Tag: infrastructure funding: Page 28

Business

Vermont Senator introduces $1 trillion infrastructure spending bill

A U.S. senator from Vermont has filed a bill that would designate $1 trillion over the next five years to transportation and infrastructure spending, according to a report from The Hill. Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders calls his bill the “Rebuild America Act,” noting in an op-ed piece also published by The Hill that, “a $1 trillion investment […]

January 28, 2015

Business

U.S. Chamber of Congress, AAA and ATA urge Congress to raise gas tax to fund long-term highway bill

With the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) inching ever so closer to insolvency, organizations are redoubling efforts to ensure Congress is passes a permanent fix, rather than a patch. AAA, the American Trucking Associations, and the U.S Chamber of Commerce submitted a joint letter to Congress Jan. 26 urging members of the 114th Congress to raise […]

January 27, 2015

Business

Corporate tax code reforms have early bi-partisan support as method for funding long-term highway bill this year

After President Barack Obama made a brief mention of infrastructure funding in his State of the Union address last week, urging Congress to focus on that rather than the Keystone XL pipeline, Vice President Joe Biden has now made his own appeal to lawmakers to fund a long-term highway bill this year. According to a […]

January 26, 2015

Business

Obama urges Congress to focus on improving infrastructure rather than Keystone XL in State of the Union

President Barack Obama in his sixth State of the Union address made little mention of issues related directly to construction and transportation, which has in years past come in the form of the president pushing Congress to do more to fund highways and other transportation infrastructure. Unlike recent years, however, the president only briefly addressed transportation infrastructure […]

January 21, 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

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

Congress passes $1.1 trillion spending bill; cuts $5 billion from federal construction accounts

Two days after the legislation was passed by a tight vote in the House, the Senate passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill Saturday night that includes both good and bad news for federal construction accounts in 2015. The bill keeps the government funded through September, when the fiscal year ends. The Senate passed the spending […]

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

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

Business

The LA Sheriff’s Dept. melted thousands of guns to recycle them as road construction material

Thousands of handguns, rifles and other weapons have been destroyed to eventually be used in construction of roads and bridges. Nearly 5,000 weapons were melted and converted into steel rebar as part of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s 21st annual Gun Melt event. More than 178,000 weapons have been destroyed as part of the event […]

August 28, 2014

Business

Recent toll road poll proves nothing; private financing of public roads is still a bad idea

The Reason Foundation and the Alliance for Toll-Free Interstates recently traded jabs over a poll that purports to show Americans prefer toll roads as a solution to our declining transportation infrastructure. Not unexpectedly, the Reason-Rupe Poll  found favor with Reason’s longstanding position advocating toll roads. The Alliance shot back with a press release citing a […]

August 22, 2014

Business

Bursting bubble of big tobacco financing gives glimpse of road building’s future without a gas tax increase

Last week I wrote about how states that engage in public-private partnerships (P3s) and other types of debt and bond financing would create short term gains and long term disaster for the road building industry. This weekend I read an article on ProPublica, an independent journalism site, that shows how the exact same thing—only using […]

August 12, 2014