A practical plan for U.S. 220

Picture an hourglass: Flip the timer over, and the sand at the top funnels through a small opening to pool in the wider receptacle at its bottom.

Now imagine if that hole in the middle were wider; sand would flow more freely.

That’s how business leaders in Martinsville see the U.S. Route 220 corridor between Roanoke and the North Carolina border. The wider the gap — the more capacity 220 has — the more commerce can flow to destinations north and south.

The Blue Ridge Innovation Corridor, a group consisting of business leaders from Southern Virginia and the Roanoke and New River valleys, wants to grow commerce in the region and, specifically, would like to see improvements made to about seven miles of U.S Route 220 between U.S. Route 58 in Henry County and the North Carolina line. 

Virginia lawmakers seem to be on board. In 2023, the General Assembly instructed the Virginia Department of Transportation to develop a plan to improve the section of road by relocating and regrading southbound lanes, designing safer intersections and extending turn lanes. Expected to be completed this fall, the study will cost about $200,000, money that will come from VDOT’s state planning and research fund, according to an agency spokesperson.

Del. Eric Phillips, R-Henry, and Jim Frith, chair and co-owner of Martinsville-based Frith Construction, both stress that the area has seen significant economic activity in recent years. This includes Poland-based glass fabricator Press Glass, which invested $155 million to expand at Henry County’s Commonwealth Crossing Industrial Park in 2023.

“When you make stuff, you’ve got to transport it,” Phillips says.

In 1991, members of Congress made plans to establish Interstate 73 as a high-priority corridor that would run from South Carolina to Michigan, but it wound up as a 93.5-mile route limited to North Carolina. Later plans explored extending I-73 to Interstate 81 in Roanoke, but those proposals “just died,” Frith says. “There was just no way it would ever be funded.”

In 2020, VDOT released a study looking at a possible bypass from U.S. Route 58 to the North Carolina line. Building a new interstate and that project would both require more funding than improving the existing corridor.

And proponents say an improved road is better than the status quo.

“We’re just happy that there’s some forward momentum beginning to happen,” Phillips says.

Associate Editor Beth JoJack contributed to this article.