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INFRASTRUCTURES USA: * DC: Nation's 600,000 bridges need repairs - * Vermont: Slide bridges - * Georgia: Funds for construction projects
* DC - USPIRG's new study indentifies higway boooggles across the country
-- A new report by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) Education Fund identifies 11 examples of wasteful highway spending that are slated to cost at least $13 billion and are based on outdated assumptions of ever-increasing driving. The study calls on the federal and state governments to reprioritize scarce transportation dollars to other projects... The report, “Highway Boondoggles: Wasted Money and America’s Transportation Future,” details how the 11 projects are based on driving forecasts that are out of synch with the decade-long trend toward less driving.
The wasteful highway expansions include:
° Illiana Expressway, Illinois and Indiana, $1.3 billion to $2.8 billion – A new privatized toll road proposed primarily to speed freight trucks across the Midwest may instead charge tolls too high to attract trucks, and will likely require hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies.
° Cleveland “Opportunity Corridor,” Ohio, $331 million – A new highway has been proposed for a community where driving has been stagnant for years, and where residents are calling instead for repairs to existing roads and investment in transit improvements.
° Dallas Trinity Parkway, Texas, $1.5 billion – A nine-mile urban highway through the heart of Dallas would have a minimal impact on congestion while detracting from popular, ongoing efforts to make downtown Dallas an attractive place to live and work.
° Double-decking I-94 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, $1.2 billion – Insisting on a wider road despite its own data showing feared traffic increases are not materializing, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation seeks to rebuild an existing highway as an eight-lane double-decker route through a narrow channel between three cemeteries, despite objections from local officials and citizen groups.
... With limited resources dedicated to repair, The nation has over 600,000 bridges that engineers have deemed “structurally deficient,” according to the most recent (2013) National Bridge Inventory tabulated by the Federal Highway Administration... “Why should states prioritize spending on these highly questionable highway expansions while six-hundred-thousand bridges remain structurally deficient and other, more deserving projects languish without funds?” asked Phineas Baxandall, Senior Analyst at U.S. PIRG...
Washington,DC,USA -USPIRG Press Release -September 18, 2014
* Vermont: Will use 'slide-in' bridges on I-91 project
(Image courtesy of PCL: Illustration of a bridge slide in progress) -- White River Junction,VT,USA - The Associated Press/The Trucker - 6 April 2015
* Georgia - Budget to fund range of construction projects
(Photo: The Old Oxford Bridge Road bridge over I-20 is closed for repairs) -- Atlanta, GA, USA - The Trucker News Services - 6 April 2015
Labels: infrastructures, infrastructures funds
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