Route 3: Finally safe?

About a half-dozen recommended safety improvements to a two-lane section of Route 3 in the Stevensburg area are complete, a Virginia Department of Transportation spokesman said this week.

Initiated after a quadruple fatality two-car crash near Clay Hill Road in March, area residents and legislators pressed VDOT to examine what could be done to make the road safer. The safety improvements were completed on schedule in mid-November, VDOT Culpeper District spokesman Lou Hatter said.

The improvements include wider, paved shoulders, a centerline rumble strip, embedded reflective markers that are safe for snowplows, flexible warning posts to mark the edge of the roadway, extra-wide pavement markings, rumble strips across the travel lanes at the beginning of the curve and stop bars at five intersecting roadways in the curve area to better delineate where the intersecting roads meet Route 3.

“We’re trying to give people as many visual clues as we can that they’re entering a curve,” said Hatter.

The studies, engineering, traffic analysis and construction were estimated to cost $291,000. Hatter said to date, VDOT has spent $158,082 on the project. However, Hatter said that figure could change, as some project charges are still pending.

Most of Route 3, the main highway linking Culpeper and Fredericksburg, is four lanes, except for the section near Stevensburg and a short section near town limits.

At several meetings initiated by area residents in the wake of the fatal March accident, local and state legislators and VDOT leaders acknowledged that the ideal solution would be to four-lane the remaining two lane section of the highway. But the money to do that — an estimated $18 million — isn’t available, say officials. Hatter agreed.

“The ideal long-term solution would be to complete the four-laning of Route 3, that’s what we’d be looking for in the long run, but there’s no likelihood that that’s going to happen in the near term,” he said.

Short of adding lanes to the highway, Hatter said another possible improvement on the horizon is adding three foot wide shoulders from the curve headed east to the four-lane section at Lignum.
“We’re looking for funding for that right now,” he said.

During the safety meetings, VDOT and law enforcement officials also stressed that unsafe and inattentive driver behaviors also factor into the accidents reported in the curve area. Earlier this year, a VDOT official said a speed study showed 85 percent of drivers were exceeding the posted 55 mph speed limit.