Transport Funding Law Passes With EOBR Mandate, HOS Study

This story appears in the Dec. 24 & 31 print edition of Transport Topics.

After a series of temporary extensions kept highway construction projects and federal transportation programs afloat for three years, Congress in June finally passed a new highway reauthorization bill.

Several provisions sought by the trucking industry, including electronic onboard recorders on all trucks and a field study on the 34-hour restart requirement in the new hours-of-service rule, were included in the reauthorization law.

The law known as MAP-21, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century, was signed by President Obama on July 6.

MAP-21 is a two-year reauthorization bill that provides $52.2 billion in spending for fiscal year 2013 and $52.95 billion for fiscal year 2014 to fund the nation’s highway and public transit programs through September 2014.

The new reauthorization law replaces the 2005 transportation-authorization law that was known as SAFETEA-LU and expired in 2009.

The new bill, spearheaded in the Senate by Sens. James Inhofe (R) and Barbara Boxer (D), passed in the chamber on March 14. Originally, it was supposed to be a six-year bill, but was reduced to two years to win enough votes for passage.

The politically divided Republican majority in the House could not agree on a bill of its own, so, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) used a parliamentary maneuver to get representatives from both chambers into a conference committee assigned to reach agreement on the Senate bill.

The House and the Senate voted for the final bill on the same day, June 29.

Under MAP-21’s  EOBR provision, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has a year in which to come up with a regulation. Carriers then have two years in which to equip their trucks with the electronic logging devices.

The bill also calls for a field study to be done on that part of the hours-of-service rule that FMCSA issued in December 2011 that requires a driver’s rest period to include resting between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. on two consecutive days.

Carriers have complained that the new restart rule will cut into industry productivity by effectively limiting drivers to five-day work weeks.

Among the other provisions won by trucking in the bill is a drug and alcohol clearinghouse where carriers can check driver records.

The trucking industry also succeeded in persuading Congress to add crashworthiness standards for big trucks to MAP-21, along with a provision that the required minimum bond for freight brokers be raised to $75,000 from $10,000.

MAP-21 also requires that executives entering the trucking industry be tested on their knowledge of regulations and safety rules, another provision that was sought by American Trucking Associations.

The bill also blocks publication of a hazardous-materials rule on tanker “wetlines” for two years by calling for a study of the issue.

It also directs states to produce inventories of available safe parking spots along highways for truckers. No new money was allocated for truck parking but the bill allows states to spend some federal highway money not previously designated for that purpose on new parking facilities.

For the first time, there is also a provision that the Department of Transportation develop a national freight plan that includes the designation of a freight highway network and an inventory of the worst traffic bottlenecks.

The original Senate bill contained money to help states add capacity to improve the freight highway network but the funding did not survive the House-Senate conference on the final bill.

The bill keeps intact the federal prohibition against states tolling interstate highways, except as part of a decade-old pilot study. However, the bill does make it easier for states to add new tolled lanes to existing interstates by easing the federal approval process.

In all, MAP-21 calls for about two dozen new studies in connection with the nation’s transportation system, although one of those studies represented a disappointment for the trucking industry.

Trucking sought congressional approval for longer, heavier trucks; however, the Senate bill never contained such a provision.

In the House, some members did try to win approval for trucks to run as heavy as 97,000 pounds and for rigs to haul two 33-foot-long trailers. Currently, double trailers are limited to 28.5 feet each.

Those proposals were not approved, however. Instead, the bill mandates a federal study to determine the effects of heavier trucks on roads and bridges.