MPO Policy Board Meeting   1/27/2021

Notice of electronic meeting due to COVID-19 state of emergency.

The meeting of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization is being held pursuant to item 4.0-01 of the approved state budget HB 29 that allows public bodies to hold electronic meetings in the current COVID-19 emergency.

and that it is impractical or unsafe to assemble in a single location and that the purpose of the meeting is to discuss or transact the business statutorily required or necessary to continue operations of the public body.

This meeting is being held via electronic video and audio means through Zoom online meetings and is accessible to the public with close

closed captioning, and there will be an opportunity for public comment during that portion of the agenda.

Notice has been provided to the public through notice at the TJPDC offices to the media website posting an agenda.

The meeting minutes will reflect to the nature of the emergency.

The meeting was held by electronic communication means and the type of electronic communication means by which the meeting was held.

A recording of the meeting will be posted at www.tjpdc.org within 10 days of the meeting.

All right.

I guess we can start with matters from the public.

That's OK.

Thank you.

My name is Peter Krebs.

I'm from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

I'd like to congratulate everybody for doing so well with this round of SMART SCALE.

Both the number of projects funded and the amounts are very encouraging.

Good news is most welcome these days.

Several of the projects are highly strategic.

I'm especially pleased to know that the pedestrian bridge over 29 at Sand Road could be moving forward.

This project could literally save lives.

It also opens exciting possibilities in Stonefield, Commonwealth, and Seminole Square, which could become one of the region's largest housing and redevelopment opportunities.

Suddenly, it also acknowledges that hydraulic 29 is at the heart of the MPO, and in some ways, what the MPO is all about.

In a way, though, it isn't surprising.

It speaks to the quality of the staff's work that went into the proposals.

But more importantly, the fact that the projects were assembled in the right way.

They embody a spirit of interjurisdictional cooperation, often extraordinary community outreach, and let's be honest, a willingness to ask questions when it is warranted.

VDOT sees all that, they appreciate these qualities, and it yields positive results.

I look forward to hearing Chuck's presentation.

I think the success bodes well for the next round, and I hope we use a similar process.

Later, Jessica is going to talk about the proposed Ravenna River pedestrian bridge at Willam Mills.

This too is a project that embodies the spirit of what the MPO is all about.

It could be transformative for both the city and the county, yet neither could do it alone.

Among the benefits, it links neighborhoods in Pentops and Willam Mills,

It connects residents of both the city and the county to jobs on the opposite side, two-way commuting, and it bears noting that three of the area's largest private employers are in the immediate vicinity.

It unites two of the area's best trails, the Rivanna Trail and the Old Mills Trail, into a single loop and provides a gateway to a future Riverside Trail all the way to Milton and beyond.

It'll be accessible to people commuting by bike, moms pushing strollers in the park,

Caregivers and their charges and wheelchairs from the hospital.

It breaks all kinds of barriers, not just the city and the county line, not just the river, but connects everything we're trying to do programmatically.

Transportation, recreation, healthcare, economic development, all of these things.

Now in the public meetings about this project, Jessica has generally said that the next step is for the localities

to decide if they would like to pursue this project in the next round of SMART SCALE or whatever other channel is appropriate.

I would urge them to do so.

And I'm saying so now for two reasons.

First of all, leaders from both the city and the county are here.

Second, the MPO seems like the appropriate vehicle, just as it was for hydraulic 29 and for very similar reasons.

I understand that the work plan allows for a deeper look at a few more complicated projects, and this would seem to fit the bill.

It's an exciting opportunity for residents of both Albemarle and Charlottesville, and I look forward to following the process and assisting as needed.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else from the public who would like to speak?

All right.

So we have an amendment to the TIP.

It's for the Route 20 bridge replacement, the Belmont Bridge, the

Cost of the bridge is going to increase about $6 million.

And there's the new tip block and then in the memo, the old tip block so you can see what the changes were.

I mean, we're

processing the block.

I mean, if the city has any, if there's any specific questions about the increases, these are based on cost estimate increases from the project that the city's managing.

I'll just jump in and say citizens have asked me where the extra money is coming from and so that I'll report that question.

All questions or comments?

Should we move on to public hearing then?

If there's anyone from the public who would like to comment on this public hearing for this item, feel free to speak, raise the hand in the Zoom webinar, or if you're on the phone dial star nine.

All right, seeing no one, I will close public comment.

So just before the motion, I sent an email out this morning to the board.

There was a small typo in the new tip block in the first memo that I sent you.

This has been the corrected memo in the packet.

So the board has the opportunity or the option to continue the public hearing so that the public can comment on the new block or they can vote on it today or

Close the public hearing and then choose to vote on it later.

The staff, the TJPD staff and the VDOT staff highly recommend that you vote on it today because it was a small error.

Okay.

So on the federal side, the STP, STP-BG, the match amount, the amount said that it was 100,576.

That's the correct number in the memo that originally went out.

The amount had a 3 on the end of it, so it was 100,576.3.

Very good.

All right.

All right.

Supervisor Malek.

Yes.

Councilman Snook is not here.

Supervisor Galloway?

Not here yet.

Yes.

All right, the tip amendment passes.

On to the next item, general administration review and acceptance of the agenda.

Are there any comments or questions from the board on today's agenda?

Second.

All right, is it fine to just do a voice vote for this?

All in favor?

Aye.

All those opposed?

All right, the agenda is approved.

On to approval of December 1st, 2020 meeting minutes.

Again, any questions or comments from the board?

No.

All right, is there a motion to approve the December 1st, 2020 meeting minutes?

Motion.

Second.

All right, all those in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye, all those opposed?

Any extensions?

All right.

December 1st, 2020 meeting is passed.

So the November meeting is right before Thanksgiving.

So we typically change the meeting to a different date.

I'm proposing that we keep all the same meeting dates that we typically have, except move the November 24th meeting to December 7th.

I move we adopt the improved calendar with December 7th set ahead of time instead of making a last minute change.

And I'll second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All those opposed?

Abstentions?

All right.

And calendar for year 2021 passes.

OK.

I'm surprised I don't have a memo for this.

So the policy board officers, our bylaws say that we should appoint a committee, a selection committee or nominating committee for the new officers.

The bylaws also say that we should

Vote for the new officers in our first meeting of the year, which would be this year.

So you had to appoint the nominating committee a month before the time.

But because there's kind of a discrepancy in the bylaws, I believe that you could still choose to elect your officers this meeting.

If you prefer, you could wait till next meeting and appoint nominating officers at this meeting.

May I ask you a question?

And that is, didn't Michael just get there?

I mean, didn't we change this in April or May?

Because we've been behind the eight ball for years and years.

So I hope that we can just let him carry on until April or May this year, and then it'll revert back to the county, and the county can figure out among themselves who they want to take the leadership.

Just as an FYI, your bylaws do state that the nomination of officers would be at the first meeting of the calendar year.

So if you would like that to move to a fiscal year appointment starting in July, we could look at amending the bylaws if that would work better.

Well, I guess I better nominate Michael to continue on and finish his term at the very least.

Second.

All right.

Well, perfectly happy to continue on.

OK, sorry.

Aye.

Aye.

All those opposed?

All right, I will continue on as chair.

I'll second.

Aye.

All those opposed?

All right, Supervisor Malek is re-nominated as Vice Chair.

So at the last meeting, we had several presentations from VDOT and a lengthy discussion about the performance targets.

This is something that the MPO has to set as part of federal and state requirements.

And after several discussions and more thought, the staff is recommending that we adopt the state targets because when I went to write a report talking about how the MPO

would affect change to meet the targets that we, if we were to set our own targets, we'd have to explain how we aim to adjust and meet the targets that we set.

And we don't have like a lot of sway to do that.

We have the long range transportation plan and we have our selection of SMART SCALE applications, but the state kind of has more sway at the way our system is set up.

I'm suggesting that we adopt the state targets.

If you would like to adopt local targets, I have two options.

In your memo, there's the first page of tables, table one and two are the recommended targets.

The last column here are the targets that we're recommending.

They match what the state says.

The second page has the

The targets are set at the MPO current targets and also looking at the actual amounts in the prediction.

So the one thing the tech committee and the CTAC committee both discussed this and the one thing that they brought up was that the safety targets, you know, you are kind of making

A target of having seven fatalities.

This is still a decrease.

Also the number is the amount, like the percentage amount looks like it's a very significant amount difference between the state and the local.

But when you're looking at, you know, the state's data has 898 and the MPO's data has only seven points in it.

So if

Like one person, like if it's like off by one, it makes this huge difference.

So that number, that percentage number could change dramatically in the coming years.

These targets are set, the safety targets are set every year.

Is this a public hearing?

Second.

All right.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

All those opposed?

Right.

The performance targets for the MPO pass.

Chuck, I have the PowerPoint

Yeah, go up one slide above that one.

We'll just talk about funding and then we can jump to what we were, what our projects were.

As part of the omnius bill, we got additional funding to account for the gas tax that is paid in by these jurisdictions within the district every year.

So we were able to get additional $87 million in district grant funds, and that helped us fund a lot more projects.

So I just wanted to point that out.

We will start to get an additional amount every to the district grant pot based on this so hopefully it'll can we won't be that much but because that was a four-year total so we should be able to get additional funding beyond the 20 million dollars which we've normally gotten in the past.

So just to keep that in mind out of the district grant pot we had 114 million dollars to fund projects with so we can scroll down to the

actual slides that were for our district.

Next one.

Okay, these are all the projects that were recommended for funding.

Of these we had in the MPO area, there was 15 total projects, 13 of them were funded.

And the only ones that weren't funded were Hillsdale South Extension and Frays Mill intersection on 29.

Everything else was recommended for funding by the

OIP to the CTB.

That's pretty great.

Mr.

Chair, if I may, hopefully it will be a little bit easier than having too much work on the next round.

Chuck, if I'm not mistaken, looking at the spreadsheet that has all of the projects on those, out of 20 projects that were funded in the Culpeper District, Hillsdale South was number 21, and it's scoring.

so you know with a though it had a high cost had there been a little more money the way i read it that one actually would have been recommended as well um so it may be that that's a fairly easy one to consider

To at least present to the policy board for your next round, because it did score so well.

On the other end of the spectrum, more so for Albemarle County, and I was very surprised at this as well, the phrase Mill Road didn't score well at all.

And that may be a project that really takes a lot more review and looking at to see if there may be a better way that would increase that score.

But it looks like the Hillsdale South is a really good project.

Any other questions or comments?

There's no further discussion.

Do you mind if I share my screen?

No, not at all.

I have an extra bonus screen.

OK, so you all received in your packets this memo, which what is happening right now is we're not getting ready to vote on this at this meeting or the next meeting.

We're starting to think through what we want to be on the unified planning work program.

For those of you who maybe don't have as much familiarity, I think we did a revision already, so hopefully you have some

some memory of that but basically this is what we submit to through VDOT and DRPT that shows how we're going to spend the federal funding that we get to operate the MPO so this is the planning dollars that we get.

I'm going to switch to another spreadsheet here just to give you guys an idea.

This number right here is the $322,500 that's what our total budget is between both

Both FTA, the Federal Transit Administration, and the Federal Highway Administration funding.

We get funding from both sources.

This includes our federal, state, and the local match that we have to work with.

And then this line item right here that says VDOT beside it, that basically supports like Chuck and the work that he does that VDOT does to support our MPO.

So we started looking through the budget for this next fiscal year just to look at what we think is likely for the work that we're going to have to perform.

There are certain things that we have to do as an MPO.

We have to staff committees.

We have to do things like the performance measures.

We have to do a transportation improvement program.

We have to do some of these administrative things.

SMART SCALE, we've already talked about how we're going to amp up our public involvement and public engagement for SMART SCALE.

So we're putting some significant resources into supporting that.

So the projects were left with some discrepancy.

The amount of funding that we really have available on a more, I guess to be more discriminating with about how we spend, isn't as much as that $322,000 budget.

We're recommending that since we've started the North 29 corridor study, since we're starting this fiscal year, which will take us through the northern portion of the 29 corridor, which is in the MPO, and then we'll also be contributing rural VDOT planning money to supporting that as well.

We're going to recommend that we go ahead and

We will continue to invest resources and effort into that planning process and that will also take us into the long-range transportation plan update which is going to be needed starting in the following fiscal year, fiscal year 23.

So this will lead us into that.

This is a high priority area for VDOT so we'll also most likely be able to get some VDOT support for that.

We're also going to be recommending that we use a consultant to do an MPO strategic plan, specifically as we start looking at the possibility of changing the MPO boundaries.

We think this is a really good opportunity to review and define who

Who it is that we're serving?

Who is our client?

Is that our elected officials?

Is that members of the public at large?

Is that our local governing bodies and their staff?

We really want to spend some time thinking about who it is that we are doing this work for.

and also help us really define our committee's structure and how we can utilize them most effectively.

We are very unique in that we have an ongoing citizen advisory committee for our MPO and I think this will really help us be able to utilize them as a resource more effectively and more strategically, so we're going to recommend some resources devoted to that.

And with all that said, we have about $25,000 or so that we could potentially do another project.

So Jessica, Lucinda, and I had brainstormed some potential topics or areas that you all might be interested in.

Just to start having you give some thought and some feedback to us as far as what your priorities would be with a little bit of that discretionary funding.

Some of the ideas that we had come up with was some sort of policy research related to maybe how to leverage public-private partnerships in order to bring more transportation funding into the region.

Best Practices for Supporting Climate Action Plans, which is a, I'm so sorry, which is a priority for both the city and the county right now.

How travel demand and travel behavior might be changing as an increase in telework, you know, due to COVID, but is most likely to continue.

Does that change sort of when the roads are congested and what travel looks like?

There's also an opportunity you know Jessica always has lots of ideas for bike and pedestrian projects which has a strong equity tie-in.

We could also do another effort to look at some sort of equity type of project and then Lucinda's been doing a lot of research on some of the understanding some of the safety data and things that

that we could be looking for that we could be doing more with specifically related to safety impacts in historically underserved communities and how there are greater safety considerations for people who are trying to access points of service like grocery stores or pharmacies, schools, things like that and how they need to be

So those were some ideas we had.

We presented to CTAC and to

and to the MPO tech committee as well.

They had some other ideas.

One suggestion was an inventory of existing transportation plans for a region and how effective they are and if they're not being utilized, why.

There was some interest in census data, a lot of interest in equity.

There's some interest in exploring new options for how we could be innovative and how we collect data.

What we could get from a technical consultant to use technology instead of maybe physically having somebody out doing a bicycle count.

Is there a technology that would make that more efficient?

And then CTAC also suggested some work around maybe understanding what makes a great ride share economy and looking at maybe some case studies to see what

makes communities more likely to adopt ride sharing habits.

There's also an interest in looking at the feasibility of adopting a Vision Zero plan that would be for our regions.

We can look at case studies or best practices of what other places we're doing.

Really this is an initial chance for you to give us an initial round of feedback on what it is that we think makes sense to be doing with the MPO funding and then for you all to give us some guidance on what you would see as your top priorities for any discretionary funding that is remaining after we put money towards what we think are the highest priorities for the MPO.

I put in the budget right now about $20,000.

That's an estimate I would need to call around and just to get a better ballpark figure.

One of the suggestions I made to Sandy and the team, too, was to speak to SIR, who I know usually has ongoing contracts with VDOT.

They, in my opinion, did an excellent job with the Regional Transit Partnership strategic planning.

They're very familiar with our area.

They worked on the Route 29 Solutions project with us.

They might be a really logical choice.

They're not cheap though.

Well, refining the scope of what we asked them,

would be a way to get the budget in.

So I know I'm not skilled at strategic planning, but there's a whole lot of sitting around and that goes on here that I don't wanna have to pay Mr. Martin to do.

So I hope that you all can generate some much more specific questions other than made the boundary change.

I don't know why we need a consultant for that.

We either do it, the communities have to ask.

We've tried in the past and they've said no.

So that's something that can be done

with an existing staff.

Yes, Michael, this is Julia Monteith.

I just, going back to the previous agenda item where we were talking about the success of the SMART SCALE projects and what we would

apply for in the next round given that so many were granted.

If I could answer just this is kind of following the pattern that we had taught the last few months with the MPO Policy Board and the committees that now that we have these scores in place, staff will go ahead and start looking at those projects that were applied for but not recommended.

Also comparing to the long-range transportation plan and B-Trans, those higher priority projects, and doing exactly that, Julia, is not only asking the policy board, CTAC, and the technical committee, but also reaching out into the public to receive some input.

Great.

One thing to keep in mind regarding that particular comment is there was huge amount of citizen uproar over the Burnley Station project and that may have been why it wasn't funded because they perceived that it was still going to be a source of great discord in the county.

So I don't know that for a fact, I'm just guessing.

Mr.

Chair, if I may.

I've not opposed any of the suggestions here.

I guess I'd want to learn a little more about the public-private partnerships to fund transportation infrastructure.

I have interest in that, so I don't know if there's more information or how to go about.

Tell me more if you would on that one.

The others seem pretty clear to me what they were.

So that would be kind of an exploratory item.

There were several applications that, you know, like the hydraulic area,

They had come up with the plan to have the overpass and everything and then there wasn't funding for it.

I've seen several kind of projects that are kind of

stalled out because there's no transportation funding for it.

This was before we got the great SMART SCALE windfall this year.

But so I was thinking that we could look into how other communities fund their transportation projects.

I was thinking about like a tax district for a development area or just looking at some other funding structures that would be available that would involve

I could

Likewise, I'm curious, some of the specifics are on public-private partnerships and what specific projects it could be applied to or what it looks like.

Two of the things that stick out to me that I know the city's definitely been discussing a lot is the climate action plan and recognizing the importance of connecting our climate action plan project to our capital projects and transportation projects.

Think about how they interact with induced demand and emissions from transportation.

So I know that's definitely something that the city's really been talking about as well as

Equity and especially how some of these transportation projects historically and in the future have impacted low income and particularly low income black neighborhoods, as well as how to get more voices involved in these transportation planning conversations and efforts, which in the city has always been a challenge.

It's very often not a full representation of the whole community who's involved in a lot of decision-making and advocacy around transportation.

We've had some success, different avenues like Cherry Avenue, small area plan and other things, but it's definitely a big priority for the city.

If I may ask people to read the reports from the 2005 Transportation Working Group where they did a complete and thorough study of alternative funding sources and the five different mechanisms that we could use.

Lee Middleditch was the one who called this together.

We met for months and

What we'll do is at your next meeting I'll have a draft of the work program with some more information for you all to look at.

OK, thank you.

Thanks, Michael.

I'm going to share my screen, actually, Lucinda.

OK, hold on.

Thank you everyone for giving me a few minutes to update you about some outreach that was done regarding a potential bicycle and pedestrian crossing of the Ravenna River.

So what's contained in these slides is really contained in the memo that you guys received, but I'll just go over it quickly.

All right, so a little background.

VDOT consultants conducted a feasibility study on two potential routes across the Rivanna River.

TJPDC staff, VDOT, City of Charlottesville, and Albemarle County collaboratively hosted a public workshop on November 12th to inform the public of the results of the feasibility study and gather feedback from the public.

TJPDC staff also received over two dozen emails on the project between November 8th and December 1st.

So questions and comments were recorded and determined to fall into the following categories and these are questions and comments both from the workshop and from the emails.

There were lots of technical considerations and that was in part because prior to the workshop we made the consultant's feasibility study document available to the public on our website so they had a lot of very technical questions because they had already engaged with that material.

They had questions about project cost, project accessibility and connectivity to other bike and pedestrian infrastructure, environmental concerns, parking concerns on both sides of the project study area, and impacts of increased use on community character.

Overall, the public feedback has illuminated a desire, should the project move forward, for the project design to respect and maintain the character of the neighborhoods near Riverview Park.

Discussion around this project offered residents an opportunity to voice pre-existing concerns regarding the overuse of Riverview Park and related parking concerns, as well as traffic concerns related to new commercial uses in Bullen Mills.

So that's all to say that people had a lot of concerns about what's going on in their neighborhoods right now.

They were going to have these concerns whether or not this project were to move forward, but talking about this project gave them the opportunity to publicly voice those concerns.

In summary, while neither of the two route options garnered clear support, those who stated their feelings about the project spoke positively about a bicycle and pedestrian crossing of the Ravenna River.

This is consistent with previous public engagement done to create earlier planning documents.

So in the workshop, there were 63 comments or questions.

The vast majority of those were just questions, often technical questions about details of the feasibility study.

But three of them were determined by staff to speak very clearly, positively about the project overall.

Two of them spoke negatively.

Of the 25 emailed comments, 15 of them spoke overwhelmingly positively about the project overall.

As a bit of an aside, because this question came up repeatedly both in the workshop and in the emails, there was information out there that consultants had identified initially six potential crossing locations in the study area.

They did present these six locations to staff in February of 2020, and that staff would have been from

TJPDC, Albemarle County, City of Charlottesville, and UVA.

Those staff members chose two of the six route options, and the four options that were omitted were those that were infeasible to construct based on the knowledge of staff because of property ownership issues, accessibility issues, known protected resources, and steep grades.

So now on our website there is the feasibility study from the consultants that's been up since before the workshop, a recording of the November 12th workshop, a summary of the public feedback both from the workshop and from the emails.

And aside, the workshop was super well attended.

And people had so many great questions and comments that we went well over our time that we had budgeted for that meeting.

And then we still had questions that were unanswered.

So Albemarle County, VDOT, and Save Charlottesville, and TJPDC worked together to answer those remaining questions.

And we put a question and answer sheet

on our website to answer all of those things that had been left unanswered at the end of our workshop.

Additionally, there is a PDF of the original six options that staff narrowed down to two.

As I said in your memo, the next steps are really in the hands of Albemarle County and City of Charlottesville and how they would like to proceed forward.

I'm sorry, I was slow to get my mute to work.

My question is, was it taken into consideration at the Woolen Mills, the county trailhead parking lot that's just been created?

Sorry, I'm going to ask for a little bit more clarification.

Yes, and there was a county lot that was added at the trailhead with the Ravana Trails and the new Moore's Creek Bridge.

So was that listed as an asset when the traffic consideration and the parking consideration seemed to be a reason not to build it there?

So I'm just trying to find out

There certainly were concerns raised about the Riverview angle from the very beginning because of the neighbors there feeling pretty overwhelmed.

So that's all I have.

Yeah, no, I think the question of it being an asset depends on whether or not you wanted it there, right?

So people were

It is an asset in terms of that being trailhead parking for people who are going to be accessing this, mostly as a recreational trail, driving to the trailhead and then walking or biking there.

Parking at both ends is going to be a valuable thing for those kinds of people.

People who talked about that parking were often expressing concerns about the amount of traffic that that commercial development had already inspired in the area and they had some concerns about how people were currently accessing that parking lot.

I think that's an issue that Albemarle County noted and the staff will be addressing that issue.

Any additional questions or comments?

And I'd just say very broadly, just my individual perspective is definitely to the extent that new parking spaces can be minimized will definitely help support the ultimate vision and goal of this kind of project.

So just a broad thought there, but thank you.

And if there's no additional,

I could go around and call out the members names if you want to do it that way.

And we just thought that it would be nice.

We had some extra time in this agenda to hear from everybody on the policy board.

You know, anybody's comments and concerns about transportation, the MPO, or just general life in the area.

We just wanted to hear from everybody.

So I'll just call out the names.

I know some people aren't here, but I want to make sure I don't miss anybody.

I do not at the moment.

I'm just gleeful about the SMART SCALE.

OK.

Councilman Snook, I don't think he's here.

Not too much.

Obviously, there are a number of big changes of foot in the city, which I'm sure people are aware of.

And we're very excited to have Mr. Boyles coming on and joining the organization.

When it comes to MPO and transportation, nothing that specific.

I would just say we've begun discussions for climate action planning.

And that's really going to get underway and take off over the next year.

And we're

We definitely recognize the importance of attaching capital projects and transportation projects to that climate action plan.

And nothing specific, but I think we definitely see the MPO in regional planning is without moral and other surrounding localities is really vital for us to have a successful climate action plan.

I don't have a whole lot to add other than sharing Ann's glee about the SMART SCALE project, the transportation projects.

Both Ann and I, I think, are glad to be back representing the county on the MPO.

I don't think we were, or we are getting ready to do our budget season as I know the city's amping up to do.

Well, I don't have too much.

I think I am, you know, obviously thrilled just from

The entire Culpeper District on the hard work that all the staffs did from the county, the city, as well as VDOT in terms of preparing those applications that got funded.

It's good to see even rivaling some of the urban areas that we secured more money and projects than that.

That doesn't help.

happened very often so it was it was very nice to see.

Yep it

It will be the Planning District Commission.

They'll be holding a meeting Thursday afternoon.

It's the normal monthly meeting where they'll be beginning to make decisions.

As of right now, Christine Jacobs is the interim executive director.

And my understanding from the executive committee of the board is that they're going to take a very slow and deliberative look and

Any type of search process, given COVID, given just the transition of how all organizations are having to restructure because of COVID and remote work, I think they're going to be very, very deliberative in how they fill the open position.

All right.

Welcome, Christine.

Charles Proctor, Chuck, do you have anything you want to say?

We can come back to Chuck.

Yes, it's actually Ms. Monteith.

I'm sorry, not Monolith.

I don't have anything to add.

I think everything that I would have commented on has already been discussed.

Oh, great.

Sure, I can give a few agency updates for DRPT.

First off, I'd like to just kind of remind all of the folks that might be applying for any of the DRPT grants that our deadline is fast approaching.

That's February 7th.

I think that's a close of business deadline.

So if you have grants in process, make sure you're trying to wrap those up, preferably before the deadline.

Additionally,

There's a COVID-19 relief bill that includes another significant amount of funding that's being directed towards transit agencies.

There's a lot of details in there and a lot of information related to the funding and the formulas that will be used and how transit agencies can use that.

If there are folks that have specific questions about that, I'd ask you to just to direct those.

To me, and I can try my best to answer them.

On the rail side of things, the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority had its meeting on Monday.

If folks are interested, we have a recording of that meeting online up on our website.

DRPT is still in the process of kind of spinning up the authority and providing most of the staffing and technical assistance right now.

They have a lot of interesting things going on over there as it relates to the acquisition of rail rights of way for increased passenger rail traffic in the Commonwealth.

Hey Lucinda, I'll just echo the same sentiments about SMART SCALE and just want to say an appreciation for the county and city staff and the MPO and PDC staff for the work they did on those applications to get that funding.

We will have revenue sharing and TAP funding cycles coming up here soon.

Later in the spring with the applications due this summer is the

I don't know if you want to open it up to anybody else.

So first we have Sarah Pennington.

Good afternoon everyone.

I am the TDM program manager and that consists of the rideshare program at TJPDC.

I don't think I have to reiterate what a weird year it's been, but that continues or bleeds over into rideshare as well.

Obviously with COVID safety, one of the things that DRPT and the state has been working with all of the commuter assistance programs on is

Ways that we can expand and promote telework since that is obviously what many businesses are doing during this pandemic.

We have done a few initiatives with the telework program so far.

We have partnered with C3 in the area and the Better Business Challenge and offered a telework webinar on that back in October.

We actually just hosted our first webinar with DRPT yesterday on

How you can evaluate and take advantage of telework VA services that are free to businesses.

Yesterday, and we will have that recording posted online very shortly in case anyone is interested.

Also feel free to let me know and I'd be happy to forward any of the materials on to you.

The state has a wonderful partnership with some consultants, again, to offer free services for telework policy, either development if you don't have one and you had to start from scratch in the midst of all of this pandemic, or for folks who maybe have a policy that's been a few years old, telework VA can either help you put together a more formalized program, they can help you evaluate the program you have to really make sure that it is the most efficient

and beneficial program for both you and your employees.

They also offer training for both employees and managers which I think can be really beneficial

to take advantage of knowing best how to manage a staff that you don't see every day.

So many, many good resources.

We're also looking forward to continuing some of that program from some of the feedback we heard yesterday on some potential options for challenges that may come up in the future.

and looking at keeping a pulse on the broadband expansion that is potentially happening through the state.

So that's just a quick update on telework.

Next we have Jessica Ballering with the U.S. 29 North Corridor Study.

I'm going to share my screen again with Linda.

All right.

So yeah, Sandy talked a little bit about this study that we just got started with.

So there's been a lot of work done down at

The intersection of hydraulic and 29, and now we're just moving up the corridor, moving north.

So the purpose of this corridor study would be to develop broad transportation recommendations that complement the existing land use designations in the study area.

And the study area is, you can see on the right hand side of my screen, the southern end of the study area starts at Airport Road and 29, and it goes all the way north to Rutgersville or Route 33, I believe.

Based on conversations with Greene and Albemarle counties, we decided to include the airport and the UVA research park, which are these two other dots on the map in our study area as well.

So out of those broad transportation recommendations, we hope to focus on transportation connections between housing and employment and educational opportunities as a means of economic development.

and focus on road user safety in particular.

This will not just be personal motor vehicles.

This will include transit, bicycle, and pedestrian transportation.

The budget for this study is $30,000 coming from the MPO, about $20,000 coming from our rural funding, and that's just for this fiscal year.

The budget for next fiscal year is yet to be determined with our work program.

The timeline for this study is about 18 months, so we've started working on it in the last couple months, and we will continue working until the end of next fiscal year.

So just the preliminary steps for this study.

We've already had a meeting with Albemarle and Greene Counties for initial discussions to talk more about the purpose of the study, talk more about the study area.

I anticipate that we will continue meeting with the counties as we move forward.

We will also have the PDC and localities appoint an official advisory group for this study.

And we've already been in initial conversations with Chuck from VDOT to request technical assistance.

on this project.

The first step we need before we can request that technical assistance is to identify those metrics of interest so we can create a scope of work for our consultants to get started.

That's it.

Are there any questions about this study?

If not, I can move on to the other study or the next item.

Okay, so the PDC has been the recipient of two really big transit grants from DRPT.

The first of these is the Charlottesville and Albemarle Regional Transit Vision Plan.

The purpose of this project is for local leaders, transit agencies, and a wide variety of stakeholders to collaboratively develop a clear vision for the future of transit in our region.

The work will result in a Charlottesville Area Transit Vision Plan document that identifies goals, objectives, strategies, and time-specific recommendations.

Those recommendations contained in the plan will be developed for short-term, long-term, and extended long-term timeframes with a horizon year of 2050.

Overall, this vision plan is, we hope for it to be very similar to what the Richmond Transit Agency recently completed in the last few years.

The budget for this project is $350,000.

Half of that is coming in grant funding from DRPT.

A quarter of it is coming from Albemarle County as local match, and the other quarter is coming from the city of Charlottesville as local match.

The timeline for this project is also about 18 months, so as soon as the agreements are signed to the end of next fiscal year.

This slide shows just the next few steps.

This is not the whole project, just the next few steps.

So we're currently over here signing agreements and MOUs with DRPT, Albemarle County and City of Charlottesville.

And we are in the process of finalizing our draft scope of work, which will be an important piece of our RFP that we are sending out to DRPT bench contracting firms.

We will have a selection committee in place by February and that selection committee will review proposals from the contracting firms and select our consulting team.

And March is when the work on this project will really begin.

So the Regional Transit Partnership will serve as the official advisory group for this project.

They will meet with the consulting team to approve a final scope of work and actually begin the hard work of this vision plan.

I'm going to go right into the other grant that we received, and then we can take questions at the very end.

So the other grant we received from DRPT is called the Albemarle County Transit Expansion Feasibility Study and Implementation Plan Project.

So the purpose of this project is to create a feasibility study and implementation plan for expanded transit service to population and employment centers within Albemarle County, particularly the Pantops area, Monticello, and along Route 29 North.

Innovative transit options to include on-demand service that emphasize accessibility and responsiveness to customer needs should be investigated alongside traditional fixed route options.

The budget for this project is just over $106,000 with half of that coming from DRPT and the other half coming from Albemarle County as local match.

The timeline for this project is about 12 months.

This is a pretty strict timeline.

We definitely want to have our implementation plan

which is one of the products of this project.

We want to have the implementation plan in hand by the end of the calendar year so that we can hand it over to whichever transit agency would be the right transit agency to actually provide this service so that they can apply possibly for demonstration project funding from DRPT to get started actually running the service in the next fiscal year.

All right.

And again, here are just the next few steps or just the first few steps of this project.

So again, we're over here.

Signing agreements and MOUs.

We are nearly done with our scope of work and that is to be sent out this Friday to the bench contracting firms.

We have a selection committee already in place in February.

They will be reviewing proposals and selecting the consulting team.

We are working on pulling together our advisory group which will be appointed by Albemarle County.

Our staff will just be functioning as project management for this project and in late March or mid-March is when the real work for this project will also begin.

The advisory group will meet with the consulting team to approve a final scope of work and actually begin working on that feasibility study.

So the only other thing I'll mention is that for both of these projects, we'll be keeping all the necessary players up to date.

We've written into the scope for both of these projects that they will make, that our consultants will make presentations to elected officials as well as to the regional transit partnership.

I'm going to stop sharing my screen.

Any questions?

I do have one.

So the big grant

Do I understand correctly?

That is basically the next phase beyond where the transit authority did its local study organization, all that stuff over the last five years.

So the $350,000 for the vision plan is intended to go beyond any work that the Regional Transit Partnership has already done.

Like what Richmond did, we're trying to come up with a really clear plan for what kinds of

What kinds of investments all of our transit agencies are going to make in the future.

It will not get down to the details of route planning or determining how many vehicles to buy or what schedules to run the routes on.

The point of the vision plan is to give the transit agencies all the tools to answer those questions in a really cohesive way so that our regional transit system is a great one that people can understand.

All right, I think I get to say one more thing and then you guys can be done with me for the night.

I'm gonna share my screen one more time.

All right.

One of the other things we've been working on is the revival of our bicycle and pedestrian counts.

So the MPO had done bicycle and pedestrian counts in the past.

We haven't done them recently.

We decided to revive and refocus them this year.

So previous bicycle and pedestrian counts for the MPO region have really been super broad and tried to get a really big picture of what our

What biking and walking looks like in the whole MPO area.

We decided that that's not a really feasible thing for the MPO to do at this time, so we tried to focus it.

And with the help of Admiral County, UVA, and City of Charlottesville staff,

shifted the focus to looking specifically at locations around the MPO area that are about to see bicycle or pedestrian investment.

And the purpose of picking those locations was that we can gather the before data and then have that investment and then come back and do the counts again and have after data.

So you can see whether or not that investment made sense.

So again, those same staff members helped identify 10 locations.

We had volunteers go out and count at those 10 locations at morning and evening peak travel times.

So that was 7 to 9 AM and 4 to 6 PM.

And everyone counted during a two-week window of the last two weeks of October.

Before our volunteers went out to count, they had a one-on-one tutorial with me where I explained the exact definition of what counts as a bicyclist, what counts as a pedestrian, how do you count a parent pushing a stroller, things like that.

What you're looking at right now are the summary results of all of those counts.

So you can see our 10 locations over here.

You can see the daily numbers of bikes.

So that's morning and afternoons for each location.

And this is just for one day.

So this represents four hours.

People had to make the decision as they saw bicycles going by or as a person walking by whether or not that person was female.

The advice they were given is if they were more than 50% sure that the person was female, they should go ahead and make that tally mark.

So the demographic information we collected was gender, whether or not the person was a child or appeared to be under 16, whether or not the individual appeared to be non-white, whether or not the individual appeared to have a physical disability, whether or not they were wearing a helmet, or whether or not they were going or riding the wrong way.

So typically,

If you're riding a bike in the roadway, you should be riding in the same direction as traffic, so someone who's riding against traffic would be tallied as riding the wrong way.

We also counted the number of motorized bikes.

That can be really hard to tell with some of the newer models of electric bikes, but when people could count it, they did.

We also have all that data broken down by intersection.

Our volunteers are out there counting by a 15 minute increment, so this is broken down by 15 minutes.

We also had them counting depending on the direction the bicyclist or pedestrian was entering the intersection and that gives us a lot of detailed information about the direction of travel.

So that information is all here, and both the intersection-specific data as well as the grand totals is all available on our website on the Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Planning page, which looks like this.

Thank you for sharing where to access it.

I was looking at some of the numbers and I'll be curious to go in and kind of get down into the weeds a little bit looking at it, at least selfishly and specific to John Werner and some of the Rio specific areas.

All right, next agenda item then.

Items added to the agenda.

Does anyone have anything to add?

All right, hearing none, I'll open it up for the second matters from the public.

If there's anyone from the public who would like to speak, feel free to

Raise your hand in the Zoom webinar.

If you're on phone, hit star nine or the raise hand icon isn't working, feel free to talk.

I can call on you if there are any additional public comments.

Thank you, everyone.

Same.