Hate looking for a parking spot? Try being a truck driver

Thousands of us will engage in the mind-numbing process of looking for a parking spot this holiday season. We’ll circle shopping mall lots, heads on swivels, searching like hawks until we find our spaces.

For us, it’s a problem a few times a year. For long-haul truckers, it’s a nightly, year-round frustration finding a safe place to rest. Only most of them won’t be successful so they’ll end up stopping on highway frontage roads, along off ramps, and in grassy areas near freeway exchanges.

That’s because the country is facing a critical truck parking shortage. Federal estimates are that there is only one safe, designated truck parking spot for every 11 big rigs on the road on any given night.

In our state, the Texas Department of Transportation and others are working closely with the trucking industry to help alleviate the problem. We encourage this public-private partnership but urge the industry to take the lead to find market-driven solutions.

The truck parking shortage isn’t new, but it has been getting worse. Today there are about 27,000 spaces available in the state, but we need about 150,000, and that will grow to nearly 250,000 by the year 2050, said John Esparza, president and chief executive officer of the Texas Trucking Association.

Esparza added that half of all semi drivers park in unauthorized spots every day due to federally mandated hours of service restrictions. Even if a driver doesn’t feel the need to take a break, rest is required and adherence to the restrictions is monitored.

The TTA has been working closely with the TXDOT and federal agencies to improve existing state-owned and maintained parking facilities “far beyond what has been funded to date.” Less than 10% of truck parking spots in Texas are publicly owned, he told us.

Still, he rightly acknowledged the important industry role, adding that “we must continue to encourage truck parking growth in the private sector to be successful.”

Jason Ryan Wallis, associate research scientist at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, said improvements are happening slowly but surely. Federal funding for new spaces has increased in recent years, and researchers like him have been testing ways to better communicate parking availability to drivers so they don’t waste time looking for spots.

“This is the major issue we are talking about in the transportation research world,” Wallis tells us. “We hear consistently from truck drivers that this is their No. 1 concern.”

A lot of us will be sharing the freeways with big rigs this holiday season. And let’s face it, we mostly think they’re in our way. But remember, they’re hauling things we all need and, after 14 hours on the road, most won’t have a decent place to park when they must take their breaks. Let’s be a little bit more patient with them while the public and private sectors work to solve this nationwide problem.