Highways

China's main north-south national highway reopened Monday after weeks of snow and ice storms, easing transportation bottlenecks that have stranded millions of people and disrupted food and fuel supplies as the year's biggest holiday approaches. The China Meteorological Administration predicted rain and sleet through today, but said the weather would clear in time for the Lunar New Year on Thursday.

Christin Ernst was in a fix. An errant screwdriver punctured her tire on a San Diego freeway, leaving her stranded. That's when Thomas Weller -- a.k.a. the San Diego Highwayman -- arrived in his monstrous white search-and-rescue vehicle, complete with emergency lights flashing. A surprised Ernst watched as Weller slapped on her spare, inflated it and handed her a card. It reads: "Assisting you has been my pleasure.

Drivers of cars and trucks swerved into other lanes to avoid a 3-year-old boy, wearing only a diaper and T-shirt, who was playing along a busy Indianapolis highway after wandering away from home while his mother slept, police said. Motorists stopped along the interstate to take care of the boy until officers arrived. The boy was unhurt. His mother, Nancy Dyer, 33, faces child neglect charges.

In a city where the average commute lasts 31.2 minutes and drivers have no shortage of bottlenecks and wrecks to grumble about, a Republican state lawmaker is exercised about a different kind of transportation issue: Cynthia McKinney Parkway. Georgia Rep. Len Walker cannot abide driving along a suburban highway honoring Georgia's former Democratic congresswoman.

In the largest and longest study of its kind, USC researchers have found that children living near busy highways have significant impairments in the development of their lungs that can lead to respiratory problems for the rest of their lives.

U.S. safety inspectors will be allowed to check trucks on Mexican soil before they enter the United States under a program that officials said would remove the last barrier to the long-delayed opening of U.S. highways to Mexican truckers. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary E. Peters and her Mexican counterpart, Luis Tellez, announced the plan Thursday during a visit to a trucking firm in Monterrey, Mexico. "This is a historic agreement to ensure the safety of these vehicles ...

It could cost as much as $378 million to rebuild a key route to Yosemite National Park that was buried by a massive rock slide last year, according to the California Department of Transportation. The most expensive option would include a mile-long tunnel through a mountain to permanently restore Highway 140, the western approach to the popular park. Five lower-cost choices start at $35 million to build bypass bridges and a short road along the wall of the Merced River canyon.

The State Assembly this week approved a resolution that cleared the way to designate a 30-mile stretch of Highway 243 between Banning and Mountain Center as the "Esperanza Firefighters Memorial Highway." The road will honor the five U.S. Forest Service firefighters who were overrun by flames while fighting a more than 40,000-acre, arson-caused blaze west of Palm Springs in October. The Assembly unanimously passed the resolution, sponsored by Assemblyman John J. Benoit, (R-Palm Desert), Monday.

They looked like bison on a bad-hair day. The herd of primeval-looking beasts -- 800-pound musk oxen -- shuffled aimlessly just a hundred feet from where we stood on Alaska's James B. Dalton Highway. With their shaggy coats and curved horns, they looked fierce but were reassuring signs of life on a highway that had few. But my friend Mike Weight and I liked it that way. If you want to get away from it all, the Dalton is the road to take.

Wildlife researchers Patricia Cramer and John Bissonette scanned the bushes and brush amid patches of snow, looking for signs of mule deer. Gleefully, Cramer kicked at a pile of droppings. "There you are," she said. "I like to see that. It means the mule deer are coming through here." It also means, she added, that deer are using a corrugated metal underpass to get to the other side of a four-lane highway splitting Sardine Canyon without becoming part of a growing national statistic -- roadkill.