Joe Kennedy

Joe Kennedy is routinely named the region's best writer by readers of The Roanoker magazine.

Recent columns

• Farewell to those who made this space great
• Homeplace founder had recipe for success
• Pam's Snack Shack: Becoming her own boss

• Column archive

I have a dream of a Roanoke where the air is so pure we'll never have another hazy day.

Where downtown sidewalks will teem with residents and tourists.

Where money will pour into the city's tax coffers the way Little Stony Creek flows over Cascade Falls when a remnant of a tropical storm passes through Giles County.

If I'm gone from this life when that day comes, I hope that I'll be able to look up (or down) at the scene from wherever I am and say, "Well done, thou good and faithful city council. Your foresight has given Green Roanoke a better meaning than greenways ever could."

I dream of a Roanoke devoid of cars and rife with cuter contraptions that combine nostalgia with more nostalgia to create a one-of-a-kind city, if you don't count Disney World and other amusement parks.

Its theme song will be set to the tune of Dionne Warwick's "Trains and Boats and Planes" and titled, "Trains and Trolleys and Shuttle Buses and an Incline."

Regress is progress

My dream occurred the very night I read that Roanoke would apply for a $2 million grant to finance shuttle buses that would link the south side of the city with downtown.

Like many people, I wondered how the buses would mix with the trolley car proposal that the council already has taken seriously, and with Valley Metro, our existing bus system.

Those brainstorms, plus the proposed incline up Mill Mountain, gave me a vision of a city ringed by road signs saying, "Downtown Roanoke Next Exit: No Cars Allowed."

Cars would clutter the streets of Rail World, Roanoke's new nickname. They'd inject a noisy, polluting element to an otherwise serene tableau.

True, Norfolk Southern Corp. locomotives are noisy and polluting, but they're nostalgic, and they're on rails, so they can stay. Cars, trucks and other noxious polluters must pass by.

Anyone who wants to visit Rail World will have to park at the Roanoke Civic Center and take, yes, a shuttle bus to its center, where the City Market used to be.

That will be renamed Play Station No. 1, a restricted zone where the cares of the world, like adulthood, shall not trespass.

Rolling on

If you detect the hand of Councilman Bev Fitzpatrick behind all of this, you may go too far. Yes, the lifelong Roanoker loves buses, trains, inclines and memories.

Yes, he is the president of the Commonwealth Bus and Trolley Museum as well as the executive director of the Virginia Museum of Transportation.

But no one person could generate such a glut of conveyances in a city so small. Can you not see city council members hunched over their lemonades and oatmeal cookies in a secret meeting at the trolley museum?

Suddenly, someone cries, "Rails! We need more rails! And shuttle buses! And an incline!

"Why stand we here idle? Who is with us, and who is not?"

Mayor Nelson Harris swiftly moves that an mediator be hired to determine the answer to that question, but is shouted down. A simple show of hands will suffice.

Six hands boldly rise to back the package. Councilman Brian Wishneff is absent, but later speaks against the proposal, just because.

Yes, the transportation binge, like all binges, seems poorly thought out.

Yes, by the time all of the buses, trollies and inclines get in gear we'll have a clattery place where nobody gets anywhere on time.

And yes, the city's parking garages will bring in less revenue with no cars than if the city continued to provide motorists with free downtown parking on nights and weekends.

The answer?

Turn those garages into apartments and condos.

You think that will glut the market?

That brings us to the beauty part: We'll use shuttle buses to bring workers and visitors from the civic center to downtown.

Once we have them here, we'll refuse to take them back.

Typically overweight and faced with an impossibly long walk, many will decide to stay. Condo sales will flourish.

Tough times call for tough action.

Now is the time to move forward with our dream.

All aboard, and no pushing, please.

Joe Kennedy's column runs Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.