Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee Meeting   6/5/2025

Hi.

Why don't we go ahead and get started.

It's 5-1.

That is probably the promptest starting time you've ever had.

Welcome, everybody.

We will kick it off by making a round of introductions.

I'd love to start with folks on Zoom, because I feel like we always leave them last.

And I know Tommy is making sure that you have chatting privileges.

So just name maybe what neighborhood you live in, maybe what brings you here, and let's go ahead

Your sound is X'd out at the very bottom, Tommy.

I don't know what's that.

Bottom right.

But I don't know if, online folks, can you hear us?

Natalie, you want to kick us off?

Hi, I'm Natalie.

I'm on my way.

I'll be there soon.

Sorry.

Real quick, if I'm promoting you to panelists, that will allow you to talk.

All right, well maybe we'll let people work that out.

We'll go around the table.

So Meredith, can we start with you?

I'm Meredith McRae.

I live in Frye Spring and I'm

Tommy is a Frank City Biped Coordinator, and I live in the Martha Jefferson neighborhood.

And the thing I'm looking forward to summer is obviously biking a bunch, walking a bunch, running a bunch.

I'm Kevin Kochis.

You may have heard of me.

Sorry.

But I've lived in town 62 years, worked at UVA for 32, walked across town and back two and a half miles one way for 25 years.

I'm very familiar with what pedestrians face.

I've hitchhiked all over the world, all over the country, through many different pedestrian settings.

What I look forward to this summer the most

is growing flowers and tomatoes on Preston Avenue and giving them to complete strangers.

I've never done the tomatoes before.

Brendan Duncan, I'm a city engineer.

Hi folks, I'm Zoe McEmber.

I'm the city's new transit planner.

I started with the city about two months ago this week.

Yay.

I am really looking forward to getting to know Charlottesville because I moved at the perfect time.

It was just turning one another, and now this summer I get to explore a bit.

Hi, I'm Kyle Robin.

I'm the city's Safe Routes to School Coordinator.

I'm Isabelle Finn.

I'm a Family Justice Policy Manager in the United Community of the Environment, B3.

Mike Breezy, I represent the Roseville neighborhood.

I'm also interning.

I just started for the summer in long range planning.

So we grabbed Alberta Fish for Alberta Greenup Fund, now the county transportation planner since we'd love to see it.

So, you know, gone for nothing.

Yeah, sure.

I'm Peter Klebs, I'm on the Environmental Council.

I'm going to be real I-20 class and say I love summer.

And one of the reasons why is you just wear the same thing all the time.

I'm James Van Vranken, one of the co-chairs of PIPEC.

Also, just like summer, we recently discovered the joys of the city halls and are going to be spending many

I'm Sadie Van Brinken, Ridge Street.

I'm Audemars Hagen.

Hi, everybody.

I'm Kevin Winchell.

I'm the new executive director over at Charlottesville Community Bikes.

And we just moved up in Florida two months ago.

So I'm really looking forward to this because Florida summers are not as fun.

And this is this is the first time I've been out of the state and living somewhere else.

So I'm looking forward to exploring the new places, finding new trails and doing a lot of fun stuff with my kids.

So if you have recommendations on

I'm Matt Dalton.

Jen Fleischer, I work for Blue Ridge Health District and I'm looking forward to, I don't know, surfing, but it's getting out of town.

I'm looking forward to June 18th.

Oh my God, so looking forward to June 18th.

Yes, that's true.

Oh, hey, I'm Josh.

I know most of you.

All right.

So again, if I'm giving you permission to move over to the panelists, that would be your opportunity to speak.

But the chat is also open.

Yes, absolutely.

We'll keep our eye on the chat.

So if folks want to contribute that way,

Approval of the agenda and meeting notes from agenda for today and meeting notes from last month.

Don't move.

Second?

All those in favor?

Aye.

Great.

Public comment?

Anyone here for public comment?

Yes.

I just want to share something with you that happened in the last couple of days.

I got a message from a woman living with a disability over on the Harris Road neighborhood, and she told me about the situation that she faces on Harris Road.

She has to cross that street several times a day sometimes, and quite frequently the drivers refuse to stop.

It's a very harrowing experience.

So I went over there and took a look, and I didn't get past the intersection of Naylor Street

and Harris Road, which is about one block from the school.

But what I found was there was curb ramps in place for a crossing, and there is a crossing, it's just not marked.

There were curb ramps in place for a crossing at Harris Road and also at the street with no name.

This is the opposite side of Naylor, and it hasn't been accepted into the city system, but it's Naylor continued.

There are one, two, three, four curb ramps

for two crossings and no marked crosswalks.

Now, what really got me was when I went to Google Street View and discovered that this has been this way for at least six years.

It's a block from the school.

It's not on a quick-build list.

Why do I have to go and make an issue of this, which is clearly something that should be there and should have been there,

when the ramps were put in place.

This also happened at 10th and Little High.

Ramps were put in place.

It was months before I happened to walk there.

I don't usually go there.

I noticed there was no marked crosswalk.

There wasn't going to be one until I spoke up.

So why is the burden of identifying these things and getting them fixed, put on the public?

Now, I'd like to quick-build this, don't get me wrong.

It's a great step.

I really like this driving on fairway.

So that's all I'm saying.

Thank you.

Anyone else for public comment?

OK. Moving on.

Questions for staff.

We don't have Ben today, but we do have Kyle and we do have Tommy.

And folks shouldn't receive the staff of the Google group.

I have a question before I forget.

Yeah, second group.

But please join us if you're not there.

I have a question for staff which is in relation to the QuickBuild list.

and had a chance to chat with Ben briefly at the bike parade on Saturday.

And the question was around, we were told at one point as part of the QuickBuild project list and kind of roll out, we were told that there were going to be signs set up by QuickBuild projects with QR codes that would link to a form where folks could offer feedback.

on these, you know, the interventions that are being deployed in their neighborhoods.

So the city could collect feedback.

Ben told me on Saturday that that's actually, that got beaten by the traffic engineer.

I was curious if BPAC thinks it would be a worthy use of our time to actually take that project on, to get the signs designed, get the QR codes up, get a Google form, like something very simple.

Wasn't it?

I'm not trying to get anyone in trouble.

And to your point is, I personally would love to collect this data, not so much solely on what's not working, but what is working.

So right now, all of the information is getting to Brandon.

Didn't I see Caleb a second ago?

But they're going to receive a lot of feedback that is most likely negative.

And that doesn't mean that's not good data.

But I think we're going to miss out on other data, which is thank you, or this is awesome, but we should tweak it here, or something to that effect.

Great.

Can we have any insight why staff wasn't allowed to do this?

I think if Ben says that he's open to supporting you, then you have the range to move forward.

I don't have any insight.

I was not at that meeting.

Thank you.

It's hugely in paper of doing it.

For the reasons that Tommy said, it feels like something that fits well within our role as an advisory committee, as a committee designed to hear from the community.

Cool.

It could just be an actual extension of the quick build committee.

That was already assembled, and I was chairing our committee, so I'm happy to do that.

Anyone would like to join me in chains?

It's a great idea.

I talked to a lot of people on Fairway who were affected by the recent thriving, and most people were really pleased with it.

But there is one problem, and that's the stretch between

Meade and Caroline.

The striping confuses people.

It looks like a bike lane, but it's not.

It's where people park their cars.

But it's only about half a car width out from the edge of the street.

And so it really would have been better off to have left that off and start the striping at Caroline.

And so that's something to consider with other projects, I think.

And so there is things to learn from this.

I know we have that same issue on Preston by the church.

Okay.

Yeah.

On Sunday.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, on a fair way it may be that we need to remove that parking because it's not intended to be parking there.

It was partially intended to be a shoulder because there is no sidewalk in that location either.

So it was partially intended that it's a pseudo pedestrian.

There's a sidewalk there.

On the other side.

On the Caroline side there's not.

Delineating parking on both sides?

Or just the Caroline sign?

Wherever there isn't sufficient width.

Well, I think that's good.

And just like Kyle's Safe Routes to School projects that have turned into concrete projects,

Yeah, I think I'll email the QuickBuild committee.

and with maybe some, maybe James and I can work up a draft and then get folks in total.

And then I was going to ask Josh Crown to sign some signs for us.

Josh Crown, did you hear that?

I will say you also have somebody here who designs things and you can maybe tie it back to pre-existing biking and walking

To that point, I just want to say real quick, I want to give Meredith a huge shout out.

Right, I think Josh is on behalf of the non-panelists.

They have to accept my request.

Hey!

Any Zoom folks who have not yet introduced yourselves, would you like to?

In the spirit of welcoming everyone?

Totally fine if you don't.

Well then we can keep moving through our agenda because we have a lot to talk about.

Utility Pulse Dominion, and ADA guidance.

Yeah, no problem.

So I'll start off, we've been in discussions with a lot of the utility companies starting really in earnest, you know, last year.

We had a utility summit last year, a couple of them actually, because it wasn't as well attended in the first one as we were hoping.

And it wasn't that much as well attended as we wanted on the second one either.

But we have around 15 independent utility companies that work on the poles and stuff around the city.

There's only two of them though that own the poles.

So there's Dominion and there's Bright Speed.

Those are the two that kind of have their own poles.

The rest of them are all just attaching to, you know, the other polls and have attachment agreements with those other utilities.

So they are not getting any agreement with the city necessarily to attach to those polls.

We have no say as to, you know, when they come or, you know, when they what their parameters are for how they're attached, when they're attached.

They do get a franchise agreement to operate in our right of way.

But the actual poll agreements

To date, at least Dominion and Bright Speed have seen those as proprietary and have not been able to share those with the city.

So I'll start there.

We have made progress, especially with Bright Speed.

We have regular meetings with them to kind of move their lines off of the poles they don't own that are Dominion's.

but one of the issues there is the the order of transfer of lines goes from the bottom up or sorry from the top down and they are you know a lot of times one of the lower ones on the pole so you know they have to try to coordinate with the other 13 utilities before some of these poles can be removed so

Say all that, it's complicated.

I mean, it's not easy.

It's not quick.

I know we had the one, if people remember, there's the semi-truck up at Park Street and High Street that got tangled in the lines trying to make that turn and ended up pulling down power lines and frying the traffic signal and all that kind of stuff.

Part of that was they pulled one of the poles kind of cockeyed and that's been

a year and a half almost at this point.

And we're still working with all the utilities to try and get stuff off of there.

So it's not that we're not doing stuff behind the scenes.

It just might not always be readily apparent to the public.

But we have made progress.

We've got, I want to say the last time I checked, it was somewhere between 30 and 50 poles in the last year that have been removed.

We've been able to get double poles removed.

It is moving forward, you know, we're giving them a list kind of 10 at a time.

We figure that's been more, I don't know what the right word is, but easier to get them to kind of focus and concentrate on these are our next 10 priority and kind of go that route rather than

just give them the full three to five hundred double poles and say, go fix them all.

So, you know, it's definitely an issue.

That's just the double pole that wouldn't get in to the ADA issues because we've got plenty of those where we have single poles that are still an ADA issue.

And the new PRO-AG guidelines that were passed late last year got rid of the exception for poles and fire hydrants and other stuff.

Stuff that might have even been compliant under the old ADA regulations are now no longer compliant.

So we're working with them.

Technically, I think those are grandfathered in, but as soon as they were to set a new poll, then they're under the new guidelines.

So we're working with that.

We'll probably end up having to, especially with the transition plan, we're planning on having to go around, basically building a sidewalk around those polls rather than moving the polls.

A lot of those, gravity works against them if they just start moving singular poles out of the way, because the lines have weight to them.

And so they start, if all your poles aren't in the line, they start to pull on the pole.

So then they need guide wires.

They need more poles to hold up the poles and stuff if you can't keep them in a straight line.

So a lot of these where, oh, there's only one pole that needs to be moved.

Well, if you move that pole,

You end up having to either move the whole line or something, so that's where we're kind of figuring out where we need to get additional right-of-way from people to kind of move around those and provide an accessible route.

So all I have to say, there's progress being made.

It's slow, but we are trying to move them in the right direction.

Dominion has been difficult to work with.

a necessary utility as designated by the state and federal government.

So it's not like we can just kick them out for not complying.

They're working under a 1920 franchise agreement that has been determined by the courts that is perpetual.

We cannot renegotiate it.

They're not willing to renegotiate it.

That one was, however, that one was made.

It was in 1905 or 1910.

1901.

Nothing's changed.

Well, the 1921 that we're under was forced through legal action by the city against Dominion then.

So, you know, I don't know that we'll get there.

Hopefully we never get there.

Hopefully we can get them to work with us.

If push comes to sub, that may have to be the final straws to get them to go through that process to renegotiate that franchise agreement.

But they are at least pulling permits now for the majority of their work.

We're still catching them every once in a while when they're not.

The smaller utilities are definitely a struggle.

All these are for-profit.

you know, having to move off of the old poles.

Well, there's actually no financial incentive for them to do that.

So, you know, it's difficult to get them to come out and move.

They've already got their service to their customers.

They're getting revenue.

All it is is a cost to them to go and leave their lines off.

So, like I said, just being

hesitant, resistant, whatever you want to call it.

On their part, Dominion's system that they use to track who's attached to their poles is rather archaic, I believe.

And no one at Dominion is really tracking that either.

So they put in basically a work request.

that the next person is supposed to, you know, when they moved over to a new poll, the next person is supposed to move off, but no one is necessarily double checking on their end to say, you know, okay, you know, per your agreement with us, again, Citi doesn't know what that agreement is, but per your agreement, you have 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, whatever it is to move off, no one's actually double checking and making

Sure that gets done.

So that's kind of the struggle that we're having right now with that.

And Dominion itself is about eight different companies within Dominion.

They're very siloed, which I've learned over the last year as well.

So just in the local office, they have six different departments that do work within the city that don't necessarily talk to each other.

And they have another two or three that are more corporate-based that will come in and do grid hardening work and stuff that may end up replacing poles that the local office doesn't even necessarily know they're out there doing the work.

Yeah.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you for explaining a lot of that.

Well,

So again, we've asked and requested that they notify us beforehand to pull their permits.

You know, if they're putting new infrastructure in the runway, whether it's poles or whether they have to put anything in our right-of-way, that they're pulling permits for those.

so that we can review it, make sure it's in a good location and that they're not just putting it in.

That works okay if it's a planned issue.

If it's an emergency issue, again, something like, you know, a tractor trailer comes in and snaps off 30 poles, you know, they're not pulling those permits.

Like they are restoring service and they're going out there and they're just doing their work.

And so a lot of times, I think,

Some of the issue, the worst issues we have are those types of things where there's there's the one on Emmett Street by WISE right there, their shopping center where that pole looks like it's been ready to fall over for two years now.

And, you know, they they went in and put in their new pole.

But getting all the other utilities off of it has been a challenge.

So ideally,

And trying to work with them on the best place to put that.

And if it has to go on the sidewalk, then we're working towards installing sidewalk around it in that location so that we can alleviate a complaint.

I'm going to put those wheels.

One, I think I just need

verification.

No, no, they don't have a, they don't have a, it's, it's, it's just that a lot of our, the mechanisms that are in our franchise agreement that dictate how they can operate in the city limits.

are old and a lot of the modern infrastructure stuff wasn't considered.

So they are still required by federal law to do it.

Which is why I am not going to answer it partly.

OK, so my second question is, are you in contact with any other municipalities where this is an issue?

Right, but I'm just saying it's not just a dominion issue.

This is a nationwide issue that this is happening.

I mean, I've traveled to Northeast, Southwest.

The East, I will say, so the fact that we're on the East Coast, we have older communities.

We have narrower right-of-ways.

makes it more difficult and more prevalent to have these issues.

So cities that were built in the late 1800s, early 1900s, or whatever, versus cities that might have been more built out in the later 1900s, there is a huge difference.

Midwest, out west, right-of-ways are 60 to 70 feet normally.

Here, we're lucky if we get 50 feet.

And when you start putting in, okay, we need a five foot sidewalk on each side, there's 10 feet, and you need a 20 foot travel lane, there's your 50 feet, it's gone.

So you don't have space for bike lanes, you don't have space for tree lawns, like where else are those power planes going to go?

Not particularly, no.

Yeah, like General Assembly.

If there's an ADA non-compliant issue on a public right-of-way, the city's responsible.

But then that's between you and them.

It is.

Any consideration about burying?

power lines like every other civilized country.

It's expensive.

And going back to the narrow right of ways that I was talking about, I was just talking about the stuff we have above ground.

We also have gas, water, sewer, storm sewer, other duck banks that are already in the ground.

RWSA, which, you know, they don't connect to our water and sewer.

They're even deeper.

So like underground is crowded.

when you have a 50 foot right of way.

And especially when you're talking about power, that can't just be in a conduit that has to be in a concrete duct bank that's protected so that if somebody is digging like, you know, so I mean, those end up if you if you've never seen it, imagine, you know, the size of this table, you know, full of stuff that is running, you know, horizontal through

And that is about regulating price feeding other telecommunications companies.

I think that because there are agreements between Dominion and their companies doesn't preclude the city from having a certain degree of regulatory control over the telecommunications companies.

I know that they have to meet sidewalk closure, permit requirements.

And I look in the franchise agreement and I see that there are requirements in there for permits, inspections, fines for noncompliance.

And so I wonder what can be done, realistically, to get the mess cleaned up, because it does look like they're not going to do anything, or very, very little.

And the mess is reaching a level where it's actually urban pollution.

A lot of it is being engulfed by English ivy and porcelain berry and other things.

I know some people now are going out with wire cutters and taking it off themselves, which is a very dangerous thing to do.

But what can be done to get this message?

These things are hazardous.

You know, they take off bus mirrors.

They pull people out of their wheelchairs.

They've caused a lot of damage.

Bicycles have gotten tangled up.

There's one down here on Market Street that's been reported multiple times.

I reported it last night.

It's hanging in the street, running down the street through the trees and for about 20 yards.

The one at 10th Street?

Yes.

Yeah.

It's still there when I came in today.

We're, we're working towards that.

Hey Brendan, so the permit system, I'm curious, is that permitting through your office?

Yeah, it's a traffic permit.

Yeah, I figured.

I have a question.

Is there a poll person?

We need a poll dancer.

We've hired a new records retention and

finance person that is trying to help manage the actual franchise agreements.

And as part of that, we're trying to get the utilities to give us at least a monthly update of kind of what they're doing every month.

and you know some of them have agreed to do that some of them have not but you know again just trying to monitor where they're at and what they're doing yeah it's a it probably could be a full-time job but you know we that's only the whole part we haven't even talked about like how then it goes to public works and gets the sidewalk part done right right so I mean the the ADA part of it a lot of that is going to be addressed through our ADA transition plan part of it you know we're

Looking at that portion, you know, we have to figure out how we're spending the money we've got.

Majority of our deficiencies that were in there were vertical height displacement stuff, so trip hazards.

So we'll probably try and knock out, you know, those over a three or four year period to get that number down and take care of those some of those easy ones.

While we're also trying to address, you know, ramps and that kind of stuff.

And then, you know, a portion of it will go to

polls and, you know, going around polls.

I mean, some of them are easier, some of them are harder.

I mean, you're working with a company and, you know, when you've got curved line sidewalk and a retaining wall, and, you know, the polls there, like, you know, now it's not just putting in a sidewalk around that pole, it's tearing out a retaining wall and doing that as well.

So, again, it's,

Or losing bike lanes or something.

The number one thing that, the number one word Brennan hasn't said yet that has probably been my nightmare is the word drainage.

So if we're like moving sidewalk into right-of-way and changing curve line, now we have to like look at changing drainage, which is like its own like nightmare.

Question.

Is Deb that person that you're referring to?

Yeah.

So I'm curious, so like, maybe not so much in terms of accessibility, but in terms of like, quality of work, you know, like when Dominion or someone comes in and replaces a guy, guy wire, and from the outside looking in, it kind of looks like this probably could have been done a little bit

better, you know, they're cutting that 12 inch by 12 inch square, dropping guideline wire in.

A, is there any type of like communication being had with them about like the quality control and or B, I know from your side that you get a lot coming in from the community, a lot of reports.

Again, yes, because, you know, we don't have

There's not a poll person that we've got.

We've only had a traffic inspector for the last three years, I think now, which has helped some because they're actually out driving the city daily and they're picking up more instances where Dominion or other utilities or other contractors are just out and work without permits and stuff.

So that has helped.

Dominion has said that they've acknowledged that their quality of work has not been

the greatest in the past.

And with pulling permits now and trying to do the right thing, hopefully we'll catch more of those.

Can I add one thing to what you said?

And that is Dominion carves ginormous holes in the sidewalk.

Two or three times larger than they need for the poles, and they ruin the sidewalk, and it never gets fixed.

If Earth settles, it becomes a serious trip hazard

and accessibility issue.

A number of these have happened since the first meeting where they were told they hadn't complied with the ADA.

There have been at least two, I know, one on Fairway and Monticello Road.

The one on Fairway, that was when I talked earlier about having six departments in the city and another several departments that are outside.

That was one of the outside departments of Dominion that came in to do that work.

I mean, we're on the fairway one.

Observation on the question.

The observation is the city doesn't need to encourage every time into the roadway to get more sidewalk.

Actually, the curb and gutter has little resemblance to what the actual right-of-way is in an old city like Charlottesville, so oftentimes you could go into the yard.

Council hear that.

If there's questions, it's important for us to use all available means.

The other question, and

This, the spaghetti of our poles and the data and electricity that they carry is a real resilience risk.

You probably have to talk to, I think the environment, they're doing the resilient together plan.

So from one, but it's not a, well, related but not related.

Yeah.

And just follow up, like there's a quality control in terms of aesthetics, but it's also when we spend so much time and effort as a city to put these sidewalks in,

and they potentially might be harmed because of the quality of work that they're doing.

I'm worried that the concrete, you know, itself is going to be jeopardized.

No, to your point, but I just want to make that point known.

We have made it clear to Dominion that they are to get a permit every time that they are putting a new pull in.

I thought that there was an issue over maintenance, excusing permits, and that installing a replacement pole was considered maintenance.

If it's an emergency-type repair...

It's an emergency.

He just said it's periodic maintenance to replace a pole, and it's not periodic maintenance.

It's no equipment.

That is our stance right now.

It's really expensive to put them underground.

UVA's been doing that.

We're undergrounding the section from Market Street here up to Locust as part of the East High Street streetscape.

Thank you so much.

And I guess I will, I will add one last question.

What can we do that would be helpful to you, Brandon, beyond identifying all the places where you're encountering these things?

And if y'all aren't using the MyCBL app, I would encourage you to do that.

What else can we do?

I know for a fact that they have heard the complaints from the public on that Emmett Street one.

So, you know, it does make a difference when they're getting constant calls and stuff about, you know, a particular problem poll.

Yes, there is.

There is.

I've thought about this a lot and I've talked about it a lot.

And the person can go to with an impassioned sleeve from the citizens is the CEO of Dominion or his wife and go to them and know this has been done with the railroads and it actually worked.

Okay, you go, they don't, they often don't know what is going on at street level.

And you take some of the pictures that I've taken and send them to them and say, please protect us.

You may be much more likely to get a response than if you, you know, use Brightspeed's contact page.

When you get that person's phone number, please email all of us.

I'm sure they can be reached.

Okay.

I think it's a very good idea.

All right.

Thank you, Brian.

Thank you.

So really glad to be here tonight, and thank you for making room for me on the agenda as well.

Like I mentioned before, I'm new with community bikes, and

I want to begin first by thanking you all because when we were looking to move to the Charlottesville area and learning more about the transit scene and bike scene and everything else one of the first groups I found when I was doing lots and unhealthy amount of internet research from Florida was BPAC and subscribing to the email attack the Google group and everything and saying

the Pawnee level Parks and Rec details that happened about how we navigate change here locally and the politics of everything.

It was really insightful to really start to understand how things work over here and what some of the challenges are that people are facing and how we're all working together to try to address those.

So thank you for the

allowing me to jump into the deep end with you and learn all of that and be more prepared for the work that I'm doing.

So in any case, how many of you out of curiosity are familiar with community bikes already?

Yeah, OK. You're my people.

I've been your nerds.

So a little like

Quick primer on us.

We've been around for 24 years now.

The first 20 years of that was a really scrappy, not necessarily professional operation run by a lot of volunteers.

Just focused on meeting some basic bike needs for folks who may not otherwise have access to it.

And over the last five years or so, the team has professionalized a lot and sought more funding from foundations and grants and those sorts of places.

So we've got a budget just north of $500,000 now.

But we were over at Avon Street before.

Many of you may remember the old shop there.

you spend some time over there too.

And so now being over at Preston, we're happy for the new digs, but we recognize that a lot of our programming that we want to move into or ideas that we have are limited by the space that we have and which partnerships we have and funding and everything else.

And so coming up on our 25th anniversary next year,

We're trying to think through what we want the future to look like.

And we can't make any of those decisions without knowing the rest of the ecosystem.

Both what work you all are doing in your lanes with what you're best at doing to make sure that we're able to support you because we're all in this ecosystem together.

It takes all of us to be able to get one person safely from point A to point B as quickly and with as much access as possible.

But we also recognize that there may be opportunities or ideas out there that you all are aware of that you see that we may not have a perspective about right now that may not be on our radar.

And so I'm looking to you all as people who are living and dreaming this work every day to help me, help our team expand our imagination a bit about what's possible and what we want a transit ecosystem in Charlottesville to look like.

And you all really know this better than anybody else, so that's why I'm here.

So with that all having been said,

I'd like to get an understanding from you all about what role, there are really two questions and I put them on the email to everybody earlier today.

First, what do you see Community Bikes as specializing in that other groups don't so that we can double down on the things that we're best at doing in support of this broader mission that we're all a part of with transit and to a lesser extent,

public health, environmental sustainability, economic and racial justice, et cetera, all these issues that connect to trends.

So what do we do differently or better than other folks that we should continue doing and try to do even better than we're already doing?

But then also what opportunities do you see, whether those are for programs or partnerships or location opportunities or strategies funding, et cetera,

What do you see out there that we could tap into and perhaps expand into as we're looking to make some changes to have a deeper impact over the next few years?

I'd love to know any of those thoughts that you all have.

And I'll stop right there and let you all talk and I'll take a ton of notes from what you say.

And maybe the last thing I'll say is simply, I want to respect the 15 minutes as well.

I want to try to get my kids to sleep later.

I'm out pro se.

And if any of you want to talk more, I'd love to just have one-on-one with you.

We'll go out and get lunch or something and chat for a couple of hours about ideas you have and everything else to do.

I'm also taking notes so you can just listen and then I'll send them to you.

Yeah.

Yeah, good question.

So we want to make sure that there are as few barriers to entry for people who need to get from one place to the other.

And we do that specifically through giving people access to bicycles for free.

So last year, we received right around 2,000 bikes donated to us.

and our team of mechanics.

We have about seven, eight people on staff now, most of whom are mechanics.

They fix up bikes to really high quality bike shop level of quality.

And of the 2,000 bikes we had donated, we gave out about 1,500 of those for free last year to people who are here in the Charlottesville community.

About 1,000 of those were bikes for kids and about 400 or so

Any bikes that we receive through donations that still look really good and look like new and have great paint and everything, we'll refurbish those as well, get them to a really good point, and we'll sell those to help fund our operations.

About a third of our budget comes from shop sales, where we're selling used bikes.

We're the only used bike shop in Charlottesville.

About two-thirds of our budget comes

There's foundations in groups like those.

And any bikes that we absolutely cannot fix up to a level to sell to somebody else or certainly to give away to somebody else, we'll salvage those for parts and take as much as we can off of them.

And then we work with someone who scraps them so that they stay out of the landfill and they get recycled in some sort of way.

So, you know, I think it's laudable that you see yourselves as being guarded on the transportation space and getting people to work and all of that.

That's quite important.

But you're not the only provider of bicycles in Charlottesville.

You're not even the only provider of free bicycles in Charlottesville, right?

Like Craigslist, for example.

But what you do that is pretty unique is

the way that you help people get in touch with their own ability to be self-sufficient.

And that is almost as important as the transportation piece.

And so definitely don't lose that.

So it wouldn't be, we talked about alternative places to work.

It wouldn't be a win for you guys to lose your sketchy basement

and have a nice showroom and that's your interaction with the public and the magic happens with your mechanics and some offsite location, right?

Like the getting your hands dirty and your ability.

Like you guys used to share a space with a quality communities council that was, that led to all the community gardens we have in Charlottesville.

Every one of them came

had its birthplace in that Avon shop too.

We recognize we're not social workers, nor do we have the competencies to be able to ascertain whether someone needs a bike or not.

We don't do means testing or anything.

We rely on partnerships with around 30 nonprofit and government organizations in the area who have clients who we give them a certain number of bikes per month that they're able to request for clients.

And so they vet clients and let us know who needs a bike.

And then we measure them and figure out what they want to use the bikes for.

And we look through our inventory and find something that will work for them.

And we attempt to have a two week turnaround time max.

And one of the reasons why I wanted to make that point for everybody is I recently had a meeting with the Social Services and Job Town Down Center about that sister e-bike voucher program we've been talking about that would like target the communities that can't afford an e-bike even if they get a thousand dollar voucher.

and we were talking about the process that they go through identifying those clients that would be best served by a bike and how they might modify that for an e-bike.

So again, relying on those partnerships is going to be key and we're looking at your program and how to replicate it moving forward.

One thing that I love about Community Bikes

And I say that as a parent is that a number of my child's bikes over the years came from community bikes and anyone with a child under the age of 12 can just get a free bike.

They can just show up and they fit you out in a bike that they have and it's awesome.

And I love that spirit of like there's no barrier to access

And while I understand that there could be very good reasons why some folks need to be vetted, I'm also like, what if community bikes had that as their kind of principle for anyone who needs a bike?

There's no barrier to entry.

And you just let people know that, hey, if your income is such and such, this is what you could pay for this bike or a suggested donation.

And if you can't, then you just get the bike.

like there's to kind of remove some of those hurdles of like kind of matching people and pairing people and some of the challenges of like mean something which well well-intentioned are also like are barriers.

I think it's one of your greatest strengths that it's like you just roll in there with your kid and like and and the other thing that I think is a huge strength of community bikes that I don't want to I would not want to lose and kind of Peter was kind of alluding to this is like there's so much joy

in the process of picking out a bike with your kid, of like going in there and having these like super helpful, really quirky bike nerds help you out.

So just the joy.

And I'm like, I'm on team joy for biking, like period, end of story.

Thank you.

Anything you want to share right now?

The answer is yes.

Not specifically right now.

I did volunteer there for a while.

I work at BRC.

Kind of off of her question, I'm just wondering,

How many adult bikes are you selling that are used bikes?

Are you kind of fixing up and reselling?

If you're giving away $400, are you selling another $500?

Are you selling $1,000?

Last year, we sold about 350 or so bikes.

And those would range from anywhere from around $250 to $2,000 or so.

Usually, these would come about

a third or so of the price that they would cost at a retail shop.

Something we've been very careful about is making sure that we carve out a lane that is separate from our local businesses that sell bikes so that we're not cannibalizing their business.

We're trying to position ourselves as the on-ramp to get them interested in cycling to make it accessible.

And then when they really want to get more serious about it and they have the means to do so, then they're able to go to Blue Ridge or Endeavor or wherever else.

and, you know, get something that's newer and of, you know, the top quality and everything else.

But it's also like I bought a bike and donated two.

Like you're getting that same, you know, the wholesaling of the, yeah, like I traded in two and bought one, you know, so I mean, it's just what happens.

I guess I was asking the question more because it seems like if just to open it up to anybody who needs a bike as an adult like you're not it's not like we're talking like thousands of people right we're not talking thousands of people it seems like especially if you limited it like your free ones are still your low-end

Right, yeah.

I know with my kids' fundraisers and stuff, a lot of times for your car watch, you're much better off just putting a donate what you can rather than saying, oh, you know,

We expect $5 or we expect $10 or whatever.

He'll get people to come in and, you know, oh, here's $200 for washing my car.

So, you know, you're definitely

probably if you just said, do a car wash. No, no, I'm not saying a car wash, but it's the same model.

Like a bike wash.

But no, just the model of just being like, hey, we're making this free, but this is a, we are a service to the community and like, if you can donate, please do.

You know, that type of thing might

I know some of it, but there's probably some I don't know.

Yeah.

So recognizing that our shop has a physical location that can't be moved,

to get closer to people who might need bikes.

Two years ago, we started doing mobile clinics where we load up our van and our trailer with a ton of bikes and maintenance gear and everything else and go out to different neighborhoods with whom we have connections with.

There's like a resource center or a nonprofit organization that runs a neighborhood association or something like that.

set up a time in that community where we give out a ton of bikes, where we ask people to bring in their bikes so we can fix them up on the spot, especially if they don't otherwise have the ability to get to our bike shop, you know, because of our geography or because of our hours or something else.

So oftentimes we kind of partner with other organizations that are going in so we can try to provide as many wraparound services

and that way we were all able to kind of synergize with each other and they might come for the book bus but they might stay because we're also able to pick up their bike at the same time or vice versa.

I just wanted to add too that there's maybe a gap in between like the bikes that are being offered for free and the like $250 maybe starting range of a bike that you can purchase and I'm curious you know

I don't really know the answer, but to what extent there are people in that middle range of like, I want to buy, but I'm not able to spend $500 on it or even 250, but also maybe I'm not connected to these social services groups.

So if you've ever seen this in action, especially with Todd in our shop, I've been learning a lot in my new employee orientation over the last two months.

And something Todd told me is that we don't negotiate with people.

If they end up saying, like, they can do this amount, then our not negotiation is simply we accept that and go with it.

So if they say, like, we were just in the shop the other day, there was a person who found Perfect Mike for them.

It was listed like $425.

She said, I've got $280 right now.

He said, that'll work.

And so we took that.

And if we see that somebody can't afford something for $250,

We can make ourselves a referral organization.

There's some liabilities with that and it gets a little screwy on the accounting side, but I'm just learning to be creative with all of that in QuickBooks.

We can make ourselves a referral organization and just compromise to them as well.

If we have a chance to talk to the person and get to understand their circumstance a little bit more, we can figure it out and

Yeah, I wonder what that could look like.

I love that.

What our concern is, is that we want to try to have a two week turnaround time on everything.

When we open it up more, then the waitlist gets longer, and then people are waiting two months to be able to get something, and then bad things start happening, and they lose some faith in it.

So that's the balancing act that we're trying to drive right now.

Pat.

Hearing you talk about the mission and removing barriers, right, and having some personal experience, do you have any advice in the past?

and then so here you say that and then here you talk about becoming a self-referring organization you know as like whatever magic happens behind the scenes is whatever but I think just kind of throwing this out there as like an idea going back to the beginning of the conversation of what is the mission of what was the future of Community Bikes and where does it fit in and what can it do more and things like that

And as the organization grows or strives to grow, there is the potential for the organization to be self-referring in a way, and potentially have somebody who, like you said earlier, like Community Bikes isn't qualified to vet somebody or to say who can or cannot have a bike.

That's the whole reason behind the voucher program, right?

But maybe in the future, community networks could be qualified to do that because I've seen many times people do come into the shop and even though there are ways to be a silver for an organization currently,

I would love to add to that.

We are very interested on feedback in, you know, there's like people who show up around this table on the first Thursday of the month and we might make assumptions about their interests and their backgrounds.

And we don't often get to hear from people who don't show up around this table on the first Thursday of the month.

And so any feedback that you can offer us around what folks who utilize your VITES experience

As fellow bikers out there in Charlottesville, I think would be really useful to us or for us to know about.

Absolutely.

And I plan to regularly attend going forward.

Who would like to talk more at some point?

Yeah.

What was your name again?

Jen.

Cool.

Hey, Jen.

Hi.

Thanks.

Cool.

We're going to have a meeting in some time.

Yeah, we're on our third attempt of scheduling a meeting.

Yeah, sitting between us and you guys.

But we'll get there.

It will.

Tommy's informing us.

The next agenda item is going to be very quick.

It is an update on the

Yeah, kind of like there was something else I had to hand raise for Kevin at some point.

I did, but don't lean on it.

Oh, OK. Yeah, so VEO.

Currently, there is a draft, a new permit for VEO draft form with the city attorney's office.

Once they've reviewed it, we're going to provide it to VEO.

for you guys to review as well.

I haven't put much thought into this.

Maybe the best mechanism is to share it via email?

Or what do you guys think is the best mechanism to... Yeah, I don't know.

I haven't had a chance.

Well, let me give it.

So we sent it to our attorney's office.

They were reviewing it yesterday.

So maybe I'll follow up with them

And then I'll reply back to you and James, and we'll figure out the best mechanism.

Just to suggest what's under discussion, and also maybe check with the attorneys.

Whether you email it, we'll bring it to a meeting.

Yeah, I guess I'll confirm, but I guess my viewpoint is if I'm sharing it with VO, then at that point it's public.

Does that make sense?

Because if I'm sharing it with an entity, is anybody for that actually to confirm it?

But I can confirm.

So what's under discussion?

In terms of the permit?

What I'm saying is, I'm not going to answer that, it's like the attorney is

You can't give us any idea of what kind of changes you're considering in the relationship with VA. Will the fines change?

What are the requirements?

Will there be a directed parking?

Best feedback from you, Kevin.

Not quite, no.

I need to hear back from them.

So they might say, yeah, you're good to go.

They might say, no, no, no, we need to tweak X, Y, and Z. OK, are the fines the same?

So I think, are the fines the same?

I don't know yet.

OK.

Yeah.

Right.

I mean, if we find people $500 for parking in the disabled parking space, why not find $500 for allowing their riders to block a curb ramp?

The curb ramps are critical.

People have died because of missing curb ramps in Charlottesville.

Make the fines hurt.

I think the balance there is if you make stuff too, they'll just leave.

And it's not necessary, but it is a useful thing to have them in the city.

They provide a service.

It is hundreds of thousands of rides.

Yes, but the blocked ride is a political issue.

I do not disagree with you, and we need to find a way to address it.

I'm just saying, raising fines to a point that they're like, we're out.

and any, but any other person is out.

Like even the contracts that we've had in the past, that was why Bird left and that was why Line Line.

What about directed parking?

I'd like to request that there be more directed parking, forth parking, VEO likes to call it, but directed parking, especially around the corner in the downtown area.

Is that going to... Is the forest parking working well?

They are working on fixing some bugs.

I'm not holding my breath when it comes to the AI stuff.

I never was.

What I will say is that from our conversations with the folks at EPA that the forced parking is not going perfectly as well.

It might help

Yes, let's have a conversation.

I don't know if everyone saw any of my staff updates, but they're removing 130 some-odd vehicles off the roads next week to reduce their fleet in Charlottesville.

So there's going to be 580-ish vehicles in Charlottesville.

Correct.

This is not a permit related request, but I would love to see if there's to be more dedicated bike and scooter parking, that it be done in conjunction with daylighting intersections and crosswalks and bike parking, like putting bike racks.

I think part of the challenge is a lot of those hubs get parked in by people who are light parking or whatever.

But if you had a couple of staple racks on either end, people wouldn't be able to park there.

I think Brendan, since you're in this room right now, I'll remind myself to follow up with you.

We had identified several of these type of locations a couple years ago.

And that was what we had kind of identified.

Great.

I would say at that time, this is what I said before, that my thought process was to not put infrastructure in those hubs.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't, I think there's some problems there.

And related to that, but not related to the permit, which is why I wasn't bringing it up again.

is that Douglas Mobility Hub is worth it.

Oh, God.

I think maybe, or we could maybe just move forward with just an orange block and say the orange blocks.

No?

All right.

We can figure it out later.

Okay.

If you have any

Yeah, they do.

It's called the Access Program.

Social Services is aware of it and they tell their clients, it's not used as well as I would like it to be used.

It's a great program.

Yeah.

Or have them put some signage up or put them on like on the

I thought that VO riders, if they'll excuse me, had to take a photograph of their scooter.

Yeah.

So from what I've gathered is that, let's say you end your ride and you take a photo

up here in the sky you end your ride and then unless there's someone who reports it as blocking access they don't go back in to confirm that that end ride photo matches right with so that's what they're hoping the AI would fix and it wouldn't allow you to take a photo

I understand.

So that's good feedback.

I would say another thing I've learned and I think I've learned a lot on how the program works is that

I don't know.

Put yourself in the mind of a video writer, right?

You're acting like they're Russian hackers who are like...

It's a kid who's like on the scooter and they're like, I'm here and I want to be over there and it's downhill, you know?

So like, I'm going to power it through, right?

So, yeah.

Oh, well, I was going to, I was going to table the conversation and just ask folks, but if you have additional comments for Tommy, just email him because we are coming to time.

We're roughly a third of the way through already of the 30-some that the council hasn't actually depicted by me.

But we're moving forward on those.

The next ones that will be installed will be some of the speed tables.

So they already did the one on Langford.

Good or bad.

It's been installed.

They ran out of material and they went out there to install them.

OK, that's fine.

But they're doing next, probably tomorrow, they'll be working on

So all these kind of steeple roads.

Can you tell me why Naylor and Harrison is one of the ones?

You're talking about the crosswalk?

Yeah.

The painted crosswalk?

Yeah.

I looked into that before I saw your My Segal comment just before this meeting about it.

And I looked into it.

And that's on the Safe Routes crosswalks to be painted list.

And I went into the public works system.

that shows what's been completed and what hasn't been completed and basically their work order system.

And there's a discrepancy.

It says that it's completed, but it is not.

So I think so.

Yeah, a lot of, I mean, there's, there's the list of 34.

There's another list of 33 that we're working on through other funding sources.

And then there was really another 30 some plus

identified.

So like, I mean, there's a lot of locations, you know, we're trying to address the ones that have the most impact as part of these quick builds and that we know we can get done, you know, before the end of the year.

So that was, that's kind of why, and then a lot of the striping stuff was not on there because that's being done through either Safe Routes or Benz neighborhood transportation funds and that kind of stuff.

But all the stuff getting built is on the Quick Builds website now.

And it identifies where that funding is coming from on that website or web page.

So if anyone's interested, they can look at all of that.

Quick question about that.

We talked about that.

We just met Tuesday, I think.

Monday.

about about getting that out there.

So part of it is, is like they're kind of running that website and our staff is installing them as quickly as they can.

So, you know, but we will try and even if it's after the fact, we'll try and keep that updated.

Do you know when you're getting to Rossville?

There's a bunch of stuff happening.

The speed tables aren't on Ross Hill.

I just asked because we were going to do a walk with five.

I don't know.

We had the great idea to put them in and then when we started designing it it may be a bigger construction project just because of where the AV ramps and the current crosswalks and stuff are at like we can put it in a circle but then your crosswalk is basically through the travel lane so we have to kind of black out so it's it's just a

We're still hoping to get it done, but it's probably going to be towards the end of the year rather than slightly less quick though.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's we're trying to knock out the ones that's a new website that we can do.

So we're, we're, we're going back and looking at how we can tweak that to minimize, you know, the restriping and stuff that might have to happen there.

But but yeah, that's, that's the goal, right?

So I don't have a specific timeline for it.

Yeah, no, that's OK.

And so we have our timeline.

And I can check back with you, too.

The other question was, maybe, Tommy, the other person that talked about it, the feedback loop.

So part of the discussion all along, if you look at Ben's presentations to council, it has been not only identifying what projects we can put out there with paint and plastic, but also doing an inventory and assessment of the projects and what we can turn into concrete permanent projects moving forward.

reviewing process of all these projects.

And we're trying to parse through and you know is it the visual aspect of the flex post that they have the problem with or is it the physical like

orientation, because I've had a lot of people, you know, the Oakley Greenleaf one in particular, where the problem isn't necessarily the design of it, it's just that it's ugly.

Sometimes they slow down.

I said that, they didn't like that.

Why don't you make a suggestion for the feedback?

Maybe instead of just a general, hey what do you think about this?

It's a guided feedback?

What do you like?

Do you want this to become concrete?

I think you can say it might be that those words, cats and might, are really important.

They do a lot of work in that sentence.

And again, I go back to drainage.

You know, we're going to run into those type of issues, training going from paint and plastic to like concrete.

But yeah, I mean, I think that like the more we can support these type of projects,

Well I just want to say real quick Bike Month was awesome and there's opportunity to continue some of this stuff.

Number one Bike Ballet, I have a partnership with the City Police and

to allow us to continue the bike ballet.

So that means that I don't have to be here every Friday.

So if people wanted to volunteer for Fridays After Five, then we can continue that.

We can talk about that later.

But we have that ability to do that.

Number two, Ben is going to be at City Market on Saturday at 9 o'clock doing a quiet route.

One very important announcement about July's VFAC meeting.

It falls on July 3rd.

I know staff have already let us know that they will probably not be in the office.

So we may want to decide that we either don't have a July VFAC meeting or we turn July's VFAC meeting into

A quiet ride, or into a neighborhood walk, or just a social, and not really conduct any business, but just take the opportunity, if you're already holding this time on your calendar, to just kind of hang out.

Sounds like you should be at the pool with everyone who made so much.

So, does anyone have like a show of hands maybe?

Like, oh yeah, I'm not here on July 4th weekend.

I'm not here until that point.

Getting out of town on both of the themes.

All right.

OK. Well, yeah, maybe we'll just, we can consider that.

A quick announcement.

VDOT and GBPDC have posted a couple of surveys

that I can forward to BPAC.

One is the street between Harrison and Pinehurst and one is on 29.

I'm just listing feedback about like what do you use this for?

What would you like to see?

And it includes like what some of the options are by ped stuff.

So I'll send it out so that people can take a look if they want and then forward it on to anyone else who might have

Anything for next meeting?

Thanks.

We'll follow those up.

Look at that.

All right, we'll follow up.

Thanks, y'all.

Motion to adjourn?