MPO Policy Board Meeting   12/17/2025

Diane, are you on?

I see a phone number that I don't recognize.

All right, well, we'll go ahead and get started.

I will call to order the December 17th, 4 p.m. Charlottesville Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization Policy Board meeting.

This is an all virtual meeting, and we will need to have the electronic meeting notice read, please.

This meeting of the Charlottesville Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization CA-MPO Policy Board is being held pursuant to the Code of Virginia subsection C of section 2.2-3708.3 which allows a public body to hold all virtual public meetings

The meeting is being held via electronic video and audio means through Zoom online meetings and is accessible to the public.

The method for holding this meeting shall not change unless a new meeting notice is provided.

Should the electronic transmission fail, you may reach out to the TJPDC at tjenkins at tjpdc.org.

Notice has been provided to the public through notice

At the TJPDC offices to the media website posting an agenda, the meeting is also held pursuant to the remote electronic participation and all virtual meeting policy is adopted by the policy board on August 27, 2025.

The meeting minutes will reflect that the meeting was held by electronic communication means and the type of electronic communication

Thank you, Sarah.

And now we can go to the roll call, please.

Supervisor Malek.

Here.

Mr. Nelson?

I saw him.

On just a second, Sarah.

Sean, if you were speaking, we could not hear you.

Just FYI.

All right, go ahead, Sarah.

There it is.

Thank you.

I'm here.

Great.

Ms. Londrey?

I'm just admitting her right now.

All right, very good.

I'm sorry, it must have been a long month.

Thank you.

That's correct.

Thank you.

Ms. Jacobs?

Mr. Hudson, Ms. Monteith.

Here.

Ms. Medley.

Great.

Thank you, Sarah.

All right, the move to the next item on the agenda, matters from the public.

Matters are welcome to provide comments on any transportation related topic, including the items listed on this agenda.

Do we have anyone who is online who wishes to give public comment today?

Please say so.

All right, hearing none and seeing no hands raised, we will close matters from the public.

On our consent agenda, the first item, 3A, is the review and acceptance of the agenda.

Are there any changes to the agenda, any adjustments?

All right, if someone would please make a motion to approve and accept the agenda.

Thank you.

All right.

The motion was made by Mr. Pinkston, seconded by Ms. Oschrin.

If everyone who votes, please unmute your mic.

Thank you.

The two other items on the consent agenda, we have the approval of the draft October 22nd, 2025 meeting minutes.

All right.

Motion was made by Ms. Malek, seconded by Mr. Pinkston.

Aye.

Minutes have been approved.

And then item C,

One of more of exciting things, even though it's a dissolution, but we've got, did I say that right?

That didn't sound right.

The Regional Transit Partnership is being dissolved to make way for CARTA, which is the Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority.

Did I get those letters right?

So that all happened, but we do have to take official action as the MPO board.

So if there is a motion to approve that dissolution,

All right, the motion was made by Ms. Malek, seconded by Ms. Oschrin.

All in favor, please say aye.

Very good.

All of those are approved.

So that will take us to item number four, which is new business.

And the first topic is statewide transportation funding.

I believe Stacy is leading the way on this presentation.

At the outset, I want to thank Sean, Stacy, Sandy,

All for being responsive to this request and the preparation that was needed to make this request today.

I do know we'll have some extra ears on listening and we'll probably be going back and playing the recording again.

So thank you very much.

All right.

Can everyone hear me okay?

I am going to share my screen.

You are set.

All right.

So I'm going to spend the next few minutes trying my best to go through what's a pretty convoluted or dense topic, which is transportation funding in Virginia.

We're going to cover this kind of in three sections.

The first will just be an overview of process.

That'll be pretty short and then I'll dive into revenue sources for transportation and then on into funding allocations and how those are distributed through the different funding programs.

There were two handouts that were part of the meeting packet.

One is a flow chart of revenues and the other is the flow chart of allocations and I'm going to talk through those.

I've got kind of snippets from that but you may want to use those as a reference as we go through this.

So I want you to think of this like Schoolhouse Rock.

I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill, right?

That process.

So this is a primer just to go through and educate in this area.

So first, how projects are funded.

Overall process is very much like the budget development process at a locality.

It's annual and cyclical.

We begin each fall with revenue forecasts and then cycle into six-year financial plan development.

That happens in the winter and the spring.

And that's the overall plan for essentially what revenue we've received and how it will be distributed.

At that same time, the General Assembly is working on development of the state's budget.

The six-year financial plan for transportation is focused on the special dedicated revenues that come into transportation, but it is influenced by the budget bill, the state's budget.

in areas like pay raises for employees, health care rates, sometimes dedicated funding that comes through the general fund for specific transportation initiatives or projects, and then ultimately the state budget, the act of passing that budget is the appropriations mechanism for transportation funding as well.

As that financial plan takes shape, then the

6 year improvement program is developed and that is VDOT's book of work that gives us the project level allocation.

So how projects that are applied for or come in through various forms of intake

receive those allocations and what that looks like over a six-year period.

And then underlying all of that, this is really the big theme, is legislation.

So it happens at the federal level, but really more significantly even at the state level, we have laws that tell us what revenue is collected, what the rates of collection are, how that revenue is to be distributed, what those programs

That it's put on what those are intended to be used for and sometimes some limits even on dollar amounts or maybe it's a floor.

It's a certain amount or above has to be used for certain priorities.

So a little bit more on revenue forecasting.

So revenue comes both from the federal government and also from the state level.

Federal revenues are estimated by VDOT staff.

We use what are called apportionment tables, which is essentially a computation table

that looks at overall federal revenue and historical revenue and gives us a sense of what Virginia will receive of that overall pot.

State revenue is that those estimates are given to us by the Department of Taxation.

So it's taxes and fees that are collected.

We receive those each November.

And then all of that is put together into a presentation that's shown at the CTB each January.

So coming up next month, I think it's the first week of January, there'll be a presentation that gives that picture.

And those are estimates at that point for the next year and the five following fiscal years.

And from that, then a six-year financial plan can be developed.

The SYFP is not just VDOT's highway funding.

It also includes the funding at the state level for the other modes, transit, rail,

ports, aviation, space authority, DMV is included, and that it's an overall financial plan that comes to the CTB, it's developed by staff, comes to the CTB first in April, then the final draft presented in June and approved and then it takes effect July 1st with the fiscal year.

The funding philosophy for the state's six-year financial plan is maintenance first.

It's called primacy of maintenance.

It's dictated in state code that that's what we do first.

So we maintain our existing infrastructure and dedicate funds there.

Then from there, we identify any funding needed to operate our programs, any needs we have, and then the remaining funding is available for construction.

Construction projects are what you would find in the six-year improvement program.

These are SMART SCALE projects.

They are certain types of bridge projects, some pavement that's funded through construction funding.

It's also revenue sharing and transportation alternatives and a number of other types of projects, most of which are now grant-based, application-based grants.

Some, though, come through different programs that are handled by VDOT, things like the Interstate Operations Program, and I'll get more into all of that.

Same as the six-year financial plan comes to the CTB in April.

As a draft, we do public hearings on those.

A final version is approved in June, takes effect July 1st.

And it really is it's VDOT's book of work.

So it includes any new projects and then also our existing projects and how those funds are programmed over six years.

Every year it's updated.

So anytime we have a cost increase or a project canceled, it comes in or out of that program and is reflected there.

So any questions on that first?

I'll pause there.

All right, great.

All right, so onto revenues.

We'll talk first about federal funding, then onto the major state revenues, which is taxes and fees that are collected, and then some of the more specific programs.

We have a small number of toll facilities around the state, also bond programs, and then some regional revenues that pass through the state onto the regional level.

So this pie chart, this is really just to give you a sense of scale.

The blue, the 54.4% in the Commonwealth Transportation Fund, those are state revenues.

that are collected through things like the fuels tax.

So that's the majority of the budget.

The yellow or gold piece of the pie there is the federal funding, about 17%.

And then the other significant piece is those pass-through revenues, 11.9% that go to mostly to regional transportation authorities.

And again, I'll get into that.

The gray that's the next largest piece at 9.2% is a number of smaller items, things like toll collections and also where there's local project participation where locality chips in money toward a project, so that's counted here.

Okay, and then this is the revenue flow chart.

So lots of pieces here, a lot of information.

So what we're going to do is kind of go section by section.

So I'm going to start down in this bottom right corner.

This is the federal revenue.

Federal, in each one of those blocks, lists programs.

This is not an all-inclusive list.

But it does represent the majority of the funding from the federal side.

So on the left in that green box on the left side is the highway money.

And then there's a box for transit that comes from the Federal Transit Administration, FTA.

And there's also funding that flows into the state from FRA, the Federal Railroad Administration.

At any given time, our federal revenue is dictated and guided by the current

Surface Transportation Authorization Act.

This is, I'm talking on VDOT's side.

The current one is called IIJA, also BIL is another name that's used for the same piece of legislation.

In the past we've had FAST Act, we've had MAP21, Safety Loo, there was ICT going further back, and each one of those has guidance in it that both brings in a certain amount of revenue,

and what those revenue sources are and then what kinds of programs exist and to some degree the priorities of the administration of Congress at that time.

And so under IIJA, which was passed into law in 2021 and is in effect until September 30th of next year,

The major pieces that are significant about it, even though most of the funding still comes from fuels tax and things like truck taxes, it did add some new revenue streams that were fairly significant.

Some of them are brand new items, things like

related to cryptocurrency, related to 5G communications, but then also repurposing of some other funding for things like COVID relief that they were able to take and use for this purpose instead.

And then the other significant thing about IIJA is that instead of

Funding coming almost all through apportionment, which is essentially a percentage or a calculation of a total that's distributed among the states.

There were several new programs created that involve direct grants.

Some of that's to the states.

The state is eligible for some, but a lot of it is to regional bodies or to localities, to tribal groups, and various other entities that are not the state.

So that's a big change too with this current legislation.

So essentially this is what gives us the amount of funding that we're going to get from the federal side and what the priorities are it's going to be used for.

So federal revenue in fiscal year 26, this is just the one fiscal year, not the whole entirety of the six-year financial plan,

It's $1.7 billion, which is about 17% of the total revenue.

Okay, and then moving on now into the major state revenues.

So, the Code of Virginia establishes

The types of taxes and fees that are collected and what the levels are.

And then over time legislation can change and increase or decrease or add new revenue streams.

There are nine up here that are the major sources of revenue.

and of state revenue.

And I'll talk about three.

I have information on the others if we want to dive into that, but I'm just going to give kind of a quick overview of three of them.

Motor vehicle fuels tax is the big driver here.

So that represents about 17% of the overall revenue in this year's budget.

That is

It shows on here, this is a little bit outdated, the snippet that I have up here on the screen.

It shows 26.2 and 27 cents, but it shows there plus CPI.

So it's cost index to inflation.

And actually for the current year, it's 31 and 32 cents for gasoline and for diesel.

So that's our major revenue source at the state level.

The next one is retail sales tax.

Of course 5.3% is the state tax rate and of that 5.3, 0.9 comes to transportation.

So that represents about 16% of the total revenue.

And then the third item is motor vehicle sales tax.

So that's when you buy a car in Virginia.

You're taxed 4.15% and that comes to transportation.

So any questions there or any other information that you all want on those other items?

I'm trying to find my raised hand, but I couldn't.

Thank you.

So at some point, could you forward to us the process with which local governments are able to access these direct grants from under the IAJA?

I know it's not for today, but every time there's any kind of direct allocation, I want to find out how to do that.

Sure, yeah.

So the Federal Highways Administration issues notices of funding opportunity.

We talk about that sometimes at these meetings related to build grants with the Rivanna pedestrian bridge.

We've discussed that and those come out on a regular basis.

But yes, I can absolutely send.

There's an email list you can get added to it to hear about those announcements as they come out.

Stacy, do you recall how long the sales and use tax has been at 4.15?

Yeah, let me see.

I know that it's been that way at least as long as I've been in this position, which is about eight years.

Yep.

Yeah, I can look that one up.

Sure.

Any other questions on this one?

Alright, so I'm going to move on into tolls.

We'll touch on these items pretty quickly.

VDOT currently directly collects tolls on three facilities.

There are other tolls in Virginia, they just are not collected by VDOT ourselves.

The first two there are express lanes.

Those tolls are collected through E-ZPass only, you drive through a gantry.

that uses a camera detection system and uses that E-ZPass to collect those tolls.

Pow White Parkway is more of the traditional what you think of toll booths.

There are the E-ZPass lanes, but there are individuals that collect tolls there.

PAL-ITE is in the final stages of repaying its debt.

So tolls are expected to cease next December.

And we recently just celebrated completion of toll collection at the Coleman Bridge.

I grew up in Hampton Road.

So Coleman Bridge that goes between Yorktown and Gloucester, that one ended in August of this year.

Tolls are used to pay back debt on those facilities.

They're also used for maintenance and operations costs.

And then for, especially for Northern Virginia with the I-66 express lanes, where there are public-private partnerships, there's often some

Part of the deal is funding that goes to serve other related purposes.

So in this case, some of that revenue from I-66 goes to transit, to park and ride lots, to things like ride sharing and other multi-modal to help with congestion relief.

And this represents about $92.5 million annually.

OK. And then on to bonds.

So another sort of specific program.

VDOT has access and currently is actively using these four bond programs.

In addition, there are some in addition that we have either had past debt or have the opportunity to issue new debt, revenue generating debt that may be tapped into in the future.

Special Structures Bonds, that's a brand new program.

It was created through legislation this past session.

And I'll talk about Special Structures a little bit more, but that's essentially the tunnels and movable bridges and some of the other significant fixed span bridges in the state.

Bonds are basically issued in parallel to significant expensive projects.

and their schedules.

So we're not going to issue new debt where it's not needed.

And then that process is overseen by the CTB but also by Virginia's Treasury Board.

And we will then make, once the bonds are put out to market and are sold, then we are able to make debt payments on them over a period of time and ultimately pay back that principal by the maturity date.

And most of these mature at 25 years or less.

We have used, in our district, we have used some GARVEE funding over the years.

That's funding that is basically against, it's borrowed against or backed by, I guess, anticipated federal revenue and we use it on a variety of projects.

It's not necessarily the largest or, you know, like the Hampton Ridge Bridge Tunnel type level projects.

It can be on smaller projects.

The others are more specific to certain locations.

And so again, because these follow project schedules, it varies greatly year to year, how much revenue that the state sees from this.

This year is a fairly low year, 74 million.

There are years in the current six year financial plan that are into the, I think it's 800 and some million dollars based on bonds.

And then finally, regional revenues.

I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this except to highlight this bottom left corner which is a lot of words to say supplemental DGP.

I know we've talked about that some with SMART SCALE over the years.

Regional revenues are essentially pass-throughs.

They're collected at the state level.

and then passed on to these authorities in the different regions.

Most of them are urban.

You have transportation authorities and NOVA.

and Hampton Roads and in Central Virginia, which is the Richmond area.

At the top there is also the WMATA capital fund.

And then focusing, I'm going to focus primarily on the regional fuels tax.

So there were several pieces of legislation over a number of years that led us to where we are, but the 2020 omnibus bill

HB 1414 is the main driver of the current setup we have.

So that bill said that any area that was collecting a regional tax on fuel, it would go to their transportation authority if there was one.

If that locality is bordering I-81, that money goes to the I-81 Improvement Fund.

And then for everywhere else, including all of Culpeper District, that money goes to supplemental DGP.

So these are the amounts for FY26.

It's a total of $1.3 billion collected in regional revenues.

And of that, just for scale, $107 million goes to I-81 and then $122 million statewide goes to supplemental DGP.

And this is the map.

I know we've shown this to the policy board before.

The different colors represent where that regional fuels tax goes and you can see that all of Culpeper District as well as all of Lynchburg and Fredericksburg districts go to supplemental DGP.

We just happen to benefit.

Culpeper District has the largest revenue of any of the districts in supplemental DGP.

And I think it's driven by the fact that we're central.

We benefit from people driving the 64 corridor, the 29 corridor, and stopping and getting gas in our district.

All right, any questions on the revenues?

I'm glad you got this down.

It's nice and easy.

OK. All right.

So on to allocations.

I'm going to talk about how allocations are distributed and then what the programs are, some of the basic details of our funding programs, and what are the intended uses of those programs.

So again, start with the pie chart.

This is allocations just in FY26.

So highlights here, down at the bottom of the left wheel, the red and then the yellow sliver that's to its left represent maintenance funding to VDOT and to the localities that maintain their own assets.

So that's about 32%.

At the top of that left,

PIE wheel is construction funding, so about 30%.

And then about 10% go to rail and public transportation, essentially DRPT's funding.

The right wheel is just kind of a blowout of what that other funding is.

And so that shows you the other modes of transportation and the funding that flows through the Commonwealth Transportation Fund to those different agencies.

Okay, and I'm going to start us off back on this revenue flow chart.

So we're going to talk here about the center portion with the Commonwealth Transportation Fund.

So funding flows from where it's collected at the taxes and fees into this fund.

And off the top of that fund come a couple of different, pretty large dollar amounts for specific purposes.

Those are the two light blue boxes.

So the first is the Special Structures Fund.

And Special Structures, I'm gonna read this description.

This is what the code says about Special Structures.

They are very large, indispensable, and unique bridges and tunnels.

2020 legislation established this fund and it requires that the CTB and VDOT have a 30-year plan for maintenance and rehab and replacement of those structures.

There are, I think it's 23 around the state.

It's the five waterway tunnels, two mountain tunnels,

There are eight movable bridges in Virginia and then eight significant regular fixed span bridges, just very large significant bridges.

$80 million plus inflation go into this fund.

So this year it's actually $90 million off the top into special structures.

And then on the right, state code requires us to put $40 million each into a fund for Route 58 and into a fund for the Northern Virginia Transportation District slash Transportation Authority.

And then after you've taken those amounts off the top, the remainder, 51%, goes to maintenance and operations, that's the orange block, and the other 49% to the transportation trust fund.

So this is where we will jump over to this allocations flow chart.

So I'm going to start.

I will mention on the right side it says federal revenue and it has those colored blocks underneath it.

Each one of those is to illustrate that federal funding does not just start

At that green block in the middle, it's actually being put into various locations throughout these charts.

Again, not the most straightforward thing to understand, but that's what that illustrates and I'll talk about that a little bit as we touch on each program area.

So, first, maintenance.

And so the Highway Maintenance and Operating Fund is not just strictly road maintenance.

There's more pieces to it.

And I'm actually going to talk about these from the bottom to the top, because that's sort of, to me, the easiest way to cover it.

The first one is support that goes to other agencies.

So this is transportation funding through our special dedicated revenues that is being transferred in some way.

There's a few different ways it's done.

over to other agencies that support transportation.

So some examples are state police where they're doing enforcement of weigh stations, highway safety corridors, DMV.

They are really the education branch for highway safety.

We do the engineering piece.

Police do the enforcement and

DMV handles education.

And another example is Department of Historic Resources.

They support VDOT with reviews of our transportation projects.

There are a number of other examples.

We work with DEQ and many, many other agencies.

There's about $50 million out of highway maintenance and operations that goes to these other agencies and about $3 million in construction funding that I'll show you a little bit later on that slide.

OK, and then next is administration.

This is just exactly what you would think.

This is general administration of the agency, things like HR, accounting, procurement, internal audit, financial planning for the agency.

It's also our IT, so software, hardware, all the services to support the many, many, many applications we use to do our work each day.

It's training and development for employees.

We have 7,748 full-time employees.

We're authorized to have that many, so quite a few people.

And then it is upkeep on our buildings.

VDOT has approximately 3,900 buildings on 300, maybe 400 sites around the state.

So this includes the general maintenance and repairs on those buildings.

Part of highway maintenance and operations goes for financial assistance to localities.

This is two main things.

One is urban maintenance payments.

That is about $640 million annually to

cities, towns that maintain their own roads and streets, and the counties of Henrico and Arlington.

Those localities have an inventory.

We pay based on the number of moving lane miles, so not a part of the street that you might park on, but the lanes that you're able to drive on.

That inventory requires them to look at functional classification.

There's different pay rates for principal and minor arterials and a separate pay rate for local streets and collector roads.

And then also there are requirements about inspection to make sure that those roads are kept to a certain condition to be eligible for those payments.

We make the payments on a quarterly basis and the CTB approves both the payment rate and then also the mileage.

So they look at additions and deletions based on new construction or other changes that are done.

And just for a sense of scale, the current pay rate is about $30,000 per lane mile for principal and minor arterials and then

$17,600 per lane mile for collector roads and local streets.

And a lane mile would be measured if you have a two-lane road for every one linear mile, that would be two lane miles because you've got two lanes parallel there.

The other thing I'll mention on this slide is the access program.

So this is one of our funding programs that's available for application by localities.

It is to allow for the construction, maintenance, improvement of roads that would access an economic development site, an airport, a historic site, a park, and it is a pretty small program.

It does require a local match.

There's varying

amounts of funding that you're able to apply for and also varying match amounts based on the different programs.

It is a rolling basis application.

It's something that local assistance division at VDOT is heavily involved in.

and I'll just mention I know Rivanna Futures is a beneficiary of EDA funding, Biscuit Run State Park in the past and Albemarle County and we've had several others around the district that have benefited.

So it's a smaller dollar value program but it is effective.

All right, and then

Most significantly within highway maintenance and operations is the actual VDOT maintenance and operations budget.

It is a significant amount of money.

The budget is developed with an asset management approach.

Essentially, we have an inventory of assets.

We have a sense of the unit cost to maintain those.

and we have certain performance targets like for example how much pavement, what percentage of pavement needs to be in good condition and we work to meet those targets to the best of our ability.

The statewide allocation is distributed out to the districts who then in turn distribute that down to our residencies and to some of our specialized work units that do pavement, that do

Bridge work that do roadside like tree trimming and other groups and then those groups create spend plans so they they work on that spend plan accounting first for their fixed cost which is to pay our people

to pay for the materials they'll use, the equipment they use, things like utilities on their buildings, and then they'll use anything that's left over to do proactive and planned initiatives.

And then, of course, that last bullet is an obvious one.

We have to make adjustments when we have significant weather events.

We do sometimes have the ability to be reimbursed by the federal government, but it doesn't always happen, or it may not happen to entirety of what we've spent.

So we hold some back in reserve and adjust as needed.

This slide has a sense of scale.

So the left block for maintenance, that's your standard, what you think of as VDOT's

Maintenance activities.

And then on the right is operations.

So locally, we have traffic signals to maintain, ITS devices.

We use a traffic operations center based in Stanton District that serves our district as well.

And then, and guardrail.

But there's also a lot of other pieces to that.

Things like the ferries, tunnels, and other special operations around the state.

So Sean, is there anything you want to add to this?

No, I think it's already well staged.

I think the big thing is that when we do have events, we have to balance our budget and try to be within budget.

So as things arise, we're always adjusting that spend plan and changing our planning work to try to be within budget.

All right, and I'm going to move into this next section.

We'll be doubling back to maintenance, and I'll explain that when we get there.

It's that little diamond there at the bottom.

This portion of allocations is called the Transportation Trust Fund, and this is a formula.

So it's got percentages there beside each one of these different blocks.

So the yellow blocks, most of them are other modes of transportation, and it shows you percentages and how that's distributed.

Again, set out in code.

Once you get past the other modes, which include transit, rail, ports, airport, space flight, and then a portion to DMV,

Then you have the Priority Transportation Fund.

This is a fund that was established in 2000, the year 2000, again by legislation and it helps to facilitate financing of projects, advancement of projects that the best way to explain this is this was at the time that we had the 40-30-30 formula which divided funding over the different road systems and it sometimes took

If there were significant, expensive projects, it took a long time to be able to build up, to be able to afford those.

And this was a way to inject funding where it was needed and where perhaps the administration determined we need to go ahead and move forward with this project.

Here's an opportunity.

So a portion of 10.5% goes to PTF.

Then the remaining 53% goes to construction.

But there's a big caveat, which is that diamond at the bottom.

It's called crossover.

Starting in the year 2002, even though the Highway Maintenance and Operating Fund was intended to fully cover maintenance, cover itself, there began to be this problem.

which is that maintenance was too expensive for the money that was available.

This goes back to the chart where it shows that 51% of the overall funding went to maintenance and it's just not enough.

So since 2002, there has been this crossover.

step in the budget.

So it's essentially where money that is supposed to be moving to construction has to be used by code to cover the debt.

We can't go into debt on maintenance, so we have to cover it.

We have to fulfill that requirement.

So this year, that looks like $533 million.

In addition, since 2006, we've also dedicated some of our federal funding to maintenance.

And it's also a significant number.

It is, I think it's $284 million.

Let me see.

I wrote that down somewhere in a sticky note.

I'll find it in a minute.

Over $200 million from federal funding in addition to what's in the Highway Maintenance and Operating Fund and what's available through crossover.

So that money goes back to maintenance to fulfill the full $800 plus million deficit.

And I'm going to mention two sub-funds of the Transportation Trust Fund.

These are basically funded through interest and dividends earned on the money that's in the Transportation Trust Fund.

I'm going to mention the first one, TPOF, Transportation Partnership Opportunity Fund, because Albemarle has a proposed project for Ivana Futures.

It's a $20 million proposed allocation that the county is looking to benefit from.

This is a fund that's intended for attracting and growing business in Virginia.

So it's at the discretion of the governor and he or she is able to make grants or also offer different financing tools to a locality to develop a site and to attract business.

There's also another

program called the Virginia Transportation Infrastructure Bank.

This is a bank essentially that makes loans and other sorts of financial assistance to localities.

to finance projects.

These are usually pretty large projects, pretty significant.

Some examples recently are the Potomac Yard metro rail station, I-395 and I-495 express lanes extensions, and the Thimble Shoals parallel tunnel on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge tunnel.

So pretty high value projects.

Okay, and then this middle piece here, this is funding that is going to be coming off the top before the final step in the formula, which is those peach boxes or orange boxes, that's the funding formula there to the right that starts with state of good repair.

These middle sections, this funding comes off before we go through that formula distribution.

So, first the state funding.

What comes off the top is $3 million to support other agencies.

I mentioned that one before.

Payment of some of our debt service.

This is non-toll debts, so GARVEE projects, GARVEE bond projects.

There's also an older bond program called CPR, capital project revenues.

Some of that is debt service paid here.

Some of this goes to rail programs.

Best example of this is at-grade rail crossings and making sure those are improved to the current safety standards.

Overhead funding for three programs.

Environmental, which is the staff at VDOT that make sure that we are protecting our biological and cultural and historical resources.

Some planning funding and also funding for land use staff at the residencies that help with new developments, new subdivisions and other land development.

The Virginia Transportation Research Council, which is located at UVA, and then construction inspection and other services that are done to manage construction projects.

About $40 million a year goes toward capital outlay at VDOT, which is our buildings and our lots.

It can be used for land acquisition, new locations, renovations, replacing a roof or an HVAC system, that sort of thing.

We apply for that internal to be able to get that funding.

And then the revenue sharing program.

So that one I think most people are familiar with.

That is a grant-based program for localities

And it is a 50-50 program, so you're applying for state funding that you match with local funding.

The applications are received in odd years and it's a pretty broad program but there are some tiers as to which projects rank the highest and are going to be funded first statewide.

This program, I think code requires us to apply a hundred million dollars minimum per year but in FY26 it's actually two hundred million dollars that's budgeted for this program.

And then federal funding off the top.

The majority of this funding is supporting MPOs.

However, it's mostly MPOs that are in transportation management areas.

So these are urban areas that have populations of 200,000 or greater.

They receive funding that comes through VDOT to the MPOs with the set, it's a fixed distribution from the federal level for

Regional RSTBG, Regional Surface Transportation Block Grant, that is a flexible fund type that's made available.

It's for all types of improvements, pretty widely used.

And then most of our MPOs statewide and TMA areas also get CMAQ funding.

CMAQ is Congestion, Mitigation, and Air Quality funding.

So this is projects that would reduce congestion, that would perhaps promote things like HOV or ride sharing, transit, bike ped, that sort of thing.

Also in this part of the distribution is transportation alternatives.

That's the TAP program we sometimes call it.

It is a set-aside, meaning that the federal government, FHWA, sets aside 10% of the total allocation in the surface transportation block grant program for TA and then it's distributed to the states and

In Virginia, we use it through an application-based program, localities, MPOs.

PDCs can apply for this funding and applications are scored and then they're selected either by CTD members or sometimes by MPOs that are in those TMA areas and distributed that way.

It's an 80-20 program, so 80% federal funding and 20% local funding.

And then also at this stage in the distribution is state planning and research, which is the SPR funding that Chuck and Sandy and I, part of our salaries are paid for that way and part of the programs that we do.

And then PL funds, which go to MPOs for funding.

And then again, rail and highway crossings.

All right, and then finally we're getting to

The last piece which is this formula.

So the formula that's here, we've had a construction formula for many years but the current formula was set forth in 2020.

It is 30% that goes to state of good repair, 20% each to high priority projects and

Construction District Grant Program or DGP.

Those are both SMART SCALE and then 20% to the Interstate Program and 10% to Highway Safety.

Let's see, I'm going to talk about each one of these briefly.

SGR, State of Good Repair, this program was established in 2015 through legislation.

It is a funding program for deficient bridges and pavements.

It's both

Assets that are owned by VDOT and assets that are owned by localities that maintain their own roads, bridges, streets.

Local projects are applied for annually.

They do have to be bridges that are inventoried, so part of the national bridge inventory.

And in terms of roads, it is primary extensions.

So Emmett Street, which is an extension of 29, Main Street or Ivy Road extension of 250.

And then the most recent change with this program was in 2024, legislation made it such that what we call cusp bridges, which are bridges that are on the cusp of turning to poor ratings on some of its components are now eligible for funding.

So you're kind of catching them before they've started down that path toward poor.

Next is the two SMART SCALE programs, high priority and district grant and then the supplemental DGP on top of that are what is made available for SMART SCALE purposes.

SMART SCALE was established in 2014 by HB2 legislation.

Of course projects are scored and selected based on the data-driven process that has changed over the years.

It's the same, essentially the same metrics but measured in different ways and weighted in different ways.

Those applications are accepted in even years and applicants include localities and regional bodies like MPOs and PDCs.

And I do just want to mention a couple of small caveats here.

Part of the

This allocation, this 20% for, I'm going to start with HPP, part of that $25 million a year goes to the Innovation and Technology Transportation Fund.

It's a code requirement.

It's a fund that allows for pilot projects and other sort of high-tech projects to

be brought to fruition.

One example here in Culpeper is a project that added a detection and data collection system in nine locations on our signals, and it allows us basically to more proactively identify where maybe a component is starting to fail and we need to go out and fix something so it doesn't back traffic up, or where we might need to make adjustments to timing.

And then out of the DGP pot comes unpaved roads funds.

The Board of Supervisors members will know about unpaved roads and also telecommunications fees or tele-fees, we call them for short.

Those are the funds that are used in the counties where VDOT maintains the roads to develop the secondary six-year plan.

So they're dedicated strictly to improvement of secondary

ROADS, the boards of supervisors have control over that funding and determine the priorities.

It's not a large amount of funding, although I will note as I was doing some research, Albemarle receives the seventh highest amount of unpaved ROADS funds in the state, $964,000 a year out of a total $25 million and

The fourth highest in Telefi, $243,000.

So just small numbers, takes a little while for this to add up, but that gives you a little bit of a picture where that funding comes from.

Okay, and then interstate operations and enhancement.

This is a program that was established in 2020 with that omnibus bill.

It is dedicated to safety, reliability, mobility on interstates.

This is not an application program.

This is a program that VDOT manages through the planning process.

So there are corridor studies done on the interstates.

They are updated every four years and projects that are selected based on the recommendations of those studies for funding.

The funding formula, there's funding that's available to all of the interstates, but the predominant amount goes to 81 and to 64 because of the way the formula is set, which basically compares the ratio of truck traffic, truck vehicle miles traveled to overall vehicle miles traveled.

And then finally, Virginia Highway Safety Improvement Program.

Again, established in 2020, that was a big piece of legislation that changed things pretty drastically.

This is funding for safety improvements.

The funding is available to VDOT on the roads that we maintain and also to localities and is distributed between the two groups.

based on essentially needs.

So we look at fatal crashes and crashes with serious injuries and determine what's the appropriate split of funding to address those needs statewide.

And it's currently roughly an 80-20 split.

So about 80% of the money goes toward VDOT-maintained facilities, 20% is available to localities that maintain their own assets.

The funding is applied for on an annual basis and it's those localities again that maintain their own assets that can apply.

You can apply for spot improvements which are like an intersection improvement, maybe somewhere that there's a known history of crashes.

You can also apply for what we call systemic improvements.

Some examples would be

Edgeline rubble strips to prevent people from running off the road on a section maybe that's a little bit more rural, flashing yellow arrows on signals, signage that shows a curve ahead, and that sort of thing.

So again, that's an annual application process.

And that is the end of what I have.

I did want to share a few links here.

There's three links.

These are basically the printed version of what I've just talked about for the last 45 minutes.

So good information here.

All three of these pages are updated regularly with each budget that passes.

And each time there's an update to any of the funding programs, you can find that information there.

Wow.

This is something that's going to be easy to turn around and explain to others.

Well, that's why we have this lovely presentation and the recording.

So that's what we can share and then have them come back after they have homework.

I guess my only question for you is, is there any conversation anywhere about

revisiting the change to wholesale fuel collection which caused such a reduction in the revenue as opposed to having it backed by the gallon.

I know it didn't turn out the way the legislators thought it was going to and so I guess that's a general assembly thing but I just was being nosy and asking if you had any information.

I have not heard much about that, about changes.

And I will say there is the other piece to that.

There's the movement toward user-based fees and how do you deal with electric vehicles.

And there is a fee associated, but I was actually kind of surprised to see how low

That ranked in all of the revenues statewide, so I'm not sure that that necessarily is the full solution either, the rates and how that's being imposed.

Other questions?

Do you have you all tracked or do you have it somewhere that shows

You know, usually when you look at a historical trend, you want to see what that gap was in O2.

Because obviously that gap has just grown.

So that seems to be like a critical moment or a critical issue that for 23 years hasn't been addressed.

Assuming it's never, the costs have never been covered in any given year since then.

I mean, it may have happened that it did.

Right.

And I guess one thing, too, Ned, to add to that, that the system grows, right?

So as land development happens, the department is taking in secondary roads every year.

I know in this district since about 2019, we've taken in over 100 miles of road in our district alone.

So as we have capital improvement projects through SMART SCALE and other means, as land development happens,

Right.

And the revenue is not going in there to cover.

Even if they don't grow, your costs have grown.

You add in the fact that you're adding in those miles, the maintenance of those.

And that's the point about how that gets funded.

I can see all the slicing and dicing, all the percents, and what goes to what bucket is being dictated by code.

But at the end of the day, like I think it was Mitch put in there that that 4.15, the sales thing was in 2016 and if memory serves, they phased that in.

I think it was four and then they moved it to 405 and then after another year or two, they moved it to 410 and then they moved it to the 415 that it's there now.

But that's been eight years since that's been in place.

It's like at what point do they accept that the gaps

To just cover even maintenance costs, there needs to be something done to up the ante.

I don't think charging fees on electrical vehicle, like everybody talks about that, but like to your point, I don't know that that's necessarily the, I mean, registration fees are already higher for high fuel economy cars.

Yeah, when some of the big trucks, we see that in the neighborhoods where big trucks, you know, for temporary construction or something can really tear up local roads to that point, yeah.

Thank you very much.

One thing I forgot, this transportation infrastructure bank that you mentioned, BTIB, would that be a source to fill in a gap?

Like if there was a funding gap from a revenue sharing on a project or something, is that something it can be,

I wanted to ask the difference between the TPOP, the Transportation Partnership Opportunity Fund, and the ACCESS program for things like EDA, like Raybana Futures is using.

ETA is an application process.

So it comes to VDOT staff.

And let me see if I can reference my cheat sheet.

It comes to VDOT staff.

The dollar amounts are quite a bit lower.

So let's see.

For design only, so to design an access road into a site,

There are two categories, major and non-major, which I think it's the Virginia Economic Development Partnership that defines that.

The max grant there is $500,000 and then the match is $150,000.

I'm sorry, $150,000 it's matched, so you have to match that.

dollar for dollar and then $500,000 on top.

Construction is up to a million dollars matched and then a million dollars unmatched.

So it's pretty small dollar amounts.

TPOF grants tend to be larger and those are at the discretion of the governor.

But again, I do believe that the connection there with Virginia Economic Development Partnership is the key.

These are sites that are

That would be very interesting to see.

Alright, so I'm very grateful for this.

This is a lot and it's very complex so pulling it all together to explain in the time you were given is pretty phenomenal so thank you for that.

My pleasure.

But there are things here that I just didn't even know or understand so

It's important to know it and understand it, in my opinion, so I'm appreciative of receiving it today.

So, if there are no other questions on the, just I'm looking at the time here, if there's no other questions on the presentation, before we move away from this item,

I feel like the better you understand something, the better you know how it works, the better it is to be able to try to work within that system.

You got to understand the system you're working in, in order to do well in the system, especially if there's strategies and such that we've talked about with SMART SCALE.

So how do we

The funding issues we have to target the General Assembly on, but working with VDOT, what do we do?

Ned, I think that we need to come together as a region to figure out what is the strategy to best put us in a situation to be successful within the confines and the system that we have.

That comes in the form of understanding what are the local priorities,

the regional priorities that have been rolled out to the state priorities to position us to go after different types of funding sources because it may not all be SMART SCALE.

Maybe there's a discussion about revenue sharing.

Maybe there's a discussion about these other grants that are out there through the federal government.

But I think we need to have a real discussion sitting around the table together to talk about these different priorities.

We've been developing this huge menu

of projects that I call, that we've done through project pipeline and other sources.

We need to figure out how we want to strategize around those.

That's great.

I'm hoping Taylor and Christine made note of that.

But it sounds like we might be getting into a little bit of that or maybe the teeing up of such a conversation with the next presentation as Sean alluded to.

So Sandy, I'm turning to you for the, this would officially move us for those of us following along to the SMART SCALE round seven project locations.

There were other folks that I know joined in to learn about the VDOT funding.

And I would say that if you all have questions that maybe you could follow up to any of the policy board folks, myself, Ann, Natalie, Brian, and or Taylor, and we can make sure that we can maybe ask those on your behalf and get answers to questions if you have some out there.

But Sandy, I'll turn things over to you to keep us moving along here.

or thank you Supervisor Galloway and just so everybody's following along.

I'm gonna get us started and then I think Chuck is going to...

going to take over describing the projects.

And I am having trouble seeing my screen.

Sounds good.

All right.

So thanks for queuing up the discussion.

I have a slide that I'll show next after this that talks a little bit about one of the big decisions that we all have to be thinking about as we

Make an effort to move projects forward from conceptualizing the improvements that we want to getting them implemented and funded.

It is really taking the time to be knowledgeable about the funding programs, how to be as competitive as possible with the funding programs that we have available, and then also making sure that we are aligning our projects with the right type of funding program based on what type of priority it is.

So we're talking about SMART SCALE.

We've been talking about some of the lessons learned, some of the metrics, understanding how a project can be successful through SMART SCALE.

And this slide right here just gives us an overview of things to keep in mind when we are talking about what a strong SMART SCALE application is going to look like.

So I have a slide.

The next slide will get a little bit into making sure you're aligning the project with the right type of funding source.

Understanding what kinds of projects are going to be a good fit for SMART SCALE means that we have to spend a little bit of time understanding the SMART SCALE program.

You all have seen this information before, so this is just trying to summarize what we've been talking about before.

First of all is understanding how projects get scored in this district for SMART SCALE and making sure that projects that move forward are going to have benefit scores in the categories that SMART SCALE uses to score the project.

We talk about good SMART SCALE projects, we're not talking about the benefit of a project overall or generally, we're talking about the benefit of a project based on how SMART SCALE determines benefits of projects.

Specifically when we're talking about multimodal projects, it is really important given the changes that were implemented in round six that multimodal projects demonstrate improvements in other scoring criteria besides land use in order to be competitive.

We saw I think it was approximately 50% of the projects had more than half of their score from land use in rounds one through five for the projects that were primarily multimodal.

The ones that had a lower percentage of their score from land use still would score very well for the district grant program, but we need to make sure that we are looking at the overall benefits of the project for the multimodal improvements specifically to know if they are going to align well and be competitive for SMART SCALE funding.

And that's part of what we try to do at the district is get into the data a little bit, understand not just what kind of priority a project has based on the statewide need, but how many benefit points a project is going to be able to garnish based on how SmartScale scores the project benefits.

So all of this is an effort to help our localities in the region move forward with the strongest applications possible.

Remember in SmartScale that project cost matters.

So the benefit to get your SMART SCALE score, the benefit is divided by the project cost.

And depending on how your brain works, we found out in the district our brains work in different ways.

You can either divide the project benefit by the cost in $10 million.

So you take the project cost, divide it by $10 million, and then project score divided by the SMART SCALE cost divided by $10 million.

Or you can take the benefit score divided by the cost and multiply the whole thing times 10 million.

So same thing either way.

The point is that the higher the project costs, the lower the SMART SCALE score is going to be, and it starts becoming very difficult to get a SMART SCALE score high enough to offset a high project cost.

So when we're talking about where the average SMART SCALE costs are for projects that are successfully funded, this is why we're talking about that.

The highest cost SMART SCALE project that was funded

In round six was I believe about $46 million, somewhere around there.

So that gives us an idea of where the cost needs to be in order to be able to generate benefits that are going to be high enough to keep those projects competitive for SMART SCALE.

And then the other thing to remember is that everything is relative.

So scores are normalized against the slate of projects that are submitted in each round.

So while a project may score well in one round,

Depending on what the other projects are submitted in the next round can impact whether or not that project continues to score well.

So just big picture ideas to keep in mind.

This chart is an effort to start talking about how to strategize what kind of projects are going to make the best sense for different kinds of funding programs.

This chart shows the majority of the most common programs that are

that are utilized by the localities and regions within the state of Virginia, but certainly especially the federal discretionary grant programs could change based on legislative priorities.

Projects that are funded through SMART SCALE need to align with a statewide or construction district priority, and those are going to be defined based on how priorities are identified in the Virginia statewide transportation plans.

The high priority project program is intended to fund projects that will benefit regional networks or corridors of statewide significance or interstates, so projects that will have a larger scale impact.

And then the construction district does not have the same requirement for location.

These projects can be a little bit more local in nature, but the priorities are still identified based on the district grant program.

And so as you identify projects that you want to move forward, as we're talking about queuing up the projects for SMART SCALE, we're really looking at the projects that meet these statewide or construction district priorities in order to be able to feel like they're going to be a good fit for SMART SCALE.

Projects that aren't a good fit for SMART SCALE could still be projects that have high levels of benefits but might align better with some of these regional or

Local priority type funding programs like revenue sharing, like some of the access programs Stacy went through, or some of the federal discretionary grants.

There are of course different aspects that need to be considered for each of these, like the overall amount of funding available through each of the programs, limitations specifically with a program like revenue sharing or transportation alternatives that limit the amount of funding that

A project is eligible to receive up to a maximum amount.

But when we start identifying what the priorities are, it's really important that we start also thinking strategically about which of these funding program buckets that they align well with.

And so with that, we'll get into discussing the projects that are being considered for Round 7 of SMART SCALE.

We are, Chuck is going to go through the projects not just that the MPO is considering, but the projects that Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville are also considering for application through this round of SMART SCALE.

Some of these help to paint a more complete picture of an overall slate of improvements that would provide benefits specifically at some of the interchanges or corridors where there were studies, but otherwise we also

Just wanted to make sure we were having a conversation about everything that is happening within the MPO area.

So this is the same slide just showing a map.

All right.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Yeah, we've got a large slate.

A lot of these are based on current studies that are going on.

We do have some additional studies that are going on that we're not going to be pulling applications from this round.

And some of these are re-submissions from previous round.

I think the first group, okay, this is in the city of Charlottesville.

This is the pipeline study or the STAR study that we're doing in the city at the

McIntire Ridge, McIntire West Main Intersection, and they're looking at doing one-way pairs here.

So you have eastbound, one-way, basically one-way streets.

So Water Street would become one-way in the westbound direction, and South Street would be one-way in the eastbound direction, at least between Ridge Street and Second Street Southeast.

So that's one of the things and as part of that they're going to put a cycle track on along West Main Street which is a two-way bike facility that's going to run along the north side of West Main and then

We're looking at changing it just because we want to work the geometry and get the operations worked out at the intersection, but it's going to basically travel on West Main Street or West Water Street through Second Street.

So that's the project that we're doing as part of the STARS study in the city.

Sure.

When the streets used to be one way, Market and Water, was Water that way and Market the other way or vice versa?

I don't remember.

That was before I got here.

It was.

East Market was eastbound and Water Street was westbound.

Yeah, I remember it being a big deal when that changed.

Okay, thank you.

So we're sort of going back to that, at least through Second Street, and hopefully that'll address some of the issues.

It does provide good bike ped, I mean bike facilities, because you're talking about a cycle track, which will be protected bike lanes in both directions on that portion of the road.

We are going to maintain the current

Bike Lane on South Street, which is ContraFlow Bike Lane on South Street.

So that's gonna be still maintained as part of the project.

We're just reconfiguring from this design, we're reconfiguring the intersection.

And I think they're actually gonna move the cycle track to the south side of the road instead of on the north side of the road.

So it doesn't conflict with the bus pull off on Water Street.

But we're taking that to public,

Back out to public comment in January.

So we want to roll it out to the public before we sort of make it public.

But and get feedback on it.

Yeah.

Quick question for the intersection at number five.

It's going to be, and that's one of the comments that we had about this concept, to get the bicyclists through the intersection, it doesn't work.

So we're shifting the bike lanes to the other side of the road and they're actually going to go parallel to this pedestrian facilities.

So the South Street section will actually come across and then they'll have to cross the street

like a pedestrian but there's a bike lane so it's going to be you're going to have the pedestrian facilities and a bike facility next to each other and then they'll follow similar to what the current configuration is but they'll have to jog to get across the intersection.

Basically you're going to have to cross to the island

and then cross Water Street to get to South Street and then you could go on South Street.

So you go from South Street to Cross to the Island and then you go across Ridge to West Main.

Which is one.

It's one way.

If you're going from West Main, the problem is to South Street, you'd conflict with the left turn movement.

But it's a contraflow vehicle way.

Thank you.

Water Street is westbound, and you could go straight across if you're on Water Street.

If you're going eastbound, you can go from, you're conflicting with the left hand turn or the through movement, so you have to go straight across the intersection to Water Street and then go turn south onto

From an operational standpoint, we didn't want to basically, we couldn't cycle it that way without giving them their own phase in the signal.

Well, the problem is you've got to meet a benefit because if you're going to submit this as a SMART SCALE application, it's got to have a benefit.

And if you're degrading the operations, that's one of your major factor areas for scoring points.

Correct.

You could do that.

I wouldn't recommend it because it will be really bad.

Yeah.

Operations would be really, really bad.

We've done the analysis and it's part of the report.

You'll be able to see what that information is.

So, but we had, we went to this because to get it funded, it's gotta be, you gotta have a positive score, otherwise you're not gonna get enough benefit score to fund the project.

Because the cycle track alone doesn't give you enough benefit score if you don't get scores from other areas, factor areas in the scoring mechanism.

You gotta get accessibility, you've gotta get points in safety, you've gotta get points in congestion mitigation to actually

have enough benefit to get the multiplier, have the multiplier be in effect for land use, because that's where you're going to get most of your points is land use.

All right, sorry.

South Street, Water Street is two-way.

It's basically following Water Street and West Main Street.

South Street is just going to be the contraflow bike lane, like it is now.

We were going to take that away, but then the city folks wanted to keep it on there, so it was no big deal to keep it on there.

It's just how it operates at the intersection was more the critical issue.

Okay, sorry.

Any more questions on that?

All right, this is a resubmission.

This is the Old Trail intersection, Allen Crozet at Old Trail and 250 at Western Alamo High School.

We're resubmitting the roundabout conversion at the intersection.

It's a hybrid 2-1 roundabout, and it also includes a shared-use path and some sidewalk connections to get from the middle school, from that northeast quadrant down to the high school.

Any questions about that one?

Okay, this is projects from the Barracks Road.

We had projects submitted last round and they weren't funded, so we went back and tried to look at what we could do to reduce the cost of what was done, and this is what we were able to work out with the county and the MPO.

We're looking at extending the deceleration lane, the ramp on 250 bypass, as well as widening the ramp, northbound off-ramp and providing dual left-turn lanes, so you can run two lanes in the westbound, the northbound or westbound direction.

And we're also going to connect the sidewalk, which is not there right now, from the city through the interchange and then provide a crosswalk on the west side of the interchange to get to the sidewalk on the north side of the road.

That's the MPO project.

And then the city, the county project would be adding a right turn lane to Barracks Road on that eastbound approach at the ramp, as well as it would include the bike, the crosswalks also.

It also includes, we're going to relocate the bus stop, which is currently at Surrey to the corner there.

And this portion of the, where the green dashed line, it would be a shared use path.

which would match up to what was in the previous application.

So this is a concept from the previous application that was submitted.

Yes, so there's a cliff where that second lane heading south onto the bypass is.

That's going to be a monstrous amount of earth moving to go there.

I don't understand that.

And that's not, I'm just reporting that because nobody seems to talk about the topography that's there.

If we could please go back to old trail thing.

I was struggling getting my stupid mute to go off.

So this has been hanging around so long and now the cost has gone from 1 million to 5 million to 17 million.

Can we just get a portable roundabout, bolt it in there?

We own the right of way.

Can we just paint it and put the roundabout in there and see how it works?

Because it'll be 10 more years before we get anything that costs $17 million.

From an operational standpoint, you've got to make it work.

You've got school buses that go through this, painting it on the road.

And we'd have to do the operations to see if it would.

I mean, we've measured the diameter.

We know it's 120 feet at least, which is what Joel always said was plenty big to do all the things that we needed to do.

I think it's important that we're talking about this round of 7 of SMART SCALE and I don't think you would want to look at pulling this as a potential application while we look at the feasibility of doing something different.

I think we've expressed there's a need to do something here

Can we fit a portable roundabout in there?

I don't know.

You're saying Alan Saunders looked at it.

I will need to get with Kerry and Troy to see if something like that would work.

But I don't think that we want to stop what we're planning here.

All right.

I get it.

I get it about not wanting to pull this.

And Alan looked at different ones.

Joel was the one who worked on this one before he moved over the mountain.

So yeah, I will retract my suggestion.

I wasn't really intending to pulling it.

I was just trying to figure out why we're not talking about more reasonably priced things for other funding.

Or, and it kind of sounds like you're suggesting like a quick build style, pop it in there.

Well, I mean, the smart scale wouldn't be funded for five more years anyway, even if we got awarded it.

So that would be that would be a spectacular.

I hadn't thought about doing that, but that's a great idea.

OK, well, some of these alternative ways to go, we put the application and I believe is what Sean was

If we get together and start having work sessions on how to figure out the different pots of money, I think this is an example of what could fall right into that conversation.

Yep, okay.

So that's those two applications.

And this is the county.

This would be the MPO application.

Like I said, we're adding the dual lefts.

We're gonna extend the deceleration lane on the 250 bypass.

We're gonna connect the sidewalk from the city to the county and then add the crosswalk on the west side of the interchange.

And that's the application.

Any questions about that one?

Correct, because last round we submitted the roundabout, double roundabout version with the shared use path and it was just not cost effective.

And it's still going to provide a lot of the same benefits that the other one did.

It's not going to be a shared use path.

We are going to make the ADA ramp improvements on the north side at the ramp crossings because they don't meet standards.

All right, next.

Okay, this is out at Old Ivy Road and Ivy Road.

The county's looking at submitting the two roundabouts, one at Canterbury in 250 and one at Boars Head in 250.

And then we're also looking at the two ramp.

extensions on 250 bypass at Old Ivy Road.

Traffic engineering has recently added a left turn lane to 601, re-striped it because the pavement was already there.

So that was something that was just recently completed.

So this is the roundabout location.

It'll probably be offset a little bit to the south, but it's going to address the operations and the safety issues at this intersection.

And this is the one that Boer said.

And again, it's going to address the operations and safety issues at that location.

These are the ramp extensions.

The one on the eastbound side, which just goes from Old Ivy eastbound onto 250.

It's going to be extended over to Leonard Sandridge.

And then the westbound basically is going to be lengthened to accommodate the queuing that's currently backing out onto 250 at that location.

A lot of people use this as an alternative way to get to Leonard Sandridge because there's no left turn at Leonard Sandridge.

So next.

This is Fifth Street.

We previously submitted this DEI last round with the shared use path in the middle.

And at $79 million, it wasn't funded.

Basically, it had a benefits, great benefit score, but the SMART SCALE, once you divide it by cost, the SMART SCALE score tanked, and it wasn't high enough to be funded in the program.

So what we're trying to do is get to a point where we can fund it.

So basically, it would have to cost $42 million to be funded last round to get a benefit score high enough to be funded.

So what we're trying to do is figure out a way to cut that much money out of the project so we can get it funded.

So what we're proposing to do is to continue building the shared use path up to the ramp, up to the interchange and crossing it over and then connecting to the sidewalk from the crossover

To the sidewalk that's on the existing bridge and then connecting the sidewalk on the south side from there to the sidewalk that's already existing in the county.

The dotted lines on here are proposed options for

Somebody else's path that can be built by others.

Either the Azalea Park Trail to the west, the Biscuit Run Trail to the south, or even possibly a parallel bike pedestrian bridge next to the bridge are all options that could be considered.

So that's pretty much the next one.

My comment was about the roundabouts at Bel Air.

I'll save it till later.

Thank you.

My only question is, has there been a consideration of separating those two, do the Bel Air one,

You know, as separate from the Boars Head one, which has very few people going in and out, and the R Cut that works, you know, works really well, or whatever those delineators are, works great.

Well, they're going to be submitted separately, so it's not a combination.

Good.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

But that being said, roundabouts work best when they're in a system of roundabouts.

Correct.

I mean, I'd like, well, part of that, when we did the study, part of that was to, once you put the roundabouts there, you can close the median between the two roundabouts because they operate to accommodate the U-turn movement.

So that was

Once it's fully built out, it makes the operations better for that corridor because you don't have that conflict with people coming in and out of those commercial areas on that north side to go eastbound into the city.

They're not crossing the traffic stream.

They would just make a right in, right out, and then go to the roundabout and turn around to go the other direction.

And that would be ultimately what would take place there.

Does that make sense, Natalie?

Okay, now 118.

This has a history.

It was submitted in round one of SMART SCALE as a full rebuild interchange.

And this is the full rebuild interchange.

This is a divergent diamond, but instead of being the traditional like you're used to seeing, instead of having the intersections at the crossover, those would be grade separated.

So it would be free flow for all these movements.

There wouldn't be any stoplights.

This was originally submitted in round one and it

was like the third lowest scoring project in the state.

So what we did was we took this and broke it down into pieces and basically submitted the pieces as separate applications.

This is one of the applications that was submitted for SMART SCALE.

It wasn't funded in SMART SCALE, but it was funded with HSIP funding, but it's still

It's still an issue.

It was identified as a short-term need in the study that the traffic engineering did for the HSEP application.

So we're seeing the ramifications of that short-term solution.

We're seeing the backups on 29 southbound.

So what we want to do is try to figure out how can we solve this problem a little bit more efficiently.

So this was one of the other options that was done, submitted and funded in SMART SCALE.

There's a significant weave between 64 and Fontaine Avenue, and this was to address that weave issue by making it, adding the choice lane and pulling the ramp back so that you could have two lanes turning off of 29 instead of just one in the northbound direction.

So it helped address that weave issue coming off of 64 northbound.

And this was the original application that was submitted for the divergent diamond at Fontaine Avenue.

And it didn't do very well when it was initially submitted.

So we resubmitted it, but it also included the left turn, removing of that left turn movement off of the other, at 64, which was the third piece of the problem that we identified from the initial analysis of the interchange of 64.

So this was,

What was funded, and then it was supplementally redesigned to what we're seeing today as the funded project.

But this is what was funded in SMART SCALE.

That being said, basically we took a $140 million project and we funded all those projects for $16 million.

And that's just some of the process we have to go through to

What we ultimately wanted to what we, how we solved the problems overall.

And like I said, we're gonna have to go back and look at the other Southbound Movement again, but I think we're gonna come up with a lower cost solution than rebuilding the interchange.

These are some of the solutions we were looking at.

We've got some other ones that we're considering also, but basically to try to address that,

Predominantly lengthening the storage for the left turn movement is one, and how do you do that?

You can have them go through and U-turn, lengthen it a little bit to have them just provide a little bit more storage space.

And then the other one was to reinstitute, flip the loop ramp from the southeast side to the southwest side.

That one has some additional problems, and we're not sure if FHWA would even support it.

And it does have a weave issue on the southbound side of 29 between the two loop ramps.

So that's, we're not really that keen on that solution as a preferred solution.

So more to come on this one.

We're still going through that development process.

We'll be meeting with a stakeholders working group in January to flesh out and review the public feedback and

Come back to you in February, possibly with another solution for that.

So here are the list of the projects for the MPO that they're eligible to submit, the five locations.

And I think that's pretty much it that we have.

Yeah, I mean, I think these are the eligible MPO applications, right?

But we also realize there are supplemental applications that the county and the city are also looking at putting in, which went on, was a part of this presentation too.

So collectively, us getting on the same page of what the overall vision is for this round seven of SMART SCALE, and even other potential funding sources.

Like Ann, you were talking about

Roundabout.

Well, maybe it's not an Albemarle County submission for SmartScale, but we need to have a discussion on what other funding source it could be to maybe move up and improve it there.

Staff, you had this one marked as an action item.

Do you want us to vote on these seven or on these locations?

So today we're looking for a recommendation for staff to submit these applications and what you would prioritize as the top four for consideration being that we have five application slots for pre-applications, but only four full application slots.

And they do that just in case one project may screen out.

for eligibility purposes or readiness purposes.

And so there's one project on this list that we would have to designate as

I also wanted to include or just add a little bit about MPO Tech Committee's feedback for these projects.

They've had really extensive conversation in their last two meetings about these, and they had a couple concerns and outstanding questions, even though they did provide a recommendation for us to keep working with VDOT for these locations.

Specifically, a little bit of the feedback that they had for Fifth Street, the DDI and the shared use path.

They had questions about what the width of the sidewalk could be.

And the correspondence that we've had, you know, is that some of those really detailed questions, we aren't going to get answered until way down the line because of how the processes work, how long it takes to develop all of these concepts and the details that's required by the time we get to full application.

Is there anybody that objects to the current order that we need to have a discussion about changing the order?

Are these prioritized so number one is our priority?

Because I would suggest reversing it if that's the case, because the 54321 as far as the doability and the major, major congestion improvements that they would provide.

I would call this out, and maybe Sean could help, but when I look at them, I'm just identifying locations.

It doesn't matter for SmartScale whether I think it's the top priority or the third priority.

And so what we have to do is determine which one is going to be that fifth application slot, which project we're going to say is the least

Important that we would be willing to pull out if all of the other four end up screening in for full applications.

And so a couple things to consider is for the two ramps, ramp extensions for Ivy Road, one of those has more significant operations issues out of the two.

And that's the one that actually was supposed to be built by the development that's right there in the corner.

That's what we were told they were going to do, but I don't know what was written down.

I don't know how you pull one of the other four, Ann.

Can I ask a question about the 118 project?

So on the, there are several slides about it.

And then there was different alternatives on the last slide.

What, what are we actually

It's like a pre-application to essentially state, hey, we're interested in a project of this nature at this location.

We've got a long lot of runway in front of us to get through the details.

I mean, as Chuck just mentioned, I mean, we've got

The one in there in the city, we've still got to go through public comments, the second round of public comments again in January.

We've got a whole lot of work to do still at the 118.

So there's a whole lot of work still left ahead, but we just want to get an idea that these are the projects that we're going to focus our efforts on.

And we're not going to come back in six months and say, oh, by the way, we think we need to look at exit 120 again.

Got it.

I see.

Got it.

The other thing, Natalie, is that MPO can only submit applications that apply for high priority funding, whereas the county and the city are applying for district grant funding.

They are eligible for high priority, but you got to meet the

eligibility requirements to qualify for high priority.

So, and as I said, you wouldn't be necessarily competing against these projects with your county or city applications.

These are basically going to be competing against the rest of the state for the high priority funding.

Got it.

And the other thing I wanted to say was you can actually put together five applications.

Initially, and then when you get to August, when you're submitting the applications into end of July, you can only submit four.

So it doesn't mean we can't move these five forward and then decide.

Got it.

All right.

So we have five.

It would, my opinion is number two and number three, these offer on-ramp extensions would be the higher ones that could find other funding sources as well.

Whereas like number four, especially, and number one, we've already know that we've gone through around where they were high cost.

So I think you have to make number two or number three that fifth application.

So I'm fine with it being,

Yes, absolutely.

It was backed up almost to Barracks Road the other day.

So it's absolutely important.

And it's the difference between a small city footprint and 750 square miles.

So that's always the difference.

All right.

So I need a motion to accept the round seven eligible MPO application locations with number three being the fifth option.

All right.

Motion made by Ms. Malek, seconded by Ms. Oschrin.

And if everybody could unmute the voters.

And all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chuck.

If I may ask one other question, if someone could please send a link to the V-Trans most recent thing, that would be very helpful for us to look at.

Just finding it is the hard part.

All right, we are at time, so we're going to move kind of rather quickly here.

So staff updates, they have my name here and Taylor.

So we included in your packet just a short report about some of the informational items that didn't require action today, and those include tip adjustments, so those are just informational, don't require any action, but we had one for a CAT project, one for a project on Emmett Street for the debt service for that, and also an adjustment for an autism sanctuary 5310 vehicle project that was included in our tip.

We also included a draft of our federal fiscal year 25 annual obligation report.

That's a document that we have to publish publicly by December 29th every single year.

So we have that included as a draft in your packet, and that'll go up before the end of the year.

And finally, we've got some existing conditions documents that were included in there as well.

And then you all did receive an update on this at your last meeting, but the PDC offices are about to undergo renovations.

Happy to pass to Christine if she wants to say anything specific.

But starting January 5th, we will be all remote.

Thank you, Taylor.

All right, we'll move to other business before I do a quick roundtable.

Just note the 2026 meeting schedule is listed on the agenda for the dates and the months that we will be meeting in.

And I will ask everyone to do your best to do a 30-second roundtable, just so we can not be here but so long.

But these are some of the better times where we get to hear what's going on.

I'll just go around the screen.

Stacy, do you have any other?

Sean and Stacy, I'll call on both of you.

Nothing else from me.

Thank you, Sean.

Let's see, who is next?

Yeah, I gave some updates at the MPO Tech.

If you want me to repeat them, I can, or we can just put them in the record.

Just real quick.

All right.

We're working with John.

Sorry, John is working with the TJPDC to submit a demo grant to get extended services for Flofana, Louisa, and hopefully we'll get our TAP grant and our DRPT grant to extend commuter services up to Greene County.

to make VA very happy as well.

We have a new chief operating officer, very excited about that, senior director of operations, very excited about that, filling a big gap there.

We're still working on our software upgrades and we're gonna demo ADA, mobility on demand software next year.

Thank you, Jason.

Yep.

I don't have any updates, but thank you.

Thank you.

There we go.

Hi.

Thank you all.

No, I don't have any updates.

We're looking forward to our meeting in January where Chair Galloway and Ms. Oschrin will be joining us to discuss the future of CTAC.

And for the policy board electeds, if you have not seen that email, please check your email to get up to speed on the last conversation at CTAC.

Thank you, sir.

Two quick updates.

We'll be kicking off our Rosehill Drive corridor repaving planning project in January.

We've got repaving coming through that corridor in early 2027, so we want to make sure that we have the restriping and all of the curbs mapped out correctly so that we can change that corridor in a pretty quick order.

And then the other thing I'll mention is that we will be doing an onboard survey through CAT in the spring.

We'll be engaging the capstone class over at UVA to have their students helping us execute that onboard survey.

Thank you.

And Mr. Williams, Garland.

Hello.

Hello.

Great.

Good to see everybody.

No major updates.

Thank you for the Tip Amendment adjustments that are in the packet today.

So just going to go with that.

Thank you, sir.

Did I miss anybody for a roundtable update?

Just a very quick note on the schedule of meetings for 2026.

Those are the dates where our meetings would regularly fall.

Staff is going to work between now and an email coming out to propose a different date for the December meeting, since that is 23rd and the day before Christmas Eve.

Thank you.

Very good.

And the next item, additional matters from the public.

Is there anybody online?

Mr. Krebs would like to comment.

Thank you, Chair Galloway and policy board.

I just wanted to take a really quick moment to thank Brian for his service, not only on the policy board, but in so many different ways.

And this is just about his last

Maybe not his final final public meeting and I'm sure he'll be serving in some other capacity and be very present in the community.

I wanted to just also mention that because memories are pretty short,

Brian and his analytical, low-key personality, he's a very drama-free guy, was right on time for the city when he started serving.

And we've come a long way while you've been serving, Brian.

Thank you very much, Peter.

That was incredibly kind.

And I've enjoyed working with all of y'all.

Y'all are lovely people.

That was very timely and very nice of Peter.

So I think that your fellow policy board members would echo the sentiments that Peter stated.

It's always interesting when we have switchovers, whether you're actually leaving your board totally or just the board that you might be representing to see what changeover happens.

So hope you will be available

to help all of us to remain in an advisory way to help us do better at this job that you're doing.

But it's been a pleasure serving with you on this policy board.

Thank you, Brian.

You as well.

Y'all take care.

All right, if there are no other items, then I would like to wish everybody a happy holidays and a happy new year.

And I hope everybody remains safe and warm and enjoys time with your families.

Thank you very much.

Thank you chair for running a beautiful meeting.