{"id":3476,"date":"2018-05-20T13:07:55","date_gmt":"2018-05-20T17:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=3476"},"modified":"2018-05-20T13:20:43","modified_gmt":"2018-05-20T17:20:43","slug":"jeanne-mozier-against-the-berkeley-springs-bypass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=3476","title":{"rendered":"Jeanne Mozier and the Case Against the Berkeley Springs Bypass"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jeanne Mozier says there is no need for the proposed $50 million Berkeley Springs bypass, that the bypass will kill the town and that the money could be better spent repaving all of the existing roads in Morgan County.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fmWfh50FJxY\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI don\u2019t want this bypass,\u201d Mozier told <em>This Week in Morgan County with Russell Mokhiber.<\/em> \u00a0\u201cAll the data say that what you get along a bypass are big box stores, chain food stores and gas stations.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cFor years, Travel Berkeley Springs has been collecting data on how people come to Berkeley Springs,\u201d Mozier said. \u201cAnd consistently about thirty percent of the people say the same words \u2013 we\u2019ve been driving through your town for years. It\u2019s so cute. And we decided \u2013 this would be the time we would stop. You take that thirty percent away to begin with. Who can afford to lose thirty percent?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mozier says that the political leaders in Morgan County claim to be for the bypass, until they look at the plan and suddenly they think this is not such a good idea.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mozier said the political leaders were not familiar with the fact that the bypass plan would shut down access to 522 from the north and the south. You would actually have to get onto the bypass and then take an exit to get back onto the old 522, she said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe design of this bypass is so horrendous. Even Charles Trump, when he finally looked at the map he said \u2013 oh, we can\u2019t have this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What would you do instead?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cDo the connector road from Fairview Drive to 522,\u201d Mozier said. \u201cMake it easy for all of the emergency vehicles to get to the hospital. Have some developable economic land. That\u2019s about a six to eight million dollar project. And then give the rest of the money to Morgan County to fix every road in the county. Then everybody would be happy. They would be happy in Paw Paw. They would be happy in South Morgan. They would be happy in Pleasant View. None of them will benefit from the bypass. If we fixed every road in the county, we would be in much better shape and we wouldn\u2019t kill our town. We have a 300 year old town that is world famous. And I promise you this \u2013 no one at the Department of Highways has ever considered what this would do to the town. No one.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why wouldn\u2019t the Department of Highways spend the money to fix the roads, as you suggest?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cBecause they don\u2019t have original thoughts,\u201d Mozier said. \u201cThey pulled the plan off the shelves and the plan was the bypass.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThere has never been a traffic study done that establishes the need for the bypass. They have never talked to the people in Morgan County to ask \u2013 do you want a bypass.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Twenty years ago, a similar proposal to bypass Berkeley Springs was killed off by local opposition and a lack of funding.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1998, a group called the Morgan County Citizens Coalition <a href=\"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/truck.pdf\">produced a 28-page legal memo in opposition to the bypass.<\/a> It outlined alternatives to the bypass \u2013 including a through truck traffic prohibition, truck weight and size restrictions and truck tolling.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mozier urged citizens of Morgan County <a href=\"https:\/\/transportation.wv.gov\/highways\/engineering\/comment\/BerkeleySpringsBypass\/Pages\/Comment.aspx\">to go online to the Department of Highways web site and weigh in against the bypass.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>(The deadline for comments is tomorrow &#8212; Monday May 21, 2018.)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeanne Mozier says there is no need for the proposed $50 million Berkeley Springs bypass, that the bypass will kill the town and that the money could be better spent repaving all of the existing roads in Morgan County. \u201cI &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=3476\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3476"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3483,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3476\/revisions\/3483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}