Published: January 21, 2008 10:12 pm      

Cell tower coming to turnpike

CHARLESTON — You’re entering a fifth dimension on the West Virginia Turnpike, a vast region in which calls placed on wireless telephones suddenly vanish without a trace.

Close the book on that episode.

Word has reached Sen. Shirley Love, D-Fayette, that a five-year campaign to get a cell phone tower on the toll road has at last paid off.

Love said he learned from Jimmy Gianato, director of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, that money derived from a recent boost in the taxes levied on monthly cell phone bills can finance two towers now, and others are in the works.

One is going up near Mahan, the infamous dead spot on the 88-mile Turnpike running from Charleston to Princeton.

“That’s the Twilight Zone,” Love said, reviving a nickname he applied to the stretch of road where calls predictably disappear.

Love has sought a tower on the highway the past five years, often warning the road’s governing agency, the West Virginia Parkways Authority, that motorists could be inconvenienced, if not put in harm’s way, by the lack of communications.

“You could have a man taking his wife to the maternity ward in Charleston or Beckley,” he said Monday, upon learning of the impending cell tower.

“And he’d be right there in one of those dead spots any time of day or night and be caught without any means of communications. Or you could have terrorists coming through there. A State Police officer could stop a group of them for a taillight out.”

With 80 percent of the Turnpike’s users either out-of-state residents or commercial vehicles, Love said non-interrupted cell phone service is even more essential.

“This will be a cooperative thing,” the senator said, noting wireless companies will be allowed space on the tower.

A second tower is going up on Gauley Mountain, blanketing the Upper Kanawha Valley, along with Clay County, and part of Route 39 in Nicholas County, Love was told.

“My persistence has paid off,” he said.

“We can’t complain any more about traveling the Turnpike without cell phone coverage. That tax raise of 3 to 6 percent has paid off.”

A new House bill this year is aimed at banning hand-held cell phones in West Virginia while driving, unless the driver is engaged in an emergency call.

En route Monday to the Capitol, the senator said he was talking but informed the other party as he approached Mahan that the call would disappear, and it did.

Love also found it ironic that the Turnpike has signs at various places advising motorists to dial “Star S-P” if they need assistance from troopers and some messages are in the “Twilight Zone.”

“You might as well send out some homing pigeons or holler your lungs out now,” he said.

Gianato informed him that construction of the towers would begin “relatively soon,” the senator said.

“This will help people who are passing through from out of state,” Love said.

“We can be proud that they will have communications on the Turnpike.”