View the June 29 seminar recording.
Nicole Coene
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you in the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Nicole Coene and I will moderate today's seminar. Today's topic is: Oversize and Overweight Freight Shipments.
Before I go any further, I want mention that we have been experiencing connectivity issues with Adobe Connect. DOT is working to resolve this issue; however, a permanent fix is not yet in place. If you begin to experience poor audio quality while listening to this webinar via your computer please private message me in the chat pod. Currently the most consistent sound is via the teleconference line.
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Today we'll have three presentations, given by:
Matthew Hedge has been the Special Hauling Permit Manager for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation for the last 6 years. He is in charge of facilitating oversized/overweight movement in Pennsylvania. In that capacity he is also in charge of maintaining and improving the Automated Permit Routing Analysis System and representing PennDOT's position on laws, regulations and policies pertaining to truck freight movement. He is also the AASHTO Sub-committee on Highway Transports NASTO Regional Chair.
Following retirement from career with Illinois Department of Transportation in 2012, Steven Todd served as the Vice President of Specialized Carriers & Rigging Association for the last four years.
Alex Marach is a Senior Consultant with CPCS. A public policy professional and economist by training, Alex focuses on transportation policy, economic impacts, modal competition, and industry trends, needs and issues. Before joining CPCS, Alex acquired extensive knowledge of economic and policy issues through his work with the National Center for Freight & Infrastructure Research & Education (CFIRE) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Today's seminar will last 90 minutes, with 60 minutes allocated for the speakers, and the final 30 minutes for audience Question and Answer. If during the presentations you think of a question, you can type it into the chat area. Please make sure you send your question to "Everyone" and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentations, but I will start off the question and answer session with the questions typed into the chat box. If time allows, we will open up the phone lines for questions as well. If we run out of time and are unable to address all questions we will attempt to get written responses from the presenters to the unanswered questions.
The PowerPoint presentations used during the seminar are available for download from the file download box in the lower right corner of your screen. The presentations will also be available online within the next few weeks, along with a recording and a transcript. I will notify all attendees once these materials are posted online.
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I'm now going to turn it over to Matt Hedge of PennDOT to get us started.
Matt Hedge
Hello, I'll try to rifle through these quickly. Several of my slides show pictures of load when something goes wrong; I'm going to talk about things that all of us can do to help mitigate these situations. If you look at this first picture here it's moving a bridge beam through Pennsylvania. It's got a long steerable dolly on it and the hauler had to call and communicate with the local municipality to move the cars off the sides of the roads so this thing could fit through. They need special traffic control plans and things that our analysis, state analysis, did not take into consideration are the drivers' abilities and vehicles' capabilities. So, when you're creating your load through whatever state you're going through, keep in consideration that those things do not come into analysis. We try to decide how that square peg is going to fit through that round hole.
The first thing we will talk about is planning. This particular picture here is of a Jack and Slide. The load did not fit under the bridge and it couldn't go around the bridge or around a different way, so we figured out that we could move it up on to the highway and slide it over to the other side of the highway and back down to continue on the route. The first company that we had to do this did a very poor job of planning. This happened in the middle of winter and they got stuck in ice and snow. It was delayed. The next company came in and had maps and pictures and diagrams and set up plans and they did a really good job of laying out their plan and contingency plan if things went awry. We decided to give them a try. This was a different company and it went very well. So planning is definitely very important when you're talking about these huge loads. Also, we are not talking about small loads. You can see here a normal sized semi-tractor-trailer in front of what we consider our super loads or our oversized overweight loads. They are considerably bigger. Legislators, no matter how much their constituents call them up saying that they need the move to happen today, they are not really willing to let that happen unless the Pennsylvania Department of transportation says that it's safe to move those loads. Consider those things when you are calling up your legislator trying to get them to do something that may or may not be safe to do.
The analysis takes time. You're not getting a pool pass or a parking permit. You're moving an enormous load or an extremely heavy load over a lot of structures and around corners. In Pennsylvania you're going to go through an automated process that does an electronic evaluation of the load going over the size route that you're going over and the bridges are all considered, and height conditions are all part of that analysis. It may also go into the district's queue. The district takes look at that particular load and sees if it is safe to deliver it if the automated analysis is inconclusive. So it might see a bridge engineer, it might see a permit staff engineer and then it may not be just one of those, it may be in one of the districts. There are 11 districts in Pennsylvania, so it could meet as many of 20 to 30 people to make sure that this load can safely travel over that route. This picture depicts all the different functions that come in contact during a typical application. In order to get ready for your route, there are a lot of things that the states are going to provide for you. They have a lot of resources, a lot of maps, lots of different things that will help you prepare to move your load. There is clearance maps, freight corridors, Google maps, plan construction, 511 traffic information is available. Within our automated system we have different administrative messages and things. Then of course there is staff that you can also reach out to.
Typically things do go wrong. As you can see this pilot car obviously made an error of some type. Time is money, so it is important that those errors don't happen. This gets me to my next side of things. Make sure that the information that you enter in there is accurate information or something ugly like this could happen. You're not fooling anybody, so please take note that the information you enter is how we are basing our analysis. If you say that you are 15 feet high and you're actually 16 feet high, you are going to hit the bridge that you did not think was a very big deal. If you're under the weight or over the weight that you suggested, you could end up in the middle of the river like this poor guy did. We have had a couple of bridge strikes that resulted in bridges having to be demolished or taken down because haulers put in inaccurate information. It may be an accident or it may be on purpose, but the important part is that you use the accurate information and take the time to correct those errors before things like this happen.
Pay attention to details. You can see here that this is a pretty enormous load traveling over a bridge that is a historic bridge. They laid bridge jumpers over it because it's too heavy of a load and would have crushed that bridge. You will see there are some 25 axles or so that are going over this particular load. The size and weight and vehicle registration, coordination with the locals, special services like ambulances and fire trucks maybe to be considered depending on what's going on in the local area. We had a condition where one of our super loads was going to take a rather long time to get over a particular bridge. There were no emergency services for a local 55+ community. So we needed to make sure that they had the ability to get medical attention in the hours that this load was going to be passing through this area.
Communications is always important. Most states have a way to reach out to their individual staff. I know that most states are willing to meet with and discuss what you're trying to do. If you've contacted somebody, leave a message there. People take lunch breaks and there are a lot of other phone calls that come in. We encourage you to leave this message so we can get in touch with you. Send emails and please be courteous. We like helping people but it's very difficult to help people when they are being rude, per se. Setup a meeting with us to talk about your particular move needs. When you have an enormous size load like this or a high volume of loads going to a certain location, we can make special accommodations to make sure these things happen. We can coordinate with local states as well. I have reached out to Maryland and New York on different occasions to work with them to facilitate special moves. State workers generally don't like surprises, so give us a complete picture of what you'd like to do. This isn't the first crazy plan we have seen. A lot of us have dealt with these things on many different occasions. We are a great resource to help you get these things to go smoothly.
Our internal state issues. This particular series of pictures is if you look at the far left of your screen, this is a nice rolling country road that happened in north-central Pennsylvania. The Marcellus Shale industry moved in, found some gas drilling and turned the road into a mud path. In all fairness, at the end of the day they went back out and fixed the road, and now it looks like this on the right-hand side. But I'm trying to say here is that, what the state tries to do is create a balance between economic needs and safety needs. The extremes are that, if it was 100% safety then none of these large moves would happen; we shut down all of them down. However, if we shut down everything that was oversized or overweight then there would be a complete breakdown in the US's ability to provide services to its citizens. So as you can see it doesn't make any sense.
We need to reach that balance. The way we do that is using bridge data and analysis and different infrastructure information. It would be, in a golden society, every state would have all the information they possibly would need to be able to make the analysis go off without a hitch. The reality of the situation is that every state has their own priorities and every state has a different level of information that they have collected on their bridges and structures. Pennsylvania started a long time ago, creating those databases and putting those things together, because there were already significant issues with their infrastructure that they wanted to make sure were addressed. One of the things that all states struggle with is the age of the infrastructure. In Pennsylvania we have bridges that are in service that are 100+ years old. There's also freeze-thaw, where the road is weakened because of the constant freezing and thawing of the different roads. In California they deal with earthquakes and they need to make sure those bridges can hold up under certain conditions. Geology, what it is that you'd drilling into that makes sure the bridge stays up in the air. Geometry, with curves and things of that nature. Infrastructure issues are roundabouts and bridges and roads and all kinds of other things that need to be worried about within the states.
Funding. What you see here is the hauler needed some more vertical clearance to get under that light, so he strapped a rope around it and tied it back until he could reach underneath it. This is damaging our infrastructure and taking money out of our ability to maintain our current conditions and build new structures. So if we have to spend our time fixing damage caused by haulers or other things, it takes away from our money to build new stuff so that the haulers can move more efficiently around. Again, funding is limited.
Automation is the latest thing going on. Pennsylvania has been at the top of the level when it comes to automation. We have been automated for almost 20 years and are putting together a new system to take it to the next generation. Some of our surrounding states are also joining in with the automation and several of these states that I put on this slide are also taking part. Automation gives you the ability to speed things up a bit, but there is no way to blanket the auto issue process. Naturally, if there are certain conditions that your state will allow a route to the auto issue, then this is great. What's good for Illinois is not necessarily good for Pennsylvania. Because Pennsylvania has been doing this for 20 years and we are more comfortable with our ability to auto issue things and our data that we are putting into our system than some of the other states are. So even though there may be an automated process going on, a lot of the states are not going to really want to allow that auto issue to take place without certain caveats or manual processes to double check.
Automation improves the speed and efficiency. As I said earlier, you definitely need good data. There needs to be a dedication to the states to maintain that good database and that's a nonstop process to make sure that this is good. Automated systems are not cheap. They do take a while to implement so even after you have created the RFP to reach out to somebody, it may be another year before that system gets up and running. Because you need to tie in all of those different databases and grab data that the state may not even have yet.
There are special cases. There's always something new going on. In this case you'll see this huge crane trying to cross over the road. So they had to lay down some crushed stone and some railroad ties so that the road wasn't torn up. That crane is probably over 500,000 pounds. Some are over 1,000,000 pounds. So these things are not small. They can do damage if they are not taken care of.
Laws, regulations, and policies. As you can see, this truck probably did not follow one of the laws, being that this was a posted bridge that says he is limited to 10 tons. Laws are established by the legislators. They set the max weights and changes would need to push through legislation and comply with federal laws. The federal guidelines are established and the state statutes support those federal guidelines so that our enforcement personnel have the ability to write tickets and cite those haulers. A regulation is kind of details to the law. Public outreach is a part of creating regulation and there's a regulatory board review. Economic impact is taken into regulations. They want to know what impact it's going to have on those local companies when you establish a particular law.
If we pass a regulation that requires them to have certain signs are flags on the vehicles, what's that going to do to them? Does it cost a lot of money to do that? Is it going to remove some safety things on their vehicle? That's all a part of the regulation. If the law or regulation is infringing on the haulers ability to move that load, there is really nothing that can be done within the laws and regulations. Those laws and regulations would need to be changed in order for us as a permit office, to do anything about it. Policies are a little bit different. Policies can be looked at and reviewed if there is a safety benefit. If moving at night is going to impact things in a positive way, so that the general traveling public is not going to be held up or stuck in congestion because of this move, then we will consider moving them at night. Things like that. Policies that if the hauler can come to me and say it's going to make more sense to do it this way, then we'll take a look at it. We are not going to change a policy because it's going to save you money; that is not considered a reason why we would.
This slide is about provision sheets. It is a sheet that we put together to help the haulers get a list of highlights to our laws, regulations, and policies that are important. They need to be known by each driver on the road. In this particular condition you will see the hauler trying to manipulate this ridiculously large size load through this small town during a snowstorm. He is not having a lot of luck. So the provision sheets talk about inclement weather and what is considered inclement and when you should and should not be out there. The other things are travel periods, pilot cars, and urbanized areas. This concludes my talk about those things that are important and impact somebody trying to move loads from a state perspective.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Matt. We will now move on to Steven Todd of the Specialized Carriers and Rigging Association.
Steven Todd
Thank you, Nicole and good afternoon. And special thanks to Nicole and Chip for presenting this opportunity for us. We in the industry of specialized transportation are blessed to have multiple opportunities to interact with some state and federal officials, particularly at the DOT level. As I understand from Chip, in addition to some of those permit officials are other important officials from state DOTs and federal DOTs as well as planning and operations. Hopefully some engineers as well, which, as you will hear in a few minutes, we rarely have ever had the opportunity to interact with them so we greatly appreciate that. As Nicole mentioned earlier, I am retired from the Illinois Department of Transportation and you'll hear me reference Illinois on a couple of occasions here today. Certainly because of my background there, but also more importantly you'll hear in a few minutes, Illinois, certainly under the leadership of governor Rauner and secretary Blankenhorn, they've become a leader throughout the nation in so many aspects of specialized transportation, automation, and elsewhere.
With that being said, we'll jump right in. One other quick note; it's important to note that in addition to trucks that cranes and self-propelled equipment play a large part in this industry as well. Special thanks to Matt Hedge of PA DOT. He's a real leader in the nation with regards to specialized transportation. Thank you to Alex, Marc Andre and others with CPCS. You'll hear from Alex in a moment. Too many studies of this nature end up collecting dust on shelves. One of the exciting aspects of this from our industry standpoint, and you'll see this in Alex's presentation, this study unlike most really stands a good chance to live a life of many years with living tools, as Marc Andre first mentioned.
Moving through the slides, a couple of perceptions usually come up in specialized transportation when people are surveyed. The first perception can be one of frustration. Running into loads while you're late for an appointment or trying to get around and hopefully not violating any laws. The other perception that comes to mind in our industry for those on the outside are these absolutely incredible mega loads which I will brush through quickly. We move many space shuttles, and this happens to be a part of the world's largest telescope moved out west. Wind blades, these are becoming bigger and larger. Often times some of our larger loads, particularly those wrapped are mistaken as they run through small towns as UFOs. Local police often get those types of calls. And just some incredible timing and planning is met, as indicated on both the stateside and our side. Here you will see a bridge being planked to avoid damage to the bridge. This is one of our overseas members moving an incredible load through a somewhat urban area. Here is a convoy going on. The one perception that far too often is not found by folks on the outside is what is actually the bread and butter of specialized transportation. What you see here is typical of well over 90% of all oversize and overweight permit moves nationwide. I'm talking about the loads in the 120,000 gross. Moving construction equipment, often times for state and federal DOT projects.
SC&RA is an association worldwide and we pride ourselves, we believe our members are the absolute safest members and carriers and crane companies throughout the country. Meaning, no disrespect to the rest of the trucking industry, but as many of our members will tell you we're the safest because we cannot afford not to be. Often times we are moving multimillion dollar loads. Finally to put things in perspective, for every one oversized/overweight permit load that moves throughout the country, well over 200 legal loads move. Rock, gravel, sand, concrete, and not to be too disrespectful to the others within the trucking industry, we believe from a specialized transportation industry that perhaps too much attention is paid to our fewer in number loads and not enough attention paid to these loads. We pride ourselves on our partnerships. Federal, state, local level, private sector, we've been interacting with a lot of ports lately. We are very proud of that. The question is: who governs oversize/overweight? The answer to that is everyone and no one. Basically what we mean by that is, unlike a lot of regulatory agencies and policies that come from the federal sector and work their way down, we are kind of special you might say in that the federal government does not issue OS/OW permits and does not get too involved in the regulatory side of things, instead leaving things to the state.
With that said, the federal government has been an outstanding resource and our go to people and we appreciate them. I said earlier that the federal government does not get too involved in the issuance of oversize permits; however they have been very helpful to our industry in many ways. Not the least of which is granting us an hours of service exemption for the mandatory 30 minute break. Which some of our members say has been a godsend, particularly for those loads that move at near crawl speeds and would be hung up at state lines for example 2 to 3 days if not for the ability to exempt ourselves from that particular hour of service rule. FHWA have been very heavily involved in an updated pilot car best data practice. Also about to roll out, of interest to I hope to a lot of state officials, is for the first time we have created a national training curriculum that we are hopeful many states will peruse and take a look at as they consider state certification programs of their own.
Finally, GAO federal agencies conducted a study primarily as a result of the Skagit Bridge incident, and out of that, they recommended to the federal DOT that further studies be conducted primarily in the areas of automated vehicle routing and escort driver certification, identifying areas of best practice. We at SC&RA continue to encourage the federal DOT and we have received indications that such a project may be moving forward at some point in time.
That is not to say that everything has always been perfect in our world in terms of interacting with federal government and state governments. This is the federal definition of a non-divisible load. It looks pretty straightforward, however as we have found unfortunately, attempting to travel through all 50 states there are at least 36 different definitions and interpretations of this federal definition, specifically using counterweights on cranes. Most manufacturers will now swear that a certain amount of counterweights are necessary and needed for the safety of the vehicle and the driver for balance and turning. Those counterweights if not at the jobsite, would compromise the intended use of the vehicle, in this case a mobile crane. Yet far too many states in our opinion misinterpret the federal definition which says A, B, or C must be met. So this is just one of many issues and priorities that we hope to move forward and advocate with our wonderful partner AASHTO.
Speaking of AASHTO, who issues permits? There are 50 states and thousands of local governments, which results in hundreds of thousands of different rules and policies, which far too often results in unnecessary cost for us. As mentioned, our partnership with AASHTO, particularly the subcommittee on highway transport, the four AASHTO regions. As if it wasn't difficult enough dealing with 50 different sets of policies, we now have local governments involved, and when you start talking about purchasing a permit to travel across the country and perhaps downtown Chicago a carrier might be in need of anywhere from 20 to 30 or more permits.
We are running into problems at the local level or even with identifying whose jurisdiction the particular road actually exists. Finally, a challenge for us is with law enforcement. Just as indicated earlier with the non-divisible load interpretation within the state itself, we run into from time to time different interpretations from some state police inspectors and what we believe to be the state DOT policy. You run into local police in some states who have yet a third interpretation of how things go. So it's quite a challenge and the next few slides, which I won't go over in detail, highlight some of the dozens and dozens of issues and barriers that our industry faces as we attempt to harmonize various policies as we move across the country. Some of the issues involved some work that we're doing with AASHTO. I'll reference that the last issue, it tells our story so to speak in terms of how much time these processes take. We have worked for 10 years with the subcommittee on highway transport to begin what's now become a pretty successful process of harmonization. The first resolution that was passed took approximately 10 years to identify and discuss and resolve. That particular resolution simply attempted to coordinate and harmonize amongst the 50 states the color of flags, the type of lights, the size of signs, and the font size of the letters on the signs. 10 years in the making just to begin to address what we see as a very low hanging fruit.
We will venture into the discussion of weight here. I mentioned at the onset that for the most part we have been tremendously pleased and appreciative of our ability to interact with both federal and state officials on a variety of issues that I covered in some previous slides. With one unfortunate major exception that we're going all out to hopefully have an audience with the appropriate state and federal officials to begin to discuss what I will show you here in a minute to be an incredible hodgepodge jigsaw puzzle of variances on weight allowances from state to state. This map is a success story; two axle tandem allowance. 20 years ago most of these states would have been colored in red; that is only allowing 40,000 pounds on a tandem two axle.
Today, years later after much individual work and meetings with individual states, we have turned most of those states blue or close to blue. That is allowing 46,000 pounds on a tandem. It should not have taken 10 to 15 years for that discussion. It would not have taken that long for discussion if we had a mechanism to discuss weight variances at a national level through AASHTO, federal officials, or otherwise. This truck here is a three axle tractor trailer truck which most of you will recognize is pretty standard in our industry; it's less expensive than the four axle tractor. And the reason I displayed the slide was that this three axle tractor can only accommodate loads at 46,000 pounds on those front two drive tandems. Unfortunately in a handful of states our industry is required to use this more expensive and much lesser in inventory four axle tractors to meet the 40,000 pounds on the front drive. This leads to, as well as the lack of harmonization and other issues, a lot of wasted time as we're scrambling for additional trucks to run through those states.
These next few maps are certainly not up to date. If you see your state not showing the exact weight limit, I'll apologize. We will update these later. But the fact remains, the story of this three axle map and this quad axle tandem map tells a truthful story and that is as you move from state to state the weight allowance that states generally allow on a three axle and quad axle tandem vary greatly. This causes a great deal of unnecessary expense and delay. And finally a non-weight related example, this map depicts when an escort or pilot car is required in a particular state at a particular length. Those states in red require an escort below 90 feet overall length. Those states in orange require approximately 90 feet. We are working with AASHTO now to harmonize at least 90 feet. You can only imagine the unnecessary delays that occur at state lines while carriers are attempting to pick up the pilot car and the unnecessary expense of dropping a pilot car for an entire state. And then automation, Matt touched on this earlier. Second only to weight is a priority for advocacy in our industry is automation. Matt mentioned 20 years ago that Pennsylvania got into the business and at that time very few states were automated. Today, as you can see through much advocacy and hard work by whole lot of state permit officials, we now see a majority of states who are now automated to some degree. The next step for our industry is to begin asking those states that are automated to let their systems do what they were designed for and that is auto issue permits.
Matt mentioned trusting his data earlier with a long record of that in Pennsylvania. We are asking states as they become automated to meet these minimum thresholds and thankfully many states like Illinois far exceed this minimum threshold. Roundabouts and intersections are a bit of a success story. Years ago roundabouts, when they began to rear their heads in the country, were designed with high curbs, fixed signs, and fancy statues. Thankfully now more and more states are beginning to consult with our industry to design roundabouts to allow loads to move through. I want to mention that we can only tell the story so well. We extend our appreciation to state officials and encourage more officials to begin telling stories themselves. Here is an example of a champion in state DOT work. Scott Marion put together this presentation and he and his colleagues are showing these around the state to both public and private sector groups. What he's demonstrating is all of the various colored dots this map represent construction restrictions, vertical clearances, bad bridges. The green line going through represents a straight line shot across Missouri of 270 miles for a particular permit load, but because of the bad bridges it's a 50% greater move which actually exacerbates the issue which we are trying to resolve. In this particular case were causing loads is to travel greater distances on our roads and bridges.
Finally, I want to close with a real genuine appeal to state DOT officials on the line. I'll be very blunt and indicate that there are approximately a dozen or more states who rarely or more likely, never send a state official to either the AASHTO-SCOHT meeting, the MAASTO permit officials meeting, the WASHTO permit officials meeting, or the granddaddy of them all our Transportation Symposium held every year in which federal officials attend. We want to appeal to all states to please consider sending officials to these meetings. I can tell you that the state officials benefit even more so than the industry by attending these meetings and hearing of best practices throughout the nation. I want to appeal to those on the line who are involved in or had influence in the AASHTO engineering committee. We are desperately attempting to seek a spot on one of your future meetings to open dialogue on the one and only issue that to date that we have been told is not for discussion. That is the beginning of the discussion on harmonization of weight allowances throughout the country.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Steven. We will now finish out with Alex Marach of CPCS.
Alex Marach
Thank you Nicole, I want to thank FHWA the presenters and the TRB for this opportunity. I will be presenting today on NCHRP 08-97, which is a study funded by the Transportation Research Board led by CPCS done in conjunction with Perkins Motor Transport, which is an OSOW Carrier and Portscape, which is another consulting firm.
The presentation today will outline some OSOW context and a bit of a national perspective adding on to Steven and Matt's presentations. We will overview the NCHRP study and then we will pull Steven and Matt's presentations together by identifying areas of agreement between permitting agencies and the OSOW industry.
In terms of the national context, OSOW freight is on the rise. We saw a dip in the total number of permits issued nationally, which is the graph that you're seeing on the slide, in 2009, presumably in conjunction with the great recession. Taking a look from 2005 to 2013, we see a 48% increase in the number of permits issued nationally. So, this issue is not going away. Additionally, the size and weight of OSOW loads is increasing. In consultation with state DOTs and industry groups, we identified this as a reoccurring trend and something they have been seeing for some time. Taken together, we're seeing more and larger OSOW loads.
OSOW movements are critical to the economy and especially industries such as energy, heavy manufacturing and construction. When thinking about OSOW movements, it's not just freight, its economic development, its jobs. These loads are being produced in states or being used by industry employing citizens of those states. So it's really an economic development issue, economic growth and that certainly should be a part of the context when thinking about OSOW loads. As Steven mentioned, OSOW is regulated on a state by state basis which means there are various approaches, processes and thresholds for OSOW movements across state lines. So this NCHRP study really looked at the national context for the OSOW movement of OSOW loads through multiple states and what sort of issues they encounter when they move across state borders.
You can see here on the map on display this is the cost of a permit for a single oversized overweight load. So the overall cost varies as well as the approach, some states use a flat fee and other states vary the overall cost based on mileage, size, or both. So there are a lot of different approaches taken throughout the United States. And not so much on the permit fee side but on other regulations differences at state borders and disharmony can cause loads to sit, to wait which decreases the competitiveness of those loads by increasing costs and ultimately hurting local, state, and national economic competitiveness. So all together we're seeing an increase in frequency and size these loads are critical to the economy and jobs, and they are facing various regulations as they cross state borders. So this is really the context for the OSOW study that the TRB put on, and I think was shown very well by both Steven and Matt.
In terms of the overview of the NCHRP study, it was developed in 3 different phases. We first inventoried regulations and permitting requirements, and in this process we looked at the top industry issues, we developed about 70 maps, we developed. a website that you can see here on the right that will be released in conjunction with the guidebook that shows state to state differences for OSOW regulations for things like permits and minimum escorts required for the size of a load, when the first escorts are required, the second the third; the hours of travel that loads are able to use at certain sizes, as well as looking at what sorts of issues delays industry at state borders most frequently. We are working with Stephen Todd to take these maps on and update them past the end of the study. These individual maps will be available once the study is out; it is looking like sometime this summer.
The second phase we looked at routing considerations, how multimodal option are considered, information gaps that OSOW carriers encounter, and how they use the data provided to them. We took all of that information as well as the underlying context of a DOT, many of which are facing budgetary constraints and have a limited ability to invest in infrastructure. We developed a number of case studies and a number of recommendations that are codified in the guidebook which will be released shortly.
I'd like to take a moment and discuss why this study is a bit different. There's been a number of studies that look at the different regulations and propose solutions, but I think an interesting approach we took in the study was we first looked at the DOT perspective and the policy constraints and took those as a given as we went through the study. What became readily apparent is that the DOT faces this dual role one in which they are tasked with enabling economic activity and the other that they're tasked with mitigating negative impacts that transportation has on both infrastructure, the environment as well as the impact infrastructure users may have on other users, the safety side of things.
Taking this all as a given, as well as the context that DOTs face various budget constraints, there's differences in geography, existing infrastructure is different throughout the United States as well as there is a distinct difficulty in getting legislative changes done. We wanted to create a study that had incremental steps that took these context and these challenges as a given to provide some options. If you can't do the home run of harmonization, what are the steps you can take in the medium term to advance the efficiency of OSOW freight while increasing economic activity and mitigating those negative impacts. We're trying to hit that middle ground where the state DOT is accomplishing both of their goals.
We also wanted to focus on highest impact factors. We want to guide the efforts of state DOTs and permitting offices to identify the highest potential impact on efficiency. We looked at what factors contribute to the total cost and which factors have a high incidence of delay, so they happen frequently, and when that delay occurs is it long or short? We are looking at this from multiple perspectives to ensure that when a DOT is looking to improve the efficiency of their OSOW system that that efficiency is targeted and those efforts will result in measurable impacts and result in the most efficient way possible. We fully recognize that DOTs have limited budgets and there is political capital involved and it takes a lot of time and study to look at this sort of stuff. We also recognize that there is a distinct lack of data available on a lot these issues. That's going to be a real barrier to the DOT being able to create change and increase efficiency if they are uncertain about what sort of impacts a change in policy or regulation will have.
Moving from there I will talk about areas of overlap between the perspectives of industry and permitting office. It's our thought that if you identify these areas of overlap they are likely to have areas of support. If they accomplish the goals of the DOT in mitigating negative impacts as well as enabling economic competitiveness, those are areas where you're most likely to see movement. In this case you'll have industry support; you'll have DOT support, so it's really a matter of deciding what sort of approach to take.
So as I mentioned, the public sector has competing perspectives. You can imagine a lot of issues either advance economic activity at the detriment of impacts on roadways and vice versa. Striking that middle ground is really where we are really looking to hit.
For industry, it's really about the efficiency and the process. Minimizing time, cost and promoting safety and reliability. So you can see how there is some overlap between the efficiency side of things, as well as minimizing cost and risk. Enabling economic competitiveness is going to be in line with what the industry is willing to do. It's really identifying that middle ground between both perspectives.
So the idea here is identifying mutually beneficial topics and the highest impacts within those mutually beneficial topics. Advancing safety and efficiency of both the industry and the DOT. What we identified was we can advance these through process, communication, coordination and ultimately through planning. I will say that there are a number of approaches that we provide and a number of examples within this overall study, but I'm going to outline a few of them. What we really try to do here is look at various levels of approaches. So there have been easy to implement things that the DOT has control over and things that will be more time and resource intensive, such as harmonization or things like an automated permitting system that will have significant budgetary needs and is going to be something that the DOT would have to ask for over a period of time.
On the information side, this is really a DOT to carrier. Matt mentioned the provision sheet, so providing information to carriers in a succinct format and providing an OSOW manual for carriers to look and find information, to provide contact information for local permits or for utilities should they need to coordinate with them. All of these things can increase the efficiency of OSOW carriers and by increasing that efficiency and making it easier to comply with those regulations, just by virtue of supplying more information, your interest and likelihood that those factors are going to be considered when moving OSOW loads.
Communication; both inflow and outflow. As mentioned, conferences and talking with industry is key, especially within your state and talking with neighboring states. Establishing those communication lines between neighboring states so you're able to coordinate going forward. Understanding what the key issues are for OSOW carriers within your state. What borders are the biggest issues? Maybe there's some infrastructure that's getting in the way that can be identified. Opening of those lines of communication so that the permit office understands the needs of the carrier and can take that into account when it's time. Outflow of information is communicating with industry in the event that there is a bridge that goes out and loads routed on that bridge need to be rerouted, providing 511 and other information on construction and roadway closures to industry before they start moving so they are able to have access to that information is only going to decreases the delay that they experience as well as increase safety.
Steven hit on automation. Automated permitting process, if you have the data, allows you to focus on some of these larger loads that Matt showed. Those loads are going to take a lot more time and effort to look at whereas some of your smaller loads, if you have the data to support it, don't require that same level of effort. You're able to move resources to focus on these larger loads.
Multi-jurisdictional coordination focuses on communication between states. We've looked at how states communicate on things like construction. A number of carriers suggested that the state DOT issues a permit so that the load is essentially being routed into an area that you cannot travel. So in that case you'll need a new permit which creates more demand on neighboring states. Coordinating those sorts of information exchanges between states is a way that the DOT increases their efficiency and the carriers. This is something that can be on a formal basis or be on more of an as needed basis. If you are considering a change to an OSOW regulation, calling up your neighboring state and understanding how that's going to potentially delay loads at the border and understanding the parking facilities at that state border. A lot of carriers have suggested is that at these delays at state borders there are not all these places for them to be, so in these cases they are waiting at the side of the road and it's just not an ideal situation for the carrier or the public traveling around it.
Planning is a really critical piece. With the requirement of state freight plans for access for specialized freight funding, OSOW loads are a real opportunity for inclusion in those planning efforts. Identifying key corridors and key generators and recipients of OSOW freight so that you are both protecting those loads and those routes and access to those facilities by looking at the roundabouts, by looking at the height of overpasses that are providing access to those areas. It really ensures that you're not hamstringing key economic drivers in your state. These corridors can serve an aspirational goal where a DOT identifies an envelope vehicle that they would like to be able to travel unhindered through these corridors. So anything build going forward would be up to a certain standard. So, you're identifying, protecting, and in the cases that it makes sense, you are expanding those corridors to make sure that in the future you're able to move these things efficiently. Ultimately if these loads stay on interstates they are not impacting as many local communities, you will have less local permits, less utilities, so the way that those things can be facilitated is really critical and I think planning is in a great first step. Additionally, planning is an incremental step toward regional coordination of routes. So a state identifies the route, the next logical step is to look at the neighboring states. Do they match up, and if not, where? How do the envelope vehicles you're both aspiring to compare? Really the focus of our study is providing these various approaches and identifying what sort of incremental steps to be taken to advance the efficiency of OSOW freight given the variety of constraints that the DOTs, carriers, and shippers face. So ultimately the guidebook has a variety of case studies, like you can see on the right that shows straight line path for various implications of routing around a specific obstacle and the various regulations that an OSOW load encounters along the way. It also includes approaches to look at state borders. Visualization tools and maps and aggregated friction maps that we've developed as well as a multimodal assessment of which markets specific loads cater to and how those modes are considered when planning an OSOW load. Finally we developed these OSOW policy options that provide a range of options all the way from things that aren't going to require legislation to things like harmonization that would require legislation. We fully understand that every DOT is a little bit different. Their ability to change these OSOW regulations, political capital is going to be different; infrastructure, geography, and budget are all going to be different. We wanted to provide a number of sequential approaches so that the DOTs can right size policy options to their needs. With that, I think I can turn it over for questions.
Nicole Coene
We do have a few questions and I would also like to open up the phone line. If anybody wants to ask the question over the phone please press star one on your keypad to be placed into the queue. The first question is for Matt. Does Pennsylvania review turning movements with Auto turn or something similar prior to issuing permits for Super loads?
Matt Hedge
No, we do not. We rely heavily on the haulers route survey when it comes to super loads, we do require a survey. For those of you don't know, the survey is a physical traveling of the route that is proposed to ensure that that truck can travel down that road. If they attempt to go that way and fail, they are in violation of the permit and the state police will cite them for that, pulling their permit and citing them like they did not have a permit. So it can get quite expensive if they don't follow that route survey.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Matt. The next question is also for Matt. Does PennDOT require any additional permits for oversize shipments in high density metro areas and/or areas that have narrow streets/roads with tight turning radii?
Matt Hedge
Yes. The city of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, I think York city and all of those cities to have their own permitting requirements. It's not based on size of the road, it's based on the fact that it's going to that municipality or that city. I will step back a second and say that the analysis takes place on all of our state routes when you're applying for a permit. We analyze all of the state owned routes, so the interstates and the US highways are all a part of those state routes and then there's what we call quad routes for the smaller roads. When it gets down to the individual municipalities, those municipalities do their own analysis to see if they can go through these particular locations. That's where it gets a little difficult to deal with. In Pennsylvania we have over 12 municipalities so each of them have their own requirements that may or may not need to be followed based on the roads that the hauler's traveling on. So that answers your question, yes we do have those type of permits available.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Matt. Next question is for Steven. How is the weight interface with Canada and Mexico cross border trips and enforcement?
Steven Todd
I'm not completely sure I understand that question and I would invite Ron to send me a separate email so I can better answer that. However, I will say just in general, there are great variances, as you might imagine, moving across borders. In Mexico for example, our Mexican company members tell us that one of the advantages of moving in Mexico is that you are generally issued one national permit to move across the entire country. Although in terms of automation they are less. The weights are in some cases more liberal, which is a plus compared to our country, but I think it is more than negated when you take in the inferior overall infrastructure in Mexico that our carriers have to deal with and move around. Canada is also a bit of a mixed bag that resembles the US in terms of the various providences having separate rules and such. Although generally I am told that it is a bit easier moving through the provinces, with the exception of Ontario which is a whole other story. In terms of the actual question, weight wise, there is a variance in terms of two axle tandems, triples, quads, and recognition of dual lane trailers enough to the point where many of our carriers move just within one country and broker the load to Canadian or Mexican carriers for those trips.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Steven. The next question is also for you. Are you aware of efforts by states or local municipalities to "preserve" existing OSOW routes - i.e. ensure that OSOW routes aren't degraded over time as a result of infrastructure changes (installation of traffic signals on mast arms, construction of median barriers, etc.)?
Steven Todd
I am not aware of specific efforts, although I am certain they exist in some pockets. From a state DOT perspective, probably not near enough. I am aware and I say this slightly tongue-in-cheek, there are a number of local municipalities and local governments that do an exemplary job of collecting enough fees and then some to fund a great deal of their various infrastructure projects and in some cases purchase fire trucks, police cars and other things.
Alex Marach
If I might weight in on that Nicole, I know that the state of Wisconsin has worked with the port and city of Milwaukee to ensure that OSOW generators within the city have access to the port which is something that a lot of ports have issues with because cities are built around them. So that most of the loads can get out of the city as well as they can get to the port. The state of Maryland has also worked with the port of Baltimore and the city of Baltimore to issue a permit that covers both the state and the city to try to facilitate the movement to those connection points. So there are some examples of states doing that. I think the question further confirms the point I was trying to make with the importance of planning for these loads, identifying these corridors, and identifying the local partners that you need to work with to ensure that critical generators of OSOW freight and employers in your state have access to reliable and efficient transportation.
Steven Todd
Perhaps I misunderstood the question. If the question has to do with what examples are out there in terms of coordination between state and local, most certainly a small, but growing number of success stories, we would first point to Illinois where the County and probably 200 additional local restrictions are working at a private public partnership in which the goal is within a year or two to one-stop shop where you go to the state website and do your state permit business and then hyperlink to the local jurisdictions that the state map has identified, obtain your local permits, go back to the stateside and get your final permit issued. As Alex mentioned certainly the state of Maryland and the state of Virginia are making inroads in terms of issuing local permits. Danny Wells in Colorado is working similar deals with the city of Denver. So yes, a small but growing number of success stories that we hope one day will serve as national models for more local governments to one-stop shop with the state which is politically sometimes not feasible or at least better turnaround time. What we'd really like to see at the local level is a growing number of local governments purchasing software similar to what the state do in terms of automation that perhaps is more geared towards local governments. There's a product called Oxcart that provides a free service to local governments for automation. It does us no good to be able to travel four or five states consecutively in which we obtain our permits in a matter of seconds, only to have one state without automation or one local government still doing things by hand for routine loads and taking days to issue a permit.
Matt Hedge
Technology is just now getting around to being able to do those things in an efficient manner. When you look at some of the states, this is relatively new technology available to the states. It's finally getting to the point where interaction with the locals is becoming a reality. I know most of the states in the Northeast are jumping on board with automation and whether it is one vendor or another, they're all going to be expected to interact with each other in some capacity.
Steven Todd
We suggest that particularly for those local governments and for the few remaining state governments that still do things with 1980s technology, we would ask that personnel be available and on hand. Too often the case, particularly with regards to local government, it can take a few days just to locate the one person within that city or county who actually has the authority to issue permits. So we understand technology is still evolving, particularly at the local level. We certainly ask for responsiveness for those governments who do choose to issue permits.
Nicole Coene
Our next question is open to everyone. Steven Brown would like to hear about experiences, research and opinions regarding applications of technology to monitor and enforce compliance, e.g., use of WIM to enforce weight regulations, require OSOW trucks to provide GPS data to confirm adherence to designated route, and other new applications.
Steven Todd
There is technology available now. I know some states have employed the use of Lydar in which they are able to efficiently measure their vertical clearance statewide without having to pull over and measure by hand. This technology is very accurate. There are also similar technologies that a few of her carriers are beginning to employ in which when they perform route surveys, they are also able to capture that vertical clearance measurement on the fly so to speak. I think that technology will greatly expedite the route surveying process as we move forward. Many of our carriers and drivers certainly do use GPS as a supplement hopefully to their permit, our one major concern is and remains some of these private companies who are advertising to the trucking industry, GPS data that supposedly has up to date vertical clearance measurements. We are strongly warning and urging our members and the entire trucking industry for that matter, to absolutely not depend solely on such technology. As Matt knows and I know from previous experience, vertical clearance measures can change dramatically any day of the year. Repaving projects, construction projects, etc. As Matt will probably agree, at least for the foreseeable future, technology being as good as it is, there is no substitute for the good old manual driving of the route survey which we hope and recommend all of our members to continue to do.
Matt Hedge
I would reiterate what Stephen said. The information in those GPS units, we don't know how often that information is downloaded. We update our information nightly to give you an idea. We recently stopped printing the truckers map, as it was out of date the day we printed it because of updates that were coming. So those updates are now an online update and are updated whenever change happens. So I wanted to go back and say that the WI MS are weight in motion scales. This is a scale that is inside the pavement that weighs the truck is a goes across. We are beginning to use those more and more. The information is accurate and when coupled with cameras we are able to locate those overweight trucks and pull them over and do certain things to enforce those weight capacities.
Nicole Coene
This question is from Bill Nokes. Are there "lessons learned" from the I-95 Maine-Florida consortium (or proposed in the recently announced I-10 Texas-California consortium) that reveal specific and persuasive changes for OS/OW? Also, are there economic studies showing what lack of harmony really costs economy?
Steven Todd
Alex, I believe you have a couple case studies that begin to paint that picture.
Alex Marach
Yes, so in the guidebook we compared the shortest path to the route taken. Assessing things like the cost of the carrier through fuel and through wages paid, CO2 emitted, and the extra wear and tear because inevitably the mileage is significantly more. We do this on a case-by-case basis. In terms of economic studies on the overall economy, this is really something that is going to be on a case-by-case basis because you don't know what the alternative route would be. We have some of these case studies showing the costs to both the carrier and society.
In terms of the referenced research, we did a review at the beginning of the study. We certainly had a number of studies that we used to inform our recommendations.
Steven Todd
To his question: absolutely guilty as charged. We as an industry do need to step up and provide DOT and state and federal officials with more analytics in terms of how much additional expense is caused per mile. We absolutely need to provide that. Hopefully Alex's study will begin to do so. As my predecessor Doug Ball always astutely said, when it comes to moving critical OSOW freight across the country, we are not asking for every bridge and every vertical clearance to be adjusted, we are simply asking for one or two main corridors through each state to be prioritized and kept open as many state freight advisory committees are doing now. I have had the pleasure of working with Wisconsin and they are doing tremendous work along those lines. It is imperative for those of you who are interested in keeping the United States at a competitive advantage globally, you need, on behalf of the manufacturers and industries based in your state and paying tax dollars, you need to provide them with a means of moving north, south, east and west without diverting hundreds of miles, as was the case in Missouri earlier.
Nicole Coene
We do have a couple more questions. Alex, do you know when the NCHRP study will be published?
Alex Marach
We are going through editing right now so it should be sometime this summer. I don't have specificity beyond that.
Nicole Coene
Next is a question for all presenters. Many state and local DOTs are pursuing complete streets policies. What are your concerns related to this shift and how can engineers and planners be considerate of OSOW vehicles? In addition, assuming there is a complete streets application, is there an issue with OSOW where they are just the through movement?
Alex Marach
Not every single road needs to be built to facilitate the movement of 150 foot OSOW load. The point is targeting investment and design decisions that link to key generators and key users. In the instance where it's being proposed on a connector to a heavy manufacturing facility for instance, identifying what sort of loads and the corridors, if you don't have a map that says these are the corridors it's going to be tough to identify that and it may get lost in the process. Assuming you have these corridors identified, the carriers of those goods file permits. You know what's going to be coming out of those plants. So working with shippers and carriers and state permitting offices to see what sort of design standards should be used for the specific infrastructure is key. Ultimately not every roadway needs to be built to facilitate these loads. The important thing is to focus on key corridors and connecting key generators.
Steven Todd
The states are doing a good job. I referenced Wisconsin earlier, identifying freight corridors and OSOW trucks. What we are asking is that, along what Alex said, once those sprouts have been identified, and many have, as your bridge replacement program is being prioritized, please lean towards rehabbing those bridges on those major freight arteries first and, as much as possible, do not differ to local politics when it comes to the very limited funding when you have for infrastructure. For example, I hear far too many cases where such a bridge on a route has been downgraded and is deficient only to find that a bridge in a popular state senator's district on a very secondary road is moved ahead of the major corridor. Welcome to politics, I guess we will always have to deal with that. We would ask the state officials to remain strong as much as possible to influence and advise the elected officials to stick to the plan. State DOT and federal officials have worked so successfully towards the last couple of years on corridors.
Matt Hedge
Being with the state I will sidestep all of the political discussions and go back to some of the resources that we have. Most of the states that have automated systems have the ability to run specific maps that can give you all the information about what kind of OSOW trucks are travelling on a particular route that there may be a planned construction project on that may help you better analyze that and may a determination with the design.
Alex Marach
Adding to that, I think that's a critical piece to consider when you're looking at upgrading your permitting software, making sure that the data that's produced and housed within the software is usable and can inform some these subsequent decisions on infrastructure.
Matt Hedge
We reached out a couple years now. We actually reached out to Wisconsin when they were talking about some roundabouts and how to design those roundabouts so that they could take the consideration to the OSOW and that was a part of those discussions.
Nicole Coene
Has anyone had experience using the permits to map the routes off of the Primary and Secondary System? Most Counties and Cities in Wyoming do not have permitting processes set up.
Steven Todd
If I understand the question, they are suggesting that in Wyoming, at least in some cases, there are local governments that have no permit issuing systems whatsoever. If that is the case, and I'm sure it is, as most states are not allowed by statute to issue permits on local roads, what often happens is the carrier proceeds at their own risk. Most, if not all, of our members still do a cursory reaching out to local officials in those particular areas.
Matt Hedge
From a state perspective, I think it is just what Stephen says. The expectation is that they are going to try to reach out to them and do their due diligence to see if it's safe for them to travel on those roads.
Alex Marach
If I may weigh in with how the guidebook handles this. Here is an example of information that if the state DOT collects the appropriate contact information for individuals within these jurisdictions and is routing a load on local cities, providing that information to the carrier is going to make compliance with that expectation more cost-effective. The relationship between the cost of complying with the regulation is going to increase if that information that's provided.
Matt Hedge
I mentioned earlier that there are 1200 municipalities in Pennsylvania, so to create a database that shows who you are supposed to contact is going to be to be difficult enough let alone when somebody decides that they want to leave or retire. So although it would be nice and I agree we want to provide as much information as possible, that contact information is a very tall order when you're talking about trying to provide that and be up-to-date and usable.
Nicole Coene
Last question. What kind of coordination do truck carriers who haul OSOW shipments have with freight railroads and/or marine shipping lines for longer distance, multimodal OSOW shipments that also utilizes rail or ship or transport?
Alex Marach
We looked at the way that OSOW moves via multiple modes and what we found was that the three modes have different strengths and weaknesses which lend themselves to fairly independent sections of the market. The real interface here is going to be those connection points and facilitating the movement at those connection points. We talked briefly at the beginning about ports. Having access to ports for OSOW loads is going to facilitate the movement of them via water. We have an example load that started in Nebraska and was destined for Virginia. It traveled all the way down to Texas to get onto a boat in Houston. If you look at a map of the US you would think that would have gone down the Mississippi, but the carrier identified there weren't routes to the Mississippi that would be able to handle this load and they did not have the infrastructure to support that movement to get that onto a barge. There are interface issues but generally speaking they have segmented markets.
Steven Todd
This is one of the tremendous success stories in our industry and our partnership with state and federal governments despite the obvious competition between carriers, rail, and water. There is a tremendous amount of coordination and discussion that goes back and forth between those industries and at the governmental level as well. Tremendous coordination in ensuring, as Alex indicated, that generally the least expensive means of transportation is used, but, as often is the case, it is generally a combination of two or all three. I can say from specialized transportation industry, we have great coordination with the rail and waterway folks.
Nicole Coene
We do have one more question from a caller.
Tom Kearney
This is been a great program this afternoon thank you very much. Steven, I want to take the opportunity to thank you. Thank you.
Chip Millard
Just a plug for that. Tom and Caitlin, often times we hear of national tragedies that get a lot of play in DC and the politicians do their thing and it goes away. To Tom's credit his colleagues as a result of the tragedy that resulted in Jason's Law, a legitimate National Truck Coalition organization has come about. We had a great kickoff meeting, as Tom indicated there, in the midst of doing regional meetings across the country and we want to ensure that our industry is represented at each of those meetings.
Nicole Coene
Those are all the questions. Let's go ahead and close out. The recorded version of this event will be available online within the next few weeks on the Talking Freight website. The next seminar is going to be held on July 20, 2016. The topic is Sustainable Freight Transportation Practices. Registration is not yet available but I will send out a notice through the listserv once it is open. I encourage you to join the listserv if you have not already done so. Thanks for our presenters and everyone for attending. Enjoy the rest of your day.
