Free Republic

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...

TRENTON – Governor Phil Murphy, alongside Department of Transportation Commissioner and NJ TRANSIT Board Chair Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti, NJ TRANSIT President & CEO Kevin Corbett, U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, Congressman Tom Malinowski, and Amtrak Board Chair Tony Coscia, today celebrated the finalization of the Full Funding Grant Agreement (FFGA) with the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to construct a new Portal North Bridge. NJ TRANSIT CEO and President Kevin Corbett executed the agreement with the FTA today, which will provide $766.5 million dollars in federal funding for the Portal North Bridge. The new Portal North Bridge, a $1.8 billion...

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...

TUCSON, Ariz. -- Border Patrol agents in southern Arizona have uncovered another illegal tunnel running under the U.S.-Mexico border, the latest in a series of discoveries and the result of renewed efforts targeting underground smuggling routes. The tunnel, according to Customs and Border Protection, ran about 30 feet into Nogales, Arizona. No arrests were immediately made in connection with the tunnel, a CBP official confirmed to ABC News. It’s the third time since December that agents have thwarted a suspected underground smuggling route in the area, according to Border Patrol. Similar tunnels used for drug trafficking have recently been found...

President Trump brings razor sharp instincts to the political picture, and nowhere was it more obvious than in his appearance in Bakersfield, California, signing a bill to clean up the junk-science federal "research" on water for the parched Central Valley, and better still, ordering the feds to give California's Central Valley farmers the water for their farms that they already paid for.  According to Politico: “What they're doing to your state is a disgrace," Trump said. "After decades of failure and delays in ensuring critical water rights for the people of the state, we are determined to finally get your problems solved." The...

Jerusalem residents and environmental groups see a threatened ecological "disaster" in the plans for a series of major infrastructure projects to expand roads and build intersections west of the city, being promoted by the Jerusalem Municipality and the Transportation Ministry. The eight proposed projects, mostly for areas just outside the city, involve construction of a large park-and-ride lot with 1,000 spots at Hadassah University Hospital in Ein Karem and highways connecting the suburb of Mevasseret Zion, the Castel National Park area and the outlying neighborhood of Ein Karem. The largest plan, recently presented for members of the public to submit...

Presidential candidate Joe Biden has released an infrastructure plan that calls for $1.3 trillion in investment over 10 years. The plan, released Nov. 14, makes a pledge to update the nation’s freight infrastructure, from highways and canals to railroads and tunnels. Biden plans to spend $50 billion over the first year of his presidency to repair roads, highways and bridges. He proposes a new $40 billion, 10-year Transformational Projects Fund, which will provide substantial grants for projects that are too large to be funded through existing programs, such as a major port upgrade or new tunnel. Biden also plans to...

British start-up Spacebit. It has sensors that can take measurements and collect exploration data for researchers to analyze. The robot also comes equipped with cameras — one of which can take “robot selfies” — and can withstand big swings in temperature, from 130 degrees Celsius (266 degrees Fahrenheit) in the day to minus 130 degrees Celsius at night. It will also eventually be able to navigate through so-called lunar lava tubes, which are tunnels beneath the surface of the moon thought to have once been filled with lava. Spacebit says this is something that hasn’t been achieved before. The company...

In the next year or two, the seabed between Hampton and Norfolk will start to change. Mud and sand will slowly move as a custom-built boring machine tunnels alongside the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel. Travelers funneling through the existing HRBT may not notice the adjacent construction just on the other side of the tunnel wall. Cargo ships and Navy vessels, carrying thousands of containers and sailors, may pass over the project’s construction completely undisturbed. And that’s the way Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization officials want it to stay. “It’s something we’re really proud of,” said Robert Crum, executive director for the...

Why can’t America build or repair infrastructure on a par with countries in Europe or Asia? Why are our bridges, roads, and airports not what they should be? Aren’t we the richest and most technologically savvy country in the world? Who or what is holding us back? Kyle Smith of National Review has the surprising (and frustrating) answer.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger celebrated when the California Transportation Commission voted, despite a host of warnings, to pay a contractor more than $1 billion to build two tunnels and a stretch of road outside San Francisco nine years ago. Schwarzenegger said the project’s new approach, which aimed to cap public expenses and shift responsibility to the private sector, would serve as a “shining example” of an innovative way to improve the state’s highways while saving taxpayer dollars. Now the project, known as the Presidio Parkway, is more than two years late and $208 million over budget. When the commission approved...

Seattle and Boston have a lot in common: they are both cities on the water, homes to higher learning institutions and hubs for tech companies. They are connected by Interstate 90 and memories of a Superbowl both cities can’t forget. Now Seattle and Boston are both home to big tunnels that run under the downtown core. Seattle’s tunnel will now face a new challenge: avoiding the problems that plagued Boston’s Big Dig long after it opened. The Big Dig Backstory The Big Dig began as a project to replace the Central Artery, an elevated 6-lane highway that was structurally unsound...

Gov. Ralph Northam announced Friday that Virginia has selected a contractor to build two new tunnels and widen a major highway in Hampton Roads. The $3.3 billion price tag — funded by regional gas and sales taxes, tolls and other sources — makes it one of the two biggest transportation projects in commonwealth history. Northam (D) touted the deal, saying he is “proud of the hard work and negotiations that have taken place over this past year,” and state Sen. Frank W. Wagner (R-Virginia Beach) in return offered praise for the embattled governor. “I want to personally thank Governor Northam...

Call it the $350 million question. Over the next six weeks, the Pennsylvania Turnpike will try to decide whether to rehabilitate its five sets of tunnels one at a time over 10 to 15 years or enter into a public-private partnership with one firm that would do all of the work in five to six years and be responsible for maintenance for about 30 years. And the $350 million is key because a large part of that money would be the upfront cost if the agency decides to pursue a partnership, said Brad Heigel, the turnpike’s chief engineer. Mr. Heigel...

HONG KONG — China officially opened the world’s longest sea bridge on Tuesday after China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and local officials inaugurated the 34-mile structure, which crosses the Pearl River Delta to link Hong Kong with Macau and the mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai. The project, which includes sections of bridge and artificial islands linked by a four-mile tunnel west of Hong Kong’s airport, went billions of dollars over budget and was delayed by two years. Chinese officials expect the bridge to significantly cut driving time between the two sides of the Pearl River, helping to achieve their vision of...

Governor Jerry Brown must allow the Free Flow of the vast amounts of water coming from the North and foolishly being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Can be used for fires, farming and everything else. Think of California with plenty of Water - Nice! Fast Federal govt. approvals.

Environmental red tape is causing “long delays” for border agents as they try to fill tunnels used to smuggle people and dangerous drugs into the U.S. from Mexico, according to border officials and Republican lawmakers who have discussed the problem with agents. Frustrated agents complain the lengthy federal review process can stall critical tunnel-plugging efforts for months after passageways are first discovered. The tunnels are being used to move people, illegal drugs and even fake pharmaceuticals. But regulations stemming from laws like the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act are putting "remediation"...

IAF targets included a Hamas tunnel and military facilities. he Israeli Air Force (IAF) struck six Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip on Saturday evening in response to the detonation of an explosive device on the Gaza border earlier in the day that wounded four IDF soldiers, two severely. Targets included a Hamas-built terror tunnel from the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza towards Israeli territory, a Hamas military facility in Netzarim and a further military facility in the Khan Younis neighborhood. Earlier Saturday, two IDF soldiers were severely wounded and two others moderately and lightly wounded after the device was detonated...

New York to Chicago by train in under five hours. It’s not science fiction, but old-school tunneling—a critical, yet oddly ignored, part of President Donald Trump’s forthcoming infrastructure plan that supporters say will cost the federal government virtually nothing, but experts say the proposal's deregulation approach amounts to a handout to Big Business. The plan calls for creating new high-speed rail lines deep underground—the basic idea behind the English Channel tunnel, or Chunnel, that whisks travelers at 186 miles per hour from London to Paris in just two hours and 20 minutes. That’s less time than the Amtrak from New...

Will no-one save Gustav Backmann’s unique Arctic fish freezer designed to maintain a temperature of between -12C to -14C all year round?The tunnels go deep inside the permafrost in Novy Port, a subterranean labyrinth that is a relic of a former age and a triumph of supreme German engineering in the most inhospitable conditions. In area, at 7,000 square metres, these tunnels and chambers cover a larger space than Donald Trump’s White House in Washington DC. They are all underground, hewn out of the solid frozen ground by labourers, like Backmann, forcibly exiled here deep in the Soviet era. Built...