Trucking through Washington: a guide for truck legislation in 2012

A multi-year highway bill with sufficient funding to start to meet this country’s infrastructure needs tops the trucking industry’s wish list for 2012.

There is a small window in the first quarter of 2012 to “marry” the working versions of the highway bill that have emerged from various House and Senate committees. But Washington insiders warn that if one workable version of those various bills doesn’t emerge from a House-Senate conference committee by mid-March, that window will close because the 2012 elections will trump any effort to get it done.

Surface transportation spending is currently funded by the latest of seven short-term “extensions,” the last of which expires March 31. Funding currently is around $51 billion a year, which independent experts, engineers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says is woefully inadequate to maintain the nation’s infrastructure, much less improve it.

“Our core surface transportation, aviation, and water resources programs are all operating under a series of short-term funding extensions,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue has said. “Neither states nor private investors can get projects off the drawing board with this kind of uncertainty—American jobs hang in the balance.”

Complicating matters is the way transportation measures are handled in Washington. There are at least four committees in the Senate—Commerce, Banking, Finance and Environment and Public Works Committee—have some say over the matter. But in mid-December, just before senators take a month break for the holidays, the Senate Commerce Committee began debate on three bills that will form the basis of the two-year, $109 billion transportation reauthorization package moving through the Senate.

The Senate bills differ only slightly. One would require electronic on-board recorders (EOBRs) on all trucks within a year of passage. Another would make it more difficult for a unsafe trucking company that was shut down by regulators to re-open under a different shell company. The common denominator in all the Senate bills is they contain no increase in the federal fuel tax to pay for them.

On the House side, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica, R-Fla., and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, both have said they want a “multi-year” bill passed “in the weeks ahead..

What is lacking is how to pay for it. One thing is certain. There will be no increase in the federal fuel tax—18.4 cents on gasoline, 23.4 cents on diesel, unchanged since 1993—but the House speaker is floating a proposal that would pay for transportation via a tax energy production. That is viewed as a tough sell in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

“I am not opposed to responsible spending to repair and improve infrastructure,” Boehner said recently at a speech before the Economic Club of Washington. “But if we want to do it in a way that truly supports long-term economic growth and job creation, let’s link the next highway bill to an expansion of American-made energy production.
  
The Senate’s bill falls about $12 billion short of being fully funded, due to gasoline tax revenue going to the Highway Trust Fund. The Senate Finance Committee is looking at “borrowing” revenue from the advance vehicle technology manufacturing loan program, the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund, reclaiming transfers of transport funds from the Land & Water Conservation Fund and $5.2 billion in new revenue from expanded oil and gas production.
  
There is no mention of a fuel tax from either parties. Republicans are dead set against raising any taxes. Some Democrats, as well as President Obama, also oppose raising the fuel tax in the current economic environment. But the good news is both parties appear committed to reaching a bipartisan solution
  
Senator Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, has called getting the highway bill done “paramount” and “critical.” She said some of the ideas could have Democratic support. But both parties will have to get serious if they are to meet the March 31 deadline before an eighth stop-gap spending measure would have to be passed. The House and Senate are scheduled to reconvene Jan. 17 for the second session of the 112th Congress.
 
The bills in the Senate are all two-years in length. The House wants a five-year bill. So that is one obstacle that will have to be overcome. It will be an early 2012 test to see how serious both chambers are about infrastructure, or whether they will continue to just kick the can down the road.
 
Although the highway bill is the big enchilada for Washington transport interests, there are other issues that could affect trucking coming out this year. Among them:

-Truck driver hours of service. Trucking insiders say no matter what final rule FMCSA issues on HOS, it will wind up in courts. If the government doesn’t do enough, expect safety advocates will take it back to court. If it’s too egregious, expect the ATA will take it to court. But because whatever proposal will have about a 12-month transitional period, whatever HOS change probably won’t impact shippers or trucking operations until 2013.

-Electronic on-board recorders. The Owner-Operator Independent Driver Association (OOIDA) successfully sued the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) because the original rule didn’t address privacy issues. FMCSA likely will issue another rulemaking on EOBRs this year. But the effective date likely would be early 2013 when EOBRs would be required by all fleets.

-Truck sizes and lengths. This is a big deal. The Senate highway bill has study language in it. The trucking industry wants to undo the federal freeze on longer combination vehicles won by the railroad industry in 1991. But trucking lobbyists say it’s time to take a rational look at longer, heavier trucks by increasing the federal limit on Interstate highways to 97,000 pounds, from the current 80,000.

“From a rational and productivity and environmental point of view, there is nothing we can do as a country that can have more impact on sustainability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and getting more throughput in our supply chain than rational truck size and weight increases on a national network where it’s safe and practical to do that,” Randy Mullett, vice president of government relations and public affairs for Con-way Inc., told LM. “But it’s a really hard political issue.”

Trucking operators do not want to run triple-trailers everywhere, only on the interstates in states that have requested them. Currently the freeze prevents any talk of that happening, except where states individually allow them on non-interstate roads.

“The federal freeze has not kept truck size and weights from increasing because there are literally hundreds of exemptions from the states,” Mullett said. “The freeze just keeps those trucks off the most appropriate roads. It’s keeping them off the best roads.”