The Senate has passed a two-year transportation bill, which has now moved to the House. The bill allots funds for highway projects and requires interstate trucks to be equipped with EOBRs, among other provisions. This story appears on the Transport Topics website.
Senate Passes Highway Bill
Two-Year, $109 Billion Plan Awaits House Action
by Michele Fuetsch
The U.S. Senate last week passed a two-year, $109 billion transportation bill that contains an array of provisions important to the trucking industry, including creation of a national freight program and a mandate for electronic onboard recorders on trucks.
On a bipartisan 74-22 vote March 14, senators approved the long-awaited transportation reauthorization bill, which provides $85 billion in highway spending over two years.
The bill now moves to the House of Representatives, where its future is uncertain and a March 31 deadline looms. Unless Congress passes a highway bill, or again temporarily extends the current reauthorization by that date, the federal government will lose its authority to build highways and to collect federal fuel taxes.
The bill takes a swipe at states that have privatized existing toll roads. The Senate batted back an attempt to privatize rest areas on highways. But the bill allows states planning to build new toll projects to move ahead.
he Senate-passed bill directs the Federal Highway Administration to designate a national freight network from existing highways and to encourage states to facilitate the movement of goods with such projects as adding truck lanes to highways.
“As representatives of the trucking industry, we’re particularly pleased to see this bill provide not just attention to — but $2 billion a year in funding for — highway freight-specific projects,” Bill Graves, president of American Trucking Associations, said in a statement after the vote.
The bill would require EOBRs on trucks traveling interstate; such drivers are currently required to keep paper logs. That electronic mandate would take effect within a year of the bill’s enactment.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has written a rule mandating EOBRs, but in August, a federal court blocked implementation, saying any rule must protect drivers from harassment.
Graves called the Senate bill “a step forward for highway safety.”
(to be continued in our 3/23/2012 post…)
Interstate Transport 