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

DATE: TUESDAY, July 5, 1994                   TAG: 9407270007
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE ROAD NOT TO BE TAKEN

IF GOV. George Allen is to convince Virginians that his sweep of state officialdom has a purpose beyond the carrying of partisanship to an un-Virginian extreme, personnel changes should be accompanied by policy reconsiderations.

One good place to start would be looking anew at the state's commitment to upgrading U.S. 58, the highway that runs across the commonwealth's southern tier from Virginia Beach to the Cumberland Gap.

The extraordinarily high priority given the project by state policy-makers of the past has been fueled more by political than by economic or fiscal concerns. The politics of regional alliances led a few years ago to special speed-up treatment for the road by the Democrat-controlled General Assembly. In the gubernatorial campaign last year, Democrats sought to stem Republican Allen's inroads into Southside and Southwest Virginia by claiming that Allen lacked opponent Mary Sue Terry's commitment to the project.

Allen responded by vigorously denying that he was soft on 58. While that may have been good for Allen's effort to win rural votes, it didn't change the fact that improving Virginia's north-south trade routes - especially U.S. 220 between the Roanoke Valley and the Greensboro-Winston-Salem area of North Carolina, via Martinsville - is far more important to the state's economic well-being than improving what opponents have called, admittedly a bit unfairly, the highway to nowhere.

Given the governor's campaign stand, it would be difficult for Allen's transportation secretary, Robert Martinez, and the new Allen-appointed majority on the Commonwealth Transportation Board to abandon U.S. 58 altogether.But surely the project's least defensible segments shouldn't go by without re- examination.

West of Martinsville, mountainous terrain drives up the cost of highway improvements, while the relatively sparse population reduces the potential for economic payoff. Much of that area, moreover, is already served by existing Interstates 77 and 81.

Backers can argue that an upgraded 58 from Martinsville west to I-77 would better connect the industrialized Martinsville-Henry County area to the interstate system. A similar point perhaps could be made for the short stretch of 58 from I-77 west to Galax.

But for the next leg of the proposed improvements, from Galax west, even those arguments cannot be made. And by plowing obscenely through the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area, roughly paralleling Interstate 81 to the north, this segment of the project would do worse than simply cost too much. It could prove an impediment to economic growth, by degrading the Mount Rogers area and thus eroding the tourism potential of one of Virginia's most naturally beautiful attractions.

While good roads are essential ingredients in the infrastructure that sustains modern economies, not all highway projects have equal merit. Some, of which the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area segment of the proposed 58 improvements is a clear example, have no discernible merit at all.

Adding economic injury to environmental insult doesn't yield a positive result. The Allen administration should recheck the calculations of its predecessors.

by CNB