Vehicle Size and Weight Regulations and Highway Infrastructure Management

Abstract

The relevance and important implications of regulations governing the sizes and weights of heavy vehicles in highway infrastructure management are presented. A procedure for evaluating the infrastructure impacts, trucking productivity, and highway cost-allocation implications of alternative truck weight limits and enforcement options is presented. The procedure uses a weight-prediction methodology that resolves some major uncertainties from the regulatory standpoint respecting input variables required to provide the technical basis to support policy regulatory and infrastructure management decisions. The regulations represent the core of transport policies relating to trucking productivity, infrastructure provision, and management. Any revisions in the size and weight limits are reflected in truck fleet, operating weights, and volumes, which in turn affect the infrastructure geometric requirements, loadings, maintenance, and rehabilitation intervention levels. The proposed evaluation approach allows regulatory and weight-control policies that are compatible with the existing infrastructure capabilities to be developed.