A roadway in northern Albemarle County that carries over 4,000 vehicles per day remains closed for the foreseeable future as a Virginia Department of Transportation inspection in September concluded that a one-lane bridge over the railroad is no longer safe.
VDOT closed the bridge on September 22 and the Albemarle Board of Supervisors got an update from an engineer on October 7.
“In Norfolk Southern owned it,” said Greg Cooley, interim district engineer for VDOT’s Culpeper District. “They replaced the bridge in 2007, rebuilt it, and then we assumed ownership in 2014. This was part of a big swap. We swapped out bridges to start maintaining the bridges with vehicular traffic. We gave them some of the bridges that we owned that had train traffic. Made sense at the time.”
The bridge is completely within Norfolk Southern’s right-of-way.
The existing bridge is not up to VDOT’s design standards with a timber frame and a steel span with timber decking on top. A recent assessment showed the bridge was deteriorating rapidly due to long exposure to sunlight and extensive use of salt to melt snow and ice.
“We think that the salt exacerbated and helped to deteriorate the steel much quicker,” Cooley said.
Since the decision was made to close the bridge, VDOT had to go through multiple channels to get permission from Norfolk Southern to get onto the tracks to look underneath. Crews were finally able to get out there on Monday of this week which means special railroad flaggers and monitors had to be on site to watch the inspection.
“It’s very complicated and not a very quick solution to what we need to do to fix this bridge,” Cooley said. “So our bridge team is working on this around the clock. They’ve brought in consultants to help with these calculations and help with the assessments.”
Another visit was scheduled for October 8.
In the best-case scenario, Cooley said it will take months to repair. When the fixes are made, the work will be subject to further slowdown to railroad rules. He said he has looked into the idea of adding a traffic signal at the railroad underpass at Polo Grounds Road while Proffit Road is closed, but that is not feasible at this time due to the need to acquire right of way and to acquire a custom mast arm for the signal.
VDOT had been intending to replace the bridge in 2030 but the preliminary engineering won’t begin until 2028. That means the agency doesn’t know what right of way it would need to purchase to proceed.
While improvements to the roadway have been considered before, there are no major improvements planned for Proffitt Road among the 169 projects on Albemarle County’s relatively new transportation priority list. The only reference to the roadway is a project to add a “Shared Use path along Proffit Road to connect from US 29 to Baker-Butler Elementary School” which dates back to the Places29 Master Plan. (search for HM008 at this link)
The structure is within the Proffit Historic District which was added to the Virginia Landmarks Register in September 1998 and the National Register of Historic Plans in February 1999. The district is recognized for its roles in post-civil war history.
“Founded by freedman Ned Brown in 1871, the small settlement became a village in the 1880s,” reads the Virginia Department of Historic Reources website. “Once a stop on the Southern Railroad line, the village features several houses built by members of the Brown and Flannagan families, former slaves on nearby Glen Echo plantation.”
According to the nomination form, there were 37 buildings in the district at the time of listing. A version of the bridge is described as a non-contributing structure “built in 1992 but closely resembles the historic highway bridge that once crossed the tracks at this point.”
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