ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 2, 1996 TAG: 9603030011
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
Virginia Tech's top "smart" road advocate and two project opponents go toe-to-toe - at least rhetorically - in a talk show to be broadcast Sunday.
The 6 p.m. broadcast of "At Issue With Bob Denton" offers a rare opportunity to see and hear both sides of the debate over the controversial road and to listen to the participants rebut each other's arguments.
The show airs on Blue Ridge Public Television (WBRA-Channel 15). It will air on Blacksburg cable channel 12 and Radford- Christiansburg cable channel 8.
The players include Ray Pethtel, a former state transportation commissioner and Tech's smart road spokesman, and opponents Debbie Dull and Michael Abraham. Dull is a former Federal Highway Administration lawyer who now raises sheep in Giles County; Abraham owns Christiansburg Printing.
The broadcast comes as the public debate over the $103 million, 5.8-mile project - designed to link Blacksburg directly to Interstate 81 and serve as a testing ground for highway safety technology - is poised to go back into high gear. Just this week, Tech wrapped up a display at the New River Valley Mall in Christiansburg that touted the university's arguments for the road's economic development potential.
The Virginia Department of Transportation soon will submit an application seeking Montgomery County's OK to condemn land for the road in a county conservation district.
Last fall, the county Board of Supervisors denied VDOT that permission, giving road opponents a major victory in their fight against what they say is a wasteful project that will harm a rural stretch of Montgomery County. But it was short-lived. A week later, the board rescinded the denial and set up a new, more detailed application process.
During the pre-recorded show, Dull challenges Pethtel on the need for the road. She insists the case has never been made for why the project can't be incorporated with a planned connector highway between the U.S. 460 bypasses of Christiansburg and Blacksburg, also known as Alternative 3A.
"I find it amazing that you have to build a new road to demonstrate a technology that's being developed to prove that you don't need to have more roads," she said.
Pethtel later calls Dull's and Abraham's comments "misinformation" and a demonstration of "a little bit of knowledge." He argues that, without the smart highway, the bypass connector will have to be expanded from four lanes to six and then eight to handle traffic by early in the next decade.
The rhetorical ripostes viewers will hear aren't even the best of it. After the taping ended, the debate moved into a hallway outside the studio, according to Denton, who heads Tech's communications studies program.
"There was a very intense kind of discussion," Denton said. "You could hear it from inside."
The broadcasters had to ask the group to take their dispute outside, he said.
LENGTH: Medium: 58 linesby CNB