Senate Passes Legislation Funding Transport Programs

This story appears in the Nov. 7 print edition of Transport Topics.

The Senate passed a spending package last week that would fund transportation programs in 2012 and allow trucks weighing up to 100,000 pounds on interstate highways in Maine and Vermont.

Senators defeated a provision that would have ended funding for transportation enhancements such as bicycle and pedestrian paths, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) blocked a vote on an amendment that would have cut funding for developing and enacting a proposed truck driver hours-of-service rule.

“This is a major step forward in my effort to allow the heaviest trucks to drive on our federal interstates for once and for all,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said of the heavy-truck provision, which she sponsored as an amendment to the spending bill.

“It would help shippers, truckers and Maine’s job creators,” she said.

Maine’s and Vermont’s congressional delegations have fought for years for permission to allow the heavier truck weights on their interstates, arguing that it is unfair that neighboring states have the higher weights.

Other New England states either had their higher weight limits grandfathered when Congress froze interstate weights in the 1990s or had specific federal legislation passed that permitted them.

Congress allowed a pilot program for the higher weights in Maine and Vermont in 2010, and officials from both states have said that the test showed safety benefits over restricting those trucks to smaller roads (3-7, p. 10).

“This really is the right direction that we should take,” Duane Brunell, manager of the safety office at the Maine Department of Transportation, told Transport Topics. “It’s best for safety, it’s best for all road users, it’s best for truckers, it’s best for everyone else out on the road.”

Maine saw “a significant diversion of large trucks off the secondary roads and onto the interstate” during the pilot, Brunell said.

The state also saw a more than 30% reduction in crashes involving trucks above 80,000 pounds, he said.

If the heavy-trucks language passes the legislative process and is signed by President Obama, Maine will issue an executive order to allow the trucks immediately, said Maine DOT spokesman Ted Talbot.

“Moving those trucks off of those local highways, out of those towns and villages . . . they’re much safer on the interstate,” Capt. Jake Elovirta, who leads the commercial vehicle safety enforcement division of the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles, told TT last month (10-31, p. 23).

American Trucking Associations favors the provision as well, said Darrin Roth, director of highway operations.

“It makes absolute sense to allow the states to shift those trucks from secondary roads to the interstate system,” Roth told TT. “As the pilot program showed, it will result in safer roads and less damage to the highway system.”

Carriers operating in Maine and Vermont also will see greater efficiency, since they will be able to take more direct routes without at-grade intersections or traffic lights, Roth said.

“As a result, companies in those states will likely see a drop in their freight transportation costs,” he said.

The Truck Safety Coalition and the Coalition Against Bigger Trucks, organizations that have opposed efforts to raise truck weights, did not return requests for comment.

The appropriations bill would fund transportation, agriculture, justice, science and housing programs for 2012. The transportation and housing part is $109.5 billion, just below the $109.6 billion level in 2011, the Senate appropriations committee said.

It includes $550 million for competitive grants to infrastructure projects and $41.1 billion for the federal-aid highway program, among other funds.

Senators voted 60 to 38 against an amendment proposed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that would have ended funding for transportation enhancements and redirected that funding to highway infrastructure.

“This amendment simply takes funds from beautification and puts them into bridges,” Paul told senators.

The money goes to projects including bicycle and hiking paths, bicycle lanes and pedestrian safety programs. But Paul alleged that it funded a building shaped like a giant coffee pot, a movie theater and “turtle tunnels.”

However, an Associated Press analysis of Paul’s claims said the coffee pot did not receive transportation funding, the movie theater is actually a driver education classroom and the tunnels allowed safe passage across highways for various wildlife, protecting drivers as well as the animals.

Transportation enhancement funds accounted for $927 million in the 2011 fiscal year, 2% of total highway funding.

Since the House has passed some appropriations bills but not others, and the ones it has passed differ from the Senate’s, the appropriations measures soon will go to a conference committee, the House appropriations committee said. That committee, appointed by leaders of each chamber, will work out differences between the bills.

Senate Majority Leader Reid chose not to allow a vote on an amendment that would have blocked the hours-of-service rule the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is set to issue soon (10-24, p. 1).

The office of Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), who proposed the amendment, declined to comment on the amendment’s fate.