Officers wrote 141 truck tickets

The hope was that after a month of writing ticket after ticket for vehicles being off the assigned truck route, drivers would get the message.
That theory never came to fruition.
“It continued, if not got worse,” said Portland police chief Nathan Springer, who noted that officer Michael Brewster wrote three tickets in a span of 40 minutes one day in October.
Drivers kept trying to find a way, other than the assigned detour using Ohio 49, Ohio 29, Indiana 67 and U.S. 27, around the construction on Indiana 26 (Water Street) in Portland. So officers kept writing tickets.
By the time the project was complete and the three-quarter mile section of road reopened Friday, officers had written 141 tickets for vehicles being off the assigned truck route in a span of less than seven months.
In all of 2014, they had written just two such citations.
The main area for offenses during the first month — May, when officers wrote 22 tickets — was Main Street between Wayne and Pierce streets. That pattern continued, with 66 tickets written on Main Street alone. There were another 20 on Pierce Street, 12 on Morton Street, 11 on Water Street, six on Hayes Street and two on Orkney Street, all of which intersect with Main Street in the area near the construction.
But Springer said officers also saw an increase in trucks using the local detour — county road 300 East, Division Road and Votaw Street — as the project went on.
“I think that was their loop around,” he said. “But we also had construction on 26 going on east of the bridge, so (Indiana Department of Transportation) was using Votaw Street, which they can do legally, but it causes a lot of commotion.
“And then we also had harvest going on, so we had farmers bringing their trucks down Votaw, which is legal, but we got a lot of phone calls.”
While INDOT workers and farmers were allowed to use those roads, their presence gave other drivers a built-in excuse. They simply said they followed the vehicle in front of them.
Officers also frequently heard drivers say they didn’t take the assigned detour because they didn’t see signs in Ohio. That prompted some officers to keep pictures of the detour signs in Fort Recovery in their cars or on their phones. They are also on hand at Portland Police Department for use in Portland City Court if the drivers attempt to challenge their citations.
“Most of them had a sad story — ‘If you give me this ticket I’ll lose my job’ or ‘I have a family to feed,’ things like that,” said Springer. “Most of them stuck with the story that GPS took them that way.”
Drivers also attempted to find a detour to the south, resulting in 10 tickets being written on Seventh Street.
The standard fine for a truck operating off of the assigned route is $25.
With the $4.24 million project, which included a rebuilt road from Meridian Street to the eastern edge of the city, the problem of trucks driving through residential neighborhoods should be eliminated. But the newly-paved street may cause other issues.
“I think the biggest problem we’ll have now is speeding, because all the speed bumps are gone,” Springer said, referencing the potholes that previously marked Water Street.
He said he plans to have officers with radar in the area, which includes school zones for East Elementary and East Jay Middle School, in order to discourage drivers from exceeding the speed limit.