Governor Hopefuls Offer Differing Ideas for Va.'s Transportation Quandary

Virginians who live along the Interstate 81 corridor, which stretches through the Shenandoah Valley to Tennessee, are looking for changes to make that crowded highway safer. Southwest Virginians also are eager for new paths through the mountains, which they say would bolster their lagging economy.

John Driver, 69, a retired civil service engineer from Winchester, said he wants more lanes on Route 7, the perpetually jammed road he drives every week to visit his grandchildren in Leesburg. And he's willing to pay for them.

"Sure, increase taxes," he said. "Sorry. That's the only way you can do it."

Driver was one of several shoppers at the Leesburg Corner outlet malls who sounded off about their ideas for transportation improvements Friday as they prepared to join the lines of traffic backing up at the problematic intersection of Route 7 and Route 15.

Larry Snyder, 62, said that he's "always voted for transportation reasons" and that his main concern this year is better bus service from his Falls Church home to his job in Reston. He said there's no need to raise taxes to do it.

"I think they already have the funding," Snyder said. "They should use it more wisely."

Kim Crenshaw said the solution in Northern Virginia is more and wider roads -- congestion is so bad she has a hard time even getting out of her Ashburn subdivision -- but she also said that roads can't be built without considering what's going up around them.

"Loudoun County is growing way too fast," said the 40-year-old sales manager for Toyota Financial Services. "Unless they coincide the widening of roads with the number of people moving out here, it's just going to be a cluster."

One area of agreement among the candidates is that private companies should be encouraged to build more roads.

Karen Mouser, 45, a Jazzercise instructor from Lovettsville, agreed. "The privately owned roads are being managed and handled better than the public roads," she said.

The candidates bring different perspectives to residents' concerns.

Kilgore would limit the role of state government so that a region such as Northern Virginia can tackle issues about which other parts of the state are ambivalent.

Kaine's approach of uniting land-use decisions with transportation planning is an appeal to those who think growth proceeds without a thought to how people are going to get around.

Potts's plan is an appeal to those who think that the problems are dire and that something dramatic needs to be done right away.

David F. Snyder, chairman of the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, said that Kilgore and Kaine offer a lot but that neither fully addresses Northern Virginia's needs.

"I would marry the two," Snyder said. "The Kilgore program strikes me as the one more likely to deliver the necessary resources to solve the problem. On the other hand, the Kaine program lists many of the specifics that solve the problem."