Free Republic

Two people were arrested Sunday morning by the Racine County Sheriff’s deputies for driving well in excess of the speed limit through the Interstate 94 construction zone. At 8:55 a.m., a deputy clocked a vehicle traveling 110 mph in a posted 60 mph construction zone in the northbound lane on I-94 in the Village of Raymond. The deputy spoke with the driver — 41-year-old Jose L. Mendoza of Racine — about his speed, and allegedly smelled the odor of intoxicants coming from Mendoza. Mendoza reportedly refused to perform field sobriety tests and was arrested and cited for speeding. Suggested charges...

Kansas City officials, using a new housing inspection law, have moved residents out of a troubled Northland apartment building where they found roaches, severe plumbing problems and other dangerous health violations, the Health Department announced in a news conference Wednesday. In the building, city officials and elected leaders said they saw caved-in ceilings, mold and damp carpets. During their visit Friday, they walked through human excrement in an apartment where sewage had backed up into the toilet, sinks and bathtub. “Disgusting is the best way I can tell you what I saw,” Councilman Dan Fowler, who represents the area, said...

Two wrecks in as many days has us reminding you of the risks we face driving through construction zones on Interstate 35. The first accident happened early Thursday when an 18-wheeler hit a road worker on I-35 near the flyovers to US 183. And early Friday, police had to respond to a three-car chain reaction crash just a mile away on the interstate. And while police explained to reporters how they were going to handle the aftermath of the latest crash, a car behind the officer spun out of control, hit the curb and finally stopped facing the wrong direction....

Despite the fact that natural gas is the cleanest of the fossil fuels hands down (and now the cheapest), liberals continue to oppose it. The “keep it in the ground” folks scored another victory this week when the city of San Jose California voted to ban natural gas lines and appliances in all new construction projects going forward. This is allegedly part of the state-mandated goal of going 100% “carbon-free” by 2045. Of course, as with all things, the devil is in the details. (CBS San Francisco) San Jose became the biggest U.S. city to ban natural gas in...

A first-draft plan for Arkansas roadway spending shows lane additions to the Greenwood bypass and Arkansas 22 between Charleston and Fort Smith, as well as potential Interstate 49 construction in the Fort Smith area. Dubbed the CAP-2 draft by the Arkansas Department of Transportation, the Connecting Arkansas Program-2 list is a “data driven” starting point work that will largely be contingent on the continuation of a half-percent sales tax next year, according to ARDOT spokesperson Danny Straessle. “The governor proposes to make it permanent,” Straessle said. “This is a list of about 20 years of work.” In a recent meeting,...

Even though it’s been about a year since the last public meeting on the Interstate 49 Connector in Lafayette, the project isn’t dead, or even dormant. Louisiana Transportation Secretary Shawn Wilson told The Acadiana Advocate on Monday things are happening to move the 5-mile section of interstate toward the federal Record of Decision needed to secure funding and start construction. The ideas and plans presented at public hearings over the past two years are being worked on, he said, and the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development is drawing up a contract extension for the consultants working on the project....

President Donald Trump’s tariffs have created the “perfect storm” at the wrong moment for the housing industry, California builders say. The California Building Industry Association estimates tariffs have driven up the cost of an average-size new home by $20,000 to $30,000.

Gridlock on America’s roadways is increasing, according to the 2019 Urban Mobility Report published by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute – in part due to job growth that is “exacerbating” the nation’s traffic woes. As a result, over that 26-year period from 1982 to 2018: The number of hours per commuter lost to traffic delay has nearly tripled, climbing to 54 hours a year. The annual cost of that delay per commuter has nearly doubled to $1,010. The nationwide cost of gridlock has grown more than tenfold to $166 billion a year. The amount of fuel wasted sitting in stalled...

A few days before Christmas last year, after he was elected to the U.S. Senate but before he’d left Tallahassee for Washington, former Florida Gov. Rick Scott gave a $16 million gift to Orange County. It was a grant to help pay for an extension of Kirkman Road in the county’s International Drive tourism corridor, and it had been pulled from a pot of economic development money known as the “Florida Job Growth Grant Fund.” It was the biggest grant Scott had ever awarded through the fund, which he and the Florida Legislature established in 2017 amid promises to end...

It doesn’t get much more Northern Virginia than this. Traffic woes and construction delays are daily gripes on the local Facebook group, “Western Prince William Chatter.” Then Steve came along -- and brought joy to the group's 20,000-plus members. "It seems he is the light at the end of the tunnel when you're STUCK in that horrible traffic! Thanks for entertaining us Steve and for those calling him Bob, just no," one Facebooker wrote. Before WPWC members gave him a name, Steve was simply known as a rubber tire crane. He came to the Manassas area to lift 10 concrete...

Houston-area transportation officials are not going to lose southern segments of the Grand Parkway without a lot of fuss. Members of the Houston-Galveston Area Council’s Transportation Policy Council on Friday unanimously approved a resolution urging the Texas Transportation Commission to keep Grand Parkway segments B and C and other related projects in Texas’ 10-year transportation plan. The segments represent the southern portion of the Houston area’s third ring road, carrying the tollway from Interstate 69 near Sugar Land south through Fort Bend, Brazoria and Galveston counties, intersecting with Texas 288 and Interstate 45 near League City. Texas Department of Transportation...

When a school district deems its region’s main thoroughfare unsafe for school buses, that highway’s problems need fixed. Lots of Wabash Valley residents fear driving on the local stretch of Interstate 70. And with good reason. Fatal accidents — several involving semi tractor-trailers crashing into stopped or slowed traffic — have become frequent on I-70 between the Illinois-Indiana border and Indianapolis. Accidents along that 68-mile path outnumbered those on the 66-mile portion east of Indy to the Ohio border in 2016 and 2017, according to the Indiana University Public Policy Institute’s statistics. Distracted driving has been cited as a factor...

It’s not often you find a land development story (outside of Kelo) that’s worth a debate, but there’s one playing out this month that might have some broader implications worth considering. In the state of Oregon, work is underway to construct a new ocean-studies building, which sounds normal enough. But it’s being constructed right in the projected path of a tsunami which geologists are convinced is coming one of these days. It’s just a question of when.But the state legislature went ahead and repealed a previous ban on new construction of critical facilities, including schools and police departments. This has...

Nothing says “welcome to the third world” quite like entering Jasper County, South Carolina on Interstate 95. Traveling from Georgia, the highway narrows from six lanes to four lanes – with rusty guardrails flanking the roadside. Trash is everywhere, greeting visiting motorists as they pass through a 1990s-era stucco display that might as well be the entrance to a drug kingpin’s barn – or a trailer park. Which … is fitting. Traffic grinds to a slow crawl, then proceeds in stop-and-go fashion for the next fifty miles. Worst of all is the pavement – which resembles an Afghan airstrip following...

A 43-year-old Bettendorf man is facing felony charges after police say he stole a boat and floated down river into the Interstate 74 construction area while naked and untied several ropes that held together the barges Sunday. Tobias Tyrone Hartsfield, last known address in the 2200 block of Grant Street, was booked into the Scott County Jail around 9:30 p.m. on charges of first-degree theft, first-degree criminal mischief and second-degree mischief. At 8 p.m. Sunday, Bettendorf police responded to the I-74 Mississippi River Bridge project barges near the Isle of Capri Casino, 1777 Isle Parkway, for a report of a...

MT. VERNON, Ky. (WKYT) - There are more crashes on Interstate 75 than any other highway in Kentucky, and the number has increased significantly since 2010. Major work is being done on a stretch of the interstate highway to make it six lanes, especially in Rockcastle County. You will see orange cones and heavy machinery when you are driving in the area. "They're blasting all the time. Traffic is slowing. You got barrels, construction, vehicles coming in and out of locations. It's a dangerous stretch of road right now," Kentucky State Police Trooper Scottie Pennington said. Statistics back that claim...

Syracuse, N.Y. – The discussion and analysis about the future of Interstate 81 has gone on for a decade. When will the $2 billion project be done? Well, we may be nearly halfway there. One estimated end date is 2030. That’s from a two-sentence section within the 15,000-page draft environmental report that the state released in late April, according to a review by syracuse.com | The Post-Standard. “Year 2020 was the year of estimated time of completion when the analysis was started a few years ago. However, due to schedule changes, the estimated time of completion is projected to be...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, inspired by the plan to tear down the elevated portion of Interstate 81 in Syracuse, wants to rewrite federal rules for hiring workers on such big infrastructure projects. If she succeeds, at least half of the workers hired for the $2 billion project for a new I-81 would have to come from Syracuse. Hiring priority would be given to people who face barriers to employment, including veterans, ex-offenders and the chronically unemployed. At least a third of contracts and subcontracts would go to small businesses, and at least 30 percent of the contracts would...

The United Nations has called on Israel to back down after it advanced the construction of more than 2,300 housing units for Judea and Samaria communities. “The expansion of settlements has no legal effect and constitutes a flagrant violation of international law,” United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov said in a statement Wednesday. “By advancing the effective annexation of the West Bank, it undermines the chances for establishing a Palestinian state based on relevant UN resolutions, as part of a negotiated two-state solution.” Israeli construction “must cease immediately and completely,” he demanded. The plan...

Inadequate planning cost taxpayers over $12 million in overruns at I LOVE NY highway rest areas, as per an audit from the office of Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. The recently released audit revealed that the state Department of Transportation did a poor job of planning and following up in its construction of rest areas with a tourism focus in each of NYS’s 10 regions. The state’s plan, as touted by Governor Andrew Cuomo, was to build at least 10 Welcome Centers, carrying New York-made products, as a way to advertise the state’s tourism attractions in each of its regions. As reported...