DATE: Thursday, April 24, 1997              TAG: 9704240002

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: Patrick Lackey

                                            LENGTH:   86 lines

WITH NO THIRD CROSSING, AREA WILL SUFFER PAINS OF ISOLATION

Experts project that, by the year 2015, traffic on the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel will be congested morning, noon and night, unless a third bridge-tunnel connects South Hampton Roads and the Peninsula. Every day, all day, will be like Friday evening in August.

The traffic projection presumes that drivers will be no brighter or better in the year 2015 than now - a safe presumption. As surely as the sun rises and sets, humans remain imperfect.

The projection assumes that increasingly heavy bridge-tunnel traffic will lead to at least 21 incidents a day - accidents, idiots running out of gas, and so on - that each stall traffic 15 minutes or more.

You might calculate that 21 incidents times 15 minutes equals only 5 1/4 hours, leaving 18 3/4 hours of driving a day.

But once traffic is stopped for at least 15 minutes, it doesn't suddenly resume speeds of 50 mph. Traffic leaving the site of each incident will be slow. Traffic arriving at the site will be fast and back up.

So what do 21 stoppages of at least 15 minutes each mean?

``Effectively,'' said Philip A. Shucet, a consultant who headed a $6 million third-crossing study, ``that's a congested period that lasts 24 hours a day.''

He said, ``Instead of peak hours, you'll have peak days, every day.''

So how would South Hampton Roads life change if the cul-de-sac we call South Hampton Roads became nearly impossible to get to from the Peninsula? After all, if traffic on the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel traffic slogs to a continual crawl, the James River Bridge and the Monitor Merrimac Bridge-Tunnel surely will become overcrowded as well.

Clogged highways are to tourism what clogged arteries are to hearts. Imagine Virginia Beach's barely populated beaches if I-64 and I-664 became hardly passable. See the empty hotel rooms.

People coming up from the North Carolina could still get to the Oceanfront, but it's a tourism truism that vacationers seldom go north to beaches. An atavistic urge drives them south to beaches, north to mountains. And tourists headed south to Hampton Roads must mainly use I-64. We're the largest metropolitan region in the universe served by only one lousy interstate. (Suggested regional transportation motto: ``If you've only got one, it had better work.'')

The Outer Banks tourism industry, of course, also would be hard-hit once traffic on I-64 crept to a barely perceptible crawl. (``Daddy, are we moving?'')

What about business? Imagine you have a plumbing company. You'd like to do business on both sides of the water, but with transit unreliable you couldn't, unless you had offices on both sides, an expensive proposition. A car dealer would need dealerships on both sides. What about MacArthur Center? It needs to draw from both sides. Specialty shops that must draw customers from a large area might not survive. The shopping experience would grow pallid.

What about the recruitment of new businesses and jobs? The Hampton Roads Economic Development Alliance may be turning into a finely tuned business-recruiting machine, capable of competing with the Charlottes of the world. But nothing the Alliance can do will persuade any business to come here if highways are clogged.

The entertainment universe for local residents would shrink. Peninsula baseball fans couldn't simply bop over to watch the Tides or the Admirals. For South Hampton Roads residents, taking visitors to Colonial Williamsburg would be a chore.

The ports would suffer, since trains cannot take everything to and from them. The Navy might balk at building up a base that's difficult to drive to. As cars repeatedly stopped and started, air quality would suffer. Polluted air could cost the region dearly in new businesses and even Navy jets. Emergency evacuation would be a nightmare.

What wouldn't be affected if traffic significantly worsened on I-64? That's the hard question. Beats me.

Art Collins, executive director of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, ticked off a list of items that contribute to the quality of life, including libraries, parks, museums and beaches. ``To the extent that you can't move within the region to take advantage of those things,'' he said, ``you're diminished.''

After three years, the $6 million study of ways to relieve Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel traffic is essentially complete, and information is being delivered to public officials.

Public hearings on a third crossing will be held in May, and local officials will decide in July what to do to alleviate Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel congestion. One of 11 choices is not to build a third bridge-tunnel.

That choice would be disastrous. South Hampton Roads' lifeblood flows down I-64. MEMO: Mr. Lackey is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu