Last month’s unveiling of American Airlines’ new logo and livery (er, paint job) was a prelude to this: the long-awaited, full-blown merger with US Airways. The airlines are making it official this morning after their respective boards approved the $11 billion deal yesterday. US Airways CEO Doug Parker will head…
For years, DART’s been planning to stick a second rail line downtown, the better to handle the convergence of what is now four separate rail lines. A three-year study was completed back in 2010, and the list of possible routes was whittled down to four alternatives, all traveling through Victory…
Every day, my commute home takes me over the Hall Street overpass where, from the comfort (or, more accurately, mild discomfort) of my bike seat, I gaze down at the parking lot that is Central Expressway at rush hour and wonder with a mix of empathy and mild condescension what…
Last April, in a dual effort to ease parking shortages and make a little scratch, DART began charging some of the commuters parking at its northernmost light stations. The charge was $2 to $4 per day and applied only to drivers who live outside of DART’s taxpaying area who parked…
When DART last sat down to update its long-range plan in 2006, the agency was thinking big. With the recession still beyond the horizon, planners envisioned 86 additional miles of rail and 121 miles of new bus routes. Since then, the agency has added the bus routes, opened up the…
Note to self: Never ride a 4-wheeler on the runway at Lancaster Airport. That’s what some members of Texas-based Team Stunters were doing last week when they were nearly hit by a modified Pitts S2S biplane. The camera person is completely excused if they crapped their pants. The plane was…
In 1967, back when Helvetica was still brand new, American Airlines recruited Italian designer Massimo Vignelli to develop what would become the carrier’s logo for the next 46 years. It was simple, straightforward, and instantly recognizable: a pair of A’s, one red, one blue, separated by a stylized blue eagle…
American Airlines has had a rough go of it in recent years, what with its ongoing bankruptcy, a knock-down fight with its unions, and the general hatred of the flying public. Today, on the heels of its first quarterly profit in a while, American announced that it is turning over…
When Jason Roberts and his crew at the Oak Cliff Transit Authority first began trying to fund a streetcar line connect downtown with Oak Cliff, they asked the feds for around $48 million. They got only half of that. They’ve scraped together a bit more funding from various sources, but…
The best way to prevent drunken driving deaths, as we were repeatedly reminded in the wake of Jerry Brown’s death last month, is for drunk people to stop driving. The obvious problem is that the people who are deciding whether to drive are drunk and, while per capita drunken driving…
On Tuesday morning, Dallas police got a call from the Transportation Security Administration. The agency had some 65 pounds of abandoned ammunition that needed to be picked up. That’s all DPD’s incident report said. Not a word about what the hell such a large amount of ammunition was doing at…
Victor Lozada was a 19-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department when he was killed in a motorcycle crash while escorting then-presidential contender Hillary Clinton to a campaign rally in Oak Cliff on February 22, 2008. His death yielded a momentary pause to the hard-fought Democratic primary, an organ donation…
Several months ago, researchers gathered 164 volunteers in College Station, Texas and Seattle, outfitted their cars with GPS devices, and had them fill out questionnaires detailing how they drive (i.e. if they speed up for yellow lights, drive drunk, miss road signs, and any number of other factors). Then they…
Two years ago, Southwest Airlines abruptly changed the rules of its Business Select program, which allows travelers to breeze through security, get to the front of the boarding line, earn extra reward points, and, most importantly, get free booze. Before August 1, 2010, could use their free drink vouchers whenever…
In 2002, Arlington voters considered a proposal to establish a public transit system. The system would have been funded through a modest quarter-cent sales-tax increase that had the support of the City Council and every major business group in town but not, as the News reported at the time, the…
Drivers traveling past DFW Airport today may have noticed the cloud of black smoke rising into the air. This guy did, at least:…
It’s officially called the IH 345 overhead freeway bridge, but you probably know it better as the clusterfuck between Woodall Rodgers and Interstate 30 which, even when there’s relatively little traffic, is a nightmare to navigate. It’s also structurally deficient, which is a civil engineer’s way of saying it’s not…
It was 2010 when developer Dave Spence sat down with hipster-vist Jason Roberts at Cafe Brazil to hash out exactly what to do with the stretch of Bishop Avenue between Colorado Boulevard and Davis Street. The road’s four lanes acted as a kind of moat, which clashed their shared ideal…
It was while pounding the pavement of Old Preston Hollow in search of a certain lost chicken that I noticed some train tracks running through the back yard of a an aging but stately house on Park Lane. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Preston Hollow, that isn’t…
Jack Bewley and Jeff Finkel have spent the last several years methodically strengthening their position in the Dallas taxi market. Their company, Irving Holdings, was established with the merger of five local cab companies. In 2007, they brought Freedom, Eagle and Jet taxi companies. Earlier this year, they brought State,…
When local transportation planners announced that they would ask the Internet for suggestions on what to call the new managed lanes on LBJ Express, it seemed like a bad idea. But Andy Rittler, corporate affairs director for the project, tells us we were wrong. Over the course of the six-week…
William Davis is just learning to fly an airplane, so his wife was filming as he brought a 2005 Cessna Skyhawk in for a landing Saturday at Northwest Regional Airport in Roanoke, Texas. Then, an SUV drove in his way. He hit it, the plane crashed, and you can see…
