Free Republic

With the Maryland General Assembly looking toward two possible special sessions this year, some lawmakers are calling for an expanded agenda to address long-term transportation funding. Gov. Martin O'Malley and House leaders have made clear that they want to devote a May special session exclusively to passing new revenue and income-tax increases to supplement a $35.4-billion budget that currently includes more than $500 million in cuts because of the assembly’s failure to pass a revenue package during the regular session. Mr. O'Malley, a Democrat, said Tuesday that is his only priority for a May special session. Other proposals would have...

Lawmakers in Missouri are considering a bill that would allow guns on public transportation. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that legislation is pending that would prohibit such cities as St. Louis and Kansas City from using local ordinances to ban guns on trains and buses. Supporters of the bill say it would make riders safer, arguing that no one would try to commit a crime if they know other riders might be armed. Critics feel the opposite; they say people will stop riding mass transit if guns are allowed because they won't feel safe with the weapons around. The bill's...

Gov. Martin O'Malley says he still hopes to convince the legislature to raise money for highway and transit projects — possibly by adding another penny to Maryland's six-percent sales tax and dedicating the extra revenue to transportation. In an interview with The Baltimore Sun, O'Malley conceded that his initial proposal to apply the sales tax to gasoline is dead in the General Assembly. But he said an alternative would be a delayed implementation of that proposal, with the sales tax not being applied until gas prices fell to a certain level. A second option, he said, would be to raise...

Maryland’s top transportation priority should be a $5.8 billion project to widen the entire Capital Beltway, from the Woodrow Wilson Bridge to the American Legion Bridge, a leading national transportation group said Wednesday. The first step would be the investment of $800 million to relieve the weekday congestion between Interstate 270 and the American Legion Bridge by widening the roadway, adding High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes and designating lanes where the direction of traffic could be reversed to accommodate the flow of the morning and evening rush hours. The Beltway recommendations topped the list of 40 Maryland transportation projects prioritized...

Florida East Coast Industries, Inc. (FECI), the owner of Florida’s premier passenger rail corridor, is developing a privately owned, operated and maintained passenger rail service to connect South Florida and Orlando, which will be operational in 2014. By connecting the most visited city in the United States with South Florida’s business and vacation destinations, the passenger rail project, called All Aboard Florida, is designed to serve Florida’s growing number of business travelers, as well as families and tourists traveling for pleasure. The All Aboard Florida passenger rail project will connect South Florida to Orlando through a 240-mile route combining 200...

ANNAPOLIS — Gov. Martin O'Malley told House and Senate lawmakers Wednesday that failing to raise Maryland’s gas tax could lead to crumbling roads and bridges in the future, and that they should pass his proposal despite its lack of popularity with residents. Mr. O'Malley, a Democrat, touted his proposed 6 percent sales tax on gas while testifying before the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee and at a joint hearing of the House Ways and Means and Environmental Matters committees. Legislators have said a gas-tax hike appears unlikely during this year’s General Assembly session because of rising gas prices, public outcry...

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday the House plans to take up the Senate’s highway bill once it clears the upper chamber, conceding that his own last-ditch effort to save a House GOP measure had not succeeded. “As I told the members yesterday, the current plan is to see what the Senate can produce and to bring their bill up,” Boehner told reporters at his weekly news conference Thursday. “In the meantime, we’re going to continue to have conversations with our members about a longer-term approach, which frankly most of our members want. But at this point in time, the...

The Los Angeles Times has a news story today about the Moonbeam Express, as we like to call it. Sometimes known as the California High-Speed Rail. The Times sub-headline says: “The high-speed rail line would transform California lifestyles for the better, backers say.” We couldn’t have said it better. There, in one concise sentence, is the problem. . . The problem with that is the train’s backers are almost exclusively agents of your government, a coercive group that doesn’t persuade, it, well, coerces. The government wants to transform your lifestyle. . .

For years, we’ve been hearing from experts across the political spectrum about the need to invest more in our failing transportation infrastructure in Maryland. The D.C. region is at the top of the list of the most-congested cities in America, and Baltimore is not far behind. Almost half of Maryland’s roads and bridges are in poor or mediocre condition, and 55 percent of our urban highways are heavily congested. Maryland’s construction industry and its thousands of workers have been decimated by years of severe cuts in transportation investment. Despite what is clearly a growing need, Maryland’s transportation program is a...

Weekly FR Boating Thread ~ Vol. 3 ~ Feb. 10, 2012 ~ Boat Transportation Launching ~ Weekly FR Boating Thread ~ Vol. 1 ~ Jan. 27, 2012 Weekly FR Boating Thread ~ Vol. 2 ~ Feb 3, 2012 ~ “Off Season”Last week’s thread had 26 posts, including the source for this week’s thread – boat transportation. I have helped clients ship vessels of all sizes and types all over North America and overseas. Except for two small scratches, every shipping project was successful, albeit harrowing on occasion. To help ensure your boat shipping efforts are successful, I will provide boat...

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley may be more skilled at implementing President Obama’s agenda than the White House itself. The Democratic governor is bringing the same big-spending, high-tax and class-warfare policies to the Free State. It’s going to cost residents a bundle. Tough economic times have forced ordinary Americans to cut back in order to get by. Not so Mr. O’Malley, who spends $35.9 billion in the budget released last month. That’s up from $34.2 billion last year and $32 billion the year before that. As Maryland Business for Responsive Government points out, the general fund budget fattened 11.4 percent last...

At first glance, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s four-year surface transportation bill contains some wins for small-business trucking, but will those be enough to overcome possible deal breakers such as longer and heavier trucks on federal highways? Here’s a look inside the bill released on Tuesday, Jan. 31. For starters, the bill calls for approximately $260 billion in funding for surface transportation, but the exact amount for highways was not known as of press time. From OOIDA’s standpoint, the positives in the bill include provisions for truck parking and driver training, a study of crashworthiness in truck cabs, and...

WASHINGTON - A day after the governor of Maryland said he would like to institute a percentage tax on gasoline, the chief executive of Virginia said he would not seek any additional taxes during a recession, particularly on gas, despite a significant demand for more transit projects. Both states have looked to sales tax to resolve their transportation funding woes. On Monday, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley said he would like to do away with a ban on sales tax for gasoline, to add to its existing 23-cent flat tax. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has a different approach. "I will not...

RAIL TRAFFIC PLUMMETS -9.3% TO START 2012 12 January 2012 by Cullen Roche Rail traffic has remained very strong in recent months despite concerns over recession. This week’s data doesn’t alter the trend, but is certainly an alarming decline that is worth keeping a close eye on. Overall intermodal traffic was down -9.3% while carloads declined -3.7%. This index has been somewhat volatile as of late and clearly one week doesn’t make a trend, but rail has served as a superb harbinger of recession over the last few cycles….More from the AAR: “The Association of American Railroads (AAR) today reported...

The new "Hours of Service" Rules are a drop in the bucket. We think of the world of transportation -- especially trucking and automobile manufacturing -- as being one of the most fundamental of Democratic Party constituencies. Detroit has long been a party stronghold, with the UAW and Teamsters among Democrats' most powerful union supporters. From the worker at the DMV to the driver he licenses, this is one solid chain of Democrats. But is this political loyalty deserved today, if indeed it ever was? Since the Democratic Party was taken over by environmental extremists a generation ago, there has...

Senate plans swift action on long-delayed transportation billBy Alexander Bolton - 12/29/11 02:14 PM ET Senate Democrats expect to pass a long-delayed surface transportation bill soon after they return to Washington next month. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said her colleagues have identified a list of offsets that could be used cover the final $12 billion of the bill’s cost. Shortly before Congress left town for the holidays, Boxer told The Hill that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) had put together a variety of proposals to push the legislation over the...

Where I live outside of Lansing, there are new bike paths sporting shiny asphalt, but the roads are crumbling. Motorists might be surprised to learn that of the 18.4 cents per gallon of federal gas tax they pay at the pump, only about 11 cents goes to maintain highways and bridges. According to federal law, about 10 percent of federal highway funds must be used for projects such as highway beautification and transportation museums. According to a new National Center for Policy Analysis report, “Paying for Pet Projects at the Pump,” the Federal Highway Administration also allocates gas tax revenues...

RICHMOND — An analysis by a nonprofit tax-policy institute says that Maryland and Virginia could have collected hundreds of millions of dollars per year since their last gas-tax increases if they had raised the tax regularly to account for inflation. The states, both of which are desperately trying to cobble together more money for transportation, had among the highest totals in the nation of unimposed gas-tax dollars, according to the D.C.-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Maryland’s gas tax of 23.5 cents per gallon, in place since 1992, could have generated an additional $421 million per year in the...

HAIBO man, I mean really, it’s not fair. It’s not right. Haibo, angeke! (Hell no!) The thing is that we only earn so much money, and in my sector that isn’t very much at all, and we give so much of it to the tax man and the electricity man and the gas man and the pool man and the hair man and the mani-pedi man and the restaurant man and the education man and the church man and I can go on into a lot of et cetera. From whence comes this e-toll man, now? There is not space...

By staff reporter Yue Zhen 10.31.2011 18:38 Expressways of Excess Lu Dadao has long warned about the risks of highway, railway and airport overbuilding, and now people are listening "Excessive." That's the word Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) academic and National Planning Expert Committee member Lu Dadao uses to describe the scope and pace of transportation-related construction projects in China. In a recent interview with Caixin, 71-year-old Lu repeated his long-held concerns about the nation's vast transportation building program, referring specifically to a critical report written by a research team he headed and submitted to the central government one year...