Rural Transportation Advisory Committee Meeting   5/21/2024

Hi, my name is Tom Egeland.

I'm the chairman of RTAC, the Rural Transportation Advisory Committee for Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, and I call the meeting to order.

We can, sure, yeah.

It does not look like, Douglas is not the representative for Fluvanna anymore.

That's what I thought, yeah.

So then we have Alberic,

How do you say your last name?

I'm sorry.

Karina Plun.

Karina Plun from Albemarle County.

We have one member of the public today, which is a rarity.

Do you have anything you would like to bring to our attention?

Well, since you asked, I saw this morning the localities

We may have the ability to lower speed limits on the state of the state of the Congress, in general.

And one of the things I've been working on is

Well, yeah, it's interesting that I know a voice for violence and a request for reduction is needed from the data office and we would have to pay for that.

and then the VDOT gives recommendations, but your team should receive the VDOT.

So I'd be interested perhaps in the next meeting to learn more about that.

Is it, you know, is there still the process of requesting a reduction of state in the VDOT office or is there now a different process where we can go, we want this segment from here to here to be the state and we're going to have to really resolution it to happen.

I can share 16 years of experience and typically more supervisor can make the request.

and VDOT will do a sweet study.

There are a certain number, it depends on how much this is abused, but a certain number of these are provided for already in the funding.

It's not something the county has to add extra money.

We cover the cost more unless they're asking for one every week.

And I've been through over a dozen.

Typically, the result is, there is the safety, the speed that people travel on the road, and there's a speed that people would like to reduce to.

And people traditionally by habit drive what they think is appropriate for the road, and then there's probably half the population that likes to follow rules.

So then if the speed limit is 55, for example, and everybody's driving a 65, and you drop it at 45, now you've just made all of the accidents more severe and more dangerous.

You have a large difference between people following the law and the people doing what they like.

And typically the roads aren't going to speed up.

and the majority of the studies that have been done have come up with that type of scenario.

Sell them have ended up with reduced speeds.

Well, I look forward to learning more about fine details.

Thank you for bringing time to work with us.

We can probably, I think we can probably put together a presentation.

Okay.

I think there's some different scenarios, and I'm a little tired.

That the revolutionary development of fluidity, the on hold patterns, you know, they're all kind of wrapped at work.

This one you just asked and you received.

OK. We can just watch it on the dinner competition.

I like that shit.

I didn't do Frank and whatever I want.

But they raised him.

All right, so, yes, we have, can we give introductions to some of you?

Yeah.

I'm Todd Fortune.

I'm the new director of planning at Fluvanna County.

This is my fourth week on the job.

Some of you who work at the PDC might know me when I used to work at the Commonwealth Regional Council.

That was my previous employer.

And I'll go ahead and make the next introduction.

This is Sarah Simba, who is one of our new staff members here at the TJPDC.

She will be working on some transportation projects.

And so we wanted her to sit in and have a chance to meet everybody here at this meeting.

You know, that is an excellent question.

It might be the current, but you know, I think we're casting a wide net and maybe going to open up our opportunity here, like in a little more.

Well, I want to move on to the approval of the minutes.

I thought they were in there.

They're rather short.

And technically, since we did not, I guess, have a full quorum in January and March, those are more like meeting notes than minutes.

But we definitely, if possible,

would like to at least approve the November.

It appears that the RICO printer repair individual was in my office this morning.

But I motion to defer the November and January notes

I have some comments from the last one.

Okay.

So can we have a motion to do the January and November negative second?

And all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Excellent.

I motion to approve the March minutes with a slight tweak.

It would appear that under VDOT with David Cook, there's a couple of questions or perhaps notations that someone's going to listen to the minutes again or perhaps ask David a couple of questions.

So I motion that that paragraph with David Cook be sorted out after we approve the minutes.

That's OK. Second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

One abstention.

Okay.

SMART SCALE applications.

Unless there's something else that we want to talk about before we go on the SMART SCALE.

You know, I think maybe Mr.

Chair, if you aren't opposed to going first.

Okay.

Welcome everybody again.

I'm Tom Egeland.

I'm a senior planner for Louisa County.

And the first slide we have here that you're all very familiar with is PSI locations for our particular county.

We have intersections and segment points.

And obviously the lower your PSI score, the more of a safety issue you have.

So interestingly enough, our lowest PSI score is the intersection of Spring Creek and Route 15.

If you remember a few years ago, that was supposed to be a bow tie interchange, which would have been the first bow tie interchange in the state of Virginia.

There's not a lot of support for that.

So although that intersection probably has the best possibility for scoring in SMART SCALE, we are not submitting a recommendation for that.

So next slide, please.

So we have been rather successful in the past with SMART SCALE.

We have a re-alignment which was completed a couple years ago, a roundabout which has been done, and in the last intersection, 522 and 208, that roundabout is currently under construction now.

So we have received three projects through SMART SCALE over the years.

Next slide, please.

And one of our three will be the intersection of, well that is going to be the intersection of 250 and Route 15.

at the Fluvanna and Louisa County border.

So this is a roundabout that would benefit both localities.

It is in the County of Louisa, so we will be submitting that as a locality.

It includes some pedestrian improvements and essentially getting rid of a four-way traffic light in a relatively busy area besides Proctor.

This intersection was submitted previously to other rounds of SMART SCALE.

Next slide, please.

Carrying on the theme of roundabouts, this particular intersection is at Boswell's Tavern.

This used to be a growth area, but it was removed as a growth area in February of 2021 when we did an update to the future landings map and the land development regulations for Louisa County.

Actually, I believe a lot of the projects in the complex plan are taken in 2019 in fall.

That's probably more likely.

This is a away traffic light currently.

It has 55 miles per hour for all directions.

And so you're in very rural areas coming to a traffic light.

You have a lot of truck traffic on here, horse trailer traffic, transit.

between basically Orangeville, Orange, Greene, further up north, down towards 64 is on a crossroad.

This hadn't been really on the PSI ranking for a couple of rounds because the curriculum has been in round one, but it's popped back up as number four games, so we'll be submitting this as a roundabout in this round of SMART SCALE.

And then the last slide, please.

This is an intersection that has been submitted in round three, round four, and round five, and will be submitted again in round six.

I actually use this intersection a lot, other than this area.

So this roundabout is near the Burnflip interchange of 64.

We have a small industrial business park in this area.

And this is another gateway into Fluvanna, between the 250 and 208, Courthouse Road.

and right now it is blinking perfectly and so

It's a high-speed area.

Again, it's 55, I think, from at least three films coming into it.

And this is an area that I can test with what events are greatly from roundabout.

In previous iterations of the concept plan, there was going to be a VDOT parking ride, but that has been removed in this round.

So these are our preliminary concept plans.

VDOT is working on a final concept plan that we'll be submitting

So the roundabout at Silent Crossroads, that's one you're planning to submit?

Correct.

Thank you.

It might be up to you.

I will say that one of the things

The 2015 round has actually scored pretty well in the first round and the previous round is just not quite good enough to be funded, but it's scoring well.

So one of the things that I just mentioned with Tom is one way that you can potentially look at some top savings is that there are some bifurcals industry in our group that are in the current draft and in the design concepts that could be removed because there are only attractions in that area.

So I think the final concept that VDOT is working forward for as part of the application would be to go ahead and acquire the right-of-way and grade the roundabout so that there's an opportunity to install those pedestrian improvements and they're also in the future but that the actual improvements would not be included as part of the project itself and that's partially to reduce the cost and often because there's no like affections in that area

The other thing that I'll mention is that since SMART SCALE has undergone that pretty significant overhaul, the impact of land use and the sporting function has decreased significantly.

And then also economic development, the way that economic development sports are being

So I don't know how much this matters.

I'm not sure how much this matters.

We are aware of that on the Fluvanna portion of the property.

And what's interesting is we don't have UDA in Fluvanna.

We do not have UDA.

So that also accounts for the scoring.

And in previous rounds, we have a, Fluvanna may not be aware of a large planning or development where the soccer fields are.

right near the interchange.

It's going to be a mix of commercial.

I have an apartment complex plan, site plan and review right now.

It's going to be townhomes, apartments, hotel, medical.

Virginia Scan website.

A project like that is not going to be offered.

What Sandy is saying is that the scoring has moved quite a bit.

It's not that economics is all going to fall over this round.

It's definitely going to change.

But we've been applying, we're going to keep applying for it because we could all agree that roundabout will be a really good improvement to this intersect.

I'm going to stand up and show you

So it runs diagonally, kind of, see, kind of like for here.

Kind of like that.

So these two parcels are in the county.

So it looks like people have...

This section will be in the copy.

So it looks like people have four lanes in each direction coming up to the ramp.

If I read that correctly, they're here as well.

A few at the top.

We're actually meeting.

All right, who would like to go next?

And remind me, SMART SCALES will be going in the fall.

Taylor's the leader.

And typically as we pass, the planning district commission has submitted on our behalf on the technical.

Next slide.

So a couple of big projects we've had going on the last couple of years.

VDOT completed their route 51 for Lord Franklin study in 2023.

Their last one was done in 2013 and we adopted our comprehensive plan.

Our 2042 comprehensive plan was adopted in April of this year.

We had a robust public engagement summary that helps guide some of these decisions and recommended priority transportation projects.

So I was told our

Overarching a goal for our transportation chapter, Nelson kind of maintains a transportation system that provides a safe and efficient multi-modal network, changed by residents and visitors to places in Midland, work, recreate, and access services throughout the county and region.

Next slide.

These are a couple of the maps that were generated for our comprehensive plan.

We've got, of course, Crashbond, the Fable Crashes, B-Trans midterm needs.

Next slide.

So this map shows our recommended primary transportation projects.

The two is Blue Star, 17 and 18.

Those are going to, those are our current applications for this round of SMART SCALE that were submitted for pre-application.

One that was funded in the last round was, I believe it's number one.

Yep, number one there at the roundabout at Route 6 or Route 151.

So that one was funded, I believe that's scheduled for start of construction 26 or 27, I believe.

Next slide.

So both of our applications are on Route 151 corridor that was identified through our public engagement and the studies as a high concern area for safety improvements.

So one project is Rockfish School Lane and Route 151 Turn Lane.

which will install dedicated right turn lanes in the southbound and the eastbound legs of Rockfish School Lane and Rockfish Valley High Lane.

That was identified in our 51 corridor study.

This had the highest average ranking out from one to five on the public survey for safety needs and cost estimates about 1.3 million.

Next slide, I've got the drawing here.

So this is one of our

problem areas where traffic tends to back up.

When you got in the southbound turning lane and then a Rockford school lane turning out, things get jammed up pretty bad there.

We have one of our two elementary schools that's back there.

The other project we submitted, Route 151 at Tamberg Drive roundabout.

This would expand the gas station curb to restrict driveway opening nears to proposed roundabout on 151.

We'd relocate the existing parking lot entrance south of the intersection, regrade Tamberg Road embankment to improve visibility, geometric improvements that would form the curb radius modifications, and realign Route 151.

Roundabout will slow traffic flow, increase motor awareness and visibility, improve intersection safety, which is a BGS need.

Also identified in the route 51 corridor study, our cost estimate for that is about 9.3 million.

Next slide.

In our previous rounds of SMART SCALE, we submitted the same intersection for turnways and site distance improvements.

The Route 151 study that was completed, it did indicate a slightly higher average ranking for the turn lanes rather than the roundabout option.

But that was thought to be a skewed result because less survey respondents answered the roundabout questions and also answered the turn lanes questions.

So less people answered the roundabout questions.

An issue with the turn lanes is that it would increase time across Route 151 due to the wide vertical.

and the roundabout will solve more safety issues in terms of traffic and slow down.

Next slide.

So that's the sketch there of the roundabout where the gas station intersects there.

It's one of our gateway areas.

I'd say when you're exiting Nelson County, when you come up that way, the sight distance, as we said, isn't great there.

That's one of our popular gas stations.

So this is our submission for Greene County.

This was submitted almost successfully in rounds three, four, and five.

We submitted it in round six.

This has been the highest, I don't know, safety, I think it's in the 140 range this time.

The rating, PSI rating.

So we're going to submit it again.

We don't have too many projects that meet the criteria for SMART SCALE.

The intersection with the highest amount of crashes in Green County is the intersection just to the right of center there where you see the purple crossover.

That's the highest it has been for a year with the highest crash incidents in the country.

I think it's in the 140s.

I don't know about that, man.

It's kind of bounced around, plus or minus.

The other one is in front of a commercial area with the senior residential district behind it.

And we have two fatalities there.

There are two high crash, higher crash incidents intersections for Greene County.

It would close two full crossovers and have U-turn movements on the far end, east and west end.

So it would hopefully lessen the, well it definitely mathematically lessens the conflicting traffic movements and the movements that remain are usually sideswipe incidents that are broadside and head-on collision.

So that one we've submitted now, this would be the second year for some of them, we did it round five and round six.

It's a relatively expensive problem

back in the club with the crossovers and utilizing the existing turn lanes and doing a little bit of bump out and still pushing them in a maybe eight million dollar range or something.

So I'm super excited to hear from Sandy that we're going to have, because I've never heard that from VDOT before in anything else, that we'll have them tweak the scores to really help out our rural counties.

Well, I mean, let's face it, we're going to be at a disadvantage.

There's more accidents, more traffic in the urban areas.

In Virginia, no offense to VDOT, it's more political than anything else.

We haven't funded roads in decades.

So there's more people, more traffic.

and we all have the same neglect on the roads as far as some of the safety things because there's not been funding.

We're going to be at the bottom of the list.

And just to put this to bed, the PFI intersection for the US-29 corridor was number 47.

Okay.

So it was pretty much actually the US-29.

What's your speed?

It's 45 through there, so there's speed.

There's a lot of crossing movements.

There's probably, probably just in that mile stretch, there's at least six over also.

Well, thank you for sharing.

May I ask a clarifying question?

So it would be J-turns at 29 and Carpenters Mill.

Where's that in relation to Route 33?

South of Route 33, just south of us, okay.

Who else would like to do a show on tell today?

I can tell.

I did not care.

I'm sure I got some answers today, but I can

So we have three for the county and three for the MPO.

Sorry for taking the slots.

But the one for the MPO is a hand-ops improvement package, which is just east of the city.

So that'll be improving two intersections.

One would be

Thank you.

I should start from here.

Okay.

Okay.

So this is one of our county ones.

This would be a runabout intersection improvements at the NSX Old Trail, mostly 50, up by Crozet.

So, up here is the Old Trail development and kind of downtown Crozet.

That way the interchange is, or the interstate is this way.

A roundabout improvement, a hyper-roundabout with two lanes going in there and then also having better pedestrian crossings on the north leg and the east leg for students walking on the old trail to the high school.

Additionally, we're going to have four feet off the first people for us, hopefully a series path that will extend on the north part that'll connect to this over there is how many middle school, I believe it's

I imagine for students to walk that way through there and also people in general to have that.

This is the reason we submitted it last year.

It was not funded, but we got close from what I understand.

And we're hoping that this year we are going to get funded for that.

Oh, this is going to be wrong.

This one is really interesting.

So this one comes from a private order plan that was about two years ago.

I wrote from 29 going down to the cities.

And one of the improvements I recommended in that plan was, or it was called a peanut roundabout or sort of a dumbbell and a whole bunch of other things.

No, it's one intersection.

It was a Kidini that one.

Kidini, yeah, it's many legumes.

But essentially how it works is they're in the intersection of

Olbrook and Northfield are about 500 feet apart, which are two similar intersections, which is not standard.

It's not safe.

It causes a lot of congestion and crashes.

So the idea here is to combine it into one mega peanut bean dumbo roundabout and make it a hybrid.

And it can also improve a lot of pedestrian crossroads.

You would have a cross with each of the legs.

It would slow some of the traffic down going through here.

There's still a lot of changes with design going on.

So I'm sure this will change for the next few months, but this is the idea of it.

That feels wrong.

I agree.

I agree.

But yeah, it's really exciting.

Could you hold on for each other?

Fashions Square Mall is this way.

So if you're driving, Fashions Square Mall will be here at 29, the City of Charlottesville is going that way.

Thank you for asking that.

We have here, so this is one of the MPO, this is part of the EMBARASS 250 Padma Study, and this is one of the improvements that are recommended by the study.

Okay, perfect.

So this is, there's a separate package or a separate project that's kind of off the screen going south towards the city, but I'll focus on the Albemarle one.

This is looking at the intersection from Georgetown Road and barracks coming this way toward the rural area, that way toward Charlottesville, the way to turn this intersection into a roundabout and then

There would be over here with the interchange of 215 and 29, there'd be another bow tie or double roundabout interchange intersection here.

So the idea of it is that you would, or we are going to close the median breaks along the barracks here.

So people would have to, we're leaving out of here, this to make that movement.

So the idea there is to reduce the cost of points and to make sure that everyone, there's better operations.

And then we're going to also

We're trying to stop right over there now.

Additionally, we're going to have a shared use path on the south side, going from the Georgetown roundabout, going along the road, then I'll go under the bridge, into the city, connecting with their future and their shared use path as well.

So it's part of a larger thing, but this is just the Albemarle package that we're talking about.

And I'm here, this is one of the Albemarle County ones.

This is Plank Road and 29 South, Charles Bill, Dr. Hoad, and Brian Peter.

Yes, and then Plank Road and Batesville is that direction for reference as well.

Here, we should be looking to install some hard cuts.

We have one here, one at Plank and 29 and one over here.

We have a lot of crashes here.

This is a PSI number exactly right there, yeah.

It's a fairly high crash number and the crashes you get there are weird because you have high speeds and a platform movement that people want to go to Dr. Post.

So this would look to reduce the serious crashes and make that intersection perform better.

For the art cuts?

I haven't heard too much

Well, there was one intersection, you know, in the county that was

It's not a single line of intersection right now.

There's not

Yeah, this is a really paved road, rustic road actually, so it's very, very low volume anyway.

And then Clank Road is fairly high volume, but we might be getting a truck restriction on this part of Clank Road anyway, so you might have less trucks making movements out of here as well.

We don't have the MTOs yet, but the MTOs are, just want to know, the 5th Street, the 64th, and the other MTOs, and then for the MTOs.

Thank you.

Well, this is a friendly reminder that my birthday is July 16th, which is the next meeting.

So why am I telling everybody?

Because July didn't want anybody to update their SMART SCALE.

So just remember now, you won't forget.

It's a wonderful day, which means you have to get your resolutions and support from your elected officials who did not do so already.

and I also look forward to spending part of that.

You'll be hanging out there on my birthday.

That's what's going on here.

Excellent.

Thank you.

I will leave it at that.

Okay, since we don't have any other things to talk about with SMART SCALE, and now you won't forget July 15th alternatives, are there any other items we want to discuss before we go to vendor proposal?

You've got a town table.

Yeah, thank you.

Sure.

Yeah.

And Nelson, our big project is over pretty much.

We got the content adopted and he's huge.

And I think everyone is excited, but also nervous to go into phase two, which is our zoning and self-position work.

So we're looking at taking that off in July.

And then the next two years from now, it's going to be gone.

Great.

You're just saying the same ultimately.

We are.

Okay.

Cool.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, I may not be aware of Louisa County.

We unfortunately lost our graphic community development to Louisa County Kids Fund.

We should, I should have an update formally for you in the next meeting of

Kane, who's been staffing.

Then there's this had not slowed down in Louisa County.

We're looking at adjusting the solar cap.

We're looking at adjusting our technology overlay district.

So those two items will be going to either planning commission or board of supervisors in the next month.

And, you know, your standard is having CBP here and there for different plans.

So I should have a lot more to do.

in July.

Congratulations, you are more than welcome to call me at any time.

You are welcome.

So Jess, if you have questions about financials, feel free to touch base with me.

I can give you a touch for my own directly.

And Wade, he's a great resource.

And then if you, again, have any questions about solar, I am happy to tell you all the things I wish I had done six years ago.

As far as VDOT,

As far ahead everybody, there should be full application training on June 4th.

So if you haven't registered yet or seen that email come through.

Great, make sure you can do that.

I think all the screenings of the free application are should be completed by the end of the month.

Hopefully the folks streamline some of the new development of the final applications that we'll be working with everybody.

The other thing I just want to mention is that in the next two minutes the Commonwealth Transportation Board will be approving the shared visa program.

And can I add back on that that's reminding me July 1st is when we get all of the new laws.

It might be a good idea if there's anything transportation related that we have an update on whatever item that is that comes out.

Transientially related to that, the law related to

Virtual meeting participation has changed.

So it's set up to 25%.

It can be up to 50%.

Part of that law does require that public bodies then review that and re-approve their policy annually.

So it's not just you approve it once, and then it holds every year.

You have to update.

I think all of the applications of a well-prepared circuit met all of their needs.

You shouldn't be meted out if you are something went wrong and let us know.

But I mentioned this in that I'm here meeting as well.

You might get, I don't know what the screening feedback is going to be when you get your applications.

Some of them might have some minor issues or major issues fly, but those are

We have like a database where we can see what the reason is for those changes and all of those are things that we are aware of that we have been discussed.

So you start to imply that they would be kind of looking to see if they met enough key criteria that would be a valid application.

Thank you.

Onward County, so we're still in our protocol plan.

We are kind of in the phase, we're kind of putting together

We recently adopted our secondary six-year plan.

So we have two roads that have no signatures to be paid from our county.

That is Henderson Lane, which is South 29 on Glendower Road, which is a connector between Route 20 and Glen Eyre where a bunch of line routes are.

So those signatures and the path of work will still be hopefully moving or paving sometime next year.

Greene, mostly got a lot of applications in for new development, residential and commercial.

They're ongoing.

And we finished our comprehensive plan.

We're working through

Small updates, key things, we don't have a clear requirement for water and sewer connections while we're simultaneously looking at spending money for a 50-year water supply, so the board has asked us to review

connection requirements so that people can't just put in a well and septic system and have a water and sewer line in their yard.

And there's probably five small things that we're going through.

We've reviewed temporary events.

We've reviewed performance standards to make sure that

New Road, for example, and other public improvements were properly funded and supported when site plans were submitted.

Temporary events, because we did not have a temporary event permit.

The closest thing we have is a tenor or vendor permit for like a fireworks stand or a food truck.

I would love to learn more about what your temporary event permitting process is like.

If you have a detailed site plan requirement, permit review, how many people

We'll find a few questions that we can view it.

We had three public hearings.

We had our three work sessions and public hearing.

We had an election.

The new board, Dean and I, every piece of work without a single question.

I can send you what we had.

It has a very nice application.

It details makers for public safety and who's responsible for what and what kind of

Insurance, you have to have all steps so that it's clear to any applicator or applicant what they should do.

The board didn't ask any questions.

They weren't able to learn that the county code section, which of course we don't enforce through planning and zoning, only apply to music festivals.

So at this moment, we really don't have a very vague, temporary advance ordinance, but it doesn't have any detail.

If it's something that everyone is interested in, would you be willing to to do a presentation here with it?

Sure.

might require ingress, ingress, and permanence from VDOT.

I would love to have a topic on that, sure.

Nothing on the hand of a dumb person.

Excuse me a second.

It's actually up to you to speak, okay.

So in Fluvanna County,

We have fairly new staff pretty much in all of my departments.

So the best way to put it is we have been working on our comp plan amendment and the assistant county administrator is trying to get a quick update through and hoping to have that next couple of months.

Once we do that, we're going to go into a full blown update.

At that point, I'll get involved.

Actually, at my previous job at planning district 14,

Comp plans were a big part of what I did.

I was actually working on four when I came to work here.

So that's one thing, but solar is the big issue.

I think Jason may have touched on this.

That's taken a lot of our time.

We have a solar ordinance committee trying to work on policy right now.

We actually had a meeting with a solar developer last week about a potential project.

That individual decided to wait until the committee finishes its work.

And until we decide on what we're going to do, but that's not going to anytime soon.

I mentioned the Wawa and we actually have another big convenience store going up in another part of the county.

So that's, those are the highlights.

I will share this.

We took the easy way out because I can pick up the newspaper and every day four or five localities are revising their solar panel rods or creating new ones and thinking about all the things that exist.

So when we revise ours, it's anything greater than one acre requires a special use permit.

I will share this, because this has been shared publicly, so I'm not disclosing any confidential information.

What our committee is considering is

evading solar in A1 altogether and creating a special district within a certain proximity to the transmission lines where solar could be sited.

Well, not really an overlay.

They considered an overlay too.

They weren't happy, really thrilled about that.

It'd be basically creating a special district where anytime a developer wanted to come in

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

So we're, this is still fairly early.

We haven't, we've not yet, first of all, the Planning Commission Board hasn't signed off on it.

And second of all, assuming they do, we'd have to develop on the underlying regulations.

That's the first I've heard of that being proposed.

I would love once that person got on the road to hear more about the transportation related part of what you're planning for in that district.

If that happens, that's an interesting idea.

Yes, it's 3% right now.

The Planning Commission voted a couple of weeks ago.

They voted 3-3-2.

Well, they did not make a recommendation.

They forwarded it to the board without a recommendation to lower it from three to two.

And so the board of supervisors will be making a decision.

I'll probably have an answer for that the next time I meet with Glenn on whether the caps can stay at three or up or down.

It's the cap for amount of like acreage, total acreage.

That is a great question because some of the conditional use permits are the entire acreage.

So, this CEP is 1,234 acres and includes utility-skilled solar substation and inventory support.

And then you might have an older project where it goes, the project is located on two parcels with a combined acre of 214 acres but the CEP is for like 123.

So, we've been adding it up by what is the total acreage that the CEP is capable of?

And sometimes it's all of the land, and sometimes it's some of the land.

Well, I can just think about it.

I can tell you in Charlotte County, and that's right before I left, that's the one we actually got finished.

And so, you know, that in all depends, it sure depends on the interior or the exterior of the buffer, right?

And so there's a lot of that.

You have to think about when you're doing an acreage cap,

So what we're doing is what is a total acreage for individual use from it.

And that's what we're using to cover all of them.

First of all, scale individual length.

Some person do that on a panel of my house, does that count?

Are that acreage or is that?

So we define solar as three different definitions.

The utility scale is solar, and then he thinks the megawatt or over, and then he replies that there's been use from it.

Now, small, I'm gonna jump, skip the middle.

I mean, small, it was 15 kilowatts when we found out people wanted more.

So we, if it's 30 kilowatts and it's on a roof, it's a building permit.

If it's 30 kilowatts and it's on the ground, then we have our own specific code for buffers and setbacks and things of that nature.

And then- But it's not as much a use permit for that.

No, so the administrator reviews, I'll say that, but with the same administrator reviews,

30 kilowatts in the west that is ground mounted on a case by case basis that they're incited to determine the appropriate vegetation and setbacks based off of it.

So kind of like the district of some sorts, but not really just defined in that definition.

But yeah, it's a much easier permitting process with 30 kilowatts in the west.

With the spread of it's ground now.

Yes, so anything that requires a conditional use term, we'll put it into the label.

We don't have anything that's under 291.

Okay, so actually I take that back.

I don't think we have anything under 11.

Don't hold me on that.

So if you haven't figured out yet, Tom is very knowledgeable about this.

He actually gave several, defined as greater than few, but less than many, presentations across the state about this very topic.

You're too kind, sir, and why it comes up in this formal law is transportation is a huge component of that.

There's probably, it's one of the biggest issues when you have a building for the public.

because transportation is an impact in a whole way.

Thank you, sir.

And yes, happy to answer any solar questions at any time.

Very good, thank you.

So I'll just do a couple quick ones.

First, put on my RideShare hat.

We are finishing up our CAP strategic plan.

That stands for Commuter Assistance Program, which they have all over the state, and that's

what RideShare is classified under.

We also assisted VDOT with the annual park and ride inventory.

We do that quarterly here.

And then with some of the specifically the VDOT owned lots, they ask for an annual inventory that's a little more extensive than what we do.

You know, we count lights and

Look at drainage, which I don't really understand and make my best guesses on all kinds of things.

So we had that completed in April, March and April is when that happened.

Just now back to RTAC staff, like Christine mentioned in the July meeting, we will be

Looking at the virtual meeting policy for this group.

And then we will also have election of officers, according to the bylaws.

So

something to keep in mind.

I probably shouldn't have told y'all that now no one will show up in July so that we can't elect everybody.

Maybe if I promised Tom some birthday treats in honor of Tom for his birthday, you guys will all be here in person for the July meeting.

But those are two things that I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of that we would be tackling in July.

And I have a recommended topic, actually.

It's a follow-up on the LUPEC meeting that Sandy helped schedule before she moved on to VDOT.

But Christine Fix from the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority did a really interesting presentation.

And the same with Taylor Holden from DRPT came and talked about the Commonwealth Corridor.

And it might be a little less relevant to our day-to-day transportation planning, but zooming out and looking at the plans that the state is coming up with for passenger rail was actually really interesting.

I would love that because I believe Buckingham Branch, the line of CSR is now up to state, and I would love to learn about what their plans are.

We're excited about anything that has to do with braille.

Something about boats in

What was that?

Have you read when I first started here?

I mean, what is this?

And I was like, I think this is a company based on a law on an actual builder.

Oh, like, like marinas.

Oh, yeah.

Wasn't there something really bold?

I mean, this is old.

It's not in your current, I don't think.

In your zoning, we're talking about marinas there.

It's like waterfront or something.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like talking rail in green.

But the TJPDC ran into any AI users

Software that can count parking spots or other things.

I don't know about AI, but the place where that probably occurred was at Commercial Truck Stop.

Because they, when I worked for the American Truck Association,

We're doing research because one of the things they want to be able to communicate out to truck drivers is in their space for you to partner with us.

If I have a lost crowd, since I was looking to locate at Gum Springs, Pasadena for several days in the meeting, there are about a hundred and ninety people.

If we have something trucked up related, I know that I'm doing very well with it right now, but I would like to hear anything trucked up related that I can use.

I'll make that even better.

Let me start out there.

I would like some information possible from VDOT on the rest of COPS 164.

One of those designed for capacity is their desire to expand them in the future.

It is, you don't have a desire throughout the state to address a national issue, which is the cubing of trucks on long roadways.

So let me think, let me get into something where all of us can participate.

Something along those lines.

And that would help me with my research and what I do.

I'd like to learn if there is somebody within the state, within VDOT, that has an effort on the future development or what we've done on rest stops, especially those that have trucking learning spaces for them,

I think it would be really interesting to hear from them about how that division of VDOT goes about maintenancing, spanning, and splitting into locations.

New locations often be very crazy.

But I think that would be a very interesting topic, especially for those of us that have characteristic lore, we have other 81s, yeah.

We have to, it was never, there were never, there are two,

Huge areas.

I don't know whether they're going to be wave-stage, wave-scaled, or they're going to be rest areas, or what they're going to be looking at.

I would love to ask that person who could find somebody what the plan for those two areas and, honestly, if people were able to use it would be.

Because the last time it was used was during the blizzard for the system we had a few years ago, and that was a staging area for removing all the debris on the system floor.

And they put it there and then bulged it.

The World Planning Caucus, which some are all getting familiar with.

Registration is opening soon.

It will be at Mountain League Watch again and the publics are going to be on AI.

Royal Transportation, Rails to Trail, VDOT funding, zoning enforcement.

So you just got in the door for me since I'm not a member yet of the office.

This is a great idea.

I'm actually on the executive committee on all the topics.

I've been going for five years.

I'm glad you're glad too.

We already have the RFP calendar.

We just did our strategic plan as well that will be adopted at the conference this year.

This is the 40th annual conference.

It's in October.

I think that's like through the 18th.

We've come up with lots of great ideas.

Thank you everyone.

Does anybody, Carson who's joined us online, anything you'd like to add?

I think you guys covered everything.

Hey Carson, Senator Youngblood, my regards please.

Rick and I go back at least 15 years.

Awesome.

Is there anything that the public would like to add?

We would like to thank you for participating and being the first speaker in six years.

And come back at the next meeting because there might be birthday creates.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

I see why I have nobody here.

Thank you.