Free Republic

The congestion and construction on Interstate 95 are frustrating enough, but navigating the dramatically uneven lanes that make your car shimmy, shake and swerve into neighboring lanes is downright dangerous. Yet as the Sun Sentinel’s Wayne Roustan reported Sunday, the Florida Department of Transportation says we’re going to have to endure this nightmare through parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties until 2024. Come on, FDOT. You’re killing us. Well, we can’t really say you’re killing us because, believe it or not, state transportation officials can’t tell us how many accidents have occurred during the construction of the I-95 express...

Commuters who take the Interstate 10 high-rise bridge over the Industrial Canal should be ready for continued delays, with two eastbound lanes shut down out of concern for the span's structural integrity, the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development said Friday. Following a large tire fire Wednesday under the bridge on the east side of the canal, crews have shut down two of the three eastbound lanes on the bridge, and the work could continue into early next week. The westbound lanes are open. An overhead traffic camera operated by WWL-TV on Friday showed heavy traffic on the eastbound approach...

Early Thanksgiving travelers are expected to stuff Interstate 15 with heavy traffic and delays this week. The Utah Department of Transportation is predicting heavy delays — of up to 45 minutes — on Interstate 15 along the Wasatch Front during the evening commute on Wednesday, as many people head out of town or escape from work a bit early for the holiday. UDOT said its engineers expect a 25 percent increase in traffic on both Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, compared to a typical weekday commute of about 200,000 cars per day. It expects heavier than normal traffic on Tuesday from...

BROWN COUNTY (WLUK) -- If you experience stop-and-go traffic heading to work or backups on your way home, you’re not the only one frustrated. Every community experiences traffic delays. Transportation planners design new roads to ease the congestion. But FOX 11 Investigates found that in Brown County, those planning the roads are frustrated too. Ads by ZINC Highway 172 in Brown County carries a heavy load of cars and trucks. During peak traffic hours, motorists are trying to cross the Fox River. A little over two miles to the south, the Claude Allouez Bridge in De Pere can be even...

PRESIDIO – City of Presidio Administrator Joe Portillo informed Presidio County commissioners last week of the Mexican government’s decision to direct transmigrants – usually South American salvagers – to the Presidio-Ojinaga port of entry. If you live near the border, you may recognize the transmigrants and their cargo: salvaged vehicles (often from California) towing another vehicle and stuffed with used furniture, appliances, and other goods. The transmigrants, Portillo explained, are mostly from Guatemala, but come from other South American countries such as Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. According to Portillo, Mexican Customs at ports currently used by the transmigrants, such...

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s proposal to add toll lanes to three of the most congested highways in the Washington suburbs reaches beyond similar proposals that stalled over the years after being deemed too expensive or disruptive to adjacent communities. Hogan’s $9 billion plan 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 by four toll lanes. The project would be built using a public-private partnership in what Hogan (R) has said would be the largest such deal for highways in...

All I could do was sigh when I saw a recent article discussing a new study that named the Interstate 95 corridor between Exit 133 and the Fairfax County Parkway as the worst traffic “hot spot” in the nation. The article was circulated around the Prince William County school where I teach. Every minute added onto my 34-mile round trip to work creates huge consequences for me. The trip used to take an ideal 45 minutes, but it has grown to a jaw-dropping 2½ hours — creating significant consequences for me and my children. I am not prone to “road...

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - Maybe one day they'll finish the renovation project on the Bayonne Bridge. Until then, we're going to have to keep enduring these total closures of the span, including on the weekends, which is a mind-numbingly bad time to shutter the bridge. Not that the Port Authority sees it that way, no matter how much we bang on their cage. We're supposed to have some nice weather this weekend. Mid-70s. Sunny. Lots of folks are going to be out driving. A lot of them are going to be going to New Jersey, either to shop, visit friends...

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...

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...

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...

Dive Brief: The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has awarded Jacobs Engineering Group a 10-year, multimillion dollar contract to design an active traffic management (ATM) system for Interstate 76 through Philadelphia, according to Traffic Technology Today. Jacobs' services for the Schuylkill Expressway will include preliminary and system engineering, design, analysis of alternatives, right-of-way acquisition and construction consultancy.The final ATM system could include occasional use of the shoulder, connected vehicle technology, variable speed limit signage and traffic jam detection and alerts. PennDOT could also implement features like ramp metering, junction control, dynamic lane assignments, and multimodal strategies in tandem with shoulder use....

Motorists on Interstate 270 could start seeing lane closures next week as construction crews begin resurfacing and restriping a highway spur that leads to the Beltway. The work marks the beginning of a $100 million project to ease traffic backups on the roadway, according to state transportation officials. “This is the first step in a major project to break daily gridlock,” Maryland Transportation Secretary Pete K. Rahn said in a prepared statement. The initial phase of the effort involves surfacing improvements on the section of I-270 that connects with the outer loop of the Beltway. The project, which is expected...

Dive Brief: The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) has announced the completion of the state's first-ever diverging diamond interchange (DDI), located on Interstate 70, according to Equipment World. The DDI design eliminates left turns across oncoming traffic, improving vehicle flow and decreasing the chance of accidents. The agency also chose the DDI configuration because it could use the former interchange's cloverleaf footprint, reducing the impact of construction on the area. PennDOT said it modified the traditional DDI design slightly. Dive Insight: Design is one way transportation agencies are combating gridlock resulting from increased traffic. Other tools in DOT arsenals are...

Everyone in America was planning for the solar eclipse on August 21, except, apparently, the Montana Department of Transportation. That day, a contractor hired by MDT had scheduled a fairly major road construction project to begin on Interstate 15 near the Clark Canyon Dam. As tens of thousands of people headed north from the path of the eclipse to get home Monday around 4:30 p.m., they encountered a miles-long traffic jam that slowed traffic to a bumper-to-bumper crawl for more than an hour for some drivers. The flow of traffic was not a problem on the northbound lane of I-15...

Truckers entering New York City by bridges and tunnels operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) will receive a 50 percent discount on tolls during overnight hours this summer. From July 10 and Sept. 1, trucks will receive the discount between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. at the Henry Hudson Bridge, Whitestone Bridge, Throgs Neck Bridge, RFK Triborough Bridge, Queens Midtown Tunnel, Hugh L. Carey Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge and Cross Bay Veterans Memorial Bridge. The move is part of an effort to alleviate “the near-term summer crisis,” MTA said in...

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- He's conquered the streets with electric cars, and he's leading the commercial race to space, but that's not enough for Elon Musk. Billionaire Musk spoke at a TED Talks conference and gave the first glimpse of the traffic-beating underground tunnels he hopes to create. The SpaceX and Tesla CEO plans to build the network of tunnels with his latest venture, The Boring Company. Construction was well underway at the Hawthorne-based business on Friday. AIR7 HD was overhead as crews worked on the early designs of a tunnel-digging machine with The Boring Company logo. Here's how it...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - A proposed bill to ban express lanes in Florida died Thursday in the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee. Despite causing an increase in crashes and confusion, express lanes, according to the Florida Department of Transportation, help move people faster, and that if they were eliminated the state would lose $1.5 billion over 10 years. All of that money is used to improve and fix roads. Sen. Frank Artiles, R-Miami, filed SB 250 in January. It that would have allowed the express lanes to remain in operation only until tolls are collected to pay off the bonds that...

In a matter of days, time will run out on a plan that could cut down on commuting times, pave the way for even less traffic congestion, and potentially give taxpayers a break. For reasons that remain unclear, the General Assembly has ignored the Illinois Department of Transportation's I-55 managed lanes project, and the cost of doing nothing has the potential to harm the state's ability to do business for years to come. The I-55 managed lanes proposal would add an express toll lane between the Veterans Memorial Tollway in the southwest suburbs and the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago....

Delaware River Turnpike Bridge to Reopen Late Tonight Crossing was closed for seven weeks as fractured truss member was repaired. Officials from the PA Turnpike Commission (PTC) and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority (NJTA) today announced that they expect to reopen the jointly owned Delaware River Bridge sometime late tonight. The 1.25-mile-long bridge, which carries traffic between the two states, first closed Jan. 20 when a complete fracture was discovered in the superstructure beneath the westbound lanes on the Pennsylvania side in Bristol Township, Bucks County. “Many people were greatly inconvenienced by this closure over the last seven weeks, and...