Based on my experiences with living in a beach community while working in an adjacent large city: [1] Car pooling can offset some of the detriments (boredom, fatigue, fuel costs, wear and tear on your vehicle, etc.) of a long commute to and from work. [2] Car pooling works best if the respective commuters live relatively close to one another, have similar work hours, and are able to "get along" with one another during their daily commutes. My experiences with living in a beach community and commuting to an adjacent large city may not apply to the converse situation (living in a large city or densely populated suburban area and commuting to work in a beach community).

I pass by this building almost everyday for work, its looks like it leased out to a vintage clothing pop up. Every weekend/ certain days there will be a line of teenagers with bags waiting to be let in. Im assuming this is just temporary though.

For the anti-car activists 😂 from The DMN... New book argues for removal of I-345 in Dallas In ‘City Limits,’ author Megan Kimble examines the costs of urban highways — and what to do about them. That highways don’t belong in cities may be news in Texas, but it is hardly a new idea. Back in 1963, in his book The Highway and the City, the critic and historian Lewis Mumford wrote that “arteries must not be thrust into the delicate tissue of our cities; the blood they circulate must rather enter through an elaborate network of minor blood vessels and capillaries.” Even Dwight D. Eisenhower, the president who signed the 1956 legislation that funded the postwar American highway boom, didn’t think those roads belonged in cities. And yet, our cities are crossed and encircled by highways that divide neighborhoods, privilege driving over other means of transit and have been linked to other ill effects, from asthma to climate change. Downtown Dallas, for instance, is choked by a noose of urban highways. The impacts of those roads — and what we can do about them — is the subject of a new book, City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways, by Austin-based journalist Megan Kimble. Over email, Kimble talked about the policies that led to this situation, the targeting of minority communities and the plans to tear down Interstate 345. The conversation has been edited for clarity. You spend a great deal of time writing about those displaced by highway building and the impact that construction had on minority communities. In what ways has race shaped the building of urban highways? In the 1950s and 1960s, city planners and highway engineers intentionally routed urban highways through Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. That’s very clear in the historical record, the idea that highways could help clear so-called blighted areas. I found a study that showed that redlined neighborhoods — communities that had been denied access to credit and government-backed mortgages simply because Black and Hispanic people lived there — were more than three times as likely as the best-rated neighborhoods to have an interstate highway routed through them. Highways not only displaced and demolished communities of color, they also helped segregate cities. In Austin, for example, I-35 was built along East Avenue. Two decades earlier, the city’s first comprehensive plan had prohibited Black people from living west of East Avenue. The highway only cemented this segregation, creating a wall between a Black neighborhood and the heart of the city. Highways not only displaced and demolished communities of color, they also helped segregate cities. In Austin, for example, I-35 was built along East Avenue. Two decades earlier, the city’s first comprehensive plan had prohibited Black people from living west of East Avenue. The highway only cemented this segregation, creating a wall between a Black neighborhood and the heart of the city. This brings us back to I-345, the dilapidated elevated highway that divides downtown Dallas from historically Black Deep Ellum. Back in 2013, when I began writing about the plan to tear it down, I was told it was a fool’s errand. Today, a teardown is a reality, though the city is planning something of a half measure — trenching it instead of removing it. What would be the best outcome, and what do you say to those who believe removing it will lead to traffic Armageddon? I think TxDOT’s “hybrid option” for I-345 — the trench you mentioned — is a clever bit of branding, implying that the state has somehow found a compromise between a highway and a highway removal. But a trenched highway is still fundamentally a highway, and it offers none of the benefits of full removal, namely freeing up or otherwise enhancing dozens of acres of land to build on and restore to Dallas’ property tax rolls. When TxDOT presented the full removal option to Dallas, it presented a vision of carmageddon — 19,000 hours of travel delay! But those traffic models don’t account for how people’s travel behavior changes according to ease of access. Anytime I get in the car, I look at Google maps to find the quickest route to where I’m going. If that’s not on a highway, I won’t take a highway. People are rational consumers of goods, and roads are a good like any other. In every city that has removed an urban highway or otherwise reduced car capacity, traffic volumes go down, even on parallel routes. People simply drive less. The corollary to induced demand — which says that as you add car capacity, cars fill up that capacity — is reduced demand. If Dallas wants to build a less car-centric city (and I think it’s an open question as to whether it does), then removing I-345 is the best place to begin.

Mays Business School has received a $25 million lead gift for a new graduate education building. It is expected to begin construction in 2026 and be finished in 2028. The university aims to raise another $30 million to support it’s construction. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/lifestyle/article/25-million-mays-business-school-a-m-19420399.php

I'm so proud that we caught this and called it. Even when they denied it!