MPO Technical Committee Meeting   9/15/2020

Okay, it's recording now and I'll just read the preamble and then we can start Rory.

So this, the MPO tech meeting

The MPO Tech Committee are meeting this afternoon, September 17th at 10 a.m. with a quorum of voting members through electronic virtual communication of Zoom's software application.

The meeting agenda and virtual meeting address has been posted for one week at the 410 Water Street East and on the TJPDC website.

and provided to local media outlets and provided to the general public, the tech committee and the tech committee members.

This meeting is open to public viewing and public comment will be allowed through electronic communication at such time as provided on the meeting agenda.

As a public body, the TJPDC is allowed to meet virtually using meeting procedures and policies as outlined in item 4.0-01 of the Virginia state budget HB 29.

Item 4.0-01 allows public bodies to meet through electronic communication means during emergency declarations such as the current COVID-19 emergency.

The governor has declared a state of emergency.

The nature of this declared emergency makes it impractical or unsafe for the public body to assemble in a single location.

The purpose of meeting is to discuss transit,

or transact the business statutory required or necessary to continue operations of the public body.

The TJPDC shall make available a recording of the meeting on its website in accordance with the timeframes established in

2.23707 and 2.23707.1 of the Code of Virginia.

The nature of the emergency, the fact that the meeting was held by electronic communications means and the type of electronic communication means by which the meeting was held shall be stated in the minutes of the public body.

We ask that you keep your communication devices on mute until you prepare to speak.

In addition, you may raise your hand or use the chat feature to initiate a discussion.

There will be public comment periods at the beginning of the meeting.

Those waited to speak are asked to raise their hand function or the chat function of the Zoom program and then we'll call on you.

I'm going to start sharing my screen and put the agenda up.

Great.

So I will call this meeting to order.

And first up is going to be matters from the public.

It looks like we're not using a Zoom webinar.

So the public is just in here with us.

Well, I'm Lee Condor.

I'm a brand new member of the CTAC.

Just want to introduce myself and elaborate very briefly on

comment I provided about the public participation plan, the third bullet.

I have recently developed some alternate solutions for a couple of smart scale proposals and just wanted to make you aware that I am a resource available to the committee to do that sort of thing at no cost to the committee should you have any interest in it.

Great.

Thank you, Lee.

This is Jeanette with the City of Charlottesville.

And I noticed we don't have other business on the agenda.

Sure.

Great.

Yep.

All right, so it sounds like there are no other members of the public.

Let's go on to approval of the draft minutes from the July 21st meeting.

Does anyone have any changes?

I have an editorial or just a spelling correction.

And then on that note, then I would move, and I'd also make a moment in your opening, in your opening paragraph, Lucinda, you said today's date was the 17th, so when you're looking at it, you might want to think that it's really the 15th.

Sorry about that.

That's okay.

All right.

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed?

Hearing none, the motion carries.

Minutes are approved.

So next up is gonna be our VTRAN midterm needs presentation.

Hello, good morning.

All right, so thank you for having me, Mr.

Chair, members of the committee.

Lucinda, would you be able to share my slides?

Okay, great, thank you.

So I believe I've met most of you all

previously, but just as a reminder, my name is Chris Wishman and I'm a transportation planner with the Virginia Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment.

And today just wanted to touch back with you all on where we stand currently with E-Trans.

So as most of you all on the call were involved last year when we were developing the midterm transportation needs,

We're checking back in to provide an update on the prioritization of those needs, which is an ongoing effort that we've been working through in calendar year 2020.

No, I'm trying.

It came up on the wrong screen.

Oh, OK.

I'm sorry.

No problem.

Well, I'll go ahead and get started while we work that out.

So, Lucinda, next slide.

So I'll keep the presentation pretty short today.

It's really just to provide a little bit of background.

I know most of you all have been involved previously with VTRAN and have some awareness of what it is.

So just provide a brief background on the midterm needs and then talk about the process we're going through now, which is the prioritization of the 2019 midterm needs.

Describe a little bit about

the intended use or some context and significance of the prioritized needs.

Give a very high level view of our approach and then talk about our plan for engagement.

So the opportunity to have you all view our initial results and provide some feedback on those.

Next slide.

So in terms of backgrounds, the midterm needs were developed last year in 2019.

We worked with you all, if you remember, we had a workshop that was held in Culpeper at the community college there, where we circled around the tables, looked at maps of the measure data and allowed folks to provide some input on the methodology.

The draft needs were released in the fall of 2019.

and then we worked with the CTB early in 2020 at the January 2020 meeting.

The board actually accepted those needs for the purpose of, or I guess their primary purpose as a screening tool for SmartScale Round 4.

At that same time, as part of the CTB action, they directed our office to create a process and develop a process and work through a process to prioritize

the midterm needs.

Next slide.

So just to make sure we're all on the same page with you know what the needs are and what they're not.

So one thing with V-TRANS what we're doing is really a problem identification.

So we're essentially analyzing the the state's network and identifying locations where there's some issue and we do this across a number of

categories of issues, you know, we look at congestion, reliability, bicycle access, pedestrian access, we have all these different categories of needs that we look at.

For the midterm needs, we're essentially analyzing the existing condition of the network, and we're identifying needs in the planning horizon of the seven to 10 year period.

So the period just outside of the six year improvement program,

And the purpose of the midterm needs, I guess, is really threefold.

So the first is what you all are mainly familiar with and that's as a screening criteria for smart scale applications.

So for a project to be eligible for smart scale, it must show some connection in meeting a VTRAN need.

The second bullet there, VDOT is also using

the V-Trans needs as a criteria when evaluating revenue sharing applications.

And then finally, the third bullet is what I'm going to talk a little bit more about today, which is a new concept to have the V-Trans needs inform project development or project study pipeline within VDOT and DRPT.

So I'll go into that a little bit more as part of my presentation today.

And I guess in the next few months and into next year,

will be coming out with some information on the long term needs.

So that work is really maybe what's more familiar from the MPO planning process, which is to do the sort of the out year study of what are the trends in population, employment growth, what are the technological trends, what are the trends for our revenues and financial resources to get an idea of what our long term needs are.

So that's an effort we're going to be

sort of coming to you all with some information on later this year and into next year.

Next slide.

So focusing back in on the prioritization of the midterm needs.

So I mentioned this idea of having a project development or project study pipeline.

So the context or the significance of the prioritization exercise is to inform

That pipeline, it's been a topic of discussion at the Commonwealth Transportation Board on two occasions this year in May and then in July.

They've discussed this idea.

So really the primary purpose of our prioritization exercise is to inform that pipeline.

But a secondary function of this will be to provide the data

So I mentioned this multimodal project study pipeline.

So again, the board passed a resolution in January 2020 directing our office to prioritize the needs.

And then there's links in this slide to the presentations that were given in May and July.

So the idea of this pipeline would be to sort of insert the V-Trans needs at the beginning of the process and help inform the studies that are being done, you know,

around the state, we invest dollars in interchange modification reports and various different studies to help identify projects.

But traditionally, those haven't been informed by the statewide plan or the statewide assessment of needs.

So the idea is to introduce the prioritized needs as a first step prior to developing solutions and then as a final step, informing the funding programs.

So this is a concept that's still being developed and is still being discussed within the CTB.

But this is some of the information that they've discussed to this point.

Next slide.

So that was really the background and the context.

So now I'll just spend a few minutes talking about kind of the approach to the prioritization that we're working through and then sort of give a

to allude to the engagement that we want to do and some of the feedback that we're hoping to receive.

So the first step in our process to prioritize was to define what geographies are we going to do prioritization at.

So we took a lesson for this from SmartScale in a way in that we're doing both sort of a statewide or Commonwealth prioritization, but then also doing within each district another sort of level of

prioritization.

So for the statewide prioritization, we're focusing in on the corridors of statewide significance.

So those are sort of the I-64s, US 29s, 95, 81.

So some of the multimodal corridors that carry the interregional travel around the state.

So we're looking at those sort of against one another.

So comparing the needs, the priority of needs along 95 to 81 to 66.

and comparing them statewide.

Within each district, we're taking a look at the regional network needs, safety and then UDA and IEDA needs.

So the prioritization of those categories of needs will be done within each district.

So, you know, within the Culpeper district, it would be, you know, comparing all the needs within just Culpeper to one another.

So this is akin to how SmartScale handles the

statewide high priority funding and the district grant program funding.

Next slide.

So for this exercise, the universe of segments or roadways that we're looking at is really where we've identified a midterm need.

So for that process, if you remember in 2019, what we did was sort of drew a line in the sand and said,

If you're above this line, if you have a congestion measure that ranks above what our threshold is, then you have a need.

If you're below it, then there's no need.

But for this, we're looking at just where there's a need and we needed to bring back in the measure data to understand relative severity of the need.

So for congestion, we brought back in some of the measures that were used and then also combine that with a magnitude criteria.

So how many users of the system

where vehicles are being impacted by congestion or reliability or the need for bicycle access.

So it's really a combination across these need categories of a severity measure and then a magnitude measure.

So how bad is the problem and then how many people or users of the system does it affect?

So with that, and as part of this second step, we can sort of rank or

sort ascending or descending the need within each category.

So I mentioned congestion, reliability, bicycle access, transit access.

We have these different categories.

With the third step, next slide.

With the third step, what we're doing is sort of for any given roadway combining, aggregating all the needs, the prioritized needs across these categories and sort of giving it an overall

And as part of that, we're also, again, taking a cue from SmartScale and providing some different options of how to weigh categories in different areas of the state.

So I mentioned the district level prioritization.

So, you know, in the Culpeper district, there may be certain categories of needs that carry more weight than others.

Maybe it's, you know, safety is the highest priority.

So with this step three,

We're providing some different templates or options of how to weigh these various categories against one another.

And this is really the main purpose of our engagement that we want to do is to come out and say, you know, with these given templates, here's how some of the initial results look within your district.

You know, what weighting criteria seems to make sense.

Also doing this statewide to have some different options available

for stakeholders to react to.

Next slide.

So the fourth and final step in working through the prioritization.

So we've prioritized within the need categories, and then we've combined everything together.

And the fourth step was a recommendation that we've had from some of the CTB members, which is to adjust for where we have some

Some other things going on that we haven't accounted for to this point.

So an example would be, where do we have bridges or pavement in really poor shape or in need of repair or rehab?

Is there any way to sort of give bonus points to segments or sort of tie break to segments that have priority needs, but then also have a bridge and pavement or state of good repair type needs?

We've also, in this step four, integrated in some of the initial results for our vulnerability analysis.

So we've looked at across the state where we have roadways that are exposed to sea level rise, storm surge, and flooding events.

So the idea here is to adjust, give a slight adjustment to segments that are exposed to those risks.

So that's really our fourth step in the process.

Next slide.

So in terms of where we are in the schedule, we've been working through and working internally to develop this methodology.

And we're at the point of having some initial results.

And the idea would be to, similar to what we did last year in 2019, is to make those results available for folks to look at and provide some feedback on not only what they're seeing as the initial results, but then

You know, kind of how we went about the process of the steps that I described, the weighting within the districts and statewide.

So in order to do that, we are developing an online tool that's really an extension of our interactive e-trans mapping application, where we can sort of make these results available and provide commenting functionality that will allow folks to go in and view the results and provide feedback.

So you all may have received earlier this month invitations for these regional workshops.

We've had to postpone those.

So I guess at this point be on the lookout for revised dates.

They haven't been set yet, but the idea would be that we make this tool available, make everyone aware that it's ready and then give about a month or so for folks to provide feedback.

We'll then incorporate that feedback, go to the public with the information as part of the fall transportation meetings.

So as I mentioned, the workshops would be as best we can, similar to the engagement that we did last year.

Obviously, we can't all get together

at the community college again and circle around the maps.

But to the extent possible, we want to utilize our InteracDTrans and online forum to get feedback.

So again, be on the lookout for that.

Next slide.

So the last few slides are just kind of housekeeping.

My colleague, Katie Schwing and I are sort of dividing and conquering the state when it comes to coordinating with

the MPOs, PDCs and localities.

So for the Culpeper district, Katie and I actually have the district split, but I would be the point of contact for the Charlottesville, Albemarle MPO area and TJPDC area.

So if you have any questions, next slide, you can feel free to contact any of us.

Here's our team's email addresses and phone numbers.

And our website is a really good resource just to look at some of our materials

Again, that'll be where the workshop page will be housed.

So that's a good place to kind of having your bookmarks maybe to check on periodically to know what's going on with V-Trans.

So that's the conclusion of my presentation.

I'd be happy to answer questions at this time.

So if people have questions, they can raise their hand or unmute themselves.

If you're on the phone and you'd like to raise your hand, you can press star nine to raise your hand.

If you look in the participants little tab at the bottom, there should be an option to raise your hand.

And I have a question.

Should this be something that the policy board is also looking at?

The MPO policy board?

I don't know if Chip is on or Sandy.

OK. All right.

Julian Bivens has his hand raised.

So I have two questions.

And maybe there's a broader question than if you said I need to be sort of used to talk about it another time.

I absolutely appreciate that.

Our region sort of sits at a very interesting place.

It sits at the bottom of the Culpeper district, which is fine.

And then it sits at the top of the Lynchburg district, which obviously we're not a Lynchburg district.

And so we're always competing with geographic areas that have actually a higher density or a higher concentration of people, which I might imagine has an impact on who gets funded.

And so

In the spirit of this political season, is there ever any discussion about redistricting?

And so looking to see whether or not districts which were established, lo these many years ago, actually because of the way population and commercial entities, commercial activities taking place, that regions that sort of, someone like our region really needs to be someplace else or needs to perhaps have a secondary or a new region, a new district that's created for it.

because we seem to be like one of the lesser geographic regions in the Culpeper district.

And then we would certainly not be, I'm not sure how we would fare if we were in the Lynchburg district.

And so, realizing as Chuck has shared with us that the funds for, and Woodland when he was here, that the funds for the Culpeper district tend to get allocated

And you can also say this is above my pay grader.

That's what I'm going to be pushing on.

Yeah, so I will definitely say that's above my pay grade, but in terms of how it impacts this effort,

Within the districts, what we're doing here is working obviously within the defined districts as we have them now.

And then in terms of the significance of this, the priorities, again, won't impact funding necessarily.

And I know there's been some concerns like, will the prioritized needs in some way give me a boost or can the alternative downgrade me when it comes to a funding program?

And that's not the intent necessarily of this work.

It's more to target where we're investing the project development or planning dollars.

So I would say maybe there's less of a risk for how this shakes out to impact the funding of projects.

And maybe if somebody wants to pick in on that, but maybe at another meeting we can have a conversation on whether or not

You know, Rory and Chuck and Chip, how, whether or not we are in fact, how do you lobby or is there a way to look at data that says really these districts, which probably have a 30 year vintage on them now, are these really districts that reflect what the population centers have done over the last 30 years.

And, you know, just like voting, is it not time to look at where transportation gets districted also?

So that's my first piece on that and somebody can pick up.

My other piece is that I'm surprised if you could talk a little about the vulnerability and that if somebody has exposure to sea or some of the weather.

And the reason for that is that I would hope that you're also looking at the other kind, you know, so that sort of coastal vulnerability.

And here in the mountains, we're subject to a weather focus and sort of the change in weather also, you know, with the fact that we have more fog days going over Afton Mountain.

and we used to have, even just 30 years ago when I got here.

And we also, when we have dumps of snow, we have snow dumps over the 64 passages that are just, and which push and can't push people to 250, which are also related to

to climate change.

So really what I'm doing right now is sort of saying climate change is not just simply about the ocean, okay, that it does have to do with the mountains.

And in this particular region, going over those mountains is a source of commerce.

While I have nothing against Virginia Beach, but going up and down the road that goes along Virginia Beach and whether or not that washes away, I'm not sure that that would have a tremendous impact.

It would, of course, some people have owned houses down there, but it wouldn't have a tremendous impact on commerce if the road along Virginia Beach were to be washed out.

Where if we were to lose significantly the road going over the mountain, that would be a problem for a whole host of people.

Yeah, that's a good comment.

So this would be sort of the first wing we've taken at doing this sort of vulnerability assessment across the state.

And we did have a narrow or limited scope to water related events.

But for the inland areas, it was really more for flooding than like snow events or fog and things that you mentioned.

So that's a good comment that, you know, perhaps maybe when we run through this as a recurring exercise, that we'd be a little more comprehensive in the sorts of vulnerabilities that we're assessing.

And what I do, if part of what Virginia is trying to do is be this sort of middle space for moving, particularly going back to moving road commercial traffic,

Again, I will say I get the ocean, I appreciate the ocean, but I'm not sure how much commerce moves up and down those roads, except for 64 going from Virginia Beach all the way across to, I guess, to conducting.

Thank you, Julian.

Yes, I had a question on could you talk about how you're counting bicyclists and pedestrians?

Are these counts that you're conducting?

Does it have to do with square footage of development?

We're mostly focused on multimodal improvements.

So vehicles, they're easy to count.

The reason why they're coming through is the business that if we were to widen the road, the business would go away.

Yeah, so maybe the best slide to think about this would be slide eight.

I guess it would be the next slide.

Yeah, so for every category, what we try to do is provide some measure of severity and magnitude.

So in the case of bicycle and pedestrian, for that matter, needs, the severity and magnitude measures we really relied on here, it wasn't necessarily counts, it was more, I guess for severity, in this case we're talking about access to activity centers, so the activity centers from V-Trans So the severity would be how far or close I am to the activity center

So the closer in, we used the distance as a proxy for how it needs for access is.

And then for magnitude, we really were basing that on block group population and employment density.

So we didn't have, you know, counts for every segment of bicycle or pedestrian counts for every segment of the state.

Okay, great.

Yeah, and as we release the results, we'll also be releasing sort of detailed methodology.

All right, great.

Yeah so jumping off that I guess I'm a little confused by that methodology because like to me you're measuring severity in terms of distance to the activity center and then magnitude in terms of the population density but to me those are both

Measuring magnitude, right?

You know, if you have an activity center and then it's completely surrounded by very good pedestrian infrastructure, then your severity of your need is pretty small, I would think, in that, you know, there's no unmet need.

But by this metric, because it's close, it would be the most severe.

So with this method, and I guess we're diving in deep now on the method, but we took into account where there was existing infrastructure.

So the severity is, like I said, distance based.

So if you're close in but don't have existing infrastructure, it was equated to a more severe need than if you're further away.

So the one thing, one limitation that we have is, especially for pedestrian sidewalk data, is not sort of universally available across the state.

We do have better data through VDOT's bicycle program, you know, bicycle facilities data.

So well, what do you mean, I guess, by infrastructure in place?

Does that mean like a pedestrian oriented project was done there in the last X amount of years?

You know, I'm looking at the map and I'm seeing, for example, like West Main Street, which in Charlottesville, which or actually Market Street might be a better option.

Which I think has fairly ample pedestrian infrastructure.

I certainly think it would be better, but I don't think there's been any specific project there, you know, lately, but it certainly, you know, has side plans.

Yeah, I'm not sure what map.

So for that, with that, we didn't take into account necessarily where there's existing infrastructure that was sort of introduced with the prioritization.

And what we use for that is VDOT's, for bicycle, VDOT's bicycle pedestrian facilities data, which is available on Virginia roads.

And then the VDOT's also developed a sidewalks inventory.

So it's not necessarily where there's a

and a project built recently, it's just where VDOT has documented that a sidewalk exists.

So it's again, not a complete data set.

But for this, you know, it doesn't punish the, or I guess downgrade the segment if there's a sidewalk in place and it's missing in the data.

Yeah, I think so.

And so I guess in terms of what map I should be looking at, so there's a bunch of maps in the presentation, and then there's the Interact vTrans.

So yeah, the Interact vTrans now only

is only showing the midterm needs themselves.

So the results of this prioritization exercise have yet to be released.

Um, so that's where I was alluding to in my, my presentation is that once we have that information up, it'll be available for, for this sort of feedback.

But yet the results of what I discussed today aren't yet, um, mapped or available.

Okay, cool.

Thanks.

OK, great.

Well, thanks, everyone.

Great.

So we'll move on to the next agenda item.

It's going to be staff updates and discussion.

So the Title VI plan is a federally required document that will help us meet the needs of underserved populations and also the Environmental Protection Act.

So the Title VI plan should be updated every few years, and the last time it was updated was in 2016, so it's due for another update.

I went through the plan and updated all of the census data and Nick helped me with the maps.

And we also updated the public outreach area of the plan to match what we're doing with our public participation plan with that update, which we're going to talk about later.

So the plan in your packet is the draft plan.

The things that were updated are in

Lou, they're highlighted in blue and basically I just want to review this with you and get any comments and then we'd like to send it to the policy board for approval.

I think that in future years we will try to do a more in-depth edit of the policy plan.

It just wasn't on our

It wasn't budgeted to do like a whole revamp of the entire thing this year, but that's something that I think we agree that we want to do in future years.

Yeah, I've got a, this is Alex from City of Shallow's View.

In terms of your citizens,

participation process.

Can you talk a little bit about your LEP strategy, limited English proficiency population?

Yeah, so the MPO does not interface with the public that much.

I think mostly with our meetings, like these types of meetings, which are pretty technical, we have not, as far as I know, had a request for a translator or to have documents translated into another language.

If we did have a request, we would do everything within our power to translate those or have a translator available.

Most of

The interface with the public would be with like John and Kat and the public transit agencies where the public are using those services and they have their own Title VI plans that they're working on.

Equity and working with underserved populations is really important to the staff here at TJPDC and in our current work plan we have

added a study on equity and how we can reach out to those underserved populations.

So we're starting to work on studying that more and having more public engagement, which we're going to talk about later on this agenda.

We have the public participation plan, which Sandy is working on, which is more about how we're outreaching to the public and including all of those types of populations

in our outreach efforts.

One of the things that we changed last year to reach underserved populations was to, we advertise our public hearings in the daily record, but we're also advertising it with the Richmond Free Press as well because that reaches out to a more broader audience and more minorities.

So we're working towards reaching more underserved populations.

Yeah, one of the things I would recommend is because sometimes some of those folks in the disadvantaged communities, low-income folks and the LEP communities, they don't access maybe the website, maybe go into your website or

Reading the newspaper and things like that.

So in terms of the public participation strategy or activities that you folks may consider, one of which will be some kind of direct mailing, having direct invitation if there are activities with the neighborhood association or representing those neighborhoods like public housing or friendship cards,

and the International Rescue Committee.

So direct mail-ins to them will be of great importance in terms of linking them or looping them in on what's going on.

Yeah, this is great.

We're going to be doing this with the equity study that we're working on later this year.

So I'm taking notes and I might reach out to you.

I don't know if you would be willing to like send me an email so I have your contact information.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, less of a question, more of a comment, I guess.

So I don't really have any actionable changes or suggestions to make.

But it seems to me that your metric of success of is it working is that people do ask for translations of things, right?

That it's available, but nobody asked for it means that either, I mean, I guess one of two things, right?

knows about it because they couldn't read the original agenda in English so they didn't know to ask for a translation of the meeting because how did they know they said anything that they cared about was being discussed or you know they didn't nobody

You know, cares at all, but which is plausible in some cases and less than others.

Okay, yeah, you guys are right on.

So we are, that's part of the equity study as well as identifying those connections and getting more information out there.

So thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Okay.

So the next item on our agenda is the public participation plan, which is kind of a more in-depth outreach to the public on how we're engaging the public.

Yeah, we can go through the agenda just really briefly.

So one thing I want to mention before we get into the public comments that were received is that, again, when we kind of started undertaking this, our intention was more about we have a new environment in place regarding virtual meetings, and it was a chance to look at what the PDC practices were and update the public participation plan to make sure that it was matching

the practices that our organization was undertaking so that everything was in sync and accurate.

And so the intention was, of course, that we would update the information to make it more, to make sure that everything was accurate and in sync, update references to information, that kind of thing.

But it was not our expectation that this would be a major overhaul at this point.

Based on the public comments that we received, I think that there probably is interest.

You all can let us know what you think as well.

There probably is some interest in making a more meaningful, robust update to the document that takes out some of the jargony language, makes it more accessible, and also addresses some of the concerns about outreach to populations that may go beyond what the federal regulations require.

So again, our expectation going into this is that we want to make sure that we are meeting the federal requirements for public engagement, understanding that we as an organization would go above and beyond what those requirements were, but we didn't want to be overly prescriptive

and leave as much flexibility as possible when updating this document.

So some of the things that you all identified were incorporated into the public participation plan, such as identifying organizations to partner with, creating email lists so that when there are major updates to the plans, we have contact information for those organizations so that we can make sure that

that they are communicating those to their populations, but nothing in this plan was really what I would consider a significant overhaul.

It was mostly just really minor, simple

Tweaks and Revisions.

So, Lucinda, if you can go ahead and put the slideshow up.

I'm just going to show you.

We had our 45-day comment period.

While I did not get a lot of comments, the comments I got were very thoughtful, I thought.

Some of these were really simple, so I kind of divided them up into two categories, ones that would be really simple, whereas if you all wanted to approve or recommend approval of this document moving forward,

You could reference these revisions and we can move forward with adopting a document with these changes.

And then there are what I would consider more substantive revisions.

So making the document less technical.

We got a comment that I thought was really important that

We have a lot of language that says to the extent possible or whenever feasible, that kind of thing.

And that can be off-putting to readers.

We got specific feedback about the need to reach out to the aging population and people who live in rural areas, but also use the MPA transportation systems that there needs to be public participation that accounts for them as well.

Then there was also a comment about addressing climate change and tax

So some of these I think make a little bit more sense based on the purpose of the public participation plan than others, but these were the comments that we got back.

So this is what we would propose moving forward is I think that there is a need to go ahead and adopt a revision

to the public participation plan just to make sure all of those sort of compliance issues are in place.

And then based on the public feedback that we're getting, we would look into reprogramming the unified planning work program to put more resources into updating the environmental justice plan and the public participation plan so that we continue to work to make more meaningful and robust changes

at a higher level to address some of the more substantive changes in a meaningful way.

So I would be happy to answer any questions you have.

Lucinda, you may want to go back to the previous slide just to see what the...

The comments were the summary of comments so they can keep those in mind.

We have advertised this for a public hearing at the policy board for for this month's meeting.

So they'll have the opportunity if they choose to to go ahead and move forward with adopting it.

but that would be based on their recommendations.

So I'm happy to hear your feedback and if you all feel like you're in a position to make a motion on either approving the document as is, approving the document with revisions, either specific ones listed here or others that you may see or else tabling, you know, the vote and give us further direction.

Those would be the

Thank you.

Sorry, I'm having technical difficulties.

Okay, so we're doing a study on electrical vehicle charging station needs assessment.

And I wanted to come to you.

I'm working on the study as part of our work plan for the year.

And I wanted to come to you to ask you

who you think should be on kind of a stakeholder list that I should be working with.

So this is the list that I have right now is Albemarle County, City of Charlottesville, VDOT, EV manufacturers, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, EV users, which we've already had one come forward to volunteer to be on the committee.

major employers like the University of Virginia, Rideshare, Commuter Lots, Virginia Clean Cities, which I've been talking with already, and then, of course, the MPO Tech and CTAC committees and the Rural Tech Committee, because this project includes the whole TJPBC area.

I would talk to the Charlottesville REA, the Renewable Energy Alliance.

OK, renewable energy lines.

OK, got it.

I would sort of suggest a couple things.

So one, that if you're using an EV manufacturer, that you do someone other than Tesla, since they're fine creating their own ecosystem for chargers around, and that's sort of how they sell themselves.

And lots of people can certainly spring for 100 grand

but there's lots of new there are lots of new vehicles that are becoming that will should be coming on lines that won't that won't use the Tesla charger okay so just about everybody's coming online whether or not it's GM, BMW, it's coming out with new Ford there's a whole suite of sort of what I would say the broader the broader manufacturers who will not use the Tesla charger but need to have different kinds of charges the other people I would suggest there's a there's an emerging industry of people who who actually put

Charger subscriptions, or have chargers and they're subscription based around different places.

You'll notice that there's probably one over by, there's a suite of them by Burger Bak, I think that's the name of the place over there in Barracks Road where there's that small island there where AT&T is and I forget what else, AT&T and there's a hamburger place.

some stuff on that little island in front of Harris Teeter.

And so you'll notice that that's a group of, that's a for-profit entity that's worked, I guess, with the shopping center to put a charging unit there.

But I think there's a bunch of stuff.

I even may have something saved in one of my files, Shannon, that I'll send to you about this emerging alternative to Tesla that are subscription-based

companies so that you in fact couldn't drive across the country if you desired and use an electric car to do so.

Thank you.

Yeah, just jumping off that a little bit.

It's actually, there's actually, the other manufacturers all decided that they would go to make it easy, that they would, that they would say, we're going to do A or we're going to go do B.

And the B was, the A was the Tesla and B as everybody else is like, no, we're actually just going to have a universal plug.

or if we don't have the universal plug, you'll have a universal, you'll have an adapter that can go on the plug that will go into that where there is no, there is one, but there's a lot of folder all around trying to use an adapter onto the Tesla plug.

They really, I mean, I get what they wanna do.

I get the boutique brand, I understand that.

But if we're talking about using community funds to figure out is there a community solution for EV,

This is my own personal bias.

Yeah, no, I think that's pretty reasonable.

And I like the idea of also bringing in a company that specifically does EV charge points and isn't a car manufacturer.

It's to make money.

and then so I'd also add Generation 180, which is a climate group around town.

They actually run an electrification like campaign or events like at a pavilion where they let you test drive electric cars.

Oh right, John.

John has actually got a whole suite of, I can't see, John is actually moving, is hoping to move deeply into

electric vehicles.

Now, they won't be using your charging network per se, but I think they're thinking through how to keep their on-demand vehicles, you know, they're moving into this on-demand piece, how to do that.

And so if you would have just loop into them, loop with whatever that expression is, then that's one of my, that's one of the Julian Malapropisms.

You just combine them all and sort of understand

That might be helpful.

Yeah.

And it seems like there might be a place for someone representing the landowners where they would go, unless we're only talking about ones that would go on the city and county property, whether the shopping center or whatever.

Yeah, but the Stonefield ones are over there behind, are the Tesla ones.

Right now, Stonefield doesn't have at this point, and they were put there with the Hyatt that's over there.

And so, but I think that is actually the piece.

I mean, Barracks Road has it, so you can talk to the people.

I think Great Eastern still manages Barracks Road and understand how they put the ones over there.

But I think it's called Burger Bock.

Is that some other country?

whatever that whatever the one with the oh maybe it's Zinberger maybe that's what is that is that like that's over there okay well on the side of Zinberger if that's what it's called you know then there you'll see them over there and I think Great Eastern manages the thing but that's the whole point I think what you're going at at Roy is that so

If you really are trying to get people to use electric vehicles, then you've got to put the charging points in the places that they execute life and not think that people are going to, you know, the whole idea that I'm going to go to the downtown parking garage and then I'm going to find one if there's one available.

But it's got to be just part of my natural flow of how I go about doing the things that I do.

And so since we have all this great data on where people go to do

Yeah, I agree with that.

I can send you something on that.

A lot of that's taking place in places that are much more dense than we are.

For instance, there's a big movement and actually I've thought about this as a, not personally, but I've been looking, following this as a business opportunity for some people that in fact they're using, they're converting parking meter type spaces

and they're putting EVs there.

So the whole thing with that is you've got to get the city, you've got to get the county of the city to be able to allow you to dig underground, right?

Because you've got to be able to run it underground and then pop it up in these various places.

But the cool thing about that is it actually moves towards that, it satisfies that whole group of people that you're talking about.

I live in a kind of a dense area.

I don't have, I don't have, you know, covered parking anywhere.

And yet I still want to have this as a, I still want to migrate to this way of moving around.

And, um,

They've been doing quite well in London, but London's got a whole bunch of things that we never will have here.

As far as taxing, the whole pushing people by taxing your vehicle, whether or not it's a high polluter or a low polluter when it comes into the city court, that's not gonna happen here.

But in fact, it is driving a bunch of people and helping them to facilitate the decision that how would I get this vehicle charged?

All right, this is great.

Thanks, guys.

Bill, did I see you unmuting yourself?

Oh, never mind.

Nothing to put you on the spot.

No, it's all right.

I should probably, I was just going to say, I mean, I know UVA is on there.

Just to specify, it'd probably be like somebody at parking and transportation would be the best point.

From the administrative side, like obviously Rebecca White would probably be the obvious choice to reach out to for that.

Lucinda, Donna Chen is a professor at UVA in the transportation department, so she might be able to provide some suggestions for you.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, yeah.

So are they an entity?

No, they're a nonprofit.

All right, I will reach out to them, definitely.

All right, thanks, guys.

Let's see, trying to find the agenda.

There it is.

Okay.

So the next item is the TIP adjustment.

And that is our transportation improvement plan is a document that we regularly update.

It's in alliance with VDOT's six year improvement plan.

And

The tip and the sip need to stay kind of the same.

So the tip is the local document that we kind of keep track of here.

and then the STIP is the state projects.

So our local projects are all in the TIP, the projects that actually have funding allocated to them.

And so regularly the state will reallocate money or move it around and then we have to adjust our TIP to match theirs.

So this is just two small adjustments.

We won't need to do a public hearing or anything on them.

The first is, and they're both maintenance blocks, so it's kind of all the maintenance stuff grouped together and it's just transferring $6 million from preventive maintenance.

to safety or preventive maintenance system preservation.

So the memos in your packet, there's two blocks that are adjusted.

So the block on the bottom is the new table and then the block on the top here is the old table.

And like I said, it's just kind of moving money around between the different groups.

Are there any questions?

Okay, this will just go like it's an informational item to the policy board as well.

And I guess our next item would be the smart scale.

The new smart scale policy and I put up the memo from the policy board packet here.

So I know Jeanette wanted to talk about this and Chip is on the line too.

Yeah, I'll be glad to.

Appreciate y'all having me for this.

As the policy board was considering the projects for the current smart scale round this year, a couple of projects stood out that a number of citizens and groups commented that there wasn't adequate public involvement in the process.

While we met all of the required public participation by BDOT, it brought up quite a bit, and especially one project in particular, that the policy board would like a longer and a more public involvement in coming to the recommended projects.

And let me say,

What's being proposed is solely for the MPO projects.

Albemarle County and City of Charlottesville, it would not affect the projects that they work on to submit to SmartScale in any way.

And it wouldn't affect their request to the MPO for support of their local projects.

It's strictly for the projects that the MPO would be submitting on behalf of the MPO district.

So, but with that, the recommendations came to try to find a way to have a more robust public involvement in the process of selecting the projects as well as the design of the projects that would go through to application.

And so in looking at this and hydraulic, just for those of you that have been around, the hydraulic in 29 process is the model that was recommended that we should try to follow.

There's no way we would have the resources to do that in depth in detail of a process.

But just using that as a model to engage the public

and with regular meetings and use a advisory panel to help put together the proposed projects.

So with that in mind, we put together this draft process that we're going to continue to work on and develop so that if the MPO policy chooses to adopt it, it will be ready for the next round of smart scale.

and so

What you see kind of in the memo that we've put together for the policy board is that in January to February of every other year is when VDOT releases the smart scale scoring for the current year.

It's at that time you start, for the MPO, we start to see how did our project score, really well or really badly?

It's not long after that that VDOT then makes their recommendations to the Commonwealth Transportation Board for the recommended projects for funding both at the district level and at the state level.

When those scores are released, this proposal, it proposes that we would begin looking at the projects that we submitted that do not look like they're gonna get funded in the current round.

Use those projects and start to build from that as to which of these we would want to start planning for to submit in the next round, which is two years later.

At that point, using that data, also opening it up to the public, to the local governments, to CTAC, to the technical committee

What other projects should be prioritized so that it's within the next couple of months then that a prioritization could come out where four or five projects that the NPO Policy Board would want to consider would be identified?

Of those four or five, we could not do a robust community engagement process for each of those.

We just do not have the resources to do.

And so what we're proposing is that the policy board with the recommendations of CTAC and the technical committee would be to identify one or two of those projects and do a robust community engagement

in working out the development and the plans, concept plans for the projects, the transportation projects.

As I said earlier, this would follow a model very similar to what we did for hydraulic in 29, where an advisory panel would be appointed by the MPO Policy Board.

They would meet regularly in public meetings and they would help to develop

the plan that would later become the application.

The downside to that is that the MPO would have the resources to facilitate and manage those two projects through this process, but only for the administration and facilitation.

We would not have resources for design work, which would be instrumental to this.

So we would rely on either the local government's resources or BDOT's resources to help with that design work.

And therefore it requires making these decisions early on so that we can receive those resources to see this through.

And another reason why there can only be one or two projects prioritized.

The other projects, what I just called minor projects, they will follow the same format we've been going, where we work closely with VDOT in putting together concepts to submit for the final smart scale applications.

Once these go through the process, then the policy board would recommend those to go forward with application.

Letters of intent would have to be sent in.

Right now it would be in April of 2022.

And continue work with the two panels until the final applications are submitted in August.

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

The time schedule that's on the handout is very, very subjective.

Number one, it's based on if VDOT keeps all the same timelines.

If they change the timelines, then our timelines would change.

But it's also working it out so that we're trying to schedule it where the MPO Policy Board only meets every other month.

We're trying to get approvals during those every other meetings so that we wouldn't have to schedule special meetings.

So that's it in concept.

We're going to be working on this in the next 30 to 60 days to put together a final draft.

And we want to work closely with the technical committee and with CTAC to help us to develop this.

And we are also looking at, and I know this isn't, you know, within your mission, but we're also looking at doing the same thing for the rural projects, just like the MPO.

the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, they can also submit four projects with each smart scale round.

And we're looking at following this same type of process.

Okay, because the issue there, it seemed to be that the public wasn't aware of that project at all.

It wasn't that they weren't.

There wasn't a robust enough plan.

Well, we heard very strongly that a lot of the public wanted to be engaged with coming up with the design.

And I guess from the city's point of view, at least from my point of view, is that this plan is moving so fast.

And we are trying to come up with our own way of

including the public in our smart scale applications that this is kind of almost leapfrogging.

And I'm not sure if it's taking into account our CIP process.

So I would need to know now what the MPO would be requesting of the city in terms of funding in order to get it in place in order to get it approved by July of

And I guess that's part of why we are trying to get this in place, but understanding being the first year, I mean, I would hope that it would be different, but it would be very likely that we couldn't ask the city or the county

for the financial resources for design work, just because, as you say, there's such a lead process.

We may have to start working on getting those resources for the next smart scale round, because

You have to plan this stuff so far out in advance is what you're saying, Jeanette.

You're so right.

And I don't know.

Well, and that's kind of my next point is that we've been told that the CIP is going to be very lean.

and this is just kind of early preps for our process of don't expect to propose a brand new big project.

There's not, the revenue, everyone's nervous about the current economic forecast, the whole bit.

So the earliest that we could probably do it if the city council was behind this was July 1st, 23 is when the funding could be available.

And my other concern just as a staff member is that we have a lot of plans out there, like the hydraulic 29 that we don't know if it's going to be funded.

We've done the review of the Ridge Street that VDOT took, you know, work on design and concept.

We have free bridge that's been out there for a while.

And if we're going to do another plan for route 20, where again,

asking for money in hopes that we will eventually get funded.

And that's something that city staff has been unsuccessful in acquiring funds for our own projects, let alone for these big regional projects.

So has anyone from the city been just talking about this schedule and this plan and strategy?

No, only through the MPO committees.

One of the things that would happen is it would help to prioritize, because I'm a big believer, you can prioritize a lot of things in local governments.

But the real priority is, do you fund them or not?

That's where your real decisions are made.

And I think this would help us to determine what projects are priorities for our local governments.

and if they're willing to put the design resources into it, then it is a priority.

If they're not willing to put the financial resources to it, then perhaps there are other projects and even in local governments that would move those projects up

So I think this would help us to do that.

I would rather have this process in place without the financial resources.

than to not have the process in place and continue on the same path that we've been going, because we haven't been doing the local financial resources for the design work anyway, except for those very long-term projects, like you mentioned, Jeanette, with putting money towards hydraulic, which each of the local governments did.

Well, I can share from the city's perspective that we are working to incorporate the smart scale process somehow into the comprehensive plan.

So what makes me nervous about this sample schedule is just how we're not going to be done.

We're not going to be ready for discussion about this in February of 2021.

Well, I don't see how we can, if we slow it down, I don't see how we get what we need in place in time to submit the letters of intent.

And again, I just remind, this is only for the projects that the MPO looked to submit.

I understand it's just, yeah, you're kind of, you're kind of getting ahead of us.

Yeah.

Hey, Chuck, I can chime in too.

I understand that this is a situation that's occurring and it's not just here, it's across the state.

We're looking at trying to come up with some system that's going to create this multimodal, I know Chris brought it up during the presentation, a pipeline of projects to where we can have this sea of projects that we can pull from for submissions.

There are resources that are available through the state

both at the district office and at central office that can be utilized to offset some of these costs or some of the development costs.

I think part of the issue we're seeing is not necessarily the resources of developing the project, it's funding the projects.

And I think that needs to be something that needs to be considered in addition to the resources in developing it.

But I think we need to focus on both pieces of it.

Because we can't solve, we can come up with a lot of projects, a lot of designs, and a lot of concepts, but if we can't get them funded, we're wasting all that, those resources.

So we need to look at it from twofold.

And so,

I need it.

We need to look at it.

Where can we best utilize the limited resources we have to accomplish the task we want to accomplish?

Well, what I'm saying is it may be better to use local resources to buy down the cost of applications as opposed to necessarily just funding the studies and then not

Well, it doesn't necessarily have to be the construction because it's

the right away piece, it's all the pieces that go into a project that we need to consider.

So there's a lot of other things that can take place that the localities have resources that they can bring to the table that the MPO and the state doesn't.

So I just was throwing that out there as food for thought that we can help with a lot of the prep stuff

So to speak if you guys work on the public participation piece and then we can come up with a project that's You guys everybody can support and then we got to look at where can how are we going to get it funded?

That makes, yes, makes very much sense.

All of them.

Well, I appreciate this.

I think this is a good start for kind of getting some control, some additional control and a process in line for how we go about this, you know, and I think

Really, I accept the blame for a lot of this because we do have a process where we prioritize our projects and we identify what we want to submit for SmartScale and we make those submissions.

But in these past couple rounds,

You know, people have thrown out additional projects to consider and we have room in that cap.

And I was like, sure, why not throw more in, you know, not thinking that there could be some blowback to that.

I was just like, but if we might if we stand a chance to getting some some funding.

Let's throw it in and try and get it.

And I think that we're, as a county, or at least me personally, we're going to rethink how that process goes.

I think we're going to be a lot more narrowly focused and only go after those projects that are those high priorities.

And what I see with this process that you've laid out is that

It's really intended to be for those projects that we can't fit within our cap.

So the county will still prioritize our projects.

I think it's more than likely that we are going to

probably do apply for our four projects max and then it's only going to be on those rare occasions when we're going to ask the MPO if they would work with us on additional projects or if there's obviously a major regional project similar to like the hydraulic or Rio projects that we that it makes more sense for you all to do and those are the only instances when this would come into play and I think that

What you've done reasonably Chip here is say

Look, if you're going to ask us to help, that's fine.

But we want a process that we follow so that we can defend it and we can move through it easily.

So I think this is good.

And I appreciate that the city is still working on how they prioritize the projects they're going to do.

We're going to probably tweak our process with that a little bit and get some more public engagement early on.

Overall, I just say, I think this, I support this mostly because really it's focused on your organization, if the MPO and the projects that you specifically identify or that the city or county ask you to help with.

So thanks for doing it.

We would, I mean, if the state, if the states, if the months hold true, which again, this is still in a very draft form, but if the schedule holds true, we would need to adopt it before the first of the calendar year.

The important part to me is to really start looking early, and according to VDOT's webpage, VDOT will have the scoring completed in January, I believe.

So that is our first blush at how did we do with the current round?

How did our project score under the current round?

And use that as the starting point on what projects we should be looking at in the future.

And I say starting early because I think we do have

A successful project in our region that kind of followed a little bit of this in that we submitted a major project for the Exit 118

that scored almost the lowest in the state in the first round of SmartScale.

Soon as we found out how low that scoring was, VDOT began working on a redesign, breaking it out into smaller components.

So that the next round of SmartScale, we had a concept, submitted that, and it actually got funded, and it's under construction today.

So the quicker we can start looking at alternatives from the projects that are scored, the better off we'll be.

Yeah, so could you send out this memo to all of us?

To me, there does seem to be some amount of value in coordinating how the three

The three entities that are submitting are publicizing this information out to everyone since most of these projects, even, you know, obviously they're in one locality or another or crossing them.

You know, for the average citizen of Charlottesville, Albemarle, they're not

really drawing that distinction right like they want to hear what are the plans and I feel like you know the problem with Route 20 and obviously 10th and Grady was less about you know getting input in

though I mean ultimately that was a problem but in getting the information out in that there was any plan to do anything with those intersections at all and so you know if we could you know release like a coordinated statement with like even just the names prior to designs being done of what we're considering drum up some like you know media and you know get it out in the local news so that people know what's happening

Then the people who are like, wait a second, you're doing something to the route 20 intersection.

I just planted like 300 trees there two years ago.

Better not rip those up.

They're going to get pissed off and they're going to actively reach out to you.

And that's going to, you know, get where we need it to be.

But, you know, up till now, they didn't know about it until the entire design was complete.

I think that's part of the problem.

Right.

But if I could come in for a second just to sort of back up on that.

Excuse me.

How this was helpful sort of as a participant and later on when we didn't get funded.

The Route 29 hydraulic project which we put, I thought, an enormous amount and some very good work in sort of moving that project along when it didn't work, when it wasn't selected because the tunnel in Norfolk was selected and ate up all the billions of dollars.

Being able to come back

and used the work that Chuck and Chip and the whole committee did to sort of break that project down to be able to submit it again for this round.

I thought it shortened the process and made the process a lot easier to just sort of navigate through.

So having that kind of disciplined and, shall I say, obvious approach on how we sort of move through sort of major projects, while Chip, I agree with you, that may not be the

the absolute sort of positive way to get all of them done.

But there are certain projects which I think you and sort of the professionals like Kevin would say this would be something that, and Chip that we would, might be a sort of a helpful way on sort of approaching this.

If not for today, if it does get rejected and we do have a strong commitment to it, then it would at least allow us to be prepped for the next go round, which I thought bought us an amount of time and also allowed us to smooth out

to sort of respond to the community, smooth it out and also push it forward in a timeframe that I was actually quite pleased to be part of.

So I'm endorsing that and endorsing it doesn't necessarily have to be for every project.

I'm good with that.

All right.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

Um, that sounds good.

Again, I appreciate, uh, being able to see the memo.

and Jeanette, I'd love to hear more about what the city is planning in terms of rolling the smart scale process into the comp plan.

And, you know, I know the comp plan is currently planned to be adopted roughly in the beginning of next spring.

Lee, I'm muted.

Yeah.

Again, just to reiterate, as far as a design resource, I'm a free design resource.

So some of these smart scale things I've done on my own, I can help with that.

Lee is a transportation engineer.

Yeah, I mean, I'd love to see the MPO and, you know, the city and county use free resources that citizens are offering.

Like, I think all over the spectrum, people with expertise want to get involved and help.

So any way we can figure out to make that happen is a good thing.

I don't know if any staff members have any comments on that.

All right, well, let's see.

Other members of the public?

Mr. Sean Tibbs, do you have any comments?

If not, we'll go ahead and adjourn.

Hey, Lucinda.

Yeah.

Oh, let me stop recording.

Hold on.