February 24, 2005

Legislative road kill

Price of increased truck weights too high

A Google search tell us that both Mark Twain and 19th-century New York jurist Gideon J. Tucker are credited with saying, "No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session."

Whoever first voiced that sentiment, it has never been more true than it was Tuesday night in the Kentucky House of Representatives.

By approving House Bill 8 on a 55-32 vote, legislators put the life and property of everyone who ventures onto Kentucky highways at great risk.

HB 8 would greatly expand the number of trucks given legal permission to exceed the state's 40-ton weight limit. If this measure passes in the Senate, trucks carrying gravel, sand, oil and gas will have the same right to carry up to 60 tons of cargo that the state granted to coal trucks a couple of decades ago.

This increase in the number of overweight trucks endangers Kentuckians in a couple of ways.

First, the trucks themselves pose a greater threat to folks who share the highways with them because stopping a truck carrying 60 tons requires a considerably longer distance than it takes to stop a 40-ton truck.

In addition, the heavier trucks do such tremendous damage to the pavement that the roads become a hazard for other motorists.

The cost of preparing the state's bridges for handling the extra traffic from overweight trucks and repairing their damage to roads and bridges was originally estimated at $385 million for the first year and $25 million each year thereafter.

However, all that cost just disappeared in a revised fiscal note on HB8, allowing its supporters to stand on the floor of the House and argue disingenuously that the bill would cost the state nothing.

But this legislation carries the same heavy cost in lives, property and added road maintenance that overweight coal trucks have visited upon the state's eastern and western coal regions for decades.

With HB 8, that heavy cost will be extended throughout the state, wherever gravel, sand and other natural resources are regularly hauled.

The bill's supporters argue that it is necessary because a pending court case could result in the weight exemption for coal trucks being declared unconstitutional preferential treatment. They may well be right; it is wrong to treat coal as a sacred cow.

But the right way to correct that wrong is to make coal trucks abide by the 40-ton limit that is enforced on interstate highways and state roads in most of the nation.

Certainly, correcting an indefensible inequity shouldn't be used as an excuse to spread the dangers and damage that have been visited on the coal regions to the rest of the state.

The Senate must keep that from happening.