S.C. transportation officials want their summit meeting with their N.C. counterparts in Myrtle Beach Friday to be solely about Interstate 73. If the real world were a fair place, the Grand Strand's missing link to the outside world would be the only topic of discussion. In a decent world, a superhighway between Myrtle Beach and the state line near Cheraw would have a higher priority than all other regional projects.

But the real world turns on leverage, not decency. And unless North Carolina builds the short link between the state line and its existing interstate highways, the S.C. stretch of I-73 would have limited economic value.

You can't ask for more powerful leverage than that. So it's hard to see how the S.C. summit attendees can keep North Carolina's coastal highway wish list from coming up for discussion Friday.

N.C. officials want South Carolina to extend Interstate 20 from Florence to Wilmington, N.C. And they want an Interstate 74 link from Brunswick County to the Carolina Bays Parkway near North Myrtle Beach.

South Carolina can't and shouldn't play ball on I-20. Such a project not only would cost an astronomical sum but also would be terrible public policy. If I-20 goes anywhere beyond Florence, it should go to the beach - south of the state line.

The I-74 request, however, is more reasonable - not least because the existence of Carolina Bays Parkway gives South Carolina some leverage of its own. The parkway now ends at S.C. 9 - an enticingly short distance from the state line. Just as North Carolina can add value to the S.C. stretch of I-73 by linking it to its interstates, so can South Carolina add value to I-74 in North Carolina by linking it to Carolina Bays.

Moreover, the link between Carolina Bays and the state line would be roughly the same length as the I-73 link in North Carolina. So costs, presumably, would be about the same - though right-of-way acquisition could be a wild card cost driver for both states.

Already, we can hear coastal tourism leaders on both sides of the state line hollering foul about such a compromise. It's no secret that the N.C. coastal transportation agenda is aimed in part at keeping so many N.C. residents from coming to the Strand. And S.C. transportation officials, of course, don't want to make it any easier for S.C. residents to get to the N.C. beach towns or mountains.

But it seems unlikely that a bistate deal on the interstates would weaken the Grand Strand's competitive edge in tourism. The beaches south of the line are easier to get to than the N.C. barrier-island beaches and would remain so if both interstates got built. N.C. beach communities would have to attract humongous private investment to match the attraction power of the Grand Strand's existing tourism infrastructure.

None of this is to suggest that S.C. Department of Transportation Director Betty Mabry and her cohorts should roll over for North Carolina on Friday. Their bottom line should be ensuring that the N.C. I-73 link gets done first. But if it takes giving ground on I-74 to get the makings of a deal, why not do so, on a funds-available basis? This is not a zero-sum game. Highways run both ways, to the mutual benefit of the people at each end.