First Five Points study phase should be nearly complete

Fog settled over many parts of Delaware’s Cape Region Wednesday morning this week. It added another dimension to the morning rush hour, already thickened with school traffic going in and out of Lewes. At Five Points, no surprise to anyone, westbound traffic from Route 1 and Savannah Road congested where Route 9 intersects with Plantation and Beaverdam roads. That’s a special place known to many locals as Malfunction Junction. It’s also ground zero for a $110,000 study underway to map future options for dealing with the traffic that converges at Five Points.

Several months have passed since DelDOT approved a contract with the Baltimore engineering firm of Whitman, Requardt and Associates to conduct the study. When that study is complete in the next couple of months, a public workshop will be held to present findings, recommended actions and next steps.

During last summer’s midday peak hours, crews from Whitman, Requardt, in white vans and pickups, conducted traffic counts at 15 different intersections surrounding the main Five Points intersection.

While those crews gathered their field data, engineers in the home office studied maps showing the many communities in the area and those planned over the next several years, to get a sense of growth rates expected between now and 2040. They have been applying those growth rates to their summer counts to get a rough feel for 2040 future traffic.

They have also been looking at crash data to identify high-crash locations and determine crash patterns. Unfortunately, there is plenty of crash data to study. And there’s no reason to question whether the surrounding area will continue developing over the next few decades. The Sussex County development juggernaut is alive and well, and is likely to continue with steady strength for at least the next two decades.

Projecting future growth

One of the documents being prepared for the task force overseeing this critically important project for the area’s future will illustrate approved developments and pending development activity. It will also factor in other developable lands in the study area and nearby, showing what the area could look like if all of those developments proceed.

According to the scope of services agreement detailing this phase of the work, a steering committee composed of DelDOT and Sussex County representatives will work with the Whitman-Requardt folks “to develop a broadly supported plan for the future of the study area, focused on the current and future quality of life for those who live and work in the area.”

The map showing the study area, accompanying this column, offers a sense of the breadth of this study.

When the findings are presented in a public workshop, they will also include - at a conceptual level - “transportation improvement alternatives that address identified needs.”

Some of the types of improvements that could be considered include “intersection reconfigurations to facilitate movement of motor vehicles, pedestrians and bicyclists; signal timing changes; connections between developments to facilitate internal traffic flow; provision of right-of-way for future two-lane connector roads in new development plans; shared-use paths; and operational modifications to the existing bus/bike/right-turn lanes on Route 1.”

Traveling through the Five Points intersection may be the single-most commonly shared experience for all who live in Delaware’s Cape Region. Cape Gazette will be watching closely and reporting on this process and what it may present to help improve our ability to get around in the decades ahead, whether walking, bicycling or driving.