According to Logistics Management, the nation’s top business lobbyist says it is time to boost public investment in highway, bridge, rail and air projects now to help catapult the country out of the worst recession in 70 years.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas J. Donohue said intelligent and greater investment in infrastructure projects could literally pave the way for a sustained economic rebound as the country seeks efficiencies from its transportation network to compete in the global economy.

“To meet our infrastructure needs, we need to boost public investments while working to ensure that the money is spent wisely in areas of genuine need,” Donohue said. “Reauthorization of the nation’s core highway bill is essential.”

Renewal of the federal-aid highway reauthorization bill has been stalled in Congress since the previous five-year, $286 billion bill expired Sept. 30. Instead of passing a bill that would double that spending, Congress has instead punted and passed a stop-gap bill at the old law’s spending levels, which transportation experts have said is too low to meet current infrastructure spending needs.

Go to Logistics Management to see the entire article.

The Colorado Department of Transportation submitted an application today on behalf of the U.S. 36 corridor to receive funds available through the U.S. Transportation’s Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) Discretionary Grant Program.

The application, a collaborative effort by CDOT, the Regional Transportation District, the U.S. 36 Mayors and Commissioners Coalition, ten local governments and 36 Commuting Solutions, requests between $160 million and $260 million to build a portion of the first phase of improvements identified in the U.S. 36 Final Environmental Impact Statement.

The first phase of improvements could extend the high occupancy vehicle/high occupancy toll lanes in each direction from Denver to Boulder, implement Bus Rapid Transit service and connect a commuter bikeway (all components of FasTracks) for the full length of the corridor at a cost of $550 million.

The people who investigate the nation’s most high-profile transportation accidents must now practice what they preach: They will no longer be allowed to use cellphones while driving, USA Today reports.

Debbie Hersman, the new chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said Tuesday that employees of the agency are barred from using any wireless device behind the wheel while on duty. The restriction applies whether the device is hands-free or not.

The action appears to make the NTSB the first federal agency to adopt an outright ban of wireless devices while driving, according to the agency and highway safety experts. It also puts stricter rules on NTSB employees than the citizens of all 50 states.

Redmond and Kirkland, two cities east of Seattle, are experimenting with new pavement markings designed to show bicyclists exactly where to stop in order to trigger the embedded detection system that will give them the green light.

One of the frustrations of bike riding in the city can be the failure of traffic signals’ inductive loops buried in the street at intersections to be sensitive enough to detect the relatively lightweight bicycles.

The markings help strike a balance between increasing the system’s sensitivity, which could cause the loops to falsely detect traffic by picking up large vehicles in adjacent lanes, and having cyclists wait longer periods for their green signal.

So was T-REX really under budget?

When RTD closed out the books last week on its half of the T-REX multimodal expansion along Interstates 25 and 225, it finished with $3.7 million left over out of its $879 million share of the $1.67 billion budget it split with the Colorado Department of Transportation.

Skeptics cry foul. They point out that the Major Investment Study on the Southeast Corridor, completed in 1997, said the light rail project would cost $445 million. They want you to think RTD went double over its budget.

The skeptics are either uninformed or deliberately misleading you. They are feeding you an apple and claiming it’s an orange.

RTD closed out the books on its part of the T-REX project with $3.7 million leftover out of the final budget of $939.4 million. The final close-out of the project had the funds left over even after RTD spent some of the surplus on extra items after the project opened, including access to Park Meadows mall, three pedestrian bridges, and upgrades and art at stations. Under federal rules, the $3.7 million must remain in the southeast corridor that T-REX built. RTD says it will use it to upgrade electrical power substations along the route to meet power demands when FasTracks’ extensions come on line. FasTracks includes a short extension of the T-REX line farther south to RidgeGate in Douglas County.

Update on the I-70 Coalition’s activities from Michael Penny, chair.

You can see some of the Federal stimulus dollars at work on Highway 9, I-70, and the Summit County Maintenance shop, but what else is happening on I-70? Well, the I-70 Coalition and our members have been continuing to stay busy over the last several months. Much of the early part of the year was spent working on legislation to ensure an ongoing and stable funding source for transportation financing. A reliable statewide funding stream is necessary for anything to happen on I-70.

Communities in the U.S. 36 corridor will bid for as much as $200 million in federal stimulus money to help extend high-occupancy vehicle/high-occupancy toll lanes on the highway from Pecos Street to Table Mesa Drive in Boulder, the Denver Post reports.

An environmental study identified the addition of one HOV/HOT lane in each direction as a core element in the first phase of improvements for the corridor, along with a parallel bikeway and upgrades to key interchanges.