Free Republic

In the latest step toward the rebirth of San Francisco’s Presidio from an aging former Army base to a bright light of America’s national park system, crews are set to break ground Thursday on a project to build a new 14-acre public park on top of two freeway tunnels near the Golden Gate Bridge. When finished in 2021, the unusual project, called Tunnel Tops, will link Crissy Field, on San Francisco’s waterfront, to the Presidio’s Main Post, parade grounds and visitor’s center. That connection was severed more than 80 years ago when the road to and from the Golden Gate...

With few exceptions, states are losing the battle with aging bridges in need of repair or replacement. Even states with low percentages of bridges rated poor are finding it difficult to keep up with bridge and road systems that in many cases are 50 years old or older. Utah, which ranks fourth for the lowest percentage of poor bridges, programs a bridge for repair or replacement in the year after it drops to a poor rating, completing the project within four or five years. The Utah Department of Transportation notes, though, that the number of bridges falling from good to...

Orange County has received a $20 million federal grant to expand its autonomous shuttle system at Lake Nona, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao said Tuesday, part of a combined $62 million in transportation awards to three Florida cities. Chao was at Lake Nona, a southeast Orlando neighborhood, along with Gov. Ron DeSantis and state transportation secretary Kevin Thibault to reveal a combined $883 million in Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) grants nationwide. Orange County was among just a handful out of more than 600 applications across the U.S. to get funding. The grant to the Orange’s Local...

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...

The last time the National Transportation Safety Board came down hard on engineering and construction was in 2007. That year, the board delivered reports on the collapse of the I-35 Highway Bridge in Minneapolis that killed 13 people, and on a ceiling collapse in a Boston Central Artery tunnel that killed one motorist. Both involved completed structures. With its final investigation findings, the board also made recommendations for new standards and procedures and quality control. NTSB's report on last year’s Miami bridge collapse at Florida International University in mid-construction, which killed five motorists and one construction worker, has similar recommendations....

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...

A bridge-building disaster should be incomprehensible in today’s technical world. Humans have been building bridges for centuries. The science should be well sorted out by now — and for the most part, it is. But the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation of the March 2018 collapse of the FIU pedestrian bridge highlighted basic design flaws and a complete lack of oversight by every single party that had responsibility to either identify the design errors or stop work once it was clear that there was a massive internal failure. We all know “what happened” here. But the “why” is more elusive....

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...

LECANTO — When Florida lawmakers signed off this year on a bill creating more than 300 miles of toll roads, they did so with scant evidence the project was needed. More than five months later, after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law and the project has been vetted in two rounds of public hearings, local officials are growing frustrated by the persistent lack of details about what would be the largest expansion of Florida’s toll system in decades. “We’re beating a dead horse right now before it’s even born,” said Dixie County Commissioner Mark Hatch, who sits on a...

I-4 Ultimate’s promise five years ago was that private financing and management would make Florida’s largest road reconstruction project better, faster and cheaper. Today, the 21-mile and $2.3 billion rebuilding of Interstate 4 through metro Orlando is slogging through rising costs to an uncertain finish date, with crews working day and night under the pall of repeated worker fatalities. Some of the issues: - The fifth death of a construction worker last month that preliminary findings say would have been avoidable with a more cautious approach to bridge building that SGL Constructors made mandatory this month. - Construction consortium I-4...

North Dakota approved legislation to pilot the freight method as a way to deal with increased demand for drivers amid high turnover rates. In solving for crucial supply chain issues, Australia found a workaround that could have implications for driver shortages and transportation hurdles in the U.S. Australia's supply chain must navigate its landmass of 2.96 million square miles, people and businesses dispersed through the Outback and an infrastructure better suited to nimble vehicles. While most of the population lives in coastal cities, many live in villages widely separated by deserts and connected by highways and dirt roads. Residents in...

Ohio planners will move full speed ahead on a proposed hyperloop system that would carry passengers between Pittsburgh and Chicago in about 58 minutes for a one-way cost of about $93. But the full system, known as Mid-West Connect, probably wouldn’t be finished until about 2050. Thea Walsh, director of transportation and funding for the Columbus, Ohio-based Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, said this week the agency is putting the finishing touches on feasibility and environmental impact studies but has concluded it should pursue the hyperloop system. The system being developed by Virgin Hyperloop One would move passengers and freight in...

Dive Brief: Illinois State Sen. Martin Sandoval has resigned from his position as chair of the State Senate's Transportation Committee amid a federal fraud and corruption investigation related to state construction work, the Associated Press reported. The Democratic senator is still listed as a member of the committee, however, as of Oct. 15. The move came after the details of a federal search warrant revealed that the FBI last month combed Sandoval's offices and home for information related to architect Cesar Santoy; Santoy's architecture firm, Studio ARQ; red-light camera program company SafeSpeed; lobbyists; construction companies; and employees of the Illinois...

Will a hyperloop work in Pennsylvania? That’s the question officials from legislative and executive branches, statewide agencies, organizations and departments, as well as a handful of private business leaders are trying to answer. Fifty people, invited to a workshop at Dixon University in Harrisburg on Wednesday, met to talk about the possibility of building a hyperloop system in the commonwealth. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission has until April 2020 to complete a $2 million state-legislative commissioned study on its viability. Media wasn’t permitted to attend the invitation-only meeting. According to the turnpike’s research, a hyperloop combines a magnetic levitation train and...

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,...

Federal highway officials on Tuesday endorsed an accelerated timeline proposed by Oregon and Washington transportation officials that sets the two states on a fast track toward construction on a new Interstate Bridge by 2025. Last month, the two states requested a 10-year extension on their timeline to show progress on the bridge project or face repaying nearly $140 million in planning costs tied to the Columbia River Crossing Project. That request would’ve given the states until Sept. 30, 2029, to either start buying up right-of-way or began construction on the I-5 project. While seeking a decade delay, the states simultaneously...

SAN DIEGO — The San Diego Association of Governments will partially close a section of Interstate 5 in La Jolla Tuesday evening to continue construction of a future trolley bridge. Work crews will close all northbound lanes of I-5 from state Route 52 to La Jolla Village Drive from 9:30 p.m. to 5 a.m. Wednesday morning to pour concrete for the future bridge. Motorists on northbound I-5 will be detoured to I-805 via state Route 52, according to SANDAG. SANDAG crews completed similar closures of southbound I-5 last week to pour concrete for the future trolley bridge, which will cross...

Severio Kyyitan was awoken one recent morning by a thunderous thumping that reverberated through the walls of his home. It might be an earthquake, he thought, until he looked outside and discovered a pack of wild horses running by his property on the Gila River Indian Community. Animals have free reign on the reservation, he said, and that’s the way Kyyitan likes it. He’s hopeful state officials will keep wildlife in mind as they plan a possible widening of Interstate 10 through the reservation. “We know it’s a need,” Kyyitan said, adding that he doesn’t want the project to interfere...

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....

EL PASO, Texas - ABC-7 has learned the families of the young engaged couple killed when their semi-truck collided with a piece of construction machinery sticking out on Interstate 10 have settled their lawsuit against the company that was overseeing the construction site. The parents of Patrick Van Fossen and Keserie Paredes had filed a wrongful death lawsuit against JAR Construction, accusing JAR of causing the deaths of Van Fossen and Paredes on the early morning of Dec. 21, 2017. In July, ABC-7 reported that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, found numerous safety hazards at JAR's construction...