Mark Haslett

In January, before many people were aware that a little-known corporation with the powers of eminent domain wanted to build a private toll road through the rural communities east of Lake Lavon and Lake Ray Hubbard, the Texas Department of Transportation was promising in a written agreement to help the company get approval for the tollway from the Texas Transportation Commission. "TxDOT agrees to support the Corporation in its efforts to perform activities required to be completed before applying for or obtaining approval from the Commission under the applicable provisions by reviewing and commenting on the preliminary Project studies and other documentation prepared by the Corporation..." the agreement says.

The agreement, called a memorandum of understanding, also discusses a potential route for the tollway that has never been publicly discussed before, a route that would have invaded downtown Dallas: "In addition, a potential Phase III could extend the project westward from the President George Bush Turnpike towards the Dallas central business district," the agreement says.

In public meetings, the Texas Turnpike Corporation and the North Central Texas Council of Governments have only discussed a route that starts at the Bush Turnpike and extends east to Greenville, but that safely leaves all of us urban Dallasites out of the equation.

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Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler

Plano in 1891

Density is good. Regionalism is bad. Dallas' city government should focus on the city itself, not on getting in good with our suburban neighbors by forming partnerships that hurt the city itself. These are things Unfair Park has heard so often that it basically takes them to be true. For Dallas to become the proverbial "world-class city" it must focus on its urban core, promoting transit, walkability and growing up rather than growing out. If those things don't happen, the thinking goes, then the city's long-term existence is in doubt. We'll be crushed under the weight of toll lanes and the cars of distracted commuters scurrying north at the end of the workday.

What, though, if that wasn't true? What if there was a way forward for auto-centric, low-density cities ringed by suburbs that didn't require a paradigm shift so much as being just a little more purposeful about the trajectory the city was already on?

That's the idea proposed by Dr. Anthony Townsend, the Senior Research Scientist at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management at New York University, in his paper "Re-Programming Mobility."

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Greg Houston

Say what you will about Longhorn Wrecker, one of Dallas' notorious towing companies, you can at least never accuse it of laziness. This is the same company that during the Dallas Gay Pride Parade five years ago descended on a post office nearby and towed a few dozen cars from the parking lot, even though Longhorn didn't have a contract with the post office to tow illegally parked cars. We're sure that Longhorn meant well and was just trying to help the post office make room for all its customers that Sunday.

Longhorn's zeal for towing hasn't gone unnoticed by the state. In a massive docket, a prosecutor for the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation has compiled a list of all the laws that Longhorn has violated since mid-2013.

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Uber, Curb (Yellow Cab) and Lyft App Screenshots

One of these is cheaper than the other two. Probably a little too cheap.

About a week ago, on October 23, Uber announced that it was cutting prices for its UberX service in Dallas for the third time since the service made its Dallas debut in November 2013. Taking an UberX from my Oak Cliff apartment to the Observer offices costs about $7 now; the same trip in a Yellow Cab would be about $12.50 plus tip. It's a big difference -- one that's likely unsustainable.

As UberX becomes an established brand in Dallas and builds market share, it could become vulnerable to a predatory pricing lawsuit. Federal anti-trust law bans companies with large market shares from selling products or providing services at a loss when doing so creates a likelihood that company slashing its prices will monopolize a market.

In July, Uber was sued for predatory pricing by a group of Maryland cab companies. Now that Uber has admitted that it pays drivers more than it collects from customers in some markets where rates have been slashed, more lawsuits may follow.

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Mark Haslett

Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, is no longer recommending Texas Turnpike Corp.'s private toll road project. But the state still sort-of is.

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 should proceed in this direction, and obviously we were wrong," said Michael Morris, transportation director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments, when we talked last week.

But does a regional transportation official's recommendation even mean anything anymore? In this fast-paced world of Texas transportation officials and unpopular toll road projects, the state is sending mixed messages about whether the toll road is really dead.

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Flickr/Alan Stanton

Dallas has terrible streets. Ask any driver who hasn't been rendered prematurely senile by the constant jostling over disintegrating pavement or any cyclist who's survived a run-in with a man-eating pothole. Hell, ask City Hall, which estimates that it will take three-quarters of a billion dollars to get the city's roads back in decent shape. When you couple aging infrastructure with a long-standing municipal propensity to value shiny new hotels and bridges over nuts-and-bolts governance, this is what happens.

This ground has been well trod, and bitching about the general crappiness of the city's streets is a tired and unsatisfying exercise. But what if Dallasites could bitch about street crappiness with mathematical precision? To not only say, "Sweet Jesus, the potholes on Garland Road sure do suck," but to quantify the precise amount of suckiness those potholes contain.

See also: Dallas Streets Keep Getting Worse and Worse

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Mark Haslett

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's putting a check in the box," Lavon's Mayor Chuck Teske says in last Thursday's cover story. "I really don't think they care what the residents out here think."

Late last Friday, however, local transportation planners suddenly seemed to care what the residents thought. The North Central Texas Council of Governments announced in a press release Friday afternoon that it is no longer recommending the toll road proposal be included in the Mobility 2035 plan, a key document that outlines where federal transportation money is going to go.

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KDFW via Twitter

U.S. 75 and Forest, as we speak.

God's reign of terror against the region continues Tuesday afternoon with an all-timer of a traffic jam on U.S. 75. The freeway is closed in both directions at Forest Lane because of downed power lines on 75 proper and the service road. According to reports, a utility pole caught fire, leading to the lines crashing vengefully onto the traffic below.

Traffic is stopped. It is advisable to avoid 75 anywhere north of downtown at all costs.

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via North Central Texas Council of Governments

Our transportation overlords at the North Central Texas Council of Governments have been accused of massaging numbers to justify letting a company called the Texas Turnpike Corp. build a tollway from Dallas to Greenville that no one who lives in the way seems to want.

The council of governments, aka NCTCOG, (Or as Shutze calls them, THE COG!), presented a PowerPoint slide full of a bunch of numbers last month that they say explains why the tollway makes sense. But the PowerPoint slides had that unofficial, PowerPoint-ish look to them. Where are all the NCTCOG's data coming from?! tollway opponents demanded to know.

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Equest

Meet Zoe, a 4-year-old Equest client with spina bifida, and her therapy horse Crunchie. Now imagine a highway bursting through the walls.

Equest CEO Patrick Bricker couldn't have designed a better spot for a new headquarters. The land, 238 sprawling acres of pasture just off Lake Ray Hubbard in Rowlett, checked all the boxes: close enough to the nonprofit's current home in Wylie to be convenient to its existing base of therapeutic riding clients, big enough to accommodate the climate-controlled arenas and riding trails that are part of its expanding mission, and inside Dallas County, which would make it eligible for proceeds from the Crystal Charity Ball.

The land was very nearly gobbled up by a 665-home subdivision. It had the zoning, a name (the Trails of Cottonwood Creek) and everything, but Equest elbowed its way in at the last minute and bought the property for $4.9 million at the beginning of the year.

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