A new report says rural communities should directly charge resource industries a fee for wear and tear caused by heavy trucks on roads.
A study by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy says the vehicles cause a disproportionate amount of damage to rural roads. The report says it’s not fair to saddle people who live in the country with maintenance costs, and rural municipalities don’t have the tax base to afford the repairs.
David Seymour, one of the study’s authors, says satellite technology is available to calculate how much a heavy truck is driven within an area. Fees charged by rural municipalities could be based on exceptional use.
Rural municipalities spend about 40 per cent of their budgets on roads compared with about 17 per cent for cities.