SENATE COMMITTEE ADOPTS UTCA AMENDMENTS TO WEIGH-IN-MOTION BILL

UTCA successfully lobbied for amendments to legislation that that could have significantly reduced vehicle weights and led to more overweight vehicle violations.

The Senate Transportation Committee recently considered a measure which would establish a "weigh-in-motion" monitoring program to enforce vehicle weight restrictions near poorly rated bridges.

This could create many challenges for the industry, especially if the program enforced per-axle weight restrictions instead of gross vehicle weight limits. Such a change would reduce load size, thus increasing vehicle trips, and would make compliance very difficult. Moreover, it would likely result in additional fines for a variety of construction vehicles.

As such, UTCA worked with the bill sponsors to amend the measure to allow violations to be issued only for gross vehicle weigh violations and to allow a five percent tolerance.

Additional UTCA-requested amendments were also included to allow vehicles that have been cleared by a weigh-in-motion scale to bypass a standard weigh station and to clarify that an approved overweight vehicle following a DOT-directed route will not trigger an enforcement action.

UTCA commends the bill's sponsors, Senator Patrick Diegnan and Assemblyman Robert Karabinchak, for considering the concerns of the industry and working with UTCA's Director of Government Affairs, Ryan Sharpe to include these amendments.

If you have any questions on this or any other legislative issue, please reach out to Ryan Sharpe via email at ryan@utcanj.org or by calling (732) 292-4300