The no-go zone: Why are there no bathrooms at I-91 rest areas?

Yahoo

08-08-2025

I had seen the sign on Interstate Route 91 promising a rest area two miles ahead, if I got off the highway.
There was no mistaking what it said, though: 'No Facilities.'
After I take Exit 43 and skirt the Greenfield rotary, I see another sign. It's a big, official blue one. All it reads is 'Rest Area,' with an arrow pointing left.
I allow myself to hope. Rest area means restrooms.
All across this country's interstate highway system, from California to North Carolina, a blue sign with 'rest area' means bathrooms for travelers.
Many parking areas, truck weighing stations and other rest areas are carved out along I-91, running 55 miles from Springfield in the south to the Massachusetts/Vermont border in the north. Not one of them provides a restroom.
I spot another rest area sign telling me to take a left. I brake, approach slowly, then I realize this rest area with a kiosk is little more than a shared parking area with a state Registry of Motor Vehicles office.
No restrooms for travelers. There's a gazebo shading a kiosk with an enlarged map of Massachusetts.
But I don't need a map. I know where I am. I need a restroom.
Despite the 'No Facilities' sign I saw back on I-91, I enter the RMV. In the corner, two security officers eye the crowd standing in silent lines. I see the public restrooms behind the officers. I act like I have RMV business then head to the men's room.
On the way out, I hold the door for an irate RMV customer wearing an orange sleeveless T-shirt. He is f-bombing the place, because he couldn't get the service he needed. I look at him and tell him I know how he feels. Because it's the RMV office, I do know how he feels.
I go to my car, parked next to the motorcycle where the orange T-shirt guy continues swearing. This time into a phone.
All this to find a clean, public restroom along I-91 in Massachusetts.
When I called the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, the Office of Tourism and Travel and the office of state Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, no one seemed to be aware that the Massachusetts stretch of I-91 is a public restroom desert.
John Gibbon, spokesperson for MassDOT, sent an email stating, in part, that 'The Greenfield RMV service center, located off of I-91 exit 26, shares a building with the Greenfield Tourist Information Center, which offers restrooms.'
It's not my habit to correct public officials. But, well, Gibbon was off twice in one sentence. Exit 26 has not been Exit 26 for years, because MassDOT changed the numbers, according to the state website. It is now Exit 43.
Also, the sign I saw back on I-91 about the Greenfield rest area said 'No Facilities.' Who is going to stop in order to use the facilities when the sign says there aren't any? Besides me, that is.
As for Sen. Comerford's office, it offered a polite we-don't-have-time-for-this email. Health insurance rates for some public employees were due to balloon. The lack of restrooms on I-91 did not move the constituent needle.
I wonder if I am alone in wondering why it is that a state like Massachusetts, which promotes itself as a vacation destination, does not provide a welcoming facility for people to use restrooms. After all, I-91 is one of the major portals into the state, a straight access from Connecticut and New York City.
Tens of thousands of vehicles pour into Massachusetts on I-91 every day from two other states. Thousands of people need a drink of water, a safe place to stretch their legs and a clean restroom.
The interstate that runs from the Long Island Sound in New Haven, Connecticut, to the Canadian border at Derby Line, Vermont, was built for the most part in the 1960s. Construction started in 1958 and ended in 1970 when the Springfield section of the interstate was completed.
'If you gotta go'
No public restrooms have been available along the Massachusetts section of I-91 for decades – possibly for as long as the highway has been around.
The original thinking, supposedly, was that people can get off I-91 and patronize local businesses, shifting the bathroom burden to private enterprise. Some apparently felt that that since I-91 ran through largely rural areas, it didn't need to provide bathrooms, unlike busy I-90 (the Mass Pike locally) and I-95. Both have 'service plazas.'
By contrast, the pull-off on I-91 northbound in Holyoke is billed as a 'scenic area.'
Marco Panella knows every mile of I-91 in Massachusetts. He drives to New York City from his home in Brattleboro, Vermont, for work as many as 40 times a year.
'It's annoying,' Panella said of the Massachusetts rest areas having no restrooms. 'Where do you go?' After a pause, Panella said, 'There are gas stations.'
This late morning, Panella, 45, did not use a gas station. He chose the woods in Bernardston next to a northbound parking area on I-91.
Between Wallingford, Connecticut, and Vermont's Welcome Center five miles north of the state line, there are no public restrooms on I-91, according to Panella.
'Massachusetts is weird that way,' said Panella. 'I don't know why there's nothing on I-91.'
Two rest areas with bathrooms remain on I-91 in Connecticut – at Exit 15 in Wallingford on the southbound side and at Exit 19 in Middletown for travelers heading north. Both are only seasonal, though, operating from April to November. According to sources online, Connecticut closed other rest areas with bathrooms in the past two decades to save money and in response to vandalism.
Panella may be able to use the woods when he commutes alone, but he said that when he travels with his wife and children, he prefers not using the tree option. 'I guess it presents an opportunity for gas stations,' said Panella.
'Maybe it's just not that welcoming around here,' said a woman from Tennessee who was giving Louie, her Shih Tzu, a break on a patch of crabgrass on a northbound parking area near mile marker 34 in Whately. Sherri, 62, who was loathe to give her last name, said the weeds were good enough for Louie.
'That's all we needed,' said Sherri, who moved to western Massachusetts last fall from a suburb outside Nashville.
Nannette, Sherri's friend on the drive north, did offer that though a patch of green was good enough for a dog, maybe Massachusetts should think about the people doing the driving.
'There should be actual rest areas, not just parking areas,' said Nannette, 69, who was giving Mika, the other Shih Tzu a turn on the crabgrass.
Dave Sevedejko exploits the opportunity. Sevedejko said that as long as Massachusetts chooses to offer only I-91 rest areas without restrooms, his store just off the Greenfield rotary on Route 2 will be busy with people walking urgently from their cars.
'They're full all the time,' said Sevedejko, pointing at the two restrooms inside the Circle K Convenience Store/Irving Gas Station he manages.
Sevedejko said people tell him regularly that his establishment is their de facto rest area.
'We have a reputation for gas and go, so to speak,' said Sevedejko, who has been working at the store for 14 years.
He said he hopes people using the restrooms will buy something from the store. But if people only stop to use the facilities, and don't buy anything, 'that's part of the game,' he said.
He will not make a fuss, because 'if you gotta go, you gotta go.'
'Not even a damn porta-potty'
Over on the southbound side of the interstate, closer to Vermont, a Chicopee resident had a choice way describe rest areas without rest rooms.
'It's crap,' said Wally Kluza, who was providing water in a plastic bowl for his two small dogs, Charlie and Rocky. 'Not even a damn porta-potty.'
Kluza said he often makes the drive from Chicopee to Lincoln, Vermont, to help his son, who's building a house. Kluza has lived in western Massachusetts most of his life. He can't remember in 64 years having a rest area with bathrooms on I-91.
'Where's my (tax) money going to?' Kluza asked.
He provided his own answer.
'Oh, yeah, Boston.'
The interstate 'gets so much use,' said Kluza. 'C'mon, where do you go? The third tree on the left?'
Gibbon, the MassDOT spokesperson, said in his email, 'Since 2009, MassDOT has not received funding in the state budget for rest areas.'
People driving through Massachusetts on I-91 will not see anything like what Vermont offers just five miles past the state line.
Vermont built a visitor center so elaborate that one employee working there called it 'the flagship.' Carved into a nine-foot-long granite block at the center is an invitation to visitors. 'Welcome to Vermont.'
That's much more hospitable than tramping off into the woods in Massachusetts.
The Vermont Welcome Center in Guilford makes good on its restroom promise – and more.
The massive timber frame structure has rocking chairs for the weary, vending machines for the hungry, a water cooler, even a wood-burning stove in the corner for a cooler season. The ceiling must be 30 feet high. The posts and beams themselves seem to welcome visitors to the Green Mountain State.
While Vermont may seem welcoming to arriving bathroom-seekers from the south, there are long stretches in the middle of the state without such amenities.
John Richardson, one of four employees on the floor at the center, looked around in admiration at the place. 'A lot of people from Massachusetts talk to us about that,' Richardson said of the beautiful building.
Visitors from Massachusetts say, 'This is so nice. We want one of these,' said Richardson, 64, a former farmer.
Vermont depends on visitors to power its economy. Because of that, welcoming people makes sense, Richardson says.
'It's a matter of where you put your priorities,' he said.
Read the original article on MassLive.
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