This section of Airport Road in Waterville could be the home to a truck parking facility that would allow truckers to park safely for a night or longer, under a proposal now before the Waterville Planning Board. Amy Calder/Morning Sentinel

WATERVILLE — A truck parking facility is being proposed for Airport Road to help ease a chronic shortage of places for truckers to park and rest, either for overnight or longer.

The park at 75 Airport Road, off Kennedy Memorial Drive and not far from Interstate 95, is being proposed by RTG Enterprises LLC, the partners in which are Maine resident Andrea Freeman and Steve Baldwin of TLC Signature Homes, based in Ohio. Drivers would pay a fee for using parking spaces.

Lack of places for large trucks to park poses a safety concern, both locally and nationally, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. The trucking industry is critical to the economy, yet there are not enough safe and accessible places for them to park, resulting in many drivers having to spend time they should be resting in trying to find parking, officials say.

Many drivers park in unsafe locations, including on highway exit ramps, road shoulders or in vacant lots, creating a safety hazard for both themselves and motorists.

The truck park is planned for 2 of the 6.9 acres Freeman owns at the site, located to the south of the property on Airport Road owned by Central Maine Motors Auto Group, on the same side of that road.

While the plan is to be able to house 35, 70-foot trucks, Baldwin said it likely would not reach 50% capacity. A lot of the trucks, mostly semis, would be staying there overnight or for a month at a time, and some truck owners may live in the area and need a place to park their cabs, he said.

Baldwin said the need for semitrucks to have safe, accessible overnight parking is huge, as drivers have experienced problems such as theft while parking on off-ramps or large travel plazas.

According to the American Trucking Associations, a lack of parking nationwide for trucks forces drivers to violate federal regulations regarding the number of hours they may drive without breaks, or park in places that are unsafe or unauthorized for that purpose.

“This dire shortage of truck parking has a detrimental impact on drivers’ quality of life, roadway safety, and our supply chain,” the organization’s website says.

Baldwin and Freeman pitched their plan April 8 to the Waterville Planning Board and the board voted to recommend the City Council revise the city’s zoning ordinance by adding truck parking facilities as allowed uses in the Airport Industrial District as the city does not have an ordinance regulating such facilities.

The council on April 15 took a first of two votes needed to approve the request and is expected to take a final vote May 6, according to City Planner Ann Beverage.

Beverage said Wednesday if the council approves the plan, the developers would then return to the Planning Board with an engineered site plan for the truck parking facility. The Planning Board may only recommend zone changes; the council has final authority. The council on March 18 had voted to refer the matter to the board for recommendation.

The plan would be to level the Airport Road lot, and pack it down with gravel to create the parking area. A 6-foot-tall fence would be erected at the property but it would not enclose the lot entirely, as Baldwin said they like to have green barriers where possible.

There are only three such parks in the state now, Baldwin and Freeman said. They are located in Presque Isle, Steuben and outside of Portland, and they are small, they said.

Baldwin said he and Freeman have been working with Truck Parking Club based in Marietta, Georgia. It is an organization that helps truckers save time and fuel by finding and reserving parking places for them across the United States. Baldwin described how reserving spaces works, saying there is an app called Truck Parking Club that has been gaining a lot of momentum.

“They have about 1,750 sites nationwide,” Baldwin said. “It’s kind of an Airbnb where people can go on there and try to find the location where they’re headed to and look through the app and there’s reviews and pictures and directions on how to park and everything like that. It’s pretty organized.”

He said about 1,600 semitrucks pass the exit off Kennedy Memorial Drive daily so he estimates if they get 1% to stop by at night 16 trucks would be in the facility per evening.

Waterville Regional Airport Manager Randy Marshall told Baldwin at the April 8 board meeting that airport officials look forward to having another neighbor but said they are concerned about wildlife and whether 18-wheelers would be hauling waste in or out of the park. Baldwin said he wasn’t sure what the regulations are around that but he could look into the issue.