Gloucester County Court House Circle A Disaster

New Court House Circle A Disaster

by; Steven Klien

Anyone who has had the privilege of driving around the new court house circle will note that the width of the street has been considerably cut down from it's previous size. This has been done in an effort to spend state and federal money or lose that money. Engineering was not well thought out as the new street width is cut down considerably. When parking now occurs on the side of the street and traffic has to get around the new circle, the area is much tighter. Complaints are already coming in that trucks are having a very hard time navigating the area and are driving across the grass and the curbing. I won't say the area did not need some work, but not the total make over that the county has implemented. In a county meeting it has been admitted that the new design was made with the intention of curbing traffic through the area.

Why not put up worthless stop lights to make it very clear to everyone they are not wanted? If you are trying to improve business on Main Street, you do not block or curb the flow of people moving through the area. I have a question here, if you are going to cut down the amount of people coming into an area and there are people who have substantial investments in local businesses and you are hurting those businesses because you have purposely restricted traffic to them, are you going to compensate those business owners or just feel sorry for them when they close shop because they can no longer afford to sit in their shops doing nothing and not making any money?

Why didn't the county wait to start working on the roads and bridges by the library on 17 business until after the court house circle was completed? Now traffic is a major nightmare trying to get to any business on Main Street no matter which direction one takes. Once it's all done it will be nice, no question about it. But at what cost? The sheer lack of planning by those in charge of doing the planning is a nightmare.