Chamber, lawmakers revisit law on truck weights

BANGOR – Congressional leaders in Washington need to see that heavy trucks on secondary roads in Maine are killing people, area legislators and community leaders said Saturday.

“We need to put a human face on this, and we haven’t done that,” Joyce Hedlund, president of Eastern Maine Community College, said during a discussion at the school.

Federal laws prohibit trucks weighing more than 80,000 pounds from traveling on Interstate 95 north of Augusta, as well as on Interstate 395. That forces drivers of heavy trucks onto state and local roads that often take them through residential areas and community centers.

A tragic fatal crash last week on a Hampden roadway involving a loaded big rig and a car driven by 17-year-old Susan Abraham, who later died from her injuries, brought the issue to the forefront once again.

Saturday’s meeting at EMCC was a gathering of the Hot Stove League, a discussion group of area legislators and Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce members. The group also discussed how to raise federal highway weight limits after Lena Gray, 80, was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer fuel truck in May 2006 while trying to cross the street near the intersection of Broadway and State Street in Bangor, Hedlund noted.

Arguments to raise the weight limits have gone unheeded for the last 20 years in Washington, but that hasn’t stopped lawmakers.

Carol Woodcock, a regional representative for U.S. Sen. Susan Collins who was sitting at the Hot Stove League table on Saturday, said Collins would be reintroducing a bill to increase weight limits this week.

Sen. Olympia Snowe and Collins, along with U.S. Reps. Tom Allen and Michael Michaud, all have argued the issue in Washington and follow in the footsteps of former Gov. Angus King and Gov. John Baldacci, who presented legislation when serving as a U.S. congressman.

“It’s not the ones in Maine that need [educating], it’s the national groups,” Woodcock said.

The group decided to contact national lobbying organizations to get the word out to other states, and also hopes to gather Mainers to testify at the hearing in the nation’s capital on the proposed federal bill later this year.

Because thousands of trucks a month exceeding the federal weight limit travel through the state en route to points in Canada and to the south, where heavier trucks are allowed, the issue will not go away until a change is made, said Candace Guerette, president of the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce.

“This is something that we’ve had enough of,” she said. “Enough is enough.”

The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, now known as the Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways, created the interstate system, which includes I-95, and Congress established an 80,000-pound highway weight limit in 1982.

The Maine Turnpike is exempt from the restrictions because federal funds were not used to construct it, so trucks up to 100,000 pounds are allowed there. To accommodate the big rigs traveling north of Augusta, the state increased its weight limit to 100,000 pounds on state highways in 1994.

Because of the federal regulations, heavy trucks are diverted onto smaller state and local roads, most of which have two lanes rather than four, making travel more treacherous for both locals and the heavy-truck drivers.

“It defies all the logic,” state Rep. Pat Blanchette, D-Bangor, said at Saturday’s meeting.

In addition to lawmakers, residents and community leaders, emergency responders and police, who are typically the first on the scene at an accident, also support increasing highway weight limits.

“Get them changed,” Bangor police Sgt. Bob Bishop said Saturday at the police station. “We’d be happy. We’re all very concerned about it.”

Since heavy 18-wheelers that need to cross the Penobscot River have to travel into downtown Bangor and Brewer to use the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge or the Penobscot Bridge, there are a lot of big rigs traveling through the area, he said.

“The bigger the vehicle, the more distance it takes to stop,” he said, adding, “I’ve never seen the truck level this high.”

During the Hot Stove League gathering, state Rep. Robert Duchesne, D-Hudson, also spoke about the traffic levels.

“It’s going to get much worse in future years,” he warned.