MPO Policy Board Meeting   3/24/2021

One second.

This meeting of the Charlottesville Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization is being held pursuant to item 4.0-01 of the approved state budget HB 29 that allows public bodies to hold electronic meetings in the current COVID-19 emergency and that it is impractical or unsafe to assemble in a single location and that the purpose of the meeting is to discuss or transact the business statutorily required or necessary to continue operations of the public body.

This meeting is being held via electronic video and audio means through Zoom online meetings and is accessible to the public with closed captioning and there will be an opportunity for public comment during that portion of the agenda.

Notice has been provided to the public through notice at the TJPDC offices, to the media, website posting, and agenda.

The meeting minutes will reflect the nature of the emergency.

The meeting was held by electronic communication 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.

Yes, thank you.

One thing I want to go ahead and mention, we're going to cover it in organizational updates, but we'll explain why in a minute.

But Mr. Lynch will not be in attendance at our next couple of meetings.

So Ms. Londrey is going to be here filling in as his alternate for the MPO membership purposes.

So we'll go ahead and start.

Ms. Londrey?

Here.

Supervisor Malek?

Yes, in Albemarle County.

And Supervisor Galloway?

Not yet.

We can go through the non-voting members as well.

Ms. Davis with Johnson.

Mr. Proctor?

with VITA.

Ms. Monteith with UVA.

Yes, I'm here.

Great.

Mr. Duran with FHWA.

Here.

Mr. Long with FTA.

Mr.

Do you know if it's Fessel?

I think it's Fessel.

He's the CTAC representative.

And we do not have an FAA.

I believe that's all of the committee members.

And then for staff, we have Miss Jacobs.

No problem.

All right.

It looks like Mr. Gardner is here for CTAC as well.

So thank you, Mr. Gardner.

And I don't think, and

And Gretchen is also here with the PDC.

Did I miss any?

Yeah.

Thank you, Gretchen.

Did I miss any staff or committee members?

I did.

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, thank you.

On to matters from the public.

If there's anyone in the public who would like to speak, you can click the raise hand icon in the zoom chat or if you're on phone, hit star nine and speak for up to three minutes.

Sure.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, policy board, and thank you for letting me join you.

I'm Peter Krebs from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

Later during the meeting, TJPDC staff is going to talk about a plan for really improving some smart scale applications where they're a little bit complicated or there are lots of questions.

And first of all, I'd like to really support them doing that.

And it's great that TJPDC is doing that.

I think TJPDC is a great body to be sort of monitoring that process because they work with both localities inherently.

They're regional in scope.

They have a great reputation and also good analytical quality.

So I think that's great.

As a real veteran of the last smart scale process and having observed a lot of the lessons learned, I wanted to talk for just a moment about what that process could do and a few things that it probably should contain.

So a good process will ask whether the project will make an important difference

It'll ask whether the project is appropriate for the MPO.

Like, does it really impact both localities?

Does it make a big difference for both?

Could either locality do it on their own?

Does the project have large support?

Is there missing information that the public could provide that would result in a better process?

That's really important because we're not just trying to have meetings.

We're trying to get better projects.

And will more discussion make a positive difference?

That's sort of a subset of the last item.

And so what would it take to make that process work well?

Well, first of all, and this is key, I think the steering committee really needs to be good at identifying who the important stakeholders are and getting them involved very early in the process.

Like that's definitely step one.

they'll need to identify questions that need to be answered before a question gets submitted.

Like we didn't do a great job with that all the time with the 2020 cycle.

So identifying questions and iteratively getting satisfactory answers before the pre-application process.

So the public and the council and the board have a great idea of what they're

what they're signing up for and buying into, really.

And then secondarily, this is important, is also that group could create a good design brief for the project itself.

So for example, the

Woolen Mills project for example doesn't necessarily have to decide what kind of wood is going to be used in it but it does need to say okay so view sheds are incredibly important you know location this is the general location where we want it to be what we're trying to do with the project also should be articulated

before the project goes in.

But we do know that the SmartScale project includes a design process that's very community driven also.

So it doesn't have to answer every question, but I think it should identify what the questions are with good guidance for it.

So that's all I have for this comment.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else who'd like to speak during matters from the public?

All right.

Sure.

Thank you, Mr. Payne.

The first thing I wanted to mention is, as you all know, Chip Boyles has transitioned into being the city manager for Charlottesville.

And so Christine Jacobs is our interim

Executive Director.

I think all of you all have had an opportunity to be introduced to Christine, but she will be filling some of CHIP's leadership role with the MPO.

And I'll be doing some of that as well.

No, happy to meet those of you that I haven't before.

Many of you I've been on several calls with serving in this interim role.

For those of you that don't know, I was previously the chief operating officer here.

I'm so happy to be a part of the MPO and do what I can to learn alongside you all.

And so then the next thing I just want to mention is some of the staffing adjustments.

You all noticed that the meeting invitation came from me instead of Lucinda from this month.

So basically what's happening is that as Chip has transitioned out, we're trying to restructure organizationally based on what makes sense as far as who is picking up some of his responsibilities.

And so what that means is that I'm going to be providing more of the administrative oversight of the MPO, which includes a stronger involvement with the management of the policy board.

Lucinda has done a really great job.

So I just want to make sure that you all are reassured that she's going to continue to be providing the programming support that she has been.

It's just gonna look a little bit different as far as who you're getting notifications from and that kind of thing.

But we will continue to provide

that support to you as well.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to any of us for that.

The next thing I already mentioned is that Mr. Lynch has taken a temporary assignment out of the area.

So Stacy is going to be filling his role in the MPO Policy Board.

And Stacy, I'll just let you say a few words.

Yeah, yeah.

So John is filling in as the acting B.DOT Northern Virginia District Engineer.

Helen Cuervo, who's been the District Engineer for the last several years, is retiring effective this Friday.

So John has started his time up there probably through May or June timeframe, in time for them to get someone recruited and on board and, you know, brought up to speed on what's going on in that district.

So

While he is in Northern Virginia, Michelle Shropshire is with us as the Culpeper District Acting Engineer, District Engineer.

Michelle is in her normal duties, the Project Development Engineer for Fredericksburg.

So she oversees what I'm going to call the normal project development.

And over the last few years, the I-95 mega projects that I'm sure you all are aware of.

One of her responsibilities is planning.

And like me, she serves as the alternate voting member on the Fredericksburg area MPO policy boards.

So she's no stranger to these processes and we're glad to have her with us.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I'm glad to be able to be with you guys and Culpeper and Stacy mentioned, I am usually an alternative

at the Fredericksburg MPS.

I am familiar with how MPS operates.

I'm glad to be able to come over and be part of your group for a time while I'm in Culpeper.

And then one last thing that I just want to briefly mention is that we've been looking at some of our other organizational systems as far as committee management.

One of the things that we've started doing with the planning district commission minutes and some of the other committee minutes is going to a more streamlined and simplified version since we are posting

The recordings of the meetings themselves online.

So we are going to basically a summary minutes format where we're being very, more so than we already are, being much more general about the discussions that are happening within the meetings and

and simplifying what's going to be in the minutes.

So you should see that in your next packet when you review minutes.

If anybody has any concerns about that, certainly let us know.

But barring no concerns, we think that this makes sense since everybody has more access to the meeting content through the reporting if they would like to see it.

I do have a question.

I have been getting updates from John and from the other staff in Culpeper on the projects that are going on in the district.

So I might not have them all memorized right today, but I have been getting updates from the team over in Culpeper.

Any other questions or comments?

All right, moving on to the general administration.

All right.

All those in favor?

Aye.

All those opposed?

All right, the agenda is approved.

Moving on to approval of the January 27th, 2021 meeting minutes.

All those in favor?

Aye.

I believe you might need to abstain, Lloyd.

All those opposed?

and then any abstentions?

No.

All right.

The January 27th meeting minutes are approved.

I'll just go ahead and take that.

My name is Kevin McDermott.

I'm the planning manager with Albemarle County and

also the Vice Chair of the MPO Technical Committee.

Thank you for having me and considering this proposal from Albemarle County.

Recently, Albemarle County Board of Supervisors voted to request changes for

The functional class of a number of roads within the county and this was in relation to something that we've been doing recently on entrance corridors that brought to our attention a number of routes in the county

that were classified as major collectors, but we believed that the function of those roads actually was more compatible with minor arterials.

So in that work, we reviewed all the standards from FHWA on what constitutes a major collector versus a minor arterial.

and relation to these roads and came up with this list of five segments of road that we believe qualified better as minor arterials.

They are roads that had previously been identified by Albemarle County as entrance corridors and the reason it came up was because of the fact that according to state legislation

Entrance corridors must be arterials.

We could not consider collectors as arterials.

So we looked at all those roads that were previously that were classified as collectors that were also

entrance corridors.

And not all of them, but a lot of them appear to us to be operating as arterials, minor arterials.

So the process for moving this request through is that in an MPO area, that request actually has to come through from the MPO.

It goes to VDOT for review and FHWA for final approval.

And so Albemarle County is now requesting that the MPO board

vote to approve a resolution requesting that functional classification be reviewed and changed as appropriate.

We have been working with VDOT planners on this project.

So we've had plenty of contact with Chuck on it.

He has taken a look at it.

He has no objection to these requests.

Obviously, they need to go through that formal approval process.

But this is the first step.

Those roads include a segment of Route 250 East from the 22-231 intersection out to the county line.

The entirety of Route 53 within the county, it starts at Route 20 and goes all the way out to the county line also.

Avon Street, which starts at the city line and goes down and connects to Route 20 as well.

Route 631, or Old Lynchburg Road, that is a small extension of the existing arterial from Sunset Road out to Hickory Street.

Hickory Street is a public road that's being developed right now as part of the Southwood development.

The next one is Barracks Road from the city line out to Georgetown Avenue.

So as you can see, all of these except for Route 53 are really extensions of existing arterials that we thought made sense to actually continue on a little bit further from where they are and in some cases all the way to the end or the end of the county line.

And so I'm happy to take questions about this process and what we've done for our evaluation but would request a vote for a resolution that I believe Sandy sent you all yesterday requesting that we make this change.

What is the practical effect of this?

Well, there's a number of practical effects.

For one, there is a funding issue that comes into play with how the VDOT residency receives funding for the roads.

So you get additional funding for roads classified higher.

This also does allow us to regulate these roads under our entrance corridor guidelines.

All right.

Yep, I'm happy to do that.

Okay.

Ms. Londrey?

Dane.

Supervisor Malek?

Yes.

Motion passes four to zero, or four to zero to one.

Thank you.

Let me run second and I will share my screen again.

All right, so many of you have been through this process before, but funding for the MPO operations comes from largely from the federal government as well as state sources.

So we get funding from 80% of our funding comes from a mixture of FHWA, Federal Highway Administration, and Federal Transit Administration funds, and then we get 10% from the

state agencies, which is the local Department of Transportation and the Department of Rail and Public Transit.

And then we match that with a 10% local match contribution.

Every year we're required to prepare what's known as the unified planning work program, which basically communicates what it is that we're planning to do with this funding.

It's a federal requirement, and it's something that we're required to do in order to continue to get funding and be in compliance with all the federal regulations.

We have received confirmation for our federal year 2022 budgets for our activities in the amount of $320,792.

What I do want to mention is that it's not included in our budget calculations, but if you look in the plan itself, there's a separate line item.

that specifies funding for VDOT support.

And so what I want to make sure that is communicated to all of you is that that's not a budget line item that comes through the MPO.

That's something that VDOT sets aside to provide staffing support to the MPOs, but it goes through the VDOT budget.

We shared a draft of this at our previous meeting, so there are a couple of things that I just want to point out to you that changed a little bit.

One of the bigger things is that we reduced the total amount from what we showed you previously in January for the Route 29 North Corridor Study.

This is the study, Lucinda is going to mention this in the staff updates and a little bit later, but this is a study that's looking at basically the northern portion of 29 and Albemarle County going into Greene County.

So we are also going to be allocating some of the rural transportation program funding to support this study as well.

So we reduced the amount that we're requesting or that we're programming into the UPWP at this point to allow for the additional contribution from the from the rural work program.

We also increased the funding for the MPO strategic plan by a small amount, by about $8,600.

Just thinking through it, we haven't really determined.

We think it's really important to do a strategic plan, especially as all these transitions are happening with our staffing.

to give us an opportunity to make sure that we are being strategic and conscientious and efficient with the funding that we get for our transportation planning in our region.

And so we think it's really important to do that work up front to determine what the goals and priorities are with all of our stakeholders and to really define who our stakeholders are to make sure that we are incorporating

those priorities into our plan.

So we're still debating whether or not it makes more sense to do that with an outside consultant.

There was a previous strategic plan that was done in 2017 that was done in-house, but we think that in order to support that with staffing, regardless, we needed to contribute a little bit more to that effort.

And I think this will set us up to make sure that we're accomplishing what you all want us to accomplish through our transportation planning for the region.

So those were the main differences from what we presented previously.

Does anybody have any questions before we go on to the next discussion?

Great.

Alright, so where we left it is that we still had some projects that we are trying to work out with this additional budget amount of about $50,000.

And so based on your feedback, as well as looking at the

At the previous strategic plan and listening to what you all had identified as your priorities, we put together two different options for you all.

Option A, which would be one more in-depth analysis project, and option B, which would be two smaller scale research type projects.

And what we're hoping for tonight is that you all will give us direction on which one you want us to put into the draft work program that we are going to be preparing and disseminating publicly.

And then there we will schedule the public hearing for that in May, where you all will vote formally to hopefully to adopt that work program.

So we listened to your feedback from our meeting in January, and then I also went back and looked at what was in the existing strategic plan for the MPO.

and put together some of these suggestions.

So the first one is this bicycle and pedestrian safety analysis.

Initially, and in your pocket, I think it explained it more of a crash analysis and that was what we were thinking initially.

We got some really good feedback though when we presented this to

CTAC and MPOTAC that we might not have enough data to do a meaningful crash analysis if we're only looking at crashes that have actually happened.

And so what we would be doing is looking at crash data that involves bicycles and pedestrians, but also doing a lot more on the ground field work and surveying with the public to figure out

Not just where our crashes occurring, but where our crashes being narrowly avoided and also where people more or less comfortable walking and figuring out where infrastructure is actually a barrier for allowing people to be able to go where they really want to go through bicycle and pedestrian.

So based on the local priorities and also what's in the strategic plan, one of the things that was mentioned in the strategic plan specifically is that there is a desire for more emphasis or work to be placed on pedestrian infrastructure.

So this would help meet that need as well as focusing on some of the equity considerations, specifically considering the needs of people who are pedestrians or bicyclists by necessity versus by choice and looking at the safety.

aspects of this.

So this would be mostly for staff time, just to give you an idea, this is about five or 600 hours of staff time that would be able to be put into this analysis.

We're also putting in a little bit of funding for a technical consultant for this to help with any sort of mapping or maybe web interface or anything like that that might come up that's beyond the technical capacity of our staff.

So that's option A.

And then option B is looking at two research projects.

I'll be a little bit more in depth.

So the first one was based on both localities have prioritized climate action initiatives.

And while we are not in a non attainment area for, you know, having to monitor air quality and having to factor that into our transportation system reporting and things like that.

There are a lot of places that are and so this would really be an opportunity to look at what other

to promote climate action initiatives and their transportation planning and determine how we could also incorporate that into our long range planning project prioritization.

So that would be the first one.

And then the second one would be looking at not so much what are the mechanisms to fund transportation projects or to get additional funding, but looking at other places where this has been done successfully and doing more of a deep dive to figure out

What made them successful?

What was the impetus that led them to form some of these initiatives and hopefully get some really on the ground lessons learned from, you know, if this was something that we wanted to pursue locally, what those opportunities would be.

The information about how to do it is out there.

We know what all the mechanisms are.

We know what all the opportunities are.

So it's more like how do we build those relationships and those partnerships and make sure that they're successful.

I put a couple of examples in the memo when I explained what the projects were.

Those aren't necessarily intended to be the case studies that we would do, but just examples of where there are partnerships between private entities that are actually building transportation infrastructure that's able to sort of be leveraged into expanded networks or places where there was a successful

tax increment financing opportunity.

Just to give you an idea of the variety of ways that funding has been leveraged to get more regional funding for transportation projects.

So we could look at what they've done that's been successful to figure out what might work well for our area.

All right, thank you.

So I actually, if we're talking about preferences, I prefer option two, because I think option one really

can be done with the police departments and data and certainly from what was in the memo, that was my immediate reaction.

I haven't quite absorbed all the stuff you just said, but I think that would be the appropriate place to start.

With option B,

The first part I think is incredibly important and something that we both jurisdictions need very much this to how to leverage can do a better job with climate issues right away and to use our transportation changes as a way to help us with that.

The second issue about changing or sort of studying the marketability of our projects, I'm assuming that right now VDOT is advising us and I know there's been a tremendous amount of work over the last couple of years to really improve

the acceptability or having all the i's dotted and t's crossed on the application so that we have done much better due to that extra work.

And I'm assuming that that is Chuck and his staff's guidance.

So anyway, I'm much more interested in the climate change part of it than the other, but I support option two.

And if you're looking for other funding sources, I hope you were able to locate the study from 2005.

It's all been done.

Yeah, I mean, the first one would be something that would be more of best practices for us to incorporate into our long range transportation planning process.

Do you mean to complete the research at this point?

It would be our in-house staff looking at how other places are doing this.

What this would do would be to help us figure out what kind of technical support we might need in addition to our staffing when we do the long-range transportation plan update, though.

Yeah, for the second one, I would imagine that that would be more of a recommendations on lessons learned on what opportunities are available should we wish to pursue them just to figure out, you know, what's worked in other places?

And as a practical matter, what would you end up doing to do a bicycle and pedestrian safety analysis under option A?

No, the technical consultant would really be supporting our data collection and information presentation.

That's what the technical consultant would do.

They would help us with mapping.

They would help us if we wanted to use, for example, a web-based

mapping comment form kind of system to get information from people.

But what we would be doing is we would start with what Supervisor Malek mentioned, looking at the incidents reports for crashes that have happened.

looking at hospital data to see where people who have been injured in bicycle and pedestrian related crashes have shown up.

But then also a lot of the work would really be on the ground doing surveying and talking to people in communities that are identified as being underserved by our planning efforts, things like that to figure out what makes

what makes the bicycle or pedestrian systems that they're using comfortable or uncomfortable for them.

And so this would really help inform and we did talk to technical staff at both localities about this.

This is information that they need that they could use when they're developing recommendations for pedestrian and bicycle facilities.

It could also help inform how we incorporate bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure needs into

So as you have probably guessed, I'm always concerned about retreading the same old work.

So we have the bike survey and app that was used four or five years ago very successfully all around for the bicyclers all around the city, gobs of information provided.

So I'm not sure we need a new system for that.

The one map that's already being developed by VDOT

is working on all the dangerous places and gaps and potholes and stuff like that throughout the community.

So I would like to know how those two things would factor into what you're proposing for this event.

I don't hear enough detail about

how you're planning to find all these people or meet all these people or anything like that.

So I just would like more.

I think for that first option, we'd be looking beyond just where the gaps are, because there could be infrastructure that's already in place for bicycle and pedestrians that regardless of whether or not the infrastructure is there, it may not be comfortable for you

for use by the people who need it.

One example that we've discussed among our local staff is the idea of using the shared use pass.

There are times when shared use pass make a lot of sense for people to use that as an alternate form of walking on a sidewalk on the side of a road.

But there are also times if you're working a second or third shift and you're having to walk where it's dark or something like that,

Even though there's a facility and there's technically a network, it might not be comfortable to use because you're walking alone through an area where there's not necessarily lights.

So we would be looking not just at the actual infrastructure of the network, but also what other factors are important to make that comfortable for people to use, like lighting, like time of day that these incidents are occurring, any sort of demographic information that's available to us we would also want to look at, as well as probably determining some ways to do some

Yes.

So option one from a resource standpoint is one project and then option two are these two smaller ones.

I shared Supervisor Malek when she says the first, in option B, the first option is more of interest to me than the second one.

Is there a way that

The safety, the pedestrian one could be on the same scale as there's an option B.

What is the main difference in resources if you wanted to do like option one and then option two one or two A or the climate action plan and pedestrian safety?

I think my concern is that for somebody to do this analysis, it's going to have to be pretty labor intensive as far as doing a lot of the public outreach and developing surveys and talking to people and doing a lot of analysis.

Um, I mean, I'm sure we could do something at a smaller scale.

But again, I think I think for us, it's better to probably if there's something that's involving a lot of new data collection versus researching the data that's already there.

The number one, with our current staff, I mean, our current staff, there's been turnover, so none of our current staff has done this.

But I did include, Jessica Hirsch-Ballerin does have some experience doing some of this type of analysis, so she does have some expertise at least participating in the process.

So I could let her speak a little bit more too,

any specific experience that she has.

Yes, same here.

I just would like to know what some details about this project and how other projects of this type

have turned out?

I mean, what happened to all the information that was gathered from the bike app and stuff?

I mean, is this going to just go on the shelf or is it going to be helpful?

So those are great questions.

I think one thing I want to clarify is that my experience on projects like this was not done in this area.

So I'm not familiar with the bike app.

I wasn't here for that particular thing.

I think I'm glad you brought it up.

It's something that we should definitely look into more, whether or not we do this project.

As for the kind of work that could be done, I do think Sandy has done a pretty good job of explaining a lot of the data collection pieces.

One thing I'll add is that like for the survey work, we do have access to MetroQuest through VDOT and that would be a very helpful tool for us to get broad participation outside of the traditional biking and walking community on these kinds of questions of comfort and safety.

I think there's a couple of studies that I could refer you to and I can pop them in the chat if that's an option.

There was a pretty great study about biking and walking comfort out of the University of Oregon.

which did a lot of the work that Sandy is describing, reaching out to the public and trying to figure out what kind of infrastructure makes people comfortable, makes people try biking when they wouldn't otherwise do it.

I'm trying to think of anything else.

There's also a pretty well tested methodology called neighborhood walkability audits.

I believe one has been done in Charlottesville before, but basically you take a group of people, you walk around the community and you get

A view of what you might call invisible information, things that a planner just going out really quickly and taking a look at the area or looking at a map of what infrastructure is available wouldn't see.

But you get this very unique information that the public has from lived experience of walking and biking in their own communities.

I hope that was helpful.

Any other questions or comments?

No, I was just gonna offer the comment.

I've received some constituent piece that kind of relates to number one, but in looking at it from a regional eye, as both the city and the county have highlighted climate action as a top priority,

that it seems that the Metropolitan Planning Organization in doing its next long-range transportation plan to incorporate option B in that first segment into that transportation plan would be definitely in line with what each jurisdiction is prioritized.

In thinking more about option one in the pedestrian bicycle safety,

I know in my district that we have a corridor study going on that's going to have to look at that and it changes on each place.

I get it, the comfortability of using a trail that's along a eight lane road or something like that versus a two lane road.

I think elements of that may have to be bitten off by each jurisdiction, but the climate action idea, a little bit more regional.

Anyone else?

Yeah, I guess my thought is I share a lot of Supervisor Malek's concerns about option one.

You know, I know in the city we have, it seems we have a pretty good idea of like

areas that we know need pedestrian and bike improvements and we're aware of some of the areas that are in the most acute need for it.

The challenge is getting the funding and making it actually happen and we could get more granular data, but I'm not exactly sure what it would

lead to that would be totally different, as well as some of the concerns about what the study would look like in actuality in terms of the data collection and how that would unfold.

So I would say I'm inclined to go with option B.

The piece that seems most important to me is the incorporating the climate action impacts.

I've been attending the city's climate action planning meetings and the MPO has come up several times as an important

regional stakeholder as that develops and it seems like option A may give us a more specific deliverable but option B but of a smaller impact whereas option B might help move towards some of these bigger changes or incorporating better regionally just what we're doing in our climate action planning here in the city.

Can I ask a point of clarification or just to throw this out there as well?

Well, one was 50,000 and the other was 30, so you'd say changing the climate to be the full 50,000.

Well, that's another alternative.

It sounds like the climate action piece is the piece that you all are very interested in.

Very good.

Keep it in reserves until we figure out exactly where it's needed.

I don't have a clear idea of what would be involved with the B project and the kinds of things you suggest examples of projects be studied in further detail.

I would be happy to receive information about those proposals or any other proposals that have the ability to draw down additional funds from someplace.

because of course funding continues to be a problem that we're confronting in many different ways.

If the staff, I mean I would say between those two goals, I don't know that there's a, from what I'm hearing, I don't hear a principled reason for saying

It's got to be 30 and 20.

It could be 40 and 10.

I don't know.

And I'm not sure that it really matters from our perspective how you allocate your time between those two projects.

I think they're both worthwhile goals.

The climate action plan may be a little bit different in the sense that it may require an additional purposeful

sort of redirecting of energy, but the kinds of things that appear in paragraphs, sub paragraph B, those four particular projects, I mean, are those the kinds of things that you would, where you would expect to generate some information just in the ordinary course of how you go about your job?

I mean, we know some of this, right?

But usually we come in halfway through the story.

So this would be a time to sort of go back and not just look at what the newspaper said or what the end result was, but how did they get there?

Talk to the people who were involved and figure out

what was happening in your community when you made this decision and how did you start these conversations and whose idea was this anyway and start answering some of those questions to figure out how they built up the consensus to make these decisions.

So at a $50,684 budget, I assume that you have

some, for at least internal purposes, some way of saying we're charging $25 an hour or something against this project.

Yeah, they're estimated.

We have an estimated hourly allocation.

OK.

From what the description was just given about what the work would be regarding the transportation question, I don't think that's worthy of us doing right now.

Because all we have to do is read the minutes of the discussion meetings of the various boards and everything else.

And we we've done self analysis of our failures already.

And that's the whole reason we have this better process for a couple of these high critical, high interest projects going forward for smart scale.

I would much prefer that we see how that goes for the next year, rather than

try to do this.

I'm hoping that we would have a lot more to gain by functioning on the transportation aspects that we can change, can afford to change, that would impact our climate action success.

And I would be inclined to agree with that.

Like others, I'm not really sure.

don't really have a lot of thoughts on exactly how 30 or 20 would break down.

But the climate action just seems like the most important piece to me and how the climate action process in the city has been unfolding is a big recognition that climate just needs to start being embedded in multiple departments and organizations throughout both local and regional government.

And this seems like a important and maybe necessary step to begin to

move in that direction here.

So I'm much more inclined to put the emphasis on that and have that be the top priority.

And again, lean towards option B. I know we're running towards the end of the allocated time for this item.

Yeah, or a revision of option B, as you all have been discussing.

Yes, I would like a vote from you all of what you want to go into the draft UPWP.

Again, we'll have the public hearing at the next meeting, and you'll be voting to adopt it at the next meeting.

Earlier, Supervisor Malek mentioned

What is there allocated for the climate action option?

And the other monies that are allocated could be sent into reserve for a future project that maybe we don't know about or give us a chance to brainstorm some others.

I like the idea of that.

And I don't know if there would be objection to that, but we can move forward with the climate action option and then bank the other funds.

And then when another research project comes to mind that's worthwhile,

to bring it forward at that time.

All right.

Sure.

Yes.

Supervisor Galloway?

Yes.

Ms. Laundrie?

Yes.

Supervisor Malek?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

All right, so as we've been discussing, we're developing a new process for a smart scale, round five.

This is for anyone who's unfamiliar, which I hope you are all familiar at this point, but this is the Virginia State process to select transportation projects for funding.

We're able to submit projects every two years with final applications

for this next round that will be submitted assuming the same timeline as before in August of 2022.

We are able to submit up to four projects currently, as far as we know, unless the guidance changes.

So for any projects that are submitted by the MPO, they're required to meet a general eligibility criteria.

So the first one is that they have to meet a need identified in V-Trans.

V-Trans is the statewide transportation plan for Virginia, and it goes through and it specifies where the needs are based on their analysis.

So for a project to be eligible, it has to show up as a need in the statewide plan.

And then MPOs are also eligible to submit projects that are on corridors of statewide significance, which would be

US 29, 64, those kinds of major inter-regional connections.

And then also for regional networks.

And so a regional network is based more on looking at the multimodal access and traveling within a region.

And V-Trans specifies what projects are on the regional network.

So the MPO can only submit projects that meet a need for the quarters of statewide significance and meets those regional network needs.

What we have discussed is basically developing a process where we identify the projects that we would like to submit for smart scale applications and then determine whether there are projects that need up to two projects that need additional public engagement or additional technical support or some sort of higher level of support in order to prepare for final

application submission and then start that process early so that we can go through, as Mr. Cubs mentioned earlier, and get public buy-in and make sure that we have a project that meets the needs both of the transportation system as identified in V-Trans, but also that has public support prior to submitting it.

So right now we are in March.

So what we are anticipating the process of being is that we have met as far as the MPO staff, as well as staff from Charlottesville and Albemarle and VDOT staff to develop an initial list of potential projects that we would move forward as being potential smart scale applications.

From there, we are going to continue outreach to both the localities.

So you all will be hearing from your staffs in April or May to determine whether there are additional projects that you all want to request on behalf of the localities.

And then we're also giving C-TECH, MPO-TECH, and the Regional Transit Partnership an opportunity to also identify if there are other projects that they want to be considered.

So for any of these committees to be able to submit a project for you all to consider as one of the final application choices that would need to be recommended by the entire committee.

So in May at our next meeting, we'll have a final list of potential project options where we'll be able to go through all the projects that potentially you all could choose from.

For smart scale applications and for our staffing support to prepare the public engagement, that kind of thing.

You'll have that full list in May.

And then we're going to be asking you to make that project selection in July.

So you'll have a month or two months between seeing the completed list and then selecting the projects you would like to move forward.

One thing Mr. Proctor mentioned is that the MPO does have four projects that we can submit.

Up to two of those are ones that we can provide that higher level of support for.

At this time, that higher level of support is gonna be public engagement.

We just don't have the kind of funding that we would need to hire engineers and technical consultants and things like that.

At this point, that might be something that we consider in the future.

But if there are more than four projects total that the MPO is interested in, the PDC also has application slots available.

So that's something else that may be a potential option if there are more than four projects.

But for right now, we're going to ask you to identify your top four projects.

And then if there's a fifth project, we could let the commission consider whether they would be willing to submit that application.

In July, the project selections will be made, including the two projects up to two that would need additional support.

And then in September, we would ask you all to appoint the advisory committees for those projects and then we can start going through the public process.

Our goal would be similarly to what we did in March to do a public workshop where we had all the projects available in the region.

We partnered with Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville to present all of the MPF regional projects at one time and give the public opportunity for feedback.

So we would like to have those ready for the public workshop.

and then we would be submitting pre-applications in May.

We do have some time between May and when the final applications will be submitted in August to collect all the information, get resolutions of support, that kind of thing, but we really want what we're actually asking for by the project to be pretty finalized before the pre-applications are due.

The real trap we got into last time was that there were decisions made before pre-application that the board and council did not know about.

And then there was no way to change it once pre-applications were in.

So that is a high priority for me not to have happen again.

And there are many aspects of this that I think are a big, big improvement.

So I just wanted to make sure that that was very clearly said out there that we cannot, we have to be

a well organized, well advertised, minutes taken process from start to finish.

This can't be any more little committees appointing themselves to do this because they can't be in charge of spending $20 million.

That's just not going to happen.

And so we have to make sure that we have these things coming back to the MPO, coming back to the jurisdictions on a regular basis.

Great.

Any other questions?

And of course, this timeline could completely change once the next SmartScale technical guidance is out.

But we're going off of what we know right now.

All right.

So like I said, we've met with staff to identify an initial list of projects.

And this is the criteria that kind of went into the projects that we identified, at least of being part of the initial discussion that could be added onto by requests from the committees or from the localities.

So the first project identification criteria was that it has to meet an identified need for the MPA region.

And that's based on the project being listed and the long range transportation plan that we're currently using.

The second criteria is that the staff basically was working to identify projects that were multi-jurisdictional, which had a clear improvement that would benefit both Charlottesville and Albemarle.

So we were really looking for projects that were on the border or would have some sort of regional connectivity benefit to both localities.

We also wanted to prioritize projects that already have plans or studies that have been completed on them.

There have been a lot of plans done on corridors in Albemarle County and Charlottesville.

So we really wanted to keep things moving from the pipeline where we've already identified the opportunities to move them forward to the next step towards implementing some of the projects that have already been identified.

And the last criteria was that we wanted to go ahead and build on projects that already had some level of community engagement and public support.

So that's where this next list that I'm going to show you came from.

You all had a table, and I can show you on the next slide as well.

But we looked at what plans were already in place, and so this was the initial list, like I said, that staff came up with.

The District Avenue and Hillsdale Avenue projects are both high-priority projects in the long-range transportation plan, so these are on the constrained list, which means we have a lot of projects listed that we'd love to do.

This is on the short list of projects that were prioritized as being extra important.

So we have those two projects.

Hillsdale Avenue was part of the Round 4 applications and it was not funded, but it was the first project in the Colbertburg district that wasn't funded.

So it was number 21 out of 20 projects, so we could reapply for that one.

This one, the 29-250 improvements, that one's in blue because it wasn't part of that initial discussion that we had, but it was a project that was recommended by Mr. Proctor based on the V-Trans needs and looking at what improvements could be made at the 29-250 interchange.

I think you all are pretty familiar with the Ravana River Bike and Pedestrian Crossing.

We had those feasibility studies that were done.

There seems to be a good public support, but there isn't a finalized project necessarily or destination or option out of the ones that were presented.

So we could do some more public engagement to finalize an application for that.

And then Avon Street and Fifth Street both had plans that have been recently completed for them as well.

So we could take those plans and develop some applications out of those.

So that's the initial list that

that we're starting with.

Do you all have any questions?

Oh, I do.

I do want to mention one more thing.

I'm sorry.

I also want to mention the Sunset Fontaine Connector as being a project that has come up in conversations as being something that's of interest to UVA, the city and the county all as being studied.

At this point, I'm hearing everybody say we really would love to be able to put some resources into understanding how we can make this connection happen.

and it seems to be something that's of interest.

It's been really important to all of the agencies that would be impacted.

At this point, we don't have, it doesn't look like we have the resources to get an actual application completed, but I do think it's something to keep on the back burner and to keep, stay aware of, because this could be a really good opportunity to do a next study once we have the opportunity to do that.

That's great, thank you.

Just a clarification on the Sunset Fontaine, is that over Stirling Avenue that is being considered?

because that is a highly critical environmental area down there.

And that's the reason that plus the railroad trestle is the reason this has never gone anywhere, but it may be in a completely different place.

I believe that's correct.

If Kevin or Jeanette or Chuck, if any of you want to weigh in.

And I can, this is Julia Monteith and I can address your question.

And yes, you're correct.

It's the strip lane through the one lane railroad underpass, and then you'd need a bridge to get it over to the next property.

So it's between the environmental resources and

There was general outrage in the environmental community a year or so ago because somebody got carried away with their bush hog down there, I don't know who, and mowed down a whole huge collection of native magnolia down there and had to really drive into the swamp to make that happen.

So they didn't do it by accident.

And so people still talk about that as something that we just can't have people running amok with mowers doing things down there particularly.

Any other questions or comments?

All right.

That is, yeah.

We'll continue to bring back.

The first one we have listed is an update on the US 29 North Corridor Study.

Thanks, guys.

I'm going to share my screen.

And we are starting a corridor study on the northern part of 29.

It's starting at the airport, and it's going up to just past the Rutgersville intersection.

It's to develop kind of a broad range transportation plan for just that corridor.

And it will be, we'll be working with both of the counties and their land use designations.

The project starting this year, it's $50,000, 30 from the MPO and 20 from the rural area.

And then it is going to continue for 18 months.

So it'll go into next year as well and be completed by the end of next year.

So that is also in the work plan for next year.

The project will be under the TJPDC because it goes outside of the MPO area into Greene County.

And we've been talking with VDOT about getting technical support from them.

The PDC voted to allow us to use VDOT resources on this project, and they're going to be hiring a consultant to

Collect the study data and work with us.

So we'll be kind of collaborating with the counties and the PDC and VDOT to come up with a cohesive plan for the entire corridor.

I should, actually, here we go.

I should have asked Kevin this when I had the chance.

Abe, is the county or is he or county staff involved in the scope for this?

Yeah, we have, we're trying to schedule a meeting right now.

We've already met with the county, both the counties Albemarle and Greene to kind of discuss the project and their vision for it.

And we have a next scoping meeting

We're trying to schedule in the next few weeks with both of the counties.

We're going to clearly identify the objectives of what they want to see to come out of it.

And then we'll write the scope based on what the counties want to see in it.

We are limited with our resources.

VDOT is going to study the intersections on 29 that have not been studied already.

So we'll have

And then the other staff update that I have for right now is I just want to mention to you all that because we got awarded some funding from DRPT through the last grant cycle for a regional transit visioning study and then also for an Albemarle transit expansion feasibility study, we did make a very minor technical update to the

current fiscal years 2021 work plan to include those awards.

Nothing changed other than referencing that we got the DRPT funding and that funding starts this fiscal year and will go into next fiscal year.

On to the roundtable discussion.

Yeah, we probably want to do voting and non-voting members as well.

Okay.

Kevin, do you have anything to update us with?

I don't have anything at this time.

From Charlottesville's end, Lloyd, feel free to jump in.

I would happily defer to Garland Williams, who I see is on the call.

Thank you.

The only comment I have is we're in the final stages.

We're going to be able to hopefully execute our part of the agreement for the funding for the larger study, hopefully here in the next two weeks.

And we also have representation from NDS.

Yeah, sorry, I stepped out into the restroom.

Yes, sir.

Good evening, everybody.

Yeah, we are currently compiling our comprehensive plan update.

We've got a work session with the Planning Commission on the 30th of March.

Council several weeks ago approved the housing elements and we are looking forward to bringing back to the city council a draft comprehensive plan in the next several weeks.

Yeah, just one thing, you know, we're in the process of updating our six year program.

The draft program will be presented at the April

Commonwealth Transportation Board meeting.

And sometime after that meeting, so between mid-April and mid-May, there will be a virtual meeting.

This replaces the public hearing that normally occurs in person at the Culpeper District Office.

So we hope you all can participate in that and we'll have a notice coming out about that meeting.

Michelle or Chuck?

Yeah, this is Chuck.

I just wanted to point out one thing.

One of the projects that I was hoping we would discuss as recommended to move forward with for review is the hydraulic 250 intersection as that started to show deterioration in the future when we were doing the hydraulic 29 work.

So that was what I was recommending moving forward.

And that's pretty much it.

We'll make sure that clarification is clear when we send the project out to you in May.

I'm sorry, Mr. Williams, I saw you had your hand up.

No, I was going to just bring to the policy board's attention that

I had a discussion with VDRPT last week and it looks like there's a funding change that has happened at the state level, at the federal level that's affecting the state ability to flex STP funds over to smaller transit agencies.

That affects us on our capital side of the house.

So that will probably affect us this fiscal year, 22.

Just wanted to make sure everybody's aware of it.

What that means is the jurisdictions will potentially have to pick up more of the calls for capital projects because they're not able to flex over the federal money.

That's something to be aware of.

We're going to

make all the jurisdictions aware, we're going to start our red letter writing campaign, making sure that our state representatives, our federal representatives understand how that affects smaller trans agencies like CAT.

That's pretty significant if the funding, depending on what the level that they reduce it by, could be 50%.

So that would be any larger projects that we do be massive impact to the jurisdiction.

Just wanted to put it on everybody's radar.

I will have more information hopefully in another couple of weeks before CTB makes their final decisions.

Thank you.

I don't believe anybody is here from John tonight.

Ms. Monteith?

Yes, I don't have any updates.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sure, I have a couple updates and some things for just general situational awareness related to transit across the Commonwealth.

First being is kind of a canned reminder that the application portal is open for the 5303 funding applications that will be closing at midnight on May 14.

If there is not an approved

final UPWP at the time.

You can submit the draft copy that's gone out for public comment and then just notice us when the final is approved and we'll update our system.

On the rail side, there's been a lot going on when it comes to rail in the Commonwealth.

The transforming rail in Virginia on February 18th, CTB approved the authorization for the DRPT director

to execute the final legal agreements for the CFX and Amtrak and VRE alignments.

This is on the north-south corridor, passing north of Richmond up to the Washington DC area.

The Virginia Passenger Rail Authority, DRPT, is continuing to work to stand up the VPRA, which was created last session by the General Assembly.

This month's VPRA meeting actually just occurred on the 22nd.

If folks are interested, you can go to our website and see a recording of the VPRA meetings and also view the minutes.

Another point of interest for MPOs, House Joint Resolution 542, the Transit Modernization and Equity Study is a study that the General Assembly is

directed DRPT to undertake over the next year or so.

This is going to be focusing on equitable delivery of transportation services, modernization of transit in the Commonwealth.

It includes but is not limited to transit accessibility, adequacy of transit infrastructure, transit electrification, implementation of emerging technologies, transit safety, and transit system engagement.

There'll be particular emphasis on transit service engagement and opportunities for underserved and underrepresented communities to engage in the process.

Additionally, there were some budget amendments that came out of this General Assembly that impacted transit.

One was relaxing the transit strategic plan requirements.

This is just giving some of our agencies additional time due to COVID to get those plans in place.

Also some flexibility around our new pilot program for fare-free transit and equity and modernization monies for that study.

I'll just check again.

I don't think we have our FDA representative, Mr. Long here.

I know Mr. Fussell is technically our CTAC representative, but Mr. Gardner, I know you're here.

So for Wood, I lost track when you were describing the rail lines which are going to be purchased, and I may be wrong, but the CSX and the Norfolk Southern lines which go through Albemarle, I thought were included originally.

Are they no longer included?

Because I didn't hear you mention them.

I don't know the status of those.

All I have is what was on my briefing book.

Okay because it would be really great to be able to work with the state rather than CSX to get some improvements we were trying to do in 2010 and never got our Colorado rail car because of the insurance that they were requiring so we will see if we can get to that.

That was I think the

Oh, and to Garland, just to ask you please, as soon as you know who's going to be the target for our outreach on this federal funding, please share that right away because both the board resolution and individuals we can pile on to contact people.

Yes, ma'am.

I thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

And I've already had this conversation with Trevor and Supervalor McKeel.

So yes, that's on our radar.

Any items to add to the agenda?

None.

All right, move on to the second matters from the public.

If there's anyone from the public who would like to speak, you can hit the raise hand icon in the Zoom webinar or hit star nine if you're on your phone and speak for up to three minutes.

Thank you, everybody.

This was great.