Albemarle staff continue work on transportation plans including two bike lanes in urban areas

In under four months, localities and planning districts across the Commonwealth will find out whether their submissions for funding through the Virginia Department of Transportation’s Smart Scale have been successful.

For the first time in years, that will include the City of Charlottesville who have submitted a proposal to reconfigure the intersection of West Main, Water, Ridge-McIntire, and South Streets. The city has so far failed to move forward with any previous Smart Scale submissions except for one that VDOT has taken over.

Albemarle County submitted four projects for consideration and the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization submitted another four.

Resources for this story

• Written quarterly report from Albemarle County transportation planning
• October 7, 2026 presentation to the Board of Supervisors
• STARS study for U.S. 29 corridor and Route 29 / 250 bypass at Emmet Street interchange

In a growing community seeking an urban scale of development, transportation planning never really stops. In recent years, VDOT has been conducting “pipeline” studies to hone Smart Scale candidates and ideas for one conducted at Interstate 64 / 5th Street resulted in one of the MPO’s applications.

Another pipeline study for the future of the I-64 / U.S. 29 interchange has not yielded any specific projects at this time but another VDOT exercise known as a Strategically Targeted Affordable Roadway Solutions study will be conducted at that location in the near future that will include results from previous studies. Albemarle applied for funding to rebuild the interchange in the first round of Smart Scale, but the project was near the bottom as I reported at the time.

Charlottesville’s Smart Scale project comes out of a STARS study which you can review here.

Two other STARS studies are underway in Albemarle accounting to transportation planner Alberic Karina-Plun at an October 7 presentation to the Board of Supervisors.

“VDOT is conducting 2 STAR studies in the county concurrently, one along the US 29 corridor from Hydraulic Road to Woodbrook Road, and a study in the Emmett Hydraulic 250 interchange pictured,” Karina-Plun said. “The purpose of the US 29 corridor study is to address safety concerns for both drivers and bicyclists/pedestrians, identify good crossing locations for US 29, and improve the operations of the corridor for side streets.”

A second STARS study targets Emmet Street from the U.S. 250 bypass to Hydraulic Road, an area with a lot of redevelopment potential and now the home of a low-barrier homeless shelter at 2000 Holiday Drive.

The firm RK&K has been hired to conduct both STARS studies. Alberic-Plun said a survey is to be available on October 13.

The adoption of a new Comprehensive Plan in October 2025 has altered how Albemarle will focus planning in the next few years. Staff will focus on one “Activity Center” at a time with the first one being the area around Airport Road and U.S. 29. Albemarle County will lead a VDOT pipeline study of that area which is expected to see a lot of activity with the build-out of the Rivanna Futures economic development site as well as UVA’s North Fork Discovery Park.

“This study is focused on improving safety, proactively improving capacity, and identifying opportunities for multimodal improvements, including a pedestrian crossing of US 29 in the near vicinity,” Karina-Plun said.

Albemarle is also working with VDOT and the firm Michael Baker International on studies to reconfigure two urban streets. One is Greenbrier Drive from Whitewood Road to U.S. 29 and the other would be on Riverbend Drive from State Farm Boulevard to South Pantops Drive.

“Preliminary alternatives were delivered in September,” Karina-Plun said. “A design charrette will be conducted later this week, and final alternatives will be decided upon in December. Re-striping will be done next year in conjunction with paving.”

Another major component of planning in the AC44 era is the creation of a “Multimodal Transportation Plan” which is intended to serve as a master document written by Albemarle staff to guide all of the county’s transportation decisions.

“This plan will examine the current transportation systems’ needs and deficiencies, how the system could best serve its purpose in the future, and what the system would look like,” Alberic-Plun said. “It’ll tie together future development patterns with transit, walking, biking, and roadway networks. Staff has been compiling available data, creating a community engagement plan, defining goals, and developing a project website.”

Until then, feel free to go through the archives of Information Charlottesville on AC44, land use in Albemarle County, transit, business and economic development,or just about any other category.

One thing to note is that Albemarle County has not updated their transportation page with all of the updated information that staff have presented to the Board of Supervisors. As of October 9, 2026, the page does not reflect the new transportation priority list the elected officials endorsed in June.

The goal of Charlottesville Community Engagement is to share this information anyway as it is all public. Here is all of the information the Supervisors saw in June.

• Transportation Project Prioritization Report
• Map of all of the projects
• Albemarle County Transportation Project List by Project ID
• Scoring methodology
• Map of the priority projects
• Draft list with project scores and ranks, grouped by project stage
• Presentation given to Supervisors on June 3, 2026

Other transportation items from the October 7 report:

• Albemarle staff are working on a traffic calming study on Park Ridge in Crozet. So far, the traffic volume is lower than VDOT’s threshold for mitigating interventions.
• There will be an open house on October 26 at Henley Middle School for the Three Notched Trail study. Staff has already begun to contact landowners along the recommended final alternative for an alignment. Visit Engage Albemarle to learn more.
• Supervisors learned that Charlottesville Area Transit continues to work on building bus stops to accommodate a future splitting of Route 2 into two segments. That would bring bus service to Mill Creek as well as the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail on Avon Street Extended.

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Paid subscribers cover the cost of conducting research for this article which was originally published in the October 9, 2026 edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement.  You can either subscribe through Substack or make a charitable contribution.