The village of Sperryville would benefit from a bypass.

The village of Sperryville would benefit from a bypass.

Sperryville is and long has been a tourist destination. Tourists are not going to stop coming to Sperryville merely because a new road makes it easy to continue on to Culpeper instead.

Nor is U.S. 522 going to become a major truck route so long as the towns along U.S. 29, such as Culpeper, Warrenton and Madison are bypassed to the east. Warrenton, of course, was originally bypassed to the west, but Fauquier County and the Town of Warrenton allowed the bypass to fill up with shopping centers, car dealerships and fast food businesses, making that useless as a bypass. The result is the new eastern bypass. • Rappahannock County does not intend to make the mistake made at Warrenton. The bypass of Washington has not become cluttered with commercial development. The county will not allow commercial development to follow a Sperryville bypass out of the village. • Mr. Fletcher’s suggestion at the Planning Commission’s public forum that a bypass would lead to Sperryville losing its post office was pure demagoguery.

The route to the Shenandoah National Park through on U.S. 211 would remain unchanged. The bypass is intended for U.S. 522, not 2il,.With,the suspension bridge near the Jixxon station approaching the end of its useful life, particularly for carrying trucks, alternatives to a bypass are disappearing.

With through traffic removed from Sperryville, it will be a more pleasant place to shop and visit. The town’s economy is indeed fragile now. A bypass that took through traffic out would enable the vHlage to recover and become a place to live as well as a place to shop. !' Two issues- are of primary importance in considering a Sperryville bypass. The first is seeing that it is indeed a bypass for U.S. 522, not a plan to move more traffic onto Route 231, a designated scenic highway. The second is seeing that it keeps the village intact rather than cutting a part of it off from the rest.