Highways

UPDATED -- Because a tanker fire has closed I-81 in the Harrisburg, Pa., area, the Pennsylvania Turnpike between Harrisburg East (#247) and Carlisle (#226), is being used as an alternate route. Tolls are being waived for all vehicles that enter and exit at those two interchanges only.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., reintroduced a bill that would restrict truck size and weight limits. His move positions a familiar piece in the size-and-weight chess match as the next highway bill approaches.

Lawmakers in Maine have given final passage to a bill allowing speed limits to increase along Maine’s interstates, but are moving to pull the plug on a study to determine the feasibility of an east-west highway.

Traffic congestion on U.S. roadways is back after two consecutive years of declines, with traffic congestion up 4% in the first quarter compared to 2012, according to traffic information provider Inrix in its sixth Traffic Scorecard Annual Report.

Trucks will have to be rerouted from the U.S. 51 Ohio River Bridge between Wickliffe, Ky., and Cairo, Ill., for approximately 70 days beginning in June, turning a 6-mile trip from Wickliffe to Cairo into a 80-mile detour.

The building of a second bridge connecting Detroit with Windsor, Ontario, has moved another step closer to reality with U.S. federal approval, but opposition to the plans still exist, including in the form of lawsuits.

The Colorado State Patrol has launched a special website for truck drivers with a wide range of information about the state’s portion of Interstate 70, with the latest information on road conditions, safe parking and chain-up locations for the mountain corridor.

As lawmakers in Vermont look to raise money for road and other transportation projects, trucking could get dragged into the mix with talk of a possible diesel tax hike. One proposal in the state legislature calls for increasing the diesel tax by 2 cents per gallon this year followed by a 2-cent hike in 2014.

In the debate over how to increase highway funding, the call is often made to raise fuel taxes or develop other funding mechanisms to fix our crumbling highways and bridges, a problem brought tragically to the forefront by the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis in August 2007 that killed 13 people. Now, clouding the debate in Washington is the claim that our infrastructure really isn't crumbling after all.

A new report says gridlock in the U.S. has staged a dramatic comeback after two years of post-recession lows, but it’s also a sign the economy is bouncing back. Data from the most recent Inrix Gridlock Index shows traffic jumped by almost 10% during February – the largest year-over-year increase recorded in two years, and a healthy sign of rising economic activity across 100 metro areas.