MPO Policy Board Meeting   3/26/2024

Good afternoon, everyone.

I'm going to call to order the Charlottesville, Albemarle, Metropolitan Planning Organization Tuesday, where it's 26, 4 p.m. meeting.

And we do have warm presents.

And I guess Londrey is filling in with for Mr. Nelson today, so that everyone was aware.

And we do have to move rather expeditiously through the first couple of action items because our counterparts are

Colleagues in the city need to get up to a meeting in five because I have to print.

Yes.

So go ahead and get rolling here.

Supervisor Malek?

Yes.

Brian Pinkston?

Present.

Natalie Oschrin?

Sean Nelson?

Thank you.

And that will take us to number two, matters from the public.

Public are welcome to provide comment on any transportation related property, including the items listed on this agenda.

And the limit is three minutes for speaker.

Anyone online that would like to give public comment?

All right, seeing none, we will close matters from the public, and we will move to number three.

The first item, review and acceptance of the agenda.

Are there any requested modifications to the agenda?

Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

Second?

Second.

All right, we got a motion made and seconded.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstentions?

The agenda is approved.

Thank you.

And that will take us to the February 28, 2024 meeting minutes that were in the packet.

Are there any changes, edits, any items there that need to be?

Do you want to see a crown?

It's now coming up, sorry.

It would seem like one point that will be listed still as the chair.

All right.

Is there a motion to approve as amended?

So we got a motion to made and seconded.

Abstentions?

The amendments are approved.

Great.

And that will take us to item number four, smart scare, smart scare, smart scale alternative selection.

And Mr. Proctor, I saw your name online.

Yes, I will.

You're welcome.

Okay.

Okay.

Basically, we went through the public survey of Barracks Road and have some preferred solutions.

And I basically summarized some of the

public data on the various presentations.

This is the same presentation I showed to the rural MPO tech with the various preferred solutions.

The first one is Georgetown Road and the access management segment.

Basically, this would convert the existing intersection at Georgetown Road to a roundabout.

And basically we would eliminate access management along the corridor, which would basically reduce the median to four feet and close all the crossovers and shift the lanes to the north.

That would give us enough room on the south side of the corridor to put a shared use path.

That's basically four foot buffer with an eight foot shared use path along that whole segment, all the way from Georgetown to the interchange.

Basically, these are the results of the public survey.

We had 66% in favor of the roundabout at Georgetown Road, and that's out of 1447 responses, so very favorable responses to that.

The written comments were

Generally negative, but they followed the alignment of the people that were against the project.

So even though the numbers are higher, the negative numbers correspond to the negative percentage of people that didn't support the project anyway.

So we didn't get as many positive comments, written comments, but we got a lot of respondents that were

Overwhelming number of respondents that preferred that scenario.

So for the shared use path, we had 56% in favor of it with a similar type of breakdown on the percentages.

I'll go through these pretty quickly and then we can go back if you have any questions.

Next is the two roundabouts that were preferred at the interchange.

And it also includes the shared use path extension through the interchange.

By using roundabouts at this location, it will allow us to go with one lane in the eastbound direction, which would give us enough room under the bridge to put a larger facility, shared use path type facility underneath the bridge along the south side.

I will point out that on all these roundabout locations, one of the questions came up about the slip lanes.

We did reanalyze those and we were going to convert those to right turn lanes so we won't have that separation of the slip lanes like they're shown on all three of these concepts.

So that was one thing that we have taken care of that the MPO Tech asked about last week.

And the last portion, and this one scored similarly well, we had 51% of the respondents were in favor to the roundabout on the west side and 55% to the roundabout on the east side.

And again, most of the 52% of the negative written comments were, corresponded to the negative responses we had for the survey itself.

So,

We did have 1,100 respondents, but we only had 331 written comments.

Similarly for the eastbound roundabout or the northbound off-ramp roundabouts, we had 923 respondents and 259 written comments.

This is another

improvement that we saw had good response from the public survey.

However, it's not needed.

We showed it in here as a preferred scenario, but it's not something that we need to build with the preferred solution.

So we're showing it and to give you an idea, but we don't have to include this.

And that was one of the recommendations from MPO Tech also not to include it.

And it, like I said, it had 62% favorable response out of 900 respondents.

And then we had 199 written comments.

The last portion is the shared use path on the east side, which would basically run from the interchange all the way to Emmett Street.

I will point out that the shared use path, we're calling it a shared use path, but it's actually a eight foot sidewalk, four feet off the edge of the road.

So it meets the minimum criteria, but the offset's a little bit short for what we would classify as a shared use path.

This one also had good respondents, 75% in favor for the first segment and 72% in favor for the second segment.

And that's all I have for this.

The county is looking to submit the western portion, which goes from Georgetown to the interchange.

The MPO is looking at submitting two applications, which would be the interchange and the eastern portion, which is a shared use path to Emma Street.

And then the other application would be for the entire application.

And then these are some of the questions that I got at MPO Tech that we've,

evaluated and I have some responses for those.

One of them was the right turn of the slip ramps.

We're actually removing those.

We did run the reanalysis of those and they all work well in 2045, so we can just go with the right turn lanes.

So that was one of the big questions they had.

Race crosswalks at Georgetown Road.

I did check with traffic engineering and that would be an acceptable

Amenity that we could add to the crosswalks to further improve the safety at those locations.

We're also including pedestrian crossings at both sides of the interchange, so on Barracks Road, you would be able to cross on the west side and the east side at the roundabouts on either side.

For the crosswalks at Barracks Road, Georgetown, and the ramps, we would, at a minimum,

Look at including rapid flashing beacons at those crossings to further improve the safety of those crossings to let traffic know in advance as a minimum recommendation.

And we also are not recommending the deceleration lane on the bypass at this time.

So that's all I have for that.

Supervisor Malner?

Thank you.

Thank you, Chuck.

Do you anticipate, the DCLA is no longer suggested because you anticipate there to be continual motion at the bottom of the ramp with the roundabout?

We've run the analysis and none of the analysis is showing that we're going to have more than like 300 foot of queue on the ramps in the future.

So we don't, based on that, we don't really,

Thank you.

Yes, please.

Thank you.

I appreciate the fact I didn't have a chance to chat with Mr.

Chambers yesterday about this and I appreciate the fact that there's some changes that have been made based off the feedback of the MPO tech meeting.

You have a slip lane right here, the eastbound slip lane that's basically a separate lane that's the right turn lane.

That'll just be like you would see a traditional right turn lane that would go up parallel with the through lane and then you can make the right turn like you would at a typical intersection.

And those would be the case for all of those approaches that show a slip lane.

Same for the roundabout at Georgetown.

It has several, it has two slip lanes on Georgetown Road, both on and off, and neither one of those would be included.

Could you go back to the two ones that are there at the interchange, please?

So does that mean that the pedestrian or bicycle bike head, I guess what's the red line there?

Does that mean that ends up being a little closer to the circle so they're not so far away?

And like I said, we'll also include a crosswalk across barracks on both the west side of the interchange and on the east side of barracks so that you don't have to go, because right now there's no crosswalks on there at all.

No basically what we're going to do is right now you've got a four lane divided road with turn lanes and a median in the middle so we're going to remove that

Those turn lanes, and we're going to put a solid median down the middle of the road that's going to be four feet wide.

And then we'll have two lanes in each direction on both sides.

And what we're going to do is the two eastbound lanes that are on the south side of the road, we're going to shift those over 12 feet.

Got it.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And so there's no way people can

If you're on the south side of that road walking or biking, there's no way to get across sort of midway between the interchange and Georgetown Road.

You have to go to one end or the other.

Correct.

I mean you've got a 45 mile an hour speed zone through there and this project we can't just arbitrarily reduce the speed.

And like I told the MPO Tech folks, if after these projects are built, we can come out and reevaluate it.

And if we can reduce the speed, there's a possibility we could look at a mid-block crossing.

And forget my ignorance, but I'm just

Sincerely wondering why can't you lower the speed as part of this?

Interesting.

Why couldn't we lower the speed as part of this project?

You have to look at it after the project was built because currently it's hosted 45 miles an hour even though people are traveling in excess of that speed because of the way the corridor is controlled.

The roundabouts, what we're hoping will slow down the traffic because right now when the light turns green at Georgetown,

Those people can come straight through that intersection and carry the speed from that rural area all the way down the corridor without a break.

So by putting the roundabout in, you're reducing that ability to carry speed through the intersection.

So that's gonna create a situation where the cars have to slow down, but in between the two roundabouts, they will speed up.

And so we won't be able to know what that speed's going to be until after the roundabout should go.

And arbitrarily posting the speed just becomes an enforcement issue versus an actual control issue.

And typically we like to control speed by putting geometric

items along the roadway that slow the traffic down and don't like curves or something like that that don't allow them to travel at speed through but this is a straight corridor and we don't want to impact the right-of-way to arbitrarily put curves in there to slow the traffic down so that's the reasoning why we're looking at waiting until afterwards because we don't can't

I'm sorry to take you back Chuck.

I was quite enamored of the slip lanes at Georgetown and Bailich Road, so can you talk to me about right now you're driving west and you're in the right lane and you have to go right onto Georgetown road and without

You go to the roundabout and you make the right.

The left lane is a through left.

You're not fighting with those people to make the right turn.

Right now it's still a yield condition, even with the slip lane.

It would still be a yield condition.

You'd have to yield to the people that are coming out of the roundabout for the slip lane.

It's not like you have two receiving lanes to go into.

So it's no different than an intersection where you have to make a right turn.

I'm sorry I don't have a design to show you.

I will come back once we have an updated design, and I can present that to you possibly next month.

I'm just not sure when I'll have a new concept available.

Well, the feedback that I've got in terms of the split lanes being removed, that's a good thing because it slows down cars at the point

And it does.

You don't, basically with the slip lane, you're having to cross

One lane that's free flow and then one lane that's a yield condition stopped.

And it's difficult to make those maneuvers.

And I agree, Jessica pointed some of that information out and I was aware of it before.

So I actually went in and did the analysis to update it to see if the right turn lanes would work.

And they do work in all the AM and PM and

in the 2045 intermeer.

So I was fine with reducing those back to right-turn lanes because they work fine.

It's my understanding that Councilor Oschrin has logged on online.

We're going to have to pause to allow electronic participation

All right, Board, we would need a motion to allow Counselor Oschrin to participate.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstentions?

I really appreciate that, thanks.

Yes, I was excited to hear the raised crosswalks were approved

But I'm not quite sure where you were talking about they're going to be located.

Correct.

Correct.

Okay, that's great, thanks.

Where are the guardrails placed?

Are they on the outside of the sidewalk, or are they in between the sidewalk and the road?

I don't think there's any out there right now.

OK. OK. And then you mentioned not being able to reduce speed at this point is a project because it would be kind of arbitrary because it's going from a straightaway to another straightaway, which is, of course, as we know, just where people feed.

We are going to narrow the lanes up.

That was another item that was brought up.

And we're going to basically try to keep it at a maximum of 11 foot lanes to reduce.

We can't go much lower than that because of the larger vehicles and buses and stuff that use this corridor.

But we can go down to 11 foot.

We can't lower it any further because of the volume of traffic that uses this road without creating extreme congestion on the corridor, so that's why we didn't consider going down to a lower, a smaller footprint.

I mean, this is a major corridor that carries traffic to the interchange.

Some of it goes into the city, but the bulk of it is going to 250 to get on the bypass.

So we wanted to make sure we could still handle that traffic.

So primarily we're looking at addressing, preserving the corridor so that we can still maintain the travel on that corridor in at least better than the current condition.

I don't know if the bike access stuff will change other than we might, we'll show the crosswalks at Barracks Road.

But everything else will, I mean, I'll bring them back to you once we get the

refined concepts developed so that you can see them again.

That'll show the right turns versus the slip lanes.

But I don't know if you'll have, if there'll be detailed enough to show some of the other stuff.

Question is, we're asking for a decision today because the pre-applications are due Monday, April 1st.

Gotcha, okay, and because we made the decision to adjust slip lanes

Okay thanks yeah because I'm just

I'm worried about what it actually looks like for someone on a bike.

I think I said this last time, but right angles are hard on a bike.

And this shows several right angles.

And we're impeding the progress of someone on a bike in favor of someone on cars.

And so by nature, it's going to be harder to bike, which leads to more cars, which leads to fewer bikes and more cars, et cetera, et cetera.

I understand that, and putting the controls in there to cross those, especially the ramps, any controls you put up would have to be, you'd have to stop to actually make those controls work.

So it wouldn't be a continuous flow type of movement for bicyclists at any way, at any point in the process.

At least the ramp crossings.

OK, thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Proctor.

Are there any other questions?

We are under a time constraint to get these three applications voted on.

This is Steven with Federal Highway.

I just had a quick question and I'm not 100% familiar with the area.

So I'm just going by what's been presented today.

So I guess anybody that knows the area could answer this.

Are there other bike lanes or other bike path lanes that this project is going to connect to?

Through the east of this corridor, there's two projects in the city that we will connect to with this project.

One is on Emmett Street heading south, and the other one is heading east on, I think it's, what is it, Ridge Road or Rugby Road?

Okay, gotcha.

And there's another trail segment that it's going to connect to on the east side of Emmett Street.

All right, gotcha.

Gotcha.

All right.

No, much appreciated.

Thank you.

I was just curious because, of course, sometimes these projects get done and then the trail's there, but there's no other connection point.

So they start and end.

So that's what I was asking.

And thank you for answering that.

Any other comments or questions?

Yeah, motion to direct staff to submit two SMART SCALE free applications for the preferred alternatives.

And the county is doing its own bid separately?

Yes.

Okay.

I would move what you just described.

All right, the motion has been made.

It has been seconded.

Is there any further discussion?

Ann Mallek?

Yes.

Ben Galloway?

Yes.

Brian Pinkston?

Yes.

Natalie Oschrin?

Yes.

Stacy Londrey?

Very good.

That will take us to item B, the I-64 and Fifth Street interchange at exit 120.

Yeah, this will hopefully be quick.

I think the power's just about gone.

Well, which one are you seeing?

Okay, good.

That's what I was hoping for.

Okay, this is a presentation I put together, but it talks about all the projects.

Basically, what we're proposing is a divergent diamond interchange for Fifth Street.

This is a concept and what it does, it reduces the crashes that we're seeing at both intersections and reduces the queuing on the eastbound off-ramp, which is on the north

West portion of this screen.

It's starting to queue up out onto 64, so we want to try to address that issue because that'll cause more crashes on 64.

We don't want that to happen.

It also includes a shared use path through the interchange, which currently there's a sidewalk on one side of the bridge, and this basically provides a shared use path down the middle of the bridge.

with crosswalks of the ramps on.

We're still trying to work through the logistics of that.

Originally, I think we were looking at all four, and then the county said they only wanted the two, and now we're back to three.

So we'll still flush that out with the county as to which ones they want to include moving forward.

Because there's some development, I guess, on the one north

right the top right quadrant there's a development that's proposed for that site so basically this is the proposal that we're recommending we're getting ready to go to public

comment probably in next week or so to get their input and then we will circle back with you on that once we get that feedback.

But this was what was previously recommended and this study is just validating that previous recommendation from the original Fifth Street Corridor Study and then once we get that information we will refine it.

We've already been in discussions with

Central Office, L&D, and actual FHWA, because this is an interchange modification, so we've got to go through a separate process for that, and we're working on getting the framework documents signed on that, and we're just waiting on FHWA to signature on that, but this is the concept we're proposing for that corridor.

Questions?

The very first bullet says reduces the crashes through limiting the separation of the compo voids.

Yes.

At both intersections, currently there's a lot of crashes.

Angle crashes.

Hold on, let me see if I got it on this slide.

No.

I have another presentation that has the

trash information on it, but I didn't pull it out.

We'll have Jersey barrier on both sides of the shared use path.

Any further questions?

Second.

All right, the motion has been made and seconded.

OK, I don't have the full concept here, but it's basically two applications from last round and we're putting them together as one.

This was the first application, which is the Rolkin Road intersection.

So we're providing crosswalks at the intersection, making some modifications to the intersection just to accommodate the crosswalks.

And then we're providing a sidewalk from Rolkin Road along the south side of 250 down to State Farm Boulevard.

That's the first piece of the project.

The second piece is

Down at Peter Jefferson Parkway, we're actually closing the crossover, which is just west of there, which is that entrance that you see that's got the purple little like moon in there, making that a right in right out.

There's a crossover there we're gonna close.

At the intersection, we're adding a right turn lane and we're converting the crossing movement to a through cut, which basically allows the left turns out and in, but you can't go directly across the intersection.

and that makes it operate a little bit better so we get some efficiency out of it.

The other thing is we're including is a park and ride lot for commuters both into and out of the city and the and Pantops area so that they can catch a bus if they want to go to Richmond or commuter bus to Richmond or they can drive to the park and ride lot and get a bus that goes into the city.

So this is the other piece of that application.

You second it, Supervisor Long?

Yes.

All right.

So motion has been made and seconded.

Can we just see the first picture again?

Please.

Thank you.

Well, hold on.

What do you mean that's it for you?

Hold on.

Oh, I played on the Ivy Road.

Basically, we're refining the sort of what we're calling the storyline for the three alternatives that we're looking at.

One of them is looking at

The bike pad and stuff on Old Ivy Road.

The other one is looking at some ramp improvements and improvements at Canterbury and

at Birdwood to accommodate some of the movements, and the other option is looking at the loop ramps on 250 south of the corridor, on the south side of the corridor, and with the Credy's Path still on the north side on Old Ivy.

I don't have any updated concepts.

We're working on those and we're putting together the public survey material.

We do have a meeting with the focus group on April 1st, and we will be sending that information on Monday to them.

Any questions on the pipeline setting?

Thank you, Mr. Proctor.

All right.

You all have a good, wonderful day.

Very efficient.

Thank you.

We'll move to item number six, moving toward 2050.

Hey, how are you?

Will's not joining us today, so it's just going to be me.

Thank you all for having me.

Again, my name is Alan Simpson.

I'm with EPRPC based out of Charlottesville.

I'm down in Richmond, though.

And I'm going to give an update on the long-range transportation plan process, share some feedback from some stakeholder meetings that we held this month, as well as an open house event earlier this month.

So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and get that going.

One second.

All right.

All righty, so.

Agenda for this presentation.

I'm going to go over the details on the stakeholder meetings and open house event that we did earlier this month.

An update on the list of priority projects.

which you all should have in your packets.

There is a list of projects and the descriptions for each one in no particular order and actually the order is a little bit different than this presentation so I apologize for that.

And the purpose of this presentation is basically to give a summary of the feedback that we heard in those stakeholder meetings and the open house event and take any questions and discussion on that.

So we held three stakeholder meetings earlier this month.

So on March 1, we held a stakeholder meeting for business stakeholders in the area.

So we had representatives from County, UVA, and Visit Charlottesville.

On the 4th, we had a public safety stakeholder meeting.

So we had representatives from Albemarle County Police and Fire, Blue Ridge Health Department, and CAT.

On the 6th, we had a community partner stakeholder meeting.

So that was a little bit more of a mixed bag of attendees.

So we had SELC, the Three Knots Trail, Piedmont Environmental Council, and the CAA attending there.

We had four attendees at each of those stakeholder meetings.

They all went about an hour and a half.

And we basically presented them with a list of priority projects and got their feedback.

And on the 7th, we held an open house at the TJPDC lobby.

And that kind of, it was a series of posters that explained the process to date and gave an update on the priority project list, had some maps and just some general info there.

We had nine attendees, only received one comment card, but we had good participation there.

So the objectives of these meetings, we were aiming to validate the proposed list of priority projects, engage general agreement with the plan's recommendations,

In the stakeholder meetings, we asked the stakeholders to give feedback on how they would prioritize the proposed projects to influence the constrained list.

And we also asked for any details that would help guide the project details, inform VDOT designs, and feed into funding applications.

Some of these projects are in very early stages and don't have a lot of details on them.

So we were just looking for feedback on that and whether or not they agreed with the priority level that we had found for each project.

And I'll go over that a little bit and how we got to that point.

And apologize if you all have heard this before.

This is my first time at one of these meetings.

So I figured I'd give a quick recap on how we identify these priority projects.

So the candidate projects started with a list of candidate projects that we compiled based on improvements identified through previous planning efforts, the small area plans, corridor studies, transit strategic plans, regional plans, and project pipeline and STARS studies.

We identified priority projects based on locally identified priority improvements and candidate projects that address needs identified through our kind of data intensive prioritization process where we looked at safety, accessibility, environmental traffic data for the whole MPO road network and pulled all that together and basically came up with an aggregate need score for each road segment in the MPO going from

One being least important to seven being most important based on the metrics that we established, I think have been discussed in previous meetings here.

So any needs that weren't addressed by a committed or recently implemented project or a priority project were indicated as planning priorities for the future.

So those will inform efforts the region undertakes over the next several years to identify solutions to identify, to address those identified needs.

So here's a list of projects.

Again, you should have a list of those in your packet.

I'm going to go through each one, and I know we've got 20 minutes here, and I know some of you all need to leave at five, so I will try to get through them fairly quickly.

Stop me if you have any questions, but we'll save time for discussion at the end.

But yeah, so this is the list of priority infrastructure projects.

Each slide will contain

The priority level that was identified through the MPO's prioritization process.

And then if we heard from the stakeholder groups on how they would rank the priority, we included that in here.

On a lot of these projects, we didn't get any feedback.

Mostly in those projects, people just kind of agreed with the rating that we had there already.

Sometimes there was some disagreement and sometimes there wasn't much comment at all.

But we documented all that and then any comments that we got in those meetings, I'm going to go over those as well.

So the first one is the I-64 and 5th Street interchange improvement.

The overall need that was identified was low, relatively speaking.

These were all things that need to get done, but on a scale of low to high, it was low.

We didn't hear from the business stakeholders really on the priority here, but public safety stakeholders found this was a high need, community partners rated it lower.

Some general comments on this one would be that it would improve

Bike and ped safety at this interchange and enhanced access to outdoor recreation at Biscuit Run Park in the future.

We had a comment that a transportation hub would be needed here in the future.

We had one stakeholder who was against implementing a diverging diamond design here.

And a comment that this is good and needs to be addressed, but not just this interchange, the entire corridor.

For the Rio Road Peanut Shaped Roundabout and Shared Use Path, the road segments in this project were identified as high or medium need.

Sometimes you'll see more than one listed here because each road segment

individually had its own priority level so overall a high need for our process.

Our public safety stakeholders didn't think this was a high priority.

The community partners definitely did.

The community partners we had were definitely more bike-ped focused and that was kind of their most of the people there were kind of championing that kind of accessibility.

So business stakeholders they did say that speed is a concern in this corridor and there's a need for safety improvements.

The community partners

We're very concerned about safety concerns and deaths at the intersection, as well as issues with safely biking along the railroad corridor.

The public safety stakeholders, interestingly, didn't feel that there were many issues here.

So there was a little bit of, those were at odds a bit, but the community partners definitely agreed that this was a high priority.

For the airport road and 29 intersection, that was a low priority from our process.

The business stakeholders felt that it should be higher.

Didn't hear much from the other groups.

General comments was that it's difficult for pedestrians to cross 29 under current conditions, but as density increases in nearby areas, that's going to become even more important, so something needs to be done for sure.

The public safety stakeholders agreed.

They were less in favor of bigger capital investments like a roundabout and preferred to see something like improved stoplight timing, sidewalks and crosswalks along 29.

For the Ivy Road corridor, long stretch of road here.

There's a lot of projects going on.

The overall need was low.

The business stakeholders and public safety stakeholders did not agree with that.

They thought it should be much higher priority.

And I will say again, the prioritization process that we undertook was only one part of this whole, one part of the puzzle.

It doesn't mean that it's a low priority.

It's just that was one factor.

We also looked at public comments.

The stakeholder meetings are also going to be a factor here.

They didn't agree that it was low, they thought it should be higher.

So the business stakeholders felt that these improvements would be essential for tourism.

Our public safety stakeholders cited a lot of flooding issues on this corridor, as well as congestion.

And our community partners cited there would be walkability benefits from adding a shared use path along Old Ivy Road.

In Crozet, the US-250 corridor at Henley Middle and Brownsville Elementary.

Low priority from the MPO's priority process, but the public safety has felt it should be much higher.

So pedestrian access for students at Brownsville Elementary and Henley Middle is a challenge.

They cited inconsistent sidewalk access on nearby roads, sidewalks that start and stop, so some inconsistency there.

There's a potential for a roundabout design here and there was mention that that could be confusing for bus pickup and drop-off Avon Street Extended and Mill Creek Drive, the intersection there We didn't get a lot of feedback on this one in general There wasn't much disagreement that this was kind of a lower priority Mentioned that it could be a good place for a roundabout and the business stakeholders felt this could be a future thoroughfare for Biscuit Run Park

Old Lynchburg Road shared use path.

Again, not a lot of disagreement with the priority level that was set.

CAT did mention that there was a need for a light or a roundabout at the intersection of Fifth Street and Old Lynchburg Road, but in general, the stakeholder groups didn't have a lot to say about this one.

For the Berkmar Drive shared use path, that was a low priority from our process.

The business stakeholders agreed with that.

The other two groups didn't have much comment on this one.

No strong opinions, really.

Another thing I'll mention here is that some of the groups we didn't get through the entire list of projects.

There was a lot of discussion at the start of some of these meetings and it ended up kind of taking up some of the time.

So we, in the community partner meeting, we started running out of time and so we asked, you know, if there are any projects that you feel strongly about or really want to talk about, let's talk about those.

We definitely made sure that they gave feedback on what they felt strongly about and gave them the opportunity to send feedback later if necessary, but we didn't hear anything back.

So some of these we don't have ratings because we just didn't get to them or there just wasn't a lot of strong opinion.

The Eastern Avenue connection in Crozet.

So we're looking at Eastern Avenue extending down to 250.

There is no need identified here because the road doesn't exist yet.

So it's not part of the road network.

So there's an NA there, but the business stakeholders felt that it was a low priority.

The other groups didn't have much to say in general, not a high priority, but something that's necessary.

For the barracks road corridor improvements, overall need on that one was low from our process, but the stakeholder groups felt it should be higher, so high and medium priority from the business stakeholders and the public safety stakeholders.

In general, comments were that there's a high priority area for pedestrian and bike safety as well as traffic congestion.

For this intersection here with the Ridge, McIntire, West Main, South and Water Street,

A medium need identified through our process.

The business stakeholders agreed with that.

Comments that this is an unsafe and confusing intersection for visitors and residents alike.

A need for equity to be considered here.

It serves a lot of people living in low-income housing.

One stakeholder mentioned that there's a need to implement the Ridge-McEntire streetscape plan here.

And we also had one stakeholder suggesting closing off South Street to vehicle traffic.

Another stakeholder mentioned that access to midway manner would be an issue if that took place.

For Rio Road corridor improvements, we're looking at between Huntington Road and Greenbrier Terrace.

That was a medium need identified in our process.

The business stakeholders thought it should be higher, didn't really get any detail on that, but they definitely thought it was higher than medium, but no other comments on this one.

For Fifth Street multimodal improvements, Fifth Street was a high, medium, and low need, depending on what part of the road segment you're looking at, but overall it could be considered high.

We did have agreement with that from the stakeholder groups.

There was a comment that there's a need for that to happen in conjunction with improvements to the entire corridor, similar to an earlier project that we mentioned.

And Cat mentioned that they would like to see a bus lane on this corridor in the future going south.

A couple more here.

So Preston Avenue multimodal improvements.

That was a high slash medium need from our process.

The business stakeholders agreed on that one.

Not a lot of comments on this one.

The 10th Street intersection is confusing.

The Hillsdale South extension, which includes the 250 interchange and multimodal improvements there.

We identified that as a high need.

There was agreement there from the business stakeholders, but no other comments.

The business stakeholders again found that was a high priority, but we didn't hear much from the other groups.

The Rivanna River Bike and Ped Bridge across Pantops and Wooden Mills.

That one is a medium need at the free bridge.

Because this doesn't exist yet, that's the best proxy we could use for a priority there because one of the goals of this project would be to

Alleviate some congestion through improving bike and pet accessibility through there.

It wouldn't obviously be a venue for vehicles, but it would be something that bicyclists and pedestrians could use to hopefully provide an alternative way to get around there.

But didn't get a lot of comments on this one or any comments at all.

There was agreement in general that this was a medium need.

So other feedback that we got, we got one comment card from the open house that I mentioned, mentioning that the city's plans for West Main Street are in the interim phase, but there's no long-term project identified in the long-range plan.

They would like to see vision projects that were more visionary, but support for what's presented.

We have a couple of comments on the project website.

They wanted to see more detail on the planning priorities list, which is also, should be in your packet, the priorities for the future.

I wanted more detail on some of those projects listed there and wanted to see them studied very soon.

There was a comment on the 2015 level of service, which was, it was one factor in the needs identification process.

It was not a major factor because congestion was lower on the list of priorities for our needs identification process.

It was more focused on safety and accessibility, environmental needs, so

We did use level of service but it was only a couple percentage points in the whole data gathering process for prioritization.

And just a comment appreciating the public forum for the long-range transportation plan.

So that's just a summary of what we heard in the past few weeks with the stakeholder meetings and the open house event as well as the project website.

Next steps are to finalize the priority project list.

We'll take the feedback that we heard into account and note that in the plan.

We'll develop implementation strategies, finalize the plan review, and we're looking at adoption in May.

And that's the summary of what we've heard lately.

So when do we have Sean?

That's a quick question.

If Councillor Oschrin and I have to leave, does that destroy your quorum?

I'm sorry.

There's no further action items to that.

So all the action got put up forward or the quorum elected for here.

But we do have a quorum of three.

And it will mainly be the updates that were received.

Sorry we have to beat that up.

But basically, if they need for rearranging things for us,

Thank you.

I think that Supervisor Malick's concern, and I'm sure she's looking at projects in her district, and I'm looking at projects in my district.

You're saying that these stakeholders, all this is, is a recap of the feedback that they get.

That's not going to change the level of priority.

No, we kept on saying over and over again, our prioritization process, his process, congestion is not important, and therefore their process was one of the top that said that none of these things were all about priority things, including the diverging diet and all these other things.

Since when did congestion not count?

Like, you know, 45 minutes.

No, it's like this.

Yeah.

Congestion was, we went through that development of the metrics.

Remember, we went through the development of the metrics and how much to weigh each of them.

And so we determined based on that, that each of the metrics would have a certain percentage.

And I think congestion overall, I don't have it where we look,

But you all approved that.

What I want to emphasize though with the plan is that the important thing is that all of those projects are so in the list of infrastructure priorities.

They're all priority projects.

They're all eligible for funding.

So whether or not they're low, medium, or high, it doesn't really matter.

They're still on that high priority list, and so they're still indicated as a priority for whatever reason by you all.

You all, as a policy board, determine what the priorities are.

This is just feedback to help inform your discussion.

But they're all still on the list for whatever reason, and you can change the list all within your control.

In a long-range plan, they won't be listed in a priority order.

Yeah, I didn't see this removal.

We're not ranking them anyway.

I just remember long-range math meetings of 50 and 100 people.

We actually had a chance to hear other people's questions instead of 45 people.

Well, the public safety, the fact that there was NA on some of the most dangerous intersections here, it's like, well, who the hell is representing public safety in those views?

Yeah, okay.

If I could also add that this feedback represented about 20 people all together, whereas the first phase, we had about 600 people that participated, that's not,

You're not cleaning all of that together.

Yeah.

So, right down on the river, you can imagine the risk feedback.

There would be feedback, but we didn't see it there for this event.

So, I'm doing this all if necessary.

Thank you.

Thank you, Peter.

Other questions or comments?

Thank you.

All right, we'll go to number seven, staff updates.

Letter A, draft unified planning work program presentation.

And Christine, if you have a question?

Included in your packet was a draft of the full UPWP, Unified Planning Work Program.

Following your direction and feedback from the February meeting, we did update the activities in the budget to reflect what it is that you all requested.

We have a very quick set of slides just to make sure that we're putting it back in front of you, but you have the full plan.

Next slide.

So the purpose of the UPWP as stated by federal law is to meet these eight planning factors.

It has to cover those.

Go to the next one.

This is really quite lovely.

You guys know most of you guys have been through these many times, so I don't want to spend a lot of time.

These were additional added priorities on top of the eight that the federal folks require.

Next slide.

Here we go.

As you guys know, we receive funding from two different federal agencies, FHWA,

That's administered through VDOT and FTA, administered through DRPT at an 80-10-10 split, federal, state, local.

And then additionally, VDOT receives state planning funds.

Those funds, the SPR funds, do not come through the TJPDC or the MPO budget, but they are related to activities at the MPO.

You have this in your packet.

I know it's going to be very hard to see up on this screen, but this is the split by funding source by agency.

So you can see the 10 to 10 split across both the FHWA VDOT and the FTA DRPT funding.

As you get down towards the bottom of the table, the yellow is the amount of funding that the MPO has to direct.

The light orange or the salmon color is the SPR funds that VDOT will use.

It's going to start getting smaller and smaller.

That's why it's in your packet.

It's then broken out by the tasks.

So we set up task one, two, and three.

One is administrative.

This I'm not going to go through because you guys have a copy of it but this now breaks it down into even further detail.

So when we talk about getting into the reporting and compliance we use both FTA and FHWA and VDOT and

DRPT funding for that.

And so it's split up by line items, by class, by budget category.

Just giving you guys as much information as you need it.

The long-range planning is where you guys directed us last time, what your priorities were.

This one has funding set aside for the comprehensive safety action plan.

That is to support not only TJPDC staff, but also to support your staffs in developing applications for implementation funding.

The next one is the Travel Demand Management Study.

In the February meeting, you guys priority ranked order the activities that we brought to you in draft form, and this one rose to the top.

We also have funding for continued staffing to do the work related to the Regional Transit Authority.

And then travel demand model, as you know, we have to do that as an inventory update.

Pedestrian navigation of innovative interchanges, and then the on-call consulting services and contingency line items.

Short-range activities are pretty standard across year to year.

These are all the things that we're required to do.

And last one.

Next steps.

You have the full draft in front of you.

It's already gone before MPO Tech, CTAC.

It came to you guys in both the February as a table, March in its full form, and then a final draft will be coming again to MPO Tech and CTAC in their April meetings for a recommendation to you all in your April board meeting, where you would then have to consider for approval

needs to be completed by early May and sent back to the bank.

Can you go to the one slide that had this, it was similar to the funding by source, but it had seats to that one.

Yes.

That one, no.

Is it a table that is written out?

Did you have a question about it?

I was just trying to put my eyes on it.

All right.

All right.

Just a very quick update that we officially submitted the nearly $3.3 million ratings grant application to do preliminary engineering on Red Manor River Bike and Ped Bridge.

We should be notified before the end of June of this year if we are successful with it.

And not that it was all bad for that, but that was just it.

All right, Regional Transit Governance Study has been completed.

Just one shared update with you all.

It did go into the Regional Transit Partnership in their last meeting where they voted to endorse the recommendations in the study and then recommend it to some types of planning district commission.

The commission then reviewed it and looked at the recommendations in their February, March meeting, sorry, in their March meeting where they also voted to endorse the recommendations and approve the study.

Regional Transit Partnerships.

Partnership members then directed staff to go back to work as a committee and bring back before them in the next four months some draft bylaws and next steps for continuing to do this work still.

Great.

Any questions?

All right.

We'll move to item number eight.

Our round table, please.

Mr. Espie.

As I mentioned before, Johnson is undertaking a few different studies right now, one on electrification, one on micro-transit, and one on rural lease assessment.

We had a meeting today on rural lease assessment.

And I was looking at rural, you know, what we need.

Thank you.

Yeah, a couple things.

First, welcome to Sandy, who started at VDOT yesterday, so she is jumping right in.

We are in the thick of SMART was here around six pre-application developments with three apps due on April 1st.

We're expecting about 25 submissions, and that's across all the districts, so nine counties, the city of Charlottesville, and three related towns.

Fontaine Interchange, we are working on the estimate comparison as was discussed at the last meeting looking at what funding is available and what this new concept would cost in greater detail than Mac and Mac.

The concept has been submitted to the Internal Smart CL Project Change Committee, so don't over view that.

Basically, they

Look at the components of the project, determine how it would have scored, and then compare that to the other results from that round to make sure that it's eligible for funding.

We believe that is eligible, so assuming that that change is approved, we have already started discussions with the city about the possibility of delivering the energy input to help decide the city's

streetscape projects, one procurement, and there is a small gap between the two projects that we would also look to address.

So we've got to kind of quantify that and figure out what the plans are too.

And then finally, we are also in the midst of our six-year program development, which is the agency's funding program across all SMART SCALE and all of our other different colors of money.

That's what I spend a lot of my time doing on a day-to-day basis.

And so we, one aspect of that development is a public hearing.

Normally, it's called a whole pepper.

Do you have any other updates today?

Back to the room, welcome Ms. Wall.

Anything in addition there, Sandy?

Thank you.

Forgive me about Ben Chambers.

Chambers.

We will be putting out our draft sidewalk priority list in the next week.

We're putting the finishing touches on our feedback collection map right now.

As soon as that's done, we'll be releasing it to the public.

We'll be going before city council on the 15th of April to give some more details on that and a few other transportation related items.

We're also working on paint projects.

We've engaged our bike head advisory committee to help us identify where we can quick build projects throughout the city.

This is in addition to the quick build work we're already doing for our Safe Routes to School program that will continue throughout the spring.

We're looking at about a little over a hundred projects that will be associated with that Safe Routes to School program.

And then on the programming side, I'd like to get an update on our Community Walks program.

We do this once a month on the second Sunday of every month.

In April, we'll be doing that in Provostville, New York.

So join us there.

And then I'll switch to my CAT app, since we don't have anyone in CAT here.

In the end of February, City Council gave us some direction on what fuels to move forward with in our fuel transition for CAT.

We'll be pursuing a battery electric bus pilot as well as a hydrogen bus pilot over the next five years or so.

That'll help us determine what tools we'll be moving forward with and what mix of tools we'll be moving forward with.

And that information is going to help us continue finishing out our zero emission transition plan, which we're going to need to finish by this fall.

The next phase of that is looking at our facility and figuring out what needs to be expanded in terms of, you know, we're expanding the service itself and what needs to be improved in order to make the schools transition.

So we'll be working through that space planning and sort of facility planning through the summer, incorporating all of that information into our zero emission plan that will come out sometime in the fall.

While we're doing that, we're also in parallel working on the transit strategic plan.

That will be released in draft form at the end of April.

And we'll be doing some public engagement with some of you guys going forward in May, working to adopt that at city council at the end of June.

What about?

Sorry.

Hello, John.

Well, for the next community walk, we'll be starting at Jackson Peak early.

It's just a county school, so we invite all of our county friends to join us.

Thank you.

All right, any additional items from the camp?

Those are, thank you.

And I'll go online.

Just that

Thank you, sir.

No more comments from me.

No, I don't have any comments.

Hey, everyone.

I will be brief.

We don't have a ton of updates that are different from March, but one new thing is DRPT recently wrapped up its Connecting Businesses campaign and is now moving on to our Connecting Commuters campaign.

So the big thing for this is we highly encourage everyone to check out the new Connecting VA app where folks can

Record trips taken outside of single occupancy vehicles.

So if you're carpooling, biking, walking, using public transit, you can record those trips on the Connecting VA app and actually earn rewards for taking those trips over time.

You don't need a reminder for this, but of course, SMART SCALE pre-applications are due April 1st.

And if you have any transit related applications or need any assistance

That deadline is rapidly approaching, so please, please reach out to my colleague Paige Lazar, Paige.Lazar at DRPT.virginia.gov if you need anything there.

And anything related to RAIL, reach out to Randy Selleck, Randy.Selleck at DRPT.virginia.gov.

And then lastly, your MPO staff know this very, very well, but Section 5303 applications are due May 1st in our new grant management software, WebGrants,

So please keep an eye out for that.

Thank you, sir.

All right, that should be a missing one.

Before I call on Mr. Williamson, you know,

All right, that will pay us to our additional matters from the public.

Is there anybody in the room who wishes to give a comment?

Is there anyone online who wishes to give a comment?

Great.

We will close additional matters from the public.

And that will take us to our adjournment.

So thank you, everyone.

Liquidy split for then.

And we will see everyone at the next meeting.