Free Republic

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump—like his opponent Hillary Clinton—spoke glowingly about infrastructure spending, alluding to Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration and Dwight Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System as examples of how spending on roads, bridges and airports helped unite the country. For 2017, the American Society of Civil Engineers has given America’s infrastructure an overall grade of D+, estimating it would cost more than $4 trillion to upgrade properly. But President Trump’s $1 trillion dollar, 10-year infrastructure plan has so far moved along at a halting pace. This tortoise-like process may offer an opportunity to think more strategically about...

If you live in the Bay Area, you’ll be hearing a lot about Senate Bill 595 over the next year or so. If you’re a regular user of any of the region’s seven state-owned toll bridges — that’s all of them, except the Golden Gate Bridge — you’ll want to pay close attention. SB 595, which won final passage Thursday and now awaits Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature, provides for a vote in the nine Bay Area counties next year to raise bridge tolls by as much as $3. If the Bay Area Toll Authority, the agency that oversees the bridges,...

The Trump administration is developing principles that will guide future highway funding. At a recent White House meeting with state transportation officials, the administration announced it was considering shifting greater funding responsibilities to the states. Along with expanding the private sector’s role and loosening tolling restrictions, these reforms will result in better decisions and management of the transportation system. It makes sense for Congress to support these transportation policy reforms. Ted Mann of the Wall Street Journal recently reported that the administration is thinking about reducing the share of federal dollars that fund highway construction. Rather than receiving the usual...

Gov. Larry Hogan never met a highway project he didn’t like. He’s a 1950s type of politician – solve all the state’s transportation gridlock and congestion by paving the countryside with lanes of new concrete.He’s got a $9 billion plan that is a lollapalooza: Let construction giants build and pay for toll lanes on the Capital Beltway and the busy I-270 corridor from the beltway to Frederick – 70 miles of exclusive Lexus lanes – and let those companies reap the toll rewards so they can recoup a staggering $7.6 billion investment (the actual cost is likely to be substantially...

Highway 37 began life as a private toll road, and was later converted to a state highway. But climate change and sea-level rise will doom the road unless something is done. For the short term, the ridiculous two-lane section between Sears Point and Vallejo needs to be widened to match the rest of the road, which is four lanes. Wetlands surrounding the road also need to be restored. It would be reasonable to use some toll money for wetlands restoration, in part to mitigate the effects of construction. Even with the new funding approved by the Legislature by raising the...

More than $45 million in revenue is believed to have been lost when the state suspended highway toll collections to help speed evacuations and relief efforts for Hurricane Irma, Florida's Turnpike system estimates. However, the estimated $3 million-a-day impact is not expected to hinder operations of the system or ongoing work programs, “as impacts such as toll suspensions due to a hurricane are taken into consideration during the annual budgeting process,” turnpike spokesman Chad Huff said in an email Friday. Funding 404 full-time positions, the turnpike system is budgeted at $1.57 billion for the current fiscal year, which began July...

No city in America runs on anything resembling a free-market model. But Texas' major cities are probably the closest thing, with vast improvements to their economies and living standards to show for it. Their looser land-use laws mean that housing supply grows quickly, stabilizing prices. Their lighter tax and regulatory structure helps businesses locate there and grow. And—shenanigans from the governor's office notwithstanding—their openness to immigrants means they have cheap and robust labor forces.But one market-oriented aspect little discussed is Texas' approach to transportation. The state has 25 toll roads, more than any other state. They are particularly common in Houston and Dallas,...

The southern, privately built section of Texas 130, which has been an obstacle course of bumps and cracks since shortly after its October 2012 opening, will see $60 million of pavement repairs over the next year in 35 spots between Mustang Ridge and Seguin. Crews in many cases will be removing five feet or more of the road’s “sub-base,” the treated and compacted soil layers that underlie the highway’s asphalt driving surface, replacing it with soil with different, stronger properties, and then repaving those rehabilitated sections. Some repairs will also include installation of impermeable layers of soil alongside the road...

Last Thursday, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan unveiled a $9 billion project to widen three of the state’s most heavily trafficked highways: I-270, I-495—also known as the Capital Beltway—and MD-295, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. What the governor’s office dubbed the Traffic Relief Plan involves constructing two express toll lanes each way—or four total toll lanes—to all three highways. Widening the Capital Beltway and the section of I-270 connecting the growing commuter-city of Frederick to Washington, D.C., would cost an estimated $7.6 billion, which the state expects to be financed via public-private partnerships: Private companies would build and maintain the new toll lanes,...

They’ve butted heads and talked of lawsuits as the MoPac Boulevard toll lane construction project has dragged on two years beyond its target completion date. Now the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority and its toll project contractor appear to be near a financial settlement. The mobility authority board, in a specially called meeting scheduled for Tuesday morning, will consider an agreement with CH2M, the Denver-based engineering and construction firm that in April 2013 agreed to design and build the 11-mile project. The contractor agreed then to a fixed price of $137 million. But in a March 2017 memo, written when...

HOUSTON -- Good news for drivers heading into Monday morning: Sam Houston Tollway's main lanes are now fully open in both directions. That means tens of thousands of commuters can now get back to their regular routes. But with the good news comes some bad news: Harris County Tolls will start up again Tuesday at 4 a.m. on all toll roads except for the section of Sam Houston Tollway between Highway 59 and Highway 290. Tolls will be waived because some feeder roads are still closed. Fort Bend County Tolls resume Monday. The toll way opening is a few days...

The Civil Administration Higher Planning Committee is slated to meet next week and give final approval to nearly 4,000 new housing units across Judea and Samaria, including the first new construction in the Jewish community in Hevron in some four decades. On Sunday night, Channel 2 reported that the Netanyahu government has okayed the move, following delays by the Higher Planning Committee, which had originally been scheduled to approve the projects in September. The new wave of construction, totaling 3,829 homes, includes building in communities outside of the so-called “major settlement blocs”, a significant shift from the limits imposed on...

President Donald Trump’s $1 trillion plan to rebuild America’s infrastructure may be unprecedented in size and ambition, but it mimics a controversial scheme championed by Vice President Mike Pence when he was the governor of Indiana. That’s why Pence is the public face of the Trump initiative, and executives from financial firms that helped privatize Indiana’s toll road are in the White House, busily sculpting Trump’s national plan. Pence and his allies like to boast about how Indiana sold control of major roads to private firms, claiming the move prompted corporations to invest money in infrastructure that would otherwise have...

Amid a chorus of support from gridlock-weary drivers and the construction industry, Illinois tollway directors approved widening the Central Tri-State Tollway (I-294) Thursday. Officials promised no toll increases but about $120 million for the $4 billion project will come from new fees to be imposed on I-PASS holders when they don't use transponders. A concept plan includes extra lanes, a "Flex Lane" for express buses, and highway interchange improvements at bottlenecks between Rosemont and Oak Lawn. "This is a first step," Chairman Robert Schilerstrom said. "We'll be reaching out to the communities. We're very interested in listening to their input...

CHICAGO — Sixteen miles of new "flex lanes" will allow PACE buses to breeze past traffic along I-90 going west from O'Hare Airport, suburban transportation officials announced this week. The lanes will carry six new bus lines all along the Jane Addams Tollway, half of them linking up with the Rosemont Blue Line station to give passengers direct access to the city. Ratcheting up bus service was the last piece of a $2.5 billion effort to widen the tollway between O'Hare and suburban Elgin, officials said. Construction wrapped up last December. The extra lane will stay clear most of the...

The Gintong Pamana Awards Foundation has presented Illinois Tollway Deputy Chief of Program Implementation Clarita Lao with its 2017 Panday Pira Award for Outstanding Achievements in Engineering. The award recognizes “Filipino Americans nationwide whose accomplishments inspire, motivate and sustain others in the Filipino community.” The group recognized Lao for her engineering career accomplishments spanning more than three decades, her leadership and management skills and dedication to engineering excellence. As deputy chief of program implementation, Lao is responsible for providing overall project management and support for multiple engineering projects from inception to completion, including projects that are part of the Tollway’s...

Opposition is beginning to build against a regional transportation group’s plan to study a second Potomac River crossing in Montgomery County. On Tuesday morning, Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner introduced a resolution that would formally put the council in opposition to the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board’s plan to study the feasibility of a bridge that would help connect Virginia Route 28 to the Intercounty Connector in the county. Supporters of the proposed bridge say the connecting route would help ease traffic on I-270 and the American Legion Bridge on the Beltway and provide better connectivity to Dulles...

President Donald J. Trump said Friday he wants the federal government to speed the environmental review of major infrastructure projects, and he held out a controversial highway in Maryland to make the case for why the improvements are needed. Calling the current environmental review process "painfully slow," the president announced his administration will create a new council to help project managers "navigate the bureaucratic maze" as well as an office that would "root out inefficiency." "We have an obsolete system," the former real estate executive said in a speech at the U.S. Department of Transportation. "Instead of rebuilding our country,...

Four years ago, one of China’s largest agricultural importers sent representatives to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., hoping that meetings with elite party officials might yield business opportunities. The company, the Dandong Port Group, was particularly focused on the governors in attendance, according to an interview with Dandong’s general counsel broadcast by Chinese state television. But now, the company’s widening influence is coming under scrutiny by federal prosecutors, who are examining the relationship between Dandong’s wealthy and connected chairman, Wang Wenliang, and Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, a Democrat who was elected in 2013. A federal law enforcement...

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Thursday proposed a $9 billion plan to widen three of the state’s most congested highways — the Capital Beltway, Interstate 270 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway — in what he said would include the largest public-private partnership for highways in North America. The projects would add four toll lanes each to Maryland’s portion of the Capital Beltway (I-495) and to I-270 from the Beltway to Frederick. It would also widen the Baltimore-Washington Parkway (MD 295) by four toll lanes after taking over ownership from the federal government. Because of private-sector involvement, Hogan said, the plan would...