Some think 460 plan 'stinks'

Residents and business owners in the Tyreeanna Road and Pleasant Valley neighborhoods turned out Thursday night to give their opinions about a road plan that would cut back on entrance points along a 55-mph stretch of U.S. 460.

“I think it stinks,” said Sharon Crist-Austin, who lives on Tyreeanna Road and would have to drive a longer, looping route onto Concord Turnpike from her home to reach the highway.

Blocking off Tyreeanna and other entrance points to 460 is a safety measure, Virginia Department of Highways officials said. Wrecks on the highway between Concord Turnpike and the Campbell Avenue/U.S. 501 intersection increased sharply after the Madison Heights Bypass opened four years ago, they said.

Local business owners Roy Templeton and Pete Deacon gave VDOT officials an earful during conversations around large display boards that showed the planned changes to 460.

“If they would just allow right-turns-only from Tyreeanna and Holcomb Rock Road, that would help a lot,” said Deacon, who operates a car repair business on Tyreeanna.

“If they would just lower the speed limit to 45 miles per hour it would save a million and a half dollars,” said Templeton, who operates a market and Shell gas station on the south side of 460. Templeton estimated the traffic change would cost him 25 percent of his business.
VDOT plans to spend about $1.7 million on this phase of its plans, which ultimately would turn all of 460 into a limited-access highway.

Rob Carey, manager of VDOT’s Lynchburg District, has said drivers approaching this 1.7-mile piece of 460 aren’t expecting cars to enter from side roads and driveways.

Motorists from the Madison Heights Bypass and the 460 Lynchburg Bypass have been accustomed to 65-mph speed limits on limited-access roads, and often don’t realize they’re approaching a slower-traffic area, Carey said.

Lorenzo Megginson, who lives in nearby Pleasant Valley, said he felt VDOT was more interested in accommodating high-speed traffic than it was in safety for local users of 460.

“VDOT policy makers are choosing to destroy our low-income, and especially black, communities,” Megginson said. The bypass already cut the Pleasant Valley community in half when construction started six years ago, Megginson said.

If any of the approximately 115 people who registered at the meeting supported VDOT’s plan, they were hard to find among the groups that talked to VDOT officials.

Bert Dodson, a member of Lynchburg City Council, said he would ask council to revisit its support of VDOT’s plan because of its impact on the community.

When state officials showed the city their plans six years ago for upgrading the 1.7-mile stretch of 460, the plans included new managed-access roads built parallel to the highway, Dodson said.

Those smaller roads would have helped residents of Tyreeanna and similar streets merge into fast-moving traffic on 460.

However, disappearing construction money for new roads has delayed plans for the managed-access lanes, VDOT officials said.

“This is a different plan altogether” from the one City Council supported, Dodson said.

Carey has said the managed-access roads still are in VDOT’s six-year plans, but there is no known source for the $10 million they would cost.