Free Republic

OKLAHOMA COUNTY (KFOR) – Construction will soon resume on the southern end of the Kickapoo Turnpike. The remaining portion of the turnpike’s southern end will undergo construction again during the second week of April, according to an Oklahoma Turnpike Authority news release. Crews opened the southern portion of the Kickapoo Turnpike to single lane traffic in both directions from NE 23rd Street south to Interstate 40 in January, then halted construction for the remaining winter months. “This turnpike uses a high-performance surface course of asphalt and has a strict temperature requirement in order to be put down and maximize the...

A $48-million contract awarded March 23 to AECOM to study impacts of widening 34 miles of the most rural southern part of the 117.2-mile New Jersey Turnpike has upset state environmental activists who say the project conflicts with the state's push to combat climate change; officials say construction remains at least five years off. The contract is the latest step in the overall $1.1-billion turnpike expansion plan outlined last year that focuses on addin a third lane in each direction to the section stretch between exits 1 and 4 through Camden County. But it also renewed criticism from advocates who...

Would you pay $100 for a sheet of plywood? I know that sounds absolutely crazy, but we are almost there. The price of plywood has been soaring into the stratosphere in recent weeks, and analysts are telling us that it will remain high for the foreseeable future. Memes about plywood have started to pop up all over social media, but this is no joking matter. These extraordinarily high prices are causing a lot of pain in the homebuilding industry, and many Americans have had to postpone construction plans indefinitely. Unfortunately, our national leaders continue to flood the system with even...

Steve Hrvoich stood in the year-old valley beneath girders for the new northbound bridge on Interstate 79 on Thursday as gigantic dump trucks known as triple 7s whizzed by, hauling up to 100 tons of dirt each from the east side of the highway to the west. Crews for Walsh Construction II were a few days away from completing what Mr. Hrvoich, the construction engineering manager for the Pennsylvania Turnpike, called “the big eastern spread.” The crews moved 2 million cubic yards of earth from the eastern side of the valley, clearing space to install thousands of feet of drain...

Amid a deepening stalemate over financing highways and public transit, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf on March 12 proposed phasing out his state's gasoline tax, the second highest in the nation, and appointed a commission to recommend alternative ways to pay for the state's needs. Wolf ordered a panel of several dozen lawmakers, transportation industry representatives, transportation planners, government officials and others to deliver recommendations by Aug. 1 of funding alternatives to foot the extra billions of dollars deemed to be necessary. "Our economy, our communities and our future rely on a strong transportation system that supports our safety and growth,"...

ORLANDO, Fla. — Temporarily blinded Saturday morning by a laser pointed at him from 1,000 feet below, a Florida Highway Patrol pilot alerted other aircraft about the flying hazard then landed his plane and began an investigation that led to the arrest of a Kissimmee man at a multi-story construction site. Guillermo Negron Roque, 47, was jailed pending a charge of pointing a laser light at a pilot, a second-degree felony. The bright flash of green light startled FHP pilot J.C. Pollock as he was flying west of Interstate 4 about 6:30 a.m. “At first I thought I was about...

TAMPA — Transportation planners are preparing to use new technology to try to solve an old problem — traffic crashes and congestion on Interstate 4 between Tampa and Orlando. The state Department of Transportation is designing a corridor management system that will relay real time information directly to motorists about congestion, accidents, work zones, weather warnings and even end-of-the-traffic-back-up locations on I-4 and alternate routes. The idea behind so-called connected vehicle technology is to improve traffic flow on the interstate and east-west alternatives without adding new lanes or acquiring new right of way. On Wednesday, Hillsborough’s Metropolitan Planning Organization —...

When Modesti Cooper returned home to Houston in July 2019 after more than a decade overseas with the United States military, she moved into her dream house on the corner of Nance and Grove streets in Houston’s Fifth Ward. She’d bought a parcel of land and designed the home from scratch in her downtime while touring from Kuwait to Afghanistan to Iraq. It was a relief to finally move in. “It’s a calm, cool, nice area,” Cooper says. “Besides the traffic, there’s no violence, no noise. It’s so quiet, it’s unbelievable. I had rockets and mortars and missiles blown over...

A major construction team on the California bullet train project notified the state rail authority this month that it will not complete a 65-mile section of the future route in Kings County until at least April 14, 2025 — nearly two years after the date that the state included in a business plan adopted Thursday. The additional delay could again boost costs and jeopardize the state’s funding plan to complete a partial operating system between Bakersfield and Merced by 2030. The project’s rising price tag has forced the state to repeatedly scale it back and delay indefinitely a goal to...

President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan packs a huge amount of potential for Nevada to improve and enhance our roads and bridges, turbocharge our economy, blunt the worsening effects of climate change, fuel significant growth in long-term employment and improve the lives of working families in our state. Among its elements, the $2.3 trillion package provides $200 billion for traffic infrastructure and public transportation, $25 billion to upgrade airports, $174 billion to stoke the proliferation of electric vehicles, $213 billion to weatherize homes in middle- and low-income areas as well as building and preserving affordable housing, $300 billion for manufacturing and...

GREENVILLE (NBC26) — A recent report gave Wisconsin a D+ grade when it came to quality of roads, but some are hopeful the governor's roads budget will continue the path to fixing what officials call "decades of neglect" to the state's transportation system. Gov. Tony Evers and Craig Thompson, Department of Transportation secretary-designee, stopped along County Road CB in Greenville Wednesday on "pothole patrol" to discuss the governor's "Badger Bounceback Budget Investments" for local roads and highways. "We have an important budget in from of us right now and the money that the state of Wisconsin is looking to share...

GREENVILLE, N.C. (WITN) - President Joe Biden’s economic agenda includes a $2 trillion infrastructure plan that aims to repair roads, focus on clean energy and create millions of jobs for Americans among other issues. The proposal, called the American Jobs Plan, faces an uphill battle in Congress as some Republicans are opposed. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday morning that he was unlikely to support anything “If it’s going to have massive tax increases and trillions more added to the national debt,” according to NBC News. Although there’s a lot to unpack in Biden’s plan, including money to...

WASHINGTON — A day after greeting President Joe Biden as he arrived near Pittsburgh to announce his infrastructure proposal, Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Mt. Lebanon, on Thursday led a bipartisan group of 46 other House lawmakers in pressing congressional leaders to dedicate another $18 billion in funding for state transportation agencies. The lawmakers cited data from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials that estimated state agencies will face a $28 billion budget shortfall by fiscal year 2024 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The spending bills passed by Congress in December allocated $10 billion, but the lawmakers called for...

(CNN) — Njeri Camara, 61, can’t visit the Shreveport, Louisiana home where she was born. Like many Black homes and neighborhoods across the country in the 1960s, it was bulldozed to clear space for highways. Camara says her parents moved when she was a baby to another Shreveport neighborhood, Allendale, where she still lives. But now her current home is at risk of being bulldozed so that a second highway, Interstate 49, can connect directly through the city. The Shreveport leaders who want to trade Camara’s home for a highway are embracing a Dwight Eisenhower-era belief in the almighty good...

Here in McDonald County Missouri it may not look like much right now, but this is going to be Interstate 49 in a few months. We were standing on what’s called the Missouri-Arkansas Connector, this is the portion of the Bella-Vista bypass that MPDOT is responsible for, and so far things are going just as scheduled. Right now the only traffic on the future I-49 is construction traffic. The Bella Vista bypass is a joint venture between ARDOT and MODOT. Each state is responsible for its own road. In Missouri they are on the hook for just over 5 miles...

The anticipated opening of the Washington & Old Dominion trail bridge over Route 29 along the City of Falls Church and Arlington’s border is finally here, letting pedestrians and cyclists alike breathe a sigh of relief. A ribbon was cut for the bridge on Friday, signaling the completion of one major part of the Dual Trails project that is being started in Falls Church and eventually expanded to other sections of the W&OD, according to NOVA Parks executive director Paul Gilbert, the agency that primarily manages the trail. But more importantly, the bridge’s construction removes one of the 45-mile trail’s...

Maryland transportation officials announced Thursday that they have selected Australian toll road operator Transurban to develop high-occupancy toll lanes for the Capital Beltway and Interstate 270, potentially cementing the company’s dominance in the Washington region. If Transurban and its partner, Australian investment bank Macquarie Capital, ultimately reach a 50-year deal with the state to build and operate the lanes, Transurban eventually would control 102 miles of express toll lanes around the nation’s capital — 37 in Maryland and 65 in Northern Virginia. Connecting high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes in the two states would mark the beginnings of a regional network of...

The pause on construction of the border wall costs taxpayers about six million dollars per day while construction sites sit idle, Breitbart Texas learned from a senior Department of Homeland Security official. On Sunday, March 21, the 60-day pause in construction of the border wall is scheduled to end. According to the source, the expenditures are required for materials orders placed before the pause and expenses for the cost of equipment sitting idle. When the issuance of a stop work order causes a contractor to idle equipment, they are entitled to be compensated for rental expenses or costs of ownership....

or years, Interstate 69 being built through Johnson County was a distant idea. On Tuesday, the state awarded more than $1 billion in construction contracts for the last leg of I-69 construction, marking the start of the final two phases of the project between Martinsville and Indianapolis. Now, the entire 27-mile corridor from State Road 39 in Martinsville to Interstate 465 in Indianapolis is under contract, according to the Indiana Department of Transportation. INDOT awarded a $345 million contract for I-69, from Morgan Street in Morgan County to Fairview Road in Johnson County, to Reith-Riley Construction Co. of Goshen, and...

GREENFIELD — Orange and white traffic barrels, detour signs and construction equipment stretch as far as the eye can see through the heart of Greenfield, indicating a major construction project is underway. Road improvement work along State Road 9 on the south side of Greenfield officially started this week, and despite numerous warnings to drivers about the road closure, the work is creating chaos as many drivers are disregarding the construction signs and driving through the closure area. Greenfield Police Department officers stopped nearly 50 drivers who disregarded construction warnings and went around “road closed” signs and barricades on Tuesday,...