– Charles Scriven

For the surrounding culture, some things seem beyond question: motherhood, apple pie, four-lane highways. The four-lane is one of those special rights you get as an American citizen. In North Carolina, the legislature has resolved that every citizen will have a four-lane highway within ten miles of home. Four-lane amendments to state constitutions may be the next step. West Virginia might lag behind in this race, as we do in several others, but we'll put lots of money into it. We have already.

The Appalachian Development Highway System used to include all kinds of roads. Corridor H was going to be a scenic parkway, and two lanes were sufficient. Not any more. More lanes means more jobs.

Yet support for Corridor H is waning. Last year, two polls showed 70 to 75% of voters wanted the four-lane. Now Ken Hechler, our Secretary of State who is running for Congress, has sponsored a poll to gauge voters’ opinions in the Second District, where the big road would go. The telephone survey of the district’s twenty counties by Peter D. Hart Associates of Washington found that 57% favored building the highway, and 33% preferred to improve the existing network of two-lane roads.

Pro-road sentiment declined to 50% in the six Eastern Panhandle counties. They include one county, Hardy, on the corridor’s alignment, and another, Pendleton, where the "Build-It" campaign has been loud and visible. All the counties would suffer from the drain of their highway funds to a dubious and extremely expensive project. That is true throughput the state, but especially so in the rapidly growing Panhandle.

A cartoon last month in The Journal of Martinsburg expressed the pervasive skepticism. A couple drives past a boy at a table labeled "Corridor H" and "Lemonade 15 cents." She asks, "Is that what I think it is?" He says, "Yep! It’s that so-called economic development we’ve been hearing about!!"

Four years ago, there was a different sort of poll called a public comment period. Ninety percent of West Virginians who commented opposed Corridor H. The group that participated was the best informed about the project’s purposes, costs, and impacts. It takes a while for that knowledge to spread. The more people know, the more they’re turned off by the hollow chant, "Jobs. Jobs. Jobs." They recognize that Corridor H is a monolithic solution to a variety of problems and opportunities.

The West Virginia Department of Transportation (WVDOT) is worried. It hired Charles Ryan's public relations firm for $750,000. More lipstick for the pig. Actually, Ryan is a subcontractor for Michael Baker, Inc., which is being paid $37.2 million to do environmental and historical studies. Ryan's "information" will focus on three areas: safety, economic development, and access. You can understand how those topics fit into the environmental and historical categories. A spokesman for the Governor said, "When you're talking about a $1.3 billion project, that is at this point on hold and at this point has people seeking to block it . . . it’s more justified than a quick headline version would suggest." Another version is that three quarters of a million dollars for useless instruction is that much less for useless destruction.

Completing part of Corridor H may undermine the rest. Elkins’ northern bypass is now under construction. A southern bypass is in the final stages of federal review. Relatively soon, we could see the bulldozers moving over South Branch Mountain east of Moorefield. Elkins and Moorefield have been the centers of pro-build activity. Once their local problems are solved, there will be less interest in taking chunks out of the National Forest or demolishing farmland or whizzing tourists away from the best reasons to stop. WVDOT could build its way out of this job.

A more skeptical public will ask, Is it fair? Why does the government allow a single landowner to decide if he's a "willing seller" when the purpose is a national park (and the owner is rich and well-connected) if it doesn’t hesitate to take land from hundreds of unwilling sellers when the purpose is a four-lane (and the owners are poor and divided)? The park would benefit many; the four-lane would be extravagant. It’s all becoming clearer with time. The surrounding culture can change.