Free Republic

Development of a proposed hyperloop transportation system linking Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Chicago would not only be a boon to communities along the travel corridors but also would be a strong business investment. That’s the conclusion of a 157-page feasibility study released Monday in Cleveland by the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc., a California-based company developing the technology to move passengers and freight at more than 500 mph through low-pressure tubes. Consultant Transportation Economics and Management Systems performed the $1.3 million study of the proposed Great Lakes Hyperloop System. For the first time, the study estimated...

Leaders within the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation have approved a public-private partnership to reconstruct a portion of Interstate 81. PennDOT’s P3 Board approved the project, which will involve the reconstruction of a 4.5-mile section of the route near Wilkes-Barre, on Dec. 4. Wilkes-Barre, the seat of Luzerne County in northeastern Pennsylvania, is 20 miles southwest of Scranton. The project will involve widening a portion of I-81 to three lanes in both directions, realigning 2.5 miles of southbound interstate and replacing eight bridges. Other safety measures include eliminating a left-hand exit and improving a substandard weave distance between two routes that...

In the latest step toward the rebirth of San Francisco’s Presidio from an aging former Army base to a bright light of America’s national park system, crews are set to break ground Thursday on a project to build a new 14-acre public park on top of two freeway tunnels near the Golden Gate Bridge. When finished in 2021, the unusual project, called Tunnel Tops, will link Crissy Field, on San Francisco’s waterfront, to the Presidio’s Main Post, parade grounds and visitor’s center. That connection was severed more than 80 years ago when the road to and from the Golden Gate...

Maryland and Virginia will partner to rebuild and widen the American Legion Bridge in a ­billion-dollar project to relieve congestion at the Washington region’s worst traffic bottleneck, the states’ governors announced Tuesday. In an unusual example of interstate cooperation, Virginia has agreed to help pay for the project even though most of the bridge — like the Potomac River flowing beneath it — belongs to Maryland. The plan marks a breakthrough in a years-long impasse over widening the bridge on the northwestern stretch of the Capital Beltway. In the past, Maryland has said it didn’t have enough money for the...

I-4 Ultimate’s promise five years ago was that private financing and management would make Florida’s largest road reconstruction project better, faster and cheaper. Today, the 21-mile and $2.3 billion rebuilding of Interstate 4 through metro Orlando is slogging through rising costs to an uncertain finish date, with crews working day and night under the pall of repeated worker fatalities. Some of the issues: - The fifth death of a construction worker last month that preliminary findings say would have been avoidable with a more cautious approach to bridge building that SGL Constructors made mandatory this month. - Construction consortium I-4...

Ohio planners will move full speed ahead on a proposed hyperloop system that would carry passengers between Pittsburgh and Chicago in about 58 minutes for a one-way cost of about $93. But the full system, known as Mid-West Connect, probably wouldn’t be finished until about 2050. Thea Walsh, director of transportation and funding for the Columbus, Ohio-based Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, said this week the agency is putting the finishing touches on feasibility and environmental impact studies but has concluded it should pursue the hyperloop system. The system being developed by Virgin Hyperloop One would move passengers and freight in...

It doesn’t get much more Northern Virginia than this. Traffic woes and construction delays are daily gripes on the local Facebook group, “Western Prince William Chatter.” Then Steve came along -- and brought joy to the group's 20,000-plus members. "It seems he is the light at the end of the tunnel when you're STUCK in that horrible traffic! Thanks for entertaining us Steve and for those calling him Bob, just no," one Facebooker wrote. Before WPWC members gave him a name, Steve was simply known as a rubber tire crane. He came to the Manassas area to lift 10 concrete...

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 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...

ORLANDO, Fla.—The state dubbed it the I-4 Ultimate for its grand scope. For some here, it’s more like the ultimate headache. A reconstruction of 21 miles of congested interstate highway through the heart of Orlando will build or rebuild 140 bridges, redesign 15 interchanges, move exits and add new toll lanes, in a $2.3 billion project to smooth traffic through one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities. Dense cities have grown up around the aging freeways, hemming them in so that expensive engineering feats are needed to do work on them. Yet work is often unavoidable. I-4, for instance, was built...

Maryland’s Board of Public Works approved the state’s use of private companies to widen highways in the Washington suburbs, but agreed to delay work on the Capital Beltway after running into opposition. The vote came during a lengthy and tense meeting Wednesday on Gov. Larry Hogan’s plan to enlist the private sector to widen the Capital Beltway and Interstate 270. The private contractors would recoup their investment through tolls charged on drivers who use the new lanes. The Hogan administration has sold the plan — known as a “public-private partnership” or P3 — as a way to alleviate traffic congestion...

The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) has a grand plan to expand I-4 well beyond the cones and lane shifts that drivers in Central Florida face today. However, those plans could be changing, in part, because of the lengthy delays of the current “I-4 Ultimate” expansion and the lack of answers being given to Congress about why it is taking so long. The I-4 Ultimate project was scheduled to be finished in 2021 with two toll lanes running in each direction down the center of the interstate from Kirkman Road south of Orlando to the Longwood rest area in Seminole...

A final plan for tolls for users along the future Interstate 10 Bridge and Bayway could be known in July, a state transportation official said Friday. It will be unveiled ahead of the August release of the final environmental impact statement on the entire $2.1 billion project. But at least one state lawmaker says more time is going to be needed to hash out tolls and their impact on local motorists. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for the experts and the work being done by the state DOT,” said state Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Daphne. “But it’s probably fair...

President Trump and Democratic leaders have discovered the one policy that unites Washington: spending money we don’t have. Yet their bipartisan pledge to spend an added $2 trillion on infrastructure over the next decade faces serious obstacles if these leaders are to responsibly improve our infrastructure. First, Washington should spend only as much as it is willing to offset with other savings. Putting $2 trillion on the national credit card would boost deficits that are already on course to surpass $2 trillion a year within a decade, due mostly to entitlements. These deficits are projected to push ­annual interest costs...

Opposition to tolling the future Interstate 10 Mobile River Bridge and the Wallace Tunnel dominated the public comments during Tuesday’s hearing into the massive $2.1 billion project. From local politicians to business owners, the message to the Alabama Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration was clear: A $3 to $6 toll will place enormous burdens on drivers and workers in Mobile and Baldwin counties, and it won’t fly with the rest of the public either. “It’s a huge expense,” said Roger Nelson of Daphne, who commutes daily to work to downtown Mobile. “It will be passed on.” Said...