ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 30, 1996 TAG: 9604010029
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: LISA K. GARCIA STAFF WRITER
State officials are taking more time than they expected to answer the 92 questions from the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors about the "smart" road, but the final draft is nearly done, said Robert Martinez, the state secretary of transportation.
Martinez said Friday that several different drafts of the answers have been written and two drafts have come as far as his desk, but the final draft is just not ready yet.
At one time, Virginia Department of Transportation officials predicted a February completion for the work, then pushed that back to March.
Now the target is sometime in April, said Mike Todd, a senior transportation engineer in Richmond. ``It's close; I would expect it to go back to the Board of Supervisors in April,'' Todd said.
Dan Brugh, VDOT resident engineer in Christiansburg, sent a letter this week to members of the Citizens' Advisory Committee for the Smart Road alerting them to the need for more work on the application. Brugh could not be reached for comment Friday.
Bill Richardson, committee chairman, said he expects the department to carefully prepare its answers no matter how long it takes, and he doesn't see the delay as a setback. The committee, which includes road proponents and opponents, has been advising VDOT on the project's design and other issues for the past year.
VDOT must file the application when it again notifies Montgomery County of its intent to condemn 140-plus acres of private land in a county conservation zone off Den Hill Road. The state must secure approval from the county before it can seek to condemn the land for the six-mile road between northern Blacksburg and Interstate 81 northeast of Christiansburg.
The $103 million highway project has been billed for the past six years as a means to speed travel between Blacksburg and Roanoke and to serve as a real-world laboratory for new technology designed to improve highway and auto safety and efficiency. Along with the planned Christiansburg-to-Blacksburg bypass connector, also known as Alternative 3A, it is also intended to relieve traffic in the congested New River Valley Mall area.
The Board of Supervisors set up the application process in December, a few weeks after it first voted to block the condemnation, then flip-flopped and rescinded its opposition.
The supervisors requested the detailed answers under a state law that says a public agency must provide any information requested by a local board when the agency wants to condemn land in a designated conservation area called an agricultural and forestal district.
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