Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 6, 1994 TAG: 9403070127
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Elizabeth Obenshain
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
For some of us, economic prosperity and highways are as intertwined as the old conundrum of the chicken and the egg.
For others of us, a superhighway is a threat to an equally compelling asset for our future: the natural beauty of our mountain landscape.
Too often, highways illustrate our national disrespect for our greatest national resource - our land. We are blessed with so much land, so many beautiful horizons that we treat land as disposable as a paper plate.
Here, we think nothing of building a major highway, cluttering it up with mostly marginal commercial development and then later cutting a parallel highway at huge cost through undeveloped countryside. This new highway will relieve the traffic - but can also reduce the marginal shopfronts along the first route to a dismal stretch of vacant buildings.
I could understand highway and local government planners making this mistake once, but it is a pattern repeated time and again.
Now our area also faces a decision on a new superhighway that would cut through this region on its way from Detroit to Charleston, S.C. If this highway comes through this area, will it be routed along the least destructive path through our mountains and neighborhoods? And will it bring economic benefits to this area that outweigh any environmental and neighborhood damage?
I have no kneejerk reaction to road projects. Communities grow and they need roads - even if they go through my own front yard, which they have in the past.
My concern with Interstate 73 and other recent road projects is the lack of far-sighted planning and the lack of respect for land too often shown by highway and local government officials. We, as local residents, have tolerated and even encouraged this attitude.
Highway planners may have good reasons not yet explained for why they would consider putting a megahighway through the rural beauty of the Catawba Valley when they could use corridors along existing major highways. But even listing this route begs the question of whether planners have sufficient respect for our region's natural assets.
It's not just routing the highways that is a problem. It's what we allow to happen once these roads are built.
These roads should be economic development assets not just in hauling freight but in impressing corporate visitors, tourists and retirees who might like to located in an area renowned not only for its beauty but for its expertise in high-tech research, smart road technology and fiber-optics.
Do we do anything to ensure that these multimillion entrances convey the right message about our community ?
I couldn't help noticing in the past few months as I entered Christiansburg along the 460 Bypass that another scenic mountain view has disappeared. We now have a two-hill panorama of mobile home parks and an old junkyard.
Don't get me wrong. We need mobile homes to provide housing. We even need junkyards. But are they the first view we want visitors to have of our community?
What if, like the Blue Ridge Parkway, our local governments bought scenic easements along our most important highways? Or planted evergreen screens that would preserve the mountain views?
Would we benefit in the long run if we expended just a little energy and a little money on planning and protecting our major highways?
Of course, a cheaper solution might be just to blindfold corporate visitors for the drive from the Roanoke airport to Blacksburg or Pulaski. That way, we wouldn't reinforce CEOs' negative stereotypes about the South by letting them see what we've done to the area's natural beauty.
A better answer would be more thoughtful planning for highways - both their routing and the development along them. We could protect scenic landscapes, promote high-quality, stabile commercial development, and promote the long-term quality of life.
Elizabeth Obenshain is editor of the New River Current.
by CNB