Briefs

We hear unofficially that one state DOT plans to make a formal complaint about our use of their logo as an illustration in a report about a project they are developing. We use people's logos in almost every article we write and sometimes more than one logo. With 6,500 articles posted we must have made 7,000 or 8,000 logo uses. Only once before has someone complained and only in an angry email, and they soon dropped the issue.

Toll road operators from West Virginia to Illinois and into New England have had their snowplows and salt spreaders out in full force the past 24 hours. The coastal states from Virginia up into New York have had more a slippery, melting mix - snow, sleet and rain.

Down in Norfolk VA they face the prospect of storm driven tidal flooding of a tunnel.

"When progressives talk of government, it is in an alluring can-do spirit….This is all well and good as nostalgia, but is utterly detached from the spirit and the practices of 21st-century government. We don’t excel at building things. We excel at studying things, and putting up obstacles to building them. We delay, cavil, and sue. We protest and micromanage. It is not the age of the engineer but of the bureaucrat, the lawyer, and the environmental activist..." - Rick Lowry, National Review 2013-03-05

http://www.nationalreview.com/author/56473/latest

Chess.com lists the Greatest Chess Players of the Modern Era.  Out of 35 only two represent the USA.

There are seven Russians, three Chinese, three Ukrainians,  and three Azerbaijanis. Reigning world champion of course is the Indian Viswanathan Anand.

"In the tortured argot of Washington, 'sequestration' connotes a 'reduction in government spending.' It is thus an exquisite weasel word, the kind that fraud-construction thrives on.

3M is closing the FSTech offices in Irvine California and moving about 75 positions there to their big research center in Austin TX and a few to 3M head office in St Paul MN.  An official said this is another move to gain synergies of co-location of people doing similar work. It's also an effort to make the business - which was losing money under Federal Signal - more efficient and more  "scalable."

Transport reporter Bruce Siceloff in the Charlotte News Observer writes that the prospects for the Turnpike sponsored Garden parkway project proceeding are dim. Dana Bumgardner, a local state legislator from Gaston County where project is located has introduced legislation to kill it.

In the state senate Sen Kathy Harrington, a Gaston County Republican who co-chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, won election by campaigning against the parkway, according to Siceloff.

Atkins new north American CEO will be Joe Boyer. He replaces retiring CEO Dean Fox.

Boyer comes from Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure Inc in Austin TX where he was president of its federal division.

How a fun young couple from San Francisco did their 'green' thing and developed a thriving new business enabled by the internet… a fun read!

http://sproutpeople.org/who.html

TOLLROADSnews 2013-02-24

The last small part of the McDonnell administration's plan to use tolls to reconstruct I-95 south of Fredericksburg has been killed. Friday the state House passed a mammoth bill HB2313 containing the clause just before the end: "11. That no tolls shall be imposed or collected on Interstate 95 south of Fredericksburg pursuant to the Interstate System Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Pilot Program without the prior approval of the General Assembly."

The governor's office supports the bar on tolls, having negotiated tax increases instead.