Rome wasn’t built in a day, the old saying goes. Historians tell us the Coliseum alone took 24 years to complete, from AD 72 to 96.

By comparison, construction of the VA Butler Health Care’s new home in Center Township isn’t taking much more than a day or two. It should be done later this summer.

We’ve come a long way since the Flavian Dynasty — or have we?

n Did you know that Roman highways built in the time of Julius Caesar more than 2,000 years ago are still in use today?

n Across the United States and Europe, the standard railroad track gauge — 4 feet, 8.5 inches — is identical to the wheel spacing of Roman chariots. In fact, that has been the standard wheel spacing for most horse-drawn coaches and carriages — which would be worthless if the wheels didn’t fit the ruts made by everybody else’s wheels over the course of time.

What’s the point? Only this: For good or bad, decisions made today could affect our lives for many years to come.

We need to keep this notion in mind as our own modern-day coliseum goes up in Center Township. A miniature Rome is about to spring up around the VA property. It will include Duffy Highlands, a 110-home, 43.3-acre residential development proposed for North Duffy Road across from the new VA facility.

Center supervisors learned about Duffy Highlands this week at the same meeting where they approved construction of an east-west road linking North Duffy and Lions roads.

Gateway Engineers estimates the 0.8-mile road would cost between $1.4 million and $1.5 million. The supervisors will seek grant money for some or all of the cost.

This is good for Center Township. Supervisors have set up a special zoning district promoting the construction of medical, professional offices and related activity. No big box stores or gas stations will go there, they say.

The new road will be ideal for this kind of development, not only for the commute of a new workforce but new storefront property — all in Center Township.

But the primary point that needs to be made here is that the new VA still needs access to U.S. Route 422 and the veterans from across the region who rely on 422 to get there. To best serve our veterans (and we all profess a debt to them), we need a north-south road that would link the long-unfinished 422-356 interchange to the proposed Lions-North Duffy connector.

The 422-356 interchange is our Appian Way: an engineering marvel that was planned, built and left half-undone many years ago — so long ago, in fact, that PennDOT says it can’t locate the original plans for its completion — and we access it daily, no longer questioning the presence of an unfinished cloverleaf that lacks a northbound route.

Keep in mind that the entire interchange lies within Butler Township, which is losing the VA Butler Healthcare site to Center. It would better serve Butler Township to force the 422 traffic onto 356 and through the New Castle Road business district to get to Duffy Road. That’s selfish thinking, not only because it inconveniences out-of-town veterans, but because it renders useless to them the new access road being installed just north of the interchange.

Completing the interchange with a north access won’t signal a fall of Butler Township. Far from it. It will spark a renaissance of development in Center Township, but the development will spill into adjacent municipalities, benefiting all of them including Butler Township.

Let’s toss in one final Roman idiom: Crossing the Rubicon. We’re asking township officials to make massive planning changes that can’t be undone. They deserve to hear other opinions, pro and con, about the steps they are about to take. This page is your forum — our forum — for open discussion.