Rural Transportation Advisory Committee Meeting   9/19/2023

Good afternoon, everybody.

Thank you for attending.

I don't believe we have anybody here from the public, but they're online, so we have a lot of new faces in the room, so I actually don't know if there's anyone I can go around and introduce themselves.

I am the senior designer for Louisa County and the Mayor of Bartok.

I'm Troy Alston, and I'm with VDOT.

Josh Gillespie, I'm with the community development director for Louisa County.

Jason Understreet, the one and only, Dennis Hager, and the kind of division planning manager for the city of Stratford.

Looks like we can see everybody online here.

Does anybody have any comments on the minutes from the last meeting or any edits that you'd like to make?

Second.

All those in favor say aye.

All those opposed say nay.

All right, we're going a little long.

VDOT state data.

Oh, well, yeah.

Well, we're happy to have Kimley Horne here with us today.

Sorry, I was just gonna let them be self-sufficient, but we could also be welcoming.

So just to give you a little bit of context, Kimley Horne has been retained through the VDOT Highway Safety Improvement Program.

They have some funding available that localities and regions can take advantage of through that program in order to, can you minimize that?

like the participant information to support sort of the understanding of safety risks throughout the community.

So we are in a very fortunate circumstance that not only is Kimley Horn our consultant for VDOT with this process but this is also some of the same team members who are actually going to be supporting our Safe Streets and Roads for All grant

through the USDOT degree as well.

So we're very fortunate that we're able to have some alignment between these two efforts and have some coordination among our consultant team.

So Mark is the project lead as far as the VDOT scope of work is concerned.

This is long enough for me to figure out why my computer is blinking.

So yeah, I'm kind of playing a dual role today here on behalf of the support that VDOT is providing, but also as part of the project team from Kinleyhorn.

So we're going to do a brief introduction to the SS4A safety action plan as a whole, but then start to talk a little bit about some

Very initial data analysis that we have done and try to establish some emphasis areas and talk about ideas to figure out what our priorities are going to be for this plan moving forward.

We don't have to have everything figured out today, but at least enough ideas and talking points that we can go back and refine our data analysis and come back to you with more numbers.

So we'll talk a little bit about the general approach for the plan, walk through those initial data findings and have that discussion and we can circle back and talk about what's next.

So to start for anyone that isn't familiar with SS4A, Safe Streets for All.

So it is a new program through Federal Highway.

It was established as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law and it's funding $5 billion worth of projects from 2022 to 2026.

The goal of the program as a whole is to help reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries that are occurring on roadways throughout the US.

There are two main types of grants.

So what we are doing as part of this is a planning and demonstration grant, which is going to be to help develop a comprehensive safety action plan.

So as part of that is going to be looking at what are current issues and then identifying a set of improvements that moving forward, we will look to identify funding and implement in the coming years.

Now, any improvements that are identified as part of this plan, we don't have to go back to FHWA to fund, but the other part of the SS4A funding that is available is for implementation grants.

So for the improvements that we identify as part of this plan, we are then eligible because we have completed the plan to then go back and apply for funding specific to those improvements.

But again, there are other opportunities to fund or implement improvements, not just the FHWA funding.

So in terms of the components of the plan, so what we have on this left side are the components that are required as part of FHWA for a safety action plan.

And this is where the

Because I'm kind of here representing VDOT and then also representing the Kimley-Horn team, there's a little bit of a gray area.

But in terms of the support that VDOT has offered to the PDC, it is to cover a few different portions of the safety action plan.

So the first is the safety analysis.

So we will be working with you all to

Go in and analyze data, identify emphasis areas or priority areas for the plan moving forward and then really focus on high crash locations and where we might be able to implement projects.

We'll have some engagement with you all as part of the VDOT effort, with the public that will be more for the full plan effort moving forward.

And then the other part is that we will be incorporating the Federal Highway data sets on underserved communities to understand what percentage of crashes are occurring in underserved communities so that once we get to the identification of improvements, we can have that in mind to make sure that the improvement set is equitable.

Otherwise, a few other key parts of the plan as a whole.

So it will involve a commitment from leadership, so from the PDC and the member jurisdictions to either commit to achieving a zero number or a significant reduction.

So when we have a full kickoff for the plan as a whole, we'll look to engage that leadership to make sure that we

We can look forward to that commitment.

And then the end goal for this project is really that set of improvements that we will identify and then prioritize and then figure out now once we have that set of improvements moving forward, how can we potentially implement or fund those improvements to really see progress on safety in the next few years.

Any questions on the overall process or what is going to be included in the plan?

All right.

Danielle also joined, and so she is known to be the Kimley-Horne project manager for the full effort moving forward.

And we look forward, thank you, Mark, we look forward to partnering with this group and others on the full comprehensive regional plan.

I wanted to mention that we are partnered, Kimley-Horne's also partnered with Abicor, and there's a very robust effort for public engagement and community engagement and buy-in as part of this planning process.

That's very important as we move forward and at the ultimate end identify projects that you will seek federal funding for and so what we've included here is a list of the engagement efforts that we will look to partner with you on in your communities.

We're going to kick off this effort more formally with the Regional Road Safety Summit and that will include you and some leadership from different jurisdictions from your different member jurisdictions and that's where we'll look to

provide education, more in-depth education on the four E's and also look for that buy-in from leadership so that we can establish some goals and that leadership commitment early on in the process.

So that's the more formal kickoff.

I just wanted to make you aware of that.

Once the data's set, we will invite all of you and your member organizations.

Other elements of the engagement process include stakeholder meetings,

A public survey which we will use to disseminate within the community to identify issues and opportunities.

We will leverage community champions and identify those community champions from different jurisdictions to help us really connect with communities and make sure we're getting the word out, spreading the word, and also hearing back from members of the community.

Mark mentioned

Actually, I don't remember which, but there was something you mentioned.

Oh, the equity considerations and underserved communities.

Those community champions will also look to identify groups that are maybe not represented most often to make sure we're connecting with them.

They will be equipped with outreach toolkits.

So our team in partnership with AVID Corps will develop a toolkit of information that will be disseminated to the community.

and so our community champions will be armed with information so they can bring us back some insight to inform the plan.

We also are hosting community pop-up meetings within the six different jurisdictions and so we'll partner with your jurisdictions to identify those locations and we'll facilitate in-person public meetings.

So there's a lot happening as part of this plan unique to the city of Charlottesville.

We will have a charrette and a demonstration project.

So that's a full list of engagement elements that are outside of

What Mark is discussing today, but it's part of the broader safety action plan.

And the next slide, we have just a snapshot of the technical components of this work and the process that we'll need to execute over the next 18 to 24 months to meet an end goal of June 2025.

with ultimate adoption of the safety action plan.

And so we are looking at three different rounds of public engagement, first with identifying issues and values for each of the six different communities.

And then all of the public engagement will be used to inform our technical analysis, inform and validate the vast amount of data that we're analyzing.

The second round of engagement will be used to prioritize and identify strategies to address those issues identified as part of the analysis.

And then the third round of engagement is really where we will have a preview of the draft plan and give the public an opportunity to provide feedback.

So this is just a layout of the general approach of how our technical analysis and engagement will be

Can you be looking for County Board of Supervisors and town council to adopt a resolution supporting what the end product of this is going to be in order for it to be adopted at a statewide level?

Yes there will be some consensus at the leadership level.

Yeah we are going to be at the end of this basically this isn't necessarily going to be adopted at the state level this is going to be having the adopted plan would make us potentially one it would show a commitment by each locality in the region to

you know the objectives and the goals and priorities that were identified here.

I don't know that you have to adopt it into your comprehensive plan, but you would have to adopt it.

Right.

It can be a standalone.

It just has to be completed so FHWA knows that there has been an effort done to look at existing problems, identify projects, and that that has been completed to

Thank you.

Right, so they've at least taken two shots at implementation grants.

Follow-up question.

Are there any other questions?

To your question about SMART SCALE, we would encourage you to seek out as much funding as there is available.

So starting off with just some definitions.

If you have not heard of the Capco Scale before, we will refer to it quite a bit.

It is how crash data is defined based on the severity level.

So the

K is going to be your fatal crashes.

My kind of trick for remembering what these letters stand for.

K is for killed.

At least one person died in the crash.

A is going to be your most serious type of injury that did not result in a fatality.

So A typically involves an ambulance arriving on scene and transporting someone from the crash.

B and C are also injury crashes, just not quite as severe, not rising to the level that require an ambulance.

An easy way to remember B is some type of visible injury that is experienced, so you can think B as in bruise.

And C is a possible non-visible injury, so you can think of it as a complaint.

Someone might be complaining of whiplash or a headache, but it's not something that you can see and comment on, but also an injury resulting from that crash.

And then O is your property damage only crashes.

This is the highest percentage of crashes that occur on our roadways.

But when we talk safety and really identifying safety improvements, the goal is to reduce

the number of fatality and injury related crashes.

A reduction in PDO crashes is an extra benefit, but it's not the main focus of the plan.

And from the federal highway level and other VDOT safety planning efforts typically focus just on your fatalities and your A injury level crashes.

So what I talked for today, we are just going to be focusing on the Ks and As.

However, once we get into the plan, because we have a mix of urban and rural, and the

The number of crashes in the various jurisdictions is going to differ, but we are going to include the B&C crashes where it makes sense, especially as we develop a high injury network.

A high injury network is really identifying the percentage of your roadways that experience the most injury crashes.

And so for in a more urban area where you may have a higher density of fatalities and serious injuries, we may only need to look at Ks and As.

In a more rural area where those crashes may be spread out to really develop that high injury network, we may not also include the bees.

So I want to make sure everyone has a good understanding of what these mean, because as we go into the more detailed analysis and develop that high injury network, it'll be a little bit different criteria for the various jurisdictions based off of the density of crashes

So jumping into some data, I wanted to start with just a picture of what is happening statewide, just to have some context to see how what's happening in this region can compare.

Looking at the fatality chart, so 2014 is kind of the break point where the state hit a low point really in

As long as crash data has been checked, 703 was at a low point in the number of fatalities that occurred in one year.

However, you can see that since 2014, those fatalities have started to increase on a yearly basis.

In 2022, that number jumped above 1000 for the first time since 2007.

So it's a trend that is very much going in the wrong direction on the statewide level and really on the national level as well.

What is really kind of the most disconcerting part of that trend is prior to 2014, with the exception of a little bit of fluctuation year over year, in general it had been a constant downward trend with the

Improvements in vehicle technology, vehicle safety, improvements to roads, really across the whole spectrum of roadway safety, that number had constantly been decreasing, except for the past eight years.

For serious injuries, again, that's our A-level injury, ambulance involved,

Up until 2014, we had a pretty steady downward trend.

And while it still has decreased a little bit since 2014, it has really leveled off.

That rate of decrease has slowed down.

So not as problematic as what we're seeing with the increasing fatalities, but it's still not as pretty of a picture as it was before where we were making strides year over year.

So in a couple of slides, I have what it looks like on a regional basis.

And the tough part is that the definition changed a little bit a few years ago.

And so you'll see when I get there, there's a pretty significant jump in B crashes with a decrease in Cs related to the definition.

you'd see basically from 2008

It was largely associated with that change in driver behavior in 2020 and it just kept getting worse.

We're still experiencing a lot of that.

It was definitely a big contributing factor in 2020, especially with vehicle speed.

Because for that pandemic year we had

increase in 19 fatalities from 2019 to 2020, we did see a drop in serious injuries and that was more likely tied to the decrease in volume on the roadways.

I think a lot of the conversations that are happening on the statewide level are related to the fact that the numbers are still increasing even though the VMT and volume on our roadways has started to rebound and

Many locations is back at or above pre-pandemic levels.

So I know a lot of that conversation is still ongoing.

I can tell you from 2021 to 2022 on the statewide level.

So the overall fatalities increased by about 40.

The number of pedestrian fatalities jumped by 50 from 2021 to 2022 on a statewide level.

Overall, if you exclude pedestrian fatalities, it stays rarely level, but there's a big focus on the statewide level for the safety team of central office to figure out, well, what caused that increase?

So the tough part is with anything on our roadways and crash data, there's very rarely one and only factor that causes a crash.

There are a multitude of things.

Changing driver behavior is the hardest thing to do in attempting to try and produce big crashes.

And what we typically, what you'll hear throughout this plan is that we talk about four E's of roadway safety.

So engineering is one of the E's, but then the others are education, enforcement, and emergency response.

and so the goal is that if you can make improvements across any of those four E's you are making progress towards safer roadways.

For the first three they tend to be more proactive type improvements and then emergency response is more on the okay well we recognize that crashes are still going to happen if we can

You know, improve response times, improve the level of care that can be provided that we may not reduce the number of crashes, but we may be able to reduce the number of injuries suffered as a result of them.

And so, yeah, education is a big part of it, but I mean, I have experienced and witnessed, I'm sure you all have as well, you know,

Drivers are speeding more so than ever before.

Drivers are running red lights more so than ever before.

The amount of people that I drive by that are on their phone, either talking, texting, being distracted by some other reason, that continues to increase.

So it's definitely a huge contributing factor, but as part of this plan, we can put some effort to focusing on education type improvements that can be shared in the region to help address that as well.

So let's take a look at trends in the region and kind of compare back and forth.

Looking within the PDC boundaries, so the low point in fatalities actually occurred two years after that statewide low in 2016.

And one thing I will say, anytime you look down on a regional or jurisdictional level, you're always gonna see a little bit more fluctuation than you would on a statewide level.

So that's perfectly normal to see.

But,

The fatality trend is pretty similar in the fact that it was overall decreasing year over year, in this case until 2016, and then it really has started to increase since then.

We just didn't see that same jump in 2022 that the statewide numbers showed.

However, when we're looking at serious injuries, we did see a consistent drop down till 2014.

What's a little bit different than what we see on the statewide levels, instead of leveling off and still having slight decreases, that trend has actually started to increase.

And then just looking at one other way to visualize this while adding in the B and C injuries.

And then you had asked about trends on the statewide level.

So right about 2012 is when there was a change.

So that's where you see there's a big increase in the number of B injuries, but a big decrease in the number of C injuries.

So that's attributed to how that data was defined.

However, there is also a big jump in

I think it's 2018 in the C injuries and this is something that we actually are seeing in a few other PDCs that VDOT is providing support.

I don't have a direct answer as to what caused that increase in 2018 yet, but we're looking into to figure out what caused that.

Just on a jurisdiction level, this plan, we are going to be developing a high injury network within each jurisdiction that then rolls up into a regional high injury network.

And so looking at numbers, so it mentions that in the more rural areas, we may be looking at more crash types to be considered.

So looking at the number of fatalities that are occurring in Fluvanna and Greene County,

and I advanced one slide to see the number of serious injuries are also lower in those areas.

That is likely where we're going to go in the next level and at least include those B-level crashes when we're developing that network.

And I don't think anything on this slide should be super surprising to those in the room who know this area better than I do, but the fact that Albemarle County has the highest number, I hope that's not a surprise to anyone here.

They're the largest rural locality, so this isn't standardized by population.

I mean, I would be interested if you're going to go there to look at the interstate travel versus the primary, secondary, and local roads.

And that is something that is true outside of Culpeper too.

I think people think of the interstates because of the speed and more so because of the volume of vehicles traveling on them on a daily basis that you see more fatalities happen but on a rate basis

Interstate facilities tend to be one of the safest.

Other than, I mean, your local roads where speed limits and the 25, 30 miles per hour are gonna have way fewer just because of that speed component.

Yeah, I wonder if VDOT, are you guys sort of serenading out accidents that occur from the right side of the road versus someone running off the west side of the road?

Something that I realized just traveling in North Carolina is that one difference between the two states' roadway systems is that Virginia

And we'll get to our emphasis areas, but one of the statewide emphasis areas is roadway departure crashes.

And so within that, the data can be defined as departing the roadway to the right or the left.

So we'll talk about roadway departures as a potential emphasis area moving forward as part of this plan, but we do have the data available to get down to that level.

So we're not

All right, so I wanna switch gears and start to talk a little bit about emphasis areas.

So emphasis areas we use as a way to define the primary areas that we will focus our efforts for the next five years as part of this plan.

There are a few different ways to think about how to develop them.

But in general, we kind of came up with a few ways to organize your thoughts about that.

So one is what areas are contributors to the frequency of crashes?

So a couple of examples, an intersection provides a place where vehicles interact.

Because it creates that conflict point, it creates a potential for a crash to occur.

More behavioral type factors, things that drivers may be doing, if they are speeding, if they are distracted, the more often you are exhibiting poor behavior, the more likely you are to be involved in a crash.

Second way is factors that contribute to higher crash severity.

So I mentioned speeding.

Speeding kind of blurs the line between these first two boxes here.

But if a crash occurs at higher speed, it is more likely to result in a more serious injury.

Similarly, seat belt use.

If you are driving without wearing your seat belt, it's not increasing your chances of being involved in a crash, but if you are involved in a crash, it really increases the chances that you are hurt or seriously injured.

The third way that you can think about it is focusing on either a user type or a vehicle type.

that is involved in a number of crashes.

So thinking about pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, young drivers, older drivers have different issues that might make them more likely to be involved in a crash than others.

On the vehicle side, you can look at the challenges of heavy vehicles or large trucks on our roadway system and how other vehicles interact with them.

And then we mentioned roadway departures already, but you can also look at a crash type and trying to address a crash type that may be more problematic in your area.

And so in general, we are going to be looking to establish a list of emphasis areas for this plan.

And so what do we want to consider as we're establishing them?

Well, one thing that we can look at is the statewide priorities.

And my next slide will talk about what emphasis areas we have used on a statewide basis.

But that does not mean that if it's a statewide priority, it is a priority within TJPDC.

So we have the flexibility to remove a statewide priority if we don't consider it a major problem in this area.

We have the option to add something else to the list if it's something that we want to consider.

The goal of today is to have some of that discussion of what are your priorities, what things do we want to consider as part of this plan.

So a few questions that you can ask are, what areas, is that a user type, is it a type of crash, is it a behavior that has a lot of crashes occurring within this region?

Another question is, is there an area where the number of crashes is increasing year over year, so it's a trend that you are trying to reverse?

Or the third is, is there an area that you can see the region achieving success in reducing fatalities and serious injury?

So even if it's not the highest from a numbers perspective in terms of how many crashes occurring, if there are other efforts within the region that are geared towards, you know,

pedestrian access or bicycle access.

Even if there aren't a lot of bicycle fatalities, it may be a good idea to still have that be a focus as part of this plan because it is aligning with other priorities.

One thing I'll just mention is I know a lot of the localities have seen serious crashes this year.

That is not necessarily going to be captured in this.

Yeah, I'll echo that.

Everything that we have is we typically use five years of complete data.

Anything that has happened since then, feel free to share, but it just won't be reflected.

Often a discussion that needs to happen as to whether or not you should be establishing a new emphasis area or having a question like that kind of be a way to narrow in within an existing one.

Also, a quick clarification.

It is... That has some crashes that occur on private roads, but not all of them.

Occasionally, they chill out on the database.

Right.

So the statewide emphasis area so every five years the state has to complete a strategic highway safety plan.

In Virginia this has always been a collaborative effort that has been led by VDOT but has included several other state agencies.

because we talk about safety being a part of the four E's.

VDOT has led the plan from an engineering perspective, but we've had involvement from the highway safety office, the DMV, from the department of education, the department of health, from the state police and various other police departments to try to create a comprehensive plan with the goal of reducing the number of fatalities and serious injuries in the state.

And so as part of that, we do have a set of emphasis areas that we have used.

So the current version of the SHSP is for 2022 through 2026.

So the development happened in 2020 and 2021.

And with the idea of those actions are then implemented in the five-year span of 2022 through 26.

And what we have on screen is the emphasis areas.

They are sorted into the different elements of the safe system approach, which is a more holistic way of viewing safety.

Some of the main priorities of the safe system approach is to recognize that crashes are going to happen and that humans make mistakes.

but it's about designing a roadway network that is forgiving for those mistakes and so it kind of focuses on, right, the goal is to try to prevent crashes where possible but then recognizes that they're going to happen and making sure that you have a network to accommodate that.

So the safe system element, it focuses on improvements versus

in improving the behavior of road users, improving the safety of vehicles themselves, trying to control speed as best as possible, and then improving the roadways and the post-crash care that is used to respond to crashes.

So what falls under the safe system approach and under those safe system elements are the emphasis carriers.

Across the board, pedestrian and bicyclists.

What we did on the statewide level was analyze data separately for pedestrians and bicyclists, but a lot of the countermeasures that we looked at really overlapped the two, so we kind of treat them as one, even though we analyzed the data separately.

We also looked at, from a safe road user perspective, crashes involving young drivers, aging or older drivers, which there are very different issues contributing to crashes with a young driver versus an older driver.

Occupant protection is seatbelt use.

Impaired driving, we talk about that being the four Ds.

So it is drunk driving, distracted driving,

Drowsy driving and drunk driving.

And then crashes involving motorcyclists also.

Moving down to that bottom row under safe vehicles, we looked at crashes involving heavy vehicles.

It's a little misleading where it is placed because

With heavy vehicles, it's really a lot of our improvements are focused on how non-heavy vehicles, how passenger vehicles interact with larger trucks.

It's very rarely the large truck drivers fault in a crash, but then we also had improvements that were focused on

Something that I've noticed over the past couple of years is we've seen a lot of RV driving in crashes.

Where does that be captured?

Is that under the heavy vehicle or is that something you're looking for?

Because I'm seeing a lot of those crashes.

I think that the RVs would be incorporated into that heavy vehicle definition.

I would have to confirm that.

I am not aware of any efforts to look into that on a statewide level.

And then along a similar line, what about EVs?

There's a lot of

Is there any information out there about how EVs are heavier and cause more damage and they're both unconscious?

It has not been to date that I know of, at least not from a VDOT central office perspective.

No, so the heavy vehicles, there's two different fields and what's collected by an officer that we look at for the definition of a heavy vehicle.

One is just looking at the body type itself of the vehicle, in which case a bus would be included in that.

I am not sure if they are included in our heavy vehicle discussion, but I know there are

So I can't speak very much.

And so from an education standpoint, this is something from farming, we have a lot of farming communities here, is that educating drivers to provide distance behind livestock trailers.

I just want to throw that out there.

It was whether or not in all of this data that we're seeing whether railroad crossing, whether someone was severely injured with fatality or whatever, whether that was part of the data as well.

Right.

I guess the question is that until you're answered, you know, is that information going to be brought into the study?

We could talk about it.

I'm not sure if the data set you have, I would imagine that it would include it.

If there's a crash that's happening on a public road, even if it's at a road crossing, I would imagine that it's part of the data set that Mark is using and referring to.

Yeah, I think, you know, as part of this effort, I don't think there's anything preventing us from looking at other plans, studies that are referencing safety improvements.

I mean, it's one of our scope items is to look at other studies and plans that have been completed to date to see what priorities they have set, what issues they have identified.

And so I think there's value in incorporating any findings from that.

I think the question moving forward from an implementation and funding perspective is having an idea for something like that with a statewide plan where they're already identifying issues and a list of improvements.

Is that something that you all are then also responsible for?

The last couple I think we've slightly touched on a little bit here.

So we have speeding, roadway departures, and intersections.

And then there are three others that are on the screen.

So connected and automated vehicles, emergency response and medical services, and data and analytics.

On the statewide level, these are things that we aren't doing data analysis for.

We don't really have a lot of

Just because there are a fewer number of connecting automated vehicles on the roadway today, there isn't really enough to do comprehensive analysis for that.

For emergency response and medical services, there is some data out there related to response times, quickly people can get on scene, but we focus on these more of rather than analyzing data identifying problem, just recognizing that improvements in these areas are beneficial moving forward and let's talk about potential improvements.

But those are ones that depending on

what you all think may not be the most applicable for a regional plan.

Emergency response, yes, I think that we include in talks directly to one of the four E's.

Yeah, and to touch a little bit on that, so for the SHSP on the statewide level, the actions that are identified related to connected and automated vehicles are more policy based of trying to figure out how do we make sure that VDOT's technology, intersections, David markings are all, you know,

responsive and can work with connected vehicles as more become available on the market.

So it's something that's more policy based, which tends to happen at a level, upright statewide level or something like that.

And so that's there isn't a lot focused on the technology itself.

So I'll keep going here.

The next two slides have definitions of how we are actually defining a crash involving a young driver, an agent, or a new driver.

I'm not going to go through all of these.

I want to highlight a few just to illustrate some of the differences that you see between them.

But this is more just for your reference if you're thinking after this meeting, well, what is a roadway departure crash?

What is a large truck?

This is your quick definition.

Afterwards, I'll make sure that we send this presentation as well as a link to the statewide plan that has a little bit more information if you're curious.

But a few things that I do want to call out.

So there are some emphasis areas where when we are talking about fatalities and serious injuries, we are talking about only a specific user type.

So for example, for pedestrians and bicyclists, we are looking at the number of bicyclists that are killed or seriously injured, or the number of pedestrians that are killed or seriously injured.

So it is not including any injury that happens to the driver involved in that crash, if that was the case.

And it's not often, but there are instances where a driver hits a pedestrian and both suffer a severe injury.

So the driver in that case, not included.

However, for some of our behavioral type emphasis areas, we are looking at the total number of people killed or injured in that crash.

So for young drivers or for impaired driving, even if one driver was drunk, if three people were seriously injured in that crash, then we are focusing on three people, because it could have been prevented if the one driver wasn't drunk.

One other call out is speed.

In terms of how VDOT classifies crash data, a speeding crash is if you were driving one mile per hour over the speed limit or in cases of severe weather or a work zone that has a lower limit posted, it's one mile per hour over what the officer reported as the maximum safe speed for conditions.

So I know most people have in their head that you can drive five or eight or ten miles per hour with a speed limit and you're not speeding, you might not get pulled over, but in terms of VDOT considers crash data, one mile per hour.

That typically doesn't change driver behavior.

Speed is one of the, I think, the most challenging aspects to try to address from a crash perspective.

And part of that is lowering speed limit can be a consideration.

However, if you lower the speed limit and you don't have measures in place to suggest to drivers that they should be driving slower, they're not going to.

So typically if you think about lowering a speed limit, you also want to consider a road diet or a speed bump, something that is giving them physical evidence that they should be driving slower.

The other thing that's tough is one of the things that a lot of the improvements that might be best suited for areas that involve speeding vehicles.

So, you know, one of the first things that I think of is having wider shoulders, right, on roadways, because if you're speeding and you do run off the road, it gives you a larger recoverable area.

The challenge is that when you're on a roadway that has a wider shoulder, you tend to drive a little faster.

So there's an inherent conflict between improvements that can help reduce the risk of speeding crashes, but they also tend to increase vehicle speed.

So I don't have all the answers right now in terms of what we're going to identify as part of this plan.

What I know is that speeding is likely going to be an issue that we'll have to focus on.

And what we can start by doing is a location-based analysis to figure out, is the concentration of crashes involving speeding vehicles, does that differ from the high-end dream network overall?

And then narrowing down on specific locations to see what we can do.

You don't have to tell me.

All right, well, let's look at some of the numbers.

So I'm going to have one chart for fatalities, one chart for serious injuries.

And so what we're looking at is the trend over the last five years within each of these statewide emphasis areas, but just looking within the TJPDC boundaries.

And so what you can see is how these emphasis areas compare to each other and how they compare year over year.

So when we are first looking at fatalities,

The highest on a consistent basis tends to be your crashes involving a roadway departure.

That is something that has been the case on the statewide level as well.

And it overlaps a lot with single vehicle crashes involving only one vehicle.

It overlaps a lot with crashes involving speeding drivers because they're more likely to leave the roadway.

Are crashes counted or can they be counted in multiple categories?

However, one thing that you see, there's a little bit more variability within the region, but the impaired driving, again, which is that four Ds, in 2022 actually had the highest number of fatalities across any emphasis area any year for this five year span.

One notable thing here, very, very few bicyclist fatalities over the past five years.

Okay.

Maybe we need to start requiring seat belts for the entire vehicle instead of just practicing?

Yes, we can.

I don't know, I'm trying to think of what the data looks like.

I know we can definitely separate out the number of instances that were driver versus passenger.

Other observations just in general about what's occurring in the region, so on a statewide level I mentioned that roadway departures tends to be the highest and it is pretty closely followed by three other emphasis areas, so speeding, impaired driving, and intersections.

There's a little bit bigger of a gap here between roadway departures and the speeding impaired and intersections.

So impaired has a few years that reach that level, but the average as a whole is decently lower than the average for roadway departures.

And then the average for speeding and intersections is even

even further down.

So that's the one thing that is a little bit different than what we see on the statewide level.

However, we do see that the number of unbelted fatalities is a lot higher comparatively in this region than what we see on the statewide level.

So if we look at serious injuries, you're going to see a similar trend with roadway departures at the top.

And we have a similar gap here where it's pretty significantly higher than the other emphasis areas that we are looking at.

Couple other interesting trends to look at.

We talked a little bit earlier about the increase in speeding related crashes between 2019 and 2020 with fewer vehicles on the road during the pandemic.

You can see that reflected between that second and third bar for speeding.

But interestingly enough, it was actually higher in 2018 in the region.

And in general, I would say across most of these emphasis areas,

is pretty consistent year over year.

We do see that jump a little bit, or really the drop in 2019 in speeding-related fatalities, and that kind of correlates with your roadway departure, or excuse me, serious injuries in 2019.

But with the exception of the fatalities, you see a little bit more variability year to year.

But with all of that, we've had a little bit of this discussion already, but really just wanted to open the floor to open the floor to ask really two main questions.

Do you think any of the statewide emphasis areas should be removed from consideration as part of this plan?

people like most of the advocates used to move that under, and we have a lot of our local communities here.

I don't think they, thankfully, think there's not a lot of brutality or abuse involved with that.

But if someone participates in that activity, there's a lot of folks involved.

We actually received the VDOT's offering, also offering the support to two other PDCs actively and we received a very, very similar comment from the West Piedmont PDC.

I think they generalized it as just like farm vehicles, agriculture vehicles.

And it's something that I need to circle back to see what that data showed.

What I think may happen is that there may not be a lot of severe injury level crashes because those farm vehicles tend to be driving at more reasonable speeds.

Yeah this might be covered already or captured already in the pedestrian and bicyclist but related to that I think one of the one of the pieces of feedback we got for the long-range transportation plan is the lack of connectivity between the like pedestrian networks and the transit networks and so if we can kind of capture where that is you know leading to maybe some unsafe

Behaviors, that would probably be helpful.

And I guess I kind of have a similar question that I had earlier about connected electronics vehicles.

Yeah, so with data analytics, excuse me, it was, there's two of the acts of, within each of these, right, you establish actions that you try to implement.

And there's two that I remember specifically for data analytics.

One was focused on better data sharing between the various organizations that are collecting and managing this data.

So, you know, how the data transfers from DNV to VDOT.

And then there was another that was more focused on Meyer, which is a

Essentially establishing the consistent way to collect crash data.

So I don't know if there was specifically something about coordinating with localities, but in the future what may become apparent is if there are changes to how and when this data is collected to make sure that there is proper

How would environmental factors currently be captured?

So I'm thinking of things both related to maybe flooding, but also, you know, driving on 64 if you're going the wrong way right now, the sun is like glaring in your eyes.

I'm not aware of a bunch being looked into so far.

The one thing I can say is from a crash data perspective, anything related to that is going to be reliant on a crash description because there isn't

There isn't anything coded in the crash data related to sun or glare.

So it may be a little bit challenging to really understand the full scope of the problem.

And I can give you a little insight.

We're actually having the same problem right now with crashes involving red light running.

So we are looking into trying to figure out

What's the scope of the problem for crashes involving red light running?

I know from a driver's perspective, I observe it all the time.

I don't observe crashes all the time, but I observe drivers running red lights.

We are currently looking into how that data is defined.

And there is a crash data field that is collected on the driver level related to any improper action.

And one of them is disobeying a traffic signal.

However, we reviewed crash descriptions on a statewide level looking for key descriptors, ran a red, disregarded signal, and found that if we only looked at that code, we're missing out on probably 30 to 40% of crashes that have a description that lends itself to red light running, even if data fields don't.

Unfortunately, anytime you're relying on text fields for any type of data analysis, it's a lot more difficult because there's so much variability, misspellings, different ways of, you know, whether you use a or the, things like that.

So that is something that could potentially lend itself to more outreach on the data collection and side of things related to, you know,

I want to thank you all for presenting this in a very accessible format to allow this conversation.

So that's a reality.

I'm not sure this is being picked up here in this information.

I'd be curious too to know if you were to take the maybe not quite scientific walkability score and relate that to fatalities for pedestrians.

Do we have places where

They're perfectly safe and there aren't pedestrian fatalities occurring there.

I want to say yes to all of the above for your answer to the question.

So I mentioned earlier that there was a big increase in pet fatalities in 2022.

There's a big effort right now kind of driven by a question to ask by the VDOT commissioner related to what is happening with pedestrians.

And so there has been a lot of data pulled together

in the past two, three months related to what is happening with ped fatalities.

I can tell you that there are more instances where a ped fatality occurred when the pedestrian was drunk than when it was caused by a drunk driver.

So it's much more common that a pedestrian is drinking and then dies or is injured in a crash.

Part of that, I think there's

In terms of how we look at that in this plan effort, I think we're kind of covering our bases in two places because that data can be looked at in the pedestrian emphasis area and in the impaired driving emphasis area.

So I don't think there would be a new focus area, but it could be a way to, two different ways to organize thoughts and think about what could be done to address that.

Yeah, so I think it's my next slide, two slides.

We'll talk about all the efforts to still be completed related to data analysis.

You can dive very deep into data.

I have spent a lot of the past couple years doing that.

But one of the things that we will be compiling is

contributing factor chart or map that shows how many crashes involve one or more emphasis areas.

So it will show the high correlation between speeding and roadway departure and it will show the correlation between impaired driving and seatbelt use.

So there is a way to look at that and then we will also have maps that we can pull together

It's kind of several parts, I guess, to it, but who is involved stakeholder-wise on that level?

I mean, for example, in Nelson County,

Augusta County actually provides some of our EMS services, but they're not part of this PDC.

I guess that was the other part of my question is I know part of the scope is looking at other plans that have been adopted.

That's not necessarily part of this scope of work, like with the consultants, but it is something, you know, I know several of the PDCs that are also doing this.

I mean, there is some like conversation that's occurring among us, but not to the extent where we're necessarily coordinating our safe streets and risk for all plans.

But that being said, I think if the goal of this is to identify the best improvements for this area in terms of who we are involving in conversations when we get to the point of identifying actions, I do think it would be appropriate to ask then someone from Augusta County to participate in those meetings and those conversations, even if they aren't physically in the PDC, if they are contributing to

I did have one question.

You were talking about the red light running earlier.

We are starting to.

I don't know exactly where that is going to lead because what we know is that it's not super well defined in the data, but we're still looking into understanding

I can tell you that we're

Software that will help identify grid-like running forests.

Now, we're very early in the process.

I won't say anything then.

So Mark, before we move on from this slide, I think you started the conversation asking which of these could be or should be removed from consideration because maybe they're not this big of a focus for the region.

I've heard us talk about adding a bunch, but before we move

It's a little weird when we say we're not going to focus on something.

It's not that we're not acknowledging it, that the state isn't acknowledging it because of SHSP, but limited time, limited resources, limited staff capacity.

I know that older drivers

Maybe there's something there.

Yeah, and action-wise, it tended to be part education-focused.

So with older drivers, there are

Well I think it's more there are certain programs in place through the D&D and other resources that they can understand what is changing about their body and how that means they should sit in their vehicle differently and things that they are educating about other resources that are available to them from a transportation perspective.

I will say that we do have some other initiatives related to aging and maybe not just

Yeah, so this could sort of tie into some of the other initiatives, at least some of them working on setting up a mobility management program, for example, which could provide some strong connection between these two initiatives.

sort of saying like maybe there are some considerations as people are aging.

So I do think there are some opportunities basically for us to develop recommendations around here.

I think if I'm understanding correctly though is the reason we're trying to maybe limit these to really focus the analysis like we're trying to sort of narrow this down so we can sort of like focus on which factors we want to understand better before we kind of identify what's rising to the top.

So with that being said, I think priorities for our region are going to

So I think maybe Ben and Alberic can weigh in on is the heavy vehicles or I know I hear like from every single rural locality that there's a concern about heavy vehicles and questions about that.

One thing I've noticed so far when this is happening with Batesville now is like these cross communities are like, you're having heavy trucks go through these places which have to go sometime.

They're going through them so a lot of the concern with these large trucks

For baseball residents, their biggest concern is having traffic trailers drive literally feet from their houses where kids end up playing just because it was built in 1750 to have trucks and still is not built now and it's not going to get rebuilt.

So a lot of it is just the concern of trucks that close to essentially where people live.

And then as more development and stuff come online, all those construction trucks as well will be using that.

And this is a mainly residential area.

Right, it is largely driven by crash data, but one of the major differences, so like, you know, this isn't, if we're

Comparing to a SMART SCALE, where you're developing a project and how many crashes that project has the potential of reducing is a direct factor in the likelihood of that getting funded.

This plan, it's incorporating other aspects.

So knowledge of the community, what we hear from the public.

What a fun.

I was just saying, because this is a plan for everyone who didn't seem to need to have specific focus on restaurants and bicyclists.

No, I'm not an opposite of what I'm getting at.

And I will add, we do not have to have this fully settled and decided today, right?

Take a look.

I also, so the presentation included the link, but I'll make sure I'll follow up in an email with a link to the statewide SHSP.

I encourage you to at least look at it.

It provides, you know, getting some context in terms of, and I guess one big caveat is, right, what we don't do on the statewide level is focus on location specific issues.

So when we're talking about intersections as a problem, we're not identifying individual intersections that need improvements in that statewide plan.

We're more focusing on as a whole, we need to make these types of improvements at intersections.

that's going to be something that changes a little bit from this right for this plan we can become location specific we can identify an individual improvement at a location that has crashes but we can also focus on more holistic things and skimming through the actions in this plan will give you an idea as to what types of things can be included knowing that we can get a lot more granular but

Any thoughts that you have after, if you take a look at the SHSP, take another look at this presentation, just send them our way.

What I'm hearing now, just to recap, I didn't hear any naysayers about removing the connected and automated vehicles.

So from that standpoint, it looks like we'll take that off the table.

Potentially can take off data and analytics, but we want to at least spend a little effort just to make sure that we have consistency amongst how that's done in the region.

In terms of some potential things to add to the list, agriculture or farm related vehicles, an emphasis area related to transit improvements.

and then potentially and I guess going back to your question related to sun glare is there do you think there would be value in almost having like a weather or environment category as a whole?

I don't know if that leads to

I think what we did several years ago is we looked at, because on I-64 we were in the eastbound at about on marker 114, 115 or so certain times of the year that sun is coming up the hill and hits you right in the ass.

And we looked at

It never took root and we never really did it, but we did a study where we recommended doing that.

at the same time of year on the Atherton Mountain from the top.

It kind of pushed right forward really bad, too.

I've always thought of that messaging kind of thing.

It's a really cool way of trying.

Well, the FR-300s, you think it's hard to screen for red light running.

It's even harder to screen for things like that.

It's going to have the quality of the feedback that feeds into this.

That might be something that you can actually...

Especially if you interview a police department or somebody like that and they sort of recommend something, you might go back and dab and look at the spots that they identified as problematic.

Yeah, additionally to the sunlight and the rainwater.

We actually discussed it on areas along 29 too, but we were having a hard time finding suitable places to install it.

You guys also have some deer reflectors, right?

Yeah, I'm not sure about that.

No, no, no.

Yeah, and I will say I am not going to pretend to be the expert in VDOT's treatment of roads or inclement weather respondents, but I guess I would point the question to

to ask, is there any value or any improvements that you could see being listed as a part of this plan that could change the way that you go about any of those activities?

And if so, maybe we include it.

I can tell you that VDOT spends a lot of time discussing that and a lot of the pretreatment

enough is going to start us knowing, continue to please know, and you know that in pre-treatment.

from a location specific if we can identify areas that maybe have a stronger pattern of more specifically like rain or standing water type crashes that maybe it could lend itself to where we need to reevaluate drainage at certain locations.

But what's

What can be difficult with that is that you don't always have a strong enough of a crash pattern.

I saw the public and everybody else.

Yeah, so I think maybe the best path forward for this is to start by

Not including a weather-related emphasis area, but we can wait.

That sound OK with everybody?

Before we move off this, I just wanna be real.

But I would just add, for Data and Analytics, we have Lake Anna, which is a seasonally visited attraction.

Most of the data, most of the traffic data accounts take place during the school year, which of course is when most of the visitors are not at Lake Anna, which is between June and August.

So it's a pretty common refrain that we say that those numbers

don't really accurately reflect the actual number of vehicles on the roads with ATs, but also they don't recognize the inexperienced drivers that are on the roads that are visitors that are coming there as tourists between June and August.

This is really just not to really focus on that this map more to be a talking point of what's coming next because if we're talking about a density map of fatal serious injury you know we're going to see more density in the city of Charlottesville and a little bit in our long-term need just because of the numbers but this is more a place where we talk about what is what is coming next we will be doing a lot of mapping efforts pulling together

Density Maps high-end hearing networks that we'll look at both on a jurisdictional level and then roll up into a regional discussion of high crash locations.

And then in terms of upcoming efforts related to data and identification of problems.

So first thing is taking the feedback here that I'm hearing today, going back and starting to incorporate the data for other emphasis areas that we've identified.

You mentioned the emphasis area heat map that will help show correlation across the emphasis areas to show what trashes tend to have one or more factors present.

High Injury Network we have talked about already.

One thing we have not talked about is VDOT screening level data.

So we will also be incorporating PSI, which is Potential for Safety Improvement.

So that is a network level, screening level data set that identifies segments or intersections that are experiencing more crashes than you would expect based off of the type of roadway, the volume on it.

So essentially, where are segments or intersections performing worse than you would expect?

PSAP is the Pedestrian Safety Action Plan, so that is a separate data set that identifies priority corridors that may be apt for pedestrian level improvements that considers pedestrian crash data, but it does not have to have crash data to be identified as a priority corridor.

That is true.

So that being said though, one of our scope items is that we can revise the PSAP analysis with input specific from this region related to how those factors get incorporated into the priority corridors.

And so that will be a conversation to have at a later meeting, but we can talk about how those various factors are weighted.

And so it may lead to a slightly different network of priority corridors than what was released on the statewide level.

Other efforts will be incorporating the underserved community data from two Federal Highway datasets.

We actually started to incorporate that already.

One other item that we included in our scope is to actually do some site visits with members from each jurisdiction.

So once we develop our high-end drain network and

Identify either segments of roadway or intersections or actually spend some time out at those sites with you all to for one thing to talk about what might be contributing to factors but on the other side there is typically a lot that our teams can learn from being at an intersection and either watching how vehicles interact with each other or how they might interact with a signal or pedestrians and so

As we move forward and identify those areas, we'll be reaching out to schedule a time to actually go out in the field with you all.

And then we did mention earlier that we'll be looking back at previously completed studies and plans to see what priorities were identified from a safety and what solutions were identified.

Have those solutions been implemented or funded yet?

Are there any troubles getting funding for those and should they be incorporated into our plan?

Do you have a literature review list of our name?

And one other item that I did not include on this list but I wanted to at least mention is we also included some effort to develop some infographics related to crash problems that can be used in any public materials or potentially released on social media to help

Either advertise the plan or advertise some of the problems that we are noticing to almost increase awareness ahead of all of the other public involvement efforts that we will be doing as part of the plan.

And these are just the upcoming efforts related to data.

So there's a lot else that's going to be on the table for public engagement and this effort as a whole, but I'm trying to make sure that the next year and a half is going to go smoothly with this plan so that we're pulling together the best product possible.

So with that, so my contact information is on this slide.

Steven and Ryan are the two staff at VDOT central office on the safety team that are responsible for offering the support from VDOT to the PDC.

Thank you both, appreciate it.

All right, well, we're a little over time, so let's move into a very brief, quick roundtable of that work for everybody.

I just have a few things for you all.

We ended up with drawing on growth and accessibility planning, technical assistance, application, which was disappointing, but I think it will give us an opportunity to provide

It's more education to the public on exactly what it is and what's going to be accomplished with that.

We have our presidency plan that will be announced at the end of August.

We've had approximately 115,000 people come, so it's a good turnout.

Overall, the feedback's been really positive, so look forward to moving right along with that.

And we're having our next work session, then in September, we're going to be doing all of the controlling work which is going to be available.

We got the preliminary results back from the route.

We're going to do one more study.

We're expecting the public meetings and survey to be in in the middle of October.

And then here's my plug.

If you are not aware of the Rural Planning Caucus, I'm on the executive committee.

And that conference is going to be in October at Mount Lake Lodge.

So it's a really good opportunity for anyone rural or not rural to come in.

Louisa County, the Planning Commission last week recommended short criminal regulations to the Board of Supervisors.

We may or may not be aware of any bonds invested in Louisa County for the community center campuses.

And I'll leave anything else to the Director

Thanks for letting me come and see this.

Thanks for having me.

providers, and that's going to be a little accident because I've worked so good just running through an accident.

It's an awesome day.

I already know that's important, but we're feeling very slowly right now.

But, strengthening relationships for our office is going to be with the Sheriff's Office and the public schools.

And so, one of the things we've really talked about with stakeholders is that we're an agent, we're an SSO, so we're building some of that right now.

who are technical for all of our members.

And for that, I really just want to mention a note from the last speaker.

I'm not sure if it's false, but we'll process it and update those.

We are currently working through our zoning code.

Pretty right, our planning commission just had a

Public Engagement event last week of five hours of public talent on our zoning code.

So that's sort of the big show in town.

We're also rolling up on 160 projects, mostly paint, and lasting operates for our State Drought to School program as well.

We're working on our transit strategic plan with CAD right now.

We're also working on an ADA transition plan to evaluate our bus stop, center, sidewalks, and microwave all throughout town.

and this weekend we have a big event with Vanna Trails Foundation in Deville.

There will be quite a few people out on the trail, hikers, bikers, runners, some people just bibbling around having fun.

Saturday, if you can come out, we'd love to have you.

There's also some events on Sunday.

Um, SMART SCALE, right around the corner, it's less than you think.

The district, the district is going to be reaching out to you all.

We're going to set up this as the resident engineer's office late October to sit down and do the locality.

We might be interested in working well this year.

Obviously, some of these things will be

I'd like to start studies which are on the points for what we all are working on.

Of course, Chuck's got his working on his PSI slides, so we can go back to our publications and potential safety improvements.

And I guess we'll also be working a lot with applications that were previously submitted, maybe between.

I think next week we'll go with the Planning Commission to work on planning toolkits for the comp plan.

Otherwise we're finishing up the prioritization draft process.

We're going to go to the board probably in October to get like feedback on our

On the four of us, she's working on resubmitting a grant for the Reconnecting Neighborhood and Communities grant that we had last year.

We're close to getting it done.

Pete's desk, but didn't get his signature.

And then that's kind of what's been happening so far.

No, nothing.

Well, so we have been kind of working to incorporate some of the TDP recommendations they made for our connect routes.

So I'm currently working on the Buckingham Connector design right now.

So we'll be rolling out an absence to the public probably this coming October.

And then we'll be moving on to Crozet next.

So that's going on.

And then we're also just had our first kickoff meeting for our

I'll be following it up.

I will do my best to share information out as I become aware of it, but if you have any questions,

Feel free to reach out to me.

I don't have anything to add.

I don't know if anyone online wants to add anything to that.

I'm mute, but I don't have anything.

Michael pretty much covered it.

Like I said, I've got SMART SCALE presentations I'm putting together.

I should be sending them out in the next week or so.

Once we get everybody's review with the PSI locations that we've got from 2021, along with some

recommendations.

It also is going to outline summary of the changes that are proposed.

Thank you.

Anybody else online like to add to the round table?

All right.

Did we have anybody from the public join us in the meeting?