Naming rights for transportation facilities

[FLRoads]

Read this interesting article on the Yahoo main page this evening:

Virginia offers naming rights for rest stops

ARLINGTON, Va (Reuters) — Driving through Virginia? You could soon be making a pit stop at the Geico Travel Plaza.

The commonwealth is selling naming rights to its 42 rest stops and welcome centers to help defray the $20 million annual operating and maintenance costs.

"By partnering with the private sector, we will save taxpayer dollars and keep our rest areas and welcome centers open," Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, a Republican, said in a statement this week.

With states facing severe budget shortfalls, rest stops are one of the easiest expenses to cut. Former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, a Democrat, closed 19 stops in 2009 to save a projected $9 million annually.

McDonnell reopened them about eight months later, and directed the Virginia Department of Transportation and other state agencies to figure out a money-making scheme.

The state doesn't have an estimate of potential revenue or any particular vendors in mind, said transportation spokesman Joe Vagi.

"We would certainly welcome and encourage anyone to submit a proposal," Vagi said.

Virginia rest stops serve an estimated 33 million visitors each year, according to the state.

State officials are working with the Federal Highway Administration to not run afoul of federal rules that block commercial enterprises on federally funded roadways.

Several other states -- including New Jersey and Illinois -- are looking into similar sponsorship initiatives, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Florida lawmakers are weighing whether to offer naming rights for any state-owned transportation property, from highways to parks.

[Duke87]

Naming rights are stupid. What really needs to happen is the policy of not allowing businesses to set up shop at interstate rest areas needs to go away. It just makes no sense.
I understand that it was put in place to protect jobs, to make people get off the highway and patronize local businesses, but in this day and age the idea of travelers patronizing a "local business" is quite archaic. Chains rule the day already anyway. So what's the difference between a job at McDonald's in the service area and a job at McDonald's off the end of the exit ramp? I see none.

[realjd]

If naming rights help keep rest areas clean, safe, and open, I see no problem with it.

[Scott5114]

Funding rest areas is always a tricky endeavor, but I'm opposed to selling naming rights, for the simple reason that corporate contracts are a poor way of naming things. Sold names are simply too impermanent to use as a meaningful name–in the late 90's they built a ballpark in downtown Oklahoma City, and sold the naming rights to Southwestern Bell. Well, within a few years the Southwestern Bell Bricktown Ballpark became the SBC Bricktown Ballpark and now I think it's named after AT&T. Most people just call it the Bricktown Ballpark.

My concern is the same thing will happen with rest stops. The T-Mobile Rest Area will become the AT&T Rest Area, then the HyperGlobalTeleCo Rest Area, then the HGTC Rest Area, then HyperCo Rest Area, and so on and so forth as companies merge, resell the rights, and go out of business. Not a good idea to refer to a company in a name; names should be as static as possible, since that's how people refer to things!

[corco]

That wouldn't bother me in the context of a rest area because most travelers don't have specific rest areas that they do frequent and the ones that do could continue to call it "the rest area halfway between Umatilla and Kennewick" like they always had before.

[bulldog1979]

You could always follow MDOT practice and name them for retired department employees. That is, of course, until you have to rename them because the employee is now a convicted sex offender.