DOT's price on trucks' toll on roads called high, low

Legislators scoffed Tuesday at a second attempt by the state Department of Transportation to put a dollar figure on the pavement damage caused by overweight trucks on North Carolina highways.

Lacy D. Love, a DOT administrator, told members of a legislative committee that the state spends $99.2 million a year to fix the ruts and cracks caused by trucks that are heavier than many highways and secondary roads are designed to handle.

"We keep coming back to you and asking for more money for the maintenance budget, and part of this is driven by the amount of trucks we have," said Love, DOT's asset management director.

Some trucks violate the normal legal limit of 80,000 pounds, pounding the pavement and forcing DOT to patch or repave roads months or years sooner than would otherwise be necessary. This damage adds up to $77.5 million each year, Love said, much less than the $130 million estimate offered by DOT in October.

He attributed an additional $21.7 million in damage to exemptions granted by the legislature since 1993 for trucks loaded with commodities including wood chips, trash, logs and seafood.

Several legislators who had criticized the $130 million estimate said the new figure is too high.

"Oh, I think it's drastically overstated, I certainly do," Sen. Clark Jenkins of Edgecombe County, co-chairman of a transportation oversight committee, said in an interview.

Love acknowledged that DOT's calculations were based on assumptions Jenkins said were faulty. They included damages for interstate highways based entirely on asphalt pavement, even though 30 percent of North Carolina's interstates are paved with concrete. Love said DOT had used these assumptions to simplify a difficult analysis that had to be produced in a limited time.

"Certainly, we'll go back and look at this again and refine it as best we can," Love told Jenkins. "This is a very challenging thing to try to come up with."

Jenkins is a sponsor of legislation, approved by the Senate but stalled in the House, that would extend truck weight exemptions to the home-building industry. He blamed much of the state's road damage on delayed maintenance spending. He has acknowledged in the past that some of the farm and forest product weight exemptions benefit his farming business in Edgecombe County, and he said he would recuse himself from discussions about those laws.

Three other legislators voiced similar doubts and spoke of the economic contributions of the trucking industry.

Rep. Nelson Cole of Reidsville, who was silent during the discussion, said later that DOT's number was too low.

"I think the impact is greater than what they're talking about," Cole said. "It could be twice as much."