ALL OFFICIALS INVOLVED NEED TO CORRECT COURSE
At the ENTRAN/WV Division of Highways presentation about the route 705 and route 119 Mileground expansion at the MPO meeting in Morgantown Thursday, DoH official Perry Keller remarked that while green school traffic peak hours would coincide with commuter rush hour in the morning on the Mileground, which would be a problem, he said, he also claimed that school traffic peak hours in the afternoon would not coincide with rush hour. That is false. Completely wrong. “Rush hour” – that is, congestion nightmare – at the 705/119 intersection occurs from 2:30pm to 6:30pm, often earlier and sometimes later. Why? Because a 705 area hospital or two and Health Sciences have a huge shift change at 3:00pm (or 2:50). And Mylan Pharmaceutical plant has a huge shift change at 3:15. In other words, “rush hour” at the 705/119 Mileground intersection, the intended site of the green elementary school, begins much closer to 2:00pm than it does to the 5:00pm claimed by the DoH. And it can extend four times as long as the DoH claims. Not exactly a small mistake. The intended green school is doomed by countless factors. And it is doomed by rush hours alone. (UPDATE: Months later, DOH, MPO, and ENTRAN corrected themselves, no doubt due in large part to public outcry: the final ENTRAN study, Mileground Road Traffic: Final Report, published February 2011, found a) “rush hours” congestion about 6 hours per day (7-9 am, noon, and 2:30-6 pm) on the arterials engulfing the school site, b) nationally rated worst possible “levels of service” (congestion): “D” and “F” (“approaching gridlock”), and c) afternoon Mileground arterial traffic speeds dropping from 14.1 mph to 8.4 mph (average) and from 7.7 mph to 6.2 mph (rush hours) if the school is added to the Mileground, and average vehicular delay at the school-front arterial intersection doubling with the addition of the school, causing pollution, vehicle crash danger, and “entrapment” to be not only “possible,” or likely, but inevitable. This final ENTRAN study however mistakenly identifies WV 705 and US 119 (Mileground Road) as being “minor arterial highways” when in fact DOH confirms that in accordance with national standards those stretches of road are “principal arterial highways”. ENTRAN has said all along however that congestion there cannot be eliminated, only reduced, theoretically, and this would be a reduction of congestion that will not necessarily last as the widened roads and intersection draw ever more traffic in this ever growing traffic vortex and region.)
RUSH HOURS
It takes a worker at Mylan 45 to 50 minutes to travel 3 miles on 705 and 119 to her house in Woodburn on Charles Avenue. By far the biggest problem, she notes, comes at the 705/119 intersection as she tries to turn right/south onto 119. Traffic is backed up onto 705 all the way from Hampton Avenue as it enters 119 across traffic (just before Charles Avenue). It is a half mile of gridlock. And apparently ENTRAN and the DoH have no plans to do anything to solve or even alleviate the Hampton Avenue backup on 119 into 705, which can exist from 2:00 to 6:00. Sometimes she says she can go through relatively quickly for whatever reason. Other times she sits forever. Imagine school buses trying to go back to Woodburn and Jerome Park (or anywhere) moving into that 705/119 Mileground intersection (if they can). How? Perry Keller is making an honest mistake, but it is a big one. Huge. Rush hours at 705 and 119 begins about 3 hours before the DoH is aware. Little children would be sitting in exhaust fumes. It’s criminal.
The DoH and ENTRAN need to get their analysis corrected, pronto.
In fact, given the stunning magnitude of that basic error, they should go camp out on the Mileground, and route 705, and on all access and egress points for about two weeks to make sure they actually get a real sense of what is going on along the Mileground and all around it.
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New Woodburn Community School 