Heavy tractor trailers strain highway bridges and deliver noise and pollution to urban communities. But cities... also depend on trucking. Since the late 2010s, it’s been clear that the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a key arterial for freight and car traffic in New York City, is in danger of collapsing. Chunks of concrete have been crumbling off the “triple cantilever” — a 1.5-mile-long three-level pile-up of highway decks in Brooklyn conjured up by infamous city planner Robert Moses in 1948.
A study in 2019 fingered a culprit: huge tractor-trailers and heavy trucks. About 13,000 freight vehicles rumble into New York City on the BQE every day. A tenth of them are 18-wheelers weighing more than 40 tons — some, almost double that. That’s far heavier than the mid-century vehicles it was designed for.
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While little noticed outside of hardcore transportation circles, the emergence of weigh-in-motion systems (or WIM to industry types) is timely, experts say. Municipalities across the US are struggling to shore up aging bridges and highways at a time of waning federal support, raising difficult questions about the costs of maintaining urban infrastructure and policing its use. And the sheer tonnage of commercial freight on roadways is on the rise, as trucks haul more than 70% of the goods that are shipped within the US. That’s forcing more cities to reckon with the toll they take on urban roads — and the people who live nearby.
