Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 25, 1995 TAG: 9511260012
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
"My feeling is we really didn't have enough information to address this properly," Gorman said. "I really feel like it's a matter of fairness."
This week, the Board of Supervisors voted 4-3 against the state's proposed condemnation of 140 acres between Wilson and Den creeks for the right of way to the smart highway.
The vote constituted a reversal of at least seven previous Montgomery endorsements of the smart road since April 1989. It left Blacksburg, Roanoke and Virginia Tech smart-road supporters reeling and the highway's opponents cheering.
The vote was not binding on the state - it could still go ahead and condemn the land if it wanted - but it amounts to a major political blow to the $103 million project, which has been in the works for more than a decade.
Gorman, re-elected to a second term this month, said he will speak Monday with Dan Brugh, a local official of the Virginia Department of Transportation, and Ray Pethtel, interim director of Virginia Tech's Center for Transportation Research.
"If the highway department wants it brought back up and feels like they can provide additional information, I'd be willing to do that," Gorman said.
Gorman wouldn't say if he would cast a deciding vote back in favor of the smart highway. "I wouldn't make a guess now as to whether I'd change my mind," he said. "I'll have to wait and see."
By board rules, only a member who voted on the prevailing side of a question can bring it up for reconsideration, and it must be done by the next meeting after a decision.
That's scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Christiansburg. The meeting was set as a work session to discuss the revision of the county's comprehensive plan and other issues.
To bring the matter back to the table, Gorman needs at least three other supervisors to agree, something that supervisors Henry Jablonski, Larry Linkous and Ira Long presumably will do.
After this week's turnaround, Robert Martinez, the state transportation secretary, said planners would be preparing new cost estimates for upgrading the U.S. 460 bypass connector and extension project to handle projected traffic that otherwise would have used the smart highway. Those estimates are supposed to be completed as early as Monday morning.
Martinez said this week that, if the Montgomery board continued to oppose the smart highway after seeing the new figures, he would be inclined to kill the project. "I do not push projects which people locally do not want," he said.
That would be a political decision. Legally, if it wanted to, VDOT could condemn the land, then simply sit on it until Dec. 30, 1996, when the current designation of county Agricultural and Forestal District 7, the subject of this week's vote, expires, according to County Attorney Roy Thorpe. The 140 acres between Wilson and Den creeks then would be out of the district, and the supervisors' opposition would have no legal relevance.
The five-mile bypass connector and extension to Interstate 81, also known as Alternative 3A, was approved by the state in June 1990 and has long been the county's top transportation priority because it will relieve congestion around the New River Valley Mall area and open up to development a county-owned industrial park at Falling Branch Road beside I-81.
The six-mile smart road, which gained state approval in February 1992, is planned to link southern Blacksburg with I-81 about 21/2 miles north of Christiansburg exit 118. It's designed to take some of the burden off U.S. 460, to create a more "direct link" between Roanoke and Blacksburg and to serve as a laboratory for new vehicle and road technology, planners say.
Virginia has spent $2.2 million planning it so far and has committed $7 million in state money and $3 million in federal money to build the first installment, a two-mile, two-lane "test bed" that would run from Blacksburg to the Ellett Valley and would not be open to the public. It would cost another $17 million to build a bridge across the valley that would stretch more than one-third of a mile and stand 175 feet high.
The balance of the road, planners say, would be built over as long as 15 years.
by CNB