The economic impacts of a divisible-load permit system for heavy vehicles

A methodology is demonstrated for analyzing the economic impacts of various weight limits for heavy vehicles through an application to New York State. Truck usage data were gathered from truck operators in 1990–1991 through three seasonal mail surveys, which allowed the collection of sensitive truck usage data while guaranteeing anonymity to the respondents. The benefits of this permit system are primarily lower business costs for those operators who hold permits; in the long-run, part of the savings realized by the truck operators flow to most sectors of the state's economy. On the cost side, increased infrastructure damage is assumed to result primarily from increased pavement damage. We find that direct benefits of the permit system (to the transportation industry and its users) exceed its costs (to society) by a factor of 17 to 1. An important finding of this study is the surprising level of non-compliance with permitting weight limits that was reported voluntarily. This may be due to the complexity of the New York state permit system and to the enforcement levels of the weight limits by state and local authorities.