The following letter was sent to Sussex County Council with a copy provided to the Cape Gazette for publication.
In your upcoming vote for the Village Center development at the corner of Kings Highway and Gills Neck Road, we again request that you include safety features and/or traffic-calming features as required by the Sussex County comprehensive plan.
You have had years to consider the impact of continued development on the neighboring communities, yet to date you have failed to address community members’ well-documented concerns that have been expressed at public council meetings and in letters to council and local newspapers. So, I am confident that Sussex County Council understands fully our concerns for the safety of our residents.
Below are the elements that we think council should require from developers as part of any approval of the Village Center project:
At any proposed interconnection between Village Center and the Governors community, the design must include traffic-calming features, including but not limited to:
• Allowance of egress/ingress for emergency vehicles, bikes and pedestrians only between the east end of the Village Center development and the Governors community
• A monument entrance sign installed identifying the Governors community as a separate, private development
• Any interconnected road to be a single-lane fire road wide enough for emergency vehicles and including a breakaway fail-safe electric lift arm/gate
• Elevated pedestrian and bicycle crosswalks/speed platforms incorporating curb bump-outs and proper signage across any interconnecting road to the Governors community
• Traffic-calming features, such as speed platforms, in compliance with the Sussex County comprehensive plan and the State of Delaware’s Traffic Calming Manual.
I trust that Sussex County Council is concerned about the safety of the communities and residents adjacent to the proposed Village Center development and will incorporate solutions into the final design to mitigate the safety risks raised by your constituents, which, if not adequately addressed, could ultimately result in a tragic mishap.
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