It’s time to start paying attention to the protests. Over the past month, drivers from across Uber’s platform — black-car drivers, UberSelect luxury sedan drivers and UberX drivers who just use their personal vehicles, whatever it is — have protested at the technology company’s Dallas headquarters in the West End…
Riding public transportation in Dallas is not nearly as bad as you may have been led to believe. One can, especially with a little help from Uber or Lyft, successfully navigate the city without owning a car. Nevertheless, DART is decidedly not great when compared with transit agencies in city’s…
Two years ago, DART proposed running a bus route from the city of McKinney to Parker Road train station. The transit agency was hoping to gain a foothold in the northern boom towns of Collin County, both to advance its vision of a seamless regional transit system and, more pragmatically,…
Like much of Dallas, I was late to work Tuesday because of a failure to anticipate just how bad downtown Dallas traffic was going to be Monday morning. Late buses and added time navigating downtown were the rule of the day. The traffic mess stemmed from a bunch of streets…
Every year or so, the Texas Transportation Institute releases its Urban Mobility Report, which looks at the impact of traffic congestion on major metropolitan areas in the United States, and every year or so the report’s release prompts a barrage of critiques from transportation wonks whose livings aren’t tied to building new…
The Volkswagen emissions scandal is not quite two weeks old, and it’s already spurred lawsuits from dozens of angry car buyers. The first such suit in Dallas was filed Monday, though it surely won’t be the last. All or most of these early cases revolve around a straightforward allegation of fraud. Customers…
As odd as it may seem at first glance given Texas’ highly developed car culture, the Dallas-to-Houston corridor might be the best spot in the country for high-speed rail. The two cities are at the center of heavily populated and economically dynamic metropolitan areas. They are separated by 220 miles,…
It only took Dallas’ UberBlack drivers a long weekend to get back their right to pick up only passengers willing to pay for their more expensive service. Late Monday night, following four days of protests and calls for strikes, Uber informed drivers through an email that they could opt out…
Until Friday, Uber in Dallas was essentially two different services. There was UberBlack — and its cousins UberSUV and UberSelect — the service that started everything for Uber. UberBlack began as a way to keep town car drivers who weren’t busy, busy. Drivers between gigs could switch the app on…
Tuesday, Schutze told you all about why we should be scared because Dallas is taking $1 million in rich-people money from the Trinity Trust to pay for yet another “charrette” to come up with a plan for a park between the Trinity River levees. Letting rich people fund park planning…
Want to actually, you know, drive on LBJ rather than just sitting on it? Now you can, but it’ll cost you. The TEXpress lanes are open. The new sunken pay lanes on Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway — we’ll begrudgingly admit — are a civil engineering marvel. They’ll also generate quite…
If the city gets its way, the second light rail line through downtown will traverse what’s become known as the Jackson Street alternative. With DART facing a deadline for applying for a federal grant it says is essential to the project, the Dallas City Council voted 13-1 Wednesday to endorse…
For the most part, the debate over what to do with Interstate 345, the elevated strip of highway that cleaves Deep Ellum from downtown Dallas, has taken place in the abstract. Like the Trinity toll road, I-345 is a litmus test for where you stand in Dallas’ ongoing fight toward…
The battle over the placement of DART”s second rail line through downtown doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen. At a meeting last week of the Greater Dallas Planning Council and Urban Land Institute, DART indicated that it was wholeheartedly behind some version of the Young Street alignment for the…
Clarence E. Sullivan arrived in Ellis County in 1890 to seek his fortune. Though barely 18, he was already well-tempered by life. A runaway buckboard had killed his parents when he was a child, leaving him to be raised by an older brother who scratched out a meager living outside…
Since it went public with plans to build a high-speed rail line between Dallas and Houston, Texas Central Railway has been adamant that it won’t be suckling at the government teat. The project would be entirely private, allowed to rise and fall on its own merits, as judged by the…
No matter who one asks, a second rail line downtown is the most important project on DART’s agenda, essential to the transit authority’s future. It will expand the capacity, and the possibility, of transit infrastructure that is currently strangled by the manufactured bottleneck of four above-ground train lines running on…
Marty Hiles had big plans for Ellis County. “A bunch of us — mostly retired, all former CEOs, executives, we’ve been around the world, done things, every one of us are veterans — we got together and we were looking and said ‘You know what? Ellis County needs to come out of…
News bubbled out of Austin last week that the ride-sharing app Uber would add the capital city to a short list of areas in which Uber offers UberAccess. UberAccess allows app users to summon a wheelchair-accessible vehicle. In areas without UberAccess, Uber only guarantees that customers with wheelchairs that can fit…
Among the first things Unfair Park — yes, we’re still calling ourselves that, old habits die hard — does when it gets up in the morning is to quickly scroll through Twitter. Since the downtown-to-Oak Cliff streetcar started rolling in April one thing that’s popped up consistently is DART’s alert…
Uber and Lyft have been legally operating in Dallas for almost three months now. Uber was already dominating cabs in the competition for business trips, a trend that has only continued since the City Council’s new transportation-for-hire ordinance went into effect on April 30. Data on personal trips are harder to…
Texas is in a weird place when it comes to transportation. It is a state utterly dependent on the automobile and yet policy makers have proven unable — or, more precisely, unwilling — to properly fund the roads and infrastructure that makes car travel feasible. The gas tax has been…
