ROBERS EARNS HIS RIGHT TO SAY `I TOLD YOU SO'

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

DATE: SATURDAY, February 22, 1992                   TAG: 9202220380
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES BUSINESS WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
ROBERS EARNS HIS RIGHT TO SAY `I TOLD YOU SO'
THE STATE Transportation Board's unanimous vote Thursday to support a "smart road" from Blacksburg to Interstate 81 overjoyed its dedicated backers - especially a former Roanoke County supervisor once dismissed as a dreamer.

Dick Robers is a man vindicated.
It's been nearly three years since he saw a piece in the Wall Street Journal headlined "Smart Cars, Smart Highways," and wondered if the technology might be suited for the proposed Blacksburg-to-Roanoke highway.
The power brokers, calling themselves The University Connection, were eager to make their road a reality. But they weren't sure what to make of this county politician and his idea.
They worried that his sci-fi suggestion might divert attention from the serious lobbying effort they were pursuing, complete with four-party deal-making and prodding from the region's representative on the state Transportation Board.
Now, the day after the board unanimously approved the project, they're calling him a visionary.
"I admitted to Dick, `I don't know where you're heading,' " Bev Fitzpatrick Jr., a Roanoke city councilman and vice chairman of the University Connection, said Friday. "I was thinking, `What does he mean here? Can we merge the two components?' "
They could - and did. Steve Musselwhite, Western Virginia's representative on state highway panel, calls the smart technology - fiber optics, radar and computer electronics in cars and along roads - "the sizzle to the project. The road is the meat, the technology is the sizzle."
Robers, they say, has every right to feel just a little bit smug about the whole thing. And he does, in his own self-effacing way.
"You're right, everybody laughed in the beginning - except for a few people," he said Friday morning, a smile barely detectable over the phone line. "It was a hard sell. I can remember there were some non-believers.
"You hate to say, `I told you so,' but I think things are coming together to make this thing work for this area," he said. "Here we are in Southwest Virginia always looking for economic development. It seems to me there's nothing better than to be on the cutting edge of technology."
To Robers, it was a natural: Tech's Transportation Research Center, an arm of the university's world-class engineering school, sat at one end; the Roanoke Valley's burgeoning fiber optics industry sat at the other; and there was a reason to build the road - the first of its kind anywhere in the world.
"We have the nucleus of technology here, and as it increases, employment should increase," he said. Back then, too, he touted the concept as a logical partnership between the public and private sectors. He couldn't help but mention Friday that Tech, the day before, had announced a $250,000 grant from General Motors Foundation for smart-road research.
"Indeed, three years ago it may have sounded like a zany, far-out idea," said Larry Hincker, the Tech official who's spearheaded the university's public campaign for the project. "The thing about far-out ideas is they're either zany or genius."
Robers' inopportune suggestion was closer to the latter, they say now.
"After that, other people took over," Hincker continued. In jumped Wayne Clough, Tech's engineering dean; and Antoine Hobeika, a civil engineering professor; and state Transportation Commissioner Ray Pethtel; and Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon; and Musselwhite, who's now angling to replace retiring Rep. Jim Olin, D-Roanoke. There are others.
But on Friday, the credit went to Robers and his zany question: "What if . . . ?"

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB