To hear some folks tell it, Vermont’s greatest threat is that it is on the verge of a urination crisis.

This excretive emergency appears to loom as a result of the $19.7 million in state budget cuts getting their final approval at the Capitol in Montpelier this week.

It isn’t that Vermonters expressed no concern for the poor, the ill, and the mentally retarded who will become worse off because of the cuts.

But nothing seems to have gotten any more attention-or condemnation-than the proposal to close four of the rest areas along Interstate Highways 89, 91, and 93.

Both the Burlington Free Press and WCAX-TV (Channel 3) had stories quoting unhappy travelers who were…well, we’re going to keep it clean on this site, so let’s just say, ‘teed off’ at the impending shut-down of the rest areas, especially because of the loss of places to go to the bathroom.

“If you don’t want us peeing in the woods, you better have some place open for us,” said one traveler. Another worried about children being exposed to the spectacle of folks relieving themselves at the side of the road.

What? Has it become against the law for motorists to get off the Interstate until they have come to their intended exit?

No. It’s both  legal and easy to get off and then get back on the highway. Everyone stop worrying about the horrors of pants-wetting or pubic displays of what ought not be publicly displayed.

The Douglas Administration’s “Impact Narrative” explaining and defending its proposed budget cuts might be disingenuous in some places. But it appears both terse (for a government document) and accurate when it defends this cut by saying it will have ” minimal impact on the travelling public because of proximity to exits with full services available.”

If anything, the document  understates the case. Perhaps this is a good time for Vermonters to consider the wisdom of closing all 17 of the Interstate rest areas, which cost $5.1 million a year to operate, according to Ed Von Turkovich, the Director of Government Business Services for the Department of Buildings and General Services.

And that’s just the operating cost. Every few years the facilities also need capital improvements. By closing them down, the state could save millions, using the money instead to limit the pain about to be inflicted on the sick and the poor.

No doubt the rest stops are convenient. But are they as necessary as they were when the Interstate system came here in the 1970s? In those days Vermont  was smaller, poorer, and less developed. Back then there might well have been long stretches of highway on which a traveler’s stomach could get too empty and his/her bladder too full.

But that was before there were fast-food restaurants, gas stations, convenience stores, and diners every few exits.

Whatever else the rest areas may be, they are  tax-subsidized competitors of private firms, most of them small businesses (if often franchises of large chains) run by local residents trying to make a living.

Yes, at their establishments the customer has to pay for the coffee. But somebody pays for the coffee at the state rest stops. And rare is the convenience store clerk who will object to travelers who use the rest room and don’t buy anything. This sounds like a function adequately performed by the private sector.

Still, it has to be admitted that the state-run rest areas have one advantage over the off-highway establishments. They’re nicer. If not examples of great architecture, most of them are not awful to look at, which can not be said of the off-highway fast food restaurants and convenience stores, each of which is uglier than all the others (and if you think that’s logically impossible just go to a few). Quiet, unhurried. serene , the rest areas are pleasanter to visit than the commercial establishments with their hustle and bustle, not to mention their awful food.

But we’re talking about a ten-minute visit.

To be sure, the rest areas also provide maps and directions for the confused traveler,  brochures touting the local restaurants and hotels, and, of late, wireless internet connection.

But Von Turkovich said the state already has deals with private off-highway places which have agreed to provide the maps and tourist brochures and to keep their rest room facilities at least as spiffy as the ones the state runs. There’s no reason more such arrangements can’t be made.

As to the Internet connection, have a little faith in American capitalism. Shut down  those rest areas and enterprising Vermonters are likely to open up just-off-the-highway coffee shops as wi-fi’d as downtown Seattle.

And who knows? Maybe they won’t even be ugly.

Tags: Interstate highways, travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 9:28 am and is filed under Business & Economy, Schools, Taxes, The Legislature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.