Scott McCartney, the Wall Street Journal’s veteran (and Dallas-based) travel reporter, recently offered a word of advice to the literate public: If you or a loved one is considering stepping onto an aircraft in the foreseeable future, make sure it’s not one operated by American Airlines. “American’s operation is in…
When the Denton County Transportation Authority was shopping for rail cars for its A-train commuter line in 2009, it settled on 11 diesel-electric vehicles manufactured in Europe by Stadler, a company based in Switzerland. The cars are quieter, more fuel efficient and more spacious than the light rail cars on…
A while back, DART was toying with the idea for a while of auctioning off naming rights to some of its stations to the highest bidder. Such measures have proved to be relatively painless ways to generate cash for some transit systems in places like Philadelphia, and DART estimated it…
For a few years now, DART and its neighboring transit agencies have been drafting plans for the Cotton Belt Corridor project, a 62-mile passenger rail line that will, if things go according to plan, someday stretch Wylie to Fort Worth. The only thing standing in the way? Just the small…
It’s easy to bemoan Dallas’ glacial progress on the bike plan that is supposed to, one day, connect the city with an extensive network of bike lanes, but credit should be given where it’s due. In the spring, it was the shared lane that randomly sprung up on Martin Luther…
Glenn Beck has seen the face of hatred in America, and it looks like a surly flight attendant. In a transcript from his radio show, posted to his website this morning, Beck claims that an American Airlines employee slammed his drink down, barked the word “breakfast” at him, and delivered…
Over the weekend, the Texas Department of Transportation released its list of the Texas’ 100 most congested roadways, which breaks the news that LBJ, Woodall Rogers, and Central Expressway? All really congested. You knew that already, but did you know that drivers on the stretch of LBJ between Central and…
Last month it came to light that the Regional Transportation Council was mulling requiring three, rather than two, people per vehicle in order to use the region’s HOV lanes. You could still use the special lanes driving solo, but you’d have to pay a toll that would vary based on…
It seems that a lot of electric vehicle charging stations have been popping up in Dallas of late — at gas stations, grocery stores, possibly soon at City Hall — and now we know that yes, there are a lot. Xatori, an app-maker, released a list yesterday of the cities…
Every year, Allstate crunches its claims data from the country’s 200 largest municipalities, does a little arithmetic, then releases a ranked list showing which cities have the best drivers and, by extension, which have the worse. The insurance company just released its report for 2012, and the answer to your…
After a veritable avalanche of public comments on Twitter and in 18 town hall meetings, DART’s board of directors voted yesterday to hike — er, “streamline” — its fares. The changes go into effect on December 3. The cost of a local ride jumps up from $1.75 to $2.50, with…
The drive south down Interstate 35 isn’t a particularly pleasant one, but there soon there may be something to distract you, namely a 243-mile elevated rail line dedicated to shipping freight. The Texas Department of Transportation is close to reaching a deal to lease highway right-of-way to Freight Shuttle International,…
Say what you will about the highway-building mania of the mid-20th century. It led to an unsustainable car-dependent culture, choked off the city center and divided or destroyed neighborhoods. I seriously doubt, for example, that the shacks above were inhabited by well-heeled white people. But these photos, from the Texas…
The North Texas Tollway Authority has made headlines of late for slapping outrageous fees on civilians and veterans alike, publicly shaming them, then threatening to sue and boot their cars. But really, the agency wants you to know, it’s not the bogeyman some people make it out to be. It’s…
At the beginning of the year, the SPCA moved out of its 40-year-old digs on Riverfront Boulevard and into a shiny new facility off I-30 and Hampton Road. The move served two purposes: For one, the SPCA had outgrown the outdated Dealey Animal Care Center and needed a larger, more…
The proposed redesign of the S.M. Wright Freeway, a stretch of Highway 175 that runs parallel to I-45 south of Fair Park, will solve a lot of problems. It’ll turn the road from an indisputably ugly slab of concrete into a landscaped urban boulevard, and will straighten out the connection…
When you set aside any aesthetic hangups and knee-jerk assumption that any vehicle without an internal combustion engine is a piece of junk, it’s pretty hard to argue that electric cars aren’t a good idea. If we’re are going to drive anyway — and current habits and decades worth of…
One time I was talking down the street and I saw Jason Roberts leap a tall curb with a single bound. No joke. He barely broke a sweat under that tweed cap. Then he shot rainbow beams from his eyes that turned all the concrete into an organic garden tended…
DART already had the longest light rail system in the country before the $1.3 billion Orange Line added another three stations and several miles with its debut this morning. Sure, DART’s soon-to-be 90 miles of track are dwarfed by the subway system in New York City, the L in Chicago,…
Offering benefits to the partners of LGBT workers is gradually becoming a standard thing for large public employers in North Texas. The city of Dallas included domestic partner benefits in 2004, DFW Airport in 2010 and Parkland this year. Dallas County is poised to follow suit at the first of…
Since they were put in place a decade or two ago, use of Dallas-area HOV lanes has required having only two people per vehicle. The idea was to encourage carpooling but not make the requirement so onerous that the lanes would sit empty. In that regard at least, the plan…
Dallas and Fort Worth are similar. They’re both in Texas, both have oversized conceptions of themselves, and both came of age in the automobile era. The cities also developed similar bike plans, involving miles of designated bike lanes, at about the same time. And that’s where, transit-wise at least, the…
