The CCAC meeting on 10 April 2024 was an open house at Brownsville.
Spend some time going through the slides. The transportation section is particularly interesting.
A few highlights:
- Read about the Albemarle County 2024 Budget at Charlottesville Community Engagement
- County Schools account for 45% of the County budget
- 3 new schools will be built in Albemarle in the next three years.
- The police gave an update on traffic issues; zero discussion about how to minimize traffic issues by having more bike and pedestrian infrastructure.
- Albemarle County’s transportation dashboard is here. Getting transportation projects completed is a massive challenge as so many things (and humans and humans’ agendas) need to align to get funding.
- A resident from Pleasant Green asks why don’t developers build sidewalks? We don’t have a safe sidewalk route. Answer was that in 2016 the Commonwealth eliminated proffers, and those were what funded offsite improvements (Read — sidewalks, etc not in a specific development)
- Westlake residents suggested revisiting the Crozet Master Plan, as it was predicated on the Eastern Connector, which is so very much delayed.
- “A comment about not enough parking in the new square and people are upset about not being able to make left into the square Ann – right in/right out has been planned for 15 years. Me: people are complaining about having to drive a few extra feet?”
- The Left turn into the Square is a disaster, particularly in mornings and afternoons.
- If we as a community – Crozet & Albemarle – are truly concerned about traffic, we need fewer cars on the roads.
- “Never forget, when you’re being asked to prove that safe bike-lanes or pedestrian crossings across unsafe conditions are ‘needed,’ it’s hard to justify a bridge by the number of people swimming across a raging river.”
- Me: the county and VDOT don’t require connectivity. They build just for cars.
- There was a question about an infrastructure gap analysis, asking for an analysis about lacking infrastructure. No good answer was given.
Listening to the discussion of P3 funding for the Eastern Ave/250 Connector was like being in a snow storm. Link to P3 transportation projects in VA: https://p3.virginia.gov/projects/
None of these are remotely similar to the Connector. There isn’t a private entity that can benefit from the project by collecting tolls or gaining a long-term contract for services. The developer already has sold over 500 homes so no point in partnering now. The Board of Supervisors will apply the same priority ranking criteria to fund the Connector that VDOT uses for SmartScale, so even if P3 can “get it for us wholesale”, the BOS won’t fund $20 million or more for a road that doesn’t go to a school, hospital, major employer, or airport. The P3 discussion is just a stalking horse designed to buy time to approve Oak Bluff, another maximum density project in East Crozet where transportation projects are unrealistic and unfunded.
I don’t disagree.
Thought this story was good and relevant as well.
https://infocville.com/2024/04/11/albemarle-supervisors-briefed-on-alternate-transportation-funding/
Sounds like Same Old Same Old…
Bike and pedestrian ways aren’t going to thin much traffic. A reliable local transit option just might…say six TONY type 6-pak carts constantly moving between the neighborhoods and Old Crozet…
Same old same old – agreed.
Bike and pedestrians – absolutely would affect traffic, if people would choose to get out of their cars. Trips under 3 miles could easily be made on bikes, and under ~1 miles easily on foot.
People choose to get in cars, and choose to complain about traffic, and often choose to ignore that they are the traffic. 🙂