Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee Meeting   8/7/2025

Thank you.

Thank you for your patience.

Just quickly say names as introductions and get moving to the other agenda items.

My name is James Van Brinken.

Hi, I'm Kevin Sarpe.

I'm Nate Dalton.

Doug Turnbull.

Herb Levy.

Chloe McEnberg, Transit Planner for East Charlottesville.

I'm Kyle Rodland, the Safe Routes to School Coordinator for the City.

And online we have Ethan Tate, Josh Kron, and Mike Ferrisi.

Thank you for joining us.

They're all moved over to analysts and they have the ability to speak.

Yes.

And we can have them if they want to speak.

Why don't they have them introduce themselves?

Sure.

I will try.

My name is Ethan Tate.

Thank you.

And Josh said he's just listening in at the moment, not participating.

Hi, everybody.

Mike Parese.

I live in Rose Hill.

Awesome.

I'm hoping to raise your hand if you want to contribute.

OK, does anyone have any comments or objections to today's agenda or the meeting minutes from last, I guess, two months ago?

No?

Excellent.

I'd only say thank you to Meredith for doing such a great job with the minutes.

She'll be out either tomorrow or early next week, but the first complete draft of our comp plan, our new one to be released online soon.

So you please read, you know,

and also Freebridge Lane.

I don't know if Peter was there as well, but that has the board has now approved of discontinuing Freebridge Lane.

So it's going to be off of VDOT maintenance stuff and it's going to be made into a park permanently.

Improvements will come over time as funding and everything else is.

But it is done.

That's great news.

Thanks, Eric.

Next up, questions for staff.

Hopefully you've all had a chance to read the staff updates if you're so inclined.

And this is an opportunity to ask questions.

We have a lot of staff here today.

Thank you for coming.

Well, no.

Yeah.

Here's a question.

Maybe it's a you guys question, maybe a better question.

Yes, there is a Ridge McIntyre STARS meeting of 14th at 6th at Carver.

That's off the top of my head.

But there is a meeting for that STARS project.

What are we going to do to make them safe?

watching a movie last night that was filmed in Paris.

And I saw a really interesting thing apparently that they do to take the bike lanes safe.

They take sections of Jersey barrier just a couple of feet at a time and drop a few of them rather than waiting to get a whole lane of them.

And that's it seemed elegant to me because cars are just simply not going to move over to a place where going straight ends up getting a Jersey barrier.

That's a great idea, a kind of compromise between cheap as a quick build, but also scary for a driver.

More

Hey, yeah, just I think this was on the staff report about Safe Routes to School.

Shout out to whoever was responsible for both fairway lane markers and hazel lane markers and all the posts that went there.

I was just curious about kind of that lower section of hazel closest to East High.

And I know at one point the Safe Routes to School plan

included a crosswalk across Hazel and down toward to get to the back entrance of Sunrise.

And I was just wondering if there's a reason that Hazel has stopped where it is, or if there's anything more to say about like future plans and that lower part of the result.

Hey, Ethan, Tommy.

So the project that went on Hazel was part of the

emergency transportation projects that have been going around.

I think Kyle first kind of suggested it during our planning process, in part because of the Safe Routes to School connector.

That design has shifted a number of times to what it became, and there was a lot of pushback

from your neighbors on that lower section of Hazel to continue the lane markings from Gillespie down to your street.

And we were going to have to remove not only a lot of parking, but to be honest with you,

We weren't really looking at adding a yellow striped line down Hazel at first.

Traffic engineer at the fire department both came out and said we need X, Y, and Z.

And that's what we were able to fit in that corridor.

We weren't really able to accommodate anything more.

There wasn't enough right of way between Gillespie and York Street to continue that lane striping down.

down to the lower part.

But just to reiterate, I think that project, it turned out really well.

It is now providing safe passage because the elimination of parking across from Riverside with a lack of sidewalk.

Students can now cross East High and then have a little bit of protection as they make their way up to your street and over to Sunrise Elementary.

Yeah, great.

Thanks.

And I'll be curious to talk offline with you about other things we can do there, people we should talk to, but that's super helpful.

Awesome.

Yeah, I had a quick question.

This could also be something you talk about offline.

I'm looking for a golf cart on September 13th from 12 to 6 p.m. Rose Hill is having a block party at Washington Park.

And as part of that, 10th Street is mostly going to be blocked off.

And we've got some seniors in the neighborhood I want to make sure I can attend.

So I don't know if the city has a golf cart or want to go in the room, know where we can rent one or borrow one.

We have a couple golf courses in the city, but yeah, I'm sure we can figure something out.

But yeah, just wanted to get the gears turning.

Thanks, Mike.

Moving along to... Well, can I just highlight a couple of things?

Yep.

Well, I just want to make sure that when you're reading through the staff updates, it's not Albemarle or the only sphere that updated it, but I got a lot of input from Public Works project managers, and there is an upcoming event here at City Space on August 20th.

for their streetscape project.

So you guys should put that on your calendar.

And thank you for sending me those presentations from Public Works.

Okay.

Sorry, I'm a bit slow.

So that's a city-run meeting.

So VDOT's might be a bit of information about it.

But it's a city-managed project through H-SHIP.

No, that's a smart-scale project.

Yeah, so I sent a follow-up email to James' email with staff updates with the presentations.

Okay, moving on.

Next item is an item from Jen and Tony about

community members and some reti

and improving connections to community.

So one of their work groups is a transportation work group, which I run with Lucinda Shannon, who is part of TJPDC, and she runs the Partnership for Accessible Transportation Health, which is called HACT.

CAA gets an AARP technical grant every year to get support from AARP to execute kind of small projects within a community.

So this year, what we've done is interview bus riders and would-be riders and gather stories from transit users in order to promote

and encourage and incentivize using CAT and Jaunt and other services, as well as gather feedback for transit providers to understand problems and issues riders have.

So that's an example of one of the grants.

What CAA would like to do for the next cycle is assist in a project that kind of Tommy planted in one of our meetings as almost a wishlist idea, which is have a repository of walk audits for every neighborhood in Charlottesville to start

That's version 1.0.

Ultimately, it would be in Albemarle as well.

But to have a very standardized set of walk audits that Tommy and staff can pull at any time and say, all right, we're ready to work in Rose Hill neighborhood.

Let's look at what the neighbors have said in that neighborhood needs doing.

What's quick build?

What's more permanent?

What do we need to go back to them at?

So that the standardization is the key here in the process.

because though we use an AARP, generally walkouts are done with an AARP template, there's the organizing of the walkout at the participants and the feedback generated are not all going into one place and they're not all being kind of

crafted in a very standardized way that helps Tommy pull that data quickly.

And so I through I on our call, I was said to Tommy, like who could help execute?

We have the ARP template.

We have he's been doing neighborhood walks.

We did a walk audit with Sive and Mike Breezy and other city staff.

as a pilot project through Virginia Walkability Institute.

We were wondering if there's a way or is there a place for BPAC to fit into this concept and help execute it, knowing that it takes someone to

do the outreach, the organizing, the capturing of the data and the positing and maintaining of the data captured.

So hence the looseness of James not knowing really what we were doing and the really it's in concept phase and seeing what you guys think.

because CAA is not a nonprofit.

It's just a group of concerned residents.

AARP grants run up to, they do run up to $50,000.

The technical grants are usually somewhere around 10 to $20,000.

They usually come with a consultant that can help, but often that consultant is not local.

So those funds could be transferred to help reduce this repository.

But yeah, wanted to throw that idea out

Let it percolate, ask some questions, see if there is another group that might be a good fit that could help kind of execute on this idea, make it happen, see if we could apply for that grant and try and get those sorted.

Not that I know of.

Everything's under the city.

I mean, I'm, quote, weeding, even though I tend to try not to consider a lead, you know, by the city more if it's we are a post like this meeting of the neighborhood walks and we try to get neighbors

In terms of something that is done, I mean, you know, the way it's been done in the past with, you know, the C4S school audits or all these other type of audits that people do, I don't know.

I guess we could ask our risk management folks that question, but I only see

Yeah, I think Matt said, I mean, that's a great question, though, because you're you're saying come with us.

They can just do that because you don't capture in the walk audit any public, any private information.

You're just capturing feedback.

So that could be, for example, a role for BPAC.

Two follow-up things I just want to

say number one, this information is not only helpful to have kind of as a repository so that like when projects bubble up in certain corridors and neighborhoods that we have on hand and I can say hey this is what the community is saying but this is they're noticing these things at certain times of day as opposed to when I go walk Ridge McIntyre

on a Friday afternoon at two o'clock, and that's our one-time experience as a group, right?

Like, this would be a repository of information that people are noticing at all times of the day, at all times of the year, because it changes.

And not knowing, and not putting, not collecting information from when

And that's the addition to, I mean, that is what we're not capturing right now.

Yeah.

My question to you was going to be if we can utilize community members because just like Mike showed up for Rose Hill he was able to pull more of his community into that as well so if is there opportunity to compensate

If we wanted to start it before the grant season, the health department can compensate under the same way that we did for Rose Hill.

There's probably about 100 gift cards left to do that, so we would probably want to get one neighborhood during the seasons and spread that out through there.

I think the way the grant is given is very much about supporting the pilot in any way.

It doesn't seem to have limitations on it from my experience right now.

But I think it's a great question.

Yeah, so there there is like a mic for every neighborhood so that the it's a volunteer, just I'm just repeating back to make sure I got it.

So there's a mic for every neighborhood that gathers the walkers at different times of year.

And that mic is compensated for that for those four walks.

But the participants are volunteers.

Are you envisioning the participants are also compensated?

OK, super great.

So a couple of things on that.

Number one,

It would be interesting to tease out who is leading it so that we can answer a mass question about liability.

Because if this is a grant coming from the health department through AARP that we tax managing, that the city is kind of like quasi-partner on of sorts and that we reap the benefits of, then

that I don't really see the liability be an issue.

But if we're more managing that process, then we then we in pain people.

That's the key thing.

I think for sure, we want to run that by risk management and figure that out.

But it really dives into what I really want to talk about, which is neighborhood associations.

And I wrote this and I just updated the agenda.

versus neighborhood leaders and if not everyone's not aware there is a neighborhood leaders program that the city runs and they meet in this room here once a year on zoom quarterly or whatever and sometimes those leaders neighborhood association folks do not talk to each other and the leaders or the neighbor associations are not every neighborhood is different

and I see an opportunity here with OSA now kind of taking that program over to kind of rethink that program or those programs and with the discussions being had with this group about how do we make feedback more representative across the entire city.

Yeah, so you've got two different things.

So like it would not just to be super explicit, it would not be a Blue Ridge sponsored thing.

It would be a Charlottesville area alliance.

gets the grant from AARP and then they could write an MOU with the city, but if the money is coming from the city, you're right, that would have to be a logistical thing that happens.

And then and the goal and purpose of that project would be where does BPAC intersect in that project?

Are they the ones writing the reports?

Are they the ones identifying the neighborhood leaders?

Are they ones not doing anything?

They're just putting it on their calendar.

Who knows?

And then there are neighborhood leaders who could be

identified and participated in that and maybe even compensated for that work, or they're a totally separate thing that Osi will soon hear about and does that thing for.

But I think just real quick Peter, there are different things.

I totally see that.

But I see a lot of opportunity for like, instead of everything working in silos, things working like together,

When OCS would send out emails quarterly before those meetings to us employees about, hey, these are questions for the neighborhood leaders, 80% of them were about transportation and like biking, walking, scooters, and even congestion for that matter.

Yeah, so that's interesting and that's kind of connected to what I was going to ask about.

So Rose Hill is, I mean, it's great that Mike was able to lead that.

Rose Hill is not typical in the sense that the person who is a leader of the neighborhood also cares deeply about walking and biking.

And so that's something that needs to be sort of teased out.

So who your leader and who your social, your walk leader and your social hub are probably not the same person in most neighborhoods.

Thinking about the Meadows, for example, like the Meadows is a place where there's real walkability issues.

And it's also really hard to

connect to the people, right?

It's hard to get a hold of them, find out what they want.

If you want to know what Belmont wants, it's easy.

If you want to find out what Fronten Page wants, it's easy.

But the matter is way harder.

So if you could have somebody whose job it is to go connect

to get your community people out.

And then you could have a small number of train leaders who can also be city residents that are trained for whatever goals we want to meet.

I think that that's I think that that's really smart because otherwise you get like the groups that are like, you know, advocacy ready.

And those are the neighborhoods that get your action.

And that may not be the same as what the cities

Sorry, Matt.

So, I definitely agree.

I think the neighborhood leaders is just the entrance into the neighborhoods, so they may not be the same person.

Plus, they may be overtaxed or overwhelmed.

Additionally, Mike Parisi, who served as the long range planning intern, his major project for the summer was one pagers or fact sheets for each of the neighborhoods, which has demographic information, walkability information, as well as how to contact the neighborhoods.

And so we have a resource now for you to utilize.

So it's not just you are connecting to the same few neighborhoods.

I'm glad you went first because that consolidated a lot of my thoughts.

Basically, I'm just looking to consolidate what you and Tommy are looking for.

It sounds like the person who's looking to consolidate all this data to make it easily accessible for

Tommy and whoever else wants to pull it.

The purpose of the neighborhood walks is to be like, oh, this sidewalk and that area and this, that's the goal of those, right?

So you want a way to unify that data.

So the person who is unifying the data, are they responsible for checking in with neighborhood leaders to like, hey, I see that you haven't updated anything in seven months.

Before we respond to all of that, I want to say one thing we haven't described as a component of the goals of this project that we've been speaking about in staff is bus stop catchments.

In public transit right now, I think most people know that the position that I've taken is relatively new to the city.

There's a lot that I'm able to identify and start to lead on.

And one of those things has been a bus stop inventory.

So that's the specific sites that buses are stopping at, the actual amenities that are at that one point location.

But there's also the multimodal access to those stops that I don't have eyes on and I don't have the ability to go to every single sidewalk in the city and to look at that connection with the lens of connection to cold transit.

So one thing that would be really helpful and another use of this audit is to make sure that it's asking questions about connection to public transit.

And so I think that's an additional component.

We're still talking about what questions might need to be added to the main AARP guides that you would typically use.

They have additional transit guides that we may want to flex those questions a little bit to be most appropriate to our community.

But just to speak to that, I know most people in the room typically are here for pedestrian and cyclist experiences.

So I think you're right.

I mean, we have not flushed anything out.

Yeah, it's going to take a data management team that's connected to a leadership neighbor, an engagement team, and then a

you know, the project manager to make sure it all comes together.

I can see that happening.

So I think that's when we were like, let's see if BPAC has ideas about how to kind of get a grant that could fund this even as a pilot for a year so they get all the seasons, you know, and where there might be a role for us.

I think a decent start may be just like getting the list consolidated and sort of have a punch list so that there's at least some order for the neighborhood walk audits like that's where I feel like the best amount of effort

Okay, is this an area that frequently ponds when it rains and that somebody with a wheelchair doesn't have a curb cut that they can navigate around it to get to the bus stop?

So there's those experiential questions about the environment that there are many different environmental factors that you're not going to observe in one or even four seasonal products.

Maybe what I can do is, you're getting me a little more organized on this, like we have the template already, we need to add the bus catchment into that template, perhaps.

And so I can provide BPAC like, here's what a template of a walk audit looks like based on the AARP one, which in general is

pretty usable.

It's been flushed out and used for quite some time.

And here's the rules I think we need from hearing from what we're hearing from.

And here's how we tie into Osei's thing.

And here's how we tie into Tommy needs like a rough pass in that.

And then we can kind of

Keep looking at that and say, you know what, this is not a fit for anybody on BPAC or we're all volunteers, too.

And this is we'll show up for the walks, but not, you know, we can kind of decide from there.

So it'll give it a little more kind of fencing in and see if you take it from there.

I think that would be great.

It sounds like what she wants to add, which is really important.

And that person has to show up to, like, yeah.

.

.

Yeah, because is there a way also if we're talking about like feeding two birds with one's going, how can we pull in my sea vault data to that to standardize it?

Because people are always throwing in pictures and things in real time.

So we should use that as well.

Super.

I can see this living in multiple different ways.

You can structure the organization in multiple different ways.

It could fall within neighborhood leaders.

But this could also fall in under a new organization with them being back too.

I know at one point there was discussion about trying to identify more members within this committee from different neighborhoods.

It's our charter, which is up on the website, is pretty loose for this committee.

It is

Anyone can show up and be a member after joining us for two meetings.

In terms of a call for more members, I think I've just been trying to make this committee more available and aware to the greater public.

Yeah, I think if we send some language to the neighborhood leaders or associations, then more potential members would join.

But again, like you mentioned, they could just send it out to the entire directory that they have and we'll get some interest.

We did that for the PATH, the PATH work and Lord knows how many emails I received back from that.

And it's pretty actively recruits for other boards and commissions and

So we'll go beyond that.

We are a committee.

We're not a board or commission.

And there's two different types of committees.

We are not city council appointed, which has allowed us to do a lot of things that board commissions and other committees can't do.

But there's also some outside.

But the mayor of Charlottesville does read in the announcements, like, come give to a blood drive, or they do all kinds of stuff.

It's not boards and commissions.

I mean, just actively going out and doing the recruitment drive, which we haven't done in a whole, I don't know, we haven't done a drive.

This is small potatoes, but that's why the neighborhood blocks are presented by BPAC, or BPAC neighborhood block.

Like how many people get the emails?

That's up from 40 when I first joined two years ago.

I've already started this.

And for context, these meetings are better attended than they've ever been.

Interesting.

This is a nice segue into the next item, because there are two parts of a membership drive.

There's trying to get more of anyone, more bodies, more opinions, more people in the room.

and then there's trying to get more representative body of people to form the advisory committee and BPAC's never been representative of the city as a whole.

It's always skewed white and wealthy.

And I think the committee having read kind of through the minutes, through the years, through like

13, 14 years of it, there have been a number of discussions about how do we get more people?

How do we hear from a more diverse set of views?

And it's never worked, essentially.

I don't see that it's ever been successful.

And so when we talked about this, we talked about maybe the goal isn't that we want to get

more people in the room.

Not everyone's available on Thursday evening for a monthly meeting.

Maybe the goal should be how do we get out to the community and talk to them and see them where they're at and hear from them.

And so that's something that the Neighbour's Walk has done well.

We've talked about getting tents and

And I don't think it's one or the other.

I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't get more people here if we can, but I also don't want to lose sight of going out into the community and being present and being an organization that is known enough, known by enough people that

People know if they have a practical pedestrian issue that they can come to us, not only that they can come to us and we're a venue, but also that something may happen if they do come to us.

That's a short introduction to the next item, which is some specific outreach opportunities coming up in the next month or two.

And we have

They're all slightly different now for each opportunities.

And I want to touch on all of them briefly.

There are some that are quite specific, like Louisville and like social at UVA, and there are some that are...

Okay.

Let me just point out that I did add a couple more.

And at some point, I'd like to say to you to give an update on the program that you're trying to get.

How about collecting feedback as well?

Collecting feedback?

I'm sorry, you threw me off.

What's that?

Okay.

So I just added on here, Meredith, neighborhood associations and or leaders, question mark.

I have an event that I'm partnering with UVA, parking transportation on, UVA Health and VEO on the 29th of August.

That may not be an event that makes sense for VPAC.

I also added the Rosedale Block Party on there.

We have a week without driving on here and maybe in a sec we'll have you talk about that Zoe.

Loop Deville Trail Fest on September 27th is up here.

Loop Deville, if you don't know, is an event some of you very much know because you helped me organize it.

But that's to kind of get people out on our amazing trail network here in Charlottesville.

If you don't know the history of

biking and walking master plan within the city.

The RCF, Urbana Trail Foundation, really helped spearhead the first one in 2003.

And we try to get people walking or biking or running the 20 mile loop.

There's options to do less or more, but we can build our work.

I think that would be great.

There's a lot of issues.

We have UVA back to school on here.

So again, that would kind of fall in with that event on the 20th.

As James said, there's a UVA bike social.

Shannon from UVA Sustainability reached out to us.

I also threw on here, the last one is Halloween.

Ethan, if you're listening.

Ethan, a while ago, after last year's Halloween, thought that that might be an opportunity for us as a group to be a little bit more present within the community.

A lot of people out walking in the dark.

And I think that maybe we could talk a little bit about how we can, you know,

That's also the daylight savings that they also, or like traffic fatalities like skyrocket right after daylight savings because people are not, they're driving in a rush hour condition, but it's now dark suddenly.

And Tommy, if I remember correctly, I think we had chatted about maybe doing some sort of like a reflective bracelet or glow in the dark, you know, glow stick or something that just like

went home with every elementary schooler and middle schooler in the city or something like that.

And we could potentially brand that thing, ideally it's not too wasteful, but there'd be some way to connect walking around in your neighborhood at night with BPAC to, again, hopefully

Yeah, and Ethan, I was also saying the city also has a, what's it called, trick truck event on the downtown wall a couple days before Halloween that might be an opportunity to maybe hand out those bracelets

I haven't had much luck finding things that work well, but if anyone has any links, send me that stuff.

I did buy a bunch of reflecting snap bracelets that weren't very reflective, it turns out.

But also, Peter, PEC's Halloween ride.

I want to promote that really well this year.

I already have my costume.

I have a new one.

I am so stoked for that costume.

You have no idea how awesome it is.

I have two now.

So there's a bunch more.

To be honest with you, West Hape one day this past Saturday was awesome.

I saw a bunch of you all there, but there wasn't a BPAC presence, and there could have been.

And I think we missed an opportunity there, but I think we should like, I know that was on James, you kind of came up with the list at one point, and I think there might be other ones on your list there too.

I don't remember off the top of my head, but that,

That would have been a great opportunity to have a BPAQ presence at West Asian Day on Saturday.

I wanted to hear from people, if we do something like that, if we go to

James, before you ask for feedback, I just want to give a brief summary of the Week Without Driving, so we can also react to that.

So Week Without Driving is a national challenge that came out of disability rights advocacy in Washington state.

Anyone who went to the Louisville Seville webinar with Anna Z. Bartz, who wrote the book, When Driving Is Not an Option, this is coming out of her advocacy.

and I have started having conversations with different partners around the city about what it would look like in Charlottesville to take on this challenge as community members, as community leaders and also as a talking point.

I think a lot of people in this room probably are aware that the fiscal year 26 city budget conversations highlighted transit a lot and that those conversations have

led into conversations already starting for fiscal year 27, which doesn't start until next June or July.

So I think this is top of mind for a lot of folks in the civic space and budget conversations about prioritization and how we want Charlottesville to look.

And I'm really interested in seeing this as an opportunity for people to think about who public transit is for and the folks that typically are using transit in Charlottesville and the folks that also could be using transit in Charlottesville and what it would look like to

I'm hoping to have

TJPC and New Charlottesville could sign on, other local partners could sign on.

It could be kind of a challenge for, I would be willing to take the challenge as a city staff member to go seven days without personally driving your own car.

So you can ask for rides, you can pay for rides, you can take pedestrian or bike alternatives, you can take the bus, you just can't drive yourself.

And if you do fail, because you have to, then you note that as part of something being inaccessible to you without the privilege of having your own license and your own personal automobile.

And I think that that information, especially if we were able to capture it in some way, would really help inform this prioritization and community understanding, not just council member or city leader understanding, but community understanding of what transit means for Charlottesville.

So I think there's multiple, the timing is really great.

It's actually going to be the week after Loop Deville.

So there could be a signup sheet for the challenge at Loop Deville if there was a collaboration there.

We've had conversations about doing an e-bike demo kind of the week before so that folks who wanted to try out an e-bike from the e-bike library, there aren't a ton of options.

There's only a limited week there, but that could be an opportunity.

I'd be open to other collaborations.

The van pool that TGPVC runs, the rideshare that TGPVC runs could be a resource available to folks who want to figure out how to get around Charlottesville without their own personal car.

And we've also talked about potentially figuring out journey mapping either in advance of the event or asking folks to kind of be spotlighted for a day, each one person a day for the week of what it looks like for them to get around their day-to-day life and maybe what sacrifices they've had to make by virtue of not being able to use their normal mode of transportation.

Hey, James.

I just want to say we're in a new space.

We started late, but we have a hard out.

We have a meeting right after us.

Correct.

Thank you for that.

Sorry, that kind of broadens my question.

I was starting with, for the events like Lucaville, Roseville Block Party, West Haven, if we've been there, we would set up with a table

and that's kind of the mode of engagement.

I was wondering if people have ideas for what we would do there?

Why would we be there?

What would we be asking?

What would we be telling or giving?

What could some forms of engagement be at those sorts of events?

And I'd expand the question for

Like demo is always a decent draw, if that can be orchestrated, which I think is going to tie into like any kind of Week Without Driving, even like the thought of loading

of baskets full of groceries in my painter bag on my commuter bike and like riding up to Wegmans and then down and back home is like, yeah, I can do it, but like, can I just take my car?

We probably will want to do an e-bike demo anyway in October, and we could probably sync it up with the first week of October since that's the next round of signups are in October for the e-bike voucher program.

Well, what's the incentive for being on BPAC?

You get city staff's ear.

You get to put your ideas for better transportation into the pot.

I mean, like we should do it.

Yeah, or like the idea of just being out in the community and being focused about like what we're asking of community members.

So there could be a version of like, what are your concerns?

I mean, I guess, but like, in our generic city, you know,

There could be creative ways to pull people to hear what their neighborhood concerns are.

Now that we are taking a more methodical approach to small area plans, being out in front, here are some questions that are going to be coming up in your community.

So those are two good strategies rather than being like, you know, we've got a fixed BPAC.

So two things.

I know we're in a time crunch.

So those one pagers also have, if available, or if they actually complete it in the neighborhood, larger scale neighborhood events.

They also have their meetings.

So if you wanted to join for one of those events or one of those meetings, you have that information readily available through that one pager.

I guess three things.

So the second thing is we're going to build out the neighborhood leaders website with information for each of the 19 neighborhoods, just like we did for the one pagers.

We're also trying to create communication strategies for each of these neighborhoods to determine or to share with everyone how they would actually like to be engaged.

I've only been here six months, so bear with me.

We need some time.

So they are published, but not really.

And so that will be another opportunity.

I know you have your website, but it allows feedback, mapping, different things like that.

So once again, glad that I waited because that basically like, I think the big problem is that people obviously care about stuff like they want their sidewalks to be safe, they want their kids

but like ironically in the world of information there's so much that you have to like parse through that it's just like overwhelming sometimes like stuff that I care deeply about I have to dig to find or like show up to a meeting or whatever and so like the some kind of portal like the the RTF cards are awesome because it's got a QR code and it like you someone scans it with their phone and they get all the information they want

All of a sudden, they can get their finger on the pulse really easily.

Yeah, consolidated dashboard sounds pretty awesome.

I wish every knowledge subject had that.

I want to learn about politics, QR code.

I think, James, your question about what would we do there, to me, it goes back to the first topic a little bit.

We're trying to raise this community's presence into the greater part of our community so that we can not only solicit their feedback in a more consolidated, collaborative way, and we can make a good decision moving forward,

but then, and the decisions and actually make the decisions.

Instead of circling around and talking about it, we can maybe strengthen this committee through a greater voice.

The people who care about this.

We're getting, I get Carlos' first week here

When his neighbors found out his job, they all wanted to know about what's going on.

Why are they doing this?

There it is, an easy plug in.

But you were just there and they're like, oh, I want this information.

I care about it.

Give it to me.

All four that came out were like, this is an incredible thing that I did not know that was happening.

One of them was from the West Haven neighborhood, and she was like all on board.

She wants to know more information, but she genuinely didn't know where to go.

That's one of the neighborhoods that has a population that could really use this kind of thing, a presence that West Haven could have expanded to a population that we know that wants to be captured.

One is caring from folks.

in the community and channeling that up to city staff.

One thing I would add to that, and like Osay, I've been with Charlottesville for a very short period of time, so I'm not sure how this group has conceived of itself before I started attending.

But you're speaking as if BPAC is not community.

That's a great point.

Thank you.

Yeah, I was just kind of in thinking about these outreach opportunities, I was thinking a lot about all of Tommy's work in Bike Month and everybody else behind the scenes, I'm sure.

I feel like, you know, speaking for myself, but suspecting that there's others affiliated with BPAC that would be on board with it like,

I was happy to show up at a couple of those spike month things.

I'd be happy to show up at this various community outreach events.

I'm sure others would be also, but that takes a level of coordination that doesn't just kind of magically happen.

It requires somebody setting up the sign up genius poll and monitoring it and sending out the reminder email ahead of time and figuring out what happens when someone cancels at the last minute.

I'm happy to volunteer.

I don't have the bandwidth to kind of coordinate all of the volunteerism for BPAC things.

I don't know if there's somebody within city hall that kind of handles all of the citizen volunteer stuff, but like that, having done that like professionally for a number of years in a different number of different ways, like

That's like a whole career in and of itself and so like I'm 100% on board with BPAC members need to be out at kind of every conceivable event that has some possible bike and pedestrian advocacy angle.

But in order to do that, it's not just like us sitting in this meeting saying, sure, I'll do that and then show up that like it's a whole there's a whole infrastructure that may or may not already exist.

So I totally agree, Ethan.

I think there might be a couple instances where like B-FAC might want to consider to do their own thing and then coordinate.

those efforts by themselves.

But at the same time, a lot of the stuff that we're talking about here are kind of pre-existing programs or events that we're seeing how VPEC might fit within it.

And there's opportunities to kind of like, you know, not have to

You know, I'm not advocating for us to be like creating whole new events out of nothing, even just coordinating who from BPAC is going to show up at back to school night at Sunrise Elementary School.

Like that still requires a point person.

It still requires a level of communication and timeliness and all that stuff.

It's like,

That's a whole kind of bit of infrastructure that has to happen there.

And I don't know that we've established who that person is either on BPAC or at the city.

I agree, but at the same time, part of it is my job, like on some of that stuff.

Maybe not in writing, but in the overall goal of trying to make our community more bike and walk friendly, part of it is my job.

And so like, I would work with feedback on making that a reality.

It's hard to get a volunteer to herd cats.

Right.

Except that one, except for me.

I like herding cats.

Always successful.

There are people, and when you do, they're very valuable.

I also don't see the lift being massive in some of these places.

Five months required tons of volunteers and we found ways to lower the capacity by changing some of the event structure and that worked well compared to two years ago.

And they're doing five things, right?

But that's part of the job is to figure out what are we talking to people about?

What questions?

And anyway, they can only be there with you for one or two questions in a row.

So be smart with it.

The e-bike one sounds really strategic.

Here's flyers.

Thank you.

Have a great day.

No, that's a great point.

The e-bike demo might be its own thing, and the BPAQ presence is, we're just here to raise awareness of BPAQ.

Thank you, Ethan.

That was a very good point about the logistics of how these things happen, otherwise it won't happen.

We should end now, I think, to let people get set up for the 6.30 meeting.

Does anyone have any urgent announcements?

9.30, Bradbury.

Mm-hmm.

Done.

Yep.

Sunny evening, mobility, total of shames.

Not having a meeting, we're having a happy hour tomorrow at the study fair, which is still on Broadway.

We're having a tour of the Tool Library.

That will be fun.

Yeah, CATEC is a member of the Alliance.

It is, yeah.

So by the way, it's a partner.

It's a partner.

And I need lots of volunteers for Loop Deville, so you can sign up to see that on the website, loopdeville.org.

Oh, thanks, Carlos.

Carlos has been amazing.

I feel like I can really get to

He did a lot of work with limited direction.

Thank you.