This story was reported and written by WHRO media partner Williamsburg Watch.
Not all the people concerned about the new James City County government center live in the county.
Williamsburg residents who live just east of the center on Longhill Road worry that increased traffic when the center comes online in two years will make a tough traffic situation even worse.
We spoke with several residents of the Skipwith Farms homeowners group, representing more than 200 homes. The neighborhood, which has become increasingly attractive for young families, is across Longhill from most of the attractions that families enjoy and that creates a danger crossing the road, they said.
Besides school children going to James Blair Middle School, “you’ve got the moms and dads walking their kids down to Kiwanis Park,” said Dorothy Rounds of John Wythe Place. “You’ve got people going for tennis, you’ve got the softball field ... the football field down by Kiwanis. Down the other way, you’ve got soccer fields and baseball fields and the little playground area."
The Longhill Woods development across Skipwith Farms on Governor Berkley Road has only one exit point at that road, which could become bottlenecked with a lot more traffic, they added.
The city of Williamsburg installed several crosswalks across Longhill, but Rounds said many drivers continue speeding well past the 25 mph limit. She showed us one sign at a crosswalk that had been clipped and damaged by a driver.
One of the challenges is that the James City County portion of Longhill has a speed limit of 35 mph, which lowers to 25 when drivers cross the city line. Not all drivers slow down.
Williamsburg, as a city, has the right to set speed limits within its borders, but the Virginia Department of Transportation sets the speed limit on the James City side, which VDOT maintains.
Skipwith residents worry traffic will get even worse now that the county is adding a library annex to the center.
“Because of the way they’re setting up the libraries, where each one will have a specialty, that one is supposed to be the technology center,” said Judy Leasure, another Skipwith association member. “There will be people from the city going to that library and they will be coming down Longhill Road.”
James City County performed a study on the traffic impact of the new government center last year that estimated it would generate 3,921 more trips, of which 5% would come from Longhill.
Leasure said she had traded emails with city Public Works Director Jack Reed, who said the city would monitor traffic once the center opens and had several low-cost options to slow down traffic.
“But we still are caught in this sort of no man’s land” between the city and the county, she said.
