Free Republic

When a school district deems its region’s main thoroughfare unsafe for school buses, that highway’s problems need fixed. Lots of Wabash Valley residents fear driving on the local stretch of Interstate 70. And with good reason. Fatal accidents — several involving semi tractor-trailers crashing into stopped or slowed traffic — have become frequent on I-70 between the Illinois-Indiana border and Indianapolis. Accidents along that 68-mile path outnumbered those on the 66-mile portion east of Indy to the Ohio border in 2016 and 2017, according to the Indiana University Public Policy Institute’s statistics. Distracted driving has been cited as a factor...

A high-speed transit system through the mountain corridor could serve as a major economic boon to communities on the Western Slope, according to a new study recently published by Development Research Partners. A high-speed transit system — likely in the form of a train that would carry passengers and light freight between Denver International Airport and Eagle County Regional Airport — was listed in the 2011 Record of Decision issued by the Colorado Department of Transportation and the Federal Highways Administration as a potential long-term solution to dealing with congestion on Interstate 70. Late last year, stakeholders — including the...

Speed and red-light cameras are the bane of many motorists. A modern idea made possible by technology, they have been installed in at least 24 states. Although these cameras are a revenue boon for governments across the nation, their intrusion into daily life is disturbing, and their constitutionality is dubious. Specifically, use of these cameras could violate the Sixth Amendment. The Confrontation Clause grants criminal defendants the right to be confronted with the witnesses against them. Since it is a camera and not a person that witnessed the offense, such violations generally cannot be considered a criminal offense. The ticket...

It’s summer, and for hundreds of thousands of Americans, that means at least one burger-and-bathroom break in Breezewood, Pennsylvania. This half-mile gauntlet of gas stations, fast-food outlets, and motels, its oversized signs towering above the surrounding countryside, is familiar to anyone who has to drive regularly from the East Coast to the Midwest or vice versa.[snip]Far from being “Every Town, U.S.A.,” Breezewood is a weird, improbable blip of a place. It’s what an architect might call a unique urban condition—a churning mini-city where the population nearly turns over every hour.

No new or specific details about the I-285 toll lanes project were revealed at a May 15 Georgia Department of Transportation meeting held in Dunwoody, but the state agency did fulfill a requirement to officially close out the “Revive285” project that began in 2006. A future round of public meetings that will include detailed maps of what properties could be taken are expected to occur in early 2020. Dubbed by GDOT as a “conversation” meeting about the planned toll lanes along the top end of I-285, the one held Tuesday afternoon at St. Luke’s Presbyterian Church attracted about 60 people....

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...

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...

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...

Decades of emissions-cutting regulations under a bipartisan law — the 1970 Clean Air Act — have eased the choking pollution that once shrouded U.S. cities. Cleaner air has saved lives and strengthened the lungs of Los Angeles children. But now, air quality is slipping once again. Bad air days are ticking up across the nation, and emissions reductions are slowing. The most notable setback has been with ozone, the lung-damaging gas in smog that builds up in warm, sunny weather and triggers asthma attacks and other health problems that can be deadly. Health effects from ozone pollution have remained essentially...

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...

Just last week, House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz dismissed toll opponents as “emotional.” He claimed that they cling unthinkingly to “perceived details” such as that the number of gantries remain unfixed and the amount of revenue actually to be obtained from out-of-staters remains not only undetermined, but undeterminable. He did not mention, but could have, opponents’ continuing concerns about the eventual rate of tolls; about whether a state-wide, shared-sacrifice tolling structure will be authorized by the U.S. D.O.T. as promised, and what happens if it isn’t; and how much gross revenue from tolling will be eaten up by costs, which have...

A date for at least a bit of congestion relief has been set for commuters on I-405 between Bothell and Lynnwood. During the last session, state legislators approved the bonding of I-405 toll revenue, allowing the build-out of at least one highway project to begin sooner. Construction to widen I-405 between highways 522 and 527, which will add another express toll lane in each direction, will now start by 2021, according to Craig Smiley, a spokesperson for the Washington State Department of Transportation. The project also includes building direct access ramps from Highway 522 onto the express toll lanes, and...

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 U.S. Interstate Highway System is the backbone of American commerce and personal travel. Funded on a pay-as-you-go basis largely through federal excise taxes on motor fuel, today it accounts for 25% of total vehicle-miles traveled despite accounting for just 2.5% of total road network lane-miles. Yet, much of the Interstate system, construction of which began in the 1950s, is nearing the end of its functional life, along with the infrastructure of other surface transportation modes. Over the next two decades, trillions of dollars of investment will be needed to rehabilitate and in some cases rebuild this infrastructure, according to...

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...

Transportation leaders will study an idea to tear down and replace a portion of Interstate 275 from the downtown area to the USF area. The Metropolitan Planning Organization voted unanimously on Wednesday to move forward with a study on the concept. Despite moving forward with the study, the MPO said there are a lot of questions and it could take decades to do a feasibility study. PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Nonprofit names I-275 among top 10 U.S. highways that should be torn down "Looking at the longer-range future, the MPO will start by getting answers to questions such as: is the cut-and-cover...

A gas tax bill crafted by a statewide industry group, Louisiana Coalition to Fix Our Roads, and sponsored by Republican Baton Rouge Rep. Steve Carter is the latest proposed solution to the state’s aging, chronically gridlocked transportation infrastructure. It’s also the most ambitious. Not only would the bill gradually increase the state’s gasoline tax, but it would levy fees on electric and hybrid vehicles and redirect a temporary, half-cent sales tax to highway and bridge construction projects. It would also dedicate a portion of the funds to specific, badly needed projects around the state, including a new Mississippi River bridge...

MARYLANDERS STUNNED by rush-hour traffic on the Capital Beltway, brace yourselves: Your commute is on track to get much, much worse. Roughly 30,000 more vehicles will be using Maryland’s portion of the highway each day by 2040, on top of the current 253,000, meaning cars and trucks will creep along at an average speed of 14 mph between Bethesda and College Park — a 10-mile segment that will take 43 minutes. That’s part of the impetus for a bold plan Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has advanced that would add up to four toll lanes to the Beltway and Interstate 270....

Multiple people died and at least 10 others were injured in a fiery crash on a Colorado highway that involved at least 15 cars and semi trucks. Officials did not specify the number of people killed, but said there were "multiple fatalities" in the Thursday crash and subsequent fire on Interstate 70 in Lakewood, Colorado, about 8 miles west of Denver. One firefighter was among the people taken to a local hospital when debris, possibly a tire, exploded. The accident occurred at around 4:30 p.m. when a semitrailer slammed into several stopped cars at a high rate of speed during...