Roads will see improvements

Published 1:42 pm Thursday, May 11, 2017

No one spoke during a public hearing regarding the Prince Edward County Secondary Six Year Plan for fiscal years (FY) 2018-23 and the FY 2018 construction plan prior to a unanimous vote from supervisors approving the plans.

The vote included an amendment of moving Watson Road to the third priority on the list, which sets a schedule for resurfacing already paved roads or paving or improving gravel roads.

Scot Shippee

According to Scot Shippee, a Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) resident engineer, the plan includes improvements on routes 705, 691, 661, 613, 721, 751, 740, 748, 628 and 702. According to the plan, Lakeside Road, Route 705, and Green Town Road, Route 691, will be funded for work in July.

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Nursery Road, Route 661, will be funded for work in July 2018. Millers Lake Road, Route 613, and Dempsey Road, Route 721, will be funded for work in July 2019.

Hidden Lake Road, Route 751, Copper Hill Road, Route 740, and Mill Creek Road, Route 628, will be funded for work in July 2020.

Bolden Flournoy Road, Route 702, will be funded for work in July 2022. Watson Road, Route 748, was originally set for work in 2020 but will now see funding for work this year following the plan’s amendment.

Prior to the vote, Buffalo District C.R. “Bob” Timmons Jr. told Shippee he was unhappy with VDOT’s work on roads in the county, specifically on Darlington Heights and Bloomfield roads. He spoke to Shippee about large depressions in the roadway.

C.R. “Bob” Timmons Jr.

“Your guys come out and they’ll patch half of that, they won’t fill it up, but they’ll patch half of it,” Timmons said. “But, they’ll only do that one, and they’ll pass 12 more getting to that one and just run by them.”

Timmons said it was the fourth month he’d been talking about the issue.

“You guys have got to do better, you’re wasting time if you’re driving out there and not doing the job,” Timmons said.

Shippee said repairing the depressions in the road — compared to repairing potholes, which are smaller — was a seasonal fix.

“We’re prioritizing a lot of this maintenance work based on traffic … That’s not saying that it’s not an eminent safety problem for somebody, but we can invest $5,000-$10,000 in a road that’s got 50, 60 vehicles a day or we can take that same amount and put it on roads that’s got 500-1,000 vehicles a day,” Shippee said. “We’re trying to address them as quickly as we can and as best as we can, but there’s simply, there’s not enough time, there’s not enough manpower, there’s not enough resources.”