MPO Technical Committee Meeting   10/7/2025

Sorry, what's the next meeting?

If everybody wants to go around and say a few questions, you can have a couple of new posts.

Sandy Shackelford, the New York full-time register of planning.

Rory Stolzenberg, Charles O'Bynum, representative.

Thank you for joining us.

Phil Palmer, I work in the Office of the Architect, as a planner, and also this year, I'm the chair of the parking and transportation committee.

County, and her vice chair.

Anya Swartzendruber.

I'm a planning manager for Albemarle County.

Tommy Saffranek, City of Charlottesville bike and pedestrian coordinator.

Sarah Simba, Regional Planner at TJPDC and Shallow to Albemarle NPO.

Christine Jacobs, Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission Executive Director.

Taylor Jenkins, TJPDC Transportation Director.

Let's give them a bug in here then.

Gretchen Devanis, ABA Administrator of the Student Board for each of the teams in the scene.

Claire Raffenberger, Transit Planner of the State of Charlottesville.

All right, folks online, we'll start with you, Mitch.

I'm a Cheever Statewide Transit Planner, DRPT.

It looks like we also have Chuck up on.

I'm the District Planning Manager for VDOT.

We need to vote them in for remote participation.

And location.

You need to provide the location or reason why you're attending the person.

for remote participation.

And Chuck?

Yeah, I'm in Warrenton, residency, and I'm more than 50 miles away from the MPO offices.

Vote to it.

Nice.

Tonya Schwartzen-Druber.

Yes.

Chuck Proctor.

I'm here, remote.

Christine Jacobs present Sarah Simbot present Jason Espy here Bill Palmer here Mitch Hubert here Wood Hudson Sarah Pennington Barry Herring Garland Williams

Any opposed?

So moved.

Thank you, Ben.

I wouldn't be happy to take any questions if there are any.

A question on tip adjustment.

We get a little background on why we lost so much funding for new rolling stock.

I can ask Mr. Baring to talk to us a little bit about that.

Shouldn't have been, we're just moving from one year to another.

This is the reason why we're doing this.

It does look like it's not coming back.

and the states.

Any other questions on this one?

and so also under this item included in your packet was a draft of those CHIP procedures that Goryan talked about so by your next meeting we would really appreciate if you all had an opportunity to review and provide any feedback or questions on that as well as we work to shape up this process.

Aye.

Okay.

Chuck, we will toss it to you then.

I didn't hear the question.

One of them talks about CO2 emissions and the other one talks about historic resources.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, thanks.

The rest of it's going to be discussions and we'd like to get a recommendation because we want to try to start working on these applications to get them prepped for next round.

Why the shift there?

On 5th Street?

On Barracks.

And it's similar to that with the dual lefts.

Sorry, when you said there's already a sidewalk on the north side under the bridge, are you talking about a sidewalk on the south side?

It would be on the south side of the bridge going from Surrey in the county all the way to where it basically dead ends in the city, currently.

Do it as a shared use path except for the segment under the bridge?

We were just going to build from that ramp to the existing sidewalk in the city.

Oh, I thought you said all the way from Surrey, which is like two blocks west of the ramp.

And I don't want to encourage that if I'd rather have them share the road than trying to transition right at the interchange.

Well sorry, I thought though if it's on the west side it ends at Surrey and then on the east side it ends at the city, it wouldn't be ending at the way the ramp is the city, is that right?

Pretty close, if the sidewalk starts just east of the ramp and it would terminate right there where that ramp, where the sidewalk ends.

But just to clarify, this study removed roundabouts entirely from the scope, and we're moving towards

We can do either one or we can do both.

How are we getting these on our list?

Because they were done as a part of the previous study.

But if we're not addressing a priority need and we're not addressing a state of the issue that's going to score well, why are we continuing for good applications?

These are only ones that have the potential for an application.

or considering resubmission in the future and if still HPP eligible?

And I just don't have any idea what that's going to be.

That's also going to be very valuable as far as the current score of studies, so we may want to see where that goes.

or a variant of it, but until we get to the end of that one, I don't want to look at submitting that one if it's not something that we're going to pursue as part of the larger study.

And we have two submissions for the MPO, is that right?

I'm just saying that's how many, the maximum you can submit.

So I think mostly just had questions like about the process and about how we kind of got to these projects, but nothing that we specifically like had to report out.

Is there any way to get pedestrian improvements associated with that project?

That's the length of the project on 250 bypass.

You could combine it with the dual less though.

The dual less, the dual less we're looking at providing the sidewalk.

Which is going to be a particularly high B-trans need.

I think the question would be, Chuck, if that is considered contiguous or part of a similar recommendation.

The other one, just you get more with it from a pedestrian standpoint or you can't get those with the ramp extension.

Whereas if you put in the double left, you're making for a much worse experience at that intersection, at the ramp intersection with barracks or bikes and pedestrians.

It's adding a little bit of width to the one crossing.

Say that again, Chuck?

I should have put in with these slides, but I didn't for this presentation.

They're in the packet.

And it should show you the right, the sidewalk section as well as the dual left so you can see what it looks like.

Could that be incorporated into this?

From a smart scale perspective, it's existing and you don't get any benefit from adding those improvements.

Even though that is a need for pedestrian access?

It's already there.

Even though it's not ADA compliant?

Even though it's not ADA compliant.

And so, I mean, I don't know, I imagine it's not adding that much to the scope to add in a couple of curb cuts and a crosswalk.

So I'm not going to know how well it's going to do until I get a final cost estimate from L&D on what the total cost is going to be for even what we're proposing.

And, you know, I'd add that in the

For the original project it did because everything we were doing rebuilding the entire roadway all the way through um the interchange but for the uh this application we're not we're only doing the south we're only doing the south side of the road a dual left turn alternative that was not selected that we're talking about here right yeah

That's on page 47 of the packet.

I don't have it open right now.

Chuck, is there an option to get any crossing of barracks?

So that's what we'll try to price out.

No matter if we do apply for one of these projects.

We could see about adding one on the west side of the interchange.

With either project, if we apply for them and get it or just for one?

It would only be on this one.

But if we apply for the one that's the right turn onto the on-ram?

And that's one of their potential applications.

Because I'm lost.

Yeah, what he's saying is that there's a separate application that the county submitted in the previous round between Georgetown and Barrett, or between Georgetown and the energy gauge.

And they're open to resubmit that one, but that one was also like 90 billion.

So we're recommending they resubmit that one.

And I think that one did have a crossing at... It does show a crossing on the west side of the interchange.

Maybe a little bit.

At the ramps.

Or at that line at the ramps.

So where is, where in the process of smart scale is that application?

So it would still have to go through the MPO to get that resolution of support.

I mean, I remember walking from Emmett all the way down to Georgetown, but the scope was from Millmont to Georgetown or no, it was past Millmont because we talked about putting a charity staff all the way down.

We're not going any further than where the sidewalk ends, where the sidewalk connects to the existing sidewalk in the city with this application.

And Chuck, but at one point last year, were we breaking this up into three separate applications, one county, one MPO and one city?

And then the county submitted just the county portion to the interchange.

Okay, got it.

We're just running the sidewalk through to get conductivity from what's already built to what's not basically to a logical termini in the county, which is Surrey.

And those have been reduced to off-ramp extensions, which capacity improvements were never really the jam of the city.

So I don't really know how we would support off-ramp extensions as a recommendation going forward.

it's all I'm saying is if you don't make you're gonna have it's a safety issue if we start to have more crashes on 250 bypass it's gonna cause gridlock both in the city and in the county if we can't make it work um and so I'm making some minor improvements from an operational standpoint to address the safety issues and additionally I'm putting in the bike ped facilities which not the bike facilities which aren't there right now

So that's part of the discussion.

I mean, can someone explain why there's a reset situation?

Am I understanding that correctly?

I took like all the way to front of there, sort of, so like... Yes.

But, yeah, I think... I mean, this is... I don't... I've never seen what this particular part is, especially with Chandler.

Was that last part you said?

and using the centers, I do understand the traffic backing up on there, but you know I also see it, I hear what other people are saying too, like just where it comes from here today, you see a lot of people walking because there's some housing complexes that are, I still call them all the same, but there's the housing complexes over there where people walked and as you know,

Yeah, that's what speaks to what Rory was talking about widening that, you know, off-ramp probably is going to make it less safe for them, making it longer than a walk.

Both of them are just trying to get to work.

You're kind of trying to line it up with a bus stop if memory serves.

So there's a few bus stops going on across.

So.

It's a standard project, but it's not going to ultimately solve some of the bigger issues on the intersection, sort of at the same time peeking down the road or something.

I think about the situation that we have on 2964 that came up with this solution of the left turn across

And I think I wouldn't otherwise.

And personally, I would prefer that you do it with the extension rather than the dual less.

Yeah, and I think important what you just said Roy, it's not just pedestrians, it's bicycles and pedestrians because that's going to be what makes the biggest mode shift change is to get folks, you know, a better facility for biking.

The city can choose to allow bikes on the sidewalks in the city.

sidewalks and bicyclists using sidewalks um to get from one place to the other because that's VDOT standards is only going to allow us to to build but in reality we're going to probably tell people like this this is what we want you to use for bicycle I have a hard time that's what I'm saying we should build it to share these past standards and for the part under the bridge that we can't do without all the roundabout so there's no room

but that's not going to be nearly as bad as the entire corridor being a choke point or it all being built to the Southwest.

So I'm wondering if he even thinks that we can get it.

Or L&D will not they will not agree to it.

I think on the east side you wouldn't have as much of a problem because there's that sort of driveway that leads to the right amount of trail up there.

People may do it, but there's no legal permissions to access the trail from that driveway.

So I'm going to put a pause on our conversation for a second because we're getting away from time.

So my understanding is today we're looking to prioritize locations for projects later on.

I think all of these, even the 64 ones on 5th Street, L&D is going to have to look at them all.

Like, can you all bring us concepts for those sorts of feedback that the committee has provided to you all, Jeff?

We will do those slides, those two locations, which will include the improvements on the north side as the one application for SmartScale.

I'm not going to say it couldn't happen, but it hasn't happened like that in the past where it's kind of a narrative process.

They need time to do.

we'd like you to go in is that as you're setting these project scopes for things that are that are primarily drastic congestion mitigation on highways to include bike ped improvements in those project scopes when you bring them back to us in your costume.

L&D is not going to agree to that because you don't want to dump bicyclists at an interchange with no place to go.

Now, that was the time.

So we're right on the sidewalk.

But I think it's kind of obvious we have some issues with some of these.

So what is the recommendation that we need to pick?

What's going on?

So if you're coming southbound from the city or from the county to get to Leonard Sanders, you have to go up the ramp at Old Ivy Road across the bridge and then back northbound on the ramp and then turn into Leonard Sanders that way.

So if I understand this correctly, you will

Can you propose to view your thoughts on the wording that you would like for them to use?

It's not necessarily as similar as it is past.

And the question is, do they want the MPO to apply for those or not?

We submitted the whole thing and it was like $80 million.

Is that okay?

And that's why they came up with these guidelines.

Our rank extensions don't need any of those type of things.

We confirmed with WIPE that they would be eligible.

Yeah, improvements to a grade-separated interchange, they count as improvements to a grade-separated interchange.

So these projects would not be competing for funding within the district grant program if the MPO is... They would only be competing for statewide funding.

We've gotten it every round, but we're not it's not money that we get to this district We're just it's statewide funding that we're bringing to this district in addition to what we get in the district grant program.

that lets you add sidewalks in the vicinity, you know, how, what are the criteria for how you can shoehorn other not standalone HPE eligible improvements into an HPE eligible project so that we can get things that we want out of

And that's what they're going to look at.

Just saying, I think you have the right ideas of drafting that list.

Or is this, we do not have a prioritized list?

Next, we're going to go to Taylor.

Any questions?

And this is what you presented to the CTAC.

It's in the packet, but do you mean standalone?

is the information.

So it is where those are posted, but it's not.

I think if you can find that.

for some of this as well as technically.

Do they have a background in engineering aspects and projects?

Like they want to be put on agendas and they want to be able to present these ideas outside of that established process.

How long have this current iteration been together?

So it became CTAC in 2013, I believe, but as far as, you mean like the current members that we have?

Right.

Everyone's all on a different appointment.

Do they have to hop off at two years?

currently, they do not like they can continue reapplying and being appointed by their, you know, whatever governing body it is to continue serving as long as possible as long as someone else hasn't applied for that spot.

So the city of Charlottesville does physically who did the city council?

Right.

Any specific feedback you all would like us to note on this discussion?

Or is there going to be like a changing bylaws or

What's the chain of communication and then revising bylaws to reflect all of the

Say more about that.

Thank you.

I'm not sure what are they going to do to make that better.

I think there are avenues where they can be providing better, they would be providing a better platform.

Yeah.

And it might be worthwhile to go talk to your counterpart, Albemarle, for that.

Thanks for that, Scottie.

All right, well, let's move along to RTB eukaryotic.

So happy to take any questions about that.

So as you recall, we're working on two STARS projects that probably have been previously to the public.

That is really the thickness of what that icon is intended to represent.

So not crossing 250 to get third on a trail over there?

And I don't know that we want to discuss having pedestrian cross the bypass at that rate.

Symbolized.

What can we do that's going to have benefits that we can actually afford?

I generally try to stay out of cold rooms.

I haven't looked at them in a while, but there's been talks about what would that look like.

Any questions on this one?

And to add to that, originally this timeline was very compressed in order to potentially have a smart scale application, but recognizing that it would come so late in the process, it made sense to extend it in order to give sufficient time for good recommendations.

29 southbound and to address the safety concerns that are resulting as a result of beaver bull stocking up and making that left turn to access I-64 eastbound as well as to improve the prep and red lock issue.

With the Teeling Bird Run lot, are you guys looking at all that connections to get to Redfield or to the forestry building?

I don't know about it.

OK.

And I don't know that we have committed one way or another.

Unless you connect to Redfields.

Thank you.

Florian, do you have any updates on all stage feeds and rooms for all?

So that's all I have.

Thank you.

I'm sorry?

No, right behind on Pedestrian Outreach.

Yeah.

All right.

And then she also said 50-50 of awards were located in urban and rural areas, so they hadn't even split on project locations.

as well.

And then we also connected with EVA Parking and Transportation about their Wahoo Commutes Program and requested some origin destination data from them as well.

When did you ask that?

I'm sorry?

When did you ask?

Last week, I think last Monday, so we had those meetings.

Yeah.

I will take a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

All in favor, stand up.