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Residents angry because they got little notice about work Date published: 10/25/2006
By KELLY HANNON
Dorothy Jackson remembers when Courthouse Road was a gravel lane. The Stafford County resident got a flashback recently when a portion of Courthouse Road was milled and layered with stone as part of a road improvement project. Residents have been driving over the bumps and rocks for weeks east of Interstate 95. Jackson preferred the original gravel. On a recent Sunday, the dust was so thick she couldn’t see oncoming traffic. “I’ve never seen it as bad as it’s been in the last month,” Jackson told Virginia Department of Transportation officials last night. VDOT held a public meeting at Brooke Point High School to share information about the project and explain why the layer of stone was necessary, and when it will be removed. David Ogle, administrator of VDOT’s Fredericksburg District, also apologized for not sharing information with residents sooner. “We probably should have done a little better job about getting the word out, and I’ll take responsibility for that,” Ogle said. Residents were angry they were given little notice about the gravel and the project, said Stafford Supervisor Paul Milde, who fielded many complaints. Milde asked whether a single lane could’ve been left paved. “I question the logic of tearing up the entire road,” Milde said. The affected piece of Courthouse Road is six-tenths of a mile, between Brooke Point High School and Hamn Lane, just beyond Andrew Chapel Road. The $5.4 million improvement project was funded in December 2005. It will widen the road’s travel lanes, add shoulders and straighten out curves. It’s part of a multiphase, $18.2 million plan to fix Courthouse Road. The road already has been widened to four lanes from U.S. 1 to Brooke Point High School. The current phase will remain two lanes, but VDOT intends to widen the lanes to meet current standards. To improve the road, contractors needed to mill the surface. Usually, this breaks the asphalt into miniscule pieces. This time, an equipment malfunction left the milled asphalt in large chunks. VDOT had to pile stone on top of it to create a driveable surface.
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