Last summer a longtime resident along South Manteca Road that is now South Main Street was kept awake at night.

That’s because he was serenaded by a trucker who was parking his refrigerated rig with the compression unit running just upwind from his bedroom window along the edge of an almond orchard.

Residents whose homes back up to Airport Way — an undesignated truck route — have complained about an uptick in big rig movements punctured by the application of Jake brakes.

People living in Powers Tract — a neighborhood they say city hall rarely has on their radar — are frustrated that on some days up to eight trucks are now being parked along Moffat Boulevard by Cowell Street often with just the trailer left behind with refrigerator units. Drivers have gotten so bold they are making minor repairs on their rigs while parked, they routinely block both a fire hydrant and a point where people cross at an intersection to reach the Tidewater Bikeway without fear of being ticketed, and almost every day create visual hazards for people trying to cross Moffat on foot.

And just around the corner on Spreckels Avenue more than 17 years of heavy truck traffic is literally pounding the pavement to pieces.

 Those frustrations that reflect quality of life issues clashing with the reality the growing local Manteca economy offering better paying jobs is being powered by trucks.

It also reflects a somewhat disjointed — some would argue non-existent — implementation of council directives through ordinances and policies.

Manteca, as an example, has three more private truck parking yards in the approval process — a second one at CenterPoint and two planned in the Manteca Industrial Park — yet the city’s efforts to force truck drivers that use city streets including designated truck routes for overnight and extended parking that is not connected with making deliveries is not robust enough to discourage the practice.

Elected leaders — present and previous — have put a lot of stock in a truck route study that is now in its 18th month of being compiled as the foundation for establishing a cohesive plan to deal with truck traffic that likely will grow even faster than the city is growing. The city promised the study would take six to nine months when they originally awarded the six-figure contract for the work to be done.

That, however, doesn’t ease what some see as a maddening hit and miss enforcement and unexplainable city actions.

One example is the truck parking. The city, if it so chose, could along the Moffat Boulevard truck route restrict the parking of vehicles over 6 feet in height near an intersection as they do elsewhere in the city. They could limit hours to ban overnight parking if they opted to do so. Yet just several hundred yards away where there are no sidewalks or pedestrian traffic the city has banned truck parking on — and along — property they own on the southwest corner of Industrial Park Drive and Moffat where at one point they proposed building the Manteca Veterans Hall. It is along a designated truck route.

There are three current truck routes in Manteca. Two of them — Lathrop Road and Moffat Boulevard — are standard truck routes.

The third truck route — 120 Bypass to South Main to Industrial Park Drive/Spreckels Avenue to Yosemite Avenue to Highway 99  — is a Surface Transportation Assistance Act (STAA)  route that allows trucks that exceed California length limits to accommodate interstate trucking.

The truck route plan in addition to identifying the establishment of legal truck routes going forward:

*recommends the city establish a truck impact fee to offset maintenance directly related to truck damage to streets. Damage along the Spreckels Avenue corridor — a legal truck route — is one example.

*examined the geometry of intersections of potential truck routes and identified needed improvements to widen or upgrade intersections where necessary.

Truck routes are designed to keep trucks off of city streets where their operation may be problematic. Ideally they steer them away from streets that aren’t designed to take the heavy pounding trucks have on pavement.

Pavement experts using research from the Federal Highway Administration estimate the projected impact on pavement of one fully loaded axle on a big rig truck is equal to more than 1,000 passenger cars. That said trucks pay significantly higher state road and fuel related taxes to pay for pavement work.

The pavement on Spreckels Avenue — one of the heaviest traveled streets for trucks in Manteca — has develop significant pavement issues after 17 years of truck movements. Spreckels Avenue is on the list of streets Manteca will address pavement issues on during the next several years.

 Trucks making deliveries to businesses that are not on an established truck route can legally do so on streets not designated as truck routes.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com