Update: US 522 Bypass News
(June 15, 2018) — A small contingent of the 522 Bypass Task Force members attended a meeting in Martinsburg coordinated by Senator Charles Trump with Secretary of Transportation Thomas Smith, Engineer Aaron Gillespie, and others who accompanied them.
Residents concerns will be considered
The bypass map presented at the public meeting in April is NOT final. They called it a “proposed alignment.” The DOH will take residents’ concerns and comments into account and report them to the project team for consideration and possible re-design. They did note that safety is the overriding factor in the final design.
The 522 Bypass project is slated to be funded through the third round of bond sales which will not happen until 2020. This means that the possible project start date is at least 2021. Should other projects be moved up in priority this project could be pushed back to later rounds of bond sales. The renewal of the environmental study is not yet completed.
More public meetings expected
There will be other public meetings held as the project progresses and as required by the environmental review and the DOH wants public input at these meetings. They noted that they have not had time to quantify the total number of responses through the web, mail, and phone. Once they have time, they will then review each to put them into common “buckets” to be addressed as part of the review stages.
You can keep up to date by joining the RT 522 Bypass Taskforce on Facebook.