MPO Policy Board Meeting   6/23/2021

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 in that it is impracticable 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 postings and agenda.

The meeting minutes will reflect the nature of the emergency that the meeting was held by electronic communication means and the type of electronic communication means by which the meeting was held and a recording of the meeting will be posted on our website within 10 days of the meeting.

Would you like me to go ahead and do the roll call, Mr. Payne?

Supervisor Malek with Albemarle.

Ms. Davis with Jaunt.

Ms. Monteith with UVA.

I just saw her join.

Ms. Monteith, can you confirm that you're present?

Come back.

Mr. Williams with CAT.

Mr. Hudson with DRPT.

I know several of these folks are here.

It looks like Wood is just starting to connect and Garland is just in out of the waiting room.

Thank you, Julia.

Mr. Williams of CAT, can you are you connected now?

Thank you.

Mr. Hudson with DRPT.

He's connecting.

Mr. Durian with FHWA, Mr. Long with FTA, I do not see Mr. Fussell with CTAC, and then I'm here with TJPDC.

All right, on to matters from the public.

I'm sorry to interrupt you guys.

It looks like Mr. Condor was moving.

There are a few things I want to say about the SmartScale Round 5 agenda item.

Among the potential projects under consideration are a roundabout at the intersection of Hydraulic Road and District Avenue and the extension of Hillsdale Drive to US 250.

Those two projects are intended to augment the Round 4 SmartScale proposal to

among other things, eliminate left turns from hydraulic road onto US 29.

The combined cost of all three of those projects is more than $50 million, but unfortunately the combination of those three projects does almost nothing to reduce traffic congestion on US 29 at both hydraulic and Angus roads.

Consequently, I suggested an alternative that for the same $50 million completely solves the traffic congestion problem

reducing the traffic volume at the intersections of US 29 with hydraulic and Angus roads from 56,000 vehicles per day to 20,000 vehicles per day on US 29.

Implementing what I proposed requires adding approximately $25 million to the $25 million of that round four smart scale proposal for the intersection of US 29 and hydraulic would cost approximately $18 million of which was carried forward from a previous cycle.

If carrying funds forward from one smart scale round to the next was done once, it can be done again, despite some assertions to the contrary.

I have to believe that the members of the Commonwealth Transportation Board are reasonably intelligent, and if given a choice between spending a total of $50 million on a combination of projects that does little to resolve the traffic congestion on US 29, and spending the same $50 million on a project that completely resolves the problem,

they will choose the latter.

I ask you to please keep that in mind as you consider the alternative I propose.

Thank you.

Is there anybody else from the public who would like to speak?

Yes, the first point that we just wanted to make sure that we communicate to everyone is that since the state, the governor's state of emergency order expires at the end of June, the PDC and any of the programs that it administers will be returning to in-person meetings starting in July, which means that your next meeting on, what's the date there, July 28th,

We will need to have a quorum present in person.

At that meeting, we will talk about adopting a remote participation policy, but even if that remote participation policy is adopted, we will still need to have a quorum physically present.

And on to the review acceptance of the agenda.

Does anyone have any amendments or changes they would like to propose to the agenda?

I'll second it.

Oh, okay.

All those in favor?

Aye.

All those opposed?

Hearing none, the agenda is approved.

Onto the approval of March 24th, 2021 meeting minutes.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

All those opposed?

Motion passes.

On to May 26, 2020 meeting minutes.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

All those opposed?

The motion passes.

I'm just going to pull up a slide for you.

And just so everyone is aware, there was a small revision to the resolution that Mr. Jensic will review with you.

Hello, everybody.

I'm Chris Genzik, City of Charlottesville's Parks and Trails Planner, formerly with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District.

This resolution is something we do almost every year.

Every other year, it's our annual VDOT Transportation Alternatives Program grant submittal.

We, as you see in the agenda write up, we got a TAP grant two years ago.

for just the bridge at point B on this map.

After doing some discussions with VDOT and thinking it through, we came up with a plan where A, you can't just build a bridge that isn't connected by a full multi-use path.

There's paths in that area, but they are recreational dirt surface paths.

So in order to construct the entire project to get all the funding in at once, hire one contractor and just get it all done, we've decided to apply for a second round of funding

The design work's already underway.

We're doing that with local money.

We'll have a much tighter cost estimate by the time the final application goes in.

This year VDOT's doing a pre-application and then a final application with a lot more upfront planning, cost estimating, and scheduling going up front.

Some of these projects have taken longer and cost more than we expected when we used to get these grants.

So this year we're gonna add $650,000 is what we want to add to the current 375.

and I believe the correction in the resolution is that we're gonna put $135,000 in cash match and we're actually working with Luck Stone.

Luck Stone might be donating a certain percent of gravel and stone dust into this.

So I believe in terms of the letter of intent and the resolution, that dollar amount might even change by October 1st when we apply.

I'm not sure technically if BDOT's gonna

Look at the resolution dollar amount and make a stick to it.

I imagine if we can get more match before we apply in October for the final, that would be fine with them.

But yes, if we want to update that, is that accurate, Sandy?

No, we just took out, we just took out the reference to the percentage.

We left, we left the amount as 125,000 and the resolution.

I think that'll be fine for these purposes.

Again, this is the first year we've done this preliminary application followed by a final app.

When the engineer gives us a cost estimate before we do it in October, if we're real lucky, we'll find out it costs less, but we're probably gonna hit it right about on the head.

So the request would be to approve the resolution like we usually do for these TAP grants at the MPA level.

And that's all I have.

Questions or comments from the board?

All right.

Is there a, do we want to do the resolutions one by one or all together at the end?

I guess one by one is probably easier.

I will second the motion.

I'd be happy to.

Ms. Malek?

Yes.

All right.

Hey there.

My name is Amanda Ponce.

I'm the bicycle and pedestrian coordinator with the city.

And this grant application resolution to support our grant application would support Safe Routes to School transportation alternatives or non-infrastructure programming for the Safe Routes to School program.

So this program had previously been funded the last five years through VDOT's non-infrastructure grant.

And so they're changing the format of

that grant and we are now required to apply for transportation alternatives.

The funding will be, we're still, like Chris, kind of working out the exact amount.

It will be up to $200,000.

Because the application really is geared more towards infrastructure projects, we're still working out certain percentages of

Grant administration and things like that.

So that will be refined before our October deadline and probably even likely before the pre-app on July 1st.

So this grant would fund a full-time salary for a Safe Routes to School coordinator.

Again, this has been funded the last five years.

And that coordinator helps to implement programs in the city schools, things like bike and walk to school day events, helmet giveaways, neighborhood bike repair.

Counting, student travel, you know, mode to school, working with the city school division to better understand how kids are getting to school.

And then also building a website and social media presence.

They will also be helping to support the crossing guards next year since it has moved from the police department to the city school division.

And that's what we are hoping you will support today.

No questions or comments?

All right.

Second.

Or is there a second?

I'll second.

All right.

Ms. Mallek?

Yes, I lost total audio.

You're voting yes, right?

Yes.

Ms. Londrey?

Yes.

There you go.

Thank you, Sandy.

Hi, everyone.

I'm a transportation planner here at the TJPDC.

And like Sandy said, we're asking you to vote on a resolution to support a planning grant application for the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity or RAISE grant program.

So first, a little background on RAISE.

It used to be BUILD and before that TIGER.

The purpose of the fund is to make capital investments in surface transportation that will have a significant local or regional impact.

You can apply for funding to actually construct capital projects or, as in our case, you can apply for a planning grant to apply for funds to plan for a future RAISE eligible project.

A little more background, it's a reimbursement style grant and there's no match needed for rural areas.

And according to this grant, the Charlottesville area counts as a rural area.

So we would not need any match for this project.

So in fiscal year 20, the TJPDC requested just over $700,000 in planning funds to create a Charlottesville regional multimodal transportation station master plan.

to meet the capacity, accessibility and safety demands of Charlottesville Union Station and improve the surrounding area.

Sandy, can you go to the next slide?

Thanks.

This is a map of the 3.3 acre site.

The Amtrak station has the little Amtrak logo over it.

And there was a restaurant next to it.

So, and yeah, you can see going to the left of the screen is heading west and heading on the other side of the screen is heading towards downtown.

So we talked about capacity, accessibility, and safety.

This is a small station, but it serves a lot of riders.

The size of the station doesn't currently meet the needs of our number of boardings and alightings, and with continued investment by the state into

rail and passenger rail, it will continue to not meet those needs.

There are some accessibility concerns where people using wheelchairs need to access the station from one of the platforms and some safety concerns, things like pooling water and lighting.

concerns there.

So the resolution states that we would be reapplying for this project, the multimodal station master plan, and we would not exceed $800,000 in that request.

Thank you.

So great question.

So that site, the entire 3.3 acre site is currently privately owned.

We have been in conversation with DRPT about still moving forward with the application and it is possible to apply even though the site is currently privately held.

Any other questions or comments?

Is there a second?

Second.

Supervisor Malek?

Yes.

The resolution passes.

Yeah, that's me.

I had it up.

and I went to move it and it disappeared.

So let me just see if I can find it again.

Well, there's a memo in your packet and we redid the public participation plan last year.

And when we did it, there was a lot of comments and requests for substantial changes to the public participation plan.

So we went and looked at it again this year and rewrote it to accommodate those comments that we received in the first revision.

The plan is a little bit of background about the plan.

The plan is required.

It's a federal requirement and it's called a public participation plan.

However, we changed the name to the MPO engagement plan because basically what it does is lists how the MPO plans on engaging the public

in their projects.

In the last revision, we got a lot of comments about transit and services to the public.

However, that's not what this plan is about.

The plan is about how the MPO engages the public with our planning and our projects.

So we rewrote the plan.

We added a bunch of goals and objectives for including the public.

We tried to keep it broad to enable the staff to be flexible and innovative with our outreach with the public and still meet the federal requirements.

So this went before CTAC, the Citizen Engagement Committee for the MPO, and they went through it, had some revisions.

I made those revisions and it's on the website for public comment right now.

It has a 60-day public comment period.

It's been up for quite a while, at least a month or two, and I'm submitting it to you all and the other MPO committees this month for review.

And then next month I will submit it.

We will have a public hearing and ask you to approve it, the MPO Policy Board.

Great.

So I probably missed this in the draft.

But is there a process that's described that will prevent what happened with the Route 20

trail issue where a non-governmental group just sort of took off with something and ran with it.

So the plan is mostly prescribing actions that we will take to include the public.

I think that that example was a special exception that I hope will not happen again.

And we do have specific directions on how the public will be included in

our most essential planning documents.

We also talk about the committees and how people can be involved in all of the committees.

The committee that put that forward is not an MPO committee.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Sandy.

Right, so just to back up a step, the biggest reason that we adopt this engagement plan is to show how we are going to meet the minimum requirements and then we are all committed to exceeding those.

So every specific

Case can't necessarily have its own process that we think of ahead of time.

I think, you know, I want to speak for the entire staff when I really hear what you're saying and we're really committed to making sure that we make sure our processes are transparent.

I think that's communicated broadly in the plan.

I don't think there's any specific section that discusses that specific case, but

Thank you.

All right.

Seeing none.

I'm going to go ahead and share my screen again.

We are not going to be asking you to do anything this month, but what we are going to do this month is to go through all of the projects that we now have a complete list of the projects that we will be presenting for you to consider as far as what you would like the MPO to pursue for their SmartScale submissions in round five.

So we've been talking about this process since we had to

to amend our meeting schedule this year.

We're not quite at May, but nothing else is going to be changed as a result of that.

So what we're going to do today is just talk about the projects that have been developed.

You've already seen most of these just in a little bit more detail.

And then there are staff here, Tony Edwards from the City of Charlottesville, as well as Kevin McDermott from Albemarle County.

Chuck Proctor is with us today.

as well as Jessica Hirsch-Ballerin who worked on one of these projects.

So we want to go through the projects and answer any questions that you have or if there's more information that you need.

We want to go ahead and know that upfront so that when we get to the meeting in July, you all are prepared to give us some direction on which projects you would like us to be preparing.

in the process that we have been discussing.

So just to keep in mind that we are going to be able to submit, as far as we know, on behalf of the MPO4 projects, we have committed to doing a more robust and intensive engagement with

So we're going to be asking you what your priorities are in July and then which of those priorities you would you think you would like to see that greater engagement with.

So just as a reminder, this is the list of projects that have been developed with the staff input.

So most of these you have seen before.

The District Avenue roundabout, Hillsdale Avenue extension, those both came from the hydraulic small area plan.

And then the Ravana bike and river crossing you all are aware of.

And Avon Street and Fifth Street were both recently completed projects as well as

the Avon Street corridor being identified as a priority in the Charlottesville master bike and pedestrian plan.

CTAC also had a discussion and as Mr. Condor referenced in his comments earlier in the meeting, they moved forward another project that they would like the policy board to consider, which is what I'm calling on this slide as the US 29-250 flyover.

So I'll explain that one in more detail.

One thing I do want to mention is that we had talked a little bit with the technical staff that one thing you all may want to consider is that you don't necessarily have to pick four different projects from this list.

It could be that maybe you want to pick one or two like the Hillsdale Avenue Extension or the District Avenue Roundabout.

You know, for example, the bike and pedestrian bridge, you might want to

choose one or two of those projects or the flyover.

And then it's possible that you might want to say, let's focus on the Avon Street corridor or the Fifth Street corridor and choose multiple projects from that so that we can focus on creating a stronger set of improvements that would benefit one of those two corridors, for example.

So that's just something else that I want you all to be keeping in mind as we discuss what those project options might be moving forward.

I'm going to come to the US 29-250 flyover last so we'll go through the other projects which you all already probably have some familiarity with and just answer any of those questions first and then we can talk about the flyover at the end.

The first project, as you all may recall, was one of the improvements that was suggested in the hydraulic small area plan, which was the District Avenue roundabout.

This is one of the last projects that is on the priority list for the long-range transportation plan, but it was not submitted as part of the package for the 29 solutions that was awarded in round four.

We have learned that there has been a development that's approved that would impact the design of this roundabout.

So if this is one that you all would like us to move forward with, we may need to go back and talk to Albemarle County and VDOT and just look at the configuration there and make sure that the design accounts for any of the changes that need to be made to accommodate that development.

This is Kevin McDermott from Albemarle County.

I don't have anything to add except just pointing out that the figure that we see there was a very conceptual design of this done many years ago.

Yeah, and this is Chuck Proctor from VDOT.

We also, as this design,

was part of the original grade separation of hydraulic and 29.

And since we're not grade separating that intersection, we would definitely look at reconfiguring this roundabout and shifting it around.

Part of the reason it's where it's located was the distance between the merge lanes between the ramps coming up from the grade separation.

So that would all have to be re-looked at.

It still would be, we'd still try to look at it as a roundabout.

Supervisor Malek had her hand up.

Yes, thank you.

As far as the development you mentioned, is there still sufficient right-of-way that should be reserved?

Kevin, I guess this is for you because I'm drawing a blank on what that is.

Yeah, thank you, Supervisor Mallek.

The development that's going on in that parking lot in Stonefield there, they were made aware of this potential project, but it wasn't funded at the time and hadn't been designed, so we didn't know the exact

Extents of it, but we made them aware of it.

And I believe that they did leave some area there at the corner, at the northwest corner of the intersection that could be utilized for some of this roundabout.

As you see in this concept right here, I think that roundabout shown is a little bit larger than

the area that we currently have.

If there are no other questions, I'll go ahead and move to the next project.

which is the Hillsdale Avenue extension.

Again, this was also, this is also one of the last projects that's on the constrained list in the long range transportation plan, which is the list of the high priority projects.

And this was also part of the hydraulic 29 small area plan.

This project is an extension of Hillsdale Avenue down to connect to 250 and then it would reconfigure the

The entrance and exit ramps off of 250 and onto 29 and that traffic would be redirected into this new connection through this network of roads.

It did score pretty well in round four of SmartScale.

It was number 21 out of 20 projects, so it was the first project that wasn't awarded, but it is an expensive project, and I know that that presents some concerns on how competitive it might be during a new round of SmartScale.

But this is also a project that is already pretty much, the application would pretty much be ready to go once we confirm the cost estimates based on the adjustment and the time span.

Sandy, I appreciate this, Tony.

Yes.

So when this was discussed two years ago, I guess, because we didn't discuss it last year, there was, I guess, uncertainty about the city's willingness to condemn the property needed here.

And so I guess before we spend a lot of anxiety and effort on this, is there a commitment on the part of the city to make it happen?

Because I know that CTB does not like things that don't get done.

and we have to be very concerned about things that end up getting caught up in process.

Just speaking for myself, I don't know the issue has come before council in the last year and a half.

Likewise, I would echo that.

That's correct.

But it's a great question and one that I frankly would have thought.

I remember we looked at this at some point in the last 12 months.

and I don't remember what the connection was, but I remember looking at it.

I'm wondering whether we had, I mean, I frankly assumed that the issue had previously been vetted sufficiently that it wasn't a concern to anybody.

Well, I don't disagree with that.

You indicated that you thought that there had been some reservations expressed.

I had not heard that.

So I don't know whether this is the time or whether it would be better to talk about it later on after you talk about the flyover and so on.

But I would, I would be curious to address the, for the staff to address the comments as Mr. Condor earlier on about the efficacy of these proposals and is there some alternative and are we truly going to be spending $50 million to not solve a problem?

And I hope that that discussion will be had.

I mean, we did an in-depth analysis.

It's not that the solutions won't solve the problem.

This will fix the situation now and carry it forward into the future for the design year.

The grade separation that Mr. Condor is presenting, that was one of the solutions that was a similar solution was reviewed as part of the solutions 29.

I mean, as part of the small area plan that we looked at, it wasn't something that was moved forward.

So, but we can go through that part of it and see, but the projects that we submitted, we have to show that they have a benefit, otherwise we can't get them funded.

Well, I just speaking again, speaking for myself, I don't know, Mr. Condor, I've never spoken to him.

I've never heard his name.

I don't know what he's talking about.

He clearly knows something about about some history here that the rest of you all know some history behind.

And at some point, whether it's now or

Understood.

We'll see how far, why don't we go through the rest of these and then we'll get to Mr. Condor's project and we can come back and have more of a discussion.

Thank you.

Sure.

Understood.

Are there any other comments before we move on?

Okay.

All right.

We will leave the hydraulic area then and move on to the Ravenna River.

I think you probably do have some awareness of this, but this is one of the projects that we worked with VDOT on last year to conduct a feasibility study to identify some potential solutions to where a bike or pedestrian crossing could be located across the Ravenna River.

So what came out of that process is that there were two potential crossings that the consultants had moved forward as feeling like there was a good feasibility to being able to complete those.

And those are in these red lines right here.

were the ones that the consultants had developed that mostly the team of technical planning staff that was involved with this process had provided some input on.

This blue line right here is another alternative configuration that Mr. Condor had proposed as well.

So what I would say for this one is that if this project is selected by the policy board as being one of the priority projects that you want to pursue,

Part of that process is going to be to look at the options that have been developed at this point to determine if there are additional configurations that also need to be considered, such as the one that Mr. Condor had suggested, but otherwise just determining what makes the most sense as far as the location and the design of a bridge crossing in this general area.

So again, I don't know if Chuck or Jessica, if you would like to add anything, feel free to do that at this point.

Yeah, at this point, I don't have any additional comments.

We just need to decide what, if we're going to move forward, we'll need to decide which option we want to move forward with at some point in time, but we could go through the public

No, that had not been.

It was basically looking at the there's only a couple locations you can cross at this point because of where the tie down points are and without having property impacts.

And we were trying to minimize those as much as possible.

And these the two red options were the ones that rose to the top as the

as what our preferred solutions would be.

The blue line does not impact a structure, but it does impact a residential lot that would have to be purchased.

And it's just a matter of where the connection points are.

The two red lines connect to, one connects at the intersection right there at River

at Main Street and Riverside Parkway and the other ones at Marcus Street and the back way into the Orwood Mills.

So they have connection points that are connect to existing public facilities that could be easily tied to.

Whereas the Riverside Avenue is a residential street and you'd be coming into the middle of the residential street.

So those are some things that we have to consider

I think Ann's got her hand raised.

Well, was my mic off?

Well, in any case, go ahead.

Under normal considerations, when you're looking at those three options, do you consider also available parking and that kind of thing that exists now or has space to be added when you're looking at those evaluations?

Because we have to be able to get people to the bridge and get across rather than just having a bridge that nobody can really get to easily.

Sandy, I can jump in.

This is Jessica.

There was for the two red lines shown, the consultants did put together this idea of having some sort of trailhead on the east side of the project for both of those projects.

And yeah, and there was also the consideration that this would be a commute option so that it wouldn't just be people driving to the bridge to access the bridge.

I suspect at the time that the design was arrived at,

Don't think that property ownership has changed at this time.

The property has not changed at this time with State Farm.

The county does own a portion of property down adjacent to the State Farm parcels.

And so I think the previous study was utilizing a county property to access the bridge from up there on the Peter Jefferson Parkway.

And like Jessica pointed out, there was some

Parking that was identified up there.

Of course we have parking at Woolen Mills that's identified for the trail.

And the city of course has Riverview Park with parking available, although it seems like never enough in the summertime.

Any other questions?

Alright, so the next project we looked at or we considered was one that's kind of a hybrid of two different sets of recommendations that were developed.

One of these, so we're looking at the Avon Street and Avon Street extended multimodal improvements.

Albemarle County had recently completed a corridor study basically from the boundary of Charlottesville down to 29 or down to I'm sorry Route 20 with that being the project boundary and has some recommendations for

improvements that were identified as part of that.

And then specifically bicycle and pedestrian improvements were identified as being priorities in the Charlottesville Bike and Pedestrian Master Plan.

So what we would do is if the policy board, again, identifies this as one of the projects, is we would be looking at this entire corridor to put together a package of recommendations for

improvements focused on improving multimodal movement along this corridor, looking at the joint recommendations that have been developed both by Charlottesville and by Albemarle.

I'll quickly just point out that the county is also considering a grant this year for under the revenue sharing program to do some of those recommendations from the Avon Street Study, but they're all located down at the

Southern end of this corridor that you show basically from Mill Creek Drive to just shy of the interstate there.

And we are looking to move forward with that.

No, not that much, but just add that, you know, this corridor is something the city's been looking at for improvements for some time.

Belmont Bridge currently under YA now and working our way south is part of the city's approach to improvements along this corridor.

Sandy, I would just say that the route to there are going to be some improvements in transit based on the adoption of the budget.

So route two is actually going to be split so there will be additional connections to Fifth Street Station and also to PVCC which will also connect the high school by splitting the other two, the route two and making it bi-directional to 2A and 2B.

No, I wasn't.

I know that you're focused on the bike impact, but I also wanted to make sure you understand that there was also transit improvements that were happening along that corridor.

So it strengthens the argument for the multimodal components.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

All right, and then the last of the projects that staff had developed was similarly looking at the 5th Street corridor and looking at multimodal improvements, which Garland, I believe there also have been some recommendations to look at transit along this corridor as well, or to incorporate transit

project considerations.

So this is also looking at the section of the 5th Street corridor from Harris Road down to a little bit south of Hickory Street.

And again, there have been a series of recommendations that have come out of a recently completed VDOT corridor study for this corridor.

And so similarly to Avron Street, what we would be doing is going through a public process to start with what those recommendations are and develop a series of actual project applications that we would submit on behalf of the MPO that would look at both intersection improvements as well as improving multimodal access and corridor improvements to improve movement through along that corridor.

So again,

The only thing I would add is that we did get the Owensburg Road intersection

funded this round.

So that portion will be completed in the future when that project is developed and moves forward.

I know Kevin has stated previously that there's some development that's proper improvements for some of the multimodal trail on this corridor.

So we can probably be a location we can build off some of that moving forward.

with one of those projects.

I was just wondering if there is any relationship between what we see on this map here and what we've been talking about in the city about a possible roundabout on Fifth Street.

And I think it's at Bailey, which is probably right at the very top of that

of that area on the map and other improvements along Fifth Street to deal with increasing concerns about safety.

Yeah, it's part of a study that the city had done previously along that northern link of Fifth Street extended.

There were several concepts proposed.

I think there were some R cuts proposed along that section of Fifth Street.

I don't remember where we stand.

I know at council we had expressed a concern.

I think it was through as a part of the capital improvement program, which of course still leaves us a good ways away from a decision, but a willingness to look at the roundabout at Bailey.

And I guess I'm just wondering from a policy or a process standpoint, whether there is any advantage or any disadvantage

Well, we're moving with another section of 5th Street between Cherry and Main Street currently.

That's in one of the SmartScale applications that the city has applied for.

So that's the next section and that ties into multiple state and federal funded projects in that area.

Any other questions or comments?

All right, so now we'll get to the new suggestion, which is this 29-250 flyover that Mr. Condor had prepared.

And Mr. Condor, I hope you will forgive me that I cut your title information off just to

be able to crop it to fit the slide.

So this is a project that Mr. Condor has suggested, which is a grade separated interchange that would move traffic between the US 250 bypass and US 29.

So it's a little bit hard to see.

I know the big picture of it when we were looking at the entirety of all the sheets at one time.

But this is the 250 and 29 interchange right here.

So what Mr. Condor has proposed is that there would be an exit and entrance ramp between 250 and 29 that starts down here.

And then this would be grade separated.

So all of these blue lines right here would be supports to support a grade separated structure.

And basically all of this traffic would be

would be navigating above the current 29 and 250 interchange to avoid having to go through all of the at-grade traffic configurations.

So traffic would move from this west of, from 250 west of the interchange with 29, and depending on which direction it would go, it would either be going north or south, and then

the ramp would reintroduce the traffic onto 29 a little bit, just a little bit south of Seminole Court.

I included in the packet a summary of the feedback that CTAC had provided and Chuck could be able to provide some discussion about the merits of this request.

I think the biggest concern that we have as staff though, is that

One of the reasons our hydraulic project in round four was so successful was because we were able to leverage the $18 million that had been designated for the 29 solutions to decrease the amount of the

Cost that we were actually asking for through the smart scale process.

And if we move forward, there is some concern that this project would not be eligible unless we basically rescinded the award that we were given for the round four project.

And then if that occurs, then we would lose that $18 million contribution.

And this last round was the last time that projects would be eligible.

So that's one of the biggest concerns that we have from staff.

But we're happy to have a conversation about the merits of this versus the other 29 projects if you all have additional questions.

Not really.

Like I said, we have looked at a similar concept to this before as part of the original small area plan.

and it wasn't something that was got support.

It's also been a concept that's been presented several times over multiple studies over the past 20 years.

So this is something that's been identified as a possible solution that hasn't gotten support from the localities.

So

We just need to know if you guys would like to support something like this.

The other thing to get to Sandy's other point is in 2018, there was some legislation passed that changed how we fund projects regarding carryover resources from other projects.

And at that point, we lost a lot of

uh resources for projects that we're languishing on and as part of that if we have any funding that we've got an exception for this last round to carry over from the previous round so but they won't carry it over another round so we will lose the money if we try to take it away um that's pretty much all i have like i said this is

Something that we've looked at before and it does have its merits.

It's maybe cost prohibitive depending on what the ultimate cost would be.

I know Mr. Condor has estimated it at $50 million, but we'd have to look at it from if we wanted to move forward to get a more realistic cost estimate.

So do I understand that this proposal would be that from a point around seminal court

Where the only access would be at either end, nothing in the middle.

Correct.

Okay.

Is there any sort of rule of thumb that we might use to have a guesstimate as to how much this would cost?

I haven't had my, the L&D section look at it.

But Mr. Condor has estimated at about $50 million.

We'll have to look at it and see if we want to move forward with it.

Generally, that's more expensive than any project we've gotten funded in this district.

So

It's about a 50-50 split, roughly.

Somewhere around that figure, somewhere between 20, it's like 53 or 54,000 on that portion of 29.

I gotcha.

Are there any other questions or comments?

Not at this point.

All right, that concludes the review of the SmartScale project.

So again, if there's any other additional questions you need answers to, or Mr. Snook, I'll reach out to you to see if you'd like to schedule a time to go through any of the background information, if anybody else would like to

meet to discuss any of the technical project details, we'd be happy to do that as well.

Okay, thank you.

I'm sorry for the confusion.

So while I was away, did you all discuss any more, or is there a work session to discuss this new project?

Or do we need to meet individually to find out more about this new flyover project?

We didn't go in detail.

Maybe Ms. Mallek, if you want to look at the recording first and then let us know if you have additional questions.

If there's broad interest in having a work session to specifically look at this from multiple policy board members, we'd be happy to set that up.

I mean, I have a broad interest, again, relatively new to the details of all of the different choices that you all have considered over the years.

But I can't help but wonder whether the solutions that folks are talking about are truly going to solve a problem.

And the only thing worse

than having the problem that we've got right now is to spend a whole bunch of money and not solve the problem.

I mean, yeah, I mean, there was a lot, I mean, the small area plan, I mean, there was tremendous amount of public input, tremendous amount of study, tremendous amount of community input and time.

There's, of course, always going to be new ideas that we could try to flesh over, draw in on things.

But I mean, I can't even imagine the amount of hours.

I mean, that project rivaled what the Rio 29 grade separated interchange was with in terms of the input and the community engagement, all the different pieces.

When I look at these different elements, like the Hillsdale Extension and the District Avenue, we're all looking at it in pieces.

When that whole small area planned, they were all working together as parts to solve the problem.

And now we keep looking at these individual pieces because the big project didn't get funded at all.

So anytime you talk about any one of these individuals, you definitely have to be thinking about, well, what is approved?

What did get funded?

How does those work with now this proposed solution?

And to just try to section these off and consider them as one projects can be problematic.

So, I mean, I certainly would recommend going back and getting the full history of that whole effort that was done to arrive at the solutions that got put forward.

And it was just unfortunate it didn't get funded.

because I think that will be able to inform the decisions we can make moving forward about, okay, these pieces now that we are doing, how are they worked together to solve the bigger issue?

And I don't know if Chuck could add any more to that, but I mean, I just get weary anytime I look at one of these elements and know how many elements are missing from the scope in that particular area of all the other pieces or fixes that were proposed.

And we've got this bridge that's going to be going over from Stonefield to Seminole Square.

You've got the pieces that did get funded.

There were other solutions down by the Best Buy.

I'm forgetting the name of that street right off the top of my head.

And I'll just say, if there are things I should be reading, send me the link.

I'll read whatever you tell me to read as a background.

Yeah, I think all of the information from the study is still available on the Solutions 29 website.

For that, we looked at the study.

I know the study's up there because I was looking at it.

today, earlier today.

Please send it to everyone, Chuck.

Yes.

Um, you know, Mr.

Chair, if I could make one final comment, I don't want to sound like I'm being dismissive or, um,

you know, not appreciating the creativity, especially from Mr. Condor's project.

That's not the instance here, but there is a reason why some projects in this area have taken 40 years to get it done.

I mean, at some point we have to look at, okay, we made an attempt.

We did it the right way.

We put it forward.

It didn't get funded.

And we need to start putting in other elements that are going to get fixed.

Otherwise we're just going to be waiting forever and nothing will happen.

So I mean, I always appreciate that creativity and the new ideas.

But part of the funding piece that has been funded is that type of approach.

We went, we didn't get the project done.

What can we get done?

This is it.

And if we're going to start talking about whether it solves the problem or not, then we need to have more than what we saw today in front of us so that we can consider all the pieces and what all of them are going to work together with what we have right now.

And let me just say, Ms. Gallaway,

One of my great frustrations with the Charlottesville political scene is that nothing ever seems to be finally decided.

Everybody's always got a new version that we ought to be looking and considering, and the Belmont Bridge is a perfect example of that.

So I understand the sentiment.

I appreciate that.

I want Lee to know that I appreciate the creativity and the thought.

Lee puts a lot of work and effort and cares quite a bit and does that to other projects around the county that we've been doing and I don't want to in any way stifle that kind of input.

But in certain instances we have to go okay well what do we have, where have we been, what are all the other moving components and move forward.

Is there any other questions or comments?

Yeah, this round, after the round four smart scale, the folks down in central office in OIP and that

coordinate the SmartScale portal and the SmartScale process and also the state transportation plan, V-Trans.

They developed a process called the pipeline process to actually facilitate studying and coming up with recommendations for where their most critical needs are out of the V-Trans process.

and study.

So what we did was we looked at all the Tier 1 locations from the V-Trans needs midterm needs list and identified the locations where we didn't really have the current studies on.

And then those were compiled into a list.

And we worked with our CTB member to identify which one of these projects they wanted to us to pursue.

We also coordinated with the folks from the localities, Albemarle County.

I know I reached out to Kevin and Sandy on the projects in this region.

We had five locations where we looked at where we have studies that were identified as part of this process.

Two of them are in the MPO area.

One of them is Pantops 250 in the Pantops area from the current funded project, which ends at Hanson's Road.

and goes from there east to the interchange.

And that would complete that area that we've been working on over the past several rounds of SmartScale.

The other location was in Shadwell at the 250 and 22 intersection.

And we also looked at the 257-29 intersection, which is just adjacent to it.

Those were two tier one locations that we

Didn't have recent studies on and that we felt we needed to study and get some recommendations for those.

So those are the ones we're looking at studying in the area over the next 10 months.

And if we hopefully will come up with some possible other applications that either the MPO, the county, or the TJPDC could possibly submit for smart scale for next round.

And that's pretty much all I have.

All right.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

I'm going to share my screen with you.

And this year in our work plan, we had an electric vehicle charging station study.

It was to look at how the region can support the use of electric vehicles.

Let's see.

Where is my slide notch?

There we go.

OK.

So the county, university, and city have all

made a commitment to reduce carbon emissions.

It's a priority for the area.

And we looked at the benefits of electric vehicle use to reduce carbon emissions in our region.

Transportation in our region is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the MPO area.

And you can see here from the Albemarle County Climate Action Plan for phase one that they've identified that and measured it.

and EVs produce almost 70% less emissions than gas powered vehicles.

So it's a good reason to support and try to adopt the use of them in our area.

These are the findings of the report, kind of the highlights, and I will be sending a draft of the report to you, to the MPO committee members and the partners that helped me work on this ahead of time.

in the next few days so that you can take a look at it before it's published.

So EV registrations have grown in the area.

We expect to have many more EVs used over the next couple of years.

And we already do have some infrastructure supporting EVs in our area.

Albemarle has 10 stations.

Charlottesville, Albemarle has seven stations.

Charlottesville has 10.

Nelson, Flugan and Louisa all have one and Green doesn't have any yet, but I'm sure they will soon.

So one of the things that I found really interesting with this study is that the US EPA reported that 80% of privately owned EV charging is completed at home.

And so that's most of the residential use, which I think is what we've been looking at

mostly for this report to encourage the use because counties can decide to purchase EVs, but we also want to encourage private use of EVs as well.

So understanding that 80% of the charging is done at home, I looked at the number of housing units that would support the installation of a charging station.

And what I did was I looked at the

the structure of the house.

So I took single family units and made an assumption that they would have a parking space that was owned by the homeowner or the person living in the house and like a private parking space.

And it was close enough that it could get electricity out to the parking space.

So not all single family houses do that but I just made an assumption.

And then I looked at the number of attached housing

units and made a comparison.

So you can see in the chart here, quite a few of the units in our area are not suitable to install EV charging stations as they are.

So there's an estimated 40,000 how-to units in the region with potential barriers to installing these home charging stations.

And I broke it out by the jurisdictions here

and you can see that the city of Charlottesville has the most need for this.

Floviana County has the least, but all of the regions do have housing that would be difficult to charge your electric vehicle at.

So we looked at strategies to encourage personal EV use and another finding that we found is that financial incentives for vehicle purchase and charging structures

are the most successful strategies.

However, because of political concerns, there's not a lot of support for financial incentives for vehicle purchase in Virginia.

But we also found that supporting the installation of charging infrastructure for residents who did not own parking close enough to the EV stations is another option.

and so I have some strategies and there's more outlined in the report.

But we can install charging infrastructure and public parking spaces that residents use to park overnight.

So in England, a lot of the towns are installing public charging stations in the street like on streetlights.

So if you park your car overnight next to a streetlight, you're able to charge it from that streetlight.

Another strategy would be for the localities to provide guidelines for charging stations just to show that they're supporting them and that developers will know what to expect and what they have to kind of what they would have to produce.

And then I think the counties are probably, the localities are probably already looking at this, but to develop local ordinances and policies to encourage new housing developments to include EV charging infrastructure.

and one of the things that I learned was make-ready standards.

It's really difficult to and much more costly to install electricity and a charging station after the building has been built.

So if you're building parking garages, you can have make-ready standards and encourage the developers to add the infrastructure to

accommodate future charging stations.

So they don't have to actually build the stations, but if like in an apartment building that has a parking garage, the lines, the electric lines would be there.

So if people did decide in the future that they would like to install a charging station in their parking spot, they would be able to do that with less cost.

And then also employers is the second most highest place that people charge their electric vehicles.

So also working to encourage employers to install AV charging stations for employees.

And as I said, I'll send the report out in the next few days for everybody to look at.

And it's pretty much done, but if you have a comment, I can also make changes.

Not too many, but a few people have comments.

So you can pretty much charge your vehicle overnight, and you can charge it from a regular DC

charge like an electric cord from your garage.

Like if you have electricity in your garage, you can plug it into the outlet and charge it over.

I'm looking up the, I have the section in here about charging.

There's three different types of charging infrastructures.

And so the most expensive to install and use is the

number three and it would be something that would be used in public spaces like a lot of gas stations or rest areas or shopping centers would have those types of charging stations and that would allow you to charge your car in an hour or two.

And then there's a charging station type two

that would allow you to charge your car in a couple hours and then the type one, maybe I have those reversed, is overnight and you can do that at home or if you're like at work.

I can add, although I am definitely not the expert on this, so my technical knowledge is limited, but a good rule of thumb is it draws about the same wattage as your typical home appliance.

I'm thinking of two things.

One is just the cost of doing it, but two is what the infrastructure that is needed in your house to be able to do it.

As I was going around door to door a couple of years ago, I came across a couple of places where people had constructed a fairly elaborate

Not just a cord, but a conduit down to a charging station that was 50 feet away from their house.

And I was thinking, if that's what everybody's got to do, that's going to be a real problem because not many places can do that.

Yeah, we'll put in a good link that

And I'm not an expert either, but being in the automotive business, basically the cheaper the infrastructure, the longer it takes.

So, you know, the idea is if you bring an electric vehicle home, you can plug it in and you can wait eight hours, cause you're not going to be awake till the next day to take the car in it.

Then there are stations that you can pretty much different types of plugs at the different facility, like at a dealership that might take a couple of hours.

as they're prepping cars to go.

And then there's the charge that if you're on the drive and, oh, I need some electricity, need to get back on the road, you can do it within 20, 30 minutes.

So it really just depends on what you put in.

According to what just got put in the chat and I'm looking at it, an overnight charge would, let's say eight hours

might give you 40 miles of driving.

Yeah, it depends on the vehicle you're working with.

So I'll just say that Lucinda had it right.

Level three is the highest level.

In other words, the fastest.

Level two is the medium.

Level one

is what people typically do at home, and we're talking about 110 in terms of wattage, so it's not 240.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

I thought maybe somebody was speaking over me.

If you could just have an external application of electrical cord, then you could just run that to the street with just typical electrical flow.

Yeah, and I can see that the other two levels, level two and then the DC fast charge, both would require

And it's, Lucinda is also correct.

In many cities now they have, it's great, they have free EV parking stations.

So not only do you get a free parking space on a prime street, but you can charge your electric vehicle with level three at the same time.

So

Well, the stock market gurus tell us that by 2022, the cost curves will have intersected to such a point that all new purchases of vehicles should be electric rather than gas.

So at the time, basically every year, the time of that crossover has moved forward a couple of years.

It's accelerating and the growth is accelerating.

Any other questions or comments?

And I'll just say to that point, Lloyd, it definitely makes me think about how we could wrap this into the city's climate action planning process and

you know, perhaps more formally incorporate some of this into NDS development approval or city planning.

So definitely very interesting, thank you.

Yeah, we do have some other minor updates.

The biggest one is that there are some TIP amendments that Lucinda will go through.

These were not, sorry, not amendments, adjustments.

These does not require public hearing.

They were just minor adjustments.

Okay, so we had quite a few tip adjustments in April and June.

So you have the memos in your packet.

The first adjustment is that the flexible STP funding moved, well, they moved all the 5339 funding to flexible

STP funding.

So, and this is for Cat and John, this is for transit.

So you can see that the tip was adjusted to reflect that and the blocks that were affected was Cat 002, Cat 003, Cat 009,

Cat 0011, Cat 0017, and Cat 0020.

And there was no change in money.

It was just a move from funding source.

The next amendment was for John.

And they were, sorry, adjustment.

They were an adjustment to increase funding

So several of the Jaunt projects, the funding amounts had to be increased slightly to reflect what Jaunt might be applying for in the following years.

So in Jaunt 002, they increased the fiscal year 22 funding by $164,000 for replacement buses.

Block Jaunt 009, they added $75,000 to renew a contract for fleet operations software.

So it's not a change, you're just renewing the contract.

In Block Jaunt JNT 0015, they increased funding by 5,000 to support vehicle replacement.

And Block JNT 0019, they

moved funding from fiscal year 22 to actually just in fiscal year 22, they moved the funding source.

So it used to be 5310 funding and now it's 5311 funding.

So there wasn't any change to the total funding amount or the year for that one.

And the blocks are all in the memo.

So you can see the old and the new names.

And they're also in the document.

On April 29th,

There was an amendment to add additional funds for CAT and Jaunt.

And CAT, it was both for operating funds, so that was in CAT-0001.

They increased the operating funds by a little over $17.5 million.

And for Jaunt, block JNT-0001,

they increased operating funds $540,000.

And I think there's one more.

In June, there were two adjustments made to the tip and this was for the VDOT side for roads.

So in the grouping maintenance block, the preventative maintenance and system preservation

They moved fiscal year 22 and fiscal year 23 and fiscal year 24.

They transferred money from preventative maintenance for bridges to preventative maintenance for system preservation.

And the amount that they transferred was

$1,241,107.

So that just moved money over from one grouping for bridges to the other grouping for roads.

Like it?

Yeah, I think Michelle had to drop off.

She had a conflicting call this afternoon.

You all probably saw the news that John Lynch has now formally moved over

as Northern Virginia District Engineer.

I think he would be comfortable with me saying that wasn't his plan when he accepted the acting assignment a few months back.

And it certainly wasn't the outcome that we as his staff were hoping for.

But he is a great leader.

And I think he'll do good things.

And Nova, it's probably the best decision VDOT can make for the agency as a whole.

So

Sad to say goodbye to him, but we do have Michelle on with us until the district engineer position is filled for the long term.

Hopefully that will happen around the end of the summer, but don't know the timeline for sure.

Unless there's any objection, would everyone be amenable to skipping ahead from the roundtable discussion just to the second matters by the public?

All right, I will open it up for the second matters from the public.

If there's anyone from the public who would like to speak, you can click the raise hand icon in the Zoom webinar.

Yeah, I just wanted to say I would be happy to provide more information on the 29 hydraulic flyover and some of the background behind it.

I realize in three minutes I can't do that, but

The estimate I had was based on actual costs for materials and construction, so it's a pretty good estimate.

I share Councilman Snook's concern that, and the reason I even came up with this, is that it just looked to me like they were spending

for the round four thing was $25 million that would have very little effect.

I actually did an analysis of the traffic at the intersection and determined that it was eliminating the left turns from hydraulic road onto 29 and then using that additional time in the light cycle for the straight through traffic had a pretty small effect.

And then you'd still need to accommodate the traffic that would have turned left now has to go on

hydraulic rotor 29 some other way, which lengthens some other light cycle.

So at the end of the day, it really doesn't do very much at all.

And that was my concern, which is why I came up.

The other thing I should say about that is that the construction is confined to the median.

So it's the least disruptive flyover approach that you could take, unlike Ryl and 29 that

You know, you had to disrupt the whole road.

This would have allowed the existing traffic to continue pretty much uninterrupted during the construction phase and then shift over to it.

But I can say I would be happy to provide further information if you want to set up a special meeting or whatever.

Please, I'd love to provide further information.

I'd love for VDOT to review the costing on it to

All right.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else from the public who would like to speak?

Not seeing any hands.

Okay.

We'll close public comment and that takes us to the end of the meeting.

Meeting adjourned.

Have a good evening everybody.