Residents of Constitution Hills
Waldorf, MD 20603
April 14, 2004
Zak Krebeck
Acting Director of Planning
Charles County Department of Planning and Growth Management
P.O. Box 2150
La Plata, Maryland 20646
Thank you for your reply on April 8, 2004 to Janet Allen, President of the Home Owner’s Association (HOA) of Constitution Hills, regarding the construction of the Autumn Hills development. Janet shared your comments with the residents of Constitution Hills.
The residents of Constitution Hills take issue with several of your comments regarding the connection of Constitution Hills and Autumn Hills via Constitution Hills Drive.
You indicated in your letter that Constitution Hills Drive will not connect Constitution Hills and Autumn Hills until the improvements have been made to McDaniel Road. McDaniel road “will be built to a major collector standard to handle the planned traffic at a higher design speed than local roads such as Constitution and Stavors.” You further added that, “Based on the traffic study performed as part of the approval of Autumn Hills, there will be additional vehicle trips using Stavors Road from Autumn Hills. There will also be a corresponding number of trips from Constitution Hills using the connection through Autumn Hills to McDaniel Road, Smallwood Drive, and Middleton Road.” The residents of Constitution Hills have several concerns regarding these statements.
· Number of vehicle trips and lack of safety considerations
The eastern end of the neighborhoods via Stavors Road, will see considerably more traffic than the western end via McDaniel Road. As you stipulated in your comments, the connection of the neighborhoods via Constitution Hills Drive will “provide more direct access to shopping areas such as the ‘Mall.’” If the number of trips were evenly distributed among McDaniel Road and Stavors Road, the fact that Autumn Hills will feature 384 new homes and potentially 768 corresponding vehicles confirms that the traffic on both Constitution Hills Drive and Stavors Road will greatly exceed current levels. However, the shopping areas and mall are located to the east of Stavors Road. It is therefore logical for most of the local traffic to utilize the more direct route, i.e., Stavors Road, to such destinations. It is unreasonable and irrational to assume that an equal number of vehicle trips will traverse several miles west, then south on McDaniel Road before going east to get to the Mall. Constitution Hills Drive and Stavors Road will be overwhelmed with the increased use.
Such vehicle trips to shopping and eating destinations are most likely occur during the dusk hours, when children living in Constitution Hills are most likely to be playing outside near Constitution Hills Drive. Furthermore, any future residents in Autumn Hills who work to the east of Washington DC (Suitland, Laurel, Bowie, Annapolis, Bethesda, Silver Spring, Columbia, Rockville), or who take the Metro to work via the Green Line at the Branch Avenue Station, will surely use Constitution Hills Drive in the early morning hours, again at a time when many young children will be at bus stops located on Constitution Hills Drive.
According to the preliminary plans for Autumn Hills provided by Mr. Douglas Meeker, the developer of the Autumn Hills project, Constitution Hills Drive will become a “minor collector.” Both major and minor collectors are described on the plans to be a minimum of 60 feet in width. Constitution Hills Drive is currently approximately 48 feet in width and it remains unclear how the additional 12 feet will be added. It is therefore very worrisome that Stavors Road, which is currently 24 feet in width its widest point, is not subject to the same series of improvements that McDaniel Road will receive. If, as you indicate, there are an equal number of vehicle trips on McDaniel and Stavors, then Stavors Road would be expected to handle a significantly higher number of trips than it currently carries. However, the more reasonable assumption of a disproportionately higher volume of vehicle traffic relative to both the current traffic on Stavors and the future traffic on McDaniel, clearly necessitates dramatic improvements to Stavors. Although the County has required Mr. Meeker to provide $2 million in improvements to McDaniel Road, there are no similar improvements scheduled for Stavors Road despite your explicit acknowledgement that future vehicle traffic on Stavors will be at least equal to that on McDaniel (though we strongly argue that the volume on Stavors will grossly exceed that on McDaniel).
As you may be aware, Stavors Road connects Jenifer Elementary School to both Sun Valley and Constitution Hills and yet, it currently lacks sidewalks for children walking to and from school. Again, as you stipulated, McDaniel Road will carry traffic at a “higher design speed than local roads such as Constitution and Stavors.” Yet, you seem to assume that the traffic on Stavors will adhere to a lower rate of speed given its lack of status as either a major or minor collector. Why would vehicle traffic travel slower on Stavors Road than on McDaniel Road? Constitution Hills Drive, a future minor collector as described on the preliminary plans for Autumn Hills, carries a residential speed limit of 25 miles per hour. Stavors Road, which connects Constitution Hills Drive to Route 228 carries a speed limit of 25 miles per hour. Stavors Road also connects to Jenifer Elementary School and is at least 36 feet narrower than the Constitution Hills Drive and McDaniel Road will be. In fact, school children in Constitution Hills, the nearby neighborhoods of Stavors Acres and Bel Air Woods, and those who live directly on Stavors Road are prohibited from walking to Jenifer Elementary and are in fact required by the County to ride buses to school specifically due to a lack of sidewalks on Stavors Road.
Clearly, this is a safety concern that has been overlooked or disregarded by the Department of Planning. Similarly, I wonder if the Department has given any consideration as to which schools the children from the future 384 Autumn Hills houses will attend as both Jenifer and Berry Elementary are already at capacity.
Route 228, the major route to which McDaniel Road and Stavors Road connect, is already overwhelmed. Specifically, the intersection of Stavors, Route 228, and Springhaven Woods is the scene of frequent accidents. These incidents will only increase both in volume and severity as vehicle traffic increases with the construction of Autumn Hills. To our knowledge, the County has not disclosed any plans for adding a traffic light to this intersection, the necessity of which is currently evident and will become even more so in the foreseeable future.
· Impacts of connecting the two neighborhoods
You indicated that, “Interconnecting neighborhoods is a part of the County’s strategy to provide a better road network in the greater Waldorf area and thus relieve some of the congestion by providing more choice in selecting a travel route.” This is grossly inconsistent with existing roads and communities.
Constitution Hills is adjacently located to two major neighborhoods and yet it is connected to neither. Sun Valley (166 homes) is located due north and the Westlake community (Dorchester, Lancaster, Hampshire neighborhoods containing more than 500 homes) is located due south. If connecting neighborhoods to provide more potential travel routes were truly an objective of the County’s strategy as you indicated, then it reasons that these three neighborhoods would have been connected. This is especially true when taken together with your comments regarding potential Mall traffic. Stavors Road ends within a hundred yards of the Westlake community and nearly the entire neighborhood of Constitution Hills lies adjacent to Westlake. Given the County’s “strategy to provide a better road network,” it would have been logical to connect these two neighborhoods to facilitate convenient access the retail district. Yet, current plans call for this critical connection to occur several miles to the west at McDaniel Road, therefore requiring travelers to head west, then south, before heading east as described above to their destination.
The preliminary plans for Autumn Hills call for 384 lots to be built on a minimum lot size of 7,000 square feet. Constitution Hills contains 140 homes lots on a minimum lot size of 14,777, more than twice the size of the minimum lots in Autumn Hills. The mean sale price for homes in Constitution Hills was $280,000 since 2002. Clearly, it does not take a demographer or an economist to realize that these two neighborhoods are vastly different in design and will therefore have very different residents. As shown on the preliminary Autumn Hills plans, there will be two lots in Autumn Hills for every one lot in Constitution Hills. So, in a few months, instead of gazing out from the deck on the back of a Constitution Hills home and seeing a beautiful wooded setting, our residents will see no trees. Instead, we will be treated to a vista of two homes being constructed directly behind a given home, two more behind a neighbor’s house, and two more behind the next neighbor’s house. Property values within Constitution Hills will undoubtedly be negatively affected. Rough estimates suggest that in real estate taxes alone, Constitution Hills residents provide annual revenue in excess of $500,000. Yet, we are not given an opportunity by the Department of Planning to voice any concerns regarding a major negative impact to our neighborhood.
As you can see from the above comments, the residents of Constitution Hills are quite concerned with the safety of our children and that of the school children attending Jenifer Elementary, and with the architectural and fiscal future of our neighborhood. Your comments, though appreciated, do not provide the answers to the questions that we originally posed, nor do they provide any express justification for connecting the two neighborhoods. As a considerable base for both County and State real estate and income tax revenue, we believe that there is an obligation for the County to respond to these concerns. We are planning to develop a petition to be signed by all residents of Constitution Hills and residents of Stavors Road indicating our opposition to any connection of Autumn Hills to Constitution Hills via Constitution Hills Drive.
In the interim, we have the following questions for the Charles County Commissioners and the Department of Planning and Growth Management:
1. Will Constitution Hills Drive, in its role as a “minor collector” feature traffic lines such as a double yellow in the center of the roadway with white emergency barriers?
2. Are there plans to add a traffic light on Rt. 228 at the intersection of Stavors Road?
3. Will improvements, comparable to those required to be made to McDaniel Road, be made to Stavors Road, such as widening the roadway and adding sidewalks for safety of school children, to accommodate increased vehicle traffic?
4. Please provide us with the Charles County specifications for a “major” and a “minor collector.”
5. How does the County justify major and minor collectors being tied in to a roadway (Stavors Road), without sidewalks, that is only 24 feet in width and that also directly serves an elementary school?
6. Will a privacy barrier be added between the two neighborhoods given the vastly different specifications of Autumn Hills (.16 acre minimum lot size) and Constitution Hills (.37 acre minimum lot size; twice the size of lots in Autumn Hills)?
7. Which schools (elementary, middle, and high schools) will children of future Autumn Hills residents attend?
8. What is the construction schedule for Autumn Hills including anticipated start and end dates?
9. Will a neighborhood sign similar to the one at the southern end of Constitution Hills Drive be added to the connection point of Constitution Hills and Autumn Hills?
We look forward to your reply to our concerns.
Sincerely,
Residents of Constitution Hills
cc: Charles County Commissioners
James Hettinger (Maryland Independent)
Angela Breck (Maryland Independent)
Tom Lanswort (The Washington Post)