Free Republic

(WLUK) -- Republican legislative leaders say toll roads could be the answer to generating needed money for road repairs. The idea was brought up during a round-table discussion at a Wisconsin Counties Association meeting last Wednesday. Both Republicans and Democrats still have a lot of questions about the plan. Local leaders are ready to hit the pavement when it comes to finding a solution for fixing streets and infrastructure, and some republicans believe tolls may be the answer. "This is an idea that's been around for years, but it hasn't been talked about with any depth within the group of...

President Donald Trump called for a bipartisan effort to pass an infrastructure bill in his latest State of the Union speech. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao echoed the same sentiments shortly after the speech. Yet both failed to provide a few details as to what ought to be included in such a bill, and leaving the details to Congress is problematic. So far, most congressional discussions on any infrastructure bill have focused on ways to fund more federal spending. Letting Washington simply throw more dollars at roads and bridges, however, is a bad idea. Whatever we spend, politicians should take...

Imagine driving along a four-lane elevated causeway above the brackish San Pablo Bay, shaving more than an hour off the normal Highway 37 commute. Transportation planners have for years envisioned remaking the 20-mile route from Novato to Vallejo into the North Bay’s most important east-west corridor. Now, they are ready to act. Officials in Marin, Sonoma, Napa and Solano counties have been meeting for several years, pondering solutions to Highway 37’s notorious bottlenecks, where 45,000 cars per day stretch the normal 20-minute commute to as much as 100 minutes. They have also acknowledged that traffic improvements will be irrelevant without...

Nearly a dozen stakeholders representing local governments and the freight and commuter sectors on Feb. 7 urged a House transportation panel to identify a sustainable source of funding for an infrastructure bill. As the panel prepares to craft legislation, lawmakers agreed infrastructure policy should top their priorities this year. Yet, they continue to differ on a way forward for ensuring the sustainability of the dwindling Highway Trust Fund. The idea that former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to consider is increasing and indexing the fuel tax by about 10 cents. Doing so, LaHood argued, would...

Professor of Finance for the College of Staten Island and Research Fellow at The University Transportation Research Center Johnathan Peters says if Connecticut lawmakers are looking to raise revenue for transportation, they might be better off looking somewhere else besides highway tolls. “Tolls, generally, are expensive to collect,” Peters said in an interview. “It’s not free. There’s a lot of technology and a lot of equipment, and that equipment will have to be maintained and replaced over time.” Peters -- whose area of expertise and study involves regional planning and road and mass transit financing -- says tolls are more...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – After just two hours of public testimony, a committee looking for solutions to Ohio’s highway funding gap found consensus on just one potential revenue source: raising the Ohio gas tax. The panel didn’t get to the level of detail Wednesday afternoon of specifying how much the tax increase should be. The Governor’s Advisory Committee on Transportation Infrastructure otherwise didn’t find agreement on other ways to raise money for Ohio’s road system, but additional sources of revenue could be added to a report being compiled on the group’s work. Other ideas discussed included indexing the gas tax to...

Miami-Dade’s mayor flies to Tallahassee this week to fight a state takeover of local toll roads, and he says an early victim of the proposed legislation would likely be a planned extension of the 836 expressway into West Kendall. “One of the major issues I have with that bill is the fact that it may stall that project for some time,” said Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who also serves as the appointed chairman of the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority. The toll board of state and county appointees, best known as the MDX, collects tolls on the 836 and four other expressways. “The...

Toll revenue would pay for only 17 percent of a new bridge across the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, a top state official said Tuesday. Eric Kalivoda, deputy secretary for the state Department of Transportation and Development, made the comment during the first meeting of a panel seeking ways to finance a new bridge, which would cost about $1 billion. The seven-member panel features leaders of five parishes in the Baton Rouge area, including East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome. Kalivoda's comments reinforced what officials knew coming in — paying for a new bridge is a huge financial...

The clock is ticking on the 21-day stopgap funding measure Congress passed and POTUS Donald Trump signed to reopen government a week ago, but it doesn’t look like he’s any closer to getting the House to pass a measure providing him with his requested border wall funding. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has doubled and now tripled down on a pledge not to provide a penny of funding for new physical border barriers despite the fact that some members of her party would support such fundind and the Border Patrol has said new barriers are needed.

If you’re desperate for a smile while stuck in Seattle-area traffic, just look toward the billboards where Washington state has launched a $4.4 million marketing campaign that promotes the new Highway 99 tunnel as resembling a happy face. The messages remind motorists this four-lane tunnel goes completely under downtown, from the stadiums to the Space Needle. Television ads depict people performing a swooping “under” gesture — for instance, while ordering a chicken sandwich with meat beneath the lettuce. Viewers are encouraged to check www.99tunnel.com. The shape resembles the trademark smile of Amazon, which dominates several blocks near the tunnel’s north...

INDIANAPOLIS — Gov. Eric Holcomb will not take action to toll Indiana's interstate highways during his tenure in office, a decision that a key Region lawmaker believes betrays the goals of the state road funding plan Holcomb enacted last spring. The Republican chief executive on Thursday transmitted to the State Budget Committee an interstate tolling plan crafted by the Indiana Department of Transportation, as required by House Enrolled Act 1002 sponsored by state Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso. The plan details how the state could collect approximately $15 billion for road improvements between 2024 and 2045 by imposing tolls of up...

More than 60 years ago, the interstate highway system was envisioned to connect the country from coast to coast. Initially, a modest 3-cents-per-gallon tax on gasoline and diesel fuel was established and wholly dedicated to the construction and maintenance of roads and bridges. The vision became reality and exceeded expectations, connecting communities, making travel easier, and improving the flow of commerce. A short time later, the gasoline and diesel tax was increased to 4 cents per gallon—where it stayed until 1983, when it was doubled. Unfortunately, this also marked the point in which highway taxes began to be diverted to...

While Democrats viewed President Donald Trump’s agreement to a deal reopening the shuttered portion of the federal government for three weeks and conservatives panned it as a “cave” to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), POTUS ally Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) noted that what happens next for a key immigrant demographic is now in the hands of the Donkey Party. In an interview with Fox News following POTUS Trump’s Friday announcement, Graham said that whether or not a long-term and permanent legislative solution for DACA and TPS recipients was now up to Democrats. “The best...

Northern Illinois has its share of public works projects that have languished in the “planning stages” for years without ever seeing an inaugural bucket of concrete poured. Millions spent, nothing delivered. A third airport in Peotone comes to mind. So do the Illiana toll road and, for those with long memories, the Crosstown Expressway proposal of the 1960s and ’70s. You probably can put the Route 53 extension on the same dusty shelf. Proposals for an expressway that would extend Route 53 into Lake County stretch back to the 1960s. ADVERTISING inRead invented by Teads But now the Chicago Metropolitan...

Call it the $350 million question. Over the next six weeks, the Pennsylvania Turnpike will try to decide whether to rehabilitate its five sets of tunnels one at a time over 10 to 15 years or enter into a public-private partnership with one firm that would do all of the work in five to six years and be responsible for maintenance for about 30 years. And the $350 million is key because a large part of that money would be the upfront cost if the agency decides to pursue a partnership, said Brad Heigel, the turnpike’s chief engineer. Mr. Heigel...

Is There Someone at FR Who Can Explain Funding Programs via Congress. I need to understand who shepherded funding through for a portion of the government. Is that something that can be searched? PM mail me please?

Mohammed Ali once said, “It ‘aint bragging if you can back it up.” I’m not bragging. I’m proudly reporting facts. The first political commentator in the country to suggest President Trump should bypass Congress and use Executive Action to declare a “National Security Emergency” and grab the funds from other government agencies to fund the wall was… Yours truly- this proud conservative warrior and RJ columnist. My column was published in the Las Vegas Review Journal back on Sunday November 18th. In advance of publication, I was the keynote speaker for the Wyoming GOP annual dinner on Friday November 16th....

By the time the I-95 reconstruction is complete, you’ll probably be too old to have to worry about a commute. The same goes for the planners, engineers, managers, and laborers who for more than a decade have worked to rebuild the highway’s 51 miles in Pennsylvania from the ground up. Their careers at PennDot or with contractors will almost surely end before construction does. “I don’t know that I think about too much that I’m not going to be here,” said Elaine Elbich, PennDot’s portfolio manager for the I-95 project. Elbich plans with a span of decades in mind. From...

HARRISBURG, PA (JAN. 2, 2019) — The PA Turnpike Commission (PTC) today reminded customers that, beginning 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 6, tolls will reflect a six-percent increase for cash, E-ZPass and PA Turnpike TOLL BY PLATE users. The increase, approved by commissioners last July, is needed to meet the PTC’s dual funding obligation to improve its toll-road system and support mass-transit improvements across the Commonwealth. As a result, the most-common toll for a passenger vehicle will increase a dime for E-ZPass customers from $1.30 to $1.40 and 20 cents for cash customers from $2.10 to $2.30. The toll increase —...

To build a wall along the United States’ international border with Mexico, President Donald Trump could order the sale of approximately 500,000 to 5 million acres of federal land. The U.S. Government currently claims ownership of about 640 million acres of land — or about 28% of the total land mass of the nation. This could raise the entire $25 billion needed to finance building the wall (not just the next installment we are currently fighting over). But one must understand that out of 640 million acres there is a vast diversity of terrain. The task is to select only...