A new truck parking study commissioned by the federal government suggests truck drivers are disinclined to use truck parking apps. But a deeper dive into the research reveals that perhaps the problem is with the information the apps provide – or the lack thereof – rather than any kind of aversion to technology.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration recently released a study, “Assessing Truck Parking Capacity Usage to Inform Truck Parking Needs Assessments and Determine the Feasibility and Benefits of Truck Parking Capacity Management Platforms.” It’s a long-winded way of saying FMCSA wanted to see how much available parking is actually being used and whether a truck parking app could improve usage.
Researchers with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute looked into three different aspects of truck parking:
- Usage of parking along the Interstate 80 and Interstate 94 corridors in Mid-America Association of Transportation Officials (MAASTO) states (Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin)
- When and where truckers are parking in unauthorized locations along those corridors
- The feasibility and benefits of “parking capacity management platforms” (i.e. truck parking apps) to optimize parking capacity usage
Findings of the first two objectives were not surprising. Essentially, demand for overnight parking is not being met, forcing drivers to park along the entrance and exit ramps of rest areas. There is also an unmet need for short-term parking, with a lot of those trucks parked along the ramps stopping for less than two hours.
Jolanda Prozzi, the lead researcher in the study, said the biggest takeaway from the results is that they “definitely confirmed the need for long-term parking, which I think by now is a no-brainer.”
Prozzi spoke with Land Line about the parking study and what she found:
“I think for me, one of the biggest lessons here is that there is still capacity available,” Prozzi told Land Line. “Maybe not enough to get every truck driver in a safe spot. I don’t say that there’s enough truck parking spaces, because we know there’s not. But there are spaces available, and the information is just not available to the driver or they don’t know where that space is, and therefore they cannot park there.”
This is where a truck parking app comes into play. Researchers wanted to know if a park management app would fill unused spots. The short answer: It did not, because few truck drivers used it.
However, the problem could be that the specific truck parking app used during the study was kind of useless to long-haul truck drivers, highlighting the need for a more centralized parking database across all rest areas throughout the nation.
ParkUnload
The study included a pilot program for a new truck parking app that monitored parking at select locations in Iowa and Wisconsin.
Researchers contracted with a European parking management app called ParkUnload for the truck parking study. The app is primarily used to manage short-term passenger vehicle parking in Barcelona, Ireland, Spain and France. It also manages curb space in urban areas when trucks are loading and unloading.
The idea is fairly simple. A Bluetooth beacon is installed near monitored parking spaces. When drivers reach the lot, they open the ParkUnload app, which finds the Bluetooth signal. The driver can then find an open spot, park and check in. Once a driver checks in via the truck parking app, the spot is marked as occupied, and that designation can be seen by other drivers on the app. It’s basically real-time parking availability information.
In FMCSA’s study, ParkUnload was used at only nine rest areas – six in Iowa and three in Wisconsin – and for only four truck parking spots at each. Parking duration at the Iowa rest areas was unlimited, but there was a two-hour limit at the 12 select parking spaces in Wisconsin. According to Prozzi, truck drivers could access real-time availability of those truck parking spaces from anywhere during the duration of the pilot program.
Over the one-year pilot period, the app was used 418 times by 338 truck drivers at the Iowa rest areas. This likely means many of the truck drivers who downloaded the app used it only once (or not at all).
Useless truck parking apps are useless
Researchers provided several explanations as to why truck drivers largely ignored the truck parking app, but it really comes down to one thing: quantity.
ParkUnload informed drivers of the availability of a total of 36 truck parking spaces across two corridors in two states. That represents a small fraction of parking spots. Truckers need to know about all available spots, not a select few.
When studying parking usage, researchers used the Truck Parking Information Management System (TPIMS) data being used in eight Midwestern states. TPIMS includes digital signs along interstates that show real-time parking availability at upcoming rest areas.
According to TPIMS’ website, TrucksParkHere.com, that data is used by 10 private sector vendors. Of those vendors, only four are functioning truck parking apps, none of which have real-time data.
All of the Midwestern states using TPIMS have real-time truck parking availability information on their respective 511 websites. That means a truck driver would need to download eight different apps to access all the information.
A trucker told Prozzi that although she understands the benefits of apps like ParkUnload, the information they provide is too narrow in scope.
“She already has an app for so many other services, and (ParkUnload) was just another app,” Prozzi said. “Her worry was that if every DOT comes with its own app or every rest area comes with its own app, how many apps would she have to download?”
When it comes to real-time, public sector truck parking information, there is no single truck parking app capturing that data. That is probably why ParkUnload failed.
This is also why private sector truck parking apps like Truck Parking Club are raking in the money. Despite truck drivers despising the idea of paid parking, Truck Parking Club has more than 1 million downloads. Why? Truckers can find an abundance of real-time parking availability virtually anywhere they go and reserve a spot.
“I do think some of these app-based technologies are a worthwhile investment,” Prozzi said. “I think the challenge is to figure out how to get the information to the most truckers and how to get a very large share of the drivers to use the technology.”
Right now, no truck parking app allows truck drivers to see available parking at rest areas across multiple states. Even if one did, those spots cannot be reserved.
ParkUnload sounds like a great solution in theory, but in practice, it would need to be done at a much larger scale to work. And if all public sector spaces were managed, the usage rates at those facilities would likely increase.
Truckers are uninterested in ParkUnload and other public sector truck parking apps, because these apps do not provide the needed information. It does not take a federal, taxpayer-funded study to figure that out. LL
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