Rural Transportation Advisory Committee Meeting   7/26/2022

Mr. Youngblood?

I think he said here.

Mr. Barish?

Excellent.

Excellent.

Is there anybody here from the public today?

So looking at the minutes that I know, Douglas, you had some comments on the minutes.

Minor ones.

Minor ones.

Does anybody have additional comments for the minutes in addition to Douglas' comments from this morning?

So then I motion to approve the minutes with the changes that Douglas has requested.

Second.

Final.

All right.

So I guess we're going to meet here from now on, correct?

Yes.

In this meeting, are we doing chairman and vice chairman?

I didn't realize that this is when you all did.

So if that isn't the time, we have time because

Well, in that case, again, I'm Tom Egeland.

I represent Louisa County.

I've been the chairman of RTAC for many, many years.

I'm willing to continue to serve as either a chairman or vice chairman of the role, but I'm also willing to step down and let someone else take it for a little while.

And so I leave that entirely up to

The pleasure of the committee.

You're doing such a great job, my short tenure here.

That was very pointed, Tom.

I'm Jim Frydl.

If you haven't met me, I've served

As vice chairman for probably as long as Tom has served as chairperson, I've been interim chairperson before.

I don't remember if I honestly can't remember.

I'm willing to serve or allow others to serve.

I think Tom is very modest in the fact that he's been great for us, but he's also been the only person willing to do it so long.

And that's why he's been nominated.

Well, it would appear that the motion to stand is I will remain chairman, but I believe we would need a motion from somebody to allow Jim to remain vice chairman.

Second.

No.

So wait, is this year 2020 or year 2021?

I mean, this seems like a familiar thing.

2022 to 2023, July.

Yeah.

Well, all right.

All those opposed?

All right, all those who would like, Jim remains Vice Chairman, say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed?

Congratulations to both of them.

I appreciate everybody's support, and I will try not to lie down.

Can I interject a small one?

Absolutely.

We've got a little bit of feedback that online participants have a little bit of a difficult time hearing folks if you don't articulate and speak loud.

We have made some investments.

We're going to be getting some sound paneling, and we're going to install a third and all camera to pick up another microphone.

Especially if you have a mask.

Yes.

I'll just quickly introduce Alberic here next to me.

Alberic has a new transportation plan for Delmaro County for those of you that have met.

K-A-R-I-N-A dash

P-O-U-N.

Welcome, Sara.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

All right, well, let's see.

So the next thing on the agenda is Mr. Krepp's rural, paving our own roads presentation.

And he's home sick today.

Excellent.

I'm actually looking forward to that presentation.

And I guess we'll go ahead and jump into new federal funding opportunities.

David.

Somebody go ahead and present up at the front, Lucinda.

Yeah.

OK.

I'm going to pass these now.

Thanks, sir.

So I'm going to send you a link as well.

Okay.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Thank you for being here in person today and also virtually for joining in.

Can everybody online hear me?

Okay.

I assume that's coming through pretty good.

All right.

Good deal.

Thank you.

All right.

So today we're going to be talking about predominantly one program specifically talking about the new Safe Roads and Streets for All program.

This is acronym SS4A.

Program for the USDOT.

We're going to be discussing that program a little bit in some detail.

So a little bit about the program.

It's part of the new bipartisan infrastructure law, an investment in jobs act.

It supports basically an initiative to prevent deaths

It varies among all user types.

So it's going to be not just automobiles, but veterans, bicycles, skateboarders, scooters, everybody out there using roads and sidewalks.

So basically we're referred to as Vision Zero.

I know a lot of you have heard about Vision Zero, but it's basically a strategy or plan for an action plan to reduce all the fatal crashes down to zero over a certain time frame.

So this program is going to have a pretty big focus on equity.

I know a lot of people were at the APA conference and there was a big focus on equity and planning at that conference.

A lot of that is coming from the federal level.

So we'll kind of discuss what equity means in this program and who it's going to be targeting.

So one of the things you'll see in this was actually presented at the ADA conference.

It's kind of a breakdown of fatalities among pedestrians by race.

So you can see the total population and then the various different ethnic racial groups in there as well.

Next slide.

So basics of roadway safety.

Basically, we talked about Vision Zero, getting towards zero deaths.

Complete Streets is going to be a big part of this.

So when you look at programs like SMART SCALE that VDOT does and our various programs, they're very targeted to networks that are kind of on the V-trans, you know, identify need network.

This is basically going to go beyond that.

This is opening up all kinds of different areas that may not necessarily need the V-trans need, but have, you know, fatality and issues that it might be in what we call an equity emphasis zone.

So that's going to be a big focus, especially kind of like on local roads and different roads off the arterial network as well will be eligible.

Proven safety strategies is going to be a big part of this, looking at other examples around the country, other TFTs, what they've been doing to get down to vision zero and looking at kind of loading through countermeasures that work.

So one thing you're going to see is that these are small projects.

They start from about 5 million and they go up to 30 to 50 billion, depending on who's submitting for the implementation of those projects.

Before we get there, though, there's one important aspect that all local governments or NPOs have to develop before they can start getting money for projects.

Next slide.

So basically this program is a $5 million program for five years.

Every year it's $1 billion.

So first year coming up, fiscal year 2022, it's going to be $1 million.

Who is eligible for this program?

MPOs, political subdivisions like cities and localities, counties, towns, federal tribes, and then multi-jurisdictional groups.

So for a multi-jurisdictional group, I will say that the locality did only do one grant application per cycle under that program.

So just keeping that in mind that if you want to do an implementation project through the multi-jurisdictional group, like a PDC, every locality within that PDC is basically eligible just for one project.

So basically the deadline for the initial round is going to be September 15, 2022.

So coming up very quickly, if you're thinking about applying for this, VDOT does offer technical assistance.

I'm going to be going through that here in a little bit.

But the timeline is very tight.

It's very short to ask for that assistance if you're interested in that.

So we're going to talk a little bit about the action plan and the implementation.

So there are two different grant types.

Before I get into that, this is an 80% federal match to a 20% local or MPO match on that.

So looking at the action plan, this is the comprehensive safety action plan.

40% of all funding from the first round is going to be going towards the comprehensive safety action plan.

That is going to be your vision of our plan.

So there's a number of different elements within this criteria that you have to meet in order to basically fulfill the requirements of the comprehensive safety action plan.

It's going to say action plan from here now because of the mouthful.

But basically for local governments, they can do about 200,000 up to a million.

I can give you an example.

So Central Virginia and T.

It's pretty similar, I would say population-wise to perhaps the Charlottesville MPO area.

It's about 158,000 people.

The request that they're doing is 350,000 for their TPM.

So that's kind of the range you're probably looking at in this area.

So 20% match of that is going to be about 70,000.

Tribal governments and MPO, you can kind of see the various

Finally it's going to be for the really big NPOs.

Is the TJPDC what we would consider a multi-jurisdictional group?

Yeah.

Or a political subdivision.

Or a political subdivision, yeah.

So either TJPDC is a political subdivision as well?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, that's something I know it is for multi-jurisdictional groups, but I'm not sure.

Her political subdivision

There is, you know, a ceiling on the maximum amount of dollars you can apply around after this.

And I'll get into that a little bit here in a bit.

I have a more detailed presentation, but basically no more than 15% of funds are awarded to every state around.

And so you're kind of being limited there already at the state level and then regional applications are encouraged.

So thinking about cross-jurisdictional projects as well.

So the first step you need to do, this is the notice of funding opportunity, it's currently out and then the application deadline is September 15th on this.

Develop your comprehensive safety action plan

and then conduct supplemental action planning activities in support of existing comprehensive safety action plan as well.

And then it gets into implementation, implementing projects and strategies.

So not necessarily projects, but also various strategies that you can do to kind of get towards that vision zero.

That could even be policy goals as an example.

Conduct planning and design.

conduct supplemental action planning activities in support of existing comprehensive safety action plan.

So you have to have this plan in place before you can start applying for projects.

So the plan is the key.

And if you don't meet certain criteria that we're going to get into a bit later, next slide.

So this is in the handout, I believe.

This is just the example from Central Virginia PDC.

I'm not going to really go into this in any too much detail.

I'm going to talk a bit about that in the next presentation from the VDOT support section.

But basically this is where you go through and you kind of answer your various questions on, you know, does the action plan include all of the following?

And then does the action plan include all of the following activities?

You kind of go through and you check and you see

What does your comprehensive plan currently have?

What does your long range plan currently have?

We can kind of fulfill some of the data requirements and some of the needs of the plan.

So that will kind of clue you in into what you need for the additional for the safety action plan.

So here's an interesting thing is like speaking of equity, a lot of these other federal programs also

depend on a lot of the same data that kind of crosses over into the comprehensive safety action plan, especially from an equity perspective, programs like housing, EPA Brownfields, you know, there are various different programs out there that will also share some of the same requirements as the safety action plan, especially when it comes to equity.

And I have an example now I'll show in a bit on that, but that's kind of

You know, one of the key takeaways here is when you develop this plan, it'll also serve other plans as well and other programs.

Is that the last one?

So I'm going to dive into this into some pretty good detail here.

So the next presentation is going to be

Or you can just bring it up.

Oh, that's fine.

So it's the original email with all the attachments.

Next slide.

This is a lot of this from Steven Reid's department.

He's one of the safety folks.

So basically the goal of the program, as mentioned before, ignition zero, getting crashes down to zero, severe injury crashes, type A crashes and fatals are going to be the focus of the program.

Safety for all users, complete streets.

I'm not sure how many local governments have a complete streets policy in place.

So I know like Central Virginia, PDC, none of them did as well.

So that's going to be one of the big requirements is focusing on complete streets and looking at policy within your local government to kind of reduce crashes by encouraging multimodal opportunities in street design.

So low-cost, high-cost impact countermeasures, equity, evidence-based strategy, and alignment with VDOT mission and goals.

So highlights, as mentioned before, $5 million per gram, 20% match.

Local match cannot come from any federal sources, including federal funds coming through the state.

So in-kind cost sharing is acceptable in there.

So in the first round, at least 40% of reserve funds for this program are for the action plan that all the PDCs, local governments must develop ahead of time before they can do the implementation.

And so maximum per state, this is actually showing dollar values down 150 million.

This is an important feature right here, and I'm going to go ahead and bring this map up, but 40% of all the funds

I have to go towards basically, if you want to click on the link, Lucinda, low-income underserved communities.

So basically, areas that have traditionally been underserved in any kind of infrastructure funding historically, there's a pretty good bit of information about what that means.

So basically preserving 40% of funds from that program.

This is statewide as well.

So there's one area just out of the university.

That's in our head.

Yeah.

The historically disadvantaged communities.

And then there's another one.

The other one.

There's two census tracts that meet this disadvantaged census.

Okay.

Christine, you didn't have it at the end.

And it isn't to say that all funds are going to go to those areas, it's just a portion of the funds.

For an action plan, they've already started the process in a couple of areas.

If you want to reach out, Richmond Regional TPO, and then also the Bristol.

If you go, they've already started some of the data collection.

Focusing on basically equity and safety are kind of the two indicators that VDOT is currently helping out with if you request it.

There is available resources for those two.

Basically looking at 12, it's pretty important on timeline for the award to activity to completion.

So it varies by the size of your MPO or your PC.

In this case, it's probably about a year to develop.

In the application, there's a 300-word narrative that he writes, and then new action plans are prioritized for funding, supplemental planning, funding eligibility for existing qualifying comprehensive safety action plans, and then criteria for judging.

Basically, this is where VDOT can provide some data assistance, the historic crash rate information, and then the equity, the percent population in underserved areas.

additional safety, less weight, low cost impact, variety of stakeholders, innovative tech have that space.

So, and then we get into implementation, a five-year timeline on this program.

It's a little bit more money, so, you know, looking at it five to 30 for cities, three to 30 for rural areas, five to 50 for NPOs.

Supplementary planning can be implementation dollars are part of larger implementation grant applications.

So yeah, these are just some of the criteria for here.

Basically some of the criteria for judging projects come down to safety, review of production and crashes.

So thinking of like the PSI index that VDOT pushes out, what is the potential for safety improvement based on if you were to implement a project at that location.

Climate change is also a part of this, so resiliency is going to be a part of that.

How resilient is your project in the face of flooding due to, you know, increasing storms and all of that.

So you'll get basically awarded projects that will probably be a privatization process in order to what we see with other federal programs and state programs.

More to come on that.

You have to have your approval and an agreement in place.

So that's where it gets, that's where it should be interesting.

David, I got a quick question, and I'm not expecting the answer to it either.

Okay, let's say we all have to submit for a SMART SCALE one that, let's say one of those projects is funded.

Can that, you know, if that's a criteria to go after some of these funds, or can you do both a SMART SCALE application and one of the, I mean, is there some kind of combining of the two possibly or not?

Yeah I mean you can definitely apply for projects in you know multiple programs.

We have projects that have gone in H-SIP and revenue sharing in SMART SCALE all in the same.

I'm not looking for an answer.

It's one of the things just to make you know safety

Oh, you mean like using the resources that come out of this to help you find areas for SMART SCALE projects down the line?

That too.

Okay.

Yeah, definitely.

So in the map I was going to show here that people will help with that as well.

So basically there are nine different requirements of which you need seven at a minimum to basically be considered a comprehensive safety action plan before you can start applying for projects.

So it needs to be recently adopted by 2017.

Basically comprehensive project strategy, time ranges, plan strategy,

We have a carbonization effort that we've done in the Rural Loggerage Plan and the LRTBs and CLRPAs.

So developing some kind of a carbonization for short-term, mid-term, long-term projects.

Safety analysis, looking at crash history, systemic needs on all roadways.

A product would be the High Injury Network.

And that's something I might as well go ahead and bring up the Richmond

The example that they did, so Stephen Greene's group assisted with the creation of this map.

So yeah this it's a little busy at first and the top right you have your various layers and you want to click on the top right there to one three lines mark there so here's kind of like the different layers correlation and basically all the crashes are mapped for your your high injury

where it gets a little busy and then basically right next to that you have your three little layers right there.

So if you want to turn off the top one, or just hit the check.

So, and then we can go back to layers and that'll kind of bring up your high entry network.

I think that's the one shown in yellow.

Yeah, the one with the three lines.

So here's your high injury network as shown in the dark line right there and there are features affiliated with all of those connections and all of that network as well that relate back to your high severe injury fatal crash network and then just below that they have the pedestrian safety analysis looking at your top three percent four horse basically at different levels in the region

So some of the other things, these are the four of the six are needed out of these.

So you can kind of take a look at timeline for zero deaths and injuries, oversight body,

Public Engagement, Incorporation of Engagement into the Action Plan, Equity, Identifying Underserved Communities, and that's the other part of where VDOT can help out a little bit.

Assessment of Policy, Identifying any Gaps and Proposed Policy Changes, and Progress Tracking.

So, if you are the senator met, the jurisdiction must apply, or they can apply, but they must apply if they want to receive implementation grants.

And then if seven are met, so you can check your plans and see if you have seven of these.

So yeah, this is the workbook again, provided that for everybody can kind of flip through that and then check out the Stake Trees for All website.

And it kind of provides more information on there as well.

So if you're looking for assistance from Stephen Greene's group, I think this week you need to ask.

So if that's something you're thinking about going down the line and applying for a safety action plan.

Now, granted, if you miss it this year, then there's always next year as well.

We're flexible.

So VDOT is very excited about the program.

And as Stephen Greene's group, they want to get

So if you're provided any kind of data assistance, you need to perform this.

If you have any questions, just quite a bit in the materials, I'll send over the links as well.

I think, you know, I've heard VDOT talking about safety for a long time, but I also hear VDOT talking about throughput.

And, you know, Albemarle County might be talking about, oh, we want to make Route 29 North a place, we want to do place-making there.

But VDOT would say, no, that's our Attila Road.

We need to have fast traffic moving up there.

So historically, I've never really taken VDOT very seriously when you're talking about safety, because I don't think we can have safety on the speed.

Those are at odds with one another.

So I'm trying to make sense of it.

I like what I'm hearing, but I'm trying to make sense of how this program fits into the broader VDOT strategy.

I mean, that goes to Lucinda's point that on Green Street, it's only local roads.

So we're only going to have safety and we're only going to have a timeline to zero deaths on local roads.

But as long as we keep having high-speed roads, we're going to keep having fatalities.

It doesn't seem very rational.

while also prioritizing speed and throughput.

So is this a sea change at VDOT, that they're shifting their priorities away from speed and throughput?

So, I mean, safety has always been, at least in Lynchburg district, it's pretty rural.

We only have a couple of corridors that are statewide significance, 29 and 460, 58 as well.

And we're doing projects like the R-cut in Livingston that all through there

We have a lot of solutions for increased safety, reducing crashes where we have PSI locations that are kind of pretty much limited in the trends of where the crash top 100 hotspots are.

And so we've been focusing pretty heavy in our studies on

Arterial preservation on 29, that's pretty important.

But yeah, I mean, it'll be interesting to see where it goes because safety is a pretty heavy weighted area in SPARSCALE for us.

And we try to do safety projects predominantly, and that's where our studies are focused mainly is through that.

Well, I mean, obviously there's

It's through looking at people who are going to all businesses.

If you're driving from Lynchburg, D.C.

Bypass around the city was shot down all the way up to 29 to be

Yeah, in VDOT we have the urban development areas that are pretty much targeted, you know, areas that we know are going to be hybrid areas where we want to have smart state growth patterns.

So that's always been kind of where we focus a lot of our safety, better streets, better connections, complete streets, it's kind of in the U.S., but this will broaden

Yeah, we're actually, you know, Team Rec, the research council at UVA, they're actually doing a study right now where we're looking at cities around the world.

We're looking at Oslo.

and a couple of other places, but we're taking European and also South American solutions.

And what they've done, we're going to have a pilot program.

We're going to have a couple of different innovative solutions that are going to be imported from a European kind of perspective.

And we're going to find a couple of different areas, could be Lynchburg district, could be Salem, could be called effort to be determined, but we're kind of figuring out like

What can VDOT adopt from these innovative solutions and what is feasible?

So we are doing a study, we're looking at different cities and how they've managed to achieve close to, not quite at, I think Oslo is the only city that has actually achieved that in the past couple of years.

But yeah, so we're taking a look at it and hopefully some good will come out of that study.

I know like nutrients doesn't really do a good job

Safety and Bicycle Accommodation Connections.

So that's one area I think the study will also be useful is finding solutions for down the line, how can we implement better bicycle connecturing facilities and get those connections built and lack of features and doesn't really cover it very well.

I have a question on, just to make sure I understand it clearly.

Yes, yeah.

Like say if we were going to go for the action plan.

And the NOFO is clear about you can have one regional safety plan or you can create individual local safety plans as a regional project.

Versus, is there only one application allowed by the PDC of any of the jurisdictions?

Right, it seems like implementation anyway would

be best suited at the local level, and as long as you can show that you've got a safety action plan that meets the requirements, you should be eligible for implementation funding as Albemarle County or Fluvanna County.

Yeah, I haven't seen it, at least some of their resources.

I think that's a good question to go ahead and ask.

VDOT is technical.

The only other program, I don't really have a lot of information, is the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program.

That's the NOFO is out right now.

I believe October 13th is the deadline for applications on that.

It's a smaller program, $1 billion for five years.

So the funding ceiling on that is pretty, it's a lot lower than this program, but it's still out there and it's basically looking at

I think when I go back I'll probably reach out to the towns and ask them because the towns for Louisa really have the pedestrian sidewalk infrastructure whereas once you leave the town, so we've talked about this before,

For real, I'm in a school, West Road, and I have bike lanes for about, you know, several hundred yards.

So I'm between Townville, Louisa, and Middle.

I have some bike lanes that are very short, period.

So it would probably be the answer to your questions that I have to talk to a few different jurisdictions and what their official can see.

That's why I really like Christine's question.

I like that question a lot.

Can we get an overarching plan that everybody can use and perhaps you need multiple governments to work together to get something.

And we know the meaning yesterday to gauge interest with our local governments on six streets for all specifically.

And so far we've heard from four of six that they're interested.

We still need to reach out to the other two to contact them.

But it's likely that we're going to be putting in an application.

It's just going to be the scramble in the next six and a half, seven weeks to get it done.

Yeah, all such faces you have in this if you don't mind.

We're all Charlottesville, Fluvanna, and Louisa.

All of those are of the staff that were in that group.

But they're all now having conversations with their colleagues to ensure that this is a priority for them.

I think our local governments, what I heard was there was much more support in going in together because of capacity and being able to do this individually.

and so as a PDC I think we can serve that role in at least getting the application through and working with our local governments to scope what is going to be most useful to each individual jurisdiction whether that's a regional safety plan or if that's individual safety plans for each local government that they can use either for implementation funding or for other uses and then perhaps a regional chapter tying them all together that it is a regional project as well.

But it's going to be, I mean, we talked about it yesterday, it's going to be a really mad dash to get everything that we need.

It's not a terribly cumbersome application process from what I can understand in a 300-word narrative.

It's the cost predictions that I want to make sure we have right.

Because if we're going to put in an application, I want to make sure we've scoped enough funding to not only create

The plan, but to meet the reporting requirements that come one year, three years later in tracking projects that are funded that came out of that safety plan.

So I liked your, what do you call that?

When you give somebody like a baseline target that you said the other TPO was about 350 and that's just for their MPO area, TPO area.

So if we were to do a whole regional project that just helps me anchor a little bit.

So, Christine, if I can kind of touch

I just came up and I'm sorry I missed the meeting yesterday.

If I can just disclose it.

We're in court and we actually want a case against a developer.

So I apologize.

So we finished that yesterday.

But the question I have is, and we might want to know this answer.

So like, you know, Tom talked about towns in Louisa.

Well, we have this town called Lake Monticello that's 12,000 people.

And it's not, I don't believe it meets any of these requirements.

It's not like a, you know, that designation because it technically like some kind of condominium for, you know, in the bottom of the air.

And the reason I bring that up is because we worked off and on and kind of, Michael and Charles, Chuck on the line too.

We're going to more and more,

relationship with the lake where gates actually touch the VDOT right away and kind of match over and you know just different basically in essence all of our development right now is outside the gates and you know and so it's like this thing that's going on that we get less funding so to speak but at the same time they do a very good job of maintaining their own roads

Michael Hayes, my wife and I actually live just inside of the lake.

So I guess the other question and kind of listening to David's presentation.

So by broadening the EDAs in our community planning areas, is this like Jon-Michael explained when he was in yesterday?

Does this kind of help start tying together or having roads that connect an EVA to a CPA or just hit hotspots?

Like for instance, we have areas that are not eligible for SMART SCALE and all kind of things.

Does this kind of help us start bridging some projects that are like 5 million, 5 or 7 million?

building up the money, or I'm sorry I missed it yesterday, I'm going over, I looked at it this morning, but we'll send this stuff out.

Like in case in point where we're thinking, I mean, our main one, I'm sorry, we have this 53 virgin like writer system, it's a terrible area for us to try to fund, but right now they're taking, VDOT's doing a great job surfacing the writer,

We have projects like the Funded Roundabout at 250 12 Road and Zion Station kind of the outer part of the Zion Crossroads area.

And then we have another project that says up in here that we're going to be doing at 600 and 618.

So

There's areas around the lake that we want to complete and do work, but then it's also going to indirectly affect Route 53 because a lot of traffic is going to be on these two main projects and not to take everyone's time off, but basically

You have a circumference around the lake and there's no other way.

There's certain areas like we found out, for instance, on January 4th when all the trees came down.

So for our perspective and a longer look at what we're trying to do is we also, once we finish those SMART SCALE projects this week and everything to start looking at actual thoroughfare of the county,

with a lot of work that you all have done for Albemarle because we need some additional information.

I'm mentioning all this.

I mean, there's going to be more than likely a prioritization process for this.

You're going to be competing statewide for safety and all that.

So it'll be similar to SMART SCALE.

It's not even more competitive.

For sure, federal funds are usually a little bit more competitive.

So it's going to be hard, I would say.

You don't really have

you know, any high crash locations existing out there or underserved community or beating some of the criteria there.

The only, so like a couple of different areas we're looking at establishing urban development areas, like Livingston and Farmville.

I mean, we're fortunate to have you here today.

Like Kevin, I thought it was Tom.

Kevin, when you started your discussion, our census charts are so large that everything gets diluted, so to speak.

Like in an area that might have like Louisa, that's Eastern Louisa, that has pockets of poverty or, you know, disproportionate type things.

But we have some similar things, but just really small, you know, the bottom of census tracks.

I wasn't trying to use up everyone's attention.

Actually, Douglas has helped me figure out a better way to answer Stephen's question.

One of the things that I see from a planning standpoint is we have these developers that are looking to put in planning and developments.

Because we have no orders that require infrastructure, on your site plan, landscaping,

What I would like to see in something like this is that okay so you're going to get the development over the next five to ten years that has all the pedestrian improvements in it and you know possibly parallel parking and whatever else but right next to it you have something that was built between the late 90s and 2000s where you literally can't walk from Walmart to Lowe's to whatever and so you know

So I you know that's for a rural you're asked question is you know for a rural county what are our issues rural areas are going to be rural areas it's not much you can be able to do with that other than the bike landing but there are for rural areas some of these small shops that are continuing to develop as long as Crossbow and the other side of Fluvanna where how do you connect the old commercial and residential to the new

You can literally sidewalk literally ends.

That's it.

So I wanted to kind of follow up because you asked me a good question.

What are our concerns?

That's one line.

Well, I think something we can contribute to the conversation is we can generate an e-pass of where we're doing service in each of your counties.

And complete streets are going to amplify the value of those services to your constituents that

What I understand is we haven't spent as much time in the implementation part because we don't have an eligible action plan.

So that to me is our first step.

But from what I understand, they're really looking at low-cost, high-impact safety, not necessarily new road networks.

So it's looking for the rumble strips and the flashing lights and the, I'm not going to use all the right terminology, but you know what I mean, in identifying where are crashes occurring, where are there fatalities and serious injuries at those crashes, and what types of interventions can this bring fun in order to

I have an idea.

I would like to see next year the projects that got funding.

We'll have a meeting and we'll just say, these are the projects.

They did traffic calming in this manner, or they connected a sidewalk here or whatever.

I mean, yeah, it'll be interesting because in the first round, you have to have that safety action plan.

But I guess some communities and localities already have a place that they're going to begin projects on that.

Because if the goal is zero, there's going to be another one of these I think.

And the period of performance in each year is up to five years.

The timeline on this was one that I was a little bit concerned because you apply in September, you may not hear for six months or six months with the federal government and then they have up to 12 months to get a contract and then they recommend 12 to 24 month period of performance.

I would think that

I mean, this is like, you know, per year it's $150 million max per state.

We have roundabouts that are going for $15 to $18 million right now, this from SMART SCALE.

So that kind of puts it in perspective how much, how little, really, when you think about it, it's spread out across the state.

So, but hanging fruit, you know,

This is Chuck.

I'd like to add to what David's been saying.

I mean, most of what we look at from SMART SCALE perspective with the localities,

is the safety issues in their jurisdiction, because those are the only things, projects that we're really finding that are competitive in SMART SCALE.

So a lot of what we're doing is already going to be looking at this program, because we look at the top PSI locations across the district and focus in on the most critical needs locations and

work with the localities on putting something together for those applications.

So a lot of that stuff, and Stephen's read is what they're doing is they're taking that crash data that we already have access to, and they're just massaging it into those maps like they showed at the Richmond TPO.

where they're more segregating out the fatalities and the serious injuries and the actually they show the type B crashes too which are the

Visible injury crashes into a plan.

So I mean, a lot of that stuff we're already doing.

So we do have a good leg on this.

So creating those maps isn't that difficult to do.

The more harder part to do is overlaying it with equity areas.

Those are not as prevalent across the district.

So

Where those safety issues overlay those equity issues, that's where you're going to have the biggest bang for the buck with this program.

But I will say for SMART SCALE, we've got 38 projects this round.

They're being submitted.

I would say it's pretty similar in our district.

32 applications and 12 of them are roundabouts at PSI locations and then we have archives going in.

We had a lot of questions on that.

That was good.

Yeah, that was great.

Yes, they are.

It's nice to be speaking to you all in person for the first time.

So I'm presenting on a project that I've been working on for the past six months here, and it is a bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure assessment.

It was done in the towns of Sandersville and Scottsville, but it can be integrated elsewhere, but definitely more suited for rural small town areas.

So this was a part of the Rural Transportation's program, work program for last year.

And the purpose to find there was to better understand the bicycle and pedestrian landscape of the incorporated towns in the district, and then to develop an actionable vision for the multimodal investment that's aligned with the locality's broader goals.

And just so you guys can get a sense if we were to recreate this, what the project timeline would look like.

It was about six months.

There is some field work involved in this process.

So that does bring some constraints due to weather and just timing things out.

But going through the timeline, basically we had our staff kickoff meeting where we reviewed the scope that was defined in the program.

But we really had to dig in and do a bit more research there to define

What are those data points that create a bicycle and pedestrian network?

And so that involved a little bit more research and we were able to define the scope with some help from resources from the Federal Highway Administration, the Rural and Small Town Design Guide.

And then also it's like case studies in connected and equitable streets

And we defined pedestrian facilities that we were going to be looking for as sidewalks, crosswalks, signalized crosswalks, and then bicycle facilities as your bike lanes, those buffer areas.

So like if there's a vegetated portion between the bike lane and the roadway and then bicycle racks.

And then next slide.

There's a bit more data that didn't really fall into either one of those, but definitely informed the network.

and so we included their public destinations, a shared use path that can be used for both pedestrians and bicyclists, advisory shoulders, so when there's an asset on the side of the roadway for multimodal usage, traffic signals, any maintenance needs that we came across while we were out in the field and then obstructions along those lines and then your speed limit and then your functional class really does define what recommendations are most suited to a specific

location.

So we also gathered data from VDOT on the speed limit of the major roadways within those time limits and then the volume and what that average daily traffic load was.

And from that rural small town to side guide, it said that these were the five principles that really like

And then with those benefits, there's going to be just, there's a lot of challenges as well, especially in the rural and small town location.

Like we were speaking of, when you're not in the city, there's less roadways.

So there's less options for where you can put that pedestrian network.

There's limited public land access.

So right of way, sometimes there's terrain constraints.

Main streets is a highway, which is what we see in both Sandersville and Spotsville.

Not exactly highway, but major roadway.

And then those maintenance needs to decline it.

And then when you're in rural areas, when you have to,

have space for those larger equipment and vehicles and then a lack of funding and safety.

But there are just as many if not more benefits.

So added recreation, more accessibility for those underserved populations.

There's air quality improvements, increased mental and physical health, less congestion on the roadways, more tourism, economic development and safety improvements.

And then another aspect of my job here at the TJPDC is that transportation planning is environmental.

So I had to bring in a little bit of the great infrastructure, but as defined in Stanislausville and Scottsville's comprehensive plans, they both referenced the concept of Enville necklace, which was defined by one of the original planners in America Olmsted, where he envisioned a corridor of vegetated corridor paths that connect

streams, ponds, parks, historic places, and other points of interest.

And further benefits here are going to be increased access, flood protection, wildlife preservation, water quality and quantity improvements, landscape beautification, and then also those co-benefits for your grant applications, making you more competitive there.

And you can see here, this was part of, I believe it was the Greene County Multimodal Corridor Study done in 2009, where you can see really what a green necklace would look like there.

And for both standards, though, in Scottsville, you can see there, there's a lot of streams and waterways that go through it.

So really having those vegetative buffers will help, especially in Scottsville, knowing about all of the flooding that happens there.

If you can bring that in ahead of time and plan for that, there's a lot of added benefits.

And so once we had defined what our data points are going to be for how we're collecting it and what really makes that exemplary multimodal network, we wanted to find a little bit more about what are the specific situations happening in Scottsville and Stanisville.

So generally in America, small towns and rural areas are typically just not designed for multimodal usage off the date.

But 81% of the land area and 19% of the US population does reside in rural areas.

Typically in rural areas active transportation is just as common in those folks.

And we've seen over the past few years in both Scottsville and Sandersville, there's been a lot of efforts done to help increase that multimodal network, including the Jefferson area bike and pedestrian plan.

There were specific recommendations that came out of that for both standards on Scottsville, but the focus of that was more to create a regional bicycle and pedestrian network.

kind of serves as an addendum to that with more specified recommendations for those areas.

And then the comprehensive plans both reference increasing the multi-level network.

There's a huge downtown revitalization project happening in Scottsville.

They're hoping to redevelop the highest entire plan and then connect that to the downtown network and then other shared use paths and trails.

So

After we did all of our background research, we were ready to head into the field.

And these are two of the maps that were developed as part of that process.

So as you can see, now all of the data points that we had scoped out are included in this.

And that was just because they didn't exist in those towns.

But in both, you can see some similarity that the sidewalk network is really condensed on that Main Street or Valley Street area.

and then spiders out from there.

And then those purple locations are going to be like local points of interest.

And some things that really make Stanardsville and Scottsville unique and their multiple network is that Stanardsville has a draw of being a gateway to Shenandoah's National Park and then also having Greene County's educational and governmental services there.

And then Scottsville has the really nice downtown area, the James River and

It's just a great downtown area.

So those were kind of those points of interest where we're like, we want to connect the bicycle and pedestrian network to those.

Next slide.

So aside from the data that was collected on the ground in the field, like I mentioned, we collected data from VDOT.

I just showed you your Scottsbills, but you can see the speed limits on the different roadways and then

the functional classification, which is going to be what the volume is on that roadway.

And based on those two data points, I believe it's on the next slide, there's specific recommendations on whether you can have a paved shoulder there that would work for pedestrians and bicyclists, or if a shared roadway is something that's feasible if it's a local road.

And so that also helped to inform the recommendations that we made.

And I just realized that I printed this out

From all of this, there were some general recommendations that we made that suited both towns and those are in the report and also listed here.

But then there were some more specific recommendations that were made for each town.

But the general recommendations really include incorporating them into your comprehensive planning efforts, working with your parcel landowners to identify opportunities for connectivity and conservation easements before you're applying for these grants, and then planning for the right-of-way acquisition, connecting your existing points of interest, and then connecting local efforts to region-wide efforts, such as James River, Natural Heritage Trail,

And then as new developments enter the area, to the plan ahead for the insertion into the multiple network, and then Greene Street's in room infrastructure.

The next slide, you can see is the recommendations that came from Scottsdale.

So the way that it's laid out is you have the roadway that it's for, and then this segment.

So it's on Valley Street from Jefferson to where it meets the James River.

And then we have the improvement that we're working for there to install bike lanes.

For some, I included an explanation as to why, but for the ones that don't have it, you can assume that it is to create cohesion, directness, or accessibility and great safety.

And the goal here is really just to have that direct connected network.

Feel free to take a closer look in there.

You can go to the next ones.

And then moving forward,

If we were to do this again, some things that came to mind that just didn't fit into the scope of this project, you could do a bit more of an in-depth study on accessibility and the ADA requirements like curb cuts as you're getting up onto a sidewalk or those up to the current infrastructure requirements and then collect data on green infrastructure if there are any.

Vegetative Strips, so are things along those lines on the signage that exists in those areas and benches.

And that is all I have for you.

If you have any questions.

Can you share with Scott again?

And so part of the recommendation is there to bring that loop in.

This is what's existing today.

And I'm curious if anybody knows more about this than I do.

I think that's also a struggle with the Rubana Trail, getting that completed is right away.

Yeah, I mean that's a parallel facility, you don't want to be out right away, so that was easier to work with, but we have like a, this new trail that we're trying to do in Amherst, but they can't get the property owners to donate a part of their land or sell a part of their gift for this trail connection, so that's been a ongoing issue for

I've worked in with playing down in Scottsville and like to try and connect the Dollar General and Food Lion

There's other constraints.

I mean that roadway has a lot of slopes that go right down to the roadway and then the roadway is too narrow existing to be able to add something to.

There's really no way that you could build a pedestrian or bike facility that follows Route 20 or Valor or whatever the next step is.

You have to take people out of the way and around on these back roads to get there.

So you have to meet certain criteria and oftentimes they don't like the off-network connections on these.

They prefer to be on the parallel roadway network.

And so then you have to meet a lot of economic development points and all that.

So it's basically a little bit harder for funding projects like this.

You know, I've presented on like place-making and asset-based economic development, looking at a deeper, more inclusive, kind of like the economic benefit of these projects and shifting away from site plans.

And this is pretty out of the box.

I wonder how large a pool there would be to try to explore that concept in the United States if even on a small basis could you get a small collection of property owners to agree to a right to roam policy and see what that does.

This will be submitted to them after this presentation.

So to kind of answer Steven's question a little bit, really from a planning standpoint, my personal opinion is that if you put in the comprehensive plan, the developer comes, you can say, ah, I have this new plan, I can't make it do it.

I don't know if we'd like to see this.

That's really the mechanism at this point.

I mean, every state's a little bit different.

Florida's very different.

That's a topic for another time.

But that's my answer to that is putting into conference plans a great first step to saying, if you're looking for zoning or whatever, we would like to connect

each trail together, would you be a willing partner to help us do that?

And the reason I bring that up is when we were at the ABA conference last week, I did the Pulse tour at the bus, and we went to Robert's Landing and talked to the developer who has the Capitol Trail running through.

And he has a very, even though the developer is very involved, the developer talked about how they had some concerns from the residents about the trail going through.

So I definitely, I think you asked them what's about right-of-way so they can start it obviously if you can find places to we have right-of-way and that's that's that's probably new criteria for start taking trails that you might want to build Scott told me interestingly enough they have the right-of-way for the sidewalk they're trying to build it was a part of that problem was

The preliminaries of engineering for the application wasn't probably as strong as it could have been.

And so what they were asking for and willing to do on that side was too little.

So it's a combination of, you know, work against the application of maybe even advancing that.

Yeah, because right before, literally our last meeting when COVID started in March of 2020, in fact, we met, and we met on the same day individually with Jennifer Lonkler from DCR on the James River National Heritage Truck, excuse me, I was throwing this one up.

But I think that Matt Lawless in Scottsville met with her

and we met with County Administrator, Parks Director, basically across the Southern part of Fluvanna and Scottsville.

We were working on the, like I said, it's a couple of years ago, but we were working on a James River natural, the river designation from basically Scottsville to Columbia.

And then we also worked with our kind of building right to our,

to be able to then have the Ravenna River coming to Columbia and James River and all that and connecting everything.

So a resident mentioned that as I think it was helpful.

She was doing a lot of that kind of outreach and maybe she can come back around to us and another aspect from Scottsville.

I'd like to stand up here on that too.

I remember that meeting.

Because we're now, I'm trying not to get on, it's pedestrian related, but I mean access related.

But I think Sandy and the folks here have finished today.

Urban, Romana, Willamette, almost kind of area, and I'm coming into, I remember you guys had a meeting with us

because that came out of our spring open house things that the community and residents really want more access to the river and the points that we have.

I call them the DGIF, Access Points of Recovery, Department of Wildlife, whatever.

Sorry, I'm getting a little off, but basically we saw a lot of

Gaps on our connectivity and we think that there's opportunities to partner with the state and you guys to help us pull those together.

I know that for the ride I know we talked about like public access to the water but do you more so need public access to trails alongside?

Yeah, so there's people that, you know, they're learning how to canoe and kayak through the programs and parks on the lake, and then they want to get out on the next year, they want to get out on the organic and do the amputee at the time.

So there's this kind of, and I think through the pandemic, there's been all that interest in the outdoor activities.

Looks like everybody else

Looking forward to wrapping up SMART SCALE.

I know Chuck is working very diligently with me and other work nowadays on getting us the last pieces we need to press submit.

So yeah, there'll be a lot to talk about in the next meeting.

I was going to say for us, I think all of our projects are urban area projects.

The ones out there, Milton, maybe right on the bridge.

Yeah, that's right on the bridge.

You've got a couple that are right on the edge.

We did just recently finalize the secondary six year plan, which has been our paving projects and still looking forward to that Peter Krebs presentation because that was a big

The question that kept coming up from the public and the board is like, what if we don't want to pay any more on these roads?

Are there other options?

What do we do with this million or so dollars that we get from the state that says it has to be used for 80?

So I'd like to look forward to that.

I also, Lucinda, I don't know if maybe you might want to, if Peter is going to come,

Next time, maybe also see if Carrie Shepherd, the resident engineer, wants to attend.

I'm sorry, is it the engineer?

Yeah, I don't know quite how she actually manages the paving program per se, and what streets you get paved next, mostly out of the district.

But the rural paving program is just something different.

Yeah, you know, to be honest with you, I've been familiar with it, but not much with that stuff.

But especially the idea, I know that it's allocated to each county and pays for big roads for a year,

I don't know, if you don't use it, I would assume it would go in the pot for the little cows to use.

Yeah, and that's been our understanding, but I think what we'll hear from Peter, and I wasn't part of the conversation that happened, was that there are counties in Virginia that are using those paving funds for things other than

Aiden, more like maintenance projects on the grids, rather than just Aiden factions.

I don't, you know, we're also, this is all, a lot of this stuff is going to be wrapped in our comprehensive plan update, which is underway right now.

I don't know if anybody's been following that.

We've got a lot of information, we've got a website up for the outline update.

It's got a lot of information about land use and multimodal

Also updating all of our transportation priorities right now is another big push for us.

Can I ask a question out of curiosity?

Do projects ever come off the list that are not the commenters and just expanding, like, to keep track of anything that's come off and you just leave it on there?

I'm asking because one of the other MPOs that I've been in discussion with and doing their lumbering transportation plan, they're also moving forward to try to come up with a new method for creating a prioritization process.

And she said this time they're going to cut it in like 20 projects and it just made me think about

Yes, we do.

There have been projects that we've, I mean, there's been recommendations in the past for like, why do we need roads that we're like, we're not interested in lining an entire road.

That's not our, or even some new roads.

And what we do is we have removed some of those and said we're going to focus more on things like intersection operations or fight dead facilities as opposed to the

But when we do that, that's not a part of our prioritization process.

That's part of our master planning or core planning process.

And essentially, there'll be another if a plan comes out.

Imagine Rio Road.

And I think we have a lot of recommendations for what Rio Road will look like from the city line up to 29.

and that was all recommended in our master plan for that area many years ago but now we've come back and we've done a corridor plan at Brido and it took a look at some of those old recommendations like these don't make any sense anymore, let's get rid of these.

So that's the way projects might come off.

But I don't want to cut that list in the sense that I don't want to consider certain projects because I don't know until I prioritize them whether or not we

You know, they deserve to be in that top 20.

But what we do do is we say the top projects, I mean, we divide them up into groups.

So we say the priority, the high priority projects are like projects one through 20.

Those are the ones we're really putting our focus on.

But this one's less than 41, sir, for a developer to come in and they're going to do something along that area, that project, too.

Absolutely.

I'd like to just tag on real quick because something just came up when you're saying not widening roads that was another thing that came out of our open houses this spring and early summer and if you all remember last year we asked the question about the two abreast and we now see the two abreast

So when you're thinking, however, I think our residents and community want to not ride roads, but to have better shoulders, a bike lane on actually the 76, 53 kilometers combined, or coming basically from Palmyra up and down.

So along those same lines of it not being too abreast we want to get people onto a better ride system and then that way we can work the lead out.

So the main thing that I'd like to bring up which is great, we and I want to thank Tom Fitzpatrick and then directly Michael Lawrence and

Chuck Proctor helping us from their offices on getting our first TAP grant down in Walmart and quite a while in the county.

It's worked with him and so we're real excited about that and it's really driving our discussions of revitalizing and getting

things done as phase one.

We've been continuing the process with two and three so I'm trying to think of other transportation related ones.

Basically we have right now our biggest thing we're working on this late spring and summer we have a rezoning that's transportation related on 618 at the main gate to the lake.

It's our first kind of new shopping center almost 20 years.

It's a 35 acre shopping center with the

The grocery store and freestanding emergency center, freestanding ER building is what they're looking at doing and then retail, restaurant, and medical facilities.

That freestanding emergency center would also have a heli pad related to it since we already have Pegasus landing at the lake anyways.

And why I bring that all up,

Intersections that are being looked at for that are similar to what they did about in 2005 at the main gate.

So we're excited on working with them.

That local developer actually lives in the lake, he and his business partners.

So, and then I think that touched upon this last time, but we did finalize our four union business partners and work with Chuck Proctor and

EPR from Charlottesville on our traffic study there.

That's about 550,000 square feet of office commercial, office industrial warehouse space.

Thank you.

Yes, Stephen, thank you.

We're hoping, we're not sure if it's going to be Sentara-based or some other hospital system, you know,

maybe even HCA out of the Richmond area, but we think it's at least on a care base.

So we would like to, like we worked with you about six months ago, senior apartments.

So yes, we want to work on that.

Now I know to tie that digressively, but I know somewhere in here in Albemarle that was the issue with where the target and goals was.

There was some kind of legal decision that was,

I'm sorry, I'm not touching on it too much.

All I'm mentioning is we do want to work with you, but we also want to say compliance with whatever happened there.

Some, many proffers ago or whatever, but yes, we're definitely one and part of you guys again.

Yes, sir.

All right, so just real quick, we have three applications in Nelson County that we're working with Isabella on this.

Roundabout at Route 6 and 151, and term lane at Tam Park and 151, and then the market in Lovingston at Front Street and 29.

The big news is that we're kicking off an update to the Route 151 study.

So the last Route 151 study was done 10 years ago, and typically the shelf life for these plants for SMART SCALE applications is 10 years.

So there's been a lot of bread on the corridor with the breweries, the wineries, the cyberies, and all kinds of backwards tourism through there.

So we're going to be kicking that off here soon.

We actually just got our scope of work approved last week by the central office.

So we'll be working on that and we'll be reaching out to everybody here soon.

RK & Kate is the consultant.

working on that, including Jon.

We'll be reaching out to you guys.

We want to do a targeted outreach with you guys, get some focus areas.

One of the big areas of focus is going to be Nellie's Hoard area, looking at kind of like smart growth in that area, as well as bicycle pedestrian amenities across the corridor.

We actually collected 12 hour turning equipment counts back in May.

at Route 6, 840 Tambark, Greenfield, Rockfish, School Lane, River Road, Winter Green Main entrance, and Beach Road Road.

And we did a 48-hour speeding class two counts throughout the corridor as well.

So you'll be hearing from us soon.

We'll get the PDC involved in that.

And we're going to have two public meetings.

We're going to have both a virtual component with a direct survey.

and two in-person public meetings as well.

A very short update, we've got two job openings at Jaunt, one for a transit planner and one for a data and GIS analyst.

So if you know of anybody who would be a good fit, please send them our way.

We're also in the middle of our transit development planning process, and I should be getting a public engagement plan any day now from our consultants.

So once I have that and I know the schedule of the important dates, I want to share that with this group.

Please somebody help me with that.

But we love to have citizens,

Blackland officials, planners, stakeholders, everybody engaging and learning about services in your county and what ideas you have for improving service in the future.

So stick to that.

Stephen, how does that work out of curiosity and stuff the PDC's working on like that?

That's a good question.

Our consultant says they're going to take into consideration

All of the ongoing and previously, recently completed plans including the regional transition study, the overall transit expansion study.

The regional transit or the transit development plan we're building should offer us the specific steps of implementation that should get us closer to the overall vision put forward by the regional transit vision plan.

need that DRPT wants to use the plan just to identify projects so that when we come ask for funding for it later, that DRPT's priorities and how they structure the requirements for the TDP may not place the greatest emphasis on coordination with other regional plans.

So I think when you consider the whole landscape of different

And the Transit Vision Plan's time frame is 2045, so it's a longer term, larger vision that has a little bit less to do with implementing what each transit agency is doing.

And Stephen and I know about each other's plans of communicating, you know, what are you doing in the public outreach, how to disco kind of thing.

Yeah, and I don't think I, I think we have an upcoming meeting to provide final feedback on the vision plan.

So something I'll be looking to is, I think it's the gap between whatever implementation steps

They described in the vision plan and the kind of things that we've historically seen in the TDP.

I recognize it's still a lot of work to be done with regional players.

I haven't seen a lot of high level plans that do effective back casting.

Say, that's our 2045 plan.

What are all the steps we need to follow today to get us there?

And remind me, how often do you hold the depth of these plans?

Normally, the transit development plan gets a major revision once every six years.

And in between, we do a minor update.

Six years.

I have a question on that, how these two plans relate.

I'm not sure, I don't think I understand how the vision plan is being built, but is there, you say it's a 20 year vision, but are there like,

Is that segmented for implementation?

There's a constrained vision and an unconstrained vision.

So there's like the unconstrained is kind of what we would do.

And it's more based on funding than time frame.

I think it's also important that the next step in this is going to be so very critical is because this is just developing the vision the next step is the the transit governance study and that's looking at what is the structure that we need in order to be able to implement to realize this vision you know whether that's the authority or otherwise we don't want to predict what it might be but if it's an authority

This government study step is going to be the one where we have to really engage all six of our jurisdictions to see who would be interested in that sort of regional authority, what type of funding can it bring in so that we can more closely break down that vision into, okay, we have this governance set up and this is the type of new funding we can bring in.

Here are the things that we can implement and create a plan for how we're going to get those implemented over time.

I think right now the vision plan is still going with

So pretty big assumptions on what the funding could be.

How many years is that supposed to look like?

Major update is once every six years with a minor update every year.

So a minor update should just say, hey, we finished these projects that were identified.

David, your government study, it was your 18 month study, is that right?

You're probably about six months into it.

Not six months into it.

It starts July 1 of this year.

So it's 18 months from now.

And honestly, I believe that's the next step.

And I can't imagine there talking to be another step out of that.

We're letting the process kind of dictate what comes next.

So the governance study was actually identified early in the vision plan process that we know we're going to need this governance study in order to implement it and based on feedback from other areas with authorities that said we should get done this step first.

rather than form an authority and then go back and talk about its governance.

Yeah, I get it.

It's probably an unfair question, but it's kind of interesting.

If it does, you know, 18 months from now, it's going to jolt Jon or, you know, that they were something else by that time, you know, it may

Let me come back three or four years from now and do this process again.

But Christine's right, the governance is so important because the way the CAT and the job are funded, if we use rural money to bring somebody from Louisa into the urbanized area, once we drop them off, we can't touch them again until we're taking them back out.

And it's assumed that when they're in the urbanized area, CAT isn't going to meet all their transportation needs.

And there are,

As you guys know, I'm preaching to the choir, but there are so many different variations in what an authority may look like.

That's the purpose of this next step is to say, is an authority going to be an umbrella that's bringing in funding and then it's funding the transit agencies at certain levels based on whatever's determined, you know, whatever formula comes up, or is there an appetite in the area for more than just an umbrella that brings in the funding, you know, whether it's related to operations or

mergers or where the cat is held, whether it's in the city or as a regional, there's so many different variations for what could happen in the next five, 10, 15 years that I think it'd be impossible to put that into the vision plan.

We now have to come back to the beginning and say like, well, what is the potential structure that can be put in place if that's what we're trying to realize in 25 years?

but we also couldn't necessarily start with a governance study.

We didn't know what it is that we were shooting for.

I think the hardest part now will be

making sure we are extremely transparent and communicating with all of the different stakeholders because now is when we need to figure out the political appetite and what it is that this region actually wants and what each of the different jurisdictions want to do in order to get there and that's going to be part of this step.

It's also going to be really important for us to be doing a lot of work at the state level to see what it is that the General Assembly will support as far as, I mean we already have the authority

for an authority, but we don't have the funding for an authority.

Is there anybody else on the updates?

I've got to make some noise for the presentation, so I've got to get back to normal.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Jen, are you still with us?

All right.

Yes.

We'll have the case roll wrote.

Yeah.

Who did that again?

Does anybody have anything they'd like to talk about or hear about?

I have a really quick week and I appreciate everybody staying.

It's good that we're back together and we're having a little meeting because we're getting a lot to talk about.

As I think we could probably reach out to give more ideas for topics, the colleges in the area and especially the Masters of Urban Regional Planning program,

What are the Studio One and Studio Two they're working on?

Did they want to present to us projects that could be beneficial to rural and urban communities?

Is there a way that TJPDC could partner with PVCC, UVA, and others to, you know, here's something that may not be funding for, but something that, you know, your students are looking for a Studio One or Studio Two capstone project that you could work on.

And they, you know, part of that is they would present to us

So we're always seem to be struggling for ideas and meeting and we always have great things to talk about, but I think that would give us a wider and deeper pool to pull from and also help colleges and the students get real world experience to present, interview, there might be some elected officials that need to get involved in this to make sure everybody's okay with that.

Are you saying that the student actually does a project for a rural county?

No.

It could be a project that's of interest to us or it could be something that a locality needs or TJPDC

There's multiple ways because Studio One is the way that VCU does it.

It's the whole classroom to prep you for your studio to adapt as you pick up.

Particular part of Charlottesville, you do a Studio One project.

And it's 15 students that are involved with it, but their capstone is just one person.

So, I don't know how UVA does it, I don't know how PVCC does it, VCU's pretty far away, but we could talk to them, is that there's an opportunity for more horsepower, because we can all use more horsepower, to help with projects, or maybe they have an idea for a project we haven't bought.

So there's a deep pool there and then we just gotta figure out what will the colleges want, what do they need, what are they looking for, what do we need to kind of work together and making sure that the elected officials are on board with it because there's no point in having a project that the elected officials like, why am I getting this project?

All right, I know we're trying to leave, but we're having a little bit of issue, I think, with coming up with topics.

I think that would help.

I'll support real quick because prior to David Blount, we were utilizing UVA grad students in the summer.

Data Research, but they also did stuff with farmer funds though and farmers market research.

There's some other kind of things that they were able to do in about six to eight weeks and actually do something in the summer and present it to the Board of Supervisors to get that real world experience.

And we indirectly need additional research or knowledge.

It could have been somewhere.

We laugh, but you're absolutely right.

I thought the exact same thing today.

We have all these regional bike plans, but what if there's enough bike plans to connect them all together to make a regional trail?

And so there, even though they could be out of date or you need to update them, like, you know, there's 20 of them, but we don't need five of them.

But I think having a master list would be great and having that updated every once in a while.

And then you can take them and go, hey, PDCC, UVABC, whoever.

There's no horsepower for this.

The locality would like to see something done.

There isn't really any funding.

But would you as a class or even an individual like to take this on?

All right, well, we'll go with that.

I motion to adjourn the meeting.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Thank you everybody.

Have fun.