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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 20, 1995                   TAG: 9509200032
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

PLANS FOR U.S. 460 ARE RECONSIDERED

Meanwhile, the department has set a public information meeting and design public hearing for Alternative 3A, the U.S. 460 bypass connector. The information meeting will be held Oct. 25. The hearing is scheduled for Nov. 8. Both will run from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Blacksburg Holiday Inn.

The Transportation Department earlier announced an information meeting and hearing for the separate "smart" road project linking north Blacksburg with Interstate 81 near Shawsville. Those meetings will be held Oct. 5 and 18 at the same times and place.

The Peppers Ferry Road flyover was envisioned as the third part of an effort to relieve traffic pressure in the congested area between northern Christiansburg and Blacksburg. The first phase is Alternative 3A, the 5.3-mile bypass connector. The second is a nearly one-mile extension of the U.S. 460 bypass from Roanoke Street to Interstate 81 beside Falling Branch Elementary School.

The intersection of U.S. 460 and Peppers Ferry Road has borne increasingly heavy traffic since the construction of the New River Valley Mall and Marketplace shopping center in the late 1980s. The traffic flow is expected to get even heavier with the completion next year of a new Wal-Mart Supercenter across Peppers Ferry from the mall.

Planners looked at the flyover as a way to guide traffic from U.S. 460 to Peppers Ferry Road without relying on the traffic signals. But now engineers are not certain that plan, designed for the year 2015, is the way to go.

"We're looking at something to handle that intersection, but it may not be a flyover," said Dan Brugh, resident highway engineer for the department's Christiansburg office. Just building the bypass connector "will take a heck of a load off that intersection," Brugh said. Also, planners have said in the past that the smart road, designed to be completed over the course of a decade or longer, likewise will relieve the intersection's burden.