Progress

It has long been an item on our editorial platform, one which our late publisher Nick Arundel championed for many years and one which, frankly, got us in hot water with a number of business owners every time we presented it in this space: "Continue an aggressive landscape-beautification program on Warrenton's drab Broadview Avenue Bypass to improve the image of our historic county seat for passing world travelers."

Broadview business owners have always been concerned that landscape beautification would ultimately mean less access to their businesses by both passing world travelers and local folks in search of the goods and services that these business owners provide.

Both points are well taken. It would be hard to argue that Broadview Avenue is anything but drab and couldn't be much improved, and even if the latest and more generally accepted beautification and safety-enhancing plan comes to fruition, it is unlikely that Mr. Arundel's campaign will be put to rest. This is the first step, not the last.

It's also true that business owners' fears are well founded.

As we report elsewhere in this issue, the latest plan is to install perhaps as many as 10 small medians instead on dividing Broadview Avenue along nearly its entire length.

Everyone along the boulevard seem s taken with the idea, but now time is of the essence.

VDOT has a lot of other projects on which to spend its money, and told Town of Warrenton officials to use the available money or lose it.

We urge council and the now happier business owners along Broadview to opt for the former.

Getting this project underway may even mean taking down two birds with one stone.

The latest proposal also creates a 6-foot buffer lane that could someday be opened to cyclists and pedestrians.

That would go a long way toward satisfying the fifth plank in our platform: Creating "walking and biking paths along historic and scenic byways."

Broadview Avenue qualifies as historic. If we can get the latest project underway, it might actually be scenic, as well.