Free Republic

Houston is a faraway place on FM 1413 in southern Liberty County, where a driver is more likely to see a pony munching on grass than a shop on the corner. If not for the trees and an electrical transmission line, the sky would be unbroken, horizon to horizon. It soon could look a lot more like other parts of suburban Houston where the Grand Parkway has gone, with cul-de-sacs replacing horse pastures and retail centers sprouting at major intersections.

Three months after a portion of Seminary Road was re-paved and re-striped to reduce it from two vehicular lanes in each direction to one lane, a turn lane and bike lanes, the 51 Comments over the “road diet” still rages on. Let us know what you think in the poll and the comments.

After years of concern about the number of traffic accidents that occur in road construction zones, Pennsylvania is doing something about it. Beginning Jan. 4, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and Pennsylvania Turnpike will begin a 60-day pilot program to formally test what’s called the Automated Work Zone Speed Enforcement program. The program is designed to cause drivers to slow down in construction areas by setting up speed monitoring equipment in work areas. After the pilot program is finished, the two state agencies expect to deploy private contractors in white Jeep Cherokee SUVs at various sites throughout the state to...

Car after car sped past Bayport resident Heidi Olivier on Friday afternoon as she tried to cross Minnesota 95, the city’s busy main street. With 2-year-old son Otto in tow, Olivier first checked traffic in both directions. Then she left Otto in his stroller on the sidewalk and stepped off the curb at Second Avenue with her arms out. After verifying that drivers in both directions had seen her and stopped, she headed back to the sidewalk to collect Otto. “Only one car didn’t stop,” she said, after she made it to the west side of the highway just outside...

Leaders within the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation have approved a public-private partnership to reconstruct a portion of Interstate 81. PennDOT’s P3 Board approved the project, which will involve the reconstruction of a 4.5-mile section of the route near Wilkes-Barre, on Dec. 4. Wilkes-Barre, the seat of Luzerne County in northeastern Pennsylvania, is 20 miles southwest of Scranton. The project will involve widening a portion of I-81 to three lanes in both directions, realigning 2.5 miles of southbound interstate and replacing eight bridges. Other safety measures include eliminating a left-hand exit and improving a substandard weave distance between two routes that...

Maryland and Virginia will partner to rebuild and widen the American Legion Bridge in a ­billion-dollar project to relieve congestion at the Washington region’s worst traffic bottleneck, the states’ governors announced Tuesday. In an unusual example of interstate cooperation, Virginia has agreed to help pay for the project even though most of the bridge — like the Potomac River flowing beneath it — belongs to Maryland. The plan marks a breakthrough in a years-long impasse over widening the bridge on the northwestern stretch of the Capital Beltway. In the past, Maryland has said it didn’t have enough money for the...

As he travels the state with top administrators from the Maryland Department of Transportation, Secretary Pete K. Rahn hears a frequent plea from business leaders, environmentalists and the public — expand bus and rail options, so travelers don’t have to be so dependent on their cars. Rahn has a ready response for transit advocates: Under Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R), Maryland is spending more on transit than at any other time. “We’re at 42 percent of the state [transportation] trust fund going to transit already, with 3 percent of the revenues coming from transit,” Rahn told a reporter in...

For more than 25 years, the Federal government has let the Highway Trust Fund, the source of money for Federal infrastructure projects, lose it's purchasing power. That's because the gas tax has been stuck at 18.4 cents per gallon for gasoline and 24.4 cents for diesel fuel since 1993. While construction costs have increased 125% since 2003, funding has not. Instead of waiting for Washington to get it together, states have taken it upon themselves to fund their own infrastructure projects. Since 2013, 31 states and the District of Columbia have enacted legislation that will increase or may increase overall...

Climate change activists calling themselves “Extinction Rebellion” have been punishing London commuters for the past ten days. The stated goal of the protest was to “peacefully shut down all roads into Westminster in Central London and non-violently disrupt the government until our leaders agree to TAKE EMERGENCY ACTION NOW.” Today, things got decidedly less peaceful when a handful of activists climbed on top of a commuter train in the midst of the morning rush hour. People who were trying to get to work dragged the protesters off the train. From the BBC: Extinction Rebellion activists climbed on to trains...

MARYSVILLE, Wash. — We're taking a look at the worst of the worst traffic spots in western Washington – and some of the solutions to the problem. Marysville A problem spot in Marysville has city and state transportation officials working to come up with a fix. Interstate 5 traffic between Everett and Marysville gets congested during rush hour. According to the Washington State Department of Transportation, between 1980 and 2017, the population of Snohomish County increased 137%. It's expected to gain another 200,000 residents by 2035. This explosive growth increased the number of vehicles using I-5 between Everett and Marysville,...

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....

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...

Climate change protesters shut down some intersections from Capitol Hill to downtown Washington Monday morning in the latest of a series of rallies around the world designed to force policymakers to respond to Earth’s rising temperatures. Organizers of Shut Down DC urged “climate rebels” to flood the District’s streets Monday to bring “the whole city to a gridlocked standstill,” according to the group’s website. The website included a map of so-called “climate criminals” that includes “corporations, lobbyists, trade cartels, and government institutions that are most responsible for creating the climate crisis.” By 8:30 a.m. Monday, health-care workers and other activists...

Gridlock on America’s roadways is increasing, according to the 2019 Urban Mobility Report published by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute – in part due to job growth that is “exacerbating” the nation’s traffic woes. As a result, over that 26-year period from 1982 to 2018: The number of hours per commuter lost to traffic delay has nearly tripled, climbing to 54 hours a year. The annual cost of that delay per commuter has nearly doubled to $1,010. The nationwide cost of gridlock has grown more than tenfold to $166 billion a year. The amount of fuel wasted sitting in stalled...

It doesn’t get much more Northern Virginia than this. Traffic woes and construction delays are daily gripes on the local Facebook group, “Western Prince William Chatter.” Then Steve came along -- and brought joy to the group's 20,000-plus members. "It seems he is the light at the end of the tunnel when you're STUCK in that horrible traffic! Thanks for entertaining us Steve and for those calling him Bob, just no," one Facebooker wrote. Before WPWC members gave him a name, Steve was simply known as a rubber tire crane. He came to the Manassas area to lift 10 concrete...

When a school district deems its region’s main thoroughfare unsafe for school buses, that highway’s problems need fixed. Lots of Wabash Valley residents fear driving on the local stretch of Interstate 70. And with good reason. Fatal accidents — several involving semi tractor-trailers crashing into stopped or slowed traffic — have become frequent on I-70 between the Illinois-Indiana border and Indianapolis. Accidents along that 68-mile path outnumbered those on the 66-mile portion east of Indy to the Ohio border in 2016 and 2017, according to the Indiana University Public Policy Institute’s statistics. Distracted driving has been cited as a factor...

A high-speed transit system through the mountain corridor could serve as a major economic boon to communities on the Western Slope, according to a new study recently published by Development Research Partners. A high-speed transit system — likely in the form of a train that would carry passengers and light freight between Denver International Airport and Eagle County Regional Airport — was listed in the 2011 Record of Decision issued by the Colorado Department of Transportation and the Federal Highways Administration as a potential long-term solution to dealing with congestion on Interstate 70. Late last year, stakeholders — including the...

Speed and red-light cameras are the bane of many motorists. A modern idea made possible by technology, they have been installed in at least 24 states. Although these cameras are a revenue boon for governments across the nation, their intrusion into daily life is disturbing, and their constitutionality is dubious. Specifically, use of these cameras could violate the Sixth Amendment. The Confrontation Clause grants criminal defendants the right to be confronted with the witnesses against them. Since it is a camera and not a person that witnessed the offense, such violations generally cannot be considered a criminal offense. The ticket...

It’s summer, and for hundreds of thousands of Americans, that means at least one burger-and-bathroom break in Breezewood, Pennsylvania. This half-mile gauntlet of gas stations, fast-food outlets, and motels, its oversized signs towering above the surrounding countryside, is familiar to anyone who has to drive regularly from the East Coast to the Midwest or vice versa.[snip]Far from being “Every Town, U.S.A.,” Breezewood is a weird, improbable blip of a place. It’s what an architect might call a unique urban condition—a churning mini-city where the population nearly turns over every hour.

No new or specific details about the I-285 toll lanes project were revealed at a May 15 Georgia Department of Transportation meeting held in Dunwoody, but the state agency did fulfill a requirement to officially close out the “Revive285” project that began in 2006. A future round of public meetings that will include detailed maps of what properties could be taken are expected to occur in early 2020. Dubbed by GDOT as a “conversation” meeting about the planned toll lanes along the top end of I-285, the one held Tuesday afternoon at St. Luke’s Presbyterian Church attracted about 60 people....