Highways

Overall, vehicles traveled 2.95 trillion miles on U.S. roads in 2011, the eighth-highest level ever recorded, and nearly double the amount traveled in 1980. California drivers alone traveled more than 900 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

In the not too distant future, traffic will finally be able to travel between Interstate 95 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike without having to use other roadways. Ground has been broken on a project in the southeastern part of the state kicking off the start of the $500 million Stage 1 of the project.

At a hearing on the Highway Trust Fund Tuesday it was clear that the key House transportation committee has some distance to go before it can achieve consensus on how the fund could be made whole, or even if it should be preserved.

Weather permitting, on Friday night, July 19, through Sunday night July 21, starting each night at 9:30 p.m., the Virginia Department of Transportation will begin to close lanes on I-95 south near Exit 148, Marine Corps Base Quantico.

Officials with the Ohio Turnpike have voted to borrow $1.5 billion, and with it will come annual toll hikes to help pay off the debt. Next year’s hike will be 2.7% with further increases tied to the region’s inflation rate.

Work to install the new permanent span for the Interstate 5 Skagit River Bridge in Burlington, Wash., is officially underway, but new delays and detours will happen again in a few weeks.

In an effort to address what it says is an ongoing problem with trucks getting stuck under a railroad overpass, the Maryland State Highway Administration is implementing a new truck restriction on a section of MD 75 (Green Valley Road) near Monrovia in Frederick County.

After the Pennsylvania state legislature failed to approve a plan to raise new money for bridge and road repairs, the state Department of Transportation says it will put lower weight limits on some of the state's bridges to try to extend their useful life.

The U.S. Transportation Department says California's Devore Interchange is a critical freight link serving 21,000 trucks each day. Now the state has broken ground on a modernized Devore Interchange that will relieve freight congestion.

Another phase of the I-20 reconstruction project in Alabama was set to begin at midnight, weather permitting, resulting in about a 10-mile section of the route being closed.

As Americans hit the road for the Fourth of July holiday, they’ll be driving on slightly smoother roads, crossing fewer deficient bridges and spending less time stuck in traffic jams, according to think tank the Reason Foundation and its new Annual Highway Report.

There’s no shortage of ideas for ways to improve the national freight network. A House panel researching the issue yesterday got a list, long, broad and mostly familiar, of what transportation providers would like to see in a federal freight policy.

Would Americans favor additional taxes and fees to support the nation's transportation infrastructure? A variety of questions on that topic were posed to a sample of people in a nationwide survey.

Years of research have produced mixed views on whether different freeway speed limits for cars and trucks make roads safer, but Wayne State University researchers are taking a comprehensive approach to answering that question for state officials.