County makes a silly Smart Road request
Many Montgomery County residents long have pined for completion of the Smart Road. Again this year, supervisors put completing the link between Blacksburg and Interstate 81 on their transportation wish list.
It is time for a reality check. That will not happen any time soon, and asking for it repeatedly makes the county look delusional or juvenile. The state lacks the money.
January 20, 2013 - 7:40 AM
I think what is silly is for the RTEB to criticize the County for expecting the state to stick to its stated intent. Did you think it was silly for the Town of Blacksburg to expect the developers of First and Main to stick to their original stated intent when it became financially difficult for them to do so? Contrary to your silly position, continuing to request the completion of the smart road is not likely to annoy “decision makers”. Instead, it continues to remind them of the project and lets them know that the citizens haven’t forgotten the legislatures prior promises. Sadly, the way our political system works, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If the County stops talking about it, the legislators will just let the completion of this project quietly die.
What is truly silly and amusing is the RTEB’s bemoaning the possibility of “a private road paid by tollbooths” after all the bitching and moaning it did about McDonnell’s proposed transportation plan. Aren’t you guys the ones who talked about the inequity of taking away the “user-fee based” gas tax in favor of making everyone pay for it through a sales tax? Aren’t tolls the ultimate example of a true user fee? Can you not see the incongruity in your own objections?
The Roanoke Times editorial board has been filthy hypocritical about the Smart Road. A reminder for the record (Thursday, August 23, 2007):
Local boondoggle earned Times’ support
Exposing The Roanoke Times’ hypocrisy is just too easy — kind of like hunting cows.
The latest example has the editorial staff sanctimoniously chastising the “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska as a congressional pork-barrel highway project (Aug. 13 editorial, “Raise the gas tax for bridge repairs”).
The editors know full well that they needn’t look so far. They could pick the bridge to nowhere in our back yard known as the Smart Road bridge in Ellett Valley as an example of pork.
Oh, but wait a minute, that $100 million boondoggle was a pet project The Times pushed down the throats of the New River Valley.
In fact, The Times’ editors made a point of praising Rep. Rick Boucher for introducing a pork-barrel “set-aside” to help finance the Smart Road.
The Times lectured readers that the Smart Road would relieve congestion in the NRV and shorten the drive time to Roanoke. In reality, taxpayer-financed welfare for Virginia Tech was what the earmark was about.
With crumbling infrastructure and the Smart Road still unopen to traffic, The Times has gone curiously mute about the transportation necessity of the “Smart Road to Nowhere.”
Repeated hypocrisy is the reason that fewer folks take The Times’ editorials seriously.
CHRIS VANCANTFORT
RADFORD
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/letters%5Cwb/129069
Has the Smart Road panned out to be the research vehicle it was promised to be? Yes. The problem is that the road was built on lies and questionable information (and no formal studies) that no one would own up to then (and probably not now). At the time, there was a major study to determine how to fix the traffic problems on overburdened U.S. 460 from the south end of the Blacksburg Bypass to exit 118 on I-81. Something like 17 different solutions were listed, from “do nothing” to various new roads paralleling the existing road to new routes from Blacksburg to I-81 (there were a couple that went from Blacksburg via Ironto to that exit on I-81). We have the chosen route today, the “connect the bypasses” plan and the route the Smart Road is on was left in the dust. But then it was decided that a new highway research program would be good for Virginia Tech and the region and that route was dusted off as being a good one for the road. The sales pitch then began to make the idea viable and palatable to the public. The “it will eventually reach I-81″ and “when the new [connect the bypasses] road becomes overburdened this road will be available to relieve the congestion” sound bites were floated out. Ray Pethtel admitted at one point that all the details of the cost and benefit of the road were just “back of the envelope” calculations, but despite that the road went through. There was a lot of arm-twisting and pressure from some powerful people (the Montgomery County supervisors caved and removed some key land from the protection of being an Agricultural and Forestal District over the objection of the land owner). There were a lot of hurt feelings over the lack of public input and participation in any part of the project (there was a token “citizens advisory committee” established that had a small say in putting Hokie stone on the tall bridge piers). The road advocates won and the “common folk” lost. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that the road would never be extended to I-81, that was just part of the smoke-and-mirrors to make things sound good.
So fast-forward to now — there are a lot of extra ramps and bridges that were built when the (poorly built) “connect the bypasses” project was constructed. Perhaps if those extras weren’t really needed in Blacksburg, there would be a better set-up in Christiansburg at the mess that is N. Franklin St. and Cambria St. Perhaps the town and county should get together and ask for a better solution to that malfunction instead of the supervisors pipe-dreaming about the road to nowhere.