National Academies Press: OpenBook
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Review of Canadian Experience with the Regulation of Large Commercial Motor Vehicles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14458.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Review of Canadian Experience with the Regulation of Large Commercial Motor Vehicles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14458.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Review of Canadian Experience with the Regulation of Large Commercial Motor Vehicles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14458.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Review of Canadian Experience with the Regulation of Large Commercial Motor Vehicles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14458.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Review of Canadian Experience with the Regulation of Large Commercial Motor Vehicles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14458.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Review of Canadian Experience with the Regulation of Large Commercial Motor Vehicles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14458.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Review of Canadian Experience with the Regulation of Large Commercial Motor Vehicles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14458.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Review of Canadian Experience with the Regulation of Large Commercial Motor Vehicles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14458.
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Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

TRANSPORTAT ION RESEARCH BOARD WASHINGTON, D.C. 2010 www.TRB.org N A T I O N A L C O O P E R A T I V E H I G H W A Y R E S E A R C H P R O G R A M NCHRP REPORT 671 Subscriber Categories Highways • Freight Transportation • Law • Policy • Vehicles and Equipment Review of Canadian Experience with the Regulation of Large Commercial Motor Vehicles John Woodrooffe Peter Sweatman UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE Ann Arbor, MI Dan Middleton Ray James TEXAS TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY College Station, TX John R. Billing Toronto, Ontario, Canada Research sponsored by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration

NATIONAL COOPERATIVE HIGHWAY RESEARCH PROGRAM Systematic, well-designed research provides the most effective approach to the solution of many problems facing highway administrators and engineers. Often, highway problems are of local interest and can best be studied by highway departments individually or in cooperation with their state universities and others. However, the accelerating growth of highway transportation develops increasingly complex problems of wide interest to highway authorities. These problems are best studied through a coordinated program of cooperative research. In recognition of these needs, the highway administrators of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials initiated in 1962 an objective national highway research program employing modern scientific techniques. This program is supported on a continuing basis by funds from participating member states of the Association and it receives the full cooperation and support of the Federal Highway Administration, United States Department of Transportation. The Transportation Research Board of the National Academies was requested by the Association to administer the research program because of the Board’s recognized objectivity and understanding of modern research practices. The Board is uniquely suited for this purpose as it maintains an extensive committee structure from which authorities on any highway transportation subject may be drawn; it possesses avenues of communications and cooperation with federal, state and local governmental agencies, universities, and industry; its relationship to the National Research Council is an insurance of objectivity; it maintains a full-time research correlation staff of specialists in highway transportation matters to bring the findings of research directly to those who are in a position to use them. The program is developed on the basis of research needs identified by chief administrators of the highway and transportation departments and by committees of AASHTO. Each year, specific areas of research needs to be included in the program are proposed to the National Research Council and the Board by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Research projects to fulfill these needs are defined by the Board, and qualified research agencies are selected from those that have submitted proposals. Administration and surveillance of research contracts are the responsibilities of the National Research Council and the Transportation Research Board. The needs for highway research are many, and the National Cooperative Highway Research Program can make significant contributions to the solution of highway transportation problems of mutual concern to many responsible groups. The program, however, is intended to complement rather than to substitute for or duplicate other highway research programs. Published reports of the NATIONAL COOPERATIVE HIGHWAY RESEARCH PROGRAM are available from: Transportation Research Board Business Office 500 Fifth Street, NW Washington, DC 20001 and can be ordered through the Internet at: http://www.national-academies.org/trb/bookstore Printed in the United States of America NCHRP REPORT 671 Project 08-63 ISSN 0077-5614 ISBN 978-0-309-15518-2 Library of Congress Control Number 2010938977 © 2010 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. COPYRIGHT INFORMATION Authors herein are responsible for the authenticity of their materials and for obtaining written permissions from publishers or persons who own the copyright to any previously published or copyrighted material used herein. Cooperative Research Programs (CRP) grants permission to reproduce material in this publication for classroom and not-for-profit purposes. Permission is given with the understanding that none of the material will be used to imply TRB, AASHTO, FAA, FHWA, FMCSA, FTA, or Transit Development Corporation endorsement of a particular product, method, or practice. It is expected that those reproducing the material in this document for educational and not-for-profit uses will give appropriate acknowledgment of the source of any reprinted or reproduced material. For other uses of the material, request permission from CRP. NOTICE The project that is the subject of this report was a part of the National Cooperative Highway Research Program, conducted by the Transportation Research Board with the approval of the Governing Board of the National Research Council. The members of the technical panel selected to monitor this project and to review this report were chosen for their special competencies and with regard for appropriate balance. The report was reviewed by the technical panel and accepted for publication according to procedures established and overseen by the Transportation Research Board and approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council. The opinions and conclusions expressed or implied in this report are those of the researchers who performed the research and are not necessarily those of the Transportation Research Board, the National Research Council, or the program sponsors. The Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, the National Research Council, and the sponsors of the National Cooperative Highway Research Program do not endorse products or manufacturers. Trade or manufacturers’ names appear herein solely because they are considered essential to the object of the report.

CRP STAFF FOR NCHRP REPORT 671 Christopher W. Jenks, Director, Cooperative Research Programs Crawford F. Jencks, Deputy Director, Cooperative Research Programs Christopher J. Hedges, Senior Program Officer Danna Powell, Senior Program Assistant Eileen P. Delaney, Director of Publications Scott E. Hitchcock, Editor NCHRP PROJECT 08-63 PANEL Field of Transportation Planning—Area of Forecasting Cecil L. Selness, Bloomington, MN (Chair) Luis Julian Bendana, New York State DOT, Albany, NY Robert M. Clarke, R.M. Clarke Consulting, Caswell Beach, NC Alan Clayton, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB Carol C. Davis, Texas DOT, Austin, TX Charles E. Gohring, Missouri DOT, Jefferson City, MO Dale B. Lewis, CSX Transportation, Jacksonville, FL Richard C. Long, Tallahassee, FL John Pearson, Council of Deputy Ministers of Transportation & Highway Safety, Ottawa, ON Michael P. Onder, FHWA Liaison Elaine King, TRB Liaison AUTHOR ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The research reported herein was performed under NCHRP Project 8-63 by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) of Texas A&M University, and Mr. John R. Billing. UMTRI was the contractor for this study. Mr. John Woodrooffe, Head of the Transportation Safety Analysis Division at UMTRI was the Project Director. The other authors of this report are Dr. Peter Sweatman, Director of UMTRI; Dr. Dan Middleton, Program Manager, System Monitoring Program at TTI; Dr. Ray James of Major Highway Structures at TTI; and Mr. John R. Billing, an independent consultant based in Canada. The work was done under the general supervision of Mr. Woodrooffe at UMTRI, at TTI, and in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. C O O P E R A T I V E R E S E A R C H P R O G R A M S

This report documents the process used in Canada to harmonize heavy truck size and weight regulations across the country and provides insights on how lessons learned from the Canadian experience might be applied in a U.S. context. It will provide a valuable con- tribution to the ongoing discussion of truck size and weight regulation in the United States. The authors include a summary of the regulatory framework for truck size and weight reg- ulation in the United States and the efforts that have been made over time to achieve greater uniformity. This report will be of interest to truck size and weight regulators in the United States, who face similar jurisdictional challenges to develop and implement regulations that permit common configurations of heavy trucks that can operate legally across the country without compromising safety concerns or creating excessive impacts on road pavement. Interest is building across the United States in allowing heavier and larger commercial vehicles across the national road network. The U.S. Department of Transportation and AASHTO (Association of American State Highway and Transportation Officials) want to be in a position to advise the Administration and Congress on whether or not there should be changes to the current federal size and weight provisions. Canada offers a readily available source of data and insight into the impacts of allowable (non-permit) vehicle size and weight limits that are greater than those allowed nationally in the United States today. Furthermore, the unique process used in Canada for the national harmonization of truck size and weight limits in the 1980s will provide considerable insight to policy makers who are evaluating changes to truck regulations in the United States. The process included a major research effort that fed technical information to a multi- jurisdictional committee charged with national consensus-building on truck size and weight regulation. The result was a National Memorandum of Understanding on Vehicle Weights and Dimensions that defined specific vehicle configurations that all provinces and territo- ries of Canada would permit to operate on their road systems. The committee continues its work to this day, pursuing national and regional uniformity of policies, regulations, and enforcement practices. Under NCHRP Project 08-63 “Review of Canadian Experience with Large Commercial Motor Vehicles,” a research team led by John Woodrooffe of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute conducted a thorough review and analysis of the Cana- dian experience with changes in truck size and weight limits and evaluated the potential applicability of this experience to size and weight regulation in the United States. Canada has ten provinces and three territories, each with responsibility for truck size and weight regulations. These regulations became increasingly diverse by the mid 1970s and resulted in many vehicles with undesirable dynamic performance and/or excessive impact F O R E W O R D By Christopher J. Hedges Staff Officer Transportation Research Board

on infrastructure. The provinces and territories determined that the diversity in regulations was a barrier to internal trade, and collectively, created a process that has now effectively harmonized them. A large research effort was carried out between 1980 and 1983 that examined the impacts of truck size and weight configuration on safety (vehicle stability) and on pavement dam- age. The research involved both field testing and computer simulation. The study’s Techni- cal Steering Committee summarized the results and developed a set of principles for con- figuration of vehicles based on the findings. The ultimate result was an agreement on truck configurations that could legally operate in all Canadian jurisdictions.

C O N T E N T S 1 Summary 7 Chapter 1 Background 7 1.1 Problem Statement and Research Objective 7 1.2 Scope of Study 7 1.3 Terminology 9 Chapter 2 Truck Size and Weight Regulation in Canada 9 2.1 Recent History and Evolution 9 2.1.1 Regulations in the Late 1960s 10 2.1.2 The Ontario Bridge Formula, 1970 11 2.1.3 Intermediate Steps, 1970–1982 12 2.1.4 Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators/ RTAC Vehicle Weights and Dimensions Study, 1981–1986 13 2.1.5 Development of National Standards, 1986–1988 14 2.1.6 Implementation of the M.o.U. 15 2.1.7 Influence of the North American Free Trade Agreement 15 2.1.8 Amendments to the M.o.U. since 1988 17 2.1.9 Québec and Ontario Size and Weight Changes 18 2.1.10 Phasing Out Liftable Axles 18 2.1.11 Other Vehicle Configurations 20 2.1.12 Summary 20 2.2 Provincial Truck Size and Weight Limits 20 2.2.1 The M.o.U. 21 2.2.2 Size and Weight Limits of the Provinces and Territories 21 2.2.3 LCV Operations 21 2.2.4 A Novel LCV Special Permit System 22 2.3 Canadian Institutional Mechanisms and the Size and Weight Harmonization Process 22 2.3.1 Background 22 2.3.2 Political Organization of Canada 23 2.3.3 Role of the Government of Canada in Truck Transportation 23 2.3.4 Role of Provincial Governments in Truck Transportation 23 2.3.5 Intergovernmental Coordination 24 2.3.6 The Task Force on Vehicle Weights and Dimensions Policy 24 2.3.7 Regional Groups Within the Task Force 25 2.3.8 Passing Law and Regulations in Canada 25 2.3.9 Taxation and Financing 25 2.4 Compile Literature 26 Chapter 3 Findings 26 3.1 Economic Impacts 27 3.2 Changes in Truck Fleets

27 3.2.1 Domestic Fleet, 1999 28 3.2.2 Cross-Border Fleet 29 3.2.3 Unanticipated Impacts 30 3.2.4 Cost Recovery 30 3.2.5 Changes in Compliance and Enforcement 31 3.3 U.S. Truck Size and Weight Regulation 31 3.3.1 Introduction 31 3.3.2 The Turner Proposal 33 3.3.3 The Comprehensive Truck Size and Weight Study 35 3.3.4 Review of Truck Size and Weight Limits 36 3.3.5 The Western Uniformity Scenario 37 3.3.6 Research Recommendations and Results 38 3.3.7 National Legislative Actions 40 3.3.8 State Legislative Actions 40 3.3.9 Regional Initiatives 41 3.3.10 The Corridor Perspective 41 3.3.11 The Bridge Perspective 44 3.4 Application of Canadian Experience to the United States 44 3.4.1 Freight and Trucks 45 3.4.2 The Need for Uniform Definitions 45 3.4.3 The Need for a Complete Vehicle Specification 46 3.4.4 The Need to Monitor Outcomes 46 3.4.5 The Need for Dimensional Compatibility 47 3.4.6 Weight Tolerances 47 3.4.7 Winter Weight Allowances and Spring Weight Restrictions 48 3.4.8 Vehicle Modifications 48 3.4.9 The Scientific Approach 49 3.4.10 Grandfather Rights 50 3.4.11 The NAFTA Partnership 50 3.4.12 The Institutional Contrast 52 Chapter 4 Conclusions 54 References 57 List of Abbreviations 58 Definition of Terms A-1 Appendix A Heavy Truck Weight and Dimension Limits for Interprovincial Operations in Canada B-1 Appendix B Truck Size and Weight Limits of the Provinces and Territories C-1 Appendix C Bibliography of Canadian Truck Size and Weight Research D-1 Appendix D Recommended Regulatory Principles for Interprovincial Heavy Vehicle Weights and Dimensions

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TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 671: Review of Canadian Experience with the Regulation of Large Commercial Motor Vehicles examines the process used in Canada to harmonize heavy truck size and weight regulations across the country. The report provides insights on how lessons learned from the Canadian experience might be applied in the United States.

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