Weighbridge Survey for Freight Policy Analysis in the Central Java Region, Indonesia

The Central Java region is located in the central part of Java Island and encompasses major inter-regional and intra-regional freight corridor. The Government, however, is not capable of collecting sufficient freight transport data such as weight origin-destination (OD) table by commodity types. Besides, it is not possible to maintain the roads with high service level due to overloaded trucks and budgetary constraints. This paper proposed a new weighbridge survey method with minimum resource by utilizing daily operation of weighbridge stations. Overload analysis based on the survey data revealed that bulky commodities, particularly steel and cement, damaged the pavement. The commodity weight OD table estimated by the survey data also revealed that the bulky commodities are transported across Java Island. The methodology for estimating the economic benefit of pavement cost reduction by transportation project using the survey data was proposed and a case study was conducted for the enforcement of overload regulation. This paper proves that a weighbridge station could be a variable source of information for freight transport analysis in addition to the original function of law enforcement for overloading and this could be a prototype for the other countries with weighbridge stations.