MPO Technical Committee Meeting   7/21/2020

So we are now being recorded.

And Rory, I'll turn it over to you.

Great.

Thanks, Nick.

And yeah, I guess I should have used my full name too, but I can probably get away with the mononym like share.

Not too many Rory's in the public.

So let's go ahead and get started.

First item up is matters from the public.

Sounds like we have one member of the public here.

No, I'm okay.

I'm here just to observe.

Okay, thanks.

Item number two, approval of giraffe minutes from May 19th meeting.

Does anyone have any changes they'd like to make or entertain a motion?

Okay, so we have a motion from Julian and a second from Chuck.

I think affirmation is fine, but I'll leave it up to you, Rory, if you want to do a roll call.

Fine by me.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All opposed?

Any abstentions?

Motion passes.

All right.

Julian nominated.

This is Chuck.

All in favor.

All right, we got three, I'll call it.

Any opposed?

And I'll abstain.

And then we would just need to do the same for a vice chair.

All right, the pain continues.

Who's our current vice chair?

Jawan.

He who is not here is nominated.

Yeah, I nominate him.

Yep, him.

OK. All right.

So then we just need a vote for Kevin as vice chair.

All right.

All opposed?

Aye.

Any abstentions?

Oh, yes, I didn't vote aye, but aye.

All right, is that all our officers?

That is it.

All right, cool.

Seems like so recently that I got elected the first time.

All right, well, let's go on to the one-pagers review.

So I'll turn it over to Ian.

Ian, like I said, is an intern here with the TJPDC, and I'll let him introduce himself.

But one of his main projects has been working on the creation of kind of these one-page summaries of all the different programs within the MPO, just because there's a lot.

And this is kind of a way to make some of that information a little bit more digestible to the public.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Ian.

Let me open that up.

Hey, guys.

So my name is Ian Baxter.

I'm an intern here at the PDC.

I'm a second year, a rising second year master's candidate at the Batten School at UVA.

So this is my summer internship.

And yeah, so like Nick said, sort of the goal of this, at least on my end, is to translate a lot of the kind of complicated

Language and programming that the NPO and the PDC does at large in terms of kind of the specifics of what all these acronyms mean and turn them into kind of easily digestible one pagers that members of the public can access and really understand

If they have a specific concern or if they have a specific idea of how things are changed through local government or the PDC, they can refer to these to have a much better idea and be a little more literate with it.

And it's fit in perfectly with my education because I have no planning or transportation background.

So this has been a pretty good crash course and understanding and learning about what

Not only the MPO does, but the PDC at large.

And so what Nick's showing you right now is like the total.

This is like once I finished the research, I put it on a page in Microsoft Publisher.

And as of now, I think we have about 15 or 16 done with like a little more color.

and a little nicer to look at that I can maybe we can set it afterwards.

But that's sort of where we're at right now.

But I presented these also to the CTAC committee last Wednesday.

And one of their main concerns was that even something like this would be a little too maybe dense or inaccessible for someone with absolutely no background in local government or planning or in housing

The whole game of PDC programming.

So what we're going to do next is sort of translate these to an even higher, like looking at it from an even higher place.

So sort of sets of PowerPoint decks.

And so I met with Sandy yesterday to talk sort of what those would look like.

And one idea we had was making up a fake project and talking about how we would get from

You know, requests for funding all the way into implementation for someone who is interested, who had an idea for their neighborhood and sort of walking them through the process of how transportation improvements actually happen.

Because one thing she was saying, there's a lot of confusion when you come in and maybe talk about a long range plan.

People will come in and ask about sidewalks being, you know, full of potholes and different people have a, they don't necessarily understand where where they're

concerns fit into the broader goal of the MPO and PDC programming.

So, that's kind of where we're at now.

Translating that a little bit into an even higher level because I was actually going over this with my girlfriend like before I presented at SeaTac and she was like, I don't, this is even like a little, there's a barrier here that even I can't get past because I don't have any background in transportation planning.

So, I thought that was really good criticism and feedback from the SeaTac.

So,

says the internal budget is often provided by the local planning commission, which provides permanent full-time staff.

I'm pretty sure that's not the case with us, right?

I'm not aware of the city planning commission ever giving that money or having any full-time staff.

Yeah, I think it just should be planning district commission instead of planning commission.

So yeah, not from Albemarle County or City of Charlottesville's planning commission of appointed officials, but from the TJPDC, so the local planning district commission or regional commission.

That makes a lot of sense.

And yeah, it's just a question.

It's a question.

So under the unified planning work program, it's just a question on initials.

When you refer to in those, and B at least, that you have PL funding and FTA funding, just consider that you want to always have, and maybe you would do this in your higher level, but you'd always set out what those initials refer to at some point so that

So people kind of go, well, how do I know what an FTA and I'll be helping it.

And so I will say thank you for doing this because even though I'm now, I guess, what am I in my third year as a, as a planning commissioner, this isn't, this wasn't anything that was part of my parlance or my universe prior to being selected to be a planning commissioner.

But I will tell you that just reading through them when they came, I thought they were extremely useful.

And I use the Rhodes, but I don't have this.

This isn't my background.

And so I would be careful about distilling it too much, because they are important issues.

They do have some complexity to them.

And I know this is going to sound like somebody who's had too much education and people should actually sort of work to try and understand some of the stuff.

Because often what happens when you distill it down to such a level, then when the natural pieces come out, which are extraordinarily complicated and many layered, then people won't enter into it because it's like, oh, this is a big, big barrier that I can't get over.

as opposed to being challenged along the way.

So that's sort of the natural thing that they'll get into.

It's like making something too easy and then when you get confronted with something that's challenging, you kind of give up because I can't figure out how to get through all that stuff.

So I would just sort of caution you not to make it, you know, like, not to make it just too easy, that's all.

And I would actually, if it's helpful for someone who's sort of in the, just entering this whole piece, I would look at them at some point if that's a helpful, not just to sort of say, yeah, okay, these make perfectly good.

So, oh, I'm still comfortable.

Yeah, that's a great point.

It's funny because sort of what just happened was that wording, which I thought meant the TJPDC, it got misconstrued and it's an entirely different meaning.

That's sort of what the staff has been going through.

It isn't like, well, when you say public there, it is complicated.

It is multilayered.

So yeah, there's a tension between making it too simple and making it inaccurate that I'm definitely thinking about.

But yeah, I mean, I guess I'm trying to, as far as the sort of higher level stuff, it'll be more like a graphic representation of how, for example, the UPWP even relates to the MPO, even relates to the PDC.

And having people just have, I guess, a base understanding of the organization, because I agree, there's really, with some of the stuff, there is no way to make it simple without, without frankly making it inaccurate.

And so I've been trying basically through conversations with staff,

I'm now in my second term as chair of this committee and I don't always know what exactly we're doing here for.

Certainly when I was appointed to it for the first time, I learned about what an MPO is by reading the Wikipedia article, which is not a particularly good one.

Yeah, I should probably get on that and try not to vandalize it.

Any other thoughts on the one-pagers?

I thought I had one, but...

Excuse me right now.

On the LRTP one, when we say it covers all modes of transportation,

And then there's, there's certainly the parentheses at the top of that paragraph right there under LRTP covers all modes, transportation, train and air are at the end of that.

Oh, that's pedestrian.

There's certain references to it throughout the LRTP.

If there was to be some movement around the Charlottesville Amtrak station, depending on how that project was ultimately funded, it might need to be something that would be referenced in the long range plan.

Cool.

What project are you talking about?

I think there's been some study looking at the capacity constraints that exist there for both trains and users.

Cool.

Thanks, Wood.

If I might, Wood.

Yes.

So I don't know if Jessica's on the call or not.

But we did submit a build grant through DOT for planning work related around the Amtrak station.

And I don't know what the status of that is at this point.

I don't have a ton of information about where that project is in terms of being funded or not.

But yes, it was a build grant application that the TJPDC submitted to try to address capacity concerns in particular and some safety and accessibility concerns as well at the existing train station.

and the funding would provide the opportunity for us to do a master plan for the station site.

Because it's funding for a master plan, it doesn't really matter what's in there at the moment.

Gotcha.

Interesting.

Cool.

That is correct.

I think the acquisition part is still ongoing.

There were some mechanisms that had to be set up by the General Assembly to allow that ownership structure.

So they're spinning up a rail authority statewide that can actually own assets because currently under the

I guess the Constitution, the state, it can't be in the business of owning the assets.

Cool.

And Wood, at our joint meeting we had between this side of the mountain and the other side of the mountain, there was some discussion about a way to move people without rail from I think the first thing was to take people from Tech to Dulles.

So I think you're referring to the Virginia Breeze, which we have.

Yes.

Yes.

We have the one route along the 81 corridor that they are currently looking at restarting after a pause because of the current situation.

And we have two additional routes that are moving forward.

One is a route that runs from along 29 all the way up to Dulles.

That should be moving here very shortly.

and then another one is our capital connection which comes from south side up into Richmond and then continues on to Washington.

I believe our inner city bus coordinator has already coordinated with most of the localities along the route to identify stop locations and things like that.

So, you know, I think the certainty with everything seems to be uncertainty right now.

but there is still a push to get that moving here summer, early fall.

All right.

Oh, sorry.

This again.

Robotic vacuum going crazy.

All right.

I was just going to quickly hop in and just let you guys know that after I leave in the middle of August, and basically I'll be able to give all of the research I've done electronically over back to the PDC staff.

So these aren't obviously set in stone, and any small changes that I might have missed, you guys will see them.

So it's a new language for me.

Awesome, that sounds good.

And I've got a couple typo corrections that I will send to you hopefully or ping me if I don't.

Pretty minor things.

Cool.

Yeah, so Sandy is, she's in on another meeting, so I'll fill in for her regarding the public participation plan.

I only included the memo, so I haven't circulated the full draft plan.

It should be posted online shortly, but I've got a Word copy, and I'll send that to everyone as soon as I get off this meeting.

But essentially, the public participation plan just kind of overviews how the MPO

engages the public in the transportation planning process and meets minimum federal requirements.

It was last updated in 2016 so obviously things have changed since 2016.

And I think Sandy and Lucinda who are both going to be heavily involved in that

revision process really want to make this document kind of a little bit more livable so there's not dated references to outdated committees and whatnot throughout the document.

Also making sure that there's flexibility on the MPO's part to do maybe some more innovative outreach techniques going above and beyond just minimum standards and requirements.

So this was just kind of the first pass at that.

It will be reviewed, the draft will be reviewed by the MPO Policy Board tomorrow and that meeting will be recorded so if people

You know, obviously you're welcome to attend it virtually, but, and I'll send that, the information's posted on the webpage, but like I said, it will be recorded.

So if anyone's interested in kind of the high level discussion points around, um, what the policy board has to say with, with that, I'll, I'll make sure that that's available.

Um, trying to think, um, I know again, um, kind of with, uh, let's see.

Yeah, I mean, I wish, unfortunately, like I said, it's not here to kind of give a more in-depth explanation, but any sort of comments, once I send that full draft around, I can forward those on to Sandy, so that way, those are reflected.

and that.

I think there's a 45-day comment period for that.

So once MPO Policy Board has reviewed it, it will be posted to the website for 45 days for the public to review and comment on it.

And then I think in September, it would go back to our committees for review and kind of taken into consideration any comments that were received in that 45-day comment period.

Happy to answer any questions that I can.

Obviously, I'm not the staff expert on that, but I'll try and answer anything I can.

I know that I will be particularly interested in how do we engage with traditionally underserved

communities and that became particularly evident looking at as we go further down to the next one about the comments on I guess the smart scale comments that it seemed that the population that sort of was actively engaged and it was I was pleased to see that but that it seemed like sort of from the traditional quarters of engagement as opposed to

Some of the communities are individuals who wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable.

So for the one in particular that I thought was helpful, but also hope that it was particularly engaging, was the one around Preston and Grady, where it looks like the major commenter there is the major property owner there now, and I would

even though I'm not part of that, that is actually I used to live near there at one point when I first moved to this community.

Yeah, that's a great point, Julian.

I know the PDC is also working on a communications plan that will go beyond just the public participation plan because that's the federal requirement, but that communications plan should get more to the specific strategies for engaging with a more diverse population and getting beyond the typical

folks that tend to participate.

So once that starts getting the ball rolling on that, then I'll make sure that obviously the committee has access to that.

In addition to that, on our work plan for fiscal year 2021,

You know, Rory and maybe others in the room are more connected to this, but it'd be interesting with all the community groups that have certainly popped up, particularly post-August a number of years ago, and then after the George Floyd murder,

That may be an interesting way to engage with some of those groups to bring them into the public discourse in a way that has a broader circle of helpfulness.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point in terms of reaching out to the specific groups who are active now, because I think in many ways they're younger and less involved on a civic level than many people who are coming from underrepresented groups in general.

So they're even less heard.

And I think that's a really good hook to bring them in.

You know, it has all the feelings of

Even I can't even say this with a straight face.

Sorry, Alex.

But Midtown, the whole conversion of this new thing called Midtown, which steps away from Star Hill and steps away from Vinegar Hill.

So we're going to create this amorphous place called Midtown, which I will curb myself on that.

But there's a bunch of things that are happening around our community.

that seems to be homogenizing its heritage and its history.

And there's part of our community that speaks that everything has to be red-bricked in tribute to the man who appropriated the red bricks from somebody else.

But they don't do anything about the appropriation of the people who are here in this community.

I just want to make sure that you will, I'm sort of, you know, Kevin and people know me well enough now that I tick where I'm coming from.

So you will rarely get blindsided with by me, but I will tell you up front that that's something that I'm concerned about, even though I live in the lower part of Albemarle County right now.

At one point I didn't, I lived right down there near that intersection and feel that we just, we need to be cautious about how we move forward in some ways.

Be respectful, not some cautious isn't the right word.

Yeah, and one thing I'd like to add is like, I'd like to see a little bit more focus on looking into and bringing to light the history behind the places where these projects are proposed.

And I think this is particularly relevant for, you know, the MPO

things that the MPO is interested in, particularly smart scale type projects, because the really bad intersections and the really bad road stretches are often products of really bad city planning of the 1950s through 70s.

And on the city level, I know just

independent individual researchers just looking through old minutes and documents have kind of dredged up all this ugly past.

Lyle Sola-Yates' research really comes to mind.

And I think in a lot of cases, in most cases even, even the people who were decision makers, the planning commissioners, the counselors,

A lot of people, except for the people who remember it firsthand, don't know about it.

And I think it's really hard to make a reasoned, nuanced decision about these things without knowing that history.

And in particular, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a minute, the Preston Grady Project.

where Harlan Bartholomew's plan after the Seville plan was to widen Preston all the way to Emmett Street.

So they seized all this land, all these homes, all these businesses, and widened it.

And then it came to an abrupt stop right at Grady because the people up in Rugby Hills managed to revolt and stop it all.

And that's why it's such a terrible intersection.

If we just talk about, well, look at how terrible and stupid this intersection is, we miss that whole history of how the neighborhoods that are right there were wronged in its creation.

And I think we lose some amount of centering of their needs as we

as we hopefully fix it and make it better.

And so I think taking a little bit of time to look into the history.

I know if you just call up Jeff Warner, he'll probably pull out the old book off some shelf of the original plan and really communicate that out to the public so they know why it is the way that it is.

Why it needs to change and how we're going to make it better.

And then the other thing I'd add to the public participation plan that I don't really see too much in it is a little bit more focus on how we're going to use technology in the coming years to engage better than we have in the past.

Obviously, it's something we've been thrust into abruptly in the last three, four months.

That's why we're all here on Zoom and not down the street in the Water Street Center.

A, that's probably going to be our reality for the next year or so at minimum.

So I think it really is enough of an ongoing situation that we should be explicitly planning and writing into the plan what our intentions are.

But B, I think we need to

to when it's over to not just go back to where we were before, where we're all in the Water Street Center and there's like no members of the public or there's Sean and Bill and no one else because no one's ever heard of MPO Tech.

And to really do more of that kind of proactive outreach and to let people send in comments asynchronously so they don't have to show up at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, which is tough for

everybody I think and there's all sorts of ways obviously you can use technology to do proactive outreach and in a lot of ways you know

were the head of the curve of others like the city in that, you know, in like MetroQuest surveys and things.

But I think there's also some lower tech, less expensive ways that can be very effective as well.

Like, I don't know, an online comment submission form.

So I think something to think about as we flush the plan out and

and really modernize it rather than just kind of making smaller tweaks from the one that was introduced in 2016, which probably itself was minor tweaks.

So yeah, first adopted 2002.

So maybe we need to take a look at what assumptions they made 18 years ago that aren't so valid anymore or could at least be improved upon.

So other thoughts on the PPP?

There's an acronym that doesn't work anymore.

Yeah, I'll chime in.

This is Chuck.

Yeah, we're looking at the same stuff from the state level.

So hopefully, if we get more information and more innovation comes about, we can

work together, incorporate those in the various plans so that we can make sure we're trying to reach out to as many people as possible.

I mean, especially once, at least in the urbanized area, there's more opportunity to be connected.

Whereas you get out in the rural areas and they don't even have wireless and some more broadband in some of the low areas.

So you can't reach out to them at all with the modern technology.

So there's a lot of hurdles that we have to

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me.

And one thing I think about is like,

Even when you're sort of using technology, I think there are ways to do it to reach people who don't have access to the same level of technology on their end.

For example, things like allowing people to provide comment or reaching out to people for comments over text, like SMS, which on the

you know professional end can be sitting at a computer typing quickly that lets you talk to dozens of people in about the same time as you can write an email and then on the other end really just requires access to you know a 3G cell network that not everybody but most everybody has access to and without requiring a ton of mental overhead on their side to

You know, go click a link or find a computer and go to a library and then click a link to do an online survey or whatever.

I mean, even to have a local community center for some of these communities where they could

actually go to if they don't have the technology themselves that's invited and part of that community that they could go to and utilize to get that information.

That would be really helpful, I think, in a way to try to encourage them to participate more.

That would have to be something that the localities would have to work with the communities over.

I know when we reached out to the Southwood

folks for the Fifth Street Study, we actually went out and met with them.

But they had a facility that the developer had provided that they could go to and utilize.

It was sort of like a makeshift community center that they could use to do those meetings.

And those kind of things in those communities would be very helpful, I think, for them to get

It might be a useful project to engage some of the other MPOs in the state and just learn about some of the best practices that they've been doing.

I know Roanoke did some engagement efforts and they worked within kind of the framework of some existing things.

They participated in some United Way listening sessions in their community as a way to, you know, this is all pre-COVID stuff, obviously, but

Engage people that might not normally show up to, you know, a 1030 meeting and stuff like that.

So a possibility would be, you know, have an intern do kind of a doc review and see what other people have in their PPPs or possibly turn to VA MPO or VA PDC as a resource.

and see if they have already put some of that information together.

I know it can be tough when we start looking at FHWA and FTA because the examples you get might be like San Jose and Boston.

And it's like, okay, these don't fit something on our scale.

Yeah, I think that's a great idea to reach out and get everyone's best practices, but also to go beyond what everyone else is doing and really lead and then share our best practices with them.

But definitely the first step is to make sure we're not behind anyone else.

And actually one thing I'd add to Chuck's point is something I've been kicking around is with these Zoom meetings, obviously to participate in Zoom, you need to have a computer with internet access or a phone with

Internet access and app capability.

But of course, that's not totally necessary because there's a dial-in option, which I notice on the packet.

If you click to the PDF, the phone number is there and available.

But on the webpage, before you get into the PDF, it's not.

I think it would be helpful to add the phone number there.

I don't know if maybe not having it on the page is some sort of anti-spam effort, but

Because we need to make considerations about people who don't have phones with app capability or internet access, making that dial-in option as accessible as possible.

And another thing I've picked around, which may or may not be necessary for like this committee, is for people who want to participate in the video chat and to see other people

by video.

You know, obviously, when the city does it, they broadcast on public access TV, and people can watch from there.

But for a smaller committee like this, it's obviously not gonna be broadcast on TV.

It might make sense to set up something like a tablet kiosk, just kind of displaying zoom.

And you can get a cheap Android tablet for like 35 bucks, and then a stand for probably another 20.

So for 50 bucks, you can have a tablet sitting out in front of TJPDC or in front of the Water Street Center that has the meeting available.

And if anyone wanted to engage, they could, you know, just kind of watch or tap and unmute themselves and talk.

Again, maybe not the most MPO tech relevant thing since we're not the most popular people around, but

Yeah, I'd agree with you, Roy.

I mean, one of the things we were exploring is, especially with the ability to do MetroQuest survey, is if you provide the tablets that people can get access to, then they could do the survey online and provide comments that way.

So I think that's a good format to try to utilize.

And it's just making those available in places where people can go to.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I'd love to see, speaking of their longer term public participation plan, like identifying

10, 15 places around the area like the Southwood Community Center where there could be a semi-permanent tablet kiosk that kind of rotates between whatever random issues or surveys or whatever are up today.

Let people engage right there.

These are really great ideas, and I've been writing them down.

I think that the place for this is when we work on that project in our UPWP of including underserved populations.

And so I'll probably come back to you guys in a couple months with a summary and some more questions, maybe some more brainstorming on this.

The public participation plan that we're working on right now is mostly to just meet federal requirements.

So I guess there's like three different projects for public participation.

The current one on the agenda today is just, you know, bare minimum federal requirements.

We don't want to put more in there because if something like COVID happens, we're federally required to do it and we might not be able to.

And then the next level is TJPDC's public engagement plan.

And that will be more robust.

And then we have a specific project just to reach underserved populations and make connections with those communities as well.

So this is something that the staff here is really committed to and engaged in.

Great.

That sounds good.

Thanks so much.

So that's... Hi, Nick.

I'll just go ahead.

Yeah.

And the TIP amendment is just we have the transportation improvement plan.

That's what TIP stands for.

and that is an allocation of funding for transportation projects.

It's through the state with federal money.

So it's basically the MPO level of the state plan of how they're allocating federal funding for the state and then the TIP is our part of that.

So it relates directly to the Metropolitan Planning Organization area

And this is, it's a run of the day amendment.

Nick, I don't know if you can pull it up.

It has, so it's basically, I'm asking the policy board tomorrow night to

to approve this amendment, and it's just moving money into maintenance.

It's preventative maintenance and system preservation, so it's just kind of road maintenance, and we're adding $8.5 million roughly to that grouping, so it's also just a general grouping of roads in the MPO area, so it's pretty run-of-the-mill.

Yeah, this is the National Highway, I forget what the PP stands for, but basically it's, and the TIP document is an obligation document.

We've actually already spent the money from 2000, FY 20.

So this is basically just updating the report to show what money we were asking them to reimburse us for that we've spent this year for payment schedules mainly.

And that's basically what it is.

But we spent the state dollars and we're basically asking the federal government to reimburse us for the money that we spent.

And that's what this reflects.

It's to generally for maintenance items,

We don't know necessarily going out in the future how much we're going to be spending.

So we usually end up having to do changes to these blocks throughout the year as we identify projects that we're going to spend money on.

So this is basically, it's not new money.

It's just money that we were able to get spent.

And part of it is because we didn't have a lot of snow this year.

So we had more funds available to do other things this spring.

So, um, that's why this, this number is so much larger than what it usually has been in the past.

We're amending the current tip, the new tip, which we just adopted last, um, in May.

It's not approved by FHWA.

So we're showing some of the future obligations in FY21, which is the current year.

This is Julian.

So the old table, which has somewhere like 13.7 between fiscal 18 and 19, bears little resemblance to the new adjusted table, which is now up to four, six, it's close to $16 million of funding.

Well, I mean, if you look at it, FY18 didn't change, FY19 didn't change, FY20 is changing, and FY21 didn't change.

So we're basically just adding more money that we were asking the feds to obligate in FY20 that we spent on maintenance of the existing roadway facilities.

So there do seem to be some changes in 18 and 19, though.

18 dropped by 240,000 and 19 dropped by 10 million.

Are you looking at the ones on the screen?

Oh, yeah, you're right.

On the screen, they don't.

Yeah, the one in the packet was a previous, that's an older table that was pulled in initially.

That's why I had talked to Lucinda yesterday and we got it corrected in the one that's shown right here on the screen.

The old table was the one that was adopted in January.

The one that's in the packet was one of the previous ones prior to the January.

amendment.

But this basically, the one that's new is the one that's going to replace the one that was adopted in January.

And really the only change was for the FY20 year, we had, like I said, we had additional funding leftover from the winter because we didn't have that much snow this winter.

We didn't have any snow this winter to speak of.

So we were able to

repurpose that funding to do additional maintenance on the roadways.

Okay, yeah, that makes a lot more sense.

Cool.

All right, I'll take any more comments or otherwise a motion.

Julian, I think you're muted.

So moved.

All right.

All opposed?

Any abstentions?

Motion carries.

All right, so moving on now to SmartScale updates.

So I think has to run so I can kind of do a high-level overview of the public feedback from the May public workshop, and then I'll turn it over to Chuck to really do kind of an in-depth update on where we are in the process.

Lucinda and then city staff and county staff work together to compile kind of an overall summary of the comments that were received from that May public webinar on smart scale projects that were being submitted this round.

So for some reason, it's not pulling up all the way, but they're able to go in a kind of inventory

and try and pull out some common themes that were being reported.

So you can see that there in that comment report.

The Frays Mill project, I think, got the highest number of comments compared to the Route 20 project, which came in second with a lot of the comments revolved around the memorial trees there in the median.

So just another way of trying to compile all of that, be a little bit more transparent in the process,

And they did include all of the letters and comments that were submitted in the appendix there.

So if anyone wants to dive into those, they are available there in that PDF packet.

Again, I was struck by which projects seemed to engage more fully the community and also the narrative around the comments.

I thought they were respectful about the comments.

Well, there were a couple of places where I thought the people were a bit less respectful than you might

in a public document.

But for the most part, people laid out their discussions and their points quite carefully.

But I was absolutely sort of three there, just sort of surprised, not that there would be opposition to them, but the level.

I guess one of the things that we've noticed on the planning commission is that when people organize themselves against something in this community,

They're quite effective at that, particularly in the county.

And so, you know, when they have a collective sense that something is not helpful to them, then they let us know.

It's interesting to see how that plays out across our community because I can imagine that reading some of the common reading a good number of those comments that those are some of the some of the common issues that we've heard on some projects those of you follow us follow the either Sean or follow the planning the Allison and the DP you know what those I don't need this so list those those projects right now

It's a similar kind of tone about who we are as a community, what they want as a community, what they don't want as a community.

And I don't know how we and the people who are set in government and hire government and policy decisions, I don't know how we're going to work with someone because it's clearly people had enough of what they view as a disturbance of their lifestyles.

Let me put it that way, a disturbance of their lifestyle.

And I'll chime in.

I think some of it is we had a lot of these kind of similar comments when we started bringing introducing roundabouts to the community, especially on the with the innovative intersections.

aside from the Route 20 project.

But I know that on the Rio Road projects and on the Praise Mill, there was a lot of pushback.

And we we've heard that across the district on other projects that were similar up in Fauquier County.

So I understand it's just we're limited.

Some of the things are we're limited to what we can do to try to address the problems.

So we understand their concerns.

Part of the problem we have is people aren't used to making some of those maneuvers through their normal travels.

But like to get to the post office on Route 29, if you're going southbound, you have to go down, turn around, and come back.

Um, so they do make those maneuvers when they have to.

They're just not, um, that, um, don't have to do it that often.

Thank you, Chuck.

That's really helpful.

I will share at our CAC, the Community Advisory Commission for the, I don't know which one this, it's like Jack Jewett and a bit of Rio.

When you put those, when we put those, those roundabouts, particularly around the airport and then going up Berkmar extended, it was interesting to hear a number of people who were just did not like

the roundabouts.

And so at another meeting, I asked them, I asked the group, how many people go to go to London or go to England with some frequency?

Every person who said they couldn't stand the roundabouts said they drove into these driving trips in England, UK.

And my question was, well, how do you deal with the roundabouts in the UK?

And the comment was, well, that's on vacation.

So we know we're only going to do it for, you know,

for like a month.

And it's like, well, if you can do it on vacation for a couple of months, why is it such a painful thing here?

But it was very, it's been very interesting to watch people just sort of freak out about roundabouts, but in, you know, on holiday, that's like a normal thing for them to encounter.

Yeah, I know I had the similar, my wife,

she didn't like them either and then she took a job and she had to drive through multiple roundabouts every day on her way to work and afterwards after doing it for several weeks she felt that they were much safer and much more efficient than the regular signalized intersection just because of the you don't have to necessarily stop you just pull up yield and

and go.

Um, so, uh, and you're going at a slow speed.

So it's just perception.

And once people get used to something and there's more of them that they can utilize, it'll just become something that they don't, it's just part of their normal, uh, everyday occurrences.

But for the, um, R cut type of intersection,

We just don't have any of them.

I mean, there's one in the district and it's just south of Culpeper on twenty nine.

So it's not something that they're exposed to on a regular basis.

So and it's different in it.

So they just have to get used to it and be exposed to it.

And then they'll start to understand how efficient it is and how it works.

So but we've got to put something in before we can actually get people familiar with them.

So.

All right.

Any more comments on that?

Yeah, and so in general, I wonder if there are techniques that maybe you've used successfully in the past or could be adopted in the future to frame the conversation in a way that kind of helps people get over that status quo bias.

Things like asking about what problems they face now, what they don't like about now, rather than thinking about scary change and what they might not like about that.

Does that make sense?

Is that something or is that sort of framing or, you know, changing it from, hey, what do you think about this new plan to soliciting feedback or both soliciting what people's problems are and feedback about, you know, what they'd like, like positive feedback about what they'd like to see rather than negative feedback of what they would not like to see.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great point too, especially, you know, kind of in the engagement process for those project specific tasks is, you know, in the past, you know, you look at like survey monkey surveys, staff have developed and, you know, none of us are experts, statisticians or anything like that.

Maybe some of us are, but I'm not.

So yeah, I think, you know, if there are partnership opportunities, I know that had been mentioned at the previous MPO Tech meeting about, you know,

Outreach efforts that Rory, like you're talking about, maybe get more to the point and can really frame the conversation more so in a kind of more informed dialogue, I guess.

But yeah, I think it's a good point.

I will notice that I recall when Chuck and Kevin talked about the Fry's Mill Art Cut there, Burnley Station Art Cut, and sort of captured it that that's one of the places where we had a number of accidents.

I think I'm right, Chuck, and please break me if I'm wrong.

And then some of them have been fatal, but yet I would guarantee you, Rory, that many of the people won't even know because you know when it's a green light, they go through in like three seconds,

and have no idea about the history of that or the accident sort of occurrence of that intersection.

So to them, this is a grand inconvenience, but yet from a policy and a community standpoint, we are saving lives.

So how do you know the whole idea?

What's the narrative that this is not just about inconveniencing you, this is about saving lives and contextually sort of bringing the liability on that?

I mean, that's what we, if you look in the documentation, that's the whole reason this was identified as a project because it is one of the top locations in the district where we have significant number of serious injury crashes.

Hydraulic 29 is another one.

There's a couple up in Fauquier County that on 29 that are the same way.

And it's just, how do you solve that problem?

Unless you're in that crash, you don't even know that it's a problem.

And that's hard to get people to understand how to solve what we're trying to do to solve that problem and what this does, what the solutions do to solve the problem.

Because we can't grade separate every intersection on the corridor.

It's just not

feasible or practical.

So we've got to look at alternative ways to do that.

And there are very limited alternatives to address those kind of situations.

So it's, um, and I don't, we haven't figured out the, uh, magic way to do that other than to just provide that information.

And that's what we've tried to do.

Um, so hopefully they'll start to come around in the future.

I know with this one, especially phrase mill,

We put together a lot of information.

There's a lot of example information.

We've got a website that basically provides a wealth of information on the different types of intersection that can be provided.

And it's just getting people to be comfortable with those types of improvements.

I think is more the issue than

And you know, we don't have those sort of things that, you know, I remember sort of one of the downfall of the Corvair was the unsafe at any speed thing.

So documentary, if any people may not remember that, but that was one of the things that, but you know, our local news, when you sort of survey our local news, cause I did this particularly when we were looking at the hydraulic 29 intersection to just sort of see, you look at, they don't,

Accidents up there never make it to the public square.

So, you know, the Daily Progress doesn't cover it, 29 doesn't cover it, you know.

So I don't even know how we get it into the, and we know that Seabil's not going to cover it, and I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but I don't know what the, I think it's called Charlottesville Tomorrow, whatever that e-newspaper, I just don't remember their name.

And so there's this whole thing that our media outlets only cover the core part of the community.

They don't cover, you'd be hard pressed to know unless there's something

you know I don't know I don't want to say gory but my mind's not I can't come unless there's some some attack some it's some incident huh something that is shocking thank you thank you would thank you that that sort of brings them to it and so there's this whole thing when you look at when we look at our numbers that's like oh my goodness of course it's why you're paying attention there but trying to tell that to people when they go well I don't know I drive through that

I drive through that intersection every day.

Nothing ever happens.

I take my horse to the breeder, you know, to the vet every day.

Nothing ever happens.

It's like, no, you need to know that five people in less than a year lost their life at that intersection.

Oh, well, I don't know that.

So there's this whole piece about, you know, I just think, I don't know how we do this given that our news outlets don't cover it and, you know, so that the currency and the pressure of it.

And Wood's great word is, you know, I don't know how,

I think Sean had a comment that he wanted to speak on.

Yeah, I don't know if my video is going to work.

Oh, you don't want to see me anyway.

Oh, look, it freezes, too.

We're going to turn that off.

I think, yeah, so Sean Tubbs, I'm speaking for myself as a private citizen.

In general, I think Julian's correct.

and this will be what I was gonna say in the public comment period is that my professional interest has been since 2005 and actually even before, if you were here, I could bring up, send you all an image of my times as a reporter back at Virginia Tech for a student newspaper covering bus routes, covering this stuff.

It's something I really believe the narrative about all these projects

It's a long history.

And I think that being able to track that is something that I'm hoping I can help the community do in the future.

With regards to the one-pagers that we saw earlier, connecting these long planning processes with the actual things is crucial.

And it takes good day-by-day, week-by-week coverage.

And it's something I'm hoping that I

I'm not at liberty to talk about it too much at this point, but it is something that I'm hoping to work with all members of the community to figure out how we can shine a light, not just on transportation implementation, but just how it fits into the community engagement network.

And it's really an ongoing conversation that just simply never stops.

And I think that what tends to happen is people tend to come in at certain parts in the conversation without context.

And as somebody who prides himself

trying to be as neutral as possible.

That's something I hope I can help with in the future.

So I just wanted to make that observation.

Yeah.

And I mean, I'm third, I guess, what Julia and Sean both said.

Even when it is in the city, you'll get maybe like a quick formulaic man hit by a car and dies at Ridge and Main.

even though it's the fifth time it's happened in the last two years.

Because, you know, person killed by car is more dog bites man than man bites dog.

There's no hook to it.

We've all become totally accustomed to people getting killed by cars.

Like, I mean, just in the last weekend, we had what, three crashes on Fish Street?

including a fatal one and only that last fatal one got any attention because it was like a police chase around town though the police didn't admit to there being a chase that's the whole thing but

So I mean, you can't rely on the media to make the problems of these intersections so much a part of the public consciousness that people go into these meetings knowing it.

And so kind of getting back to that point earlier about starting off with a display of the history, I'd say let's add not only the history of how it came to be, but also the history of how it behaves as it is, and really opening with the

The problem statement of what is it that we're trying to solve with this thing rather than here's the change we're going to make and like

You know, for example, the one pagers for all the smart scale proposals, we're all, all right, here's what the intersection is going to look like now, which I think is like helpful for me and us to know what we're proposing.

But we're familiar with what the problems are and you know, where it needs to be fixed already.

But the person down the street who just sees that is like, oh my God, change.

I don't want change.

Change is bad.

So I know it's extra effort and it's like hard to distill down into something that people can digest really quickly because they don't have the mental overhead to think about all these things at length, but

I do think it is important to make that quick pitch of, hey, this is broken now, and here's how and here's why.

And this is why we want to make the change.

And Rory, I'll just chime in.

To get to this point, we did that.

and it's just maybe we need to do a better job of when we go out to the public that we provide the information because we have it.

I have PowerPoint slides that show all the crashes that occurred and what the major cause of the crashes were and shows how many were injuries and if there were any fatal crashes.

Those are all, that's all information that we have.

that I put together when we took these to the individual localities.

I sat down with the city staff and the county and we separately and we went through the locations in their jurisdiction where we were seeing excessive number of crashes where people were getting a lot of injuries were occurring.

So the information is there.

It's just we need to make sure, like you said, maybe we need to make sure we include that

when we put in the public, have the public workshops so they know where, why we ended up where we did.

Yeah, I think that's really good point.

I mean, it's good to hear that you do have it.

And I figured you probably did.

And I think you really hit it spot on is like,

It's not that the information isn't there.

It's that the public just doesn't, they don't really have the tools at their disposal to go seek it out.

So you need to kind of stuff it into their faces or they'll kind of never, never realize it at all.

And actually,

And on a similar point, I'm wondering, is there a way to proactively reach out to people who have been involved in crashes at those intersections, like literally the people most directly affected, and say, hey, remember that time you got in that bad crash at that intersection?

We're doing something about it.

Come to this meeting and talk about how the intersection is bad.

how we're hopefully going to make it better and that this is necessary because you know if they're just only hearing about it as members of the public and honestly I have no idea how members of the public hear about these things because I feel like I would never have heard about any of these things before I was on these committees but people show up a lot of people showed up so I don't know maybe I'm not representative or I don't know but like

However they hear about it, they're still gonna, even if they are proactive enough to see it in Siebel tomorrow or in a notice, I guess, and come to a webinar because they care so much.

They probably didn't put, you know, 20, 30, 60 minutes into looking deep into, you know, what the underlying problems are.

And in particular, you know, I'm amazed at like the Rio, the Rio John Warner one where like for months and months, as all of these things have been coming up before the County Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors, everyone's like, this intersection is the worst.

Like it absolutely needs to be fixed.

It was like totally, you know,

botched last time or not thought about and we need this and now we have a proposal to fix it and everyone is like no this is terrible we don't want it like leave it out is it's fine and like dissonance there amazes me but but I mean also like these aren't the same people necessarily maybe they are and like

people don't know the history.

And everyone just has a status quo bias.

So if there's non road related change, you say you need road related change before that can happen.

And if there's road related change, you say, I don't want the road change, but I don't know.

No, that's for privacy issues.

I mean, we can identify the crashes.

But the people that were involved, those are scrubbed in the database.

So I don't have access to any of that information.

I just have the information on maybe their age and whether they're male or female.

Yeah, I mean, that seems reasonable from a privacy standpoint.

And maybe this is a thing that needs to be worked on more like the higher system level.

Yeah.

Part of it is that, I mean, we have a project in Orange County at Route 3 and Route 20 that we were actually doing a project out there and the Board of Supervisors, remember, was driving through that intersection after we had finished our improvements and got in a crash.

And so he brought it up at the board meeting and wanted us to look at that as a SmartScale project.

So we're actually doing it as a SmartScale application.

And the reason why is because

of that board member bringing it forward.

So those are some of the things that, yeah, I agree with you that, yeah, it'd be good to get that kind of feedback.

Yeah, that's a good point.

You know, maybe you need like a little email list sign up form right at the bottom, like a detachable slip from the police report they're filing, but after you've been in a bad crash, I don't know that you want to be thinking about email lists.

On the other hand, that might be the time you're like, God damn it, the government needs to fix it.

So I don't know.

Yeah, that's something I'll think about more, yes.

um so uh one

The item that I would like to make a comment on of my own that I noticed was not a particularly popular one for commenting on actually.

So the Hillsdale Drive South extension, I see we have two comments on that, one of which seems to be a one line as part of a comment on every single project.

So I know when we last talked about this, I asked,

where it was going to go through to connect to Holiday Drive.

And I think I was told the Econolodge parking lot.

But when I got into this webinar, it looks like it goes right smack through Szechuan restaurant, which presumably will require eminent domaining it and tearing it down.

So, well, A, I'd say that troubles me to tear down a small business.

in the middle of a recession.

I guess obviously it happened later.

But have the property owners there, the U's been notified that this will impact them?

This was a project that was in the as part of the original study that we just moved, brought back in.

We just don't have a great separation at Angus.

So I'm not sure

We had a whole slew of public outreach sessions with the communities throughout the whole panel process that we went through that took like 18 months to go through.

So beyond that, I don't know.

We didn't do any additional feedback beyond the panel meetings for this round of SmartScale.

Hmm.

Okay.

Rory, are you sure that the owner of the property, I'm not, I don't, at one point I knew the owner of the property and it wasn't them.

Oh, that's a good question.

I'm not sure.

Actually, in full disclosure, they are a client of mine below the conflict of interest limits.

But I figured I'd probably mention that.

Yeah, but I think what Chuck's not also saying is that this is, and that's no fault of Chuck, is that this piece is part of what was just,

selected, it was put in as a separate project from the package.

So there were, there's two applications.

One is for the Hillsdale extended project down to 250.

I mean it can move a little bit but generally it's probably going to follow that alignment because there's very limited space between Dominion Power and Kroger's that we can fit a road in there.

So you can't make a lot of deviations without significantly impacting those businesses also.

And you've got the other business that's just south on the

East of that area too that you would, if you shifted to the east you're going to impact them.

So there's going to be impacts with that project no matter where you put it.

Yep, I see that makes sense.

But at the same time, you know, when it's impacting the livelihood and

I mean, ending the business of a small, locally owned family business.

I'd like to see some amount of proactive notification of those individuals in particular.

And obviously, it's in a time right now where it's a pretty hard time to be a restaurant owner.

So I don't know how much bandwidth they have to deal with something like this, but I'll let them know.

I mean, I think during the panel, during the original development process, um, they were, we probably did reach out to all of the property owners that were going to be impacted.

Um, uh, but I'm not positive cause we had so many meetings, um, both with the different various communities, the businesses, um, we had business owners on the committee, on the panel.

Like I said, the original study was like an 18 month process where we probably had 50 or 60 different meetings throughout the course of that in addition to the panel meetings with different community groups meeting in people's living rooms and everything else.

Okay, good to know.

Thanks.

And maybe this is my status quo bias sinking in.

But all right.

And then for the two projects that there was significant, I guess we'll say opposition or public thoughts on, I guess that's the well, I don't know, there might have been some other county ones that I didn't really totally pay attention to.

Route 20 was the one I noticed and then Preston Grady was the other one.

And in particular for Preston Grady, I guess.

Now that that one has been approved by council last night to go ahead as an application,

I'm wondering if there's been any particular thought about ways to engage more heavily with people who feel they haven't been heard in the past and as expressed in these comments.

Obviously, again, it's a five-year process for anything to ever happen for this project, but to make sure that in that process coming up that

People are heard.

It's a little too early to talk about that, Rory.

We're simply trying to get the funding so we know if there is actually a project there or not.

So ideally, we will get the funding, and we can come back to the community and say, there is a project.

It's $7 million.

Here's the timeline for it, and here's what our public process is going to be.

So we definitely are going to hear from them.

But we do not yet have an identified local funding source to start a small area plan.

And every time I hear someone talk about small area plan, that'd be wonderful to start.

But what happens is we do a plan, and then we have no money to implement anything.

So then we have a long lead time before we identify funding.

And at that time, we are then told

That area plan is now old.

It's been 10 years.

It's been 20 years.

And new people have moved in.

So it's a delicate balance of trying to get public input that is appropriate and timely and actually get the funding lined up.

Yep, that makes a lot of sense to me.

And I got to say, I agree with your skepticism of small area plans.

I don't see what incredible good they've done so much besides pushing projects further down the line and making sure there's not any actual change.

But I mean, for example, West Main, when was that plan approved, 2016?

And we're now, I think last time we said it's the 2040s when that'll be completed.

It has to do with the funding.

It has to do with funding.

So I know everyone likes to say Belmont Bridge it's taken forever oh my lord we've been talking about this for years it took us decades to get that funding it's only in the last few years where we actually have all of it exactly so

And this is the big change that I don't think we've communicated to the public is that it used to be we got guaranteed funding a little bit at a time.

Every jurisdiction and we could slowly amass the money and we could start the public process early and develop it and get the concept going and

kind of project out when the construction is.

But the state would see a huge backlog of funding that's just sitting on the books because there's not enough to do anything in any particular jurisdiction.

So then you saw the public was like, oh, well, you're not actually doing anything.

And it's like, no, everyone gets their share.

It takes a while to amass.

So now we've changed it where you get all the funding up front.

But you need to have a concept and development done in such a way that you have some public participation all locally funded in order to get awarded the funds to then move forward.

It's very convoluted.

We're certainly not trying to avoid or sidestep the public process.

But it's almost like we're trying to throw out

a decent enough concept from planning documents that we've received from the public about certain intersections or corridors or streetscapes, come up with a loose enough project to then submit and get a successful application and then we go back.

But the public's not used to that.

And there's a disconnect or a distrust that we are trying to

on a staff level figure out a problem and we're gonna skip them.

And that's not at all what we're trying to do.

We're just trying to get some funding.

Yes, I have to chime in on what Jeanette said.

Yeah, the new program is you got to basically have a 30%, almost 30% plans for

the application to be submitted for funding.

You've got to have a study, you've got to have a good concept so that you can get a good cost estimate from that concept.

And then you've got to submit that and we evaluate it and it competes against all the other projects that are submitted throughout the state.

So it's not easy to do anymore to get projects funded.

Yeah there's uh it's not that we're trying to exclude the public participation piece but it's just the time frame it doesn't we don't have years to put these applications together um it's a two-year cycle and it comes around we got to put to get applications together every two years for like safety projects um we may have an idea but

The analysis is done on crash data that's not available till January, February.

So we've got to basically start these concepts and get them developed and do the studies and stuff in about six or seven months, which is really difficult to do.

So I know for the city projects, they're more or less not necessarily

Safety related projects.

They're more urban development area projects.

So those can be done a little bit differently.

And they have a little bit more lead time.

But still, you've got to submit an application that is what you're planning to build.

And there's very little leeway to change those plans once they're submitted.

Because you have a budget that your cost estimate

that goes in as part of your application.

And if you make major changes to it, then you run the risk of getting your project pulled, because it doesn't meet the same needs that it originally needed with the application.

Or you need more money to provide the planned improvements that you want to now provide, so after the public process.

So it's really difficult to actually

Yeah, that makes sense to me.

And I mean, I know you guys are doing the best you can.

And the system makes it difficult.

And you know, like I said, I don't, I don't really personally see small area plans painstakingly made over years and then put on a shelf for a decade as the solution really.

And but I wonder if, you know, there are ways to

in a really low cost, low touch way to get constructive feedback from the community in a way where they feel like their voices are being heard and their voices are being heard and the plan can be shaped around it because I think really the mistrust is

in many ways well earned over the decades.

But it's also, I don't think, something that's really fixed by paying consultants half a million dollars to say they're doing community engagement and do a bunch of public meetings that no one shows up to.

So I think about when people are organizing and collecting petitions across the neighborhood to oppose a project,

if there's a way to redirect that effort towards actually gathering, you know, answers to a short survey or something to get, you know, constructive positive recommendations on what they'd like to be done or what they think the problems are, again, rather than just kind of sort of reflexive opposition because, you know,

Well, that's what that meeting was on June 30th, was that we heard from the MPO meeting in May that there was a lot of concern.

So we set up the June 30th meeting and that did start with a presentation giving why we identified it, what plans we had pulled this from,

This is what the safety and accident history is of the area.

This is what we're trying to do to receive 100% state and federal funding to address it.

And at that time, right before the meeting was when we were notified that there was a petition.

So we were not aware that that was going on.

So it seems every time we try and say, we're going to have a meeting on June 30th, we're going to give you information.

This is your time to talk to us, et cetera.

We're preempted with another survey or output and that's fine.

That's another way for, you know, receiving input.

But I don't know how to give a secret super secret fast survey.

That can preempt the petition or the whatever else we're trying to notify you of what the next steps are and what we're trying to do to reach out We're, we're basically trying to do the best we can.

Yeah, I hear you.

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a tough problem that I don't think we're going to solve today.

I do think the meeting on June 30th was positive in that it was helpful and I think hopefully started a more productive turn to the conversation.

I hope you heard, I think I really heard why people are concerned and the source of that mistrust, which is just sort of the beginning obviously to creating a more, you know, productive relationship and

and getting past it to create positive results.

But again, I know it's really tough.

No, we just haven't had time.

We don't even have time to submit the smart scale application, which luckily VDOT gave us a little bit more time to put that together.

So no, we haven't.

And that's part of the problem is that you want an open dialogue with the public in general.

But now we're also being told we need to have meetings with particular leaders or I personally have an issue with that.

that I'm happy to talk to someone that's reached out to me on the phone and the email and whatever else.

It gets a little uncomfortable when I have to talk to so-and-so because they're very important in the community.

I like to deal with the general public and have everything as open and clear and transparent as possible.

So no, we haven't reached out.

We're not necessarily opposed to reaching out.

OK, that makes sense.

Yeah, it's really difficult.

And I agree.

I know we spent close to $2 million on the hydraulic 29 study.

with all the public meetings and all of the outreach efforts that we did with the panel and the consultants coordinating the meeting had 12 members of the community, both the city and the county and business owners and everybody.

But you can't do that with every project.

It's just not feasible.

So I know with the Fish Street study that we recently

We're wrapping it up now.

We had original public meetings and outreach efforts to the community and held a MetroQuest survey.

We got over 1,200 responses to the initial survey, which was just to get, here's what we see are the problems, here's the goals of the project, and just to get their comments on it.

The follow-up virtual meeting,

and in the follow-up survey we got over 900 comments and that's where we actually had alternatives that people could provide comments on.

So I think that's a process to go through but that was, studies have been going on almost a year now.

So it's just how do you do that and on a project and that was a over $200,000 study.

and that we're wrapping up now.

So it's just a matter of hopefully we'll get several projects out of that.

We've got one for this round and possibly we'll get some other ones in the future.

But those are some of the things that we're going to probably end up investigating and using as tools in the future to get public comment.

I think MetroQuest is an inexpensive way to get a lot of feedback in a 30 day period.

So

And it's not that hard to put together a survey, but it doesn't necessarily reach everybody.

If you don't have access to a computer to actually take the survey, you're not going to be able to provide feedback.

We supplemented it with paper copies of the survey that we handed out, plus we handed out fact sheets on the project.

So those are things that can be used to supplement, especially for the people that aren't

as tech savvy or have access to those forms of media.

But it's still a coordination effort on somebody's part, and it still is expensive.

And that's not something that's covered in the cost of the project, because you're just basically trying to get feedback on what may become a project.

And that's what I think Jeanette's, where those area studies, those quarter studies,

that we do separately, that's where you've got to do those to pull those projects from.

Yeah I mean it's definitely a challenge and you know I hate to hear how overburdened staff is while at the same time we have all of these instances where we're pouring hundreds of thousands or millions into consultants to do community engagement where they go out and and go through the motions and maybe do get some engagement but then take everything they've learned and give us some report and then leave and go back to whatever town they came from

with all of the community knowledge they've gleaned.

In terms of that pre-study outreach and general comment feedback, again, I'm wondering if there are decent, cheap, low-tech solutions that might make sense.

For example, is there a form, a comment form online for each project where you can submit what you think or, you know, what you don't like about that intersection or your thoughts or whatever, or is it a matter of sending an email?

And then for like the survey, you know, is it possible to, we just like put sort of like, you know, how realtors put up like a thing of,

flyers in a little plastic, you know, box nailed to a post.

Can we put a bunch of surveys and fact sheets in there and then leave a little comment box underneath that people can write down and slip in their answers or have the option of mailing it in or going online?

Well, I know from a staff level, we're not spending a million dollars on public funding from regarding any particular project.

And while we are definitely overburdened, we are also there every step of the way when our consultant is reaching out.

We approve the surveys, we listen and try and go, I think this is what they're interested in, we provide blank spaces, et cetera.

So all this knowledge is not being lost, at least when we're dealing with a transportation project,

where we're doing a public participation process.

So there's that.

We do have a survey that's out for Preston Grady.

I don't know if it is closed yet or not.

That was advertised all over the place.

I think it was mainly electronic the way it was advertised.

We had the MPO meeting and that had contact information.

I think it was phone and email.

for each of the staff members.

So that's what we've done.

I don't know.

I mean, I guess we could put up paper tubes around the city, around Preston Grady.

I don't know if we're there yet.

We've gotten the application approval to submit.

We very well may not have a project.

The city alone is submitting four projects that exceed the $20 million that's supposed to be spread all over the district.

So hopefully we shot everyone out and we get all the money.

But that's probably not going to happen.

So I think it's what we're trying to do is think about the future going forward.

Do we need to create or request local funding to start a public participation process sooner?

Are these plans that we have done, are they still good?

There's a lot of questions.

And then on top of it all, we have the lovely COVID-19 and what that's doing to the overall city budget, staffing, the whole bit.

Yeah, I think those are all reasonable points.

And I think you're right that at this point we have approval to apply and then we'll have funding for community outreach.

So that makes sense.

Again, I was thinking more about just potentially how to do things

in the future.

And on the consultant side, I was thinking admittedly less on the transportation planning and more on the general planning, comprehensive planning in particular.

But that's neither here nor there, I guess.

I think we were going to have a discussion about

Um, Fontaine Avenue, uh, that project was presented, uh, at the May meetings and as the DDI, which was what was submitted last round, um, we've been working on an alternative concept to try to get the cost down.

Um, and I'm trying to get the, find out what the final costs are going to be now, but, um, just to get, uh, your all's thoughts on the new concept.

The other thing I wanted to try to discuss was

For the hydraulic 29 package of projects, there was two additions that we were looking to add to the concept.

And they were basically, we were going to put some trail sections along hydraulic from the intersection up to Brandywine, just extend the multi-use trail up that far.

And then we were looking at,

When we did the evaluation, it wasn't initially part of the project.

But when we looked at it, the intersection of Hydraulich and 250, we started to see problems at that intersection.

So we actually identified that.

And I wanted to get Jeanette's thoughts on this particularly.

If we closed off the Rugby Road to right in, right out, would that

Would the city have a lot of concerns about that?

So right now we're allowed, we're out.

We can go out straight across.

OK. And the other thing is, do you know if you guys got funding?

I know that the revenue share and the TAP grants were, I don't know what the status of those are.

But I was wondering about that left turn lane extension on 250.

I thought you guys had put in for that.

It is still a viable project.

We have been told that all revenue sharing, and I do believe the TAP grants as well, VDOT is not giving us an affirmative answer to the funding until

OK. OK. That was one of the questions I wanted to ask because it was all centered around that functionality, the intersection.

But those are the everything else remains the same for the application.

I mean, for the based on what we have submitted in March.

But those were the two things that we were looking at

adding to the application.

I can send you those.

Uh, yes.

Chuck, this is Julian.

Yes.

No, but you can go across from rugby to hydro, you can go across from rugby to hydraulic and you can go left on the 250 from rugby today.

Yes.

Um, and that's what, uh, we, we ran several scenario, different analysis scenarios,

And that one seemed to be the least expensive one and provided the best benefit.

And that's what we wanted to discuss to see if that was something that we could add to it.

I mean, we could always do it later as a separate application.

We felt, though, that if it was not that controversial that in the

I might suggest that that Rugby Road, as it sits today, that Rugby Road is an alternative for people to come off Preston.

or to come from the university and then the GO 29 North.

I wouldn't know, you'd have to look at your own data on this, but I'm not sure that that's really a local road for the people coming off of Rugby Road there, but that's really become sort of an informal habit trail to get people from

from the university and off of Preston and to keep them from either going down Rose Hill to come on to the bypass or go down McIntyre to get on the bypass or, heaven forbid, go up 29, go down the barracks and then make a right onto 29.

So that's become this sort of insider's habit trail on how to get up there.

And so I don't know.

I don't know how you'll uncover any of that, but I don't necessarily think that's a local road.

And that's where our city traffic engineer's input would be very important because I know he's been working with them.

I know that they have been complaining that their residential street is being used by others.

and how that impacts the connectivity of the overall roadway network.

Yeah, absolutely.

And those are the two main projects that I wanted to, things I wanted to present.

I wish I had the other one to show you.

What we were looking at doing at Fontaine was more of a CFI, where you're crossing the left turn traffic from Fontaine that's going to the 29 South Movement.

They would cross over before they get to, well, basically at that interchange.

They would cross over and then go through the interchange on the left side and then go right up the ramp.

And then, however,

What it does is, I can't, I can explain to you, but you're not going to be able to understand it without visually seeing it.

Um, is the, um, let's see.

I don't know.

Let me see if I can be able to.

Alright, I'm trying to get to the

Trying to find the...

I sent it to you guys, but I can't find a drawing now.

And Jeanette, real quick, while Chuck's looking for that,

Okay, thanks.

Chuck, I was muted.

As we're recreating that intersection, particularly the coming off the 250 south or the 29 south portion of that, that there's a special, there's a

Last year, the Planning Commission approved an independent school over there.

I forget what that was.

It's not Covenant, but it's another school.

Regal?

It's Regents.

Regents.

Regents, Regents School.

And so I think part of that, part of their Proctor, part of their

Part of that package was that they need to kick in some funds to fix that intersection or to be prepared to help that off ramp.

If in fact that becomes the metrics for that aren't working for getting their kids in and out of that place.

So as you're working with that, just keep in touch with Kevin, please.

Yeah, Kevin's aware of it.

He was on vacation last week.

Okay.

Um, we finalized the draw concept last, actually last week.

And I hadn't sent it because I had, we hadn't got the concept finalized, but, uh, um, so nobody's from the County's even seen it either.

So it's, um, we're basically going to try to, Kevin's going to bring it back to the board, um, next month.

for them to look at it.

All right, here we go.

Yeah, you should be able to.

Oh, okay, I see it.

Let me see what it's gonna show.

All right.

Can you guys see my screen yet?

Yeah.

I just want to make sure I've got two screens running.

Okay.

Yep.

Yep.

Okay.

This is the new concept.

And this is, it's two pages, so I'll have to open up the second page separately.

But this is what it looks like that we finalized.

You see the extension of the trail through the median.

The left turns are crossing over at the east interchange ramp intersection, and they're running and then going right up the ramp.

The left turns from the southbound ramps get off and still make the left turn, and then they go through.

The east intersection is signalized to accommodate the left crossover and the eastbound through movement.

The westbound through movement's not signalized.

I know it shows on there, but that's not signalized.

And the ramps are signalized.

So that's this piece of it.

Chuck, this is supposed to simplify the intersection?

I didn't say necessarily simplify it.

This is, if you're coming down the ramp and you want to make the left hand turn, you have to make a right.

OK, because there's still a left turn.

Do you see that left turn, though, from the ramp?

Yes.

Yeah, see, that would be my biggest concern, is trying to explain to people, well, if you want to take a left and get back on, you go into this left lane.

Yeah, I mean, those are some of the things that we, I mean, we were looking at something that was, the last application for the DDI was almost $22 million.

We were trying to come up with something that was not as expensive.

I don't know exactly how much this costs but I'm hoping to have those figures by tomorrow at the policy board meeting so that I can show the difference between here's what the DDI is going to cost versus here's what this is going to cost to see if because we wanted to have a better competitive application.

I don't know if this is something that they're going to be supportive of.

I know at hydraulic

We looked at the continuous flow intersection and there was a lot of concerns about it.

So I'm not sure if this is going to be something that's viable.

Why don't you show this plan to the university and say this is what you're going to get

I know, I know.

Yeah, but also on the other side, also they own a good piece of it on the other side of 29.

The piece, and I think this is where Bill and people have to weigh in, keep in mind that Fontaine is going to become outpatient services.

So they're gonna be moving a lot of outpatient clinics to that location over the course of the next 10 years.

Yeah, I know.

And we, I mean, I saw that originally

There was a study that was done, and they proposed some improvements for this interchange for this corridor.

and there is a plan for those.

I think Bill can perhaps facilitate a conversation between you and Alice, the architect.

But I'm going to suggest to you that this is going to be a bunch of people who are going to be coming here, who are going to only be coming here once, combined with people who are using that road to commute in.

And so I'm only going to, I mean, I guess the full disclosure, the building that you see there, I was the primary

I was the primary tenant of 400 Racy Hunt Drive.

I had all three of the floors there under my management.

And the accidents that we started seeing at that intersection of Racy Hunt Drive with university people and people coming to the clinics in there, we just saw it increasing because this is the first time people ever come in there.

and so I just think if we go forward with something that may be helpful down on the 29 and Fontaine, you're gonna be pushing a lot of, you're gonna be pushing occurrences to that intersection.

Yeah, no, and I totally understand.

That's why I'm not sure if where this is gonna end up.

Like I said,

have been working on this for like six months back and forth with traffic engineering, between L&D and traffic engineering, just to come up with something that they could agree on and was less impactful.

But it's not conventional at all.

And I would agree with all of your comments.

I mean, we heard this from the Hydraulic 29 folks when we presented this at that intersection.

that they didn't think this was a viable concept.

So I suspect we're going to hear similar type of comments once the policy board sees it tomorrow and it's presented to the board of supervisors later.

I mean, I agree.

It's a little bit confusing in terms of the circulation.

But sorry, I've got a little background noise going on here.

Understood.

Yeah, so I guess my question is, if EVA has comments, how do we get those to you?

What's the process there?

What I think Becca goes to the MPO policy board tomorrow and she'll probably have Becca White, our director of parking transportation.

I want to try to get it out to everybody so we can get comments.

I know that the they're not planning to vote on this project as as part of the

package at the meeting tomorrow.

I had a meeting with the staff from the PDC yesterday, MPO and PDC, and they're basically pulling this one out.

So they're going to wait because they don't have to submit the letters of support until October.

But currently, the application has the DDI in it.

Um, but I don't necessarily, it hasn't been updated and I don't have the updated cost estimate yet.

I'm hoping to have some rough values for that tomorrow.

Um, for, so we can compare, show the comparison and the cost.

Okay.

Do you feel like what you're showing us here is, you know, at a place where if I took it, yeah, to other people at UVA and said, this is what VDOT's looking at for a smart scale project here.

Yes.

I mean, like I said, I didn't get the final version until last week because they were still going back and forth with traffic engineering on the final version of it.

So this is the final version of it.

I think there's one more version that doesn't show the one

I have signal heads on the poll, but everything else is the same.

So yes, this is the one you would get.

Okay.

I've sent it out to the MTO and the county already so that they can have it to reach out to their

Board members and staff distributed amongst the staff.

And like you said, we're going to present it at the MPO Policy Board meeting tomorrow.

But we're not going to just for comments, not for supporting and basically to start that because we don't have to submit the final applications till the 17th.

So we have still have a couple of weeks before we have to submit the applications.

Um, and so we want to try to get as much feedback on this as we can.

Um, and I think, um, Kevin was actually going to take it back to the board.

Um, but it won't be until after the application deadline date.

It's in the county, but I, so I want to give support from the MPO.

I mean, MPO has to, since they're the submitting entity, they have to provide a letter of support.

And the jurisdiction that it's in also should provide a letter of support.

All right.

And one, sorry, I know we're way out of time, but one last question.

The page you have it on, there's like kind of a bulb out on the north side of Fontaine right at the end of the construction area.

Yeah, where the red and the orange lines are.

yeah yeah and then it looks like dark gray that's to uh that's for the u-turn we're gonna have to grade up in there so there's additional right away and then there's a temporary easement beyond that for grading and then we'll have to look at relocating the because the Ravana Trail runs through there along the top of that ridge so we're gonna have to shift it over and re-establish it um as part of the project too I think Michael Barnes pointed that out to me uh

Yeah, and there's a pretty steep hill there.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, it's that it's going to be at the signalized intersection.

So it'll get a phase of the signal.

Yeah, yeah.

Right.

So you have Camp Holliday trails.

So those individuals are probably going to be using that quite a bit.

And then you have

It used to be I would come down that ramp and not have to basically look right before I take a left.

And now there's always someone coming.

No, I agree.

There's a lot of traffic.

I've sat out there for

many, many times try to come up with a solution to fix that interchange issues.

And it's not a good way to fix it.

But like I said, if we want to try to look at incorporating that ramp traffic from 64, we have to have almost a dedicated lane for those folks to make that maneuver.

And that's why I originally

We originally looked at the DDI as that solution, because it does allow for that movement.

And this one also does.

I'm all for saving money.

No, I can understand that.

We just wanted to come up with an option that was less costly that might be more competitive to solve the problem.

And that's where we came up with this.

Because if we start looking at if we could replace the bridges, then we could do a lot of different things out here.

But that's another that would be doubling or tripling the cost of the project, which

And one last thing.

So was this project submitted the last round and didn't get approved with the diverging diamond?

And so now you're reworking it to try to bring the cost down?

Well, I mean, the

The cost for the diversion diamond is only going to go up about above what it was from last round.

So it was $22 million last round and it didn't do very well at all.

So it's going to be more than that this round.

I'm hoping this project is going to be less, much less than that.

I don't know what those numbers are yet because I haven't gotten the cost estimates.

So once I have those, hopefully I can

I'm hoping to have that material available to present to the board with this concept tomorrow.

So I'll have a cost for the relative cost for the divergent diamond and a cost for this that and then they can decide what they want to do and advise the MPO staff on how to move forward with this.

Yeah, no, I would appreciate that.

Yeah, last time with the DDI, I was able to set up a meeting with you guys separately and we were able to have time to get comments.

We just this was just so the schedule was so compressed, I couldn't get concept done in enough time to really get it to you any sooner.

Any other comments?

Yeah, it's all right.

So if we're finished with those, then only thing left is additional matters from the public.

I would like to apologize for, wait, hold on.

I think I'm good now.

I'd like to apologize for not being muted earlier.

I just assumed I was.

But I think just to this point, just this recent Fontaine stuff, I'm looking forward to seeing that.

And of course, I'm speaking in a neutral manner here.

I'm not representing anybody.

But I think that, as I just put in the chat, there's a lot of stuff.

I'll try to do my video.

It's not going to work.

See, it stops.

But there's a lot of projects.

There are a lot of legacy projects that I think are,

Just worth remembering and keeping the pieces in point.

I seem to recall about eight, 10 years ago, the UVA health system managed to get a pretty massive rezoning on the land just to the west of Buckingham Circle.

All those pieces matter and keeping track of it.

And that's hopefully what I'm helping I can provide to the community going forward.

That's it.

All right, are there any other members of the public or anyone else that have any matters to discuss?

If not, this meeting is adjourned.

Thanks, guys.