Tag: Virginia Department of Transportation

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News

Rivanna Trails Foundation seeks a new path

The Rivanna Trails Foundation wants to build a 25-mile-long paved bicycle and pedestrian path, similar to Arkansas’ Razorback Regional Greenway. PC: Arkansas Tourism

Snowy roads didn’t stop about a dozen people from making their way to the Carver Recreation Center last Tuesday for a brainstorming session on something that’s been in the works for nearly 10 years: the Three Notched Trail. 

The Rivanna Trails Foundation is spearheading the effort to build a 25-mile-long paved pedestrian and bicycle path from Charlottesville to the Blue Ridge Tunnel (a few miles from Waynesboro), roughly following the path of Three Notch’d Road—a major colonial-era route across central Virginia.

Today, Route 250 follows the Three Notch’d route, but the trail will most likely not be right beside the busy highway. Instead, it may lie a couple miles to the north or south of the original road, potentially starting in western Albemarle County, north of Interstate 64 but south of Garth Road.

Apart from these plans, RTF, which is working with the city and county Parks & Rec departments and the Piedmont Environmental Council, has yet to decide on a specific route location, cost estimate, or completion year, due to numerous obstacles, including a struggle to secure funding and public support.

“[Another] roadblock has been getting dedicated volunteers who are willing to help scout possible locations and find landowners who are willing to share their property [with the trail],” says Allie Hill, a Rivanna Trails Foundation board member. “We would never put the greenway on someone’s property who doesn’t want it.”

RTF, which was founded as a nonprofit in 1992, turned its attention to this project after completing much of the popular Rivanna Trail loop around Charlottesville, and sees the new trail as part of its mission to create greenways throughout the Rivanna watershed. 

In 2015, RTF was able to get the Three Notched Trail included in Albemarle County’s Comprehensive Plan, as part of the county’s commitment to developing a complete greenway trail system. A feasibility study, the next step in the process, would cost roughly $35,000 just for the first phase of the project, from Charlottesville to Crozet, according to a private firm RTF consulted two years ago. RTF currently has only $3,600 in grants from various private foundations.   

This fall, the group will again apply for feasibility study funding from the Virginia Department of Transportation. If the funding is approved, VDOT would hire its own consultants to do the study. “And if the [study] looks positive, [VDOT] might fund the whole project,” Hill says. 

She notes that VDOT did the feasibility study for and built the highly successful Capital Trail, a 52-mile paved pedestrian and cycling path from Richmond to Jamestown, following Route 5, which RTF hopes to use as a model. VDOT spent approximately $1.5 million per mile to build the trail, but it is being maintained by the counties the trail passes through. 

By the end of this year, RTF hopes to have a feasibility study set in motion, whether it is by VDOT or a private company. In the meantime, Hill plans to host monthly meetings to establish a formal planning group, which will, among other tasks, work on increasing public support for the project and finding landowners willing to share their property with the trail.

Those interested in joining the trail effort can email Hill at info@threenotchedtrail.org.

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News

Few Florence floods: But local area hit with power outages

It’s too bad Saturday’s UVA football game against Ohio University was moved to Vanderbilt Stadium in Nashville—with little rain, the Cavs probably could have played at home. Photo by Jack Looney

Grocery store shelves in Charlottesville and Albemarle County were picked clean last week by people preparing for Hurricane Florence’s worst. But come this week, those cases of water, boxes of batteries, and jars of peanut butter had gone largely unneeded.

While a tornado left one person dead in Richmond, and significant flooding threatened folks in Nelson, Green, and Madison counties, the immediate local area was relatively unscathed.

“Florence could dump a foot of rain on already saturated ground,” predicted state climatologist Jerry Stenger before the hurricane, when Virginia was projected to be in its northeast quadrant. “We’re going to have trees down all over the place.”

Stenger was right. And wrong.

The majority of area rain fell Sunday, September 16, through Monday, September 17, and by Monday morning, the National Weather Service had issued a flood warning for the city and county. Local areas reported receiving between a half and two inches of rain, with minor flooding reported in Albemarle.

In the state, approximately 500 roads were temporarily closed, with eight of those in Albemarle, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation.

Approximately 3,800 Dominion Energy customers in Charlottesville and Albemarle County were out of power from 10am Sunday, September 16, until Monday morning, when about 2,300 of those people had their electricity turned back on, according to Dominion spokesperson Daisy Pridgen. Remnants of Florence hit the local area the hardest around this period, and she says the outages were largely the result of trees falling on power lines.

At press time, the energy company’s interactive power outage map showed only 27 and 181 customers were still without electricity in Charlottesville and Albemarle, respectively.

The Virginia State Police are already offering tips for next time, such as dialing 511 before driving for the latest updates on road conditions and closures, and always using headlights while windshield wipers are activated—not only because you can see better and you become more visible to other traffic, but because that’s the law.

And perhaps the most important tip, and one you’ve likely heard before: Turn around, don’t drown.

More than half of all flood-related drownings occur when a vehicle is driven into hazardous water, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state police add that it only takes 12 inches of rushing water to carry away a small car, and two feet of it can wash most vehicles down a roadway.

“It’s never safe to drive or walk into flood waters,” says VSP spokesperson Corinne Geller. “No matter how shallow you might think it is.”

Storm statistics

  • 1 death in Richmond
  • ½ to 2 inches of rain in Charlottesville
    and Albemarle
  • About 500 road closures across the state
  • Nearly 4,000 local power outages for Dominion Energy customers
  • $60 million authorized by Virginia
    Governor Ralph Northam to spend in response to Florence

*Numbers provided by the Virginia Department of Transportation, National Weather Service, and Aubrey Layne, the state secretary of finance

Categories
Arts

Chicho Lorenzo paints through barriers at local exit

Charlottesville Mural Project artist Chicho Lorenzo’s recently completed work is located at Barracks Road near the 250 bypass. Photo by Eze Amos

When painter and muralist Chicho Lorenzo saw the 7′ tall retaining wall along Barracks Road near the 250 bypass, he knew exactly what he wanted to paint.

“Maybe two years ago, I was commissioned to paint a mural for a military school,” Lorenzo says. “I had an idea for an image of two teachers standing like columns, supporting the base of education. I didn’t paint it then, but when I saw this wall I thought, what if I extended it from teachers to nurses to dreamers to many other people in the community?”

In early 2017, The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative partnered with Albemarle County, the Virginia Department of Transportation, UVA Arts and local residents to beautify the concrete corridor that connects busy Barracks Road with scenic Garth Road. Local and regional artists submitted proposals to the initiative, which was spearheaded by The Charlottesville Mural Project, a Bridge PAI program designed to showcase artistic talent while creating a more interesting visual landscape in Charlottesville.

In the process, members of nearby communities discussed what they hoped to see in the mural, including organic colors, a sense of whimsy and playfulness, and a theme that communicated the history, geographic beauty and diverse people of the area.

Small wonder that Lorenzo was chosen. Since moving to Charlottesville in 2008, the self-taught artist has become known for painting dreamy, colorful murals that reflect the vibrancy of his native Madrid and typically reference real people from the local community.

Local musicians are some of his favorite subjects. “If I sit in front of a musician playing, I can perfectly draw it—not just their faces and instruments, but the way they play,” says Lorenzo. “I can draw their music with symbols and other graphic resources. It’s very instantaneous inspiration.”

Manifesting the unseen is part of the pleasure of creation for Lorenzo, who views art as “opening the window for a real life” that just happens to not exist yet.

He points to the mural he painted on the back wall of Mas Tapas in Belmont. “It’s a floating banquet with real people: people from the restaurant, people from the yoga place upstairs, many neighbors from that area,” Lorenzo says. “There was one neighbor who told me that his mom always wanted him to have a farm. So on one of the mountains, far away, there’s a little farmhouse with this guy in the door.”

Just like that, the man’s mother was right. Suddenly, he had a farm.

“In my experience, art opens possibilities in life,” Lorenzo says. “We are so used to seeing life a certain way. We see our routines, our day-by-day. Now with the Internet, we can see more, but it’s still limited. But then you learn how to do art, and you realize life is limitless.”

That’s the power of mutual inspiration, he says. Whether he works on painting a portrait or creating a massive mural, he continually draws from the town that inspires him—and hopes to return the favor.

“Mostly, I hope my art inspires a kind of happiness,” he says. “I have this trust that my art somehow makes the world or at least the local community, a little better.”

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News

McAuliffe anoints Berkmar Drive, talks Morva

Governor Terry McAuliffe speaks at VDOT's ceremony to mark the opening of eight Route 29 Solutions projects. Staff photo

Virginia traffic officials began discussing ways to make U.S. 29—a highway that carries 50,000 vehicles a day—flow more successfully about three decades ago, Secretary of Transportation Aubrey Layne says. When Governor Terry McAuliffe took office three-and-a-half years ago, he made it a top priority.

Today, the governor and his colleague visited Albemarle County for a Virginia Department of Transportation ceremony to mark the opening of the Route 29 Solutions projects, which included extending Berkmar Drive from Hilton Heights Road to Towncenter Drive.

McAuliffe, Layne and about 70 prominent guests stood before the Berkmar Drive extension to celebrate and eventually cut the ribbon with several small pairs of scissors.

Governor McAuliffe speaks with City Councilor Kristin Szakos and Supervisor Ann Mallek. Staff photo
Governor McAuliffe speaks with City Councilor Kristin Szakos and Supervisor Ann Mallek. Staff photo

When the 72nd governor of Virginia took the podium, he said the people of Charlottesville and Albemarle County “made a lot of noise” about the busy highway corridor when he first took office. He remembers local entrepreneur Bill Crutchfield as the main squeaky wheel.

“Tell Bill the road is here,” McAuliffe said. And later he added, “You can bike, you can run, you can walk, you can do whatever you want.”

Virginia is the best state in the country, he claimed while clad in a navy suit and orange tie, but it won’t be if people can’t access it. “They’re not going to come to our state if they’re stuck in traffic.”

Layne, Board of Supervisors Chair Diantha McKeel and House of Delegates Minority Leader David Toscano also made remarks. In attendance were a number of supervisors and city councilors, as well as former supervisor Jane Dittmar, who ran for 5th District representative last year.

Other Route 29 projects, of which there are eight, include widening Seminole Trail from four to six lanes and extending Hillsdale Drive from Greenbriar Drive to Hydraulic Road. And the people of Charlottesville rejoiced when another project, the Route 29-Rio Road grade-separated intersection, opened last summer—46 days ahead of schedule.

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Ribbon cutting. Staff photo

After the ribbon cutting, McAuliffe was grilled on other topics, including today’s scheduled lethal injection of William Morva, who was sentenced to death for the 2006 killing of hospital security guard Derrick McFarland and Montgomery County Sheriff Deputy Corporal Eric Sutphin. Morva, incarcerated for burglary and attempted robbery, was receiving medical treatment when he overpowered a guard watching him, fatally shot McFarland, escaped, and shot and killed Sutphin, who was searching for him.

Many have petitioned McAuliffe to grant the man clemency on the premise of him allegedly being mentally unstable at the time of the murders.

“I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t sleep a wink last night thinking about it,” the governor said, but didn’t give any indication of his final decision. Hours later, he decided not to grant clemency.

As for the KKK’s plans to rally in Charlottesville this Saturday, McAuliffe, who has vetoed more bills than any other governor, said a number of them discriminated against women and the LGBT community.

“To me, any discrimination breeds hatred,” he said. “People are entitled to free speech, but I’m not for hate speech.”