Gordie Howe Bridge opens without U.S. participation

In this issue:

• Gordie Howe Bridge’s unusual opening
• Georgia’s dedicated truck lanes
• Forty percent more driving?
• Rethinking bike lanes
• Value capture for transit
• Two ways to ruin a shipyard
• News notes
• Quotable quotes

Gordie Howe Bridge Opens Without U.S. Participation

After months of political delays, the $4.7 billion Gordie Howe Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, had its opening ceremony on July 24, with traffic commencing on July 27. A joint Canada-United States inauguration had been planned, but the Canadian government called it off due to ongoing disputes with the Trump administration. The bridge had been finished for several months, and its original Canada-U.S. opening ceremonies were planned for June 12, but U.S. objections killed that plan.

Here are the basics of this beautiful six-lane cable-stayed bridge. The original Canada-U.S. agreement was signed in 2012 by then-Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and then-Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. Canada would pay the entire cost of building the bridge (and the interchange on the Detroit side of the river), but the bridge would be jointly owned by the two countries’ governments. Once the original financing was paid off (perhaps 30 or 40 years after it opened), the two governments would share the net toll revenues. Such a deal for the United States!

Everything seemed to be going fine as the bridge neared completion earlier this year. But the Trump administration then began raising concerns and objections, despite the fact that the bridge was being 100% built as a Canadian project and would provide a much-superior link between the two countries compared with the aging (monopoly) Ambassador Bridge—the only crossing usable by heavy trucks.

On July 14, an editorial in The Wall Street Journal filled in some of the background I discussed in the April issue of this newsletter. It pointed out that the Trump administration’s hostility to the new bridge seems to have been stimulated by the owner of the Ambassador Bridge (which has long offered the only truck crossing between Detroit and Windsor). As the WSJ editorial pointed out, Trump’s threat to block the new bridge “came after Ambassador Bridge owner Matthew Moroun met with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick,” and after  “Moroun donated $1 million to a Trump-aligned Super PAC in January.”

The Canadian government wisely ignored an array of Trump assertions and threats, and eventually it disinvited Trump administration officials from what had been planned as a Canada-United States opening ceremony. Despite all the politics and bluster, this superb new bridge is now operational, and truck traffic, in particular, has a far superior route between Detroit and Windsor. The Moroun family tried to preserve their monopoly, and failed; we should all be glad.

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Georgia Planning Dedicated Truck Lanes on I-75

Last month, the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) announced that construction would begin next year on its first truck-only lanes project. The plan calls for adding dual northbound truck-only lanes on 41 miles of I-75. The lane additions would begin just north of the I-75/I-475 split and terminate at exit 218 south of Atlanta. There will be no tolls on the truck lanes. GDOT tells me that southbound truck lanes are in their longer-term plans when funding permits.

Dedicated truck lanes are rare in the U.S. highway system. California has a few truck-only bypass lanes here and there on I-5, while the New Jersey Turnpike’s “dual-dual” configuration separates cars-only lanes from combined car/truck lanes. That’s about all there are, but there have been many proposals.

The most ambitious truck lanes proposal was funded by the federal Corridors of the Future program in the first decade of this century. It was proposed by the state DOTs of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio for the I-70 corridor. It called for dedicated truck-only lanes in both directions across all four states. The added two lanes each way were to be trucks-only. Due to the huge cost of this expansion, either all lanes or just the new truck lanes would be tolled. Because the concept included allowing long-double and triple-trailer rigs, the trucking associations of all four states supported the project. Unfortunately, the Missouri legislature would not enact tolling legislation, and the project never materialized.

In a forthcoming policy research paper, I analyzed the potential for truck-only lanes to be added to the Florida highway system. That analysis looked at the major limited-access highways in Florida and concluded that only one corridor appears to be feasible for adding truck lanes. The study, done as part of a larger transportation research project for Florida Department of Transportation via Florida State University, has not yet been released. My draft includes a brief history of proposed truck-only toll lanes, which might make a good stand-alone policy brief at some point.

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Forty Percent More Driving?

That’s the provocative headline of a June 30 Changing Lanes commentary from Andrew Miller. The article is an interview with Benjamin Shiller, an economics professor at Brandeis University. Shiller and colleagues have published a paper analyzing a future in which self-driving cars are widely owned. One of its conclusions is that there will be a lot more driving (hence the 40 percent in Miller’s headline).

Shiller’s recent research began by considering the impact of individually-owned autonomous vehicles (AVs) on transit ridership. His research paper assumed that personally-owned AVs would proliferate in the Boston metro area, and an initial conclusion was that many people would use their own AV rather than taking transit. That would replace time spent on a transit vehicle with time spent in a personal AV—and he estimated that it would be less of an annoyance if you were in your own vehicle, going exactly where you wanted it to go. (And you can do more things in the privacy of your vehicle than on a Boston subway.)

Shiller and his colleagues built a model simulating future travel in the Boston metro area. It took into account increased congestion as people shifted from transit and conventional vehicles to personal AVs. They estimated that the disutility of longer travel times in a personal AV (due to increased congestion) would be less bad due to the other things the “driver” could do while the AV drives itself. Their model also assumed that many people would move to homes further away from their workplace. Between that and an increase in congestion, the model predicted a 30 to 40% increase in miles traveled.

This is where the title of Miller’s article (and this article) comes from. I have not examined Shiller’s model to assess its assumptions, but the overall finding that personally owned AVs would lead to 40% more vehicle miles traveled strikes me as unlikely. Just because the disutility of sitting in traffic congestion decreases (because you can do other things) does not mean most people would be OK with 40% more time spent in traffic. But I agree with Shiller on the large benefits of owning your own vehicle. (It’s available instantly when you need to go somewhere; you can keep personal stuff in it; it includes storage space, etc.)

Accordingly, Shiller sees fundamental problems with the AV fleet model. It’s not just the inconvenience of customers having to wait for the vehicle’s arrival, paying for each trip, and the fleets being too small to handle all the demand and still make a profit. He’s not optimistic about the viability of the AV fleet model itself. If it is sized to handle peak periods, it will have large amounts of idle assets most of the time, but if they size it for average demand, regular customers may not get what they want, especially at rush hour.

Finally, to return to this article’s headline, the idea that large-scale use of personally-owned AVs will lead to a 30% to 40% increase in daily miles traveled is not well-supported by either Miller’ article or interview with Shiller. This is not something I will be worrying about.

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Rethinking Bike Lanes

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has attracted criticism for appearing to downgrade bicycle-only lanes. Last month, DOT deleted bike lanes and four other practices from its list of “proven safety measures.” Needless to say, cyclists have mobilized in support of bike lanes, with some claiming the Trump administration was rejecting science and undermining rider safety.

Before getting into the safety question, there are several other questions about U.S. bike lanes as they exist today. First of all, while there is no dedicated federal bike lane funding program, some members of Congress love to respond to the biking community by creating grant programs to support bike lanes, including “complete streets” programs, which imply that a street lacking bike lanes is incomplete. Bike lanes are a local—not state or federal—subject. If or when Congress and the nation start serious thinking about paying for transportation infrastructure as federal money runs out and Social Security becomes insolvent around 2032, it’s essential to get expectations in line by sorting out which transportation modes are inherently federal, state, or local.

In terms of safety, bike lanes on urban roads as a safety measure seem to be aimed at preventing cars from crashing into a cyclist from behind. Data that I’ve seen suggests that few cyclists are hit from behind in traffic lanes, with or without bike lanes. Rather, most auto-bike collisions occur at intersections, where bike lanes often disappear to make way for turning lanes. And it is at intersections where most bike injuries and fatalities take place. Antiplanner editor Randal O’Toole cites data from Denver, Phoenix, and Portland about cyclist fatalities taking place mostly at intersections.

In cities large and small, there is an inherent conflict between street parking in front of stores and restaurants and bike lanes. That kind of battle is going on now in Chicago, where businesses are protesting the removal of on-street parking to provide space for bike lanes. (“A Bike Lane Battle Spills into the Streets,” Joe Barrett, The Wall Street Journal, July 31, 2026). The article notes, “The fights are playing out in statehouses and city halls, where officials are increasingly trying to balance the popularity of biking—to commute, shop or recreate—with local interests that rely on parking and the efficient movement of vehicles.”

And it’s not just downtowns where this problem exists. I live in a suburban portion of Broward County, Florida, where six-lane arterials with 40-mile-per-hour speed limits have striped bike lanes alongside them. I’ve never seen a cyclist in any of those lanes in more than 20 years of living here. But the severity of a car-bike collision at 40 miles per hour is obviously far worse than at 20 miles per hour. Putting bike lanes on such arterials should be seen as highway engineering malpractice.

Funding popular local transportation projects is a tradition loved by members of Congress, who can say to constituents, ‘Look what I’ve provided for you.’ But that’s not a good reason for Congress to spend federal tax dollars on a strictly local government function. We have a Federal Highway Administration because we pay federal highway user taxes. We don’t pay federal bikeway taxes because this is not a federal function.

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Value Capture for Transit
By Baruch Feigenbaum

Transit systems across the country are facing fiscal pressure as pandemic-era federal relief expires, ridership fails to recover to 2019 numbers, maintenance backlogs grow, and local governments reach their limits on the subsidies that they provide. Farebox revenue, which once covered 40% or more of the operating costs, may only cover 20% or less now.

Some transit systems are choosing an innovative method: value capture. Value capture is based on the idea that transit investments may create private economic gains through higher land values and new development. Instead of allowing those gains to benefit only nearby landowners and developers, value capture dedicates increased property tax revenue towards transit system funding and finance. This is not a traditional tax. It is not paid by all existing businesses. It only affects businesses within a certain distance of transit stations, typically ¼ to ½ mile. Only the increased value for the developments near transit stations is taxed.

Value capture includes several different tools such as tax increment financing (TIF), special assessment districts, joint development agreements, and long-term ground leases. Some states have different names for these tools; for example, in Georgia TIFs are known as Tax Allocation Districts. Generally, development near transit stations can increase in value from 30% to 150%. Value capture can create recurring revenue streams for transit operations and maintenance. This type of funding is helpful because federal transit aid provides no operating funds. And most state and local transit systems skimp on operations to build shiny new systems.

Value capture predates modern transit systems. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, private streetcar companies worked with real estate developers to create streetcar suburbs along streetcar lines. The transit companies increased ridership and farebox recovery, while developers saw their once-remote land become more valuable thanks to transit access. Modern transit agencies are now attempting to duplicate that strategy.

Thus far, value capture has been used mostly for heavy rail lines. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) shows how agencies can use value capture tools to create recurring funding streams. Since 1975, WMATA has completed 59 joint development projects across 32 stations, creating thousands of housing units and millions of square feet of office and retail space. For example, the Infill NoMA station on the WMATA red line captured $2 billion in value from taxes on new housing and commercial properties.

But the transit line has to be a good fit for value capture. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system shows that investing in transit can yield private benefits, but these gains do not always translate into significant revenue increases for transit agencies. A 2019 Mineta Transportation Institute study examined the impact of BART’s Warm Springs extension in Fremont, CA, and found that homes within two miles of the station experienced an average station-induced price increase of about 10.25%. The study found a $1.69 billion initial increase in home values, with a total 30-year value gain of about $4.48 billion. The Warm Springs extension cost about $802 million in 2018 dollars, meaning less than one-fifth of the estimated property value increase would have been enough to cover the project cost. However, little of the value was captured for the transit line.

Value capture is not exclusively for rail. In fact, the greater opportunity is for buses. Many bus rapid transit (BRT) lines are being built due to the high costs of rail transit. Minneapolis has eight BRT lines, with four more in development. Value capture generated $13.7 billion from existing lines with $9.7 billion more projected, most of it bus-related. Pittsburgh’s three BRT lines have generated $300 million in increased property tax revenue, and the Silver Line in Boston has generated $1.2 billion in new tax revenue. Twenty years ago, BRT was a new technology that not all transit systems were familiar with, but that is not the case today. 

Value capture cannot solve every transit funding problem. It works best in strong real estate markets with supportive zoning, redevelopment potential, and enough demand around stations and transit corridors to generate increases in land value. The Lincoln Institute’s research on Tokyo and Hong Kong found that transit real estate models were most effective during periods of rapid urbanization and economic growth. Value capture is far less effective in rural communities, weak housing markets, or lower-density regions with limited transit systems that do not change development patterns.

Value capture can fund part but not all of the capital costs. Seattle’s South Lake Union Streetcar covered 47% of project costs through a Local Improvement District financed by nearby property owners and businesses. Washington’s NoMa Metro station raised about 23% of project costs through assessments on commercial landowners.

Similar to any other infrastructure financing approach, value capture has to be implemented correctly. Omaha used a TIF for ½ mile around its under-construction streetcar line, not just the station. And the city argued that the TIF would fund 100% of the costs. But development occurs mostly near stations, and value capture rarely funds the full capital costs. As a result, the project is expected to fall short of the projected $300 million in TIF revenue and need additional taxpayer subsidies.

Value capture won’t make a flawed project viable. The WMATA Silver Line, which was justified on a flawed alternatives analysis, has funded only about 20% of the $6 billion price tag through value capture. If WMATA had built a combination BRT Heavy and Freeway BRT, which is what a fair alternative analysis would have shown, the total cost would be less than $1 billion. Even if there was not value capture money, the public would have paid less. But as the Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and Boston examples show, value capture does provide revenue for bus transit.

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Two Ways to Ruin a Shipyard
By Surse Pierpoint, guest author

American shipyards built three ships last year. Not three types. Three ships, full stop, set against a global commercial order book of 5,448. The United States is the world’s second-largest manufacturing economy, and it accounts for roughly 0.04 percent of global commercial shipbuilding, four one-hundredths of a percent. Other measures put the number slightly higher, closer to a tenth of a percent depending on what’s counted, but every version of the count agrees on the same fact: American shipbuilding is not a struggling industry. It is barely an industry.

Fewer than 100 oceangoing cargo ships fly the American flag today, serving the transportation needs of the largest economy on Earth. The ships that do exist get kept in service well past the point any other maritime nation would scrap them, often past 40 years, against a 20 to 30-year international norm, because the cost of replacement is so severe that limping along beats building new.

My article “The Visible Ships,” published earlier this week, traced what happens when a state pours subsidies into shipbuilding without a price signal to discipline the spending: China’s $91 billion bet on its own yards came back to twenty cents on the dollar, a market-share triumph and a value-destroying investment happening in the same industry at the same time. America’s shipbuilding collapse took the opposite road to get to a worse destination. Beijing spent too freely. Washington competed too little. Both arrived at an industry that has no reason to become good at what it does.

The U.S. law responsible is the Jones Act, passed in 1920, requiring that any cargo moved between two American ports must travel on a vessel that is American-built, American-owned, American-flagged, and American-crewed. On paper, it exists to guarantee the country a merchant marine and a shipbuilding base it can call on in wartime. In practice, it has spent over a century walling off a domestic market from the one thing that might have kept it competitive: the need to win business against anyone else.

The instinct to protect the industry did not start in 1920. It started with the ink still wet on the Constitution. Two of the first three acts passed by the new United States Congress, in 1789, imposed tariffs and duties favoring American-built and American-owned ships. In 1817, Congress went further and banned foreign vessels from domestic commerce outright, a law lifted almost directly from Britain’s own Navigation Acts, the same protectionist regime the Revolution had just been fought to escape. By the time the Jones Act formalized the policy in 1920, American shipbuilders and the maritime unions that crewed their vessels had already spent 130 years learning what every protected industry eventually learns: that lobbying for the wall is a better investment than competing without one.

This is in part a simple story about “good intentions gone wrong” misses. The Jones Act didn’t fail by accident. Gordon Tullock, the economist who gave rent-seeking its name, described exactly this mechanism: When a government has the power to hand one group a protected market at the expense of everyone else, resources stop flowing toward better ships and start flowing toward better lobbyists, because defending the wall pays better than tearing it down and competing on the other side. A shipbuilder facing Japanese or Korean competition has two ways to spend a dollar: improve the yard, or hire someone to make sure Congress never lets Japanese or Korean ships touch the coastal trade. The Jones Act has made the second option the higher-return investment for a hundred years, and American shipyards, entirely rationally, took it. Tullock explains why the money goes toward lobbying instead of better ships. He doesn’t, by himself, explain why that trade stays profitable for a hundred years instead of ten. That part belongs to economist Mancur Olson: a small, concentrated group of shipyards, carriers, and maritime unions organizes and defends a windfall far more easily than a hundred million people organize against a freight bill none of them ever sees itemized, and that imbalance doesn’t wear out with time; it renews itself every year the arrangement continues.

The cost of that choice never had to announce itself to the people paying it, which is precisely why it has lasted a century. Every American who buys anything shipped between two U.S. ports pays the Jones Act’s premium quietly, folded into a freight bill they never see itemized. Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and Alaska, all dependent on coastal shipping for goods the mainland takes for granted, pay it hardest. A shipyard that never has to win a contract against a Korean or Japanese competitor never has to figure out how to build a ship for what a Korean or Japanese yard charges, and 0.04 percent of a global market is the compounded result of a hundred years of never having to try. South Korea offers the useful contrast, and a genuine complication. Its shipbuilders are not strangers to state support either. Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME), once one of the largest yards on Earth, spent years bleeding losses as China’s subsidized yards undercut it on price, eventually forcing a debt restructuring and a 2023 buyout by Hanwha, which now runs the yard as Hanwha Ocean. That is not a story of an unsubsidized firm losing cleanly to a subsidized one. It is closer to a firm losing a subsidy race because its own government didn’t back it generously enough to win. But the crucial difference from the Jones Act is what happened next: DSME’s losses were real, its lenders and shareholders absorbed them, its leadership changed, and the company itself stopped existing under its own name. Whatever help Korea gave its shipbuilders, it stopped short of guaranteeing them a market no foreign competitor could enter. American shipbuilders never had to survive that test at all, because the Jones Act made sure the test never arrived.

Put the two failures side by side and the lesson sharpens rather than splits. China proved a state can subsidize an industry into a share of the market that means nothing, because it never had to ask whether the ships were worth what they cost. America proved a state can protect an industry into total irrelevance, because it never had to ask whether the ships were worth building at all. Removing the discipline of prices by flooding a market and removing it by walling one off are not opposite strategies. They are the same strategy wearing different clothes, and rent-seeking is the mechanism that keeps either one running long after the results should have ended it: once a subsidy or a protection creates a group with more to gain from defending it than from competing without it, that group will spend accordingly, and it will win, for exactly as long as nobody outside the arrangement is paying close enough attention to object.

Nobody has to guess what removing the wall would do. A wartime waiver, issued in March and tied to the Strait of Hormuz closure during Operation Epic Fury, let foreign-flagged tankers move cargo between American ports for the first time in a century. Extended twice, first to 90 days, then to 150, it is the longest suspension of the Jones Act since before 1950. In the first 90 days alone, foreign vessels moved more than 31 million barrels of fuel and chemicals between US ports, most of it from Gulf Coast refineries to a California market that needed it. The country did not fall apart. House Republican leadership now wants the experiment stopped on schedule, sending a letter in June asking the administration to let the waiver expire this August rather than extend it again. The Jones Act is not a cautionary tale from a bygone era of bad policy. It is the fully mature case study sitting in plain view, a hundred years old, still running, and for 150 days this year it was quietly, accidentally proven unnecessary before the people who benefit from it get the chance to shut the experiment down: three ships, an orderbook of 5,448, and a wartime accident of policy nobody intended as a test.

Surse Pierpoint is a logistics and trade executive with experience in Latin American free zones.

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News Notes

Tennessee DOT Selecting I-24 Team This Month
Infralogic reported (July 22) that the Tennessee Department of Transportation has received proposals from all four short-listed teams for the express toll lanes project on I-24. The expected announcement date is Aug. 21. The four teams are: ACS/Meridiam/Acciona, ASTM North America/FCC, Cintra/Transurban, and Plenary/Shikun & Binui/Sacyr. The winner will design, build, finance, operate, and maintain variably priced express toll lanes on I-24 between I-40 in Nashville and I-840 in Murfreesboro. The concession term will be 50 years.

Senate Increases Private Activity Bonds Cap to $45 Billion
In a bipartisan vote on Aug. 7, the Senate increased the federal cap on tax-exempt private activity bonds (PABs) from $30 billion to $45 billion. The $30 billion limit was recently reached, so the addition would enable PABs to be used for many more public-private partnership (P3) projects, if the House passes similar legislation.

Highway Trust Fund Still in the Red, Despite New User Fees
Caitlin Devitt reported in Bond Buyer that the federal Highway Trust Fund will be even deeper in deficit after enactment of the five-year BUILD America 250 Act. Federal gasoline and diesel user taxes have not been increased since 1993, and the new electric vehicle fees will generate only $17 billion through 2036. She also points out that when this new bill expires, federal highway funding may be caught up in the expected insolvency of Social Security in 2032.

Some New Support for North Carolina I-77 Express Lanes
Three local governments that opposed the I-77 project—Cornelius, Huntersville, and Monroe—reversed their opposition to the project late last month. WSOC TV News reported that the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization is scheduled to consider reinstating the project when it meets in late September.

Truck Tolls Are Coming Back in Rhode Island
Since a federal appeals court ruled in 2024 that the state’s truck tolls are legal, Rhode Island has been planning to reinstate them. The trucking industry’s objections have not impressed the legislature, and the RIDOT in June awarded a contract to Quarterhill to establish a back office to manage toll collection. It is due to be in operation by May 2027.

Transurban Looks Beyond Virginia for Express Toll Lane Projects
Following its tentative agreement with Virginia DOT to add 120 lane-miles to its I-95 express lanes, Bond Buyer‘s Caitlin Devitt reported that Transurban is now considering going beyond Virginia to pursue such projects in Atlanta and Nashville, where large-scale plans for such lanes have been approved. The company is shortlisted for the $7.6 billion I-285 Eastside Express Lanes in Atlanta.

Brightline Florida Still In Serious Financial Distress
In a Bond Buyer article on July 27, Caitlin Devitt also reported that Brightline Florida is still in dire financial straits. As of then, bondholders had agreed to yet another short-term debt extension. She reported that since January, each grace period has gotten shorter. She quotes a Florida attorney (not involved with Brightline) as thinking that whatever financial restructuring takes place should keep the railroad in operation.

Florida’s Alligator Alley Going Cashless
The 78 miles of I-75 across the Florida Everglades are one of the state’s many toll roads. Florida DOT announced last month that as of Aug. 3, cash will no longer be accepted. Tolling will be either electronic (SunPass or other transponder) or Toll-by-Plate.

Mobile River Bridge to Start Construction in October
Alabama Daily News reported that construction on the $3.2 billion project is planned to be underway by early October, according to Alabama DOT. The new bridge will be a six-lane, cable-stayed design. The project is not a P3, but the bridge, as planned, will be tolled via all-electronic tolling, and there will also be a $60 per month unlimited-use plan.

Express Toll Lanes for Hampton Roads Expressways
USDOT announced a $310 million TIFIA loan to the Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission to help finance express toll lanes on the I-64/I-464 corridor. This region is home to the Virginia Ports system, which generates substantial truck traffic. The Hampton Roads Express Lanes Network plays a key role in improving traffic flow.

Cape Fear Bridge Replacement P3 Rejected
A proposed public-private partnership that would replace the obsolete Cape Fear Memorial Bridge was rejected last month by the Wilmington metropolitan planning organization after a review by the North Carolina DOT recommended not proceeding with the billion-dollar P3 unsolicited proposal.

South Carolina Authorizes Choice Lanes
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed a bill overhauling the state DOT and authorizing it to proceed with plans to implement express toll lanes comparable to those already in operation in Georgia and North Caroline. Any such lanes are required to be new construction, with existing general purpose lanes remaining non-tolled.

Shipping Thrived During Jones Act Waiver
Joe Lancaster reported (Reason.com, July 6) that successive 60-day and 90-day waivers of the Jones Act led to unprecedented cargo shipments between U.S ports. Under normal conditions, shipments between the mainland and Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and other overseas U.S. jurisdictions can be made only via Jones Act ships, of which there are few.

Operators of Ship that Destroyed Bridge Face Criminal Charges
The operators of the M/V Dali, which collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in 2024, are facing criminal charges, per an article in ENR by Jim Parsons. The federal indictment charges Synergy Marine and Radhakrishnan Karthik Nair for making modifications to the ship’s systems that compromised reliable redundancies and automatic restart capabilities. They are charged with conspiracy and failing to inform the U.S. Coast Guard of a known hazardous condition.
 
TRIP Report Lauds Interstate Highway System
In a new report, The Road Information Program (TRIP) quantifies the benefits of the 70-year-old Interstate Highway System, including increased safety compared with other highways, large economic benefits, and motorist savings due to high speeds and less congestion than on other long-distance highways. The report also notes that the system is carrying more traffic than it was designed for and lacks adequate funding to make needed repairs and improvements.

Dutch Trucks Now Pay Distance-Based Tolls
Starting July 1, all trucks on highways in the Netherlands must pay per-kilometer tolls. It applies to all highways and some provincial and municipal roads. All trucks must have an onboard unit linked to a contract with a toll service provider. At the same time, a previous motor vehicle tax has been abolished for all trucks required to pay distance-based tolls. The new truck toll charge replaces the former flat-rate charge from the Eurovignette system.

Argentina Prequalifies Bidders for Federal Toll Road P3s
Infralogic reported (July 6) that the Argentine government had pre-qualified 13 bidders for planned federal toll road P3 concessions. The tolled highway projects will be located in four geographical regions: Mediterráneo, Puntano, Portuario Sur, and Portuario Norte.

Washington State Plans Lower-Income Toll Discounts
The Washington State Standard reported that the state’s Transportation Commission approved a program offering 50% discounts on tolls for lower-income users of the SR 167 and SR 509 expressways in the Puget Sound Region. My question is: why isn’t there a comparable discount on gas taxes? That would make as much or as little sense. Both gas taxes and tolls are road user charges. People pay them based on their use of those roadways. Toll roads generally cost more to build and operate than non-tolled roads, so those who choose to use them should pay for that choice.

Federal “Freedom to Drive” Initiative?
I’m several months late in reporting an announcement from USDOT called “Freedom to Drive.” As reported by Michael Bennon in Public Works Financing’s April issue,  DOT Secretary Sean Duffy asked all state governors to identify the two to five worst traffic bottlenecks in their highway system and identify actions to address that congestion, with a focus on “maximizing roadway capacity for driving.” Duffy’s announcement also stated that “[Y]ou may need to recover roadway capacity from other purposes to support driving.”

Pullman Porter Appreciation
On Facebook last month, Genny Harrison of U. Mass. Lowell published an appreciation of the role played by Pullman porters on U.S. passenger railroads. It’s a nicely done history of the role played by Black Americans during the heyday of passenger rail. You can find further details on this subject on Wikipedia.

Tribute to a Roadway Pioneer
In the Wall Street Journal, Ben Cohen penned an overdue appreciation for John V. N. Dorr, who invented the solid white line at the edge of a roadway to help drivers stay on the road at night or in other low-visibility conditions. The illustrations are before/after photos of the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, which I drove every day to and from my first post-graduation job at Sikorsky Aircraft.

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Quotable Quotes

“The Interstate Highway System at 70 continues to provide tremendous benefits to Americans, saving lives, time, and money. It is absolutely vital that we preserve these transportation benefits for future generations of Americans, but this will require that  the funding needed to rebuild and modernize our interstate highways is provided.”
—Dave Kearby, Executive Director, The Road Information Program (TRIP), news release, June 26, 2026

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