1975-09-02 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Statement re: City Attorney on Truck Ordinance "The sectio~ of the State Code that provides the general authority for localities to regulate the truck traffic, unfortunately does not provide any clear specific standards which the City should apply in deciding what types of trucks will be excluded from what types of streets. In the absence of a clear statuatory standard it seems to me that in judging any scheme which you might come up with to regulate truck traffic. We have ~o look at whether the regulations decised bear any reasonable relationship to the public purpose which are seeking to accomplish by ordinance. I think it is generally agreed that the reasons people want to regulate truck traffic are to increase traffic safety and low noise levels, the safety factor and noise factor are the two items which have been often presented to Council as reasons why we ought to have a Truck Ordinance. As was reported to Council at the Work Session the Studies undertaken by the Traffic Department and the other members of the City Staff indicate that there is not direct corelation which can be made between vellieny, between size or type truck involved and the safety factor or noise level. In fact some of those studies showed that there are other types of vehicles which are inherently more noisy and perhaps even less safe than trucks. A truck ordinance by its very nature is discriminatory because it denies to one segment of the public, that is the truck driving public a privilege, the use of the streets which is allowed to another segment of the public. Now its obvious that not every kind of discrimination that a government inters into is inherently unlawful or unconstitutional but its also basic principle of local government regulations that the discrimination that the local government makes in cases like this must non be irrational or arbitrary. Based on this if we are able to show, demonstrate by hard evidence that si sheel trucks were more noisy than four wheel trucks, or that the trucks.generally were more noisy than any other kind of vehicle, Oust for example motor cycles or sports cars, then you devise a valid regulatory scheme. You say if we were able to prove statically less safe than motor cycles or sports cars or station wagons or whatever kind of vehicles use our streets, then we might also be able to validly exclude certain classes of trucks from our streets, but the evidence thats been set before Council tends to go the other way. You cann't made a direct one to one correlation between these factors. ~nd on that basis I am forced to conclude that someone wishes t~ challenge any truck regulations you can come up with might be able to challenge it sudcessfully and unless further studies ~r later information were to prove otherwise that in fact you can correlate the size of trucks and the noise they make as pa~ t from other types of vehicles. Whether that some how trucks ~re less safe which we don't have evidence of, then I am not a~ all convenienced that it is possible to validly sustain an ordinance of the kind that the Council has been considering in ti~e past. There is another problem I think that underlies thiS'kind bf truck regulation, and that is the exclusion of trucks from o~e street of necessity increases the consentration of trucks on ano':her street, they are going to go somewhere and if you exclude t]lem from one way they are going to ifind the next way or the llext available way to get to where they are going. If it we~e possible to make these exclusionary decision on some sort of ~miform basis it might pose no legal problem but it's apparent to us that the trouble Council has had in the past in attempting to a system of truck routes it will not be possible to exclude truckl from all of our arterial streets which pass through residential neighborhoods. If you were to exclude them from all these s~reets it would be obvious to most anyone that it is an unreasonable regulation because there simply would not enough streets available for them to reach all areas of the City to which it is necessary for them to go. Therefore we're faced with the d~cision in trying to choose some arterial streets from which they ~ill be excluded and choose others to which they will thus he dir,~cted. I am inclined to think that this kind of decision whict~ would necessarily transfer supposed adverse effect of these ~rucks, from one neighborhood to another neighborhood cou].d be challenged not only be the truckers who were thus direct~d around town but by the residents of the other neighborhoods to which you directed them. On this basis I am forced to conclu~.e in the absence of evidence to the contrary that a truck reg~lation such as Council has considered in the past could b~ challenged in the Court and that I am not at.all confident that we could sustain the ordinance against such a challenge."