Insufficient availability of safe and accessible truck parking forces professional truck drivers to choose between adherence to federal hours-of-service regulations and parking in unsafe or unauthorized locations, including highway shoulders, ramps, and local streets. Challenges to developing an effective Truck Parking Information and Management System (TPIMS) for tracking commercial truck parking availability and informing drivers include non-stationary parking demand patterns, sparsity of data, and imperfect conditions for sensor reliability. The goal of this research is to develop a robust, adaptive, and deployable truck parking prediction framework, together with a practical Prediction Improvement Toolkit, that can maintain reliable TPIMS performance over time despite the challenges commonly observed in real-world deployments. Building on operational experience from WSDOT’s TPIMS, this research is focusing on advancing prediction methodologies and translating them into reusable tools, guidelines, and evaluation resources that will support long-term TPIMS stability, trust, and scalability throughout the system’s lifecycle.

Principle Investigator: Yinhai Wang, Civil and Environmental Engineering, UW
Sponsor: WSDOT
WSDOT Technical Monitor: Matt Neeley
WSDOT Project Coordinator: David Strich
Scheduled completion: July 2027

The purpose of the Freight Policy Transportation Institute at WSU is to undertake research on a variety of topics and issues that will improve our understanding of the importance of efficient and effective freight transportation, both to the national economy and to regions, states, and international trade.  Research topics address the need for improved intermodal freight transportation policies and implementable actions that would increase the effectiveness of intermodal transportation in lowering operating costs while also increasing the safety and decreasing the environmental impacts of freight transportation nationwide. Distributing the benefits of improved freight transportation performance to specific industries and sectors of the economy are important objectives of the Institute. The continuing focus of research projects falls generally under five themes: infrastructure investment and alternative financing/pricing, transportation security and freight efficiency, transportation and economic development, alternative energy sourcing and transportation systems, and freight transportation and international trade.

Principal Investigator: Eric Jessup, School of Economic Sciences, WSU
Sponsor: FHWA
Scheduled completion: Ongoing