Macon is one of Georgia’s major cities and a vital intersection of many freight lanes. Interstates I-75 and I-16 meet in the heart of the city and I-475 Bypass is used to route commercial traffic around the downtown area.
Many truckers call Macon home, as it sits a little over an hour away from Atlanta’s sprawling logistics facilities. Macon has now added itself to the growing list of cities enforcing laws and regulations trying to push out big rigs to up property values and in turn tax revenues.
What’s the Comprehensive Land Development Resolution everyone’s talking about?
First of all, let’s get an accurate definition of the truck parking law that went into effect on Jan.1. Here’s Section 26.08 of the Comprehensive Land Development Resolution:
To put it plainly, only one truck can be parked at a home. You cannot have any truck over 10,000 pounds GVWR parked there, which rules out most sleeper cab trucks.
You can’t live out of the truck cab, travel trailer, or boat on the property also. And I expect no one would be foolish enough to bring hazmat cargo into a residential area.
The big thing is if you had a truck light enough, where could you park it? “Front yard building line” is the legal term we need to recognize and examine next.
The law literally states “not in your front yard”
According to the examples on LawInsider.com, a front yard building line means an imaginary line from the front corners of the building or home to the property line. The space created in front of the home is, by that definition, the front yard.
Anything behind that imaginary line is known as the sideyard and backyard. You are safe to park your truck in those areas.
From what I have read in Macon’s rulebook, there is no requirement yet that you need to have some form of fence or tree line to block anyone from seeing your truck.
NIMBYs want property resale value and cities want revenue
The fight over Macon’s truck parking was made famous by trucker Raven May, an intermodal driver for C&K Trucking out of Chicago Ridge, Illinois. C&K Trucking operates in Georgia out of terminals in Lithia Springs and Savannah.
His interview with WMAZ13 News brought forth the issues he and other drivers were facing; his home is where he parks his truck and he has no way to travel to a terminal since his family, like many Americans, can only afford one personal vehicle.
So why do the NIMBYs hate trucks at home so badly? Well, trucks do like to tear up the grass and track mud and dirt onto the street. Ever priced a concrete slab sufficient to park a truck on lately?
Ugly, torn yards kill resale values since the front yard is what you see on realtor websites and brochures. And with housing prices as high as they are now, banks and real estate companies are lobbying for any law they can to preserve and boost those prices.
Drivers can expect to see more pushback from metropolitan lawmakers, and even some county commissions, banning park parking at their homes. Our question to them is what are they doing to offset the loss of those parking spots?
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