In the News

Road equipment sale called routine

A West Virginia Division of Highways official insisted that an auction next month of surplus heavy equipment - originally worth about $22 million - is routine, and not the first step toward contracting out road maintenance projects to private companies.  Full Story

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Plenty of Projects, No Rules

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is advancing two pieces of legislation packed with billions of dollars worth of earmarks, but the committee is not asking senators to certify that they have no financial interest in the projects - at least for now. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee passed its versions of EPW's bills in March and required conflict-of-interest certifications for both measures, though the committee said in its report that "it is not clear if the definition of 'Congressional earmark' [under the new House rules] applies to technical corrections to [highway bill] projects because these technical corrections do not provide new budget authority for such projects."  Full Story

Fiery crash melts part of San Francisco highway

A stretch of vital highway for San Francisco Bay-area commuters collapsed after a gas tanker truck crashed and ignited flames that shot more than 200 feet high, officials said. Flames on a lower ramp melted the upper deck of a highway on the Oakland/Emeryville side leading to the double-decker Bay Bridge that connects the heavily populated East Bay to San Francisco. As the steel structure weakened, a concrete slab fell onto the ramp below.  Full Story

An antique with a future

The single-lane, single-span Dorrington Road Bridge crossing the rushing waters of Robinson Run in Collier, PA, rates highly with bridge experts and history lovers for its design, condition and age. But those are the factors that have placed the 119-year-old span on the endangered list. The state Department of Transportation wants to replace the 60-foot-long bridge, which is 19 feet wide, with a concrete box-beam bridge.  Full Story

New Ontario website promotes highway campaign

The campaign to modernize 2,000 kilometers of the Trans-Canada Highway from Ottawa to the Manitoba border has intensified. Sault Ste. Marie MPP David Orazietti, who introduced a private member's bill in October proposing federal-provincial discussions on the development of a highway improvement plan to enhance public safety and the regional economy, launched a website (www.4lane17.com) to further promote the suggestion.  Full Story

The second-greatest Briton of all time

Recently, the BBC conducted a TV poll for the "100 Greatest Britons in History." The winner, no surprise, was Winston Churchill. The runner-up was Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Who? Isambard Kingdom Brunel of the unforgettable name, an engineer who built railways, bridges, ships and other key links in the United Kingdom's transportation network. A visionary who beat out Princess Diana, Charles Darwin, William Shakespeare, Sir Isaac Newton, Queen Elizabeth I, John Lennon, Adm. Horatio Nelson and Oliver Cromwell - and that's just the top 10.  Full Story

Missouri highway department to fund tree-planting program

The Missouri Department of Transportation said that it will pay for the Department of Conservation to distribute 2.5 million trees over five years to youth groups around the state. The "Trees for Tomorrow" project will cost the Transportation Department $750,000, or $150,000 a year. "Our job of building roads and bridges requires us to remove trees sometimes, and it's our goal to replace those trees with new ones each year," Transportation Department Director Pete Rahn said.  Full Story

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Funding

Missouri seeks bridge-funding solution

A growing number of Missouri officials are looking beyond tolls to build a $1 billion Mississippi River bridge, rather than face losing hundreds of millions of dollars already secured for construction. Missouri and Illinois leaders want a new bridge to alleviate congestion on the Poplar Street Bridge, which carries interstates 55, 64 and 70, but they disagree on financing as well as the size of the bridge. Illinois officials are adamantly against tolls, because its residents would make up the bulk of the traffic on the future bridge. Full Story

Bill would tap Maine state taxes to fund road, bridge work

With a crumbling road and bridge network and declining funds to repair and maintain it, Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Trenton, says a bold and comprehensive fix is needed. Damon unveiled a plan that would redirect portions of sales taxes on vehicles and accessories and the excise tax collected by municipalities.  Full Story

Washington state lawmakers OK $7.5 billion road budget

Washington lawmakers passed a freshly negotiated $7.5 billion highway budget plan designed to get hundreds of road projects back on schedule and to cover huge cost overruns. The two-year spending proposal identifies much of the money needed to build a multibillion-dollar new floating bridge across Lake Washington and provides $915 million for initial work on a replacement for Seattle's waterfront Alaskan Way Viaduct. Both are considered at risk of failing in a big earthquake. Those two megaprojects are among 432 road and bridge projects in the new budget.  Full Story

More delays for Delaware's Indian River bridge construction as bidding begins anew

A breakdown in the bidding process will again delay construction of a new bridge over the Indian River Inlet near Dover, meaning a new span probably won't be finished until 2011.

A 2005 engineering report estimated the current bridge would become unsafe between 2008 and 2010. A new nine-month bidding process would mean the span won't be done until mid-2011.  Full Story

$10 billion in current projects breaks Caltrans record

The California Department of Transportation has hit a new milestone: $10 billion in projects under construction. The previous record was $8.8 billion (adjusted to present value) in projects being built in fiscal 2001-2002. Caltrans opened 173 projects to bidding last year, and hopes to list 286 projects this year.  Full Story

Tennessee paving projects hit the skids as asphalt, concrete prices zoom

Faced with increased materials costs due to rising oil prices and high worldwide demand for asphalt and concrete, Tennessee and local officials have been forced to delay resurfacing projects or to use cheaper alternatives to pave roads. For example, TDOT's average price for concrete jumped about 24 percent from 2004 to this year, department spokeswoman Jennifer Osborne said. And, she said, resurfacing costs have increased from $35,000 to $45,000 per lane mile in 2005 to $55,000 to $70,000 per lane mile today.  Full Story

Enlisting residents to hunt for road funds

Montgomery County (Maryland) Council member Nancy Floreen (D-At Large) wants to pull together a task force of residents who know their way around the economics of transportation projects and are able to think imaginatively about ways to pay for road and transit needs. Montgomery has a backlog of transportation projects that cannot move forward because they have not been fully funded by the state, which is strapped for cash. Full Story

Safety Issues

NTSB chairman testifies on highway safety issues

National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Mark V. Rosenker testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies on the NTSB's work on highway safety issues. Rosenker highlighted the Board's overall role in helping to maintain public confidence in the nation's transportation system by conducting thorough, objective investigations when an accident occurs, and making recommendations to fix the system so similar tragedies will not happen again. He noted that, in contrast with the other transportation modes, most of the approximately seven million highway accidents each year in the U.S. are investigated at the state and local level. Full Story

Steel reinforcement bars wrongly placed: designer

Crucial testimony pointing to exactly why a Laval, Quebec, overpass collapsed in September, killing five people, revealed that steel bars designed to reinforce the concrete were wrongly placed, creating a situation in which the fatigued concrete would not be able to hold up the viaduct. Gilles Dupaul, the senior engineer who designed the overpass, told the commission of inquiry into the collapse that the steel bars were not installed according to his plans.  Full Story

Innovations

Washington state DOT bridge crew saves millions

WSDOT Secretary Doug MacDonald has honored six members of the Olympic Region maintenance bridge crew whose innovative solution to removing old paint from bridge suspender cables will save taxpayers millions. The crew invented a suspender line stripping and painting machine that is equipped with a vacuum and able to be guided remotely over the cables. The machine is about six times more efficient then the old hand-stripping method.  Full Story

Nu-phalt hits road with innovation

Nu-phalt Scotland uses innovative infrared technology to repair the average pothole in 20 minutes, and is in the final stages of developing a system for dramatically cutting the time and cost involved in major utility works. The company says its pothole technology is "faster, cheaper, safer, and longer-lasting" than conventional digging and filling, and also environmentally friendly by re-using existing material in the road. Full Story

Calendar

05/14/2007 - 05/17/2007 — Auburn, AL - Aggregate Technology
Sponsor: National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT)

05/20/2007 - 05/23/2007 — Atlantic City, NJ - Annual Conference
Sponsor: American Society of Highway Engineers (ASHE)

05/22/2007 - 05/24/2007 —  Dallas, TX - 2007 Concrete Technology Forum: Focus on High Performance Concrete
Sponsor: American Society of Concrete Contractors (ASCC)

05/22/2007 - 05/23/2007 —  Evanston, IL - Transportation Engineering Emergency Preparedness Planning
Sponsor: Northwestern University Center for Public Safety (NUCPS)

05/22/2007 - 05/24/2007 —  Dallas, TX - Concrete Technology Forum
Sponsor: Portland Cement Association (PCA)

For our full events calendar, go to http://www.betterroads.com/calendar

Labor Statistics

p - preliminary

Source: U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
  http://www.bls.gov

United States Economy at a Glance

Data extracted on: April 27, 2007
Source: U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm

Compiled by Larry Green, news editor, Better Roads.  To contact Larry about the newsletter content, send e-mail to .

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