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Free advertising
IF YOU HAVEN’T been appalled lately at how your tax dollars are being spent, try this one on for size. The State of Virginia has awarded a $297,053 contract to erect 300 “travel services signs” at 25 interchanges along Interstate 95 between the Virginia-North Carolina state line and the Woodbridge interchange near the Occoquan River.
According to a release from the "Virginia Department of Highways, these signs “will show available gasoline, food and lodging facilities by name, brand or trademark,” thus making Virginia “one of the first states in tbe nation to make such specific information for travelers a permanent part of its official signing program.”
We’tl just as soon Virginia didn’t have this “first.” First of all, why must the taxpayers— through their gasoline taxes—foot the bill for $300,000 wdrth of free advertising for “gasoline, food and lodging facilities?”
Second, what difference does it make what “gas” is. available—they’re all much the same, if we are to believe numerous consumer reports. The same goes for the motels and those heated frozen food emporiums that line the interstates. If you can close your eyes and tell the difference between the frozen peas in a Howard Johnson’s or a Holiday Inn, you just may have the most sensitive palate known to medical science. Or the deadest.
BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, if the Virginia Highway Department really has more money than it knows what to do with—as seems to be the case— maybe its better for them to spend it on free advertising signs. Otherwise, they might spend the money to build more ugly by-passes and more useless highways. □
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