Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 12, 1994 TAG: 9410120077
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL STOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Remember the last time you were driving on Interstate 81, cruise control set at 65 mph, and a tractor-trailer suddenly cut you off, forcing you to slam on the brakes and drop to 50?
In less than five years, you might not have to worry about touching the brakes, says Virginia Tech transportation guru Ray Pethtel. Computer sensors will detect the 18-wheeler and automatically slow the car.
It's called adaptive cruise control, and it's one of Pethtel's favorite examples of "smart" technology to be available in the near future.
Pethtel, former state commissioner of transportation and now a transportation fellow at Virginia Tech, was the featured speaker Tuesday at the October luncheon of the Greater Blacksburg Chamber of Commerce.
His primary topic was Virginia Tech's role in a $200 million consortium - primarily financed with a $150 million federal grant and headed by General Motors Corp. - that will work to develop the highways of the 21st century.
It has been less than a week since U.S. Transportation Secretary Federico Pena announced that the GM-led consortium won the grant, and Virginia Tech already has improved its standing with the group.
Originally, Tech was included as an associate member of the consortium, a step below the nine principal partners - GM, Delco Electronics, Caltrans, Bechtel, Parsons Brinkerhoff, Hughes Aircraft, California's Department of Transportation, Carnegie Mellon University and Martin Marietta.
But Pethtel said Tuesday that GM executives told him that the consortium's nine members had voted to include Tech as a principal member.
"We expect to be included in all of the consortium activities," he said.
Pethtel said he expects Tech's share of the consortium funds to range between $15 million and $20 million over the next five years.
Along with millions of federal dollars, the consortium award brings with it a promise from Gov. George Allen to build the first two miles of the "smart" road, designed to link Blacksburg to Interstate 81.
Allen, who wrote to GM CEO Jack Smith saying the road could be used as a test bed for the consortium's research, was in Blacksburg on Tuesday to be briefed on the project.
Allen said the first two miles of the road - estimated to cost $10.1 million - would be financed from the state's general road fund.
That's a shift from previous administrations, which supported the proposed six-mile link from Blacksburg to the interstate but said it should be paid for from nontraditional sources like state bonds.
But Allen said the road is an important economic development tool that shouldn't be kept on the back burner.
"This is a priority," he said. "This is just a tremendous opportunity for Virginia."
Allen, however, stressed that funding for a proposed U.S. 460 bypass from Christiansburg to Blacksburg won't be delayed because of the smart road.
Pethtel said construction on the first two-lane, two-mile segment of the smart road likely will begin in late 1996. State crews have started surveying the route, and acquisition of right of way will begin next summer.
The road will start at U.S. 460 in Blacksburg and stretch about 1.7 miles into the Ellett Valley. That section will end near Virginia 723 at Wilsons Creek.
A bridge about 900 feet long will be needed to span the valley at that point, and Pethtel said he hopes to secure a defense-conversion grant to help pay for its construction. The bridge would have built-in sensors that would detect deterioration, allowing maintenance to be done in a timely manner without abruptly shutting down the span.
Pethtel told the chamber that he's confident that the smart road eventually will be a four-lane highway that will tie into I-81 south of Ironto. By the year 2015, he estimates, it will handle 20,000 vehicles a day.
The Tech transportation expert said Southwest Virginia could attract more than $300 million in the next two decades in intelligent-highway system research money.
"We think that's a conservative estimate," he said.
Pethtel has been pushing the smart road since he took over as transportation commissioner in 1986. Shireen Parsons, president of the New River Valley Sierra Club, has been opposing it for nearly as long.
She hasn't given up.
Parsons said she was encouraged by an environmental victory last month when Walt Disney Co. canceled plans for a theme park in Northern Virginia.
"That kind of success is energizing," she said. "It's harder and harder for people to swallow these projects. People have reached a point where they are saying enough is enough."
Pethtel doesn't buy it. He continues to gaze into the next century to the age of magnetic levitation, or "mag lev," as he calls it.
Just like Luke Skywalker's land cruiser in the "Star Wars" movies, that technology would allow interstate travelers to hook onto mag lev rail that will use magnetic fields to lift vehicles a few inches off the road and then jet them away at speeds up to 300 mph.
"You can take your foot off the gas, your hands off the wheel and your mind off driving," Pethtel said. "That's the transportation of the future. That's our target."
by CNB