State Faulted for 4 Years of Perilous Truck Misroutings

Fundamental flaws in Caltrans’ internal communications played a key role in misrouting oversized trucks in more than 30 incidents over four years, including one case resulting in a crash that killed a Westminster man, a new state audit has concluded.

The 30-page report by the state auditor’s office noted that Caltrans officials already have “identified the major problems with the [truck] permitting process.” The audit recommended more improvements to streamline how state officials route more than 180,000 oversized trucks a year along 15,000 miles of California highways.

The audit, issued Wednesday, faulted Caltrans for relying on two people statewide--in offices in San Bernardino and Redding--to handle hundreds of field reports of roadway changes and construction projects. The workers then entered the reports into a database from which permit operators work.

Because of lax reporting of temporary road changes by highway construction crews and the timing of permit requests, a driver could be given an approved route only to find a road impassable because of construction, the audit found. Drivers then would have to stop or find their own way around the problem.

The audit also said the system of hand-processing permits raised the risk of human error, and it recommended that Caltrans devise a computer system to effectively block permits for vehicles too big for local conditions.

Flaws in the truck-permitting system came to light last July when a 15-foot-tall fuel truck struck a 14-foot-10 overpass on the Riverside Freeway in Anaheim, knocking its cargo onto a nearby car and killing driver Tam Trong Tran, 36, of Westminster.

The rig was on a route approved by a Caltrans permit worker who, despite warnings by a computer program, didn’t notice that the bridge was two inches lower than the truck. An accident report said the truck’s excessive speed also played a role because the driver couldn’t respond to a height-limit warning sign in time, according to the audit.

Audit ‘Confirmed What We Suspected’

Truck-permitting again became an issue in October when a temporary bridge near Lompoc collapsed after a truck weighing 89 tons--more than twice the bridge’s load limit--crossed it. It was one of six overweight trucks Caltrans workers had routed over the bridge in the two weeks it had been open. No one was seriously injured in the collapse.

To correct those problems, auditors recommended better staff training and a procedure to make staffers accountable for failing to follow reporting policies.

Those recommendations came in addition to Caltrans’ own request for 17 more positions, half of which would be assigned to the permit process, and for a $13.2-million computer system to automate permit requests now processed by hand.

However, the audit said Caltrans recognized similar problems in 1994 but failed to reconfigure staffing.

“The audit confirmed what we suspected,” said state Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Santa Ana, vice chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. “We knew that the permitting office was understaffed, given the volume that it had to deal with. And we knew that the staff was working basically on a manual system, subject to tremendous risk of human error.”

Dunn said he hoped the Transportation Committee would hold a hearing on the issue this month.

Chuck Mack, the Oakland-based Western region vice president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said the audit identified a key issue in truck safety: better enforcement of regulations.

“The Highway Patrol and Caltrans do the best they can with what they got, but they rely too much on the goodwill [of drivers] and voluntary compliance,” Mack said, adding that government cutbacks have increased the risk to public safety.

“The balance is tipped too far in favor of cost saving, and not in terms of safety. The people charged with the responsibility are doing a good job, but they need more.”

Officials for the Automobile Club of Southern California said they had not analyzed the audit and declined to comment.

Caltrans spokesman Jim Drago said the audit “validates the path we’re taking,” including requests in Gov. Gray Davis’ 2000-2001 budget for more people and a new computer system. That budget has yet to be approved by the Legislature.

An earlier request for more staffing was rejected by the state Department of Finance, the audit said. But Drago said that had more to do with timing than with need. He said finance officials recommended that Caltrans include the request in the upcoming budget rather than seek immediate help, which the finance officials called unnecessary.

“They said it was better to go through the normal budget process rather than to go for a specific immediate appropriation, because we’re only talking about a matter of months,” Drago said. “Those resources were not critical, given our situation currently.”