Free Republic

Starting next week, billboards, social media, television and print media will carry messages urging thousands of Valley motorists, including those in the West Valley, to prepare for four years of disruptions in their driving routines. It’s not exactly Armageddon that the Arizona Department of Transportation will be heralding, but it certainly won’t be a walk in the park either, especially for car and truck traffic on I-10. West Valley motorists who need to get to the other side of the county or Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport can expect significant increases in traffic as motorists try to evade the inevitable...

The Louisiana Legislature voted overwhelmingly Thursday to move approximately $300 million annually from a fund that pays for higher education and health care to a fund that pays for large transportation projects. Supporters have said the spending will not only improve the state’s infrastructure system, but that it will also create construction jobs. Critics are concerned the proposal would exacerbate an already expected budget deficit in July 2025 affecting state universities, hospitals and other health care programs. Gov. John Bel Edwards needs to sign the legislation for it to become law. Edwards hasn’t decided if he approves of the bill...

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...

Severio Kyyitan was awoken one recent morning by a thunderous thumping that reverberated through the walls of his home. It might be an earthquake, he thought, until he looked outside and discovered a pack of wild horses running by his property on the Gila River Indian Community. Animals have free reign on the reservation, he said, and that’s the way Kyyitan likes it. He’s hopeful state officials will keep wildlife in mind as they plan a possible widening of Interstate 10 through the reservation. “We know it’s a need,” Kyyitan said, adding that he doesn’t want the project to interfere...

A new report ranking the deadliest highways in the nation calls Interstate 10 the “most dangerous” in Arizona. But Arizona highway officials say the ranking is incomplete and overlooks a variety of efforts made to make the highway that links the two most populous metro areas in the state as safe as possible. There were 100 fatalities on Arizona’s nearly 400 miles of I-10 from 2015 to 2017, according to ASecureLife’s report, which used statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The company, which mainly deals in security systems, said it seeks to report on everyday issues affecting consumers....

EL PASO, Texas - ABC-7 has learned the families of the young engaged couple killed when their semi-truck collided with a piece of construction machinery sticking out on Interstate 10 have settled their lawsuit against the company that was overseeing the construction site. The parents of Patrick Van Fossen and Keserie Paredes had filed a wrongful death lawsuit against JAR Construction, accusing JAR of causing the deaths of Van Fossen and Paredes on the early morning of Dec. 21, 2017. In July, ABC-7 reported that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, found numerous safety hazards at JAR's construction...

Interstate 10 is now three lanes both ways between Tucson and Casa Grande, but your commute probably won’t get faster. The Arizona Department of Transportation projects I-10 could be bumper-to-bumper all the way to Casa Grande during rush hour by 2035. The route currently carries around 60,000 vehicles daily, and that could quadruple depending on the region’s growth, according to an ADOT spokesperson. John Moffatt, director of economic development for Pima County, said those backups won’t just be bad for commuters. He said they will hurt trade with Mexico. “Trucks are like water. They find the path of least resistance...

A final plan for tolls for users along the future Interstate 10 Bridge and Bayway could be known in July, a state transportation official said Friday. It will be unveiled ahead of the August release of the final environmental impact statement on the entire $2.1 billion project. But at least one state lawmaker says more time is going to be needed to hash out tolls and their impact on local motorists. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for the experts and the work being done by the state DOT,” said state Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Daphne. “But it’s probably fair...

Opposition to tolling the future Interstate 10 Mobile River Bridge and the Wallace Tunnel dominated the public comments during Tuesday’s hearing into the massive $2.1 billion project. From local politicians to business owners, the message to the Alabama Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration was clear: A $3 to $6 toll will place enormous burdens on drivers and workers in Mobile and Baldwin counties, and it won’t fly with the rest of the public either. “It’s a huge expense,” said Roger Nelson of Daphne, who commutes daily to work to downtown Mobile. “It will be passed on.” Said...

The Arizona Department of Transportation has released its first-stage environmental review of a proposed new interstate from the border to north of Phoenix. The agency wants the public to weigh in on the controversial proposal, and is holding public meetings in Tucson and Marana this week. Three years ago, the state transportation department began evaluating the possibility of a new interstate highway, called I-11, which would connect traffic from the Mexican border to the Nevada border. In 2015 a federal act identified the route as a high-priority corridor eligible for federal funding. State transportation spokesperson Laura Douglas says her agency...

Toll revenue would pay for only 17 percent of a new bridge across the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, a top state official said Tuesday. Eric Kalivoda, deputy secretary for the state Department of Transportation and Development, made the comment during the first meeting of a panel seeking ways to finance a new bridge, which would cost about $1 billion. The seven-member panel features leaders of five parishes in the Baton Rouge area, including East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome. Kalivoda's comments reinforced what officials knew coming in — paying for a new bridge is a huge financial...

Though a final draft of the environmental assessment report detailing the proposed Interstate 10 widening through Baton Rouge was originally scheduled to be presented at a public hearing this month, state officials now say it will likely be February before the report is complete. There’s no particular reason why consultants preparing the report are running behind, according to Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development Secretary Shawn Wilson. “It’s just that engineering is a much slower process than the public or I, for that matter, would like it to be,” he says. “They’re gathering some additional data as they try to...

With more than a year left before construction starts, the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) has begun demolition work for the proposed Mobile River bridge and Bayway project. The agency is currently in the process of tearing down nine buildings throughout the project site just south of downtown near Virginia Street, where the bridge will be footed. “Because the final design is in a preliminary phase, we don’t have exact locations on where the footings are going to be … ,” ALDOT spokeswoman Allison Gregg said. Some of the buildings were vacant before ALDOT acquired them, other owners and tenants...

The Arizona Department of Transportation continues to make plans for the fabled Interstate 11, announcing a $155 million investment into the stretch of highway from Phoenix to Las Vegas. The plans, for what is now known as U.S. 93, have been in the making for years, with several more to go. Meanwhile, the nerve-rattling, headache-inducing, traffic-clogged two-lane stretches from Tucson to Phoenix that are much of Interstate 10 aren’t getting much thought. The issue is that touted improvements to U.S. 93 are part of a larger plan to build a dedicated trade corridor between Mexico and Canada, running right through...

In central Texas, a portion of U.S. 190 near Killeen has been designated as Interstate 14. But the Youth Infrastructure Coalition would like to see a complete I-14 corridor from eastern Georgia to west Texas. Under their proposal, I-14 would create an alternate east-west highway that would be located midway between I-10 and I-20.The coalition’s founder is Frank Lumpkin, a student at the University of Georgia. He said he and other students started the group to inspire young people to get involved in infrastructure projects that can benefit the area.“If you look at a map and take the demographics of...

While there’s been much discussion about the pending plan to widen Interstate 10 through Baton Rouge, the $360 million earmarked for the project is not expected to cover all four phases of the work. Following a speech to the Baton Rouge Rotary Club today, Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development Secretary Shawn Wilson said state officials are confident the first two phases of the project—first widening and replacing the aging elevated portions of the highway from the I-10/I-110 merge to the City Park Lakes, then replacing the bridges over the lakes—can be completed within four years using federal Grant Anticipation...

MILTON — A driver was killed early Friday after rear-ending a car on Interstate 10 that had stopped due to road construction. According to a report from the Florida Highway Patrol, at around 2 a.m. Friday three cars were traveling east on Interstate 10 at mile marker 20, approaching Avalon Boulevard. Two of the cars, one driven by 38-year-old Amaury Cisneros Morales of Orlando and another driven by 57-year-old Brian Cordes of Slidell, Louisiana, came to a complete stop due to a construction roadblock in the area. A Freightliner truck traveling behind Morales’ car failed to stop and rear-ended the...

Local planning politics on Los Angeles’s Westside is in a sad state of affairs. There, a municipally-led push to complete city streets by adding bicycle infrastructure and other pedestrian improvements has been met with fierce opposition from local drivers. Recent efforts in L.A’s Mar Vista neighborhood, for example, grew so toxic that community members launched a now-stalled recall bid to remove Mike Bonin—the local council person who champions the so-called “road diets” as well as the city’s Vision Zero plan those diets support—from office. The embarrassing spectacle has thrown into question the commitment L.A. residents have not only toward prioritizing...

Texas lawmakers have gone from championing to criticizing toll roads, a shift that some Houston-area leaders worry has gone too far and could limit coming projects. "Without toll roads and that funding, I don't know what we are going to do," said Montgomery County Judge Craig Doyal, citing the need for new roadways in rapidly growing parts of the Houston area. The concern, voiced at a Dec. 15 meeting of the Houston-Galveston Area Council's Transportation Policy Council - the region's transportation planning group - was shared in response to decisions by the Texas Transportation Commission. A day earlier, the commission...

Up to 1,000 non-native fish died in the Lower Santa Cruz River, a retired fish biologist says, because a state contractor diverted river water for an Ina Road bridge construction project. The diversion moved the river’s treated sewage effluent from the west bank to the east bank, away from the towering, shady willow trees along the west bank. It ended Friday, a little more than a week after it started, when the contractor dug a new channel near the bridge site to reverse the effluent’s course back to the west bank. The diversion “was a necessary part of the construction,”...