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

DATE: SUNDAY, March 5, 1995                   TAG: 9503070006
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER NOTE: Information from charts at end of
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

HARDY ROAD

And in recent years, it's become one of the most frequently traveled roads in the region. As more and more people have moved into western Bedford and Franklin counties, the road has grown into a sort of commuter thrill ride each morning and afternoon.

Hardy Road's also a popular route to the lake. On summer weekends, residents say, traffic is so heavy, you're lucky if you can get out of your driveway.

Hardest hit by the dangerous road are the residents of Hardy, a rural community that straddles the Bedford-Franklin county line. They've been trying for years to get improvements to the road with only minor success. And the longer state and local governments wait to fix Hardy Road, it only gets worse, they say.

Here's the story in the own words of people who live with Hardy Road every day:

Robert Amos:

The owner of Hardy Service Station and Garage in Franklin County, Amos figures he's towed about a third of the cars, trucks and trailers that have run off Hardy Road's curves in the last 40 years. And that's kept him pretty busy.

Sitting across from his service station in a field are recent monuments to Hardy Road's notoriety: a red sports car that wrecked on a sharp curve and a boat trailer that fell off a bridge.

"People are just running too fast for the condition of the road. The speed limit's 35 but everybody goes 55 or 60," Amos says, pausing from working on a car driveshaft. Behind him, cars zoom by.

"On the average, in very five minutes, there's a car coming from each direction. That's how busy it is."

He looks at his wife and says, "We've been married 30 years now. They've been talking about redoing this road ever since then."

Jimmy and Bobby Kesler:

These two dairy farming brothers from Franklin County are also members of the Hardy Rescue Squad, the volunteer group that works most of the accidents on Hardy Road. Their farm is on a long hilly curve in Virginia 634.

"We generally average one [rescue] a week" on Hardy Road, said Jimmy Kessler. "There's lots of traffic here, especially during work hours. It used to be there wasn't too much rescue work to do in the middle of the day.

"Now there's almost as much to do then as there is on the weekends."

Bobby Kesler said, "It definitely needs work. It's a mess. If they'd just widen the shoulders or do a little bit a time . . ."

Sometimes the cars go so fast past the farm that they can't drive their tractors on the road. And when they do, the cars pass right by them, even though there's a double yellow line indicating no passing.

"They'll pass two and three cars at a time" on the curvy road, he said.

Not long ago, Jimmy's son, Donald, was driving a trcator on Hardy Road and made a left-hand turn signal. A truck tried to pass him but came back too soon and side-swiped the tractor, wrecking it. Donald wasn't hurt.

"We've talked to our [county] supervisor" about repairing the road, Bobby Kesler said, "But they're not sure when anything's going to be done."

Doug Beatty

Hardy Road is the nail in Doug Beatty's tire. The hair in his soup. The rain on his parade. And there's nothing the Virginia Department of Transportation resident engineer for Franklin County can do about it right now.

"It's almost an intolerable situation," he said. "We're constantly bombarded with complaints about it. The alignment of the road is just not suitable for the traffic it's carrying."

To upgrade the road would cost almost $1 million. The annual budget for road improvements in Franklin County is $1.25 million. But just keeping up with maintenance eats most of that.

"The more traffic we get, the more maintenance dollars we have to spend," Beatty said. "The more you use it the more you wear it out.

"With $1.25 million a year to cover new construction, you don't build that much that quick."

Instead, he's forced to watch the road get worse as his department tries to skim from its budget each year to pay for the improvements.

Rufus and Hazel Underwood:

"We have to call the life-saving crew an awful lot," said Hazel Underwood from the deck of her lakefront retirement home on Hardy Road in Franklin County.

Looking down the hill from her house, you can see the Lynville Bridge, a narrow concrete structure that crosses Smith Mountain Lake at the bottom of two hills in the middle of an "S" curve. It's the worst accident spot on Hardy Road.

And in the 21 years the Underwoods have lived there, they've seen a lot of wrecks.

"They keep this guardrail torn up all the time. We've seen two trucks go in the lake over the last couple months. One was loaded with steel. You couldn't even see it."

Her husband Rufus said, "We hear a lot of brakes, especially at night. A lot of people don't realize the curve is elevated. They hit it too fast and they just lose it. They'll wake you up at all times of the night."

"You can hear them when they hit the guardrail at night," Hazel Underwood agreed.

"Traffic has increased," she said. "Each year we see more and more and more. There's so many people who work [in Roanoke] who live on this end of the lake that it's just like an interstate in the mornings and evenings.

"It's ridiculous that we've lived here as long as we have and nobody's done anything about it. The whole Hardy Road needs to be widened.

"We've thought about getting up a petition but I wonder if that would do anything."

The Underwoods live on the side of a hill below Hardy Road. The shoulder of the road hangs just above their roof.

"All we have to protect us is a guardrail," Hazel said. "We're just lucky nothing's come on top of us so far."

Arlene Richards

The owner of a general store on Hardy Road in Bedford County, Richards has lived on Hardy Road for more than 30 years. Her old house is right across the road from her new home and the store.

In the middle of a curve, cars routinely ran off the road and turned over in the yard of her former house. Once, more than 20 years ago, a car ran off the road and hit the porch of her house, killing everyone in the car.

"We were out at the lake," she recalled, sitting behind the store counter in sight of her husband's framed autographed pictures of western film heroes. "We came back home and there was glass and metal and bodies in the yard."

There wasn't a rescue squad then. But while medical response has gotten better on Hardy Road, the road's worse than ever.

"We had nine wrecks in front of the store here this summer. Right here in front of the store in the morning, it's like a racetrack.

"Since the lake opened up, it's gotten really bad. It seems like one person dies out here every year."

Nevertheless, she has mixed emotions about the impending improvements of the road in Bedford County. Her store sits close to the roadfront; its gas pumps are just out front. She doesn't know if the store will have to be moved or destroyed if the road is widened. So far, the surveyors haven't told her anything.

"I hate to see them widen it and take away my store. It's the only way I have to make a living."

Steve Moorman/Dan Booth/Hardy Post Office

Steve Moorman of Bedford County is the mail carrier for Hardy Road. It's a job his father held before him until he retired in 1988.

It's also a job that entails more danger than barking dogs or braving dark of night, rain, cold or sleet.

"You keep your flashers on and you stay prepared for something that might happen. There's times when people come right up on you, tailgating all the way. They'll be behind you in a blind spot and they'll lock their brakes. They'll pass you on the double line and everything else."

Moorman drives his blue mail truck up and down Hardy Road, stopping on the shoulders, sometimes parking ditches, keeping one eye on his rear view mirror as he parks in the middle of curves and just over the top of steep curvy hills, where other drivers can't see him as they approach.

On one particularly dangerous curve just down the road from the post office, he puts letters and magazines in a row of shiny new mailboxes. A car took out all the old mailboxes when it braked to avoid a school bus that was stopped in the curve.

Dan Booth, the postmaster, said, "There's not a day that doesn't go by that people traveling to work don't go over the [yellow] line" because the road's so narrow. "I've been put over in the ditch several times. Luckily nobody's gotten hurt.

"They're coming too fast up this road. There's been three accidents in front of the post office this year. People don't pay attention to what people trying to turn into the post office and they either rear end them or there's near-misses."

He points to the cars speeding down the road, obviously faster than the 35 mile-per-hour speed limit signs visible nearby. "How many law enforcement officers have you seen? You don't see them very often out here. That's the problem. It's seldom that we see Bedford County [sheriff's deputies] down here."

Warren Moorman/Hardy Civic Action League

"We always consider ourselves the lost end of Bedford County", says retired postal carrier and Hardy native Warren Moorman. Blame geography: Hardy is almost 25 miles from the county seat of government in Bedford, and the main road - Hardy Road - leads toward Roanoke or Rocky Mount, instead.

Because of that, it's been easy for government officials to forget Hardy exists, he said. That's why he and several Hardy residents formed the Hardy Civic Action League.

For more than 10 years, Hardy Road was a low priority on the Board of Supervisors' long-range road improvements plan.

Residents fed up with the accident-ridden road organized the league in 1991 and demanded action. Through meetings with the Board and the transportation department engineers, the group was able to lower the speed limit on Hardy Road from 55 miles per hour to 45 miles per hour.

But that didn't do enough. The cars kept coming, at unsafe speeds.

"When I started at the post office in 1960, we had maybe 1,600 patrons. When I retired in 1988, the post office was serving 5,000.

"The traffic is just like a train in the mornings and evenings."

Last fall, when the Board of Supervisors held a public hearing on road improvements, the Hardy group packed the house. The board listened and moved Hardy Road up the priority list for repairs. This fall, Department of Transportation workers started surveying for improvements to be completed within the next three years.

Moorman said, "We were the heaviest traveled secondary road in the county. There wasn't any question that we needed road improvements.

"I've lived in this house since 1956 and I don't think this road has had any major reconstruction since 1957.

Dale Wheeler, Bedford County Supervisor

Dale Wheeler, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors, entered politics in 1990 because of Hardy Road.

"It's been on the six-year plan forever," said, Wheeler, who was a founding member of the Hardy Civic Action League. "Every bit of this had to be fought for.

"The curve at 634 and 635 was not fixed when there was wreck after wreck after wreck. The Hardy Civic Action League worked their fingers to the bone to do something about it."

TRAFFIC ON HARDY ROAD HAS GROWN

IN BEDFORD COUNTY

Average Daily Traffic:

1986: 4,600 vehicles

1992: 5,100 vehicles

IN FRANKLIN COUNTY

Average Daily Traffic:

1983: 1,783 vehicles

1985: 2,374 vehicles

1993: 3,088 vehicles

AHEAD

BEDFORD COUNTY:

When: Spring/Summer 1997

Where: 1.5 miles from Virginia 635 to Virginia 633.

What: Widening.

Cost: $1.1 million

ROADWORK AHEAD

FRANKLIN COUNTY:

When: 1996/1997

Where: From Va. 804 to Va. 676.

What: Widening.

Cost: $278,000

ROADWORK AHEAD

FRANKLIN COUNTY

When: 1999/2000

Where: Va. 634 from Va. 676 to Va. 635.

What: Widening.

Cost: $343,000.

Hardy Road isn't the only country roads outside Roanoke that's now carrying suburban-style traffic. Here are some examples of how traffic loads have increased - and construction to accomodate it is underway.

BEDFORD COUNTY:

JORDANTOWN ROAD (Virginia 619)

When: Spring 1998

Where:1.9 mile segment from Virginia 24 to Bore Auger Creek, one mile north of Virginia 700. What: Smoothing and straighening.

Cost: $1 million

Average Daily Traffic:

1986: 1,300 vehicles

1992: 2,000 vehicles

GOODVIEW ROAD (Virginia 653)

When: Spring 1999

Where: 1.5 mile segment from Virginia 757 to Virginia 655.

What: Widening.,

Cost: $750,000

Average Daily Traffic:

1986: 381 vehicles

1992: 1,200 vehicles

BOTETOURT COUNTY:

SANDERSON DRIVE (Virginia 605)

When: Finished Summer 1994

What: Widening.

Cost: $2 million.

Average Daily Traffic:

1986: 1,300 vehicles

1994: 3,000 vehicles

Virginia 654

When: To be finished Dec. 1994/Jan. 1995

Where: From U.S. 11 to U.S. 220.

What: Two-lane road will be widened and turn lanes will be added.

Cost: $4 million

Average Daily Traffic:

1986: 3,100 vehicles

1994: 4,000 vehicles

COUNTRY CLUB ROAD (Virginia 665)

to be added to six-year plan

Construction: Narrow two-lane road will be widened and slant of road will be improved.

Cost: $5.5 million

Average Daily Traffic:

1986: 900 vehicles

1994: 1,200 vehicles

FRANKLIN COUNTY:

JETERS CREEK BRIDGE (Virginia 676)

1997/1998

Construction: Will replace one-lane bridge with two-lane bridge and will add 1/2 mile of standard road-width approaches to the bridge.

Cost: $930,000

Average Daily Traffic:

1983: 1,026 vehicles

1985: 1,459 vehicles

1993: 1,640 vehicles