Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 7, 1993 TAG: 9303070099
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
IS EXPLORE COUNTING ON UNKNOWN?
The Explore Park pitch goes something like this:Each year, more than 2 million recreation-seekers cruise through the Roanoke Valley on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Build a frontier town and environmental center and - presto! - parkway travelers will stay for an afternoon or even longer.
"What we'll do is stop what traffic is there," explains Richard Burrow, Explore project engineer.
The catch is there may be significantly fewer tourists on the parkway than Explore planners believe. National Park Service traffic counts suggest that locals - not tourists - account for many motorists who use the parkway in Roanoke County.
Jim Ryan, the parkway's chief of resource planning, said data confirm a "constant flow of commuters" along the parkway between U.S. 460 and U.S. 220.
The parkway is a shortcut for hundreds of locals - the Copper Hill nurse commuting to Roanoke Memorial Hospital; the Stewartsville bargain-hunter heading to Wal-Mart at Hunting Hills Plaza; and the Boones Mill insurance agent meeting a client in Vinton.
No one knows for sure how much parkway traffic is local, but parkway officials say the percentage of commuters is higher near metropolitan areas such as Roanoke and Asheville, N.C.
"I'm sure a lot of tourist interests would be unhappy to hear it," Ryan said.
Explore Park planners concede they have not surveyed traffic to support their estimate that 2.1 million recreation-seekers drive by the Roanoke County site, which is scheduled to open to the general public next year.
Yet, planners cite this unconfirmed traffic estimate to drum up support and cast the living-history state park as an economic-development tool.
Explore Education Director Rupert Cutler recently claimed that the park would attract "a million or more" tourists a year to stay overnight in motels.
Last month, the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors agreed to spend $350,000 to improve Rutrough Road to provide parkway travelers with a temporary access to the park site.
Supervisor Harry Nickens urged his colleagues to support the road project, saying that improvements were needed to accommodate what could be 500,000 cars a year from the parkway.
Those estimates are wildly inflated. Explore planners themselves say the park will be lucky to draw as many as 45,000 people a year by 1996.
Built into the attendance projections is the recognition that Explore will be too small - at least for the foreseeable future - to attract people from far and wide.
At one time, Explore was supposed to be a theme park celebrating Virginia's role in the exploration of the West. A 1987 master plan projected 1 million visitors from outside the area each year; slightly more than half would have come from the parkway, and the rest from Interstate 81.
The revised plan now calls for a collection of 19th-century buildings. While Cutler envisions a day when the Explore Park is on equal footing with Colonial Williamsburg, chances are the park will open next year with little more than a frontier farm and hiking trails.
"It may be like Mabry Mill," Cutler said. "Mabry Mill is not very extensive, but it's a nice place to visit."
Like Mabry Mill, the Explore Park will rely upon the Blue Ridge Parkway for its out-of-town visitors.
But no one knows how many tourists are out there.
The National Park Service counts traffic, but the totals do not differentiate between the travelers taking in the mountain vistas and the locals taking a shortcut to work.
Explore planners assume that local traffic accounts for one in four cars on the Roanoke Valley section of the parkway.
"It's a guess," Burrow said. "I hope it would be an educated guess."
Burrow estimates that an average of 1,800 cars - each with an average of 3.2 tourists - pass by the Explore site each day. That works out to 2.1 million tourists a year.
Burrow said the tourist traffic will fluctuate according to the season, with approximately 900 cars a day in the winter; 3,600 in peak periods of April and October; and about 1,800 from May to September.
Actual traffic counts by the parkway do not support Burrow's theory of seasonal fluctuation.
Parkway traffic in the Roanoke Valley maintains a fairly constant level throughout the year. The volume rises gradually as the weather warms, and it peaks in October.
In 1991, average daily traffic ranged from 1,300 in January to 2,560 in October, according to results of a traffic count at a point just north of the Virginia 24 interchange.
"It's a pretty steady stream of commuters; you don't have the peaks and valleys," said Ryan, the parkway planner.
A distinctive seasonal pattern does emerge in more isolated areas of the scenic highway where there is virtually no commuter traffic.
At the James River north of Roanoke, the average daily vehicle count shows wide swings - from a low of 80 in January to a high of 745 in October. The low-to-high ratio is more than 9-to-1, compared with less than 2-to-1 in Roanoke.
Commuter patterns also show up in hourly counts of northbound and southbound traffic at parkway interchanges with U.S. 220 and Virginia 24.
Data from both sites show that parkway traffic spikes each weekday morning and afternoon, coinciding with peak commuting hours. On weekends, however, traffic builds gradually through the morning and maintains a steady flow throughout the afternoon.
Ryan declined to estimate local traffic on the Roanoke Valley section of the parkway. The only way to know for sure, he said, would be to stop motorists and ask where they are going.
"You would have thought Explore would have done a little demographic work," Ryan said.
Burrow, the Explore project engineer, said he would consider conducting a visual survey this summer to get a handle on commuter traffic.
Burrow acknowledged that the estimate of 1,800 tourist cars per day may prove high. "There very well could be some additional commuter traffic out there."
He stressed, though, that the first priority is to raise $15 million so that the Explore Park can open its first phase by next year. Plans include a frontier settlement, environmental center and aviary.
Burrow said the park would be "reasonably fortunate" to draw 30,000 visitors in 1994 and 45,000 in 1995.
Those attendance estimates assume that the $15 million first phase is completed. The River Foundation, which is developing the Explore Park, has $600,000 in contributions and pledges.
Will the first phase open on schedule?
"I'm not sure that's going to happen," Burrow said.
Burrow said he had no idea how many people would visit if the Explore Park was simply a reconstructed farm and hiking trails. Most of the visitors probably would be schoolchildren on field trips and families looking to stretch their legs. There would be no admission fee.
"If there's not something out there worth seeing, the people won't stop," he said.