PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (AP) – Heavier trucks should keep rolling on the New Hampshire and Maine turnpikes, a preliminary report recommends.

The report was mandated by the Federal Highway Administration after both states received exemptions from the 80,000-pount truck-weight limit in 1998. The report recommends maintaining the exemption.

“We found out this would cost basically between $3 and $4 million if we did not have this exemption,” said Michael O’Malley, a recently retired turnpikes project designer for the New Hampshire Department of Transportation, who has stayed on to work on this project.

Among other issues, the report looked at safety concerns and the potential effects on the states’ highways and bridges if the heavier trucks were no longer allowed on Interstate 95.

If those trucks were not allowed on the interstate, engineers estimate there would be one more accident a year in New Hampshire, at a cost of about $98,000, according to the report.

Routes other than the highway could pick up as many as 30 trucks a day, if those vehicles were not allowed on the interstate.

The report said that repair costs to the steel Piscataqua River Bridge would run about $750,000 a year, and would be shared by both New Hampshire and Maine, if the heavier trucks were still allowed on the highway. But, officials also found New Hampshire would save about $376,000 a year in major-renovation work to area bridges if the heavier trucks stayed on the highway instead of other routes.

New Hampshire also would lose money on tolls, as five-axle trucks bring in some $200,000 a year and six-axle trucks bring in $500,000 a year, according to Mark Berndt, of Wilbur Smith Associates.

Although not studied in detail, “there would be significant impacts to businesses trying to compete,” both in Canada and the United States, if the truck-weight limit returned to 80,000 pounds, Berndt said.

Officials hope to finish the report in the next two months, and are accepting public comment through June 11.

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On the Net:

The draft report can be found on the New Hampshire Department of Transportation Web site, www.nhdot.com.

AP-ES-06-04-04 1819EDT