MPO Technical Committee Meeting   1/18/2022

Can we take attendance from just the Zoom attendance list?

Here we go.

This meeting of the Charlottesville Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization Technical Committee is being held pursuant to CODA Virginia 2.2-3708.2, which allows the public body to hold electronic meetings in the locality in which is located has declared a local state of emergency.

and the catastrophic nature of the emergency makes it impracticable or unsafe to assemble a forum in a single location and the purpose of the meeting is to provide for the discharge of its lawful purposes, duties and responsibilities.

This meeting is being held by electronic video and audio means through Zoom online meetings and is accessible to the public.

There will be an opportunity for public comment during that portion of the agenda.

Notice has been provided to the public through notice of the TJPDC offices to the media website posting an agenda.

The meeting minutes will reflect the nature of the emergency.

The meeting was held by electronic communication means and the electronic communications means by which the meeting was held.

A recording will be posted at tjpdc.org within 10 days of the meeting.

All right, I guess first item in the agenda is matters from the public.

I see we have one member of the public here who I'm guessing does not have anything to say, but feel free to unmute if you do.

So really the most exciting update that we have is that we do have a new transportation planner that's going to be starting with us on January 24th.

Ryan Nichols is coming from us most recently.

He worked for Chapel Hill in North Carolina, but he also actually started his career with the PDC.

I don't know.

It's been kind of a while.

I don't remember the exact dates, but maybe in the early 2000s.

So we're excited to have him back.

And, you know, I was hoping he might be able to join, but he doesn't start yet till today.

So we'll make sure that you all get introduced to him once he kicks off.

I don't know who gets the cheesecake, but if anybody referred him, let me let me know.

Let's see.

Next up, I guess we have acceptance of the agenda.

Okay.

Anyone have anything to add?

Sounds like no.

All right.

So next up, we have approval of the minutes.

Does anyone have any changes to the minutes?

Great.

Alright, we have a motion and a second.

Do we need to do a roll call vote for this one?

Can't really raise hands since everyone's camera's off.

Standing, can you color roll?

Hold on.

Let me pull the right spreadsheet out.

Wood Hudson?

Yes.

Chuck Proctor?

Sorry, I thought it was unmuted.

Sarah Pennington?

Yes.

Bill Palmer?

Yes.

Steven Johnson?

Yes.

Jeanette Janicek?

Yes.

Jessica Hirsch-Ballarin Yes.

Kevin McDermott Yes.

Great.

Motion carries.

Minutes are approved.

Next up, we have resolution of funding support for the Regional Transit Governance Study, DRPT technical assistance grant application.

Yes.

Yes, I do.

Thank you.

I'm going to try this.

Presenting in Teams feature on PowerPoint, see how it goes.

Join a meeting to present.

We're not in Teams, so that won't work.

It seems to have frozen up.

Yeah, sure, thank you.

Okay, hold on.

I somehow lost my screens.

Okay, I think I had too many programs open.

Okay, so I can't see what slide you're on, but TJPDC is currently applying

for a governance study.

It's for technical assistance grant to do a governance study.

And the study is to establish a formal arrangement to support regional coordination and planning around the transit operations.

Basically, our regional transit vision plan that the regional transit partnership is conducting right now is recommending that

the area look into new ways to bring in revenue to support the projects that they are they're recommending in the vision plan.

So the study would look at the transit systems and the current system and then make some recommendations to

but make some recommendations to form some type of governance system to bring in new revenue and to create a new revenue and create a system to allocate that revenue equitably among the community.

So the timeline for this study would be that we apply for the study on February 1st to DRPT and then we would

not be awarded the funding if we are awarded the funding until January, until July, probably the end of July.

So the actual governance study would start in the beginning of August, and it would be an 18 month program ending around July, I'm sorry, January 2024.

Sorry, that was a bit segmented.

My computer totally froze up on me.

I guess I have a question.

Do we have any sense of like how that new revenue would be generated?

Yeah, so in the December 5th,

Regional Transit Partnership meeting, the consultants for the transit vision plan talked about some options for generating revenue and they're looking at the model that Richmond has taken on with their new transit authority.

so they're suggesting creating some type of a regional authority that would levy a small percentage of sales tax and then there is the wholesale gas tax to look at and those are the two main fundings versus that they're recommending us for us to look at but what we want to do is do a complete study on the whole system like the governance of everything

Well, thanks.

Steven, did you have a question?

I don't have a question, but if I can jump in.

What we are really asking you for is a resolution to is to make a recommendation on the resolution of funding support to include a portion of the MPO's work program for FY 23 to go towards contributing toward the local match.

We're also seeking funding from Charlottesville and Albemarle who fund the Regional Transit Partnership.

to also support the local match requirement.

Alex?

Is this study, when it's completed,

This is a region-wide study and we were advised by the consultants to include the rural communities who also during the vision plan are expressing an interest in expanding their public transit services.

whether that be traditionally or a non-traditional way.

So we are starting off broad and making sure to include even the rural counties for our region.

And then we will kind of see throughout the study what comes up and how

like how the partners want to be involved or not involved in an authority or some type of governance system for transit.

In terms of potential dedicated funding source, if at the end of the study there is a recommendation to have a dedicated funding source for

transit system.

Is it going to require each member local government to take action, ratifying the recommendation or is this going to be just something that Thomas Jefferson board is going to approve?

and then all the rest of the local government will, it will be binding on the rest of the local government.

I don't think we have the authority to do anything binding for the other counties.

This would definitely be a partnership.

And if the rural counties were interested in being involved, then they would make a motion and some type of vote on their own to participate in the project or in the

in an authority or some type of government structure.

But again, this is something that is going to be worked out during the study with the consultants.

We have a plan to have several meetings with each of the rural jurisdictions and the consultants during the study.

And then also the Regional Transit Partnership will be working as the

governing, not as to governing, but as like the consulting, like, you know, the, like, advisory

the advisory and support for the grant.

So that also the Regional Transit Partnership also includes representatives from rural areas.

And also we'll invite staff from rural areas to those meetings when you're talking about the governance studies.

I have a question now.

Yeah, that's part of one of the things that we're asking the consultants to look at the current code.

Well, it allows for some of them to join.

And it specifically names which ones can.

I think it's everybody in our MPO district.

Oh, good.

Yeah.

I'm scheduling a meeting

soon to talk with our legislative consultant, David Holstaff on that.

And we will be working with who are the state partners that we need to work with during the governance study as well.

I think really another interesting

Potential outcome of the study is if they identify any ways that Cat and John could start coordinating today as though we were a regional transit authority, maybe some some low hanging fruit that maybe we could more clearly demonstrate the future potential and maybe accelerate the process.

Part of the study will look at implementation strategies.

This is Chuck.

Most of you all weren't here, but this was done before back in the 2000s.

And the General Assembly passed resolution giving the region the ability to create a authority.

However, there was no funding mechanism that went with that approval.

So the main part of this is to identify the funding mechanism

to be approved to implement a funding mechanism for this authority.

I think that's really the big stumbling block since the legislation was passed because we've been working on this for probably 15 years now.

So those are some of the issues that we need to really bet and work through how that's going to happen and get approval by the General Assembly to

Any other questions or comments?

Otherwise, I would entertain a motion.

All right, great.

Do I hear a second?

I'll second.

This is Kevin.

Wood Hudson?

I guess I can just go to first names.

Go ahead.

Okay, Sarah?

Yes.

Jeanette?

Yes.

Christine?

I don't know.

Yep, thank you.

Jessica?

Yes.

Kevin?

Yes.

All right, motion carries.

Next up, we have our annual safety targets.

Okay, this time I don't have a presentation.

So I don't know if you remember last year we looked at the safety targets to set for the state.

Every year VDOT asks us to set safety targets and other types of targets in other years.

So last year we did

So this year I have the workbook is in your packet and you can look at the numbers and I'm making a recommendation to continue to work on the state to set the state targets for MPO.

The way that it works, just to summarize what we came up with last year, was since VDOT does most of our road maintenance and building, they are in a position to affect the safety

for the federal highway funding more than we are.

And because of that, we decided to adopt the state targets, seeing as how if we adopted different targets, we would have to come up with a plan and justify how we're going to affect those changes to make the federal highway roads in our area more safe.

So I'm just asking you guys to recommend to the MPO that they adopt the state safety targets.

Yep.

So do we have any comments or questions on this item?

Nothing?

Yeah, I mean, we had a pretty thorough discussion on this last year, I think.

I guess I'll just say it kills me to see, I don't want to re-litigate everything again, but it kills me to see this curve of going down and then sharply going up represented as a downward trend on the trend line.

Just not really a valid statistical analysis, if you ask me, but again, I think

We came up with pretty good reasons for still going with the state one last year.

There's not really a better option.

And yeah, I'd also, I guess, note that there was a pretty sharp increase in fatalities over the last and serious injuries over the last couple of years.

So we should hopefully do something about as we make future decisions.

But does anyone else have any comments or questions?

Yeah, this is Chuck.

I'll add that even though we set these targets, there's not really any requirement for us to or issue if we don't meet the targets.

All those are at the statewide level.

So basically, from our perspective, the law requires that we set the MPO set all the MPO set targets, even though there's nothing that

penalizes them for not meeting them.

And I agree that I wish there was a better way to show the data than what we're showing, but we are seeing an increase in the number of severe injury crashes and the trend.

That trend, if you looked at it more closely, it is upward.

But since we've been collecting the data since 2006, it is a

down grade line, if you look at those points, because the percentages at that time were significantly greater than they are today.

So I think we still try to focus on making sure that we do the projects that will address safety needs in hopes that we can reduce these number of crashes and the seriousness of the crashes.

But there's only so much we can do to

On the roads, part of it is education and the DMV coordinates that piece of the program with the driver implementation plan.

All we can do is focus our efforts on making sure that we eliminate as many of the safety and hazards along the roadway that we can.

That's all I have, so any questions?

Anyone?

That's Christine.

All right, a motion.

Do we have a second?

Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second.

Sarah?

Yes.

Bill?

Yes.

Jeanette?

Yes.

Jessica?

Yes.

Yes.

All right.

Next up, we have the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment, Growth and Accessibility Planning Technical Assistance Program.

Yeah, I just wanted to update you.

As some of you may recall it, I think we had a pretty tight turnaround when we were making this technical assistance application, but we had applied at the end of last year to the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment for technical assistance to help us develop a project prioritization process that would be incorporated into our long range transportation plan.

which we are expecting to get started with next fiscal year.

So not too far away now.

So this would just be for a portion of the plan that would be integrated into the rest of the tasks that would need to be part of the long range transportation plan.

But really what I was trying to do is look through some of the previous long range transportation plans, look at some of the documentation of lessons learned,

as far as process was considered and request some technical assistance to help us formalize a lot of the processes that we are already implementing.

So I'll just show you a brief slide that helps you see what it is that I'm hoping this process would help us do if we are awarded the technical assistance.

So really what we would be looking at is looking at the need identification for what the improvements need to be for our transportation system throughout the region.

And then this process would take us through this aspect of prioritizing the needs, helping us understand where we need to conduct additional studies to develop specific recommendations for how to implement improvements that meet some of those needs.

And from there we would work on basically putting together a constrained list of those recommendations for the specific projects, develop those cost estimates, and then that would help us prioritize the projects within that list to go on to the constrained list, which is the high priority list.

of projects that we want to pursue based on what our anticipated funding would be.

So this would be a way just to help us create metrics that go from prioritizing the goals and objectives based on public feedback to actually seeing how those priorities will impact which projects would be most effective at implementing improvements that we would like to see to enhance the transportation system in our region.

This would just be a recommendation, so ultimately it would still be up to the policy board to determine which of the projects, with input from the public, with input from the different advisory committees that are part of the MPO.

But it would be up to the MPO policy board to eventually approve what that constrained list would be.

But we're hoping that this would help us develop a much more transparent process

in order to communicate how we go through this process because some of the challenges in the past have been transition and committees, transition and leadership, and we're hoping by having a really well-established documentation of this process that that will help communicate across some of those transitions as we move forward.

We are continuing to work with OIP to develop a scope of services.

An award is not pending at this point.

We're just trying to refine what it is we're asking for.

And we should hopefully hear about whether or not we are going to be receiving the technical assistance before our next meeting.

All right.

We don't have any questions.

And we don't need to take any action, right?

So I guess we will move on to Chuck for SmartScale project updates.

All right.

In the pipeline process, we've had all of our, in December, we had all of our round three of stakeholder group meetings.

We're currently working on finalizing the presentations for the online surveys which should go live on the 31st of this month to try to get some public feedback and then those will run for two weeks and then after that we will

Identify the preferred solutions and then we will meet with the stakeholders and start working on developing the final recommendations for each one of the locations.

So that's pretty much where I'm at with that.

What about the projects that are not the pipeline projects?

You know, the county has proposed a number of additional ones that still needed some planning work done.

I've reached out to consultants and I'm waiting on them to return with a cost estimate for the developing the final sketches and cost estimates.

So as soon as I get that, we'll be moving forward with those applications, developing that material for you.

Okay, thanks.

I mean, what else did you, I mean, I think we pretty much defined what the locations were and what the scope of the projects were.

So it's just a matter of, for yours, most years, there's not much analysis piece.

Yeah, I guess I'd just like to make sure that we have some time to look at what the consultants come up with for those just so

Well, the other thing is we just have to have enough that we can submit the pre-application and then we can finalize the, we have to August to finalize everything.

So right now I'm working on getting the information to you guys for the pre-application.

And then once we get to that point, we can revise it and tweak it to a final submission application in August.

Yes, that gives us essentially April, May, June, and July to kind of reevaluate those and make sure and tweak them if necessary.

Correct.

Last call.

All right.

Thanks, Chuck.

As most of you know, we've been meeting with the Stakeholder Advisory Committee for their Havana River Bridge project.

So we've had two more traditional meetings and we had an onsite meeting on Friday.

And I think out of everybody here, I think, Jessica, you might have been the only other one that was at that meeting.

So feel free to jump in if you want to add anything else and check as well.

So far with the committee I think there are a lot of people who are residents of the Woolen Mills area and so what we're finding with this, and it's not unexpected, we did anticipate this, what we're finding as part of these discussions are that there's a lot of concern over what maybe to those of us that

work in transportation are not necessarily specifically transportation related concerns, but because there's a bridge that that's going up and sort of connected to some of these other areas of concern, this has become a very large part of the conversation.

So far we've spent some time talking about just the parking concerns and again understanding that that's not necessarily part of the transportation considerations but also understanding it's very significant to the local residents.

We want to make sure that we are hearing it and acknowledging that it is part of the overall development of the area.

And then also thinking about overall network connectivity and how the two different feasibility alignments might support or enhance desired connections throughout the overall transportation network and the general area.

For those of you that have been at your localities for a longer period of time than I've been without at the MPO and maybe reaching out to you just to try to get some more historic information, I think it's going to be really important to be able to communicate to the policy board and the elected officials at the city and the county kind of the

the history of this project and how this has been identified as a need and, you know, going through just some of the documentation, going a little bit back a little bit further than I'll be able to provide at this point.

But I think, you know, we may not be able to reach a consensus with this committee, but I think we'll have some really good information to move forward to our decision makers in order to help

inform them on how to make a determination on which of the alignments might be more feasible from a variety of perspectives.

I guess, and this isn't necessarily historical, this is really more current.

Probably Alex and everyone at the city have been involved in this, but we continue to deal with issues related to like the woolly mills development and the increase of traffic down in that area.

So just say, you know, something that we need to be aware of and make sure we're addressing through

I think all the residents down there in the city and those few at the end of market in the county have felt increased pressure not only of

Well, it mills redevelopment, but also like the increased interest in the park down there, which never seems to have enough parking on the summer days.

I just want to add, just to piggyback on what Kevin said, as you guys move forward with the study, you know, I recommend talking to the city's traffic engineer, Brennan Duncan.

You know, I remember we spent a lot of time, you know, on the traffic concerns, you know, from the neighborhoods around the area.

So contacting Brennan

OK, all right.

No, I was just going to say for anybody who's interested, our next meeting is going to be this Thursday at four o'clock with that committee.

We're going to be talking about a lot of things that aren't network connectivity and parking, but that's what we spent the majority of our discussions on so far.

Great.

Any other thoughts on Rivanna?

Yeah, this is just a really brief update to make sure that you all know that we're still moving forward with the other three projects that the MPO has identified as wanting to have on their slate for this upcoming round of SmartScale.

So we have a meeting scheduled for next Monday at nine o'clock to discuss kind of the next steps for how to move those projects forward.

So just to refresh your memory, that is a roundabout at District Avenue and Hydraulic.

And then it is two multimodal improvements.

One of those is on 5th Street starting at 5th Street and the Street Station Parkway.

and looking at some intersection improvements as well as extending some multimodal infrastructure from that intersection into kind of towards the city building off of the Fifth Street Hubs and Trail project that was approved in the previous round of smart scale.

And then the third project will be looking at multimodal improvements going south along Avon Street, going south from the intersection with Druid and basically going towards, I think,

We determined that we want to at least go to where the park and ride is on Fifth Street or on Avon Street.

And if we can extend it a little bit further, we'll look at what those options are.

So we're going to plan to do at least a little bit of engagement with the existing committees for 5th Street and for Avon Street that were convened as part of the corridor plans that were developed for those projects.

Sounds like no.

Thanks, Sandy.

Yes, thanks everyone.

I just have a couple of quick updates on both RideShare and Afton Express.

Since we last met, I have the November and the December ridership numbers for Afton Express.

In November, there were 540 total rides, passenger rides, which definitely saw, continued to see that little bit of the increase.

We had several days that were in the high 30s.

which is really positive and exactly what we're wanting for those numbers to continue to trend up.

December, we definitely saw a fall in those numbers, but that was also to be expected, especially with the holiday with UVA staff.

I know obviously the medical center stays open year round, but many of the faculty and staff at UVA get quite a bit of time off.

So that was expected to see the decline.

We only had 358 total rides in the month of December.

But again, I think the university's closed for

Close to two weeks, give or take there with some of those schedules.

So good information moving forward to know that next year they may be looking at altering some of those routes or the service hours, maybe decreasing and only doing two instead of four.

So all of this is such a learning experience and such good data for us to have.

We did also do a holiday thank you to the writers on Afton Express before the holiday season kicked off.

I think it was around December 15th or 16th.

We gave some swag bags with a free ride card included in those.

Just to thank those regular riders for continuing to use the service.

We have some exciting promos coming up in the future later this month.

We are kicking off a Bring a Buddy campaign.

So anyone who brings a friend gets a free ride for the future and that friend gets a free ride that day.

So again, really wanting to focus on getting the word out, the awareness for these services on Afton.

They also have had a couple of days with the weather where they have not been able to run.

So that is something to keep in mind as well.

But hopefully, you know, most people will see this as a safe ride when the weather is a little iffy.

We are continuing to plan promotions and different things throughout the rest of this year to look at increasing ridership numbers.

If anyone has any suggestions or if anyone wants to do any type of partnership,

We are certainly very open to those ideas and getting the word out.

We have materials that we can distribute to any offices for any employers.

We also are available to table or lunch and learn whatever is safe with your COVID policies at this time.

So that is it for Afton Express.

Does anyone have any questions specifically on that?

In addition to partnering with the Afton Express, we are continuing all of our rideshare activities, which is promoting all forms of alternative transportation.

We are working with a marketing group locally to look at ways that we can better market the Rideshare program, particularly our new, and I say new, even though it's been around for a little while, but unfortunately most of that time has been during COVID, which has made it a little difficult.

So it still feels very new to most people, but our Rides Rewards program.

So as people register with us, they can sign up in this system and each time they take a form of alternative transportation, telework also counts.

You can earn points that you can then redeem for rewards that can either be cashed in for actual things, for coupons, or we do monthly drawings and you can use those rewards to put in for those and those are usually anywhere from $25 to $100 gift card depending on how many they're giving out.

If it's 25, then they're giving four.

It's always worth whatever up to 100 is.

So we're really exciting.

We're meeting with that group again to kind of come up with some of the implementation ideas that we will be looking to use moving forward.

In addition to that, we are also applying for a couple of DRPT grants, our normal operating grant, which is also due February 1st, and then we are working on

a grant to help us with a strategic plan that is one of DRPT's requirements for the Commuter Assistance Programs.

So that's my update for now.

Cool.

Any comments or questions?

All right, now we'll go on to roundtable updates.

So all right, I guess let's go around the room.

Sure, so we are also working with OP regarding a GAP technical assistance grant.

and we are looking at the city of trying to come up with a centralized list of priorities for transportation projects coming from our bike ped master plan as well as the streets that work.

So we are working on a scope and we'll see how we go in the next few months of whether we will be awarded that funding and be successful.

So there's that, Belmont is moving on.

We're picking up speed as we are demoing the bridge.

So we're very excited about that.

We are looking at impacts to Water Street as we need to demo not only the bridge deck, but also the girders over it.

So we're working closely with the traffic engineer as well as with Juwan on CAT impacts.

We're trying to get it so that we only have flagging on the road with 15 minute closures, but it may require a weekend closure.

So we'll be getting back with the public when we determine those impacts.

Great, thanks.

Yeah, we have a new mayor, Lloyd Snook, and the vice mayor is Councilor Wade, and also a new council, not all of them are new, but we have two new councilors, Councilor Pinkston and Councilor Wade.

So,

So the city's got a new government, pretty much.

Yep, I hear they might appoint the interim one tonight.

Yeah, sorry, I'm on my phone.

So I just put a link in the chat to parking and transportation at UVA just to give a heads up that regular spring semester service starts on the 19th with one change from the fall.

And that's kind of trying out a new kind of novel nighttime

bus transit system where they're going to go to one fixed route between the hours of 10 and 12.

And then if you're not able to get to where you want to go on that fixed route, there's a on demand kind of like similar to what we used to call or they still have the safe rides van, but it's more expanded to service students, whoever who

might not be on this one fixed route that they have.

So if you want to find out more, you can go to that web link that I put in in the chat.

But, you know, it's something that they have that's new to UTS, so it's kind of a see how it goes and hopefully it'll be successful in moving people around where they need to go in a safe way.

Beyond that,

Not much else to report other than kind of like with the Belmont Bridge, we have our own big construction project over at Emmett Ivy and there's just continual lane closures here and there.

But I don't think the entire road is is going to either Emmett or Ivy will be will be closed.

Actually, Bill, I have a question for you.

So I heard that the construction for Cobb Hall, the Comm School expansion across from the South Lawn is just starting.

Um, that's a good question.

I honestly, I don't, I don't know a hundred percent.

I have to look, uh, maybe not the entire way, but maybe, uh, the portion in front of the project would be my guess, but I, I can double check and get back to you on that.

Cool.

Thanks.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yep.

Wood?

Sure.

Basically a quick update slash reminder.

It is DRPT's grant application season.

This includes all the grants for our transit agencies along with kind of our special grant programs, which include demo and technical assistance in our intern program are due February 1st.

If folks are having difficulty accessing any of the manual application forms, please reach out to me and I can direct you to where you can find those on our data website because we're still having some intermittent issues with our main website.

Thanks.

Actually, I'm going to go ahead and give the county update and then hand things over to Kevin.

I'm going to be looking at my slides from our quarterly updates.

So let me click pop over there.

OK, so we are working on smart scale.

We've got some projects identified that we want the county to apply for, and we'll be continuing to talk to the PDC about helping us out and submitting a couple other applications on our behalf.

I don't know if we've shared this with this group before, but we do have four SmartScale projects that were awarded funding in the last round that are being fast tracked.

So we're working with VDOT to get agreements signed and get those started.

We're looking at starting those in the spring and summer of 2023.

Let's see here.

What else?

The rail road corridor study has finished up phase one and they are moving on to phase two.

This looks at just a different section of rail road from John Warner Parkway to the city line.

We are working on our multimodal transportation plan, which is effectively the transportation chapter of the comprehensive plan update.

We can probably talk to this group more about what's all going to go into that as we figure out more about what's going to go into that.

A lot of transit stuff is happening over at the county.

We are working really closely with CAT to get more transit shelters, benches, concrete pads at different transit stops in the county.

We also have a sense of place program going on, which is pairing art installations with transit stops.

And that first site is going to be in the Stonefield development.

and we're looking at a second site for that project at Northside Library.

We also have two transit items on the agenda for our Board of Supervisors meeting tomorrow.

One is looking at implementing microtransit service at two different areas in Albemarle County and we'll also be talking about the Regional Transit Governance Study and getting the board support for that at our meeting tomorrow.

Let's see.

No real changes since the last time on the bike pad.

We're still working on construction of the pedestrian projects on Old Ivy Road, Avon Street, Rio Road, and on US 250 out in Crozet.

And then regarding the Broadway Blueprint, that's something that was the Broadway corridor over there by Woolen Mills.

We had done a sort of planning effort to look at how we can help that corridor redevelop into more of an arts and cultural center to allow

at the Woolen Mills development.

I will just add that related to the discussions we've had about the bridge project, we are talking to the city traffic engineer, Brennan, about how we can do a better job of trying to route people to the Broadway corridor and Woolen Mills to try and keep them

off of market as much as possible.

We're looking at using the city's wayfinding signage program, the signs that you see all around town directing people to

different places and how we may be able to get some signs similar to that and get some of the city intersections to direct them to what we think is the most appropriate way to get to the Woollett Mills area, which would be to go down Carlton all the way

Meade Street, essentially, or Meade and Carlton, and then Carlton turns off the confusing street names there.

But the street names don't matter as long as we can get the arrows pointed in the right way, I guess.

And so are those the round three 2020 smart scale ones that you guys are going to start next year?

Yeah, the Fast Track ones.

Yeah, round four.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, the ones that were approved in the last round of VDOT is fast tracking, which means instead of seven or eight years, maybe three to five years.

That's great.

Cool.

Yeah, I'll maybe ask you more about that offline.

All right, so let's see, who have I missed?

Hey, we are about to start our triennial audit, and that's the federal audit that happens every three years that's mandated.

So we'll be pretty busy with that.

But we also have a lot of stuff going on, as you can tell by everyone else talking about it.

Cool.

Thanks.

Let's see.

I'm happy to go.

We've covered a lot just in this agenda.

So as you guys can see, we're really active right now.

We're still in the mix of the regional transit vision plan that's going really well and anxiously awaiting some of the scenarios that will come out of that.

You guys already know about the technical assistance governance studies.

We don't need to cover that.

I think the next thing we're really going to

spend a great deal of time on is programming the MPO funds for FY 23.

You know, we have some rollover funds from FY 21 that need to be included.

We'll likely have significant FY 22 funds that need to roll over since we have so many vacancies and staff for our MPO.

So looking to jump into that, we're really excited for our new transportation planner to start so that we no longer have that vacancy.

So we can program things in the year that we receive it.

And then we're excited for the MPO appointments from the county and the city.

Supervisors Galloway and Malick will remain on the MPO and Councillor Snook will remain and Councillor Pinkston will be taking Councillor Payne's place on the MPO.

One other thing that I'll just add for those of you who may not be aware, we do have a new district engineer for our district as well.

So Sean Nelson has been appointed as the replacement for John Lynch, who was previously our district engineer.

Great.

And only other thing I'd add from city planning commission, we endorsed the, or we recommended for approval, the Rivanna River Urban Corridor Master Plan, or just plan, last meeting.

So that will be going to council for approval.

And then also, I think at some point later this month or the next week or so, it will be going to the county for some sort of non-approval endorsement

since they're about to start a comp plan process anyway.

And with that, I guess we'll go to closing matters by the public.

Still have a member of the public here.

Feel free to unmute if you have anything to say.

He's just recording as usual.

So all right, I guess we will wrap up.

I'll make great time today.

Thanks, everybody.