ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, May 18, 1996 TAG: 9605200017
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL S. ABRAHAM
THERE YOU go again, filling your editorial pages with blindly enthusiastic support for the ill-conceived ``smart road'' (May 13 editorial, ``Smart road: ready to roll?'').
Your statement, ``Now that Virginia's Department of Transportation has provided ... more than 60 pages ... of additional information ... it's time to move ahead with the project,'' implies that the very act of answering questions asked by the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors is sufficient provocation to bulldoze this monster forward. Never mind that VDOT's document is completely biased, wholly self-serving to the point of outrageousness and a blatant miscarriage of public trust. It might as well have been titled ``Sixty Pages of Great Reasons to Build the Smart Road''!
Did you notice the inclusion of several letters from presidents of local corporations expressing full support? To VDOT's credit, it didn't bother with any camouflage. It made no attempt whatsoever at impartiality, preferring to proffer its skewed viewpoint unfiltered and unadulterated. This extreme one-sidedness is a slap across the face of well-intentioned supervisors who requested needed facts, not an orchestrated, government-sanctioned tome of drummed-up benefits. Plus, the document was full of the same exaggerations, obfuscations and rhetorical garbage that has permeated smart-road proponents' arguments for years.
You say, ``The important thing is that the answers provided by VDOT ... reaffirm both the value of building this transportation-research proving ground, and the folly of any board action that might kill it.'' That is preposterous! The only thing this document proves is the narrowness of VDOT's blinders in serving its own interests rather than the public's. And for you to suggest that the Board of Supervisors should disregard both the letter and the intent of laws governing agricultural and forestal districts for the economic benefit of the few, you should hang your heads in shame!
Neither side on this issue would argue that 140 acres of agricultural and forestal districts are ecologically or economically significant in and of themselves. But the precedent that would allow them to be condemned at a whim, when viable, lower-cost alternatives exist, effectively dooms to obscurity and irrelevance important and valuable state laws, and the lands they were enacted to protect.
Distortions? You're just as guilty as VDOT! For instance, you say: ``Adding two extra lanes to Alternative 3A would consume more homes and businesses, cost another $60 million or more, and require the redesign and expansion of the interchanges.'' In fact, if you believe VDOT, its document says (on page 49) that adding fifth and sixth lanes on 3A would increase the cost of 3A by $5.5 million. (This is roughly one-twentieth of the cost of the smart road.) VDOT further states: ``Traffic projections have not been made that would indicate when eight lanes of capacity would be needed.''
So really, now, isn't your $60 million a bit of a stretch? Even if it were true, which it isn't, it's still tens of millions less than the smart road! Do you realize that the $100 million is an equivalent amount necessary to pave or otherwise upgrade every secondary road in Montgomery, Roanoke and Giles counties?
Most important, you say, is ``the principal benefit posed by the smart road, which would be a scandal to squander ... the opportunity to become a major research center for a multibillion-dollar high-tech industry.'' This assertion needs to be challenged on these points:
First, Tech is a leader in intelligent-vehicle testing by aspiration only. Maybe Tech will draw $100 million in research funding; maybe it won't. If it doesn't, do taxpayers get their money back for the facility they were forced to fund? Second, just when did VDOT become a de facto economic-development office with responsibility to provide research laboratories at taxpayer expense? If intelligent-vehicle testing is so lucrative, the venture capitalists or others who stand to gain should be those at risk, not unwitting taxpayers.
A near-perfect site for this testing might well be alongside the U.S. 460 Bypass near Tech, a stretch of land that offers many features the smart road cannot: It's on Tech property, so no land would require condemnation, and it's available now. None of the land is ecologically sensitive. It's only a mile from campus, making it supremely convenient, and it could be used permanently. Perfect, except for one minor detail: The researchers and research contractors would have to pay for it - not the taxpayers of Virginia. So, it's ignored.
This project is ripe with irony. Consider:
The road is justified from a traffic standpoint by asserting that it will relieve congestion on a highway (Alternative 3A) that hasn't even been built.
Much of the desired research is oriented to proving technologies that will allow more cars to use existing roads, yet backers insist that a new road must be built to do so.
Virtually every road in Southwest Virginia is in awful shape, in need of maintenance after our awful winter. Yet we somehow think we can justify this new one, burdening future taxpayers with more maintenance needs.
I don't believe for an instant that the lion's share of research dollars would be lost by not building this road, nor do I believe that traffic counts justify it. This is pure pork, a hugely expensive project with uncertain gain, to benefit very few. It would be the most blatant case of corporate welfare this county has ever seen.
The people aren't fooled. I suggest that Tech, VDOT and your newspaper wake up and smell the exhaust fumes. This bad deal deserves the dead end I hope it will soon face. And the sooner you drop your gleeful support, the better for all concerned.
Michael S. Abraham of Blacksburg is general manager of a manufacturing business in Christiansburg.
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