CCJ

May 2015

Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal

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12 COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | MAY 2015 JOURNAL NEWS and they endanger public safety when rescue workers are delayed in responding to emergencies. This plan would also let states redirect toll revenues to completely unrelated projects." ATFI formed last March and includes major carriers like UPS and FedEx, along with the American Trucking Associations, the Truckload Carriers Association, all 50 state trucking associations, NATSO and others. The House highway bill, the Bridge to Sustainable Infrastructure, would establish a task force to oversee the HTF and its solvency and put in place measures to raise fuel taxes if Congress fails to prevent fund shortfalls by the start of both 2017 and 2020. The first adjustment to fuel taxes would come immediately by changing the language of the law currently dictating them to base the rate on the cost of living for 2014 rather than 1992. Subsequent tax increases would come again if the HTF continues to come up short and would be set in 2017 and 2020 if needed. The bill has bipartisan consponsorship – 10 Democrats and seven Republicans . Paul's and Boxer's bipartisan Senate bill would incentivize companies to move their foreign earnings stateside. The two estimate that roughly $2 trillion in earnings by U.S. companies would be eligible for the repatriation tax incentive. All money earned would go directly to the HTF. The three highway plans are among several long-term ideas floated in recent months. Congress has until May 31 to pro- duce legislation to continue funding. With the deadline looming, however, Congress may not have enough time to pass a long-term bill and may need to clear another short-term patch to prop up the struggling HTF. It passed a stopgap measure last year when faced with the end of the two-year MAP-21 highway funding law. – James Jaillet U .S. Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.) sent a letter last month to U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to air his concerns about the scope of and participants in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's congressionally required 34-hour restart study, which has been in the works since January. Hanna's letter includes four key points to Foxx and FMCSA that he says should be considered for the study, including – per- haps of most concern for the study's efficacy – ensuring selec- tion of drivers that "are truly representative of the industry." The agency has focused on recruiting drivers who work between 60 and 70 hours a week and who typically work at night, Hanna says. "This is concerning because it indicates the researchers do not understand how the 34-hour restart is being used in practice," he says in the letter. "This small [subset] of truck drivers is not representative of drivers who use the restart provision and not representative of drivers who have been impacted by the July 2013 restart restrictions." The agency has been recruiting drivers for the study since January. The study, required by a 2015 appropriations law passed in December, was designed to pit pre- and post-July 2013 restart rules against one another. The bill directed the agency to study two groups of drivers — one that abided by the pre-July 2013 rules and one that operated under the 2013-implemented provisions. In his April 2 letter to Foxx, Hanna also says the agency should examine in its study how many crashes or near crashes occur between the morning rush hours of 5 and 9 a.m. This request stems from concerns from both within and outside the industry that the 2013 rule changes force more trucks on the road during those hours, which comes with a list of potential negatives: More traffic, more potential truck-involved crashes and forcing truck operators to burn allowed drive time stuck in rush-hour traffic, to name a few. Hanna also asks FMCSA to loop in the National Academies Transportation Research Board's Committee on Truck and Bus Safety. The committee, he says, should be tasked with choosing the peer review team that will analyze the study. "This would show further commitment on behalf of the Department that objective analysis will occur," Hanna says in the letter. Lastly, Hanna asks FMCSA to limit its data analysis to restarts that include only one or two nights. As it stands, Hanna says, FMCSA is comparing restarts with one overnight period to those with more than two. "This is consistent with the previous flawed restart field study that was criticized by stakeholders," he wrote. "If the research is indeed intended to study the relative benefits and drawbacks of the two rules, then restarts of more than two nights are not rep- resentative of the actual restart restrictions being studied." – James Jaillet Congressman presses FMCSA on hours study DOT, White House | Continued from page 9 U.S. Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.) has been one of the trucking industry's main congressional allies in pushing back against the 2013 hours rules.

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