by Ted Polakowski
12. December 2011
My wife and I travel frequently and at random times down a particular road in New Jersey where there are two recently constructed truck weigh stations. On our travels we have watched these very nice edifices being built, and with the size of the plot we estimated that there was going to be a big push on making sure that there were no overweight vehicles on New Jersey’s roads. Why else would one go to such an expense?
We now have a little game called: Will it be open today? We play this game because over a period of, let’s say, the last two years, with as many as 100 sample points scattered at all times of the day and night, we think we have seen one of the weigh stations open once. Being of an inquisitive mind (and wanting to do a blog post) I did a little research on the web and found that these two truck weigh stations, one in each direction on a very busy interstate, cost about $60 million to build. With our little survey results it would seem that the state is getting a very low utilization factor on these, and you have to wonder why anyone would spend $60 million and then proceed not to truly use the asset.
So now the plot thickens. It so happens that last month my wife and I had occasion to drive from New Jersey to Charleston, South Carolina and back. We therefore passed through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia as well as North and South Carolina. Seven states in all. Each of these states had a weigh station somewhere near its border and many of them looked of the same age and remarkably similar as the ones in New Jersey. Guess what? Of the fifteen or sixteen we passed there was only one open, a weigh station in Virginia on Interstate 95 northbound. I would venture again that this seems to be a very low utilization factor.
Why then, you might ask, is this investment in infrastructure done in the first place? Wikipedia states that the current use for these stations is to enforce tax and safety regulations. Not only is the weight checked at these stations but so is safety equipment and logbooks to see whether drivers are obeying hours of service rules. I would venture a guess that all of the above checks are ticketable offenses that would take unsafe vehicles off the roads while generating fines that would pay to run the facilities without taking funds from the general coffers.
Just from a safety standpoint I think that states should reconsider their weigh station open hours policy. Just think about this—according to Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, overweight trucks will take longer to brake to a stop, they are more prone to rollover in crashes and they do much more damage to roads and bridges than trucks that conform to legal weight restrictions. And here is where it gets personal–studies show that in two-vehicle crashes involving passenger cars and large trucks, 98% of the fatalities were occupants of the passenger vehicle.
And here is the bad news: In 2007 and 2008 more than one of every five trucks that were inspected was placed out of service for deficiencies that prevented it from continuing to operate (FMCSA, CVSA). Don’t you think having the weigh stations open more often might help enforce the regulations that are in place to keep us, the traveling public, just a little safer and pose no cost to the taxpayer?
What do you think???
