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…
For a moment, it seemed that one small suburb in north Texas was prepared to take on the tow truck industry. It was less of a crackdown and more of an “education campaign,” according to Euless Police Department Lieutenant E.J. Starnes. The police were concerned that apartment complexes had made…
For the first time in three decades, Dallas is home to a downtown shuttle. And for the first time ever, the shuttle will not be marked by three-foot high bunny ears and painted-on whiskers, a la the ill-fated “Hop-a-Bus” program. The trademark pink will remain, however, as DART rolls out…
You’re speeding out of work with a cell phone in one hand and can of Coke between your knees, trying to make it home before the Chihuahua you keep locked inside all day shits the carpet again, when suddenly, one of those small, panicked dots appears in the distance, in…
All those brave, lonely nights in the back of an Uber car, acting like just another kid who needed a ride, all of those limo violations, all of that pretending: It was all a waste. Dallas is dismissing all the citations police had filed against Uber drivers. Uber’s attorney Joel…
A.C. Gonzales, the interim Dallas City Manager, has nearly completed his triple-lux fall onto the proverbial sword in the city’s attempt to marginalize Uber at the behest of the taxi industry. A short while ago, Mayor Mike Rawlings released and reacted to the findings of former Dallas County District Attorney…
Uber, thanks in no small part to Dallas’ reactionary, lobbyist-led crackdown, has been getting a lot of love in recent weeks. Uber’s convenient, fast, chic, and fits nicely into the role of a dashingly handsome David taking on Yellow Cab’s Goliath. If this Uber love has geographic center, it’s in…
If you happened to find yourself on westbound I-20 yesterday, our condolences. The entire interstate was closed for a brief time between Lancaster Avenue and Houston School Road, and lane closures lasted into the evening, causing traffic to back up for miles. You might be alarmed to discover that the…
At some point, after a year-plus of hand-wringing and delays, the push for DART to offer benefits to the domestic partners of employees took on an air of inevitability. Two weeks ago, the DART board’s administrative committee overwhelmingly voted to move forward with a “plus-one” plan, allowing unmarried employees to…
Each year, Allstate comes out with a list of America’s worst drivers, and each year, Dallas is puzzled to discover it doesn’t come out on top, an honor typically reserved for Washington, D.C. That’s not to say that drivers here aren’t terrible. In this year’s report, Frisco, Plano, McKinney, Irving,…
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport’s “new, high-tech parking control plazas,” which cost $56 million and offer automated entry and exits for all visitors, were supposed to go live in late August, but the rollout was briefly pushed back because of minor technical hiccups. “The Parking Control System is a complex installation…
As anyone who’s ever forgotten to pay a toll bill or is capable of doing arithmetic knows, the eye-popping amounts owed by the North Texas Tollway Authority’s top toll violators is mostly fees. As an example, take reigning scofflaw champion Melissa Martinez. To rack up the $153,046.47 she owed the…
Good news for anyone who’s ever fumbled with change under a bus driver’s withering glare, or frantically mashed buttons on the ticket dispenser as the train pulls away. Starting next Monday, September 16, you can avoid all that thanks to GoPass, DART’s new mobile ticketing app. It works about how…
Pretend you busted your checking account and fell behind a few days on your rent. Would you feel safer if your landlord let a towing company take your car away? That’s the gist of an organization called the Texas Association of Safer Apartment Communities, a safety association landlords can join…
Arlington is celebrating this morning. After decades as the largest U.S. municipality without mass transit, the city now has a bus service. So park your Ford Excursion and prepare to retire your warmed-over gibes about Arlington as the ultimate suburban wasteland. All done? OK, now bring them back out of…
This morning, at a half hour past midnight, 20-year-old Benjamin Boyer was riding his bicycle south down Cole Street when his front tire slipped into the groove of the trolley track. He was thrown from his bike and, this being Dallas, he sailed straight into the back of a 2012…
Max Kalhammer is leaving City Hall at a key time for cycling in Dallas. During four years as the city’s bike coordinator, he helped develop a very solid citywide bike plan and oversaw a remarkable expansion of bike infrastructure in the city. Downtown is now crisscrossed by shared bike lanes,…
