Halliburton to pave Shenandoah Valley

Here's an interesting column from a local paper about a Halliburton/Virginia DOT scheme to widen I-81 to eight lanes through the Shenandoah Valley to accommodate more truck freight. The writer explains why this isn't such a swell idea, and proposes a common-sense alternative.

Ed. note: not only would this ruin one of the prettiest stretches of Interstate in the South, it would dump even more semi-truck traffic into downtown Knoxville Tennessee, where, for some inexplicable reason, two of the nation's busiest interstates intersect.

There is a $104 million widening project underway for I-40 downtown (the largest project ever undertaken by TDOT), where I-40 (fed by I-81) and I-75 converge for a few miles, at one point funnelling down to a narrow, decrepit, two lane flyover in the middle of downtown Knoxville. That stretch of highway is one of the state's deadliest, with frequent wrecks involving semi-trucks.

TDOT and the City of Knoxville (which is run by a family that owns one of the nation's biggest truck stop companies whose former CEO is now Mayor) have long opposed efforts to reroute that section of interstate around downtown, or to require trucks to use the I-640 bypass as an alternate route. The last thing they need down there is more semi-trucks.