OREANDA-NEWS. Frankfurt Airport (FRA) celebrated the opening of a new truck parking lot at CargoCity South on March 13, after one year of construction. Right behind airport gate 31, there are now more than 70 parking spaces available 24 hours a day for vans, trucks, and semi trailers. Sanitary facilities, including two showers, complete the range of amenities offered for truck drivers.

Fraport AG's executive board member for operations (COO), Anke Giesen, said: "By creating this special cargo parking area, we are delighted to fulfill a longstanding wish in the airfreight industry to give truck drivers an appropriate place to spend time during their waiting and rest periods at Frankfurt Airport's CargoCity South."

This new parking lot is designed, for example, to be used during the periods when truck drivers are awaiting customs clearance or waiting for loading and unloading of their freight shipments at the airport's cargo terminals. Active utilization of the new infrastructure can help to reduce road traffic congestion in the area, especially during peak periods.

To ensure that the requirements of future users would be met, the parking area was planned and constructed in close cooperation with the local forwarding association known as SLV (Fachverband Spedition und Logistik Hessen/Rheinland-Pfalz e.V.), along with truck shipping companies based at FRA. The head of SLV, Volker Oesau, praised the new parking area as "a strategically important milestone in the evolution of CargoCity South." He added that "the cooperation with Fraport has given rise to a truly demand-driven solution."

The truck parking lot project was initiated by the CargoCity Frankfurt Task Force, the predecessor of the recently created Air Cargo Community Frankfurt. Fraport and FRA-based airfreight companies launched the project with the goal of providing appropriate on-airport infrastructure for truck drivers, while also easing the strain on parking areas at CargoCity North.

The new truck parking lot is another measure to strengthen Frankfurt Airport's position as the leading cargo hub in Europe. Operations for the parking lot can also be integrated into FRA's new Fair@Link computerized scheduling system - as Frankfurt Airport moves further toward becoming a digitized cargo hub.