Letter to the Editor: Parking Info For Free

This Letter to the Editor appears in the Oct. 20 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

Parking App for TA, Petro Locations

I read with interest your Sept. 15 article — “Michigan DOT Relies on Smart Phones for Alerts About Parking on I-94” — in particular, the part about the $4.5 million grant from the Federal Highway Administration.

Through its smart-phone app, TruckSmart, TravelCenters of America provides parking information for free. We have gathered enough data since 2010 to develop algorithms that estimate future parking availability at all TA and Petro locations. It didn’t cost much and, of course, no government subsidies were received. Frankly, the app didn’t take long for us to develop.

All truck-stop and rest-area operators I know can count. They should do so, such as TA does, and frequently. A physical count of available parking every hour or two, by a human being, also helps keep parking spaces at TA and Petro better maintained.

If $4.5 million is what it really should cost to cover a 275-mile stretch of highway, it would take $800 million to cover 48,000 miles of the U.S. Interstate Highway System. This letter is an open invitation to every state and every truck-stop and rest-area operator in the United States — TA will add any truck-parking area’s counts to our database and our parking app to present truckers with enhanced, nationwide parking-availability data, for free.

Thomas O’Brien

CEO, President and

Managing Director

TravelCenters of America