Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) - Repairing the nation's crumbling roads and bridges was supposed to be an area ripe for bipartisan compromise between congressional Democrats and President Donald Trump. Instead, Democrats are panning Trump's proposed $1 trillion overhaul and even Republicans are balking at some aspects of the emerging plan. The White House's self-proclaimed "Infrastructure Week" began with Trump appearing Monday with aviation officials and some prominent GOP lawmakers to announce plans to privatize the nation's air traffic control system and separate operations from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The rapidly escalating tollway fines that have left some Texans owing thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars could be a thing of the past, based on an amendment that surprisingly found its way into a Texas Department of Transportation bill this week. But the impact to your pocketbook would depend on which tollway you’re driving. Under the amendment, a car owner who has driven on a tollway without paying — even hundreds of times — would owe at most $73 in fines every six months, plus the unpaid tolls. But that change, proposed by Rep. Ina Minjarez, D-San...

HOUSTON - The teachers at Spring Forest Middle School asked KHOU 11's Verify team whether Beltway 8 has been paid off and if the tolls will ever go away in the foreseeable future. "Why do we still pay for toll roads?" wondered 7th grade teacher Rebecca Mustachio. "To be honest, I thought we would be done paying for toll roads." We are not even close to paying the bill for those roads, according to Roxana Sibrian of the Harris County Toll Road Authority. In a statement emailed to KHOU, the authority says it will be paying off construction debt until...

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s grand plan to spend $1 trillion over the next 10 years on highways and other infrastructure improvements faces a formidable roadblock in Congress and state legislatures. There’s agreement the investment is badly needed to improve the nation’s sagging infrastructure but how to cover the huge expense is the point of tension. Trump would use $200 billion in public funds to generate $800 billion in private money under a partnership program that would finance government bonds and also return a profit to private companies through interstate tolls and other user fees. To do that, Congress would...

Least terns. A federal lawsuit. Greenpeace. Vandals. Industrious beavers. Angry homeowners. Bureaucratic delays. These were among the obstacles and setbacks that had to be overcome before the Creek Turnpike was built. At one point, the chairman of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority declared it a “total disaster” and exclaimed: “The Creek Turnpike in Tulsa, God only knows when that’ll be completed,” John Kilpatrick said, as reported by the Tulsa World’s Wayne Greene on Oct. 19, 1990. “If we had it to do all over again, we wouldn’t do that project,” the exasperated Kilpatrick said after federal bureaucrats held up construction of...

Investors are hoping to seize upon the $1 trillion infrastructure plan proposed by President Donald Trump to transform the nation’s highways, bridges, and tunnels into assets they can monetize by adding tolls and other user fees.The Trump infrastructure plan, which the administration plans to roll out this week, is centered on the idea of “asset recycling,” which refers to the process of securing new infrastructure spending by leasing the operations of existing public property to private operators.The privatization-centered scheme has the nation’s largest toll operators salivating. Transurban, Cintra, and TransCore, three major toll operators, have retained federal lobbyists to influence...

Jane Addams Tollway (I-90) drivers can expect those inscrutable black gantries towering over the roadway to get chatty this summer. The Illinois tollway has completed installation and testing of 29 digital message signs between Barrington Road and O'Hare International Airport. The displays will provide real-time traffic updates and safety advisories and direct drivers to shift lanes when crashes occur. The system will go live around the end of July or early August, Chief Engineer Paul Kovacs said at a Wednesday committee meeting. "All the construction is done and we've completed the testing so we know it's operational. Now we're training...

After years of angst over whether to extend Route 53 north into Lake County, the Illinois tollway moved with dizzying speed last week approving a $25 million study of the project. But while the board's vote took seconds, there were hours of fraught testimony from environmentalists fearful of pollution, residents worried about losing their homes, commuters sick of sitting in traffic and construction industry representatives lobbying for jobs. Here are five take-aways from a momentous week: 1. Promising to pay for the extension could be a game-changer. Unlike his predecessors, Chairman Bob Schillerstrom pledged that if Route 53 is extended,...

The Michigan Department of Transportation has begun work on a vehicle-to-infrastructure communications project, in which 3M will provide lane markings, smart sign technology and dedicated short-range communication devices for a three-mile stretch of I-75, according to a report from ITS International. Once these items are installed, the Oakland County stretch of highway will allow the testing of advanced vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications. The construction project is expected to take about four months to finish.Michigan is emerging as one of the leaders in V2I and vehicle-to-vehicle communications research and adoption. V2I communications involve the wireless exchange of critical safety and operational data between vehicles...

The city of Madrid has joined the likes of other Progressive cities like New York City and banned “manspreading” on mass transit. According to Spanish news source the Local, the Municipal Transportation Company (EMT) will be posting signs on the bus system discouraging men from spreading their legs when sitting. A tweet by the Madrid City Council shows the signs will include a big red “x” next to a photo of a man with his legs spread and the phrase, “Respect the space of others” next to it: In a statement provided to the Local, the EMT said, “The new...

LIVE Stream: President Trump Delivers Remarks at the Department of Transportation

The race to create self-driving cars is on—but what happens when they’re everywhere and nobody has to drive? That could lead to a “passenger economy” worth $7 trillion by 2050, according to a new report by Intel and analyst firm Strategy Analytics. While the name of the potential new market is lame, the amount of cash it's estimated to drive is not: the study predicts self-driving cars will free up 250 million hours of commuting time per year, providing the backbone for a thriving $800 billion industry by 2035, when the study predicts fully autonomous vehicles will begin to proliferate...

This is what happens when the New York City subway literally feels like hell. Desperate straphangers stuck for nearly an hour in a powerless subway car with no air conditioning tried to break out of an F train at Manhattan's Broadway-Lafayette station Monday evening, video posted to Twitter shows.

President Trump will reportedly introduce a plan on Monday to privatize the air traffic control functions of the Federal Aviation Administration this week as part of a broader push for infrastructure reform. The Washington Post reports that Trump will instruct Congress to pursue privatizing air traffic control and spin it off into a nonprofit corporation. Trump could send principles for the plan to Congress as early as this week, according to the report. Trump will be joined by the CEOs of several major airlines as he makes his air traffic control announcement, ABC News reported Sunday evening.

Solving traffic issues across our state is an age-old problem.Southern Nevada faces gridlock as the area continues to expand. Northern Nevada's geography makes road construction and rehab trickier.But the appetite for taxes, which help build our roads, is weak. One potential solution? Toll roads.Tom Skancke is a lobbyist and transportation expert who thinks toll roads could be a great way for Nevada to help improve its infrastructure."What I'm suggesting is that more states around the country and particularly in the West -- in the Intermountain West -- have a serious conversation about more toll lanes," he said.Skancke said one of...

There were not many open seats at a pair of meetings last week over proposed routes that would send Interstate 11 through the Tucson area. Many of those in attendance were there to speak against two of the alternatives, which run west of Saguaro National Park West in the Avra Valley.“I understand the need to provide ways for people to move around," said Kimberly Baeza, "But it doesn't have to come at the expense of our open landscapes and beautiful Sonoran Desert.”The meeting is part of the second step in selecting the route I-11 could take through Arizona. The freeway...

Greater reliance on user fees, federal loans rather than grants, and corporatization are three keys to the Trump administration’s infrastructure initiative released as a part of its 2018 budget. The plan will “seek long-term reforms on how infrastructure projects are regulated, funded, delivered, and maintained,” says the six-page document. More federal funding “is not the solution,” the document says; instead, it is to “fix underlying incentives, procedures, and policies.”In building the Interstate Highway System, the fact sheet observes, “the Federal Government played a key role” in collecting and distributing monies to “fund a project with a Federal purpose.” Since then,...

Talks have been bubbling in recent months about making major route changes to Interstate 14, but the primary organization behind the push says it’s facing resistance from a West Texas representative and the state’s senior senator. Regional transportation lobby group Midland-Odessa Transportation Alliance (MOTRAN) has pushed to change the congressionally approved western route of I-14, also known as the Forts to Ports Highway and the Gulf Coast Strategic Highway System. Forts to Ports aims to connect Fort Bliss in El Paso with Fort Hood in Central Texas and Fort Polk in Louisiana. The plan also connects to military deployment ports...

Surface road transportation comes with congestion, construction and hordes of cranky commuters. One potential workaround? Flight. That’s the idea behind SureFly, an octocopter concept capable of carrying two passengers into remote and difficult-to-access areas up to 70 miles away. Better known for its trucks, Workhorse Group Inc. plans to unveil the technology at the Paris Air Show on June 19. “It’s designed to be a short-hop machine — if you can fly a drone, you should be able to fly this,” Steven Burns, chief executive of the Loveland, Ohio, company told Trucks.com. Only a mock-up concept vehicle will be on...

Mr. Oliveira brought a putative class action suit against the interstate trucking company for which he worked–Prime–for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act, Missouri minimum wage statute, and other labor laws. Prime moved to compel arbitration under the FAA. In response, Plaintiffs argued that the FAA had no application to their contracts because they are transportation workers. [The Court agreed with the Truckers]