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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 10, 1995                   TAG: 9505100037
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHERE PAVEMENT MEANS PROGRESS

The two U.S. senators driving the proposal are Virginia's John Warner and North Carolina's Lauch Faircloth, both Republican members of a subcommittee that has written and approved a version of the next highway bill supposedly to reach President Clinton's desk by Oct. 1.

The two proposed highways are, to use their designations du jour, Interstates 73 and 74. The former, under the Warner-Faircloth plan, would run from Princeton, W.Va., to Greensboro, N.C., via Blacksburg, Roanoke and Martinsville. The latter would connect I-77 from just south of the Virginia-North Carolina border to Winston-Salem, N.C., and then extend to the new 73 south of Greensboro.

Which route is assigned which number is a trivial question - except as it might bear on funding priorities. And on that point, there's little question about the part most urgently needed: the stretch from Roanoke to Greensboro. The rest is of lower priority, and in some cases need not be built to strictest interstate standards.

Where construction of new roads can be reasonably avoided, it makes sense to do so. Thus, the current proposal appropriately has the new route in the Roanoke Valley travel not over Bent Mountain, but along I-581 to U.S. 220. Thus, too, the existing U.S. 460 in Giles County should qualify, with some upgrading here and there, for the I-73 stretch through the New River Valley. This scenic region is a low-priority part of the route - no sense in building an entirely new interstate corridor there.

The current U.S. 220, on the other hand, is inadequate for today's, let alone projected, traffic. The inadequacy already is hurting the economic well-being of industrial communities between Roanoke and Greensboro. Under the Warner-Faircloth plan, this leg of the proposed I-73 would swing between Greensboro and Winston-Salem, thereby providing the latter city with additional interstate-highway access even before I-74 is built.

But the Warner-Faircloth plan also preserves a larger vision, building on the region's existing highway system. The Roanoke-Greensboro leg of I-73 would create an interstate link between I-81 in the Roanoke area and I-40 and I-85 in the Greensboro area. This is needed because, increasingly, Western Virginia's economic fate is as connected to North Carolina's as to Eastern and Northern Virginia's.

Meanwhile, the Roanoke-Princeton leg, including the crucial "smart road" to Blacksburg, would improve connections not just between the New River and Roanoke valleys, but also to the existing I-77, and to the proposed I-73 north and west of the Princeton-Bluefield area, to Huntington, W.Va., and into Ohio and Michigan. And, while the proposed I-74 would be built only in North Carolina, the improved connection to Winston-Salem should also benefit Southwest Virginia localities along existing I-77.

It should because the essential economic-development value of a good interstate system lies not in the villages of fast-food restaurants and motels that pop up at new interchanges, but in the role of highways as arteries of trade and travel between centers of population and business.