By Peter Ciancone

Tribune-Star

Terre Haute's chances for getting a proposed superhighway connection between Evansville and Indianapolis suffered a huge blow Wednesday when state officials announced their five preferred routes.

The U.S. 41/Interstate 70 alternative, listed as "non-preferred," ranked lowest in the performance criteria determined from a 10-month study of 12 route alternatives.

The Terre Haute route was the only route to achieve the lowest rating in every category listed as a project goal -- though the study showed U.S. 41/I-70 did prove to be the cheapest and the least disruptive to farmland, forest and wetlands.

"I can't believe we didn't score on one thing," said Terre Haute Mayor Judy Anderson, who attended the news conference in which INDOT Commissioner J. Bryan Nicol presented the findings of the study.

Nicol named five preferred routes from the 12 alternatives presented by the Indiana Department of Transportation and its consultants last October. The others were listed as non-preferred for environmental reasons or for failure to measure up to the goals INDOT described earlier in the study.

Nicol presented three thick volumes of analysis during news conferences in Evansville, Terre Haute and Bloomington on Wednesday.

The analysis provided, " ... a uniform comparison of all the alternatives under review," Nicol said, but the massive study has not yet eliminated any of the routes. The decision on their one preferred route will be made before the end of the year.

The study measured the 12 alternatives against nine performance goals developed earlier in the study, with three goals weighted more heavily: Indianapolis to Evansville travel time, improved personal accessibility and international and interstate freight movement. Other performance criteria included long-term economic growth, congestion relief and safety.

"It is not any one factor that we based our decision on," Nicol said.

Vince Bernardin of Bernardin, Lochmueller and Associates, the consulting firm hired by INDOT to conduct the study, said the ranking of the long-term economic benefits of the various routes considers possible economic harm done to Sullivan, Vigo and Clay counties. Many say those counties would suffer a reduced volume of traffic as a result of the highway bypassing the area, making some counties' economic boom a bust to others.

"The entire analysis assumed that a lot of things are going to be happening in southern Indiana, apart from I-69," he said.

The study showed three of the preferred alternatives among the five most expensive, with a projected cost of $930 million for the least expensive -- U.S. 41/I-70 -- to more than $1.76 billion.

"We've said all along, this is a billion dollar project," Nicol said.

Accompanying Wednesday's announcement were one volume of papers devoted to the environmental impact study, a second with documents used to support the study, and an atlas of geographic information using a new information system. The system allowed INDOT to layer a wide variety of information onto maps to assist in its work. That atlas would be of value for years in other southwestern Indiana projects, Nicol said.

All three volumes will be available in libraries in the 26 counties covered in the study, or can be downloaded from the Web site www.i69indyevn.org.

Nicol said the normal public comment period for the federally mandated study has been doubled to 90 days, and that INDOT would conduct another trio of public meetings in mid-August in Evansville, Terre Haute and Bloomington. Critics have complained that the quick scheduling doesn't allow time for the public to study such a large volume of material in time to make intelligent comments.

Nicol said they wanted to get information out to the public quickly, and doubling the input time period, which ends Nov. 7, will give everybody a chance to weigh in.

"Public meetings are simply another way to carry public comment," Nicol said. "A letter sent on the 89th day carries the same weight as a comment made at the meetings."

"For every person who is asking us to extend that deadline, there is another asking us to make a decision," he added.

The announcement on the single preferred alternative will be made before the end of the year, Nicol said. The Federal Highway Administration will take that recommendation, he said, and issue a record of decision next year. From that, the state could begin to look at specific road beds and design.

Copyright 2002 Tribune Star