ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, June 7, 1996 TAG: 9606070077
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
About 80 Bedford County residents went "begging" before Virginia highway officials in Salem Thursday morning. They implored the state to make improvements to narrow and dangerous Virginia 24 in the southwestern part of the county.
The residents filled at least two-thirds of the seats at a final hearing by the Commonwealth Transportation Board on the state's proposed six-year improvement plan for interstate, primary and urban highways in Western Virginia.
The board has proposed spending $525,000 over the next three fiscal years to complete engineering studies on adding four lanes to Virginia 24 for a 4.5-mile stretch from Stewartsville to Virginia 746 east of Chamblissburg.
But County Supervisor Dale Wheeler asked that the board move quickly to actual construction of the new roadway because of the increasing traffic on Virginia 24.
Bedford County's population has grown by 30 percent over each of the past three decades and is now the 15th-fastest growing jurisdiction in the state, Wheeler said. This growth in population and in tourism on the Blue Ridge Parkway and at Smith Mountain Lake have increased traffic, including truck traffic, on the road, which is a main route into Roanoke, he said.
Of particular concern, Wheeler said, is that Staunton River Middle and High schools, the two largest in the county, are along Virginia 24. With school bus traffic and increased tractor-trailer traffic along the road, "What we have is a perfect formula for disaster," he said.
School bus driver Norman Culbreth brought visual aids, including photographs and two pieces of yellow highway lane markings, to show highway officials what he faces when meeting a truck on one of the narrow bridges along the road. His bus, he said, is 121 inches wide, and the traffic lane 112 inches wide.
"When trying to squeeze 121 inches of bus with 50 kids on it by a tractor-trailer coming from the other direction, you'll break out in a cold sweat very fast," Culbreth said.
Harry Reed of the Chamblissburg Ruritan Club has been to the board's hearings since 1990, asking for improvements to Virginia 24. "We know that at a final allocation hearing, changes can be made," Reed told the board. "We need some construction."
But changes to the improvement plan after a final hearing are rare, Virginia Secretary of Transportation Robert Martinez said after the hearing. Every year a few modest changes may be made, but if the board decides to give more money to one project it must take money away from a project somewhere else, he said.
Virginia 24 is a "very real, true need," said Fred Altizer, chief administrator of the Salem Transportation District. "There's no doubt about it." But Altizer said the state has just so much money for road improvements, and it has already spent $20million in Bedford County since 1990 on such projects as U.S. 221 at Forest, U.S. 460 at Montvale and U.S. 501 at Big Island.
The transportation board should take its final vote on the six-year improvement plan at its meeting June 20 in Richmond.
Also at Thursday's hearing:
* Bud Oakey, vice president of the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce, thanked the board for allotting $10million toward preliminary engineering work on Virginia's portion of new Interstate 73. The allocation, to be made at the rate of $1million a year, puts the road's future on the "fast track," he said.
I-73, which was included in Congress' Federal Highway System bill this year, will link Grayling, Mich., with Charleston, S.C. In Virginia it will roughly follow U.S.460 and I-81 from Bluefield to Roanoke and U.S.220 from Roanoke to the North Carolina border. The business community has argued that the road, particularly the section from Roanoke to North Carolina, is desperately needed for its economic benefits.
* Arnold Covey, Roanoke County's director of engineering and inspections, appealed to the board to move ahead with improvements to a 1.7-mile section of U.S. 11/460 west of Salem that is a two-lane bottleneck on the otherwise four-lane road. The road is not included in the six-year plan.
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