ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 30, 1996 TAG: 9612020049
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: MARK CLOTHIER STAFF WRITER
CBS is off the hook.
The television network's decision to move the Virginia Tech-University of Virginia football game from Saturday to Friday - traditionally the year's biggest shopping day - didn't cause the traffic jam along the Christiansburg retail corridor that some feared.
Instead, football fans moved with better-than-expected ease Friday along U.S. 460 from Interstate 81 to Tech for the 2:47 p.m. kickoff. Afterward, traffic emptied faster than it did after Tech defeated West Virginia University last Saturday in Blacksburg.
``Yeah, we were kind of surprised,'' said David Clarke, an assistant resident engineer with the Virginia Department of Transportation in Christiansburg. ``It didn't back up that bad at all. Just sort of a steady backup. It started early and just sort of stayed heavy.''
Shoppers - like the UVa Cavaliers, who scored on their first possession of the game - for the most part struck early but quickly faded.
Christiansburg retailers worried that the blend of game and mall - expected to add 25,000 cars to the U.S. 460 and Peppers Ferry Road intersection's usual 55,000-car Friday load - would make an all-too-avoidable traffic nightmare.
To some extent they were right.
Dick Workman manages the Leggett store at New River Valley Mall. He said he had a crowd of snarl-dodgers waiting on the other side when doors opened at 6 a.m. By noon business began to taper.
Workman said he figured he'd make up that sales slack with a later-than-usual closing time Friday night and during the rest of the weekend.
Jim and Dotzie Grussmeyer were two of those early shoppers. They drove from Reston early Friday. By noon they'd already stocked up on Tech souvenirs at Wal-Mart and were refueling with fast food before heading to Lane Stadium to watch their son, Kyle, a Hokie cheerleader.
Traffic for them flowed smoother than expected up until Wal-Mart, they said. Getting from the Wal-Mart parking lot to Peppers Ferry Road to U.S. 460 to Burger King took about 30 minutes. It's normally a five-minute maneuver, at most.
Daryl and Dee Snider hit the stores Friday morning before the sun.
By noon - six hours into their odyssey - the Blacksburg couple already had been to too many stores to list.
All in all, the morning went smoothly, they said. The red light for westbound lanes of Peppers Ferry Road was the first they'd seen all day.
Blacksburg's Earl Hall had the relative misfortune of having a good deed that needed doing near the New River Valley Mall on Friday morning.
Normally, the deed's no sweat: Hall, 62, drops his friend off for a doctor's appointment near Columbia Montgomery Regional Hospital, then hits Wal-Mart for some medicine and a few bags of groceries.
Friday's traffic added a few minutes to the trip. Regardless, he was back to pick up his friend with 20 minutes to spare.
It was, after all, still a doctor's office.
``Traffic's kind of bad right now,'' Hall said from behind the wheel. His sedan was idling about 13 cars back from the traffic signal that would let him make a left turn onto U.S. 460 from Peppers Ferry Road. ``But I guess what with all these people coming in for today's game it could have been worse.''
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON\Staff. Despite the flood of shoppers nearby,by CNBfootball fans leaving sold-out Lane Stadium on the Virginia Tech
campus Friday faced fewer traffic tie-ups than after last weekend's
game. color.