Rural Transportation Advisory Committee Meeting   11/28/2023

along the regional network.

My colleague Rashawn is going to provide a more detailed look at the role of community champions and how you can help us identify the right champions to reflect your jurisdiction.

Just think back in your specific counties, which communities would be considered under engaged.

If you're looking for someone to respond, in Greene County, it would be Latinos, African Americans, and really, I would argue anybody that is probably 60% or less of the AMI,

Thank you for that.

The rest of the county is less engaged on varying degrees, but we do have some specific areas like Norwood and Wingina and Gladstone that are harder to reach.

You said Gladstone?

Gladstone, yeah.

Okay, perfect.

It's right down by the James River and pretty far from the rest of the county.

Those are problems, issues that just about every rural county is going to face, though.

You can get to them, but again, historically they've been kind of isolated into little enclaves almost.

That was evident that it was either underserved purposely or people aren't engaged or not participating.

Yeah, Jason, what was the last one?

They're just small communities, crossroad communities.

can come up and mute or put in the chat.

that are retirement age or older might be a little bit underrepresented as well.

So if we can just take maybe a minute or two again with a mute or chat if there's specific individuals that come to mind would be helpful.

Is that part of that, or are we really talking about boots on the ground individuals that represent certain organizations and groups?

They can't be active in these groups, but they're people we would liaise with directly.

So both are helpful.

And then another question with the community champion, how much, if anything, do they need to know about transportation?

So I would say it's more important that they understand their community, they're respected in their community or have good roots or connections there.

Excellent, thanks Chris.

Chris, what part of the county does Willie Gentry typically represent?

So Willie's in the Cuckoo District, which is central and eastern part of the lake.

For those members of the committee that don't have people that come to mind immediately, when do you need that information by?

So within the next week would be great.

Does anybody that's online today have some names they'd like to give out now or is everybody like to go back and sort that out?

But like I said, I'll get with Dylan and we'll get you a list before December 10th.

All right, well, I will leave my email in the chat and then we'll send you guys some follow up, but this has been incredibly helpful.

That's great.

Excellent.

I would prefer to Chuck on this one as far as the SMART SCALE side.

Educate us on SMART SCALE.

Any questions?

No Chuck, if you get a chance as we move on to the next agenda items, could you drop the link to where the most recent recommendations are for consideration in the meeting chat?

Yeah, let me go to it and I'll drop it in the chat.

All right, thank you so much.

All right, thanks, everyone.

Mr. Youngblood, I'm looking forward to hearing about the Ralph 151 corridor study.

How's everybody today?

Well, thank you for presenting right after Thanksgiving.

Do you want me to show that or do you want me to just kind of go through a briefing discussion over the meeting and what the study is?

Is there a preference from the committee?

You'll give me the share opportunity I can.

You should be able to, is it not letting you?

So with that, I'll open up for any questions.

I know that basically the localities have the ability to sort of require higher standards than VDOT can require, but can VDOT advise the counties and the localities on those improvements to be requesting?

If they find it challenging and unsafe, folks are gonna find someplace else to go.

Do you have any thoughts on maybe sort of the or does anybody have any thoughts on sort of the status and the opportunity to implement some of these like more I guess like comprehensive strategies when the funding programs seem to be so project specific?

One of the parts of the game that we play going through, we just try to maximize all funding streams and not just SMART SCALE.

It's just that most of the projects now are more over costly than what some of those funding applications can support.

I think it'd be good to have DDOT give us another update on SMART SCALE on mainly two things, how many projects we'll actually be able to submit and if there's an update to the PSI ranking going into the next year.

But we have that information updated through 2022.

I mean, if there's a list of four or five, 10 things that they could be interesting for us to all hear it and then have a discussion of what we could add to that.

And so, Chuck, if you're okay with that, you and I can touch base maybe early next week and I can put together a little presentation and get your input in as well.

That sounds good.

Okay, I didn't think you'd have a problem with that.

No, not at all.

What do you think, Sandy?

works what doesn't work.

Do you wanna have other ideas?

I don't want to speak for Dylan but I do really like that last topic idea that's something that we've been kind of working on on our own side of things and you know we're going into updating the zoning ordinance and everything and we used to have you know formal site plan review committee meetings before bringing things to planning commission and subsequently the board but over the past several years we haven't held an SPCA meeting in a long time and we're trying to figure out how we want to do things going forward.

How do other localities deal with the private drive aisles that we've received bonding for, but it's not enough to actually convert it to full VDOT spec road, how they've dealt with that, because I know we've got several in the queue, and I'm sure that there's others out there that have a similar situation.

So you have roads that were bonded that were supposed to be taken into the system, but the bond wasn't high enough to

And I don't really know the answer and I know we've talked internally about it, but Tom's idea about asking the other localities brought up a good point.

Are other localities experiencing that?

And I know the Home Members Associations have worked with the county and going after revenue sharing in order to bring the road up to at least some standard.

Yeah, I was at Campbell County when they did that, too, right?

And so it is one part of a process.

So it is an issue.

I don't know if we can do that by the next meeting, but we'll keep it on the radar.

Yeah, and we may have to get some residency folks involved with that too, because they're the ones that typically deal with those issues.

Vandy, I know it was light on ideas in the last meeting, so I've got you four now.

It sounds like it's going to be the Rick and Chuck show at the next meeting.

Yeah.

Probably January, February, right, Sandy?

The next meeting would be in January.

If it's December, I wouldn't be there.

Fair.

Thanks, Rick.

Well, I'll go ahead and kick off roundtable.

So lots of things happening in Louisa County and I will turn the floor over to somebody else.

So that'll be interesting as well because we just adopted our solar ordinance a couple years ago and this will be the first time that we're actually utilizing it.

If you have any questions about solar, feel free to reach out.

That's about it transportation-wise.

Just keep keep grinding on the current projects, like Route 20 and 3% is still just moving forward through the process.

Thank you.

Jim, what you got going on in Greene?

So we've got a lot of good things that are happening and exciting things that should make improvements and help the traffic flow when the rest of the commercial and residential gets built.

Does anybody else want to give an update?

Curtis, do you want to, wait, did Curtis leave?

No, I'm here.

Curtis, did you want to share just the upcoming meetings for Safe Streets and Rides for All?

Those are the only things I have for Safe Streets currently.

Thank you.

Congratulations.

Cheers.

You're talking about Albemarle, not on the committee.

It'd be kind of a fun job for me though, I guess.

I'm in on this committee.

I'm like, whoa, am I director without knowing?

Bye, everyone.

Thank you all.