I hit the campaign trail with Rick Perry, E. Smith starts off the fall TribLive series by interviewing Attorney General Greg Abbott, Stiles on the most congested roads in Texas, Ramshaw's interview with former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller, Grissom on the perils of talking too much if you're the head of the state's jail standards board, M. Smith on Congressman Chet Edwards' fight for political survival in a Republican year, Philpott on counties worried the state's budget woes will trickle down, Hamilton on whether Texas should be in the movie-vetting business, Aguilar on a Mexican journalist seeking asylum from his country's drug violence, Galbraith on green energy and Texas college football, and excerpts from former Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby's new book, How Things Really Work: Lessons from a Life in Politics: The best of our best from August 30 to September 3, 2010.

After a 2006 bus accident in Beaumont that killed two students and injured several more, parents and legislators successfully demanded the state finance seat belts in school buses. Today, four years later, the Legislative Budget Board finally gave approval for a grant program — but the rules the board set likely will exclude the Beaumont area from getting the money, even though the grassroots movement started there. 

Twenty-eight new Texas specialty license plates are up for a public vote by My Plates, the company that markets them.

Lawmakers have said it before, and today they said it again: Sweeping top-down change is needed within the Texas Department of Transportation.

Efforts to contain the oil still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico finally seem to be making headway, but the government is now warning that the remaining slick may have a mind of its own.

E. Smith interviews Gov. Rick Perry for the Trib and Newsweek, Philpott dissects the state's budget mess in a weeklong series, Hamilton looks at whether Bill White is or was a trial lawyer, M. Smith finds experts all over the state anxiously watching a court case over who owns the water under our feet, Aguilar reports on the battle between Fort Stockton and Clayton Williams Jr. over water in West Texas, Ramshaw finds a population too disabled to get on by itself but not disabled enough to get state help and Miller spends a day with a young man and his mother coping with that situation, Ramsey peeks in on software that lets the government know whether its e-mail messages are getting read and who's reading what, a highway commissioner reveals just how big a hole Texas has in its road budget, Grissom does the math on the state's border cameras and learns they cost Texans about $153,800 per arrest, and E. Smith interviews Karen Hughes on the difference between corporate and political P.R. — and whether there's such a thing as "Obama Derangement Syndrome." The best of our best from April 19 to April 23, 2010.

Car2Go is a pilot program no more. The innovative Austin-based car-sharing cooperative is opening its memberships to the public starting on May 21.

Burnt orange and Aggie maroon are out, for now, at the Texas Department of Transportation.

Austin is hoping the next big thing comes in a tiny car: It's the first North American city to pilot a car-sharing program promising the possibility of less congestion and lower emissions.

Grissom on the 1.2 million Texans who've lost their licenses under the Driver Responsibility Act and the impenetrable black box that is the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, Ramshaw and Kraft on nurses with substance abuse problems and rehabilitation that can get them back to work, M. Smith finds it's not easy being Rick Green, Stiles on counting Texans (and everybody else), Rapoport on the State Board of Education's war with itself and the runoff in SBOE District 10, Thevenot's revealing interview with a big-city superintendent on closing bad schools, Aguilar on the tensions over water on the Texas-Mexico border, Hamilton on the new Coffee Party, Hu on Kesha Rogers and why her party doesn't want her, Philpott on the runoff in HD-47, Ramsey on Bill White and the politics of taxes, and E. Smith's conversation with Game Change authors Mark Halperin and John Heleimann: The best of our best from March 15 to 19.

The North Texas Tollway Authority board just accepted the Transportation Commission's deal for building State Highway 161 by a vote of eight to one. The state commissioners offered the deal on Wednesday that allows NTTA to effectively borrow TXDOT's credit rating in making deals.

Sensible people in the Metroplex may have given up long ago on Southwest Parkway and State Highway 161, two huge projects first proposed back in the 1960s. Now they're toll roads — one incomplete, one not yet started — and the money to build them may finally be available. There is, of course, a catch.

State Rep. Vicki Truitt, R-Southlake, has won and won easily since wresting the district from a GOP incumbent in a 1998 runoff. But this year is different. She'll face three opponents and voters who might be in an anti-incumbent mood.

Lawmakers are still perturbed at TxDOT, but the state's transportation agency is trying to do better. The first step, says one commissioner: Figure out how to meet the transportation needs of Texas citizens — which it's not doing.

Is Texas building a highway to nowhere? No. But Texas legislators like their pork barrel transportation spending just as much as their Alaskan counterparts, apparently.

This week, The Daily Beast released its list of the 75 worst commutes in the country. Is yours on it?

A burnt-orange view of "Roads."

Team Kay is on the television airwaves this week with an ad hitting Governor Rick Perry on transportation policy.