I-71 and I-75 Expanded Truck Parking

Cost Estimate:

Benefits:

• Additional truck spaces will improve the capacity for truck parking in Boone County and the Northern Kentucky Area. This will assist in reducing the number of trucks that park along the public right of way, thereby improving public safety and preventing pavement degradation.
• Increased truck parking notification throughout the area will reduce the time drivers waste searching for parking, thereby improving driver efficiency, as well as fuel and emissions savings.  Ultimately, this will provide a positive impact on the environment as well the economy.
• The ITS, dynamic signing will inform truck drivers of the status of available parking spaces. This will eliminate the need for truck drivers to unnecessarily exit and search individually for available parking. The frequency of trucks existing from and merging onto the interstates from these sites will be reduced, improving both safety and traffic flow.

Challenges:

• Available right of way is limited, particularly at the weigh stations.
• Truck parking expansion will likely move trucks closer to residential properties. Additional landscaping/trees or other mitigation measures are recommended to be considered as part of this project.

Existing Conditions

Congestion:

• Interstates in Boone County are essential corridors for the transportation of goods on a local, regional and global scale. The percentage of trucks traveling on interstates through Boone County range from approximately 20 to 30 percent of the total traffic volume.
• Boone County is home to major companies that serve as significant truck traffic generators.
• A 2015 study by the Kentucky Transportation Center at the University of Kentucky, titled Commercial Truck Parking and Other Safety Issues, reported that the I-75 rest areas addressed in this recommendation had usage rates of 90 percent or higher and would benefit from increased parking capacity.
• OKI conducted a review of truck movements using data acquired from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) during the development of the Boone County Transportation Plan to identify “hot spots” or roadways with high levels of truck parking occurring within the public right-of-way. Available authoritative, real world data was used to assist in validating verbal reports of truck parking issues collected during the Transportation Plan and quantifying the degree of the problem to public and private stakeholders at the local, state, regional and federal levels. The southbound and northbound I-71/75 public rest areas were identified as two prime locations where insufficient truck parking has been witnessed by citizens and verbally reported to OKI, KYTC and Boone County staff; and, shared through the Boone County Transportation Plan’s Freight Survey responses from private freight companies (survey conducted in June/July 2017). OKI staff analysis using the ATRI data clearly supported these findings.
• Boone County growth in freight logistics and distribution companies is expected to continue to increase truck traffic through the day upon roadways across Boone County.

Land Use/Socio-Economic/Environmental:

• The land use surrounding the existing rest areas and weigh stations are primarily residential.  Expansion in truck parking at these locations may reduce the buffer space between the existing parking and the residential properties.
• Truck drivers are given strict guidelines on how long they can legally drive before they are mandated to stop the truck and rest. With the difficulty in finding adequate parking, drivers often have to start searching for parking an hour, so that they comply with drive time mandates. This reduces freight efficiencies and is damaging to the environment through increased emissions from trucks driving and searching for parking.

Safety: 

• In OKI’s application of ATRI truck movement data, locations where high numbers of trucks were parking in the public right-of-way for extended lengths of time (one hour or longer) was overlaid with crash data from the past five years (2012-2016). This analysis showed that many of the same areas exhibiting of high rates of long term truck parking were also experiencing high rates of incidents involving trucks. A prime example of these high truck parking/high crash rate locations was the I-71/75 public rest areas in Boone County.
• The Kentucky Transportation Center study also identified a crash pattern relating to proximity and usage of truck parking facilities.