Study Finds Shortage of Truck Parking a ‘Safety Concern’
The FHA’s survey is the latest and most comprehensive attempt to tackle the problem
When drivers were asked to identify problem parking regions, the mid-Atlantic area ranked first. PHOTO: KYLE GRANTHAM FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Parking shortages that could cause truck drivers to continue driving while tired or to stop and spend the night on road shoulders and exit ramps “are a national safety concern,” according to a study the Federal Highway Administration is expected to release on Friday.
“Ideally each driver requiring rest should be able to access a safe, clean, full service parking space to obtain long-term rest whenever the need for long-term parking arises,” the 119-page study says. “In reality, there is often a mismatch between driver demand…[and] the availability of an adequate parking space at that point and time.”
More than 75% of the truck drivers surveyed in the study and nearly 66% of logistics personnel reported they regularly had trouble finding safe parking when it was time to rest. Ninety percent reported “struggling to find safe and available parking” at night.
Unofficial or illegal truck parking places have become so common that safety officials in 48 states reported they could identify the locations. Officials in 11 states could identify 11 or more places, according to the study. Nearly half the time those ad hoc locations were freeway ramps; 27% of the time freeway shoulders and 20% of the time they were parking lots, it found.
The study, mandated in the last transportation bill, includes surveys of state highway and safety officials, truck drivers and other segments of the trucking industry. It is the latest and most comprehensive attempt to tackle the truck parking problem by evaluating states’ abilities to provide adequate truck parking and developing a way to measure parking adequacy.
‘An increased focus…on the need to plan truck parking for drivers will go a long way toward encouraging the better utilization of existing truck parking capacity’
Truck parking shortage isn’t new. But it has been getting worse as the economy has picked up. It also has been further squeezed by changes that took effect two years ago in the so-called hours of service rules that require truckers to take 30-minute rests after eight hours of driving and to stop for a longer period after 11 hours. That won’t be helped by predictions that freight volumes are expected to increase by nearly 29% over the next 11 years, according to a new report from the American Trucking Associations and IHS Global Insight. Trucks transported 9.96 billion tons, or 80% of the $700.4 billion of 2014 freight revenue, according to the ATA.
The parking shortage has also received increasing attention from transportation and safety officials since the 2009 killing of Jason Rivenburg, a trucker who had parked in an abandoned gas station in South Carolina en route to deliver a load of milk and the killing last year of Mike Boeglin as he waited to make a delivery to a steel plant in Detroit.
The FHA found that one of the most critical issues cited by law enforcement and safety regulators in the study is the dilemma they face when they encounter trucks parked—often illegally—on road shoulders.
Police know the reason is often that the trucker got tired or ran out of his 11 hours of drive time but couldn’t find a parking place. “A driver sleeping in a truck parked on the side of a highway may be more of a danger if he or she is awakened and ordered to vacate the premises,” the study noted.
When drivers were asked to identify problem regions, the mid-Atlantic, which includes New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, ranked first, followed by New England and the Midwest. Drivers highlighted problems in the East on Interstate 95 and Interstate 81 corridors and along I-70 through Chicago and I-5 in California.
The study reveals why the problem is so intractable. There is no single entity—not federal or state governments, not trucking companies or shippers—responsible for truck parking facilities. Moreover, the vast majority of truck parking—88% of the 309,000 spaces documented in the study—is at private truck stops, not in public rest areas.
But truck-stop operators reported challenges with expanding their parking. They need to account for customer demand and real-estate costs, and they also frequently run into zoning and environmental laws. Many communities don’t want more trucks stopping nearby for the night.
Lisa Mullings, chief executive of the National Association of Truck Stop Operators, says she hopes the study will encourage better planning by truck fleets.
Often parking spaces are empty—just not where truckers need them at the moment they must stop and rest. “An increased focus…on the need to plan truck parking for drivers will go a long way toward encouraging the better utilization of existing truck parking capacity,” Ms. Mullings said.
