Free Republic

Jesus Torres can see a lot from his perch in the cab of a tanker truck. Cars with blown tires on the side of the pothole-scarred roads. Overturned tankers on exit ramps curved too sharply for large modern trucks to handle. And more often than not, red tail lights snaking into the distance. “They need to add more lanes to all the highways,” he said on a recent morning on Interstate 270 just after leaving the Phillips 66 terminal in Commerce City. Far too often, Torres said, accidents on this highway through Colorado’s industrial center will cause long delays that...

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...

Maryland’s $9 billion plan to expand the Beltway and Interstate 270 is among the nation’s biggest boondoggles, a public-interest advocacy group said Tuesday in a new report. The report — issued by U.S. PIRG Education Fund and Frontier Group — highlights nine highway projects, including Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s plan to widen certain roadways using public-private partnerships and tolling to pay for them. The advocates say these projects are unwise for several reasons. They say expanding or building new highways always leads to more congestion over time through the wholly predictable phenomenon of “induced demand”: When new capacity opens up,...

Elon Musk announced plans to start digging a traffic-easing tunnel under Los Angeles “in a month or so”, but city planning bodies say he doesn’t yet have permission.The SpaceX and Tesla CEO has been mulling the idea since December, when he revealed his frustrations with congestion in the city. “Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging,” he said on Twitter.“It shall be called The Boring Company,” he added. “Boring, it’s what we do.”At the time it wasn’t clear whether he was joking, but today’s announcement suggested he was not. Elon...

In July Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe stood on the platform of a train station in Alexandria to announce that the U.S. Department of Transportation had granted $165 million for the Atlantic Gateway project.While this is a multimodal project featuring rail, bus, and highway improvements, it was clearly the latter that most enthused the governor. At one point during his remarks, he declared that because of the road projects, “Today, the congestion is going to end!”The primary focus of the highway improvements will be an extension of the HOT (high occupancy toll) lanes on I-95 and I-395. The only other speaker...

There’s a famous old fable known as “Belling the Cat.” For those who haven’t heard it, it goes like this: A bunch of mice are threatened by a vicious cat, and they call a council to figure out how to solve the problem. One mouse proposes that they place a bell around the cat’s neck. That way, they’ll hear the cat approaching and have plenty of time to run and hide. The mice applaud the plan. They love the plan. It’s a great plan. One mouse asks who’s going to volunteer to place the bell around the cat’s neck. Suddenly,...