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.