Bigger trucks would divert huge amount of cargo onto highways from railroads

Increasing the size and weight limits of trucks on the nation’s highways would divert a potentially huge amount of goods from rail to roads, further damaging the nation’s infrastructure, causing greater environmental harm and undermining highway safety, a new report has found. The report, by economist Mark Burton of the Appalachian Transportation Institute Marshall University, found that relaxing weight and size limits “would also lead to increased crash-related casualties, unaffordable wear and tear on highways and the diversion of freight traffic from congestion-reducing, environmentally friendlier non-highway alternatives to all-highway truck routings.”