Senate Committee Sets Highway Bill Hearing

The Senate Commerce Committee said it plans to hold its first hearing Dec. 14 on a series of bills as part of two-year transportation reauthorization legislation.

The latest three pieces, all introduced Dec. 7, include a proposal to mandate electronic onboard recorders for all trucks and buses within a year of the measure’s passage. Other proposals call for studies of the effects of detention time on drivers’ hours of service and of oversize, overweight trucks on highways.

The bills would make it harder for carriers shut down by regulators to “reincarnate” under new names and would require new “applicant motor carriers” to demonstrate, via written exams, knowledge of safety regulations. The proposals were introduced by Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), chairman of the subcommittee on surface transportation, and Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.).

“We must do more to make sure large trucks and buses are not a threat on our roadways and are only operated by the most qualified drivers,” said Lautenberg.

Rockefeller said, “We need to make sure that only the safest people are allowed to operate large trucks and buses and [to] give the Department of Transportation the tools it needs to improve its oversight of the industry.”

Commerce is one of four authorizing committees that must each address portions of the proposed two-year, $109-billion transportation spending plan.

The Environment and Public Works Committee on Nov. 9 approved the highway portion of the replacement measure for SAFETEA-LU, the highway funding law that initially expired in 2009 but has been extended eight times by Congress (11-14, p. 1).

The Senate Banking and Finance committees have yet to address reauthorization, and no reauthorization bill has been introduced this year in the House.

EOBRs, which already are in use by many of the nation’s largest carriers, can be used as a tool in the enforcement of hours-of-service rules for drivers.

American Trucking Associations has supported a push to mandate EOBRs, while the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association opposes any such requirement.

Other Senate bills introduced last week would reauthorize two other agencies overseeing surface transportation — the Research and Innovative Technology Administration and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

The PHMSA bill calls for the development of an extensive paperless hazard communication system. That bill also would require DOT within two years to adopt regulations establishing uniform procedures for the safe loading and unloading of hazardous materials on and off tank railcars and cargo tank trucks.

Meanwhile, the detention study by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration would examine whether the time that shippers detain drivers “contributes to drivers violating hours of service requirements and [to] driver fatigue.”

FMCSA is expected to announce its final HOS rule this month on whether drivers can stay behind the wheel 11 hours as the current rule allows or whether the hours will be reduced to 10.

The size-and-weight study would launch an examination of the effects oversize, overweight trucks have on factors such as crash rates and infrastructure.

In some states, truck dimensions are larger than the federal standards because they were grandfathered, the roads were not built subject to the freeze on size and weight or Congress has passed specific legislation allowing larger trucks.

Most recently, Maine and Vermont were allowed permanently to permit trucks up to 100,000 pounds on their portions of Interstate 95 (11-7, p. 3).

EPW’s portion of reauthorization is the work of a bipartisan coalition led by Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)

The Banking committee authorizes the transit portion of the spending plan.

If the bill is to advance, however, a critical hearing will be in Finance, where Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has said he must find $12 billion in offsets to maintain current levels of transportation spending.

The nation has been spending about $50 billion a year on transportation.

Staff Reporter Eric Miller contributed to this article.