By Sean C.W. Korsgaard

Special to The Farmville Herald

The Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) is considering funding several local transportation projects in Buckingham, Cumberland and Prince Edward under House Bill 2.

The projects took one step closer to becoming a reality recently during a meeting held in Lynchburg.

Almost 50 people gathered at the Kirkley Hotel in Lynchburg for a town hall meeting hosted by the CTB, one of nine being held across the state this month.

Offering a public forum to discuss

transportation projects, VDOT spokeswoman Paula K. Jones said there were some passionate and vocal responses from the attendees.

The Lynchburg district, which includes 10 counties in the region, including Prince Edward, Cumberland and Buckingham, includes 38 submitted projects, and have price tags ranging from $150,000 to almost $19 million.

In Prince Edward County, the projects include safety improvements at the South Main/Milnwood Road intersection in Farmville, improvements made to the U.S. Route 15/VA 692 intersection, reconfiguring the U.S. 460 and VA 307 intersection and installing turn lanes at the U.S. Route 15/ VA 665 intersection at Worsham.

In Buckingham County, the projects include trimming the embankments along the intersection of W. James Anderson Highway & S. James River Highway and adding 11-foot lanes along U.S. Route 15 & VA 636.
In Cumberland County, projects include reconstructing the intersection at Route 60 and Route 13 into a four-lane intersection while adding turn lanes and adding full-length lanes and shoulders to Columbia Road (690) and Cartersville Road (45).

“We are very proud of this district and that all of these entities that were eligible to submit projects in the Lynchburg district, all of them did,” said Jones. “I think that speaks very highly about the counties in our area, and the attention and care the region has for transportation.”

The meetings focus on the proposed local and regional transportation projects that localities have submitted to be scored under a new prioritization process as legislated by House Bill 2. Signed into law by Gov. Terry McAuliffe, House Bill 2 is a consistent and data-driven “prioritization” process to score projects according to critical transportation needs.

What this means, according to Tamara Rollison, communications director at VDOT, is that projects are ranked according to need and other factors, and the limited amount of funding is distributed based on this.

“Simply put, transportation prioritization is about examining each project’s benefit to Virginia by the numbers, and funding the right ones first,” said Rollison. “This is a consistent and objective ‘prioritization’ process to score projects according to critical transportation needs.”

The meetings will highlight the 321 applications for projects submitted by 131 local and regional governments across the state, spread across nine districts. The applications request $6.95 billion in funding under House Bill 2.

The projects will be scored through the end of December. Once projects are scored and reviewed by the public, the CTB will then select which projects to fund and be included in the next Six-Year Improvement Program by June of 2016.

For those who missed the meetings, feedback from the public is being accepted until the Dec. 11 and can be submitted through www.virginiahb2.org or by calling (800) 367-7623.