Been looking forward to getting my hands on this for a while.

I came to Minneapolis to report on what's going on, and one of the main questions I showed up with is "just what is the scale of the resistance?" After all, we're all used to the news calling Portland a "war zone" or whatever when it's just some protests in one part of town.

this 1.8m subscriber YouTuber cited my Tokyo transit two-parter series, which I wholly appreciated, but I think he may have cited the wrong piece bc I don’t say a word about rural Japanese transit (I do in other places!) youtu.be/8B9M6Bzc4Us?...

Sunset on the Santa Fe Railroad depot in Presidio, Texas, near the Mexican border. The units pictured are a GP7 and a couple of GP7Bs with a caboose bringing up the rear. October 18th, 1968. Photograph by Joe McMillian.

NEW: A ton of trash ends up in Buffalo Bayou, Houston's urban waterway. I spent a morning last week with the people who clean trash out of the bayou with a sucking boat. A long the way, I learned about the never ending battle to clean up pollution. 📸/📝 by me: www.chron.com/culture/arti...

A Carrollton-bound A-Train heads south past a silo for Boral Resources in Lewisville. This line only sees freight service at night due to rolling stock crashworthiness restrictions. Photograph by CJ.

"direct lithium extraction" promises to be a more efficient, cleaner, less ecologically disruptive way to extract lithium from brines, if the economics pencil. now, as Li prices tick precariously upwards and companies look towards commercialization, it could be a make or break year for the tech

In a rare sight for Texas, a former Pennsylvania Railroad GG1 sits in Longview in 1984, on its way to Fair Park in Dallas, where it will be displayed as part of The Age of Steam Museum collection. Photograph by Paul F. De Luca.

The Dallas-Fort Worth area would score a 10.26 on this graph. The Houston area would come in slightly higher at 12.49.

Sorry, but triumphant claims about autonomous vehicle safety are wildly exaggerated. It's an open question whether today’s self-driving cars are any safer than those driven by humans. And if reducing crashes is the goal, that isn’t even the right question. My deep dive, in Bloomberg 🧵

Many people are saying 2+2=5, and who are we to judge if they’re right?

The stats are in, and they confirm a big trend: Dallas ended 2025 with 141 murders, a *10-year low.* To put that in perspective: 📉 43 fewer people murdered than in 2024. 📉 Dallas' 4th lowest murder count since 1995. A significant drop that has largely flown under the radar.

University Park City Council has voted unanimously to call for a DART withdrawal election.

The University Park City Council will decide this evening on whether to call a DART withdrawal election after having a special work session with the agency yesterday. Some notable sections from the ordinance they will vote on tonight:

Daytripping on TEXRail: Grapevine, North Richland Hills popular with riders

Four Dallas suburbs plan to vote in May on whether to leave Dallas Area Rapid Transit, or DART, following years of tensions between the suburbs and the North Texas region’s transit agency.

New webpage from DART advertising the agency's benefits to local cities, emphasizing economic development, capital investments, and security improvements. Also included is data on ridership by mode for each member city. www.dart.org/about/public...

Many such (Dallas) cases...

braddie downer checking in: this essay on Japanese social and cultural decline anticipating America's near-future should ring alarm bells oceandrops.substack.com/p/japan-is-w...

A TEXRail FLIRT dashes across Iron Horse Boulevard on the night of February 14th, 2021. Service would be suspended the following morning as the coldest winter storm in Texas since December 1989 took hold of the state. Photograph by Jadon Henderson.

Happy New Year

University Park City Council looking to call a DART withdrawal election. Meeting will be on the 6th.

Two TRE trains pass each other over the West Fork of the Trinity River, April 2023. On the left, a former Amtrak F40PH pushes eastbound toward Dallas. On the right, F59PH 120, originally built for GO Transit, pulls the westbound into Fort Worth. Photograph by Joseph Cermak.

My friends are in the Times! Reporter Victor Mather and photographer Vincent Alban (neither of whom I see on this platform) did a great job capturing what makes these adventures so much fun. [Gift link]

Both running eastbound through Richardson, the DART Silver Line passes by CPKC's L31 local freight on its run from BNSF's Alliance yard to Wylie. The Silver Line briefly shares tracks here with CPKC before splitting off to serve Cityline/Bush station. Photograph by David Hawkins

A Conrail SD50 leads a Santa Fe train into Amarillo, June 1992. Neither railroad would see the end of the decade, as the Santa Fe would soon merge into BNSF in '96, and most of Conrail's system would be split up between CSX and Norfolk Southern in '99. Photograph by Tom Pearson.

The office is closed up until January 5, but one of the fun things we're doing as a staff is writing about our favorite stories by other staffers. We assigned editors to other editors Secret Santa style, and we've been publishing them every day on FrontBurner. www.dmagazine.com/section/fron...

This is what it's like to drive through Arlington, Texas

I have acquired some things.

Nerd alert: rail.guide now has a trolley/interurban layer (turn to classic owners view) and it's extremely cool

Merry Christmas people

Really encouraging to see more and more channels pop up talking about transit and urbanism in Dallas. Glad this came across my radar. And really good production quality for such a small, new channel! Looking forward to seeing more from them.

Recently, the folks behind @wtyppod.bsky.social had been asking around for serious journalists to write about their show. I might not be the former, but I am the latter, so here is my best shot: substack.com/home/post/p-...

Many such cases here in Dallas.

anyway, rancid vibes on this website aside, happy Solstice everybody. at least the days are getting longer from here.

Damn, he was also awesome in generation kill

Speed Matters. Some thoughts about transit and speed, life, space and time. open.substack.com/pub/marcochi...

Power bills are sky-high, and data centers are to blame, right? Well, yes, but there's something else, upstream of the AI boom: a utility sector beholden to financial interests, resulting in massive corporate profits. I looked into this dynamic for @harpers.bsky.social harpers.org/archive/2026...

In Garland, a Rowlett-bound DART Blue Line train picks up passengers from Forest/Jupiter station while a DGNO train works cars for the Plastipak Packaging company. Photograph by Blair Kooistra.

Great article from Kate here.

It's generally good news when your appraisal district adds nearly $3 billion to the tax rolls, like Dallas did this month. But what if that precedes a wave of defaults and foreclosures of affordable apartment buildings? Let's take a drive through Lake Highlands. labreportdallas.com/p/the-housin...

East of downtown Austin, 1997, a German RegioSprinter trundles along rarely used freight rail tracks. This pop-up service was part of a federal initiative to show how small DMU railcars could be used to provide transit on existing rail corridors. Photograph by Fred M. Springer.

Hey Dallas

TEXRail flies over the West Fork Trinity River, just north of downtown Fort Worth, on its way to DFW airport. To the left of the image sit three other rail bridges once used by the Santa Fe, Cotton Belt, and Rock Island Railroads, respectively. Photograph by Travis Berryman.

Peak Amtrak lounge car performance right here.

Really going all out on the lights there Arkansas.

Home bound

Rural Light-Rail, courtesy of southern Illinois.

Hi St. Louis

To St. Louis, then south to Texas.