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

DATE: FRIDAY, March 11, 1994                   TAG: 9403120009
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A ROAD TO THE REGION'S FUTURE

Good news, then, that the Virginia Department of Transportation has accorded a high ranking to a route that would send I-73 through the valleys. Also welcome is the low ranking, in VDOT's announcement this week, accorded a route through the Catawba Valley. Instead, the preferred alternative incorporates the proposed "smart road" between Blacksburg and I-81. This makes sense.

Throughout history, whether as seaports or caravanseries, populated places have depended for prosperity on proximity to travel and trade. The internal-combustion engine has supplanted beasts of burden, of course, but the principle remains unchanged.

Traveling the information superhighway does not require VDOT highways. But even as computers revolutionize how ideas and information are transported, their globe-tightening is making facility in the physical transport of people and goods all the more important. For the foreseeable future, particularly in rather isolated places like Southwest Virginia, that means good roads.

The only alternative ranked higher than the preferred New River-Roanoke corridor in the VDOT study is the do-nothing alternative: using existing I-77, which runs through mostly empty countryside from the West Virginia to North Carolina borders, to route I-73 traffic. That's no gain for long-distance travelers beween Detroit and Charleston, S.C., the proposed interstate's termini, since I-77 exists and would remain regardless of its numerical designation. It's no gain for Virginia, either, since it would add nothing to the state's highway system except a second set of signs on 77.

It would be cheaper, of course. Doing nothing always is - in the short run. But the long-term economic-development potential of the do-nothing alternative is zero. The economic-development potential of the New River-Roanoke route is considerable.

Within the New River and Roanoke valleys, the virtues of an I-73 that incorporates the smart road include, obviously, those offered by the smart road considered alone: the economic spinoffs of a local exercise in cutting-edge technology, and a more direct link between a university (Virginia Tech) that needs a city and a city (Roanoke) that needs a university. Apparent abandonment of the Catawba Valley option also removes a threat to a scenic and natural resource that never made sense.

Looking outward from the valleys, the chief virtue of such a route is its provision of a north-south interstate highway through the region. That would mean a better connection - especially important, given prevailing economic patterns - to the Greensboro-Winston-Salem area.

From Virginia's point of view, such a north-south route is far more significant than was construction of the north-south I-77 to the west. In Virginia, I-77 passes near no Virginia population center larger than Wytheville; a New River-Roanoke route for I-73 would pass near not only the state's biggest university and Western Virginia's biggest city, but also near the industrial center of Martinsville. And it would connect this part of Virginia more closely with the burgeoning growth of the Carolinas.

The idea for I-73, which began as an effort by West Virginians to get a better connection between Huntington and Bluefield, showed up late on Virginians' radar screens. Its routing in West Virginia apparently is set; North Carolina may not be far behind. Virginia's political leadership, and VDOT in particular, have shown a lamentable lack of foresight. Now they must play catch-up.

But they shouldn't give up, and accept the do-nothing alternative. The project should be put to work for Virginia, too.