Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee (2013-2026) Meeting   11/18/2020

Today, neither Tristan nor Stuart, our chair and vice chair are able to join us today.

So Travis is ready to take the role of chair yet again, just for today and lead our meeting.

So in a minute, I'm going to hand it off to him.

But before I do that, I'm going to read our statement that we have to read at the beginning of every meeting.

I've got the shortest version possible now.

The governor has declared a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the nature of this declared emergency makes it impracticable or unsafe for the Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee to assemble in a single location.

This meeting and the required public hearings will be held utilizing electronic virtual communication with the Zoom software application.

In accordance with virtual meeting procedures and policies as outlined in item 4.0-01,

of the Virginia State Budget, HB 29, as effective April 24th, 2020.

The meeting will be recorded and made available to the public at tjpdc.org.

All right, so that's our statement.

And I would also like to do attendance.

I put it as item zero.

So I'm just going to quickly read through our list here.

Just trying to get...

Grab my member list.

All right, so Tristan and Stuart are not present.

We know that.

So when I say your name, just unmute yourself and say present, please.

Great.

I know Donna couldn't make it.

She emailed me.

I see his name.

He's on mute.

Patrick, if you want to unmute yourself really briefly just to let us know that you're here and you can hear us and we can hear you.

Maybe Patrick's having a hard time with the mute button on mute, so we'll give him a minute.

Going back to my list, Gary Heaton.

Are you present, Gary?

No?

OK. Joseph French?

Oh, Patrick, I see.

So that was a yes for Joseph.

And Patrick, I see that you've unmuted.

Are you there?

Yes.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Lee Kondor?

Didn't see him, okay.

Great, so that completes the roll call.

Yes, just quickly, I was a professor at the University of Virginia

Over 40 years, I was the head of the department of civil engineering for several years.

And my specialization is in transportation.

So I'm joining this committee because I really was looking forward to serving somewhere in the community in the transportation area.

And I was asked by one of our supervisors,

McKeel, Mrs. McKeel, who asked me if I was interested.

Great.

So I'm going to quickly share my screen to show our agenda for today.

Thank you, Jessica.

Welcome everyone and welcome to, or good evening everyone.

Welcome to Nicholas.

So I'll call this November CTAC meeting to order.

The first item on the agenda is matters from the public.

All right.

So after that we have approval of the July 15th draft meeting minutes.

Did everyone have a chance to give those a look?

I think we often give another minute or two

So actually I realized that I gave you guys the wrong minutes and I even wrote July 15th minutes there.

You've already voted and approved those.

So my mistake and in your next packet you will see two sets of minutes.

The ones for our September meeting which is the one I should have included this time around and November's meeting minutes.

Thanks, yeah, sorry I didn't catch that one either.

Okay, so at 705 we have the performance measures and targets.

Thanks.

All right, I'm going to share my screen.

So back in 2017, the federal government started asking the states and MPOs to use a performance measure to reach goals.

So the federal government has transportation goals and then the state

and the MPOs set their goals through their long-range transportation plans and then we set performance measures to measure our performance in meeting those goals

And the federal government asks the state and the MPOs to set targets that we need to meet in order to reach the goals.

So we use the performance measures to measure our progress towards the targets, which eventually will lead us towards our goals.

So the state has asked us to measure a couple of different performance management

transportation items and there's three different categories that we need to select.

So the state does all the measuring and all of the reporting and they share that data with us for the performance measures and they've selected some that are targets that we need to set for ourselves as an MPO.

The state sets targets for the entire state so it's kind of like the average

for all of the state.

And then the MPOs are asked to either adopt those state targets or adopt their own targets.

Most of the MPOs adopt the state targets.

The performance measurements will be used to select transportation funding.

However, the MPO targets are not used to select transportation funding.

So

If we set our targets, it's a good conversation for us.

It's a way for us to kind of track where we're going.

We will be tracking that anyways because we will have some targets, either the states or ours.

And I'm going to show you the, so there's, can I go back?

There's three different kinds.

So there's asset and system conditions, which are like the condition of the pavement, the condition of the bridges.

And then there's safety performance targets that we talked about last year.

Those need to be updated every year.

So we'll talk about those.

And then there's public transit agency safety targets.

And those targets are just encompassed into one plan for all the agencies.

So we just sign on to that and there's not a lot of

If I could just interrupt you for a second, if you can go back to that slide.

We did talk about the safety performance targets last year, but there's so many new folks on CTAC.

Yeah, so I've got two slides.

One is safety performance targets, so I will go over those.

First, I'm going to talk about the asset and system condition targets, and then we'll talk about the safety targets.

So the asset and system condition targets, the

These are the targets that we need to decide which ones we're going to select.

The ones that are in bold are, so these targets are set every four years.

They are from, they started in 2018 and they go to 2021, but there's like a midterm checkup.

So in that midterm checkup, the state wants us to decide if we want to keep targets that we had set ourselves and then also if the state changes a target, we need to decide if we want to adjust that target as well.

So this is our opportunity to adjust some of our targets.

When we set the targets back in 2017,

We set some of our own targets.

The ones in bold, we set different from the state, except for I think the

Well, so the ones in bold, we said different from the state and we need to decide if we're going to keep the targets that we have, adjust them or stick or go back to the state targets.

The first column is the state target.

So that's what the state has set is their target.

The second one is our current target.

And then the

Third column is this, I can use a pointer.

No, I can't.

Yes, I can.

Can you see my mouse?

Yeah.

Okay.

So the third one is the actual amount for 2018 or 2019.

And then here is just indicating that we need to set or not set that target.

So the percentage of deck area of bridges in good condition is obviously like the percent

of bridges that are in good condition.

So those are all of those.

I don't think we have enough time to go through each and every one.

I think that the staff recommended the targets and then the technical and your committee, the CTAC committee would review them and then make recommendations to the policy board and the policy board would make a decision to adopt them or not to adopt them.

And we work with the state hand in hand with these.

So we're in communication with them about, you know, what we want to do and kind of it's a collaboration.

So now I'm just going to ask, and we may have covered this last year when we went over this, but for the couple of measures where our actual is clearly well above our target, can you just briefly explain how we got to that point or why those targets are well below where we're at today?

Yeah okay, like the pavement in good condition are, I don't know why our target is so high actually, that

That's a good question.

I know that the bridges, we set the target different because we knew we were going to be doing work on the bridges.

And then once that work is completed, we will have a higher amount.

So that's why the deck area of the bridges, like we said, we were going to have 23% in good condition.

Currently, our condition is 10, almost 11%, but we're doing some work on the bridges, so we expect to go up the pavement.

I'm not sure about the pavement one.

Yeah, I'm not sure why it was 25%.

Yeah, so maybe I typed that in wrong.

That might be 25% too.

5% I think is what it would have been probably.

I don't have a data in front of me.

Just to be clear, I was referring more to the one above it, the pavement in good condition interstate where the third column, the actual is 69.7%, but our target is only 45%.

And that's the discussion that

that we want to be having and that we've been having internally is some of our actual conditions are better than the targets.

The reason why, so we adopted the state targets, which was 45%.

So, you know, our target's better.

And so typically the MPOs are just choosing to adopt the state targets, but

I can probably give you some feedback on this one um we've had some mild winters recently so we've had a lot of snow money that hasn't been spent and we have to spend it by the end of the physical year

And the easiest place for us to spend it on is on paving.

So we've probably advanced a lot of our paving operation schedules, advanced them forward.

So that's given us a better good rating overall.

If that makes sense.

One of the things that I noticed looking at the targets and the actuals is Northern Virginia kind of really affects some of those.

Are there any other questions?

I'm gonna move on to the next slide.

And this one as well has quite a difference.

So these are the safety performance measures and they look at the, it's a five-year average and they look at the percent change.

So I have in here the percent changes and then using the percent change, we calculate the fatalities.

So for our,

So the top ones are both PARs, and then the bottom is non-modal fatalities and serious injuries.

So the state target is a reduction of fatalities by 3.2%, and our projected trip for 2021

So actually the states is going up.

The 3.2% is going up and then the 4.3% is going down.

So that's quite a difference.

And then the number of fatalities obviously is a lot more because it's statewide instead of just our MPO area.

And then you can see the percent change in serious injuries is it would reduce by 1.46.

That's what the state is going for.

Our projected trend is 16.1%.

And then the non-motorized injuries and fatalities is also going down by more than what we had, than what the state has as their trend.

So we need to, every year we tell the state what targets we want to have.

for those as well.

So this is going to be presented to the policy board.

There are some workbooks that I'm working on getting on the website that has more data in them.

It shows some graphs of the trends, and you can also look up.

Yeah, that's a really good question.

So there is no financial impact.

The state sets their targets.

They set their funding based on their targets and their measures.

Our targets are mostly just for us.

and we do have to report in our TIP, our transportation improvement plan and in our long-range transportation plan what our targets are, what the trends are and what actions we're taking to meet those targets.

There's no penalties for not meeting the targets for the MPOs and I think that

The reason, it's a good way for us to talk about the trends of the condition of our pavements and bridges and also the safety of our system.

And it possibly could be a way for us to make local decisions about funding.

There are penalties on the statewide level, but not for the MPO level.

The statewide level, if we consistently miss our targets, the federal government can actually require us to focus all of our federal dollars on safety improvement projects.

That's all I have for slides.

Just another clarification for me.

Okay.

They give us the actual data.

I have a couple of workbooks that has the data in it.

Well, no, that's fine.

Yeah, I mean,

No, not now.

So Lucinda, I don't want to interrupt if anyone else wants to ask some other questions, but Lucinda, I think that you gave us a really great overview and it was really informative.

Is there anything you want from the committee today?

And also, are you planning on coming back at the next meeting in January to talk more about this topic?

So the policy board is going to go over this in their December 1st meeting, and in January,

The policy board will vote on what measures they want to adopt, what targets they want to adopt for the measures.

So in your next meeting, I would like if you could and you wanted to make a recommendation to the policy board.

And Lucinda, do you anticipate having specific, suggested new targets for MPO?

Yeah, I actually have suggested targets for, so I have the targets that the trends say in the workbook that will come to you for the safety performance targets.

I don't have targets for the asset condition ones.

I think that I would stick with what we have unless the state

I think I'm looking from the committees whether we want to stick with the state targets or try to make our own targets.

What were the guidelines used by the committee to select our own targets?

There are not guidelines as far as I know.

So Lucinda, just to clarify for everyone, the trends that you would see in the workbooks, those predict what the levels of each of these things would be if nothing changed.

I don't know if it's realistic to think that we would be investing to change the trajectory.

But, you know, if like, so going back to the safety one, you know, if our trend of, you know, is being more safe and having less fatalities, we're probably going to continue along that trend.

So it won't hurt us to continue to have those expectations and set the targets higher than the state averages.

and I think that by having the higher targets when we look at our long-term transportation plan and our transportation improvement plan that we can have conversations about how we can meet those targets in the local areas but

I don't think that changing the targets is going to change any funding at the moment.

Most of our funding comes through the state and the state's working off of their targets.

And I think I meant that more rhetorically.

So like if, just for everyone to keep in mind that it makes sense to have targets that are in line with what the data says we should expect in the next few years, unless we had some sort of commitment from the localities or the MPO in general to make a particular effort on improving a particular trajectory.

Marty, actually, that is something that came up at the MPO tech meeting and I found it so interesting.

It sounds like you found it interesting too.

So I guess VDOT is finding that, you know, everyone expected that fewer people on the roads, fewer miles traveled says, you know, we should expect fewer crashes or serious injuries.

And that's now what the data is showing.

It sounds like this finding that with wide open roads, people are engaging in incredibly risky behavior like driving really quickly, driving really fast and not wearing their seatbelts.

But yeah.

Yeah, I was gonna chime in, Jessica.

Did Steven give you guys the presentation that he presented?

because that might be very informative that you guys there's definitely some good slides in there where it shows how the trends by year they went down they went back up and they're starting to go back up and and and comparing that to especially some of the stuff that's in the workbook it sort of shows some of the same things and I think if we can show that to the group

So Chuck, I think that's a good point.

And for everyone else, what Chuck is saying is that the MPO Tech company did see a presentation that went into even more depth than what Lucinda is sharing with us here.

And if there is interest among committee members, we can ask Stephen to come and give that same presentation, perhaps more directed at the general public.

That presentation is going to be given at the policy board meeting on December 1st.

Sounds like a good idea.

So what I'll do is I'll send it out as an email.

But as you guys review it, if you feel like you would like to have Steven come in and talk with you guys, I can try to schedule that for January.

Great.

Lucinda, was that all you had on this item?

Yep.

Yeah.

Any other?

Thanks.

Any other last thoughts on this one?

Coming up on 730, so I'm going to switch on to the SMART SCALE updates.

And before we do, I just wanted to ask if any members are not talking to you, try to mute your microphone.

I'm just getting a little feedback at some point.

I'll try to go first.

We're wrapping up the validation part of the applications.

I actually met with the city earlier this week to answer some of their questions on their applications.

Hopefully we can get those wrapped up this week.

And then we're looking at we're

They're starting to score the applications through the different both safety and congestion scoring.

So we can start putting together the data for the presentation in January to the CTB.

And hopefully we'll be wrapping that up, like I said, over the next week or so with all the applications in our district.

Okay, SMART SCALE is our main funding program.

It goes on a two-year cycle and we work with the localities to identify the applications, the locations they want to

apply for funding and we work with them on developing their applications for submission.

This round, I know the MPO submitted a couple of applications for Hydraulic 29 in Hillsdale South.

And also, let's see, Fontaine Avenue was up the third one.

Interchange improvements, so those were the main projects.

The city had four projects that they submitted, Preston, Grady,

Ridge Street, Emmett Street, Multimodal, from Barracks up to the University.

And then, let's see, the last one was, shoot, draw the blank.

West Main Street, phase three, which is a section from 8th to 10th Street.

So those were the city applications.

The county also had four applications, 20 and 53 intersection, conversion to a roundabout.

The Rio Road East, John Warner Parkway intersection, that was a conversion to a roundabout.

The Old Lynchburg Road, Fifth Street intersection was also a conversion to a roundabout.

And then access management along 250 East, which is basically the wide open median there,

between Stony Point to the top of the hill.

They're going to close that median and put in a partial access at People Place and partial access at Hanson's Road, and then a green T type of configuration at Town and Country Drive.

And those are the applications in the area.

The TJPDC also submitted some applications.

and they were the route 20-29 shared use path which was from Carsbrook to along 29 up to the river, Craze Mill intersection improvements to a restricted crossing U-turn type intersection.

The 107 Park and Ride lot which is the exit at

Out by Crozet on the interstate, we're putting in a park and ride lot there.

And then the 5th Street Hub and Trail Project, which is down there at where Wegmans is from basically that new little shopping center next to the Holiday Inn down to 5th Street Station Parkway and then up to Wegmans.

They will be presented at the CTB meeting, which is generally in the middle of the month.

So it's probably going to be about the same time as the meeting.

Whether they'll be out before and we'll have them to look at, I can't say one way or another.

Depends on how quickly, because they don't necessarily send them out to us earlier than that.

Does VDOT do this entirely on their own, the ranking?

Well, and that's some of what Chip's going to talk about later.

What we do is usually I go out and talk to the

the localities and the MPO and the TJPDC and we try to work together to identify the projects that we want to focus on and then I work with them on developing the doing studies and developing the applications and I assist them in with my on-call consultants on putting together that information for them but

We were hoping to actually look at involving the various committees more this time.

Generally, they run through the committees to get approval, and everybody's aware of them, and we run them through.

But we want to definitely do some additional public involvement to try to get better applications than we have in the past.

Okay.

I will go then.

Can everybody see the memo?

Okay, I've got dual monitors, so you're either looking at my wife and son at his elementary school graduation or the memo.

I wasn't sure which.

So, thank you all, and for those that I haven't met, I'm Chip Boyles, the director for the PDC and MPO, and I will go through a little bit of background.

We have presented this to CTAC prior,

and a couple of questions that you were just asking led very nicely up to this with SmartScale being the funding source for our major projects here within the region.

We do anticipate that as soon as the scoring is completed by VDOT and provided to the Commonwealth Transportation Board, we will be then coming back to CTAC as well as the technical committee with those rankings.

Though the projects will not be awarded by the CTB until June, we will have a very good idea as to which of our projects we submitted scored well and those that maybe didn't score so well.

In the past, both the technical committee and CTAC has had input on the projects that we submit.

When I say we, the MPO, we can submit four projects for consideration with the smart scale funding.

Both CTAC and

the technical committee along with the MPO Policy Board.

They also get to review the local projects that are submitted by the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County just as a review and they can vote to support those or not but they don't have any type of selection input for those projects.

In the past we haven't

identified our priority projects until you know starting to get close to the application period and it's caused some problems hearing there plus it's just a better process if we can get the community engaged earlier

and especially for CTAC, and I will give my warning here, I do believe CTAC is going to take a much more active role in helping to select the projects that we will recommend to the policy board to then submit for funding application.

Working closely with both the technical committee and CTAC, what we're proposing with this policy is that as soon as we get the scores out from the current rounds, we begin trying to identify our four or five projects that we want to start to consider for the next round, which will be a year and a half later.

But by identifying those early, we would be asking the MPO Policy Board that out of the four projects we could submit to identify two of those that would be what we call priority projects.

By priority, we will go ahead and begin working.

We will have an advisory committee that's appointed for each one of the two projects

And the advisory committee will be based upon neighborhood involvement, business involvement, or other direct stakeholders that should have some type of input with the projects themselves.

Working with VDOT hopefully we'll be able to get some technical assistance so that we can get some transportation engineering as part of the effort so that we can come up with as well a defined project with a full amount of community engagement by the time that the applications are due.

I would love to be able to do this for all four projects.

This would be the first time we've done it.

I'm very concerned that we won't even have the funds to do two priority projects, but we are going to commit to that in this first round and see how it goes.

And hopefully with VDOT's help with a consulting engineer, we'll be able to pull that off.

So that's kind of the background.

Again, we feel like we haven't been able to provide the community input that we would like to with previous rounds.

And so that's why we're recommending that this policy be adopted by the MPO Policy Board.

The other thing, one of the major changes in this from the first draft that you saw,

is that we did include a provision in here that the MPO Policy Board can waive this process if a project were to come up that they felt was more important than those four that were previously identified.

I think it's a very long shot that they would want to go around this policy if adopted to do that, but it's very similar to the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

No matter what the project score that are submitted statewide for SmartScale, the CTB can always move a project up.

They just have to be able to explain and document to the public why they may have jumped the project up.

This would be the same thing here, but the policy board would still have that ability.

So what we're looking at is that in January to February when the scores come in, we'll immediately present the scores to you

We'll be looking for recommendations not just from CTAC and the tech committee, but from the local governments and from stakeholder groups, perhaps CAT or Jaunt with one of the transit agencies so that we can then start just ranking ourselves and choosing the four or five projects that we want to submit.

And when I say we, that CTAC may want to submit to the policy board to be considered.

The policy board will then, they will choose the two priority projects and the policy board will also select the advisory committees for each of those priority projects.

I will back way up to say in your previous discussion about the performance targets and the safety measures, while SMART SCALE doesn't address repaving and the routine maintenance,

Some of the items for both safety and performance, you could start to look at what our MPO targets are.

And so if it was safety, if it was some type of bridge replacement,

If those were high priorities, you could use those measures in selecting which of the projects that are submitted will go to the MPO Policy Board for final application.

So locally, those performance measures may help us in selecting what those final four to five projects will be.

It doesn't ensure funding.

Nothing we do can ensure funding, but we can try to build the most solid projects that we possibly can for application.

I just had one more comment.

One thing, or I guess two comments based on our past kind of experiences with SmartScale applications.

So I guess at the kind of the May 2021 meeting in that period where we may be seeing new projects coming in from the localities that weren't necessarily in the previous round.

I think it'll just be important with CTAC to make sure those are presented in our packets a little bit before the meeting, I think.

And Travis if I can, that's exactly for this is that there's enough time built in

that the way it used to be when you got those applications, decisions had to be made right then because it was application deadline time.

Now we're over a year in advance.

Great.

And then just my second point related to that, just making sure that on our agendas for those meetings, we have enough time to actually kind of really think through and talk through the projects.

Chip, I have maybe two questions.

We have left that up to them.

They are both aware of this model.

They have expressed, well I shouldn't say they, the city expressed concerns that if they're going to recommend a project to us, they have to move their time frame up by a year.

And we're not at all advocating that this should be used for their local projects.

You know, I want to let Charlottesville choose theirs the best way they know how and Albemarle to choose theirs.

Oh, I understood that.

I was wondering if you would just follow the same procedure.

So we have some

I think we would like that.

Okay.

Second question is in terms of the public engagement, do you have a number of times you would do a public engagement over the course?

Is there any sort of

Yes, we do.

For those that have been around and involved with regional transportation for a while, hopefully you are aware of the hydraulic advisory panel that this is modeled from.

So

What we're anticipating is not following the traditional, you know, two public meetings at the local middle school, but what we're looking at doing is to live stream each of the committee meetings

You know, with a running website so that all of the information is on the website and people can visit, whether virtually or in person, the committee meetings so that there'll be a running conversation rather than two or three single

meetings.

Okay, sounds good.

You're welcome.

And I recommend if you would like to see what we have in mind, please, I always preface this.

It's a much scaled down version.

Do we have any more questions or comments for Chip?

And if not, Chip and Jessica, we are looking for a recommendation on this one, it looks like.

We are.

Okay, do we have a second?

Second.

Okay, all in favor?

Yes.

Aye.

Yes.

I guess should we go one by one?

Yes, for me.

I was waving my way.

OK, why don't I just go through one by one and I'll keep going.

Travis, yes.

Ray?

Yes.

Lucas?

Yes.

Nicholas?

Yes.

And Tim?

Yes.

Thank you, everyone.

All right, so that passes.

Great.

Okay, so, um,

We gave a presentation along with Albemarle County and City of Charlottesville and Chuck from VDOT on a feasibility study that had recently been completed looking at a potential bicycle and pedestrian crossing over the Ravenna River in the vicinity of Riverview Park.

We did that back on November 12th last Thursday.

I think I saw some familiar CTAC names on there.

Okay.

All right, so the agenda we covered at that meeting was to talk about the project's history, a little bit detail about why the feasibility study was done, what it was looking for, the results that the feasibility study found, and that was, particularly, there were two potential route options that the consultants found to go across the river and up into Pan Tops.

We compared the two results or the two route options, the results, how they were similar and how they were different.

And then we talked about next steps.

We set this up as a opportunity to get a lot of public feedback.

It wasn't just us giving out information.

We also wanted to hear from the public.

These were the guiding questions we had for our open-ended feedback.

Unfortunately, we didn't really get to these because we had a ton of questions from people about a lot of the route details and some bigger picture things.

But this is what people were asked to think about and some things that people have been emailing me about since

We finished the presentation.

So for you guys, I'll give a really brief version of the presentation we gave on the 12th.

So just what we tried to do with the project history was inform people that this was not a brand new idea that came out of nowhere.

The idea of having a crossing over the right Vanna near Riverview Park is something that has been talked about in Charlottesville for a really long time.

And it's been identified by a number of different plans done both by the TJPDC by Albemarle County and by the City of Charlottesville.

So on the right, you can see a list of all the different plans that came up in and in every one of those plans, when they've ranked projects, they ranked this project as in the highest priority.

All of those plans talked about the Rivanna River as a great amenity to our region, but also a physical barrier to mobility.

They also identified how there's a lot of growth happening on both sides of the Rivanna River in the Pantops area and in the Woolen Mills area.

and that there is currently bike and ped paths on either side of the Rivanna River, but there's very limited connections between them.

And for all of the bike and ped infrastructure that's already in the area, there's even more being planned.

The reason this project is so exciting, I know that there's a lot of people who think about a lot of different places where you could cross the Rivanna River.

A lot of people are very excited about the idea of a bridge going

near Darden Tow and Penn Park.

But the one near Riverview Park is so exciting because it would not just be a recreational amenity.

This would be something that really serves commuter transportation needs.

And this is a map from the Pantops master plan that shows the study area in orange, that little circle that the feasibility study really honed in on.

It shows how many people live in Pantops but work in downtown Charlottesville.

and all of the people who live in the Charlottesville area like really in Charlottesville and commute to Pantops for work.

So all of these people are living a bikable, walkable distance from their places of employment.

So this particular bridge would have a lot of commuter benefit as well.

In 2019, staff from the city of Charlottesville, Albemarle County and the TJPDC requested Chuck to investigate the feasibility of such a crossing.

And that feasibility study was, while it was underway, it was discussed at joint meetings of the city and the county two different times.

And at one time there was a presentation on it.

And then we talked a little bit about why the feasibility study was done.

It was done at the request of local staff.

It was completed at VDOT's expense and it was done by a contracted engineering, planning, and design firm.

And what I included in your packets was the full memo that we got from BHB with all the details of the feasibility study results.

Okay.

So what Chuck's team asked the consultants to do was to determine whether a bridge in the study area was even possible from an engineering perspective.

They found out that at least two route options looked possible.

And then they were asked to develop a conceptual plan for a bridge in the study area and develop a planning level engineer's cost estimate for the conceptual plan.

And they did both the conceptual plan and the cost estimate for both of those two route options.

And then we looked at the results.

So these are the two different route options that the consultants came up with.

One was a more northerly option in orange.

It went from the end of Chesapeake or the intersection of Chesapeake and Riverside across the river and then

up as a shared use path to the intersection of Pantops Drive and State Farm Boulevard.

I've drawn it as a really straight line.

It is not intended to be a straight line.

There's a lot of switchbacks that follow the topography of that slope to make it not so steep for the user.

And then the other options started at the east end of East Market Street and went across as two different bridge pieces.

And then again,

as a shared use path up the slope to that exact same intersection.

And then to give people a better idea of what exactly that would look like, here are some renderings.

So this is option one.

You are looking south.

Over here, this is Riverside Avenue.

This is the Riverview Park.

And here's where the bridge would begin.

It would be a single truss bridge that would go right across and then you can continue up as the shared use path over here.

And this is a rendering of what it would look like with some users on it.

Option two, this was the one beginning at East Market Street.

You're now looking north.

This is Market Street.

Here's the railroad tracks.

So it would begin at the end of East Market Street, go across as two pieces with a pier in the middle of this island here.

And then we compared the engineering basics for each of those options.

So like I said, the first one was a single truss bridge, 325 feet long.

The bridge would have a clearance of 40 feet over normal river height, 15 feet over flood plain, and the entirety of the bridge and path would maintain a grade of 5% or less.

The second option beginning on East Market Street was an arch bridge with a pier in the middle of the river.

Each span was 296 feet long.

The first span was the one that would be closest to the river itself.

And that one had a clearance of five feet over normal river height and one foot over the floodplain.

And that bridge and path were able to mostly maintain a grade of 5% or less, but there was a small section of it.

Jessica, can I break the question?

That's a good question.

And I think it's something that would have to be investigated a little bit more deeply, given that they expect only one foot of difference between the bridge and the river.

Yeah.

It's not something I know for sure, but it's something that would have to be investigated.

So good question.

Then I tried to situate the project area and both of those options into the bigger picture of bike and pedestrian infrastructure.

So the black circle is the study area.

Use the river in blue.

This straight line of purple, which indicates sidewalk infrastructure, is Chesapeake because there is continuous sidewalk infrastructure along the north side of Chesapeake.

This like a sporadic purple is East Market Street.

There is sporadic sidewalk infrastructure along East Market.

One thing that I did try to point out to people is we have these two pretty different options, but they're actually very close together geographically.

They're I think less than a half a mile apart.

Very close.

Okay, so

Situating those two route options on the west side of the river, on the Charlottesville side.

Option one provides a direct connection to the Rivanna Trail, Riverview Parks parking lot, and Chesapeake Street, which leads to downtown Charlottesville.

Similarly, option two would provide a direct connection to the Woolen Mills Economic Development site, and also leads to downtown Charlottesville.

The nice thing about the one on Chesapeake is it does have a continuous sidewalk on the north side,

A negative thing is it is a very hilly road.

Option two, it not only had the sporadic pedestrian facilities, it also has a constrained 20 foot cross section.

There is a very narrow part of East Market Street that would not allow for separate pedestrian facilities.

And the first option had parking at Riverview Park.

and the second option has limited parking availability along East Market Street for recreational users.

And then on the east side of the river, both of those route options ended up in the exact same place.

You're looking at a picture of the intersection of Peter Jefferson Parkway and State Farm Boulevard facing southeast toward the hospital.

And what they envisioned for either, what the consultants envisioned for either route option was a trailhead

at this Eastern end of either route.

So there'd be some sort of like shade structure.

There could be some parking, other trailhead like amenities.

And the hope was that recreational users would access the bridge from the Pantops area where a dedicated trailhead would be planned.

And that has the potential to alleviate parking and access issues at Riverview Park and the surrounding neighborhood.

Cost estimates, option one came in a little bit cheaper at $11,330,000 plus contingencies, and option two came in at $15,360,000 plus contingencies.

Both of those estimates included the need to purchase right of way from State Farm and Presidio Development.

If the county was able to negotiate an easement, that would reduce the total cost of both projects.

All right, and then we talked about next steps, which really was just to tell people that we are a long way off from anything being built.

We are even a long way off from really developing the design in greater detail.

So what we showed people is that our first step would begin when the meeting ended.

We would review feedback from the meeting and from online comments and share that feedback with committees like CTAC,

as well as city and county staff and elected officials.

We would be continuously identifying potential funding opportunities and if any of those funding opportunities seemed like they'd be a good fit for this project, that's when we would begin by identifying initial support for the funding application from both City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County staff and elected officials.

At that point, we would have to really determine an alignment.

Do we want to go with Route 1?

Do we want to go with Route 2?

And then we could submit a funding application.

And if that's awarded, we're looking at then moving into a design phase, which would be heavy on public input.

And then finally we can move into construction.

Then we took a bunch of questions.

We took so many questions and I've gotten so many comments via email that I don't have them prepared for you today.

But I can say really broadly, we heard two main themes, I would say.

One of the themes was parking.

People are concerned about parking, not just in the context of this project, but in that area, whether or not a project like this would go in.

It sounds like parking is a problem at Riverview Park area.

And they wanted to talk about that at this meeting.

The other thing that we heard repeatedly was that there is a residential character to this area.

And they were concerned that an amenity like this,

I'd like to make a quick comment.

I showed the information to a bridge builder friend

And his reaction was that it's a no brainer.

Number one is what should be built.

And he gave me a list of reasons why.

Aesthetics and the problem of the pier in the middle of the river where all the contingencies were going to be higher than what you expect for the second option.

So I would just, from a professional bridge builder, number one,

Thanks for that.

Any other comments?

I would just like to compliment you all on the presentation.

I think that it was really professionally done.

I think that you have the count on how many people were there.

It was a lot.

I think when I looked, I saw 63 and engaged.

I do have a question for Chuck and that is given what we all know, the pressures that are on that area, especially once the woolen mills really gets going.

I mean, really as the developer who was on the,

On part of the discussion was noting, I mean, it really hasn't even had a chance to open fully because of COVID.

And even though there is the one way traffic down Chesapeake and circulating around And we have to remember that there's a dividing line between city and county so

in terms of an organized constituency group of both city and county residents who are extremely concerned about the impact on their greater neighborhood.

It's really seems to me from listening, it's going to be a significant sales job.

So my question to Chuck is, wouldn't it be better at some point for us to have an alternative instead of having selected two that are right

So close together.

We originally looked at about six different locations in this area.

We didn't want to go up further north towards Free Bridge

or North of there, because those have been looked at also before.

We wanted to focus in on this area.

And that was something that came out of the committee early on.

And we did look at a crossing going south across, was it Moores Creek, and then crossing over further to the south.

But it's just those options weren't as

as good a location as these two.

Connecting to Market Street there, the closer you get to that railroad bridge, it's gonna put it right at Woolen's Mills.

So there's parking at Woolen Mills and the people from Pantops can go there into the city.

They don't necessarily have to go down Market Street.

Chesapeake does have a lot of facilities.

Most of the other locations we looked at had

impacts to the residential developments that are existing along the roadways there.

There's not very many places that you could tie down with the structure because of the floodplain limitations.

Even if you look at the floodplain maps, the intersection at Chesapeake right now is in the floodplain.

So there's not a lot of good places where you can actually put the bridge where it would be feasible to put it.

My recommendation then is that that's most likely the one thing that was missing from the presentation.

Next time, most likely a screen with the six alternatives that were initially done so that there'll be a feeling that it's not just focusing on that neighborhood as the only

is the only feasible one, but there have been four others that have been looked at, at least in a preliminary manner, and then make the justification that Chuck did in a second slide because of the, I believe, what will be a very strong outpouring of

negativity of community impact, again, both city and county residents from that.

So there would be- We didn't- Oh, go ahead, Chuck.

I was gonna say, we didn't directly look at parking.

I know that came up and I know Kevin and Dan from the county, they were looking at opportunities in the Pan Tops area for parking.

I know at the Woolen Mills site there is parking there that could be utilized.

Additional parking on the west side.

We didn't really explore that option any further because there's very limited places you can put it other than near the Woolen Mills property.

Yeah, I think the way I put it,

For the Pantop side is that there is expected to be parking there as part of this project if it's built, but we don't know at this time how much or where exactly.

And then on the west side, not part of this project, but Tim Padolino from the county did talk about looking at the parking situation or someone talked about looking at the parking situation at Riverview Park, not as part of this project as something else that they're trying to deal with because they already know that

I have a couple of questions.

That's a great question.

I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know either.

Okay.

I'd have to look.

I mean, there's a pretty detailed, in the study, there's a pretty detailed layout of the alignment of the path, the shared use path, how it works its way down the hill.

And for a large portion of it, they follow the same alignment.

The reason for the grade for option two was because the distance is shorter.

So you couldn't make the grade up, crossing the river, going up the hill.

So that's why it had to be a steeper grade for a short section.

Okay, so the other question, the other thought I had in looking at your timeline, when does the county and the city have to put in the budget?

funding for the construction.

So, sorry.

Go ahead.

When would the county and the city have to put in their budget funding

for this project?

Is it in their fiscal year 21, 22, what?

So that would depend on the funding opportunity we were seeking.

So if it was a SMART SCALE situation, SMART SCALE does not require either the city or the county to put up any funding in order to move forward with that project.

So SMART SCALE, they wouldn't necessarily need to put anything in the budget ever.

but something like revenue sharing would.

Yeah, the TAP has a match grant and revenue share is a 50-50 match but they only match up to $10 million over a two cycle period.

So you're limited to $5 million each cycle.

So the city and the county would have to figure out if they wanna

apply for those pieces, and then they'd have to come up with the additional funding to cover the additional costs that would be incurred.

Like I said, SMART SCALE, they wouldn't have to incur anything, but we'd have to further evaluate the application and develop the application.

So there would be possibly be some, and we could probably participate in that cost of putting together the application.

but there wouldn't be any necessarily a match from the county or the city.

It helps if you can buy down the cost of the project because it makes the cost benefit greater.

So you're more likely to get the project funded in SMART SCALE if you do participate.

Okay, so I just worry about the timing.

That's why I would just bring that to your attention because you need to take that into account

Otherwise you have a theoretical project and a theoretical starter in the construction days.

So one other quick thought to you, I'm involved right now where a proposal for a trailhead is going up.

And the trailhead is in a place where it was for recreational use.

I think given the map that we showed from the Pantops Area Master Plan, the expectation is that commuters would not be arriving by car.

They would be making their entire commute by bike or on foot.

I'm just trying to think of the area.

Well, remember we go both ways.

So there is some development planned for the Pantops area that would increase housing in the area.

And then for all the other people who are already living in Pantops, we know that there's lots of them traveling to

downtown Charlottesville in particular for work.

And we know that people living in Charlottesville are also traveling into Pantops to work.

So again, based on the knowledge I have right now on this project, I don't anticipate commuters taking up parking spaces at either end of the project area in order to use it for commuting.

And Tim.

I was going to actually bring up the same

Same point and ask you and Chuck if you could speak since we were talking about ratings, rankings, how the commuter aspect could enhance this project in future competitions.

Because there was a lot of discussion about that.

And then for this group as well, colleagues here, there were interesting discussions again from I think the developer representative about the

potential loss of a large workforce at State Farm, those numbers on Pantops and the fact that Welletry has not put the numbers in the woolen mill because of working from home and reassessing that for future and what impacts that might have.

So I don't think that that's something we can really speak to, but it was part of a really

Thank you so much.

But I do want to just comment a little bit.

I think, you know, any plan that was done prior to March of 2020, it's going to have to be reconsidered in light of all these changes that's happening and how people work and work from home and stuff like that.

Yeah, the way they would look at it, there's very limited area places to cross the river.

I mean, they look at the volume of traffic that's crossing at Free Bridge and they would look to see how much of what percentage of that traffic would possibly divert to

This facility if it's built and since that number is so large it would probably be a pretty significant number and it would get scored based on how much relief it would provide to that facility so which would be significant and right now that's one of the worst sections of from a congestion standpoint

That's one of the worst sections of road in the MPO area.

And there's not really any, we've looked at plans to improvement.

We've studied several plans to improve it, but we can't get consensus between the city and the county on what we can do to fix it.

Mainly the bridge at the county city line.

The county is looking at improvements along the 250 corridor.

We're actually doing

A project to rebuild the interchange at 64.

We're looking at the access management project on 250 corridor.

We've got a project that was approved last round or the round before that for improvements at Stony Point and 250.

And it's just, we're looking at some improvements in the county, but we can't get anything

to make improvements to allow more throughput into the city.

So one quick follow up on that, where are we in terms of a major pedestrian bicycle crossing on 250 that would bring that large resident, potentially bring that large

That I'd have to reach out to the, we'd have to have that discussion.

I don't know.

I know there's been some discussions with, as part of the Pantops Master Plan to provide those facilities.

I know they're looking at providing crossings at Rolkin,

but beyond that I don't know and there's not a project in the pipeline right now for that.

It definitely should be something we could consider either an overpass or some sort of facility to get that separate from an at-grade crossing to get us across without having to go because the only other place to do that would be down at Free Bridge.

You can go under the bridge

along the existing trail to get from one side to the other side.

But there's not a good place to cross unless you go to the Signal and cross right at Stony Point and or at Riverside.

I guess what I'm getting at is that if you say that it would score better if it really could relieve congestion and it really began to take on a commuter role to the greater downtown from the county on the north side of the road,

I don't think the analysis gets that refined when they're looking at it.

They're looking at pulling off traffic and shifting it over and its effect on

The larger capacity of the roadway, how that would improve the capacity of that roadway.

So it's just going to be the percentage of trapped volume they peel off.

Can I just make a general comment on this?

In addition to the financing and timing, which are important, I think, but I think a major factor, a project of this type is really community acceptance.

and I think there should be strategic plan if this is a program that should go through to have a strategic plan for us to give information to the community on the

benefits and disadvantages of the project and try to show clearly that this project will be very beneficial to the community because I can anticipate that a project like this would take the same format as what's happening with the bypass.

And one should be able to first of all to say, how are we going to tell the people that this is an important project?

These are the advantages.

This is how it would benefit the community to me is a very important aspect of this process.

Thank you for that.

So I'll just briefly note that one thing I touched on earlier does seem with that option to that one foot clearance over the floodplain is kind of a non-starter given how what we've seen along the Rivanna the last few years.

And I do think just it'll be important to consider when it comes to the other bridge and

How the community will receive it.

Also just, I know the grades along Chesapeake and East Market Street, it does seem like it, even if the sidewalk infrastructure is on Chesapeake, a lot of people may go to East Market instead, just cause it's, you know, I run along there and I usually run on Market instead of Chesapeake just cause the hills on Chesapeake are so intense.

Yeah, I can speak to the grade a little bit, Travis.

Because it's downstream, the bridge is lower.

The floodplain is really wide at Riverside.

It goes all the way to the, almost to the houses, and it goes all the way to the intersection.

So it's, we had to keep it up higher than at that location than we did at the,

Option two, we held to the road elevation, which was our tie down point on the west side.

So that's where we started off at.

And because it's a longer bridge, the trusses are deeper.

So it's gonna be lower, closer, even though the water height is, actually the water height is lower, but we're also at a lower elevation starting.

And since we're running a bit long, I think Jessica,

I mentioned she may want to push the bike pad pedestrian count update to our January meeting if no one has any concerns with that.

All right, hearing none, last thing on the agenda is additional matters from the public and looks like we still don't have a named one.

So I think unless any other questions or anything else anybody wanted to bring up.

All right, well, I think we can adjourn for the night then.

Thanks, everyone.

No.

Thank you, everyone, for showing up.

We'll see you in January.

Thank you.

Thanks.