Car drivers, truckers assess blame.

Byline: The Register-Guard

SALEM - When it comes to the role trucks and cars play in damaging Oregon's roads and bridges, the question of fairness has been a contentious one over the years.

After all, taxes and fees from passenger-car drivers and trucking companies are at stake.

The tension between the two groups led to a voter-passed constitutional amendment in 1999 that requires studies to be conducted every other year to determine the cost responsibility of each of the two categories of road users.

The 2003 analysis done by the Oregon Department of Transportation concluded that in all, cars contribute to about two-thirds of the cost of all road- and bridge-related expenses: from rest area construction and maintenance to repaving to congestion-relief. In large part, that's because trucks account for only 8 percent of Oregon's road use on a miles-per-vehicle basis, said John Merris, the ODOT Policy Section manager.

But in certain areas, the heavy weight of trucks and their freight more than make up for the damage caused by the cars that outnumber them. Trucks are responsible for more than 70 percent of the cost of resurfacing roadways, Merris said.

And trucks cause 56 percent of the damage to Oregon's bridges, he said.

That figure draws catcalls from some motorists, such as Eugene resident David Blaine.

"Fifty-six percent? that's a huge break for the trucks," said Blaine, a retired 80-year-old. "The damage automobiles do, outside of knocking down signs, is negligible."

The way Blaine figures it, vehicles such as his 2,500-pound Pontiac Sunbird could travel across Oregon's bridges in endless convoys without putting enough weight on them to compromise their integrity.

But loaded trucks have been allowed to put the stress of 70,000 to 105,000 pounds or more on Oregon's spans. The damage has been severe, and costly, he said.

Given his views, it irks Blaine that the Legislature is raising car fees to pay for two-thirds of the increase and leaving the remaining one-third to trucks.

But Salem's leading advocate for motorists, AAA lobbyist Larry Campbell, said he's not troubled by the arrangement. Campbell said he's confident that when future cost-responsibility studies are done, they will reflect that this year's increased transportation fees are paying primarily for bridge work, which means truck taxes will have to be recalculated to reflect that industry's larger responsibility for bridge-related projects.

"It'll change in the future because of the kind of work that's being done," he said.

Keith Sherman, CEO of Sherman Brothers Heavy Trucking in Harrisburg, said his industry already pays more than its fair share for transportation fees, given that Oregon's weight-mile tax results in higher truck taxes than those imposed in other Western states.

And he contests the notion that Oregon's policies have been too lenient on trucks when it comes to the weights they're allowed to carry.

Oregon's allowance of trucks that weigh up to 105,000 pounds may exceed what many other states permit, Sherman said, but they also set stringent requirements for the number of axles that trucks must operate with, requiring up to eight axles for the heaviest permitted loads - which distributes the weight more broadly on the driving surface.

"So it's actually easier on the roads than the regular five-axle combination with 80,000 pounds," he said.

Patrick Cooney, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Transportation, said that despite the public's perception that heavy trucks are solely responsible for Oregon's badly damaged bridges, there isn't evidence to support it.

He said a combination of bridge-design that dates back to the 1940s and earlier is partly to blame.

An ODOT-commissioned Oregon State University study on bridges, due out later this summer, could shed more light on the issue, he said.

- David Steves