Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee (2013-2026) Meeting   11/16/2022

The idea is not separate for the people who are in something online.

Is there anyone who is part of the public?

There being no letters from the public, that's what they need to do.

There's food and pens from either down here somewhere.

Food and pens from the last week we had which was long.

We have a second.

Second that.

All in favor.

Well, Bonnie, we'll move to the next class meeting.

In the end, I guess you can.

But anyway, I guess we're in.

We're already in.

All right, so we're on to the update on the 2015 Long Range transportation plan.

Can you hear me, Nicholas?

Yeah, I can hear you.

OK. Well, I can hear Sandy just fine, but everyone else is very muffled, and it's quite garbled.

Well, we'll move the apple a little bit closer

Okay, thank you.

Okay, so the first kind of fun part about our transportation plan is that based on what you all told us, we should not call it a whole bunch of transportation plan.

So I think that this is the live that was just recently fresh off the press as of yesterday.

The little woman you find that reviewed the evening will probably take the hyphen out between now and right now because I don't really have a hyphen in there, but otherwise it's filed.

So thanks for providing that feedback.

And then it's a fun little activity for ourselves to

As most of you know, we went through a process to retain sound consultants to provide general support and have them work out in a few key areas of our automation strategic plan.

And so we did end up recruiting EPR consultants who are some, who have currently more heads of staff.

So that's a really good combination for our area because there are people that are familiar with our area, EPR has a lot of public engagement expertise on one range, expertise in fans, and then currently a lot of the technical expertise aspects.

So that's going to be really helpful as part of our own transportation plan.

So after talking to them,

They helped us sort of think through what the appropriate type of engagement might be for different parts of our plan development.

And so I'm just going to go through this with you to sort of define how we're going to be conducting stakeholder engagement.

Now, some of this we went through before as part of the planning process itself.

This is just going to be a little bit more specific about why we're recommending the types of engagement

that are being recommended at the different phases.

So the first phase of this is to really define the goals and then practice.

So after talking to the consultants, what they recommended is that there's probably a really important stakeholders that have a vested interest in what happens as part of this long-range transportation plan that are not going to be participating through the up year.

And so part of getting that engagement up front is going to be to help make sure that these perspectives are represented as we define the goals and objectives for the long-range transportation plan to make sure that we don't have any major blind areas or we're not missing any key factors that need to be considered.

And so those are places like

Not the development community necessarily, but private businesses to members of the economic interest.

Those are things like equity priority communities.

So people that are able to speak to the needs for our facilities or communities that are covered by our Title VI plan requirements or communities that have some sort of

I guess barrier, where transportation presents a barrier.

We want to make sure that those perspectives are also considered as we sort of develop the framework for what a transportation plan would cover.

It also includes, I think there are a lot of safety considerations that go beyond just the transportation planning and engineering side.

So there are some of those professionals that could speak to some of those factors and then there are also

When I generally classify that, that seems to be in Charlottesville largely about environmental interest, but I guess like special interest groups.

So they have like some advocacy philosophies that have really important things to say about what this plant means for the environment and how to make sure that we're meeting the environmental goals.

So there's a need to make sure that some of these perspectives are represented in the process and make sure that that is built into the framework

After talking to the consultants, what they suggested is that the best way to do that is going to be to use small focus groups where you can have a really well facilitated conversation because we're talking about abstract ideas.

It's going to be hard to have good conversations with the public at large.

So they suggested have some of these conversations with some of these stakeholders early in the process to make sure that that's informing the development of your goals and objectives.

The other thing that this does is by using these focus groups early on is that we develop an engagement with representatives from these communities that can help guide us on how we can best engage with those communities.

or business communities or things like that, that can help us know if we want to make sure that we have these perspectives represented in the larger public engagement, what is the best way that we can do to conduct outreach to those communities and they can help us identify those strategies.

Yeah, keep that in mind.

Another important suggestion, and that is that the CTAC be represented in those focus groups.

We have enough members that we could spread out, just one of us, that focus group, just to be able to report back to the CTAC what that particular focus group's concerns were and so forth.

Just get, you know, perspectives that we can

Like as a liaison kind of thing?

Okay.

Thank you.

So we have a question.

Sure, yeah.

The key thing, folks, is you don't want anyone

Yeah, well, I'm going to talk to them about it because I think the expectation is that that's something that our staff would be doing, but they would work with us on developing sort of the framework for that.

So I think, yeah, I think one of the questions that came out of MPI Tech yesterday that you might have picked up on, Donna, was whether or not this is going to be a true focus group or whether it's going to be more of like a stakeholder discussion.

And I think that's kind of a little bit on, you know, I have to work with the consultant on what we define that we want to get out of it.

So the ones that I've seen were pretty like open-ended.

Yeah, and we'll define what we hope for the outcomes to be prior to conducting the meetings.

I think the important thing is that we really want to make sure that these lenses are represented in the early stages of the process.

So then after we define the goals and objectives, that's where we started talking that we would do a big broad public engagement.

So we'll use the compacts that we develop through the focus groups and the stakeholder discussion groups to help us guide some more targeted or specific efforts.

But generally, this is where we're going to open it up and really try to do the broad outreach

to help make sure that everybody knows what the long-range transportation plan is, have public meetings where people can come and learn, identify some of those public intercept opportunities, and then we'll also conduct a survey.

So this is kind of combining two different phases of the project itself into one outreach activity.

And this is also based on guidance from the consultants.

Because basically what they told us is that it's going to be easier for the public to sort of help make decisions about predetermined alternatives.

So we're going to have these goals and objectives that have been defined through the MPO activities and have been vetted through these stakeholder groups that we've identified.

The public can then help inform what most resonates with their values.

as far as what the board has done about the transportation system.

And then there's also going to be an opportunity for them to say, and this is where I see that we have a problem with the community, or this is where I see an opportunity for improvement.

So we're kind of combining this into one significant outreach opportunity.

I think my initial thought was that we would prioritize our goals and then we would rank

to do a ranking of the needs of the transportation system and then go back to the public.

But instead it feels like it's a little bit more of an efficient process to ask the public where they see the needs up front.

And then our ranking process for prioritizing the needs for the system deficiencies would be able to also put what's prioritized as far as the quantitative analysis

next to what the public has, where the public has identified needs and to see those two side by side, which will, which will create like a fuller picture of, you know, what does the data show?

You know, the Albemarle County is doing a complex, you know, and they started it a little bit because, you know, the recent states slowed down, but they had something,

I like the way you described it.

They had proposed different objectives for the common plan and then asked for public feedback, but they weren't so strict, they're just those things that have been published in public that provide additional comments or additional ideas and usually do the same.

Don't make it so strict, but here are the five things that we want you to comment on.

Well, I think that's going to come up when we do the public meetings.

I think as far as the survey is concerned, though, we're probably going to stick to having a predetermined list.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Well, I think even if we wanted to limit it in person, I don't think we could be able to.

I was thinking about, I mean, I think there are some

Yeah, sorry, I missed what you were saying.

But please just go on.

The sound is very muffled.

I'm not hearing clearly.

Yeah.

One of the really nice things about MetroQuest, that happened to them, certainly we could certainly do something different if people have strong preferences, but one of the, part of the support that they provide is that they translated into other languages, like one of the functions of it.

I don't think that in our area there's a substantive population of people who speak languages other than

Spanish.

The rescue?

They are on the list, like people to include, at least to reach out to for the, for this, like stakeholder group, so we'll talk about that.

But it's also possible when we talk to those groups, they'll say for our community to participate in these work because of what we would need.

And so some of this was kind of up in the air, but based on the analysis that we're required to do for the federal compliance, it looks like

Well,

I mean, I mean, part of it part of it is just the I mean, there is a cost associated with translating them, like not just a Metro class survey, but translating all of our materials and providing those services into other languages.

And I think I think.

You know, if there's a specific request, we're required to need it, but it's just a question of

You know, is there really a demand to participate in this from the other community?

And I'll just note that from the meeting we just attended at VDOT earlier, they were looking at the completion rate by language type on surveys by MetroQuest, and so the ones that were sent out in English had a much higher completion percentage of like 50%.

So that is to say that survey is not necessarily the best tool to get feedback from every community.

Yeah.

In fact, the bench blog being about the tax need to be invited to participate.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we, you know, maybe unfortunately for Lucinda, but fortunately for me, we have a lot of experience, or she has a lot of experience now knowing how to engage with communities through that transit vision plan.

Alright, so then the next one here, so we're going to prioritize the goals, we're going to write the goals and objectives, we're going to take the public feedback that we hear about where they see that there are system improvement needs, we're going to put those together, and ultimately what we're going to end up with is a list of prioritized

needs that are going to help us also start identifying projects that need to be prioritized.

So once we get to the project for organization phase, that's where we're going to do another pretty significant paragraph of public engagement to start getting feedback.

So we're going to tell the public, we heard you, this is what you said your goals and objectives were and how important they were.

These are the solutions that we came up with and these are what the priorities are based on what we heard from you all.

and basically ask for their input at that point.

Did we get it right?

How does this feel?

Does this feel like it needs your name?

Does it not feel like it needs your name?

I don't know exactly what the questions are that we're going to ask, but that's generally what we're trying to gauge at that point.

If they would have gone through this process, now what's your feedback?

What do you like?

What do you not like?

So that's when we're going to have this opportunity to do this another check, reach out to some of those same groups that we reached out to for that first round of feedback to identify the priorities in the first place,

and to follow back up with them and to kind of close that loop.

So we'll do another set of public meetings, we'll do another set of public interviews with those same communities, and we'll have a public comment period where people will be able to review the recommendation and provide feedback.

It's possible that this is going to be an iterative process where we prioritize projects, get some feedback, reprioritize projects, get some feedback,

How long do you think the first two phase, each phase will take?

Yeah, I think, you know, I have a answer.

I think we can probably finish

This space up probably by next June.

Yeah, I think we'll be able to get to a point where we at least get through the first round of public engagement by June.

Yeah, and so that will work to start getting some priority.

My hope is that probably, you know, I think

I think we'll be working through it at that point.

Let's fingers crossed, yeah.

And so the final step in the public engagement process is going to not be that impactful, but it is a requirement, so we have to make sure that we have a required public hearing.

But that hope is that by the time we get to the point where we have the public hearing of the adoption of the plan itself, that there's been enough of a public process up to that point

All right.

I don't think so.

The question is,

Hopefully this makes sense.

But I'm wondering, so with the focus groups, more than likely, some of the focus groups are going to be a lot of groups.

For instance, if you're talking to downtown business folks, you're going to have a strong emphasis probably on parking, for instance, versus the environmental folks who are not

and you also are going to have a lot of, I would say also like folks who tend to benefit from, I don't know, I don't know, I imagine they collect demographic information or try to, they're taking surveys, right?

So is there any kind of weight given to those kinds of things?

Like whether for demographics, since one of the goals is to like,

So a couple things that I think is important to remember is that the stakeholders that are going to be engaged in this process are not actually defining the goals and objectives, they're important in the goals and objectives.

So all of that is going to go through our stuff.

and we'll come back to ELO as an advisory committee, MPATAC as an advisory committee and the policy board ultimately to determine like what are the overall values that we want to support in this plan.

So we're basically just defining like what our copies statement are

And then through this broader public engagement process, we'll start working at how do we weight these different goals against each other.

So I don't think there's any concern that like one group is going to sort of like add down another just by their group goal.

I think it's more about like, we want to make sure that

If there are needs that support business, and maybe some of them are contradictory, then that's a conversation that we need to have, and that's a policy decision that we need to make.

Yeah.

So, as we're talking about public engagement, these are a couple of questions that I think it might be helpful for us all to work through together.

And that's, we get through this process,

What does it look like to say that this process was successful as far as public engagement efforts?

So there are a number of ways that you can evaluate these.

I put some up on the slide, but that doesn't mean that those are the only ones.

I think the measure of success would be you get to the final stage where you have other hearings and you get a lot of people there but they're supportive as opposed to, hey, this doesn't make any sense.

So both quantity and consensus would be the measure of success.

I think that's pretty tricky, because a lot of times, the people who come out are the ones that need their voices to be heard, and so by that point, the people who come out are going to be more motivated, and they don't agree with them, and they do agree.

It's probably not representative.

I think this is a better measure to say that, but before we said it, it will soon be here for enough people and people that represent the community.

And if that's a yes, then I don't know if that convinces us later.

I don't know how you would measure that.

I don't know.

So is there a way to list it as part of the feedback, other groups or representative combinations that something would suggest reaching out to?

We don't necessarily have to do the discussion.

We can also do like a single or an interview, for example.

But that can also be like one thing we ask at the end of whatever that process is.

Yeah, first two bullets are really numerical in some respects, in most respects.

And I think that's what you need to do at that stage.

You just want to say, have we reached out?

Have we reached out in terms of the date

So number received maybe versus number of attendees.

We know demographics are in the county, in the city.

That's what I was sitting on.

Sure.

I would also say that because the first two are rather quantitative, it's pretty important to establish what that means in terms of numbers before we start the engagement process.

So do you all want to define what those schools are or do you just want to add to it?

I do like the demographics because you do have the demographic numbers and so you want to see if you've got civil percentage or at least some small percentage of the demographics in terms of income, education, race, whatever, all three

Actually, in the MetroQuest surveys that have been put out, not all of them, ask for the demographic data, and make sure that that's actually in the framework.

Also, my impression, and thank you,

I'm not making promises, but I do taxes, I've done taxes for AARP, and they collect demographic restrictions.

I'm not going to lead by there, just to give you a sense.

My sense is, because I feel like a Democrat, I still have to each return.

Yes, people, ethnicity, income, something like that, houses, people, are they military or not?

And I would say, so I've done this for three years now, I get about 50%

My recollection of the coverage that Albemarle County conducted on the small area of land

I guess we make it about 1%.

Probably 1% would be an optimistic response rate.

Well, I think you're going to have a number.

Yeah.

Some of you guys might have heard of the four-based code, what's the name of it?

And they had a big army of people there.

We haven't had any of the imps that we've been running here in a second. Screaming, y'know, and like, spacious people even in tears. All in a nice light. And, um...

So I think that's something we're going to be careful of.

And we'll get in with the metrics and the conditions.

Well, I did one other MetroQuest survey and I think that was, so that's the other thing is that just kind of what we propose out of this process of how, like, you know, how strong do people feel about it?

The preventative reference survey got about, I think it was like 820 responses.

Which, again, people felt very strongly about that.

But a lot of the, I mean, I don't think that that's actually very common for the long-range transportation plans for, like, that I've seen that other places have done, to have that necessarily high level of responses.

So I think, you know, maybe 0.5% might be a more acceptable goal.

That's still a pretty, like, substance that we're a person to the, I don't know, the community about that.

I think good survey responses on the, on these, like, the more general arms transportation plans are probably not worth accurate in a lot of things.

But that's just a survey.

Well, we haven't catch your name out, so we've got to do that.

And a pretty slick logo, but I have not designed it to serve the record.

So the focus groups slash stakeholder discussion groups, we had a conversation about this MPFI.

So the way I group these,

together in my mind was sort of what frame of reference would these people be coming together to speak from.

So the idea isn't necessarily that we would have a focus group around economic development or a focus group around safety, but that we would have a conversation about the goals and objectives, making sure that people who are looking at them from these different lenses would be able to

to speak to the process of maybe what's missing or what doesn't sit right with them or what they would like to add.

In MPO Tech, they suggested that potentially it might make more sense to have focus groups that weren't organized around sort of like the type of people that are participating, but around topic areas that everybody would sort of like be speaking to.

So instead of having one focused, like where we invite business communities to participate,

I want to talk about economic development.

So there are different ways to do that.

Either way could work.

It might change the way some of these groups are organized, but I'd love feedback on whether or not these are the right stakeholders to be including.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

If that's your perspective, let's assume that we should probably have two groups for each topic, then it's more essentially for 68 people rather than

And, you know, they can, you know, especially if we compare notes between the two different groups, which, you know, see what they said that was similar and what this would be different.

The other thing is you could break up some of these into two groups that have been the same.

Yeah, I actually do have an MBA in tech, too.

Yeah, I forgot to put an asterisk by it.

I forgot to put an asterisk there.

Yeah, I think the more...

First Baptist Church because they helped us with the Trans-Indigenous Plan and they have a good connection to the, they have a Black community church and so they provide a connection to that demographic of people.

So I included them for that reason.

Are groups related to transportation not specifically included because they'll be incorporated in a different part of the puzzle?

Like what?

I guess I'm curious, I don't know that I have a suggestion on how to navigate that.

Yeah, well, I think that's why we're having a conversation here.

And again, we're not necessarily trying to be exclusive and it doesn't mean that others won't have opportunity to participate.

Again, this is helping us make sure that we are seeing things through the lens of stakeholders that don't necessarily have an opportunity to provide feedback like you all are doing right now.

I don't know.

What about like linkages to other modes like Amtrak or the airport?

I think those might make more sense on individual interviews.

Yeah, and I know that President Donald Trump has already spoken, or told me about the airport.

So how about, let me just, I saw the Virginia Institute for the Law, you know, and our CAC recently had the, wanted the institute, and that might be an interesting,

Also, to me, what bothers me about the list is very, let's see, central oriented.

I don't want to say downtown, but Albemarle County is pretty good.

And I assume the transportation covers the entire county, right?

And I just, I don't know where to reach out, you know, in more of the rural areas.

I don't see it in this list.

Yeah, so it basically covers all along 29 to a little bit south of 64 and up to Greene County.

Ani Easton goes around the block as well.

The first group we follow in the main interpretation house.

So I can go out at 250, I call that the polo grass, the soccer association.

There are the big views, as you go out in the county, that's the transportation, those are the drivers, right?

And so you want to find out what the needs are, how to address that, how to apply all the transportation.

I want to find out what it means, about how to address them and how to apply for all of the transportation. And I just, these organisations are going to focus just like we said, on, on, on Paudings and...

I don't really see any of those that are exclusive to downtown.

feedback rounds, if that makes sense.

While you're at it, I just think about the representation

Yeah, I didn't include any private assistance in this list, but the economic development departments have sent me, like who the top employers are.

Jose is an interesting thing.

Also thinking about maybe habitat.

And I don't know if you picked up this, I really came up with it.

I didn't see that up there.

I guess you did.

Yeah, there's not that much, Cat.

I can take you around it, Michael.

Yeah, you didn't write it down.

Yeah, you didn't write it down.

It was really just one of the developers.

What's the low income, any idea what that is?

Low income?

Anybody?

Okay.

I don't know.

I'm going to sit in the back.

Between us 14,000.

And I'm going to send you back one time, so that's about $750.

So just know that we've done this now.

That's OK. We only have to be able to talk about it.

But this will give you all a chance to provide initial feedback before we start

talking to the stakeholders about this.

So as far as the goals and objectives in metrics are concerned, I think it's really important that we start by keeping the end in mind.

So the outcome of this long range transportation plan that we're required to produce is a list of transportation projects.

So it's a little bit different than some of these other planning efforts that we're doing right now, or that you all might be doing as far as the comprehensive planning or other plans.

where you're sort of defining, you know, these are the different values that are important to our communities.

And this is a set of strategies that we're going to use to reach those goals.

Really what the goals and objectives and metrics and the long-range transportation plan are going to do is they're going to help us determine how important are each of these different values in selecting the projects that we think are going to be the most important for our region to pursue.

So the output of this whole objectives

and metrics evaluation process.

It's going to be one set of projects.

So the goals and objections will involve how the projects are prioritized.

The goals are the general value statements.

So that's, this is what's important to our community.

These are the things that we value.

And then the objectives are what it looks like to accomplish this goal.

So those are things that are more measurable that help you know that you are making progress for achieving those goals.

And then the methods are what we use to evaluate.

So they're kind of the technical side of the goals and objectives, statements that help us look for indicators for how well our projects are going to support the identified goals and objectives.

So it's possible that through this process, as we have so many discussions in the community, that it's possible that there will be objectives that are identified that can't be translated directly to a metric of that technical.

And so if that's the case, then we'll work with stakeholders to figure out

How can we incorporate those objectives as considerations in our project implementation process?

But to the extent possible, we want to try to be able to create a process that can quantify as many of these objectives as possible in as far as evaluating our project.

So the general process is that you all as an MPO advisory committee are going to help vet the draft goals and objectives.

We'll take them out to the public.

These were the draft goals and objectives that I had developed to start an initial conversation and then MPO Tech had made some suggestions as well.

So they generally cover, so again, the general goal statements are like the values.

This is what's important to us for our transportation system to accomplish.

We want it to be safe.

We want it to be environmentally friendly.

We want it to promote equity and accessibility of the system.

We have goals around incorporating the transportation system with our land use planning and supporting economic development and then we want to improve the travel efficiency and sustainability.

MPO Tech had wanted to increase the

I guess the efficiency goal, to make sure that it was clear that that was not just a roadway transportation improvement to support a single-arm community vehicle, but that it would support all those.

So I knew a few things around there in the efficiency category to help kind of try to strengthen that goal.

But in general, those are kind of the categories that

We generally use them and these are pretty common on all plans.

How they're grouped together is a little bit different.

So a couple of things that are different.

I used the previous long-range transportation plan as a baseline.

A couple of things that are different is that I pulled the equity and accessibility grouping out because it seems like there's a lot more emphasis in the local area as well as coming from the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration

There's a lot more focus on equity and environmental justice, so I wanted to pull out equity to strengthen that as a goal in its own right, and I also pulled out environment to strengthen that goal in its own right.

This will be where we do the public engagement to help us define how much of a we need to get to the different factors.

My instinct is that probably what will likely have a lot of lead associated with it will be the safety and equity.

categories, and then probably the other ones will have less of an emphasis.

I think one of the things that's really interesting is if you look at the 2040 plan, for example, it was pretty much completely a system capacity plan, so it was really looking at improving the efficiency of the operation.

And my instinct is that probably efficiency will not resonate as significantly to people as it did previously, but

I think we'll do some public engagement.

Ultimately, the policy board will help us determine, you know, what we need to get to the different categories.

But, yeah.

Is it meant to be like a vote agnostic?

I see things like voter choice and public vote.

Could it not be that the UK says we need to see one in one of the participation board?

So, for example, when we talk about safety, we're going to be able to say it's more important to us or we want to prioritize the safety for bike and ped users.

I think what's really hard about this plan is that if you start defining what your desired outputs are at this phase, you really sort of, how do I explain this?

Like again, the goal is to help us develop a process where we can evaluate one kind of project against the other kind of project.

Okay.

So one thing that could be challenging, assuming this is kind of the starting point where you mentioned the rubric that you will evaluate projects on, even though I'm a huge supporter of multimodal struggle, here there are many instances where you basically have double counting, right?

So you have increased merge weights for all users, but then above that, increased use of alternative modes of transportation.

So if you were to actually evaluate this quantitatively, even though you're giving issues that were vague,

You know, like the input you're putting in to evaluate that is the same for both of those things.

So that would end up getting you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It makes sense.

And I think the way that we're actually, the way this is translated into the metric is actually different for each of these categories.

So, but I think the other thing that's hard is sort of, you know, you're kind of, the objective is kind of the inputs being the same, like what you can actually measure.

and how people are able to win for what you should measure.

So it makes sense that the objectives should be what the public would be able to provide feedback on, and then we need to be able to translate that into something quantifiable, almost.

Yeah?

Two more questions.

Trails can be considered if they meet the transportation system.

Those are some projects that have been funded in the past five, 10, 15 years.

The local projects VDOT has funded.

They locally drive projects.

There's certainly a rubric in the SMART SCALE, where most of the money is water projects, that tends to go towards, you know, things that produce congestion, a trail of 10,

I would argue about how some of the metrics score in the rubric, SMART SCALE, and you may say it's site-indiscriminating.

It's a trail that's now associated with roadway, right?

But if you ever shared most of our projects, I would share with you about the component with the roadway.

And it's not just you, it's the people.

On that stage.

That may be true too.

And I can tell you, not too far away, but there's tons of money to do everything you want.

So the state can't always, the federal government can't always be the last arbitrarily to be there.

Yeah, no worries.

I'm not going to get into specifics, but this is not a be now, right?

It is not, no.

But that's the way you sort of phrased it.

And you have to be careful because we have train stations, buses,

and VDOT.

I understand that, but that does not show up necessarily for VDOT.

That's my question too.

One more time.

All the Smart Scale projects we're working on, they were nominated by a locality.

So the locals are putting these things up for Smart Scale.

VDOT is funding them against the rubric that was put together.

So, yeah, just to be clear, you don't like the projects because you don't like what Charlottesville or Albemarle is nominating for projects.

It's just a transportation element that's off the road.

And for that case, in order for that kind of transportation connection to be eligible for funding through the state, it has to be the transportation requirements for VDOT.

You're correct.

You are correct that we can include other things that aren't going to be VDOT-funded projects in this plan that would like them around and lead the area.

First, I will agree to approve the train station.

That's not going to be that project.

Yeah, that would probably go into the DRT category, but yeah.

But the airport is a good thing.

Yeah.

The big one, the big infrastructure, too, is to give you our money, and not necessarily clear this all down into a VDOT.

It shouldn't go into a county or a city, and we should be characterizing things that are not necessarily

Sure, yes, yeah.

consider other options.

I'm not sure yet what goes far.

You have to go back to the federal government.

So you're interested in something special.

Yeah.

I have a follow-up.

The new federal money that's coming out, does that money help fund these types of projects, or are those earmarked for the specific other things?

So some of that money is used in these projects.

Yes.

And some would be used for other things.

Also related to the Department of Transportation.

If we include that in there, basically if we include it in here, it just helps us identify it as a transportation priority that could be pursued through something besides the kind of standard channels.

And maybe help you integrate it a little bit.

Trans-Asian, maybe you mentioned, you know.

But it may not necessarily be funded by VL.

But that would be included in our scope.

Not to add another layer here, but it would be helpful

That's a good question for the group.

Like a purpose statement?

I might add something in the works.

Well, any other comments?

Well, I don't need it back.

We can move on to any additional matters from the Department of Justice.

Any members of the Department out there?

All right.

What's that? Yes.

We are at the point where we will able to be able to be able to