Rural Transportation Advisory Committee Meeting   11/16/2021

This meeting of the Rural Transportation Advisory Committee is being held pursuant to code of Virginia section 2.2-3708.2, which allows a public body to hold electronic meetings when the locality in which it is located has declared a local state of emergency and the catastrophic nature of the emergency makes it impracticable or unsafe to assemble a quorum in a single location.

and the purpose of the meeting is to provide for the discharge of its lawful purpose, duties and responsibilities.

This meeting is being held via electronic video and audio means through Zoom online meetings and is accessible to the public with closed captioning and there will be an opportunity for public comment during the portion of the agenda.

Notice has been provided to the public through notice at the TJPDC offices to the media, website posting, and agenda.

The meeting minutes will reflect the nature of the emergency.

The meeting was held by electronic communication means and the type of electronic communication means by which the meeting was held.

Call the meeting to order.

Do we have anybody from the public?

Do we have any comments on the minutes?

Abort.

This would be under number five.

And the last paragraph, just to clarify, I think about it says, Dan Butch said, after development is completed, there is need for traffic calming issues.

Probably best to say that after development is completed, there tends to be a request for traffic calming issues is probably the better way to word it.

And then we try to implement it where appropriate.

But it's the road plans is not really, that's kind of a side thing, probably best to put, you know, we evaluate these developments within the road plans.

And then there is, there tends to be a need for traffic calming concerning safety issues, but

We try to implement these where appropriate with VDOT.

Gretchen, did you get that?

I'm actually looking at the minutes from last these minutes, and I'm not sure that I see where you're talking about.

Okay.

OK.

All righty.

I'm looking forward to a riveting presentation on SMART SCALE because I'm working on my SMART SCALE stuff, so I'm really looking forward to this.

All right, good afternoon, everybody.

So I think Chuck and I are going to be splitting this.

I've got environmental, and then Chuck is going to be covering land use on his own.

Has everybody got this up?

Good deal.

I'm going to go ahead and put it in full screen mode.

So looking at the round five proposed environmental improvements and changes,

So going over a little bit, we're going to talk a little bit about the current process and methodology.

So what is E1?

E1 is basically gonna be air quality energy.

That measure was, the weight was changed to 100% between round three and round four.

So a lot of this information actually comes from the technical guide.

You can refer back to see kind of what the points are, what the characteristics are, but basically it awards for non-SOV project characteristics that are scaled by user that reduce per capita VMT.

Points are awarded including energy efficient infrastructure fleets, freight points are awarded for projects which have a decrease in percent per person hour delay greater than zero and truck traffic greater than 8%.

Environmental implications are captured in the cost.

So current methodology, this is basically how E1 is currently scored, where the points come from.

The total number is for non-SOV projects you can get is 8.5.

And then for freight, the total you can get is 1.5.

But these are all the various characteristics and attributes you can get in your project currently.

So what are we looking to change?

VDOT went through and they looked at several different options.

We had a work group that kind of looked at the feasibility of implementing all these different options and what the score result would be and what looked to fit best moving forward.

So basically what we're looking at the preferred option is going to be option eight, which is going to be combining option two modified.

I'm going to get into that a little bit later in option five.

So option two is basically allocating out non-SOV users by mode for precise point calculation plus normalizing non-SOV and freight categories separately.

Option five is going to be number three, convert to carbon offset by applying emission factors and gas factors.

So going into a little bit of detail, what are the details actually in object two?

So currently, all the points are totaled and multiplied by all non-SOV users.

This results in compounding points based on users from other categories, proposed multiplying by respective category.

Non-SOV users and freight component are not the same unit.

Non-SOV is based on increase in the increase of users.

Freight requires improved delay but captures existing truck volumes.

So the proposal is to normalize them separately in equal weight the two categories.

Special accommodation point category is to remove accommodations for hybrid and electric vehicles or space infrastructure for electric vehicle parking.

So looking at object five under E1, statewide GHG emissions by led by VDOT central office environmental division will be completed next year.

Currently, there's no simple tools to capture GHG.

SMART SCALE is in pre-NEPA, but after the pilot is complete, consider application of SMART SCALE.

Consider VMT and delay converted to GHG CO2 score.

So what are the changes we're looking at to calculate the CO2 offset?

Expected non-SOV users currently calculated for E1.

So that's not going to change.

That's still going to be in there.

Hours of delay reduced currently calculated in C2.

Triplink, we're going to use the national average and smart scale analysis segment length.

Mission factors, we're going to look at average passenger car fuel efficiency.

And then finally, fuel use factor from delay reduced.

So what are the non-SOV CO2 offsets?

Increased non-SOV VMT, transit and park ride users multiply new users by the analysis trip length.

Pedestrians will multiply total new users by 0.67 miles.

This is based on a national average length.

Bicyclists will multiply total new users by 3.54 miles, which is all the average percent tripling.

Increase the non-SOV BMT, which is the sum of the two above, and then non-SOV CO2 offset will apply fuel efficiency and emissions factor.

So reduced drug delay, this will get back to the vehicle hours of delay, divide total person hours of delay, PhD, by 1.2 persons per vehicle, heavy vehicle hours of delay, multiply vehicle hours of delay by project weighted average truck percent,

And then heavy vehicle CO2 offset, which is in this formula below.

So the final score is going to be the sum of the non-SOV CO2 offset and the freight CO2 offset.

So here are the proposed ranges for the modified.

So modified is going to be a weight option to modify 50% and then weight option five, which is weighted by 50%.

Option two tends to skew by to freight.

So the modification considers the magnitude of delay.

Option five skews to non-SOV improvements.

Step one would be to modify option two so points based on the magnitude of delay and then in current place system it is binary if there is any delay improvement at all.

Step two would be to combine the modified option two with option five to give it a 50-50 weighting.

So what does this all look like in the end for E1?

Well, not a whole lot of changes.

So this is for Culpeper districts.

The ones in yellow I've highlighted are the ones that are basically in the rural areas.

And then this shows option eight.

This is basically what would be in and what would be out as a result of all the changes listed before for E1.

So really, all those changes are going to be very, very minimal.

It doesn't really impact any of the top projects.

The scores are pretty much all the same.

There will be like some slight differences towards the bottom where one project might be in and one might be out.

So in this case, a roundabout of 522 in Route 20 came in, and then Route 17 and coming to Scorder Road Archive went out.

So this is the results for Lynchburg.

No difference basically in the current funding formula.

All the Nelson projects are highlighted in yellow.

So E2 is going to be the impact to natural and cultural resources.

Dan, I got a question, or David, I'm sorry.

So Chuck, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they're removing the hybrid vehicle

That half a point there at the bottom of the screen.

That wouldn't be applied.

All right, so getting into E2, the impact of natural and cultural resources.

So currently how this is all done in the E2 is we have a project line or polygon area, and then we have a buffer that's based on the project type, and then they look at all the different environmental impacts, cultural resources, wetlands.

Regardless of the type of project or the scope of the project or the right of way impacts, all those buffers were treated equally among the same project categories.

So here are the proposed changes for E2.

Basically, step one is not going to change.

That's your weighting percentage for your different types of environmental scales for various types of projects from your very small, no environmental impact here to the really big EIS interchange improvements and highway capacity and all that.

So the map project location, so it's currently at a quarter mile buffer, but we're going to propose a tiering approach with features like this, so I'll get into that a little bit later.

So overlay with sensitive areas, review the validity of every input layer.

TMPD was in control now environmental division for improved QAQC so basically we're going to bring in the environmental folks to do a review of all these impacts calculation and the final total acres impacted there's no change there no change in normalizing the measure from zero to 100

So here's the buffer tiering.

This is going to be the biggest change.

Projects in tier one are going to have a 30 foot buffer, either improved in SMART SCALE rank or remained in the exact same rank.

Projects in tier two are going to be one eighth of a mile.

Projects on average changed by, this is kind of the result I'll show you, but the projects on average changed by less than one position in the SMART SCALE rank.

projects in tier three, which is going to be a quarter of a mile buffer, fill an average of four positions in SMART SCALE.

So here are the various tiering based on projects.

So you've got a lot that kind of show up in that very first one, the 30 foot buffer.

So things like constructive sidewalk or shared east path or new intersection, you know, all of those are going to have a very small impact buffer.

It's really when you get into the big ones, add new three lanes, new park ride line, rail transit, other, all of these, your buffer starts to get much larger.

So comparing the proposed changes to the official SMART SCALE part one, this is called upper district.

I've highlighted in yellow all the rural projects.

So how does this look in your project benefits for rank change?

This is statewide.

So this is basically how your project looks after these changes are implemented compared to other projects statewide for benefit.

And this was your overall rank change.

This was your district change right here.

But as you can see, a lot of these projects in Cold Upper are now going up.

As a result of these changes, just because the buffer area has gone down on a lot of these smaller projects.

So going back through, you can see that it's pretty much consistent that there were some that lost points.

So like the Route 3 and Route 20 intersection, these are all basically urbanized area projects, but these all kind of went down in the rankings.

So here it is for Lynchburg District.

You know, same kind of story where a lot of the SMART SCALE ranks went up for all of our projects.

It doesn't really change a whole lot for Nelson.

So the Route 151 at Sandbark went up five places.

Oak Ridge went up four.

Route 6 and 151 actually went down five places just with the looking at the environmental impacts within that that buffer area.

And that is basically all the changes from environmental.

David, I have one quick question.

This isn't necessarily going to change any of the information that has to be provided as part of the applications, right?

Right.

So this is actually more to do with the scoring process.

So when they actually go in and evaluate the projects and look at the environmental impacts, the biggest changes are going to be the buffer and how that's looked at for various projects.

So really I think in our area that's going to help a lot with this steering just because we don't have any really large projects down here.

It's mostly where we have projects up in this area.

So that'll help us.

But yeah, this is basically all stuff that goes behind the scenes and how it's calculated at the end.

Thank you.

All right, land use.

Done this already once today, hopefully it'll go better.

My presentation isn't as new as David's.

I basically just in scalping the one from the CTB, basically land use is

For most of you all, it doesn't have any effect.

It didn't have any effect on you because you were not getting any points in area types C and D. So this gives you the opportunity to get points in area type C and D, which you didn't before.

So in your urbanized areas, in your localities, you may have more opportunity to get points.

Basically, it looks at you have an L1 and L2.

L1 looks at how much

Density you have versus population and employment in an area.

And right now they look at a three mile radius around that area.

And then the L2 is the increase in land use between now and 2030 and what that density change would be.

So those are the two factors that go into it.

So basically it's saying that if you have more density, there's more opportunity, there's more chances that people are gonna walk

between their home and other activities, whether it's jobs or most of the time they're looking at non-work activities, so shopping and those kinds of things.

So if you have a lot of mix of uses within a small area and you're putting a project in there, you can definitely get an advantage to the score.

And we see that in a lot of the urbanized areas.

Most of the projects in the Albemarle, Charlottesville, Albemarle metro area got significant number of points just in this category from land use, upwards of eight points in their application for their score.

But basically what we're doing is we're gonna look at that buffer area

to see how well it's reflecting in the score and then in the land use, how adding this category to Area Type C and D would affect the overall scores.

All right, so basically, and that's pretty much what I said here, we looked at several different things.

The one mile buffer seemed to be the one they had the most effect on across all of the,

projects.

And it's also better closely represent what a walking trip might be, whereas the three mile most people aren't walking three miles.

So and that's why they used one mile.

Currently, this is existing percentages that were scored upon.

On your projects.

And you get a certain percentage based on your area type or an area type C.

for the most of the TJPDC.

So you're using this row right here.

And the proposed is down here.

So they're looking at taking 10% of your accessibility and putting it into land use and giving you the land use factor.

The map on the right just shows you the areas that are covered by which area type.

You can see most of the state is blue, which is area type D, which is the most rural portions of it.

TJPDC is all in area type C, and most of the other area type C areas are urbanized MPO areas that aren't in this district.

Okay, that's pretty much it, all they had.

So what I wanted to get into is some of the details of it.

And here's where we got into how they came up with what they did.

Let me get back to here.

They looked at eight different or six different scenarios, and they ended up focusing in on scenario six as the preferred solution, where these they were looking at different area rate radiuses,

different combination of scenarios about how you're going to, who it's going to be applied to.

And then like I said, six is where they set up to.

This is existing.

The bottom here is, this is the percentage of your project score that came from the different categories.

So for area type C,

Most of your scores came from safety, points came from safety and economic development.

As you can see is an area type B and A, they got almost half their points from land use.

So you guys are missing out on that opportunity.

And that's what we're trying to solve with this change.

And you can see here's the difference between those two previous slides.

And then this is the change they're recommended.

The blue, the red is

where the rates went down and the green is where here on the right at the bottom is where the increases went to.

So obviously you're taking red, some from the red and moving into the green category.

And then this is the weighting based on the new category.

As you can see, it's gonna go up significantly for area type C and D.

with land use.

You're going to get a lot more points for your applications from those area types.

And this is basically the difference.

And then I'm going to pull up a spreadsheet that has the changes in it.

Right, for Albemarle County, these are the ones that changed based on the different categories.

And as you can see,

Several dropped out.

I mean, came in that weren't in before.

And these are like, this is in Fauquier.

These two, these three here are all in, two of them are in the town of Warrenton, and one of them is in the town of Culpeper, where they have the more density.

So you're gonna see that that's gonna be where you're gonna get the points for your applications moving forward.

And then there were several that dropped out, which are mainly in the rural areas,

or they cost a lot.

17 in Covington's Corner is on 17 out in the middle of the rural area.

There's not a lot of density around it so it wouldn't get a lot of points.

MS Street project was just a costly project.

It got a lot of points from it but it wasn't enough to stay in the ranks because these other projects moved up above it.

And then the Fifth Street Hub project, the radius

By shrinking the radius, it lost some points, but also it was, these other projects gained from it.

From my perspective, there's more opportunities for those projects that have

in urbanized areas, like Zion's Crossroads, like up in Greene County and Rutgersville and Standardsville, those places where we do have some jobs and population, they're gonna get some benefit from this type of change, significant.

Because right now, before, they weren't getting any points.

And they're competing against Charlottesville and Albemarle County that have that large density of both population and employment right there next to each other.

And there are projects in the middle of it.

So they're going to get a significant number of points.

Like I said, most of the applications last year from the MPO area got upwards of eight points just from land use as part of their total score, which

Most of those projects in the rural area didn't get eight points total.

So yeah, to echo that for Lynchburg, I mean, safety is still going to be very important in the rural areas.

And a lot of the areas in Nelson, we weren't getting any economic development points at all for the most part.

Just there weren't any site plans in the buffer area.

There wasn't enough zone-only properties to really gain any points.

So, you know, if you remember looking back, the only one that really suffered from the environmental was 6 and 151.

And there isn't really any economic development at that location already.

But you might see some boost in places like Livingston or Nellie's Ford.

Any of the village centers where you have a higher density of a sidewalk network that's there and accessibility, that's going to be important.

Yeah, I echo that because we had some projects throughout the district that had very little economic development because there's just nothing around those projects.

I have a question for you all, and that is what is driving these revisions to the SMART SCALE model?

Do you think it's the case that there is some ideal configuration of the model and once that is discovered and put in place, the model will never change again because that now captures what we want?

Or do you think that it's just like every couple of years we're gonna look back and say, oh yeah, it looks like we've been doing these kinds of projects and not these other kinds of projects.

Are we happy with that?

And if not, we'll make an adjustment.

Well, no model's perfect.

And we've been tweaking this model a little bit every round since it started.

So I don't we haven't really made substantial changes since round one, but we have been making changes every round.

Some of these aren't that this one is pretty significant for the rural areas and it's definitely going to have a benefit.

And we've been pushing to get this change made for

Many, many years because we saw the disconnect between the urban and the rural areas.

And they weren't getting scored.

It's not like they weren't getting scored fairly.

It's just that it appeared from the scoring that they were at a disadvantage.

And this is just to closely level the playing field a little bit more so that they have some opportunities

So who gets to make the ultimate decision that like, oh yeah, that's not what I intended.

These are presented to the CTB and the CTB ultimately makes a decision.

We run various scenarios.

I think for these we ran eight scenarios for environmental.

We ran six for land use and those were presented to the CTB at their meeting in October.

And then they're going to get public feedback and then they're going to vote on those changes in December.

Ultimately.

That's helpful background.

Chuck, I thought it was helpful in MPO Tech when you explained how because our district is a mixture of both category B and category C, how that disproportionately impacts the likelihood that the more rural localities would be competitive in this process.

Sure, I can do that.

And that's what I tried to show with the one slide I had previously showed where they're getting their points from.

You're showing that the slide was showing that the MPO areas, the area types A and B, which are your Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads, Charlottesville MPO, Richmond District, Fredericksburg, those areas are getting the bulk of their points from land use.

and for you guys to try to compete with them, it's near impossible.

So we were finding out in the districts like Stanton, like Salem, Richmond, Culpeper, we were seeing that those area types that have a B and a C or D or an A and a C or D, that they were, the data was skewed towards those MPO areas.

Cause they were getting the bulk of the,

Top scores where the rural areas were getting pretty much shut out for the most part.

So this basically by allowing them to get points in those areas, it's giving them an opportunity to compete with the MPO area.

I mean, we did well.

We had 20 of our 30 or 22 of our 36 projects were in the top 50% across the district, across the state in how they scored.

and we were able to get many, many projects funded.

We had the top four safety rate projects in the state.

So we're pretty much customizing our projects towards getting the best score.

This will give us some more options so we don't have to just focus on safety.

We can focus on some other things.

And it allows those urbanized areas which

There's more right-of-way costs and they're more constrained to actually compete for projects in their areas, like the town of Warrenton and the town of Culpeper, which they've been hard pressed to get any projects funded at all.

Warrenton hasn't gotten any projects funded.

I think the town of Culpeper has gotten one.

So if this had been in effect last round, they would have gotten, Culpeper would have got one project funded

Hey Chuck, not to be a naysayer, but I don't see anybody from the town of Warrenton on this call.

Well, that's my, that's my, that's one of my tasks is to try to get you guys something in those, in your areas.

So we'll have to focus on those areas where you have the most density and see if we can get stuff done.

I know Tom's got some stuff in Zion's Crossroads that you've got a lot of density there with Spring Creek and all that commercial stuff that's going on there.

So hopefully we can get something funded down there this round.

OK, I do appreciate it.

It does balance the ledger a little better compared to the previous funding way.

So the rural areas have a little bit better shot.

It definitely seems that way sometimes.

But one related question that I have is it came up earlier.

Do any of you all at this point know whether you would be requesting additional project application slots from the PDC?

So each locality will have the opportunity to submit four SMART SCALE projects.

And at this point, do you anticipate potentially having more than four that you would like to be considered?

And if so,

All right.

Well, thank you, Chuck and David.

I'm sure we'll be reaching out to you individually on our own localities.

For round table, we have a new Board of Supervisors member in the Green Spring District starting in January.

I have no further news at this time.

Oh, wait, that's a lie.

This Thursday at 6 p.m., and if you want, I can send you the video link,

We will be having a work session with the Planning Commission.

VDOT will be there to discuss how they review large-scale solar projects and possibly planning and development.

So if you can't watch the video online, it'll be available because we're probably recording it.

So there's that.

I'll let you know in the next meeting what VDOT says.

I'll let you know.

I've got great news, everybody.

We all won the big broadband grant and we'll be getting the money tomorrow.

I'm kidding.

Greene, we have

We have the regular stuff.

We have some large proposals coming through.

Going to the Planning Commission, we have a request to transfer, change the zoning from senior restricted to open market for 600 homes that have been approved.

It'll be interesting because it does match the goals of the comprehensive plan.

But because it's changing from senior to open market, there are school and transportation costs that are unmitigated.

So it'll be interesting to watch what the board values, whether it's the growth area development or the cost factor when they make that decision.

We also have a large,

We have a 140 unit glamping proposal out pretty close to the, to about a mile and a half, two miles off 33 on a pretty good section of road near the national park.

A lot of uproar from the neighbors, but again, it's a project that meets some of the goals of the comprehensive plan for tourism and economic development.

So it would just be interesting to watch those

All right.

We call it special here, Tom, because we're special.

But yes, yes, it would be.

We're reviewing it.

under the tourist lodging regulations and some of the conditions are actually coming from our campground performance standards so we're kind of using that as a baseline for these units as far as how close they can be together and the type of

of features that need to be included within the resort.

But it's actually, it will have a spa, a pool, a clubhouse.

So it's gonna be a lot more like a cabin resort than a glamp ground.

It's double walled tents that are completely insulated.

Tom, I'll go next.

This is Douglas and Jon-Mikel and Fluvanna.

So Chuck's aware of this, but we've completed our, just kind of also talking to Dan Butch and Albemarle, we've completed our functional classification of changes for Route 53 and 250 from major collectors to minor arterials.

And Jon-Michael's putting together the application package that was approved by the board.

And he's going to get that submitted to Chuck.

So that's a,

That part's been completed and we are working on a really large zoning case outside of Lake Monticello Road.

I'm sorry Lake Monticello, but

That's been taking up a lot of our time and working on that with the EPR transportation folks right now in Southern development.

So that's, but I'm sorry, Tom, we're gonna miss your, I'll miss your work session with the, on the solar and VDOT interaction.

I actually am doing a community meeting that night with Dominion and it's interrelated with solar project.

They're replacing a 1930s transmission line and switching station out in the center of the county at Route 53 in Virgin Lake Road area.

We're really getting ready to be hit with a large amount of solar projects in 2022.

And we're going to start.

I was forwarded some information that, Tom, you guys had on locating your solar projects on GIS map locations in the county.

So we're going to try to do the same.

Yeah, and this was Josh Gillespie forwarded it for me from Orange County.

I think he got the information from you guys and Mathias.

And then there was also some really good information from Mark Bassett at Dinwiddie County down south of Petersburg.

So I think solar was something that, or I really think solar is something we need to talk about in

Maybe have a recap from you guys at the January RTAC meeting.

So that's about all we have unless I'm missing something, Jam.

I don't think you're missing anything.

The same as y'all's.

It's the Route 53.

and Route 250.

Yeah, everything was extended basically into Route 15 into the county on 250 coming up Eastern Albemarle and 53 coming out of Albemarle area as well.

So yeah, we actually use y'all's maps.

I think whoever put your maps together gave us, this is easier to do it that way.

Yep, so we're getting that application in.

That's good news.

Yeah, I've got it.

I mean, I've sort of been waiting on theirs so I could put it all together and send it all because I need logical term and I on the eastern end.

And the county line isn't a logical termini.

So we had to extend it all the way to 250.

That's been working with Douglas and Fluvanna to try to get that taken care of.

Yeah, Chuck, I had

Yeah, to try to hunt down some of the requested info on that application.

And it was fun, took a little while.

That's good news.

Thanks for the update, Douglas.

Sure.

Yeah, so we have our application sitting on Chuck's desk for that as well and for the upgrade to, I think it's to arterial status, I believe, from collector.

We just got informed this month that the CTB approved our request for a Virginia byway of Route 810 and 240 in Albemarle County, connecting to Greene.

And so that will be signed and implemented.

That was a three year in the makings project getting that initiated.

So that just happened this month.

And what's new on the plate is besides SMART SCALE discussion, the county is starting to look into a comprehensive plan update.

So within that, transportation is looking for a more of a multimodal transportation plan within that comp plan update.

So this is early discussions.

on that and basically kind of help us identify, continue to identify, but also prioritize and rank and see how we pursue, which projects we pursue that are identified in studies and master plans and long range plans.

I'm here next.

This is Chuck.

SMART SCALE, we're working to finish the, wrap up the review on the initial study locations that the localities are submitting and providing back some comments based on those, our review.

And those should be coming out probably soon.

I know I finished Fluvanna's and I sent them on to Alan, so he should be getting back with you guys.

And I'm,

Pretty much done with Louisa too.

I know, Tom, I sent some stuff to you already, but I will talk some more.

Still working on Albemarle's, theirs are mostly not much for me to do, so they're mostly bike-ped type of projects.

There is the roundabout out in Albemarle, western Albemarle, but those are mostly in the MPO area, so they're not really in the rural areas.

Greene, I've done some initial reviews, but I got to really focus in on those.

So I talked to Jim earlier and I'm going to be finishing those up probably the next week or so.

And pipeline, we've wrapped up the initial studies.

They're both in the MPO area, so well, not the initial studies, phase one.

So we're working in phase two, which is the alternatives analysis.

That would be good.

So sooner we can get that, because I think we've got everything ready and it's pretty much all the material I had sent to Tom.

So you've got all that material, Tom.

So that we'll be presenting.

So we just need to set up a time and we can all get together and then get comments on those and then see what we want to do from the public outreach perspective would be the next step after that.

So that's pretty much all I got.

Yeah, Tom, just to add a little bit to that discussion, we had a board member who retired, and that's the Cunningham area, that's kind of Scottsville, southwest part of the county, but that new board member served on the board in the past, and he has, I believe, expressed some interest in being involved in the Zion Crossroads area, just like, so if Tom bringing on a new board member, we have a new board member,

So I think he's going to want to be kind of involved in the next update and Sandy and I gave an update back on September 14th to our planning commission on it and they're asking for kind of

Not really an update, but when the next stakeholders meeting is, Chairman Bibb and all.

So I'd like to, you know, if we can actually talk, Sandy and Tom and I were trading emails this morning about it.

So if we can get that maybe set up soon before sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas would be great.

Douglas and Tom and Andy who is one of the members of the consultant team had reached out and especially for Tom since there's also a staffing transition had asked if there's anything he could do to help sort of with the transition and you know the stakeholders and the staffing and things like that so I don't know if you all think it would be helpful we could see if he could schedule a meeting just with kind of the new people that are coming into this to get them up to speed

I'll be meeting with the board member, the new board member possibly this week.

So I might just pass along your name, Sandy, if that works for you that, you know, if you'd like to learn more about the Zahn's Crossroads Study, please reach out to Sandy.

So this Thursday night at 6.30pm, the Transit Vision Plan is hosting a meeting on the plan.

They want to gather public input on the area, the entire region's vision for transit planning.

And it's important to include the rural areas as well.

This is for the entire TJPDC region.

And we've had a lot of comments and requests to ensure that the rural community is involved in the process.

So I'm sure you guys have gotten emails from me already, but if you haven't already, please share the information with your network and I'll post a link to the project website in the chat.

where you can find out more information about the meeting and register.

I know we're getting close to time and there's another meeting that some people have to jump off to it too.

I just want to mention for the PDC, we have a new staff member that's going to be starting next week that will be probably, you'll probably be seeing her a little bit.

She has more of an environmental background, but will be working with the transportation programming as well.

So we're happy to

Get a little bit more staffing and start filling some of our gaps.

We are still hiring for a transportation planner.

So if anybody is able to pass along a successful lead, I'll make you the same offer I made at MPO Tech.

I'll bake you a cheesecake.

You name the flavor.

Sandy, got a couple of quick updates.

One of them is going to be the project pipeline up in Nelson County.

So we're in phase two right now, which is going to be the analysis and looking at the alternatives phase.

We've collected traffic data, turning count, movement data.

We had our stakeholder meeting back September 20th, if I'm not mistaken.

So that's already gone through and I have that presentation if anybody's interested in seeing that.

The other thing is the PSI data set has been updated.

So I provided that link in the chat.

Let me know if you can actually access that.

I haven't tried it off the VDOT network so I'm not sure if that's internal to VDOT only or if anybody can open it.

But basically, this just came out a couple of weeks ago, and this is going to be the updated 2016 to 2020 PSI data list.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of compare that to the previous PSI list, which was 2014 to 2018, see what came in, see what fell off.

Looks like for Nelson, not a whole lot of changes.

Actually, what we're doing, the project pipeline is still very highly ranked.

So pretty confident that would make a good smart scale application, especially with all the land use potential there in the village area.

Yeah, I'll add something to that.

In addition to the PSI list update, which I forgot to mention, they did update the safety data in VTRANS and that's posted to the VTRANS website.

So the maps are all updated with the new VTRANS information, safety data.

The other thing I wanted to say is the SMART SCALE portal is going or SMART portal is going to

They're going to push out a module for pre-application module and that goes live on December 1st.

They're going to have some training coming out after that to go through it, but it's a way to go in.

It's just like a regular SMART SCALE.

You can go in and set up your, start putting in your application material just like you would for your SMART SCALE application.

And then once you get enough material in there you can actually submit it and I can review it and then once I review it you can import it in during the application cycle directly into your application so you don't have to re-enter it.

So it gives you some advanced time to get your application material in there before the March deadline or March period starts for SMART SCALE.

but it's gonna be open year round and you can do it for any application, not just SMART SCALE.

The other thing is there's a training on the changes for that David and I went through on November 22nd.

There's a webinar that's out and a link was sent to all of the SMART SCALE users.

So you should have gotten that.

Major updates at Jaunt.

We're just waiting patiently for our new CEO to start next month.

All righty, well,

The City of Charlottesville, we're following their emergency order, so that should still be in effect through, I believe it's through early March, so at least January we'll be meeting on Zoom.

All right.

Well, I

Jim and I got to run to another TJPDC meeting.

Thank you, everybody.

Douglas, if you need anything with Sol or just call me.

Later.