|
-
Traffic stacks up at about 3:30 yesterday afternoon at the intersection |
By KELLY HANNON
Over the past two decades, plans to fix the Falmouth intersection have been big.
Bypasses. Cloverleafs. Flyovers. Tunnels.
Now, the talk is turn lanes.
Last night, the Virginia Department of Transportation presented two designs for the Stafford intersection where U.S. 1 and Butler and Warrenton roads meet, immediately north of the Falmouth Bridge.
For an estimated $24.9 million, VDOT would dramatically widen the intersection at street level.
The intersection would still be controlled by a four-way traffic signal, but new turn lanes and more straight-ahead lanes would cycle cars and trucks through the signal faster. Also, the land required to improve the intersection is smaller than in previous plans.
A previously discussed design option remains: A $54.9 million flyover for traffic traveling east and west on Butler and Warrenton roads, with a traffic signal underneath controlling traffic on U.S. 1. The flyover design would take property from Falmouth Baptist Church and a neighboring cemetery.
Virginia has budgeted $24.9 million for the Falmouth intersection in the latest six-year transportation budget, passed in June by the Commonwealth Transportation Board. Federal money would pay for 80 percent of the project, with state funds paying the remaining 20 percent.
For an additional $30 million, the flyover would shave about 30 seconds off a driver's wait time at the intersection in 2016.
Cord Sterling, a Stafford supervisor and a state transportation board member, favors the street-level design over the flyover.
"The financial cost and opposition in the community would not be worth the tradeoff in traffic improvement. Portions of a church and cemetery would have to be taken," Sterling said.
Stafford Supervisor George Schwartz, who represents the Falmouth District, made the reconstruction of the intersection a campaign issue. Schwartz said the street-level design is practical and can be completed in five to six years. "They've done the traffic research and it will reduce the waiting times," Schwartz said.
Currently, drivers wait an average of 2.88 minutes at the Falmouth intersection traffic signal during peak weekday hours, according to VDOT. The wait is much longer for some drivers, especially on weekend afternoons and whenever motorists use U.S. 1 to avoid a crash on Interstate 95.
If nothing is done, that wait will grow to an average of 4.05 minutes in 2016, and 8.42 minutes in 2030.
The street-level plan trims the wait time to 1.35 minutes in 2016, and 2.90 minutes in 2030. The flyover cuts a driver's wait time to below a minute in 2016, to 0.80, and keeps it close to 2 minutes by 2030, when VDOT expects 65,000 cars a day will pass through the intersection. An average of 42,000 cars a day go through the intersection now, VDOT estimates.
Close to a hundred people attended an informational meeting on the designs yesterday, held at a VDOT auditorium on Deacon Road. Quintin Elliott, VDOT's Fredericksburg District Administrator, spent three hours talking with area residents and business owners about the designs, with additional VDOT staff going over maps blown up to poster-board size. Attendees were asked to fill out a comment sheet or submit remarks by Aug. 14 to VDOT offices.
Following the public meeting, VDOT will discuss the designs with Stafford County staff and the Board of Supervisors, Elliott said.
VDOT will gather all of the comments and begin work on a more detailed design, which will have firmer boundary lines, and give property owners a foot-by-foot look at how the reconstruction work will affect their land or business. A public hearing would be held on that design.
Until a final design is drawn, some matters are unresolved, such as the fate of West Cambridge Street,
the steep, two-lane road that connects U.S. 1, River Road and Washington Street.
VDOT officials could not say whether West Cambridge will be completely or partially blocked at the intersection of U.S. 1 based on the proposed designs.
Amy Johnson, owner of Amy's Cafe at 103 W. Cambridge, said she was "flabbergasted" that the plans will hurt businesses on all four corners of the intersection. She was disappointed not to see anything demonstrating how the new intersection would tie in with Stafford's plans to redevelop the Falmouth area.
"I think they've waited too long in my opinion," Johnson said. "I think they've allowed too much development and it's almost too little, too late, and dollars now seem to be what matters, when there were alternatives years ago."
Homeowner Gabriella Pribble lives on Ingleside Drive in a neighborhood along the Rappahannock River. She feels badly for people who sit in traffic on the Falmouth Bridge on Sunday afternoons, trying to go north, but she opposes both proposed designs.
"I think they should leave well enough alone," Pribble said. "There has to be another solution."
Pribble is worried about the closure of West Cambridge, and what it will do to friends and neighbors.
"I've lived up there 46 years, and I hate to see people hurt and my heart goes out to them, and businesses as well," she said.
Many of the meeting's attendees had an immediate concern connected to the intersection--a home or a business.
One of them was David Bronston, who lives on Butler Road in a house he has been renovating.
He's undecided on the plans. For now, his top concern is traffic speed on Butler, since he has to back out of his driveway directly onto the road.
But he had another concern: the long line of cars sitting on U.S. 1. northbound, all the way into Fredericksburg. "The thing that really bothers me, and I avoid it because I'm aware of it, the northbound traffic on U.S. 1 backs up all the way to the college, and I just feel sorry for those people," Bronston said.
Kelly Hannon: 540/374-5436
Email: khannon@freelancestar.com
