it's gonna be gigantic. you build it, and then you have all these levels, maybe the bottom floor is a place to bring in, public transportation, maybe it's, you know, DART buses and or light rail connects, right? so that when you get off your train on the seventh floor, you go down to whatever level you need. there can be a whole area for purchasing goods, you know, whatever's you need.

Restaurants. Restaurants, all of that stuff. Places to lounge. A park another layer could have, the Greyhound bus station, Tornado, Megabus, all of those, you could have a depot there, almost like an airport.

we could lease stalls. does that sound like a small airport? Almost the exact same thing. Are we building a new transition or are we using the existing one?

this will be a brand new one. it'll be right across from where the new convention center will be, across 30. and then that'll get connected through a cap, because we love to cap the freeway now and build a park on it, right? everybody's followed our lead on that.

All these other major cities are working on them now. and we're working on our second Clyde Warren. Which is another thing that happened during your tenure. Yes.

Absolutely. we're doing the expansion now. Southern Gateway, the building is started, the dirt's turning, which is kind of weird to say dirt turning up when you turn dirt on top of concrete to put a park in. this is a good thing because it's great for cooling down the environment.

You're putting in trees and dirt and things that'll help the freeway. Absolutely. you're also. Connecting two sides of the freeway that are impossible to connect.

it's actually kind of nice, To see it because it really does reconnect. does reconnect people. Yes, that's a mode of transportation, right? so how do we do more of that?

how do we get the dollars for it was, was my favorite, was we did the extension for Clyde Warren. We were able to get federal dollars because these dollars for transportation aren't for a park. we didn't sell the project as a park because it's not about that. That's all philanthropist dollars being put in for the park.

what we were building, our project was, a park. And so that cap, then we could qualify for federal dollars. And it's sometimes just being able to think differently. we got those dollars and we're a better city for it.

And now we know how to do it. we're good at it. other cities, yeah, we can do it again and again and again. Some of this we were already starting because High Speed Rail has been a conversation for 20, 25 years.

Here we are at the precipice of being able to get it done. And so that trip to Japan was, so important because The vast majority of people in Dallas have never been on high speed rail, have never seen high speed rail, don't really know anything about high speed rail, including me. I was one of those persons who had never experienced it, never seen it, never been to, parts of Europe that have it, and I've never been to Japan It was really exciting to be there because, as transportation chair, I've read a lot, researched a lot, watched a lot of YouTube videos on it, but seeing it and hearing all the other proponent pieces, gave me a new perspective.

a gift that I will be able to really explain it now forever so that connectivity from the station is so important because there's a place in Nagoya, called JR Tower. So kind of like where we're at right now it was their first station that was ever built before high speed rail in 1861. it was a pedestrian type station to get people across and moving. connected with, carts and other things.

And then that got destroyed in a, in a earthquake. And so then the new one was built and by then we had buses and, vehicles and cars. And so that became the bus depot with the pedestrians connecting. And then, many years later it was expanded on currently the station is on the ground level and there's stuff underneath and on top now they have what's called a sky street.

it's this entire level imagine all four of your buildings connected by a sky bridge. the entire thing is restaurants, department store. Along the street, along the sky Yes, but it's in the sky. it's like floor 18 or 17 or something like that.

and everybody knows where to retail. so it doesn't matter your residents that live there on the ground. There's a hotel. And then on top of that, there's some, a little bit of office and then it's a gigantic.

Hotel and this is all one area on top of the other and this is that transportation oriented development they went up and then three or four towers were built on their own away from this because of the success of the project they already had the plan to do the second phase the third phase and the fourth so there's four towers all connected to each other, but they were built over, Many decades the first three towers are owned by the private company JR that runs the transportation system for Japan the fourth one is actually called JP, a different company it was just amazing.

And then when we went out to get on the high speed rail, the high speed rail is inside of the buildings it's adjacent to, but it's all connected so easy. and let me tell you, these trains, 90 seconds, they have 200 plus trains a day that go from, Osaka all the way to Tokyo. So, you know, that's a little further than Houston. Let's call it Corpus Christi.

Okay. 235 trains a day, with anywhere from 90 seconds to two and a half minutes in between each train. And that's how fast you get on and get off. And your head didn't spin?

Not once. I thought it would. And you know, when they told us we only had 90 seconds, like, being a first time rider, I was like, you have 90 seconds to get off this train, and the new people getting on. And so, I'm thinking like, but you know, it's really easy because you don't need a lot of luggage.

Yeah. You just got your backpack or, your bag because these are day trips for them. Yeah. So, imagine being able to live in Dallas and work in Houston.

And come And come back because it's going to be, a 90 minute walk. You know how many people drive, wait in their car two hours, two and a half hours to work in Dallas? Yeah. And get to wherever they live.

Right. and sit in traffic. So 12, 000 cars, when it starts, it'll be taking off about 12, 000 vehicles off of I 45, daily. Daily?

Daily. That's a lot. 12, 000 is what they're averaging. Wow.

I think it's more popular, more and more, right? 24 70, 000 people a year. And this is, this is About, not just today, but it's about the next hundred years because 1861 is when Japan built their first station. Right.

It's 2024 and they're on their fifth phase of the station, and high speed rail has been around for them for about 50 to 70 years and it's so interesting to hear all the why's we shouldn't do it that we're hearing here right now. The exact same thing because the Japanese have, kept all of this history. And so we got to see and hear a lot of it and it's like, Oh my gosh, I'm hearing that exact same thing. years ago.

70 years ago or 50 years ago. The biggest one that we're hearing right now is why does it have to be 70 feet in the air? Well, the Japanese technology was designed this way in order to save agriculture and to save livestock. Now, because they don't have as much space as we do because of all the mountains.

Oh, yeah. it's a very small country. Very small country. It's an island.

Concentrated. big island, but it's still an island. You can't just build on top of any mountains, you have to build on the edges, the cool part is, they went up because, you don't need as much. You don't have to take as much right away.

everything's arced underneath the pillars that are building up the rail. that was so the agriculture wouldn't be destroyed, completely, You gain all this land back. cows can, The longhorns aren't going to cross the high speed rail. Because our train will be the fastest train.

in the world at that point for that Japanese technology. plus we had a straight shot. Japanese have to do some curves and turns around mountains, we would have the fastest speed of any train they have, ability to go 90 minutes to Houston, stop to finish. And that's what the two and a half minute stop would be in the middle.

if you don't do the express train, there'll be an express train that doesn't stop around college station Yeah. And by going in the air, I love that you use the longhorn because I'm a Texas longhorn. because it would have been 205 miles per hour, 255 miles per hour, and a longhorn. It's not gonna be good for the longhorn.

No. and that's not good for, the farmers the livestock and the elders And so, this way, The cows can, the cows, the sheeps, the goats, the pigs, the chickens, whatever they are, can keep doing their little thing. They still have places to eat underneath. And honestly, for our hot Texas sun, I bet you they'll be hanging out underneath it.

be a little shade. be some shade. I'm we have to continue this with another program because we have so much to talk about. I do have to ask you one question.

You can talk about this for hours. And I love it. Emissions from the train? Zero.

Absolutely none. I love it. Because it's all run on electricity. Okay.

we even asked about what happens if, we have another breakdown of the grid what the electricity does is it, puts energy into magnets. The magnets are what propel. I even got to do a simulator driving one, it was pretty fun. But I also got to sit in the, I call it a cockpit, but the driving station inside the bullet train.

I didn't get to drive it, but, the driver was literally right next to me and I was sitting next to him while somebody was behind me explaining how everything went. And so that was really wild to be going, you know, Of course, they use kilometers over there, but to watch it going up 225, 300, you know, up to 300 kilometers per hour, and you're just shooting, right? you're right there. it felt like I'm just in a fast car, but, it never felt like, I guess kind of like, I can explain, it's like, it feels like an airplane except without the pressure change.

And so you're just flying through and you see everything, you can actually have a meeting while you're. in there because you don't have all this turbulence. It's not like rail that we think of like freight trains. It's smooth.

Smooth, almost no noise. When they would be going by you, I would never hear them. what you did hear was wind, because it's cutting through, so you would hear a whoosh, you might hear a clunk here and there, but nothing like I was expecting, I live in West Dallas, so I have a train that goes behind me, 385 times a day, you hear that, you hear a whistle, and you don't need it if it's above the street and above the ground If we get this done, it should take about 10 years to build, which, if you think about it, that's really not too bad, when you're going from, all the way from Houston to Dallas, and 90 minutes, I mean, I'm ready for it, and the Japanese are so advanced they're building now what's called Maglev, which should be done in 10 years, and that one will literally, the train will have no wheels.

Oh my God. it'll have a wheel to start and a wheel to stop, but it's going to be elevated, so magnet elevated, mag left. Like it just shoots through a tunnel? Yes, and it'll be, above a rail.

Oh my God. And it'll have things to hold it in place, but it'll literally be levitating about 10 centimeters off the ground. Wow. And that one's going to get them.

So Nagoya to Tokyo is about the same as Houston to Dallas. And that's what Nagoya to Tokyo is now. That one will be 45 minutes. Oh my god.

Tokyo to Half time. Like, I'm just gonna be going, like, we are, we're in the Jetsons. Like, it's We're in the Jetsons! Okay, we're gonna have to have you come back because we want to Talk about apartments.

I really want to get into that because, Candy Stewart is so focused on housing, but everyone always thinks that I hate apartments and I don't. I live in an apartment and I'm a renter and you're a renter and I'm only person who lives on the council that lives in multifamily and I'm also, one of two on the council that rent and it's, my lifestyle right now and I love it. So we're going to talk about Real estate's important, right? And so that's why this bullet train is important, because it'll help real estate, it'll help increase values, all of that.

But also, you need density around it, which will be, that's in our plans. Apartments. Well, there'll probably be apartments, but what we need to change, and we will get to it, is, state laws to allow for developers to build more condos and condos because there's people like me who want to own my own house. I want a condo.

But totally. But there's so many laws we got to change. Yes. We're going to, do that because I'm very passionate.

I want to just own my little postage stamp from the world. I don't need an acreage. I just need a postage stamp. Because that's why they're not building it.

We'll talk about that next time. Keep listening. Keep watching. Keep reading.

I'm Candy Evans for Dallas Dirt. Thank you.