Brewed Fresh Daily

" Is the Great American Asphalt machine (celebrated by our colleague Jane Holtz Kay in Asphalt Nation) about to get derailed � or given multi-billions for massive expansion? Fresh reports from Pennsylvania and Virginia offer vividly contrasting visions. Latest from Harrisburg is that the state�s DOT has chopped $5 billion in bridge and highway projects from its planning list. Gov. Ed Rendell�s transportation director refers to the state�s tightening fiscal condition and then adds what�s been unsayable in most states up to now � some road projects may be bad ideas because of their impact on the landscape... For stark contrast, check Virginia. State and federal officials are thinking out of the box in quite different fashion, pushing a plan to add a second four-lane road, exclusively for trucks, to the state�s 325-mile stretch of Interstate 81, a major north-south road (and now NAFTA highway) along an American natural treasure � the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley... Yet I-81's new truck lanes, critics fear, would �industrialize� vast stretches of Virginia landscape, turning the Shenandoah Valley�s fabled blue sky, for example, from blue to gray. And one has to wonder � �Why not trains?�� the argument I made myself in a recent column. It would be great to see the presidential campaign focus on vital transportation issues like these, touching as they do on our economic future, our environment and quality of life, democratic planning and choice. But don�t count on it.