Rivanna River pedestrian bridge once again misses out on federal funding

For the third time in a row, a project to build a pedestrian bridge across the Rivanna River has failed to qualify for federal funding.

“We unfortunately did not receive the RAISE grant that we applied for the Rivanna River pedestrian bridge,” said Taylor Jenkins, director of transportation at the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

Jenkins made the announcement at the August 27, 2025 meeting of the policy board for the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization. The MPO is a mandated group of elected officials who make decisions about transportation projects that are funded by the federal government.

The idea for a pedestrian bridge across the Rivanna River to connect Pantops and the Woolen Mills has been percolating for many years. Here are some early documents:

• A nine page document lists the early history of the project
• VHB memo to the Virginia Department of Transportation with two potential alignments
• A three page document with answers to questions from a November 12, 2020 virtual workshop on the project
• Two page summary of feedback from the online workshop held on November 12, 2020

In the spring of 2022, the MPO Policy Board chose an alignment for the bridge that would connect the Pantops side with the Wool Factory at the end of Broadway Street. They also voted to submit the project for funding through the Virginia Department of Transportation’s Smart Scale process but it was not selected. At the time the cost estimate for the selected option was around $15 million.

One reason the project did not qualify is because that cost estimate escalated to $42.5 million.

Staff at the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission had submitted the project to the United States Department of Transportation for what was called a RAISE grant in the administration of President Joe Biden. That’s an acronym for “Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity.”

If funded, there would have been money available for further engineering to define some of the unknown conditions that led to a higher cost estimate. However, a first application was unsuccessful and a second application met the same fate.

The MPO Policy board voted last December to try a third time. The name of the grant program was changed to BUILD in the early days of the second Trump Administration as I reported at the time. That’s an acronym for Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD).

No projects from Virginia made the cut this time around as you can see on the U.S. Department of Transportation website.

“They didn’t give us any other information but they do typically schedule a debrief with anyone who wasn’t selected so we’re just waiting on standby for them to reach out and schedule that,” Jenkins said.

Christine Jacobs, the executive director of the TJPDC, said staff will continue to look for grant funding to move the project along.

Before you go: The time to write and conduct research for this article is covered by paid subscribers to Charlottesville Community Engagement. In fact, this particular installment comes from the September 4, 2025 edition of the program. To ensure this research can be sustained, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing monthly through Patreon.