ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, August 14, 1996 TAG: 9608140006
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
A connector road that would divert traffic around residential neighborhoods east of Virginia Tech is still on the drawing board, but will be up for a public hearing later this year.
The planned Southgate Road connector would allow motorists to drive from South Main Street at Hubbard Street to the Tech campus and the U.S. 460 bypass without driving through downtown Blacksburg or the Airport Road-area neighborhood.
The new road would be designed to reduce congestion from daily commuter traffic to Tech and during football home games.
The state isn't scheduled to advertise for bids on the project until 2000, said Dan Brugh, the Virginia Department of Transportation resident engineer in Christiansburg.
That date could change, because a whole year is penciled in to obtain rights of way and that amount of time likely won't be needed, he said.
Work on the project, approved in 1989 by Tech's Board of Visitors, has been slow getting started.
"We've been on hold on this for a little while. We were waiting until Virginia Tech completed ... work on [its] master plan and gave us alignments that were acceptable to them," Brugh said. A public hearing on the location of the road will be held later this year. A hearing on the design of the road will come later, possibly in 1998.
While a general route for the road has been established, the exact location could change. The road would generally run on university land on the eastern edge of the Tech Airport, take part of the turf-grass research farm and join Southgate Drive beside the German Club. The residential portion of Southgate Drive between Airport Road and the new connector would be dead-ended.
"There are several alignments that we're looking at," although the routes all begin and end at the same points," Brugh said. "The bottom line is we'll put the road wherever Tech wants us to put it."
VDOT wants to improve access to Tech's sports facilities while accommodating pedestrian traffic as well.
An above-ground interchange at the intersection of the U.S. 460 bypass and Southgate Drive, the main entrance to Tech, will mean the removal of traffic lights there.
Brugh said several accidents there have been "caused mainly because traffic is moving 55 to 60 mph. They certainly don't desire to stop along the bypass. This will eliminate the signals."
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: map showing location of proposed connector road.by CNBcolor STAFF