The province's Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal department just announced that it's letting a pair of companies drive truck trains on main highways. The "long combination vehicles" are basically two shipping containers pulled by one truck cab, the industrial version of those crazy tourists you see driving around with a car hitched onto the back of their giant RV.
In its press release, the government points out:
Proponents of the long combination vehicles say they will allow Nova Scotia to remain competitive and increase business to the Port of Halifax. Other benefits cited for them include reduced truck traffic, by using one engine to haul two trailers, and reductions in fuel and greenhouse-gas emissions.
Strangely enough, the release doesn't tell us what the LCV naysayers think.
One such critic is International Teamsters president James Hoffa, quoted last May in an article in trucking mag Fleet Owner:
The idea of letting bigger trucks on the road is just crazy,” said IBT general president James Hoffa in a press statement released this week. “They’re extremely dangerous and they ruin our roads and bridges, which are already in bad shape. I can’t imagine a worse time to promote this idea. Our infrastructure is falling apart and the highway fund is running out of money, and they want to allow trucks that do more damage to roads and bridges?”
The same article cites this California study to point out a few negatives, including that "Large trucks are involved in a disproportional percentage of fatal collisions."
The press release explains the province's thinking as such:
"Other jurisdictions allow LCVs on a limited basis and we don't want to inhibit the ability of Nova Scotia to compete," said Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal Minister Brooke Taylor. "At the same time, safety is our top priority and running a pilot project will help us assess first hand how these vehicles perform on Nova Scotia highways."
The spectre of "other jurisdictions" making it hard to "compete" is effectively minister Taylor saying the everybody else is doing it, so we should too. I guess when you put it that way, it's a great reason to put your "top priority" — namely your citizens' lives — at risk.
