Oops Redux

 

VDOT giveth and VDOT taketh away pretty much sums up the proposal to remove the traffic signal at the corner of Hockett Road and 250 in Centerville, install a median, and permit only right turns from St. Matthew’s Lane and Hockett. The light was installed after years of begging VDOT to end the game of chicken played when navigating that intersection.

This was brought to the attention of the supervisors during the evening citizen comment period of their June 6 meeting. Several residents of the Hockett Road corridor, apparently perusing the new transportation tab on the county website here objected to removal of the signal. They contended that, at the very least, a community meeting should be held to discuss removal of the traffic signal before any action is taken.

Traffic moving in all directions at 250 and Hockett Road

This is part of the realignment project connecting Hockett and Ashland Roads by bisecting the field on the south side of 250 culminating in a roundabout near Holly Lane. Hocket between the roundabout and 250 would be for local traffic only.

At first blush, removing the traffic light doesn’t seem so bad. According to VDOT data, most of the turning action there is east. This allegedly would go away when the connector road is compete.

However, residents of the Hockett Road corridor often cross 250 to access the Broad View Shopping Center and to go St. Matthew’s Church to worship and vote. Right now, there are only a few businesses north of 250. As Centerville attracts more commercial enterprises, this will change. People tend to follow the path of least resistance, so after turning right, they could well head to Short Pump and do their shopping there. Since the alleged purpose of draft revisions for Centerville land use is to encourage area residents to shop locally, this seems counterintuitive.

Under the proposed plan, if you live off of Hockett Road and want to go to Food Lion, you would either take the connector road near Holly Lane to 250 and turn left to get to Food Lion. For the return trip, you would either take Plaza Drive to Ashland Road and head south or go to the other end of Plaza Drive and make the strange left turn near Company 3.

Dysfunction in Centerville traffic patterns is nothing new.

When 250 was four laned through the village core about 12 years ago, the project was fraught with “issues”.  A much touted but never explained “medium strip”—not a clairvoyant ecdysiast, but a low concrete barrier—served only to cut off the south side of 250 from the north and make left turns around it a delicate and dangerous, if not impossible, maneuver.

Who could forget the dysfunctional southbound turn lane from 250 west to Manakin Road? Large trucks stuck in a too tight curve, were an almost daily occurrence. After many complaints, a VDOT official admitted that engineers—perhaps in the VDOT bunker—used the wrong curve template when designing the intersection. The turn lane was eventually fixed, using funds that could have been better spent on other projects.

Land use for the Centerville Village has many puzzle pieces. Roads are a big one. Seems like the more options motorists have, the fewer traffic choke points there will be. Traffic engineers want to keep vehicles moving, they don’t necessarily seem to care where they are coming from or going to.

The signalized intersection at Hockett and 250 seems to be working well. As more homes are added to the Hockett corridor—65 have been rezoned, another 50 or so are in the works—the easier it is to cross 250, the more business will be generated in Centerville Village.

The Occam’s Razor principle, the simplest solution is the best seems to apply here. This isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

As a practical matter, it will be several years before realignment project is finished. Hopefully, a more detailed look at actual traffic patterns will change the plan.

Stay tuned.