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In booming Chesterfield, families are concerned about dangers of Otterdale Road

Posted at 11:19 PM, Dec 18, 2018
and last updated 2018-12-18 23:40:14-05

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. -- With 3-month-old twins and a 2-year-old, life can be hectic for Michael and Lindsay Lange.

When they learned they had twins on the way, they opted to upgrade from a smaller townhouse in the city to a large home in the new Westerleigh subdivision in southwest Chesterfield.

"We just knew we were going to need more space," Lindsay Lange said.

And they're not alone.

According to numbers from Chesterfield County, development has exploded in the Moseley area.

Construction approvals jumped from just 2 between 2008 and 2012, to 31 since 2013.

"There's just constantly new houses coming up. There's four houses being built right now behind us," Lindsay Lange said.

There were 1,633 single family homes here in 2008 and 10 years later that number has more than doubled to 3565 as of October of 2018.

And while the Langes love living here, they and many others we talked to said they have one major concern: Otterdale Road.

"It's just that the road isn't quite keeping up with the developments around it," Lindsay Lange said.

We rode along with the couple and their precious cargo on what should be a simple trip to the grocery store

"It starts to get narrow pretty quickly," Michael Lange said. "We can't avoid it we're stuck with it every day."

"This turn up here is one of the worst ones where you can't tell the cars coming around," Lindsay Lange said.

They pointed out blind curves, sharp turns and places with no shoulders, and the spot where a Chesterfield school bus ran off the road earlier this year. The road is also prone to severe flooding, sometimes even trapping people in their homes.

"This is one of the spots that can flood here crossing over this creek," Lindsay Lange said.

Decades ago, it made sense to have just a two lane country road here, but the Langes say that's not the case anymore.

"The road feels like that but there is all these major developments that it really isn't the middle of nowhere anymore, there really is a lot of traffic," Lindsay Lange said.

We took their concerns to Chesterfield County leaders.

"We understand the need on Otterdale Road, the flooding highlighted a pretty critically important need to address," Deputy County Administrator Bill Dupler said.

Dupler told us the board of supervisors just approved funding to widen the part of Otterdale between Woolridge and Hull St.

"It will utilize the tax revenue from a 300 million dollar project to fund the purchase of bonds for capitol improvements to the roadway system," Dupler said.

But, that doesn't include widening the section near the Lange's subdivision.

Dupler said it does, however, provide some funding for mitigating the flooding issues on Otterdale, which is something the head of transportation said in a recent video could take a long time.

"From that point it could still be several years before we can implement a solution," Jesse Smith said in a video on Facebook.

But Dupler believes otherwise.

"So it sounds like people may see improvements quicker than several years?" CBS 6 problem solver Melissa Hipolit asked Dupler.

"Oh yeah we have a plan to do that. We want to do that. We do have to align the engineering with the funding to get it done, but we're going to get it done as fast as humanly possible," Dupler said.

But the Lange's wonder why the county ever approved new developments without upgrading the roads first.

"I think they should have some more foresight, it's not too hard to realize that there is going to be substantial increases in the traffic here and the roads should be ready," the couple said.

To that point, Bill Dupler said the county did make improvements to Otterdale Road with the development there, and they've been planning improvements there since before the recession, but the recession caused a delay.

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