News Articles

12/02/2006, Atlanta Journal Constitution
Transportation leaders, lobbyists meet in secret
Greensboro -- Key state transportation leaders attended a closed-door meeting Friday at the rustic-posh Ritz-Carlton Lodge at Reynolds Plantation to discuss changing Georgia's tax structure.

The meeting at the luxury resort was organized by Georgians for Better Transportation, a lobbying group, as part of its effort to persuade the state to raise more tax money for transportation projects. Read more...

11/04/2006, Atlanta Journal Constitution
REGIONAL REPORT
Atlanta highway projects pile up
Slow times: High costs, political priorities in the fast-growing area keep much key roadwork from even starting, and some plans have had to be junked.
When it comes to transportation projects, metro Atlanta appears to be putting on the brakes.

Fewer than half of the metro region's transportation project phases that were supposed to get under way this year actually did, according to "Breaking Ground," a report released Friday by the Atlanta Regional Commission. It's the lowest percentage for any year since ARC started counting in 2003. Read more...

10/11/2006, Cherokee Sentinel
To the Editor - Interstate 3: Not dead yet
It has been just over a year since the public information forum at Tri- County Community College alerted our local citizens to the proposal to build an interstate highway through the mountains of Western North Carolina which was advanced in the highway bill signed into law on August 10, 2005.

Here is an update on I-3, now referred to as the Third Infantry Division Highway" by the government, and on the efforts to prevent I-3 from ever being built:

The highway bill provided for 1.32 million dollars for a study and report on the steps necessary to complete a highway from Savannah, GA to Knoxville, TN via Augusta, GA. In the same bill an identical amount was provided to study a companion interstate originally dubbed I-14, which would connect Augusta, GA with Natchez, MS. From there the proposal was put in the hands of the Federal Highway Administration to begin the process of conducting the study. Read more...

09/25/2006, Atlanta Journal Constitution
Road budgets battered by rapidly rising costs
The conversation with state transportation planners last year is seared in Jack Conway's brain.

Months before, rising prices had bumped the cost to widen McGinnis Ferry Road in Forsyth and Fulton counties from just over $20 million to about $35 million, Conway says. It was unprecedented, and it was going to hurt. And now here they were again, sitting in a government conference room, everyone vaguely aware of what was coming, no one ready for the number. Read more...

09/19/06, BBC News
French row over vineyard motorway
Baron Geoffroy de Luze usually loves this time of year, when the soft rains fall on the grapes in Margaux just before the harvest.

He can look out over his vineyards in the hope of another vintage year - but not this year.

The baron is filled with foreboding because the French authorities are threatening to build a motorway right next to his vines. Read more...

08/23/06, New York Times
Things Fall Apart: Fixing America's Crumbling Infrastructure, By Nicholas Kulish

Whether it's the roads we drive on, the pipes carrying our water, or the power lines humming with the electricity that lights our homes, America's physical networks are falling apart.

For the sake of the economy and the country’s competitiveness, it’s time to rebuild.
That's bad news for those of us spending hours a day in traffic caused by road-repair bottlenecks, or sweating through prolonged summer blackouts. But it's also a substantial drag on our economy and on our businesses. And it will be a competitive challenge for this country in the years to come.

Infrastructure - the catchall term for the backbone of our nation - is the kind of word that makes taxpayers want to roll over, hit the snooze button and go back to sleep. We ignore it and only complain when something breaks. No dummies, our lawmakers react accordingly. They approach the underpinnings of our nation's future like school nurses, applying the equivalent of Band-Aids and aspirin. Read more...