To witness Lynchburg’s burning hatred for us, check out today’s News & Advance editorial about Places29. It borders on (unintentional) humor. #
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
Sideblog
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
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You need to read the comments for the article for a good laugh as well.
So we have stopped all the progress? VDOT has all the land it needs and the state could plan to build the road and there would be little we could do about it. Oh right, there isn’t any money to build it either and for years there won’t be.
Sure the County could sue VDOT if they tried to build the road but VDOT has to schedule it on a plan some where first. Lynchburg, your problem really lives in Richmond, not here.
Lynchburg’s original gripe goes back to Charlottesville state legislators moving the interstate from Richmond up to Cville. It originally was planned to go west to Lynchburg, then over the mountains.
Too bad it didn’t work out that way.
Good point, fdr. Lloyd Snook provided some history about that on my personal blog earlier this year:
Wow, so a five-mile stretch of a 1,000-mile long highway is responsible for ALL that highway’s problems. We must be more important than I thought! Has this person EVER been north of Cville or south of Danville? Traffic just flows through silk from Culpeper to Manassas? No problem getting getting around Charlotte or Spartansburg, NC? Please. I’d love to go on, but I have to go out to my pasture and feed my horses. Or is that go out to my porch and water my cucumbers? One of those two.
“Seminole Drive”
Heh.
“Well, isn’t that convenient.
And extremely self-centered, even for the leaders of Charlottesville and Albemarle. For them, the world revolves around their little hamlet, much like popes of the Middle Ages believed Earth to be the center of the universe. (News flash: It’s not!)”
HA!
29 at the northern Albemarle County Line has 29,000 cars per day.
29 at the southern Albemarle County line has 11,000 cars per day.
The difference is these figures is obvious: people are trying to drive through Charlottesville to get to Lynchburg, but many of them are forced to give up due to our hellish traffic and head back north.
Didn’t I hear that UVA did some heavy lobbying, too?
Do you mean I had to go all the way to Lynchburg to get hear from Jackson Landers?
If I hadn’t I would have missed this pearl.
Living in Lynchburg, there have been times when I’ve been frustrated by sitting in bottlenecks along 29 from Lynchburg to DC. During rush hour, Cville pales in comparison to the stretch from Warrenton to Gainesville. I’m not opposed to upgrading part or all of the corridor, but I believe much of the push for such upgrades has faded as fuel costs have risen and budgets have been crunched. Jackson made some good points, but I’ll correct one error that seems to get tossed out quite frequently when 29 gets brought up. Danville has been the locality that has felt the brunt of the losses due to job migration. The job losses mentioned by Jackson have had about as much effect on Lynchburg as they have had on Cville. Lynchburg based advocates of the 29 improvements are interested in adding jobs as opposed to replacing lost jobs. Anyone who knows about our state’s economy would recognize that Lynchburg has a pretty solid footing and has typically shown job growth over the last 20 years.
“Lynchburg based advocates of the 29 improvements are interested in adding jobs as opposed to replacing lost jobs.” How can speeding up traffic on 29 bring new jobs to Lynchburg?
hkm, traffic does flow like silk from Ruckersville to well north of Culpepper. Its around Warrenton that it gets bad – and its always bad when you get close to the interstate.
Cville does need to do something, but the best solution would be to stop growth on roads that can’t take it. They should zone the growth onto 250 parallel to the existing interstate instead.
Driving less will relieve a lot of traffic. For example, if you’re not going to or from work, do not drive during rush hours. Make only one trip to the grocery a week. Take all of your family out shopping only on one day a week; if Sally need shoes and Jake needs glasses, take them the same day and enjoy the quality time. Does you teenager really need a car to drive her friends around? You will also enjoy the savings in gas and lower your “carbon footprint.” In other words, be a part of the solution, rather than always dumping the problem off on the tax payer. In the fifties, most families who had cars only had one and family members had to cooperatively use it. Fewer miles, cheaper gas and cheaper insurance and cheaper taxes. Of course I know no one agrees with me.
If you want to decrease traffic in Cville, expand the public transportation to the counties. I live at Lake Monticello and have no car, so I can’t even get to those few spots that JAUNT stops at, on the few occasions the do stop. If there was a bus or shuttle that stopped at all the Lake gates on Rts 53, 600, and 616, we could link up with CTS. There are plenty of people out her who would like that option.
I understand that it is logical and probably helpful to eventually extent public transit out to places like Lake Monticello, for the reason that you cite. But, for the record, living at Lake Monticello without a car and then wishing for a bus is a bit like these people who move to Free Union and complain that there’s no Chinese restaurant, or to Charlottesville and complain that there’s no Home Depot. You’re just not living in the right place.
Oh, I had a car when I moved here. We actually had two. But things happen — like second cars dying after 200,000 miles and jobs being lost and whatnot. Plus, we’re not exactly in the hinterlands out here. And we’re not Fork Union. This is a community of close to 8,000 people, most of whom have to go to Cville several times a week (if not daily). It’s not really a wacky dream that we could get regular public transit to town.
Who’s supposed to pay for Lake Monticello’s bus service? Usually, residents of restrictive communities provide their own shuttle service paid for by the residents of those communities. Westminister Canterbury is a good example. They have a shuttle bus for the exclusive use of their residents.
Those of you living in Lake Monticello without a car are certainly not a part of the traffic problem and therefore I’m afraid can not be a part of the solution.
Like I said: I understand that it’s logical. But I’ve spent the majority of my life living in the country, and I never once thought “gosh, I sure could use a bus.” :) It doesn’t help you any that Lake Monticello appears to consist entirely of people who have moved here from New Jersey and very much want this to be New Jersey, which the rest of us aren’t really fond of.
Well, we’re from New England, not New Jersey, so — whatever. And I agree, it would be lovely if the Lake Monticello Owners Association ponied up for a shuttle, but they’re too busy blowing hundreds of thousands of dollars on dredgers and improvements to the golf course 95% of us can’t afford to use. I’ll end my part of the conversation here. ‘Night.
@hkm, I welcome you and yours here and ‘Night.
Waldo, personally I feel running buses to the suburban communities will only increase the demand for housing in those areas and in the long run will increase pressure for developing the rural areas. It’s getting increasingly important to be able to advertise “on the bus line” or “near transit.” Therefore it is not in the city’s interest to add amenities to those suburban communities in the county that are comparable to Johnson Village and Greenbrier such as Woodbrook and Carrsbrook. It makes living in the county easier for some people and with the lower tax rate and comparable housing prices, and the reputation of the schools, it is quite reasonable for a person to prefer living in the county. It is not as though city residents work there. Running buses to these communities will help make less demand for their comparables in the city and dampen property values.
The current bus system is set up to bring city residents out the county to shop (and move people around the city). Most Albemarle resident have no interaction with this system and don’t want to pay for large buses carrying few people around.
I not saying we need to get rid of the system just that it really doens’t seem to do much more than allow the people without cars to move around. Until putting my car in the garage makes sense I really don’t want to put a dime more into mass transit.
The only place transit seems to work is at the University and perhaps the free downtown shuttle
Well seeing as how Carrsbrook and Woodbrook are pretty close to Greenbriar, I can’t really see what the big complaint would be about adding service to those areas.