If you'd been hoping that the long-awaited D Street Overpass project would open as promised today, then you'll just have to put those hopes on hold.

The City of Tacoma now predicts the $24.5 million project will be opening June 16. The four lanes over the railroad tracks could be open as soon as this weekend, but the Dock Street connection will open somewhat later.

The formal ribbon-cutting ceremony is set for June 25, said the City of Tacoma's Roxanne Murphy.

A trip over the partially open bridge this morning showed the major structural elements are in place, but items such as the railings are still to be completed.

The completion of the project will be a great relief to Dock Street residents who've dealt with repaving projects and street closures since April 2006.

The overpass will end the long waits that drivers have experienced for years trying to cross the BNSF-Union Pacific main line at D Street.

The aerospace community is abuzz today trying to puzzle out what the forced resignations of Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley will mean to Air Force procurement policies.

Boeing, of course, is hoping new leadership at the Air Force will somehow have a change of heart about awarding the $40 billion contract for new airborne tankers to an Airbus consortium.

Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the chief standard bearer for Boeing's 767-based tanker in Congress, said the resignations could be significant.

"For months the Air Force has stonewalled Congress and the American people in answering basic questions about the tanker decision. Now, on the eve of the GAO ruling, the administration has expressed a lack of confidence in the decision-making and leadership of the Air Force's top officials."

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is scheduled to rule on Boeing's appeal of the tanker contract on June 19.

In the meantime, the Economic Policy Institute says its new study of the tanker contract shows that contracting with Boeing instead of the Northrop-Airbus group will create 14,000 more U.S. jobs.

Northrop and Airbus' parent company, EADS, will base their tanker on the Airbus A330 commercial airliner. Much of that tanker will be made in Europe, but final assembly will be in a new plant in Mobile, Ala.

Boeing's proposed tanker would be based on its 767 jet made in Everett and modified in Wichita, Kan.

EPI estimated that the Boeing tanker would contain 75 to 84 percent U.S. content while the Northrop-Airbus tanker would contain 50 to 60 percent U.S. content.

Amazon’s Web site went down for more than two hours in the middle of the day Friday, The Associated Press reports.

The Web site shut down at about 10 a.m., giving an error code to anyone visiting it, according to Keynote Systems Inc., a California-based company that measures Internet activity.

Here's more from the story:

Shawn White, Keynote’s director of external operations, says an error in the configuration of the Web site might have caused the shut down.

White says another reason might have been be server overload, but he says Amazon has a history of being able to handle large loads of visitors.

Calls to Amazon.com were not immediately returned.
White says the Web site was back up to 60 percent capability around noon.

You've just paid $800 for a roundtrip to Houston. You've forked over $40 each way to check two bags, $20 to make your reservation at the counter, $5 for snack box on board and $30 extra for an aisle seat.

Isn't there something to break up the monotony of all this bad news about traveling?

Yes, and it comes from Portland's FlightStats.com, which tracks airline on-time performance across the country.

In spite of the economic crisis that's hit the airline industry this year, or perhaps because of it, flights are improving their on-time performance nationwide.

According FlightStats figures, flights were on time 79 percent of the time in May nationwide, up for the fourth month running. In 2007, the average for on-time arrivals across the country was 72.6 percent.

On-time performance at Sea-Tac Airport in May was slightly better than the national average at 79.72 percent. That compares favorably with average at Sea-Tac for all of last year of 73.39 percent.

SeaTac's Horizon Airlines recorded the third-best on-time arrival performance of the 39 North American airlines that FlightStats tracks.

Horizon flights were on time (within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival time) 87.69 percent in May.

Sun Country Airlines posted the best record with an 88.09 percent on-time performance in May. Hawaiian Airlines was second with 88.04 percent.

Horizon's brother airline, Alaska, was on time 79.35 percent of the time.

I drove by a gas station on my way to work this morning that had regular for $4.21 a gallon. I kinda hoped that was an anomaly but I checked the AAA Web site and the Tacoma average is $4.22, up from $4.209 yesterday.

That means it would cost me 69 cents more to fill my volkswagen with 13 gallons today than on Thursday. And $6.54 cents more than a month ago when gas was $3.717.

Has the price of gas affected you? Have you started going in to work fewer days a week or carpooling?

If you drive in to Seattle or even to Tacoma from Puyallup, those gas prices add up.