Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordination Committee Meeting   3/17/2022

And there's probably no need to read the electronic or the statement.

Okay.

Start with introductions, Ryan Mickles, TJPDC.

Brennan Duncan, City of Charlottesville traffic engineer.

Chuck Proctor, Culpeper District, VDOT Planning, Jessica Hersh-Ballering, Amarillo County Transportation Planner, Lucinda Shannon, Thomas Jefferson, Planning District Commission, Sara Pennington with Rideshare in the TJPDC, Sandy with the TJPDC,

John Blechak, VDOT, Central Office.

I'm Peter Krebs from the Piedmont Environmental Council, technically a member of the public.

Were those the projects that you wanted submitted or the county wanted submitted into SMART SCALE?

So I'm going to go ahead and do that right now.

I'm just not sure for the Canterbury 250 Old Garth Road what we're doing.

That Old Garth Canterbury one is our lowest priority.

I just don't know that one's the only one I don't I mean there's so many options there that I don't know what we're what the end results are going to be and so it's hard to scope something like that.

Yeah, and I think the other concern we had was for those pipeline projects, Eastout 250 at Milton and the other one, and Louisa, we were concerned that until we had seen, and we still haven't had a chance to fully review the modeling data from Zach until we have a chance to review that, I think Kevin just wasn't sure if that was going to be a good option.

This is going to be the bigger issue.

Is that what you're saying would be it?

But I think even the last time we did the model for the last round, that section of road is over capacity.

There are no other improvements slated for that project.

Right, and that's the partial CFI.

So you're doing those as two different applications?

Yes.

Okay.

and closing the crossover at the median at the hotel and they're putting in the park and ride lot at Northwest Quarter.

So the goal would be that by the time the application portal opens again on June 1, but that's when it opens again, right Chuck?

Okay, so it's going to be basically varying depending on the application.

Hopefully not wait until the day of the applications are due to get those submitted since we ran into some technical issues last time.

Sure.

I don't know if you have more of an update.

We may, depending on what that is, and again, the time frame, we may try and even do a pilot of some sort for it, but that's still up in the air.

So that our long quarters, they're going to put in the whole corridor and then reduce it.

of that I'm guessing that we'll probably have to shorten it and like stop at Bailey about halfway just so that we still have a competitive application so this will more than likely get split into two different applications this time and then two years from now.

But we just generally use the template for that, and that should be fine.

Okay, Jessica, I don't know if you have anything more for Applemore County?

Those are about the same as we presented them previously.

And my other question is, should we plan to also ask the resolutions at that same meeting?

We would have the May 24th as kind of a backup.

Would it make sense for us to try to get the MPRS projects on that same meeting schedule?

It probably would, yeah.

Okay.

They can just approve all of them at one time.

Can you make sure that you're coordinating with us then?

I will try and do that.

We have the resolutions for June 15th.

Okay, and same thing, Jessica, should we try to, yeah, okay.

Thank you, great.

Do you need anything from us, or you've got it taken care of?

I'll pull together all the materials much closer to the date, and I'll send them your way for review, but I don't think I'll need anything from you.

Great, sounds good, thank you.

I didn't know if you were familiar with this project to that level of detail or not.

It would really be Brian, the guy who shared this info.

Yeah, and then that's, I'm sorry, Sandy, go ahead.

So I think that might be one question too, is whether or not it was intended that this project would comprehensively inventory all of those things, or if that was just the placeholder to put in information if it was available.

Your piece of the One Map project?

So Chris probably has a lot more information on it than I do.

OK.

Oh, I see Michael has a question.

That could create controversy or the public, you know, just to the mechanisms to try and make it a public facing database.

You know, we can make it public facing or not public facing, but if requested, there's still always that consideration that it could be made available to the public.

I would say don't kick out anything now until you've sort of made some of those decisions of what's important.

And maybe at that time we'll have some sort of schedule or tentative schedule for that completion.

Give you 15-20 minutes of her time, she's over at EPR, and she probably could give you a little bit of a better sense of where the city ended up leaving the project.

Sarah, if you would like to expound on that, please feel free to jump in.

But that's kind of all the information that I have for Rideshare part of it.

So Sarah, are you asking right now if anybody has Bike Month activities plans?

So this kind of gives us a little bit of a loophole to help support other programs that are happening.

Sarah, it might also be helpful if you talk about how we benefit from partnering with other organizations, like what metrics we're trying to collect and how that benefits the overall ride share program.

And there will certainly be a biking element so that those folks can be involved in that particular initiative as well.

I don't know if anybody else has any more information they'd like to share regarding that.

or maybe providing a hybrid option for our VDOT folks that aren't locally established.

I think it's always easier to meet virtually, save the trip.

So that's basically time I'm losing in being able to do other functions.

Anybody want to go first, city, county, VDOT?

RACE grants are due mid-April, so that is going to be a big thing that Kevin and I are working on in addition to SMART SCALE for the next couple of weeks.

We could get them from the PDC potentially.

They can be sent directly to the Department of Transportation and I can get you that information for where to send it.

I think that's kind of an interesting related topic.

But other than that, that's all of our company updates.

Brendan or Chuck?

I don't have anything at this time.

Okay.

So hopefully this will work out for that project.

You're asking what would be the outcomes of the study if it's funded by raise?

Is it meant to yield an alignment or design projects within that or some combination of those?

So we're thinking that sounds like something that can be done for a million dollars.

That doesn't necessarily mean that's where it has to go, but that's a reasonable starting place.

So I, yeah, but Peter, if you wanted to reach out and help support the effort, we'd appreciate that.

Have letters of support from either of those two entities, either the Virginia Trails Alliance or the Virginia Capital Trail.

And Peter, I have your phone number, so I'll probably reach out to you after this meeting.

Thank you.

The Central Shenandoah PDC, they were doing a regional trails program too, just to make sure that kind of you're all sort of staying in communication as you're talking about the greater trail throughout the region.

Thank you.

Yeah, no problem.

So this isn't gonna be a surprise, I don't think for anybody.

Does anyone know any consultants that do this work really well?

I would see if you could get in touch with chat persons.

I can chime in and just tell you who did certain things if you want to look at the plans.

That'd be great.

I think those are the main...

I believe Kimley Horne and Clark Nexon have both done some trails in the area.

Yeah, and I think Michael Baker's also doing Valley to Valley if you want to.

I don't think that's released yet, but... Great, thank you for the recommendations.

I'm just telling you who did various studies.

Is there a reason you haven't seen those kinds of consultant firms used for these kinds of projects in Virginia?

I mean, we just used the on-call consulting that had the remaining amount of budget for most of those, or had an office nearby where the work was done, stuff like that.

to make sure you're getting a realistic feasibility study because I've had a few firms that are really great at landscape architecture planning and that kind of thing but don't have the civil engineering type capacity to really say that it's realistic and if the point of the plan is we want to make sure this is a realistic and you're dealing with creek crossings or whatever per each route that might be one thing to consider when we pick one is do they have the traffic engineering and civil engineering side that can really back that up.

Great, thank you.

OK, next on the agenda, bike and pedestrian related comments, concerns from the public.

Does anyone have anything?

Thank you.

So I think this is just a particularly difficult project because people care so much about it.

It's probably going to be at least two or three layers of dimensions, but keeping it to a minimum.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'll chime in.

If we want something else, then we need to figure out what that's gonna cost, and put it into the estimate, because we can't necessarily go back and get that much more money.

I guess like maybe could it be a two-step where they picked an alignment and they get a more detailed cost estimate for a couple of designs?

That makes sense.

I guess the origin of it is that this is implicating cost combinations that the HP didn't foresee.

But I want to make sure we're going to have a cost estimate that we're not automatically going to go over once we start looking at the design of the project either.

I think we just need to have a really straightforward, simple, clear answer to that kind of question.

Is that kind of where you're going, Peter?

Maybe the other SMART SCALE projects would have better results if they followed those as closely too, but this one's hard and just thank you all for the work you're putting in.

Thank you, Peter.

It's been fun and challenging and lots of things all wrapped up in one.

So it's good to collect this information early.

We'll see you next month.

Thank you everyone.

Thank you.