MPO Technical Committee Meeting   6/2/2026

We can start with the call to the word.

Taylor Lowry?

Here.

Bill Palmer?

Here.

Sarah Pennington?

Here.

Here.

Do we have anyone participating that's part of the voting method?

It doesn't look like anybody in the public would like to speak either in present or online.

Make a motion.

Second.

What happens to the motion?

Motion to approve.

Actually, I think, it is a while back, but I think it says I was virtual stretching for the last meeting, but I was present.

With that change, I guess Jessica, still a motion to approve?

Motion to approve with that change.

Parts of it, the documents, what happened in public with that as well?

Happy to take any questions.

What is the process for that exactly?

So the process would be for anybody who would like to serve as the chair or the vice chair for the next fiscal year should speak up and

So, does the vice chair and chair, do they have to get nominated today to then potentially be voted next meeting?

operating the meetings from the start of the fiscal year.

Well, can I nominate the vice chair and chair for their same positions?

I will be stepping down as vice chair.

And that.

So you're up for chair.

That's how the PTO does it.

Alberic and I have been talking about the county representation on the MPO and I would like to nominate myself as vice chair.

This ultimately is a discussion between the MPO technical committee members to come to an agreement of who would like to be chair and vice chair for the next fiscal year.

Could you follow up with them offline to see if it shows that and is that interesting?

You can nominate her or anybody next time.

Yes.

Next someone needs to second that motion Is that good enough for you?

Who's in approval for the nominations?

Aye.

Our first presentation is smart scale around seven mechanical projects, but it's still a low rate.

Good morning, everyone.

Thanks for being here.

Any questions on MTO products before I jump into the world or different products?

So that's kind of like the final deadline for all the planning studies program.

Any other questions?

It just looked at the look of it.

And she links on all the January's things in a little bit.

but noted here as a reduced conflict at intersection.

For this one?

So it's on the 10th road and Charlie Road.

That's us.

So I don't think I saw anyone from the rural jurisdictions jump on, but if there are any questions, I'm happy to forward those to them and I'll get some answers.

You said all four of these are resubmissions?

And then I think because these are innovative intersections, now with the CTP's approval, they would also be eligible for HPP.

Right.

For Nelson.

I don't think the Rockfish school may project with the eligible grades.

Are there any different criteria that apply to the rural district jurisdiction products?

Not in terms of your eligibility, but how products are stored, depending on where they're located, they could be in a different area type.

Are there any criteria that C or D are rural?

D

Thank you.

Next up is Sandy with presentations on the Starving Public Federal process.

But both of the programs also offer some flexibility to incorporate additional engagement as needed.

Look at more than one forecasted growth rate or if there's a desire to Define different levels of adequacy for traffic operation like can you speak a little bit to like how much the the program is flexible in this approach or if that is likely determined in the framework phase and

So do you all have any questions on general process and general expectations around the study?

What's CO Planning?

Central Office Planning, yeah.

Is that set by WIP or VDOT or CTV?

with our planning separate staff capacity of probably about nine for the district, for the entire district, if that sounds like I'm right in the heart.

I think that's, we've talked a lot about our capacity, right?

I think there are two, city and three counties or something like that?

OK. That's correct.

And so did that agreement make like a staff level, a policy board level, attached to a 3G on that road chain?

But there will be a designated point of contact for each of the represented agencies that will ultimately be able to say like, yes, we agree with us using whatever process that stakeholder organizations determine.

Thanks.

their jurisdiction and making sure that what they're coming to the table as a representative agreeing to is comprehensive of what the staff and the electeds are doing.

I mean, are we strictly looking at crash data to just kind of have the best priorities there, or are we kind of engaging in this data in terms of people that do cycle or walk, or reaching out to communities that actually would be able to model solutions to determine if you have the biggest problem?

There's going to be a lot of consultant support, but also identify where there might need to be supplementary or targeted efforts by localities to do additional work to make sure you're getting what you want out of the studies and out of the public engagement.

Yeah, I know that PEC, you know, as we used to work, you know, they would discuss about melting the oil station, and more rarely is that part of standing without which the women still have been.

Not that I'm not that consistent with them, but... Can you repeat the question?

Make sure I understood it.

We've got to discuss those topics and I just wanted to know what was in there to reach out for this group's engagement.

I know from the city standpoint, we've had a lot of conversations about how we do that in general, outside of VDOT projects, and hopefully we can better not think that wrong.

Make sure that we're healthy for any of those efforts that will be needed and make sure that that's built into our timeline.

Pipeline, is that maybe more geared towards specifically set up for SmartScale?

SmartScale is going to focus on that 10 to 20 year midterm solutions.

So like, during the setting the project goals phase, is that when we should be talking about what funding sources we ultimately want to be going after from these potential studies?

Would you agree with that?

Yeah, I guess I'm just thinking through like the most recent examples with our city projects and I feel like now having had this conversation maybe we would have, I don't, yeah, maybe I would, I don't know that would be anything different per se, but it would just be like something that we thought and talked more about.

You know, you're not applying for funding in a very public way for those projects, but there's still things that if you all want to present to your life as officials who say, we could start doing these things now and not wait five to six years for small scale funding with these projects.

And it feels like there should be a way to like do something more

Any other questions?

Can you remind me where CTV is on the discussion that they were having about MPOs and PDCs being able to apply for the entirety of a preferred alternative versus phasing that into multiple phases?

But when they expanded the innovative intersections, there are very few, like, alternatives that don't meet one of the other criteria already.

Thank you, that's helpful.

Anyone else?

All right, on that note, I'm by Kellie Brown to give the presentation on the Charlottesville Stars on the Pipeline projects and locations.

Should I go up there to do it or should I...

If you're joined on the Zoom meeting from your computer, you can do it from there or you could come on here and follow us.

Hi everyone, I'm Kellie Brown.

Given concerns, considerations for significant stakeholder resident engagement, we do not recommend that these be the subject of a STAR study be led through a VDOT effort but really be prioritized as a city-led effort for local funds or other funds and resources.

That concludes the presentation.

It's a tiny commission, go ahead and weigh in on this because maybe I'll keep my question brief if we're going to get to look at this later.

But I do think that for future rounds, we need to be backing up from this state of how we get that sort of input from the public commission.

Because I think it's a different thing.

before we have that first kickoff meeting.

So I was wondering if we can include that one block on the south side, like the intersection in this study, just to kind of connect it together and get a contiguous

We can discuss that, but I will say that I think that's going to be challenging because there's a bridge.

I don't know how far you go from the intersection itself in the study.

Okay.

And so I know these are city priorities and they are identified as B-tran, but do we know, maybe it's a question to take offline, but I'm just curious, knowing the history of Smartscale and what gets funded, what priority level are these segments or intersections?

So I think focusing on areas where there are high accessibility and safety needs, especially in an urbanized area like the city of Charlottesville, is going to give you your best effort to get high scores because this is where downtown Charlottesville

So that seems like that's just, you know, the nature of doing, you know, limiting your scope, I guess.

connectivity types of state.

You know, we got all that land of county owns that we can do whatever to say.

Any other questions or comments?

I mean, do you foresee that list of the three that you're not going to pursue this path as being things that you guys will initiate in the near future or that's still being discussed?

I think we're still trying to figure out what level of detail that plan could provide for these specific corridors, but it could certainly help re-establish a priority level for each of these and a time frame for when we could tackle them.

And now, Jessica with the Albemarle fireworks.

Ed Poni?

So it's a former county development area, and so it has development area density minus the infrastructure, which sort of makes it something, I think, that narrative.

And I can get you that information if you're curious.

People only thought strictly about the intersection of issues and not the broader scope of issues that might be addressed by the study.

So I, but I think this is a gravity to the city kind of work together on something that can, you know, really improve travel in a creative way that isn't just adding loadings.

Questions?

Last part of this is we have a staff member

So the staff memo just summarizes everything in like a convenient kind of one page written form, but it was everything that you just received.

I'm still just one more moment.

This is a voting item for the committee, so you will need to provide a recommendation or not for the MP policy vote.

Just one motion?

I think one would be fine.

Is this just a general recommendation to support the projects generally, or are you asking them to prioritize?

We were asking for a recommendation for the policy board generally, but am I hearing that prioritization would be helpful?

So I just want to clarify what the expectations will be coming out of this meeting for us to have bookish studies.

to Charlottesville, briefly counting, not precluding any other authorities that may identify for jurisdictions.

recommendation for these projects with this one location you know discussion amongst yourself the one location where you would say this would be like our lowest priority like if one had to be dropped because of staff capacity, VDOT capacity and they couldn't carry forward all of them maybe the discussion is which one of these locations is the lowest priority.

and what you're saying Taylor is you're saying we're voting but we're also voting in terms of like a priority but hey this is kind of what we really want to go move forward with and you know if but if we can't we want to do x right like here's our list in order essentially so that if there were capacity constraints and one of those had to be dropped which would be the one to be dropped okay I mean I

Is that consistent with what we talked about?

So if we had to choose, we would go with the intersection project.

And what were you seeing earlier, Sandy, that there's another?

Another same project.

You mentioned that.

Or what, though?

It's not that.

Join me with Albemarle County.

Can you?

So we were recommending to do the U.S. 250 at Freebridge, study Joy Atlanta's intersection, all those things, Albemarle County, City of Charlottesville, and then do one of the other two projects that were proposed in the City of Charlottesville.

But I don't think we would recommend that as a priority over the Ridge McIntyre intersection.

We would do US 250 R3 bridge.

Yes.

Okay.

So you're getting a bonus.

Would you all choose from the county, just the one of those other two?

Okay.

I'm confused.

Yes.

So, I mean, I guess when I was reading the packet, I didn't know that we'd be kind of trying to choose between the two projects.

If they're going to choose between two of those Charlottesville profits.

Yes.

But we've heard from the city that they would prefer the McIntyre, Ridge, Preston intersection.

On the planning commission side of things, like this is the first that I'm reading the materials and I don't know, I mean maybe I agree with the staff, but I don't know, right now I don't have enough information.

It is fine to let the policy board do their job if they can make that determination.

See if that passes.

Just as we kind of feel out, like Tommy was saying, this is the first time that we've done it, so I'd just be curious to know, like, what other information should we bring you in the future?

I agree that this is a priority versus that one.

So maybe the general support for any of these locations?

Sure.

Or would the UH policy board not do the prioritization?

and then we can include, like in a staff memo that says, due to capacity constraints, one of these projects will not be able to be studied and they can have a discussion and decide how to move forward.

I propose a motion to commence these projects or recommend these substantive projects for the NPO Policy Board with the understanding that when listening to projects,

The long bridge, the pre-bridge.

Okay, so to be very clear, we will either do Preston or Rich.

Correct.

And we can do the other ones, but even if we eliminate one of the other ones, we still only want to do one of those two projects and study.

One project in the city, got it.

One of those two projects in the city, yeah.

Excellent.

Okay.

Uh, any, uh, for approval please say aye.

Aye.

And we are excited to work with you all.

But are there any questions on the board or a portion?

I'm wondering why that is.

So as we moved away from Hillsdale, we didn't continue to plan for that Hillsdale shared use path.

Are the benefits reduced on the shared-use path?

We're just not going to necessarily think to do it like a conceptual design.

Yeah, so just looking at the strong heat map for that area, seeing where the existing pedestrian and cycling traffic actually is, and we looked at the bottlenecks of, you know, analyze the existing traffic that is in those areas and look at the bottlenecks of where people can't connect between one high pedestrian traffic area and another high pedestrian traffic area.

So we're trying to do both of those together.

So, I mean, I think, you know, you have to have sort of parallel, I mean, I agree with

Building on that, smart scale requires

Is there a benefit to elevating that as a recommendation to give it a little extra emphasis in a future funding opportunity?

would be where there would be a preferred pedestrian and bicycle corridor to support movement along North-South in the vicinity of 29.

Yeah.

I don't have a good response right now for how to benefit people.

and we really focused on some of the ones at Branson's pretty broader.

So we weren't really looking at improvements out there, but you have a thought, do you want to continue your follow?

And at the last meeting, I was really just trying to get updated on where we were currently with everything as opposed to having like much as

see if there's opportunity.

I know the second thing is the on-scope of the study, but that's just, I think, a kind of frustrating thing about the way that transportation planning happens at the moment.

But we also are aware that there is regional interest in transit being a way to try to maintain the throughput on 29, whether that's on 29 or through a parallel transfer route.

It just seems pretty obvious that the people that live on one side would very much like to get to the commercial side on the other.

So I'm not sure, like other than, you know, continued maintenance of the existing crosswalk, I'm not sure that there's an opportunity there right now.

I guess just like a number, I mean, because you can't really do anything with a number of lanes, but you know like just wondering if there's options to be able to discuss about making that safer.

And again, these improvements are included in your packet, but I wasn't going to go through them unless there's another question.

So should that be westbound?

Yeah, so that's when you're going west on... Yeah, and you're making that protective lot turn right there.

Yeah, it just says eastbound.

Oh, gotcha, yeah.

I didn't even know that was there.

Any other questions on these?

That's what you said in the state of adjustments, Borean.

Thank you.

Release means minus and add means plus.

So it's, these are our federal obligations.

adjusting, moving something around so that in the end we can spend every dollar that the feds give us and not have to turn that back in.

Thank you, Stacey.

to make sure that we're all awaiting this event.

Or how do we interpret what that means?

So we have to look at the exact details.

We're not seeing like the full, all of the federal pieces for each project.

This one had numerous fund types, not just in federal colors and money, but numerous fund types in state and then also local money.

But it was Ad as an adjustment, not as a funding.

Thank you.

Put in some stat updates first, and then we'll bring it on.

And I'll let Goryon talk a little bit about Safe Streets.

TJPDC staff just supported their application with the Marriott and any other questions that they had.

We have the earthquake meeting scheduled for

Awesome.

Like, if there are any meeting dates or months that you specifically want to be all virtual meetings, that would be helpful for us to know so we can send out the holds for those that's virtual.

Not right now, but right now?

Well, we can know at the next meeting as well if you want some time to scale on that.

We're going to speak on that more.

The results and we'll be asking the board to approve those rankings and use them for the next, in the near term while we develop the multiple transportation plan.

Just wanted to thank Gordon and Taylor specifically for helping us out on the 6th grade and getting estimated last week.

Yeah.

City.

New York City.

permit?

Kat?

What were you?

We don't have anything.

So anything you want to add to that?

Barry, I think we just got confirmation that we should be having better electric buses to arriving on site at some point in June or July.

I guess I'll stop as well as part of that.

Let's go to Bill, UVA, and school has ended for you.

It started in March, I think, from the Fontaine Garage to the health system.

Okay, you still have those little microbuses that sell us?

Yeah, so those go into service more during this time of year, a reduced schedule, because we just don't have the ridership to...

They're kind of point out the microbuses?

They're called negists or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That'll have a, you know, that'll have a good hub for parking and then getting on a bus or getting on a bike and it'll have some like bike storage and bike fixing area, things like that.

Yeah.

that loose further balance process.

And then go to Mitch, do you have anything from DRPC to report off?

So congrats, and that's all from DRP2.

Is there a belt or a...

I do have one more update about SmartScale.

Applications, all the documentation for applications with the exception of the resolutions of support need to be uploaded by July 15th.

We'll see each other on August 4th.

All right.

Thank you.