Working Together to Improve Wards Road

Anyone who has ever driven down Wards Road knows it’s a motorist’s worst nightmare.

Now, imagine what it must be like for pedestrians.

As Liberty University has grown over the last several years to its current enrollment of more than 11,500 students, business growth along Wards Road has followed. As one of the main commercial hubs for all of Central Virginia, they don’t come much busier or more congested than Wards Road.

Twenty years ago, there was just River Ridge mall at the intersection of U.S. 29 and U.S. 501. The next couple of miles to the airport were pretty much open space with a few strip malls and gas stations. Then came Wal-Mart, followed soon thereafter by Sam’s Club.

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Today, tens of thousands of vehicles use Wards Road, one of the region’s major thoroughfares. And so do hundreds of students, walking over from LU’s growing campus.

Or at least, trying to walk over.

It’s a game of dodgeball, almost, as students try to make it across up to six lanes of traffic without becoming a highway statistic. Running between vehicles stopped at lights, trying to dash out from the median during a lull in oncoming traffic ... it’s a tragedy waiting to happen.

City Planner Tom Martin described the scene to The News & Advance in a story last week: “You can drive out there at any point when school is in session and see students crossing anywhere and everywhere.”

And that just can’t continue, especially as LU continues to grow in future years.

That’s why the Lynchburg Planning Commission and city staff deserve a round of applause for devising the Wards Road Pedestrian Master Plan, a multi-phase plan designed to make the highway safer for pedestrians and, by extension, motorists.

Construction of the first phase of the project, estimated to cost about $1 million, would be timed to coincide with LU’s own construstion of a pedestrian tunnel from campus that would open on Wards Road near the Vitamin Shoppe across from Sam’s Club.

The plan calls for construction of a pedestrian crossing area on Wards, with new signals computer-coordinated with others along the road and designed to funnel all pedestrian traffic through that causeway.

Coupled with additional bus service from the LU campus by GLTC, and you’re talking about the possibility of dramatically reducing freelance pedestrian traffic on Wards Road, making the road safer for all.

Future phases of the Wards Road plan are where it really gets interesting ... and innovative.

On the Wal-Mart side of Wards Road runs Rock Creek. Wal-Mart has done a commendable job of landscaping the banks of the creek on their property.

The city’s pedestrian plan builds on that idea and takes it to the next level.

That “next level” would be construction of a fully landscaped pedestrian and cyclist trail running the length of the Wards Road commercial corrider. Rock Creek Parkway would be both a key safety component for pedestrians but also a beautiful streetscape project along what is now just a river of asphalt.

All involved in the development of this master plan deserve recognition, from city staff to LU officials and business owners along Wards Road.

The entire process should be a model for Central Virginia as to how public and private parties can work together to solve a mutual problem.