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Re: Dallas
Premium Outlet Mall? I had to look it up - never even knew it existed! All I know in Allen is The Village and it's far from an outlet mall. I love the trail, fishing, and the park-like atmosphere of The Village. If there's anybody here unacquainted with it - here's the directory.Originally Posted by adaniel
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A good article
Awesome picture of the ongoing construction of the LBJ Freeway
Some more articles about the LBJ progress
Era of the toll is about to dawn on Dallas-area highways
North Texas drivers wanting to minimize their traffic problems will soon have to pay the piper that state lawmakers spent decades avoiding.
Virtually every major Dallas-Fort Worth highway project includes plans for new tolls, in many cases replacing what have traditionally been free carpool lanes. By the time billions in planned construction is done, most of the area’s major corridors will either be toll roads or feature some sort of toll component.
In large part, the growing network of toll highways can be attributed to living in a state with a booming population and a Legislature that dodges solving transportation funding shortfalls.
Texas lawmakers haven’t raised the state gas tax, the primary revenue source for transportation funding, in decades. They also haven’t developed a meaningful, long-term alternative funding source. When inflation and fuel efficiency in vehicles are factored in, Texans effectively are paying far less to fund transportation needs than they were 20 years ago.
Transportation officials charged with minimizing congestion are increasingly turning to a patchwork of various financing methods. Virtually all of those plans rely on toll components whose estimated revenues are used to secure construction costs for new highways or expansions of existing ones.
- http://www.dallasnews.com/news/trans...-highways1.ece
LBJ?s fluctuating tolls peak at $2.45 during rush-hour debut | Dallas Morning News
Tolls on LBJ Freeway change at midnight, will forever vary after that | Dallas Morning News
Construction work continued in March 2014 on the interchange between Interstate 35E and LBJ freeway are drivers passed underneath new bridges. The interchange is set to open July 12, 2014. (Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer )
- Next portion of LBJ Freeway expansion to open July 12 | Dallas Morning News
Eastern side of LBJ to get toll lanes, too | Dallas Morning News
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More discussion about the controversial Trinity River Toll project
Toll road opponents planning so-called funeral for Trinity Parkway
A rendering of one of the proposed plans for the Trinity Parkway.
No one knows for sure when – or if – the Trinity Parkway will ever be born.
But its funeral is scheduled for Sunday.
Organizers of a tongue-in-cheek, New Orleans-style jazz processional through the Bishop Arts District admit that the planned $1.5 billion toll road is far from officially dead. But they say the project’s costs and potential impacts have grown so dramatically since voters last approved the riverside road that it’s time to shelve plans.
Their way of reflecting mounting community opposition is a light-hearted Second Line procession complete with a ceremonial casket and bartenders slinging a signature cocktail called the Flooded Parkway. Pallbearers include former Dallas City Council member Angela Hunt, a longtime opponent of the parkway.
“You have an equal and opposite reaction to the ridiculousness that is this project,” said Jason Roberts, a long-time community activist who is helping organize the event.
The parkway is perhaps the most contentious piece of the city’s long-held but frequently embattled plans for the Trinity River Corridor Project. The ambitious venture aims to turn the vacant floodway into a massive urban park filled with lakes, recreational areas and trails.
The opening of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge over the river is so far the signature achievement of the overall project. The city will celebrate more victories this month with the opening of the Continental Avenue Pedestrian Bridge, the Trinity Skyline trail in the river basin and a redesigned Sylvan Avenue bridge that provides access to the floodway.
The contentious toll road is envisioned as a 9-mile-long road inside the Trinity’s levees. It will connect Interstate 45 southeast of downtown to Interstate 35E and State Highway 183 northwest of downtown. Dallas voters first approved the toll road in a 1998 bond package for the larger corridor project. They again approved the parkway in a 2007 election that unsuccessfully sought to block its construction.
“We’re moving ahead,” said Michael Morris, transportation director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments.
Morris said his agency and Dallas City Hall are awaiting the final sign off from federal authorities, who are reviewing plans for the toll road. Once that happens, regional leaders will begin working on a plan to finance the $1.5 billion needed for construction.
- Toll road opponents planning so-called funeral for Trinity Parkway | Dallas Morning News
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North Dallas Tollway getting an extra lane each way.
Additional lanes are coming for one of North Texas’ most traveled corridors — and one of its most loathed overpasses.
By 2017, the North Texas Tollway Authority plans to add a fourth lane in each direction of Dallas North Tollway from Addison and North Dallas to Frisco. It also will add some lanes and partially redo the tollway’s interchange with Bush Turnpike.
About 145,000 people use the north-south corridor every day in North Dallas and through Collin County, according to the average daily traffic count at the Parker Road toll gantry.
Dan Ting of Prosper said an extra lane on the stretch of about 9.5 miles is welcome, though he fears its potential relief may be short-lived.
“That’ll certainly help, but I don’t know how long before it just becomes gridlocked again,” he said.
The $250 million expansion and redesign is the agency’s largest project on the tollway since it opened the northern extension from Gaylord Parkway in Frisco to U.S. Highway 380 in Prosper in 2007. The widening and interchange redesign currently is in the design phase.
The project also includes some restriping and the moving of streetlights from Belt Line Road to LBJ Freeway.
- Dallas North Tollway to get additional lanes, new turnpike interchange | Dallas Morning News
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Some good news for Mesquite
Mesquite officials on Monday marched closer to a new public transportation deal with STAR Transit without mention of recent overtures from Dallas Area Rapid Transit.
The council is scheduled to decide at its June 16 meeting whether Mesquite will become the third southeast Dallas County city, and the largest, to contract with STAR — rolling its own paratransit services in with a connector line from Hanby Stadium to Dallas’ Lawnview rail station that currently operates on a deal with DART.
Assistant City Manager Jerry Dittman filled council in on negotiations since the two May public hearings on the STAR proposal. In reaction to residents’ pushback over price, he said, the transit authority has agreed to charge the same $1 that Mesquite’s paratransit charges for out of town trips for three months. Then, prices would go to $3.
- read more here: Mesquite keeps focus on proposed transit switch | Dallas Morning News
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A new bicycle corridor is being planned and built for the DFW metro area
Dallas has a new bicycle coordinator who’s very eager to roll out the bike plan
The city of Dallas has been without a bicycle coordinator for almost a year following the June adios of Max Kalhammer, who came to Dallas from D.C. in 2009 and stayed around just long enough to help launch the 2011 Dallas Bike Plan and then grow frustrated with his inability to roll out more than a few miles of bike lanes, most in or around downtown. But fret not, cyclists, as the position has been filled.
One week ago today Ashley Haire strapped on her (completely unnecessary?) helmet and went to work at 1500 Marilla, following stints as a project manager with the Texas Department of Transportation and at Portland State University, where she was a senior research associate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Says Keith Manoy, the city’s senior transportation planner and one of the few city officials who’s worked to make the bike plan a reality, says he hired Haire because of her “passion for cycling” — and because she has a background in bicycle and pedestrian facility planning. In other words, he says, she “has real experience” in turning the hypothetical into the tangible.
“People have been screaming for getting facilities on the ground, and her ability to streamline the process, to get things designed and get contracts out, was really attractive to me,” says Manoy.
Haire’s been at Dallas City Hall just long enough to find out where it is. She doesn’t even have a working computer, at least one on which she can design software. So it may be a few months yet before you see evidence of her handiwork. But, she says, the bike plan is a “living document” she intends to bring to life … finally.
“My general philosophy is to keep cyclists off of the high-volume, high-speed thoroughfares,” says Haire, who got her Ph.D at the University of Texas at Austin. “I was in Portland for some time, where I was doing more bicycle stuff, and there the philosophy is: We have in some way, shape or form a parallel route where we can get people where they need to go without putting them in harm’s way. In Dallas that’s a major concern: Cars rule, and get everyone else off the road.”
- read more here: Dallas has a new bicycle coordinator who?s very eager to roll out the bike plan (from 2011) | Dallas Morning News
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Excellent Article on the DFW Metro:
The Urbanophile » Blog Archive » Dallas: A City in Transition
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Well, here are ridership numbers in general...
A few regular readers tell me they’re interested in the small print of DART’s rail ridership numbers. They’ve reminded me that I used to post them from time to time, and they want an update.
OK. Here you go. See the chart at right.
There is a pile of caveats, though.
There was a time when watching DART’s ridership gains or losses was as simple as remembering two colors: Red and Blue. And it was possible to add up all the stations of each line and compare ridership to years past.
Then these things happened to complicate comparisons:
1) DART added its Orange and Green lines.
2) During rush hours, every other train on Red Line tracks north of Mockingbird (and on part of Green Line tracks) are, in fact Orange.
3) DART changed its method of counting from manual to automated toward the end of 2012. That produced an immediate increase in official ridership numbers, at the time.
In looking at the ridership numbers keep in mind that they don’t represent human beings. Instead, they represent “trips.” You can think of them as boardings.
Look at the bottom of the chart, at the totals. The March total of 95,904 means about that many people got on. Since I get on the train twice in my typical commute, I’m typically counted twice. This morning I’d have been counted three times (and there are lots of us), since I got off the Orange at Cityplace and got on a Blue. One rider, two “trips” counted. The 95,904 trips in March may have been less than 40,000 daily commuters.
Also, don’t look at the October numbers, since they factor in a State Fair bulge.
The best way I know how to compare today’s ridership numbers with those of years past is to compare ridership by station. I’ve kept station-by-station numbers going back to 2004, when the first phases of the Red and Blue were more or less built out.
To compare then and now, I dismissed 2004 and 2005 as starter years and focused on 2006. Take a look at the three months from the spring of 2006 that I’ve excerpted here. I focus on the Red Line, which is the one I know best.
Eight years ago, Parker Road was topping 3,000, and now it’s not. That could be a short-term deficiency as the pay-for-parking program, now disbanded, pushed people to Bush.
Arapaho and Walnut Hill are down a bit, and Park Lane and Mockingbird (where the Red and Blue branch off) are up several hundred.
Since many stations are fed by buses — like the Route 361 I take to Arapaho — changes in the feeder routes can affect ridership.
- http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallas...idership.html/
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This is interesting to. Shows, that if you give people the option between car or mass transit, the majority choose car because it's a better form of transit with more freedom.
I really hope ODOT starts ramping up construction on new highways and expansion. I'm sure they will, but out of choice, I'd rather have better highways than a better transit system.After North Texas transit agencies spent billions increasing service to unprecedented and record-setting levels from 2000 to 2012, U.S. census data show that area commuters were less likely to take a bus or train to work.
An analysis by The Dallas Morning News of census data from 55 cities found that the area added more than 358,000 people who worked outside the home during the 12-year period. The number of additional transit commuters: 435.
The analysis also shows that 95.2 percent of commuters either drove or carpooled to work in 2000, a percentage that remained the same 12 years later. Yet the share of transit users fell from 2.1 percent to 1.8 percent over that time.
That’s not to say Dallas-Fort Worth public transit has failed. The area’s three transit agencies saw overall passenger trips — which include non-work journeys — increase 22.1 percent between 2000 and 2010.
State and regional planners say the network put in place during the beginning of this century isn’t just about today’s transportation needs. They’re trying to build infrastructure that will lure drivers for decades to come.
“We’re building a system for the next 50-plus years, the next 100 years,” said Gary Thomas, the president and executive director of Dallas Area Rapid Transit.
The analysis by The News found that while transit’s share of commuters declined in the 20 cities that are transit members, it collectively increased in the 35 cities that don’t pay into any transit agencies. And Dallas is almost single-handedly responsible for the transit-member decreases. The city added more than 13,000 people who work outside the home between 2000 and 2012. But 5,388 fewer people commuted by transit.
The North Central Texas Council of Governments, which steers federal and state funds to local projects, this month began organizing a regional transit task force that will look at ways to expand bus or train service to suburbs that aren’t members of transit agencies.
DART, meanwhile, wants to add an east-west rail corridor along the Cotton Belt that would connect Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport to Plano’s Red Line. It also hopes to add a second rail line through downtown Dallas in hopes of increasing capacity and flexibility for city riders. For now, both projects are largely unfunded.
But financing isn’t the only challenge facing transit agencies and planning officials. If they want to add a meaningful share of area commuters, they will finally have to overcome the political friction, population shifts and inherited development obstacles that have conspired for decades to keep the car king.
“That’s what keeps us up at night,” said Todd Plesko, DART’s planning and development vice president. “How do we remain flexible enough? How do we adapt to the changing ridership?”
- As North Texas transit options grew, bus and train commuting fell | Dallas Morning News
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Update on the Toyota HQ in Plano
Toyota picks KDC to build new Plano headquarters
The $350 million Toyota campus will be built on 100 acres at the southwest corner of State Highway 121 and Legacy Drive.
Toyota Motor Co. has selected Dallas-based developer KDC to build its new North American headquarters in Plano.
KDC is the same company that’s developing the huge State Farm Insurance campus in Richardson.
The $350 million Toyota campus will be built on 100 acres at the southwest corner of State Highway 121 and Legacy Drive. The project is expected to total more than 1 million square feet.
“We are excited to move forward with KDC to develop our new North American headquarters,” Toyota’s Doug Beebe said Thursday in a statement. “We are confident that KDC will deliver a world-class facility that our employees will be proud to call home.”
Toyota plans to move into the Plano project in 2016 and 2017. The world’s largest automaker is relocating about 4,000 jobs from Southern California, Kentucky and New York.
KDC is a partner in the group that owns the land where Toyota is building its new head offices. And KDC is also developing FedEx Office’s new headquarters just across the street.
“We are proud to be partnering with Toyota on the development of its new home in North America,” KDC CEO Steve Van Amburgh said in a statement.
“We look forward to welcoming Toyota to Plano with a state-of-the-art headquarters that truly reflects the values of the company and its employees,” he said.
The Toyota campus is part of the 240-acre Legacy West development that KDC, Karahan Cos. and Columbus Realty Partners are building in West Plano.
- Toyota picks KDC to build new Plano headquarters | Dallas Morning News
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This nice for the area
Tesla may be considering land in south Dallas for its giant battery factory
Tesla Motors may be considering a 700-acre site in southern Dallas County as a location for a $5 billion battery factory.
However, the site is one of dozens that have been submitted to Tesla for its review, and the electric-car maker is still months away from any decision.
“We are looking at a bunch of different locations and have not confirmed anything,” said Tesla spokeswoman Alexis Georgeson.
The site off Interstate 45 in southern Dallas County emerged this week as one of the locations.
The Dallas Business Journal says it is part of 4,000 acres on either side of Interstate 45 owned by Prime Rail Interests of Colleyville.
Until now, San Antonio was considered the front-running area in Texas, one of at least four states vying for the factory, which will employ up to 6,500 people.
Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico have also been identified as finalists for the plant. Some industry observers believe Nevada may be the favorite.
The automaker’s home state of California also has expressed interest in bidding for the factory.
Though attractive as a right-to-work state, Texas continues to irritate Tesla with its refusal to allow the company to sell vehicles here directly without dealerships. Direct car sales are allowed in California.
- Tesla may be considering land in south Dallas for its giant battery factory | Dallas Morning News
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West Dallas
Big project in the works for Singleton Boulevard in West Dallas
A property touted as the largest single redevelopment site in West Dallas is in play to developers.
The 40-acre tract at 1000 Singleton Boulevard is just west of the booming Trinity Groves district.
Developer StreetLights Residential is negotiating to acquire the tract now occupied by old metal industrial buildings.
The apartment developer would use the property for a large rental housing and retail community, property brokers familiar with the deal say.
The development has the potential to play a key role in the renaissance of West Dallas from a heavy commercial district to an urban neighborhood with new homes, restaurants and retail space.
John Bielamowicz, an agent with Henry S. Miller Brokerage LLC, has been marketing the Singleton property to potential buyers for about six months. The industrial site is owned by a unit of Austin Industries.
StreetLights representatives declined to comment on the deal. But filings for preliminary planning have been made with the city of Dallas.
The property stretches from the southwest corner of Singleton and Obenchain Street all the way south to the Union Pacific Railroad line.
It’s just north of the popular Belmont Hotel and the new Sylvan Thirty apartment and retail development.
With construction of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge and success of the Trinity Groves restaurant and retail complex, apartment developers have been flocking to the area west of downtown Dallas.
Developer Trammell Crow Residential has plans to build more than 300 apartments on West Commerce Street on the site of the vacant Mission Motel and adjoining property.
Wood Partners is already building a rental community in the same area.
- Big project in the works for Singleton Boulevard in West Dallas | Dallas Morning News
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Article on the status of the housing market in Dallas
D-FW new home prices soaring thanks to higher costs | Dallas Morning News
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Wade Park Frisco, TX U/C
Developers break ground on Frisco?s Wade Park | Dallas Morning News
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D-FW far outpaces the rest of the state in industrial building
D-FW far outpaces the rest of the state in industrial building | Dallas Morning NewsBy Steve Brown
August 5. 2014
Almost twice as much industrial space is under construction in North Texas as there is being built in the other top Texas markets combined, according to a new report by CBRE Group.
More than 18.5 million square feet of warehouse space is being built in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, CBRE estimates.
The other top Texas industrial building markets – Houston, Austin and San Antonio – together have only about 10.5 million square feet of industrial space being built, according to the commercial real estate firm.
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Bleu Ciel Dallas
?Own a Piece of the Sky? in Dallas | Elite Traveler
Starts this fall.
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KDC Tower
The Retail Connection
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100 Parkhouse Dallas Proposed
Home | Downtown - Dallas - Luxury Apartments - 100 Parkhouse Dallas
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I was at a ULI North Texas meeting last week and there was a panel discussion about the Trinity Parkway. One of the panelists was, I believe, the president of the citizens' council. She was very in favor of the project. Well, a Dallas city councilwoman was at the meeting as well and she got into an argument with the the panelist saying she hopes the project never happens. It was interesting to see the hotly contested issue in person.
I really hope it isn't built. The last thing Dallas needs is more and more urban highways. It would pretty much kill the experience of hiking, walking, biking near the river....not to mention that we shouldn't be building huge road infrastructure between flood levees!
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yes because all the huge roads and highways in Dallas are hampering development. That is why Dallas is doing so poorly in new construction and growth.
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I don't think its getting built now that the Mixmaster is getting widened. The costs with it have soared to about 6x what is was budgeted, and I think the population in general has hit "peak tollroad."
You are right, building a freeway inside a levee is the height of idiocy. I'm not sure who thought this was a good idea. D Magazine had a good write up on this a few months back.
The Trinity Parkway Is*Dead - D Magazine
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It's almost depressing to see all the things going on in DFW, Austin and Houston. I find myself pleased about stuff being done in OKC until I see stuff being done there. They do things with their highways and build some amazing things and it never seems to stop. We get on here every day just hoping for something to get "proposed" and then wait for years talking about it every day on a forum. I love OKC and it's changed so much over the years but we really aren't even in the same stratosphere as those cities and never will be.
As long as we have the current leadership at the city level (not including the mayor) and ODOT and the way they do things on the cheap, nothing will ever compare to the way they do things in Texas. I find that sad actually and have always wondered why we do things so backwards at times. I was in Tulsa last weekend and getting on and off the BA Expressway and couldn't believe how out dated and awful the on and off ramps were. Anway, congrats to those thriving cities in Texas and may OKC continue to excel as well, just at an entirely different pace.
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I didn't say anything about hampering development or that Dallas was doing so poorly in new construction of growth.
I'm advocating that another urban toll road through a FLOODPLAIN is a bad idea.
With that said, I would advise you to check out A New Dallas to see what kind of effect that removing an urban highway could have for downtown Dallas.
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Actually I don't support the Trinity Tollway just FYI. I just think the highways in Dallas are amazing and something we should look to as model. I also love their Dart system and wonder when we'll get something like that.
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I really don't want to see highways like the mixmasters that Dallas has developed in OKC. all the elevated roadway is a nightmare for Ice and snow and maintenance. we just removed I-40 Crosstown I don't think we want to make that mistake again.
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