Public Comment for Lake Pointe

Eryn Siegel — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 18:14:26 +0000

Edit: I did receive a phone call from a very helpful lady in planning and she has fixed the issue. My comments do now appear. But, I already went through all the trouble to make a post, so I am keeping this up for anyone who wants to check them out.

I wrote a public comment for the Lake Pointe rezoning (RZN 2024-00013 – formerly Ellis Farm) and submitted it to the city for it to be included in the published public comments. I attached my comment as a pdf document, as I have many times before. This time the pdf was not included. Instead, there is a link that takes me to jot form (website) and asks me to log in. I do have a call and an email into the city, but just in case they can’t get this resolved, I want to make my comment public. I pulled together a lot of data on the road safety and I want to make sure people have access to it. Below are my comments and the accompanying documents:

To Suffolk Planning Commissioners:

The location of RZN 2024-00013 Lake Pointe (formerly Ellis Farm) at 464 Manning Road is not a suitable location for this project.

There are serious concerns that a development of 300 homes, in this location, will exacerbate road safety conditions that are already a daily hazard for those in the Manning Road community, putting citizens at additional risk for harm and their lives in jeopardy.

There are several issues when it comes to the Traffic Impact Analysis submitted by the developer for the Lake Pointe rezoning. The study focused solely on traffic and failed to mention the many geometric design insufficiencies of Manning Road. The study also failed to provide remedies for these safety concerns. Additionally, the traffic study failed to analyze traffic on Manning Road, and instead used a different road which is wholly dissimilar to Manning Road.

Hazardous Conditions on Manning Road

There are grave concerns regarding the safety of Manning Road. Since 2020 there have been 87 reported accidents on Manning Road, including 52 injuries, and 2 fatalities.

On October 1, 2021, a pedestrian was struck by a car on Manning Road and killed. On February 21, 2020, a man died when his truck hit a downed tree on the causeway. A man died when his vehicle, driving down Manning Road on December 30, 2011, ran off the road, hit a ditch and rolled over. Another man was airlifted to the hospital when on May 9, 2014, his truck overturned in a head on collision.

Ask anyone that lives on Manning Road or the surrounding area and they will tell you about times their cars were side-swiped by large vehicles traveling the opposite direction, about being run off the road by a vehicle that could not fit in its lane, or an accident caused by lack of visibility on this rural road.

According to Mayor Mike Duman, during his pre-council meeting on Facebook Live on Sept 16, 2022 (mark 29:48), “Manning Road… yeah, Manning Road’s pretty much a nightmare. I can’t drive it. I can’t drive Manning Road sober, nevertheless if I had a beer.”

Manning Road is a narrow, winding country road. It originally functioned as a rural secondary road. According to the 2035 Suffolk Comprehensive Plan, “many existing roadway segments located within or adjacent to the focused growth area boundaries were originally built as rural secondary roads. These facilities generally have narrow lanes, little or no shoulders and open ditches for drainage. Right-of-way widths may be as narrow as 40 feet. Even though the two lanes provided may be considered adequate for capacity purposes, the geometric configuration of these facilities is not adequate for serving existing or forecasted traffic volumes as the surrounding landscape changes from a rural to suburban and urban character.”

The Suffolk 2045 Comprehensive Plan removed this language from the new plan, but it still admits that: “It is still common for the roadways in the rural sections of the City to have narrow road widths, narrow-to-no shoulders, and open drainage facilities adjacent to the travel ways.”

Also note that Virginia ranks 15th among U.S. states with the highest number of fatalities on rural roads, according to a 2019 report from TRIP, a national transportation research group. The Suffolk 2045 Comprehensive Plan looked at 5 years worth of crash data in Suffolk, between January 1, 2019 – December 31, 2023, and found that there were a total of 48 fatalities during that five year stretch. Two of those fatalities were on Manning Road.

The causeway through Speight’s Run Reservoir is susceptible to flooding during hurricanes and storms. This prevents residents (this would include any at the Lake Pointe development) from heading north on Manning Road. Manning Road can flood about 2 miles south of the proposed development as well and on Manning Bridge Road, the next closest intersection south of the proposed development. This area has a lot of water in and around it. With heavy rains, not only does Speights Run Reservoir overflow, but these supply streams south on Manning Road and on Manning Bridge Road can overflow onto the road, trapping residents.

The causeway has other safety hazards. It curves causing limited visibility and has numerous trees that hang dangerously over the road. These trees can, and have, come down onto the road during storms. One incident resulted in the death of a resident. Due to the reservoir’s unique nature of being owned and maintained by the City of Portsmouth, but located within the City of Suffolk, Portsmouth often neglects the required maintenance of this area. Overall, this causeway is a hazardous stretch of Manning Road. It is also located between the proposed development and Holland Road (the closest main intersection). Manning Road has no sidewalks and nowhere for pedestrians to walk safely.

Another area of concern is the intersection of Wilkins Drive and Manning Road (approximately one tenth of a mile from the Holland Road/Manning Road intersection). Mostly, drivers traveling to and from the proposed development would enter Manning Road either from Holland Road or Wilkins Drive. Wilkins Drive T-junctions with Manning Road right at the apex of a curve on Manning Road. This severely limits the visibility from Wilkins Drive as vehicles try to enter Manning Road at this location. The lack of visibility, combined with the narrow lanes, no shoulder, and ditches right along the edge of the road, makes for a dangerous intersection.

Geometric Design

The City of Suffolk classifies Manning Road as a collector road with a “purpose of providing access between arterial highways and local streets”. To function as a collector road, the design standards, according to VDOT Road Design Manual, require that the road lanes should be a minimum of 11 feet with shoulders. VDOT recommends 12 foot lanes in agricultural areas. The adjacent property is active farmland. Currently, lanes on Manning Road are only about 8 ½ feet wide and the shoulders are dirt with drainage ditches (3 feet deep) within 2 feet of the road surface. There are no clear zones (4 to 10 feet of unobstructed paved shoulders) on either side of Manning Road as required by VDOT criteria. There are numerous existing trees, telephone poles, mail boxes, and other items within this required clear zone. With an existing lane width of 8½ feet, most commercial trucks do not fit within the lanes, as most commercial trucks are 9 to 10 feet wide. Fire department vehicles and other first responder vehicles are also 10 feet wide, making them too large to fit in their lane on Manning Road.

Manning Road is designated a collector road, but its geometric design is severely under any state standard and therefore can NOT safely accommodate the additional traffic of a large development like the one in this application.

Please see attached diagram entitled: Diagram of Minimum Safety Standards for a Collector Road drawn by one of our engineers to demonstrate the geometric design of Manning Road compared to the geometric design standards for collector roads based on state standards. The difference is extreme. See also UDO appendix D – Typical Sections for Suffolk’s minimum requirements.

Traffic Impact Study

The traffic study provides no data on Manning Road, neither at the site of the proposed development, nor at the Manning Road/Holland Road intersection. All data comes from the Holland Road/Grove Avenue intersection just down the road on Holland Road from the Manning Road/Northbrooke Avenue intersection.

From the traffic study: “Current traffic volume data for the existing Manning Road intersection were not available. City staff provided September 6, 2022 turning movement counts for the Holland Road and Grove Avenue intersection. As the Grove Avenue signal shifts to the new Manning Road / Northbrooke Avenue intersection, it was agreed that shifting these traffic volumes to the new intersection was a reasonable assumption.”

The problem with using the Grove Avenue data is that Grove Avenue is the entrance to a residential development area with the only entrances/exits being Grove Avenue and Northbrooke Avenue (see attached map). You can see the neighborhood circled in yellow on the map entitled Comparison of Manning Road vs Grove Avenue. Now compare it to the map at the bottom of the page. That same neighborhood is still circled in yellow (at the top), but you can now see the full length of Manning Road. In addition, major intersections have been circled in red. On the Grove Avenue & Northbrooke Avenue map, those intersections are the Grove Avenue/Holland Road (Rt 58) intersection (the one that had the traffic study data) and the Northbrooke Ave/Manning Road/Holland Road (Rt 58) intersection which has recently been completed by the city to align Northbrooke Road and Manning Road. You can see on the Manning Road map how extensive Manning Road is, measuring almost 10 miles and having major intersections at Holland Road (Rt 58), Manning Bridge Road, Copeland Road, and Mineral Spring Road. Manning Road is classified as a collector road because other roads feed into it as it feeds into an arterial highway (Holland Rd).

The speed limit on Grove Avenue is 25 mph. On Manning Road, it starts at 25 mph but by the time it gets to the proposed development location, it is 40 mph. Grove Avenue and Northbrooke Avenue are residential streets about 22 feet wide. Manning Road is a rural road that averages 16-17 feet wide.

However, the traffic impact study never addressed the traffic capacity on Manning Road itself. Nor does it address the fact that the geometric configuration of Manning Road is inferior to that of Northbrooke Avenue or Grove Avenue, both of which have wider lanes. Since January 2020, Manning Road has had a reported 87 accidents, with 52 injuries and 2 fatalities, Grove Avenue and Northbrooke Avenue experienced only 3 accidents with 3 injuries (no fatalities) for the entire neighborhood combined. There are definitely differences between these roads.

If, in fact, the average daily trips (ADT) on Manning Road equals that of Grove Avenue, as the traffic study states, Manning Road currently experiences 1,600 trips per day. The study also states that a development with 300 single family detached homes will generate an additional 2,772 daily trips. That will increase all trips on Manning Road to a daily total of 4,372. That may be within the normal limits for a collector road, from a traffic standpoint, however, that is an increase of almost three times the amount of traffic that Manning Road currently experiences. How will that translate when we consider safety. Instead of 87 accidents over the next five years, will we see more than 200? Will that result in 100 injuries and 6 deaths? This is the reality that the residents of Manning Road will experience if the City rezones this land to allow 300 homes. These will be our family members, friends, and neighbors involved in these accidents. Is the City of Suffolk ready to sacrifice these residents in the name of development?

Proffers and Planned Improvements

The traffic study mentions road improvements. The developer’s plan is to widen Manning Road at the site of the project to add two additional lanes that will allow for left turns and right turns into the existing Springfield Neighborhood and the proposed Lake Pointe neighborhood. The developer is offering no proffer to improve Manning Road north of the development for the one mile to the closest main intersection (Holland Road).

The City has no plan to improve Manning Road and it is not in the Transportation Master Plan for any improvements (a plan that is designed as a long-term, 20-year plan) which means there will be no funds available to make Manning Road safer for citizens. Widening Manning Road, including the causeway, to meet VDOT minimum standards, would require cooperation from the City of Portsmouth and the Army Corps of Engineers, because the reservoir has the added complication of being part of the protected wetlands.

The 2045 Comprehensive Plan states: “Transportation improvements are needed to accommodate growth and the continued train, truck, and car volumes that pass through Suffolk, but transportation improvement needs exceed funding.”

Additionally, the UDO states:

SEC. 31-601. – ADEQUATE PUBLIC FACILITIES.

Subsection (a)

(4) To ensure that adequate Public Facilities needed to support new development are available concurrent with the impacts of such development;

There is no plan, nor funding, to fix the design problems with Manning Road in order to safely accommodate the additional traffic that the development will bring, and thus Manning Road will not meet the ‘adequate public facilities’ needed to support this large development.

Conclusion

Manning Road has a long history of serious accidents and fatalities, including the segment of road from the site of this proposed project to the nearest main intersection. This is not hypothetical; people have died driving on this road. This development will put significantly more traffic on Manning Road, increasing these incidents, and putting more lives in danger.

Manning Road does not meet the state design standard for a collector road, despite its designation. The developer is only planning to fix the stretch of road directly in front of the development, but that leaves a mile of hazardous road to the next major intersection. The City has no plan for improvements. For these reasons, Manning Road does not meet the ‘adequate public facilities’.

Development can be positive for the city and for communities. However, development without ensuring there is first infrastructure in place can be devastating. If the rezoning and development is allowed to move forward before updating Manning Road to meet minimum state road design standards from the site of the project to the main intersection with Holland Road, there will be a huge negative impact on the community; substantially more traffic, more accidents, and more fatalities. If the City approves this rezoning request, it will be risking the safety and lives of those that live in and around Manning Road.

Manning Rd – Care4Suffolk

Public Comment for Lake Pointe