MPO Policy Board Meeting   8/26/2022

I do.

This meeting of the Charlottesville Albemarle MPO is being held pursuant to the Code of Virginia section 2.2-3708.2, which allows a public body to hold electronic meetings and the locality in which it is located has declared a local state of emergency and the catastrophic nature of the emergency makes it impracticable or unsafe to assemble a quorum in a single location.

And the purpose of the meeting is to provide for the discharge of its lawful purposes, duties, and responsibilities.

This meeting is being held via electronic video and audio means through Zoom online meetings and is accessible to the public 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 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 at tjpdc.org within 10 days of the meeting.

Supervisor Mallet?

Present and in early still.

Mr. Nelson?

Yeah.

Are you able to use your sound, Mr. Nelson?

Yeah.

Ms. Londrey?

I'm here.

Mr. Reek?

Ms. Monteith with UVA?

Yes, hello.

Mr. Williams with CATS?

Here.

Mr. Hudson with DRPT?

I don't believe we have anyone from FHW or FTA, CTAC, and I'm present from the TJPDC.

So back to you, Mr.

So we are here to, I don't have, my screen is limited.

Do you have the agenda that you can put up?

Yes.

We do.

We would start with public comment.

Oh, we do have a public comment.

Is there anyone here online that wishes to give public comment?

I'm not seeing anybody raise a hand.

Am I missing anybody?

I'll just call again anyone here to give public comment.

All right, we'll close the public comment period.

Yeah, I'm gonna turn this over to Hal Jones, which is the project manager from VDOT.

He's going to give you some background about the hydraulic 29 project package that was approved in round four for smart scale funding and will describe basically what it is that VDOT is requesting at this time.

OK, good afternoon.

Thank you, Sandy.

Can everyone see my screen?

I'm going to give a brief overview of the project.

Thank you.

This is the location of the Hydraulic 29 project is on the north end of Charlottesville, as most, if not all of you are aware.

The project purpose and need is to improve safety and mobility at the US 29 and hydraulic road intersection and nearby intersections.

Currently, there are poor operations and congestion that exists in the area, particularly during peak hour conditions.

There are few places to currently cross safely US 29 in this area.

So this is one of the reasons we're working on the project.

The status of the project is, this is the last remnant of the 29 solutions program.

We currently are under procurement for a design-build contract on the project.

Our estimate exceeds our budget, and next month at September CTB meeting, we're planning to ask for additional funds.

Just a brief background, the hydraulic planning advisory panel

which was a group of about 12 individuals, city and county elected officials and business owners met beginning March 2017 to start a planning study which would be the basis for the transportation study for this project.

The panel met twice a month for most months through July 19th of 2018, so there were 29 meetings

over a period of about a year and a half where the planning study was developed and reviewed and formed the basis for a group of transportation projects to address needs up to 2045 in the future.

This ended in an application for the 2018 smart scale round, which was very robust and it included three grade separated

Crossings of US 29.

Up on the top of the screen is a Zahn Road overpass.

At hydraulic in 29, we looked at a design where hydraulic road would go underneath 29.

And down at Angus to the south, we looked at an overpass to carry traffic and pedestrians over 29 there.

The application was scored and it did not score well due to the cost estimate and it was not funded.

So for the next round in 2020, much of the former panel met again in early 2020 to prepare an application for round four of SmartScale.

We started this with the basis of

looking at available funds and trying to reduce scope to make some improvements and utilize the existing funds while needing very, very little additional money.

So we met several times beginning in early 2020 and this ended up, our meetings wrapped up on Zoom meetings with COVID hitting and the pandemic.

But what we

settled on after looking at several different options for two or three of these particular element locations, A through E, is what you see in front of you.

This is an overview, and I'll describe these briefly and then show more detail.

A is at 29 and Hydraulic Road.

The main idea here was to increase green time, signal time, for north and southbound traffic by removing hydraulic

rode left turns onto 29.

We also added a protected hat-grade crossing for pedestrians with signals.

To the south, lower on the page is element B, which was a green T, and that would allow traffic coming out of Angus that wanted to turn north or left onto 29 to be able to do so while keeping 29 north traffic moving.

Up at the top of the page, element C is a grade separated pedestrian bridge, and we have two bus stops, one on each side of the bridge.

Element D shows a roundabout at Hillsdale and hydraulic intersection.

And element E shows an extended shared use path and improvements at Mickey and Brandywine Drive, restricting left turns from those streets.

A close up of each element follows where this is element A at 29 and hydraulic with north generally facing to the top of the page.

Notice the west side of hydraulic, we had striped out the existing left turn lanes and we have a crosswalk there that we don't show signals at this scale, but this is intended to have pedestrian signals.

Element B is the green T at Angus Road.

Notice in particular the entrance and access for the hotels on the east side of 29 there.

Through the last year of development, we made some changes to that that I'll show you.

Element C is the pedestrian bridge with bus stops on either side.

The bus stops are indicated

in the green shading rectangular areas.

Element D is the roundabout at Hillsdale and Hydraulic Road.

And the last element E is the Hydraulic and Brandywine and Mickey section.

The orange designated shared use path is shown on the

Lower right, and we were installing medians to direct traffic for right out only movements from those streets.

So here's the overview as it went to smart scale application in the summer of 2020.

After we got the project funded last July in 2021, we began additional studies, geotech studies, environmental studies, additional survey, and we got into more detailed preliminary design.

And this is the current concept, as you see, which we took to public hearing this past May.

I'll highlight each of these elements in a bit more detail, but we did have a public hearing in May where 63 attendees were present.

We had two additional follow-up meetings with stakeholders, primarily business owners in the corridor here on Route 29.

This is the hydraulic element, Element A, and 29 runs

Diagonally north to south here on the page, we had to rotate these to better fit the paper.

But this shows more detail and more design work for this particular element.

Notice that the west side of hydraulic, we now are reconstructing a new medium so that we can align the lanes going across 29 with hydraulics.

So that's a better, a safer result where we're not

looking at the lines not lining up going across 29.

You see the crosswalk to the south on the south leg of 29 and notice that's a little bit unusual in the median and we've got a bifurcated roadway at two different elevations so

in order to meet ADA regulations, we had to stretch out the crosswalk in that fashion, but that will be signalized.

The element B, green T, now I've rotated the page again on you, 29 runs left and right on the page with north to the right.

Notice the access and entrance to the hotel here.

During further development, we looked at

removing the existing 29 entrance and relocating that off of Holiday Drive to promote a safer situation so that traffic leaving the hotels would not be inclined to try to take a left out of there and go south on 29.

Even though there's a concrete median, we've seen instances in a couple of other locations where traffic has actually gone

in the improper direction.

So we thought that would be a cleaner and safer orientation to relocate that entrance off of Holiday Drive.

And I'll show the existing conditions for this area on the next page so you can get an idea of the median changes.

You can see there's a crossover just north of Holiday Drive.

and then one further to the north where the Holiday Inn is there on the top right of the photo.

So back to the proposed plan, we're closing one of the crossovers and we're reconfiguring the crossover at the Holiday Drive on the right side for an Access Inn only.

The third element, C,

is the pedestrian bridge and we're using ramps rather than stairs on this for better access for all.

So you can see the profile on the lower part of the page and that ramp profile on the left of the page corresponds with the bottom of the diagram where we're wrapping the ramp around.

And then on the

Westside of 29, which is the top of the page, that's Stonefield development.

That grade is higher currently, so that works to our advantage.

We don't have to have as many ramps for that side.

Element D is the roundabout.

Through further development, we looked at a couple of things, and it should be noted that two-lane roundabouts or hybrid two-lane roundabouts

require quite a bit more thought in design than a single lane roundabout.

So that led to this design being put forth at the public hearing.

It does impact the old Kmart property quite a bit more, and it does change access to the Kroger on the bottom of the page.

You can see Whole Foods there to the kind of the planned northeast quadrant.

So we're looking at some changes to this to provide better access to Kroger, access to the roundabout itself, which would not preclude an extension of Hillsdale South in the future.

Element E is the fifth element and the yellow or orange extension of the shared use path is shown as our median islands to direct traffic

for a right in, right out or left in access for Brandywine and Mickey.

All right.

Comments or questions here?

Supervisor Malek, has her hand raised, Mr.

Oh, yep.

Thank you.

Sorry, I missed this on the drawing.

So is it now a single lane roundabout at Hillsdale?

No ma'am, it's a dual lane, but it's a hybrid because there is a single lane on two pieces right there in the crossover, but the main through road there hydraulic is dual lanes.

VDOT's policy is currently not to design and build completely dual lane roundabouts with two circulating lanes,

until we can get a better handle on how those operate.

All right.

Any other questions on the program?

All right.

Sure, Sandy.

Can you all hear me OK?

So as they kind of indicated, we're kind of in active procurement right now, and we're looking at our budget.

And we're trying to figure out a way, as we've kind of updated our estimates going into this next phase, of how to complete as many facets of this project as possible.

So we've kind of gotten to an issue situation right now where we're over budget based on updated estimates and some of the things that we've looked at.

So the question has kind of been posed to the MPO, would there be an appetite to remove one of the elements to ensure that we get the biggest benefit of the other elements in the project?

And the one element that we've been looking at and considering to remove is the green tea, which Mr. Jones kind of indicated and showed in the graphics.

which that potential element also restricts a lot of access to those business owners down there which I do believe we had quite a bit of input during the public hearing process and we had individual stakeholder meetings.

So the answer is the MPO board amenable to recommending

the removal of the green tea part of the project.

Not to preclude it from happening in the future, but it would just not be built as part of this design build suite.

Thank you, Mr. Nelson.

Sure, I'll start.

I think that it's a reasonable compromise.

I think getting the other pieces done certainly takes us a long, long way towards making that set of intersections much more useful and workable for the community.

And I think that if we have to

sacrifice one piece of it, then I think the team has made the right choice in the piece that's the least important.

It could even be, as has been noted, is a concern with the residents or business owners down there anyway.

But putting that aside, I think that if we had to drop a piece of this or defer it,

I think what Mr. Nelson has suggested makes sense and I support it.

Yes, thank you.

I appreciate all the work and heartache that the VDOT folks have gone through to get us to this point.

And I'm grateful because absolutely my highest goal is to keep moving forward on as much of this as we can get.

And I'm very concerned about throwing the whole project out of the bus.

So I support the changes.

I'll just say I agree with both of my colleagues who just spoke and

Well, very efficiently.

I have no different thoughts on the matter.

I especially note that the green tea can be a standalone project in the future.

So I know that that's something that can still be addressed down the road.

It doesn't preclude anything from happening.

I guess the only comment I would add, in addition, as we think to that in the future, as I know some of you have had conversations about, but figuring out what to do with chicken roe and some of the issues that we deal with

for all the people trying to get cane sauce and what have you.

But it is a real issue, so it's something that will have to be, that those businesses will need some help on that side that the green tea doesn't necessarily go to address.

So I want to make sure that that point is put out there.

But I, too, agree that this is a reasonable solution to remove that project in order to get the other projects done.

Mr.

Chair, do we need a motion?

I'll be happy to make one.

Yes, sir.

Please.

I'll second that.

Thank you.

The motion was made by Mayor Snook and seconded by Councilor Pinkston.

Is there any further discussion?

Sure.

Christine, raise your hand.

No, I don't need to make comment before the vote, but I will since we already unmuted.

Supervisor Malek?

Yes.

Yes.

Very good.

That motion carries and that action will kick off the letter that's needed.

Thank you.

Two very quick things.

I would certainly support the improvements along 29 South.

Mr. Jones presented how important it was that we improve the throughput going south on 29.

But you cannot go anywhere when two of the lanes on the west side are completely full of people sitting.

It is incredibly dangerous.

People call me all the time and complain bitterly about how they almost got hit there.

So I don't know what the enforcement things are, but I know years ago there was plans for a service lane that started at Holiday Inn and went to Angus.

And that would certainly be ineffective.

Way, as is used in many other places.

I'll just leave that on there.

And the other thing which was part of the 29 solutions and has been Matt had the funding match and what was needed from Albemarle County is the synchronization of the lights south of hydraulic.

because one can go from Boulders Road and never make a stop until you get to Hydraulic and then it is half an hour to get to Ivy Road.

So I really hope that there will be a way to work on that synchronization for the benefit of the whole community and the projects as a whole.

Thank you, Supervisor Malek.

I certainly endorse those comments.

One of the reasons we've got the

Some of the functionality happening up 29 is due to the signalization programming that's happening.

No, I'll just add to that that we are going to be working with the city regarding what upgrades are needed to an oil store.

We've got a synchronized system through there.

So our operations people on our side of the house will be meeting with the city at some point in time in the future to try to figure out

What do we need to do to get those upgrades in and what type of funding stream can we use to make those improvements?

And I would like to thank you all for your support in this endeavor.

Thank you, Mr. Nelson.

Comments by board members?

Now we do, Sandy's reminded me, we do have a second public comment period.

Thank you, Chris Gensick.

I'm City of Charlottesville's Parks and Greenwood Trails Planner.

We're really happy to see that the

Shared Use Path is going to come off 250 and go up to Brandywine.

I think there was a request to see if that could extend from Brandywine at least to Mickey Drive because we're about to drive build a very big Shared Use Path up to Greenbrier.

And we've done a bunch of work on the bypass so that two block section and hydraulics very important.

And right now this only includes the one block.

So if there was an opportunity to examine the Brandywine at least to Mickey Drive piece for Shared Use Path, that would be great.

We understand Mickey to

Hillsdale is going to be pretty hard to do with the buildings there, but we'd like to see if it's possible to squeeze that in instead of just having a sidewalk there and that one last piece of this very large loop we've been building.

Thank you, sir.

Is there anybody else who wishes to give public comment?

I am not seeing anyone.

All right.

Any comments on the remarks from public comment?

But I think Supervisor Malek has her hands up first.

Thank you.

I was just remembering that at the last MPO meeting, this was discussed to add more to begin, change the plans, basically, as how it's been done.

And I think the same thing applies that once we are in procurement, we will not be making changes right now.

But Mr. Nelson can certainly confirm or correct me if I'm wrong about that.

And this is another section that I think can stand alone.

Yeah, and to that point, I actually, after the last MPO meeting, I went and walked the route that was just described.

And it's a lot less involved than I think had been suggested in the meeting.

There would be no effort.

involved in the box culvert for instance.

There's enough room between the curb and the box culvert in that space to easily put in the the size trail they're talking about.

I raised the point to deputy city manager Sam Sanders and to our traffic folks and Jack Dawson in

their notion was to sort of explore it as a possibility for the city to infill that area as a separate little project.

So I guess that's, I think that's where the city stands at this point on it, though they were going to do some more, have some more conversations.

I would say Mr. Nelson, you know, if you get a chance and you're out there, it's really, you know, of course I hate it in my line of work when someone says it's really not that much, but

It doesn't seem to be a huge extra piece that's being requested there.

So I don't know.

Thank you, Councillor Pinkston.

Just to kind of respond, I know we're already past our time, but I mean, myself, the project team, which was Kyle Jones and Greg Cooley met with Jack and Sam just on Wednesday and talked about this.

We're working on a way and a path forward that would work for both of us.

So more to come on that, but we are coordinating to try to make something happen here.

Sounds like people are working together.

This is just fantastic.

That's what we do.

All right, very good.

Are there any other comments then?

All right, seeing none.

All right, very good.

I appreciate everyone finding the time to come together for the special meeting.

And we were able to quickly come to a very reasonable resolution on the application.

So thank you all.

Hope you all have a good weekend.

Thank you, everyone.

Bye bye.