For the past several years, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and state DOTs have been working to address the growing shortage of truck parking, yet the problem continues to worsen. Truck parking is a challenge that inherently requires involvement from local agencies. NCHRP Project 08-141, “A Guidebook for Local Truck Parking Regulations,” is developing model ordinances to assist local jurisdictions. However, standardized methodology is still needed to determine how much off-street (on-site) truck parking should be required for truck-generating development projects.

Additionally, the absence of comprehensive truck freight data significantly hampers effective operations management and infrastructure investment, particularly at the regional and county levels. This data gap affects three key areas: (1) truck parking—adequate facilities for both staging and long-haul movements are essential for safe and efficient freight operations; (2) goods movement—accurate origin-destination information is necessary for appropriately sizing freight infrastructure; and (3) demand estimation—reliable trip generation rates are vital to evaluating the impacts of freight activity on transportation networks.

The objective of this research is to develop truck parking demand estimates for a range of truck-generating land uses. These estimates will support local agencies in creating development guidelines for off-street truck parking and queuing requirements for new and expanded freight-related developments.

Research tasks and activities could include the following:

·       Developing a methodology for collecting empirical truck parking demand data;

·       Developing truck parking demand estimate guidelines, including a methodology for estimating demand, an overview of truck parking design standards, and off-street truck parking development standards for local agencies;

·       Producing a transferable method of estimating offsite truck parking spaces required for various land uses;

·       Establishing a method to rapidly estimate origin-destination flows by commodity, thus enabling metropolitan planning organizations and state DOTs to approximate freight flows using land use characteristics, observed truck flows, service delivery types, and other data sources; and

·       Developing or updating tools and models to better estimate demand, especially for warehouse-to-warehouse (business-to-business) deliveries.