Closing Rest Stops

In two weeks Virginia will close, temporarily it is hoped, 18 rest stops, to save money.

The amount saved will be 9 million dollars. What does that come to as a fraction of the 2.6 billion by which the Virginia money coming in is expected to fall short of the money that has to go out?

Yet people are still pushing to have the state spend money to build more prisons.

Rest stops are much to be preferred over prisons. They improve the quality of life much more than prisons do. Though I don't drive on them nearly as much I used to -- it's been almost 10 years since I last set a wheel on one -- I still feel confident in asking what would an interstate be without a bunch of rest stops?

An excuse for this move is that the state has rest stops that are no longer needed, because they have been supplanted by commercial enterprises that can be found at the interchanges.

But those are no substitutes, because state rest stops have the huge virtue of being there strictly for a couple of basic purposes that have no commercial aspects at all. They are great examples of government at its best, which comes when it is doing something for the public good instead of for the benefit of corporate sectors, and usually the two have no connection and instead run counter to each other, usually at the expense of the public.

So, in two weeks, drive the unfriendlier highways, near here at least.