Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordination Committee Meeting   2/18/2021

All right.

OK. And since we have both staff and members of the public joining us today, we'll go around and do some introductions.

In no particular order, I guess I'll start.

I'm Jessica Hersh-Ballering.

I'm a transportation planner at the TJPDC, and I help facilitate these bike and ped committee meetings.

Am I muted?

Hi, I'm Brian Becker.

Thanks for joining us today, Brian.

Brian will be really helpful for our One Map discussion.

Hi, Sandy Shackelford, Director of Planning and Transportation for the TJPDC and

Yeah, I'm not a bike ped specialist person.

Thanks, Sandy.

I'm Butch with Albemarle County, senior planner of transportation.

Thanks, Dan.

Yeah, hi, I'm Bill Palmer with UVA.

Been helping out with the One Map and kind of working with Brian, starting to work with Brian on that as he's picking up the reins from Bob and figuring out where we're going with that data.

So it's on the topic for discussion.

Thanks, Bill.

And I'll just point out to everyone that we had

Bob, Bill, and Brian working on our one map.

And I think it's great, all that alliteration.

Thanks for joining us, Michael.

Yes, good morning.

Annie Stafford.

I live in the Willenbills.

I have just gotten interested because of some potential projects happening down here.

And so just an interested citizen.

And I apologize.

It's a good day for baking.

And thank you for joining us, Annie.

Hi, Stuart Gardner, generally just an interested resident in Charlottesville.

Thanks for joining us, Stuart.

Thanks, Peter.

Sorry about that.

And David.

Okay, I got it.

Great.

Well, thank you, everyone.

All right, so our first agenda item is the One Map Project.

So just a little background for anyone who isn't aware, there has been a project in the works for quite a while to try to pull together all of the data from city, county, and UVA on bike and pedestrian infrastructure and put that all in one place and on one map, hence the name One Map Project.

That project was mostly being handled from the technical, hold on one second, just adding Chuck here.

That project was mostly being handled from a technical perspective by the City of Charlottesville and we're really grateful for all the work that they've done so far.

But their GIS expert has left and now we need to finish up our technical work.

And that's why we started bringing in other people.

So we have Brian here from Albemarle County who's trying to tidy up Albemarle County's data, but also may have some more information about the data that he received from some information from a technical side of things.

about the data from the city and UVA.

So Brian, I'm going to hand it off to you.

Okay.

Hello.

So what I got was a file from Bob Brown at the city.

We had sent data to, there was some confusion initially because there's a lot of cooks in this kitchen, I guess.

The data that was provided, the data has been provided to the city, but there had been some changes to field names that was done by another person here at the county as part of our, a different project.

Unbeknownst that that was going to create a problem.

So we now know why the county data was not in there.

I will get the county data in.

The file that I have has got UVA and the city data.

It has a city version of the Ivy Creek trails.

And so I will replace that with the county version.

And after that, I'm still trying to figure out the data that I've got.

It might need some cleanup.

I'm not sure.

It kind of looks to me initially that the UVA and the city were both just put in there.

and not all the common fields were repopulated.

So I need to make sure that the same, the agreed upon fields has the data for both the city and the UVA data all in the same rows.

And then we will, it should be ready at that point to go to whoever's going to host it.

So I think,

Just expanding on what Brian said, it sounds like our original concern with the county data not being included with the city and UVA data was just a field name issue that the field names didn't match.

And Brian has that sorted out and he can handle getting the county's data to have the proper field names.

We should.

That was my understanding too.

And, you know, obviously it's been over a year since we submitted this data.

So I can't totally remember the exact process, but I believe Bob created a,

A geo database that had the field names in there and I just loaded my data set into that and gave it back to Bob.

So, you know, if there's, if there's some discussion we need to have, that's, that's fine.

We can, you know, either reload it or whatever we need to do.

Can I just add, just from discussions with Brian and Michael Barnes on emails, this is really the home stretch of this project.

I don't see it being delayed.

This has to get cleaned up and finished.

there's just like some some specifics we're working out with the data we're bound to find some issues you know this is a lot of people were involved with this three different you know entities and so Brian and I were just finishing up on the county's end and we're in the process we're going to meet with Michael Barnes and and last meeting it was agreed that Michael was going to kind of 2AQC take a look at all of the data

compiled together and so we just had an email with Michael and we're going to meet and look kind of at the product to get like with all three of the data sets and we could even invite the city to be involved with that but this is more of like looking at data fields looking at kind of just the nuts and bolts of it and be able to make a final version to eventually

be hosted and I think what we all agreed on this would be a PDC hosted map.

So as an aside, the PDC takes absolutely no position on if you guys work with Michael on this stuff.

I just want to make sure Dan, Brian, Bill, and Amanda, that you guys check with your own bosses about sharing all of your data with someone who is working with VDOT, but I think he's willing to take on this work in more of a volunteer capacity.

So just making sure that you guys are going through all the proper channels.

Like I said, the PDC doesn't have a position.

So it seems like we have these three steps.

We need to do the home stretch of just getting all the data in a format where everything can be put together.

And that sounds like just cleaning up the field names.

From there, there's going to be hosting it, which, like we've said, the PDC is willing to do.

And from there, there's going to be, Bill, correct me if I'm wrong here.

Once the data has all the proper field names and smushed all together, that doesn't necessarily mean that a GIS map pops up and it looks like completely usable for the general public.

There needs to be more work done.

And there's still a question of who is going to do that particular work.

Yeah, that's my understanding.

And Brian can jump in as well.

Yeah, so to say that TJPDC is going to host it, there's several ways that could happen.

The easiest way would just be to have a link to that geo database that anybody could download and use.

I mean, that's technically a way of hosting, but I think in our minds, what we're thinking is TJ, you'd go to TJPDC and there'd be a one map page and there'd be a nice map of all the bike and pedestrian facilities in our region.

that's built on this data and you may be able to download the data as well if you were a citizen or somebody at UVA in a planning class or something and wanted to work with that data.

So I think that's the next step is figuring out you know I think we were kind of going back and forth on who would actually host it but it sounds like maybe the the best option would be to have PDC host it.

We're going to have a little meeting with what some people at UVA that work on the academic GIS side of the house in the library and they might have some ideas on how we get

to a good web map kind of product.

And maybe they have some interest in helping with that.

But I do think that's the next step.

And then it's a matter of who's gonna do the updates.

Because I think you, Jessica, don't necessarily have in-house ability to do that at this point.

Yeah, and I think when we met, Bill and Brian, discussions of updates where it wasn't a huge deal immediately because the infrastructure doesn't change at breakneck pace.

So we have some time.

Yeah.

I definitely agree with what Bill said about the hosting.

I think you know it could be a collaboration on once it's being hosted

Make it presentable, make it an online portal, like an online map, user friendly type thing.

Static maps are so like 2018, you know, we want to move on from that.

But like this is that's the goal is like an online portal.

Like VDOT has a lot of these for a lot of different infrastructure or paving what they have, you know, the same kind of idea.

I'm willing to chip in the county for what we could for that as well.

For updates, this is what I want to add too.

I'm going back on discussions from over a year ago, but this was something that we could put us, and Brian can confirm, we could put a script in for each UVA data, the city and the county, and when something has to be updated on our end, that could automatically go to the one map and update it.

And these were conversations that Bob even confirmed as well.

So I think we've had a good discussion of the overall big picture and all the steps that we'll need to take for however long it takes.

But we still need to come back to this very first step where we get everything together with the same field names.

And I don't know that I understand how we're going to take that step.

I can go back to my emails.

I mean, I know we had a lot of sharing of spreadsheets that had that common field name addressed sort of early on.

Yeah, I have that too.

Brian, we were just discussing with that, looking at referencing that.

So we just need to figure out how we're going to get all of the data in one place and have all of that data have the same field name.

That's going to be the meeting.

We'll keep everyone in the loop, but that's what we're going to set up with Michael.

OK. We'll add everyone necessary for getting into that.

OK.

Cool.

All right, so it sounds like that's gonna be our first step.

No, we shot an email yesterday saying we should get together.

Okay, so if I can push a little bit, let's say maybe you guys can get your meeting in before our next bike and ped meeting, and we will be able to talk more then.

Were there any other questions or comments about One Map?

Cool, okay.

Well, let's move on to our next agenda item, which was to talk about SMART SCALE.

So as you'll recall, the MPO is kind of

formalizing a new process for how we take on smart scale projects requested from the localities.

Yeah, so what we're talking about and for anybody who's unfamiliar with SMART SCALE, this is a every two year application process where we submit applications for the state to fund transportation infrastructure projects.

So it's based on a scored process where there are several different categories and basically projects are scored

and the projects that have the best benefit compared to the costs or projects that get selected.

We actually were really successful in this last round of SMART SCALE.

We submitted, I think we had all but one or two of the projects we saw we submitted for funding approved.

So we got over $114 million

throughout the MPO area or throughout the PDC area in transportation funding.

One of the things that we're talking about now is that we want to be able to provide that there were some hiccups

in projects that we thought we were going to submit that we didn't get submitted just because there needed to be more public involvement.

And so by the time we had a project that was ready to move forward and got the public feedback, we realized there wasn't strong public support for that.

So what we want to do is make sure that as we select these projects and move them forward, that we're doing all of that public engagement, getting public buy-in, making sure that we're meeting a need that the public has before we submit the application.

So that's sort of the background.

What we are talking about, I have some initial meetings scheduled with the city and the county to start talking through what projects might be selected.

So just to remind you, the MPO is going to select up to two projects that will have a significant level of public involvement to go through a very robust process.

We'll do that outreach for

I don't know, probably between six and eight months to really get applications nailed down.

And then we'll be prepared to submit those during the next round of SMART SCALE, which will be in the spring.

So I have some initial meetings with county and city staff next week.

Amanda, Jeanette is scheduled for that, so you may want to reach out to her if you want to have some discussions with her ahead of time or be involved in that meeting.

I don't care personally, she gave me a list of people to include, so if she's not already in the loop and you have some thoughts, you may want to reach out to her ahead of time.

What I am thinking is that in March we're going to be going to all of the MPO committees, this committee, etc.

to just ask for initial thoughts on what they think should be considered for the MPO to pick up for this robust public participation process to prepare SMART SCALE application.

I want to bring an initial list of project requests to the policy board, the MPO policy board in May for them to start reviewing and thinking through.

And then we're going to request that they make their project selections in July.

We do have four total slots for the MPO to submit projects.

We could submit two additional projects beyond those, but we're going to select two that we think merit significant public engagement at that point.

So those would be because there's a lot of public interest in it like we found with the Route 20 project that could be a potential option where we go back and revisit that and think through with a much more significant public engagement process.

or it could be based on just the scale of the project.

There's a lot of activity and need to address congestion and safety concerns on 29.

We got some of those projects funded.

It's a much scaled down version of what was prepared when we did that small area plan.

So there are some potential options there.

So the criteria isn't necessarily based on how big the project is

cost amount wise, it's based on how significant it is to the community based on any number of factors.

So the policy board will be picking two based on that criteria.

So what I would suggest is that you all be talking with your local staffs about what your staff priorities might be.

And then at some point between now and probably April, we'll be asking for formal requests for the MPO to consider projects for this public engagement process from your boards and councils.

So we'll want to have sort of some of the elected official support for those projects moving forward.

And so then in May we'll have the policy board start going through the options so that they can vote on the projects in July.

So that's really it in a nutshell, the general timeline.

I don't know what questions you all have.

Excuse me one second, let me shut the door, I'm sorry.

My apologies.

But yeah, I'm happy to answer any questions.

And this is a process that we're developing right now.

We don't have to dive into specific projects.

I know we're meeting this coming week.

You're meeting in the county.

But also, I do want to mention that

We need to get the ball rolling and I'm in discussion with Chris about the Rivanna River, and we need direction from that as well.

Yeah, I think my hope is that whatever we do for this process on behalf of the MPO, it does have a really strong regional component.

Right, and I'm going to, Chris and I are kind of putting together, we're going to meet, the meeting we're going to have and gather next steps on how to go to city council, or he goes to city council, we go to, you know, in, you know, just kind of taking steps that way and then seeing what feedback we get on on how to proceed.

Hey Sandy, I really, this is Peter Krebs.

I really appreciate what you said about the regional implications.

I don't know to what extent that can be locked in as a core guiding value or if that's something the policy board needs to say explicitly, but I could easily imagine the two most difficult projects not having

Yeah, I mean, I don't think we've established a specific project selection criteria.

I think as we get a list of requested projects, we'll probably be talking about it from all facets.

So Sandy, could you remind us what you were hoping people would come to our March meeting with?

Yeah, so in March that should be a pretty good idea of what projects you think will at least be discussed by your boards and councils if not have already been discussed and supported by your boards and councils.

So that will just start giving us an initial list that projects are going to come from.

By May, by the MPO policy board meetings in May, we should have a formal request from all of the, either the MPO committees or your boards and councils.

So that's when the requests need to be formalized before the meeting in May.

Thanks, Andy.

Any other questions?

Is there any interest in, I mean, I know the projects that might merit more discussion within this committee would be the Rivanna Bridge as well as Route 20 or some revision of Route 20.

Is that something that you guys would like to discuss?

Would you like to discuss those two projects in greater detail at our March meeting?

Or is that something that you guys feel you need to do more within your own organizations?

I mean, yeah, I mean, I don't mind.

We need to kind of see if we're

Committee on the Route 20, like kind of like see where we're at on next steps for that.

I think this is the perfect place for that.

Okay.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I'm sorry, I've got screaming kids in the background.

So my opportunities to chime in here are tough.

All right, so we'll add that to our March agenda, and we'll talk about it within the context of SMART SCALE.

And if you guys have any conversations within your own organizations, be prepared to bring that info to the group.

No, I don't think so.

Again, this is just a really new process.

We'll see if the timelines work out the way I think they will.

Well, we'll do our best to move through it.

And also the other thing to keep in mind is that even if our project isn't necessarily selected for this big public engagement opportunity, we do still have four applications.

So it could be that there's a project that there's already been a lot of engagement on.

We don't necessarily think that we need to have an additional significant level of engagement at this point.

Maybe we can get

by with what we've already done.

Can I just add that like thinking about on Route 20 and like I just kind of want to see how

We do need to see like if we're talking SMART SCALE, you know, does this need to be further studied?

You know, are we going to look at another route or is there another regional connection that calls out in the bike ped plan?

And let's take the correct steps to publicly and prioritize, you know, if there is, you know, something to be studied.

And since we have VDOT, you know, do we have the capabilities of getting another study finished?

Yeah, that's a good point.

Chuck is going to be involved in those discussions.

I don't know, Chuck, if you can speak to sort of VDOT's ability to support.

I think we were sort of thinking that most of this would not involve an engineering component at this point, but there could be opportunities potentially.

I don't know if any of the VDOT folks want to respond to that at this point.

Okay.

So funny you mentioned that.

We do have a trial for that through the end of this fiscal year.

If it goes well, they're talking about extending access to MetroQuest for the MPOs and PDCs moving forward.

So we'll kind of have to see when we get to June, July, whether or not we're going to continue to have access to it.

Just jumping in for our members of the public, MetroQuest is just like a very fancy survey program that would allow us to, yeah, I see, what is MetroQuest?

It's designed to be very user-friendly and accessible.

So it's a very, I guess, intentional survey option that removes a lot of the barriers to engagement and completion.

Yeah.

Sandy, this is Chuck.

I finally figured it out.

I had to unmute on the screen too.

Yeah, if anybody was part of the Fifth Street project,

We use MetroQuest for that survey component, and that's basically what it is, if you're familiar with that.

It basically looks at sending out links that you can go to to take a survey, and the links are sent out by geo-referenced areas.

So if you cross that into that area, it'll send you an advertisement for that

to take the survey.

And it pushes it out through a bunch of different social media platforms so that you can participate if you're somebody that's in that area.

So everybody in the world can't actually get that information and take the survey.

But it's a good way for us to gather data.

And we've had a lot of good success across the state.

I know Fifth Street, we had over

1,200 participants in the survey.

So it was a way to get a lot of data points and get people's input.

Regarding the VDOT's participation, I know there was a question earlier.

They're developing some information on projects moving forward and whether it meets a V-Trans needs or not.

So we'd have to evaluate it to see how much

participation we could provide in that perspective from a consultant standpoint.

Thanks Chuck.

I just want to go back to, I think Amanda, I just want to clarify your point.

So you were suggesting using MetroQuest to choose between some of our projects identified in the Jefferson area bike ped plan as ones that we might want to pursue.

No, actually I was thinking more about that as a tool for some of these other projects that may still need additional engagement like the Route 20 or Rivanna River.

But I think we were fairly good on Rivanna River, right?

I think it could be argued that, you know, either way, Route 20 definitely needs more engagement.

I think it could be argued either way with the Rivanna Bridge.

I did have a lot of engagement at our one workshop, but I think that more people would like to say more things too.

So great, I think that's a good idea.

Sandy and I can talk a little bit more about MetroQuest and what that might look like in the SmartScale project offline, and we'll bring it back to you in March when we have another discussion about it.

Were there any other questions or comments about SmartScale?

All right.

Yeah, great.

Okay, so the next item on our agenda is also from Sandy.

So one thing we talked about at our last meeting was the Unified Planning Work Program.

So that is the plan of work that we set for ourselves as an MPO for the coming fiscal year, which begins in July.

So, um, let's see.

Sandy, we heard some comments from you guys, some suggestions from you guys at our last meeting.

We also heard comments from CTAC and our Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee and MPO Technical Committee.

And Sandy took all of that info, oh, along with the policy board's recommendations and came up with two different options.

And I think that you guys will be excited to see that alternative transportation is very much included in both of those options.

So Sandy, I'll let you talk about those.

I'm going to try.

Yeah, okay.

So this might be a little bit small for some of you, but hopefully you can see it generally, it can make it a little bit bigger.

So after working through what everything looks like on paper, we basically have about this $50,000 that we can, we kind of have to put towards some sort of like research or discretionary

type of planner project.

My thought with this is that I looked at, I spent a lot of time looking at other work programs that other MPAs were doing, other projects that were related to some of the things that came up.

And in addition to the discussions to see what kind of areas were priorities for the people we were having discussions with.

So I have two options that I feel address

sort of the main themes that arose in these discussions but would also either satisfy a need that had already been identified by the MPO in the most recent strategic plan which while outdated is still the best guiding document that we have or would provide better information moving forward in order for us to be able to take outcomes from this plan or this effort and move it forward into

supporting additional projects that would hopefully solve some of the needs in your local areas as well as help us prepare.

for additional work that we could be doing to support some of the recommendations that come from these.

So the first one that came to the surface is there's a lot of concern about safety and equity.

And in the strategic plan for the MPO, there was also this really strong desire to really be considering pedestrian networks as opposed to

More bicycle oriented facilities.

So this first one would have both components, but it would be sort of a focus on equity and safety.

Looking at bicycle and pedestrian involved crashes and really starting to look at what are the common denominators and factors across the board, not just location specific, but also what other factors are contributing to

especially serious injuries and fatalities that involve bicyclists and pedestrians.

And from there, we would hope that we would either be able to identify locations that need further study or evaluation or else look at other risk factors like lighting, time of day, lack of access to major attraction centers like schools or daycare centers or something along those lines, grocery stores that people are trying to access without adequate facilities.

And so this would launch us into being able to do better outreach and education in some cases or else to have a better sense of what kinds of bicycle and pedestrian projects we might need to prioritize based on safety considerations.

There is an MPO that had a pretty good analysis that I think we could base this, the Martin MPO.

I think that was out of Florida.

But if I bring this up, I'll just show you the cover page so you can see.

They basically looked at all of these different factors and were able to come up with some overarching themes for what was contributing to bicycle and pedestrian-involved crashes.

So that's option one.

Option two, I think, would be less data centric and more research based.

And so I think we could either do this option one and we would have that as sort of like the sole additional project, or we could focus on these other two options.

The other two options involve transportation funding and also

and also focusing on some of the local environmental initiatives that both Charlottesville and Albemarle are pursuing.

And I think both of these, while not directly bike ped related, I think both of these have some really strong tie-ins to bike ped types of facilitating stronger use of bike ped facilities and making sure that those are

Definitely important ways that we are contributing to these goals.

So the first one is just looking at sort of best practices for what we can do to support the climate action plans that both the city and the county have adopted through a regional transportation planning process.

This would probably be mostly looking at best practices that other regions have adopted, specifically regions that are in non-attainment areas that are required to

report air quality and make sure that they're taking significant strides to contribute to that reduction in pollution.

So there is some information out there and it would probably be taking that back in and looking at how we can incorporate that into our long range planning process and how we can prioritize that.

The second one is sort of a

Second part to a revenue study that we're doing right now, and this would be to look at case studies where there has been success in leveraging additional investment into the transportation system.

The idea would be to look at somewhere between three and six scenarios where this has been done effectively and then to really start looking at why those were successful and what lessons can we learn from that in order to potentially pursue those.

A couple of examples I've pulled just to give everybody an idea of what this might

Look like and these are not necessarily what we would do.

These are just some some ideas so that everybody can start wrapping their head around what we might be looking at.

I actually came from Lynchburg, the Lynchburg area before this.

And so in Lynchburg, very similar to Route 29 Business through Charlottesville.

There's Route 29 Business through Lynchburg.

Liberty University is on one side of 29.

Then there's a big shopping center with Walmart and Target and Sam's Club, a lot of restaurants on the other side of 29.

And so there were a lot of crashes that were involving pedestrians,

trying to cross over 29.

So Liberty actually built a pedestrian bridge, making a connection from their campus to the other side of the road in partnership with the city of Lynchburg and with VDOT.

And from there, the city has been investing in additional pedestrian infrastructure to support movement once they get to the other side.

So it was a good opportunity for

a private investment to leverage a much more robust pedestrian network.

There are some examples of tax increment financing where that has been used by the city of Chesapeake to fund streetlight installations and provide a vehicle and pedestrian safety infrastructure.

And then we also, as part of a grant that Jessica worked on to get additional

to get some additional investment into Amtrak stations.

We realized that there's also a strong initiative to attract private investment into Amtrak stations to build on some of, to help support some of the costs of the capital and also support transit oriented development within the areas.

So in addition to the transit focused component of Amtrak, you can also use that to bring in

You know, commercial development or maybe even housing or something like that help reduce the operation costs to Amtrak, but also create new amenities and connections for the local area.

So those are those are the options right now.

So really what I'm looking at and probably more specifically for this first one is

This is Amanda.

I love option one.

That's been something that I've been wanting to do for a long time.

We've kind of had a couple of different efforts at trying to do it, but just have never had the dedicated staff to kind of come up with, with you know, great, a great final product.

So for me, that's the one that I, that I find most appealing, but all of them are great.

Yeah, I definitely agree with Amanda.

That was seems like it's an area of focus that we need to focus on more in the bike pet community, I'm saying so.

Yeah, I agree with that.

This is Bill.

Not that I have too much skin in this game, but option one seems like really appropriate for everything that's going on, especially in the city with the comp plan update and the discussions around that.

I would just also add that the Jefferson School, and I forget exactly what it's called, the Heritage Center over there, they have

They've been thinking about this kind of thing a lot and I'm sure others on this call probably know more about it than I do.

But they might be a good, you know, reach out or resource to help guide that process as you get into it.

But I will say, you know, the county did just finish our phase one climate action plan and looking for

You know, we're already in discussions with implementing strategies that are specifically called out in our transportation sector, some goals identified and stuff.

I don't know that you guys necessarily need to vote.

Mostly I just want feedback because ultimately the policy board is going to be voting on which ones that they would prefer.

Okay, yeah, I definitely want them to decide on it.

I definitely see how beneficial both would be and how some background that we have on the climate action.

Okay.

Is that a general consensus among everybody?

Well, thank you, Sandy.

If people have any additional comments, you can feel free to email me or email Sandy.

Great.

All right.

So I think one of the last things on our agenda.

Oh, I wanted to talk a little bit about potential organizations recommended to regional transit partners.

to the Regional Transit Partnership for Regional Transit Vision Plan Stakeholder Group.

Okay, so last time we met, I talked about how the PDC had received a grant from DRPT to create a vision plan for regional transit.

We're gonna be working on that project basically over the course of the next year and a half.

And the Regional Transit Partnership is going to be our official advisory group for that project, but we're also creating an additional

A new subcommittee of the RTP that's going to be referred to as the Regional Vision Plan Stakeholder Group and we're filling in a list of all the organizations that might

be good for that stakeholder group right now.

And I bring it to you guys because as I've said before, part of the regional vision plan is definitely going to include some consideration of first and last mile connections to transit.

And that is definitely going to look at both bicycle and pedestrian options as they relate to this transit plan.

So I just want to put it in your minds that I would definitely like to see some bicycle and pedestrian

groups be in this stakeholder subcommittee and you can either make any suggestions right now if you know of particular organizations or if you as a member of your department at the city, county, or UVA want to be part of it.

Or you can email me after this meeting to make those recommendations.

The only other thing that might be worth considering in this is, you know, scooter and e-bike, you know, sort of how the dockless mobility works with transit.

Great.

Um, good question.

Sounds good.

Any other comments or suggestions?

All right.

Well, as always, feel free to email me with your suggestions for questions.

And the last item on our agenda, and we are hoping to wrap up a little bit early today and we're on track to do that, are just updates from staff and VDOT and any bike and pedestrian related comments or concerns from the public.

Yeah, I'm still here.

What was the question?

I'm sorry.

Not right now.

Basically, we've already wrapped up the project that we're working on.

We're getting ready to kick off the 29 North study.

That doesn't include any, well, we'll look at it, but I don't know.

It's not including any trails or anything that I'm aware of.

So that's the only thing I've got underway at the moment.

John would probably, Bolychek would probably have a better idea of what's going on across the state regarding it.

There was a recent study that was put out by NCHRP on bike and ped safety at alternative intersections.

which might be something people might want to look at as we move forward with some of these alternative intersections like the R-CUD and roundabouts and some of the other things to show how pedestrians and bicyclists can traverse those type of intersections.

Like I said, it just came out last week.

Let me see what the number is.

It's NCHRP report 948.

Thanks for that, Chuck.

OK. Like I said, it gives a lot of, it's just recently approved and sent out.

And I heard about it at the TRB meeting.

earlier last month.

Great, thanks Chuck.

Alright, going through staff.

Amanda, if you have a quiet house, do you want to go ahead?

I'm trying to think of things that are in the works.

I mean, we certainly are doing a lot with all of the SMART SCALE projects that we have underway and funded.

We are working on Preston Avenue, looking to see if we can add a bike lane there and we'll be working with the adjoining neighbors to kind of come up with a plan that meets their parking needs and also hopefully accommodates bicycle

Bicycle Facilities.

We've got our right-of-way Angie Schmidt discussion this evening.

Hopefully you were able to get a copy of the book and are able to join us tonight.

And I think that's about it right now.

Hi, yeah, I don't really have too many updates.

We've been working with some students that, you know, depending on how things go with the semester, maybe having something around the time of Earth Day where we're able to close off a portion of McCormick Road for, you know, an afternoon to kind of demonstrate what, to cars, you know, and vehicles, to demonstrate what that might feel like to have more, you know, pedestrian and bike priority on that

Road, but I don't have, it's still in planning.

That sounds like a fun project.

So we'll definitely want to hear more.

All right.

So we covering, we have some, some studies going on the Crozet master plan.

There's a lot of input on bike ped, alternative transportation.

So that's still in the works.

That was going to the CAC and it's still in the development.

And the Fifth Street STAR Study was just sent to the board for their information on the recommendations and which that study just finished up this winter.

And we do have a Royal Corridor Study underway going from 29 to

John Warner Parkway, and so that's going to have some, definitely some bicycle pedestrian recommendations in there as well.

And let's see here, just for, we're working with VDOT, but through Parks and Rec with some land use permits, some access easements there for some

Post Trail routes, trying to get some homework done with that, get these set, but also just some older projects that are within the county's construction just for information purposes.

There's some projects out for bid, sidewalk improvements on Avon, Rio,

and also 250 sidewalks and crosswalks, 250 by in front of Harris Teeter and Crozet there.

So these are projects that were funded a few years back but are internally being administered by the county.

Ivy Road sidewalk and bike lanes is also going to be out for bid in March and pedestrian connection, crosswalks.

for Mountain View Elementary School as well.

And there's a shade use path pedestrian connection improvements for Greer Jewett School off hydraulic as well.

So those are, that's being reviewed, the bids are being reviewed on that as well.

Great, thanks.

Peter,

Did you wanna mention anything?

Okay, now I'm on mute.

Sorry about that.

So wanted to let everybody know that the Active Mobility Summit is coming up next Friday from 10 to three.

That'll be an opportunity to have small group discussions around topics that

are nominated by participants.

And so for groups to work together on projects of shared interest.

So for example, there will be a small group discussion on bike month, which is being led by community bikes, but it has heavy participation from the city and lots of other organizations.

There'll be a Safe Routes to School small group discussion, probably a discussion about increasing equity and inclusion in organizations, boards, and leadership, and other topics of shared interest.

I'll place a link to that in the chat.

And then the other thing I wanted to mention is the move to health equity is working on a coalition that's working on a

Community Needs Assessment, and that'll have a survey instrument.

And I will post a link to the draft of that survey.

If you all want to take a look at it and make comments, we'd be very grateful.

Thanks, Peter.

All right.

Any of our members of the public or our members of CTAC, if you want to make any comments?

Sorry Jessica, I do have one more thing.

Peter reminded me but forgot to mention another topic that's going to be on the Bike Summit is Bike Month.

That's obviously coming up in May and we got to start doing some thinking and planning for that.

Yeah, I think that's a great idea.

We'll let you guys have your discussion at the summit, and then we'll revisit it in our March meeting here as well.

All right.

Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us.

As always, email me with any questions or topics for next month, and we'll see you in March.

See you.