Rest area

 ( Road Infrastructure ) 

• Highway 1 (Trans-Canada Highway) westbound between Brooks and Bassano;
• Highway 1 (Trans-Canada Highway) eastbound between Tilley and Suffield;
• Highway 2 (Queen Elizabeth II Highway) southbound between Crossfield and Airdrie;
• Highway 2 (Queen Elizabeth II Highway) northbound near Highway 13 west of Wetaskiwin;
• Highway 16 (Yellowhead Highway) eastbound and westbound between Edson and Carrot Creek;
• Highway 43 accessible from both directions south of Valleyview; and
• Highway 63 accessible both ways between Atmore and Breynat.

Alberta Transportation also designates partnership rest areas or highway service rest areas that are privately owned and operated highway user facilities. These facilities are located on Highway 1 at Dead Man's Flats, Highway 2 at Red Deer (Gasoline Alley), Highway 9 near Hanna, Highway 16 at Niton Junction and at Innisfree, and Highway 43 at Rochfort Bridge.

The original service centres for Highway 401 were mostly built around 1962. The service centres in Ontario were originally of a generic, cafeteria-style nature. They contain , washrooms, picnic areas, and . During the late 1980s the service centres were taken over by Scott's Hospitality, a major publicly traded Canadian restaurant operator, who leased them out to major oil companies and fast food restaurant chains, with a single gasoline distributor and sole restaurant for most locations, with some centres also receiving limited renovations in the early 1990s to extend their service life by a couple decades. In 1991, a service centre was placed in Mississauga to cater to eastbound traffic entering the west of the Greater Toronto Area; this location was branded as Info Centre, promoting Toronto tourism, and served until its closure on September 30, 2006. The rest areas on Highway 401 at Ingersoll and Newcastle (both serving only the westbound carriageway) and the Highway 400 rest area in Maple (Vaughan) (serving southbound traffic only) were completely rebuilt to a shared design in the late 1990s, and remain in service today with minor modifications. In 2010–11, all the remaining older service centres were replaced by a common design operated by HMSHost subsidiary Host Kilmer under the ONroute banner, which features a selection of fast food providers akin to a food court.

In line with the 400-series Highways being fully controlled-access, all of these service centres allow general access by freeway entry/exit only and do not connect to adjacent roads, even those located in cities. Some of these urban service centres may have restricted access to surface streets, during construction, and on an ongoing basis for staff, suppliers deliveries, and waste disposal. The only exception was the Cookstown service centre, which was directly connected to Highway 89 (a surface street) as well as the Highway 400 freeway since the centre was located at their interchange. The Cookstown service centre closed on February 1, 2013 in order to accommodate reconfiguration of the interchange ramps, being replaced by a new service centre (Innisfil ONRoute) on Highway 400 north of Fourth Line which opened in June 2015.

Outside of the ONRoute locations there are 211 rest areas along provincial highways. Most are basic stops (picnic area) with restrooms for most locations and parking for most vehicles (commercial trucks may not be serviced at small areas). Most are seasonal operated from mid May to mid November.

Reese's Corner at the intersection of Highway 21 and Highway 7 is often considered a service centre. Although Highway 7 was bypassed by the freeway Highway 402 in the late 1970s, Reese's Corner still receives much traffic as it is only a short distance from the interchange of Highway 402 and Highway 21 (Exit 25). Lastly, Weigh station (which are more frequent than service centres) can be used by travellers for bathroom breaks, although this is not encouraged.

Two off-highway service campuses at Exit 74 along the Queen Elizabeth Way in Grimsby are unofficial rest areas for travelling motorists. Two smaller such facilities (Seguin Trail Road south of Parry Sound and Port Severn Road in Port Severn) also exist on the less-busy section Highway 400 north of the last official on-highway service centre.

There are about 10 service areas (on Highways 10, 15, 20, 40, 55, 117, and 175); with some of these rest areas have restrooms, filling stations and restaurants/vending machines.

Some places, such as California, have laws that explicitly prohibit private retailers from occupying rest stops. A federal statute passed by Congress also prohibits states from allowing private businesses to occupy rest areas along interstate highways. The relevant clause of 23 U.S.C. § 111 states:

The State will not permit automotive service stations or other commercial establishments for serving motor vehicle users to be constructed or located on the rights-of-way of the Interstate System.

Therefore, the standard practice is that private businesses must buy up real property near existing exits and build their own facilities to serve travelers. Such facilities often have tall signs that can be seen from several miles away (so that travelers have adequate time to make a decision). In turn, it is somewhat harder to visit such private facilities, because one has to first exit the freeway and navigate through several intersections to reach a desired business's parking lot, rather than exit directly into a rest area's parking lot. Public rest areas are usually (but not always) positioned so as not to compete with private businesses.

Logo sign indicating gas, food, lodging, camping and roadside attractions near an exit can be found on most freeways in the United States. Beginning in the mid-1970s, private businesses have been permitted to display their logos or trademarks on these signs by paying a transportation department (or a subcontractor to a transportation department) a small fee. Until the release of the 2000 edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, these signs were allowed only on the rural sections of highways. The 2000 MUTCD added provisions for allowing these signs on highways in urban areas as long as adequate sign spacing can be maintained, however, some states (such as California and New York) continue to restrict these signs to rural areas only. These signs are allowed on urban freeways in 15 states, with Arizona being the most recent state (as of 2013) to repeal the restriction of these signs to only rural highways. Attempts to remove the federal ban on privatized rest areas have been generally unsuccessful, due to resistance from existing businesses that have already made enormous capital investments in their existing locations.Thomas Corsi, Robert Windle, A. Michael Knemeyer, "Evaluating the Potential Impact of Interstate Highway Rights-of-Way Commercialization on Economic Activity at Interchanges," Transportation Journal, vol. 39, no. 2 (Winter 1999): 16-25.

For example, in 2003, Congress's federal highway funding reauthorization bill contained a clause allowing states to start experimenting with privatized rest areas on Interstate highways. The clause was fiercely resisted by the National Association of Truck Stop Owners (NATSO), which argued that allowing such rest areas would shift revenue to state governments (in the form of lease payments) that would have gone to local governments (in the form of property and sales taxes).Anonymous, "NATSO denounces pro-commercialization in highway bill," National Petroleum News 95, no. 5, (May 2003): 9. [6] NATSO also argued that by destroying private commercial truck stops, the bill would result in an epidemic of drowsy truck drivers, since such stops provide about 90% of the parking spaces used by American truck drivers while in transit.

Pennsylvania, which opened the first such highway in 1940 with the mainline Pennsylvania Turnpike, was the model for many subsequent areas. Instead of operating the service areas themselves, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission opted to lease them out to Standard Oil of Pennsylvania (which was acquired shortly afterward by the modern-day Exxon), which in turn operated a Filling station with a garage and Howard Johnson's franchises as a restaurant offering. The turnpike leases the filling station space to Sunoco (which operates 7-Eleven convenience stores instead of garages at the sites) and, as of 2021, the rest of the service area space to Applegreen.

In the summer of 2021, Iris Buyer LLC (an Applegreen company) announced that they were acquiring all travel plazas by HMSHost. The deal reached an agreement at the end of July 2021 officially transferring ownership. The New York State Thruway Service Areas (which will be owned by another company by Applegreen) was not affected by this transition due to the fact that Host's contract was expired. As of July 2022, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia have service areas that are operated or have stake by Applegreen.

Some turnpikes, such as Florida's Turnpike, were never integrated into the Interstate system and never became subject to the federal ban on private businesses. On turnpikes that did become Interstates, all privatized rest areas in operation prior to January 1, 1960, were allowed to continue operating. Such facilities are often called service areas by the public and in , but each state varies:

• Connecticut, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia – service plaza

• Delaware, Kansas, Maryland, and Oklahoma – service area Kansas Turnpike Authority
• Illinois – oasis
• Indiana and New York – travel plaza
• New Jersey – service area or service plaza

Some states, such as Ohio, allow nonprofit organizations to run a concession trailer in a rest area.

Started in 2015(ish), The New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway Service Areas started advertising and selling products from Popcorn for The People. It is a non-profit organization which creates employment for people with disabilities, specifically autism.

The most basic parking areas have no facilities of any kind; they consist solely of a paved shoulder on the side of the highway where travelers can rest for a short time. A scenic area is similar to a parking area, but it is provided to the traveler in a place of natural beauty. These are also called .

Comfort and hygiene are important considerations for the responsible authorities, as such remote sites can be very expensive to clean and maintain, and vandalism is common. Also, Australia's dependence on road transport by heavy vehicles can lead to competition between the amenity needs of recreational travelers and those of the drivers of heavy vehicles—so much so that on arterial routes it is common to see rest areas specifically signed to segregate the two user groups entirely. Thus rest areas generally do not allow overnight occupation. In Queensland, however, well-maintained rest areas sometimes explicitly invite travelers to stay overnight, as a road safety measure, but this is rare elsewhere.

• Aid station
• Caravanserai
• Diner
• Truck stop