Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordination Committee Meeting   8/13/2020

Okay, so this isn't officially like a public meeting.

It is open to the public, but this group is still in flux.

So members of the public, we're glad you're here.

We hope this information is helpful to you and we hope that you can contribute to our conversations.

And yeah, that's it for getting us started.

Okay.

So the first item on our agenda was a one map check-in.

So for staff, I'm just curious where you are, if you have any questions.

I think Amanda is on this call.

We're figuring out where the city is at would be helpful.

Can you hear me okay?

If you can hear me, which I'm not sure, but we got all of the data from all of the different parties.

And so Bob is working to kind of look through it and make sure everything merges correctly and all that.

So we met our deadline of getting it all done before our next meeting, but we're still in the process of kind of compiling it all.

and seeing what that gets us.

But it's all good.

I think two questions that came up were kind of how to deal with Ragged Mountain and Ivy Creek.

Those were two pieces of data that were missing from the data that was provided.

Speaking for the county, we do have that data.

I think that came up as one of the areas that was city maintained trails.

So we could send for those two areas.

I know Ivy Creek is updated.

I think there's a lot of discussion about what's

What are the existing or proposed routes?

I think that's even a discussion before I was here.

Yeah, I mean that works again.

That's also out of my area of expertise as well.

This is Michael Barnes.

I just came into the conversation.

Okay, yeah.

We've got Ivy Creek.

Again, it's Michael Barnes.

Great.

So I'm just going to back up a second because I forgot.

There might be some people on this call who are not familiar with the One Map project.

So for those of you who are not, this is a really cool project that

City, County, and UVA have been working on for a while now, and it finally seems like we've really made a ton of progress, but basically the goal is to put all of the bike and pedestrian infrastructure on

One Map, so people you know people don't when people travel by bike or on foot they don't always know exactly where the city line is versus the county so this would give you all of that information all in one place so really great project and it sounds like it might be ready for people to view in the near future.

Okay so just recapping Ragon Mountain information is going to come from Chris and maybe some help from Michael Barnes there and the county will supply the data on Miami Creek.

All right, well that was quick and easy.

Anything else on one map that anyone wants to discuss?

Okay great, thanks for that guys.

Let's see, moving on already to our outdoor recreational trail opportunities.

So originally my thought was that we'd have a little bit of time for everyone to highlight

any recreational or commuter trails that might be less or well known in your jurisdiction that the Rideshare program at the TJPDC could highlight in our social media.

However, Rideshare has decided that that doesn't really fit within their funding limits.

However, I still want to gather this information.

There might be other opportunities for the TJPDC or the MPO to advertise lesser known trails.

And I'd like to have that information on hand for the future.

So if anyone wants to just shout out some of your lesser known trails that you might want to, that you want the public to know about, let's do that right now.

And members of the public, if you have a particular trail you want us to highlight, you can shout those out too.

Or you can all think on it some more.

And I'm always happy to take these suggestions by email.

It can be anything.

Hey, Jessica.

This is Peter.

So PC is about to, we've created a web page that has like 15 places to walk, bike, or run in City County University from each of the three.

It's kind of stuck in my production queue right now.

I'll share what you have or what we have or when it gets published.

Sure.

That sounds great.

We have maps for every one of our parks that I don't know if you already have or have access to, but there are lesser known trails out near Scottsville and even Byroms.

We do have Byroms, but we do have a whole

Yeah, I think the goal of this would be to really highlight something as opposed to giving people too much information about all of their options.

OK.

So you're just looking for something that most people don't know about.

Yeah.

At least somebody knows about it, I'm sure.

I guess from, you know, around UVA, there's a lot of trails on the UVA foundation properties over in the vicinity of Ragged Mountain and that area that are, they're not really commuter trails.

They'd be more recreational, but there's some nice walking trails through the fields at Fox Haven that are very clear and well maintained.

as well as the Boar's Head Trails, which you'd access from the Boar's Head Resort and encourage people to use those.

They're free and open to the public for walking and definitely for walking.

I'm not sure what the rules for biking are.

I'll just chime in.

This is Terry Kent, as a citizen who loves being outdoors.

I feel like on the, and I don't have the name, I thought it was like Skylar or it's a park that maybe RCA like had a bit of property.

I just remember Robbie, Robbie Savage told me about it.

I accessed it a couple of years ago.

It's beautiful, has lots of little streams and it's east

And I don't know if anyone remembers, like, what's the name of it?

It's down in, Siler, Siler, you're right.

Gotcha.

That's the one I'm most aware of when I was on the board that we worked with

They actually have a lot of camping there and things like that.

It's the only one I'm really aware of.

It's again in Savannah.

There is actually land that the Nature Conservancy owns that you can hike with permission.

That's a whole other category of interest area.

If we're looking at all of the possible resources or destinations people can have, we could dig a little deeper than we normally do and there are a lot of things out there.

Coatere Creek Park is one of our parks that doesn't get a lot of recognition.

It's got three

Three miles of the trail, but it's on the lake or a wither wall.

Great.

Cool.

I have a very nice list here.

And if anyone thinks of anything else that they would like us to have in the queue for potentially sharing in the near future, just email me and we can advertise those.

All right.

Moving right along, next we're going to talk about the desired outcomes for a bike and pedestrian count.

So let me bring up a quick presentation here.

I'll be sharing my screen.

Right.

I'm assuming everyone can see this.

Shout at me if you can't.

But basically, it is part of the TJPDC's coming this year's work plan for us to conduct a bicycle and pedestrian count.

So this has been done in the past.

We're reviving this and I'll just go into my presentation and there'll be lots of opportunity

at the end for us to discuss.

I know that Shane from VDOT is also on this call.

He has already talked to me and he has some really great ideas for how our area can collaborate with VDOT and make use of some of their resources like their automatic

bike and ped counters.

And we can collaborate and they can get data as well that they're looking for.

So Shane, I'll let you talk a little bit more at the end as we get into our desired outcomes.

But if you want to interrupt me at any time to pop in and say anything, please feel free to do that.

All right.

So for those of you who might not be familiar, staff can kind of zone out for a minute.

The purpose of a bike and pedestrian count

Counts of bicycle and pedestrian traffic that result in reliable annual average daily non-motorized traffic numbers are essential for effective planning for all road users.

Count data, especially when used with geospatial data inventories of existing infrastructure.

And that's a fancy way of saying when you take the count data and you mix it up with a map that shows where

So this is a chance for me to trot out my favorite quote.

This was a planner in Canada said, remember, when asked to prove that bike lanes would be well used, it's hard to justify a bridge by the number of people swimming across a river.

So it's saying that counts, while important, are not the only thing that you should use in planning for bike and pedestrian infrastructure, but they are an important piece.

And here's more reasons why they're important.

When done regularly, count data make it possible to assess changes in network use over time, measure the impact of new facilities and policies, and improve the design of new facilities.

Counts are also useful for planning for bicycles and pedestrian safety, as the count data can be used to put crash statistics in context to better understand bicyclists and pedestrian risk exposure.

And maybe just quickly backing up on that.

I'm coming from a different city and in that city we had one intersection where we had nearly 4,000 people going through that intersection on a daily basis on bikes or walking and it had very, very few crashes.

compared to another place that had only one crash involving a bicyclist, but had far fewer bicyclists and pedestrians going through it.

So it was really great having that count data in addition to the crash data was a really good way to understand that the intersection with one crash was a much, much more dangerous intersection for bikes and peds than this one that had just one less crash.

OK.

So the TJPDC has done counts in the past, and they've done them well.

Most recently, it was done in 2015, but there were also counts done in 2013, 2011, and 2009.

I searched in our documents, and I was not able to find consistent data from 2009 or 2011, so I'm not really sure what happened to that.

But we do have data from 2013 and 2015.

It appears that most of the locations that were done in 2013 were also done in 2015, and some new ones were also added in 2015.

The locations that were done that were counted were chosen by a group that included the city, Albemarle County, UVA, some advocates, and TJPDC staff.

These counts all followed the National Bicycle and Pedestrian Documentation Project's best practices for bike and pedestrian counts, including using some of the exact forms that this documentation project recommends using for the counts.

The counts were volunteer based, so while there were some staff who went out and counted at some high volume intersections and locations, there were lots of volunteers who just volunteered their time to go out and count.

After reviewing what we had done in the past, I think that there is a lot of room for focus and improvement of the counts that had been done.

Hopefully there's a lot more.

All right, so let's look at a map.

So what I'm going to do now is stop sharing the screen.

I'm going to bring up a map that will show where the counts have been done in the past.

OK.

So this is a very sort of zoomed out map of the Charlottesville area.

And you can see that there were count locations kind of all over.

There was one.

as far north as Rio and the John Warner Parkway.

There's one as far south down here at Mill Creek and Avon Street extended.

There's a lot over at the university, but nothing else really over here.

There's quite a few downtown, but not much over this direction, including nothing over by Riverview Park.

Anyway, I think

So this gives you a good sense of where we have data from in the past.

So not all of these locations were actually counted.

These were all identified as priorities.

And then within this group of priority count locations, it was broken down by this team of city, county, UVA advocates into low, medium, and high priority.

And mostly medium and high priority ones got counted.

So we can come back to this and I put it on this map so that we can zoom in and out and we can look a little bit more closely at what's on the ground as we talk about it.

I'm going to stop sharing this.

And I'm going to start sharing just a really quick historic summary that includes the data.

OK, so on the left.

You guys are seeing a list of all of the locations that were just on that map.

Like I said, I couldn't really find complete count info for 2009 or 2011, but I did find stuff for 2013 and 2015.

The bike ped documentation project recommends that these counts are held twice a year, once in the spring, once in the fall, typically in October and May or September and May.

Anyway, so I've identified whether or not the count was completed at that time or not with a yes or no.

I've put incomplete in some of the spots because the data was seriously incomplete, as in I could only find data for a couple of hours total, maybe like for one day, maybe only one hour or maybe an only 15 minute increment.

I'm not sure if that means that there was

that someone was counting for the other increments of time, and they just had zero, so they didn't put that in, or if that data is missing.

So you'll see if it's incomplete, if it was really incomplete, but I want to note that all the data appeared to be varying degrees of incomplete.

There were lots of 15-minute increments that were missing.

So just keep that in mind as you're comparing these total numbers.

So I think it's useful to consider for the places that we did count in the past, how many people did we count?

Because we don't necessarily want to continue to count at a place that has incredibly low numbers if that place is not

if that location is not strategic for future bike and pedestrian planning.

So here's the total pedestrian numbers, and here are the total bike numbers.

And this ranking over here is just whether or not the group that prioritized the locations ranked it as high priority, medium, or low priority.

So for both the map and this information,

which like I said should be taken with a grain of salt because it's incomplete and I did it quickly just totaling up these numbers.

I'll make that available to staff by email later today.

Now I think it's time for us to get into more of a discussion.

Continuing.

All right, so the goals for today's discussion.

Basically, I want to hear, especially from staff, but also from the public, what are the desired outcomes for our next bike and pedestrian count.

I'm not convinced that we'll be able to get one.

I'm not convinced that we'll be able to get one going for the fall, but I'd like to try.

And we will definitely do one for the spring.

So when we do that,

Given all the craziness in today's world with the pandemic and people's commutes changing, what are your desired outcomes for our next bike and pedestrian count?

And after we've talked about that a little bit, I'd love to hear more about what other information do we need to choose priority locations for the count?

We can stick with the locations that have been done in the past.

We might want to choose fewer of them, depending on how many volunteers we think we can get.

We might want to refine them,

choosing some of the locations that have been done in the past and maybe adding new ones.

But I think that that's going to depend on a lot of other sub questions like where are projects that impact bikes and peds going to take place over the next few years so we can get that before and after data?

How can we collaborate with VDOT?

Thank you, Jessica.

Good morning, everyone.

This is Shane Sawyer with the Virginia Department of Transportation.

And a couple of weeks ago, I was looking through the TJPDC UPWP.

And I joke with Jessica that I'm not crazy that I'm looking through UPWP's, but I saw this project and having a lot of experience with

With bicycle and pedestrian counts over the years, I thought I would contact her to see how we could increase the utility of the counts that they are going to do and pair those with what VDOT is already doing to increase the utility.

It's a tremendous amount of work to organize these MBPD counts so it would be great if the data collected actually has more utility than just a number in a spreadsheet.

So with that I did reach out to Jessica and

I propose some ideas on how that if they are going to actually do go out and do the counts what can we do that will benefit VDOT, the PDC, and the region as a whole to collect additional data or more useful data since they're already there since we all have volunteers out counting so

And I did mention that also VDOT does have some automated counters in Charlottesville that have been counting for quite a while.

And we could also place additional counters in advance of the manual counts and leave them in place afterwards to get a longer

duration count because there is some question of utility of two-hour counts alone in terms of looking at year-round numbers so anything we could do to increase the utility of the effort that goes into getting these counts will be great and so we have some ideas we're hoping to partnering however you guys would like us to and I'll be happy to

to provide any insight that I've gained over nearly a decade of doing this.

So I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks, Shane.

I think one thing I just want to add, because I didn't really talk about it in my presentation.

So the bike pad documentation project, it recommends these counts twice a year in the spring and the fall.

They also have very clear instructions on when to count.

because we're trying to gather commute data in particular.

They're looking for a two-hour count in the morning, typically between seven and nine, and a two-hour count in the evening, typically between four and six.

Great.

Yeah, but like Shane said, there's limited utility to just these two hour counts.

So there would be a lot of benefit from working with VDOT and using their automated counters who could be out there counting for 24 or 48 hours.

And then we can compare that information to the

Go ahead, Amanda.

I was just going to say the flip side of that too, and maybe you already sort of hit on this, was just validating the counts of the actual account equipment and making sure that those two match.

Because I think, you know, I know personally with the equipment that we have in Charlottesville, we haven't done a great job of really being out regularly to make sure that the account equipment is working the way that it should be.

And I have one quick thought to throw in here.

I would agree the before and afters of, you know, something that's about to come online would be very valuable.

You know, we built it, did they come?

There's also a number of settings now, like the John Water Parkway, and I would say Water Street, where you have an option of being in the street or on the trail.

It might be worth if we are sitting in locations to see

What's the split?

How many people are using the bike lane?

How many people are just in the road?

And how many people actually use the trail just to kind of get a feel for what types of facilities people prefer?

Or if it's a non-preference, you know, I know certain people that commute don't like multi-use trails, and some people that like trails would never get in the middle of the road.

So that could be a data point we haven't collected yet.

That sounds really interesting.

Yeah, and Jessica, I would like to add that I think Amanda hit it in the sense that yes, the automated accounting equipment is great.

However, it is technology.

We think they're pretty accurate, but it's always great to go out and manually verify that they're working.

And we can actually give the volunteers log on information to the calendar

And actually, in real time, they can see if it's working.

So anyway, that's details that is further down the line.

But also, as Chris said, before and after is something that we struggle with.

The after is pretty easy, the before less so.

And also, you know, while we're out there in the past,

Some of our counters are only pyros, meaning that they only count an object.

They don't do mode split.

So we could get the count between pedestrians and cyclists.

And we know that our counter equipment is missing people that are walking side by side.

So if we observe that 90% of the people out there are walking side by side, we could use that as an adjustment factor to actually show that there's more pedestrians than the counters are actually counting.

Anyway, a lot of information could be gathered while folks are out there.

In the past, we've even gathered some basic demographic information, things that we can observe such as health

gender, youth versus elder populations, just certain things that you can observe without having to do an intercept survey.

So there's, and I, we have a form that we've used in the past.

Really great point.

Go ahead, Dan.

Crozet wasn't included in the past study.

There's some pretty active trails in Crozet that are getting a lot of use.

It would be really great to have that same type of information.

Yeah, it is volunteers.

When I was looking at the 2013 and 2015 data, it had volunteer names associated with each of the count locations.

None of them were people that I recognized, but again, I didn't expect to recognize too many of them.

I would like to put Bill on the spot a little bit.

I know things are different at the university this year, but I think that these kinds of counts that require so many volunteers

can really be helped by student volunteers.

I think there were, and I think there might be.

In years past, I think the university community helped out various groups, probably by UVA and then also the urban planning students.

I think both contributed.

So it'd be a matter of kind of reaching out to those groups and seeing if there's a, you know, if there's a population there that would be willing to help out.

Engineering could also be a good, you know, group to reach out to.

I could definitely help you recruit volunteers, Jessica.

We can make that a whole program.

I think the thing that would help the most is having potential volunteers have a

Like a landing page or a packet or something that you could easily put together a communication where it says here's what the expectations are and here's the information we need from you.

You even use a Google form and you can just build a roster pretty quick.

Great.

I was going to put you on the spot as well because I know you have the alliance going to be meeting soon.

So they would be a great group to get involved as well.

And just to really briefly speak to how I'm envisioning getting the volunteers, I am thinking of some sort of page on the TJPDC webpage, pushing it out through social media, having some sort of map where people can click on the location that they would like to volunteer at and doing a really brief virtual training, which will probably just be recorded and people can do the virtual training whenever they want to.

And then hopefully we will have the count pages available for download for people to print on their own before they go out.

So we can do this all in a very socially distanced way where people don't need to be in a room to get trained.

They don't need to come to the TJPDC office to get anything.

They can do it all on their own.

Hey Jessica, I may depending on what we're collecting it could be irrelevant but I sort of recall that maybe there was a video that was created training video that the PDC created last time too which I don't know if that would be helpful or not just so you don't have to recreate something if it already exists but

There might be something like that already.

And Will Cockrell, if anybody still has contact with him, might be able to point you in the right direction.

Yeah, I think that that will be helpful for me to review for sure.

I am kind of hoping to refine the count sheet to make it even simpler than it has been in the past.

It might reduce the amount of information that we get in terms of turning movements.

But I think there's a way to reduce

to reduce the amount of info we're requesting from people so we can focus on the things that are most important.

Yeah.

The other thing, too, that might be worth looking at is rather than having individual account sheets, is there some sort of an app that people could download on their phone so that you don't have to go through the data transfer process and it's all kind of there in one spot?

I don't know how I did not think of that, but yeah, that's great.

I like that idea.

I used to have students to enter this kind of info and now we don't.

All right, but let's talk a little bit more about desired outcomes.

We heard a little bit that there is the interest in having the before and after construction

Data, which would require hearing a little bit more from the locality is about where you're anticipating projects that will impact bikes and peds.

And I just want to, you guys all know this, but I just want to reiterate, it doesn't have to be just a bike and ped project.

I think that there is also value in doing before and after if you see, if you anticipate construction that's going to negatively impact bikes and peds and you want to document that because it's adding lanes or doing something else to the intersection that

for the roadway that you think is going to reduce the amount of riders and walkers on it.

I think that's a great place to count as well.

You also talked about, I really liked the idea of counting the number of people on the path versus on the road on the parkway and on Water Street where they have the option to do either.

But what else are people looking for?

I for one would love to see

An effort like this include river traffic, how much use we're getting with our boat launches.

Well, yeah, how many boats are on the river?

How many folks are using the river right now?

We've seen a huge surge.

And I know that the Rivanna River Company, I'm sure, has a way of tracking that, but there's a whole lot more use that goes under the radar.

And as we're working to improve our log sites and focus on the whole river trail corridor, I don't think we have many people commuting on the river yet, but eventually they will.

I like it.

Similarly, electric scooters or skateboards or other sorts of devices that people are using would be useful to kind of consider.

Dan, speaking to your river traffic one, I think that that might fall outside of the scope of transportation projects, but I'm happy to collaborate with you and with Parks and Rec in general to pool volunteers and help you get the information that you're looking for as part of this one big count, but I think it would fall outside of my scope.

Just want to agree with Chris to talk about, you mentioned Water Street, but that same concept of the path bike lane or the shared use path would be in the county on John Warner Parkway and even Berkmar, which I think VDOT does have, I think they have some counts out there right now too.

It seems to me as well, although right now is not a good time, that counting students going to elementary and middle and high schools, not on the school bus, you know, how many are coming in, it would be a useful thing to know.

Now obviously right now when school isn't happening is an issue, but something to maybe think about for the future.

Yeah, actually that's something that could possibly be pushed through our Safe Routes to School program.

We do have technical assistance needs that we could probably do that, give you guys a grant to do that at a couple of schools and help organize that.

So yeah, we have walkabout grants, we have mini grants.

Jessica, it's Michael Barnes here.

Why don't I just send you a list of the current projects that VDOT is working with the city and county that have bike-ped stuff and some of the future projects.

Absolutely.

That's great.

Hold on a second Terry, we'll let Shane go first and then you can go.

I know we're early in the process but nailing down these dates would allow us to early on to put counters out so we could leave them there maybe a month you know total automated counters that way you know the longer the count duration the more accurate picture you're going to get so no rush here but

A little bit of advanced notice that we could pull counters from other locations and concentrate them in Charlottesville for this one month period or whatever period we decide we could do that.

So just let us know in advance so we can gather these.

Great.

Terry, go ahead.

From a climate solutions perspective and assessing

You know, how many people are using alternative transportation, non-fossil fuel transportation?

Terry, that's actually a great point because we in the past one thing that we have noted

When doing the manual counts is we made some assumptions as to your trip purpose, meaning if you were in Lycra and had a $3,000 bicycle, we put you in the recreational.

However, if you were pedaling by with a backpack, I mean, basically it was a judgment call.

However, they are telltale signs so that we feel that's pretty accurate as to the reason be it commuting versus recreation.

No, that's great, Shane, that you mentioned that you can make those assumptions.

I was thinking that that might be something that you could only gather with the intercept surveys.

But yeah, there are some telltale signs.

And I think it's also important to remember that those recreational trips are important too.

Those might be someone's first step to eventually doing a commute trip on bike or on foot.

Dan, I think you have your hand up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Two comments or questions.

One, the 76 bike route, does anyone monitor the use of that?

I'm just curious.

It would be great to have an idea of how many people are passing through with that.

And if anybody knows, I'd like to know.

But the other question I have is, I've been really intrigued with

Looking at heat maps of the Strava data and I've learned a lot that I didn't know at all as far as ways that people are moving around and the ways, especially the ways people enter our parks.

I had no idea people were getting into our parks in certain ways, but I'm looking at areas that if we're looking where people are

Getting out and active, the entrance to Biscuit Run along that route is an example of an area that isn't officially open yet, but I would love to know how many people are currently using it and maybe to set someone up at Wegmans, you know, up on the hill there just to get an idea.

But yeah, I would like to know how some of these areas, some of these corridors

We haven't opened up yet.

I have a sense that they're getting a lot of users.

The trail down past the interstate along the Old Mills Trail, going on down from Milton.

I hear a lot of people going down there and the wear and tear is going, but we have no idea what kind of numbers.

Thanks for those questions, Dan.

Real quick, Shane, do you have any info?

As far as numbers on the bike route 76 route, no, there are no reliable numbers.

I've spoken with the Venture Cycling Association in the past, folks who've organized the Virginia Cross State Ride, and the long and the short is no, there are no real numbers as to who is riding it.

VDOT certainly doesn't count.

However, you know, that's not to say we could not pick a certain segment of bike route 76.

And, you know, if the factors were proper, we could do some counts.

And Dan, the same thing about your trail.

But anyway, we can talk offline about that.

I'll count that for you.

And I will say one thing, Strava is great.

However, in terms of folks using Strava, it is very, very, very recreational oriented.

So your average commuter is not using Strava as you're riding from point A to point B to get to work.

So take everything that Strava has as these are your, these are your hardcore recreational, well, your active recreational cyclists.

In some cases, it's just the same person running back and forth.

Chris, I got a quick final thought on that too.

Places where we haven't built something yet, and we need to prioritize, okay, we get three SmartScale grants per round, and we've got three projects, and we've got three champions all saying, this is the most important.

I don't know how you go out and count.

How many people are out

Pedaling on a four-lane highway where we're anticipating putting a new thing in this section of town versus that section of town to kind of show, well, you know, we all think in our meetings that this is the most important place to apply for the next thing.

But maybe in reality, we're not seeing that, in fact, maybe the other spot has more people putting themselves in an unsafe position where maybe that would help us figure out upcoming grant rounds.

I'm just not sure how to count that.

Yeah, Chris, I think, I mean, that's our goal is to figure out how to count effectively and then use that data effectively.

But ultimately, the goal would be to have it help with our planning.

I think we'll figure it out as we go.

I also, I wanna pile on a little bit with the Strava.

I think that a heat map is a really cool idea.

And I think that our goal is eventually to have such a robust bike and ped count that we can create our own heat maps, but I'm pretty biased against Strava.

And I think TJPDC, our goal as an organization is to count or to really consider underserved populations for planning purposes and Strava actually

It's going to skew more male and it's going to skew more higher income and it's going to skew more white.

So we're probably going to be careful about relying heavily on something like that, although I think it can be an important piece of what we're looking at.

I think Amanda has her hand raised.

Yeah just two thoughts.

One is obviously we also have counter locations and we'd be glad to kind of move them around to you know it's between VDOT and the city's counters we can create something that starts to reflect a network approach or whatever that would help you kind of with that

I'd be glad to move those counters around to places that would be the most useful.

And Shane, did you have any info on what's available to us through Streetlight?

Because for a while we had the bike pad data available and then we didn't.

Yes, so the last I've heard, and again, I don't know if this has been confirmed because it is actually an OIP contract versus a VDOT contract, even though they're intertwined there.

Last I've heard, the bike ped, or I think it's the multimodal package is what they were calling it, bike ped transit, is coming back online with the renewal of streetlight with the contract.

I can find out exactly when that will happen, but it is my understanding that that data will be available when the contract

That is a good question.

I would think so, but again I cannot make any promises.

I just know that the multimodal package should be back and we'll be able to look out.

Anyone that has an account will be able to use it to its fullest.

But that's definitely something that can be used to supplement.

However, when it gets down to, it's great for origin and destination.

However, when you get down to counting the exact number, it is a little less accurate.

Great.

Well, thank you.

You knew more than I did, so thanks for that, Shane.

One question I kind of want to put out to the group, I don't know that you're going to have any particular answers but I welcome any thoughts.

Typically these counts have been very commute focused and that's why they've done these morning counts and evening counts at typical peak travel times.

That might not make sense if we're going to do something this fall and it might not make sense in the future if people are going to transition more and more to

remote work.

What are people's thoughts on counting?

When do we count and who are we counting and like to what end?

If we're not just trying to reduce peak travel time, what are we trying to do?

That's a very good question.

We actually have been collecting data on a park visitation right now.

and we have monitors of trail ambassadors out collecting or just checking in with folks as they enter the parks, but there is a pattern of more use during around lunchtime, midday, but it might be really useful to compile what we've learned from general park recreational

What about lunch hour in the urban area?

I know in the evening there are millions of dog walkers.

Everybody gets home and takes their dog out somewhere.

Or Dan, in Crozet you're going to the parks after work and like you just had me thinking like the bike lands on German's Gap.

I don't know if we collected those to say that these are people commuting to work.

Yeah, I think the biggest use I see here in Crozet is after work hours.

Thank you guys.

Michael, I see your hand up.

Yeah, just one thing is maybe to set the thing up to test areas where you would expect to see people but don't see people.

I mean, obviously, if you put counts in downtown, you can find lots of people walking and riding bikes.

But the Route 29 corridor, there's a lot of people over there who, you know, minority populations, other people, relative density of that area, probably fairly low

biking and pedestrian usage in that area.

Somewhat related to that, one thing that we have found interesting is that sometimes the facility is there, but if it's not connected or if it's not comfortable for your average user that they're not going to use it.

So again, or

As we say, they may use the adjacent street.

We found that on Hillsdale, the bike counter that the city has out has really low counts for cyclists.

However, we put out a pyro that counts cyclists and pedestrians and the numbers shot up.

So basically, because that Hillsdale corridor, folks are riding, bicyclists are riding on the road.

because it's a nice shared use road instead of the path, whereas pedestrians appear to be using the shared use path.

Yeah, and thinking of Jessica's bridge analogy at the very beginning, it seems like it's not a great way to measure latent demand, but it's a good way to know if a facility, for example, needs to be upgraded or improved.

29 being a prime example.

I'm pretty sure

Thanks everyone for those thoughts.

To wrap this conversation up, I think that how we will move forward is I will email

staff requesting a couple of different things.

One, just if you have location suggestions that you want to put into the pile, please email me with those.

But I will, like I said, send out an email reminder with this meeting summary to do that.

Also, I know Michael Barnes is going to send me info from VDOT on where construction is going to take place, but if staff, you have any particular locations that you really want us to focus on because construction is going to happen that will impact bikes and peds, let me know what those are.

Also, so that the public can get involved and continue this conversation as you think of locations

We will see.

I'm going to try to get a little thing on our website on the bike ped page where you can suggest a location and I'll put that out to the whole email list as well.

So I think our next step is to just start gathering potential locations and winnow it down from there into the highest priority ones based on what staff think would be the most useful to them for planning purposes in the future.

Any other final thoughts on this before we move on?

Cool, all right.

So the next thing was SMART SCALE update.

So congratulations to everyone.

SMART SCALE has been submitted.

You don't have to think about it for a little while.

Chuck, why don't you go ahead and tell us, wrap things up for us.

There's still basically, everything's been submitted.

We've got two projects that are still in limbo.

The Hillsdale South extended project and the park and ride lot out in Crozet.

We had a meeting this morning and they're working on the issues with the portal and hopefully those are gonna be resolved by the first part of next week so we can have those projects submitted.

Everything else was submitted that it was in and right now we're starting to validate those applications and if we have any questions or concerns we'll reach out to the localities or the MPO or PDC and try to get those resolved and corrected in the application and that'll take place over the next

two months.

So we should be have all that stuff wrapped up by the middle of October.

And then they'll go into scoring, which they'll evaluate the applications across the state and score them based on their cost benefit.

And then in January, they will come out with the prioritized list based on the cost benefit analysis.

So that's where we're at on those projects right now.

Thanks Chuck.

Can I ask a question, maybe not necessarily on the SMART SCALE process, but just on state funding overall.

Chuck, do you know, I mean, we still have yet to find out if projects that were submitted for revenue sharing

a year ago were funded.

Do you know what the schedule is for that?

The Revenue Share Program, it's been

It's not expended until they work out the budget details, possibly this fall.

SMART SCALE, we're moving forward with it like it's going to occur.

They just haven't identified the amounts necessarily.

I think this was the first, for this round of SMART SCALE was the first round that we were supposed to see the additional funding come on board.

But what the status of that is, I don't know.

but at this time they haven't said anything about any issues with delays or anything regarding the SMART SCALE application since they wouldn't be awarded till June or July of next year.

So, and then the funding is way out in five years.

So, cause it's the last two years of funding.

So I don't suspect that that would necessarily be impacted by the current situation that we're in, but more Tom Whannell

Budget starts to roll out and they start to resolve some of those issues later this fall.

Hey Jessica, I've got two more things.

I know we originally had the, we had the Rivanna Trail,

on this.

I sent everyone the, or I sent you all the report, the draft report and the information.

And I just wanted to get, do we have any feedback or can we get some feedback on that report so that if there's anything we need to edit or change or do we need to do set up a presentation where I can pull some of the slides out and we can make it into a presentation that we could present.

Yeah, so I think, I mean, I'm kind of looking for feedback from staff here on this.

Given our experience with the Route 20 shared use path, I would like to make any presentations on the Rivanna Trail.

The river crossing.

I would like to make any presentations on this river crossing be as public as possible and just move right into some sort of public comment.

Staff, how do you feel about that?

Can I also jump in for a second, Jessica?

The other thing to consider is that we also wanted to incorporate any sort of public engagement work that we do on the bridge with the larger Rivanna River corridor plan that we're working on between

between Albemarle County and the city of Charlottesville.

So that's something else to keep in mind.

We're going to be doing probably starting in the next three or four weeks, we're going to be starting to do a really big public engagement push to have more regular meetings and have the public comment.

We're going to be setting up a really robust website for public comment as well.

So that's just something to keep in mind if possible.

Second, what Sandy says there.

I think that's a great idea.

I think that David Benish is now the project lead for the Rivanna Trail Corridor or the Rivanna Corridor process for the county.

And we would really like to wrap those two things together, the Rivanna Crossing and this.

I don't think anybody, I don't know if we've seen that document that Chuck mentions.

I know we have seen some very initial stuff, but I think we're gonna want a very robust public engagement process and stakeholder process involved in that to review whatever decisions are coming out and continue to get feedback and make sure that we're making the appropriate decisions on that project.

This is Chris.

I would agree with that up to the point where so long as the river corridor project's ready to go soon because the danger is people read Rivanna River Bridge Project in any way at all in the paper and go, I haven't been able to input on this and we end up in the same boat we did on Route 20.

So I believe we have a river meeting being doodle pulled maybe for next week.

So I'd like to get the bridge

out in some public way kind of as soon as possible.

Dovetail it with the river corridor, but if we're not fully ready to go full blown on a river corridor public meeting, mention it at the bridge meeting without, you know what I mean?

That's a good point, Chris.

Yeah, I think one of the biggest things is we just are going to need to

We're getting the website going pretty quickly.

I mean, it's just a matter of getting meetings with the, the only thing that we're held up on for the public engagement is having one last technical committee meeting and one last steering committee meeting.

But our hope is that, you know, especially since we want to take advantage of people at the river right now while the weather's nice, probably we're going to be doing a really big public engagement push through September.

So that's the high priority for the river.

We do have a corridor website that we're setting up.

We can put information on that.

I think the most important thing is that we are communicating everything in a central place so that all of the information, like people sort of start associating all of those projects together and putting it all together.

And then, you know, any public engagement that we do

We would just wanna help them understand how all these different pieces are related, but different, but connected, sort of helping distill everything down is the feedback we've been getting from David Benesch and Albemarle County.

And perhaps one of our priorities at the River Corridor meeting is to set the date for a public meeting, then start advertising the date, even if it's late September, so to speak.

And I'd like to make sure that we are all in agreement that we're not really, I mean, I would love to say we're gonna move forward with that Rivanna Bridge project, maybe in through a revenue sharing or TA grant next year that the city and county could partner on.

But if we're not ready for that, if we haven't done the appropriate outreach and gotten all the feedback,

I agree that it would be nice to move that forward quickly, but if we're not ready, we're not ready.

So I was going to say, as we're talking to the public, I think it's important that we be clear about what questions are on the table and have

Communication pieces that are appropriate for resolving those questions.

So where we are with the bridge project is identifying zones where it could go or spots where it could go.

And VDOT did some excellent engineering work that shows contours and

If we put those out, this happened to us with Route 20, if we put those out and people are thinking about, oh, that looks like a lot of digging or whatever, what we're really trying to find out is, for example, if we put it in the Woolen Mills property, if people would feel uncomfortable walking into Woolen Mills and walking into private property to cross the bridge, they don't need to see engineering levels

drawings for that, but it could really sidetrack the discussion.

So we need broad types of information from them, like the consultant also identified some bridge typologies, you know, that type of stuff might be useful, but the types of questions we should ask should be broad and we can narrow it down even

Those are good points.

Thanks, Peter.

So just to recap, Sandy, I'm also looking to you to confirm this.

So it sounds like the River Corridor Steering Committee will be meeting in the near future.

And at that meeting, it is possible that they could set a public meeting date

Yeah, I mean, we need to, we have some ideas that we're going to propose.

We need the committee to sort of, you know, confirm or direct or redirect us or whatever.

But yeah, we're going to do a big push through September and yeah, and get a robust website so we can tap into all of those efforts to

One of the things, and you guys might want to think about this as well, but one of the things we've been talking about is that everybody is kind of doing all of these virtual meetings.

So to what extent does it make sense to have another virtual meeting or are people kind of burned out from virtual meetings and maybe the best thing to do is do more, get more feedback through like an interactive website or that kind of thing too.

Yes, and Chuck, you may want to weigh in on this since you're the project manager for the Rivanna Bridge.

Obviously, we are required to do some public outreach on all of our transportation studies.

I would just caution between... Obviously, we want to coordinate these two efforts, but the bridge study has a starting and end date and a set budget and things like this, whereas if you put it out to the public and you ask, where do you want to cross the bridge or cross the river, and you get all of these spots that aren't

that aren't covered in the study.

We're already somewhat into the study so I guess do we, Chuck this might be for you, do we offer the proposed alternatives to the public and let them comment on that because that is where the engineering or at least the basic that's what the study is looking at is certain certain crossings in a certain segment of the river not the entire corridor.

So again I guess the question is Chuck do we

and the group is, once the study is far enough along, do you put out the proposed alternatives and the information associated with each crossing?

Shane, I think I'll just add that

The engineering work that's already been done has identified a couple of options.

So I think that anything we bring to the public would be prioritizing those options rather than identifying brand new ideas.

Yeah, I would agree.

There's very little, I mean, when we went out there and looked at the area, because of the size of the river basin, the tie down points are pretty limited.

So without doing like taking buildings and stuff down.

So we're very limited as to in this area where we can put the crossing.

And these are the two points that when the engineers went out there and we started working around at the impacts, these were the two optimal locations where we can make the tie-ins work.

especially for the Riverside Park because of the grades the basin extends all the way across the park almost to the houses on the adjacent street so there's very limited places to put the tie-down point at that location and that's why it's located where it is.

Same with the southern end where we went across the

River at near Willam Mills, you've got houses along that whole road.

So you're very limited as to where you can put it.

So I mean, within the area and on the initial page of the document, they showed an area that we looked at and the walking perimeter for the facility.

So I agree, I think we could look at it that way and that may be

I think that's a concern.

And that's going to be one of the questions that's going to come in.

And there already is a concept for doing something there.

Now it's just not a bridge, a cadet bridge only, but the, uh,

That would be something that could be considered, but I don't know.

We were mainly looking at this area because this was something that was identified in a previous study for crossing near at this location in some fashion.

I would add to that.

that there have been numerous studies over the years that have identified that area.

So historically there's been the public participation in this question for quite a while.

I'd like to pull up because I know it's, Chris you could probably help.

And I don't think it's essential to really dive too deeply into where we've discussed it before, but I think it will be essential when we bring it to the larger public and ask those questions.

We're going to want to paint a really clear picture of how we got to the point that we're at and emphasize the public participation that's already happened.

I also wanted to note that Chris put something in the comments about a press release in an interview.

I think that that's a really good idea to bring to the

River Corridor Steering Committee, and a great opportunity for them to direct people to the public input website that Sandy was already talking about creating for this.

So I also see Kevin has his hand up.

Yeah, I just wanted, I may be missing and I think that the location has been discussed and, you know, among us we have, I think all of us have looked a lot at that segment of the river and tried to imagine where crossings are.

I can't remember any specific studies that we have that say this is the location where we want to move forward with the bridge.

There may be some

I'll point out to the public, but to get back to this idea of how we wrap this in, once again, I have a lot of fear that maybe we have not put this out enough to the public for full input yet.

The Rivanna Corridor studies looking at a lot of bigger picture issues, such as how does the public

I think that everybody wants a bridge, but we don't know that for sure yet.

I think that's something that a bigger question that maybe we need to step back and take a look at before we move forward with the location study of the bridge.

And these are questions that we should have asked a long time ago.

And I think that I learned my lesson once again from the Route 20 is that we got to step back and look at the bigger picture first.

There's also other things that we're looking at through the Rivanna Corridor Study, which like the location of historic resources, the location of important environmental resources.

I don't know if this bridge location study was able to take all that stuff.

I don't know, Kevin.

I'm kind of siding with Dan that we have tons and tons of, like, decades of data saying that pan tops and woolen mills should be connected in some kind of way.

I think that we have that information, and it could be that there are many people who, some hidden majority that are not for that.

But if we put forth like, OK, here's a thick line spot A, here's a thick line spot B, here's a thick line spot C, of course, none of the above has to be one of those ideas.

And broadly speaking,

Each of those has advantages and disadvantages, and they each probably need further elaboration.

I think the historic resources is a great example.

The more we can bring that forward, and if people make a rational decision, that's fine.

Those are similar things that we heard in the Route 20 process, though.

I mean, we all we had, you know, a plethora of data that said, oh, the Monticello Trail should be connected to the city.

Here's some lines that we've looked at along Route 20.

We skipped over how do we get from point A to point B by saying, here's the way we suggest to get from point A to point B.

And this is Chris.

I'm going to narrow this down very quickly, I think, in my mind.

And the only box we need to check on the bridge project right now so that we don't get shot in the butt is, does the public know you're talking about it?

And the longer we wait to just say, we're talking about a bridge.

Tell us that you want a rope swing.

I don't care.

If we don't let them know, then the first group that calls the board of supervisors or council and says, here's these people having backdoor meetings again, we're shot.

So maybe we don't have to tie it to the larger, bigger, broader, everything.

If we just put something out that says, there's people working on this thing, send them your crazy or your beautiful or your wonderful off the wall thoughts.

But then we can say, box checked.

We told the public and we told them how to comment and we just sit back and let them say whatever we're gonna say.

I'm just worried that every day that goes by that we haven't said, hey public, here's who you call.

We're at risk of another tree steward's popping up and going, there you go again.

And then we're never gonna be able to apply for SmartScale again, because our leaders are gonna say, you guys keep getting this step.

So I would almost be comfortable tomorrow putting a press release out that says,

There's a bridge study, here's an email, send them your thoughts.

And I'll take the, I agree.

Put it out there a lot.

Um, especially with the route 20 meeting, cause that was some of the questions that came up.

How did that get to be a priority?

And we brought up that this study was going on during that public meeting.

So a lot of people know that it's happening.

Yeah, Chuck, that's actually a very good approach.

What we have done with many VDOT planning studies is that we, early in the project, we do one survey where we kind of get the general thoughts and things, and then we look at what can be done, and then you get them to comment on some alternatives.

However, we've kind of skipped that first step in the sense that now we're actually looking at alternatives.

you know, per previous discussion, is that an issue?

I mean, it's based on engineering observations, meaning these are the most feasible places from an engineering standpoint.

You know, so do we, again, is it, do we come down to say, here's one crossing, alternative A, here's another crossing, alternative B, or here's a no build, you know, meaning we keep it as it is, people do not like it.

But anyway, the point is we,

Some type of feedback is needed, but again, I caution, are you getting people to comment on specific alternatives and then get accused of already providing the solution before you ask the question?

If I could respond to that, I think one of the solutions maybe to help

prevent that perception is to reference the work that had already been done to reach out to the public in the small area plans where a lot of these recommendations are referenced because both the city and Albemarle County have referenced the need for this type of facility in their plans.

So I think if you start with, you know, we're not starting this completely from scratch.

This has been something that's been discussed for a long time.

Andy, is there, I'm creating more work for us.

So I'm asking you if this is a good middle ground, perhaps.

I really liked Shane's summary of having this, how VDOT has typically had these

General Thought surveys followed up by the Here Are Particular Options surveys.

So what if, as a middle ground, we follow Chris's idea to do some sort of press release soon and have something on our website that in text covers the

The small area plan and outreach work that has already been done highlight a couple of bullet points about what was found in those small area plans and previous outreach work and then just allow people to comment really broadly about how they feel about some sort of crossing of the Rivanna River.

We have that.

It's kind of like that general thought survey that Shane was talking about.

Hey Sandy, also the TJPDC did a study of the area.

They were looking at transportation, but this area was identified as one of the options for a crossing

Is that in the bike plan that they adopted last year?

Is that what you're referring to?

This was a study that they got a grant for through FHWA to do, I can't remember what it's called, but this was one of the options that was listed.

Yeah, the ecological grant.

So it shows a bridge across the Rivanna to either Williams Mills or Riverside Park.

I don't remember which.

So like I said, that's like Dan was saying, there's a lot of previous documentation that shows that there's a need here from the public for this type of facility in this area.

So it's just a matter of

And this doesn't really give recommendations.

It just gives some options based on engineering judgment that these are two feasible options that you might want to consider.

It's not saying pick one of these.

Thanks, Chuck.

Dan, I see your hand up.

Did you want to just really briefly add a comment?

Yeah, I do.

I mean, there is historically, this has been discussed a lot, the Martha Jefferson Hospital went in, the dedication for Greenway we got, part of that was understood that there could be a future connection for commuters there.

But the thing I wanted to mention is that that area is

In the process of rapid transformation, when you look at the commercial, what the woolen mills sites becoming and the palisades development directly across the river and the population is going to come into that.

You know, the results of the survey five years from now would be very different.

I think if asked, would you like to have a bridge cross here?

But my conversations with the developers for both of those projects look at it and go, wow, yeah, this is

This is of huge value to what they're working on in the transformation of that area.

I just think that soliciting or asking the developers invested in and involved in that area, what kind of support or interest they anticipate might be helpful as well.

Thanks, Dan.

Okay, so I think we have kind of a

A short term and a medium term plan that is really cautious and tries to go with the lessons learned from Route 20.

I'm going to summarize that in my summary email.

Please feel free to respond back with any comments or questions or revisions that you would like to suggest.

And Chuck, I'll follow up with you a little bit more on this after the meeting.

No, that was pretty much it.

Like I said, SMART SCALE is moving forward, and I pretty much outlined the process moving forward from here.

And then it's just a matter of the last two projects getting those put in next week.

So I can coordinate that with you guys offline, so that won't be a problem.

But I just wanted to bring up this project per se.

I wanted to try to move it forward and start the next steps that we need to go to get public feedback.

And because I'm at this stage in the game for the consultant, I'm sort of wrapping up this part of their task order.

And if we need to do more work,

I would have to go through and do an additional task order for that work.

So I just wanted to get some feedback on the feasibility study to see if there's anything else we need to do before I wrap it up.

And that's pretty much what I was asking for.

But if we want to go through the public process now, that's a good idea.

And I think that's something where we can take that.

Great, yeah and I'm glad you brought it up and I'm glad we had the discussion we did.

I think that there were kind of these two ends of the spectrum of people wanting to be really cautious and move slowly and people being still cautious but because they want to move quickly.

I just want to add just some more little background to this was just looking at some emails about when this study was starting to get

Running, we did both the city and county, there was a joint city county council board meeting last July 2019, or early August 2019.

And this scope of this project was a quick overview and presented to them, as well as I believe old Lynchburg at the time.

So that's a good reminder.

I'm going to include in my email a request to all of you to send me summaries and any websites for any time that you've talked about this project or included it in any area plans or anything that has been public facing.

And Jessica, can you also

Great.

I will probably do that by just including Sandy, and Sandy can send it on to the technical committee.

Anything else?

Anyone on this?

Well, again, thank you, Chuck, for bringing that up.

I'm glad we're thinking about this and moving forward with it.

All right, our next thing on the agenda was to talk about the Three Notch'd Trail because there is a feasibility study being worked on by VDOT.

Yeah, so the counties continue to discuss this based on the request that we had gotten from VDOT to have our board approve some sort of a resolution of support for this study.

We received word from our executive and Parks and Rec administration, CDB administration, that we're not

Willing to move forward with that request at this time.

The issue being that we're kind of overbooked right now with projects and there's a fear that trying to move forward with the Three Notch'd Trail study right now will take resources away from some of our other ongoing projects that we've heard a lot of feedback from the public are being put off to the side

These are things like the Bismuth Running Trail, the Rivanna Corridor stuff, the Morris Creek stuff, the Western Park stuff.

And the idea that we were going to move forward with another project, I think our administration and staff feels that

It's going to make it look like we are essentially just putting more plans on the shelf that we are not going to be able to move forward with for a long period of time.

The idea that I've presented to me is that it doesn't mean that we don't support this project.

It's just that we're not ready to move forward with it right now.

We can't commit the

or do we need the board's blessing at the VDOT level, Chuck, to even undertake the study?

Because if consultants are doing the study and some other yet unvolunteered entity, to be volunteered shortly, potentially manage the study process and we get the study while VDOT's ready.

The bottom line is I'd like to get the county's support because they're probably gonna be the applicant of the project moving forward.

And it's gonna involve their participation in the study.

And a lot of it is it's coordination now.

I know that Chip from the MPO and I talked to Kevin about it

about how we're going to move forward with some of these projects in the development in the future to try to make sure we integrate.

And this project would be similar to Fifth Street where we have a big it's going to be a big study and involve a lot of public participation baked in.

And it's going to require everybody's participation and involvement to actually pull it off.

So I don't want to

overburdened especially the county as well as the MPO and some of this is in the PDC, well maybe in the PDC or especially if you go out to the west of Crozet going out to the tunnel.

So it's gonna involve all those entities and we need to make sure that we've got support from everybody before we really move forward because they're gonna have to be involved in it to actually

Yeah, and that was my quick thought is that the Three Notch'd Trail group, so to speak, is going to have the capacity that, you know, I would certainly help coordinate public meetings, set out the announcements, rent the rooms, blah, blah, blah, do all, market the meetings, etc.

To your point, it would still mean that, you know, Kevin or Dan or the other Dan,

You probably need to attend the meeting, but in terms of the logistics of arranging public input, I think that could be handled by the TNT group.

But again, I'm just putting that on the table.

If it's not without the local government support going to go anywhere, then maybe that's not even worth discussing.

But I think our group can put together meeting rooms and announcements, et cetera.

But I'll just leave that up to the county side.

Yeah, we did talk about that and we pushed that point that it wasn't going to be a major lift because we weren't going to be the project lead on it, but I think fear that

The plan may not turn out to be exactly what we wanted if we're not participating heavily in it.

It was one of the issues there.

And then also the eventual implementation of the plan.

Thank you for that.

prioritized and that have been sitting on the table for a while and another part of the issue is that we are throughout the county we've been on a hiring freeze now for six months and we've lost a lot of people over that time we're really short-staffed and even for something like the getting the public the word out for public meetings through our Kate office I think was a

Yes, I would just like to reiterate what Chuck said and to a large degree what Kevin said.

We would need a formal resolution is not required.

However, we would need the county staff to say yes, this will proceed.

So without that, I don't see another group being able to advance it.

So yes, it will need county.

Involvement, heavily involvement because again anything coming out the other end would be a county application and I know a lot of folks are interested in this but I do I will applaud the county for recognizing that if they're not ready to do this they're not ready to do this it would you know

This study will probably be several hundred thousand dollars, a couple hundred thousand.

And if it's not ready to move forward, there's just really no need to expend that type of funds if there's other projects that are out there in the pipeline.

Again, this can be revisited anytime.

Again, it's just a phone call request from Chuck and to the central office and it can be revisited.

But again, if you're not ready, I think just in terms of being,

Great, thanks for clarifying that it can be revisited.

So this isn't just the one opportunity gone.

It's definitely something that we can talk about again in the future when Albemarle County is ready.

Yeah, I was unable to attend the last discussion.

I come back to this question.

Has the project in Three Notch'd Trail looked at reducing the length or the scope of the study to the 250 crossing or 29 crossing to, say, Boardshead and that connection to the city as a start?

That's one of the biggest hurdles

and that whole trail and I was just curious if that was discussed at all, to scale it back to something smaller and maybe more doable.

I think that's a question for Kevin.

I don't know if Dan actually meant that for me or if that's something for the Three Notch'd Trail group but that was not discussed, the idea of shrinking it.

I think it still could be an issue with our time or our commitment and I'm really happy to hear what Shane had to say about that because that was sort of what we were hoping is that

If we can't move forward with this right now, could we revisit this?

Maybe even if we just get the Rivanna Corridor study out of the way, or a few of these projects that have been

and Sunset, Old Lynchburg.

Chris and I had a discussion with VDOT on that just recently, but a couple of projects, if we could get a few projects off of our plate right now, and then reevaluate this next spring or something and see if there's an option to do it then, I think would get us a lot further.

But I don't know.

I did, thank you.

That's the reason that I tuned in today mainly.

It seems like a state interagency opportunity to link this up with Department of Conservation.

I've seen them putting years of work into the concept and little project planning on the James River Heritage Trail, which, from where I sit, tie a lot of these things together and work within the watershed, but they've been able to deliver

Big results on that south of Richmond and kind of working their way up river with projects in Lynchburg, Buchanan, even here.

So if there's a way to plug some of the VDOT resources into the conservation side, I think that would be really helpful and bring the center of gravity from this concept a little bit south.

As far as looking at priorities, the James River Heritage Trail is one that I really think that we shouldn't forget.

But as Kevin says, we have a good sense of what our carrying capacity is right now.

Of course, Shane.

It's basically whenever the legalities are ready.

And again, Chuck is the gatekeeper and the one that will be handling it.

I mean, for us, I can take them any time.

SMART SCALE sort of dictates my workload these days but I know we just had the submission process and I've got to go through and validate and stuff but that's not as heavy and then I know that I've talked to Kevin and I talked to Chip about how we're going to deal with projects moving forward and I know there's an initiative on a statewide basis to re-look at the

Pipeline of projects to try to figure out a better way to bring them, develop them, and move them forward through the process.

So some of that's gonna be taking place over the next probably several months.

And that may dictate some of what we do moving forward.

The other thing is I know we had this issue that came up with the Route 20 Trail project is

What's the regional prioritization of projects and is this a high priority?

We're going to have that question come up and we need to make sure we've got consensus across the localities that are involved to make sure that everybody's on board with what we're studying because I don't want to get hammered again like we did with Route 20 about how did this get on the list and why is this a priority?

Chuck, I think that's a good point.

And I'm going to add that to our agenda for an upcoming meeting.

I think we do need to take a look at the Jefferson area bike ped plan and see

Take a little bit of a deep dive and figure out what priority system was set up in there and how we want to move forward as a planning district commission.

But that'll be for another time.

Really quickly, because I do want to try to keep us on time.

I see Ally Hill is on the call and you've been such an instrumental part of moving the Three Notch Trail forward.

I do appreciate all of you thinking through this so deeply.

The Three Notch'd Trail planning group is moving forward this fall with a UVA grad student class where 12 planning students are going to be working on the Three Notch'd Trail.

And maybe as a congestion of tasks that I can ask these students to work on to

who kind of help put this project in a better alignment for the future or minimize some of the questions that would come up in the future.

That would be very helpful.

I, of course, am a little disappointed, but I understand it.

And I hope that we can keep this alive in the fall and the spring if things have changed.

But if you do have suggestions for planning

Department folks on a list today and tomorrow.

Even if it's just a couple ideas that you want to drop in an email to me, it's info at threenotchtrail.org.

So thanks, everybody.

Good question.

And Ali, if you are on a computer and want to pop that into the chat box, write an email address.

And I just want to thank you for your positive attitude moving forward.

I think that it's clear that there's a lot of enthusiasm.

But yeah, the bandwidth isn't quite there at the moment.

And hopefully, it will be in the future.

I'll second that, Jessica, if you don't mind.

Ali, we do appreciate the work that you guys are doing.

And it doesn't mean that we don't think that this is a really great project and that we would love to move forward.

It's just that we're in a position right now where we can't really put the effort in that we would love to.

If you don't mind, we might still be working with students and kind of keep working on our own to narrow down different ideas and paths.

I think that's a great idea.

Hey, Jessica.

I think everybody on the call knows this, but the TNT Crew PC and the Virginia Trails Alliance are co-sponsoring a meeting that's like a Theory of Change meeting that was going to be about the zone between Charlottesville and Richmond.

We have staff from each of the localities inclusive

I'm coming to that.

I'll put it in the chat as well, but the meeting is Friday, September 11th at two o'clock.

And email me if you'd like to be added to the list.

Thank you, Peter.

Were there any other final comments on the Three Notch'd Trail feasibility study?

Great.

OK, so we were going to wrap up with roundtable updates.

I guess I'll give one sort of pressing announcement.

The Woolen Mills Bridge and what's going on out there.

You all may have noticed if someone's been out there that it was closed to public access recently.

The issue being that there's some, the bridge was not permitted appropriately and we have some safety concerns.

I know if you've seen especially the

the far side of the bridge away from Woolen Mills, the Rivanna water-suicide.

There's seat drop-offs and things that really don't meet our code.

Kevin, is there any plan to get that information out to the public?

I know in the little Facebook hiking groups I'm in, there's been a lot of people asking questions about the bridge was open, now it's not.

What's going on?

I don't know if that was planned out, but let me reach out.

The project is in a Parks and Rec project, so I think

Great, thank you.

Any other announcements from anyone?

Sorry, I was unmuted that whole time.

Sorry about the blue jay that's been chirping this whole time.

Thanks, Peter.

And I'll try to include info on the active mobility meeting and the Three Notch'd Trail meeting on the 11th in my email.

Anyone else?

All right.

Well, thank you so much for joining us today.

I feel like we had a really good discussion from everyone involved.

I hope we do this again.

I hope we have as many members of the polytheic again next month.

Until then, look for a summary of today's meeting from me in your inbox, probably tomorrow.

And I'll be asking staff for input, although I have been seeing a lot of emails coming in, so maybe you've already sent me everything I'm looking for.

Anyway, that's it.