Robert D. “Danny” Evans Jr. couldn’t help but smile as four lines of self-propelled modular transporters gently backed a new 2,800-ton cracking furnace into position at Chevron Phillips Chemical Co.’s Baytown, Texas, ethylene plant in September 2022.
Congress’s last-minute spending appropriations saga had one more unexpected twist, with the Senate approving legislation to transfer administrative control of the Robert F. Kennedy Stadium campus to the District of Columbia.
Federal funding for construction and infrastructure programs will remain at current levels until mid-March 2025, under a stopgap spending measure passed by Congress on Dec. 20.
Early on the morning of Sept. 24, 2022, three six-trailer lines of self-propelled modular transporters (SPMTs) groaned into motion for a one-mile journey across Chevron Phillips Chemical Co.’s Baytown, Texas, ethylene plant.
From the day it broke ground in September 2019 to its grand opening exactly four years later, the Brightline passenger railroad’s 170-mile extension from West Palm Beach to Orlando has been a novel, even audacious undertaking.