MPO Policy Board Meeting   6/25/2025

Yeah, fine sharpener.

Can you hear the song right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Chuck, can you hear us for a moment?

Thanks.

I'm going to call to order the Wednesday, June 25th, 4 p.m.

Supervisor Malek?

Yes, here.

Supervisor Galloway?

Present.

Councilor Kingston?

Here.

Sean Nelson?

Present.

The nonvoting members are Mitch Humbert.

The alternate non-voting members, Wood Hudson?

Here.

Jason Espy for John.

Julia Monti?

Present.

Garland Williams?

No.

Steven Miner?

Daniel Konig?

Christine Jacobs.

Great.

Mr. Brack, leave that microphone before you say anything any of us might take advantage of.

Not that we would do that, of course.

Item two today then, we don't have the remote now.

Okay, number two matters from the public.

Does anyone here wish to give?

Yes, we have one.

Sir, you know the drill.

Anyone else?

My name is Paul Grady.

I live just outside of Crozet.

First, I want to say that I'm stunned

that Kroger is closing its hydraulic road store.

I had hoped that Kroger would have become a partner in extending Hillsdale Drive south to Holiday Drive.

That connection has to be made.

Also, I want to give a one and a half thumbs up to the diverging diamond at I-64 on Pan Tops.

The only criticism I have is that the traffic lights are not well coordinated with the rest of Richmond Road.

In fact, the lights on Long Street aren't well coordinated either.

The roundabout at Hydraulic and Hillsdale, again, one and a half thumbs up.

I have noticed people changing lanes in the roundabout.

There should be some signage to discourage that.

And last, the extension of the left turn lane on the 250 bypass at Hydraulic Road.

Thank you, sir.

All right, being that there are no others giving comment, we will close matters from the public.

And then we'll go to item number three.

So we have an agenda.

Is there any changes to the agenda?

Is there any motion to adopt the agenda?

Second.

All right, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Abstentions?

Thank you.

And then we also have the approval of the April 23rd, 25 meeting minutes.

Are there any changes or edits to those minutes?

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstentions?

Thank you.

All right, that'll take us right to number four, new business.

And the first is the travel demand management study, and Ms.

So included in the fiscal year 26 UPWP for the MPO is a transportation demand management study.

In preparation of starting the next fiscal year next week, we've drafted a very high level scope of work for you all that was included in your packet.

And today we're looking to feedback on if this study fits with regional needs as it was.

So included on this slide is an excerpt from the UPWP that shares that the idea for this study originated during the completion of the LRTP, which was adopted by the policy board last May.

The intention is to reduce vehicle miles traveled, or VMT, specifically within the Charlottesville downtown area, increase trips made by other modes, and enhance connections to our existing multimodal transportation.

This study specifically will be completed by MPO staff, so it will not be a consultant study, and I just wanted to bat out as far as we can see.

Before we drafted the scope of work, we reviewed other studies that similarly aligned with what we were hoping to do with this study.

The first of which is a BMT reduction strategy that was developed by an NPO in Minneapolis-St.

Paul area.

They used trip characteristics that they identified through a regional travel survey that they conducted to estimate the feasibility of mode shift based on trip distance, competitiveness of travel time, one another mode, and potential comfort.

A second example of what the study could accomplish is illustrated by an active transportation plan that was conducted in Florida that used streetlight data, which is the original data source that we've identified for the study that we can also use.

And they identify trip patterns and top origin destination pairs in their area.

So in this graphic, the thicker the line, the higher the trip volume.

The final example that we looked at was an origin destination report by another NPM in Florida.

Yes, and depending on the data source, some data sources identify if they are defiable trips and some identify by mode.

And so it could be specific based on which data feed.

Thanks.

So as with most studies, our staff would begin by reviewing relevant planning documents to identify the planning context, existing infrastructure, and any plan improvements.

Also during this task, we'd also look to establish a baseline.

So what's our current understanding of EMT and the region and our service area so that we have an established benchmark to produce for the several events.

We then propose conducting an origin destination analysis using streetlight data, which is GPS-based, and it's a big data source.

We've primarily selected that because it's available at no cost to the MPO, but as with any other data source, there are pros and cons with what's available in it.

So we could also look into other data sources.

And we've gotten some great feedback from the MPO Tech Committee last week as well about some other ways to look into it.

In Streetlight, generally, trips are available to view by mode, by trip length, and by customizable mode.

So you can select certain areas and reach into that.

In TAF3, we take that information and trip characteristics that we identified in TAF2 to recommend improvements and strategies to encourage mode shift and reduce BMT in the MPO region.

Some of the strategies that could be considered here could be related to land use policies, rideshare, parking programs, it doesn't just have to be infrastructure.

We understand how all these things work together to encourage or discourage the mode that someone chooses to take.

And we could definitely take a broad look at whatever recommendations come out of this.

Finally, in task four, we do foresee some sort of public engagement component to this study, where we go to the public to understand what their priorities are to make sure that this study is aligned with those.

Their engagement could look together and put on prioritization of the proposed strategies, or it could also serve as a validation of the data that we collect.

Like if we use a certain source that shows us the mood slip, maybe that means we tap into cycle groups or running groups to just see, does this align with the trips that you all know that you're

As far as next steps, so today we really wanted to get an outline of the scope in front of you, just to be able to receive some feedback and make sure that we're on the right track as far as what the regional priorities are.

We've heard great feedback from the tech committee already about some other data sources to look into and other methodologies.

But today we really want to hear from you.

So what are the outcomes that you all are looking for in this sort of study?

This is actually more of a question than I think.

I know the city is working on getting the bike counters, which I imagine will be useful data for this kind of setting.

I think we have some else by that point.

So are the studies that are used in San Francisco Bay Area appropriate for some

communities that are our socks.

That's probably something Lori looked at, but that's something that's popular in my advice during that homework.

And also, lots of my residents use Strava, that's for it, Mike's pandemic, and always encouraging county staff and others to be using that business.

Last thought.

In order to not sort of foreclose doors, does one ever ask what public desires are to begin

Thank you.

And on the Strava data, we have already begun to look into that and they do make their data available free of charge, which is awesome.

So people find to get access to that and they go through the application and take a look at it.

So we have this program in the fiscal year 26 UTWD, which would begin July 1.

And so once we nail down a little bit more of the scope and a little bit more of the detail on the approach, we'll have a better idea of when the schedule would be.

But would that data be available in the data source to this?

Yeah.

I think it'd be the other way around.

I guess I'll just make a comment that, you know, different modes of travel for those who currently live here and or regularly work here enough where they have to commute around.

but that just that constant conflict between all the folks that must, I mean, forget the folks that live here and still drive a lot.

But it's in addition to the commuters that have to come here, that someone's being, I mean, we just had a housing study report, Hamilton Lombard was given a presentation, a regional housing partnership, and talking about the demands since the housing is a piece, it forces everybody out and they're all having to come here.

Well, even if they want to bike, they can't bike, right?

right they get here they can maybe go somewhere then use an alternative method um i'm just wondering does this get at that conflict of what exists between we have our uh steal chris fairchild's phrase we've got our from here's and our live here's i guess i would change it to to those who the work here's and then the folks that are uh that have to commute here from afar and how do they deal with that vehicle conflict for you know you can make the city as much of a

Right.

We did include in here also looking at park and ride lots and the utilization of those lots to understand, do we have the right capacity of park and ride lots?

Are they located in the right areas?

Are people still traveling from the places where they were in the past when those were first constructed?

Going off of that, because I think you made several excellent points, including that housing is what's pushing people far away, but still needing to commute in.

It might be interesting to add a question of something like, would you like to live closer or would you, something where it's incorporating the housing and transportation are the same, you know, you, you have to transport only as far away as you know, your destination.

So that might be an interesting, just kind of like additional layer to study because a lot of times,

I think the university has a good model that for many, many years, the blue lot was where people who lived out came parked your car, got your bike off your car and drove, rode your bike to wherever your academic building was, if it didn't match the bus system.

So they are on it.

to looking at the university's model around transportation.

They have that new, they're commuting program.

And part of it is if you sign up for that, then you have a certain number of guaranteed rides home in case there's an emergency.

I had a quick question.

Are you partly using the precedent studies, the three that you shared with us to help refine your scope?

Yeah, so Streetlight is a GPS-based cell phone big data source.

And so it takes all of this GPS data and aggregates it and de-identifies all the personal information in it and makes it available for transportation planning.

Anyone can purchase this data to use it to do any sort of planning or analysis that they want.

and VDOT has a statewide contract.

They've used it for before and after analyses for construction projects that they've done and any other planning needs that they have and they have developed.

I think BTRC, the Transportation Research Council, has developed guidance on here's how you can conduct some of these planning studies with it.

So it's one of many that's available out there.

That one is just easily accessible for us.

but other ones that folks have used, replicas and other big data source that incorporates a couple different data points and not just the cell phone data.

But there it's one of a couple options that are out there.

I think the study also just selfishly from a PDC and an MPO perspective gives us an opportunity to go in and use that data and see what the capabilities are.

So it's a learning opportunity to build capacity within our region for what all can we garner from that data.

And this would be, as you say, staffed by you all?

Yes.

No, I think this was great.

I really appreciate it.

And we will bring at the next meeting another scope of work to hopefully get signed off and get started on.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 4B, Charlottesville area transit FPA low or no emission project.

And this will be led by your favorite friends and director and vibe.

So I'm actually going to, this presentation was done by me at the technical team a week ago, but Bruce, which is Kat's project manager, that's going to be the presentation.

So I just wanted to give you kind of a,

intro as to what we are contemplating.

So Pat's always looking for additional funding, other people's money to make projects that are of bad magnitude happen.

In this case, we are looking at doing some capital improvements on our lab because we're looking to expand services and we're actually looking to transition our fleet to a more environmentally friendly fleet.

So

When those two things culminate together, we find an opportunity.

There's a no-low grant that annually comes out.

We were hoping that it would come out this year.

We weren't sure because of the change in administration, but it did come out.

So it came out on May 14th.

The FTMA, $1.5 billion available.

And of that $1.5 billion, $1.1

low or no emissions grant.

So we're going to take an opportunity to apply for one of the grant opportunities.

We want to give you kind of a scope of all the major projects that we're kind of getting done.

And then we're going to basically sensitize that down to an application we're working on right now that we will be applying for by July 14th.

I said 16th last time.

I said the 14th.

16th.

We would have missed a date.

So I'm going to turn it over to Bruce, and he's going to give you a kind of a heads up on the projects we're getting done.

We will have it in on the 14th.

We will have it in on the 13th.

So I'm Bruce White.

I'm the senior project manager, as Garland just said.

I've been on the job for about a year.

So I've been working very hard to bring CAP in line with the council's desires that they voted on back in February of 2024.

So as Garland said we're getting ready to submit the low note but we've been working for a year even though this was kind of short notice we just received those four weeks ago and it's due in three or four weeks we're ready and the reason we're ready is because we've been working with our vendors and internally to generate these products so we have three major projects we started working on last summer the first feasibility study

and we contracted with the vendor Kimley Born, renowned national vendor, and they're working also with Wendell, the architecture firm that was their sub.

So the first product was the feasibility study, very in-depth analysis.

It weighed all the different types of zero emission vehicles.

It also looked at our routes, put everything together in one nice package to give us a vision forward.

Taking that feasibility study, the next product was led by Wendell, the architecture firm.

they did a site evaluations.

They looked at our buildings, they looked at the turf, they looked at what we had on the ground to support a transition into zero emission vehicles.

And then finally, the third product was the transition study that kind of made the first two together and gave us a roadmap forward.

So we have, now let me say one other thing.

It was kind of a one, two punch on those last three reports.

It was,

building towards the future.

It's about a 15 year timeline we were looking at.

The buses have a 12 year lifespan.

So it fit real nicely into a 15 year plan, which also makes up with the zero emission milestones.

There was a milestone at 2050 to be completely carbon free, but 2040 is kind of our interim milestone.

And there's also a milestone in 2030, which I believe is a 45% reduction.

So that was kind of the timeline.

So building towards the future,

was one in growth, and then the other, of course, transition to zero emission.

The interesting thing about the low-no bacteria, it added a third problem for us.

Building for the future, transition to zero emission, what the low-no, if you read the actual product, because we have a new administration, they shifted the focus on it a little bit, and they want it to be led by a discussion and argument

on supporting families, families with children.

So our low-no submission asked to kind of mate our routes up with the Charlottesville family situation as it relates to our bus routes and prove to them that we rate the money that we're asking for, for that purpose.

So we are currently operating on the cop lot.

It's six acres.

That's where the cap

proper site is.

There's two main buildings.

1545 is administration.

Building at 1549 is the maintenance building.

It's a five-bay shop.

It's been in existence about 2008-ish, 2010.

It's about 15 years old.

It's working.

The problem is it does not and will not support zero emission vehicles.

And the main reasons are the safety.

We have a

needed from consul to have a dual pilot program.

We're going to go both battery electric, B-E-B, and fuel cell electric, F-C-E-B.

Our mandate right now is to do dual pilots.

Our building does not support either one.

Both zero emission options present different safety challenges needed.

Batteries, of course, the main thing you need to contend with is the potential for fire.

If there's a battery fire, it's really important to be able to put it out and to contain it and to isolate it.

that's better.

Hydrogen, the main focus, is ventilation.

You have to move air if you're going to work with hydrogen.

So in either case, our maintenance facility is not adequate right now for the next 15, 20, 30 years.

If you look at the feasibility study, we could provide it.

It's on the website, I believe.

The building, of course, can be retrofitted.

Other main transit agencies have done that.

We had Kimley-Horn and Wendell look at retrofitting our current maintenance facility, 1549.

I think the cost was in the $15 to $20 million range.

Really expensive.

So you just have to balance that against building and starting fresh and doing it right.

The other big thing you gain from starting fresh is the ability to phase your products because

as we transition to zero emissions.

So we were still going to do that.

That's what we're doing right now.

We have to operate diesel during the period, whether it's five years, 10 years, however long we're going to keep operating diesel buses, then our new platform, whether it's electric and or hydrogen, we'll have three different platforms, at least two.

So it's much better to have a new building to be able to phase the transition to a new other bus.

So that's Lot 6.

The other two buildings up here, they're small.

This one is the service building, 1555.

That's where the vehicles are fueled, oil, washer fluid, all the fluids are out there.

They practically every 19 fuel.

1559 is the wash rack.

That's where they go through.

Now, the interesting thing is the middle lot.

And that's kind of the focus of our low known requests.

because we want to develop that piece of property.

We have this beautiful, pristine, three-acre lot sitting right next to us that we have been to own, they bought in 2001.

So it's been sitting there for 25 years waiting for this meeting.

Yeah, really good.

Boresight was just amazing.

The interesting thing is we bought it from Delaney back in 2001.

The plumbing manufacturer, the venerable Charlottesville plumbing manufacturer that

moved, I think, from New York and New Jersey back in the 70s and set up their plant on the lower lot, the four acre lot.

And they operated for decades there, beautiful family business.

They're not really operating to the same level they were before.

There were some other subtenants in there, a party storage facility.

The building is not being used to its highest and best use in our potential.

But of course, it's taking off cash with the waiting family.

and so it is still a business thing to do to them.

We've reached out to the lady to talk with them to see if they're interested in selling the four acre parcel as well.

Thus far, not a lot of interest, but that may change.

So we're planning as if one day up the road we'll be able to buy the four acre parcel that the lady still wants.

Until please feel free to interrupt obviously if you have any questions.

So this was done by Wendell.

This is just a snapshot of the existing tech facility.

Pretty much describes what I've just discussed.

One key point with this photo is our current parking in between the two rows of buildings is for 40 buses.

Right now, we have about 40 buses, 36, 38, 40 in that range, depending on the flow of new buses versus retired buses.

The problem is our 15-year plan calls for at least rising up to 60 buses.

And probably beyond that,

I'm not sure what the latest for Ben is because I know some of the council members want to see increased service, get the frequency down from 45 minutes to 30 minutes to 15 minutes.

That's going to take more buses.

We need a place to park the buses.

It's a simple geometry funnel.

We do not have parking for the buses right now.

So at an absolute minimum, we need to develop a middle bar for more parking.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg with what we're really talking about.

This is a conceptual plan done by Lando.

This was done during that second document I had up a few minutes ago, the site of the evaluation.

Conceptual, we didn't pay a lot of money for it.

It's just kind of big brush strokes as to what we're going for.

But this shows the new maintenance facility now in the lower portion in the orange.

And it's a seven bay.

It also includes a two pull through.

There's a debate.

I think kind of in the bus maintenance team and whether a pull-through is better or drive in and back out.

Obviously, it's never optimal to back up buses, but I'm not an expert in that area, but this has the best of both worlds.

We have five bays where you pull in and back out, and then there's two pull-through bays where you can go all the way through.

The pull-through bays are also required if we move to articulated buses, the really long buses, such as that proposed for up and down Route 29 eventually in the future if we have the need for that.

Now, up above that is interesting because we have the mandate to do hydrogen pilot testing right now.

And hydrogen is interesting because we're going to probably start small.

To start small in hydrogen, you import hydrogen.

And you can either import liquid hydrogen or gases hydrogen.

They bring a trailer up, they park it right in front, and you start drawing hydrogen from it.

You still need equipment.

used new equipment to convert it to the right form.

You need equipment that can put it into a bus.

But if we go to hydrogen, the inexpensive way to do a pilot is to import it.

Well, Kimley-Horne said in her feasibility study and in the transition study is, at some point, if we decide hydrogen is the way to go, which many jurisdictions have, then we would either go to larger scale importation or we could start to produce our own hydrogen

with units that are called electrolyzers.

So they convert electricity into hydrogen via these machines that we develop.

They're a little pricey, but when you cross everything together, it makes sense.

Next to that is the locations for the charging equipment.

If we go with battery electric buses, we basically need a charging dispenser for each bus

It doesn't have to be one for one, but in general, you're going to have to come close to one for one if you're going to charge buses.

So you have to plug them in.

The charging apparatus, that can also be pricey, but you just have to do it.

And that's what we're doing right now.

And I'll talk a little bit more.

We're also doing the pilot charging right over here on our existing pod.

I'll talk more about that in a few minutes.

So this is the hydrogen area I was talking about.

This is the potential

battery electric charging.

Here are the five A's.

There's the pull-throughs.

This is parking for non-revenue vehicles.

We could also put one chargers there.

One other interesting thing about this plan is you'll notice something's missing.

And that's the existing connected garage, which we would one day demo about.

And this is like 15, 20 years after that.

Make sure we get the useful life out of it.

And we make the best use of it in the state.

Any questions on that?

Crystal loves that idea from sustainability.

Of course, not only on top of the buildings, but you could also, anywhere you park buses, you could put

you know, at Cana Libre, I don't know, solar parking.

We've made multiple trips.

I've only made one.

Garland's made three trips.

I think two trips to Champaign, Illinois.

It's a renowned hydrogen facility.

Some of you were there.

They have a massive solar panel there and they are producing hydrogen exclusively with solar.

They've hit to the point now where they're topping out their capacity.

So they're going to have to either put an electrolyzer in or start importing hydrogen.

but they've been very successful thus far with just solo.

Does that answer your question?

The answer is yes.

So next up, we asked him, okay.

And I actually watched some of the old videos from city council back in February or March of 20.4.

And I thought the most appropriate question was how much will this all cost?

Has anyone projected this out?

Well, we did.

We projected it out.

with the help of Kimley-Horn.

It just, we weren't making the books internally.

Everything's been done by external impartial vendors.

So, so Kimley-Horn produced a report and this is obviously not readable, but that's what I'm going to speak from today.

And that's where our low-no request stops from, namely from the Kimley-Horn report.

The main thing we're going to ask for in the low-no report is the new maintenance facility.

When Kimling-Harn gave us this financial analysis, they gave it to us in PDF form, and you'll see.

So this is the maintenance facility.

This is phase one in the financial report.

This is the battery electric.

We don't have a location yet, but assuming we put it here, this is where we could put the hydrogen fueling area.

So the important thing about Kimling-Harn was any financial analysis, especially because it's over a long period of time.

their report covers I think seven years out of one assumptions.

And one of the most important assumptions is they use the 5% inflation figure, which is, you know, pretty hot for longevity, financial analysis, but it's good for us because the numbers are, I mean, it's good and bad.

They're large, but they're righteous, I think, which is helpful.

So that's a key assumption.

The external things they left out are important.

They have no grid upgrades.

We are,

County on no grid impact in the short term.

So we're not anticipating Dominion knocking on our door saying we need a substation or $500,000.

Not yet.

I mean, that discussion could happen five years, 10 years from now.

But right now, especially with the school buses and the transit buses being located in the same area of the grid, it's something we have to consider long term.

What impact

Will this have a Dominion?

Is Dominion going to be with us and who's paying?

Very important question.

But nothing in the short term.

We haven't had any friction from them at all asking for money for a pilot program in the short term.

In fact, they've been very helpful.

I'm sure most of you know what they're doing on the bus, on the school bus side of things.

The electrolyzers are not included.

That's about it for the really important ones for the assumptions.

So this is the format they gave us.

Like I said, it's about a seven year inflated five percent.

So these numbers here, which is these are the key numbers for the phase one for the maintenance building.

The payments three, four and five years out inflated five percent.

So that I mean, that's good for us because the present value is less.

And we figure if we get this no low,

is successful, the number that we're asking for in the time that we have, all the designs done and everything put together, it should be pretty good, given Kimberly-Lohn's projections.

So let's talk a little bit more in detail about those.

So you can see the grand total is 37 million-ish, paid four to five years from now, inflated 5%.

That's really important for that number.

It's a 25,000 square foot building, as I said, seven bays, five single, two double,

but most important, we cannot transition in the current building.

We need to do something if we're going to transition this real mission because of the safety concerns.

This is just a little blurb.

You know, we came up with the number.

Did you want to talk about the number 39.9 asks?

Okay, so we had to pick a number.

So we're going to put in for the request, the grant and

Kimley-Horns numbers were kind of fuzzy because of the projections.

They were just order of magnitude numbers anyway.

We didn't want to be unreasonable, given the size of our transit operation and the size of our jurisdiction.

We're kind of in the small to medium range, looking at other towns.

So we wanted punch within our weight, not too much above our weight.

And we came to 39.9, is our ask.

It's not cast and stumped.

We could change it.

So the 39.9 is important because we wanted to make sure that we, as we're working through and into the actual design, that the numbers escalate.

We've seen double digit increases year after year on construction.

We believe 39.9 protects us, so we would have to come back to this by demanding adjustments.

That was one of the factors.

And we want to wait.

We want to be successful.

So we don't, we don't want to be in a position where we'll have to go back and ask for $2 or $3 million in a short term bridge to finish off the project.

So it would cover all of the expenses.

The low note grant, more than likely it's 80-20.

So depending on the request amount of this, it's going to be $4 to $8 million, depending on how we look at it.

So we were working through that model right now about, you know, we have about half that money reserved that we had been looking at by doing capital projects before.

Got it.

So it's not, they give us 39.9 and then we add 20% of that.

So, okay.

Okay.

So that's kind of what we were going to talk about with regards to the low and low.

I'm just going to tag a few other things on here because they're important to the overall picture.

The two things I'd like to talk about is NIPA and the battery charging structure we're putting in right now.

So NEPA, this is an environmental law we have to comply with to use federal funds.

We're applying NEPA both to the three acre parcel and the four acre parcel, even though we have no contract or anything for the four acre, it's easy to include it in the NEPA analysis.

So just in case we're able to come to terms with Delaney, we won't lose three years or two years worth of funding.

It's very inexpensive and efficient to do it.

So NEPA, we're about, I would say about 60% through right now.

We were working with Kimley-Horn earlier and Wendell.

The reason we went with another firm, RK&K, we competitively did obviously, but there was also a conflict issue that needed to be resolved because NEPA, it really asked the fundamental question is, should the federal government invest in this lot?

Should we use federal taxpayer dollars?

And it looks at all the issues swirling around.

Well, Kimley, Horn, and Wendell kind of have a vested interest in the answer being yes.

So when you look at the regulations regarding NEPA, you're not supposed to contract, if possible, with the same firm that is in a good position if the NEPA is successful.

So we went with a firm called RK&K in Richmond, and they've been doing a great job, and we're really happy with this firm.

Those are the five main categories, hazardous materials,

that's the phase one phase two testing.

We've already passed the phase one.

We're going to do some very limited soil testing to make sure the soil is okay.

Traffic analysis, all the data collection is done.

They're just writing report.

Cultural resources has already been resolved.

Cultural resources relates to prior human activity on the property and

It's funny because when you look at the old, we got the phase one report, they're really fun because you get these pictures dating back a hundred years, aerial things.

And lot two used to be cleared.

It was like farmland and all those trees you see there now are our second growth trees, third growth trees.

So the lot actually was part of someone's homestead at one point.

So that's a cultural activity.

Of course, it could also go much farther back, Native Americans and things like that.

So,

the team came out they physically looked at the ground they walked the lot in very great detail they sent the report up to the state agency that monitors this the state agency looked at everything and said case closed we're satisfied there is no cultural implication on the slot so we were all kind of shocked because we thought they would be going deeper into that and that's also another soil sampling thing what they'll do is they'll put a big grid and they'll come out and dig

looking for remnants and anything that could be of cultural significance, but it's depth resolved.

Does that answer your question?

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, no, we're really happy about that.

Noise and vibration, they've already done the sampling.

We just haven't received the final report.

And natural resources, they're about halfway through that.

They walked the terrain and they didn't find any natural resources on the parcels.

But there are three different species, two bat and one butterfly, that they pull from external websites that are regionally related.

And what we're going to have to do is probably schedule the construction at certain times and not do it during certain seasons when they're breeding and leading and whatever that would help to keep the species alive.

Two bat and one butterfly.

And the butterfly, of course, is the monarch, which everybody loves.

the bats, everyone loves bats here.

So we've got to kind of, that's the bottom line.

Yeah, no, it's important, super important.

Anyway, this just illustrates we're studying for thoughts.

This is important.

NEPA has three levels of classes of action.

Everybody in the world is telling us we're going to be at the lowest procedure level.

And this relates to all of the motives in common and how much

process, how much process is due.

We're going to have the minimal due process.

We'll be shocked that it's not a CE categorical exclusion.

So that's also good.

Okay, so battery electric, you know, we have a quote from Kidman-Horne, 3.0 milliampere for the pilot.

We are in the process right now of putting in the pilot charging

apparatus.

We're lucky because on Avon, we have a major power line that goes right down the street.

So just like UVA just did on the Millmont lot, they put a new power pole.

They just put a power pole in and put it right in the corner.

Then you have to put a new meter box, transformers, and the chargers come in two pieces.

There's this power block piece and then there's a dispenser piece.

We are planning, just like UVA did for their first wave,

for eight dispensers.

It may end up being six on the lot and two in the garage.

We're still working that issue out.

Ideally, we're going to have chargers in the maintenance bay so that we can power up the buses if needed to keep them running.

A minimal one, probably two.

We're still working on the details.

I think we're probably, we have the draft, we're working with Dewberry.

UVA was so helpful to us.

They're just wonderful people over there.

probably seven or eight times.

And we just asked them, who did you guys use Dewberry?

So who did you know who would Dewberry?

So we got their number and the same person who designed their systems is designing ours.

We got a very attractive price for that.

It's a proven success.

So we're really comfortable.

They just gave us our draft instruction drawings and we're chopping them right now.

So the biggest challenge we found with putting in

the charging infrastructure is surprisingly the transformers.

There's this crazy long wait time to get a transformer for this.

So we're well ahead of the, we hope right now, we have two buses on order.

They've actually been submitted and we are anticipating the delivery of our first two battery electric buses in June of 2026.

LCTB was able to offer two more yesterday.

So we put in

That concludes my presentation.

Any questions?

So you said that this grant prioritizes families and children.

Does that mean that if we focus more on our school buses, that

So we're taking them to account, you know, that we,

if we don't have any legal aspect on the restraining the user kind of gifts and we've talked about the system opposition plan and working through that housing effect goes from those families having to get better service to them getting a new facility while making the transition going to make that better more likely so that's our hope.

Yeah, plus the money is coming from the Department of Transportation through the FTA, so I don't think we could use that much for school buses, even if we wanted to, right?

We cannot.

So it's transit, transit, transit.

We only have our own public transportation, we have our own grants, I mean, the Cyprus, we've paid them to get out of jail, they don't give us any funding.

So I don't know others for school buses, but this is transit-specific.

If you can't provide them service,

that Colby can find.

So, we're doing two separate tracks.

We'll talk a little bit about the US project, but just really focusing on the semester side and the transit, you know, the operations and the fishing.

And if you can use all the pieces of money, that's all back there.

Did the study theorize, I mean, understood to get diesel and then you gotta try to handle it.

But ultimately, it's to get rid of the diesel.

So a great question.

So here, versus one of the things Bruce pointed out is that we're an agro building and the facility will still be running on the L facility.

is doing that, impeding our ability to maintain and work with assisted buses while, you know, we don't want people in construction to know why they're trying to fix the bus.

So, when the bus stop is closed, we can, you know, wait a few hours if these are all going to exist and they're not going to float anyway.

If we need parking, there's a parking issue that's going to take us a little while.

We're hopeful that we get with them within the time frame of this administration.

That's really one of the key things that everybody wants.

And it's both the filling and the maintenance.

They both vary, so you need that much more space.

That's true.

Thank you, everyone.

I mean, this is related, but so like, kind of drive frequency is the ultimate goal, right?

So we do need more space for more buses.

If we

So great question.

In our original review, we are looking at banning the security on the second lot.

which means that would give us the specific capacity, but it doesn't give us anything beyond that.

So we make some builds out of that.

So that's why the conversation started about applying for the third for non-union property, because then it allowed us some opportunity to really plan out the facility over at 30 years horizon for an expansion, consolidation, whatever you want to call it.

And as we go through the vision plan, the number eight is higher than six feet of the applied process

And just I'm reading this map right those that area on the left.

Those are car parking spaces.

How many how many spots is that?

we are all pretty short today.

This room is always shaking my head.

We are playing vehicle chairs with folks using these places right now.

So any relief that we get is going to be a plus.

And as we add additional drivers, it's going to become more critical to identify additional folks as folks.

Parking, parking by a lot is next to our facility that's right in front of the schools.

Which brings it all, of course, back to housing and where people are coming from.

Yeah.

OK, thank you.

Yes.

I'm sure that you

I think grants work also.

So I was just like, I pulled up the NOFO and I was like skimming through it.

It's all low emissions.

It's like they have that flag.

I'll read a sentence from the announcement I had.

FTA is now requiring transit agencies to describe how their projects will improve the accessibility of transportation for families with young children.

with a focus on improved access to jobs, health care, and retail.

Childcare, I hope.

Yeah, we're going to need it.

We have facts.

I was going to straighten it up a little too, because I wanted to see how they were awarding dollars.

It's real money.

So I think we're able to shop and because I think what we'll be able to prove is that we'll be able to get into construction within a reasonable time frame and get hopefully completed by the end of this prejudice.

Plus, we've got all the products that we didn't have last year.

We have the three reports.

We have the cost analysis.

We have the vacant lot next door.

Yeah, the vacant lot next door helps.

You know, we're not having to include that in the proposal.

Back to Ann's question about solar.

So, um,

We have not considered to add language for solar panels.

Our focus right now, I believe we can, there are other grant opportunities that we can be able to go out there for solar.

We don't have the necessary to go through the low grant opportunity.

Sustainability is telling us all the time about different grant opportunities to get solar panels.

So as soon as we get water, we want to turn them loose and let them go and find us some money.

And if, if this project just happens to come in under budget, is that money able to be used?

Is it flexible or do we have to give it back?

So comes the strings.

So if it's earmarked for construction of the project, we can.

Under construction of the project as proposed.

Correct.

Right.

They don't allow us that.

So the motion would be to move approval for supporting the fiscal year 2025 low or coalition grant application for Charlottesville area transit facility expansion project.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

Thank you for the presentation for answering the questions.

All right, the next item, we have a couple of informational presentations.

The first, the Safe Streets and Roads for All Regional Moves Safely, Blue Bridge.

This is the presentation of the final and final regional governance of the Safe Nation Plan.

Thank you.

Hello, everyone.

I'm pleased to present today.

This is probably going to be maybe the last presentation on C&P Policy Board.

maybe not the last ability, but we're very close to the project's completion.

They all want to highlight a few things that very well, or many of you are familiar with.

Safe streets and roads for all backgrounds, Albemarle counties and city of Charlottesville leadership commitment, the planning process, the high injury network, the four E's of roadway safety, our public engagement processes,

the proposed solutions and next steps.

As you all know, in 2021, a bill was signed into law that became the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that established the Discretionary Program, Safe Streets and Roads for All.

This program supports the United States Department of Transportation National Rural Waste Safety Strategy and its vision of zero fatalities by 2050 using a safe system approach.

As you know, the Moosaysia Blue Ridge is a regional project, but the plan was designed in a way that is also considered a super local plan as it has specific jurisdictional chapters for each locality.

This slide highlights Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville leadership commitments.

They both adopted resolutions to reduce the

number of fatalities and serious injuries by half by 2045, with an additional city of Charlottesville eliminating roadway fatalities by 2045.

So both of these goals were adopted in support and alignment of the safety of state's priorities.

Before I talk about the planning process, I want to acknowledge and thank the project team who, besides planners from DJPDC, consisted of the working group member represented by staff from each of the jurisdictions, VDOT and as well as our consultant, the Kingley Board.

A little bit about the planning process, so it's divided into four key components and supported by three rounds of public engagement.

both all of these components of the safety action plan were very engaging throughout the entire process that ultimately led to the development of the final comprehensive safety action plan.

One of the key methodologies that we developed for the project is the hindering network methodology.

This serves as a map that shows the highest concentration of fatal crashes or crashes that resulted in fatalities and serious injuries.

for your reference it's tiered by the most severe crashes down to the least severe crashes but this was very important to identify the locations that were included in the safety action plan and we'll talk about a little bit more in the spot specific improvements so I want to highlight the four keys of roadway safety that this plan was built upon

The goals were to design safer facilities for all of our road users through engineering, build a culture of roadway safety through education, reinforce safe travel behaviors through enforcement, and save lives through emergency response.

I want to talk a little bit about the public engagement.

We provided the plan out to the public

in three rounds.

In round one, we identified issues and opportunities in the entire region.

In round two, we engaged on strategies and priorities.

And the third round was the review of the comprehensive safety action plan or the draft document through your call to meetings.

I want to say that for all three rounds, well, for the first two rounds, we went out to where the public was.

to meet their needs and get as much feedback as we could for all kinds of road users and different ages as well.

That ultimately led to our proposed solutions and I want to say thank you to VDOT for this segment because without their help, well not just VDOT but also jurisdictional staff for this segment because we would not have

developed the segment without their feedback and without their help.

But our proposed solutions are divided into three categories.

First, we have spot improvements.

These are engineering countermeasures that are specific high-risk intersections, and they're proven solutions for safety that will reduce the total number of fatalities and serious injuries within the county.

The next category is the systemic improvements.

These can be applied to the entire roadway network within the county and how these are classified as low cost, high impact solutions to achieve our goal.

And the final

proposed solutions are the policies and programs.

These are the non-engineering solutions that can be applied to address the other E's of the project.

All of the proposed solutions are highlighted into the complete of safety action plan.

So with the adoption of a move safe with Blue Ridge comprehensive safety action plan, both City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County are now in position

will be eligible applicants for implementation funding in the next Safe Streets and Roads for All rounds.

As you all know, there is currently a round ongoing with the in-line applications by tomorrow.

So we definitely missed this round, but there's going to be another round next year with about $1 million.

And I just want to mention that since that one is being the last round for now,

probably will be highly competitive when it comes to implementation projects.

So I think more of the funding will be allocated towards implementation and less for planning and development.

When it comes to the monitoring, PGPBC's team will do an annual update on the data of the safety action plan.

can be in line with further safety transportation train and further refine our strategies as needed.

That's all I have today.

I'll be happy to take any questions.

Just to reiterate the point that each locality has to go for the new grant on their own.

Well, this was a regional

Yes, and do that effort on their own.

There are other places that are submitting regional applications that are including systemic improvements across multiple jurisdictions and are submitting on behalf of their region.

So the PDC is an applicant, the MPO is an eligible applicant, but local jurisdictions are the preferred applicant because it is specific to your

needs.

So, for example, in the Fredericksburg region, they just submitted or they're about to submit an application assuming their board approved.

That seems like an interesting way to prioritize

since Virginia has independent cities that are often metro areas.

So specifying local preference when it's always going to be regional.

Appreciate you all the work and effort going on and that of staff that put all this together and bring it to Cleveland.

So thank you so much.

Also pleased to share, if I may just interject, I know we're in the MPO meeting, but all six of the PDC's jurisdictions did approve it at the board level.

Yeah, I think one of the things, you know, I'm happy to do some more research into this.

like we can apply for you for a project.

We can apply on behalf of the region for a series of connected regional projects.

I would have to go back and look and say if Albemarle wants this one specific thing and Fluvanna wants a different specific thing, whether you can couple them together or if it's, hey, rumble strips were a thing across all six, let's go ahead and put in an application for this very connected, I'd have to look back at what the details of that were.

That's what we have to go look at.

All right, that's great.

So the next item is the Campos CTAK membership and appointments.

There was a document included in your

I can speak to that one.

And so we included that on there.

For your reference, there are just a couple of slides that pulled out information from the CTAC bylaws for your reference.

We have this item one here because the CTAC committee consists of 13 members total, three of which are appointed by the MPO.

And so we have two member terms that have expired currently, and we have one MPO appointed member that is asked to resign.

And so as the MPO, you all would be the appointing body for those three people.

And we have not received any applications to date so far for those.

And so we included this just to ask, is there anyone specific that you all would like us to reach out to and maybe share the application with?

Is there a way that you all would like to amplify these vacancies?

I would like to introduce the notion that, and I'll ask if Ms.

Finley wants to comment on it as well,

County representatives of C-TAC have began to question the purpose of C-TAC when a long range transportation plan has taught information.

And what's the point?

Does he want about it?

So in the pre-agenda, we thought it best to put this here so that the policy board can start thinking about, I think it's time to consider its charge.

Does it need to have a charge when a transportation plan is not being actively worked on?

and if it does, what is it?

So that we can get member, I don't, I've, you know, I think it, I think it was frustrating to hear folks or participating in committee say, I don't know what we're supposed to be doing.

So I can't imagine their frustrations and sort of the ones that are wondering that, but I was just frustrated, frustrated hearing it.

So I think the policy board needs to grapple with this.

So this is kind of the introductory, all right, the CTAC,

Do we need C-Tech outside of transportation, long range transportation plan formation?

And if so, what is its purpose and charge?

And we need to figure that out beside that.

So this is kind of the knock on the door of a conversation that will happen in probably the next meeting or so as we figure that out.

I think that's really timely.

Our last meeting was just on the specific topic.

through the bylaws.

asked me to advise the policy board, but the current policies right now don't really allow that.

We often hear about presentations after the policy board has already put them aside about them, so there's not really a time to advise.

I think that was one of the things that I think people talked about.

I hear these presentations in this meeting, and then 17 people come to them to edit some tabs.

and so there's not an opportunity to come back necessarily and advise at the same time while we're hearing about it.

That's

That sounds all accurate.

and then the board could ultimately take that and decide yes, or with all due respect, you know, thinking like, well, no, we just want it during a long range transportation plan.

Is there, when it kind of looked at Taylor and Christine here, is there work that, that, I mean, I'd be willing to do it myself as the chair to engage with the CTEK group in preparation for the next policy board meeting,

Yes.

Yes.

You're everything.

Yes.

Yes.

bylaws work during the summer.

So what are your thoughts on how the process could be?

Would that be, I mean, just assuming that the policy board would alright with myself.

And if I can speak, staff also often says, what are we supposed to be doing necessarily with this group outside of that long range plan?

And what is the comparative advantage of having a citizens advisory committee?

A lot of the planning work we do already has a great deal of public engagement.

How is the advisory committee different than the general public feedback?

Are they there to propose plans?

Are they there to advise on direction?

Are they there to give feedback on existing drafts of work?

And so I think talking through that is really important for us to make sure that we don't have a committee that's expecting and wanting to do one thing, but it's not informing you in the decisions that you all need to make.

And so it doesn't become an effective tool.

So we want to make sure that we're also able as staff to manage

One of the biggest challenges that we've seen over the last five years or so is how to engage with public where they are.

As an eight-year veteran from 2000 to 2008 on what was called chart back then.

Yep.

That was our, well, I mean, number one, there was huge controversy in the air.

this was the third or fourth iteration of the bypass so every single meeting there was some going on and not that and we did not hesitate to take our obstructionist view up to the policy board and say look guys you gotta stop doing what you're doing or don't change what you're doing any number of different things so I think two predecessors to Christine trying to do away with that

and really restricted their ability to do anything.

So perhaps in your archives, you might go back to, you know, 20 years or so, and if there was, I remember, really great engagement on ours, but also, here are things that other places are doing.

And if VDOC was back in its prehistory, we're never going to build roundabouts here.

Are you there, Chuck?

I remember you saying that.

but we had constant engagement about that for about four years until the first roundabout in Albemarle was filled and maybe in the whole Central Virginia at the airport.

And we were killing somebody every single year there.

And since then, there has never been a city.

So I think it was a great learning experience, a great way to focus a lot of community attention.

There were many other things such as transit to the airport where

there was a lot of talk about that community and the airport squashed it like a bug because they wanted to bring it in from the park.

But that's something that's still going on, it's still being raised.

So I would just see what you all can turn up because I think my documents are so covered in cobwebs now, they wouldn't do us any good.

But it was P.B.

Anderson, the university architect came to every single meeting.

I mean, this was

Maybe it's because there was nothing else going on in the early 2000s.

And so we were all going to trip down here every month and in the old brochures and do things.

But it was certainly a lot of wonderful engagement.

Worked on the light rail possibilities, where we'd be standing, sitting sides across the roads and tripped around in the briars out there and looked at all the various possible siding locations and things like that.

So I think that sky's the limit as far as the time goes.

information that the group could get engaged in.

And I, for one, would be very happy with whatever ideas they come up with.

I would also add that we're unique in our area for our Citizens Advisory Committee compared to some benchmark looking across other MPOs or TPOs that have one.

Not all of them have one.

They instate it during the long-range plan, and then it sunsets until the next long-range plan.

But we happen to have a group of fairly technical people on a Citizens Advisory Committee.

We've got engineers, we've got professors, we've got planning commissioners.

you know we've got folks that are offering a technical perspective versus a citizen hub-and-spoke outreach to other citizens and so also looking at that I think is going to be really important because we want to also and this is me speaking so I don't I don't want to get myself we want to make sure that we're not outweighing the opinions of individual technical members against what the technical committee's role is supposed to be this is supposed to be more of a general citizen

perspective.

And so when we get things like design drawings from a citizen, we would not receive them from any other citizen member and bring them to you all and say, do you want to consider that?

So we also, we need a little bit of help navigating what is it that you guys need from this individual group that is unique to what feedback you're getting from the technical committee and from the broader public?

And how can they help you get what you need?

So I love your suggestion that in the short term lets you and

Yeah.

Then just include any interjection with the chair and vice chair taking that on by anybody else.

I want to do some summer bylaw work and stuff.

Okay.

I don't know, does C-TAC have a vice chair?

Yeah.

So I mean, you might want to include the vice chair of C-TAC.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then also as we move further into the agenda, we're going to talk about some proposed changes to perhaps the way that all of the transportation meetings are stacked.

Because we recognize with when we were meeting every single month, it was a lot easier to bring things to one committee before the other.

Now that we're every other committee, we do have times where things will need to come to you, for example, such as Lono, and there's no opportunity to get it before CTAC because they don't meet until another month after you.

I'm interested in your expression about a private engineer comes up with an idea but you would not go any further and this reminded me that over many years when citizen groups had done ordinance work for example on our

University, some other private people, and they did monstrous amounts of work and brought us a draft bylaw and it saved five years because it was adopted in the number of months.

So that was a very positive experience from ALGRA's perspective.

And so I'm not sure if there isn't a space for an outside ID.

I mean, you'd have to hand it off to proper, you know, be somebody else more official in the hierarchy to see if it wouldn't do me any good to see it.

Well, and that's part of what I'm saying is would we receive it from a citizen and bring it to you all?

On the Bike and Pet Advisory Committee, that's been used for kind of crowdsourcing information and ideas and putting together lists of things that then the city does act on.

So it's not unheard of to do that kind of thing.

I don't know if technical drawings are necessarily coming out of that, but I think there's room for

Very good.

Thank you.

So that will take us to item six.

We've got staff updates and then our upcoming meeting schedule.

And Tori Ann will go over this.

Thank you.

So there is an informational item, but also an action from the board.

There has been two requests for two separate adjustments to the TIP document.

The first request comes from the DRPD and its adjustment 13 to the TIP.

The request is to add funding to the fiscal year 2025 in the amount of $215,000.

from which 34 are going to be state funds, 172 federal 5310 funds and 8000 in local match.

The other adjustment, number 14,

comes from VDOT and this one is to update preventive maintenance for bridges grouping to reflect the most recent changes.

This adjustment moves $335,000 from the SDBG funds from federal fiscal year 2024 to federal fiscal year 2025 to reflect the actual expenditures during the same period.

The last piece is the amendment number 12 to the document.

This request comes from DRPT again and it's asking us to add a new tip block titled operating assistance.

This block will provide funding to the PATH program and in details that is $3,000 in FTA 5310 funds, $3,000 in state funds and $1,000 in local match.

As I said, this is to support the PATH program, specifically volunteer driver programs.

so they can increase transportation services for older adults.

This will also cover mileage reimbursements for drivers and background checks.

In the agenda packet, there was a memo from CA and PO staff, as well as CA and PO technical committee, both recommending that the policy board adopt the new tip block or new amendment to the tip

And just to clarify, because the resolution is just specific to amendment number 12, right?

That's all.

Yes, exactly.

So the motion would be, are there any questions first?

So the motion would be moved to approve amendment number 12 to the Charlottesville MPO fiscal year 24-27 transportation and improvement program.

All right.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Abstention?

No?

Awesome.

Thank you, Lauren.

Item B under six, the fiscal year 26 UPWP updated allocations.

Taylor, speak to that?

So the policy board formally adopted the UPWP at your last meeting on April 23rd with anticipated updates to the budget once we received those allocations.

So I have included in the packet the final UPWP document.

We have received final allocations from DRPT for the transit funds and we have received VDOT's SVR budget.

So now none of these numbers are draft any longer and the additional funds were split proportionally across all three tasks in the same proportions that were presented

That doesn't require any action on the part, just a bit of additional update.

No questions.

All right.

So for this item, we did want to give you all an update.

So at the MPO tech committee's meeting last week, we proposed and they accepted moving their current meeting times from it was every other third Tuesday from 10 to 12

moving that to every other first Tuesday from 10 to 12.

And that will give us a little bit more of a buffer between the meetings of the technical committee and policy board in case they direct us to make any technical changes to work.

And staff would have a little bit more time to be able to make those changes before it came in front of you for your consideration.

That was one reason for that.

And then the other was that it also conflicted with Commonwealth Transportation Board meetings and staff at our agency and also at their organizations probably should be attending and listening to those in real time.

So being able to meet that.

helps accommodate that as well.

For the MPO Policy Board, you all currently meet every other fourth Wednesday from four to six.

We propose keeping that day but bumping it from 4pm to 4.30pm since the Regional Housing Partnership meets right before and there's no buffer currently between those two meetings.

So sometimes folks have to kind of come over in a hurry.

We still have to kind of flip this room if they're meeting in the same room and that would just give us a little bit more of a buffer to be able to do that.

Does this day and time still work for everyone generally?

4 to 6?

and Charlottesville.

I mean, if you want to set time, but we've always been, I think it's been more confident for Albemarle and Charlottesville Wednesday.

Yeah.

Yes, it is.

So, 430.

Okay.

Thank you.

Great.

Number seven, VDOT update on projects.

Sandy is walking up.

Chuck will jump in if he needs to.

So first of all, believe it or not, we're done with round six of SmartScale.

The CTD approved.

They're all officially funded.

So that's a wrap on round six.

And we're talking about round seven now.

We are going to the VDOT Cool Pepper district and we'll be

in the not too distant future, reaching out to localities and our regional partners to start talking about round seven potential applications and interests.

We at the district are currently working on developing some additional tools to help that applications.

But speaking of moving meetings for the CTV meeting, fresh off the press is that I heard that there's going to be a pretty

substantive review of project performance from round six of the July medium.

So that will probably provide a lot of good feedback to know what to do going into round seven.

We've been talking about the STARS project.

So we have

the project in the city of Charlottesville, the Ridgeback entire West Main Water Street intersection project.

We completed the public engagement on that and held the alternatives meeting to start talking about potential alternatives at that intersection in May.

And we're currently working on setting up a public feedback meeting in early August.

That will be a meeting and we'll also be carrying that with a second survey to get feedback on the alternatives.

and then the combined US 29 study between Barracks Road and Woodbrooke.

We completed the public survey.

We had over 2000 responses on that one.

And we also held the kickoff meeting for the transit component of that study.

The existing conditions report will be completed in early August.

We wrapped up the two surveys for the pipeline projects.

That's the 5th Street DDI at the I-64 interchange and then the US-29 at I-64 exit 118 interchange.

We had 450 responses on the US-29 survey and over 700 on the 5th Street survey.

We have a meeting on Friday for those two to start talking about existing conditions, what we learned from the public feedback and start

determining which alternatives we might want to move forward for further vetting.

So for the, for the pipeline, we will be moving into the alternatives evaluation part of the study next month.

And are there any showings on the essays?

I might have a question.

I was just hoping to be worthless.

You mentioned final round six is done.

I will try to stay too focused on that wasn't exactly sunshiny news for us here locally.

Um, I think, I think we have better, we have a better idea and please feel free to jump in if you want to add anything.

I think we have a better idea of how to appropriately scale the applications and what to look forward for in terms of what types of applications are going to perform well.

That said, I think everybody in the state is trying to do the same thing.

So I would anticipate that there will be a very competitive round.

But we want to do our due diligence to help set up all of our applicants for success with their applications.

The Pool Heifer District has always performed really well above average for how those scores go.

It does not sound like that is the end sunshine.

Actually, that was my exact question is, you know, since the rules changed recently, are we anticipating changes again?

They do a review every round, so there might be minor changes, but I wasn't anticipating kind of that scale of changes.

How much does the governor's administration have an impact on that sort of thing?

Um, I think, I mean, they appoint the CTB members to some extent.

The CTB ultimately decides the policy, but a lot of that is in state code.

Similar in the homework for today, there were, maybe it was in the tip, you talked about

and with our CFO fund transportation projects.

There was a discussion, I believe, with people about carbon bonds.

They're going to see me earlier this week.

What's different, probably, is that we're going to sign a contract, but I hope they'll find out.

That was the anxiety that all of a sudden Virginia was going to get left off.

If the federal money wasn't there, then it's not a contract.

It's all these projects.

Offline is fine, but in another part of my homework, I used to just pretend they were talking about what the image of the MPO

Where was that Ann?

Age 17 maybe if that's within the tip.

Thank you.

Yeah tip, sorry, Spanish yarn.

Lots of it all the way to route 20 on the east side of 29 and way beyond early still which is the booty side.

on the Northwest.

And so there is not one urban thing about where I live.

I just wonder why it's so big now and what the consequences would be for those changes.

And that was another thing that the person two times before Christine was the one to make a video about.

I don't know.

So anyway, I'll just leave you on the table.

All right, that moves us to our roundtable updates.

I will move through the online folks first.

Jason, I see your name first.

Yes, hold on a second while I get my camera on.

Hello, everybody.

So, John is currently engaged in developing a communications and marketing plan.

We're also happy to report that the Commonwealth Transportation Board approved the applications we made for a variety of things, including our soft facilities and parking lot upgrades, as well as micro transit and for ADA and possibly Green County.

pilot as well as a full scheduling dispatch software transition which is decades in the making overdue.

The other thing we've been working on lately, some of you have received a notice that we were engaged in a community survey.

which is part of our due diligence as a transit agency to talk to our riders and people who use us or not.

We launched this study on June 2nd.

We'll be concluding on July 2nd.

Currently, I want to thank everybody who's helped spread the word.

We've been using QR codes, paper copies in all buses, flyers.

We've had people ride the bus.

We've distributed local media, TV, radio, UVA.

We've had print and news outlets and posted on socials with paid ads.

Currently, we have about 654 respondents, which we're very happy about.

We have one week to go, and we're hoping for a strong finish before the 4th of July holiday.

And we need to share our results of this with our board, the jump board, which is going to meet on August 13th, and thereafter that meeting we'll be able to make presentations to other bodies like this one or the

rural transportation policy board or attack or any of the others has desired.

And yeah, that's about it for now.

A few updates and we're looking forward to the, by the way, the survey is exciting.

There's a lot of interesting stuff in there.

Thank you.

Mitch, DRBT, I see you're on there now.

Great.

Just a few brief updates and Jason alluded to this, the SIP was adopted and you can view our now approved SIP on our website on a pretty cool interactive manner on there if anyone hasn't checked it out.

And just another plug for some NTI courses that we are helping to host.

So upcoming very quickly now, we have our public involvement in transportation decision making that's available for registration for July 8th through the 10th.

and that's being hosted here in Richmond at Reynolds Community College and then we also have state and metropolitan transportation planning that'll be September 15th and 16th at PlanRVA's headquarters here in Richmond as well.

Great.

Thank you.

And I can't see all the names.

Is that everybody that's online that may give an update?

Can you all see if there's any other names on there?

I think that's it.

Yeah, that's it.

All right.

Good.

Hello?

Thank you.

Julia from UVA.

I don't think we have any updates, just that we're

UTS is on summer schedule.

That's pretty clear to everybody.

Great.

Mr. Williams, beyond what was presented today, any updates?

Just a quick one.

We're going to be giving an update to city council on July 21st.

What we noticed as we went through our budgeting process this year is that the way it's compressed, we don't really have an opportunity to lay out all of our planning.

So we're going to be giving an update there almost really first at the 4 o'clock session.

So just want to give a brief heads up on that.

So this part's kind of our budget planning process.

The beginning is not the end.

starts kicks off using that on September, then we would have the development providers would have an idea of, you know, potential costs for the comfortable transit services.

So they can make decisions up front as opposed to being pressed to get to the last 30 days of the register.

So that's a that's a good thing.

Additionally, we have some capital money that had

going.

Yeah, the major one that we've been trying to get underway, press the poll.

I'm sorry, Midway Manor.

Midway Manor, Gary comes with me.

Midway Manor, the goal is to have that one started on June W. So that's soon.

And I'm hopeful that that project should be done

and then the nine days.

That would be an optimal schedule to get that up and with the nine days.

And then we have other amenities projects that we have identified for funding for the next capital year.

There are three, I believe, in the county.

State.

I'm into these projects.

I want to give everybody kind of a flavor for our costs.

We will be happy to do a presentation if you would like us to do that, but I'm into these projects for cattle, for trains that are pretty expensive.

If anybody has gone by or would like to go by, there's a 80-day compliant bus stop at Belmont

is a great issue.

We had utilities, all sorts of things.

There are others that have been $70,000, $80,000.

So we were anticipating that it was about $30,000 fees.

We were aware of that.

We see that now.

So the numbers are probably about $75,000 to $80,000 fees.

additional projects happen.

So we have shelters, all of them.

Every bus stop that we have, in my opinion, doesn't necessarily want a shelter.

But to make them compliant, the first step is to put in the bus pad, the pad itself.

said shelter, but I added stuff to support a shelter, but that will make it compliant first.

And then we'll have a, we should have really, you know, some sort of information about whether the stop warrants a shelter.

Because if the ridership is too pretty, maybe it's not a shelter, maybe it's a bench as opposed to a shelter.

It's the Catch-22.

It is.

It's 95 degrees.

Nobody's going to stand at that bus stop because they can't sit down and they can't be protected from the heat or the snow or the ice or whatever.

Not opposed to taking something everywhere.

Like, it can gain profitability.

All of us can do that.

And then, are we really, like I said, if the ridership is low, it's going to help out in where it's worth entering around in.

people are getting off to go home.

You don't have to shelter because they're not using it, right?

And somebody asked me a question I didn't have the answer to.

Are there regular reports that you provide to county staff about ridership, a number of routes,

So actually, part of what was asked of me when I first got here, almost six years ago now, is that we have a dashboard that actually allows you to see all that information.

We're working with UTA, which is our APC data on collecting all of our team, and they

they are updating our information with Nelson Agar once a quarter.

So Zoe knows because she's been tasked with making sure to benefit them.

So we did a two year dump about three months ago, four months ago.

So you're starting to see regularly more updates.

So the system, you're going to be able to get more refined, more information, more history there.

So you'll be able to see the real trends on the power system.

Well, it's been a whole new world since the last six years.

So thank you for what you've done to help us in as a partner.

At our last meeting, we did have a member of the public come and just express their concerns about the activist who was arrested for spray painting the crosswalk on Elliott.

And we just like have all the members of the board that's like expressed that they've been hearing a lot from their communities and the folks that they knew in the area.

Both concerns about pedestrian safety and we're really grateful for the quick films and everything that you know,

John?

So last time we met, I talked with some of the public and the public engaged in these projects.

then we also had the Fontaine public hearing which was very positive that public hearing was about the interchange there at 29 also the city's portion of the street stayed on Fontaine and then the district had no roundabout that public hearing was held and well attended some construction updates on the 240-250 roundabout is going on

We're maybe looking at detorns for the 6-8 bridge, sometimes starting after on the 12th of July.

For the 5th Street, Old Liffburg roundabout, we're working on right-of-way acquisition letters.

The issue that we've actually issued last week.

The Rile Road, County Warren Parkway roundabout, the Belvedere Green T, we're working on getting right-of-way plans approved there.

And the 20th and 5th Street roundabout, we're working on 5th and 9th.

Those are all under design build.

at the construction project and the landings working all mainly at one time.

Any questions for Shawn?

Sure.

So I gave a lot of details to city council at the beginning of this month, giving sort of an annual overview of what we do to transfer fiction claims.

So I'm going to leave a lot of that to that presentation.

You'll need to go back and check that out.

But a couple of things I do want to highlight that we didn't talk about since May.

to work.

So that was all great for the month of May.

But what happened beyond May was kind of the next question.

What we launched for inmates were part of the answer to that, which is fightseagle.com.

That is a place for us to gather information about where to fight, when to fight, when there are events out, where to get a fight.

So everything that you want to know about fighting in this region, we're trying to concentrate on our website.

Good information out there now and it's going to continue to be built out over the coming years with our participation in the community that we receive.

The other thing I've mentioned that we talked about a bit during that, so you can also update, we use our QuickBuild program.

Recently, Council put aside some money to put on our surplus and to build the following transportation improvements.

These are QuickBuild projects that we're putting at the intersection where we have unsafe processing, but also

County.

So, we're trying to put on the ground this calendar year.

Uh in addition to those thirty four, we've got to set up another thirty-three projects that are similar flavor that we'll find out of some existing city funds.

Uh so, that'll be about a million dollars worth of that we're trying to get out of the world of the next year and that's a lot of

When we're looking for future grant opportunities for things like H-CIP, we'd like to know what works and what we can put in a lot of different places so that we can utilize state and federal funds as smartly as possible.

You have seen many around the Dallas time.

We got to where we started with the design on the Rose Island Drive.

That's sort of at up the area in the early Nittlesville.

So that area will total early Nittlesville will have some of that.

So that's one thing that we're excited about.

Well, I look forward to hearing you all because I know at least a dozen places in the world have the same techniques and needs to be experimented on.

A couple of things.

Just past May, it was Pervoke Month.

We also kicked off the three-nunch trail venture and planning project.

Very successful.

The other project we're pretty excited about is the Great Bridge Lanes closure to vehicles.

We just got our pedestrian light count information back, I think earlier this week, maybe last week, and it's proven very successful.

We will be passing it to the board in August for determination whether we need to do the best project as well.

Last thing, you probably all know that we're in the middle of our compound update.

We brought our transportation project, our transportation chapter to the board in

May as well.

We've got plenty of comments and good feedback, but they don't want to mention about that as it does call for a multimodal plan that we hope to kick off after adoption for the urban areas of the county.

Thank you.

Did I miss any of that?

Can I add a couple things?

As speaking of Quick Builds, which were mentioned a couple of times, if anybody wants to join the Bike Ped Advocacy Committee next month, because it's July 3rd, which is holiday, we're changing our schedule a little bit.

So instead of having a full meeting, we're going to go on a bike and walk to the Quick Build, a lot of the Quick Build projects.

So if you want to do a lap of the city and check those out, it's going to be

outside of City Hall at five o'clock on Thursday, July 3rd.

So anybody who's local will join for that.

And then the other thing Ben also mentioned, going back and looking at the presentation he gave, there's a website that some local constituents made that's called meetings.seavilledata.org that has both City, County Harrisonburg and Greene County

meetings, and it has the video with the transcript right next to it.

And you can jump to the transcript and check out exactly where that part of the meeting is.

And so you can easily navigate to where you want to watch.

It is meetings.cbuildata.org, but it does include counting meetings as well.

And it's not just council and Board of Supervisors.

There's Planning Commission.

It's not yet.

Any other of the order?

All right.

Any additional matters from the public?

So, Mr. Krebs.

All right.

We will close matters from the public and if there is no objection, we will adjourn.

Our next meeting is in office.

I don't have the date.

Enjoy your summer.

I lost summer.