A few years ago, a private, Dallas-based corporation announced it would like to build a private toll road, all with its own money, connecting northeast Dallas County to somewhere around Greenville, running basically parallel to the Interstate 30 and passing near Lake Lavon and Lake Ray Hubbard. The Texas Turnpike…
The Texas Department of Transportation’s sign regulations are so strict that the agency once said that even the commandments of the Lord would require a permit. But the woman who owned the Ten Commandments sign in question fought back, and it seems that TxDOT is finally putting its rules into…
Opposition to the Trinity Toll Road hasn’t quite reached the torrential flood that will be needed to sweep it into oblivion, but there’s at least a decent-sized stream that’s been growing, drop by drop as former supporters realize it’s a terrible idea. This morning, the Texas Public Interest Research Group…
If you’re looking for popcorn-worthy fireworks at a public transit-related public meeting, your best bet is to watch the Dallas City Council decide who should represent the city on the DART board, an exercise that invariably descends, as so many other discussions at City Hall do, into a bitter racial…
Brace yourself, Dallas transit users. We’re here to break some tough news: DART is losing. We don’t mean that the agency, now three decades old, has largely failed to woo people out of their cars. That’s true, but it’s not entirely DART’s fault. Neither to we mean that the focus…
At some point next year, a Dallas-based toll company may get permission from the Texas Department of Transportation to build the only toll road in Texas that is totally supported by private finance. The exact route is something that the Texas Turnpike Corp. is still figuring out, but rural property…
Tuesday night, in the packed chambers of the Dallas City Council, the public had its biggest say yet in the ongoing struggle to develop new regulations for car and taxi services in Dallas. Many in the crowd wore pink shirts in support of Lyft and one group brought along one…
There’s something fascinating happening in Collin County. Residents are voicing an opinion on an issue — in this case they loathe the idea of tolled “managed lanes” running down their portion of Central Expressway — and, lo and behold, their duly elected leaders, including Collin County’s entire legislative delegation and…
Maybe the image that comes to mind when you picture Texas roads is zipping down a West Texas highway in a pickup truck with a dusty breeze whipping through your hair. It’s the image Ford has probably seared into your mind through years of advertising, and one that’s occasionally pretty…
Despite having received zero proposals for private investment and an expected zero dollar contribution from DART until the agency’s cash flow issues loosen in 2035, plans for public transportation along the former Cotton Belt Line in northern DFW are moving forward. According to a DART presentation, plans for the line…
Your boss tells you that you have to attend a business meeting in Paris, you poor thing. After packing a bag or two, how much time should you reasonably allot to get to the airport from your downtown office? In honor of DART’s new orange line expansion, we decided to…
For all the talk of adding toll lanes to various portions of U.S. 75 and LBJ, there hasn’t been much attention paid to the Texas Department of Transportation’s plan to include similar lanes — referred to as “managed lanes” in plan documents — along the stretch of I-35 between U.S…
Michael Morris, as Schutze mentioned this morning, is arguably the most important man in local transportation. As transportation director for the obscure but powerful North Central Texas Council of Governments, he has an outsize say in how transportation dollars get divvied up across 16 counties and, by extension, which ideas…
It’s never a good idea to cut off a humongous cement truck on the freeway. Not so much because karma may bite you in the ass at some vague point in the future as that it could be piloted by a driver who has no qualms about crushing the back…
It may be surprising to hear, with as much as North Texas has been deservedly trashed for being a car-dependent, unwalkable hellscape, but DFW fails to crack even the top 50 of a recent Governing.com study measuring pedestrian deaths per capita. Between 2008 and 2012 the region has averaged 6.5…
Riding the DART train, you may have wondered at some point whether those those overhead straps are capable of holding the weight of a fully grown adult. The answer is yes. You’ve probably never wondered whether those straps are capable of holding the weight of a fully grown adult as…
Pop quiz: What was Dallas Morning News personal finance columnist Scott Burns referring to when, in a July 1989 column, he described “a project that may give Dallas, particularly downtown Dallas, a better future” and a symbol of “what we need to be the city we want to be in…
For decades, the passenger railway system in the United States has been in decline. But dreams of a high-speed railway across Texas have persisted, and with a rapidly increasing population and accompanying traffic woes, it’s becoming increasingly necessary. Between a recent announcement of an environmental study and concrete funding plans,…
In honor of the opening of Washington Metropolitan Area Transit’s new Silver Line, which connects previously unserved areas of Northern Virginia to the capital’s sprawling public transportation network, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight data journalism project has released an interactive chart of per capita public transit use in American metro areas with…
If you had planned to drive anywhere near Interstate 35W in Fort Worth and Denton County this weekend, we and the Texas Department of Transportation have one request: Don’t. Really. Please, just don’t. You may have seen some of the warning signs flashing from Waco to Denton County, telling drivers…
We know the real estate industry is doing well in North Texas because we keep getting stuck in traffic at huge construction sites. If you have an idea for a weird new thing you’d like to be built in Dallas, local Realtors are a good, powerful group to get on…
OK, so we’re a day too late on this latest effort to bolster local tourism. DART announced today that the highly anticipated DFW station would be opening four months ahead of schedule. With an originally scheduled opening in December, the date has been pushed up to August 18. Oh, and…
