Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee Meeting   1/8/2026

We will begin our January meeting, BPAC meeting.

This is our annual meeting.

This is when we get to do exciting things like elect officers and confirm our meeting schedule for the year.

So, but we will always, we'll kick off as we always do with a round of introductions.

Maybe we'll start with the Zoom folks because I feel like we always lead you all to the end.

And our icebreaker today is what, where were you born?

Yeah, I can start.

My name is James Van Vranken.

I'm one of the co-chairs of BPEC.

Nice to see you all here.

I was born in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.

Hi, I'm Linda Cappacchione, and I'm a volunteer community organizer with the TomTom Festival, wanting to

Oh, Washington, D.C. And I'm actually in Maryland right now with my folks in Maryland.

Thank you.

Hi everyone.

I'm Albert Carina-Plun.

Hi everybody.

I was born in Berkeley, California and lived in Venezuela for about 15 years and I was

I'm retired now.

Oh my goodness.

Amazing.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Jen.

Hey, Jen Fleischer.

Oh, I'm officially a city councilor.

And I work at the Blue Ridge Health District.

And I was born in Boston, Massachusetts.

But Sarah, I grew up in Broward County.

So there you go.

We're all connected.

We're all connected.

I can't see the list, though, because I'm driving.

Yeah, no, that's it.

Oh, great.

I'll keep it going.

I'm Guinevere Higgins.

I'm a VPAT co-chair.

I live in Beaumont.

Hi, I'm Kevin Zorf, citizen.

The new one?

No.

I was born in Virginia Beach, General.

I'm Peter Krebs.

City resident, work for the Piedmont Environmental Council, and I was born in Shawnee Mission, Kansas.

I'm Evan Pilachowski.

Here is an observer today, and I really get to know you all.

Tommy Sopranek, Citi's bike and pedestrian coordinator.

Awesome, awesome.

Thanks y'all for sharing a little bit more.

Is Freddy in the waiting room or what's Freddy's do?

Freddie, if you'd like to welcome Matt, so please, please holler.

And Natalie's breaking in.

One more.

Oh, come on.

That's worthwhile.

All right, Natalie, our final introduction.

Oh.

Hello, I'm Natalie Ostrom.

I am the vice mayor.

Don't tell anybody.

Yeah.

It's great.

Thank you for that, y'all.

Fantastic.

Thank you, Kevin.

Thank you, Marinette.

I'm not sure if we can squeeze in this proposal that is tentative, but we're talking about it looks like there's good feasibility, but Tommy's aware of it, right?

Is it on there?

It's not on the agenda, Linda, but I think either maybe during public comment you can mention it or

It's also a great use of the BPAC listserv, which goes out to like over 100 people.

So, you know, there's only a few of us around the table and on Zoom tonight, but if you want to cast a wider net for your idea, can also be good there.

But yeah, happy to have you speak.

It might require discussion, but we'll see.

I'll squeeze it in.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Public comment is the next item on our agenda.

Anyone else beyond Linda here for public comment?

Really?

Oh, okay.

There it is.

Okay.

So there is a proposal that we are working on to submit to this year's TomTom Festival to make it car freer.

And there's a partnership happening with YMCA.

and Love No Ego and Keep Going Together.

Right now we're tentatively considering also including, but we need to reach out to them, so it's still under discussion and we're looking at the agenda.

But Moral Mondays folks who meet at the downtown mall, these are folks with churches and different faith organizations.

they care.

Anyway, we were thinking that maybe they could, they'd be interested in carpooling at their parking lots, like at nine o'clock on April 25th, 2026.

And I'll go to the YMCA, you know, maybe with bike racks with their bikes, some of them.

And at that point too, there'll be like a nature connection with the youth nature wellness connection.

to make streamers for their bikes or if they're walking.

And these would be more earth friendly than plastic, and they'd be kind of like kites but streamers, with an intention that they have with their nature connection activity as they arrive.

And we were thinking maybe the bike ride would be at 1030 from YMCA to the downtown mall at the Tom Tom Festival.

and Tommy mentioned there would be a bike filet.

Now these times are sort of flexible right now.

This is just very much of a draft.

There's some other ideas floating around with that.

There's a panel discussion we need to secure a place after that at 1130 that Benita Patton with YMCA is organizing.

She's reached out to the mayor and different folks

and she wants to have youth representation also from student council at the different high schools, possibly middle schools.

And this would be a panel discussion in terms of what would make this more for a friendlier community for youth and families, that sort of thing.

We don't have the panel discussions yet.

But there's Freddie Jackson.

Is that Freddie Jackson who's listening, or is it a different Freddie?

Did somebody say there was a Freddy out there?

Okay, so Freddy is with Love No Ego and he would be our moderator.

I don't know if any of you know him, but he's very charismatic and fun and has a wonderful vibe and message.

So he could be the moderate.

He's committed to be the moderator.

then that would go until about possibly one o'clock and then after that would be what we had last year again with Keep Going Together, a dance block party with Susan McCulley and the youth and family.

People could participate with that after the panel discussion and there'll be thematic music related to our theme and

Of course, you know, there's something about being car-free or not as dependent on fossil fuels.

If that may be something we can think of.

Yeah.

Well, can I ask a couple questions and maybe add some context for everybody as well?

Sure.

So I think that, like,

You're working on a proposal for TomTom, for this, to try to make the event itself more car-free.

I looked it up.

Yes.

I forgot to mention that.

Right.

So I very much want to do a bike valet as part of TomTom.

Yes, regardless of whatever it is that happens.

Bike valets, I feel like are a very impactful, low capacity way of showing people bikes are great transportation as well as providing a great service for folks.

So I offer that as an idea in conjunction with your idea for a bike ride from the YMCA to here.

Friday Center 5 has also happened the past few years at the same time so I think Bike Ballet maybe on that Friday like we did last year would be great.

This is all to say I think I am I'm personally maybe wanting to know a little bit more what you mean by moderator and panelist.

So I think what might be helpful for me and I would assume for like people on the Bike Month Planning Committee and BPAC

is like a proposal.

And then we can send it out to that listserv.

I mentioned this to Linda and Meredith in the email today, but I don't think I'm going to be around the 25th or the 26th, whatever that main Saturday is.

So we are going to be looking for volunteers to help whatever it is that we try to do.

But I think it's a great idea.

and I would love to support it as much as possible.

And in addition to that, the other thing I proposed just today to Linda, I wanna do the e-bike demos during the e-bike voucher signup window.

So that's four e-bike demos a year and April is one of those signup periods.

So I think that doing some sort of e-bike demo during TomTom would make sense, but I don't think it has to be on that Saturday.

It could be on the Wednesday or Thursday or whatever,

But I think tying it back to everything that you're trying to do, Linda, I think would be great.

Right.

And YMCA has a great parking lot.

Awesome.

I'm reminded too that in a conversation with staff earlier this week, we heard that the week without driving is also sort of looking for an advocacy home.

And that's in September, October, later in the year.

Well, there was a question I had about public transit.

And ask them to have bike racks.

Buses do have bike racks.

They can hold two non-ebike bikes at a given time.

But there's not permission to bring a bike on the bus.

Great.

Cool.

Well, let us know how you need BPAC support.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, but who knows?

Thank you for taking this on.

What's that?

I was just saying to the group, I was just asked directly, YMCA is on Route 9.

I think the biggest thing whenever we do is the term like promoting, having enough time to be able to promote everything.

Awesome.

And welcome YY, I see you're online.

Glad you're here.

Hello, my name is Wai Wai An.

I live in North downtown.

I was born in Seoul, South Korea, and moved to U.S. in 2008.

I'm just wondering where I can get more information about the volunteering opportunities.

Well, for TomTom, you can just, they're searching for people starting now, I would assume, off their website.

TomTom Festival, Charlottesville, will pop up.

Okay, well, just put me on some mailing list or something whenever I can make it.

I don't think so.

OK, if the chat's available, yeah, I'll do that.

Yeah.

Great.

Yeah, we'd love to have you there.

And then you'll hear about all kinds of opportunities to get involved.

And we welcome you offering your time.

Thank you.

All right, moving into officer elections.

I've never done this before, but I think we, James and I have put ourselves forward as continuing on as co-chairs.

Sorry.

Thank you, YY.

Go ahead.

Yeah, sorry.

Thanks.

Yeah, so I saw the agenda about Locust Avenue, so I wanted to make public comments.

As far as I know, whenever there is repaving or utility work, that's kind of once in a decade opportunity to do kind of chip infrastructure.

So I'm just wondering why we

We don't have, as far as I know, we don't have the infrastructure plan for that.

And especially that local seven year blocks kids from one side to go to the other side.

Dubb Avenue, where the Sunrise Elementary School lies.

And my kids go to Sunrise and every day I bring him there.

And like at the low cost, I cannot let my kids walk alone on that street.

So I just want to mention that why we don't have any plan for this good opportunity.

And another thing related to that is I think we talk about like we kind of equate bike infrastructure with the bike lane, but I think Locust or John Warner Parkway or West Main, those are examples where they are not really bike lanes, but kind of anti bike lanes.

because you are kind of really dangerous riding in the bike lane because there are lots of debris, cars are driving fast and because there are not a lot of people using it, people see it and then say, why are we building this bike path that nobody uses?

So I think it's a net negative actually to build this type of really bad bike lanes and also

The reason why I cannot let kids ride on low cost avenue, it's not about bike lane, but it's about speed of the cars, right?

So I think we sometimes forget that it's more important to slow down the cars than

painting a bike lane.

Because if cars are slower, it's fairly safe.

Actually, in Bloomington, my commute to route had a mixture of bike lane, painted bike lane, and a neighborhood greenway, which is just a neighborhood street.

And the part I felt the least safe was on the bike lane, because that's just a painted gutter with the fast cars.

and the part that I felt most safe was didn't have any bike lane.

It just had that traffic calming infrastructure with the traffic cushion, chicane and road narrowing and so on.

So I think it's really less about bike lane, but more about the safety overall of the street and then slowing down the cars and like

Going back to the Sunrise School, if I kind of imagine going to the school, at the low cost, every street, there's no traffic calming.

And that means cars are driving fast and pretty much no kids are walking.

Well, I mean, kids are walking on the very narrow sidewalks, but then even with those quick builds,

If cars are driving 30 miles per hour, yeah, you cannot let kids walk there.

So I just want to mention that it's really about the speed.

There's going to be a few opportunities to kind of weigh in.

I'm glad Evan is here to hear your comment, especially around how do we think about aligning things, projects like repaving with rolling out new infrastructure and traffic calming.

So always appreciate underlining that.

We are getting away from our agenda.

Yeah.

So while you bring up some good points, I would recommend to go back, look at my email that I sent a few weeks ago as it relates to Locust Avenue.

Quickly, there are many projects in place and planned.

Locust Avenue, there's nothing in a plan to point to, right?

And there was a lot of public comment that went into Locust Avenue to get what we have currently.

That all being said, there is a utility project there.

There is no plan to repave Locust Avenue.

It's just going to get patchwork.

So there's no striking plan associated with it.

So I would just say from a BPAC's perspective and from a person who lives two blocks from the area that you're talking about, it would probably benefit us as a community if we work together to identify those places that need it the most and put them in plans.

Thank you, Tommy.

All right.

And lots more opportunity to weigh in as we talk about our work plan, as we think about how our work plan ties to the comprehensive plan, ties to the transportation master plan that Ben is working on right now.

Exactly.

So while you're ahead of the curve as usual, and always grateful for your input.

And Sarah, just acknowledging your comment here that Florida DOT is trying to accommodate wider sidewalks.

instead of bike lanes in some locations that sounds like go Florida.

All right, moving back into officer elections.

We have three elected positions on the BPAC.

We have either a chair and vice chair or co-chairs and a secretary.

Has anyone been considering throwing their hat in the ring for any of these officer positions for BPAC?

Upham Secretary again, if no one else wants it.

Merrick Dibb.

Crushing it.

We don't deserve her.

Anyone else?

I know James and I have, I won't speak for James, but I know we had talked about continuing on as co-chairs in our occupancy.

No change of heart.

All right.

I move that we vote to, I move to, hold on, how does this work Natalie?

I would like Meredith to be secretary.

Make a motion.

I would like to make a motion that Meredith is our secretary.

So I get that motion.

All those in favor.

And by virtue of attending BPAC, you can vote.

Aye.

Aye.

All right, unanimous.

Aye.

I'm the ladies on.

I make a motion for Benamir and James to continue on as co-chairs.

For how long is the term?

It's a year.

Congratulations.

Hey.

Thank you for having us.

Brilliant.

Because this is our annual business meeting, we also want to go ahead and

just confirmed the dates of all of our 2026 meetings.

This meeting, of course, it should be held on the first Thursday of the month, but because that day was New Year's Day, we pushed back a week, which I think also explains why some folks aren't here.

So the January meeting is a little off.

I believe all of the other

Meetings.

And actually, Tommy or James, are you able to share your screen just so people can drop in the chat these dates?

I don't know.

Just so people can know, sometimes it's easier to see them.

Do you have the agenda handy?

Or James, do you have it handy?

See that, James?

That's fine.

It's basically the first Thursday of the month for the rest of the year.

It's also complicated March 5th.

And that's at the Wolf Factory.

It's just at the Wolf Factory.

So I will say I actually uploaded all these to the city calendar already.

Great.

We can delete them or whatever.

The March 5th one, I just put location TVB to align with mobility summit.

Yeah.

So y'all can see the dates here.

You will be smart to delay the

Week.

Yeah I think we can still forward and say these are the meeting dates and if in June

I currently don't have it set up as this being a location.

It's just set up to be a webinar.

My thought behind that was if people are on the Google list, they'll see that an in-person option is available.

Is it because, though,

I think there's uncertainty over space, over how to get into this room, and all those things.

And also at one point, the available capacity.

If we don't have any reason to believe that we are not in this room, for the folks who join in person, I feel like we should have that information on the website if people do want to show up.

They know where to go.

Let's see if we get a response from his email earlier today.

Cool.

Um, great.

Um, questions for staff.

Do we have a staff report?

There's not one linked.

It's not linked, it was attached in the email.

Anyone have questions for Tommy or questions that you would like Tommy to relay to other staff or Zoey, sorry.

Okay well this is my first meeting and you know I have an agenda but I was even wondering if there may be a BPAC representative for the panel discussion.

I know you want a written proposal too but this is about making it a more you know friendly community for families and youth and multi-generational and make it more

just healthy too.

So there's different things that people want from their community, and a lot of people would like that walkability and safety.

Yeah, just to be clear, Linda, you're asking staff, so Zoe, myself, or other people in our department, if we'd be willing to sit on a panel discussion during TomTom about

Is that right?

Yeah, I think we can probably figure that out.

The other question is, there was something I didn't really hear it said, it was very quick, but I don't know if it was related, something about a Wednesday morning thing.

Well I think I just offered Wednesday in general as like a day we could do the e-bike demo.

It didn't have to be that Saturday.

It could be Wednesday, Thursday, or even that Friday.

Okay, and then I'll just, Tommy, if I have any questions about putting this on the listserv, I would contact you or would I contact Meredith or if I

Yeah, we approved it.

So James and I have a policy of any new members cannot automatically post because we're experiencing some spam last year.

So if you're a new member to the BPAC list or you've never posted before, you have to have your message approved.

It's not because we don't think your message is worthy.

It's just because we want to make sure there's no spam.

Oh, okay.

So all I have to do is send an email?

Yep.

Okay.

And the other question I have, too, you had a question for me about what the panelists would be doing or what the moderator would be doing.

Is that true?

But maybe I can explain that more in this.

But is there something specific that I need to address?

But once I write this up, it will be explained?

Is that a question for Tommy?

Okay.

Great.

Thank you.

So I understand that this festival is about getting input from the public on what they would like to see.

How is that input being?

Is that going to be recorded somehow, not just voice recording?

Is it going to be put down in writing?

How does the public know that they've been heard and how

Do they know there's a response to what, you know, they are saying is being incorporated into something?

Because I'm not familiar with your planning process.

This is not a city process, right?

This is a group of people running a festival, having a panel about how to make the city better.

Full Stop.

There's no guarantee that any of it will be heard.

That's not, I mean, I'm just being real.

Yeah.

Is how you plan to incorporate the feedback that you're soliciting into actual change in the community.

Right.

Right, I understand that, but instead of this is just a let's feel good together kind of gathering, is this what we're talking about?

So Linda, just go to the website because that website is going to give you a good idea of what TomTom is, but it's not going to fill in all the blanks.

Sorry, did I say Linda?

Okay, sorry, I apologize.

But the city is very much involved.

We are a big financial sponsor of TomTom.

And I'm working with our director of comms right now to see how we can get our, to be a little bit more engaged through TomTom.

And while I think Peter's on point with this is a citizen group of people coming together to see how they can make TomTom a little bit more car.

Free, we the city staff can play a role in that.

But it's not run by.

Okay, so just a recommendation.

I participated in events where we were not the sponsors, but there were booths that the county would set up and just say, hey, here's an opportunity for you to give us some feedback.

We put that on boards or something, even just take pictures, put that together and kind of hand it over to somebody else.

But at least, you know, it's like put somewhere where it's going somewhere and you're telling folks, hey, you know, this is it's an opportunity for the city to to actually have something, you know, a list of some things to look at, because not everybody from the city is going to be there.

You know, not everybody from staff is going to be there and it's just, you know, it's a way of actually getting the information back.

But it's just a suggestion.

Yeah, and that's absolutely BPAC's role is to do outreach in the community.

And we have as we have like so much juicy stuff to talk about in the work plan section of our agenda.

So thank you for the good preemption.

Yeah.

Couple of quick questions for Tommy, I think.

The first, well, I'll say the first, but you can answer it second.

I wanted to reiterate Kevin's email about Theo, about kind of what the status of that is.

I'd appreciate an update on that.

And the second question is about,

I think I heard there's a community meeting for the Greenleaf intersection, which is one of the quick builds that BPEC suggested.

And I went to the first one, so I have a bit of context about what's going to, like how that meeting came about.

I was wondering, Tommy, if you know, if any,

of the transportation team are going to be there.

Yeah.

Thanks, James.

So I'm going to say something real quick that's not answering your question, not related at all before I forget.

Because Peter asked me this question.

In two weeks, there is a PDOT public meeting at Carver Rec Center about West England Ridge.

They haven't posted about it.

I just know that because we've had emails about it.

But they're going to post it like today or tomorrow.

So you'll see something in the next 24 hours.

To answer your question about Greenleaf,

Ben is going to be there.

And Ben knows a little bit more context around that project than I do.

and the first question, yes, Kevin and I have already talked about VO.

I handed out those documents before last BPAC meeting and where we are now is I was sick and it was the holidays and I haven't had a chance to actually put all everyone's comments into a document to send back to VO.

But that's the next step to do that.

And if you have more comments to share, please send them to me.

Oh, yes.

My comment is that I support a plan that precludes parking views on sidewalks.

What about in areas that are not downtown?

Can I offer a suggestion?

It's the same thing I said at the last VPAC meeting, which is they can only be parked in designated areas and that can be physical or virtual.

So in the app, all users have, we'll show you the location.

So that's the designated parking area.

What does that do for you?

Okay, so you're saying as opposed to a painted perimeter off the ground?

Both.

I'm saying that is a designated area in lieu of that where we can't do it everywhere.

Is there a way to do that?

I know that the geolocation of the exact precise location of the scooter is not super accurate.

So is VO able to do that?

Like to know that someone is like,

And as a user, you need to be able to figure that out.

I guess, yeah.

I don't think you have to, it doesn't have to be that accurate.

The way I look at it is, A,

if it's two blocks over there, that's not the same as here, right?

And B, as it relates to Florida, I've been trying to get a hold of this bike pick coordinator in Tampa, that apparently Tampa, I think it's Tampa, they have figured out a way where when you're online, you can zoom in and the city can actually find VO or any user

just by looking online when scooters or other devices are outside that GPS reference area.

So violations are sent from the desktop.

It's not necessarily having to go out and physically see anything.

Would it be possible to do that, but also say like, no sidewalks in residential areas?

Literally, where could they park if not on a sidewalk?

On the parking space?

Yeah, we're park parks.

Yeah, they park there now.

Park there, continue parking right.

There's tons of places to park.

I don't know why, for some reason I always think of Monte Vista

It's like a very long road.

There's no sidewalks.

But see, I think that one of the benefits of going that way, it helps us better clarify where and where you cannot park.

If we say straight up, nothing on the sidewalk, unless it's designated, right?

So if there's a big, fat sign that says scooters, you can go here or on the app, it says scooters can go here.

You can.

I would say that if scooters are parked on the sidewalk, it's because we have a very wide sidewalk, which we don't have many of.

So there's very few opportunities that we wouldn't be able to fit scooters legally on a sidewalk.

So let's put a sign that says, yes, you can park here.

to

parking in general on asphalt, which means bike corrals and flex posts.

And I've asked our traffic engineer, I sent the email that we identified all possible autonomous mobility hubs two years ago to the traffic engineer, which are like 25 up and down the West Main corridor.

Can we turn those into bike corrals?

And I'm still waiting for approval.

But that's the goal is to hopefully get to that point if we put up flex posts and

Well, I was actually going to say something beyond that, which is I think there's still the, even scooter users are victims of car brain where they think the scooter can't go in the street because cars need it.

And if VO is able to communicate to users, park this in a parking spot, you're allowed to do that.

But the very first person who drives up to their house with their groceries and sees a scooter parked in their parking space

is going to throw it on the sidewalk.

That's happening now.

That's absolutely true.

But let's say there's 100 users and 100 of them get told, oh, I'm allowed to park in the street.

And then they park in the street.

And then 50% of them get put back on the sidewalk.

And my point is that there's not a user education that fixes that because the user is not involved.

The user might be in Florida now.

It's the person who throws up and not picked up the car.

But if it fixes the people who didn't realize.

Yeah.

So can I take this one step further?

Because you guys are both on.

We're both going in the same direction.

and I'll give you an example.

Ulderman, there's a road that starts with an M Miller.

Anyway, a lot of people park their scooters there because it quickly becomes county over towards St. Ann's.

And it's a cut through for all those like student housing right by St. Ann's.

So people, residents complain all the time that these scooters keep getting left where they want to park their car.

What is our ability to coordinate with the county for some urban ring usage?

Great.

Thanks.

In the interest of making sure we tend to everybody's questions, because VO can get us all riled there.

Maybe we table this conversation right now.

My goal was to have given you a draft plan with everyone's comments that I was going to send to VO for today.

It didn't work out.

If that's what you guys would want, I can still do that.

I think in a perfect world we would send that to B.O.

before our next meeting.

I will share it on the listserv and then we, after the next meeting, I will plan on sharing it to B.O.

Cool.

So you will put that on the listserv.

Fantastic.

Other questions?

I have questions for Tommy, but I want to make sure I have a better question.

Linda, I'm going to ask one question and then I'm going to bounce it to you.

Oh, yeah.

So yes, I was going to make an announcement about the January 22nd and would love to share more information with folks when it's available.

But I am curious, so will we see a plan?

Yes.

This new plan?

Yeah, for sure.

Will be online?

Okay, great.

And then is there, what is the process by which we make sure that whatever VDOT is proposing, Westinghouse Ridge,

Take a look.

I don't believe so.

Well, we have a meeting tomorrow with Public Utilities and Public Works about West Main utility project.

Okay.

No, it's the retreat.

Ah, okay.

So I'll know more about West Main in general after tomorrow.

But what you just asked is what I've been asking throughout this entire process.

I will say

We, the most important, in my opinion, and I would assume that my opinion, what I want from this is kind of similar to what y'all want.

Like we got, we were getting like the majority of what we want and if there's subtle tweaks to kind of align with whatever the design is for West Main, I think we can do that based on what we were able to accomplish to get to where, where the, where the, where it is now, the design is now.

if that makes sense.

A protected bikeway going up Water Street to Ridge, and then it's going to use a bike box to get to the right side of West Main.

So it's going up Water on the south side and then using a bike box to get over to kind of like the right side.

So when it crosses Ridge, it's now on the north side of West Main.

I could see a world after going through design of West Main that the bike lane or bikeways are on the south side.

But we had to go through that process, we don't know.

but that's a tweak we can make within VDOT's parameters.

It's not going to screw us.

Correct.

Now, if we decided we want to roundabout, then we can't do that.

Right, right.

But it's a subtle tweak on existing.

Gotcha.

Real quickly on that, though, because I know everyone's going to be important.

Excited to know.

If you haven't gone to check out the new website for the eBike voucher, please go check that out because that's on the new Connecting Charlottesville platform.

which Ben is going to set up an event page for the BDOT.

So this, that platform is going to allow us to like share events and programs and projects a little bit better or no, excuse me, a lot better.

But Ben said today he's going to set that up.

Let's make sure that that gets communicated out to the listener too.

No, no, just for that one.

It's a city meeting.

It should be on the city, not just on the VDOT calendar.

Linda.

OK, well, I'm learning a lot.

It's great.

I feel the passion.

Do you have a due date?

Well, for one thing, I need to write something up and submit it to the TomTom Festival like yesterday, I think.

I mean, I would say my recommendation to you, Linda, would be to put a call out for folks to help kind of, you know, serve on this committee with you to create this panel to kind of plan this.

Oh, we're doing that.

Yeah.

That would be my recommendation.

Make a request for that to be on the panel.

But we, there, I don't know how many people, I mean, I think it would be nice to have representation.

I don't know how many folks we can, because we're going to have students in there and so on.

Yeah, I can help with the route.

Okay.

Anyway, I guess we don't know.

Okay.

Yeah.

Are you basically saying that you're going to write a proposal and you're seeking help leading different parts of that proposal?

Yeah, I think we need to have it be defined that it's going to happen.

I know it's weather permitting, though, for sure.

There's that.

And when do we decide whether it's

I think just to be clear, Linda, I don't think BPAC is going to quote, like, bless your proposal.

I think it's more of like write the proposal and then the people on BPAC will say, yeah, sure, I would love to help out in whatever capacity, whether that's I love to join the bike ride or I would love to join the panel or I would love to join help staff, the bike ballet or whatever it is.

I think you're going to, what you're going to hear is a,

different voices pop up and offer to help in some capacity.

So the more detailed your proposal and clearer your proposal can be, the better response you're going to get from folks on the listserv.

Okay, so I work with Meredith, it sounds like, and she can give me that.

Is that right, Meredith?

Great.

Yeah, I see your thumb up.

Okay, thank you.

Month of May.

No, I know it is the month of May.

OK.

All right.

I think I'm done with those questions.

Any other questions for Tommy or Zoe?

All right, we will proceed with our agenda.

All right, hopefully y'all took a gander at the charter and the work plan.

James and I and James are you able to fill up the work plan and just we can look at it and see if anyone has questions or comments.

We are hoping to approve both of these tonight unless there's really substantive feedback that we need to take in to continue refining both of these important documents.

I think we wanted to start with the work plan.

We took in some feedback from staff earlier this week around

around making sure that all of BPAC's activities kind of align directly with an existing goal and set of strategies within the city's comprehensive plan, which was approved in 2021, alongside the city's strategic priorities around things like climate change, the kind of bigger picture strategic goals.

So we have not gone in and kind of like done the work of aligning each of these individual goals.

In fact, I'm going to actually pull these out right here.

the city's comprehensive plan goals.

But I think I do appreciate the feedback from staff.

And I think it's important that we make sure that we're always going to time our city does a great job of producing plans and not following through on them.

So I think we want to be a part of both creating awesome plans and then making sure that those plans are also followed through on them.

So it's going to make our work stronger if it's directly connected to existing projects and existing, you know, like stated, voted on strategic goals.

So I'm happy to go ahead and do that and I did not have a chance to do that ahead of tonight's meeting.

But I think James and I feel comfortable with kind of what we have put forward as far as the kind of

a core set of activities that VPEC will undertake that fall across the categories of advocacy, advising, meaning advising the city, advising staff, outreach and education, and then kind of these operational goals that just are intended to kind of facilitate how we show up.

And we have not gotten a lot of feedback on changes to what's here in this work plan.

This work plan is not meant to preclude

you know, taking on additional work as projects arise.

We want to, of course, always be responsive and reactive to things in the community, hopefully responsive and reactive to good things and not tragic things.

But we also wanted to make sure that we kind of always had this plan to touch back to so that we feel like the work we all put into this committee is strategic.

It is like moving forward

just with a shared understanding of what we all kind of want to get out of showing up here on the first Thursday of the month and beyond.

I think I'd also like to add to that to say that if something is not on this work plan, it doesn't mean that we can't do it this year.

The intention was to have a list of things that we know we would like to get to.

to have something somewhat formalized to keep us honest, keep us checking back to our priorities, kind of check back every so often.

How are we doing?

Where have we made progress?

Where have we not made progress?

It's not meant to be an exhaustive list.

It can change through the year.

It doesn't have to be.

Some kind of list of commandments that we're always going to be holding people to and saying you can't talk about it because it's not on the work plan.

Thanks, Dan.

Thinking about YY's public comment at the start of the meeting, I want to ask, do we have anything about traffic coming in here?

What else?

Okay.

Cause I think perhaps like maybe we should not like, we should include traffic calming as a, um, one of our goals at large instead of like, just as being an element of quick builds, because like we mentioned bike lanes specifically at the top of the work plan, but

So on that point, yes, I think the other piece is that a big, it's like this little bullet in here and there's not a lot in it, but this transportation master plan is actually going to call for reduced speeds across the city.

That's right.

That's part of what we need is to ensure that we have the most robust transportation master plan possible for all the things that we care about.

And as part of that, because we all know that you can't just like change the speed limits ends and magically use speed workers, like we have to actually change the infrastructure.

So I think your comment is well taken in Wawa's comment.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I've heard you guys say this and why have I mentioned it earlier, you know, biking on roads with slower traffic can be just as safe or safer than like safe bike lanes or protected, you know.

Well, they're saying it's more better than unprotected bike lanes.

Yeah, that's not where I'm going with this.

What I'm going is, biking is one of those things where not everyone is the same biker.

So just keep in mind that YY might be thinking how he's biking with his kids.

And then there's the commuter that's going 35 miles an hour to UVA.

Biking, everyone's a little bit different.

So just keep that in mind.

But biking can be safer for X biker doesn't mean that it can be safe for Y biker.

Yeah.

Let's keep it to the work plan.

Anyone else?

Can I add something real quick to that last comment?

There's data out there that shows that those bikers, the 35 mile per hour down South Florida, we say they're willing to ride in 60 mile per hour traffic.

That's only 7%.

The ones that YY was talking about is almost 60% of the population.

And some of that's just pent up demand.

So we really need to be planning for slowing traffic down to make neighborhoods safer, for people to feel safer to even walk in the neighborhoods.

Of course, there's no comparison to where I lived in South Florida to Charlottesville.

For me, this is slow life.

I think our orientation is how can we find the most upstream intervention possible so that we're both prioritizing the folks you're talking about, Sarah, and making a change at the highest level of the system so that that's why having things like let's make sure that Public Works and NDS and all these departments that are involved in the various pieces of making sure that our infrastructure gets put on the ground

are in coordination and collaboration so that we can find efficiencies and can think them faster and less expensively.

So I think that's kind of the purpose, and I think that's where this transportation master's been.

Let's all work together.

One thing you can do with this with respect to the work plan that you have,

It's under the Transportation Master Plan.

It says advocate for speed limit reductions.

And speed limits are just one tool toward the goal of reducing speed.

And it's not a very important, actually.

But I would just get rid of this, advocate for speed reductions throughout the city and get rid of the main arterial routes, because we want speed reductions on all routes, not just arterials.

When you say speed reductions throughout the city, what percentile of speed are you talking about?

So right now you're in the zone in technical jargon that this doesn't have to care about.

Right.

I think those go to what this work plan is going to speak to.

So that is going to be a technical question.

But I mean, yes, there is like, we could build a plan that keeps people from drag racing on South, you know, on 5th street, or we could build a plan that like gets the everyday driver and it's, I recognize it's not the same intervention, but you know, this is a, um,

you know, a one and a half to two page thing that talks about everything, right?

I've got a question about the nature of a work plan, which this feels very like mission vision statement.

Whereas I generally think of work plans as like,

The first quarter we're going to do this, the second quarter we're going to do that, the third quarter we're going to do this.

We don't.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, I feel like this is more like purpose.

Like this is what our purpose is.

This is not a work plan.

This is like

This is how we will filter things through to decide if they make it to the work plan.

It might also be like the, this is like, where else is, and each thing needs like in red action, such and such things.

So like we're trying to be more welcoming.

Well, one proposal that James and I were going to put forward is that we adopt this work plan as written, recognizing there's more to be done this week.

We do want to make sure we're incorporating the city's comprehensive planning goals in here.

We can add a timeline.

And I think that the timeline of it all

is not a, it doesn't necessarily need to be timeliney, but like you said, where it, you know, and this is kind of combining two things that are already in here where create a welcoming and friendly atmosphere of BPAC meetings where those not traditionally seen as bike pet advocates feel like there's a space for them to contribute.

I think we've acknowledged almost every meeting that we're not the most diverse group in the city.

But then in a different place, you say like attend neighborhood association meetings.

And I think that's part of the,

that's an action that ties into that principle of trying to meet people where they are, get people involved who are not typically involved.

And even if they're not showing up to this meeting or zooming into this meeting, they're more aware of us.

Yes, that bullet three was specific feedback that we heard from Kyle that we actually heard that in the past there were people who felt unwelcome at feedback meetings.

People who showed up.

Interesting.

So that's why we made it an explicit goal of like, oh my goodness, no effort.

You are willing to come here?

Oh my God, I've been walking here so badly.

Well somebody, you already discussed this in terms of yeah this feels like a vision or mission and not well there is a part that talks about outreach and action so I wanted to comment also in the engagement of the community there's

Engineering, they have a great engineering department at UVA, and this could be an engineering project that students might be interested.

It may help fly better, maybe.

I don't know.

I maybe already thought of something like that, but I see that you're thinking of an action plan later, but this looks fabulous, but I just wanted to mention that.

the local community that they offer opportunities to do something with the local community as a project.

We can wait until next month.

We can push this to next month once the updating has been done in both then.

If anyone wants to move, we can move to do things or come up with a totally different idea.

Not scrap it.

There's a lot of good stuff here.

Thanks.

Can I ask a question that will perhaps

guide us towards what we're going to do next.

I've been thinking throughout this process that BPEC has long been reactionary, hasn't been very strategic, needs something to guide it, but also that BPEC spends a lot of time talking about what should BPEC be doing and that we didn't want to turn this into another long process of

making a plan for BPEC to enact a plan to get the staff to make plans all the way down.

And so my tendency with this has been, doesn't need to be perfect.

It's not great.

It's something.

And you're all making very good points that it's not really a work plan.

It's kind of focus area.

I've heard, I think Natalie suggested maybe we should do a work plan after this.

And so my question for the group, I think, is how much do you think it would be effective?

I don't mean this to be a leading question.

Do you think we should spend more time planning for how BPEC should act?

Or do you think we should kind of cut it here or maybe do a bit more work?

Can I take the lead on, so we have the same problem with BPAC at Broward and I'm sorry I have dogs in the background.

We have the same problem with BPAC at Broward and my suggestion following what James is saying is that and listening to some comments that have been shared

is why not take what we have, adopt it as a guiding document.

You can call it whatever you want.

Work plan is not a bad thing to call it because it's just semantics.

But then take it, spend next time with the next steps.

How do we go about doing some of these things?

And start adding actions to it.

And so everybody can come back and take a piece of it and say, OK, here's how we could implement this piece or that piece.

I apologize for the noise in the background.

And so move it.

Thank you, Theron James.

That's kind of exactly what I was going to say.

I think we just call this something else, and then when we add the action items, that's the work done.

All those opposed?

Great.

Guiding document.

And it'll look a little different next month.

Thanks everybody.

James, do you want to talk us through the Charter?

Sure, yes.

So context here, very quickly, BPEC has had an old charter for a while that was, I think, quite vague in a lot of ways.

I read it when I first became chair, and it didn't really help me understand what BPEC should be doing or how it should operate.

But it had some good things in it.

This was an attempt to formalize and specify

what I think is already happening or what we've said we want to happen.

So for example, specifying membership in this document, black text is from the original charter, blue text is specifying what already happens, red text is a bit more substantial proposal.

So for example, this red text,

We felt that BPEC should be sending more official letters of recommendation to City Council and to Planning Commission.

Sorry, my internet is not good.

And I will confess to us a small mea culpa, which is that I was chairing this meeting, like as though we had adopted this charter already.

It's given that they are... Oh, thank you James, sorry.

So like that everyone can vote.

And that actually is our annual meeting.

Thanks.

Yeah, so I think our goal is to vote on the changes that James has put in, seeing some good feedback and comments in here around, and Peter, including live action editing at the moment.

I'm appreciating Meredith's comment around here, around funding, advocating for not just staff positions and CIP funding, but also funding for programs and things that, you know, kind of the softer stuff.

this could prevent.

Do we want to be packed up?

So here, I'll just say it, but like, it's not necessary to have it in here.

And it could be a liability if someone within city hall takes a view that the boards and commissions should not be about advocacy, right?

And then having, and this board would be

susceptible to that because it's being facilitated by a staff member, right?

So like someone who's hyper anti-government might say, well, isn't there a conflict of interest if you say our bike peg coordinator should get paid more or something like that, which we may think entirely, but having that sort of thing in the charter is just kind of a self-owned.

That's not even necessary.

Like, I'm not sure why it needs to be in the charter.

Correct.

The advocating for program infrastructure, all of that stuff is fine.

But when government staff go on record and this could someday be hybrid staff, if it becomes the boarding commission, then that like

And they will.

I think part of, if you've been around this work long enough, you recognize that a lot of the challenge that have been around, like right now, we all need to be advocating for more, for people, for, well, I know Public Works is doing this, right?

But we know we need the city to be hiring more concrete crews.

Like that is crucial to get to meeting our infrastructural goals.

Could we

Certainly, we know that we can spend infrastructure dollars without private managers to do it.

We know that very, very well.

And we've learned the hard way not to do the one without the other.

It's a given.

I'm just trying to protect BPAC.

There have been mayors who are like, what is this BPAC you've got?

I'm going to take a close come to what they're up to.

Yes, whatever people are happy with.

I would lean towards Peter's point of view, because I don't think we've ever looked at these purposes in my time, except to change them now.

I don't think they help us necessarily, because we tend to know what our purpose is.

Cool.

I should have said this when we talked on Monday, but do you feel like this captures like one of the main roles

and all these plans that we make holding us accountable for actually installing the recommendations and things in these plans.

I like that this exists.

Yeah, is there a specific thing to that?

When it says design, do you think that maybe this should point back to the actual standards design manual that we created?

Well, BIPIN is something that feels like an umbrella, right?

Like that conceivably in 10 years, this document can still be true.

It's not pointing to specific documents that at that point may be wildly irrelevant or out of date.

So I think we want it to kind of feel as broad as possible.

So operationally, how would BPEC

Accomplished that.

Well, that's why I brought this up.

Well, go ahead, Peter.

You noodled something that I was thinking about is like, who does BPAC report to?

So this was set up by a city engineer that didn't know anything about bikes.

And so she wanted advice.

And so it's kind of been that.

It could be very operationalized if BPAC had a

Well, it changes it from advisory to advocacy.

If accountability and benchmark meeting is something that this body becomes responsible for noting.

It also goes into advocacy on the city website too, I'm pretty sure.

Doesn't it?

Your point about accountability, Tommy, I'd also say that we as citizen advocates don't need much encouragement to hold city staff accountable.

Yeah, that's a good point.

I think that's where it comes in handy, though, is if there's an official letter-writing capacity.

Like, as BPAC, this is the official position, which accounts for all of these voices.

Yeah, I guess what I'm thinking is BPAC, in theory, has a more informed

Roll, then like the citizens at large, right?

So like holding us accountable, they kind of know what they're talking about when they're holding us accountable, right?

I mean, you know, BPAC was heavily involved in the creation of the bike pit master plan.

It's 6-27.

Do folks have wild objections?

James, do we want to table this until next month?

Is there a staff lawyer that can review, because I'm a little uncomfortable with the advocate word as a former staff member, if it's an advisory group.

So perhaps, I don't know if the city has a legal

Somebody on legal that might be able to view the changes and say, hey, yeah, you guys are okay with this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We can hear you all back.

Um,

Sarah, it's a good question.

I don't know the answer to it as far as like, because BPAC is not, we are an all-volunteer, non-appointed group.

So we technically kind of have like, quote unquote, no power.

That said, I mean, yes, do we have to operate within, you know, like we can't go totally rogue.

And at the same time, like there's no, we have no authority also to do anything I think that could get us in too much trouble.

Someone just said, should we replace advocate with recommend?

That's kind of what I do.

It's fine.

Because this is yeah, this is not a I appreciate the inclination for like a legal review because it's shaped like a legal document.

But this is

A volunteer body of people who like bikes.

It's not, you know, we're not... Sidewalks, we do like sidewalks.

But it's not, we're not, this is not a committee that was created by council with a specific, like, mandate.

Task, right.

So it's not as formal as that where we... Help us all understand why we're all here.

It's because we do want to advocate.

I love that also because I think it is good enough to be like a starting point for if there is a decision to make it a board or commission.

Totally.

Yeah, the cooks in the kitchen.

I also think...

Perfect is the enemy of good enough.

You guys are going to have the opportunity to go at this again during the transportation master plan, right?

Exactly.

Okay, cool.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Motion?

Second the motion?

I think the second is very good.

Okay, Aye.

Aye.

Post?

Beautiful.

All right, we got to start.

Yeah.

Okay, great.

Great.

And you know, if we need to revisit this and revise things, we can absolutely do that.

Just the remaining things on the agenda, which was basically a budget review.

Yes, so there's budget forums next week.

I'll send this to the feedback lister because there's the VDOT thing too.

Is there anything that would be useful either from this that you all want to share or anyone else wants to share going into our council retreat tomorrow?

Oh my god, that's a loaded question, which has an agenda that doesn't list anything specific.

All right.

Motion to adjourn.

Thank you all for the time.

Appreciate you all being here.