Five stories that have North Texas talking: How Dallas traffic compares with major cities; Rawlings wants task force on Confederate statues; more Dallas and Fort Worth schools meet state education standards; and more.
Popular opinion: Dallas traffic is the worst. Recent study from The Washington Post: It’s not as bad as in some other cities.
The Post looks at 30 different large U.S. cities, including Dallas, and compares how far drivers could get from downtown, leaving at rush hour versus later at night.
For the study, the Post relies data from Here Technologies, which uses billions of anonymous measurements from cell phones and vehicle sensors to calculate how traffic conditions change throughout the day. The data was collected from Friday, July 28.
You can get more than 50 miles out of downtown Dallas in an hour regardless if you depart at 4 p.m, 7 p.m. or 10 p.m., according to the analysis. Compare that to the dense city of Boston — a city with about half the population of Dallas — where you can drive 20 miles farther if you leave at 10 p.m. than if you leave at rush hour. In New England, that’s the difference of being stuck in Massachusetts or entering a neighboring state.
Here’s how Dallas compares to Los Angeles. You can get a lot farther in less time in Dallas than LA.
The Post does include a caveat to the study, however: It’s hard to compare traffic between cities. One reason? In some cities, people just drive more. But, congestion across different cities stems from “zoning and segregation,” meaning the separate locations of living, eating and shopping create traffic. Explore the full analysis. [The Washington Post]
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- Although he disapproves of Confederate statues in Dallas, Mayor Mike Rawlings doesn’t want to immediately tear them down, despite calls to do so in the wake of a violent weekend in Charlottesville, Va. Rawlings on Tuesday proposed the creation of a task force that will study the issue. [KERA News]
- Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday signed a bill that will require Texas women to pay an extra health insurance premium for non-emergency abortions. It’s one of three abortion-related items he placed on lawmakers' agendas for the special session. [The Texas Tribune]
- More Dallas and Fort Worth schools met the state’s education standards this year than last year, according to 2017 accountability ratings released Tuesday by the Texas Education Agency. [KERA News]
- This incoming college freshman from Plano thanked his dad in afeel-good tweet. [The Dallas Morning News]
The High Five is KERA’s daily roundup of stories from Dallas-Fort Worth and across the state.Explore our archives here. And sign up forour weekly emailfor the North Texas news you need to know.
