HONK IF YOU LOVE DECAY: MISSOURI HIGHWAY WOES

As if Missouri's Department of Highways and Transportation didn't have enough grief already, the state will soon become the target of a lobbying campaign to permit still larger trucks on its roadways. Missourians are about to hear the advantages of putting so-called "turnpike doubles" and "Rocky Mountain doubles" on their deteriorating highways. Plans have already been made to present the case for sanctioning huge multi-trailered behemoths on already burdened freeways to the members of the 1991 General Assembly.

If the plan succeeds, state motorists who have had large 18-wheelers chasing them down interstates in the past are in for a thrill comparable to the scariest ride at Six Flags. The American Trucking Association has already launched its campaign in Washington, where lobbyists are now at work trying to convince Congress that it should allow states the right to establish "special permit" rules that would let trucks exceed federal weight and length restrictions.

The stakes are huge. Trucking companies say they need additional profits to overcome higher costs and increased fuel costs of at least $4 billion a year. The only way to accomplish this, they declare, is with larger load capacities, another term for longer and heavier trailers. We're not talking about a few dozen CB-talking truckers here; we're talking big business in an industry with an annual revenue of $239 billion, which employs 7.4 million people while hauling 40 percent of all U.S. freight tonnage.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE trucking industry to both the urban and out state areas of Missouri should not be overlooked. Countless communities throughout the state are no longer served by railroads and rely almost exclusively on trucks for their very existence. Trucks are important not only to supermarkets but to auto dealers, pharmacists and appliance outlets. Without truck freight deliveries, most Missouri communities would find themselves in a state of emergency within days.

Under federal restrictions, trucks are limited to 80,000 pounds gross weight, with an axle limit of 20,000 pounds for single axles and 34,000 pounds for tandem axles. In addition, there is a bridge formula that limits weight according to the distance from the first to the last axle. Under "grandfather" provisions enacted when Washington set new nationwide weight and length limits in 1956, many states, most of them in the West, already allow heavier and longer trucks.

In Missouri, as well as most states east of the Rocky Mountains, trucks are limited to one 48-foot trailer or two 28-foot trailers. The most common types involve three 28-foot trailers, called a "triple," two 48-foot trailers, called a "turnpike double," and one 48-foot plus one 28-foot trailer, called a "Rocky Mountain double."

If anyone is in doubt about the possibility of such trucks running across this state's highways anytime soon, let it be noted that one federal agency, the Transportation Research Board, has already called for rules allowing states to grant greater gross truck weights and lengths. The trucking industry lobbyists have obviously got their nose under the tent and, having started their motors running in the nation's capital, have Jefferson City on their destination list. The lobbyists should have a field day, arriving just ahead of the state's new ethics legislation.

BOUND TO BE OVERLOOKED in all this frenzied effort to "save" the trucking industry is a highway system in Missouri that may already be past saving. Missouri is next-to-last in the nation when it comes to the condition of interstate roads and dead last in the safety and condition of its bridges. The state's main interstate route, I-70 linking our two large urban centers, is today carrying eight times more truck traffic than envisioned when it was designed. Missouri ranks 45th in the nation in a measurement of condition of its rural interstates and 48th in measuring the condition of its urban highways. Sixty percent of Missouri's 23,010 bridges are substandard.

While other states are now busily building improved roads that access designated industrial areas, Missouri is spending its revenue just trying to patch the country's sixth largest highway network. The worst-case scenario is that Missouri's roads will soon be bearing 18-wheel giants that provide little new user-tax revenue but incrementally increase the rapid deterioration of existing routes. Missouri could be known as Highway Hell, diminishing still further its declining image as a good place to live and work and build new factories.

If ever there was a time for inspired highway leadership, this is that time. That big truck you see in your rearview mirror is no illusion. Rather it is an image of the growing deterioration of a state highway system that was once one of the finest in America.

Honk if you love decay.