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

DATE: MONDAY, October 3, 1994                   TAG: 9410040012
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TRAILS TO A HAPPIER ROANOKE VALLEY

GREENWAYS are an idea whose time has come to the Roanoke Valley. Actually, the idea has visited before, but was never invited to stay and flourish. It ought to be welcomed now.

Now would be nice, in part, because an opportunity might otherwise be missed. New sewer lines are to be installed along the Roanoke River. The feasibility of stretching a biking and walking trail above the buried sewer line, along the river, needs to be studied now.

Now would be good, more generally, because greenways would wonderfully enhance a quality of life that is, in this valley, rightly prized but dangerously taken for granted.

Greenways, so everyone knows what we mean, are corridors of open space protected and managed for conservation, recreation and transportation. They usually follow natural or existing linear features, such as stream valleys, waterfronts, old railroads, ridgelines or roads.

They can serve various purposes, often in combination - walking, jogging, biking, buffer, flood control, wildlife-migration. But their essential purpose is to connect. They connect places and people, communities and countryside.

For a community already connected to mountains, streams, the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Appalachian Trail, greenways would seem a natural.

Some Roanokers have talked up an art-walk or linear park along the railroad between the Hotel Roanoke and the transportation museum. An excellent notion, but why stop there?

Imagine a greenway extending from the City Market area through Elmwood Park, past the hospitals - with a spur up Mill Mountain and to the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the main trail running along the river to Explore Park. That's the vision of a small band of local enthusiasts. It is a great idea.

And hardly radical. Wiley Drive and Wasena Park can be considered a greenway. A Roanoke River plan done for the city five years ago included riverside trails. The Fifth Planning District Commission in 1975 proposed bikeways connecting Roanoke, Salem, Vinton and Roanoke County. (The commission is doing an open-space study now for the valley that's likely to feature a similar blueprint.)

Meanwhile, the national rails-to-trails movement has hit the New River Valley in a big way, with abandoned rail corridors converted into bike trails. Cities across the nation are realizing the potential of formerly neglected waterways. And greenways have sprouted not just in places like the Portlands, Maine and Oregon, but also in Chattanooga, Knoxville and Raleigh. Their experience offers lessons - and clear evidence of benefits - for greenway development here.

Cost is a problem. But cost only rises with time. And money can be found if someone goes after it. Other localities, for example, have used federal funds under the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991.

Practical and engineering difficulties loom. But, if regarded as challenges rather than barriers, they can be gotten around. In Chattanooga, cantilevered boardwalks were extended over riverbanks to link disparate segments of its greenway.

Developing trail systems will take time. But so what? Raleigh, N.C., one of the South's most advanced cities in terms of greenways, took 18 years to develop 35 miles of trails.

Let's get started. The first step: Form a coalition prepared to organize support for the idea.

by CNB