AZ to open 5 rest areas shut during budget cuts

Arizona Daily Star - Capitol Media Services | Howard Fischer Capitol Media Services

[SandRat]

PHOENIX - If you've got to go - to Phoenix, that is - you'll soon have another place to stop if you've gotta go.

Next month, five of the 13 rest areas closed by the state last fall in a budget-cutting move will reopen, the Arizona Department of Transportation announced Monday. Four more should be welcoming travelers again by the fall.

ADOT spokesman Doug Nintzel said his agency's funding, largely a combination of gasoline taxes and vehicle-registration fees, has stabilized since October, when the department decided it could afford to operate just five rest areas. And it looks like state lawmakers, who last year took $500 million out of ADOT's already cash-strapped budget to balance their own books, aren't planning a repeat.

But Nintzel said the current funding may turn out to be just a temporary solution. That's why Gov. Jan Brewer said she wants Congress to repeal existing laws prohibiting the state from leasing space to private companies that want to open up shop in those rest areas, or letting the companies run the rest stops entirely.

Three of the rest stops set to open in July are on Interstate 10, one each at the east and west end of the state, and one right in the middle, just north of Casa Grande. Others set to reopen are on I-19 near Canoa Ranch and another on I-40.

Less clear, Nintzel said, are reopening dates for another four. The remaining four have what ADOT called "serious repair issues" that will keep them closed for the foreseeable future.

That's where the question of how else to pay for all of them comes in.

ADOT figures it takes an average of $320,000 a year to operate each rest area, for water, electricity and routine maintenance. But Nintzel figures his agency would need more than $100 million to get all 18 of them in good working condition, and federal highway money can't be used for rest-area maintenance.

Brewer wants to look for new sources of money, and gubernatorial press aide Paul Senseman said that means allowing private companies to pay to operate in the rest areas, or privatizing them outright and getting the state out of the business entirely.

That's common in the East, where the highways predate a 1956 change in federal law that precludes new commercial operations in rest areas along roads built with federal money. That left Arizona, with its newer roads, out of luck.

[SandRat]

[BARLF]

IMHO,waste of taxpayer money.

[Tupelo]

While passing the closed rest area near Casa Grande last week, I remarked to my wife that there should be some way for rest areas to be leased by a private company and operated at a profit. Free to pee, but snacks, maps and “stuff” for a fee.
I don't have the know how to do it but I would sure like to invest in the company that figures it out.

[Alberta's Child]

That's why Gov. Jan Brewer said she wants Congress to repeal existing laws prohibiting the state from leasing space to private companies that want to open up shop in those rest areas, or letting the companies run the rest stops entirely.

Rest areas on the Interstate Highway System are prohibited by Federal law from carrying out any commercial activities, with very limited exceptions (vending machines, for example). This dates back to a 1959 law aimed at keeping highway authorities from having an economic advantage (as the owner/oeprator of a public right-of-way) over competing private businesses off the highway.

I can't say I disagree with the Federal law in this case. There's no way in hell a private company operating on private property off the highway should ever be put at a competitive disadvantage by a government franchise.

[Alberta's Child]

That's common in the East, where the highways predate a 1956 change in federal law that precludes new commercial operations in rest areas along roads built with federal money.

This article is a bit misleading. The roads "in the East" where these commercial operations are permitted are those that were built BEFORE the establishment of the Interstate Highway System and were later given interstate designations by the U.S. government. Almost all of the roads that fit this description (e.g., the New Jersey Turnpike, Pennsylvania Turnpike, New York State Thruway) are toll roads -- of which Arizona also has none.