WASHINGTON — State transportation departments want more than just new truck parking capacity, they want to be better equipped to maintain the facilities already built.
“Just building a truck parking facility is not enough,” wrote Garrett Eucalitto, president of the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO), in comments filed with the U.S. Department of Transportation this week.
“State DOTs continue to experience challenges with the operation and maintenance of these facilities as a barrier to keeping them open to support truck drivers. Federal support for such costs in addition to construction funding will be critical to maintaining public truck parking facilities to ensure a safe and resilient system.
“AASHTO believes that flexible formula funding is the best solution for addressing a national truck parking problem so that every state has the support necessary to address this challenge.”
Truck parking – and lack of it – has been flagged by the Trump administration as a priority after years of pressure from the trucking industry to get Congress to approve grant funding earmarked specifically for building out more parking spaces.
“We want to fund truck parking for our truckers in this country – a critical need for safety in the United States,” DOT Deputy Secretary Steve Bradbury told state transportation officials at DOT headquarters last month.
AASHTO’s comments, which were filed in response to DOT’s request to help update its National Freight Strategic Plan (NFSP), were underscored by Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT), which pointed out that winter closures on Donner Pass along I-80 in northern Nevada exacerbated truck parking shortages.
The agency supports using the National Multimodal Freight Network, a map of highways and other freight networks used by DOT to prioritize funding, “to facilitate the construction, operation and maintenance for truck parking facilities to support the essential work of truck drivers and to ensure a resilient supply chain,” the agency stated in its own comments.
“The federal government can play a role in setting minimum standards for truck parking quantities and rest area quality, and local governments can facilitate the development of truck parking with private developers when public projects cannot be constructed.”
AASHTO urged federal officials to speed up truck parking expansion – and all freight infrastructure projects – by streamlining regulations.
“Ongoing efforts to modernize and streamline the environmental review and permitting process to better align federal resource agency actions will support the timely and cost-effective delivery of freight infrastructure projects across the nation.”
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