SAN ANTONIO – It’s a common sight along many Texas highways: 18-wheelers parked along the side of the road.
The Texas Department of Transportation is trying to change that. It’s in the middle of implementing a 10-year plan to identify more opportunities to add parking at rest areas and other sites across the state.
“When we have an accident with a truck, it’s much more likely to be a very bad accident,” said Alvin New, a member of the Texas Transportation Commission. “Having them be able to be rested and not fatigued as well as not having a big immovable object parked on the road, so if someone else leaves the roadway, they’re not hitting a truck, all of these are great things.”
New told his fellow commissioners during an Oct. 28 meeting that progress is being made on implementing plan on the state side of things, although most of the new capacity will come from the private sector, including new truck stops.
The Interstate 10 and Interstate 35 corridors in the San Antonio region are two of the areas identified as having a truck parking shortage.
A comprehensive analysis found parked trucks were involved in thousands of crashes in Texas between 2013 and 2017, with the San Antonio district coming in just behind Dallas and Houston.
In 2020, there were 2,000 crashes involving commercial vehicles in Bexar County alone last year, with 17 fatalities.
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