On the way out the office door one day last week, we were stopped by someone who lives in Smithfield and cares very much about its future. He had read the editorial saying that Smithfield’s greatest road need was widening U.S 301 from Carroll Pharmacy to Four Oaks.

Our friend politely begged to differ. Improving Smithfield’s entrances and its main interchange with Interstate 95 were greater needs, he said. To be honest, we wouldn’t spend a lot of breath arguing that point. The reality is that Smithfield has many road needs, none of them critical perhaps, but all of them guaranteed to make the town a better place to live and in which to do business.

The problem, in our minds, is that few people spend a lot of time lobbying the state on behalf of Smithfield’s road needs. The chamber of commerce gets a passing grade; in particular, it has been a champion of the expansion of Booker Dairy Road into West Smithfield.

But we certainly don’t hear the Smithfield Town Council talking a lot about the town’s road needs. Granted, the council did have a plan for easing congestion on Industrial Park Drive, home to stores, restaurants and hotels. But while the state has been kind enough to add a turn lane to Industrial Park Drive from South Equity Drive to Venture Drive, the council’s plan to build a parallel street has gone nowhere — literally.

As we told our interested friend, it would be easy to hold Smithfield’s elected leaders wholly responsible for failing to address the town’s road needs. But the Town Council is only as proactive as its citizens demand that it be. So to the extent that nothing seems to get better about driving around Smithfield, we have ourselves to blame. That and, of course, a state that can’t seem to get its road-building house in order.