Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Heavy Trucks

The Doyle Administration is looking to deflect blame.

One in six semitrailer trucks recently exceeded the weight limits imposed in August on the Highway 45 bridge in the Zoo Interchange, leading to its rapid deterioration, the state’s top bridge manager said Monday.

In a five-week period from mid-February to March 21, electronic sensors on the bridge detected roughly 1,550 trucks a week crossing the span that exceeded the weight limit of 60,000 pounds. That equals roughly 16.2% of all tractor trailers, according to records provided by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

Calculated over seven months, an estimated 48,000 trucks have exceeded the weight limit, which was imposed in an attempt to extend the life of the crumbling span.

“Had we had adherence of postings, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” said Beth Cannestra, director of the bureau of structures in the state Transportation Department. “There is no question in my mind. If you look at the cracking patterns and areas of new cracks that have appeared - it’s overload.”

Let’s be perfectly clear.  The highway is SUPPOSED to be able to handle those trucks.  The weight limit was put in place because the government failed to properly maintain and replace this critical part of our transportation infrastructure in a timely manner.  If the government had done their job in a competent manner, there never would have been weight restrictions and we wouldn’t be pissing away millions of dollars for temporary bridges.

(10) Comments
Posted by Owen at 0717 hrs
Politics + Politics - Wisconsin

  1. The US and Wisconsin rely primarily on gasoline taxes to fund the cost of road construction and maintenance, but the effective tax rate has been cut in half since the ‘60s. Just as the people of the ‘50s and ‘60s made the commitment to the future for quality roads, so it was our duty to make that commitment going forward. We dropped the ball by cutting funding. Now we have to pay extra.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 30, 2010 at 1026 hrs


  2. Owen,

    Better the state has found the problem, is monitoring it and trying to deal with it.

    Would you rather have an I-35 over the Mississippi issue on your hands?

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 30, 2010 at 1145 hrs


  3. The US and Wisconsin rely primarily on gasoline taxes to fund the cost of road construction and maintenance, but the effective tax rate has been cut in half since the ‘60s. Just as the people of the ‘50s and ‘60s made the commitment to the future for quality roads, so it was our duty to make that commitment going forward. We dropped the ball by cutting funding. Now we have to pay extra.

    Would part of that commitment involve ensuring that the money that it was supposed to be used for actually be used for transportation and infrastructure and not education and nursing homes?

    As far as all of this goes, finally someone brings up the I-35 bridge. Remember when that was a priority in our country? Seems, that once again, some politicians have lost there way and apparently had better things to worry about.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 30, 2010 at 1207 hrs


  4. We have not cut funding for roads, nor have we cut the tax.    The effective rate has gone down because the price of gas has gone up, but this is irrelevant.  The costs of building and maintaining roads are not directly proportional to the price of gas, if anything they should be slightly inversely proportional as usage of the roads ought to drop when the gas price goes up.

    Whether or not we should design and build these roads to handle 120,000 lb vehicles is a question we need to ask ourselves.    They can’t be justified for miltary purposes and what we are effectively doing is subsidizing heavy long haul truck transport over other transport means.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 30, 2010 at 1216 hrs


  5. An Abrams tank weighs 135,000 pounds.

    Posted by Owen on March 30, 2010 at 1223 hrs


  6. And an Abrams tank can be moved via rail, which they almost always are.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 30, 2010 at 1227 hrs


  7. In the immortal words of Frank Drebin, ‘Please Disperse ... There is nothing to see here!’.

    Posted by TD on March 30, 2010 at 1340 hrs


  8. Would part of that commitment involve ensuring that the money that it was supposed to be used for actually be used for transportation and infrastructure and not education and nursing homes?

    Of course. If you want to raise taxes for those purposes, that’s fine, but it’s not sensible to say you are raising a particular tax for a dedicated purpose and then starve that purpose while directing it elsewhere so you can say you “didn’t raise taxes.”

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 30, 2010 at 1448 hrs


  9. It seems to me that if you have a gas tax supposedly to build and repair roads, and you raid the fund to subsidise County buses, bike trails, the general fund (Gov’s infamous $1.2B theft) to say nothing of plans to pay for the car-speed rail line to almost nowhere, do not try to tell me the problem is that taxes are not suffiently high. Why do lefties always find a way to disparage taxpayers as tightwads, while at the same time singing the praises of those who suckle at the teat of public funds?

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 30, 2010 at 1909 hrs


  10. Tom,

    The reason for the raids that Democrats and Republicans have voted for over the past quarter-century was that the legislature and governors were not willing to cut spending to meet tax revenues or to raise taxes to meet spending. They were behaving irresponsibly, but no one called them on their misleading claims when they said they were ‘not raising taxes’.

    This is bipartisan irresponsibility.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 31, 2010 at 0750 hrs


Commenting is not available in this channel entry.