Coalition Aims to Help Truckers Find Parking Along Interstate 81

Truck dispatchers and drivers running on one of the nation’s busiest freight routes, Interstate 81, may soon be able to use their smart phones to get details on where there’s a parking space or even an accident ahead.

A data system to give truckers real time information on those fronts is being developed by the I-81 Corridor Coalition, a group of state and local government agencies and business groups in the six states the highway crosses from Tennessee to Canada.

The coalition plans a system so detailed that truckers and their dispatchers will be able to determine whether an accident is serious enough for them to find an alternate route, said Kevin Cole, the coalition’s executive director.

“It will give additional detail on demand. In other words, you can click and it will tell you locations, severity, likely delay links,” Cole said.

“It will give them options such as alternate routes, truck stops, rest stops nearby, including the availability of parking and services, and fuel prices and, then, it will provide navigation to the option that they pick,” Cole said.

The coalition said it plans to have the system, funded by a $436,000 federal grant, operating by 2015.

Any system that helps drivers with incident avoidance, improved freight travel time and parking is welcome, said Mark Nagi, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Transportation, a coalition member.

“For safety reasons and the new [hours-of-service] driving laws, truck parking is an issue that we are trying to address,” Nagi said. “Currently, when truck parking is not available, trucks are queuing up on ramps.”

The federal HOS rule requires a 30-minute rest within the first eight hours of drive time and a 34-hour restart time. Dean Riland, assistant general manager of the Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association, called the impending system a “great step forward” to help drivers, especially with parking.

“We’ve done so many studies here in Pennsylvania on parking problems along the I-81 corridor,” said Riland, a former truck inspector for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. “When someone else would take a look at it, the comments from almost everyone were the same and . . . not much happened.”

Truck traffic on I-81 “is very intense” Riland said. “I travel a lot of time on it myself, and it’s just amazing at times.”

According to PennDOT, trucks account for 25% of the 3.5 billion vehicle miles traveled on I-81 annually.

Along some stretches of I-81, trucks account for 40% of the traffic, Cole said. “Twelve percent of the entire U.S. economy moves on Interstate 81,” he added. “And we’re expecting a doubling of truck traffic there probably in the next 25 years.”

I-81 starts at the intersection of I-40 just east of Knoxville, Tenn. From there, the highway runs through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York before reaching the Canadian border at Fishers Landing, N.Y. The coalition found 4,800 truck parking spaces at commercial truck stops and publicly owned rest areas along the 855 mile-long highway.

Kendra Hems, president of the New York State Motor Truck Association, said truck parking is a big issue on I-81, where a rest stop on the southbound lanes just north of Syracuse was among six closed in the state during the recession and never reopened.

Cole said that as the coalition develops its data information system, it will draw “a comprehensive picture of the demand, origins and destinations for freight movement along the corridor.”

Then, the coalition can assess how well existing parking facilities meet the needs of truckers juggling their hours-of-service demands with the next open parking space, said Cole, a member of the planning commission in Johnson City, Tenn.