The United States' National ITS Program devotes a great deal of resources toward the nation's commercial vehicle operations (CVO) industry activities. Those resources have primarily involved interstate operations and concentrate in three basic areas. Those areas are electronic screening, electronic credentialing, and roadside safety systems. While these areas are important to the nation's economy, an area equally as important is parking for loading/unloading of commercial vehicles in urban areas. With congestion levels increasing nationwide, urban area delivery parking is especially difficult. With the rising number of direct purchases made over the Internet, urban goods delivery continues to increase at a rapid rate. This paper explores various parking policies employed by a cross section of municipalities and explores why some policies are more delivery 'friendly' than others. This paper also examines some of the latest ITS technology deployments and research underway to help alleviate this growing problem. Finally, this paper explains that the solutions addressing inadequate loading dock space and outdated curbside design standards (or lack thereof) require local, regional and national involvement.
Abstract