The city of San Antonio is looking to ban overnight truck parking on all city streets with the proposal of a new ordinance.
The proposal was presented to the Public Safety Committee on Tuesday, September 19th by San Antonio Police Department Assistant Chief Robert Blanton. The ordinance would ban overnight truck parking along all non-residential city streets in San Antonio, Texas between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. Truck parking is already prohibited on residential streets between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., reported KSAT.
The committee voted to fully consider the item at a full city council meeting in the future. A date has not yet been set.
Before the proposal, Councilman Manny Pelaez’s office worked with businesses on trucks with available street parking spaces to get them to restrict parking on their portion of the street. This means the businesses gave up street parking for their customers just to prevent semi trucks from parking there.
“It’s a piecemeal process because each individual business has to be able to give up the parking in front of their own business just to get rid of the 18-wheelers,” said John Wood, the board president of a local neighborhood.
“Someone usually comes and picks them [the truckers] up, or they have Uber come pick them up, and they go somewhere else,” he said. “So these people are not local to this immediate area. They’re just utilizing the space to park.”
“There are multiple businesses that offer parking for truckers right here. So there are options for them, but the street shouldn’t be one of them,” he added.
But, those involved in San Antonio’s trucking industry say the solution isn’t so simple.
“There just isn’t enough truck yards to park all of the trucks in the city of San Antonio, much less the ones that are hauling across the nation,” said Beatriz Foster, whose family owns a truck parking lot on Potranco Road.
Foster says that parking a truck at her family’s business costs between $100-$200 a month, and the waitlist to use the yard has more than 50 trucks on it. She says the other yards they are familiar with have waiting lists too.
“There just isn’t enough truck yards to park all of the trucks in the city of San Antonio, much less the ones that are hauling across the nation,” Foster said.
“The products don’t just appear in your kitchen or your house. A truck driver brought those things to your home, to your city,” she continued. “So all we’re asking is that they help truck drivers solve the problem of finding where to park.”
Blanton says that the SAPD has not spoken to any truckers or trucker associations about the proposed ordinance.
