Cecelia Kirkman
Planning Commission
Published: April 11, 2008

I’m glad to see the Sun covering important road safety issues. Unfortunately, the April 4 article regarding Hope Road contains several factual errors that likely left readers with the wrong impression.The gist of the story was that, after he heard from a constituent concerned safety problems on Hope Road, the Aquia District supervisor sent emails to the transportation commission but never received a response. 

For the record:
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1. The board of supervisors dissolved the transportation commission in January of this year, well before these e-mails were sent. This might explain the lack of response. In January, the commission’s duties were combined with the planning commission to better integrate land use and traffic issues.

2. Unfortunately, the Aquia supervisor did not forward the e-mails to the planning commission’s transportation committee, so we were unaware of his concerns. Apparently he didn’t make his appointee to the planning commission aware of these concerns either, since the Aquia District planning commissioner never brought them to our attention.

3. The article notes that I made no mention of these e-mails in talking with the reporter. That’s because I never received them and the reporter never asked me to comment on them. 

4. Finally, despite what was reported in the article, I am not the chair of the planning commission; Mr. Peter Fields is chair. 
Rest assured that my colleagues and I on the planning commission are extremely concerned about road safety issues. That’s why we are developing transportation recommendations based on the facts of traffic flow and accident counts, rather than promoting political pet projects. Of course, it is ultimately the board of supervisors that is responsible for choosing which projects to implement.

As an example of our fact-based approach to transportation planning, the Planning commission recently recommended that the “new” Andrew Chapel Road project be removed from the secondary road 6-year plan. The cost of this project has ballooned to $11 million, yet this section of road serves only 3,300 vehicles per day and has a low accident rate. A majority on the planning commission think that the $11 million would be better spent on fixing the Falmouth intersection, which serves over 62,000 vehicles per day.

By focusing our limited resources on high-priority projects we can both protect taxpayers and make a dent in addressing the area’s backlog of transportation concerns.