Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 4, 1994 TAG: 9409070003
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A16 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
U.S. 221, also called Bent Mountain Road, twists so tightly in some places that drivers have to slow to 25 or 30 mph. Pulling out of some subdivisions is a matter of punching the accelerator and praying, because of poor visibility. Places to pass are rare.
The road likely follows an Indian trail, running in the lowlands close to the creek, winding and twisting the same way the water flows. No major changes have been made to it since the modern road was designed around 1930.
"So consequently, you have a very rural road by highway geometrics ... carrying traffic today of many, many times what it was designed for," explains Fred Altizer of the Virginia Department of Transportation.
The 10,000 cars a day is expected to almost double in 20 years with all the development and commuters from Bent Mountain and Floyd County.
Because the road runs tightly beside Back Creek and has steep inclines in places, widening it to four lanes - the width VDOT says is necessary for traffic flow - will be tough on the existing roadbed.
The next phase of widening is 2.3 miles long, from where the four lanes stop at Bridlewood to Old Mill Road, just past Poages' farm. Alternatives include moving it to the other side of the creek - the south side - or taking it farther from the creek on the current side.
If the road is moved off its existing path, there will be six lanes of asphalt running through the community: the four new ones and the two existing ones. That's a lot of pavement through a rural area.
"I'm not ready for it," says Genevieve Henderson, first vice president of the Back Creek Rural Village Civic League. "I guess like everything else, you learn to accept it."
She's in favor of road improvements, and the civic league has long lobbied for something to be done. The league will not take a position on where the new road should go. But Henderson would like to see Bent Mountain Road kept as is, as a scenic drive, and a new 221 built elsewhere to serve commuter traffic.
While residents complain about the road, its condition hasn't stopped home buyers from flocking to Back Creek.
"It's sort of a self-controlling thing," says Lee Eddy, chairman of the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors. "If people think the roads are so bad, they won't want to build houses out there. But people don't seem to mind it too much."
Some residents want VDOT to do something before 1999 to fix parts of the road. Others would like to see the rest of 221, all the way to the foot of Bent Mountain, widened at the same time.
Joe Kephart lives between the road's first two curves, which residents say are the most dangerous parts of Bent Mountain Road.
"It's going to be five years before they start. Some of the most acute problems could be taken care of" before then, Kephart says.
To straighten the curves, VDOT engineer Jeff Echols says, probably would mean working on half a mile of road even though that section might not be used in the future.
Kephart wonders why the county approves more development.
"Do you want to do that at the same time the state can't keep up with providing safe access? I'm disappointed in the county for allowing continued growth to put more traffic on that road."
VDOT engineers are leery of landslides, which plagued the last section widened, near Bridlewood and Coleman Road. Over the next few months, the engineers and geologists will be out testing the soil.
They did that with the last section that was widened, but then extended the road a few hundred feet to "make a better transition," Altizer, the district administrator, said. In that part of the road they didn't conduct tests and they ended up having slides.
For this next section, VDOT is looking at taking the road straight across the creek instead of following the existing road at the first bad curve. The road would cut across woodlands and residential property and proceed on the south side of the creek until somewhere around the Poage farm. There the road would be brought back to the north side.
"Had we not had that problem with slides," Altizer says, VDOT would not have looked at the other side of the creek seriously.
Three million dollars has been allocated for engineering and buying the right-of-way for the first phase. At some later date, VDOT plans to continue the four-lane expansion to the base of Bent Mountain.
"It's going to be one of the more difficult roadways to engineer an alignment through," Altizer says. "You've got existing development, you've got Back Creek, what is possibly unstable material."
by CNB