Rural Transportation Advisory Committee Meeting   9/15/2020

OK. And just so we are all clear, the TJPDC Rural Technical Committee is meeting on the afternoon at 1 p.m.

It is September 15th with a quorum of voting members through electronic virtual communication of Zoom software application.

The meeting agenda and virtual meeting address has been posted for one week at 401 Water Street Center East on the TJPDC website and provided to local media outlets and to the general public and commission members.

This meeting is open to public hearing and public comment will be allowed through electronic communication.

at such time as provided on the meeting agenda.

The governor has declared a state of emergency.

The nature of this declared emergency makes it impractical or unsafe for the public body to assemble in a single location.

The purpose of meeting is to discuss or transact the business statutorily required or necessary to continue operations of the public body.

The TJPDC shall make available a recording of the meeting on its website in accordance with the timeframes established in sections 2.2-3707

and 2.2-3707.1 at the Code of Virginia.

The nature of the emergency, the fact that the meeting was held by electronic communication means and the type of electronic communication means by which the meeting was held shall be stated in the minutes of the public body.

We will begin by having each member identify themselves and then the PDC staff members.

Please keep your communication devices on mute until you prepare to speak.

In addition, you may raise a hand or use the chat feature to initiate a discussion.

The public will be muted except for public comment periods.

Those wishing to speak are asked to use the raised hand function or chat function of the Zoom program.

Participants calling in may press star nine to utilize the raised hand function to speak during appropriate times.

Staff will assist the chair in recognizing those who wish to speak and with identifying motions, seconds, and votes.

OK, let me go back.

All right.

Good afternoon, everybody.

I call the virtual meeting to order.

Yes, please.

OK. We'll start with the committee members first, and then we'll get to the PDC staff.

Dan Butch, David Cook, Chuck Proctor, Rick Youngblood, Tom Egeland, Stephen Johnson,

And I'm not sure who the 434 number is.

OK, awesome.

OK, PDC staff, we have Lucinda.

Chip is here.

And Jessica is on as well.

Did I miss anybody?

All right.

Roll call is completed.

Oh, okay.

All right.

I have to unmute a second.

All right, the minutes are passed.

We're flying along here.

We'll go to staff updates.

Do you want me to pull up that memo, Lucinda?

Sure, yeah.

And that would be me.

As part of our work plan this year, we're going to work on a project to assess electric vehicle charging station needs.

And basically, this is to support the use of electric vehicles in the TJPDC area.

I wanted to bring this to your attention.

And at this meeting, ask you if there are any stakeholders that you think I should be working with or contacting or any

Tidbits that you think I should be looking into for this project.

So in the memo, there's a list of possible stakeholders that could be part of the study.

I've listed Albemarle County, the city of Charlottesville, VDOT electric vehicle manufacturers, Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, citizen EV users.

major employers like the University of Virginia, RideShare for the commuter lots, Virginia Clean Cities, and then the MPO techs and C-Tech committees and the rural tech committee, which is you guys.

So I'd like to hear comments and thoughts on it.

I'm sure Kat would like to be kept up to date, but I know they had some negative experiences with electric vehicles in the past.

Okay.

The most likely companies are private companies that might locate these, like some of the major gas station chains, where they might have some of these set up in the corners of their lots, or are you only looking at public access?

So something like Tiger Fuel with

I'd recommend reaching out to Dominion Energy.

I know that they have a website page dedicated to electric vehicles.

They might have some brochures or contact information of somebody who, you know, might have Charlottesville region as their territory.

Tom, I find that suggestion shocking.

I got a better one.

How's this?

So I know that zoning wise, electric charging stations are relatively new.

And I'm sure there's a lot of localities, especially rural ones that don't have an updated section of their parking calculation for charging.

And so it might be worth

Reaching out to the people that review zoning for the cities and the counties to determine is it a streamlined process?

If I have an existing gas station and you're required to have 10 spots and I want to take two of them away for charging, is there any permitting involved with that?

Do I have to pull a building permit for the electrical hookup most likely?

Do I have to amend the site plan or is it an administrative review?

So from a planning standpoint, it might be worth

That's good.

Tom, this is Chip.

We were in a conversation earlier on the same topic.

That was the thought I had.

I was even thinking of charging stations in public parking areas of a residential development.

Exactly.

And you've got to, I mean, what if there's proffers that say something?

I mean, there's so many different variables when it comes to zoning and planning that unfortunately it may sometimes be case to case.

But, you know, if you look at the

One of the ideas I'm getting from is that we're doing a lot of solar projects.

And so the Department of Environmental Quality has the pollinator SMART program where they, if you look at some other items, you can get different certifications for being a solar friendly county.

And maybe one of those things is trying to find a streamlined approach or recommendation to the body, the governing bodies, that, you know, this seems to be the most streamlined approach for installing EV, whether it's in public or private use.

Now I'm starting to repeat myself.

It's a good point, Tom, because, you know, sometimes it would just be parking.

Other times it would be taking away parking.

You know, if it was Hollymede Town Center, likely someone would park there and charge while they're shopping and then leave.

Anything else?

Okay, so I'm looking at the American Planning Association's March edition.

And on page 52, it talked about the Sol Smart Program, which is a national designation and technical assistance program funded by the US Department of Energy.

Good.

Also for Albemarle County, I worked a lot with them on the climate action plan which is still in draft form and will be, I believe, to be adopted within the next month and we have a lot under the transportation sector

Just some language about electric vehicle charging infrastructure and some strategies or goals that are identified, some specific ones such as developing ordinances and policies to encourage charging stations

but also to pursue public-private partnerships or grants, state federal grants, for additional charging infrastructure.

So, I mean, if it gets adopted, the strategies and goals, I believe, will be a part of that and would initiate the planning process and develop those policies.

Thank you.

David and Chuck and Rekki, you all may weigh in, but I know when we were talking about the parking light smart scale application, having an electric vehicle charging station infrastructure incorporated into that was one of the considerations.

I know that they were looking into it.

I don't know if they ever came out with guidance, documentation on that.

I'll have to check.

I mean, we were some of the questions that you all were raising about taking up spots.

And most of the commuter lots are for all day.

We didn't necessarily part of the concerns that we had would be like the utility of it for short term charging.

They would get might get occupied all day for somebody that doesn't really need to charge all day.

And that was some of the concerns that we've thought about as part of our process.

But like I said, I don't know if they come up with any guidance for it yet.

I know there's some up in Northern Virginia, but most of them are in public lots.

We don't really have any in our park and ride lots that I'm aware of.

Chuck, I can see how that relates to the park and ride.

Yes, like I said, but I'll have to check.

I haven't heard of any specific guidance.

I know I've seen numerous facilities, transit facilities that have charging stations.

One of the key aspects is having these

in different remote locations and everything to have accessibility issues for those.

And a lot of these are quick charging stations that people can get in and get out.

So I think it's a sort of blend between the economic incentives and the alternative transportation modes and all that ties into it.

But I haven't seen anything clear and concise.

I know I'm on a statewide connected autonomous vehicle group that are working through long range planning and everything, and we may

Okay.

All right.

Any other comments?

All right, well, thank you very much.

We're looking forward to that study.

We're finalizing the screening process right now.

We're supposed to be done.

I've got like two or three left to do.

We're finalizing.

One of them is in the city of Charlottesville, but everything else I think in the district is through the process.

We're still validating the applications.

Well, right now,

Spin every round is they announce the scores at the January CTB meeting.

They're presented to the CTB at that point, and that's when they're released to the public.

Well, David or Rick, do you all want to talk about anything from the Lynchburg district related to SMART SCALE?

Nothing really major to add to that.

I've completed screening on all the Nelson County projects.

So they've already gone through that process.

And currently I'm working on validating all the Lynchburg district

And I know that there's been some presentations to the NPOs, Office of Automotive Planning, either Chris Wishman or Jatinder or Katie.

Pay attention to how that process is going to play out.

We've provided numerous comments over the period.

The NPO may want to look at what potential impacts may be there.

You know, this whole process with the update to be trans has been what we consider rather problematic in how this has gone through.

So we have provided pretty substantial comments in regards to what our thought process is based on a number of different issues and performance measures related to SMART SCALE and how that plays out.

You have to be seeing how that

And especially in the rural areas, if you look at most of the prioritized process, it really focuses on and it's geared more towards the urbanized areas as opposed to the rural areas.

And most of our, other than Albemarle County, most of our areas are rural.

So a lot of this stuff doesn't even affect you guys at all or help you at all.

One thing I will share is, you know, each one of these NPO presentations, we've had VDOT staff participate in these calls.

and we will be putting forth comments based on what we heard in each one of these MPOs.

And that's not just yours, that's Lynchburg, that's the whole statewide, all MPOs and PDCs that have had presentations.

So there is a spreadsheet that is being developed that each one of the district planners will get a hold of and review to support.

So we have one voice that moves the comments forward so it holds a little bit more weight because to date,

And I think Chuck will probably agree with this and I know David will.

The district planners have not been completely involved in this part of the process for V-Trans.

We're getting this information, a lot of this information the same exact time that you guys are.

So it's been a little bit, been very challenging from our standpoint.

So

More to come on that, but I think the key thing that everybody needs to hear is VDOT's there supporting you guys.

Chip, do you think, along with trying to reach out to the MPO, do you think we need to do more outreach with the PDC commission as well to, okay.

Maybe we'll coordinate.

Yeah.

And let me add this too.

That is part of the problem with this midterm update is when they do these workshops and stuff and everything west of what I consider west of Charlottesville, which includes part of Culpeper and everything west, the PDCs, you know,

discuss the rural component but that is not part of this update process.

However, because it's not a part of the process is where the issue is coming into play because as VTRAN is moving forward in the midterm update as Chuck said it's very urban centric and the rural aspect we feel like is being jeopardized in regards to how those project solutions come forward and so a lot of the comments that were

Thank you.

That's really important to know.

Yeah, I can just let everybody know from the rural side, I don't think it's going to be advantageous, but for the MPO and urban SMART SCALE submissions,

Our MPO Policy Board is beginning to look at a process where as soon as the scores are released in January, we'll start reviewing projects to decide what should be the projects to submit in the next round of SMART SCALE so that we can get a jump on the process.

And also to identify bigger projects that need more of a public engagement process than we've been providing in the past.

Normally for our counties that we work with, and this only affects the projects that the MPO itself is submitting, not what the jurisdictions and the MPO submit on their own behalf.

We don't normally do very many, if any, projects for the counties.

Most of our counties, they don't have over four projects.

So I don't think it'll come into play for

the rural SMART SCALE submissions through the PDC, but it might.

And I know that it'll come up as we're talking about it with the MPO.

Somebody will reference that maybe we should do it for the PDC too.

So we'll keep you all abreast.

I don't see any major changes or problems right now, but if it starts to move in that direction, we'll definitely update you.

What we're trying to do for the MPO is identify one or two major projects as early as possible and then we're going to create an advisory panel that will help us through a public engagement process.

Walk that project through until it's ready for its letter of intent and then from that point before the August submission be fully prepared to submit a very well vetted project.

Are there any other questions or comments related specifically to SMART SCALE or your process to going through and getting your application submitted?

Well, we do have kind of a light agenda today, but we thought it was still going to be really important to make sure that we had opportunities to all connect.

Sure.

I'll start.

So Louisa County has had three solar projects come through the Board of Supervisors.

One of the three was approved and it was the largest one.

It was over 1,300 acres for 244 megawatts.

We think the Board of Supervisors will eventually be looking at a solar ordinance as well as a zoning ordinance update that will match the 2040 comprehensive plan in the coming months.

Obviously, because of COVID, we've had to move some things around.

As for transportation, I think we're just, you know, gotten through the SMART SCALE.

So that's pretty much going through the public hearings.

Don't have much more than that.

Hey, Tom.

We do not.

I can provide you a draft, a link to the draft.

It's gone through planning commission through a couple hearings.

And the funny thing is a solar ordinance was going through the planning commission at the same time as

Most of the applications.

So we were tweaking as we go.

The Planning Commission, I think a month or two back, recommended approval to the board.

How did you review the projects?

What did you cover them as utility projects?

So the major utility was the definition which requires a conditional use permit.

Okay.

Is how we've been going about them.

But our ordinance will have things such as, you know, does it require a desktop review?

For cultural or environmental, you know, what percentage of the site has to be planted in pollinators following the DEQ Pollinator Smart Program?

What is the minimum buffer width to adjacent properties or right-of-ways and what exactly in the application is required because in one of the three applications in one you'd have a full cultural phase one the next one would be a desktop review and the next one would have nothing and it's just a matter what the applicant is willing to spend before because you know in order to go through the DEQ process you a lot of times you have to have

the local zoning approval really before getting any other approvals through either PJM or DEQ.

So it's kind of been a moving target.

We've been working, you know, and the cool thing is during the zoning ordinance through planning commission, the applicants actually stayed after their item was voted on and participated in what they thought the new ordinance, what the good things and the bad things were.

No.

Yeah.

Understood.

I know some communities have bonding requirements for disposal after the useful life has ended.

We were talking about this this morning because we do not address it.

We only allow utilities, which previously we've really kind of defined as as

Public utility owned.

We allow public utilities, not private utilities.

So a solar generation plant that isn't part of Dominion Power or Rappahannock Electric is an independent utility, not a public utility.

So in Greene, we don't have a lot of space to put one in the first place.

I'm going to see if I actually, I think I just found the link to the draft solar ordinance that went through the planning commission, but it's probably going to be tweaked when it gets to the board.

Again, I don't know when it's going to the board of supervisors, but I'll go ahead and throw that in the chat box so that everybody has a link to it's a planning commission packet.

And then I also will provide you the video link

Awesome.

Well, so what's been happening is that a private company will come in and then they'll get the conditional use permit, but then they'll sell the lease to Dominion Power.

So it goes from being private to public.

Okay.

And which is, which is an important thing, because when you're doing your building review, you got to talk to your building official, but within its private, there's a lot more to review.

Interesting.

Thank you.

So that's you.

That's it for you, Tom.

Yep.

Sorry.

I was just looking sure my links work.

Yeah, in green.

Two things.

One, I don't know if anybody else had the issue.

And Chuck, hopefully you haven't ignored me, but on my computer screen for SMART SCALE, the acknowledge button that was supposed to come up weeks ago has never appeared.

Yeah, I got an email that said, click on the button and that button's never appeared.

So I haven't never clicked on it.

I think that was one of the fixes they were having problems with.

And it should have been fixed.

It's been maybe a week and a half since they looked.

And maybe you just clicked it for me when it popped up.

But I haven't seen it yet.

I can't click it.

I clicked it of the original review.

And if it's not right,

Maybe I just haven't checked recently, Chuck.

I'll let you know if I don't find it.

Okay, thank you.

And then you can answer another question.

I think I know the answer, but we have grass growing every 10 feet for every section on the shoulder of Route 33, and it's pretty thick and pretty tall.

It's not really part of the mowing.

I can answer that question, but other than the safety issue with him being out there, I don't know.

I'd have to go back to the residency and find out the maintenance what the policy is regarding that.

I know we've had issues with gravel in the shoulder on the shoulder of the road, especially in a curb and gutter section with bicyclists.

Yeah, we've got grass as tall as a foot tall in each crack section.

along the shoulder, and then the shoulders are mostly loose gravel.

It's actually, I have a friend who lost two bicycle tires biking on the shoulder.

And I can check it down.

That's not a big deal.

Updates from Greene County.

We finally quit using COVID as an excuse and have

completed a basic webinar series.

We are trying to review hybrid or form-based or a different type of performance zoning in order to achieve the goals of the comprehensive plan, which are more oriented towards Tom's favorite word, human scale.

And mixed use of developments that work live play concept that our Euclidean zoning doesn't really encourage.

And with COVID and the inability to have easy public meetings, we decided to try and

Solicit opinion from stakeholders.

So we're starting with property owners, potential developers and business owners in addition to the regular public.

But we have three short webinars that are a little over 10 minutes each that explain how we got to each step.

And then the last page is soliciting input on how we might be able to achieve these goals.

And so that series is up online on our website under the zoning audit category.

And additionally, we're going to email the links out to about 30 stakeholders to try and try and solicit opinions.

So Chip's on the list.

You guys will receive that when it goes out.

Love any input that you can have.

And then as soon as we get some of that baseline data, we'll

Start to attempt to put together a baseline framework and we'll be looking for some help from you guys at TJPDC to do that.

And then hopefully we'll be able to have general public meetings to start vetting the baseline framework.

But our goal was to start with the stakeholders because as government owners and as private citizens, we're not the ones that are actually going to create the spaces.

The developers and the property owners are the ones that are going to do it.

So we want to start with some sort of base of realism and hopefully move forward.

So if you guys are bored and want to see the webinars, I can use the chat and I can put up the links.

Well, I think I think one of the really valuable things of these conversations, though, is to share what you are doing to reach the public so that other

Members of the committee might be able to take that back to their communities, too.

Yeah, we're hoping the worst thing that could happen is we'll end up in the same place everybody else and just have to use a cookie cutter approach and see how that works.

But really hoping to try and try and get it to be a grassroots community beginning that is as specific as we can get it to Greene.

and then try and write the regulations from there as opposed to a more traditional approach with some of these performance standards, which is to take a national plan and then vet it in the public and just try and, I don't want to say ram it down people's throats, but it's trying to take the big thing and push it into the small round peg instead of trying to create your own local base point.

I might be naive and Pollyannish, but that's how we're trying it.

That would be great.

I have a couple of different lists.

I'll choose one to go through though.

Can you hear me?

Mm-hmm.

Oh, OK. Our update is almost identical to Louisa's.

Douglas Miles has been working this summer on incorporating or looking to incorporate regulations for solar facilities into the zoning ordinance.

So I'm going to share the draft that Tom shared with everyone.

I'm going to share that with Douglas.

We have been approached by a company that's looking to do more applications here in Fluvanna.

Other than that, nothing much transportation activity-wise.

We do have, we're picking our crossroads back up again.

So we have a meeting, what's today, Tuesday?

We have a meeting on Thursday to get that going again.

Now that some of the SMART SCALE efforts have been undertaken, we can

reallocate some of those efforts back to Zion Crossroads.

Sure.

Just like everybody else, we finished up the SMART SCALE submissions.

Chuck, you were very helpful with that, and that definitely carried

the majority of our attention this summer and we also got our thinking rural transportation the secondary six-year plan that was

approved, and then we had some rural rustics resolutions designated and getting two new road segments paved.

One is a small portion out for Union area, and then the other one is actually connecting, it is in our rural areas, connecting to the reservoir road.

So just outside the city.

And we've also in community development, transportation planning, we've been working a lot, collaborating more with our facilities department that are administering VDOT projects.

So previously submitted applications that were funded.

And so

We have, you know, trying to improve that process internally and it's been good to see that.

We've also have the Crozet Master Plan.

That's a transportation study involved with that.

That's been more Kevin involved with that and

Again, we don't lead the Fifth Street corridor study, but that we should be getting a draft document of that shortly with recommendations, intersection segment recommendations, and it's been over a year process.

Also, let's see here, climate action, I mentioned that draft document is going to the board.

Again, a lot of transportation.

Transportation was heavily involved in that.

A lot of public input towards that as well.

And a lot of great recommendations in that.

And this has gone to the board, I think, as initial phase one, phase two.

showing the progress and now I think the draft document will be, I have not been, I've been involved with the transportation aspect of it, not the full adoption of the plan.

Let's see here, a lot of local development still, development reviews going on, TIAs all up 29 and

A big thing still, a hot topic I think I say every time.

It's mostly in our rural areas, a lot of speeding concerns, traffic calming requests, and we've been formulating an approach in collaboration with VDOT and Amarillo County Police being able to identify needs and solutions within this whole process.

And we get a lot of subdivisions

that are expressing these concerns.

A lot of them don't have sidewalks.

So we have children playing on the roads to just excessive speeding.

So that definitely takes up a lot of our time as well.

Stephen, any updates you want to share regarding Jaunt?

Or maybe let us know, especially due to the pandemic.

I haven't looked at ridership numbers recently.

We obviously had a huge dip when quarantine first went into effect.

In the past couple of months, we've

started to see that trend back up.

We're nowhere near where we were pre-COVID, but we are to a point that we're starting to enact, quote unquote, reopening plans.

We've had digital infrastructure, so everybody's been able to work who needed to work.

But bringing a few of our reservationists back into the office to accommodate the demand, increase demand and demand response trips.

We are still using quarantine level service, so over half the seats on our buses have nice little signs that say, please don't sit here to encourage people to space out.

So we do have reduced capacity on all of our buses, which is, it's important, but it does mean a lot of our traditional metrics about ridership as being

The typical metric of transportation success is it has to have a big old asterisk next to it to say, hey, capacity of all our buses cut in half.

But we're keeping on keeping on.

We're continuing to do all the critical transport we need to, dialysis and that kind of thing.

But we're just starting to see the beginning of that upward trend, hopefully back to normal.

Did you want me to talk briefly about the scoping for RideShare?

Is that of interest to this group?

Just really briefly, RideShare is getting its funding quarterly this year just because of funding limitations at the state level.

So we are being very careful about how we are spending that money.

So right now, Sara and I are working on a scope of work for upcoming quarter two.

I'm trying to figure out how to best use those funds and encourage people to travel safely.

Let's see.

What about our VDOT?

We talked a lot about VTRANS.

We talked a lot about SMART SCALE.

I'm your person.

Okay, go ahead.

Are you sure?

All right, thank you, Chuck.

Just want to alert you guys that the VDOT Commuter Survey results are now out, and it's got a lot of great data.

About 5,500 people statewide took the survey, and they have some really cool interactive features in there and dashboards where you can actually dig down into the district-wide data and look at

individual districts and how people responded but it has a pretty good picture of like before and after how people did and a lot of useful info.

So I'll go ahead and provide that in the message box for everybody.

Yeah, I can go ahead.

Sandy already said that we've got the Xions Crossroads workshop set up for Thursday.

Hopefully we can get that thing back underway.

I got a new schedule they're going to release.

We're also working on the Metro Tech Quest, the Metro Quest survey, and we'll be discussing it at the meeting.

It's going to go out probably in the next couple of weeks.

So more to come on that Thursday.

We've also been, I've got a couple of PIA's and Louisa that I'm reviewing right now.

One at the corner store and the other one is for the Shannon Hill Business Park.

So those we're looking at and

All I got.

I just wanted to see if there were any topics of interest that you wanted us to prepare.

I think one of the things that maybe we're hearing is regarding public engagement and public outreach.

Is there any specific topic you would like to make sure we cover in more depth at the next meeting, that one, or if there's anything else that's of interest to you all that we could spend some time preparing for?

I'll throw something out.

That is very specific.

Yeah.

We'll see what we can come up with.

Any other thoughts?

Sure, why not?

Well, it's a lot of collaboration internally with ACPD, but also with VDOT.

Okay.

Any other thoughts or comments or suggestions for topics?

Well, I don't know if there, Tom, do you wanna see if there are any other additional matters from the public?

All right, well, if you have questions about solar, please feel free to reach out to me.

And if there's anybody comes up with an idea for topics, please let TJPDC know for the next meeting.

Thank you.

Good work.

I should have told you, Nick's on vacation right now.

I was stuck on mute.

Thank you, sir.

See you guys.