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Speaking of the Brent Spence Bridge, would be interesting to see which one actually gets finished first, it or the I-69 bridge.

Probably the latter. I fear it it will take an I-35W situation to get anything going on the Brent Spence.

The Brent Spence's issues are capacity issues, not structural issues. The structural integrity of the span is fine. It's not in any danger of falling into the river.

So when will the existing Brent Spence bridge be due for replacement?

The EIS re-evaluation is now available to read for the US 67/Future I-57 four lane from Route 158 to just south of Neelyville.

https://www.modot.org/sites/default/files/documents/Route%2067%20EIS%20Reevaluation.pdf

They acknowledge that the Route 158 will have be redone in order to meet interstate standards, but no word on eliminating the two at-grade intersections at County C and the frontage road system north of there.

Also, got to love some of those email comments......

Oh those comments are classic. Especially the tweets. The "this is great" mixed in with the "fix my dirt road first" responses.  The one where the husband is passing off to the wife, then back to the husband and then to son, all on Twitter. OMH!

All these people in Missouri making proclamations on what should happen in Corning, Arkansas. I couldn't help but laugh.

Also, all the memorandum's from all of the affiliated or impacted state and federal agencies! Now we know why it takes so long to get a road built.

Pennsylvania has a few these older sign support structures around, with at least a couple of them being on US 220 between I-180 and I-80: https://goo.gl/maps/f98UzA1NcbzRMrCj9

They’re a bit unusual in that the horizontal truss structure of the sign “bridge” (excuse my lack of proper terminology knowledge) extends beyond the vertical supports and connects diagonally with the footings at the base, giving the overall assembly an odd, top-heavy appearance.

Louisiana also has a bunch of these old gantries still around as well, I believe.

instituting the US  minimum wage in Puerto Rico will decimate their economy worse than it already is.....

Decimate?  The only employees in Puerto Rico with a minimum wage lower than the federal $7.25/hour are those not covered by FLSA.

Non-FLSA employees in Kansas are likewise exempt from the state minimum wage.

In 2010, Kansas raised its state minimum wage from the previous $2.65/hour, to $7.25/hour.  This was right around the same time the federal minimum wage increased from the previous $5.15/hour to that same $7.25/hour.  In other words, non-FLSA employees in Kansas were bumped up from $5.15/hour to $7.25/hour.

Puerto Rico's current minimum wage already matches the current federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour, so FLSA employees would stay the same.  Non-FLSA employees in Puerto Rico currently have a minimum wage of $5.08/hour, which is roughly the same as what their counterparts in Kansas had been making prior to the bump.

Considering that the Kansas economy was not 'decimated' when the minimum wage increase happened here a decade ago, I have my doubts that the economy of Puerto Rico would be 'decimated' if an almost identical increase were to happen there.

Or am I missing something specific about Puerto Rico that would make it get hit especially hard?

What caught my eye was the construction phasing on pages 17 and 18 of that pdf.

So there is a real possibility this could become another Bella Vista bypass situation.

Today, we have pay-by-plate so there's no need for toll plazas and hence no risk of crashes. The bigger issue is that people don't like tax increases. And given Connecticut's history, if they brought back tolls, I'm sure they'd find another way to squander it and then come back asking for another tax increase.

If Connecticut were to ever bring back tolls (not likely IMHO, but then, I'm from Wisconsin), I am sure they would all be charged electronically. As I have said before, toll booths and toll plazas from the 20th century are obsolete, and should remain in the 20th century.

See Reply #3732 regarding the latest re-tolling initiative via electronic toll collection.  In short: dead-on arrival when it was discovered that even the little piece of I-684 in CT was slated to have an AET gantry erected.  Westchester County, NY residents weren't having it.

Was Burt Reynolds even in part III?

Yes BR has a scene at the end where Buford thinks he's talking to the real bandit.  BR is listed in the cast.  He was busy with Stroker Ace at the time. 

And, of course, you have a perfectly fine (even good-looking!) sign just to the right of it that nobody bothered to try to match in any way, shape or form. Not even the same font size.

Of course it's not the same font size—looking at it again, on top of all of the other errors, the messed-up sign has the classic 3/4 error as well! (Compare the stroke width of the capital letters with the lowercase ones.)

In Minnesota there used to be quite a few curved monotube-ish gantries, especially on lower-speed urban roads/junctions throughout the state. I'm not sure how old they are, but very few remain. Here's one that was removed a few years back in Red Wing. This is notable because (with the exception of the Saint Anthony Falls I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis) Minnesota doesn't use curved monotube gantries. More conventional monotube gantries (like this) are still used sparingly in new installations, but most of Minnesota's newer gantries have a triangular truss design like this.

Weird, it's exactly backwards in Oklahoma -  trusses are out and monotubes are now the preferred choice.  The monotubes are a much cleaner design, IMHO.

Only in certain counties, though—urban counties get monotubes but rural still gets trusses, apparently. The only reason I suspect such a policy is that there was a project that spanned between Cleveland and McClain counties and replaced a bunch of signs. On the Cleveland side of the line, all monotubes. The signs on the McClain side got trusses.

This also only applies to free roads. The new turnpikes in the OKC area all use trusses.

I personally prefer the trusses because the monotubes look too clean. I know, intellectually, that the monotubes are designed to hold the weight of a sign. But visually, from a design standpoint, a single pole 'feels' too flimsy, like the sign is going to tip over backward off the back of the gantry or slip off of it.

This?

It's interesting that there's one right on I-390, given how I tend to think of Québec with those things.

Probably just left in place as an emergency cross-over.   We have a few in NJ - The most obvious are the crossovers at the Delaware Memorial Bridge to allow both directions to use one of the bridges:
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.6821672,-75.4980044,394m/data=!3m1!1e3

....

In a similar vein to that, for many years Route 236 just west of Annandale, Virginia, had these paved crossovers blocked with jersey walls on either side of the Beltway overpass: https://goo.gl/maps/yMKfRLeYYXfFXPtS8 (it should be showing you the 2008 Street View; if not, click into that year). You can click ahead to the other side of the overpass to see the other one. Those were there because sometime back in the 1980s there was one of a series of fiery crashes involving an overturned tanker truck going to or from the tank farm in Fairfax City and the fire was intense enough that one of the bridges had to be closed for repairs. After the repair was done, they simply blocked the crossovers with barriers and left them there for almost 30 years until the overpasses were replaced as part of the HO/T lanes project on the Beltway. During that construction, they built larger crossovers for a while as all traffic used one bridge while the other was demolished, then after that all traffic used the new bridge while they repeated the process. After it was all done, they finally removed the crossovers and paved median altogether.