REDO I-81
We've been talking about updating I-81 for months and there is still a cloud of doubts and indecision.
It is obvious that Interstate 81 has become hazardous to those who use it because of increased traffic. Something must be undertaken promptly and, up to this moment, we seem to have been discussing expensive “make do”, “get by” and “Band-Aid” changes which will be obsolete before they are completed.
Six months ago, in these pages, we suggested that it might be time for us to share our problems with others. The suggestion offers a way whereby much of the traffic now being handled by I-81 could be siphoned off pretty much as I-81 has done with I-95 for years. The plan would prove to be less costly that proposed modifications widening exiting I-81 to add extra lanes; and it would bring other advantages to much of Virginia as well.
Basically the plan calls for at totally new north-south interstate highway east of the Blue Ridge mountains from a point in the Raleigh-Durham,N.C. area to Danville in Va., Lynchburg, Charlottesville and, then into the Frostburg, Md. vicinity avoiding highly compacted northern Virginia/DC.
Legislators and citizens of the districts involved should be beating the drums loudly for such a major interstate thorough their areas, and the sooner they start the better.
All the proposed “fixes”for I-81 are meeting with opposition and understandably so, especially the obvious plight of trucking firms being asked to pay tolls if they use the “new” or “modified” highway. It is time to check comparative costs, advantages and disadvantages while I-81 proposals are “on the shelf”. Objections are largely because of public outcry against the apparent foolishness of many of the costly proposals for temporary modifications, at best.
It is, no doubt, also probably accurate to point out that any plan is without permanence. At that point it will be time for citizens state house persons west of the Appalachians to talk up a Greenbriar Valley interstate. It might start in Tennessee, move through the Greenbriar Valley to Elkins and then into Pennsylvania. The interstate situation is no longer a Shenandoah Valley matter; not just a problem Virginia alone must face. It is an Atlantic states dilemma and should be treated as such. The same people should be considering ways of establishing distribution centers of commerce closer to existing marketing centers to make much of the excessive traffic unnecessary. We can control the flow if we really choose to do so.
Talk with your concerned political leader; talk to owners of trucking firms about this possibility. The need for a new Piedmont Interstate highway is urgent. It will be costly, but far less so in both money and human lives, than to continued patching-up, mending and the seemingly endless suggested repairs on I-81 to meet traffic needs it was never designed to handle.
A.L.M. Nov . 15, 2002 [c485wds]
