Officials have released a list of the 100 worst traffic conditions in Texas.

Dallas motorists suffer the most highly congested road conditions in Texas, says a recent report from the Texas Department of Transportation.

The state’s top three bottlenecks are all located in Dallas County, according to the 100 Most Congested Roadway Segments in Texas. But while Dallas has the hottest spots, Harris County actually has more of them. The Houston area has 31 on the worst road conditions traffic list while Dallas has 21.

Road conditions for Fort Worth are next in line for headaches, with 15 tight spots, followed by San Antonio with 11 and Austin with 10.

Here are the top 10 most congested roads and their respective counties:

1. SS 366 in Dallas, from I-35E to U.S. 75
2. I-635 in Dallas, from I-35E to U.S. 75
3. U.S. 75 in Dallas, from I-635 to Woodall Rodgers Freeway
4. I-35 in Travis, from SH 71 to U.S. 183
5. I-35W in Tarrant, from I-30 to SH 183
6. U.S. 59 in Harris, from I-10 to SH 288
7. I-35E in Dallas, from I-30 to SH 183
8. I-10 in Harris, from I-45 to U.S. 59
9. I-610 in Harris, from I-10 to I-45
10. I-45 in Harris, from I-10 to I-610

See this interactive map to locate all 100.

Congestion patterns haven’t changed much over the past year, Texas officials say. 

“Finishing or starting construction is probably the number one reason for the shift in ratings,” said Tim Lomax, a researcher with the Texas Transportation Institute, which helped TxDOT develop the list.

“Weather contributed, and the economic recession has generally reduced congestion compared to four years ago,” he said. “But in the last year, construction was primary.”

The Transportation Institute calculates congestion from traffic speeds gathered by NAVTEQ, a firm that collects real time travel information nationwide, and combines that with traffic volume data.

“Texans know that traffic is bad, and these ratings shifts won’t change public opinion,” Lomax said. “The list is important for planning purposes.”

Heber Springs, Ark., a friendly town of 6,000 that tourists swell to 30,000.

Driving through the pine forests of East Texas, on the way to Central Arkansas, you pass signs for places like New Boston, Pittsburgh, Mount Pleasant and even Paris.

It’s almost like pioneers started running out of names by the time they got to Texas. 

But things get a bit more imaginative once you arrive at the Arkansas border. Names there start off with morphed incarnations like Texarkana, and later dish up tidy permutations such as Arkadelphia. 

The one that snapped me to attention on my trip last weekend was “Okolona.”

You know, Oklahoma’s just a short jog to the west, I thought. Could it be? Is this some sort of an Arkansas localism? Perhaps it was pranksters?  

Nope, not pranksters, a crisp exit sign down the road soon confirmed – Okolona was sure enough real. But where’d the name come from? Does it have anything to do with Oklahoma? I could only wonder.

Later, I checked the web, and it turns out the name is yet another clone. A number of U.S. places share the name, including some in Mississippi and Kentucky.

This site says it’s an Indian name meaning “much bent.” Hmmm … another mystery.

Oklahoma, meanwhile, comes from the Choctaw Indian words okla and humma, which means red people, according to this website.

As interesting as all that is, there was one name that trumped them all. 

Cruising through Central Arkansas on lanes sluicing through thick woods, admiring how the towering trees shot up like ripe green walls along the undulating highway, the strange name suddenly popped up. I looked several times. I could see nothing else.

The sign said, “Toad Suck Park.”

So I dropped that one into Google too. Toad Suck is indeed a community, with a name that’s somewhat of a puzzle.

Yes, OK, I thought in amazement, I’m not in Texas any more.

Look, no frontage roads on this Arkansas freeway! But plenty of tall trees.

And it’s so easy to galvanize issues: Do we spend hard-earned taxes on transit or roads? Do we revive downtown cores or unclog asphalt arteries to suburbs? What neighborhoods should get the coveted rails or lanes?

The right strategic mix is the sane solution, but agreeing on the right blend can drive decision-makers batty. To wit, the 2000 light-rail election in which VIA Metropolitan Transit was buried first by critics and then by voters. The 2-to-1 defeat silenced local rail advocates for almost a decade. 

But now VIA’s latest rail plan – a $180 million project to build a 2.7-mile east-west streetcar line through downtown as well as construct two major transit centers and two suburban bus park-and-rides – seems to be careening around the same pitfalls. 

The heat turned up last week after two businessmen, Marty Wender and Mike Novak, resigned as co-chairs from VIA’s streetcar committee. That’s because the agency moved forward on the rail plan without first consulting the committee. 

Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff got on the radio and called the resignations a “rather a chicken way to do business,” according to the Express-News.

Today, Elaine Wolff of Plaza de Armas took a long wade toward the deep end. Without giving away too much, players ranging from city, county and business leaders are struggling over whether they can sell the plan to taxpayers, whether a sales tax that was going to roads should now be shifted to transit and, rather telling, whether a north-south rail route might be getting short-shrift.

To get details on the behind-the-scenes fisticuffs, you need to read Elaine’s story at Plaza de Armas, which is a subscription news service:

• SA’s streetcar debate runs off the rails

Also, here’s the Express-News story:

• Politics sidetracks debate on streetcar

Just two days before Christmas, average U.S. gas prices have topped $3 a gallon. And you can expect prices to keep rising into spring and summer. 

This isn’t a typical run-up.

Prices usually peak in the summer and slide down after Labor Day. In recent autumns, regular unleaded dropped an average of 22 cents a gallon, even when you exclude the freakish plummet in 2008 after the economy popped.

But this autumn, gas prices shot up 30 cents a gallon.

Various experts point their fingers at growing demand amid a slowly recovery economy, tightening supplies and the U.S. dollar losing ground to inflation.

The last time Americans paid an average of $3 a gallon at Christmastime was in 2007. There was a similar run-up then, and prices went on to bust $4 the next summer.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration says we shouldn’t see such record highs this time, predicting gas will average $3.12 a gallon next summer.

Meanwhile, AAA reports that 92 million Americans will make trips over the next 11 days, the most since the 2007-08 holiday season. Nine out of 10 will drive.

Also, they will travel farther and spend more than last year, AAA says. In fact, despite unemployment hitting 9.8 percent last month, spending on transportation, recreation, food and accommodations over the next three months should rise 3.4 percent from the year before, even outpacing economic growth.

Hope everybody has a great Christmas and New Year’s. Have fun. Be safe.

HELPFUL LINKS:

• Check weather
• Check state roads, or call (800) 452-9292
• Compare gas prices

SOURCES:

• U.S. Energy Information Administration
• AAA Fuel Gauge
• AAA travel forecast

You’re going to pay a little more for a lot of things this Thanksgiving.

If you drive anywhere, gas will cost about 20 cents a gallon more than a year ago. Texas prices average $2.68 today.

If you fly, tickets will cost about 4 percent more. On top of that, at some 70 airports, including San Antonio’s, you now face security scanners that see through your clothes or agents who will touch in ways that few people would dare.

Staying home? Cooking a traditional turkey meal will cost 13 percent more in Texas.

Meanwhile, 9.6 percent of U.S. workers are looking for jobs. Experts, revising predictions, now say unemployment will remain higher than thought for years to come.

Yet, Americans seem ready to celebrate, an AAA survey indicates.

About 42.2 million people will make a trip of at least 50 miles this holiday weekend, up 11 percent from a year ago. On average, they’ll travel 816 miles and spend $495, nearly the same as last year. Nine out of 10 will go by car.

“When purse strings and heart strings compete in a tug-of-war, especially at this time of year, the heart wins out,” AAA President Robert Darbelnet said.

And so it has. Some things you can’t put a price on.

• Check weather
• Check state roads, or call (800) 452-9292
• Compare gas prices

You’ll likely pay more than $3 a gallon for gas next spring.

But you’ll probably keep paying the same 18 cents per gallon federal gas tax — which has lost more than a third of its purchasing power since it was last raised in 1993.

The roads you drive on will get worse. Transit will face ongoing challenges. 

That’s what appears in the fog ahead as Republicans take back the U.S. House amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Feeding voter sentiments are widespread fears about rampant spending and taxing.

Incoming Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica of Florida told reporters last week that the gas tax will go nowhere — which mirror’s President Obama’s position — and that he wants to reconsider recent high-speed rail grants.

But Mica also said he’ll grab hold of a stalled $500 billion six-year transportation reauthorization bill, now a year overdue, and work to push it through. The bill is twice as much as the 2005 law and twice as much as what the gas tax will bring in.

Even so, the massive bill still falls some $150 billion short of just being able to maintain what we have, indicates a report headed by two former U.S. transportation secretaries. And that’s just the federal gap — states and local entities have holes too.

We are facing an “elegant degradation” of our transportation system, the report warns. It will be slow, sure and very costly.     

SOURCES: 

• Federal gas-price predictions
• St. Augustine Record report
• Reuters report
• New York Times report
• Well Within Reach report

OTHER STUDIES:

• Performance Driven
• A Bridge to Somewhere
• Paying Our Way
• Transportation for Tomorrow

Robert Hirsch

Think back to the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979.

The economic crashes back then are just a taste of what’s coming in two to five years, energy analyst Robert Hirsch told a conference Friday in San Antonio, according to the Express-News.

That’s when Hirsch estimates the world will reach peak oil production. After that, supplies will decline.

It’s going to be chaos, the story described. And this time the recession will be much longer and tougher to turn around.

“There will be no quick fixes,” Hirsch said.

Hirsch first rang the warning in a 2005 report he did for the U.S. Department of Energy. He and two other authors have followed up with the “The Impending World Energy Mess,” a book released this month. Read more in this post.

From the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas

Peak oil.

There it is. A rather nondescript phrase that, when plugged into Google, calls up a mountain of angst and controversy.

Peak oil is the apex of production, when new field discoveries and technologies just can’t recover as much oil as we once did. The U.S. passed peak production in the 1970s. Some say we’re passing the global peak now, or about to.

The implications are huge. 

Millions of years worth of energy have been stored in a compact and portable form to give us oil. Unleashed a century ago, the black gooeyness had a lot to do with transforming and buoying our modern economy and way of life.

Are there enough energy alternatives to replace black gold? Can we mitigate in time to avoid economic disaster?

Robert Hirsch

Robert Hirsch tried to answer those questions in a seminal 2005 report he did for the U.S. Department of Energy. He issued a dire warning, saying we better get moving on curbing demand and developing alternatives.

But it doesn’t sound like we did a very good job, according to a book Hirsch and two other authors released this month. “The Impending World Energy Mess,” with a forward by former U.S. Energy Secretary James Schlesinger, says:

• World oil production will start to decline within five years.
• Economic damage will increasingly get worse each year.
• Fixing the problem will take more than a decade.

If you want, you can look Mr. Hirsch in the eye as he delivers the bad news in person, and maybe get to ask him a question. He’s in town to talk at the Electrification of Transportation Conference being held at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center.

Hirsch will be the luncheon speaker on Friday. The conference cost is $40.

• UPDATE: What Hirsch said at the conference

Notorious traffic backups and numerous crashes on I-35, especially on the stretch from San Antonio to Austin, have spawned big-ticket projects such as the SH 130 tollway and Lone Star commuter rail. Putting two and two together from such thinking eventually led to the now supposedly defunct Trans Texas Corridor.

But more big plans are in the making.

Four committees, each looking at a segment of I-35, are holding public meetings this month to wrap up draft plans on what to do with the highway, its feeders and parallel roads. Billions of dollars worth of projects are eyed, including this for South and Central Texas:

• Convert one I-35 lane each way into toll/carpool lanes from Buda to Georgetown
• Remove tolls and widen SH 130 to six lanes from Seguin to Georgetown
• Build high-speed passenger rail from San Antonio to Dallas
• Build passenger rail from San Antonio to Laredo
• Widen I-35 from San Antonio to Laredo

The four segment plans will be finalized next month. Then the I-35 Corridor Advisory Committee will consolidate them into the MY 35 plan and deliver it to the Texas Transportation Commission next year. 

The committees for segment 3 and segment 4, which straddle San Antonio, will hold joint public workshops 6-8 p.m.:

• Thursday, Sept. 23, at  the VIA Terry Eskridge Community Room
  1021 San Pedro Ave. in San Antonio
• Tuesday, Sept. 28, at the Live Oak Civic Center’s Rocket Room
  8101 Pat Booker Road in Live Oak
• Wednesday, Sept. 29, at the  Seguin-Guadalupe County Coliseum
  950 S. Austin St. in Seguin

Learn more at www.MY35.org.

The nation’s economic recovery seems to be slowing down, but not travel plans to enjoy the last days of summer.

Some 34.4 million Americans are making trips this Labor Day weekend, according to an AAA survey, up 9.9 percent from last year’s dismal showing.

Vacationers will also spend more this year, the survey shows. Median spending is expected to be $697, up nearly $50.

Travelers are expected to pay more for airfares, 9 percent higher; car rentals, up 7 percent; and hotels.

But one thing they won’t be spending more on is gas. Regular unleaded, now averaging $2.68 a gallon, is down almost 20 cents from the spring, an AAA report says. Texas prices are averaging $2.51.

Meanwhile, nine out of 10 people are traveling by car this holiday weekend.