Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 28, 1993 TAG: 9303290417
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Explore planners admit they have not surveyed traffic to support their estimate of 2.1 million tourists.
Explore's environmental director, Rupert Cutler, claimed that a million or more a year would stay overnight in motels. Yet, the National Park Service says that locals - not tourists - account for many using the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Project engineer Richard Burrow estimates that 1,800 cars with 3.2 occupants (2.1 million tourists annually) pass his park daily. He then admitted that may be high and that the park would be "reasonably fortunate" to draw 30,000 in 1994 and 45,000 in 1995, assuming the first phase is completed.
Roanoke County Supervisor Harry Nickens told other supervisors that with 500,000 cars a year from the parkway, they should spend $350,000 in tax money for a temporary road to a park that would be lucky to draw 45,000 a year by 1996.
The Virginia Department of Transportation took our tax money and matched the $350,000, questions apparently unasked.
Previously, Roanoke County has proclaimed that the project is their No. 1 economic priority, yet it does not even meet their own standard for economic-development initiatives.
The National Park Service has admitted in their studies that the spur road is not within their normal scope.
The River Foundation, in the April 1991 Roanoker magazine, bragged that it had raised $31 million. Where did that money go?
The revelations in Poole's article reaffirm predictions made by Granger Macfarlane and Hardy Against the River Project about the fiscal responsibilities and feasibility of the project.
The bottom line is - after eight years, a $250,000 taxpayer-subsidized Denver Study, $31 million in funds, all of the above assumptions and failure of the project to prove it can pay its way - just what the hay is over there on the land that drives the stewards of our tax dollars to keep the project alive? CHARLES L. WILLS VINTON
by CNB