- FHWA Postpones Effective Date Of Buy America Rule Revision
- PA Turnpike Announces Tollbooth Demolition Start And New App For Drivers Stuck In Backups
- Illinois Tollway Is Accepting Student Internship Applications
- Careful iPhone Users Can Defeat Scammers Who Bypass Apple Security Measure
- These are just some of the toll industry developments TRN is following.
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FHWA Postpones Effective Date Of Buy America Rule Revision
USDOT has “temporarily” delayed the March 17, 2025, effective date of the Buy America Requirements for Manufactured Products final rule. According to a Federal Register notice published today, the postponement is in accordance with a January 20, 2025, presidential memorandum that freezes all executive branch regulatory activity pending Trump administration review. The notice, issued by FHWA chief counsel James Payne, represents that the department has statutory and other grounds for making the delay effective immediately without the necessity of giving prior notice and an opportunity for public comment.
The Buy America final rule was published in the final days of the Biden administration, on January 14, 2025. It amends FHWA’s Buy America regulation to terminate the general waiver for manufactured products and establish requirements for manufactured products used in federal-aid highway projects.
Highway-Tunnel-Bridge Maintenance Issues of Law Procurement of Tolling Equipment & Services US Department of Transportation (USDOT)PA Turnpike Announces Tollbooth Demolition Start And New App For Drivers Stuck In Backups
KYW-AM reports on two Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) announcements. According to COO Craig Shuey the demolition of tollbooths made obsolete by the conversion to open-road tolling will begin this spring on the upper end of the Northeast Extension. “In June,” he says, “the Philadelphia area will begin seeing demolition — Norristown to Mid-County and Street Road, with Bensalem being the last of the interchanges to get reconstructed. And that’s going to occur in 2026.”
Mr. Shuey adds that later this month, PTC will launch a text service that enables drivers stuck in backups to find out why traffic isn’t moving. “We will tie them to our incident management system and provide real-time information about what’s happening at that particular location,” he explains.
AET (All-Electronic Tolling) ETC Systems Highway-Tunnel-Bridge Maintenance Mobile Navigation and Traffic Monitoring Apps Open-Road Tolling Pennsylvania Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC)Illinois Tollway Is Accepting Student Internship Applications
The Illinois Tollway Authority announced that students with the requisite educational qualifications can apply online for its 2025 Internship Programs through March 30. Internships with pay and flexible scheduling offer students “practical experience in different segments of the transportation industry and government, while connecting them with mentors and professional development opportunities to help further their careers. These experiences will help prepare students for leadership roles in their chosen fields.”
The Tollway’s annual Professional Services Internships run from June 2 through August 8, 2025, “placing students in various Tollway departments such as administration, business systems, facilities and fleet, finance, information technology, internal audit, office of the inspector general, operations, planning security and safety and stakeholder engagement.”
The Tollway also offers two Engineering Cooperative Education Internship programs for engineering students: a summer program from June to August 2025 and a year-long program from June 2025 through May 2026. “These internships provide hands-on experience in project management, structural drafting and 3-D modeling, and construction inspections and traffic maintenance.”
Students interested in learning more about internships can read the announcement, view an informational video, refer to the Careers section on the Tollway’s website (scroll down to “Illinois Tollway Internship Program Information”), or sign up for a live online information session scheduled for Friday morning, March 14.
Illinois Illinois State Toll Highway Authority (IL Tollway) Transportation and Infrastructure Leadership And Workforce Diversity Transportation And Infrastructure Workforce IssuesCareful iPhone Users Can Defeat Scammers Who Bypass Apple Security Measure
Clearly, some toll payment smishing perpetrators have succeeded in bypassing the filtering and security measures mobile companies provide for the protection of their customers. WRCB reports that exploiting a “loophole” in Apple security protocols is one method scammers have found to prey on iPhone owners. The article describes a ruse that fraudsters are using to pass smishing website links to message recipients. Its advice to iPhone users is “[a]void responding to any text messages you’re not anticipating, especially those that ask for a ‘Y’ or any other confirmation.”
Crime Beat Cybersecurity ETC SystemsThese are just some of the toll industry developments TRN is following.
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