Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee (2013-2026) Meeting   1/22/2025

Call the meeting to order.

It looks like we have a quorum, which is great.

Before we start, Mr.

OK.

This meeting of the Charlottesville Albemarle and Metropolitan Planning Organization Citizens Advisory Committee is being held pursuant to Code of Virginia subsection C, section 2.2-3708.3, which allows a public body to hold all virtual public meetings.

The meeting is being held via electronic video and audio means through Zoom online meetings and is accessible to the public.

The method for holding this meeting shall not change unless a new meeting notice is provided.

Should the electronic transmission fail, you may reach out to CA-MPO at C, Jacobs at TJPDC.org.

Notice has been provided to the public through notice

at the TJPDC offices and to the media on the CA-MPO and TJPDC websites hosting an agenda.

The meeting is held pursuant to the remote electronic participation and all virtual meeting policy is adopted by the CA-MPO Policy Board, August 28th, 2024.

The meeting minutes will reflect that the meeting was held electronically

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

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

As a reminder, the code requires that

Thank you.

Okay, and I presume, Sara, you're able to get the attendance from the Zoom screen.

I think it'd be helpful, Chair Kondor, for our official minutes and the recording if we did a quick read through with a audio so that folks can hear if they're not able to see on the screen who is present and who is not.

Would that be okay?

Sarah, do you want me to read those?

I am prepared to do it.

Very good.

Mr. Kondor?

Here.

Ms. Chen?

Here.

Mr. Gardner, Mr. Jose Gomez, Mr. Patrick Healy, Mr. Ethan Heil, Sarah Medley, Marty Meth, Nathan Moore, Mr. Danny Yoder,

And Mr. Greg Weaver.

I don't see him.

Mr. Charles Proctor.

I'm here.

Thank you.

Okay, so then we can proceed with matters from the public.

I don't see anybody here.

I want to make one comment, quick comment.

I attended one of the Safe Streets for All presentations that had an opportunity for

One observation was that one of the highest causes of serious accidents is roadway departure.

People run off the road.

And logically, that type of accident mostly occurs in rural areas where the roads are not engineered.

I mean, pretty much paved over car

cart paths.

So they have varying radius curves and curves without any super elevation.

There's frequently no sidelines and sometimes not even a center line.

So, and then you have hazards like deer and ice and things like that that tend to make matters worse.

but yet those roadways don't, those type accidents aren't frequent enough in any given five mile stretch to make any portion of those roads meet the list of high hazard areas.

So,

They sort of get ignored.

So it was just an observation.

I don't know if there was anything you can do about it.

It is what it is, but I thought it was interesting because the group I participated in cited engineering as probably the biggest area for emphasis on the Safe Streets for All program.

But that's where it could really pay off.

But fixing all those roads, of course, would be prohibitively expensive.

But nevertheless, they do have their problems.

So anyway, that was all I had to say.

All right, we'll proceed next with, I believe it's minutes, right?

Oh, would it be appropriate to have the agenda?

Yes, I would just love to, before you review and accept the agenda, I would just like to make an introduction on the screen.

There's a new face for you all.

Taylor Jenkins is on our screen.

She is actually our new Director of Transportation, so I'm thrilled to welcome her to the CTAC Advisory Committee.

She comes to us by way of transit and transportation planning experience, both in the private and the public sectors.

She has supported MPOs from the other side, from the DRPT side, so she is very familiar with the work.

that we are doing and she will be overseeing our entire transportation programming so that includes the MPO that is rural transportation as well as transit mobility management ride share and then any of our special projects like Safe Streets and Roads for All or any upcoming grants that we may have.

So I'd just like to welcome Taylor and let you all know that please feel free to reach out to her or us if you would like an introduction or if you would like some time to get to know her.

but you will start to see her around a lot in all of our committee meetings so welcome Taylor.

Thank you.

Well welcome Taylor.

All right so yeah first we should approve the agenda which we can do by acclamation.

Does anyone have any

Any problems or questions or issues with the agenda?

If not, we'll consider it approved.

Likewise, for the minutes for the last two meetings, since we did not have a quorum at the last meeting, the minutes from the previous meeting were back in October, I guess were not approved.

So we have meetings, minutes from October and

December, whatever the dates are.

Okay.

Does anybody, first of all, have any issues with anything in the minutes?

Anything that you want to change?

Chair Kondor, just for the minutes in the record, we're going to need a motion and a second.

All right.

Well, do we have a motion to approve the minutes from the two previous meetings?

So moved.

Moved and seconded.

All in favor?

Any opposed?

All right.

Approved unanimously.

Okay.

Next is election of officers for the coming year.

I want to state that I'm done being president.

So it's somebody else's turn.

Please be aware that

The chair is expected to attend the MPO policy board meetings, which are about on the same schedule as our a week later.

You can do it virtually, that's how I do it.

You don't actually have to go there, but just listen in and they typically ask for, they do a round table and they ask for any information from CTAC toward the end.

That's pretty much about all you do.

But they are interesting, so do be aware of that.

But yeah, so please, I would encourage someone else to volunteer for the job.

So nominations are open.

Any takers?

No?

Well, the other thing is I think my appointment runs out this year.

I think this is my appointment for the CTAC expires in June, something like that, of 2025.

So I may not even be here for the whole year.

Donna, you're co-chair now.

Yeah, yeah.

Sarah Medley, how about you?

Hey, Lee, I was thinking about this obviously as part of it.

And I would like to encourage the younger members because a lot of what we do

Looking at 2030, which for me is accessible, 2040 is starting to get out there.

2050 is amazingly optimistic for a guy like me.

It's basically the younger people's world that we're talking about a lot.

And I say younger from my age point.

Yeah, I agree.

And so Sarah, if you're willing, I nominate Sarah.

Well, we'll get to co-chair next.

Okay.

So I guess we'll take a vote.

All in favor of Sarah for chair, say aye.

Aye.

So takeover.

Appreciate your trust in me.

A co-chair.

Yeah, I'm the vice chair.

Yeah, okay.

So, it's, well, Sarah, go ahead.

Does anybody want to be the vice, vice chair is the position?

And I can say the vice chair's primary role is to serve as chair should Sarah not be there or to sit in her position at the policy board meeting should she not be there.

Is anybody willing to have this position thrust upon them?

I see Peter smiling.

I have heard you say good things in meetings before.

I still feel really new to this group.

I mean, I've only been one year and I've missed at least one meeting last year.

I'm still trying to get my bearings on even what we're supposed to be doing.

I'm not, I just took chairing committee for Charlottesville Tomorrow.

I've already just grabbed a new leadership role for this year.

That's kind of heavy responsibility.

If nobody else wants to do it, I can continue my role as vice chair.

Thank you, Donna.

Thank you.

All right, so then do we need to nominate Donna Chen as the vice chair?

I have a motion to approve.

All right, and so then we'll vote on that.

All opposed?

All right, so Donna is the vice chair.

I think I abstained by accident, I'm sorry.

Oh, okay.

Sarah, I will say while you pull up your agenda, since that was actually just thrust upon you without preparation.

For those of you on, I am going to clean up those minutes to make sure that we had a first and a second for each of those.

Okay.

Okay.

So we have accepted the agenda.

We've approved of the minutes.

I just lost my page because I didn't print this out already.

And then we elected the officers, so we're moving on to new business.

And so we have the first is the performance safety targets.

Yeah, good evening everyone.

My name is Gorjan Gjorgjievski.

I'm a retail planner at the TJPDC.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to present to you the performance safety targets, which is a federally mandated process when moving ahead for progress in the 21st century act known as MAP 21.

was enacted in 2016.

It established a framework for national transportation performance goals.

These national targets set by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation defined the overarching safety objectives for the nation's transportation system.

The targets filtered down to the states, which developed their own targets, and finally to MPOs who are tasked with adopting targets in support of the statewide's objectives.

The primary reason we adopt safety targets is to comply with federal funding requirements.

While the NPOs are not directly held accountable for meeting these targets, the responsibility lies with the states.

With the state our targets are meant to assist the state in achieving its goals.

So every four years we review the state safety targets comprehensively and annually we adopt our own targets to align with these efforts.

The state provides us with valuable data and tools to help us determine our regional targets.

So historically, this MPO has adopted a state targets.

However, in 2023, they took a different approach by adopting the alternative targets.

And in 2024,

We transition to aspirational targets that are aligned with our comprehensive safety action plan, also known as move safely blue ridge.

Today I will talk a little bit about the process and the result of the last Charlottesville Albemarle MPO tech and policy board meetings.

So the state provided data to illustrate the safety trends, including recent and long-term projections.

So when we establish safety targets, we focus on three key metrics, the number of fatalities, the number of serious injuries from roadway incidents, and the number of non-motorized fatalities and serious injury.

Regardless of which targets the MPO policy boards choose to adopt, we remain fully committed to improving safety for everyone who uses our transportation system.

It's important to recognize that some state level targets may show an increase in the number of fatalities and serious injuries.

This is because the targets are data driven and reflect actual trends, which sometimes project increases.

In such cases, the goal shifts to minimizing the rate of increase rather than achieving an immediate reduction.

While this may seem counterintuitive, it underscores the importance of using data to inform our strategies.

So the state gave us several options for establishing safety targets, which are reflected in the chart before you.

These options include the state targets, which assume no change in the rates of fatalities and serious injuries or non-motorized fatalities and serious injuries from last year.

Alternatively, the other options were to base our targets on regional trends, either recent or long-term trend lines.

So the recent trendline showed a significant increase in fatalities and serious injuries, while the long-term trendline indicated a smaller increase in fatalities and a slight decrease in serious injuries.

This kind of highlights how short-term data can sometimes deviate from long-term patterns.

And finally, the aspirational targets shown in the first column, which align with the comprehensive safety action plan and the statewide goal of reducing fatalities by 50 by 2045.

This translates to approximately 2% annual reduction in fatalities and serious injuries.

This chart just shows what the MPO chose to adopt last year and what they adopted this year.

So I wanted to mention that through thorough discussion and based on the recommendation from the MPO Technical Committee, the MPO Policy Board decided to adopt the aspirational safety targets for this calendar year.

which as I mentioned align with the Comprehensive Safety Action Plan.

This concludes my presentation tonight.

I have a question.

What happens with this data?

Is the planning district supposed to report on this, like how we achieved our targets?

That's a great question.

In the agenda packet, the response letter was included.

So in that letter, we provide the targets that the MPO policy board decided to adopt it and then we send them back to VDOT.

So if this MPO chooses to

Whichever targets the MPO chooses to adopt, the goal is to help the state achieve its goals.

Because as I mentioned, the MPO is not held accountable for meeting these targets, but the states are.

A question on this.

Oh, sorry.

Go ahead, sir.

I was just wondering, what are we doing to achieve the aspirational targets?

If there's not any particular change, we're just seeing the trend line kind of go up, but we're like, no, we're going to go down.

Yeah, that is another good question.

The reason why we chose the aspirational targets is because this TJPDC, but also part of the Charlottesville Albemarle MPO work on the comprehensive safety action plan, the Move Safely Blue Ridge, which the main reason for the project is to

It comes from the Safe Streets and Roads for All initiative, which is a federal program to reduce the number of fatalities and serious injuries.

Not necessarily.

I mean, as I said before, we're not held accountable for meeting these targets.

So, yeah, it's really to help the state achieve its goals.

Yeah, and I can add, Nathan, and I'll phone a friend of Sandy or Chuck, if I don't say this,

But this is always a philosophical debate every year that we have to submit these performance targets because there is very little stick or motivation at the MPO level to meeting these targets.

There's nothing that we have to report.

There's no funding withheld.

There is no, this is really saying, what is the MPO's goal?

And how are we supporting the state in reaching theirs?

And so we often have to have this philosophical debate because some folks come at it saying, well, we should say zero fatalities are acceptable, right?

But there's also this reality to, we know that that is an aspirational target that is unlikely to be met because of driver behavior, because of things that are outside of the control of the MPO or the state.

And so we have to come somewhere in between and say, well, what are we going to say is our goal?

Even though we recognize that

It's really a theoretical goal that we're doing to help VDOT.

It is not coming back to the MPO or the local level to then meet these aspirational targets.

And if you want to add anything to that, feel free.

But this is something that I'm not kidding you every 12 months.

I feel like we have to go back through a process of saying these targets are really important.

Sure.

I hear you.

Great.

I can chime in.

This is Chuck.

Yeah, we do a lot of work with the localities and the MPO to identify where the safety issues are and work with them on developing projects for funding that they can submit both for localities and the MPO can submit to try to reduce some of the crashes that

some of the more critical locations so that's part of the process it just takes time and as you see later this round of SMART SCALE we didn't do as well in this region but we did get one project funded and hopefully that'll help address some one of our major

Part of our major safety corridors in the Pantops area.

So, like I said, as we get projects, work to get projects developed, we focus on where there's key crash locations and where we're seeing a lot of these occurring.

So we're trying to focus on getting, and then work with them on getting them funded.

and it's just, there's limited resources to get those funded as Sandy will show you in our upcoming slides.

So, but that's how the process works and every round we'll come back with more locations and try to get those acceptable for funding and work with you guys on putting together the applications for those projects.

So then the minus 2% we could say then is a rational aspiration based on achieving which parts of safe streets can be implemented in 2025 or are being implemented currently in 2024.

I would say that the 2% decrease, it's kind of divided annually based on the goal of reducing fatalities by half by 2045.

So taking that into consideration, that comes to about 2% decrease annually.

Okay.

Okay, if there are no more questions, we can move on to the next part of new business, the RAISE grant 2025.

This is an informational item just to let you know where we are with this.

For those of you that have been involved with the MPO for a while, you will be familiar with this.

For those of you that are new,

I'm just going to share a very brief background.

So the MPO applied several rounds ago for SMART SCALE to do a bike pedestrian bridge over the Rivanna River.

and that was not scored very well for SMART SCALE for many reasons, lots of contingencies, lots of unknowns about the project, very high cost.

And so with support from the MPO and the TJPDC, we applied for a RAISE grant, a Federal Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity.

That's what RAISE stands for.

We applied for a grant in the 2023 round.

It was actually scored as a project of merit, which means it was in the highest tier of scores,

and automatically advanced for a second round review.

It received great feedback from the USDOT team.

However, it was not selected because of the competitiveness, the number of applications, the limited amount of funds that they had.

We were highly encouraged to resubmit in 2024.

We did so.

So we submitted it again last year.

It was again scored not as a project of merit, but as a recommended project, which is one point different

Project of Merit.

So it's still got very high scores in our debrief with USDOT.

They did encourage us to continue to submit it.

It wasn't selected because of how competitive the grant is.

So we are now hoping for and thinking that the third time is the charm.

We are looking to resubmit in 2025 a RAISE grant application.

This will be for the first 30% preliminary engineering phase of the project so that we can reduce some of the contingencies

Get some more known information so that we have a more competitive application for implementation for the second phases, or second and third phases, excuse me.

So we went before the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission for support.

They supported us resubmitting with a resolution and then back to the MPO Policy Board in their December meeting, they supported us resubmitting.

So just letting you all know, we will be sharing more information with you later, but we are

Beavers is working to get an application in by next Thursday for what we hope is third time is a charm for the preliminary engineering for that Red Vanna River bike head bridge.

Happy to take questions.

We are putting as much as we can into it.

We are seeking letters of support from our senators, from all of our project partners, community partners, PC, all of that, and are in the final stages of working through the budget.

We got all of the cost estimates from VDOT back

Now we're putting the admin budget together.

But just wanted to let you guys know if you're hearing about it, we have not let that project go away.

We are still committed to trying to seek funding to get it done and hoping that this is the year that we are successful.

So that's my project update.

Thank you for that update.

Are there any questions about that project?

Comments?

Well, best of luck.

I do a lot of grant writing and submission myself, so I know sometimes resubmitting really does do the trick.

All right, so if we're ready to move on to staff updates,

and the meeting schedule.

Thank you again.

Just wanted to give a brief update on the project.

We wrapped up round two of engagement to remind everyone round two of engagement was to ask the public what kind of projects they think would make the most difference when it comes to reducing the number of fatalities and serious injuries.

So with that, we held 12 pop-up events, about two per jurisdiction at TJPDC to promote the Move Safely Blue Ridge project and gather the community feedback.

We conducted a community survey to identify the roadway safety enhancement projects.

We analyzed the service responses to identify the potential solutions based on that input.

We also featured the Move Safely Blue Ridge project in the discussion with Let's Talk Albemarle podcast.

We held two virtual public meetings on December 11th.

We had our stakeholders meeting just last week.

Currently we're working on the City of Charlottesville demo project.

We're in the coordination part of that.

So the coordination is going to be the implementation of a project at the East High Street and Meade Avenue.

We're preparing to do a survey launch in February to gather feedback, which will run through March 7th.

We're organizing a public meeting to seek input on which implementation projects residents believe will have the greatest safety impact on that intersection, which we have three solutions from they can choose from.

or Vodon.

That one is scheduled for February 25 at 5 p.m.

I can provide the location at a later time.

The upcoming efforts will be the draft development of the Comprehensive Safety Action Plan for preparation and for review and then round three of public engagement which will be focused on gathering the feedback on the draft Comprehensive Safety Action Plan itself.

That's all I have for the updates.

Thank you so much for that update.

And as I am the chair and I feel a little bit more empowered to understand what's going on, what can we do on this board to support the Safe Streets initiatives and to help to make more pedestrian friendly road?

Like how can we be involved and what maybe should we be doing?

I mean, we definitely plan to come out before you with the draft comprehensive safety action plan and seek your feedback on it.

I think that and then Sarah, I would also add, you know, part of our

I guess overarching goal with this, it's always important to have a plan, right?

But the implementation is really where the change happens.

And so part of our scope of work for this, and I'm working with the consultants is to better position our local governments to be able to apply for funding for implementation for actual projects.

And so certainly that is a local decision that is up to them, which projects they choose, when they choose to prioritize them, and if they choose to apply for implementation funding.

But I would say one thing that is really helpful for citizens is to make sure that you are making your voice heard when those projects come up that you do have interest in them applying.

And I know that leans in towards the advocacy and not the advisory, but I think it's really important for our local governments to be hearing from citizens on you've identified these priorities.

Here are projects that we know are eligible.

We support you like applying for implementation funding in order to get those things done.

Following up on both of those, I am curious and definitely would love to see more of that come back to us, not just as a report, but what we can be doing.

And I'm wondering, there's so many groups right now working

in this space around transportation, walk friendly, et cetera.

The Charlottesville Area Alliance that I'm a member of, TJPDC is a member of, working on age friendly, Liveable Seaville, the Downtown Charlottesville Group, Move to Health Equity, the Health District, you know, the built environment is part of the public health issues they're cognizant of, Piedmont Mobility Alliance through PEC,

And I keep wondering what opportunity there is for a convening of some kind around these issues with so many different groups and sharing how we can work together.

What are the pressure points that we can apply as different coalitions?

And maybe again, this group, I understand there's some limitations, but would it be appropriate for this group to be a part of a conversation with other coalitions

working on this.

I mean, I'll make one other point and leave space, but I mean, certainly gun violence in our community is a horrendous crisis as it is throughout our country.

And I realize it also illustrates all kinds of social ills and other things that go behind that.

And it stuns me how much energy and attention we give to gun violence.

And we just write off that people get run off, get run over in our community

constantly.

I mean, fatalities and major injuries on our roads are much worse than gun violence in our community.

And people just seem to accept it.

And I know that's a national trend, too.

So is there an opportunity for this group to be a part of a bigger convening?

Or at least is there going to be some communication strategies around raising awareness, not just within this group, but to your point of other citizens advocating to their elected officials that, you know, I'm sick and tired of this.

I'm not going to take it anymore.

If I can make a comment, I think the bylaws states clearly that part of the function of CTAC is to also share information with your community members, like with your networks.

Perhaps in the next stage of the projects as we move along, that could be a component we could think about, including having you all as citizen advisory

and other community members joining to the community engagement we're going to have in round three and sharing that information to reach a broader group of people.

Just add to that.

Thank you for that.

I had forgotten that.

So, you know, one of those opportunities may also just be a TJPDC, you know, Korean or whoever's appropriate.

presenting to some of those coalitions the findings directly to try to raise awareness.

I think there's bubbling anger and frustration and fed-upness about it, but people don't really know that there's anything that they can do.

I've participated in a lot of the State Street sessions too.

People, there seems to be a growing consensus that design is the problem, which the experts that I listen to certainly makes a lot of sense.

We're not going to fix design very quickly.

I mean, we've got decades worth of poor road design that are making it dangerous for pedestrians and allowing cars to drive too fast.

So it seems like the education component seems to be needed as well.

So if there are, it sounds like there are opportunities for this group to talk more about that and try to implement and try to connect the dots.

Again, I've lifted five coalitions I could talk to about getting on the agenda.

I'm sure people know some other ones, BPAC, the city BPAC,

Yes, and if I may, just to finish up, and if you know those dates when those coalitions meet, if there are any regular meetings, as we plan our next round of community engagement, we could perhaps, we could plan around those dates so we know that such group and such group

Meet at a certain time, twice a month, once a week, so we can organize those things for you.

Just make us aware and provide us this.

Thank you for that feedback.

I'm off my soapbox, Sarah.

No, I appreciate your soapbox.

Thank you for that.

And I really appreciate this little conversation.

It looks like the next update is just the next CTAC meeting will be March 19th.

It's going to be an in-person meeting from 7 to 9 p.m.

Is there any comment about that item?

Yep, I have a short update for you all.

I do have a presentation, but it'll go pretty quickly.

Okay, so...

Basically, what I want to do is just give you all a little bit of background information and talk about what the outcomes were from SMART SCALE round six.

And I think what this is going to help do is understand maybe what kind of considerations we're going to be giving our projects as we develop applications in future rounds, learning a little bit of what we learned from this round with some of the updates and also some of the different

funding outcomes that occurred this year.

So the first thing I want to do is just make sure that everybody here has a general idea of how funding is allocated for SMART SCALE projects.

This is all outlined in the state code, so there's the code reference at the top if anybody wants to go and read through the legal version of all of this information.

But basically, the formula for funding transportation improvements within the state is that before we do anything else, funding that is collected for the purposes of transportation improvements goes first to maintenance to cover all of the existing infrastructure.

And maintenance includes things like recovery from severe weather events like Hurricane Helene, like snow removal, those kinds of things.

That's all within the maintenance budget.

After all of the maintenance costs are accounted for, funding is then set aside for administrative and general expenses, and only then is funding allocated for what is considered construction projects.

And so you'll see that there's a list of how much of the remaining funding is allocated amongst the different construction

funding programs, not just SMART SCALE.

SMART SCALE, if you'll recall, is actually two different programs.

SMART SCALE is the method to select which projects are funded, but the two SMART SCALE funded programs are the high priority program, which is the statewide program, and the district grant program.

So each of those gets 20% of the remaining budget after maintenance and administrative costs are covered.

What we saw this year is that there was an increase in maintenance expenses due to things like Hurricane Helene that resulted in nearly a $510 million transfer that was originally planned for construction that had to go back to maintenance to cover deficits.

and this has been an ongoing discussion where there has been maybe awareness that the maintenance budget continues to grow as we have more infrastructure to maintain and that's just cost related to

what you need in order to maintain existing infrastructure increases.

And so the preliminary six year plan that was developed or is being developed is showing that over the next six years, there's a difference in $1.6 billion between construction and maintenance.

So $1.6 billion in the next six year improvement program is being moved from construction to maintenance compared to the existing

a six-year improvement program.

That means that there's going to be an ongoing reduction in the amount of construction funding that's available that is split among those five programs as listed.

The other thing that is going to show a decrease in the amount of funding that's available for construction this year is related to the implementation of the wholesale fuels tax.

This was an additional tax that was put into place in 2020 and the revenue that was generated is applied if you're

Basically, according to this chart, there are some exceptions, but for the Culpeper District, all of the new funding that was generated from the wholesale fuels tax is going into the Culpeper District grant program.

It all stays within the district.

What happens, though, is that VDOT funds projects six years out.

So when a project is identified through SMART SCALE to be funded, that funding goes into a six-year improvement program and funding is allocated for years five and six of that program.

So you're always funding five or six years out.

So what happened is that when that district grant program supplemental funding went into effect initially, there was a large initial infusion of funding from the buildup of those six years that wasn't programmed six years out.

that had to be phased in over rounds four and five.

So we saw that in round four, this generated approximately $393 million additional dollars to the district grant program based on programming the funding that would be collected through this program for fiscal years 2021 to 2024.

and round five we saw nearly $666 million estimated that was programmed from the supplemental district grant program.

That sort of got us through phasing in this new source of revenue and now it's leveled off and so the only supplemental funding that is being added is for the two years

basically for that round of SMART SCALE.

So that's estimated to generate $243 million in fiscal year 2030, 2031.

And that is going to establish a more reasonable baseline moving over.

So that funding has been phased in, $243 million is a more realistic approximation of what the additional amount that that funding is going to generate moving forward.

So what that means is that for the Culpeper District, going through the transfer of all that money back to maintenance from construction, reducing the amount of the supplemental funding from the wholesale fuel stacks that was implemented, that gave us a balance of $68 million for the district grant program for round six.

And then that was further reduced by $6.6 million to account for cost overages for projects that were funded in previous rounds.

So that gave us about $61 million of funding in round six that could be applied to new projects.

And just to show you a little, well, and then

And then this column right here is the high priority program.

So that is the funding that is being distributed for projects across the entire state for the high priority program for the regionally significant, generally larger projects.

So this chart just shows how this compares to each of the previous rounds.

So you'll see in rounds four and five, those were significantly larger than any of the previous rounds.

And now in round six, we're kind of back to more in line with where we were in round one for the district grant program.

The high priority program, the Culpeper Construction District has been fortunate to get projects funded through the high priority program.

Every round so far, but that is not money that is allocated directly to our district.

That is something that projects in the Culpeper District have to compete for statewide.

So probably the more significant amount to pay attention to is what's available through the district grant program.

So all of that said, these were the projects that were submitted within the Charlottesville Albemarle MPO area.

And one of those projects, the US 250 Peter Jefferson Parkway and Rolkin Road Pipeline Bundle, was recommended for funding based on the project scores.

This was submitted by the MPO, and this was funded or was recommended for funding through the High Priority Program.

Looking at the projects that were not recommended for funding, the ones in the top three of those, the two Barrackshore projects and the IS-64 projects, those were only eligible for the high priority program.

And the bottom three projects were only available through the district grant program.

So I know that we had talked within this committee about some of the changes that were being implemented in round six compared to round five.

If you have questions about this, we can go over this.

But we have spent a little bit of time looking over initially to see how some of these changes may have impacted the outcomes of the projects.

And so these are some of our initial observations.

It was the intention of the changes to the scoring methodology and land use to change land use from a standalone score to a multiplier.

It was the intention for that change to reduce the impact of the land use score in determining which projects would be successful.

So we did see that this resulted in

Lower scores for projects within the urbanized areas, but it did still provide provide scoring benefits.

And then the economic development methodology changed, and we also noticed that that did result in some lower scores for the economic development results compared to the previous scoring methodology.

It does not appear that the changes to the funding step process would have impacted the outcomes for what was funded through the high priority program.

At least for this round of Cool Pepper, it's possible that would for previous rounds.

And then I think it's also really important to note is that the highest cost high priority project that was recommended for funding statewide was just about $46 million.

So if you go back and look at this previous slide, you'll see that all of our high priority programs were

significantly higher.

And Chuck just sent me a message and it was funny because as I was reviewing the slide I realized that I left off the Rio Road peanut roundabout as well on this project.

That was also not recommended for funding and I can update the slide and send out that correction.

I had a quick question, Sandy.

I just don't remember.

Maybe you just said this and I missed it.

Okay.

That was funded through the high priority program.

Yep.

And so I think the other thing that's important to note is that in this round I think the changes or the transfer of funding from the construction back to maintenance probably did also decrease the overall number of projects that were funded.

We saw this round that there were

53 total projects statewide that were recommended for funding out of 270 that were submitted, which has been the lowest since SMART SCALE was originally implemented.

So it was a pretty low number of projects overall.

And with a few exceptions, most were pretty consistent with other districts in terms of the number of projects that we had funded.

I've been focusing on the projects within the MPO area, but in the entire Culpeper construction district, which also includes areas north of the Thomas Jefferson planning district commission area, there were four projects total.

So the only high priority program project that was recommended for funding was the US 250 Peter Jefferson Parkway project.

And then the other three projects that were recommended for funding through the district grant program were

We're north of this area and two in the towns and one in Culpeper County that had a really high number of accidents and crashes.

So what we have seen so far is just based strictly on the scoring outcomes.

These are the projects that would be funded looking strictly at scoring outcomes.

The Commonwealth Transportation Board does have the opportunity to adjust the final list of funded projects.

That's known as the consensus scenario.

So once they make any adjustments that they would like to make, a consensus scenario will be developed and presented.

to the Commonwealth Transportation Board on May 20th.

And then public hearings will be scheduled throughout the state prior to the final adoption.

They'll be adopted as part of the next six year improvement program.

So that's just a really brief high level overview.

Thank you very much.

I do kind of long-term thinking with projects like the Barracks Road improvements that we were looking at between Emmett and Georgetown.

That was kind of much ballyhooed, and I remember the public comment was very thorough.

It's a very high price tag.

Probably not just using state funds.

So, I mean, Chuck can jump in because this is something we talk a lot about.

I think there are a couple of things, you know, for some of these projects, sometimes there are less expensive alternatives that are identified that maybe don't have as many benefits, but could still have some benefits that would be less expensive to implement.

So you can consider some of those things.

And then I think there's a lot of discussions that we have to have about what opportunities there might be to leverage other kinds of funds.

that could be applied either in addition to SMART SCALE or instead of SMART SCALE.

I mean, what we saw across the state, we did in this district, but a lot of projects that were funded, they had leverage fund, meaning that there were other funds applied to the applications to buy down the cost of the project that gives them a higher score.

Because basically, your score is your benefit score divided by your cost.

So if you reduce the cost, that means your benefit score doesn't get dropped as much.

So if we could go back to look at some of that also, the other thing we'll probably end up doing is relooking at some of those.

I know with Barretrode, we had some other alternatives that we considered.

We may want to look at that.

going back and readdressing looking at some of those to see if those they'll still solve some of the safety issues because those aren't going to go away they're going to continue to be there and get worse so we we're going to have to fix the problem it's just how do we fix it if we can get something funded that it's not what we adopted but it's still something that's supported by the public then I think that's something we can pursue but we'll work with MPO over the next

year or two to see what they want to do on that project.

Fifth Street's the same way.

I know that was one of the ones that's a high priority also.

High safety crash location at both intersections.

We also have queuing on the ramps that's backing down almost to 64 that we've got to address.

So we're actually going to, I mean we're going to talk about the next part of it.

I just want to add commentary and Chuck say please correct me if I'm wrong you know this is not my background but it's also important to note that a lot of areas where they are leveraging additional funds they also have transportation authorities where they had dedicated revenue sources coming in specifically to be able to contribute funding towards transportation projects and so that's another thing for our region to really be just mindful of is it's not

Just that the local governments are contributing local funding in order to bring down that score, but that they have revenue sources coming in intentionally designed to do that.

That's true.

Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Northern Virginia all have authorities.

Even Salem District has, they get an RSTP funding, which is federal earmark funding.

So there's a lot of other, especially for the high priority funding,

We're competing against those regions for that funding and they actually have resources that we don't necessarily have that they can put towards those projects.

So, I mean, we're trying to do our due diligence in making the projects when we start to put them together fundable.

We did very well this time.

75% of our projects scored above the 50% median

across the state.

All of ours were in the top 65%.

We're doing better than any other district when it comes to that.

For funding we're bringing in, we brought $93 million into the district to fund projects.

That's the third highest in the state.

So we're doing a good job trying to get these projects

That is correct.

As of right now, the enabling legislation allows for a regional transit authority.

It is not a transportation authority as it is in other places within the Commonwealth.

So both the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County have, through their governing boards, decided to enact the enabling legislation, which means this has been on the books for many, many, many years.

They are now saying, let's authorize that authority to begin to do work so that, one, it can legitimize the authority and show that regional work is happening, but then think of a long-term vision of what it's going to require at the General Assembly level in order to either

You'll have to entertain me a little bit more because what's the difference between a regional transit authority versus a regional transportation authority?

Great question.

Transit allows for all of the revenue to be dedicated only to transit projects, whereas transportation can be transit, which is all of the public transit as well as roadway, rail, air, any other form of transportation.

They can take that revenue and they can by policy adopt what it is that they're going to do with that revenue if it were to be approved at the General Assembly level.

Again, not my background, so anybody else on the call that knows more about this than me,

I was going to add that it also covers bike ped projects, which the change in the smart scale regulations this time actually made it harder for those projects to be funded through smart scale because you don't get as many of the bonus points.

It's still a multiplier for the score, but before the land use score was

really helped getting those projects funded.

So that funding can go to those.

And just to help me grok where the revenue comes from, and I hope I'm not the one with this question, but if you had a regional transportation authority, I'm hearing about dedicated revenues coming in that are not state revenues.

What are they?

Are they tolls on the roads?

Are they federal grants?

Excellent question.

So in some places, wholesale fuel tax.

In others, it could be a real estate tax.

In others, it could be a sales tax.

It could be transit occupancy tax.

So it is really looking at taxation and how either existing taxation can be rerouted and or additional taxes can be raised to support specific initiatives for transit and transportation.

Okay, thank you so much.

Were there any other questions about the VDOT updates?

Okay, then we can move on to STARS and pipeline studies.

Yeah, I can cover this one sort of.

The STARS studies, we've got a few in the area, one on like the 29 corridor north from Barracks Road,

through the interchange all the way into the county up to Woodbrook.

It's two studies, one's at the interchange, the other one's hydraulic north.

We also have a study for the Ridge Main Street intersection in the middle of the city.

And those are primarily the two studies, the STARS studies for this region.

The pipeline studies, we're getting ready to, the CTB is gonna adopt those.

locations at their February meeting.

So we're looking at two locations in this part of the district.

One of them is the 118 interchange at 64 and the 29 bypass.

And the other one is to relook at the 5th Street interchange to see if we can reduce the cost by

Amending the current project to move the bike ped facilities off the bridge.

So we're going to be looking at that because 50% of the cost of the project was replacing that bridge.

And if we can eliminate that cost, the project would have been funded.

So we're going to look at what options we have there and see if we can get that cost down to a more reasonable amount that it can be funded.

And I cover everything, Sandy.

I mean, basically we work with the localities and we want to develop applications from those recommendations from those studies.

So we're working with the localities, the city, the MPO and Albemarle County.

On those studies, they're part of the stakeholders group, so we're basically working together to come up with solutions.

That's similar to what we did on Barracks Road and Ivy Road.

Those were two pipeline studies from last round.

We'll get similar type of products out of these studies that can be submitted hopefully by the MPO for next round of SMART SCALE.

And I will say we are also looking at the park and ride lot at the 118 interchange to see if we can improve that.

Right now, it's just parallel parking on Teal.

Chuck, did you say that there was an option to not replace the Fifth Street Bridge?

Well, there wasn't, when we started looking at it, because we had to do so much work on the deck, we had to replace the deck.

And when they started looking at the deck replacement and the substructure, the way it was, the way the substructures integrated into the deck, we had to replace the substructure too.

So that's what led to the full bridge replacement.

If we don't have to put the shared use path on the structure, we don't have to replace the deck.

So we need to get into the full bridge replacement.

We might have to do some modifications to the median curbing, but that's probably about it.

And that's what we're hoping to do.

And that was like 50% of the cost of the project was replacing that bridge.

So I want to see if we can do that.

We still would have to look at a separate facility for the bike and pedestrian facilities parallel, which will have a cost, but it probably won't be $50 million.

are $30 million.

There are existing trails right there now, which are, you know, run parallel.

But in the Z axis, you know, in the third dimension, they're below.

But

Correct.

I mean we're working with the county on where those are located and see how we can connect them in.

I know they're running a

Correll on the south side west of the bridge or the north side west of the bridge that we looked at when we were actually designing the crossings on the bridge to make sure we connect to them and we're also going to tie into the trail system that's coming in just south of the Holiday Inn site where we got another project to put in a trail

along Moore's Creek that goes over to Biscuit Run and up the hill to Wegmans.

So we're looking at all that.

I mean, you do have the overpass that runs along over Biscuit Run.

There could be a trail along that.

But it's basically getting to the development along Fish Street south of the bridge, because that's not very integrated into that trail system north of the bridge.

Right.

So that's what we're trying to do.

118 is where the 29 bypass connects across the 64 west of town just south of Fontaine and Route 20 is at exit 120.

Oh, is it 120?

I thought 20.

20 is 121.

You're right.

What I'm asking is because the pipeline study mentions 5th Street for exit 118 to I-64.

Pipeline

There are two pipeline studies.

So the first three, one is for exit 120.

Got it.

Okay.

Thank you for that.

Sorry about that.

Any other questions?

Great.

Thank you so much for those updates.

Thank you.

Yes, this was my question.

I don't have any roundtable updates to share.

Thank you.

Thank you for clarifying that.

I'm not wearing officially, I'm not representing the Charlottesville Area Alliance here today, but I mentioned it earlier, and for those who aren't familiar, it's a coalition of about 25.

Government, nonprofit, and for-profit organizations working to implement an age-friendly community.

And the City of Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and Flamando have all, through their governing boards, made commitments to AARP metrics about what an age-friendly community is.

And transportation has been a big area CAA has worked on, been working on, and we are going to get another grant this year through AARP Virginia working on walkability.

We've done walk audits last year.

We did training for some VDOT staff over there, city and county staff, community citizen members, looking at how you conduct a walk audit.

And we're working with folks about how we can try to implement that more as a norm in our city and surrounding counties.

We've been doing bus driver, bus rider training, helping folks who have never ridden the bus

and don't really know how to do it, helping them learn that.

Lucinda from TJPDC helped to launch that program last year, and they're going to be doing more of that with the new PATH program, trying to build better mobility for people who can't or don't drive for one reason or another.

So there's a lot happening in that space.

We're not sure what the grant is this year, but we're going to we're talking to AARP Virginia about looking at rural transportation needs

John did a recent study on that but we're looking to see if we can dig a little deeper in some areas about the challenges of people in the rural area who don't drive and the challenge to get around there.

Thank you.

I can share that

My workplace, I work at the Equity Center at UVA and we are co-hosting this MLK event, Everybody Outside, Finding Joy and Belonging in the Outdoors, which is about increasing access to outdoors activities,

There was going to be a hike on Saturday, but that has been postponed, but there will be a keynote and panel discussion.

It's sponsored by Prolific, Run Club, Black Girls Hike, RVA, and UVA's Office for Sustainability.

I can throw that information into the chat if anybody is interested in attending.

and then sort of a little tangential I guess but just from the planning commission side of things Albemarle planning commission there's the much discussed eastern connector bridge and road out in Crozet that would connect kind of the neighborhoods near 240 with the oh Ethan's got it great with the neighborhoods closer to 250 and the grocery store down there

There was a sort of public-private partnership thing sort of in the works where a developer was going to proffer some of the land and also kind of get started on building part of that road.

It ended up not being recommended for approval and so the developer actually kind of pulled back on that amidst a lot of opposition from crozations who also say they want a bridge.

Okay, thank you very much.

Are there any additional matters from the committee or the public?

All right, so all in favor?

No, but a huge thank you to Sarah and Donna for your willingness to serve as chair and vice chair and be thrown into it and take the helm in the moment.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your willingness.

Thank you so much.

I will see you all in March.

Have a good night, everybody.