Free Republic

What the L? Gov. Cuomo rocked the regional transportation world this week when he cheered a report suggesting that the existing cross-Hudson tunnels between New Jersey and New York don’t need a full shutdown to rebuild them, potentially throwing yet another wrench into the plan to build a new pair of tunnels to boost interstate rail capacity, a $13-billion piece of the Gateway Project. It’s the latest baffling twist in the decade-plus-long saga. On Sunday, the governor suggested that a report done for the Port Authority by consultants London Bridge Associates showed that the existing century-old tunnels could be fixed...

You know our country is in serious financial trouble when lawmakers are considering selling a portion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in order to partially replenish the U.S. highway trust fund. Yet, the apparent financial distress doesn't stop the Department of Transportation from continuing to hand out millions of federal matching funds to entice local governments to either expand or build light rails under its "New Starts" program. Several U.S. cities jumped on the fed induced light rail frenzy. The latest example is Lone Tree, Colorado, a picturesque small town with a population of 13,267. The Lone Tree city...

In August of 2013 I wrote Message to 5.7 Million Truck Drivers "No Drivers Needed" Your Job is About to Vanish. The key word in that sentence is "about". I did not mean immediately, but I did mean a lot sooner than truck drivers and the general public expect. Most protested. I received many emails saying this would not happen for decades. Many truck drivers thought it would never happen. Most mentioned insurance issues. Yes, there are problems, but time has marched on even quicker than I thought. TechCrunch reports California Will Start Granting Licenses For Driverless Cars In September....

Sunday, July 13, 2008This could be just a tad over the top, automotively speaking C&D has official photos and stats on the '09 Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG "Black Series" -- a tricked out version of the already ludicrously fast SL65 AMG. The new series claims 661 horsepower. Top speed is electronically limited to around 199 mph. Torque output is unchanged at 738 pound-feet, although Mercedes says the engine is detuned from 885, likely to keep the heavy-duty five-speed automatic transmission alive. The Black Series’ transmission, however, adds a fourth transmission setting, M2 manual mode, which shifts a claimed 25 percent quicker...

The federal government's Transportation Department has just issued a "white paper" on reducing traffic congestion in the country and guess what? It doesn't include a word about how improvement of either passenger or freight rail in America might be able to help. Once more, the powers-that-be in Washington are determined to put all the nation's transportation eggs essentially in one basket more and bigger highways with a small sop to improving some airport traffic control systems. The oversight drew a letter of protest from the president of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, George Chilson. "While you are right to...

A Norwegian trucker has filed police charges against the country's new transport minister and the head of the state highway department. He claims they're not maintaining roads well enough. Leif Erik Nordmo of the trucking firm Power Trans in Rælingen, northeast of Oslo, makes the long drive between Oslo and Molde daily, hauling grocery items. He's wound up stuck on the mountain stretch of highway at Verma several times in November, because the road wasn't plowed. "We're paying for a service we're not getting," an irritated Nordmo told news bureau NTB on Tuesday. He's furious that all the taxes and...