HIGHWAY OR LOW ROAD

It is confounding that so-called safety advocates would rather have tractor-trailer rigs carrying logs, gravel, heavy equipment and other commodities through downtown Bangor and along narrow rural roads instead of traveling on straighter and safer roads. This is the practical result of their opposition to measures to raise the weight limit on interstate highways.

It is past time that Congress reverse this untenable policy and allow trucks weighing up to 100,000 pounds to travel the interstate. A sensible amendment to the transportation reauthorization bill introduced in the Senate by Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, and supported by Reps. Mike Michaud and Tom Allen, would allow the limit to be raised as part of a pilot project.

Trucks exceeding 80,000 pounds are barred from the interstate north of Augusta. An exemption granted in 1998 allows trucks weighing up to 100,000 pounds to travel on the Maine Turnpike and heavier trucks carrying jet fuel are allowed to use the highway to get to Bangor International Airport to supply military planes. According to truckers, the state police have only recently enforced the weight limit on Interstate 395, which connects Bangor and Brewer. As a result, more big trucks are traveling the streets of the two cities. Naturally, truckers warn that this is a dangerous development.

This summer, a study, mandated by the federal government, found that allowing trucks weighing more than 80,000 pounds on the Maine and New Hampshire turnpikes saved up to $4 million and dramatically reduced accidents. It found that the accident rate, per hundred million vehicle miles traveled, was more than four times higher on two-lane roads than on the Maine Turnpike between 2000 and 2003. The fatal crash rate on “diversion routes,” the largely two-lane undivided highways heavy trucks are now forced to travel, was 10 times higher than the Maine Turnpike and interstate routes, based on miles traveled. Accidents involving serious injuries were also less frequent on the turnpike and interstate than on diversion routes.

The report also found that costs to maintain roads could be lowered if the weight limits were upped. If the turnpike exemption were to end, the state would spend up to $2.4 million more annually on pavement rehabilitation and an addition $800,000 a year on bridge maintenance.

Officials in Atlantic Canada also want the weight limits increased. They point to a map of the region to make their point. Through New York, Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, southern Maine and across Canada, the larger trucks can stay on the federal highway systems, swiftly moving goods through the region. But when they drive north as far as Augusta, the weight limit forces these trucks onto secondary roads, where the driving is less safe even as the lower speeds require more time and expense.

Although reauthorization of the transportation bill is likely to be drawn out and contentious, the pilot project provision should remain in the final version. An opportunity to reduce accidents, while saving money, should be too good for safety advocates to pass up.