Free Republic

Every once in a while — and perhaps especially now, if we’re really going to talk about a trillion-dollar infrastructure program — we need to revisit the basics: “This is probably a column-length question, but what are the solutions to traffic congestion in the D.C. region?” That reasonable question came in during the midst of last Monday’s online discussion about whether traffic conditions would be improved if everyone just went faster. (In fact, we would not all be better off if you’d just go as fast as the driver behind you wants.) What are we really hoping to achieve when...

CINCINNATI - U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, will highlight in downtown Cincinnati this morning key infrastruture projects, such as the Brent Spence Bridge, as he outlines a framework to rebuild and repair the country’s infrastructure which will create millions of construction jobs. The northern Ohio Senator will be joined by Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley, Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority President and CEO Laura Brunner, and OKI Regional Council of Governments Deputy Executive DirectorRobert Koehler. President Donald Trump previously promised $1 trillion of investment in American infrastructure during his campaign. Brown joined Senate colleagues to release a roadmap for making...

Faced with ever-increasing traffic jams, South Florida's public officials have come up with a plan: Make it worse. Instead of fixing the problem, government officials are deliberately adding to it in hopes we'll all walk, ride the bus or take the train. "Until you make it so painful that people want to come out of their cars, they're not going to come out of their cars," Anne Castro, chair of the Broward County Planning Council, said during a meeting last year. "We're going to make them suffer first, and then we're going to figure out ways to move them after...

Bill Bertram frequently felt uneasy as cars whizzed past while he waited in traffic to reach the Tri-State Tollway's Grand Avenue exit ramp in Gurnee in the months after a $19.4 million reconstruction project was completed in 2015. Thoughts of being a sitting duck for a rear-end crash crossed his mind. Still, the 59-year-old Round Lake Beach resident said, driving north on the tollway to the westbound exit ramp was the most efficient option to head home from his Evanston job. On Nov. 16, at about 5:15 p.m., the rear-end crash he worried about happened. Bertram was stuck in a...

The cost of toll roads, the toll of urban congestion, ride-hailing battles and a high-speed train war garnered plenty of attention in Texas this year. And after the Legislature spent two sessions focusing on highway funding, lawmakers now appear poised to tackle other transportation matters next year. Here's a look at the year's biggest transportation stories and how they may continue to unfold in the coming months:1. Uber and Lyft roll out of Austin after losing city electionNational ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft stopped operating in Austin after voters there rejected an ordinance that would have repealed certain regulations, including...

In July Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe stood on the platform of a train station in Alexandria to announce that the U.S. Department of Transportation had granted $165 million for the Atlantic Gateway project.While this is a multimodal project featuring rail, bus, and highway improvements, it was clearly the latter that most enthused the governor. At one point during his remarks, he declared that because of the road projects, “Today, the congestion is going to end!”The primary focus of the highway improvements will be an extension of the HOT (high occupancy toll) lanes on I-95 and I-395. The only other speaker...

Not everyone is thrilled with U.S. Rep. John Larson’s proposal to build massive highway tunnels under Hartford, but Daniel Burnham might be, were he still with us. It was Burnham, the great Chicago architect and planner, who said, “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.”Larson’s is anything but a little plan; it is breathtaking in scope. It has stirred the blood of some public officials and business leaders. But the concept is so vast, complex and potentially expensive – it would be longer than Boston’s “Big Dig” tunnels...

CASA GRANDE — Republican Congressional District 1 candidate Paul Babeu says he plans to make improvements to Interstate 10 a greater priority for the federal government. Babeu, who is Pinal County sheriff, assembled a number of Republican state lawmakers on Monday to discuss his intentions as a congressman to prioritize widening a portion of I-10 that runs between Phoenix and Casa Grande. His plan is to work on expanding this section from two lanes to three in each direction. Doing so, Babeu said, improves safety and economic development. “This is directly linked to a prosperous future for western Pinal County...

There’s a famous old fable known as “Belling the Cat.” For those who haven’t heard it, it goes like this: A bunch of mice are threatened by a vicious cat, and they call a council to figure out how to solve the problem. One mouse proposes that they place a bell around the cat’s neck. That way, they’ll hear the cat approaching and have plenty of time to run and hide. The mice applaud the plan. They love the plan. It’s a great plan. One mouse asks who’s going to volunteer to place the bell around the cat’s neck. Suddenly,...

<p>Tweefie Millspaugh has a relatively short commute from her home in North Baltimore's Abell neighborhood to her job at a downtown law firm. Without traffic, she says, it takes about 15 minutes.</p> <p>But lately, the 54-year-old has found herself yelling fruitlessly in the driver's seat as she sits for 45 minutes on streets jammed by road closures across the city's center. After work, she waits again in a crawling line before finally inching out of her parking garage and into the gridlock.</p>

Highway express lanes provide a faster trip for carpoolers, people who drive low-emission cars, and solo travelers who are willing to pay more.ThatÂ’s the idea, anyway.But as Americans drive more miles than ever before, express lanes are facing a challenge: they are too popular. So many drivers of all kinds are using the lanes that it is increasingly difficult for transportation officials to keep them speedy.For solo drivers, the tolls in express lanes typically vary based on demand. In some places, drivers pay more during peak travel times, and in others prices go up as more cars enter the lane....

You know something is a big deal when politicians start fighting for credit — and camera time. Given the "thank me" glomming going on in Baton Rouge these days, clearly news that the federal government will pony up enough cash to fix the disaster that is Interstate 10 westbound off the Mississippi River Bridge is one of those hallelujah moments. There was Gov. John Bel Edwards on Thursday (Aug. 4), at old McKinley High School with U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond by his side, telling the world Louisiana will be getting between $20 million and $25 million in FASTLANE grant money...

Dear Gov. Hogan, Rep. Delaney, Rep. Shuster … somebody: I'm Andy Bruns, and I run The Herald-Mail. I need to tell you something disturbing about myself. At least 10 times a week, I put a bullet in the revolver, spin the cylinder, put the gun to my head and pull the trigger. One of these days, the gun will go off. My friends and family will be devastated, and my children will be fatherless. No, I’m not suicidal. I, along with thousands of others in the region, simply commute to work on Interstate 81. The gun is only a metaphor,...

The Ontario lottery corporation recently started advertising its newest scratch-and-win lottery: tickets cost $30 (the highest price among its lotteries), and the top prize is a cool $2.5 million. Now, if you want an indication of how bad traffic is in the GTA, consider that Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca announced a lottery of his own on Thursday: tickets cost $180 each, though you only pay if you win. The prize? One of 1,000 permits to drive in an uncongested highway lane for 16 kilometres between Burlington and Oakville. The ad copy writes itself: Imagine the freedom of cruising at...

More tolls are coming to Ontario roads, Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca said Monday, with details on the province’s plans due in the next couple of months.Del Duca was talking about a report by a group of environmentally minded policy types calling themselves “the Ecofiscal Commission” that says road tolls are the only way to handle worsening congestion. Particularly, the report calls for adding tolls that would allow vehicles that would not otherwise qualify to use existing high-occupancy vehicle lanes.“Road use has traditionally been freely available to anyone with a driver’s licence, and the open-access nature of roads makes them...

City-parish president candidates Joel Robideaux and Dee Stanley navigated questions on coal-generated power, the disruption an elevated interstate might cause in Lafayette and whether the city has too many traffic signals — all posed at a Thursday evening forum sponsored by the local chapter of the Sierra Club. In a campaign season where the candidates have often found themselves repeatedly addressing the same issues in the string of debates and forums leading up to the Oct. 24 election, Stanley and Robideaux covered some new ground at the environmental group’s forum at the Lafayette Public Library downtown. Robideaux, a longtime state...

TORONTO - The Ontario government has been working on plans for high occupancy toll lanes on three Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area highways since 2013, but has kept most of the details secret. When the NDP filed a Freedom of Information request in early 2014 for detailed information on the work, which includes traffic models, most of the documents were to be blacked out or not released at all, according to a report obtained by the Toronto Sun. Ministry of Transportation staff prepared the note to give senior bureaucrats and the minister’s office a heads-up about the NDP’s “contentious” request....

HOV is good; HOT is even better. As we saw during the Pan-Am Games, High Occupancy Vehicle lanes were great for cars with three or more people and other designated vehicles. The trouble was that they went largely unused. High Occupancy Toll lanes solve that problem by opening up the designated space to cars that don’t have the numbers but whose drivers are willing to pay for the convenience. Premier Kathleen Wynne has hinted that she’s willing to implement HOT lanes, but has not been specific about where and when. If the U.S. experience is anything to go by, however,...

Few things are as essential to economic growth and development as our nation’s roads. In a state as expansive as Arizona, riders understand the importance of having sound infrastructure, especially when it fails, as it did with the recent bridge collapse on I-10 in California not far from the Arizona border that continues to impact travelers across our state and region. Throughout history, providing for our nation’s infrastructure has been a central priority for both political parties. And, since President Dwight Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway System in 1956, our roads and bridges have served as the backbone to our...

Public attention on Maryland transportation planning issues has primarily focused on the Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties’ Purple Line and Baltimore’s Red Line since Larry Hogan became governor. The largely limited impact these two projects would actually have on congestion has often been lost. Planners estimate that the Purple Line would add only 11,800 new daily transit riders by the year 2040, less than a one percent increase (0.8%) in metro area ridership.Earlier this month Virginia Deputy Secretary of Transportation Nick Donohue released the results of VDOT’s Potomac River crossings study.[1] Their main recommendation is to extend the Beltway’s HOV/toll...