The City of Charlottesville has not updated a website that the Public Works Department uses to communicate the status of upcoming transportation projects since last November.
It “is currently undergoing a process to reassess and refine project estimates and completion dates to enhance accuracy,” reads a disclaimer on the site.
The website is still a reasonable place one might visit to find information about planned infrastructure—even if the updates are stale.
For instance, the city has not yet begun to build a sidewalk on Stribling Avenue that the website states was to have begun in the spring of 2026. Earlier this year, it was announced that more money was required to cover higher-than-expected costs to purchase right of way.
On the other end of the scale, public works this week has begun constructing a new sidewalk at the intersection of Ninth Street and Forest Hills Avenue in the Fifeville neighborhood, but the website states the plans are not yet complete and work is TBD.
At least one unfinished project has been in the works for so long that it is no longer listed on the city’s website but is moving forward in some fashion anyway.
The 250 Bypass Commuter Trail from Park Street to Hydraulic Road is a partially completed pathway on the northern side of the four-lane highway that bisects Charlottesville. There is currently no mention on the local government’s main website of a project with origins that date back to at least the city’s 2003 bike and pedestrian master plan.
But City Council minutes contain multiple references to the project, which is intended to allow an off-road bike lane for people to get from downtown to the commercial areas on U.S. 29 without using a car. Some segments of the commuter trail have already been constructed, such as the 2019 installation of a bridge across the Norfolk Southern railroad that connects both sides of McIntire Park.
The existing portions of the trail are depicted on a brochure produced by the city but there’s a gap in the middle, to the east of the Dairy Road interchange. One of the obstacles to completion has been a triangular piece of land on part of a property that fronts Grove Road in the Greenbrier neighborhood.
In December 2019, City Council appropriated a $50,000 grant from the Virginia Outdoors Foundation to purchase the land. A required public hearing to buy the 0.422-acre property was held in May 2022.
The deal closed four years later on June 15, when the city paid $55,000 for the land. City Parks and Trails Planner Chris Gensic said in an email that there is funding in place to build a section of paved trail in a portion of McIntire Park to the west of the Piedmont Family YMCA.
“This latest acquisition will allow us to complete the design and request funding to construct a paved trail up from the western bridge to Meadowbrook Heights Road,” Gensic said.
More clarity on the future of the trail and other city pathways may come as the Department of Neighborhood Development Services begins work this fall on a Comprehensive Mobility Plan intended to explain how Charlottesville will contend with higher residential density.
