Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 21, 1990                   TAG: 9003232497
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HIGHWAY

The Roanoke County supervisors' chairman very well may make a high-tech highway appear in Western Virginia. And if "smart" technology is built into the new link between Blacksburg and Roanoke, some high-tech support services likely would materialize, too.

This isn't a singlehanded venture, but it was Robers who waved the first wand.

The project's latest success was a warm reception last week during a pitch before a congressional committee for $95 million in federal funds. That's not routine for individual projects. But "excited" is how both Robers and Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, described the reaction of members of the subcommittee. It was the first time the panel had received a specific proposal for incorporating "smart" technology in a highway.

With "Intelligent Vehicle/Highway Systems," sensors are built into both cars and the highways, to regulate such things as traffic flow and speed. The idea is to make travel safer and less environmentally damaging.

Such a system, still futuristic, would be installed for testing on a fifth lane of a Blacksburg-Roanoke highway. The testing will be done somewhere, Robers maintains; why not here?

He seems to find no shortage of people who agree with him. A conference on "smart" technology next month at Virginia Tech is attracting experts from General Motors, Ford, Motorola and the University of California at Berkeley, as well as federal and state government officials.

Robers' wand-waving has been steady, but he hasn't had to tout the show very hard. Tickets to the "smart highway" project seem to sell themselves.