By Jane DeGeorge
Eagle Reporter
Published: April 24, 2008

Residents of Wright’s Lane (Route 700) in Radiant say they have been waiting for improvements to their unpaved, curvy road for years.

Earlier this month, some of the road’s homeowners were elated when they saw Virginia Department of Transportation workers preparing to begin the long awaited road improvement project, according to Wright’s Lane resident Brenda Ryder.

However, their joy faded when the residents learned that the workers would only be doing a fraction of the original project, which included reconstructing and paving the entire 2.7-mile length of the road.

VDOT representatives had estimated the entire Route 700 road revamp, which is included in the county’s current six-year road improvement plan, will cost about $1.5 million, according to department documents. Officials expected the department would have enough money to cover this project, according to its current priority placement on the county road improvement plan, in 2016.

However, earlier this month, VDOT Residency Administrator Don Gore said he identified about $100,000 within the department’s money that is available for maintenance to tar and gravel a section of the road.

VDOT officials had decided to direct the money to re-do an approximately half-mile section of the road starting with its intersection with Orange Road (Route 230), according to Gore.

“I don’t have money to do the whole road but I thought I’d help them out a little bit and help get them started,” he said.
But Ryder and other Route 700 residents think its no coincidence that four new homes sit along either side of the section of the road VDOT was planning to re-do.

“They’re only paving in front where the high dollar homes are,” Ryder told The Eagle.

“I told [a VDOT representative] either pave the whole road or don’t pave none at all because you know how it’s going to look,” she said.
“It sounds a lot like discrimination,” said Wright’s Lane resident Richard Pritchett who, upon hearing about the partial project, started a petition he sent to VDOT simply requesting “the back of Route 700 [be] paved just as the front is going to be.”

Almost all of the residents of the approximately 25 Wright’s Lane homes, including some residents of the newly constructed homes toward the front of the road, signed the petition, which has brought the proposed roadwork to a halt.

Ryder and some of these upset residents say they suspect representatives from the company that built the new homes had somehow convinced VDOT officials to re-do the section which fronts land the company owns along the road. (The developer owns three other lots, besides the four new homes, that are for sale along Wright’s Lane, according to a sign on the road.)

However, Gore says that the new development was “not the controlling factor” behind the partial project.

“This was planned to do a couple of years ago, even before those houses were built,” Gore said. Usually the department does not do sections of a road project at separate times, however the available funding was initially directed toward Route 700 because “it [would be] easier to do” than other projects currently on the six year road plan, Gore said.

“There’s no major grading on that road. The other projects on the [six year road] plan are more involved than Route 700,” Gore said.

Residents toward the back of Wright’s Lane questioned why VDOT decided against using the currently available funding to do work on a section toward the road’s dead end rather than the front. The residents toward the back of the road say they’ve been patiently waiting for road improvements for years and the homeowners toward the front of the road have only lived on the roadway since 2005, when they say the homes were first built.

Gore says that the department does not typically start roadwork toward the back end of a road.

“It’s not reasonable to do the back of a gravel road…we try to tie paved roads into paved roads,” Gore said. The VDOT official added that sometimes the department will pave a specific section of a road, if it is absolute necessary. Years ago the department paved a curved hill toward the middle of Route 700 since residents were repeatedly having trouble driving up this hill, according to Gore.

“I would love to pave the whole thing but I don’t have the money to do it,” he said.

In the end, the residents’ petition and repeated calls to “either pave the whole road or none at all” convinced VDOT officials to cancel the partial project, according to Gore.

“I’m going to force it on them,” he said.

The $100,000 VDOT officials had proposed to spend on a portion of Route 700 can only be used for currently active projects and cannot be set aside toward future work on the road, according to Gore.

During the department’s budget process, money is assigned to each road project according to its placement on the county’s six-year plan. VDOT officials have not yet directed any money toward the entire Route 700 roadwork project due to its placement toward the end of the list of proposed projects, Gore said.

There will likely be no funding to be set aside for the entire Route 700 project included in VDOT’s 2008-2009 fiscal year budget, he said.
A public hearing regarding the county’s six-year road improvement plan and updates from Gore about available funding is set for the supervisors’ regularly scheduled May 13 meeting, which starts at 3 p.m.