Rural Transportation Advisory Committee Meeting   8/19/2025

I will call a non-meeting meeting to order.

And in that fact, what we'll do is we'll save the voting of the minutes and approval for the November meeting.

We'll also do election of officers, I guess, in November as well.

While we have everybody on here, I will continue to serve as chairman if you will have me in November.

Happy to do that.

I find it rewarding.

and I would like to change my RTAC alternative to Renee Mawyer as opposed to Cindy King.

And I can obviously, I'll send an email for Renee's contact information and spelling of the name.

And... Could you spell Renee for me?

R-E-N-E-E-M-A-W, sorry, M-A-Y-W-E-R.

Thank you.

All right.

I need to update my alternate as well.

Emily Ullstrom, she's no longer with us, but I do have a new player.

This is his third week.

Thank you.

Des, I can ask Tanya or one of them to be the opening.

It certainly has.

We'd just like to have one on record, but you know, if also that position is vacant, you know, it's totally the county's call, but I just wanted to check in.

Random question.

So the only thing about the online meeting is it has to be advertised in advance that it was online.

And do those change over?

They restart with the fiscal year.

So we're starting fresh.

And it can be half.

So we could do two of the ones.

I think last year we did our February one, virtually.

In case that there might be weather, that is actually into, I guess, probably our next item of the remote electronic participation in all virtual meeting policy.

I agree.

So anywhere is probably the one to do because we have had to cancel meetings because of snow.

Is anybody interested in being vice chair that is here?

Obviously we'll go through this again in November, but does anybody have any interest or we just wait till November?

We'll wait.

We will wait.

Silence, silence.

You are, if you say you want to.

You know, since we've got pretty much

Everyone, at least online, we certainly can go into our informational items.

Again, the remote electronic participation and all virtual meeting policy was attached to your agenda.

Really just, again, as an informational piece and a reminder of how that particular opportunities can work for the committee, which we did just kind of discuss.

But if anyone has any questions, we're certainly happy to take those at this time.

Okay, cool.

No problem, no rush.

All right.

All right, go ahead.

I'm going to talk about SMART SCALE round seven and some of the stuff we learned from round six and then give you some ideas of what we're going to be doing this round.

So basically, that's going to be the quick agenda or the items that we're going to be looking at.

So go on to the next slide.

as I think you guys might've seen this before, but basically this was presented at the January CTB meeting just to highlight the money that was transferred from construction program, which is where SmartSCALE gets its money to the maintenance program.

It was a $1.6 billion was transferred.

So basically we have less money to deal with when we're looking at SmartSCALE applications.

So next slide.

This is the,

Basically summary of the round six results.

And as you can see, we got $93 million of total revenue from this round and we were able to fund four projects.

The next slide.

This is a summary of basically what we've gotten round for round since we started SMART SCALE.

As you can see, we're basically at 57 million for the district grant program.

is what we were able to projects we were able to fund we had a little bit more than that but so that'll just stay in the kitty for next round for us unless it gets used on to fund overruns on other projects we also were able to secure the 36 million dollars for a high priority project but basically we have to

The round four, round five, we've got the supplemental tax, fuel tax revenue that was phased in and we're basically through that phase in period, we're basically at what we would normally get.

I'm sorry, this is Christine.

I missed it.

If we don't use it before next round, we could use it as, like if we have a number of projects and it puts us over what we have available, we could supplement that money for that to cover any overages.

And then if we go through that,

The money stays with the district.

This is just a summary takeaway of how we did compared to the state.

Most of our projects did better overall than any other district in the state.

Like I said, all of our projects were in the top 65% across the state, which is better than anybody else did.

In the 50% we had more projects than the, well not more projects, percentage of our projects were higher in the top 50% than any other district too.

So overall we did really well even though we didn't get all of our projects funded.

It's only so much money.

So next slide.

This was one of the key takeaways.

This last round, 81% of the projects were priority one or two in the V-Trans needs category.

And the average cost of the funded projects was $18.6 million.

So that's the district grant pot.

For the high priority, it was

96% of the projects were a priority one or two.

And the average cost of the funded HPP projects was $27 million.

This is a key takeaway in that we need to focus what projects we're submitting as to make sure they're a priority one or two need.

And this will come through these slides as we move forward.

But that's what we're going to be focused on moving forward for this next round is making sure that we're having

a priority one or two need project and that the cost is around these figures for the district grant and for high priority.

If we get outside of those, it's less likely that the project is gonna be able to be funded.

Any questions about that?

Okay, next slide.

Underneath the bullets that say average cost of all funded projects,

The MPO is going to talk about this later, but we're working with the TJPDC to change the category from C to D. You guys have seen a lot of presentations on this recently.

This is just reinstating that fact.

I think it'll give us better scores overall in the rural areas because we'll be in a

Area types that focus mostly on safety versus a mix of safety and congestion.

So any questions about this, I'll move on.

Hopefully we'll get this adopted next month.

Like I said earlier, VTRANS needs, the CTB adopted the current priorities in April of this year and that's what we're using for our evaluation of potential projects for this round.

Like I said, we're focusing on the priority one or two needs.

and those needs maps are available at the V-Trans website, which is listed here.

We're also gonna look at the PSI data.

Currently it's 19 to 23 PSI data, and that's updated every year, but it's November before the 24 data will come out.

But when we actually evaluate a project, we're looking at the most current crash data last five years.

So we don't necessarily refer to the PSI data at that point.

Next slide.

This is something that Sandy's been working on.

We're trying to come up with a way to do some preliminary evaluation of projects just so we can screen how well projects might do against other projects in the district.

So we're starting, we're pulling data from these different data sources and trying to put together a tool to where we can start to score, not necessarily score, but just evaluate projects on a high level to see

how they're fair in all these different categories.

And then we can see which ones would be the better ones to submit versus the ones that don't appear to be as well.

And that's what we're working on right now.

Any questions about that?

And these are the scoring categories that some of the scoring categories that SMART SCALE uses, but we're using the same data sets.

Next slide.

This is the schedule.

It's the same as the previous round.

Basically, the submission period will be in March of next year for the pre-apps, and then the full app will be due in August, and then they'll make the evaluation the following, scoring in the fall, and then the presentation of the recommended scenario funding in January of 27.

Next slide.

All right, these are the current studies we have going on in the region.

We have Ridge and West Main in the city of Charlottesville.

We just had a public meeting on that, the 14th, and we're running a survey which runs through the 28th to look at the various alternatives for that intersection.

The other two projects in the STARR studies are on the 29 corridor.

We're doing the corridor from Hydraulic to Woodbrook, north of the city.

And that corridor, we've got the existing conditions report, and we're currently looking at developing some preliminary alternatives, and we'll be rolling that out to the MPO at their next meeting coming up.

And then we've got the Barracks Road interchange project,

Well, it's the Emmett Street Hydraulic Project, but it goes from Barracks Road to Hydraulic Road.

And we're looking at the 250 Bypass Interchange, as well as the interchange at Barracks Road and the intersection at Hydraulic Road and 250.

And that's also an existing conditions report.

I think we've already finished the review, but we're going to start looking at some preliminary alternatives for those projects to go into phase two of that study.

Next slide.

These are the two pipeline studies we've got going on.

Fifth Street, we're

basically doing a value engineering of the previous application from last round to see if we could come up with a lower cost solution for the interchange improvement as well as look at the corridor just north of there into the city where they're actually proposing changing some previous recommendations for how the bike ped improvements would be implemented on that corridor.

So we're gonna try to align our recommendations with what they've

They're proposing to do.

And then the other one is the I-64 interchange.

We're starting to see queuing in the southbound direction at exit 118 on 29.

And we're trying to address that queuing issue by fixing that.

It's providing more

turn lane capacity because it's really short because of the piers right now.

So we're going to try to see what we can do to fix that as well as we look at that park and ride lot down there, which is basically on-street parking on T.L.

Lane.

So to see if we can come up with something on that.

And those two, the existing conditional reports are complete.

And we're starting to look at the phase two scope and the preliminary alternatives for that one.

Next steps.

Okay, what we're doing is we're finalizing the presentations that we're gonna be rolling out to the localities for SMART SCALE round seven.

And hopefully we'll start sending those out later this month and hopefully meet with the localities to try to look at potential locations that they wanna try to pursue for next round of SMART SCALE.

And that's the schedule.

We're gonna probably roll it out and try to come back in October for approval of the,

confirmation of the location so we can start finalizing the material for your applications.

That's all I got.

I had one, but you answered it that you were going to talk to our elected officials about what they're looking to do versus what you have researched.

And that's what we're going to do.

I'm putting together the presentation with, like we have every round, with some preliminary recommendations.

I will say that because of the changes in the priority one and priority two, VTRANS need, some of the applications will fall off that were submitted last round.

So that's something that we're going to have to talk with the localities about

What is in their area that they can submit that would be competitive?

The other thing we're going to probably talk about is, and it's not something that most localities will be able to do is, is there any possibility of leveraging funding?

That seems to be where we're going to be going in the future to have competitive applications.

Thank you.

Alrighty, well thank you Chuck.

Great.

I think I would say it's one of the best SMART SCALE presentations I've seen in seven years.

I know where we're going now.

Well, it'll be March before you know it.

Hello, everyone.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to present you today.

Before I go into the implementation part of the presentation, just brief updates to where we are with our current project, which is Move Safe with Gorj.

So as of now, all

localities have adopted a plan.

We did get a positive response from them, but it has not officially been approved yet.

Our period of performance is September 30th of 2025.

And then after that, we have about 120 days to close out.

So once we are satisfied with each other's needs, they will issue

approved the plan.

So with that being said, it's kind of time to think about what do we do with this plan from now on.

So the main goal of the plan was obviously safety, but to position the localities to the eligible applicants for implementation funding with the next round of social supports for all.

Just want to remind everybody about the commitment that all the counties

Committed to having the total number of fatalities and serious injuries by 50% by 2045.

And then the implementation projects for them to be displaying are gonna be the key to achieving that goal.

In just an overview of the state shoots, row 12 implementation problems.

So we know that as of right now, the FY 26, which is next year is gonna be

perhaps the final round of century's total funding.

There's gonna be approximately $1 billion for that round.

So as our current information, we think that perhaps 70% of that is gonna be allocated for implementation funding and about 30% for funding and demonstration of grants.

As you all know, all projects that are gonna be

applied for about 20% non-federal match requirement.

So we know that number one, counties are going to be eligible applicants, but with the SMART SCALE applications being kind of at the same time, we know that's going to be a busy time for the locality as well.

So another important thing is that PDCs and MPOs are also eligible applicants.

TJPDC could apply for information funding based on your needs for projects identified in the plan.

A little bit about case studies that we did, and this is also still developed, so we have not fully researched these case studies, but the first one is the regional collaboration case study from the George Washington Regional Commission.

where they applied for various systemic improvements across multiple jurisdictions.

They focused on pedestrian control phases, crosswalks, sidewalks, and all other things.

So the main applicant for this implementation funding was the Pittsburgh

The other one is the regional collaboration case study with the Vandenberg Regional Council of the Dollar vendor, Denver, Colorado.

They partnered with eight localities and focused on pretty much the same things, hybrid beacon signal upgrades, mass star upgrades, pedestrian crossings, and so forth.

Even in the same application, they also included supplemental planning projects for a city-wide statement of study.

But all of their projects were identified in the Conference of Safety Action Plan that they were going in.

The systemic improvements that are captured in the Move Safely Blue Ridge are very similar to the ones that I mentioned in the case study.

So we're looking at baseline movement, centerline on those prints, westward signs, yellow flashing arrows, pedestrian scrambles, and so on.

One thing I want to mention is that all candidate locations are identified in the emergency safety action plan.

So the examples that we're looking to do, and perhaps this is something that you could look at in the future, but we are hoping to partner with each one of you as one-on-one meetings to kind of know the details of the implementation projects that are identified in the plan to kind of see which projects would you like to consider applying for.

But we have rural enhancements of any rural roads in multiple jurisdictions we could do edge land improvements.

We have corridor-wide safety strategies where we can optimize signal timing, implement high-friction surface treatment to reduce and eliminate rural departure incidents.

We have some measures obviously for the urban areas because also the city of Charlottesville but also the urban areas of Albemarle County are captured in the plan as well.

And then the major corridor safety treatments that include curb delineation, rumble strips, high-fetch service treatment along corridors and crossings between two counties to reduce runoff flows drivers.

When I think about the major corridors, that mainly is US 250 and US 29.

A little bit about the spot-specific improvements.

So in the plan, there's a total number of 43 spot-specific improvements.

These could be also potentially applied for in the next five or six weeks for all.

The cost is,

I'll talk a little bit about the cost.

I think there's only a couple of projects that are estimated to be about $5 million.

I believe one is a roundabout in Fluvanna County and the other one is a roundabout in Alomar County.

But most of these projects are going to be low cost, high impact solutions to improve road safety within the region.

So the timeline for the application development, we're looking to start as early as January, 2026.

We will need project scopes, cost estimates, resolution supports, the VDOT support, and MOUs with VDOT because this is gonna be a construction project.

Based on the information that we have for last year,

We're thinking that the FY26 NOFO is going to be released around March 26, and then the application deadline will be in June.

One thing I want to mention is that last year the funding ceiling for a complete application was about $25 million.

That is only on the federal side.

I'm not exactly sure what are we going to see next year, but something for us to keep in mind as we look at the projects.

Thanks, Gorjan.

This was great.

Just to give a little bit more context, we really wanted today to be sort of a

Kickstart to some conversations and discussions with you all if anyone had any interest.

And now that we have this finalized and adopted safety action plan, looking to the next step of implementation and thinking through, do we want to pursue any of the opportunities that are in that plan?

I think this is a really unique opportunity that we have, and there's a lot of money that's going to be on the table next round.

And some of the case studies that you saw in Gorjan's presentation today were specific scenarios where the regional body was actually the applicant

and they worked with their local jurisdictions to come up with a bundled implementation project to submit for.

Does this have anything to do with the stuff happening with BVA and Honda?

That's all separated?

Are there any questions?

Comment.

You're looking for letters of support from the Board of Supervisors that start in January.

We should probably make sure not waiting until December due to the Board's not meeting sometimes more than once or whether or whatever reason.

Great segue.

I would suggest that this be part of maybe discussing when we talk to SMART SCALE and

the elected officials, because if you find out that the counties are looking to put money at proper SMART SCALE, they might, you wouldn't do that for this too.

So I think that's the answer for, I mean, who's talking to who first?

Yeah.

So maybe to add a little, a little, maybe like a overview of how,

This could work potentially as we're thinking about it is that we're going to be pretty limited in SMART SCALE as to what is going to be feasible and what's going to be competitive.

So this could be another option to move forward on a high priority project.

If you wanted us to, we could try to coordinate at least to have somebody from the PDC sitting in on our SMART SCALE meetings to

No, I mean, we can coordinate it, try to do it at the same time.

Like I said, once I have the data layers together and have the locations, the numbers have gone up, so there's not,

The rankings basically are going to be from last round of SMART SCALE weren't that well from most of the projects in the rural area.

Maybe that's the answer right there is if you're going to every locality and saying, look, we've been submitting the same thing for the last five rounds.

It doesn't make sense to do that anymore.

There really is as the five, maybe one project worth submitting.

By the way, we have this safety action plan that, and maybe that's the segment right there, we can get, either the PDAC can be part of the meeting or we can get you in touch with the PDAC so you can figure out if there's something else we can do.

Maybe that's the answer.

We could start, we could try to coordinate that, especially for

You guys and Fluvanna, I mean, Lynchburg will have to help Nelson County, but for Greene, I mean Fluvanna and Louisa, we can coordinate with the PDC and make sure that we have that as part of some of our presentation, if it's on that action plan.

because I'm going to have a location center, the highest priority for the district.

So the project that's going to be applied for has to be in the action plan.

They probably all are because we're looking at the safety data to coming up with these locations.

So they're the high priority safety locations in each locality because I don't look at it primarily don't look at anything else.

So they're probably in the plan.

I don't know that like the roundabouts, for example, are there necessarily because if I recall, there wasn't like a roundabout that was proposed in the plan for

Like Louisa County, that went into the move safely.

Because we have three roundabouts going just about every round.

So yeah, I mean, I think it'd be really interesting to see what comes out of the SMART SCALE meetings and whether this is another way for us to help counties that

You know, we've gone from four submissions every round to really have one now.

So it sounds like it's going to happen.

But I will add that PDOT is very supportive of supporting the locality of the PDC and any future applications.

So whatever.

I have a question maybe for all the counties.

I recommend having a discussion with like by a department in the county administration, yes, before and because sometimes county administration wants to have that discussion or bring them into a separate meeting.

Each locality I think operates a little bit differently.

The deciding factor, because all these projects are within your county, so we want you to decide which projects are going to be what you need.

Based on your need, we can apply for these projects on your behalf.

So I think for, in my head, I guess it makes more sense to discuss that with you and then

Your support will help us get buy-in from the wards.

I would also say as part of those meetings that PDC and MPO have with locality staff is including that cross-reference.

And I don't think...

I don't think it's a bad thing that we might not be submitting a project we've done in the last five rounds because I'm submitting the same roundabout for five rounds.

What, suddenly how's the sixth round going to be any better unless there's either a safety issue or, so I mean, it's less staff time for everybody that can be used for other things.

So I do like the fact we're going to a more targeted approach.

It just is, unfortunately the downside becoming

Harder and Harder, especially for rural counties, to get a piece of that pie.

I'm on the rural county stump again.

I've enjoyed both presentations today.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Does anybody online have any questions or comments?

All right, well thank you for educating us.

Just a couple quick updates from the PDC here.

Much like Chuck mentioned about the area type change, we just wanted to let all of you know that this has went to all of the counties, to the administration, and it has also went to our commission who will be making a decision on that at their September meeting and then moving through the channels from there.

So just wanted to keep you aware of how that was proceeding.

And then just another quick informational timeline thing.

When we met in June, we talked about how we were taking on a role planning needs assessment.

And so basically looking at what plans already exist for the localities here in the counties, what plans we have at the PDC that kind of correspond with that.

and one of our staff members, Logan, is in the process of going through websites to start collecting all of that information to develop a memo that we will get to you guys with a survey that will come out.

And that will happen all before we meet again in November.

So just kind of wanted to give you number one, a heads up that we are working on it, where we are, what you can be expecting from us.

I will say just quickly,

He is mostly, like I said, starting with what plans are online that have already been completed.

If by chance anyone knows of a plan that isn't online, we're kind of tapping it at around the last 10 years.

But again, if there's something we wouldn't think of, if there's something outside of that timeline that you think is very relevant to this, please just email me and let me know.

And we can make sure that we're including that in there.

As part of the survey, we will be sending you what we looked at so you'll know what we've what we've checked.

But just to get ahead of that a little bit, if you know of something that, you know, is super relevant that maybe doesn't meet those two initial qualifications of being in the last 10 years and online.

Just give us a heads up.

But we are plugging along with that and really looking forward to getting your responses from the survey.

And then after the survey, we do plan to schedule one-on-one conversations with the planning staff in the localities to still make sure that we're getting the best picture of what those needs are after we've reviewed all of those plans.

And then again, our target date is to have most of this wrapped up

in January and ready to present to you at the February, and it is an early February meeting, that's when we're switching weeks.

Yeah.

And then as a follow up to the first one, she was talking about the SMART SCALE area types I have on my calendar.

for next Thursday to email all of the chief administrative officer.

And I know I CC'd this group on the email that went out to all the county administrators, but I have a message to follow up with them just to remind them that it is going to action.

Thank you.

I'm definitely looking forward to all the older plans, seeing what's out there.

If you feel okay, we can do a quick round table round and see what's going on.

I can go ahead and start.

So to Tom, Louisa County, we are working on survey questions for our comprehensive plan update.

So that is something we are working on internally.

I really don't have something more exciting to share.

Our comp plan, the draft's online for you to read if you are interested.

We'll have an open house for it as well.

This will be exciting.

And that's also our big update for Albemarle.

You're also working on data center, are you not?

I'm not personally, but yes, that is something that I think went to boards of session last week.

We got a lot of emails that I saw in my inbox.

But I'm not the person asked about that, unfortunately.

That's Bill Fritz.

He's there, good leadership support.

Hey guys, it's Stephanie Golon with Greene County.

We're extremely busy.

We're working with Kimley Horne to do our locally administered project for SMART SCALE.

Jim's pretty much working on that every day.

And then we're also waiting to hear back from the CTP about a developer proposed traffic improvement that's occurring right here in Stanardsville that will have a great impact on

Everything, our population, our economy.

We also are starting to talk about budgeting for updating our comp plan, which we just recently adopted probably two years ago, but we're going to hire a consultant this round and do a major overhaul.

It's been about 15 years since we've done that.

And with all the development in Rutgersville and the newly revived residential development that's happened the last five years, we feel that we need to do a

Overhaul of that plan.

So that's what's happening out here in Greene.

Hey, it's Dylan and Nelson.

Like I said, we've got our new planner, Cody.

He's on his third week.

He came from Albemarle County from code enforcement.

So he's been fitting in very well so far.

And I'm glad he's doing code enforcement because that is my least favorite thing to do.

We've got, so our zoning ordinance regulates temporary event permits.

I'm sure you're all familiar with the lock-in property and the festival I haven't done in a few years, but we've got an application in for an event that's sold out already.

It's called Valley of the Seven Stars.

About 23,000 people, so we're working through approvals with that, with everybody.

We've got Rockfish River Rodeo and the Overland Expo all happening.

Our ordinance update continues.

That will be going well into next spring, but it's going well.

We're doing overlay districts on Route 29 and Route 151.

So going through all of our proposed uses and which corridors they should go on and shouldn't go on and working out details of that.

You know, things like access management, bike and ped, all of that.

We amended the county code so basically before

If you wanted to get a business license you could just go to the commissioner's office and get it and over the years I've tried several times to tell the board well they really should be getting zoning approval first and they weren't really interested in that but when the legislation hit that prohibits commissioners of revenue from sharing information about short-term rentals with other government agencies which is how we were tracking them

We decided that we would codify requiring the zoning first so that we can still be able to track short-term rentals in the county in our registry.

We've got the Central Virginia Electric Co-op.

They've got two projects that are small-scale battery energy storage that are behind the meter.

So although we don't have a battery energy storage ordinance at this time,

The site plans are proceeding as accessory uses to a public utility.

So like I said, those are very small scale, small footprints within the existing compound.

FEMA put out new flood maps that were effective August 5th, 2025.

So that was a pretty decent size mail out.

3,000 residents in the county got a letter.

We've got that mapped on our GIS.

So that's been good.

And

Our new Department of Social Services building, they just submitted their site plan so in conjunction with some of the Safe Streets for All recommendations, the corner there where the building is, they're going to be removing the

existing curbing and guardrails and going to be putting sidewalks in so that the housing development across Route 29 will be able to access the main town of Livingston.

So a lot going on, but we're fully staffed now, so we should just keep rolling.

We sound busy.

So I guess it's my turn now.

So a couple things going on here.

On the personnel side, we have hired an admin program specialist, which will help take some of the load off.

She's a local girl.

She unfortunately won't start till September 8th, so we have a few more weeks to go, but looking forward to getting her on board.

As far as our comprehensive plan, we are starting to see some signs of progress with our advisory groups.

I'm still hoping to have a

A rough draft of our plan, update ready after the first of the year for Planning Commission and Board to start looking at.

As far as transportation projects, we are still on track to submit, or at least planning to submit a transportation alternatives application for streetscape in Fork Union by the 15th of September.

In fact, I've got a Zoom meeting with Pat Moore

in a little more than an hour to go over that application.

And we still have to go before the board.

They get their final blessing, which will happen on September 3rd.

I don't think we have enough time.

No, not unless there were any suggestions for future topics.

Well, I follow this non-meeting meeting to what?

Thank you everybody.

Thanks everyone.