Heavy Vehicle Characteristics at the Laredo and El Paso Ports of Entry

You are here: Homepage > Search

Heavy Vehicle Characteristics at the Laredo and El Paso Ports of Entry

L. A. Sanchez-Ruiz / C. E. Lee

Truck traffic moving through Laredo and El Paso, Texas, includes a large portion of the total number heavy vehicles entering Texas from Mexico. These trucks have considerable impact on the transportation infrastructure in Texas and other states, and the additional traffic that will be affected by the pending implementation of provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are of special concern. To obtain quantitative data about the number of such trucks and their axle loads, weigh-in-motion (WIM) devices were installed near the north end of the international bridges that cross the Rio Grande at Laredo (1993) and at El Paso (1994). Data obtained from these WIM systems through the summer of 1996 are presented in summary form in this report. Analysis of the data has been undertaken to characterize the observed truck traffic volume and composition, axle loads, and equivalent single axle loads (ESALs) for northbound trucks entering the U.S. from Mexico at Laredo and at El Paso.