The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

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September 7, 2012

Cell towers to be erected soon on turnpike property

Verizon interested in up to 6 new sites

By Mannix Porterfield Register-Herald Reporter

BECKLEY — For years, travelers on the West Virginia Turnpike griped about the sudden loss of cell phone coverage in certain blind spots on the 88-mile toll road.

More than once, those portions were scorned as The Twilight Zone.

Relief is on the way, once all the details get ironed out, Turnpike Manager Greg Barr disclosed at Thursday’s meeting of the West Virginia Parkways Authority at Tamarack.

One tower in mind by Verizon is near the Morton Travel Plaza, and a second one envisioned would be at the Chelyan toll plaza.

In addition, the communications giant is interested in four other locations.

“The good thing is they’ve identified two sites they want to get started on right away,” Barr said.

Attorneys for the authority, Verizon and the Division of Highways are hammering out the terms of the agreement.

“We’re real close on that now,” Barr said.

Cell towers already are functioning atop the mountains, and Verizon wants to erect some closer to the Princeton-to-Charleston highway.

By installing them in the controlled access of the Turnpike, the company can save costs associated with access roads to towers high up a mountainside. A $250,000 facility along the road would cost twice as much if planted up a mountain, Barr noted.

Already, the Federal Highway Administration has given its blessing to adding towers in the Turnpike’s controlled access line and right-of-way.

“There is some stipulation about whether the guardrail has to be moved or to decontrol a certain area around the cell towers,” the Turnpike manager said.

“The other thing we’ve been working on for a long time is the wording in the lease agreement. With these towers, basically we’re leasing the land to build the towers. That has to go through the new Real Estate Division that was created by the Legislature.”

Complaints have abounded about the inability to maintain calls while driving the Turnpike.

“It’s gotten better,” he said.

“But once you leave Beckley and head north and hit Mileposts 60 and start going into the mountains and the curvy part of the Turnpike, you just drop your signal. We all know that.”

Once all of Verizon’s planned towers are in place, “We should have pretty good coverage,” said Randy Epperly, the HNTB consultant.

“There’s 14 miles where it’s really bad now — between Standard and Mahan.”

A paralyzing snowstorm in December 2009 that left motorists trapped overnight and well into the following morning underscored the inadequate cell phone coverage, he noted.

“That was a big wake-up call for everybody, too,” Barr said.

“People were stranded, couldn’t call anybody and couldn’t check the social media networks. That kind of pointed out we’ve got to do what we can to get coverage there.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com

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