Leading Off (10/25/10)

1. The Houston Viaduct celebrates its hundredth birthday, and remarkably, despite some needed repairs that were identified recently, the bridge has no significant structural flaws.

“It’s the best bridge built in Dallas,” [Willis Winters, an architecture historian] said, adding that honor, to his thinking, will go to the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, scheduled to open next year.

2. In the Dallas Morning News, transportation reporter Michael Lindenberger compares and contrasts Rick Perry and Bill White’s stands on transportation, which mainly diverge over issues of taxes, local control, the use of private toll companies. Towards the middle of the piece, the real issue rears its head: road construction debt “has grown so high that even TxDOT warns that by 2012 it will run out of money for new projects and have to reduce maintenance – thanks in part to rising debt payments, though officials there say the real culprit is the lack of new funding.”

3. My hat goes off to Navarro County Emergency Management Coordinator, Eric Meyers, who had the guts to keep his iPhone running while this twister bore down on his car yesterday.

4. And a little more video, because no one will tire of watching this or this anytime soon.