Every two years, the Virginia Department of Transportation takes applications for projects to be funded through a process called Smart Scale. Several projects have been constructed or are under construction in Albemarle County that went through a process which ranks projects on how they will achieve various community benefits.
Charlottesville on the other hand has yet to begin construction on any of the projects they have been awarded. Several have been canceled to help the city shed a “deficient” status granted by VDOT.
This year is the seventh Smart Scale Round and final applications are due on August 1. The pre-application period has closed and that time gives VDOT the chance to work with localities to weed out projects with little hope of qualifying.
The rules change slightly each year as VDOT staff makes changes for the Commonwealth Transportation Board to consider. Each locality can make four submissions and groups and regional bodies called Metropolitan Planning Organizations can also submit a few if they meet a need identified in a document called Virginia’s Transportation Plan (VTRANS).
On March 20, the Policy Board of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO) reviewed several candidates for their consideration and provided some feedback just before the pre-application window closed.
On April 7, a technical committee consisting of staff and other stakeholders took a review in advance of a vote the Policy Board will take on April 22 about what CAMPO will submit. (view the materials for the meeting)
MPO staff have queued up four projects for this round for the regional body to submit.
One of them would be a resubmission of a project to convert of Interstate 64’s interchange with 5th Street into a diverging diamond and to add pedestrian connections such as a shared use path to the future Fifth Street Trail Hub.
“In the last round, the project was too expensive to be funded because it included a full bridge replacement,” said Taylor Jenkins, the director of transportation for the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission. “So this is a value engineered version of the application from last round with a preliminary cost of over $44 million.”
Another project with a cost estimate of $21,389,947 has the title “US29 NB/US250 EB Off-Ramp and Pedestrian Improvements and details can be seen here.
The MPO Technical Committee endorsed both of these projects unanimously.
However, there was disagreement over the two other projects which would address traffic flow in the vicinity around U.S. 250 and Ivy Road. VDOT had a “pipeline study” to recommend components. Albemarle County has included some of these in their list of applications, but the MPO is being asked to submit these two:
- US 29 NB/US 250 EB On-ramp extension at Ivy Road — $13,865,000 (learn more)
- US 29 SB/US 250 WB Off-ramp extension at Ivy Road — $10,664,361 (learn more)
Ben Chambers, Charlottesville’s transportation planning manager, is chair of the MPO Technical Committee. He explained he would be voting against moving those projects forward.
“Defining our shared priorities as a region and delivering a strategy for addressing them is the job of the MPO and particularly for us as the technical experts,” Chambers said.
One of the jobs of the MPO is to adopt a long range transportation plan for the Federal Highway Administration which has a list of projects that are likely to be built if there is enough funding. This is known as the “constrained” list and Chambers said the two projects are not regional priorities.
“The projects do not address our needs as the city or as a region in this corridor,” Chambers said. “This project is strictly between the county and VDOT. The city and its association with the MPO should not be playing a part in its Smart Scale application allotment.”
Chambers said the region should be working on a project to address safety concerns at the intersection of 5th Street Parkway and 5th Street where a person was killed earlier this month or perhaps another area where there are more pressing concerns. He said he knew his no vote would cause concern and change the tone of the committee.
“I expect this difficult process to highlight a need for us to return together as a community to focus in on our priorities instead of chasing dollars for the least necessary improvements,” Chambers said.
If the MPO Policy Board votes for them, Chambers said he would not recommend them to City Council when they take their vote on July 20. He made a motion to table the two projects and Charlottesville Planning Commissioner Danny Yoder made the second.
The motion failed on a vote of four yes, five no, and three abstentions.
Jessica Dimmick, a transportation planner in Albemarle County, said that while the Smart Scale process might be flawed it is the one that is in place.
“Like it or not, Smart Scale is the funding mechanism that we have for major transportation projects,” Dimmick said. “And it only comes around once every two years.”
Dimmick said she understood Chambers’s concerns and said there might be a way to further the design after the scores are ranked next January.
The MPO Technical Committee took more actions. One was a motion to recommend the northbound ramp and that passed five to three with three abstentions. The second was to delay a recommendation on the southbound ramp until the June meeting.
The MPO Policy Board met on April 22 and took take up the recommendations. There was no acknowledgement of the MPO Technical Committee’s vote in the packet.
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