Virginia’s Commonwealth Transportation Board has approved state funding for the widening of Carrollton Boulevard.

Construction of the two-phase project would tentatively begin in fiscal year 2032-33.

The Virginia Department of Transportation recommended in January that the CTB award funding for 11 Hampton Roads District projects. VDOT, in January, had ranked Isle of Wight County’s request for funding to add a continuous right-turn lane at Carrollton Boulevard, also known as Route 17, at its intersection with Smiths Neck Road as the No. 1 project districtwide and the No. 2 project statewide.

The CTB’s May vote awarded the project $13.9 million through the sixth round of VDOT’s Smart Scale cost-benefit funding formula. Final funding adoption in VDOT’s six-year improvement plan for primary roads is scheduled for June 18.

“At this point we are in the funding scenario that will be moving into the draft plan,” Isle of Wight County Transportation Administrator Jamie Oliver told county supervisors on June 5.

Oliver said the state funds would be combined with $2.7 million in federal Regional Surface Transportation Program, or RSTP, funding the county had previously been awarded through the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization, bringing the total cost to nearly $16 million.

“Smart Scale’s requirements are that they 100% fund the project within the six-year plan period that they’re approved for, so either we have to show that we have whatever the difference is available or it has to be fully funded by the program,” Oliver said.

The continuous right-turn lane is intended as a first phase of plans to eventually add a third southbound through lane from the end of the James River Bridge through Route 17’s intersection with Brewers Neck Boulevard at the Crossings at Bartlett Station shopping center anchored by Publix.

The second phase, which the CTB also approved for state funding, would convert the continuous right-turn lane into part of the third through lane and add a new right-turn lane for access to the Eagle Harbor shopping center anchored by Food Lion and Smiths Neck Road.

Phase 2 was awarded $27.3 million in Smart Scale funding. Both phases would tentatively see funding available in fiscal year 2028-29 for preliminary engineering and see construction start in fiscal year 2033. Phase 2 was ranked in last place for the 11 approved projects but still made the cut for state funding.

Oliver said Smart Scale projects are required to have “independent utility,” meaning in the event Phase 2 is approved before Phase 1, it could still be constructed.

“The projects actually have some overlap in their concepts,” Oliver said.

Isle of Wight has seen eight projects approved for a cumulative $71 million in Smart Scale funding since 2016.

Isle of Wight had submitted four applications for the sixth round of Smart Scale, though the two Route 17 projects were the only ones funded this cycle. The county had also submitted funding requests for extending the 10-foot-wide bicycle and pedestrian trail that currently terminates at Nike Park to connect to the ongoing extension of Nike Park Road, and converting the existing intersection of Carrollton Boulevard and Sugar Hill Road, east of the Bartlett intersection, to a “continuous green-T” or “Turbo-T,” which would allow through traffic to pass through the T-intersection without stopping. But neither made the cut for state funding.

The Sugar Hill Road intersection scored 0.4 compared to Route 17 Phase 1’s cost-benefit score of 23.4.

“It has a lot of ground to make up,” Oliver said. “A lot of that is based on the cost-benefit analysis. … Some of these much smaller projects that you’re imagining $1, $2, $3 million, they end up in the $5 million or $6 million estimate range because you have to inflate them out to the end of the six-year plan depending on when they’re going to be built and that really hurts their cost-benefit score.”

The $5.9 million Nike Park trail gap connector scored 0.5, ranking 240th statewide, while the continuous green-T ranked 250th.

“​​The Sugar Hill Road estimate ended up at $7 million, which has continued to inflate even though nothing about the project in and of itself has changed the last three times we’ve submitted it,” Oliver said.