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Love of children prompts parents to slow South Riding traffic
As day was breaking on June 1, six South Riding parents were stopping cars, asking drivers to please obey the speed limits “because we love our children.”
For more than a year, Judy Munley has been on a mission to make the streets in her neighborhood, The Retreat at South Village, safe for the 50-some children who live there. She has gone to Winchester Homes, the developer who maintains the roads. She has spoken with the county and the Virginia Department of Transportation about installing a three-way stop sign. She is frustrated that nothing has been done.
“This is extremely dangerous and we are at our wits' end. We are just grasping at this point,” Munley said.
Munley attended a Winchester Homes meeting in Bethesda, Md., in March 2006 to voice her concerns over the safety of the streets. She again brought up the topic at a July homeowners association meeting. At that point the HOA was still under developer control.
In March a car going through the neighborhood hit the driver of a trash truck, who had to be medevacked out. Twice resident Melanie Broga's daughters, Ellery, 7, and Haley, 6, were almost struck by a car as they were getting off the school bus.
Munley went through the neighborhood with a petition and presented it to Winchester Homes.
Her request for the three-way stop sign came to the county in March and was grouped with other traffic calming requests for the area.
Last October Zachary Popovich, 11, turned his neighborhood activism into a school project. He walked door to door collecting 31 signatures on a petition for the installation of a four-way stop at the intersection of Hopefield Place and Clarecastle Drive. The four-way stop is now in place.
The developer, the county and VDOT are testing several traffic calming measures in the neighborhood – a four-way stop at the intersection of Hopefield Place and Clarecastle Drive (phase one), a crosswalk between Hopefield Place and Mountcastle Drive on Clarecastle Drive (phase two), and a three-way stop at the intersection of Mountcastle and Clarecastle drives (phase three).
The groups are using a phased system, tracking how each phase works in conjunction with the previous phase and as it stands on it own. After phase one and two are tested together, phase one will be taken out and phase two will be tested alone. Then phase three will be installed (in late summer) and will be tested with phase two, and so on.
Winchester, who maintains the roads, has to make sure with county assistance, that when the time comes to turn the roads over to VDOT, they will be acceptable and up to standard.
The goal is to “not put something in that in the end VDOT won't accept,” said Chuck Acker, transportation operation engineer with the county's Office of Transportation.
Once the county analyzes the test results, they will go to the developer, the HOA and the community for review.
Jerry Pauley, area manager with the traffic engineering section of VDOT, said taking the time to test the calming measures “allows us the opportunity and latitude to try different things.”
“The county and developer are trying to work with the community and submit something that is approvable,” Pauley added.
Contact the reporter at lwolstenholme@timespapers.com
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