Slugging, aka commuting to work in random strangers’ cars, has long been a thing in Houston and a handful of other cities across the country but never in Dallas. Maybe it’s that use of our HOV lanes requires only two people per vehicle or that Dallas doesn’t have enough pockets…
With all the hullabaloo surrounding the completion of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, not to mention what must have been a righteous party, it was easy to forget that world-renowned architect Santiago Calatrava was supposed to design two more of his signature (e.g. big, white, and arch-y) bridges across the…
A few years back, the North Texas Tollway Authority took out those pesky toll booths and replaced them with cameras that, if you happen not to have a toll tag, snap a picture of your license plate and helpfully send you a bill — or send a bill to the…
Five years ago, the Trinity Railway Express signed a deal with 4G Metro “to provide the nation’s first comprehensive wireless broadband solution spanning the entire length of a major public railway.” Impressive, right? But by last year, it had become not so impressive. “The contractor wasn’t able to generate enough…
Splashed across the front page of the Morning News today, large and above the fold, is an article detailing a new Brookings Institution study that measures how well public transit connects people and jobs in the nation’s 100 most populous metropolitan areas: “D-FW among worst for getting to work on…
As promised, the North Texas Tollway Authority published a list of all drivers with 100 or more unpaid tolls, and it’s a long one. Some 25,000-plus people owe the agency a total of $12.5 million. NTTA is billing the posting as a convenient resource for drivers to check and see…
There was a lot of buzz back in May when a group led by the Central Japan Railway Co. and former Harris County Judge Robert Eckels announced plans to raise $10 billion in private funds to establish a bullet train linking Dallas and Houston. TxDOT, too, has been looking at…
Not to belabor the point, and with all due respect to the people who were injured, but watching a DART paratransit van plow into a line of cars on the Tollway is awesome. Now, we can watch it from the van’s perspective, plus bonus footage of the driver, who is…
A while back, DART announced it was considering fare changes that will, assuming they are adopted, will go into effect on December 3. The proposal would do several things. It would streamline the fare structure and introduce variable pricing for peak- and non-peak hours, but for most riders, it will…
If you watched the footage of a DART paratransit van plowing, without so much as a hint of a tap on the brake pedal, into a line of cars exiting the Dallas North Tollway on June 29, you might have assumed the driver was a) not completely sober, b) sending/receiving…
As a rule, I never read the DMN’s automotive section, which, in case you were wondering, is in fact a thing that exists. It’s not just that the section is basically one long advertisement for vehicles I’m never going to buy or that Car Talk is infinitely better as a…
Remember last week when a bus crash shut down the Dallas North Tollway? Turns out the NTTA has video. Posted it this afternoon. No one died in the crash, so you can enjoy it guilt free…
Front page of the DMN this morning is a story to warm the heart of anyone who owns a car: The number of uninsured drivers in Texas has dropped and dropped hard, from 4.2 million to 2.6 million, all in a single year. That comes after rates have been hovering…
When the U.S. Census Bureau released figures Thursday estimating cities’ growth between 2010 and 2011, the big news locally was that eight of the 15 fastest growing cities are in Texas and, of those, five — Plano, McKinney, Frisco, Denton, Carrollton — are in our corner of the state. The…
When it was announced last week that CLEAR, “the nation’s pre-eminent biometric secure ID program,” was setting up shop at DFW Airport’s Terminal E, it struck me as odd. Seemed that TSA was abdicating some of its responsibility to a private company, which of course it was, but I had…
The Cotton Belt Regional Rail Corridor, will someday stretch some 60-plus miles from Wylie to southwest Fort Worth. If, of course, DART and its partner agencies can find the money for the $2 billion project, envisioned as a public-private partnership. DART spokesman Morgan Lyons points me to the North Central…
Yesterday, a company named Clear, which bills itself as “the nation’s pre-eminent biometric secure ID program” announced that it will set up shop at DFW Airport’s Terminal E on June 27. Says the news release, the company’s “innovative biometric technology combined with members-only lanes allows travelers to speed through security,…
Every morning at a METRO stop along the Katy Freeway in Houston, several dozen commuters gather and wait. Except they’re a little out of place. “There’s a main area where the buses pick up the people who park up at the park-and-ride lot and, not far from there are relatively…
At its meeting today, the board of the North Texas Tollway Authority approved a plan to publish the names of every person who has 100 or more unpaid tolls. It will be an updated list of more than 25,000 drivers who owe something like $12.5 million. I can get behind…
DART is in the midst of a series of community meetings to explain its proposed fare changes. The in-person get-togethers seem to have gone swimmingly, but this afternoon, DART went all 21st century for a one-hour Twitter town hall from 1 to 2 p.m. today. Awfully brave, I thought. Something…
I know what you’re thinking: Come December, when DART opens its station at DFW Airport, you’ll just slide your luxury vehicle into one of the 597 brand-new parking spaces at the Orange Line terminus while you hop on Lufthansa for your European ski holiday. After all, there’s plenty of space…
When the 3-year-old and I took the DART train to free day at the Nasher on Saturday, little did I know we were on the cusp of history. Ridiculously early this morning, some 36 hours after we stepped off the train, DART accosted feted one Don Johnson as the 15-year-old…
