Hearing is scheduled on $18.2 million Courthouse Road project in Stafford County.

Date published: 12/6/2005

By EDIE GROSS

Marie Griffis will go three or four days without retrieving her mail because reaching her mailbox means crossing Stafford County's busy Courthouse Road.

"They come down this road like they're wild," said Griffis, who has equal trouble pulling out of her driveway near the Stafford Green community.

"This is a dangerous, dangerous road," she said. "I've been here 19, going on 20, years and it is awful."

Griffis is counting on a project that will widen the road's travel lanes, add shoulders and straighten out some of its hairpin curves.

But the roadwork has a fair amount of opposition, too.

Some residents worry it will destroy the area's rural nature and invite more development. And the project's ultimate price tag--$18.2 million--might be better spent on other roads, they say.

"I think it's a waste of time and money. We don't need it," said Mariel Berrios-Riebe, who lives nearby on Brooke Road. "I really think there are other places we can use that money."

She and others point to the Falmouth intersection, State Route 610 and U.S. 17 as spots more in need of improvement than Courthouse Road, also known as State Route 630.

"We've got the Falmouth intersection, where 60,000 cars a day are sitting in traffic," said Cecelia Kirkman, who lives south of the project area. "Eighteen-point-two million dollars won't pay for all of the Falmouth intersection, but it'd be a good down payment."

Elected officials who serve on the Fredericksburg Area Metropolitan Planning Organization will hold a public hearing on the project tomorrow at 6 p.m. in the Stafford Board of Supervisors chambers at 1300 Courthouse Road.

The issue is largely how to fund the project, which has been in the works for at least a decade. But some residents are pushing FAMPO officials to revisit whether the work should happen at all.

Crews widened Courthouse Road to four lanes between U.S. 1 and Brooke Point High School about five years ago.

Officials always intended to improve the rest of the road east of U.S. 1 in three separate phases, and they've been steadily setting aside money to do so.

The next phase includes the stretch between the high school and Hamn Lane, just beyond Andrew Chapel Road. That segment will remain two lanes, but the Virginia Department of Transportation intends to widen them so they meet current standards.

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Date published: 12/6/2005