With less than three weeks left for public comment on proposed updates to the District’s 30-year-old food truck regulations, members of both sides of the debate are stepping up efforts to ensure that the new laws best serve their own interests.

Under the new regulations, food trucks will be able to park at any legal parking spot so long as they pay the meter, though vendors selling desserts will not be allowed to remain stationary for more than 10 minutes unless they have a line of customers. All trucks will be permitted to operate until 10 p.m. on weekdays and 1 a.m. on weekends. The regulations allow them to stay open later than their current hours, but trucks must still close earlier than restaurants.

D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs Director Nicholas Majett explained the proposed rules at the monthly meeting of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E on Monday.

“We thought [the regulations] struck a balance between the brick and mortar stores, who obviously have a right to survive … and the mobile vending trucks, who also have a right to operate their businesses,” he said.

The rules would also provide for the creation of vending development zones intended to give community members a say regarding the number of vendors allowed in their neighborhood.

“It’s basically meant to really allow the local community and businesses and business associations to work with us to really develop a public space management plan for vending for their particular area that works best for them,” DCRA Legislative Affairs Specialist Helder Gil said.

“The zones are not envisioned to exclude vending. You can’t create a zone and say we don’t want vending in our area,” he added.

Food truck owners said the new regulations would be an improvement over the District’s current policies, which strictly limit areas in which trucks are allowed to operate. But they are also lobbying to strike clauses governing the time restriction on dessert trucks, operating hours and the creation of the vending development zones.

Patrick Rathbone, owner of the Big Cheese Truck, helped launch an online petition two weeks ago with the Washington, D.C. Food Trucks Association to have the rules removed. By the beginning of the month, the petition had received 568 online signatures.

While truck owners are mostly happy with the new regulations, neighborhood restauranteurs who hoped the legislation would place tighter restrictions on the city’s mobile eateries were less satisfied.

At Monday’s ANC meeting, Andrew Kline, an attorney with the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, argued that food trucks were usurping public space and that DCRA should stipulate that food trucks only operate on fixed sites.

According to Rathbone, restaurant owners are more concerned with limiting competition than with protecting public space.

“We’re lobbying to get the rules passed and they’re lobbying to get the rules changed,” he said. “They want to restrict competition, that’s what it boils down to.”

Some neighbors also expressed concern about the effect of food trucks parked in residential areas. On Monday, the ANC passed rules banning food trucks from operating out of residential parking permit spaces.

But Rathbone reiterated that residents had little to worry about.

“Food trucks aren’t going to go park in a residential area because there’s not enough foot traffic,” he said. “It’s a non-issue.”

The 30-day public comment period for the bill ends Feb. 20, after which the D.C. Council will vote on the regulations. If approved, the rules will come into immediate effect.