A change in Boston’s truck route, in which Mayor Thomas M. Menino eliminated daytime permits for gas and fuel trucks, has been ruled illegal by the Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration, reported the Boston Globe.
The federal agency said the city never requested or received approval to ban haz-mat loads from passing through, which is FMCSA’s jurisdiction.
The route change effectively shifts danger to other communities, as evidenced by a 2007 accident on a residential street in Everett, when a rerouted tanker overturned and sent a flood of burning gasoline down the street. Massachusetts Motor Transportation Association’s executive director, Anne Lynch, said the ban amounted to an ‘export of risk’ by sending fuel trucks into Everett and surrounding communities to avoid Boston.
“He took traffic that should have gone through the city and rerouted it through 27 towns,” said Lynch. “You cannot export your risk to another community.”
Boston’s transportation commissioner Thomas J. Tinlin said the change was made to keep the city from being a convenient throughway for fuel deliveries bound elsewhere, like Hyannis. “Why should that person be able to cut through our city and put our citizens at risk?” he asked, saying the DOT had issue with how the city went about the rerouting process, not with the reroute itself.
To legally make the change to routes, Boston must establish a reason for the change, look at several other factors, and consult with neighboring communities.
Source: The Boston Globe: US slaps Boston’s rerouting of trucks. Stephanie Ebbert.
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