Free Republic

Several key Central Texas highway projects — including expansions of U.S. 183 in North Austin, U.S. 290 in Southwest Austin and Interstate 35 through the heart of the area — are once again in limbo after Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick last week staked out firm anti-toll positions. “Right now there’s a billion dollars worth of projects on hold, between 183 and Oak Hill,” said Mike Heiligenstein, executive director of the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority. The I-35 project, estimated to cost $8 billion to add toll lanes and other improvements from Round Rock to Buda, was...

Angela Dean spends at least $200 a month to cover after-school care for her 5-year-old son. Getting back and forth to work — and making sure she picks him up in time — costs another $200 just in tolls.“If I didn't take toll roads, my commute would be an hour-and-a-half or more depending on traffic,” Dean said. “I get off work at 5:30 p.m. and I have to pick my son up by 6:30 or pay crazy late fees. When I take the toll roads, I get there with about 15 minutes to spare.”The North Texas suburbanite uses the President...

State officials have yet to find a private partner to help finance the construction of the final five miles of the Gilcrease Expressway, but they are closer to figuring out how much motorists will have to pay to use it. Tim Gatz, executive director of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority, said Monday that the toll is expected to be about $1 to $1.50 for private vehicles, with a higher rate for commercial vehicles. Motorists who use the plate-pay system, as can be used in Jenks, likely would pay more. “We are waiting on the traffic and revenue study to come back...

Take Interstate 65 south across the Ohio River and you might not notice you've just spent $4. No toll booth stands between the Indiana border and Louisville. Motorists who frequently travel the route likely have a transponder device, with the cost charged automatically to their account. For those without a transponder, a camera captures a license plate photo and the tolling system operator, with access to motor vehicle records, sends a bill to the vehicle's registered owner. As technological advances make highway and bridge tolling easier and more efficient, technology also is delivering more fuel-efficient cars and trucks. The gasoline-tax...

Is that toll collector in the booth an endangered species? Not quite with 387 collectors working for the Illinois tollway in 2018, but the numbers are dwindling as the agency moves toward an automated system. Through attrition, toll collector jobs will drop by 32 next year, which accounts for nearly 60 percent of the 55 eliminated positions agencywide, according to the proposed budget recently released. Other budget highlights include an estimated $60 million spike in revenues and a $269.7 million increase in capital spending from 2017. Overall the operations and maintenance budget, which includes salaries and equipment, will rise by...

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission authorized nearly $34 million in final design contracts Tuesday for an eight-mile stretch of the Mon-Fayette Expressway from Jefferson Hills to Duquesne. If final design goes as expected, construction could begin in 2022 for the first of three remaining segments needed to finish the last 14 miles of the highway from Jefferson Hills to the Parkway East in Monroeville at a projected cost of $2.1 billion. That’s more than the $1.68 billion cost of the first 60 miles of the highway, started more than 40 years ago in northern West Virginia. The commission’s action Tuesday increased...

"The priority is spending," the energetic and newly minted congressman, sporting an American flag pin on his dark suit jacket, told the C-SPAN host, soon adding, "the size of the government is really what it comes down to." The year was 2010, and the congressman-elect was Mick Mulvaney, then a 43-year-old restaurateur and developer who rode the tea party wave during President Obama's first term to defeat 14-term incumbent Democrat John Spratt and be the first Republican to represent South Carolina's 5th Congressional District since 1883. Fast forward to 2017. The national debt has surpassed $20 trillion. The country's budget...

This year, America’s overall infrastructure was awarded a D+ grade, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ “Infrastructure Report Card.” Arizona’s infrastructure may be relatively newer by comparison but it is starting to show signs of wear and tear as indicated by the C grade that it received from ASEC. While the state of Arizona’s infrastructure may not be in as dire of shape as other urban areas, the need for new and repaired infrastructure is widely talked about, especially at Valley Partnership. For 30 years now, Valley Partnership has been the rational voice at the table whenever important...

An IRS Special Agent gets to carry an AR15 in certain circumstances. Another agency, Health & Human Services, trains special agents on heavy military-style weapon platforms by the same vendors that train our Special Forces warriors.

BROWN COUNTY (WLUK) -- If you experience stop-and-go traffic heading to work or backups on your way home, you’re not the only one frustrated. Every community experiences traffic delays. Transportation planners design new roads to ease the congestion. But FOX 11 Investigates found that in Brown County, those planning the roads are frustrated too. Ads by ZINC Highway 172 in Brown County carries a heavy load of cars and trucks. During peak traffic hours, motorists are trying to cross the Fox River. A little over two miles to the south, the Claude Allouez Bridge in De Pere can be even...

One of Arkansas’ top priorities is finishing Interstate 49 in the western part of the state. A key component of that massive project, which is also massively expensive, is a 13.7-mile stretch near Fort Smith that includes a bridge over the Arkansas River to connect Interstate 40 with Interstate 49, which would then run from south Fort Smith to northwest Arkansas and up through the midsection of the nation. The project’s completion would connect with a 6.5-mile stretch of Interstate 549 that opened in 2015 and hooks up U.S. 71 with Highway 22 in south Fort Smith. The proposed 13.7-mile...

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...

Politicians on all sides insist that we can’t have those big “beautiful” tax cuts originally promised by Donald Trump because the cuts have to “pay for themselves.” What they’re really saying is that tax cuts can't be large enough to curtail the government spending. Tax cut opponents like to create the impression that Big Government’s current spending is so critical to our national welfare, it’s simply not feasible for cuts to be made—anywhere. Really? Free Market Central spoke to Adam Andrzejewski, Founder and CEO of OpenTheBooks.com, the non-profit, non-partisan organization whose mission for the last six years has been to...

WASHINGTON - The federal government began its new budget year with an October deficit of $63.2 billion, up sharply from a year ago. The Treasury Department reported Monday that the October deficit was 37.9 percent higher than the $45.8 billion deficit recorded in October 2016. Both government receipts and spending were up for the month, with receipts climbing 14.3 percent to $235.3 billion, a record for the month of October. The larger spending figure was up a sizable 11.6 percent to $298.6 billion. The deficit for the 2017 budget year, which ended on Sept. 30, totaled $666 billion, up 13.7...

ANNAPOLIS — In 2009, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley closed the visitor center at the Sideling Hill cut, the symbolic gateway to Western Maryland, as a cost-saving effort. Some saw the move as personal, or at least confirmation of how the former governor felt about the state’s rural counties. “We had only two visitor centers that were closed in the entire state under O’Malley,” said William Valentine, an Allegany County commissioner. “It wasn’t too hard to figure out what happened.” Current Gov. Larry Hogan reopened the Sideling Hill Visitor Center in 2015. Earlier this year when Hogan took the stage...

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...

The suspected foreign national terrorist behind the New York City attack that has left at least eight individuals dead came to the United States years ago through the Diversity Visa Lottery, a program that President Trump and pro-American immigration reformers have demanded an end to. According to ABC New York, 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov — the man who allegedly mowed down pedestrians in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City — entered the U.S. in 2010 from Uzbekistan under the Diversity Visa Lottery before obtaining a Green Card. The Diversity Visa Lottery gives out 50,000 visas every year to foreign nationals...

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...

BOSTON — One year after the lights went permanently dark inside the Bay State’s remaining human-staffed tollbooths, giving way to the era of all-electronic tolling, a bill on Beacon Hill touted by a powerful Democrat from Lynn would expand tolling throughout Greater Boston, with high-traveled freeways like Route 128, Interstate 93, Interstate 95, and Route 2 transitioning into tollways. State Senator Thomas McGee, the chairman of the Joint Transportation Committee, filed the bill, “An Act Establishing the Metropolitan Transportation Network,” last January. His bill was heard by the committee on Tuesday. Testifying at the hearing against the bill was Citizens...