Mike Morris

Unpopular Toll Road Idea We Said Was Dead Might Not Be Dead

North Texas' regional transportation officials recently announced that they would no longer recommend forcing people out of their homes in the countryside northeast of Dallas to build another toll road, because it turned out that people didn't like the idea. "We thought we had consensus that we sho ... More >>

NCTCOG Acknowledges Public Criticism, Drops Private Toll Road Idea

From the beginning, the private toll road that would run parallel to Interstate 30 seemed like a sure thing, no matter how many people who lived in the way who said they didn't want the road. "I think that maybe the ship has already sailed, and all these meetings out there, the public comments, it ... More >>

Plans for Texas' First Private Toll Road Roll On -- and Right Over People in its Path

For the people who live in the countryside east of Lake Ray Hubbard and Lake Lavon, the appeal is in the quiet rural roads, dense trees, wild animals in the woods and bright stars shining in the night sky. To a Dallas company called the Texas Turnpike Corp., all that open space is a sign that not e ... More >>

THE COG! It Has a New Idea for the Trinity Toll Road. Be Very Very Afraid!

The weird shadow government nobody knows about but that runs everything, called "THE COG!," headquartered near Six Flags amusement park in Arlington, is cooking up a plan to ram a new highway down the city's throat even if the city votes against it. Well, that would be my interpretation of a story ... More >>

Surprise! Yellow Cab's New App Looks Just Like Uber's

They've tried to beat them at the City Council, they're still trying to beat them with Michael Morris and the NCTCOG, now Yellow Cab is trying to join Uber and Lyft by offering an app that consumers might actually want to use. See also: Vonciel Hill and Michael Morris Join Forces and Seek Delay on ... More >>

Texans Think They Can Solve Traffic With Retimed Traffic Lights

Breathe easy, Texas. Your long-term transportation needs -- the one lawmakers and policy experts have been fretting about for years -- have officially been solved. The masses, in their wisdom, which the Texas Transportation Institute has distilled in a just-published survey, have settled on a sure-f ... More >>

NCTCOG Seems Pretty Enthusiastic about Letting a Dallas Company Build Texas' First Private Toll Road

A few years ago, a private, Dallas-based corporation announced it would like to build a private toll road, all with its own money, connecting northeast Dallas County to somewhere around Greenville, running basically parallel to the Interstate 30 and passing near Lake Lavon and Lake Ray Hubbard. The ... More >>

Vonciel Hill and Michael Morris Join Forces and Seek Delay on Car-Service Regulations

You could see the dark clouds gathering Monday morning. Word had come down from somewhere near Michael Morris' Arlington compound that someone from the North Central Texas Council of Governments was going to make a contribution to the city's interminable discussion about regulating Uber, Lyft, Yell ... More >>

Michael Morris Is the King of DFW Politics, and the King Says the Highways Stay

Michael Morris, the Dallas Forth Worth area's No. 1 regional transportation planner, guru and playuh, was back in the news over the weekend and today for his decree that knocking down an overhead freeway in Dallas ain't gonna happen, no matter what the hippie wingdings think (not his precise words). ... More >>

Never Try to Take Public Transit to DFW Transportation King Michael Morris' House

Michael Morris, as Schutze mentioned this morning, is arguably the most important man in local transportation. As transportation director for the obscure but powerful North Central Texas Council of Governments, he has an outsize say in how transportation dollars get divvied up across 16 counties and ... More >>

Hey Suburbs, We Thought You Thought Gated Communities Were Cool

Culture is the most confusing thing. In today's Dallas Morning News, a state representative from a northern suburb is quoted objecting to a proposal for tolled lanes on U.S. Highway 75, the main road north from the city, saying, "We'll basically be a gated community." Wait. I thought that was what ... More >>

Tearing Down I-345 Is Not as Crazy as It Sounds

Transportation Planners Hesitant to Tear Down I-345, Because Poor People

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 ... More >>

Key Opponent to Tearing Down I-345 Likes to Keep the Race Card Up His Sleeve

This morning, Eric posted an item here with a particular quote that I just could not let pass. Eric saw through the quoted statements immediately, so I guess I'm just piling on. His story was about remarks made recently to The Dallas Morning News by a powerful regional transportation planner who not ... More >>

Think Objectively

Tra-aaa-aash, Go Pick It Up

The Cotton Belt Rail Line Can Still Be Built. Here's How.

The writing had already been on the wall for weeks by the time a Senate committee convened in April to consider John Carona's bill aimed at jump-starting construction of 62 miles of passenger rail along the Cotton Belt Corridor. The city of Fort Worth had scrawled the message in big, bold letters wh ... More >>

The Cotton Belt is Dead, at Least For Now

In the end, it wasn't the opposition of the Fort Worth City Council that killed the Cotton Belt project, nor was it the opposition from neighbors in North Dallas. Not directly, at least. Rather, the 62-mile commuter rail that would run from Plano to Fort Worth, died a quiet death at the state legisl ... More >>

Space, The Final Frontier

North Texas is Angling for a Light Rail Manufacturing Plant (Translation: Jobs!)

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 ra ... More >>

No, Alf Doesn't Count As Video Art

Get Smarter, Pay Nothing.

Soon You Might Need Two Lifelike Dummies to Use DFW's HOV Lanes

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 seems to have been successfu ... More >>

The Bogus 'Detour' Argument for the Trinity Toll Road is Finally Dead

Wait. Click the pause button. Freeze this. There's a huge point here that some people do not want us to notice. In the last 24 hours, the entire debate about the Trinity River toll road has completely shifted ground. I was just now on the phone about it with City Council member Scott Griggs. He poi ... More >>

Mayor Mike's Version of Regionalism: Selling out Dallas to the 'Burbs

In his speech last week endorsing a new highway in the Trinity River flood zone, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings threw down a gauntlet. It was sort of a buried line. I guess not everybody heard it. I did. He said at one point, "I'm a regionalist," and then he said of people who oppose his view, "For tho ... More >>

Finally, We Nail the Real Reason Dallas Needs That Trinity Toll Road

OK, look, just see if you can follow me here, because I need to know if I am following myself. You tell me. Michael Morris, a regional transportation official who gets quoted, has always said we need to build a new super-highway along the Trinity River, walling it off from downtown, because the new ... More >>

Gold Star Installation

Texas Transpo Commission Gives OK to Move Ahead With $700-Mil Redo Of IH-30, IH-35E

​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 Pr ... More >>

"The Times Are A-Changin'": Hunt, Griggs Ask Pointed Questions About Trinity Toll Road

NCTCOG's Michael Morris​According to the North Central Texas Council of Governments, the Trinity Parkway will cost around $1.8 billion, give or take a few million. That money's not there. But, hey, what's the rush: As we mentioned this morning, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' environmental impac ... More >>

Ides of March: No Game Change

Intrigue drowns out argument in political thriller.

Imagine a DFW With Significantly Eased Traffic Congestion. In, Say, The Year 2035. Maybe?

North Central Texas Council of GovernmentsThink traffic is bad now? Click to embiggen the infographic of the future.​Speaking of mass transit ...Today the Regional Transportation Council of the North Central Texas Council of Governments met with the local citizenry at a public meeting at the p ... More >>

Roger Staubach Says Super Bowl Seat Fiasco Was "a Horrible Mistake," But NFL Assured Him of Second Chance for North Texas

Photo by Sam MertenRoger Staubach at City Hall this morning​As reporters gathered around Roger Staubach following this morning's launch of Mike Rawlings's mayoral campaign at Dallas City Hall, questions inevitably shifted to his thoughts about the approximately 400 fans that were denied seats ... More >>

O, Modern and Beautiful History

Maybe One of the Few Times We'll Use "Cotton Bowl" and "Super Bowl" in Same Sentence

​Been meaning to get to this for a couple of days, ever since the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee sent out its weekly newsletter that said, at the very top:TOM LANDRY SUPER BOWL HIGHWAY: On Tuesday, June 15 at 3:30 p.m., the Host Committee along with Alicia Landry will officially announc ... More >>

Richard Allen brings jobs to the black community.That makes him racist?

Go Home, GOP|Money For Nothing|Corrections

Paying the Toll, One Road at a Time

When there’s a transportation crisis in this region, it’s a given that Michael Morris will make an appearance. And sure enough, with six projects scheduled for delay because of the Texas Department of Transportation's funding crisis, Morris, Director of Transportation for the North Central Texas ... More >>

Roads to Nowhere

Assistant City Manager Ramón F. Míguez delivered some bad news to the council's Transportation and Environment Committee on Friday. Sam Merten's heading to City Hall this afternoon for the 2 p.m. Transportation and Environment Committee get-together. Thrilling, yup. Only, there is an item of cons ... More >>

Warning You Now: A Lot of Math Ahead

There have been plenty of Trinity River shindigs in the 10 years since the original vote to approve the project, but no event brought out more big guns than the mayor's Trinity River Corridor Project Summit Friday at City Club. The alphabet-roster of attendees could fill Unfair Park for a week, but ... More >>

Michael Morris, King of the Roads

Michael Morris, Director of Transportation for the NCTCOG, lives in Arlington. Which doesn't stop him from poking his nose into other cities' bidness. Michael Morris sighting this morning. I want to read it into the record. Morris, of course, is my least favorite local politician. Nothing personal. ... More >>

The "Vengeance" of the Trinity Pavers

Belly Up

Tom Landis unloads Deep Ellum Texadelphia

Out With the Old, in With the Blues

More changes in Deep Ellum

They Just Wanna Dance

Is that so wrong, Mayor Mom?

Can't Boogie No More

Club owners fear the city may put a stop to dancing the night away

Rouging the Corpse

Miller wants to pretty-up a stinker on the Trinity River deal

Idiot's Highway

That toll road they want for the Trinity is a loser

BeloWatch

Two for the road

Martini Ranch mixes dozens of variations of the world's most famous cocktail