Transportation board rejects modified U.S. 29 study

The Commonwealth Transportation Board rejected most of the recommendations Thursday from a U.S. 29 study that would have returned right of way for the long-stalled Charlottesville bypass to landowners.

“I’m really pleased with the way things came out,” said Kenneth Spencer White, Lynchburg’s representative on the 14-member board.

“We got a unanimous vote” on a U.S. 29 resolution Thursday that was much different from its original version, which would have endorsed returning the right of way and would have dropped proposals for bypasses in eastern Albemarle and Prince William counties.

The study of the U.S. 29 corridor, from North Carolina to Gainesville, was done by Parsons Transportation Group and had been presented to the policy-making CTB last month.

However, some new routes Parsons originally suggested had been deleted. Other modifications also were made, White said, by someone in “the state administration.”

White said he didn’t know who was responsible for changing the recommendations, but the board rejected the changes. “No one is stepping forward to say ‘I did it,’” White said.

“The fact that (the changes) happened is important,” White said. “Why it happened or who did it is not important. The board has agreed that it was wrong to do that, and it is back on the right track.”

“The point is, the board (CTB) never had an opportunity to look” at Parsons’ original proposals, “never had an opportunity to consult with the localities involved, and never had an opportunity to find out if there was a way to resolve those differences,” White said.

The changes removed several features from a version of the study Parsons originally displayed at public meetings along the highway corridor this year. Two of those features were an eastern bypass of Charlottesville and a proposed bridge to carry non-local traffic past Charlottesville’s most congested point near Hydraulic Road.

White said the study also had been changed to recommend giving back the right of way the state acquired many years ago for a western bypass of Charlottesville. Parsons’ original study had recommended using the western right of way for a two-lane road that would carry some of the traffic now using U.S. 29.

Parsons’ original recommendations should have been submitted to the CTB and discussed there, White said. If they were to be deleted, that should have been done only with CTB approval, White said.

The adopted resolution calls for the Virginia Department of Transportation to report to the CTB by July 1 with recommendations for:

- A list of intersections to be rebuilt as two-level interchanges,

- A plan to improve mobility and accessibility north of Charlottesville,

- A plan to improve mobility and accessibility in the Gainesville, Haymarket and Buckland region

- A plan to minimize the number of traffic control signals in the 29 corridor.

The adopted resolution also calls for a committee of CTB and VDOT officials to recommend by April 1 some new procedures to avoid the insufficiencies it found in the version of the Parsons study that was submitted to the CTB.

It’s not known whether the current CTB members will be on the board to receive those VDOT reports. Incoming Gov. Bob McDonnell has the authority to appoint new members of the board.