
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 29, 1993                   TAG: 9312220004
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

INTERSTATE 64

ROANOKE Mayor David Bowers and City Council are right to see a link between economic growth and the routing of Interstate 73, a proposed north-south highway to run from Detroit to Charleston, S.C.

This region could benefit mightily if the new interstate were routed through the New River and Roanoke valleys, rather than to the west where Interstate 77 already serves as a north-south thoroughfare.

Such a route, as Vice Mayor Bev Fitzpatrick noted, also could dovetail with the proposed "smart" road between Blacksburg and Roanoke.

But Bowers was off the mark in blaming lack of local effort for Roanoke's failure years ago to get Interstate 64 routed through Lynchburg and Roanoke, rather than Charlottesville and Staunton.

In fact, Roanoke and Lynchburg officials fought hard for the more southerly route - hard enough to win state approval for it. But they couldn't overcome the clout of then-Sen. Harry F. Byrd Sr. As a rule, Byrd was no man to favor the exercise of federal power over the states. But in this instance, he successfully petitioned federal highway officials to veto the state-approved route through Roanoke, in favor of the Charlottesville route that exists today.

There's a moral in the actual story, as opposed to the misremembered account. The moral is that, while you can't win if you don't try, neither will you always win when you do try. If that lesson were better understood, perhaps the politics of grievance and victimhood would be less prevalent in the America of the 1990s.

by CNB