THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Monday, August 15, 1994                TAG: 9408130010
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Editorial 
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   51 lines

A BETTER ROUTE TO THE OUTER BANKS THEY COME. BUILD IT

Route 168, the road connecting Chesapeake and the Outer Banks of North Carolina, is a heavily traveled two-way street. So it ought to be more than two lanes, all the way.

Carolina is doing its part for its residents who work and shop up here and travelers who vacation down there: It has approved funds to widen the road up to the Virginia line and the project could be finished by 1998.

This side of the line, it's gridlock central, with no end in sight. Why?

The short answer: that other symbol of gridlock, government.

Not city government: The city of Chesapeake, tired of the summertime bottleneck on Battlefield Boulevard, knows what it wants: a parallel road. It knows what's needed to get the road started: $9.5 million in federal funds, millions more from the state, maybe $20 million in tolls from travelers at $1 a car and approval from the Virginia Department of Transportation and the Corps of Engineers for its path.

The money bogs down in the Senate. VDOT and the Corps are bogged down, since 1989, in studying the impact of five or six alternative routes on wetlands and a certain species of shrew.

That is not the two-legged kind which emerges after traveling 4 1/2 hours from Kempsville to Corolla with young children or spending Saturday afternoon trying to leave a home on Battlefield Boulevard. It is the four-legged Dismal Swamp shrew, whose need for habitat must be balanced against humans' need for a roadway.

Chesapeake has signs up begging harried travelers to besiege Congress for funds to start the parallel road. Great. But federal funds alone won't suffice.

Add a demand that the Endangered-Species Act, coming up for reauthorization, be redrawn with some sense of proportion and rationality.

Add a demand that state and federal lawmakers and Governor Allen intervene to put a solution for Route 168 high on the state's priority list. VDOT just started the necessary environmental report nine months ago, a spokesman says, but with the Corps' cooperation, could settle on a solution within six months to a year. The General Assembly and Congress should be ready to move quickly on funds.

Finally, add a postscript: Once on the road to settling this contentious connection, can Virginia and North Carolina tackle another - the Lake Gaston pipe-line? by CNB