Sell Your Soul To The DOT

by Cal Bryant - September 17th, 2007 - Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald

Apparently, I’m not alone in the fact that no Town of Ahoskie official has made contact with anyone in our neck of the woods. I’ve spoken with a few of my neighbors and they said the only thing they knew about the proposed bypass was what they read in The News-Herald last week.

Perhaps I’m too naïve, but I thought the town officials would at least have the courtesy to let those affected property owners know of their intentions to support Alternative #12 before they actually approved a resolution which will disrupt our lives.

Whoops, I forgot….we live outside of town, therefore we cannot vote for the leadership within Ahoskie’s borders. But yet our fate rests in their hands.

I agree with Cal that I do not understand the leadership of Ahoskie. The counter proposal to the original by-pass plan was incredibly stupid if Ahoskie wants to keep growing. Why would Ahoskie propose a solution that made it easy for Ahoskie people to go shop in Greenville and did nothing to get people from other areas to get to the big stores on the east side of Ahoskie? Do they really not appreciate how much business gets drawn to Ahoskie by Walmart . . . which then shops in other stores and businesses in Ahoskie as a result? You have to use the big stores to draw customers as a first step. This is a simple rule of modern city planning. That means you must get a Freeway to bring people to the big stores.

Though the elimination of a dangerous intersection (the 11 - 561 crossroads) is a good idea, the new bypass route #12 is further away from the current business community's big stores than the original bypass. That means that rather than bring people from long distances to Ahoskie, it will encourage traffic to bypass Ahoskie and go to cities with easier proximity to their large stores.

It is not just the secrecy of the Ahoskie leaders that seems unacceptable. Their logic seems unacceptable too.