Communities or other entities responsible for maintaining motorways will receive 35% of the fines generated by automatic weight-in-motion (WIM) complexes installed on their section of road.
The relevant draft law was developed by the State Service of Ukraine for Transport Safety (DSBT, Ukrtransbezpeka) together with the Ministry of Community and Territorial Development of Ukraine, according to the head of Ukrtransbezpeka, Mykyta Lagunin.
“The main drawback of WIM complexes is that there are not enough of them on the roads. During wartime, WIM complexes cannot be a priority, so we decided to review the paradigm of our approach to this issue. Together with our ministry, we want to involve other stakeholders who are responsible for local roads and communities in this process,” he said in an interview with the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
Lagunin specified that 57 WIM complexes are currently connected to Ukrtransbezpeka and are operational, although according to the initial plan, which was developed back in 2020, there should have been approximately 250 units.
According to him, we are talking about WIM complexes on the road and a new type of automatic recording, the so-called Low-Speed WIM – platforms with more accurate measuring equipment, which do not have such high throughput capacity, but it is advisable to place them at unloading/loading points, for example, at the entrance to the port.
“If a truck can somehow bypass a WIM complex on the highway by driving through villages, it will still pass through this Low-Speed WIM with high measurement accuracy at the port entrance,” explained the head of the service.
Lahunin noted that five years after the introduction of the WIM complex system, which not only helped inspectors pull over vehicles with signs of overloading from the flow of traffic, but also immediately fine them, this system has proven to be very effective, so the main task is to scale it up.
According to the head, there are some problems with the operation of WIM complexes, but they can be solved through upgrades and closing loopholes where drivers bypass these complexes.
Lahunin clarified that there cannot be WIM complexes directly in Ukrtransbezpeka, because they are an integral part of the road as an engineering structure, and only the road’s balance holder, for example, the community, can install a WIM complex.
At the same time, he said that it is proposed to leave 15% of the fines collected by WIM complexes for the development of Ukrtransbezpeka, where the current salary of an inspector is 22-23 thousand hryvnias per month, and the remaining 50% to the general budget of Ukraine.
According to the head of the service, this bill is currently being discussed with all interested central government agencies.
“This will allow us to quickly and effectively develop a network of WIMs and build an effective system of safeguards against overloading,” Lagunin emphasized.
According to him, the approximate cost of a two-lane WIM complex today is about 18 million hryvnia, which is not an insurmountable burden for most communities.
“Some WIM complexes installed in places with heavy traffic can pay for themselves in six months.
We are not saying that this should become a means of making money, but with the effective operation of the WIM complex, violators understand that they should not violate the rules. So, first, communities will recoup the costs of developing and maintaining this system, and then they will save on road maintenance,” said the head of Ukrtransbezpekha.
He also reported that in six months, the state budget was replenished by more than UAH 65 million thanks to WIM fines, while during road checks over the same period, about 300 inspectors imposed sanctions totaling more than UAH 283 million. The largest number of violations were recorded by WIM complexes in the Kyiv region (858), Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava regions (395 and 207, respectively), with a total of 2,700 fines issued to violators.
“If we can build WIM complexes and replace our inspectors with computers that do not systematically take bribes, that would be great… Our main focus and priority is the maximum digitization of all possible functions,” Lagunin emphasized.
In total, over the four years of operation of the automatic detection system, UAH 560 million has been paid into the budget.
Ukrtransbezpeka notes that most often the WIM system detects violations of the dimensional and weight limits established by law by 5% to 10% inclusive, with fines reaching UAH 8,500. Before the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, this figure was 36% of the total number of violations, while after the resumption of the WIM system complexes in May 2022, the figure rose to 64% of the total number of violations.
WIM complex, Лагунін, Укртрансбезпека
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