ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 4, 1997 TAG: 9702040071
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
YOU'RE MOVING down the crowded interstate near Metro Anywhere, U.S.A., right on someone's bumper. Bobbing between lanes, you flit out from behind down-shifting rigs, back in to shake the speed maniacs descending like Velociraptors in the rearview mirror. Inside your steel enclosure, you're anxious, stressed. You wonder:
Will more lanes clear up the high-speed congestion?
They might help for a while. But long-term, drivers still will be fleeing Tyrannosaurus rigs and Veloci-racers - when they aren't jammed together in a crawling migration stalled by road repairs or wrecks or simply too many cars on a given stretch. Drivers still will be in the same box, that is, as long as roadbuilding is the sole response to heavy traffic.
Advances in automated-driving technology hold promise of easing the situation in the future. Meanwhile, reauthorizing ISTEA, the federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, would help communities solve their regional transportation needs more creatively.
Passed by Congress in 1991, and up for reauthorization this year, ISTEA prescribed how $25 billion a year in federal gasoline taxes are divvied among states and metropolitan areas. For the first time, it gave urban areas the power to set their own regional transportation priorities through their metropolitan planning organizations.
And, vital though the highway system is - for commerce, defense, public safety and personal travel - communities setting regional priorities spent some of their money on other modes of transportation. While highways have kept the largest share, ISTEA has allowed some funding for mass transit, and about $1 billion a year for transportation enhancements such as bikeways and greenways.
The Roanoke Valley is behind other regions that moved more quickly and with more foresight to involve citizens in regional transportation planning and pursue creative alternatives with ISTEA funding. But ISTEA has been tapped for fledgling efforts to establish a system of greenways, for example, starting with the Hanging Rock Trail in Salem and a path from downtown Roanoke up Mill Mountain.
The problem is that, just as states such as Virginia and regions such as ours are beginning to understand they shouldn't limit their options to insatiable roadbuilding, the money that encourages communities to explore their options is threatened with extinction. Highway builders and state transportation departments have found that they prefer almost total control over federal gas tax revenues, and are lobbying for replacing ISTEA.
One alternative, nicknamed "Hot Tea" for highways-only transportation, would set up a highways-only trust fund. Virginia has signed on to another, STEP 21, proposed by a coalition of 21 states, that promises to assure that at least 95 percent of a state's contribution to the federal Highway Trust Fund is returned. (Virginia expected only 79 cents on every dollar it paid into the fund in 1996.)
More money always sounds good, but the battle for bucks threatens the kind of community control and openness to innovation that ISTEA has slowly started to get rolling.
In a growing number of places, ISTEA is prompting roadbuilders, community activists, environmentalists and business people to look at a mix of transportation for their region. Intermodal connections that make it easier for locals to bike or take a bus to work or for businesses to trade in international markets have also become factors in spending limited transportation dollars - and must continue to be.
Our region needs more road development, including installing I-73, building the "smart road" and widening parts of I-81. But a future that looks like a crowded highway, only more so, is not very livable. Communities must be able to cut their own paths, not all of them set in concrete.
LENGTH: Medium: 69 linesby CNB