Infrastructure

“After slamming the brakes last year on planning for the long-envisioned urban rail system in Austin, city leaders in recent months have rejuvenated efforts to bring a plan to voters by next year. But despite those stirrings and official enthusiasm, fundamental questions about urban rail remain unresolved: What precisely will the first segment be, how…

“A Sacramento Bee investigation has found that the California Department of Transportation technician who conducted key testing on the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge has been discipilined for fabricating test results on other projects. The technician, Duane Wiles, also failed to verify that his testing gauge was operating properly, as required by Caltrans to ensure…

Over the past year, severe weather in the Washington D.C. area has led to frequent power outages, and called attention to the service of utility provider Pepco.  “One of Pepco’s standard explanations for the frequency and duration of its outages — dense tree cover — does not hold up under scrutiny, a three-month Washington Post…

A two-part series by the Detroit Free Press found that “despite hundreds of oil and natural-gas pipeline accidents in the last decade, there are no federal regulations governing how far major pipelines should be from homes, or schools or businesses.”   An interactive graphic show where oil and gas pipelines run through the state of…