Photo by Hearst Washington Bureau archive.
New York Congressman Paul Tonko says that truck drivers play a crucial role in helping government offices determine where new parking areas should go. Tonko was instrumental in getting the bill known as Jason’s Law passed and federally funded.
Jason’s Law requires the Department of Transportation to conduct a survey of the availability of parking facilities within each State to evaluate their capability to provide adequate parking and rest facilities for CMV’s and the survey is being conducted at this time.
“In the law itself, specific to the language of the law, eighteen months is the threshold that has to be met in terms of the Secretary of Transportation doing the survey with each State. So by time, eighteen months elapses, from July 6, we must have put together a survey with each State.”
“That is a lot of time, but when you look at what they’re assigned to do, you realize there’s much work to be done. The purpose of me sharing that eighteen months with voters is that they should take it upon themselves to get involved actively and quickly in this process.”
“The survey that these individual States have to do in compliance with the Feds, is to one, look at the capability of that individual State to provide adequate parking, the second would be the volume, measure the volume of Commercial Motor Vehicle traffic within that specific State.”
“And finally, we need to develop a system of metrics that will measure the adequacy of parking in the State. Your matching the transportation count with the physical space, the resting space.”
“My encouragement to the trucking public, if you know of spots where maybe there’s long hauls before you can find a resting spot in a certain State, let these States know. If you see prime property that could be expanded, let them know. Whatever critical or critiquing input you can provide, that’s important. And I think getting ahead of the curve, because this may move quickly and you don’t want to have some of the potential of what you think a good resource would be, skipped over because they were informed at the trail-end of the process.”
Congressman Tonko continued to reiterate the importance of the trucker’s perspective which he considered to be the most required element of the process. The survey will be performed in relation to each State’s Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and their freight offices.
He advised the nation’s truck drivers to provide their input in this process by emailing their suggestions to: [email protected] and reminded drivers that their voices are heard, pointing to the fact that due to thousands of drivers joining in with Hope Rivenburg and her cause, that Jason’s Law did in fact, become law.
