MPO Policy Board Meeting   2/26/2025

Councilor Oschrin.

Here.

Mr. Nelson.

Present.

Ms. Londrey.

Here.

Ms. Huber.

She's not here.

Mr. Wood Hudson.

Mr. Mike Murphy is not here.

Ms. Monteith says she won't be available today.

Mr. Garland, Mr. Minor, Steven, Mr. Kang, Ms. Medley is joining us today from CTAC.

She's the new CTAC chair.

And when we get to the round table, we'll have a chance for staff to develop.

And Christine, oh, hold on.

I'm just getting to your text.

So Christine just mentioned that she apologized that she's not here in person, but is joining us to be able to listen.

But the next item for us after attendance, we do have a staff update.

I am happy

And thrilled to be able to say that we were able to hire our new Transportation Director, which I believe puts the TJPDC at full staff, correct?

Yeah.

Which has not been the case for a while.

So that's fantastic.

Taylor Jenkins has joined us as our Transportation Director.

And this is the first time we've met in person.

We've got a brief intro at the TJPDC meeting.

Yeah, of course.

Thank you.

I'm Taylor Jenkins.

I'm originally from Richmond and I joined TJPDC last month.

I think January 16th was my first day, but I came from Michael Baker International where I spent some time working on

Thank you very much.

And that brings us to item number two, Matters.

Mr. Krebs would like to speak today.

Thank you, Ned.

Policy board.

My name is Peter Krebs.

I'm from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

I'm here to invite everybody in the room and visiting online to attend the fifth annual Active Mobility Summit, which is happening next Thursday and Friday, so not tomorrow, but a week from Thursday and Friday at the Wolf Factory.

The annual mobility alliances meeting is an opportunity for different groups and different kinds of stakeholders to come together

Formwork teams around projects that nobody can accomplish alone.

This year, we're incredibly excited, but our theme is going to be the Three-Notch Trail.

It'll be the unofficial kickoff of the Three-Notch Trail planning process.

The Three-Notch Trail will be a multimodal bike pedestrian pathway from Charlottesville to the Afton Tunnel and beyond.

So it's a project of really national significance

But also this process is going to tackle some pretty everyday type of problems that exist here in the MPO area, like how will people get to work?

It'll be useful in that way as well.

So the summit has a different format than usual.

It's gonna take place, it's free, open to anybody.

There's a Thursday night session on March 6th, which will be sort of,

Everybody learning the basics of the Three Notch Trail, the process.

Jessica is going to give a good intro about the project.

We're going to have Cat Anthony, who's the director of the Virginia Capital Trail.

She's going to do a presentation.

The Virginia Capital Trail is sort of our inspiration.

It connects Richmond to Jamestown and beyond.

It has really changed both the urban fabric of Richmond

But also it's changed the way the rural counties have clouded about walking and biking.

So that'll be a great, pretty interesting conversation.

Plenty of food and fellowship.

Then we're going to reconvene on Friday morning back at the Wolf Factory.

And it's going to be a little bit more intensive, like stakeholder, work session type stuff.

We're going to have a panel that is going to also include Kat Anthony again.

She'll be back.

as well as Brantley Tindall from the Ball Mine Trail which will connect Petersburg to Ashland and Richmond in between.

Elliot Caldwell from the East Coast Greenway will be there and also Dwayne Jones who's doing amazing work connecting Waynesboro to the Upton Tunnel and that's going to really handshake with the Three Notch Trail.

Super exciting.

Thank you.

And is there anyone else here in the room that would like to get public comment?

Is there anyone online who wishes to get public comment?

Then we will close matters from the public and go to item number three,

3A is the review and acceptance of the agenda.

Are there any changes to the agenda today?

All right.

Motion's been made and seconded.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

All right.

And item 3B, the approval of the draft December 18, 2024 meeting minutes.

Are there any changes or edits that need to be made to the minutes?

All right, these motions have been made and seconded.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

Awesome.

And since this is the first meeting of 2025, we have the, we need to do the election of the officers for the NPO board.

And the nominating committee, which was myself, Mr. Nelson, and Ms. Monteith met last Thursday at 1 p.m. and had conversations about how it would go this year.

I also had conversations with Mr. Pinkston, Ms. Oschrin, Ms. Mallek,

Typically, it's not in the bylaws, but typically we have swapped city to county in terms of leadership year in and year out.

This year, and it's not required to do that, but it seems that this year there might be interest to have it continue with the county as the leadership for the chair role this year and then vice chair from the city.

So the nominating committee was prepared to have myself continue as chair

And Ms. Oschrin would be the vice chair nominee.

I want to say thank you for being willing to remain the role as chair.

It's one more thing on top of your to-do list, which is why I didn't feel like being able to right now.

But the city's grateful for your continued leadership.

And the slate is Ned Galloway as Chair, Natalie Oschrin as Vice Chair.

And all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Extensions?

Great.

Happy to do it.

So that will take us to Item 4.

New Business, the first item for a fiscal year 26 unified planning work program update.

Ms. Jenkins, this will be your, you're handling this one?

Yes.

Sarah is going to share her screen.

Before you get started, I really want to thank you for putting the list of acronyms in.

I'm glad you noticed.

Is it large enough?

Okay, let's see how they look.

Go ahead and go to the next slide.

All right.

And so this was also in your agenda packet.

So you all can review the document itself and see the slides.

I know this is a little small, I apologize.

But the background of the UPWP, it really guides the work that MPO staff will be doing for the next fiscal year.

So it identifies all of the transportation planning activities that we would ideally work on next year.

It serves as our budget and our work plan, and it also identifies the regional priorities and deliverables that you all would want to see as well.

Next slide.

Federal law requires that we address specific planning factors in the metropolitan planning process.

And so those are in the UPWP, and I also put them up here in the presentation as well.

And those include factors such as safety, security, maintenance, travel and tourism as well.

The last LRTP update was done in fiscal year 24, and so we recommend bringing the UPWP in line with the vision and the priorities that were identified in that plan.

As part of the long-range transportation plan process, there was a lot of public engagement that was done for that, and so this is a shared vision that we know the community has, as well as MPO staff and everyone who is on the MPO as well.

And so we recommend those blue ones that you see on there, which are equity, quality of life, climate action, and land use.

We recommend including those in next year's UPWP update to also guide the work alongside those federally required planning factors as well.

UPWP is mostly funded from federal sources.

So 80% federal, 10% of it is local funding and 10% is state funding.

The two federal agencies that primarily fund the UPWP are the Federal Highway Administration and FTA.

And so the Federal Highway dollars come through VDOT through PL funds and the FTA funds are administered by DRPT.

I know this is a little hard to see, but this table identifies funding by source.

So it specifically calls out how much we have from each of the funding sources.

And so the ones that are in red, they're in red because we don't have those final numbers yet.

We will get those probably in April.

So those will be reflected in the updated document that you all see for adoption.

This table identifies funding by task.

And so you see the specific buckets, how much we have allocated to each of the different tasks in the UPWP.

And so this year we did increase a bit of the program administration budget, which there's a bullet on the next slide about that.

But historically, I've been told that we have underestimated how much time and commitment and resources it takes specifically to do things like staff committees.

We didn't explicitly call out and pass UPWP's things like laptop replacements, eligible expenses that do fall under admin.

And we wanted to make sure that we could accommodate and capture all of those in the future to avoid any sort of transfers that we might have to do because we under budgeted for that.

Task two is long range transportation planning.

So that's any of the long range plans you would think of.

And you do have a line item budget that we will show with those.

And then task three are any short range activities, including specific technical assistance to localities.

Some of the administrative changes.

So for this UPWP, we removed the line item budgets for the subtasks and the UPWP itself.

And so we did this to align with similar practices of other MPOs and reduce the administrative burden that's on staff anytime we would have to do an amendment to the UPWP if there was a percentage increase over a certain amount.

There will still be a line item budget that's maintained internally for staff to make sure that we are still hitting those ballpark areas where we want to hit for all of the work and you all will see those line item budgets in this presentation as well.

And just a couple naming changes.

We wanted to call those out as well.

We just tweaked some of the language.

So administration became program administration.

Long range transportation planning was the same.

And short range planning became short range transportation planning and local, state, and federal agency assistance.

And part of these changes were also to make it easier for staff.

Like when we are allocating our time to specific projects, it should be very clear.

We should be able to pull this up and you should see here's where this should fall.

Here's where I should build this work, et cetera.

And this will help us do that.

All right, so these are the line item budgets specifically for the items that we hope to do in the next UPWP.

So for Task 1, Program Administration, on one side, on the left side of the screen, that is the PL Fund budget, and then on the right side of the screen, that is the FTA budget.

And so things that fall under administration include reporting, invoicing, staffing committees, and we specifically call out all of those committees and the document itself, public outreach, public participation in Title VI.

That specifically is just to update those documents.

And so if there is public engagement that has to happen as part of a plan, a study, or anything like that, that would go in whichever task that project would actually fall under.

We added this in here just to make sure if we had to update our Title VI plan, if we had to update the public participation plan, that there is a place to capture that under administration.

And then information sharing and professional development.

That is where our staff would attend those monthly and quarterly meetings put on by VDOT, OIP, the CTB, just to make sure our staff stays up to date and we can share that information back with the MPO as well.

Task shoe for long range transportation planning includes the comprehensive safety action plan that the PDC is currently working on.

That has a mid fiscal year 26 completion.

And so we made sure to include that for next year for staff to continue to be able to work on that.

The travel demand model update is also in there.

We are currently updating that right now.

That's a project that will carry over.

The travel demand management study is something that was in the previous one that will also carry over.

The Coordinated Human Services Mobility Plan update is something that is new for this UPWP that the state is currently about to kick off an update for that plan.

And we don't have a full scope of what our involvement would look like, but since we are a grant recipient from DRPT for their mobility management program, we would have some sort of role.

Maybe that's, you know, stakeholder involvement, maybe a survey we might have to fill out, but our staff might be involved with that plan.

And then the next one is long-range transportation plan.

If anything would have to be amended in the LRTP, that would be captured under this task.

And finally, task three, short-range transportation planning is where we include all of that day-to-day work that we would do.

And so SMART SCALE support, technical assistance, participating in STAR studies, project pipeline studies, and other grant planning and support.

TDM work, transit and rail planning, human service planning, bike ped support would also fall under this task.

If we have to update, we have to do the annual performance target updates every single year that work would fall under here.

And then we have a bucket for any special studies, projects, programs, contingency that might come up.

And so we know that if our partners are working on a special study that we might not know about at the time, that could be captured under this, if any of those come up.

So those were the highlights of what's in the fiscal year 26 UPWP.

As far as next steps and the timeline, you all were provided with the initial draft, and we went through it today.

And we would anticipate adoption at the April meeting.

And so you all have a bit of time to go through, review the document, and get us any feedback that you have.

Yeah.

federal funding situation since 80% comes from the feds.

Yeah, that's a really great question.

I guess like how much of that is, I guess, allocated or promised in a way that is spoken for and harder to mess with than

Can I respond?

It is formula-based funding, so it's not discretionary-grant funding, so I think it would be on a lower tier as far as that.

I think the discretionary-grant funding is probably the target right now.

Right, I get that everything is potentially the target.

Yeah, discretionary versus formula.

OK, that's helpful.

Thank you, Sandy.

And then if you can hear me, this is Christine.

We've also gotten communication from USDOT that is clarifying some communications that have been going around that in every transition of leadership, there's going to be a review of all documentation.

They have specifically noted that there is no pause in our funding right now, but there is a comprehensive review of all documentation.

So that's

STPs, TIPs, State Planning Research Work Programs, Unified Planning Work Programs, Long Range Transportation Plans.

So those are all currently under review, but we have been told that the funding at this point is not being considered.

The big grain of salt.

I have a comment.

Right.

I'm having to take that one as well.

I have directed my staff that we should continue with business as usual and not preemptively sanitize any of our documentation until we are directed to do so.

And so since this was a priority of the community through the planning processes that we've gone through, we are recommending continuing to include it.

With that said, if we get something that states that we must make changes or risk losing our federal funding, we will have to make that decision when we get there.

And that could come in the form of amending language and documents.

We really want to know, are these the regional priorities?

And so when you all go through and you look at the specific tasks and what's captured under them, especially task two and task three, almost just confirmation.

I would also add, you know, from you all's perspective, certainly what I have

You know, directed my team to do is what we're doing broadly at the TJPDC.

But since you are as the planning organization, you have decision-making authority.

Does anybody disagree with what Christine was talking about earlier or object?

No, I don't disagree.

I think what you said makes sense.

Very good.

So because we received federal funding, we have to comply with the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The way that we do this is we create an implementation plan.

It's kind of a plan of how we will not discriminate against people of color or foreign origin or who speak a foreign language.

In December of 2022, we updated the Title VI implementation plan and this body approved it.

That was based, the update was based on VDOT's requirements for Title VI.

And it was a pretty extensive update because we also received federal funding through the Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

We also have to go through an audit with them and comply with their specifications of how they want to see the plan updated.

So they had some requirements that were not in the VDOT plan.

And we added those requirements as appendices and it's appendices F through M. It's in the memo and you can see the appendices also in your packet.

And so we need to ask the policy board to re-approve the plan with the amendments that were made to it.

I don't know if you want me to read out the amendment,

Appendices that were added.

It's pretty mild.

And this one is an action item?

Motion has been made and seconded.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Abstentions?

That will make us to number five, Innovation and Technology Transportation Fund.

I appreciate the invitation to come today.

My name is Mike Fontaine.

I'm the Associate Director for Safety Operations and Traffic Engineering at the Virginia Transportation Research Council, which is the VDOT Research Division.

We're located on grounds at UVA, so we are here locally.

Well, we're pulling the PowerPoint up.

So while we're pulling the PowerPoint up, what I'm going to be talking about today is a project that VDOT has going on investigating what's called Smart Intersection Technology.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

No worries.

There we go.

One more, please.

There we go.

There's always a little lag.

Can you go one more, Sarah?

So I probably don't have to tell anyone in this audience that intersections are often a critical point in our network in terms of highway safety, especially for bicyclists and pedestrians.

When we look at the data that we have in Virginia, what we see is over 25% fatalities and over a third of all serious injuries are at intersections, and those numbers are even higher for bicyclists and pedestrians.

So this is an emphasis area in our state strategic highway safety plan to focus on these, particularly these vulnerable road user crashes are

A significant concern because we've seen an upward trend, but especially post-pandemic in crashes with bikes and pedestrians.

Next one, please.

So I'm talking about smart intersections today.

What is a smart intersection?

So what we've seen in the last five to 10 years is there's been tremendous leaps forward in the technology that we use to detect traffic at intersections.

Essentially, there's been large innovations in the use of LIDAR and the use of machine vision as well as radar.

Where rather than just detecting whether something is stopped waiting at the intersection or not, we can actually track trajectories of vehicles as they traverse the intersection.

And so what this does is this new technology kind of opens up a lot of opportunities for us where instead of waiting for a crash to occur, this allows us to look at near misses that are happening in the vicinity of the intersection.

Rather than being a reactive mode where we're waiting for a crash to occur and then trying to figure out how to fix the problem, we can look at are there unsafe behaviors happening at an intersection and try and either change how the signal operates or make other changes to try and address those problems before something bad happens.

There's also opportunities with these technologies to interact with the traffic signal controller to try and improve the operational safety of the intersection.

So if you can foresee a case where

A vehicle is approaching an intersection on a red light at a speed that is obviously way too fast for them to stop at the red light.

We could potentially hold an all-red phase longer so that cars aren't going into the intersection while this person is getting ready to run the red light and get hit.

And then thinking a little bit further out, as we move into a world where our infrastructure and vehicles are more connected in the future, we have opportunities to warn the vehicle itself directly if we detect something happening at the intersection.

If there's a pedestrian,

In the crosswalk, a car looks like it's going to enter the crosswalk.

While that's pedestrians there, we could potentially push a alert in vehicle to that car to alert them of that dangerous situation.

Technology isn't there yet, but it's hopefully on the horizon, but it gives us some of these capabilities.

Next slide, please.

So there's a program that's been established by the General Assembly called the Innovation and Technology Transportation Fund, ITTF.

that basically provides dedicated funds to test these high technology kind of pilot programs.

And it has to be one of these five emphasis areas that I've got on the slide.

And back in 2022, we received a million dollars to perform a pilot test of these smart intersections in order to really see whether this has the potential to help us out from a safety and mobility perspective.

Next slide, please.

So we've conducted this in two phases.

Our first phase, which went from 2023 till September of last year,

We did a technology scan, found four promising vendors.

We deployed them on two intersections up in Fairfax County where these four systems were all deployed on the same two intersections in parallel.

So we could look side by side, how do they perform?

How do they handle being up there, out in the elements for a prolonged period of time?

And are they going to hold up?

And we looked at how well did they work?

Then from that, we're taking the most promising technologies and then we're expanding the deployment to look at other use cases

around the state to see how well this functions in a broader variety of situations.

So we're getting ready to do four deployments down in the VDOT Salem District, as well as four in the Culpeper District, specifically all in Albemarle County.

And so we've been working with the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute to do this work.

VTTI is a major university department for us in a lot of technology projects.

They've got a large staff that does a lot of technology integration work for us.

And so they've been very instrumental in us deploying this program.

So we go to the next slide.

So I do want to talk about what happened in Phase 1 because that gives you context for what we're going to be doing here in Albemarle County.

So we deployed at Route 29 in Nutley and Route 50 in Nutley and Fairfax County.

We looked at one system that used LiDAR, so essentially create a point cloud of everybody traversing through the intersection from the LiDAR.

That cost about $36,000 per intersection to deploy that system.

We tested two machine vision systems where they were camera based and used video image processing to track these trajectories.

And then we looked at one system that used a combination of radar and video in order to do this detection.

And so we initially looked at, well, okay, could it accurately detect traffic and bicyclists and pedestrians and all the users of the intersection?

And then was it able to accurately identify safety critical events?

You know, that's what we wanted to see here.

Could this, the value add for this over our traditional detection systems?

And we had an independent data collection system there that we collected data so we could look against ground truth video and say, okay, did this work the way it was supposed to when we were doing the test?

So next slide, please.

So we went out to all the sites.

We did a lot of work with our local Northern Virginia District folks to try and figure out where to put the equipment on these mast arms.

One of the challenges often is just finding physical place on the poles to put all this additional detection equipment.

You can kind of see the sensor array we ended up with at the end when we had four systems all out there.

This is not what the Albemarle County systems will look like because this is four systems, not one system.

And so they were all deployed there with the vendor to make sure that we were getting the best possible operation.

So next slide, please.

And so they were calibrated.

So the top one kind of shows what it looks like with the LIDAR based system where they were sort of setting up the detection for the point cloud.

The bottom left side, some of them were using fisheye cameras where they basically had that kind of video view and then decomposed it to track vehicles through the intersection.

And then we set up these independent video

All right, so let's look at what these systems actually are doing here.

So if you just tap the button, it should advance the video.

So one of the things that it can do is it will automatically detect when a crash has happened at the intersection.

So this is a case where the vehicle is turning left here.

Someone has run the red light and struck the vehicle.

So you can foresee a case where if we have a system like this, perhaps this helps us with emergency response.

If there's a way to detect

A crash in real time, maybe an emergency response could be alerted, send someone to the scene a little bit faster than relying on a 911 call.

So we do have an opportunity to get things like that.

We also know we have a lot of unreported crashes.

Fender benders happen all the time.

We never know what happens, you know, because a police report is never filed.

And so this gives us some additional data looking at things like that.

Next slide, please.

Another interesting case is it can actually detect wrong-way drivers.

This is a case where there's a median on one approach.

There's a driveway that you'll see on the left side of the screen.

If you hit the button again, Sarah.

This person at 930 at night, not at 2 a.m., decided to go the wrong way down the road because they didn't want to go down to the next light and pull a U-turn to go into the shopping center and went into oncoming traffic.

So, you know,

This happens far more often than we would expect based off of what we've seen at these intersections.

It was rather surprising to see something like this.

Okay, the next one.

This is where I think we start to see some real power here.

So this starts to get into our near-miss detection situation.

So if you wanna hit the button, Sarah.

Oh, oh, go back up one, sorry.

Sorry, can you go back a slide?

Sorry, you're jumping ahead on me here.

Okay, yeah, now just hit the button once and, oh, okay.

Click on the video, baby.

Okay, so this is a case you're going to see a vehicle come out of the right side of the screen.

It's going to take that turn at a high rate of speed, not yield.

You can see how close to a call that was with the vehicle that was coming through.

And that's something that we would never pick up on our crash reports.

This is something that

Luckily nothing happened.

The person behind was able to slow down enough not to strike that person, but it does give us an indication of unsafe behaviors that are happening at the location.

All right, we can go to the next one now.

And then this is one that I am not going to advocate this at all, but you'll see this pedestrian decides to basically play Frogger across the... And watch this red pickup, watch how far the nose of that truck comes down in order to break and avoid hitting that pedestrian.

And so it's worth noting that at this intersection, this is the one leg of the intersection with no marked crosswalk.

And so not to condone what this pedestrian did to cross here in a very dangerous way, but it does kind of show you the pedestrians are taking the shortest path to get to their desired endpoint, whether we've

indicated that that crosswalk is there and safe to cross or not.

But obviously what he did here is not something that is safe.

But this again, something we never know about through crash report data, because thankfully a tragedy did not happen here.

All right, so we go to the next slide.

So one of the things that this allows us to do is we can look at all these near-miss events and we can start to look at a heat map of where are these problems happening at the intersection, as well as what time of day are they happening.

So this gives us some analytical tools where we can say, OK, that turn where we saw the one vehicle take the high rate of speed, it looks like we've got maybe a high rate of curvature there where someone can make that movement very quickly.

Maybe that encourages them to do that.

Maybe there's a design intervention to reduce those near misses if we viewed that.

We can also look at by time of day where we have problems.

And so just to be clear that this technology is a safety and mobility analytical tool.

It is not an enforcement tool.

It's not like we can write tickets off this, right?

So we can get a time of day map.

Maybe this gives us information we can share with our law enforcement partners where they can figure out when to go out and do enforcement based off of this kind of day as well.

Just a quick question about the graph on the right.

Yeah, so in this case,

It's red is bad, green is less bad, I shouldn't say good.

So it's basically the intensity of the number of near misses that we have at this intersection.

On the right, so this is a count of the number of near misses we saw over the course of a year by hour of the day.

So if we were to look at this, we would say at 5 p.m. we had about 900 near miss events.

between 5 and 6 p.m. at this intersection, across the entire intersection.

Colors are just to differentiate by hour of the day.

The colors don't mean anything.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Next one.

All right, so what we want to do is, you know, this is fundamentally a technology evaluation.

We're trying to see whether these systems work.

And so what we discovered was that, you know, we kind of randomly selected two weeks of data throughout the year that we deployed.

We tried to look at a range of light conditions, day versus night, as well as weather conditions, rain, snow, clear, things like that to see how well they performed.

And what we found was the LIDAR system really fell apart when we had inclement weather.

The ability for that scanning lidar to create a good point cloud did not work well when we had a lot of rain in the air.

And you'll notice that I do not name any vendors here.

I don't want to give the impression VDOT is endorsing or not endorsing a particular vendor.

That's intentional.

The radar system actually also performed very badly because it couldn't maintain a consistent lock on a vehicle or a bicycle or pedestrian as it traversed the intersection.

So it massively overcounted the amount of users that we had there.

So the two video-based systems seemed to work the best for us.

We tended to see that the ability to detect vehicles was pretty good.

The ability to detect bicycles and pedestrians wasn't as good as for vehicles, but it still was better than what we have now in terms of counts of bicycles and pedestrians, which is almost nothing, right?

So this gives us some measure of exposure and usage of the intersection that we don't have today.

Next slide, please.

So we also looked at how well was this able to identify these near-miss events.

And so we looked at this from a couple of perspectives.

We said, okay, using their numerical criteria that they use, like how close do I have to physically come to a crash?

Was it detecting things appropriately?

And then we also looked at it more subjectively.

You know, we have cases, you know, I probably had a case like this today walking to the meeting.

I was on the downtown mall.

Walking across one of the vehicle crossings, the vehicle was going very slowly through.

He was past me.

I started walking behind the vehicle as it passed me.

Distance-wise, I was very close to that vehicle, but there was no danger of me being struck.

That might get flagged by an automated system, but it really isn't a safety concern.

And so what we see is that while the systems generally work pretty well from a numerical method of identifying these near misses, not every near miss that's identified has really a safety problem.

So there's still, it's a,

diagnostic tool that an engineer can use to look at the data and try and see, okay, is this really a safety problem?

The one thing I will point out, the thing where it failed the most was wrong way detection.

And the thing that caused it the most problems is if you had a car carrier with a bunch of cars on it, some of the cars were facing backwards or someone towing a vehicle and it was facing backwards, it would count that as a wrong way vehicle.

It didn't, couldn't tell whether it was in tow or whether it was actually driving.

So that was one where we saw some of the deficiencies in the system.

All right, if we go to the next one, please.

All right, so moving on to phase two.

This is where we're taking our most promising systems from the first phase.

We're trying to broaden out the deployment.

And really, we're trying to stress test these systems and put them in more challenging situations to see how well they work, as well as expose them to the elements for a longer period of time to see if they're going to be

having maintenance problems or what the upkeep is going to be like on the systems.

So we're going to be doing four deployments in Montgomery County.

Probably the most interesting of these is we're actually deploying one at Beamer and Southgate right outside Lane Stadium, which will be a very interesting data collection for us to look at behaviors of both bicycles, pedestrians, and road users.

And then we're going to be doing four sites in Albemarle County.

So we've been working with Culpeper District to try and identify locations.

It's a combination of looking at locations where we have pedestrian and bicyclist usage, but we also have space in our controller cabinets to house all this additional equipment.

So what we've settled on is we're looking at Alderman McCormick at UVA.

This is just down the hill from my office and

This will be a very interesting case because any type of mode of transportation you can think of is used at this intersection by the students.

I saw someone on a motorized monowheel the other day, which was a new one for me.

So if we can work there, I think that'll be interesting as well as some of the behaviors the students have at that intersection.

We're looking at hydraulic at Lambs Road right by Albemarle High School.

This will be interesting, I think, partially because the county has installed a speed camera at that location that just gives us potentially some insights into what's happening with behavior there with that.

We're looking at ivy and old ivy.

This is probably the one that's most likely to change.

Right now, the Culpeper District structure and bridge is reviewing the structural design of the mast to make sure it can handle the additional equipment

There's already a lot of equipment out there.

We may or may not be able to do this one, but if we do it, I think it's going to be interesting because of the geometry because caused by that carwash there, as well as the pedestrian traffic we see coming down Old Ivy Road here underneath that narrow railroad bridge.

And then we're looking at Route 29, the Rio Overpass.

And this is interesting just because of how big that intersection is.

It's so expansive.

Can we detect reliably with a piece of equipment when the intersection is that large and that there's so much space for a pedestrian across there?

So we go to the next one.

So basically what we're going to be doing with this evaluation is, again, this is a technology evaluation, not a site evaluation.

So I guess I do want to emphasize that we're looking at, does the technology work?

We're not using this to diagnose safety issues or anything at these intersections.

Now, that being said, the data that's being generated is going to be

shared with Culpeper District.

They're going to be aware of everything that they're seeing.

And so that is going to be happening.

So, you know, we're again going to be looking at detection accuracy, the accuracy of the safety critical events.

One thing that's new is we're going to be looking at what's the ability of these systems to interact with our traffic signal controllers.

So some of these functions that we've talked about before, like, can I hold the all red a little bit longer if it looks like someone's going to run the red light?

Could I

Hold a red phase if I've got a slow moving pedestrian across.

We're going to test that functionality essentially in an offline mode.

So these signals are going to continue to operate using the traditional detection and control that we've got out there.

We're going to run this in parallel to see how it's going to work before we would ever turn anything out for public use.

And then overlaying all this, all the VDOT folks know that cybersecurity kind of overlays everything that we do.

Sean laughs.

And so we've been having a lot of discussions with our operations technology division, because obviously anything that could compromise the integrity of the traffic signal system to operate safely is a primary concern.

We want to make sure that what we've deployed out there is going to pass muster from a cybersecurity perspective.

And so that's going to be a critical part of the evaluation as well.

Next one.

And so in terms of schedule, basically where we're at right now is we're in procurement and we're going to be moving into installation.

We hope to have everything up and installed by June of this year.

Then we'll be collecting data and assessing the system through January 2026, trying to summarize our findings and then assuming the systems work well, right now the systems are kind of purchased and installed by Virginia Tech.

And then there'll be a transition over to VDOT at the end of that process.

And so working with Virginia Tech has been good for us from a procurement perspective because universities have a much easier procurement pathway than state agencies do.

And so that has been a good pathway for us to getting this technology out there.

So with that, I'm happy to take any questions.

Yes.

So you mentioned the cybersecurity of it all.

How long are the videos stored?

So right now, all the videos are stored on the cloud by the vendor.

That's one of the aspects of the cybersecurity assessment that we're looking at.

It's all behind.

You have to have a login in order to get in and access all that.

That's one of the things that we're looking at because VDOT has a policy not to store video because of the FOIA implications of stored video, where if

We had recorded our video.

We would be constantly inundated with FOIA requests from lawyers investigating traffic accidents.

Sean, I'm not sure.

I don't think it's a law.

It's not a law, but we don't record any of that.

OK.

Thank you.

Well, so we have an exception for research purposes.

Now, if we start rolling this into production, then that's where everything starts to become a question of how we do it.

And I think that's the important piece.

This is research.

I think this is a good point where we're testing the video based system in Albemarle County.

In Montgomery County, we're testing some, there's a different radar based system that we found that appears promising that we didn't test in phase one.

The advantage of that is there's no video trail to it.

We're just looking at paths.

And so there's no, there's,

There's no video that someone could do a Freedom of Information Act request on.

So that might, you know, dictate an ultimate decision on what technology platform is used if this proves to be successful and rolled out broadly.

I guess this is probably pushing the limits and I guess applicable to the Executive Order 30 also, isn't it?

This is kind of a, so again, we have research exceptions to that order.

Now, I think one of the challenges we've got is that the vendors that we see like to throw the AI label on everything, whether it's AI or not, because it's sort of the sexy buzzword of the day.

And so, machine learning, image analytics, stuff that we've literally been doing for 25 years has been rebranded in a way that is

So I appreciate that you said the parameters for this evaluation is for technology, not to evaluate the siting of the intersections.

What does site evaluation come into play?

Well, I think first we have to establish the validity of this data is kind of where we're at.

Do we trust the information that's coming out of these systems sufficiently

to use it for deciding to program improvements and make decisions.

So I think that's the first thing that we have to establish.

Now, that being said, we've been working very closely with the traffic operations folks in Culpeper District on this, and they've been very intimately involved in all this, and they have access to all the dashboards and everything as things go up.

So I'm expecting that if they see things that are concerning as this project progresses, they're going to move to immediately address them.

Sean's nodding his head.

I know there's a lot of good folks there, and I know they're going to do their due diligence as they see this come forward.

Now, that being said, like I said with the wrong way, detection.

Okay, yeah, it looks like this is working pretty good.

Well, you dig below the surface a little bit.

It's like, well, maybe we can't trust these initial numbers that it gave us.

We've got to do

It still requires an engineer to kind of look at the data and assess it.

And is this really telling us what the system thinks it's telling us?

So I'm not sure I can really give you a firm answer on when we would move to that.

A lot of it is we've got to make sure we trust the data before we start spending money to address concerns that are identified by the data until we've established that trust.

I guess a major concern that I see as citizens complain to me about is the general lawlessness

So what you're going to learn about these behaviors from a distance will be helpful, because at least from an educational point of view, somebody ought to be able to figure out how to help the public understand that they're not the only people out there.

The AAA actually does surveys annually.

I think they still do them annually, where they ask people basically, break your driving performance relative to your peers.

And everybody, it's something like 80% of people think they're a part of average driver.

And, you know, so that's mathematically not possible, right, that 80% is above average.

And what they find is basically the only group that says that they drive about as good as their peers is when you start to get like in 65 up, people start having a little bit more realistic assessment of their driving compared to their peers, but there's still people that they grossly

overestimate how good of a driver they are.

It's always everybody else has the problem, not me, you know, kind of thing.

So, you know, that's the one thing, you know, we certainly have constraints on what we can do with the video and using that as a system, but video is a powerful tool, you know, and one thing I'll say is that, you know, so we're doing this on the VDOT system and, you know, when we did our Fairfax deployment, City of Falls Church,

Actually saw some of this data and they got very excited about it.

And so they're actually deploying a video based system on their city system using city funds to do that.

And so they've got a different policy with regard to video retention than the state has.

And so that gives them different opportunities.

So there's different tools available and a lot of it depends on, you know, city might be able to do something different than what we can do in VDOT.

The data will be shared with the Culpeper and Fisker.

Yes, two of those sites have corridor studies or pipeline studies.

I have kind of a, it might be

A broader question.

It might be for Sean, it might be for both of you together, but this is a new technology.

So moving forward when we're designing intersections, it's something that we could include in the initial design for the intersection.

And so I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on how this could affect intersection design and

What does this look like to compare it?

Like right now we're comparing it to existing conditions, not a new blank thing that we're starting with.

So we have like a roundabout first policy.

Is this going to threaten that?

Because now there's technology that could overcome the safety that you get.

Like, what do you, how do you, this is totally predictive of it.

I'll take a stab at that.

I think it will help inform us of patterns to help us mitigate with our design.

So I don't necessarily think it's going to make us, we're not going to use this data set around us not good here.

I mean, I think we're going to learn what we've learned from these areas and specifically in areas like Old Abbey.

If we implement something out there now to collect information, we would use that information to help us design the best intersection

based on the habits that we saw from the data that was collected.

That makes sense.

I mean, I guess I would agree with what Sean said.

I guess the one thing I'd maybe add on to that is right now, like if we're talking about a blank slate, brand new design where we don't have the advantage of going out and collecting data on current behaviors and trying to figure out how to mitigate that.

Right now, the science of safety has evolved tremendously in the last 15 years, where it's become much more mathematically and statistically rigorous.

And so we know a lot now about how different design features impact crash likelihood.

But still, we're fundamentally, you know, handcuffed by using crash data.

You know, it relies on a crash happening

It relies on someone calling the police to get a crash report of the system that we can document.

And that crash has to exceed the dollar threshold for it to be a reportable crash.

And so when we look at the crashes that we know about versus what State Farm or an insurance company knows about, they're vastly different sometimes.

And so I think this will give us a much more complete view where if you have enough of this data in enough places,

Maybe you can start to look at these behavioral trends and tie it to geometric features.

But we're a long, long, long, long way from that happening.

We would have to have really systematic use of something like this to have enough data out there where we could start to draw those relationships.

But I think Sean's right on.

I mean, for right now, I think it's

It's a refinement tool more than a replacement.

We still know roundabouts have tremendous safety benefits.

And I think a signalized intersection is almost always going to...

In many situations, a roundabout works well.

Okay, thank you.

The video of the car speeding through the turn lane was similar to what I think I took away from an analysis of

This is fascinating.

I hope that you learn lots of good things.

Or walk out in the traffic.

Very good.

Any other questions or comments?

Thank you very much, sir.

Thank you.

That will take us to item six, so we have three different updates.

No, Goran is not here today.

I'll do it for him.

I'm going to give the update for Gorjan.

He's been able to join us today on our Move Safely Blue Ridge, which is the safe streets and roads for all regions safety plan to reduce roadway safety and serious injuries for all road users.

The first item is the City of Charlottesville safety demonstration project and yesterday the Charlottesville community members were invited to review and provide ideas or thoughts on three proposed roadway design

to improve safety around the intersection of East High Street, Meade Avenue and Stewart Street.

This implementation project demonstration is important because it allows the city and the project team to see which of the three proposed option Broadway design that we are suggested would have the most safety impacts for the residents that live and work

and play in this community.

So three different scenarios were presented yesterday at the public meeting at the Burley Moran Elementary School in Charlottesville.

It was amazing for me to see and to hear how residents were thanking the team for having them take part in such an important effort on safety.

We had a great turnout and very meaningful discussions.

And I would welcome anyone who was present yesterday in this very room who would like to say something on that or share their thoughts on what happened yesterday to do so with the board.

It's okay if there is not many people here were there yesterday.

The second item on the moves, I don't know.

Just if you want, I don't know.

Yeah, there was good turnout.

I guess.

Yeah, the room was full.

There was a lot of chatter.

I think it helps for people to have someone to talk to because I live in this neighborhood.

My house is actually in the photos on the survey.

And so I had some neighbors who texted me a couple of weeks ago saying, how do I even read this survey?

And I was like, well, come to the event and someone will walk you through it.

It's good to have, there was like a person at each board to say, okay, this is what this means.

This is how this works.

The three different options had, I mean, you know, we all know this intersection situation and two of them added a bike lane to the Stuart to East High section of Meade, but the road itself became one way in different directions.

And then the third kept it two way.

But what all of them did and what I really appreciated was at the top of Meade where it meets East High had a big bump out to decrease the space that a pedestrian would need to walk to cross there and also prevent kind of what we were talking about earlier with just people taking a turn because it's easy to make that turn.

This whole road is basically a slip lane and so it kind of makes you actually have to stop and assess the situation before moving forward.

I'll also note that this is a temporary improvement that we're looking to make.

This is a safety problem that we've all known has been an issue, but we've all kind of been curious how to solve it.

And we want to test some different options about what we can do before we have to go in a more expensive concrete kind of project.

So we'll be putting this on the ground.

Whichever version of it gets approved by council later in April or early May, we'll be putting it down on the ground over the summer for 60 to 90 days.

Very nice.

If there is no one else, I'm going to add.

The second item on the MOOC safety outreach is the draft safety action plan development.

The team has been meeting with each locality in the region in one-on-one meetings to review and discuss existing condition reports and discussions covered safety criteria, potential solutions, implementation, demographics to ensure that

The plan that's being developed align with each locality's needs.

So we've met so far with four out of our six jurisdictions, and the next two are scheduled for later this week and next week, the first week of March.

The third item on this list is the roadway safety roundtables with farmers and ranchers in the area.

Based on feedback that we received from the Safe Streets and Roads for All January stakeholder meeting, we've invited a select group of farmers and ranchers in this area to discuss roadway safety concerns and solutions.

And as of tomorrow,

The team is hosting a meeting in person with the Virginia Farmers Bureau.

This meeting will take place from 12.30 to 1.30 p.m.

Doors will open at 11.30 at the Virginia Forestry Department here in Charlottesville.

So this is an invite-only meeting, so let us know if you'd like to attend or if you know anyone who might be interested in attending.

The purpose of this meeting is simply to share experiences, identify key safety concerns, as well as exploring potential solutions to improve roadway safety for farmers and ranchers in this area.

And finally, the next policy meeting will be next April on the 23rd at 4 p.m. in this very room.

Great.

Any other questions, comments?

Yes.

Yeah, so CARTA met last week, and they had their first board meeting.

This is something that the community has been working on for a very long time, so it was a really nice event to happen.

They reviewed the draft bylaws and decided on,

officers.

Diana is going to be the chair and Brian Pinkston is going to be the vice chair.

They decided on the meeting times, which they're going to meet.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Natalie is going to be the vice chair.

Sorry.

I was hoping someone would correct me if I was wrong.

So thank you.

Yeah.

So they're going to meet every other month.

And we're going to move the RTP to meeting every other month as well.

So they're going to meet the first Thursday of the month.

And their first meeting will be 4th.

Thank you.

Sorry, I should be more prepared.

So yeah, their meeting is going to be at 5 to 6.30 and the RTP meetings are 4 to 6.

So the RTP is meeting this Thursday and CARTA will meet next month in March on that fourth Thursday at 5 p.m.

I think that's everything that they kind of did in that meeting.

The RTP meeting is going to have somebody, a representative from the Virginia Transit Association come and talk with us a little bit about the state politics and kind of looking at how we can approach the legislature on getting additional funding for transit.

Is that why that's on here?

I don't remember this.

One, two, three.

So it'd be on the 4th.

So I guess that's calling out that that's the one of the next NPO policies we're meeting with.

And it will be in person.

And then we'll go to item number seven, VDOT updates on projects.

Yes, and just while we're getting the presentation pulled up,

Let you all know up front, Chuck was planning to be here tonight to get the presentation.

He wasn't able to make it for the family reasons.

So for the sake of continuity, I'm largely using the same slides.

I added two extra ones that won't be in your packet.

So I tried to call those out.

So you can still follow along and it'll be clear which ones skipped.

You can from there.

So we wanted to come back to you.

The CTV met in January to give us the first glimpse on the staff recommended scenario for projects recommended for funding on SMART SCALE.

So what I'm going to do today is just review what was in the staff recommended scenario.

I'm going to start by giving a little bit of background on what the cost allocations were for this round because they're different than what they were previous rounds and what that means moving forward.

And then we'll talk about the projects in the Culpeper district and how they performed.

And of course, for my VDOT friends here in the room, please feel free to jump in if you have additional items you'd like to touch on as we go through this.

All right, so to set the stage, I think it's important to understand how funding gets allocated among the different buckets to fund projects through VDOT's budgeting process.

The first thing based on the state code that has to be funded is maintenance.

And that also includes things like responses to disaster recovery, so things like Hurricane Helene, as well as snow removal, which we all have appreciated with the last month, I'm sure.

So what has happened in years past is that we have continued to see an increase in the amount of funding that is needed to go towards maintenance funding.

And it's only once all of the maintenance obligations are fully accounted for that you move down the budgeting process and construction funding is based on what is left over after the maintenance funding is distributed.

So what we saw, first of all, in the budget that is being prepared, the six-year budget that is being prepared for fiscal years 26 through 31 is that compared to the previous six-year estimated allocation,

We're seeing a shift from construction back to maintenance of $1.6 billion compared to what it was previously.

So that directly impacts the amount of funding that is available to distribute among the five construction projects directly.

More money goes to maintenance, less money is available for construction.

SMART SCALE, just to make sure I'm being clear, is a construction program.

And the high-priority program and the district grant program are two different construction programs

that use SmartScale basically to allocate funding among them.

The second factor that I want to spend just a minute to review is that we had additional funding that was available around four and five because of the implementation of a wholesale fuel tax that was put into place in 2020.

So what happens, the way that funding is identified to be allocated among SmartScale projects is that there is a

Estimate of how much revenue is going to be generated in years five and six of VDOT's six-year improvement program.

When there was a new funding source that went into effect in 2020, what happened is that this additional revenue started becoming available immediately, and it hadn't been programmed in the six years prior.

So there was this huge infusion of funding that hadn't been allocated yet,

And so in order to get back on that six-year cycle, all of that funding that was coming into the revenue stream immediately had to be allocated to projects.

So this new funding was phased in over Round 4 and 5.

So what you'll see is that in Round 4, there was $393 million from this new revenue that was generated.

In Round 5, there was $666 million of this new revenue that was generated.

Now in Round 6, we've caught up.

and there's $243 million.

So this is funding that is generated through the wholesale fuels tax.

Some funding that is generated stays within the region because the Culpeper district doesn't have a special fund like a corridor fund or a transportation authority that was in place when this new tax was implemented.

All that funding goes to the district grant program.

So the good news is it does create additional revenue that we can use to program for smart scale projects.

But compared to what we saw in rounds four and five, we're caught up now.

I'll mention, Sandy, Culpepper District,

that wholesale fuels tax has really benefited us.

Because of the length of Route 29, we were one of the largest, it was one of our largest revenue sources compared to the other districts.

So part of that is not having a regional authority or a special place that that has to go, but we benefited greatly.

There was a reduction in the income from just whatever the substitution for the books they were supposed to pay as opposed to everybody paying at least some amount.

Yeah, we can see exactly what Stacy is referring to in this table right here.

So this shows how much funding was allocated.

So this isn't necessarily how much was available within the District 2 program, but how much was actually applied to go towards projects that were funded in each of the different rounds.

Of course, with Round 6 being that it's not approved for funding yet, this is recommended at this point.

So Rounds 1 and 2 were kind of phasing and SMART scales, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time looking at those.

Round three gives us a good indication, though, of how much funding was available before the implementation of this wholesale fuels tax once SmartScale moved to a biennial application cycle.

And then round six gives us a good indication of how much funding is likely to be available moving forward.

So it does more than double the amount of funding that was available in round three with those changes.

But you also see in rounds four and five, there are just these huge spikes of funding, which contributed to having a lot of projects that were funded in the Culpeper district.

The other thing I just want to make sure that I clarify for you all is that I included how much funding we were able to receive into the Culpeper District through the high priority program in each round.

But we are not guaranteed to get any projects funded through the high priority program.

These are competitive statewide, so it speaks to the success that our district has had in being able to develop projects that have been competitive, and we've been able to pull in these statewide resources, but we can't count on them necessarily from one round to the next.

This table shows sort of the overall picture of what the SMART SCALE funding allocations look like.

So a couple of things that I want to note.

68 million dollars potentially available to allocate and then in the column next up there's a chart of probably a dozen or so projects.

Sean, can you give us an indication?

You can hear us.

We just went offline.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Good job.

Thank you.

All right.

So we're coming to $6.6 million.

Anything that isn't allocated, but it remains in the pot, stays with the district grant program.

I want to point out two additional things.

One is that the total amount available through the high priority program that's around was 300, just under $385 million.

And then a total of either 53 or 54.

I just came from another meeting where they kept saying 54.

So it's one of those two numbers.

Projects statewide were recommended for funding, but this was what was presented at the CTB meeting in January.

Yeah.

So we had,

In our district, there was $68 million available.

$6.6 million went to finished previous projects, but only $57 million ended up being allocated, so still remaining we had $4.3 million.

Correct.

It could have funded another project.

So 53 or 54 projects funded statewide.

So this is the lower amount that we have seen or a lower number of projects than we have seen in previous rounds.

And that's probably a combination of projects are more expensive, but because there were bigger projects and also just because projects have gotten more expensive and also the reduction in funding from rounds four and five.

All contributed to that.

And then at the bottom, you will see what was funded in the Culpeper District.

So we have four projects that have been recommended for funding at this point, three of those through the district grant program.

We're all in the northern part of the district.

Was that choice based upon dollars and the cheaper one, which is the highest traffic one?

Or something like that?

Yeah, I mean, remember, SMART SCALE is a comparison between the benefits that it scores based on the SMART SCALE criteria and the cost.

So the Barracks Road projects and the 64 projects did see really good benefit scores, but they were also expensive projects.

So that is something that we want to consider moving forward.

And I'll talk a little bit about some strategies that maybe we can consider for future rounds.

But that basically was what I wanted to cover on that slide.

So just a couple of initial scoring observations based on taking an initial look at the information.

We have 4.4 projects recommended in the Culpeper district compared to 53 of 270 projects that were recommended statewide.

The changes to the Land use scoring methodology did contribute to lower scores overall for projects.

They still provided scoring benefits.

I just want to iterate that this was intentional because what

What they saw statewide previously is that land use was a single factor that had a disproportionate impact on determining which projects were going to be successful.

The changes in the economic development scoring methodology resulted in slightly lower scores in urbanized areas.

The changes to how high priority funding steps were funded, that did not impact our area.

I think it's good for this group to understand too.

So four out of 24 projects are recommended to be funded here in Colorado District.

We spent a little over a million dollars developing with the localities, MPO,

Over a million dollars in developing applications, 24 applications, and only four were funded.

So we see how much money is going to be available for sponsor deal.

So as a region, we really need to come together to determine

What are the projects we want to invest in to make sure that, one, you've got a good application, and then maybe some of the strategies Sandy's going to talk about is you're going to have to buy down the cost of a project in order for them to be successful to be funded.

Based on where we're at right now and the big-ticket projects that are looming out there that it seems like everybody has coalesced around that something needs to happen, like at Fifth Street, you're not

Before we get to that, I just want to show you overall that this just shows a chart of the median score for the Culpeper district compared to the statewide.

So overall, the Culpeper District is performing better than the statewide averages, and we can look at it a little bit more on this page.

The median and average scores for the Culpeper District exceeded the statewide mediums and average scores.

We had almost 30% of our projects scored in the top 25%, and all of our projects were in the top 65%.

So overall, as a district, we performed really well.

But I do want to point out,

that if you look at the score specifically for the MPO, those are a little bit lower.

So a couple of things that I think are helpful to keep in mind is that the highest cost project that was recommended for funding through the high priority program was just under $46 million.

I think for this project, it was the total cost.

They asked for the full amount, but I'll go back to confirm that.

And if I recall correctly, that average cost of projects that were funded in the high priority program was closer to about $30 or $32 million.

So $46 was high, the average was around $30 or $32.

I just came back from a meeting with the SMART SCALE team across the state, and one thing that they really emphasize is even if you're talking about leveraging funding, the most important aspect is how much money you are actually asking for through the project.

So even if you are submitting a $79 million project application, you have to buy down the cost enough that you're really only asking for something like $30 or $35 million.

The amount that you're asking for is going to have a bigger impact than the additional benefits you'll get from a bigger project.

And I don't want this to be discouraging.

I think this is more information.

Can I ask you another question?

Oh, I'm sorry.

No, go ahead.

Okay.

Is SMART SCALE still a relative score?

Though it also depends on whatever else is in the mix like that year too.

So the process of evaluating the changes is done by the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment staff.

As in to change it from what it is?

yeah like ask for it to be changed in for x reasons well you know that would be an administration if the administration wanted to review smart scale which i believe that the changes that happened just now was because the legislator asked us to review it and they wanted changes made and that's that's what happened so i mean they they're constantly reviewing the process but i would imagine that

During the next administration, because this is last year, I would imagine that there will be a new administration.

But there are things that are specifically in the code that's codified through the Code of Virginia for SMART SCALE.

The General Assembly will have to change in order for the factors.

So is our funding formula.

So DGP and HPP are percentages of an overall formula that also includes safety and some other things, state of good repair, and that's in the code as well.

And is the scoring?

The methodology, but the General Assembly, the code requires what has to be considered.

Okay.

And they go through the process.

Anytime there are changes of that being presented at the CTV, there's the opportunity for localities, MPOs, PDCs,

So talking about what it looks like to get the projects funded.

Right now, there is a staff-recommended funding scenario.

This is based on the project scores.

In the spring, there will be public hearings on the six-year improvement program.

This also includes what is going to potentially be funded through SMART SCALE.

At the May Commonwealth Transportation Board, they will present what is considered a consensus funding scenario, meaning the CTB could make revisions for what was recommended based on the staff scenario.

And then in June,

The six year improvement program for the following six year program will be adopted, which will include funding for the SMART SCALE project.

So talking about what is going to happen for round seven, and this is where maybe I can be a little bit more optimistic because we have better information now and we do have some opportunities to go back and review some of the projects that were submitted like the I-64 DDI.

to do some value engineering and try to right size the scale of that project.

We have five studies that are currently slated for the MPO area.

We've talked about these previously.

The ones that are in the blue shades are the star studies.

So that's the US 29 corridor between Hydraulic and Woodbrook and the 29 interchange at Emmett Street.

And then we have one in the city at the Ridge, McIntire, West Main intersection.

And then the project pipeline studies will kick off once the Commonwealth Transportation Board authorizes funding for those in March.

And so one of the things we're doing is we're going to go back and do some value engineering at the DDI on 5th Street and develop a concept that will be scaled better to fit with the information we have now about what is going to be viable in smart scale.

And then we will also be looking at US-29 at the I-64-118 interchange.

We'll go back, please.

We don't really have significant updates on these other than we're currently getting ready.

If there's information, you can easily put your hands on about the 29, the TEO, the light blue thing.

I'm drawing a total blank on what that's all about.

Yes, it's a pipeline.

Yeah, we just had a 29 solution work and got all the same sidewalks stuck on.

Yeah, this is style.

So there's that, we removed the loop ramp.

to make that, do you remember with Fontaine, we're working on removing the left turn.

I thought that was north of the city, and now I see it's Fontaine.

Okay.

The stars, the stars, 29.

The M-X-T, the M-X-T, did it change?

I draw like the Woodbrooke.

Is that already done?

Is it underway?

No, we're about to begin it.

Is that requested by the localities or where did that come from?

Well, there are several high safety needs.

It's one of the highest safety needs along that corridor.

We have several PSI locations, potential for safety improvement locations along that corridor.

So we're not going to revisit any of the improvements that have already been recommended and funded.

We're really looking at

The corridor to look at other operations and other opportunities to improve safety.

Yes, I have a question.

I don't think the barracks road pipeline corridor improvements, like that scored the highest even though it was the most expensive.

There was an alternative improvement that was identified that we could discuss if there was interest in pursuing that.

No, it was basically, instead of doing the two roundabouts, it was adding a second right turn onto...

The bypassed out.

The bypassed out, yeah.

That's awesome.

I'm sorry to interrupt.

All right.

So nice.

I believe that's correct.

Any other questions or comments?

We're working through identifying our new transportation improvements, so there's spot improvements in places we want to do pattern calling testing.

We've been working on those two past couple of months and are still trying to narrow down exactly which spots we want to tackle, but we're getting closer to that.

The other big fun update that we have is our bike voucher program.

We did our lottery for that on February 5th, and I've been handing out $1,000 vouchers to 25 lucky people.

There's still not many people claiming their vouchers yet, but of the 25 that have shown up, it has really changed the vibe in this

The programming staff are really looking forward to the mobility summit next week and have shared some of our next steps for the K-9 field service back and after planning process.

I do.

Hold on.

Let me, yeah.

Just want to report, some of you are familiar with it because maybe you participated in it, but we had a board retreat, just news from our organization, to help identify priorities for the next 12 months or a year for Mike Murphy, who you know is our CEO.

Those include

software upgrades, demonstrating microtransit in green in ADA, working closely with CAT on ADA agreements, and then, oh, I can't remember, there's like five or six.

I think I got the most ones, but there's ones like, you know, internal ones, like set up performance evaluation at Jaunt, which hasn't been around for a long time.

So yeah, just some internal good direction from our board on priorities ahead for us to work on.

We've applied to some of those, DRPT, there was an application period for grants that was due February 1st, and we put in for demonstration, we put in for a bunch of things, but we put in for a demonstration pilot for micro transit, as well as for software

And so it brings us into the current decade.

We're a couple that gave behind on that.

So that's all I got.

Thank you.

Thank you, Casey.

VDOT, any other rotation?

A couple of things.

We are, this is all really locality oriented, the revenue sharing and transportation alternatives pre-application cycle opens on April 1st.

And to prepare for that, applicants can participate in two upcoming webinars.

There's one on March 5th, next Wednesday, on revenue sharing, and on the 19th of March for the TA program.

There is also an opportunity, we look forward to welcoming our locality partners at Locality Day on April 24th.

This is an in-person event.

It's at Silver Fox Ladner Farm in Nelson County.

We have done a locality day a few times in Culpeper District, and this one is actually confined to Orangeburg and Stanton District.

So there will be VDOT staff from all the three districts as well as from the localities in those districts.

They're good information sharing, I think, in the presentations and some networking opportunities, opportunities to learn from other localities on what they're doing, what's working, and

What they have up their sleeve.

And then finally, Sandy mentioned our spring public hearing for the six-year program.

That is going to be on May 7th.

And we'll be back in the spring last year.

Kevin?

Hello.

You guys, you all have seen the work that's going on on Point 9.

They're hydraulic with the pedestrian bridge.

So that project is hoping to be sleet in October of this year.

They should start bean direction sometime in April when things are coming along.

And we did have a request from Sam Sanders from the city to look at putting test insignia as part of the county, the university, and the city on the bridge on the fence.

So potentially we'd have the county, steel, university, and the city on the fence as you're pointing to the side.

So we're trying to work through that.

I guess it's kind of a gesture of you coming into that region all together.

So I thought that was a good thing.

So we're working with our design ability to try to make sure that can happen.

Other update is Fontaine and the District Avenue design build bundle.

That'll be the next one.

So we're hoping to get a public hearing for that sometime in May.

The request for proposals will go out in June.

Hopefully we'll have an award by the CTB in December of this year and start work next year with the project being completed sometime in 2029.

Any questions for VDOT?

Awesome.

What you said that reminds me of intersection.

Online or in person?

Then our next meeting as it was stated earlier, April

23rd, 2024.

And with that, good meeting, everyone.