Virginia Delegate Dave Albo's justification for widening Rolling Road. Emailed comments to CAWSV residents in 2008. [Bumper to bumper traffic] is not "20 years away." It's about 5 years away [b/c on Rolling Road just about 2 miles from your house is an office building with 6000 employees being built]. And when no one can make a left turn out of it. I am not going to want to say to people that we decided not to widen Rolling. Secondly, its Federal $ that is widening the road, and if we reject that $, then we will never get it back. Thirdly, on my side of Rolling by WSHS, lots of people complained about its widening, and now that its done, EVERYONE, except of course the people who live on Rolling, like it. Fourth, Pat Herrity's figures on how dangerous Rolling is now is quite compelling. We don't want someone from our neighborhood injured or killed. Finally, the opponents of the plan do have a good point. I am not saying that the project does not have problems. The biggest as I see it is that the road is way too wide. The plan has space for a bike lane on the road and then a bike path on the side. Pat and I are trying to get the bike path eliminated, which will greatly reduce the impact on the community. According to studies, that facility will attract thousand of private contractors to the area, thus creating more buildings. I wish it was not happening. I even testified before Congress begging them not to have access to the project onto Rolling. But they have not agreed with me. So my position is that I have one shot at making this happen. If the project is rejected, then the Federal $ goes away and it will not be built for years, decades or maybe even ever. That may make you happy. But, I will have to live with hundreds / thousands of commuters who will be shocked to know that the state turned down Federal money when they, in my opinion, will be caught in bumper to bumper traffic or can not make a left turn onto Rolling. Moreover, the road as it is constructed now, even without the 6000 jobs, is handling twice the traffic volume for which a secondary road is designed to handle. Finally, though people have disagreed, transportation professionals have pointed out that this stretch of road has a high number of accidents, many of them quite serious. Also, they attribute part of the cause has to the curvature of the road. I attribute it to drunk drivers and speed, but certainly the curvature causes these people to lose control more often than a straight road would. I will not assist your group in advocating this position b/c I don't agree with it, but I am happy to tell you where your voice can be heard and how to do it. I support the project b/c I think that in the near future people will be very angry if it is not done. Also, when we widened Rolling from WSHS to Braddock, there was a lot of apprehension that it would cause all sorts of traffic and development. None of that has occurred, and it seems that everyone (except those who live on Rolling) like it. My point to you and others is that I think you all are making a huge tactical mistake. Fighting the widening of Rolling at the expense of improving the design could prove to be a fatal mistake. In my opinion, we need to be concentrating our efforts on (a) getting the size of the project reduced by eliminating the bike path. Even the bikers don't want the bike path, they want to use the lane designated for bikes. I can't understand why the project includes a bike path and a bike lane. Eliminating this will give people living on Rolling much more space; (b) reducing the speed limit and creating police pull offs so we can get better enforcement; and (c) some people have wanted an additional light between Barnack and the Parkway, such as at Viola. |