THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 15, 1994 TAG: 9409140117
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: BY GERALD A. PORTERFIELD
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
Maybe it's just me, but does there seem to be a tremendous amount of interstate-highway sound-wall construction going on? You know, those 25- to 30-foot high, wonderfully textured and elegantly earth-toned visual delights popping up along our local system like mushrooms after a rain.
No kidding. Next time you're out, pay attention: You'll be amazed at how extensive they've become. At this rate, in another five years anyone driving on Interstates 64, 264, 464, 664 or Route 44 will be able to travel from Hampton to Norfolk to Virginia Beach to Chesapeake to Portsmouth to Suffolk to Newport News and back to Hampton without seeing anything but these $1 million-per-mile, modern-day ``horse blinders.'' Excuse me. ``Continuous visual screening and sound-attenuation devices.''
I just don't get it. In so many cases they're replacing great stands of mature, healthy trees as well as underbrush with these monolithic slabs of steel and prestressed concrete. Our government is missing the big picture when it comes to ``the highway experience.'' It wasn't that long ago when Dad would pack the family into the station wagon after Sunday dinner and go for a relaxing drive ``up on the concrete'' to take in the scenery. With today's traffic and these visual improvements, is it any wonder Chevrolet no longer advises ``See the U.S.A. in your . . . ''? Not much to see.
Sure, many of you are now saying, ``Think about the poor people who are being affected by the construction and expansion of these roads.'' But many of these roads have existed for more than 35 years; the alignments of the newer ones have been around for nearly as long. If location, location, location is the first rule of real estate, then buyer beware is surely the second. Everyone living adjacent to these roads has chosen to live there. Are their so-called rights of sound attenuation any more important than those of the hundreds of thousands who are forced to travel these roads because their residential areas are so far removed from their work areas?
There's a larger point to be made here, besides the fact that the interstate construction, repair and reconstruction cycle provides quite nice job security for many bureaucrats and contractors. As long as we persist in the suburban form of development we've opted for, we will witness ever more of our tax dollars relegated to an ever-expanding highway system. However, this will all be futile. There isn't enough money and there can't be enough travel lanes to solve the problem. And the bureaucrats know this.
In fact, the vast majority of the solutions proposed by our traffic engineers are indeed the problem; for merely increasing the size of a road, interstate or otherwise, actually draws more traffic to it, creating a vicious circle. In his book Suburban Gridlock, Robert Cervero says it more succinctly: ``Travel is a direct function of how we organize our communities, and if we physically segregate activities and fail to zone certain areas for a mixture of uses, chronic breakdowns are inevitable. It is imperative . . . that more self-sufficient, village-like working environments be built.''
Our traffic problems will not be solved by fewer, wider roadways but by smaller and more numerous ``connector roads'' binding a greater number of activity areas. Dispersal of traffic, not concentration, should be the goal of our traffic engineers and highway planners. Only then will there be no more need for very expensive ``Band-Aids'' such as these soon-to-be-omnipresent sound walls along the urban interstates. In the meantime, it's difficult to decide which is more offensive, these walls or billboards that dot the landscape.
But wait! That's it! I understand. They're not building sound walls on the interstates; they're building walls on which to place billboards.
They're building the Information Highway!
Nevermind. MEMO: Mr. Porterfield is director, Community Design Group, Talbot Group. by CNB