Tag: Infrastructure: Page 39

Business

Los Angeles at a tipping point: get serious about public transportation or sink into Third World status

Last week I got the opportunity to visit Southern California and see how the country’s most famous freeways were holding up. I pulled out of LAX in my rental car just after lunch, gunned it onto the 405 and then west on 101 and barely had to tap the brakes during four hours of high-speed […]

January 23, 2015

Business

More reasons not to build toll roads

As a follow up to my earlier post on the Texas SH 130 toll road, I wanted to elaborate on another reason why I think toll roads are a bad idea: elitism. Tolls for me, free for thee Most of the sophisticated toll systems today photograph your license plate or read an RFID transponder in […]

January 19, 2015

Roadbuilding

New state data revealed on infrastructure report card latest tablet app update

We already know that our nation’s infrastructure isn’t scoring top marks on its report card. They’re the kind of grades that would have put me in trouble with my folks and certainly wouldn’t have bene marks I could have used for my undergrad or grad school applications. But just in case you want to see […]

January 12, 2015

Business

A drive on a Texas high-speed toll road: Is this how everybody will drive in the future? I hope not.

Over the holidays I had the opportunity to travel south on the newest Texas toll road, otherwise known as State Highway 130. The 131-mile road was built to ease Austin’s crushing traffic burdens, particularly along Interstate 35, but controversy has dogged the project since the road opened. The financing for SH 130 has always been […]

January 8, 2015

Business

At groundbreaking, California trades union head calls high-speed rail construction “greatest infrastructure project” in U.S. history

Despite years of controversy and wondering where the money to fund its construction would come from, ground was officially broken Tuesday on California’s first high-speed rail line in Fresno. Expected to be completed by 2029, trains on the $68 billion railroad will travel at speeds up to 200 miles per hour, spanning 520 miles from San Francisco […]

January 7, 2015

Business

AASHTO: Annual road investment of $120 billion needed to keep up with demand

Next year will be a critical year for America’s surface transportation infrastructure, according to a just released report from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. In addition to getting highway legislation beyond the short-term mindset (a current extension ends in May), an annual investment of $120 billion for highways and bridges between 2015 and […]

December 24, 2014

Business

Alabama has no plans to raise gas tax; state will rely on next year’s bond issue for road projects

Gov. Robert Bentley says he has no plans to ask the Alabama legislature to raise the state’s 16-cent-per-gallon gas tax, responding to emailed questions submitted by The Tuscaloosa News. Instead, Alabama instead will look to a $508.5 million highway bond issue to finance highway projects, bonds that last week received a AAA rating from Standard […]

December 15, 2014

Business

AGC economist forecasts strong construction growth thanks to ‘shale gale’, Panama Canal expansion

The morning after Republicans won back the U.S. Senate, Ken Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America, said that conservative majorities in both houses of Congress are unlikely to spend money to improve the the country’s infrastructure, but that private construction will be robust. The keynote speaker Wednesday at the 2014 Association […]

November 6, 2014

Roadbuilding

Ray LaHood: ‘We need a big pot of money’ to fix America’s roads and bridges

Continuing his “America is one big pothole” theme, former U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood used an appearance at a Caterpillar press event Wednesday night to lambast the present direction of U.S. transportation policy. Calling the 2-year transportation bill passed in 2012 “chintzy,” LaHood called upon Congress to think as roads as economic corridors. […]

October 31, 2014

Business

Former DOT Sec. LaHood: “We need a big pot of money” to fix America’s roads and bridges

Continuing his “America is one big pothole” theme, former U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood used an appearance at a Caterpillar press event Wednesday night to lambast the present direction of U.S. transportation policy. Calling the 2-year transportation bill passed in 2012 “chintzy,” LaHood called upon Congress to think as roads as economic corridors. […]

October 30, 2014

Roadbuilding

VP Biden urges for increase in infrastructure spending

Vice President Biden wants to see an increase in infrastructure spending, saying it would spur growth and create jobs. “Build, build, build, build. … We built the transcontinental railroad,” Biden said at an event hosted by CG/LA Infrastructure. “The first federal road was built from Washington to Ohio … [We] built a thing called the Eerie Canal […]

October 30, 2014

Business

With Prop 1, Texas may break the logjam, spur innovation in highway funding

In November, Texans will go to the polls and vote on Proposition 1, which, in a nutshell, proposes to take half the money from the state’s gas and oil revenues and direct it toward highway construction and maintenance. Everything in this bill is sure to please the construction industry. And everything I’ve read over the […]

October 14, 2014