(From appeal-democrat.com) The California Transportation Commission has allocated $2.2 billion in new funding, including $41.5 million for a long-awaited, long-term road rehabilitation project planned for Yuba County. Drainage and electrical work is expected to begin in the spring, with primary road construction to start a year later. Proposition 1B, a 2006 voter-approved transportation ...

(From fxstreet.com) After a strong showing in the first half of the year, Canadian housing starts showed no signs of letting up, rising 4% in July to an above-consensus 205.1K units (from a downwardly revised 196.6K in June). All the gains were in multiples (up 13% to 120.2K), while single family ...

The idea of creating an infrastructure bank to leverage federal funds and funnel private investments into U.S. roads, bridges, transit and railways, has gained support from an influential private organization. The group Building America’s Future recently release a report: “Falling Apart and Falling Behind,” and former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, one of ...

(As reported by bloomberg.com.) U.S. home values in the second quarter had their smallest decline in more than four years, as the share of borrowers with negative equity shrunk. During the period April through June, 26.8% of single-family homeowners with mortgages owed more than their houses were worth, compared with 28.4% in the previous ...

The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have issued a preliminary notice of proposed Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. The proposal would allow full-size pickup trucks, some of the biggest sellers for Detroit's automakers, to meet less stringent standards than cars from 2017 to 2021. The standards ...

(A release from the Associated General Contractors of America.) Construction employment inched up by 8,000 jobs to a 15-month high in July but remained far below the peak set in early 2006, according to an analysis of new federal employment data released by the Associated General Contractors of America. Association officials said ...

(A release from Purdue University) A civil engineer at Purdue University is taking advantage of the demolition of a bridge spanning the Ohio River to learn more about how bridges collapse in efforts to reduce the annual cost of inspecting large spans. "There is a whole family of bridges called fracture-critical," said ...

A new report from U.S. DOT Inspector General, “Financial Analysis of Transportation-Related Public-Private Partnerships,” says Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) rarely generate “new” money. PPPs “change the timing with which funds become available, but generally do not increase overall funding levels," the report says, because investors who provide funds up front assume risk and ...

A study by the American Society for Civil Engineers found that the cost of failing to invest more in the U.S. transportation infrastructure would total $3.1 trillion in lost Gross Domestic Product growth by 2020. The study also said investing only at current levels would cause 877,000 jobs to be lost. ...

(News from the Associated General Contractors of America.) Construction employment, not seasonally adjusted, increased from June 2010 to June 2011 in 149 metro areas (including divisions of large metros), decreased in 141 and remained unchanged in 47, the Associated General Contractors reported today in an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics ...

(News from the Associated General Contractors of America.) Construction spending totaled $772 billion at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) in June, up 0.2% from the rate in May but down 4.7% from June 2010, the Census Bureau reported on Monday. The estimates for May and April were revised upward by ...

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has announced that Ford Motor Co. is recalling more than 1 million trucks, including the F-150, the top-selling U.S. vehicle, because straps that secure fuel tanks to the vehicles may corrode and cause the tanks to fall. The defect has led to three fires and one injury, according to ...