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The Texas Department of Transportation is asking Nueces County residents to attend a public meeting in Driscoll to comment and provide input on proposed upgrades of US 77 to a controlled access facility that meets interstate standards. The purpose of the meetings is to review proposed options for upgrading US 77 and to present recommendations, TxDOT officials said. The first round public meetings were held in early March. This second round of public meetings is being held as part of TxDOT's continued effort to gain public input on issues related to proposed improvements and to provide an opportunity for public...

In my recent letter to you concerning the TTC, I misquoted some information about the company known as Cintra. Mr. Patrick Rhodes of Cintra wrote in response to my mistake. Therefore, I stand corrected with the following: Fellow citizens, the company, Cintra, is not affiliated with ZAI-ACS. Cintra is partnered with Zachry on some TxDOT projects and ACS is partnered with Zachry on some other TxDOT projects. Therefore, I hope this clarifies the over-zealous statements in my letter. Cintra is a Spanish-owned company, and ACS is a larger Spanish-owned company. Zachry, a Texas company, is affiliated with each of them...

With another hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast, the so-called “bridge to nowhere,” championed by Alaska’s Congressional delegation on behalf of the people of Ketchikan, just won’t go away. Three years ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the plan to spend hundreds of millions to connect Ketchikan with its airport on Gravina Island became a national symbol of Congressional excess, much to the dismay of Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young. Sen. John McCain has made it a habit to ridicule the bridge project during his presidential campaign. McCain has promised to veto any bill sent to...

TEXARKANA — The company selected to design Interstate 69 has revealed plans to also implement the world’s first air rail freight system in the corridor, possibly starting in Texarkana, Texas. “You [Texarkana ] have railroads here, you already have an interstate, bringing I-69 is another interstate, you’ve got Oklahoma, you’ve got I-49,” said Gary Kuhn, senior project manager for Zachary American Infrastructure. “This is what the logistics world likes to see — that opportunity to go from one mode to another very efficiently.” In a presentation to the Wilbur Smith Rotary Club, Kuhn said the freight shuttle is a new...

After attending the spectacular closing ceremony at the Beijing Olympics and feeling the vibrations from hundreds of Chinese drummers pulsating in my own chest, I was tempted to conclude two things: “Holy mackerel, the energy coming out of this country is unrivaled.” And, two: “We are so cooked. Start teaching your kids Mandarin.” However, I’ve learned over the years not to over-interpret any two-week event. Olympics don’t change history. They are mere snapshots — a country posing in its Sunday bests for all the world too see. But, as snapshots go, the one China presented through the Olympics was enormously...

The Pineywoods Sub-Regional Planning Commission met Thursday to hear a presentation by the commission's president, Hank Gilbert, who said the plans to move the Trans-Texas Corridor to the current U.S. Hwy. 59 location may not come to fruition. The Texas Department of Transportation initially planned to build a new highway system, which would have been as large as 1,200-feet wide, that would run through rural areas of East Texas, including Nacogdoches County. However, TxDOT scrapped those plans in June and announced a new proposal to build the TTC along the existing route of U.S. Hwy 59. But Gilbert, of the...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Public investment funds based in Texas could invest directly in transportation projects through a new corporation under a plan unveiled on Thursday by the state's legislative leaders and the governor. Texas has the nation's biggest road privatization plan but the legislature, reacting to criticisms that developers were enriching themselves at the expense of taxpayers, enacted a two-year moratorium. That has crimped road-building projects and led to a series of clashes between the governor and the legislature, who now have agreed on a compromise plan. Developers, including overseas companies, investment banks and private equity funds all vie...

Emergency responders were still at the scene of accident on I-690 west of the state fairgrounds, where four adults and three children ages 6 to 11 were pulled from an SUV. The adults and children from Webster, near Rochester, were hurt when a truck struck a footbridge over Interstate 690 a mile west of the state fairgrounds, causing a piece of the bridge to fall onto the SUV.

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...

Vancouver, WA - U.S. Sen. Patty Murray offered a bleak financial assessment this week for replacing the Interstate 5 Bridge, saying it would be “extremely difficult” for the federal government to provide even the minimum contribution backers expect. Murray, D-Wash., told The Columbian the project faces a number of potential obstacles, including a projected $3.4 billion shortfall in the federal highway trust fund and the possibility of a John McCain presidency. The Arizona Republican has promised to veto any “pork barrel” earmarks that direct federal dollars to projects outside the regular appropriations process. Preliminary financial plans call for using $400...

The high price of gas has driven down demand. Now politicians like Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty are worried gas taxes might not be able to fund infrastructure projects. Pawlenty proposed a consumption tax on driving as a possible replacement for the gasoline tax. He is rumored to be a possible running mate for presumptive GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain.

One year ago today, when the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed during the evening rush-hour commute and killed 13 people, the disaster sparked a furious national debate about the crumbling state of our infrastructure. So quickly are such catastrophes forgotten that a major-party presidential candidate can now propose eliminating the tax that pays for bridge repair, and few bat an eyelash. About a quarter of the public road bridges in the United States are considered functionally obsolete or structurally deficient, according to the American Assn. of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Fixing them would cost roughly $140 billion, but...

Study Finds Promises To Repair U.S. Infrastructure Have Gone Largely Unfulfilled By Alexis Christoforous, CBS 2 News NEW YORK (CBS) ― The one-year anniversary of the Minnesota bridge collapse is putting renewed focus on the safety of our nation's infrastructure. A new study finds many of the promises made then still have not been fulfilled, and lack of money is a big factor. It's been a year since the massive bridge collapse in Minnesota sent 13 drivers plunging to their deaths. The tragedy triggered nationwide bridge inspections, and promises to fix serious problems. But a review by the Associated Press...

Bush Calls for New Highway Tolls, More Private Funding of Roads By CHRISTOPHER CONKEY July 30, 2008; Page A3 The Bush administration unveiled a plan to impose new tolls on freeways and encourage more private investment to finance road and mass-transit projects, a move aimed at stirring debate as lawmakers prepare for a major overhaul of transportation policy.

ALBANY - Warning of an approaching economic calamity, Gov. Paterson yesterday called an emergency session of the state Legislature - and raised the specter that New York may have to sell off roads, bridges and tunnels to close a massive budget deficit.

One more thing about bridges then I'll be quiet. A really good article at gobridges.com talks about the mess our nation's bridges are in -- thousands of them spanning big rivers and little creeks all across these United States. This article also reflects on how the inspection technology has changed since the National Bridge Inspection Standards came into being. The House passed HR3999 on July 24, 2008. It's now headed for the Senate. When this resolution came out of the House it contained eleven amendments, several of which were clarifying points of language. However, Amendment 6 encourages states that receive...

Good news for drivers, is bad news for the federal highway trust fund. The fund faces a multi-billion-dollar shortfall next year because Americans are using less gas... and that means less revenue from gasoline taxes. The Federal Highway Administration says Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer miles in May 2008 than in May 2007. Ohioans drove 75 million fewer miles in the same time span. And Pennsylvanians drove 100 million fewer miles. Some government officials say it points to a need for another method besides the gas tax to fund highway projects.

Good Money After Bad by: Bethany Stotts, July 28, 2008 When gas prices are at record highs and American families are feeling the economic pinch, Congress may just decide to boost gas prices even higher. Their reason will be to save jobs. As the Washington Post reported on July 20, “Now, lawmakers quietly are talking about raising fuel taxes by a dime from the current 18.4 cents a gallon on gasoline and 24.3 cents on diesel fuel.” The discussion arose out of a presentation by Congressmen James Oberstar (D-Minn.) and Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), who calculate that states will lose millions...

The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), meeting in New Orleans Friday, approved a motion to call on Congress to shore up the diminishing Highway Trust Fund with an increase in the federal gas tax. Last hiked in 1993, the 18.4-cent tax is the primary funding source for federal highway projects. Increased use of fuel-efficient vehicles and non-petroleum fuels as well as cutbacks Americans have made on their driving have negatively impacted the revenue collected from the tax. "The time has come for policymakers at all levels of government to take a serious look at transportation funding," Oregon State Sen....

Oberstar, D-Minn., said his committee is working on the next long-term highway bill. He estimated it will take between $450 billion and $500 billion over six years to address safety and congestion issues with highways, bridges and transit systems. "We'll put all things on the table," Oberstar said, but the gas tax "is the cornerstone. Nothing else will work without the underpinning of the higher user fee gas tax." At the very least, the gas tax should be indexed to construction cost inflation, DeFazio said. The nonpartisan National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission concluded in a report this...

An unprecedented cutback in driving is slashing the funds available to rebuild the nation's aging highway system and expand mass-transit options, underscoring the economic impact of high gasoline prices. The resulting financial strain is touching off a political battle over government priorities in a new era of expensive oil. A report to be released Monday by the Transportation Department shows that over the past seven months, Americans have reduced their driving by more than 40 billion miles. Because of high gasoline prices, they drove 3.7% fewer miles in May than they did a year earlier, the report says, more than...

This letter of mine appears in today's edition of the Washington Times: Upset that Virginians' taxes were not recently raised to construct more roads, State Delegate Brian J. Moran, Alexandria and Fairfax Democrat, declares that "Government has an important role to play in strengthening our infrastructure, developing our economy and creating new jobs" ("Virginia's transportation conundrum," Op-Ed, Tuesday). Not so fast. Infrastructure that we today naively suppose must be supplied by government has in the past often been supplied by the private sector - supplied so well, indeed, that these private-infrastructure projects helped to spark the Industrial Revolution in 18th-century...

The U.S. Congress is discussing a second economic stimulus bill that could include nearly $15 billion in infrastructure spending, a senior member of the House of Representatives told Reuters on Tuesday.Rep. James Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat who chairs the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said a stimulus package could include "accelerating" pay-outs of $9.5 billion from the federal trust fund dedicated to road construction and maintenance. "You can have 700,000 people working in three months. We should have done it this spring," Oberstar said in an interview. The money would go to funding more than 2,600 projects, he said. States would...

As fuel prices rise, gas tax receipts drop, and money for roads and bridges dries up - Gas prices are soaring. That's the bad news.But as they soar, motorists drive less, and that produces some benefits: less air pollution and less congestion. That's the good news.And then there's the bad news about the good news. The federal gas tax is levied on a per-gallon basis. So the less people drive and the less gas they use, the less the federal government collects from gas taxes. So it is that recent record high gas prices have produced record low gas tax...

Rotting holes in steel support beams, enormous rust patches, small splits in steel girders and broken bracing are evident all along the underside of the John Greenleaf Whittier Bridge, the heavily traveled Interstate 95 span that crosses the Merrimack River between Amesbury and Newburyport. A just-released state safety report filed in the wake of last year's disastrous collapse of the similarly designed Interstate 35 bridge in Minneapolis gave the 57-year-old Whittier Bridge "poor" ratings due to deterioration. On a 10-step ranking system, the rating is just two steps above the point where engineers consider closing a bridge due to safety...

At 6:05 p.m. on Aug. 1, silence will fall along the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. And those standing along the river's banks will remember that at that moment one year ago, the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River, killing 13 people and injuring hundreds of others. A prayer service on Aug. 1 at the Basilica of St. Mary followed by an outdoor memorial service at Gold Medal Park on the Mississippi River will mark the first anniversary of the bridge collapse. "It was one of the worst days that I will ever be part of that ironically showed...

America’s tradition of bold national projects has dwindled. With the country’s infrastructure crumbling, it is time to revive it ___ THE Mississippi River pushed relentlessly past dozens of levees this month. Towns were submerged, their buildings tiny islands in murky water. Ducks paddled on ponds that had once been farmland. Some flooding was inevitable, given the force of the swollen Mississippi. But a poorly managed flood-defence system did not help. For the past few years it has been hard to ignore America’s crumbling infrastructure, from the devastating breach of New Orleans’s levees after Hurricane Katrina to the collapse of a...

The latest U.S. natural disaster is triggering fresh rounds of concern and debate about how to repair America's aging infrastructure. The worst Midwest flooding since 1993 has generated images of swamped towns, cracked roads, washed-out bridges, overwhelmed dams, failed levees, broken sewage systems, stunted crops and water-logged refugees. The losses are in the billions of dollars and still mounting, as the costs of crop losses alone send shocks through the inflation-wracked world food system and threaten insurers. The disaster has reminded policymakers of the decrepit state of U.S. infrastructure, stirring concerns similar to those following the deadly Minneapolis bridge collapse...

The ubiquitous disappearance of peanut packets from domestic flights was the most obvious sign that air travel was headed for hell in a hand basket. Some airlines are now requiring that passengers pay for any checked luggage. Yet no matter how miserable they make the flights, the budget cuts will not be enough to repair the infrastructure contributing to the delayed flights and hour-long taxiing. In its latest Report Card on America’s Infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave aviation infrastructure a grade of D+, naming increased passenger flow and outdated air traffic control systems as obstacles to functioning....

America is falling apart. Literally. From highways to bridges to plumbing to telecommunications, we are not keeping up with our national maintenance chores. Our highways are crumbling. Just maintaining them as they are would cost up to 40 cents a gallon more in gas taxes over the next five years. And that would do nothing to meet the increased demand; highway travel and hours stuck in traffic have both grown by about 25 percent in the past 10 years. Remember that bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis last summer? More than one-quarter of U.S. bridges -- including one-quarter of Oregon's --...

AUSTIN — The Texas Transportation Commission on Thursday selected San Antonio's Zachry Construction Corp. and a Spanish toll road developer to plan a superhighway from Texarkana to Brownsville. The $5 million contract calls for Zachry American Infrastructure and ACS Infrastructure to create a financial plan for the Interstate 69 segment of the Trans-Texas Corridor. "This team represents the best in the balance of local and global expertise necessary to complete a project of this scope," said David Zachry, chief operating officer of Zachry Construction Corp. The private developers' plan calls for seven new loops around Corpus Christi and other cities...

Drivers who get safely off Interstate 35E after arriving in Dallas from Austin or San Antonio have a certain look of relief – like they just outran a buffalo stampede. Only on I-35, the stampede is trucks. The white-knuckle experience helps make the case for some kind of reliever road, even a tolled one. Making that same case has been a harder sell for U.S. highways along the Gulf Coast and East Texas. Drivers there can judge their own level of congestion, and they have insisted that their mostly rural corridor doesn't warrant the major undertaking of a parallel turnpike....

Members of the Collin County Commissioners Court are entering unknown waters in the area of transportation. They need to make sure they don't get in over their heads. At issue is their recent vote to explore formation of the county's own tollway agency, which could compete with the North Texas Tollway Authority for future road projects. Exploration, fine. Given the scarcity of road-building dollars, exploring alternative ways of paying for highways and seeking fair treatment for Collin County makes sense. As County Judge Keith Self puts it, "We need to educate ourselves." As Commissioner Joe Jaynes puts it, "We owe...

AUSTIN — Saying big changes are needed to restore trust in the Texas Department of Transportation, the Sunset Advisory Commission staff is recommending a revamp of its governing board, project planning, and dealings with lawmakers and the public. The commission's report, to be released today, comes in the wake of controversy over planned public-private partnerships on toll roads, the route of the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor transportation network and questions concerning agency funding figures. The Houston Chronicle obtained a copy of the report. "The Sunset review of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) occurred against a backdrop of distrust and frustration...

Many in the great state of Texas have a lot to say about a proposed network of toll roads and railway lines known as the Trans-Texas Corridor. The Texas Department of Transportation received more than 27,000 public comments during a three-month comment period on a proposed corridor project called the TTC-69, said TxDOT spokesman Mark Cross. Transportation officials had 47 public hearings in February and March and accepted written comments through April 18 on the environmental and social impact of the corridor. Comments ranged from flat-out opposition to the corridor to suggestions about how to lessen its impact, Cross told...

The Texas Transportation Commission sounded the right notes last month in its first meeting under new leadership. Deirdre Delisi, recently appointed by Gov. Rick Perry to chair the commission, and her fellow commissioners finally seem to have gotten the message — the Texas Department of Transportation has lost the public's trust. For those with short memories, here are a few highlights that explain how that happened: •TxDOT fought to keep details of Perry's proposed Trans-Texas Corridor secret. It denied repeated requests from the media and landowners to let the public view a plan that calls for hundreds of miles of...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Congressman Kevin Brady lead a group of nine Texas lawmakers on Friday, from both political parties, in urging the Texas Department of Transportation to remove the Interstate 69 project from the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor and return it to its original route which brings existing highways U.S. 59, U.S. 281 and U.S 77 up to interstate standards. In a letter to Deirdre Delisi, the new chair of the Texas Transportation Commission, the lawmakers maintain that "public support for the original I-69 project - which focused on bringing existing highways up to interstate standards and existed long before...

The Sunset Advisory Commission's scathing staff report on the Texas Department of Transportation, issued Tuesday, centers around one crucial statement: This agency has sunk so low in the eyes of the Legislature and the public that trust can only be restored through dramatic action. "[T]weaking the status quo is simply not enough," says the report. The prescribed solution is to abolish the five-member Texas Transportation Commission. The governor would appoint a single commissioner to run the department with oversight from a special committee of legislators. During the next four years, the Transportation Department would extensively revise its policies and procedures....

Responding to concerns that a superhighway project running from East Texas to the border with Mexico could cut through private lands, state transportation officials said Tuesday that they will only consider putting it along existing roads. State officials have held almost 50 public meetings and received about 28,000 responses from residents about the proposed Interstate 69 project, which would be part of the so-called Trans-Texas Corridor network of toll roads. The "overwhelming sentiment" of the comments from the public was that the state should focus on using existing roads instead of carving new ones out of the countryside, said Amadeo...

State highway officials said Wednesday that the first step in carrying out their decision to build a controversial toll road along the present U.S. 59, and not through farm and ranch land, is to get federal approval. Although no federal funding has been sought for the Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor, the Texas Department of Transportation is bound by federal environmental law. The project has generated thick volumes about its likely impact on the natural environment and the communities in its path. The Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) is expected to undergo public review late this year and then get sent to...

Gas prices topping $4 a gallon. Freeways that have become parking lots — if you can get to them through surface-street traffic jams caused by fast growth, urban sprawl, and inadequate road planning. Transportation planning in Texas in general seems to have turned into a careening Mack truck that’s just as liable to plow into a city as help it. New highways are needed to get more and more people to work and get NAFTA traffic from the Rio Grande to the Red River, but the state says it doesn’t have the money to build the roads and bridges and...

WASHINGTON — The Texas Department of Transportation, long viewed as hyperpartisan and arrogant by some members of the state's congressional delegation, has been trying to soften its image by reaching out to lawmakers of both parties in the nation's capital. But while state transportation officials are having some success in easing the personal animus, they still face a stiff challenge in selling their policy agenda to the state's elected officials in Washington. Many Texans on the Potomac cringe at the agency's embrace of toll roads, the controversies surrounding the Trans-Texas Corridor and TxDOT's resistance to many of the highway earmarks...

American Superconductor said it's the longest high temperature superconductor cable that's ever been installed. A piece of Long Island, N.Y.'s power grid has received an upgrade, with Devens, Mass.-based American Superconductor (Nasdaq: AMSC) announcing today that a section of high temperature superconductor cable was installed at a major interconnection point in the system. The 2,000-foot long cable, made with wire produced by American Superconductor, is the longest installation of high temperature superconductor, or HTS, cable in the world, according to the company, and the only HTS installation running at transmission voltage. The Long Island Power Authority has already flipped the...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry wants to build a big highway through the Lone Star State. No, make that a really big highway, as in a monstrously big highway. The exact route hasn't been determined. The mega-highway would run roughly from Laredo on the Rio Grande River through the Hill Country and the Piney Woods and then through Texarkana in that tiny portion of the state that borders Arkansas. Imagine for a moment if that thoroughfare would be pointed in the other direction - from the Valley, through the South Plains and then through the heart of the Panhandle, right past...

Topeka, Kan. and Washington - At its best, America's infrastructure has powered our economic prosperity, created well-paying jobs, and served the public interest. Today, however, it has fallen into a dangerous state of disrepair. The Minnesota bridge collapse last summer brought home the urgency of repairing and modernizing our nation's system of highways, bridges, tunnels, power plants, transmission lines, and airports. But doing so will be prohibitively expensive. Current plans seek to exploit the nation's need for private profit. But there's a better source of capital at hand: public pension funds. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that $1.6...

County commissioners reaffirmed their stance against the Trans-Texas Corridor, and they took another step toward keeping county government transparent when they met Tuesday. First up on the court's agenda, commissioners heard a presentation by Connie Fogle on behalf of the newly formed Pineywoods Sub-Regional Planning Commission. According to Fogle, the Texas Local Government Code, Chapter 391, requires state agencies to coordinate with local commissions to "ensure effective and orderly implementation of state programs at the regional level." "Critical in the code is the word 'coordinate,'" she said. "This does not mean the commission has to cooperate. The intent is to...

Each day, I make the dreaded drive down Interstate 35 to go to work in Fort Worth. Each day, I slug through the snarl and sludge of ceaseless traffic, which intensifies my growing desire to commit hari-kari, or at least incites a vehement curse of the highway gods. Certainly, we in Texas need more lanes, more roads, more rails, more something to deal with the ever-expanding urban population and growing international commerce. Yet how do we solve our transportation needs without carving up the countryside like some congratulatory cake? Or should the construction of a superhighway-rail-utility corridor even concern us?...

AUSTIN — Maybe Texas’ transportation problems are a lot simpler to understand than recent fights over toll roads make it seem, North Texas leaders told state senators Wednesday. “My first recommendation: You need to provide a lot more revenue for transportation,” Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, told the Texas Senate transportation committee. That was hardly the only suggestion from Mr. Morris or the many others who spoke to the committee, which is seeking input as it readies an approach on toll roads, TxDOT and more for the next legislative session. But it might...

In 2006, former premier Lucien Bouchard and several business leaders blamed the not-in-my-backyard syndrome - NIMBY - for much of the Montreal metropolitan area's "immobilisme." The criticism followed the cancellation of two projects that had stirred public protests - a casino near Pointe St. Charles and the Suroît power plant. Despite the scolding, citizens remain unrepentant and as pesky as ever. Protests against noisy aircraft over the West Island, for example, are giving headaches to airport officials trying to accommodate increasing numbers of flights. Protests on the North Shore are also causing problems for the expansion of a smelly regional...

Lufkin Mayor Jack Gorden has been selected by the Texas Transportation Committee to serve on a citizens' advisory committee for putting together information regarding the proposed Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor. According to Texas Department of Transportation officials, advisory committee members represent a cross-section of community and business leaders, landowners, local transportation experts and others. "Our goal is to enhance the public dialogue and meaningfully involve more Texans in transportation decisions," said Texas Transportation Commission Chair Hope Andrade. "These committees will have an important seat at the table as we work together to shape the future of transportation for our state." Gorden...