Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee (2013-2026) Meeting   3/16/2022

I can certainly do it if you need me to.

I mean, I'm good on who is here.

I don't need to call it if that's what you mean.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

So I don't have the emergency statement, but I can say call in the meeting to order.

It's 703 p.m.

It's the 16th of March.

Welcome, everyone.

Thanks, Brian.

Yes, I do.

This meeting of the Citizen Transportation Advisory Committee is being held pursuant to Code of Virginia section 2.2-3708.2, which allows a public body to hold electronic meetings with 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 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.

There will be an opportunity for the 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.

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

Thank you.

Without further ado, I guess this matters from the public.

I don't see any names that I'm not familiar with.

Is that correct?

All right, so assuming no matters from the public, we can move ahead with the approval of the draft meeting minutes.

So you know, I guess I first ask any questions or any kind of concerns about what we had from our notes from last session in January.

And thanks, Stuart, for presiding over that.

No?

Thank you, Lee.

Anyone second?

Second.

Thank you, Travis.

Sorry.

Anyone want to say, I'm going to go the opposite of the normal way.

Anyone want to say no to it?

Any nays?

No nays?

Awesome.

It looks like it's carried.

All right.

All right.

Yeah, it looks like we've approved the draft meeting minutes, Sandy.

So we're ready to go to the next piece, which is our election for this 2022-2023 committee chair and vice chair.

No, Mr.

Chair.

Basically, the committee is, according to bylaws, needs to appoint a chair and vice chair at your first meeting of the calendar year.

Great.

Yeah, Mr.

All right.

All right.

It's very intense with a lot of outside work, that's the fault of it.

I'm just kidding.

It's a pretty simple lift for anybody.

Yeah, sure.

So the chairman role is what you're seeing right now.

It's running through and facilitating these sessions that we have every other month.

and making sure that we just stay on the next agenda item to the next and then asking you know the right people who are noted in the meeting minutes to you know take over the topics and also in prior to each call it's normal for us to the committee chair and the vice chair to review the agenda and make sure that hey is there any kind of questions we have or anything that was mentioned perhaps in a prior session that

that the staff maybe had mentioned that they wanted to cover.

Basically just double check the agenda and then you can provide feedback if you see any.

Usually it's a very smooth process, only a couple of times have we ever proffered any ideas.

That usually happens around a week or two before each session and it's just one email or two so that's one thing and also for the vice chair and committee chair you could be asked to and you do have a seat on the MPO something that as the chairman and vice chair you become a member of that

that group.

And so that's a role that you want to take advantage of and provide a visible piece of CTAC to the MPO.

That's a good way to do it.

I think I'm covering most of it.

Okay.

This is Stuart.

I would just add occasionally you're asked to support or represent CTAC in a related transportation

It's pretty light.

I've done it twice with Stuart at this point for two years and I'm ready to put the reins down.

So welcoming anyone who would be willing to take committee chair or vice chair.

So I guess we could start off with, who would like to take on a committee chair?

All right, Lee.

Anyone else willing?

Go once, go twice.

All right, cool, Lee.

If there's only one, it's only one Highlander.

All right, and then vice chair, who would like to join Lee in this adventure for the next year?

I can continue if no one wants to do it, but only if we don't have any volunteers.

I mean, it's fun and fulfilling and worthwhile.

Thanks.

All right, we're staying with Stuart.

Stuart, thank you for the offer.

All right, cool.

Next year or this year?

Donna, which one?

Did I misinterpret?

Sorry, whichever session we're... Oh, this coming one?

Yeah, okay.

All right, yeah, there you go.

Stuart, then nevermind if that's the case.

Yeah.

First, you get a saw and get your arm off.

No, yeah, it's what we just said, basically, getting the agenda together, that kind of thing.

And I can send you some handy notes that Jessica sent me a long time ago after when I took over from Travis.

She gave me some bullet points how to run these things.

And it kind of helped me.

So, Lee, I can send it to you.

And Donna, if you're ever wondering, it's not difficult.

It's just a nice little reminder every two months.

All right, cool.

Well, I guess that concludes this.

Thanks, Donna and Lee.

Well, I was going to say, we should probably introduce Ryan and explain why I keep adding things over to him.

So Ryan's been at the PDC for how long now, Ryan?

So he was hired as a transportation planner, and he is going to be supporting the MPO, including CTAC and MPO-TAC and a lot of the projects within the MPO.

So from now on, he's going to be kind of the staff contact coordinating this.

I'll still be at the meetings.

Sure.

Sandy, I started off at the TJPDC many years ago.

worked at the city of Charlottesville for a few years and in North Carolina.

And I'm appreciative of Ms. Christine Jacobs and Ms. Sandy Shackelford for giving me the opportunity to be here again.

And then we also have Ruth Emerick who just recently joined us and she is the new chief operating officer for the TJPDC.

And Ruth, you can go ahead and introduce yourself if you'd like to.

All right.

I don't blame you.

All right.

Awesome.

Thank you, Patrick.

Cool.

So we'll go on the vocals here.

On yays, anyone want to say yay?

Yay.

Yay.

Cool.

And any nays?

Cool.

All right.

That carries over.

Lee is officially it, formalized.

I'll move to approve.

Thanks, Travis.

That was a tie.

And as far as for seconds?

I'll second it.

Thank you, Marty.

All right.

So let's do the yeas.

Anyone want to say yes?

Please say.

I'm looking at the yellow bars, by the way, if you're wondering what I'm looking for.

Anyone want to say nay to Donna?

All right, good.

I think we're good.

We're formalized.

Donna is vice chair.

Thank you all.

And thanks, Marty.

I think it's good to do everything formally, right?

If we're going to do the dance, might as well take the right steps.

All right.

So if that concludes that, welcome, Ruth and Ryan.

And I guess we're ready to get started with the next topic, which is round five, SMART SCALE transportation projects.

I think, Ryan, if you're ready to kick us off into that.

Thank you.

I'll try to share my screen here.

Okay, are you all able to see my screen?

Yes.

So on February 28 of 2022, the MPO city staff, Albemarle County staff, and the Virginia Department of Transportation held a public webinar, which featured an overview of roughly 12 projects that the MPO was considering to undertake for round five of SMART SCALE.

We had approximately 75 members of the public to attend.

So far to date, there have been 40 comments received either through the website, email to staff,

and over 800 comments for the Ravenna River Icicle and Bridge pedestrian crossing, which is outstanding.

Sandy spearheaded that project.

Here's a comprehensive map that just shows the general locations of those 12 projects.

You will note, I don't know if you all can see my cursor,

This here is 5th Street extended where both the city, the county, and EPO are pursuing projects on that corridor.

Avon Street is here.

The Rivanna River Bicycle and Pedestrian Bridge crossing is here.

The District Avenue roundabout is here.

Unless anyone from the committee has any specific questions, I won't go into too much detail.

But I believe in your packet, there was the entire webinar presentation.

What I have on my screen and what I'm showing tonight are the four projects that the MPO

will be applying for.

So what you have on your screen now is a map that shows the project on 5th Street extended for the city of Charlottesville, which will be from Cherry Avenue to Harris Road, the MPO project, which will be from Harris Road to basically the city limits and the county project

which is from Stagecoach Road to Ambrose Commons.

And this is a sketch showing some of the proposed improvements for the Fifth Street project that the MPO will be undertaking.

It involves bicycle accommodation,

pedestrian accommodations as well, a median adjustment.

And I'll just briefly read the project description.

This project will add a southbound turn lane into Fifth Street Station Parkway from Fifth Street, a median adjustment at the Willoughby Shopping Center, and a left turn lane mid-block from Fifth Street traveling northbound.

The shared use path between the 5th Street-Harris Road intersection to Holiday Inn intersection is also proposed.

Ryan, before you move on to that, can I just ask a question about the 5th Street projects?

Sure.

Would you mind, so looking at the different diagrams, would you mind kind of explaining how, like as someone walking on the sidewalk and then on the bike lanes, how you kind of progress through the county to MPO to city project?

Like it looks like it's a separated bike lane in some parts, maybe not in others.

Yeah, sure.

So the diagram on the right, which shows the section, as you can see, there's the, in fact, it's kind of hard to read here, but you have the two travel lanes at 11 feet, and then you've got the,

left turn lane to go into 5th Street Station Parkway.

This represents the southbound travelway.

On the right, I believe, represents the northbound.

And you have, of course, the median here.

This right here is the sidewalk.

that's being shown.

So I'll go back to this map.

So essentially the shared use paths will be along here and you've got the improvements here.

There are already, I believe, existing sidewalks in the city section here.

There is, I believe, a gap in the sidewalk network as you cross over the interstate here, which at some point will be addressed, possibly in the future, SMART SCALE application.

And I don't know if there's anyone here from

and CDOT that Mike can explain sort of the travel movements and the median cuts.

But here is where the, in fact, this diagram may best show the left turn lane, the median adjustment into the Willoughby Shopping Center, which is here.

This area here is Fifth Street Station Parkway.

And I believe that

So it sounds like after these are done, there'll be five blocks on both sides, except for that one part going over the interstate.

It'll just be like a gap that needs to be filled in the future.

I can speak to that for a second.

And that's just because they're pursuing the diverging diamond right there.

And so they don't want to do any construction in that area knowing that there's going to be an additional project coming on board.

I also have a question about that fifth street section.

Sure.

You mentioned the left turn opening, which looks like that lower left diagram there inside the smaller circle down there.

Is that so people can turn left coming out of the shopping center or will people turn left into the shopping center?

So, okay, and I can't tell what the diagram's too small there.

No, no, I'm on the small, you've got your cursor on the larger circle.

Yeah, that's what I'm addressing.

So is northbound traffic turning left into the shopping center?

No, I think this is restricted.

So if you're coming out of the shopping center, you have to proceed south.

From my understanding.

And stack lane there for them?

No, there is a dedicated left.

My image is just too small to see that.

Okay.

Yeah, Patrick.

The reason they did that is because they eliminated the left turn lane northbound

at the intersection that's across from 5th Street Station entrance so that they could accommodate a second left turn lane into the 5th Street Station southbound.

I see.

Okay, that's the other change there.

Any more questions about Fifth Street Multimodal?

Okay.

This is a sketch showing Avon Street multimodal improvements from Druid Avenue to Fifth Street Station Parkway.

I believe the sketch actually stops at Palatine.

but there will be some bicycle and pedestrian accommodations through this section and I believe some road widening on the west side and I'll just briefly read the project description.

This project will develop a package of multimodal transportation improvements along Avon Street between Druid Avenue and Fifth Street Station Parkway.

Avon Street revision study was completed by Albemarle County in 2020.

Bicycle and pedestrian facility needs were identified in the Charlottesville Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan.

Improvements include bicycle and pedestrian facilities, road widening on the west side of Avon Street,

and undergrounding a drain of stormwater retention treatment.

And of course the county also has a project further south.

This is Stuart.

Could you just go back to that aerial map and orient?

Where is Wegmans?

Where would that be in this picture?

Got it.

Yeah, I wonder if I could ask, how did the MPO pick this one among others?

So maybe it's more general question.

What was the criteria for the MPO picking its four projects?

Yeah, we had a whole process that was identified, but basically we met with staff and the criteria that we used was really looking at projects that would benefit both localities that had already been through a planning process that, you know, involved public

input or public process at this point so we wanted to look at things that were already in a pipeline that already had some level of public support and that would have benefits to both Charlottesville and Albemarle were sort of where we started and then we went through a process of

reviewing what some of those projects would look like, at least as far as choosing the general areas and the general projects.

I had a quick question about the connectivity of the bicycle lane network.

So this, I guess the limits of this project on the northern end, if I recall correctly, connects to a bike lane that already exists.

But what about on the southern end?

No, and we had talked initially about potentially going down.

I mean, I think the sidewalks, if I recall correctly, start again going into the station development.

So we had talked about whether to extend it that far down or not.

I think the concern is just that the longer the project goes, the more expensive it's going to be, the less competitive it would be for the SMART SCALE process.

So that might be the next iteration if we're successful with funding for this round.

Okay.

Good point.

I think to speak to the other end of that, the pedestrian side of it, once completed,

I think there's almost one mile of sidewalk that will be constructed if this project comes to fruition.

So you've got almost 5,000 linear feet of sidewalk as well.

District Avenue roundabout is at the intersection of Hydraulic Road and Cedar Hill Road.

Basically, it's the construction of a roundabout at this intersection here.

This here is Hydraulic.

Sorry, this is Hydraulic.

This is District.

This is Cedar Hill Road.

and I believe there will be a restricted, a port shop put in place here to help channel traffic coming off of Cedar Hill Road.

This project will improve vehicular movement at the intersection with Hydraulic Road, Cedar Hill Road, along with bicycle and pedestrian safety and mobility accommodations.

The project will also include a port shop island to restrict direct access onto off roundabout from Cedar Hill Road.

And I think I saw where approximately 15,000 vehicles travel through this intersection from VDOT's average annual daily traffic count program.

That's a good question.

I would probably have to defer to NC,

Yeah, I don't know that Chuck's on.

Michael's here, Barnes.

He has a new position that's going to be supporting VDOT, but Michael's new, so I don't know that he can speak to the specifics of that either.

Yeah, I think there was some pretty significant public outreach that was done as part of the hydraulic small area plan and that was the preference of the community that lived off of Cedar Hill Road because they were concerned about having their road connected directly to the roundabout and that being used as a, you know, through route to get to that shopping center.

But I believe you're right.

I think that was Travis that made that comment that you wouldn't be able to, you know, turn onto Cedar Hill from hydraulic.

Well, Chuck did say though that the design is incomplete at this point.

So there may be some accommodation if you wanted to.

allow traffic to move from the shopping center southward into the neighborhood.

And this particular design is trying to allow for an exit out of the neighborhood onto hydraulic, but not to allow it back in.

And I'll take this two seconds here.

My name is Michael Barnes.

I've worked in the community for about 20 years.

The past three, I've been representative of VDOT

The funding that goes to the city for various infrastructure projects like Belmont Bridge, West Main Street, etc.

And I've recently moved from the sort of that plan design and construction component into this planning section.

So I'm excited to be working with you all in the future.

And if I can help you please feel free to reach out to me.

Thanks, Michael and Sandy.

Any more questions regarding the District Avenue roundabout?

And the last MPO project is the Ravana River Bicycle and Pedestrian Bridge Crossing Project.

This project will provide a critical bicycle and pedestrian linkage between the City of Charlottesville and the County of Albemarle, connecting two existing trails on the east side of the Ravana River.

The project was identified in the CA-MPO Long Range Transportation Plan and the Jefferson Area Bike and Pedestrian Plan.

The feasibility study was completed by VHB in 2020 with two potential design options developed for consideration.

I have a question, Ryan.

So there were some surveys that went out recently, and I provided feedback on those, I'm sure, as well as everyone else here.

When are we going to see those results, or have you guys had a chance to review them?

Yeah, we've gotten 800, we got 833 results.

There is a, thank you Karim, Karim just posted, there is a report that we completed that was kind of a draft.

I have a more finalized version that will be posted with the MPA materials.

Just a really quick high level overview of what those results revealed is that

The highest priorities that were identified by people who took the survey, the number one priority as far as how we should, what we should factor in as far as the placement of a bridge was connecting to existing pedestrian networks.

And the reason we focus on the pedestrian connectivity is because

There isn't any bicycle infrastructure at either of the locations or any of the travel routes already.

So the pedestrian connectivity was was available.

So that one was prioritized.

The second highest priority was access to recreational amenities.

So things like parks and trails and then the third highest priority

was maintaining Riverview Park as a naturalized area.

And then the priority that was actually had the least amount of respondents that indicated that it should be prioritized was connecting directly to economic development.

And the results as far as the preferences between the two, we asked for people to rate each of the locations on a five star scale.

And so it's fairly consistent with the feedback we got on priorities that there was a preference for the Chesapeake

Bridge Landing, which looking at the slide is the more northern landing that goes along Riverview Park over the Woolen Mills site.

And the difference was, I think it was an average of 3.98 stars for the Chesapeake Street location versus 3.4 stars for the East Market Street location for the placement.

And then as far as the design preference at both locations, people seem to prefer the cable stay bridge design, which is shown on the top image if you're looking at the images of the bridge design structures, but there was a stronger preference for the cable stayed design at the Chesapeake Street.

location versus the East Market Street location which also seems to be consistent with feedback that we got through the Stakeholder Advisory Committee and the public webinar just because the location at Chesapeake Street along the river is a long kind of an open portion of the river with this really beautiful view shed that has this really nice, you know, experience for people to see the open river so people like that

Seems like that location a little bit better, but we're also more concerned about the visual destruction of the bridge at that site.

So they wanted a bridge that was less visually heavy, I guess, at that site overall.

That's great.

Sounds like aesthetics on the Stay Bridge.

That's cool.

Alright, yeah thanks for that.

The only question I would have is one that I actually posed, probably annoyingly to those who already had to read them.

I wrote for the one down on the southern side near Woolen Factory Mill, how would we connect it?

It seems like it'd be going through East Market Street and then you'd have to walk up to connect to Riverfront Park.

I was wondering if there was any kind of contingency plan

Yeah, that's really outside the scope of this specific project, you know, but it is something that there are at least some discussions on, even though I don't think there's really a clearly identified solution that everybody sort of agreed upon to pursue.

So as far as the connectivity between Riverview Park and the wool factory, I think that probably needs to occur regardless of the location of the bridge.

Those are just two very sort of popular locations.

And then there's also the section of the Ravana Trail that there's a gap between where it connects at Riverview Park or where it connects basically at the wool factory on the other side of the wool factory going over Morris Creek.

So I think it is an important connection.

We'll see.

Well, thanks, Sandy.

Sandy, you might've mentioned this that I missed it.

Yeah, the MPO policy board has been provided with all of the information and they've been, we had a special meeting on March 10th to kind of review all of the feedback that we've heard from all of the different forums that we've received it.

So they should be making a decision at their meeting on, their meeting was supposed to be on March 23rd, we're trying to find a contingency date, but they should be making a decision at their regular policy board meeting in March.

Any more questions regarding the Ravenna River Bicycle and Bridge Project?

OK, so.

As I mentioned, and Sandy as well, we continue to receive public comment.

The MPO had a special session March 10th, maybe the 24th in which the policy board approves the selection of the projects to proceed.

SPART scale pre-application submittals are due at the end of the month and

The final application submittal is due August 1.

So between now and the end of the month, MPO staff will be preparing those preliminary applications.

I was hoping we could vote on the type of bridge, but hey, or did that, I guess, in the survey.

Yes, that's all that I have.

Thank you.

Sure, I will turn this over to Sandy.

Sure, okay.

So some of you probably recall we go through this process every year and that's basically developing a work program that shows what we are going to do with the resources that we get to fund the MPO.

And so we have to develop a work plan and we have to submit that to VDOT and FHWA and DRPT and FTA and get approval just to make sure that

What we're doing supports the overall goals of the federal and state agencies that fund us.

So just a couple of background tidbits for you all.

The MPO is funded through two federal programs, the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration.

And those are funded with an 80-10-10 match.

So the federal sources provide 80% of our funding and then the state sources, the state departments, which are VDOT and the Department of Rail and Public Transportation, they provide 10%.

and then we provide a local match of 10%.

We are federally required to identify activities to be undertaken using this funding in the annual work program.

So every year we develop a draft among staff and present it to you all as the committees for feedback and then the policy board ultimately will approve what the funding allocation is and then we'll send those out to the state and federal agencies for their review and

basically to check off and say, yes, this is consistent.

I don't have the budget allocations just yet for FY23.

So we're basing some of our funding decisions on assuming that we're going to be funded at a similar level as we were this previous year.

So our funding for this year was $321,000.

This is not something that we request.

This is amount that is developed based on

our population and the funding structure that filters down from FHWA and FTA.

So they tell us how much funding we're going to get.

And usually, you know, when we're not adjusting based on census changes every 10 years, the funding is going to be pretty similar from one year to the next.

And then one of the things that you will see when you look at the draft work program is that there's going to be another line item that I think it's called a VDOT SPR.

So that's VDOT state planning and research funding.

And so that's going to show up in our overall budget because that's an additional resource that goes to support the MPO, but that's not funding that goes through our staff that supports VDOT staff that, you know, that work on the projects alongside with us.

So there's one thing that I do want to mention and that's that one unique thing about the FY 23 program is that

Normally we try to spend all of the funding that we're given each year to do programming within the same fiscal year, but because of some of the staffing shortages that we've had the previous two years, we are going to be also incorporating rollover from actually going back to FY 21 and FY 22 into the upcoming FY 23 work programs.

So even though typically we would have about $320,000 give or take based on those annual

Adjustments between fiscal years.

We're going to have more resources because we weren't able to utilize all of our funding in fiscal year 21 and fiscal year 22.

And so that's going to show up as some additional funding to support our programs.

There's a little bit of a difference between the types and just for anybody who's really curious is that there's a passive rollover that is available through the FHWA funding sources and what that means is if we just don't spend all of our money when we get to the end of the fiscal year, we don't have to do anything.

We'll get whatever the balance of the funding is that remains in two fiscal years.

So we had a little bit left over, about $35,000 left over from fiscal year 21.

We don't get it in fiscal year 22, but it's automatically going to be rolled into our funding amount that is allocated for FY 23.

And then if we want the funding to be available in the next fiscal year, so we want FY22 funding that we're not going to be able to utilize because we haven't had staff that's been billing to the MPO because we've had some significant vacancies for periods of time, we have to go through an active process of de-obligating that funding and that FY22 work program, showing where we are

Reducing our budgets for some of those programs in order to actively program it into the next fiscal year in FY23.

So we've done that.

So what we are showing you tonight is basically what we have drafted for the FY23 work program and it shows what we are estimating for what we're going to receive for FY23 funding

in addition to these rollover amounts.

So you'll see that in the funding source in FY21 in that second line that says FY21 PL passive rollover, that's the funding amount that goes through sort of the FHWA and VDOT channels.

You'll see we have $35,000 from FY21.

And then from FY22, we are planning pending guidance from the policy board to actively roll over an additional $70,000.

And then on the Federal Transit Administration side, assuming we have a similar funding level in FY 23 that we had in FY 22, we'll have just under $110,000 and then we're going to be actively rolling over an additional $26,000 from that.

And that's all based on where we have the build down programs to date on initiatives that were kind of identified as maybe not being as important to the MPO Policy Board and just looking at what we have staff capacity to complete prior to the end of the year.

So you'll see if you go down to the line that says PL plus FTA total, what we are anticipating to have for our MPO programming for our internal staff and direct costs goes up from about $320,000 based on what we would normally get for one fiscal year to $453,000.

And this actually works out pretty well for us because we are going into a two year update of the long range transportation plan.

And so this gives us some opportunities to think about how we can utilize consultants to support some of the staff.

work that we're doing to prepare the long range transportation plan and make sure that we are developing that thoughtfully and cohesively and robustly.

And then you'll see, like I said in the previous slide, that additional line that's under the PL and FTA total, that just adds in the resources that VDOT is committing to their staff to support the program.

And then Ryan, do you want to go ahead?

So that's the funding source.

All right, can I ask a quick question, Sandy?

It's not for infrastructure.

We really don't have the kinds of resources for like infrastructure.

So, you know, I mean, I don't know that there's any role against it, but there are MPOs who are larger who get funding for, you know, to identify their infrastructure projects that they want to pursue and have a little bit more autonomy over programming and prioritizing that funding.

We're not big enough to be one of those MPO programs.

So this is mostly for our planning purposes.

Thank you.

Yeah, we're still kind of thinking through that.

One of the things we want to do before we finish this fiscal year is get a really good handle on the scope for the long range transportation plan.

And I think that will help feed into the process.

So I have a couple of thoughts of where consultants could plug in.

One of those could be around, you know, do a really robust public engagement and public information sharing, you know, utilizing consultants to help sort of guide and develop some of the feedback tools or survey tools that we implement, or just creating sort of informational items that can be used to help people better understand the long range transportation planning process.

We could also look at how they could provide stronger support on the more technical side with technical analysis and provide support as far as modeling what the impacts of different improvements might be for the area.

Thanks.

And the only other question I had is it mentions in the long range transportation plan scoping part that y'all got a grant from OIPI to develop a new project prioritization process.

Is that development of that something that's going to come through CTAC and the policy board?

Yeah, no, I think we want to really work on making sure that we're getting buy-in for the process that we implement, you know, as we go through it.

So we are planning to engage you all and MP Attack on the Policy Board as we go through it.

One of my hopes in doing all of the scoping and having the opportunity to utilize consultants is that we can develop a really clear and transparent

Okay, I will just briefly highlight some of the activities in the draft 2023 UPWP.

The MPO is looking to allocate roughly $27,000 or $27,000 to SMART SCALE, which we'll see here.

MPO boundary analysis,

This is coming from the 2020 Census.

Based on that report, there may be an adjustment to the boundary that's needed.

So there is about $12,000 for that.

As Sandy just mentioned, the development of the 2050 Long-Range Transportation Plan, approximately $205,000, $206,000.

The development of the 24-27 TIP, Transportation Improvement Program.

The Regional Transit Governance Study.

Here, roughly $33,000.

One map.

Here, approximately $36,000.

Sure, Sandy.

So basically One Map is a project that I believe initiated circa 2019.

and both the city and the county.

The idea was to have a understanding or a definition for the various facilities, a common definition for all the various facilities related to bicycle and pedestrian activities.

I believe one time the city was the main host or the main

project holder of that one map.

And then the county took it over, I believe for a period of time.

And so now for this upcoming fiscal year, the MPO is looking to sort of close that out and at some point make a decision on what that project is going to look like, whether it's going to be used for planning purposes,

or whether it would be something that the public could use, but it's basically a map showing bicycle and pedestrian facilities with a shared or common definition among the facilities.

Any questions regarding

Okay.

Cool.

I do not.

We just wanted to present to you with a draft of what we have identified.

This year, a lot of the things on the work program are things that are required, like the TIP and the Long Range Transportation Plan, but mostly just to make sure that you all see it before it will come back in May for approval by the policy board, and you'll be asked to potentially vote on our recommendations.

Any comments anyone would like to share about the Unified Planning Work Program?

If not, I don't have anything to enter into an official record, Sandy, but I would mention that it's nice that they're able to roll over the funding.

So that's nice flexibility.

Not sure if I've seen that that often in public policy.

All right, excellent.

Yes, so Mr.

Chair and committee members, as you know, you all have been meeting virtually for quite some time now, but there is a possibility within say the next month or two that the City of Charlottesville and the TJPDC return to in-person meetings

Is there a possibility of hybrid meetings?

There could be in the short term.

I think what's going to happen is that the commission is going to, so we're located in Charlottesville, so we follow their emergency order, which extends for six months.

Our commission is going to review basically what the policy is for the commission, and we'll create a policy that applies to all of the committees that are within the

the TJPDC's sort of administrative oversight.

So there could be some opportunities in the short run to have hybrid meetings.

Once Charlottesville's statue is no longer in place, so we are going to be required to comply.

with the state requirements to have the meetings in person.

So if you recall, we did go through the process of adopting a remote participation policy that applies for certain circumstances.

Yeah, I recall that from like six months ago or something.

And it was, I think it's based on illness and something like that.

I'm not sure to be honest with you, but I know people have talked to me in my other committees about having hybrid meetings.

Some people like to be remote.

But if there's nothing else on this, any other questions before we proceed?

Looks like we'll learn more next time.

All right, moving to the next one, future discussion topics.

One question I have, which maybe this would have been better in the program work or the UPWP discussion, but I know under the new federal infrastructure law, there are some like grant programs, like the electric vehicle program that the MPO can apply for grants under.

Have you all been looking at some of those opportunities?

Is that something you'll be thinking of?

Yeah, I think it's something we probably want to pursue, at least as far as understanding the information and the opportunities.

I don't think we've identified specific projects, but one thought I had is at an upcoming policy board meeting, if not maybe one of an MPA technical committee, is trying to get a speaker to come in and provide some better information on what opportunities might be available in our area.

Thanks, Sandy.

Thanks, Travis.

Yeah, it's fine for now.

Great.

All right, I think we're ready to move on.

I still don't see any new names.

So matters of the public, I think we're good to go.

Is that correct, Sandy?

Thank you, all right.

Well, I think this is the first time I've ever seen this.

Of course, it's my last time to end early.

So I guess we can call this meeting to a close.

It's adjourned at, what is it, 8.08, 8.08 p.m.

Thanks all for attending and congrats, Lee and Donna.

Thank you all.

Thanks, everyone.