State-Owned Highway Rest Areas Are Closing While Truck Traffic Grows

State departments of transportation across the country have been closing public highway rest areas due to budget constraints, even as commercial truck traffic volume has increased 30% over the past two decades. Since 2000, at least 10 states have shuttered rest areas or reduced operating hours. Virginia closed 19 rest areas in 2009. Connecticut closed several on I-95 in the mid-2000s. Florida has periodically closed rest areas for extended renovation periods with no temporary alternatives. Each closure removes 15-40 truck parking spaces from the network permanently. For truck drivers, each rest area closure is not a minor inconvenience -- it is the elimination of the only free parking option available to them. Private truck stops charge $15-$25 per night for a parking space, and many drivers, particularly owner-operators running on thin margins of $50,000-$70,000 net income, cannot afford $500+/month in parking fees. When a free rest area closes, drivers who previously relied on it must either pay at a truck stop, park illegally, or drive further to the next available spot, burning fuel and hours-of-service time. The structural cause is that rest areas are funded from state highway maintenance budgets, which are themselves funded by fuel taxes that have not been raised at the federal level since 1993. As maintenance costs for roads and bridges have consumed an ever-larger share of stagnant fuel tax revenue, rest areas -- which generate no toll revenue and serve a transient population that does not vote locally -- are the first line item cut. Congress has repeatedly failed to create a dedicated federal funding stream for truck parking infrastructure, despite Jason's Law (MAP-21 Section 1401) nominally authorizing it in 2012.