Short Pump's Biggest Road Project Is Also Its Slowest
October 8, 2026
October 8, 2026
The Short Pump road project that made the news this fall is the one furthest from a construction start. The projects that will reroute your drive this winter are smaller, closer to home, and mostly off Broad Street. Line up the current project records from Henrico County, VDOT and the Central Virginia Transportation Authority, and the pattern holds across the whole list: the bigger the price tag, the further away the bulldozers.
That matters if you live off Pouncey Tract, Twin Hickory or Ridgefield Parkway and read "funding" in a September headline as a sign that relief at the I-64 exit was close. Here is the work in the order you will feel it, starting with the smallest.
Henrico's Sadler Road project is in the Three Chopt District. It costs an estimated $42 million and covers a 1.9-mile stretch between Dominion Boulevard and Cedar Forest Road. Construction began in the third quarter of 2024. Design, right-of-way acquisition, utility relocation and the construction bid are all marked complete on the county's project page.
The finished road will have one lane each way, a center left-turn lane, curb and gutter, and better drainage. A shared-use path for walkers and cyclists will run along the east side. The section between Ireland Lane and Sadler Grove Road moves to a new alignment, and roundabouts are planned at Innslake Drive and at Sadler Grove Road.
Parts of Sadler are closed to through traffic until the project wraps up in summer 2027, and all traffic is detoured onto Cox Road. The county has posted the closures in phases:
As of early October, the closure has moved one segment north, and it will move again around the turn of the year. Each phase pushes more traffic onto Cox Road. Cox Road also has its own project starting soon.
On the county's posted schedule, construction on Cox Road at Guyana Drive starts in the fourth quarter of 2026, weather permitting. The proposed design includes a four-way stop, two roundabouts on Cox Road, bike lanes and speed cushions. So the road that carries the Sadler detour is about to get its own round of construction.
North of Broad, Henrico expects to start more safety work on Shady Grove Road and Old Nuckols Road in the fourth quarter of 2026. That work includes buffered bike lanes, better pedestrian signals and crosswalks, and a realigned Shady Grove "S" curve, with completion estimated in 2027. The roundabout at Old Nuckols and Shady Grove, the most visible part of the corridor plan, was finished in April 2025.
Henrico's online profiles for these projects don't show when they were last updated. Treat the fourth-quarter dates as the county's posted estimates, not fixed start days.
If your trouble spot is the I-64 off-ramp onto West Broad, the project to watch is VDOT's West Broad Street Short Pump Operational Improvement, project number 123583. It covers Route 250 from I-64 to East Pouncey Tract Road. The plan includes:
VDOT's page, last updated Sept. 17, 2026, lists the project as in design. It shows an estimated cost of $24.3 million, with construction starting in fall 2028 and finishing in fall 2030. VDOT advertised a willingness to hold a public hearing in February 2025 and received no written requests for one.
That's roughly two years until work starts on the merge at Gathering Place, and four years until it's finished. A second VDOT project farther east would add turn lanes and bus facilities at West Broad's intersections with Dominion Boulevard and Cox Road. It is also in design, with work scheduled from spring 2028 to summer 2029.
The Henrico Citizen ran its story on Sept. 9 under the headline "Funding for new I-64/North Gayton Road 'diverging diamond' sets in motion multi-year project to alleviate Short Pump congestion." The phrase "multi-year" in that headline carries a lot of weight.
The vote behind the news came on Aug. 28, 2026, when the Central Virginia Transportation Authority unanimously approved a project agreement for the North Gayton interchange. The amount was $709,000. CVTA staff member Chet Parsons explained to the board that most of the work under the agreement would be survey-related activities in the project's first phase. He called it a carve-out from the authority's larger commitment, with Henrico County as administrator. According to the minutes, CVTA's total commitment to the project is "just over $63 million," and VDOT will administer most of it under separate agreements.
Compare that with the full cost. CVTA's current commitment table lists the Short Pump Area Improvements package at a total estimated cost of $372,234,891. CVTA has put in $60 million, no other funding is listed, and $312,234,891 remains to be found. VDOT's page for the package, last updated May 29, 2026, says the study is complete and that "the project does not have funding for design or construction phases." The August vote came after that update, but a survey agreement doesn't close a gap of more than $300 million. No published source gives an opening year for the interchange.
The interchange itself is one piece of a seven-project package VDOT selected. The package also includes Route 288 auxiliary lanes and ramp changes, widening of the I-295 westbound ramp, a northbound I-295 auxiliary lane to Nuckols Road, and several changes to the Broad Street interchange and access points. When the Federal Highway Administration endorsed the plan in 2023, Supervisor Tommy Branin called it "the largest transportation safety project this county has ever done in history." A project that large takes years of funding work, and it has only finished one of those years.
Look at how far each project has gotten and the order makes sense. The Sadler Road page shows design, right-of-way, utilities and the construction bid all complete, so it's the one being built. The Broad Street operational project has a cost estimate in the mid-$20 million range, has finished its public-hearing step, and is in design with a start date. The North Gayton package costs more than ten times as much, and most of its money hasn't been identified yet.
The costs are worth comparing too. The three nearer projects, Sadler at $42 million, the Broad Street merge fix at $24.3 million, and Cox Road and Shady Grove at sizes the county hasn't posted alongside them, are each a small fraction of the interchange package. They're the ones with schedules.
The need on Broad is well documented. In 2024, Henrico Public Works Director Terrell Hughes told Richmond BizSense, "With growth in the county, conditions are going to get worse. We're already overcapacity." The same report said that without improvements, backups at the westbound Broad Street exit could reach Glenside Drive by 2046. Those figures were the case for funding the whole package. On the current schedules, the first relief for that exit is the flex-post and lane work on West Broad starting in fall 2028.
Here are the dates as currently posted:
If you're selling in the next year, buyers who drive to your showings this winter will come through the Sadler and Cox Road work. If you're buying, a house near the Gathering Place merge will have construction nearby from 2028 through 2030. Whichever side you're on, Terri Brennan Homes can show you what recent sales on your street say about price and timing. Request a free home valuation to get started.
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