Committee asks about charging infrastructure at welcome centers and park-and-rides after highway presentation

During a presentation on a cross-border highway project, committee members asked whether welcome centers, rest areas and park-and-rides have electric-vehicle charging stations and whether the state can install chargers or charge users for them.

Members said answers during the presentation were unclear. Several members reported that park-and-ride locations have chargers and that private or nonstate chargers exist at some sites, but members also said the state may not be able to operate paid chargers at certain welcome centers and rest areas. One member said they had specifically asked the Buildings and General Services (BGS) follow up about chargers at a new rest-area facility in Guilford; according to members, BGS responded that chargers could not be installed there for “one reason or another.”

Members compared the situation to observations from other states where chargers on major corridors were heavily used. They also discussed technical differences among charging connectors and recent market shifts toward the NACS/Tesla standard, noting that multiple connector standards are being consolidated industry-wide. Committee members requested BGS follow-up about current charger inventories at state rest areas, the legal or contractual limits on installing chargers at welcome centers, and whether park-and-ride chargers are publicly or privately owned.

No policy changes were made; members asked staff to collect clearer information from BGS and other relevant state agencies and to flag where private vendors or infrastructure partners could be used instead of state-operated charging systems.