Huge Kudos To Texas DOT -- Nothing About The Bakken -- December 7, 2017

This is a huge "shout out" to the Texas DOT: thank you for all you've done. I am more than impressed.

We (Sophia and I, and our respective families) literally live at the intersection of three major Texas highways:

• Texas Highway 121 -- connecting Plano, TX, to Ft Worth, running northeast to southwest
• Texas Highway 360 -- connecting Grapevine to Arlington, Irving, the area between Dallas and Ft Worth, running north to south
• Texas Highway 114 -- connecting Los Angeles, CA, to Dallas, TX, running from the west to the southeast

When we arrived here in 2013, the first thing we were told was that the local community and commuters had lived through ten years of hell while TX DOT completely re-worked the interchanges for those three highways where they all converge on the south side of downtown, historic Grapevine, and just a mile or so west of the DFW airport.

I thought that the result was incredible. The interchange involving those three major highways seemed to be brilliant.

There were a few choke points, and, a few "nice-to-have" things yet to complete but essentially it was a pretty good system. Actually better than pretty good; very good.

Over the past four years TX DOT has been working those choke points and the "nice-to-have things" to really complete the project.

This past month, it appears, almost everything is complete.

Additional ramps and interchange changes where 114, 360, and 120 come together right off Hall Johnson, where we live, have been completed. It seem "perfect." And now I see TX DOT is already adding more changes which will make the interchange even better. And they do this without interrupting the flow of the three highways.

The major choke point was a two-mile stretch on Texas Highway 121 northeast of Grapevine through Lewisville on the way to Plano.  They've been working on that stretch for the past year, and this past week a major portion -- probably 90% -- was completed. We went from two lanes in one direction to four lanes with additional lanes for off-ramps, on-ramps, and frontage roads, with the result that in each direction there are six to eight lanes where there used to be two to four lanes. The bottle neck routinely took 30 minutes (when there was an accident, the logjam could be several hours); tonight, for the first time ever for me, the two-mile stretch was a blur, and traffic was able to travel the posted speed limit of 70 mph at rush hour.

I am truly blown away how clever Texas DOT was to figure out how to do all this and do all this without major interruption of traffic during construction. And it appears they completed everything ahead of schedule.

Lights on the Hill, Slim Dusty  

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The Tax Page

It appears that the mainstream media does not understand the tax policy of the US.

Journalists (and the headline writers) seem to be amazed that companies like Apple will get a huge tax break.

Case in point: headline -- Analysis: Apple poised for $47 billion windfall from GOP tax bill. It appears by some calculations that Apple has been overpaying its fair share by billions and billions of dollars every year.