In 2018, road inspectors in Odesa Oblast were left speechless when they stopped and weighed a truck. It was carrying 202 tons of cargo–five times more than allowed by the law.
This was a record for Ukrainian roads, infamous for their potholes. According to state road agency, Ukravtodor, every third truck is in violation of weight norms.
But there may be hope. On June 28, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law allowing the government to automatically impose fines via weigh-in-motion systems.
As part of the law, intelligent devices with sensors built directly into the asphalt will be able to register and fine overloaded trucks immediately upon hitting the sensor. Each one of these devices costs around $360,000; the fine for driving an overloaded vehicle will range from $315-$1900.
“They (truck drivers) don’t care that the state spends about $1 million on repairs of one kilometer of roads,” said Zelensky, Ukrainska Pravda reported in 2020. “We want to do something good for the country, and they don’t care,” he said. n
Overall, there are some 50 weight-in-motion systems already installed across Ukraine, five of them at the entrance to Kyiv alone.
By the end of 2021, the Ministry of Infrastructure plans to install 100 more weight-in-motion stations, many of them in Odesa, Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts, where grain carriers damage roads heavily.
In March, the head of State Service on Transport Safety Yegor Prokopchuk forecasted that the state budget could add $1.5 million a day if the law was signed.
Meanwhile, inspectors handed out fines totaling $4.7 million in 2020, while the government spent a historic $5.1 billion for road repairs the same year. “These are extremely high numbers of overloads,” Prokopchuk said, Ukrainian media reported.
Experts believe that the law will also minimize corruption risks as inspectors are used to turning a blind eye to violations.
According to Serhiy Bykov, chairman at Institute of Public Policy and Consulting, despite the fact that the government has increased the number of inspectors to 200 people in October of last year, “even a thousand inspectors will not protect Ukrainian roads.”
“The temptation is too great to take money into your pocket, and not send it to the budget,” Bykov said, Interfax reported.
Moreover, he said that it is a common practice when goods, before crossing the western borders of Ukraine, are divided and loaded into two or three trucks, since their “weight is strictly controlled” in the European Union countries.
“Nobody (outside Ukraine) wants to see how the millions of dollars invested in the road sector are smashed under the wheels of trucks,” said Bykov.
Not so happy farmers
Being among the top violators of overloaded trucks, members of the agrobusiness community see huge risks for their industry as a result of the new law.
According to the director of the Ukrainian Club of Agrarian Business Roman Slastyon, it will be very difficult for farmers to control the weight of the cargo in trucks and “not to transport it in handfuls, in order to adhere to the norm.”
“In 95% of cases, there are no scales in the field to weigh the load,” said Slastyon during a round table discussion in the the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food on June 25.
Plus, agro-experts complained that there is an “unfair difference” in fines for cargo carriers and cargo owners.
According to Ruslan Kalnitsky, an expert of Ukrainian Agri Council, while cargo carriers will get the maximum fine of $1,900 if the truck is 30% overloaded, cargo owners get the same fine if exceeding the norm for just 50 kilograms overweight. “The cargo owner, the carrier, and a buyer of the goods are equal participants in the transportation process,” said Kalnitsky.
“There can be no argument for a different approach to their responsibility. This bill upsets the balance,” he said.
