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DelDOT's Village Center response: ‘It's Catch-22’

December 1, 2016

Per DelDOT, a Traffic Impact Study is not essential for the Sussex County Council to make a rezoning decision on the Village Center, although a TIS "could provide additional information."

Per DelDOT, if Sussex County had an Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance, "a TIS would be essential to determining if the Levels of Service defined in the Ordinance are met or not met when development is proposed."

But Sussex has no such ordinance, so DelDOT cannot evaluate Levels of Service that do not exist – and even if DelDOT applied Level D (which I guess is nearly failing - or maybe, almost passing?) - DelDOT cannot provide a LOS assessment because they have not collected traffic data at the corner of Gills Neck and Kings Highway in a long time. (The residents know that...DelDOT's last TIS was a decade ago).

Per DelDOT, they can't say if the recent work at the intersection has improved the LOS or not because that "is difficult to say without specific calculations." And calculations require data – which DelDOT has not collected in over 10 years.

So I guess it is hard to say if the recent work has improved the situation and will mitigate the impact of the rezoning – but it has created safety concerns at the intersection. How many times have vehicles sheared the signs off the median or have motorists turned into oncoming traffic because of the ill-sited median and misaligned lanes?

Per DelDOT, TISs take time and cost money – "they are real costs passed on to consumers and taxpayers."

Consumers? Not citizens, residents and taxpayers? Who are these consumers? Ferry-riders? Out-of-staters? The tourists? What engineer or government employee calls the populace "consumers?" Who authored this response?

Sussex County Council needs to: deny this rezoning request; place all rezoning requests in the Lewes-Rehoboth area on hold until the comprehensive plan update is complete, and supporting traffic and environmental impacts are analyzed; and conduct a review of all codes and ordinances in use by the other counties to determine if Sussex needs to create or update its ordinances to compel state agencies to better support the county, as the county endeavors to properly govern and administer development.

And if the council has time – it might inquire as to what descendent of Joseph Heller's "Doc Daneeka" is working at DelDOT?

Fran Mahon
Lewes

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