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HALTOM CITY, Texas (AP) - Shon Newsome almost got tricked into paying a toll for a third time. But on a recent afternoon, just before she was about to drive onto a Loop 820 on-ramp that would have required her to pay a toll, the sales executive pulled off the highway in Haltom City and asked a bystander for directions. She was trying to figure out which lane on the two-lane ramp would take her to the toll-free lanes - but the answer wasn’t clear.

D/FW AIRPORT — The Ebola virus death toll has surpassed 4,000, including one in Dallas, and congressional leaders demanded Friday for more to be done to make sure the deadly disease doesn’t spread in America. They asked health officials for answers to questions they are hearing, such as why flights aren’t being stopped to and from West African countries and what is being done to protect U.S. troops dispatched to West Africa to help. “The crisis is unfolding at an alarming pace,” U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, said during a specially-called congressional hearing at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. “Thousands...

SEVERE WEATHER STATEMENT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE FORT WORTH TX 116 PM CDT TUE APR 3 2012 ...A TORNADO WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 145 PM CDT FOR SOUTHERN DALLAS COUNTY... AT 116 PM CDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE METEOROLOGISTS CONFIRMED A LARGE AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TORNADO. THIS TORNADO WAS LOCATED NEAR LANCASTER...MOVING NORTH AT 20 MPH. THIS IS A TORNADO EMERGENCY FOR SOUTHERN PORTIONS OF THE CITY OF DALLAS AND THE CITY OF LANCASTER! SEEK SHELTER NOW! THE TORNADO WILL BE NEAR... LANCASTER AROUND 125 PM CDT... PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... A TORNADO HAS BEEN CONFIRMED! THIS IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND LIFE THREATENING...

St. Hedwig has homes on large lots and a longtime tradition of rural living. And folks there want to keep it that way. “We want to be able to maintain as best we can the reason we moved out here in the first place,” said Kathy Palmer, the city’s planning and zoning commissioner. But a new master plan and recently updated zoning maps are no match for a proposed route of Trans-Texas Corridor 35 that would slice straight through the city of about 2,000 people and create headaches for several city departments, officials said. With neighboring Wilson County, St. Hedwig...

Member of the Texas Sunset Commission today recommended 'radical' changes in the administration of the Texas Department of Transportation, including placing the troubled and controversial agency into a four year legislative 'receivership' and abolishing the Texas Transportation Commission, which runs TexDOT, and appointment of a Transportation Commissioner who would be answerable to the Legislature, 1200 WOAI news reports. But Sunset Commission member Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon (D-San Antonio) suggested going one step further. "What I am hearing form the public is that they are wanting to see an elected commissioner," she said to loud applause from the TexDOT opponents who...

Drivers who get safely off Interstate 35E after arriving in Dallas from Austin or San Antonio have a certain look of relief – like they just outran a buffalo stampede. Only on I-35, the stampede is trucks. The white-knuckle experience helps make the case for some kind of reliever road, even a tolled one. Making that same case has been a harder sell for U.S. highways along the Gulf Coast and East Texas. Drivers there can judge their own level of congestion, and they have insisted that their mostly rural corridor doesn't warrant the major undertaking of a parallel turnpike....

FORT WORTH -- The Trans-Texas Corridor is now so controversial, merely uttering the words in most political circles is taboo. "We're calling it a 'regional loop' because you can't say 'Trans-Texas Corridor' in the state of Texas anymore," said Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments. "The Trans-Texas Corridor is a lightning rod," he told visiting state representatives this week while explaining how the corridor would connect to regional highways by 2030. Opposition to the proposed construction of a $184 billion network of toll roads during the next 50 years is so strong statewide that...

State Rep. Jim McReynolds has sent a letter to the Texas Department of Transportation saying he thinks TxDOT should drop the idea of tying the Trans-Texas Corridor in with plans for routing Interstate 69 through East Texas. McReynolds says tremendous negative outcry from his constituents and other East Texas residents has made it clear to him no one wants infrastructure that massive and disruptive to the quality of life to be built, taking big swaths out of the Pineywoods countryside. "Within the past several weeks, I have personally attended every TxDOT hearing held in my district regarding this proposed corridor,"...

Driving down to Austin lately has become a real trip. I-35 is usually packed for most of the 185 miles, and what used to take three or four hours now can take five or six. Flying down can take almost as long, when you figure in airline security delays, more flight delays, and the time it takes getting into and out of crowded airports. But what if it took 45 minutes to travel from the Metroplex to Austin by train or an hour to make a trip to Houston? Advocates of high-speed rail lines are floating these ideas once again...

Push for higher gas tax could follow chief's death The death of Ric Williamson, the fiery, whip-smart chairman of the state transportation commission, could upend the still-roiling debate over toll roads in Texas in the new year. Mr. Williamson died Saturday of a heart attack at age 55, sending shock waves through the nearly 15,000-employee department he led as well as the political and policy circles where his combative style and pro-toll-road agenda had engendered enormous change – and criticism. Always careful to credit Gov. Rick Perry, a close friend and former roommate, Mr. Williamson emerged as a lightning rod...

The Interstate 69 corridor, a Mexico-to-Canada concept discussed since 1991, has received government recognition as a "corridor of the future," a designation that immediately means $800,000 in federal money for studies. Local officials say it could mean more trade in South Texas. The corridor -- a 2,680-mile international trade route from Mexico to Canada also known as the Trans-Texas Corridor-69 -- was one of two designated Tuesday as corridors of the future. Interstate 10 from California to Florida also received recognition. Hailed as a route that would facilitate trade resulting from the North American Free Trade Agreement, I-69's Texas portion...

Could high-speed rail service with a stop in the Hillsboro area be a reality by 2020? That is the goal set by the Texas High-Speed Rail and Transportation Corporation (THSRTC) following the final planning and design charrette in Fort Worth. The charrette preceded the 10th annual Transportation Summit held in Irving Tuesday through Friday, August 7-10. THSRTC board members met in Houston in May at the Continental Airlines headquarters for the first of the charrettes. Attending were eight international suppliers of high-speed rail for nine different systems in France, Germany, Korea and Spain. In addition, 14 consulting firms of varying...

Texas needs the Trans-Texas Corridor because of its surging population, a representative for Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday while speaking in Cleburne. Plans are to build the multi-lane highway and rail system parallel to Interstate 35, north-south through the center of the state. Kris Heckmann, deputy director of Perry’s Legislative Division spoke at the Cleburne Civic Center at the invitation of the Johnson County Republican Women for their monthly meeting. Every decade since World War II, Texas’ population has increased by at least 20 percent, Heckmann said. In 1990, the state’s population was 16.5 million, and today the population is...

It's not the least bit hard to describe the choice that Texas Transportation Commission members will face Thursday at their meeting in Austin: (1) Agree with the overwhelming preference of this region's elected officials and allow the North Texas Tollway Authority to build the Texas 121 toll road in Denton and Collin counties, or (2) award the lucrative project to the apparent favorite among state toll road devotees, the Spanish company Cintra.From here, it's an easy decision: Pick NTTA.But there is reason to worry that in the boiling pot of Austin politics, the commission may see things differently. Because of...

But compromise doesn't affect six projects slated for Harris County AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry on Monday signed legislation that slows down his ambitious plans for building toll roads but does not halt them completely. Perry and the Legislature got into a stare-down last month when lawmakers sent him a bill that put serious restrictions on building toll roads in Texas and constrained policy set by the Texas Transportation Commission, which is run by the governor's appointees. Perry said he would veto the bill and threatened to call a special legislative session if lawmakers did not send him compromise legislation....

AUSTIN – Lawmakers broke camp Monday, taking it on faith that Gov. Rick Perry won't slam the brakes on a compromise toll road bill. Monday's session finale came and went without Mr. Perry signing the bill, which imposes a partial two-year freeze on private toll road deals. Lawmakers did not try to override his veto on their initial bill to overhaul the state's toll policies. Many involved in the contentious toll road debate were expecting Mr. Perry to approve the bill by now because his office was closely involved in hammering out the compromise. Perry spokeswoman Krista Moody said the...

House, Senate passage seem likely The careening vehicle that has been this legislative session's toll road overhaul appeared to pull into the garage about 4:35 p.m. Thursday. At that moment, Republican state Sen. Robert Nichols of Jacksonville, after spending several moments huddling on the floor with Sen. Tommy Williams, sponsor of Senate Bill 792, affixed his signature to a compromise version of the bill, and the two shook hands. "We've got a deal now," Williams, R-The Woodlands, said about an hour later. "This is really going to move transportation issues forward, particularly in large metropolitan areas." The deal was among...

AUSTIN -- Key negotiators were still working Wednesday night to hammer out a compromise version of a toll-road moratorium bill that Gov. Rick Perry won't veto. Earlier Wednesday, Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, said a compromise between the House and Senate versions of a transportation bill had been negotiated, but key House members quickly insisted that a deal had not been reached. The compromise version would require both chambers' approval. Perry vetoed a toll-road moratorium bill last week, citing concerns that it would cost the state federal funding of transportation projects. Different versions of a second moratorium passed both chambers last...

Toll road compromise reached By Ben Wear | Monday, May 14, 2007, 08:10 AM Lawmakers, representatives from the Texas Department of Transportation and others have reached agreement on major toll road legislation that will be laid out this morning in a meeting of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee. But there could be a backlash. Many legislators had said this session that what they didn’t want was to be presented with a large “agreed-upon” transportation bill late in the session with little or no time to absorb it. That’s exactly what they’re getting, however. The bill, in this instance,...

Our colleagues at The Dallas Morning News offered this advice to lawmakers fighting to keep intact complex regional plans to deal with transportation issues in Dallas, Fort Worth and the surrounding counties: "Keep Up the Fight." Good advice. Both the Dallas paper and the Star-Telegram have felt some ownership of this issue since we combined on a joint editorial project in 2003, calling for a regionwide effort to link area cities by rail. But rail is only part of the solution to the serious problem of traffic congestion that is approaching gridlock during parts of the day. Officials in North...