(Photo: Meghan Doyle/ Flickr)

Pop quiz:

What do you pay in federal fuel tax for every gallon of gas you buy? What percentage of the price of a gallon of gas comes from fuel taxes?

No Googling!

As the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy points out, Americans are woefully short of understanding the factors that make up the price they pay per gallon for gasoline at the pump. And, the Institute also points out, most Americans think the federal fuel tax goes up every year. (Spoiler alert: it has been 18.4 cents for almost twenty years).

Fact is, gas taxes do not deserve the blame they are getting for our high gas prices. Ten years ago about one third of what you paid for a gallon of gas came from fuel taxes (federal, state and local). Today it is about half that.

Question: How do you convince the public that the 18.4 cents per gallon fuel tax (which goes into a fund that only pays for transportation infrastructure) should be raised, and maybe indexed? And how do you convince the public that without a raise there will not be enough money for our roads and bridges when Washington politicians who face reelection are aware that most of their voters are way out of the loop when it comes to gas taxes? Politicians are there to stay there, not to educate the public. Right?

Residential access is limited to light vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The city’s Twitter feed notes that no large trucks will be allowed in neighborhoods. Residents and media members entering neighborhoods must show identification or other credentials for access.

Though many roads are opening, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation requested on Twitter that drivers should try to stay off Interstate-35. “If you must travel, please find alternate route,” the agency wrote via the City of Moore’s Twitter handle. On it’s own Twitter account, ODOT suggested I-44, US-81 and US-69 as alternate routes.

Click the link below for road opening/closure updates from @cityofmoore and @OKDOT from May 22.

[View the story "Moore roads open with limited access" on Storify]

Tom Kiselica

Bomag Americas has hired Tom Kiselica as the road building specialist for the northeastern United States.

Kiselica’s responsibilities will include providing equipment training, demonstrations and machine set-up services to customers for Cedarapids asphalt pavers and material transfer equipment, CMI reclaimer/stabilizers and BOMAG’s existing line of milling equipment.

Kiselica has more than 30 years of experience in the service and sale of asphalt paving and road building equipment. He previously worked with Gateway Equipment, Way Equipment and Cedarapids.

Kiselica will work from a satellite office from within his territory.

Bicyclists carry supplies during 2012 Disaster Relief Trials in Seattle, Washington.

Seattle, Washington, next month will test bikes as a means of disaster relief, Road.cc reported.

The city will hold Disaster Relief Trials (DRT) to gauge the cities preparedness for natural disasters such as earthquakes. Bicycles are a major part of the city’s DRT.

Bicycles have been used for disaster relief in other cities. After Hurricane Sandy, for example, Giant Bicycle and Transportation Alternatives donated bikes to New York medical staff, who were then able to maneuver through areas that vehicles could not.

This is not the first year Seattle has used bikes in its DRT. Last year, the city’s DRT featured cargo bikes and bikes towing trailers, both of which would be used to transport essential supplies in case of road closures.

Check out the video below to see the bikes carrying supplies at Seattle’s 2012 DRT.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the site entry to see the video.]

Michigan state capitol (Photo: DanMacMan / Flickr)

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and Republican lawmakers signed an agreement Tuesday to set targets for the state’s budget, Crain’s Detroit Business reported.

The budget is expected to be completed by Wednesday of next week.

House Speaker Jase Bolger (R-MI) said the agreement puts $350 million of the state budget toward transportation. Bolger referred to the funding as “a down payment,” stating that the money will help the state match federal funding and repair roads.

Bolger said a long-term solution for transportation is not likely to be happen before the budget is finalized.

San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (Photo: Markus Lueske / Flickr)

Closing in on an end-of-summer opening, the $6.4 billion eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is getting set for its big day more with a whimper than a bang.

Good point from Dan Walters in San Jose Mercury News. Do the trials and tribulations (that seems like a reasonable one size fits all description for this span) of the bridge tell us something about the future of California’s planned bullet trains and tunnels?

California Governor Jerry Brown may now be backing off his “it will be open by Labor Day” stance after his cavalier dismissal of concerns lead to some pointed questions about responsibility and safety.

The Federal Highway Administration has now launched a probe into why seemingly undesirable bolts were used on portions of the bridge.

And The San Francisco Chronicle reports that John Fisher, 82, an emeritus professor of civil engineering at Lehigh University and member of Caltrans’ peer-review panel for the project, said the state’s decision to use galvanized, high-strength steel rods was “not well-thought through” because such metal can crack when exposed to the elements, and Caltrans needs to examine hundreds of at-risk rods on the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge and replace any that are hard enough to be vulnerable to cracking.

Design problems, work problems, budget problems–it’s been a long rocky road for this bridge. In any construction project–but, it seems, especially the really big ones–snowballing is a problem: small problems, inadequately handled, roll into bigger ones and so on.

It’s surely at times like this that the QC guys and the inspectors say, “Hey, we told you we were the good guys.”

(Photo: Michael Fawcett / Flickr)

On-highway diesel fuel prices have continued to increase in most regions of the United States this week, our sister site, Aggregates Manager, reported.

This is the second consecutive week of nearly nationwide increases.

The New England region, the only region with declining prices, experienced a decrease of $0.004 per gallon.

The largest increase occurred in the West Coast less California region, which jumped $0.049 per gallon since last week.

Despite the increases, diesel fuel prices are still down from last year. Though the U.S. experienced a $0.024 per gallon increase this week, nationwide diesel fuel prices are down $0.066 per gallon year-over-year.

For more information, including a chart displaying weekly and yearly changes per region, check out the full diesel fuel report at AggMan.com.

The 0.74-percent decrease in the construction industry’s fuel consumption in April represents a slowing in construction activity. The decrease follows an adjusted 1.2-percent fall in March; the original reading was a 0.9-percent dip.

Despite the monthly decrease, construction fuel consumption in April was up 3.2 percent over April 2012. This marks the seventh consecutive year-over-year gain.

For more details, check out the full story at EquipmentWorld.com.

(Photo: Victoria Pickering / Flickr)

We reported last week that the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will hold a confirmation hearing on the nomination of Mayor Anthony Foxx for Secretary of Transportation.

The meeting–which will take place tomorrow, May 22, at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time–will be broadcast live on the Senate Commerce Committee website.

The committee’s website states that anyone interested in watching the webcast should refresh the homepage 10 minutes before the scheduled start time to begin streaming the webcast.

Watch the webcast here.

A battery-powered bus built by Proterra. (Photo: Proterra)

The California Energy Commission has purchased the first two battery-powered buses for Northern California, KCET reported.

The commission purchased the fast-charging buses, built by Proterra, with a $2.56 million grant through the AB118 Air Quality Improvement Program. The buses will be part of the San Joaquin Regional Transit District’s fleet in Stockton, California.

The grant also covers costs for an automatic charging station that will guide an approaching battery-powered bus into position and charge the bus for 10 minutes–long enough to power the bus for two hours. California-based AeroVironment built the charging stations.

Buses that are similar to those in Stockton are already fully-operational with Foothill Transit in Pomona.