The Dartmouth Quadrangle is known to most as the Dartmouth Road/Route 1 intersection. Planes, ships and people who enter the Bermuda Triangle disappear. While in the Dartmouth Quadrangle foresight, common sense, proper planning and basic intelligence on the part of our local, county and state government officials disappear.
The expanding commercial development, anchored by Wawa, and now Lefty's Alleys and Eats and the Rehoboth Cinema on the south side of Dartmouth, and the Home Goods, Kitchen & Company and liquor store on the north side, have made this intersection an untenable traffic nightmare.
And now, to add injury to insult, yet another parcel of land has been expanded and rezoned from residential to commercial near the liquor store. The sign is already there announcing the pad site is for lease. This will add yet more traffic to back up onto Route 1. And it will trap more shoppers attempting to get back out onto Dartmouth Drive.
This untenable engineering design and zoning monstrosity would be laughable if it weren't deadly serious. It's further exacerbated by the fact there is only one entrance to and exit out of the Rolling Meadows Community via Dartmouth Road. The bottleneck and traffic fiasco in the Dartmouth Quadrangle is an ever-increasing menace and public safety hazard for Rolling Meadows. The day will come when, not if, a resident might die because an ambulance is delayed getting to them and delayed again attempting to get back out through the Dartmouth Road intersection.
Who will be held accountable? A second exit/entrance road out of Wawa and Lefty's has been promised for some time. If it ever comes to fruition it might alleviate, but certainly not solve, the traffic quagmire. The legal machinations for approval have raged on ad nauseam, going on now for almost a year. To my understanding the delay is attributable to DelDOT's lawyer and Delmarva Power's lawyer quibbling over dotted Is and crossed Ts. Drag it out, more billable hours for them.
The summer traffic hordes are coming, and those who might make it happen fiddle while Rome burns. Delaware was the last state to eliminate public floggings. I suggest the old flogging post in Georgetown be refurbished and floggings be reinstituted for state, county and local government officials who lack the foresight, common sense and intelligence to make rational decisions for us, the taxpaying citizens.
Otherwise, more Dartmouth Quadrangles are inevitable here in Sussex County.
Steve Hyle
Lewes
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