ROANOKE TIMES 

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

DATE: MONDAY, November 1, 1993                   TAG: 9312300027
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE DUMB ROAD (WIDENING)

WITH THE big day just one day away, let's note one of the less helpful promises of the election campaign. GOP gubernatorial candidate George Allen went on television to set the record straight: Contrary to insinuations by Democrat Mary Sue Terry, he too favors widening U.S. 58, the east-west highway that runs practically from nowhere to nowhere across the southernmost reaches of Virginia.

Well, ducky. Politicians get their kicks on Route 58. Now we have f+ibotho major-party candidates for governor on record in favor of spending millions of scarce road dollars on the A. L. Philpott Memorial Boondoggle.

From Martinsville east, 58 already is a divided four-lane highway. Though not of interstate standard, neither is the Martinsville-to-Danville run a major cog in the state's transportation system.

West of Martinsville, steep terrain makes the cost of four-laning too high to be worth it. The acme of absurdity is one proposal to build, in these fiscal hard times, a four-lane segment of 58 connecting metropolitan Galax to Interstate 81 near metropolitan Marion. Under this alternative, the state would (a) spend an estimated $155 million to (b) cut a thoroughfare through the scenic beauty of Mount Rogers National Recreation Area so as to (c) shave two-tenths of a mile from the current Galax-to-Marion route via Interstates 77 and 81.

No wonder the U.S. 58 proposal, to get as far as it has, required direct intervention by the legislature in a departure from the Virginia tradition of prioritizing road projects according to professional assessments of need rather than political assessments of pork-barrel potential.

The chief argument for the road is that it will bolster economic development along its route. The assumption seems to be that if we build it, they - factories, tourists, you name it - will come.

No question, land transportation plays an important role in economic development. But road routing should bear a reasonably close relationship to economic reality. Biotechnology and materials-engineering research at Virginia Tech, for example, carries potential for economic growth. Tobacco, a mainstay of the Southside Virginia economy, does not.

Do the economies of rural Southside and Southwest Virginia need help? You bet. But what will be the great payoff in a better connection from Virginia Beach to Emporia to South Boston to Danville to Martinsville to Bristol?

What could help Southside and Southwest Virginia would be better north-south roads, including an Interstate 73 routed through the New River and Roanoke valleys.

It's partly a matter of putting roads where people are, as in Northern Virginia. More generally, it's a matter of improving transportation links where they count - such as between southern Virginia and the "tradesheds" being created by the burgeoning economies of North Carolina's metro areas.

The largely rural communities on Virginia's southern edge need better connections to Raleigh and Greensboro to the south, and Lynchburg and Roanoke to the north. The U.S. 58 communities' need for better connections among themselves along a widened highway is, at most, marginal. 


 by CNB