Charlottesville's Real Estate Blog. Buyer &/or Seller Representation, Real Estate News
Hawes Spencer at the Hook reports that “The three-year pilot program to run a daily train between Lynchburg and Boston– greatly bolstering Charlottesville’s railroad access to New York and other zesty cities in the Northeast– has won an additional two years of operating funding.”
Great news.
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.
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?
“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.
Hilarious observations from Patience on Charlottesville’s parking lots.
This is why I ride my bike to the Market Street Market: “Main St. Market: Christ. I once carried an eighteen pound roast of beef and a bottle of whiskey far, far down W. Main just to avoid parking here.”
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.
Erika Howsare at C-Ville has an interesting look at getting around Charlottesville without a car.
Very related article I wrote in 2006 – Are there Two Charlottesvilles?
Also: Patience Crabstick wrote earlier this year a detailed account of the Charlottesville Bus system. (and I wrote about her writing about the bus system)
Finally. Maybe.