Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee (2013-2026) Meeting   1/18/2023

It's definitely been raised roughly 42 more than that.

I want you to know that I draw like everyone.

It's just, you know, there's nothing you can do about it.

It's just, it'll be interesting to me, you know, with, with smart scale funding being limited, how many of you might have actually been funded now?

Now, this is not just us, of course, it's all the other agencies in the United States.

yeah there are a couple things if you don't mind and just for those of you who are reading this the table is broken up into three different categories for each project so this is the base cost estimate so that's the engineering cost estimate based on what they think the project will will cost then there are the contingencies which are sort of accounting for unknown risk

So there are additional contingencies that are applied to different projects based on what kind of risks might be expected that they need to mitigate.

And then the last one is inflation because transportation projects are basically implemented that the costs that the funding is allocated for inducted out for six years are not going to be implemented right away.

So there's an inflation cost that's also applied.

And then within each of those different rows, you can see there's the PE, RW, and CN.

These are the different project phases.

So there's the preliminary engineering phase, the right of way phase, and then the construction phase.

So this top row right here is showing what the base cost estimate is for all of those project phases.

This second row right here is showing how much is being added to the overall

Project cost to account for any of the unknown risks.

Because remember, we haven't done the preliminary engineering yet, so they don't know exactly when we're developing these project estimates, what kinds of potential obstacles or barriers they might run into.

So they try to account for that.

And then this last one right here is the overall information cost.

The CTB, the Commonwealth Transportation Board,

received its first presentation from the staff after evaluating all of the SMART SCALE projects for round five at their meeting yesterday.

And based on the staff recommended scenarios, they did recommend funding the 812 Street Multimodal Improvements Project, but that was the only project that the MPO submitted that was recommended for funding.

There were two other projects

From the Culpeper District in a region that we're also funded, one of them was improvements on Peter Jefferson Parkway.

That included some access management improvements as well.

So that was submitted by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission and then improvements to Belvedere.

That was the Green Tea intersection that was recommended for Belvedere and Rio.

That was also recommended.

for approval.

Can I just hear just, I mean, the bridge, for example, has so much added to it compared to the other funds.

And it seems to me it's roughly in the same stage.

I'm not sure I can quite tell

on these numbers.

It's the geology aspect of it.

They all know it's under the ground.

So the borders of the bridge, it's totally unknown.

Yeah, it's a really sensitive area.

There's a lot of, not just the ecological and the geotechnical concerns, but also there are a lot of historic features in that area.

So until they do the environmental analysis as well, they're not sure what exactly they might need to adjust in order to build that bridge.

So again,

VDOT is developing these funding applications without doing any of that preliminary engineering.

We have the three, excuse me, the list again.

I can go forward, they're going to drop off.

I mean, the bridge was in particular was something that we've discussed that was here.

We've had a lot of discussion.

Yeah.

Well, the reason I say this about the bridge is because I think there's a really good opportunity to apply for some additional funding for the preliminary engineering phase to answer some of those unknown questions.

So I think this aligns really well with the RAIDS grant program through the federal, it's a federal discretionary grant program, but I think because of its importance in connecting to highly dense urban areas,

In a safe way, an alternative to Brevard, I think that's a low high priority for, you know, to establish that are connected to the other region.

The other two, I think we may be having some bigger conversations as possible that maybe we go back to the 5th Street project and look at how we could potentially pare it down a little bit to submit a kind of a more streamlined application next time.

That's a little bit pared down, but maintaining many of the benefits

In the district avenue roundabout, I'm not sure if we're going to move forward on this point or we'll potentially take a step back and kind of take another look at the hydraulic 29, the larger hydraulic 29 area.

I think those are some questions we're going to have to work through with the policy board.

You said it's preliminary engineering right of way construction.

DDI is, oh, I forget exactly what that stands for.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When you're stepping back and evaluating the work that we need to blend these together in the funding cycle,

So in the previous round which is what which was a um it was an outlier but there was this huge input for money because there was a new wholesale fuels tax that was implemented

And so basically, remember, transportation funding this program six years out.

So basically, by implementing a new tax, they had six years of projected revenue that hadn't already been programmed.

So they added all of those six years projections of revenue into the last round.

Previous round, we got 12 projects funded in our NPO area.

So that was a little bit of a fluke, and it was something that we were advised very strongly not to expect.

I think our project costs overall, you can see the price tags on these are pretty high.

So I think I'm not surprised that we got free.

I think that's, you know, I think I had very little expectations and, you know, I'm pleased with this outcome.

I think there always is an opportunity to evaluate and that's one of the things that we do between rounds.

And that's something that our VDOT staff also helps us do is help us plan better to have more competitive applications in the future.

What happened specifically with the hydraulic 29 bundle that was approved in round four of SMART SCALE, the previous round, that we have submitted an application for a grade separated roundabout, and it had all these really great features associated with it, and the total price tag of $140 million that did not score while through SMART SCALE.

And so between round three and round four,

I say we, I wasn't really integrally involved at that point, but that MPO worked with the stakeholders that had developed the recommendations for the 29 hydraulic improvements and really found ways where we could identify more targeted, less expensive projects.

And I think that's really the direction that SART SCALE is going.

In order to be more competitive, localities and local regions either have to

to find additional resources to be able to put towards projects to reduce the amount of funding you're asking for through SMART SCALE in order to increase the competitively.

There's also a project in Nelson County that was recommended for funding, but that is technically in the Lynchburg, Vancouver district and the other localities in our region that are receiving.

So there's Avon Street.

There is the US 250 Peter Jefferson Parkway intersection.

That included a parking lot.

What's that?

It's a continuous green tea, yeah?

So that was nice that everybody that submitted an application in our NPR got to have one awarded to them.

Now I'm just trying to make the connection to the long range training.

The general categories that are evaluated are similar.

The actual methodology is going to be a little bit different because we are

developing a way to measure the performance and the benefits of our project based on what we have the capacity to do and not necessarily relying on all the tools that VDOT would have accessible.

So there's some difference there.

I think one of the questions that we'll have to answer as a region is do our priorities align the same way that the state's priorities align or do we want to place a higher priority on a different set of

of values that the state does.

The table that we look at uses the methodology that is developed by VDOT, so VDOT generates all of those elements.

Yes, we do not do that.

Now, there is potentially some discussion on how there could be more of a back and forth and more of an opportunity for a conversation about those cost estimates.

Yeah, originally we were going to ask VDOT staff to use that as an opportunity to talk about the different types of projects, the program funding and things like that.

They had a conflict and were not able to be of attendance tonight, but I think that that report is a really good resource to sort of just know what's happening in our region.

It gives a little bit of a, you know, if you have questions that somebody asked, hey, you're on the CTAC, what's going on with this project, you can answer them now, or maybe you wouldn't have been able to before, but

But if you have anything you want to talk about, this could be a good time to have a discussion.

I was just curious on the hydraulic and 29 intersection.

There was a line up to the center where they do something about the traffic, Sydney was there.

Do you remember that?

Is that ongoing?

The original plan that also predated me a little bit was to synchronize the signals going up and down 29 between the city and the county.

I think the county

to synchronize their signals, but the city has had some difficulty synchronizing those, and there's a variety of reasons for that.

But my understanding right now is that there hasn't been funding identified to move forward with the signal synchronization on the city side.

Well, let me bring up, so, of course, I said I've got complaints.

Why does CTAC explain what it is?

Everybody does a comment about traffic.

And they like to see something done differently.

Do we have like someplace where people can, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to voice everybody's complaint that I hear, but is there a place where people can register?

Shouldn't we set up a place we don't?

Can we complain about traffic?

Yeah.

Well, we want to volunteer specific instances.

For example, there are a number

We have the new intersection at 250 and 64.

The divergent diamond, yeah?

Yes, which I'm used to because they have one in Maryland that I went through all the time, but nobody else appears to be used to it.

But there are a lot of comments about lines of sight, lines, where should people sort of explain what's bothering them?

and get it back to VDOT, that's a very good question.

I think VDOT's website doesn't have something, I mean, I've certainly used it to complain about what might be used and all that.

This is VDOT, that stuff, how about?

In a City Public Works department also has our own group.

I'm in Nelson County and at one point people were posting the phone number of the communications on social media, so I guess that's also an option if you really need to talk to someone.

So just to give you all a little bit of an update, we at the MPO technical committee, we reviewed the project prioritization process, which is wrapping up.

I have been, I spent the last month calling a bunch of people and emailing a bunch of people to try to set up some stakeholder discussion groups.

So those should be meeting, starting to meet in February.

And then we've been working on creating some draft content for the website.

So I think that was included as part of your packet.

And I thought that this would be a really good opportunity for you all to provide some feedback on mostly the content.

I know that the format is not leaving a lot to be desired and we're going to work to improve that, but you all have made some statements like we needed a

like a purpose statement and a why I should care about the plan statement, those kinds of things.

So what I did was we have a couple of different sections and really I think my, where I landed with this moving forward is that if somebody asks, what is long range transportation plan?

There are kind of a number of different perspectives you can answer that question from.

And so I tried to think through how I would answer that question and what different ways that people, that this might

So I will say that I think, um, you know, some of the feedback I got from our staff that reviewed this was I had this little line in here about making a personal connection to transportation.

And I think originally that was a little bit lower down about why, why should I care about the plan?

And the idea was that if we move it up, it might be more of a hook.

I feel like it's a little out of place right now.

But the first way to answer the question of what is the World Trade Transportation Plan or what is moving towards 2050 is that it's a required document that MPOs are required to to prepare that identifies transportation priorities for the region.

The second part, the second way to answer that question is why an individual should care about the plan or how it impacts them individually.

So here I was really trying to emphasize what are the ways that that

that the long-range transportation plan will make a difference in how people go about their daily lives.

If you're an average person, why will this plan be something that impacts you?

This next question is what does the plan do?

It's really talking about what is the process of developing the plan?

And then the last question is why is it important

which is really about what it is you use this plan for.

So those were kind of the categories, but we can spend a little time.

I don't know if you all want to go section by section, but we could talk a little bit about what you liked about the page, what maybe doesn't land as well, or if this is laid out in the appropriate order.

I think breaking things up into like bullets and just like breaking up the text always helps and just the way I read things I tend to skip over paragraphs so I think that is helpful to draw attention and then maybe also whether it's like actual images or even like

Right, so something I think that can kind of help communicate too, should I post myself to like scan things and see what your eye is trying to do, that could communicate things visually as well.

Basic organization, but from a formatting standpoint, I mean, I think lettering on the Y should I care about, and the thing is the other is better.

Yeah, I think he, I've gone back and forth a little bit with our website manager.

This is obviously a work in progress.

I think he used the different text to try to just break it up a little bit more, but I think probably, I don't know, at least to me, the smaller text is a little bit more difficult to read than the bigger text.

He also, we had a timeline and I don't know if you guys like those or not, but originally the timeline I had was vertical,

And it showed the project phase on one side and then the public engagement on the other side.

And what he did was, because we were having trouble fitting that all on the page, was he developed this little project ticker, which is kind of cool.

I think you were the one who said we needed a purpose statement.

That statement?

Yeah, it always seems like a one-stop shop.

You've got to get enough information to understand why you should care.

I like how the highlighted and light purple parts are sort of the layman's feet for translating within the black and white text.

I do feel like the way that the text is formatted in the light circle would be more acceptable.

It's actually more wordy.

It's even more paragraph-compute.

Especially the second portion.

Yeah, we can probably pull it out, some of these questions, for example, that might help break it up a little bit.

You all said the last line.

Maybe this is just me, but I feel like if I'm looking at this, if I'm looking at it initially and I don't know much about how this stuff works, I might think that it's a broken picture and then you can't necessarily click over or drag.

So I think some kind of

Do they start and end the timeline?

If I were going on here as a citizen, as somebody who's really concerned about climate change, I don't think that there's anything in here that stands out that it's like,

inspiring to me that this is like really gonna it's gonna have an impact on it I'm not saying that like well this is gonna be like the plan is built to have you know with that center right we'll have a major impact even though like hopefully but so

I don't know if that's appropriate to sort of like emphasize as a goal or, you know, I don't know, just have a little bit more connection to this, you know, city's climate action plans and visits that we talked about last time or anything around that.

Yeah, I think if it's like that, I just wouldn't want to, if climate change is included, I wouldn't want it to be like a throwaway thing, like as it is right now, it's like, oh, environmental impacts, it's like one bullet out of this,

And again, it's just for me, it doesn't inspire that, like that would be a focus where it, I mean, needs to be, you're talking about 2050, you know, and everything's on fire.

If I'm hearing your

If you care about climate change and how this supports the climate action plans, and maybe those turn into bullets, there's a way to, how does it support climate action?

I guess transportation is the largest sector in the city and county towards emissions.

I think one of the challenges specifically with the climate change, and we struggled through this while we were developing the prioritization process, is it's really hard to get a direct measurement of the climate change impacts of a transportation project, especially if you're not relying on modeling.

So I think that this will become apparent as we go through the process, but really,

I didn't want to pull this out separately from the draft goals and objectives until we have the opportunity to talk to the stakeholder groups, but I think the approach is most likely going to be that there are going to be a couple of themes that are interwoven throughout some of these other goals and objectives that aren't necessarily going to be stand-alone criteria for evaluation, but are going to be

They're going to be incorporated throughout the evaluation of the projects.

And one of them, I think, is going to be climate change.

Because again, we're not really necessarily evaluating the air quality impact of the potential transportation projects, but we are going to create a prioritization process that includes land use coordination, that includes congestion mitigation, that includes support for multimodal infrastructure, things like that.

I think that messaging will become apparent.

I would second it to work something like that, which is air.

And then as you say,

Each in its way because when Point Grey was bringing this up I was looking at bullet points under what does the plan do and all of them except for the first and the last imply but do not express

So yeah, just kind of get it in that and then double it.

Yeah, because it's not like, I mean, a lot of stuff that we discussed or we've been discussing, I guess, we've seen, you know, definitely related to that.

Well, Doug, you mentioned where you're starting to do focus groups.

Yes, I've only scheduled one of those, so once I have the meeting dates, I can send those out to you.

I think we're going to do those in person here at the Warner Sheets, and there's one in the center that's available.

I would probably just request that we have one or two people as of so far.

I don't know that they'll be recorded.

We did talk to the consultant, so I think

I think after talking through a little bit of what the discussion groups would look like, I think it makes sense to have them actually facilitate the discussion.

So I'll probably do an introduction and let them facilitate the discussion.

I just wanted to caution against two people in the room that aren't part of the focus group because then they tend to dismay the conversations.

I'm scheduled to be one of us, to be an observer and report back to the group.

I'll also just

Just to manage expectations, I think it might be more of a discussion group than a focus group.

But I'm working with them to develop some content and I think we'll have some activities to get up and do some stuff.

So we have the business stakeholder meeting that is scheduled for February 4th, is that meeting.

So I'll try to hit those.

I'm not starting at the beginning.

But just as a reminder, this is the overall process that we're working through.

So we have, Ryan has, are you presenting on the demographic?

Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

So Ryan can update you all on the demographic and land use trends.

The existing system operations that will occur largely when we start doing the project evaluation will be able to evaluate the different criteria that are working into the prioritization process.

The planning context and background has largely been completed and then we have a draft set of goals and objectives that will be vetted by the stakeholder groups next.

Next month, and then we will come back in March to establish a more finalized set of goals and objectives.

And then we'll start working for the public engagement to establish the different weights of the different priorities.

So we are new through the process.

Just as a reminder that we were working

with the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment to develop the project prioritization process and there were a couple of guiding principles that they used to develop the process that we're using.

One is that we would either use publicly accessible or locally developed data that was specific to our MPO.

So the only really locally specific data that we're using is the transit data and then also

The job growth projections, we'll use our capital demand model for those.

The methodology is based on our existing staff and technical capacity.

And then they were developing a process and not a project.

So it was really important to emphasize that this is something that we would take over management once they completed it.

We incorporated feedback from previous discussions with MPOTAC.

And with UL, and that included additional consideration of multimodal system functionality, incorporating more of an equity lens approach to evaluating the criteria in the different areas.

So instead of having equity be one criteria, I tried to think through how equity could be incorporated throughout the assessment of the different goals and objectives.

And then we added environmental impact factors.

So I won't get into this in too much detail but basically there's a raw score that's calculated and for every performance measure there's a seven point score from low to high the projects will be assigned or normalized to that seven point scale and then those will be combined in order to give and multiplied by the weight for each of this criteria that will give you a final score.

These are the draft goals that I anticipate will change after we go through the

stakeholder discussion groups.

But this is an example of what the overall process will look like.

So you have your different performance measures.

They're each given a weight.

These are just examples.

These could be the weights we give each of the performance measures that could be different weights.

So a couple of things that I'll highlight.

When we were talking about that the roadway safety criteria is still largely the same.

We're using the potential for safety improvement information from VDOT's Highway Safety Action Plan.

There are a couple of different thresholds that we'll need to decide which ones we want to use as we get into evaluating the projects.

For the pedestrian safety action plan, the original methodology included the spatial analysis using

And I think that wasn't really capturing as many of the opportunities where there were pedestrian safety improvement needs as we would have liked.

So the methodology that is recommended now is to use the pedestrian safety action plan, which is an action plan developed by VDOT.

It both captures where there are existing crash, crash clusters, as well as uses a predictive analysis to identify corridors where there's

Opportunity to make pedestrian improvements.

Yeah.

Oh, go ahead.

Good question on this.

Yeah.

Yeah, so for some of these we really had to use proxy data.

So, you know, we didn't have bicycle specific data.

I guess I'm wondering, I mean, because like tragically someone was killed earlier this week.

And I just, I feel like there's an interesting there.

Even the way a roadway is laid out and how a pipeline exists in certain organizations, the beautiful space and the sidewalk, I feel like that would be a missed opportunity.

It's a big problem in transportation overall.

Traditionally, there hasn't been an upward data set in front of me, but it's a close fashion that now there's a lack of mobility modes and they don't have any standardized.

So it's going to take time there because if you look at all these data sets, like the crashes or average values from the previous five years, it's going to take some time to let the micro mobility boats even show up in these databases.

But that's, that's a good question for VDOT.

Will they have a, you know, a slowly using IT action plan at some time in the future?

Right now, I think that for most pipelines, because the most

deadly crashes to cyclists involved in the vehicle.

And those crashes are mostly captured in the vehicle.

Yeah.

And so maybe my follow-up question is just trying to understand.

So these are data sets that are feeding into an analysis.

So, most of our safety data sets are reactive, meaning we collect data about the actions that come from police reports.

So I think what you're saying is it from a geometric design perspective in the state.

No, I don't think so.

Part of the predictive aspect of the pedestrian safety action plan is also looking at components that will also apply for bicycle safety, so things like

the number of destinations that people might want to travel to, the percentage of disadvantaged communities that live within a certain distance of those areas.

So there are other factors other than just the pedestrian infrastructure that is also being measured in that that can also serve kind of as a proxy for where there's likely going to be bicycle activity.

This isn't perfect.

I understand that, but I think it's also

That amount of resources that would be necessary for us to have that data available locally to analyze would be very expensive.

So we're doing the best we can with the data we have available, also knowing that this quantitative analysis is only part of the story that is going to be told.

We're going to do the public outreach as well.

We're going to get feedback from people that tell us, I'm nearly hit

Are there standards for the five lanes?

I mean, there's a lot of things that are identified as five lanes that you want to go close to.

And I think that's where I was going to mention this,

So again, we are measuring and I know Marty, you've raised some concerns about using jobs, sort of our job destinations as an area.

But I think in this case, we're using jobs as a proxy for access to locations where people would want to go, because that's what we have information for.

But the next thing is really measuring accessibility.

How many places can somebody get by different modes of transportation?

And so what they did for accessibility

is for the bike access to jobs that are using the level of travel stress, which is basically a measure of how comfortable is it for somebody to take a bike to get from one destination to another.

And so you're taking the existing condition, whatever the, so in this case, the bike access for jobs, you're taking the existing condition and saying that this is how, whatever the level of travel stress is on a rating of one to four, you're saying it's a level two travel stress, that's the existing condition.

If somebody could access all of the destinations that are at the highest level of travel stress, a level of travel stress four, that is the opportunity where we could maybe close the network gap by making those, by reducing that level of travel stress to reach all of those potential destinations.

So that is sort of getting, it's not exactly measuring safety, but it is measuring a lot of those sort of

There are these hideous programs with roads and ways of going depending on the track.

The app does have a recommended bike route to guide them.

But it doesn't necessarily, yes, I know that, I know we're walking there too as well, but it doesn't show you whether they're traveling on the streets or on bike paths.

Okay, so there is some information there.

Why isn't that fed into looking at the five axis?

I think it is the level of travel stress is like a rating for how comfortable the infrastructure is to cycle on, so it takes into consideration not only the type of infrastructure that's there, so it's separated by plane, shared road, or dedicated by path, and then also if it's adjacent to traffic, it's the level of traffic and the speed of the vehicle traffic, because the faster that is, the busier that is, the less comfortable the traffic is.

What are you using?

I don't know if this is where Google pulls our data, but we're using the National Accessibility Evaluation Information.

It's a pooled-fund study that VDOT participates in.

Remember, we have to go back to that criteria that we started with, which is using the publicly accessible data that

We don't know what analytics are necessarily using.

So that's what we're using to pull our analytics to measure that.

So then we're using the transit access to jobs.

So for each of these, we're comparing the current condition to an ideal condition.

So for transit access to jobs, we're comparing existing transit access to what automobile access would be during the similar peak hour.

So the opportunity where there are the biggest differences between transit access and vehicle access, that's where there's an opportunity to make improvements.

And then auto access to jobs would be the difference between how many jobs are accessible during peak travel hours compared to how many jobs would be accessible during the off-peak hours, assuming those businesses are still open, I suppose.

And then is there any cross-matching between accidents, let's say on bikes or on the sail?

And you do access on roads.

This is going to, this is going to cumulatively take all of this into account to give us those hotspots on where is there an access need as well as where is there a safety need.

Well, they're just developing a process that we're going to use.

But you're asking if we're improving access in a place that is going to introduce more safety risks.

Well, I think that if we're improving access, we're not going to be improving access necessarily.

We're going to be improving the infrastructure, right?

But this process isn't going to determine that for us.

The mobility and system efficiency is pretty straightforward.

These are really standard evaluation criteria using travel time index and planning time index for travel time reliability.

Yeah, that's planning time index for these.

So the travel time index is basically how long it takes you to get somewhere during peak travel hours compared to free flow travel.

And then the travel time reliability is

What percentage of the time can you reliably get to your destination within a standard period of time?

What we added in addition to, again, emphasize sort of the multi-middle system operation was the bus transit on-time performance.

So this would use the on-time performance of the transit systems based on data that they provide to us and determine where there might be some

Land use and economic development.

This one feels a little bit counterintuitive, I think, but basically this is where we are trying to improve the walkability of the defined growth areas.

So we want to, so in this case, we want to make

Access to destinations that are important to the community that are non-work destinations, so places like parks, libraries, schools, grocery stores, both kinds of places, where there is opportunity to improve access to this.

So in this case, it's actually a little bit counterintuitive that they'll pull in walk scores and bike scores and projects in areas that already have a high walk score and bike score, meaning that there's already existing infrastructure.

And there's already a lot of destinations within an area that are accessible by walking or biking.

So you're saying the opposite.

It's a critical message.

No idea what it is.

It might also be amazing.

You're a partner of mine, which is already new, but it's so existing.

Will that change as the city is advocating higher density rebuilding essentially and so is the county in a sense so that seems somewhat counterintuitive because that's the high density should be more opportunity to build in various types of infrastructure to promote

Sure.

Yeah, that is also going to, as that happens, first of all, we are defining where we're going to basically, what areas are going to be eligible to be prioritized.

Is that going to be the whole MPO area or is that going to be defined, the defined growth areas?

So that's one of the decisions that we'll have to make around this.

So I think this is one of the challenges with the walk score and bike score because this is a procured data set that B-Trans gets.

I'm pushing you because there's a lot of construction going on.

Some of it's been approved, some of it's in the planning stages.

No, it's going to go up there.

And similarly, there is that by the giant down by hydraulic, there's a lot there to walk the back.

That's going to get a lot of

That one is obviously a place where you should infrastructure improve it because that's been targeted for a lot of problems that are going on or oriented by coals and whatever.

There's a lot of building going on all the time.

It might not be prioritized as high for those land use, but I would also say that that's probably also going to be captured in some of these accessibility evaluations as well.

So they're basically measuring both different aspects on where is there a barrier to access

In general, that can be improved so that those are places where that might score a little bit higher.

And then where are there opportunities to improve the walkability of an area?

So you're right now giving us pieces.

An analysis for that piece, but I can't picture it in my head, which ones, how it will weigh the different biographies.

The score incorporates all of these factors.

Yeah, I did not explain this very well, but one of the ways that we will get to the future growth projections is that the walk score and bike score will also be weighted against the projected future population and employment levels.

We'll use the travel demand model.

So if there's an area that is projected to have a large amount of growth compared to another area that might be

to make things walkable you have to kind of get away from the traditional zoning model where here you've got industrial and nowhere near that can be the housing housing has to be way way far away so obviously if you work at that industry you can't walk there as something won't let you build a house anywhere near where you need it so as the comp plans get more

How do we ensure, let's say, sidewalks

As opposed to the bare minimum mode, we put eight white painted strips on the ground and people still speak through versus an elevated, different color, flashing lights, narrow ends.

You know, there's lots of models for best practices, like crosswalks, for example.

I don't know that I have a very satisfactory answer for you because that's really sort of not you know the long-range transportation plan for this part that we're talking about right now we're going to we're just prioritizing the needs we're not even talking about how projects are going to get selected we're saying how do we identify what the most important areas are that we need to

So I think when it comes to that it's really looking at what are the implementation policies around that that are adopted by the localities and I mean honestly a lot of it is also going to come down to what the VDOT guidelines are and what is going to potentially be how much can we do and still be able to have viable projects that

can move forward to get funding and what are the resources to do those.

So I think the transportation access to schools is going to be a growing conversation that we have because as we're all seeing right now with bus driver shortages, the multi-middle access to schools is becoming a more important conversation.

And obviously, when you're talking about

younger children traveling to school.

I think that makes everybody much more aware of the safety concerns, but I don't know exactly how you assure that.

And I feel like that might end up being more of a local policy that would provide that assurance than something we could do from the MPO.

And then the last criteria is the environment and resiliency.

So basically this isn't necessarily, this is going to occur at the end.

So after we go through that matrix and we get this raw score, there would be an adjustment based on the environment and resiliency system needs.

So what has been recommended is a 5% adjustment for segments that are exposed to historical flooding.

There actually are not very many of those, according to V-Trans, but

That also could change as we experience climate change.

And so that would help any projects that are experiencing those historic flooding incidences have a higher priority.

And then there would also be an adjustment for economically distressed communities to also factor in that equity component.

I'm wondering if there is an opportunity here to take some of those previous metrics you mentioned and translate them into an environmental impact score.

To me, this is all related to safety and not much about environmental impacts.

So for example, think about turning the LTS metric into an actual transit axis.

Both of those, to me,

I think if maybe what you're talking about is

Maybe reframing those to be environmental goals instead of accessibility goals, potentially that that's certainly something that we can do.

I think, I think some, in some of these, there are a number of different ways that these can be categorized and resorted.

So, I mean, if, if that's messaging that feels like it's disconnected from this process that we hear a lot of feedback on, you know, why isn't this included?

That makes sense.

Maybe that's a good focus for the question.

Yeah.

The other thing, like I mentioned, is that we may end up sort of having another sort of like category of these where

We specify that there are guiding principles that are built into this, and that's consideration for climate change, consideration for equity, consideration for multimodal system improvements.

That's always a good question.

So taking away

is a safety improvement, is an environmental improvement.

If you are replacing it with, you know, bike, pedestrian, and bus infrastructure, right?

So more cars you take off the road, more improvements you're going to see in those areas.

So I'm just wondering if somehow

That's incorporated.

As if there is a negative score to, yes, it's improving maybe some congestion issues for cars or like people in cars can get from one place to another faster.

I understand what you're saying.

The question is like, is there almost a weight, like a negative weight,

So are you able to show a penalty?

Yeah.

There is a penalty in my mind already.

For illustrative purposes, I will say that we do not have really significant congestion issues.

I know some people will disagree, but we want to eliminate it completely because I think the types of improvements that we would be looking at for our area wouldn't necessarily be things that would

that would increase the lanes.

It would be operational improvements that could also have safety benefits.

So we're looking at things like the innovative intersections where pedestrian and multimodal safety improvements could also be addressed as well as improve the efficiency.

I think there's an opportunity potentially to have a conversation about whether or not we want to have any sort of value for congestion mitigation, but

I think it's very easy for us to think about this from the experience of someone who, you know, bikes, walks, drives to work, and that's what you're doing, but transportation is more than just about moving people to work.

I mean, those roadways also deserve the classes that we're talking about here.

Emergent Beat Services, great.

Things get delivered to places that you need when you access a hospital.

I mean, it's not just a, you know, I think it's easier to frame it as a car versus bike commute type issue, but that's not, to be honest, I support the growth of the bicycle mode share, but you're only going to be able to reach so many destinations out of it.

You have to be able to know how to ride a bike.

It has to be a reasonable system.

And for a lot of people, it's got to be the right one.

Yeah, but I mean, bike isn't the only, we're talking about bike, yeah, I mean, you mentioned like trucks and buses and ambulances, but there's like, there's a way to change the road.

Those are the only things that are using that or certain kind of data.

Even with cities that have very good transportation for Paris, London, you will see a lot of traffic there.

I mean, you don't never need a car, even in New York.

I think maybe that to keep in mind is that we are also going to be talking about when we're talking about the long-range transportation but we're not really getting into the secondary street system and that might be where there might be more of the opportunity to actually convert roads to you know non-vehicular roads but we're really talking about like a regional

Yeah, for instance, in the State of the City, Florida, now that I got here, it's a fact, I'm connected to the bicycles.

They don't go there, so the cars go in there.

and the people who worked with us back in 1964, and the people who are coming from Charlotte schools, we have to be able to help.

And helping the county has a lot of role there is.

A lot of people live way too far to think about bicycling or walking to the city.

because you know in many ways their condition addition camera is that something that can be captured here because then maybe that gets to this like concern that there's been such a long time of

I think, you know, without knowing what projects this is looking at, the worry is that we just keep adding new things, or we promote, you know, quicker access for these people to move further out.

Well, I can't like 100% assure you.

I can tell you, though, that any capacity improvement projects that involve adding claims is probably going to be cost prohibitive for us to pursue right now.

So really what we're talking about, congestion mitigation, we're really talking about operational improvements at intersections.

Like the lights.

I should also consider that cars and stock and goods have a lot of emissions, even if they're very clean.

Great.

The graphs were made from the ACS data by, like,

I have one question about what the graph showing the population in Charlottesville.

I think it would be educational attainment.

Yeah, in fact, I will actually go back and check on Gretchen for this particular data set.

So when I first looked at this back in September, October, I pulled these numbers, but just a couple of weeks ago, I went back to produce some data and I heard that some numbers had changed.

So these numbers could, in fact, could have changed.

And what I saw, what you just pointed out, was the increase from 0.15 to 0.1.

But yet, when you add up the, at least when it comes to the graduated professional degree and the bachelor's degree, yeah, it would be good.

But yeah, I will check that.

I think it's just to, you know, exclude those, those talkative issues that are kind of in the area.

This first one, the Democrats raised a thank you to all the DTPs that I saw while I was in the city that I can handle, vehicle, rail road, property, that sort of thing.

Oh, wait.

Do you want to pass on that one?

Anybody know?

Yeah.

Is that the entire Alabama District Assembly?

Yeah, they're beautiful.

And I know people have visited many of them.

I can't even sign for this.

But we'll put the shirt on.

You have something, you have one chart that needs to work by age.

And I ended up with the percentages, basically,

from Charlottesville that are 100%, but I don't know what percentage of the population they're talking to that.

So it says means, you know, some, whatever that percentage is, let's say 45% for Charlottesville is 20 to 24, but what's the percentage of population that they're talking about that's working and what's the percentage that's not working but still living in the area and using transportation?

It's called the golf courses.

So I didn't see anything there.

That's it.

Yeah.

Marty, I think I get your question.

The only way to go get there is data or source information captured where you're showing not working, but still living in a county and using transportation.

It should be part of what they're looking at because they're using transportation parts going around the county using roads or they will.

I only looked at this one because I didn't see anything yesterday.

Yeah, and Ryan was just pulling the data that's reported on the ACS.

So the question you're asking is really what the differential is between how many people are represented there versus the total population.

And then we just have some more charts here.

This was in 2045.

I think to what you see now, here are some extracts which is easier to get the data.

But I think that I may go and alter the final point by starting with a lot of groups.

It really comes in three different block groups.

One thing that I was saying, we had pointed out

that I'll also try to do is write back the map or I will actually probably have numbers there so I'll probably do a little more information.

This here shows the population.

I'm probably shouldn't have started off with this.

This is the population that's in the strat with Albemarle and Charlottesville.

and then the follow-ups on the latching races that I've worked with then.

And I think also too, there are like three or four other categories.

There's two more races.

There's Native, Native, Native, Native, Native, Native, Native.

But I think I want to incorporate those as well.

I'm traditionally looking to focus on Black, Hispanic, Asian.

But I think I will probably include those other voices as well.

And again, use a different geography other than track that we'll use.