Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordination Committee Meeting   9/17/2020

So I am recording now just so that I can make summary notes at the end of our meeting and we have been posting these recordings to our website just because there does seem to be interest from the public in having these available for review.

Okay.

Is that Chuck?

Are you the one who just called in?

Anne Malik, good morning.

Oh, good morning, Anne.

Good to see you.

Yeah, Chuck is also, there's a small area plan for Zion Crossroads.

Yep, that sounds likely.

Okay.

And that's where I lost Sandy and Chip to as well, so.

Okay.

What's that?

The trails advisory committee is also happening as Chris said, he's doing double duty there.

Lots of meetings this morning.

Well, thank you for those of you who can join us today.

Real quick, one map check-in.

Amanda, last time we talked, there were just two areas that hadn't been mapped in yet, Reagan Mountain and Ivy Creek, I think.

Chris and Dan were supposed to take care of each of those.

Good question.

I don't remember.

I think that everything got worked out and it was all ready to go.

I'm going to have to check in with Bob.

We got the ragged and ivy creek trails added to the one map.

Yeah, I think so too.

And I can't remember what Bob was doing.

Yes, I believe that's correct.

And we're going through a website update at the moment.

My question was, is this trails in the water, in the reservoir area or somewhere else?

Because that was the main thing that caught my head when I, my eye from the headline of the notice.

Right there for hiking.

Yeah, I'm not sure how the One Map and the current legal status line up in terms of data.

These are just the lines that show that the trails exist.

The One Map doesn't have any effect on what happens with

Well, it needs to reflect what's there today, which is no bicycling.

I think it's really important at every stage that the right information get out there so that people don't get themselves into a situation because they didn't know or didn't have the opportunity to know what was available and what wasn't.

I believe I tagged them as pedestrian path because those were the options under one map.

Maybe what we do is follow up and make sure that that tag somehow reflects what you're saying there.

Yeah.

Pedestrian path sounds great to me.

I thank you very much, everybody.

Have a good day.

OK. Hey, Jessica.

This is Dan.

I just stepped in.

I don't think you did.

It sounds like we have the Ragon Mountain and Ivy Creek info and it's been submitted to the city.

Amanda is checking in with Bob, but it sounds like everything is there finally.

I mean internally with the county I worked a lot with Parks and Rec on this.

Yeah, I don't think that was to minimize the work that's already been put into it.

I think we just, it might be, it should be fun for all of us to take a look at what it looks like all put together before we share it.

I would include that as a next step.

All right.

Once we do that, I think we should have a more in-depth conversation about distribution and promotion.

I know it's pretty easy to promote a map like this on social media or on our websites, but if there are other things that we want to do, that might be something to talk about in the near future.

So just putting that on everyone's radar, we don't have to have that discussion today, but we should start thinking about it and be planning to

roll this out effectively in the near future.

Sorry, trying to unmute myself here.

Honestly, I don't remember.

It's been two years and I'm not a tech person and somehow because Bob offered to write the script to combine all the data, I've become the point person, but I don't really know.

That definitely was the goal.

We don't want to be producing PDF maps.

And this is Chris.

Those lines are going to show up on our online web GIS.

I talked to Mark Simpson.

One map's going to become our trail layer for the city.

And so it'll pop in when you use our mobile app.

at Ivy Creek at Ragged or around the city and it'll also be what pops up when you turn on the city's web viewer on the internet.

They'll pop in as lines.

I'm not exactly sure how they interface with Ivy Creek Foundation's mobile online stuff.

Yep, they're out there and the dogs are out there.

At the moment, that's something county police have to enforce.

We can't enforce it as park staff because we're not deputized to hand out tickets.

So I'm going to have that conversation with county police soon and just figure out what we do with a weird legal situation that still isn't resolved.

And what the reality of what people are doing out there.

There's people swimming out there too, and they're not supposed to be doing that.

To Shane's point though, I think having the data be in a single spot and accessible is the key thing.

And then depending on what you all and even the legislative bodies decide to have be public, then public third parties could pull pieces of that data and use it in all kinds of different ways.

Maybe RTF would want to use that for their map or as mentioned Ivy Creek or even get someone like Willow Tree involved.

Okay, so I got Bob responded and says they're finalizing the ArcGIS online mechanism for sharing.

The county will be able to put their data there and the city will take care of our data in UVAs.

I haven't looked into the Ragged Mountain data.

I asked about, you know, is Ragged Mountain and Ivy Creek tagged as pedestrian path?

He hasn't looked into Ragged Mountain.

The county is responsible for Ivy Creek.

Ask their representative about that item.

Sorry, I was just trying to understand what that was from.

Yeah, you may have missed Dan.

Ann was on the call earlier and was concerned about how they're showing up.

I think she doesn't want them to be shown as a biking path.

This is Michael Barnes here.

Can I ask you a question?

Which is, as far as the next steps go, what about the QAQC on the data and also will it be available?

You should be able to, yeah.

I mean, I know for the city's data, it's currently on our open data portal.

And what about a QAQC period?

I guess you guys are going through that.

I think it'd be smart once, I mean, we did do that prior to the merge.

Yeah, I agree.

I mean, we did the same.

So it sounds like we have a few remaining technical questions.

Amanda, do you think we can get Bob at our October meeting?

Yeah, I can certainly ask.

I was hoping to move things to the third Thursday of the month, but I'm not sure how that works with everyone's schedules.

We have a few folks missing today, but I'm not sure if that's just because of random other meetings that got scheduled or if we move it to the third Thursday, is that overlapping with existing regular meetings?

So it's either going to be the second or third Thursday.

I'll try to clarify that in the next couple of days.

And I will, if you just want to share his email with me.

I don't know that I have it.

So it sounds like our technical questions include can all of the GIS information included in the map be downloaded onto personal computers?

How is the map going to interface with existing GIS maps from like the Ivy Creek Foundation and others?

How interactive is it?

And some quality control questions.

Does that sound like an accurate summary of what we've been talking about?

Anything I missed?

Okay, if you think of anything else, let me know because I'll try to give Bob those questions ahead of time so he feels really prepared.

Okay.

Moving on to the next topic.

So the Rivanna River Crossing.

So as staff know, there was a feasibility study completed.

And I have to minimize everyone's little pictures so I can read all my words.

There was a feasibility study conducted by VDOT consultants.

I believe everyone should have gotten a copy of that study, but I'm going to review it here just so everyone is on the same page.

So the need for a bike and oh and this presentation I'm it's really short it's about five minutes I'm going to give it to you and it is the same presentation that I gave to the Rivanna Corridor Steering Committee so folks like Tim will have already heard all this stuff.

So the need for a bike and pedestrian crossing with Rivanna River in the vicinity of Riverview Park to connect the Pantops region to the city of Charlottesville has been identified in numerous planning documents and these are the big three.

The county's Pantops Master Plan, the city's Bike and Ped Master Plan, and the TJPDC's Jefferson Area Bike and Ped Plan.

The feasibility study was done at the request of City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County is how we described it to the steering committee.

VDOT's Transportation Mobility and Planning Division hired consultants to do a feasibility study to develop a conceptual plan and planning level cost estimate for such a connection.

And this is just a picture of their study area.

So as you can see, it centers around Riverview Park.

Ultimately, the consultants came up with two suggested alignments.

Option one is in Indigo.

It's the more northern one from Chesapeake Street and Riverside Avenue to Peter Jefferson Parkway slash State Farm Boulevard.

The second option is in Teal.

It's the more southerly one from East Market Street to that same intersection over in Pantops.

So the first option, the one coming from Chesapeake, would look a little bit like this, according to the consultants, a single truss bridge.

These are some, you know, a picture of somewhere else where they have a bridge like that and a rendering over on the right.

A second bridge would have a pier in the middle on the sediment island, and it would look a lot like this one from a different location.

OK, so the engineering basics.

Option one, starting at Chesapeake, like I said, would be a single truss bridge.

The span would be 325 feet long.

The bridge span would have a clearance of 40 feet over normal river height and 15 feet over floodplain height.

The bridge and the path would maintain a grade of 5% or less for the entirety of the bridge.

Option two, the one beginning on East Market Street, would be an arch bridge with a pier on the mid-river sediment island.

Each span, there'd be two spans, would be 296 feet long.

The first span has a clearance of only five feet over normal river height and only one foot over the flood plain.

The bridge and the path would mostly maintain a grade of 5% or less, but about 150 feet of it, of the path in particular, would have a grade of 6.5%.

connectivity and other concerns.

Option one, starting at Chesapeake, provides a direct connection to the Rivanna Trail, Riverview Parks parking lot, and Chesapeake Street, which, as we all know, leads to downtown Charlottesville.

And it is expected to be the easier of two options to construct because of the absence of in-river construction.

Option 2, beginning at East Market, provides a direct connection to the Woolen Mills Economic Development site, but East Market Street has a constrained 20-foot cross-section that doesn't allow for separate bike or ped facilities at that far east end.

There's also limited parking availability along East Market Street for recreational users, so that's something to consider.

There's a little bit more of that available to speak, and there are potential impacts of this connection to the historical canal and lock system.

Permitting.

So both option one and option two would require a permit from the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, but then they would also both require some hydraulic modeling of the 100-year flood plain.

The consultants believe and stated in their feasibility study that for option one, beginning at Chesapeake, there was a really low risk of impact to the floodplain, but for option two, there was a significantly higher risk of impact to the floodplain and that would likely require a bunch more permits from a bunch of different organizations.

Okay, and lastly, cost estimates.

When all is said and done, the Chesapeake option was cheaper, coming in at about $11 million plus contingencies.

Option two, East Market, came in at about $15 million.

Both of those estimates included right-of-way purchase from State Farm and Presidio Development Properties, so any negotiation of an easement would reduce those total costs.

Okay, so that's it.

That's a brief summary of the feasibility study.

Hi, Jessica.

This is Chris.

I'm going to do this real quick because I'm tracking this other meeting at the same time.

I think two questions we might want to figure out is

Why is the one bridge significantly closer to flood level than the other?

Is that a given or can they make the other one taller if that clears the floodplain better?

I don't know.

I think it's a question to put out there.

The other one I would imagine would be a question is, what if we wanted a truss bridge at the one location or a suspension bridge at the other location?

Does the location define the design?

And again, that's a question I don't know the answer to, but I think it might be.

If people started asking, well, I like the design of option two, but I like the location of option one, is that possible?

I think those are two questions we might want to pose to the consultants just as a generic, you know, they don't have to do the math, but to kind of say, like, if somebody asks, what's the answer to these two questions?

Great, great questions.

Has it been, and this may be something we need to talk to Chuck about, but has there, what type of public input or is there a public input strategy?

I mean, as we saw with the Route 20, hopefully we learned a lesson from that.

And technically all planning studies are required to have some type of public input as per VDOT guidance.

So again, this may be something we need to talk to Chuck about.

However,

I would think that we learned some lessons from the Route 20 study.

So anyway, that's something that probably needs to be discussed.

And also, it seems like there's already alternatives.

So I mean, will the public input ask specifically, yay or nay, do you like this specific one?

And what if they come back and say, no, we don't like

either one.

Yes, good point, Shane.

And we have learned so many lessons from Route 20.

I'm going to get into a little bit more about public input next.

So like I said, I presented that feasibility study summary to Rivanna Corridor Committee, Steering Committee.

They have a plan for public input.

And once we get done talking a little bit more about the feasibility study, people have more questions on

On that, we'll move into how we're going to move forward with public input with that group.

Go ahead, Shane.

I'm assuming there is or will be a paved path running up to the bridge on both sides.

Yes.

Right.

Thank you for those two questions are perfect.

I would say that the way to maximize the value of this feasibility study is for it to provide good information for the public to make a decision with.

So that's sort of the goals rather than pointing towards suggested outcomes or whatever.

So what we're asking from the consultant should always have that goal in mind.

I mean, if the feasibility study

could contain more public input, that would be desirable, but whether it's the consultant or us or some other group, the soon next step is gonna be having a good conversation with the public.

To this, I haven't seen the full study, but last time I checked in, one of the factors at the time the consultant was leaning toward

More toward what's now option two.

That seems to have changed, but one of the reasons is because of the approaches for that higher bridge.

Could be long or potentially using a bunch of footprint or et cetera.

And so I would say at a minimum, we need to be prepared to talk about not only what's happening

Yeah, so to that point, Peter, and just because I see Peter, other Peter, Peter Olms's comment in the chat, there at one end on the Pantops end, there was a render, a drawing in the feasibility study that showed some sort of like open air structure on the Pantops side at the beginning of the trail that would be kind of an official trailhead inviting people to

use this trail and it would be a place where you could there would be parking spaces and be good spot to start riding a bike or walking from.

Any other questions or comments on the feasibility study stuff?

I'm also just going to read this out loud.

So from Tim Padolino in the chat, he said he just wanted to try to clarify that there does not appear to be any acquisition costs related to the Presidio property.

Riverbend Development has reserved a special lot to dedicate to the county about six to seven acres between their apartment development and the adjoining state farm property.

So if I'm understanding that correctly, Tim, it sounds like the overall costs of both of those projects would be reduced significantly because there would be no right of way acquisition needed.

Yes, Michael Barnes here.

I put something on the chat.

It would only connect to downtown in as much as it connects to streets that lead towards downtown.

So option one was going to connect to downtown.

So is the thought then that both of those road routes would be sort of like sharrows?

Yeah I don't think that that had come up in the feasibility study except to say that on East Market Street there was a very, I mean there was a large chunk of it that's very narrow and there's absolutely no way to include any separate facilities.

I know that Chesapeake is also rather narrow and I'm not sure that they would

This is Chris real quick.

We did some studies when Will and Mills redeveloped and there's a number of options on Market as well as Broadway and then up through Carlton through Belmont.

I think for the bridge, we've got to land on a public street for biking and a sidewalk, which

You're right, the last piece of market in the county, there'd have to be some discussions about, I mean, it's a very, very low trafficked street, even with the woolen mills.

I don't think they're opening their front door on the market side on purpose, but I think that would have to be put into context with the bridge.

We need logical destinations on both sides.

So Chesapeake has a sidewalk and you can bike on Chesapeake.

what happens in the future to really connect the Woolen Mills and this bridge and Pantops into downtown.

I think the city and the county were working on that when the mill building came in.

So there's some conceptual ideas about how to improve any or all three of those routes.

But I don't know where the funding and the engineering is on those particular pieces.

The Broadway one looks really good because Broadway is a super wide street, at least up to Carlton.

But I think that depends on how the mill site's considered public access.

How would you bike from this bridge to Broadway type things?

Yeah, I mean, I would only add the Chesapeake and Market are both kind of considered shared roadways and the bicycle and pedestrian master plans.

So, you know, that's in addition to what Chris said about using Broadway Carlton.

I just conclude with, I think you're going to spend 10.

Sorry, I just want to conclude that if you're going to try and make a 10 million, $15 million, ask for a bridge, um, making sure it that's a lot of money.

make sure it has connectivity to some of the destinations into the city.

It's probably going to be a major weak point of the concept if you don't find out a way to resolve that.

Sure, so it does seem like there are some limitations to the feasibility study as it's been conducted so far and it sounds like we've got the local experts to help us figure out more what the facilities would look like once it reaches the end of what's been studied with the feasibility study.

All right, so moving on.

So like I said, that presentation was something that I gave to the Urban Rivanna River Corridor Plan Steering Committee.

And they've also taken it to their technical committee.

So this group recently had a steering committee meeting.

This is the group that Sandy was here talking about last time.

They're working on that whole corridor plan for the Rivanna River area that extends north of the Riverview Park area.

Basically, their most recent meeting, they discussed the vision statement, the guiding principles, the benchmarking and public engagement strategies for their plan.

And their next steps are to get public feedback on all of those things, especially the draft recommendations that have been compiled by the technical committee so far.

And in those draft recommendations is where it relates to us.

The draft recommendations include implementing a new bicycle and pedestrian bridge in the Riverview area as one of the recommendations.

So the corridor plan, they have a website, and that website has been updated with the public survey.

That includes the vision statement, the guiding principles, and most importantly, those recommendations.

They are going to, in the near future, be posting signs along the river directing people to the website.

They are working with the economic development staff as well as equity and diversity and inclusion staff at the city and the county to expand outreach efforts beyond just posting those signs.

And the public survey will ask people to pick the top seven recommendations out of the list of recommendations suggested by the technical committee.

So that is as much public engagement is currently planned for this project, which as you can see, doesn't really get at

doesn't really get at many of the details of the feasibility study.

It basically just asks the public, is a new bicycle and pedestrian bridge in this area in your top seven choices?

So I wanna open up the discussion.

We had some ideas last meeting about how we wanted to have way more public engagement

I think the city ends at least and we'll talk with the county folks as well but this definitely deserves its own meeting.

A

The neighborhoods involved need to have their input, the people in general, but with the SMART SCALE stuff like we learned last time, I think we can't depend on, while it was on the website, we need to specially invite stakeholders, Willam Mills Neighborhood, probably the BPAC, the River People, and I'm happy to help set up, I know it's COVID time, but to advertise, put posters at the park, particularly to say, hey, there's a proposal and here's how you input

and both put it on the web and say if you just want to go look at it on your own that's an option here it is make sure everybody's aware that it's out there get the willow tree folks involved but be and there will be a zoom open house for lack of a better word maybe kind of thing and maybe set up one or two of those and so I'm happy to do that help set that up and then with Amanda and Kevin and Daniel whatever it needs to be so that we do a specific thing about the bridge

And at that meeting also mentioned the corridor study so that we're not neither ones holding the other one up or assuming that one of those projects is going to gather all of the input for the other one.

Thanks, Chris.

Yeah.

And also, given that this is a VDOT study, I don't think just generically

I think there'll need to be some questions asked specifically about what the study did, not just the corridor study, which is somewhat unrelated in this sense, meaning VDOT has spent this money on providing alternatives.

It's not conceptual at this point in the sense that we're not asking, would you like a river crossing?

It's like we've already spent a lot of money on determining which one.

So I think, as Chris said, there has to be

And again, we'll have to work with Chuck on this, but I think there's going to have to be some independent public input on the feasibility study, not the river, not the corridor study, because again, that has nothing, and again, I'll say it's not related, it's very related, but again, I don't think just, I think input needs to happen on the feasibility study itself.

Again, that may be something that VDOT actually has to develop, you know, do something specifically.

Great.

Thanks, Shane.

I think it's important to hear that from VDOT.

And we've also got, we did some Riverview Park nominal planning with the neighborhood a couple years ago.

We're putting a restroom in there.

We had some trail thoughts and there's the boating and parking and more access points.

So there's already somewhat of a group of public folks that I've got a list for that would also I would invite to this because they're specifically interested in Riverview Park.

We would also take input about Riverview Park at that time.

So I think that, yeah, to Shane's point.

And also related to the public input, will it be put, I mean, it's great to have specific invited groups, but what about the larger public?

I think for the Route 20, it kind of got, kind of fell into that trap.

Yes, some certain groups knew about it, but it was never really opened up.

from my understanding to the larger public to comment on.

So again, stakeholder groups are not necessarily represent the entire population that could use this.

We've certainly gotten better with park planning.

We mail something out to every address within a quarter mile of a park.

We put flyers all over the park.

I wouldn't be opposed to a press release to make sure this gets out into the general press

I'm with you, Shane.

Basically, we want to make sure everybody at least knows it's going on and has the ability to comment if they want to, because the last thing you want is someone saying, I didn't even know this was happening, what's going on?

So we could have council announce it at a council meeting, like in their announcement section, and do both the known stakeholders and the broader public.

I think this is a great opportunity to showcase how well we can do with getting the word out.

Whether we get a lot of comment back or not is a different story, but we want to make sure everybody can say, yes, I was aware I could have commented, I just didn't have any comments, rather than, no, I had no idea it's going on, and then we get derailed again.

Plus, it's a neat community asset.

Any other comments?

I mean, I think it's a resounding, there's a lot of desire to have a lot more public engagement and hearing that VDOT is really expecting it, I think there's good reason to do that.

So I'm going to talk to Sandy and Chip and see what we can come up with.

Chris, I'll probably be talking to you a little bit more after I talk to them so we can get something set up and start getting those invites out and start

posting things publicly.

Right.

So next, we were going to move into smart scale stuff.

And since Chuck is not here, we're not going to do any real updates.

I mean, I think that everyone here is very well aware of the smart scale process and where we are at.

But for a few members of the public who are here, everything has been submitted for this round.

I think nearly everything has its

Resolutions of Support.

So we're just kind of waiting on that.

And we will hear back in January or February how initial scoring has gone for those projects that have been submitted.

All right.

Also, there is a change to the SMART SCALE process.

So that is what I'm going to go over next.

Sharing my screen again.

Okay, so historically at any time before pre-applications are due, the localities could ask the MPO or the PDC to apply for SMART SCALE projects on their behalf.

And the MPO or the PDC would agree or not based on the number of available slots and the staff time and resources available to work on such an application.

The pre-applications would be submitted in April, full applications submitted in August,

MPO Tech and CTAC and the Policy Board would hear about the projects at their meetings.

Those meetings are open to the public and the MPO Policy Board as well as the localities governing bodies would decide whether or not to give their resolutions of support for these projects.

So that's just a quick review, especially from members of the public, about how things typically have worked.

So because of everything that went awry with the Route 20 project and that shared use path, there was a desire within the PDC and MPO to change the SMART SCALE process

for the MPO.

So these process changes that I'm about to describe would only apply to the MPO area.

So city of Charlottesville and urban Albemarle.

And it would not in any way impact how the city of Charlottesville or Albemarle would apply for their own projects.

This would only apply to those localities asking the MPO to apply on their behalf.

Okay, so specific procedures for this new process still need to be drafted, but very tentatively what Chip has come up with, our executive director has come up with, is

that the MPO Policy Board as well as CTAC and the MPO Technical Committee will review the most recent round of submitted projects when initial scores are released by VDOT in January or February after this most recent August submission for lessons learned and to determine whether or not those projects should be reapplied for in the next round of SMART SCALE applications.

Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville will still be able to request the MPO and the PDC apply for new projects on their behalf.

But this request would need to be made almost a year earlier than it has been done historically and the requests would tentatively go through CTAC and the MPO tech committee.

who would make recommendations to the MPO Policy Board not only about whether the project should be considered for application but also whether it is a major or a minor project and this is probably the most important part.

So minor projects are

what they sound like.

These are not projects that we expect too much.

We don't expect an unusual amount of community engagement to be needed or much more design to be needed compared to what's already done.

So the MPO policy board for a minor project would determine whether or not the MPO has the resources to apply for the project on the localities behalf and there would be no process changes from that point forward.

Major projects would be something that CTAC or MPOTAC or the Policy Board

acknowledge that that project would require additional community engagement because it's perhaps in a sensitive area and or the design has not, there's a lot of questions about the design or there needs to be more design work done before it can be applied for or it's a project that in order to have a good, it would need a local match perhaps in order to score well within Smart Skills Process.

So in regards to the major projects, the MPO can really only agree to do at most two major projects per cycle.

And within that two maximum, that would include any MPO-generated projects of regional importance.

So really, we can only handle two big projects because of what we want to do with these big projects.

So hmm.

The next step would be for the policy board to determine whether or not the MPO can apply for the project on the localities behalf, and if they can, and it's a major project, the policy board would appoint an advisory panel, which would begin meeting in October of year one of the two-year SMART SCALE cycle, to review the objectives of the project and possible design options.

This advisory panel would be modeled off of what was done with hydraulic in 29, so this very

In-depth public engagement process and in-depth review of design options, including the possibility of hiring outside consultants to do additional design work or engineering.

The advisory panel would provide updates to the MPO Technical Committee, to the CTAC, and to the MPO Policy Board.

There would be lots more public engagement

And like I said, there might be technical support from VDOT and or outside consulting firms to help with the things that the PDC or the MPO is not capable of helping with.

We are better at doing the public engagement side of things, not the engineering.

OK. Are there any questions on what we've talked about?

OK. Well, if you think of anything or if you have any comments about how you would like to see that process, like I said, what I've described is just really tentative ideas of how it would move forward.

So next, Chris had some great pictures of some interstate ramp crosswalks.

And the reason that's so interesting, again, goes back to Route 20.

So one of the reasons the Route 20 project had a shared use path going down the median of Route 20.

And the reason they did that was because it seemed very dangerous to have bikes and peds crossing

Interstate Ramps.

So, let's see here.

Okay, and I'll have to be quick because I think my presentation is about to pop up shortly on the other State Trails piece.

Basically, it's a concept thing where the median

Trailpiece, had benefits for some safety things.

It had some drawbacks.

It had the tree issue and all that for Route 20 South.

In my travels this summer, I would occasionally go from a relatively large street in a city onto an interstate ramp and go, wow, they have a crosswalk.

Look at that.

They're not all perfectly wonderful, but they're there.

And some of them are VDOT somewhere in Maryland on the DC Capital Beltway.

And my brain kind of went,

If you can cross the Route 29 DC Capital Beltway entry ramp with a crosswalk, we can probably pull it off down here, especially when our traffic volumes are much lower.

So the reason I throw this back to the committee just to talk about, I still think it's feasible that we could run down particularly the Piedmont College side of Route 20.

I think the other side, just the way the interstate ramps are designed,

Going across that weave motion coming into northbound, I don't see how that could be made safe.

But I conceptually think you can make safe crossings of the 20 south to 64 west and then the exit ramps that come down onto the other side on the south side of Scottsville with good engineering, active flasher beacons.

The sight lines actually seem to be there.

So I just wanted to put it back on the table to go.

I still think there's a way to make 20 happen.

And if it's not in the media, and I would like to somehow explore this, I doubt VDOT's got the money.

Maybe they do.

But I think maybe it's a, we discuss it internally and go like, you know, would we be comfortable with a 13 year old crossing one of these ramps?

That's kind of my judgment standard is would I let a 13 year old kid do this?

Would I call that safe?

Or if that's not our target audience, you know, would it help 95% of people making this motion with the knowledge that you're not going to send a 12 year old out there on their own?

without somebody helping them.

So I just wanted to put it out there.

I didn't want to abandon the Route 20 connection.

And seeing these other examples, the one you were showing was Virginia Beach, the Bird Neck.

You can see the sidewalk coming down on the northwest quadrant crossing, going through the median.

Now, the southern intersection is traffic light controlled.

We don't have that situation here.

Obviously, a signal control, you can do a lot more.

But they even have ramp in the northeast quadrant.

Going across that on-ramp.

So to me, it's technically possible.

We might want to talk about, is that really acceptable for us?

And if we deem it acceptable that it could be done technically, then we authorize the technical study to say, okay, show us what it would look like to go down the west side of Route 20.

So that's my two cents.

Great, Chris.

Thank you for that.

And I also wanted to note that Peter Olms has commented in the chat that he's previously recommended the review and use of ITE's recommended practices on accommodating peds and bikes at interchanges for this topic.

So Shane, I know you're not Chuck, but what are the chances of us getting another feasibility study from VDOT on something like this that

removes the shared use path down the middle and looks at something that utilizes crosswalks at the ramps because I think that had been pretty summarily dismissed by the consultants in the first round.

All I know is you can get Chuck to request it.

I mean, that's basically all I can say in terms of, I mean, obviously there was

I assume that the whole median theme was looked at based on some concerns previous to, I mean, with crossing the interstate on-ramp.

So again, I don't know if, I guess the concern is then what happens if this study or that alternative's not liked, then do you request another study?

And then, I mean, again, it's, I don't know.

I would be somewhat confident that from what I recall the only opposition was trees.

I don't remember anybody saying a trail down there is a non-starter but correct Shane you're right some people might go I'm not crossing an interstate ramp I like the median one and then what do you do so yeah that's an unknown but yeah if you can ask Chuck that would be wonderful obviously if the answer is no we'll just have to

I'll also note that there was some question of safety with the Route 20 feasibility study especially at the north end which I'm not sure I mean that was a safety question was is it safe for people to cross

Route 20 or not.

And if people were concerned about the safety of crossing Route 20, I'm not sure that they would feel any better about the safety of crossing the ramps.

So I do think that there's still some concerns in addition to the trees with an alternative like you're suggesting, Chris.

I also want to note that Peter has mentioned in the chat that there was a sense of the board was that there should be a step back and ask the public

How ought we to solve this A to B question, not what do you think of this idea?

So yes, and board means board of supervisors, not the MPO policy board.

Let's see.

So, and you also mentioned, Peter, pointing to the idea of having a steering committee, or I think you're referring to the advisory panels as Chip was suggesting for the revision to the SMART SCALE process.

I'm curious from a planning perspective what everyone else's thoughts are in terms of just asking the public really broadly how do you think we should solve this problem as opposed to coming to them with a bunch of ideas and saying what works best for you.

What are people's thoughts on how to proceed?

It sounds like we need to talk to the public and we need more engineering information

I'm not 100% sure how we can move forward.

Yes, I think that there were, that was mentioned a lot, especially by the tree stewards that maybe we could avoid route 20 altogether and look at different ways of reaching Monticello.

but I'm not sure that, I mean, that was just not studied in the feasibility study.

There's a way to get to Monticello maybe with a great big complex tunnel project.

There's a way to get to Piedmont PVC with a great big complex tunnel project.

And then there's the Route 21, you know, on a hundred year horizon, all three of those would be great if we had the money and unlimited resources, I guess, like Peter's saying, maybe we need to get a smaller group to kind of

Wrap our head around, if the tunnel project's $20 million and requires a massive amount of engineering and Route 20's still sitting there, do you just go with Route 20 for now?

And then I think if we did get a stakeholder group, I don't remember walking the Route 20 thing, but I might not have been there for the walk.

Something tells me taking a walk might also be useful with a stakeholder group and I'll maybe leave it to Peter to see what he might think about putting such a group together.

I guess the point I want to make is before we request to, I mean, discuss requesting studying Route 20 further, maybe we should really keep this open to, what's called out in the bike ped plan is a lot of PVCC as well from Woolen Mills.

I think if you start talking about tunneling under an interstate, I just think, again, I'm not an engineer, but we're talking about the cost for, I mean, if you start getting into $30 million for a one mile path, shared use path, I mean, you've got to think about what's going to compete.

Yeah, you could study anything and you could come up with an engineering solution.

I mean, that is not the issue.

It is, is it going to compete?

and I can tell you $30 million or $20 million even.

I mean, it's probably given the size of Charlottesville and the use and all, I just don't see that being successful.

We got to talk about Piedmont College too.

Going to Monticello has got a great recreational tourism value.

Going to Piedmont's got equity, alternative transportation and all sorts of other values.

So when we look at

What are we trying to get to and what's the best way to get there?

We gotta make sure we include Piedmont and the other neighborhoods.

And I'd like to add on to Shane's points, Michael, here.

I don't know, I believe the cost for this project was about $6 million.

It'll be interesting to see how similar projects would have, will do in the SMART SCALE funding this year coming and

My sense of things is that this project probably would not have competed very well.

I don't think it would be a great diversion of trips to reduce congestion.

I don't think it would have hit a lot of the other things.

I'm not completely sure that it would fund well.

Chuck is obviously the person to speak to that, but I would come back and think about cost and can you get this thing funded, even the project you were talking about previously.

And then to the second point, which is

I'm still not quite sure how this project got to the top and became the number one choice in the community.

It was a second or third tier ranking in the PDC's plan.

I realized it was an opportunity, but I kind of wonder if there aren't other opportunities for trails within the community that might either benefit

larger populations or might score better on a SMART SCALE rubric.

And I'm looking at hoping that the One Map project will give us a capacity to sort of take a little bit more holistic look at things.

Michael, to answer your question, right when the bike plan was adopted, this committee, we met and basically the goal was to look for city-county connections and it really came down to the Rivanna River crossing.

Yeah Dan, I was at that meeting and I think we came the three options were brought to the to the meeting but there are other places connecting to Redfields

into the city, stuff in the Route 29 corridor, a lot of population density up there.

And I just come back to trying to think about utility of your next round of SMART SCALE projects and how they might score well would be a good place to sort of step back and maybe take the lens and look a little bit broader for you

So I'm going to kind of wrap this conversation up.

I will say for however the project ended up where it is now, VDOT has invested resources in doing the feasibility studies.

So I think at this point, it's a question really for the county if they would like

The PDC to potentially investigate this or the MPO to investigate this further potentially with an advisory panel.

I see Kevin you just popped on and you probably have no idea what we're talking about.

I'll follow up with you later.

But I think that's where we're at.

So either the project is kind of is done from the MPO perspective.

Well, I guess it's done from the MPO perspective unless we hear from the county that there is an interest in pursuing it further with the MPO taking the lead on stuff like that.

All right.

So now with our last hour, I want to talk more about the bike and ped count.

So we had the beginnings of a discussion last week.

I shared, or last month, I shared a lot of info with staff members regarding

previous counts and then just yesterday I sent staff members a pretty detailed scope of how I think this project could go.

So what I'd like to do today is sharing my screen again.

What I would like to do today is to review the scope and get feedback from staff

and finalize the count locations as much as we possibly can in this hour.

I don't think that we'll have time to assign tasks and I don't think that really makes sense until the count locations have been finalized.

So if we don't have time to do that, I'll be following up with staff after this meeting to kind of ask for help in terms of requesting volunteers and other things like that.

Okay, so for members of the public who didn't read the scope, I will just go over the very basics.

So project goals, the primary goal as decided by this committee at our last meeting

was to improve bicycle and pedestrian planning in the region through the collection of project specific data.

The reason I'm talking about project specific data is because there was this focus on a lot of people liked the idea of having before and after data for projects to compare how effective that facility was for increasing ridership or whatever.

and then the project will have two secondary goals.

The first one, just because I don't wanna miss an opportunity to get data to better understand how COVID restrictions have impacted local travel behavior and to collaborate with VDOT to better understand automatic counter accuracy.

So I think we can do all of this to some degree by doing 12 count locations.

Okay so a really quick project description.

So the plan for the bike ped count is to do a fall and a spring count this fiscal year which is very similar to how the counts had been done in the past.

You would have up to 12 locations.

We will include in the count demographics which would just be assumptions by the counter as to whether the pedestrian or bicyclist was male or female

That is obviously not going to be 100% accurate, but it's valuable information and whether or not the bicyclist or pedestrian is a child, an adult, or over the age of 65.

Again, not going to be 100% accurate, but still valuable.

The counter will also document behavior such as helmet wearing, wrong way riding, and sidewalk riding.

And I know that sidewalk riding is legal here in a lot of places, but it's still valuable because it shows us that people do not feel comfortable riding on the street.

And then the spring count will be paired with an online and or intercept survey.

If we're in a better public health situation and we can talk to random strangers in the spring, I think an intercept survey would be great.

In lieu of that, we'll just do an online survey.

So given that description, there's a bunch of actual products to come out of the count.

The main one would be, I think I missed a word or two.

The MPO's Bicycle and Pedestrian Count methodology working document.

So we will very carefully document how we do this count so that it can be replicated in the future either by the MPO or by the locality if you want to do more data collection that is project specific and you want it to match up with any data that the MPO collects.

a bicycle and pedestrian count and survey webpage on the TJPDC site, an online volunteer training video, a fall bike and ped count summary, so this will be just a really brief presentation of the data we collect with the fall count, and an in-person survey, or in-person or online survey, a draft summary document of the survey analysis, again, like the

Fall Bike and Ped Count Summary, just a really brief presentation of the data that we collect before putting all of that info together with the spring count data into a culminating work product titled the FY 2020-2021 Bicycle and Pedestrian Count and Survey Report.

Okay, any questions so far?

Any comments so far?

This is the schedule that you guys received.

As you can see, it's really front loaded because I understand that it's going to get even colder very soon.

So we want to get the count done as quickly as possible.

Under different conditions, we would have done it in the proper weeks in September, but it's going to be pushed to October.

You guys can yell at me if you think it's going to be way too cold by the end of October but I think that realistically that is the soonest I can make this happen with the number of volunteers I'm hoping to get.

And then we would do another count along with the survey in April and then we would have everything finalized and we would do a presentation at a public workshop of the final

A collection of data in June, the end of the fiscal year.

Jess, I appreciate all of this.

It looks awesome and very thoughtful and well thought out.

I guess I just wonder, is even October aggressive?

Would we be able to get volunteers enough to be able to do this this year?

Would it make more sense to just do them both fall and spring?

I think in years past we did do them in the same calendar year.

Not that that makes a big difference, but it was kind of odd years.

Yeah, no, I appreciate you trying to be realistic.

I think unless there's a lot of people who say this is just absolutely crazy, I do want to try to push forward with it.

I think limiting the number of count locations, we can still try to get volunteers to do most of it.

But if we can't, I think the MPO has the staff to count some of those.

I have the money for this fiscal year and I definitely want to do it.

So I'm going to try my best and I think it'll all come together.

But any other comments or thoughts?

And I appreciate that, Amanda.

Hey, folks.

I had an audio problem before.

Can you hear me now?

Awesome.

Well, now you can hear me, but I can't hear you.

And I'm glad to be able to at least speak one direction.

Jessica, since you're formulating a quasi-policy document, I would specifically mention that you want to work with UVA, as well as the city and the county.

I think that that's important.

And it'll help the project succeed at the political level.

Also, this is something that I spoke with Jessica about separately, but the document talks about measuring the value of planned or completed projects, but also it might be good to have just longitudinal data that goes for like five or 10 or more years around specific corridors.

Not dependent on construction and projects.

And anyway, the idea of construction itself is kind of disruptive.

So having just clean data that's multi-year data might be helpful.

So do some stuff that's related to projects, but also just pick what are your priority corridors and do some measurement over those across time.

And Jessica, I would add that I guess it'd be great to do a video, but if you're following the MBPD methodology, they already have training materials available that you can just download again.

I mean, unless you're wanting to do something above and beyond.

Thank you for that.

And I think we will try to reuse things when possible.

Sometimes I find if I change one thing on the count sheet, then it's better to just quickly make my own video than to make amendments to something that has already been put out.

But you're definitely right.

We will try to reuse things.

My only other minor comment is, you know, certainly the city is willing to let us let you guys use our account equipment too.

I think you called out in the scope just VDOT equipment, but you know, we're happy to let you use ours too.

I think I knew that.

I just articulated clearly in the scope.

Thanks.

All right.

If you haven't had a chance to fully read it yet and you do some more reading over the weekend or something, just let me know if you have any other comments by email.

Okay, so with that, I want to move into talking about the locations.

So I'm bringing this up again.

Okay, so given the goals,

And I apologize if this is like a little bit hard to follow.

I was really trying to break things down as much as possible and hopefully keep it as clear as possible.

But you guys can let me know if I did that.

So keeping things project specific,

I focused things into these three main categories at the top.

So we could choose locations that we would be talking about as after project counts.

So these are locations where there has recently been construction of a type of bike ped facility that may be used in the design of future bike and ped projects.

And jumping over to the example, the example I was thinking of with this kind of location

is 29 or Emmett between Angus and Morton.

So that location has a shared use path through the middle, through the median.

And I think it'd be really helpful to take a look at how people are behaving in that area walking and biking to see if that facility works for people or if in doing the count we notice something crazy that people are doing that they, you know, show us that they either like it or don't like it.

So that's what I'm thinking of for that.

And I think that that count data will help us determine whether that facility type should be prioritized or avoided for future project designs.

So this particular example can give us a really clear idea of whether or not a shared use path in the median of Route 20 would have been a good idea or not.

And we could have used that information when talking about the Route 20 project to the public.

So that's one.

The other category type was before and after project counts.

These would be locations where there is construction planned for the near future and we would have the intention of counting again at the same location after the construction.

And an example of that would be Belmont Bridge.

We know that there should be construction happening soon.

And if we can hurry up and get that before data, that will be very helpful to compare it to the data that we will get afterwards.

And the point of counting at that location would be to determine whether that construction was effective in increasing ridership or diversifying demographics of users or improving safety as a ratio of crashes to riders.

And then the other category type that's project specific would be the long before project counts.

And this kind of gets at what Peter was talking about where we want to have some locations that we keep coming back to, but it still puts it within this project context.

So these would be locations where local staff anticipate bike and pet infrastructure will need to be built.

in the next decade and ideally we would keep counting at these locations all the way up until that infrastructure is built and again afterwards.

I don't have an example of this.

I don't know what projects you guys are thinking of for the next decade.

I'm sure you have lots of ideas and the goal of counting at these locations would be to help better plan for bike and ped projects in the location and have data available for funding applications.

So those are the project specific category types and what I'm looking for today from local staff in particular but also from anyone else is let's come up with nine locations.

So three for each category type.

and those would be where we count this year.

The last category is those COVID relevant counts.

These would be locations where local staff expect there to have been dramatic increases or decreases in the number of users due to COVID restricting travel and how people live their lives generally and pushing people to do more outside activity.

An example for that would be Riverview Park.

It's already an automatic counter location so you've already got some historical data

It would be a great place to continue to gather that kind of information.

All right, I'm gonna stop sharing just because it's easier for me to see everyone if I do that, but if you need me to bring this back up, I can.

Sorry, for ones in the city that, you know, I think would make sense to consider those that are currently under design for SMART SCALE.

So like the Emmett Street one that we also have

automatic counters there.

So we might be able to do some count validation, you know, kind of do double duty with validating existing counters, barracks and Emmett intersection.

There will be a future shared use path along there.

Also Fontaine Avenue and East High, I think are the main ones that are kind of under design right now that might make good before and after

That's a good point.

And I think if we choose to move forward with the Mont Bridge and it becomes uncountable because of construction in the spring, we can fill that space in with another count location.

So I don't want to rule it out if you think it'll be valuable to get that before data.

Just real quick, as far as Belmont goes, they may be modified, but there will be pedestrian routes kept open through the whole construction.

Good to know.

Thank you.

It just might not be a one-to-one comparison between fall and spring.

Yes, there will be pedestrian accommodations and just

I understand that with construction it might not be an apples to oranges or it might be an apples to oranges comparison.

Alright I'm seeing also people putting stuff in the comment chat that's also really helpful especially when you let me know which category it is.

I would say maybe these two that we have been looking at with the MPO, like Route 20 and the river corridor crossing.

I mean, maybe that's something to look at.

I'd come back and support a band as one that she mentioned there, Emmett Street.

We've got a project that's going to be going to construction between University Avenue and Arlington that's going to happen in a couple of years.

So I think getting accounts out there is a really good location to, and then of course they've got another smart scale application and that could continue all the way up the Route 29 corridor.

And it's a busy corridor with a lot of potential for a lot of people to use bikes there.

Great.

Yep.

I put a star next to it.

Thank you.

Let's see.

We've put the city on the spot.

How about the county?

Any suggestions?

I think we might have lost the county.

All right.

I don't want to speak for the county but we do have counters in place on the shared use path adjacent to John W. Warner Parkway and have been in place for quite a few months and we're also thinking of maybe leaving one of those as a quote unquote even though it's portable we may leave it in place forever well as a permanent counter so

Again, we're counting that location, and we actually have two very close, one of which does break out bike ped, does do the mode split, and one that's just a pyro that counts them together.

So again, it might be good to get some demographic breakdown there and also

We know that we're undercounting because people walk side by side and the technology does not allow.

So it might be good to see if that is a common theme.

Are the counters undercounting based on use?

Is it undercounting by 10%?

Is it undercounting by 50%?

Just based on user behavior.

So again, those are in place.

We can leave those in place for an extended period as needed.

Great.

And what I should clarify is that this was our second secondary goal was to ensure that

or to work with VDOT to make sure that the counters are as accurate as possible.

So once we have finalized those 12 locations, Shane, I'll follow up with you and we'll figure out which of those we would want to add a counter to if it doesn't already match up to a place where the counter already is.

Great.

So I don't know, I'm seeing some comments in the chat including from,

Peter saying, what did you say exactly?

It's really important to be able to answer, are we seeing more bikes around town?

And then suggesting that we revisit previous TJPDC count locations.

So in the detailed scope of work, I did talk about which count locations it would be preferable to have

had previous counts done at those locations.

Because for some of these groups, some of these categories, it's more important than others.

But I just want to clarify that we had to pick some sort of purpose for these counts.

And we had talked about how these really generic counts about just trying to cover as much ground and determining how many people are riding at so many different locations.

That's just a really hard thing to do.

And I don't know that it gives us a ton of useful information.

I think, Shane, you talked to us either to the whole group or to me specifically about how there is some question about whether or not these gigantic counts that just try to cover a large area, how valuable they really are to planning purposes.

So that's why I've tried to focus the count on these projects to give us a very clear goal for what it is we're counting and what we're going to do with that data.

Yeah and related to that I would think that longitudinal data would be best again a two-hour count on one day once every ten I mean

You basically have a snapshot, but if you do the same locations every year, at least you have a better chance.

Again, the two hour window is questionable in terms of how useful it is.

However, at least if you could compare the exact same methodology from one year or any previous years that you have, at least you can start building longitudinal data, but just random snapshots

for a two hour period, just trying to cover the most amount of area I don't think is going to yield useful data.

Yeah.

Great.

Okay.

Well, I will follow up with both the city and the county to review the location choices, and then I will follow up with Shane to figure out where the counters are going to be so that we can determine accuracy.

I think that's everything.

Does anyone have any other comments about the count, the locations, or anything else we've talked about today?

Well, I'm going to wrap us up early.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

And thanks for all of your suggestions and comments.

This meeting has been recorded.

I will post it on our website in the next few weeks.

Great.