PRIVY SOLUTION

With little fanfare – no ceremonial cutting of the first toilet paper roll – a public restroom on Route 9 was opened last week. This wouldn’t be remarkable except that it wasn’t supposed to be possible.

When it was first requested last year, the Department of Transportation said a public facility on the road between Brewer and Calais would cost $625,000 to build and $100,000 a year to maintain.

The Department of Transportation had a point that a crude facility that is not monitored and maintained is worse than no facility at all, but it is to be commended for working with lawmakers to find a solution.

That solution is a public restroom, to be open 24 hours a day, year-round at the Airline Snack Bar and Lodge in Township 22. The owners of the snack bar, who successfully responded to a request for proposals from the state, built the facility at the edge of their parking lot at a cost of $77,000. They will be paid $45,000 a year for cleaning, maintaining and monitoring the facilities.

Because there are few businesses, and hence bathrooms available to the public, on the 90-mile stretch of Route 9 between Calais and Brewer, Sen. Kevin Raye introduced legislation to have DOT build a rest area with bathrooms along the route.

Sen. Raye talked poignantly of people traveling from Washington County to Bangor for medical treatments and having no place to stop to use the restroom.

The problem wasn’t just one of dignity, it was also one of serving travelers’ basic needs. Calais is the seventh-busiest border crossing with Canada and Route 9, heavily traveled by tourists and trucks. Substantial funds, mostly federal, have been invested in upgrading the road. Adding public restroom facilities was a logical next step.

For a 2002 study on rest areas for the New England Transportation Consortium, University of Maine engineering professor Per Garder found that clean facilities that also provide information about local attractions can also be a boost to tourism.

Public restrooms with signs announcing them, as have been installed on Route 9, aren’t likely to draw new visitors to Maine. But they do send a more positive message than a long stretch of road with no facilities.