Commission backs new standards for truck stops and travel plazas to reduce off‑site truck parking

The Suffolk Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend an ordinance text amendment (OTA2025003) that creates supplemental development standards for truck stops and travel plazas, aimed at preventing trucks from parking on streets and adjacent properties and to ensure safe on-site circulation.

Assistant Director Meg Pittenger told commissioners the city currently lacks clear standards for facilities that include truck fueling and parking. The proposed standards apply to facilities providing three or more truck fueling lanes. They would require five truck parking spaces per fueling lane for smaller facilities and 10 truck fueling spaces per fueling lane for larger truck-stop operations, require that truck parking be available during hours the site is open to the public, and require an auto‑turn exhibit (truck‑maneuvering diagram) with CUP or site-plan applications. The draft also would require landscape buffering where the facility abuts public property, residential, institutional or recreational uses and ask that passenger-vehicle parking be physically separated from truck parking.

Pittenger said neighboring jurisdictions’ practices and built examples informed the numeric recommendations; staff noted many existing multi‑lane facilities have constructed similar parking counts. The code changes would not alter where truck stops are allowed: the existing use table already permits truck stops by right in M-2 heavy industrial and requires a CUP in M-1 light industrial and B-2 business zoning districts. The Planning Commission’s ordinance committee reviewed the draft and the full commission approved the recommendation 7–0 to forward it to City Council.