Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee (2013-2026) Meeting   1/19/2022

So welcome, everyone, calling the meeting.

CTAC, January 19 is the day today.

To order, time is 7.02.

So first matter, maybe we take attendance.

I would be happy to.

Tristan?

Tristan, I don't know if you're trying to speak in cat, but if you could just, yeah, there you go.

Thumbs up.

Stuart.

Here.

Daniel Bailey.

Here.

Lucas.

Here.

Donna.

She told me she would not be able to make it tonight.

Karim.

Here.

Ray Heron, I don't see him.

Lee?

Here.

Did I miss anybody?

All right.

This meeting of the Citizen Transportation Advisory Committee is being held pursuant to the Code of Virginia Section 2.2-3708.2, which allows a public body to hold electronic mediums when the locality in which it is located has declared a local state of emergency.

And the catastrophic nature of the emergency makes it impracticable or unsafe to assemble a quorum in a single location.

And the purpose of the media is to provide for the discharge of its lawful purposes, duties, and responsibilities.

This media is being held via electronic video and audio means to resume online meetings and is accessible to the public.

There'll be an opportunity for public comment during that portion of the agenda.

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

The meeting minutes will reflect the nature of the emergency that the meeting was held by electronic communication means and the type of electronic communication means by which the meeting was held.

Thank you, Sandy.

Okay, so as per our agenda and typical, we always allow for matters from the public, three minutes per speaker.

So members of the public are always welcome to provide comment of any public interest, transportation related topic.

So are there any members of the public here today that would like to speak?

OK. Yeah, I don't see any hands up.

I would like to know.

All right, so no matters from the public.

Next item is typically to review the meeting minutes prior and ask for a motion to approve.

So do people need time to look at the minutes from our last meeting?

Or are we ready to ask for a motion to approve?

Okay, so no amendments moved to approve by Lee.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Second from Nicholas.

So the meeting minutes from our last meeting, November 2021, that seems like ages ago, are approved.

OK, so the next new item of business is Ravana River Bicycle and Pedestrian Crossing, a summary of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee, any public engagement plans.

Yeah, and we do have quite a bit of time on the agenda for this, so this will be a good opportunity for you all to ask questions.

There are a few of you that are on the stakeholder advisory committee, Karim and Stuart and Daniel, I don't know if you've been able to make it, but you've obviously had access to all the meeting information, so if you all have additional

information to drop in as well as Chuck, you're welcome to, but I want to provide you all with an update of what we've been discussing.

So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen.

And feel free to stop me at any point if you have questions.

So just to remind you all that this is the committee.

It's a mixture of both residents and citizens, people that are involved with nonprofits or other community organizations, as well as technical staff.

So far, the committee has met three times, which includes two Zoom meetings and one onsite visit, just to get a better sense of some of the

factors that might affect the decision making around choosing which of the alignments we want to pursue.

And then our next meeting is actually scheduled for tomorrow at 4pm.

Just to remind you that this is the timeline that we're working for as part of preparing a SMART SCALE application.

So we are basically between this October and March window where we are having the advisory committee meeting and then we'll be developing a schedule for a public workshop.

I'm speaking with

The City of Charlottesville and Albemarle next week and we'll coordinate with them on what that public workshop might look like and what the states might be.

Last time we did SMART SCALE we did a big public engagement for all the projects within the MPO area including those that were being submitted by Charlottesville and Albemarle.

And also, just so you all know, while I'm screen sharing, I cannot see you.

So if you have a question, you're gonna need to just unmute yourself and stop me to pause and ask the question or to add any additional information.

I do not see your screen.

Oh.

Well, that's not very helpful.

Let's try this again.

Do you see it now?

Well, now I lost the preview of you, but that's okay.

Just to remind you all that the

We're working for a SMART SCALE application and so we are going to basically be working to make sure that we are considering some of these portions of the desired alignment that are going to line up with how SMART SCALE applications are scored.

So just to summarize, I know we talked about this in a little bit more detail,

at a previous meeting, but SMART SCALE projects are given a score based on these different factors, safety, congestion, mitigation, accessibility, environmental quality, economic development, land use coordination.

There are metrics and systems that are used to evaluate projects and given a benefit score.

And then that benefit score is divided by the overall project cost.

And so for the projects that score the best based on that cost benefit ratio, those are the projects that are usually, although the transportation board does have some discretion in this, but the goal is that the projects that score the highest are gonna be funded until we run out of money.

So we are competing against other projects that are submitted throughout the state.

As you'll recall, we started with three alignments.

There are two that were developed through the feasibility study.

This is just a rough estimate.

There's an alignment that basically goes from what we're calling the State Farm property over to, this is Chesapeake Street, and this is Riverview Park right here.

So that's this alignment in the middle.

And then there's the second alignment that's a two-stand bridge that lands at the end of East Market Street.

So there's a stop pier right there on the sediment island as it's referred to that provides sort of the support for the pier that's in the middle of those two stands.

And then we also considered this third option that Mr. Kondor had developed for Riverside that basically goes to Riverside Avenue.

But there was a lot of concern from the Parks and Rec Department in Charlottesville as well as the residents in the community because of the piers and because it came out mid-block and separated some of the houses from the rest of the street, they felt like

There were going to be too many impacts to the neighborhood and the park itself to be able to be considered feasible.

So for right now, the committee is only looking at these two options.

Well, I have to say I'm a little surprised, but

I guess they hadn't considered that the trailhead on the route that I proposed is on an existing bus route, which the other two are not.

And that the proposal I made is also probably about $4 million less expensive than either of the other two.

And since cost is a factor with SMART SCALE,

I guess I wish they hadn't dismissed it so quickly because it's got a lot of advantages to it.

And it really doesn't impact the park at all.

I mean, Patrick and I went and looked at that.

The impact of the park is zero.

In fact, it makes the park more accessible if anything.

Sure.

Yeah, understood that the folks that were involved in that decision making reviewed it though and felt like it was going to impact, if not current operations, future operations.

So that was just part of their consideration.

The committee, you all helped us create this list.

And then the committee added a couple of other factors to consider as part of evaluating the bridge alignment options.

So we had talked about what factors should be discussed as part of this.

And the committee talked about, I think this relates a little bit to connectivity, but they really wanted to emphasize the importance of making sure that this bridge alignment connected to the overall transportation network well.

Understanding that the bridge itself, there are a lot of network connectivity improvements that are desired by the community and understanding that the bridge itself isn't going to be able to resolve all of those connection issues.

They wanted to make sure that we are considering how this bridge could best support overall desired network connectivity as part of the considerations.

And then also considering that the river is a designated scenic river, and it's really important as far as the visual impacts.

And so making sure that we are considering placemaking the visual impacts as far as the bridge design and location.

What is occurring as part of the discussion that we're having with the Stakeholder Advisory Committee, which includes, as part of the official committee, it includes a couple of folks that live or are residents in the Woolen Mills area.

It also includes, well the committee itself doesn't include, but it has sparked a lot of interest from other members of the committee that have become invested in following this project and attending the meetings.

So there are a lot of issues that are already in existence in the surrounding area that are not caused by this bridge.

but there is some fear that this bridge project will exacerbate some of those concerns so we're trying to have some discussions around what those concerns are so we can make sure that those are communicated as part of the considerations for this bridge project also understanding that resolving these issues is

is outside of the availability most in a lot of these cases of the bridge project itself to address those concerns but making sure that we're communicating how this bridge would interact with the exacerbation of some of those issues and making sure that we're communicating how those issues are already planned to be addressed so one of those is parking

For those of you that are in the area, you probably are aware that there are already significant parking shortages at Riverview Park, especially on weekends, on nice days.

There's just not enough parking to accommodate people who want to use that amenity.

So this is a major concern that is coming up from a lot of people that live especially close by in that neighborhood that this bridge is going to be a recreational attraction and more people are going to want to drive to the area to access the bridge and it's going to further exacerbate parking considerations.

I can't say

Definitely that that won't occur or that there won't be additional parking demand, but the parking concerns in this area are going to have to be addressed regardless of whether or not this bridge gets built.

So we've been having a lot of discussions about that with the committee.

There are some opportunities to improve parking in the area that are being explored.

Nothing is definitive at this point.

But again, this would be basically separate from the bridge project itself in most cases.

That includes things like looking at where there's potential opportunity for additional parking, looking at how we can make the parking less of a stressor on the residents in the area through parking restrictions, but also thinking through that if we have

A pedestrian bridge that improves access from other parts of the area.

That's also likely to contribute to a reduction in parking demand in the area because it gives people more options to access these recreational amenities without having to drive the location.

So it's a big overarching discussion.

There's also been some discussion about intentionally underpinning for parking to try to encourage modal shifts as far as people accessing, how people access the park.

So there's discussion on a lot of different fronts around parking that have come up as part of this discussion.

I see we had a couple questions there.

Chuck, sorry if you're starting to talk, you can go first.

Yeah, they do have 10 spaces that are dedicated for parking.

I have not talked to them directly because the Albemarle County staff has been the ones to facilitate that discussion.

But he did just RSVP for the meeting tomorrow.

So I think potentially we can have some of those discussions to see if there's opportunity to expand parking.

I certainly don't want to speak on his behalf, though.

The other thing I'll say is that we're also you know, the county of Albemarle is also considering where there might be some opportunities to increase parking and some of the commercial sites that are being underutilized right now for parking on the Pan Top side.

And so, especially for people that might be coming outside of this immediate area, like for the region, one of the discussions is that, it's off the diagram on this page, but on the Pantops side, there's the Old Mills Trail and there's a planned extension, I think it's a five mile extension of the Old Mills Trail going further south.

And so for people who are traveling outside of the region that might want to come to this location in order to use that, you know, have a day trip where they're using that on those trail, it's going to be facilitated a lot more effectively by parking at Pan Tops, which has much better vehicular access off of 64.

versus at Riverview Park.

And then I had just one other question.

I don't know if this has come up in stakeholder meetings.

Just trying to get a better sense of, so at the Riverview Park crossing location, it seems like from a recreational perspective, I can easily picture how that works where it almost creates a loop between the trails on either side, because you have free bridge, you kind of

I guess I don't see how that works as well if you were to put the bridge over by Woolen Mills, like how these people would have to connect still from the Riverview Park area through that neighborhood to get over the bridge.

Yeah, that's very possible.

Parking is parking and if you're going to go somewhere to ride your bike around, it's not a very long distance to travel between those two sites.

So I mean, that is also an important point to consider.

Well, I guess I should mention with regard to that there is a gap in the Ravenna Trail from the intersection of Chesapeake Street and all the way down to Woolen Mills and I brought that up with the

Park people from both the county and the city.

That would be primarily in the city.

And the city also has an urban Rivanna River corridor study ongoing.

I mentioned it there as well, but yeah,

Right now, if you're trying to walk the Ravana Trail, once you leave, say you're going south and you cross Chesapeake Street, you have to basically walk on the street on Riverview Road or whatever is there and to get to East Market Street, then you have to walk on the street because there's no sidewalks, there's no shoulder

I mean, East Market Street in that area is really now.

And it's constrained by buildings and the terrain.

There isn't a lot you can do about it.

The trail really needs to go on the east side of the houses and so forth that are there, which would require negotiating with the property owners.

But yeah, right now, getting from Riverview Park to Woolen Mills on foot

Sandy correct me if I'm wrong, but from, I think part of the discussion that we had when we met on site last week was precisely that.

And one option was that the, was it the logical termini or something like that for the SMART SCALE application would end at the beginning of East Market.

So that building a sidewalk would be part of that funding that we would ask for.

Of course that would increase

Yeah, it wouldn't be part of necessarily East Market Street.

I think the discussion we had around East Market Street is East Market Street does have a public use easement.

So for, and Chuck again, correct me if I'm wrong, but from VDOT's perspective, that's the access point.

that that's going to meet the requirements for us to have this connection to the transportation network that there are likely going to be needs to be additional easements or right-of-way purchase though just to accommodate or negotiate it just to accommodate the bridge landing based on what Albemarle County has said but I think until we get into the actual design of the landing we won't know exactly what that looks like.

The only thing I was going to add, the East Market Street ends at the, there's a fence there and it says interstate maintenance from there to the, where it goes underneath the railroad bridge where the landing would be.

That's where the easement is.

Currently, it's an access easement.

to get through there so that's why we can actually termini the bridge there but there's some issues with East Market Street because of the way the houses are really close to the road on both sides to put some sort of facility through there for bikes and pedestrians

alone without doing shared the road would be very difficult and probably impact several of those buildings which may make it not feasible from just that that regard without buying out the properties so that that was something we looked at initially when we were looking at this from a feasibility standpoint and we weren't that's why we didn't actually extend anything down there because it wasn't really that feasible to do it we were our main

Alright, so talking about the network connectivity, this just shows a couple of ways that people might access these different locations from going into downtown.

From the landings, this is just looking at the wool and milk side because once you get onto the pan-top side, all the landings are

Indian and pretty similar locations.

And that's because the county owns property on the state farm side already.

So that's why those locations are more definitive.

So these orange dots are approximately where the bridge landings would be.

And the main point to look at is that each of these potential ways to access downtown are going to have different pros and cons.

But I think the real important thing to consider is that once you get onto a transportation network, you really have a lot of opportunity to move through the route that is going to be most compatible with what your needs and comfort is as far as accessing downtown.

These are pretty closely parallel road networks to get to the downtown area.

And so one of the discussions that we've been having is that there are pros and cons with all of these

Chesapeake Street, some people said are hilly and narrow, but it does have a consistent sidewalk along the north side of the road.

We already talked about some of the constraints on East Market Street, which is largely along this very most eastern end where it's really narrow and

There's also a lot of concern from people who live on East Market Street and frustration with the existing vehicular traffic that is going through East Market Street from people accessing the wool factory development.

So that's already a concern.

And then once you, but at the same time, the number of vehicles is a lot lower, the roads are narrower.

So as far as people feeling comfortable walking or biking, that actually might be preferable for some people compared to Chesapeake Street, which again is narrow and hilly, but has consistent infrastructure.

So the last option in the green is a connection along Broadway Street, which does not currently have consistent infrastructure, even though there are maybe some tentative discussions from Albemarle County about improvements and enhancements to Broadway Street overall.

Those have not been funded, and they're not necessarily

you know, definitely going to move forward.

But there are some people who would prefer to use Broadway.

If you're coming from this Southern Bridge Landing site, you could go through the Wolf Factory parking area to get to Broadway Street without connecting at all to East Market Street.

But really again, the main thing that this highlights is that really once you get onto any of these networks, there are a lot of opportunities to

to travel throughout the network to use the path that's going to be the most comfortable for you.

This gray line right here is also helpful to note that there's a, I'm referring to it, I don't know if that's a formal name, but the coal tower trail.

So there's a shared use path that these networks also connect to that could facilitate additional movements.

This is hopefully just to illustrate that we could look at the bridge landing site and which ones have the most direct infrastructure that would offer the most popular, most comfortable connections, but there's a lot of variability as to how people can move about the network regardless.

I have a quick question.

Probably going to ask it tomorrow again.

But for that blue line that connects down East Market, is that crossing?

It's kind of hard to see.

I believe it goes under the railroad track.

Yes.

It goes under the railroad track.

Yeah.

Yep.

So just cross it, but not at grade.

And Sandy, are we required to state or make a choice which one of these is preferred, or is this just a matter of, hey, there's three options potentially for users of the bridge.

No, I think it's just intended to sort of highlight how like the networks can be sort of like interchangeable at any of these bridge sites.

We don't have to choose.

I mean, at some point there's gonna have to be discussions from localities and maybe the MPO to determine as far as investment priorities, which ones we want to pursue as a higher priority than others, as far as priorities.

But that's not part of this application process.

Actually, I don't think it does cross the railroad track at all.

It seems like not because the bridge location that we looked at is right.

I guess if you're going to the green line, it would go underneath it.

Yeah, the blue one ends right at that corner on East Market Street ends.

And then it turns it goes underneath the railroad tracks.

But that's not really that none of that section is really East Market Street, because you're beyond the end of the public facility, which is East Market Street.

So technically, East Market Street doesn't go all the way to the orange dot.

But the railroad crossing is on the south side of the crossing.

I guess a follow-up question.

When we walked, we went through Marchant and there's a railroad crossing there.

Thanks.

I'd just like to reiterate that the public transit is also a conductivity option

And the Route 1 bus goes up Parkside Avenue north of Chesapeake.

So the route I proposed would have an easy bus stop there.

Yeah, I do have a transit slide in here somewhere, Lee.

So you can talk about that a little bit more when we get to it.

All right, so this is just another map that shows some of the, this one gets a little bit busy, but it shows some of the existing as well as, well, existing bicycle networks.

And then this one shows recommendations from the bicycle area and pedestrian plan.

It's a little bit difficult to interpret these though.

So I think the first one that we looked at was already probably the best option.

As far as understanding connectivity overall, we don't need to get into a lot of the details.

As far as ADA accessibility, the biggest place where this comes up is looking at the actual shared use path that would have to be constructed from the landing site on the PAMPAP side of the project to

to the connection at Peter Dufferson Parkway and State Farm Boulevard.

Again, Karim brought up this, the subject of logical termini.

So again, because this is a transportation project, we have to connect this bridge to the larger transportation network.

So the Old Mills Trail or the Ravenna Trail or some of those trails that are really popular for recreational use don't meet those transportation requirements.

And so there would have to be some improvements to make the connection from the bridge to the transportation network.

So basically, for ADA accessibility, you have to maintain a grade of 5% or less to meet those requirements.

The Chesapeake Street connection, that shared use path from that slightly northern alignment maintains a 5% grade for the path connection to Peterson Parkway.

And then the East Market Street, so the more south alignment, has a portion of the path that would be at a 6.5% grade, so it wouldn't quite meet the ADA requirements.

So that is one consideration that we'll have to determine whether or not, and Chuck, I don't know if there's an opportunity for you to request exceptions or anything like that, but we'd have to determine whether we need to look at that design to see if we can get that grade reduced further or whether or not we could move forward with a portion of the trail that doesn't quite meet those ADA requirements.

I was gonna say that can probably be addressed in the design phase.

Because I mean, as long as the bridge meets the requirements, the path can be can meander to meet the 5% grade.

I know what we did with the trail at the Fifth Street Station Parkway, we had to do switchbacks on the trail so we can get up that hill.

So I mean, we could do that for this trail if we have a situation where it does exceed the 6%.

Resiliency.

So this is a pretty important topic that is coming up a lot more these days.

Some of the discussions related to resiliency are really about flood impacts.

So I think probably the clearest guidance that we have right now as far as our consideration for

For resiliency, is this clearance over the river height versus over the floodplain height?

So the Chesapeake Street alignment that was proposed has a clearance of 40 feet over normal river height and 15 feet over the 100-year floodplain height.

versus East Market Street which this span right here that goes from East Market to oh here's a better picture for you Karim of the interaction with the railroad

So this first span right here has a river clearance height of 25 feet over normal river height versus one foot over floodplain.

So in terms of resiliency and the discussion on the technical memo, and I'll be very honest that I did not absorb it closely enough to be able to relay it to you all, but it is in the technical memo on our TJPDC website and I can send that out.

It is that there is more concern with this East Market Street alignment actually impacting the floodway and perhaps having more, causing more concern regarding to wanting to plan for resiliency.

Well, I guess I should mention that the Chesapeake Street

The bridge span over the river clears the bridge by 40 feet, but the western terminus of the bridge, the bridge isn't horizontal from that center suspension span.

It goes downhill by 18 feet to the level of the end of Chesapeake Street.

Yeah, and that's true I think for both of these configurations is that the landing sites are going to be on the floodplains on both sides.

I was going to ask you about this.

I don't know if the technical report gets into how well would a bridge like this withstand it if the river really flowed straight over it and it was essentially inundated by the river.

I don't know that the technical amendment discusses that, Chuck.

Can you talk about how that's considered as part of the design?

Yeah, put me on the spot because I don't remember exactly what they went into.

We've got to withstand it.

I mean, it can overtop.

We don't want it to overtop.

And it's got to pass a certain year floodstorm to be acceptable.

Before it goes overtop, even the free bridge, I think it's at a certain level, you can overtop that bridge.

It's going to have to be designed to be structurally sound.

So it's not going to fall down during that type of event.

So those are factors that are going to have to be reviewed and incorporated into the any design that we move forward for either location.

But I mean, we haven't gotten a lot of information because there hasn't been any geology done.

So we don't know what the foundation material is going to be that what the foundation types are going to be as well as

the design of the bridge.

We showed two different designs of the bridge, but those are just to give, show you what different aesthetics could be incorporated into the bridge.

You could look at similar types of bridges at either location.

It's just that what kind of aesthetic features do you want the bridge to look like?

And that's gonna be both for the people that are using the bridge and the people that are using the

River as an amenity, because you're going to be looking at that structure when you're going by it.

So those are some of the things we need to take into consideration when we're moving forward with the project.

Lee, can I just make a comment here, which maybe you could consider as you proceed.

Because of the location of this bridge, which is around residential areas, we have to take into consideration also that what we used to call a 100-year storm is not necessarily a 100-year storm now, because a 100-year storm now, we can see that it's happening every 10 years or maybe less.

So I don't know how you can cope with that thing.

We'd have to go through and do an H&H study to see what the impacts of the bridge and map out where the floodplain is at the time as part of the design process.

So all that's going to be evaluated when we go through the, for whichever alignment we choose, what those factors are and make sure that we're accommodating that

I just want to briefly, to be a little clear in a second, Nicholas's concerns that I do think that one foot over the flood plain still has me concerned on East Market Street, especially just a few years ago, even Free Bridge was almost over top by flooding.

So, it definitely seems like a concern if there's no way to kind of

I mean, if we want to meet the ADA requirements, the tie down point is going to be the biggest thing.

Wherever you tie down the bridge, that's going to be your lowest point.

Whether it's the end of East Market Street or the end of Chesapeake Street.

And those are going to be, he says 15 feet over the normal flood, over the normal waterway, but like Sarah, I mean, Sandy said the tie-out point is in the floodplain.

I just think that our existing conditions and we're just going to have to unless we want to basically run the bridge is significant further away from the locations and then you sort of lose some of the advantages of tying it into the park.

I know Lee's option ties right into the street which is right at the floodplain point.

right there.

But actually when you build the tie-in, part of his trust is probably going to be impacting that floodplain because it's below the bottom of that

I mean, your tie down point is the road itself.

So he's going to be coming off with his, so whatever we do there is going to have some impacts on it.

And that's why we're going to have to look at it and do the study to see what the impacts are, because anything you put in there that impedes the flow of water is going to increase the cross section of that floodplain at that location and impact water.

And that's something that will have to do with every one of these projects.

For every pier you put in there, it's an obstacle that's blocking the flow of water through that basin.

The technical memo did recommend that once a preferred alignment was determined that these environmental analyses should be done very early in the process to answer some of the questions that you all are raising.

And then this just also highlights the permitting that would be required.

for either of those bridge options to, again, ensure some of those environmental considerations do not cause additional hardship on the surrounding communities.

Here we go, Lee, we can talk about transit access now.

These are a couple of the maps that show the existing transit service areas for the two sides of the project area.

So this first one is showing transit service on the woolen mill side.

So you can see Riverview Park, just to give you a little bit of context.

But again, the Chesapeake Landing site is approximately right there.

Lee, the alignment that you had suggested with the approximately around that point right there, kind of midway through the intersection and the transit stop.

So these are the transit stops that would be closest to the Chesapeake Street landing.

And then there's another one, you know, up here kind of mid-block on Chesapeake Street.

For the Woolen Mills area, there's nothing that's super, super nearby in the vicinity.

I think this goes down a little bit further.

It's a little bit hard to see the streets on this map.

It goes down a little bit further, the woolen mills development does.

There aren't super close transit access compared to maybe the Chesapeake Street, but it's also not, especially if you're going to woolen mills, it's not that far out of the way to maybe access it through the woolen mills development.

I just want to say, Lee may disagree with me here, but I think the important thing is where to try to get the best alignment for the bridge, because for the transit stop, negotiation can take place later on to move transit stops.

I don't think that's a critical factor.

Sorry.

I want to say one thing to also keep in mind that I think I can't remember which meeting this was set in, but if this happens to get funded, we're looking at like 2026 when construction would start.

So it's a ways away when things can change.

Yeah, I have reached out to CAT just to determine whether or not future service, especially to the wool factory development, whether future service has been considered or if that could potentially be evaluated, not asking them to commit to anything, but just wanting to know how that might be considered in terms of creating

I don't know what the word I'm trying to say, but transfer options or support transfer options between people who are traveling in different modes.

On the other side, I mean, again, this is less of a discussion point because all of the landings are pretty similar.

So this is the

State Farm property and the landings would be a little bit south of the existing, or a little bit west of the existing building, which I know you can't see this very well, but it's surrounding where it says ATM, that's the State Farm building.

So it looks like the closest transit access points would be right here, which is at the intersection of State Farm Boulevard and Martha Jefferson Road or whatever that road is that goes into the hospital.

They are, so actually at the board meeting today Albemarle County just supported a resolution or endorsed a proposal to apply for a demonstration grant to implement micro transit service in the Pantops area.

So that could be another way to provide additional accessibility to these kinds of sites

beyond just the fixed route transit.

Right.

Yeah.

But I do think it's really important that we talk about how all of these different modes can interconnect to provide a cohesive network for people who want to travel through them.

Water safety and recreational use impacts.

This might be somewhere where some of you might be able to provide additional thoughts behind what should be considered as far as recreational use impacts beyond what I'm able to.

So again, none of these proposed designs would have piers that were directly in the water and so I think that removes a lot of the concerns for people who wanted to boat or flip down the area as far as actual interference from the bridge infrastructure and utilizing those recreational assets.

But you all can tell me, because I think the recreational use impacts on the water safety for recreational users.

I think this might have come from you all originally.

I think it's good to consider.

Thanks.

Yeah, I think some sort of like guardrail or I don't know what that screening is standard.

Yeah, they both have rails.

At height and depending on, I know over roadways, we put up fencing that's 12 foot tall, but over rivers, I'm not sure if it covers the same type of accommodation.

I'm not as familiar with those.

I know some of the examples we use for some of the bridges that we've looked at, like for the bridge at or across 29.

One of the examples we use was the

Bridge up on or across the toll road at Wolf Trap.

There's a pedestrian bridge that crosses the toll road and it's an arch span and it's got, like I said, they're 10 to 12 foot tall fencing, it's white trusses and it looks really, really nice.

Okay, thank you.

I was going to ask, the only thing that comes to mind in this respect is I want to say at some point, I don't know if it was these two blamments or past ones, but there was mention of that some of the when alternatives would require in-water construction, the other one wouldn't.

Correct.

They're going to have to somehow get there, whether they do it by building a temporary bridge to the center of Ireland or somehow get there to actually build it.

You're going to have to do it.

I mean, you can, there are methods for doing it, but you've got to make sure you're protecting that construction site from any high water event to a certain extent.

So you've got to put up some sort of

Yeah, I mean, you're up high with the grade.

They'll probably be coming in from the Pan Top side to try to lower elevation to come into the river for that design.

So they'll probably be building some sort of temporary structure to get you to that center island.

That's a good point.

Any other thoughts or questions?

As far as the recreational use impact, the only thing I'm aware of right now is that there is some interest at Riverview Park in installing a boat launch site kind of really near where that landing site is.

It doesn't sound like the Parks and Recreation Department is overly concerned that that would be an interference and could probably

I'll be tight and together to minimize, you know, any of the impacts to the neighborhood as part of all of those facilities being kind of located in that location.

But that's the only other item related to recreational use that I can that comes to mind as far as considerations for the bridge placement.

Utility impacts, I don't have a ton of information on this.

The Ravenna Water and Sewer Authority does have a wastewater interceptor that runs through the project area.

So they were not overly concerned that this was in

You know, overly burdensome obstacle for this project or even in the future if there was interest in putting additional parking near a bridge landing at Chesapeake at the end of Chesapeake Street.

They weren't overly concerned that that is an obstacle that can't be overcome.

But the design would need to ensure that we were not placing piers at the site that would interfere with that.

existing wastewater interceptor.

The landing site at East Market Street or at the end of East Market Street, they confirm floods outside of the project area.

So at least as far as the water and sewer authority infrastructure, there'll be slightly less utility impacts to navigate at that site.

Okay.

And then as far as the project cost, again, just remembering that the SMART SCALE, the cost is really important because the benefit score that's evaluated based on those criteria are divided by the overall cost of the project.

So these are just base cost estimates.

You can see that the one which probably intuitively makes sense for most people since it's a slightly less

less complicated or complex design.

So the one for Chesapeake State is the base cost estimate.

And I think this was 20, $20 is 11.3 million versus 15.3 million.

One thing for those of you who haven't

Some SMART SCALE applications is that these are just the base cost estimates.

And when we submit these projects, carve a SMART SCALE application, there are significant contingencies that are added to calculate for kind of unexpected changes that might come up in the project cost as well as for inflation.

I mean with the current inflation and stuff that we've been having a lot of this discussion on how it's going to work this round and they're going to apply an inflation factor to every project and they're not sure what that's going to be to the initial estimate and then you're going to add escalation on top of that so

Yeah, they're gonna go get significantly larger.

$20 million for East Market Streets, probably not out of the question.

I don't know yet.

Like I said, once we get a definitive location, we will spend a lot of time and effort to try to refine the estimate and look at the detailed cost.

We gotta look at what kind of aesthetics type of bridge you want.

Also, because that'll dictate more cost or less cost depending on what you choose for those options.

So those are some of the things we still need to answer before we can really get to that.

But that's probably close.

Chuck, this is Stuart.

What it does is it improves the cost benefit of the score because it's basically your benefit divided by cost and that's going to give you what your SMART SCALE score is and that's how it's evaluated.

I know last round the county put money on every one of their projects and every one of them got funded

Last round also we were able to got, we received a block of money which from the Amias bill from several years ago that was passed by the General Assembly that we actually got about $105 million of additional revenue in the district.

So we were able to find like 24 of our 36 projects that we submitted last round, which is

twice as many as we've gotten in any of the previous rounds.

So I don't look at that being an option this time, but even the district grant pot of money is probably in the close to 28 to $30 million range.

And the statewide, unless they're gonna add more money, I don't know what the infrastructure bill is gonna do, because we're still working through some of that.

Correct.

Sorry about that.

Thank you.

May I just make a comment here, please?

I think I raised my concern about the process itself the last time.

I think using this smart scale process, it's good for small projects.

It's OK for small projects.

But when we start going into the millions and millions of dollars, I think it's good for us to use the standard basic benefit cost analysis procedures

or incremental benefit cost analysis procedure to evaluate projects.

A lot of the factors used in this SMART SCALE project are based on subjective evaluations.

And I am worried that when we start moving, as time goes on, even small bridges like that would start costing 25 million, 30 million.

And if we just base all of our analysis on smart scales, I think we may find ourselves in trouble.

We may be making decisions that are completely opposite to what we are really looking for.

Yeah, I think, so part of that is we're hoping to address through, we applied for a technical assistance grant, the MPO applied for a technical assistance grant through the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment to help us develop a regional prioritization process that would be incorporated into our long range transportation plan.

So we don't know if we're going to receive that technical assistance.

We have requested it.

We worked on a scope of services with OIP, but that would be our regionally developed process for how we determine which projects are going to be the most important based on our regional priorities.

I think the challenge, though,

is that for us to secure funding from the state to implement projects, they're still going to have to be competitive based on the state's process to receive funding.

So we're not going to be able to get away from that.

Yeah, I think I'm on the same page with you though.

I think it would be helpful if we were able to define how we prioritize projects within our region a little bit more formally to document how we choose which projects we want to move forward.

I think that's the last.

Well, public impacts, we'll talk about this a little bit more with the stakeholder committee.

So this slide is blank for a reason right now because I didn't want to fill this out without their input.

I think this is important for them to inform.

One thing that I think I have last mentioned about right here, let's see if I get it back.

One thing that I think is really important that we're communicating as we go through this committee and as we go through with the policy board to make a recommendation is I don't necessarily feel confident that we're going to come up with a consensus from the Stakeholder Advisory Committee that there's one project that's going to be more desirable than another.

I think, especially since a lot of people are residents in the area, they're thinking about the project as far as what impacts it's going to have to them and what their concerns are as far as

you know, concerns that they already have in the area.

But I think, and I think we can communicate those and we can do our best to make sure that the localities that have the opportunity to work towards all some of those concerns are engaged in hearing that feedback.

But I think what's more likely going to happen is that we're going to be able to provide this information to the policy board and to the elected officials

Just to show the overall level of considerations that need to go into this and letting them know what opportunities are going to be to address some of the outstanding concerns that this project won't resolve.

But I don't know that we're going to come out of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee with a solid 100% consensus recommendation.

So that's just one thing to consider.

As far as hearing this feedback, it's really important.

The other thing I will go ahead and mention as far as the public impacts is that related to East Market Street, so that southern location, there is a lot of concern already from the residents that live along Mullen Mills about the traffic that's going into the Wolf Factory.

And one of the concerns again is that I think a bridge that

Connects to East Market Street is going to attract a lot more people to come down East Market Street through vehicular traffic and continue to contribute to some of that vehicular use of that road that is already causing a lot of frustration for those community members.

So I think that's also really important to make sure that we are considering as part of the discussion

I just wanted to add, Sandy, that in the interest of full disclosure, since you put the cost estimates in for the others, the cost estimate on the one that I proposed is less than 8 million.

And I analyzed the structural cost, the steel,

I think when we discussed this with the central office staff at VDOT, they did not feel confident in that estimate.

So that's why it's not included because it's not the same.

Actually it is.

I mean, I'm an engineer and I estimated it.

So

Yeah, I could say that it's easily under 8 million.

To get it down to a more exact number would take a little more work.

But yeah, I feel confident that it'll come in under 8 million.

All right, so as far as public outreach or engagement, I'd really love to hear where I think we have a few more minutes we can talk about this, but just wanting to hear from you all about, you know, we have engaged the stakeholder advisory committee, but they do not necessarily represent the community as a whole.

And so one of the things that we're talking about is how we can do a good job of engaging the broader

community to get additional feedback on what preferred options might be.

So these are a couple of ideas that we can discuss about what kind of feedback would be helpful from the public.

I think one of my thoughts is that we can ask

the public through a survey to prioritize the different consideration factors and ask them which ones might that they believe should be considered as highest priorities so we could do something like that.

We could develop a table of factors based on the different bridge alignment options to

to basically give a summary of the bridge options and ask them to select from a list of characteristics.

One other idea that I had was to develop a graphic that shows the general location of the different bridge alignments and ask the public which ones they preferred and ask them a follow-up question about why they might prefer that option over the other one.

I think the challenge with that is that that would mostly give us an idea of which location

They prefer for alignment versus factoring in other considerations for things like resiliency or flood impacts or equity or something like that.

But those are a couple of ideas I have.

I think with COVID, probably an in-person option isn't as preferable.

And there's also a question about where we would do the in-person option, because it's not like this is serving one specific population.

It should be serving the broader community as a whole.

I would recommend the on-site survey

I sort of envision a table, a couple of people sitting there, maybe the little pavilion over your head, handouts and so on.

In terms of a broader community, when you go to these parks, particularly the ones that are attached to trails or greenways, you pretty much see a cross section of the community.

You see all kinds of people there doing all kinds of things, walking dogs, you see,

very small children toddling, see elderly people also toddling with their walkers and whatnot.

And you see, and the other thing I would mention is we speak, you know, as a project, we speak of the other side of the bridge as being at the bottom of that steep slope to pan tops.

And that's a problem to be,

to be solved, but the rest of that, the other side of that bridge is Darden Town Park.

People who ride bikes, who run, and even people who just walk leisurely, that's not a long walk.

And so if you were gonna be on site, you would be in Darden Town and Riverside, and I think you'd have a very good cross section of the people who actually use the thing

and which would I think then balance against people who live right on Riverview or Chesapeake and say, I don't want that thing because of parking.

That's very understandable, but it's a very limited view.

And so that's the one I see here that looks like it would really click.

It would give you something that you don't have now.

And

And again, with COVID, you get outdoors, you know, those guys playing cricket over at Darnton Town, these guys, you know, they're running around, they're not wearing masks, and because they're all 20 and 30 feet away from each other.

So, of course, we'd expect safety standards at your little pavilion, but, you know,

I think the COVID impact is a lot less there.

And I think you'd be also less susceptible to loading, where people who actively don't want it in the woolen mills could call up all their friends and say, go to the website and say no.

You're encountering people who use these facilities

Sandy, this is Stuart.

Well, we would potentially be able to send a survey to the bike and pedestrian group, but really I don't have a formal way to sort of document preferences at this point based on the larger community.

I'm getting a lot of comments and feedback and being copied on email lists and those kinds of things, but I think we also want to make sure that we're not just

Reaching out, I mean, I think obviously if we did any onsite engagement, the parks are a good place.

I'm not sure about Darden Town Park.

That is a little bit far north, so I don't know how likely it is that those users would come.

I mean, I think there might be people who come down to use that as a recreational amenity, but I'm not sure as far as trying to get preferences for people who are using the bridge for commuter purposes.

I'm not sure that that would be the best location to try to get those.

that feedback in a more formalized and documentable way.

I guess on that note then I would say like also good to make sure you're doing some outreach to the

Some of the new apartment and housing developments on the Pan Top side too, just for those people who don't have any connection today that would potentially have a new connection.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, if you all don't have any other comments, that is basically everything I wanted to go through with you all tonight.

Yeah, Sandy, thanks very much.

That's a big topic.

Appreciate how thorough that was.

Just highlighting, we have about 12 minutes on our time allotment.

The next item is staff updates.

Department of Transportation, Virginia Project Pipeline.

Chuck, do you want to give a quick update?

Yes.

We've got the two projects in the MPO area.

One's out at

The Shadwell area at 22 and 250 and North Milton Road and 250 and the other ones, the Pantops area.

We're looking at some park and ride lots, potential park and ride lot locations.

One of them that were on the list is actually the State Farm parking lot right next to where this trailhead is.

So

Those are some of the options.

We're gonna have an online survey that's gonna go live the end of the month on the 31st and run for two weeks to try to get comments on what we're proposing.

But most of our stuff in the Pentops area is bike and pedestrian improvements along the 250 corridor, more crossings of 250, completing some of the missing sidewalk pieces along 250 and those kinds of things.

They're not really,

capacity enhancement projects are more or less.

We are closing one of the crossovers there at the Holiday or the Hilton, I think, or the one hotel that's not signalized because they have access to signalized intersections, both Peter Jefferson and to Westminster Canterbury.

So we're going to close that crossover.

And then we're looking at some alternative intersection treatments at some of the other intersections.

But most of it is multimodal in nature.

We're trying to work with transit agencies to see how we can incorporate, like I said, one of the park and ride lot locations is right there, almost directly across from

Peter Jefferson Parkway in the vacant lot just to the west of Glenorchy and the other one is south of 64.

So those are some of those highlights of that, those studies that are moving forward.

But like I said,

We're going out for public comments starting the end of the month through a public survey.

We also have all the materials is out there on the website that you can go out and look at if you want to.

It's vaprojectpipeline.org is the website.

And then just go to Culpeper and it'll give you all of the projects.

We have five across the district, but two of them are in the Albemarle County area.

Thanks for that.

Appreciate it.

Any questions for Chuck before we move to the next item?

All right, the next is a future discussion topic.

So important if any members have something they want to talk about in a follow-up meeting.

I think two off the top of my head, Travis raised about elections, supposed to do elections for board members in January.

I think we can potentially bump that to the next meeting.

And the other one is we talked a while back about maybe having someone speak to us about traffic calming and reducing speed limits and what's required, if that's even possible.

Today, there was an article in the Daily Progress about CAT, Charlottesville Transportation, how they were looking at buying different types of buses and doing flexible routes as well as fixed routes.

It sounded very much like Jaunt.

I wonder if it'd be useful to have Jaunt and CAT come in and talk about

where they meet.

I mean, they're each going through sort of a similar type of approach.

I'd like to know, is there any overlaps between the two?

I mean, I know John reaches out a little bit further than Cat obviously, but it would be interesting to hear them at least talk about what their visions are.

That's great, thank you.

Thanks for covering.

I was thinking that it would be nice to learn more about the process by which new sidewalks and pedestrian projects are considered.

I think that that would be an insightful topic.

I see a lot of places that aren't serviced with sidewalks and I wonder why.

Great, thank you.

Some time ago, some people are interested in someone coming to talk about four-way stop signs.

Oh, sorry, roundabouts, roundabouts.

We can do that.

This is Daniel, Sandy and Tristan.

That's a great question about sidewalks and that stuff.

We've on the Planning Commission have faced that a lot.

If you look at the Crozet master plan,

and everything that goes there.

One of the biggest impediments to those type of improvements are easements and the lack of easements to install those sidewalks and the ability to procure those sidewalks.

Over here in the Rio district, you actually will see where if you go up Rio Road where they just install the new sidewalk, you'll see the sidewalk switch the sides of the road.

One of the biggest reasons that had to happen was the inability to procure an easement from the property owner right there in the corner of Penn Park and Rio to continue that sidewalk down that side because they didn't want the sidewalk on their property.

And so that's one of the big issues in Crozet specifically is we have a lot of roads and have no easements by which we have the right to place those type of sidewalks.

Then I might just add that part of that also has to do with zoning and rezoning and what we put on the requirements on builders as they have new developments, because those, you know, it would seem to me that as a new development, and I've seen a few go up, that they are be asked by the county, at least I know the county was be asked to

I have sidewalks as part of their development process, at least if they're asking for rezoning, obviously.

All right.

Thanks, everyone.

I don't think any members of the public has joined, but we tend to wrap up asking if anyone from the public would like to speak, granting them three minutes.

Any members from the public like to speak?

All right.

It sounds like no one from the public.

So if nothing else, I'll state that the meeting is adjourned at 8.28.

All right.

Yeah, look forward to seeing you all next time.

Good job, everybody.

Have a good night.

Thanks, all.

See you.

Thanks, everyone.

Bye, everyone.