Free Republic

Paying to bypass traffic already is happening on Interstate 95. Plans are in place for the pay-lane practice to creep into Boca Raton and Delray Beach. Commuting south on I-95 into Boca Raton during the afternoon rush hour was never a charm, but it’s worse than ever now, due in part to the creeping transformation of I-95 into a toll road. Like many bad ideas, this started small. The Florida Department of Transportation project called Express 95 adopted the slogan “Giving people the option to save time.” But it more honestly should have been branded, “Buying your way out of...

Collecting tolls in Hampton Roads is a $180-million-a-year business — nearly twice the size of the region’s fishing and farming sectors combined — and is set to grow. Much of that money goes to finance a private venture’s $1.5 billion expansion of the road and tunnel network connecting Norfolk and Portsmouth. A somewhat smaller amount goes to the public body that’s spending nearly $800 million to dig a parallel tunnel for the 55-year-old, 23-mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. A much smaller part goes to keep the Coleman Bridge over the York River in shape, and to pay off the cost...

A summer getaway along Interstate 95 in Virginia could include extra backups the next few years now that construction is ramping up on a 10-mile extension of the HOV or toll 95 Express Lanes. Virginia and Transurban, the private builder and operator of the toll lanes, held a ceremonial groundbreaking Wednesday at the Stafford Regional Airport for the 95 Express Lanes Fredericksburg extension, a project they believe could significantly alleviate some regular backups from Garrisonville Road to the Rappahannock River. Until the $565 million project is finished in about three years though, hundreds of workers on the project mean drivers...

Extending Virginia’s 495 Express Lanes to the Legion Bridge will require widening the Capital Beltway, but would also bring new sidewalks or bike paths in the area between the Dulles Toll Road and the Potomac River. The Virginia Department of Transportation will present preliminary designs for the toll lane extension Monday night. The extension is intended to connect to toll lanes Maryland plans to allow a private company to build over a rehabbed Legion Bridge. Construction on Virginia’s extension could begin late next year and open to traffic in 2023. Maryland has yet to formally select its toll lane designs...

In the next year or two, the seabed between Hampton and Norfolk will start to change. Mud and sand will slowly move as a custom-built boring machine tunnels alongside the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel. Travelers funneling through the existing HRBT may not notice the adjacent construction just on the other side of the tunnel wall. Cargo ships and Navy vessels, carrying thousands of containers and sailors, may pass over the project’s construction completely undisturbed. And that’s the way Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization officials want it to stay. “It’s something we’re really proud of,” said Robert Crum, executive director for the...

Why can’t America build or repair infrastructure on a par with countries in Europe or Asia? Why are our bridges, roads, and airports not what they should be? Aren’t we the richest and most technologically savvy country in the world? Who or what is holding us back? Kyle Smith of National Review has the surprising (and frustrating) answer.

Dive Brief: Six more contractors and designers have settled lawsuits for undisclosed amounts with victims' families and the survivors of the March 15, 2018, pedestrian bridge collapse at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, the Miami Herald reported. Among the companies that settled is FIGG Bridge Group, which designed the pedestrian span. The other five companies are Bolton Perez & Associates; Corradino Group; A&P Consulting Transportation Engineers Corp.; RLT Engineering Services LLC; and Gerdau Ameristeel US Inc. There are more than 20 defendants being sued in civil lawsuits in Miami-Dade Circuit Court for their alleged roles in the collapse. The...

The traffic jams over the Occoquan are so much worse than on any other part of Interstate 95 in Virginia that they throw off the scale of a review of potential traffic improvements for I-95 from North Carolina to the Potomac River. Initial analysis ahead of public meetings this week to identify the Virginia trouble spots shows people spend more than 1.2 million hours a year in delays in just the 1-mile southbound stretch over the Occoquan River. The miles leading up to that are only slightly better, regularly slowed to around 30 mph. Overall, at least 70% of delays...

Taxpayers from all 50 states pay into the Highway Trust Fund when they fill their tanks with gas or diesel fuel. That sends billions of dollars a year to Washington, which then cuts checks to state governments in the form of infrastructure grants overseen by federal bureaucrats. It’s hard to tell just what shuffling so much money from one level of government to another is supposed to accomplish. In point of fact, the system creates many speed bumps that prevent our highway system from delivering the value it ought to. A Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on Wednesday...

Shimla: Massive mudslides hit the Chandigarh-Shimla national highway between Parwanoo and Solan towns in Himachal Pradesh on Saturday owing to heavy overnight rains, that led to traffic snarls and posed a serious threat to motorists. The movement of traffic was hampered almost throughout the day due to massive landslides along the highway in Solan district. Motorists said the maximum landslips were on a 30-km stretch between Parwanoo and Kumarhatti, where over 20 km was either damaged or piled with boulders and muck. They said the falling debris threatens their safety while travelling through this stretch that has been excavated recently...

In this Policy Tip Sheet, Matthew Glans examines gasoline taxes, how they have become less effective over time, and why states can no longer rely on them to fund state transportation projects. Problem Gasoline taxes are an unreliable funding source for state transportation projects, road construction, and maintenance due to declining gasoline prices and more fuel-efficient vehicles. In 2015, Daniel Vock, writing for Governing, analyzed state gas tax data reported to the U.S. Census Bureau and found two-thirds of state fuel taxes failed to keep up with inflation. Moreover, gasoline taxes are regressive and produce widespread economic consequences. Increasing fuel...

LHASA, April 26 (Xinhua) -- The world's highest highway tunnel was open to traffic on Friday at an altitude of over 4,750 meters above sea level in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region. The two-way tunnel is over 5.7 km long, which is a part of the 400-km highway linking the regional capital of Lhasa with Nyingchi in the southeast of Tibet. Construction of the tunnel started in 2015 on the 5,018-meter-high Mila Mountain, and it was completed on Monday, helping shorten the 18-km distance over the mountain to 5.7 km. Gong Bin, project manager of Mila Mountain Tunnel of the...

A subsea tunnel across the Strait of Belle Isle is back in conversation once again after a report was tabled this month in Ottawa. The federal government’s standing committee on transport, infrastructure, and communities is now calling on the federal government to work with the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec, as well, as the private sector, to build a fixed link across the Strait of Belle Isle and complete Route 138 along the Quebec Lower North Shore. The tunnel would link Point Amour in Labrador to Yankee Point on the Great Northern Peninsula in Newfoundland. The project would...

In late April, President Trump and Democratic congressional leaders finally found something they agreed on: infrastructure. Outside the White House after a meeting with the president, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat, issued the pronouncement, “Big and bold.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the Democrat from New York, echoed the takeaway: “We agreed on a number, which was very, very good, $2 trillion.” Trump himself has been publicly quiet but didn’t dispute that he told the Democrats he “like[s] the number.” By May, this renewed spirit of cooperation had fallen apart, at least temporarily, with a second meeting collapsing...

The small industrial buildings and blighted homes that once dotted the landscape of Detroit's Delray neighborhood are gone for good as demolition and site-cleaning work for the Gordie Howe International Bridge is in full swing this summer. The long-anticipated bridge construction project is starting to take shape on the Michigan side of the Detroit River, as cranes have been working along the riverfront in recent weeks. The cranes were drilling test shafts into the ground that will determine the final design of the new span and its towers rivaling Detroit's 73-story Renaissance Center, said Aaron Epstein, CEO of Bridging North...

SEATTLE -- The double-deck Alaskan Way Viaduct spells disaster in the event of a massive earthquake in Seattle. It's a warning that played out in real life in Oakland, Calif., 30 years ago. The Cyprus Street Viaduct Collapse killed 42 people during the Loma Prieta Earthquake. The stark similarities between that and our own viaduct in Seattle had experts sounding the alarm back then. Then in 2001, the Nisqually Earthquake hit at a 6.8 magnitude. "In 2001, during the Nisqually quake, the Alaskan Way Viaduct was damaged on the north end of the Alaskan Way Viaduct," said tunnel expert Red...

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger celebrated when the California Transportation Commission voted, despite a host of warnings, to pay a contractor more than $1 billion to build two tunnels and a stretch of road outside San Francisco nine years ago. Schwarzenegger said the project’s new approach, which aimed to cap public expenses and shift responsibility to the private sector, would serve as a “shining example” of an innovative way to improve the state’s highways while saving taxpayer dollars. Now the project, known as the Presidio Parkway, is more than two years late and $208 million over budget. When the commission approved...

A public interest advocacy group has identified the country’s “most wasteful and pointless” transportation projects, which are costing taxpayers $25 billion. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) cites among “the biggest boondoggles” a $2.2 billion widening of Interstate 81 in Virginia, a $7 billion interstate project in Houston and a $802 million “Connecting Miami” redesign of city highways. According to PIRG, widening highways to reduce gridlock fails for several reasons. Multiple studies show that more road space over time leads to further congestion because of a phenomenon called “induced demand.” “We’re stuck in a car-centric rut in the United...

Cash-strapped Connecticut is grappling with how to pay for transportation investments to prevent more than half of its roads and highways from falling into disrepair in the next decade. The answer, according to Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration, is highway tolls. Like most states in the Northeast, Connecticut previously used highway tolls to raise revenue. The state removed all tolls in the 1980s following a crash at a toll plaza that killed seven people. Now Mr. Lamont, a Democrat, is attempting to persuade a skeptical state Legislature to bring them back. Lawmakers declined to vote on tolls during this year’s legislative...

A dedicated route for wildlife migration has been built in the newly constructed national road between Fuyun county and Wucaiwan in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Crossing the Junggar Basin, the 216 national highway is expected to be put into operation on August 1. The project was launched in 2017, with environmental protection made the top priority. The bridge is 100 meters long, 50 meters wide and 6 meters high. There are several culverts along the highway designed for wild animal migration. In order to fit in with the surrounding environment, the passage is covered by a layer of...