Free Republic

Public attention on Maryland transportation planning issues has primarily focused on the Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties’ Purple Line and Baltimore’s Red Line since Larry Hogan became governor. The largely limited impact these two projects would actually have on congestion has often been lost. Planners estimate that the Purple Line would add only 11,800 new daily transit riders by the year 2040, less than a one percent increase (0.8%) in metro area ridership.Earlier this month Virginia Deputy Secretary of Transportation Nick Donohue released the results of VDOT’s Potomac River crossings study.[1] Their main recommendation is to extend the Beltway’s HOV/toll...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said a vote to begin debate on a massive highway bill he is pitching is "an important first step" toward solving a transportation funding shortfall that has bedeviled Congress for a decade.  "There are lot of tired cliches about not giving up after an initial set back," McConnell said, referencing a failed test vote on Tuesday that placed the Senate's ability to pass a long-term highway bill in doubt.  "I won't subject our colleagues to any of those this morning, but I will say that last night's vote represents an important first step toward...

If I don't have time to read legislation before voting on it, my default vote is no. We received the highway bill today at 3:06 p.m., and it is over 1,000 pages long. Our first vote on this legislation is scheduled for 4:00 p.m.

I was interested to read the article from The Sun News on Thursday about the last-minute delay of the permit to pave International Drive. This project will take thousands of cars off of the gridlock of Highway 501, and relieve congestion in Carolina Forest. On the day before we were to receive the permit from the Army Corps of Engineers, the Coastal Conservation League filed an appeal. It seems they want the road to be redesigned to include multiple bear crossings, at a cost of millions of dollars to the taxpayers of Horry County. That’s millions of scarce taxpayer dollars...

Construction on the new Interstate 74 Bridge is supposed to be done by 2020, but money – and time – is running out. On Saturday, July 11th, 2015, Representative Cheri Bustos visited the Quad Cities to meet with local leaders about federal funding. Right now, Congress is trying to pass a highway bill to fix and fund our area’s infrastructure. However, if they don’t find a solution by July 31st, 2015, federal funding for those projects – like the I-74 Bridge – will end. Monday, July 13th, 2015, a spokesman for Bustos said that if federal funding for the project...

In recent decades, there have been many ways to make money and one virtually infallible formula for losing it: running an airline. At times, it might have made more sense for the major carriers to set up bonfires of cash on tarmacs rather than actually transport people. Lately, though, they have figured out how to avoid squandering huge sums. Hint: It involves charging more for their services than it costs to provide them. This strange development has set off alarms among people in Congress who think aviation should be a charitable activity. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., recently charged, "Consumers are...

United Airlines flights have been grounded nationwide due to a computer system glitch. Millions of passengers are currently stranded at airports across the U.S. after the airline requested that all planes be prevented from taking off, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In a statement, United spokesman Luke Punzenberger told Bloomberg that the company had experienced a 'network connectivity issue' and was 'working to resolve this' as quickly as possible. '[We] apologize to our customers for any inconvenience,' he added.

The problem is clear: Traffic congestion will become significantly worse and more widespread without big changes in how people and products get around. Build more roads. Build more public transit. Rely on new technology. The possible solutions are many, but none is easy or cheap. A few ways to ease the nation's gridlock: ——— PUBLIC TRANSIT RENAISSANCE Ridership on public buses, trains and subways has reached its highest level nationally since the 1950s, and transit boosters cite this as evidence that expanded service and routes is a good investment. The nation's driving capital, Los Angeles, is making a multibillion-dollar investment...

ANNAPOLIS, MD – Following through on his campaign pledge to provide funding for highways and state-owned local roads, Governor Larry Hogan today announced $1.97 billion for highways and bridges from Western Maryland to the Eastern Shore. The priority projects, which will get underway by 2018, include $1.35 billion in new projects going to construction and $625 million in preserved projects. The $1.35 billion in new projects includes $845 million for major projects and $500 million to fix bridges and improve roads. “Today, I’m delivering on my promise to provide nearly $2 billion in funding to our highways and bridges across...

Dashing Baltimore's hopes for an east-west light rail line, Gov. Larry Hogan said Thursday that he will not build the $2.9 billion Red Line. "The current proposal makes no sense whatsoever," the governor told a State House news conference. But Hogan, making his first appearance since announcing Monday he has cancer, gave mass transit advocates a limited victory by giving the green light to construction of a slimmed-down version of the Purple Line light rail project in the Washington suburbs. During his campaign last year, Hogan had said the state could not afford either project. After he took office, however,...

Gov. Larry Hogan announced Thursday the state will move forward with the Purple Line. The Republican governor made his decision after months of speculation about whether he’ll kill the $2.45 billion light-rail project. Hogan said the state will fund the project with $168 million, “a fraction” of the cost of what could have been up to a $700 million state investment. The governor said he will ask Montgomery County and Prince George's County to increase the size of their investments. “The Purple Line is a long-term investment and will be an important economic driver for Maryland,” Hogan said. “It will...

Karen Finley, former CEO of the Phoenix-based Redflex Traffic Systems, pleaded guilty today in federal court to an eight-year bribery-and-fraud scheme that helped the company retain photo-enforcement contracts with two Ohio cities. Finley, 55, of Cave Creek, pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Terence P. Kemp of the Southern District of Ohio to a charge of "conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery and honest services wire and mail fraud," the U.S. Department of Justice announced this morning. She resigned from the company in 2013 after the corruption scheme was alleged by a whistle-blower. Top executives in Redflex's Australian-based parent company,...

The Obama administration wants to declare that greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes are harmful, which would set up regulations to limit the pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a proposed “endangerment finding” Wednesday, which would formally conclude that carbon dioxide and any other greenhouse gases from commercial airplanes contribute to climate change and harm the public health and welfare. The move is a major win for environmentalists, since aircraft are the largest source of greenhouse gases that the EPA is not either regulating or planning to regulate. But the EPA’s proposed solution to the airplane climate problem — adopting...

We are reliably assured by progressives in the modern era that spending, deficits and the national debt are no big deal and are generally just distractions and dog whistles tossed out by conservatives. After all, you can always just print more money or go out to the White House rose garden and pick more off the money tree or something, right? That’s why my LADAR (Leftist Radar) is always set off when I hear one of their spokesmodels suddenly becoming concerned over the budget. The most recent example of this comes from Steve Lopez at the LA Times, who takes...

Self-driving cars are taking to the streets in California this summer, but the Golden State isn't the only one opening its roads to autonomous cars.Virginia just announced that 70 miles of highway in the Commonwealth would be open to self-driving cars, like the cars in Google's fleet. Any autonomous vehicle wanting to travel those routes, called the Virginia Automated Corridors, will be overseen by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which helped the state government plan the project.As the Richmond Times-Dispatchreports the plan is for companies to test how their cars react in real-world situations on highways packed with human drivers....

Though many public transit systems across the U.S. have increased fares in recent years, chances are your local transit system still isn’t breaking even on your ride: According to a Hamilton Project (THP) post, of the more than 1,800 mass transit systems in the United States—including those running trains, buses, or other transport modes—only about two percent reported that fare revenue exceeded operating expenses in 2013. And when it comes to metro rail systems across the U.S.—which include heavy rail, such as subways and elevated trains, and light rail, which operates at street level—all U.S. systems reported operating at a...

Just before Congress slunk away for the three-day weekend — which it was, of course, planning to stretch into a week — senators from the Northeast held a press conference to denounce Republicans for underfunding Amtrak passenger rail service. “Amtrak has some infrastructure that is so old it was built and put into service when Jesse James and Butch Cassidy were still alive and robbing trains,” said Senator Charles Schumer of New York. “In Connecticut we have a bridge that was built when Grover Cleveland was president,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. Now you have to admit, this is...

President Obama on Friday will sign a two-month extension of highway funding into law, the White House said. The measure prevents a sudden halt in infrastructure funding that was slated to begin May 31. But White House press secretary Josh Earnest criticized the stopgap bill as a punt and urged Congress to pass a long-term measure to fund road projects. “It’s the president’s view that the era of short-term patches ... must come to an end,” Earnest told reporters. Earnest noted it was the 33rd temporary fix for highway funding since 2008. The uncertainty caused by that approach has led...

President Barack Obama has adjusted his goal of having 1 million plug-in vehicles on the road by this year's end, much to the disappointment of many electric vehicle enthusiasts. The change of heart comes six years after Obama signed an executive order mandating electric cars with the intent of the government buying 1 million EVs by 2015, according to Bloomberg. However, the president scaled back this objective in March, due to sales and government purchases not meeting expectations. The decline in consumer interest in electric vehicles, which lack the infrastructure that gasoline-powered vehicles have, played a significant role. U.S. consumers...

Rep. John Delaney was in Hagerstown Wednesday to pitch his proposal for long-term funding of transportation and other infrastructure projects by repatriating the overseas earnings of American corporations. "There hasn't been anything really transformative to put a lot of money into infrastructure," Delaney, D-Md., told a small group of businesspeople at Bulls & Bears restaurant. He pointed out that the federal gas tax — the primary source of revenue for the Highway Trust Fund — has not been increased since the early 1990s, in part, because it is politically unpopular. It also is a regressive tax that hits lower-income people...