Editorial

Editorial

Listen to input

Over the past several months, a controversy has erupted over the county’s long-standing request for improvements to Rt. 211 between Washington and Sperryville. In this column some issues ago, we urged the Board of Supervisors and the Department of Transportation to consider carefully the project in light of present-day conditions, not using data and arguments from more than a decade ago.

In this regard, we listened with approval when the assistant resident engineer insisted on Tuesday that the decision would not be made in favor of the project solely because it had been approved in 1974.

We’re not going to make a determination about whether or not the four-lane should be built. That decision rests, properly, with the Commonwealth Transportation Board, with the assistance of the department’s engineering staff.

However, we hope that the Transportation Board, at its hearing on Monday, will listen carefully to the arguments presented by both sides. The opponents of the project have mobilized, and collected more than 500 signatures in support of their view. We understand that the highway’s supporters are mounting a similar drive.

We hope, as well, that the Transportation Board will consider the engineering and traffic studies presented by the department’s staff, and request updated material, if necessary. It’s probable that community sentiment is not the only thing which has changed since the last public hearing in 1974. So have traffic patterns and counts along the highway,^ as well as the designs and devices available to address safety concerns.

And, we hope that both sides will foreswear the personal attacks and emnity which, unfortunately, too often mar public debates like this. Both camps maintain that the safety of the public is their foremost consideration — and we hope that concern stays at the front of the debate.

And lastly, we urge the county’s residents, whichever side they favor, to express their opinion either in public or through private channels to their elected officials. This t project’s future is an important decision for the county, and 7 the more people who become involved the more truly the decision will reflect the wishes of its residents. That’s the way it should be.

And, if they feel it’s warranted, we ask that the Transportation Board schedule a public hearing in Rappahannock County, in the evening,when more residents can attend to express their views on the project.

In that way, the decision, whichever way it goes, is more likely to reflect the wishes of a majority of the county’s residents. That too, in a democracy, is the way it should be.