PennDOT partners with technology company to track overweight commercial vehicles

By ADAM BABETSKI
TribLive

PennDOT has reached an agreement worth $4.6 million with Quarterhill, a Toronto-based technology company, to operate its system of sensors that help maintain its roads and flag overweight commercial vehicles.

The majority of the hundred-plus sensors are purely for data collection and to track the number and volume of vehicles that travel through a given area, according to Tyler Haichert, Quarterhill’s director of intelligent transportation systems.

Sensors in the Pittsburgh region inhabit interstates like I-376, I-79 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

But don’t expect to spot a sensor on your commute — they sit flush with road joints, making them nearly imperceptible, Haichert said.

“Most people wouldn’t have a clue that they went across the site,” he said.

PennDOT also owns 21 Weigh-In-Motion stations along the on-ramps of travel plazas, which feature cameras so law enforcement can track individual commercial vehicles that violate federal weight compliance regulations.

Drivers must pay a base fine of $75 for an overweight vehicle, plus $75 per every 500 pounds the vehicle is more than 3,000 pounds overweight.

Different kinds of commercial vehicles have different weight limits, Haichert said.

For example, a typical “Class 9” truck — with a trailer — has a maximum allowable weight of 80,000 pounds.

“If those trucks greatly exceed that, then obviously there’s safety conditions that aren’t being met for those operators,” Haichert said.

He added that PennDOT’s regular sensors can flag when overweight vehicles are likely to have degraded or damaged sections of roads, so the agency can promptly perform maintenance.

PennDOT spokeswoman Alexis Campbell said the data that the sensors collected was an important planning tool for the agency, both for law enforcement purposes and determining long-term pavement designs “to prevent premature cracking, rutting and faulting.”

Quarterhill recently acquired International Road Dynamics, which had been PennDOT’s sole source vendor for weighing sensors since 2006, Campbell said.

She confirmed that there are no changes planned for how the systems operate following the ownership change.

Quarterhill has worked onand- off with PennDOT for nearly 30 years and was responsible for deploying some of the sensors, Haichert said. The company services more than 40 transportation agencies across North America.

It will now take over the sensors, which Haichert said are spread “pretty evenly” throughout the state’s major roads.

Quarterhill’s contract runs for three years, with options for two more.