There are times when nothing warms the heart of a weary traveler quite like the sight of a rest area up ahead. Bathrooms, maps and a brief stretching of the legs can make all the difference if one is driving from Bend to Portland or La Grande to Burns.

Two state agencies, the Department of Transportation and the Parks and Recreation Department, as well as the public/private Oregon Travel Information Council through Oregon Travel Experience, operate some 57 rest areas across the state. Lawmakers in 2012 ordered ODOT to turn over its rest area operations to OTE and approved spending money from online sales of driving records to help finance the change.

Unfortunately, the sales program never has lived up to expectations. Rather than having some $9 million annually to give to OTE for rest areas, revenues have fallen short of projections, and that’s not expected to change anytime soon.

The lack of money poses a problem, both for ODOT and for OTE.

For one thing, money shortages will mean that several rest areas that were to have been transferred will stay in ODOT’s hands longer. It also means that ODOT and the travel information council will have to amend their deal to cover the changes.

Worse, from OTE’s perspective, ODOT proposes to complete the transfers and pay OTE $6.55 million this year and next. Then it hopes to limit transfers to what it collects as a “convenience fee” through online sales. The two years, it believes, will give OTE time to come up with a money-raising scheme of its own for rest area maintenance.

That’s simply not good enough.

ODOT, the travel information council and the state must have a contingency plan in place to assure that rest areas get the attention they need, even if revenues fail to meet projections. Travelers count on rest areas, and having them available — and clean enough to use — makes the state’s highways safer.

Oregon Travel Experience, meanwhile, continues to work to improve the areas under its charge. It must find the money to continue to do so.