Many people curse the population growth Stafford has experienced over the past several years and its associated effects, including traffic.
But not Steven Englman.
A county resident since 1987, he praised the boom. When he moved to Stafford, there was only a fraction of the people who call the locality home now.
“It’s exciting,” Englman said Thursday. “It’s growing. Things are happening.”
He was one of a handful of people who attended a meeting the county government’s Department of Capital Projects held about work to improve the Route 1 and Courthouse Road intersection.
Stafford will begin construction on the $30 million project later this month, county officials said.
It will widen Route 1 and make improvements to the road and at its intersections with Courthouse Road and Bells Hill Road/Hope Road. The work will improve aspects of the road system, such as:
- Route 1 will be improved to a four-lane, divided highway with a concrete median.
- Dedicated left-turn lanes will be provided from Route 1 onto Courthouse, Bells Hill and Hope roads.
- Eastbound Courthouse Road will be widened to provide a dedicated left-turn, right-turn and through lane.
- Westbound Courthouse Road will be re-striped to provide a dedicated left-turn, right-turn and through lane.
- An eight-foot sidewalk will be installed along areas of Route 1, and pedestrian crosswalks will be built.
The benefits of the work are many, Stafford officials said. The dedicated turn-lane functions, along with new traffic lights, will improve the capacity of the road network and significantly shorten delays at the lights.
The median will provide improved channelization of traffic, thereby reducing accidents.
And the sidewalks and crosswalks will provide safer pedestrian accessibility in the area.
The project will be done in five phases, with completion scheduled for June 2027, project manager Frederick Dodds said Thursday.
The work will be done mainly at night, he said. Residents and motorists in the area won’t see anything happening on Route 1 during the day.
The population growth Englman mentioned — and more cars on area roads — made the project necessary, Dodds said. Levels of service for the roads are poor.
“The driver for this project is just growth,” he said, adding that the project will make the “livability” in the region much better.
Englman was convinced that the work will help to reduce traffic, as was Julia Lewis, who frequently attends county meetings.
“I think it’ll be a great project because it’s going to take away the bottleneck of everybody coming through this area because it’s grown so much,” she said.
Making turns in either direction on Courthouse Road is a slow process, Lewis said.
“I think adding turn lanes is so, so important,” she said.
