The partial closure of Church Street during the past 18 months for reconstruction of the Cypress Creek Bridge has been all the proof anyone should need that Smithfield’s traffic infrastructure is precarious.

People who travel from, to and through the town have known for decades that to keep traffic flowing in Smithfield requires both the Smithfield Bypass and Cypress Creek Bridge. Close one and the other is hopelessly overworked. 

Prior to 1973, there was no Smithfield Bypass, and the need for it had become obvious. Most of the traffic serving the town’s two packing plants, as well as daily traffic to Newport News Shipbuilding to the east and Surry Power Station to the west had to travel directly through what would become Smithfield’s Historic District.

VDOT wisely bought, or condemned, enough property along what would become the bypass route to eventually four-lane the road. Unfortunately, that’s where the vision for the future ended.

In 1980, not long after the bypass opened, the daily traffic count averaged just over 8,000 vehicles a day, with another 2,000 going through town on Church Street. By 2023, just before the Cypress Bridge partial closure, bypass traffic had grown to 18,000 on weekdays and Church Street was taking just under 9,000 — about double the traffic back in 1980.

During that same period, the traffic from Windsor to Smithfield along U.S. 258 also doubled, from 4,200 to nearly 10,000. It was and is more than half the traffic using the Smithfield Bypass.  

Beginning in the early 1990s, well over three decades ago, Isle of Wight debated what to do about future congestion. One suggestion was to bypass Smithfield completely by building a connector from Benn’s Church cross country to Courthouse Highway (U.S. 258). Smithfield businesses justifiably voiced the view that totally bypassing the town could be disastrous for business. That, plus the fact that the miles-long bypass would have to cross a considerable amount of swampland, plus VDOT’s ambivalence toward it, killed the idea.

Looked at more closely and often was a Cypress Creek Connector, which would use the new Fairway Drive overpass as the beginning and end of a road that would bypass the business section of Main Street, which was and is narrow and daily congested. 

Resident VDOT Engineer McFarland Neblett said in 2000 that the Cypress Creek developer had agreed to construct the overpass because it was needed to tie into the future bypass.

Though the project seemed to have some steam, West Main Street businesses again protested and it never came to pass.

Out of all that discussion and concern has come a relatively modest turn lane project that runs from the bypass to Ace Hardware. Construction of that project just recently began.

During all those discussions and ideas, the one thing that has been missing is a suggestion by either the Town of Smithfield or the Board of Supervisors that the Smithfield Bypass itself be widened. 

It takes decades to build a primary road project once the need for it has been determined. If Smithfield and Isle of Wight convinced VDOT today that the bypass must be widened to handle a portion of the growing local congestion, it would probably be 2050 or later before it got built. It would take even longer, I suspect, if widening the bypass bridge were included.

And that may explain why no one has gone to bat for it. Our entire country is driven today by instant gratification, and that goes for public officials as well as the people they serve. Why would a council member or supervisor who might be on the council or board for another four to eight years champion a project that won’t be built while they’re in office, and quite possibly not while they’re still living?

The answer, of course, is that we are charged with leaving things better for the next generation and we’re not doing that very well. Imagine how nice it would be today if supervisors and council members had pressed for long-range planning and funding to widen the bypass back in 1995 or so instead of debating cross-country connectors and other exotic solutions, without arriving at any agreement. The bypass might have been widened before the Cypress Bridge work began.

It’s something to think about while you’re waiting to travel the bypass this afternoon between 3:30 and 6.

 

John Edwards is publisher emeritus of The Smithfield Times. His email address is j.branchedwards@gmail.com.