Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 26, 1994 TAG: 9403300004
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Virginia Department of Transportation says $453,242 awarded the Huckleberry Trail and $136,000 awarded Ingles Ferry last October may begin to trickle down as soon as next week.
Originally VDOT said the check would be in the mail to both projects by January 1. However, governmental snafus stalled progress and blunted the momentum of local project organizers.
"We're in limbo," said Bill Ellenbogen, president of Friends of the Huckleberry Trail. "We've been confronted with our own kind of gridlock."
Huckleberry Trail backers hoped to complete the five-mile hiking and biking path by the end of this year. Now the financial holdup may delay completion until 1995, Ellenbogen said.
"We're ready to start work," the Radford Heritage Foundation's Lewis I. Jeffries said of the Ingles Ferry project. "But until we receive the funding, we can't do that."
Local frustration is the understandable result of state and federal officials struggling to administer a new program, said R.O. Cassada, a VDOT engineer.
"It's been rough," Cassada said. "We didn't expect it to be as hard to get it going as it was."
"We're letting them down on our end. It has taken us a miserably long time. Every step has created more questions than answers."
The state is the middle man between federal and local governments in disbursing funds for the Huckleberry Trail and Ingles Ferry.
They were among 37 alternative transportation projects awarded funds last year from the Federal Highway Administration from gasoline tax revenue.
The Huckleberry Trail will connect the Blacksburg library and the New River Valley Mall in Christiansburg along an abandoned railroad line.
Ingles Ferry will revive a historic 18th century pedestrian ferry across the New River between Radford and Pulaski County.
Critical aspects of both projects, such as land acquisition or site deisgn, cannot be completed until the federal money is available.
Contract revisions have been bouncing back and forth between the federal, state and local levels of government for more than six months.
"Each government has its own set of hoops that you have to jump through," Ellenbogen said.
What all parties hope is the final contract for the Huckleberry Trail's funds is ready and only awaits the signatures of local officials, said Joe Powers, Montgomery County's planning director.
VDOT officials said the Ingles Ferry contract should be sent to Radford any day.
"I'll be glad when it gets here," Jeffries said.
"I'm on the edge of my seat," Ellenbogen said. "Everybody's is anxious to see it happen."
Funding snafus continue to block progress of the Huckleberry Trail project, although state officials assure that the check's in the mail.
Trail supporters have yet to see a penny of the $453,242 awarded to the project by the state last October.
As a result, completion of the six-mile recreation trail between Blacksburg and Christiansburg - originally scheduled for late 1994 - may be delayed by as much as a year.
Representatives of the Virginia Department of Transportation acknowledge the money's been tied up in bureaucratic red tape much longer than anticipated.
by CNB