ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 8, 1995 TAG: 9512080075
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
Estimates of the economic impact of the "smart" road do not depend solely on Virginia Tech's participation in a national consortium developing a prototype of an automated highway system, a university official said this week.
Ray Pethtel, interim director of Tech's Center for Transportation Research, said the National Automated Highway System Consortium is only one of many possible sources of research funding for the smart road.
Pethtel reacted this week to a statement issued Tuesday by the Sierra Club New River Group, a longtime road opponent, and to an article examining the road's economic impact in Sunday's Roanoke Times.
In its statement, the Sierra Club New River Group charged that Virginia Tech "has consistently and deliberately misrepresented its relationship to the consortium in an attempt to bolster its fabricated claims of projected research funding and spinoff economic development that depend on the construction of the smart highway."
The forecasted economic benefit of the proposed 5.8-mile highway between Blacksburg and Interstate 81 was an issue in the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors' vote last month that would have blocked the state's condemnation of land for the road. The board later retracted that vote.
The issue likely will come up again next year, after the Montgomery board considers a list of questions for the state related to the condemnation at its 7 p.m. Monday meeting.
Pethtel said the Sierra Club's statement was a distortion by a special-interest group designed to vilify Virginia Tech, the center and the consortium. "I really think it's specious, and I think it is a ruse," Pethtel said. "The smart road is important to support the notion that there is a commitment in Virginia to develop this technology that goes right to the heart of economic development."
The Sierra Club statement cites a comment by consortium official Robert Meinert that Tech is not a major player in the group and has associate member status, which is available to anyone willing to sign a confidentiality statement in order to be put on a consortium mailing list.
Shireen Parsons, Sierra Club chairwoman, said that statement is enough to show the pattern of Tech's misrepresentations. "It's always the same implication," she said. "Never does it say 'We're on the mailing list, that's all we are.''' She said Tech inflated its role in the consortium early on, and never corrected the public record to note the university was only an associate member of the consortium, not a core participant.
Celeste Speier, a public affairs official with the consortium, said Wednesday that while the group has no plans to fund Virginia's smart-highway construction, it has looked at the university for some potential future studies.
"We're looking at it, and we haven't ruled anything out," Speier said. In response to the Sierra Club statement, the consortium issued its own statement on Tech's role. "We value Virginia Tech's input and expertise, as we do all other [National Automated Highway System Consortium] associate participants. All ... have an equal voice in program management oversight ... and participate in the consortium technically and strategically," it read in part.
Parsons sent the statement out this week to announce that the New River Valley Environmental Coalition and the national Sierra Club have joined the New River Valley Greens in a federal lawsuit challenging the environmental planning for the smart highway. The groups also have retained a lawyer for the amended suit, which was filed Nov. 15 without counsel.
Pethtel, Tech's chief smart-road advocate for the past 20 months, said he has consistently described Tech as an associate member in the consortium.
"If anybody is trying to mislead or put out misleading information, it's the opposition to this project," he said.
Pethtel, reacting to The Roanoke Times' Sunday article, said it is out of context to link his economic forecasts of $100 million in direct smart-road research for Tech and private industry and $300 million in long-term spinoff economic development for the region to the small amount of money Tech has received to prepare a concept paper for the consortium - $47,400, matched with $28,600 from Tech and the state.
He said Tech has current commitments of $3.2 million in research related to the smart road.
"The leap is not from $48,000 to $100 million," Pethtel said. "It's from [$3.2 million] and a number of industrial commitments to $100 million."
That $3.2 million breaks down into several projects that are under way now and set for the next two years: $1.4 million from the federal government to develop intelligent transportation system technology with the smart road; $1.49 million related to Tech's role as a research center for this technology; $30,000 to develop a scale-model testing system; $76,000 to develop the concept paper for the consortium (including the $47,400); $64,158 from a confidential private industry; and $132,272 from AT&T to develop a sensor that would be used in the smart road. The university also has a commitment from Atlantic Research to share the cost of developing the deck for the proposed bridge across Ellett Valley, he said.
Projected research commitments through 1997 total $7.3 million, including the $3.2 million in current research, he said. The center's annual budget is $3 million.
Pethtel this week compiled and released a detailed chronology of Tech's role in the consortium in response to questions from The Roanoke Times.
Part of the equation, in both Pethtel's comments and in the Sierra Club's allegations, has to do with the divide between perception and reality, and the way Virginia Tech's role in the consortium evolved and was portrayed from early 1994 to the present.
Beginning in January 1994, Tech officials spoke of the university's major stake in the consortium, which was then competing for a $160 million federal grant (matched with $40 million in private-sector money) to develop a prototype of the new "hands-off, feet-off" auto and road technology. When the consortium won the grant in early October 1994, the then-director of the Tech transportation center said he expected it to spur construction of the first two miles of the smart road. "There is a very big role for us," Antoine Hobeika said in an Oct. 8, 1994, news article. "This is a big thing for Southwest Virginia."
The next week, Pethtel spoke before the Greater Blacksburg Chamber of Commerce on Tech's role in the consortium and on the economic benefits of the smart road. He told the chamber that Tech's share of the consortium funds should range from $15 million to $20 million over the next five years, according to an Oct. 12, 1994, Roanoke Times article.
That figure was repeated in three more news articles and an editorial in October and December of 1994.
Pethtel said Tuesday, as he did in late 1994, that the university initially had been interested in becoming a "core participant" of the consortium. Tech and Virginia hoped to leverage $15 million or more from the consortium based on matching it with $10 million from the state and nearly $6 million from the federal government to develop the first two miles of the smart highway, he said.
But within the consortium's first six months, Tech decided to remain an associate member after the group adopted rules that prohibited core participants from competing for 35 percent of research contracts, or roughly $55 million, Pethtel said.
That decision - which was not publicly announced - followed meetings between Tech, VDOT and consortium officials in Richmond on Jan. 31 and in a visit to the university on Feb. 27, according to documents supplied by Pethtel. The university remains an associate participant but intends to compete for research funding involving future demonstration projects, he said.
"The associate role is a significant role," Pethtel said. "We take our role in the consortium very seriously."
The nine core participants include Bechtel Corp., Caltrans (the California Department of Transportation), Carnegie Mellon University, Delco Electronics, General Motors, Hughes Aircraft, Lockheed Martin, Parsons Brinckerhoff and the University of California Partnership for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH) project.
General Motors helped organize the consortium in 1994 but is an equal partner now and no longer considered the group's leader, Speier said.
LENGTH: Long : 144 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Pethtel.by CNB