Henrico County Department of Transportation

Henrico County Department of Transportation

To whom it may concern (likely no one):

I got an opportunity to drive down the new stretch of John Rolfe Parkway--between Church and Broad--this evening. It was a very smooth ride. You should work on that.

I realize that your laborers have spent the last 12 years working on the stretch of roadway that’s going to eventually (perhaps by the time I retire in 2040) become the full John Rolfe Parkway. I remember when you opened the first portion between Lauderdale and Ridgefield when I was first allowed to drive myself to Godwin High School in 1998. It had promise. It would be a fantastic way for me to get home easily while avoiding traffic after I dropped my friend off. He lived off of Lauderdale, and I was near Church and Pump.

This smooth, nearly flawless stretch of roadway (however minuscule it may be) is unacceptable in the Far West End. It just doesn’t fit. All of the roads around it have trenches and pot holes cut strategically into them so that our vehicles don’t have a chance to stop bouncing after barreling through one before slamming into the next. You’ve done well with Three Chopt, which was as newly paved as this stretch of John Rolfe not too long ago. You even managed to unevenly cut a ditch down the middle of Three Chopt in a manner that we’re forced to attempt to hold our vehicles steady with at least two tires bouncing back and forth between the edges for a stretch that seems like a mile. Heading from Gaskins to Pump in the afternoons, I begin to get the jitters as the road starts to level off, but am rewarded once again with the bone-shaking rumble as I near the apartment complex.

For a while there, during your constant roadway experimentation, you’d just thrown gravel into the ditches beside Three Chopt and made me drive there. I don’t know if you were just testing out a new strategy during that time or what, but I liked it. Not only did I have to navigate ditches, trenches and potholes, but I also had to watch for flying gravel, workers standing around looking at one another and eating donuts, and orange barrels rolling down the hills toward my car. It was like a gauntlet of potential vehicular destruction that really epitomized driving in the Far West End.

I will give you some credit, however. In the 12 year stretch that you spent paving this new section of John Rolfe (presumably pebble by tiny pebble), you have managed to wreak havoc, destroying several of the connecting roads. I used to take Pump all the time to get from Church to Broad. It was a straight shot from the many neighborhoods to all of the shops. Not only that, the traffic at the stoplight right there at Pump and Broad was always very fitting of the Far West End (Great Job on setting the timing of the green-light just long enough so that the first car THINKS they can make it through before the light turns! You’ve gotten me good a few times!). Now, I have to rumble across what used to be Pump before making a left turn onto the new (too smooth) section of John Rolfe in order to make another left onto Pump. You turned a single painless left turns into two lefts over what could only be described as a mine-field of potholes and jagged edges. Bravo.

In conclusion, please find time to do something about this stretch of even roadway before I get spoiled by not having my joints shaken every time I sit down in my car. I wouldn’t want to become accustomed to this, only to have it ripped away when someone there decides that it needs more holes and takes a jackhammer to it for gits and shiggles.

Thanks for your time and attention.

Sincerely,

A Concerned (Shaken, not Stirred) Citizen