MPO Technical Committee Meeting   2/3/2026

introduce our new member.

We have a new member from the city joining us from our Planning Commission, Danny Yoder.

Thanks, Ben.

Hi, everybody.

Nice to meet you all virtually.

I wish we could meet in person, but I guess that'll happen a couple months from now.

But as Ben said, I'm the new Planning Commission rep. Rory has kind of termed out, so I'm

Taking over for him, Rory has a really impressive attention to detail.

So I'm going to try my best to borrow some of that in my work here.

All right.

Thank you, Danny.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Danny Yoder?

Here.

Barry Corina-Plum?

Here.

Lonnie Murray?

Here.

Charles Proctor?

Thank you.

Christine Jacobs.

Present.

Jason Espy.

Bill Palmer.

All right, great.

And I think next we have to make sure that we're following all the rules for this meeting.

Yes, sir.

This meeting of the Charlottesville Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization, CAMPL technical committee is being held pursuant to the Code of Virginia subsection C of 2.23708.3, which allows the public body to hold all virtual public meetings.

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

The method for holding this meeting shall not change unless a new meeting notice is provided.

Should the electronic transmission fail, you may reach out to the TJPDC at gorgamg.org.

Notice has been provided to the public through notice of the TGPDC offices, to the media website, and hosting on the agenda.

The meeting is held pursuant to the remote electronic participation and all virtual meeting policy as adopted by the CAMPO Policy Board on August 27, 2025.

All right, thank you.

So our next item is going to be matters from the public.

I believe if you are with the public and would like to speak with us, you have to raise your hand.

I'm seeing Peter Krebs.

Thanks, Ben.

I just wanted to invite everybody here and any members of the public to attend the sixth annual Active Mobility Summit, which is coming up on March 5th and 6th.

That's an evening presentation.

And we're going to have Pete Eshelman from Roanoke, who's going to talk about how Roanoke could successfully build an economic development strategy around connectivity and access to the outdoors.

There'll be plenty of fellowship and also listing out some local wins, which are things that you all have worked on and are working on as well.

The next day we're going to reconvene on Friday morning at the Wolf Factory for work sessions and a panel about what an economic development strategy focused on connectivity might look like here in Charlottesville and Albemarle.

Thank you so much.

I said a whole bunch of stuff that y'all didn't want to hear.

All right, we can move on to our next item, which is review and acceptance of the agenda.

I did not see any other hands raised for the matter from the public.

Second.

I got Lonnie and a second from Albert.

We'll just do a voice vote.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

And any opposed?

I abstain.

All right, thank you, Tanya.

And we can move on to our next item, which is approval of the meeting minutes.

So you'll be abstaining from that one, Tanya, not from the agenda.

Ben, just two corrections to the meeting minutes from last meeting.

Thomas and Brian want to abstain from the vote of the smart scale.

All right, well thank you for those corrections.

Do I have a motion to accept

The meeting minutes as amended by Gorion, and please take note of the item at the bottom of your screen that just popped up.

You will have to unmute yourself when you do the voice vote.

You also need to be visibly seen on video.

All right, thank you, sir.

And a second?

Second.

All right, thank you, Alberic.

Any opposed?

And I know I've got Tanya as an abstention.

Do I have any other abstentions for this one?

I will also abstain.

All right.

Thank you, Danny.

All right.

Well, we can now move along to our next item now that we've got the approval of the minutes.

So this is going to be an update from Sandy and Chuck on our smart scale project application that are being developed right now.

Sure, thank you, Ben.

I have one summary slide, and I wasn't going to go into a lot of details on the applications themselves, but just wanted to give you a quick status update.

Mostly we're focusing within this group of the projects that are within the MPO region.

So just as a reminder that we as VDOT are currently supporting five project applications.

These are in pretty good shape.

The 29 northbound and US 250 eastbound off-ramp improvements, if you recall, this is a revision to the previous application that was submitted for the Barricade Interchange.

So this is a lesser alternative that

will hopefully be more competitive in SmartScale this round.

We will need to revise the study.

We have retained a consultant to make those revisions for us.

We have a draft concept and we will look forward to reviewing that with you at a future meeting.

The two ramp extensions at Old Ivy Road, including the westbound off-ramp extension,

and the Eastbound on-ramp extension application.

We have completed the study.

We will need to do an operational safety and analysis report.

We have a consultant retained that is working on that.

We have planning level sketches, so we will need to

develop higher level sketches for the applications.

VDOT is in that process.

We have a finalized concept for the I-64 and 5th Street DDI project.

And then the biggest project I think that

That doesn't feel like it's quite as far along as the other ones.

We are still working on revising some concepts and seeing if we are able to get consensus to move forward.

So we will be having some discussions on what the next steps are for those projects in the next week or two.

Our hope though is that if there is continued support from the MPO that we would be able to submit an application at this location.

But we are still working to identify the preferred alternative and once we do that we'll be able to move forward on the cost estimate.

We're in good shape on the other projects that are being developed that are planned submissions from the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

I won't go into a lot of details on the project concepts themselves at this point.

All right, so it sounds like we are still in development on these applications.

We're working through them.

We're going to get together potentially next month and talk about them in more detail, but that's still TBD.

And we're going to have a time to vote on these and really move them on to the next phase of smart scale application at a later date.

Nothing to vote on on this one today, guys.

But if you have any questions about where we're at with these projects, now's the time.

Otherwise, we can move along to our next piece of business.

So I'll open it up to you all.

All right.

Then I will keep us moving.

Sandy, we're going to look forward to a more in-depth update at our next one.

Thanks Ben, good morning everyone.

Included in your packet was a draft letter of support for a BUILD project submission for the Rivanna River Bicycle and Pedestrian Crossing Preliminary Engineering Project.

The Notice of Funding Opportunity for BUILD was announced on December 15th and the deadline is February 24th.

So staff have been working on gathering application materials, letters of support, and making sure we have everything, all of our ducks in a row for that deadline.

So we've submitted this project before for this proposed bicycle and pedestrian bridge between the Pantops growth area and Willen Mills.

Each time it was submitted, it received really high remarks.

Every debrief meeting we've had, they continue to encourage us

to resubmit it.

They said that it's in line with the priorities of the grant program.

It just advances to that final level of higher level review and it's just not picked but it's very competitive and they just keep encouraging us to submit it.

So the previous application was for $3.5 million to complete preliminary engineering.

That cost estimate could change a bit and staff are currently working with VDOT to make sure we have an updated cost estimate to be able to submit.

All right, before I ask for a motion on this one, any questions from anyone on our committee?

All right, well, I do have one.

So we submitted this.

This will be our fourth time, I believe, submitting this project.

Have we looked at any other projects that may be feasible for submission for this?

Or is that something we should maybe do for the next round if we're unsuccessful with this?

Yeah, so we asked if there were other appropriate funding sources when we had that debrief meeting with USDOT, and they said this one would be the best opportunity for this project.

And so if this continues to be a priority, we would continue to resubmit it.

The last application, I think we heard some feedback that we didn't score well in their innovative materials or processes category.

So we're setting up a meeting with VTRC, the Virginia Transportation Research Council out of VDOT to see if they can help us revise that language.

Specifically the feedback that we got was that we didn't propose any innovative materials for the bridge and so that's what we're trying to address just to see if there's anything a little bit more innovative that we could propose for that.

I also read in

Some correspondence coming out of AMPO, the Association of MPOs, that this administration is very focused on automation.

Okay.

I think that's all of my questions on this one.

Anybody else have any follow up questions that we need to talk about before we start making motions?

All right, well, I will take a motion to recommend that we move forward with the letter of support for this project.

So moved.

And a second from Tanya.

Let's go ahead and

Do a voice vote on this one, so you'll have to come off mute and make sure that you're on video.

All in favor of moving forward with this motion say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed.

Any abstentions.

All right, you can move forward with our letter of support Taylor.

Thank you.

Next up is going to be the traffic demand model.

This is going to be a super riveting conversation about modeling from our friends at TJPDC.

Awesome.

Thanks Ben.

Just to do a quick introduction before I pass it over to our presenters.

So today's meeting is seeking a recommendation to move forward with the 2050 demographics that were forecasted by the project team to be used in our travel demand model.

And so they're going to talk a bit about how these were developed.

Charlottesville is currently completing a zoning impact study, and we did work with the consultants to be able to get Charlottesville specific demographics developed for the model and Albemarle County staff have also reviewed this.

They provided us a couple revisions, so I welcome them at the end of this presentation.

If they'd want to speak a little bit about those, you're welcome to.

Good morning.

This is Nag Kashi from AECOM.

I'm part of the team for the model update.

So we are in the process of updating the regional model as part of which we will be updating the base year to 2022 and then the future year to 2050.

Today we are going to talk a little bit of the demographics for the year 2050.

For the updating process, we are using some data sources which include the Weldon Cooper for the 2050 population forecast and Woodson pool data.

and the Decennial and American Community Survey and University of Virginia enrollment and parking data provided.

For the city of Charlottesville, the city provided us the total employment estimates and the employment estimates by TAs and so we are using what was provided for the city of Charlottesville.

Yeah, so this is a table that kind of shows like how the model compares against the Weldon Cooper data.

And a small note that the model includes city of Charlottesville and portions of the most of the Albemarle County and portions from the Greene, Louisa and Fluvanna counties.

So this table shows the population from the Weldon Cooper data and the model and in general, kind of trends similar to Weldon Cooper data.

This table is a summary of the different variables and how they compare between 2022 and 2050.

So in general, like they all have healthy growth and within reason that our population is estimated to be growing about like 26% and then employment about 39%.

Just to look at region-wise, this is the district definition that the model currently uses, and the plot shows how the districts are.

Can we move to the next slide?

Yeah, so this is bi-district, the comparison of the population and employment.

And yeah, in general, the North of Charlottesville district shows most increase in the population and employment, the population increasing about like 8500 and the employment about 8300.

The following couple of slides show the thematic maps showing the population, employment and household distributions in the area.

This is for the household.

household populations.

This plot shows the employment distribution in the modeling area.

The couple of next slides show the changes in the population employment between 2050 and 2022.

Yeah, this shows a change in employment.

And as part of the other input is the model network.

So this is a plot showing the 2050 network that is proposed to be used in the model.

And there's a plot showing the different facility types.

Number of lanes.

The aim of this update is to develop a tool that could be used to measure different metrics to analyze the performance and effect of different projects in the region.

And some of the metrics include like able to get a sense of the congestion in the area, be able to develop some plots,

showing the level of services, able to be estimating the transit ridership, the mode share, VMT per capita, and get a sense of what's the travel time between different areas to get an idea of the congestion and other metrics.

So this is in brief the process we are adopting for the 2050 and where we are.

All right, I will open the floor up to any questions folks might have on modeling.

I've got a couple questions, Ben.

Yeah, go for it.

So I think I mainly have two questions.

So first on the demographics, I'm curious, you know, projected 2050 is quite a long way from now.

Do we ever look back at our previous model updates to understand how our future projections actually turned out?

Like, do we tend to be

Overestimating, underestimating, about right.

So as part of this exercise, we have not done, but the previous estimates were also for the 2040, which is still way ahead that we don't have exact numbers to compare against.

Okay.

So the model has a different module by itself for the university trips and a different module for the regular non-university trips.

So both are handled differently and with emphasis on university trips having their own pattern.

I have a question.

Yeah, I'm building on Danny's question about student ridership and how student travel behavior.

Right.

So as a part of the transit network we have, we also have the UTS service in the model.

So right now we are, we just got started with the mode choice where we analyze all the trip patterns between the different transit routes and make sure that that's kind of reflected in the model.

All right.

Any other questions on the model?

I actually had a couple and I think Jason, you were kind of touching on this.

When we're looking at the model, it sounds like we're talking a lot about the road network.

And I'm curious, I saw that the last slide of the uses for the model are looking at potential ridership forecasting for transit, or looking at different mode shares.

Are we able to do that?

So the model does include the transit, detailed transit networks.

So we do have the Charlottesville routes, John, Bright, the university routes.

So as I briefly mentioned, we are in the process of the mode choice where we look at what the model estimates for the transit ridership, compare them against the observed data and make sure the model adequately reflects along with the highway validation where we look at the observed counts and the different

route the different categories of the highways and make sure they all fall within the suggested PPM guidelines from the VDOT.

And is there a way that you're able to do that for the biking and walking trips as well?

Yeah, that's part of the network.

And if I could jump in to add a little bit more to that.

So we did a lot of exploration for the bike ped component.

And one of the challenges is that bike ped trips tend to be a lot shorter, like they happen in smaller geographic areas than what our TAZ boundaries represents.

So TASes are typically much larger and they capture longer trips.

And so that's why we aren't able to specifically pinpoint bike ped trips specifically as something in our model.

Building on the question about the transit inputs for the model, what do you have for the future transit network?

Because I can imagine a world where there's, it might be here sooner than you know it, where there's commuter bus up to Greene County, up 29.

So right now we are in the process of calibrating and validating the base year model.

We just got started on the 2050 and we are at this point welcoming any, I mean talking to TGPDC and VDOT to get more inputs on the future network.

But to clarify for what you're looking for today, we're not looking at the model network itself.

We're looking at the demographics in the TACs and saying, yes, we understand what these are and we agree with this smells correctly and like to make sure that the policy board agrees with us as well.

All right.

Any other questions that we have on that one?

All right.

Thank you, Jason.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All right, thank you, Tommy.

And I will do this by voice vote as well, so you'll have to come off mute and show your faces.

All in favor of the motion, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

All right, thank you all.

Thank you.

All right.

Good morning, everyone.

So hard to believe it's already time to start planning for next fiscal year.

But today, I'm going to walk us through the draft fiscal year 27 UPWP, which is basically the MPO's work plan and budget.

So today, it's only informational.

We're here to collect your feedback about what should go in the final draft.

And we will come back in April with a finalized version for recommending to the policy board.

So a little background on the UPWP.

It identifies all of the transportation planning activities that will be conducted by MPO staff for the next fiscal year.

It serves as our budget and our work plan, and it should ideally be aligned with regional priorities and deliverables.

Federal law requires that all of the metropolitan planning processes address 10 planning factors that are shown in the blocks in red on the right of the screen.

The ones in blue are additional frameworks that we added to the UPWP for this fiscal year that were adopted in the last long-range transportation plan.

So we added those to make sure we're in alignment with the LRTP while we're conducting all of our planning activities.

Just a quick reminder about the MPO's funding sources.

So two federal agencies primarily fund the planning activities 80%.

FHWA or PL funds, those are administered through VDOT and FTA funds are administered through DRPT.

Then we additionally have a 10% local match that we provide and a 10% state match is added on top of those federal funds.

VDOT also receives state planning funds or SPR.

from FHWA to support the activities of the MPO and those will be shown on the next slide.

So the fiscal year 27 work program funding my source has mentioned it is federal, state, and local funds together.

Everything is in red here because we have not yet received any updated funding allocation tables and all of these values are from fiscal year 26, so the current fiscal year.

So these will be updated in the next draft that you will receive.

All of these are from last year.

So as previously mentioned, you'll see down at the bottom in the salmon color where it says VDOT SPR funds.

Those are the funds that VDOT receives to be able to support the MPO through things like invoicing, direct costs, things that help us with the work that we're doing.

So that funding, the $275,000,

is within VDOT's control.

What's within the MPO's control is the $481,000 number, and everything that's captured in this budget includes staff time, it includes direct expenses, admin expenses, things like printing, mileage, professional development for staff, all of that is captured in this budget.

For funding by task, the splits that we recommended in the last UPWP, we recommend carrying forward.

So task one, program administration at 25% of the funds.

Task two, long-range transportation planning at 30% of the funds, and that one's lower since we're not in an LRTP update year.

and task three, short range planning and technical assistance at the highest share at 45% because we recognize those short range tasks are what we're working on the most these fiscal years.

So the smart scale applications, any technical support that our member jurisdictions need, working on the tip, things like that.

So a couple of highlights from the current UPWP.

We try to do a look back every time we're drafting the next one.

And so I do recognize that we're still about six months out from the next fiscal year.

So some of these activities are still in progress, but a couple of things that we've already accomplished from this UPWP is Move Safely Blue Ridge, our comprehensive safety action plan.

So we completed that plan this fiscal year and all of our member jurisdictions adopted it from the planning district commission.

The Regional Transit Partnership and Charlottesville, Albemarle Regional Transit Authority or CARTA.

This fiscal year we officially completed that transition and the CARTA board has been stood up for a full year.

They have bylaws and they have members appointed to that.

Safety performance targets is something that we do every fiscal year.

That's already come before you all for recommendation to the policy board and they will provide an adoption and approval vote this month.

The fiscal year 24 to 27 transportation improvement program has been a really big work item this fiscal year.

We're completing a comprehensive update of our TIP document that's currently in progress and a draft should come before you at your next meeting.

Of course, smart scale work and we're also updating our travel demand model.

Other highlights are the development and submission of grant applications.

So we've talked about, we submitted an additional Safe Streets and Roads for All grant application this fiscal year, a 5310 grant application for our PATH program, Rideshare grant application, and then we are working on submitting a BUILD grant application as mentioned earlier.

And then of course, on an ongoing basis, we are participating in STARS and Project Pipeline studies as a stakeholder in those studies.

So for the fiscal year 27 UPWP, I wanted to highlight a couple ongoing and continued activities that will remain in the next UPWP.

So MPO administration, so staffing our committees, invoicing, reporting requirements that will remain in the UPWP.

Smart scale coordination will continue to be in there to make sure we're submitting those full applications and any follow-up that's related to those continuing to participate in the STARS and project pipeline studies and new ones as they begin next fall.

the annual adoption of performance safety targets, continuing the TDM study that we started this fiscal year and the development and submission of other grant applications as applicable.

And going through a couple new things that we're recommending for the next UPWP, the first of which is best practices and benchmarking.

So that's incorporated into administration, short range, and long range.

So all three buckets in the UPWP.

And really the intention of this task is to benchmark policies, performance measures, and how we can implement that from peer MPOs.

So really looking at our policies and procedures, the work that we do,

to make sure we're in alignment with what's going on in the state and that we have really firm grasp on the core activities that we're supposed to be doing as an MPO.

So that could involve data management, public involvement, project prioritization, could involve looking at our bylaws.

Have our bylaws been updated or do they need to be updated?

The next activity incorporated into short-range and long-range sections of the UPWP includes some data visualization activities.

So that's creating GIS layers from the projects in our LRTP and in the new TIP document that will be adopted this fiscal year.

We recognize that we have access to a lot of data here at the MPO.

We receive a data dump quarterly on projects that are happening within the MPO boundary, what phase it's in, how much it costs, if there have been any extensions.

and so beginning to explore how we can visualize some of that data and make that publicly available, make that available to you all, other staff members as necessary.

And finally, for the last new activity, it would be evaluating the feasibility of establishing a bicycle and pedestrian count data program here at the MPO.

Previously, the MPO has done volunteer bike counts.

That's something that we've historically done and we have heard from Charlottesville and Albemarle staff

that having better bicycle and pedestrian data would be valuable for them.

That could be valuable for project planning, for grant writing, for safety analysis.

And so we'd really use next fiscal year to evaluate how we can start that sort of program, maybe to identify a pilot that could be run, what locations would be good for this type of work, and what equipment do we need that would be most appropriate for those locations.

So next steps, a draft of the UPWP was included in your packet today and so this is sort of the starting point of getting this information before you and having some discussions on are these the right regional priorities to capture in here to talk with our state and federal partners since they both have to approve the UPWP every fiscal year and then of course updating the document with those actual budget values once we receive them.

So once we are ready to prepare a final draft, we do also have to do public notice for that and have a public comment period.

And then we'll come back before you in April with a final draft presentation looking for recommendation for approval.

All right.

Thank you, Taylor.

Yes.

First, I'm excited to see the idea of the bicycle and pedestrian count in there.

I think that that's very important.

I know that there's a need, at least for Albemarle and Charlottesville, to do a new park needs assessment.

And as we heard from Peter Krebs earlier, there's also an angle in terms of regional tourism and economic benefits of bicycle.

pedestrian.

Awesome.

All right, any other

Folks who want to have a question for Taylor on UPWP.

I'll also echo Lonnie's excitement about the bike ped counters.

That's something that we as a city have sort of struggled to wrap our minds around because we know it's bigger network than just the city.

So excited to have some support and some partnership on that.

And, you know, I'll also echo what Lonnie touched on a little bit.

I know the city is looking at working on a mobility plan.

the citywide and I know the county is starting to look into that as well following their comp plan.

You know, making sure that your efforts are aligned with our efforts is going to be useful.

I don't know that that really changes your UPWP all that much, but it may change some of the topics that we talk about along the way throughout that UPWP.

Yeah, it's a little bit of a granular detail, so it wouldn't be in this presentation.

But one thing staff have been talking about is currently we do every other year a joint meeting with Central Shenandoah MPOs and us.

And we talked about perhaps writing into the UPWP so that it's incorporated into staff time and any direct costs that would be associated considering a joint meeting between the MPO and the Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority.

So making sure the

The MPO and the Transit Authority are coming together once every two years to have shared content, information sharing, things like that.

Yeah, I like that suggestion.

All right, any other questions, suggestions, comments for Taylor?

We're not voting on this today, just looking at the draft and providing some feedback and some direction.

Looking like everybody's satisfied with what they're seeing, Taylor, so we can move on to our next item.

Let me, oh no, I lost my window.

Do you want to take that one Chuck?

Like I said, I don't have any updates.

We're working on the studies, we're working on smart scale.

I think Sandy gave you an update earlier on that.

The individual projects, I'm not

up to date on what the status on those are for the bundles in and around the city and the county.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

And maybe I will pick on you, Sandy, just a second.

I forget what the exact number of attendance we had on at the meeting itself, but we had a public meeting for the STARS project in Charlottesville at the Ridge, West Main, West Water Street intersection.

I think we had probably, I want to say maybe about 20 to 25 people attend, so a little bit less than the first open house.

I have received probably close to 20 emails or so with comments.

Most of them are pretty favorable.

There are some that are concerned about the one-way impacts on businesses, but still a lot of good engagement.

All right.

Thank you so much on that.

So we've got our VDOT project updates underway.

Staff updates.

So for this packet, we included a written staff update just to make sure we're covering all the bases, giving you all as much information as possible, so I won't go through and read that entire document.

But just calling out a couple items of note, so the Federal Fiscal Year 25 Annual Obligation Report

previously came before you as a draft.

We have published and posted that document.

It's not anything that needs to be approved.

It's an informational document that basically shows an accounting of the last federal fiscal year for how many federal funds were obligated that fiscal year.

So that has been published and there's a link to our website for anyone who's interested.

We did receive notification that we did not receive our Safe Streets and Roads for All application that we applied for.

That was a partnership with UVA and Honda for that research project.

Staff also attended a debrief meeting last week on that to receive feedback about how that application did and Goryan sent out some written updates with the feedback that we received on that project.

Other than that, I also want to mention, I know we've come to this group before with a previous presentation related to CTAC, related to what the MPO's activities are, how CTAC has been involved in the past, how they could be involved in the future.

So we just want to keep you all in the loop and let you know that at the policy boards meeting this month, they should be taking action on what the future structure of CTAC could look like, if anyone is interested in joining and dialing in to that one.

I think that's it.

The packet was a little thick this time, so we also passed along some information from a previous OIP quarterly MPO meeting that we attended.

This is something that Ben asked us to sit around, so we're happy to keep sharing that information as it's applicable if we receive SmartScale updates.

If there's anything at the CTB that could be of interest for you all, we can continue to pass those along.

Yeah, I really appreciate the report so that we have a reference.

That's super helpful to have that all in one place.

And I know that we usually finish up our meetings with the roundtable updates.

We have run into some timing issues with that.

More recent meetings, because we've had such long discussions about some of the topics that we really wanted to dig into.

So we may look into doing more of this sort of shared written update in the future.

Today, we've made our time pretty well through the meeting.

So we have time for roundtable updates and more discussion.

But before we jump to that, I do want to open up the floor for some questions or discussion around anything that may be in the staff update if you need any further clarifications.

All right.

Seeing none, there's also a lot of material.

So if you haven't gotten through that yet, get your eyes on that.

It's great info from our TJPDC staff.

So with that, I will jump us to the next item.

Thank you, Taylor.

We will do roundtable updates.

I will kick us off with City of Charlottesville.

So first thing I wanted to mention, I talked about a little bit earlier.

We are working through scoping what a citywide mobility plan looks like.

Right now, that means that we are trying to pull together existing conditions and existing data to figure out what we've got and what our direction has been to this point.

Luckily, we've got some great intern support over the semester that we're going to be putting to that effort.

But it's going to be a big lift throughout this spring for us.

We're trying to get an RFP out in June so that we can get some consultant support on that mobility plan.

That's my large focus at this point.

Tommy, who is also on the line, a large focus of his is something that we went to council with last night, which is our e-bike voucher program.

That is a pilot that we've set up last year to give away vouchers to folks who are interested in having an e-bike.

Last year, it was a flat thousand dollars.

We gave out a 25, about 25 every quarter.

We ended up having 91 plus bikes being purchased through our local bike shops and it was a great success in our eyes.

The one thing that we did think that we had room for improvement on was making sure that we were making that impact equitably.

And so this year we were looking at more of a tier approach for different voucher levels that are available for people at different income levels.

So if you are receiving public assistance and you're below 80% AMI,

We're going to be able to give you a $1500 voucher which could actually cover the cost of an e-bike totally, may incentivize people who are in that income bracket to participate a little bit more and get that benefit from the bike program.

So last night we went to council and Tommy and our sustainability team got council to

Reappropriate money so we can continue that for another year.

So we're really excited about that.

We just ran the, or we're currently running the lottery and there should be, I think about 36 people who are going to be hearing this week about whether they got a very nice coupon for a new e-bike.

The other thing that we're working through is expansion of services and this may actually be more of an Albemarle County update.

CAT is working to expand services on their route to realigning so that we have connections from the city to the jail and Mill Creek shopping center area.

That's been an effort that's always been pretty heavily engaged in over the past few months and this past weekend we submitted an application to DRPT to get some support

to build out the bus stops for that expansion.

So a lot of fun activities happening over here in the city.

I will pass it along to folks in the county.

Sure, Ben, I'll take that.

First of all, I want to introduce a new team member who is on the call, Jessica Dimick.

has joined our team.

Hi, everybody.

I'm Jessica Dimick.

I started with Albemarle County three weeks ago as the principal transportation planner.

I am replacing Jessica Hirsch-Ballering's position, and I've been a resident here in the Charlottesville Albemarle County area for 15 plus years, coming from the private consulting side.

Background in traffic engineering and transportation planning.

Thanks, Jessica.

Ben, as you mentioned, we too are looking at launching our multimodal transportation plan effort.

We're right now looking at what that looks like, what the process looks like.

as well as looking at timing.

We think we'll be able to kick that off sometime this summer, possibly late fall.

And currently, once we get that scope in place, we'll be collecting our existing conditions and whatnot as well and existing information.

Lonnie, it looks like you have a question.

Sure, we'll make note of that, thank you.

Other things that we're working on, we've been working pretty closely with VDOT to look at our smart scale applications as well as giving input on the STARS and pipeline studies.

We, in anticipation of our revenue sharing applications next year, we are kicking off two studies

one for the Free Bridge promenade and the other one looking at the feasibility of Moore's Creek Greenway.

I will pause there and see if Alberic has anything to add.

All right, thank you all.

Next up is Rideshare.

Not any large updates like everyone else.

We spent most of December and January working on DRPT applications for our annual operating funds.

We are in the process still of doing some website redesign and restructure this year and then next year, as we wrote in our grant, our focus will really be on rebuilding our employer database.

Awesome.

Thank you, Sarah.

Next is VDOT.

Sandy, Chuck, do you have anything else?

All right.

Next up would be DRPT.

Nothing too new other than what's already in your agenda packet, other than our grants have closed and we've begun scoring.

So if you applied for one, be on the lookout for any sort of emails requesting information or anything like that.

All right, thank you.

All right, thanks.

Next up would be Kat.

I kind of gave the update of some of the work that they're doing.

They're working through their budget for this upcoming fiscal year as well.

I think we just had Barry on the call this morning, and he needed to leave just a little bit early.

So we'll get a further update from Kat in the future.

Yeah, just a couple.

I'm happy to report that John recently hired a chief of operations.

Andy Steed has a lot of 20 years of plus experience managing transit operations.

Super excited as well as a senior director of operations and as well as a communications manager.

So we're slowly staffing up over a number of years of having a thin

in those positions.

We are prioritizing scheduling and dispatch software changes to bring us in the current decade.

We are starting with a pilot of mobility on demand.

Some people know that as microtransit.

We're going to pilot that in Greene County and also for ADA paratransit for the City of Charlottesville.

Just a note on that, any changes in the CAT routes impact our ADA footprint and therefore, jaunt, we're joined at the hip.

So glad to hear CAT's expanding, but we'll need to take that into account as well.

We applied for a DRPT demo grant recently for expanding midday service demand response for Fluvanna and Louisa based on need for customer, you know, client feedback.

We've heard from PATH and from surveys, as well as a extension of fixed route commuter service from Greene County to urbanized Charlottesville, Albemarle.

Very excited about that.

And if we get those, we'll be needing to coordinate with PATH and Rideshare to promote those new services.

All righty.

And who is last on my list?

Nothing major.

I think we just have the continuing construction at IBM at

or the Ivy Corridor.

One of our construction projects is the North Grounds parking garage that is fast being put up and that'll have some innovative, not just being a parking garage, but the idea of a hub where you park there and then there'll be bike storage facilities and things of that nature, bus stops to get you on grounds without a car in a number of ways.

Also, construction at Fontaine continues

with the hope of starting that new, you know, using that garage as more of a commuter garage soon for health system employees.

Yeah, beyond like traditional bike racks, I think there are some covered racks there, but I don't think there's a dedicated room for bike storage, but I have to look into that.

Well, let's follow up with that.

Awesome.

All right.

That's all from our roundtable updates.

Additional matters from the public.

I am looking for hands raised in our participant menu and not seeing any.

All right.

Well, that moves us on to our next meeting date.

It looks like April the 7th.

TJPDC staff, do you want to touch on any of the discussion about

Yeah so as Sandy alluded to a little bit earlier we are looking to schedule a special meeting of the MPO Policy Board for more information on smart scale projects and so once we have that date solidified we will forward the invitation to all of you as well if you'd like to attend but the purpose of that meeting is for city, county, and MPO staff to present what smart scale projects we intend to submit for full application period

We will provide more updated information if we have new concepts, cost estimates, things like that.

And that is so that in the April meeting, the Policy Board can provide a recommendation for a resolution of support.

All right.

All right, so

Keep on the lookout for an invite for that meeting.

And if not, we will adjourn until April 7th.

And we will be in person for that meeting because we can't do more than one of these in a row virtually.

And hopefully the renovations at the TJPDC offices will be completed and we'll get to see the bright, shiny new space that they have.

All right.