Allen Road residents seek VDOT help
By Ruth Marlow
Dust . . . washboard-like ruts . . . mud . . . speeders.
Voicing frustration with these problems, several dozen Allen Road (Route 639) residents recently asked the Virginia Department of Transportation to devote more time and money to them.
During an April 9 informational meeting, arranged by Supervisor Barbara Byrd (I-Russell), they asked VDOT what could be done to alleviate these conditions – and how soon it could be done.
Part of the wear and tear is caused by speeding motorists who use an unpaved, 2.4-mile section of the rustic roadway as a shortcut from Summit Point Road (Route 632) to Crums Church Road (Route 611), Byrd and several residents said.
“With the way West Virginia (traffic) is coming down our roads, if that road were paved, it would be a major crossover,” Byrd said.
“The road is so bad that my mirrors vibrate and fall off to the ground,” said Veronica Long, who lives and drives a school bus on it.
The most recent traffic counts by VDOT, taken in November 2006, showed 170 vehicle trips per day along the road, VDOT engineer Bob Childress said.
A major obstacle to getting any immediate relief, other than scheduled routine maintenance several times a year, Childress and engineer Jeffrey Lineberry said, is lack of money. The road does not qualify for VDOT’s pave-in-place or rural rustic roads programs, they said.
“We will do what we can within our limited resources,” Childress told the residents. Paving a roadway costs an estimated $800,000 per mile, Lineberry added, noting that VDOT has only $35,000 annually available in its budget to take care of the county’s unpaved roads.
An equally important obstacle over the years has been residents’ unwillingness to give VDOT the right-of-way necessary to construct a roadway wide enough to be safe, Lineberry and Childress added. And when they asked for a show-of-hands last week, only one resident volunteered to give up land.
After Tuesday's meeting, Lineberry told county supervisors and County Administrator David Ash the agency will continue to monitor the condition of all unpaved county roads, including Allen Road, “to ensure that we are providing a similar and quality level of service.”
Meanwhile, a contractor will grade and apply stone to the road during the next several weeks to maintain it, Lineberry said. A dust control application is usually done in the spring and fall, he added.
And Byrd said Tuesday she has been assured that sheriff’s deputies will step up traffic enforcement along the roadway.
Contact the reporter at rmarlow@timespapers.com