Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordination Committee Meeting   1/19/2023

Sure.

Sounds good.

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

OK.

I'm Ryan.

We can't complete our stuff with Sara.

Yeah, there you go.

TJPDC ball rolling.

I'll go for county.

So I'm Alberic Karina-Plun.

Okay.

I'm Michael Geiser.

I'm a bike ped advocate in Northern Albemarle and the Carsbrook area.

Okay.

I'm Ali Hill.

I am another community advocate for the Three Notch'd Trail Plan, a Three Notch'd Trail project.

And I've been working on this for many years.

I guess I'm kind of the chairperson for the Rivanna Trail Foundation's subcommittee on this.

And so I've been eager to be a part of this meeting today.

Hi, I'm Michael Barnes with VDOT.

So basically I think we have a fairly light agenda.

You have in your meeting packet the minutes from the last meeting.

At the last meeting, I think Michael and some members had asked if a scope of work could be drafted for one map.

So I've included a draft scope for phase one.

I say phase one in the sense that there could be subsequent work in the future.

I know that Peter has submitted yesterday, I believe I saw some ideas.

I think that they are some good ideas, perhaps maybe going into a second phase.

But if you all have any questions or comments, I'll take them.

I'm hoping that Ben will be available or that we'll have a chance to get an update

Find out where the city is at with their GIS.

I think what's needed now is to get those city files and for me to finish digitizing all three agencies.

The hope is that I finished before that timeline that was included in that scope.

I was trying to get myself a conservative

timeframe to do things, which I thought other tasks would come.

Ryan, I'm sorry, I'm new here.

Yeah, so Ali, One Map is an effort shared by the University of Virginia, the county, and the city

and the MPO to come up with a naming system, a right naming system for the bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure on the road.

So for example, sidewalks, bicycle facilities, such as lane sharrows, shared use paths.

So the hope is that

There's the shared definition, shared commonality of terms that will perhaps in the future be used as a public tool.

The public will be able to possibly interact with this in some way.

The near-term vision, I think, is for this to be a TJPDC tool that we can utilize both in planning efforts

Both, Ali.

There are a couple of different parts of this that we're working through, a couple of different approaches.

So one of them is having the shared terminology and trying to come up with a shared system that is used for everybody who's

Collecting this data to move towards standardizing what that looks like for a region.

That's a longer term process because one of the challenges anytime you're doing anything with GIS and the data maintenance is that you know there's going to be

There's going to be sort of a transition period and it's going to take an extremely large amount of work to go back and change what's already done.

So a lot of it is what do we do moving forward and how to standardize this.

So this is looking for opportunities on how do we standardize the collection of this information.

But the second part of this is how do we get all this information in one place where it's going to be useful to help us

understand network connectivity and plan projects and that kind of thing.

So that's what we're working on right now is just taking all this information from a lot of places and putting it in one place where we can see sort of the big picture.

We are working through what it might look like to share that with the public.

I think the primary purpose, at least for this initial phase, is not necessarily for this to be a

So one of the reasons I'm asking is I was contacted by a UVA planning department and they're doing capstone projects for their students this spring.

And there is one student who I have suggested that

She could take the city of Charlottesville from UVA to, let's say, Free Bridge and think about where, let's say, the potential Three Notch'd Trail could go through town, partly through UVA and partly through the city, just to draw up some possibilities and think about

Who to talk to about that with Chris Gensic and you guys and so forth.

Sure.

Allie,

I can talk to Jessica at the county who's kind of leading the whole Three Notch'd Trail charge right now about that.

I'm sure she'd be happier to hear about what the student wants to do.

That'd be great.

Ellie, that's a phenomenal example what Three Notch, sorry about what the one map is for because currently that student is going to have to do two sets of searching for the UVA spatial data and the city's spatial data to say nothing in the county.

and finding them and having them sit next to each other is already something that's difficult and then having them communicable between the two, that's like a whole second can of worms that Sandy also mentioned but currently right now that poor soul is gonna work with the city map that's like full of lines but a blank space where UVA is and then a UVA map that

is full of lines but is surrounded by blankness.

This should help with that kind of thing.

Yeah.

And the other thing on this is that I could propose other projects for the capstone project since this class has just started.

I think we've had some preliminary discussions.

So if you guys think this is too premature,

I think, Ryan, your timeline is the end of the fiscal year to finish it.

So we might not have the one map available.

And to be honest, we are not collecting new information.

We're using the information that is

provided locally.

Yeah, you know, you bring up a good point in that, yeah, I'll probably try to specify or spell out what the, what ortho, what

Projection I'm using so that when the city, the county, UVA, when they're working on their files, they can keep that in mind so that the projections will come in and they'll know that I'm working off of 2022 ortho from this source and in this projection.

Yeah.

Can I real quick like, first of all, thank you guys so much.

I really, really, really do appreciate you guys writing this down.

I think it was very helpful to see what you guys are planning on doing this project.

And my one suggestion is that the purpose statement

Sort of does reflect, Ryan, what you're talking about, your first phase.

And I'm wondering if we couldn't broaden the purpose statement to include a couple more things.

I mean, I think if I'm looking at what you've written, and I'm looking at lines 9 through 12, I would almost suggest that potentially you could say the purpose of one map is, and you'd have a colon, and that everything that you've written there is A.

Because that really is the first thing, you're trying to get everything onto a single map and a single format.

But that B, we would find ways to update this in the future.

And that C, it would be a planning tool for both the city, the county, UVA, and the MPO.

I think that's the idea that in the future, this will become a common planning tool.

And I think we should

Establish that in that first paragraph.

Your work products maybe only are this first initial effort that you're talking about, this phase one.

But I think it's important to acknowledge that it's something broader so that we'll all be on the same page moving forward.

Yeah, I'll think about it, Michael.

I hate to commit right now with a couple hours of sleep, but I will think about that.

But I will say this, too.

A lot within the purpose and the background, a lot of that, that's language that has been from our UPWP.

So I don't want to, so using that as a framework, I know basically limits and avenues to, and rabbit holes not to go down, I guess is probably the better way to say it.

But yeah, I will think about it.

I know that Peter also has some suggestions that I think would also be good possibly for a second phase.

A lot of those were already talked about or discussed at some point over the past five, six months.

I'd also second what Michael said.

Sorry to hop on you, Sandy, but Sandy articulated exactly what Michael said.

So I feel like it's already the common understanding.

So to use marriage parlance, let's make it legal.

And I feel like it's important to keep it sort of centered, like being really focused on the purpose.

This isn't like an academic exercise.

There are problems that are abstract out in the world that we're concerned about that we just don't have time for.

This particular issue of not having a single data set has interfered with the MPO's work in the past.

Project is mainly to make it so that we don't have to spin our wheels over and over gathering data every time a new transportation project comes up.

So I think the policy board is on board with the rationale already, and it's what we already understand.

Yeah, and Ryan, we can work on how to fit this in and where it goes, but I think actually what Michael and Peter are articulating is actually part of the assumptions that we're using on how we're approaching this, which is that we want this to be something that is sustainable to maintain and that we want other

Planning Partners to be able to access it and use this information.

So I don't think what they're suggesting actually changes what we're planning to do.

I think it's just providing some additional context.

Yeah, thank you, Sandy.

Obviously, the architecture that you're building into the system now will help facilitate what happens in the future and its capacity to update those things.

I recognize that probably updating it in the future falls into two major categories.

The first one is when new infrastructure is actually added, whether that's something that's built by one of the localities or it's added by a private developer who's expanding say a subdivision and adding sidewalks.

and then however that happens I would assume that that existing infrastructure is it's created I've understood in the past you guys are trying to work towards a system where the individual localities would be responsible for updating their own shape files and then somehow migrating that information to this common database so I assume that that will be one of the work products that will come out of this effort is to establish how existing

infrastructure gets incorporated into the system?

I think that's one of the things that we're going to try to answer that question as part of this.

Right.

And then the second part of that, of course, is, you know, stuff that's going to be planned and proposed that wouldn't actually be picked up by a GIS department within one of the localities to probably come out of the planning sections of the localities.

And when I say localities, I'm including UVA.

But it would seem to me that if

You know, for this to be a valuable planning tool for folks to be able to like, you know, again, sort of like Peter was talking about, sort of see what's in that blank space outside the areas that they work in.

It would seem to be as simple as asking the localities to commit to whenever they take on a planning endeavor, one of the work products that they're consultants that they hire, that that work product would be

I think it sounds simple on paper.

I think the big concern that we have is that there are different levels of planning information.

There are different levels of prioritization.

And I think the overall concern we have is just managing the overall maintenance of what information is current and accurate.

So I think that's something that we could have some discussions about with the localities.

But again, that would be something that we would want to make sure that those actual data layers would be provided and maintained by the localities and we would pull it in.

Final thing, if you don't mind, please.

Again, thank you so very much for putting this in writing.

It was very, very helpful.

The one thing that I know that was worked on before you all came, and actually I wasn't, at that point, I wasn't really participating in the PED group, and that was the establishment of what the attribute table was.

Well, you mean listing out what's in the table?

That would your, I mean, you- Yeah, just basically,

I mean, you actually, well, it's basically my, I mean, yes, I can do that, but it's basically the same attribute table that's in the GIS file that you had.

So if you open up that GIS shapefile, the layer, the table, all that's there, that's what's there.

And like I said, and you saw for yourself, I'm sure there are a bunch of rows and columns that are blank, that are empty.

Yeah, I'd like to know, is there like a national standard for this kind of information where like everybody uses it so you could tie into a broader regional statewide national thing and then it would tie into apps like AllTrails and things like that.

They could take a subset of the data

So you're not like rebuilding something that people have done.

Yeah, I know we kind of talked about how is this different from a bike, well, I have, from a bike pad plan or map.

We've talked about how it's the bicycle and sidewalk pedestrian infrastructure facilities, how the state uses it.

I think in the retrans process,

So yeah, the MPO basically has an opportunity now, I think, to be the main focal point in obtaining this infrastructure into one database.

It's just a matter of collecting that information, which is voluminous.

The one thing that I will say, sort of being out of town this weekend and then coming back into town this week,

I heard about a pedestrian accident and I believe a bicycle accident within a span of about two or three days.

And I'm wondering, we released this one map and folks get a hold of this one map.

I'm just curious as, Michael, you may know that you're at the state and deal with accidents and Peter, you may know being that this was a checklist.

Were these accidents at,

Intersections with crosswalks there.

I think one was at Rio.

The other one was at Ivy.

Was there infrastructure there that would have been mapped on one map?

And then what does that look like when one map is disseminated to the public with the intention of there being safety?

And that may not be a question for today, but something to talk about.

Well, thank you, Brian, for directing that question to me.

First of all, I haven't gone to look at that specific one with those specific incidences.

So unfortunately, I can't respond to that particularly.

But I really think that

I understand that there's a concern of liability with this particular tool.

I wonder, it seems like it's real utility as a planning tool.

And I know that there has been discussion in the past of making this a public facing tool that might be able to use for wayfinding or something like that.

I think that's

sort of hobbling this effort because it's a level of detail, it's a level of utility that I understand would make this much more herculean effort and I think that if you guys you know if we could stop framing it as that is one of the potentials for this thing and that is more as a planning tool so we can like identify gaps that we could identify potential corridors that might stretch from one edge of the development area to the other through

several of these localities that we can jointly plan for capital improvement projects.

And I mean, to be sort of clear, so thinking about the cyclist was killed on Ivy Road.

I believe that section has erstwhile bicycle infrastructure in the form of sharrows.

So any liability there would be

as such owned by the Commonwealth because it's, you know, it's their road.

But I have to point out that same stretch of road was, it's on Albemarle County's Greenways plan.

It's on the regional bike ped plan.

Nobody's blaming the Thomas Jefferson Bike Ped Master Plan for the cyclists riding on Ivy Road.

They were riding on Ivy Road because they were trying to get from point A to point B, not because the regional bike ped plan told them to.

So even if this thing were to be

somehow get out.

It would be like either heavily caveated or like limited to truth telling.

I mean, I hope that it gets back to sort of the purpose statement that

Again, if you were to look at the purpose statement as what you guys put in the first paragraph is basically the first step of trying to get everything to a common format.

The second step would be trying to find a way to

Maintain this planning level data.

The third step would be to use it as a planning tool.

The fourth step of making this something that might be widely available to the public is a wayfinding thing.

You could add that as a purpose, but I think it's helpful that since you've written it out, we could maybe even exclude that as a purpose.

You might even be able to put that as what it's not, and that might help to dissuade that

Some of this is also going to be dependent on the localities policies around sharing their data as well.

Because I don't know, Alberic, you may be able to answer this.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I'm not I'm not too aware of the exact how much I see we can share basically over layers because we are a public entity.

I don't know if there's something secret we do.

So I think that'd be fine.

And then also to kind of answer Michael's question about the national standards.

Ryan, you can also help me with this if I'm a little bit off, but I think that wouldn't work because every locality and state would be using completely different projections and datums and different, I guess,

Data formats, you would have to somehow choose a projection that shows, you know, even if it's a whole state, you have to make sure that everything works together.

Oh yeah, I'm definitely not thinking about any

It'd be great to have Michael but I think that's very not easy.

But I really do appreciate you sending me the scope because it does help me understand more of kind of what the One Map was because last meeting I guess had a different idea of what you thought and so there was kind of like what are we planning to do here and I think seeing your purpose statement also the workflow your work

I know this has been something that we've been discussing for a long time.

It's taken some kind of different iterations.

One of the challenges we had was just sort of thinking through getting all the data in one place at one time wasn't necessarily the issue.

The issue was more about

How do we develop something that doesn't create a lot of additional work for all the people who are responsible for providing the information and consolidating it all in one place?

And I think that's where maybe there are some different ideas that were being pursued originally that we had to kind of take a step back from and really, really look at how can we create something that's sustainable and maintainable that doesn't create a lot of, you know,

additional obstacles for all the different people involved.

So we'll work there and there's always going to be room for improvement and for this to evolve.

And to that end, Sandy, it's interesting.

This conversation has been very good because I think it's brought to the fore that issue of how do we maintain it going forward?

And it's also brought the liability questions back out.

Well, I mean, Alberic just sort of said, I don't think there's anything we're going to publish, you know, that we're providing that can't be published.

And maybe we can like confirm that with the city and confirm that with UVA.

And if that's the case, the information is being put in here.

Liability concerns or not liability, the data sharing concerns might be put to bed.

And if we're also talking about it being used solely as a planning tool, then maybe some of the liability concerns can be put to bed.

I appreciate those as legitimate concerns, but let's just go ahead and face those things head on and deal with them.

And that way, again, to me,

If you go back when this thing was first conceptualized back 2000, 2015, 2016 timeframe, the city was in a big way trying to work with this open data stuff.

They had the open data portal and they were trying to put stuff out there.

And so that was part of the, you know, this thing, let's make this an open data portal type of thing.

But the other major problem was that there was not a single map that showed what the county was planning and what the city was planning and what UVA was planning.

And so

It made it very difficult to think, well, hey, listen, I live in the city.

I work in the city.

I want to allow my city residents to, I don't know, drive up to the Fashion Square Mall.

I mean, bike up to Fashion Square Mall.

And if I was to do that, and I was to put a bike trail in, where would I connect to the county's system to get to Fashion Square Mall?

There was no means for doing that.

I think that this was conceived primarily as a planning tool and so I think if we can come back if that is truly what we're agreeing upon and maybe we back away from this thing trying to be a wayfinding tool for the general public

Yeah, I think we can work that out.

And I don't think it changes what we're doing.

I think it just changes on how broadly we make the information available.

So, um, but, but that's something that we can work with the localities to figure out what their policy is.

Um, that'd be great.

And for the last point, cause we kind of got away from it and Ryan, thank you for sharing those files, you know, back, I don't know, it was beginning of last summer.

Um,

I'm sure I'm not the only person who's interested in the attribute table stuff.

And moreover, I would think that, as you sort of alluded to, Ryan, about having your projections and stuff, I think one of the final deliverables should be what are the, you know, what was the projection you used?

What would you use for, you know, all the metadata as well as the attribute table?

Because again, while planning

Standpoint, it would be great if the localities were able to pick that up and then the work products they might give to a consultant that would be readily available from them.

What's, what's behind the metadata with State and BTRANS and Shane Sawyer?

I'm not quite sure.

I totally understood that, but that's not a,

Question to be answered today right now at this moment.

But yeah, Michael, I think I'll probably talk with you all just about that aspect of it.

If I can sort of see if I can confirm, not on the specifics, but on the general context.

Basically, it sounds like what you're asking, Michael, is that we document the methodology and the basically frameworks that we're using to put all this together.

Thank you, Sandy.

That's exactly what I'm talking about.

It's a whole other kettle of fish about being able to access

the state's databases, which might provide a lot of the street characteristics that you guys are talking about in this.

But I'm willing to take half a loaf of bread at this point.

I think to get what you guys are trying to do right now is a worthwhile endeavor.

And we can maybe try and make those other utility available at one point in the future.

Again, thank you.

You basically hit it upon the nail on the head.

Yeah, I'll follow up with Michael.

after the meeting.

But yeah, I think that it makes sense.

I will say that there's a lot more digitizing and correctness that will need to be done.

Thank you, Ryan, for getting us as far as we are right now.

And I know everybody's anxious to continue to follow the progress there.

Yes, no problem.

Yes, I can.

Let me share my screen quickly.

I'm not used to just having a laptop, I'm used to having all these monitors around me, so I have to adjust.

Okay, here we go.

So for some of you, this might be some old information, and if it is, I apologize, but this is kind of updated, you know, what the application is, what we're trying to do, and then where we are now.

So RAISE was part of the BIL that was passed in 2021.

It's kind of focusing on just projects that are for safety, environmental sustainability, different type of mode used to like bikes and pedestrian and transit rather than just do all cars.

And we requested $2 million and RAISE funds for the round that we applied for and we received them, thankfully.

And I think the state overall received

Honestly, about $60 million with the race funds.

And there's a bunch of projects.

There's, I think there's ours in Northern Virginia, there's working on making a new bridge across Potomac from about Arlington to DC.

So it's kind of a theme of this round that there was a lot of bike pad.

Actually, Conway, Arkansas, which is a suburb of Little Rock had $24 million given to them to do this huge bike infrastructure.

So that's a big deal happening right now at the White House.

So our proposal is, again, to do $2 million for just planning purposes to stretch from the Blue Ridge Tunnel in Nelson County through Crozet some way and then end at the city border somewhere around UVA.

So right now, we don't really know what alignment we're going to do.

There's different options.

There's the option of following the railroad, which would kind of continue along here.

You can see this kind of dashed, hatched line go up.

Advantage of that, it's already been graded so you can kind of do a rails with trails kind of deal.

There's also the question of do we want to send it kind of up and around Crozet or do I want to send it through Crozet, which would again change the dynamics and then kind of maybe the purpose of the trail itself.

So that's something that we would be doing with this money so that we can figure out.

So our planning activities are the three potential alignments.

We do lots of public outreach.

We want to talk to people who live in Albemarle and live in Prose and see what kind of things they want to see, what kind of purpose they would use the trail for.

Because they could use it for both recreation, and they could use it also for commuting if you're going between Prose and Charlottesville.

It's about 12 miles on a bike.

So if you have an e-bike, it's definitely doable.

Also reach a functional 30% design for the entirety of the preferred alignment and then an implementation plan to look if we can start to develop segments of that whole trail independently.

So like, for example, constructing the Crozet or Charlottesville segment first and then eventually moving over to Nelson County because

We don't know if we will be able to construct and get the funding to construct the whole trail at once, but if we can start working in segments and identify what are the most important segments that we can work on right now is still something that we would like to do.

To the history and context, Ali, like you said, this has been kind of something that's been wanting to happen for years now.

And thank you for working with that.

And this has been mentioned in lots of plans.

It's building connections to other successful projects throughout Virginia, like the Fallen Trail that connects from Richmond down to Petersburg, eventually hopefully the Capitol Trail, which goes from Richmond to Williamsburg, and then other trails as well in the Valley.

So this beats both transportation needs with different types of mode sharing or mode commuting and then going around Crozet and recreational needs people could you know instead of having a drive to go to a trail if you live in Crozet or on the edge of Charlottesville you can just hop on your bike or go walk in there easily and then here is just so we're this little segment right here the Charlottesville there's Afton Tunnel so connect to eventually a

greater regional network of trails throughout Virginia, which would be fantastic.

And that really mean people could go from here down to Richmond and have a whole bike trail that could be part of another tourist and economic development project that we work on.

So the main merits, obviously there's these five big ones, but the two big ones we want to focus on are the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the economic benefits for the community and individuals.

So

Marina House Gases, the circle on the left, the pie chart on the left is for nationally and it's

Nationally, a little bit under a third of our greenhouse emissions are from transportation, but here in the county, it's a little bit over half.

So that's if any kind of work and projects to reduce some of that CO2 emissions or that general greenhouse gas emissions and kind of shift some people away from driving, even if it just means they don't drive to have to go to the trail or they don't drive as much, it's still a win.

And then the economic benefits.

The Capital Trail has been very successful at generating revenue and people who write it typically spend $22 per visit at local businesses.

So here that could look like people biking up to Afton from Charlottesville on the way back.

They stop in Crozet and they go to the coffee shop or they go to Crozet Pizza or they visit different local vendors.

They could be a

A day trip or two for people who want to kind of experience this nice scenic bike ride up and down the mountain.

And also there is a cost here for people.

If people want to live in Crozet to have that more quiet and more scenic lifestyle, but they still need to get to Charlottesville for work, there's that option where they can hopefully, you know, bike to work using an e-bike because AAA said in 2021 average car cost about 33,000, which the average annual cost of vehicle operations and maintenance was just under 10,000.

That number for maintenance has now gone just above 10,000 and

An e-bike sets you back, I mean a diesel one, at least a thousand bucks.

There's not really much maintenance, just don't get a flat tire, charger, battery, and that's essentially on an e-bike.

That's all I do for my e-bike.

And then the next steps would be for funding to complete environmental clearances, acquire the right of way, and then construct the segments of the preferred alignment.

And this could be through another GRACE grant application,

This could be through SMART SCALE.

This could be through TAs.

It could be part of other VDOT projects in general.

And hopefully we can get some constructed through proffers from developers, which would be the best one because they do it for us.

Where are we at now?

So we are working on finishing up our grant agreement and we're meeting in a few weeks, I think the next two weeks with our internal grant team and our lawyers in the county before we send it off to DOT.

Our goal is to have this signed by the end of the fiscal year.

The DOT set up at least six months maybe for some of these grant agreements.

We're hoping it's a little bit shorter just because our grant agreement is just a planning grant, not a capital construction grant.

There's less involved there.

As well as we are using only federal funds for this.

There's no other local or state funds.

There's no

There's no reason to have to work that into the grant agreement.

And this summer, we'll be putting out an RFP for different contractors and consultants to start working on that.

Oh, no, there are others.

I'd love to share.

Two updates that came in the last week or two.

Yeah, this is pretty informal, Ali.

Go ahead.

Well, thanks.

Let me pull up.

Give me one second here to pull up the right.

So last week, I went with some folks over to Waynesboro.

And this is probably going to be hard to orient yourself, but this is a map of Waynesboro.

You can follow my arrow here downtown.

Sorry, let's see if I can get rid of

Okay, back here is downtown Lanesboro and they have received a grant, this street trail grant to get a widened street corridor all the way from downtown to here.

which is around basic city and whatnot.

And they've also received a grant to give a greenway to go from this section.

And it's an ADA accessible 10 foot wide path to go all the way to the west end of the tunnel, the Crozet Tunnel.

So what this means is if our Three Notch'd Trail comes in and connects on the east end of the tunnel over here,

We will be able to connect all the way into downtown Waynesboro with a car-free path, which I think is very exciting.

And this has all already been funded.

So this will be probably constructed by the time we're finished with the study.

But I think this is a very interesting future connection there.

The other exciting update in my mind is this one, which is

You know, the Three Notch'd Trail for the RAISE grant goes from the, sorry, my husband is sick here.

It goes from the west end of the city of Charlottesville limits and out to the west end of the county.

As that map that Alberic showed earlier, ideally we'd like to connect from Charlottesville to Richmond.

So there's been discussion about how to align that trail.

This particular map here is Pantops,

And this is the existing Old Mills Trail that goes from Darden Town Park and ends around Interstate 64.

This section here could be a potential future of the Three Notch'd Trail going out towards Glenmore which is here.

Glenmore already has a county maintained two and a half mile stretch of trail that's not very accessible unless you live in Glenmore.

But this stretch here is being given from the Monticello Thomas Jefferson Foundation who owns this land over to Albemarle County

as a public right of way.

And that will be happening this spring with the goal of turning that into the Three Notch'd Trail eastward expansion, heading out to connect to this Glenmore section, which I think is very exciting.

One factor of this right of way is that Monticello and Thomas Jefferson Foundation was not allowing it to be paved.

but I think like a crush and run gravel similar to what's at the entrance to the Crozet Tunnel would be the surface.

But it's all great for accessibility and of people commuting to and from town and so forth.

So anyway, I think those are great updates to share.

Just to add a little bit, actually, the Clifton Farm there, I know they are, I think, giving Parks and Rec a stretch of their river frontage as well so that they can work on trails.

It's very exciting, especially if that stretch is being actively worked on, and then the west stretch is actually being worked on.

It'd be nice to simultaneously working on

Getting through the city, not on the roadway.

I think that's going to be a real big challenge.

Jessica knows how I feel already.

But there's like a constellation of projects around Ivy Road, Old Ivy Road,

and the 250 interchange, like a whole bunch of stuff.

I mean, I- You mean the VDOT presentation that was given by Troy Austin about the whole Ivy Road interchange in 250?

Correct.

So for that, and it would probably benefit if you just quickly also look at this design, but for that, it wouldn't that their plan doesn't really have much pedestrian stuff involved, classic VDOT, I know.

That's more just a lot of restriping and resigning to relieve some of the congestion that happens with STAB and with the off-ramp off of the 29 Bypass and Old Ivy.

So I don't think there would be much pedestrian stuff that's happening right now, unfortunately.

But I appreciate you bringing that up.

That's a good point.

Yeah, I know that we've just completed recently or completing very soon pedestrian improvements along Ivy Road with new sidewalks and stuff but I don't know how much bike facilities over there are over there.

I will admit I really don't go west of Dairy Market that much in town.

Is that presentation that you're referencing, Peter, is that available to be shared?

It should be.

Yeah, I watched it later.

It's in the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.

It's just part of the presentation to their meeting.

Yes, this was last week.

So I'm going to post a link to our staff summary of that report, which has a link to the actual report.

Great.

So one other somewhat related question I have is if I have a student

at UVA, who is interested in working on the Three Notch'd Trail East between Charlottesville and Richmond or Ashland, let's say, to connect with the Fall Line Trail.

Yeah they could probably get in touch with me.

I think if it's just sort of answering questions and being available as a resource I think that's something I can commit to doing.

I'll be honest we've been understaffed and we have a brand new transportation planner starting next week so as far as like actually managing a project I think yeah but I'm happy to talk to somebody and actually this relates to

One other initiative, I don't know if we're done.

When we're ready to move on, I have another piece of potentially the Three Notch'd Trail connection that might be helpful to discuss.

OK, well, Ali, I'm glad you're here and Michael as well.

I'm glad you all are here today because it's probably safe to be a phone call, honestly.

But I don't know if you all have been following about the Rivanna Bridge that we've been trying to construct between Pantops and Albemarle.

Well, Pantops and the Woolen Mill section.

That was submitted for funding application through SMART SCALE and the scores were released Tuesday with the recommended scenarios for which projects should be funded and that one was not selected as one of them.

But there are a couple of reasons why.

Peter, you and I were doing the exact same analysis on that project.

The project benefits actually were very high.

The problem with that project is that if it's a VDOT administered project,

And because it's a bridge that is being proposed in an area that is ecologically sensitive and none of the analysis on the environmental analyses to think like the geotechnical analysis and the hydrologic analysis would be completed until the preliminary engineering phase was completed.

So what happened is that between inflations and additional contingency values that were added to the project to account for any undetermined risks at this point, the overall project cost was escalated to $42 million total.

So obviously that's not necessarily a real cost, but until we do the preliminary engineering, we don't know what the environmental conditions are that have to be accounted for in developing a more accurate construction cost.

So sort of in preparation of knowing that this project was not going to be funded through SMART SCALE, we've been following watching out for the next notice of funding opportunity through RAISE to determine if we can apply for RAISE grant funding to do the preliminary engineering phase, get some of those unknown questions answered and develop more accurate construction cost estimates.

So we are going to be requesting support from the policy board at their meeting next week to support the application of a RAISE grant to do that preliminary engineering.

And that is something that VDOT has agreed to administer if we are successful in receiving that.

There's a pretty quick application deadline for that.

It's due at the end of February, so I've started pulling together as much information as I can find.

The good news is that I had a lot of the information that you've already referenced.

I don't know that the

I don't know that the way that that could potentially tie into the expansion of the Three Notch'd Trail is the only argument to make, but I think it is a really good argument to also tie in with the rest of the benefits that this bridge will have more locally.

One of the questions that maybe this could answer is it looks like there's a pretty good trail system that loops around the city south, so I don't know if that could also potentially provide

On the south side, if it is the Rivanna Trail, it is definitely a rustic trail and it would not be used for transportation.

And it is a mixture of city owned and county owned on the south side.

And

privately held easements and licenses that the Rivanna Trail Foundation has.

And actually last night we got a strategic planning session for the Rivanna Trail Foundation and talked about rustic trail versus paved in the future and so forth.

And there was a lot of, not necessarily dissension among the group, but some people were very forward thinking, saying, you know, with climate change, we have to think differently.

We have to think about

Transportation as a priority.

And if we need to pave certain stretches of it, let's do it.

And then some people are like, no, I want to get lost in the woods.

And I don't think there's a, you know, again, there are consensus, but I love the idea of, and most of us love the idea of a braided network.

So let's say the path that you're talking about for transportation is a greenway that's paved for transportation, but then adjacent to it is a separate rustic trail that you could choose to take one or the other in the same corridor.

So all of that was given a huge thumbs up for a braided network to kind of satisfy everybody's needs.

Yeah, I think the bigger sort of tie into the Three Notch Trail is more that this provides

A safe, comfortable bicycle and pedestrian access across the river compared to Free Bridge currently.

I think we had it around 16, 20.

Well, I think the base cost, so there was a concept plan that was developed in a feasibility study that I think was around 15 million.

And I think the base cost before you started adding the contingencies and the inflation was around 18 or 19 million.

I did a little back of the envelope analysis and so basically if we didn't have to fund the PE phase at all through SMART SCALE if that portion was already completed and then if we could cut the contingencies in half even leaving inflation the same as it was now the project would have cost around $27 million.

Now it's possible that we do the preliminary analysis or the preliminary engineering and that we realize that the actual construction costs are higher than the base costs we are using and that some of those contingencies actually are actualized into project cost but that gives us more information so we know we're asking for the right amount of money and not you know what we may or may not need because we don't have all the information we need.

The other thing I think that is really interesting, and I'm sorry, I'll let somebody else talk in a second, is that I think that as I'm sort of doing some background information to potentially apply for a RAISE grant, you have to make the argument that it meets all of these different needs, and one of those is safety.

What's also interesting is that it actually did not get any points for safety in the SMART SCALE system because it's not necessarily showing it as an alternative to an existing route or piece of infrastructure.

So I also thought that that

That was kind of a little bit disappointing because I think there is a really strong safety argument to make given how dangerous free bridges and how it's being identified.

I think Peter was it were you the one that commented in the chat earlier that the 250 corridor is becoming a

Well, interestingly, there have been quite a few fatalities in the zone between the city border and Ivy.

So I was thinking west of town, but also, Alberec sitting right here, but the

250 Free Bridge area is one of Albemarle's top hotspots too.

But are those safety issues for pedestrians or for vehicles?

I live about a thousand feet from the bridge actually, so I've used it many times to go biking to food line and stuff to get groceries and I just do this weird little like maneuver to get around essentially by going down the stairs and under the bridge and back up and along the sidewalk so I think from a pedestrian standpoint it's

Safe enough.

I wouldn't say it's pleasant, but I mean, you're not really hitting any conflict points with cars.

And then also for the VDOT SMART SCALE, the contingencies with the bridge that's not just unique to the bridge, they slapped on contingencies and high right-of-way costs for all of our projects.

So they all came back with extremely high price tags, which surprised us and kind of made us figure, okay, we're going to get one, maybe two projects.

And we did get one project, our smallest one, but we still got one.

So, yeah, that's,

I think free bridge is, for cars, bad.

Like Peter said, East High is dangerous.

I don't even bike on East High.

I refuse to.

I always go up Bellevue behind me onto Locust Avenue across 250 and then go down to downtown just because it's faster, I guess, as the crow flies to East High.

But I've already been hit by a car once and my helmet probably won't sustain that kind of damage again to my head.

It is.

So VDOT does have a pedestrian safety action plan that only looks at pedestrian safety, does not account for bicycle safety.

But there were, based on the pedestrian safety action plan that was most recently updated, the 250 corridor is one of the top 1% corridors needing improvement in the state.

Yeah, so it's sort of a, Sandy and I had a separate conversation, but it's kind of a scenario where the zone is so uninviting that there are no pedestrians there to get hit.

That's a good point.

Most people who are there are mostly people running along the Rivanna Trail, but I see, but it is possible to go with pedestrian things.

It does have like, you know, enough exits and entrances.

It's just a very unpleasant movement to do overall.

And I'll try to find, VDOT, they identified per each regional, I guess, district, and we're on the Culpeper district, the,

potential for safety improvements for intersections and segments.

And I know that's free bridge and that the route 250 and so many plant road intersection, which we, there are plans.

I think it's been funded to improve the intersection.

I think they're like, they score like top five for segments and intersections in the County for potential for safety because they are so unsafe right now.

And from a safety perspective and slightly from a congestion perspective, the sort of purpose is getting people from the big area of Pantops, the Pantops Center of Gravity, the Martha Jefferson Hospital Center of Gravity to the Charlottesville Downtown Center of Gravity.

and routing trips for both pedestrians and bicyclists away from the 250 corridor.

I mean, there's no real pedestrian, anything along 250.

Like once you get, I guess, get into the city anyway, it's just that, you know, carved through the neighborhood.

Then thinking west also.

So this would tie in with the county's Broadway blueprint plan.

Yeah, I think because one of the things you have to do with the race grant applications is provide support for all the arguments that you're making.

The safety argument just ends up being the hardest because it feels intuitive for those of us who know it that this doesn't feel like a safe place that I want to bike or walk or have my kids biking or walking if they're coming on a trip with me.

But yeah, the policy board will be asking the policy board if they would like to support that moving forward.

I think it's a good opportunity.

I think this aligns really well with the RAISE criteria.

So there's no guarantees, of course.

I agree.

It's the planning students.

And so I'm not sure their level of GIS skills.

OK, but yeah, I would be happy to be in touch with Jessica so that she's the one that's masterminded a lot of the Three Notch'd Trail stuff.

OK, so I guess moving on with the agenda, I don't know if Mr. Gazzard, if you had

Oh, I did want to talk about the death, the pedestrian death.

From watching the news this morning, it looked like they were trying to cross from Fashion Square on 29 towards the Speedway gas station.

And that's just south of Ryer Road.

That's an unmarked crosswalk.

on 29, and people are usually going about 60 at that point because it's a free ride.

I usually do, well, maybe over 50 anyway, but there are people that do 60 and more because it's just a straight shot.

and people are doing 60 at least on north of there up by Kroger and past Lowe's and Walmart.

It's an insane thing because I live right around there.

It's like people are just driving like insanity.

But 29 is a problem because it's a highway and there are no crosswalks.

So that's a major issue.

I think it's like divides the county

And that's something that should be looked at.

It should not be a highway.

But that goes back to why we never had a bypass.

So that's a thing.

And also, Alberic, I wanted to ask if you had any updates on Safe Routes to School.

Yes, actually, I was going to bring that up.

I just went to schools, and I'm going to probably do that later today as well, work on the application, because we should have

hopefully all the materials for them.

And so I will hopefully, or either us or them, I don't really know yet, we'll be submitting probably one of those mini walkabout grants for Woodbrooke.

Or if schools wants a different school, I mean, I told them, I was like, I'm just here to help with what you want to do.

If they have a school with a different need or different priority, that's a higher ranking for them, I think they'll go for that.

Related to the other concerns around 29, the only other thing that I might say about that is that the MPO is currently kicking off its long range transportation planning process where we're going to be evaluating what all the different

System needs are, I think everybody knows probably Albemarle County better than anybody else, the challenges that 29 presents.

You know, we did get the, there was a SMART SCALE project that was funded in

The last round, round four, that is currently being bid out.

And I think construction should start pretty soon.

That will include a pedestrian overbridge at Zandroid, which is a little bit south of this area.

But I think some of the challenges are just that it's going to take a long time to get some of this infrastructure in place.

And I think all of us

at this meeting today are aware that this is a really significant concern and it's something we want to continue to find ways to improve but it's also unfortunately one of those things that takes a long time to identify what the options are going to be and then even further how we can find funding to implement them because the projects keep getting more expensive, there's less and less funding and

You know, it's just an ongoing challenge.

The other thing that I'll mention is that the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission and the MPO also applied for a Safe Streets for All grant, which is intended to do a really high level analysis of what is contributing to different types of crashes.

throughout the entire region.

So include Charlottesville, Albemarle, as well as all of the rural localities as well in our district.

And so that's going to look at multimodal safety impacts.

If we are awarded that grant, we should be finding out in the next month or two and helping us find additional solutions, looking at this more systemically, not just how, what are the infrastructure needs that we have that could contribute to reductions and

And I'm a bigger, more long-term, I guess, vision.

The county, we did apply for a Reconnecting Communities Program grant, which would basically do a study of 29 from hydraulic up to, I guess, polar grounds about the bridge right there.

Because we don't know what, you know, some of the best ideas to how to make this

This segment of row which effectively divides the county in half into something that people can cross so that point of this grant that we're applying for is to fund a corridor study of 29 to look at what improvements could be done in the future what kind of projects could we apply for in the future with different types of funding from RCP or different grants I raised to improve stuff because the whole point of

The whole point of it is looking at infrastructure in the United States that has divided people so things like railroads, highways, 29 and to see how basically we can reclaim these these dividing pieces of infrastructure back to people so that people can actually live and function better so there's projects like I know Detroit is tearing down a highway I think Baltimore applied to tear down one of their expressways so it's

Project like these.

We're not tearing down 29.

I'm sure VDOT would have a little bit of a hissy fit if we did that.

In Louisiana, too.

I think it's the Claymore Expressway in Louisiana.

I think it's

Does anybody watch City Nerd on YouTube?

I do.

So, yeah, he's great.

I watch a lot of urban planning YouTube.

I'll admit that right now.

So I'm gonna put a quick thing in the plug for the active mobility summit in the chat I'm about to send an alert and you all all of you are on my list.

So you'll get a more in-depth email about the summit also in that awesome report that transportation report it was mentioned that

The study to find a feasible way to do the Route 20 shared use path between City Line and 53 is going to start soon.

And I just wanted to point out to Alberic that this particular group was founded to work on problems like that.

So I would suggest that the consultant look to this team

Definitely tell Jessica as well because she's the one spearheading the Route 20 shared-use path stuff.

I don't know too much about it other than VDOT is not the most excited about having a shared-use path right next to a highway, I don't think.

Well, as we've seen, we'll come up with a new name.

Oh yeah, and for the grant we applied for for 29, we should be finding out DOT said spring or winter of 2023.

So who's to say?

So that's the type of lawyerly language they used for us as well.

or they were like, we can't commit to anything.

Great.

No specific updates at this time.

One thing that might be just something you want to consider as part of the Three Notch'd Trail feasibility study is how that will potentially provide access to existing transit stops and cruises.

There's a new park and ride that's being proposed off of Interstate 107, or off of Exit 107, right out the Carrese area.

Good point, Sandy.

Okay, if there are

Alberic, if you don't mind, if I could get a electronic copy of that PowerPoint to attach to the minutes for those who were not present today.

That'll be great.

And I will send out a notification at the next meeting.

Eric Bali, I'm not sure if you want to come back, but we do meet each month to talk about bike pit issues.

I'm not sure how you were brought on today, but you're more than welcome to come back.

Thank you.

Please do.

Great.

And likewise, Mr. Gozer, please feel free to come back and join us.

Thank you, everyone.