We can build an Interstate 69 highway to Indianapolis without breaking the bank and destroying farmland. We can do it by upgrading existing four-lane highways instead of building another one from scratch. But there is only one way to accomplish that: by upgrading U.S. 41 to an interstate and connecting to Interstate 70. It can’t be done using Indiana 57 and Indiana 67 or other two-lane roads.

As support for a U.S. 41/ Interstate 70 route has grown, its opponents have done a quick and dishonest two-step. They’ve practically abandoned the fiscally and environmentally irresponsible "new- terrain" route via Bloomington, Ind., that they used to champion. That route would have wasted so much tax money that Tom Brokaw called it a "Fleecing of America" on the NBC Nightly News.

Increasingly, they now support a different route for I-69, one following Indiana 57/67. Recognizing that U.S. 41/I-70 makes common sense, they claim that their new route has the same advantages. They claim that it will use existing roads, thereby conserving tax dollars and protecting farmland and forests. There’s just one problem with this: It’s not true.

Unlike U.S. 41, which is a four-lane divided highway, Indiana 57 and Indiana 67 are almost entirely two lanes and not divided. Making them into an interstate would require enormous widening. Along much of the way that’s impossible, because so many homes and businesses would have to be relocated.

We don’t know exactly how many relocations Indiana 57/67 would require, because the Indiana Department of Transportation is still studying it. But INDOT has calculated the relocations necessary for a comparable and partially identical route, which would have upgraded Indiana 57 and Indiana 45 — which is also two-lane — to an interstate from Evansville to Bloomington.

According to INDOT, to upgrade these two-lane roads to an interstate just to Bloomington:

• 744 homes would be relocated, compared with 226 for U.S. 41/I-70 all the way to Indianapolis.

• 85 businesses would be relocated, compared with 26 for the entire U.S. 41/I-70 route.

• 17 churches and eight cemeteries would be relocated, compared with none for U.S. 41/I-70.

Nobody wants to relocate that many homes, businesses, churches and cemeteries. And the relocations along an upgraded Indiana 57/67 would be comparable.

For that reason, an Indiana 57/67 route for I-69 could not take advantage of existing roadway along much of the way to Indianapolis. Instead, it would have to be a new-terrain highway, paralleling these existing roads and built from scratch. That means the same ballooning cost and farmland destruction as the new-terrain route via Bloomington.

The Indiana 57/67 proposal has other problems, too.

Like the new-terrain route, it faces enormous opposition. In Owen County, for example, where it would bulldoze through scenic hills and bring sprawl to Indiana’s most unspoiled areas, elected officials oppose it and a citizens group has organized to fight it.

And Indiana 57/67 isn’t much help to people who oppose U.S. 41/I-70 on the basis that it doesn’t go to Bloomington. Indiana 57/67 doesn’t go to Bloomington either. In fact, Bloomington is about a 25-minute drive away.

For those of us tired of arguing about I-69 and interested in getting it built, it makes common sense to locate it where people want it, instead of where they don’t. It makes common sense to put it where it won’t destroy thousands of acres of Southwest Indiana farmland and forests. It makes common sense to save our taxpayer dollars by upgrading highways we already have.

The U.S. 41/I-70 proposal does all of that. North of Interstate 64, U.S. 41 would be upgraded to full interstate standards and would be renamed I-69. Like any other interstate, it would have no traffic lights, driveways or at-grade intersections. The route then would follow a bypass around Terre Haute which is already in the works. The rest of the way to Indianapolis it would use existing I-70, which would be renamed I-69/I-70.

U.S. 41/I-70 costs less than an Indiana 57/67 route, it preserves Hoosier farmland and forests, and citizens and elected officials along the route support it. For all those reasons, I-69 will become a reality far sooner using U.S. 41/I-70 than using an Indiana 57/67 route or any other combination of new or upgraded roads.

Let’s get I-69 built in our lifetime. Let’s use the common sense U.S. 41/I-70 route.

Dixie Wagner is a resident of Evansville.

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