DATE: Sunday, June 22, 1997                 TAG: 9706220158

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY JEFFREY S. HAMPTON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CURRITUCK                         LENGTH:   88 lines

STATE MONEY SOUGHT FOR BIKE PATHS

County officials want bike paths in Corolla, and they want the state to pay for them as it did in Dare County at a rate of $100,000 a mile.

``If it's good enough for Dare County, it's good enough for Currituck,'' said Paul O'Neal, chairman of the Currituck County Board of Commissioners. ``I know they hate to hear that, but that's the way we feel about it.''

Currituck officials have been asking for bike paths since at least 1980, but they never get them, they say.

Meanwhile the state Department of Transportation has built more than 30 miles of bike paths in Dare County with more to come. The latest Transportation Improvement Plan for 1998 through 2004 lists 10 highway projects for bicyclists in Dare County. The same list slates six bike projects in Currituck County. None has dates or funding yet.

Currituck officials blame the inequity on politics.

``(Sen.) Marc Basnight got a million dollars for them a couple of years ago,'' O'Neal said.

Basnight is a Dare native and the leader of the state Senate. Another Dare native, R.V. Owens III, was the 1st District representative on the state Board of Transportation until two months ago.

O'Neal made a verbal request last week to Charles Ward, the new 1st District representative on the state Board of Transportation. Wardmet with community leaders last week about regional road projects. Ward is chairman of the Perquimans County Board of Commissioners and a Hertford businessman.

``We're looking into that right now,'' Ward said of requests for Corolla bike paths. ``We're thinking we can do something, but it's too early to tell.''

It may take years, according to one state official.

``We're not talking about something that is very fast,'' said Curtis Yates, director of the Division of Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation. ``And we're not talking about something there's a lot of money for.''

Yates said his division gets $3 million a year to finance about 10 projects across the state. There are 90 requests on the books, he said.

``Sometimes there is some flexibility in the schedule so others can move up,'' Yates said. ``Politics sometimes plays a part.''

O'Neal said the commissioners want bike paths to help keep teens from riding skateboards, bicycles and rollerblades on N.C. 12, the only road through Corolla.

Several of the subdivisions in the upscale beach community have built bike lanes, but they stop at the property lines.

The commissioners want the state transportation department to make the connections between subdivisions.

The state builds bike paths as narrow asphalt strips off the highway or as wide-paved shoulders for several purposes such as walking, skateboarding, rollerblading and biking.

There are six miles of biking lanes in Manteo, five miles in Nags Head, about one mile near the Wright Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, and two miles in Kitty Hawk. The state laid nine miles of wide-paved shoulders, about five feet on each side of N.C. 12, from Hatteras to Avon. The communities built 11 miles, making a 20-mile continuous biking lane.

In part two of the project, the state laid another nine miles of asphalt beginning six miles south of Oregon Inlet Bridge to Salvo. The third phase will connect Salvo to Avon, said Don Conner, highway engineer for the first district in the state transportation department. So far the project has cost $1.6 million.

The Dare County bike lanes were not built entirely with state money. Residents of Duck pay a special tax to have bike lanes built in their community to the Currituck County line. That work should be done by spring 1998, Conner said.

Money from the towns and the Dare County Tourist Bureau have helped pay for others.

In 1980, the Currituck County manager wrote a letter to the director of the N.C. Bicycle Committee wanting a bike lane along U.S. 158. O'Neal said Currituck has been asking for a bike path along N.C. 12 in Corolla for at least four years.

Corolla developments such as Currituck Club, Pine Island, Corolla Light and Monterey Shores have already built bike paths, said Jack Simoneau, planning director of Currituck County. Currituck officials say they only need a couple of miles of asphalt to connect them all. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

DREW C. WILSON/The Virginian-Pilot

Jeff Hanson, 14, of Lincoln, Neb., rides a bike path through Corolla

Light, one of several subdivisions that has built privately financed

paths.

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