20-02 — Successful Approaches for Facilitating Truck Parking Accommodation Along Major Freight Corridors

Original Scope: Lack of adequate accommodation for truck parking along major freight corridors continues to be a critical issue for state transportation agencies. Truck parking at many state-provided safety rest areas and weigh stations routinely exceeds capacity, often leaving truck drivers without reliable options for safely taking rest periods when they are tired or legally required to do so. Drivers may resort to parking on highway ramps, shoulders, or other unsafe areas, creating hazardous situations for the truck drivers and other road users.

Scan participants will seek a better understanding of the process for developing a truck parking information system along with a successful strategies employed by leading agencies, candidate technologies that might be considered to support sharing parking availability, and case studies of systems that may be transferable to other agencies. Additionally, the scan will focus on and produce potential strategies for issues such as monitoring, ITS design, overcoming legal barriers, and potential funding mechanisms.

Implementation and Impact

Following the scan workshop in May 2021, the scan team worked at the state, regional and national levels to advance scan findings. Highlights of these activities include:

At the state level, scan findings were presented to ITS Washington, the Virginia Freight Advisory Committee, and the Connecticut Freight Working Group.

At the regional and national levels, the scan team presented the scan outcomes at the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Eastern Transportation Coalition Truck Parking Working Group, and the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations.

In June 2021, Washington State DOT and FHWA co-hosted the 2021 Washington State Truck Parking Workshop: Overview and Potential Solutions for Consideration. Categories of solutions included capacity, programmatic, technology, and solutions that cut across multiple categories.

Also in 2021, Colorado DOT decided to build upon their recent planning successes to make significant improvements in meeting the parking needs in their state. The result was for Colorado DOT to draft and publish the Truck Parking Public-Private Partnership Project Development Playbook in August of 2022.

In September 2022, FHWA published the Truck Parking Development Handbook, which presents resources for development of truck parking, including factors that influence parking need, quantitative approaches for estimating truck parking demand, design of truck parking facilities, truck parking safety and security, and facility siting to protect community quality of life. The Handbook serves as a resource for planners, engineers, local officials, State departments of transportation, metropolitan planning organizations, economic development organizations, and other entities involved in freight and land use planning.

In May 2023, TRB hosted a webinar based on the outcomes of this scan entitled, Truck Parking Strategies, Technologies, and Partnerships. The content of this webinar provided a better understanding of the process for developing a truck parking information system along with successful strategies employed by leading agencies, technologies that might be considered to support sharing parking availability, and case studies of systems that may be transferable to other agencies. Presenters shared potential strategies for monitoring, ITS design, overcoming legal barriers, and funding mechanisms.

A link to this scan page will also be posted on FHWA’s Freight Professional Capacity Building’s website, which is still under development. This site will provide links to publicly available truck parking resources, such as university research, state and local research and programs, AASHTO and TRB resources.

Scan chair, Jason Beloso, provided perspectives on the scan outcomes on the final day of the scan:

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