ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 7, 1995 TAG: 9512070054
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
By 2000, you may be able to walk or cycle on an auto-free trail between the Roanoke City Market and the Blue Ridge Parkway.
After months of meetings, thousands of dollars spent on consultants and a series of public workshops, boosters of linear parks in the Roanoke Valley will announce today a pilot "greenway" project: a trail from downtown to Mill Mountain and on to the parkway.
The first greenway, most of it in the city, would be financed largely by the federal government. Some time early in the next century, it would be linked to Explore Park in Roanoke County.
Officials hope its popularity will create a groundswell of support for a more ambitious - and expensive - network of connected linear parks throughout the valley over the next 30 years.
Members of the Roanoke Valley Greenways/Open Space Committee will announce the pilot project at 2 p.m. at the Roanoke Valley Resource Authority Transfer Station on Hollins Road Northeast.
Next week, Roanoke and Salem city councils, Vinton Town Council and the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors will be briefed on the project and long-range blueprints for a greenways network.
Roanoke is expected to apply for federal funding for the greenway in January under the Intermodal Surface Transportation Enhancement Act, a federal program that pays for alternative transportation projects. ISTEA already has partially funded another local greenway project, the Hanging Rock Trail in Salem.
The estimated cost of the initial greenway and the distance it would cover were unavailable Wednesday.
The downtown-to-Blue Ridge Parkway route wasn't the most popular choice of residents who participated in greenways workshops in Roanoke County, Salem and Roanoke last summer. They preferred a linear park along the Roanoke River linking Explore Park to Roanoke and Salem.
Roanoke County Supervisor Lee Eddy, who was on the steering committee, said planners chose the other project because it best meets criteria that Virginia Department of Transportation planners use in apportioning Virginia's share of ISTEA funds.
In choosing ISTEA projects, "VDOT emphasizes transportation rather than recreation," Eddy said. "That narrowed down the list of projects to those that would link two or more destination points."
Except for one leg, planners haven't decided exactly where the proposed greenway would go.
The exception is getting up Mill Mountain. The steering committee has proposed routing it up Prospect Road, the winding old road up Mill Mountain that is closed to vehicular traffic because of a deteriorating bridge.
The rest of the greenway route would be hashed out in a series of meetings among residents, businesses and greenway proponents between now and the end of January, said David Hill, a landscape architect and planner hired by the city to complete the ISTEA application.
ISTEA funding requires a 20 percent match in local funds. But the federal program allows governments to count services or land they provide as part of the local share.
The city might be able to meet the match by donating Prospect Road, portions of Mill Mountain Park or land downtown for the greenway. That could mean taxpayers might have to pay little for the initial leg.
But Eddy said some state planners fear Congress will cancel ISTEA after next year, meaning local governments would have to come up with other sources of funding for the greenway network over the next three decades
Options for long-range funding include direct taxpayer subsidies; bond referendums; a local gas tax, which valley governments already are considering as a way to replace declining federal bus service subsidies; a charitable trust that is administered by a private group; and private-sector funding.
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Chart: Roanoke Valley greenway implementationby CNBschedule.