Police, councilor urge review of truck routes

BANGOR – It was unclear Wednesday evening what role, if any, a detour routing trucks through downtown Bangor played in a fatal accident earlier in the day in which a woman was struck and killed on a city street by a tractor-trailer hauling a fuel tank.

Neither the truck’s owner nor law enforcement officials would comment on whether the vehicle was following the detour route or simply was on its scheduled route. But soon after the accident, the Bangor Police Department and a city councilor called for a review of the issues which led to the detour’s creation.

“Though the cause of the accident is pending, it underscores the need for an immediate review of issues surrounding trucks [weighing] in excess of 80,000 pounds being forced off federally regulated interstate highways onto the city streets of Bangor,” the Bangor Police Department stated in a press release.

“We’ve seen this coming for a long time,” said City Councilor Gerry Palmer, who works in a downtown office close to the accident site and stopped by to find out what occurred.

“It was theoretical before, but now there’s been a death,” Palmer said.

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the [victim’s] family,” Palmer said. “We urge all citizens who are concerned about this situation to call their congressional delegation, because this is a federal problem.”

Joe Lallande, president and CEO of Maine Potato Growers Energy Services, which owns the vehicle, said Wednesday evening that the company received the initial accident report from the driver, Richard Lawrence of Westfield, but that they hadn’t spoken to anyone since.

“We’re very distressed,” Lallande said. “It’s a terrible, terrible tragedy.”

The truck was headed to Presque Isle, and Lallande said the driver was picking up fuel in the Bangor area.

Whether the truck normally would be taking the Oak Street to State Street route it was on, or if the driver was forced to reroute because of construction on the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge or truck weight restrictions on the interstate was unknown.

Lallande said it was a fair question, but one that he didn’t feel comfortable answering.

A similar sentiment was expressed by a state Department of Transportation official.

“Obviously a tragedy of this nature is just so regrettable, but there’s really no way of knowing at this point why the truck was traveling that route and what alternatives it may have had,” Greg Nadeau, Deputy Commissioner with the Maine Department of Transportation, said Wednesday evening.

Under current federal law, trucks weighing more than 80,000 pounds are prohibited from traveling on Interstate 95, including I-395, north of Augusta.

The Federal Highway Administration recently refused to temporarily lift the truck weight ban on the Veterans Remembrance Bridge, which carries I-395 over the Penobscot River, while the Chamberlain bridge is under construction. The federal refusal has been a source of frustration for local and state transportation officials, whose efforts to get a waiver were in vain.

“As we have discussed before, absent some special statutory amendment or provision, there is nothing in the United States Code … that grants me, or anyone in the FHWA, the authority to waive the application of the statutory interstate weight limits as requested by your department or officials in the cities of Bangor and Brewer,” wrote Federal Highway Administration Division Administrator Jonathan McDade in a letter to Maine Transportation Commissioner David Cole.

The only statutory truck weight limits exemptions that apply to Maine are the grandfather clause for the Maine Turnpike (used to support the exemption for Augusta’s third bridge) and an emergency waiver for delivering jet fuel shipments to the [Maine] Air National Guard Base in Bangor, according to McDade.

McDade recommended that state and local officials revisit the detour “to determine if any temporary or other operational changes could be implemented to [effect] a safe and more efficient flow of truck traffic through town. However, the only legal option to enable the FHWA to grant a waiver of weight limits on I-395 is a Congressional amendment to [federal code], or some other federal legislation authorizing a waiver of the weight limit.”

Meanwhile, Barry Prescott, a bridge manager with the DOT’s office in Bangor, said there are no plans to adjust the truck route between now and Sunday night, the target completion time for construction on the Chamberlain bridge.

Prescott said the work remains on schedule and the bridge will reopen early Monday morning.

Neither the Bangor DOT office nor the Bangor Police Department has received complaints about the truck route. Assistant police Chief Peter Arno said the only calls the issue has generated were inquiries from trucking companies.

– BDN reporters Toni-Lynn Robbins and Aimee Dolloff contributed to this report.