Is end near for Eastern Connector-

Seth Rosen / Charlottesville Daily Progress
Published: March 4, 2008

-After a $500,000 investment and a year-and-a-half of intense review and design overhauls, the Eastern Connector is on life support and fading fast, some elected Albemarle County and Charlottesville officials believe.

Since planning began, the county and city sides have viewed the project through different prisms: To the city, the point of the connector is to enable area residents to expeditiously travel from northern Albemarle County to the burgeoning Pantops area without traversing Charlottesville roads.

To the county, however, the project's main purpose is to relieve congestion on U.S. 250 near the Rivanna River crossing. At times the goals have dovetailed, but they have also caused friction, with Charlottesville officials questioning the county's commitment to the project.

Now, though, a lack of a consensus route and the challenge of securing enough funding for a project that could cost north of $40 million have some supervisors and councilors predicting the project's ultimate demise.

"There's no reason to put a lot of energy into pursuing it," Councilor David Brown said. "There are other road projects that are both more doable and more important at the moment."

Kenneth C. Boyd, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, put it more succinctly: "It doesn't seem to do what we wanted it to do."

The Eastern Connector concept has been bandied about for years, but in the fall of 2006 the city and county became serious about planning efforts and allocated a half-million dollars for a study to kick-start location and design discussions.

On Monday night, however, councilors and Charlottesville staff sharply criticized several new recommendations for the Eastern Connector, saying that the options would likely dump more traffic onto city streets instead of diverting cars around the city.

Each of the new options - including widening U.S. 250, widening High Street and building new bridges north and south of Free Bridge - "does nothing but carry traffic through the city of Charlottes-ville," said Jim Tolbert, the city's head planner. "We were concerned those completely ignore and took the focus off what the study was supposed to be about."

County officials have reasons to worry about increasing congestion around the Free Bridge: In 2006, 52,000 vehicles crossed the bridge each day, up from 30,000 per day five years prior. By 2025, that number is predicted to jump to more than 68,000.

"My whole intent behind the study is to alleviate pressure on 250 during peak hours," Boyd said. "I drive that everyday both ways during rush hour and it is a hugely congested area."

By the end of last year, a committee of city and county officials and residents whittled down a list of options for the road from 13 to four. But each of those has proved to be fraught with problems.

"We realized at the beginning there wasn't going to be a silver bullet that took all the traffic off the road," said Juandiego Wade, an Albemarle transportation planner.

Preliminary traffic analysis of the two alternatives exclusively in Albemarle - connecting Proffit or Polo Grounds roads to Route 20 - showed that neither would truly solve current, or future, traffic problems.

A third option, running the road through Pen Park to Rio Road, is fundamentally flawed, many concede. It would cause an uproar in surrounding neighborhoods and might not be approved by the federal government. Plus, Lewis Grimm, the lead consultant on the project, determined that a road there would divert only 16 percent of traffic from the Free Bridge corridor during the morning and evening commute.

The final series of recommendations entail improving the areas around that bridge. Possible ideas include widening U.S. 250 to six lanes in both directions; widening High Street beginning at Meade Avenue; and building new bridges north and south of Free Bridge.

John Pfaltz, a Charlottesville resident who sits on the Eastern Connector committee, panned the idea of widening U.S. 250 or High Street, noting that it would be extremely expensive and force the relocation of more than two dozen houses.

Besides, he adds, "why should the city absorb all this traffic," when the original intent of the connector was to move people from Pantops to northern Albemarle-

At this juncture, every option remains on the table and it is unlikely that final decisions will occur anytime soon. But elected officials seem to be ready to write the project's obituary and move on.

"I wouldn't want us to waste a whole lot more of our resources figuring out how to pave a road that is never going to be built," Mayor Dave Norris said during Monday's council meeting.

Instead, he added, conversations between the city and county should focus on improving transit and building other, more feasible, connector roads.