Background
The Resort Area of the City of Virginia Beach continues to grow and evolve into a diverse, world-class, year-round coastal community for residents and visitors. Recognizing the need to transform and adapt to changing lifestyles, City Council adopted the Resort Area Strategic Action Plan 2030
(RASAP 2030) on June 2, 2020 to establish new goals and priorities for the Resort Area.
One of the top priorities of RASAP 2030 is to complete a Mobility Plan that recognizes new transportation options for moving around the resort and establishes a balance between them. The goal is to form a strategy for traffic calming, pedestrian circulation, bike circulation, shared mobility devices, curbside management, vehicular circulation, public transit, and parking in the Resort Area.
What is the Resort Area Mobility Plan (RAMP)?
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An extension of the Resort Areas Strategic Action Plan (RASAP) vision/process with a multimodal
plan for the RASAP study area
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A detailed look at challenges and opportunities with short and long-term actions and strategies
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An alignment of different types of mobility (e.g., vehicles, bicyclists, pedestrians, shared mobility, transit,
TNCs, parking) in a way that optimizes how people access the Resort Area and move around within it
- New concepts for key corridors that illustrate changes to support optimizing mobility
Process
The City hired Kimley-Horn, a planning, surveying, engineering, and design consulting firm, to work with the RAMP Steering Committee composed of area stakeholders to develop a Resort Area Mobility Plan. The planning process will include:
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Visioning and Goal Setting - In this phase, a mobility vision and goals will be developed to help guide the identification of mobility concepts and provide a framework in which they can be evaluated.
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Defining Challenges and Opportunities - This phase will involve reviewing information from past efforts and engagements to define the issues of today and the future.
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Exploring Different Approaches for Mobility - A scenario-based and analytic planning approach will be employed in this phase to identify and measure diverse transportation approaches intended to best meet mobility goals for the Resort Area.
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Identifying a Preferred Approach for Mobility - Based on goals and objectives of the planning process, evaluations and analysis, and engagement, a preferred approach to transportation will be identified.
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Drafting a Plan - Draft a plan that incorporates input from participants in the process and will identify definitive plans to achieve an integrated mobility system for the Resort Area.
- Validating - Leverage the next resort season to validate and confirm some outputs discovered through the planning process.
- Adopting a Plan – The draft plan was presented to Planning Commission for public comment and referral to City Council November 2022 and adopted by City Council January 2023.