View the May 16, 2018 seminar recording
Jennifer Symoun
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you to the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Jennifer Symoun and I will moderate today’s seminar. Today’s topic is Best Practices in Industry and Government Coordination for Developing Truck Parking Solutions.
Before I go any further, I do want to let those of you who are calling into the teleconference for the audio know that you need to mute your computer speakers or else you will be hearing your audio over the computer as well.
Today’s seminar will last 90 minutes, with 60 minutes allocated for the speakers, and the final 30 minutes for audience Question and Answer. If during the presentations you think of a question, you can type it into the chat area. Please make sure you send your question to “Everyone” and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentations, but I will start off the question and answer session with the questions typed into the chat box. We will also take questions over the phone if time allows and I will provide instructions on how to do so once we get to that point.
The PowerPoint presentations used during the seminar are available for download from the file download box in the lower right corner of your screen. The presentations will also be available online within the next few weeks, along with a recording and a transcript. I will notify all attendees once these materials are posted online.
Talking Freight seminars are eligible for 1.5 certification maintenance credits for AICP members. In order to obtain credit for today’s seminar, you must have logged in with your first and last name or if you are attending with a group of people you must type your first and last name into the chat box.
PDH certificates are also available for Talking Freight seminars. To receive 1.5 PDH credits, you will need to fill out a form. Please see the link in the chat box. Certificates will be emailed one week after the seminar. A seminar agenda has been included in the file download box for those who need to submit an agenda to their licensing agency.
Finally, I encourage everyone to please also download the evaluation form from the file share box and submit this form to me after you have filled it out.
Today we’ll have a brief introduction given by Scott Grenerth of Truck Specialized Parking Services, followed by three presentations given by:
We will then have a few brief concluding remarks from Jeff Purdy of the Federal Highway Administration Office of Freight Management and Operations.
I will now turn it over to Scott Grenerth of Truck Specialized Parking Services for a few opening remarks.
Scott Grenerth
Thank you. I want to thank everyone for joining in, and I just want to let you know this presentation comes from the cooperation amongst the state and local government coordination working group from the National Truck Parking Coalition for working to try to provide opportunities for ideas out there and making parking better and finding ways to achieve that goal. The information that we will talking about and other activities we have will go into resources we will produce to help reach that goal of effectively coming up with real ways for addressing the truck parking problem. We hope it’s informative for everyone.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Scott. Our first presentation will be given jointly by Charla Glendening and Alex Marach. Charla is the Statewide Planning Manager for the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) in Phoenix. She supervises statewide plans and programs including the Long Range Transportation Plan, Freight Plan, Bike/Ped Plan and the Tribal Program. She has worked in the field of Planning for 19 years, and her experience includes both public and private sector work.
Alex is a Senior Consultant with CPCS. A public policy professional and economist by training, Alex has a wide-range of experience assessing transportation policy for MPOs, states, the federal government, and industry groups. He has developed state transportation strategies, guided states through the definition of critical freight corridors and connections, and has extensive experience consulting with public and private sector stakeholders. Among other projects, Alex is a lead analyst for managing truck parking studies in Arizona, Florida, and on the update to the Jason’s Law Truck Parking Survey.
Charla Glendening
Thank you, Jennifer and good morning everyone from Phoenix, Arizona. Good afternoon to you on the East Coast. Thank you for inviting us to speak at today’s webinar. I know our focus is truck parking but before Alex and I launch into that discussion I wanted to provide you with some background and context related to freight in Arizona in order to better understand our current truck parking initiative.
Arizona recently completed its first federally compliant freight plan which enabled us to program and begin authorizing the national freight fund. As an FYI, Arizona received $95.7 million in apportionments through the FAST Act. The plan took us two years to complete but it resulted in strengthened partnerships with our MPO’s, and also established new relationships with the private trucking industry. The primary purpose of our freight plan was to develop a fiscally constrained plan that demonstrated a performance-based planning approach to identifying projects. We accomplished that through a very collaborative process, and by the end of the study we identified almost $6 billion in freight improvements needed within Arizona.
At the time we were developing our list of needs and prioritizing our top 25 projects, we were approached by the Arizona Trucking Association to discuss the electronic logging device mandate. We were asked to evaluate capacity issues at our current rest areas. The timing of this discussion resulted in a $10 million set aside in the freight plan to fund future projects that support truck parking. It also led to a change order with our freight consultant to begin evaluating truck parking more closely in Arizona; and that allowed us to really keep momentum going by utilizing the same consultant that we used for our freight study. We also utilized our freight advisory committee that rolled into our truck parking advisory committee.
I included this slide on the right to provide you some context as to how freight primarily moves through Arizona and the next slide gives you an idea of our top freight sectors in the state. At this point I will be turning the presentation over to Alex for the next 6 to 7 slides. Alex is currently managing our truck parking study and also managed our freight plan. He will be covering the aspect of data collection and some of the challenges that we encountered as well as lessons learned. I will pick up again on slide 11. With that Alex.
Alex Marach
Thanks Charla. In addition to the ATA, Arizona Trucking Association, highlighting truck parking as a critical issue in the state, the process of developing a freight plan highlighted truck parking as a critical need in a number of ways. The first of which is through industry outreach. The project team identified Arizona’s top 10 freight sectors which comprise about 30% of GDP and 32% of employment and about 95% of international trade flows from Arizona. During consultations with these industries they identify truck parking as an issue that they encounter in effecting the efficiency of movements within the state. In addition to this outreach we looked at the freight flows going to, from and within the state which is shown on the map here on the right which highlights the importance of critical corridor such as I-10 and I-17 within the state. It also shows the importance of the Phoenix metropolitan area to freight movement.
Comparing this map to the map that Charla highlighted, I-40 doesn’t rise to the level of significance as it did in the national map. That is because this map does not include through traffic. But that through traffic is critically important in the context for truck parking. Arizona is situated between large freight origins and destination in California and Texas. These origins and destinations are located such that the hours of service that truck drivers encounter puts them in Arizona requiring them to stop off for truck parking. Providing this national context is critical to understanding truck parking within the state. In addition to industry outreach and understanding the context, Arizona’s quick transition from the Arizona State freight plan to a truck parking study really enabled the state to build upon coordination that was occurring during the freight plan, as well as build upon the state freight advisory committee and their involvement, as well as leverage the commitment that ADOT made in its $10 Million set aside for the future truck parking study.
This early coordination with MPOs continued from the freight plan because the Maricopa Association of Governments, or MAG, which represents the Phoenix metropolitan area did their freight plan at the same time that Arizona was conducting their freight plan. This coordination between the consultants doing the freight plans insured that the overlap between the studies was minimized and a similar approach is used in developing Arizona’s truck parking study and the truck parking study that MAG will undertake following the Arizona statewide study. The state freight advisory committee was involved throughout development of the freight plan and, as Charla mentioned, many members of the freight advisory committee joined the Arizona truck parking stakeholders group which provided critical input into the freight plan. These truck parking stakeholders group includes a number of private and public sector stakeholders and input provided through the process. Quick movement from freight planning to implementation is allowed for, in addition to ADOT providing the $10 million set aside really showed that Arizona was serious about fixing truck parking and I think assisted in engagement with the private sector stakeholders that were engaged throughout the freight planning process. They are now continuing to be engaged in truck parking studies.
Transitioning to some of the lessons learned that we have developed through this freight planning effort statewide truck parking study, the first of which is partnership is key. As I mentioned, Arizona convenes a truck parking stakeholders group right at the beginning of the study. This group includes the Arizona Trucking Association, who provides a location and provides lunch during the working meetings, which assists in attendance from private sector stakeholders that are able to use this as a working lunch, and it has resulted in good attendance throughout the process. We also worked with OOIDA and ATA to distribute our truck parking survey, which resulted in good participation from drivers and company managers. We also have Knight and Swift transport which after their merger became the largest truck load carrier in the U.S., numerous local trucking companies, and the National Association of Truck Stop Operators. This combination of private sector stakeholders provides both validation and input into the truck parking study. It ensures we are focused on the right aspects, and we have input from the private sector that we need. In addition to private sector stakeholders we have public sector stakeholders. Truck parking, like a lot of freight, is a crosscutting issue within the private sector generally and within DOT. There is membership from ADOT enforcement and compliance, ADOT rest areas, safety and TSMO for ITS application, Department of Public Safety, FHWA, MAG, and ASU. This combination of public and private sector stakeholders ensures that as we reach the implementation of the actual recommendations to the plan they have been thoroughly vetted by these groups. They have been able to provide input into the solutions and it seeks to minimize any issues that we encounter as implementation occurs. All of their input is greatly valued, and it has been incredibly helpful in order to develop this study.
Our second lesson learned was on project scoping and gathering truck parking data. At the beginning of the study ADOT committed to doing a statewide study and at the same time MAG was going to do a study of their MPO region. The coordination between MAG and ADOT continued from the freight plan and it was decided that MAG would look at the urban area within Phoenix and ADOT would largely focus on rural areas. This split of urban and rural context we think makes sense because of jurisdictional implementation as well as the use of truck parking is different between urban and rural contexts. The studies are also staggered such that the state and MPO studies don’t overlap. MAG’s study will commence following the Arizona statewide study so they are able to use the outputs of the statewide study in their scoping and their data gathering as well as some of the conclusions in order to appropriately scope their study to minimize overlap between the statewide and MPO study. Partnering with the Arizona Trucking Association and OOIDA was key for gathering truck parking data from the actual users of truck parking as well as managers to understand how to truck parking decisions are made state to state.
Lessons learned on truck parking data itself. We used a combination of data sources including ATRE GPS data and truck parking demand data. We observed different truck parking needs in rural versus urban context when we looked at the duration of truck parking. Trucks are parked shorter amounts of time in urban areas suggesting that those truck parking locations were being used for staging. We also looked at when trucks are parked in rural areas and how long they were parked. It was typically for longer periods of time. We use the ATRE data set and the duration of truck parking to identify both legal and illegal or undesignated locations of truck parking. We coined a term called gray truck parking which Arizona has quite a bit of. These are areas on the side of roadways that were used for construction staging or abandoned lots that trucks are parking and using on a fairly regular basis. The gray or undesignated truck parking, here’s an example on I-15. We identified 120 parks over eight total hours for each parking event, during our 8-week sample. The trucks are finding this area and parking for extended periods of time. This picture you see on the bottom, of the trucks being parked, you can see there are two trucks parked in the Google maps image itself. This next slide shows undesignated or illegal truck parking near a Shell station both in a gravel lot behind the Shell station and on the roadway leading to the Shell station. On the right we see Sunset Point which is a rest area within Arizona and trucks are parked on the on-ramp and the off-ramp and local roads leading up to Sunset Point. The way that we are using the ATRE data is, we are identifying where trucks are parked and we split how long trucks are parked to identify clusters of legal and illegal truck parking based on the amount of time they are stopped and comparing that to usage at private and public truck parking location. In areas that we see available truck parking at truck stops or rest areas and we are still seeing illegal truck parking can suggest that there is an information issue in that area.
I will turn this over to Charla but I think some of the key lessons learned from the study are the importance of maintaining the momentum from the statewide study of the Arizona State freight plan moving directly into the truck parking study. Arizona DOT’s commitment to funding the study which I think highlights to the private sector that they are serious about adjusting this issue. As well as partnership with private and public stakeholders. Partnership with the MPO has allowed for ADOT and MAG to focus on the respective jurisdictions and allows for these studies to take place at different extents. The DOT focused more on the statewide extent and a higher-level analysis; whereas, the MPO focused on last mile issues that they encountered and some staging issues that are not necessarily as large of a focus in rural areas. And finally, using and carrying momentum from the freight advisory committee to the Arizona truck parking stakeholders group provided this input and critical partnership between public and private sector.
Charla Glendening
Thank you, Alex. Where are we now? We are about two months from finalizing our truck parking study. We are not letting that stop us from pursuing funding and financing opportunities such as the recent grant that was just issued, the Advanced Transportation Congestion Management Technologies Deployment Grant, as well as the new bill grant. In addition to our state effort, as Alex mentioned, we are also working very closely with the largest TMA in our state, Maricopa Association of Governments, as a partner on their truck parking study. We are also members of the I-10 coalition and the Western states coalition. Both of these coalitions bring multiple states together to focus on freight initiatives in the areas of technology, operations, and communications.
I wanted to mention that while our initial findings here in Arizona are indicating that we should have adequate truck parking, if you include all available private and public parking, but our data is telling us that we definitely have capacity issues at various rest areas across the state. Therefore, we believe that one of the first solutions that we should be exploring is how to better communicate with the truckers as they drive into and around Arizona. We believe that perhaps by enhancing communication we may be able to resolve some of our capacity issues. Therefore, we are exploring the use of ITS technology to relay real-time truck parking occupancy to truckers.
That concludes our presentation. Thank you so much to all of you for participating today. I hope you found the information valuable and perhaps something you can apply in your state or region. Alex and I look forward to any questions you have at the end of the presentation.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Charla and Alex. Our next presentation will be given by Bill Kuttner of the Boston Region MPO. Bill has worked at the Boston Region MPO since 1992. He was initially involved in late-phase planning efforts for the Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel project, often referred to as the “Big Dig”. Since then he has gradually expanded his work on freight planning issues and was recently designated as the MPO’s Freight Program Manager.
Bill Kuttner
Massachusetts is a small state, and is divided into 13 MPOs, so our MPOs are quite small geographically. It is not clear how this small area fits with freight planning. We are also not part of an implementing agency. In most of the country, MPOs work very closely with the counties and county governments. That does not happen here. Here we are focused mostly on certification responsibilities, such as the TIP, the long-range plan, MPO outreach, and environmental justice. But we have a staff, and a lot of people here that do a lot of different things. We can be a think tank, and we study issues that are important to the MPO or the state. Rest locations are a statewide and nationwide problem, but we recognized that it is a problem, and the Boston MPO was asked to take a look at this. That was my task, and here we go.
This is a report, and you can download this, called the Truck Stop Memo. It has a lot of pretty pictures and aerial photos. Let’s get going here. It is amazing the amount of planning you can do with a good map; it almost does the planning for you. Let’s look at the legend. We are looking for spaces, the dots have at least five spaces, and they have to be striped. I used Google Earth. I am not just looking for pavement, I want to see stripes on the pavement. We have the brown dots which are with commercial services and the green ones are without commercial services. These are rest areas. Within Massachusetts we have all sized locations, and then outside of Massachusetts we just have the large and the very large commercial truck stops. From the point of view of a driver, the nice thing about a large truck stop is that there is always room for one more, so if you are a big rig and you have to stop you generally take your chance on one of these areas.
If we look at Massachusetts, it can be divided into three parts. If you are out here, in the western part of the state, you are in good shape. There are a couple of large truck stops. If you are down in the southeast you are probably pretty close to your customer you can either park at your customer’s, or the customer will tell you where you can park. You work something out.
The problem is this corridor. You come up I-84 and then you go on Interstate 90, then Interstate 290, then I-495, and finally you go up I-93 to upper New England or go up I-95 to upper New England or the Canadian Maritime provinces. After you get past I-84, people tell us it is a wasteland if you have to stop. The map says it all. There are two issues. If the people are trying to get to upper New England or the Canadian Maritimes the next large stop is in Kittery, Maine. Sometimes people are trying to get into Boston and they have small delivery time windows that they have to respect, and they need to stop, take a break and then they can stage for the following day’s delivery. The problem is, out here land starts getting expensive. The problem is that the truck stops have a business plan. A guy comes up and fills the tank with diesel fuel, buys a meal, and then parks his truck for 10 hours. That business plan only works if land is cheap and up here it is more expensive and harder to make that business plan work.
We do have a rest stop up here in Chelmsford on I-495. Let’s take a look at this rest area. The sign says closed until further notice or something like that. The state used to take care of the site which was staffed by the local Visitors Bureau. They had indoor plumbing and restrooms which the state of Massachusetts would pay to maintain. Later, the state of Massachusetts said not anymore, they would spend their money elsewhere. The poor Visitors Bureau cannot pay to support this so it gets closed up and now we have a great way of greeting families coming in on vacation to Massachusetts. The traditional model of the rest area doesn’t work particularly well. The Visitors Bureau can’t, and the State won’t, maintain this area to a high standard. Burger King could but that is a different question. We hear reports from law enforcement agencies about naughty things happening back here in the woods. Trucks can park, frequently in the grass. This model does not work well.
Let’s move ahead to our recommendations.
Strengthening the rest location system: Commercial truck stops. I said pricey land is an issue. You need to be identifying and purchasing suitable and sufficient land. We need another rest stop near I-495 and the FAST Act allows use of federal funds. We would want to mandate impact-reducing technologies. It is no surprise to people that truck stops are not a popular land-use in towns, so you have to make them a little less objectionable. We will talk more about impact reducing technologies.
Strengthening the rest location system: Rest areas. We recommend seeking federal approval for on-Interstate public-private partnerships with limited commercial activity. Since 1960 you haven’t been able to have commercial activity on interstate highways unless they are completely paid for locally, like the Massachusetts Turnpike. The MPO recommends that we try to seek some sort of wiggle room to allow commercial activities like getting Burger King, for example, to take care of the toilets in Chelmsford. Once you get this working and once you can actually generate some revenue on these roads then you can move to the next recommendation and you look at these weigh stations and maybe make them decent. Just spruce them up a little bit. Another thing we have in Massachusetts are park-and-ride lots. I looked at every single one on aerial photos, and if you want truckers to use them, stripe some spaces for trucks. That is my safety recommendation.
Let’s move on. We are talking about partnerships and you can also download this: the draft Massachusetts freight plan. It discusses many issues in great detail and is available for public comment. We can look here in chapter 5, page 71. Right up here, recommendation number one, is to build or expand truck stops on primary truck routes. This makes my efforts seem all worthwhile. Then we move to a more detailed description of the recommendation. They mentioned I-495 and locating a new stop on its Northwest arc. We need this. We talk about electrifying truck parking areas to get the impacts down. What we need to do is find locations and get partners. The MPO is not going to lead this. It’s going to be the state.
Another thing is the image credit, Boston MPO. Well, let’s go here. We got this from Shore Power and they have these pedestals here. The power pedestals connect to the truck so in the winter they can heat the cab and in the summer they can air condition it. I went to Shore Power and said I want some pictures of trucks using your equipment, and they sent me some pictures. I wasn’t satisfied and kept asking for more photos until I spotted this one. My question is, I look at this picture, and what kind of a hard-hearted local official could resist having such a bucolic scene in town. Look at this, a beautiful hedge here and this truck protected by a terrier, man’s best friend. Having a truck stop is not that bad. We had this recommendation, including technology and electrification. The state adopted it and the MPO can move on and study other things.
We have been on the lookout for where we might put these things. Here we have Massachusetts Route 2 where it meets I-495. We have a number of industrial sites around here that frankly are not fully utilized and they could possibly be repurposed as truck stops at one point. Our state partners are always interested in MPOs passing them ideas that they can maybe use. Actually, for procuring land, the Diesel Emission Reduction Act, or DERA, could pay… you might actually get DERA funding for these, and that’s another recommendation.
I am about done, but here we go with the last slide. The theme of this presentation is cooperation between different levels of government. This truck stop is somewhere on Interstate 84. Let me leave it at that. I was driving to Hartford with a friend, and I said “let’s stop at a truck stop and get a BLT” so we got off and pulled in here and up to this restaurant. It is all boarded up, which I thought that was unfortunate. So we took our car and drove over here and got a tank of gas and got a cold plastic wrapped sub. At the checkout line I talked with the young guy working, and I asked, not giving too much away, “What is it like working for Warren Buffett.” He said, “Well things haven’t changed much.” I asked, “Is he making new investments?” He replied, “Out West is where the investments are.” I said, “Why doesn’t Warren go and fix this restaurant up and reopen it.” Well, apparently the operator has wanted to tear this building down and expand the truck parking, but the town will not give them a demolition permit.
Once again, any movement in this area will require cooperation between different levels of government, and the MPO in Boston is merely bringing fresh insights and information into the process but ultimately the state and municipalities and their federal partners need to cooperate to make this happen. That is the end of my presentation.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Bill. Our final presentation will be given by Pragati Srivastava. Pragati is the Director of the Memphis Urban Area MPO, a bi-state MPO, covering portions of Tennessee and Mississippi. She serves more than 1 million residents in the Memphis MPO region and works closely with the 29-member Policy Board, comprised of various local, state, and federal agencies.
Pragati Srivastava
Thank you, Jennifer. As the other presenters talked about their experience, I will be sharing our experience in the Memphis area related to the outreach activity that we did for regional freight trade plan that was completed last year. I hope you find it informative.
A quick background. We are a bi-state MPO covering portions of Tennessee and Mississippi. You can call us a tristate MPO because we work well with our neighboring MPO across the Mississippi River into West Memphis, Arkansas. There is a lot of collaboration with the projects we do with them, and really is great working with them on different projects including this one. When it comes to the local economy a quarter of our employment is in transportation and warehouse sectors. We have the headquarters from FedEx here and various other transportation industries. Freight is important for our region from that perspective. Giving a quick overview of the freight, what all do we have here? What I like to call it is the four R’s, roads, river, rail and runway. Memphis sits at the center of the intersection of 2 major Interstate highways. We have the North/South I-55 and I-40 is the East/West corridor. With rail, we have the 5 class 1 railroads present in the Memphis regions, and they have made quite a bit of investment in the last few years, with Norfolk Southern even getting funding through the first round of the TIGER grant for their intermodal yard in the eastern part of the MPO area. We also have an inland port on the Mississippi River which is the fifth largest inland port. What we are most known for is FedEx which has made our airport the second busiest air cargo airport in the world. As you can see with the presence of all these, Memphis has become a major warehouse and distribution center in the country.
Coming to the freight plan that we did. In the last 10 years or so we conducted various types of studies related to freight, whether it was corridor level, or looking at data collection, or things of that nature. Nothing really looked at the issue of freight from a comprehensive fashion. This is where the freight plan came in, which gave us the opportunity to look at things comprehensively as where we are right now and what are some of the issues we can address to remain competitive in the future. Initially we were looking at doing the plan for our MPO area, which is Tennessee and Mississippi only, but once we dug into it, in terms of how the freight moves, we decided to expand our boundary and included the West Memphis area. The plan almost took one year for us to complete, there were some initial contracting processes, but we formally started working on the plan in May 2016 and finally the board adopted the plan at the November 2017 meeting.
A key part of our freight plan was the engagement of the stakeholders and various types of stakeholders. We were able to get a few data sets from the state itself. As we all know data tells you a little bit of the picture, but I think you need to reach out, especially on the freight side, to different stakeholders to get their input. Like what issues they are seeing? And whether it matches with the data set, or not. We had our freight advisory committee of the Memphis MPO. That was the main committee that helped us with the plan development process, it included federal, state, local and private industry. They were part of this advisory committee. That was the main one that helped us.
Additionally, we met with freight companies that are located locally, so we met with FedEx and BNSF and some other warehousing and distribution center type of companies. And in addition to that we also had consultation with local jurisdiction to get an idea of what kind of issues are coming to them when it comes to freight movement within their jurisdiction and beyond. Beyond these engagements we also looked into how we wanted to get input from the user perspective and that is where the trucker survey came into the picture. I will talk about that in the next slide and so on. Finally, we also conducted an online public survey to see how the public sees freight in their day-to-day lives. Coming to the trucker survey, this was important for our area because the majority of the freight movement is on trucks. Probably it is common for most of the urban areas. This was critical for us to get the input from the truckers’ side. And reach out to them on a one-to-one basis and see what issues they are facing when they are passing through the region and if they have any suggestions for improvements. Our initial plan was to conduct the survey at the truck stops. There are three really big stops within the Memphis tristate region. It’s a great opportunity to reach out to a lot of truckers. Unfortunately, since they were privately managed the request was declined. At this point we had to come back and brainstorm with our consultant, who was helping us out with this outreach process, and see how we can get the input and what are some alternative locations? That is where we were able to figure out that going to local truck related dealerships, repair shops, and things of that nature. That worked out in this case. We picked seven locations and made sure they all were spread out within the three-state area so it is not just concentrated in one part of the state. We wanted to make sure it will geographically spread out into the three-state area. We called this effort “man on the street” because we literally had people on the street with iPads quickly asking questions from the truckers based upon whatever facility they were at, and getting input, and getting it updated on a real-time basis. Additionally, what you see on the slide, on the right side, we also had good relationships with the Tennessee Trucking Association, and they have a newsletter that goes out monthly or bimonthly, and they were kind enough to include the online version of the same survey in that newsletter. Needless to say, the online survey resulted in zero responses because the truckers are on the road. We wanted to see if it worked or not, that was something that we learned.
The survey itself, a little bit more of the background. This is from the MPO’s perspective. Our first attempt ever to do a survey like this that is reaching out to this particular stakeholder group. Most of the time like any MPO, we are reaching out to the public and talking to and working with the state. That is usually the main group we are working with, but this was different. We wanted to ensure it turns out well. Initially, we decided the questions would be short and sweet. The number of questions we asked were 10. I have a few of them listed here. All of the questions and responses are on the website if anyone is interested. And the main idea -- we wanted to make sure they don’t feel overwhelmed by too many questions, and that was the main reason we wanted to keep it short. And also, we wanted to have a higher response rate. Those were some of the reasons that went into us having a shorter survey for the truckers.
What I have here is the responses that we got after the survey. This whole process was completed over a period of two weeks. We were surprised and excited to see 300 responses almost. That is quite good because on the public sector side it can be really challenging, sometimes, to engage the freight sector. This was exciting for us to see a high response rate. I just have 3 of the main things included here. When it came to challenges, it wasn’t surprising to see that truck parking was the number one issue highlighted by the truckers; followed by roadway congestion, which is it expected; and safety, and so on and so forth. Those are some of the main issues highlighted. In the Memphis area we have had a few weather-related events that disrupted traffic flow. We wanted to see if that had any impact on their movement or anything else. It seemed like the winter weather had an impact, and we also had some flooding issues. That was interesting to learn as well. Finally, we wanted to see what are some of the potential solutions that they think a public sector should look at. They came back with the answer a better quality pavement, which was interesting. Again substantiating the challenge they had already had identified with more truck rest areas or put truck parking. This was interesting for us to understand from their perspective.
Some more findings from the trucker survey. We did ask them some O-D related questions, which is what the pie chart is showing. It is divided into thirds. One third just passing through, one third were in local trucking, and the remaining were starting or ending in Memphis. That was interesting to find out what demographics we were dealing with when it comes to truckers, and which areas they are coming from. Most of them, almost a quarter, of them said on the survey, either they were independent or worked for a company of 50 people or less. We also had open-ended questions because we try to keep things short and sweet, but we wanted to give them opportunity to respond, if there was anything we missed in the initial questions. Some are included here. I thought it was interesting, they like our barbecue and our food. I think that settles the case that Memphis has the best barbecue. The challenging part, people missing Super Bowl, which was an issue, which I thought was funny. They are mostly on the road and they miss a lot of different events. Hearing that from them I thought was interesting.
I briefly want to touch on the public survey as well because it was also conducted during the same period. It was an online survey. We sent a survey monkey to our email listing to different groups. We had it posted online. Here again the idea was to keep it short and sweet. There was a little bit of educational element. The reason I say that is because if you talk to the general public most of the time they are like freight? They think gravel, petroleum, and those kind of the things that contribute to freight, but they need to understand every time they hit “buy” on Amazon that adds to the freight. We had questions related to online shopping and what type of delivery method they use and some general questions like that. The final question was how they perceive the importance of freight for the local economy, and more than 90% said they saw it favorably for the local economy.
Here we were able to get 400 responses. One thing that we found interesting was the public also identified that truck parking in neighborhoods was an issue. This would substantiate the point that was made by the truckers. I guess some of them were not able to find parking and were taking a risk and parking in certain neighborhoods. It was one of those cases that we found interesting that substantiated the public side and the truckers as well.
The lessons learned. This was our first attempt to ever engage the freight sector in more detail. We developed our outreach method that worked for us. It is always good to have multiple ways to engage people in each region and state, as they are set up differently. Every area should take a look and see what is the best way to engage a stakeholder group and tailor the outreach methods accordingly. Be creative. We learned this when our request was rejected that you need to come up with alternative solutions. If an area is important for your planner project you are working on, then one has to be creative to finding solutions to problems we may come across. Third, keep it short and sweet. I do think -- this is my personal take, I think keeping the survey short helped us get more responses. I think that is something we will keep in mind moving forward. Finally, substantiating common points between different groups that we have. For example, the truck parking issue brought up by the public as an issue and the truckers themselves I think it was interesting that they substantiate that way.
The next step for the Memphis MPO area, we have, I think Bill mentioned in his presentation too, an inventory of the truck facilities in the area. It is very high-level. Literally, somebody zoomed into Google Maps and said there is a truck stop and there is one. This issue will be difficult for the MPO to handle it on our own. What we are looking at working with the state Department of Transportation to address this issue. They may be working on issues internally at this point. We are looking forward to working with them and trying to see how we can best address this issue together working with the state, locals, and the MPO altogether. At that point, the engagement with the truckers at the Trucking Association would be more in depth. We will figure it out, what type of outreach activity we want to do with them. Location identification will be critical. This is where the local jurisdictions come into play because MPOs don’t really control the land-use, and we don’t want to propose parking in somebody’s backyard. Some of those conversations would be happening with local jurisdictions as well.
Finally, restoring options of having ideas related to ITS solutions. A trucker coming to our region or passing through can adjust their trip accordingly, based upon where the parking is available and have that information handy ahead of time before they even come to the region. Those are potential things we are looking out for next steps. That is pretty much it.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you Pragati. Before we move onto questions, we will now have some final remarks, given by Jeff Purdy of the Federal Highway Administration Office of Freight Management and Operations. Jeff has worked on a wide variety of transportation, land use, and environmental planning projects at the local, state, and federal level. Jeff’s current responsibilities include freight performance measures, freight demand modeling and data improvement, and truck parking. Prior to moving to FHWA Headquarters, he served as the Technical Services Team Leader and Transportation Planner for the FHWA Wyoming Division, overseeing statewide and metropolitan transportation planning. Before joining FHWA, Jeff worked for a community and transportation planning consulting firm in Michigan.
Jeff Purdy
Thank you Jennifer. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our presenters. We saw some good examples of what states and MPOs are doing to address the critical problem of providing safe commercial motor vehicle parking. What I would like to do is take this opportunity also to mention that the Federal Highway Administration and our other partners at USDOT are going to be initiating an update to the Jason’s Law survey and assessment. I would imagine most of the people on the webinar today are familiar with Jason’s Law, but Jason’s Law is named after Jason Rivenberg, a truck driver who tragically lost his life while parked at an unsafe location. As part of MAP-21, Congress passed Jason’s Law to set forth national priority on addressing the shortage of safe parking for commercial motor vehicles on a National Highway System. A key component of Jason’s Law was the requirement that USDOT conduct a survey and assessment to evaluate the capabilities of states to provide adequate truck parking facilities to assess the volume of commercial motor vehicles in each state, and develop a system of metrics to measure the adequacy of commercial motor vehicle parking on the national highway system. The original survey was conducted in 2014, and in 2015 the results of the survey was published, and it’s available on Federal Highway’s Office of Operations Truck Parking website if you want to look it up. Please take a look at the 2014 survey.
Another aspect of the law was the requirement that USDOT do periodic updates to the survey. It has been four years now since the original survey was conducted, and so we intend, later this year, to initiate a new survey. It will be conducted in a manner similar to the 2014 survey. We will be reaching out to state DOT partners and professionals involved in motor carrier safety, the truck stop industry, and the trucking industry, to gather information on truck parking availability. And essentially what we will be doing is updating the inventory of truck parking to identify where improvements have been made since the previous survey. We will also be looking at truck travel on the NHS and evaluating the increases in truck parking demand that has occurred over the past few years. This will give us an opportunity to evaluate some of the new technologies that states are implementing such as truck parking information systems. It also will give us the opportunity to look at all of the state freight plans that were done under the FAST act and see to what extent truck parking has been incorporated into state and MPO planning.
Really, beyond just the statutory requirement for us to do an updated survey, this will give us an opportunity to continue to work with our partners and stakeholders working with state DOT, MPOs, people involved in motor carrier safety, the truck stop industry, the freight industry, and truck drivers, to continue to work on trying to advance improvements to providing safe and available commercial vehicle parking. I will turn it back over to you Jennifer.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Jeff. I will now go through the questions starting at the top of the chat box. I know we have some questions and commentary in there. I will try to filter through them. Some questions I may ask again even though a presenter has typed in an answer so we can get more details. I know we had questions and Scott, I will turn to you. Maybe talk more about how OOIDA helped with, the survey and the question was, truckers rolling through needing a place to stop aren’t typically the truckers that are domiciled in state, primarily those from other states that need a place to park as they drive through a part of the state. Scott if you wanted to talk a little more about the survey.
Scott Grenerth
To start off with, OOIDA is Owner Operator Independent Driver Association. I worked there for several years on regulatory issues. I can tell you that working there, they absolutely number one represent the small business trucker which is the majority of motor carriers out there. Those are people who may have one truck to themselves, or they may have a fleet of six trucks that their family or friends will drive. They do have an OOIDA foundation, Tom Weekly and Andrew King, those two individuals there do the research and work with the information on the trucking industry especially from a small business perspective. That being said, one of the things they do that could help many of you if you’re looking for information in your area is to send out surveys to the membership. They can do that targeted all the way down to one congressional district, to a metropolitan area or division, an entire state, or state regions. The only thing I will say is they are always cognizant that they don’t want to send out too many things too often to the membership because they are small business operators. They are great to work with on that and they would be happy to talk to anybody about that.
Alex Marach
From the Arizona statewide truck parking study, we included a question on the survey that was distributed by the Arizona Trucking Association, and by OOIDA that asked how frequently the truck driver parks in Arizona. So we were both able to differentiate truckers that parked in Arizona and compare the frequency that truck drivers parked in Arizona to the frequency that same group of drivers experienced issues finding parking. You can imagine it’s relevant to know if 50% of the time they’re having issues or 5% of the time. That is how we got at that regional issue, in understanding how frequently drivers were there. And got at some of the national and regional drivers that are not domiciled in Arizona.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. Charla and Alex, where does the real-time Google imagery come from? Did you pay via a contract?
Alex Marach
We worked with ATRE to get a sample of their GPS data. Then we used GIS to overlay that to get the context for where those trucks were stopping. It’s important to see if there were improvements made to that location from Google maps being updated. It was a combination of ATRE data and our analysis that created those maps.
Jennifer Symoun
Another question for you both, given that lots of truckers seeking long-duration parking have origins and destinations outside of Arizona, are the main incentives for ADOT providing designated parking to avoid an unauthorized parking and sleepy driving?
Charla Glendening
I would say yes. I think that our primary focus is to encourage safe and authorized parking. We have really large expanses of land between our cities. Unlike maybe the question that came from the participant from the East Coast, the drivers out here are often going hundreds of miles of just being out in a rural area. With the ELD mandate we are very concerned that we are going to start seeing truckers just pulled over on the side of the interstate under a bridge sometimes, when they cannot make it to our rest areas, or they are already full and they are parking on the on-ramps and off-ramps. It is having a negative impact on our pavement infrastructure, in that the shoulders that they’re parking on really cannot handle that type of weight. They are crumbling. Yes, to answer your question, our hope is to get truckers in designated truck parking areas that are safe, clean, have amenities, and what the truckers want more than anything is free.
Scott Grenerth
I will add onto that from a trucker’s perspective. The truckers are definitely happy to park where they know they are not going to wake up with a ticket on their window in the morning. I have a friend who had a boot put on her truck because she parked in a shopping center and they came out and did that without bothering to ask her to move. They want to avoid those situations. Good news is this, in the city of Weed, California, they added municipal parking in an area where they had a problem with people parking in unauthorized areas. When they did that the unauthorized parking situation went away. They documented that in an interview with those folks.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. The next question, Charla and Alex, or anybody can feel free to jump in. The next question is, during discussions with the Trucking Association did they give you insight into where they feel additional parking should be located.
Charla Glendening
Alex, you can chime in too. As far as specific locations, no. It gets back to my last comment, and that is they are just looking for safe areas that are clean. They are looking for well-lit areas. They want some amenities. They are probably looking for good bathrooms, and perhaps a restaurant. Again, more than anything they don’t want to pay to park. What we have learned in working with the trucking industry, is that the carriers or the employers will not pay the drivers to stay overnight at a truck stop. It comes directly out of their pocket. That then cuts into their profits and their paycheck. We are faced with this issue of wanting to provide all of these amenities for them and keep it free but at the same time we can’t commercialize our rest areas. There will have to be some strong partnerships that exist between the truck stops and what the DOT can provide for free parking. They have mentioned they would like to see perhaps ADOT develop parking lots adjacent to truck stops. We have been in touch with NAFTA to understand the political pushback that states could be facing when working with our private sector to accommodate freight parking. I think as long as the private sector is receiving funds for fuel and food, the indication is they are not opposed to some type of free parking adjacent to their private truck stop.
Alex Marach
Can I add onto that? Specific locations weren’t explicitly called out. In our surveys we asked about rural versus urban. We had open-ended questions or places that the people taking the survey could fill in. We got corridor, but not specific location. That is where I think triangulating data is key. Namely using the survey in addition to usage at each truck parking location and undesignated truck parking for the state to triangulate the input into identifying specific location. Where truck parking is particularly problematic.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. The next question, in addition to real-time parking availability, are you looking into historic time of day/day of week predictions of percent occupancy such that truckers can see the “likelihood” of availability based on time of arrival at a particular rest-stop or truck stop.
Alex Marach
We have looked at time of day in the state, generally, and broken that down by day of week on a statewide basis. Because Arizona doesn’t have instrumented truck parking locations and the data we have on usage isn’t as granular as it would need to be to get down to day of week or time of day, we haven’t gone to that level. I think other states are looking into that. I believe California has an initiative to use the data from their truck parking sensors. In order to build that insight into their information systems. It is something that if Arizona DOT started to instrument their locations that could be the next step after collecting some data.
Scott Grenerth
I will add onto this. That would work well when it is instrumented, and when you know for certain that the data is correct and accurate. That would be great to be able to provide that information. Currently, from truckers I know, they’re using socially sourced information, which the authenticity of that data is not 100% guaranteed. That is a bit of frustration for truckers to try to look up information. Maybe that data was accurate that day, but not that day. Maybe no one contributed data there. Definitely having instrumented, site mapped, and predictive data is the kind of thing that is wonderful to know. It’s something that me as a veteran driver, I have a good idea of certain areas of the country but as soon as I got out of that I would be as knowledgeable as a rookie driver starting out.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. Bill, a question for you in regards to the map you showed of the rest stops. Is there no overnight parking at the Georgetown weight station on 95?
Bill Kuttner
I did not check that weigh station. My reference to weigh stations was in general. I was just looking at rest areas and commercial truck stops, and I said if we can do something to revitalize the rest areas we could extend that to weigh stations. I am aware that weigh stations exist, but I did not inventory them specifically. If I had looked at an aerial photo I would want to see striped spaces. When you have these park-and-ride lots, the problem is they are all striped for cars. If a truck driver comes in and sees a whole lot full of the car spaces, is there a place for him to park? No. Any place he parks, somebody could block him in. That’s part of the reason why I use that as a criterion of whether this is a serious place for trucks. But I did not systematically investigate the weigh stations.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, I see somebody posted a link in the chat box that has a website that documents truck parking locations all around the country. Bill, another question. Is there anything that would prevent a state to lease the land to private customers on long-term contracts similar to what goes on with marine ports around the country?
Bill Kuttner
Not to my knowledge. The state would have to take a lead on that, and I can’t speak for the state, but that would be a way a state could step up. If a driver just buys a tank of gas and a meal and parks his truck for 10 hours, you can’t pay for the land. The cost in metropolitan Boston is too high. Somebody is going to have to bring the cost of the land down and the legal mechanisms to do parcel assembly by the various state agencies -- I’m not specifically aware of. There are rules about what they can and cannot do to obtain land. I think more capacity is needed. I think you will have to have some sort of government involvement to put the capacity where the capacity is needed. But the specific rules for parcel assembly, I don’t know.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. Did you look into adjacent landowners as stakeholders to you with MPO discussions with your working groups?
Bill Kuttner
No, we are at the beginning of this. The state will have to take the lead. I just throw ideas up to the state. I went to a barbecue and saw something interesting, and got on the phone and said here are ideas to think about. At this point the state only has a draft freight plan. At some point it will become final, and then they might form a working group.
Actually, the MPO doesn’t have a freight advisory group. The state has a freight working group and as much as I can, I go to their meetings, and I meet people informally, and I come right up to them and say this is what I’m working on and give me your feedback. That is very valuable; going to meetings and asking people questions. Everything I’ve done has been informed by things I learn when I meet with folks on an informal basis.
Let me add, we have our small MPOs and Route 495 straddles several MPO boundaries. When I meet with people at other MPO’s, I warn them that I may find a good truck stop location in their MPO. The people at the other MPOs acknowledge that truck parking is an important issue. They know that my analysis is straightforward and I basically look at what’s out there to come up with some ideas. This has all been done on an informal basis. Get information out there and pull it together. Try to make sense out of it, and ultimately when we are ready to step forward on this, the state will have to take a lead for very good reasons. They are in a position to act on this.
Jennifer Symoun
Bill thank you. You have alluded to electrified truck parking areas. Do you have any insights as to how much long hour truck idling plays into the park trucking issue?
Bill Kuttner
No. Abby Swaine has been putting up links on this thing. If people are interested in electrification, scroll and click the links that Abby posted. She is an expert in this.
What I did is, in a sense, I’m looking at my political crystal ball. Truck stops are not a popular land-use in a town. If you’re going to go there and say this is important for safety and logistics and it has to be done, the proponent, be it the state or some truck stop operator, needs to present the most advanced thing. If you are not bringing the best available technology into the community where you are trying to site one of these things, you can expect to get more pushback. Even if you have all the technology, you can expect some pushback. You have to be able to say you’ve done your homework and brought in every tool and every trick to make these things palatable, including your landscape designer to make a nice hedge and a landscape service. You bring the community as a complete package.
The problem is going to be the refrigerator units, especially as you get closer to cities because it used to be factories were in cities and now factories can be anywhere. But people still live in cities and people eat. What happens is as you get closer into the cities you will get more trucks with refrigerator units, which make a lot of noise. No matter how nice it is outside where the driver might roll his windows down, you have to keep the refrigerator going to keep the lettuce from spoiling.
All of these problems interconnect. Whatever you do, if you think you need some raw capacity, be prepared to bring the best available technology if you are going to a town.
Jennifer Symoun
The next question Bill and Pragati, what do you see as a major role and first steps for MPOs and truck parking branding? Either one of you can jump in.
Bill Kuttner
In Boston it is brainstorming. We don’t have any administrative levers. But if you really do your homework and look at the stuff people take an interest in, what you do is important even if you don’t have a lot of administrative levers you can pull. All MPOs are different. That is the end of my comment.
Pragati Srivastava
I think the first step, of course, is identifying the issue. Again it depends, each MPO is not set up the same way, just going to what Bill said. First identify what really are the issues and are there any things to be identified through your own planning process being an issue for your region. That would be the first step for any MPO to go to the next step. In terms of, let’s say, we want to do a study on the truck parking situation or work with the state. You need to have some base background related to that. That would be my recommendation and the first step. Then I think it is a problem, it would be difficult for a MPO to resolve on its own. This partnership and collaboration, both on the public and private side would be critical in making sure whatever effort you all are doing in the truck parking site becomes successful.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. This question is to all presenters. Do you have experience siting new truck parking near ports or on underutilized land, contaminated land, or convincing communities that establishing a new organized parking facility will significantly alleviate unauthorized parking and idling in neighborhoods?
Bill Kuttner
From Boston, no. No experience. I just go to the store and cross my fingers that there is something there to buy.
Charla Glendening
From Arizona, I don’t have an example either.
Pragati Srivastava
Same for Memphis. We have good relationships with the inland port authority folks, but that is something that we can explore if we get going on this truck parking study. But nothing right now.
Jennifer Symoun
I think we have time for one last question. In California, they recently conducted a truck parking survey internally within the agency and with external stakeholders. A major issue was pollution and trash biohazard left by drivers. Have you experienced issues with that and if so, how is it impacting your plans to address truck parking?
Scott Grenerth
This is Scott. I will take this because I have to speak for the driver. It can certainly be an issue, especially in the unauthorized parking areas, where people will leave litter behind. It does happen. The thing that helps with that the most in my experience, in my personal opinion, from one truck stop chain to another, from one local truck stop to another, when it is an attended location with somebody on site, like a truck stop, and they are picking up the trash on a regular basis. Just maintaining it as a good business practice that tends to reduce the next person coming along and thinking I can litter here. The reality is truckers are like anybody else. When that attitude is out there, and you see something already that looks like it’s not being cared for, there is less likelihood they will care for it. I will just say, lastly, from our direct experience for truck specialized parking services. We operate facilities in the urban core of Detroit, and they are spotless every single, day all the time. That is because they are maintained well and there are no problems with the neighbors there at all. We are glad to be a good neighbor and offer safe secure parking and well-maintained.
Jennifer Symoun
We are out of time, so I want to thank all of our presenters and also thank everybody who attended today. The recorded version of the webinar will be available within the next few weeks on the Talking Freight website. The next Talking Freight webinar will be held on June 20 and will be about Advancing Clean Air Projects at Ports and Goods Movement Facilities through the CMAQ Program. Registration is not yet available for this webinar, but once it is, information will be sent through the Freight Planning LISTSERV. The LISTSERV is the primary means of sharing information about upcoming seminars. I encourage you to join the LISTSERV if you have not already done so. Thank you and enjoy the rest of your day.
