Below is the 2011 Customer Satisfaction Survey dispatched this morning by Dallas Area Rapid Transit in advance of today’s board meeting. Long story short: Despite some issues with the transit agency — longtime riders think the buses are getting shabby, passengers don’t feel there’s adequate notice of service disruptions, there’s…
I’d forgotten all about Dylan Hollingsworth’s shoulda-been classic photo taken in January 2010, during what turned out to be the First Annual No Pants! Ride on Dallas Area Rapid Transit light rail. Then a Friend of Unfair Park shot me this video from yesterday’s third-annual balls-out trip on a train…
A Friend of Unfair Park passes along The Wall Street Journal’s latest look-see at how well the big carriers handle passengers and their luggage, and per the annual Middle Seat survey the two locally based airlines don’t do so well when it comes to getting your bags to your destination…
A quick look-see reveals efforts to sell the 1964 Cadillac Hearse that transported President John Kennedy from Parkland Memorial Hospital to Love Field have failed at least once before — in 2007, when Arrdeen Vaughan, the Alvarado funeral-home owner who’d had it for decades, came up $100,000 of the million-dollar…
Only yesterday we noted the Dallas Area Rapid Transit is ready to go on that final leg of the Orange Line that’ll connect with Terminal A at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The price tag’s steep: $149,750,000 for the third section of the Orange Line, from Belt Line Station to DFW…
Last night Dallas Area Rapid Transit sent word that its board of directors signed off on the design-build contract that’ll push the under-construction Orange Line the final 5.2 miles that’ll get it to Dallas-Fort Worth Airport’s Terminal A. Long story short: You’ll be able to light-rail it from DART to…
Wait — who’s Tom Horton (no, not a Canadian coffee shop), and what has he done with Gerard Arpey? Oh, Arpey’s out — decided to “retire,” per the statement from Fort Worth-based AMR that follows in the wake of its Chapter 11 filing in NYC court this morning. (Though some…
Robert Tobolowsky wobbled through the doors of Stubb’s as the echo of roots and jam rang in his ears. It was a January night earlier this year; Tobolowsky, a Dallas native and recent SMU grad, was in Austin visiting friends. He stepped onto the sidewalk, the letters on the street…
On Tuesday we noted that the Texas Department of Transportation is looking for a firm to ID would-be routes for a high-speed rail line between Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, using $15 million in Federal Railway Administration High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program funds awarded over the summer. Shortly after that, this…
It’s been quite some time since last we discussed the long-proposed high-speed rail line between Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, which Jennifer Moczygemba, who oversees the Texas Rail Plan at the Texas Department of Transportation, called in April “definitely a priority” for TxDOT. This morning, she reiterates: It still is. So…
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 Project Pegasus. Long…
Meant to mention this the last time I took Lemmon to work a few weeks back: Avoid it at all costs. But not for the usual reasons; not because it’s “the road to Fallujah,” as one Friend of Unfair Park called it a few months back. Well, OK, maybe it…
For those who missed Tuesday’s heads-up, avoid the hell out of LBJ this weekend as they finish taking down the pedestrian walkway and Marsh Lane bridge running over 635. The folks in charge of this operation aren’t kidding around, either: They’ve sent out several warnings in the last couple of…
The folks in charge of the LBJ Express project send word: A month after they called off demolition plans at the very last minute, citing safety concerns, they’re finally going to tear down all of the pedestrian walkway over 635 this weekend, after some of it was taken down in…
Seems like only days ago we were watching those old home movies shot on Forest Lane, in which you catch a fleeting glimpse of the groovy brick-wall mural, between Midway and Rosser, painted in the spirit of 1976 by W.T. White students. The mural, done to cover graffiti that marred…
Called my dad the other day and asked him: “You know what’s coming to the Dallas Convention Center the first week of October?” To which he replied, very matter-of-factly: “Yeah, the Mecum auction.” Which he knows because my father, a second-generation car-parts man, spends his occasional free Saturday nights watching…
Could have sworn we just saw an Annual Urban Mobility Report from the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M — like, eight months ago. Maybe the Aggies couldn’t wait any longer to bring the good news: Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington drivers no longer waste 48 hours behind the wheel annually, stuck on…
If you didn’t know who Leisha Hailey was this morning, you probably will by the end of the day. She’s the latest celebrity taking to Twitter to call out Love Field-based Southwest Airlines, which removed her from a plane today — not because she’s considered a heavy-duty “safety risk” like…
Came across this on the city’s website: an invite to an open house at R.L. Turner on Tuesday, during which Texas Department of Transportation officials will discuss a project that, as Jim noted only yesterday, the North Texas Tollway Authority wants no part of — the expansion of IH35 from…
The Census Bureau released a lot of data this morning, including the 2010 American Community Survey Single Year Estimates; we’ll get to that once we look over the charts and graphs — fun! But among the docs dumped is Commuting in the United States: 2009, which says, among other things,…
Last week the LBJ Express folks were kind enough to provide us with this crude but nevertheless edutaining look at how traffic patterns were going to be shifted in advance of the pedestrian walkway boom that wasn’t, not yet. But this weekend, they insist the Monfort bridge demolition will take…
There are several items of interest and note on the Dallas Area Rapid Transit board’s agenda for today, but let’s focus on two for now — the ones on the Operations Committee’s to-do list that’ll impact drivers of cars and riders of mass transit … well, the naughty ones, anyway…
