MPO Policy Board Meeting   1/25/2023

And do we have folks here in person to speak today?

All right, seeing none, we will move, Pat, I didn't see any hands raised online, right?

All right, we'll move past matters from the public and we're going to, so we're going to the elections after the general administration there, Sandy, what's up?

Yes, correct.

All right, so number three, we're going to do some introductions and some agenda stuff.

Sure, yeah.

I do not believe I've seen Mr. Byers here this evening, so maybe one month he'll be able to join us for the meeting, and we can introduce you to him, our new Commonwealth Transportation Board member.

I would also like to introduce you all to Mr. Stephen Minor, who is joining us online.

He is the newly appointed Federal Highway Administration representative to the MPO Policy Board.

Sure.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Can everybody hear me?

Okay, great.

I would turn on my camera, but we're having some really bad weather in Indiana and my internet's been really slow.

So if I'm afraid if I turn it on, I might lose everybody.

But next meeting, I'll make sure to have them.

I'll be moved by then.

But yes, my name is Steven Miner.

I've been with the Federal Highway around three years now.

I started with the professional development program.

So this was my first planning job.

So my first assignment was moving from DC to Missouri and I worked as a trainee there.

And then the last year I've been with the Federal Highway Indiana Division as a community planner and environmental specialist.

And then I started right before the holidays virtually with the Virginia Division.

So I'm looking forward to meeting everybody and working with everybody and

Thank you for joining us this afternoon, Mr. Ryder.

And then lastly, I'd like to introduce you all to Curtis Scarpignato, who is our new transportation planner who will be working with MPO and also the Rural Transportation Program.

All right, and we need to accept the agenda.

Is there a motion to approve?

Second.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

All right.

The agenda is approved.

And then we need to approve our December 6, 2022 meeting minutes.

Move for approval of the December 6, 2022 meeting minutes.

Second.

All right.

Aye.

Opposed?

Thank you.

The minutes are approved.

And now we'll move to number four, it's our Officer Elections.

Sure, I would go ahead and review the recommendation from the Nominating Committee.

So just as a reminder, the Nominating Committee was made up of Mr. Rieck, Ms. Monteith, and Mr. Nelson.

They have recommended for the officers of chair and vice-chair that Mr. Pinkston from Charlottesville serve as the chair of the MPO and that Supervisor Mallek from the Albemarle services of vice-chair.

And so they would be happy to answer any questions you all may have.

I mean that what I would recommend is that the voting members of the policy boards first start with

Any questions for the nominee?

And is there a second for that nomination?

I'll second it.

Any other nominations for chair?

All right, we will close the nominations for chair.

And is there a motion to appoint Mr. Pinkston as the chair?

And I will second.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Thank you very much for the big gift.

I don't know.

We've got those three folks.

Yeah, these are three folks.

Yeah, well, good afternoon.

I'm grateful to have this opportunity and working with all of you.

So I guess the next step is to open for nominations for vice chair.

OK. Motion and a second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any abstentions?

Okay.

Thank you.

Motion carries.

Thank you.

The next thing on the agenda is the approval for the meeting schedule of the national corrections session for 2023, not 2022.

Okay.

So we have the proposal here meeting scheduled for 2023.

You can see the dates that are listed here.

That's up to you.

The one thing I will notice is that because we are going through the Walmart transportation plan, we did add some extra meetings in the last part of the year.

So you'll see after July, we're moving to the monthly meetings.

And we can determine as we get close to those dates whether or not we need this

For the record, January 25, 2023, which is today, March 22, May 24, July 26, August 23, September 27, October 25, December 25.

So that's the first Tuesday that we'll have to accompany Thanksgiving.

Mr.

Chair, I'll make the motion to approve the 2022 meeting schedule as stated.

Motion and a second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Any folks not in favor?

Any abstentions?

Motion carries.

All right.

So the next order of business, the letter of support for section 531C, we're going to be building the E&M grant application.

It's a pleasure to be with you here tonight.

Things go wrong in this time.

The TJPDC is going to apply for a DRPT quarterly management grant.

It's section 5310.

And I'm just going to introduce the program and explain a little bit about it, and then ask you to send the letters

for the application.

So the mobility management grant is a Section 5310 program.

It's authorized under the Fixing America's Transportation Service Act.

And it's an FTA grant.

It's a discretionary grant program.

And DRPT administers this program as a designated recipient for areas that are not large urban areas.

So, transit management builds coordination among service providers and expands the availability of services for seniors and people with disabilities.

It's targeted towards seniors and people with disabilities and it was originally elected to go above and beyond the ADA.

So sometimes transit services don't always, can't always serve people with disabilities or the folks who have difficulty kind of riding and

There's three goals of the Section 5310 program to increase public transit projects that exceed the ADA requirements, improve access to fixed route services, and decrease reliance on paratransit, and to build alternatives to public transit that assist seniors and people with disabilities.

And we talked with the Quiddles Area Mobility System, which is a mobility management program funded by 5310 and some other sources.

And we really liked, actually, the DRPT grant officer suggested that we model our program after theirs.

And we really liked what they were doing and they are very helpful.

So we decided to start with a

One Stop One Call Center.

So what we hope to do is to introduce the concept to partners which we've been talking with transit agencies and human service providers, start a call center and a website that has all the information of the existing services, and have a call center

person who will be there to answer the phone and help provide referrals to existing services.

So we don't want to recreate services.

We're going to work with existing services as a partner.

We'll be gathering Rappahannock, Rapidan, Regional,

The BBC offered to let us use their software system which is pretty robust and which is really nice of them.

So we'll be gathering data on the call center activities and also on need.

So if somebody calls in and needs a ride and we're not able to schedule it and help them find the ride, we're going to keep track of that and find out how many people, where they wanted to go, what times of the day, so that at the end of the year we'll be able to see

more scientifically of what needs are out there.

And we'll also be building partnerships all along to make sure that everybody's working together.

So the first year budget, we're asking for $110,000.

There's a 4% local match that will be covered by the TJPDC.

It'll be a half-time manager for 12 months and a full-time staff person for six months.

And then we hope to grow.

There's a lot of opportunities in mobility management.

We can do voucher programs, expand services to rural counties, work with the transit agencies to coordinate scheduling, and also to create like one front facing kind of marketing so that people can just go to the center, the Windfall Olympic Center, and find out information on all of the transit services.

So it's not like you have to go to different websites to find out.

We can travel train which is when somebody helps a person who wants to ride transit but is not able to.

They go to their house and they meet with them.

They come up with a plan with the person on how to do it.

They ride the bus with them until the person feels comfortable and is able to do it on their own and then sometimes they'll shadow the bus in their car just to make sure everything goes okay and they'll be there you know on the phone if something happens.

We can do volunteer driver programs, taxi and bus voucher programs, and just work with the community partners to collaborate and create efficiency.

So, we saw a presentation on this, I think, in RTP, right?

So that is Foothills.

So it's RAPIDAN is the agency that hosts it, and on the foothills area of mobility management, that's the name of their mobility management center of their program.

Got it.

So if I'm just sort of like, this sounds amazing, I think it's a great idea, I'd definitely support it.

But am I picturing like another set of cubicles over here in your office?

Some people are...

The way that FAMS does it is they actually contract with service providers to provide the staff to help with the call center.

So it's not necessarily that the PDC will necessarily be staffing up a call center.

Like a virtual kind of cloud-based thing that you sort of purchase access to?

There's a software system that she mentioned that eventually if we were to build this program

No.

I'd say the other thing that we're thinking about is using this first year to really build the relationships and work with all the service providers to figure out where the great seed is and

It'll be awarded in June and then we'll take some startup time, the mobility manager working part-time, set up the call center, find call center staff, make agreements with partner agencies.

We plan to apply for another grant ever in the first year and continue.

Do other folks have questions?

Actually, my comment is how I think it's incredibly helpful with special heavy touch people to be able to help

People feel comfortable early ins and outs.

I think hospitals need these two.

I've always been somebody to help people who haven't used the service before.

I think many of us have gone to a new city.

The first day I was in San Francisco years ago, it was like, oh my God, I've got this pass card in there.

Why is this everywhere?

How do you find out where to go?

Do we want to look at the actual resolution of support?

Yeah, there's a letter in your packet to Jennifer DeBruhl, the Director of the Department of Ground and Public Transportation.

I don't know if you need to read it.

It's pretty long.

It's in the packet.

OK, so the letter's in the packet.

OK, we have a motion and a second.

May I have a vote, please?

All in favor?

Aye.

Any nays?

Any abstentions?

OK, motion carries.

Thank you.

There's been a significant amount of planning work that have gone into creating a bicycle and pedestrian crossing, a cross-border random river between the General Woollett Mills area and the lower portion of Pantops.

We have identified a facility for that project through multiple planning processes by both localities, by the PDC, by the Charlottesville Albemarle MPO across the board.

There was a feasibility study that was completed in 2020, I believe was the final date that the recommendations were developed.

We conducted a substantive public engagement process to

to determine which of the alignments that were identified in the feasibility study that was preferred by the policy board.

And then as part of preparing for a SMART SCALE application through this most recent round of applications, there was an engineer, what I'm referring to as an engineered conceptual design, which is not an actual design term, but gives you an idea of that, that there has been some engineering that has gone into developing a conceptual design for that alignment.

We'll talk about the actual SMART SCALE evaluations a little bit later in the meeting.

But basically, those project benefits that were identified through the SMART SCALE evaluation process were very high.

So if you're just looking at the benefits score, there were 394 projects that were submitted in the state of Virginia.

This score just based on benefits ranked number 26 out of 394.

So there is now a quantifiable benefit that we can

refer back to determine that this does meet a very important Aboriginal need.

It scored particularly high in the areas of environmental sustainability and providing access to jobs, including providing access to jobs for disadvantaged communities.

However, as you all know, the project costs were very high because in a sensitive area, in a river, and therefore a lot of contingencies that had to be included

and have been included beyond the project base cost to account for some of the mitigation that may be needed in order to construct the project if it was approved.

And so, as we discussed in our last meeting, really this is a project that needs some of that additional preliminary engineering work to be done before we can create a better cost estimate for the project.

And really the RAISE grant application would be an effort to identify an additional resource to complete that first phase of work in order to hopefully determine the viability of the project moving forward for actual construction.

The RAISE grant is the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity Discretionary Program.

This is not a new grant program through the federal infrastructure bill that are coming through, but there is additional funding that has been allocated through the infrastructure bill to provide some additional resources.

So currently there's $115 million that has been designated for training grants for this fiscal year.

And awards are based not just on the strength of the application but also making sure that there's a variety of project types that are funded as well as creating some geographical diversity.

The project is evaluated against its alignment with the merit criteria.

So listed here are the merit criteria that the project needs to be able to address.

Basically, this project aligns very well with the merit criteria listed in the new grant.

There are safety benefits to the project.

There are no safety issues on business and free-bridge, which is the only other alternative, ethical pedestrian access right now.

The environmental sustainability impacts are significant, improves quality of life by connecting to important community destinations, mobility and community connectivity because of the network gap.

It aligns well with some of the economic development initiatives that are being pursued by specifically Albemarle County.

There is quite a bit of partnership and collaboration that has gotten us to the point where we are.

The state of good repair and innovation

Opportunities are going to be a little bit more limited but that should not be an issue because projects are basically in order to receive the highest recommendation to be able to move forward to the next phase of the evaluation of the project you need to score highly in six of the eight categories.

And then like I said even at that point even if they make it so fair and even if this

So again, the project scope would be to complete the preliminary engineering project phase, which would include the hydraulic analysis, specifically looking at the soils and the geotechnical analysis and the environmental review.

This also gives us the opportunity to look at the functional design plan and evaluate the project for opportunities to reduce the construction costs, which normally wouldn't happen until the project is fundamental through SMART SCALE.

The TJPDC staff will be the project sponsor and fiscal agent, and then we have been communicating with VDOT and they have also partnered with us in order to administer the

We're very grateful to that partnership and we hope that this will be successful and we'll be able to be a good pilot in how our agencies can collaborate and find additional resources too.

It should be missing because it was all the same.

This is the bridge.

We were just talking about hydrologic analysis.

That's the next one.

Why don't you go back to the start of the slides and just paste it in there.

Well, she's doing that, Mr. Chairman.

May I ask a question?

So just so I understand, I'm going to restate what I think I heard.

So we submit for this grant.

We receive it.

Yes, correct.

You could probably go back and raise it.

Correct.

Yeah, I really appreciate the creativity and imagination that's going after this, I think.

Yeah, any other questions about what we're wanting being proposed?

Do you have any sense of what the cost of this when we put these grants out?

Yes, we will need to attach a dollar figure when we submit it.

We are, my plan at least, and we haven't gotten to the point where we're working through this with VDOT, so we'll work closely with VDOT to make sure the costs are covered.

through the SMART SCALE application and think through either whether or not there are adjustments that need to be applied to that based on different estimates and timeframes and things like that.

And then if there are any other additional tasks that we might want to add.

$2.3 million per hand?

Yes.

For those grants, yes.

The total base cost was $18.4 million dollars, with the inflation it was around $42 million.

And then second, well it really does three things.

Second, it gives us the opportunity to evaluate the plans to identify where there might be cost in savings from what was initially from the initial conceptual design.

And third, it reduces those contingencies because we've answered all those questions.

All right, any other questions, comments?

So this gives us the 70% desire, or this 30%?

Having seen projects which blow up later because we didn't do this, I'm so grateful that we're doing this.

I'm grateful that Sean said, you've got to cut your wrist down first before you do this again.

So we're trying to implement the suggestions we're getting from our expert people.

Any other questions?

Any seconds?

Second.

Okay.

On the record, no.

All in favor?

Okay, any person not in favor?

Any abstentions?

Okay, the motion carries.

It was a unit on properties, which can be really dry and pretty out of the road.

You haven't done the math, but you're expected to memorize what the properties are.

So I would speak in a paper

What is this minute?

So it works because this might be a good opportunity to implement that strategy.

But I'll do my best to make it interesting without a British accent.

I can barely speak with a British accent.

This is a topic that can be a little challenging to understand, but I just want to provide you with a little background.

So as the MPO, one of the things that we are intermittently asked to provide information on is this establishment of performance targets for the transportation system conditions in our MPO area.

So I want to provide a little bit of background to understand how what we're doing fits in with the overall goals.

So the requirements to establishing performance targets were

were implemented in, I think it was, I'm not gonna try to remember the date, but in the big infrastructure bill that was passed up in the Obama administration, that is known as the Math 21 Act.

And this established national targets that basically had goals for what it looks like to prioritize investment into the federal transportation system.

So what ended up happening is that there were

Performance targets that were established at the national level in order to support the achievement of some of these national goals that were identified.

And so in order to further ensure the movement towards successfully meeting these performance targets, there was a requirement that the national targets would be set and the states would be required to set performance targets.

And then the MPOs would be required to establish performance

By establishing the targets, what that means is that we are committing to pursue projects and objectives that support the achievement of those targets.

The overall progress towards meeting the performance targets is evaluated at the state level, not at the MPO level.

So the state is held accountable for whether or not they're meeting their state and performance targets.

And the MPOs have the option of whether we want to adopt the state targets or adopt our own established targets.

And historically, the Charlottesville, Albemarle, and PO has adopted the state targets.

The safety targets are established annually, and this is usually where there's the most discussion about whether or not we want to adopt the state targets or adopt the targets that are based more on the regional trends that we're seeing.

So this chart shows the difference

and what those actions would be.

So the first column right here in that middle is what the trends are for the number of fatalities, the fatality rate, the number of serious injuries, the serious injury rate, and the number of non-motorized fatalities and serious injuries that we would set as a target if we use what we're seeing based on regional trends versus what those projections would be based on the state targets that are set.

I will say right here that the state targets are required to be based on actual trend data that is being collected to see what the actual trends are, so it is a data-driven process, but the data also shows that the trend is that there's actually an ongoing increase in fatalities.

And so by setting these targets, really what they're doing is trying to minimize how much those fatalities increase each year.

What happened at the state level when these targets were set up by the Commonwealth Transportation Board had a discussion about not just setting these targets based on what the data was showing, but also setting aspirational goals and basically charging

the different staff within the administration to identify strategies to basically reduce the trend and start working towards reducing fatalities overall.

So there is a precedence at the state level of setting not just these data different goals but also these more aspirational goals.

The recommendation from our staff is that we go with that, and I'm totally glad that is, and that's because a lot of the way that we pursue our project priorities are based on the statewide system.

What I will say, just so there's no question about this, is that

Which of these targets we adopt will probably not meaningfully change how it is that we approach our projects because safety is already a very significant priority and how we select property or projects that we want to move forward on and what it is that we base our planning priorities on.

So my concern with number of fatalities at nine, and that's the region, because Albemarle's already had three in January.

Or maybe it's four as of yesterday.

So can you help me understand where that nine came from?

Because unfortunately, our county's been the top in the state, not per capita, but in the state by county or jurisdiction, three times out of the last 15 years.

So we have got a serious safety problems here.

The grand majority of them were concerned with speed, especially with narrow country roads and single-wide offs and that kind of thing.

So it's been a great concern because we're trying to do our part.

Yeah, it sounds like we need to save streets.

That would be great.

Thank you, Marcie.

Only 14,000 miles of roadway.

I believe that the number of fatalities up here at the top of number nine actually does not include the non-voterized fatalities.

I believe if you look at the pedestrian safety action plan or if you look in the tables with the way the VDOT collects information, I believe that

I believe that roadway crashes do include bicycles, but do not include pedestrians.

In our region.

In our region.

Okay.

The infrastructure condition and system performance targets, there's basically a high threshold and a low threshold.

So there's a percentage of deck bridges that are in good condition.

So we're setting a target, basically saying that we want to be, so in a good condition, we want to be above the target that's set.

So you can see that if we adopt the state targets here, which we probably wouldn't want to adapt anything lower than the state targets, you can see that in our MPO area, we're actually below

what the performance target is just for our region specific for the condition of bridges that the percentage of deck bridges in good condition so we want to be above that target and then there's also low threshold for the number that are in poor condition and so we want to be below that threshold

And then we do the same thing for the pavement conditions, both on the interstate and on the National Highway System.

And then we also look at the system reliability, which is basically evaluating how well the actual performance of the system is, how much the weather is, how reliable the transportation systems are.

So in those areas, there aren't really significant concerns with the Charlottesville

Our bridges, 10.8% of them were in good condition and our target is for 25.1%?

Correct.

And also, I'll just make sure that this is clear as well.

This is only evaluating the bridge condition on the interstates and the national highway system, not necessarily all bridges throughout the entire region.

Any other questions on this one?

A chance at asset management targets.

This is one I'm not as familiar with, but I know that was on the front end that you all have, or on the bottom that you all have any questions.

But there are also performance targets that are established related to the condition of transit assets, which includes vehicle age, other equipment, and then also facilities as well.

So for any of the smaller transit agencies, which are most of the transit agencies in the state, including both Jaunt and CAT, DRPT sponsors a tier two asset management plan, which basically establishes a statewide performance management

So any questions on this one?

All right.

So now we get to decide where it is that we want to set our performance targets in each of these areas.

So the staff recommendation is that we continue to adapt the state performance targets for all the categories like food safety, infrastructure and system performance, and transit asset management.

Alternatively, the MPO Technical Committee recommended that we adopt safety and performance targets that are based on the regional trends, which are shown on the slide here that we've already discussed.

I would like to ask Sean if he can help us

with any recommendations between the technical committee and the statewide.

Well, nothing's really jumping out at me.

I think what the technical committee has recommended is probably the way to go is just kind of localizing with this area.

I have a note that city staff

Charles Hall is right there with you.

Did you speak a little bit to why?

This is Ben James.

Yeah, I'm the city's transportation planning manager.

Yeah, basically if you go back to the very beginning of our presentation, what it is we're communicating when we adopt these standards is that we are going to pursue projects that are intended to help us achieve those performance targets.

It sounds like it's more philosophical.

I do wonder a little bit if we adopt the glory goals.

It sounds like it is.

It's based off recent trends.

I mean, but fatalities is a whole lot of drug behavior.

So really good luck trying to.

So it's always.

But what about the other pieces on the list?

I mean, the infrastructure ones, based on what I've seen, we're recommending keeping those with the stated targets.

I struggled with this four years ago, because it just seems like a checkbox we're checking out.

And that's what we're doing.

So what's the purpose of us, the state, saying, well, the NPO's approved all these.

Well, yeah, because we have to use your map, and we use our data, and we come up with these numbers, and we're really not

But that's exactly what's happening.

The time to be aspirational and to do things that we actually think could help our area or through other means, but it's certainly not here.

The state's using us to say that the MPOs approve our targets, and that's helping them with the feds.

It's a federal requirement.

Yeah.

So is the fact that our local MPO tech committee and the city staff, I'm not sure about the county staff, are advocating for learning these little columns

Does that, the fact that we've got local advocacy towards that, the numbers there, does that sort of help our case with the state?

So there's nothing that we're going to do different on the ground.

To me, I want to honor the fact that the computer tech community is in staff, and I'm not sure if I can count them, and show them.

I've spent a lot of time, and we all have, too, but we've got folks who said, OK, well, this is what I feel like.

This is what I wonder about.

It's a huge difference, or a significant difference.

And the state targets for the other?

Yes.

The state targets for the other three categories?

Yes.

OK, so we have that motion.

Do we have a second?

Second.

OK. Is there any discussion at this point?

Okay, I was called both.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

So if you did not see this already, I tried to put this on the slide, and it just started getting really busy, but you all, there should be some of these green sheets that are floating around.

These green sheets show all of the projects within the Wood Pepper VDOT district that were funded through SMART SCALE.

So there are a lot of projects on here that are not in federal.

Recommended for funding, right?

Recommended for funding.

So there are a lot of other areas that are also listed here that are outside of the Charlottesville, Albemarle, and PA.

So what I think is helpful just to see here is that there are several of the projects that may not have been funded but also scored very well.

So this could help us as we're choosing whether or not we want to continue to reapply for some of these projects in future rounds.

or whether we want to go back and select different projects for what we might want to prepare for each around the SMART SCALE.

The one thing that I will call out is that you'll see that all of these are green except for the District Avenue Roundabout that is in white.

And you'll see that if you look at the SMART SCALE score, it's higher than the SMART SCALE score in the two projects below it.

So even though those two projects below it were funded instead of the District Avenue project is because they were funded through the district grant program, which is the local funding available just for the Culpeper district and the District Avenue Roundabout projects is only eligible for the statewide high priority fund.

So even though it had a higher score than these other projects, it was eligible for a different funding source and did not score competitively with it compared to other projects from that high priority funding source.

So I just wanted to make sure that that was explained.

If you recall, there's a benefit score that's given to the projects that are evaluated against all the criteria that smart-scale projects are evaluated on.

On the slide up here, I'm showing just the total, all of the projects that were submitted within the MPO, and it shows the overall project benefits scores and SMART SCALE scores.

Just so if there's a project that you're specifically interested in, you can see kind of how it fared compared to the projects that were funded.

So the April 2 full-time little improvement that was submitted by the MCA, so that's the one that covers the section from Jewett Avenue to, I know it's like the store of Jewett, I don't remember exactly what the intersection is, but it covers that section between the city and Albemarle County

I'm sorry to be dull, but could you repeat what you said about the Albemarle-Caddy score that would be changing something on Belvidere Boulevard?

Yeah.

So the way the scoring works is that the overall project benefits are calculated.

So for the Belvedere project, you'll see that if you're just looking at the benefits score from that first column, it has a benefit of 2.24.

But if you look at the SMART SCALE score, it goes up to 4.58.

And that's because the way the SMART SCALE score is determined is you take that benefit score and you divide it by the cost of the project in $10 millions of dollars.

So when you divide 4.

8 by 10 million, you get basically half of a billion dollars.

And then the local money that was put in also helped out a lot to break the cost down.

And so were all the other items in the state competitive fund that the District Avenue was in?

Did they all score higher than 9.22?

You may know what are submitted in our area or other places or whatever.

Are they really relying on the benefit score or is it some other mashup of things?

Because I'm 9.22 compared to others on this list.

But you're looking at 9.22 as the 4.6 total.

In the case of the strict avenue, for example, we can have a conversation about this needs to be a priority project.

And that's something that, you know, as a region, we think has significant benefits.

It does work pretty well and can be competitive compared to depending on what other projects are funded.

It was very close to being funded.

Some of these other projects we can have some additional conversations about the

Let's see, what is it?

The 5th Street Project, you can see that overall benefit score was really low.

And then divided by the project cost, that might be one that we want to consider whether or not there's another project that we might like to move forward or if there's a way to pare that down significantly or take out an aspect of that.

Could someone also remind us where we are with Hillsdale's roundabout?

I know when the two roundabouts were proposed, they were supposed to work together and to solve the other problems at the intersection.

By the time we got to District Avenue, there was no more money to potentially fund this project.

I think one thing that's happening here is that the subject is taken off the list.

Obviously, stuff that was behind it is more likely to be funded.

I just wanted to say something about the county putting the blame on the Albemarle project.

This project is a history indeed.

You're thinking on the right.

You're absolutely right.

Thank you.

Thanks a lot.

This is just an informational item.

We will probably be talk- as soon as we finish one round of SMART SCALE, we'll start talking about the next round of SMART SCALE, but this will probably- this is just to give you all some additional context to relate as we start having conversations about what our next round of project priorities are going to be.

I will mention that based on the Long Range Transportation Plan, we've worked through most of the projects that were identified on that constraint list.

Great.

Any other questions for Sandy?

Thank you very much.

This is you as well?

Yeah, we don't really need to do a whole lot with these.

If you have specific questions, if you want me to start going through it, I'm certainly happy to.

As you all know, we've been working through a project polarization process with the Office of Environmental Planning and Investment to develop a

for our organization process for evaluating the system needs and also prioritizing projects for the long-range transportation plan.

So we are wrapping up that project.

There's a very useful tool that they're developing that GIS thinks that will help us really sort of take a lot of information on what the different needs are in different categories and put those together in order to help us identify where the overall areas are that

This isn't a decision point, it's just sharing data.

Yep, so just as a reminder that the framework for developing this prioritization process was that we would develop it based on the current technical and staff capacity for our existing organization, that it would rely on publicly accessible data or else data that is legally provided, and that it would be the development of a process and not a plan.

So it would be replicable and adaptable for any

have been defined by our NGO, and we have incorporated feedback from previous discussions with UML, the MPA Technical Committee, and other feedback that we've heard.

So some of that feedback that we've incorporated into where the final prioritization process is landing is that we make sure that we incorporated

multi-system considerations throughout the evaluation of projects that we included equity analysis factors throughout the evaluation of the different criteria and that we also added an impact factor in evaluating the key priorities.

So just really, really high level, the way this whole thing is going to work is that there are performance measures that are established.

Oh, sorry, yeah.

There is a performance measure that's established for each of the objectives that we're going to evaluate.

There's going to be a raw score.

The raw score is going to be standardized on a seven point scale and then there's standardized scores are going to feed into the final weight category.

As a reminder, these are the draft goals that we're working with.

We will be working through these with a public process in order to see if there are different revisions or if we need to categorize these differently or something like this.

But these are the general goal statements that we're working with right now.

So for each of those general goal categories, there are these different performance measures that have been identified.

So you can see that for each segment of the row that is being evaluated in each of these metric categories, roadway safety, pedestrian safety, and that performance measure column right there, there will be a score that's assigned for each of those performance measures that are evaluated after the raw scores are standardized, so one to seven.

We will determine how much weight each of those performance measures accounts

So this is just an illustrative example of what this might look like.

So we will multiply the actual standardized mean score, so each one of those will be from one to seven, times the weight that that mean score is assigned based on public feedback that we get after each of the performance measures.

And so there at the bottom there will be a cumulative score that is established that will help us figure out where the system mean priorities are.

I just want to make sure it's really clear that we are not committing necessarily to saying that this problem is going to identify where the highest needs are, but it will help us give us sort of a quantifiable starting point to have a conversation about whether or not this aligns with what the priorities are for our region or whether we think this is missing a mark a little bit and there are other needs that we also should be accounted for.

What this will do is we will be able to identify where the most significant system needs are based on all of this evaluation criteria and then that will help us start identifying which projects we have developed that best align with what you guys need.

So this will help us really determine which projects we select to start developing our project priorities based on our constrained budgets.

Does that make sense?

So that's a high-level overview.

Do you want me to go through, however, what each of these performance measures is on a high level?

I think this is actually what anyone else's desire to present is seeing more of the information that is publicly available in the packet.

Correct.

So what did you present here, the 50 pages of stuff?

short counsel Pinkston, and the CAO Policy Board.

As Sandy mentioned, the staff is preparing for the 2050 LRTG.

As part of that, I had the task of looking at the American Community Survey five-year estimates.

Also, I had the chance to go back and look at the estimates from the last long-range plan update.

In your packet, you will find some of the categories below the graphics that we've started to map.

What I've done since the issuance of the package, I have went back and taken the ACS data and I put those into blood groups.

Currently Albemarle and Charlottesville together have a crime.

41, I believe, census tracts, combined, I don't know how much else, more than 122 census block groups.

So the final demographics will probably have much better information in the community packet than some block groups.

I actually have some of those, but I don't think I got enough of the time to present to you all.

Looking at the ACS data for 2021, Albemarle County looks like it shows a population of 111,000.

Charlottesville at 47,000, combined with 150,000.

Aged in Charlottesville, the governed population is not distributed around the university.

Part of Albemarle and Charlottesville

both show a parking level of less than both the state and national average.

The only thing I know in PO Tech, I was asked if there was anything surprising that I've seen from the data so far.

I've created many maps.

I've had a chance to

Fully, you would get all the data that they analyzed, but I will say one surprise, I think, was that the African-American population in the city was actually defined.

Typically, I think, no demographic defined for the most part.

Carpet data, I thought, was higher than what I ever thought.

that happens to serve at the DDC board.

Educational payment, I will say, at the CTAC meeting, Vice Chair Chen had a question on one of the slides on the educational payment, so I went back and updated that to make sure that's clear.

At NPO Tech, the chair

Mr. Stolzenberg asked about marginal error so we will try to find a way to sort of address the marginal error that accompanies the ACS data.

have concrete numbers.

I already see in the back there's a simple graph from road to high.

In the final edition from these demographics, we'll actually have the data for the actual percentages of raw numbers.

Sandy, do you all have any questions?

This goes into informing what used to be called long range planning

The Zoom participants are seeing the room.

So the vision plan is complete, but we're still working on it.

I don't want to let it sit on the shelf.

So we are looking at presenting at Rotary clubs in the area.

So this is this is presentation from the RTP

I was going right to the RTP project.

So the RTP is meeting tomorrow and Mr. Rieck will be presenting on Josh's kind of state of the union from last year and this year.

And I think in March the RTP will have a presentation from the consultants on the governance study.

And the MPO also will have

We can get on the agenda.

The government studies basically show us how to make the regional transit authority work, right?

OK. Yeah, and get other money.

Yeah.

Yeah, so the government study has moved along.

The first time I know it's completely

It's on the agenda for tomorrow's RTP meeting.

It's on the existing conditions of the transit service providers and the legislation.

It also has a nice table that compares the current legislation that we have for our area to form an authority and then other authorities in Virginia that have similar authorities to what we have and kind of goes through comparing

The steering committee will need in March to go over that tech memo.

We're working on the second tech memo, which is peer studies.

We will be looking at four or five different areas of the country that are similar to our engine.

and how the university, and seeing how they form structures to govern and bringing revenue for transit.

Excellent.

And you were saying that you were going around the delivery clubs and other places and talking about the

People are excited about it?

Yeah, people are really excited about it.

The mobility management grant as well.

I've been going to IEC meetings, inter-agency council meetings for different rural areas and talking to them when I talk about mobility management.

I don't have a presentation either, but just wanted to give a quick update.

So I'll do it from over here.

So Acton Express celebrated their one year anniversary in September.

So the service has

We've been going very well.

The passenger count arrives for both November and December.

We're just a little over 1,700, which is great.

We're still seeing those numbers go up.

We had several days where we had over 60 riders, which has kind of been the high point so far.

The more exciting news, though, is they are looking to expand the schedule.

So they put out for public comment the suggested schedule, which was going to include

Additional routes both in the morning and in the evenings to accommodate the hospital shift workers who do the seven to seven.

So they have received the public comment.

The official schedule has not been released and finalized just yet.

They are in the stages of doing the test runs to make sure with traffic that they have their timing down.

But I can tell you that there will be an additional loop back on the a.m. schedule to pick up UVA hospital workers at approximately 745 a.m. We're going to get that timing a little tweaked.

All the rest of the morning trips will stay the same.

There will be a fifth run or trip added in the p.m. that will pick up both at 645 p.m. and then we'll circle back into the second pickup at UVA at 745 p.m.

And then the other two trips in the PM both 1 and 3, the main ones will stay the same.

So that is really exciting.

They also had some shifts in times for two other PM routes of about 15 minutes, which will better accommodate the UVA facility workers who get off at 3.30, which is kind of in between.

We heard feedback from some of them that they were waiting up to 15 minutes.

to take the bus home, which I think is a huge plus that they thought it was worth waiting that extra time just to be able to ride.

So we were really excited to look to be able to accommodate them.

The schedule should be finalized and out for publication probably in the next two weeks.

Our goal is February 1st, but we all know how that works.

They're hoping to have the kickoff for the new schedule once it's been announced around the 13th or 15th of February.

So we'll be happy to share any of that information.

Yes, yes we do.

We actually have a marketing team.

So this, so the Acton Express, as you all know or most of you may know, is a pilot or moving out of the pilot phases

as a project with the Central Shenandoah PDC.

But since we have funding partners both on this side of the mountain and it mostly serves the employers on this side of the mountain, TJPDC has been a big participant in that as well.

So we actually have a marketing committee and a planning committee that I sit on with the folks at CSPDC and then we have someone from UVA Parking and Transportation that is also on there.

So we do

Yeah, I work in facilities management.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

We'll look for those emails soon.

They haven't been finalized again.

Questions?

Sure.

So, number one, this is really great.

So is there anybody here who could update me on the timeline for the Park and Drive action bill, which I know we did.

OK, so it is also in the bag as well.

When that happens, which I guess would be a year by the time it's done.

More than that.

Okay, anyway, there are 8,000 people in Crozet and many of them, many of them are driving to the university.

Absolutely.

We have actually already began the getting meetings.

Jessica started those up with the county

to include the folks over at CSPDC with Acton Express.

We're going to obviously get Jaunt looped in because they have all of those routes in Crimson as well, so we want to make sure that we're not duplicating services that aren't needed.

People in the community are all begging for the autonomous shuttle circulator to come back so that they can jump on everything and then take it to the reactor.

It's like the micro-trains.

And the other question just in general is, is there a joint meeting with Central Shenandoah that is on our list for this year?

Yes.

I hope we will, because those have been very, very, very beneficial.

And maybe our checkbox will have a paper medal.

And that's a great segue.

Thank you.

One of the initiatives that RideShare is taking on, we are in the process of completing our grant applications that are due February 1 for DRPT, and that includes not only the operating grant for RideShare, that would be the grant for Acton Express, but in addition, RideShare will be taking on a strategic plan, and we are doing that in conjunction with CSPDC since we

Our programs overlap so greatly that it just makes the most sense.

We do shared marketing, a lot of shared programming.

So that's a new requirement for this year.

Well, can I ask you to follow up on Supervisor Malek's question about the park and ride lot, I-64, looking at the materials that were provided in the packet.

It says construction advertisement is expected in October 2024.

What's the timeline from construction advertisement to actually construction?

That's a me problem.

Yeah, I was going to say, I have no idea.

That's a me problem.

That's a me problem.

That's a me problem.

That's a me problem.

That's a me problem.

That's a me problem.

That's a me problem.

That's a me problem.

That's a me problem.

That's a me problem.

That's a me problem.

Next up, the roundtable discussion

Sure.

It's up to you and we want to start with voting quickly through all the agencies that are represented.

But we had 2020 VDOT Culpepper District transportation update.

Just for the record, if you're on the digital agenda, there's active links to all these items that will take you directly to that.

Are they working for you?

I actually have a tab filled up with the paper agenda.

OK, so please help me out here in terms of the organizations.

So we have a number of projects that we're trying to get through.

One of our highlights is Ben Chambers, who is the, what's your title?

I'm the Transportation Planning Manager.

The Transportation Planning Manager is going to be helping CAC complete its alternative fuel study.

So I've asked.

They had to step in to kind of help us pull together the specific stakeholder components that need to be finished so we can get through the next couple of months with the goal of having probably the next 60 days or so.

That will help us for our discretionary grants when we're looking at just adding additional fuel sources to our fleet.

Hopefully, you know, we've seen preliminary numbers

Now we need to look at to see how to phase this in on what alternative fuel sources that we are comfortable with as a region to have over the next 20 years.

Thanks for that, John.

I just have one question to that.

No, the transportation updates include in the packet.

Anybody have any questions about any VDOT project or maybe if it's even not a VDOT project, just reach out and we can steer you in the right direction.

I would just add that we have a series of presentations, localities in our district about the project selection initiative that we're working on.

In a nutshell, it's about trying to get localities to prioritize what projects do they think they might want to do in the next three to five years so that we can get an idea of what's on your radar screen, you can get an idea of what's on your radar screen.

I love that when I start picking projects that fit well with our funding programs and working a little closely with your staff to try to pivot and articulate what that project is a little bit better.

The idea is to try and bridge the communication involved between the shares and planners and try and deliver better projects for the locality and hopefully be more competitive so we can bring even more

So that's something we're working on.

Yeah, very good.

Can you just, with John, Mr. Reich, a couple of things.

Bring a new chief operations officer starting on Monday.

Randy Kander from North Carolina.

30 years experience in the rural and public on paratransit.

I'm also bringing in a lady from Northern Virginia as a director of operations who would report to Randy.

She's got a 20, 30 year experience in urban paratransit as well.

So I'm looking forward to having a really strong operational team.

We're submitting some grants for February 1st too, like everybody else.

We completed our alternatives fuel studies a month or two ago.

And we're already applying for a grant to see about implementing battery electric buses in the rural areas that will probably require some sort of fast charging infrastructure out there, so we want to see what that will look like.

We also want to get a better handle on the needs for transit in our service area, kind of quantify what that is to help us with

And also we want to look at microtransit as a service delivery option for us.

We want to see where in our service area it makes sense, and if it does, what does that look like.

Also on the microtransit side, we are negotiating with a national microtransit provider to help us maybe do some pilot type work.

Next slide.

Yes, really briefly I'll share that our planning facilities planning and construction team recently finished a couple of locally administered projects that have been funded.

So RIO Road pedestrian improvements, Avon pedestrian improvements, US 250 West pedestrian improvements, as well as IV Road bike and bike improvements, and Greer Journey and the Land Cleaning Campus bike and bike improvements.

I'll caveat that to say that those projects are finished enough that the public

I was just going to ask without putting you on the spot, you can say if you prefer to answer another time, but can you say anything about the Lands Line campus?

To zoom out, the Landsland Campus, that is where Ebon High School career and journey are.

There was recently a master plan done for the campus and that master plan included a loop road potentially to come in where the road currently enters at Lands Road and then go around the campus and exit at Georgetown Green.

More work needs to be done for that project to receive any

like from VDOT or any other sources.

So there's also some existing transportation concerns along with specifically at those intersections but also in between there are safety concerns as well as gaps in the bike and pedestrian network.

So schools and local government have come together to work to do a study to better investigate how those projects could all interact and which components of the project need to be prioritized.

State Funding for our transit agency.

Right now we're currently in procurement trying to figure out which of our DRPT bench contract consultants are going to be the right ones for us to move forward with.

It's going to be a fairly tight timeline.

Usually these take about a year, maybe a little bit more than a year, we have less than that.

But luckily we have done a system optimization plan recently and we've also worked with this group and with our

Second thing is we are getting towards the end of our prioritization process.

We're doing a similar gap grant with OIPI to prioritize our light head facilities.

That has not been done since 2015 in the city.

Folks, it's changed over.

Some projects have gotten done in the meantime.

Some priorities have shifted in the meantime.

So we're re-prioritizing those projects.

We've gotten through all the quantitative analysis.

As I mentioned, we are currently working with VEO, with our scooter company, working through what our current regulations are and how we can update those so that they operate more

Thank you.

So, I wasn't going to say anything, but I did want to invite everyone here to the Piedmont Umbility Alliance All Day Summit on February 24th.

That's a free event from nine registrations at 9 a.m. and it starts at 10 a.m.

It will run until about three with lunch provided.

The purpose is for groups who are working on similar overlapping projects to come together, show resources and ideas, and lay out some actionable work plans.

Examples that have come from that is the Luke Deville Festival, which you all know about, the community bikes doing mobile clinics that take the repair facility to residences,

So that's all February 24th at Citi Space.

It's free on their flyers here by the way.

There's a line too.

Help me out here.

Mr. Meyer, anything for the group?

Thank you.

Nope, I don't have anything.

Okay.

Anyone else on this one?

I would just say we're grateful for Curtis to join us.

OK, so I think we are now to the point of asking for additional matters from the public.

So members of the public are welcome to provide comment.

We're going to have three minutes, please.

We have, let's see, anywhere else here?

Anyone online?

Going once, going twice.

OK.

Do I need a motion to adjourn?

Yes.

I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

Well, if we do, OK. All in favor?

Aye, please.

Stand up.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.