Of late, the North Texas Tollway Authority has been testing out a host of new methods to encourage drivers to pay their tolls. The agency will block your vehicle registration and impound your car. It will publicly shame you. It will sue you. Sometimes, though, nothing works as well as…
The Texas Department of Transportation and its transportation-planning surrogates have unsheathed their latest weapon against the proposal to tear down I-345, and that weapon is poor people. The argument was first voiced by Dallas Morning News editorial writer Rodger Jones, who wondered a few days ago why the urban types…
In case you missed it, NPR ran a piece yesterday about Texas’ moderately surprising move toward bike-friendliness. The state, especially its cities, have been adding trails, bike lanes and pro-cycling policies at a respectable, if not quite Portland-esque, clip. Just look at Dallas’ ambitious bike plan, with its plans to…
When intrepid Observerer Amy Silverstein recently took DART to DFW International Airport, she missed her hypothetical flight and narrowly avoided being devoured by coyotes. She ultimately discovered that there was a bus that took her to the terminal, but the trip was long, arduous and complicated. That problem will be…
Don’t have a car but the bus isn’t your style? As part of our look at car-free Dallas living, Amy Silverstein weighs the pros and cons of other ways to get there from here. Taxi Pro: Even if you’re partying in a sketchy part of town, calling Yellow Cab guarantees…
As part of our look this week at what it means to live in Dallas without a car, Amy Silverstein put DART to the test to see how well it could get her from our offices at Oak Lawn and Maple avenues to D/FW International. There’s a United Airlines flight…
Critics of Uber say that without the heavy hand of city regulation, the app-based limo dispatching company won’t serve residents in poor neighborhoods. Critics of Yellow Cab complain that’s pretty much how things often work now. For our look at living car-free in Big D, Amy Silverstein pitted Yellow Cab…
For all the complaints about taxi service in Dallas — drivers often refuse to take credit cards, they dislike short hauls and sometimes they’re slow to arrive — making a living driving a cab in Dallas can be an iffy proposition. For our look at living car-free in Dallas, Amy…
The revelation last year that Dallas City Hall, in an effort to help its benefactors at Yellow Cab, was quietly working to put Uber out of business sparked a massive public outcry. Transportation hearings have turned into a referendum on the taxi industry. Uber has been called racist. And it’s…
Here’s an idea. What if, instead of maxing out its credit card on a road-building spree, Texas took care of the roads it already has? Crazy talk, right? If the past decade has proved anything, it’s that the state’s fiscal conservatism ends as soon as the asphalt begins. So who,…
When Lyft rolled into Dallas last fall, it was a popular cab alternative for city-dwellers who couldn’t afford Uber’s “surge pricing” and who also didn’t need to travel very far. But that’s about to change. Starting tomorrow afternoon, Lyft’s service area in Dallas will expand to a much bigger grid…
When DART updated nearly half of its bus fleet in 2012 and 2013, it opted for vehicles fueled by compressed natural gas. But fossil fuels are so 20th century, hence the transit agency’s just-announced plans to add all-electric buses. DART isn’t about to electrify its entire fleet. The plan right…
In news that should surprise no one, the Texas Department of Transportation will not tear down Interstate 345, the 1.7-mile stretch of highway separating Deep Ellum from downtown. The Dallas Morning News reported over the weekend that the agency will instead repair the aging span, citing the same concern voiced…
The Wright Amendment, the baldly anti-competitive 1979 law designed to protect DFW International Airport, dies for good on October 13, when the ban expires on direct flights from Love Field to anywhere that isn’t in Texas or the four states that border it. And what exciting new destinations might be…
We’ve all seen those desperate emails that Yellow Cab sent to Dallas City Hall last summer, using its influence there to demand that officials crack down on Uber, the digital-savvy car service. Poor Uber, the narrative went, just a little start-up under assault by the entrenched taxi industry. But when…
Sooner or later, it’s going to happen. A driver for Uber or Lyft is going to crash. People will be injured, property damaged. And then, some poor Dallasite with a neck brace and a stack of medical bills Dallas will discover just how lousy these ride-sharing apps do insurance. That’s…
In a secret underground lair somewhere deep below Europe, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is hunched over a map of Mansfield, Texas, an evil glimmer lighting his eyes. A mirthless chuckle escapes his lips as he presses pencil to paper. Lubbock County Judge Tom Head may have sniffed out his…
This, no matter what the DART-phobic among you might assume, is not what the average bus ride is like. Nor is it what your average DART driver is like. Sure, most are less than jovial, and that sidelong glance they cast as you step on board could be interpreted as…
The Frisco traffic officer was camped in an unmarked Chevy, trying to catch drivers going above the speed limit, when he noticed something suspicious. Some of the motorists could see him. They waved. He had a feeling that a man named Ron Martin might have had something to do with…
After a frack job is complete, can we be certain that the energy industry is taking care to ship the oil as safely as possible? Two United States senators are gently questioning that as a series of crude oil train explosions have made the news. On December 30, a crude…
Driving on LBJ Freeway while it’s under construction is pure misery. Living next to it, as Laraine Schaffer and her neighbors have discovered over the past three years, is pure hell. Schaffer’s home is in the 12000 block of High Meadow Drive in far Northwest Dallas, a street that backs…
SeaWorld has taken a bit of a beating recently as the backlash from CNN’s Blackfish documentary, which lays bare the cruel folly of keeping killer whales in captivity and forcing them to entertain the masses. To a lesser extent, so has Southwest Airlines, which has a longstanding partnership with the…
