Worth the Wait?

Route 2: Pain now–Payback later

By Sharon Lakey

Sen­a­tor Jane Kitchel was quot­ed in the Cale­don­ian-Record on July 1, 2011, at a meet­ing between the Ver­mont Agency of Trans­porta­tion and Danville res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers. “Maybe this project is a lot like hav­ing a baby. When we get done we’ll be pleased with what we have, hopefully.”

There’s no doubt about the pain. Any­one try­ing to make it through and around Danville this sum­mer has expe­ri­enced it. Frus­tra­tion has some­times been high, but late­ly it seems peo­ple, at least local­ly, are wait­ing for the baby with more sto­icism. And while wel’re wait­ing, there is renewed inter­est in what the final prod­uct is going to look like. Over the past 20-plus years, the col­lec­tive mem­o­ry of how this project evolved has dimmed; per­haps a review of how we got here from there is use­ful. So, a lit­tle history…

In 1989, Jen­ny and Joseph, two Danville stu­dents, were walk­ing home along Route 2 after class­es. It was a snowy after­noon and the road was icy slush. A black car came bar­rel­ing up the road, through the blink­ing cau­tion light, head­ed toward Mont­pe­lier. The dri­ver lost con­trol and slammed into the kids, even drag­ging Joseph a ways as he clung to the bumper. Mirac­u­lous­ly, both chil­dren sur­vived, but that was the last straw. Par­ents, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and offi­cials felt some­thing had to be done to slow traf­fic through Danville.

It had been a pri­or­i­ty of the state for a long time to widen Route 2 through Danville to meet fed­er­al two-lane stan­dards, but the redesign through Danville was a puz­zle. For dri­vers on the top of Dole Hill com­ing into Danville, not only is the view breath­tak­ing, it is also a straight course down into the vil­lage. There is a nat­ur­al increased momen­tum as one descends the hill and a free­way kind of look encour­ages speed. Just how was the need to move traf­fic smooth­ly through the town going to meet the town’s safe­ty goals?

Not only was safe­ty an issue; there was also a hope among cit­i­zens that cars wouldn’t just zip through town. If trav­el­ers slowed and paid atten­tion to their sur­round­ings, they might want to stop, espe­cial­ly if what they saw was attrac­tive. This would cre­ate a more busi­ness-friend­ly atmos­phere. And, as the high­way splits Danville in two, it was also impor­tant to keep cit­i­zens com­fort­ably and safe­ly con­nect­ed across that hard divid­ing line cre­at­ed by the highway.

Thus began the Ver­mont Agency of Transportation’s first exper­i­ment in a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort with local gov­ern­ment and cit­i­zen input to design an accept­able road that would meet the needs of both com­mu­ni­ty and fed­er­al high­way guide­lines. Anoth­er play­er would be called into the effort–the Ver­mont Arts Coun­cil. As one per­cent of fed­er­al fund­ing for the project was allo­cat­ed to inte­grat­ing artis­tic enhance­ments into the project, the coun­cil would act as an impor­tant resource for the community.

Con­sen­sus build­ing is nev­er an easy process, and this was no excep­tion. A com­mit­tee of nine mem­bers local vol­un­teers agreed to gar­ner input from the com­mu­ni­ty and relay it to the design­ers as well as keep the select board informed. They also act­ed as resources to pass infor­ma­tion from the design­ers to the gen­er­al pub­lic. It was a bumpy process with much give-and-take on all parts before the basic design was agreed on in 2002. The project was fund­ed in 2003.

And here we are, in 2011, in the first year of a three-year process to com­plete the Danville Project. For the nest two sum­mers, we are told to expect traf­fic delays as VTrans com­pletes its part of the bar­gain. The last year will be less inva­sive as the Green will be land­scaped and art pieces installed.

It is hard to imag­ine the com­plet­ed project. Boul­ders strewn, noisy machines, orange plas­tic fenc­ing, a pletho­ra of work­ers hold­ing and spin­ning stop and slow signs–all this cre­ates con­fu­sion, and it is hard to visu­al­ize a peace­ful fin­ished product.

But the grand design is there, well-thought out after hun­dreds of hours of gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion and ham­mer­ing out the details. Mert Leonard, Danville’s town admin­is­tra­tor, has kept the draw­ings and designs for the project tucked away in his office since 2002. In this issue, we are shar­ing the basic high­way design for Route 2 and around the green, not­ing the way traf­fic will flow through town.

The two pho­tos attrib­uted to Dufresne-Hen­ry Inc, a con­sult­ing firm hired by VTrans to pro­vide assis­tance in design­ing the project, are 3‑D images of how the high­way will look to dri­vers. The first is of the cen­ter of town before the main inter­se­tion; the sec­ond is after a dri­ver leaves the inter­sec­tion and is head­ing toward Marty’s.

Enter­ing Danville from either side, dri­vers will encounter small islands, their gen­tle cur­va­ture send­ing a sub­tle mes­sage that they have entered a town and require a slow­er speed to nego­ti­ate them. A stop­light will be installed at the inter­sec­tion of Hill Street and Peacham Road at Route 2. It will trig­ger when cars from Hill Street and Peacham Road approach. Dri­vers pro­gress­ing through the inter­sec­tion from Mont­pe­lier to St. Johns­bury will again encounter the islands, and there will be a left turn­ing lane into Marty’s.

In the third draw­ing is a pho­to of the pro­posed green design, show­ing how traf­fic will enter and exit Route 2 on the green side of town. Two one-way streets, on either side of the green, and the removal of one road onto Route 2 will grant only two entries and two exits from the high­way, bring­ing it down from four. This makes a great deal of sense for safe­ty and calm­ness around the green.

In the com­ing months, we’ll take a look at the green enhance­ment and see how the artists are pro­gress­ing. Two artists have been com­ing to the His­tor­i­cal House to work on their designs, and we’ll share what they are doing.

Much more detailed infor­ma­tion, includ­ing a his­to­ry and analy­sis of the Danville Project, can be gar­nered online. Just Google the Danville Project and you will find ample read­ing mate­r­i­al. If you would like to see the draw­ing that Mert had in his office, you may see them at the Danville His­to­r­i­al Soci­ety on Tues­days or Thurs­days from noon to 7 p.m.