Free Republic

Amtrak is adding more cars to its trains to accommodate passengers next week, the busiest week of the year for the state’s three passenger train routes, including the “San Joaquin” through much of the Central Valley. On what is anticipated to be the heaviest single travel day of the year for Amtrak — the Wednesday before Thanksgiving – Amtrak expects ridership to reach as many as 127,000 passengers system-wide. Last year, Amtrak carried nearly 686,000 passengers for the holiday week setting a new Thanksgiving ridership record. To accommodate more passengers traveling during this holiday week, more capacity will be added...

LOS ANGELES California motorists make millions of daily crossings of bridges and overpasses classified as "structurally deficient" like the span that collapsed in Minneapolis, but state transportation officials say none are in danger of falling down. Of the 50 most heavily trafficked bridges and overpasses deemed structurally deficient in the United States, 38 are in populous Southern California, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the Federal Highway Administration. Of those, 32 are in Los Angeles County, five in Orange County and one in Riverside County. Bridges with the designation in Essex and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey...

11/3/2005 - BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AFPN) -- Age, weather and more than 3,000 operations every week take their toll on the busiest runway in Afghanistan. Without a continual effort to repair the runway here, the mission would virtually come to a halt. A nine-man spall-repair team from the 455th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron spends more than two hours every day maintaining the runway. A spall is a shallow break in the concrete, usually found along a joint. “We’ve made more than 200 repairs in the last two months,” said Tech. Sgt. Jason Benbrook, the noncommissioned officer in charge of...