North Central Texas Council of Governments

The Cotton Belt is Dead, at Least For Now

In the end, it wasn't the opposition of the Fort Worth City Council that killed the Cotton Belt project, nor was it the opposition from neighbors in North Dallas. Not directly, at least. Rather, the 62-mile commuter rail that would run from Plano to Fort Worth, died a quiet death at the state legisl ... More >>

North Texas Senators Beg TxDOT Not to Screw Up This High-Speed Rail Thing

Texas Central Railway's plan, announced almost a year ago now, to build a high-speed rail line linking Houston and North Texas has hit a not altogether unexpected complication: inter-city squabbling over where the bullet train will stop. In Mobility 2035, its long-term vision for transportation in ... More >>

Council of Governments Asks the Internet to Name LBJ Toll Lanes. Because That Always Works

If you've been up that ways in the past year, you might have noticed that they're doing some work on LBJ. But, as the video above tells you, it's not just any old work. They're transforming the tired old freeway into the LBJ Express, by which they mean they're adding a handful of managed lanes. The ... More >>

North Texas is Angling for a Light Rail Manufacturing Plant (Translation: Jobs!)

When the Denton County Transportation Authority was shopping for rail cars for its A-train commuter line in 2009, it settled on 11 diesel-electric vehicles manufactured in Europe by Stadler, a company based in Switzerland. The cars are quieter, more fuel efficient and more spacious than the light ra ... More >>

Cotton Belt Regional Rail Project Now Has Someone Who Wants to Pay For It

For a few years now, DART and its neighboring transit agencies have been drafting plans for the Cotton Belt Corridor project, a 62-mile passenger rail line that will, if things go according to plan, someday stretch Wylie to Fort Worth. The only thing standing in the way? Just the small task of findi ... More >>

On I-35, a Freight-Only Monorail Could Soon Take Root

The drive south down Interstate 35 isn't a particularly pleasant one, but there soon there may be something to distract you, namely a 243-mile elevated rail line dedicated to shipping freight. The Texas Department of Transportation is close to reaching a deal to lease highway right-of-way to Freigh ... More >>

How Do You Get From Dallas to Houston in an Electric Car? Wait About Five Years.

When you set aside any aesthetic hangups and knee-jerk assumption that any vehicle without an internal combustion engine is a piece of junk, it's pretty hard to argue that electric cars aren't a good idea. If we're are going to drive anyway -- and current habits and decades worth of automobile-centr ... More >>

Soon You Might Need Two Lifelike Dummies to Use DFW's HOV Lanes

Since they were put in place a decade or two ago, use of Dallas-area HOV lanes has required having only two people per vehicle. The idea was to encourage carpooling but not make the requirement so onerous that the lanes would sit empty. In that regard at least, the plan seems to have been successfu ... More >>

Want to Ride to Work With Strangers, North Texas? There Will Soon Be An App For That.

Slugging, aka commuting to work in random strangers' cars, has long been a thing in Houston and a handful of other cities across the country but never in Dallas. Maybe it's that use of our HOV lanes requires only two people per vehicle or that Dallas doesn't have enough pockets of density. Maybe it' ... More >>

That Dallas-Houston Bullet-Train Proposal Needs More Money Before it Can Start Costing Money

There was a lot of buzz back in May when a group led by the Central Japan Railway Co. and former Harris County Judge Robert Eckels announced plans to raise $10 billion in private funds to establish a bullet train linking Dallas and Houston. TxDOT, too, has been looking at high-speed rail, and is in ... More >>

City, Developer Will Finish Making Your Walk Down Lamar Street Suck Less Right After it Pays this Cable Bill

You have always been able to walk from the site of the Convention Center Hotel over to, say, police headquarters, but why would you? That stretch of Lamar Street has never been particularly inviting to non-motorized transport, but some long-delayed street improvements designed to make the stroll les ... More >>

Dallas is Proud of Cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions By a Third, and Thinks You Should Drive Less

Back in 2006, Mayor Laura Miller joined with her colleagues across the country to sign the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, a promise to reduce the city's greenhouse gas emissions by seven percent below 1990 levels by 2012, It was just Dallas doing in its part to chip in on th ... More >>

How John Wiley Price (Allegedly!) Sold Dallas

OK, I've got my idiot coloring book out again. Sorry. Just have to do this. I just want to help people not get totally lost in the delicious detritus of the FBI affidavit released yesterday in the Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price corruption probe. The details are delectable -- a web-work ... More >>

The Bogus 'Detour' Argument for the Trinity Toll Road is Finally Dead

Wait. Click the pause button. Freeze this. There's a huge point here that some people do not want us to notice. In the last 24 hours, the entire debate about the Trinity River toll road has completely shifted ground. I was just now on the phone about it with City Council member Scott Griggs. He poi ... More >>

Read NCTCOG's Long Look-See at How to Fund the Cotton Belt Regional Rail Corridor

​At 1 today the Regional Transportation Council will discuss the doc you see below: the 132-page report finished last month as part of the so-called Cotton Belt Corridor Innovative Finance Initiative, which the North Central Texas Council of Governments touts on today's agenda as "a thorough inves ... More >>

Texas Transpo Commission Gives OK to Move Ahead With $700-Mil Redo Of IH-30, IH-35E

​Moments ago, Ed Pensock, the interim director of the Texas Turnpike Authority, explained to the Texas Transportation Commission down in Austin why Dallas so desperately needs the so-called Horseshoe Project -- otherwise known as the redo of IH-30 and IH-35E over the Trinity River, once part of Pr ... More >>

Halfway Through The Process, City's Gas Task Force Gives Little Indication of Upcoming Recs

Photo by Leslie MinoraKenneth Tramm of Modern Geosciences tells the task force about long-term air monitoring.​Since July, the city's gas drilling task force, established to recommend parameters for Dallas's fracking ordinance rewrite, has voraciously consumed drilling data, testimony from exp ... More >>

Imagine a DFW With Significantly Eased Traffic Congestion. In, Say, The Year 2035. Maybe?

North Central Texas Council of GovernmentsThink traffic is bad now? Click to embiggen the infographic of the future.​Speaking of mass transit ...Today the Regional Transportation Council of the North Central Texas Council of Governments met with the local citizenry at a public meeting at the p ... More >>

A Sneak Peek at the Cotton Belt Regional Rail Corridor. One Day. Fingers Crossed.

Friend of Unfair Park BigJonDaniel passes along the video you see above: a Dallas Area Rapid Transit-produced sneak peek at the Cotton Belt Regional Rail Corridor, which would stretch from Wylie to southwest Fort Worth. Of course, right now it's closer to concept than reality: Last summer, the North ... More >>

Browse City's Options For Turning Riverfront Boulevard Into a Complete-Ish Street

Click to embiggen Riverfront Option No. 2, which would reduce it to six lanes for 1.5 miles and add two bike lanes​OK. So. About that Belleview Connector below.The reason it's on the Trinity River Corridor Project Committee's agenda tomorrow is because that bridge -- which, as more than a few Frie ... More >>

Feds Roll Out $15 Million to Begin Studying Feasibility of DFW-to-Houston High-Speed Rail

​About a month back we looked at docs the Texas Department of Transportation submitted to the Federal Railroad Administration in the hopes of landing some federal money dough for that loooooong-discussed Dallas-Fort Worth-to-Houston high-speed rail line. Long story short: The state wanted $18 mill ... More >>

Everything You Needed to Know About That Downtown to Oak Cliff Streetcar Line

Click to embiggen the latest streetcar alignment map that will be presented to the DART board tonight.​On Friday, Keith Manoy, the chief transportation planning officer, spoke to Unfair Park about who will be responsible for what when it comes to the designing, construction, operation and maintena ... More >>

How the Love Field People Mover Project Fits Into Downtown-to-Oak Cliff Streetcar Project

Click to embiggen the current streetcar project alignment, which runs all of 1.6 miles​Here's a council committee briefing worth keeping an eye on today: Streetcar Planning Update, always a topic of interest but even more so as the Federal Transit Administration revenue-service deadline barrels do ... More >>

City's Going to Need Private-Sector Partners to Design, Build, Operate and Maintain Streetcars

​As we saw this morning, the city's having enough problems funding that 1.6-mile streetcar starter line from Union Station to Methodist Hospital (or close to). So how does it expect to stretch track over more than 40 miles in and three miles around downtown Dallas, which is the ultimate goal? Easy ... More >>

"Regionalism" Just Means Dallas is Going to Get Drilled When It Comes to Fracking

​So-called regionalism is a rip-off, a scam and a hoax designed to neuter cities and sell them down the river to the damned suburbs. A few weeks from now the Dallas City Council will take up the issue of fracking, the kind of natural gas drilling in which drillers pump millions of gallons of ... More >>

City's Chief Transpo Planner Talks Streetcars and Why First Downtown to Oak Cliff Line Is "Critical Spine" Of System of the Future

Dallas's first new streetcar line will run from Union Station to near Methodist Hospital in Oak Cliff. At least, that's the plan at present.​I've been playing phone tag with Keith Manoy, the city's senior transportation planner and the point man for all things streetcar. It's understandable. He's ... More >>

"The Much Anticipated Downtown Dallas Streetcar Project Is a Step Closer to Reality."

University of Texas at Arlington LibraryMain and Akard, circa 1953​That headline is the very first sentence in a press release from the U.S. Federal Transit Administration announcing that on Thursday, it and the North Central Texas Council of Governments finally signed the grant agreement that wil ... More >>

Plan Ahead: Streetcar Town Hall in Two Weeks

​No doubt City Hall will send out a release sooner or later, or post it to the City Secretary's open-meetings page, but we like to plan ahead. So, in case you missed the notice -- buried in tiny type at the bottom of Page 4B in the morning paper, right next to the El Centro ad -- there's a public ... More >>

Match Game: Before Council Takes NCTCOG Development Funds, a Peek at the Projects

Angela HuntThere was a competition to redo the Routh Street underpass that serves as an Arts District gateway. That was in '06.​At its August 25 meeting, the city council will be asked to sign off on taking close to $14 million from the North Central Texas Council of Governments, which, in June, a ... More >>

Mayfield's Got a Deal: $10 Mil From County to Move OC-to-Downtown Streetctar to Commerce

Sam MertenDallas County Commissioner Ken Mayfield​Late last night, the missive you see below -- in which Dallas County Commissioner Ken Mayfield offers to pitch in $10 mil for that Oak Cliff-to-downtown streetcar line -- appeared in the Unfair Park in-box. Mayfield tells Mike Eastland, executive d ... More >>

The City's Head of Transportation Operations Talks About What's Next for Streetcars

University of Texas at Arlington Special Collection​Spent a little time Thursday talking to city officials about the McKinney Avenue Transit Authority's $5-mil loop through downtown. And, almost always, our conversations ended with the person on the other end saying, "You really need to talk to Ke ... More >>

Maybe One of the Few Times We'll Use "Cotton Bowl" and "Super Bowl" in Same Sentence

​Been meaning to get to this for a couple of days, ever since the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee sent out its weekly newsletter that said, at the very top:TOM LANDRY SUPER BOWL HIGHWAY: On Tuesday, June 15 at 3:30 p.m., the Host Committee along with Alicia Landry will officially announc ... More >>

Clearly, You All Have Thoughts About Cycling in Dallas. City Hall Really Wants You To Share.

​So, speaking -- or shouting -- of bicycling in Dallas ...A couple of weeks back I mentioned that on May 27, the city and the North Central Texas Council of Governments are holding a 2011 Dallas Bike Plan Open House from 5 to 8 p.m. at Dallas City Hall, during which reps from Toole Design Group wi ... More >>

Belo Garden Site's About to Get a $1.6 Million Scrubbing; Downtown's Gonna Get New Meters

Coming to a downtown sidewalk near you at some point, should the city renew its deal with ACS (which it will)​Every so often I'll get an e-mail from a Friend of Unfair Park who wonders: What the what's going on with Belo Garden? They ever gonna do that thing or what? To which I usually respond: I ... More >>

DART Wants to Take You to the Super Bowl. But the Feds Have to Sign Off.

​I was looking at the meeting agenda for tomorrow's Dallas Area Rapid Transit board meeting and noticed a couple of items of interest on the planning committee sneak peak, chief among them: If DART wants to get folks from member cities to the Super Bowl at Cowboys Stadium come February, it'll have ... More >>

Some Questions Over How Useful Google Maps' New Bike Trails Feature Actually Is

​Bike Friendly Oak Cliff was the first locally to make mention yesterday of the fact Google Maps now offers bike trails -- that's the green line you see on the map at right. (Writes Jason Roberts, "It's a good way to see a birds-eye view of our trail system, and will hopefully help when plans deve ... More >>

Want the Dallas County Commissioners in Charge of Toll Roads? Dickey Does.

​We've heard rumblings: Maurine Dickey ain't much of a fan of the North Central Texas Council of Governments. And here's our first bit of evidence: a memo Dickey sent to her fellow Dallas County Commissioners suggesting they consider forming the Dallas County Toll Road Authority to expedite the co ... More >>

NCTCOG, City Have Tapped Maryland Firm to Revamp Dallas Bike Plan

Danny Fulgencio​Speaking of the North Central Texas Council of Governments ...We've been waiting on this announcement since late November, when the NCTCOG and the city of Dallas put out the call for bidders interested in coming up with a new Dallas bike plan. And, lo and behold, there it is on the ... More >>

We Interrupt Our Regular Broadcast for Schutze to Say Something Positive About the City

Can You Help Synthesize Strategies and ID Action Items for Downtown? Oh, Good.

Click to expand this time line of Dallas's master plans dating back to 1960, courtesy the North Central Texas Council of Governments​Back in April, the Dallas City Council gave Berkeley-based Moore Iacofano Goltsman, Inc. $515,000 out of the Downtown Connection TIF District Project Budget to come ... More >>

Before Belo Garden, Soil Remediation

Maybe you just forgot -- it's been a few years -- but there's supposed to be a Belo Garden downtown.​Said the city's own time line back in '07, the Belo Garden downtown should have been completed by ... let's see ... last month, matter of fact. And revised guesstimates last summer set the start da ... More >>

City Receives Some Clean Cities Stimulus Money, But None For Economic Development

​On Friday, Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm informed Mayor Tom Leppert and the Dallas City Council, via memo, that the city's getting around $3 million in Clean Cities stimulus money to, among other things, "enhance fueling infrastructure, retrofit city vehicles and assist in the provision of traini ... More >>

Keep on Truckin'. Just Not in the Left Lane.

​For the last four years, the Texas Department of Transportation and the North Central Texas Council of Governments have been restricting big rigs from driving in the left lane along small sections of I-20 and I-30. And they're delighted with the results of the pilot program: Dan Kessler, NTCOG as ... More >>

"Very Exciting Stuff" as Dallas and Fort Worth Apply for Federal Money for Streetcars

Courtesy Justin CozartIn 1945, Dallas city and transit officials, among them Mayor J. Woodall Rodgers, introduced "the first of twenty-five new, silent, streamlined street cars."Almost two months ago, the Dallas City Council's Transportation and Environmental Committee got a peek at the proposed ali ... More >>

So, That Dallas Streetcar Grant Application? It's Really the Oak Cliff Transit Authority, Sorry.

Courtesy the Oak Cliff Transit AuthorityOne of the original streetcars that ran through Oak Cliff long, long agoJason Roberts -- a Happy Bullet, co-founder of the Art Conspiracy, Texas Theater-rehabber and, for the purposes of this item, Oak Cliff Transit Authority board member -- sends word that th ... More >>

From the Unfair Park Educational Film Dept.

Comes this 11-minute film courtesy the North Central Texas Council of Governments and the North Texas Grease Abatement Council (band name alert!) concerning the proper disposal of fats, oils and grease. Highly recommended. Poor, poor Chad.

Foster's Brook, or: The Dallas County Judge is Smarter Than He Lets On

This should be said: One of the heroes in the otherwise ugly stupid saga of the inland port development in Southern Dallas has been Dallas County Judge Jim Foster.First of all: He figured it out. A very good source close to the county commissioners told me, "He's like a little detective. He's quiet, ... More >>

Go Home, GOP|Money For Nothing|Corrections

The "Vengeance" of the Trinity Pavers