State has yet to get help for rest areas

The planned closure of nearly half of Virginia's highway rest areas next week seems likely to move ahead, despite state officials' pleas to Congress to help keep them open.

The state plans to close 18 rest areas Tuesday because of a shortfall in transportation revenue, but Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and other officials have asked Congress for a waiver or exemption from a federal law barring commercial activities at interstate rest stops. That would enable the state to have private businesses operate them.

That request was met with resistance in Congress yesterday, as an attempt by Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-10th, to push through an amendment to a federal transportation bill failed in committee on a 26-32 vote.

"The goal was to begin the process to let the state commercialize rest stops," said Dan Scandling, a spokesman for Wolf. "The whole effort here was keeping them open for safety reasons."

The closures are expected to save about $9 million, as state transportation officials grapple with a recession-driven revenue shortfall that led the Commonwealth Transportation Board to cut Virginia's six-year transportation program by $2.6 billion.

Wolf sent a letter to Kaine yesterday urging him to reverse the decision to close the rest areas and find another way to save $9 million. Wolf wrote that he had made a "good faith" effort to help the state keep the facilities open.

"I am strongly opposed to the decision to close rest stops in the state," Wolf wrote. "It is a terrible idea. We are putting hundreds of thousands of motorists at risk."

A spokesman for Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., said the state's congressional delegation was studying possible options for obtaining an exemption from the federal law. But even if that is possible, it likely wouldn't come in time to prevent the closure of the rest areas, state officials and congressional aides said.

"As of right now, the rest areas are scheduled to close next Tuesday, and that has not changed," Kaine spokesman Gordon Hickey said yesterday.

Jeff Caldwell, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said the 18 affected rest areas would be closed to motorists and barricaded Tuesday. Crews will then start a 30to 60-day process of removing furniture and shutting off utilities. A welcome center in Manassas also is scheduled to close in September; 23 other rest areas around the state will remain open.

"We have got to close these on the schedule that we came up with in order to meet financial targets," Caldwell said. But state transportation officials would welcome the option of having private businesses keep the rest areas functioning, he said.

"We are supportive of it," he said. "And as a long-term solution to this issue, it is certainly a viable possibility, but the law will have to change. Then we would have to move through the privatization and contracting process."

Martha M. Meade, a spokeswoman for the motor club AAA Mid-Atlantic, said the group also sent a letter to Kaine yesterday expressing concerns about closing the rest areas. She said the group would support privatizing them as a way to keep them open, but "even if that worked, certainly they could not be privatized by next week."

"We understand the budget crisis," Meade said. "However, we just wanted to ask that [state] officials take one last look to make sure there were absolutely no other options."

With so many rest areas scheduled to close, Meade urged motorists to plan their trips carefully so they can find safe places to stop.

"We do encourage people to take the time to stop and take the time to plan," she said. "Just because the rest areas are closing does not mean we don't have responsibility to keep ourselves and others safe."

Contact John Reid Blackwell at (804) 775-8123 or .