Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 19, 1991 TAG: 9103190201
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: ABINGDON LENGTH: Long
Milliken said he has told Gov. Douglas Wilder that the single most important transportation decision affecting Virginia during his term of office will be whatever is in the Federal Surface Transportation Act to be enacted this fall.
State transportation officials have examined the Bush Administration's recently introduced transportation legislation, Milliken said, and do not like what they see.
"The federal act is the channel through which your and my gasoline taxes come back to Virginia," he told people attending the annual Bristol District highway funding hearing for 1991-92 road needs.
As proposed, he said, the act would return about 80 cents to Virginia for every $1 in gas taxes paid by Virginians into the federal transportation trust fund. Other states like Maryland and Georgia will likewise come up short, he said, while a number of Western states would be getting more than they paid in.
Milliken said he and Wilder had met with U.S. Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Charles Robb, D-Va., as well as House members including Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, to work toward changing the bill to be more beneficial to Virginia.
The federal transportation act determines what levels of money will be available from Washington for states and what kinds of projects they can be spent on. The interstate system has been the centerpiece of the federal program for the past 35 years, but it is now essentially complete.
Milliken said Virginia also is unhappy with the amount of federal money to be made available to states, calling it insufficient.
All this comes at a time when Virginia's own budget shortfall will mean funds for primary, secondary and urban roads will be about 16 percent less next year than in the current fiscal year.
Milliken recently sent letters to local government officials and state legislators asking them to be ready to make "recommendations on which projects can be delayed or deleted" from road improvement priority lists.
He said in the letter that, later this year, he would give Wilder a list of projects that cannot be funded from money available now. "In the meantime," he said, "we must live with what we have."
Wilder also has asked Milliken to come up with ideas on how such priority projects might be funded in other ways.
The estimate of revenues could change further, depending on actions by Wilder and the General Assembly when it meets in April. He said the Department of Transportation over the past eight months "has reduced its administrative and maintenance budget substantially in order to make the maximum dollars available to the construction program."
Even so, the coming fiscal year will not be an easy one "and that is a fact of life that we're going to have to live with," he said. "You can't do even the same with less money."
That did not stop 42 speakers at the hearing from asking.
Although counties, cities and towns in the Lenowisco, Cumberland Plateau and Mount Rogers Planning Districts all had their own local priorities, the four-laning of U.S. 58 across the state emerged as a continuing priority from throughout the region.
"I certainly don't want you to forget the Route 58 corridor. I think that can be the most important transportation event for this decade," said Del. G.C. Jennings, D-Marion, expressing sentiments echoed by other legislators and local representatives.
"We need 58 four-laned right now from here [Abingdon] to Damascus," said former Damascus mayor and former Washington County Supervisor Jobert Rhea, who now sits on the U.S. 58 study committee. "That's our highest priority right now."
Other projects drawing much support included improvements to the U.S. 23-58-421 interchange near Scott County's multicounty Duffield Industrial Park, putting an Interstate 81 interchange at Virginia 704 to provide access to and from a Washington County industrial park, extending Virginia 107 from Saltville into the coalfields to Claypool Hill, and completing the four-laning of U.S. 460 through Buchanan County and U.S. 23 through Wise County including the Norton bypass.
Among the requests from Wythe County Assistant Administrator J.C. Higginbotham and Wytheville Town Manager Wayne Sutherland were a full interchange at Exit 20, which now has only southbound access and a northbound exit on Interstate 81.
Janet Blair, manager of Factory Merchants Mall at Fort Chiswell in eastern Wythe County, asked for better highway signs until access to the mall could be achieved from Interstate 81-77. She said access is now difficult and must be along the road in front of Petro Truck Stop, adjacent to the mall.
She said some trucks have overturned trying to use the mall's service road and warned that, in case of a chemical spill for example, the only exit now could be blocked and the mall could not be evacuated.
Nelson Walker, executive director of the Greater Bluefield Chamber of Commerce, told transportation officials they soon would be hearing about a proposed Interstate 73 between Detroit, Mich., and Myrtle Beach, S.C., through Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina. It would enter Virginia near Bluefield and join the existing Interstate 77, he said, already partly combined with Interstate 81 in Virginia.
He said the plan will be presented to congressional representatives and state transportation officials next month. It has been endorsed by the Wytheville-Wythe-Bland Chamber of Commerce, he said, as a potential major tourism highway.
by CNB