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Semi-Safe

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All involved insist that safety is their first concern, that they have no interest in seeing dangerous vehicles tooling down the freeway. "We're not opposed to inspection stations, because we want the junk to be off the road," says Les Findeisen, TMTA director of information.

Findeisen and the others might be more convincing if they did not contradict each other on key details; or if Trietsch, TxDOT, the state troopers or anyone else had documented the alleged safety concerns before the edict to cancel was issued. Though every step of the process that led to TxDOT's approval of the project is well chronicled, not a shred of paper explains how Trietsch reached his conclusion to scrap it.

Robinson is convinced that safety had nothing to do with the decision. "That's garbage," he says. "I know what's going on here. Politicians got involved, and from then on it went downhill."

In the tiny, windowless basement office that hardly seems the nerve center of a serious law enforcement effort, Sergeant Loni Robinson clicks his computer mouse and bangs at the keys, eyes darting from keyboard to screen as he searches for an entry. After several moments, he finds the item in question. "Here it is," he exclaims with an exuberance that feels out of place in the drab surroundings.

An ex-Marine and former truck driver with an acute sense of order, Robinson can quote chapter and verse from the book of regulations, cite companies with excellent (and poor) safety records, recall who said what at which meeting. In case he needs a memory jolt, he keeps an extensive computer diary.

Such attention to detail has served Robinson well since the Pasadena DOT unit was formed in 1995. The legislature passed a law that year allowing municipalities to inspect and ticket commercial vehicles, and the city quickly took advantage.

Any motorist who drives Texas 225 understands the need for rigorous law enforcement. A major transportation corridor that feeds the Port of Houston as well as the dozens of chemical plants and refineries in the area, the highway handles more commercial traffic per mile than any in the state. At peak times, trucks running three and four abreast clog the artery, almost 700 an hour, according to a count by the Texas Transportation Institute. Depending on the time of day, as many as 40 percent of the trucks carry dangerous chemicals, some of which are lethal if inhaled. Estimates from various sources put the total number of 18-wheelers passing along 225 at around 7,000 a day.

And if the Port of Houston Authority builds the massive Bayport container terminal as planned, the volume of truck traffic zipping through the Pasadena city limits might double. "I don't know how we're going to [manage] it," says Robinson.

With so many rigs on the road, accidents happen frequently. Robinson quickly recounts a series of incidents that occurred the past few weeks alone. In October, a too-tall rig pulled down a string of power lines on Pauline Street, including one carrying a deadly 25,000 volts. Another truck loaded with 9,100 gallons of aviation fuel tipped over on October 28 near the intersection of 225 and Preston. "It's just fortunate there wasn't a big boom," Robinson says.

Sometimes there is a big boom. At least once a year, a gasoline tanker crashes and burns on area highways. Last August, a tanker blew up on the Southwest Freeway near Montrose, incinerating the driver and torching a vacant apartment building nearby. On May 28, an Oklahoma Tank Lines gas hauler overturned and exploded at the junction of Interstate 10 and 225, killing the driver.

State statistics show that in 1997, 486 people in Texas died in wrecks involving large trucks, the most in the nation. Federal stats show an average of about one hazardous materials spill from trucks every day in Harris County. While the majority happen at plant sites during loading or unloading, many leak in transit: On May 26, for example, a truck released toxic methyl acrylate gas after the driver tried to turn around in a tight space near the bayside community of El Jardin and drove his rig into a ditch. The residents of El Jardin had to be evacuated.

Fortunately, no incidents of catastrophic proportions have occurred since 1976, when a truck carrying deadly anhydrous ammonia plunged from a West Loop overpass and ruptured, killing seven people and injuring more than 150. Whether one interprets the death and accident data as high or low, it's the potential for disaster that counts, Robinson says. "You don't look at what did or didn't happen. You look at what could have happened."

Robinson tries to leave as little to chance as possible. He and his team are trained well beyond the minimum requirements for the job, and their reputation for thoroughness extends throughout the state. They regularly instruct trucking companies on safety and compliance. When Houston police need expertise at fatal truck wrecks involving hazardous cargo, they know whom to call. "We're supposed to be one of the most educated units in Texas," says officer Robert Metcalf, a hazardous materials specialist.

But the demands of the job dwarf the resources available to do it. With only three full-time and six part-time officers (borrowed one day a week from patrol duty) in the DOT Unit, they're stretched membrane-thin. In all of 1997, they inspected only 1,051 trucks. On a good day, they cull at most ten or 12 from the swarm.

Other factors hamper the enforcement effort. In particular, officers lack a designated place to do their work. Chasing down trucks and lugging around portable scales and other equipment adds time to an already lengthy task -- a complete stem-to-stern inspection can take more than an hour under the most optimal conditions.

Efficiency was to be only one benefit of the weigh station. In addition to scales and a staging area, the station would include a small building equipped with telephone, bathroom and other amenities that truckers as well as police could use.

Coupled with the station's primary purpose -- to provide a safe place to do inspections -- those goals made sense to TxDOT district chief Gary Trietsch, at least initially. "Let's try to do it," Trietsch scrawled on the letter requesting the weigh station that Pasadena Mayor Johnny Isbell wrote in June 1996.

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