Truck restrictions coming to Litchfield Park

By Madeline Ackley Salazar
Mail | Twitter: @Mkayackley

Litchfield Park residents who regularly traverse Camelback Road should begin to see fewer commercial trucks beginning May 1. 

Commercial trucks not stopping for pickups or deliveries in the Park will need to reroute when they reach Camelback Road between North 127th Avenue and North Village Parkway – a stretch of road recently brought under Litchfield Park jurisdiction. 

The road previously was under Maricopa County control, and Litchfield leadership has long sought to annex the area, in part to make needed repairs and to help mitigate heavy truck traffic, City Manager Matthew Williams told the Independent. 

“The West Valley has developed around Litchfield Park, so of course, the truck traffic has naturally grown over the years,” Williams said.  “There’s a lot of homes that back up to Camelback Road and there’s a lot of heavy trucks that go through there at all times of the night.”

Williams said residents often complain to the city about the traffic and the noise and pollution the trucks bring. 

In 2020, Litchfield Park passed an ordinance that limits truck traffic to those with business within city limits. Those just passing through were prohibited. So the stretch of road along Camelback will have the same restrictions as the rest of the city. 

As part of the agreement which officially took effect March 17, the county agreed to pay Litchfield $3.5 million to be put toward street repairs – an amount Williams said will not be enough to cover the full cost of the repairs.

The city is working to get the word out about the changes coming in late spring. 

Williams said the city sent more than 100 letters to trucking companies and that it will rent two electronic billboards on either end of Camelback Road advertising the upcoming restrictions.  

Litchfield Park residents breathe sigh of relief 

Litchfield Park residents appear largely positive about the city’s decision. 

Ginny Solis-Wright has lived in The Park for most of her life and said she’s seen more semi-trucks traversing Camelback Road and stopping on the sides of the road in the area of 127th Avenue. 

Residents were concerned the problem would become worse when in 2020 the community learned FedEx was planning to build a cross-dock facility near Luke Air Force Base. 

Community members like Solis-Wright, and HOA president of Litchfield Greens John Connolly fought hard against the proposal that was eventually passed by the County Board of Supervisors. 

READ:  Litchfield Park cross-dock terminal opposition stalls due to lack of funds

“Please do not confuse our willingness to accept the sound of freedom from Luke Air Force Base as justification to run us over with 6,000 trucks a day,” Connolly wrote in a Go Fund Me set up to retain a lawyer to fight against the cross-dock station. 

“There are things we're willing to tolerate for my country that I’m not willing to do for a bunch of  ‘Out of state LLC’s’ that have no attachment nor care for our community,” Connolly wrote at the time. 

Williams said Litchfield Park leadership had worked with Maricopa County officials to annex the stretch of road long before the cross-dock was ever proposed. 

However, he did say that while the city was initially opposed to the project, it granted its support under the condition that semis would exit to the nearby Loop 303 freeway–not pass through The Park. 

Even though the FedEx truck hub will still be built, Solis-Wright thinks a lot of the would-be traffic will be mitigated by the city’s ordinance and its annexation of Camelback Road. 

“I am very grateful that the city council…went into action to make sure they were supporting the residents of the community of Litchfield Park.”

“I am so very grateful,” she said. “Because they really do care about the residents of the community.”

Madeline Ackley Salazar can be reached at mackley@iniusa.org or found on Twitter @Mkayackley.