BC Trucking Association calling for more overnight parking
Posted October 5, 2022 10:57 am.
Last Updated October 5, 2022 11:04 am.
Owners of transport trucks and other heavy vehicles are looking to the B.C. government and local municipalities to build more overnight parking for them.
President and CEO of the BC Trucking Association, Dave Earle, says the lack of overnight parking has been an issue for a while.
“This has been an issue for at least the last decade, if not more. What we’ve seen in other circumstances is municipalities getting very creative,” Earle told OMNI News. “They’ve been creative but we really, really need to be focused on this because the problem is only getting worse as our fleet continues to grow.”
Earle says more vehicles and drivers every year are using the Lower Mainland for their base of operations.
“We’re looking at about a one per cent fleet growth every year. So, we see another six or seven hundred heavy vehicles come into the fleet every year and another 1,500-2,000 medium-to-heavy duty vehicles coming in. So it’s a significant number every single year that comes online,” he said.
FILE – Big trucks leave the Port of Vancouver. (CityNews Image)
Currently, Earle says, the only facility available for overnight parking is on Highway 91 near Nordel Way and only has room for about 100 units. Although there are plans to build another parking facility in north Surrey, he says it will provide minimal relief to the problem.
“The significant new investment that the province has made with the new truck parking facility down by the Port Mann Bridge is really welcome. It’s for a couple of hundred units with the ability to expand to a couple of hundred more. But there are over 20,000 heavy vehicles registered in Surrey alone,” he explained.
“I think what it boils down to is our land use policy decision-making in the Lower Mainland. We have competing interests,” Earle continued. “We need to use land for housing, we need to use land for employment opportunities, we need to use land for agriculture. And we have all these competing opportunities and pressures and we really have to be mindful that if we take out of one bucket, where is it going? Because it doesn’t necessarily go into the one we want it to go into.”
