The Route 60 Corridor Study: What Is Proposed for the Village of Midlothian

If your business fronts Midlothian Turnpike between Old Otterdale Road and Mt. Pisgah Road, there is a county study that describes how customers will reach your door in ten years' time. Most people on that road have never opened it.

It is worth an hour. The recommendations are not funded, not designed in detail, and not final — which is exactly why reading it now is more useful than reading it later.

A note on the date, because it matters. The county's file name says January 2025, but every page of the document says August 2023. The traffic counts were taken in November 2021 and the public survey ran in spring 2023. This is 2023 work that the county published in 2025, not a new study.

The corridor produces more crashes than the state average for an urban arterial, but less severe ones. Of the 231 crashes, 81 percent were property damage only, against 64 percent statewide. Two were fatal. Four involved pedestrians.

Year by year: 52 in 2017, 48 in 2018, 57 in 2019, 39 in 2020, 35 in 2021.

Half of all crashes were rear-end collisions, against 43 percent statewide. And the number that drives the whole recommendation: 44 of the 231 crashes, 19 percent, involved a vehicle making a left turn. Another 10 involved a right turn and four involved a vehicle entering or leaving a parking lot.

Neither of the two fatal crashes was a left-turn-out-of-a-shopping-center case. One, in October 2018 near Village Place Drive, involved a vehicle going straight and a vehicle turning right. The other, in December 2020 near Old Otterdale Road, was a single vehicle traveling more than 20 mph over the posted 55 that left the road and struck trees.

A raised median. The study proposes a fully median-divided road, with a median 15 to 17 feet wide. Full-access crossovers drop from nine to five. Partial-access crossovers rise from five to ten.

Thirty entrances change. In the study's own words: "There are 30 full-access entrances that will be modified to right-in/right-out access or a directional median crossover."

A shared-use path. Ten feet wide, on the south side, from Old Otterdale Road to Woolridge Road. The existing sidewalk on the north side stays. With a median in place, most pedestrian crossings of Route 60 become a minimum of 22 feet at a time rather than the full width.

Narrower lanes. Two travel lanes each way, 11 feet maximum.

One speed limit. Today the posted limit changes three times inside the study area — 45, then 35, then 45, then 55. The study proposes a uniform 35 mph throughout.

A signal at Grove Hill Road, at the new middle school entrance.

Six intersections are named in the study as moving from full access to some form of partial access:

The study's access diagram also shows the tire repair and Chicken Fiesta entrances near the middle school becoming right-in/right-out, and the middle school's own former entrance has already closed, with school traffic rerouted to the Grove Hill Road extension.

Right-in/right-out has a cost, and the study measures it. Its own 2031 modeling projects afternoon peak queues for the new right-turn-only exits:

That is the honest trade: fewer left-turn conflicts on the Turnpike, longer waits to get out of a parking lot at five o'clock.

The study's answer to the business-access question, which a resident asked during the 2023 survey, is this: cross-parcel access and connector roads are part of the long-range plan, pedestrian and bicycle access reduces the need for some car trips, and federal analysis has found sales tax receipts within half a mile rising after similar medians were installed. It does not name that federal study, and it does not describe any process for notifying, consulting or compensating an individual property owner whose access changes. The strongest commitment in the document is a single sentence: "As the project moves forward, coordination with property owners may allow further improvement."

That is the argument for engaging early rather than at a design hearing.

Three things in the study are recommendations that still need a separate approval:

There is one more open question worth raising with the county if it affects you. The study's existing-conditions diagram shows Crowder Drive as a signalized intersection, and its proposed-conditions diagram shows it as right-in/right-out — but the written 2031 analysis still models Crowder Drive as a signal with left turns. The document does not resolve that, and neither can we.

No cost estimate appears in the published document. The county's own summary says the study includes cost estimates, but the 66-page file it posted contains none, and its appendices — including the corridor concept exhibits that would show parcel-level geometry — are listed in the contents and not included.

On funding, the study is blunt: "The proposed improvements are currently unfunded."

What has happened since:

This is the Midlothian Community Special Area Plan being turned into engineering. The study says so directly in its opening paragraph, and again five more times. The plan, adopted in December 2019, called for narrower lanes, a landscaped median, a shared-use path on the south side and a consistent 35 mph through the village. The study carries all four forward, and describes its recommendations as "synchronized with the original recommendations" in the plan.

The public process was a website and survey open from March 1 to April 30, 2023, promoted on social media, with county staff also meeting business groups along the corridor. It drew 342 responses: 54 percent supportive, 28 percent opposed, 18 percent neutral. The study does not publish the comments. Instead it answers twelve questions, and the questions are the clearest record of what people said — about access to businesses, about whether bicycle accommodation is worth the money, about congestion, and about whether the village is already overbuilt.

One of those answers is worth repeating for anyone worried about what this means for their property: "This process will not affect the current zoning or land uses along the corridor."

Not to be confused with the Eastern Route 60 Corridor Plan, a separate land use study covering Midlothian Turnpike from the Richmond city line eastward, which is currently on hold.

Last updated September 16, 2026.