Tag: Washington: Page 9

Roadbuilding

Top 5 Cities for Electric Cars

Some of the cities on this list are probably obvious, but I was surprised about a few of the cities on this “Top 5” list from Clean Technica. Here are the five cities where you’re most likely to see someone charging up their car: Los Angeles, California San Francisco, California New York City Seattle, Washington […]

August 26, 2013

Roadbuilding

Can your bridges withstand a hit by a heavy semi?

A disturbingly large number of America’s bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete (see Better Roads’ November bridge inventory). But how many are “fracture-critical?” Washington State’s collapsed I-5 bridge was fracture-critical when it was hit by a heavily loaded truck. But it is far from alone in the state of Washington in that classification and […]

July 18, 2013

Roadbuilding

More than 200 Washington bridges are fracture-critical

More than 200 of Washington state’s bridges are classified as fracture-critical and could collapse if a key component of the bridge fails, according to KUOW. Of those bridges, at least three have been struck multiple times in the past five years, putting the bridges at a higher risk of collapsing. The Interstate 5 span that […]

July 17, 2013

Roadbuilding

Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation discusses infrastructure investment at bridge collapse hearing

The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies met Thursday for a hearing, where the committee examined the Interstate 5 bridge collapse in the context of the overall status of the nation’s transportation infrastructure. AASHTO Journal reported that Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) chaired the hearing, “Crumbling Infrastructure: Examining the Challenges […]

June 18, 2013

Roadbuilding

HOTless in Seattle

It appears some road planners in the Seattle area assumed that drivers would be willing to pay their way out of congestion. It appears that this is not so. A pilot project was designed for high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes at State Route 167 in metro Seattle. But the use projections were way, way off. […]

June 18, 2013

Safety

Workers return to Washington state jobsite after discovery of radioactive soil

Though likely somewhat reluctant, workers returned to a jobsite in Richland, Washington Thursday after radioactive soil was found there. According to the Associated Press, the radioactive soil was found, strangely, under a bird’s nest at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Work was halted on a waste treatment plant being built there. Upon discovering the radioactive soil, […]

June 7, 2013

Roadbuilding

Inhofe: Obama’s $500 billion to $600 billion reauthorization bill “not going to happen”

Oklahoma conservative Republican Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who has “been through,” as a he puts it, eight reauthorization bills, said after hearing outgoing Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood say President Obama’s goal was $500 billion to $600 billion long-term reauthorization bill: “It’s not going to happen.” But, he said, a long term, well-funded bill is […]

June 5, 2013

Roadbuilding

Rahall: 2014 reauthorization to be different from MAP-21

Ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) committee and West Virginia veteran Congressman Nick Rahall (D-WV) believes reauthorization in 2014 will be a far different process than the contentious and almost-failed MAP-21 work of 2012. Speaking to the Transportation Construction Coalition (TCC) in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, he recalled years on the committee […]

June 5, 2013

Roadbuilding

Shuster talks transportation funding, earmarks at TCC Fly-in

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) believes September 2014 reauthorization has much the same bipartisan support that surfaced for Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), and a bill could be ready for the President to sign when MAP-21 expires. Funding, he said, is of course the key issue. Reforms […]

June 5, 2013

Construction Equipment

Big Bertha, world’s largest tunnel-boring machine, lowered into starting position in Seattle

With the digging of the Washington State Route 99 tunnel in Seattle scheduled to start in July, the Washington State Department of Transportation recently lowered the head of Big Bertha, the world’s largest tunnel-boring machine, into the pit that will serve as its starting position. Bertha made her triumphant arrival in Seattle at the beginning of April […]

June 5, 2013

Roadbuilding

2013’s bridges: A Skagit River reminder

Did the collapse of the I-5 bridge across the Skagit River in Washington State demonstrate a need for increased investing in our increasingly substandard transportation infrastructure, particularly bridges? One argument says no. Then it sort of says yes as well. “No” in that the bridge was not failing and in desperate need of repair. “Yes” […]

May 28, 2013

Business

Funding isn’t there to rebuild partially-collapsed I-5 bridge in Washington

Despite the increased attention it has given to the problem, the aftermath of a partial collapse of a bridge on Interstate 5 spanning the Skagit River in Washington state also underscores the dearth of solutions the U.S. has for its aging infrastructure and lack of funding. Last Thursday, a section of the 58-year-old bridge collapsed after […]

May 28, 2013