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

DATE: TUESDAY, April 26, 1994                   TAG: 9404260129
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RAY REED
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

INCENTIVES HELP WORK GO FASTER

M.P., Roanoke A: A couple of factors have to be considered.

California has more electoral votes (54) than Roanoke (0), so it gets federal dollars a lot faster.

More seriously, though, the Santa Monica Freeway carried 300,000 commuters per day even before the Jan.17 quake.

If transportation is the backbone of our economy, that freeway is Southern California's spinal cord.

Financial incentives on the freeway job spurred a contractor to finish in half the allotted time of 21/2 months. With a bonus of $200,000 for each day he was early, the contractor doubled his money and received almost $30 million.

The Virginia Department of Transportation says quick work could be done here, too, if the urgency and incentives existed.

Hurry-up jobs cost more, but emergencies call for them. Radford's Memorial Bridge across the New River will get priority treatment; it was abruptly closed last week because of rusty beams.

That project's preliminary time frame was between two weeks and two months, but transportation officials hoped to have a new estimate today.

The Fifth Street Bridge is an inconvenience to about 10,000 drivers a day who used it before last August's closing. We can take other bridges or railroad grade crossings, though it's annoying when we momentarily forget Fifth Street's status.

For what it's worth, the Fifth Street Bridge is slightly ahead of schedule for a July 30 completion, the Transportation Department says.

Alcohol vs. tobacco

Q: There has been much in the newspaper recently about smoking-related deaths and about nicotine's possibly being classified as a habit-forming drug. Why doesn't the government consider alcohol as dangerous as nicotine? What is the percentage of alcohol-related deaths compared with smoking-related deaths?|

L.W., Roanoke A: Tobacco is easier to target because almost 40 years of research have produced clear data about its health effects.

The toll looks like this: Each year, 420,000 people die from smoking, or the respiratory and cardiovascular diseases it causes.

Alcohol was blamed for 108,458 deaths in 1989, the most recent data available.

It's hard to get a handle on alcohol deaths. Alcohol's direct results are cirrhosis and various kinds of alcohol poisoning, which added up to 18,704 deaths in '89. The greater number of alcohol-related deaths are from homicides and accidents, such as wrecks and fires.

Alcohol's toll on the living is even harder to quantify. Lost jobs and broken families are not reflected here.

Got a question about something that might affect other people too? Something you've come across and wondered about? Give us a call at 981-3118. Maybe we can find the answer.