Who made Congressman Goodlatte the engineer on this project?

This editorial in the Richmond Times-Dispatch points out correctly that the recent pronouncements by Congressman Bob Goodlatte about the expansion of Interstate 81 appear to be the Congressman's own layman's view of how to build a project that will cost billions, and that's no way to decide the issue.

Then again, recalling for example this editorial in the Virginian-Pilot, maybe we should let the politicians figure out the details of road projects, since that worked so well for VDOT in the 1990s.

I'm hoping that when they start all this expansion on the Interstate, they begin at Winchester and work their way south, so maybe I'll be too old to drive before the work reaches Southwest Virginia. After all, the work done widening Interstate 81 to six lanes around Bristol for less than ten miles above the Tennessee line only took about 5 years, as reported here, and it's 280 miles from here to Winchester. At the rate of two miles per year, if they started now, they might get as far south as Harrisonburg by the time I'm 80 years old.