Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee (2013-2026) Meeting   5/19/2021

Sure.

Okay.

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 Charlottesville Admiral MPO Technical Committee or 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 24, 2020.

This meeting will be recorded and made available to the public at our website.

And next, I'll go right into our attendance.

And I can't see you guys while I read the attendance, so please respond verbally.

Great.

Donna Chen?

Here.

Perry Heaton?

Joseph French?

Marty Meth.

Marty, I know you're here.

Great, thank you.

All right.

Sure, just confirming we do have quorum and welcome everyone to May 19th, citizen transportation advisory committee.

The first item is matters from the public.

We limit three minutes per speaker.

All right, so we will close that item and move to the next item, which is approval of the draft meeting minutes from the March 2021 CTAC minutes.

Perfect.

All right, so their motion has been

for approval and seconded.

So the minutes from the March meeting are approved.

Lee, thank you.

No, not yet.

Okay.

So let's all vote on the now that they've been seconded.

Yeah, sorry, Stuart.

I'm going to jump in here.

And this is just a not very big vote.

So all those in favor, raise your hand if you approve.

Anyone reject?

Anyone abstain?

All right.

The vote is in and the minutes have been approved.

All right, so third item on the agenda is future meeting topics and questions.

This is a new item relatively where CTAC members can ask questions of staff.

CTAC members can raise potential discussion topics for future meeting agenda items.

So open it up to the floor.

At the last meeting, I'm going to volunteer.

Lee had offered to do a presentation on roundabouts and I've noticed, you know, a lot of the VDOT

activities, they're pushing roundabouts.

We seem to be going in circles now in the area.

So it would be nice to have a presentation both by VDOT and Lee too, if he so desires about roundabouts, why they're important, how they're sized.

I'm not sure about next meeting.

There's a lot of things to wrap up at the end of the fiscal year.

And I'm not sure what we're going to be starting up at the beginning of next fiscal year.

Okay.

I was going to add, I noticed them looking through the uniform work per program work.

That a note of the EV charging station needs study was completed in FYI 21.

Have we seen the results of that?

Yes, it was actually supposed to be on this agenda, but we were trying to be very mindful of the fact that we've run over on every single meeting.

So we have postponed it.

Lucinda, did you want to just maybe give a couple of brief comments since you'll be coming back to us in July to present on that study?

Yeah, so I have a nice presentation and a draft of the document that's ready for everybody to view.

We started the project

thinking that we want to support EVs in our region.

And I was thinking like, you know, we'll put some EV charging stations in shopping centers or something like that.

And then as we started doing some research, I realized that

The 80% of EV charging is done at home.

And it's kind of funny, I totally forgot this, but a couple of years ago I was going to go buy an EV and I had picked one out and my husband was like, you can't charge that.

I don't have a garage with electricity in it and I so I ended up not buying it because it was just too much to try to get a charger in far away from our house so I think that that is the main barrier at this point to residential EV purchase and use is the ability to charge it at home so I have some statistics about kind of the situation with our housing and how many people in our area

Great, thanks.

Lucinda, I would just add on that, you know, that's all the more reason why it's important to have public charging infrastructure and especially at people's places of work.

Yeah, that's the second highest charging place for residential use.

I would say this much.

We're going to hear about some of the study proposals.

I think maybe I'd like to hear that and have a discussion.

I might suggest something else after we go through that presentation by Sandy.

All right.

Great.

Anything else?

If nothing else, we'll move to item number four.

All right.

So item number four is a unified planning work program, FY22.

Sure, thank you.

This is just the only slide that I have related to this, but we can talk about any questions that you all have.

As you all are aware, we have been putting this in front of you to develop our work program for the next fiscal year for what we're going to be supporting through the MPO

O'Brien, and the funding that we received.

So if you recall at our meeting in March, we had basically developed a couple of different project options for what we could support once we had programs, all the other funding for the programs that we had identified as being

necessary for the MPO for the next year.

So the things that we already had included in the work program were completing the north corridor study, developing the scope for our next long range transportation plan update, which is updated every five years,

and then doing some strategic planning for the MPO in general, just because we had a strategic plan that's a little bit outdated and we could use the opportunity to go back and really help identify where the MPO in general would like its resources to be focused as far as interests and opportunities there.

So those were the main programs that we had already identified under the long range transportation planning.

And so if you recall, we had about $50,000 that were designated once we developed the staff recommendations for projects and we had proposed a couple of different options based on feedback that we had

that we had received.

One of those you all may recall was the one that seemed to get a little bit more interest from the MPO Tech as well as you all, which was an analysis of the bike and pedestrian crash data.

And I'll put in a plug for Donna, one of her grad students that had worked on some research for UVA, did a presentation at MPO Tech.

Yesterday, that was really interesting.

So that might be another opportunity if you all are interested in hearing that data to learn more about that, if that's something that's of interest.

But the MPO decided, the policy board decided that that was not a project that they wanted to pursue.

Instead, what they what they wanted to see in the work program was to put some funding $30,000 total towards supporting transportation planning,

integration considerations to help them advance their climate action initiatives.

So that is what has gone into the draft Unified Planning Work Program.

We're going to put $30,000 towards basically looking at

Best practices, determining what kinds of data we have available in our local area to be measuring climate action impacts from our transportation system locally.

And then to start looking at what performance metrics we may be able to use as we go through our next long range transportation plan.

to be considering those climate action impacts as part of our overall project prioritization.

What that means is that at that meeting, they left the balance.

So remember we had about $50,000 for programming, which left about $20,000 on the program.

And what they said is they kind of wanted to just set that on the shelf for right now in case another opportunity to program that funding came up that might be more of a priority.

And it sounds like there might be a couple of studies that

aren't necessarily ready to move forward right now, but might be before during this next fiscal year that weren't on our radar.

So what we did was we put the balance in this on-call services line, which is just a generalized line for things that might come up.

The rest of the items that are here under the short range transportation planning are kind of standard things that we typically do.

You all are very aware, I'm sure that we're doing this more robust SMART SCALE process.

And then these other line items are just regular things that we have to do for compliance with the

with the federal regulations like the transportation improvement program, maintenance, performance targets.

And then we also put general outreach as well as supporting CTAC under the short range planning categories.

So these are mostly things that the projects might look different from year to year, but we do these same types of things every year.

And then there's the administrative category.

I wonder if you could just clarify.

I know you've done this before.

For the Regional Transit and Rail Planning, I know that's an advisory service to the Regional Transit Visioning Plan.

I think I have that right.

Yeah, so just a couple of points of clarification before I talk about the regional transit vision plan.

The line item you're talking about that you see on your screen, regional transit and rail planning, that doesn't only support the transit visioning plan, that supports all of our transit and rail planning.

So one of the other big projects that's kind of on the table or has been on the table this year was, and last year, was we applied for a build grant

which is now raised this year.

It's a big federal grant because we were looking at some work to potentially be done with the Charlottesville rail station.

So that line item can support a lot of things.

It doesn't just support transit.

It definitely includes rail as well.

We have a separate budget for the Regional Transit Partnership, which is the group that is kind of taking the lead with the Regional Transit Visioning Plan, which I've talked about to this group before as one of our two major transit grants that we have going on this year.

And I'm going to update on both of those later in the meeting at the very end of the agenda.

Okay, so I have a second question because when I see money that's not allocated, I don't know, it's sort of been in my job description to always look to figure out how to allocate.

But seriously, it struck me that we've been emphasizing affordable housing a lot.

And one of the aspects of affordable housing

is that there's adequate infrastructure to support the people in the affordable housing.

And I have looked at one or two sites and there's online, there's something called a walkability index.

And that sort of said to me at one of the sites, the site wasn't walkable and the transportation was poor.

And so I wonder if it's worth doing a study.

That is a great suggestion.

I think Lucinda can probably speak to this better than anybody, but I think there's a lack of some of the studies out there, so that would probably fill an important gap.

Well, I looked a long time ago at the county affordable housing, and I don't remember, I have to admit, it's been a

Several months since I really looked at it in detail and it's a hundred and some odd pages.

I don't remember it really focusing on what the walking criteria should be.

And particularly as we increase the range of affordable housing, that is the people who have only 30% of the medium income, they have really different transportation needs than somebody who's at the 80% level, for example.

In my mind, at least.

And I think we need to look at that a lot more closely and get some metrics down, some criteria down.

Sorry, Lucinda.

Tomorrow, the Regional Housing Partnership is hosting a webinar on this topic, exactly on this topic.

And we're gonna talk about walkability scores and affordable housing.

I did some research and I'm gonna put, oh, I'm sorry, you guys, I have really bad internet.

I did some research.

I'm gonna put a link in the chat that has a link to that page.

And it has some stats on,

affordable housing and transportation costs for each of our localities.

And I found that on average, the average person, I just can't remember how to say the statistic.

I think it was that more than like on average 50% of our residents in the TJPDC region spend

between 40 and 50% of their income on housing and transportation combined, which is a lot of money to be spending, especially if you're not making that much money.

Thank you.

That's great.

I just copied a link, so I have it.

Sandy, if I could jump in and maybe it would be good for this group to get an overview of how the MPO budget is separate from the housing work that we do.

Sure, yeah, just at a very high level.

The funding the MPO gets is basically designated by the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration based on the size of our MPO area.

So that is an allocation that we get based on population.

And specifically, that is to support the overall mission and goals of coordinating transportation for the

designated MPO area.

So we do have funding specifically for that.

Whereas the PDC staffs the MPO, but the PDC does other things beyond the MPO.

So as far as the housing work that we're doing, the major funding source for that comes from

The locality membership fees that they pay to the PDC, that the PDC then programs based on what the regional priorities are as identified by the commission.

So based on the population for each of the localities, they pay a certain rate based on their per capita.

And then the commission membership for the PDC tells us what the regional priorities are.

And so housing has been identified as a regional priority.

And then we also apply for additional grant funding through others to support some of the housing programs.

So they are separate.

I think where there are opportunities for overlap though, I think we can look at where some of those opportunities are to integrate the program areas, but we do need to make sure that as far as the MPO is concerned, that we do focus on the transportation aspect of it.

So we do have to be pretty specific there with the funding, but I think there are opportunities if we're talking about transportation for a certain needs segment or to support

Sandy, do you have one more question on the climate action planning?

These two all have added to the list.

You mentioned the addition of, or looking into potential metrics to measure kind of impacts on climate.

Are you all thinking about that both in terms of metrics for the long range plan and like potentially adding to the annual performance measures we look at?

I don't know that we would, I mean, as far as the annual performance metrics, I think one of the things we could talk about is how do you measure and achieve the goals?

And maybe that's one of the things that we look at is what the places that are really at the forefront of integrating this into their transportation efforts, how they're measuring that and what their frequency is.

So I think that's a question.

As far as it actually being a performance measure though, those are actually federal requirements.

Yeah, and I guess I'd always understood those federal ones were kind of the minimum and you can add to them, but I know it's

Yeah, I think we would just have to define the process and define what success looks like and how we measure that.

So there's a lot of opportunity to figure that out as we go.

Yeah.

And do we have some of that data now?

For the performance measures we have, but we, I mean, Chuck, correct me if I'm wrong.

We are not in a non-attainment area locally, which means that we are not required to be providing the performance measures on air quality at this time.

So we don't have that as far as the MPO with designated goals, just because we haven't had to yet.

So this is really a local initiative that we're trying to support.

We're trying to support

I'm sure we will, especially as we sort of identify how do we prioritize this and how do we measure this and how much of a priority should it be compared to other priorities, that kind of thing.

That would be my suggestion is let's figure out what our baseline is.

So build on that and then achieve whatever our goal is.

Okay, I just have a quick question.

This is regarding the MPO 101 primers.

I went to the MPO website, I couldn't find it.

And I don't know whether I made a mistake, but I went to MPO.

I looked for MPO 101.

Yeah, they're kind of divided up.

That's really helpful feedback to have, though, because maybe we do want to put a section just with all the primers together.

But typically, Lucinda, correct me if I'm wrong, but we put each primer up in the same place where the other information for that program is.

So for example, for the transportation improvement program, if you go to that website link,

Well, this is one of the comments I would like to make.

A thing like that is for the ordinary man there, the ordinary citizen.

I think it should be put in such a way that it's the easiest format for this person to be able to find it.

If I cannot find it, I don't think many people can find it.

So if one suggestion I could make, if you all can think about really reorganizing this, that is an ordinary person can go to the website.

Well, not necessarily, not necessarily.

You could put it on one side and then direct.

When you get to the part that they are discussing it, you can highlight it and they can click it.

It's the same link.

No, that's really helpful to know.

Hey guys, Sandy, I had a question for you.

Yeah.

Can I be heard?

I'm having a lot of issues.

Okay, that was to me.

All right, cool.

So my question is, is that in the long range planning and or anywhere in this document, I was wondering if there's any kind of gaps or any kind of considerations for light pollution as it relates to any kind of transportation and planning, you know, like street lights, that kind of thing.

Specifically to transportation, Chuck, is that considered as part of the environmental impacts?

I don't think we include lighting in anything.

I know we do it from a safety perspective, but usually if it's a factor in crashes, and then if you're adding lighting, you might get a benefit from that.

But that's the only thing I can think of.

But there's no like,

Is there any reason as to why we wouldn't want to incorporate that?

I was going to say for,

I'm looking at it from a SMART SCALE scoring perspective but from a community perspective you may want to look at it from that perspective and I even with projects where like roundabouts we talked about earlier usually you want to have lighting and roundabouts so people can see what's going around or if you have a lot of pedestrian activity you want to have lighting so people can see the pedestrians it's just how you

What do you consider as lighting?

Do you want to have street lights or do you want to where you have a lot of businesses and you have a lot of lighting that's already being provided.

Do you want to add additional lighting to that for street lighting?

I'm not sure if it's going to be included or not in our documentation.

If it's not a consideration, then it's not a consideration.

Yeah, I don't know that it's part of the necessarily the evaluation process.

I think that's going to be really specific to the needs of that particular location where a project is being implemented and what the overall goals and vision and design standards for that community are.

Any other comments on agenda item number four?

All right, so we'll move forward with the SMART SCALE update and discussion.

Yep.

So just real briefly before we get started, I just wanted to back up for a second just to sort of explain how we how we and I know we've talked about it, how we've identified the projects, but I just want to make sure that you all have the background information to know how projects sort of go from being initially identified as

Having a need in the transportation system to moving forward towards a SMART SCALE application.

So I'm just going to really briefly go over that and then we'll go through the projects that we have identified as being the most relevant opportunities for the MPO to consider for this round of SMART SCALE.

So the most important thing when starting with the project identification for SMART SCALE is that it's not going to be eligible unless it meets a need in the state transportation plan, which is referred to as Z-Trans.

So we always have to start with that to make sure that our project is eligible.

So that's step one.

And then step two is that it's identified as a statewide need.

And then we need to make sure that it's identified as a regional need.

So we start going through our planning documents like the long range transportation plan.

I'm looking at the localities, comprehensive plans, looking at anything more specific like bicycle and pedestrian plans or the transit development plans that the transit agencies develop.

And that's where we start really identify what are the regional projects that have been identified as priorities where those coming from.

And what we do is we take the long list of projects that we want to accomplish in the area, and then we look at what we expect to actually get as far as funding.

And from the long list of projects that we start with, we start whittling those down to prioritize that out of all the projects we want to do, if we only think we're going to have a small amount of funding, these are going to be the highest priorities.

I'll refer to that as the

as the constrained project list in the long range transportation plan.

So that's the first thing we do as we look at that constrained project list and try to identify where the opportunities to fund those projects are going to be first.

And then we move through the longer list of projects through some of these other planning efforts.

Now there are some cases where there might be a need and there might be, you know, both identified at the state and regional level, but we might need more information before we're ready to just move forward with the project.

And so that's when we get into some of the corridor planning and small area plans and feasibility studies that you all have heard us talking about.

We know there are some opportunities.

We know that we can probably develop an application, but we need to really identify that out of all the options for solutions in this area, which ones really make the most sense to move forward.

And so we do these more focused studies where we can get a designated advisory panel or stakeholder group or technical experts where we can really get people focused on a smaller area or corridor.

and be able to go through what the potential alternative solutions might be and which ones seem like they make the most sense for that project.

So we go through those planning studies for the small area.

And then we move to step three.

So we know that it needs a need.

We've identified what the potential solutions might be.

So in step three, we get into going through any sort of technical analysis that we might need to provide to support our application.

And step three is really important because this doesn't normally happen until we know that we're going to probably move an application forward.

So we've identified the project.

We want to apply for funding for it.

That's when we know that we're going to have to do this technical analysis.

The Charlottesville Albemarle MPA relies really heavily on VDOT to support our development of these applications.

And so what's really important to consider in step three is that VDOT's ability to prepare these analyses for us is dependent on it being a high enough need in the state transportation system in order for them to be approved to use their funding to support the application development.

So before we select the projects to move forward, we have to make sure that we're going to have the resources available in order to prepare the applications to do this technical analysis.

The specific analysis that's gonna be needed depends on the project.

It could look like safety data.

It could look like an alternatives analysis where you compare different solutions for a problem and figure out which one is gonna be most cost-effective or which one is gonna have the most benefits.

It just really depends on what the kind of project is, but we have to provide all of that analysis in order to support our application.

And then once all of those pieces are in place, we go through and we make sure that we have the support of the local governments, the resolutions, all that kind of information, as well as all the other background information that we just have to provide with the applications, economic development sites, things like that.

And then we know that we can move forward with actually preparing and submitting the application.

This is what I like to refer to as my ugly side, but it just gives an example of what this looks like in practice using a project that most of you are familiar with, which is the hydraulic small area plan.

So you can see the first thing that happens is that the project is identified in V-Trans as a need.

So this is 29 right here, and this is Hydraulic Road.

You can see that the segment of 29 right here is in red, which means that that is the highest priority need that is identified in V-Trans.

So it meets the V-Trans criteria.

So then if we go over to the right, you'll see that this is where the need first shows up in the long range transportation plan through the MPO.

And so it's just generally referenced as a congestion at a choke point at US 29 and Hydraulic Road, which is helpful, but that still doesn't really help us figure out what project we should apply for, for SMART SCALE.

So for hydraulic road, there were a lot of stakeholders.

It was very political.

There were a lot of people that were interested in it.

It was a high development area.

So VDOT actually supported, along with the MPO and the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County, the development of the hydraulic smell area plan to start early identifying where the opportunities and the most

the most effective solutions would be.

So we did that through the Hydraulic Small Area Plan.

And out of the Hydraulic Small Area Plan, you can see in the flight box here, these are some of the recommendations for specific projects that were high priorities were developed.

So that's where we start getting into, we need to do something about congestion at this choke point to, this is what we're going to do about congestion at this choke point and developing some of those more specific solutions.

Now what happened with the hydraulic small area plan is that this was developed in the midst of the long range transportation plan update.

So not only was there an application that was submitted, I believe this was 2018 for these projects, but this box is actually what was shown in the long range transportation plan on the constrained list for projects that we wanted to move forward with.

As most of you all are aware, it was really important that that ended up in our long range transportation plan because the first package of projects that we submitted for hydraulic were very expensive, did not score very well, and did not get recommended for SMART SCALE funding.

So we had to go back to the drawing board and develop a different set of applications that we could

reduced the cost and increased the benefit comparatively in order to be more cost effective and more competitive for funding.

So that ended up, so what we did was in 2020, we were able to pull out some of these projects and package them together in order to put together a different package that was much less expensive.

So after we developed that small area plan, this is just a sample of the type of analysis.

This is one part of it.

This is one page of a safety analysis.

There were a lot of other analysis that were completed, and then we were able to submit the project application.

So that just shows you a project that went through that whole cycle.

So again, if we look at our timeline, you all have seen this before.

We're in May right now.

So what we're doing through you all and with the localities is finalizing the projects that we are going to ask the policy board to consider for SMART SCALE applications to be developed.

And so we're going to finalize that list this month.

And then in July during the next policy board

meeting in July with UL's recommendations.

We're going to ask them to go ahead and select which projects they want us to move forward with.

Now, just as a reminder, the MPO has stated, it's our policy that we all support up to two projects that need a higher level of stakeholder engagement.

So it will be up to the policy board in July, ultimately with your recommendations and MPO techs recommendations to

Let us know which projects they would like that engagement to occur on.

The other thing that I just want to mention is that there is a possibility as we consider projects that maybe especially looking at the corridor projects, maybe we don't want to pick four different

from this list of projects.

Maybe we don't want to pick.

We're going to do one from each of these categories.

Maybe the recommendation to the policy board that we want to consider is we really want to focus on one of these corridors and do two or three projects within that one corridor.

So that's something else that you all can be considering if you would like to make that recommendation to the policy board next month.

So this is just the list that has moved through that process that we talked about, where it was identified as a V-Trans need, it was identified in a regional planning effort, and then there's been some sort of study that's already been conducted, so we're building off of information that's already been provided, as well as some public support.

So you can see the projects that are identified here are largely ones that are on the jurisdictional boundary between Charlottesville and Albemarle, so there is a

multi-jurisdictional collaboration that's needed to move these projects forward.

And the exception to that might be Hillsdale Avenue extension, which is just barely within the city limits of Charlottesville.

But that will also support the overall set of hydraulic 29 improvements that have already been recommended for approval through SMART SCALE.

So those are the projects that we're considering.

So what I'm going to do is I'll just go through all of them at a very high level and check if there's anything you want to add or Jessica on the Ravana Bridge, if there's anything you want to add, feel free to do that.

And then we'll open it up to questions and discussion.

So this first one is, you know, as we were talking about roundabouts, this one that you have all most likely seen at some point before, which is a recommendation for a roundabout at District Avenue.

So again, if we go back to our big map, that's this one right here, which was also part of the solutions that were recommended in the hydraulic smelt area plan.

So this is located just a little ways up hydraulic past the shopping center.

This is the movie theater right here.

So we would need to, I'm so sorry, this is the movie theater right there.

I was circling it on the wrong screen.

So we would need to look at the configuration of this roundabout.

Some of the property ownership and development plans have changed.

So we'd need to go back and look at that and do some potential revisions to the design.

But generally, this is one of the projects that we would be considering.

That's one of the last projects that has not been funded that's on that constrained list in the long range transportation plan.

Chuck, do you want to add anything on this?

No, okay, we can come back.

The second project is the Hillsdale Avenue extension.

So this would be extending Hillsdale from the current stopping point.

This is over by the Kroger down to 250 and making a direct connection with 250.

The other important thing that we would be doing is closing these ramps between 250 and 29.

So those ramps would not be there.

And all of these traffic movements would then be directed through this

through this new connection.

So again, this was one of the projects that was recommended through the hydraulic small area plan.

It's one of the last projects on the constraint list.

This was submitted as an application during our last round.

It was the first project that was not recommended for funding.

So if there was one more project that could have been funded, this one would have been it.

All right, and then we get into the Ravana River Bike and Pedestrian Crossing.

I think most of you are probably aware that we completed a feasibility study last year that was funded by VDOT looking at some potential bridge configurations to provide access from the Woolen Mills area over to the Riverside Park area generally.

So these are very rough sketches of potential bridge locations.

These were the two potential designs that were sort of recommended by the technical stakeholder group that reviewed the project options for a variety of reasons.

So if this moves forward as a SMART SCALE application, we would be really looking at the configurations or finding the design and determining how to

incorporate any sort of bridge that we feel like is the best fit for the community with the larger transportation and pedestrian network.

I mean, we've got two options.

We may be looking at a third option, but the bottom line is we need to hone in on which option we wanna go

And then refine that option to give us the best results, taking into consideration some of the other items that we might want to look at, especially from the aesthetics perspective and some of those things, because that can change the cost and the feasibility of different concepts.

So one thing to note is that

There is a disconnect between these two locations on the west side.

There's no way to get from Riverview Park to Woolen Mills if you're a pedestrian or bicyclist because there's no facilities on East Market Street.

So that's a concern and there's no way to connect that but by a trail along the river because the properties are all privately owned.

So there's a big trailhead that comes down from

along the creek on the southern border of this property, Moore's Creek.

And it basically would tie into Woolins Mills.

So you would have that connection if you did that bridge.

The bridge at Riverside Park does or Riverview Park does go into the city.

So it's a lot more feasible from that perspective.

So there's a lot of pros and cons with both concepts.

We'll have to wade through those and see which is the best option moving forward.

Yeah, that that would be part of what we would have to do as part of the development process to prepare for the application.

So the next project we're looking at, these are less well-defined because they're looking at larger stretches of corridors.

So the first one is the section of Avon Street and Avon Street extended basically from, I think it goes from Mill Creek Drive at the south end to Monticello Avenue.

So it goes from the county well into the city.

The city has identified pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure improvements in their bicycle and pedestrian master planning process as a high priority.

And then Albemarle County just recently completed a corridor study on this in 2020 that identified some additional improvements.

So what would we be doing is if the policy board selected this project and you all recommended this project to move forward is we'd really be looking at what all the recommendations are through that corridor and picking out a package or two or three, depending on the guidance we're given from the policy board to develop applications that we think would be competitive.

So we might be looking at

you know, a section of corridor improvements with intersection improvements or something like that, but finding ways to put specific projects together into an application that we believe would be competitive.

Now, one of the questions that we were asked when we did the public workshop was whether we could do one application with all of the projects within this corridor.

And we could do that, but the challenge though is that once we start putting a lot of projects together and looking at longer stretches,

It does increase the cost of the application.

So we always do this.

If you'll recall, SMART SCALE is based on the cost relative or the overall benefit score relative to the cost.

So we also, we always have to keep sort of that evaluation criteria in mind in order to make sure that we are moving forward projects that are going to be pretty competitive for funding.

And then the last project that has been recommended by staff for consideration is the 5th Street corridor.

Again, looking at starting at the south and in Albemarle County.

This is Ambers Commons Drive.

I know this is kind of a small text to read, but starting at the south at Ambers Commons Drive.

and going up into Charlottesville until Harris Road.

And again, it's the same thing.

We would be looking at the entire corridor and putting together a package or two based on the direction that we get from the policy board on creating packages of projects that can be developed into an application.

So that is what we are looking for as far as, this is what we're recommending based on that project pipeline that staff discussed when we were developing these recommendations for consideration.

Well, I guess I'll mention that I offered a couple of alternatives and

All right, and Lee, you just tell me where to go on here.

Do you want me to skip past the narrative and bring you right to

Your first drawing.

Hopefully you're on mute.

And while Lee is unmuting himself, I'll just remind you all that this came as a separate packet by email.

Yeah, this is one of several drawings that show an alternative for the US 29 hydraulic road situation.

As it stands right now, I mean, I'll get into the narrative just a bit, but it's already been proposed to spend in the round four SMART SCALE, about $25 million on some changes to hydraulic road intersection, eliminating left turns from hydraulic onto 29, around about at Hillsdale and hydraulic and a couple other modifications

Farzer-South on Emmett Street.

And then, as you've just seen, there's two other proposals under consideration.

This round, the District Avenue roundabout and the extension of Hillsdale, the combination of those two would be

again in excess of $25 million.

So at that point, assuming all that was approved, you'd have spent $50 million on this.

And what I'm proposing is to take the same $50 million and basically make an extended ramp from US 250 west of the interchange with 29 all the way up to Seminole Court, one lane in each direction,

so that the through traffic could basically go out over Angus Road and Hydraulic Road and avoid the interchange the current interchange between 29 and US 250 which is there's a lot of congestion on all of those points so instead of taking through traffic say five minutes to

to cover that distance.

They could now do it in less than one minute.

It would take approximately 36,000 average daily traffic count off of that section of US 29, which would then make it possible to have pedestrian crosswalks at hydraulic road, for example,

It would take a lot of the stress off of that road and eliminate a lot of the congestion.

Yes, yes.

One lane in each direction, basically over the median, the current median between the north and southbound lanes.

And this is where it starts.

And then the final drawing shows an overall view of the whole thing.

So at the very top of this drawing was Seminole Court, and at the very bottom, of course, is US 250.

and this particular, there are more drawings to this that some of them show the elevated roadway and some of them have it hidden just so you can see the details of what's underneath.

But setting aside from the moment, the funding aspect of it, what Chuck and I have discussed this and he had expressed concern that

The city was not in favor of any kind of what's known as a flyover option, which this would be.

So I guess the first thing I wanted to hear from all of you is, is that in fact true?

I mean, would this be a non-starter for some reason?

And if so, could somebody tell me what that reason is so I can understand it better?

Again, I looked at the traffic, I looked at

I analyzed the traffic at rush hour at the intersection of hydraulic and 29 southbound and changing the light cycle at hydraulic road to eliminate the left turns from hydraulic would increase the through traffic green cycle by 12 seconds which adds about takes the current capacity, peak capacity of the road

for through traffic from 1300 vehicles per hour to about 1600 vehicles per hour.

But the problem is, is that at peak times, you've got 2800 vehicles per hour.

So it doesn't, it's not gonna fix the problem.

You'll basically have spent $50 million and you still have the problem.

So what I've offered,

Each of those lanes, one southbound and one northbound can handle 3,600 vehicles, well, 1,800 vehicles per hour in each direction for a total of 3,600 per hour or 36,000 per day.

And the current V-Trans data on that section of road is 56,000.

So it takes the traffic level

at the hydraulic road intersection, 56,000 vehicles today down to 20,000.

And like I say, it spends the same $50 million as proposed to be spent anyway.

So I guess my question is still is, is there any of you that knows the reason why you just can't do this?

This is Stuart.

I would just say that the reason I would deprioritize it is, you know, looking at some of the other options, multimodal from Avon on Avon Street and Fifth Street, I'd rather prioritize things that get you into the city without using a car.

And I feel like the Avon Street and the Fifth Street do that.

They reduce traffic by giving people the opportunity to get into the city on each side of that Wegmans shopping area,

Carless, and I think that's something that is a real benefit.

I think also anytime you have an elevated structure, traffic noise becomes an issue.

Of course, this is already 29, so it's not exactly a quiet corridor, but that's always something of concern for neighboring developments.

Yeah, it would make it easier because

the bulk of the through traffic, which to Stuart's comment, I mean, 29 is a major through highway.

And so traffic that has no interest whatsoever in stopping in Charlottesville is forced to go through that section of road.

And this just takes some of that pain away and lets the through traffic

basically go over the local traffic and that way the local traffic is much calmer so actually as I said there would be opportunities to actually have pedestrian crosswalks of hydraulic road which are completely unfeasible now because you can't afford to hold up the traffic that long.

Pedestrian crosswalk signal is typically 30 seconds and if you stop the traffic for an additional 30 seconds you'd have

There's 56,000 cars a day on that road and they all have to traverse those intersections

And the intersection is just incapable of handling that traffic so it backs up.

It just does.

And the proposals so far don't really address that.

I mean, they try to help a little bit, but the impact that they make is almost negligible.

And I could go into all the reasons, but setting that aside for the moment, this would make a huge difference for the same amount of money.

Yeah, a couple of questions.

First, I just wanted to thank you for all the work in developing this idea and presenting it to us.

I guess the first question was, so the, I mean, is the idea that this would be kind of scrap the proposals that are currently in place for hydraulic, because I know the improvements to the intersection and then also that Xan Road, bicycle, pedestrian crossing are already now funded in the

State Six Year Plan from last round of SMART SCALE.

Yeah, okay.

So I guess that's just one concern about kind of the comparison of the kind of money we already have in hand versus

taking the kind of rolling the dice on a new idea.

And the other question I had for, I guess maybe more for staff, I know you're all looking at some multimodal improvement options for boot 29.

And I know in the past, when some talk about trying to maybe at some point in the future do some type of express bus or BRT,

Lawyer 29, and I'm assuming that that would probably take a dedicated lane potentially in the, using that median area.

We're actually doing a study that, you know, with the Trans Division Studies, Jessica could talk to that a little bit more, maybe.

I mean, I don't know that that's necessarily been hard and fast identified as what will happen.

Yeah, I can't expand on it too much more except to say that I think there is interest among the localities that there's flexibility because there's being so much invested in studying this route, this portion of 29, really all of 29 North.

Lee, I had one slight question.

A flyover in bad weather tends, I know we don't have a lot of ice, tends to be ice over and be slippery.

I mean, at least I'm not a traffic engineer.

So, but that's my understanding.

Is that correct?

Well, it's a valid consideration certainly elevated

Any bridge tends to ice up quicker than the surface street because the ground protects it from the underside of the pavement from the freezing temperatures, whereas the freezing air gets underneath the bridge.

Obviously, you'd have to treat it with anti-icing like you would anything else for the rare occasions where we do have ice.

But yeah, I mean,

Like any bridge, you'd have to take that into consideration.

But the other thing I wanted to point out is that because this is structured in, I mean, you know, compared to the original proposal to have a, to grade offset hydraulic road, this is much less expensive.

It's also much less impact during the construction period

Most of the construction is combined to the median.

So most of this can be built without seriously disrupting the present traffic while it's being built, which is another advantage.

There's also minimal right-of-way impact.

A couple of the piers on sheet two there would impact the encroach slightly on those, the Best Buy property there.

But other than that, there's no right-of-way cost.

And it's actually a fairly simple structure to build.

It's not complicated.

The spans are fairly short, so it's not terribly expensive to do.

So it's entirely feasible.

I guess the question for all of you is, is it worth presenting this to the

Michael, I have to comment on this.

One thing we should realize about that corridor is that it's not so much a pedestrian problem, it's a traffic problem.

And any solution that will really improve the traffic flow

which I think, I don't know whether it was Chuck who tried to clarify just that, is how long this construction would take place and how much time would it take?

Because we know the problem we had with the hydraulic, the current hydraulic road situation where all of the people with shops, they were opposed to it.

I think that we should ascertain clearly that although this is an all elevated structure,

Yeah, my first comment was that the problem in the corridor, in that particular corridor,

is not a pedestrian problem.

It's a traffic problem.

It's an automobile problem.

So solutions that would solve the traffic flow would have a significant impact overall and for the corridor.

But the thing that we have to take into consideration here is how long, how much it would take, the time it would take to do the construction.

Because we know if there is anything that's going to impact the stores around that corridor, there would be strong opposition to it.

And we have to take into consideration how

Yeah, well, like I said, the construction would actually have minimal disruption

of the traffic because it's confined to the existing median.

Ultimately it does take one lane out of the existing traffic, but so there'd be some inconvenience, but most of it is in, you know, you're building the piers and once the piers are done, you set the bridge section on top.

You know, that can be done at night to minimize the disruption.

It's actually,

Pretty easy to do this without majorly affecting the traffic.

You're not changing the grade or anything about the existing highway.

It stays the same.

The traffic lights all stay the same.

Nothing gets changed there.

It sounds like the larger question is, do we want to focus our resources on easing congestion at a bottleneck or improving other areas of our community through multimodal pathways?

We're at time for this agenda item.

Is there a recommendation from staff?

Do we continue talking about this?

Do we

Thank you for being mindful of time, Stuart.

As we've said before, this is the first time we're doing this process.

So we have kind of been working with Lee and Chuck as these ideas have come up.

And we don't necessarily, I mean, Sandy, I should let you speak about how this is going to proceed.

I think it looks a lot like the slide Sandy showed earlier, where we are going to not ask you guys to vote on anything today.

We are just taking your comments, summarizing them, and passing

And they will also not be voting on anything this month.

They will come back in July and make that final vote with regards to which four projects we would be potentially applying for as an MPO and which two of those projects we would be doing an extended public participation process for.

So again, being mindful of the time, I also want to be mindful of all of the work that Lee has put into these proposals.

So I want to give him just a few more minutes.

Lee, you had another proposal, which I've scrolled right past.

And I want to give you a few minutes to talk about that and give us a few minutes.

Okay, this one's much simpler.

I just proposed a different location for the bridge.

As you might recall of the two proposals, one was a suspension style bridge that terminated, that ran from the Old Mill Trail and terminated at the end of Chesapeake Street.

I'm proposing something further north that would terminate on

Riverview Avenue, it would require the purchase of one vacant lot at 296 Riverside Avenue.

But then the bridge would be level instead of being an incline.

And it would also keep both ends of the bridge above the floodplain, which neither of the other two proposals did.

I also

designed the bridge so I know what it costs and I know that it's feasible as opposed to the other ones which were pretty sketchy.

So it's just a third option to the other two.

And that's really all I ask is that it be considered along with the other two on its merits.

The one question we did have was, was there any reason that anybody from the city would have that

would make purchasing that vacant lot at 296 Riverside Avenue unfeasible for some reason.

I can't see it.

I mean, it's a vacant lot.

You should be able to buy it.

So just to expand a little bit on what Lee has said, Lee is proposing this not as an alternative to the Rivanna River Bike and Pedestrian Bridge project.

It would just be an additional option as part of that project set to be considered through the SMART SCALE application process.

I feel like Chuck might want to say something.

Is that right?

Yeah, I mean, we have two options.

This would be a third option, so I mean,

that we could consider.

We're going to have to go through the process and get public input on which option is the preferred scenario.

And so we can look at all three options.

Adding another option isn't really going to make that much difference.

It could be an issue with tie-ins and stuff like that.

And we can look at the merit of all three of them.

I will say that just generally we did send these to the city just to see what their concerns were.

One of the concerns that is consistent across both of the hydraulic proposals and this is just that not just the construction costs, but also the ongoing maintenance and inspection needs for any sort of elevated structure.

So they're trying to, the city in general, that's one of their major concerns with the

Hydraulic Flyover Textile Design.

And then for the bridge, they prefer the simplest design possible, meaning that they want the least number of piers with the most direct connections.

Just a quick question.

Lee, it looks like you were connecting all the way from that road.

Is there any, I mean, I get the idea of having it level.

But any reason we could have it closer to the river?

Is it the floodplain was the consideration?

Well, yeah, because of the floodplain.

I mean, and the fact that that was exactly the problem with option one on the other one was that one section of that suspension bridge was level, but the other suspension, the other section from the edge of the

West edge of the river down to Chesapeake Street dropped 18 feet in 324 feet of distance, which is actually a greater than 5% grade.

So not only does it put the West end of the bridge below the flood, a hundred year flood level, but it also makes it more difficult for ADA and so forth, because now you go down the hill,

from Riverview, the intersection of Riverview Avenue on Chesapeake Street, you go down the hill and they have to climb back up again, whereas this one would go straight across on the level.

And like I say, the individual spans on this are actually quite inexpensive.

The total length of the bridge is the same as the proposed suspension bridge.

That was over 500 feet and so is this.

And so was option two for that matter.

That was more than 500 feet of bridge.

If you all wanted to vote, you know, if you felt very strongly you wanted to vote on them, you certainly could do that.

Well, then I'd like to weigh in and say that I would support adding each proposal hydraulics or 29 and the bridge

And I'll just say in passing, I wonder if rather than taking the bridge out of the park and up onto the vacant lot and the pavement of Riverside, if it was bent 90 degrees to the north and then declined right at the edge of the park, say at the west side of the parking lot or somewhere, could it

in the same length or maybe a slightly longer length come down to earth at an agreeable grade within the park where it would pick up, say, the multi-use path there, the westernmost path in the park that joins up with the riverside path further to the north.

So that would be one thing that Lee might wanna

But otherwise, I think they're both hats off.

I don't want to distract too much from CTAC's comments, but I do just want to jump in a little bit with what Patrick said, just because I am hopeful that this project will move forward.

The Rivanna Bridge project will move forward as part of our SMART SCALE applications, and I just want to clarify expectations.

What you just said, Patrick, while it sounds lovely to connect to the shared use path that already exists in Riverview Park, the feasibility study that

Just a couple of quick points.

I mean, I certainly have no objection to this being considered along with the other two options.

The one thing that I was thinking through and for getting into that, and I do like that idea of it being level and having none of it in the floodplain, that certainly benefits.

One thing I was thinking is, I guess getting a better idea or just thinking through in the process, the kind of routes pedestrian and cyclists would take to enter this one.

So thinking about like people coming down East Market, but I guess we now have to kind of like backtrack up Chesapeake and then over to Riverside to get on and then or like folks that are parking at Riverview Park having to do like a kind of walk around Chesapeake to get over.

So I don't know if you like include stairs there or I guess just thinking through as part of when you're considering the three kind of what

Great comment.

Thank you.

We're at 827.

We still have staff updates to go.

It sounds like generally the census bring all seven.

projects to the policy board.

Unfortunately, I don't think we got to provide comment on one through five, but unless there's any objections, we can keep moving.

Sandy, I hope I can volunteer you that if you guys do have comments, please feel free to email me.

I will pass them along to Sandy and she can share those comments with the policy board at their meeting.

So I am going to quickly share my screen.

Hey, Jessica, before we move forward, I just want to get clarity.

Yes, Sandy, did you want to say anything?

Sandy, did you want to say anything?

Sorry, Jessica, with the comments we made in regards to the proposals, will you be including those in your kind of, you pass them along to policy boards?

A couple about the flyover on 29.

I did have some concerns with that one that I raised earlier.

Hey, Travis, I know you brought up the cost issues.

There was $18 million that was left over from the Solutions 29 package of projects.

It's been sitting there waiting for a package to go in.

If we pull the current package, we'll probably lose that $18 million.

So that's something that we may want to consider moving forward, because then whatever we submit is going to have to stand on its own merit without any support from any other resources.

Just to clarify that for everybody who doesn't necessarily know that there was $18 million

that was put on that project to buy down the cost from $25 million to 5 million, well, about 5 million, a little over $5 million.

And that's why it was one of the highest ranking projects in the district and in the state.

But if we lose that, we may end up not losing everything.

The answer is it's complicated.

Our meeting was scheduled for May 26.

We are likely going to only meet to, I have not sent out the update, I have not confirmed this, so bear with me if this is incorrect.

There's a scheduling conflict with a

recently called a city council meeting.

So we're likely going to meet for half an hour just to do the public hearing for the unified planning work program.

And then we likely will put off all the other business for a newly scheduled meeting in June.

Great.

Okay, I'm going to quickly go into our transit updates.

We'll save any conversation about tips, stuff until our next meeting.

So as a reminder, the TJPDC was awarded two grants from DRPT to do transit planning studies.

The first of those was the Albemarle County Transit Expansion Feasibility Study.

and implementation plan.

So the purpose of this study is to do a study and an implementation plan for expanded transit service to population and employment centers within Albemarle County, particularly the Pantops area, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and along Route 29 North between the city limits and UVA Research Park.

So that's a really big, long stretch of 29 that they're considering.

This project, when we sent out the RFP, we clarified that we want to not only think of fixed route options, but to have innovative transit options to include on-demand service to emphasize accessibility and responsiveness to customer needs.

The budget for this planning study and implementation plan is $106,000 with half of that coming from DRPT, the other half coming from Albemarle County.

We at the PPC are managing the project, working directly with the consultants, but Albemarle County is very much involved in this project as well and making sure that we're moving towards an end product that

meets their needs.

The timeline for this project is a little different than what this slide says.

It's still about 10 months-ish.

We got started in, we really got started in like April and May.

The deadline, the end of this project will probably look like more like January of the next year.

And that still works for our overall goal of applying for having the appropriate transit agency apply for demonstration funding for to begin service as early as fiscal year 23, which is July 1, 2022.

So you might've heard that information before if you've been to any of our regional transit partnership meetings.

What we've done so far is we have determined who our consultant is.

We have a consulting team from Michael Baker and a group called Foursquare.

They are transit experts.

They are helping us with every piece of this study and helping us create the implementation plan.

They had a kickoff meeting with our advisory group

The advisory group was determined in part by Albemarle County bringing together residents, transit officials, and business and environmental interests.

So we've had that first meeting.

That advisory group will continue to meet on a monthly basis through the end of the project.

We have recorded those meetings.

We don't know how we're going to proceed in sharing those.

There are three informational presentations that are going to be completely public and they're going to be advertised so we can try to get as many people there as possible.

The advisory group, I will clarify, is not making any decisions.

They are very much advisory and helping the consulting team, providing input from their particular backgrounds and helping

That's a good question.

Let me move some coffee cups and look at a piece of paper that will tell me.

And while I'm looking, we can just ask more questions.

Oh, we're looking at our first meeting in late July.

Any other questions on this project?

Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sitting in the dark.

I'm going to scoot ahead a couple of slides.

Here is our other DRPT transit grant.

So this is the Charlottesville and Albemarle Regional Transit Vision Plan that you've heard about.

The overall purpose of this plan is for local leaders, transit agencies, and a wide variety of stakeholders to collaboratively develop a clear vision for the future of transit in our region.

We've since said that means we want the community to figure out what high quality transit looks like and then create a clear plan to achieve our vision of high quality transit.

Early work will gather data from a variety of sources to identify the types of transit service that can be supported on travel corridors throughout our region.

And the final work product will be a regional transit vision plan document that identifies short, long, and extended long-term actions that the community must take to support the community's vision for high quality transit.

We have an overall budget of $350,000 for this planning study.

Half of that comes from DRPT, a quarter of that comes from Abnerau County, and a quarter of that comes from the City of Charlottesville.

We have about 18 months to do this study.

We have a hard end of the end of next fiscal year, so June 30th of 2022.

This project has just moved a little bit slower because we have been very careful to meet with a lot of the stakeholders, not just at the Regional Transit Partnership meetings, but one on one with our staff to make sure that the end products of this study

really meet the community's needs so that elected officials and transit agencies all feel like they have the information they need to take clear steps forward.

So we've put a lot of work in on the back end.

We've since released our RFP.

We have received proposals and we are in the process of choosing the consulting team.

with the help of our selection committee.

So I would expect in the next couple of weeks, definitely at our next meeting, to be able to announce which consulting team we've chosen.

Just a quick question.

Jessica is the RFP or request for a bid.

I'm not sure how you're calling it.

So RFP stands for Request for Proposals.

It is not online.

We are using DRPT's bench contractors, so we have an attenuated process for how we're releasing what I should actually be calling an invitation for proposals that doesn't follow the same typical RFP process.

It looks a lot like an RFP though.

It is not online because we don't have to show, we don't have to put that out there.

We've just sent it to the appropriate consulting teams.

What I can say is we do write a memo and that explains why the selection committee has made its choice as to which of the proposals they felt was the strongest proposal and who's chosen as the consulting team.

And if you're curious, the four consulting teams that we have to choose from that we sent our RFP to or our invitation for proposals to is Michael Baker, Kimley Horn,

AECOM, and Sandy or Chuck, can you help me out?

I can't remember.

Sorry, any final questions on agenda item six before we move to final matters for the public?

All right, has anyone from the public joined since we started?

Okay, so then the recommendation is to close the meeting.

We can just close.

Okay.

Thank you, Stuart.

Thanks, everyone.

Good to see you and looking forward to our next discussion.

Thanks, everyone.

Everybody stay cool.

Bye.