Free Republic

A fibrosis of bicycle lanes is spreading through the cities of the world. The well-being of innocent motorists is threatened as traffic passageways are choked by the spread of dull whirs, sharp whistles and sanctimonious pedal-pushing. Bike lanes have appeared in all the predictable places—Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berkeley and Palo Alto. But the incidence of bike lanes is also on the rise in unlikely locales such as slush-covered Boston, rain-drenched Vancouver, frozen Montreal and Bogotá, Colombia (where, perhaps, bicycles have been given the traffic lanes previously reserved for drug mules). Even Dublin, Ireland, has had portions of its streets set aside...

I spent last week in Massachusetts and broke my "driving on the right" cherry at last, but then I got the shock of my life... No cats' eyes, on any road, anywhere.When I arrived in the country, it was dark, raining and slightly misty, and once I got out onto the I-93 northbound and had stopped putting the wipers on when indicating my turns, if anything it got even harder to drive. This was because I had a real job working out where the lane markings were. Even the cruddy Garmin sat-nav in the hire car didn't seem to know...

HEFLIN, Ala. (AP) — His wife riding beside him with their two children in safety seats in the back, John Fisher drove home toward South Carolina along a stretch of Interstate 20 covered with ruts, bumps and crumbling concrete. Just ahead of the family, Crystal Marie Dick was heading to the other side of the Georgia line to give a friend a ride. The pothole in front of her 1995 Toyota Camry had been fixed at least once already, and now the repair was breaking down, too. A pocket of jagged, brittle bits of concrete covered nearly half of the...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - In a bow to political winds that demand the streets be cleared of snow, plows were out on Wednesday across the U.S. midsection despite the strain on tight state and local government budgets. A winter storm was forecast to dump as much as a foot (0.3 meter) of snow across the Great Plains and Midwest by the weekend. The storm was expected to bring enough snow to Des Moines, Iowa, to match the city's normal snowfall total for an entire winter season. The Iowa capital expects to chew through its $3 million annual snow removal budget soon...

LONDON - Here's a new road repair plan: Don't bother. Officials in the small English village of Navestock, some 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of London, are considering leaving many of the town's potholes unfilled as a way to bedevil the speeders who zip through town at breakneck pace. There's another advantage as well: Leaving the potholes alone is a lot cheaper than fixing them. City councilor Mike Parrish said the plan would help return many of the town's smaller roads to their original status as country lanes. "It seems potholes are good on our quiet little back roads," he...

About $90 million in stimulus funds will be headed to Santa Clara County, with most of the cash going toward repairing pavement, buying hybrid buses and installing metering lights along Interstate 280 through San Jose. The money was part of the $490 million approved by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission on Wednesday, the first local allocation following the signing of the historic $787 billion stimulus bill last week by President Barack Obama. While there were no high-profile South Bay projects approved for this first infusion of federal money, officials came away feeling they had positioned themselves to capture more money down...

NEW YORK — Construction workers digging at ground zero have uncovered a 40-foot pothole and other features carved by glaciers about 20,000 years ago. Unearthing these glacial features has been critical in preparing the foundation for Tower 4 of the new World Trade Center, being built by Silverstein Properties at the southeast corner of the site. Engineers need a clear understanding of the contours of the rock....... "It's nice to look at," said Robert B. Reina, a supervising structural engineer at Mueser Rutledge, "but it's all got to go."

London-based Daily Telegraph reports of mysterious blast in military convoy leaving Revolutionary Guards Base last weekend. At least 15 people killed in explosion, but Iranian authorities seeking to silence incident Was sabotage responsible for disrupting a shipment of arms from Iran to Hizbullah? The London-based Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Friday of a mysterious explosion which devastated an Iranian supply convoy intended to reach Hizbullah. According to the report, the strong blast took place in one of Tehran's suburbs as a military convoy left a Revolutionary Guards' ammunition storehouse. At least 15 people were killed in the explosion. Western sources reported...

WING, N.D. - Mike Goos likens the prairie potholes of North Dakota to suburbia. Ducks born in the prairie potholes mature while on "spring break" in the south, returning north to find a home and raise their young, he said. "You're a pair that likes 3 inches of water, we've got a place for you. You're a pair that likes 4 feet of water, we've got a place for you," Mr. Goos, a Fish and Wildlife Service wetlands manager, said on a June 23 wetlands tour. But as with humans, suburban life for ducks isn't free of troubles. As the...

Targeting what many Southlanders consider the ultimate urban blight, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced plans Wednesday for a 14-week effort to repair an estimated 35,000 potholes citywide. Following through on one of his campaign vows, Villaraigosa said "Operation Pothole" would include 50 trucks with two-person crews working in selected areas on weekends starting Sept. 24. The $400,000 effort is in addition to a regular pothole-repair program operated during the weekend. Money for the program will come out of the department's overtime fund, Saucedo said. "This extra effort is being undertaken to improve the condition of our neighborhoods and streets," Villaraigosa said...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger traveled to a quiet San Jose neighborhood Thursday, and -- dogged by protesters -- filled a pothole dug by city crews just a few hours before, as part of an attempt to dramatize his efforts to increase money for transportation projects. The choreographed press opportunity -- at least the governor's fourth recent event involving transportation issues -- seemed aimed as much at thwarting the demonstrators who have followed Schwarzenegger for weeks as grabbing new attention for his proposal. Schwarzenegger strode toward television cameras on Laguna Seca Way to the sounds of the Doobie Brothers' "Taking it to...

On the day he was sworn in as San Francisco's 42nd mayor 16 months ago, Gavin Newsom stood on the steps of City Hall during his inaugural address and promised: "I will tackle the smallest pothole.'' He hasn't tackled enough of them of late, as the backlog of requests now reaches into the hundreds. Faced with a mounting budget deficit, Newsom cut the number of pothole- repair crews earlier this year from three to two, and city drivers, cyclists and even pedestrians are noticing. Now, in the wake of Newsom's own bumpy ride down Seventh Avenue in the Sunset District...

Potholers discover ancient Roman mosaic By Bruce Johnston (Filed: 19/01/2005) Potholers exploring a site near Nero's palace have discovered a mosaic showing ancient Romans trampling grapes to make wine. The 10ft by 6.5ft mosaic depicts three naked figures crushing the grapes with their feet, while a fourth entertains them by playing a double flute and another man piles the fruit in a basket. Using a remote-controlled camera, the potholers filmed the fragment at the edge of the largely unexcavated, 14-acre bathing complex in Rome built by the Emperor Trajan, itself lying on top of the ruins of Nero's lavish residence,...

NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) -- A Pennsylvania Department of Transportation maintenance shed will be considered for recognition as a historic place, an honor that would make it harder for PennDOT to widen a busy highway in suburban Philadelphia. The one-story brown brick garage, one of 67 county facilities built in 1936 as part of Gov. Gifford Pinchot's campaign to pave 20,000 miles of rural roads, will be the subject of a $10,000 study to determine if it belongs on the National Register of Historic Places. PennDOT will fund the study, which was ordered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. The...

(For education and discussion purposes, only) A research group funded by road builders called Wednesday for more state highway spending to avert a costly increase in accidents, travel delays and wear-and-tear on everyone's cars. [One local planning organization says highways account for only 52 percent of the transportation spending needed in the Durham and Chapel Hill area by 2025, with 44 percent earmarked for rail and bus transit.] North Carolina has failed to repair and expand its highway network quickly enough to keep pace with growing passenger and truck traffic and crumbling roads and bridges... (snip) Citing census and highway...

<p>HARRISBURG -- Get ready to shell out more to travel the Pennsylvania Turnpike starting, probably, on Aug. 1.</p> <p>The Turnpike Commission staff is recommending a 44 percent toll increase, taking the rate from the current 4.1 cents per mile to 5.9 cents per mile.</p>

<p>LANSING -- Gov. Jennifer Granholm will veto a provision in this year's supplemental budget to restore 34 road projects she delayed to save money, a spokesman said Friday.</p> <p>Greg Bird, spokesman for the governor's budget office, said the veto shows Granholm's strong support of the "Preserve First" program, which emphasizes repairing existing roads rather than new construction.</p>

ENR Files from the Front SPECIAL REPORT CLEANUP With "Lego Logic" Army Engineers Wage Peace One Block at a Time (6/9/2003) By Thomas F. Armistead in Baghdad Baghdad -- People swarm over the field inside a sports stadium. One cluster with rakes and shovels smoothes the ground while a pair of workers pulls a roller over it. Another cluster throws armloads of clothing into a waiting truck. At the side of the field, a vehicle-mounted loudspeaker sputters to life with lively Iraqi music. Outside the stadium, a street vendor pushes a cart with drinks and food. It feels like...

<p>A television cameraman films the wreckage of a North Huntingdon Township police cruiser that was hit by a train Monday evening.</p> <p>A North Huntingdon Township police officer whose cruiser became immobilized on train tracks during a routine patrol was able to get out of the car before a CSX train batted it the distance of almost half a football field.</p>

<p>Mother Nature seems to be trying to reclaim the cobblestone streets that run through the residential neighborhoods north of Brookline Boulevard.</p> <p>Along Gallion Street and Flatbush and Rossmore avenues, weeds push through the space between the stones. Moss and grass give the bone-colored streets a greenish hue in some spots. Thickets of weeds burst through the crevices where the street meets the curb.</p>