Jevic Transportation - News & Media

Jevic Professional Driver Provides Perspective on CBS Evening News

Traffic is up and road repairs are down. There was 40 percent more traffic in 2005 than there was in 1990. At the same time, an estimated 30 percent of America’s roads are in poor or mediocre condition.

Nobody knows the nation’s highways better than Jevic Professional Driver, Phil Gould.

“I’ve been driving trucks professionally for 42 years,” Gould told CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes.

But he doesn’t enjoy the open road the way he used to. Road conditions have declined, he said.

“They were beautiful, but now they’re, they're for the most part, they’re in need of repair,” Gould said.

There’s weather damage, salt damage, cracks and potholes.

“Typically when you see potholes it's a sign that the actual structure of the road has significant problems. And that's really just a symptom of those problems,” said Frank Moretti of the national transportation research group TRIP.

In San Jose, he said, 66 percent of the roads have substandard pavement quality. At 65 percent, Los Angeles is almost as bad. Those California cities top the list of the 10 metropolitan areas with the roughest roads.

That’s as measured by vans like one equipped with special lasers on the bumper that send “roughness readings” to a computer inside. If it’s close to 200, that’s bad.

“They used to call this ‘Pothole-sylvania,’” Gould said, while driving in the laser-equipped van through Pennsylvania.

Allen Biehler is the state’s secretary of transportation. He says his budget to maintain and fix the 40,000 miles of state-owned roads is short by $1.9 billion – per year.

Would he call it a crisis?

“We would call it a crisis,” Biehler said. “That has happened many years ago.”

All those rough rides are rough on your wallet. It’s estimated that driving on roads in need of repair costs American drivers an average of $333 per year. Or almost $400 for urban motorists.

So why are road repairs stuck in a rut? The cost of materials used to fix pavements has shot up 33 percent in the past three years and the 18.4 cents per gallon gas tax that helps fund highway repairs hasn’t been raised in 14 years.

Some states are coming up with creative funding solutions: Indiana is leasing its turnpike to a private company; at least six states use or plan to use so-called “hot lanes,” which charge motorists to drive in congestion-free lanes; and another half-dozen has put in place “variable” state gas taxes that rise with inflation.

“Everything needs to be maintained — nothing lasts forever,” Gould said.

These days, Gould spends most of his time training new truckers — teaching them how to handle the bumps and skids that drivers encounter with increasing regularity.

Original Article on CBS website.