Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 12, 1994 TAG: 9405130002
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: EDITORIAL EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ray L. Garland
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
THE COUNTRY is now running so well that Congress has time to pick and choose among the routes that future highways will take, making a political decision out of what should be left to engineers and accountants.
This has not been unheard of in the past, of course - witness the decision 30 years ago to bring Interstate 64 through Charlottesville instead of Lynchburg in defiance of the wishes of the U.S. Bureau of Roads and the state highway department.
But Congress now aspires to play a dominant role in the process, assuring that some roads and communities will be more equal than others.
Apparently, at some point in the near future, Congress will designate a route for a new highway - possibly an interstate, probably not - linking Detroit and Charleston, S.C., through the great state of West Virginia. Funding and construction may take years to follow, but partisans of various pathways through Virginia are in full cry.
By the luck of the draw, i.e., seniority in the Democratic majority that has controlled the House of Representatives since John Kennedy was just a freshman senator, West Virginia is calling the tune. In 1991, Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., chairman of the House subcommittee on surface transportation, got the Huntington to Bluefield corridor along U.S. 52 included in what is called the National Highway System, making it eligible for 80-percent federal funding on a fast track.
For reasons no one seems able to explain, this went on the books as Interstate 73, which set Virginians salivating. But it turns out that as greedy as it is for federal largess, West Virginia never intended to build this particular road to interstate standards. As one Rahall aide explained, "We really don't care what it's called in West Virginia so long as we get a four-lane road through there."
But simply elevating a single stretch of some 100 miles through one of the nation's backwaters to the status of a national priority wasn't enough. We now have the grandiose design of somehow tying this in to a new interstate linking Detroit and Charleston, S.C. A glance at the map will reveal the manifold impracticalities of this approach.
What the magic is in a new link between these two cities is lost on me. In fact, we already have two interstate systems doing the job. If you're talking trade, there's very little logic in improving the interstates already serving these cities. There are at least three Atlantic ports more convenient to Detroit than Charleston: New York, Baltimore and Hampton Roads - all with direct interstate service. But what has logic ever had to do with the pork barrel?
But if pork is going to be served, Virginia understandably wants its slice. I-77 is already complete in our state, and it's hard to devise a more direct route to Charleston, S.C., than that. But state officials, backed by all relevant members of the Virginia congressional delegation except Rep. Rick Boucher, want a new interstate to parallel U.S. 460, looping the Roanoke Valley on the south and paralleling U.S. 220 through Martinsville to the North Carolina line.
While anything is possible if the right whispered word is given, how they expect Congress to buy such a costly, out-of-the-way route south is beyond me.
To make matters more complicated, Boucher has proposed Virginia 100 between Pearisburg and Hillsville as the I-73 corridor. Since this would parallel existing I-77 - being as close as 10 miles in some places - it's equally hard to imagine Congress seeing this as a wise expenditure of public funds.
But Boucher is the man to watch in this farrago, as he noted in saying he has "excellent rapport" with Rep. Rahall. Translation: Boucher grooves with the liberal establishment that runs the House along the lines of the old Supreme Soviet. He can be checkmated in the Senate, of course, which answers to an entirely different dynamic.
A more sensible approach would be for the state highway department to go forward with such improvements to 460 and 220 as are necessary to make of them the first-class, four-lane, divided highways they don't fall far short of being now. But with the new I-73 corridor up in the air, those plans are likely to be placed on hold. Why upgrade an existing highway if it's going to be rendered obsolete by a new interstate running nearby? The rub is, most of us will be past caring before it's actually built.
It is on this point that Boucher makes the most sense. For his Virginia 100 proposal, he recommends the road be built only to the standard of the Appalachian Regional Commission for four-lane highways. This permits sharper curves, more access from side roads and requires less right-of-way than interstates. If the 460/220 corridor is to get the special federal funding, this is the way to do the job quickest and cheapest, as West Virginia is already showing us.
The sad part of this story is the extent to which it illustrates the nation of pickpockets and scam artists we have become. Because an obscure West Virginia congressman has the clout to direct the federal government to assign a high priority to a road that probably doesn't carry enough through traffic to deserve it, Virginia dreams of getting taxpayers in Montana to build us a new, billion-dollar interstate when far less, judiciously spent, would give us all the road we need, and give it to us in the here and now.
In fairness, West Virginia clearly deserves full interstate status for its aging turnpike between Charleston and Bluefield. This is the true missing link in the interstate system of the mid-Atlantic region, serving as it must as a de facto I-77, and I-64 requiring a substantial toll. Why this wasn't pushed instead of U.S. 52 is something else about all this I don't understand.
Ray L. Garland is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB