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Widening and improvements to a 27-mile stretch of Interstate 95 in Robeson and Cumberland counties are being sped up due to a grant. The N.C. Department of Transportation plans to accelerate the improvements because of a $22.5 million federal grant awarded this week. It is the second major federal grant the NCDOT has received since the summer of 2018 to help fund major improvements along I-95 corridor. The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the grant through its “Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development,” or BUILD, program, which helps states and cities build and repair critical pieces of the transportation network....

MADISON, CT - So-called "Supercharging" Tesla stations will soon be open on both sides of Interstate 95 in Madison. Superchargers are under construction at the 95 Madison rest areas, both northbound and southbound, between exits 61 and 62. Both are 10 stalls. Currently the nearest Superchargers are located in Milford. Tesla supercharging stations charge support peak rates of up to 250kW per car. AModel 3 Long Range operating at peak efficiency can recover up to 75 miles of charge in 5 minutes and charge at rates of up to 1,000 miles per hour. V3 Supercharging will ultimately cut the amount...

Your commute could get worse before it gets better along a stretch of Interstate 95 in Palm Beach County. Later this month, crews will begin adding express lanes from Glades Road in Boca Raton to Linton Boulevard in Delray Beach. For realtor Ricky Hen, this is great news. "Traffic is awful to be honest with you," said Hen. The Florida Department of Transportation will add two tolled express lanes along that stretch of I-95 in southern Palm Beach County. "I think it's great idea," said Hen. "I think it will help a lot and add a lot and help a...

A mass murderer known as the “I-95 killer,” who spent the majority of 1994 targeting gay men -- including a Navy World War II veteran -- ate three burgers, fries and bacon before he was executed late Thursday in Florida. Gary Ray Bowles, 57, was pronounced dead at 10:58 p.m. Thursday evening after receiving a lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Starke, the office of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said. Bowles had already eaten his last meal by 3 p.m. that afternoon, prison officials told WJXT. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute appeal filed by Bowles’ attorneys...

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 summer getaway along Interstate 95 in Virginia could include extra backups the next few years now that construction is ramping up on a 10-mile extension of the HOV or toll 95 Express Lanes. Virginia and Transurban, the private builder and operator of the toll lanes, held a ceremonial groundbreaking Wednesday at the Stafford Regional Airport for the 95 Express Lanes Fredericksburg extension, a project they believe could significantly alleviate some regular backups from Garrisonville Road to the Rappahannock River. Until the $565 million project is finished in about three years though, hundreds of workers on the project mean drivers...

The traffic jams over the Occoquan are so much worse than on any other part of Interstate 95 in Virginia that they throw off the scale of a review of potential traffic improvements for I-95 from North Carolina to the Potomac River. Initial analysis ahead of public meetings this week to identify the Virginia trouble spots shows people spend more than 1.2 million hours a year in delays in just the 1-mile southbound stretch over the Occoquan River. The miles leading up to that are only slightly better, regularly slowed to around 30 mph. Overall, at least 70% of delays...

A public interest advocacy group has identified the country’s “most wasteful and pointless” transportation projects, which are costing taxpayers $25 billion. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) cites among “the biggest boondoggles” a $2.2 billion widening of Interstate 81 in Virginia, a $7 billion interstate project in Houston and a $802 million “Connecting Miami” redesign of city highways. According to PIRG, widening highways to reduce gridlock fails for several reasons. Multiple studies show that more road space over time leads to further congestion because of a phenomenon called “induced demand.” “We’re stuck in a car-centric rut in the United...

Washington, D.C. is the nation’s capital — and its suburbs could be moving towards becoming the nation’s capital of privately owned express toll lanes. The Virginia side of the Potomac has placed a big bet on such roadways, with 14 miles of pay lanes in the middle of the region’s famous Beltway, reversible toll lanes along 29 miles of I-95, and construction under way on three more highway segments. Last September, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan announced an even more ambitious plan for his side of the river, covering 77 miles of the Beltway and I-270. If these plans go forward,...

By the time the I-95 reconstruction is complete, you’ll probably be too old to have to worry about a commute. The same goes for the planners, engineers, managers, and laborers who for more than a decade have worked to rebuild the highway’s 51 miles in Pennsylvania from the ground up. Their careers at PennDot or with contractors will almost surely end before construction does. “I don’t know that I think about too much that I’m not going to be here,” said Elaine Elbich, PennDot’s portfolio manager for the I-95 project. Elbich plans with a span of decades in mind. From...

WASHINGTON — Toll lanes around the Capital Beltway and I-270 in Maryland could be built in several separate phases and even operated by different companies under the latest plans released to industry insiders. It indicates Beltway construction could last for years. The first phase would include fixes for the Legion Bridge.A new document sent last week ahead of the next forum for private companies that could design, build and operate the lanes said that while Maryland eventually plans more than 70 miles of toll lanes from Frederick to Bethesda and from the Legion Bridge to near Oxon Hill, building out...

WASHINGTON — Some rush-hour commutes on Interstate 95 have been better since a 2-mile extension of the 95 Express Lanes opened to reduce backups in the regular and toll lanes at the original southern merge, but others have been slower, according to analyses by VDOT and the Express Lanes’ operator.Transurban said average afternoon rush hour tolls for trips from anywhere in the lanes that end at or south of Garrisonville dropped by 8.2 percent — from $21.52 between Nov. 1, 2016, and Sept. 30, 2017, to $19.76 in the period between Nov. 1, 2017, and Sept. 30, 2018.The one-lane extension...

Maryland voters narrowly oppose adding express toll lanes to widen three of the state’s most congested highways, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll finds, highlighting public skepticism about one of Gov. Larry Hogan’s signature transportation plans. The centerpiece of the Republican governor’s proposal — a $9 billion project to add four lanes apiece to the Capital Beltway, Interstate 270 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway — is even opposed by voters in the Washington suburbs, whom the plan is supposed to help. More than half of voters in the D.C. suburbs prefer to invest in public transit rather than building more roads....

BRISTOL TOWNSHIP >> The long-awaited interchange connecting Interstates 95 and 276 (the PA Turnpike) in Bucks County is officially open. Officials from the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, the Pa. Department of Transportation (PennDOT), the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and representatives from ground-transportation agencies in neighboring states gathered on Friday to commemorate completion of major, Stage 1 components of the Turnpike/Interstate 95 Interchange Project. “Motorists who travel in this area have been waiting a long time to realize the benefits this direct link will bring, namely reduced congestion on Bucks County roadways and improved traffic flow in the Philadelphia region and the...

Ever since the notion of widening Interstate 95 and making it a toll road was chased out of town by an angry mob, there was a bewildering silence out there. What to do about “America’s Main Street”? How to fix the nation’s first major interstate highway, parts of which bear a worrisome resemblance to what old-times saw on Day 1? In fact, some of those ancient parts are right in our backyard, including the too-low overpasses in Harnett County that trap an over-height truck from time to time. Harnett also owns a few of those short exit ramps that make...

MIAMI - Federal officials said a construction company did not do enough to protect its workers before a concrete barrier collapsed and killed two men along Interstate 95 in February. "This tragedy could have been prevented if the employer had ensured that adjoining structures were shored, braced or underpinned to avoid a collapse," said Condell Eastmond, with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Atlanta-based Archer Western Construction Inc. faces up to $33,000 in fines. OSHA officials also said the work site was not properly inspected for hazards. The Florida Highway Patrol said Abel Orlando Zuniga-Fajardo, 37,...

A checkpoint set up by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents Wednesday on Interstate 95 led to the arrest of a fugitive Haitian immigrant who previously was ordered to be deported. The random checkpoint, which was in place for 11 hours, stopped traffic in the southbound lanes between the Penobscot County towns of Howland and Lincoln. Several agents set up cones blocking the highway, and then asked vehicle occupants questions about their citizenship before letting them proceed. Southbound drivers could not avoid the roadblock.

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Traffic backs up virtually every day on Interstate 95 southbound where it crosses the Occoquan River entering Prince William County because five lanes are decreased to three. Prince William Supervisor Ruth Anderson, R-Occoquan, has proposed a solution: Build a reinforced shoulder lane along I-95 south from the Route 123 interchange at Occoquan to the Prince William Parkway. This will keep four lanes available. “Not only will this improve commute time, it will prevent frustration with having one of the worst bottlenecks in the nation,” Anderson said. The National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board is conducting an air quality analysis to...

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) announced a deal Wednesday that will add 10 more miles of express lanes to the Interstate 95 corridor, expanding the system of high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes to Fredericksburg by 2022. As part of the agreement, the private company building the lanes will give the state $277 million upfront to cover costs of a bridge over the Rappahannock River and other improvements along the corridor, Virginia transportation officials said. The deal essentially moves forward a 10-mile extension from Garrisonville Road (Route 610) in Stafford County to Route 17 in the Fredericksburg area. It also builds on...