Pittsburgh City Council is one step closer to prohibiting large trucks from parking on residential streets overnight.
“In a residential community you shouldn’t be able to leave you large trucks. A – it’s a public safety concern on many of our narrow streets, B – residential community is meant for residential parking,” said Councilman Dan Gilman.
City Council members say they’ve heard complaints for years that large trucks remain parked on residential streets, either blocking views or taking up coveted parking spots. Gilman's bill addresses that.
“The problem is ‘commercial vehicle’ is not defined in our code and if you go to state code of commercial vehicle, it’s based off weight. Well, no police officer who’s called to a scene at 2 in the morning has no idea what the weight of a vehicle is and unless they have commercial plates which say ‘CV’ and then a number, which most of them do not, there’s nothing they can do,” said Gilman.
He said the bill would define an oversized vehicle by length, width and height. The focus, according to Gilman, is moving trucks, large box trucks or food trucks - not a landscaper’s pickup or other vehicle that may be larger and used for commercial purposes, but isn’t considered oversized.
City Council gave initial approval to the measure, which they’ll discuss further next week.
