DATE: Monday, March 31, 1997                TAG: 9703310054

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAC DANIEL, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   57 lines

RESIDENTS: OUR WAY ON THE HIGHWAY

How much weight does a past council vote hold in a town growing as fast as Chesapeake?

The answer confounded the City Council last week as it dealt with a road-widening project along Kempsville Road.

And in the end, what appeared to be a promise kept may actually result in that promise being broken.

Kempsville Road, one of the city's few east-west arteries, has been slated for expansion from two lanes to six since at least 1990.

However, at the request of nearby residents, the City Council voted in 1994 to limit a middle section of the project to four lanes, a vote that City Council members acknowledge was more political than practical.

Then came a spurt of record-setting growth. Chesapeake officials now say it's more than residents wanting six lanes; they need all six lanes.

``And if we don't build them now, we'll end up building them in the future - at twice the price,'' public works director John O'Connor told the council last week.

Even with six lanes, Kempsville Road isn't expected to be able to handle the influx of traffic expected by the turn of the century.

The road will have an average daily capacity of 43,000 vehicles, a number that will force traffic to a crawl, according to state traffic counts.

``We're really hard-pressed,'' said city engineer D. Ray Stout.

But local residents remained adamant against the six-lane plans, arguing that traffic counts were inflated.

Kevin Butler, a member of the Kemp Woods Civic League, held council members to their past promise to limit a section of the road to four lanes.

``We don't need it,'' Butler said. ``We don't want it.''

Still, the City Council voted 5-3 to allow state transportation officials to begin acquiring the right-of-way for the road.

Before the vote, Vice Mayor John W. Butt promised residents that this did not mean the four-lane promise would be broken.

Opponents left the council chambers thinking they had won the battle to keep the road from growing to six lanes.

But state officials said this week that the council's approval means the state will begin acquiring enough property to build the full six lanes.

And once construction begins, the state said, the outside lanes - those affecting nearby residents most - will be built first.

Thirteen homes and one business are expected to be displaced by the project, whether it be four or six lanes.

Council members John M. de Triquet, Dalton S. Edge and Alan P. Krasnoff voted against moving forward after residents brought up the previous promise.

But the remaining council members were leery of keeping that promise. Only four members of the council were in office at the time it was made.

The widening project will be broken into three phases along the 3.6 miles between Battlefield Boulevard and the Virginia Beach city line. The middle section of the project - from Greenbrier Parkway to Volvo Parkway - is the section slated for four lanes. The two adjoining sections will remain at six.

The project is expected to cost $26.3 million and is scheduled to begin this fall and end by February 2001.

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