Virginia hopes to reopen rest stops in 2011

It’s a long shot, but Virginia officials are hoping that they will be able to find a way to reopen 19 closed rest stops on the state’s interstate highways in a couple of years.

The state is going to mothball until at least 2011 the 18 rest areas and one welcome center slated for closure and eventual demolition because of budget cutbacks.

“We want to wait till we exhaust all options on commercialization [of the rest areas] before we make the decision to get rid of all of them,“ said Jeff Caldwell, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Transportation.

However, right now federal law prohibits the commercialization of rest areas along interstate highways, except for placing vending machines in rest stops, according to Cathy St. Denis, a Federal Highway Administration spokeswoman. Facilities established before 1960 are exceptions to the law.

The rest stops’ primary service is free public toilets. They also provide a place for truckers to nap, tourists to pick up brochures for attractions, families to picnic, and dogs to relieve themselves.

Long-distance travelers stopping at the Ladysmith rest areas on Interstate 95 in Caroline County yesterday were dismayed at the coming closures.

“We use them a lot,“ said Sandra Jacobs from Hamilton, Ontario. She and her husband, Stan, and their two dogs stopped at Ladysmith on their way back to Canada after one of their frequent visits to their daughter in North Carolina.

“These are so much better than we have in Canada,“ Stan Jacobs said. “In Canada, you pretty much got to run to the bushes.“

In the Richmond area, in addition to the Caroline rest stops, VDOT will close two areas on Interstate 64 in Goochland County and two on Interstate 85 in Dinwiddie County. The two stops on I-64 in New Kent County are among the 23 rest areas and welcome centers that will remain open.

VDOT will be putting the 19 closed stops into mothballs — stripping out useful items, turning off utilities, draining the plumbing, boarding up the buildings, and putting up steel gates — at an estimated cost of $570,000, Caldwell said.

The 18 rest areas are to be closed July 21 and the I-66 West Welcome Center at Manassas on Sept. 16.

The Commonwealth Transportation Board has cut the state’s six-year transportation program by $2.6 billion to make up for recession-driven revenue shortfalls.

Closing the rest stops is part of the state Transportation Department’s plan to make ends meet this year and should save about $8.6 million, officials said.

Putting the soon-to-be closed highway rest stops back in operation eventually “would be our hope,“ state Transportation Secretary Pierce R. Homer said yesterday. “But absent a change in federal law or an infusion of transportation funding, that’s not likely.“

The state’s tourism industry wants to give it a try.

“We’re hoping to keep that dialogue open with VDOT . . . to keep the rest areas open permanently,“ said Megan Svajda with the Virginia Hospitality and Travel Association.

The group hopes to find ways to help finance the state highway agency, she said, beyond the motor-fuels tax, transportation’s chief revenue source in Virginia.

Though the General Assembly has failed to come up with a fix for the state’s transportation woes three times in the past four years, “their ears are a little more open than in the past,“ Svajda said.

A powerful coalition of truck stops, fast-food restaurants, gas stations and the visually handicapped doing business at locations near interstate highway exits has blocked all earlier efforts in Congress to commercialize the rest areas.

“When the state is operating a business that is on the right of way, it really hurts the businesses at the [Interstate] exits,“ said Holly Alfano, vice president for government affairs with the National Association of Truck Stop Operators. “It’s not a level playing field.“

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine wants Congress to allow commercialization of rest stops, said his spokesman, Gordon Hickey, but he has ruled out taking money from other state functions to pay for keeping the travel facilities open.

“Transportation is a self-funded agency,“ Hickey said. The governor “is not going to take money from public safety and education and social services and put it into transportation.“

“We obviously have communicated to local governments and private industry that we would be open and receptive to local or private funding” to keep the rest areas open, Homer said.

“No one stepped up.“