Semi-elevated road axed from VDOT study

The last of three unexpected road proposals for the Charlottesville-Albemarle area included in the Virginia Department of Transportation U.S. 29 corridor study will be dropped from the final report later this month.

Charlottesville’s City Council asked Monday that the proposal to connect U.S. 29 to the U.S. 250 Bypass via a partially elevated roadway near the Kroger at Hydraulic Road be eliminated from consideration.

In October, VDOT announced it had removed both the Leonard Sandridge Road extension and the “eastern bypass” from the study. All three proposals have come under fire from local officials who said they were not consulted and that no data was presented to support the recommendations.

“This design will have the appearance of a ‘mixing bowl’ type intersection which we do not believe is appropriate for our community,” reads a letter from city Mayor Dave Norris to John J. “Butch” Davies III of the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

The letter states that 10 city businesses would be affected by the road and interchange, costing the city more than $868,000 a year in taxes. The letter also notes that the council believes the real issue with congestion on U.S. 29 is the proliferation of traffic lights north of Charlottesville.

“I can assure you [the interchange] will not be in our final report unless the city chooses to support it,” Charles Rasnick of VDOT told the council Monday.

However, the project manager hired to oversee the project had the opportunity to explain the reason why the concept was under consideration. Joe Springer of the Parsons Transportation Group told the council that many of the transportation improvements recommended in Albemarle County’s Places29 Master Plan would do too little to address congestion on U.S. 29 between Hydraulic Road and the U.S. 250 Bypass.

“There is the project to add an additional lane southbound between Hydraulic Road and extending on to the Route 250 Bypass on to Barracks Road,” Springer said. “We do believe that is needed but it doesn’t adequately address long-term needs.”

Instead, Springer said, the alternative was suggested as a way to remove through-traffic from U.S. 29 for that stretch of highway, allowing the existing U.S. 29 to serve local traffic. He added that the project would depend on the long-term redevelopment of the area.

“We do believe that it would provide some benefits both in terms of land use and in terms of being able to downgrade the existing stretch of U.S. 29 to make it more livable and walkable,” Springer said.

Councilor Julian Taliaferro said he understood that the existing interchange of U.S. 29 and U.S. 250 is a cause of congestion, but that he was troubled by the new concept.

“The issue of the chokepoint has been created by lack of action to build a bypass and to build connector roads in this area,” Taliaferro said. “It seems to me like a rather short-sighted solution to send this through the city.”

Rasnick told Taliaferro that the concept of the new interchange would not work to help relieve congestion unless the Leonard Sandridge Road extension was also considered. How-ever, that concept was removed in October at the request of the Albemarle County Board of Supervi-sors.

“Our feeling was that you needed both of them to be working together,” Rasnick said.

A final report will be released later this month. It will then go before the Commonwealth Transpor-tation Board for approval.

Charlottesville Tomorrow is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization covering land-use and transportation issues in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.