Abstract:
A remarkable growth in infrastructure development is witnessed after start of China Pakistan Economic corridor (CPEC) development. Trade volumes have grown to meet the ever increasing population demands. The overloading of trucks increasingly continues to destroy the highways, motorways and roads. The „transport sector‟ has, not been able to change from its primitive character that it is guarding traditionally and continuously. This primitive structure has thus resorted to overloading as the only alternative to stay afloat in the transport market. While there has been no substantial support from the government in assisting change / improvement, the curse of overloading continues to perpetuate the destruction of the road infrastructure. Compounded by the ill effects of the ever growing socio-economic imbalance caused by spiraling fuel prices, it is unlikely to witness a break in the overloading-destruction-rehabilitation cycle until radical effective implementable measures are immediately launched. The maintenance and rehabilitation bill continues to touch staggering proportions. NHA over the last decade has incessantly tried to address the overloading problem through legislation, setting up of weigh stations, stakeholders‟ interaction etc, but failed. The background of the study rests in the country-wide habit of overloading road vehicles with the effect of damage to the roads, a multitude of lethal accidents, unregulated transport conditions with absence of insurance coverage and specifically an enormous and increasing budget for the repair and rehabilitation of the road network of Pakistan. Transport sector accounts for 10% of Pakistan GDP. Foregoing above a deliberate effort was made to explore the causes of over loading.
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A survey based study was done to explore the stakeholders‟ perceptions about the issues of overloading so as to formulate a framework for the axle load management regime for Pakistan. The framework developed in this study can be used by stakeholders for the formulation of effective axle load management regime for Pakistan
