Truck parking with ‘public transportation’ to tourist destinations is being discussed by the City Council in Laredo, Texas.
Councilmember Vanessa Perez is seeking partnerships to help build a network of private parking lots with public transportation in Laredo, Texas after receiving multiple calls complaining about a lack of legal parking for the semi trucks that frequent the area.
“You guys pride yourself on saying, ‘We’re the biggest landport in the world,’ but there’s no help for us transportation companies,” said Ricardo Sandoval earlier this month, a business owner who says his trucks often get fined in the area because there is nowhere for them to park.
Perez’s solution is to work with private landowners to create jointly owned truck parking lots that would give trucker’s a place to park and make money for the city, reported LMT Online.
“We’ve had this long-standing issue in District VII where we don’t have enough room for truckers to park,” Perez said. “This does cause issues where to park and does cause issues with landowners where they find trucks parked on their property and are in violation with our ordinance. We have a lot of issues dealing with growing pains, if you will.”
“There are people out there interested in creating parking lots in municipalities,” Perez said. “Let’s put it out there to see if there’s anyone in the private sector who would be interested to partner with us. Reserving pieces of their land for this kind of thing so that trucks can have a place to park temporarily, or overnight, and then maybe incorporate some public transportation with that.”
Perez says that the city should start to view truckers as possible tourists, and offer them public transportation at these truck parking lots to tourists destinations such as downtown Laredo, or parts of San Bernardo Avenue.
The plan is still under discussion by the City Council.