Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 11, 1994 TAG: 9405110055
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Our life is frittered away by detail," wrote Thoreau. "Simplify, simplify."
The idea, whose backers include 6th District Rep. Robert Goodlatte and 5th District Rep. L. F. Payne, is simplicity itself: Hook the New River and Roanoke valleys into a northwest-southeast interstate to complement the existing northeast-southwest Interstate 81. Among other benefits, it could incorporate two pre-existing high-priority projects - upgrading the Roanoke-Greensboro stretch of U.S. 220 to interstate or near-interstate standards and building a "smart road" as a more direct link between Roanoke and Blacksburg.
Details, however, are sketchy - as they must be for a project still at least 10 years from completion and probably longer - on such things as exact routes and the precise level of standards to which the highway would be built.
As one consequence, it's easy to read into the plans more specifics than exist, and then to assume a worst-case-scenario. Critics are right in thinking the details are important. But much of the criticism will almost certainly prove irrelevant to the final product, whatever it may be: No highway can cut through everybody's back yard.
Amid the murk, a few points of illuminating detail are visible:
If West Virginia builds its I-73 segment at less than full interstate standards - at the standards of, say, the Roy Webber Expressway in Roanoke rather than of I-581, which connects I-81 to the expressway - pressure is eased on Virginia to route I-73 away from the existing U.S. 460 roadbed through Giles County. That would be a good thing. This stretch is the lowest-priority part of the proposed I-73 through Virginia. U.S. 460 already is a four-lane divided highway. Improving it should suffice, and would do considerably less damage to the county's natural beauty than would building a new, separate interstate.
The value of the proposed Roanoke-Blacksburg smart road would be enhanced if it were part of the proposed interstate. The smart-road project stands on its own as a threefold economic-development tool: a major research project for Virginia Tech, a locus for new jobs in a high-tech growth industry, and an infrastructure improvement to bring a city and university and their common region closer together. Using it also for I-73 provides a funding mechanism for something that should be built anyway.
Constructing a better road between the Roanoke Valley and the North Carolina Triad, via the industrial Martinsville-Henry County area, is important for a number of reasons. One, often mentioned, is the inadequacy of existing U.S. 220 to Greensboro for handling current traffic, let alone future demands. Less mentioned is the importance of an I-73 leg south of Roanoke as an interstate connector between existing interstate highways in the Triad region and I-81 in the Roanoke Valley, and from there to the Northeast.
Those kinds of linkages should be the goal of interstate-highway construction. Ninth District Rep. Rick Boucher's proposal for a four-lane highway meandering through low-population Carroll, Wythe and Pulaski counties - all of which are currently served by interstate highways - is a diversion.
Until the legislative language is made more specific, and engineering studies are funded, many details will remain unresolved. One unresolved but critical detail: how and where to connect the smart-road leg to the south leg toward the Triad.
It would be a shame, though, to fritter away the general I-73 proposal amid opposition to speculative specifics. Pinning down a few details - getting firmer assurance, for example, that I-73 won't require a second major highway corridor through Giles County - could allay some of the doubters' worst fears. And that might simplify getting I-73 routed through the New River and Roanoke valleys.
by CNB