We all know that the development of roads and their location are primarily the culmination of a political process, as opposed to a planning process.

The N.C. 211 bypass route was suddenly dropped by the N.C. Department of Transportation when it met resistance from landowners along the proposed bypass route. Immediately it found the funds to schedule the widening of N.C. 211 to four and five lanes from West End to Page Road — where many more residents will be negatively impacted — and ignoring the obvious implications for the traffic circle.

With the announcement by Pinehurst Inc. of its plans to construct Course No. 9 and a new community on N.C. 5, we have another traffic factor that needs to be dealt with immediately. Let’s bring sanity, livability for humans, and environmentally sound thinking to bear on this issue before we lay any more asphalt in 250-foot widths across our landscape, removing all trees in the process.

DOT’s plan to widen N.C. 211 can be stopped, and it can be stopped by people and their representatives. Write your county commissioner, your town councilman, your state representative, The Pilot, and Moore Regional Hospital and let them know your feelings on this matter. As Richard Banks, an architect, has pointed out in his series in The Pilot, it is of crucial importance to the future of the Sandhills area — its citizens and its businesses — to develop rational traffic and growth plans now.

William M. Wendt