U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Blair, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, put out a news release Wednesday trumpeting the inability of the Federal Aviation Administration to support claims that the looming sequester cuts will cause 90-minute flight delays:

During a Congressional hearing today, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta, when asked for data to support this claim, responded, “I can’t tell you with precision that it would be 90 minutes every day.”  When Members raised concerns about the Administration’s announcement on delays, despite the lack of precise data or a final plan, Huerta responded, “I think what we’re saying is that these are illustrative of the impacts we would expect to see.”

During the hearing of the Subcommittee on Aviation, Members of the panel expressed frustration with the FAA’s continued lack of data to support the Administration’s predictions of furloughs for nearly all of the agency’s 47,000 employees.

“For months, this committee has been asking the FAA for data about their sequester plans. For months, this committee has received nothing in response,” said Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA).

“I find it troubling that the FAA and the Administration are still figuring out how to make these cuts but continue to raise the alarm about furloughs and increased delays,” Mr. Shuster said.

It remains to be seen whether the Obama administration is exaggerating the impact of the sequester to try to force Hill Republicans to agree to an alternative. If serious air travel delays do occur, Mr. Shuster has placed himself squarely in the firing line.

Meanwhile, Paul Nussbaum of The Philadelphia Inquirer is spreading no sequester gloom-and-doom:

“Motorists and public transit users have little to fear from impending federal budget cuts,” he says in an article posted today.

“Most of the federal money for highways and mass transit operations comes from the Highway Trust Fund, which is exempt from the looming sequester, the mechanism that could require $85 billion in federal spending cuts this year.”

PennDOT will close the ramp from northbound Interstate 579-Crosstown Boulevard to Bigelow Boulevard from 10 p.m. today to 5 a.m. Friday for work on an overhead bridge. Traffic will be detoured via the Centre Avenue-Consol Energy Center exit.

The right lane on the outbound Parkway North will be closed at the Levi Bird Duff Bridge in Ross from 8 p.m. today to 6 a.m. Friday because of work on the bridge, Allegheny County announced this morning. The bridge is between Exit 5 at Perrysville and Exit 7 at West View. The bridge will close to vehicular traffic on Monday for a long-term rehabilitation project but will remain open to pedestrians. This restriction comes a few days after a county official told me there would be no significant parkway restrictions during the work.

Inbound Route 28 will be restricted to single-lane traffic from the 40th Street Bridge to East Ohio Street for the next two weekends and on weeknights through March, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation announced. The restrictions will be in place from 8 p.m. Friday through 5 a.m. Monday and during the same hours March 8 to 11 and on weeknights as the major construction project continues.

A $5.6 million bridge replacement on Curry Hollow Road in Pleasant Hills will resume Friday. At 7 a.m., traffic will be reduced to a single 10-foot-wide lane in both directions between Route 51 and Keeport Drive. The restriction will continue into mid-November as work continues on the bridge over railroad tracks west of Arbor Lane.

Warrendale Bayne Road will be reduced to one lane in both directions between the northbound I-79 off-ramp and Harmony Road in Marshall starting at 9 a.m. Monday and continuing around the clock through mid-August as a $3.7 million road reconstruction project resumes.

Police will “pace” or slow down traffic on the Pennsylvania Turnpike between Butler Valley and Allegheny Valley for 20-minute periods on Tuesday and Thursday as work continues to remove a Route 910 bridge in Indiana Township. The Tuesday pace will be between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. eastbound; Thursday’s will be 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. westbound. Troopers will restrict traffic to 20 mph to 25 mph during the paces.

Inspection of bridges and signs on the Parkway West will cause lane closures from 7:30 a.m. to noon Saturday on the outbound side between the Fort Pitt Tunnels and Banksville Road and between Green Tree and Carnegie. On Sunday, inbound lane closures are possible between Banksville and the tunnels from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and between Carnegie and Green Tree from 7:30 a.m. to noon.

Schedules for approximately 35 Port Authority bus routes will be adjusted effective Sunday, March 17. Port Authority adjusts schedules four times per year. Details and links to new schedules are posted at www.portauthority.org under “Service Changes.” Paper schedules will be available soon. Interestingly, no adjustments are planned on rail routes, which still operate on the same timetables that existed before 11 stops were eliminated last June.

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The South Highland Avenue bridge in Shadyside, as photographed by the Post-Gazette's Bob Donaldson earlier this year. It will close on Monday for a six-month replacement project that will preserve the stone abutments, which date to 1875. The bridge itself dates to 1925 and is structurally deficient and functionally obsolete -- and pretty darned ugly to boot.

Here is what the new bridge will look like:

A community meeting on the project will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Calvary Episcopal Church, 315 Shady Ave., Shadyside. More about the project can be found here.

More evidence today that a rebounding economy might be making our highways and roads more dangerous.

The Governors Highway Safety Association reports that preliminary data for the first half of 2012 shows a 19 percent increase in fatalities for 16- and 17-year-old drivers.

But good news in Pennsylvania, one of 17 states were deaths among 16- and 17-year-olds declined, possibly owing to the state’s stricter laws for junior licensees.

The national rise follows eight years of decreases, “so we appear to be headed in the wrong direction,” GHSA says. “Despite these increases, deaths are much lower than five and ten years ago. We must be vigilant to get the numbers going the right way again.

“While it is too soon to know for sure what is causing the increase in teen driver fatalities, we suspect the growing economy is playing a role. Additionally, the pace of states strengthening teen driving laws has slowed. We also suspect that distracted driving is contributing. It’s not news that teens are distracted by technology behind the wheel.”

Nationally, the preliminary data show the number of 16- and 17-year-olds who died in crashes in the first half of 2012 was 240, up from 202 in the same six-month period of 2011; Pennsylvania had six such deaths, down from 10 the previous year.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported in September that preliminary data showed a 9 percent increase in fatalities for all age groups during the first half of 2012, also reversing years of declines.

The 88-year-old South Highland Avenue Bridge in Shadyside will close for replacement on Monday. Kaitlynn Riely of the Post-Gazette described it thusly in a recent article:

There are bridges that inspire poetry and paintings. The South Highland Avenue Bridge is not one of them.

The thoroughfare, which connects Shadyside and East Liberty with its two lanes and two pedestrian walkways, is an ancient-looking structure covered in rust and graffiti.

It is, to put it plainly, a bridge about which no song has been sung and no book has been dedicated.

Yet soon it will be sorely missed.

The project will close South Highland Avenue and Ellsworth Avenue, which runs under it. Bus routes 71B Highland Park and 75 Ellsworth will be detoured. Weekend closures of the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway, which passes below the bridge, may be necessary. More details are here.

The project is scheduled for completion in September.

A community meeting on the project will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Calvary Episcopal Church, 315 Shady Ave., Shadyside.

Short-term lane closures are possible on Route 51 between Fidelity Drive and Stewart Avenue in Pleasant Hills and Whitehall starting at 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, continuing to 5 the following morning, during core drilling.

Rehabilitation of a bridge on Prestley Road in Collier will begin March 9, near the Thoms Run Road intersection. At 7 a.m. that day, weather permitting. Prestley Road will be open with alternating one-way traffic controlled by temporary signals from Thoms Run Road to the entrance of Journey Assembly of God and Cavanaugh Landscaping, but closed to through traffic from the church entrance to Route 50. The detour uses Route 50, Millers Run Road and Presto-Sygan Road. Work will conclude in the fall.

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The Levi Bird Duff Bridge over the Parkway North in Ross will close for a $3 million rehabilitation project next Monday. That’s why you’re seeing road work signs along the parkway, but Allegheny County officials said they don’t expect the work to cause traffic restrictions on the expressway.

The 30-year-old bridge, which carries Cornell Avenue over the parkway, is scheduled to remain closed to vehicles through Nov. 1 but will stay open to pedestrians throughout the project.

The six-mile detour uses Center Avenue, Perry Highway, Highland Avenue, Gass Road, Union Avenue, North Starr Avenue, Lincoln Avenue, North Balph Avenue, Bellevue Avenue and Cornell Road.

Tree trimming and removal will resume at the Parkway West-Banksville Road interchange on Tuesday. Short-term lane and shoulder closures are possible on ramps from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays through mid-March, but all ramps will stay open and parkway traffic will not be restricted.

Installation of protective shielding under the bridge that carries McKnight Road over Ingomar Road in McCandless will cause lane restrictions in both directions from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday. No restrictions will occur on McKnight Road.

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