ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 10, 1995 TAG: 9512110016
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: Guest Column
SOURCE: ROBIN BOUCHER
As a founding member of the Informed Citizens' Action Network (ICAN), I would like to state our group's philosophy in response to Keith Furr's Nov. 19 letter in the New River Current.
ICAN has never made a BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) statement. On the contrary, we have always suggested reasonable alternatives. In only one case did this involve a "no-action alternative" - Appalachian Power Co.'s proposal to build a 785 kv power line.
As for Interstate 73, we have always supported the Virginia Department of Transportation's primary recommendation to route I-73 through Virginia along Interstate 77. It was the Commonwealth Transportation Board, headed by Transportation Secretary Robert Martinez, which chose the U.S. 460-220 corridor over the department's I-77 recommendation.
Martinez espoused the same rhetoric as Furr: "I-73 through Pearisburg, Blacksburg and Roanoke will dramatically improve access to the markets of the Midwest and dynamic North Carolina." Perhaps these gentlemen need a lesson in map reading. Interstate 81 (and to a lesser extent I-77 and lnterstate 64) provides access to the Midwest and the Carolinas to this region. We are surrounded by major interstates.
ICAN believes in using existing resources. We realize infrastructure must be developed; however, we are sensitive to taxpayer dollars being used in pork-barrel projects, such as the I-73 "dogleg" through the New River Valley.
U.S. Sen. John Warner further endorsed this route because he believed it would help to bring more business to the Roanoke Regional Airport. Will building more highways make us use the Roanoke airport more often?
Upgrading U.S. 220 by routing I-73 through the New River Valley is costly and circuitous. That dangerous road needs to be made safer, but leave U.S. 460 out of it.
Routing I-73 along I-77 is a less expensive, less destructive option. By upgrading I-77, which is already drastically overburdened and dangerous, we are fixing what we have.
Both the Giles County Board of Supervisors and Blacksburg Town Council oppose having I-73 entering the region along U.S. 460. These local governments feel it will impede the region's focus on high tech and recreation-based economic growth in a clean, natural environment with a high quality of life. Have the state and federal governments become so detached that they ignore local mandates?
Furr's comparison of our future to that of the Research Triangle is not a positive one. Does he think the "good-paying jobs based on technology" moved to the triangle area because of their roads? Anyone who travels to that region knows it is beset with huge traffic problems. Highways, developed to ease traffic, multiply traffic by enticing more drivers out on the roads.
To create positive change in our transportation congestion, we must become more conservative in our use of the automobile; use existing roads, which have already used a large percentage of our national land base; and employ alternative methods for moving people by introducing mass transit, pedestrian-friendly walkways and comprehensive bicycle-commuting networks among regions.
To focus exclusively on the limited vision of building more roads, whether smart or not, is shortsighted.
Robin Boucher is a Blacksburg resident.
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