Loop 820 drivers stuck in traffic often curse Austin. They should be cursing their own neighbors. A long-planned freeway across Northeast Tarrant County was blocked almost 20 years ago by hostile residents, pushing an extra 80,000 cars a day onto Loop 820 for years to come and creating the worst traffic bottleneck in North Texas. Former Tarrant County Commissioner Bob Hampton, a 1980s regional transportation leader, blames "Yankees" for blocking construction of the North Tarrant Freeway, now reduced to a divided boulevard called North Tarrant Parkway. From the mid-1960s until 1990, state highway planners expected North Tarrant Freeway to carry...
