Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said last week he believed President Bush would sign legislation by year’s end creating a new Homeland Security Department, after the Senate halted action on the bill until September.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said nearly 26,000 truck drivers could be disqualified every year under the agency’s new commercial driver license rules.

Click here to write a Letter to the Editor.Legislation moving through Congress to set up the Homeland Security Department President Bush has proposed would drop his proposal for universal driver licenses and prohibit funding for the Terrorism Information and Prevention System, known as Operation TIPS.

A provision in the pending energy bill requiring production of 5 billion gallons of ethanol in 2012 threatens to drain the Highway Trust Fund, according to highway lobbyists and leaders on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

As the Texas Department of Transportation begins a series of local hearings on where to locate safety-inspection stations for in-coming Mexican trucks, the mayor of Laredo, Texas, threatened to block plans to place federal and state truck inspection facilities at border-crossing bridges, which she said would worsen traffic backups.

State law enforcement authorities are not getting up-to-date information about truck-driver offenses, according to information that emerged from two state self-assessments of commercial driver license programs.

Early next year, the Bush administration and Congress will trade proposals for the next multiyear, multibillion-dollar highway spending bill. But transportation lobbyists and federal officials already are staking out classic positions on how to pump more money into the Highway Trust Fund and who should get how much out of the spigot.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is closer to issuing a rule requiring drivers who haul hazardous materials to undergo background checks, FMCSA Administrator Joseph M. Clapp said last week.

Canada and the United States are close to launching a program that will allow trucks from both countries hauling low-risk cargo to cross the northern U.S. border in a fast lane, according to officials from both countries.

Although the Department of Transportation has signaled it is close to opening the U.S. border to Mexican trucking, the process still has some wrinkles to iron out before those trucks begin operations across this country.