Free Republic

Someone hacked through yet another fiber optic cable in the San Francisco Bay area early Tuesday morning, continuing a rash of incidents that have disrupted Internet traffic and vexed law enforcement officials. The latest attack occurred at around 4.30 am Pacific Time near the town of Livermore, about 50 miles east of San Francisco. Someone climbed down a manhole cover there and cut through several fiber optic cables, according to several reports. The FBI is investigating. The cables are operated by backbone providers such as Level 3 Communications, which sell capacity to other cable and Internet providers. The cables carry...

The problem is clear: Traffic congestion will become significantly worse and more widespread without big changes in how people and products get around. Build more roads. Build more public transit. Rely on new technology. The possible solutions are many, but none is easy or cheap. A few ways to ease the nation's gridlock: ——— PUBLIC TRANSIT RENAISSANCE Ridership on public buses, trains and subways has reached its highest level nationally since the 1950s, and transit boosters cite this as evidence that expanded service and routes is a good investment. The nation's driving capital, Los Angeles, is making a multibillion-dollar investment...

It’s summertime, and that means millions of Americans cramming in their minivans and crisscrossing around the country on family vacation. But how safe are the roads, and will they be backed up for miles of gridlock? This year the highway trust fund that finances our national highway system is running out of money. The federal gas tax will raise about $34 billion this year, but that isn’t enough revenue to cover all the spending Congress wants to do. So naturally, the lobbyists in Washington — including mayors, road builders, transit operators and civil engineers — are demanding a higher gas...

ANNAPOLIS, MD – Following through on his campaign pledge to provide funding for highways and state-owned local roads, Governor Larry Hogan today announced $1.97 billion for highways and bridges from Western Maryland to the Eastern Shore. The priority projects, which will get underway by 2018, include $1.35 billion in new projects going to construction and $625 million in preserved projects. The $1.35 billion in new projects includes $845 million for major projects and $500 million to fix bridges and improve roads. “Today, I’m delivering on my promise to provide nearly $2 billion in funding to our highways and bridges across...

Dashing Baltimore's hopes for an east-west light rail line, Gov. Larry Hogan said Thursday that he will not build the $2.9 billion Red Line. "The current proposal makes no sense whatsoever," the governor told a State House news conference. But Hogan, making his first appearance since announcing Monday he has cancer, gave mass transit advocates a limited victory by giving the green light to construction of a slimmed-down version of the Purple Line light rail project in the Washington suburbs. During his campaign last year, Hogan had said the state could not afford either project. After he took office, however,...

Gov. Larry Hogan announced Thursday the state will move forward with the Purple Line. The Republican governor made his decision after months of speculation about whether he’ll kill the $2.45 billion light-rail project. Hogan said the state will fund the project with $168 million, “a fraction” of the cost of what could have been up to a $700 million state investment. The governor said he will ask Montgomery County and Prince George's County to increase the size of their investments. “The Purple Line is a long-term investment and will be an important economic driver for Maryland,” Hogan said. “It will...

We are reliably assured by progressives in the modern era that spending, deficits and the national debt are no big deal and are generally just distractions and dog whistles tossed out by conservatives. After all, you can always just print more money or go out to the White House rose garden and pick more off the money tree or something, right? That’s why my LADAR (Leftist Radar) is always set off when I hear one of their spokesmodels suddenly becoming concerned over the budget. The most recent example of this comes from Steve Lopez at the LA Times, who takes...

President Obama on Friday will sign a two-month extension of highway funding into law, the White House said. The measure prevents a sudden halt in infrastructure funding that was slated to begin May 31. But White House press secretary Josh Earnest criticized the stopgap bill as a punt and urged Congress to pass a long-term measure to fund road projects. “It’s the president’s view that the era of short-term patches ... must come to an end,” Earnest told reporters. Earnest noted it was the 33rd temporary fix for highway funding since 2008. The uncertainty caused by that approach has led...

Washington is paralyzed by extreme political rhetoric that creates powerful sound bites but poor policy. The big legislative updates that we need to compete in the 21st century and to raise living standards have been blocked by a reluctance to seek common ground. With Washington already broken, the last thing we need is a left-wing version of the tea party. But I am worried about where some of the loudest voices in the room could take the Democratic Party. Rejecting a trade agreement with Asia, expanding entitlement programs that crowd out other priorities and a desire to relitigate the financial...

Former White House Chief of Staff and currently mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, whose city is rushing to be the next Detroit after decades of big government excesses, once said that a crisis was a terrible thing to waste since it allows you to get things done you couldn’t get done in a saner atmosphere. The Amtrak derailment outside Philadelphia is the latest case in point. Never mind that the Antrak train that crashed outside Philadelphia, killing seven, was being driven at 106 miles per hour around a curve that was designed for 50 or that the “positive train control”...

Rep. John Delaney was in Hagerstown Wednesday to pitch his proposal for long-term funding of transportation and other infrastructure projects by repatriating the overseas earnings of American corporations. "There hasn't been anything really transformative to put a lot of money into infrastructure," Delaney, D-Md., told a small group of businesspeople at Bulls & Bears restaurant. He pointed out that the federal gas tax — the primary source of revenue for the Highway Trust Fund — has not been increased since the early 1990s, in part, because it is politically unpopular. It also is a regressive tax that hits lower-income people...

WASHINGTON -- Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Monday that Congress needs the equivalent of basketball player LeBron James to help them pass a long-term extension of a federal fund that pays for the nation’s transportation system. The Highway Trust Fund is set to run out at the end of this month, and Congress has yet to set a vote in either chamber on legislation that would extend the expiration and allow the Department of Transportation to distribute what little funds it has left to states. “We have a clock that is running out. We’ve got 20 days left, and gosh,...

“Infrastructure-wise, we’re becoming a Third World country,” guest host Joy Behar says.The women of “The View” tackled a pressing issue of the week along with a decade-long argument on Thursday’s episode: the deadly Amtrak train crash in Philadelphia and America’s decision to go to war in Iraq. With Whoopi Goldberg absent from the show, Nicolle Wallace, Rosie Perez and Raven-Symone were joined by “View” veteran Joy Behar and model/actress Molly Sims. Given the diverse ideologies on Thursday’s panel, the conversation grew heated at times. The discussion about the train derailment in Philadelphia quickly turned to Republican efforts to cut funding...

For one thing, we still don’t know what caused the derailment. First responders had not finished combing the wreckage of Tuesday night’s Amtrak derailment for bodies when the liberal outlet Vox posted: Alarming headline, exploitative disaster photo. The only thing missing is a picture of a grinning Ted Cruz. The response to last night’s deadly Amtrak wreck in Philadelphia prompts two observations. First — and this seems important — we don’t yet know what caused the derailment. An investigation is under way. Sources tell the Wall Street Journal that the train was traveling more than 100 mph — more than...

RUSH: First the train derailment, Amtrak train derailment. Now, obviously, this is a tragedy, there is injury, there is death. And I must sadly be the one to remind you that there is a political component to this, and you will be hearing about it very soon. The political component to this is going to be -- and it will not be very long. In fact, it may have already happened. I haven't been able to monitor all this stuff constantly since this accident first happened. It's predictable as easily as the sun coming up in the morning. We're gonna...

A consequence of America growing more secularist, by which I mean more materialistic, is clear in public reactions by secular sophisticates after the crash of Amtrak 188 in Philadelphia. The dead had yet to be confirmed, the injured were still trapped in smashed train cars, but partisans steering the news narrative griped about “infrastructure” and lectured about “funding.” They blamed Tuesday night's calamity on Republicans, though investigators said speeding into a curve at 106 m.p.h. likely caused the crash. (Maybe the engineer is a Republican.) Two hours after the crash, as aerial shots of the tangled disaster scrolled on social...

America is crumbling before our eyes. Once, the U.S. was the envy of the world with its modern roads, airports, railroad bridges and other infrastructure. Everything was first-class. Now, it’s third-rate. An Amtrak passenger train derailed Tuesday in Philadelphia, killing at least seven passengers. The investigation into the crash is only beginning, and it’s too early to say what caused it. But it’s not too early to say that Amtrak’s crumbling infrastructure didn’t help matters. “It’s an extremely heavily used stretch of track,” transportation analyst Matthew L. Wald told CNN, referring to the area where the train derailed Tuesday night....

EVERY day, millions of Americans rely on a remarkable network of roads, bridges, subways, trains and buses to connect us to work, school and opportunity. But our transportation system, once the envy of the world, is in jeopardy. In New York City, subways and buses are overcrowded and often unreliable, and roadways and bridges are in dire need of repair and rehabilitation. From the next phase of the Second Avenue subway to plans to connect the Metro-North Railroad to Pennsylvania Station, to the proposed new subway line under Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, there isn’t a short- or long-term expansion project...

hatever one might have thought about the Maryland Transportation Authority's decision to raise tolls four years ago, no one can say the two-phase proposal wasn't scrutinized from all angles or that the public wasn't given sufficient opportunity to ask questions or make comment. The same can't be said for the agency's decision to roll them back — in some cases below what they were before the last price increase. That secrecy and abrupt decision-making should give Marylanders pause about what's going on at the agency that owns and manages some of the state's most important — and costly — transportation...

Yesterday, conservative lawmakers pushed to attach key toll road reforms to two transportation bills in the Texas House, but they were thwarted by Speaker Joe Straus and his parliamentarian Chris Griesel who would not allow them to present their amendments. Griesel told them the amendments weren’t ‘germane’ (or salient) to the bills, HB 13 and HB 20, and blocked Rep. Jeff Leach and Rep. Jonathan Stickland from even laying out their amendments. Straus and Griesel utilized the same technique as they did on a Stickland amendment to the open carry bill the week before. The two decided to reject the...