Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee (2013-2026) Meeting   9/15/2021

A recording of the meeting will be posted at tjpdc.org within 10 days of the meeting.

Does anyone have any questions or concerns from our previous meeting back in July?

I'm guessing that's electric instead of electronic, but that's it.

If there's nothing, can we have a motion for approval?

I move to approve with those changes.

Who wants to say yay to that?

Yay.

Lucinda, would you like to take it away from here?

Any questions?

Lucinda, would you mind going back to showing the map of where this is all taking place, please?

And let me see.

There you go.

Any questions?

Are there transit things you're looking at?

There's not a lot of shoulder for buses to pull over and let people off and then also people would need to cross the road to get home or to their destination and that's a real problem right now with 29.2 and then if people need to walk or bike to their bus stops we need to have pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure there to support the transit that we want to see in the future.

But I'm sure you're all looking into all these options.

We're trying.

Unfortunately, I've not read the report completely yet, but was there any specific information obtained about the future of the airport and how it would impact that corridor?

I guess, Chuck, you can jump in and tell me if I'm wrong.

Can I make a comment here, please?

This is just a small suggestion here, which I think could impact what's going along that corridor in the future.

Looking at a future plan which would include widening, which currently we wouldn't have any way to get it funded.

I know I'd use it if it weren't gravel.

And we'd have to work with the county if they wanted to improve that route.

Yeah, I'm just thinking that would be less expensive than trying to widen 29.

That's why we were gonna look at alternative intersections like the R Cut for some of these situations where we can still move traffic at a reasonable amount of comfort on the corridor by rerouting some of the side street volumes through alternative intersection treatments like the R Cut.

Is this all residential growth that would commute into Charlottesville expectation every day?

And then that is a mix of commercial and residential.

Does that go all the way up to Greene County?

and most of it is zoned residential.

Is that like vehicle crashes, pedestrian crashes?

So really, there's only been that one pedestrian crash that wasn't impaired pedestrian.

Are there any other organizations or neighborhoods that are going to be possibly added or considered outside of the airport, Holley Mead, the NGIC, UVA Research Park?

We're just limited with the possible improvements we can put on the corridor just because of the sheer volume of traffic on 29.

I was wondering why we were so efficient.

But if you would like me to formally take a tenet, I'd be happy to.

Oh, if you already got it.

She said she's good, so feel free to keep moving forward.

Chuck, I believe this with you.

I've got like nine slides, but two of them are like pretty short.

So let me get to the right.

And then the last part is the link to our website which has a lot more information on both roundabouts but also all of the alternative intersections that we look at when we're looking at improving an intersection.

Yes, there have been a number of studies that have been done.

They're actually working on a third edition, which is probably going to come out sometime in the next couple of years.

But having some experience in Europe of what they are doing in Europe, I was sure that gala balls have better in several locations where there are some signal lines and in fact at some intersections which we are not signal lines.

Sorry, Tristan.

I was wondering, in what cases is it not a good use case?

And that's part of the evaluation process that we go through before we recommend a roundabout

So I've always liked roundabouts for that reason.

I have a question, but I'd like to show a screenshot so that I can better ask the question.

A peanut about.

Lee, you're muted, Lee.

Isn't the yellow vehicle gonna run into the blue one when the blue one turns across its path?

Let me go back up here.

Roundabouts everywhere and I think for that picture the way they had it we drove there is the people that are inside the roundabout on the inner portion always have priority so if you're on the outside you always have to pay attention to who's kind of in front of you on the left hand side if they want to exit out you have to yield for them.

And I haven't actually put any in in the district other than possibly hybrids like this.

I can't emphasize that, yeah, multi-lane roundabouts should be used with great caution because there's too many things that can go wrong.

Yeah with that one in that diagram that was more for not for really review like we're doing when we get to the striping plan on something like that and one of my recommendations on that because I looked at that whole corridor plan that they had was they may want to look at two through lanes on the for Rio Road and one lane for the circular end lane so you wouldn't have that issue of

I don't know if that'd be considered like a true multi-lane roundabout, but I know I've seen ones like that, that get at kind of providing two lanes without kind of mixing the traffic as much.

I can zoom in here real quick and show you the ones that Holly made real quick.

That was a perfect example of what you mentioned.

And we look at it on a case by case basis.

Yeah, thank you.

You're welcome.

This is Karim again.

Is that a thing that, what are your thoughts on that, I guess?

But for the passenger vehicles and the smaller vehicles, they would use it just like they would any other roundabout.

I think we're next ready, Sandy, for the SMART SCALE, round five stakeholder committee piece.

Nancy also.

It looks like it's being shown.

So yeah, I'd like to hear your thoughts at this time.

I'm not sure what happened.

Yeah, if I share my screen, I can't see you all.

Oh, okay.

So yeah.

Then another question, which maybe I don't know if Karim or Daniel have thoughts, but members of the City or County Planning Commission, possibly?

I think that makes sense.

This is Daniel.

Don't we have a specific bikers group that is represented with the county NPO?

Regarding your comment, Travis, on the citizen representative, I was thinking that probably at least one of those would be based on that Bike Fed Committee at Charlottesville.

So I think there should be somebody there that does understand that.

Can you clarify, would VDOT be providing the engineering support or would you all be able to continue to utilize consultants for this part of the process?

I've got to still work out the logistics on that, but that was my plan.

I believe their proximity to this might behoove to have them included.

There's like a thousand members in this public group for bike infrastructure projects.

Okay.

All right, any other thoughts?

It's a little bit on, you know, I don't know, they might be represented, but the Ruby Ann Atrell Foundation might be an interesting group to interact with on this project.

That is a good one.

So any thoughts on this list at this point?

Would maintenance and repair be part of your cost figure

It certainly would be from the city side because they would have to provide the maintenance for the infrastructure that is within the city.

as part of the project.

It sounds like maybe that should be a consideration then.

But that's something that we definitely need to consider.

I had a, sorry Sandy, can you say something?

No, I was just going to say that was a really good suggestion, thank you.

So now when they're showing the previous ones, the fact that one of the designs was only like one foot over flooded elevation was definitely seemed like a big concern.

Or are you thinking of it more as like an economic development impact?

Existing entry or exit points being used in that area that they're still provided for.

If anyone's been to the Haddon's Ferry, they know what I'm talking about if you get downstream of that ferry.

I know the route that I proposed, you know, Route 10 buses run right by the end of it there, so it'd be easy to put a bus stop right at the end, so that would make it convenient for people that wanted to walk half the way and ride the bus, the other half.

in discussions related to planning around the corridors and to provide as many alternative forms of access to these assets as we possibly can.

And if you're going to add this connection without adding additional parking, it could be problematic.

And also add bicycle parking to that too, in case people want to bike there and then go walk from there or take a bus from there.

But I mean, adding a bike rack wouldn't be that much of an issue.

Yeah, I'm just picturing like, I don't know how feasible it is, but if there is a transit route that goes there, if somebody rides their bike across the bridge, like from Pan Tops and then drops their bike off, send it for riding in the city and instead take the bus from there, something like that.

Is the proposed bridge going to connect to the old Mills Trail?

Am I remembering that correctly?

for any of the designs.

It's the Ravana Trail on the west side that's too low.

Yeah, we had to come in at higher elevation on both sides.

No.

It's not ADA compliant at all.

So I was like, then that would require an extended kind of project or why would we consider?

South Pantops Drive between State Farm and the new apartment complex to the east from the end of the trail, from the end of the bridge.

Any other questions or additional comments for Sandy to take away for this piece about factors to consider for prioritization and future discussion for this committee?

And we'll certainly keep you all aware once that advisory committee starts meeting.

Is that relevant at this moment to bring up?

Who wants?

Is anyone interested in taking such an appointment?

I will, but unfortunately I'm going to be out of the country for the first part of October, so I should probably not mountaineer for this one.

Well, I'll do it if nobody else will.

Awesome.

Thank you, Lee.

We'll add you to the list.

Sandy, is there anything else that we need to cover?

That was really helpful.

But anything you guys would like to discuss before we adjourn and proceed into public matters of the public and then close?

So I need to take that up with the policy board, I guess, but I just wanted to make you aware.

But yeah, you can certainly request at the policy board or see if they would like to consider that annotation in a revision to the minutes.

So, Sandy, can you confirm that before I really close this out?

I don't see anyone.

Thanks, everyone.

Thanks, everybody.

Have a good evening.

Take care.

See you guys.