Rural Transportation Advisory Committee Meeting   8/4/2026

Is it time to do elections already?

We're only going further.

Mr. Chairman, I think they just put that on the agenda for fun.

Before we do the election of officers, if we could vote Dylan into the meeting.

You may join us, Dylan, remotely.

So I want to make sure I get there in time.

Because there's a motion to vote.

Motion to keep Thomas shared of RTAC.

Would you like to remain vice chairman?

However, if someone else is interested, I also have no problems with that.

All those opposed, congratulations.

Aye aye, thank you.

Okay, well now that we have the officers sorted out, is there any housekeeping items that the TJPDC wants to do before we go into minutes or anything else?

Just introductions.

Sandy, you want to start?

Sandy Shackelford, VDOT, or to start, anything.

Michael Murphy, Jaunt.

Jim Frydl, Greene, Kevin.

I just started July 1 as the Director of Regional Planning, so it's nice to meet you all.

Fantastic.

And Sarah Pennington with TJPDC and RideShare.

And then people online would like to go order any water slides.

Just introductions?

Yes, ma'am.

Yeah.

Congratulations.

I'll go Christine Jacobs, ED here at the Thomas Jefferson Planning District.

I'm an associate planner with Louisa County Community Development.

Okay.

We have been including Tanya, but I didn't know once Jessica had joined.

We have not discussed hardtacks.

Obviously, we know from Dylan that we will be waiting for an alternate there.

All right, now our favorite topic of them all remote electronic participation.

But again, just wanted to put it in front of you as an annual reminder of the policy.

There always seems to snow.

It is hedging our bets.

Does anybody have goals and objectives and they just write a role or does everybody feel like they could use a little more time to go over that with the proper individual?

I think we probably want to have the time just so that our elected bodies can weigh in and if they see anything that they want to add or change.

Thanks for letting me steal your thunder.

Yeah, sorry, I jumped ahead.

If I did not know if we were going to dive into any technical questions, is that something that you're willing to do for other localities if they plan on just presenting to their more supervised group?

And we're willing to help you all develop materials if that's helpful, if anything that you all need to facilitate that communication for most students.

Everybody's got to come and put the vote ready.

Can you keep moving on the other items, or are they dependent on having a group of others?

So that would be open for everybody to read that.

Great.

Are there any other general planning efforts that you all are going on that we do need to get through here?

We're not entirely involved under the transportation-related impacts, but that is a large thing that we are working on to protect the rural and agricultural character we have in left and right counties.

VDOT is doing two, well, one less thing to do, two pipeline studies in rural areas.

Is it time for SMART SCALE again?

And also looking over at our Jaunt friends.

Well, we're trying to just do things now instead of studying.

That's exciting.

And I will say that part of it is engaged in a prioritization process for transportation initiatives that intersects with parts of U.S. funds.

Any question about demographics before we jump into some of the commuter?

I'm not looking for it right now, but is there a breakdown or someone has statistics of what these smaller percentages are made of?

Yes, that should be in the written documentation, offices, double check for water parking, but if it's not, I can quickly pull that.

Just the curiosity, so.

That's awesome.

Just curiosity.

A lot of our jurisdictions in this region are higher than both the United States and Virginia.

And I'm just wondering how this slide and this data point's going to look when they see the 2026 numbers.

But I'm happy to do some digging and see if there are other data sets that might be available for that.

Is your question whether or not like if you telework, if that's like accounted for in terms of the average, or just accounting for that as like part of the bigger context?

So I think that this is likely to look different.

So yeah, the statistics are interesting.

Any questions about this before I proceed?

The workforce needs are of employers and I'm just curious like when we talk to employees and find that you know they find a lack of available resources of workforce ready people in the region or there's a surplus or it's just about right and like how does how do these numbers match what the employers want?

Like if you have 80 some percent of the jobs that you have being filled by people outside of your jurisdiction, that can speak to the local employment base.

I'm just looking at this bottom column here right now, like quick map, didn't really look at it carefully, but over 40,000 people are coming from outside the PDC to inside the PDC to work, which means to me that there are needs that need to get met that can't be met by our floor are not being met by our residents.

Does that make sense?

What did you do there?

So that have an administrative address located in our particular jurisdiction.

So you would imagine the hospital employees to be people traveling to the city, even though most of the hospital never became part of the city.

and 66% of resident workers in Charlottesville commute outside of the city for work.

I thought you had a question.

76.1% could be in and out of the county.

Within these numbers, people who tell it to me, so they may work from home, actually not drive, but they work out of accounting in this data, correct?

Yes, this does not specify any work from home agreements, any certain number of data that they might be making this at.

Address is for where they were.

Yes.

There are a couple of nuances that everybody knows about.

So if it's 15% of people in the community are teleworkers, every one of those numbers might be 15% out.

And they did tell us that this was the best step

How is the city of Richmond not a top community destination for Louisa County?

That makes sense.

Probably won't be good if I don't use it downtown.

And I'm happy to send you the Excel export that shows the number of games you're set for our victory.

Happy to share that with everybody.

Great question.

Any other feedback on these or thoughts?

Rural counting, Stephanie?

Is it more about environmental protection or is it more about protecting agricultural businesses?

I would like to see both.

might be more related to building a new self-transportation foundation.

And Tim Harp?

Go ahead, Jim.

It's okay if it's related, but I think the environmental is more about the true environmental impacts, fuel leaks, small.

Jim, I appreciate your insight.

I agree with that.

More of that come November.

Is your concern that agricultural maybe isn't like emphasized enough?

Yes, I think the word agricultural would be nice to have in one of the goals.

Noted.

I don't know if that would count as redevelopment or if that was longer development, exactly.

David, open on your thoughts.

Of course, it's also job security.

So I don't know, just thinking through that, it might make sense as you have these discussions that those end up being split out into two separate ways.

which is typically you would think of things like 151 where you have agribusinesses but preserving rural character maybe could add a little more we could flush that out a little more under land use transportation because one is preserving something and the other is providing an aspect of it.

OK.

That's the end of the war.

So it's all about perspective.

So we'll summarize all of this feedback and send it around to everyone so that you have it to be able to reference if it's helpful in your conversations with your elected officials to say there's some feedback that TJPDC has already done and we can provide that.

Would it be like middle of October, end of October before we get a version two goal that we can shop out for a vote?

Yeah, so the November meeting has been 10, so we would be sending the packet out to you ideally around the 3rd or 4th.

Give us time to compile all of it.

I don't know if it's easy to

It also provides a great breakdown of the demographics that you've provided earlier.

Are there different ways to measure these things that maybe we haven't thought about already would be helpful feedback.

So why don't we make like a goal of October 1st that if we, everybody can get some feedback to the TJPDC October 1st and that way we can try to come together with a decision in November.

Just really looking for your input here as well.

If you're only looking at fatal and serious injury crashes, you may... because you're only looking at where the incidence is and specifically I'm thinking like in the towns or in the growth areas, thinking about like the multimodal infrastructure, you might not be able to capture like safety benefits associated with improving the built infrastructure for people to walk around in a growth area, for example.

Is reliability for account development the reliability of the same commute every single day?

Like how often can you make your trip and it is an expected trip versus some days it might take this long to recover from an incident or you know 30 minutes versus a 10 minute trip.

There are a couple different performances related to it.

I don't know how you got in but I think accessibility maybe not the same type of the definition but is important for economic development because how many businesses have we seen fail because it's too hard to get into or you know it's just so that your whole network and the arrangement of your network also helps with success

I mean, obviously it takes what's helpful and what's regardless of that.

And as a lookout, we need to be careful about problems with subgrants.

That doesn't make sense, but it's something I've rolled around a little bit.

One of the other thoughts I had is you put on this, is that often kind of like a multiplier, sort of like how they do land use and SMART SCALE, where like if there are other needs, and there's also like a system preservation and maintenance thing that like gives it a little new stuff and priority.

So we're part of the problem.

At least, we're leading the way.

Well, I appreciate everybody letting me start a conversation here just to talk about the goals.

I have nothing further to add at this time.

Thank you guys for that.

I really appreciate everyone being so engaged and asking really great questions and I'm just very happy this is recorded so you can go to that if you'd like to watch.

November 10th.

Thank you.

Thank you, Taylor.

I'm ready for a Culpeper District update.

And do you want to say anything about what's going on at that intersection?

So I'll get after that.

We want to take a look at them and see what we can do to help that intersection operate more effectively and safely.

I mean, it's not as close to Dump Springs, but it is an accident for both Gidditch and Louisa County.

That would be way lower than the industrial park.

But after construction data center, if you're riding, there wouldn't be as many, I guess, factory or laboratory, whatever you're going to have in your industrial park.

Otherwise, if you don't have any questions, I'm going to answer them, but that's what's going on.

All right, Lynchburg District update.

Yeah, can you guys hear me?

I think that's I think that's all for now we're kind of in that you know wrapping up one thing moving into the next round of things.

We need to reschedule some meetings.

But we didn't want to come to you with just a problem and no potential solution.

I mean, how long do we have to do the survey, I guess is the question.

We'd probably look to leave it open for at least a month and give our staff enough time to be able to work through those results and produce materials for you all.

So anybody else looking at their calendar to see if the second or sixteenth works for you?

I'm happy for everyone.

All those in favor say aye.

All those opposed?

Alright.

So thank you again for that.

Round table favorite moment.

I don't think I have anything in addition.

But I don't have anything really from a transportation standpoint to speak about.

So I will turn it over to... Can I ask a question real quick?

access management or transportation related items that would change or impact growth.

I'll probably have more information to share.

Thank you.

So it'll be a cool effort, I think, over the next two or three years.

About everything.

You had said previously once you have maybe a better handle on that favorite stuff that you would be willing to share with the group.

Like a five-minute flow chart, you know?

I could do that in, I guess, November meeting.

Sorry to put you on the spot.

No, no, no.

It's interesting because we're going to try to make it work with Royal Rustic so that it's not two separate programs but it's one thing where there's two separate I guess options in the room so fingers crossed it works.

How do you write that out?

A whole bunch of things and people have a lot of different things.

Sounds fascinating.

So I don't know if you'd run into that.

Yeah.

That's the general thought.

Was this something that was requested or is this a county initiative?

And because it's kind of blocked there also.

Thank you for sharing.

You're welcome.

Those are my two main updates that I should share.

So yeah.

Dylan, tell us all about Nelson.

So check that out, rpcva.org, and if you have any questions, let me know.

It's a great event.

Great event.

We'll take you up on that.

All right, sounds good.

Thanks Dylan.

They never vote.

No, you think you're giving a live vote?

Sorry.

No, I think so.