RE: WVDOT Road project through New Cumberland, WV.
I am amazed that WVDOT is still proposing the most expensive and destructive way to put WV Rte. 2 through town.
What WVDOT officials are planning, Alternate 4, would require widening Station Hill and Ridge Avenue. Widening Station Hill would involve expensive concrete buttresses of the hill from Chester Street to and the bottom of Ridge Ave. to prevent Rt. 2 from falling. It has done that already. Only quick action by the town’s employees prevented vehicles from falling into the gap that was created by the failure. Widening Ridge Avenue would involve removing the sidewalks (grass and part of he bricks) from in front of the homes and businesses along Ridge Avenue.
I don’t live on Ridge anymore, but if I did, no way would I allow WVDOT to take my brick sidewalk.
Widening Ridge Avenue would involve, as Pat Jones noted, removing utility poles and I believe some fire hydrants.
Here is an important fact to consider:
For current and future big rigs (heavy trucks) that are using and will use when projections for increased growth in the area north of town are realized.
Two 102 in wide trailers need a minimum of 17 feet to pass each other. The tractor pulling the tractor needs an additional 4 feet so the side mirrors won’t break off and that’s time two, or a minimum of 25 feet. The road is 22 inches wide. Watch the trucks try to pass each other without crashing their mirrors together or running into the utility poles.
A proposal to route the road straight through town from Chester Street was met with WVDOT objections that flooding occurs there and there are baseball fields in the area.
- There is flooding at the backwaters before New Cumberland floods and truck traffic is rerouted to Ohio.
2. The ballfields are rarely if ever used by Little Leagues. Their games are played in Chester
To me and anyone I talk to….this is a “no brainer.”
This State is about to finish off the beauty of Ridge Avenue, incur un-necessary costs and ignore a better way to re-route traffic. So I urge you to “put the pressure on” – call everyone you can and urge then to do the right thing.
Bob McNeil