Planning Commission Work Session Meeting   5/6/2025

May 6, 2025 Planning Commission meeting.

Tonight will be a work session.

It's a special meeting.

And so I will not have to speak to any of the general public here tonight.

Yes.

Ms.

Thank you.

So we'll move on to the consent agenda.

I move to accept the consent agenda as presented.

Any discussion?

Alrighty.

Great.

Thank you.

And we are on to item number three work session CCP 2021-2 AC44 comprehensive plan transportation.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Can I just interrupt you for one second?

Ms.

Firehock is now here.

I'm sorry.

Joined by several colleagues to talk about the transportation chapter of the comprehensive plan tonight.

As per usual, we'll go ahead and go through a summary of feedback we've received, go through some community input, do a chapter overview, and review the upcoming schedule, and then really allow, that's the time for questions, comments, what have you on the actions.

These are the couple of focus area topics that we have for you tonight.

These probably need a little bit of lead in, but we'll do that part at the end as we usually do.

So for previous feedback that we've heard from this body before on transportation within the development area, we've heard to prioritize investments in the development areas while focusing more on safety, rural recreation, and rural character in the rural area.

Also looking to enhance transit in the development areas.

including expanding MicroCat and then maintain a coordinated approach on trails and greenways to ensure connections to our denser, more populated areas.

In the rural area, what we heard was, let's use some data and community input to verify where people are already walking and biking.

And then also incrementally,

Complete some improvements within coordination with VDOT, like shoulder widening.

We also heard, again, safety improvements as a priority in the rural areas and then provide a type and level service in the rural area, especially on-demand paratransit and commuter transit.

So some of the community input themes that we heard, especially for the development areas, is providing safe, comfortable infrastructure like sidewalks and bike lanes for walking and biking that's separated from cars.

That was the main theme there is keeping those two separated.

And then transit needs to be frequent and reliable so folks can maintain consistent use.

And then related specifically to cars, the community feels like we need to slow the cars down, reduce some parking requirements.

And then there is that concern about traffic congestion and the infrastructure to keep up with growth and not exacerbate that congestion.

As always, safety is a concern.

For the rural area, what we heard from the community was to explore and implement ways to make walking and biking in the rural area safer, looking for small-scale improvements.

That includes widening shoulders, adding signage, and exploring off-street paths and trails.

And then we need to look at continued transit options that are needed, especially in the urban areas that meet daily needs.

Thank you.

So to begin with, as we saw in these previous slides, you noted that there was a lot of different concerns that we heard from the public, the board and the PC.

related to the development area and the rural area.

And I think that's kind of what we've been looking at for a lot of these chapters, especially in the land use chapters, the differences between the development area and rural area.

And you continue to see this in the challenges that we've identified with transportation.

They're different between the development area and the rural area.

In the development area, we see a high peak hour demand.

The multimodal networks are fragmented, meaning that there's a lot of breaks in them, especially our sidewalk and bike network.

There's limited funding and rising project costs in the development area.

Those costs are driven by the right-of-way needs, the existing

The existing facilities including utilities that are out there that have to be moved, stormwater, things like that.

That's really important in the development area.

And then the VDOT ownership of roadways.

which they have higher requirements or really high requirements for their standards and very little flexibility there and they manage those roads so it's a little bit harder for us to move through approvals and getting projects completed in the development area.

In the rural area, realistically, safety is our number one concern.

We have narrow winding roads, a lot of them with little clear zones, a lot of them do not meet any standards.

And we see a high rate of fatal and severe accidents because of that, including wildlife collisions.

Additionally, we know that we have, you know, an aging population in the rural area.

that doesn't have access to transit service.

And we see a lot of desire for biking and walking, for recreation and exercise.

And that's from not just the people that live in the rural areas that want to be able to walk and bike around their homes, but also because it's such a draw for people that live within the development area to get out and want to bike or run on some of these rural roads, whereas more aesthetically pleasing and lower traffic levels.

So based on those differences, we've created two different goals for transportation, one for the development area and one for the rural area.

In the development area, our goal is really focused on increasing safe, comfortable, and accessible multimodal options for all users.

This is where we're really going to see, because of the density, a lot more people want to be able to walk and bike to their daily trips.

And so this is really a focus of the development area.

And also utilizing place-making to encourage more people to get out and walk and bike and use transit.

Whereas in the rural areas, we are looking to address the movement of goods.

Of course, this is on our primary roads, including the interstate highways and rail.

And then also connecting those rural area residents

into their needs that they have within the development area, whether that's jobs, shopping, other hospital appointments, anything like that.

So we really want to make sure that our rural area residents have good access to those things.

So the overall transportation planning strategy here is that we want to support the land use strategies that are already outlined in the rural and development area land uses of AC44.

This includes the growth management policy to direct future growth and density into development areas, and they have such a lower

the expectation that there may be lower levels of service and improvements found in the rural area as opposed to the development area.

We've got to recognize that creating a high quality multimodal transportation network takes a very long time and a lot of money and so we have to be very careful about how we

Select projects and move forward with them to get the most effective projects built in the time we have.

So future transportation is really needed to make sure that we can get down into the, identify the most important projects that we have out there.

To do this, one of the primary recommendations from this plan, one of the primary action steps from this transportation chapter is to create a multimodal transportation plan.

We recognize that within the bounds of the comp plan that we're working on now, there's too much detail that's required for a transportation plan.

So our recommendation is to come back

and

in that prioritization process to integrate the land use transportation planning and zoning so that we know that what we're proposing for transportation matches our recommendations for land uses in the development area and what we're looking at for our zoning updates actually matches those things as well.

We say that we want to delineate the modal emphasis networks

What that means is that we want to be able to go in to a transportation plan, look at specifically where people want to travel to and from throughout the county and how they might want to get there and identify those best routes for that.

So that includes transit routes and bike routes and where we want to focus the pedestrian network as well.

It will define typical cross sections for future roadway design.

And what that means is that by going through a multimodal transportation process in consultation with VDOT, we'd be able to develop what a road cross section would look like for these different areas, and then work with VDOT to make sure that we can implement those.

That really tries to overcome that challenge of coordinating what VDOT wants to see in a road and what Albemarle County wants to see in a road.

It also will prioritize the projects given the limited resources and other constraints.

So similar to our project prioritization that we've gone through in the past, it would really set up a system so that we could keep working through a prioritization process with consistent goals and really know what the important things we want to move forward with in transportation are.

So with that, I'm not going to read through all these transportation objectives.

Obviously they were all in the chapter and they're all followed by all the action steps, high level in the development area.

The number one objective is the transportation plans.

And I think the most important piece of that is that multimodal

transportation plan that we're proposing, but it also is setting up how we want to go about doing area plans and corridor plans as well.

So really important, the planning function of what we're doing with transportation.

The second objective there is really focused on how we want to build out our bike and ped network.

The third is about transit service.

The fourth is really about the personal vehicle travel and how we want to make sure that road network works.

And then the fifth one there is about regional and inner city transportation.

This is looking at our primary roads, our highways and interstates as well as

airports and rail and how we want to integrate that into the system.

Then we've got the safety objective and how we want to move forward with safety, improving safety for users of the system.

And finally, our goal related to greenhouse gases and climate change and how transportation is so important to addressing our climate goals.

Moving on to the rural area, really, as I said, our priority with the rural area is to invest in projects that are going to improve safety.

And we also, in concert with that, want to maintain that rural character on those roads.

We want to improve the rural transit system, but I want to highlight that what we really want to do here is increase rural area residents' connections to things like commuter services.

So I'm kind of looking at this objective we have here, wondering if maybe we might want to

Think about the wording of that so that everyone understands what we're trying to do is not create new transit routes, fixed route transit that's going out into the rural area, that we want to focus our transit system in the rural area on these commuter routes, things that are already out there, Afton Express,

you know, the connect routes that John operates and see them where they could stop in rural areas and putting parking rides out there.

So really just giving access to those services, but also keeping in mind things like paratransit, which is a need that we have in the rural area and making sure that we can keep providing a service like that.

So then we get into the traffic fatalities and serious injuries, which I mentioned before is a major concern in the rural areas.

and improve the rural area community members equitable access to walking and biking opportunities.

So this is really recognizing that those people that live in the rural area also would like places where they can walk and bike safely and a lot of our rural roads are missing that.

So finding some sort of program where we can identify some important resources out there that we can enhance for people.

Thank you.

We've, of course, transportation hits on several of our chapters, including both land use chapters, environmental stewardship, thriving economy and housing.

So you can see how this is starting to all weave together.

Our schedule coming up, we're here today to talk about transportation with you all.

We'll be looking to May 28th to talk to board about the same issue and get their feedback.

And then our last chapter is cultural resources, which you'll be getting via email in the next couple of days.

We'll be coming to you on the 27th of May for that and board on the 24th.

And last but not least, we have several ways that folks can engage with AC44 primarily through the Engage Albemarle website is the best resource to get up to date information.

So our chapters are shared there, any engagement activities, work sessions will continue to be posted on the main page.

And then you can always sign up for emails and or newsletters.

So with that, I'm going to go back to our chapter focus topics.

Great.

Really helpful.

Thank you.

It was a great chapter, too.

A lot to pore through.

Do you all want to start with, typically we start with just some high level questions, if there are any clarifying questions that we might have for staff.

I'm curious in the rural area, are there any roads that flood a lot?

If the answer is yes, has it raised a level where we need to be looking at mitigating that through this work here?

Yeah, that's a good point.

I think maybe that's partially wrapped into the idea of safety, making sure that our roads are safe, I think, and keeping them out of floodplain.

But I agree, it's an element that we should be concerned with.

A point the staff is

I'm not sure if it raises the point where you have to be explicit as opposed to implicit.

Thank you.

I think that's a really important point.

It's something that I've thought about a lot.

A lot of railroads, they were built back in the day, sort of the path of least resistance.

A lot of them were put right next to streams.

And I don't know if it's practical at all, but I know that even on my road, on Sugar Ridge, I've long thought that it would be nice to actually take that road away from the stream where it is, purchase another route to take the road, to bring it away from.

I don't know,

You know, how we can think about things like that.

Yeah, I wonder, you know, if I mean, there's a section here obviously talks about greenhouse gas emissions.

So that's kind of going towards the sustainability end.

Tara, if I could, that will be addressed in our next session.

We're going to be talking about cultural resources and then also our response to climate change and community health.

Yeah, that's great.

I wondered also, as you were saying, the design I think you were talking about of roads, if we're talking about 100-year floods, what does that really mean now?

Right.

I mean, I know that something that's like actually shows up now as a criteria and smart scale.

Um, they are talking about that, uh, trying to design roads that are more resilient to flooding, especially when you have the state level, you're looking at a lot of stuff down the coastal zone.

Um, but obviously Mr. Murray's point, extremely, uh, expensive to move roads, especially to like get them out of a stream Valley.

In some respects, with all the priorities that we're competing against, I'm curious how much resources we really have sometimes to be able to deal with some of those issues.

There's also situations where the culverts are now undersized, where the type storms are getting.

So that's not necessarily moving a road, but I can think of multiple roads that are blocked because the road, the creek is jumping, the outside, it's hitting, the culverts are full and it's going across the road.

If the culvert was bigger, the creek could still stay in its lane, if you will.

Those places do.

Yeah, we skipped to the last bullet on here, but those are things that are good.

Some clarifying questions about some of the action steps.

And actually, I think the multimodal plan, sort of taking all this and making a multimodal plan probably answers my first question, which is like, there's a lot of action items I was gonna ask if there's sort of some priorities, but it sounds like kind of the, that plan will sort of elicit some of the priorities as we go.

I was just curious about some of the terminology and some things that I haven't really come across before, and maybe others,

We all know what these all mean, but I was just curious about a few things if you don't mind indulging.

One was in 2.2 talking about pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure.

Identify projects suitable as low plan, no plan projects.

So low plan, no plan are projects that we can, that might be smaller and faster to implement and that we may be able to do as a county in conjunction with VDOT with very little construction detail, if you will.

and then also looking at 4.1, 4.2 where we're talking about efficiency and connectivity of vehicular traffic.

I was curious to hear more about what intelligent transportation systems and travel demand management, what these systems kind of look like and how they operate.

without having to go bald.

I was on the same page.

I googled a bunch of these.

Oh, good.

ITS, Intelligent Transportation Systems, I think that's really referring to things like connected signal systems, corridor signal systems, that can actually fluctuate and change their pattern based on the amount of traffic they're seeing at certain times.

You even see now that some people are looking at AI as a possible opportunity for

You know, a system being able to learn how traffic patterns work and adapting signal timings to adjust to that.

So that's really what ITS is.

Travel Demand Management, it sounds high-tech, but it's actually something that we see a lot already.

It's things like utilizing park and rides and ride share programs.

In the action step there, it does talk about the Charles Albemarle MPO and TJPDC, they actually have a program to help do that.

that connects riders and supports van pools.

And I think one of the things is in a road system that we have is kind of mature and very expensive to expand.

How do you get more efficiency out of that system?

So that's both those things you're trying to do.

Yeah, for sure.

One of the, and with fewer state resources available for any expansion, I might add, at least based on what we saw this year and the budget coming down the pike.

There's a part on daylighting some cul-de-sacs that was sort of further down in there.

at least for bikes and peds and I was wondering if there's anything I didn't see anything in here about sort of daylighting cul-de-sacs or neighborhoods that only have one way in one way out for actual cars.

Yeah, I think they're great opportunities and something that when we talk about our zoning code and ways we can update our zoning code, those requiring those connections are something that we can work on so when projects do come out, when development projects come in that are pushed by the private sector, we can work with them to try and create those.

As you say, it's something that's very expensive if we try and do it as a

County, but they're opportunities.

And I think part of that idea with the improving vehicular connections, I think that's really trying to get at that, trying to make sure that we've got a network or more of a gridded system.

I know it can't be a perfectly gridded system, but something with those connections to give people more options to get around.

Yeah, not everybody in my neighborhood would agree with me, but it's really difficult to only have one way in and out.

And I find that personally very frustrating sometimes.

And there's a surprising number of neighborhoods just like that, not just the ones from the 60s.

And then the last thing, it's not even really a question, but it's something I was thinking about looking at the section.

We've had a lot of conversation here and elsewhere about microtransit and microcat in particular.

And I don't know if it would make any kind of difference on kind of a cost per rider basis, but something that I found kind of interesting was UVA's transportation system has kind of the UTS on demand for nighttime that operates kind of like MicroCat in that it's not fixed routes, but it's only like 50 particular destinations.

And so, you know, it's like you can go from here to here, here, here, here, but like, you know, it's not going to come to your doorstep, but it'll get, you know, kind of in the neighborhood.

Just to kind of continue to riff off a couple of your thoughts, there were a couple places as you're saying that and I'm trying to figure out who the audience is or will eventually be for this because there's some things in here that I think maybe many of us get like understand the the acronyms like TIA

micromobility, ADA, PRO, P-R-O-W-A-G, C-A-M-P-O, yeah, ABC, all of those.

I think that's what we're hearing we take for granted that we know what those things are.

Yes, I remember some of our colleagues have suggested that you might want to think about collapsing some things, like put some things together.

For instance, I was suggesting to you under development areas is to look at some wordsmithing on objectives one and two, because they're basically saying the same thing.

But I think there's probably a way that you could do that.

and then objectives three and five, that there's probably some language there that you could tame that down a bit and sort of make it a little, perhaps take some of the, by combining it, take some of the length out of it, the length out of it.

Then under the rural areas, objectives one and three, perhaps think about if that's possible to just perhaps collapse them together and then they complement each other and they could just flow to one and I've got other things once we go through them.

as we go through the, I will say that the explanation that was much more palatable to me than the document.

And I can get into my annoyances then, but what you did in presenting it to us, if there's a way that you could put that into a chapter, I think would feel

much more future focused and taking into consideration the various things that have come to us as opposed to much of this that just feels like, please don't ask me to have to consider this yet again when we've considered this those many times before.

These seem to be the same kind of discussions we've had either over the course of many years that I will come to a point where I say, some of what our issue is is that we're using 29 for several things.

That's a function of a decision that was made in the 80s.

Right.

and so unless we can do something that talks about here's the traffic that's through traffic, which is not even mentioned here and here's the traffic that is a connection to either local but also the surrounding communities, how do we deal with some of those issues?

And so that's part of like, you know, we've got a lot of traffic that comes through this community that's through traffic

that we would be having very different conversations about how we were managing our traffic and also how we would be managing our land if some of that traffic had been diverted someplace else in the county.

Well, across my street, but that's neither here nor there.

Right.

And we also have this suburban development that has isolated neighborhoods as little islands.

That's right.

And then now we're trying to kind of convert them into an urban grid retroactively, which is really hard to do.

And that's the piece for me when I was reading this.

It's like we've got some pieces here that unless we can retrofit,

I don't want to talk about multimodal.

and when you show me page seven and I see that multimodal makes up 4% of the transportation, commuting transportation and we're not effectively dealing with the 66%.

That's when I think you start talking about quality of life.

That's when I think you start talking about how are we making this place a place that is dealing with the issues that are embedded in our culture, embedded in our community that this is really nice.

but we're not solving some of the, as Karen said, we're not solving some of the severe issues that are related to the disconnected, the disparate development areas.

That's the piece that I was hoping to see.

We do have the goal of trying to connect, like when you get a new development, trying to find a connection between two subdivisions.

But that's not the piece.

The subdivision is not the piece I'm talking about.

How do we connect Crozet?

How do we facilitate travel between Crozet and tops and north of the Rivanna?

How do we get people to the airport?

without having to drive your cars.

I mean, we're just talking about what's the quality of life thing that we're trying to do here.

And many of, I've heard many of us talk about how do we get people out of cars?

Right, like one of the sub actions I suggest in my edits was why don't we have any commuting opportunities to go to the airport?

Or to the train station.

I don't know if it has the connection.

I know we talked about the airport, but I was looking for it in the language it talked about providing access, you know,

That's what I put it under too.

It only said the train station.

I was looking for a transit also to the airport.

People park their cars for seven days at whatever it is, nine bucks a day.

Well, they don't want to leave their car there all week.

I don't know if Charlottesville is doing it, but we're getting sidetracked.

There's a lot of hotels that now participate and you actually park in the hotels and they shuttle you over there.

I don't know if anywhere around Charlottesville they do it.

In this community, I fly to all these other airports and I get off and I can get places on a bus, a metro rail, a hotel shuttle.

I get here and I've got Uber or a cab.

Begging your friends to get you.

Well, it's interesting because Mr. Bivins, you know, I think you're sort of talking about one of the central themes and it should be coming up in

coming through, we would hope it was coming through, is that, yeah, 66% of commuters are, you know, single occupancy vehicle, and we're gonna try and add 31,000 people to this development area or county over the next 20 years.

So how do you do that without expanding the road network?

And I think that's really what we're trying to directly take on by saying, I think we're certainly gonna always encourage and support

people who drive and need to drive.

I mean, I just think that's who we are as a culture, as a country, and then we're not trying to in any way, shape or form look adversely at people driving.

But to be able to accommodate these other folks, we're going to have to look for other solutions.

And certainly transit and biking are opportunities in the relatively small area we're in.

Now, will we have a light rail that

No, we won't have a light rail to the airport either.

So I mean, I think some of our things are sort of commiserative with the size of the community we're in.

Anyhow, point being, I would have hoped that that message sort of came through, how we sort of recognize the limitations that are placed upon us as a community of being able to expand the road network to accommodate more and more drivers and recognize that that's going to be tougher as we get denser.

We really have to focus on developing a strong plan that will connect these activity centers, that will connect these destinations that people need to be and afford opportunities to use some other mode of transportation to get around.

Yeah, it's like there's outside in and inside in.

So it's like outside commuters coming in, how do you solve that?

That's partly the affordable housing conversation, right?

Bringing people into Aspen from the work for people who live here.

Supporting regional transit.

Supporting regional transit.

So then there's the inside in piece, the part where there are commuters internally that are moving around.

And then there really is, I mean, that's the human part of it.

Then there's the goods.

We move a lot of goods on 29.

We can pretend that it's all about people coming in from Forest Lakes or Crozet, but it's not.

We move a lot of traffic down 29 because of a decision that was made.

that had a tremendous impact on how we use our land.

But now we're trying to retrofit, I'm just going to use everything north of the Rivanna River, that there's

We can hope that they, I'm not even going to pretend that, they're not going to, they're not going to bicycle or walk into the city.

It's not going to happen.

And so, and so my, my piece is, is on the margin.

I understand exactly what you're saying, Mr. Barnes.

On the margin, how do we sort, how do we both sit in a place where we need to improve, improve a system that was not even thought about?

because there was never any consideration that it was going to have to compete along the various means that it's having to compete now in addition to doing what we're looking for the

for the 30,000 people who are coming here, which is what 10% of what we already have here.

How do we blend those two together?

And that's what I was excited when I heard the conversation, because it really was looking at, it felt to me like it was thinking, having some time to think deeply and perhaps,

in new ways about how we're going to solve some of these.

And this feels still very task focused on issues that I don't believe we can solve with these things for either money or the ability to get it done.

So that was what I was.

Can I just jump out of sequence here, if you don't mind?

Um, because I, I had similar take, uh, as commissioner Bivins in terms of when I first read this, um, and I had to work with some colleagues that helped me work through some of this yesterday in our call.

But I did think that our staff's presentation today was very concise and succinct in actually outlining the process that you've gone through.

And what we have in front of us is a very high level, really it's just a very high level concept of here's our approach.

So I actually think that we're already talking about bullet point number one for sure, but also number three.

And that's what we're getting into now, right?

So do you agree with this approach?

Now, there may be things that you believe that are missing here, and I agree with Commissioner Bivins.

And this goes to bullet three.

I think the crux of this is that this isn't the answer.

These are just the high-level approaches

and do we think that there's something missing here and there may be, you got some violent points and how do we begin to address some of the legacy issues that we're trapped with, like every other community, right?

I mean, we're not unique in that way.

It's that people made decisions 30, 40, 50 years ago that everybody has to live with, particularly in transit, right?

And so I think the answer is,

Making sure we have the right approach, which you're asking for here, as we move into the implementation piece, that that's going to start to identify the high priority projects and initiatives to address.

We're not going to be able to do everything.

That's one of my questions, which I'll stop now and let Mr.

Lonnie, jump in, but I do think that that's what piece that I struggled with is this is high level.

We're going to get into the more detailed approach and implementation strategies.

Do we have the right overall tact here or are we missing a few components?

So just jumping on, you know, what people have been talking about connectivity and tying the pieces together.

I mean, one of the things that also brought up in the park section was, I think we really need a parks greenway fund as a voluntary alternative, you know, we have

We often have times when people propose, they say, OK, we're going to put a bike lane, but it goes nowhere.

And it's not even really where anybody wants a bike lane or they want a sidewalk.

Where they really want the sidewalk is just down the street.

And we see that all the time at Crozet.

There's really high priority places that they want, but there's never going to be a development there that's going to allow them to build that bike lane or sidewalk.

But if we had a fund as a voluntary alternative, maybe we don't get a,

You can make a real park yes and or you can make a real you can make a real greenway or real you know system so so that's one thought on that.

I guess we're getting into the chapter focus topics and so

Well, some of the things I just want to say too, I mean, I really appreciate the addition of the Green Streets action at 7-1.

We have that in Crozet.

I think that that's a great feature of downtown Crozet.

I think it's a good model of a Green Street.

I'm glad that biodiversity has been taken into consideration and road paving.

But I think biodiversity could also be extended to other road management.

You know, often roadsides are important refuges for rare plants.

Because of the fire suppression, we used to have regular fires, you know, in our woodlands.

You know, there's, they would maintain these open spaces where you'd have rare plants.

And now a lot of these have been confined to roadways.

In the past year, my wife and I actually found an S1 or critically imperiled species in Albemarle County on a county roadway.

And we worked with the VDOT to actually put no mow signs on that area so they wouldn't be herbicides or mowed during the wrong season to protect that S1 species.

It would be nice if we were, as a county, more proactive and thinking about how we're maintaining biodiversity on our roadways.

In regards to the bullet point two about a program to support active recreation on some rural roads, obviously I support that.

I do have some misgivings about through the plan that everywhere that walking and biking is referenced in the rural area that it always is paired with recreation.

We don't call out recreational vehicle travel, although obviously all the traffic on the Bluish Parkway is recreational, except maybe emergency vehicles.

On a given Saturday in my neighborhood,

90% of the traffic, the vehicular traffic is recreational.

People going to restaurants, to wineries, to take their kids to soccer practice, all that is recreational technically.

But we're not calling that out as recreational.

And so I do, there's this little section here what says,

Biking and walking on rural roads does occur often for recreational exercise rather than access jobs or other resources.

But these are valid uses of roadways, and it feels apologetic.

And I get it, and I'm glad that we're affirming those uses as valid uses of our roadways.

But at the end of the day, if a runner, a walker, or a cyclist is on a rural road,

Then that's the thing, right?

There's a user that's on the road and we should plan for that user being on the road.

I fear a little bit that overemphasizing the recreational aspect kind of puts them in another class that sort of suggests that they're of lesser value.

Can I just ask you a question?

Yeah, I think recognizing just in this spirit of equity that it's not just that a lot of the

A lot of the activity in the rural area, particularly on weekends, is recreational.

The question is, when we call something as recreation, why are we calling out?

Are we calling out because we want to reach out to the user groups in question?

I'd love to see an action item here about being proactively engaged groups for walking, running, and cycling in the area on key decisions when we have key decisions being made.

So I think that would be a reason to call that out.

Yeah, I agree.

The only thing I would want to not lose is the fact that if you're driving a car, it's different from a safety standpoint than if you're riding a bike or you're jogging or you're riding a horse.

So when we're talking about

I think one thing that would be a positive thing to either leverage, I know that there are existing groups,

that discuss, you know, there's the bike pad group that the meets.

Yeah, absolutely.

The one that's run out of the PEC, I think.

Yes.

So I think actively participating in those groups actively, but I think even if there was a county advisory group, I know sometimes people get sick of advisory groups, but having groups that actually represent non-vehicular traffic, that might be a good way to make sure that we have good representation when key decisions are made.

I think also an action item would be good is

When there are rezonings or special use permits, other things, particularly in the rural area, but not exclusively, it would be nice in our staff reports if there was some analysis of, while this is an area that's highly used by cyclists or runners or even horseback riders, let's take that in consideration when this special use permit comes through.

You know, right now we never get any, you know, there'll be vehicle counts, but there's never any discussion of roads used by those other groups.

So I mean, I think explicitly, you know, putting that as an action item that we would do that I think would be a really big game changer.

and particularly when it comes to things like road paving.

The other thing I'll say in here too, I think one thing of the rural area I think would be really helpful, we have a certain number of multi-use parking lots that are extremely helpful.

There's one over

A lot of them are privately owned.

There's one over in Whitehall that's used frequently by runners and cyclists, but it's also used by the utility companies.

Whenever someone needs to come in to fix the electric lines or whatever, those same lots are highly used by that.

There's one over in Dick Woods.

There's one, but there's a bunch of them around the county.

It'd be nice for us to be a little bit more intentional about those multi-use lots.

I would just remind you when we tried to do the,

the ride share off of near Patterson Mill.

The number of letters that we got from people saying don't put that over there was quite astounding to me because that's really an isolated place.

I mean, you'd be hard pressed to see that parking lot off of Patterson on Patterson Mill near where the V dot lane is.

And so

Well, I mean, I think that's a valid point.

I think, you know, right now, I just, I think there's these great places that we have, like Miller School has offered this great lot over in Dickwood's Road, that's highly used.

There's, you know, as I say, just, I think we're more proactive as a county and recognizing the importance of these, these places where people park and meet.

You know, Mr. Murray, I'm listening to you talking about a wide range of things.

Obviously, there have been multiple times over the past year, I've heard you talk about some of the rural streets in your area where a little bit of improvement would make a huge difference for the recreational component.

I think we try to say in a presentation here, I think it's something we heard from the board at one point is that

recognizing that we are in a sort of constrained funding environment.

We can't do everything.

In the rural areas, what do we want to try and get done?

And so it was a long list of things that you provided to us, everything from plant protection to all kinds of other stuff.

And I think what we're trying to do in the comp plan is if, to use Mr. Bivins' term, a to-do list,

is to try and take this chapter and say, I mean, you could spend money all day on everything.

But where do we want to spend our money?

Where are we going to call out as some key places to put some focus on there?

In part, because if we don't have focus, especially in the development area, I fear that our efforts will be dispersed.

And at the end of the day, it won't be as transformative as we need to be to address some of the things that Mr. Bivins had said.

So coming back to the rural area, we were really trying in this regard

Recognize that some places are heavily used for recreational purposes and maybe that is one place where we would put our efforts.

I used to live in Esmond.

You couldn't walk on the street.

People were flying up and down the street.

We put signs up, you know, slow kids playing, people ripping the signs down.

Yeah.

But we're not asking to put a sidewalk in Esmont as much as it might be a great idea.

It's too few people and we don't have the money to pay a thousand dollars millennial foot for a sidewalk in Esmont.

I think if I could, can you just this little baby, I think, allow this continued conversation, but also kind of direct us on to the first bullet.

There was a slide, I think, Kevin, that you had that talked about the differences between the rural areas and the development areas.

It was almost like a side by side.

There you go.

Well, yeah, I was thinking, so these are the challenges that are outlined.

Was there one that talked about the implement

There it was.

It just passed it.

Yeah, there you go.

Maybe that's it.

Just thinking about ways.

So what I think

Michael, what you're saying is sort of identifying the what like what are the things that want to be in here and then is maybe the multimodal to your point when we get to the multimodal plan that may be the how but at some point in there we're going to have to add some priorities right and some recommendations in terms of that so maybe if it's helpful maybe to sort of think about the what in the rural area which I think is what you're asking and then the what in the development areas we can kind of

You know, increasing road margins.

I mean, that's, you know, they're only about, I'd say, a dozen, you know, really highly used areas for walking, running and cycling.

And so it's, and most of these are already, they're used because they are predominantly safe routes, with the exception of, you know, Route 76, which is just insanely dangerous.

So,

You know, really a lot of times it's just little tiny sections.

If you could add six inches, 12 inches to the margin of the road, you can make a place dramatically safer.

If you could work with a cooperating landowner nearby who owns the property, say like, just make a little trail just off the road to get someone off the road so they can meet the next connection.

And we had a great meeting recently about Ridge Road and some of the things that could be done potentially to make that safer.

The connection between Ridge and Deca, for example.

So that's what we're talking about, like little tweaks.

I definitely would not expect or want, you know, sidewalks and bike lanes in the rural area unless, you know, except for, you know, when we get a regional transportation network like the Three Knops Trail, that makes a lot of sense, obviously.

I think it may make sense, the connection between, you know, you have Jarmon's Gap is a widely used greenway that connects up to the parkway.

Having, you know, bike lanes that go from the Crozet development area to Jarmon's Gap, that might make sense because it's so close to a development area and so highly used.

But otherwise, you know, I think that we're talking about small tweaks here, but most importantly,

do no harm, right?

So many times I've seen over in Keene, there were some areas that were widely, still are widely useful walking and running.

And when one of those roads was before the board to be paved, one of the, one person came by, you know, came up and speak, to speak and said, oh, well, we need to pave this road to make it safer for, you know, I see bikes all the time on this road.

We need to pave this to make it safer for them.

and no one questioned that.

And if you look at that map, I think two of those accidents that were described there where someone has serious injury, it looks like they might've actually been in that keen area.

And so I think, you know, do no harm, I think is an important part of this, recognizing these uses exists and not taking actions that would bring harm, would eliminate those uses or, you know, impair the,

I was just going to bring it back to development areas whenever we Yeah, the only I'll just add one other thing in rural areas and if anybody else has anything just thinking about sort of goals as you as you think about the multimobile transportation plan and the sort of how I guess in a sense

Well, to me, like the goal should be something like we've talked around most of these safety and part of safety on rural roads is awareness.

So thinking about signage and those

If I'm biking on a rural road and I'm supposed to stay 18 inches from the edge, it's hard to do that.

A lot of people don't do that.

But if the bikers are aware of what's going on and the people on the road are aware, it's helpful.

So we talked a little bit about connectivity, so that bigger picture of how you connect back into the development areas and having the possibility of identifying ways to do that.

Sustainability, talked about that.

Economic vitality, supporting access to jobs, housing and commerce with sort of on the internal again, getting back to connectivity.

And then maximizing the use of existing infrastructure and thinking about how that is best handled.

Ways to avoid having to look for additional funding, but ways to maximize the use of existing infrastructure.

To me, part of that is getting back to your Strava comments from the past of identifying, having a map and understanding where those use patterns are.

And as you mentioned, you talked about prioritizing, like that should be a guide to how we prioritize things that we do in the rural areas.

And then the last thing is, which I always just thinking about benchmarks, what are other communities doing in this kind of setting, in this kind of the subject, you know,

You mentioned, I think, or someone mentioned having user groups come in.

Maybe it's not another citizen advisory committee, but it's somebody who's made up of the users that can provide you some insight.

The one thing I left out though, just real quickly, you know, you also have communities like Batesville where, you know, they have pedestrian needs as well.

And when I lived in Batesville, you know, when there was a big snowstorm or there was some, you know, weather situation or something going on, the ability to walk to the Batesville store was really important.

and now I know they've had a need for this Crossroads, which keeps getting obliterated by VDOT every day, but it's sort of an example of that connectivity to what we call the Crossroads community, right?

Yeah, I mean that and also even just in North Garden or wherever you are where there's access to physicians,

you know, emergency services, things like that.

Yeah, makes a lot of sense.

I do have a couple.

Just doubling back on the signage, I jotted that down.

If that's something that should rise to an action, share the road, any of those kinds of signs to start to communicate with our drivers.

But I wanted to point our attention to, I guess it's RA Transportation 1, and then it's Objective 1.3.

Discouraged new roads or road paving that would fragment core habitats, impair roads used by pedestrians, yada, yada, yada, the last sentence.

New roads should be for agricultural and forestry purposes.

I'm not sure if I agree with that, if we're trying to look 20 years out.

That really stood out to me.

I think we all had a conversation, it wasn't that long ago, where we were talking about the 20-acre allotments for development.

And I could see 20 years from now, there's a development of eight homes on two acres each, for example, or a little community of tiny homes that's gentled on the landscape that might require a rose.

And I want to be careful how we paint this picture of

So I might be able to clarify it a little bit so and I can give a really practical example

If you look at Fox Mountain, which is actually, you know, it's identified in the biodiversity action plan as an area, as a large core.

There's a road that's on, that was on the paving list on Fox Mountain Road.

There's this gravel road that goes over Fox Mountain that already from the moment it got listed on the paving list, for sale signs started going up.

And for sales signs for not what would be affordable homes, but for people who want to put a big house in the mountains so they can have big scenic views.

Now, there's sort of a natural progression that happens in a rural area where first you have a farmer that goes in, then becomes a gravel road.

And then it becomes paved.

The moment it becomes paved, you see subdivisions sprout up all along that road.

And there's nowhere clearer than this than if you look at the two Dick Woods, right?

There's Dick Woods where it comes from Ivy to Miller School Road.

And there's a lot of subdivision and residential development.

If you look at the gravel part of Dick Woods that starts at Miller School and then goes to Nelson County, that's mainly farms.

and so what happens is that when you take these gravel roads and you pave them, you're accelerating development.

Yeah.

I don't get that.

Right, which we know.

Weird.

Yeah.

In fact, I think that piece of property has been sold for an enormous amount of money.

But yes, it was weird.

And those people there got fiber on the road where those of us who live closer can't get fiber because we're not going to pay for it.

But the two pieces of property that you talk about on Dick Woods Road, I mean, there was a decision there to allow those two properties to subdivide.

really big lots.

And so it's not the paving of the road that went from 64 to Dick Woods to the middle center there.

It's really what happened.

It's really sort of the conversation about the development of those two pieces of property and the people who were asking to develop them.

And so I don't know necessarily that it's a chicken and an egg thing as far as the paving or it's who owns the henhouse.

I think we can have a reasonable conversation about places where

there can be different kinds of development in the rural area.

I think there's a great conversation that we'd had, you know, we can get, you know, how we can have more small lots as opposed to these large farm states.

I think, you know, I agree 100% on that.

We need to have that conversation.

But I think that's different from the areas that we know are right now large forests that are right now unfragmented.

because when you have an area that's unfragmented, it has less, there's less introduction of invasive species.

There's, you know, wildlife aren't being constantly run over by cars.

So, you know, you have much more biodiversity in those areas.

You know, and you have places that are, you know, safer for other recreational uses.

So there may be places in the rural area that already have a lot of roads, that already have a lot of infrastructure where

And maybe that's what the language has to be, just the way it's written right now.

I don't agree with it, right?

Because it makes it sound like no, flat out no.

And I respect everybody's perspective here.

And thank you for that.

It's very enlightening.

So maybe it's just the way it's worded, like maybe it's strategic, right, where we develop more homes or whatever.

And I need you to be careful with that wording as well, because

that's not the intention of rural area, but I can't sit here and say 20 years out, I don't want any new homes in the rural area.

That doesn't even seem realistic, right?

So maybe it's just a wording there and how it is.

Were they trying to refer to, was that new roads referring to like a road that goes to a forest, to a logging site?

I feel like the others would be temporary roads, right?

Maybe.

Yeah, but you can rewrite this to say something like discourage new roads or road paving that would fragment core habitats and pair roads used by or pair roads used by pedestrians period.

And then you could say when paving is deemed necessary prioritize spot improvements period.

I think we encourage additional residential development.

I think that that's valuable.

Maybe it just takes some rephrasing.

There is actually in the Rural Rustic Roads Program, there's actually a line that says that in there in the authorization that they say, whereas this won't, you know, we know of no development that's going to occur.

You might know the exact line, but it basically says that it's not going to cause additional development on the road or that there's no anticipated development on that road.

and really it's talking about encourage additional residential development in agricultural areas or additional residential development in, you know, unfragmented forests.

That's really what we're talking about.

Then we have to agree that paving roads does encourage additional residential development.

And I'm not sure 100% if it does.

I can only point to my own.

Yeah.

Would you say?

It will develop it pretty well, actually.

Zoning is what really controls it.

So I don't, personally, I don't care if it's in here or not.

It's kind of an outlier, like reading along and then we can put it.

That's that one clarifying question, which was 3.6, where it says investigate educational programming intended to improve user safety, yada yada yada.

What does that mean?

Is that is that just a Google search?

What we're

But looking at possibly working with like our Almarcan Police Department on educational opportunities, even if it's for like new drivers.

But the idea there is that what

And it's frustrating to me that I see this all the time.

But in our rural areas in particular, road fatalities are often the result of unbuckled drivers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I don't want to pick it apart.

I mean, I wrote that as a general comment to go through this whole thing.

And there's a bunch of things that say explore, investigate.

They're not, they're so vague.

I really just like they beat this drum every time, but there's a number of the objectives that are so vague.

I don't know what they're saying.

Yeah.

Well, that's, is that where the multimodal Google search industry, I'm sorry.

No, I was just asking if that additional detail is what we get to next, Karen.

Yeah, go for it.

Were you done?

Yes, sir.

I just wanted to add, to Karen's point, that I did find a lot of the language that suggests that there is a

A very generalized approach at a particular item that we're going to explore, but are you actually going to implement something or are you going to facilitate something?

So I think maybe take a look at that terminology that's not so, because you can explore many things and not come up with anything tangible.

So

I got a couple, I mean, a lot of them didn't cover what I had marked up here, but going back to, and this is in page 16 under how the multimodal transportation plan would be implemented.

And the first bullet there is prioritizing the infrastructure investments.

And so I think that that's key because that is obviously the outcomes that we want to

to have come out of the multimodal plan is what are the actionable first steps, right?

What are the highest priority things?

Because we know, as has been mentioned here today, we don't have the resources to do everything that we need.

We can probably all come up with a dozen things that we feel are high priority, right?

And so 12 times however many people we have up here, it's a lot.

We know that we're gonna have to pare that down significantly.

And so what are they?

And I think what I would also suggest is evaluate the process that we go through to fund.

And I know we have a, it's an always a safe process, but let's think about that.

How do we approach it?

How can we increase the possibility of actually getting the funds, right?

And so I would, whether it's a formal process, but at least an evaluation of

Should we just keep doing the same things over and over again?

Or are there some things that we might be able to think about?

Can I tag onto that?

I was going to ask this at the end of the session, but since you brought it up, I mean, do we really think that there's, we're going to be getting money from the federal government to the state for transportation projects, given the current administration?

I mean, the Federal Highway Administration, they're canceling all the federal grants, so they're not going to be giving new ones.

That's my observation.

My experience is that things change over time.

I think nothing will change over the next four years.

And this is like, aren't we updating this every five, I feel like we need, it's like the elephant in the room when I'm reading this, that there's not going to, what are we going to do as a county?

And maybe when you get to your work plans, it's like things that you have to compete for funding with when there's no funds coming from the federal government.

They're just ending grant programs.

Or anything that people need to need it the most.

Yeah.

Well, obviously, we've been working on this plan for several years.

This chapter is a reflection of stuff we did.

It takes four more years.

I understand.

I understand the frustration.

I share it, too.

I think the Luis's point is he's talking about how do we as a community try and put ourselves in the best position to take advantage of certain funding programs, right?

And our priority should match up with that.

I think there's a little statement in one of the sessions talking about like using smart scale grants, really try and go deal with some of the vehicular solutions that we have, because the current administration has made that a high priority of that program.

If we go back several years previously, other administrations had made maybe some of the multimodal stuff a little bit more eligible for funding.

So they've made changes there.

And of course, the federal government, the elephant in the room here is the changing of funding priorities we're seeing at the national level.

Who knows what will be next year.

I think for a community of ourselves, it kind of comes back to

Some of the things that Mr. Bivins was talking about, how does it come cost clear what you want to try and achieve?

And I think what we're trying to say, and hopefully, and I'd be interested to sort of maybe hear why we failed to be clear enough about that, but it is we're going to have another 30,000 people in 20 years.

We've got the road system that we have.

We're not going to be able to significantly increase that road system.

How do we start to try and find other ways to accommodate

the new people we want to welcome into our community and the resulting congestion that's going to come from that if we don't develop these other ways.

So I think that the fact of the funding aspect of it embedded in here also is a recognition of either we're picking up this low plan no plan I mean on a small level low plan no plan from Henrico County where they control their own streets and they do a lot of these things it's like they found it cheaper to sometimes go and just put the improvement out there

as opposed to having a big engineering exercise before they did it and use this cost savings and the engineering thing to fix whatever mistakes they made when they went to try and fix the problem.

In other words, it's almost easier just to do it for small crosswalks, sidewalk patches, things like that.

That's one way I think we're trying to be a little bit innovative.

Another way is to recognize that for some of those places in that gap of wanting to build

More multimodal, especially bike facilities or transit facilities, that some of that may ultimately end up being something that we as a community have to fund ourselves or that we use our revenue sharing opportunities to build some of those things and or building up some capacity within the community

to sort of do these projects ourselves as opposed to relying on BDOT to do them.

BDOT's cost of production is very high.

So those kind of things are in the plan.

Yeah.

And so I think they're not.

And I wasn't suggesting, I wasn't trying to, even the way I worded, I wasn't trying to say like, do this or that.

But I do think we need to go beyond our

Let's wait and see what we get from B. Dunn and Smartscale.

Because even if you go back a year, I mean, last year or before this administration and federal government and the cuts, what did we get?

I mean, our higher priorities, none of them got approved, right?

I mean, a lot of it was put on the fifth street, didn't happen.

I think there's a lot of, personally, how would,

VITA needs to reevaluate the way they start to plan projects and when they actually start to cost estimate.

because I think they got it backwards.

It's fraught with potential error and price escalations by the time they actually come to do it.

And then you wind up putting all this time and effort to something that doesn't happen.

And we see it over and over again.

That's what I'm saying.

I think we need to be more creative as a community and say, well, how are we going to get these high priority projects?

If we can get some VITA money, great.

If we can get some federal money, great.

Well, another good example of that is, as you said, P3s, right?

Public private.

Just think about how developer engagement can help get things done and help process that.

One of the things in personal experience is you get these multimodal paths sometimes are a huge amenity.

It's what they want to live in that community.

and there's value that's placed on that.

And so as a development community considers that being implemented, there are other communities that actually have that multimodal as part of their checklist, their site plan checklist.

And if those kinds of things that are actionable, that actually create accountability as you're applying for a site plan can be included in the documents, I think that's very helpful.

aspect of it.

And then just one other thing, a hypothetical project, where, you know, there was a smart scale improvement that was funded, but there was a gap, the developer stepped up to fill that gap.

No, I got excited.

You were talking, it's my fault.

Yeah, so I was also just thinking for some of the smaller level, I don't want to say scale, smaller level things in here like you had trying to have charging stations for electric vehicles.

That's an example of something where maybe we start thinking about incentives more, like putting out that if a developer

proffers or puts in charging stations, they get some kind of density bonus or some benefit to them to do that.

In Charlottesville, when I was on the planning commission there, we added a density bonus if they were within so many feet of a transit stop.

So that we, you know, are trying to encourage development around existing transit infrastructure.

There was a master plan for the trails.

And then we asked developers, try to tie into that trail.

And they, we got it.

People kept tying into the trail, but only because there was a master plan.

So I'm thinking about like we've been talking about bike lanes along roads and you know how to squish all these different users but you know we need to be out of the box a little bit more like maybe there is I don't know what the route is but some regional bike commuter route that's not on the road

that's, you know, through whether we just purchased a ton of land for future military related installations to support NGIC, right?

We have a lot of money to do things when we want to.

So, you know, if you look at Lynchburg, they're lucky because they have a lot of parkland, but they have bike lanes that are bike routes that they put through the parks that turn into commuter routes.

And they weren't even intending that.

and now they're like bike commuting, all these people are bike commuting to work.

So I just think maybe we've just think out of the box.

I liked that idea that I heard earlier tonight from somewhere down that end about, you know, instead of like saying we want this 10 foot paved wide path in front of your property, but maybe it doesn't go anywhere.

Like it runs into a mountain or a wall of rock or something, or someone else's building.

We've had this conversation multiple times lately.

They pay it in lieu of fund that then goes into that Greenway fund, but that we have to do that plan.

Maybe that is something separate or maybe it's part of that master transportation plan.

And hopefully that transportation plan is thinking about off-road transportation as well.

So, but I'm just thinking that we could, and maybe this is later on when you do the master plan, but there's a number of incentives that you could come up with for some of these smaller scale

Yes, so in terms of smaller scale things too, one example in Crozet that I think is important is there's these big things people talk about with roundabouts and other things that we're working on, but I got to tell you one of the things that was

bothering me for years was there's just a little spot on Miller School Road to Crozet Avenue where people were turning right to go to the high schools where people were off-roading because the left turn lane was backing up and blocking all the traffic on Crozet Avenue like all the way back to Crozet.

And so I think there are other places where it's just expanding the turn lane, just making the turn lane a little bit longer.

You know, you could have a huge impact.

And I wish we would do a little bit more on identifying those

There's things where we could, I think some of these turn lanes, they're obvious to the public if we just reached out to some of the people in the community and said, hey, listen, what are your list of things?

And usually by the time VDOT gets around to these things, the turn lane needs to be even longer than they planned.

I was saying development areas a mile or two ago.

And some of the conversation earlier reminded me of Dr. Brown, where we're going, we don't need roads.

But no, to the point that Commissioner Firehock actually was saying, I lived in Madison, Wisconsin.

We had beautiful, just like dedicated bike paths that you could cross the whole city on.

I actually used it as a bike commuter.

I think about that coming from my own neighborhood now, trying to get to where I work, just west of UVA proper.

And it's 12 minutes by car, and it's about five miles.

But if I were to go the only safe way, which uses that bike path along the parkway, it's eight and a half miles.

And it adds a lot because there's just no good crossing at 250 that I think is safe.

But at least somewhere along the path to get to it is not safe.

But I think there's a few things I want to just sort of like

suggest as priorities and I know this is probably a lot of it already will confirm what you're thinking but just things that are on my mind is what Commissioner Bivins was saying earlier about this is predominantly cars as far as how people get around and we can wish for more you know bike use and stuff but it's not easy like you know even where I live like I just said if I were to try and bike to work it would be really a challenge

and I think until we have that infrastructure to make that work, it's predominantly cars.

To that end,

You know, I don't want to just add more lanes to the existing highways.

I think what we can look at, though, is sort of use the stormwater floodplain metaphor, right, with like lots of rivulets and lots of smaller connections alongside in parallel.

We just don't have that much land to do so.

And the developments that we've got, I don't know the creative answer to this, but so many of them are just really constrained and there's no way to get from here to there, even though it's a very short distance as the crow flies.

But if we had more of those kind of grid-ish, obviously now going to be kind of curvy, but grid-ish ways to go places that aren't 29, that aren't hydraulic, we might actually stand a chance of like pulling some of the traffic into neighborhoods and not just, not speeding traffic, but just cars in a way that absorbs some of that without having to go nuts with our highways.

Second,

Sort of a priority I would see, you know, after kind of like making it easier for cars to get around, is the public transportation is really, really difficult in the urban ring of the county, unless you happen to live right next to a bus stop.

But again, just my own example, 12 minutes for me to drive to work, it would take a minimum of an hour and 19 minutes for me to take public transportation work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so I think

Again, looking at microtransit as a key part of that, maybe different versions or hybrid versions of that.

Those are both within the development area of the county and not even crossing north of the Rivanna either.

If it was 24 minutes instead of 12 for me to drive, cool.

But we got to have a way to address that for the people where they live.

I don't know the answer there either, but that is something I hope we can

Yeah, I mean, they mentioned microtransit in here.

Yeah, now there's a lot of great technology for on demand.

The microtransit doesn't need to go up in that neighborhood because no one's asking for it.

Yeah, exactly.

And when we saw some of the cost comparisons on a per writer basis for MicroCat versus some of the actual fixed routes, it actually beat two or three of the fixed routes.

I was surprised.

And then bike commuting again, I think it'd be great.

We have the Rivanna, which is a literal river, and then 250, which is like basically a river in terms of how much it blocks everybody's ability to cross safely north or south.

And until that's addressed, and a lot of that's in the city, I don't know how we get there.

There are more crossings in the city kind of over Locust Grove toward downtown but there's far fewer kind of in the county portion that we can actually like do.

Again though, I'd love to see that and the reason I bring up those kind of points is that just again where we've put our people in the development area is mostly north of the city and so kind of like going north and south up and down from in town to the suburbs is

a lot of the trips.

And then that sort of alludes to the the last thing I'll say about all that is just there are a couple mentions of the city and I think one action item that actually talked explicitly about coordinating with the city but just the the need for city county collaboration on this is is going to be enormous.

There's so much that just can't happen and unless we're talking together about these things sort of all the time.

And I don't know if our priorities are the same as theirs like

I feel like getting people to and from work efficiently and safely is pretty high priority.

Some of the things I read about in the news about the city, I don't know if they really want people to get places.

just period or efficiently.

You know, they're talking about reducing lanes on a major corridor, which is clustered up with traffic often already.

They didn't bother to do the traffic light coordination study years ago.

It's going to be till next year before that's even online.

So it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse to drive through at anything except very off peak hours.

And so

How we take where they are and where we are and align at least enough to have some kind of sensible coordination across the boundaries, I think will be really important going forward.

So I would add to that, again, what I started with earlier, where we are is not where we are.

Where we are is a ring around a destination point.

and that ring brings people from Orange, from Green, from Augusta, from Fluvanna and from the other county in Nelson.

And so to try and solve an Albemarle County problem by ourselves, I think doesn't recognize the severity of the problem.

But it's much larger than 140,000 people.

It's whatever the TJPJ, there's someone here who knows that better than I do.

It's whatever that region is that cost to come through us to get to the major health and education and until we develop more up 29, the major employment area for this region, at this region level.

And so figuring out how to manage both our local traffic and our traffic that comes through us to go someplace is something that I, while it's not necessarily

unfolded in this piece, I would suggest that there be some footnote or some answer that this is not 140,000 person solution here that we're thinking about.

That's the piece that I was being concerned about.

And I say that, many of us have said what our other lives are.

And when I say that and realize that I tried to move us up to North Fork for free building,

And most of my people who were going to go to that free building who were not making six figures were north of town.

It was the six figure employees who live over in that other gated community, not the one on the west, but the one on the east who scotched the deal.

And that's typically how decisions get made around here.

it's the people who live in the upper six figure communities that scotch the deals for the people who don't have six figures.

And we have a lot of people who come here who do not make six figures, who do not make six figures.

And so some of the solutions that I see us doing are really geared towards a more affluent community, which is fine.

I will give you a situation.

I had a conversation with a very passionate young man who was probably gonna go work for something called C3.

I don't know what the C3s are.

I do know what it is.

It's an environmental advocacy group.

Very passionate young man who lives off of Barracks Road and was telling me that he just wanted the sidewalks clean so he could ride his bike.

So he could ride his bike because he couldn't ride his bike anywhere.

And I said, tell me more about this bike riding stuff because you've all heard my thing about I see fewer bike shops.

So I have a hard time believing that there's a lot of people who are commuting by bikes.

I see a lot of

Trenet, thrown by the side of the road, those electric bikes that people can ride.

I don't know what they're called, but they just sort of turn you around.

And he said to me, scooters, thank you.

He said to me, and I challenged him to tell me about a bike that was less than $2,000 that I could actually not be afraid that it would break if I was going to give it to somebody.

And he told me something.

This is a very interesting thing he told me.

He said, I agree.

that most of the people driving bikes, riding bikes to work are the C-suite white males in this community.

This is a white male who was telling me this and so I'm just like be quiet because this guy's telling me about the C-suite.

white males that ride their bikes to their offices and therefore can afford to have that kind of lifestyle.

And so where this narrative, the shaggy dog story is coming through is that as we're thinking about these things, as I think about multimodal, and I think is it really a commuter option?

Is it really truly gonna be a commuter option?

I'm trying to do in my head the functional analysis.

You've got 20% of the people according to page seven who work at home.

There are 66% of the people who are single people, single vehicle occupancy.

How are we going to somehow get the 20% and the 66 out of their house, out of their car, onto a multimodal wheel?

And that's the piece that I've been wrestling to try and say, if you talk about priority, which is why you hear me sort of costically at times say, I don't want to talk about multimodal.

I want to talk about how we're going to move these people more efficiently.

What are the options?

We lost in court over an option that was wonderful for north of town.

Because whatever the paperwork was, and I'll look at the lawyer over here, we couldn't hold the particular development to something that felt like it was good for everybody.

And as a result, all of those people up there don't have a public means or a shared means without it being a private means to come into town.

And if you look at their density, when I looked at the density on the density map, we've got more people north of the Rivanna River than we have anywhere else in the development area, including Pan Tops and the development area of Crozet.

How are we going to get those people options?

how are we gonna provide options for those people so that they can go and do the things that I think is the right thing we're talking about the quality of life.

Transportation is about the quality of life and how do we improve that so that people can go from home to chores, then go from home to recreation, they can enjoy all those scenic views that my colleague to the left of me wants to preserve out in the middle of God knows where and so that they can go do that in ways that is healthy

and that is price sensitive to our community that we want.

And that's the kind of thing that I'm looking for here to answer the questions that are before us, which is why I was sort of pushing so hard on how do we retrofit this?

Well, can I ask a couple of quick ones?

I'm sorry.

I'm not doing this area specific.

No, no, I know.

Because we don't, I don't have the plan.

I don't have the pan tops person here to give the counterpiece.

And I don't feel like doing the Jewett piece.

I'm just, I'm asking staff.

I'm putting before staff.

He don't, he don't, don't even pretend, don't even pretend.

What I was going to say is the elephant in the room, though, is that I think about someone recently who said, we don't have enough roads and transportation to accommodate all of us to commute to Charlottesville.

And what I really wanted to say to that person was, well, really, we need to develop to the point of Crozet.

We have employment centers in Crozet.

So that's outside of this chapter.

but I think really thinking as we develop employment centers, trying to develop employment centers in some of those areas so people don't have to commute to other parts.

I think that that's a big piece here.

I also would say too, I think we need to re, I wish I could go back in time and get people to just rethink the continually adding more and more lanes to 29.

That was a horrible solution.

I think we need to really rethink that whole philosophy we've made

If I could to Commissioner Murray, I think you are making a really good point that I just want to make sure that everyone recognizes there and responding to Commissioner Bivins.

Keep in mind that we don't see any one of these action steps is a silver bullet.

Everything that you see here has to be looked at holistically, and we've got to pick and choose what the right solutions are.

And they're not always in the transportation chapter.

They're very often, I mean, a lot of what I'm hearing from the members of the commission here are questions that are answered in the land use chapter about how are we

and a housing chapter in the economic development chapter.

So just keep that in mind that when we get down to say implementation, we're going to be looking at things that pull from all of those sections and really look at it.

So where are we providing places for people to live so they don't have to commute from green or where are we giving people jobs in different areas that at the activity center idea is really focused on that.

And the transportation chapter is supposed to be

emphasizing the activity centers and how we build those up.

So I really appreciate that line of question.

Yeah, I'm glad you did.

I was going to say, well, it facilitates, so the transportation tend to facilitate the activity centers, right?

So they work off of each other.

They need each other.

So it's not standalone by itself.

And that's, I mean, we can, to me, it's just, these questions are about to get to the implementation piece and

I think we've gone through all of these, one another, and getting to that implementation piece and then making sure that we have the components in there to make it successful.

I think you have them there.

I think you've heard a lot today about some things that we need to perhaps pay a little bit more attention to, but I think you have, in my mind anyway, the foundation is there.

Yeah, and I'll kind of go off that too, and I don't mean to be summarizing this, but a couple things jump out.

One is, as we've been talking, it seems to me a reasonable process is with all the great work that you guys have done, we've talked about it sort of being the what.

And then we talked about prioritizing things.

And then we talked about the how.

So we've got to prioritize how do we do this.

And then we implement.

And we understand how we do the implementation.

Then we sustain.

And then we measure.

And I think a key part of this is the measurement piece.

So as you think about

As we're moving forward and as we look at the multimodal transportation plan, thinking about having ways to measure success in there as part of the process for me would be an important aspect of it.

The other piece of it, you mentioned sort of Kevin and Lonnie were talking about land use.

You know, for me, I mean, the transportation, it's like sort of the elephant in the room.

It's all about land use, really, when it comes down to it.

That's what's driving this, whether it's in Nelson County or whether it's in Fluvanna or whether it's in the center of the development area in Albemarle County.

It's how are we using the land?

And so that's tied to zoning, which I know we'll get to at a point.

So that's all kind of interwoven.

And that piece, I think, is where we start talking about things like, do we have too much parking as a requirement?

You know, how do we think about sharing parking?

What are some of the strategies to do that?

EVs, things like, you know, it's just all based on basically zoning strategies and what that looks like tied to the transportation plan.

Exactly.

The investigation of a program to support active recreation, I think we probably all agree that that makes a lot of sense.

And then the implementation of a multimodal transportation plan, I think we agree that that is a good logical next step.

My question is, when would that happen?

I think we would get through October and get this AC44 approved, right?

Well, we've talked about rural area plans.

We've talked about, you know, there's a lot of plans we're talking about.

Yes.

There you go.

I mean, to your first point, thank you for coming back and like, remember the challenge that we tried to tell you at the beginning of this process, we were gonna sort this stuff out into chapters, and then we're gonna have some reference to each other, but that it needed to be some focus within topic areas, because otherwise you start combining all these things.

And so that's, it's been an interesting process.

try and write a chapter just on transportation, touch on a couple of little things of environmental and protecting agricultural and forestry roads, whatever it is.

So it's been an interesting challenge.

I think one thing that Tanya and her team are really focused on right now and that we're all committed to is the implementation component of this.

It's very easy to,

write a plan and come back five years and write it again.

So I think we are really trying to focus on implementation and a set of metrics to see whether we're getting to the, we're, we're doing that.

And I'm not quite ready to let the cat out of the bag yet on exactly what we're trying to do, but I'll sort of give a preview a little bit.

And that is, I think our proposal is going to be really to try and

Think about how we come back and talk about these activity centers.

And what are we supposed to be doing?

Because that's a huge portion of this.

We made a decision someplace along the line that there's 30,000 people we're going to try to accommodate.

We're trying to get a majority of them probably in the activity centers.

And we may tweak some of the zoning around in the lower density areas to allow a more missing middle.

But I mean, the lion's share of the population is trying to get to those things.

and at the same time overlap that with this idea of really very strong because when we have little control of is the bike and the ped aspect.

The regional transit thing is sort of in its own world.

It's very important but you're talking from staff level of us really trying to work on taking this multi-modal plan and actually

putting something down that's feasible on a map and saying this is the system of bike trails, especially connecting activity centers, connecting things into the city and looking for pedestrian gaps, if you will, in the systems within the activity centers.

I'm really trying to create kind of a long list of things that we need to be working on.

I don't know how we're going to fund them, to your point, but, you know, sort of touching upon some of that aspect of we are going to have to look for other ways, either doing the projects ourselves or funding the projects ourselves.

and trying to find ways to maybe work with VDOT and catch those opportunities when the federal grants are getting ready to come in.

To be ready, and yes, and that's the last part of this thing, is having a good plan that when we're talking to our partners in the development community, if we build a large percentage of the public infrastructure in our community is to make sure that they are building key elements of this plan.

I think maybe if we had had this 10, 15, 20 years ago, it was stronger,

Multimodal plan in place, we may have made some more progress than we have had done, but that's not to me, it's not too late.

So in long and short of that thing is I think we're going to try and bring something to you in the June timeframe.

And it will be in the document that really starts to talk about, hey, look, these are the kind of the key things that we think we need to be doing coming out of this planning exercise.

So that hopefully in five more years, we have these short little chapters

How are we doing and having a way to get to

The last thought I had, just sort of a random thought, but I don't want to miss the opportunity to say it, and that is with affordable housing.

I think I would just say as we think about the way we use county funds and whether it's raising taxes or whether it's parsing portion of the funds that maybe are surplus at a time that could go to affordable housing, et cetera, et cetera.

Keeping in mind that we're not just, we don't just need to fund housing, but we need to fund infrastructure to make housing successful.

And that's where the regional transportation because right now,

KTEC has the Trump card, not KTEC.

CAT has the Trump card.

If CAT, you can say to CAT, how much will it cost?

And they say, well, it's going to cost X amount of, it's often over a hundred thousand dollars to put a stop in.

And if you say, sure, they still have the ability to say, no, we don't want to put that stop in.

And so,

because part of me has had that conversation, part of the person I work with has had that conversation about including a stock and was told it was X amount of money and then so where's the county going to get the money to do it with?

And so you're right.

The whole idea is if we're going to ask people to live someplace, I think we also have to think more broadly about how are we going to move those people around.

And I don't think that's just about affordable housing.

I think that is about how do we move people around?

Because if we can get them out of cars, we can create a healthier lifestyle.

And that healthier lifestyle is something that's better for this entire community.

Public transit or public transit options for other parts of the county.

And that's the piece that I, because we don't own the transportation system yet.

Maybe the regional transit project will make it more of a shared ownership, which I think would be a brilliant situation if we could get to that thing.

But right now, one entity still has the way to say, we're not going to do that.

but when we had a, to your point, we had a proposal not so long ago for a trailer park that would have been presumably affordable housing but the commute from that trailer park would have been the same commute as if somewhere to drive from Fluvanna.

I have to come in on that because you know that really is a piece that really just is, I'm not saying you are,

but attempts to put people in a box that I don't think is fair for us to do.

because if you look at that part of the county, if you look off of Secretary Road on the other side of 20, you will see houses that are very modest, a little bit smaller, a little bit bigger than this manufactured home place.

And people can make decisions about the size of house that they are willing or capable of purchasing without having to be condemned for whether or not they have to drive in.

I saw, I listened to some of that and thought, you didn't say whether or not a person has to drive in or not, not you, but some of the comments about that.

People make all kinds of decisions on how they allocate their funds.

And if they want to give their child or give their family the opportunity to live in a modest house in the country and still commute to wherever their job takes them, God bless them for them to do that.

I think I agree.

I think we're generalizing.

I just want to not generalize on that part.

And I will just simply say, the problem here is not about transportation.

The problem here is that when you talk about affordable housing, that it's still a house that is going to bump up against $500,000.

I want to make real clear that we're not talking about something that used to be called Section 8 housing.

So my piece is let's be careful in the language that we use, because that language has a tendency to paint broadly a group of people who have been disenfranchised in this community.

Which I don't think anything we've said here disagrees with that.

I think it's still the fact.

All right, does anybody, not to close things out, but does anybody have any closing comments or thoughts?

Just for clarity, it was around section five, DA section five, strengthen regional inner city transportation.

If you could just really quickly walk me through five, two, five, three, five, four, I'm not clear what they meant.

So they provide support for Charlottesville Amtrak passenger train rail to meet future demand.

A renovation to expand the existing facility.

Yeah, there is that 5-2, that is one of the ideas.

And you may remember that a number of years ago, there was a regional effort to try and work to improve that station to be able to run more rail transit through there.

Yeah, I think it's a little bit of all that.

At one point, that was one big station.

The stations in the baggage section.

It's just reclaiming the entire building, which would be helpful.

Yeah, there is a state rail plan.

That line is the profitable line of Amtrak.

That's exactly right.

Extremely successful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I guess, you know, it's sort of like there's been talk about there's been studies about the east-west line and we're just trying to get a little bit out in front of that hoping that one day that that

becomes more and more a realistic thing.

Yeah, you have to build a plan, right, that says, yes, this was one of our goals.

Where?

I see.

That's super helpful.

And then 5.4.

Just curious, is that an option to pull out?

I was just curious why that was in there.

I'm sorry, we want to participate in the airport authority.

Would you pull out?

Gotcha, that makes sense.

And then my last question, is this something for the staff to think about?

When you read DA Transportation 3, increase the reliability and frequency of public transit service, my first thought was, what is the root cause of why we don't have reliable and frequency of public transit service?

Because when I read the actions, they don't line up.

When I read the actions, for example, I don't think the fact that we don't have high quality ADA Pro-WAG compliant transit stops is the reason why we have

unreliable and not frequent transit service or like any of those actions.

Collectively, they don't seem to answer the question of solving the issue around increasing reliability and frequency of public transit services.

Something to think about those actions seem to not necessarily correlate with the wording the way it's written.

I think that's what 3-4 is really getting at is that we have stops, but a lot of them people with mobility issues can't even get to because they're in the dirt on the side of a road.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that that would help.

I think part of it is, right, you have to get more people riding the bus, right?

So some of that may change.

So the bus, the bus situation may change because you know, right now it's free.

It's free coming out of the pandemic.

There's maybe some pressure on the system that they need to start charging again.

And they've also had some pressure on the system about finding qualified drivers.

And so that's where I think the regional transit system might help give them a pool of individuals.

And if we could ever get this conversation with the university, that the university would somehow another integrated system more fully.

A regional idea.

Right.

Actually, just to build on that, that was the point that I had.

In the,

Again, back to page 16, where you talk about the bullet bullet points on the multimodal transportation plan implementation.

It doesn't talk about cross agency collaboration and you know, with the city or UVA or, and again, I mean, you've heard it here, do you really, you're not going to do this without broader collaboration.

And there's a lot of plans out there.

And obviously we have the MPO, MPO, I mean, there's a lot of,

authorities out there and that are trying to do this already.

So I, I just, it seems to me that that needs to be strengthened a little bit stronger stress.

Yeah.

Fair enough.

Okay.

All right.

I had some minor comments, but I put them in the document and I shared them.

Did that give you what you need, staff?

Thank you guys.

Sorry, no problem.

Sorry, we got there quicker than I had it ready to go.

The Rio Places 29 committee advisory committee met and there were a couple of proposals for feedback.

Let me get there.

One of them is for Arden Place on Rio Road.

Yeah, we kind of know about this already a little bit.

Anyway, that's going for feedback to sort of change the small area plan such that it would convert some of what's core to flex and then they had a proposal for some housing.

Part of what's been expressed is some difficulty getting to that 60% AMI even with the tax.

Credit, their tax break credit incentive that we've got.

But yeah, there's some conversation about that.

And I am actually conveying this secondhand because I had a work event that night.

We can come back.

Yeah, sorry.

That's good.

Thank you.

So apparently the presentation was done on a laptop with a bunch of people looking over his shoulder.

So it was apparently as successful as that can be.

But that's a

I think what Mr. Moore was trying to talk about in that particular one that's in the form-based code area and form-based code has a core section and then the flex zone and we're working with the applicant to work to rezone it to allow more flex zone to allow them to not have some of the commercial issues.

We'll be bringing that to you probably in the June, July time frame.

I think that's with that rezoning.

probably would make its way to the Planning Commission.

So as far as the Board of Supervisors meetings, not very exciting, at least from your perspective, or maybe it is.

The first one on the 23rd was a public hearing for the new budget.

And the one on the 30th was for the establishment of the property tax rate and the personal property tax rate.

That's the report for... They see the residential chapter next, right?

At their meeting this week?

Yeah, they're looking at housing tomorrow.

Got it.

Thank you.

And as far as new business goes, I think I'll just touch on a little bit something we talked about yesterday, Commissioner Missel, and that was we had something scheduled for the first meeting in June on June 10th.

and that item was a CTA for the round two of the data centers conversation.

And just been made a decision to pull that off the agenda.

I think they're gonna go to a public meeting first before bringing it to you all.

And so that opportunity has opened up and the suggestion that I put out yesterday to you is that I will scramble and see if we can't bring you

A presentation on a list of the items, you know, several meetings back you'll have the conversation of wanting to have a general update of things.

Housing may be a good one to have on that day because I know that Stacey has come out with a recently the housing report.

Unfortunately, I know you will not be here that meeting.

But I'm going to work to try and find something this week.

Does anybody have any high, like based on the, you mentioned housing, there's transportation, there's schools, there's other topics.

Is there any maybe second choice if housing is a first choice that we might want to listen to?

Transportation came up and I think the suggestion was like really talk about like what projects are we working on, where they stand, and I think Kevin's suggestion was that we have a meeting with VDOT on the 12th and we'll be able to bring you the freshest information possible.

We can do that probably on the meeting on the 25th because I think we only have one item that night.

So we can, I hear you all.

You want to be better informed of

You know, the development of a lot of these different aspects that we've talked about in the conference and planned.

And so we'll try to do a better job of providing that.

To the extent that, and I'm not suggesting this, I just know that we've talked about this a lot, to the extent that it might be helpful at some point is to have the gentleman from Texas come in and talk about the ag forest tax, the differences in how that happens.

I know we saw a memo that got distributed by

Pete Lynch

I think I'd like to hear about, and maybe we'll hear it when this comes forward, but since I wasn't here when the county implemented form-based code, I'd be very interested to hear more about how the county has done form-based code.

Well, just some ideas.

Thank you so much.

Can I just real quickly, Mr. Murray, as far as form-based code, we're in doing a lot of work right now with sort of updating the form-based code that was adopted for RIO.

Great.

We'll take care of that then.

Thank you all for the suggestions.

We'll try and find something for you.

I hate, I hate to hold a special meeting if I can't really load it up with a bunch of good topics.

Got it.

Yeah.

And thank you for the save on Arden 2, Mr. Barnes, and also just the other proposal that came before the CAC for conversation.

perhaps also huddled around a glowing laptop, I'm not sure, was a community meeting for 600 Rio Road West, so other side of 29 there, with a proposal for several multifamily, sort of essentially right past the pawn shop, just up the hill slightly, to build several multifamily buildings there, up to 153 in the proposal.

Buildings or people?

units.

Yeah.

And so that would be technically that's a conversion to from commercial office to neighborhood model district.

Let's see, any old business or items for follow up?

I would just I would just like to you know, we're having all these outdoor things right now.

And so I can't tell you the number.

First of all, you don't realize how public you are.

People know who we are, even if we don't know who they are.

So just be aware of that.

I can't tell you the number of people who have come up to me recently with the library book sale and the green elephant over there at Albemarle, over by where the ACAC is.

Plant sale?

Huh?

The plant sale?

Yeah, the plants have a set space.

Who said to me, you're on the planning commission, aren't you?

I said, yes.

And they said, why isn't this, why aren't these parking lots being used as houses?

And I said, well, you know, if you'd like to have that, you can buy it and then you can do whatever the heck you want to.

But that's not what we do.

So just be prepared out of all the years that I've been on the planning commission all of a sudden the last 30 days people recognize us and they want to know why we're not making good use of those parking lots and putting apartments there as opposed to other places in the county.

Just be prepared.

I blame SimCity and Cities Skyline.

They can't just do it.

All right I think I'll just add I run into people at our county cideries and wineries who are like oh the planning commission I watch it every every time it's on I'm like I I'm not kidding and I joke with them like you need to find Netflix or something like what is you're nothing better on there are people out there who watch the planning commission

No, someone called me by name.

They called me by name.

They said, oh, you're Julian.

Well, I think we're all TV.

We're on TV right now, and everybody's hearing this.

The thrills.

I'm grateful to serve.

Thank you.

So I think we're going to adjourn the Planning Commission posthaste to Tuesday, May 13, 2025 at 6 p.m.