Although the Delaware Department of Transportation freely acknowledges the state fails to provide adequate overnight truck parking, that didn’t stop lawmakers from crafting a bill that would target weary truckers with fines of $500 or more.
“We don’t want to stop commerce, but we want our e-commerce truck drivers to be good stewards of our state and also to our neighbors,” state Sen. Nicole Poore, a cosponsor of House Bill 479, reportedly said. “We are facing a rising challenge regarding the prevalence of tractor-trailers and other commercial trucks in and around our residential neighborhoods, in particular north of the canal. It’s been really, really tough, and so we have corridors that people have been parking themselves and taking up quite a bit of the road.”
Truck parking fines currently range from $10 to $25. Under House Bill 479, they would skyrocket to between $100 to $500, depending on the size and weight of a commercial motor vehicle. Tractor-trailers would see the highest first-offense fines. Truckers who park on the wrong street more than once would incur penalties that could peak at $2,000.
Delaware reportedly has only 12 parking locations in the entire state, a pair of public rest areas and 10 privately-owned truck stops. Its grand total of 337 spaces remains grossly insufficient. Route 1 alone stretches from business-heavy southern New Jersey and serves as a coastal corridor to the Chesapeake Bay and Norfolk, Virginia.
The only legitimate public truck parking rest area along that route is located in Smyrna. After that, the next public overnight parking area available to truckers is the Eastern Shore of Virginia Welcome Center, 180 miles away. To say the Delaware truck safety infrastructure is insufficient and hazardous would be something of an understatement.
“With the more warehouses being built we’re going to have more traffic with these trucks, but we want them to be respectful and, in turn, we can be respectful as well,” Sen. Poore reportedly said.
Poore contends that residents complained about “tractor-trailers in main roads in neighborhoods that block their views as they travel out of their communities” along Route 9 and U.S. Route 13. These truckers were likely forced to roadside park as their hours of service limits drew to an end, or they were too tired to make the haul to a parking area that wasn’t already full.
Nicole Majeski, Delaware DOT secretary, reportedly thanked Poore and acknowledged complaints regarding “trucks that are parking along the side of the major roadways.”
The Bill reportedly sailed through the Delaware legislature with only a single no vote. If enacted into law, the Delaware DOT would install signs along major highways banning commercial motor vehicles from parking on the shoulder.
Sources:
https://www.ttnews.com/articles/delaware-bill-would-hike-fines-residential-truck-parking
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