NATSO Presses Its Case With FHWA Against Rest Area Commercialization

Officials from the truck stop and travel plaza organization NATSO said they put their concerns about potential commercialization of highway rest areas before regulators at the Federal Highway Administration in an Oct. 27 meeting.

In reporting about it on the association’s web site, NATSO said the meeting’s agenda was to discuss the FHWA’s upcoming corridor designations for alternative fueling stations.

But NATSO said it also told regulators that travel plaza operators can best invest in alternative fueling infrastructure if they are not competing with on-highway rest areas for business such as vending machine sales.

That meeting and NATSO’s report on it follow an FHWA Sept. 27 request for public comments on whether it should allow new forms of rest area commercial sales.

NATSO said that in the Oct. 27 meeting it urged federal officials “to harness the knowledge and ingenuity of existing exit-based businesses for private investment for alternative fuel infrastructure without pre-empting consumer demand or forcing the private sector to compete with the government.”

It said NATSO also urged FHWA officials “to account for the effect that certain policies the agency is considering will have on other policies before the agency. For example, at the same time DOT is considering how to incentivize private truck stop operators to invest in alternative fuel equipment, it is simultaneously considering expanding vending options at highway rest areas.”

David Fialkov, NATSO’s vice president of government affairs attended the meeting. “Expanding vending options would totally undercut NATSO members’ food service business, which is a major growing profit center for the industry,” he said.

He added that it is important for regulators to know “that the more they undercut our members’ core businesses, the less money our members will have to invest in alternative fuel infrastructure, or truck parking expansion projects, and any other number of things that DOT is trying to encourage. The left hand needs to know what the right hand is doing in order for this all to work.”