The long-awaited federal Highway Reauthorization legislation is set to move forward this fall giving Congress the opportunity to modernize American truck weight limits and facilitate economic growth just when we need it most.

Lawmakers are expected to begin drafting the Reauthorization proposal, which will fund our transportation network for the next few years. In this bill, Congress will have the critical chance to include truck weight reform known as the Safe and Efficient Transportation Act (SETA), legislation now pending in both the House and Senate. SETA would give states the opportunity to allow more productive trucks on interstate highways within their borders.

Many trucks carrying heavier goods meet the current federal gross vehicle weight limit before they are fully loaded. The weight limit forces shippers to underutilize these trucks leading to more vehicles on the road, more miles traveled and more fuel used than we really need. SETA would help correct this inefficiency by allowing a properly equipped truck to carry more freight on the interstate.

Under SETA, states could set interstate weight limits of up to 97,000 pounds for single-trailer vehicles that are equipped with six axles instead of the typical five. The sixth axle compensates for the additional weight, allowing shippers and carriers to safely use more space inside each rig. This additional axle maintains — and even improves — current braking, handling and weight-per-tire characteristics for the truck, all of which improve the safety features of the truck.

Transportation Research Board (TRB) and U.S. DOT studies have both confirmed the fact that a six-axle truck traveling at 97,000 pounds maintains the same braking distance as one running at the current federal weight limit of 80,000 pounds with the current five axles. And because of the additional tires, a heavier six-axle rig puts even less weight per tire on the road.

If equipped with six axles, trucks can safely ship more freight and shippers and carriers can significantly reduce the vehicle miles traveled, as well as fuel and emissions necessary to get products to market. At Kraft Foods, about 40 percent of trucks currently hit the weight limit with significant space left in the trailer. SETA would allow the company to annually eliminate approximately 33 million vehicle miles traveled, more than six million gallons of fuel and 73,000 tons of carbon dioxide from its operations (EPA SmartWay calculations). And that's just one company.

So why make this change now? It's imperative that we use our infrastructure as productively as possible. That means more efficient shipping options. And reducing the amount of fuel needed per ton of freight helps us all as we look to better use our petroleum.

When it comes to truck weights, the United States is simply behind. America trails all other developed countries in cargo mass productivity. Our major trading partners, including many European countries and Canada, already employ trucks that can bear higher weights. We are simply at a competitive disadvantage because we can't move freight to market as efficiently. Considering the rapid population growth and the spike in tonnage shipped on our highways, it is imperative we act now.

Now is the time for lawmakers to bring the U.S. federal weight limit up to date. I hope you will join me and the Coalition for Transportation Productivity in asking Congress to include SETA in the Highway Reauthorization legislation. SETA will help U.S. shippers become more productive and reduce our carbon footprint in a way that is both safe for the motoring public and sustainable for our highways.

For more information about SETA and the truck weight reform effort, visit www.transportationproductivity.org.

Source: www.allstarpics.net

This fall, when President Obama supported the decision by Maine and Vermont to extend higher truck weight allowances on their highways, it was a vote for increasing the productivity of trucking on these states’ highways. Bill Graves, president of ATA, added context to the importance of this decision: “Existing restrictions on truck weight limits constrain the trucking industry's efforts to reduce crashes, help our customers to remain competitive in global markets and lower our carbon footprint."

Not long after, the Association of American Railroads’ (AAR) President and CEO, Mr. Edward R. Hamberger, attacked the decision accusing the President of “train robbery.”

It would be like a day without sunshine if the AAR didn’t publicly attack one of their industry’s largest customers: the trucking industry.  Every time any discussion turns to ways the trucking industry can gain productivity, improve safety, reduce congestion or lower carbon emissions in the movement of freight, the AAR goes on the attack. Hearing these same arguments time and again becomes tiresome.

Mr. Hamberger went on to say “heavy trucks cause infrastructure damage that taxpayers will ultimately have to pay for.  This [extension of the program] will rob the railroad industry of revenue needed for reinvestment and add congestion to the nation's highways."

Mr. Hamberger, let me remind you once again: The trucking industry pays 40 percent of all revenues that comprise the Highway Trust Fund and pays 30 percent of State Highway Fund receipts.  The trucking industry generates these revenue levels while accounting for less than 15 percent of total vehicle miles traveled.  In addition, the trucking industry directly serves 100 percent of the communities in America, whereas the railroad industry serves about 20 percent of America’s communities. That’s an inconvenient truth. Many railroad supporters also cite benefits to the environment and less highway congestion if rail capacity were expanded. Here are the facts: If the rail industry could double intermodal capacity overnight, that additional capacity would equate to removing about 1.5 percent of truck traffic from the nation’s highways.

Not allowing more productive truck configurations to use federal interstates, and instead forcing them to use secondary state roads, does not support efforts to improve safety. In fact, when trucks are forced to use secondary highways, the potential for wear and tear can be greater, since these roads are often not built to the same robust standards as our nation’s interstate highways.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Smart Way Transport Program also confirms the environmental and economic benefits that higher truck weight limits and longer combination vehicles would bring. Importantly, these higher weight standards would not exceed the per-axle weight limits defined by the DOT’s bridge weight formulas. Added benefits would include improved safety, reduced congestion and lower carbon emissions from fewer, more productive trucks on the highways.

When you wipe away all the rhetoric, there is one fact that railroad industry cannot deny: The vast majority of shipments that move by rail start and end with a truck.  Let’s work together to create a national transportation policy that recognizes that all modes of transportation are required to support America’s economy and global competitiveness.

David L. (Dave) Miller is a respected industry expert and an authoritative voice for effective, common-sense government and business policies that enable the freight transportation industry to fulfill its critical role in the nation's economy.

As founder, VP and COO  of Gnosis Management Group, Dave provides consulting and issues management services to public and private companies and advocacy organizations, drawing on nearly 35 years of experience in policy development and strategy and as a senior operating executive in the trucking industry. He recently retired after a 27-year career with Con-way Inc, a national trucking and global logistics company, where he served as senior vice president, global policy and economic sustainability.

Source: www.businessweek.com

New federal legislation presents a unique opportunity to safely improve the efficiency and sustainability of truck shipments. The Safe and Efficient Transportation Act (SETA), now pending in both the House and Senate, would give states the option to set interstate weight limits of up to 97,000 pounds for trucks equipped with a sixth axle. Without lengthening the truck, the sixth axle maintains braking and handling capabilities, with a slight decrease in the current weight per tire.

SETA is critical to making the shipment of heavy goods more efficient. Many trucks packed with weighty goods hit the 80,000-pound federal weight limit before the truck is fully loaded. That means these trucks leave the loading dock partially empty. Under SETA, however, shippers could safely utilize more space in their rigs — and avoid using more truckloads and fuel than necessary.

As the largest food company in the United States, Kraft Foods supports SETA because it would shrink our carbon footprint without compromising safety. About 40 percent of our trucks currently hit the weight limit with significant space left in the trailer. Under SETA, we could reduce the number of trucks we’re using by about 6 percent. That translates to 60,000 fewer loads and 33 million fewer vehicle miles traveled each year. And we could also eliminate 73,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Further, the U.S. DOT predicts that freight shipped by truck will dramatically increase over the next decade as our economy grows. By boosting the amount of freight each truck can safely carry, SETA will reduce the number of trucks and vehicle miles necessary to meet demand — and therefore make roads safer now and in the future. In fact, based on the findings of a 2009 Wisconsin Department of Transportation study, if a law like the Safe and Efficient Transportation Act had been in place in 2006, it would have prevented 90 truck-related accidents in the state that year.

SETA will no doubt improve safety records for U.S. shippers, lower their environmental profiles and save major companies tens of millions of dollars per year in shipping costs.

Please contact your members of Congress, and help us show them that SETA will make truck shipment safer, greener and more efficient. For more information about SETA and this truck weight reform effort, visit www.transportationproductivity.org.

Kraft Foods makes delicious foods consumers can feel good about in 150 countries around the globe and is a customer of Con-way Inc. Harry Haney also serves as chairman of the Coalition for Transportation Productivity, a group of over 160 shippers and related industry organizations advocating for the passing of SETA.

www.fleetowner.com

If you are looking for news from Washington that will brighten your day, please stop reading now!

Since the 1950s when legislation was enacted to build the Interstate Highway System, Congress has passed, and the President has signed into law, a renewal of the federal commitment to surface transportation infrastructure every few years. While initially dedicated to highways and funded by fuel taxes through the Highway Trust Fund (HTF), federal aid to transit was added to the mix about 30 years ago. This was and is justified by the need to reduce congestion on our roads, particularly in urban areas.

Of course, each renewal of these programs triggered vigorous debates about issues such as raising fuel taxes, equitable distribution of funding among the states and numerous other issues. But the need for a robust federal program to build and maintain a vast national road system was virtually universally recognized. We have had a consensus among those who govern us that interstate commerce, international trade and the right of Americans to have individual mobility over long distances all made such a program essential.

Furthermore, until the end of 2008, the consensus seemed to be strengthening. Two commissions created by Congress in the last surface transportation reauthorization bill focused on the need to find additional funding to expand our highway system and related facilities. While there was disagreement about where to find the money (i.e., higher fuel taxes, or a vehicle miles traveled tax or private investment or some mixture of the three), there was recognition that a projected doubling of freight over the next 20 years would overwhelm our existing system. There was also a consensus that, despite the advertising campaigns of the Class I freight railroads, trucks would have to continue to carry the vast majority of freight.

No more.

The last surface transportation reauthorization bill expired on Sept. 30, 2009. The Obama Administration announced in its earliest days that it opposed any fuel tax increase. Furthermore, the Administration not only hasn’t proposed an alternative source of funding, it hasn’t even sent Congress a request for specific legislation provisions. So the country is limping along with periodic short-term extensions of the old legislation. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee became so frustrated with the Administration that it passed a draft bill, but with no numbers in it!

Worse still, because of the recession and other factors, the HTF has virtually collapsed.  Over the last two years, Congress has transferred more than $70 billion to highway and transit programs from general revenues and deficit financing. The majority of this money was included, on a one-time only basis, in the so-called “stimulus” bill. Fuel taxes dedicated to the HTF can no longer support current highway and transit programs, much less any expansion. The whole concept of users paying into a trust fund that covers federal surface transportation programs is being undermined.

But the Administration and Congress have poured money into another aspect of surface transportation. Using deficit financing, over the last year and a half the federal government has appropriated more than $10 billion into our rail system, for both passenger and freight service (over 80 percent has gone to “high-speed” intercity passenger service). While most of these dollars have not yet been spent, the U.S. Department of Transportation has been vigorously making grant announcements.

Thus, even though Congress hasn’t passed new surface transportation legislation authorizing such a radical policy change, it is well under way.

If you believe that America needs a strong, growing freight transportation infrastructure system as a key element in a healthy economy, and that trucking must continue to play a vital role in that system, then it really is time to let your senators and house members know.  If they don’t hear from you, they aren’t likely to straighten this out. The consequences for us and for our children will be an America ever less able to compete.

Jim Burnley is a partner in the Washington office of Venable LLP, and is widely recognized as one of the nation's foremost authorities on transportation law and policy

Source: www.rutgers.edu

At a time when it is increasingly acknowledged that the federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal course, you would think the first thing a cabinet agency’s new strategic plan would do is attempt to figure out which of its historical functions are truly federal and should be continued. But that sort of prioritization is entirely absent from the U.S. DOT’s draft Strategic Plan, posted online for comment at https://dotstrategicplan.ideascale.com .

Instead we are given a vast array of poorly justified expansions of the federal role into every nook and cranny of how Americans and their goods should travel—as well as how and where we should live.

One prevailing theme is frustration that current law does not permit the DOT to exercise as much micromanagement as its leaders think they should be doing. For example, the plan laments the lack of federal authority to regulate the safety of mass transit, as well as the lack of federal control over which specific highway and bridge projects states spend their federal highway monies on (as opposed to the numerous programs into which the feds already divide up these funds). It even laments that “DOT’s Federal-aid roadway design standards are not enforceable on local streets,” so that unless the law is changed, the DOT can only “encourage” more states to adopt the “complete streets” model in which every street in America must be equipped with sidewalks and bike paths.

Another recurrent theme is performance measures—but they are selectively and inconsistently applied. For example, something as basic as a minimum benefit/cost ratio threshold (perhaps 1.5) would weed out numerous low-priority projects that sound nice but aren’t worth the money. The only instance in which such a standard is discussed is with regard to possible airport expansion. It is not mentioned with respect to with DOT’s newly favored sectors: transit, streetcars, high-speed rail, the “marine highway,” etc.

The phrase “data-driven” appears several times, but only in limited contexts such as multimodal safety problems—not to evaluate favored modes or favored themes. The notion of a level playing field among transportation modes is mentioned several times—but the only aspects where analysis is suggested are on fuel-use, safety, and environmental benefits. What about a level-playing field comparison of goods-movement modes on cost, delivery time, and reliability?

A major focus of the previous Administration’s DOT, under both Democrat Norm Mineta and Republican Mary Peters, was congestion reduction. This applied to both surface and air transportation, and included active promotion of market pricing in both areas (with no success in aviation, alas). Unfortunately, while the draft strategic plan gives lip service to reducing congestion, its approach to doing this in urban areas is to expand transit, promote ride-sharing and flextime, and support the demand-management form of road pricing. (Tellingly, that reference to pricing is buried in the “State of Good Repair” chapter, which is mainly about asset management.)

And that provides a clue to one of the major omissions from the Plan: capacity expansion. While it expresses limited support for expanding airport capacity, in highways its only concession is the possibility of “targeted investments” in “our national freight highway corridors to address bottlenecks.”

But as far as motorists are concerned, there is not a word about adding capacity to cope with projected growth and reduce congestion. In fact, the plan even suggests that more cities do as San Francisco did after its last earthquake and tear down urban freeways that may no longer be needed. And in its redefinition of “functionally obsolete” bridges, it refers to not having “adequate lane widths, shoulder widths, or vertical clearances,” but makes no mention of not having enough lanes. It also uncritically accepts the “We can’t build our way out of congestion” mantra, despite extensive evidence to the contrary (especially with priced capacity).

Entire chapters are devoted to the Secretary’s two favorite topics: Livability and Environmental Sustainability. Both are notable for broad assertions presented without acknowledging considerable data and analysis calling them into question. For example: “A comprehensive strategy that promotes livability and reduced the demand for auto travel will significantly lower the long-run cost of transportation (and other infrastructure) for both household budgets and taxpayers.” (p. 30) That’s an astounding claim, accompanied by zero evidence. Transit and smart-growth advocacy groups typically argue that substituting transit for driving saves an individual money—but they ignore the large taxpayer cost of the highly subsidized transit alternative.

Another example is a tricky little game played with transportation data. The National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) did indeed find that 11.6% of all individual trips are made by walking or bicycling. Page 51 contrasts that figure with the less than 2% of annual Federal Aid Highway funds spent on walking and biking. First, this ignores the other NHTS finding that in terms of person-miles traveled, biking and walking together come to just 0.9% of the total (but still get 2% of the funding). Second, federal highway funds are supposed to fund important federal highways , like the Interstates. There is also the factoid that 40% of all metro-area trips are two miles or less in length and therefore “could be taken on foot or bicycle”—if you ignore how people value their time, the vagaries of weather, the stuff they have to carry, etc.

Yet another assertion, presented with no attempt at substantiation, is that “Creating livable communities is just as important to residents of rural areas as it is to residents of urban and suburban areas.”

Finally, in the chapter on sustainability, this allegedly data-driven, performance-based plan simply asserts that “to reduce carbon emissions, improve energy efficiency, and reduce dependence on oil,” the nation must begin “development of a national network of high-speed rail corridors.” A similarly vague justification is given for DOT to “strategically expand the marine highway system.” These mode choices are never presented as having emerged from a data-driven, mode-neutral benefit/cost analysis; they are simply assumed to be wise choices on which to expand billions of federal tax dollars. In particular, nowhere in the entire document is there any mention of using a cost/ton standard (such as no more than $50/ton) to sort out cost-effective greenhouse gas reduction measures from highly wasteful ones.

This draft plan is presumably a preview of what the Administration will set forth in its proposal for reauthorizing the federal surface transportation program. That amply demonstrates the need for a fundamentally different alternative to emerge from Congress.

Bob Poole is a Searle Freedom Trust Transportation Fellow and Director of Transportation Policy for the Reason Foundation, the free market think tank. A recognized transportation policy expert, Mr. Poole has advised the previous four Presidential administrations on transportation and policy issues. This column first appeared in the May 2010 issue of the Reason Foundation’s Surface Transportation Innovations e-newsletter.

A long-running battle over reducing diesel emissions from port drayage trucks has turned into a serious threat to nearly 30 years of trucking deregulation.

Several years ago an alliance of union and environmental groups threatened to make it politically impossible for the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to expand unless they cracked down hard on emissions from the thousands of trucks used in drayage of containers to and from rail yards and distribution centers in Southern California

Their package deal was that the ports would henceforth deal only with companies rather than thousands of individual owner-drivers, on the grounds that only large companies could afford to replace all those trucks with new trucks compliant with 2007 Federal diesel emission standards.

The not-so-hidden agenda was that drivers in truck fleets would be easy for the Teamsters to unionize, whereas they can’t do anything with owner-drivers.

The entire goods-movement industry, including the American Trucking Associations, objected to this plan as violating the Federal pre-emption of state or local economic regulation of trucking—and they prevailed last March in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Port of Long Beach dropped out and set up its own registration and certification program, pertaining solely to requiring clean-air compliance on a truck-by-truck basis. Both ports are offering subsidies to help truckers purchase compliant trucks, and as of a recent count, over 5,500 trucks have either been replaced or retrofitted in less than a year. An October headline in the Los Angeles Times said “Diesel Emissions Down Drastically at Ports of L.A., Long Beach.”

Having lost in court, the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports, representing 80 environmental and labor groups, has mobilized to change federal law. Besides Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, they have recruited the mayors of Oakland, Newark, and New York (and their ports) to urge Congress to amend the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (the most recent law dealing with federal pre-emption of transportation economic regulation) to permit ports to exclude owner-driver operators and deal only with fleets. Their aim is to get union-friendly legislators to slip such a provision into the surface transportation reauthorization bill.

Source: www.boston.com

That would be a huge mistake. As Journal of Commerce editor Paul Page wrote recently, “We’re talking about setting unprecedented limits on the pre-emption of federal regulatory authority over state laws that has been established and upheld in court rulings over many decades. We’re talking about the legal fabric of commerce in the United States.” Moreover, should individual ports be allowed to create this patchwork of policies, those that did so would put themselves at a competitive disadvantage. The ports of L.A. and Oakland compete with Canada’s Vancouver and Prince Rupert and Mexico’s Lazaro Cardenas, all well-served by long-distance rail. And the Port of New York and New Jersey competes with major ports in Virginia, Georgia, Houston and elsewhere.

Even partially rolling back trucking deregulation would set a terrible precedent, emboldening those who would like to undo railroad and airline deregulation as well. Let’s hope cooler heads prevail as Congress drafts and debates reauthorization.