Recently in Transportation Category

Source: Associated Press (WI), Fri, Feb. 02, 2007

MADISON, Wis. - A state Department of Transportation attorney says two appointees of Gov. Jim Doyle told him to delay the release of a politically damaging 2004 report. Jim Thiel testified Thursday he had been told to not release the report until after he got a copy of a Department of Administration rebuttal that questioned the DOT's finding that state engineers cost 18 percent less than consultants. Doyle pledged during the 2002 governor's race to trim 10,000 employees from state payrolls and has argued that contractors could do some work more cheaply than state employees.

Source: Associated Press (IN), February 4, 2007

A private company will take over portions of the Indiana University campus' motor pool under a plan officials say allows all school employees to keep their jobs. IU President Adam Herbert said Friday the school will contract with Enterprise Rent-A-Car for the daily rental fleet that employees use for university-related travel.

……. IU union leaders and a group of community and faculty supporters met Friday with three members of IU's Board of Trustees, delivering petitions signed by 3,455 people opposed to the school's outsourcing plans. "I think they heard us, but I'm not sure it will change their opinion," said Dallas Murphy, president of Local 832 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents service and maintenance workers.

Source: Lisa Cornwell, The Associated Press (OH), Sunday, January 28, 2007

CINCINNATI -- The state attorney general's office is trying to find ways to improve enforcement and oversight of criminal background checks on school bus drivers after a private bus company discovered that it had not done complete checks on all drivers.

........ First Student Inc., based in Cincinnati, suspended service for the day Thursday to the Columbus Public Schools while it scrambled to check if all drivers had required background checks. The district had to cancel classes for the day, and other districts that use the company around the state questioned if their drivers had the required checks.

Source: International Transport Workers' Federation news release, 2 February 2007

Trade unions from European countries where passenger carrier FirstGroup is planning to expand have announced plans to send a fact finding mission to the USA to investigate the company's service record and whether it is living up to its pledge to remain neutral during union membership drives.

....... The British and American delegates passed on examples of FirstGroup's poor service quality after being awarded local government and school contracts for bus service. Delegates learned that just in the past week schools in Ohio were shut down for a day because FirstGroup's school bus subsidiary failed to screen out drivers with criminal records.

Related article from the Cincinnati Enquirer, January 25, 2007: Schools close over bus driver checks

Source: By Joe Mysak, Bloomberg, January 31, 2007

Well, so much for selling all the airports. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is going to buy the lease of the first, and so far only, U.S. airport approved by the Federal Aviation Administration for its Airport Privatization Pilot Program.

....... The larger question here, though, is what this means for airport privatization in the U.S. In general, the FAA is against it, primarily because it wants all the money made at an airport to stay at the airport.

Source: Associated Press (WI), Thursday, January 25, 2007

The state Department of Transportation has agreed to pay a $500 forfeiture as part of a settlement for not complying with an open records request for a report comparing the cost of using state workers and contractors. The department agreed to plead guilty to allegations it “arbitrarily and capriciously” denied or delayed its response to a request for the report under the deal with the state Justice Department filed Wednesday. …… Former Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, a Democrat, sued the department and its secretary, Frank Busalacchi, in June of last year. She alleged agency employees had completed the report (.pdf) in April 2004 and that Tim Hanley, then the president of the State Engineering Association, filed a request for the report in August 2004. But the agency refused to turn it over to the association, a union representing state engineers, until November 2004.

Source: By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (IN), January 25, 2007

Some among the dozens of people who lost their Indiana Toll Road jobs last week are not happy about their assignments to new state jobs. The private company that took over running the toll road last year terminated about 95 employees, who were eligible to be placed into other state government positions. …….. Hackler said the workers were given six months to find another state job on their own, but those who could not were placed in jobs, with his office trying to place people in positions that matched their skills.

Source: by Daniel Schulman with James Ridgeway, Mother Jones, January/February 2007 Issue

........ Fifty years to the day after Ike put his pen to the Highway Act, another Republican signed off on another historic highway project. On June 29, 2006, Mitch Daniels, the former Bush administration official turned governor of Indiana, was greeted with a round of applause as he stepped into a conference room packed with reporters and state lawmakers. The last of eight wire transfers had landed in the state's account, making it official: Indiana had received $3.8 billion from a foreign consortium made up of the Spanish construction firm Cintra and the Macquarie Infrastructure Group (mig) of Australia, and in exchange the state would hand over operation of the 157-mile Indiana Toll Road for the next 75 years. ....... The one thing everyone agreed on was that the Indiana deal was just a prelude to a host of such efforts to come. Across the nation, there is now talk of privatizing everything from the New York Thruway to the Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey turnpikes, as well as of inviting the private sector to build and operate highways and bridges from Alabama to Alaska. More than 20 states have enacted legislation allowing public-private partnerships, or P3s, to run highways. Robert Poole, the founder of the libertarian Reason Foundation and a longtime privatization advocate, estimates that some $25 billion in public-private highway deals are in the works; a remarkable figure given that as of 1991, the total cost of the interstate highway system was estimated at $128.9 billion.

Source: BY SHERI McWHIRTER, Record Eagle (MI), 12/20/2006

Harvey Nicholson worked in maintenance at Gaylord Regional Airport for more than 10 years. Six days before Christmas he learned he's about to lose his job. ……. Otsego County commissioners unanimously voted to approve a contract worth more than $186,000 with an outside company for maintenance and other services at the small airport on the west side of Gaylord. The decision will cost three local residents their longtime jobs by year's end and is expected to save the county about $20,000. "It's small savings in light of what you're losing in experienced employees,” said union representative Ellen Keith, of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees.

Source: by Eileen Welsome, Texas Observer (TX), December 15, 2006

Ric Williamson, a former state legislator and longtime pal of Gov. Rick Perry, runs the monthly meetings of the Texas Transportation Commission like a traffic cop. .........As commission chairman, Williamson sits atop the organizational chart of the Texas Department of Transportation, a huge branch of state government that receives about $6 billion in tax revenue each year, and parcels out road construction jobs worth many billions more.

Appointed by Perry in 2001 and elevated to chairman in 2004, Williamson is now the governor’s man on one of the most ambitious and expensive public works programs in the world: building a network of privately financed and operated toll roads and super-corridors that will literally and figuratively change the state of Texas for generations to come.