Ohio Turnpike service plazas are now selling food on a carry-out basis in response to the coronavirus threat, but they remain open, as do travel-plaza restrooms.
That’s in sharp contrast to counterparts on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which has closed the Pennsylvania Turnpike’s service-plaza restaurants and restrooms entirely, with portable toilets offered as a substitute for the latter.
“Tables and chairs in food courts are temporarily unavailable to our customers to eliminate surfaces that could become contaminated with COVID-19,” Ferzan Ahmed, the Ohio Turnpike’s executive director, said in a statement announcing that measure.
Elsewhere in the service-plaza buildings, janitors are cleaning surfaces more frequently using products recommended by the national Centers for Disease Control to combat the coronavirus, while vendors “have increased emphasis on sanitation and good hygiene practices,” Mr. Ahmed said.
Special attention is being paid to such areas as touchpoints in the restrooms, infant-changing tables, showers, door handles, vending machines, automated teller machines, travel kiosks, and condiment carriers, he said.
Both the Ohio Turnpike and the neighboring Indiana Toll Road also urged motorists to use E-ZPass electronic fare payment or credit cards for their tolls. Ohio toll collectors have been provided with, and ordered to use, nitrile gloves, hand sanitizer, and disinfectant wipes.
In Pennsylvania and on the Illinois Tollway system, cash fare payment has been suspended entirely.
Those who do not pay using E-ZPass in Pennsylvania will be billed to the address associated with their vehicles’ registration. Motorists traveling the Illinois toll roads have been directed to pay using the illinoistollways.com web site.
Neither the Indiana nor Illinois toll-road websites indicated any current constraint on service-plaza operations. The New York Thruway so far has not announced any coronavirus-related restrictions.
Separately, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation on Tuesday closed rest areas along non-toll highways in the state. Freightwaves.com, a trucking industry news site, said that industry was protesting that action as an impedance to truck drivers taking required breaks during and between their shifts. Pennsylvania also ordered all state-managed road construction projects to halt, according to PennDOT’s web site.
Ohio’s highway rest areas remain open, said Matt Bruning, an ODOT spokesman at the Columbus headquarters, and no road projects are being delayed.
“Our crews are doing more frequent cleaning [at rest areas] and we’ve posted signs reminding visitors to wash their hands,” Mr. Bruning said.
As for construction sites, he said, “most construction workers are already practice social distancing on the work site.”
First Published March 17, 2020, 7:15 p.m.
