ROANOKE TIMES Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times DATE: Sunday, March 9, 1997 TAG: 9703100007 SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY COLUMN: Guest Column SOURCE: MICHAEL S. ABRAHAM
You really still don't get it, do you? You still don't understand the opposition to the "smart road.".
Real journalism has never been a strong point at the Current, but your article "Divided highway" [Sunday, Feb. 16] sets a new standard for mediocrity. Power brokers plow ahead with grandiose plans for slicing up huge acreages of prime business and agricultural lands within our county.
Serious investigation would have discovered that the smart road has been a political ploy from day one; that of the two goals of the project - a direct link from Blacksburg to Interstate 81 and a taxpayer-sponsored IVHS test bed - neither would have been economically feasible alone. The smart road only became feasible as each of these goals became the justification for the other.
Real journalism would have told the readers that the placement of the planned intersection at the south end of Blacksburg, the largest and most destructive of the six [!] new interchanges, was chosen to accommodate the smart road and otherwise could have been half a mile farther south coincident with the current intersection.
Your article discounts the road's substantive opposition. (Mind you, at every public meeting I've attended, the people "against" broadly outnumbered the people "for.") You devote less than three inches to Shireen Parsons and me to suggest an alternative without the social, economic or environmental devastation of the smart road. The reporter would have spoken to Dr. John Lipsey, the retired Ellett Valley physician whose land is being taken although he thought he'd preserved it in a binding agricultural and forestal district contract. He would have spoken with Bill Richardson, the chairman of the Virginia Department of Transportation's Citizen's Advisory Committee. Richardson told me that the fate of the smart road was decided years ago at the highest level of state government and that no amount of citizen input would ever have a chance at derailing it. In other words, we citizens were never "in the loop."
If testing in real world conditions were really desired, as the road's proponents claim, we would have instrumented U.S. 460 over Brush Mountain five years ago. One of Tech's most prestigious engineering professors told me privately that most of the research he wanted to do could be done in a vacant parking lot.
Would it have been too much to ask the paper to explore the $80 million or so that could have been saved by boosting 3A to six lanes to handle foreseeable traffic volumes? (Don't forget, between 3A and the smart road, we'll be dumping eight lanes onto I-81, which at the time will only have six of its own!) A stand-alone test bed, either oval or point-to-point, could then have been built. Could we have explored the economic benefit of saving taxpayers $80 million?
A real journalist would have indicated that the $103 million for the smart road and the $130 million for 3A (an amount equal to more than $6,000 per Blacksburg resident) compete for funding with other projects such as the New River bridge in Radford, the completion of Virginia 100 over Cloyds Mountain in Giles County, and the maintenance of virtually every other road in the region.
Would it have been too much to ask the Current to interview those who think our county may be growing too fast already? Could the paper have found anyone who thinks that having our county achieve the highest growth rate in the state might actually not be our loftiest goal?
Could the paper have spoken to anyone who considers roads and interchanges of this magnitude an affront to our sensibilities, our wallets and our natural worlds? Could the reporter have mentioned that more than a million acres of land across America are being lost to development every year, and that nothing will ever hasten this fate in Montgomery County the way these roads will? Could the paper have explored any transportation alternatives?
Over the months of the smart road fight, during which time I've become one of the most outspoken critics, I've held out the vainest hope that someday some real journalism might happen from within the confines of your bureau. Surprise me someday, would you?
Michael S. Abraham
Michael S. Abraham- is a Christiansburg businessman..
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