O.C. Lawmaker Rips Caltrans on Truck Permits : Dunn Chides Caltrans Over Truck Permits

The state senator leading an investigation into Caltrans’ beleaguered permitting office said Thursday that the agency had broken its promise to install a computer tracking device that would help prevent trucks from slamming into highway overpasses.

State Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana) said changes--scheduled to take effect today--in how oversized trucks are routed fall far short of Caltrans’ assurances at a recent subcommittee hearing. The agency had promised that new computer software would be installed quickly with emergency funds to ensure that oversized trucks are routed safely.

“The system they now say they are putting in place is not as fail-safe as we were promised at the hearing,” Dunn said. “Caltrans witnesses said a system would be in place shortly that would not allow a permit writer to issue a permit before resolving all ‘red flag’ problems along the route. That has not happened.”

Dunn’s office opened the legislative inquiry into the permit office along with state Sen. Betty Karnette (D-Long Beach) after a Westminster man was crushed to death when cargo fell from an oversized truck that had crashed into a highway overpass two months ago.

“I still have a high level of concern for the safety of people driving down the road, whether it’s the truck driver hauling the oversized loads or the people in cars driving near them as they cross under overpasses,” Dunn said.

At the August hearing in Sacramento, Dunn and others posed a series of questions about the permit office, from the number of employees writing permits to the ways in which Caltrans tracked the number of routing errors. State officials were unable to answer many of those questions, but revealed that over the past 3 1/2 years, Caltrans employees issued permits that sent at least 24 oversized trucks under bridges too low for them to clear. Immediately after the accident, Caltrans officials had said there had been only three mistakes in the last three years.

Caltrans officials sought to answer the remainder of the questions in a letter dated Wednesday and signed by Caltrans Director Jose Medina. In that letter, Medina explained that since the death of 36-year-old Tam Trong Tran on the Riverside Freeway in Anaheim in July, his office had taken a number of steps to keep such accidents from happening again.

Medina said the agency had hired five new permit writers and were making sure that all permits approving truck heights of 14 feet or higher were double-checked to make sure trucks could clear those overpasses.

The Caltrans director also said that a change to its computer program would “automatically identify for the permit writers if an overheight load is too high for a bridge on a particular route. While not foolproof, this program will give us another important check.”

Permit writers rely on computers to help them route a booming oversized truck business on the state’s obstacle course of bridges, the majority of which were built before modern standards were in place in the late 1960s.

The programming changes made this week are considered an improvement over the old system but fall short of a “computerized last check” that Medina last month authorized emergency funds to acquire. The old system simply warned of problems in a given trip segment but was not specific about what the problems were. The updated system will highlight each hazard along the trip, Caltrans officials said.

That modification, said Caltrans spokesman Jim Drago, should make a mistake like the one that led to Tran’s death far less likely. In that accident, a 7,000-pound fiberglass fuel tank that reached 15 feet in the air was knocked of the back of a truck when it passed under the 14-foot-10-inch La Palma Bridge.

Computer Allowed Issuance of Permit

The computer warned the veteran worker in the San Bernardino office who wrote the permit that there was a hazard on that trip segment and had noted one problem but failed to notice the discrepancy with the bridge clearance before moving on. The computer program allowed him to issue the permit with the error in place.

Since the July 16 accident, the permit office has come under intense scrutiny, with a union grievance filed by a permit writer in the San Bernardino office alleging understaffing, overwork and unrealistic deadlines had been problems management had been aware of for years.

The permitting operation last fiscal year approved 188,000 oversized truck routes, a 44% increase over six years. Staffing in that time increased only 17%.

Although Medina has made some changes, Dunn and Karnette say more needs to be done. Dunn said Thursday that he remains dissatisfied by Caltrans answers to questions the agency has been asked and he says he has no confidence in the record keeping for the permit office.

“We’ve come to the conclusion that record keeping has not been a high priority at Caltrans,” Dunn said.

Dunn said he and Karnette have asked the California Highway Patrol to search its records for other accidents with bridges. They expect a report soon.

Caltrans spokesman Drago said the agency is looking at ways to improve the safety of the permitting operation and remains committed to updating its computers, although he said he could not say how soon that would take place.

“It’s a complicated issue,” he said. “Anything new we would bring in would have to be programmed to include all the roads and bridges in California, so it’s no easy fix.”