Passenger Transportation

Adventures in a Car-Free Dallas: Cabbies Find Ways to Survive in a Tough Business

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 Silvertstein talked to ... More >>

Yellow Cab Conducts Regular Background Checks? That's Not What It Said Under Oath.

Just how strict is Yellow Cab about putting safe, responsible cab drivers on the road? That answer depends on which day you're talking to Yellow Cab. On Tuesday, for instance, Yellow Cab's owner Jack Bewley gave a long speech at City Hall's special transportation meeting touting how safe and respo ... More >>

The Yellow Cab Emails that Spurred Dallas' Uber Crackdown -- "We Are Bleeding!"

An NBC5 report last night shows just how desperate Yellow Cab Co. was to run Uber, the rider-summoned, smartphone-app car service, out of its territory. In emails dating as early as May, a lawyer for the biggest taxi company in North Texas hectored the city manager's office about citing Uber drivers ... More >>

Dallas' Unfair Fight to Crush Uber

City Hall does the taxi industry's dirty work to kill competition.

American Airlines Grounds All Flights, Will Offer Refunds as Soon as the Computers Work

UPDATE: We are now in a system-wide ground delay until 4:00pm CT as we work to resolve this issue. We apologize for any inconvenience.— American Airlines (@AmericanAir) April 16, 2013 American Airlines broke the news a while ago that it's in the midst of a massive, system-wide computer failu ... More >>

Cabbies Say There's a Taxi Monopoly in Dallas, and They're Fighting to Break it Up

Jack Bewley and Jeff Finkel have spent the last several years methodically strengthening their position in the Dallas taxi market. Their company, Irving Holdings, was established with the merger of five local cab companies. In 2007, they brought Freedom, Eagle, and Jet taxi companies. Earlier this y ... More >>

Mayor Mike Rawlings Offers American Airlines and Its Employees His "Emotional Support"

​Over the course of the day a few items have rolled in related to American Airlines and AMR's Chapter 11 filing this morning. Among them: A Q&A from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport about how the bankruptcy might but probably won't affect the airport (it follows in full); and a statemen ... More >>

U.S. Department of Transpo Forks Over $5.6 Mil to Study OKC-to-DFW High-Speed Rail Line

U.S. Department of Transportation​This morning, as expected, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood passed out $2.4 billion in funding to 54 high-speed rail projects in 23 states. Among the recipients: the Texas Department of Transportation, which'll take home $5.6 million intended to allow a fu ... More >>

About That Dallas-to-Houston Bullet Train ...

​About a year ago there was some big back-and-forthing over the viability of a high-speed rail connecting Dallas and Houston. But since then, we've heard next to nothing. Except: Our sister paper in Houston directs our attention this morning to news of a Monday-morning meeting during which Yoshiyu ... More >>

DART Wants to Take You to the Super Bowl. But the Feds Have to Sign Off.

​I was looking at the meeting agenda for tomorrow's Dallas Area Rapid Transit board meeting and noticed a couple of items of interest on the planning committee sneak peak, chief among them: If DART wants to get folks from member cities to the Super Bowl at Cowboys Stadium come February, it'll have ... More >>

The Juice is Loose on AA Flight 614

​Too bad we still don't do our Ask An American Airlines Spokesman bit. Could come in handy on a day like today, which we begin, thanks to one good Friend of Unfair Park, with Dallas consultant Dave Koss's lengthy tale of an AA flight attendant's bizarre response to a first-class passenger's reques ... More >>

Well, This is One Way to Clean the Inside of a Plane: Go Green! Right, Southwest?

Southwest Airlines had its Media Day today, so expect myriad deep-think pieces in coming hours about the Love Field-based carrier's newfangled "Green Plane." Um, which is ...? Well, here's the press release that inventories all the "environmentally friendly interior materials" being used, among them ... More >>

Kay Bailey and Ray Hutchison, Putting the "Green" in DART's Green Line

Ray Hutchison​"Did Kay Bailey Hutchison cross an ethical line by supporting a rail line that is a payday for her husband?" That's the question addressed in this morning's Texas Watchdog piece written by former Observer-er Matt Pulle, who examines the Texas gubernatorial candidate's involvement in ... More >>

Tracks of My Tears, | Slumming It, | Critics’ Pick: Tool,

According to UNT Profs, DART's the "Economic Engine Making Dallas a World-Class City"

Click to expland the image if you actually want to peek at DART's 2030 Transit PlanThis morning at Dallas Area Rapid Transit HQ, president Gary Thomas lauded the rail expansion as "on time and under budget," and presented a new study by professors at the University of North Texas's Center for Econom ... More >>

Billion Dollar Babies: Build America Bonds to Build Dallas Area Rapid Transit's Light Rail and Maybe the Convention Center Hotel

Dallas Area Rapid Transit The Martin Luther King Jr. station, part of the Green Line expansionNo doubt you've heard of the Build America Bond -- "the financial crisis equivalent of war bonds," says this BusinessWeek explainer from last month, if you haven't. Dallas Area Rapid Transit has cert ... More >>

American Makes $278 Mil From Checked Bags, to Which Southwest Responds, "So?"

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, American Airlines pocketed $278 million in bag fees last year, putting it at the top of the list of airlines making extra scratch by charging to lose your luggage. But Dallas-based Southwest Airlines insists it still won't go there: Southwest CEO G ... More >>

So, You Want to Know Who's Paying for the Dallas Love Field Redo, Do You?

Pardon, but light of yesterday's announcement that American Eagle has flown the coop at Dallas Love Field till the dust settles, city officials would like to clear up any misconceptions concerning the forthcoming extreme makeover scheduled at the airport. Construction's scheduled to occur sooner tha ... More >>

AA Flight Attendants to Work the Picket Counter at DFW Tomorrow

Airline Execs Now Have Common Enemy: Goddamned Oil Speculators!

So, from the looks of a letter that arrived in my in-box last night, most of the airlines' woes come from but a single source: oil speculators. At least, that's what American Airlines' Gerard Arpey and Southwest Airlines' Gary Kelly -- and nine of their fellow CEOs and presidents -- insist in a miss ... More >>

Southwest Airlines Don't #$*!% Around

After the jump, the Southwest Airlines ad that appeared in today's Wall Street Journal. Which brings me to this week's installment of Ask American Airline Spokesman Tim Wagner: Is that ad brilliant or what? --Robert Wilonsky

The American Way: Pissed. Off.

Based Here. Best Here. Surely You Jest Here?

AA's Tim Wagner Will Now Answer Your Questions and Concerns. Be Nice.

As many Friends know, Tim Wagner is the spokesman for American Airlines. He's also a frequent contributor to Unfair Park's comments -- especially, oh, when it comes to items concerning American Airlines, which are more and more frequent during these troubled times in the airline industry. To that en ... More >>

Television Haters Want American To Fly Friendler Fare. They'll Get Right On It.

Herb Kelleher Had Himself a Good Ol' Time In Front of Congress

Over at the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure's Web site, you'll find the best nine-hour film this side of, um, Shoah? (Sorry, first one that came to mind.) It's the entirety of yesterday's hearing -- Critical Lapses in FAA Safety Oversight of Airlines: Abuses of Regulatory "Partn ... More >>

DART Doing Fuzzy Math

DART: What billion dollar shortfall?

American Airlines: They'll Get Ya There. At Some Point.

More good news for American Airlines, which is starting the year with two false-imprisonment lawsuits hanging over its head. Today, the U.S. Department of Transportation released its Air Travel Consumer Report for November, and of the 20 major carriers in the United States, Fort Worth-based American ... More >>

Aunt Fannie's Butt|Smogville|Douchebaggery

TWA Flight Attendants' Fury at American Airlines Takes Flight

Early last week we posted a short item on the ongoing tiff between former TWA flight attendants and American Airlines. It has since generated 61 comments and counting, one of which came from an American Airlines spokesperson defending his company's position. Who knew that Unfair Park is the place wh ... More >>

KZPS: Now the Best Radio Station Ever?

Southwest by Southwest

Paula Abdul doesn't like Southwest Airlines. Allegedly. Very allegedly. Some Southwest Airlines notes this morning, as I prep for an afternoon flight to Austin: Says here that CreditSights analyst Roger King figures now would be as good a time as any for the Dallas-based airline to get involved in ... More >>

Southwest Still Good; American, Getting Worse

Southwest Airlines, as always, had the lowest consumer complaint rate (0.18 per 100,000 passengers, neat) of all the major airlines in 2006. Yet it came in at only No. 5 on the Air Quality Rating 2007 report, issued today by Brent D. Bowen of the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Dean Headley of W ... More >>

Match Game

And Qantas Never Crashed

Texas Pacific Group, the Fort Worth-based private capital firm ($20 billion worth) with arms in San Francisco and London, has made a roughly $8.5 billion takeover move for Aussie Qantas Airways in tandem with the Australian merchant bank Macquaried Bank, Ltd., as reported in the Wall Street Journal. ... More >>

It's a Secret, No Doubt

The Amazing Schutzini

The plan for Dallas' future: blood in the 'hood, Mayor Hunt and the Venerable Rasansky

It's the American Way

All's Fare

Crosshairs

Blackwood is a way to target somebody at City Hall

Letters

Slow Ride

Try getting to Toronto on DART light rail some day

DART Guns

Transit agency kisses off gunplay story

Memory Problem

Plans for a 9-11 memorial for American Airlines workers hit snags

Eyeball to Eyeball

Why the Mexican bus-company owners went from hating Laura Miller to endorsing her

Best Sign That We're a Big City Now

The Opening of DART's CityPlace Light Rail Stop

Highwaymen

San Antonio conservatives and a professional road warrior try to hijack a DART rail election

Is this any way to run an airport?

Black bookseller Robert Crews once ran a thriving store at D/FW. Now he's in court fighting to save his business, thanks to airport policies that boost local minorities and squeeze airport concessionaires

Hello, Dallas! DART Light Rail is here

One Scared Puppy

Why Dallas' Greyhound Lines is fighting for its life