DATE: Sunday, May 11, 1997                  TAG: 9705080152

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: DAVE ADDIS

                                            LENGTH:   71 lines

UP AGAINST THE WALL DRIVERS MOURN AS VDOT BURIES A LOVELY VIEW

Let's get one thing straight, right at the beginning: Don't blame Gribok for this mess. The feds made him do it.

Gribok is Dennis Gribok, the resident engineer for VDOT, the state agency that builds and fixes highways. And it's not Gribok's fault that his name looks suspiciously like Gridlock. That's the name he was born with. Give him a break.

Gribok really is a pretty nice guy. Most bureaucrats go into eternal ``he's in a meeting'' mode when they get a message that some cheesy newspaper reporter is asking questions about his life's work. But Gribok didn't duck, bless the man. What I wanted to know was something like this:

``Why, Mr. Gribok, are you guys building a gigantic concrete wall across the Broad Creek Bridge, the only pleasing patch of scenery for us lemmings who commute between Norfolk and the 'burbs every day?''

If you've been that way in the past week, you know what I mean. A 700-foot-long wall that would make an East German weep is crawling across the northwest side of the bridge. Another soon will match it on the southeast side.

Gribok says they went to great pains to choose a soothing, sandy hue of molded concrete. But the wall still looks like the last barrier you'd vault in a mad dash for freedom from a Chilean prison.

``It's the noise,'' Gribok said. ``Whenever a project is being built with federal dollars, the federal government requires you to use noise as a design criterion.''

Does the government, I asked, allow you to use aesthetics as a design criterion?

That stumped him. ``Ah-what?'' Gribok asked.

Obviously, I-264 and Route 44 were designed with a fine aesthetic sense. The on-ramps alone might have been drawn by Picasso during his Guernica years. The influence of Fellini is readily apparent in the merge lanes.

The feds, Gribok said, use a complicated cost-benefit formula - a mix of dollar signs and decibel levels - to figure out if cutting the noise for the neighbors is worthwhile. At the Broad Creek Bridge, and miles of other spots along I-264, they figure it's worth as much as $20,000 per resident to soothe the nerves of folks who thought it was a splendid idea to buy or build a home beside the most congested stretch of highway between Atlanta and Washington.

The wall is not cheap. Even Gribok grimaced. The gray concrete stuff along the land corridor, once painted, will cost about $19 a square foot. Yes, square foot. The fancy, sand-colored stuff along the bridge costs about $26.50 a square foot.

That's nearly $240 a square yard. For that price you could drape the bridge in Persian rugs and have something a lot more pleasing to look at.

And that's the point here. For thousands of us, that quick stretch across Broad Creek is the only reminder in the morning that our world didn't spring from the back end of a cement mixer. The sun glitters off the water. Sometimes you see ducks.

Much of that is now blocked by The Great Wall of VDOT.

``Hopefully,'' Gribok said, ``people will be watching the car in front of them instead of ducks.'' Gribok's a good guy, but he is a highway engineer.

Perhaps the wall's designers were influenced by one more artist: Edgar Allan Poe. What once was color and light is now dark and sinister. So many walls. You can't help but wonder if a black cat is bricked up behind them, or a telltale heart.

Ka-thunka. Ka-thunka. Ka-thunka.

What a mood to arrive at work in. MEMO: Dave Addis is the editor of Commentary. Reach him at 446-2726, or

addis(AT)worldnet.att.net. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

RICHARD L. DUNSTON/The Virginian-Pilot

The noise-abatement wall under construction at Broad Creek Bridge.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu