Alex Wolford

Psst... @theoverheadwire.com, this is a good one.

Listen, if you want to talk into "the device" to record your thoughts that bad, you might as well just go full Dale Cooper and buy a microcassette recorder.

Dallas: A great case study in how the overhyping of "microtransit" is encouraging leaders to destroy useful transit networks.

An episode of WTYP where the person you bring on is the disaster in question.

New article for @dmagazine.bsky.social about DART withdrawal elections and the future of the agency. Featuring the work of @humantransit.bsky.social, city council members using ChatGPT, and a detour to talk about transit in the Windy City.

Some SD units and U-boats seem to have made their way south here.

Far from their home in the Northeast, three Conrail locomotives roll past Downtown Dallas in September 1988. While these locomotives might be wearing Conrail colors, they are seen here likely running on an MKT train.

Photograph by Calvin Christian.

UT Dallas is Trying to Punish a Student Editor for Editing UT Dallas has consistently been accused of free speech violations in recent years.

I'm proud to be a board member of The Retrograde and I am deeply concerned about how UT Dallas is seeking to punish one of its editors for doing what any good editor does.

www.dallasobserver.com/opinion/ut-d...

Lots and lots of coal, about 40% of the nation's total supply.

This is one of my favorite maps for understanding how freight moves around America. Railroads ship lots of intermodal, grain, and coal out west. Barges work with bulk goods in the lower Mississippi, and trucking mostly handles lower-volume manufactured goods.

The M-Line streetcar "Petunia" works its way through Uptown Dallas on Cole Avenue in September 2023. It's trailed by the 209 bus, which follows an almost identical route to the M-Line but deviates to connect to the West Transfer Center Downtown.

Photograph by David Hawkins.

From a draft earlier this year I never quite finished

Station plan from past planning documents.

Map of the region. Point markers refer to stations. TRE is the blue line in the south, the orange line is to its north, and the BNSF Madill subdivision is the white line running vertically.

Here are some maps to clear up the geography. I'm still entirely unsure if Irving is proposing a new service along the BNSF line (white on the map) or if they made an error about what tracks the TRE (blue on the map) runs on.

This station has been mentioned in DART plans before, where it was deferred, but it was never intended to serve the Trinity Railway Express. Rather, it was for a new, unrealized commuter rail line along the BNSF Madill Subdivision.

Proposed deal from the City of Irving.

Proposed deal from the City of Irving with the section mentioned boxed.

This is a proposed deal from the City of Irving sent to DART. Among other things, it calls for the creation of a "South Las Colinas Urban Center Station" that would receive light rail and TRE services. The problem is, this proposed station is 3 miles away from the TRE line.

Trains

I hate the part of writing where I know it's over for the day but maybe if I click between the dozens of tabs I have open for 30 minutes straight it will come back

They should give you a private railcar to ride around in like William H. Moore.

Train beneath a bridge.

Peeking around the corner, a DGNO freight train rumbles onto the former MKT mainline. Overhead, viaducts carry the DART Green Line and Downtown Carrollton station, an artifact from the DART system being based on old freight rights-of-way.

Photograph by Sam Combs.

Does going to the "portfolio" section under the "edit profile" menu work?

DART trains at a station.

Early in the years of DART light rail, two single-car LRVs met at a crowded West End station in 1998. At the time, the Red Line ran from Westmoreland to Park Lane Station, while the Blue Line only ran from Ledbetter to Pearl, where it terminated.

Photograph by Norman Gates.

Trains on fuel pad.

Trains rest on a fuel pad in the busy railroad junction town of Temple in the summer of 1986. From here, the Santa Fe system splits three ways: north to Fort Worth, south to Houston, and west to Brownwood.

Photograph by John Leopard.

They also spent the past decade fighting to get the Silver Line. They threatened to withdraw back in the 2010s if it didn't get built.

After some back and forth on the council, the City of Addison has chosen not to call for a DART withdrawal election.

Where is Jane Remover? Where is Ninajirachi?

What have you done to them?!

Also, are artists just not allowed to release music in December if they want to be on one of these lists? Genuinely asking.

Train crossing bridge.

In Texas snow, the Trinity Railway Express dashes across Little Fossil Creek on February 15th, 2021, as it accelerates westbound out of Richland Hills station. Service was suspended later that night as conditions from winter storm Uri worsened.

Photograph by Jadon Henderson.

The Forgotten History of Light Rail For the last century, the central question of American transit planning has been how best to serve our suburbs. As people moved out of urban cores, bought cars, and began living decentralized lifes…

Reading this old piece from @a320lga.bsky.social, and there is a lot relevant to DART and how to feed a light rail system. Or to put it more simply, "The suburbs have starry eyes for microtransit, and we are all going to pay for it."

homesignalblog.wordpress.com/2024/07/12/t...

From State Rep Matt Shaheen "DART is what taxi cabs used to be. They got replaced with something [rideshare] way more convenient. It did a much better job of accommodating the transportation demands of a region. [...] I mean, heck, with Elon Musk, we might have flying cars in years."

Train at the station.

Seen at Houston Union Station, the Santa Fe's California Special would travel to Clovis, New Mexico, where it would connect with the San Francisco Chief. To the left, the Houston segment of Missouri Pacific's Texas Eagle can also be seen. June 1968.

Photograph by Joe McMillan.

At what point does regional rail start making sense again economically? Is it that the distances get too great for an ALM to make sense speed-wise?