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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...

President Obama will unveil a $4 trillion budget Monday, featuring an ambitious public works program, a one-time tax on foreign profits kept overseas by corporations, tax credits for middle-class Americans, and a 1.3 percent pay raise for federal employees and troops. The massive document is a blueprint for what Obama has been calling “middle-class economics,” but congressional Republicans are likely to view it merely as the president’s opening bid in a contentious process designed to forge a tax and spending plan for the new fiscal year.

President Barack Obama’s budget will propose an ambitious six-year, $478 billion public works program of highway, bridge and transit upgrades, half of it financed with a one-time mandatory tax on profits that U.S. companies have amassed overseas, White House officials said. The proposal, one of the main components of the $4 trillion spending plan for the 2016 budget year that Obama will send to Congress on Monday, attempts to tap into bipartisan support for spending on badly needed infrastructure repairs and construction. The tax on accumulated foreign profits would be set at 14 percent and due immediately. Under current law,...

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By staff reporters Zhang Yuzhe and Zhao Jingting 09.15.2011 13:24 Highway Builders Discover Dead End for Debt Local governments that raced to start highway projects are now struggling to repay loans or even finish paving Heavy reliance on bank loans by local governments to finance a 3-year-old, nationwide highway construction boom is showing an uglier side as short-term liquidity risks emerge. Money from commercial bank loans with one- to three-year maturities poured into highway and other infrastructure projects between late 2008 and 2010. But in recent months, government financing vehicles that sponsored the projects and planned to borrow more money...

NEWARK, N.J. – New Jersey's governor wants to kill a $9 billion-plus train tunnel to New York City because of runaway costs. Six thousand miles away, Hawaii's outgoing governor is having second thoughts about a proposed $5.5 billion rail line in Honolulu. In many of the 48 states in between, infrastructure projects are languishing on the drawing board, awaiting the right mix of creative financing, political arm-twisting and timing to move forward. And a struggling economy and a surge of political candidates opposed to big spending could make it a long wait. Has the nation that built the Hoover Dam,...

In 1996, the average monthly sewer bill for a family of four in Birmingham was only $14.71 — but that was before the county decided to build an elaborate new sewer system with the help of out-of-state financial wizards with names like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. The result was a monstrous pile of borrowed money that the county used to build, in essence, the world's grandest toilet — "the Taj Mahal of sewer-treatment plants" is how one county worker put it. What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect...

BAGHDAD — As the local government in northwest Baghdad's Hurriyah neighborhood has proven its ability to provide for its people, U.S. Soldiers handed over the Hurriyah Public Works Sub Station (PWSS) to the Government of Iraq during a ceremony held on the station's grounds here, June 17. The PWSS serves the people of Hurriyah by ridding its streets of sewage and trash. The land the PWSS was built on was once a trash dump, but after some cleaning and brick work, it was turned into the centerpiece of service in Hurriyah. The compound is equipped with two garages, four buildings...

“History reminds us,” President Barack Obama told both houses of the US Congress on Tuesday night, “that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas.” By “the nation”, Mr Obama means “the government”. We can tell by the episodes he uses to make his point: the establishment of universal public education, the GI Bill of Rights and – alluded to but not named – the Highway Act of 1956, at the time of its passage the largest public works project in US history. Mr Obama’s praise for the Highway Act...

BAGHDAD, Dec. 23, 2008 – U.S. soldiers and Baghdad’s deputy mayor met Dec. 21 to discuss progress at a public works substation in the Mansour district of the northwestern part of the Iraqi capital. Army Col. Louis Fazekas, left, shows Baghdad Deputy Mayor Naeem Aboub the progress made at the Ameriyah public works substation, Dec. 21, 2008. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Dustin Roberts  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Multinational Division Baghdad soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division’s 2nd Heavy Brigade Combat Team and Naeem Aboub, elected as Baghdad’s deputy mayor in 2005, saw the refurbished substation building...

BAGHDAD — The citizens of Baghdad are on a new type of mission these days. Instead of worrying about the violence that once plagued their city, citizens are now focused on making their home town a cleaner place to live. With a central focus on water, sewage and trash removal, workers assigned to neighborhoods are hard at work trying to ensure that their fellow Baghdad citizens are afforded clean streets and clean water. For a senior leader in the 2nd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Multi-National Division – Baghdad, making sure the neighborhood workers have what they need...

… NEW YORK – A stock market gaining in confidence shot higher for a second straight session Monday as investors bet that President-elect Barack Obama's plans to increase infrastructure spending will help lift the economy back to health. The major market indexes jumped more than 3 percent, and the Dow Jones industrials' nearly 300 point advance gave the blue chips their highest close in a month. Obama's plan calls for the largest U.S. public works spending program since the creation of the interstate highway system a half-century ago. That could bolster the economy by putting thousands of people to work...

SACRAMENTO – A day after declaring a fiscal crisis in California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be in Philadelphia today to deliver a face-to-face plea to President-elect Barack Obama for more public-works money to help break the recession's grip on states. California has $26 billion in projects – from airports to roads – that are stalled until additional federal funding comes through. “So this is why I'm going back there, to talk about projects we have ready to go,” Schwarzenegger said yesterday in Los Angeles. “We can put a shovel in the ground literally the day after he becomes president.” While...

This year marks the 75th anniversary of Franklin D. Roosevelt signing the Emergency Conservation Act, which created the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] and changed the lives of up to 4 million young men while reinvigorating a struggling nation. Events are being held across the country to pay tribute to the CCC's work from 1933 to 1942. [ ... ] Most the CCC boys, as they're still called, were 18 to 25 years old when they enlisted. To be eligible for the program, they had to be identified by the U.S. Labor Department as being on the "relief rolls," unemployed, physically...

BAGHDAD — Multi-National Division Baghdad Soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, opened a public works substation in Yarmouk, a neighborhood in northwest Baghdad, June 14. The Yarmouk substation will serve the southeast Mansour District and provides workers a place to store equipment used for basic services, such as trash removal and sewage maintenance. “All of this was built from scratch” said 1st Lt. Nicholas Anderson, a civil military operations officer with the 4th “Straight Arrows” Battalion, 42nd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, operationally attached to the 2nd BCT, 101st Abn. Div....

LOS ANGELES — Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the Department of Water and Power are expected to announce on May 15 a revised water use and management plan for this city that includes using recycled wastewater to recharge drinking water aquifers, according to a May 15 Los Angeles Times article. The new plan allocates about $1 billion for the proposed reclamation system, also known as “toilet-to-tap” or “sewer-to-spigot.” The city would recycle about 4.9 billion gallons of treated wastewater to drinking standards by 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported on May 15. Villaraigosa, who less than a decade ago opposed such...

BASRA, Iraq, Jan. 15, 2008 – Army engineers are conducting a public works upgrade here, repairing streets and completing unfinished sewer work. Iraqi workers use jackhammers to remove damaged pavement in preparation for pavement work in the Maqil neighborhood in Basra, Iraq. U.S. Army photo   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started work on a Basra pavement and sewer project in November, said Ferdinand Guese, project engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Gulf Region South District. The new project aims to complete the paving of various streets in Maqil, a...

ENCINITAS – The statue of a male surfer recently unveiled in Cardiff is having one rugged ride. First came harsh comments. Then, over the weekend, came the fashion makeover. “I think it was tacky,” Jim Clark, president of the Cardiff Chamber of Commerce, said of the vandalism. Someone dressed the surfer in a pleated pink skirt, bikini top and lucha libre mask. Passers-by noticed the getup Sunday morning. By Sunday afternoon, the statue was back to normal. The $120,000 statue, “Magic Carpet Ride,” was created to celebrate Cardiff's surfing legacy. Commissioned by the Cardiff Botanical Society, the statue stands along...

One hundred twenty-two levees from Maryland to California are at risk of failing, according to a list released Thursday by the Army Corps of Engineers. There could be danger to people who live in communities near some of the levees as well as a chance that they will have to pay more for insurance, said Butch Kinerney of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's national flood insurance program. The list was released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by news organizations, including The Associated Press. If the Corps of Engineers determines a levee to be at risk of...

SACRAMENTO – Support for a record $37.3 billion public-works bond package placed on the Nov. 7 ballot by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature is slipping as Republicans switch to opposition, according to a new Field Poll. Bond measures for transportation, schools and flood control still have leads, but a housing bond is trailing. A separate $5.4 billion water and parks bond, placed on the ballot by gathering signatures, also has a lead. After months of negotiations, the governor and the Legislature reached a bipartisan agreement on a massive bond package intended to rebuild California's neglected infrastructure and prepare for...