ROANOKE COUNTY, Va. – No matter where you live in Southwest or Central Virginia, chances are you have traveled on US-460 through Roanoke County.
Because of the high traffic area, officials are looking at ways to improve the roadway in the coming years.
“The goal is to improve the fluidity and safety of the 460 and 220 corridor,” said Roanoke County supervisor, Phil North.
Roanoke County is offering surveys and hosting information meetings like the one Thursday night to learn what the community wants to see for the future of 460 and the surrounding land.
“We’ve had projects in the past the Chic-fil-a the LewisGale Medical Center where we had a lot of people come out regarding traffic issues on that so what we decided to do was to look at this whole corridor and try to plan where future development will take place where access points will be,” said Roanoke County’s director of planning, Philip Thompson.
The stretch of 460 in the Bonsack neighborhood of Roanoke County is the second most traveled road in the Roanoke Valley. This is why officials are looking to make improvements.
“But there are more improvements to come at the interchanges to reduce signalizations from four light sequences to three which will also improve traffic during the heavy times of the day,” said North.
So far, some ideas have been eliminating U-turns at intersections and adding a sign encouraging drivers to get onto US-220 when traveling from the Lynchburg area to the New River Valley.
“And also looking at future land use and future commercial development or residential development and also, how can we protect those things that people want to protect in this area,” said Thompson.
The survey will be available until January 28. Another informational meeting for the public will be hosted in May.