Put connector on hold, officials agree

For now, local government officials have all jumped on the bandwagon: There’s no need to forge ahead with the Eastern Connector.

The move to hold off on the project, most recently made by the Charlottesville City Council on Monday, happened after officials expressed a desire to have more concrete data on the effects of a regional transit system and traffic patterns, plus the identification of a funding source.

“I’m not sure we want to invest more of our money, which I think might be just throwing money down a hole at this point,” Mayor Dave Norris said, adding that similar sentiments have been echoed by the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. Councilors discussed the road during their meeting this week, and county supervisors also decided at a meeting last month that they would refrain from making a decision about the multi-million-dollar road for two or three years.

An outside study completed by PBS&J found that costs for the connector road, designed to ease traffic on U.S. 250 by linking northern Albemarle to the developing Pantops area, were estimated to be as high as $169 million, depending on its size and location.

In 2006, city and county officials fronted $500,000 to conduct the road’s feasibility study. But the committee’s recommendations on the most viable way to build the road were delayed for months while more specific cost estimates were compiled for the various options.

Comprising city and county officials, staff and residents, the body recommended going through Pen Park to connect Rio Road with Route 20 as the best option because it would divert the most daily traffic from U.S. 250 — 10.4 percent with a two-lane road in Pen Park and 16.3 percent with a four-lane road by 2025.

The other options would connect either Proffit Road or Polo Grounds Road to Route 20.

But councilors deviated from the study’s primary recommendation, with some saying they were unwilling to have another transportation project go through city parkland like the controversial 2-mile Meadowcreek Parkway, which will cut through McIntire Park.

“That option should be taken off the table,” Norris said.

Councilor Julian Taliaferro agreed.

“I don’t think we ought to sacrifice any more parkland,” he said.

Jeanette Janiczek, Charlottesville’s program manager for the Virginia Department of Transportation, said city staff does not want a road to be constructed through parkland. Traffic models have shown that there is a concern about traffic and need for the roadway, but the most recent origin and destination traffic data date back to 1999 and do not specifically address the connector road.

“There’s a need for a new connection north and east of the city,” Janiczek said, but where the traffic is coming from and going to is still not known. Janiczek said the city believed it would be beneficial to conduct another, more detailed location study, even though costs could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Councilor Satyendra Huja said new origin and destination data should be collected and evaluated before a location study is done, and the city agreed that money should not be put up at this point. But it remains a concern, Huja said, that traffic projections for the U.S. 250 bypass are high — in 2006, 52,000 vehicles per day traveled between High Street and Route 20 — up from 30,000 in 2001. Plus, river crossing volumes between the city and the county are expected to increase by 47 percent from 2005 to 2025.

“My worry is that it will just become totally jammed,” Huja said.