Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504220015
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Greenways, you may recall, are narrow strips of open space, usually following natural or manmade corridors such as rivers, ridgetops or roadways. They can serve any number of uses, from biking and walking trails to flood-plain protection, from natural buffers to paths linking neighborhoods and parks.
Prodded by a handful of persuasive enthusiasts, local governments in recent months have joined a study of greenway feasibility in the valley. The city of Roanoke, Roanoke County, Salem and Vinton all have endorsed the concept, and have established a committee to work with the Fifth Planning District Commission to come up with a plan.
Great first step. A task force of planners and citizens from all the localities, working on a regional endeavor, represents in itself an advance in cooperation worth celebrating. The planning commission's study originally was to have inventoried open space; now, with the new charge from local governments, it will focus on opportunities for greenway development.
Yet the question remains: What will come of the effort?
The committee's ambitious agenda calls for public meetings, and a preliminary plan for valley greenways as early as the end of summer. Unfortunately, the planning commission is politically weak - and plans have been produced before, with little effect.
Whether today's hopes become tomorrow's facts on the ground will depend in part on citizens' ability to get their governments sufficiently excited and committed. Right now, they are neither. If they were:
Salem and Vinton would have moved more quickly to appoint citizen-members to the planning commission's task force. (The committee has had to start meeting without them.)
More important, the city of Roanoke would not have made the potentially serious and costly error of failing to commission an analysis of greenway-feasibility as part of engineering plans for a new sewer line along the Roanoke River.
Along the river is a natural place for a trail. If the river bank is to be torn up anyway, doesn't it make sense at least to consider the greenway option in the design process - instead of retroactively, when it will cost more? City Manager Bob Herbert and his public-works director should move even now to add a trail component to the engineering study.
Ultimately, the only way to get local governments moving is to develop a regional coalition promoting greenways and seeking additional sources of support. The potential public interest is there. Recent Roanoke County "visioning" sessions, for example, have featured calls for greenways as a quality-of-life enhancement.
The germ of an organization is present, too, in the volunteer group Valley Beautiful, and among the handful of activists who've successfully lobbied the valley's elected officials. It will help to start with small, readily achievable actions, like converting Wiley Drive to one-way traffic and adding a biking and walking lane, or opening the old, now chained-off back road up Mill Mountain.
Budding enthusiasm will have to blossom into something approaching a civic movement, though, if it is to overcome official resistance and traditional inertia and, eventually, spread greenways across the valley.
by CNB