Free Republic

GRAND ISLAND, NY - The New York State Thruway Authority announced Wednesday that cashless tolling on Grand Island will be operational the night of Thursday, March 29. For months, there has been construction near the North Grand Island Bridge on the 190 southbound and on the 190 northbound near the South Grand Island Bridge. The actual gantries, which drivers will go under to pay their toll, are being built. Once the system becomes operational, according to the Thruway Authority, drivers for a brief period of time will go through the old toll plazas, which will not be operational and then...

Design-bid-build may still be the No. 1 project delivery method for U.S. construction, but other processes are rising that could challenge DBB’s stake in how some projects are carried out.One such arrangement, public-private partnerships (P3), is gaining steam with talks from Washington, D.C., about employing the method for President Donald Trump’s $1.3 trillion infrastructure spend. While more states and local entities are successfully turning to P3s to tackle major infrastructure overhauls and new projects, the method still runs up against a perception problem. Some elected officials are hesitant to employ P3s because they don’t want to let a private firm...

All you toll road haters, limber up your fingers for the flaming responses to this column.Because the toll road story here in Central Texas that I’m about to tell you, based on usage and revenue, is a good news story. The simple fact is that the nine toll roads here, other than the privately run section of Texas 130 south of Mustang Ridge, are being heavily used and are financially healthy.This is certainly not the uniform case around the country, where a number of toll roads in the past decade have gone bankrupt. In Central Texas, well over 1 million TxTags...

A massive crane at a Florida construction site toppled Thursday, nearly crushing workers below. Surveillance footage provided by the St. Petersburg Police Department shows the moment the crane tips over, sending two workers below sprinting away. The crane narrowly missed one of at least eight workers running for their lives. St. Petersburg police tweeted that no one was injured and that the construction site, at the department’s new headquarters, didn’t suffer major damage, although the crane itself did. The Tampa Bay Times reports the crane was carrying a scissor lift weighing about 1,000 pounds. A worker told the Times that...

The Illinois Tollway invited about 20 Hinsdale property owners to meetings Thursday, but at least 50 people showed up, including state Sen. Chris Nybo. The Elmhurst Republican asked tollway officials why they are not reconstructing Interstate 290/Interstate 88 interchange first, and then reassess whether the proposed widening farther south with two lanes in each direction is still needed to relieve congestion. "The tollway has not clearly explained why they need to expand this stretch to six lanes, instead of five, in each direction. That additional lane in each direction is a big deal for Hinsdale and Western Springs," Nybo said...

A lumber shortage has pushed prices to record highs as builders stock up for what is expected to be one of the busiest construction seasons in years. Builders say the higher lumber costs are making homes more expensive. Lumber prices started rising last year after fires destroyed prime forests and a trade dispute between the U.S. and Canada restricted supplies. Now a shortage of railcars and trucks is forcing builders to pay even more. “We are in a lumber supply crisis,” said Stinson Dean, a broker in Kansas City, Mo., who ships wood from sawmills to lumber yards, in a...

They say there are two constants in life: death and taxes. However, if you live in Montgomery County, there’s a third: traffic congestion . Unfortunately, some Montgomery County politicians seem almost to scoff at any real solution to that last constant. Take Montgomery County Council candidate Ben Shnider’s recent critique of Gov. Larry Hogan’s (R) proposal for Interstate 270. Shnider, a Democrat, is correct to point out that Hogan’s proposal does not go far enough. But Shnider argues for policies that would, ironically, make traffic only worse. Meanwhile, his Democratic primary opponent, incumbent council member Sidney Katz (Gaithersburg-Rockville), has shown...

A federal court of appeals on Thursday (March 15) put construction of the controversial Bayou Bridge oil pipeline back on track. By a two-to-one vote, judges in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal in New Orleans struck down a ruling by a federal judge in Baton Rouge that had halted the pipeline's construction through the environmentally-sensitive Atchafalaya Basin. In Thursday's appeals court decision, Judge Edith Brown Clement wrote that the district court "abused its discretion in granting a preliminary injunction" halting the pipeline's construction. The district court should have allowed the case to proceed with the Army Corps of...

“MASON CITY: To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new.” — Robert Penn Warren, “All the King’s Men” (1946) WASHINGTON — Appropriately, Warren began the best book about American populism, his novel based on Huey Long’s Louisiana career, with a rolling sentence about a road. Time was, infrastructure — roads, especially — was a preoccupation of populists, who were mostly rural and needed roads to get products to market, and for travel to neighbors and towns, which assuaged loneliness. Today, there is no comparably sympathetic constituency clamoring...

Donald Trump’s first budget recommendations help pay for a bigger military with lower expenditures for other promised programs. His recommendations for infrastructure disappointed local officials across the nation, and his plan to revive Nevada’s Yucca Mountain also received limited funds. Trump’s plan calls for $1.5 trillion in infrastructure projects, with just $200 billion supplied by the federal government. It was widely assumed, including in conservative circles, that the program would force local governments to raise taxes. In the Unification Church publication Washington Times, economist Peter Morici wrote, President Trump’s infrastructure plan puts a heavy burden on the states and will...

A whistleblower in the southern California construction industry says illegal alien workers have “taken over every trade” in the business while driving down wages by an estimated 40 percent. ... Blaine Taylor, the whistleblower, said the construction industry in California once offered a starting wage of about $45 an hour in the late 1980s. Fast-forward to 2018 — nearly two decades into when illegal aliens began flooding the industry — he now says that wages have fallen by more than half, standing at just $11 an hour.

Q: On recent trips to Las Vegas traveling on Interstate 15, Riverside resident Janet Field said she noticed that the rest stops along the interstate were closed in both directions. She wondered why the rest stops are not being used, and said they appear to be in good condition. A: Water and electrical problems are to blame for the closures of rest stops on 1-15 between Riverside and Las Vegas, said Caltrans spokeswoman Terri Kasinga. The rest stops outside of Barstow and Baker are just old and need major repairs or rehabilitation work, which is why they are closed. Kasinga...

MILWAUKEE -- Milwaukee drivers will deal with orange barrels on the freeways for the next 10 years even if Congress passes a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan, the head of the a Wisconsin transportation group said. Pat Goss, executive director of the Transportation Builders Association, says the state hasn't put itself in a position to use the federal money for two Milwaukee County freeway projects eliminated in 2017. That year, Gov. Scott Walker delayed construction on Interstate 41 north of the Zoo Interchange and abandoned plans to rebuild Interstate 94 past Miller Park because of a funding shortfall. Don't expect a $1.5...

NEENAH, Wis. - At the Winnebago County Highway Department, a memorial for two men is a reminder of two employees and two family members who are gone too soon. "Today it's been 12 years since he's been gone," Susan Tiffany said. Tiffany lost her brother, Dan Melhorn, on March 7, 2006. Melhorn, along with his partner and friend, Marc Neumeyer, got killed working along Interstate-41. "My sister told me and I just went, 'no, no'," Tiffany said. Tiffany said that after her brother's death, she drives extra slow through work zones. She's not alone in hoping others will follow. Local...

WASHINGTON — The two-year-old high-tech system that allows the Interstate 66 “red X” lanes to be opened outside of rush hour will be taken down within the next 12 months, WTOP has learned.The active traffic management system, which includes digital signs over each lane on a stretch of about 12 miles of I-66 just outside the Capital Beltway, cost $39 million. Work began in 2013; the system was first activated in September 2015.Construction on two HOV or toll lanes in each direction between the Beltway and Gainesville is set to ramp up this spring, and that will disrupt the system....

FAIRFAX, Va. — Both Interstate 66 tolls for solo drivers and expanded HOV hours have not slowed traffic on most major parallel routes during the morning rush hour, Virginia transportation officials said Tuesday.A new analysis — which found the average daily toll paid in January was $12.37 — also showed that even an increased number of cars on some roads like U.S. Route 50 did not significantly change travel times in January, compared with the same time a year earlier.“What we’re still seeing is the project is working as intended,” said Nick Donohue, Virginia’s deputy transportation secretary.The Virginia Department of...

The final leg of Interstate 69 from Martinsville to Indianapolis will cost nearly $1.6 billion.ThatÂ’s according to the Final Environmental Impact Statement for I-69 Section 6 the state released Thursday. The analysis says construction could start in 2020 and wrap up within six years.Section 6 will run along the existing route of State Road 37. That means some of the many businesses that line the highway in Morgan, Johnson and Marion counties will have to move.The FEIS says more than 80 businesses, including a non-profit and fire station, will need to relocate. ThatÂ’s in addition to nearly 200 residences that...

HUMBLE, TX — The traffic in Kingwood is already an issue, but it's about to become more frustrating as crew prepare to shut down parts of the Interstate 69 bridge that spans the San Jacinto River, just south of Kingwood. The Texas Department of Transportation announced this week that they will close the southbound lanes of I-69 over the river at the end of this month to repair damages caused during flooding from Hurricane Harvey. The construction is expected to continue through the start of summer, and the start of the 2018 hurricane season, which begins in June. Humble, Kingwood...

BLUEFIELD — Extending the King Coal Highway’s “bridge to nowhere” in Bluefield to the Airport Road area is still on track for next year. Del. Marty Gearheart, R-Mercer County, said the project remains on the Department of Highways six-year plan for a 2019 start. “Dirt should be moved next spring (2019),” he said. “It will be built when it is supposed to. It’s been part of the six-year plan and was not scheduled until next spring.” The bridge, which connects to Rt. 460 and then to Interstate 77, was finished almost 10 years ago but funding for the highway has...

A recent scientific study published in the renown "Europhysics News", The Magazine of the European Physical Society, (2012), Vol. 43, number 6, described how paleomagnetism study on several pyramid stones demonstrates the validity of Davidovits' theory on the artificial nature of Egyptian pyramid stones. ...Dr. Igor Túnyi ...and Ibrahim A. El-hemaly... made the following assumption (quote from their scientific paper): Our paleomagnetic investigation of the two great Egyptian pyramids, Kufu and Khafre, is based on the assumption that if the blocks were made in situ by the geopolymer concrete technique described above, then their magnetic moments would all have been...