VIDALIA — In the ancient world, all roads may have led to Rome, but it’s the road that leads to Vidalia that local and regional leaders are meeting to discuss today.

The El Camino Corridor Commission’s biannual conference kicked off last night at the Vidalia Conference and Convention Center and will continue through noon Friday. Approximately 150 representatives from along the corridor are in attendance.

“We asked (the commission) if they would put it on in Vidalia,” Mayor Hyram Copeland said. “We put on a little sales pitch, discussed what we had in Vidalia and the Miss-Lou, and so they’re coming to Vidalia.”

The El Camino Corridor — better known as U.S. 84 — runs from Brunswick, Ga. to El Paso, Texas, and the purpose of the conference is to plan lobbying strategies to get the entire length of the highway four-laned. Representatives from various state and federal legislative offices will also be at the gathering to update their constituents about the project.

“It is always a continuing process, trying to acquire funding for the (highway) itself,” Copeland said.

The other conference of the year takes place in Washington, D.C., where participants drop by their congressional delegation’s offices to lobby for funds for the corridor.

“We had good luck in money last year but to get more money we need to be part of (the 2010 Federal Highway Authorization Bill),” President of the Five-State El Camino East-West Corridor Commission Janet Sullivan said.

Mississippi is currently the state with the most four-lane highway for U.S. 84 completed.

All that remains is a 10-mile stretch from Waynesboro to the Alabama state line, and Sullivan said that it would be completed by 2012.

Louisiana, however, is nowhere near that goal — Georgia, Alabama and Texas all have more of the highway four-laned than Louisiana, which has completed approximately 30 percent of the four-lane project.

“Our goal is to catch up with the other four states,” said Ferriday Mayor Glen McGlothin, the president of the Louisiana delegation to the convention. “Louisiana is so far behind it is pathetic.”

But not everything has been at a standstill.

The recently opened five-lane bridge in Jonesville is a part of the overall El Camino project, Vidalia Riverfront Administrator H.L. Irvin said.

While local leaders along the corridor hope the four-lane highway will open their areas to economic development, the highway is also supposed to serve as an alternate escape route in the event of a natural disaster such as a hurricane, Irvin said.

“It is supposed to take the pressure off of Interstate-10 and Interstate-20,” he said. “Those have become so congested.”

The commission’s next meeting, which will be in Washington, D.C., will be Feb. 9-16.