Development of Overweight Vehicle Permit Fee Structure in Illinois

Permits are one of the most effective and common tools for state agencies to regulate the operation of overweight and oversize vehicles by ensuring the safety of passenger and freight traffic and minimizing damage to pavements and bridges while promoting commerce and the safe movement of goods and services. Although the State of Illinois uses a relatively comprehensive permit system, many of its parts have not been revised for more than 30 years. Therefore, the objective of this study was to revise the current permit system by evaluating up-to-date impacts of overweight vehicles. In this study, impacts of overweight (OW) vehicles were evaluated in three aspects (bridge, pavement, and traffic safety) and individual fees were developed for each. The most recent databases on infrastructure condition and state-of-the-art prediction/ classification algorithms were employed to produce the realistic and up-to-date assessment of OW vehicles' impact. Finally, a combined permit fee was recommended as a function of miles to be traveled, as well as axle and weight information, by aggregating the calculated individual fees.IDOT-R27-152Ope