[Vision2020] Otter Wrong About Damage

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of the Letters section of today's (August 11, 2010) Moscow-Pullman
Daily News with a special thanks to Linwood Laughy of Kooskia.

 

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Otter wrong about damage

 

Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter recently told north-central Idahoans the planned
shipments of giant equipment on U.S. Highway 12 would probably not impact
the highway "any more than a one-ton pickup." 

 

The governor is either ignorant of the facts, grossly misinformed by the
Idaho Transportation Department, or is willing to lie to the public about
predictable damage to the highway surface, subsurface, shoulders and bridges
by these 493,000-646,000-pound transports. 

 

The governor's own transportation funding task force recently learned about
axle loads as a critical predictor of highway damage. Above-normal wear
occurs when axle loads exceed the legal limit of 20,000 pounds, with the
damage being exponential with higher weights. According to the Washington
Department of Transportation, an axle load of 40,000 pounds causes 16 times
as much damage as a legal load. Axle loads of the planned shipments
generally vary between 35,000-38,000 pounds, with some loads in the
45,000-48,000-pound range. Fifty years of highway research by the U.S.
Department of Transportation makes clear these initial shipments alone will
cause as much wear on U.S. 12 as would 35-40 million passenger cars, or
nearly the same number of "one-ton pickups."

 

Otter wants American taxpayers to subsidize huge international corporations
by allowing the transport of giant equipment made in South Korea,
transported on Asian ships, trucked through Idaho by a Dutch company, on
their way to a Canadian oil field. The fees paid to ITD will not cover ITD's
administrative costs, and future taxpayers will get stuck with repairing and
replacing the damaged highway and bridges.

 

Linwood Laughy

Kooskia, Idaho

 

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For more information visit . . . 

 

"The Rural People of Highway 12 Fighting Goliath"

http://www.fightinggoliath.org/

 

Seeya round town, Moscow.

 

Tom Hansen

Moscow, Idaho

 

"Facts are stubborn things."

 

- Idaho Governor "Butch" Otter

http://mountaingoatreport.typepad.com/the_mountaingoat_report/butch_otter/

 

 

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