Free Republic

After a series of crashes on Interstate 81 in the Carlisle area in April, the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners Thursday approved a resolution that asks PennDOT to prioritize and expedite plans to widen the highway to three lanes in each direction across the county. Commissioners said the current design of the ramps and two-lanes of traffic no longer supports the number of vehicles traveling the interstate. “Interstate 81, along with the Pennsylvania Turnpike, brings tremendous economic opportunity. But the interstate also poses safety concerns as traffic volume increases and congestion worsens,” the board said in a joint statement. “In...

Caltrans will widen striping and increase visibility on 1,027 lane miles of U.S. Highway 101 from the San Benito/Santa Clara County line to the Santa Barbara/Ventura County line, thanks to funding by Senate Bill 1 (SB 1), the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017.“The wider and brighter striping will make it easier for all drivers and truckers to see the lane lines,” said Caltrans Director Laurie Berman. “The highly reflective striping will improve safety for road users, especially during rainy days. The six-inch striping will also take up more surface so it will be more durable and last longer,...

Perhaps the most puzzling thing about autism and ADD is that more than a decade into this public health crisis, our best, smartest government scientists and public health officials still say they have no idea what's causing it. Scary stuff, when parents having a child today realize there's at least an estimated 1 in 150 chance their child will have an autism disorder (1 in 90 if it's a boy). While the government has been utterly unable to stop it, or even tell us what is causing it, they say they do know one thing: it's not vaccines. But today,...

In a poll conducted for NBC and the Wall Street Journal, 58% of respondents agreed that "gun ownership does more to increase safety by allowing law-abiding citizens to protect themselves." On the other side, 38% agreed that "gun ownership reduces safety by giving too many people access to firearms." These results are a significant reversal of responses from 19 years ago when 52% felt that increased gun ownership reduced safety. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called this shift in favor of gun ownership "dismaying. Considering the carnage taking place on our city streets on a daily basis, I think it's clear...

NEENAH, Wis. - At the Winnebago County Highway Department, a memorial for two men is a reminder of two employees and two family members who are gone too soon. "Today it's been 12 years since he's been gone," Susan Tiffany said. Tiffany lost her brother, Dan Melhorn, on March 7, 2006. Melhorn, along with his partner and friend, Marc Neumeyer, got killed working along Interstate-41. "My sister told me and I just went, 'no, no'," Tiffany said. Tiffany said that after her brother's death, she drives extra slow through work zones. She's not alone in hoping others will follow. Local...

A high school student who survived the deadly Florida shooting on Valentine’s Day that left 17 people dead has slammed his teacher on social media, calling him an “opportunist” and “a coward,” after he allegedly wouldn’t unlock his classroom door and let students in, a report from the Sun-Sentinel said on Friday. Josh Gallagher, a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., shared his account on Twitter. He said he was in math class with his teacher Jim Gard when the fire alarm went off. Students began to evacuate, and while Gallagher was near the stairwell, he...

HUMBLE, TX — The traffic in Kingwood is already an issue, but it's about to become more frustrating as crew prepare to shut down parts of the Interstate 69 bridge that spans the San Jacinto River, just south of Kingwood. The Texas Department of Transportation announced this week that they will close the southbound lanes of I-69 over the river at the end of this month to repair damages caused during flooding from Hurricane Harvey. The construction is expected to continue through the start of summer, and the start of the 2018 hurricane season, which begins in June. Humble, Kingwood...

Although the Colorado Department of Transportation has its eyes on the future, as seen in its advocacy of the Rocky Mountain Hyperloop project that recently won a global challenge, the agency is also trying to innovate when it comes to current highways. Hence the planned installation of variable speed limit signs in Glenwood Canyon that can either speed up or slow down traffic in response to weather and traffic conditions. VSL has already gotten a tryout near Boulder, and if the system works in Glenwood, among the trickiest sections along the Interstate 70 corridor, after installation set to begin during...

At least 10 construction workers died and several were injured after a partially constructed bridge in central Colombia collapsed on Monday. The laborers were working on the bridge's drainage system when the incident occurred. The victims fell 280 meters (920 feet) into a ravine in Chirajara about 95 kilometers (60 miles) from the Colombian capital of Bogota.

At a measly 17 cents a gallon, Missouri’s fuel tax is woefully inadequate to fund the state’s growing need for transportation-infrastructure improvements. The more the system deteriorates, the worse our state’s business climate will become. Gov. Eric Greitens could put some muscle into his determination to attract business and generate more jobs by embracing a long-overdue fuel tax increase. The Missouri 21st Century Transportation Task Force, created by the Legislature and approved by the governor last year, proposes to boost the tax by a dime, and by 12 cents for diesel, which is only about half of what’s needed to...

Just after the end of World War I, a young Army officer who was born in Denison, Texas, was assigned to accompany an expedition of military vehicles driving across America. The mission was to determine the difficulties the nation might face moving an entire army across the continent. Lucky thing the country was no longer at war. The convoy constantly ground to a halt on unpaved roads, sinking into mud, slipping into ditches and sliding into quicksand. The cross-country journey took 62 days, averaging about six miles an hour, something close to the speed of a leisurely walk. The lessons...

An independent safety panel recommended NASA not certify SpaceX's commercial crew system until the agency better understands the behavior of pressure vessels linked to a Falcon 9 failure in 2016. That recommendation was one of the stronger items in the annual report of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) released by NASA Jan. 11, which found that NASA was generally managing risk well on its various programs. The report devoted a section to the composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) used to store helium in the second stage propellant tanks of the Falcon 9. The investigation into the September 2016 pad explosion that destroyed...

A crack that closed the Delaware River Bridge between Philadelphia and New Jersey last January has prompted the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to plan repairs to 13 other bridges across the state. The crack in welding material, which created a 2-inch gap in a major truss, was so serious that officials thought they might have to permanently close the span owned by the Pennsylvania and New Jersey turnpikes. As a result of that problem, PennDOT looked for similar issues in other bridges; the repairs will involve drilling out areas where welding occurred to fill improperly drilled holes, called plug welding,...

One day last year, a citizen on a prairie path in the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst came upon a teen boy chopping wood. Not a body. Just some already-fallen branches. Nonetheless, the onlooker called the cops. Officers interrogated the boy, who said he was trying to build a fort for himself and his friends. A local news site reports the police then "took the tools for safekeeping to be returned to the boy's parents." Elsewhere in America, preschoolers at the Learning Collaborative in Charlotte, North Carolina, were thrilled to receive a set of gently used playground equipment. But the kids...

Fire - beautiful, warm, fascinating, dangerous, and deadly. In the Bible it is used to purify, it is used in sacrifice, it is even a symbol of the Holy Ghost ... The video [included with article] is an eye-opening look at a household fire. We all know that we need to be ready in case of fire with a plan of action to get out of a burning house ... We also need to have a plan for sudden unexpected fires that we can put out quickly ... what if your television caught fire? your computer? or your microwave oven?...

A teenager in Florida is in a medically induced coma following a horrifying accident on New Year’s Eve. Authorities tell WFOR that 14-year-old Layne Chesney suffered third-degree burns across most of her body while roasting marshmallows at a friend’s house. “My daughter has sustained burns over 95 percent of her body,” Leigh Chesney, Layne’s mother, told WFOR. “She has suffered a lot of disfiguring injuries. Family members say Layne was roasting marshmallows at a friend’s house to make s’mores. “When the flames went out, one of the children or her, I do not know the complete story, accidentally or purposefully,...

A new detection system to help prevent wrong-way crashes will be part of an interchange under construction in the south Las Vegas Valley. There were 279 wrong-way driver crashes on Nevada’s freeway systems from 2005 to 2015, according to the Nevada Department of Transportation. They resulted in 41 fatalities and 125 injuries. After researching ways to address the problem, NDOT determined a system using vehicle detection, cameras and red rectangular rapid-flashing beacons should be employed. To implement the system, NDOT requested and received permission from the Federal Highway Administration to experiment with the beacons. Permission was needed because red rapid...

VALDOSTA – Any driver who's hit a deer or spotted one standing on the shoulder of the road should appreciate the new fencing along portions of Interstate 75. Old fence with a height of four or five feet has being replaced with eight-foot game fence in various locations in Crisp, Turner, Tift and Lowndes counties through small Georgia Department of Transportation maintenance service contracts, according to a DOT press release. Fence replacement just concluded in Lowndes County and must be inspected by the department. The other counties are complete. Contractors were also asked to use wire to fill in bottom...

ABINGDON, Va. — Crashes in the construction zone around Interstate 81’s Exit 14 in Abingdon more than doubled between 2015, the year before the project started, and 2017, according to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles. There were 67 crashes reported between Exits 10 and 17 in 2017, while the number of crashes in that stretch was 36 in 2015, according to the DMV. There were 72 crashes in 2016, the year the project began. Between Dec. 8-10, there were two accidents on that stretch of highway, including a one-vehicle crash that resulted in a fatality and a tractor-trailer that...

LAKE WORTH A Bobcat construction vehicle hauled by a large tow truck hit the 10th Avenue North overpass on Interstate 95 on Wednesday morning. The crash damaged the bridge, snarled northbound traffic on the highway for hours and shut down all eastbound lanes on 10th Avenue North, authorities said. Barbara Keller, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Transportation, said a combination front-end loader and backhoe struck a beam on the overpass. The backhoe was extended upward and that’s what damaged the concrete beam, she said. No other vehicles were involved and there were no injuries in the crash, according...