Rural Transportation Advisory Committee Meeting   8/20/2024

And I don't believe there's anybody here from the public online or around.

So we'll jump right into the election officers.

I am happy to continue to serve as chair.

It is a pleasure to do so if the rest of the members agree.

Sure, yeah, we can do nominations, yeah.

I motion to allow those that are participating virtually today to be able to vote and participate.

All those in favor say aye.

I second the nomination.

I accept your nomination humbly.

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed, the motion carries.

Thank you all.

I am looking for volunteers to be vice chair.

Well, I motion Dylan Bishop, the Director of Nelson County, to be the Vice Chair of RTAC for 2024-2025.

Can I get a second?

Second.

Right.

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Well, first order of business, the minutes were excellent by the way.

I don't have a single comment to make to them.

We did have one correction that was submitted via email and that is just that David Cook needs, he's VDOT's central office instead of Lynchburg.

I motion to approve the minutes with the requested revision.

Can I get a second?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed?

So review of RTAC members and alternatives.

I'll go ahead and start off.

I would like to change my alternative from Josh Gillespie, the former director of community development,

to Renee Moyer, R-E-N-E-E, M-A-W-Y-E-R. And I can give, I will obviously share that email contact information and everything.

Yes, Emily Hjulstrom will remain my alternative.

Wonderful, thank you.

And I appreciate everybody taking the time to let us go through this.

in the meeting.

Wonderful, thank you.

Jump in, whoever, does everybody want to keep who they have?

I mean, we can switch since you're down there at the meeting.

It might be more convenient for you to be the main person and I can be the backup.

And I think the same goes for Lynchburg.

I would like to make your job easier and I'd like to put this item on the next meeting agenda for those that were here today.

They will not escape.

No, I just have a guy in the right green.

That's the hardest part.

It seems like it should be easy.

You're all prepared.

So just to highlight for everybody to talk about a little bit why we've been saying some of the things that we've said is there have been some changes for round five going into round six or round six right now.

So the map up here in the corner just shows the area types.

So the MPO area, which is Charlottesville and portions of Albemarle County, they're category B or area type B and everybody else is the area type C. So those are the only locations I showed here.

But the difference between round five and round six is that land use was changed from having some sort of baseline rating that contributed to the project score to being converted to a multiplier.

So those points were reallocated.

And so for all of the land use area type C, which is everybody in this room, your projects are going to get more points for safety.

And then the other big change is that the economic development methodology was changed, which is going to basically result from those people in lower economic development points across the state.

So what that means for most everyone is that your projects are largely going to be evaluated and get the majority of their points probably from the safety score.

So if you have locations that have had high safety needs that haven't been funded, it's more likely this time that those safety needs will

boost your score up a little bit more than it has been.

And also some of the projects that were being funded based on this land use score aren't likely to get as many benefits.

Have you heard anything about how we'll get a summary of that change and how it's changed scoring throughout the state?

No, this is in effect for round six.

Yeah, they will do an analysis.

They do an analysis after every round.

I don't, well, I don't know.

I don't know that it will be as extensive as was done between rounds five and six.

That was a pretty substantive update, but they will.

So, um,

So we can go through the...

They have four projects that they're submitting.

One of the projects is within the rural area and the three projects within the MPO area.

Since there aren't folks from Albemarle County today, I can show you their one application in the rural area.

And if anybody's interested, we can look at the other three projects.

But this is a project that is on US 29 and Plank Road near Dr. Lewis for those of you familiar with that area.

That's 29.

So this is a potential for safety improvement intersection that rings number 66 in the area.

And so there is a series of three R-cuts that are going in at those three crossovers.

The crossovers are listing

The project will include some lengthening and improving the left turn lanes in both directions at each intersection, and then also an improvement of a right turn lane.

This is a preliminary cost estimate.

We haven't quite finalized the cost estimate.

It looks like it's about $15 million right now, but this is also an inflation that's not been added to this yet.

But this is the one project that is outside of the NPO area.

And then the three projects that are within the MPO area.

They're the roundabout at Old Trail Road, which is one of the entrances to the Old Trail developer, now Western Albemarle High School.

They're doing a peanut roundabout at Hillsdale and Northfield.

There are these two intersections that are really close together.

They have traffic lights that are really close together.

This project was identified as one of Albemarle County's initiated corridor plans.

For the peanut?

I don't know.

It's just a modified

Singling Roundabout with more legs.

There's not a regular video shows and there's not that many of them around.

There are some and they vary.

I was just curious, I was going to throw it on later today.

And then this is part of a bigger corridor study on Bear Thrones near the university.

So to

To give you a little bit of context, Emmett Street is down further down this way a little bit.

This is Georgetown Road.

And so there's a hybrid roundabout that's going in at Georgetown Road with pedestrian cropping on both sides, a shared east path along the west or paper south side of barracks road.

And then it would also include adding a right turn lane onto the 29-250 on or up right there.

So,

We have Albemarle County as the only one here where we are still waiting for the final cost estimate from a couple of the projects, but this cost estimate has been finalized at $37.6 million.

All right.

You're welcome to talk about it if you want.

It's a project that we've submitted multiple times, and we hope to get fortunate enough to have it approved this time.

It's the intersection that ranks the highest or worst, I guess, if you want to call it that, in the county.

And there's some elevation changes and some accidents that occur there, and we're hoping to make it safer.

So this project has been submitted in the previous rounds.

It has been submitted at about $25.5 million dollars.

That's finalize.

Again, the primary purpose of the study is to improve safety.

So there are cuts that are going in at two crossovers right here.

There's going to be a new loon or U-turn lane that's put at the north end of the project.

For anybody who's not able to cross due to the crossing restrictions that are put in place, they'll make a right turn out of here and go up and make a U-turn around if they need to act on the other side of the road or go in the southbound direction.

And then on the other end, there would be a U-turn lane down there.

Correct.

The northern U-turn would be new and we'd be closing those two intersections.

The one to the right center is where we have a significant number of accidents and if anybody's tried to get out in that area, it's very congested.

More importantly, halfway between the crossover that's turning into a restricted crossing in the northern U-turn,

There's an intersection right now that is a full crossover and that's an area filled with accidents.

So this would be a big safety improvement for this area.

I can also add, basically we would pull the crash data for this.

And according to what I heard earlier, the application criteria has changed.

I think we're hoping that some of these high need safety implications that have been closed but haven't quite gotten funded will be competitive.

And then the other project in Greene is another set of sort of access management with some clothing, some additional crossovers.

It's another high congested area.

There are people that the speed limit slows down, but people travel pretty fast through there because it seems like an area where you can travel fast.

and there's a lot of crossing traffic for an elementary school and most of the neighborhoods that want to get out onto 33 to head west use that leftmost closed crossover and then there's a significant senior subdivision and shopping center got the center closed crossover.

Both of those create congestion and conflict and it's turning this into an R-cut or U-turns at the ends

Closing the full length crossover reduces conflict points significantly.

And again, this is, the primary purpose of this is safety and it would make a big safety improvement.

This one is a little bit lower on the PSI list compared to the other project on 29.

This is US 33, so I have that cropping on Rucker's Mill.

A little bit, a little bit less than that.

And I'd like to also, you know, Louisa County State, that we get an excellent level of service from Sandy and Chuck, and it's been a pleasure working with you all this round and the past rounds.

Yeah.

We are happy to do it.

Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, just thanks.

Thanks for throwing me under the bus.

But yeah, I appreciate the accolades and yeah, it's part of my job.

I want to be there to help you guys because I want to fix as many of these locations as we can.

It helps you and it helps your community as well as it helps us.

So I'm glad to help.

There were three locations in Louisa County and one of the other things that you might notice as we look at the federal cost estimates especially and some of these are resubmissions and there have been some questions about the variation in the cost.

Yeah, so that is standard across the board like we're hearing this from all the other districts as well that the costs have increased that there's more variation in some projects than others but

But it's not just projects throughout the state.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the first project is U.S. 250 and U.S. 15 intersection improvements.

Sure.

Here at Zions Crossroads, the growing area of this intersection is shared basically by Fluvanna and Louisa County.

The Wawa is going to be built on the empty field to the left there at the roundabout.

And there's a planning and development further up towards the entrance to 64.

There's actually two unbuilt planning and developments in Zion Crossroads.

Spring Creek is still building out.

So you'll find where you're going to see a consistent increase in traffic in this area.

So the United can have a roundabout so that it can handle that.

Especially if you miss where you're trying to turn in, it'll be easier for you to use the roundabout than trying to turn around with a light or having to go further down to do that.

So this is

We can talk in a second about this.

This is actually a hybrid roundabout.

So what you can see is that at least in one direction, there are two lanes right here.

There's a flip lane up here in the, get more into the northwest corner.

So for vehicles that are making a right turn, they don't actually have to enter the main roundabout lane.

And then there is a two lane roundabout going in the eastbound direction.

And the rest of it is a single lane, but they do have these slip lanes.

on the corners of the quadrants for the right turns, the movements.

And that's the final cost estimate for this project was a little under 25 million.

One of the changes that we made from the previous rounds from Curriculum from Army is we removed the pedestrian improvements.

And the reason for that is because at this time there were not a lot of pedestrian attractions

in the vicinity.

So it would increase the cost of the project without necessarily having the demand to use those facilities.

This project also a couple of years ago, Thomas Jefferson Buying District Commission did a corridor study with Fluvanna County.

And so this is just one piece to, you know,

Any questions?

This is relatively high speed.

Sorry, this is Frank.

So this is the burn clip exit off Interstate 64.

You have a church of two gas stations and there's a bit of a hill on the left hand side going down and there's a bit of a curve in the road on the right.

So either way, you really got to look left and right, left and right quite often to cross with a blinking light intersection essentially right now.

And so we also have the burn clip industrial park in this area.

This intersection is part of the 2040 Office of Plant and Future Land Use Map for mixed use and industrial growth.

So in firm clip exit really is your main exit to get into the town of Louisa and for people that are coming from this area like Hannah often use it.

So there's a need to see an improvement at this intersection.

This is a PSI.

98, so just for comparison, Clarita County is around 40.

These are district ranks, so these aren't being kind of lined up on top of each other.

And these would all be competitive.

They're the district grant program.

The other thing that is happening with some of these Roundabout projects, especially where there are businesses located,

really close to the intersection.

This is also providing some access management, better defining some of these business entrances, better just kind of have open frontage along the road, which also provides some safety benefits.

Last roundabout.

So this is at the intersection of 15 and 22.

This is a relatively high speed.

because you have people coming down 15 or about 55 miles an hour.

You have people that are going from about 55 down to 35 other directions on 22.

And it's just if you're driving on rural roads, which you really, that's the feel you get from both of those roads, you're not expecting to get a traffic light at this intersection.

So this intersection has also been applied for several times before.

Oddly, this intersection has not ranked very well in PSI in the last couple rounds, but it's actually got a really good ranking this year.

So, unfortunately, that's probably a tribute to accidents at that intersection.

I will tell you that the hair on my neck stands up when I drive a horse trover, Ruth.

Yeah.

But that's not authentic.

Some pedestrian crossings at all of the legs.

So you have all this market.

There's a gas station at the bottom there.

And then on the left is a Mama Leone Italian restaurant, which has not opened up yet.

And then in the north, that building just has not found a use yet.

and the right-hand side is an abandoned, I think, motorcycle repair shop, where it used to be.

And really, this was in a growth area back in 2019, but the growth area was, it was removed during the updated comprehensive plan.

So this area is designated rural by the 2020 comprehensive plan.

So it's just a matter of, really it's a safety improvement because you have a lot of truck traffic going up and down 15.

Hi, good afternoon everyone.

Of our 13 projects for SMART SCALE this round, we had two in Nelson County.

We have Route 51 and Tambark Drive roundabout and Rockfish School Lane turn lanes.

Unfortunately, Rockfish School Lane was screened out due to not having a V-Trans need.

We tried to

Tried to push with OIP as much as possible, but we had to unfortunately screen it out.

But Tambar Drive has been pushed through the portal.

It has been validated by both the district and the applicant.

And it's a simple roundabout project.

It was a resubmittal in round five for turn lanes.

However, from the new 151 corridor study, which is in the processes of being finished, a draft was sent to us in 2023.

This area called for a roundabout instead of turn lanes.

So it's a singular lane roundabout with two sections of access management with the gas station up north and the family medicine to the south.

Turn those two right in right outs.

I want to say thanks to Carson and Rick and Bella

You know, they did all the work on this completely.

And I know they fought really hard to get that Rockfish schooling, turn lane improvements in there.

We'll see what we can do about Rockfish.

We'll see if there's another way we can get it in or another funding source for it.

But it's just it's not a not a safety need.

according to the V-Trans needs, and it doesn't meet the custom safety need requirements either.

So they had to push it out.

It wasn't really in the conversation, not even for the corridor study.

Rick, you might be able to

Well, just to give you some updates on what's happening next and Rick and Chuck and Carson can jump in if I missed anything.

The district screening, it sounds like that Lynchburg and Culpepper have gotten through a majority of the projects here for the district screening.

And so that's going to go to social office.

So we're working on the state's understanding of project scope.

Culpepper and Lynchburg districts, both of us, all the projects in the stream have been validated by the district, which means that they are now to the applicants to go in and review the state's understanding of project scope and make sure you concur with those.

It is really important to make sure that you're, you know, spending time and looking at those and make sure you agree with them.

Because if a project needs to change scope for any reason, that's what they're going to go back to after a project is funded.

I did a check, I think...

I think I saw that Nelson County has been validated.

Have you gone in Denver or something?

The validation is going to take place and should be done by October 31st.

You guys don't have to do anything for that.

And then the scoring should be done by the end of November.

So the status of the processing

Yeah, I don't know exactly what it will look like.

Any other questions on SMART SCALE?

The lead, right?

Let's go over the

So, legislation adopted by General Assembly in this last session necessitates changes to the remote electronic participation and all virtual meeting policy.

In your packets were both a redlined edited version.

and a clean version that was adopted by the TJPDC commission.

Their original one was from September 1st, 2022.

They just recently adopted the revised policy in their July commission meeting.

There are some changes in the ability to hold all virtual meetings.

And so I want to make sure I clarify that if there is an in-person meeting with a quorum present in person,

The rules still apply like they did before for participating electronically in an in-person meeting.

The changes that I'm going to detail for you today are when you're holding an all virtual meeting.

Those have changed.

And so you are able to, rather than 25% of your meetings, you are limited to two or up to 50% of your meetings, whichever is greater, rounded to the nearest whole number.

You are able to hold those as all virtual meetings.

As an example, if you meet six times a year, you are allowed to meet at least three of those, a total of three of those all virtual.

You also cannot have virtual meetings back to back.

So if you hold it all virtual meeting, your next meeting needs to be in person with an in-person forum.

It does have to be posted publicly if the meeting is intended to be held all virtual.

Everything needs to be accessible to the public.

Any materials that are shared with the committee must be shared with the public.

Call in information that's shared with the committee must be shared with the public.

It does expand provisions concerning the use of audio visual.

And so this one is pretty important because in order to establish a quorum in an all virtual meeting, cameras and audio have to be on in order to establish that quorum.

Additionally, if cameras are then turned off, that member is considered absent from the meeting during that time.

So you have to have cameras and sound on particularly for votes.

That's what's most important is that you are seen and heard when you are putting a vote in an all person meeting.

The other thing to note is that it does require now an annual adoption of the policy.

Previously it was adopt the policy and then that policy is in effect until any amendments are made.

This instead, the first meeting of each fiscal year, you have to readopt the policy.

And then you guys don't have to take any action on this because as an advisory body, you follow the policy that was adopted by the PDC commission, which has already been done.

So how we normally do it, like today, we just, we have to vote and if there's people who are participating online, like Jim, we just vote to allow them to participate and they can, they have to have their camera on when they're voting at a minimum and they are limited.

Yes.

So if there is an in-person quorum present,

and someone is participating electronically, those rules are still in place.

That's still, you can only participate in up to 25% for the reasons listed within the policy of illness more than 60 miles away.

You still have to state what that reason is.

So those provisions have not changed.

The ones that have changed are when you are now not holding an in-person meeting and you are holding your entire meeting all virtual with all members present online.

Then you can hold those up to 50% of your meetings within a fiscal year and those audio visual roles come into play.

And I've heard by the several participants before, so I don't hate that.

Meaning because they didn't say whether they voted or not on something.

Or, you know, in a virtual meeting without p.m.

I said, oh, what do you think, Rick?

And I'm not into those crickets.

Not that Rick's ever done that.

I think it's good because there might be meetings where people just cannot come to Charlottesville to do that and there could be meetings where we all have some kind of illness.

Typically I try to call around a little bit to see who can come and then, you know, we can use that accordingly.

But I don't want to use them all at once, obviously.

Yeah, and you know, that is something to think about, you know, how this committee wants to use that particular opportunity.

Something that came up in the NPO Tech meeting this morning was talking about meetings that are maybe more information sharing heavy.

Those being ones that would be really good to do virtually.

Or snowstorm.

Yeah.

Like maybe maybe it's just good to either pick January or February to say, you know, in the off chance that there could be bad weather.

We should, actually the only winter one is February that we have.

So our meeting schedule is obviously this one here in August, then in October, December, which when we get to roundtable we may want to talk about how we want to

to do December, February, April, and June.

Okay.

I think less relevant perhaps for this advisory committee, I can say that commission, as an example, meets 10 times a year.

They're allowed to hold up to five in an all virtual format.

They are not interested in scheduling them all virtually in case there's a need for a special session.

They can reserve some of their virtuals for those special sessions to accommodate for changing schedules.

And as far as Lynchburg District's concerned, I mean, we don't have any problem being up there.

One of us, either Carson or myself, we can be in attendance.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

So I learned that not a lot has been shared about the move safely with Blue Ridge.

So I'm going to start with the background a little bit.

We'll say that Blue Ridge is the region's plane to reduce roadway fatalities and serious injuries for all road users, no matter their choice of transportation.

I want to emphasize that this is a regional project that covers all the jurisdictions within the TJPDC.

Albemarle, O'Bannon, Greene, Louisa, Nelson,

as well as the City of Charlottesville.

So this is a grant that comes from the Safe Streets and Roads for All federal program.

It's supported through the United States Department of Transportation National Road Brake Safety.

They use a safe system approach to reduce fatalities and serious injuries by zero.

I'm going to share a little bit about the activities that we have done to date.

So this project's process is divided into four steps.

The first step was identifying issues and opportunities through a survey.

So during the month of June this year, we completed this step through extensive public engagement.

We conducted the survey with the goal for the public to share their safety concerns on the roads and streets that they travel.

So with that being said, we held six in-person public meetings, one for each jurisdiction.

We held one virtual meeting for all jurisdictions.

And then we conducted

21 pop-up events, which included attendance on the farmer's market, food pantries and festivals.

That was done with the help from our community champions, which I'm gonna name one of them, is the Greene County Food Pantry.

They conducted a survey as well, just to help us out, get a bit more outreach

The step that we're working on right now is the extraction and analysis of the survey data.

So with that data, we will establish priorities based on the survey feedback that we've got.

We have also begun working on step three.

That includes scheduling meetings with each jurisdictions.

based on the fine jury networks to identify site visits where we can attend and discuss the opportunities for safety improvement.

These three steps will lead to the developments or the safety action plan.

I do wanna ask for help for our next round of engagement, specifically for outreach.

have another public engagement round.

I believe it's gonna be sometime in late October.

So we will reach out to each of the jurisdictions to make sure that we can get some help in spreading the word.

Basically we're getting the word out, we're collecting information and yeah I'm happy, we have, Louisa County has a public relations individually.

Yeah, but just to emphasize what we're saying, like we heard from Sandy, safety, safety is the number one priority of the USDOT.

So this project is very, very important and we're looking forward to having it all hand-in-hand.

Yeah, we have been already in touch with Cindy King and Louisa Kavanagh in the background.

It's been a really interesting project to watch progress.

Thank you.

You're also welcome to get one on your way out, whatever you feel comfortable with.

And yeah, so we can start roundtable whenever.

I think it was Rick.

Rick, were you just saying something about can we get someone to the meeting in person?

I want to make sure that I didn't misstate or confuse anybody.

If there is an in-person meeting, you are still allowed to use the exemption related to the 60 miles distance, and that's unlimited.

If you look in the policy, the 25% and the 50% don't apply to that provision, so I didn't want

No, it's not a problem.

I was just saying, we'll support you guys however is necessary.

If we need to have somebody there, we can.

It's just we're on the topic to make sure that we're within the bylaws of the policy.

Jim was unable to make the meeting today because he had conflicting meetings around this time.

That is correct, Tom.

I think what's really unique about this is there actually has to be an in-person forum present in order to then allow anybody electronically to participate in the in-person meeting.

And so unless there is an established forum

That's really, I mean, you can have people state their reason for participating electronically, but it's not like you're voting them into the ability to vote in the meeting.

Thank you.

Round table.

I'll go ahead and just start.

I am Louisa County's newest Deputy Director of Community Development and I've also been, the Board of Supervisors has passed a resolution making Deputy Zoning Minister.

So there's some new news out of that.

We have a new director.

We unfortunately lost Josh Gillespie to the County of Houston.

I wish him only the best.

And we did pass solar cap down to 2% or 3%.

And Nelson, let's see, next week

We're having our joint kickoff session, the forwarding planning commission for our zoning and subdivision ordinance updates.

So that is exciting.

We have had our first utility scale solar application come through.

It's been to the planning commission.

It's about 500 acres of panels, 90 megawatts.

Planning Commission recommended denial, so the board will hear that in November.

The Lovingston sewer project kicked off today, so they're replacing, I think, 8,000 linear feet of clay pipe in Lovingston, and that'll go along with the revitalization project for the sidewalks, I'm sure.

Something... Is that increasing capacity too?

I believe so.

I think, I believe so.

I don't know a ton about it.

Something interesting for the group, recently we had a proposed subdivision and an existing development of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

So as a result, I met virtually with the superintendents of both the Blue Ridge Parkway and Appalachian Trail because both

are a part of it.

So our county subdivision order's requirement is a 50-foot wide radically all the way back to the public road to subdivide, which can prevent some subdivisions.

So in this case, there's a National Park Service easement that's only 14 feet wide off the parkway.

And I learned a lot talking to them, but their main goal is to extinguish as much access as possible

All the parkways legally, federally, they cannot ramp anymore with their access off the parkway.

So that kind of shut that down.

So that was interesting to learn about their mission and their thing.

So, and then of course I have to give my plug for World Planning Caucus.

That's October 16th through the 18th.

It's at Mountain Lake Lodge.

It's a great time.

We have sessions on

AI and cleaning, rural transportation, VDOT funding, streams, zoning enforcement, ethics, legal sessions, lightning rounds, we do a group hike, we have music, we have some auctions.

Although a quick update just because you're looking at me.

I don't know if it was said earlier, sorry, I came in late.

I had another meeting butting right up to this one.

But Sarah is officially going to be the staff member for RTAC.

I did not.

I'm sorry.

I played off myself.

Gorjan Gjorgjevski will be moving into the lead staff role for the MPO technical committee.

And we'll be moving more into transportation and planning.

He previously was working on the Bonnie Broadband's massive grant that we received and in an effort to make sure we can keep him after that grant goes away.

And with his passion and interest in transportation, he's going to move into that spot.

And then also Sarah Simba,

will be the lead staff member for the MPO Policy Board, as well as the Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee.

Congratulations to all of you.

And I'll add, if anyone has anyone looking for admin work, we have a position open that we desperately need.

Like within planning or just within the shared position between building inspections and anything in zoning?

Well, since we're plugging job over here.

I'm looking for a planner, so.

Sandy and Chuck might have something too.

The round table for in person.

And then RideShare is starting new fiscal year FY25 while also wrapping up all of the last.

It's always a very interesting couple of months there at the beginning.

Big thing is we are getting close to finishing our CAP strategic plan, which CAP stands for Commuter Assistance Program.

Hopefully we'll have some of that to potentially share with you guys maybe at the October

Maybe the December meeting, shooting for October, but worst case scenario, we'll definitely get some of that draft in front of you guys for any additional input on that as well.

And basically it's looking at overall transportation options throughout the region, how we partner with CSPDC since we are both the RideShare brand target markets and how we will be looking to reach them in the next five years to

Well, Chuck and Rick and Carson can jump in as well, but I think the big probably updates from VDOT, the Culpeper District is that we're currently looking at our next round of study locations for SARS and potentially we can

start vetting locations for pipeline as part of that review as well.

So we may be reaching out to some of you all to gauge our interest on certain locations to undertake the next set of studies on.

The only thing I would add is we've got, we'll probably be reaching out to all the localities

Yeah, so transportation wise we have

A few interesting things.

We have a development that is in the rural area adjacent to and surrounding the town of Stanardsville, and they are interested in a right in right out exit entrance on the limited access part of Route 33.

The Board of Supervisors voted

down a resolution of support.

So the developer and actually the town are appealing directly to the CTB to ask for approval of the entrance because it would be a significant amount of traffic that would pretty much bog down the current intersections and Main Street in town.

And it would be

It would be a traffic safety issue not to have that additional exit.

It's likely to get approved, although you never know when you go through a governing body what their choice will be.

But the board originally voted against the resolution because they thought it would stop a buy right housing development.

And that didn't turn out very well for them.

Note of Interest, kind of a fun neighborhood development.

We have a development that's going in adjacent to the Freddie Creek Park area of Albemarle County.

And they have dedicated a little over two miles worth of hiking trails to the community.

And, you know, there's possibilities in the future

whether formally through agreement with Albemarle County or informally because neighbors aren't going to stop if there's 10 feet of separation between one trail and another.

It'd be a larger interconnected trail network in that area.

So kind of a fun multimodal opportunity.

And then lastly, the Board of Supervisors approved local administration of a project.

It's a round two SMART SCALE project.

There's some things that have changed with the development in that area and so the board wants to look at local administration to try to achieve some different innovative intersections that fit better with the county plans than the original plan.

My recap is that the Loves Travel Center Resoning Conditional Use Permanent Special Exception application on the Gun Springs exit is scheduled for the September 3rd Board of Supervisors meeting.

Transportation related things.

I might already know this, but in Nelson, a lot of the community gets concerned about speed limits a lot.

So we get asked a lot about that.

Robert Brown informed our board at our meeting last week that some legislation was passed that allows locality oversight of speed limits.

So I learned that it's only if it is marked 25 miles per hour,

Then you can go down to 20 or 15.

Where the local is.

So for us, that's not going to make a whole lot of difference because a lot of them are posted, but I just thought it was good.

Does anybody else have anything to share around it?

Correct.

That's what I've got.

Yes.

I don't know if that is too close to the holidays, if you guys have any thoughts or feelings on that.

Yeah, that's also true.

It also could be a virtual meeting, so.

I think we should try to keep it and then we can like you and I can work on this area and I'll work with rural counties and we'll combine together and see if we have enough for quorum.

I agree we should save all of our online uses especially for the months of February for this stuff so never ever again.

I haven't forgotten the ones that we talked about last time.

I knew there was some discussion about truck stops and how those are figured out for the queue and how many they can accommodate.

Looking for information on that to figure out who might be able to address and help us with that.

And I think especially with the number of buses that are coming through,

Virginia, I think it would be interesting to have a topic if somebody could tell us, you know, this is what we've learned from these applications coming in.

That would be a good topic.

And then I will tell you that there are 10 parking spaces at the VDOT rest area, all the way between Gum Springs and Shortbump that I counted.

10 on either side of the street.

Not including the ones that are made.

But I did my own little survey obviously.

The other informational item I think that we brought up just because of such a good presentation to the Land Use Environmental Planning Committee with VDOT, Charlottesville, Albemarle, is the rail.

Yes, very much would like to hear about that.

I think the Buckingham Branch, CSF line, around Ruiz, Louisa County, and I would love to know what the RPQ is planning.

And then we could probably get a summary of the Rural Planning Caucus.

What tips and facts?

Come to the conference.

Yeah, that was a good plug too.

You can give us like the free trial version.

We also have like a mentor scholarship program, so we'll cover registration if you want to bring.

Will we have any information from Safe Streets for all to talk about?

I think that you read my mind because between now and October we are engaging with all the colleges and then discussing what's the best way to communicate with you, what are the best ways to engage in your community, what are the processes inside.

So keeping everybody in the loop.

I mean, it could be a good time to give an update.

because we're really expecting as the project team and the consultants to have you inside being engaged compared to the first round, second round.

We are expecting this language of this project to be like internally absorbed.

So we're communicating with Cindy King for them.

Who on Cindy King is also involved on your side of the project?

I think it'd be really good to have a

This is how we're tackling this from a outreach.

This is what we've done.

We've gotten this person, this person, led to other people and how we've gotten the word out.

It's part of that.

And then we, because the reason I bring that up is some of us are approaching five years of our comprehensive plan and others are working into it.

So this is a huge project that y'all are endeavoring on and would love to learn anything we can get out of it from a public involvement standpoint.

that we can then use for our own comp plan updates or focus areas.

So I think even a five, 10 minute presentation would be helpful.

Yeah, I think by mid October we'll have more information than we do now, especially after those site visits are done.

Yeah, and one thing I've learned, at least from Love's Travel Center, is that, you know, certain projects will get certain groups of people together in certain areas of your locality, and you start to learn who those people are, they're very active, and I think that just comes, I mean, you probably know as well, that certain projects lead to meeting different individuals that know a lot more people, and that could be key to it as well, is that we, as RTAC members, should start collecting

groups of individuals that if we have a project from the PJC or just internally, we can share this internally.

And then we just, maybe we get, maybe there's a form, I'm not trying to say a word, maybe a very quick word document where we could get less from our own localities to share with these individuals, but would you like to fill us out and be on the list for the TJPDC for anything we do going forward?

And we just bring those to our conference meetings or if we know we have a case of 100 people, they tell, well, hey, you also, so maybe,

But by design, the Safe Streets in Roseboro is intended to utilize community champions.

And that's exactly what you guys are talking about.

It's the folks that are already connected to groups of people that may not be showing up to our pop ups or our

Exactly, because the people coming out for loves aren't necessarily talking about same streets for all.

They're concerned about interstate, Gum Springs exit.

So I think there could be an opportunity to cross those lines.

So, yeah.

But what would we accomplish in such a short amount of time?

I think so.

And, you know, as you think of things or if you think of things, you know,

Well, I'd like to thank all of you for running the tomatoes for our meeting today.

Next time, I'll give about half of the meeting

I have a motion to adjourn.

Can I get a second?

Second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

See you all next meeting.

Thank you.