A coalition of local officials from across the country are calling on Congress to oppose proposed legislation that will allow an increase in the length and weight of large trucks traveling on commercial highways.
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“Longer and heavier trucks would cause significantly more damage to our transportation infrastructure, costing us billions of dollars that local government budgets simply cannot afford, compromising the very routes that American motorists use every day.”
Not just highways. Most of these are still going to travel on some locally maintained roads for at least some distance to drop off their goods. They should weigh less than 2 trucks, but will also potentially pack more weight into less space than 2 trucks (depending on loads).
What will this mean for red light durations and the yellow change phase? It takes a lot to slow these babies down.
There may need to be a re-evaluation of stopping distances, but as strong distances haven’t really been updated over time, I don’t see that being a major issue.
I don’t think it means anything different for traffic signals. The biggest trucks mostly stick to highways, even small state highways, that don’t have many signals. And where they do, they’re probably going up be going slow enough already that it’s not going to make a difference.