New Woodburn Community School

WV DOT/DOH MUST ACT NOW IN ATTEMPT TO LIMIT THE DAMAGE WROUGHT BY MON SCHOOLS AND WV SBA & BOE

As noted at the end of the previous post:

It is certainly possible though unlikely that Eastwood Elementary will open before the construction of the Mileground intersection roundabout with its school access/egress spoke. While Monongalia County BOE Superintendent Devono has repeatedly told the media that Eastwood is on track to open in late January or early February, he has all the while told BOE employees (who have stated publicly at various school meetings) that Eastwood will not open until “spring” [April, being mentioned] – thus affording the WV Division of Highways what should be ample time to build the roundabout school spoke into the congested highways. [Update: A recent FOIA request of the DOH reveals that the roundabout, including the school access/egress spoke, is now scheduled for a May 1, 2013 completion date.] [Update 2: dicey and difficult temporary access/egress now to be allowed via WV 705.] [Update 3: DOH roundabout completion date now pushed back to July.] [Update 4: First day of classes for students at Eastwood is now scheduled to be April 3, 2013 – in the teeth of major highway and intersection construction, a mere 7 weeks before the last school day – school times will begin and end 45 minutes earlier than the current schedule.]

Of course, it is ridiculous, irresponsible, and especially dangerous to move into the consolidated intersection school of Eastwood in “spring” when there would be only a few weeks of school left, about 6 weeks (if few or no snow days; the second to last week of May is the scheduled last week of school in Monongalia County for 2013). The bus routes and classroom shifting and other building logistics are daunting, and area drivers would not have time to adjust to the impending roundabout if it is even built by then. Plus, the adjacent highways’ congestion will not only remain but is expected to worsen dramatically for an additional year or two or more, both given the imposition of Eastwood and pending construction of the additional lanes on the Mileground. (Even with additional lanes across the Mileground, congestion is only expected to be reduced not eliminated. Meanwhile traffic crashes are expected to increase, at what is already a hot-spot for smash-ups.) As explained in previous posts, there is no reason of any sort, contractual or otherwise, why Monongalia County Schools could not, at the very least, delay any shift to the consolidated intersection school and every reason why it should.

Furthermore, the WV Division of Highways (DOH) should feel legal and safety obligations to totally re-vision and move the WV 705/US 119 “Mileground” intersection as far away from Eastwood as possible. To public knowledge, the DOH has done nothing in this regard. The DOH basically planned and designed the highways intersection in its known current design before the DOH had any idea that a new school would be constructed at this commuter intersection. To the public’s knowledge, with the exception of adding a roundabout spoke direct to Eastwood Elementary’s front door, the DOH has not troubled to change its unwitting early design, not fundamentally. What have been even any slight student and commuter safety and health modifications? Such failings by the DOH, in addition to the failings by Mon Schools, would create fertile ground for future personal injury lawsuits (against the DOH and Mon Schools, the WV School Building Authority, and others) based on possible, probable, and expected incidents and fallout in and around that intersection, especially in relation to students’ health and school and commuter/commercial traffic.

Why doesn’t the DOH move the WV 705/US 119 “Mileground” intersection away from the school, as far as possible, at least putting it in the cornfield on the southwest side of WV 705, the far side of the highway from the Eastwood school building and grounds? Why should that not be considered an absolute minimum alteration? And why does the DOH apparently still think that expanding the Mileground to 5 lanes in any way makes sense? Shouldn’t the 705 commuter corridor be shifted to somewhere other than a commercial district that has become the Mileground?

The expense of merely moving the 705/119 intersection from the southeast to the southwest side of 705 should be minimal. The DOH might even save money in the shift, in the present let alone in the future, given the right-of-way expenses and other severe safety and logistical problems of allowing the intersection to go in at the original spot, right by the front doors of Eastwood Elementary on the Mileground.

Monongalia County Schools and the West Virginia School Building Authority and the West Virginia state Board of Education entirely lacked the common sense to keep a brand new elementary school away from a major commuter and commercial intersection. The fault primarily lies with the irresponsible and incompetent decision-making of Monongalia County Schools Superintendent Frank Devono and WV School Building Authority Director Mark Manchin, along with the lackey and willfully ignorant county and state boards of education, which evidently serve as mindless rubber stamps to the odious.

However, the common sense and egregious failings by county and state education management do not excuse the West Virginia Department of Transportation and Division of Highways from bending over backwards to act as the first responsible and functionally professional adults on the scene, to try to make the best of a fundamentally bad situation at this dangerous intersection. The DOH needs to not only prepare 15 mph school zone speed limit flashers and signs, the DOH needs to entirely reconsider where to locate and how to reconfigure the 705/119 intersection and highways expansion by Eastwood Elementary on the Mileground.

In fact, DOH regulations would seem to require shifting the massive intersection away from the school, as noted previously:

Disastrous Planning