$2M in fines issued for bridge weight violations

Citing a lack of resources, the Rhode Island State Police about three months ago revised its method of tractor-trailer enforcement for the ailing Pawtucket River Bridge on Interstate 95.
Along with the 18-ton weight limit, the force since August has been enforcing a two-axle restriction, meaning any tractor-trailer that crosses the bridge could be stopped and fined, regardless of whether it’s loaded above 18 tons, Sgt. David Medeiros said earlier this month. The new method both saves time and is a more effective way to keep heavy trucks from sneaking past police patrols.
“For the first nine months we basically tried to let the industry police themselves and they did not,” said Medeiros. Since beginning enforcement of the weight restrictions on Nov. 28, 2007, $2.27 million in fines have been issued.
Before the new axle restriction, troopers had to make a judgment about whether a truck might weigh too much. It they thought it might, the tractor-trailer had to be escorted to a weighing area.
“We just simply don’t have the resources to have troopers over there to weigh all the tractor trailers, Medeiros explained. The weighing process can take longer than an hour because the trucks first have to be moved to a safe location, he said.
Now, “if a trooper can count the number of axles, then the guy’s in violation,” he added. Troopers can still decide to have a truck weighed, but no longer have to spend an hour or more with virtually every truck stopped that’s carrying a load.
The Pawtucket River Bridge was built in 1958 as part of the state’s original Interstate Highway system, according to the R.I. Department of Transportation. It was built to handle 60,000 cars each day and now about 162,000 vehicles daily drive over it.
The bridge has had weight restrictions since Nov. 2007, when the DOT instituted a 22-ton limit and announced that it would replace the bridge. In the last week of Nov. 2007, the State Police started adding special patrols to the bridge area, Medeiros said.
Last April, the DOT declared the bridge safe but still dropped the allowable weight to 18 tons.
The State Police’s two-axle restriction went into effect in July, but until the start of the week of Aug. 3, “we did what we call soft enforcement,” Medeiros said. “We didn’t write any fines, we just stopped trucks, let them know and tried to educate them.”
The department started handing out citations after that week.
In the eight weeks ending Oct. 4, the axle fines represented at least half of the total fines written for tractor-trailer traffic on the bridge, according to figures provided by Medeiros.
While the 18-ton limit equals about 36,000 pounds, the average loaded tractor-trailer weighs 80,000 lbs., he said. So that average is 44,000 pounds over the weight restriction. State law allows State Police troopers to fine truckers $125 for every 1,000 pounds over the weight. So an average-weight tractor-trailer could be fined $5,500 for one trip over the bridge.
But, “it has to be stopped, we need to check to see if it has a load, then make a judgment as to whether or not we think it’s overweight and then we have to escort it to a safe place to weigh it,” Medeiros said. “That number of trucks weighed may have dropped a little bit since the beginning of the [new regulations,] because now … it isn’t necessary to spend an hour on every truck.”
From Nov. 28, 2007 until the two-axle regulation went into effect, troopers wrote a total of $1.75 million in overweight and other citations for bridge tractor-trailer traffic, Medeiros said. So for the first nine months of enforcement, that’s an average of about $194,000 a month in fines.
In the first eight weeks of handing out two-axle fines, the total citations written – including overweight fines – were $521,115, or about $260,500 a month.
Medeiros couldn’t say exactly how much has been collected from tractor-trailer fines on the bridge because once a citation is handed out the Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal handles the case. And in court a judge could decide to reduce the fine, so the total citations might not represent the true total collected, Medeiros said. “This is what we wrote – but what’s collected is a different thing,” he said. A call to the Traffic Tribunal’s Administrative Office wasn’t returned before press time last week.
The money, Medeiros said, does not go back to the patrols but rather to the state’s general fund.
Medeiros emphasized that the fines are safety-based regulations, not an effort to increase revenue in a tough economic climate.
Initially, the State Police were reluctant to give out the total amount it had fined “because it was right around the same time the state was announcing the deficit and economic woes.
“They didn’t want anyone to get the perception that this was for economic-revenue building,” he said, “because it certainly isn’t.” &#8226