ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, June 14, 1996 TAG: 9606140025
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SHIREEN I. PARSONS
THE MONTGOMERY County Board of Supervisors soon will, once again, consider the Virginia Department of Transportation's request to condemn agricultural/forestal district land for the "smart road."
Specifically, the board's decision before the board is to be made in accordance with the Virginia law that was enacted to preserve our agricultural and forestal lands and protect those lands from development.
To uphold the law, the supervisors must vote "no" on this issue if they determine that condemning 140 acres of agricultural/forestal district land and constructing a four-lane highway through Agricultural/Forestal District-7 in Ellett Valley would have an adverse impact on the state and local policies that protect such lands.
The Montgomery County AFD Advisory Committee on June 5 voted unanimously to recommend that the supervisors deny the Transportation Department's request because of the impact the project would have on AFD-7 and the county's policy with regard to agricultural/forestal districts. In their discussion, they pointed out that the policy declares that all county residents benefit from good stewardship of the land and from reduced demand to extend the urban areas of the county.
In this precedent-setting case, to dishonor the contract between Montgomery County and the AFD-7 landowners would render this policy meaningless throughout Virginia.
The supervisors also must vote "no" if they determine that the project is not necessary to serve a public need in the most economical and practicable manner possible. In fact, there are viable, less costly and less detrimental alternatives that would serve all the perceived needs expounded by the proponents of this project. Therefore, this four-lane highway through AFD-7 in Ellett Valley is neither economical nor practicable.
Our transportation needs will be served, at less cost to taxpayers, by constructing the four-lane 3A bypass and, if and when necessary, expanding it to six lanes.
Also pertinent to a discussion of alternatives is that in 1989, Virginia Tech's Center for Transportation Research conducted a study in which it found that a mass-transit system between Blacksburg and the Roanoke Valley is entirely feasible. Now the New River Planning Commission is conducting a similar study.
Obviously, a mass-transit system would reduce the number of vehicles traveling between these two areas; however, the Transportation Department never considered this or any other transportation alternatives as solutions to its projected traffic increases.
Traffic on the Blacksburg-Christiansburg 460 corridor is badly congested, and yet the Transportation Department has stopped work on the needed and approved 3A bypass pending the board's approval of the request to condemn AFD land. This is extortion, and the supervisors must not let this influence their decision. It's an outrage.
As for Tech's intelligent highway systems research potential and the projected spinoff economic development, even Dan Brugh and Ray Pethtel finally are admitting that the research need not be conducted on a new highway in Ellett Valley. It can be done anywhere, with the same economic-development results.
In response to a request that he review the state Transportation Department's answers to the supervisors' questions about research benefits, Jack Duke, engineering professor at Tech, stated that he sees no evidence that any past, present or potential research is dependent on a highway in Ellett Valley.
Jack Hodge, the Transportation Department's chief engineer until his retirement in February, stated that the test bed can be built elsewhere for a lot less money. Hodge also pointed out that the federal transportation funding can be used anywhere in the vicinity of Blacksburg. Asked whether the smart road should be constructed as proposed, he answered an emphatic "No."
In conformance with the law that preserves our AFD lands, the supervisors' answer must be "No," too.
Shireen I. Parsons, of Riner, is a consultant to nonprofit environmental groups.
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