BLACKSBURG – A congested area in Blacksburg, for anyone accustomed to traveling this area of Montgomery County, is Prices Fork Road.
The Blacksburg Town Council had recently resolved to reduce speed limits over summer 2025; however, the recent death of a Virginia Tech student along Prices Fork Road has increased safety concerns on the road.
Franklin S. Zhang of Canada was killed Mar. 29 while standing at a bus stop at the 200 block of Prices Fork Road.
Virginia Tech Graduate Teaching Assistant Aditya Khanna addressed the Blacksburg Town Council at the April 22 meeting.
Khanna had instructed Zhang in a course at Virginia Tech University.
“Franklin, without exaggeration, was one of the best students I’ve ever had,” Khanna said. “He was a freshman, but his curiosity about mathematics extended way beyond his years.”
Khanna said Franklin was friendly, respected by his classmates and that “some of his jokes still make me smile.”
The GTA said he wished for council to quickly consider and take action on the safety of the town’s road conditions for students, especially those most vulnerable to traffic, who must take public transportation, and are pedestrians.
A presentation was given to the council by Engineering and GIS Director Carolyn Howard on recent road studies, speed limit changes taking place over summer 2025, and future studies that will be completed by Blacksburg along with the support of the Virginia Department of Transportation.
“[In] 2016, we had a speed safety study from University City Boulevard to Tom’s Creek Road, and out of that study, we implemented new signal timing for pedestrian crossings, allowing for longer times for pedestrians to crossing,” Howard said.
Additional studies were done in 2017 in conjunction to the construction of the Gilbert Place project, in 2019 to construct improved sidewalks along Prices Fork Road and sign timing at Toms Creek Road, and a speed and safety study was completed in 2020 at Toms Creek Road and Stanger Street with no implementations or changes.
Now, two separate safety studies are underway in search of solutions for pedestrians and cyclists who share the road with vehicles in the town, specifically Prices Fork Road, a main thoroughfare running parallel to the University and in Blacksburg.
“The first one is a traffic signal timing study. That work was originally initiated due to some of the accidents that have occurred at…West Campus Road and Prices Fork Road,” Howard said. “The other study that we just started is the Prices Fork speed and safety study, and this will be from Old Glade to Toms Creek Road, and that is a section that has not been studied since prior to the pandemic, with the goal to reduce speed limits throughout the corridor.”
The plan is to collect information from the study’s results, share with the town council, and implement improvements prior to students returning in August 2025, Howard said.
Virginia Department of Transportation’s Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment (OIPI) is planning to conduct a separate study from the beginning of Prices Fork Road to the village of Prices Fork, and to the county line. This more inclusive study, looking at vehicles, pedestrian, and cycle traffic, will be conducted over a longer period, with results and plans for implementation to be completed by the summer of 2026.
“We are going to extend the left-turn lane at West Campus Drive and shorten the left turn lane into McBryde,” Howard also said.
Town Manager Marc Verniel said, “I think…we’ve got a short-term plan to do some things this summer, and we have a little bit of study we have to do that we’re get trying to get done really quickly before the semester ends. So, we can do some things this summer and then we have the longer-term plan with the OIPI study…”
Mayor Leslie Hager-Smith noted “the idea, of [a] pedestrian bridge, which keeps coming up with people.”
“That was part of the 2019 study, and the reality is that it would not be used, because it would be shorter just to go to the intersection at Toms Creek Road, because of all the ramping needed for accessibility,” Howard said.
