Rural Transportation Advisory Committee Meeting   1/16/2024

And then folks online, can you confirm if you can hear us?

We can hear you.

All right, great.

Thanks, Carson.

Tom, I'll turn it over to you.

I don't think we have a quorum.

Well, I would like to thank everybody for joining online.

There's online that does not appear that we have an official forum, so we're not going to have a meeting today.

We can still have the presentations and discussions.

We just can't vote on anything.

Well, would it be fair to those that are presenting to go by?

and to save it for the next meeting.

I mean, I'd love to hear about the Louisa Carlin presentation, or I guess Dylan online, right?

Well, we have Dylan and Jim and Carson on.

And everything will be recorded too.

OK. Have you all started recording?

OK.

Yeah.

Chuck?

OK.

OK. Do you know how to join the Zoom, Chuck?

You can join the Zoom meeting and then you can share it.

You should be able to share your screen.

I think I copied you on an email.

Good afternoon everyone.

Can you hear me?

Soon you can.

As part of this meeting, I was asked to present the PSI stuff.

So we had the 2017 to 21 information before when we started SMART SCALE.

We just got the 2018 to 2022 data set in end of November, beginning of December.

So we put together this

maps in the PSI list.

And I'm basically going to present that.

I also put in the projects that for SMART SCALE that we're proposing for this round that we're working on.

The first one, this is just PSI data.

It's the potential for safety improvements.

And it's basically the top

Crash locations in the district ranked by the total number of crashes.

We use this as a cursory way to identify where our serious locations are that we want to try to consider for improvements.

And I'll work with you guys on identifying those based on these lists.

And they also are incorporated into the V-Trans needs and

Those are, I think, going to be, we're supposed to be updated as of this month.

So hopefully that's all taking place.

OK.

This is Albemarle County.

We'll skip through this when nobody's here.

Fluvanna, is anybody here from Fluvanna?

All right Jim, here's the updated information.

Basically we're looking at

Most of the intersections that we discussed before, I don't think there was anything really new.

It's funny that the one intersection at Greencroft dropped off and Advanced Mills came on, so the project that we had planned will still work.

The rank dropped there to 84, so

and then the other one 607 jumped up I saw that one it's like 15th now that's pretty high so we probably need to actually there was a crash there this morning yeah they had it there was a rear-end crash I think in the inside lane that I had to go through this morning so yeah that one's problematic so those are the locations and then the next ones are the segments

We're just doing the official confirmation.

We have a resolution from the board that they will support these when they're ready for official submission.

OK. Like I said, we're going to review them and update them and get you the information probably sometime into next month, beginning of March.

Right.

I think L&Ds are already looking at these so as soon as they get that information we'll be working with you on those applications.

Not as much to do this time because they don't have economic development.

We haven't yet, no.

Yes.

And then land use is back in after the CTB took it out in December.

They put it back in as a multiplier.

Yeah, that's the way it's going to go.

I agree.

OK, that's all I have.

No, thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right, Louisa.

Tom.

Here's your locations, like I said, a lot of them are the same.

Corner Store, Dickerson Store is still on and then 22 and 15 came back on it was on there before like we talked about and before and then the Camp Creek is still the highest location and then 250 and 15 are the second and then I think fourth is the 22

15, and then fifth would be the 208, 250, but it's way down the list.

I think it dropped to, I forget what the number was.

Yeah, it went to 98, which is low.

So the other ones will probably be the best locations.

And like I said, we can talk about looking at mineral.

I know that one was something that Scott mentioned to me.

But I just don't have time to do it right now.

But we can, I know it's been something, and I don't, even submitting it for SMART SCALE, I don't know how well it could be funded.

Because you don't, you're not only eligible for safety.

So I don't even know if they would, you could submit that as an eligible project.

Something to consider.

Are you guys still looking at EDAs?

The topic comes up as the conversation drops off.

Okay.

All right.

That's all I have for you guys.

And I think the recommendations are what we had talked about before the two intersections.

So just as soon as you let me know, that'd be great.

I already have staff working on them to get them ready.

Rick and Carson are both on as well.

Sorry, I got multiple things going on.

I mean, based on the new regulations and guidelines,

We've got the 151 corridor study going on.

We'll more than likely prioritize two roundabout projects to support applications.

My assumption is they'll be the priority projects

Yeah, I noticed one of those was pretty high.

The one at 29, and what is it, Route 6?

Yeah, there's two 6 and 151 locations.

One's a north, one's a south.

The south one is a funded, probably about $16 million project, which is under design now.

The northern one was an HSIP project probably about 10, 11 years ago, but it's still showing up as a high priority PSI location.

Yeah, we can do that.

I think we had a little bit of discussion at MPO Tech this morning.

But basically, you guys have a lot.

And I will tell you from the start, this isn't all the locations.

I only put in the top 50 PSI locations.

There's probably twice as many.

And for the segments, I only put in the rank in multiple different ways, but I only put in the top 100.

locations, but there are many more than that also.

So it's multiple pages worth of data.

Here are all the locations.

No, it's, let's see, it is Woodbrook.

Number two is eight,

866, I don't remember which one that is.

Number three is Woodbrook.

Scroll down, it might be, go up one page, go back to the map.

Three is on the right, one's at the bottom, I'm trying to find two.

No, that's a segment.

I can't remember where 866 is, but you have the top, many of the top locations in the district.

And I think we need to start, we'll probably have to start looking at the corridor again, these locations.

I know Michael and I were, had already started talking about it.

Yeah, we have- Too compressed.

We have right now an application that opened and funded, I think sometime this month, for the DOT.

They're very connected between these neighborhoods.

Yeah.

around those intersections because it's not pretty right now.

So we may have to look at something along that portal as well.

That's pretty much it for Albemarle.

Like I said, we've got the other locations, but it's going to be this data.

It's incorporated in the V-Trans.

They haven't prioritized the V-Trans needs, but they used to update the V-Trans, and that's what they're doing this month.

Sandy one of the other components with the PSIs typically the traffic engineering sections I know in our district they will pull upwards to 100 locations and do an individual study what we kind of call pretty much call like many roadway safety audit locations and we may have one or two of those projects that pop up to be potential SMART SCALE but

Typically, they're handled on their maintenance and operations funding or HSIP or different programs like that.

So sometimes local government entities won't have to go through any application phases.

That's great.

You know, artists do the same thing.

A lot of times for the projects that they can't do with HSIP, they'll let me know what the locations are and recommendations, and then we'll look at that.

Plank Road,

is one of the ones in Albemarle County that they actually studied for an archive.

And that's one of the ones they're looking at submitting.

So we're going to use that study that Captain Jerm did.

Of course, Chuck, I missed the front end.

I was tied up with something else.

Yeah, pretty much.

We've got them all defined.

At this point, I've been trying to coordinate that early on.

Tom and I were just having that discussion earlier.

But yeah, we've got emails from a couple of different people saying no more.

Fortunately, we're not too bad of shape.

Yeah, I think your district and my district, we've been

The two status quo at about 28 to 32 projects every round.

Yeah, we're looking at four pipelines projects also.

Actually more than that.

Because NPA might submit some, the county might submit some, plus I got some up north in the same boat.

Yeah, that was pretty horrible.

And I was really, we have two projects, both our pipelines projects and Albemarle have interchanges on them.

Yeah.

If your OSAR is not anywhere near

So yeah, that's what, well, we're gonna get to that.

It's just a matter of, do we have to do phase two or just phase one?

If we have to do just the alternatives analysis, then I think we can probably get to that and get a preferred alternative, but that's about it.

If we have to do anything beyond that, it's gonna be difficult.

Yeah, everybody should have gotten an email yesterday or today from Office of Automotive Planning.

Probably the most detailed email I've seen sent out as far as information.

Definitely get in there and start reading all that so that you understand the process moving forward.

Oh yeah.

There's also a, if you don't have it on your calendars, there's also a training that's scheduled for February 28th.

So, yeah.

Speaking of which, we can go ahead and just talk about, I think you all are aware at this point of what the proposed changes are, or what the changes now are.

They're not proposed anymore.

They are actual changes.

So, but just real briefly, I'll go through what the differences are from round, the previous round, round five.

The biggest changes that are going to be very direct are

not going to affect local projects or projects that are local through the Lynchburg district funding program but are eligible to receive funding through the high priority program.

So localities are still eligible to submit projects that can be funded through the high priority program, but they can also submit projects funded through the district grant programs.

MPOs, transit agencies, and PDCs are only eligible to submit projects to the high-quality program, though.

So when they added these eligibility criteria for the high-priority program, what this means is it limits the types of projects that MPOs, PDCs, and transit agencies can submit to just this list.

And then any local projects or projects that are submitted by the localities, if they meet this criteria, could also be eligible for the high-quality program.

One of the reasons that this is a little bit important is because the funding, the amount of total funding for the Culpeper District and the local district is, for the Culpeper District, I think, currently around $26 million.

That was what my last slide was.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is fine.

That can't be right.

And the reason for that is we don't have any interstate.

I mean, 64 and 66 go through the district.

From our district.

OK.

I must have either looked at it wrong or there was a typo on the slide outlet because I looked at that at the back of your head.

All right.

But the point is that if you have like a $40 million project, that's going to eat up a large portion of that district grant program budget.

And so it is helpful to know what types of projects might be eligible for that.

So before projects that were eligible for the high priority program were just based on where the project was located, either in a forward or a statewide significance or in a regional network, which were largely related to the NPOs.

They still have to meet that criteria, but now they also are limited to one of these types of projects, which are largely focused on new capacity projects, adding lanes, adding new road alignments, improving interchanges, significant improvements to transit and freight movements,

and then in yellow they added this entire corridor improvements identified as preferred alternatives and STARS pipeline studies or another MPA study in coordination with the state.

So what this means is that if you have a project pipeline or STARS study that you work on and you identify a set of preferred alternatives, if you submit an application for all of those alternatives combined in one application, those would be eligible for that.

but you have to submit all of them.

Otherwise, at the localities, you can pull out sections of any one of those studies and submit just those applications through the district grant program.

The other thing that occurred is that there are some modifications to the weighting factors.

And so for the MPO area, that's type B.

And then for all of the areas within the TJPDC area outside of the MPO, that's area type C.

So this is going to be the weighting criteria that are going to be used to evaluate your SMART SCALE projects.

This was bumped up 30% of your benefit points will come from safety.

So any of those safety target areas are going to be a large percentage of your score.

Congestion of 20%, accessibility is 15%.

Economic development is 25%.

So again,

It's really important that you are entering all of your economic development information into the Virginia scan database because economic development is going to be 25% of your score and then environmental considerations are 10%.

The land use was converted to a multiplier so basically your benefits are going to be assessed over the other five scoring criteria.

and then if you have identified land use benefits, those are going to be multiplied to increase your baseline points and all of those other factors.

So then as Chuck said, there are also procedural changes.

So it's going to be really important that we are all working proactively, not just through this cycle, but through future cycles to identify projects.

with enough time to make sure that we can meet all of those application requirements.

One thing that we heard very loud and clear through all of the CTB meetings is that they were going to, because they did not change the number of applications each entity is able to submit, they're going to enforce the application completeness requirements pretty, pretty stringently.

So that means that whereas previously we had opportunities that were missing,

one or two analyses or a letter of resolution or anything like that.

There was some flexibility to add that after the application deadline and it doesn't sound like that flexibility will be expended moving forward.

There was a lot of discussion last week about actually making changes after the pre-application period.

Okay.

And I think it opens it back up for most of the criteria, but uploading some of the documentation and actually making changes, they're not sure if we're even there actually going to be able to do it.

Well, not only you guys might be able to do it, but we can do it.

So that could, I've got to find out.

They weren't sure last week, so more to come on that.

But it's going to be critical to get those critical documents in by March, end of March.

Yeah, the big takeaway, if you're able to clone an application that was made it through SMART SCALE last year, go ahead and do that as quickly as you can.

Cost estimates don't have to be finalized through the pre-app phase.

I got that solidified today.

And then I also saw that the pre-scoping module, which is basically a place where you can start entering that information before the applications are open,

are being encouraged to be used.

If you're rolling an existing application over, I would just clone it into the new application application.

If the way the pre-screening module works is we can actually edit it live.

And then what happens is we review it and we have to say, yeah, it's ready.

And then you can clone it into the

Application.

So you might as well just, if you haven't started it already, you can start it in there and then you could roll it over, but it just adds another layer with you on our part to actually do it.

Or if you want to collaborate on an application, we can do that during that process.

Yeah.

So I think that covers all of the most important topics, but yeah, it's just going to be important that everybody's paying attention.

And often the pre-applications we confirm, they're going to open on March 1st.

They're going to need to be submitted on April 1st.

So you don't have to know when the application window opens.

You do not need resolutions of support from your governing bodies during the pre-application.

And you can't have them later.

That's one of the things that we're really strict on.

No, thank you, Chuck.

I appreciate it.

Yeah, I got a confirmation, 5.2.

Sorry, 5.2.15.

Cool.

What was that report you said from the way

It went out as a mass email to all the people that have SMART SCALE.

It's also on the SMART SCALE webpage.

I haven't.

and what is the best way to get into these plans, right?

The Economic Development Department should be able to support that.

I just wanted to ask Al for general on case anybody would be curious.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chuck.

You're welcome.

Do you want to do a roundtable or do you want to go to the roundtable?

Thanks, Dara.

We are, it's a planning commission having provided the facilities plans, which are

starting to be in admission to our 2045 as the planet was supervising for review.

And I think it will be another busy year here for Duluth County just looking forward.

That's all I have for today.

We're working on all the panel doing the oral assessments.

We're going to be talking to Laura and then Nancy, David and Nancy.

We're going to talk about kind of what

They want transportation-wise, something bad, but also they're going to work on a new six-year plan.

So there are six roads in the county that if we get enough approval from residents on the road, we'll be paid.

So that's incentive for them.

So that's all we have right now.

Anybody behind?

Just a couple things but they're big things I reckon we've got our comp plan public hearings coming up so our planning commission public hearing will be at the high school on the 31st at the end of the month and

We're just continuing to work on the four pipeline studies

and the three star studies I got going on, as well as all SMART SCALE applications.

Yeah, one of the things I'll share, we're getting into the last phase of our 151 corridor study.

We've had pretty robust participation in our public meetings.

Anybody that knows that corridor and the community there can always expect a lot of participants.

Just to give you some stats on the recently closed survey, over 829 participants, almost 4,000 views on the survey, close to 7,000 responses, and over 1,000 specific comments.

So the survey, the online surveys that we're doing now with the studies are extremely valuable.

And, you know,

Just appreciate everybody's, you know, Nelson County, Sandy, PDC, and posting that information out and getting it through the social media feeds.

Even in our pipeline studies, the new public input process that we're utilizing is just gangbusters as far as getting people involved.

I was going to say, I chime in, we had a public meeting for one of our star studies.

I had two people show up.

Chuck, when we have our next 151 corridor, I'll invite you.

Anything else from the PDC here?

Yeah, we are working on drafting the letters of commitment for each of the jurisdictions right now.

So if you haven't heard from us yet, keep an eye out.

We'll probably be discussing it all with you in the coming weeks and presenting to your boards shortly thereafter.

Thank you.

Yep.

And then I actually have a follow-up question.

We'll get in the notes here for SMART SCALE.

What is the distance around an intersection

that you have that you can put economic development into these canons.

It's still, those are still, the criteria is still there.

Three miles.

Interchange, not intersection.

So roundabouts fall under the one-mile criteria.

That's listed in detail in the technical guide.

None of that changed.

All they're going to do is they're going to import the layer from these Virginia scans in and then they're going to basically

Thank you.

Anything else for the group?

Well, I appreciate all of the people that are joining us here online and in person.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Curtis, I haven't forgot about you.

I'm putting together some best practices for corridor overlays.

Awesome.

Yep.