With NJ DOT reviewing its statewide truck regulations, a number of New Jersey communities are putting pressure on the agency to limit truck traffic on local streets, and requests for truck bans on Routes 31, 29, and 206 have dramatically increased. Calls for action on Route 31 have grown particularly loud since East Amwell Mayor Lester Hamilton received a letter from the FHWA director Rodney Slater saying that New Jersey has authority to ban trucks on Route 31 that aren't making local pickups or deliveries.

But state DOT officials fear that a rule against trucks would be challenged as an unconstitutional interference with interstate commerce, a possibility that was raised by the federal agency's own attorneys. In a June 29 letter to New Jersey transportation officials, FHWA Chief Council Karen Skelton wrote that any efforts to restrict trucks on the highway "could well be challenged as a violation of the commerce clause in the Constitution." The Constitution prohibits "unreasonable" restraint of interstate commerce.

NJ DOT has written the feds asking for clarification, and at a recent public hearing, NJ DOT spokesman John Dougarian pointed out that Hamilton's letter from Slater only gives the state the authority to limit large, or 102-inch-wide trucks, but doesn't address the more common 96-inch trucks that make up a majority of the truck traffic on the road. He also said that both federal and state attorneys have advised NJ DOT that an interstate trailer ban on Routes 206 and 31 could be "highly vulnerable" to a court challenge on constitutional grounds.

NJ's United States representatives have also come into the picture in recent weeks, with Representative Rush Holt and Senator Robert Torricelli accusing NJ officials of hiding "behind the apron" of the federal DOT and urging Governor Whitman to establish a plan to make the routes safer. At a hearing last week, State Senator William Schluter urged the state to lower tolls on the NJ Turnpike to lure trucks off of local roads.

Dougarian said a truck ban is under consideration, but that the department is also implementing other steps that are less likely to land it in court, including toll and fuel discounts on the Turnpike, lowering speed limits on Route 31, and underwriting the state police truck safety inspection program.

State officials say that the volume of truck traffic on Route 31 has more than tripled since construction of a missing link of I-287 in the northern part of the state five years ago, allowing truckers to use Route 31 as a connection between I-287 and I-95.