MPO Technical Committee Meeting   7/18/2023

Here Here

here, Greg O'Connell here, Curtis Cardinato here, William Emmert here, Tony Tulek here,

All right, that's very good.

I want to finish up on general history.

All right.

Chair or vice chair?

I guess let's start with Jagger.

Toss their hat up for me, as they can do it for another year.

You can also come with me.

That's good.

I'm not going to continue your excellent work.

All right, thank you.

I accept.

Give me a second for that.

Alright.

Yes, we will.

All right, I'll be the vice chair as the part of the community because we've got too many promotions.

And so, I'm going to tell you who's going to do it.

Should this be someone specifically from the county?

We may be reviving sort of their pre meeting a couple weeks earlier to talk about the agenda.

Sure.

Do we have any other nominations?

All right, I'm going to call the vote.

Any opposed?

All right, we have a seat now.

We're to the final session.

Congratulations, as we are to be the most chair.

that are set out, we can hear that pretty well.

We'll do our best.

We're going to try to plug in these table nights to do that, if that helps at all.

Can you hear something better now?

Yes.

Is there any way we can get the main computer to show the slides?

Just join the meeting.

We're trying to give them a big TV so everyone isn't looking over my shoulder at my tiny computer screen.

I mean, I can just talk through the one map if you want me to go ahead and keep the meeting moving.

I can talk through the one map.

It will probably be easier to have slides for the following presentation.

OK.

County.

So we had a pretty robust discussion on One Map at the previous meeting, and it made us realize that we should probably come back and talk a little bit more about the One Map project and where we are.

So just for your reference, the One Map project is really intended to be a combined map of bicycle and pedestrian data in the MPO area, combining data from the city of Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and UVA.

into a single map resource to show the bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in the region.

Just to give you a little bit of project background, one map was identified as a need during the development of the Jefferson area bicycle and pedestrian plan, which was completed in 2019.

And so, following the completion of that plan, the TJPDC was providing some general coordination with ongoing coordination of the different staff that were engaged in the bicycle and pedestrian planning, but there weren't any specific resources that were dedicated to developing the One Map resource.

so it kind of bounced around a little bit different entities picked it up here or there but without really being identified as a specific project for on anyone's work plan it never really quite made it to the point where it was completed and developed fully and so in the past fiscal year in the 2023 fiscal year the MPO

identified it and dedicated specific resources to complete the One Map resource in the 2023 fiscal year.

So just to clarify a few things about One Map, about what One Map is and what One Map is not.

One Map is intended to be a resource of regional bike ped transportation data in order to support an understanding of the existing system infrastructure and for use as a planning tool.

We are pulling together data that is provided by UVA, the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County into a single data set and we're making this data available for public use.

What we are not doing with one map at this juncture is incorporating any trails data that is not considered a transportation improvement.

So that was very specific in order to manage the scope of the project.

We wanted this to focus on what is considered a transportation project.

And if you have questions about that, I'm happy to elaborate a little bit on what is considered transportation versus recreational.

We are not incorporating data for trails that are not publicly maintained.

So there was a discussion about how to bring in information for maybe recreational uses that are maybe on private properties.

We're not including that as part of this resource.

And we are not incorporating planned improvements at this point.

So we are only looking at existing infrastructure and we'll update the map as new infrastructure is added to the bicycle and pedestrian network.

So there are a couple of different project challenges that we face as we were trying to navigate through this project.

And one of the biggest things that we wanted to avoid doing in the development of the One Map resource was duplicating the maintenance and ongoing sort of update and collection of information.

We wanted to make sure that there were not overlapping data sets that would be maintained in different ways by different entities for the sake of providing

a clarification on the accuracy of the information.

So there were also some differences in how the different organizations that are involved in One Map were characterizing or entering the data into the GIS system.

So some of those involved, whether or not the attributes that were being put into GIS followed the center line of the road versus the actual physical location of the infrastructure.

Whether they were being entered in as line segments versus polygons, that was a difference that we noticed.

And so we had some discussions about how important it was to standardize how that information was maintained.

Again, going back to the first premise, which is that we wanted to make sure that we were not duplicating

and trying to maintain different data sets for the same information.

The solution that we identified as a staff is that the simplest way to overcome those obstacles was just to let all the entities continue to collect and enter the data the way that made sense for them.

And at this specific point in the project, we're just going to combine it and share it back out as it is provided to us, not necessarily try to adjust or revise

how the data is entered.

I'm not the GIS person, but how the data is digitized.

So another challenge that we're faced with is that there is an overlapping effort with VDOT to maintain bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure data on a statewide basis.

The state is actively collecting this information and David Cook, who is on the call today is working to maintain a statewide resource of this information.

There are some differences between what the state is collecting versus what we have identified locally.

has the information we want to share on this map.

Specifically, the state is limiting the type of infrastructure that they are including on their statewide map if it is providing internal access to a specific resource.

So for example, if it's a resource that loops around the university or that loops around a park that doesn't necessarily provide external access outside of that locational resource, that is not

being incorporated into the state's bicycle infrastructure inventory.

And so there is some additional information that we're probably going to be maintaining outside of what VDOT is maintaining.

And then VDOT is also not maintaining the sidewalk information.

And so the solution there is basically that we will continue to work with VDOT and sort of let VDOT be the main source of the information that is within the scope of the work that they're doing to

maintain the information on the bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure based on what their scope is.

And then we will continue to work to coordinate any new infrastructure that is identified that meets those standards with VDOT to help them maintain their information in an up-to-date way.

And then we will regularly pull that information and combine it with the additional local information that we want to make available to our region.

And then the third thing that I've been talking about is the need to identify a systemic methodology to maintain and provide updates to the data.

And so basically, I think this is a close enough community that if there are new infrastructure projects that are being installed, we'll have a pretty good opportunity to be aware of those early.

But because there's not an overwhelming amount of those, and just to make sure that we're creating a sustainable system to keep this as an up-to-date resource, we'll develop a regular schedule to update the data.

probably on an either annual or biannual basis.

We'll kind of see how that how that plays out.

So just just to give you all a little bit of

of a final preview of what the expectation is as far as the resources that will be available.

We are going to host the information on the TJPDC website.

I'll send a link in just a second.

The combined data set is not available just yet, but we're working on getting the actual data set itself loaded up to the website.

We do have a regional reference map that has been developed as a PDF, and we are looking into

getting that formatted in like an ArcGIS online type of format, you know, the things that you can kind of click on, you see the map, you can kind of zoom in and out and explore it a little bit more.

It's a little bit more interactive.

So we're working on that.

And then we're also sharing the links to the reference data where we're pulling the information as available.

I don't think the data we got from UVA is from a publicly available resource, but the other resources are there to give some

additional information to anybody that wants to explore it a little bit further.

So with that, I'm going to drop a link to the website.

And you can you can go to that at your leisure to look through the resources, but mostly just wanted to let you know that, you know, the one map project is largely completed, at least as as as determined was appropriate for this for this first phase and any additional work we do related to

the bike ped planning can draw on that as a resource now that we have sort of all that information in one place.

So I've got one question about the public private split.

So I know there's a few places where you have a lot of facilities that are really operational and more of a very short lens between streets that don't connect.

One thing that appears like Fort Johnson Village and that Cherry Hill PUT meeting, there's like a little route that's probably 30 feet long.

where you don't go down there, you're about to go way out of your way to get to private rail.

It's probably something we would look at in context.

So I think this gives us a good resource of what the existing infrastructure is.

And I think, again, as we start looking at proposed improvements and what our goals are for the connectivity of the network and things like that, we're going to have to look at each of those areas in context.

So I don't know that those necessarily need to be captured on the map.

I think the map gives us enough information where we know where the assets are and we can use

Sandy, another question about the state's map.

You mentioned that they will not be maintaining sidewalk layers.

They'll be showing a sidewalk layer, right?

Yeah, I'm not going to put, well, David Cook is on the call.

Yeah, sure.

Thank you, Sandy.

David Cook.

I'm with TMPD, Statewide Bicycle and Pedestrian Planner.

So we do have a sidewalk inventory.

Right now we're actually in the middle of a big update of our bike inventory map, and that map should be completed at the end of July.

We have some edits going on, some additional features that needed to be added to the map.

We're also going to spin that up to the VDOT Enterprise service.

It'll be available on Virginia roads.

We're probably going to have to update the link on that map.

So Sandy, remind me, just because I noticed on your one map, you do have the link on there.

So we'll have a brand new link in August, so just let me know.

But in reference to your question, we do have a sidewalk inventory.

It's about 93% complete.

So we're missing 10 local governments.

Basically, that was based on data provided us from MPOs, PDCs, local governments from their records.

And there's about 10 localities in there that we still need to work on.

So that's going to be the next big effort starting in August.

We do plan to show a map similar to the bike inventory map that'll kind of be a one like kind of snapshot of all of the data that's been given to us on the pedestrian sidewalk infrastructure

but we will have to go in and actually digitize those 10 local governments.

So it'll probably be towards the end of the year before we actually make that publicly available.

But we do have that data.

I can send over a shape file to the MPO if they would like to see that, what we have so far.

Awesome, thanks.

Sandy, you mentioned the planning effort.

I don't think we have set plans for what the next steps are going to be for the planning effort.

We wanted to develop this as a resource for both the MPO as well as any of the localities.

But I do think this is information that we can incorporate into our other planning efforts, like the Safe Streets and Roads for All grant, the long range transportation plan.

All right.

So this is a pretty lengthy discussion and one of the things I want to let you all know is I don't think it got caught on the agenda but

I'm going to, because I want to make sure that everybody is aware of the discussions that are happening at the CTB, I'm going to, I'm going to limit what we're talking about for the long range transportation plan a little bit more than I had planned initially.

And we'll plan to have a much more substantive conversation about that next, next month.

Yeah, number five is longer track date, but then number six is your smart bill update.

And we've got, well, we've got 20 minutes for LRTD and 40 minutes for smart scale, and we're currently only 13 minutes late, so.

Well, I'll condense this a little bit, but I just wanted to give you all an overview, let you know what's happening as far as the public engagement, where we are now, what our next steps are.

So we can keep this pretty brief unless you all have

really significant questions you want us to dive into.

So just to give you an overview, we started the public engagement formally with the stakeholder committee meetings that met in February.

And then we really launched to the more broad public engagement in in June.

So at that first set of stakeholder committee meetings, we held three meetings.

We had twenty five attendees and they gave us feedback on the goals and objectives.

They were they were more

They're more facilitated conversations and we had less specific questions we were trying to get information on out of those stakeholder committee meetings.

We had a pretty low participation in the first set of meetings that the MPO developed

We had four attendees at the virtual informational webinar and then at the drop-in open house we had six attendees.

And while those numbers are low, I would say that that's not necessarily out of the ordinary for what is occurring at other types of public engagement along those lines.

So really what this means is that our best opportunities to get the feedback we're looking for at this phase is to really try to get out into the community and work with specific organizations.

I checked it late last night.

I have not checked it today, but the MetroQuest survey was at 114 responses.

When I put the slide together, I think it's up to over 120 now, so we are getting some feedback.

It's not an overwhelming amount, but people are seeing the survey and taking it, so we are getting some of that feedback.

Alright, so in terms of getting additional information, the biggest piece of information that is going to be really helpful for us as part of this is that we do want some general feedback on the overall different priorities related to the goals that we're seeking information on, but we're really hoping to get

and then the first questions,

regarding the different waiting for the priorities and the trade-offs.

That's going to help us sort of understand the relative importance of the different priorities comparatively, but the map is going to give us the richest set of information.

So we do have a couple of intercepts that are being planned.

I think next week, actually, we'll be tabling at the Downtown Transit Center, so that will give us some good opportunities to hear from specifically transit riders.

We're working with the Center at Belvidere to do some outreach.

we are attending a board meeting with the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau and then while it's outside of probably this specific engagement phase we are working with Albemarle County to also attend community advisory committee meetings and they have some plans specifically focused around transportation.

So we'll adapt our engagement with them based on where exactly we are with the phasing of the project.

We're also exploring some opportunities to get some additional outreach, looking at maybe trying to table at the national night out events.

I haven't been able to get in touch with any of the event coordinators just yet, but that's something that we're actively working on.

looking at potentially tabling at Fridays after five.

I've been trying to get in touch with CRHA to work with them and then also trying to work with UVA to table at the lawn once the students come back for the session.

And then there are also some opportunities to work with specific neighborhood organizations that we're also reaching out.

The other thing that I'll mention is that at this point, where we are in the process is largely conceptual.

So I think we're also going to have another opportunity to get feedback from the public when we start talking about specific projects that we're looking at.

And that's likely where people will start having more of a personal understanding of how this could impact them.

And that's another opportunity for us to be hearing from the from the public.

So, you know, our engagement goals, I think we're to reach about

six to seven hundred hundred people to try to make sure that we were reaching a good cross-section that was representative of the community and so we're going to continue to work towards those goals also understanding that it won't necessarily all need to occur up front in this particular phase.

And then just to give you a little preview of what we're hearing so far from the survey, when asked about how much to weight the different goals that have been presented between safety, environmental considerations, multimodal accessibility, land use coordination and efficiency and economic development, you can see that the highest priority has been given to safety followed by the environment and multimodal accessibility.

And then the land use coordination and then the

efficiency considerations were the lowest.

Regarding the trade-offs, I think this probably confirmed what we've already seen in a lot of other plans, but I think it's helpful to have this information, so we were asking the survey respondents to

make trade-off, forcing them to make choices between two competing interests.

So the first one was, would you prefer we prioritize roadway improvements or prioritize multimodal improvements?

And you can see that there's a strong preference for prioritizing multimodal improvements over roadway improvements.

When asked about access, one of the items we're trying to capture here is a more important, less important, same amount of importance to improve access to jobs or to improve access to community destinations that aren't necessarily associated with employment.

And this one is a little bit more equally spread.

There might be a slight preference towards access to jobs, but you can see that the highest number of respondents are selecting that middle category, meaning that is really important to consider both of those accessibility issues.

And the final one was related to climate action.

Is there a preference between trying to reduce congestion on the roadways versus

supporting active transportation to try to get people off of the roadways and using alternative forms of transportation.

And you can see that there's a strong preference for the active transportation and public transportation.

So that's just a little bit of a preview of what we're hearing so far.

We're going to continue to reach out to specific groups to identify opportunities for outreach, especially looking at underserved communities and how we can increase engagement in the plan with those communities.

And then, like I said previously, we're anticipating more engagement once we begin the discussions of the specific transportation improvements that are being considered.

to keep going?

I'm sorry, do we have any questions from the room?

What's that?

No?

If I do this, can you hear me better?

I'm sorry I didn't catch that.

Let me switch.

All right, we're back on the album now.

Alright, so I'll go ahead and talk about the conversations regarding SmartScale at the CTV meeting.

And what I want to preface all of this with is that these discussions are ongoing.

So I think that's important to know that no decisions have been made yet.

There's actually a smart scale retreat that is occurring tomorrow.

And so the CTB is going to get into more discussions on this tomorrow.

And also, the other thing that I want to make sure that you are aware of is that this is condensing hours of presentations that the CTB has made at the May and June meetings.

So this is certainly intended to provide you all with information to help you understand maybe what some of the concerns are related with how the SmartScale program is currently functioning and some of the feedback that the CTB is hearing.

and some of the options that they might have to make adjustments to the SmartScale program.

But I am not an expert on any of this.

And so this is presented mostly for you all to be aware that the discussions are happening.

But if there's something you need more information on, I would certainly encourage you to watch the CTV meetings, tune in to the retreat tomorrow if you're able to, because this is an ongoing discussion.

And I'm certainly happy to have conversations

with VDOT and any of you if needed to get clarification on what potential outcomes might be from some of the changes that they're considering.

So, the first thing that I'll start with is that if you are a little less familiar with SmartScale, they did a really good job at the May Commonwealth Transportation Board meeting covering the history of the program, what is codified, so what is not subject to adjustments or changes year by year for SmartScale,

and what the CTB has some discretion over in terms of how they adjust, how the program is implemented between years.

Between every single round of SmartScale, there's an evaluation of the project outcomes.

And so between rounds four or after round five, they're going through the same evaluation.

the evaluation considered surveys that were sent out to external users, so people who are submitting applications like localities and MPOs, interviews with CTEB members, feedback from the state agency staff and consultants that are involved with the application development and scoring.

And so a lot of the feedback is based on what they're hearing across all of these different feedback mechanisms.

the potential adjustments that they are considering address both procedural concerns as well as project funding outcomes.

And then, like I said, the discussions are ongoing.

Just to give you a really high level background of smart scale so we can sort of set the stage, there are different land use types.

So every locality, every region within the state is sorted into one of these land use types.

and based on the land use type that determines how much of your score is derived from the different scoring factors up here.

So the Charlottesville Albemarle area MPO area is a type B land use type and one of the one of the main factors that that has set the one of the main factors is what percentage of the score is derived from from land use.

It wasn't until round five.

that land use was added to Type C and D. Previously, just Types A and B were able to get some of their benefit score from the land use factor.

And then everywhere in our construction district or within our region outside of the Charlottesville, Albemarle, MPO boundaries is considered Type C, so it has a different scoring that's applied.

And then there are two funding programs through SmartScale.

There's the district grant program and there's the high priority program.

So the district grant program is funding that is allocated directly to each of the VDOT construction districts.

And localities are the only applicants that are eligible to receive funding through the district grant program.

and the qualifying types of projects that localities can submit under the district grant program include safety, urban development area projects, projects on corridors of statewide significance and projects on a regional network.

And then there's the second program is the high priority program.

and so every entity that is eligible to submit smart scale projects can submit projects to the high priority program but the high priority program is the only program that MPOs, PDCs and transit agencies are able to submit applications through so we do not qualify to submit projects through the district grant program and then the projects that are eligible to receive funding through the high priority program are limited to projects on corridors of statewide significance

and regional network projects, which are basically defined within the MPO travel markets by the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

That's just some background information.

So the OIP staff, which oversees the SmartScale program, basically completed an analysis of the project after round five and identified a number of issues.

that they wanted to examine further in order to better understand whether or not SmartScale was meeting the intended purpose of the program and to determine if they wanted to make any adjustments.

So you'll see that what's in red here are concerns or identified issues as they're referring them that have not yet been addressed.

Those are going to be discussed at the SmartScale retreat, which starts tomorrow.

So what they've talked about so far has been

the actual project development and application development and the quality of applications that are being received.

Real or perceived process biases.

I don't recall specifically looking at forward-looking process, but I think that might also be something that is embedded into another process that may be discussed further.

And then the funding steps.

And so I'm just going to very briefly highlight what those discussions are and what some of the potential potential I guess adjustments they're they're considering could be and what those could mean for projects in our region.

Alright, so the first issue that they talked about was the application quality.

And one of the things they're highlighting is how much additional resource it takes in order to prepare smart scale applications compared to when the project was originally or the program was originally enacted.

Basically, the program is 50% bigger funding-wise through the six-year improvement program, but it's the same amount of staff that is on board to develop the application, score the projects, and then also implement the projects.

And so when they reviewed what they were receiving through the SmartScale process, what they found is that over 50% of submitted applications were not ready for scoring at the full application submission.

And they found that 413

applications were received with 152 recommended for funding.

So the success rate of applications that were submitted was a little over a third.

That entities that submitted more applications were not necessarily more successful at getting projects funded.

And that basically overwhelming, they heard that there was a lot of time and effort that was being spent on preparing these applications that were ultimately not competitive for the funding program.

So a couple of potential solutions that are being discussed is reducing the number of application caps for all entities.

So what this means is that for entities of our size, we each are able to submit five pre applications and four final applications.

There's a discussion about reducing the overall total number of caps that all entities would be able to submit in order to support the improved quality of that application so that applications that are submitted are

have all the information that are needed at the project deadline, and also to make sure that there's good attention being given to developing quality projects.

There are some other considerations regarding readiness, so for any entity that wants to locally administer their own projects.

There's a discussion about whether or not they would want to continue to allow entities to use their own estimates if they agree to cover any shortfall versus maybe requiring them that they use a VDOT validated estimate.

There's a discussion around that.

And then there's also a discussion around potentially tying funding decisions to to pass performance and project delivery for any locally administered projects.

And so you can see that this is showing, so again, we're the smaller tier, we're tier one.

So you can see that right now, this is our maximum number of pre applications and there are a couple of options that are being presented to reduce the total number of applications to either three final applications or two final applications.

There is a technical

For everything that they're doing, they're analyzing what it might look like if they implement that solution.

And so you can see the application numbers fell from 394 to 259, but the success rate increased from 39% to 53%.

And then one of the things they're talking a lot about is the size of the projects that are getting funded.

And so they're also looking at how the value of the project might change with all of the adjustments that they're making.

So this is the first sort of set of issues that they're tackling is the application quality.

So there's a technical work group that is meeting to review the potential adjustments and to make recommendations.

And so the work group recommended reducing the application cap.

They recommended that they provide earlier and targeted support to applications.

So improving the overall quality of the applications that are being submitted.

and then they do not support the solution to not validate estimates.

They want all the estimates to come through to go through the VDOT validation process.

And they also recommend the solution to tie consensus funding decisions to performance and delivering projects.

I can keep going or I can kind of pause at the end of each section to take questions, but for the sake of time,

It might help to just keep going through.

All right.

So the next thing they spent a lot of time talking about is looking at the perceived biases in the projects that were recommended for funding, specifically focusing on small projects.

being funded at a higher rate than bigger projects.

So they asked a lot, they asked the external responders to the survey, do you think there's a bias in their process?

And what they heard back is almost 60% said yes, we think the project is biased either between large and small projects, urban, rural projects, based on project mode, etc.

So being good engineers, they did an analysis.

and they define some terms.

So when they're talking about small projects, they're talking about projects that are under $10 million in value.

And then they did some analysis.

And I'm not going to spend too much time on this because I think it makes sense that you're going to fund smaller projects for less amount of money for that then.

So you'll get a higher number of small projects, but it will take up a larger portion, a smaller portion of the budget because they're small by nature versus the number of large projects that are funded.

So one of the things they looked at is how many small projects are being funded through the high priority program.

So that's the program that is intended to fund projects that either are on corridors of statewide significance or on regional networks.

This is important because one of the biases that they're looking at is that there's concern that these high priority program funds are funding small projects that aren't necessarily having the impacts that were

intended to be funding through the high priority program.

So this graph on the left shows the breakdown between funding for projects that are in the district grant program between large and small projects and then this column on the left shows the breakdown of large versus small projects and the high priority program.

and what they really focused on is this jump between round three and round four to the number of small projects that were being funded through the high priority program.

So there is a larger number of smaller projects that are being funded through the high priority program in rounds four and five compared to rounds one, two and three.

And specifically, they looked at the breakdown then between small projects that were bike-ped principal improvement projects and highway principal improvement projects.

And what they found is that for small projects, comparing small project to small project, what they found is that bike-ped projects were 59% successful versus highway projects that had a success rate of 47%.

So the success rate for bike-ped projects was a little bit higher.

So small projects are funded just over twice more often than large projects.

Small bike ped projects specifically were more successful.

And small projects account for 78% in project count, the 33% of total funded amount.

The average smart scale request has decreased between rounds one and four.

So this is reflecting that probably applicants are

adjusting the types of projects that they're submitting to be competitive and smart scale.

And so what that's doing is that's leading to a higher number of smaller projects that are being submitted in order to be competitive.

And that bike ped projects have steadily increased from rounds one to specifically rounds four and five.

So the next thing they talked about is the amount of influence that the land use factor score has played in the overall amount of benefits that projects receive.

And there's some concern that the land use score is driving which projects are getting funded to an extent that may be a little more outweighed than they intended it to be.

So this starts getting into some of the discussions and the caveats that they're talking about as they're talking about making these adjustments and that it's complicated.

There are a lot of different changes they can make and changes to one thing might have some cascading impacts on other factors.

And so part of what they're doing at the SmartScale retreat is talking about what happens when you start layering some of these potential

adjustments on top of each other and what that does to the outcomes, but I still want to make sure that you all are aware of these discussions that are occurring.

Alright, so what they're finding is that the overall amount of the benefit score that projects are receiving has increased almost has almost doubled since round one or more than doubled since round one.

So at round one, you can look right here.

At round one, land use benefit score accounted for 23% of the total benefit score that projects received.

And then in round five, it's up to 49%.

Alright, and and specifically as you start talking about smaller projects, the smaller the project, the higher percentage of the benefit scores coming from land use.

So for projects under 10 million 55% of the benefit score was coming from land use for projects between 10 and 20 million 43% was coming from land use and then 20 to 30 million 32% was coming from land use.

and specifically bike ped projects are getting a very significant amount of their benefit score from the from the land use category.

And so you can see that the overall average was 49%, but for bike ped projects at 74% and then for bus transit at 64%.

So those active transportation and public transportation, alternative transportation are getting a high amount of their benefit score from from land use.

All right.

So this is really talking about why maybe they want to look at whether or not the land use score is really capturing what they want it to capture in terms of providing overall project benefits.

The land use score is really capturing, currently in their assessment, is capturing more where a project is being located and not actually whether or not it is having significant improvements to the land use deficiency goals that are stated.

in the CTP's goals.

And so one of the things that they are talking about doing is that they think land use is important, they want to keep it, they want to keep, you know, sort of a benefit from land use, but tying that maybe more to enhancing the benefits that are identified from other scoring factors.

So for example,

you might get a safety score and then if there's a high land use benefit you wouldn't get a separate score for land use you would potentially get a additional magnifier that is applied to your scores in other areas.

So that's one potential adjustment that they're talking about and the goal there is to limit the influence that land use has and remove land use from being the sole driver of success for which projects are identified for funding.

Alright, and so again they're doing these scenarios and so what you can see is that if they if they made some adjustments and again I don't know the actual details of what kind of maybe like

influence factor they might be using, but it shows that if they basically make some of the proposed modifications to land use that they're discussing, this would be the impact.

The average total cost of funded projects would increase a little bit.

The average total requests of funded projects would be raised, so you're getting slightly larger projects.

And you can see where there would be changes based on the improvement type.

So there would be fewer bike pad projects that were funded.

A few more highway projects and maybe some minor changes to the bus or transit projects that are funded.

The other thing that they're talking about doing right now is making some adjustments to what types of projects are eligible and through the high priority program funding.

So currently, the Code of Virginia that enables a smart scale legislation basically says that high priority projects are intended to mean those projects that are of regional or statewide significance, such as projects that reduce congestion, increase safety, accessibility, environmental quality, or economic development.

The current policy defines where the projects are located.

And so there's some discussion about whether or not there's a need to better define what types of projects should be

eligible through the high priority program.

So one definition that is being considered is that high priority projects would be limited to new capacity highway projects, managed lanes, new or improved interchanges, new or improved passenger rail stations, and freight rail improvements or fixed guideway transit.

So remember that the MPO, the PDC transit agencies are only eligible to submit projects through the high priority program.

So this would limit the types of applications that we would be able to submit to projects that meet this or another proposed guideline for what types of projects would be eligible through the high priority program.

We got a question from Ben.

Yeah, just on the last slide, can you go back to the previous slide of what types are

Currently, there's no definition for the types of projects.

Okay, so between this and the previous changes that you were looking at for land use, it looks like there's sort of an overall for us to be prioritized by projects.

I think there's a lot of concern about the amount of, yeah, I think there's a lot of concern of whether or not that was the intended outcome of the SmartScale program and is certainly a direction where SmartScale has been shifting in recent rounds.

Okay.

I think we link up the opposite concern here that we're getting that funding taken away from projects that we think are important for bike ride projects.

So I'm a little bit like freaking out that we're taking that away.

Do you know what's like driving this push or concern at VDOT or LCCD?

you know, the administration?

Is it the whole 64 gap, people being mapped out and funded sooner?

Sandy, I can, you know, in listening, and again, I think we're going to hear a lot more after this retreat, but in listening to the previous CDP meetings, I think there's a lot of variables.

I think part of it was the capacity of VDOT staff to be reviewing the quantity of applications that are coming in and making sure that the quality of those applications improve.

I think there also has been a neat emphasis at the administrative level and specifically looking at benefit cost analysis and how we're measuring that on the local level budget versus roadway project.

I think there's a lot of different things.

I also think that it is

The other issue though is what we're talking about is the intended outcome.

were, well, not necessarily what are the highest priority.

For example, if there's a very large cost interchange, they may not do that one because they know that it's not going to be effective.

So they're also trying to address folks learning the symptom and submitting applications that fit the symptom and seeing if they're unneeded to change the system so that those higher priority things become marketable.

That was just a large discussion that they had.

Before we jump into the list of our critical projects, the other thing that sort of gave me pause was the past performance issue.

Do we know any more details on that?

Because I don't think the city's going to do quite well if we're competing with other people.

I have not already.

So that might be something they're talking about in there.

If you're able to tune in tomorrow, I would certainly suggest doing so or follow the recording as soon as it's available.

I think also one of the things I can talk to Sandy about is one of the reasons we're going to be continuing to update you guys on these conversations and CDP is having an interview that we ask or recommend to all of you who are going to write a letter on what we feel is necessary in order to get regional priority to that.

We're certainly going to be paying attention to it, but we think a lot of the bias on this is probably pretty important.

And would it be worthwhile, I guess, to engage our local CTV member directly?

Here's the alcohol police captain.

I don't know if we have contact with him generally, but OK.

OK, great.

It's probably going to make more sense to wait until after the retreat to sort of see where the discussions, what direction the discussions are going.

But yeah, we can certainly consider that as a conversation we want to have.

there's actually a couple more I was trying to put this in context to sort of our region so there are a couple more related to what the CTB is doing but I think basically I wanted to sort of give at least some high-level idea or context for what that might look like as far as impacts for our region so I'll put it in context of our project I think the biggest takeaway though right now is that it may be

to early to really settle on which projects we want to be preparing for applications until after they determine which of these adjustments they may be making, if any of them.

So, based just on this proposed definition for what kinds of projects would be eligible for the high priority program funds,

I went through all of our projects.

For the projects that were submitted previously, I looked at what kinds of improvements those were.

This has not been vetted through VDOT.

This has not been validated.

This is my assessment.

So it could be that I have misinterpreted some of these, but the projects that appear to be able to meet those definitions that are on the list of potential projects we could consider would be the Ravana River Bike Ped Bridge.

So even though there's a movement to move away from

some of these bike ped projects.

This primary improvement type through the smart scale application was actually a highway new capacity project, so that could potentially still be an eligible project that we're able to submit.

It's a new bridge, so the new bridge sort of offsets the overrides the bicycle and pedestrian improvement as far as what is considered the principal improvement type.

The other thing I probably did not emphasize is that there's nothing that would prohibit you or us from including any sort of bike pad or multimodal improvements as part of another application that met this definition.

It's just that the principal improvement type would have to start with one of those categories and if we had other multimodal improvements we wanted to incorporate we could do that as well.

So the Ravenna River Bike Ped Bridge, I believe, would still be an eligible project.

The Hillsdale South Extension, I believe, would be an eligible project because it's new capacity.

It's building a new road connection.

And then potentially the pipeline project at Ivy Road is also including potentially a review of the 250 interchange.

And so if there are, there's a potential interchange improvement that could be an eligible project through the high priority program.

I don't think the interchange is part of the project scope.

Michael's going to talk about that in a minute.

Maybe he can clarify.

OK.

So the last thing that they're talking about potentially reviewing is the way that projects are funded.

So the current process to fund projects through smart skill is step one looks at all the projects that were submitted through the district grant program.

So just looking at the at each of the construction districts.

Projects are scored and then funding is allocated to projects within those construction districts based on who gets the highest score until they run out of money.

The second step allocates the high priority program funds on a district-wide basis.

So it basically looks at the project scores and says which projects would be funded in each district if they had been eligible to be submitted to the district grant program versus the high priority program.

So that's step two.

And then step three allocates the high priority program funds on a statewide basis.

So looking at if there's any funding left, what are the highest overall statewide projects?

So one of the concerns that they're looking at right now is that the amount of funding allocation to the high priority program has not increased since round two.

But when the wholesale fuels tax was enacted in 2020, all of that funding was allocated to the district grant program.

So there's now a lot more funding in the district grant program than there was previously.

And so I think I think the concern that they're trying to address here is that they are continuing to allocate high priority program funds to projects that are really these small projects that are more appropriate for the district grant program, even though the district grant program has more resources than it did when it started.

And so just to again give you some context, when you look at the projects in the Culpeper district, these are the projects over here.

This shows like where the project is funded as far as the funding steps.

So the projects that are in each of the localities are submitted by the localities are funded in that step one.

And then the projects that were recommended for approval.

This is looking at the staff recommended scenario, not the final scenario, but the projects that were recommended for approval.

that were submitted by the MPO and the PDC are being funded in step two.

So that's just what that looks like to play out.

We don't have any projects that were funded in our region that were funded through that next step, step three.

So what they did was they looked at what would happen if they changed the high priority program definition.

And what they found is that if they just changed the definition for what types of projects are eligible through the high priority program, they found that the average project size increased from $15.6 million to $76.2 million.

And the number of projects that were funded decreased from 30 projects to six projects.

and what they found is that any projects that were those bike ped principal improvement types were not funded through the high priority program.

So you can see the bike ped projects that were funded were all funded through the district program in this scenario, none of those projects are funded through the high priority program.

All right.

So then they did this analysis on what happens if they eliminate that step two funding.

So basically instead of that second step being that projects would be allocated, the high priority projects would be approved or recommended for funding based on if they would have been recommended for funding through the district grant program if they were eligible.

Instead of doing that, they're saying let's remove that step

and let's go immediately from step one, prioritize all the projects within the construction district.

And then the new step two would be prioritize all the projects across the state through the high priority program fund.

And what they found when they did that is that it actually reduced the overall size of the of the projects that were funded.

So changing the definition of the high priority program decreased the number of projects that increased the value of the projects that were funded.

and decrease the number of projects that were funded.

Making changes to change the funding steps actually had the opposite effect, where it decreased the total value of the projects, the average value of the projects, and increased the total number of projects that were funded.

So you can see we are increasing the number of bike ped projects, we're increasing the number of highway projects.

And so then they looked at combining those two.

So those two are having kind of conflicting impacts.

One of them is reducing the project size.

The other one's increasing the project size.

So they combined those.

And what they saw is that when they combined those two scenarios, that had a more moderated impact.

It increased the project size.

So they're funding what they would consider to be more of these significant improvements to the corridors of statewide significance and regional network.

and increased the overall project size, decreased the number of projects by about half, and then it decreased the number of bicycle and pedestrian primary projects from 51 to 15.

So again, we're looking at potentially what this might have on our projects, but I think the main takeaways is there are a lot of things that they're talking about that are going to significantly change the types of projects that we may be eligible to submit.

that could change the types of projects that are really being prioritized through the investment of this high priority program funding.

And so I think it's really important, again, that we're just paying attention, following the conversation, considering whether or not this is having impacts that are overall helpful for our region or maybe have some concerns that we want to make sure our

being at least heard as part of the process.

But I think at this point, until we sort of get a better sense of direction from the CTV, it's going to be hard to know what direction to go as far as our application development.

They have looked at each of these things, and I think part of the work here is to look at what happened to all of that.

Looking at how they define new projects, how they support the projects, how they meet the projects, the number of applications that are received.

No question.

All right.

We're going to go to the next item, which is federal grants update.

It is ground tech project development.

So, Project Pipeline is basically a means to develop better concepts, better estimates, better applications.

And you sort of see that embedded in your argument

had projects that are poorly conceived and they come into the application stage of these projects that tend to be overbundant and delayed.

I tried to

is one of the application states or pipelines really geared toward that.

Moreover, it is based on the B-Trans needs area one branding and needs where we start the project.

And inside of the district, we're also trying to help support other projects, the project collection process, the lab brand, cap and revenue sharing projects,

didn't work very many people in this PDC.

We did work with Green County and most of them were in the border section of the district.

It would be good to try to branch out and work on that on those other projects.

Both are very smart-scale and appropriate sharing of time.

With that said, again, Project Pike has focused on these high-priority e-trans projects.

We're doing four currently in the district right now.

One's in Paul Becker, one's in Warren,

and two of them are here in the Charlotte-Blau Island area, Barracks Road, and what we're looking at.

The process, you know, as you all know, Chuck's daughter has been sick and actually passed away a couple of weeks back.

That meant that he was managing his project.

I took him over about five, six weeks ago.

So I've been playing all the characters myself on these projects.

and the White House with you, we're probably about a month behind what we should be in the process.

I think we can catch up in this phase, if not the next phase.

Basically, the first phase, the month before the end of September, the next one will be from September to September, and then the last one will be January to July of next year.

and if you think about the three phases, first phase is finding the problem is, second phase is trying to figure out what are potential solutions and trying to work with it to try to find a preferred solution and then third phase is really trying to engineer that at a conceptual level, well maybe a little more at a conceptual level but just try to get some really good applications planned and get a good estimate.

So we're in phase one right now.

We release surveys to reach out to all the needed components in the first phase.

The first one is collecting data.

That's traffic counts.

That's safety data that we have.

Other forms of information we don't collect to analyze the situation.

The other is reaching out to all the interactive online surveys.

to the logistical needs for the northern section of the district.

Like yesterday, we're going to release the Barrick Road and Ivy surveys next week.

The Ivy survey or the Ivy process is going to be slightly unique from the other three.

As you all know, we do have work with the county called Triangle Out solution that was

would live in that northwestern quadrant of the 250 bypass intersection.

A lot of issues came out of that while I was in some interaction.

And so it is generally best to try to on this particular one, just a little differently.

We work with our home county to set up our own little focus group.

And that week will be comprised of system representatives from neighborhoods and businesses that are getting more and more

we're trying to go through this process effectively.

One is kind of like as we want to gather the staff, gather the input from the public, gather the input from the staff, asking these folks what's the end of that first phase.

If you get anything, you validate that this one concern was that we're talking about the problems, these are the problems you all experienced and you're not recognized.

Make sure that they

you know, we're really communicating well with the back of the World War and people have been that.

The other aspect of that particular World War is VDOT's identified V-trans and states of V-trans needing the building on 250, both itself and at the interchange.

But there's been a lot of discussion, a lot because of the Triangle House, one of these things that we're having about the multi-modal

So that's another component of this thing.

We're open to pick off something this week and then the next step will be trying to really make sure we understand fully.

You know, I always be able to study here, sort of asking three questions.

Those are really interesting.

where are people wanting to go outside of the study area?

You know, where are the major destinations of Barrick?

We're not necessarily thinking of pantyhose, we're going to move to a far away if we don't do it the correct way.

But Barrick Road, North Ground, Stepping Ground, Boar's Head, you know, those kind of things, we're not quite thinking of the multi-middle component of this whole thing is the three-notch trail study that's coming up.

That's sort of in our mind thinking about where we can head it.

The next question is really making sure we understand what we're trying to link to.

What is outside of the study area that's being proposed by the city of the county of UVA?

It's still a little bit opaque.

You know, what are the planned facilities for multimillionaire in this area that's the world we're outside of?

To help them to define that in context.

But then the last part of multimodal police were thinking, I mean, you know, it's east-west border and you really only have five choices.

You can either go on the north side of Old Ivy, go on the south side of Old Ivy, go on the north side of the railroad, go on the south side of the railroad, go on the south side of T50.

And so the thing about this is to ask, like, what are the places where we're going to be problematic?

You know, you might see something that seems red, yellow, green, sort of.

One of the problematic areas,

we don't think we have an opportunity or where are the opportunities that will become green and then put them in the yellow might be maybe something important or expensive or maybe difficult to do and then try to stitch that together into a mosaic of how we can actually bring people from one side of the board with the other.

There's a lot of opportunities among others.

So hopefully out of that process

That was a wrap-up, phase one.

I have a better idea of what we're going to do at the public input, and the input from the four-world focus group, as well as the data that we'll be pulling for fresh data to track some more behavior in the region.

We'll be doing a similar process, but a little bit lighter, on the other three four-worlds, including Barracks Road.

Obviously, Barracks Road is a question of how you maintain efficiency in four-worlds in particular.

through but how do you um increase safety at the same time increase multimodal for the world so we'll be looking at that um I will say somewhere there won't but it's not quite as complicated that way but I um I don't know if any of the questions that you might have is that's where our process is for the next um couple months again as we move into phase two uh we'll be certainly you know

So how are these potential changes to smart scale

is affecting how you go through this or are you just gonna pick what the good projects will be regardless of how messed up the funding opportunities get and then figure it out later or?

I think right now, I think at the staff level, obviously, we're following what's going on CTV.

Uh our influence on that, what's happening with that is, we have some of it's done, you know, significant and some of the issues that I'm hearing out of that

and there were multiple things there.

And I think CTV is looking at a whole wide range of things there.

So how that actually plays out, we'll have to see.

You know, one thing, we'll talk about the bike-ped stuff, and yeah, to be honest, there hasn't been something that the governor's office has talked about or not, but you know, I think part of the problem is I still have the district

branch, you still have locality to comply with a lot of that stuff.

I think there's a push to try and make sure that some of the high priority funding is flowing to maintain some of the, you know, the market or the order of the statewide sector, the connected tissue for things to dig together.

And so making sure that those things get funded and making sure that, you know, safety and congestion needs are being damaged is, I think, part of the underlying threat in this whole

and that sort of moderate debate.

There's probably a lot of quality of applications and the number of applications.

I think our district, we did a decent job managing them.

Our district is interesting.

It's different than other districts in that we actually are taking the applications that are coming in and we're running the path around because I think we really understood that

We were getting kind of back of the napkin kind of plans with very broad estimates.

And we were getting, we've seen that in a long time, the warnings in our district have been pretty bad.

And I'm just talking to Albemarle, you know, some of the localities.

So we were trying to reach out and trying to help develop better constant medical estimates.

and other districts.

We have about 38 in the last round.

Other districts, we're talking like Richmond and close to 100.

And so, it just becomes to the point where things being put in that aren't well considered and really the volumes going through is becoming, I would say, harder to buy the right products, but it starts to undermine quality.

So that's the part of what's happening, funding, reduction funding applications.

And quite honestly, at a certain point, there may be some value in trying to prioritize what are the projects that are important.

And I think I'll just close on that.

I think we've been talking about this sort of project selection process, a process we've been working on, but we've rolled out a cap and an oversharing project over in the last part, four steps in capital improvement.

to the planning at the outset.

Back in, you have to think about how it's going to be maintained and who's going to maintain it.

But in between, there's sections that we've not always done a great job that feed out our localities and partners.

And that, of course, the third step is doing the engineering and construction, which is a big problem in this area.

And one, I keep coming back to is project selection.

That's picking the right project.

and to do that, I think we have to make out of the planning process where we're prioritizing, look, these are the products we want to do in the next three to five years and the planning process has to be sort of geared towards these important products so that when these grants have to start, we're pulling from the state of the projects or the small ones like the medium sized, like the revenue sharing or larger

on a score scale.

And obviously as requirements change in these programs in time, we need to be flexible and adapt to that.

But the idea of really trying to figure out what projects do we want to work on in the next three to five years is so critical as opposed to, hey, we've got a grant coming up.

Let's look around and see what studies we might have sitting on the table or what's the pressure at the moment.

is critical.

I think we can do well and also in terms of smart scale, we have to go by and what the state has defined its needs and in this area, actually, IV and Barrett's safety and congestion are not the biggest need.

It's multi-mobile improvements branded like that.

So, making sure that we're

and Smartscale, but the gaming system that you need to do to some extent.

I believe this part's good.

talk about this.

There was a recent change in a project that was approved.

How does that happen?

So, I mean, I'm not, I mean, I actually like the switch.

I think it makes sense, but what is the process that, I don't know if everybody's familiar with that, but.

I think you're speaking to, we had it on the chart up there.

It's the Peter Jefferson, Peter Jefferson project got swapped out for the roundabout.

That's really the CDP making decisions for the project.

If the staff recommends a scenario that comes through, and that ranks spreading loss of benefit.

In this case, I think there was a, you know, the District Avenue project, while it didn't rank as high, might have been a better product to advance, especially as some of the other investments are being made back here.

Yeah, that's a great thing to do as well, but my understanding is it's probably a core release to the budget.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Awesome.

A bit of an analysis that rank, right?

I thought it was a little bit of CTV, but it wasn't what they had gone and then at the approval stage, that's when they made the script.

So that was the May meeting where they made the final approval and so it just got in before that June 1st

They could just have it.

Yeah, we found out about it about a week or two ago.

Well, I mean, it happened.

Well, we weren't actually talking about it in this meeting, I think, the last... Well, we talked about, like, three that were... Again, I thought they were already approved.

No, they didn't make that change after Liverpool.

They made it prior to CTV improving the projects.

Yeah, right.

Because it actually scored higher

than the other one, but that pool of funding can run out.

And so they went to the other pool of funding.

And I think the CDP members argument was that was actually a better project.

So I think that was the recommendation of our CDP member.

Anything else on this item?

Yes, I'll keep this very brief.

If you have not already heard, we did not get, we're not successful in receiving a raise grant award.

There were four awards in the state of Virginia, I believe.

And I think three of the four of them were projects that were either in a under some sort of underserved community.

So either historically disadvantaged or had a large percentage of underserved populations that were impacted by the project.

So that does lead us to determine what our next steps might be related to the Ravana Bridge.

One of the benefits of applying through the RAISE program is that they do offer debriefs.

So that's probably our immediate next step is to be on the lookout for the debrief and be able to get feedback about our application to determine whether that may make sense for us to continue to pursue RAISE.

But there could also be a larger conversation about what

what next steps might look like as far as pursuing that specific project.

related to the Safe Streets and Roads for All grant.

We are under contract.

I think we don't yet know how to be reimbursed through that grant program, so that's probably our next administrative step.

But as far as moving the project forward, we are under active procurement.

We have received proposals for the project and are in the process of selecting consultants.

There's a consultant selection committee that has been identified

with representatives from all six of our jurisdictions that are serving on that.

Any questions?

Just a quick note that in previous presentations that we've submitted, we've definitely been told by the UNCOT staff

that often it takes multiple submissions of the same application in order to be successful.

And it can be the exact same application a year later.

So we'll learn from that theory.

And we'll look at your research and that would be very cool.

Alright, Roundtable, MPO.

Alright, so first off, we are working on our consolidated draft of the zoning code right now that will be revised by our consultant when you hand it over to the Zoning Planning Commission.

My other biggest news is that we have a bike type of parking at the time of spring.

We will be working on our Doppler mobility hubs, so figuring out where our scooters should be parking, as well as looking at our bike parking around town to make sure that we have enough space.

And then Dory can come up with some sort of measurement of the demands that we can figure out for more bike parking in the city.

On trend, we have started our TSP, the transportation plan,

We have been doing public outreach recently on that in the downtown transit center and one in the city market.

There's currently a survey out.

If people contact one site, there should be a link to that.

We're also going through our alternative to the feasibility study.

We just presented to council last night on our progress on the technical analysis.

We'll be going to external to take over the next to get their feedback on what sort of people actually using the future.

County.

Um cats also rolling out bus shelters.

We have a meeting, I believe, later today with DRPT.

They are helping us with designs for bus shelters, specific locations around the city as well as the county.

Uh I think we're a little bit ahead of the county and then selecting our sites and forward with design but we're looking at the initial

Lastly, I just wanted to touch on our Safe Rocket School program.

We have developed our initial project for the school year of projects that we're going to put on the ground.

Our tier one projects, which are going to be paying ballers, thankfully we can get out quickly in the next month and a half, should be getting sent over to public service for an order to put in lots of crosswalk and things like that.

So you should start seeing a lot of public works activity on the ground, a lot of painting.

We are going to be, in the next days, expanding that list beyond what it is right now.

Right now, it's just the public routes to school.

We're walking around the department in the parent responsibility zone.

We are at the next step in expanding that in all the parent responsibility zone.

And then step after that, we'll be in bus stops outside of those parent responsibility zones, and then you can put your bus stops safely and stay in your bus stops safely.

So we're working through this project right now.

We're also going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some outreach.

We're going to be doing some

So, tomorrow, we're going to be for two items.

One of them is for agenda to get the secondary plan.

We're almost three pages that are doing that and also, I believe this will be giving an update on rep point shared his path for kind of giving them the context of the project and also some of the

Creek Bridge process.

I believe that Parks and Rec right now is working to get thought estimates on the gates and stuff from their contractors.

We can kind of figure out where to put them, as well as looking at the current right-of-way in the easements from federal faculty, if we can figure out a current route some more without having to work more right-of-way.

For safe routes to school, we just received the final report for Woodbrook Elementary, and I'm meeting with school in the, I believe on Thursday,

to kind of discuss some of the projects that we can hopefully get done, you know, in the near future to help these kids and then talk about some of the other recommendations from that.

The priority process is still ongoing.

We didn't push back because we're busy with everything.

Green Ops, I believe, is going to enter the RQ, or R-Q, possibly, network in the middle of the house.

And I think we'll

I believe next

Planning Commission meeting.

We're going to be discussing more about the 1844 updates as well including the battle being in most of New Orleans right now.

Right, Louisa and Kat are pretty comprehensive.

I think I covered most of it earlier.

Not too terribly much to report.

This is an interesting time of the year.

We're finishing up one fiscal year and that sounds anxiously starting another one.

So we are just wrapping up some of our marketing initiatives that we have scheduled in 23 that will be then put out in ethical 24.

We did some fun video work.

and are going to have some additional photography so that we've got a little bit of a library to pull from when we go to use social media when we do future marketing.

We will be starting a strategic plan that is a requirement from the RPT.

We have selected an agency and are in the process of refining the scope of the bus and the contract so hopefully that will

get all sorted out and everything in place by the end of this month so that we can start working on that in August.

And that process will need to be fully adopted through the commission here at DJPDC and submitted to DRBT by November of 24.

So we should be all set and on a good schedule to make sure that that happens.

And Ben, I think this is probably a worse question.

Do we have any updates on any of the SmartScale projects?

Last fall, they said some are supposed to update this screen?

I think some of them are.

It depends on which SmartScale project.

And honestly, we have a lot of this.

Some of them, one of them they are probably thinking of are acquisitions of all the extreme state projects that are a big SmartScale project in Albemarle and right away.

No, it's OK.

It'll be a very brief update, but I do thank you for the opportunity.

So I just wanted to highlight that we need an announcement just about last month that we received an award through FTA's best and best facilities program.

So we are going to be able to replace 39 transit vehicles for 11 rural public transit agencies throughout the Commonwealth, which is a very, very much needed

This program for bus and bus facilities, for those who don't know, it focuses on replacing, rehabilitating, and purchasing buses and related equipment, as well as constructing bus related facilities that could be transfer centers or maintenance facilities.

It's a very competitive program.

So we are really excited that we were able to get any kind of award out of this cycle.

So hopefully we'll be able to get those projects running.

The other thing is just kind of a staffing note.

So you might have seen him pop in.

He had to pop back out, but we have hired two new statewide transit planners.

That would be Mitch Huber and Paige Lazar.

Likely you'll see them kind of shadowing me as well as others for those who may be on other MPOs or other meetings coming through.

and we hope to have kind of any kind of new assignments or information about MPO representation from DRPT released within about September or October.

So we're going to give them a little time to kind of get acclimated before I throw them to the wolves.

Great, thanks Tiffany.

Any questions?

Tiffany, do we know where any of those 39 buses are going?

I actually, I think they're mostly 5311 recipients, so I'm not sure with you all if Jon had been in that group.

Okay, thank you.

And everyone else, I missed you to leave an update.

All right, we'll go to closing matters from the public.

Anyone from the public wants to speak, feel free to unmute.

Just an apology on navigating even the tech issues.

Not our data guy with a Linux computer, getting to make technology work just right.