Parking at Horner Rd. is Awful!!!

I wonder if anyone has any ideas of who to contact in regard to this. Would it be VDOT or the county or whom since the lots are public?

To the best of my knowledge the Horner lot was originally a VDOT lot. The last expansion that doubled the size of the lot to 2000 + spaces was a county funded and managed project. So it is really both. However, I doubt if you could restrict it to county stickers.

I think we should ask our state and local reps to look into the issue of commuter parking in PWC again. We do have space in the 123 lot and I believe other lots in Lake Ridge(?) I'll bet there are those that use Horner that could use a Lake Ridge lots or the 123 lot if we could get sluuging started there The entire issue needs to be looked at once again.

Bob

I learned my lesson the hard way today. I thought I would play connect the dots frm my son's school to Tackett's and shave five minutes off my commute. It's only 9 miles, right? How much traffic can there really be on Prince Wm Pkwy and Old Bridge Road? 30 minutes of bumper to bumper traffic and five school zones later, I am parked in the line of cars. To play it safe, I get out of the car and walk to the car behind me: "Is this the line to Rosslyn?" I get that glazed over expression rom this guy and depression sets in. I drive the 5-7 minutes south to Horner, arriving at 7:50 AM. There, I am the 10th car in line for Rosslyn and there is absolutley zero pedestrian traffic in the lot. Now I drive over to PM, wait about 4 minutes and I have two riders (one of whom has to give me directions to 95N since I have only been in that area twice). From leaving the house to standing in line at the coffee pot at work, it took an hour and fifty minutes! My decision is now made. Prior to 7:30 AM, I'll go to Horner. After that, it's PM!

To clarify a few points...

Maureen Caddigan's office looked into the county stickers issue before and discovered that there was no legal standing for towing or ticketing or putting up a sign that said For PWC Residents Only. For one thing, too many military people live around here and have cars legally licensed out of state, not to say county. So you can't do that without opening a can of ugly legalistic worms (plus we owe the military guys for starting the slug lines to begin with!)

The supervisors are well aware of the problem of parking at Horner, but they (rightly) shy away from interfering directly with the police -- that way lies a different kind of country than I want to live in. They police are not unreasonable about this: I've had at least 4 of these tickets waived in the last year or so.

The PROBLEM, as others have noted, is 61,000 new PWC residents in 4 years to go along with all the thousands who've moved into Stafford and F'burg, but NOT ONE new commuter parking space added since the Rte. 234 expansion in 2000/2001.

THAT's the problem. And that is why 13yearslugger is right in urging everyone to come to the board meetings, as futile as it might be, because the supervisors need to hear the need. We can't expect them to really respond, to divert needed resources, unless they see the irate taxpayers in person.

I'd love to see more spaces at Horner, but the hill we have to climb is the argument that "why should the county build more spaces when there are empty spaces every day at other lots like Old Hechinger?" The county can (sorta) argue with a straight face that they don't need to build more spaces until ALL existing spaces are utilized. It is hardly the county's fault that slugging out of the 123 lot doesn't usually work.

(not my personal point of view but one that does have a certain amount of validity)

Eric
Tacketts to Rosslyn rider