Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 5, 1994 TAG: 9402050058
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Over the past two weeks, roughly 1,200 Southwest Virginians attended a series of informational meetings on I-73 - which would pass somewhere through the region on its way from Detroit to Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Some people attending the meetings have voiced environmental concerns, but most of the comments have been positive, said Bruce Clarke, assistant state transportation planning engineer. "People are saying we need the road because we need the economic benefit the road will bring."
Meetings in Abingdon, Wytheville, Blacksburg and Roanoke drew about 150 people each. But 600 swamped surprised Transportation Department officials at a meeting in Martinsville on Tuesday. They had been encouraged to attend by front-page news stories and editorials in the Martinsville newspaper.
Most of the questions that people asked were about the location of the proposed routes, Clarke said. "They just want to see where it's going."
Some attending the meetings, however, criticized the department for not providing more information on the feasibility of each of the seven proposed routes.
"There are no environmental studies, no economic studies, no traffic data and nothing for us as citizens to make a comment on," Mark Barker of Roanoke complained to a department official at the Roanoke meeting.
David Loeks, a retired professor of urban affairs and planning at Virginia Tech, questioned the planning process the state is using to develop a route for the road. People attending the meetings should have been given an opportunity to review the state's study methods, said Loeks, who worked for 30 years as a planner in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area before coming to Tech.
Rather than throw out the seven proposed routes for public comment, transportation officials should have been prepared to tell people which particular routes can reasonably be constructed, Loeks said.
"If they don't know if they're feasible now, I don't know how they're going to know if they're feasible in six weeks," he said.
He also questioned the way the route for the road is being developed on a state-by-state, piecemeal basis. "It's not an interstate planning process at all," he said.
But Clarke defended the Transportation Department's methods. If the department had decided before the meetings which routes were feasible, some people would have complained that they were not included in the planning process early enough, he said.
The department's planning staff now must prepare a recommendation for the March 17 meeting of the State Transportation Board, which may or may not take action, Clarke said.
I-73 is one of a few new roads included in a plan for a National Highway System unveiled by the Federal Highway Administration in December. Congress must approve the proposed system before Sept. 30, 1995; Virginia presumably must make a decision on I-73 well before then.
Congress will put up at least 80 percent of the money for the interstate and, it is generally agreed, will have the final say on where the road goes.
The state Transportation Department is studying various issues before preparing a recommendation on the road's route for the Transportation Board, transportation engineer Joe Orcutt said. They include potential traffic, cost, economic impact, environmental impact and public support.
Public support was gauged at the open meetings over the past two weeks.
Attending the meeting in Blacksburg on Wednesday was John Sage of Bland County, who has a special interest in the future of I-73. Sage, a teacher at Bluefield State College, is one of the Bluefield-area residents who gave birth to the concept of the Detroit-to-Charleston interstate.
People in Bluefield had worked on securing improvements to U.S. 52 between Bluefield and Huntington, W.Va., but realized the road would be more valuable if it was part of a larger interconnection, Sage said.
The group settled on Detroit as the road's northern terminus with the hope of attracting the auto industry to West Virginia, he said. Myrtle Beach and Charleston were picked as the road's southern destinations with the idea of catching tourist dollars.
"We were looking at this as a big economic-development project," Sage recalled.
As people in other states began getting behind the road, Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., rose to the chairmanship of the House surface transportation subcommittee. "We were just fortunate to have everything fall together at the right time," Sage said.
Through the efforts of Rahall and Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I-73 was included in the 1991 federal highway bill. The bill also included $118 million to begin improvements on U.S. 52, the I-73 route through West Virginia.
It did not hurt that before the passage of the highway bill, Rahall brought Rep. Norman Mineta, D-Calif., then chairman of the surface transportation subcommittee, to Bluefield to take a look at U.S. 52. Rahall took Mineta, who now is chairman of the House Public Works Committee, for a ride on the curvy mountain road, and the Californian became carsick, Sage recalled.
Sage and those in his West Virginia group favor the route for I-73 that would incorporate the road into the current I-77 between Bluefield and the North Carolina line.
Transportation Department officials say they are giving full consideration to all the proposed routes. But two - those that would enter Virginia in Wise County or in Alleghany County - seem to be ruled out by the West Virginia requirement that the road pass through Bluefield.
Another two of the proposed routes would bring I-73 through the Roanoke Valley and south along the U.S. 220 corridor through Martinsville into North Carolina.
Until Thursday, Roanoke Valley politicians were at loggerheads over which of those routes was the best for I-73.
But House of Delegates Majority Leader Richard Cranwell, D-Roanoke County, made it known Thursday that he was withdrawing a resolution he had introduced into the House last month calling for I-73 to enter Virginia on I-64 in Alleghany County, following U.S. 220 to Roanoke.
After a discussion with state Highway Commissioner Ray Pethtel, Cranwell decided that a resolution endorsing a route for the road would be premature, according to Jim Echols, a legislative aide to Cranwell.
Cranwell's resolution had put him at odds with Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, who supports a route that would bring I-73 into Virginia near Bluefield and follow the current path of U.S. 460 to Blacksburg and I-81 to Roanoke.
Neither of the Bluefield-to-Roanoke routes proposed by the Transportation Department would bring I-73 down I-81 as Goodlatte and others have suggested.
Economic development officials in the Alleghany Highlands already had abandoned hopes for an I-73 route through their area, recognizing that West Virginia's decision to put the road in Bluefield made that impossible.
Instead, they are supporting another proposed interstate highway, the TransAmerica Transportation Corridor (also referred to as a new I-66), which would stretch between Norfolk and Los Angeles. Officials acknowledge that both I-73 and I-66 are many years away from construction, if not reality.
Goodlatte and other Roanoke Valley politicians are supporting an I-66 route that would bring the road into Virginia on I-64, down U.S. 220 to Roanoke and along the U.S. 460 corridor through Lynchburg to Norfolk.
by CNB