Free Republic

The completion of the Fern Hollow Bridge construction in under a year and at a cost of $25 million is truly a feat that should be applauded by one and all. But it also points out the utter failure of our government to function on an expeditious and cost-conscious manner daily (“Editorial: Fern Hollow failure,” Jan. 29). Tom Wolf declared at the bridge opening ceremony, “This is the power of government that works for the people.” “Under normal circumstances this bridge would have taken 5 years to complete,” said Kate Thomson of the United States Department of Transportation. “This is...

Line painting and other finishing touches continued Tuesday at the new Fern Hollow Bridge in the city’s East End, with a dedication ceremony planned Wednesday and completion of bridge reconstruction work anticipated Thursday, officials said. A date for reopening the bridge to traffic has not been set, according to Pennsylvania Department of Transportation spokesman Steve Cowan, but it was anticipated it would be within a week. The busy, 500-foot Forbes Avenue bridge, which connected Squirrel Hill to Point Breeze and Park Place, collapsed onto a popular hiking trail about 100 feet below the road in Frick Park in January. Ten...

When Modesti Cooper returned home to Houston in July 2019 after more than a decade overseas with the United States military, she moved into her dream house on the corner of Nance and Grove streets in Houston’s Fifth Ward. She’d bought a parcel of land and designed the home from scratch in her downtime while touring from Kuwait to Afghanistan to Iraq. It was a relief to finally move in. “It’s a calm, cool, nice area,” Cooper says. “Besides the traffic, there’s no violence, no noise. It’s so quiet, it’s unbelievable. I had rockets and mortars and missiles blown over...

MassDOT Secretary Stephanie Pollack has been appointed to the new Biden-Harris administration as the new Deputy Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration. Pollack has led MassDOT since 2015, at the beginning of Governor Charlie Baker’s first term. Before she joined the state government, Pollack had been Associate Director for Research at the Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University, and an attorney and director of the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF). As a CLF attorney in the 1990s, Pollack helped negotiate a package of significant transit improvements that the state promised to build as mitigation...

BREAKING: Biden has chosen Pete Buttigieg to lead the U.S. Transportation Department - Reuters

Leaders who spoke during a Friday morning ribbon-cutting ceremony to open a new Interstate 15 interchange touted the $31 million project as a prime example of what can be accomplished when entities cooperate. The Northgate interchange opened to the public a few hours after the ceremony concluded, with Pocatello Mayor Brian Blad, Chubbuck Mayor Kevin England and members of the Bannock County Commission all driving their cars across the bridge as the official first users. The interchange is located north of both the Pocatello Creek Road exit and I-15’s “flying Y” with Interstate 86. The interchange was first added to...

Orange County has received a $20 million federal grant to expand its autonomous shuttle system at Lake Nona, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao said Tuesday, part of a combined $62 million in transportation awards to three Florida cities. Chao was at Lake Nona, a southeast Orlando neighborhood, along with Gov. Ron DeSantis and state transportation secretary Kevin Thibault to reveal a combined $883 million in Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) grants nationwide. Orange County was among just a handful out of more than 600 applications across the U.S. to get funding. The grant to the Orange’s Local...

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Build America Bureau has finalized a direct loan of $225 million for the Interstate 10 Corridor Project, a critical step forward for one of the most highly anticipated regional transportation and mobility improvements in Southern California. Construction will begin in early 2020 on the four-year project in San Bernardino County, which will include the installation of express lanes (also known as toll lanes) between the Los Angeles County line (near Montclair) and Interstate 15 (just west of Fontana). The low-interest federal loan, which closed on May 3, is through the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation...

PINEVILLE, Mo. — Gregg Sweeten had difficulty last week putting his reaction into words. When he learned that funding for the long-sought Bella Vista Bypass had been found, Sweeten, the Pineville mayor and McDonald County emergency manager, was stunned. Then he was elated. "That is amazing," Sweeten said. "That is going to be so great. I think it’s going to lead to all kinds of opportunities not only for Pineville but for McDonald County. I mean, it’s just — I just can’t say how happy I am. Wow. That is ... that’s wild. That’s amazing. That’s a Christmas present right...

"U.S. Transportation department executive approved grant days before taking job with rail contractor" A top Obama administration executive at the U.S. Department of Transportation approved a $647-million grant for a California rail project in mid-January and less than two weeks later went to work for a Los Angeles-based contractor involved in the project, The Times has learned. The grant provides a significant part of the money required to install a $2-billion electrical power system on the Bay Area’s Caltrain commuter rail system, allowing the rail to retire its diesel locomotives.

DENVER (CBS4)– Federal authorities told the Colorado Department of Transportation and opponents of the planned Interstate 70 expansion this week that it would open an investigation into claims the project violates the Civil Rights Act.The pending investigation comes in response to a federal complaint filed with the U.S Department of Transportation by Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, and neighborhood groups impacted by the project, including the Cross Community Coalition, Colorado Latino Forum and Elyria-Swansea Neighborhood Association. Filed last month, the complaint alleges CDOT’s plan will result in “disparate and severe environmental and economic impacts” on the predominantly Latino communities.Candi CdeBaca,...

The U.S. Department of Transportation says it will soon allow Mexican trucking firms to apply for authorization to make long-haul cross-border runs, potentially ending a longstanding dispute. It says it expects the move to permanently end Mexico’s on-again, off-again retaliatory tariffs on $2 billion in U.S. imports. […] The opening is a long-delayed provision of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. …

Destroying the sovereignty and freedom of United States citizens is well underway with a new doublespeak plan called Seven50, just another euphemism for Globalism through Regionalism. Flying under the radar, federal bureaucrats and alphabet agencies have joined with local politicians in 7 Florida counties in imposing The Sustainable Communities Initiative (SCI), a United Nations created plan which divests Americans of Constitutionally guaranteed liberty by introducing social collectivism. Vero Beach County Commissioner Bob Solari warns that the Sustainable Communities Initiative (SCI) being pushed by HUD, the EPA, and the USDOT is representative of a culture which believes “government can never be...

A bipartisan group of House members has called on the Department of Transportation to reverse regulatory guidance issued in June that limits the ability of supply trucks to service oil and gas fields. Rep. Jeff Landry (R-La.) and 60 other members of the House argued in a letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood that the guidance will harm not just the oil and gas industry, but related industries that contribute to job growth. They also argue that the guidance reversed 50 years of established practice with little warning to the industry. "Such a change significantly restricts the operations of individuals...

Embattled Metra Executive Director Phil Pagano, under investigation by his own agency for financial issues, threw himself in front of a Metra train this morning and was killed, sources said. It happened in an unincorporated area near Crystal Lake just after 8 a.m.

In an ominous sign of a still-spreading political scandal, federal officials are probing potential misuse of U.S. funds by exiled Metra chief Phil Pagano. In a series of developments, U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., who has helped Metra obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants in recent years, called on the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation to "investigate whether any federal funds were misused or spent in any unauthorized way." Mr. Durbin's action came after the Federal Transit Administration — the USDOT unit that actually makes grants to transit operators — put Metra on restricted...

Several industry groups are publicly condemning what they claim is the Obama administration’s effort to earmark an ever larger share of highway funds for non-highway projects. They are particularly livid over the administration’s proposal to take $200 million in highway taxes normally distributed to the states and re-direct them into a new Livable Communities program unveiled by the U.S. Dept. of Transportation (DOT) in January. “It takes a lot for a group like ours to publicly criticize a Presidential administration this way,” Greg Cohen, president & CEO of the American Highway Users Alliance (AHUA), which represents motorists, bus companies, truckers,...

Designated High-Speed Rail Corridors Map As of January 2002, the FRA has designated ten high-speed corridors under section 1010 of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Act of 1991 (ISTEA) and Section 1103(c) of the Transportation Efficiency Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21). Designation allows a corridor to receive specially targeted funding for highway-rail grade crossing safety improvements, and recognizes the corridor as a potential center of HSR activity. These designated corridors are shown on the map at the beginning of this document and are listed below, generally from Southwest to Northeast. DESIGNATED HIGH-SPEED RAIL CORRIDORS: California Corridor Pacific Northwest Corridor South...

Americans are driving our roads into the ground, and we can't find an easy fix. Highway maintenance lags far behind the need for it, while new roads (and transit options) linger in line for funding. Construction costs keep rising, but fuel tax revenue, which pays for most of the road work, is fading. The result is transportation gridlock. The best way out is to break the fuel-tax deadlock. Either we raise this tax -- which in the United States is low by industrialized-world standards -- or find another source of cash for building roads and transit. First, consider the sorry...

Lately I have heard from some of you, asking about the Corridor. Most folks believe it is over, dead, gone from our beautiful East Texas. I have been watching our government's actions on this subject. Did you know that in TxDOT's cover letter to the federal government it states they will only use existing highways to build their corridor? Did you know that TxDOT also stated that it may need to build in non-existing paths also, some time in the future. Citizens, I write you today to make sure you understand that the corridor issue in Trinity County has not...