MPO Policy Board Meeting   3/21/2023

Good afternoon, welcome.

It's a little bit of a slumber crowd than normal, but it's good to see everyone start their meeting.

And also the time is probably late.

And we need to bring some women from the... From the waiting room?

We'll do the roll call first and then we'll go through who's online and then it will be important.

Supervisor Malek?

Yes.

Supervisor Galloway?

Councillor Justino?

Councillor Kingston?

Yes.

Ms.

Here Mr. Williams?

Here Ms.

DeBensky?

is our representative of DRPT and taking another position with VDOT.

Thank you for being here today, Mr. Minor.

Mr. Koenig.

Mr. Kondor.

and Ms.

Awesome.

OK, so I guess the first order of business is are there any members of the public who would like to provide comments?

There's a limited three minutes per speaker.

in a shuttle group with a teaching car.

Okay, I guess we'll look to see if there's anyone online.

So I think the time for public comment, managing the public, is complete.

So we need to have a review and acceptance of the agenda.

Does anyone have anything they want to add to the agenda?

OK, we have a motion and a second.

Need public comment?

Aye.

Aye.

Okay.

The motion is by the vote.

With the approval of January 25th, 2023 meeting minutes, are there any revisions that we need for the meeting minutes presented?

Okay, could I have a motion to adopt the meeting minutes for the meeting minutes presented?

All in favor?

Aye.

So I guess the next item of business is for Mr. Memphis to present to us on the Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee point of order.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is the Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee as several term expirations.

City Council will be appointed with three members.

Two great appointments in one meeting.

At this meeting, the MPO Policy Board will be appointing or considering an appointment of Representative

Okay, so the ones that the city appointed last night, it's separate from this, so CTAC is part of the MPO subcommittee, and so the city appoints

Thank you.

So, I read Mr. London's application.

It seemed excellent.

Do we have any questions?

I have no questions.

I move that we have a question and there's no further discussion.

All in favor?

Aye.

Someone's promoting.

We appreciate him being willing to serve.

Okay, next item, I guess you can say here, the transfer, the FY24-27 transportation program.

I think most of you all are probably pretty familiar with the TIP process by this point, but TIP stands for Transportation and Recruitment Program, and this is one of those required documents that MPS needs to prepare in order to program spending of federal transportation funds within the NPO region.

It is a four-year spending program that is updated every three years, basically, so there's a year of overlap between the existing TIP and the one that we are developing, in the process of developing, so it's work from the end of FY21 to 24th.

will be adopting the FY24-27.

The anticipated expenditures are provided by the transit agencies and VDOT.

So this is the communication from the transit agencies on what they anticipate their expenditures will be over the next four fiscal years.

And then VDOT is basically developing the expenditure information based on federal project spending that has already been approved through their six year improvement program.

You'll see as you look through the document that there are two different types of projects.

Projects of regional significance are pulled out and they are shown individually in the set boxes, which provides an opportunity for us to make sure that we are aware of the status of those projects and how expenditures are being outlaid in support of developing those projects.

And then there are projects that are grouped into categories that are similar in nature.

So what happens is that by grouping projects, we're able to provide the state with a lot more flexibility in making sure that they're able to move forward on all of their maintenance and system improvement needs without having

So if you look at the document, this is the demonstration that shows the difference between these two.

So the top box shows one of the regionally significant projects.

You can see that there's a project description that's very specific on where that is occurring.

And then for the groups projects, you'll see that it states clearly at the top that they're grouped and it tells you what the category is.

Sure, thanks Anne.

Since the packet was simulated, I went back to the original sources of information from the granted providers and I found some hidden room and some formulas.

The numbers and figures that are in your packet are happily updated with those figures shown on your screen.

I have received approval from John.

So the John summary does line up and add up correctly and no word right now from Canada.

But what's in your packet?

Which table is this?

There are, I guess,

One new project that's different from what's in the current TIP, that's the Edition on Government Study.

There's also a new project in the TIP for a mobility manager on the previous project, or the previous mobility manager.

In the current TIP, the previous funding is about $60,000, but it's a new TIP on that.

Thank you.

So I believe those are the numbers that were sent over by our CFO, Barry Herring.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

We'll confirm all of that information before we put it out as a last set of checks but thank you for looking at that.

This is a required federal document that we need to provide and then this goes back to VDOT and they use this to inform their statewide transportation

There are some requirements related to what we need to get through in order to adopt this plan.

So we will, once we get all of these updates incorporated into the transportation improvement program, we will provide an opportunity to hold a 30-day comment period.

So we'll have this up on our website and we'll have it available and make up their identification on our social media accounts so that people can read the plan and provide feedbacks.

And then at the next policy board meeting in May, we will be holding the required public hearing.

And at that point, you'll be required to request this action on whether or not you'd like to approve it either as presented or with language.

As I'm getting lost in the project list, are there changes?

Is there a place where it shows where the changes are?

Oh, the changes from the original draft.

But it was broken, so I'm sure there are changes in there.

We still don't know where they are.

Yeah, we are starting with a new document.

So this is an early version of the changes that are backed from that FY 21 to 24 project.

So as we go through and we do the amendments, we'll show how the funding has changed when those are approved.

So first of all, it says Charlottesville, NBA was the top.

Because it looks like it has some county projects in it.

Here, let me add the other projects.

Is that what it is?

Appendix A projects by grouping.

So is it safe to disclose that anything in our whole region, regardless of the jurisdiction, that has federal attorneys attached to it is not visible?

Yes.

But it shouldn't be called that.

It's not a showing.

So I don't want people to think there's not even a recounting thing.

We'll see what you think.

We appreciate you rambling and inviting that.

question I had was, and I'm sorry, I've been on the board for a year, but I'm still, I'm just forgetting my ignorance of some things.

So this is crafted by y'all.

You sort of have the overall oversight of this plan, working with the various member jurisdictions to inform what's here.

Is that essentially correct?

We compile it with the information that many of us have.

Okay, thank you.

So you have a problem with repositing, or did you see that you have no clue what they're doing?

Because it was in your meeting.

Yeah.

No, they made that stuff for sure.

So for example, in Mid-Street Screenscape, I think I saw it in here.

Thank you.

No, I apologize.

I'll work online and see if he doesn't have the time.

And then there will be group chapters in there that you can use as a page for the team of sorrow.

And I'd like to know, look at that, because it is so far out of the world there.

If there's a way to the west of Charlottesville, I don't know if I would have been in and out on the east side to know.

I guess it's way beyond what we're seeing in the ground.

I assume that there were some kind of

There's been any things that were involved with me in the NPO?

Well, when did it get changed to look like that?

Literally, it went around the airport.

So, this is the answer to my question.

No, no, I'm not in charge of that.

Those boundaries have been that way for a while.

That was from 2013 until then.

Certainly.

Interesting.

All right.

Fantastic.

Any other questions on the tip?

So, no actual part of this timeline we mentioned about the public hearing will be documented in May.

Any other questions?

Any questions online?

Alright, the next item is the transit governance study update.

and this initiative will introduce the consultant in the presentation from Beth.

It's looked at how to fund the projects in the Regional Transit Vision Plan and was part of the recommendations of the vision plan.

And it also is going to look at if we do increase revenue for transit in the region,

how we'll manage that revenue and be accountable for it.

Hi, good afternoon everyone.

I hope you can hear me clearly.

Yes, we can hear you.

Excellent.

All right, thank you again for inviting us to to give you an update at this afternoon's meeting.

So this will be just a short overview of the status of the project.

It will take us about we'll have about 10 minutes and then five minutes for questions.

And so many of you already have received the phase one of this

of the phase one memo to review and we received some good comments as well.

But this afternoon, we would like to just go through a very high level study overview, talk about the work that we've done so far and what we have remaining, any preliminary outcomes we have, and the next steps.

And so starting this project last fall, in November, November, December, we

We finished phase one of the study.

We have five phases in total.

So phase one was the existing conditions.

Phase two, which we just completed, is the peer study where we are looking at governance structures of other transit agencies in similar areas.

Phase three, we'll look at potential revenue generation sources.

And so Lucinda talked about the transit vision study and how we have those alternative futures for transit governance in Charlottesville.

And so what we are going to look at here is try to identify our potential sources of funding and how we are going to fund some of those improvements and what that would look like for the jurisdictions in region 10.

Once we have some potential sources down, then we'll start to craft some alternatives for governance scenarios of what that would look like in Region 10.

At Phase 5, we would combine all the stakeholder engagement we do in Phase 4

to finalize what that government structure would look like and those funding strategies.

And so just a quick, and so that's just to give you an idea of where we are in the study.

So according to phases, we are still sort of about in the middle portion or

early part of the middle portion we are about to begin phase three and so we are just doing a round of updates on phase two analysis.

Now because you've already gone through phase one just as a reminder what we went through in the existing conditions was looking at what

the existing operators in the areas have looking at the organizational structure, their governance structure and their existing funding.

We also looked at the existing legislation that is available for the Charlottesville Albemarle area for potential authority and did a review on that.

And so just very briefly,

does very high level.

We did, we spoke, we had interviews with both with CATS, with John's and with UTS, which are the three main operators in the area.

We got to understand how they are organized, understand the organizational structure and what the governance looks like.

We also discussed what the funding situation is like and how they interact as far as

where their services overlap or how they coordinate in that area.

And also in situations where there's some service that is contracted or funding provided, for example, from the university, what that looks like.

And so all of those details are in the phase one memo, which you already received a link to in the agenda.

so the next part of phase one was also looking at the legislative authority and so part of this study was to review what the the current legislation so that's what you see in this first box here is this Charlottesville Albemarle regional transit authority which exists so we did a review on what are the authorities what the powers how it what are the boundaries how is it structured what is the

potential governance that is laid out in the legislation.

And then what we did was also compare it to other funding structures in Virginia.

So we looked at the NVTA structure, we looked at HR TAC, CVTA, and then other potential frameworks.

So for example, in Virginia, we have what we call the

the public service corporations which John's is one of.

Also GRTC in Richmond is also set up and organized as a public service corporation.

And then there's also the option of transportation district commissions which Hampton Roads Transit is as well as NVTC.

The first column, the CARTA you described it.

So we do have some existing legislation that was approved a long time ago.

Correct.

It exists in legislation only.

It's not functional.

So if there were to be an entity to be set up,

Something we could look at would be, and I'll go into my next

slide here, I'll go back to that, is because we have the existing legislation set up for the CARTA, we can call it, we can look at either modifying that to address whatever changes we would want in the entire region based on this process that we are going through.

So towards the end, when we identify the exact characteristics we want of what a transit entity or an authority would look like,

we could either modify the existing legislation.

That's the second option here.

There's also the option of creating a completely new entity, a new legislation.

And then our third is modifying another framework.

So one of the others that we presented at first to match whatever characteristics.

But what are those characteristics that we might want to consider in setting up such an

an authority or some other structure is what is the amount of funding that we want potential funding for now and even for the future thinking about the transit vision study looking at those alternative futures of the constrained and unconstrained analysis or whatever is in between that the stakeholders deem appropriate

You might also want to consider potential side effects of any funding generated.

What would the boundaries be?

Is it going to be all of the members of Region 10?

If you look at the existing CARTA legislation, the members of the authority are, it says Charlottesville and all

County.

There's also all our portions of LaVena Green, Louisa Nelson.

So these are all potential boundaries for such an entity.

We can also include

private nonprofit or tourist service agencies, higher education facilities, example, the university, UVA or other public transportation agencies.

These are all options or other cities or towns that would want to opt in as long as the existing members approve of it.

So there's many combinations to consider in what the potential boundaries would look like.

looking at what a potential governing board would be.

And this is where our peer study is insightful or helpful in looking at what other agencies or other operators do in terms of how they govern and make decisions for their agency.

So next we, in phase two, was now digging into

What are other agencies doing?

In order to identify the agencies or operators, we had some selection criteria looking at places that have similar or near population for operating characteristics in terms of ridership, operating budget, operating budget per capita.

We also wanted to make sure that those areas had a presence of at least a large

University also having a bus system as we have in the UVA situation and also multiple operators within the same jurisdiction like we have here with Johns, with Katz, with UTS.

So those are some of the factors we can be considered in selecting the

the peer areas.

And so we narrowed it down to six areas.

So we had Iowa City, then Ann Arbor in Michigan, Bloomington, Blacksburg, State College, and Ithaca in New York.

And so for each of these areas, we first did these, of course, online research reviews,

and then also followed up with interviews, video interviews with their staff.

In most cases, we spoke to either the CEO or the director or the director and an additional person.

And so these interviews were very insightful and we have the results of that also in our phase two memo, which is being reviewed now.

But as we were going through the study, just giving you an overview,

Some of the things we were conscious of or focused on was looking at their service, looking at history, how they evolved over time, especially in the cases where there was some consolidation, as in the case of Ithaca in New York, of three agencies combining into one.

We looked, we delved into that a little bit more, looking at their sources of governance, source of funding and their structure.

Now, this table here is just a summary of the six agencies that we reviewed, giving you an overview of where the years they started, their comparative budgets, the jurisdictions that they serve, the type of governance they have, and any major organizational changes that have happened.

Now you'll notice that we had a good variety of different types of governance types amongst the agencies.

We had two that were city departments, just similar to CATS for the city of Charlottesville.

We also had a public transportation corporation.

We had one nonprofit 501c3 and two authorities.

One was a joint municipal authority and the other was a regular transportation authority.

So because of this diversity in the way they are organized and governed, we also saw differences in the way that they make decisions in terms of funding, in terms of the service they provide, and even plans for the future.

Some of the notable, I'd say, takeaways from

from our discussions and our chats with them, I would say was something that came up in at least many of many of the at least two or three of the agencies with their relationships with the other agencies and their jurisdiction was very casual.

Most of the time it didn't go beyond

just coordinating on shared bus stops, for example, or for long-term planning.

In some cases where there was very close coordination, we saw discussions of potential consolidation.

So for example, in the case of Bloomington and in Iowa City, in both places, they had raised the topic of consolidation for efficiency.

In the case of Bloomington,

what worked against them really was there was a lot of lobbying by the agencies throughout the state because of their state funding formula the consolidation would have increased their funding, their state funding and reducing it for the others so there was a lot of conflict there with the other operators but since then

their formulas have changed and is no longer dependent on that.

And so they are thinking this might be something they could pick up in the next three or four years as well.

And in Iowa City as well, this was something they talked about.

They talked about it a few years ago.

It wasn't politically feasible, but the director we spoke to seemed to think that that was possible in the near term.

Another thing that was significant was the close working relationships with the university.

In almost all the cases, the university funded a significant portion of the transit system in the millions of dollars.

In the case of Blacksburg, for example, the university provides all of their local funding with the city, the city of Blacksburg provided zero to little dollars.

that was very unique.

In the other agencies as well, either through contracted service or some sort of arrangement where they also provide service on campus or parts of campus, they were providing funding in upwards of at least one or two million dollars each year for their service.

And so that seemed to be something that we could look a little bit more into if we were to think about increasing

revenue generation in this region.

Another interesting funding revenue that we saw from at least three of the

the operators was that they were contracted service with housing developments and apartment complexes.

And that also was a large portion of their internally generated funds.

They would provide shuttles or routes to the housing complexes or the apartment buildings to their main routes.

And this seemed more common in the areas where the universities were larger.

So that is also a good potential

if it is applicable to this region.

Then in the case of Bloomington, for example, we noticed that they had what helped them with increasing revenue.

Recently in 2022, they passed a referendum that increased their property taxes for transit, and that was for the idea of innovative transit.

And so they

they increase their funding by about $4 million each year started in FY23 to fund a new BRT project.

And so the BRT being one of the city's priorities, but in all,

it was the city really pushed for increasing transit funding and the people, the residents were very supportive of it and it passed overwhelmingly.

And so potentially with the results from the transit vision study, there could be a way of framing this with a high possibility of increasing the revenues in that way.

And so the details of all of this are outlined in the phase two memo, and you'll have a chance to review it as well.

So the next steps for this project is to initiate phase three, which is the potential revenue generation.

and so we'll have, we'll develop a list of potential sources.

We'll continue with discussions with members, knowledgeable people in Virginia for transit funding.

We'll plan to make contact with members from the CTV or other bodies that can help us with phase three.

Then we will move on to

individual discussions with the jurisdictions.

And so the region 10 members will be reaching out and coordinating with the TJPDC to set up one-on-one discussions to talk more about their priorities and what seems feasible for them as part of our stakeholder engagement process, and then move then into phase four, which would be developing those governance scenarios.

So we are about midway now.

We are beginning to be in the midway.

So we are still early in the process, but I believe with the work we've done so far, we are in a good place to really do some good work in the summer as well.

Thank you for that.

That was very informative and helpful.

Any questions here?

Thank you.

Some of them, not all of them do, but some of them do.

That's where we failed in the legislature.

Yes, so actually, CATA

is pretty similar to, has that same structure.

So they have, they are a municipal, a joint municipal authority, but they don't have tax and power.

So it's similar to the RTA legislation we have here.

And so because of that, they still need funding from the member jurisdictions.

However, in some of the other cases, even for Bloomington, even though it's a city department, they have a property tax.

It wasn't an authority, but they still have a tax.

And the other question I had was, for Blacksburg and St.

College, I understand that the university students who ride the bus system are a huge boon to the statistics, which then brought down God's more money to the federal government than we could possibly do because we don't get access to the ridership of the university, which is on our municipal.

Could you repeat your question?

So I don't know who's funding that, but.

Well, one of her points was that if it's with the university, there's automatically a huge number of

So I guess your question is in the cases where we see the university providing significant revenue to the system, is it because they're also providing that bus operation?

I think that's the question.

In the third row here, we see that for Blacksburg, for CATA, and for TCAT, they provide the transit service for the campus.

But in the other three agencies, the campus also runs their own system.

But in all six cases, we saw that the university still had that they still contracted service from the operators for substantial revenue.

Thank you.

Any questions online?

This was very helpful.

Thank you for having us.

We have both of them online.

We can put the presentation online and phase one is in the packet.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, I think we can move on to the next item, revisions to FY 23 Unified Planning Work Program, UPWP.

Yeah, so since we have a couple of things that we're going to talk about related to the Unified Planning Work Program, I'll just give you a really brief overview of what the book and why it's important.

The Unified Planning Work Program basically is our opportunity to communicate to the state and federal agencies by giving our NPS funding what it is that we're going to use the funding for, and it gives them an opportunity to

that is consistent with what their priorities and objectives are for these funding expenditures.

So every year we get an allocation that is communicated through our state agencies, VDOT and DRPT, that gives us our funding allocations.

80% of our funding comes from federal sources, that's the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration.

And then our state agencies provide a 10% match and then we also provide a 10% local match.

that's how our MPO planning efforts are funded.

It is a federal requirement to develop this work program and also to communicate any changes in the requested funding as far as moving funding from one year to the next.

So this is what we're really talking about tonight is an opportunity to make funding that is appropriate for fiscal year 23 and make it available for fiscal year 24.

All right, so our fiscal year 23 budget, which is the budget for our current fiscal year, was estimated at about $500,000, and that included a little bit of work from some previous years for a variety of reasons.

And then VITA also provides an additional budget for their staff through the state planning and research program funding that they have.

to the FDA specifically.

There are two types of rollover funding that you're going to see in a couple of minutes.

So the first is capital.

So that means if we get through a fiscal year, we don't spend all of our funding now.

We still get that money from the FHWA side of the allocation, but we don't get it the next year.

We get it in two years.

So we'll have some rollover funding.

We have some rollover funding from fiscal year 21,

In order to have funding available from one fiscal year to the next fiscal year, we have to make an action request to deobligate the funds from this fiscal year and ask for it to be available from that fiscal year.

We would like to go ahead and make a request to de-obligate a little over $100,000, $105,000 total from the fiscal year FY 23, and to actively roll it over into fiscal year 24.

The two items that we would like to identify that we would like to deliver the study from is one of these is for the Long Range Transportation Plan development.

As you may recall, we had identified in this fiscal year when we approved the Unified Funding Work Program that we would retain the services of our consultant to help us develop the program.

That was based on rollover funding that was beyond what our annual allocations were due to a number of different reasons that that had accumulated.

So what we are asking for is that we have estimated how much of that contractual amount of our consultants will be spent through this fiscal year.

And we're requesting that the balance, which is $72,600, be rolled over into next fiscal year, specifically for the support of the consultant's services and the long-range transportation plan.

The remaining balance that makes up this $105,000 is based on an on-call service line item.

As you may recall, we had initially approved a draft of the unified planning work program for fiscal year 23, and then we got updated allocations that showed that there were additional allocations beyond what we had initially expected.

And at that time, we processed our revisions to the unified planning work program, and we did not identify additional tasks at that point, but we put it in.

So the balance of $105,000 that we are requesting to have available next year is coming from that mobile call services, which means that none of the rollover requests is from planned activities that will be expected to be undertaken this year.

So this will not be impacting the government.

and any of the work products that we expect to complete.

So this normally de-obligates these products for business leaders so that we can have them available next week?

Yeah, sure.

Any questions?

So we do need a lotion to de-obligate these parts.

We'll talk about that when it's signed.

So you mean it doesn't need to indicate the specific path that it's going to?

Yes.

Perfect.

So this is just the draft of the work program that we're developing for NSIS 24.

So taking it from that Williger funding, as well as any of that passive ROLER funding.

So you see there's a line item from slide 22 that shows the passive ROLER funding that's going to be added and this shows what I anticipated much at this point.

The first line is the annual funding that is estimated from the FHWA and VDOT side right now.

So that's our first line item.

The second item is the passive rollover from two years ago.

This is the active rollover that we are requesting.

And so this is the total that we're getting from the FHWA VDOT side.

Then on the FTA side, we are not anticipating rollover.

We're anticipating that we will spend down that budget in full before the end of this fiscal year.

So the estimated allocations for FY24 from the FTA is $129,000.

And this is the line I have right here that is estimated for the VDOT SPF for the year 2.

They've given us an estimate that's been pretty consistent over the last few years that could be implemented though once they get their file.

their final items to us.

So as far as the work programming, this is going to be pretty similar to what you all have seen as far as the format.

There are a couple of line items that I'll mention.

These past one administrative items are pretty standard items that we have to include every year just for the ongoing compliance with doing our reporting and voicing staffing committees and information sharing.

I do want to point out that we increased this line item right here under information sharing from what it has been in the past.

And that is because one of the activities we would like to originate in FY24 is to modernize the MPO website to be consistent with the updated format to the TJPEC website.

So that line item is a little bit increased from where it has been previously.

The long range transportation planning tasks is where you'll see them is very short, from year to year.

So we will be continuing the development of the 2050 LRTP to meet our goal for updating it every five years in the federal regulation.

This line is required for the comprehensive safety action plan is one that we are also including as a recommended line for the Cold War program and that's for our staff to support the development of the safe streets and roads for all grants.

So this will be above and beyond.

The other thing I want to point out is that there's a new requirement for the FHWA funding that requires us to spend 2.5% of our FHWA planning funds on complete streets activities.

The MPA boundary analysis was one that we were hoping that we would be able to complete this fiscal year, but we're just now starting to get some information from VHAT about what the new eligible organized period is might be.

And so we're probably going to need to continue that activity into next fiscal year in order to process any discussions around potential investments to the MPA boundary.

So it is warranted based on the data.

The slide item about the transit governance is really intended to support the completion of the transit governance study that we have been discussing as well as support our staff's work toward any follow-up that is needed in order to support recommendations that come out of that.

The slide item about the commuter assistance program strategic plan is also included in the rural work program as a suggested task, and this is to support the development of our strategic plan for a rideshare program.

we have applied for technical assistance grant to complete that grant through DRPT that will basically cover the cost of the consultants, but this will help provide additional support for the staffing needs for the development of that plan.

And then the last one in that list is this travel demand model update.

So VDOT maintains the regional travel demand model, which helps us protect system operations and conditions in future years that's updated regularly and

it will involve some coordination among the MPA SAC and the localities SAC.

Is that a computer model simulation that is housed somewhere by VDOC or what is the model?

Yeah, it is an actual model.

Who's got it?

Um, yeah, Dravid model is, um, I'm dealing with things, groups, native, that was since the law, that actually helps run Dravid models based on, um, you know, various, uh, generate Dravid in the, in the O area, the residential stuff.

Uh, you can run multiple scenarios based on different, um, priorities that you might have that will generate outcome and show you where you're going to have to get a change of model for your study.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

That was pretty cool.

And then we are maintaining this on-call services or contingency budget.

Part of this is related to us waiting to find out about some other initiatives that we're taking.

So if it turns out that we're not successful in pursuing those initiatives, we will come back and look at whether there's additional programming that we want to start.

you know, depending on whether or not other funding opportunities come through, that will be something that we look at.

The short-range transportation planning, these are pretty standard line items that we include each time, which includes the maintenance, the ongoing maintenance of the transportation improvement program.

So once we adopt it, there are sometimes changes that need to happen so that we support to maintain developing smart scale projects, the bike head and the transit

and those kinds of things.

So this is really just the draft to show the projects and the tasks that we know we're going to need to complete, but it's really an opportunity for you all to work out any feedback.

Thank you.

Yes, it says for fiscal year 2022.

Is that just a type O or something here?

Yeah, unless you have any questions that you want to.

Any questions still or any questions online?

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Next item, letter of support from the DRPT grant application for corridor identification and development program of the Carnival corridor.

Yeah, unfortunately, I don't have a lot of information beyond this topic, but the DRPT that reached out to us, they reached out and outlisted the boards.

Grant that they're applying for through the Federal Railroad and Fidulation Grant.

So it's looking at the east-west rail corridor and looking at improving passenger rail service between the Hampton Roads area all the way to Southwest Virginia, including a future direct connection between Charlottesville and the Richmond region, which would improve the efficiency of passenger rail travel pretty significantly for our area.

So we have prepared a draft letter of support that we can provide from Charlottesville.

That's on page 122 of the packet.

We need a motion in the second for the vote.

I move that we send this letter in support of the Honorable Pete Buttigieg.

I'm not sure.

Yes, the Secretary will be.

And fast forward.

Yeah, so Smartscale is a concept that doesn't really sleep for us.

We've adopted a concept to really be considering this year round, and it sounds like we're a little bit

but it doesn't hurt to be prepared.

I think everybody's familiar with SmartScale, but this is the base process that we use with what transportation products we're funding, and it's the main source of new construction funding for transportation products.

Currently, based on the existing rules around SmartScale, which are always being evaluated, and this could be amended in the next round, we're a little bit ahead of

where I think the state is as far as knowing what any sort of revenge ones might be applied in future rounds.

But as far as we know, at this point, we can submit four projects.

And for projects that are submitted by the MBO, we can submit projects that meet a couple of different criteria.

So first of all, any project that's submitted by any entity must be in need that is identified by the state's transportation plan, which is VTRANS.

And then the MPO is eligible to submit projects.

They either meet a need identified on the corridor of state or significance or in the regional network that is established in patrons.

So there are other projects that localities are able to submit that MPO is not eligible to submit because it doesn't meet either of their criteria.

And around that, we implemented a new process to support applications and relevance.

So we identified the projects early, and then we identified projects that needed some additional support as far as developing the application and the funding to secure the project to submitting the application.

And as you recall, we conducted a pretty robust public engagement effort around the Urbana-River Ridge project to

identified what the location was and what the alignment was that we wanted to be considered for that submission of that application.

Around 6, we would feel like to identify what the priorities are early and determine the projects that we are interested in submitting that may need additional development prior to that application submission.

However, there are some differences from around 6 as well.

And largely this is related to the phase of development that our projects are in.

What has happened is that since the last formation for teaching plan was adopted, we have a really nice problem in that we have worked through this mission and most of our priority projects for the region.

We've been successful at getting a number of these funded.

So we don't have a long list of outstanding projects that are ready to go that have been developed through planning initiatives.

We are in the process of developing a new plan.

So, you know, we're adding, we're developing new projects that we want to have in the queue, but we're not in a state where those are well defined.

Yeah, this will all be vetted through the long range transportation plan, so our hope is that as we talk about all the projects in these pipelines, it will start creating a list of projects that will potentially lead us to a long range transportation plan.

Yeah.

The other thing that's a little bit different is that the type of support that is needed to develop the app planning projects is a little bit different.

based on the face of development that we're in right now, meaning that a lot of these need a little bit more technical support versus support around the public engagement, which the MPS staff is a little bit more capable of facilitating without a lot of outside support.

So as we start looking at the rounds, at the application development for round six, one of the first things we did was review the unfunded projects from the last two processes in direct scale, just to see where there may be opportunities to fund those projects.

And so moving forward, the two that probably have the most interest that haven't been funded yet, is the Sturt Avenue Roundabout and Trafalgar Road, which scored very well.

It's very close to being able

That project did not score very well, but it is a really important project that has been identified by multiple localities.

had not been identified as much of a high priority or there's other work that we're doing on the bridge.

We know that there is additional work that needs to be done that we're putting on the hospital support scale.

But we're not in a phase where we have more information about what's necessary and they have a more competitive approach to the next round of the point.

So it may not make sense to identify that as well as what we're going to be looking forward for round six.

Obviously, we'll know in June if we are successful in getting a re-experience funding and maybe we'll have another conversation.

It was very vocal.

The word was split, but it was split.

that probably got in our way in the United States.

So that's what Ken said, those are some of your public planning processes that are there.

And we make sure that we get that checked out first.

These are initiatives that are coming from VDOT.

We can talk a little bit about the previous projects, but these are other projects that have been identified as priorities that VDOT is going to be taking the lead on and sort of walking through and identifying potential improvements based on these areas.

started in the 19th century, but it really improved the secretary of transportation law, so they're both planning an investment that the pipeline studies are a management group, and they are a management feed, once again, or any other transportation funding sources.

They have to develop projects.

They go through a public process, so the public is involved throughout the entire time as recommendations are being

projects.

The one you're looking at is the one that's on Barridge Road, running from left to right of Georgetown to Emmett Street in the city, as well as looking at the interchange there by that.

Issues that you can see down from that lower portion of the bike head and transit issues that involve capacity preservation while we're looking at that part of the project.

You know, hopefully we

down to brass tacks.

So this first project that was identified is looking at the barracks where the Tuesday are closed.

Yeah, from left to right, it's all very close, starting in Jordan County, going to the end of the city.

And then the second project is looking at a section of Abbey Road that also includes the T-15 interchange.

At this point, I guess it's important to sort of outline, really going from starting from this time from right to left,

starts at the intersection of Old Iving and Iving Road.

And then comes to the interchange and then, you know, I guess it takes all the way to the top of what 4 said.

And then looks at some of the issues we have on the main lines.

I think you're going to find that when you get back to that traffic model we were talking about earlier,

This study is not looking at the area of the triangle house.

You may not have been there.

Okay.

Yeah.

Maybe that, but I mean,

the discussion I've had is I want to look at the entire area.

Okay, I'm not sure what all that means, but I want to talk about this area of Kinslow-Pixon, it's just to the west of the bypass and north of 250.

There's Walker Drive and Old Ivy.

There's three streets that are there that you can potentially do a turn into the

It's not roundabout, I'm just going to bully you in the middle of it.

It's crazy, but whatever it is, it's totally, or maybe not totally, it's the right angle about it.

Okay, triangle about it.

Okay.

Interesting.

One element I will make sure that, since I have it all drawn out with red marker on that, but the picture that you are going... It's going that way.

Pardon me?

It's going that way.

Did I say that together?

Maybe I forgot.

If you're northbound on the bottom,

The people at the light and the exit

Makes a difference in your four rounds because the people from the bypass in the morning just keep going because there's no stop sign.

Or there may be a stop sign or you'll find that they don't pay attention.

And if there were a stop sign there to stop that traffic, then 250 would be able to keep moving.

So now that you've heard that, I will make sure I send you the map.

And it's up to somebody left and right that's coming off of 250, like to have them just stop?

Well, the people going west have to stop.

That explains my situation to more of the north and south and then we go

and then you don't go anywhere.

I would share the bathroom as it was supposed to be because they hadn't gotten anywhere in traffic in a while.

Sorry, we can't clear the start of the study.

yeah just accessibility for that that whole neighborhood of the city i think it would be really good you talk about the different two different pools and funding because we would like we talked about it in um in field tech yeah so so as far as scale you'll recall that um the there are two different funds of projects there's a high priority fund which is a statewide fund those

at the FDO.

So we are competing for any projects that the FDO is competing against other projects within the state.

And then there's also the district grant, which is funding that's provided specifically to the whole district.

The locality is that the projects are eligible for both the statewide funding program and the district funding program.

What happened with the district avenue project is that it actually scored higher than other projects that were competing

are competing for the district's funding, but because we submitted, the MPS submitted the application for the district project, it's not eligible to receive the district funding.

For both of them.

and they said they were right-of-way issues but I think the cost of the two properties there was the major, one of the major, the city side of the road.

So it brings the county to the city of Denver, right?

It could.

I think that it's currently out of that roundabout itself, so that the county, can you confirm that?

I believe the city line is sort of a southern side.

I think that we're in the city.

So when will we, when do we need to have our sort of ducks that are willing to educate?

Okay, I think so.

I think there are still some outstanding questions that probably need to be answered.

I think it's going to be later this year.

I mean, like, at the end of the year, they're going through the process now of doing all the surveys, and we just really started with the study.

So, I think I saw from the other conference last week, it was in

at the end of the year.

Of course, we don't really start into the process officially until spring of 2020.

With that said, I mean, I think we all are recognizing the benefit of working on these projects earlier and spending more time trying to get public input.

I think what we really need to know probably in the next set of meetings is, are there additional projects or initiatives that you all want us to be considering for development?

And then we probably need to identify what kind of additional support would be needed to make those projects ready.

Okay, great.

Especially with the absence of long-transmitting plans,

Yeah, so I have a couple that I'll start off with.

The first one is related to the Long Range Transportation Plan.

We completed the stakeholder discussion group, so we have three different groups, so three different types of stakeholders.

We got some really good feedback.

So there's a technical memo that is included in your packets for review with some suggested

changes to the draft goals and objectives based on that feedback.

We will bring that back to you all for a deeper discussion next time.

But I don't think you're quite all the way there yet, but it gives you an idea of how some of the feedback that we've heard from the stakeholder discussions are being considered.

So we'll have a bigger conversation.

And then we've also been working on the

We completed the scope with Renaissance and Michael Baker on the project prioritization tool.

So if you all want to see anything related to that, I'm happy to just show you what that tool looks like, but we'll often be dissecting about our future meetings because we'll need to be making some decisions around how to evaluate a different project.

and then related to the race grant application.

I would like to thank VDOT for their support and preparing that application and for championing it and getting the agency to stand behind the project with us.

We were able to successfully submit the application.

We asked for just over $3 million and we should find out about the outcome of that at the end of June.

Yeah.

and then they take the roads for all will probably be on.

We have a meeting with me to start working on the crash analysis that we have to do, and then we're working with the US DOT and the Federal Highway Administration on getting a great agreement.

Yeah, and so it would be nice again to start.

So, Acton Express, of course, launched their expanded service, so additional hours in the evening to accommodate hopefully the hospital workers there in the May and February.

So far, numbers have felt very steady.

They are still averaging about 58 riders a day.

in the February reports.

We're still trying to get the word out about that new route to the public and specifically the UVA employees.

I know we're still working on additional marketing initiatives to help support and let folks know about that.

With regards to Rideshare, we are kind of

just finished all of the grant applications that will be February 1st, one of them being the technical assistance grant for a strategic plan for the program, which is a state requirement, and that is in addition to our regular operating funds.

So we're kind of in a holding pattern of getting ready to prep all of our funds for activities.

May is bike month, so we are working to coordinate and help support

activities with that, both on the state level and on the local level.

You know, Earth Month and Clean Commute is usually something that we move a lot of promotions around, so we kind of stay tuned for that.

And we are actually today just wrapped up the timeline for proposals for an RFP.

Then, Mister Nichols, updates on the FY 2124 adjustment.

Is that it for earlier?

Yes, there was there was an adjustment to a project in the current chair.

This came from the is to the service in the industry.

We got indicated that there were small increases in the

total service in the now with some adjustments to the repayment.

An adjustment that's not a policy member to ask for.

Anything else of interest on that topic?

The administrative.

OK.

OK.

Roundtable discussion, I think we're at that point.

Great.

So right off the bat, our friends from Vigod.

I am on the executive working group that is kind of steering this thing.

So if you don't want to submit a survey,

They're planning to adopt a policy change by December of this year.

So they're kind of on a crunch to work through this effectively.

They're planning on presenting the recommendations to the CTB for policy adoption in October.

So if you back this up, we're probably going to have a pretty good idea of what

what we're going to be targeting sometime in September.

They're going to be regular updates to the TTB, so continuing the TTB, they will probably be giving staff reports on a routine basis to update them on what we're going to be setting.

So look forward to working through that.

Other items of interest, the hydraulics,

needed.

So I have to go back and ask for judgment money to fully fund that to have a contract move forward.

Contractor who is in the living and awarded this project with a lot of this, Curtis Contracting, they also have the design bill fund for the EDI project and 151 Roundabout.

So contractors already mobilized.

As soon as they finish that work, they get spot on with this hydraulic project.

So we're excited about that.

The last thing, talking about bundles, we've got another bundle, the nine-mill bundle that we're working on.

We just had a risk meeting here.

I believe it was a couple of weeks ago, it was not actually the end of February.

And that project consists of the Rile-Drowned or earthquake intersection, Fifth Street, Old Lakesburg intersection, around 53 and 20 intersection.

Those roundabouts.

We're looking at trying to include some additional items.

If everything goes well with round five, we want to advance the genre of the reindeer that is there as part of that project and move that with this roundabout loan because the roundabout loan will be part of the intersection of the flight down the streets of that project.

So we can move that and advance it and go along with this project.

Right now, that project is slated to go to its broad set of public hearings this summer and award

Yeah, I just follow up.

Last time I think I mentioned that we were running a selection process.

There's a lot of talk right here about trying to do work with rooms of applications.

We had our cable office, someone will look at it as the northern part of the district.

projects, we're doing eight projects in Culpeper County, volunteer county, it wasn't green, it was large.

Essentially what we've done is gone out, do a site visit with the locality, bringing their planners, their public works department, let's give you know where some of the utilities are, as well as folks from our engineering section, the local residency, and we're doing, taking that information with the concept that they want to do,

and we're doing both looking at like a conceptual plan and probably work through some of the engineering issues to inform some of the planning decisions, making sure that the planning goals are grounded in something that's dual as well as trying to, by that scope, narrow the problem with the project to make sure that the engineers are looking down the street to understand what some of the planning goals were as applicable to the context, maybe something a little larger than the project itself.

and I think to try and get a better application, because when we've been doing the wallpaper districts, but, you know, the design of different districts could be nice.

So each of those is a little bit different than the next, but we're similar to callback for Friday.

We start with a small scale project, really developing the concept plans and the estimates for all of the projects, I mean, local values, you know, it does vary.

We're moving that to remember to be sharing a tab.

This is kind of our first really effort in the planning section.

Probably we can get what the engineers get to really put that good context around the project to make sure that the planners understand some of the constraints for all the engineering side.

It has been great to be out in the field at a couple of different localities where, wow, it's nice to be out here to see what the engineers are saying about our project.

So it's not good as a dialogue.

We're getting ready to go back to the counties with some of these projects next week, the week after.

and hopefully, I think we're going to be close, some of them have been great, we've had lots of information on studies, weapons studies on these properties that they're going to work on so we're able to be down to the brass tacks on what the issues are going to be with the project and hopefully that will end up making a better application that we get a better estimate on and hopefully it will be delivered on time and on budget.

Is that something we see as being

able to be reapplied in this part of the district?

Yeah, no, we'd be looking at it as a matter of fact.

And I think there are various factors, you know, here locally that they, you know, weren't able to take us up on the wall this year.

We're intending to really go to the cap scale, starting earlier than we have in the past.

We've been talking about coming out in January, coming through July, August, my friend, this year.

to meet, again, localities and see how we can help someone smart to have a project.

I know that some of it is being considered now here locally and hopefully we'll be able to have strong collaboration with the projects to help a little bit.

I think, again, one of the great things about this, I think, is when you're a planner, and let's have them on the different side of this project, and you're a planner, you're thinking about all this stuff, you're trying to look at it, and you're not thinking about

the impediments that might be in the way of an individual project.

And this is a way to address those things and get a better understanding of how dual they really are.

Or maybe think of a different alignment that might be able to meet that same need and purpose.

OK, that's great.

Thank you for that.

I think she had to jump out, but she did say that she had updated a reminder for her

Throughout the fiscal year, Albemarle County transportation planning staff have been working on these conceptual design projects to give us better projects with more public input and more accurate process.

So we're wrapping up our free bridge lane conceptual design project where we got the board's approval to move ahead with planning a pilot program to turn the bridge lane into a covenant.

So that's very exciting.

We're going to move forward with that quickly.

We also just kicked off our Route 20 shared use path project today with a site visit.

And later this month, we will have a stakeholder meeting where we'll get all the important folks in the room and talk through what that project might look like.

Great.

So not the free bridge itself.

The free bridge lane is a

Narrow, underutilized roadway that just sits about three quarters of a mile and it goes from Nardin to Park down to Rebrigade itself.

So basically just pedestrianizing it.

Right now it has vehicle traffic on it, but it's a little bit narrow and it has a shared use path on the west side of it that isn't well delineated from the roadway itself.

So it's a little bit of a safety hazard.

Yeah, we're in the river a lot too, which is really wonderful.

In the Route 20 shift path, what are the events that started like that?

Yeah, so the northern endpoint would be the city coming line.

So there are bike lanes right now on road bike lanes that end in 4E Road.

Right, thank you.

So we are working through our non-lunarized prioritization projects right now.

So that's looking at all of our bike and structure that we have as priorities from our 2015 bike pet plan and from our street support plan in 2016.

We have worked through the quantitative analysis with our consultant and they handed it off to us and said, take a look at this and make sure it makes sense.

and then we'll be putting together sort of our staff recommendations to rule out stakeholders in the public before we bring to council.

Once we do get a thought by council, then we'll be taking it to VDOT and saying how can you guys

on our roadways in the past year in response to our candidate parent responsibility zones.

We are shifting from project style work to program work now, getting more programs in the schools for bikes, and also going out to the community where kids are helping them fix their bikes.

Last week, we had a mobile bike workshop.

We have a few of these set up throughout the spring.

The first one was last week over here at Friendship Court.

And next week, we'll be doing

We're rounding up all of the city's

bike to work week, bike to work month, bike to work day, bike to school day, bike to school week, all of those.

What else are we doing?

Dockless permits, we are reviving our regulations in the city for dockless permits.

We had some issues with how Bayo was performing on our streets, especially the parking and safety, and they had some issues with their profitability, so they were looking for some trade-offs.

We are working through that and

is currently under with our legal department.

We're expecting that to be smoothly and hopefully get them a new permit in the next month or two.

That permit will be managed by our head coordinator which we're currently trying to hire.

So hopefully we'll have both a new program and someone to manage it at the same time on their side.

Good question for you because the place where I usually trip up

So we do actually have one built into the regulations that was there before.

We just rediscovered it as we were editing the regulations.

It's that if they get a request, a scooter or a bike, and they don't do it within an hour, and I get to embark, I get to embark on $100.

We haven't done that yet.

Obviously, it's good that I'm around here, but I'm not sure about that.

I'm just still working that out, but I hope so.

I'm actually hoping that we're getting a new virus.

I'm here.

Just a couple quick ones.

passenger amenities that will help us do improvements that are sorely needed at a number of our bus stops.

We're also in the final stages of finalizing an RFP that will allow us to hire a construction management company

to help facilitate getting that money on the street and making some real efforts to improve some bus stops here in the next fiscal year.

Excellent.

Yeah, that's still an issue.

uh...

Supervisor McKeel has had conversations, I believe, with VDRPT.

They're working through a process where they're going to help transit agencies around the state to get, I guess, three or four different shelter designs that will be acceptable by VDOT.

That way we can kind of hopefully shorten the process because there's the process that VDOT goes through to

The private right of way one, those would be ones where Kat would have to work out with the owners.

Thank you, great.

Thank you, Carla.

Todd, are you still on?

Okay.

Thank you, Todd.

Okay.

UVA?

Anything for the grader?

Okay, all right, great.

FHWA?

He had to jump off as well.

Okay.

Instead of jumping.

The FDA?

They were not.

Actually don't have anything that DAPT didn't already cover.

So do a good job of that.

Thank you.

It's good seeing.

And then anything else from the TJPDC?

OK.

Excellent.

Any additional matters from the public?

Anyone like to provide a comment?

Only three minutes per speaker.

Thank you everybody and I'll make it very brief.

I'm Peter Krebs from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

First of all, terrific meeting and what a rich packet this is.

Sandy and our team did a great job preparing the Riviera River pedestrian bridge raise grant.

County as well as the MPO to keep an eye on it as it changes.

Certainly there are ways that SmartScale can be better.

but in general SmartScale has been good for our region.

It's data driven and the way that it looks at data is very compatible with both Charlottesville and Albemarle's approach to land use.

So let's keep an eye on that.

Hopefully it gets even better.

But that's all I have for now.

Any other comments from the public?

OK, I thank you.

I'd love to have a motion to adjourn.

All right, all in favor?

Aye.