In late 2019, the Charlottesville City Council and the Albemarle Board of Supervisors agreed to end a public body known as the Planning and Coordination Council that met openly with University of Virginia officials to discuss the infrastructure needed for a growing community. This was replaced with the closed-door Land Use and Environmental Planning Committee which meets…
Some in this growing community might say that there’s a need for new road connections or improvements to the existing ones. Transportation planning is one of my favorite topics to cover, and please ask questions in the comments. There’s a learning curve. At their meeting on April 5, the Albemarle Board of Supervisors got an…
Planners across the Commonwealth got new information Tuesday on whaat projects are likely to receive funding through the process the Virginia Department of Transportation uses and which ones will need to wait another two years. The fifth Smart Scale round is the largest one since the program began in 2016 with $1.53 billion in projects recommended for…
One of the items on the agenda for the January 11, 2023 meeting of the Albemarle Board of Supervisors is a quarterly update on transportation projects. This will be from the the county’s transportation planner, Jessica Hersh-Ballering. The major piece of information coming up later this month will be the scoring of Smart Scale submissions. …
A new traffic pattern will begin tomorrow at the intersection of U.S. 250 and Route 151 in Nelson County. The Virginia Department of Transportation expects that vehicles will be routed through a new roundabout beginning at 9 a.m. “Flaggers will control traffic through the intersection while the traffic signals at the intersection are removed and…
In three months, the Virginia Department of Transportation will release the results from the fifth round of Smart Scale, the major avenue through which projects related to roads and sidewalks are funded. “We are in Smart Scale season,” said John Lawson, Virginia’s deputy transportation secretary. “Everybody will be wondering how much money will be available…
Charlottesville Community Engagement is a newsletter and podcast that tries to keep up with how much it costs to build things, a major factor in the provision of infrastructure. The Virginia Department of Transportation also keeps an eye on changing trends as part of an effort to deliver services more efficiently. This comes out of…
The Virginia Department of Transportation has followed through on a plan to help the city of Charlottesville get better about actually building projects for which it has been funded. On Tuesday, officials briefed the Commonwealth Transportation Board on the cancellation of three projects for which the city received funding from the Smart Scale process in…
Efforts are underway to secure funding to transform the character of Fifth Street and Fifth Street Extended between Ridge Street and Ambrose Commons. There are at least three projects being considered for the next round of the Virginia Department of Transportation’s Smart Scale process. “Smart Scale is the process that the state uses to prioritize…
Work continues to prepare the next round of applications for the Virginia Department of Transportation’s Smart Scale funding process. Chuck Proctor is a planner with VDOT’s Culpeper District and he’s assisting Albemarle and the MPO come up with potential submissions. “Most of them are bike-ped related, a lot of them are multimodal projects like Avon…