To the Editor,

I am amazed that WVDOT is still proposing the most expensive and destructive way to put WV Route 2 through New Cumberland.

What WVDOT officials are planning, Alternative 4, would require widening Station Hill and Ridge Avenue. Widening Station Hill would involve expensive concrete buttresses all along the bottom of the hill from Chester Street to the bottom of Ridge Avenue to prevent Route 2 from falling. It has done that already. Only quick action by town employees prevented vehicles from falling into the gap that was created by the failure. Widening Ridge Avenue would involve removing the sidewalks (grass and part of the bricks) from in front of the homes and businesses along Ridge Avenue.

I don’t live on Ridge anymore, but if I did, no way would I allow WVDOT to take my brick sidewalk.

Widening Ridge Avenue would involve, as Pat Jones noted, moving utility poles, and I believe some fire hydrants.

Here is an important fact to consider – for current and future big rigs (heavy trucks) that are using and will use when projects for increased growth in the area north of town are realized – two 102-inch wide trailers need a minimum of 17 feet to pass each other. The tractor pulling the trailer needs an additional 4 feet so the side mirrors won’t break off and that’s times two, or a minimum of 25 feet. The road is 22 feet wide! Watch the trucks try to pass each other without crashing their mirrors together or running into utility poles.

A proposal to route the road straight through town from Chester Street was met with WVDOT objections that flooding occurs there and there are baseball fields in the area.

1. There is flooding at the backwaters before New Cumberland floods and truck traffic is rerouted to Ohio.

2. The ballfields are rarely, if ever, used by Little Leagues. Their games are played in Chester.

To me and anyone I talk to, this is a “no brainer.”

The state is about to finish off the beauty of Ridge Avenue, incur unnecessary costs and ignore a better way to reroute traffic. So I urge you to “put the pressure on.” Call everyone you can, and urge them to do the right thing.

Bob McNeil

Steubenville

(formerly of New Cumberland)