When Lyft rolled into Dallas last fall, it was a popular cab alternative for city-dwellers who couldn’t afford Uber’s “surge pricing” and who also didn’t need to travel very far. But that’s about to change. Starting tomorrow afternoon, Lyft’s service area in Dallas will expand to a much bigger grid…
When DART updated nearly half of its bus fleet in 2012 and 2013, it opted for vehicles fueled by compressed natural gas. But fossil fuels are so 20th century, hence the transit agency’s just-announced plans to add all-electric buses. DART isn’t about to electrify its entire fleet. The plan right…
In news that should surprise no one, the Texas Department of Transportation will not tear down Interstate 345, the 1.7-mile stretch of highway separating Deep Ellum from downtown. The Dallas Morning News reported over the weekend that the agency will instead repair the aging span, citing the same concern voiced…
The Wright Amendment, the baldly anti-competitive 1979 law designed to protect DFW International Airport, dies for good on October 13, when the ban expires on direct flights from Love Field to anywhere that isn’t in Texas or the four states that border it. And what exciting new destinations might be…
We’ve all seen those desperate emails that Yellow Cab sent to Dallas City Hall last summer, using its influence there to demand that officials crack down on Uber, the digital-savvy car service. Poor Uber, the narrative went, just a little start-up under assault by the entrenched taxi industry. But when…
Sooner or later, it’s going to happen. A driver for Uber or Lyft is going to crash. People will be injured, property damaged. And then, some poor Dallasite with a neck brace and a stack of medical bills Dallas will discover just how lousy these ride-sharing apps do insurance. That’s…
In a secret underground lair somewhere deep below Europe, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is hunched over a map of Mansfield, Texas, an evil glimmer lighting his eyes. A mirthless chuckle escapes his lips as he presses pencil to paper. Lubbock County Judge Tom Head may have sniffed out his…
This, no matter what the DART-phobic among you might assume, is not what the average bus ride is like. Nor is it what your average DART driver is like. Sure, most are less than jovial, and that sidelong glance they cast as you step on board could be interpreted as…
The Frisco traffic officer was camped in an unmarked Chevy, trying to catch drivers going above the speed limit, when he noticed something suspicious. Some of the motorists could see him. They waved. He had a feeling that a man named Ron Martin might have had something to do with…
After a frack job is complete, can we be certain that the energy industry is taking care to ship the oil as safely as possible? Two United States senators are gently questioning that as a series of crude oil train explosions have made the news. On December 30, a crude…
Driving on LBJ Freeway while it’s under construction is pure misery. Living next to it, as Laraine Schaffer and her neighbors have discovered over the past three years, is pure hell. Schaffer’s home is in the 12000 block of High Meadow Drive in far Northwest Dallas, a street that backs…
SeaWorld has taken a bit of a beating recently as the backlash from CNN’s Blackfish documentary, which lays bare the cruel folly of keeping killer whales in captivity and forcing them to entertain the masses. To a lesser extent, so has Southwest Airlines, which has a longstanding partnership with the…
Maybe the street was deserted and you decided to open up the throttle. Maybe a tree branch was blocking the flashing school zone sign, or you didn’t notice the cop as you rolled through the stop sign. Whatever the particulars of the situation, practically every driver knows the flush of…
Freight trains are the little engine that could of the transportation industry — really janky-looking and slow, but resolutely refusing to die. In fact, the freight train industry is doing better than ever in states sitting on top of shale, enjoying a massive increase in business thanks to fracking. There…
It’s still far too early to declare D-Link’s two-year pilot program a success or to gauge the long-term popularity of a free downtown shuttle. But after nearly two months in operation, officials say they’re pleasantly surprised. “It’s exceeded our expectations so far,” says Downtown Dallas Inc. president John Crawford, whose…
[UPDATE, 3:44 p.m.: “I just got an email from Uber saying the charges are being reversed,” Kimberly Alexander wrote to us this afternoon, about two hours after we had gotten off the phone with Uber’s Leandre Johns, who had insisted that the damage was legit. We’ve left him messages and…
LBJ’s TEXpress Lanes opened overnight Friday, and fears that their fluxuating toll rates would create some type of rift in the space-time continuum proved to be wildly overblown. The first vehicle — the guinea pig, if you will — entered the newly completed corridor, which stretches from Preston Road to…
Five North Texas mayors walk into a room. After some glad-handing and small talk, Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck launches into a soliloquy. “In the city of Arlington, we are constantly looking for new ways to encourage the community to sustain an active lifestyle,” he begins. Residents should be made aware…
It’s the moment Dallas drivers have been waiting for. After months of being teased by computer-generated flyovers and the prospect of traveling on corridors that came this close to being Davy Crockett Rocket Lanes, the new LBJ Express debuts on at midnight Saturday. Not the whole $2.7 billion project, mind…
Across the U.S., commuters are trading in their cars for trains and buses. According to a study released Wednesday by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, two-thirds of the country’s 100 largest cities saw jumps in the number of miles traveled each year on public transit between 2005 and 2010…
If high-speed rail is to exist in Texas over the next several decades, it won’t be the work of the federal or the state government. Though the state has been exploring the idea for close to three decades, there’s no money on the table and little political will to put…
Visibility was limited as Alexander Ryan Jones, 19, rode his bike across Weldon Street at 9:35 p.m. It was dark and rainy, and there was a wall in the median where a ramp descends into the Cityplace parking garage. According to police, neither he nor the person he was riding…
