Impact of the Social Law on Truck Parking Sustainability in the EU
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sustainability Article Impact of the Social Law on Truck Parking Sustainability in the EU Miloš Poliak 1,*, Adela Poliaková 2 and Kristián Culˇ ík 1 1 Department of Road and Urban Transport, University of Žilina, Univerzitná 1, 01026 Žilina, Slovakia; [email protected] 2 Department of Economics, University of Žilina, Univerzitná 1, 01026 Žilina, Slovakia; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +421-41-513-3050 Received: 5 October 2020; Accepted: 20 October 2020; Published: 12 November 2020 Abstract: Road freight transport in its current form has significant issues in terms of sustainability. These problems arise from an increase in density as well as from legislative decisions. Although not obvious, the parking of freight vehicles and legislation are connected. EU legislative decisions have reduced the sustainability of the parking system. The first and main goal of our study was to test the hypothesis that social law requirements negatively impact truck parking. The second important goal was to create a methodology that can determine the necessary number of parking spaces that comply with the requirements of social law. The method used for this research included the counting and numbering of parking spaces on specific routes in the EU compared with the intensity of freight vehicles on these routes. Our study shows that it is not possible to meet the requirements of social law and that the current state of freight vehicle parking is unsustainable. Planning sustainable parking areas in accordance with regulatory requirements is necessary, otherwise drivers will circumvent the rules, leading to a distortion of the freight transport market. In this paper, we also outline the proposed methodology for numbering parking spaces in a specific area. Keywords: freight; transport; sustainable; parking; truck; road 1. Introduction In terms of inland freight transport, road freight transport is currently the most significant mode of transportation. According to The White Paper on Transport, transport is supposed to increase by 80% in 2050 compared to 2010. So far, this seems to be accurate, as the number of vehicles utilizing public infrastructure has increased as expected. With the increasing number of vehicles, especially freight vehicles, it is necessary to build infrastructure that meets increased demand for capacity and car parking. The number of cars parking influences the safety and sustainability of transport because it is connected to safety breaks and ensuring drivers’ rest. Increasing driver demands for rest also increases demands on parking places (e.g., judgment [1]). In this study, we aimed to determine whether the infrastructure of car parks is sustainable following the increase of road freight transport in the European Union. We specifically investigated the drivers of road freight transport. We analyzed the possibilities of vehicle parking in the selected area. Because goods transport is a significant aspect of the economic increase, we dealt with transport output sustainability in connection to parking policy; therefore, we processed the proposals of the European Union parking insurance sustainability. The contribution of our research is a draft of solutions, through which it will be possible to aim for vehicle parking sustainability that is related to the social regulation demands. Only a few studies have been interested in the relation between road transport output sustainability and truck parking place capacity. Chatterjee and Wegmann in 2000 [2] noted that in the United States, Sustainability 2020, 12, 9430; doi:10.3390/su12229430 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Sustainability 2020, 12, 9430 2 of 16 there are parking places for trucks in public car parks and resting areas along highways, but in the state of Tennessee, some car parks were fully occupied, causing big trucks to park on highway feeders to these areas. Based on interviews with drivers, they found that, although there are existing facilities for resting and sleeping in public places, many truck drivers cannot use these facilities due to a lack of available parking spaces, particularly during the night. Al-Kaisy et al. in 2012 [3] showed that the existing studies about rest areas were not accurate, or that they came from old data. Data were collected from surveillance video cameras with views of a whole parking place in 44 car parks in the USA over one week. We found that the average trucks’ parking time is longer than personal cars’ average parking time on less occupied highways [4]—that means an average of 30 min during a day and approximately 3 h and 22 min during a night. Kay (2014) introduced the results of binary logistics regression and negative binomial regression on demand characteristics of 47 road-resting places in Michigan [5]. He found out that as the distance between resting areas increased, the number of cars occupying the road resting areas increased. He used online data obtained from the monitoring information transport system from Michigan’s transport department. The problem of car park capacity was dealt with in Japan by Muramatsu and Oguchi in a 2017 study [6]. From the results of this study, it is possible to claim that parking places for freight transport are under-utilized in Japan. The authors suggest implementing a time toll to motivate the drivers to use a public area of the car park in as short a time as possible. This kind of approach is counterproductive to the requirements of road transport safety. The stated claim is possible to support using study results processed by author Jung in 2017 [7]. A study on the conditions in Korea showed that complementing resting areas, which are relatively small resting areas between common resting areas and which serve mainly for drowsy drivers’ rest, could decrease the number of accidents caused by sleepiness by approximately 14%, particularly on highways with two or more driving lanes. Matsushita et al. surveyed resting area distributions and developed a model of selection and model of attractivity evaluation [8]. Their results showed that transport time, area attractivity, and the number of passengers over 65 positively increases car park selection, while the available areas, cleanliness of sanitary facilities, and availability of restaurants or shops increases attractivity evaluation. Their results also emphasize the importance of the information provided concerning the resting areas and nearby relaxing places. A study of Hajime Seya examines truck drivers’ behavior in car parks [9]. The author uses six-month data about the vehicle’s trajectory from the digital tachograph and introduces a car park solution and, parallelly, a situation by multilevel continual model development. Given that digital tachographs note trucks’ time and area information in Japan, it is possible to analyze not only the behavior in car parks, but also a way to measure parking time. In this study, data was sourced from 1600 vehicles equipped with tachographs, similar to those used in the European Union. Based on data from digital tachographs, it was possible to identify an average driver’s resting time, but was not possible to identify a parking place occupancy. For truck drivers, it is important to know up-to-date information about free parking spaces. Nowadays, accurate GPS devices are used for navigation, but there is no guarantee of a free parking space. After finding out that the driver cannot park the vehicle in a given place, they begin to experience time-related stress; therefore, increasing the available information regarding parking spaces is important, which must be based on real-time parking data. According to [10], the parking information system can count the number of vehicles’ arrival and departure. This is called real-time indirect parking monitoring [11]. Indirect methodologies are based on detecting and classifying vehicles at all ingress and egress points of the parking facility and summing the difference over accumulated counts at specified time intervals, as opposed to directly monitoring each parking space status. Then, the data are sent to local parking information processing or management centers, or regional traffic management centers via communication networks. The information must be processed and converted to form, which navigation devices in vehicles can then display. This procedure has four steps: Data collection, data process, information and communication management, and the last is information display. Another source [12] talks not only about capacity information, but also Sustainability 2020, 12, 9430 3 of 16 about the possibility of preliminary parking place booking. The source [13] describes an online GIS (Geographic information system) survey instrument that is used for collecting the location information of areas with truck parking capacity shortages. According to [14], the parking pattern is defined by one main parameter—the global demand-to-supply ratio. In reality, the spatial distributions of the demand and supply are essentially heterogeneous, and this heterogeneity is critical for transportation management and planning. According to the analyses processed by Andras Nowak, more than 30,000 parking places in Germany are missing [15]. On average, 7000 trucks park in restricted places like highways feeders and exits and emergency parking areas on highways. They block approaches to gas stations or are in parking spaces defined for personal car parking. Another study [15] points out that, from 2016, the number of injuries and collisions with trucks has continually increased because of incorrect parking. In Germany, the listed state causes problems with finding drivers that are willing to drive a vehicle for longer distances like 500 km. More than 15% of all drivers spend the night next to the highway with no comfort, no toilets, or the possibility to wash [16]. According to studies [15], the increase of road freight transport in Germany introduces an extra 4% per year that requires 4000 freight transport parking places that are currently unavailable. Problems with the establishment of parking places next to highways also have an economic aspect.