To the Editor:

Please allow me this letter as my opportunity to address the vast community of The Villages-News readers who might be concerned about the future of our hometown, my hometown of 16 years.

Over the last several weeks, there have been frequent articles, comments to those articles, and Letters to the Editor debating what I call the roadway albatross, also known as the upper north Morse Boulevard. There was an article in the V-N.com issue hitting my email box this Thursday morning, June 11, noting “Safety improvements to Morse Boulevard come to a screeching halt,” and that is a very positive note in my opinion.

Within one of the earlier V-N articles, James Vaccaro states that “building the multi-modal paths off the road is the solution we all need to strive for.” But Mr. Vaccaro’s suggestion does not provide a permanent solution for the long-range future. The needed safe and operational use of the subject portion of Morse for mingled automobiles, large and small trucks, golf carts, bicycle riders, and pedestrians can never be accomplished by further “improvements.”

Personally, and very likely for many other motorists using Morse (and probably a few silent Villages officials), I do not feel Mr. Vaccaro’s statement would go nearly far enough to present a permanent resolution; it would simply place yet another temporary band-aid on this worsening, obsolete, inadequate, and unsafe portion of a main north-south highway. Any further expenditure of funding by any entity or entities would simply be more money down the drain!

Morse Boulevard’s original design and construction represent a very early project absent any awareness of, or consideration given to, the current and further expansion of The Villages. The time has arrived for the appropriate entities to recognize that, inevitably, a decision will be made to transform, actually replace, the short northern portion of Morse Boulevard (the current albatross) to be consistent with its southern span, bringing it up to the specifications of Buena Vista Boulevard—i.e., two lanes in each direction, without gates on either end, and the inclusion of a buffer between the north and south lanes. The rationale for such a decision, the planning, and the extremely expensive budgeting are obvious, but there is more to it.

As anyone who has traveled Morse Boulevard for decades will agree, the two concrete portions of the bridge just north of Lake Sumter Landing have recently grown quite bumpy. Along with the replacement of the northern portion of Morse, that bridge needs to be replaced as well. As was the first part of Morse, the bridge was designed and constructed decades ago when The Villages was in its infancy, and the bridge was equally not expected or anticipated to handle the heavy traffic use of today.

Pertaining to the bumps, I suspect a careful inspection of the foundation of those two portions might well disclose that the cause of the current bumpy condition is not repairable. Therefore, replacing the dangerously narrow two-lane bridge needs to be included in the eventual modification I propose. This is a very costly modernization project for sure, but the future of The Villages calls for such a project.

I will look forward to meaningful and constructive comments regarding my thinking here.

Lee Gilpin
Village of Liberty Park