Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee (2013-2026) Meeting   7/21/2021

Alright, so again, we'll just see you all so please verbally respond.

Daniel Bailey, Albemarle County.

Donna Chen, MPO, Nicholas Garber, Albemarle County.

Yeah, yes.

Thank you, Nicholas.

Gary Houston, Charlottesville.

Joseph French, Charlottesville.

Thank you, Ray.

Lee Kondor, Albemarle County.

Here.

Marty Meth, Albemarle County.

Thanks, everyone.

Great.

Well, does anyone need time to review the meetings from our last meeting?

The meeting minutes, I mean, not the meetings of the meetings.

I have to do the emergency statement.

All right.

The meeting of the citizen transportation advisory committee is being held pursuant to code of Virginia 2.2-3708.2, which allows a public body to hold electronic meetings in the locality in which it is located has declared a local state of emergency.

and the catastrophic nature of the emergency makes it impossible for an unsafe to assemble a quorum in a single location and the purpose of the meeting is to provide for the discharge of its lawful purposes, duties and responsibilities.

This meeting is being held via electronic video and audio means through Zoom online meetings and is accessible to the public with closed captionings and there will be an opportunity for public comment during that portion of the agenda.

Notice has been provided to the public through notice of the TJPDC offices, to the media, website posting and agenda.

The meeting minutes will reflect the nature of the emergency.

The meeting was held by electronic communication means and the type of electronic communication means by which the meeting is held.

A recording of the meeting will be posted at the CTPDC website within 10 days of the meeting.

And that's it.

Yeah, thank you.

No one in the room, all right, cool.

I just have a minor comment.

I think this is a correction.

I think it was two or two open the meeting, but it's been made clear that Tristan took over.

Am I correct here at the start of the meeting?

Can you hear me?

Is this a question about the meeting minutes?

Yes, the minutes.

Oh, I don't think I actually took over last time.

Okay, I thought I was here.

You said I'm here, so I thought you actually took over.

Okay, good.

Sorry.

Thanks for asking.

Look good to me.

So I'll move that they approve.

Great.

All right.

So let's do a vote then.

We'll just do it through a voice.

So listen.

So who says yay?

Any nays?

Rabstanes.

Great.

I think we're good to go on that.

Those are approved as written.

And then, yeah, well, let's get to the next topic, which is future topics.

So this right here is where the CTAC can ask questions or to the staff or for the next meetings we have in the next two months from now, or just raise any potential discussion topics that we'd like to talk through.

So in the next 10 minutes, we have set aside, we can discuss kind of future items.

So does anyone have any thoughts they would like to bring up last time?

Lee, I think you did a presentation on some drops you did.

Thanks for that.

So that was something we did last time to give you guys an example.

I do.

In looking at the staff recommendations for the smart scale projects,

The flyover option that I proposed for hydraulic 29 was not included there.

And one of the reasons for that was limited public engagement to date.

So I'd just like to suggest that we at least continue to kick that around.

I realized that, you know, there was originally a proposal that cost nearly three times that much to have grade separated intersections at hydraulic and Angus road.

but of course it was too expensive.

I think the proposal I'm offering is probably more feasible cost-wise.

And I think that if we, even if it doesn't make the cut for round five, I think it would be worth us kicking it around a little more, just to refine it and to possibly go further with it.

Okay, thank you.

It's noted.

Now, as far as for Lucinda, is there any thoughts on this?

These comments can

Great, all right.

So we'll expand on that perhaps, Lee.

Yes, I have a comment based on one of Lee's proposals from last time when Lee shared that with us

I had kind of right at the end of the meeting blurted out that I thought that his bike ped crossing of the Ravana might be improved by putting a bend in it.

I've since been over to the park and looked around and I think that would improve it.

But I don't have the,

the talent or the software to put it into a architectural rendering for you.

But the basic plan is to come from the east bank over to the west bank, sort of make landfall.

And at that particular pier, then bend it to the north and take it to add a ADA grade

down to what I think of as the upper trail.

There are leaving the park and the parking area at Riverview Park and heading north there are two trails, one that winds along the riverside and one that's a pretty straight shot kind of up on a cleared area at the back of the property lines of those homes along Riverview Avenue.

and rather than take it all the way up to Riverview Avenue.

I thought that would improve the flow in terms of people cycling on the trails and provide off street parking.

In other words, it would become more of a park bridge than a neighborhood bridge and yet be completely accessible to the neighborhood.

The other thing it would do, I think it would be improved by moving upstream a little

because in its location, going in a straight shot over to the vacant lot on Riverview Avenue, it kind of goes all the way across the playground area.

Whereas if it went upstream just a little bit, it could cross the lower trail and enter, there's kind of a wooded patch in between the two trails

It could progress through there at a decline and be, in my view, kind of like parts of the Saunders Trail where you're on a causeway amongst the trees.

The trees in there look to be, there's a few spectacular specimens, but there's mostly their saplings and a lot of undergrowth.

So it just looked more advantageous to me to do it that way.

And in terms of acquiring easements or ownership of that vacant lot, it seemed like it would take that out of the equation and might save a few bucks there.

It might also reduce complexity in terms of making it a parks and rec

instead of maybe public utilities, public works and all of those kinds of things that might happen if you have to hit a city street.

So, and I'd be happy to meet anybody over at the park and walk around and point and nod or whatever to get the,

You know, to bring more clarity than I'm bringing at this point, but basically just kind of back of the envelope calculations there in terms of reducing the height down to ground level and so on.

It appeared like it would work with the same number, perhaps one less of those spans.

I think they were 105 feet long.

So

That's what I, again, I offer.

This has been written down and whatever we're going to do with it, we're going to do with it.

Thank you.

So, so for that plan, so that bike pad path in Ravana Park,

Do we have something from the county or the committee that has been proposed that we're going to be looking at in the future?

I'm just trying to recollect from last time or did we review something?

Lee proposed two things.

He proposed the flyover and then there were two bridges that were downstream.

Each was downstream.

I think one interfaced with Market Street or maybe Riverview Avenue.

between Market and Chesapeake.

I don't remember where it came to ground.

I guess my question would be, what has been the county or the TJPDC's reaction to this?

Is there anything that's being done with this?

Yeah, I don't know.

I'm just offering it to Lee's plan if anybody's interested.

It might be moot.

Maybe to get VDOT money, you have to go to a city street or something.

I don't know that.

But I'm just saying, when I'm looking at Lee's plan, I think this is an amendment to it that improves it.

I'd certainly be willing to meet with you, Patrick, at the park to discuss it.

Yeah, there's no substitute for going onsite.

So yeah, that'd be great.

And I guess we can get in touch after the meeting or something or I can just throw it out.

I can ask Jennifer to just put my email out to all of you if you don't already have it.

I'll just note if we do discuss it further, I'm definitely more of a visual person.

Okay.

But again, my question goes back to this is that for CTAC, it's normally been we review what has been put together by the planning committees or the county.

In this case, we're helping on the creative end and proposing.

So where does this come into the process?

I can answer that.

So typically, so what is happening with the bridge specifics, what we're talking about is that we have had the, we'll cover this a little bit later too.

We've had the feasibility study.

This has been a project that keeps coming up over and over again on the local planning plans, as well as on the water and transportation plan, but the exact location and configuration is satisfied.

What happened is that,

VDOT funded a feasibility study to look at some potential configurations for the two bridges, which is the general projects that we started moving forward for SMART SCALE applications.

So what would happen as far as this project specifically and these additional suggestions for the bridge project is that we would

We would basically go through as part of the SMART SCALE development if this is one of the projects that is identified by the policy board and consider the alternatives as well as the additional suggestions that we've received and work from there to develop an application.

There are a number of considerations and factors that go into this besides just, you know, maybe technically what makes sense, you know, related to the ability to acquire right away or

maintenance and inspection lists and things like that.

So as part of that process, we would have those discussions with a stakeholder group that's identified.

But in general, to answer your question, really the entrance point for these new ideas or suggestions would really come through when we do our long-range transportation plan updates, because we want to start with a public process so that we're not necessarily starting with

One like really great creative idea, but we're going through a public process to identify what the priorities are for the communities as a whole.

And then once we figure out what the priority issues are that we feel like need to be addressed, we start from there to consider what are the options to address those issues and we want all of that to come through a public process.

So we want to start by identifying the community priorities.

And then from there, we start looking at what are the alternative

solutions, and from there, which of the alternative solutions are the best for any number of factors, including costs, including public support, including the ability to find funding for it, that kind of thing.

So really we have a process in place.

It's just that the time span between these processes is quite a bit.

So there's not necessarily

You know, an ongoing opportunity to just start being creative and suggesting ideas.

We need to start by getting them in the pipeline and from there we start, you know, moving forward from big high level priorities to, you know, finding specific design configurations.

Great.

Well, I believe we have the feedback from you, Patrick, and thanks, Lee, again.

Just, Tristan, this is Stuart.

Just one other item real quick.

I hear questions often about, you know, what can be done to reduce

Speed limits and traffic, I think they're called traffic calming studies.

Unless someone on the existing team has the expertise, maybe we could think about it in a future meeting, have someone come and speak about, you know, what neighborhoods can do to reduce speed limits or traffic calming studies, how that can contribute to, you know, basically making a safer, safer streets in Charlottesville.

Yeah.

I mean, I hate to add on something when we were just about to move, but one would be is the light timing.

I was curious if there's anyone from the county or from the commission that could speak to future projects that will be around the timing of lights.

I'm thinking about Pantops and other places where I seemingly have flipped the coin and hit

Tails, I think every time.

And so I'm just curious if there's anything in the works or if there's any kind of an expert that could talk through something like that.

I don't know if that would go along with the speed limits, but Stuart, you sparked that in my head.

I can sort of answer that question.

Each traffic light has what's called a permit drawing which specifies the timing.

In order to coordinate multiple lights, you have to have the communication infrastructure so that the controllers can all talk to each other.

And then, you know, an engineer

sits down and determines based on different times of day, like you'll notice on 29 where the lights are coordinated, the light timing is different in the afternoon than it is in the morning.

So that's all specified in a permit drawing that is prepared for VDOT, which becomes a legal document so that if anybody ever claims that the light

That was interesting.

I'll look that up on my own.

I don't mean to take anyone's time, but if there was any kind of policy or project around that, I was curious if there's anyone be able to speak to that, but if there isn't, don't worry about it.

I mean, I can talk about a little bit.

This is Chuck.

And we're actually doing a study.

One of our studies that we're moving forward this next several months is to look at pan tops.

And I know traffic engineering,

Pantops itself it was one of the first places we looked at adaptive signal timing plan where the signals would they look at the platoons as they were progressing and they would adapt their timing plan to accommodate the flow of traffic through that location and it would obviously modify the signal timing plans on the fly as it was

during the time of day, especially during those periods too, when they had gaps, it would allow more traffic from the side streets to enter.

And that was there for several years.

Recently, they just put in a new timing plan for that whole corridor.

And that was just originally, just initially, I mean, finished probably in the last couple of months.

And that was implemented.

So those are some of the things that, and they're coordinated through traffic engineering,

and actually the Northwest Regional Operations Center can go in and manually change signal time plans as they operate to adjust for traffic flows during specific times of the day but generally like Lee was saying they have a plan established and it's usually a time of day plan

during a specific period where the flows are mainly in one direction to accommodate that traffic flows into or out of the city.

And they vary depending on the time of day.

Usually there's a morning plan, a midday plan, and an evening plan.

And then you have an off-peak plan, which basically may go to on-call to where it calls based on the demand at this particular signal and it may not be

A plan involved at all.

Thank you.

I'd like to see, I don't know, I do think this would be an interesting subject for kind of a more detailed presentation at some point.

And I think it'd also be nice to just get a general, I know there are different levels of kind of adaptive signalization technology.

Yeah, it may vary depending on the system.

I know we had to re-change out all of the rollers for the Pantops corridor when that was originally put in.

And they periodically do that depending on the technology that's going forward and the type of detection they're trying to use at a particular intersection.

So I think those were just recently, like I said, the timing plan was recently changed.

and I think the controllers were recently updated.

They had done the 29 corridor previously as part of the Solutions 29 process and they used a similar type of plan at Pantops when they upgraded this system to what we have on the 29 corridor now.

But they used a varying communication system along the corridor and

especially at the city county lines like at Free Bridge and at Hydraulic, that's where the city county lines are and communications between our signal system and the city signal system, sometimes those are problematic and usually we have issues at those locations.

I think High Street is one of the signals that we control.

I'd have to go back and look and check with traffic.

And I know that Angus is one of the ones we're trying to take over.

This only seems to underline how we want to have this as a presentation.

I don't know why I find it so interesting, but I appreciate you going through that.

But I think this could go on for a while.

So I appreciate you- Yeah, good.

Yeah.

And we can coordinate that and get somebody from Traffic Engineering here

Yeah.

All right.

Well, great.

Well, thanks, guys.

I didn't mean to have that run so much.

I'd appreciate it.

Yeah, so I think we're over now, but I think we're ready to go to the next topic.

Thanks again, everyone.

I'm going to get caught up here.

So basically, when the governor's state of emergency for Virginia

At the end of June, we were expecting to go back to being required to hold our meetings in person.

What we realized is that since Charlottesville is under a locally adopted state of emergency and we're located in the city of Charlottesville, we're able to continue to hold our meetings remotely.

Under their locally adopted state of emergency.

So what we're talking about tonight is not basically a state of emergency policy.

It's related to the opportunity to allow some remote participation by committee members.

The pandemic is over and we go back to having to comply with the non-pandemic open mediated requirements.

So a couple of years ago, the General Assembly passed some legislation that allows remote participation in meetings of the public bodies under specific circumstances.

The important thing to note is that there still needs to be a forum that is present at the meeting in person.

And then from there, individuals who meet certain criteria outlined in the policy that was shared with you are able to take advantage of an opportunity to participate in up to 25% or two meetings per year, whichever is greater.

So for you all, since we meet every other month, there would be two meetings under certain conditions.

These conditions are pretty general in nature.

either because you yourself have some illness that precludes you from being able to be in attendance, you're caring for a family member that is ill and so you're unable to be in attendance or you have some sort of personal matter that makes it unable for you to attend in person.

So basically what you would need to do is that if you knew that you were not going to be able to

remotely using this policy you would need to contact the chair before the meeting and let them know that the policy does state with specificity but I don't think that that means you have to necessarily say what your particular illness is you just have to say what the circumstance is that makes you unable to participate in person and then what would happen is that

The chair would bring that to the members of the committee that are meeting in person and they would vote on whether to allow you to participate remotely.

So all of this language that is in your packet today is based on the state legislative language.

So we did not write this language ourselves or put these particular allowances.

in the policy, but if you would like to have some opportunity to continue to allow remote participation, once the state of emergency is lifted, you can go ahead and adopt this policy, which would allow it under these circumstances.

Just one question.

We are having all of the committees and the MPO decide individually as their own public body.

I don't have any objections to it.

I'm just curious if, how we see this kind of working in practice.

It would be very similar to what you see here today.

So there'd be more people around the table than just Jessica and myself.

But we would continue to, we plan to continue to use the Zoom technology regardless to allow for more participation from members of the public.

So you would just be able to use the same technology that you're using right now to call in and yeah.

And so anybody who's participating remotely, we have a large screen TV that's set up so we'd be able to interact with them.

I'm not against it, but I'm just concerned about the record of the, on the record of action, when it says that the citizen transportation advisory committees merely shall reflect the specific nature of the personal matter, the disability or medical condition.

What does that mean?

Somebody has, the person has to tell the chair, what is the disability or medical condition?

Well, again, this is the language that's specifically in the state legislation, so we have not changed this from that wording.

In the past, it's been, it would go through the county staff.

So like, Jessica, you would like sometimes receive an email.

I've never done this, but like, if I was sick, I was like, hey, I can't make it.

Can Stuart cover?

That would be the end of it.

Are we saying we would change it if you want to go use the Zoom link that I would assume would be on the agenda?

You would need to, I mean, the Zoom link is going to be there.

Like Sandy was saying, we will continue to hold meetings in this hybrid fashion.

You would need to speak to staff who could pass it along to the chair.

So that would happen during the attendance check at the beginning of the meeting, right?

Yeah, you would need to reach out before the meeting.

And I mean, Christine just posted in the chat, if you want to not see that, just confirm it.

You need to specify which exception.

So I'm unable to attend due to a personal disability or medical condition, or I'm unable to attend due to the fact that family member's medical condition requires me to provide care for my family member, and I'm unable to attend.

So not the specific medical condition.

Yeah, I don't, I mean, I know that this was developed, this question has come up, this was developed specifically to reflect the language that's in the state.

So I'm not sure, I don't know, Christine, if you're able to chime in at all to know if there's any opportunity to change letters, specify it.

I think also given the pandemic, simply stating concern for health or due to the COVID epidemic, I think that this group would certainly not require

The town of Scottsville early on in the COVID response ran hybrid meetings in both their planning commission and their town council and which means they've been doing

doing that for over a year.

I believe at the height of the response, they went totally virtual as we've been doing.

They're back doing hybrid and have had good feedback and are gonna continue to do that even when meetings are fully open.

So somebody at MPO could maybe talk to

Matt Lawless down there and see how they handled this issue.

Just the language issue that's come up here.

Matt's the town administrator down there.

The difference, of course, is that you're multi-jurisdictional and they're a pretty discreet little organization.

You know, everybody in town knows everybody.

But what they did was just as has been said here, I have a medical condition.

Somebody in the household has a medical condition and we're caring for them or whatever.

Yeah, I have the specific language of the code pulled up if it helps at all.

I'm happy to dump that into the chat.

I don't see any concern if you guys wanted to revise language

to fit what's in the code.

I'm trying to make sure I don't drop like a 700 line paragraph.

Hang on real quick.

I don't think that would work because I don't think this is prepared only for the COVID.

No, this isn't designed to be used after COVID.

Exactly.

That's why I don't think that talking about COVID is necessary.

If it's designed for after COVID, it means it's a long-term thing.

And I think that part should be clarified.

It's important.

For all of us now, we may agree that we understand what is intended.

But five years down the line, or three years down the line, somebody else could be chair of this committee and feels different.

Yeah, what Christine put in the code is maybe we could reflect.

Sandy, I'm so sorry to interrupt you.

No, it's not referring to COVID.

I understand.

Okay, thank you.

That's helpful to clarify.

Thank you.

But if you guys would like us to revise that sentence to make sure that it doesn't imply to any chair or future chair that they have to disclose a personal medical major, we can certainly revise that and bring it back to you if you're not comfortable.

I think I just know looking at this language you posted in the chat, Christine, that I don't see anything in there about the

It says if participation is improved, the public body shall also include in its minutes the specific nature of the personal matter cited by the member.

Got you.

So I guess when I'm reading the language, it's just not super clear to me that specific nature only applies to personal matter based on the way it's worded.

So if we could just make it more clear that specific nature is only tied to that one and not the

Yeah.

Okay.

There are protocols within the medical community about privacy and I might be wrong, but I think there's something called HIPAA.

No, yeah, certainly.

Yeah, and so just a line about this requirement in no way violates HIPAA or whatever you want to reference, meaning that your medical privacy is preeminent.

We could, just for the sake of being able to move this policy forward, we could just take that phrase, the Citizen Transportation Advisory Committee's minutes shall reflect and start with the disability or medical condition.

Well, I don't know.

We could just move the specific nature of the personal matter.

Yeah, I think that might work if we just put that towards the end.

I don't hear, I think it's Jessica is speaking in the hall.

I know it baffles Claire.

I'm sorry, it was Sandy.

I said, I don't hear you clearly when you are saying.

Somehow, I don't hear you clearly when you speak because I don't know whether it's my computer

I don't know but I hear everyone clearly.

I was going to basically ask or indicate what I think I'm hearing is that on the first line on A for the remote electronic participation memo, are we indicating that we would want to change the language where it says the member shall notify the chair that he or she is unable to attend the meeting and end it there and you don't have to give a reason and you would be asking for the ability to or just indicating you would be using remote electronic means to attend.

No, because the same code requires that we specify why there is remote participation.

What we are talking about right now is just changing the order of the phrasing, so under section C where it says record of action.

We would start by saying the Citizen Transportation Advisory Committee shall reflect and then we would start with the disability or medical conditions semi-colon, the fact that a family member's medical conditioner that required the member to provide care for such family member,

And then we would add the specific nature of the personal matter, semicolon.

I'm wondering as to how much can we change on this?

Do we even need to include that?

I mean, again, like what Patrick was saying, HIPAA, I would indicate that I would ask why can't we just say the meeting minutes shall reflect that someone had to attend via remote.

We are able to move the words around.

So, I mean, we're all volunteers.

What I'm hearing is that that might just indicate that person would not join if they wanted to protect their privacy.

Yeah.

It's unfortunate.

Sandy, to what you said, I think just a minor tweak at the beginning.

Yeah, that's helpful.

And understanding the memo, am I understanding it correctly that someone who does attend remotely will not contribute to the quorum?

Yeah.

Yeah, it looks okay to me.

Move to approve with the amended language under C. Second.

Okay.

So we have this motion ready for approval then with the amendment.

and C, I guess the reordering of that sentence.

So we'll go with yays first.

Do you guys like to say yay?

Please just voice.

Yay.

Yay.

Cool.

Any nays or abstains?

Looks like the yays have it.

So CTAC's approved it with the amendment.

Cool.

I think we're ready for the next piece.

I'm going to share my screen.

I have a presentation.

So I think I came to you when we first started this study.

went through it and I've spoken with some of you offline getting feedback and good ideas.

I just want to go through the findings like so we'll talk about the need.

I'm going to go through each chapter in the study with you and then take comments and questions.

So the study is on the website.

We're getting quite a few comments.

So we are considering making some additions.

But at this point, the study was in last fiscal year.

Hey, Lucinda.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yes.

Yes, thanks.

I will be close to the computer.

So we looked at electric vehicle charging stations in the region 10 and the entire TJPDC region.

And our objective was to look at what the region can do to support residential electric vehicles.

So the benefits of electric vehicle use.

Transportation is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the MPO area.

And as you know, a lot of the communities here are looking to reduce their greenhouse gases.

So electric vehicle use can be a big part of that.

Electric vehicles produce less emissions than the power vehicles.

and it's like almost 70%.

And this number is including the carbon emissions used to produce the electricity.

So EV registrations have grown in the TJPDC area from 2008 to 2019.

and the infrastructures.

We looked at all the charging stations.

There's 35 in the area.

You can see the map better in the report.

And an interesting thing we found is that the number of public charging stations pretty much doubled in the last couple of years.

So it's definitely catching on.

And one of the things that we found is that 80% of privately owned electric vehicles, the charging is completed at home.

And we looked at the number of homes that would be able to easily install an electric vehicle charger.

And to do that, we broke out single family houses and then multi unit houses because if you live in an apartment building or even a townhouse, it will be more difficult to get electricity to your parking spot if you have a parking spot.

And set up a charger.

So that was one of the things that we thought was important for the area to know.

Because there's an estimated 40,000 housing units in the region that have potential barriers to installing the home charging facilities.

So strategies to encourage personal EV use.

What we looked at was one of the things that we found was financial incentives for vehicle purchase and charging.

There's a huge upfront cost of purchasing the vehicle and then also installing a charging station is kind of

Financial incentives like tax credits are really useful to helping adopt EV technology and also supporting the installation of charging infrastructures for residents who do not own or park close enough to have EV charging at their residence.

So some strategies that we identified to support the personal UV use is to install charging infrastructure in public parking spaces that residents use to park overnight.

And we had some examples of communities in Europe that install

EV chargers on the light posts in neighborhoods.

So when people are parking overnight on the street, they can plug their EV in and charge it from the light post.

Also, the localities can provide guidelines for EV charging stations and develop local ordinances and policies to encourage new housing developments to include EV charging infrastructure.

One of the things is that it's very hard to add EV charging infrastructure after the garage is built because the electric lines need to be run before the garage is built.

So make ready standards, encourage new facilities when they're installing garages to provide electrical capacity necessary to accommodate future charging infrastructure.

That would save a lot of money and time.

So we wouldn't be requiring the developer or builder to actually install EV charging stations, but we would ask them to make the parking spaces have electricity

available so that in the future if somebody did want to install a charging station, they would be able to.

And then the second highest place that residents charge their electric vehicles are at work.

So employers encourage employers to install EV charging stations for employees.

And there's examples of all of this in the report.

Oh, and that's it.

Lucinda, did you come across anything that talked about the building code for new single-family developments?

Because there's also just the cost of a homeowner to have to upgrade the electrical infrastructure, even in a single-family home garage, to be able to install a home charging station.

I did not come across anything specific to that.

No, I did not.

Hey, this is Stuart.

Great report.

The two things I would add about, you know, adoption is one, just general awareness.

You know, people have heard of electric vehicles, but they don't actually know much about them.

So awareness campaigns.

And then also, you know, you mentioned incentives, just highlighting that Virginia General Assembly passed an equitable electric vehicle rebate in the most recent General Assembly, but unfortunately it was unfunded.

So

I'll just agree with Stuart, great report and a lot of really interesting information.

I especially like the just updated info on the commuting patterns.

I thought that was very interesting to see.

One thing I just also suggest, including in reports and presentations like this, you know, I know we're so focused on greenhouse gas emissions these days that we don't often think about local air pollution benefits, but those are also huge from electric vehicles and I think also worth noting.

Noise pollution is another one.

They're so quiet.

I just want to make the comment that I think it's an important story.

But what are the plans to move forward for implementation?

I believe that Albemarle County, I know Charlottesville is already moving forward on it.

They have a grant program, they've installed chargers and Albemarle County also, the most recent chargers that were installed in our area were in Albemarle County parking lots.

Yeah, City Hall, they installed several recently.

Do we have any metrics as to what their usage has been?

I think it's very recent, like in the past month or two, right?

But is this gonna key into that at all?

Cool.

I think the other thing is that eventually we need to get the utility involved.

Dominion.

When I was in San Diego, the power company there is who installed the majority of the charging station.

Great.

Well, understood.

One more suggestion, Lucinda.

I know in our literature review, when we were doing our EV study, we found that for people who are already EV owners, when the utilities have special rates, like, you know, off-peak hour electricity rates for charging, that also encourage them to use their EVs more.

Like if they have one EV and one gasoline car in their household, if there is a special electricity rate that help them, encourage them to use the electric vehicle more often than the gasoline one.

Yeah.

Well, if we decide to do another study on this, I'll definitely contact you.

I found your report really useful.

I definitely use the information in it.

It's interesting because I was just reading that gas rates are more variable than electricity rates.

Donna, would you mind sending that report around to the group?

Yeah, let me see if I can find something that's in a presentation version.

It's an academic research report, so it's not super easy to read.

I can share it with the group.

Thank you.

Well, great.

If there's nothing else for Lucinda, thanks for that.

I'll go ahead and share my screen.

All right.

So I know everybody is probably kind of tired of hearing about

about this timeline, this process now.

But just real briefly, as a reminder, we started this process in March and we've been following the schedule and timeline where we have developed initial list of projects.

We went through this process of hearing if there were any additional requests from the localities or from you all and the other policy board meetings.

We finalized our list of potential projects

May into June since we had to reschedule our policy board meeting.

And so now we're at the July meeting where we are going to be asking the policy board next week to actually determine which of the projects that they would like us to move forward to develop into applications.

So if you recall, we are asking you all, we're not gonna ask you to vote, but we're just gonna ask for your feedback on which of the projects you would like the policy board to move forward with.

As a reminder, we have four applications from the MPO itself that we are going to prepare for application submissions.

And of those, the policy that we've identified up to two of them could have a higher level of engagement either because it needs additional technical support to develop the application or because there needs to be more community engagement.

So just as a reminder that our

that when we developed the staff that I met with in Charlottesville and Albemarle as well as VDOT, identified a couple of goals for moving projects forward.

So the goals that staff had identified were that we want to submit applications that will be competitive based on the way that SMART SCALE projects are scored based on that cost compared to the benefits.

We want to submit projects that embedded their public process, that have demonstrated public support already,

and that are continuing to move projects through that pipeline that we talked about a little bit earlier.

So there's already an existing planner study that I've completed for those projects.

So just as a reminder, this is the list of projects that we initially have started out with.

The District Avenue and Hillsdale Avenue extension projects were the two projects that were left on the constrained long range transportation list.

So that's on the short list of really high prioritized projects that was developed when we went through that last ball range transportation project.

These are the last two projects that have not been funded from that short list of prioritized projects.

And then the other projects that staff have moved forward for consideration were the Miranda River Bike and Pedestrian Crossing, as we already talked about,

and then submissions for projects on 8 Mount Street and 5th Street, which have just been completed, have had completed corridor studies on those, looking at some multi-modal improvements along those corridors.

And as you recall, in our previous meeting, Mr. Kondor had also suggested adding this US-29-250 flyover project in addition to another configuration for the Ravenna River Bike and Pedestrian Crossing.

So just real briefly, like I said, we're going through those criteria that we had identified.

And so this is just going to be a real brief summary of what those considerations are for each of the projects.

The District Avenue Roundabout is an $8.4 million project, which was estimated in the Long Range Transportation Plan.

That estimate is a little outdated at this point, so that cost estimate is likely to increase.

but it was recommended in the hydraulic smell area plan.

And initially staff had said that there would need to be minimal engagement at this point because it is a project that went through a pretty robust public and stakeholder engagement process.

After talking to MPO tech though, there is some concern that there will be some right of way impacts that will affect a duplex on a portion of this property

And so because there will be an impact to some affordable housing units, they felt like there probably does need to be some additional outreach to the community just to make sure that they're aware of that and to make sure that that is considered as part of the process.

The Hillsdale Avenue Extension Project, this is extending Hillsdale Avenue all the way to a connection with 250 and part of that project would be removing these turning ramps from 250 onto 29 and vice versa and redirecting those traffic configurations through this local road

This was submitted around for SMART SCALE application and the project cost at that point with all of the VDOT contingencies and inflation included was a little over 34 million dollars.

So staff's concern for this one was that this project is not likely to score competitively just due to the sheer cost of the project even though it's a high priority.

So at this point, staff is not recommending that this project moves forward, even though it does meet all the other criteria.

Holding onto this contingency that the PDC, the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, also has additional project applications that they can submit.

Sandy, I just had a question on this one.

So my question was, I went back and looked at the results of SMART SCALE for round four, and I know this one wasn't recommended, but it looks like it wasn't far off.

It was, I think, one of the first couple in the district that was not recommended for funding.

I'll take a first stab at this and then Chuck can jump in if I need to.

It's not necessarily that we would anticipate it would explore worse.

It's that there was a huge additional amount of funding that was contributed to this last round that is not going to be something that continues due to the increase in the wholesale fields tax that started being collected.

So what happened is that that tax went into effect last year in 2020.

and for VDOT projects, the projects are programmed six years out.

So what happens is that basically you have six years of that new wholesale fuels tax that's being collected that was all applied to this last round of SMART SCALE.

So we're not going to have the same level of funding.

Yeah, thanks.

Do you want to add anything to that, Chuck?

No, I think you covered it.

I mean, that was the reason.

Plus it's only eligible for high priority, which we've got some high priority money this time, but most of that was in the higher level projects.

The next project we already discussed a little bit earlier was the Urbana River bike and pedestrian crossing.

The two configurations that were shown in red, as you may recall, are the ones that were developed as part of the feasibility study and then Mr. Kondor had suggested this additional configuration.

So the two projects in red, the two configurations, ranged between $11 and $15 billion.

This is on a number of area plans for the

The concern that staff had is that even though the cost is not exorbitant it is a little high for this type of project and so they did want to recommend that the project move forward with as one of the projects that needed additional engagement to develop but instead of just focusing on

I think that it would also be helpful to spend a little bit more time looking at opportunities to further reduce the cost to see if we can make this project a little bit more competitive.

So if this project is moved forward, as I indicated earlier, part of what would go into the development of this application would be some of the stakeholder and public engagement to really nail down the configuration considering all of the factors, including costs, including feasibility, including impacts on area of residence, including public support,

We talked a little bit about Avon, the Avon Street multi-modal improvements.

The project's scope that we have looked at initially with staff is in red and then after talking to the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County, really they came to a consensus that they'd like to build on extending the existing pedestrian network and trying to create

A comprehensive network of facilities where there's currently a gap.

So what they had identified was really focusing on this area between Jewett Avenue where there are bicycle lanes that drop off.

At that point as you're traveling down Avon Road and then going south into Albemarle County to at least Avon Port where there's a park and ride.

There was a discussion about potentially extending this even further down to the street parkway to try to get some bicycle and pedestrian facilities.

That would be ideal.

The concern was whether or not a project that was that long would be able to support competitively.

So that is part of what we could evaluate moving forward.

I also want to mention that Albemarle County is also pursuing some of these projects for the recommendation that came out of their Avon board or studied on the southern end through revenue sharing.

So there would be an opportunity to build on some momentum around Avon Street, even in addition to what we would be applying for for SMART SCALE.

This was the recommendation from staff for that.

We don't know the project costs to be determined, but we would certainly work to be making that as competitive as possible.

And then for the fifth street multi-modal improvement, we had a really robust conversation about this with MPA Tech yesterday.

So again, my thought initially was that it could be that there are a couple of different projects that come out of one of these borders.

And the discussion that we focused on in MPOTech was whether this should be where that occurs or not.

So the recommendation from staff is that we would look at the intersection improvements at 5th Street Parkway and go ahead and do one application that would look at some of those intersection improvements which were estimated at about $2.8 million just for the intersection improvements.

Then also incorporate some bicycle and pedestrian improvements going north towards Harris Road.

And what this would do is this would connect to the history trails and hub smart scale project that was approved in round four.

So it would, again, continue the existing bicycle network even further.

The other conversation that we had with

With MPO technicals, whether or not there maybe should be another application a little bit further south.

So the discussion is that right now until we know what's happening with the energy change right here at 64, it doesn't make a lot of sense to pursue any sort of improvements since those would likely be disrupted.

So the next opportunity would be looking at making these connections down here and where we left that discussion is that the District Avenue roundabout was a really high priority for Albemarle County and one way or the other that would most likely be pursued either by Albemarle or by the MPO and so they felt like that was a higher priority because it was

and that Albemarle County or the PDC could submit an additional application for improvements further south on the Pitt Street corridor.

So they did recommend just including this one project at this point, leaving an opening for either Albemarle or the PDC to submit an additional application.

So then this is a project that Mr. Kondor had discussed and

We've discussed this quite a bit with staff and with VDOT and there is some merit to the project.

However, it feels like it's preliminary to bring this forward at this point.

So remember the evaluation criteria that we were using is looking at the cost and benefit analysis, wanting it to be vetted through a public process, being documented in a liberal plan.

And at this point, this application does not meet any of those criteria.

There could be an opportunity to revisit this in the future around the SMART SCALE, but at this point we would really need to start a public process to get through to identify this as a priority before staff can comfortably support it.

So that is why this specific project is not recommended to move forward at this point.

And here's just a summary of that analysis that I went through so you can see it all in one place.

So the staff recommended scenarios are the district avenue roundabout with, sorry, these are the CTAC recommendations, the district avenue roundabout with additional moderate engagement to do some outreach, the Ravana River bike pedestrian crossing with a high level of additional engagement and outreach,

and then the two projects I just went through with Avon Street corridor and 5th Street corridor with a minimal amount of outreach because there had just been plans recently completed.

Just a quick question.

Yeah, I don't know the Avon Street corridor.

The portion in the city for Avon Street, they would likely just be

starting at least with on-road bicycle lanes, which is what is available up to Druid Street.

But going into the city, I know that they want to have actually a separated special use, shared use path at that point.

So I don't know what the cost estimate would be.

I would, yeah, I mean, I could throw out a number.

It's based on nothing.

Not at this time.

We were waiting to see what projects were going to come out of this.

And then we'll start looking at concepts and cost estimates.

Sure.

And then for Fifth Street, the intersection improvements themselves will be about $2.8 million.

And I know they did have a cost estimate.

What staff has suggested was sidewalks and then, again,

on street bike lanes through there.

And I want to say that that was maybe an additional $5 million or so based on that district corridor study.

Yeah, I don't recall off the top of my head, but it's probably in that neighborhood somewhere.

I'd have to go back and look.

I know the intersection improvements were reconfiguring that left turn, northbound left turn and moving it to a different location.

as well as putting sidewalks and bike lanes.

And then it transitions as you move south to a shared use path.

Great.

This is Stuart, you know, perhaps a topic for a future conversation.

But, you know, I would just like to highlight that it's important when development is being done that this type of thing is incorporated, you know, when Fifth Street

That area, the big shopping area was developed.

It should have included all this stuff.

So we're not having to go back after, you know, two years after it's completed and consider how people not on cars get there.

So, you know, perhaps a topic for another time, but just the importance of when we do development in the city,

And that's a good point.

I know for, on the southern portion in the county, there is a development at the corner of Olensburg Road that's proposing, that's proposed and that's being reviewed right now.

And as part of that, they're going to build a shared use path

That's called out in this plant on their side of the road along that frontage.

So that is something that we are getting built by the developer of that property.

So Chuck or Sandy, just to clarify for that, the 5th Street intersection improvements, we're just talking about like turn lanes not adding any actual like vehicle lanes to that area.

No, we weren't adding additional lanes.

I think they were basically eliminating the northbound left turn lane and shifting it to

Shifting that movement to Harris Street and then we were adding bike and pedestrian facilities along that corridor and there was a couple of different alternatives but I think the main alternative was sidewalk on one side and bike lanes and then a shared use path on the other side with bike lanes.

So those are the kind of things that we were looking at more so than more lanes.

I mean, so generally, if you don't support the CTAC or the MPO tech recommendations, that would be helpful to narrow the policy board.

I was asking because I find it difficult to differentiate to lay more importance to either the 8th Street or the 5th Street, because I do not have the feel of the advantages and disadvantages of each one of them.

Yeah, in the agenda, it looks like we're being asked to provide a recommendation to the policy board.

And so the question would be is, is this just saying, hey, we don't see problems at this point?

That was an error on my part to include that asterisk.

Last time, and if you would like to, you can do it again.

Well, speaking for myself and backing up what Nicholas just said, I would say, yeah, it would be great to get more details on the TBDs that would give us more insight into what could be the future for those projects.

So do we want to go one by one or do you guys feel the need for that?

You guys can shout out saying you want that or not.

Otherwise, we can just say, good to go for now.

I offered a counter recommendation which I sent to the policy board.

I don't know if you all would like to see it.

I sent a copy to our staff people so they could put it up here for you all to see if you want.

Sorry, I did not have it ready to go.

We're changing the agenda as we go.

So thanks for being flexible.

Well, I was just making the case for not doing District Avenue basically for the round four SMART SCALE because that $35 million total expenditure really doesn't do anything for the traffic flow in 29.

And so I,

Yeah, there she is.

She has it.

Lee, is this one of those ones we just saw that the staff also did not recommend?

That's correct.

The staff did not recommend this.

But I provided here the rationale for why it doesn't make sense.

to do District Avenue, but just to briefly summarize this, I mean, previously the proposal was to do grade separated intersections with 29 with Hydraulic and Angus Road, but the cost was well in excess of a hundred million dollars to do that, so it didn't go anywhere.

and right now that section of 29 is the last remaining bottleneck on US 29 all the way from Danville to Gainesville.

VDOT spent hundreds of millions of dollars eliminating bottlenecks, especially Lynchburg and even Culpeper and certainly Gainesville and so, you know,

incentive to do something to actually fix the problem is pretty good.

So yeah, go on to the next slide.

So their own data shows that if you do what they're proposing, which is eliminating left turns from hydraulic road to US 29 and putting roundabouts in that,

at the intersection of Hydraulic and Hillsdale and Hydraulic and District, as far as US 29 traffic goes, the level of service still remains a D. So that changing that traffic light timing to eliminate the left turns really only gains you about 168 vehicles an hour in each direction, which

When there's 2200 vehicles per hour at peak hours, that doesn't do much for you.

So going on to the next slide, there's also a couple of unintended consequences from doing what they were going to do.

Those proposed roundabouts, for instance, there's not enough room for them to do

anything but the absolute bare minimum 100 foot, 50 foot inscribed circle diameter for a multi-lane roundabout.

And I feel based on that, that the traffic flow at each of those intersections is actually gonna be degraded relative to the existing traffic signals.

The second unintended consequence is that Green T at the intersection US 29 and Angus Road

makes Holiday Drive inaccessible from southbound US 29.

I mean, basically if you're southbound on US 29, you wanna go to Holiday Drive, you pretty much have to get on to 250 eastbound and get back off again, go around the ring on the ramps to get to Holiday Drive.

So bottom line is after spending $25 million

the round four smart scale project and another approximately $10 million on round five smart scale for the roundabout at District Avenue, you not only didn't make things much better, but in some regards you made them worse.

So then the final slide is, rather than wasting $35 million, why not spend $50 million and solve the problem?

There's a list of nine reasons why this solution works better.

So, as I said, I sent this to the policy board for their consideration, but I don't disagree that further public engagement is necessary.

And I think we should lead the charge to do that.

This isn't gonna go anywhere until we have that additional

Public Engagement until VDOT reviews the design and offers their input on how to do it and the cost and on and on.

I must say this is why I hesitated a lot about the smart scale system of evaluating.

I think we have better deterministic ways rather than using a sort of subjective way.

because there are so many factors which are not taken into consideration in evaluating these different objectives.

I don't think we can do anything about it now, but I think that we should have at the back of our minds to see whether we want to continue this SMART SCALE process or really develop some deterministic objective methods to do these evaluations.

The amount individually may not be a lot of money, but when you put all of it together, it's quite a lot of money and we may not be getting the

bang for our bucks.

So I would suggest that some of these things should be looked upon as when you are looking at many projects, look on the benefits advantages of one above another for us to decide rather than just depending on some subjective way and putting up estimates.

When we are talking a very small amount, I can agree.

But when we start talking about millions, I think we have to have a deterministic way of doing this.

Yeah, I will say, though, that part of that was done during the hydraulics area plan.

I was not there for that project.

But that was what the goal was, was to put these systems together.

The problem was that this was a hydraulics 29 intersection was identified as a really high priority.

And we were not just flat out, we're not going to get funding to do what we really wanted to do with all the pieces in place.

So what we did last year in round four, and Chuck could talk more about this if you all want, I do want to be mindful that it's 8.32 now though, is try to break out where can we make some improvements that are still going to have some benefits that are going to score well enough to actually be funded.

We can create really great ideas, but it doesn't do us a lot of good if we can't find funding to implement them.

So that was really the priority when we applied for round four.

The other thing that I'll say is that what Mr. Kondor is proposing versus what has been moved forward for the hydraulic project so far are really addressing two different problems.

So one of them is addressing the through traffic from 250 to 29, and the other is addressing the local circulation of people moving within the area.

So it's a different type of solution that he's offering for a different type of

for a different type of traffic movement that is trying to be accommodated.

No, I would agree.

I mean, we considered a flyover option and it's been considered many times before and it hasn't had any public support and that's been part of the issue.

It addresses one aspect of moving traffic vehicles

not pedestrians, it talks about, I mean, it's basically how to move vehicle traffic north-south through this area to the limited access facilities on the 29-250 bypass.

It doesn't address the pedestrian, the bicyclist, and how these other intersections operate.

And that's why it does have its advantages for the through movement

of vehicles, but it doesn't address those other movements and those other aspects of what we're trying to accomplish.

And like I said, I like the concept and I do something very similar to it as when we did the hydraulic 29 study and we had a discussion about it.

We never really got into the details because it didn't really come up as they wanted to have any

of that type of concept presented at that time.

But we developed a concept similar to what he's showing at that time.

We'd have to do some more stuff and some more evaluations.

The biggest thing is to move forward, we'd have to do a lot more detailed analysis and study, look at alternatives,

Completely what he's proposing to do to include the stormwater management and the other aspects of it.

And that's just that part of it.

We'd have to go back through and if you wanted to include those,

Those would have to be added to that cost of that project as they are now.

Right, the $25 million does include a bike ped bridge across 29, which currently there's no way to cross 29 by bike or pedestrians without taking your life into your hands.

Just another note.

One additional concern I raised last time.

Yeah, so I mean, I guess that's a good discussion here, but as far as for next steps from the staff, what do you guys need from us?

All right, great.

Well, if that includes that, thanks, everyone.

And thanks, Lee, for walking through that.

And thanks, Chuck.

All right, so I don't believe we have any members of the public here for this final piece.

Is that correct before we conclude?

That's correct.

All right, great.

Well, then, if there's nothing else, everyone, we're adjourning.

It's 836.

And thank you for your time.

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Bye.

Is it ended?

Oh no!

Okay.