Rural Transportation Advisory Committee Meeting   9/20/2022

Well, I hope everybody does.

Mr. Whalen's name was spelled incorrectly, and I have fixed it in the meeting notes.

It is spelled W.

Excellent.

All right.

Well, I motion to approve the minutes with that change.

Can I get a second?

I second.

Excellent.

All right.

So I'm Peter Krebs from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

I'm going to start off with some great news.

I don't know about the rest of y'all, but I don't have anything close to an hour.

So when I first saw it, I thought it said 10 minutes.

I'm like, that sounds about right, but no.

Nowhere close to an hour.

Unless we want to have a fulsome discussion, that would be great as well.

So the Piedmont Environmental Council is a nonprofit environmental group that represents nine counties basically following the 29 and 15 corridor from the Potomac to the James River.

So starting in the north of Loudoun County, dropping down to Albemarle.

A number, but not all of the TJPDC counties are in our service area.

Fluvanna,

Nelson and Louisa are not, but Greene, Albemarle.

Orange is in your service area, right?

That's part of ours.

So there's a lot of overlap.

As part of, I'm a planner and I focus on both transportation and health and wellness and the intersection that creates

PC is predominantly known as an anti-sprawl organization.

We've been working for about 50 years and we're best known for our work to preserve rural areas and the rural way of life.

However, we also do work in urban areas within our service area to create quality places for people to live.

So there's less need to scroll into rural areas.

As part of my work, I run a local alliance called the Piedmont Mobility Alliance that pulls together organizations, agencies, groups, and individuals really diverse from between Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

Actually, my service area kind of lines up with the MPO, so if the MPO changes, it could pull in green as well.

So when I say agencies, it's anywhere from DCR to city, county, TJPDC, but also like the health district is very active in our work.

Organizations range from

my group to small neighborhood associations all the way up to Sentara, which is technically an organization.

And then also our work spans, it's diverse in terms of types of projects that we undertake.

So we're very active in promoting community engagement in the LRTP.

but we also work on small trails that are a quarter mile long.

So lots of different types of work.

And as I alluded to, we don't make a distinction really between what's important for the rural areas and what's important for the urban areas.

We have a holistic view that says we, vibrant urban communities need thriving economically

you know, vital rural areas where we can get our food, forests, clean water, clean air, all that good stuff.

So in our spring Mobility Alliance meeting, which was on April 25th, we had a group from Loudoun County, which is called the

Loudon Preservation and Conservation Coalition, who came and gave a presentation to us about their work to be very methodical and intentional about how Loudon County handles its rural and unpaved roads.

Lucinda was there, Bella was there.

I don't think Kevin was there, but Jessica was there.

a couple Board of Supervisor members.

It was a really great discussion.

And so Lucinda just invited me to come and share a few highlights from that discussion.

In the end, I'm gonna just share a link on the Zoom meeting to a video of the presentation.

The Loudoun folks were extremely generous.

They sat down for interviews with myself and Lonnie Murray, who some of you may know.

and also there are very detailed meeting notes.

Also the coalition has a white paper that is excellent about intentional handling of rural roads.

And that will also be in this suite of documents that I share.

So everything makes sense so far.

Okay, so we'll,

In Levin County, and I think it's pretty consistent throughout PC service area.

I'd imagine it's similar for you all here.

They see a lot of different resources embodied in their rural and unfaved roads.

They, having a road be unpaved, so in a way that's a bit of a misnomer on the agenda.

It's almost like not paving well roads ought to be the agenda item.

Reasons for not paving include protecting a rural way of life.

That's kind of the primary one that drives a lot of other things.

It controls speed, limits growth and development as they have extraordinary scenic value

They have health and recreational value both for the residents on the road, but also for the localities and region as a whole.

And as a result of all of those things, they embody a very significant economic resource that ought to be handled intentionally.

So they work very closely with VDOT and their own residency.

They urge VDOT and the Loudoun Board of Supervisors to apply numerous metrics in deciding whether or not to pave roads.

Those include the ones that I mentioned.

But they also factor in community

feedback both through their petitions toward paving, but also through the interaction between the board of supervisors and the staff.

So those are two channels that paving opportunities pop onto the radar.

And it's pretty similar to how it works in Albemarle County.

Some of you probably know, Kevin knows best of all that Albemarle has recently tweaked its policies for paving and raising the bar a little bit about whether a petition is considered successful or not.

I definitely support those changes.

One of their key things is they established with VDOT that

The VDOT's mandate is not to pave rural roads.

VDOT's mandate is explicitly to improve rural roads.

And that may or may not equal paving.

Traditionally, it often ends, but it doesn't have to necessarily be.

From the county leadership perspective, they,

have become more circumspect about paving because they see proper maintenance as way cheaper than paving even across a long span of time.

And then finally, our discussion spoke a little bit about conflicts among different users of rural roads that could mean

cyclists, runners, walkers, equestrians, locals, non-locals, and those conflicts sort of coalesced among a couple of key points.

One is safety or perceptions of safety, and I'll tell a fun story about that in a second.

etiquette, which is closely related with safety, parking also, which is a cultural etiquette issue, sharing the road or not sharing the road and the idea of that the resource of an unpaved road is a fragile one that can go away for a number of different reasons.

So,

One example that is not good is when somebody comes to run or to ride a horse for example and they're using private property that's not the right of way that is without permission or creating bottlenecks or

harming sightlines.

There's been some issues of sightlines here in Albemarle County.

But sort of what we all agreed on in terms of resolving these is that communication is so important.

But that could mean physical communication via signage, but also for

advocates such as myself communicating what good behavior looks like for people who are using a public resource but they're kind of guests and it is erring on the side of courtesy is the way to go.

That's basically what I had to report, but I'll close with just a fun story because why not?

I haven't had a chance to tell this story in a work context.

I'm a runner, biker.

I've become a biker so I could understand the point of view of cyclists, but I was running on the gravel roads in Amherst County one time.

came around a curve, a truck came around the curve and it was like an OS moment, what am I going to do?

My policy generally is I don't share the road.

I yield the road, step aside, step over the ditch.

And this time I had to full on dive across the ditch and I was fine, but I spooked the cattle and the pasture.

And I don't know if you all have seen Full Ground Cows Running, but it's a little comic relax.

So they were counting across the field and a few got back on my feet and started running.

I resolved to just

Breathe it out and let it go, but then I could hear the motorist coming back behind me and I recognized the sound of their truck and I was like, oh man, he's coming back to finish me off.

And he pulled up beside me and rolled down his window with just the most profuse apology that was quite unexpected and not even necessary.

But what he said is he came around the corner and the light blinked and he couldn't see me until the last second.

You know, I just told him that it takes a real adult to come back and tell somebody that you've done the wrong thing and to apologize.

And so for me, that happened before I started this job.

But it really just undermined or underlined my opinion that it's important to communicate.

It's important to understand different points of view.

Important to listen because our assumptions are very often not correct.

With that, I'm happy to either answer questions about things I've heard from the Loudoun folks or from other folks in the community, or as you all wish, move on to other parts of the agenda.

Yeah.

So thanks for coming, Peter.

And I wish I had been able to be there at that meeting in your hand with folks from Loudon.

But part of why I wanted to have this discussion was because, as you pointed out, we've had a lot of, not controversy, but indecision about how to treat the unpaid throat.

Right.

with some people saying we need to start making these all unpaved and then we get the push to paved roads.

I looked at the map of unpaved roads and I don't know what kind that VDOT puts out.

And I looked at Loudoun County, which, you know, is pretty close to DC, DC urban area.

And I was really shocked at the number of

Unpaid Groves they have left.

But something like 250 miles.

And here we're, you know, what I think of as a more rural county, we have much fewer unpaid groves.

And so I was, I was struck by that.

And I was wondering how they were able to do that for one thing, but then also in the counties, if I had this conversation with Carrie, we get a certain amount of money.

It's a

A reasonable question.

I think that one thing that they said, though, is to not be spooked by use it or lose it, that you shouldn't necessarily go use monies that are not needed.

It's not this, but I think planning practice sometimes shows us that in the transportation space, products that are over-scoped can do harm.

So this would be an example that what they did say, and I'm aware of who I'm in the room with, I'm probably the least knowledgeable person in some ways,

One of the things they talked about is changing the aggregate mix as a way to improve longevity of the roads.

A couple of other notes that came to me that I was also thinking about is one of the metrics that they have that I'm not sure we're doing as good a job locally as we might is

Whether thinking about a road of significance or a route of significance and whether a segment of unpaved is part of a significant rural cultural experience.

I mean, you know, you look at the county's paving list and some of them aren't like that's a road that its main job is to get people from, you know,

Up to a church, that's its whole job, like that's different than a road like Ridge Road that is part of a cultural experience.

One other secret to the success in Loudoun County that I think might be rare in the US is that those 250 miles are, many of them are being actively defended by

the residents of those roads.

Because I think it's safe to say that Loudoun's equestrian community is more organized than the one that we have here in Albemarle County, although it's significant here.

I think that's one little difference.

And sorry, just one other note.

And actually, I'd like to go back to Kevin, because you're kind of the,

The first that I'm following is that I think we have a very good example within the TJPDC and the Green Springs.

Like that area is very, very holistically thinking about the role of ag and

culture and paving.

And not only that, but the road segments are not handled all the same in Greensprings.

Yeah, I've been working kind of behind the scenes to get an answer to that question.

It's been a little bit, I haven't gotten a definite answer yet.

I have reached out to our folks at Loudoun and I'm trying to set a meeting with them.

And I did reach out to our policy department to see if I could get an answer for that.

But as of yet, I have not gotten one.

So from what I understand,

At this point, until I hear otherwise, that money, that funding is just dedicated to arm surfacing gravel roads.

But I do believe Loudon is still receiving that funding because it's tied to how many models of gravel road they have.

So they should still be receiving that money.

Where it's going or how it's getting used, that's a question that I also still have.

And you mentioned that a lot of the defenders of those un-maved roads in Loudoun County are the residents.

And we do have that in Albemarle County, but we also have a lot of residents that are like, I can't stand this road in the condition it's in or the washboarding effect that they get.

And so they end up pushing for it to get paid because they don't think that, and it's not,

And they were very emphatic that living in the rural area does not mean that one should have a second class transportation system.

In fact, folks are trying to run almost like industrial level stuff, driving huge trucks and so forth.

If we lose the economic viability of the rural area, it's game over for those the best trying to stop sprawl.

So it is a complicated issue.

And so I, although I do think that addressing, as much as we can, addressing conditions like ones you described is

sort of definitely a level up compared to piling up miles of paved road.

and actually you'll have millions of dollars that you can still only use paid on paper.

Yeah, which now having Albemarle, I'm gonna join that conversation with a lot of counties.

I think a couple of Scott's counties have just won.

It's becoming kind of a bigger conversation now.

I don't know what should we do with it.

And I think it's important to have that one input in that conversation too.

And this even gets into this question where we get these constant calls from people that live on paved roads.

Like a SMART growth perspective, being able to direct transportation maintenance resources toward where transportation maintenance is needed full stop without like having separate buckets would seem preferable to me.

And then through triage, if a perfectly level, runs level, drains nicely,

Three Mile Rana Road can stay unpaved.

Why pave it when we're not doing as well with a high traffic road that's having maintenance issues that are totally different?

So that's a good question and I don't really have scientific data to back that up but

And that's also complicated because, yeah, especially, I don't know.

I mean, probably many of you know with PC we're often challenging whether viticultural or cidery or other types of operations are ag operations.

We support those if something has a rogue crepes to

give a whiny vibe, but it's really an event menu out in the countryside.

We tend to not support those sorts of things, but I think our concern as advocates in putting that type of operation approved is that it can indeed drive

Well, first of all, the existing infrastructure may not be appropriate when that facility goes in, which on the surface, like in the short term, that presents safety issues, reasons to not locate that enterprise there.

And then yeah, being a driver for that improvement, which then has a camel's notice for other kinds of sprawl.

One of the reasons why, I mean, suddenly Kevin stepped out right when I was talking about this, but I think Kevin, the county, Albemarle's new approach to requiring a larger number of signatories is partly intended to prevent a single large player showing up and being like, I'm one of five landowners on the road.

20% of us want the road to be paved

The same is true for a speculative developer.

So as you're having conversations with residents about whether the road ought to be paved, having more of a sort of one resident or one parcel, one boat approach, rather than saying this gigantic landowner or this economically

Empowered Landowner is driving this conversation.

We consider it one.

I mean, if a land owner owns a bunch of parcels, we still wouldn't hear that one.

In our petition thing, we did that with the one, we recently did one down south connecting between, I can't remember the name of it, John Griston.

It was like 12 parcels and 40% of the land

Apart from justice, we don't want to incentivize speculative subdivision, which this policy neatly avoids.

We're one person, one vote.

Peter, you talked about the health and economic value for these roads.

Yeah, so my in-laws live in Fluvanna County on a rural road.

It is paved, but it is a rural road.

And every night they go for a walk on the road.

So we've always known that there is a close link between active lifestyles and physical and emotional health.

And that's really been underlying since the pandemic.

But I think also there is an idea that folks in rural areas have access to unlimited

outdoors and good places to take in fresh air.

And for my analysis, that simply is not the case.

The road is where they go for a walk.

And so I think right at the local level, it's really important for folks to have a good place to walk, especially because they're not going to have a walkable park or something like that.

So the road becomes a de facto park.

But then I think if you zoom out to like the county level or the regional level, railroads provide a calm, quiet outdoor space for recreation.

I mean, I'm here because my in-laws are here, but also

The beauty of the surrounding areas around Charlottesville are a big reason why I'm here.

But you actually don't really, I think, need to take anybody's word for it.

There's a lot of money that comes from the awareness that rural areas are a healthy place to be and a healthy place to recreate them if you drop.

You know, any of the free publications here in Charlottesville on the ground, it's going to open to an ad that shows somebody walking in an outdoor space.

So Loudoun County is pretty intentional and so are we intentional about promoting themselves as a tourist destination, but Albemarle, sorry, Loudoun actually

leverages its rural roads as part of its tourism package.

So for example, they just hosted a gravel bike ride in national class race.

And the gravel bike riders, they are athletes, but they're also athletes that are going to spend a bunch of money when they're visiting the locality from across the area.

And so typically those events are held in like Oregon or Iowa or somewhere like that.

It was pretty cool.

Or upstate New York.

So.

Six Woods Road, first time ever on my years here.

I run the computer sometimes, but I did it on a Sunday a few weeks ago, a full length from Miller School all the way out to 151.

Okay, you must be fit.

Yeah, so I think, so I mentioned Green Springs as an example, like a success story.

I think Dick Woods Road is also a success story in certain ways.

It exhibits some quality, some quality pieces.

Number one, it's on the county's radar as something that's an important resource to protect.

The board of supervisors always knows that.

They always mention

Anytime you talk about unpaid roads, Dikweds Road comes up.

And part of that is because the local high school cross country team uses it for their training.

Then when you look at the sort of execution of Dikweds Road, a nonprofit partner, in this case, the Miller School,

Allocated some land for a designated parking area that they also do litter control.

So if you're going, I don't know if you did it this way, but most people that go to Dick Woods have a place to park, so it's guaranteed they're not going to annoy the landowners by parking.

So that's a successful piece.

That's a post-pandemic phenomenon.

And so our answer is to always hopefully have multiple locations to spread these out.

Green Springs also, the local community has, the local running community has agreement with a local church to borrow their parking lot.

But that's like within the community, there has to be good communication because

They're able to go there due to the grace of the adjoining landowners.

So it's so important to maintain that relationship.

Dickwood's Road also is kind of neat because it doesn't necessarily have to perform hardcore transportation duty because Plank Road is right there.

So that's another reason why it's like, you could say, okay, we can,

from a transportation network perspective, we can live without liquids being paid where another location and maybe a really important throughway.

Thank you for that.

We appreciate you coming all the way out.

We learned a lot from that.

Well, I think we don't have that, but we have a dedicated web page about the conversation with Alauddin advocates.

So that's what I was going to share into the chat.

And that has resources, including their white paper, which is quite good.

Yeah, so thank you.

Thank you again.

Yes, I am, and I think Lucinda has got a PowerPoint that she's going to pull up so I can share that with you.

So, for those of you, we've mentioned this across the, you know, at various points in conversations that we have, but the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment

has a GAAP technical assistance grant program that might be of interest to some of you as far as building capacity for some of your legal planning efforts.

The MPO is currently working under them with a technical assistance grant for developing an accessibility planning process.

So this is really focused on

You know, developing a process to use to prioritize needs and projects within our NPO, but they have a couple of different components.

So I wanted to go through these with you in case any of you all might be interested in taking advantage of this for your localities.

So there are a couple of goals of this technical assistance gap funding.

It's to support the development of multi-modal transportation systems.

encourage the use of innovation and best practices to improve efficiency.

So looking at new data sources, intelligent transportation systems, that kind of thing.

It was really focused on this third bullet promoting coordination between land use and transportation planning.

One of the big reasons they started sort of developing this program was based on the

was based on the original regulations around the urban development areas, you know, to help support localities and really planning to coordinate their land use and transportation planning to develop efficiencies and infrastructure investment.

So it certainly will support those efforts.

And then also to help inform the infrastructure and policy considerations that go into the state transportation plan, which is referred to as BTRANS.

And for those of you that don't have designated urban development areas, one of the challenges you might have with SMART SCALE is that the way projects are identified as being a VTRANS need, which is required in order to apply for SMART SCALE, a project has to meet a VTRANS need.

So if you're in a rural area and you don't have these designated UDAs or growth areas that meet the definition on the federal code,

You're going to really limit your eligibility for what kinds of projects will be eligible for SMART SCALE.

So this is one way where you can support the development of some of these established growth areas in order to be able to be eligible for additional funding for infrastructure.

These are the types of technical assistance that are available to local governments.

Conduct multi-modal planning with an existing or planned DDA's or growth areas.

So for those of you in Fluvanna and

Louisa, you might recognize this.

This was the Batadahat Gateway study that we referenced when we were developing the scope for the Zion Crossroads plan was a GAP technical systems grant.

So that is one example of where they were able to go in and help develop some

Really significant recommendations around multimodal improvements in a designated area.

There's this second component, which is developing and evaluating strategies to address emerging planning issues.

People are doing that in different ways.

Developing an accessibility planning process.

So if you want to include transportation in your comprehensive plans, or you want to develop a planning process focused around transportation,

This could be an opportunity to get some technical assistance.

And then the fourth one is conducting multimodal planning outside of an urbanized area.

So maybe there's a town or some sort of activity center or something like that that you want to do some multimodal planning around.

The availability for the amount of technical assistance you are eligible for will vary based on the component.

One thing I

I think it's probably going to be true.

I don't know, because I've only applied for one kinds of these grants, but you're not actually putting together a scope of work and asking for an amount.

You are telling, as part of this application, you are telling OIP what it is that you need the technical assistance for, and they will help you refine the scope.

So you don't have to actually say, I need $100,000 or I need $75,000.

You basically tell them, this is what we would like to do with the funding, and they'll help you refine the scope and work to procure consultants.

There is an application deadline of October 31, 2022.

There's no local match requirement associated with this, so you don't have to bring any funding to the table.

You will need a letter of support from a governing body.

Basically, that just says that they know that you're applying for this and will support it.

It's actually one of the simplest applications I've ever submitted.

It's very simple because again, they're trying to support the development of additional capacity for localities.

But certainly if this is something that you are interested in exploring and would like support from the PDC to develop a scope or something like that, we're happy to support.

Anybody in that sense.

And then we can send out the link to the website for more information.

But happy to answer any questions, but mostly just want to make sure this is on your radar.

We haven't gone to them to say that.

What I will just, I'll just put the bug in your ear for Louisa County is that you don't have any of these designated birth areas.

Correct.

So I would say that one of the things that

Your board may be interested to know would be about what funding opportunities might be available if there is a designated growth area.

And when you mean like not designated as UDA's?

Yeah, so it doesn't have to be called a UDA, but it has to meet the definition of a UDA in the state code, and it has to reference that.

Yeah.

Can they help you develop the boundaries for UDA?

I'm not sure about the actual specifics.

I think they could help you develop the boundary.

I don't want to speak for them.

I'm happy to follow up.

I think what they really want to help you do, though, is really understand what are your goals for the UDA once it's defined.

Sandy, which one of these did you move?

The MPO was working on the component redevelopment accessibility planning process.

So yeah, so they're supporting the project prioritization and the needs prioritization process that we're going through.

And I think that's also what the City of Charlottesville applied for, for their bike pad prioritization process.

For their bike pad prioritization that they're doing.

I believe they also applied for component three.

I think I do feel like well again we didn't have to bring anything to the table you know to apply for it so I do think that the amount of technical support that we're doing is really going to it's significantly improving the quality of the plan that we're going to be able to produce based on if we had to put our staff resources into doing that portion of it

Anybody have any other questions?

Thank you, Sandy.

Lucinda, RTAC 4.10.

So this is just kind of an update administrative thing.

I wanted to let you know that the Rural Transit Needs Assessment, which is Task 2.1 on the work plan, is mostly going to focus on the governance study.

And that will be the rural contribution to the governance study.

So there's probably not going to be a separate report.

It'll be part of the revenue study for that.

I don't think that we need to do an amendment or anything like that.

Oh, thanks.

Louisa County, we have

They plan unit development in Indiana.

They plan unit development to have been designed on a town center across Crossroads.

It could be done on a planning commission at the same time, not totally.

Designed on this Crossroads, they plan to increase about, I don't have an exact number, about 200 million units already for planned master development.

And then in a lake, we have 96 unit condominiums with 130 unit room hotel, and a rooftop restaurant with tow drops.

So two large projects that obviously we're asking VDOT to take a look at for comments before they go to the Planning Commission in October, if that's when they go.

We also, more importantly, Monday hired a Planning Associate, Curtis, and he'll be helping out.

Louisa County's growing, so we need the help.

and Jon.

We're in the midst of our transportation development plans that is due to be finished by January 26th or something and we just finished our community engagement initiative so we're pretty pleased with how that went.

We did rider surveys on the buses, we did community surveys out in the community and then we also have online options.

I'm guessing our response right here on

and two other people, which is pretty good as far as I'm concerned.

Also, I have to announce that this is going to be my last RTAC meeting.

September 30 will be my last day at Jaunt Club.

And it's been a pleasure serving with you all.

Thank you for having me.

I'm trying to ask you a couple of questions.

Is it good?

That explains that.

Everybody was very kind.

Thanks for your attention.

I have an update from the online.

Rick Youngblood says that VDOT Lynchburg District is conducting a new Route 151 border study, an update of the 2020

Not a lot to report from Albemarle County's rural area.

We are in the process of our comprehensive plan update.

It's a very long process that's been going on for

five or six months already, and probably going through the next couple of years, we're really overhauling the entire comprehensive plan.

So that's going to be a big effort.

There's going to be a lot of implications to rural areas as we look at how, you know, the development areas in Albemarle County are sort of getting to the point where we're running out of space.

And so I think we're one of the big

And the development area are allowed different kinds of uses in what we've previously called the rural area.

So that's a big point of discussion.

I think that's really all we got going on.

This is because of the fact that we don't have development that we allow in our rural areas.

Paula Nelson, we are wrapping up the public engagement portion of our comprehensive plan update.

We have close to 900 responses to the community survey, which are pretty close with.

So in October, they're going to be presenting the results I'm writing to the board and the planning commission.

They'll get the end of October, so looking forward to that.

As far as transportation goes, Rick already said where they kicked off the

Route 151 corridor study and that will be from Acton Mountain Road down the south of Beechbrook Road.

I did actually forget to think about it.

Last meeting, we had not gotten the RAISE grant yet, so I wasn't sure if everybody knew about that, but we did make an application for a federal release grant.

for a three-notch trail which would connect from the city of Charlottesville all the way up into Nelson County.

We did work with Nelson County.

I got a letter of support from them all to the Hampton Tunnel and that was successful.

So it's a $2 million planning grant that's gonna take us to a conceptual level design and the full alignment for that entire trail.

Well, I guess two things we would mention.

Working through the validation process on that.

I know Chuck's working with all the folks

Hopefully we will be getting estimates to you all in the next 10 days or so because we all want to see what those are going to be.

But we're moving forward.

The other big thing is that there's a Ready, Set, Go!

grant that we'll make heard about.

I hope we have.

It's closely targeted towards localities under 5,000.

The TAP program, which is paid for in a lot of

You know, trails and speedscapes throughout Central Virginia is trying to target localities and towns less than 5,000, some are called money.

A particular grant is geared towards other localities and grants for these smaller localities that can be up to 50,000, localities less than 50,000 people.

But the goal being to try and help

No, we technically, so the approval of money that does go to people, to a county less than $5,000, and actually this grant would be

It's weighted toward those communities, small towns.

But for this planning purposes, they are allowing it to be up to $50,000.

And the grant itself, the TAP grants themselves, will range from Washington Metropolitan area with the federal funding structure to set aside for localities under $5,000.

So sorry, just to clarify, a big county with a small town could apply for that.

Just hypothetically.

OK.

Just a couple quick updates with regards to RideShare right now.

Statewide it is Discover Transit Month sponsored through DRPT and next month will be RideShare Month so we will be

Featuring and putting additional information out to all the areas here about carpooling, vanpooling, further commuter services.

Also this month, doing the parking ride inventory, which does happen in most of the rural areas as opposed to, so we'll have some of those counts.

We are also looking to

We'll be assisting VDOT and they are doing some more extensive park and ride, I guess, inventory parks.

So we will be partnering with them as part of what we already do and just adding in the extra features and information that they're looking for as well.

Sarah, next question.

Sure.

So when you do your inventories of those park-and-ride lots, is there also data that tells us, or do you ever do surveys that say like, where are you coming from and going to if you're using this park-and-ride?

We have, to my knowledge, we have never surveyed the cars slash vehicles there in the lots.

trying to think what would be the best way to even do that.

We certainly have done some RideShare surveys that may or may not be capturing everyone in the park and ride lots.

We wanted to capture everyone in the park and ride lots, but realistically, we know that that's probably not entirely true.

So, yeah.

I just thought there was something to talk about.

The reason I bring it up is because the park and ride lot on 29 is you're leaving the city right there, right?

We have a large development proposal on the opposite side of the road that may make some access changes to the road and could impact that parking lot for one thing.

Yeah, relocate it or make a second one if you want to keep the one that's there.

So I'm just curious, and we can talk more about this, but I'd like to get numbers so that we can start to think about what size we want to consider that for.

And the reason I just asked about where they're coming from and going to is because we make access changes.

So say somebody can't get less into this anymore, less out, things that can impact, that kind of thing.

Definitely.

Yeah, I can definitely give you very easily numbers for the last little bit.

Great.

Nothing we want to share, I think Kevin said before.

Solidity, it's 130 megawatt, 52 AC alternate current facilities, yep.

And Scott, it's on State Maintained Gravel Road.

As you know, speaking of those, with a one lane branch coming off of 15, the other side of the access on Route 6 in Goldbine is wonderful, very good entrance, and that's where all the infrastructure would go.

but the company bought property next to the one lane bridge bridge in 2015 where there's no access whatsoever.

So we've had a couple meetings with them this year.

So they are a large California company experiencing their growth on the east coast, dealt with a lot of the

CEP Solver, Ed Marico, Suntraps over here in Charlottesville, and all that.

But it's been quite interesting.

We're kind of mobilizing all the state agencies, the Department of Forestry, the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, of course VDOT, and then all of our carbon sources and working on this, but making progress.

I can't tell you about some other things that are going on with it, but there may be some changes in the new year with the company we're dealing with, so I'll stay with that.

But I think from our perspective and our research that we've been doing, and I know at Bezo last week, you just gave the world your presentation, so Tom's been checking into some of that, but I would just say for a lot of us as rural counties,

Real quick, we're the second smallest landmass other than Greene County and the DJPDC, so we are probably, once more of these projects come out of the 24 PJMQ, we are going to become the county that welcomes accessory solar and rooftop solar, honestly, because a lot of the

Ones that are even smaller like 20 to 35 to 45, 50 megawatts that we have the people interested in doing are also even too large for our land mass.

We created a lot of things with our land use and definitions last September and we're currently going through changes on solar taxation and

will set a limit of the number of acreage in the county and things like that.

But I guess the reason I'm mentioning that is this main road that they chose to be on is a state maintained road, but they chose the wrong location of where to site their solar arrays.

They also chose the largest stand of trees in the entire county.

to their facility.

It's kind of like where I used to work in Justico County.

We took like about two thirds of Pocahontas State Park and cut it down.

So just generally as planners, I'm trying to say, we're definitely not in support of this project.

And I don't think most of the state agencies we're dealing with are, but as we all have to bring things, shepherd things through a process with them purchasing land on the east side and doing the infrastructure on the west side,

As a planner, I don't have an opportunity to merge the two and make it a small project.

So, you know, you can make a 35 to 50 megawatt facility all next to the infrastructure.

So, the solar and while I take the term to the best, the battery energy storage.

So, they did a great job of locating underneath the transmission line and where our two main transmission lines come together.

but anyways that's, sorry I don't want me to digress too much on solar but we're all interested in learning and figuring out some of the access and I want to mention that next Thursday, the Urbana River Basin Commission is doing the conference at the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center with

Elizabeth Marshall from UVA and Chad Martin from GDQ.

So if anyone knows, that's open and it's still free.

It's still open to you.

But other than that, a lot of our main projects are going on.

We just started doing our funding stuff with the Palmyra Streetscape TAP grant.

Starting that in the process, got the letter from the central office.

That's about it.

Thank you.

Tom was our contact for this project.

Tom left last month.

But yeah, outside of all the solar that seemed to hit all at once for Fluvanna,

We have a couple SMART SCALE projects that are screened in and being reviewed.

Like Douglas said, the TAF grant that we had approved is working on the funding for that.

We're also in the throes of our comprehensive plan, finished about a month ago with public.

We have more public open houses.

So yes, this is going to be a mad dash to the new year, I think.

Hopefully nothing crazy during the holidays, even more so.

I mean, that solar project Doug was talking about is like almost 30,000 acres, part of Havana, not very good access.

And it's, like I said, even the small scale solar projects are having a hard time with access just because a lot of them just want to pick farms that don't have great access.

and also not great support lines to get their work equipment in, which is a big one.

We all get involved in that a lot.

Just having proper access to the job sites and upgrading and upgrading and improving roads or just leaving them in the condition that they brought all their equipment in has been a big challenge for them.

Thank you for reminding me.

I forgot to mention, so last week the Virginia Association of Zoning Officials' 32nd Annual Conference, they asked you to speak as the panelists to give a 20 minute presentation to the members of the conference on solar and kind of the lessons learned along the way from Louisa over the last few years, how we created an ordinance.

So if anybody here that needs information, please reach out to IARAGOS.

I know that earlier, I think it was in the year, maybe it was last year, we gave a presentation on this transportation is a very big issue when it comes to solar.

It really is one of the top five things along with the 32 other conditional use permit conditions and 10 pages of coordinates and all the other things.

But I mean, it's really, it's an issue when you apply, it's an issue during review, it's an issue during site plan and then you extract it.

Until it's built, problems really go away for transportation.

So, yeah, I just wanted to thank Douglas.

Thanks for reminding me to bring that up.

And we're here as a resource for you.

And also for the MPOs and the PDCs, you know, you could be reaching out to them about something else and they go, hey, do you know somebody who can talk to you about solar?

Well, we'll have them reach out to us.

Part of that, I said in the last meeting, I had no problem with sharing our knowledge with Northern, Southern, PDCs and NGOs because the more people we know, the better off we're going to be.

Well, one other thing.

One, just real quick, if you guys want to know more about solar in

Central and definitely Southside of Virginia.

Carphone News, I think they're a new newspaper out of Lynchburg or that kind of area.

They have been doing a lot of really good reporting and series of writing on it.

And basically, think of all the data centers that are up in Northern Virginia.

They think of us in Southside and

North Central, South Central part of the fire region.

That's the area that we saw the family flat.

I mean, an area they're doing our work on is not flat, but it's still Piedmont and everything, of course, but take a look at some of that information and also Elizabeth Marshall's survey that they just did and launched this spring with early helpful.

for some of the resources statewide.

But, you know, there's opportunities.

It's a huge, sorry about the age group, that acres around 27,000.

So out of curiosity, I hear you guys talk a lot about access and taking down the forest and put that up.

Let me say it this way, I don't know if this is world transportation, but I'll say this, the ones that we did with SunTruck Solar, they're a great company, don't get me wrong, but the ones that we did with them that are three and five megawatt facilities next to CBAC substations, we're having problems with ENSWAS and construction wireless with those.

Okay, so you can only imagine 10-20 volts that, you know, we would have with working with whatever size would get it down to us.

The technology about the battery alternates, you know, it's wonderful to learn about and understand, but I generally, we were very supportive of it, but I think generally the

Even the industry people that we deal with.

We're all like, I don't want to say like flying blind or flying or doing stuff before the infrastructure is there.

And so to speak.

Like, you know, for instance, on planners, I'm very supportive of, like, look at real quick at California, where they want EV cars and only EVs, you know, and all that.

And then, what, just a week or two ago, they said, don't plug your EV car, I don't have enough charge.

Okay I mean so the charging network in the Caltrans or whatever is not enough so you know I think what we're learning all the conferences and all the things that are coming out let's slow it down just a little bit for everyone the people who are installing it who are creating it people who are reviewing it and the state agencies that we work with but let's slow it down a little bit I mean there is definitely a need to increase

Green Energy Facilities, and Creek Recapture, all that.

It's just trust and perspective that probably some of the areas that we ask them the questions about how we're gonna put the solar panels in, some pretty steep slopes and areas where there's lots of, they're not getting near the wetlands because they can't, because the slopes too, they're up on them.

Or for instance, they'll select the really flat area, by the way, it's right by the grid, so everyone's gonna see them.

you know so I think it's just also the California and out west companies kind of east and if you have you know like Edwards Air Force Base kind of area where my dad was at one time you can put panels up for lunch you know some late dry late fits but here in the east because it's a totally different

A lot of folks in North Carolina and Virginia I think know they get it and understand it, so we're trying to educate them.

But I guess the main thing is let's let all the General Assembly things, changes keep coming through, but let's work on them to be implemented as best we can with the environment we're in.

I don't want some environmental damage things done that we're doing or creating these things for better the environment right that's all I'm sorry I guess just a little bit extra specifically like the biggest thread that all of us have is like Peter Royal Field so having a huge utility scale solar

It may not appeal to that thought, but also I think part of the explosion is what we've learned in these conferences and stuff is that it's become incredibly more efficient with how solar power is generated and captured now with like dual sided panels and they're tracking and they're much cheaper to produce now so I think that coupled with a lot of the federal funding is like really pushing them to like really try to give in while they can.

So those two things are kind of clashing in our county as well.

Like this huge solar project, we haven't gotten to the public page yet.

We're still working with all the state agencies before we even show this to the public, because we want them to be as well prepared as they possibly can be, because there are going to be a ton of questions, but very mildly.

Topics for next meeting.

So I've been talking around and some of the other rural transportation committees have been looking at their, I can't remember the name of it, I can't look it up, their like environmental mitigation plans.

That would be excellent.

That would be a great topic, especially since TJPDC is currently working on the outdated.

I offer, I don't want everybody to sleep, but I can give a 20 minute presentation that I gave to Beza here if we're struggling for topics.

So 20 minutes is over.

Now let's threaten everybody with that.

Well, can I mention one thing?

I think we spoke at all of the jurisdictions in here, well, except for Albemarle, about the Safe Streets for All program.

So we were able to successfully submit an application that included all six of the jurisdictions within the TJPDC.

But what I wanted to make sure that you all know about is that regardless of the outcome of that grant, I mean, I believe that it will be very competitive, but regardless of the outcome of that grant is we reached out to VDOT.

And starting in January, late January, they are going to start doing some crash data and safety analysis for us.

And so regardless of what happens with the safe streets for all, we're going to be able to use those resources to develop a very detailed data set as far as what is contributing to crashes.

And there will be some stakeholder engagement.

One of the things that they'll be doing is they'll be coming to each locality

to have an onsite meeting.

And we'll hope to start working on building some collaboration among different departments and agencies as part of those meetings.

We could get Dominion Energy here.

They were at the conference with me and they gave a presentation on battery storage.

We'll talk offline about that.

I was thinking that it would be interesting to have an update on what challenges you had on the transportation section of updating your comprehensive plan, especially if you're willing to perhaps give a presentation sometime next year to get further along.

I'd like to hear more about the $10 million grant.

Yeah, you do have a little presentation that we've given to the Blue Pack and our Board of Supervisors.

I mean, it's only like 10 minutes of talk.

Yeah, it works for me.

And I know Rick Youngblood has a presentation about the Route 151 corridor as well.

That's a pretty short one.

I'll have to just threaten to speak for 20 minutes.

And I want to thank the NPO, PDC, TJPDC, everybody for reaching out.

I appreciate you all reaching out to everybody and trying to get us more guest speakers and offering the same.

I don't recently.

Tom, real quick, I'll just say this was a group I wasn't aware of before, but this will be the third year I've gone.

That was the World Landing Caucus.

It's fantastic.

It's a smaller group of people.

This is the world group I thought it would share.

Anybody have any other topics or ideas they'd like to share?

Stephen, I would like to thank you for all of your difficult questions over the past few years.

They have been excellent and very difficult.

Does anybody have any last minute housekeeping items or things you'd like to discuss with the whole group?

Jen's been on the call, if you require.

He's already seen the presentation.

No, drove all the way across the street, actually.

Just a quick public comment is that PC is watching the solar issue very closely.

And I think we're looking at externalities and figuring out how to get ahead of those.

And surprisingly, we hadn't really thought of transportation

and that whole bucket of externalities.

But the magnitude of the issue is gigantic.

Our CEO just informed the staff that it looks like the data centers alone can drive as much energy demand as Virginia is using total.

So like a doubling of Virginia's power usage just because of the data centers.

And the reason is because the transatlantic internet trunk line comes in Lansing, Virginia, and then it spreads out from there.

And then we also have our own transcontinental fiber optic lines.

So there's a lot of future interest in having data centers here.

That could also be a land use issue here in this region, but definitely the solar.

I'll ask because that data center they're not here yet, but I don't see why they wouldn't be here in the near future.

Yeah, absolutely.

And if you'd like to reach out, if you'd like to send Douglas or I or others about this already, we're more than welcome to.

I have on my list been a hold of your best practices for your presentation already.

That'd be cool.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

We're adjourned.