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Wednesday, March 26, 2003
Others from Henry, Patrick and Carroll counties said their economies would be helped by widening U.S. 58 to four lanes.
By RAY REED
"Thirty years from now, we are going to need those eight lanes, and the sooner we build them the better it's going to be for the people of Western Virginia," said Griffith, R-Salem. Griffith said he has talked with Rep. Don Young, a Republican from Alaska and the chairman of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Griffith said he thinks federal funding would be available to help pay for truck-separated lanes on I-81. Such lanes are part of highway building consortium Star Solutions' proposal. Griffith's comments were delivered to Virginia Department of Transportation officials, including Transportation Secretary Whitt Clement, in Salem at the agency's annual road hearings. Clement said Gov. Mark Warner has been in Washington this week to pursue I-81 funding. Bedford County officials and business leaders made a strong pitch for widening a 2 1/2 -mile stretch of U.S. 221 in Forest, and improving the safety of the Virginia 24-Virginia 122 intersection at Stewartsville. Other speakers from the Roanoke and Henry County areas brought up plans for Interstate 73. Roanoke City Councilman Rupert Cutler told highway officials that many Roanoke council members were upset about the proposed I-73 route through Southeast Roanoke and preferred an alignment on the U.S. 220 corridor. Henry County officials said that if the section of I-73 that would connect an industrial park with U.S. 58 and U.S. 220 south were under construction, they could immediately bring new jobs to the area, which has about 12 percent unemployment. Others from Henry, Patrick and Carroll counties said their economies would be helped by widening U.S. 58 between Stuart and Hillsville to four lanes. But Clement said all the state money available for U.S. 58 has been spent or committed. Six speakers, three of them members of the House of Delegates, urged VDOT to charge the remaining cost of the Smart Road in Montgomery County to the entire state's highway budget instead of taking it out of the VDOT Salem District's fund for building primary highways. Clement told them that VDOT had already investigated taking the Smart Road out of the Salem District budget and couldn't find a legal route for doing it. Although the road has been built, charges for its construction will continue several more years. People from Giles County asked VDOT to put plans for improving Virginia 100 back into the construction program. County Administrator Chris McKlarney noted that in 1969 Gov. Linwood Holton promised, while standing on the courthouse steps, that 100 would be widened, and it fell off the priority list again last year. A dozen other speakers mentioned I-81, and half of them said railroad tracks should be improved along the highway's corridor to handle freight that's now being carried by trucks. Star Solutions' spokesman at the hearing, Jack Lanford of Adams Construction Co. in Roanoke, urged Virginia's transportation officials to make a multistate effort to upgrade tracks in the I-81 corridor. Lanford said Norfolk Southern Railway officials have told his group that the railroad can earn a profit on freight only when it's hauled more than 700 miles. Lanford said rail offers a viable alternative to truck freight "if we can work out something with other states." David Foster, a former railroad man from Salem, told the transportation officials that the rail component mentioned in the I-81 widening plans offered by Star Solutions and Fluor Virginia Inc. are not meaningful. Foster said the two highway consortiums propose only to eliminate a railroad bottleneck near Front Royal on a freight route from Atlanta to the Northeast. He said that fix would have little effect on truck traffic along I-81.
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