Word: highway
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...SUPREME COURT recently gave truckers a green light to destroy the interstate highway system. With a February 21 ruling that rebuffed Connecticut's bid to keep double-trailer trucks off its highways, the high court decided it will sit by to watch a 42.500-mile highway system crumble further...
Tests by the Department of Transportation (DOT) have shown conclusively that five-axeled trailer rigs carrying 99,000 pounds of cargo--the ostensible limit--do as much damage to a highway as 96 cars. Moreover, DOT spot checks have also found that at any time 25 to 35 percent of all trucks on the road to as much as 133,000 pounds every additional 1000 pounds cargo does more than just 1000 pounds' worth of damage...
...interstates were built with the expectation that they would need to be overhauled in 20 years, says Lawrence A. Staron of the Federal Highway Administration. But he adds, "if traffic volumes are very different from what we expected, what we designed for 20 years might last only...
KEEPING THE double-rigs off the highway will not spell the demise of the trucking industry. In the short-haul and rapid-shipment markets, trucks will always prove more efficient than railroads, and that market will never be threatened...
...important to remember that trucks only entered the intercity long-haul market in the first place because the government dished up the interstate highway system, and regulations for a long time made that market artificially attractive to them. Permitting double rigs is just another way of encouraging trucks to serve a market--long-haul transportation--in which railroads are up to four times as fuel efficient and less expensive, and where truckers are not really maximizing their profits...