Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 11, 1994 TAG: 9412120019
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Virginia Tech.
While other public meetings sparked plenty of interest, the Tech briefing revealed the intense hopes for the projects held by the transportation and business gurus within the state's largest university.
Following the briefing, Dan Brugh, a Virginia Department of Transportation resident engineer, and a consultant hired to design the bypass connector fielded questions.
One of the first was, "How do you get to Ramble Road?"
For a moment, as the consultant fumbled through a flip chart of designs, University Transportation Fellow Ray Pethtel worried aloud that a driver wouldn't be able to access the road that leads to Tech's Corporate Research Center, home to dozens of high-tech research outfits and commercial projects that have spun off from university-oriented research work.
However, the designs for the Blacksburg interchange - where the smart road and bypass connector intersect in a spaghetti-like configuration of on- and off-ramps and existing roads - provide for access to and from the center, as the consultant eventually pointed out.
Satisfied, Pethtel, a former state Transportation Department commissioner whom Tech hired to lobby for the smart road and other transportation-related projects, later asked, "Where are we going to put up the Virginia Tech signs ... big multicolored ones?"
The question was asked somewhat in jest, but it told much.
Tech's people persuaded Gov. George Allen earlier this year to pledge money to build two miles of the smart road for use as a test bed for experiments. But the school had to be admitted into a consortium of companies that was vying for a $150 million federal grant for "smart" car research. Before Allen's decision, the state had not said how the road would be built, but that it would be funded by nontraditional sources such as state bonds.
Now that Tech has been admitted and the General Motors-led consortium has won the grant, the test bed - which will be inaccessible to the public - will be paid for with money from the Transportation Department's Salem District funds, Brugh said. At least $10 million is earmarked for the project. No one knows how the remainder of the road will be built.
Tech's Center for Transportation Research stands to have $12 million to $15 million in research money funneled into it once it begins receiving funds through the consortium.
So it's easy to see the impetus for Tech's lobbying efforts, which have gone on in public and behind the scenes.
Last month, the Transportation Department announced it was forming a citizens' advisory committee to help "with the goal of helping us develop smart-road plans which are environmentally responsible," Brugh said then.
Brugh maintains that the committee idea was his. But four days before the announcement was made, Tech's No.1 public relations man, Larry Hincker, e-mailed a memo to Greg Brown, dean of the school's College of Forestry, asking for his help in finding "reasonable people" to serve on the committee.
"At my request and suggestion, VDOT will be forming a citizens' advisory group for the project," Hincker wrote Brown.
"There is a small, but vocal contingent of opponents to the [smart road] project," and many of them are professors or students from the College of Forestry, Hincker told Brown.
"We sincerely want those people to participate in this process. However, we also want reasonable people - folks who understand compromise," Hincker continued. "From my standpoint, I would like to ensure that we surface a few of those reasonable people I mentioned earlier. Think you might be able to help?"
Hincker said this week, "That's the kind of thing that has to be done in this environment. ... I was trying to get a message to the people who might be interested. What I didn't want people to think is it was just another whitewash committee set up by VDOT."
He said he had suggested forming the committee two years ago, when Pethtel still was the transportation commissioner, and he expressed concern that the memo was being used to make the university look bad. The message was sent to the Roanoke Times & World-News anonymously.
Hincker denied, however, that he was trying to pack the committee.
"I mean, I haven't signed up for it," he said. "It's quite obvious where I'm coming from."
Brugh reacted last week by saying that the idea of forming the committee was his from the start. He thought of it "a long time ago," he said.
Hincker had suggested forming a group with some Tech people on it, but "I refused to go with that," Brugh said.
"There's probably two different objectives in mind. Mine is citizen input," said Brugh. No elected officials or Tech administrators will serve on the committee, although there may be some members who attend the university or teach there. Its meetings will be open to the public, and with 40 to 50 people having asked to serve on it, "it's going to be difficult to whittle it down to 15," he said.
Brugh said that the committee will be announced this week.
At the briefings last week, flip charts used by the Transportation Department's consultant company, Richmond's Rust Environment and Infrastructure, noted three topics: the bypass connector, the bypass extension and the smart road.
Beside the smart road title, a red "VT" was placed.
And at the public meeting Wednesday, a video touting the smart road was played over and over. The video had been developed by Pethtel's office the day before.
The video says the smart road begins at Tech, a statement which is technically wrong, Pethtel admitted, although "philosophically," that's the truth, he said.
Tech's handiwork in moving the smart road forward shows up in other ways.
Two years ago, Hincker wrote a letter to the editor of the Roanoke Times & World-News, detailing why the public should support both the smart road and the bypass connector, also know as Alternative 3A.
This past January, Tech President Paul Torgersen wrote R.C. Lockwood, VDOT's transportation planning division administrator in Richmond. The letter expressed the university's support for routing Interstate 73, a proposed highway to run from Detroit to Charleston, S.C., through the U.S. 460 and smart road corridor.
Torgersen, however, qualified his support.
"Smart road funding should not be made dependent upon its designation as a segment of I-73," he wrote. Invoking Tech's role as a major employer in the New River Valley, he said funding "is urgently needed in order to attract firms interested in performing IVHS-related research on the test bed, and thus enhance economic activity in our region.
"We would not support I-73 designation for the smart road if it would delay funding and/or construction in any way."
by CNB