Va. wants ability to commercialize rest areas

RICHMOND, Va. - Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and the state's top transportation official want Congress to help pave the way for private businesses to operate highway rest areas and head off a budget-cutting plan to close many of the stops next week.

Transportation Secretary Pierce Homer wrote to Virginia's congressional delegation asking for their help getting around a federal law that prohibits commercial activities in interstate rest areas.

Gov. Kaine wrote a letter Thursday to Massachusetts Rep. John W. Olver, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies, expressing his support for such a waiver or legislative exclusion.

U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf plans to propose an amendment to the annual transportation spending bill for the 2010 fiscal year that would suspend the federal law barring commercialization of rest stops, Dan Scandling, a spokesman for Wolf, said Thursday evening.

State transportation officials decided last month to close 19 of the state's 42 rest stops to help ease a $2.6 billion budget gap over the next six years. Each rest stop costs about $500,000 annually to operate.

"Closing nineteen rest areas is not a matter of choice — it is a matter of financial necessity," Homer wrote in Wednesday's letter.

The Federal Highway Administration says just a handful of states have received waivers or exemptions from the federal government allowing them to let businesses operate state rest areas.

Some, like Maryland, were grandfathered in before the federal law took effect. Others, like West Virginia, have gotten around the law by putting commercialized rest areas along toll roads.

The Commonwealth Transportation Board passed a resolution in March asking Kaine to solicit the congressional delegation to amend the law to allow for commercialization.

Kaine said in his letter to Olver that he'd welcome any chance to discuss commercializing the rest stops to keep them open.

Unless something changes in the next few days, highway officials will place barricades at the entrances on Tuesday.

Interstate 81 is slated to lose seven rest areas. Four each will shut down along Interstates 95 and 85, and Interstates 64 and 66 will lose two each.

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Associated Press writer Zinie Chen Sampson contributed to this report.

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