ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 9, 1996 TAG: 9606100032
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: VIRGINIA EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: ELISSA MILENKY STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above
THE HIGH-TECH ROAD HAS SUPPORT - but it's far from overwhelming.
As the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors prepares to vote Monday on the "smart" road, a Roanoke Times poll shows more county residents favor the controversial road project than oppose it, but by a close margin.
For six years, opponents and proponents have claimed they speak for the majority of county residents. But the poll paints a more complicated picture. Though the smart road garnered a larger percentage of support, more people favored an expanded version of Alternative 3A - another road project in Montgomery County - when given a choice between the two.
"Clearly, neither side has overwhelming support," said Harry Wilson, director of the Center for Community Research at Roanoke College, which conducted the survey for The Roanoke Times.
The telephone survey of 442 randomly selected Montgomery County residents was carried out from May 28 to June 2 to gauge public opinion on attitudes about the smart road, an approximately six-mile link between Blacksburg and Interstate 81 that is being promoted as a testing ground for transportation research. The survey has a margin of error of 5 percentage points.
The role of public opinion on the smart road issue has been especially prominent in recent months as the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors moved closer to a vote that could determine whether the road is built at all.
On Monday, the board will vote to grant, deny or delay the Virginia Department of Transportation's request to take about 140 acres of land out of an agricultural and forestal district - land VDOT needs to build the road.
The board members have been under pressure from the road's supporters and its opponents. As results of the newspaper survey indicate, opinions about the project are complex.
When Montgomery County residents were asked whether they supported the road - after balancing the potential economic and travel benefits vs. potential harm to the environment - 48 percent said yes and 40 percent said no. Twelve percent did not answer the question or were unsure.
Support of the smart road remained about the same when people were asked about the road's $103 million price tag, which has since been lowered to $98 million. A further breakdown of that question revealed more men than women favored the smart road by a 12 point margin.
At the same time, the people surveyed showed more support - 60 percent - for a highway link between Blacksburg and Roanoke, which many believed would help the Roanoke and New River valleys.
The numbers changed when the residents were asked whether they preferred construction of the smart road or an expanded Alternative 3A, which would connect the Blacksburg and Christiansburg bypasses and then link the Christiansburg bypass to Interstate 81 at Falling Branch Road.
In that question, 45 percent preferred an expanded 3A while 30 percent favored the smart road; 20 percent said they were unsure. Support for Alternative 3A alone was overwhelming at 76 percent.
VDOT has been asked on several occasions whether Alternative 3A could be expanded to handle the traffic and testing of transportation research that would have been routed to the smart road. VDOT designed these projects in tandem, with an interchange in Blacksburg that would connect the two roads.
Adding lanes to Alternative 3A instead of building the smart road is not favored by VDOT because it would be more expensive, would make further expansions difficult and would not provide the most suitable conditions for testing research, transportation officials have said, among other reasons. Details of how 3A would be expanded were not included in the survey question.
In deciding whether they supported the smart road, the survey respondents also were asked how important certain factors were in their decision.
Environmental quality and reducing traffic were rated most important, with project cost and job creation close behind. Attracting grant money to Virginia Tech and attracting high-tech companies were rated least important.
Other efforts have been made to gauge public sentiment on the project, though not with a scientific poll. When VDOT collected written and oral comments from more than 400 people during informational meetings about the smart road last fall, about 70 percent of those comments expressed support for the project, said VDOT's resident engineer in Christiansburg.
Jim Moore, a member of the Board of Supervisors, asked for comment on the smart road on the Internet several months ago and found that about 52 percent of the responses favored the project.
Public opinion has played an important role in the long-running debate about the smart road, especially as the issue has become more polarized in recent years.
Many petitions, resolutions and speeches supporting the smart road have made their way through the local chambers of commerce and Rotary clubs, even within the last few months. Opposition groups have held press conferences and picketed to publicly denounce the smart road and more recently have filed lawsuits to block the project. The groups say they've had no problem gathering hundreds of names in opposition.
Letters to the editor representing different sides of the controversy regularly have been printed for months.
More recently, efforts to publicize public opinion have centered on the Board of Supervisors because of its impending vote. Transportation officials have said they likely would scrap plans for a smart road in Southwest Virginia if their request for land is denied.
The massive lobbying effort began after the board initially voted against the state's request in November. Supervisors answered phone calls and received letters and visits - especially from the road's supporters. The effort was enough to convince the board to rescind that vote and institute a more detailed application process for the state, which included a list of 92 questions geared to gain more information about the project.
After months of pressure, the supervisors again must tackle a decision that could decide the future of the smart road.
For earlier smart road articles, the text of the questions in the poll and related documents, see The Roanoke Times Online: http://www.infi.net/roatimes/nrvhome/nrvindex.html.
LENGTH: Long : 109 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Charts by staff. color. Map by staff. color.by CNB