• Many aging road users see no alternatives to driving in their communities. Forty percent of respondents aged 65 and older reply that they ride with family or friends, 26 percent say they walk, and 15 percent say there is no other way to get around other than driving.

China Buys U.S.

China State Construction Engineering Corp., the People’s Republic’s biggest builder by market value, intends to buy a U.S. construction company next year as it begins investing as much as $2 billion in the world’s largest economy, according to a Bloomberg report. The builder has shortlisted two potential takeover targets, including one with annual sales of about $1 billion, says the report.

State Taxes Stronger

While we keep worrying about funds for our highways and bridges from Washington, the concern over what states can find in their coffers has also been a constant for the past couple of years. Now the Rockefeller Institute of Government is reporting that tax collection data for the July-September quarter of 2011 shows growth in overall state tax collections. Though “more modest” than the previous three quarters, the growth was “still strong.” Among 48 early reporting states, all but three showed gains in collections over the same quarter in 2010. We now have seven consecutive quarters with rising state tax collections following five quarters of decline triggered by the Great Recession. And after those seven quarters of growth, overall state tax revenues have recovered to pre-recession figures.

SAY WHAT

“Hopefully, we learned a little lesson last year.”

—TxDOT spokesman Mark Pettit, as Dallas — still smarting from its struggle with a freak snowstorm during Super Bowl week last year — gets it first fleet of snowplows.

Clarification: In the “The State of Bridges” article in Better Roads’ November 2011 issue, the number of Texas’s structurally deficient (SD) and functionally obsolete (FO) bridges were transposed in the left-hand column on page 11. Texas has 1,469 SD bridges and 7,480 FO bridges. The table on page 12 titled, “Highest Percentage of SD/FO State/Interstate Bridges” contained the data for “Highest Percentage of Total SD/FO City/County/Township Bridges.” The corrected article is on the Better Roads website, www.betterroads.com/the-state-of-our-bridges/, and also in the November digital edition on the website.