Highways, Bridges and Roads

Pete Ruane, a retired U.S. Marine, says his biggest battle these days is convincing Congress that the roads he takes to work need improving. 

Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. said his bill would allow the government to focus on “crash prevention programs, not national helmet mandates.”

Electric utilities plan to ask President Obama to waive highway tolls for utility crews responding to extreme weather-related power outages, an industry source told The Hill.

Obama is meeting with utility chief executives and trade associations Wednesday at the White House to discuss improving response times to major weather disasters like Hurricane Sandy.

The industry source said it would ask Obama for some quick fixes — mostly on the logistics side of emergency response — to prevent a similar episode, with the toll issue being a good start.

Foxx has been a vocal supporter of expanding the light rail system in Charlotte, N.C., since taking office in 2009.

Sixty-six percent would oppose a gas tax, even if revenues were dedicated to paying for road and bridge repairs.

Commercial truck drivers who fail drug tests might soon have their names listed in a federal database.

The White House has received a proposal to create a registry of drivers that test positive for drugs or alcohol while on the job. The rule would eliminate a loophole that allows drivers to “job hop” by not reporting failed drug tests on applications.

“We’re very excited that the rule has gone over to [the Office of Management and Budget],” said Abigail Potter, a research analyst for the American Trucking Associations’ regulatory and policy affairs department. “This is something we've been advocating for since the late '90s.”

Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) on Monday blasted a decision by the Department of Transportation to spend $520,000 to repair an historic covered bridge in Ohio that will not be open to traffic.

"When towns in every county in every state need infrastructure improvements and updates, it's frustrating to see half a million dollars being spent on a bridge that serves no clear transportation purpose," Reed said. "It's an insult to taxpayers."

New rules exempt rebuilding projects from lengthy environmental reviews if they stem from a "natural disaster or catastrophic failure."

Lawmakers on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will engage in an age-old debate this week: What role should the federal government have in transportation spending?

The committee's first full hearing under its new chairman, Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), will be an examination of the "federal role in America's infrastructure."

The Pennsylvania lawmaker is a second-generation Transportation Committee chairman: his father, former Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), chaired the same body from 1995 until 2001.

The younger Shuster has indicated he will use the Wednesday hearing to try to convince staunch conservative members of his party to exempt transportation from their proposals to scale back spending.

“Transportation and infrastructure have long been recognized as federal responsibilities shared with the states," Shuster said in a statement. 

The outgoing Transportation secretary said the nation's infrastructure was "falling way behind other countries."