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Public desires
SPERRYVILLE residents made several good points at the Route 211 hearing on “improvements” planned by the Virginia Highway Department, and we hope the engineers were paying attention.
First of all, the justification for making Route 211 a major link between interstate freeways is highly questionable. The Department is already pressing a number of four-laning projects in this immediate area for the avowed purpose of linking 1-81, in the Valley, with interstate routes serving the Eastern megalopolis corridor that extends through Virginia. Building still another one of these “links” before there is an opportunity t6 test the effect of any of the others is truly carrying coals to Newcastle, and expensive and disruptive coals at that.
But, mainly, we liked the Sperryville citizens who warned against a super highway project that would tend to destroy the quiet, village life of the community. True, Sperryville is already crisscrossed by major thoroughfares, but even so it has managed to survive and prosper; bulldozing through excessive highway capacity, and adding unnecessary features such as curbs and gutters, could wreck Sperryville as a community which has managed to maintain a “highway-oriented” economy while retaining desirable features as a residential area.
FINALLY, THE proposal to “channelize” a considerable stretch of the Thornton River at Sperryville should receive the closest and most critical study. Seldom have “channelization” projects of such an extent turned out to be unmixed blessings—to put the case extremely mildly—and the poor Thornton already has almost more problems than it can handle.
The Highway Department has been making great claims in recent years of how it is becoming more responsive to what the public wants. The evidence thus far is mixed; in Sperryville, they have an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the keeness of their appreciation of public desires.□
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