Free Republic

INDIANAPOLIS — Maintaining the state’s roads and bridges is work fraught with obstacles and hazards. It doesn’t daunt Ed Soliday, a retired pilot and safety expert who loves telling stories and spinning metaphors. “I’m evangelist, and may 1,000 angels sing when somebody comes to see the light,” said Soliday, Republican chairman of the House Roads and Transportation Committee, who aims to convince fellow lawmakers to set aside politics in search of sustainable road funding. Don’t queue the music just yet. Soliday’s ideas for raising cash for deteriorating roads and bridges include some politically unpalatable proposals, such as tax hikes and...

President Obama is entering his final year in office with one of his most ambitious first term promises -- a nationwide network of high speed railways -- largely unfilled. Obama spoke frequently in his first term about developing the network. He imagined a U.S. rail system that would rival the interstate highway system, citing similar train systems in European countries that are widely popular. Obama included $8 billion in his 2009 economic stimulus package to jump start the high-speed rail program in the U.S. But seven years later, Obama has little to show for the effort. His stimulus offer was...

HANCOCK — The Sideling Hill Welcome Center is now more than just the most scenic set of fair-weather restrooms in Western Maryland after Lt. Gov. Boyd K. Rutherford and a host of elected officials on Friday reopened the facility, which has been closed for the last six years. Perched on the east side of Sideling Hill near Hancock, where a massive cut in the mountain rock allows Interstate 68 to pass through, the center was closed in 2009, in a move by former Gov. Martin O'Malley that did not sit well with many area residents. "It was done for political...

BOSTON - The MBTA fiscal control board revised the public transit agency's advertising policy after opponents of an ad taking aim at the Israeli government packed a board meeting and demanded the immediate removal of the ad from an MBTA station. Dr. Charles Jacobs, the head of the group Americans for Peace and Tolerance, said the ad puts Jewish people in danger. Others said it incites hatred and pointed to the death of Sharon’s Ezra Schwartz, who was killed last week in a terror attack while studying in Israel.

When Congress left town for the August recess, it did so without coming to an agreement on a long-term transportation bill. Instead, the president signed a three-month extension that set the stage for another showdown this fall. More than 30 such temporary extensions have passed since the last multi-year transportation bill expired in 2011. The inability of Congress to come together to pass a transportation package has frustrated the myriad special interests whose lobbyists want assurances that the dollars will keep flowing for years, and not just months, to come. And the media, which seldom miss an opportunity to push...

According to the Association of American Railroads shows that rail traffic continues to slow down, as shipments of a range of commodities are sharply lower from a year ago. New data shows fewer shipped cargoes of coal, grain, metals, and oil across the United States in early November. For example, coal shipments are down 9.7 percent year-to-date compared to the same period in 2014. Cargoes of oil and other petroleum products are also down 7.7 percent over the same timeframe. For coal, the slowdown is due to dramatic fall off in coal production. As more and more coal plants are...

here were plenty of high-fives and backslaps on Thursday as the House overwhelmingly approved a multi-year, $325 billion transportation bill designed to address the nation’s woeful highway, bridge and infrastructure system. Leaders from both parties hailed the 363 to 64 vote – capping three days of debate and consideration of 100 amendments -- as a major breakthrough essential to rebuilding the nation’s pothole riddled highways. As so often has been the case in Congress’s seemingly endless transportation melodrama, there is a lot less to the bill than meets the eye. Much of the promised new funding hinges on budget gimmicks...

More tolls are coming to Ontario roads, Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca said Monday, with details on the province’s plans due in the next couple of months.Del Duca was talking about a report by a group of environmentally minded policy types calling themselves “the Ecofiscal Commission” that says road tolls are the only way to handle worsening congestion. Particularly, the report calls for adding tolls that would allow vehicles that would not otherwise qualify to use existing high-occupancy vehicle lanes.“Road use has traditionally been freely available to anyone with a driver’s licence, and the open-access nature of roads makes them...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 02, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hausfeld, a global plaintiffs’ law firm, announced today that the judge overseeing Brown, et al. v. Transurban USA, Inc., et al., No. 15-cv-494 (E.D. Va.), the Honorable James C. Cacheris, has largely denied the Defendants’ motions to dismiss the pending class action case. The plaintiffs in the case alleges that the I-495 and I-95/I-395 HOT Lanes operator (Transurban) and its debt-collection agents (Faneuil, Inc. and Law Enforcement Systems, LLC (“LES”)) violated state and federal law by assessing and seeking to collect crippling administrative fees and penalties for allegedly missed tolls. Drivers who use...

The planners, residents and developers hunched over maps Thursday had plenty of ideas for the daunting task of untangling and improving the massive web of aging highways in and around downtown Dallas. About 50 of them were gathered at the Dallas Regional Chamber for the second of three public input workshops on TxDOT’s CityMAP project. The goal? To provide a blueprint and menu of options for city officials on potential costs, traffic impacts, timeline and designs for Interstate 30, I-345, I-35E and Woodall Rodgers. It would be wonderful if the city could eat the whole apple — all the worthy...

<p>Flaws in nuts that hold up lights throughout the Big Dig’s tunnels may be the result of workers overtightening the fasteners when they were first installed, a top highway official said Thursday.</p> <p>Highway officials revealed this week that an inspector had discovered a cracked nut on a light fixture in the Ted Williams Tunnel in September. After further inspection of the Williams Tunnel and the Interstate 90 Connector and Interstate 93 tunnels, officials said they believe hundreds of fasteners throughout the Big Dig tunnels are flawed and must be replaced.</p>

Our latest #Brake4Buses story focuses on a busy road in a De Pere neighborhood: the intersection of Randall Avenue and North Broadway. Steven Lepak caught on video a driver passing a stopped school bus this week, but says it’s happening more often this year. “The incidents aren’t as extreme as the one I caught on video, but I would say once a week or more there is some type of incident with traffic and this bus stop,” said Lepak. As Target 2 interviewed Lepak, we caught on camera, someone else passing a stopped school bus. This time, a car stopped...

City-parish president candidates Joel Robideaux and Dee Stanley navigated questions on coal-generated power, the disruption an elevated interstate might cause in Lafayette and whether the city has too many traffic signals — all posed at a Thursday evening forum sponsored by the local chapter of the Sierra Club. In a campaign season where the candidates have often found themselves repeatedly addressing the same issues in the string of debates and forums leading up to the Oct. 24 election, Stanley and Robideaux covered some new ground at the environmental group’s forum at the Lafayette Public Library downtown. Robideaux, a longtime state...

Years ago, the Tokarski family gathered with friends around a kitchen table in an old Indiana farmhouse. They were discussing the looming construction of Interstate 69 and how they could possibly stop it. The group suspected a project of such magnitude, an interstate route stretching across the southern half of Indiana, would cause severe environmental 
damage. “We really had the project almost at a standstill until Mitch Daniels came into office,” said Thomas Tokarski, now the president of Citizens for Appropriate Rural Roads. “We still have huge amounts of support from the people in Indiana.” Since that farmhouse meeting, Tokarski...

In a state where four out of five traffic improvement projects bust their original deadlines, Florida transportation officials expect to beat the odds with one of the largest jobs ever undertaken in the Sarasota-Manatee region. Construction of the state’s first diverging diamond interchange at Interstate 75 and University Parkway, which began Aug. 3 and is set for two years, will end before the September 2017 World Rowing Championships draw tens of thousands of visitors to nearby Nathan Benderson Park, state officials promise. But the timeline leaves Prince Contracting, the Tampa-based company that won the $74.5 million contract, just one month...

Most folks probably think of the State Transportation Infrastructure Bank as just that – a bank that finances major highway and bridge projects. S.C. Rep. Chip Limehouse, R-Charleston and a member of the Infrastructure Bank (STIB) Board of Directors, described the bank, created by the Legislature in 1997, as a “funding arm” in a recent (Charleston) Post & Courier story. But in addition to providing funding to the state Department of Transportation and local governments, STIB in recent years also has assumed the role of a general contractor or project manager, paying millions of dollars directly to certain companies for...

TORONTO - The Ontario government has been working on plans for high occupancy toll lanes on three Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area highways since 2013, but has kept most of the details secret. When the NDP filed a Freedom of Information request in early 2014 for detailed information on the work, which includes traffic models, most of the documents were to be blacked out or not released at all, according to a report obtained by the Toronto Sun. Ministry of Transportation staff prepared the note to give senior bureaucrats and the minister’s office a heads-up about the NDP’s “contentious” request....

HOV is good; HOT is even better. As we saw during the Pan-Am Games, High Occupancy Vehicle lanes were great for cars with three or more people and other designated vehicles. The trouble was that they went largely unused. High Occupancy Toll lanes solve that problem by opening up the designated space to cars that don’t have the numbers but whose drivers are willing to pay for the convenience. Premier Kathleen Wynne has hinted that she’s willing to implement HOT lanes, but has not been specific about where and when. If the U.S. experience is anything to go by, however,...

It may have escaped the attention of Baltimoreans but things have gotten a little testy in the New York-New Jersey area in recent weeks over the state of century-old rail tunnels running under the Hudson River. The deteriorating condition of the tunnels is threatening Amtrak and other rail service, but how to pay for a $14 billion-plus replacement has proven a challenge. Unfortunately, that's not just a problem for New York City but for Baltimore and other stops along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, the nation's most heavily traveled railway handling more than 750,000 passengers a day. The stations in Baltimore and...

Humans need rules. Rules make life more predictable. But when the rules multiply, the world needs some rule-breakers. The creator of the underground website Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, was sentenced to life in prison for creating an online space that allowed people to use bitcoins to buy and sell things. Some used Silk Road (named after Marco Polo's trading route from China) to sell illegal drugs. People do that anyway, even without Silk Road; since the site's closing, numerous similar websites have taken its place. The prosecution implied (but never really argued) that Ulbricht planned murders. That would certainly be...