Texan roads are underneath strain. Tom Stone seems at how new analysis analyzes border controls for heavy automobiles, calculates allow revenues vs street restore prices and recommends methods to guard the state’s highways for the longer term
Politics apart, the 1,254-mile Texas-Mexico border has lengthy required an array of security and safety measures that should function 24/7 to handle the circulate of over 14,000 industrial automobiles that cross northbound each day. Even when this tide reduces within the face of tariffs from the Trump administration, it is going to nonetheless be essential to take care of safety methods on the border, the place ITS serves as the primary line of protection in making certain compliance and safety.
An unlimited array of know-how helps the border drive, who should maintain a be careful for every little thing from unlawful immigrants to contraband, each minute of daily. In the case of car compliance, recognizing smuggling and defending roads from overloaded automobiles, some the applied sciences on the coronary heart of this method are weigh-in-motion (WIM) units, augmented by static scales.
A rising consciousness of the essential nature of the border crossing, which added $67.3 billion to Texas Gross Home Product (GDP) in 2019 and is projected to greater than quadruple to virtually $300 billion in GDP by 2050, prompted the Texas legislature to enact Texas Home Invoice 4422 (HB 4422), which directed the Texas Division of Transportation (TxDOT) to conduct a research on public security, border safety, and transportation infrastructure from Texas-Mexico border crossings.
A US/Mexico border crossing level
The research was carried out with the help of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) and included enter from the Texas Division of Public Security (TxDPS), Texas Navy Division and native regulation enforcement companies. The HB 4422 Research reported its findings in November 2024, and located essential gaps in enforcement know-how
Of the eight CMV border crossings the place TxDPS has a presence, all have been discovered within the report back to “have lacking or non-operational know-how” that ought to be there to “improve inspection capabilities.” This consists of essential WIM methods, which permit authorities to measure car weights with out requiring them to cease – a big effectivity benefit in high-volume settings.
These weighing methods function a part of an built-in safety strategy that helps determine potential smuggling exercise. The report notes that “human smuggling and managed substance smuggling have been the 2 most typical crimes reported by TxDPS” among the many 322 people arrested for CMV-related crimes between 2018-2023.
Weighing applied sciences work alongside different screening instruments like license plate readers, thermal cameras, and hazmat placard readers to create a multi-layered safety strategy.
The price of weight
Even in if a truck driver is just not complicit in a criminal offense as egregious as smuggling, merely driving a car that’s over its permitted weight can have a big financial affect, notably relating to later street upkeep to restore injury it could trigger.
Quantifying this injury was the topic of one other research mandated by the Texas legislature – The HB 2223 Research on motorcar impacts on the roads and bridges of Texas. One of many key contributors to this work was Brianne Glover, a division head and senior analysis scientist on the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI).
“You see vehicles on the market daily – while you’re in your technique to work, while you’re working errands – and also you don’t actually take into consideration them, however they’re transferring continuously,” says Glover. “They’re bringing items to shops, they’re bringing items to your private home. They’re bringing items to different producers that will use a component to supply another good. And so vehicles help many main industries, particularly right here in Texas.”
“Industrial vehicles and outsized vehicles have extra street injury price related to them than revenues. So, there’s a loss there. There’s a deficit”
Brianne Glover, a division head and senior analysis scientist on the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI)
The HB 2223 Research examined within the monetary relationship between automobiles and street infrastructure. It separated automobiles into three classes: passenger automobiles, industrial motor automobiles (sometimes 18-wheelers), and oversize/ obese automobiles. This final class didn’t embody vehicles that have been illegally obese, which might have been tougher to review, however as a substitute checked out those who had obtained a particular allow to function over 80,000lb.
“The legislature wished to understand how a lot injury vehicles did and what the price of that injury was,” says Glover. “And in order that was one thing we referred to as a ‘consumption price’. We then in contrast that to the precise revenues that these automobiles introduced in to the State of Texas to see in the event that they have been protecting the injury they do to roads, mainly, in the event that they have been paying an excessive amount of, or too little.”
Presently CMVs (industrial motor automobiles) should pay for street use in Texas primarily based on mounted charges, similar to car registration charges, which go up the bigger the truck is. Giant vehicles may even pay extra gas tax just because they burn extra gas.
Each outsized truck journey additionally requires a allow. Firms that incessantly transfer heavy hundreds can purchase quarterly or annual permits as a substitute of single-trip ones.
Glover’s analysis revealed a big monetary imbalance on this trucking cost system. “Industrial vehicles and outsized vehicles have extra street injury price related to them than revenues. So, there’s a loss there. There’s a deficit,” Glover explains.
In keeping with the analysis, industrial vehicles trigger about $2.2 billion in total consumption prices (injury to roads and bridges) yearly, however solely usher in somewhat over $2 billion in income. “So we’re brief by about $130 million while you examine the 2,” says Glover.
For obese automobiles, “their consumption price is rather less than $300 million yearly,” she notes, with the same hole of “about $168 million” between their prices and the income they generate.
Each outsized truck journey throughout the border requires a allow
Frontline know-how
With the price of obese vehicles to the state proven within the HB 2223 Research, suggestions of the HB 4422 Research to spend money on weighing know-how on the border come into sharper focus
The HB 4422 Research recommends to: “Deploy digital weigh-in-motion (VWIM) all through border area and assemble pull-over areas for CMV inspectors to carry out roadside inspections” with a funding want of $5.4 million. Digital WIM refers to any WIM system with digicam enforcement backup.
The HB422 Research additionally requires better funding in static scale websites, which it estimates to require round $4.5 million funding. It recommends organising “static websites for cell patrols alongside CMV routes to reinforce the effectivity and effectiveness of business car inspections.”
Closing the hole
A key a part of Glover’s analysis concerned creating potential options to handle the funding hole. Her workforce recognized a number of choices for policymakers to think about, together with adjusting allow charges for outsized/obese automobiles, both with a blanket improve or by elevating annual charges greater than single-trip charges, or growing car registration charges primarily based on weight.
Implementing a vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) price, the place automobiles pay per mile pushed was additionally thought-about. “You possibly can fluctuate charges for various classes, so a truck would pay the next worth per mile than a passenger car,” says Glover.
A VMT scheme may very well be augmented additional with the addition of precise weight into the equation making a weight-distance tax. Whereas the authorized mechanisms for this don’t but exist in Texas, Glover factors out that “there are 4 states that presently have these: Kentucky, New York, New Mexico, and Oregon.” Whereas such methods presently depend on registering the general capability of a car and the handbook reporting of VMT, sooner or later dynamic weighing with WIM coupled with satellite tv for pc positioning might create a very computerized system.
The US border drive should all the time be vigilant
The political balancing act
The problem for Texas authorities is sustaining rigorous safety, whereas facilitating the swift motion of legit commerce. Because the HB 4422 Research of border crossings states, “If carried out, the suggestions from this research will lead to extra environment friendly, protected, and safe border commerce.”
Equally, Glover’s analysis highlights the necessity to steadiness infrastructure funding with financial realities. “Vans help main industries in Texas to the tune of practically half a trillion {dollars} in financial output.,” she says.
This financial contribution creates a difficult political state of affairs, the place the income of the motor carriers and the advantages to the economic system and shoppers have to be balanced in opposition to the price to the DOT in sustaining roads, elevating questions of whether or not public cash ought to subsidize non-public revenue if this may be justified by total public good.
“It very a lot is [a political hot potato],” Glover acknowledges. “That was a part of the unique research, too. We did take a look at the financial impacts, as a result of should you have been to boost the price, does it simply get handed on to the general public or to the buyer buying these items? The trucking trade is large right here within the state of Texas, we’re very giant. And in order that’s the principle manner we transfer items. And a number of items that come from Mexico and go on to the remainder of the US.”
The dialog continues, and whereas agency motion on the matter is but to materialize in Texas, the problem continues to be a reside one. “Our legislature is in session proper now, which solely occurs for a couple of months each different yr,” says Glover. “And I do know there have been a couple of payments to do with completely different oversize vehicles and what wouldn’t it take to extend the load restrict. And so, I do know it’s a relentless subject for dialogue.”
As each experiences clarify, for the hundreds of business automobiles that cross Texas highways each day and TxDOT itself car weight it a essential issue that may decide prices, income and in the end the deterioration fee of roads. “Everyone knows they’ve their regular life cycle prices,” says Glover, “but when we are able to maintain from rushing that up, that’s all the time a plus.”
This text first appeared within the Might 2025 concern of TTi
