(The following story by John D. Boyd appeared on The Journal of Commerce website on September 23, 2010.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The railroad industry is urging Congress to block an Obama administration move to permanently allow Maine and Vermont to let trucks weighing 100,000 lbs. operate on their interstate highways.
The administration has asked Congress to make current heavier-weight pilot projects permanent, in a continuing funding resolution that would extend federal spending authority past Sept. 30 for many federal programs.
Current law limits truck weights on interstates to 80,000 lbs. with allowance for special exceptions such as during a natural disaster or when farmers are hauling harvest loads. Maine and Vermont were allowed to test the heavier weight limit for their extensive logging industries.
But the AAR, which represents the nation’s largest freight railroads and some others, said the proposal “could provide impetus to trucking interests in the Northeast and along the East Coast to lift the federal truck weight ban elsewhere.”
AAR President and CEO Edward R. Hamberger said 100,000-lb. trucks could take “a siphon a significant percentage of freight traffic from the country’s railroads,” depriving the railroads of revenue they need to invest in their privately owned track networks while adding to highway congestion.
He said the Department of Transportation has found “that trucks weighing 80,000 to 100,000 pounds pay just half of the cost of the damage they do to the nation’s highways.”
Hamberger said the heavier trucks “exact a serious wear and tear toll on America’s already overextended highways, while much of the repair cost “is paid by taxpayers and not the trucking companies.”