MOUNT HERMON — At least 100 people came out Monday evening to learn about — and criticize — potential options by the Virginia Department of Transportation to fix a stretch of Franklin Turnpike long known for safety woes with speeding abuse at the top of the list.
The Mount Hermon Volunteer Fire Department played venue host to the session. With the fire engines in the background, giant posters partially encircled the room. Moving in a clockwise fashion, the first displays explained the history of the project before moving into possible solutions.
It’s part of something called a Project Pipeline study that focuses on areas of improvements for motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists. The goal of Project Pipeline is to come up with what VDOT calls “cost-effective solutions.”
The five-lane corridor in question stretches from Orphanage Road to Hunting Hills Road.
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“We’ve had a number of fatalities over the past year and a half,” Ken Bowman, a supervisor for the Chatham-Blairs District, said to open the meeting. “A lot of it has happened because people have pulled out in front of people that are going too fast.”
He said the focus is about how to restrict the speed.
“I’ve told people before … this is Franklin Turnpike out here and not the Jersey Turnpike,” he said, noting that even though the speed limit is 45 mph, it’s not uncommon to see drivers going anywhere from 55 mph to 70 mph.
“Nothing is in stone,” he explained of the possible fixes displayed through the room. “These are just concept drawings.”
It’s also a long-term project since funding isn’t even on the table yet. It’ll be six or seven years down the road before changes would get started.
“If you are looking at something happening tomorrow, it’s not going to happen tomorrow,” he said.
The solutions range from placing a median strip in certain areas, making it impossible to cross what’s now five lanes of traffic. A roundabout is another possibility floated by VDOT.
“If you see something you don’t like, tell us about it,” Jay Craddock, of VDOT, told the crowd gathered, emphasizing that feedback was the reason for the meeting.
The best way for that feedback is via an online survey — https://publicinput.com/ly-23-09alternatives — that’s open through Monday.
Bowman told the Register & Bee he was pleased with the turnout Monday night for the meeting that was more individual dialog than speakers talking to the entire room.
“I’m glad to see them talking, because that’s a good thing,” he said as people made their way to the large diagrams to ask VDOT representatives questions.
Bowman said he didn’t want to be influential, so he didn’t comment specifically on any particular solution.
“I like to start with a minimal and see how we progress,” he said. “How can we do this without having to go and spend, whatever the millions of dollars is.”
He suggested more traffic lights as a way to slow down the speeders.
His wife, Brenda, was a driving force behind the effort to bring light to the problem.
The fatalities led her to address the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors in January 2023, before her husband was elected.
“I just thought it was a good idea for a study,” she said since the Mount Hermon road issue always came up in talks.
The Bowmans live in that area and see the problem firsthand.
“I think that the main problem is the speed,” Brenda Bowman told the Register & Bee.
She also likes the idea of traffic lights, something on her mind when a previous study last year was conducted.
“With this study they’ve been pretty thorough and I’m appreciative of that and they’ve really taken it seriously,” she said of VDOT’s efforts. “The whole point of this is to slow the traffic and it’s a safety issue.”
Criticism
However, plans pitched by VDOT didn’t appear to sit well with residents and business owners alike.
Dr. John Hoffman, who has owned Mama Possums on Franklin Turnpike for 15 years, is concerned about the impact to his restaurant business that employees 20 people.
“Two of them would destroy the business,” Hoffman said of VDOT’s plans. “One of them would damage it severely.”
The problem comes with the median strip preventing motorists from turning left into Mama Possums. It also creates a problem for those leaving the eatery. In both cases, vehicles would have travel a ways down the road before making a U-turn.
The traffic circle “would be kind of a nightmare,” he told the Register & Bee.
Speeders are the main safety issue he sees.
“I’ve watched it for 15 years; I’ve driven out here for 15 years,” he said. “If I set my speedometer on 45, everybody passes me.”
Distracted drivers also play a role in the problem-plagued stretch.
“They just need to slow down,” he said. “They need to enforce the law.”
The fix need not be in the millions of dollars, he stressed. For example, a rumble strip — a road feature that shakes a vehicle to alert a driver of a change — could be a way to get travelers to take it slow in that area.
Hoffman remembers when the road was just two lanes and someone making a left turn would back up five or 10 cars waiting for a opening to turn.
“This road was progress,” he told the newspaper. “They spent millions of dollars to bring progress and business opportunity out here to the Mount Hermon community.”
The proposals now would take some of the lanes back down to one in either direction.
“We should go back to the 1980s and ask for our money back,” he said. “The only problem here is that people don’t obey the 45 mph speed limit.”
Hoffman and his wife, Valarie, were chiropractors for more than 30 years and are sympathetic to people in auto crashes.
“I’ve never met a car accident that was the street’s fault that wasn’t the human’s fault,” Valarie said.
Road not problem
Resident Danny Carlton agreed, telling the Register & Bee the problem comes down to driver error.
“Blaming this road for wrecks is about like blaming a gun for shooting people,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with this road.”
Living in the area for 30 years, he also remembers when it was only a two-lane road.
In fact, he told his wife when the four-lane highway was built “it’s going to be a raceway,” he said. “And that’s exactly what it is.”
Carlton goes 45 mph on the road but has others zoom by him all the time.
“People are passing me so fast they are out of sight before you can blink an eye,” he said. “We’ve got crazy drivers here.”
Ray Earp, the assistant fire chief at Mount Hermon, questioned some of the plans as well, but noted he was speaking personally and not on behalf of the department.
“In our business, time is of the essence,” he said, pointing to one of the maps that has a median planned. He theorized that if the department needed to get to a house fire on the other side of the road, they’d have to go well past the home to make a U-turn.
Also, the roundabout would cause issues for the large trucks that respond, he said.
“I’ve responded to a lot of accidents out here,” he told the newspaper. “Most of it goes back to a lack of attention on the driver’s part.”
While speeding is an issue, the larger problem comes from things like people “inhibited by cellphones,” for example.
“I don’t think these are the answers that we need personally,” he said, again noting he was just speaking for himself. “There’s lots of factors that need to be looked at in this. It’s not a simple fix.”