Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordination Committee Meeting   7/15/2021

And let's get started talking about one map.

We don't have Brian here today.

Dan, did we need to discuss anything?

I know there were some emails going back and forth at the beginning of the week.

Oh, okay.

Basically, maybe I'd prefer Chris or Amanda provide an update.

I do feel like we've been in conversations, mostly Brian for the county representing like the technical GIS work of it has been in conversations with Charlottesville's point of contact on that.

We really had not made progress.

I think we have been kind of waiting for an update

things on our end, the counties end are ready to go.

UVA, I think that we have that data that I think that was sent and updated to us.

Thanks, Dan.

Unfortunately, Chris has no info.

So I heard Amanda has no info, so we'll look to Chris.

I don't want to misquote anyone, two people that are not in the meeting as well.

But I do think that there is some data structure issues that has to get ironed out still.

That's what it sounds like.

I mean, speaking for the county, we have an upgrade internally separate from this whole project.

with our GIS system.

And I think that we would be willing and I'm going to push to try to get our data, county data, available through the county's outlets as we're waiting for this project to get rolled out as well.

You know, I think that's just where we're at.

But I do think there's a lot of technical stuff that still needs to get ironed out.

And I haven't been involved in those conversations.

And it doesn't sound like anyone in this meeting has either.

Thanks, Dan.

It sounds like the technical people just need to keep talking to each other or start talking to each other.

So thank you for the update from everyone.

And yeah, we'll have it on the agenda for next time.

I have a question or a thought.

I know, I think all of us provided data updates to VDOT as part of their bike mapping project.

And I wonder, what has been your experience with R3 data, R3 submissions, is that a viable,

option for kind of trying to create this one map.

If this continues to drag on, it just seems like, I don't know, seems like this has taken a really long time.

I'm not sure, and Shane and John aren't on the call,

Um, so I can't answer that question, Amanda.

Thanks for that, Chuck.

And Dan, maybe you can fill in a few more details, but my understanding from the emails going back and forth were just that this group had already decided on a bunch of categories for how to describe the bike infrastructure.

So I'm not sure that the data that VDOT has follows those same categories.

If it does, maybe that is a good solution.

Yeah, you summed it up well.

In my conversations with John and Shane is they were accepting any type of update from us, from the city.

on just to kind of show them, hey, this is what the infrastructure is.

And I think internally, they did not require it to be a certain data structure.

I think they were going to do that in-house.

And as long as they had what needed to be updated.

For us, it's a little different project.

We're trying to merge three entities, data, like basically puzzle these

this dataset together and that's what the holdup is for us is things have to line up smoothly through all three datasets and structures and that has a lot to do with behind the scenes, you know, behind the scenes stuff within GIS and I think that that's really kind of what has been the holdup.

I do, basically it doesn't sound like things were

like complementing each other and so you can't merge it necessarily.

Great, thanks for the update.

I do want to move us on to the next item.

Next we have Lucinda giving us a little bit of background on a corridor study that the PDC is working on and requesting a little feedback on that project.

Thanks, Jessica.

And thanks, everyone, for allowing me this time.

Let's see.

This one.

OK.

So the PDC is doing a corridor study on Route 29 kind of in the north area.

It starts at the airport.

Well, Airport Road.

It starts at Airport Road, and it goes up to Deerfield Drive.

and it's just the US 29 corridor.

So that's kind of the Rutgersville area up there.

And I'm going to go through a bunch of slides kind of quickly.

And basically what I'm hoping to learn from you all is to identify pedestrian transit and bike infrastructure needs in that corridor.

And also if there's other groups that I should be talking with that would also be able to help me identify those types of needs in the corridor.

So this is the existing land use right now.

Can I interrupt for a second?

All right, let me try again.

Thanks, Jessica.

Screen.

This one, maybe that one.

There's a lot of screens here.

Is that it?

Yes, now we see the presentation.

OK, so yeah, I just want to show you the map here.

It's from Airport Road up to the Rutgersville area up here.

So it's mostly in Albemarle and some in Greene County.

The existing land use is rural, and then there's the planned development area.

And Rutgersville also has a lot of their development is planned in this area too.

So there's

Six traffic lights in the study.

And some of the identified trip generators are the airport, the UVA research park, and the National Ground Intelligence Center.

And there's some planned development up here too with the Cedar Run Homes and the villages, and then North Point down here, which is a pretty large development.

There's also a Creekside and Judo Drive Development Plan, but we're waiting for more information on those.

So there are some VDOT projects that are happening right now along the corridor to improve the roadway.

And there are also some ongoing studies.

So this is, VDOT ranks their

intersections and corridors by safety and need.

And so these areas here along the study corridor have a pretty high need, and they'll be able to be available for funding for projects, for road improvement projects.

So I don't know if you guys, like, this is a good area to focus on if you know of any bike, ped, or transit infrastructure needs in those intersections in that corridor there.

And then there were three pedestrian crashes all up in the Ruckersville area.

And they're looking into more information about those crashes.

And that's the end of my presentation.

I'm hoping mostly to get some information from you about like what groups that I should contact and share this information with to see if they have any head bike or transit needs.

And I'm already talking with the transit agencies.

And then if you know of any infrastructure needs for that area, and I'll just put it back to the map.

Yeah, this is Dan with the county.

There's a lot going on up here that is on our radar.

Something that just stood out is we have a lot of proposed routes in this area, like a lot of proposed connections that are called out in any type of regional and master plans and county plans and stuff.

I could send you that information.

I think trip generators would also be smart to include Chris Green and Pretty Creek even though they're recreational people are going there.

We have a lot of proposed kind of like rural roads for bike improvements on VDOT's paving schedules and

You know, we have a lot of, we do have a, you know, a shared use path proposal.

Chris mentioned, you know, 29 in the chat there.

We had that called out, you know, so, but it's in the planning stages.

I'll be able to send all this information that you need for this as well.

Freight Mill was a project, intersection project that we just applied for, for SMART SCALE, but that was not funded.

I don't believe there's further study of that.

Chuck would know.

In Albemarle County, I know that Lewis and Clark, it shows up as a need location on, from what the data set shows, but I know that North Point Development is converting that, they may have already done it, to an R cut, so that should be addressed.

There was the other R cut at North Side, opposite North Side Drive, that's already constructed.

There's going to be a parallel road along 29 from Lewis and Clark all the way down to Airport Road on the North Side Drive North Point property once they get it finished and that's going to be some residential and it's all it's going to be multi-modal with sidewalks and bike lanes and so we'll be able to get to this light here at Lewis and Clark.

Getting across the river

could be a concern because there's not really any way to get across unless you go up Dickerson Road and that's not very amenable.

Once you get north of there, this section of 29 is very hilly and very, there's a lot of geometric and a lot of safety issues and that's the primary focus of this study.

Up at the north end, Frays Mill,

The project that application didn't do very well at all.

So we're probably gonna have to look at that again to see if there's something else we can do there to fix that.

Cause it was like one of the worst scoring projects in the district.

In Greene County, there's a lot of opportunities.

I know we have one project at Connector Road that goes through the, let's see, station, not Rivanna Station.

There's a development up there on the right before you get to Matthew Mills that we have, we're building a connector road from 670, which is, goes back through the Pretty Creek development.

That's going to connect out to 29.

They're making some improvements to 29.

As the development there is also looking at making some improvements to the corridor there.

Most of the properties in this area are all

Already rezoned and most of them are zoned either multi-use or residential.

So until they come in the site plans or something, there's not a lot of things we can do.

We have tried to work with the Green County on establishing a parallel road network through this area to try to help mobility both from the

Multimodal aspect as well as the vehicles situation.

There's not a lot of park and ride lots in this area either so we're going to look at that as a focal point of trying to see where there's some opportunities for those in this corridor.

That's pretty much all I've got right now.

Hopefully we'll get more information but we're trying to get as much input on the

Multimodal aspect of it as opposed to the vehicle aspect of it because we're going to deal with that part of it but we want to get input from everybody on the other aspects of the process.

I know that John is on the stakeholders group and hopefully we'll get some good feedback from them because they actually control or

group so that hopefully we can get that all addressed in this corridor.

Just looking over, I do see that, you know, we do have a shared use path on Lewis and Clark and Amport Road has a bike lane connections there.

And this area is, you know, it's the edge of the development area.

Lucinda, I'll also point out that there are some good and specific comments in the chat box as well.

Yes.

Are we looking into crossing, safe crossings across 29?

Because that's really, there's nothing around.

So that's a major consideration.

Can I ask a follow-up question to that?

I think it's something we should consider.

Wow.

Well, by me, by Kroger and Lowes, there's a missed opportunity there.

And then, gosh.

Yeah, need more input about users up in that area up north of us.

I mean, with all the development coming, there's gonna be a need for more crossings.

This was identified in our project priorities for the county.

I'm going to put in the chat the link to it.

It has all the maps and background information.

But what has been identified in this area is a priority ranked number 41.

This is Timberwood Connector, Timberwood and Burkemont.

That's the description of it, but that would be the area that that is looking it's it's I think is an extension of the north town study trail study.

Yeah, this is one of those areas, like I was saying, there's a big disconnect at the river.

So it sort of acts as a barrier north-south.

So we may want to look at how we can forward that area better because like I said, you can get to Lewis and Clark

And then there's a big development.

You've got the Rivanna Station and you've got that big residential development on the west side of 29 opposite Rivanna Station.

Lucinda, did you have any other specific areas you had questions on?

So the phrase mill crossing, I'm just reading Peter's comments.

Like the further study on freeze mill, what should we add into the study?

Well, I just basically from where we were with applying for that project, not funded, just kind of going off what Chuck said, there needs to be further evaluation.

It was proposed as an R-cut, which was not even really supported too much.

by the residents who utilize this, there is a need identified.

That's why the county applied for this.

So it's identified as a tier one safety need in V-Trans.

I just coming up with a economical solution is the issue.

that we can fund.

We're hoping the R-cut would be that solution, but obviously it didn't provide enough benefit to justify the cost.

So we're going to have to step back and look at it again to see what other alternatives can we look at or opportunities are there that intersection address the safety as well as the mobility needs.

It is identified as a connector in the

bike plan, there aren't really facilities other than share the road out there.

So, but you do have the park access on the east side and it's just what are we gonna do to provide that connection and make improvements there that are gonna address all the needs.

Do you guys know where the people who are crossing Frays Mill Road are coming and going to?

There are bicyclists that are through travelers going from Burnley Station to Frays Mill.

There are also people who are going to Freddie Creek

I'm not really sure how a cyclist would use 29 in that sector at all.

So the only comments I've heard are sort of through distance cyclists, things someone riding like 20 miles or something like that may go across 29.

Dickerson, is it Dickerson Road?

That connects across from, yes, that is a gravel road that does connect to

Chris Greenlake Road, you know, it continues and you can turn onto Chris Greenlake to connect to the park there.

Okay.

That's all the questions I have.

If you think of anything else, just let me know.

Thanks, Lucinda.

And like Lucinda said, if you think of anything else, you can feel free to email me.

I can pass it along to Lucinda since you guys will have my email address.

All right, next up, we have Sandy who's going to talk to us about SMART SCALE.

Yeah, I feel like I talk about SMART SCALE a lot, so I apologize to those of you who have heard this presentation or a similar presentation before.

Okay, go ahead and share my screen and I'm gonna try to keep it very, very high level, just so you guys can get a watch.

So, Jessica mentioned, I'm not sure if I showed you guys this timeline here, but this year, or this cycle, the MPO for Charlottesville, Albemarle is starting a different process for their SMART SCALE project selection.

So this is just an overview of that process.

Starting in March, we started having some initial discussions about the projects that we would be submitting for round five, which will not be

which the pre applications are not going to be submitted until May of 22.

So we started basically a year ahead of time and developing a process to make sure that we have been able to vet the projects that we are going to submit.

We started some initial discussions and then we've been going through this process of identifying what the project requests might be.

There are technical committees and our MPO committees and then and really in June, because we had to reschedule the MPO meeting, but we basically finalized the list of potential projects to choose from.

So then coming up in July, we are going to be asking the policy board to actually identify which of the projects they would like developed into applications.

And from there, they can determine up to two of those that might need a additional level of engagement or project support to develop those applications.

So at least two of the four applications that the MPO will submit will be pretty straightforward projects that they've already gone through a high level of vetting and will need really minimal additional feedback at that point in order to submit and up to two could be supported by this additional engagement or technical support.

So the next step once those projects are selected is that for any of those projects that need additional engagement, we'll appoint advisory committees to be part of that process.

And then we'll start holding meetings with the advisory committee.

We'll plan to have a big public workshop reviewing all of the projects that were submitted like we did in round four.

Some of you may recall that we

We collaborated with Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville to have a big public workshop just to review all of the projects that were submitted.

And then we'll have that public feedback prior to the deadline to submit the pre-applications.

So if there's any reworking or anything like that that needs to happen during those public workshops, we'll have an opportunity to incorporate that into the pre-applications.

And then just real quickly, the project selection goals that were identified with staff

which included discussions between the TJPDC and the MPO, VDOT, and then the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County where that we want to submit projects that will be competitive based on the cost benefit scoring process that SMART SCALE goes through.

We want to move projects forward that have already been through a public process and have public support already.

And we want to keep projects moving through our project development pipeline.

So we want to start with projects that are already

undocumented plans or studies and move those projects forward first before we go back and look at new projects to be developed specifically for SMART SCALE applications.

So a really high level overview.

These are the projects that were identified as potential projects.

All of these in red were identified through discussions with staff and recommended as potential projects for the MPO committees to consider.

Some of these you all are already familiar with the District Avenue roundabout and the Hillsdale Avenue extension, which came out of the

hydraulic 29 small area plan that was conducted a few years ago.

We've talked about the Rivanna River bike and pedestrian crossing that was also identified as a priority.

And then there are these two corridors that we were considering that have recently completed corridor studies on them.

Avon Street, at least for the portion of Albemarle County and then 5th Street.

And Avon Street has also has been identified by the city of Charlottesville as being a priority to improve multimodal

infrastructure.

And then this project, shown with this blue line right here is why I'll go over this a little bit later.

This US 29250 flyover project was submitted by one of the CTAC members, so that one also got added to our list.

So you all are familiar probably with the District Avenue roundabout.

This is hydraulic is over here and this is a roundabout that would support some of the other solutions that were identified as being in place as part of that hydraulic small area plan.

The actual design would need to be

determined based on the development of the application if it's selected as moving forward.

But one of the things you can see here in white is that it does incorporate pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure to navigate crossing of this roundabout if that project moves forward.

The second project, the Hillsdale Avenue Extension, we submitted in round four and it did not score very competitively.

So at this point, the MPO is not, staff is not recommending that we move forward with this project, not because we don't think that it would be helpful or valuable, but just because it's unlikely to score well and unlikely that it would get funded.

But this is an extension of Hillsdale Avenue from its

from Hydraulic Road all the way down to 250.

And then some of these interchanges between 250 and 29 would be reconfigured.

So those ramps would be closed and traffic would be reconfigured to go through this Hillsdale 250 connection.

And this also included some additional bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.

The Rivanna River Bike and Pedestrian Crossing is one that you're probably familiar with and this is one that the staff is recommending to move forward and this is also the project that staff is recommending has some additional investment of resources put towards it.

The cost that came back from the feasibility study that was completed for the two configurations that are shown in red were between $11 and $15 million.

And by the time we add contingencies and inflation costs and things like that that need to be included as part of the application, that's likely to jump up even more significantly.

This is a project that shows up a lot in a lot of the small area plans and corridor studies and anything that's in that area.

So staff does believe it's important to go ahead and submit it.

But one of the suggestions we had when we were discussing this is maybe we need to spend a little bit more time determining if we can consider options that might help us reduce

The concern right now with the price tag is that it's unlikely to score well enough to receive funding.

that were developed out of the feasibility study.

And then this line in blue shows a third suggestion that was brought forward by C-Tech.

Preliminary review by staff indicate that there are some reasons why this might not be preferable or technically feasible, but assuming this project moves forward,

We could consider whether or not we need to go back and revisit these two configurations or whether there are additional options like the third option that would potentially still allow the project to move forward and be more cost effective.

All right, and then we get into the Avon Street and the 5th Street corridor projects.

After discussing this with staff, they had a pretty concrete recommendation for what the application should look like for the Avon Street multimodal improvements.

So you talked at one point about potentially looking to see if there was maybe a series of projects that we should consider coming out

of these corridor studies.

And really, staff had a pretty good idea of what project made sense.

So the suggestion that came out of this would be to start at Druid Avenue in the city, and that's where there's a bike lane that drops off at that point.

So to extend that bicycle infrastructure from where it ends at Druid Lane and pick that back up

Going at least to the park and ride facility in Albemarle County, which is located at Avon Court Park.

I think depending on price tag of what we come up with, there could be some opportunities to extend it even further to where it picks up at the Fifth Street Shopping Center or Parkway right here.

But I think it just depends on Albemarle County staff indicated that they were okay and were comfortable

using the park and ride as a terminus in the south at this point to help keep the project costs competitive.

And then Albemarle County is also going to be applying for some revenue sharing to implement some of the recommendations that came out of their corridor study on the southern side of Avon Street.

And then for the 5th Street multimodal improvements, again, we had talked about whether or not there needed to be multiple applications for this and staff indicated as well for this one that they had a pretty discrete idea for recommendations already.

So there were some improvements that came out of the 5th Street corridor study to make some improvements at the intersection, reduce some left turn lanes and add some left turn lanes.

I think they're adding left turn lanes off of 5th Street turning onto the Parkway.

but to make some of those improvements right there to include operations at the intersection and then extending the bicycle and pedestrian facilities so the sidewalk and the I think it was the on-road bike lane that was recommended as part of this study to extend those north and provide that connection to the street trails and hub project that was funded in round four so that's the recommendation

And I will also say that staff did not necessarily feel that there needed to be a heavy amount of public engagement or additional support for any of the projects other than the Rivanna River bridge crossing.

So our suggestion would be to still continue to convene a meeting or two with the stakeholders that were involved in their original development of their recommendations at a minimum, but staff did not feel like there was a heavy need for additional public engagement at that time since these projects have already been through a pretty robust public engagement process to develop the recommendations in the first place.

This flyover project, it's probably a little bit hard to explain without this being superimposed into a map, but this was a recommendation from a CTAC member, which basically is a grade separated ramp that starts on 250.

So this is following the 29 corridor, and this is following the 250 corridor.

So this would be a grade separated ramp going both directions.

Entrance and exit point on 250 would be over here west of the West of the intersection with 29 and they would go on to this ramp and they would use this ramp basically to fly over so it's great separated it's going to be above the road to fly over and then the other exit and entrance point would be on 29 this is just south of Seminole Court

So it would basically remove all of the traffic coming from 29 and 250 from having to go through that hydraulic road intersection.

The estimate that was prepared by our CTAC member was $50 million.

That has not been verified by VDOT.

So it's hard to know exactly what that final dollar amount would be, especially once contingencies and inflation and

Project Engineering and those kinds of things are applied.

But even based on that estimate, it's a pretty large price tag.

So the recommendation from staff then is just summarized in this table right here, going back to that criteria that we talked about, you know, saying that we want projects that are going to be competitive based on the overall cost of benefit.

We want projects that have been through a public process that are documented in the plans.

So you can see that what staff is recommending that will be considered by the MPO is that the MPO moves forward with the District Avenue roundabout, the Rivanna River

Bike and Pedestrian Crossing, Avon Street, and Fifth Street corridor improvements as the four applications from the MPO.

The Hillsdale Avenue South project, we're going to keep in our back pockets because the PDC also has applications that it can submit.

So if the PDC does not use all four of their applications closer to the deadline, we could reserve the option to also include that as one of those projects just because

It is the last project on the short prioritized project list in the long range transportation plan that has not been funded at this point.

So it is identified as a priority project.

We don't want to submit it if it's not going to be competitive, but if we're not going to be using all of our project application slots, this could be a project that we slide in at that point.

Andy, I will point out that there are a lot of, there's a lot of great discussion going on in the chat and really a question for Chuck, if I could highlight it.

So there was the suggestion that the, because of the cost of the Rivanna Bike and Pedestrian Bridge project, was there the opportunity to phase that project?

And the question was specifically about phasing the first phase, only getting to Old Mills Trail.

There was a trail there, but I'd have to look into it a little bit more to see if that would be a logical, considered a logical termini.

I mean, we would at least have to get it down connected to the trail.

But I think that could easily be done.

Or at least extend it to a point where we could merge the two together using ADA compliance.

So we might want to extend the trail a little bit

to where we can merge them together so that we don't have to build something that we're not gonna really use in the future once the other trail part is built.

Thanks for that info Chuck.

Dan, is there any information from the county regarding like plans for Old Mills Trail?

What portion of this are we talking about?

Oh, the Old Mills Trail.

Parks and Rec.

This has just went to the board about an extension of that.

The existing section of this is a six foot stone crushed.

I believe that that would be the extent of any type of improvement farther south of this.

That is on Parks and Rec's radar.

But I believe where the Rivanna River Crossing, that would already be connecting to the segment that is Existing Trail.

But within the Rivanna River Study, it did have the upgraded shade use path connection up to Peter Jefferson Parkway.

Chris mentioned in the

I'm reading the chats.

Chris mentioned about phasing that, taking that portion of the project out.

Chuck, I mean, I don't think VDOT would look as connecting to a stone crushed trail as an approved connection for infrastructure.

So I'll clarify what I wrote in the chat.

And this is a question for Tim Pedalino.

If Dan doesn't know the detail of this, but the development that's underway there called Presidio Place includes river access as part of its project.

Peter, I'm not sure it includes river access, but there is a right of way to access the power line, the power cut there through Presidio.

Yeah, and so, you know, some things well closer to the river than Peter Jefferson Parkway in any case.

And there is education of trailhead parking, I believe, with that as well.

But I think this does need to be further identified.

It's always brought up when we mentioned this about additional parking.

I mean, the goal of this project is it's a commuter bridge, you know, to provide access.

I mean, we could look at it in reverse, build the trail first and then build the bridge second that ties into the trail with the shared east path.

So that might be another way to look at it.

And yeah, this is Chris.

I'd say kind of like we're doing over here is putting the piece of the puzzle together so you don't

Not build one piece waiting for the next, but you do have to meet the scoring criteria for economics and logical termini and ADA.

So yeah, is it possible that SMART SCALE builds the bridge and TAP builds the trail with help from the Presidio?

Sometimes when we see those great big numbers and they hold up the project for too long because people are scared of the big number, just thinking of ways you could cut it up.

But obviously, if you change the endpoints, it changes the SMART SCALE scoring.

and the ADA-ness of the trail.

And someday that's going to be the Three Notch'd Trail going over towards Clifton.

But that's maybe not quite ready for prime time.

So, yeah, if you could just run it real quick and see how much it would change the cost and it would still meet the criteria and the county's commuter desires.

The other thing we discussed with the transportation staff folks is that

Even if the bridge is not successful in this round, sometimes it takes a couple of rounds for us to get projects successfully funded.

So this would at least give us more information going into a future round to hopefully revise an application.

It's just hard to know what other people are going to be submitting to know what we're competing against for the funding applications.

I will say there was an article

Last month, about a bridge over 495 that was awarded and it included a long section of trail and it was in the $9 million range.

It was near the Tysons area, so it was a significantly long bridge.

comparable to what we're looking at here.

And then just to answer the other questions, none of these projects are set in stone at this point.

This is the recommendation from, you know, a meeting that MPS staff held with VDOT and Charlottesville transportation staff and Albemarle transportation planning staff.

So these are just the recommendations that are going forward to the policy board as staff recommendations.

Sandy, I just had a question about

My first scene, maybe it was at our last meeting.

I don't recall seeing a new proposed alignment for the river crossing.

Do you have any additional information on that?

Yeah, that was recommended by our CTAC member.

I can put that slide up again, hold on.

I think, I think, Jessica, or you might be in a better position.

I think some of these discussions, some of the concerns with why this wasn't moved forward initially were maybe part of your discussion earlier that I wasn't a part of.

So I can jump in, Sandy.

If this is not an alignment that was initially proposed in the early stages of the feasibility study, it's really close to it.

The major issues were, and again, this was proposed by a member of the public or a member of CTAC, the issue is that it relies on the purchaser acquiring some existing private property as the starting point.

along Riverside Avenue, and then the project as estimated, like its cost estimates, only considers going to Old Mills Trail, which as we've been discussing in the chat is really not, is unlikely an acceptable project endpoint.

Yeah, my guess is still that the taking off into Market Street may be the best one to go forward and then

With the railroad potentially coming into Commonwealth possession, I think there's some parking opportunities on the city side.

The railroad owns a lot more land than just the tracks on the city side.

Sandy, did you want to elaborate a little bit on the amount of flexibility we would have with design after the policy board

Yeah, I mean, it really depends on what exactly they vote on.

They could vote like specifically on these exact recommendations, but I think really what we're asking them to do for the Rivanna Bridge is just to prepare the most competitive application we can that generally provides a bridge crossing in this area.

And so there would be a lot of flexibility on what that actual end design would be.

For something like the 5th Street corridor, you know, Peter mentioned in the chat that there's a lot of opinions about the Harris Street intersection at that point.

I don't know that that would be part of the discussion if the policy board approves the recommendation as proposed by staff.

The policy board could say, you know what,

We think you need to go back and just look at the whole 5th Street corridor and do more engagement to see what the priorities really should be out of that.

That could be the guidance that the policy board gives us.

So it depends a little bit.

I'll be able to answer that question better based on what the actual vote is after our meeting.

And just as a reminder, that meeting is going to be on the 28th.

The policy board meeting will be on the 28th.

Great.

Thank you, Sandy.

If people have any other comments or want to direct staff, if you want to direct members of the public, you can email direct them to me.

All right, so next on our agenda is next meeting topics.

Sure.

So we were actually selected.

The League of American Bicyclists and EcoCounter put out a call for like a competition call for bike data.

And we submitted an application and were selected as one of two to have EcoCounter do some analysis of our account data.

So I have to, as part of that, I have to give a presentation next week.

Thanks, Amanda.

And that is going to pair very nicely with another presentation we're going to have from the staff at Roanoke Valley Regional Commission.

Yes.

I'm looking to get some more trail counters.

Amanda and I worked together pretty well with our counters and the same with Shane and John on the VDOT side.

But I want to get some more remote counters for Ragged Mountain and some other places for park side purposes.

And Amanda recommended I talk to the other Amanda's down at Roanoke Valley.

And I didn't realize how extensive their trail counter bike ped counting program is.

They coordinated the PDC level, the counts and the data, which I think we already do here at the PDC.

at some levels, but how to get our VDOT counters, our city counters, I don't know if the county is going to and or I think Bill mentioned UVA might start getting some of these electronic counters that provide data up to the web real quick.

So the idea would be to have the Roanoke group which works with Virginia Tech and their localities and the Roanoke Valley Regional Council to just give us an update on how they set that program up

how they collect the data, how often they put out a report to the localities.

But it's basically a nice regional model for collecting things from various entities that manage trails and I assume by pedestrian infrastructure.

Thanks, Chris.

So yes, lots of good things to look forward to next month.

Are there any other requests from folks regarding meeting topics?

Probably not for August.

It sounds like we'll be busy hearing about counts.

But for September, October, any requests that you'd like to voice now?

Otherwise, you can email them to me.

Alright, next we'll move into roundtable updates.

We were making plans as the state of emergency was lifted to return to in-person meetings.

What we realized was that since we are located in the city of Charlottesville and the city of Charlottesville is under a locally adopted state of emergency that we can continue to hold meetings virtually as long as that state of emergency is in effect.

So starting for all of our meetings in July, we will allow an option to come in person, but we will still be holding the meetings virtually.

So for any of you that are committee members on any of the MPO committees or

any of the TJPDC committees, you can still participate with your full membership virtually.

What we are doing with all of our committees is we are also working towards adopting a remote meeting policy that is effective outside of the state of emergency.

And this allows in certain situations, this allows committee members to participate remotely in meetings if they

meet certain criteria.

They're pretty general things about like health emergencies or needing to care for a family member.

There's some specificity, but that you have to provide, but generally you just have to say

I am not participating or I request to participate in this meeting virtually because of a health consideration.

And the way that that would work is you would have a limited number of opportunities to use that remote participation and there still has to be an in quorum physically present.

Thanks.

And I'll just add everything that Sandy just said really only applies to appointed committees.

So like our MPO technical committee, our citizens transportation advisory committee, all of those, like the policy board, it does not apply to this committee.

So this committee, if it's the desire of the committee, we can continue to meet virtually indefinitely.

So if this works best for everyone, we can just continue to do that.

What I would ask is if you feel very strongly about meeting in person,

Send me an email and we can see what the feelings of the group are.

But for the time being, it seems like everyone really enjoys meeting quickly, virtually.

We've gotten a lot of nice participation from the public.

So that would be my recommendation, but we want to hear from, especially from staff who attend these meetings regularly.

Any questions?

Great, okay, so the next item is updates from staff and VDOT.

Couple of things, we're kicking off our like the MPO, we're kicking off our SMART SCALE round five program to try and coordinate that input

There's an outreach effort with the city and the county.

We've also got two, well, three studies.

We've got the North corridor study, which Lucinda presented on earlier.

And then we've got two other studies that are getting ready to get kicked off.

One's for the 22-250 intersection in Shadwell.

And the other one is for the 250 corridor in Pantops,

Really, it's the section from the Hanson's Road out to 64.

We're gonna look at that for both safety multimodal aspects, seeing if there's opportunities for replace the park and ride a lot in that area, and to complete the sidewalk and other facilities that are missing along that corridor.

So those are some of the things that we've got coming up.

But

Thanks, Chuck.

Any questions for Chuck?

Right.

Yeah, on the front of pedestrian bike stuff, I don't really have any updates.

Just will note that we are finally kind of starting our update to our grounds plan, campus plan from 2008.

So that'll probably touch on aspects of walkability and biking and stuff, but nothing to really report yet.

Thanks, Bill.

OK, well, thanks for joining us today.

Let's see here.

So we're still waiting on design changes from our consultant for the Preston and Barracks intersection.

We anticipate having

I mean, I don't know if it's a public meeting.

But kind of once we have those design changes going to the church and meeting with folks in person to show that the changes before they're implemented.

But we anticipate repaving will happen sometime September, October time frame.

Great.

Thanks, Amanda.

As been noted, we've been having our focus on the discussions for the next round of SMART SCALE projects.

You know, we have right now the Rile Road corridor study going on.

We did receive some recommendations in evaluating that.

and that is in full swing.

The extension, we did extend that to the city line for the planning process to evaluate recommendations from 29 to the city limit there.

And we have some bike ped projects, some sidewalk shade use path connections that are internally being led, administered by the county that should be getting constructed by this summer into the fall out at Greer and Jewett connection there by the schools on Ivy Road, as well as Avon just south of Milk Creek there and on Ryle.

by connecting just north of Penn Park Lane as well as the 250 out by Crozet.

Thanks.

Let's see.

Not really much of an update at this point.

We are finalizing and working through some of the programming we will be doing in FY22.

and looking at ways that we can possibly incorporate some bike and pedestrian programming in the constraints of commuters and DRPT.

Thanks, Sarah.

And I'll note that if anyone is very interested in all of the details of Rideshare, Sarah will be giving a presentation on the 22 work plan at our MPO tech meeting on Tuesday.

Hey, thank you.

So I have two quick updates and then one update that I'm sorry is not quick.

It'll be a little bit of discussion that this body is a good starting place for.

First of all, there will be a mini summit in around Labor Day, right before Labor Day, like a six month anniversary of the mobility summit from February.

I'll put a link to the Doodle poll in the chat.

Second fast update, there is a fun little article about bike bed in the real estate section of the Seville Weekly.

I'll put a link to that in the chat as well.

And so here's the other issue that I'm following and I wanted to hear you guys' thoughts.

I'm really glad that Sandy's on the call and Chuck because

This is definitely regional transportation, definitely multimodal, and definitely a spot where it's hard to get stuff done because it's city, county, and university all right together and nobody fully owning it.

So we all have to own it.

I'm gonna share my screen if that's okay with you, Jessica.

So there's been a buy-write subdivision application

a property that's known as the Grainger property, which is in Albemarle County, but only barely.

It's in this little section of land south of the railroad tracks, north of 64 and west of Sunset Avenue extended.

It's completely undeveloped.

Hilly, and there are multiple streams there.

So I'll zoom in just a little more so you can see the parcel boundaries.

So this is the parcel that's being developed.

So looking at it from the Jefferson Area Bicycle Pedestrian Master Plan map now.

Let's see, let me locate it, whoa.

So I'm going to hide this layer for a second.

So as you see, there is a very important part of the Rivanna Trail that passes through that property.

It's a place where you can go and feel like you're in the country, but really be in Albemarle County and just steps from the city of Charlottesville.

The bicycle pedestrian master plan, I'm going to turn the layers from that on.

and you can see that the bike pad plan shows for upgrades along Sunset, but also shared use path along the edge of the property where the current Rivanna Trail is.

And that's important because that links the Southern part of Albemarle Counties, the Southern neighborhood to UVA, Fontaine,

Research Park, and a whole lot of other things.

So here's the plat that was submitted, and it is by right.

So it's a suburban cul-de-sac, a series of suburban cul-de-sacs.

A bit unusually, it

Often these plats at least make some reference of Creekside Trail or a recreational trailer or some indication of something as important as the Rivanna Trail being on the property.

This one doesn't do that.

It does include a couple of different easements for utilities and for a

sort of a ghost of the Sunset to Fontaine connector.

I'll talk about that more in just a second.

Now, I as a planner with PC have three concerns.

One is making sure that the Rivanna Trail stays and actually this could be an opportunity for it to be better.

So PC and the RTF are working with the landowner

with the developer to make sure that that happens.

No action is required from this body except for having Albemarle County being active as you always are and making sure that that piece gets built.

And so, for example, here's a map that the RTF put together that shows the way the developer can do that.

Then a second concern also is just from land use that it's a prime opportunity for clustered development density and leaving difficult areas alone.

The developer is not doing it that way because it needs to be by right.

Again, I'm not asking anyone here to weigh in on whether clustered subdivisions are better than unclustered, but

That's something that's important to think about because the developer in the past has wanted to do a cluster and subdivision, but they haven't been able to do it because apparently in order to get the PUD, they would need to have a second means of egress.

And that would entail

going through a very difficult set of issues where essentially it would require the developer building the southern half of the Sunset to Fontaine connector, which is difficult

Prohibitively difficult for a private entity to do for two reasons.

Number one is because there's this railroad track that cuts across that and it has a narrow underpass for what we might, I colloquially call a straddling extended.

Straddling becomes a gravel road and goes through a narrow underpass under the railroad track.

And then the other issue that is actually

Almost as much of a challenge for the developer is that there's this in-holding right in the path of where the southern or this connector would go.

So the developer is not going to be able to make this other landowner play ball.

And so that other landowner is not playing ball.

Is there a way for the collective to, particularly VDOT, to perhaps get this thing unstuck so we don't get a development that is less than what everyone, including the developer, wants?

Point out that the Sunset Fontaine connector is part of the LRTP.

So in fact, it shows up as row 12 on the first half of the list.

So I think there are a couple of things that I would like to see.

And it's not something that can be resolved by this group.

I'd like to put out the question like, how can we go forward?

That's one piece.

And then I think the other piece is the, where are we as a community?

And this is a little bit more of an Albemarle County issue.

How serious are we about doing this Sunset Fontaine Connector?

Because I personally think if the subdivision gets

built the way it's planned to get built.

We are sort of deciding that we're not gonna do that connector.

I will caveat that I'm gonna go back to the subdivision plat.

The subdivision does show, let's see if I can zoom in.

I don't know if I'm able to zoom in while I'm in zoom.

Hold on a second.

I think my zoom navigation bar is in front of my PDF zoom bar.

So sorry, I can't go in close on the...

I'm gonna try this one.

So I'll do just the screen zoom and maybe that'll be good enough.

Okay.

So the developer is offering something.

This hatched thing here is captioned as a 60 foot wide public access right of way, which could be used for a portion of the right of way.

Not all of it, because as you see, it just stops.

at the creek and doesn't go anywhere.

Also, potentially, maybe in theory, it could be used for the connector road, but it completely ignores the situation on the ground, the floodplain, and just creates that straight swath.

And my opinion about the reason why it makes that straight swath is because it's sitting next to a power line easement, which is a straight swath.

I have one initial question, and Dan, you may be able to answer that, but are all the improvements that have been recommended in the long-range transportation plan that was adopted into the comp plan by the county, are all of those considered when you all do your plat reviews?

It's definitely taken into consideration.

We provide this to them.

That connection is a high priority within the county.

And to be fair, I have not, I did not get to dive into this yet.

And, you know, it's still in review.

But it's early.

But we have a lot of

avenues that we're looking at, Parks and Rec would be looking at at this transportation engineering perspective about what they're providing.

Sure.

Hey, I have a question.

Hey, Bill, not to put you on the spot, but how does the master plan for this area look from the UVA's perspective?

You mean for Fontaine?

Yeah.

What we call now, I think we've dropped the research, I think it's the Fontaine Park.

We have a master plan for that we recently, I think it was a couple of years ago, we finished for a long-term master plan for Fontaine.

I think it's up on our website if you care to view it.

You know, it's mostly about like the, what's going on inside.

And then it doesn't obviously make that, contemplate that connection for the Southern Connector.

So we didn't really want to like assume anything would be happening with that given how long the Granger property has been in play anyway, and knowing all the issues involved in getting over, under, through the railroad area there.

but it maybe had a potential outlet onto what I guess would be extremely extended to kind of outlet onto Fontaine, but mostly it did not need to use that part.

And then I think it's always been the case that if we did kind of have an exit out on Stribling extended,

To Fontaine, it would be like a right out only, like you wouldn't, because of the light at Fontaine and Racy Hunt, you wouldn't have a left turn there or, you know, it just wouldn't be possible from a safety standpoint.

I was just curious because I know this has been explored multiple times and before the university took back the park from the foundation there was another access point that was proposed and extended back to that back parking lot for the foundation so that's what I was really trying to

Yeah, I wouldn't say it was a focal point of, sorry, of the current master plan, though it potentially could happen, especially if we needed to add more structured parking on kind of that side of the park.

I think you would maybe need some sort of outlet.

Yeah, it boils down to this becomes more of a county issue than a VDOT issue.

Yeah, Kevin is on this one.

He knows a lot of the background on it.

He knows what they're proposing and he's aware of it.

And he kind of has a lot of the, you know, he sees what's going on with what they're proposing and what responsibility falls on the county for any future improvement as well.

Awesome.

So thank you.

Thank you for that.

And like I say, I'll relay updates that we get from the landowner about progress on the bicycle pedestrian piece.

I just wanted to raise this to your attention because it's like a situation we see over and over where through no bad intentions, stuff gets harder and harder and harder.

I'm wondering if there's a moment to say, okay, let's do something before it gets harder still, but it'll be interesting to watch it go.

Having said that, this could be an improvement for

bike pad connectivity through that area.

Great.

Thank you, Peter.

And Dan for offering a little bit more info.

Were there any comments from anyone else?

Not necessarily just about what Peter talked about, but any other issues you wanted to raise or discuss.

I will note that we're just a few minutes over.

So if you do have anything you want to add, let's be brief.

And if not, thank you so much for joining me.

I hope you all find the bravery you need to try out rollerblades and have a good rest of your month.