Browsing Category Transportation

What is Rio Road Going to Look Like in 5 Years?

in Albemarle Charlottesville Transportation on

It’s almost like the County and City leaders don’t care about the ramifications of their collective (in)decisions.

In five years:

– The City of Charlottesville still won’t have built their portion of the Meadowcreek Parkway

– The County of Albemarle will still be approving developments with no regard for their impact on traffic, schools, water, sewer, quality of life.

– The City and County will still be unable to work together as well as they should for the benefit of CharlAlbemarle citizens.

I have long struggled with my opinions about growth in Charlottesville/Albemarle. In the nearly five years since I wrote that post, nothing has changed.

Don’t get me wrong; I love living in Charlottesville (actually Crozet, but we all refer ourselves as being from “Charlottesville”), but how can we achieve balance?

Questions:

– What infrastructure improvements are being planned to accommodate all of these new units?
– The City of Charlottesville is encouraging more employment growth (good – see CFA and Worldstrides) but not working with the County to facilitate infrastructure improvements. Why?

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Walk Score of Charlottesville, Virginia

What is Walking Distance to You? (in Charlottesville)

in Albemarle Charlottesville Politics Transportation on

“Walkable houses in Charlottesville” – one of the more frequent requests I get both from buyer clients and from visitors to this site.

But “walkable” means different things to different people.

Clarifying and pulling out buyers’ true intents is one of the most useful skills a good real estate agent brings to the table. For example, when a new buyer client tells me that he wants to be within “walking distance” of the Downtown Mall, I always follow up with:

“What is walking distance to you?”

Your response of “less than 30 minute walking distance” is why I asked … my non-American-based clients have a much more liberal definition of close (usually less than 30 minutes or 2 miles) than do my American clients (less than 10 minutes or 5 blocks).

So the question is – what does walkable mean to you?

As I do with a lot of the stories that make it to this here real estate blog, I started by asking on the social networks – Twitter, Facebook and Google+

The City of Charlottesville has a lot of highly “walkable” homes, using Walkscore as the guide, and there are an awful lot of condos in the City of Charlottesville that offer walkability.

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Western Bypass – Same Plan, Twice as Expensive

in Albemarle Charlottesville Politics Transportation on

From Charlottesville Tomorrow:

An unofficial estimate for construction of the Western Bypass is more than double the amount members of the Commonwealth Transportation Board were told by Virginia Department of Transportation officials in July before they voted to resume funding of the 6.2 mile highway.

Internal documents released under the Freedom of Information act reveal that VDOT engineers calculated a cost estimate of $436 million in late June, several weeks before CTB members voted to allocate $197 million to the project.

1 – Great analysis at cvillenews.
2 – Without the fine folks at Charlottesville Tomorrow, we likely wouldn’t know about this boondoggle.
3 – Wouldn’t it be cool if we’d devote federal funds to building American infrastructure rather than prisons in other countries?

Here’s the problem in a nutshell with infrastructure planning and implementation in Charlottesville and Albemarle:

Our localities are brilliant at planning. And studying. And planning. By the time they finish studying and planning, the plan is outdated, not viable and more expensive. And it’s time for another plan.

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