UPDATE: Just hours after posting this blog criticizing the state of Connecticut for closing the state’s non-commercial rest areas along Interstates 84, 91, and 95, I received a call from Michael Riley, president of the Motor Transport Association of Connecticut, to say that a deal has just been reached today with the administration of Gov. Dannel Malloy to keep all seven of the rest areas open.
“The administration has made assurances to the transportation committee chairman that they will all remain open,” Riley told me. “The outrage that was expressed by this was phenomenal. People who hadn’t called their legislators in 50 years (were calling).”
So Connecticut has reversed course, despite a Malloy adminstration spokesman telling the Hartford Courant on Monday that the closings would not be reconsidered. The trucking industry has won this battle, but there is a still a war to be fought for safe truck parking in the U.S.