Oberstar Says Lack of Research Stalls Push for Heavier Trucks

This story appears in the Jan. 18 print edition of Transport Topics.

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said he believes that a lack of good data on the effect of bigger trucks on the nation’s roadways has stalled any hope the trucking industry has of new legislation to change the current limits.

Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), who three years ago suggested a test of heavier trucks, said the failure of that effort to materialize likely closed the window of opportunity for a nationwide increase in weights as part of the upcoming bill to provide highway funding for the next six years.

In an interview last week, he said his vision for a two-state test of heavier trucks collapsed over Maine’s concerns about a potential fee on the heavier trucks.

More recently, in the annual transportation spending measure Congress passed late last year, both Maine and Vermont got the go-ahead to increase their truck weights for a one-year pilot.

In addition to the short-term test, Oberstar said the future of truck weight limits also could depend on a federal review of the federal bridge formula, which is what officials use to calculate the amount of weight bridges can safely support.

“There are just so many questions that need to be answered,” he said during the session in his office on Capitol Hill. “I’d say it’s under evaluation, under consideration by the Federal Highway Administration and by committee staff and myself. But I think we need to be very careful in what we do in going ahead, on what we do on that issue.”

As a result, he said it was unlikely Congress would make changes in size or weight regulations anytime soon.

Oberstar said he was optimistic about passing a highway bill — which would be the likely vehicle for a weight change — this year but not before the ongoing test was completed.

In 2007, Oberstar told Transport Topics he would be interested in a pilot program to examine the effect of heavier trucks on highways (click here for previous story).

Last week, the Minnesota Democrat said he had tried to implement a test then, but he was unable to get the parties involved to agree.

“Had we done [a pilot] in 2007, we’d have some results today to evaluate and to take action or not on the outcome,” he said. Without that data, he said, it would be hard to make a change.

Oberstar told TT that concerns from Maine representatives were about heavy logging trucks that generally travel the state’s roads, rather than on federally funded interstates that are subject to the 80,000-pound limit.

Those trucks, along with trucks in other states such as Minnesota, Montana and elsewhere, “operate on state roads and they go through small towns, they are rumbling through the towns; there’s noise, pollution, and safety problems and accidents on these logging routes. And what they want to do is just shift that burden and traffic over to the interstate,” he said.

In response, Oberstar said he worked with Minnesota, Maine and the Federal Highway Administration on a pilot.

He said FHWA told them that “for such a pilot program operating on the interstate you should pay a fee — cents per mile — on a formula.”

At that point, Oberstar said Minnesota agreed to the fee, but Maine balked, killing the proposal.

Oberstar said FHWA is now “re-evaluating the bridge formula and the bridges built in the ’60s and early ’70s . . . when the bridge formula was approved.”

“Before weights were changed in 1982 and 80,000 [pounds] allowed . . . there was no evaluation and no one asked the Federal Highway Administration whether that weight shift would be in accord with the bridge formula,” he said.

The chairman said any change in weight limits would have to wait until after that review concludes.

Besides the concerns about the effect larger vehicles could have on roads and bridges, there are other political hurdles to increasing truck weights, ranging from opposition by interest groups and the railroad industry, to the lack of unanimous support for heavier vehicles within the trucking industry itself.