Up date on By pass

State drops 2 plans for U.S. 113 Sussex bypass
By RACHAEL JACKSON, The News Journal
Posted Friday, April 20, 2007
Two proposed bypass roads that had angered Sussex County residents have been dropped from consideration to ease traffic from Milford to the Maryland line, the Delaware Department of Transportation announced Thursday.
Several other options for increasing capacity on U.S. 113 are still on the table.
So far, DelDOT has spent about $7.5 million studying proposals, including bypass options around Milford, Georgetown and Millsboro.
The two recently dropped proposals were from the Georgetown and Millsboro studies. Roads that would have snaked east of the existing U.S. 113 in Georgetown and Millsboro were eliminated from consideration. In both cases, DelDOT cited negative response from residents who worried the roads would cut up farmland and could hurt property values.
DelDOT is now looking at 11 options for the south Millsboro area and nine options for the area between Georgetown and Millsboro. In Georgetown the agency will be focusing on an option that simply adds lanes to the existing road, said DelDOT Project Manager Monroe Hite III. That option, known as "on alignment," is the one that farmer Keith Johnson has been supporting.
"I think they can handle it on alignment," said Johnson, who worries the other options will fragment usable farmland. "The western side people and the eastern side people are in this all together."
Johnson collected about 1,100 signatures in favor of the "on-alignment" proposal.
The agency will pick what it calls a "recommended preferred alternative" for the Georgetown area in early May and for the Millsboro area in summer.
The two options that were dropped had been suggested last summer. Now that they are off the table, the agency is back to its original ideas, Hite said.
Area resident Donna Atkinson said that she was frustrated that the state was looking at a north-south plan instead of an east-west plan.
"I think it may be unwise to designate so much of our funds to a single roadway that's designed for out-of-state beach traffic," she said, alluding to the fact that Ocean City, Md.-bound motorists may use the road heavily. More important, she said, should be roads that get people to Delaware beaches.
Atkinson, who is a member of one of DelDOT's working groups, said she has been cautious about the popular "on alignment" option because she worries it could make it difficult for drivers to get to businesses.