Legislation passed the Virginia General Assembly in 2014 that required the Virginia Department of Transportation to begin using a system to rank potential projects for funding.
Since then, the Smart Scale system has gone through six rounds and has covered part of the costs to build projects including the diverging diamond at Interstate 64’s interchange with U.S. 250 and conversion of Hydraulic Road’s intersection with Hillsdale Drive into a roundabout.
“SMART SCALE is a process that helps Virginia meet its most critical transportation needs using limited tax dollars,” reads VDOT’s website on the process. “It evaluates potential transportation projects based on key factors like how they improve safety, reduce congestion, increase accessibility, contribute to economic development, promote efficient land use, and affect the environment.”
The Smart Scale Cycle happens every two years and the last round concluded this June when the Commonwealth Transportation Board approved the latest slate including a $36.4 million project to make several improvements on U.S. 250 at Pantops. That came out of one of VDOT’s pipeline studies and was the only successful project in Albemarle or Charlottesville during this round.
The applications for round 7 are due next summer and this is the time when several candidates make their way through the process. The members of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Policy Board got an update at their meeting on October 23. That body is made up of two Albemarle Supervisors, two Charlottesville City Councilors, and the administrator of VDOT’s Culpeper District.
The MPO Policy Board itself gets to select projects as do individual localities with a total of four applications allowed. Sandy Shackelford, a planner with VDOT, said that any projects that the regional body chooses to pursue must have a need identified in a document called VTrans.
“The project needs to meet a need on the statewide significance or regional network which is identified as being within an MPO area,” Shackelford said.
Shackelford said projects also require a lot of documentation including relevant safety studies, preliminary sketches, and cost estimates. As Smart Scale has matured, there are also a lot more stages at which projects might be filtered out for not being ready enough to proceed.
“At this point in 2025, we’re starting to think about what is it going to take to meet these requirements in 2026,” Shackelford said. “The pre-applications for Smart Scale will be open in March. And so that’s when the basic information that the general locations that you all are interested in preparing applications for will need to be identified.”
One likely location that local officials would like to consider are off-ramp extensions at Old Ivy Road. Shackelford said that will require additional safety and operations studies in order to justify inclusion in Smart Scale.
The Commonwealth Transportation Board will adopt its final guidelines for Round 7 at their meeting in December.
During the meeting, Albemarle Supervisor Ned Gallaway expressed frustration a process that has encouraged the submission of smaller projects that address portions of an intersection in order to qualify for funding.
For instance, Albemarle County submitted a proposal in the first round to rebuild the interchange of Interstate 64 and U.S. 29 and it ranked near the bottom. An application in a subsequent round paid for installation of a traffic light to control the movement of vehicles traveling south on U.S. 29 onto I-64.
Gallaway noted that several of the proposed projects seemed to be similarly piecemeal due to the low level of funding Virginia invests in its transportation infrastructure.
“All of these lesser alternatives got me no level of excitement,” Gallaway said. “I don’t see how this does anything but tell our constituents it looks like we’re doing something when we’re really just not fixing the problems. The problems are in the bigger projects and how they all work together.”
No decisions were reached at this meeting as staff continues to advance work on the various candidates. The MPO Technical Committee and the Policy Board will be asked to weigh in at meetings in December.
Ben Chambers, Charlottesville’s transportation manager, said the city is considering applying for a Smart Scale application for a project to reconfigure the interchange of West Main Street, Ridge Street, and McIntire Road. That project went through a public survey earlier this year as part of a Strategically Targeted Affordable Roadway Solutions (STARS) study. You can take a look at the work to date here.
“We’re working through the final design for that,” Chambers said.
For an incomplete account of SmartScale in the area, take a look at cvillepedia.
Before you go: Paid subscribers cover the cost of conducting research for this article which was originally published in the October 28, 2025 edition edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement. You can either subscribe through Substack, make a monthly contribution through Patreon, or consider becoming a sponsor. Another way you can help is to share this article with people you might be interested. Thank you for reading!
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