MPO Policy Board Meeting   9/23/2020

Yeah, and I'll just make an announcement.

This meeting is being recorded, including the chat box, and it will be posted on our website for the public to view.

So I'll call roll.

Supervisor Ann Mallek.

I don't see her on the list.

Councilperson Lloyd Snook.

Councilperson Michael Payne is here.

And John Lynch is Stacy Londrey.

is...

I'm here.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Well, let's move on to agenda item two, matters from the public.

If there's anyone in the audience who would like to speak, you can raise your hand in the

Zoom chat, as well as if anyone's on phone at star nine to raise your hand over the phone to speak.

And it looks like there's nobody who has raised their hand to speak.

Last chance, okay.

Sure, thank you.

I'm going to share my screen.

We'll go back.

This is Paul Josie.

I raised my hand.

Am I being called on?

Yes.

Thanks.

I just wanted to comment upon the proposed plan at Fontaine Avenue, part of the SmartScale application.

Thanks, I've been a resident of Fry Spring neighborhood for about 14 years and I know this route very well and I was concerned with, given this is a great gateway into grounds and into the university and also into the neighborhood, I was surprised by the widening of the asphalt.

There's an existing median strip of

A lot of mature trees that are looking very healthy, probably about 10, 15 years old.

And I was surprised by the turnaround lane particularly that was being designed and how significant of an impact it is from an entry standpoint.

So it's already a very wide asphalt stretch with a lot of what seems like additional lanes that are very rarely used.

And then to add a very big U-turn lane was, I think, possibly a mistake.

And it looked somewhat

undesirable as a gateway in design.

Okay, and is there anyone else?

Again, you can raise your hand in the Zoom chat if you would like to speak.

Okay.

Thank you.

I'm going to share my screen.

But I promise I'll give it back, Lucinda.

Yeah.

You see it?

All right.

It's not up.

Okay.

It's because it's on screen too.

I gotcha.

Okay.

When I turned it so I could see it and look at the camera at the same time, it messed everything up.

Okay.

So,

So as you all are aware, we're in the process of updating the public participation plan.

When we started looking over the plan, the idea was mostly just to update it to make sure that we were in compliance with our own organizational practices and also look at what we were doing in regards to electronic communication and holding electronic meetings during the state of emergency.

And so to make sure that our plan was still

So as you all are aware, we put together an initial draft of the plan.

We put it out for public comment.

We did the 45-day public comment period, and we got some feedback on it.

I got a few emails.

And so what became pretty clear based on the information we got back is that there were some pretty easy updates that we could go ahead and make based on the public feedback, but there's really a desire for us to spend more time making this more of a robust update and really just making it a little bit more

timely and consistent with the other ongoing efforts that we are trying to implement to make sure that we are considering equity in our outreach and public engagement efforts.

So on this slide right here, I have a summary of comments that we received back.

I divided it up into simple revisions and substantive revisions.

So the simple revisions were things that I was already able to just really quickly and easily add into the plan based on the public feedback, mostly just making sure that there is consistency between

The process that we followed to both amend existing plans and also to adopt new plans and making sure that the same list of programs and plan updates were inclusive in both areas.

Stacy actually pointed out that there were some inconsistencies in the language used, so I updated those sections.

And then there were some requests that we add more references to social media as an outreach medium that we use and also include a reference that community events and festivals when we're not in a state of emergency and when those are held.

We will also utilize those.

So those were ones that were really simple to make that we can go ahead and incorporate as revisions into this plan if you all would choose to go that route.

And then there are these more substantive revisions and the feedback we got was that the document needs to be less technical and more easily accessible for a wider audience.

Reducing the use of qualifying language like when feasible or to the extent possible.

Provide strategies to conduct outreach to the aging population and rural users of the MPO transportation system and then addressing climate change.

Some of these may or may not make sense to include in the public participation plan, but that is a summary of comments that we got.

I will note that initially when the technical committee and the citizens technical advisory committee reviewed this, I had included SmartScale in the list of documents or plans.

I include that as a simple revision, but looking back at it now, I don't know that that makes sense.

because basically all that is required for or the only public engagement that's really emphasized for the list of planning efforts that are on those lists is a minimum public hearing requirement.

And we can add SmartScale to that list, but I don't think my personal opinion is that that's not the best way to get engagement and feedback from the public around SmartScale project selection.

We could add it as a minimum requirement if you all want to direct us to do so.

But as we're talking about developing our smart scale process, I think for now it makes sense to leave it out of this revision, knowing that we're going to continue to work on making more meaningful updates to the document.

So tonight we have advertised a public hearing, so you will have the option to vote on the public hearing after we hold the public hearing, after you hear these

any additional feedback that there might be.

The options are that we can move forward with

adopting the plan as it was initially presented to you all that we can adopt the plan with the revisions that were recommended by the technical committee minus SmartScale or we could add SmartScale to the list of projects or we could table the discussion to wait and do a more robust update later.

It is staff's personal preference, not personal, but it is our preference that we go ahead and do an update now just to make sure that we do

And then we would look at opportunities to revisit our work program and allocate additional funding to do a more robust update by the end of this fiscal year.

So with that,

More a comment than a question, Mr.

I'm happy to do an approval and then the robust going if that's what staff is preferring just because it handles the procedural piece.

My own response would be on your list of ongoing activities and reading through that.

Correct.

Yeah, let me pull up.

Yeah, if there are specific revisions that you want, this is the time to make sure that we incorporate those with the language you want us to use.

Yeah.

I know how difficult it is when we talk about public participation and how many different tools and ways that we can go about getting public feedback.

It seems to me that you're getting at one and that last bullet point about connecting with and we all use interested parties or the quote unquote stakeholder organizations.

It seems to me that we could be a little bit more proactive pushing out and trying to get those individuals than just relying necessarily on citizens requesting inclusion,

It's easier probably to identify public agencies or providers of freight services than it is private citizens.

But I think that PVCC's network to work and their connectors idea and how they connect with responsible, or not responsible, but they identify individuals in the community in helping in their program.

And that kind of, what's the word I'm looking for, primary push out

to get those connectors to the folks that would be interested in what you're going after.

I think there could be something to that that could be added in here to help with engagement.

Do you want us to try to draft language to include in this revision?

Seems like that would be a better conversation for the round two, the more

I'm going to do a more robust study on it, but I think when we talk about public participation, I mean, it's the same in the county or in most places.

You think whether you hold public meetings, you make announcements, you post things on websites, you give people a way to sign up for lists.

But if that's, you know, we've been doing that.

So there's probably more interesting ways to go out and find the right people to be involved instead of waiting on them to find us.

And I just offer that one example as a way to do that.

There could be or I imagine there are others.

Thank you.

And just so you all have the opportunity to see it, I did this as the draft.

The highlighted portions are the ones that were changed since you all got the draft that was in your packet.

So I added language about utilizing community events, utilizing social media platforms.

Let's see.

Other ones added the long range transportation plan to public notice from any major documents.

We match this language with the previous section, which was about adopting major documents about providing notices to agencies and organizations that support or are affiliated with low income and minority populations.

So Mr. Galloway, I think that

Maybe somewhat what you were referring to, but what you would be referring to as a much larger portion of the population to look for other opportunities.

But that's a way to satisfy the requirements that we, not just satisfy the requirements, but meet the intent to be inclusive of those communities when we're doing our planning effort.

I think those were the most significant ones.

And then we added the

Abbreviations to the acronym table.

Okay.

I'll open the public hearing.

If there's anyone in the audience who would like to speak at this public hearing, you can hit the raise hand icon in the Zoom chat.

And if you are on phone, hit star nine.

All right, there's no one with their hand raised.

Last call.

All right.

I close the public hearing.

Is there any further discussion or questions from the board?

All right.

So I'll move approval of the public participation plan as amended, presented.

I can do that, yeah.

So, Ms. Mallek?

Mr. Snook?

and Ms. Londrey.

Is that how you say your name?

Londrey.

Yeah, so what we need to do, and you'll see this

I don't know.

We might want to talk about this a little bit at the end of the agenda.

But what we'll need to do is we'll need to make some revisions to the Unified Planning Work Program, which is the document that communicates how we're going to allocate funding.

And there are some reasons we need to be as specific as possible based on VDOT invoicing requirement changes.

So we're going to have to amend that work program to allocate additional funding.

So you'll see that request for the amendment at the next meeting.

And once that is approved for the additional funding, we can get working on it.

Thank you.

OK. On to agenda item four.

Does anyone have any changes or additions to the agenda?

All right.

Is there a motion to approve the agenda?

So moved.

I'll second.

Aye.

Aye.

All those opposed?

At the last meeting, the board directed me to do a poll to find a better date for the November meeting because the meeting was scheduled right before Thanksgiving.

And the poll showed that Tuesday, December 1 or Thursday, December 3 worked for everybody, except for Mr. Snook did not vote.

I don't remember voting.

Oh, yeah, Ned, you didn't vote.

I didn't mean to call myself out.

But either time is fine.

OK. All those in favor?

Aye.

All those opposed?

All right.

Meeting is rescheduled.

And the approval of the July 22nd, 2020 minutes.

Any discussion or changes to the July 22nd meeting minutes?

All right.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

All those opposed?

Okay.

So at our last meeting, we approved

Applying for the other SmartScale projects and the Fontaine Avenue project had some last minute changes to it.

So the board wanted to wait until after those changes were made.

And so this is a project that the MPO is submitting for SmartScale funding on behalf of the county.

And so the board will want to decide whether they would like to submit this application as it is or not submit it.

All right, this was the concept that we came up with to try to fix some of the issues that are here at this interchange.

It wasn't selected for funding and it was scored relatively low on the list.

So what we did was we developed, we looked at the interchange and tried to see if we could reduce the cost and the right of way impacts to make the application more competitive.

So this is the concept that we, traffic engineering and the location and design section

develop to address both the traffic growth and the heavy movements and the safety issues that are currently present at the center change.

And basically, it's a partial DDI in that it crosses over the westbound left turn beam that's that free flow up onto the southbound ramp onto 29.

and installs a signal at that crossover location.

It also includes the multi-use path, shared use path through the interchange, which is something that's down there right now, just ends right at the ramps.

And those folks would travel across to the median and then run down the median and then cross back over on the west side of the interchange.

The drawback to this interchange is that if you want to go mainly from either the northbound movement off the ramp to out towards Fontaine Avenue extended, the reservoir and those places, you'd have to make a right and go down to Ray Hunt and make a U-turn.

Same way if you're coming from Fontaine Avenue extended,

and you want to go northbound on 28-9, you'd have to also go down and make a U-turn at Ray Hunt and come back.

Both those movements are relatively low-volume movements, so we felt that that wasn't as impactful and would still operate effectively.

The second slide, if you scroll down the page, Lucinda,

This is the improvements that would be at Ray Hunt.

We're adding a left turn lane and the U-turn lane.

You still have a single lane that goes into the city.

You still have the right turn, dual right turn lanes that turn into Ray Hunt Drive.

And basically this would more effectively address the weave issue that currently occurs at the interchange itself right now with people coming off the northbound ramp

and going right into the through lane into the city and causes a lot of near misses and conflicts with that through movement coming from the southbound 29 ramp eastbound into the city.

So overall, that's the gist of what we're proposing to do.

Mr.

Chair, if I could ask a question of Chuck.

I thought a very general but

Very worthwhile question.

Came up at the Commonwealth Transportation Board meeting last week.

And they weren't talking about this project in particular, but I thought it was very relevant of being clear and identifying the objective of the project like this.

I've talked with a number of folks about this project.

And this is one where there are a number of benefits.

You're addressing congestion.

You're addressing safety.

You're also addressing that westbound turn movement on the I-64.

My question would be, what would be, if there were one overall benefit of this project, what would that be?

The safety at 64, that ramp, I don't have a way to address that movement right now.

And the diverging diamond was one way to address that.

It does the same thing that this interchange concept does.

It allows that movement to operate almost free flow down, around, and back up onto the 64 ramp.

without signalizing that movement, there's not a way to put a or build some sort of flyover.

The loop ramp would basically have a tremendous impact on the Fontaine Research Park property, especially where the state police barracks are and the Forestry Service building is there in the back.

Those buildings would be totally impactful because we would have to put a major loop ramp there, which would create a lot more conflict points and accidents even for that movement to occur.

This is a way to safely address that movement.

It basically just takes the conflict out of the interchange, both 64 and this one.

So that would be the most critical

need that it addresses.

We have queuing tractor trailers on that left turn ramp because of the traffic southbound from Charlottesville that wants to get on 64 eastbound is directly in conflict with that movement.

So they can't make that maneuver.

And we've had some recently some fatalities there probably in the last five or six years where people have gotten killed making that maneuver.

this would address that and reduce that conflict and injury capacity.

It also will accommodate a lot of growth that I know the research park is planning since the university and I know Julia's gonna mention that, that they're planning a lot of growth in the research park and they're moving part of their facilities out here.

So we took that into consideration

Thanks Chuck.

Okay.

Thanks.

Basically,

Right in the middle of the screen at the bottom where it says conceptual sketch, they would come down this ramp and then make the left turn right here at the interchange at the bottom of the interchange and then go across and then back up and then they would go right on to 64.

No, the other direction southbound.

There you go.

So you go up.

underneath the bridge and then back up to the south to 64 interchange.

And the only time that movement would stop is when the left turn movement coming out of the city would, they basically would work as a two-phase signal, which the left turns would go on the ramp and then the left turns from, or the outbound movement from 29

from the city down to that ramp would go.

Lucinda, do you have the document I sent in your email?

Could you put that up so it's easier to see it?

While she's doing that, this is a case where public participation was limited.

I am on the CTAC, and the first time I saw this was last week.

So in a week, I redesigned the thing.

I just finished it.

As a matter of fact, just before this meeting,

So what you see there is an overview.

So what I propose to do is take the problem being the left turn for the northbound US 29 traffic to get westbound I-64.

I propose a ramp starting just north of the intersection with Gold Eagle Drive on US 29

ramp up, go over the southbound US 29 lanes, continue around, and then go over the eastbound I-64 lanes and then ramp down and merge with the westbound I-64 traffic.

This proposal would cost $16 million in construction, cost $1 million for design and project management,

which is $17 million, which is $3 million less than messing with Fontaine Avenue.

And this is a better solution to the problem because it is a free flow design, completely eliminates the problems and the traffic that wants to get on I-64 West from northbound 64 or US 29 does not have to navigate two traffic lights, one at the

ramped to get on eastbound from southbound US 29 and also the one at Fontaine Avenue.

It's much more direct.

It would work much better.

And like I say, I had a week to do this, so I could probably refine it a bit more given a little more time, but I knew this meeting was coming up and I wanted to

to show an alternative proposal.

The C-TAC did not recommend approval of this.

The motion didn't carry.

There were four abstentions, so it didn't carry.

The Fontaine solution leaves a lot to be desired.

This would work better.

I would like to clarify, CTAC did not approve the Fontaine proposal that was put forward in your packet.

Well, if it's appropriate, I can go ahead and provide my comments at this time.

Julia Monteith, University of Virginia.

You all know me from the policy board.

And we had a team of people at UVA who took a look at this and

sent in formal public comments approximately a month and a half ago.

And what I would like to do is just read those comments so that they're accurate.

And then if you could go back to the concept sketch so it might be a little bit easier for people to understand our concerns as I'm walking through this, that would be appreciated.

And then if anybody has any questions regarding my comments, I'm happy to answer them.

So can you bring it?

Yeah, thank you.

So the first one is UVA has purchased Fontaine Park and just completed a master plan to expand the park and add over a million square feet in a phased manner.

The basis for this is to move the ambulatory clinics from the congested area of UVA Health

to the park for better patient access and expanded facilities.

The second one is we have concerns regarding various turning movements and in particular, the flow for vehicles traveling north 29 to West Fontaine Avenue, having to travel through the intersection at Raisey Hunt Drive.

In addition to passenger vehicles making this movement,

There's a concern about how that's going to impact flows into the park and create weaving patterns in this area.

And so we would like to see that there's a different approach to the U-turn approach for anybody who's trying to travel west on Fontaine.

Three is there are a number of technical concerns that need to be addressed as part of the public comment process, including vehicle flows, pedestrian and bike safety, and constructability.

And the fourth one is Fontaine is an entrance corridor into our community and a major gateway for UVA.

We have concerns regarding delineators, jersey barriers, and similar traffic management techniques that not

do not seem to be in keeping with the entrance corridor.

And then just as a final comment, we just feel that this intersection needs a lot more scrutiny before moving forward.

Does anyone have questions about the information presented there?

Is there a second?

I'll second.

Want to do a roll call on this one, Mike?

Yes.

And I will note for the record that obviously the Albemarle Board of Supervisors, they all did prefer the previous design.

So as part of our work plan for this year, we are conducting a needs assessment for electric vehicle charging stations in the TJPBC area.

So that includes the counties outside of the MPO as well.

Mostly this is assessment and recommendations of ways that we can

encourage the use and support the use of electric vehicles in our region.

So I'm just bringing this to you as a discussion item to see if you have any comments or recommendations on it.

We asked the CTAC and the MPO technical committee to give me more stakeholders to contact about the study, which they gave me a really good list.

So I've been working on that.

They also sent me some great articles and research papers as well.

So that was really helpful.

Lucinda, this is John Lynch.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

All right.

All right.

We briefed the MPO Policy Board a couple of meetings ago, I believe now, and have had the chance to have discussions with CTAC and the technical committee regarding future smart scale rounds.

And if you'll bear with me, I will use perhaps the Fontaine Avenue as a example project

where I think this type of new policy would be beneficial.

What we're recommending, and we've received comments from both CTEK and the technical committee, we're going to be revising and coming back to you hopefully at your next meeting with a formal policy asking your adoption

that we begin to identify projects that the NPO policy board considers for future smart scale rounds and consider starting that process much earlier than we have in the past.

The past practice has pretty much been projects that Charlottesville or Albemarle saw as a priority

but did not have room on their application list.

Each of the local governments are limited to four applications.

And so we would move those into the MPO to apply for.

In addition to very large projects like the hydraulic, those have been a priority for the MPO and both jurisdictions for several years now.

But what we would like to do is as soon as the scores are out, which should be in January or early February, we begin to identify projects that either have been submitted in the past and didn't score well, or projects that we haven't submitted in the past but have gained in priority, and receive input from CTAC, from the technical committee, as well as from the general public,

of projects that are in V-Trans, that are in a long-range transportation plan, but begin to move those forward on the application selection process.

And what I believe this will do is allow us to provide more public input and community engagement.

Again, using a project like Fontaine, using a project like the Route 20 pathways, that we would engage the public.

We would identify at least, well I shouldn't say at least, at the most two priority projects that we would do an extensive engagement for beginning 16 to 18 months before the applications were actually due.

Making sure that we identify what the actual needs are, what the community's vision is, making sure that it meets the land use provisions around the area that the transportation improvements are scheduled, and move this forward.

We believe that that citizen engagement, community engagement, will really help on bigger projects.

Smaller projects will still handle the same way we've been doing.

The other thing I would say is that this is solely for the MPO submitted projects.

So if Albemarle County has four projects that they want to submit, we aren't trying to suggest that they change their process or Charlottesville change their process.

We just think for the MPO.

The downside to this is that to do an extensive engagement like this,

We may need some technical expertise from a consulting engineer.

Often, VDOT has been able to help with that, but not always will they be able to do that.

So if we can plan early enough, we would go to the local governments for funding for the consulting engineer to help out.

The MPO can handle the facilitation, the community engagement portion of it,

We don't have the expertise with traffic engineers, nor do we have the resources to hire a traffic engineering firm.

The technical committee brought out that the very first year we do this would be a learning process and would be the most difficult for us, because we would have to know what projects we were after to go to the local governments

for the resources to hire a consulting engineer in November of this year.

And we won't have those projects prioritized until after January.

So the first round will be a little bit difficult.

We may have to really beg to get some help from VDOT, which they've been so helpful in the past.

But once we get this system going, we should be able to plan ahead and be able to have those technical resources available to us.

Again, we're talking about probably two of the four MPO projects every year would go through this process.

The other two would go through a normal public hearing and public engagement process.

We'll have this for you at your next meeting.

Just one comment in terms of consideration, and Chuck may be able to elaborate a little bit on this.

In terms of looking at the projects for smart scale, a lot of them, they have to meet a V-trans need.

So that may be one of the criteria that you use to determine which projects you'd be looking for.

And those that, obviously, that have been submitted already but didn't get funded would fall in that category.

But also to try to limit some of the planning work up front.

Certainly, thank you.

And I have a question.

I think I've asked this before, but I just can't remember.

I think it's very dependent upon the project.

For instance, I'll start at the high end and John and Chuck can correct me, but

The consulting engineers for the hydraulic project were probably well north of a million dollars spent on that.

Zion Crossroads, we're currently doing a corridor plan there that I think is in the neighborhood of a couple hundred thousand dollars.

But it could be much smaller than that if it's a very confined area.

Yeah, I was going to say it all depends on what the requirements are and what you want them to do.

The original part of the hydraulic 29 project, where we did the small area plan and the traffic analysis for the first larger thing, a larger part that took like 18 months, we probably spent about, it was north of a million dollars, it was probably about a million and a half.

So this latter part portion,

where we came back and we did some additional analysis and developed some additional concepts.

I had the consultant work on those and that was in the $50,000 to $60,000 range.

For like the Fifth Street study that we're currently working on right now or that's wrapping up right now that we looked at that corridor, it was over $200,000

and the same thing is for the Zion's Crossroads project.

So most of them, depending on the size is probably going to be somewhere in that ballpark, a hundred thousand to two to $300,000.

Um, and a lot of it has to do with how much, um, public participation you want them to, uh, take care of for you.

Um, if you're just having them do on the engineering and the, um,

Okay.

And then one last question.

OK.

Any additional questions or comments?

All right.

Thanks.

So these are just updates that I wanted to share with you.

In your packet, there's the 2020 annual report that we submitted, the MPO submitted to VDOT outlining the staff's activities for the year.

And then the title plan draft update

The Title VI plan and the environmental justice plan needs to be updated every couple of years and it's overdue for an update.

So we went ahead and updated the plan.

And if you look in your packet, let's see, the plan

is here, and then I highlighted the changes in light and blue.

And so most of what we updated was just the tables from the census, the new numbers for our area.

And when we went through the plan, the staff decided that we could do a more robust version of this plan.

make more public engagement and more outreach to limited English speakers.

So we didn't have that in our budget for this year.

So we wanted to just kind of update the tables now for this year.

And then in future years, we'll go through and we'll add money to the budget to do a more robust plan and more robust outreach to minorities in our area.

So this is not required to be voted on or anything, but I wanted to share it with you.

If you have any questions or feedback, I'm happy to take that.

Hey, Lisa, just a point of clarification.

OK.

So, yeah.

So this is the first time you're seeing it, and then we'll bring it back to you in the next meeting and ask you to vote to approve it.

Thanks, Sandy.

So if there's no questions, I'll move on to the next item, which is the TIP Administrative Adjustment Memo.

And this is the last meeting we had an amendment, so you had to vote on it because it was over a certain dollar amount.

But this is a smaller amount of money, and it's just an adjustment.

So there's no need to vote on it, but we wanted to share it with you.

and this is moving two maintenance blocks, moving $6 million from preventative maintenance to safety and preventative maintenance.

So it's just an administrative adjustment.

So here's the two tables.

The old table is on top of what was allocated

originally, and then the new adjusted table is down below.

So the amount is still the same.

Oh, actually, it's more.

So they did add money to this block.

And then the other adjustment is the second page in your packet.

And this table, the very last table in here, was updated.

So this is different.

Oh, wait.

I'm sorry.

Let me show you the new table.

So we did have a last minute change to that last table.

So these two tables are the same as what was in your packet, but these two tables here for the maintenance traffic and safety operations did change a little bit.

So in 2020, they took the $6 million away and they added it to the other table up here.

Are there any questions?

I will get better at explaining these.

Just to briefly, Mr. Payne, if you don't mind me just taking a second, because we want to go ahead and get you all to be in a position to vote on the adjustments to the work program at the next meeting, what we will do is we will send out the information to you all ahead of time to review

Sandy, if I could recommend the policy board in the past when we've done stuff like this, if you would send out both the original

I would be happy to.

Okay, any additional items?

All right, hearing none, move on to agenda item 10, additional matters from the public.

If anyone in the audience would like to speak,

You can hit the raise hand icon in your Zoom chat or type into the chat.

And if you're on phone, hit star nine.

I see no one with their hand raised to speak.

So the next meeting will be Tuesday, December 1st at 4 o'clock.

OK. Well, meeting adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you all.