DATE: Tuesday, September 9, 1997            TAG: 9709090261

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAC DANIEL, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   71 lines

EXPRESSWAY ROADBLOCKS AHEAD? CHESAPEAKE COUNCIL TO DECIDE TONIGHT ON ROUTE 168 BYPASS.

The City Council will be asked tonight to approve the design of the so-called Chesapeake Expressway - a much anticipated bypass for U.S. 168 to a choked two-lane section of southernmost Battlefield Boulevard.

It's one of the most important votes in the road's long history. And several council members, including the vice mayor, say they are not pleased by the plans and may be ready to erect some barricades.

Councilman Dalton S. Edge also expressed reservations about the plans at a work session last week.

Should a redesign be required, city officials said, it could add up to $6 million to the $125 million project and delay it another year.

Vice Mayor John W. Butt, who has long been against tolls on the Chesapeake Expressway, calls the current design plans ``ludicrous.'' In a council work session last week, he described one interchange as a ``spaghetti junction.''

Butt doesn't like traffic lights planned at Gallbush Road and Ballahack Road. He believes they would cause delays on the expressway similar to those currently occurring on Battlefield Boulevard.

``It's ridiculous to have another bottleneck situation that we're going to just drop ourselves into,'' he said at last week's work session. ``I live down there and I see what goes on day in, day out.''

To alleviate some of these problems, he has suggested bypassing traffic lights by elevating the highway over those intersections and having some portions of the road adjoin the current Battlefield Boulevard, a move Butt said would have less impact on wetlands and help local businesses reap the rewards of tourist dollars.

City officials admit that some of the suggestions offered by Butt, other council members and locals are fine. Problem is, they're coming in too late in the process and could add substantial costs and delays.

``We know that what we're building works,'' said city engineer D. Ray Stout last week.

Tolls will be required on the road because the city, in an effort to rush construction, agreed to tap a state fund that only provides money for privately built toll roads.

The city has released a report that detailed the other requested changes and their likely results.

Butt had suggested a direct connection ramp or elevated highway in lieu of a proposed loop ramp at the Battlefield Boulevard/Route 168 interchange.

According to a city report, this change could delay the project for between six and nine months and cost about $6.5 million more.

Another suggested change was to move the Battlefield Boulevard/ Route 168 interchange further south. That could delay the project up to a year, would require a new public hearing and reduce the cost of the project by about $1.7 million. This savings, however, would be offset by the cost of the delay, the report said.

The cost of elevating the expressway to eliminate a proposed traffic signal at Gallbush Road, city officials said, would be a six- to nine-month delay and $4.5 million.

The Chesapeake Expressway is considered Chesapeake's most important road project. The current two-lane Battlefield Boulevard is a summertime nightmare, with traffic often snarled to and from North Carolina's Outer Banks.

The Commonwealth Transportation Board is scheduled to approve the road's design on Sept. 18. Buying the road's right of way is expected to begin this fall. Construction is scheduled to start next spring, and the expressway is expected to be complete by the summer of 2000.

The city plans to be the first in the state to build a highway parallel to the existing road using a consortium of private builders. The builders will construct the road and operate it for a number of years, using tolls to pay off the debt.

At the last public hearing on the road's design, 343 citizens attended. About 63 percent of the citizens who commented supported the project. . ILLUSTRATION: Map

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