From Charlottesville Tomorrow:
In other news, Huja announced that VDOT has agreed to open up the county’s portion of the parkway to cyclists and pedestrians by the end of July. Another agreement between the city, county and VDOT prevents the road from opening to vehicular traffic until the interchange and both road sections are all completed.
Beautiful. I might try riding my bike to the Belvedere neighborhood from Downtown Charlottesville … but I’m not looking forward to the hill on Rio just past Melbourne.
Update: I talked with Lou Hatter with VDOT for clarification on the timeline and to ask why they couldn’t open it now. He responded very quickly:
Although the recreational trail appears to be finished there is one segment of the trail where the top layer of asphalt still needs to be applied. Even after that final asphalt work is done, the trail is part of the larger Meadowcreek Parkway project, which is still under construction. Due to liability concerns VDOT will not open the trail to public use until the entire project is completed and accepted by VDOT. The contractor is ahead of schedule and at this time it appears construction is likely to be finished by the end of July.
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Update 11 July 2011:Â
“A multi-use trail built alongside Albemarle County’s portion of the Meadow Creek Parkway will not open at the end of this month as previously announced.”
Why not open it for peds and cyclists now? We have beautiful weather, it’s a wonderful trail, we all could use the exercise, and it may allow some to bike instead of drive, helping our environment. What is the holdup?
Absolutely agreed.
I asked VDOT your question and posted the response in the post.
Living right around the corner from this, I’ve seen a heck of a lot of people who don’t seem all that concerned about waiting for it to be officially opened before walking or biking it.
I’ll take that a good news. 🙂