Soon after the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors adopted a new Comprehensive Plan update in October 2025, staff in the Community Development Department began moving toward a plan to implement new directives through five Big Moves.
These include a “modernization” of the zoning code, development of “activity centers,” creation of a rural area plan, and something called the Multimodal Transportation Plan.
The Planning Commission had an update on that plan at their meeting on October 13.
“I just would like to say it’s a very, very well laid out plan process we put together and incorporates consensus from AC44 and many of the concerns we’ve heard from you and from others,” said Michael Barnes, Albemarle’s Planning Director.
Barnes cautioned that no plan can satisfy everyone in the community but said that staff has worked for months to create a process to guide the county toward implementation. He said staff have built on previous studies as well as the public input that has already been received to build the new Multimodal Transportation Plan.
“It sets out a clear path for mapping out our transportation networks of sidewalks, bike paths, transit, auto, and freight,” Barnes said. “This plan also sets out a clear path for coming to consensus on strategies and policies that will govern how we go about building out these networks that will support growth policies that accommodate roughly 30,000 to 31,000 people over the next 20 years, mostly in the development area, and many of them within our activity centers.”
In Virginia, Comprehensive Plans are intended to demonstrate how a locality is preparing for future growth. For over 40 years, Albemarle has designated about five percent of the county for growth. Comprehensive Plans provide sweeping policy directions through recommendations for action.
“What I’d like to emphasize tonight is that the development of the Multimodal Transportation Plan will move the goals, objectives, and actions within AC44 forward, and it is doing so alongside several other initiatives that are underway, also running in parallel,” said Jessica Dimmick, Albemarle principal transportation planner.
Dimmick said the goal of the Multimodal Transportation Plan will take previous plans and feed them into a prioritization system to create a transportation network. This builds on the new transportation priority list that the Planning Commission saw in April and the Board of Supervisors saw in June.
Here are the resources for that list:
- 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
The Multimodal Transportation Plan comes with a major caveat.
“While it’s relatively easy to envision an aspirational network for every mode, the reality is that resources to build that network are limited,” Dimmick said. “And so we must understand that part of this process will involve tough choices. On what to build first. And with that will come a discussion of how can we strategically focus and phase our projects to deliver functional portions of the planned networks, those that will provide the most usefulness in terms of connecting people to the places they need to go.”
The plan sets up a framework that calls for the future transportation system to be “connected”, “accessible”, “safe”, “efficient”, and “equitable.” A set of questions is attached to each word to try to help explain some of the trade-offs that may occur. Let’s take a look at “efficient.”
“The term efficient has been typically used in the narrow context of minimizing vehicular delay, and while time is one thing that we don’t want to waste, we would like to propose broadening this perspective,” Dimmick said. “If you look up the term efficient in Merriam-Webster, it says capable of producing desired results with little or no waste. And so while time is something that can be wasted, resources— we can expand that to include all resources.”
Commissioner Corey Clayborne of the Rivanna District cautioned against deemphasizing the importance of time to those who use Albemarle’s transportation network as a driver, a transit rider, a cyclist, or a pedestrian.
“I can be fine with broadening the perspective around minimal waste but I think you absolutely have to put time back in there, like the ability to get places in a reasonable time,” Clayborne said. “For me, just in this season of my life, that is the single most valuable attribute that I have is my time.”
According to a presentation shown to the Planning Commission, the step to begin a new prioritization won’t start until sometime in the third quarter of 2028. That is after steps called “process design and goal setting” and “modal systems and network needs” and “recommendations.” Work on the funding plan begins in 2029.
“Community engagement process is still under design,” reads a note in the presentation. “Touchpoints with public and stakeholders to be refined and could change.”
Scottsville District Planning Commissioner Catherine M. Brown noted that implementation of the plan isn’t scheduled until sometime in the spring of 2029.
“It might be helpful to start looking at funding sources along the way and identifying some maybe low-hanging fruit projects or some things that could be shovel-ready incase funding opportunities come up quickly, especially smaller ones,” Brown said.
The development of this plan would not stop the existing way projects get funded through a combination of sources from the Virginia Department of Transportation. Albemarle County has submitted four applications in the current Smart Scale process and another round will take place before this latest planning work is complete.
Other planning work is also currently underway or pending such as a STARS Study of the intersection of Airport Road and U.S. 29. That has been identified by county staff as the first Activity Center given proximity to the Rivanna Futures project and the University of Virginia’s North Fork Discovery Park.
Rio District Planning Commissioner Nathan Moore said he is aware of the other Big Moves but wanted to know how they all fit together.
“I know we’ve talked about housing opportunities and activity centers as well,” Moore said. “And I was just wondering, as this process unfolds, how we’re going to kind of coordinate this planning with the activity center plans and with the zoning modernization because those paths do feel like they’ll need to fairly explicitly intersect along the way and hopefully sync up along the way.”
Barnes said the number of activity centers has been reduced in order to focus on walkability and there may be future investments that can be made to support that goal.
“I think the idea of trying to coordinate the land use and the transportation together to try and build something that will actually sort of support the goal that was created back in the Neighborhood Model back in 2000, and trying to underpin that with some of the transportation that will support that, I think, is really a big goal,” Barnes said. “Obviously funding will always be something that is interesting.”
Barnes said Albemarle is reliant on funding from the Virginia Department of Transportation and always will be but the county is trying to take a broader view.
Moore said unless transportation connections are made, the people projected to move here will go elsewhere. He said transportation investments must go hand in hand with where new housing is built. He said he often hears from people who are frustrated that there’s too much building without new infrastructure.
“The one exception I can think of right away is like Berkmar Extended,” Moore said. “We built a road and that has now enabled a lot of things to go up along alongside it.”
Berkmar Drive Extended was called for in the Places29 Master Plan adopted in February 2011 and was suddenly funded three years later after the demise of a partially-funded Western Bypass, along with the grade-separation of Rio Road and U.S. 29.
Commissioner Mary Katherine King of the Jack Jouett District said the county’s decision to limit growth to certain areas has meant people have moved to other localities in search of housing they can afford. As such, the county should provide options for those who do.
“I absolutely think the priority needs to be on some type of regional bus system,” King said. “Why do we not have a park and ride at 29 and Greene? Why do we not have a park and ride at Fluvanna and the county? Like, why do we not have one at Nelson where people can park their car and get on a bus and go to work? Like, that should be a priority.”
A park and ride lot is planned at Crozet and will be served by the Afton Express once it is operational. The $5 million project is under construction according to VDOT’s website.
The creation of the Multimodal Transportation Plan comes at the same time Charlottesville is working on their own mobility plan. There is a Connect Charlottesville page with more information about the project.
Barnes said Albemarle has to work with the city to solve a mutual problem which is how to reduce the number of vehicles trying to use roadways during peak periods.
“We have to somehow figure out how to work with them to meet their goals of reducing the amount of traffic in the city and also congestion as well as us needing to pass through the city,” Barnes said. “Obviously, there’s some major choke points within our community, especially at peak hour [where] the congestion is quite bad. And I think that we are trying to broaden the conversation by saying that auto-oriented solutions by themselves are unlikely to succeed by themselves.”
Commissioner Karen Firehock served eight years on Charlottesville’s Planning Commission and said many non-vehicular pathways between neighborhoods that have been built are the result of planning exercises.
“One simple thing that we were able to do was to put in all these links that we wish we had, like, we wish we could link from this neighborhood to that trail,” Firehock said. “And it, you know, it wasn’t like we owned it. We just drew a line. We said, please, somebody make this link. And so, as developers would come forward, like Southern Development Homes, they would say, oh, you want that link there?”
Barnes said that the Multimodal Transportation Plan provides the opportunity to do just that sort of work.
“I think the effort here is to try and push something into a time frame where we can come back and deliver that network that you’re talking about, and then spend a fair amount of time talking about how do we actually build that network, how do we fund that network,” Barnes said.
Commissioner Luis Carrazana implored staff to not be limited in their vision. He also suggested Albemarle work with his employer, the University of Virginia, to help them address their transportation management needs.
“We bring people from, you know, outside the campus into the heart of Grounds, and we do that every day,” Carrazana said. “A lot of the people that are coming in are coming in to work at UVA. So is there a way that UVA can partner, bringing them in from Greene or Nelson or from across the mountain?”
One such program offered at UVA is the Wahoo Commute program which offers cash incentives to those who choose not to drive.
Stay tuned to this newsletter as planning and implementation both take place. Charlottesville Community Engagement strives to bring you a combination of both as time spins on.
Before you go: The goal of Town Crier Productions is to increase awareness about what is happening at the local, regional, state, and federal government levels. Please share the work with others if you want people to know things.
Paid subscribers cover the cost of conducting research for this article which was originally published in the October 21, 2026 edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement. You can either subscribe through Substack or make a charitable contribution.
Discover more from Information Charlottesville
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
