Free Republic

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s proposal to add toll lanes to three of the most congested highways in the Washington suburbs reaches beyond similar proposals that stalled over the years after being deemed too expensive or disruptive to adjacent communities. Hogan’s $9 billion plan would add four toll lanes each to Maryland’s portion of the Capital Beltway (I-495) and to I-270 from the Beltway to Frederick. It would also widen the Baltimore-Washington Parkway by four toll lanes. The project would be built using a public-private partnership in what Hogan (R) has said would be the largest such deal for highways in...

Virginia elected officials thought they had taken politics out of highway funding when they adopted a new way of scoring and ranking transportation projects three years ago. But maybe not in this election year. With three statewide offices and the House of Delegates up for grabs in three weeks, a regional spat over highway funding caught fire Monday, as Secretary of Transportation Aubrey L. Layne Jr. took aim at Republican political leaders in Southwest Virginia who have accused Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, of doing too little to fund critical road projects in their region. Layne told the House Appropriations...

OAKLAND — The Maryland Department of Transportation is taking another look at the Oakland bypass project. Deputy Transportation Secretary Jim Ports made the announcement during MDOT’s annual meeting with local residents and officials last Friday morning at the courthouse. Every year, MDOT officials present a draft of their six-year Consolidated Transportation Program (CTP) during a tour of Maryland’s 23 counties and Baltimore City. “We have decided to reignite the decision for the Oakland bypass,” Ports told local residents last week. “We’re going to look at a practical-design approach to try and save money.” He said the decision was made after...

INDIANAPOLIS — A recent state study found that if the state’s interstates were made into toll roads, they could generate between $39 billion and $53 billion over 30 years. But it’s unlikely that all of Indiana’s interstates would be made into toll roads, State Sen. Mark Messmer, R-Jasper, said Friday morning. He especially doubts that Interstate 64 or Interstate 69 from Evansville to Indianapolis would be converted. “The only way you can put a toll on a road is if you upped the capacity of the road,” he said. “If you widen the bridges or increased the number of lanes,...

Maryland has submitted another grant application seeking federal money to help widen part of Interstate 81. The application will face a little less competition, because another Maryland project was withdrawn. "I feel pretty good (about the application) for a couple of reasons. ... We're a large project that's not looking for a lot of money in a rural area," Matt Mullenax, executive director of the Hagerstown/Eastern Panhandle Metropolitan Planning Organization, said Monday. The $81.9 million project would extend the widening of I-81 to six lanes from Williamsport to Interstate 70. Mullenax said the Maryland Department of Transportation plans to fund...

With winter fast approaching, one of the deadliest Kansas City road construction seasons in recent memory is coming to a close. Crews last week removed the concrete safety barriers along the Interstate 435 pavement reconstruction project in Overland Park. ItÂ’s one of several road projects that have caused major crashes, inspiring the department of transportation in Kansas to add rumble strips to the I-435 project. The first season of the two-year project is complete, and crews re-striped the highway over the weekend. The 140,000 vehicles that travel that road every day now can move along the original lanes. The $16.34...

VIGO COUNTY, Ind. (WTHI) - It's the interstate many of you have sworn to never travel again. Just this summer, Interstate 70 was the host of several horrific accidents, in a matter of days. But why is that? That is why we are taking a look into what makes I-70 so dangerous. ----------- They are the titans of the road; the giants of the interstate. They are semis. “…semis carry 80 thousand pounds of weight.” Big to all, scary to some. But to Corban Matney, they're a way of life. "Altogether, I've been driving about 30 years." As a semi-truck...

MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WMBF) - It’s taken decades to work on getting the Interstate 73 permit and now the federal government is saying the road can finally be constructed. The question now is how to fund it. Local organizations such as the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce want to help push it forward. The I-73 permit was issued back in June and not much has been done to construct the southern part linking S.C. 22 and Interstate 95, leading MBACC president and CEO Brad Dean to say some people thought the project was at a standstill. Dean had the...

Construction of Interstate 73 to Myrtle Beach has widespread support among key players in Washington, D.C., and is favored for financing when President Trump introduces an infrastructure package to Congress, according to U.S. Rep. Tom Rice. “The president has said he wants an infrastructure package, and we want to make sure that we are on the radar at the front of the line,” Rice told The Sun News in an interview this week. Rice says he’s held numerous meetings to help secure the $2.4 billion needed with top Trump administration officials, including D.J. Gribbin, special assistant to the president for...

More than 100 concerned residents peppered state and local officials Monday for information about the new Interstate 74 Bridge. Moline Mayor Stephanie Acri hosted the event, part of a series of casual meetings to share ideas and air concerns about the city. Experts on site included Ryan Hippen, construction field engineer for the Illinois Department of Transportation, and Danielle Mulholland, I-74 project engineer with the Iowa Department of Transportation. "I don't get tired of talking about this improvement," Hippen said. The basket handle true arch twin bridge is to cost an estimated $1.2 billion, and open late in 2020 after...

The parents of a medical school student killed in a 2015 Pembroke Pines crash were awarded $45 million in damages. After a three-week trial that concluded Thursday, jurors awarded Jennifer and Reginald Astaphan damages in connection with the death of their 29-year-old son, Jonathan Raymond Astaphan, of Dominica. Ranger Construction Industries, of West Palm Beach, was ordered to pay $35 million in damages; Juan Calero, the driver of the tractor-trailer in the chain-reaction crash, was ordered to pay an additional $10,005,000. Astaphan was killed May 28, 2015, along Interstate 75 near Pines Boulevard as he crossed paths with a flatbed...

North Carolinians agreed to borrow $2 billion last year to support higher education and infrastructure. Should they borrow a similar amount to more quickly build Interstate 87 and other important roads? Some local officials say yes. For more than a year, Interstate 87 has been a burning issue for elected officials in Pasquotank and surrounding counties. Creating that road from Raleigh to the Virginia state line would cost more than $1.3 billion, based on early estimates, and it could take decades to develop. Just widening U.S. Highway 17 to interstate standards from northern Pasquotank through Camden may cost almost $187...

All I could do was sigh when I saw a recent article discussing a new study that named the Interstate 95 corridor between Exit 133 and the Fairfax County Parkway as the worst traffic “hot spot” in the nation. The article was circulated around the Prince William County school where I teach. Every minute added onto my 34-mile round trip to work creates huge consequences for me. The trip used to take an ideal 45 minutes, but it has grown to a jaw-dropping 2½ hours — creating significant consequences for me and my children. I am not prone to “road...

In a fillip to India’s highway development programme, the Union cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday approved a plan to build thousands of kilometres of roads and highways over the next five years at a cost of about Rs 7 lakh crore, a spending push that could help generate jobs and lift the economy. Announcing the Cabinet decision, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley called this public expenditure on infrastructure projects as “unprecedented” and “something which has not happened in the country till date.” The plan involves constructing 83,677 km of roads, highways, green-field expressways and bridges in...

State officials intend to redirect highway funding to improve safety on Maine roads and stem a rising trend of injuries and deaths among pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers.Changes to transportation funding follow the completion of a report by a state task force on roadway safety. The task force was commissioned in February by Transportation Commissioner David Bernhardt in response to a rising trend of vehicle collisions, specifically pedestrian deaths. It released its report publicly on Friday. “We had a terrible year last year with fatalities on our road system,” said Joyce Taylor, chief engineer at Maine Department of Transportation. “That really...

Dive Brief: The Michigan Department of Transportation announced it will take on private-sector partners to finish a $1 billion state highway modernization project in Oakland County, MI. Using the public-private partnership (P3) model to design, build, finance and maintain the remainder of the project, rather than waiting on public funds to become available, could shorten the construction schedule by up to a decade, The Detroit News reported. MDOT will issue requests for qualifications from potential private partners before the end of the year, and it anticipates the selection process will wrap up in the summer and fall of 2018. The...

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - Maybe one day they'll finish the renovation project on the Bayonne Bridge. Until then, we're going to have to keep enduring these total closures of the span, including on the weekends, which is a mind-numbingly bad time to shutter the bridge. Not that the Port Authority sees it that way, no matter how much we bang on their cage. We're supposed to have some nice weather this weekend. Mid-70s. Sunny. Lots of folks are going to be out driving. A lot of them are going to be going to New Jersey, either to shop, visit friends...

Connecticut abolished tollbooths more than 30 years ago, and every attempt to reinstate them since has been blown out of the water. But that would have to change, says U.S. Rep. John B. Larson, D-1st District, should his proposed underground highway system in Hartford become reality. For the last eight months Larson has talked to nearly every civic group, news editorial board, local business, municipal government, state agency, and federal office, trying to drum up support for his proposed $10 billion “big dig” project. So far, support has been hit or miss for the plan that would sink interstates 84...

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump—like his opponent Hillary Clinton—spoke glowingly about infrastructure spending, alluding to Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration and Dwight Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System as examples of how spending on roads, bridges and airports helped unite the country. For 2017, the American Society of Civil Engineers has given America’s infrastructure an overall grade of D+, estimating it would cost more than $4 trillion to upgrade properly. But President Trump’s $1 trillion dollar, 10-year infrastructure plan has so far moved along at a halting pace. This tortoise-like process may offer an opportunity to think more strategically about...

If you live in the Bay Area, you’ll be hearing a lot about Senate Bill 595 over the next year or so. If you’re a regular user of any of the region’s seven state-owned toll bridges — that’s all of them, except the Golden Gate Bridge — you’ll want to pay close attention. SB 595, which won final passage Thursday and now awaits Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature, provides for a vote in the nine Bay Area counties next year to raise bridge tolls by as much as $3. If the Bay Area Toll Authority, the agency that oversees the bridges,...