Department of Transportation Story Archives - Page 2 of 5

Capito Asks Why East Palestine Train Was Not Considered High Hazard

Officials at the scene made the decision to vent and burn five tank cars of vinyl chloride, creating a column of black smoke that darkened the sky over the community.

U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito asked witnesses in a hearing Wednesday about what kind of rail safety improvements are needed after last month’s fiery derailment in Ohio.

Capito, R-West Virginia, a member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, asked why the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, was not considered by federal definition to be of a higher level of hazard than other trains.

Officials at the scene made the decision to vent and burn five tank cars of vinyl chloride, creating a column of black smoke that darkened the sky over the community.

Capito asked Jennifer Homendy, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, whether the definition of a high-hazard flammable train should be changed.

“Is that something you would consider that should be looked at as a safety improvement?” Capito asked.

“Yes, senator,” Homendy said.

The NTSB is investigating the derailment but has no regulatory authority. That kind of change would have to come from the U.S. Department of Transportation or Congress.

The definition was set by a Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration rule issued in May 2015 following multiple derailments of trains carrying crude oil and ethanol, including one in Mount Carbon, West Virginia, in February 2015.

Hal Greer Boulevard Project To Reshape Huntington’s Interstate Access Corridor

Gov. Jim Justice announced Friday morning a $13.5 million comprehensive upgrade of Huntington’s Hal Greer Boulevard, also known as 16th Street, all the way from Washington Boulevard to Third Avenue.

Transportation Secretary Jimmy Wriston said the project would be fast tracked, with a field office going up in January, building demolition in February and road work beginning in the spring of 2023.

“This one’s comprehensive,” Wriston said. “It has all the bells and whistles, pedestrian, bike path, new lighting, landscaping, you name it, this project’s got it.”

Huntington Mayor Steve Williams said the project was more than a decade in the making, with stakeholders from the Fairfield neighborhood to hospital and university presidents joining in a planning alliance.

Designs will highlight safety, accessibility, beauty and economic development for the main corridor that leads people from I-64, to Cabell-Huntington Hospital and to the downtown area and Marshall University.

“With all of the business development that is planned on Hal Greer Boulevard, in five years, anybody who’s coming through here right now will not recognize Hal Greer Boulevard,” Williams said. “It will be absolutely transformed.”

The project will also highlight a partnership with the Thundercloud “First Dig” Initiative, laying underground broadband fiber along the corridor, providing internet speeds that partners say will be 1000 times faster than what locals are experiencing now.

Roads To Prosperity Program Marks Five Years Of Road, Infrastructure Projects

Friday marked the fifth anniversary of the launch of the state’s Roads to Prosperity program.

The state passed the program at Gov. Jim Justice’s urging in 2017, selling $1.6 billion in bonds to upgrade state infrastructure. Since then, the program has funded more than 1,000 projects of varying scale. These projects have mostly focused on improving state roads, with the state Department of Transportation (DOT) heading most of them.

“I think it’s exceeded everybody’s expectations,” Commissioner of Highways Jimmy Wriston said. “We went from a more than $500 million shortfall in 2017 to a $1.2 billion surplus just this past year. Plus, we also have a great benefit of counteracting the decades and decades of underinvestment in our roadways.”

Wriston said the program is a massive undertaking, citing that nearly 94 percent of all roads are maintained by the state.

Larger projects include the Coalfields Expressway, which connects southern West Virginia to western Virginia, a six-lane widening of the West Virginia Turnpike around Beckley and Corridor H connecting Grant, Tucker and Hardy counties to northwestern Virginia.

Bridge projects, including the Donald M. Legg Memorial Bridge on Interstate 64 and reconstruction of multiple bridges along Interstate 70, have been managed as well.

Wriston said the tackling of larger projects also gave the DOT room to handle smaller, secondary roads through the Secondary Roads Maintenance Initiative.

“There’s a lot of trickle down there, not just with the construction of the road projects, but the folks that supply the road materials, the folks that actually work out there and bought slushies and lunches, eating at restaurants while they’re working. It’s all been working together,” Wriston said.

The DOT website has an estimated statistic of 48,000 jobs created as a result of the project.

Pedestrian Safety Campaign Launched At Marshall University

The program, called Heads Up Herd, reminds students and pedestrians about ways to stay safe around busy traffic. These include basic tips like looking away from cell phones while crossing, using crosswalks and making eye contact with drivers.

Marshall University is introducing a new pedestrian safety campaign in response to a fatal collision on campus last fall.

As part of the program, professors are provided with pedestrian safety PowerPoints as class material and students are given reflective, iron-on patches for their backpacks.

“In my whole career here, the biggest complaint I got was how our students and community cross the streets. So that’s what we’re working on,” said Marshall Director of Public Safety Jim Terry.

The program exists as a response to a fatal accident in which an oncoming vehicle struck and killed a Marshall University student on campus. The state’s Department of Transportation (DOT) is set to begin the second phase of a traffic safety audit next month.

“We average a student a year hit by vehicles. And it’s dangerous,” Terry said. “And 95 percent of the time, or higher, it’s the pedestrian’s fault.”

Last month, the school also partnered with the city of Huntington and the DOT to help make the campus safer for pedestrians. One of the proposals included speed limit reductions from 35 mph to 25 mph on 3rd and 5th Avenues. A new crosswalk on 20th Street outside the school’s rec center also provides safe passage from the main parking lot.

Inflation Makes State’s Highway Construction More Expensive

Secretary for the West Virginia Department of Transportation, Jimmy Wriston, told the Joint Committee on Government and Finance that inflation is making highway construction more expensive in the Mountain State.

At an interim meeting of the Joint Committee on Government and Finance on July 26, West Virginia Department of Transportation Secretary Jimmy Wriston said the department’s contracts for current projects have clauses to adjust for rising inflation. While it relieves some of the added costs for contractors, it raises the project fee for the department.

“If all of our projects today were completed, and I had to calculate that asphalt and fuel adjustment and pay that today, it would exceed 14 million dollars,” said Wriston.

Supply chain shortages are also making it harder for the department to buy equipment and vehicles.

“The Division of Highways runs on its trucks,” Wriston said. “That’s a particular concern to us.”

Wriston suggested the state should develop a policy for upcoming projects under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to include clauses that compensate contractors to offset added expenses.

“We’re always anxious to be told what we can do to lower barriers to activation on things,” Speaker of the House Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, said. “So if you’re trying to adjust or make mid-course corrections on anything that we can do to be helpful on, we’d certainly appreciate knowing that.”

Clarksburg And Lewisburg Airports May Have New Carrier

Airports in Clarksburg and Lewisburg may have found a replacement carrier in anticipation of SkyWest Airlines’ departure.

Airports in Clarksburg and Lewisburg may have found a replacement carrier in anticipation of SkyWest Airlines’ departure. The budget airline asked to end service in March.

The directors for North Central Regional Airport in Clarksburg and Greenbrier Valley Airport in Lewisburg have identified Contour Airlines as their preferred carrier moving forward.

In March, the Department of Transportation blocked SkyWest Airlines from ending service to 29 airports across the country including Clarksburg and Lewisburg.

In documents filed with the Department of Transportation (DOT) at the end of June, both airport authorities requested a waiver to award their Essential Air Service (EAS) contract to the Tennessee based airline, which is affiliated with American Airlines.

According to DOT, the EAS program was put into place to guarantee that small communities that were served by certificated air carriers before airline deregulation can maintain a minimal level of scheduled air service.

As an Essential Air Service carrier, Contour would connect the regional airports to the National Air Transportation System via the American Airlines hub in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Contour currently offers service to 10 other EAS cities, including Parkersburg and Beckley.

Both airports declined proposals from Boutique Air and Southern Airways Express. Those airlines only offer single-engine service, and that would require the airports to waive their rights to twin engine service.

A proposal from Team Tundra was rejected by both airports as incomplete.