Caltrans and Clearance Permits

What first was portrayed as an aberration now appears to have been much more common. Caltrans now acknowledges that far more permits allowing trucks to pass under bridges too low for them have been issued in recent years than previously disclosed. The revelation is an acknowledgment that sloppy oversight, which has put the traveling public in danger, appears more a pattern than an isolated incident. All the more reason now for more staff and better management oversight to protect the motorist.

Concern arose last month, when it became apparent that a permit issued by Caltrans allowed a truck with cargo bound for Utah to pass through an overpass in Orange County with insufficient clearance. In that accident, a motorist was crushed to death when a 7,000-pound fuel tank was knocked off the rig. In the aftermath of that accident, officials said that three truck routes were approved incorrectly since June, but that these were the first errors made in the last three years.

Last week, Caltrans released a much longer list, one that demonstrated the deficiency of the previous accounting. In the past 3 1/2 years, employees issued permits that sent at least 24 oversized trucks under bridges where there was not enough clearance. These caused mobile homes, cranes, a solar turbine and a backhoe to slam into overpasses. None of the incidents on this list led to reported injuries, but accidents this year alone did thousands of dollars in damage to property, vehicles and cargo.

While it is a relief to know that none of these accidents resulted in known injury, this record really is a matter of luck. Other motorists on the road at the time simply were more fortunate in the timing of their journeys than the driver who happened by chance to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the Utah-bound cargo passed through Anaheim.

If permits were rarely given incorrectly, there would be reason enough to review the process. After all, a bureaucratic miscalculation on the height of even one truck potentially could have disastrous consequences. To learn that there is a pattern of mistakes over time, and that the agency didn’t have a handle on the problem upon initial review, suggests a more systemic problem that requires prompt remedy. If the problem has existed for a long time and simply has been ignored by management, as a union grievance has suggested, then this is a case of serious mishandling of an important public safety task.

Caltrans Director Jose Medina has promised to hire more workers and upgrade existing technology. We now know, however, that Caltrans never hired the three permit inspectors to double-check each route that it said it would bring on in 1994. How many more mistakes will there be before the response meets the need? The high volume of permits that writers handle indicates how urgently reform is needed in staffing and management oversight.