Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Weight Matters

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

In 2007, trucks paid $2.7 million in fees for permits to operate in excess of Virginia’s vehicle weight limits. But that number fell far short of the estimated $211.4 million that heavy loads did to the state’s roads that year, according to Gary Allen, head of the Virginia Transportation Research Council.

Although Allen didn’t put it quite this way, it appears that Virginia motorists are subsidizing heavy trucks to the tune of more than $200 million a year by failing to levy appropriate fees.

According to Peter Bacque in a Dec. 22 article in the Times-Dispatch, the Virginia Department of Transportation is recommending an increase in overweight-vehicle fees but is not pushing for the big rigs to pay their full freight. “Stakeholders raised concerns regarding current economic conditions, the competitiveness of Virginia’s ports and the difficulty in some industries of avoiding overweight loads,” said David S. Ekern, transportation commissioner.

Same old story. A special interest group receives a long-standing subsidy from the public, the subsidy becomes an entitlement, the special interest cries hardship when someone tries to curtail the subsidy, politicians back off, and everyday taxpayers pay through the nose.

Here’s what Allen’s research revealed: A heavily loaded tractor-trailer produces 8,000 to 9,000 times as much damage to highways and bridges as a passenger car does.

The deterioration of Virginia’s bridges, wrote Bacque, was traced mainly to the 30,000 vehicles (operating with permits) that weighed more than the loads for which the bridges were designed. Based on Allen’s calculations, a tractor-trailer weighing 116,000 pounds traveling the length of the 325-mile Interstate 81 and crossing its 58 bridges should pay $142.67 for the trip.

A long-running theme of this blog is that transportation policy should be based upon user-pays principles. The public should press the General Assembly to require trucks to pay the full cost of their heavy loads.

Admittedly, the calculations on what constitutes a “fair” fee can get tricky. Dale Bennett, lobbyist for the Virginia Trucking Association, notes that the VDOT study is “based on a lot of assumptions.” Probably so. But let’s see the VTA comes up with better assumptions. New assumptions might change the numbers on the margin, but they’re unlikely to alter the fact that trucks are not paying the full costs they incur.

Bottom line: Shippers need to pay higher fees — or use lighter trucks.

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23 responses to “Weight Matters”

  1. Accurate Avatar
    Accurate

    You are correct, that user should pay, but the ‘cost’ will ultimately end up being borne by the consumer.
    Right now the consumer/public pays a subsidy which is, for the most part, invisible to the consumer/public. However, raise the fees for trucking and the cost of goods (and in some cases services) will take a dramatic hike. The ‘problem’ will get the money it needs to fix the problem but the consumer/taxpayer will suddenly see and feel the impact of these fees. In some cases (the case of the poor) the cost of the item may rise to more than what they can afford.

    So which solution is best? A somewhat ‘invisible’ subsidy which is paid by all consumers/taxpayers? Or raising the price of goods and services by imposing the ‘true cost’ of doing business thereby driving some businesses out of business and making some goods and services beyond the reach of the poor?

  2. charlie Avatar
    charlie

    Fuuny, I thought the entire thing about government was drawing the lines. Something about Solomon.

    That being said I liked the post — I’ve been harping about trucks for a while.

    It seems as if the “assumptions” were more based on damage to bridges than anything else. That’s fine and true, although bridge damage is not usually what consumer/taxpayer is complaining about when they complain about roads.

    Why do I also think that any proposed increase in this tax would not result in higher maintenance, but instead in more suburban roads?

  3. Larry G Avatar
    Larry G

    I have a different take as usual.

    Roads in Europe are deeper with more layers of base and asphalt and as a result they last longer.

    What has happened in this country is that we KNOW the weight of the trucks and we know the damage they will have on various depths of road base and asphalt.

    It’s not rocket science.

    But…because of the pressure to build more roads.. and stretch out the transportation dollar – we build on the cheap.

    and I agree with respect to the comments about “making the truckers pay”. Truckers, just like any other business do not “pay” – they tack on whatever their costs are and pass them on the the consumer.

    But the bigger question is –
    is it cheaper to build roads more beefy to start with even though more expensive that now or is it cheaper to build them as we are now.. but then to have to fix them more frequently AND put up with degradation of service?

    There are no free lunches.

    If we want better roads – we will pay for them.

    But is it more cost effective to built them initially beefier than we do now?

  4. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I'd like to see the original study, which does not seem to be posted on the Virginia Transportation Research Council's website (or I just wasn't able to find it).

    I would generally agree that a business' costs are normally passed along to its customers. But prices are set by markets. In a soft market, sometimes producers cannot recover cost increases. Perhaps, that's what the truckers lobby worries about.

    It strikes me that the Virginia way is to attempt to spread the costs to everyone through a higher fee or tax here and there, rather than to try to set fees at cost. Maybe it's a throw-back to Virginia's slave-holding days where a very few benefited on the backs of many others.

    Setting overweight truck fees at cost does more than recover VDOT's expenses. It also sends a price signal that the trucking industry and its customers will adjust to. If the fees are high (because the costs are high), we might see smaller loads and less road/bridge damage. We might see a shift to more rail shipment. We might see efforts to reduce the shipping weight of products. We might see higher shipping charges and/or lower truck profits.

    But aren't these better than a system where we encourage more damage to roads and bridges because we don't charge costs to cost-causers? Why is it better to raise gas taxes for those who cause less damage to roads & bridges? Why is it better for us to forgo the additional maintenance that VDOT could do with the revenues now being used to fix damages caused by heavy trucks?

    Let's see if Pierce Homer stands his ground or weakens in the face of lobbyist pressure.

    TMT

  5. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Jim Bacon:

    A blast from the past.

    It must have been over 20 years ago when we both supported weigh-distance tax.

    That 90 / 10 ratio is exactly the one Oregon found in the early 80s.

    Fair distribution of cost is the only way to evole a sustainable society.

    Never Even Close to Acurate says:

    “So which solution is best? A somewhat ‘invisible’ subsidy which is paid by all consumers/taxpayers? Or raising the price of goods and services by imposing the ‘true cost’ of doing business thereby driving some businesses out of business and making some goods and services beyond the reach of the poor?”

    Sure, blame the poor! It will help them to have a distorted economy?

    During the boom 50 percent of the populaiton was losing ground, 45 percent were Running As Hard As They Can.

    Now 95 percent are losing ground.

    The tax deductions for mortgage payments is the poster child of wrong headed Agency action re The Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis and Larry noted earlier.

    The weight distance problem is the poster child of wrong headed Agency action re The Mobility and Access Crisis.

    Along with the Interstate highway system (rather than an InterRegional system), underchaging trucks is just a massive wealth transfer with huge downsides.

    EMR

  6. Larry G Avatar
    Larry G

    I’m not in favor of a subsidized approach because it distorts proper and fair assignment of costs.

    I agree with TMT in that when costs are directly assigned that the vehicles that are causing the damage – get the assigned costs – and then they can better optimize their own operations – to save costs – including those costs that are borne as a result of weights that damage the roads.

    When you “hide” this cost – there is no incentive to become more efficient – like reducing weight that is not actual product.

    If you think about this – your TV or your can of beans or your sliced baloney is the reason for the road damage – and each of them would cost a few cents more to pay their fair share of the costs to maintain the roads and/or build them initially to handle the higher weights.

    Unless of course, one believes that we should all become “localvores” of TVs, beans and baloney which would not require road damaging transport….but then the price of the products would probably be much, much higher…so some of us would have to choose between beans and TVs and baloney.

    and yes.. I know.. I’m leaving myself wide open for a follow-up “baloney” comment… ;0

  7. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    This isn’t news. It is well known that truck traffic is highly damaging to roads.

    Some of the damage can be reduced by building heavier roads, but that comes at a cost, that trucks are still not paying for.

    On a hot day you can watch the “wave” of asphalt that precedes the weight of a slowly moving truck. On concrete roads the slabs “rock” as the trucks pass. In rainy weather in Arkansas you can watch the silty soils squish out from under the slabs.

    But, let’s assume that we charged trucks their full costs, what would be the result?

    Some goods, those with the highest shipping costs would no longer be available, for lack of market. Blueberries from California, maybe.

    So, whether you purchase blueberries as a conspicuous consumption habitue, or only for a special occasion, tough luck.

    It isn’t only the trucking industry that is being subsidized here, it is our own ability to have products readily available.

    Sure enough, we wil still be able to get blueberries. Special order at a higher price, or grown locally in hothouses, at a higher price.

    So, you need to add up the sum of all those higher costs, and subtract that cost from what you will save by charing trucks more (which they are going to pass on to us anyway).

    Systems Engineering 101.

    RH

  8. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    TMT (and Larry), You nailed it exactly when you said that properly setting the fee for overweight charges is to send out accurate price signals that will allow the players in the market to make economically rational adjustments.

    Ray is clinging to his old argument that subsidized the cost of transporting products has hidden benefits to us all. That is true to some extend. Lower weight fees = lower trucking costs = lower cost of shipping products. By that logic, however, why don’t we just subsidize truckers so that anybody can ship anything for free? Even Ray wouldn’t agree with that. It would lead to economically irrational behavior and the squandering of resources. Truckers, shippers and consumers would benefit — but others would pay, and the costs would outweight the benefit.

  9. Larry G Avatar
    Larry G

    “hidden benefits”.

    isn’t that a wonderful concept for those who love subsidies – who love the idea of NOT KEEPING an accounting even when such an accounting is clearly available.

    In other words, we should not be doing an accounting because then we’d know more about the real value of those “hidden benefits”.

    The reason we have damaged roadways – is because – we have a system that eschews accountability and so we have seriously damaged roads … no money to fix them – without raising taxes…

    so we raise taxes .. to pay for repairs.. and the truckers decide that then..since we have better roads.. they can put even more weight on the trucks…

    this is what happens….

    only..when putting more weight on the trucks actually will result in higher costs to the truckers – will they start looking into whether or not there is a direct cost/benefit to them in putting more weight on those trucks.

    What the subsidy is – is an explicit advocacy for not having an accountable cost-benefit calculation.

    This is even worse if you think about the fact that we already pay gas taxes for weigh stations and employees and their benefit to do what?

    to ..in theory.. weigh the trucks to make sure they don’t exceed the weight restrictions – right?

    so why are the roads being damaged if we are paying extra money to monitor the weights in the first place?

    Well… it’s pretty obvious that the current weight restrictions are insufficient to prevent road damage.

    So.. what’s the solution?

    The solution is clear.

    At the weigh stations – charge for weights that exceed a designated threshold.

    and have a schedule of charges that go up the higher the weights are….

    and then …let the truckers figure out how to keep their extra costs down….

    it works… it’s fair and it will lessen road damage – and generate extra money to fix damage caused by higher weights.

    the problem with most subsidies is that a strict accounting of cost/benefits is, in essence, a death knell … and so the folks who advocate the subsidies are almost always opposed to strict accounting.. and instead speak often and long about “hidden benefits”.

  10. Accurate Avatar
    Accurate

    EMR –
    I didn’t need the snide comment – “Never Even Close to Acurate”

    followed by – “Sure, blame the poor! It will help them to have a distorted economy?”

    I’m not blaming the poor, I’m not ‘blaming’ anyone. I merely pointed out that in some cases passing on the true cost of things will price those things beyond the reach of the poor. I didn’t say that was good or bad. I didn’t say that it was right or wrong. I merely put it out there as a result of charging the true costs. I didn’t see anyone argue with my points or logic, just your nasty comments.

    A little PS, your tirades on this web site have caused me to visit it less often and read and comment less. Of course, this might be your desired result.

  11. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Sometimes Close to Accurate said:

    “I’m not blaming the poor, I’m not ‘blaming’ anyone.”

    Sorry, but that is exactly what it sounded like. It is an Accurate redition of the favorite catch phrase of those who want to keep getting a subsidy:

    For example, suggesting if they cannot take the interest deduction on their $900,000loan,then the pool will “suffer.”

    Or if they cannot get their new billiard table delivered from Alabama cheaply, the poor will not be able to buy bread.

    “I merely pointed out that in some cases passing on the true cost of things will price those things beyond the reach of the poor. I didn’t say that was good or bad. I didn’t say that it was right or wrong. I merely put it out there as a result of charging the true costs. I didn’t see anyone argue with my points or logic, just your nasty comments.”

    OK, here are the reason that is very bad policy:

    It masks true costs so there is no way to know who may really quaify for what help to level the playing field.

    It incourages excess consumption (aka, Mass OverConsumption)

    It reduces the revenue for needed programs by subsidizing the wrong actions and behaviors.

    By “wrong” EMR does not mean wrong from a specific perspective but wrong in that they would not be supported in open democratic processes by the majority if all the facts were known.

    Have you decided to help create a Lewenz Village Yet?

    EMR

  12. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “Ray is clinging to his old argument that subsidized the cost of transporting products has hidden benefits to us all. That is true to some extend.”

    No, I hate subsidies as much as anyone, especially when they become entitlements. I only say there ars SOME times and SOME conditions whena knee jerk reaction against subsidies is probably missing some salient points.

    If we actually charge full costs to truckers by the weith and mile some goods will go up in cost much more than others and we will lose a lot of CHOICE in what we buy and we will be worse off because of that.

    I make no comment on which WAY we would be worse off – less subsidy or less choice. I merely point out that routinely bashing subsidies is an incomplete examinatin of the facts.

    RH

  13. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “…who love the idea of NOT KEEPING an accounting even when such an accounting is clearly available.”

    You mean like those that are opposed to the concept of accounting for (supposedly) life saving expenses by converting the costs to a statistical value of human life?

    RH

  14. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    “… no money to fix them – without raising taxes…”

    But it is OK to raise taxes on the truckers?

    RH

  15. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    ” weigh the trucks to make sure they don’t exceed the weight restrictions – right?”

    NO. NO. No. No.

    You don’t get it. They pay extra fees when they exceed the weight restrictions. But the weight restrictions themselves are far too high to prevent damage.

    We are talking thousands of times the damage a car causes – and that’s by a LEGAL truck. the extra fees just pay for part of the extra damage caused – over and above what is allowed by our insane truck taxes.

    You know, the ones we wind up paying anyway.

    RH

  16. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    “OK, here are the reason that is very bad policy:

    It masks true costs so there is no way to know who may really quaify for what help to level the playing field.”

    OK, Yes.

    But simply lambasting every subsidy without considering its (possible) benefits also masks the true costs of doing without the subsidy.

    Such questions CANNOT be answeed this way. You MUST back up and draw the system boundary larger. Take a three degrees of freedom approach and see what you get. If you can still identify winners and losers, you have not reached the system boundary yet, and you need four degrees of freedom, etc.

    As soon as you make the argument that (some event) is unfair to someone, you have lost the argument about what is best for the common good. It is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle applied to economics.

    As soon as you claim that each individual must be burdened with his onw true total costs, then you have bought into the idea that the common good can only be the sum of all the individual goods: therefore individual greed is good.

    We are trapped between the tragedy of the commons, the tragedy of unenlightened self interest, and the tragedy of the lemmings. We are going to run blindly off the cliff, while bashing the public commons of subsidies.

    Because we don’t see that it is (or might be) in our own self interest.

    In this case, the whole picture involves more than the idea that trucks do more damage to the roads than they pay for. Especially since we already know that trucks don’t pay the taxes, consumers do.

    The idea cannot be to make ourselves (magically) better off by making the truckers worse off with taxes that we will pay. that makes no sense.

    So, what we have to look at is that given we willpay, one way or another, how do we do it so that:

    a) we are collectively better off

    and

    b) no one is any worse off.

    You still face the problem that one person might be no worse off, but “feel” a lot worse off because he didn’t get as much benefit as the rest. Lower trucking taxes mean blueberries are cheaper, but he couldn’t afford blueberries anyway.

    That is unfortunate, but it is distiguishable from the situation where he once could afford blueberries and now cannot. Obviously, at some level of distorted opportunity, we are no longer increasing the public benefit, but our present level of discourse leaves us a lot more opportunities for good than bad.

    As it stands now, we make the sme errors in logic no matter which side of the discourse we choose. EMR’s qupote above is a good example.

    RH

  17. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I have a soft copy of the Virginia Transportation Research Council study summary that I obtained from VDOT. Anyone wishing a copy can send an email request to tmtfairfax AT lycos dot com I’ll be happy to forward it in reply.

    TMT

  18. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Ray needs to work as hard to understand human settlement patterns (and what they can tell the knowledgeable observer) as he does to discredit what Dr. Risse says.

    If he did he would find that the answers are quite straight forword.

    Instead he provices excuses for and perpetuates business-as-usual and politics-as-usual.

  19. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    “Instead he provices excuses for and perpetuates business-as-usual and politics-as-usual.”

    I wonder why all of EMR’s supporters are shadowy nameless Anons.

    Look, all I said was that IF you get to a point where everyone pays their own full costs there will be no cause for anyone else to complain about what they are doing. EMR has said as much, himself: he doesn’t care where people live as long as they pay (his version) of full locational costs.

    The problem with that, as I point out, is that it is inconsistent with his views about how selfish self-interest and profit-making is incompatible with the social good. It is also inconsistent with his views on proerty rights. If you are going to insist that everyone pay for what they get, then you need to be clear about who owns what to begin with.

    As a result, I find his inconistencies a lot more straightforward than his “answers”, and i think his argument is fundamentally flawed.

    ————————–

    I hate politics as usual because it frequently based on beliefs about single issues that don’t hold up to the facts. We would still be having partisan debates over whether feathers fall faster than lead balls, had someone not provided definitive proof.

    If we chose to, we can do the same with other issues, except it behooves us or our party to “win” an argument (in the short term) even if the facts are wrong. Hence the example on the Laffer curve. No one is out there advocating for dispassionate measurements about what it is we are trying to do: even the “scientific” and “academic” communities have been corrupted by politics.

    There are a lot of proposed anwers out there that are simple, straight forward, and wrong. To those, you can add EMR’s, which are convuluted, circular, politically tainted, and wrong.

    ———————–

    The frustrating thing is that I have the feeling that somewhere at the bottom of that mess of ideology there are a couple of premises that are correct, but after that, its a mishmash.

    The idea that a sustainable planet means we need fewer people consuming less stuff is hard to desagree with, for example. Except that, if you have enough fewer people, the ones left could consume a lot more. The obvious quesition, then, is what is the right number of people, not how and where to cram them into settlement patterns.

    If you figure that out, then you need an ethical framework for achieving the “right” number of people. Good luck with that.

    It has been said that without insects, life would vanish from the earth in five years, but without man, life would flourish.

    So, if sustainaability is a problem, then let’s define it in a way that can be measured, and will be measured the same by either political party. The definition proposed by EMR (and many others) strikes me as useless, in that respect. It is something like to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

    Pretty fuzzy.

    ——————————

    I believe that biological, chemical, and economic processes at their root are energy processes, and no further categorization is ultimately needed. “If you use more energy than can be produced by the land you occupy, then you are in an unsustainable condition.” Conversely, by definition, you must be “occupying” as much land as it takes to produce the energy you consume, whether you are actually paying for it, or not.

    I think my answer is easy and useful compared to the sustainability pablum that is usally preached. Follow the energy.

    “Occupying th land that it takes to produce the resources you consume” sounds a lot like a call to pay for your full resources, just as EMR would say. But it suggests profound differences in how we consider the sustainability of our cities.

    The present mantra is or seems to be that somehow our most densely populated places are the most efficient and sustainable. To me, that idea is just about as crazy as the idea that a wood ball and a cannonball fall at different speeds.

    Pretty simple really. Draw a circle around a city and then measure all the energy that goes in and out, plus the embedded energy of all the goods that go in and out. I’ll wager that the larger the circle, the closer you get to balance. I’ll wager that the value of the heat wasted in the heat island pretty much accounts for the difference.

    Now, that is straightforward, and I don’t have to rail endlessly about gaming, advertising, MSM, short term profits, subsidies, or greedy self interest.

  20. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Larry:

    Check out the comments on Freakonomics under the post:

    “Why You’ll Love Paying for Roads That Used to Be Free: A Guest Post”

    185 comments, overwhelmingly opposed.

    RH

  21. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “The base rate proposed is a quadratic function of axle-weight, times the number of axles and miles travelled, which together with vehicle speed, determines highway wean and tear. “

    This is based on the Oregon plan for a mileage based tax.

    Now a QUADRATIC equation based on weight throws a whole new wrinkle in the pie. also, in Oregon, high mileage vehicles, like hybrids, are already subsidized.

    But now they also want to capture speed, and that means GPS. Next the GPS will control your speed, highway use or routing, and probably (eventually) destination.

    All we will be missing is the KGB asking for our travel papers.

    RH

    RH

  22. Accurate Avatar
    Accurate

    EMR says –
    “It reduces the revenue for needed programs by subsidizing the wrong actions and behaviors.”

    And WHO becomes the arbitrator of which programs are ‘needed’ and which ones aren’t? Who becomes the ‘behavior’ czar who rules which actions and behaviors are ‘right’ and which ones are ‘wrong’? I’m willing to bet that your view of the above questions and my view of those questions would be very different (assuming one of us became the ‘czar’).

    “It masks true costs so there is no way to know who may really quaify for what help to level the playing field.” Level the playing field? Sounds fairly socialistic to me. And in a true pay-if-you-play system, should there be ‘help’? After all, aren’t the present subsidies a ‘help’ for some segment (or more than one) of the consumption chain? Why would we do away with one only to give a subsidy (or ‘help’) to another, I don’t follow your logic (and I despise socialism).

    Finally, “Have you decided to help create a Lewenz Village Yet?” I would not help build such a place as it totally rubs me the wrong way. I couldn’t put my heart into some thing, some place that is so totally opposite the way I like to live. If someone (you perhaps?) wishes to live in such a place, then more power to them; go help build it. I believe we all need to be able to live where and in whatever conditions we think make sense for ourselves (within the bounds of civilization and the law) but I would be a hypocrite unto myself to work or live in such a place.

  23. Accurate Avatar
    Accurate

    RH said,
    “But now they also want to capture speed, and that means GPS. Next the GPS will control your speed, highway use or routing, and probably (eventually) destination.”

    I live in Oregon, we have one of the worst, stick-his-head-in-the-sand, doesn’t have clue governors in this wonderful country of ours. Actually, we are more afraid that at first, they will use the GPS to mail you a ticket for speeding. Later, they will dictate what kind of vehicles can be bought/used in this fair state. I’ve said it before, I’m trying to get away from this whacko state.

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