Honkin' Mad

What the new Arlington MAX buses will look like - colorful!

Here's an image of what the new MAX buses in Arlington will look like:

What do you think of the color scheme? Well, for one, I see LOTS of colors in there. ... It looks like UT-Arlington's blue and orange is represented, as well as DART's famous yellow and the red and blue of the Fort Worth Transportation Authority. Also, is there some Dallas Cowboys blue and Texas Rangers red and blue mixed in there?

What a colorful partnership it is ... this two-year pilot project to bring public transportation to Arlington. ;-)

@gdickson

P.S.: Hat tip to the Fort Worth Transportation Authority (aka the T) for sending along this artist rendering.

DART service to Arlington a step closer to reality #fundingtransport

A Dallas Area Rapid Transit committee has decided to press forward with a 24-month experimental bus service from the Trinity Railway Express CentrePort Station to the University of Texas at Arlington - despite concerns about Arlington's long-term commitment to transit.

Bill would let Arlington join Dallas Area Rapid Transit

@gdickson

A bill has been filed that would make it possible for Arlington to join Dallas Area Rapid Transit.

Senate Bill 1461 by state Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, would clear up confusion about what cities are eligible to join the agency, which operates more than 90 miles of light rail, co-owns the Trinity Railway Express and runs a massive bus system. The bill specifies that a city is eligible to join a transit authority if any part of the city "is located in a county that is adjacent to a county in which the authority has territory."

 DART is headquartered in Dallas County, next door to Arlington in Tarrant County.

A companion bill, HB 3642, was filed in the House by state Rep. Linda Harper-Brown, R-Irving. The bills were filed Thursday and Friday, just before the deadline for non-emergency and non-local bills during the legislative session.

Arlington and DART officials are courting each other these days. Arlington later this year hopes to roll out bus service between its downtown area and the TRE's CentrePort train station, in a two-year pilot project funded by business leaders and the University of Texas at Arlington.

DART, meanwhile, is aggressively seeking new cities to enter its fold. Arlington is an obvious choice, with more than 300,000 residents and a reputation as the nation's largest city without full-fledged transit service.

But Arlington voters have rejected transit three times since 1980. Even so, DART and the T are proposing to run Arlington's two-year bus service for just $700,000 a year - if Arlington agrees to hold an election asking residents to join DART within four years.

Under current law cities must be in the same county where DART is located, or adjacent to a current DART  city. There was some sentiment that DART can already claim to be located in Tarrant County, since the agency co-owns the TRE and makes daily runs from Fort Worth to Dallas.

Also, DART owns the Cotton Belt railroad tracks in Fort Worth, where the proposed TEX Rail line is tentatively scheduled to begin operating in 2016.

But DART officials are seeking clarity to ensure they can bring Arlington and perhaps other Metroplex cities into the fold, DART board member Mark Enoch of Rowlett said.

"We have assets in Tarrant County, with the TRE. We have liabiilty there, employees there," he said. "But one of the issues we're looking at it, we're asking legislators to clear up that law."

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Arlington's Victor Vandergriff steps down from NTTA board

@gdickson

12:25 a.m. update: Here's a link to an updated version of the story with more details about Vandergriff's potential interest  in the job of Arlington mayor, as it appears in the Thursday Star-Telegram edition.

Arlington businessman Victor Vandergriff announced Wednesday that he is leaving the North Texas Tollway Authority board, a position he has held since 2007.

Vandergriff was chairman of the board in 2010 and 2011, taking over from predecessor Paul Wageman of Plano, who guided the agency through tremendous growth but was sometimes criticized for aggressive management.

The decision takes effect at the end of the month, a tollway official said.

Vandergriff attempted to unify the board, but was unable to pass through sweeping changes on the tollway authority's reliance on a small number of legal, engineering and other professional firms to do virtually all of its day-to-day work. So he stepped down as chairman and was replaced by former Fort Worth Mayor Kenneth Barr, the current chairman.

Still, Vandergriff received a standing ovation from the tollway board during a meeting Wednesday in Plano.

Vandergriff was a vocal member of the board when key projects were delivered, including the Sam Rayburn Tollway in Denton and Collin counties, and the western extension of the President George Bush Turnpike in Grand Prairie and Irving (a key route to Cowboys Stadium in Arlington).

“We cannot thank Victor enough for the countless hours he has dedicated to working on NTTA projects that increase mobility for North Texas drivers,” Barr said in a statement.

He also oversaw the conversion of the region's tollways to an all-electronic form of collection - essentially doing away with the toll booths - and the beginning of construction on the 28-mile Chisholm Trail Parkway project from Interstate 30 near downtown Fort Worth to U.s. 67 in Cleburne.

Chisholm Trail Parkway is scheduled for completion in 2014.

More recently, Vandergriff was trying to secure construction of the Texas 360 extension south of Arlington-Mansfield to U.S. 287.

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Dallas Fort Worth toll lanes will be named TEXpress lanes

@gdickson

The developer of the LBJ Express and North Tarrant Express projects held a name contest to come up with a moniker for the toll lanes that will be built on freeways.

TxDot ready for winter weather - if it ever gets here ;-)

@gdickson

The Texas Department of Transportation is ramping up its preparations for icy weather, even as the Dallas-Fort Worth area prepares for another weekend of gorgeous days with highs in the 80s.

About 30 snow plows are available in the North Texas region, and more can be called in if a storm is severe enough, agency spokesman Val Lopez said.

"If the storm is bad enough, we are able to flex our manpower where it is needed the most," Lopez said.

During the week of the 2010 Super Bowl at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, transportation department crews from across the state stayed in the Metroplex for several days, working in shifts to try to keep the roads clear for commuters and hundreds of thousands of tourists.

The agency has a stockpile of liquid magnesium chloride, which can be sprayed on roads as an ice preventative, or used in higher concentration to break up ice that has already formed. The agency uses a truck equipped with hoses and pipes on the front end to spray herbicide in warmer months, and a different set of pipes and nozzles on the rear end to spray magnesium chloride during an ice event.

"It comes out at the same rate, so the difference between pre-treating the roads to prevent ice and de-icing - or removing the ice that's already there - is a matter of how fast you drive," said Vernon Well, a maintenance technician. "For de-icing you drive about 10 miles per hour. For pre-treating you drive about 40 to 45 mph."

The agency also had several large piles of sand, and a sand-salt mixture known as chat, to spread on roads.

Photos: Vernon Wells, Texas Department of Transportation maintenance technician, stands outside his truck waiting to begin a demonstration of how to spread magnesium chloride.

2. A herbicide truck is also equipped with pipes and nozzles to spread liquid magnesium chloride, to remove or prevent the formation of ice on roads.

3. A dump truck is equipped with a sand spreader on its rear end.

Texas marks macabre anniversary: 12 years since last fatality-free day

@gdickson

The last time Texas enjoyed a fatality-free day on its road system - Nov. 7, 2000 - Florida election officials were counting "hanging chads" and paving the way for Texas Gov. George W. Bush to become president.

The Baltimore Ravens had just completed the first of 11 straight wins that would propel them to a Super Bowl championship.

Gasoline was about $1.34 a gallon.

On Wednesday, the Texas Department of Transportation asked motorists to observe the anniversary of Nov. 7, 2000 (which, coincidentally, was also the Wednesday after a presidential election), as a reminder that it's their responsibility to drive safely.

Based on the numbers reported by police agencies statewide last year, the state averages 8.35 road deaths per day. Some days, the carnage on Texas roads is worse than others. But always - since Nov. 7, 2000 - there is at least one person killed.

"We've always kept track of it. It's just not something we've announced in the past," said transportation department spokeswoman Kelli Reyna. "We're just trying to get a call of action to people. We're putting fatality numbers on message signs. We're trying to do more things to make motorists aware of their own actions that can prevent this. We feel it is incumbent upon us to remind people they have a job to do."

Since Nov. 7, 2000:

• 41,252 people have been killed on Texas roads, roughly the equivalent of the population of Keller. That figure includes 3,048 people killed in 2011 and 2,545 so far this year.
•  28.9 percent of those killed weren't buckled up.
• 34.9 percent were in a crash that involved alcohol.
• 13.4 percent were distracted.

Even as the state raises speed limits - including the 85 mph toll road that opened last month outside Austin - law enforcement officials say they'll be stepping up enforcement to hold the line on fatalities.

“Texas state troopers are dedicated to protecting the public and they will continue working to identify and remove dangerous drivers from our highways,” Texas Department of Public Safety director Steven McCraw said. “I urge all drivers traveling in our state to do their part by driving responsibly, eliminating distractions, adhering to the posted traffic signs and ensuring everyone in the vehicle is buckled up."

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New era for transportation; more women in leadership positions; new dollars, new partnerships

HURST - A panel of five transportation experts spent part of Friday morning briefing about 500 guests at a Northeast Tarrant Transportation Summit about a plethora of ongoing road projects, and the moderator couldn't help noticing that it was a diverse group.

"You're seeing the best and the brightest," said Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments. "Three of the five are women. That's no coincidence."

Getting a road built in your neighborhood still requires lots of networking with an alphabet soup of agencies that control the big dollars -- the council of governments, Texas Department of Transportation, North Texas Tollway Authority, Fort Worth Transportation Authority. But it's no longer the good ol' boys club it used to be.

Among the speakers Friday at the annual Northeast Tarrant Transportation Summit: Elizabeth Mow, who is in charge of project delivery for the tollway authority; Christie Gotti, a senior program manager at the council of governments; and Renee Lamb, Tarrant County transportation director.

Gotti, who holds a master's degree in public administration from the University of Texas at Arlington, didn't necessarily expect that the transportation industry would be a man's world. Her initial interest was in environmental work, before her path at the council of governments led toward highway funding issues. But she has noticed a difference in not only the gender but also ethnic makeup of her counterparts.

"If you look around the council of governments, it has always been a diverse group, but now you're seeing a bigger difference the last few years outside our agency," Gotti said after the panel discussion.The long-time member of WTS, an international group that seeks to advance the role of woman in the transportation industry, atttributed the change at least partly to the work by universities to get more women and minorities interested in fields such as engineering.

Nonetheless, WTS reports that much work remains to achieve a balance in the workplace. For example, the number of girls studying computing has declined 13 percent during the past 10 years. More than 60 million women are in the labor force, but women make up only 8 percent of engineers, 18 percent of engineering technicians and 30 percent of natural scientists, according to a WTS fact sheet.

Still, it's a new era in many other ways. Several huge transportation projects are now under construction in Tarrant County, and many others are being planned. Projects touched on during the summit Friday included the proposed Texas 170 toll road near Alliance Airport, Texas 26 in Colleyville and the relocation of Farm Road 156 and BNSF rail lines in and around Haslet.

Regional planners say the key is learning to use alternative forms of funding, and to form multi-agency partnershgips to spread around the pain and responsibility.

Other highlights:

• In Grapevine, the $1 billion reconstruction of Texas 114/121 known as the DFW Connector is 68 percent complete, and nine months ahead of its scheduled completion in 2014, spokeswoman Kristen Schropp said.
• Phil Wilson, hired last year as executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation, told summit attendees that “Texas is in many ways the test place for big ideas, because of our innovation.”Wilson, who has been at the helm for about 100 days, said he is conducting the first major internal reorganization of the department since World War II.The department has an annual budget of about $10 billion, and 11,000 employees – 1,153 of whom are engineers.“This summit today is not really about transportation,” Wilson said. “It’s about economic development. It’s about jobs. It’s about moving people day to day, to work. It’s about moving goods.”

@gdickson

Super Bowl Highway signs to be auctioned off; Sports memorabilia from Interstate 30 'Tom Landry Highway'

ARLINGTON – Call it a sign – actually, 12 signs – that there’s still money to make from Super Bowl XLV. The big game is now a little more than a year in North Texas’ rear-view mirror, and signs proclaiming Interstate 30 as “Super Bowl Hwy” have been removed from the roadsides. But regional transportation planners see no need for those green highway placards, which are owned by the North Central Texas Council of Governments, to gather dust. So instead, members of that organization’s offshoot, the Regional Transportation Council, are taking steps to auction off 12 of the signs.

The giant metal banners come in two sizes – one about two feet tall and 14 feet long, the other about 18 inches tall and 10.5 feet long. They are made to attach to the top of the permanent “Tom Landry Highway” signs that are displayed along I-30 in Fort Worth, Arlington and Dallas.

Michael Morris, council of governments transportation director, thinks they’d be a perfect item for a wall at a restaurant, sports park or perhaps even inside Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones might care to put in a bid, seeing as how his team hasn’t been able to find a road to the Super Bowl since the 1995 football season.

“They aren’t going to raise a lot of money, but they’ve been sitting here for months and they’re not doing us any good here,” Morris said during a break at the RTC’s monthly meeting Thursday in Arlington, where the signs have been leaning up against a board room wall.

For prospective bidders, there are two catches:

• Owners of strip clubs, or other businesses that aren’t considered family-rated, likely will not be considered. “Certain places, we won’t have them,” Morris said.
• Auction winners probably will have long-term but temporary custody of the signs. They’ll have to agree to give them back, if the region is selected to once again host a Super Bowl – perhaps as early as 2016. If that happens, the signs will once again need to be placed out on I-30.

Auction proceeds will go to the Super Bowl Host Committee’s Youth Education Town charity, which provides afterschool activities for boys and girls. The RTC likely will vote on the final auction rules during its next meeting March 8, and conduct the auction shortly afterward.

“I hope they bring in lots of money,” said Arlington Councilwoman Kathryn Wilemon.

@gdickson

Ferris Bueller takes another day off in Super Bowl ad for Honda