There is one thing about the arrival of November that makes northwest suburban residents happy: The road construction season comes to an end-at least until next March.
And this past season, as with every other one, motorists have repeatedly asked: Wasn’t this road just torn up for repairs?
Sgt. James Linane of the Carol Stream Police Department said one major reason for the frequent road repairs is large commercial vehicles, many of which run overweight.
Linane is known throughout Illinois as an expert on truck enforcement. When he’s off duty, he teaches courses for law enforcement agencies through Northeast Regional Training Inc. in North Aurora.
In West Dundee recently, Linane taught a course that attracted police officers from throughout the northwest suburbs. Already many northwest suburbs actively enforce truck weight and safety laws, he added, including Hoffman Estates, Algonquin and Crystal Lake.
According to Linane, truck enforcement makes sense because it helps cut down on the wear and tear on the roads, provides the financial means to fix roads damaged by trucks and, most important, makes the roads safer for other motorists.
“I am an accident investigator also,” he said, “and I have seen the results of too many accidents involving trucks.”
Linane cites figures of a study done by the state during the 1960s in Ottawa, in LaSalle County southwest of Chicago. “That study showed that one truck weighing 80,000 pounds puts the same wear and tear on a road as 9,600 cars,” he said. Taking into account that some trucks travel with light loads or empty, still the average wear and tear per truck amounts to that done by 3,400 cars, he said.
“What happens,” Linane said, “is that hairline cracks appear in the roadway. Those cracks fill with water and freeze and thaw repeatedly throughout the winter. Eventually, you have potholes, and a big price tag that has to be paid by the taxpayers.”
The Illinois General Assembly has appropriated $1.15 billion for highway improvements in 1994. In the six-county Chicago area, $540 million in state funds will be spent on road repair, construction and improvement, according to Bob Plunk of the Illinois Department of Transportation.
But road damage isn’t the only problem caused by overweight trucks. They also are a safety hazard, Linane said. “The most common factor in crashes involving mechanical breakdown of trucks is the braking system.”
If the truck is running overweight and there is already a problem with the brakes, the potential for a serious or fatal accident is greater. “Overweight trucks cause more road damage,” Linane said, “and account for a large number of fatal accidents nationwide.”
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, in 1991 (the last year for which figures were available) 4,090 fatal accidents involving trucks resulted in 4,814 deaths throughout the country.
Fines for weight and safety violations can mean a lot of money for local municipalities.
“Local governments realize that it is a neat little business to be into,” said Fred Serpe, executive director of the Illinois Transportation Association, a River Grove-based organization representing the state’s trucking and transportation industry.
“The fines are revenue generators,” he said. “Any money generated from overweights should go into the state road fund if the purpose is to create money to replace roads.”
Instead, Serpe said, the money goes into municipal general funds and can be used for purposes other than road repair.
But Linane thinks it is unfair to call truck enforcement simply a revenue generator. “These fines are more like user fees,” he said. “The fines are used to offset the cost of repairing road damage, which is caused by the trucks.”
Dale Essling, a gravel truck owner-operator who drives regularly through the northwest suburbs, doesn’t think police officers really know when a truck is running overloaded. “I see my truck every day, and I could not tell you every time if I was overweight or not,” he said.
Essling said he’s rarely been stopped by police officers, but added that whether or not a truck driver is guilty of running overweight, the stop costs the driver money.
“If a police officer pulls me over, it is going to cost me 15 minutes to a half-hour,” he said. “That may mean that I can’t make it back to the gravel pit for one last time before 4:30 (when it closes), and that costs me $60 that I would have received for the load.”
Linane admits that sometimes officers are mistaken but said there is no other way to handle overweight enforcement. And he concedes truckers may have a valid point when they say lower weight restrictions result in higher transportation costs.
An Illinois law that will take effect Jan. 1 may threaten local truck enforcement efforts, however. The law requires overweight truck fines be paid not to the jurisdiction that issues the ticket but to the jurisdiction that maintains the road.
In Barrington Hills, for instance, if a police officer tickets an overweight truck on Algonquin Road, which is Illinois Highway 62, the fine would go to the state under the new law.
“This would take away all incentive for local enforcement because there is no guarantee that the money collected through fines would be used by the state or county to repair those roads being patrolled by local police officers,” Linane said.
Efforts are already under way to work out a compromise, if not to repeal the law. State Rep. Robert Biggins (R-Elmhurst) said he and other legislators are talking to everyone involved-truckers, police and representatives from the various jurisdictions-to work out what will be best for everyone. “The fines have been used to maintain scales and pay for police department operations,” he said.
The law may actually make it easier for trucks to run overweight. “I think there will be less concern,” Essling said, because police officers won’t make an effort to stop trucks they suspect are overweight, “or police officers will wait until the truck turns off onto a local road.”
In Hoffman Estates, Sgt. Steven Casstevens, a state certified truck enforcement instructor, said that if the law is not repealed, truck enforcement efforts will be crippled more than they already are.
“We are not doing as much truck enforcement as we used to because we don’t have the manpower we expected to have,” he said. “Our revenue from overweights is down this year to $60,000 from $130,000 in 1991. If the new state law is not repealed, we won’t do any enforcement. It’s just a waste of time.”
In Schaumburg, six of the village’s patrol officers are trained in truck enforcement. “We have a lot of traffic that comes through the community, and the damage to the roadways becomes significant,” said Lt. Fred Schmidt, commander of special operations.
Most of the problems occur when trucks that leave the interstate highways don’t stick to the designated truck routes, he said.
Trucks stopped for suspected violations in Schaumburg are taken to one of three privately owned scales or to the Rolling Meadows municipal scale, which they can use free of charge. Schmidt said a truck is never taken to its own scale. “We use Meyer Material’s scale,” he said, “but if we pull over a Meyer Material truck, that truck isn’t going to the Meyer scale.”
The money the village realizes from fines helps pay for road repairs, said Schmidt, adding, “We don’t have a problem from the truckers over enforcement. I think as long as you play within the rules and regulations, there isn’t a problem.”
