Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 10, 1993 TAG: 9301100104
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: MARION LENGTH: Long
ROUGH ROAD AHEAD FOR U.S. 58
It may be that trying to tinker with the state plan to improve U.S. 58 across the bottom of Virginia will mess it up.Or it may be that the route could be fine-tuned just a little more in Southwest Virginia, even though the state Transportation Board decided in May where the road should go.
That was the issue when about 150 people gathered in Smyth County last week at a meeting arranged by the county Chamber of Commerce.
"We just wanted to tell the Transportation Board, `We endorse what you're doing, now go do it,' " said Bob Dix, chairman of the chamber's Transportation Committee, which endorses the selected route.
But the route has its critics, and one of them is Joseph A. Rhea Jr. of Damascus, the newest Transportation Board member from Southwest Virginia.
Rhea said people in his part of Washington County "kind of feel like we're being left out . . . 58 has its own corridor, the way we feel about it, and that corridor is not over Interstate 81."
Maguire Associates - a Virginia Beach consultant that spent two years on a $2.2 million study on routing the upgraded U.S. 58 segment between Lee County and Martinsville - felt it should be moved onto Interstate 81 from Bristol almost to Marion.
Near Marion, it would move south to Trout Dale in Grayson County on a new piece of road and pick up Virginia 16 to Volney before getting back onto the old U.S. 58.
The state plan does call for improving the existing route, which winds from Abingdon to Damascus, Konnarock and Volney. It would be widened to four lanes from Interstate 81 near Abingdon to Damascus, but would remain a two-lane road from there to Volney - although work would be done to ease curve and grade hazards and narrow bridges.
Mountain Heritage Alliance is one of the organized citizens' groups that doesn't like that part of the plan calling for the U.S. 58 upgrade. It says the improvements would destroy the Hurricane Campground in the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area, harm the Comers Creek trout stream, disrupt part of the Appalachian Trail and otherwise harm the aesthetics and environment of the region.
John Sauers, a resident of Whitetop in Grayson County, said he and others have mapped out changes between Whitetop and Damascus that would avoid some of the ecological harm and have given their ideas to the Virginia Department of Transportation.
"We have the plan and VDOT has been down here to look it over," he said. "The environmental people can work with it."
Sauers and Del. G.C. Jennings, D-Marion, disagree on the benefits of seeking changes.
"Do you think I'm a babe in the woods on this thing?" Jennings asked Sauers. If people keep messing around with the accepted state plan, Jennings said, the state might just decide not to spend money on improving the existing route of U.S. 58 and simply reroute the highway over the interstate.
Economically, Jennings has said, that would help no one.
It was Jennings who first articulated the idea of four-laning U.S. 58 across Virginia, linking the coalfields to Virginia Beach and opening them to the outside as they have never been before.
Jennings made the suggestion years ago to a study commission on highway needs for the 21st century at Virginia Highlands Community College in Abingdon. He had been hearing complaints about segments of U.S. 58 for so long that he suggested improving it all.
Edgar Bacon, the Jonesville lawyer and former House of Delegates member who was Rhea's predecessor on the Transportation Board, remembers sitting on a table at that crowded hearing with late House Speaker A.L. Philpott of Henry County. "We just might be able to get that done," Philpott mused.
Philpott took on the project, and the 1989 General Assembly approved funding it through three $200 million bond issues. It is still unclear how the fiscal crisis that came along since then will affect the project, but the first bond issue has been issued and is being spent.
Bacon made the motion for the Transportation Board to approve the Maguire Associates recommendation, and to make the improvements on parts of U.S. 58 not included in the new route.
"The consultant seemed to me to have the most reasonable view of the location of 58 from Jonesville to Martinsville," he said. "I thought it was the recommendation that would do the best for all of the people along 58, and that was my best judgment. And that's the way it stands today."
Bacon said he does not feel seeking changes would be helpful at this point.
"Now, if you change it and get into quarrels with environmentalists and so forth, you're not going to get the road completed for years to come," he said. He felt the consultant's recommendation would get the job done most quickly.
Rhea, the new Transportation Board member from Damascus, said he had gotten too much bad advice from consultants to put much faith in the recommendation. His idea would put the new improved U.S. 58 onto Virginia 91 near Damascus and dip into Tennessee before coming back into Virginia to pick up U.S. 58 again, avoiding environmentally sensitive areas. It would route the new road along the Tennessee and North Carolina border.