THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 24, 1995 TAG: 9502220111
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 12B EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PATRICIA HUANG, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 110 lines
Last week's public meeting about plans to improve Route 168 was strangely familiar to many of the Chesapeake residents who attended.
``They're showing us their latest proposal, but it's exactly like what they showed us five years ago.'' said Wayne Hogge of Hickory.
For decades, improvement of the road, known locally as South Battlefield Boulevard, has been held up by lack of money and environmental reviews. Thursday's hearing, which was a part of two federally required studies, was aimed at offering motorists the opportunity to meet highway officials and give their suggestions on easing traffic congestion.
Like many residents who attended the Thursday afternoon public forum, Hogge was disappointed that progress seemed to come so slowly. He pointed to a schedule that indicated construction bids for the route would begin in the year 2000.
``And that's just when it's going to begin!'' said Great Bridge resident John Pierce.
Pierce was pondering one of several information billboards in the auditorium of Southeastern Elementary School where the meeting was held. He had just been ushered into a room at the meeting to watch a city information video on ways to ease the congestion.
``It's just stupid!'' he said. ``They just need to address the road faster for the sanity of the people. I realize they can't print money, but on the other hand, the Lake Gaston environmental reviews didn't take this long.''
Residents at the four-hour, walk-in meeting said they were hopeful that the House of Delegates' Roads and Internal Navigation Committee's 21-to-1 approval of a public-private partnership act would mean roads will be built faster. The act, called the Public-Private Transportation Act of 1995, was unanimously passed by the Senate on Jan. 31. It must now be passed by the House before it can be signed by the governor.
A private firm, Rebuild, Inc., is looking into the possibility of fixing Chesapeake's Jordan Bridge as well as Route 168. The company would be able to make a profit from tolls.
Some citizens were still skeptical and came out to blast the city in this latest phase of the long saga of Chesapeake's most overcrowded thoroughfare. The route to Outer Banks tourist spots now carries three times more traffic than it was designed to hold and also serves as Chesapeake's main hurricane evacuation route. Current peak weekend traffic has been counted as high as 28,200 vehicles with an estimated 80 percent coming from outside the region.
With another summer drawing closer, several residents at the meeting said they were frustrated to have no relief again this year.
Shirley Phelps and her husband, Richard, of Hickory sat with neighbors in one corner of the room, recounting Chesapeake traffic horror stories.
It had taken Phelps an hour and a half to drive the five miles home from work one summer, she said. Others at the table nodded their heads in empathy.
But the solemn faces they wore that evening had more to do with their futures than just congestion.
``This is the third meeting we've been to. and I still don't know if they're going to take my house or not!'' Phelps said. ``Let me get on with my life. This has been going on for long enough.''
Phelps' house on St. Bride's Road stands in the path of the city's preferred plan, she said, but highway officials still have not been able to give the couple any definite answers.
Phelps and her husband said the situation has left them in limbo, not wanting to fix up a house they might be forced to abandon and not being able to sell it.
She glared at Virginia Department of Transportation officials standing around the room. ``It's just ridiculous when every time you come to a meeting you don't know any more than the last time,'' she said.
Two tables away sat Phillip and Patty Wilson, who came with a different agenda.
Before any more construction or even talk of construction continues, they want the sound barrier wall they were promised more than a decade ago, they said.
The Wilsons, who live a mile away from the southern end of the Great Bridge Bypass, sat with their neighbors, Ronnie and Kathy Raines. Both couples owned their homes before the bypass was built, they said.
They just can't stand the noise anymore, the two couples said. And what's worse, the Wilson's house in the summer becomes a sort of service stop for motorists who find themselves in a bind.
``People break down on the bypass and climb the fence all the time,'' Patty Wilson said. ``They come and ask if they can use our phone.''
``I'm always giving someone a block of wood because they need to jack up their car or they forget to bring a jack and I have to lend them one,'' her husband chimed in.
The delay, the Wilson's said, has been a longtime debate between city and state over whose responsibility it is to erect the sound barrier wall. Like the hurdles that hinder Route 168, the construction of the wall has been held up by lack of funding and environmental reviews, Patty Wilson said.
Although the two couples have collected more than 150 signatures of homeowners in their neighborhood who say they also want a wall, they said they haven't made any progress.
``We just want our wall before any of this starts,'' Wilson said, motioning towards the Route 168 plans. ``Everyone has just lived with the noise for so long.''
Back in the far corner of the room, a group of men stood around a stack of blueprints. Great Bridge resident Carl Burns argued with them about why the road hasn't been built yet.
Robert Brown, a local highway construction worker who brought one of his own alternative plans for Route 168, rolled his eyes and walked away from the discussion.
``It's all baloney,'' he said. ``There has not been enough political pressure in this area. It's going to take political pressure to drive the EPA decision. It's all politics. That's why this road hasn't been built yet.''
Brown was busy promoting his own alternative plan for a road that connects with Interstate 664 and the very southern end of South Battlefield Boulevard near the North Carolina state line.
KEYWORDS: ROUTE 168 SOUTH BATTLEFIELD BOULEVARD by CNB