Planning Commission requests cable guardrail in front of CHS

By Sarah Vogelsong

CP Reporter

 

Caroline High School’s landscaping may soon include a guardrail along Route 207.

In a discussion about erecting a protective physical barrier in front of CHS at its Feb. 5 work session, the Planning Commission shifted its attention from concrete bollards or boulders to a cable guardrail.

“It’s not bad looking,” Port Royal Commissioner Tim Thompson said, “and you can see over it, you can see under it, you can cut the grass around it, (and) you don’t have to mulch it.”

Currently, CHS is separated from the 55-mile-per-hour Route 207 by a row of trees, which will remain part of the renovated site. Public officials have raised concerns about the new site plan, however, which moves the front of the building 43 feet closer to the road, placing it 75 feet from the property line and 143 feet from the nearest travel lane.

Fears center on the possibility of an accident or driver error causing a car to veer off of Route 207 and into the building, endangering student safety.

For Commission Chairman Les Stanley, these fears were thrown into sharp relief by a Jan. 22 incident in Chesterfield County in which four students allegedly stole a van, strapped a brick to its accelerator, and crashed it into the front of L. C. Bird High School, triggering a fire and causing significant building damage.

“The safety of the children, that’s the primary reason we wanted something there,” Stanley said, “because 207 is very highly trafficked.”

This traffic includes a significant volume of tractor-trailers, Western Caroline Commissioner Bob Fiumara pointed out, and in an accident “at 55 miles per hour, a tree isn’t going to stop them.”

Randy Jones, CEO of OWPR, the architect for the CHS project, reported that the firm had been working with county building official Kevin Wightman to weigh options and had come up with a plan that would erect a series of boulders 80 feet from the nearest travel lane of Route 207, spaced 20 feet apart. Jones said he considered this design “appropriate but also not terribly expensive.”

A guardrail designed to Virginia Department of Transportation standards, he cautioned the Commission, would be “very expensive.”

Fiumara, however, expressed the opinion that cost should not be the driving factor in the decision. “Safety of the children is the first thing,” he said.

Furthermore, Thompson said, in the case of vehicular impact, a boulder could cause the car to roll upwards and tumble down the other side, whereas with a guardrail, “you have a glancing blow.” Bollards, he said, would be unlikely to hold together in an impact and could risk splitting.

The Planning Commission expressed a preference for a cable guardrail, instead of one constructed of corrugated metal, a direction that Jones agreed was “probably a better solution than a standard VDOT guardrail.”

The Commissioners have requested that OWPR bring a design of the site plan that shows a guardrail, as well as the boulder concept previously suggested by Wightman, to their next meeting on Feb. 19 for a final decision.

Review and approval of the site plan was delegated to the Planning Commission by the Board of Supervisors as a condition of its approval of the special exception that allowed the front of the school building to be moved 43 feet closer to Route 207.

At a question from Stanley about the status of the CHS project, Jones reported that “it should be advertised for bids very, very soon.”