Panel OKs Draft Funding Bill That Includes EOBR Mandate

This story appears in the June 29 print edition of Transport Topics.

WASHINGTON — A key House subcommittee last week approved the framework for a new six-year surface transportation plan proposed by transportation committee leaders.

The plan calls for mandatory use of electronic onboard recorders and a new office to oversee development of public-private partnerships, among other significant policy moves.

However, the nearly 800-page proposal is also noteworthy for what it does not address: thorny issues such as states’ rate of return in federal spending on fuel taxes they collect, or truck size and weight limits.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), chairman of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, called the bill “a discussion draft” and said the panel’s leaders hoped members would “raise concerns that we will attempt to address before the full committee and then have a full amendment process.” During the June 24 subcommittee markup, nearly a dozen amendments were offered, and subsequently withdrawn; by agreement, they will be addressed later in the legislative process.

The bill itself would make some significant changes in transportation, particularly in a truck-safety section.

According to the text of the legislation, it would “require commercial motor vehicles . . . to be equipped with electronic onboard recorders.”

The EOBR regulations would include standards such as engine synchronization, methods of identifying individual drivers, ease of access for law enforcement and tamper prevention.

Clayton Boyce, spokesman for American Trucking Associations, said “the cost of electronic logging equipment is substantial, and if there is a federal mandate for the equipment in order to improve federal and state enforcement efforts, there should be federal funding assistance for it.”

“We’ve been pretty vocal about our support for an EOBR mandate, so I think we’re happy that it is included in the bill,” said Steve Keppler, director of policy and programs for the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance.

The bill also calls for the creation of an “office of public benefit” within the Federal Highway Administration to “provide protection of the public interest in relation to highway toll projects and public-private partnership agreements on federal-aid highways.”

The public interest office would review and approve proposed toll-rate changes and oversee other state or private activities including how toll revenues are used and whether lease or sale agreements include noncompete clauses.

“Clearly, our position has been that there needs to be a public interest standard applied and we think that the bill does that,” said Tim Lynch, a senior vice president of American Trucking Associations.

The bill also adopts a number of other changes to safety policy supported by ATA, including the creation of a drug and alcohol test clearinghouse for drivers and allowing employers to be notified if a driver has violated state or federal laws.

During the markup, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) raised the issue of truck sizes in proposing an amendment that would have allowed heavy coal trucks traveling in her state to use a small section of Interstate 77 in order to bypass a town.

Capito said that “each day 300 to 400 trucks pass through [Chesapeake] hauling West Virginia coal, and as you can imagine, it is heavy traffic that poses a safety risk and serious challenges for keeping the town clean and free of debris.”

The simplest solution, she said, would be to let 126,000-pound coal trucks use I-77, “but the federal interstate weight limits prohibit this.”

DeFazio said he “appreciated the concerns” of Capito, and that “we will have some discussion regarding truck weights before we move to full committee.”

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) proposed setting the minimum rate of return of fuel tax revenue to states at 92% of what is collected there.

“Equity is a huge issue,” Diaz-Balart said.

Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), a co-sponsor of the amendment, said that because the interstate highway system has been built there was “no logical rationale” as to why states should not get all the money back that they pay in fuel taxes.

Transportation Committee Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.) said leaders “specifically left this section of the bill blank so it could be resolved as we go forward to the full committee.”

After the hearing, he told re-porters that donor-donee concerns were “way overblown,” and said there are no rate-of-return battles when dealing with other federal spending, such as the Department of Defense budget.