dug begley

Asked amid a flurry of design changes and shifts in street policy whether he was abandoning Houston’s goal of eliminating vehicle deaths by 2030, Mayor John Whitmire in February 2024 said a goal for the future wasn’t what the city needed. “My commitment to ending the loss of lives starts right now,” the mayor said at the… Continue reading

On a video call earlier this month, Naqibullah Laghmanai showed his mother and two teenage brothers the rooms ready for them in his Houston home. Their long, painful wait to travel from Pakistan to Texas was almost complete. Their paperwork was in order, interviews completed and medical evaluations submitted. “I showed them everything in my house,” Laghmanai… Continue reading

The collapse of The Alliance, one of Houston’s stalwart refugee resettlement groups, did not come as a shock to the nonprofits and other agencies with ties to the region’s refugees and immigrants. It merely added to their often stacked workload of providing classes, offering financial help and helping newcomers navigate the residency process. And the timing of… Continue reading

Signs, signs everywhere. In the Houston area there are signs, and a litany of them are illegal and drawing the attention of drivers at high-traffic intersections. Houston area residents are noticing a slew of new signs offering construction deals, cash offers for homes and other services after the recent storms hit the area. Many of those signs… Continue reading

Transit officials in Houston are shelving plans for the University Corridor, once the backbone of the region’s long-term plan, citing the squeeze that proceeding with the rapid bus project could put on other services. “It is only in the recent years, post-pandemic, that we have understood its impact,” said George Fotinos, chief financial officer for… Continue reading

Once the traffic light at San Felipe turns green, there is little stopping southbound drivers along Chimney Rock Road. A few gentle curves and cul-de-sacs among the houses are all that break up a straightaway that many drivers know only as their link to Westheimer. In short order, two sedans, a pickup and a minivan… Continue reading

Warehouses and other businesses that close their bathrooms to truckers could be opening themselves to penalties of proposed federal rules. U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls, a Fort Bend County Republican, has refiled a bipartisan bill aimed at requiring businesses that ship or receive goods to open their bathrooms to truck drivers carrying those shipments, if the business… Continue reading

Luz Lopez could see the writing on the wall, or more specifically the writing on the telephone poles and along the sidewalks and often in the medians of the busy streets in and around her Cloverleaf neighborhood. Between the illegal dumping and the intersections cluttered with signs offering easy money, predatory loans, home sales —… Continue reading

Perhaps it is the cagers, or maybe it is the squid out on a time trial. It could be a loner or weekender that has too much lump. Whatever anyone wants to call it — and riding is riddled with lingo — more motorcyclists are dying on Texas roads. The reasons probably outnumber the unique… Continue reading

Joseph Fiorenza, the son of immigrants who steered a rapidly changing southeast Texas through its evolution as a beacon for newcomers as its first home-grown Catholic archbishop, died Monday, church officials said. Fiorenza, bishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston from 1985 until 2006, was 91. In a statement, Fiorenza’s successor, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, praised him… Continue reading