State budget woes may doom some rest stops

At least one cash-strapped state in which Route 66 traverses is considering shutting down its rest stops along the interstate highways, according to the Wall Street Journal.

According to the article, Arizona is considering shutting down at least some of its rest stops as a cost-cutting move.

An interesting excerpt:

One hurdle for defenders of rest stops: The facilities don’t exactly inspire nostalgia. Poets and novelists have spilled far less ink on rest stops than on diners, motels and other attractions that dotted older highways such as Route 66 before the interstates put many of them out of business. When rest areas have made the news in recent years, it was often because of police sex stings.

Historians largely have held their noses, even as some of the more ambitious rest areas incorporated tepees, adobe huts, windmills and oil rigs into their designs. “People don’t see it as an academic thing because it’s a bathroom,” says Joanna Dowling, a historical consultant in Chicago who broke new ground in 2007 with a master’s thesis on the development of interstate rest areas. Last year she launched a Web site for buffs, www.restareahistory.org.

(Check out Dowling’s site. Some of the designs are a hoot.)

The American Trucking Association and AAA both oppose the closure of rest stops, the latter because fewer rest stops mean more fatigued drivers.

Illinois, Texas and, most recently, Missouri have opened Route 66-themed rest stops along the interstates that shadow the Mother Road. It seems doubtful those facilities would close because they’re relatively new and their being on very busy east-west arteries.

However, I’m a bit ambivalent about the closing of rest stops. It would force interstate travelers to get off the superslab and find facilities in a town — many of them that serve Route 66. For many of those towns that were bypassed, that would be a form of small, but sweet, revenge.