May 15, 2006
Taking a toll | Trucking-intensive industries bemoan Maine's annual weight restrictions on rural roads
By Chris Churchill
Like town meetings, melting snow and optimism over Red Sox baseball, posted roads are a Maine rite of spring, so expected a sight that many drivers speed past the fluorescent signs that mark the restrictions without a thought. But to some state industries, the postings are frustrating stop signs, markings that put the brakes on productivity and slow the economy.
Weight-restriction postings typically appear in mid to late winter, as temperatures rise, and remain well into the spring, as long as temperatures drop below freezing at night. They are designed to protect roads when frequent thaws, in effect, tenderize the roadway and make them vulnerable to damage from heavy trucks and trailers. Postings typically restrict vehicles weighing more than 23,000 pounds, though most allow heavy-vehicle travel when temperatures are below freezing and roads lack standing water.
Want to truck a load of timber from the woods? Then watch for those orange signs. Want to haul a boat? Not on this posted road, you won't. "It's an inconvenience, to say the least," says Danny Chalmers, owner of Ocean House Boat Storage in Southwest Harbor, a business charged with bringing boats to sea in the spring.
For Chalmers, posted roads often force him to get up and haul early, while the air is still cold and little water runs on roads. There's nothing unusual about his situation: Maine has been posting roads to heavy vehicles for about a century now. And some businesses have come to consider the restrictions ˆ and the delays or roundabout routes they force ˆ a routine cold-weather expense, like heat and snow removal. "Businesses that are potentially affected [by posted roads] learn to live with it, which doesn't mean it isn't an inconvenience for them," says Herb Thomson, spokesman for the Maine Department of Transportation. "It's Maine, and many businesses have adjusted to this pretty well."
But some business owners believe they face more inconvenience than is necessary, because a modern and properly engineered road ˆ a road that drains rainwater well ˆ doesn't need to be posted. It simply isn't as vulnerable to a truck's weight. But in Maine, few roads are engineered to modern standards, and some say many miles of state roadway need reconstruction. Maria Fuentes, spokesperson for the Augusta-based Maine Better Transportation Association, says posted roads are a by-product of the state's failure to adequately fund road improvements. Road postings, Fuentes says, "have been a great source of frustration. And with the low priority we're giving to roads, I'm afraid it isn't going to get any better."
The long way around
In a typical spring, the state posts 1,800 -1,900 miles of roadway, while cities and towns post thousands more miles. The postings are disproportionately located in northern and rural parts of the state ˆ areas that can least afford an economic hindrance. In part, postings are more common away from southern Maine for a simple reason: northern and western Maine have colder temperatures, and the freeze-thaw cycle lasts longer into the spring.
John Melrose, a former DOT commissioner, says southern Maine also tends to have sandier soil that allows water ˆ a key culprit in springtime road damage ˆ to drain. Moreover, rural parts of the state have a more limited road network. If a street in, say, South Portland is posted against heavy traffic, a driver usually has several options for alternate routes. But in rural areas with fewer roadway options, one closed route can create severe economic hurdles.
Melrose remembers that Route 11 from Sherman to Ashland was frequently posted against truck travel during the 1990s, and "in Aroostook County there's only two ways out ˆ Route 11 or Route One," he says. Trucks, especially logging trucks, were forced by the closures to travel a detour hundreds of miles long. Melrose says the posting cost the forest-products industry $7 million-$8 million a year in added transportation costs.
Route 11 was eventually rebuilt in 2001, eliminating that problem. But other roads remain problematic: Route 15, an important connection between Greenville and Jackman and central Maine and Quebec, is a road DOT highway engineer Cliff Curtis calls "a wood-industry pipeline." But most years it is posted, a major hindrance for the industry.
"Route 15 has been a perennial problem," says Linda Griffin, co-owner of Jackman Lumber. "It has really interrupted the flow of commerce. It's the east-west connector here."
Road postings often are characterized as a problem for the forest-products industry, largely because foresters work in remote parts of the state with colder weather and poor-quality roads. But the industry's trucks also benefit from a network of private roads immune to postings. And the impact of posted roads is muted somewhat, because loggers like to work in cold temperatures, when roads are frozen and immune to a truck's weight. "We don't want to be wallowing in the mud with skidders," says Patrick Strauch, executive director of the Augusta-based Maine Forest Products Council.
Still, for many who work in the woods, the postings are an annoyance, especially considering that state law exempts trucks involved in agriculture and fuel-delivery from the restrictions. (Snow plows, school buses and emergency vehicles are also exempted.) Gordon Libby, owner of Gordon Libby Forest Products Inc. in Jefferson, notes that a truck hauling sawdust to a farm can travel a posted road, but he can't with a load of wood. "The logging industry is a big part of the economy in this state, and a lot of livelihoods depend on it," Libby says. "[A logger] needs to support his family as much as the guy who's running a fuel business."
Curtis says the DOT understands and sympathizes with the frustrations. But the department, he adds, has little choice. "The point of the postings is to preserve the infrastructure the best that we possibly can," he says. "We'd love not to post, but at the same time we don't have that option at our disposal." Curtis says the DOT in recent years has declined to post vulnerable roads to let commerce flow, then watched as those roads turned to virtual gravel. "They were literally destroyed," he says.
Curtis and Thomson agree well-engineered roads don't need to be posted, and say the state has a long backlog of road, bridge and infrastructure projects to undertake. It's unlikely, they say, that the state will catch up soon ˆ meaning the postings of state roads will continue. "That's the bigger picture," Thomson says. "The amount of needs in the road system are immense, and much more than we can pay for with the resources we have."
Damage control
Town managers and road commissioners tend to watch over their roads like momma bears guard cubs. Most towns, especially in rural areas, have limited road budgets, and officials don't want to stand at a town meeting to announce unplanned road repairs that will spike the tax rate. "We can't afford to be fixing miles of roads," says David Morton, longtime town manager and road commissioner in the Cumberland County town of Casco. "If you don't post the roads, they'll drive them. You have to take that extra step."
Drive around small Maine towns and you'll see so-called "bathtub roads," where the side of the road is higher than the roadway, meaning the ground below the pavement fills with water. Roads like these show that in many smaller towns ˆ even more so than with state-maintained roads ˆ few roads are engineered to withstand heavy vehicles during the frost-thaw cycle. That means posted roads in many towns outnumber roads that trucks and trailers can travel. "None of our municipal roads are built to any standard that will support heavy traffic in spring," Morton says. "So basically all our roads are posted in the springtime."
A minority of towns, including Casco, issue permits that allow heavy trucks to travel posted roads, but only if the truckers post a bond to repair damaged roadways. But Morton says few businesses are willing to post to do so, despite their claims that using those roads are critical to their operations. "It's critical, unless they have to pay for damages," he says. "Then they can wait."
Morton says Casco also allows exceptions for emergencies ˆ but it had better be a bona-fide emergency, like a tree falling on a house. "That's different," he says, "than somebody who waited and now there's a sale at Home Depot. That's not a real emergency."
But what's an emergency in Casco might not be considered such somewhere else ˆ and vice versa. That contributes to the problem cited by businesses of travel and road-posting standards varying widely from town to town. "It's problematic in knowing whether you can or cannot work on that road," says Ken Butler, a procurement supervisor with Robbins Lumber Co. in Searsmont. "There's no continuity in terms of interpretation."
Butler says if it's a 20-degree day, posted roads are passable, and most towns will allow travel. But a trucker, he says, can unexpectedly drive into a town in which a wet spot on the road ˆ possibly caused by road salt ˆ will lead local officials to consider the road closed. "Nobody wants to stave up the roads," Butler says. "We all live in small towns, we're taxpayers in small towns, and we know what the budgets areˆ We just want to be able to work the roads, and know when we're doing the right thing."
Truckers also say posting season seems to be getting longer and longer, with some towns now keeping truckers off the road for nearly a quarter of the year. "It isn't just postings going up in mid-March. We're seeing posters go up in January," Butler says. "It was the cost of doing business and you dealt with it. But now you're looking at several months that you're dealing with this."
With municipal budgets tightening, some sense that towns are become overly protective of their roads ˆ to the detriment of commerce. "When we go out and do jobs, we need to be able to move forward," says Libby, who wants to see more towns adopt bonding programs that provide businesses with leeway. "If a road isn't fit to haul on, I should have sense as a business person to say, 'That road is too soft.'"
Though the winter that just passed was warmer than most, that warmth had little effect on the posting of roads. Many roads in Maine ˆ byways such as Alfred Road in Kennebunk or Wolfe's Neck Road in Freeport ˆ were still posted. Some say roads were more vulnerable this year than in others, because the ground was saturated with water and the period when temperatures soar and sink above the freezing line was lengthy. "There was an early freeze-thaw, then it did it again, then it did it again," Thomson says. "That cycle was drawn out."
The spring, though, turned warm and sunny, and most towns this year removed their restrictions earlier than is usual. By the start of May, few roads remained posted. But like the other rites of spring, the postings will return. If a well-traveled road isn't posted now, then just wait until next year to see if those fluorescent orange signs appear along the route.
Weight-restriction postings typically appear in mid to late winter, as temperatures rise, and remain well into the spring, as long as temperatures drop below freezing at night. They are designed to protect roads when frequent thaws, in effect, tenderize the roadway and make them vulnerable to damage from heavy trucks and trailers. Postings typically restrict vehicles weighing more than 23,000 pounds, though most allow heavy-vehicle travel when temperatures are below freezing and roads lack standing water.
Want to truck a load of timber from the woods? Then watch for those orange signs. Want to haul a boat? Not on this posted road, you won't. "It's an inconvenience, to say the least," says Danny Chalmers, owner of Ocean House Boat Storage in Southwest Harbor, a business charged with bringing boats to sea in the spring.
For Chalmers, posted roads often force him to get up and haul early, while the air is still cold and little water runs on roads. There's nothing unusual about his situation: Maine has been posting roads to heavy vehicles for about a century now. And some businesses have come to consider the restrictions ˆ and the delays or roundabout routes they force ˆ a routine cold-weather expense, like heat and snow removal. "Businesses that are potentially affected [by posted roads] learn to live with it, which doesn't mean it isn't an inconvenience for them," says Herb Thomson, spokesman for the Maine Department of Transportation. "It's Maine, and many businesses have adjusted to this pretty well."
But some business owners believe they face more inconvenience than is necessary, because a modern and properly engineered road ˆ a road that drains rainwater well ˆ doesn't need to be posted. It simply isn't as vulnerable to a truck's weight. But in Maine, few roads are engineered to modern standards, and some say many miles of state roadway need reconstruction. Maria Fuentes, spokesperson for the Augusta-based Maine Better Transportation Association, says posted roads are a by-product of the state's failure to adequately fund road improvements. Road postings, Fuentes says, "have been a great source of frustration. And with the low priority we're giving to roads, I'm afraid it isn't going to get any better."
The long way around
In a typical spring, the state posts 1,800 -1,900 miles of roadway, while cities and towns post thousands more miles. The postings are disproportionately located in northern and rural parts of the state ˆ areas that can least afford an economic hindrance. In part, postings are more common away from southern Maine for a simple reason: northern and western Maine have colder temperatures, and the freeze-thaw cycle lasts longer into the spring.
John Melrose, a former DOT commissioner, says southern Maine also tends to have sandier soil that allows water ˆ a key culprit in springtime road damage ˆ to drain. Moreover, rural parts of the state have a more limited road network. If a street in, say, South Portland is posted against heavy traffic, a driver usually has several options for alternate routes. But in rural areas with fewer roadway options, one closed route can create severe economic hurdles.
Melrose remembers that Route 11 from Sherman to Ashland was frequently posted against truck travel during the 1990s, and "in Aroostook County there's only two ways out ˆ Route 11 or Route One," he says. Trucks, especially logging trucks, were forced by the closures to travel a detour hundreds of miles long. Melrose says the posting cost the forest-products industry $7 million-$8 million a year in added transportation costs.
Route 11 was eventually rebuilt in 2001, eliminating that problem. But other roads remain problematic: Route 15, an important connection between Greenville and Jackman and central Maine and Quebec, is a road DOT highway engineer Cliff Curtis calls "a wood-industry pipeline." But most years it is posted, a major hindrance for the industry.
"Route 15 has been a perennial problem," says Linda Griffin, co-owner of Jackman Lumber. "It has really interrupted the flow of commerce. It's the east-west connector here."
Road postings often are characterized as a problem for the forest-products industry, largely because foresters work in remote parts of the state with colder weather and poor-quality roads. But the industry's trucks also benefit from a network of private roads immune to postings. And the impact of posted roads is muted somewhat, because loggers like to work in cold temperatures, when roads are frozen and immune to a truck's weight. "We don't want to be wallowing in the mud with skidders," says Patrick Strauch, executive director of the Augusta-based Maine Forest Products Council.
Still, for many who work in the woods, the postings are an annoyance, especially considering that state law exempts trucks involved in agriculture and fuel-delivery from the restrictions. (Snow plows, school buses and emergency vehicles are also exempted.) Gordon Libby, owner of Gordon Libby Forest Products Inc. in Jefferson, notes that a truck hauling sawdust to a farm can travel a posted road, but he can't with a load of wood. "The logging industry is a big part of the economy in this state, and a lot of livelihoods depend on it," Libby says. "[A logger] needs to support his family as much as the guy who's running a fuel business."
Curtis says the DOT understands and sympathizes with the frustrations. But the department, he adds, has little choice. "The point of the postings is to preserve the infrastructure the best that we possibly can," he says. "We'd love not to post, but at the same time we don't have that option at our disposal." Curtis says the DOT in recent years has declined to post vulnerable roads to let commerce flow, then watched as those roads turned to virtual gravel. "They were literally destroyed," he says.
Curtis and Thomson agree well-engineered roads don't need to be posted, and say the state has a long backlog of road, bridge and infrastructure projects to undertake. It's unlikely, they say, that the state will catch up soon ˆ meaning the postings of state roads will continue. "That's the bigger picture," Thomson says. "The amount of needs in the road system are immense, and much more than we can pay for with the resources we have."
Damage control
Town managers and road commissioners tend to watch over their roads like momma bears guard cubs. Most towns, especially in rural areas, have limited road budgets, and officials don't want to stand at a town meeting to announce unplanned road repairs that will spike the tax rate. "We can't afford to be fixing miles of roads," says David Morton, longtime town manager and road commissioner in the Cumberland County town of Casco. "If you don't post the roads, they'll drive them. You have to take that extra step."
Drive around small Maine towns and you'll see so-called "bathtub roads," where the side of the road is higher than the roadway, meaning the ground below the pavement fills with water. Roads like these show that in many smaller towns ˆ even more so than with state-maintained roads ˆ few roads are engineered to withstand heavy vehicles during the frost-thaw cycle. That means posted roads in many towns outnumber roads that trucks and trailers can travel. "None of our municipal roads are built to any standard that will support heavy traffic in spring," Morton says. "So basically all our roads are posted in the springtime."
A minority of towns, including Casco, issue permits that allow heavy trucks to travel posted roads, but only if the truckers post a bond to repair damaged roadways. But Morton says few businesses are willing to post to do so, despite their claims that using those roads are critical to their operations. "It's critical, unless they have to pay for damages," he says. "Then they can wait."
Morton says Casco also allows exceptions for emergencies ˆ but it had better be a bona-fide emergency, like a tree falling on a house. "That's different," he says, "than somebody who waited and now there's a sale at Home Depot. That's not a real emergency."
But what's an emergency in Casco might not be considered such somewhere else ˆ and vice versa. That contributes to the problem cited by businesses of travel and road-posting standards varying widely from town to town. "It's problematic in knowing whether you can or cannot work on that road," says Ken Butler, a procurement supervisor with Robbins Lumber Co. in Searsmont. "There's no continuity in terms of interpretation."
Butler says if it's a 20-degree day, posted roads are passable, and most towns will allow travel. But a trucker, he says, can unexpectedly drive into a town in which a wet spot on the road ˆ possibly caused by road salt ˆ will lead local officials to consider the road closed. "Nobody wants to stave up the roads," Butler says. "We all live in small towns, we're taxpayers in small towns, and we know what the budgets areˆ We just want to be able to work the roads, and know when we're doing the right thing."
Truckers also say posting season seems to be getting longer and longer, with some towns now keeping truckers off the road for nearly a quarter of the year. "It isn't just postings going up in mid-March. We're seeing posters go up in January," Butler says. "It was the cost of doing business and you dealt with it. But now you're looking at several months that you're dealing with this."
With municipal budgets tightening, some sense that towns are become overly protective of their roads ˆ to the detriment of commerce. "When we go out and do jobs, we need to be able to move forward," says Libby, who wants to see more towns adopt bonding programs that provide businesses with leeway. "If a road isn't fit to haul on, I should have sense as a business person to say, 'That road is too soft.'"
Though the winter that just passed was warmer than most, that warmth had little effect on the posting of roads. Many roads in Maine ˆ byways such as Alfred Road in Kennebunk or Wolfe's Neck Road in Freeport ˆ were still posted. Some say roads were more vulnerable this year than in others, because the ground was saturated with water and the period when temperatures soar and sink above the freezing line was lengthy. "There was an early freeze-thaw, then it did it again, then it did it again," Thomson says. "That cycle was drawn out."
The spring, though, turned warm and sunny, and most towns this year removed their restrictions earlier than is usual. By the start of May, few roads remained posted. But like the other rites of spring, the postings will return. If a well-traveled road isn't posted now, then just wait until next year to see if those fluorescent orange signs appear along the route.
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments