MPO Technical Committee Meeting   11/16/2021

for the series.

So let's keep on time today.

So I call this meeting to order.

Sandy, could you read the statement today?

This meeting of the Charlottesville Albemarle MPO Technical Committee is being held pursuant to Code of Virginia section 2.2-3708.2, which allows a public body to hold electronic meetings when the locality in which it is located has declared a local state of emergency and the catastrophic nature of the emergency makes it impracticable or unsafe to assemble a quorum in a single location.

And the purpose of the meeting is to provide for the discharge of its lawful purposes, duties, and responsibilities.

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

There will be an opportunity for public comment during that portion of the agenda.

Notice has been provided to the public through notice at the TJPDC offices, to the media, website postings and agenda.

Great.

So first on the agenda, we have matters from the public.

Or can you do attendance just by looking at the screen, Sandy?

Yeah, Gretchen, do you have the list of participants that you can look at?

I do.

Great.

So matters from the public, limit of three minutes per speaker.

Do we have any members of the public who would like to speak?

Look at you, Peter.

Take that as a no.

So next up on the agenda, we have approval of the draft meeting minutes for September 21st, 2021.

Does anyone have any changes?

Otherwise, I would entertain a motion.

Tim?

I'll make the motion.

All right, we have a motion from Tim, a second from Chuck.

We'll do unanimous consent.

All in favor, say aye or raise your hand.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None opposed?

Motion carries.

Next up on the agenda is the Virginia Transit Equity and Modernization Study.

Alrighty, let me see if I can get my screen shared here correctly.

All right, do you guys see the PowerPoint slides?

Yeah.

But do you see my notes or is it the actual slides?

Actual slides.

Perfect.

All right, guys.

So today I'm going to run through a short presentation that we've been giving to our MPOs and other stakeholders on the Virginia Transit Equity and Modernization Study.

So a little background on this study.

This is the result of House Joint Resolution 542, which came out of the General Assembly last year.

This basically directed DRPT to kind of undertake a significant statewide study of transit in the Commonwealth, really focused on like a needs assessment and really focused on encouraging and

gaining insight and input from communities that are generally underrepresented in kind of the traditional transit planning assessments and approach.

And it kind of looked at a variety of topics related to kind of the delivery of transit.

in the Commonwealth.

These topics were kind of generally shaped into the six broad categories you see in those tiles on the screen, ranging from transit accessibility, the adequacy of transit infrastructure, transit electrification, emerging technologies, transit safety, and system engagement in governance, so kind of like the structure of everything.

Before we really dive in though, it's kind of important to set the frame with kind of the overall study goals after we kind of know what it's going to be looking at.

This study will identify transit agency rider stakeholder needs, develop an action plan to address those needs and define underrepresented and underserved communities on the state wide kind of level of things.

The study will address opportunities, gaps, assessment of transit services and accessibility, needs and barriers to improve transit infrastructures, opportunities to reduce carbon footprint through bus electrification and other zero emission technologies, strategies to inform priorities of implementing and encouraging these technologies, opportunities to enhance passenger and transit employee safety,

and a framework for identifying and engaging the disadvantaged populations in underserved communities.

If you guys have questions as I go through this, feel free to interrupt at any point.

I'm happy to turn it into more of a conversation than me just kind of clicking through slides.

So kind of where we are in the process right now, we're sitting here in November.

We've wrapped up the data collection phase.

And we're well into the baseline conditions.

The baseline conditions is teeing us up to deliver the interim study report to the general assembly in December, which was mandated by the legislation that formed the study.

Once that's complete, early in the new year, we're going to be shifting goals and kind of taking this data collection and the baseline conditions and transitioning into more action planning, kind of understanding what some of the outputs are, what some of the actions may be based on the information that we've gathered and solicited from a very, very broad stakeholder group.

So kind of some of the key activities to date.

So far, we've completed this data collection phase, which involved review of plans and policies, collecting a lot of data points, and then kind of cleaning those data points.

Because unfortunately, when you're working with 39 different transit agencies, everybody has slightly different interpretations of things or counts similar metrics.

in different ways.

We did a big transit agency survey.

We got responses from all 39 of our agencies.

This was about a 45 question survey that really went very detailed on a lot of topics related to this study.

So we could really understand kind of the existing conditions out there when it came to transit equity and what agencies are looking at in terms of

Future developments with technology and modernization.

We've also engaged riders through a rider focus group that has met a number of times.

And kind of the last component is transit outreach toolkits.

We've worked with our consulting teams to put together a lot of materials that were circulated to our transit agencies as a way to try to increase engagement with the frontline employees.

Many of these employees are folks that

don't have email or might not really be in places frequently where we could engage them through kind of traditional means.

We have a lot of drivers with a lot of our bigger systems that might actually never really come into like the transit offices because they're doing like their driver shift changes kind of out in the field.

And so we've really worked to try to get that

that frontline employee engagement to make sure that we're getting a lot of really good feedback with this effort.

So on that data collection slide, kind of I mentioned that survey, we've also made a lot of technical data requests of our agencies.

This has been one of those areas that has been challenging because of just the level of

technical knowledge from an agency like Fork County to somebody like a CAT.

You know, there's a big difference in scale.

So we've had to kind of work with kind of the lowest common denominator and figure out what the best information is we're able to glean.

We've collected a lot of GIS information.

In a related project we were able to develop

GTFS, which is General Transit Feed Specification Data.

This is basically digital data that represents your transit route, your transit stops, and your schedule information in a way that we can analyze and do a lot of kind of GIS mapping on, collected information on each agency's capital programs, a big data dive into what we refer to as the National Transit Database or NTD,

And then finally, TransAm, which is a DRPT maintained database of assets.

So these are capital assets, things like buses, things like the CAT facility or the Jaunt facility.

So we can understand the condition and age of the general

transit infrastructure as it currently exists in the Commonwealth.

Done a big data collection kind of on that higher level, a lot of statewide data jumping into things like Title VI plans, public agency transportation safety plans, and transit agency strategic plans.

So what's in progress right now, that baseline conditions, big component of this has been

engagement of our two kind of main committees and groups, the transit equity committee and the transit technical working groups.

The equity committee is made up of mainly transit agency leaders and CEOs.

We have about 12 on there.

And then the technical working groups are made up of

technical staff at our transit agencies, some outside experts, and then also some key leaders in those fields from across the transit world and the US.

These groups have been meeting frequently and kind of diving into all of the topics that I displayed on my second slide, transit electrification, governance,

Modernization and Equity and really focusing in on those topics and kind of leading the discussion around those topics and producing kind of a lot of the data that's feeding up into the plan as it progresses.

So kind of just touching on some of the community engagement, the seven working groups.

We've launched a study website that's publicly available.

We're going to be making some tweaks to that website here shortly as we kind of load in some interactive mapping content that references a lot of the data that's been gathered, these outreach toolkits.

We have an open community comments database that we can receive and track comments that are made from the general public.

And then we're going to be targeting a virtual public forum for the spring of 2020.

I think it's still to be determined if that's going to be some sort of virtual or hybrid forum or in person.

You know, it's just hard to predict kind of how these things are going to play out.

Okay, so what's upcoming, action plan, the interim study report in December, that forum I mentioned, and then the final study report, which is due early summer of 2022.

Some initial themes that we're seeing out of the baseline conditions is equity can be incorporated

More in-state guidance, requirements and funding programs for public transit.

Many bus stops are poorly placed and not well connected to sidewalks.

This is something that probably a lot of folks are familiar with driving around in their communities, seeing

the bus stop that's in the ditch or other places like that.

Basic infrastructure, shelters, venting, benches, lighting, et cetera, are lacking at a lot of stops throughout the Commonwealth.

Most transit agencies do not have rider advisory boards or committees made up of citizens, potential riders, or current riders.

There's a significant interest from Virginia transit agencies to electrify fleets and adopt newer transit technologies.

But additional resources are required.

Funding, retooling of workforces, training, technical assistance.

As it stands right now, kind of a rule of thumb is an electric 40-foot bus, which is kind of our typical transit vehicle, costs approximately double than a standard diesel bus.

and that's excluding the cost of the charging infrastructure and kind of those associated components.

Many transit agencies are interested in piloting zero fare service to overcome barriers to transit access.

This is something that's kind of been an outgrowth of the COVID-19 pandemic in a lot of our transit agencies, kind of initially pausing fare collection because of the person-to-person interaction that it oftentimes entails.

The study action plan findings from the baseline conditions assessment and interim study report will inform the development of the study action plan.

The study action plan will include recommendations and the implementation strategies that address barriers by topic area and will describe specific actions needed.

and Next Steps condition required, timelines for implementation and responsible agencies.

We're anticipating the study action plan will advise changes to a lot of our programs and hopefully address some funding and policy issues that will help tweak implementation of a lot of the outcomes of this study.

So next steps, just kind of in summary, baseline conditions memo, interim report in this fall, and then that final report in spring of 2022.

There's a link to the website.

It's a rather long URL as URLs go, so I do apologize.

But if you do have questions, you all know where to find me.

Thanks, Wood.

I've got a question.

Good morning, everybody.

This study, I think, is right on target, especially the focus on equity.

I just received an update from Senetawana this morning.

And if what I'm reading is correct, based on the infrastructure bill signed by the president yesterday, the state will be getting $1.2 billion for transit

to improve public transit, which is very timely in terms of implementation of your study.

The question I have is, in terms of the equity aspect of this, how do you guys intend to obtain the data locally?

Are you going to require, after this is done, are you going to require localities to prepare their own transit plan as part of funding consideration?

That's a great question, Alex.

We already require transit agencies to either do a transit development plan or transit strategic plan as a requirement to receive state funding.

We anticipate that this study will probably recommend some changes to what's

included in the guidance for those documents.

We might see changes to the way those documents look at a community.

We might encourage additional focus on various topics related to equity, maybe taking deeper dives.

A lot of transit agencies already do surveys of the riders.

There might be some recommendations that

You know, specifically start to ask questions regarding demographics there or access.

You know, we might even start to look at things like encouraging survey instruments to be circulated in various minority languages that would be present in the community.

Some are like Hampton Roads that has a, you know, significant concentrations of diversity

could probably really benefit from something like that.

So that's probably where the planning implementation on the local level is going to occur.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

I think you answered my question thoroughly because I was wondering about that.

As you may know, and some of you,

We're in the process of completing our comprehensive plan.

And actually the city council took a look at it yesterday, and one of the things that is needed, but it was considered in the plan,

For me, I don't think people are talking about it a whole lot.

It's a transit.

We are talking about density, but transit to support the density development is not usually coming up, but I hope the latest emphasis on transit improvement and equity will probably help in terms of linking

That density issue, the provisions in the comprehensive plan and the public transportations.

Yeah, so first I agree with what Alex is saying.

I think it's a great study.

I am a little bit concerned that the study won't address displacement and gentrification because if this study is perfectly successful, we identify the vulnerable populations and then we implement the perfect transit solutions to meet their needs, but then they get displaced potentially because we just built this great transit, they get displaced.

Then aren't we right back where we started?

So I'm curious, Wood, have you seen anything in the study looking at how are we going to serve these communities and then protect them from displacement?

And then on a broader note, I'm curious, Wood, do you see anything about this study that is different?

Because this is not the first transit study we've ever done.

We've been doing transit studies for decades.

And I think that hasn't resulted in us having public transit that we're really happy with.

I think what I can say is that what is different about this study is that some components of the target audience for this study is us as in DRPT.

We realize that this is kind of a tool that is going to allow us to really take that 360 look at our programs because we know that

The way we shape a program can have a great impact on what a transit agency does or doesn't do.

We're hopeful that reshaping our programs to maybe encourage things like electrification will have that benefit to help enhance adoption.

On the displacement front,

While this study really hasn't gotten down into that level being that it's kind of more statewide, there's some good examples.

Maybe like the Richmond region has done a lot of work with their transit vision plan that has kind of really tried to look at some of those issues and how you can deliver transit kind of

equitably without kind of causing some of the externalities in terms of impact on the communities that you're targeting and serving.

You know, I think that's been a big emphasis in Richmond in terms of them going fare free because they have really realized that during this pandemic, especially that a lot of their riders are not choice riders.

They're riders that need the service and are having to take the service to get to work at something like, you know, the VCU hospital and therefore like, you know, the equity component of charging fares.

They've also focused on, you know, kind of just keeping headways up.

in order to meet demand, but also allow the folks to spread out on the vehicles.

Great.

Any other questions?

All right, thanks Wood.

I guess we'll move on now to the round five smart scale changes.

Turned off here.

Okay.

They just sent out an email yesterday with some

about a webinar that's upcoming to go over the SMART SCALE changes also and to get everybody prepped on it.

So basically I'm gonna show you the same presentation that they had showed or that they had sent out and we can go through it.

And if you guys have any questions, I can also, we can pull up the spreadsheet and go through what the effect of these changes would have had on last round of SMART SCALE.

Okay, this was what they sent out with the email for the Smart Scale Change webinar that's coming up on the 22nd.

So I'm just gonna go through it real quick, and then we can talk about what the changes are and the impacts on the projects.

Let's see here now.

Okay, these are the five or six factor areas.

Currently, land use is not one of the factors in area type C and D, and that's part of the reason for the change for that one.

but these are the areas that all the applications are scored upon.

Environmental changes, there's E1 factor and E2 factor.

E1 looks at air quality and they're trying to get a better handle on this this time and to where they can look at what the changes in the non-SOV trips would do to

create CO2 offsets.

So part of what they're doing this round is looking at how to better quantify that number.

And the other one is the impacts on cultural and natural resources.

This has been changed in rounds two and four, and it basically is a negative number.

So the greater your impact is, the greater the negative effect is on this score.

And then, like I said, we'll look at

land use measures and cost estimates.

Like I said, greenhouse gas emissions is what they were trying to more quantify in this round of SMART SCALE.

And then they're making some minor adjustments to the E2 measure.

And then currently we have the data sets

And we're getting them from environmental.

And one of the other changes they're gonna make is they're gonna just have environmental do that part of the evaluation.

And I'll get to that when we get to that section.

So it's just looking at those different cultural resources and getting environmental to give us the impacts.

The E1 measure, like I said, we looked at, currently we're looking at the process and then we looked at a quantitative and a qualitative measure to get those improvements.

And this is pretty much what I went through before.

They're looking at how much the increase in non-SOV, VMT,

the project would create and then measuring that change to get the carbon CO2 offset.

Here's the current factors that we look at.

Basically rail, bike, ped, pedestrian and these haven't changed from the previous rounds.

You get certain amount of points for each one of these factors in your application.

And then those are multiplied by the amount of

as non-SOV users, and then those are added up to give you a score.

And then for freight, it's, hold on, let's see here.

For freight, they basically look at the amount of reduction in delay that's being created, and that's multiplied by the percentage of trucks to give you the

Change in the truck portion of this factor.

The special accommodations category is one of the ones that are dropping this time as part of this change, because they're not really getting any benefit from those.

I mean, it gets a benefit, but they're not gonna factor that into the score for this.

It's hard to measure how many of those are impacting a portion of the road that you're basically improving.

Like I said, they are looking at the two other components and trying to see how those would increase the project will increase those and then how they would measure those.

Basically, here's an example of what I'm talking about.

These are the categories, and this is what they were proposing to do with this project on Lafayette Boulevard Multimodal.

Currently, what they do is they figure out how many of these different items, how many non-SOVs are generated by these

items and then they're multiplied by that factor on that previous sheet that I showed you and they come up with a measure and then those are just summed and then like I said for the freight they do the same thing they get the delay times the truck percentage and it gives you a measure and then those are added together and then this gives you the score well this is the score before it's weighted

This is the, and then for what they're proposing to do is instead of having using this to multiply by all of the increasing users, you're only multiplying it by the specific users that are affected by that improvement.

Like the sidewalk is gonna encourage 22 more people to use the sidewalk because you're putting it in.

So that's times two that would give you the 44.

So those are that's one of the changes they're making.

The other one is that they were changing how this part of it works over here.

You would sum it up, but then you would scale it at this point.

And then instead of scaling it at the end, so they would scale this and then for the freight, they would do the same thing, you would get that same number and then you would scale that and that would that was your highest

score for this factor.

So those are added together and divided by two and that would give you your weighted score for this.

This one's not weighted but it's probably going to be 100 because of the this number here.

Are there any questions about that?

This is a lot of information and I'm not going over it very well.

Are there any

Well, what I was going to do was there's a spreadsheet at the end that shows how it's comparative.

You can pull up this presentation, the original CTB presentation that was done on the 7th.

It's got a lot more detail about all of these.

For this factor, they went through eight different scenarios.

to look at different options.

Not so much this, this is basically option two here on the right that they ended up using.

Option one didn't do the weighting right this way.

Option two does the weighting this way.

The next slide is, and this is where I was talking about the weighting part of it for this project.

So these aren't the same, but this hasn't been weighted and this has been weighted, and that's the difference.

So for the CO2 offset, they went about it a little, like I said, a little different.

They pulled data from the other factors and then they use triplinks based on national averages and SMART SCALE from the C1 and C2 categories of, those are their congestion factors.

The emissions factors, that's based on the National Household Survey data,

for, well, the emissions is based on your standard number of CO2 per gallon of gas.

And then your delay is your fuel efficiency, which is your average fuel efficiency for the vehicles.

Where they get the other numbers up here is what they're using for their national average for the trip links for that various bike pad,

transit and those three uses.

But basically here's the calculations.

So basically they calculate these individually, then they add them up to get your total non SUV VMT.

And then they basically convert it using this equation to CO2.

For freight, they would do it a little differently.

They know what the reduction in the delay is.

So they would basically back in what is the truck vehicle delay.

And then they would multiply that by your truck percentages to get your volume of heavy vehicles.

And then they would convert that to your CO2 offset.

And here's basically how that would work.

The lockers and the bicycle parking spaces, they don't really generate any additional users at the park and ride lot.

So they just got zero.

The sidewalk has 22 times your 0.767 and it gives you 14.7.

And then your transit items provide your segments where they're looking at what the trip links are for those transit vehicles.

This one actually uses transit to the VRE so you get a longer section.

And then those are added up and then that's converted to determine what your CO2 offset is.

And then your freight, like I said before, is calculated down here and gives you that offset.

And then those are added together to give you your score.

And then this is weighted against all the other projects.

So what the final proposal was is to use the option two, which is the first part I showed you, and option five, which is the last part I showed you, and combining them, the qualitative and the quantitative 50-50 to give you a more representation of how better to reflect the score.

Now the E2 measure, this is the other piece of environmental.

This really hasn't changed a whole lot.

Before they just used a quarter mile buffer for all projects.

What they're proposing to do this time is tier this based on the size of the type of the project it is.

So you have tier one would be 30 feet, tier two would be an eighth, and tier three would be a quarter mile.

And depending on your project, most of our projects are tier one projects.

So they would only need to get a 30 foot buffer.

So that would dramatically decrease the amount of environmental impact in the sensitive areas that we're having.

Cause most of our stuff is not requiring a lot of right away and it's not adding new capacity or new lanes.

It's not roads on new alignment.

So those are the things that are the higher tier type of projects.

And you can see this is a example of some of the items that are on the list and what they would rank as.

And again, like I said, this would be effects of it on the scenarios.

And so that's it for land use.

I haven't been involved in, I mean, that's it for environmental.

I haven't been involved in environmental changes, so I'm not that first in those.

Land use, I was pretty much involved with from the beginning, so I know a lot about it.

I'm curious about these projections, like how many more users is this improvement gonna bring?

When they calculate the change versus what's on the roadway now versus if you add the improvement, what it would be in the future, they're looking at that conversion and diverting trips from the main line to that other mode of transportation.

And that's given us congestion change in the delay for the roadway.

So that's where they're getting some of that information.

I have to look in the technical guide.

It's in the technical guide and I don't, they didn't put it on the slide.

So I don't, I don't really know.

I'd have to look it up.

But if you look in the technical guide under the congestion, it talks about the other modes and what the shift would be for those modes to determine the congestion factor and what that number would be in that equation to determine what the change in the delay would be.

Because basically they're diverting traffic off the roadway and freeing up space that

I'd like to follow up on that, Chuck, on Stephen's comment.

And I don't know if this is exactly, if this is what Stephen's asking, but I was struck by this piece of it where that now they have determined that, and I actually never knew that we got

points for including bike parking in the past in our projects.

That's, I mean, that's what they're saying.

I'm not sure where they got that information from.

I just did a quick Google search and it feels like I was able to turn up a lot of data that shows that installing covered bike parking does increase the likelihood that people choose to bike to a destination.

Is that what you're asking, Stephen?

Yeah, yeah, you've got it.

Like we've worked with consultants who have been responsible for doing like transit planning projections for us.

And they would say things like, oh yeah, do these three changes and your ridership is gonna double in three years.

Like, I don't know where they get any of this stuff.

I'm not the one, I'm presenting the information that somebody else

actually pulled together.

The land use part of it I know a lot more about because I was dealing with that.

The environmental I know very little about.

I've been learning a lot in the last couple of weeks on actually the process they went through and all that stuff.

So environmental is they're trying and there's a study going on that environmental is undertaking right now to

Develop tools for measuring the GHGs because right now there aren't any.

I don't think it's a bad idea.

Well, it's dark.

This is an existing park and ride lot with existing facilities there.

So this is just, they're adding some improvements to the corridor and to the park and ride lot.

So it's not like, and all they're saying is by adding these to the park and ride lot, it's not going to necessarily, I mean, I would think it would encourage trips too, but they're, they're not saying that necessarily.

Why?

I don't know.

So that can be a question that we bring up for the folks at the webinar.

They're basically haven't finalized any of these changes and they're looking for feedback.

Let me see if it's on the email.

And this is all going to be covered in the webinar.

On the 22nd.

On the 22nd?

OK.

Yes.

And hopefully there'll be time at that point to take questions on some of this stuff.

Yeah, when I saw that originally, I had a question about I just haven't had time to follow up with them on that particular question because I didn't necessarily think that was the case either.

So we'll go through land use now and then we can look at some I can pull up the spreadsheet and you can see where the changes are.

Land use has the biggest effect on

the projects across the state.

However, I would just let you know that upfront.

So, and it basically looks at the density of population and employment around the project.

The more density you have, the more that encourages walking because you've got more employment, more generators and more tractors right there close.

So any improvement you make there is going to encourage those trips to occur.

And that's what land use is trying to measure.

So what they basically are looking at is adding this to the other area types, C and D, which don't currently have land use.

And then looking at the buffer, because the further you go out, the more population and more employment and more commercial density you're going to get.

So they looked at shrinking that down to a more reasonable amount to

that better reflects what the walking trip would be.

Because most people aren't gonna walk three miles, but they may walk up to maybe a mile.

So that's why they were looking at the density.

I mean, the distance buffer.

So quickly to go through these, like I said, all area types could C and D don't have that area type now.

So they're missing out on a lot.

And the one mile is for the average pedestrian tripling.

So basically this is the top is what the existing percentages are.

Once your scores are calculated, they're assigned a 10% role and then there are a percentage and then they're summed.

So this is basically to change this table and what's below are the recommended changes.

The red is where they're taking percentages from to add in the green category on the right.

on the bottom table.

And these are the map of the area, different area types.

You can see is most of the areas are in area type D, which is the rural area.

You do have B, which is Charlottesville MPO area, and then Richmond and Fredericksburg, and then Salem.

Rich, Roanoke MPO area.

Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads are area type A.

And then the TJPDC, as well as some of the other MPOs are area type C.

So where we see the biggest disconnect is where you have area type B and A mixed with area type C and D, because it puts those C and D at a disadvantage to compete for their getting their applications funded.

So that's why we were really looking at this one.

Okay, not a whole lot of information there, deeper dive.

This is just the next steps we went through and get public input.

And that's it.

I didn't really go into a lot of detail.

I can show you more of the detail that they had in there.

They looked at eight different scenarios for land use.

And I can give you an idea of what that

information look like.

This is excerpts from their file.

These are the different scenarios they looked at, various radius, basically what area type it's going to affect and then the percentages.

This one, test four looked at

Waiting A and B and C and D separately.

And five was mainly looking at just if we reduce the area type or the radius from three miles to one miles, how it would affect area type A and B.

But six is what they ended up focusing their efforts on.

And how they came up with that is I'll show you

This is the existing and this is basically this bottom of this table is the percentage of your score that you've got from those individual categories.

So you can see from land use you're getting 44% of your scores coming from land use for your approximately.

This is an average number.

And it's just a matter of how do these other area types compete when you're getting half the score from that and they're not getting any of their score from that.

So, and that's what we were trying to do.

And you can see this is the differences between those first two tables and here's the changes that we were proposing.

And then this is,

What the benefit is score with the new, if you use the new percentages, how your applications would have, where they would have gotten their scores.

And like I said, you're still getting a predominant amount of points from land use, but not so much.

These are closer.

And then this is the difference between those two.

So that's it for that.

Let me pull up the spreadsheet and I'll show you some other information where you can look at the impacts to the scores.

These are the scores from last, from round four.

Basically here is existing and then this is what it would have been if we had these in place.

So basically these three projects right here are in the urbanized towns in the northern part of the district.

Two of them were in the town of Warrenton and one of them's in the town of Culpeper.

So they have the same sort of density that Charlottesville and the urbanized part of Albemarle County have.

So that's why they scored well and they moved up in the ranks from what they did initially.

And then we had a couple that fell off that would be John Warner and Araya Road and Emmett Street and the Fifth Street Hub.

Those were the three projects that would have fallen off and not been funded had we gotten this for last round.

And part of that is for like John Warner Parkway, because we were using a three mile radius, the amount of

Commercial property within that three miles grew significantly.

You've got a lot of residential, which don't have a lot of employment or non-work trips that would have occurred in that area.

So by shrinking that distance down, you're dropping that interaction amount down because there's not as much interaction between those two types of uses.

Emmett Street is just more or less cost because it was right on the bottom of the borderline.

It was the last project that was funded and then the 5th Street Hub also fell off.

And it's similar, the one mile radius just doesn't, it reduces its effect on the number, amount of non-work trips that it's gonna affect.

So why did hydraulic 29 fall so much?

It's not necessarily, I haven't gotten into the weeds about why, cause this table is a combination of environmental and land use.

It's just that the,

I don't necessarily think it fell some, but the 29 corridor didn't fall as much.

And the 29 corridor project was basically a really small project along that corridor, so it had less environmental impacts

So where the hydraulic 29, because it was on two roads, the footprint was much bigger.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And you're also crossing the creek there too.

So when you say the footprint's way bigger if it's on two roads, is that because

It's not necessarily that you're getting that.

It's probably closer to the footprint that it's because it's two measures.

The E1 is a positive measure.

E2 is a negative measure.

So your negative measure for that project is probably greater because you've got more environmental

Any other questions, everyone?

I probably butchered this pretty bad.

So if you have any questions, just send them to me.

If you have comments, like I said, send them to the SMART SCALE website and then they will get to those folks and they can make tweaks as we move forward.

I actually have a question, Rory.

And again,

We're all in this crystal ball time right now.

But is this, Chuck, is this a staff decision to make the final changes?

And could the advisory committee, we know that the makeup will change next year with the governor from a different party.

So does that,

I do not know.

The CTB ultimately makes the decision on the changes and the staff is basically presenting this to the CTB.

They presented it in October and they'll present it again this month.

So it's just time.

So then I guess if that timeframe is maintained, then we really don't, the changes as modified

should that you've presented to us and then whatever modifications should become the rules for that next round of SMART SCALE and it would be the reworking of SMART SCALE if it were to be reworked by the next administration after they come in that would be effective.

Yeah, we'll probably be the next, unless they want to make some

I'm not saying they couldn't do it, but if the legislators want to make significant changes, they could basically say, let's postpone this current round of SMART SCALE and then make changes.

And then that's what they did last when they originally started SMART SCALE.

They basically put a hold on all funding until after SMART SCALE started.

Okay.

Thanks.

Appreciate it.

Yeah.

It's all crystal ball stuff at this point.

I mean, the other thing is we've got the legislation from the federal government that's coming in too.

And I know that like the Louisa County, they've got a couple of line item projects that are listed in the bill.

So but they're not going to be fully funded.

So it's, there's a lot of,

So overall, I'm telling you, this isn't a fair characterization, but it seems like these changes are, you know, bad for us, right?

Like in this example, for last round, we would have lost on 38 million in funding.

It's mainly, there's only so much money.

Fortunately, last round of SMART SCALE, we got $105 million of additional funding for projects.

So these projects wouldn't have been funded anyway last round in a normal round of SMART SCALE.

Because of the omnious bill, we got $87 million

and then there was a surplus, so they gave us another $18.7 million.

So we were able to get, and if you look on this spreadsheet, there's some light green numbers, rows down at the bottom, those were other projects that we were able to get funded with some of that additional funding.

So it's not just these projects, we were able to get some other projects.

These projects, like I said, the ones that were up here, and it's not so much the radius, it's adding the area type to

Land Use to Area Type C and D that had the biggest effect.

Because once you fund those three projects, the money's got to come from somewhere.

And this just shows you where, I've got another spreadsheet, but I don't want to spend time.

On average, the Charlottesville MPO, Albemarle County, you get about eight points of your score

from land use overall.

I mean, you had 14 projects, 11 of them had at least eight points in land use.

And the rest of the district can't compete with that because they're lucky if they are getting three and four points on a total from an application when you're getting more than that in one category.

So that's where the disconnect is.

So really it's,

It's those other organized areas within the district that are going to be helped with this.

And that's what that other graph was trying to show where they got their scores from.

Okay, so it's more than like in the last round, we were kind of way inflated and crowding everyone else out.

We did really well.

22 of our 36 projects were in the top 50% across the state.

Four of our projects in the rural areas were the highest ranking safety projects in the state.

So we're doing

Good job coming up with great projects and getting to maximizing our points.

Rory, just to give you a little bit of perspective, Savannah County was the only other county within our PDC that's also in our Culpeper VDOT district that received any SMART SCALE project awards.

That makes sense.

Then just a follow up on that and looking to the future.

Do we have any better sense because of the status of the census information as to whether our MPO will grow?

I can maybe attempt to answer the first part of the question.

I'll let Chuck see if he can answer the second part of the question.

One of the things we're waiting on is to see if there's going to be a change in how the density has to be configured in order to adjust the boundaries.

There has been some discussion, and to the best of my knowledge, there has not been a decision made.

Whether or not the density has to be contiguous and how far apart sort of dense areas might be in order to be able to be eligible to be incorporated into the MPO area.

So I think we're waiting for some determinations.

We'll probably start doing more specific research into it.

Next calendar year, maybe starting in the spring to start doing some mapping and seeing what that might look like.

And then it would be a process of us developing a proposal and getting agreement from the localities that could be affected and then making a petition and going through that process.

But we haven't looked into it specifically.

I know the population has increased.

I don't know what that will potentially mean for

the boundaries being adjusted.

I mean, it's based on population.

But follow up on your part before we go to that.

Sure.

Ultimately it's a decision of the governor, but they can make that determination that they would like to not participate and that would be passed along to the governor.

And that would most likely be still the case, or is there a chance that we could be talking about going down into Buckingham?

You might go east.

You might go east into Fluvanna and Louisa.

That's where the other big population centers are.

There's a lot around what Sandy was saying.

There's a lot of, I know that something came out a while ago about, they were talking about reducing the,

Density numbers, I mean, not reducing the density numbers, but increasing the density numbers so that the areas would have to be more dense to qualify.

So unless they change, if they go that route, it could impact the MPO and that the size could actually shrink.

Once you start looking at those rural areas that aren't as dense,

Not necessarily adding more areas.

You might, the areas that you, area you might have might shrink.

So those are something that we need to really still get determination from the Fed on what, how they're gonna look at that.

Regarding funding, it's all based on population.

Most of SMART SCALE is based on competitiveness of the application.

All right, so running up against time, so let's go ahead and move forward to smart scale project updates.

All right, we met with Kevin, what, yesterday, Kevin, to talk about the 29-250 bypass.

Yeah, so we're looking at the projects with Kevin and the MPO on what they want to move forward with.

And then once we, most of them are bike-ped related, a lot of them multi-modal projects, Avon Street, Fifth Street,

Like I said, the 29-250 bypass.

The TJPDC is looking at several applications for, we'll be looking, hopefully the county wants them to pursue those.

So we'll still have to work with Sandy and the TJPD staff on those.

But there are some of the other locations in the MPO area that

The county's not directly looking at, and the MPO's not directly looking at, but that the TJPDC could actually submit for the county.

And they include the old Trail 250 intersection out by Crozet, as well as the North 29 corridor study, whatever we get out of that project, there may be some recommendations.

Study for the Pantops area as part of the pipeline process as well as Shadwell, as well as improvements at the Shadwell intersections out to the east.

So those all could be PDC applications.

All right.

Have you heard from any other localities about projects, potential projects they might ask you?

Yeah, I have not heard any requests.

Usually, I wait until a little bit closer, but I might go ahead and just make that request now to see if anybody else has any projects that they

Yeah, I can weigh on that too, Sandy.

Basically, most of them have four or three

I think Fluvanna is looking at possibly four but they may only submit three because one of the ones they want to submit is not eligible.

Louisa might be the one locality that might have more than their number but we'll still wait and see on that one.

They have some locations that they know they want but with line items in the

Transportation Infrastructure Bill, they may have some additional ones they want to submit because they need additional funding for them.

But we'll see.

Green County right now, I think they're only looking at possibly three.

So you should be in good shape overall.

And then as far as the MPA projects that we're moving forward on, it took me a little bit longer than I was hoping, but I did, we were able to make all of the appointments for the stakeholder advisory committee for the Ravana River, like Pedbridge.

So those meetings will start, our first meeting is scheduled on November 30th, to start going through the project background, to explain a little bit of the history and what our goals are, and then

to walk through the process that we'll be doing with the stakeholder advisory committee to develop priorities for the project.

The other projects that we're looking at for the MPS, so the Avon Street multimodal extension, the District Avenue roundabout, and the Fifth Street intersection of multimodal improvements, we'll probably start having those discussions in January to

to determine what we need to do as far as outreach and what kind of additional decisions we need to make to develop those project applications.

We will plan to meet at least with the Avon Street and Fifth Street committees that were involved in the development of the plans that we're using as the baseline for the applications to

to at least review the application and make sure they know what they're submitting and provide opportunities for any feedback or input at that point.

Is that it for that item?

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Great.

So we're on schedule.

So let's move on to staff updates.

Yeah, I just wanted to take a few minutes to let you all know and make you aware of where we are in the progress we're making through our work program.

As I think most of you know, we are short-staffed at the moment, so we're really limited with staff capacity.

So as a result, that means that we're not able to move forward as well as we wish we could on all of the elements in our work program.

I included in your packet a summary just showing dividing the work plan up into our administrative long range and short range categories where we are at the end of the first quarter.

So ideally we would be at about 25%.

spent through if we were you know being able to work through a program at a perfect pace and right now we're under under half of that budget has been spent so we're definitely behind spending wise because we're we're short a few staff members so what we're doing is we are prioritizing the projects that were already in progress like the north 29 corridor study we're making sure that we are

Following through on anything that's more urgent or immediate in need like the SMART SCALE projects to make sure that we're moving forward and that we're able to take advantage of those opportunities.

We're continuing to comply with all of the federal requirements so things like the TIP, Lucinda continues to maintain the TIP and

We'll be coming back to you to discuss performance targets and things like that.

And then what we're trying to do is really looking at ways that we can most efficiently still move forward on meeting some of these goals with really limited staff capacity.

So doing things like applying for the OIP growth and accessibility grant to get some technical assistance to support the development of our LRTP scope and so that we're able to

to make sure that we're moving forward on that.

We have had to put off the climate action initiatives research for right now, and then also really sort of limiting the additional public outreach, public engagement that we've been able to do, as well as scaling back a little bit of what we had hoped we would be able to do in participation in some of their projects.

But we are committed to moving forward and just riding this through until we are fully staffed.

I do want to also mention that we submitted or we put out RFPs to retain a consultant for a strategic plan.

We did not get any responses to that.

We got some initial feedback that in addition to local governments and regional governments and state governments all experiencing staff shortages, there are also capacity limitations with consultants.

And so we probably need to increase the funding available for a strategic plan in order to be able to

for consultants to find that to be an attractive offer and to respond to that.

So one of the items I would like to propose is to take the $25,000 that we had not programmed yet for on-call services and add that to our budget for the MPO strategic plan and reissue the RFPs to see if we can attract consultants to respond at that point

with an increased budget that will allow a little bit more flexibility and creativity in how they respond to that.

The other thing I want to mention is that we do have a new planner that will be starting next week, I believe, so they'll be able to start working on some of the programming that we've left untouched at this point, and then

And then we are continuing to hire for a higher level transportation planning position.

But assuming that there is going to be some money left unspent, we will be moving into a long range transportation plan update next year.

And so we are confident that at that point, we will be able to roll over the funds to be able to use as part of that process if we're not able to

Put it towards the work that we have programmed for this year.

It appears to be a reasonable proposal that you're making to increase the budget so that you can find a consultant.

Well, probably, I think we will need to amend the UPWP.

So I might bring that back.

Sounds good to me.

Thanks, and keep up the hard work.

I know it's tough being short of that.

Hello everybody.

This will be nice and quick, but we just wanted to, again, keep everybody abreast of what's going on with RideShare.

I know the last time I came to speak with you, I had some information to share, so I just wanted to follow up on that.

RideShare has been promoting the Afton Express in the month of October.

Usually we do RideShare Week during that time frame, which involves a lot more promotions throughout the month.

But with COVID still lingering and some of the restrictions from DRPT,

We decided it was the best use of staff time and resources to really continue to promote the Acton Express, which launched September 1.

We didn't want to lose any of that great momentum that we had that first month, also because fares for the Acton Express started kicking in after that first month, so October 1.

So we put out some radio advertisements just to continue to build awareness

and to increase ridership and I have good news to report that as of yesterday during my weekly Afton Express meeting we were informed that ridership has continually been increasing

and we are almost to the 40 passengers per day, which gets us halfway to our goal already in the first year of 80.

So we got to keep that momentum going and up, but that was exciting news to see that even though fares kicked in in October, we have only seen an increase in ridership.

We were planning some additional outreach activities, which as many of you know, is a little tricky during COVID to do actual outreach.

But we are going to set up some tabling opportunities at UVA.

We are looking for other opportunities.

I know the city has mentioned that they would be interested once more staff are back in the office because if they're not in the office they don't need to be taking the bus.

All that good stuff.

So just keep your eyes and ears open if you think of anywhere

That would be really beneficial for us to have some promotions for Act and Express.

We are kind of working around places that are near the stops.

We will also be doing some more targeted marketing in the month of December and January.

We're going to focus on some origin destinations in

The Central Shenandoah region for the first month and then some destinations if you're on this side of the mountain in the second month.

So as always, stay tuned.

There will be more information and more things to come with Afton Express.

And then the other quick thing that I wanted to share as a follow up from the last time that we met is also in the month of October.

We had Discover Transit Month, which was initially a program that DRPT was going to do statewide due to concerns with COVID and staffing.

They kind of

took a step back that told us as a program if we were still had in you know things that we felt comfortable promoting that it was all right to do so we partnered with Jaunt, CAT, and UTS and did a series of three videos just really talking about how the services work how to take advantage of them looking at concerns that folks have if they've never taken transit before and trying to address some of those issues

And just reminding folks that it's not as complicated as it seems from the outside and once you try it once, it's a lot easier to continue.

So we posted those through CAT and their YouTube channel and then each of the agencies involved spread that through social media, particularly through Facebook and Twitter.

We are in the process of compiling a report to summarize kind of the results that we saw, but it looks like we've gotten some really good feedback so far.

And it was kind of a lot of fun to do, which is always nice when that happens with work.

So we would be happy to share that summary report once it is complete, if the committee would like to see it.

And we are also scheduling some meetings to continue doing some more collaborative work.

And to showcase all the transportation opportunities in the region.

So that's it for me.

I believe that the CSPDC does have some data at that and they are looking at changing possibly some of the routes to accommodate more of the schedules at the health systems buildings there at UVA, but I think they were waiting to get that data to see if maybe, you know, the super duper early morning route, which I think is at like five something in the morning, you know, if that was going, if that one seemed to be at least initially less,

If there's a deeper dive that anybody wants on any of that info, I'm happy to see what we can

What we can come up with with CSPDC to share with the group for sure.

Then a follow-up question.

Correct, yes.

And then I guess a question for the UVA folks.

It is my understanding that they are not, since they are a partner in paying for the service.

However, they are looking at ways to possibly offer reduced cost

Thank you.

That is an excellent question.

I have not been given any specific data on the exact number of people or the percentage of people who are utilizing those stops.

Yeah, and Becca may be on top of that too.

She's just not here today.

Becca White, parking and transportation head at UVA.

That is an excellent question, Bill.

And it actually does look to be that we have a lot of repeat riders.

One of the interesting things that they shared with us yesterday in the meeting is not only does it look to be repeat riders, but further evidence of this is every day and at the boardings, they are selling multiple, multiple fare cards.

So people are buying the full fare card, which I think gets them

10, 15, 20 rides.

I think there's a couple of options on the fare card.

And so people are getting the cards and definitely committing.

And I think when they did a rider survey at the middle to end of September, it looked like they were seeing mostly repeat riders.

So that's the whole thing.

It's like, if we can, again, much like the other transit promotion that we can do, if we can just get people to try it once, they seem to really enjoy and appreciate the service and are often sticking with it.

I mentioned and they talked about and we haven't confirmed exactly how to do it but doing a bring a buddy on the bus to help you know get more people to try it and by doing that maybe the person who brings them will get you know a discounted ride or free ride or fare we're still working out those details there will be promote we're planning to do promotions and some things

Very cool.

And yeah, I'd be interested in that top data too, both from like the destinations and in origin, whether it's like being more popular in Stanton versus Waynesboro and how that's all working out.

But great progress.

Yeah, I can definitely get that data.

Oh, and one other quick thing.

They were doing some construction on the Waynesboro Park and Ride lot, which I think I've mentioned and many of you know is our busiest park and ride lot in the RideShare region there in Waynesboro.

And that construction has been completed.

And the only things that they need to do are install the permanent bus shelters for the act and express there.

Awesome.

Anyone else have any questions?

All right.

Thanks, Sarah.

Thanks, guys.

So we had a couple minor adjustments to the tip in October and November.

About half a million dollars was moved from

the traffic and safety grouping to the maintenance and system preservation grouping.

Also in bridges and the grouping maintenance of bridges removed a little over a million dollars from fiscal year 22 to, no, from fiscal year 21 to fiscal year 22.

And then also there was some funds moved from bridges to traffic safety, traffic and safety in fiscal year 22.

And then I can go right into the Transit Vision Plan public meeting.

And I'm going to post the links again in the chat box.

And I'm really hoping that you guys will all sign up for the public meeting, which is on Thursday night at 6.30 PM.

There's also surveys on both of the TJPDC transit projects.

There's like so many transit studies right now.

It's hard to keep them all straight, but the TJPDC is doing the Albemarle County Transit Expansion.

And we've already had the public meeting for that.

So there's just a survey for that one.

And then the second one is this Thursday, the Regional Transit Vision Plan, which is for the entire TJPDC region, including the rural areas.

And we're really hoping to have people come and share their ideas and vision for transit in the future for the entire region.

Also, that link will bring you to the webpage where you can register for the meeting and take the survey.

And the survey will be up at least a week after the public meeting.

So please share those details with your network.

Awesome.

Thanks, Lucinda.

Any questions on any of those?

We don't need to take any action on the tip adjustments.

All right, so roundtable updates.

I guess we've actually got a fair amount of time left.

Oh, anyone have any updates?

They're calling on people.

Yeah, I can't think of any updates.

I think the last Planning Commission meeting, I mentioned that, as a lot of you probably knew, that Emmett Street was closed temporarily for some utility work in the road.

As far as I know, that's complete, so the road should be reopened, maybe with some limited closures.

And just going forward, as far as I know, with all the work going on around there, they'll probably continue to be temporary.

Closures though not permanent, like not full closure of the road as far as I know.

So there at Emmett Ivey as well as the Contemplative Sciences Center just further south on Emmett Street is getting underway so there may be some impacts there as well.

Cool, thanks.

Sure, got a couple DRPT updates I can run through with you all.

Let's see, our Transit Ridership Incentive Program.

This is a new program that we put together this year.

It was one of the things that came out of the General Assembly session last year.

Presented at the October CTB meeting, draft recommendations for the first round of funding, three regional route projects were selected, GRTC, Greater Lynchburg Transit Company for a route extension,

PAT, which is Petersburg area transit for a southern connector to Emporia, and Hampton Roads Transit for a circulator at the naval bases and the naval facilities down there.

We had four zero fare projects that were selected.

GRTC, Greater Richmond Transit Corporation, Alexandria, Dash, and Mountain Empire Older Citizens, which is a rural provider in far southwest Virginia.

where the other UVA is.

Two additional zero fare projects that DRPT is working on identifying funding resources for and will make a future determination if funding is available are Charlottesville Area Transit and Fredericksburg Regional Transit.

Let's see what else we got going on.

Oh, we put out a new tool online called the Virginia Transportation Navigator.

This is a tool that folks can use to find transit resources in their community.

We partnered with Virginia Navigator, which is a nonprofit that focuses on developing these resources.

They have a disability navigator, a senior navigator, and we incorporated transit resources into those tools.

I'll drop a link in the chat if people are interested in seeing those resources that are now available.

We have a couple upcoming transit webinars.

The first one is more relevant to our transit agencies.

On November 19th at noon, we have a transit asset management plan revision kickoff webinar.

On November 22nd, we have a COVID strategies handbook webinar.

And on November 29th, we have a Commuter Assistance Programs and Special Projects Grants Workshop, which is probably relevant to the MPO staff.

I believe we'll be touching on 5303 information and along with our special grant programs at that time.

And we continue to work to stand up the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority.

Details regarding upcoming VPRA meetings are available on VPRA's new website.

I've got a question for you, Wood.

Awesome.

Sounds good.

I'm looking forward to hearing the exact scheduling on that once that's figured out.

All right.

So we'll go to, I guess, the city.

I don't have an update.

So Belmont Bridge is having its first major traffic shift today.

So we are moving all traffic on the western side of the bridge.

So we can open up the eastern side, start demo.

You're going to see preparation activities for the bridge, but the bridge will not actually start coming down until say about a month from now.

So as soon as we end this meeting, I can go out there and take a look at what they're doing.

The other thing is Chuck mentioned that he was unaware that the city, what the city was applying for for the next round is SMART SCALE.

Just want to remind everyone this is still early in the process.

We have a new city council coming online.

The city does plan to apply for SMART SCALE, but we haven't yet decided which projects.

I don't think any of them are going to be a surprise.

West Main Phase 4, we continue on with that project.

There's been discussion about Fifth Ridge and improvements within the city.

We've done a study on that.

The Preston Corridor,

East High has been thrown out from the East High streetscape to 250.

There's also been discussion about Rose Hill between Preston Avenue and Rugby Avenue doing a streetscape through there.

I asked a quick question.

You said

East High from the end of the current streetscape, which I think is locust to 50.

Is that what you said?

And what is 50?

Oh, okay.

Yeah, we're not doing a new road, Kevin.

Not yet.

All right.

No, I'm glad to hear.

I imagine, yes.

We tend to only submit for our projects within the city.

There's been some that are in the city that is going to be very interesting when VDOT comes through and tries to administer within the city.

So Chuck, I think passing that on to Hal Jones that he needs to start coordination with the city regarding the Angus Road intersection 250 and those improvements, Hillsdale roundabout on hydraulic and the 29 hydraulic.

I haven't heard anything yet.

So I guess my city update, as Alex mentioned earlier, we passed the comprehensive plan last night.

So finally, been working on that since January 2017.

So it's a big step.

I'll go ahead and go through some of our transportation construction updates.

We are now finally, after many years, in the construction phase for a lot of sidewalk improvements, including new sidewalks out on Avon Street Extended, both north and south of the Mill Creek intersection.

Rio Road East, basically from the John Warner Parkway heading south or east into town.

New sidewalk going under construction there.

New sidewalk out in Crozet along 250 by the Harris Teeter there.

Basically, Corey Farms up to Harris Teeter, and that includes a

pedestrian crossing.

There's a pedestrian crossing at the Rio Road project as well.

A new pedestrian crossing at Mountain View out on Avon.

That is basically completed already.

I think it's being used by the students already.

and a new sidewalk and shared use path out on Lambs Road, taking people from the hydraulic intersection all the way back to the schools in the back there, Jewett Middle School and Greer Elementary School.

Also, Ivy Road in the county from the city line out to the UVA facility, that project is

And then our big projects that are still being worked on from the 2017 round of SMART SCALE, I think it was.

The Diverging Diamond at Exit 124 at 250 and I-64, that's well under construction there.

It will be for about another year now, I believe, before that's completed.

And then the roundabout up on Prophet Road and Route 20 in the rural area there, that is under construction as well.

Other projects still in planning are sidewalks over on Commonwealth Drive and shared use paths on Berkmar extending from the Hilton Heights Road down to Rio.

Those are in design right now.

Oh, and the Route 20-250 intersection, another SMART SCALE project from I think 2018 is in design.

And we've already covered most of our planning projects.

We're working with TJPDC and VDOT on a lot of those, I think.

I think we've gone through them all.

Some really big residential rezonings that the county's working on right now.

We had a community meeting for a 500 unit development on Old Ivy Road right by the bypass last night.

That's proposed to be a mix of residential units, you know, apartments, townhomes, and single family homes.

but all rental back there.

So it's sort of a new model for what we see as a big rental community that includes single-family homes.

Also the Southwood Phase 2

Close to 700 new units in phase two alone is going through the rezoning out there on Old Lynchburg Road.

And we expect to see a rezoning application come in any time now for the North Fork Park up north of Holly Mead off of Route 29.

to add residential to that development without decreasing the amount of non-residential that's already approved.

So they're proposing to go up in density quite a bit up there.

I don't know the number of units that they're proposing.

We haven't seen that yet, but I think it's in excess of maybe 500 units up there.

three giant rezonings.

Those all fall under the VDOT 527 regulations that say if they generate more than 6,000 vehicle trips a day.

So three of those going on right now, we haven't had a single one since Brookhill back in like 2015.

So a lot of residential development going on.

That's all I can really think of that we're working on.

I think that we should add that now that the city's done such a nice job of bringing their comprehensive plan home,

We begin ours.

We're having kickoff discussions, but really you all, Jessica, and you know the work plan, but I think really it's kind of a January for real when we start going.

Do I remember correctly?

Yeah, that's correct.

We're breaking it up into different segments.

So it'll be, it's not that we're going to take five years to do one plan.

All right, cool.

Hey, thanks, Rory.

We don't have any major updates to bring to this group.

Great, thanks.

Let's see.

The pipeline projects we wrapped up our last round of stakeholder group meeting last week so we're starting on phase two which is basically developing alternatives based on feedback we got from the stakeholders group meetings and we will be pursuing those and then having additional stakeholders meetings and then we'll have public outreach probably in

January to show the public the alternatives and get feedback before we finalize those studies.

That's pretty much it.

I mean, like I said, I'm working with on smart scale with everybody and trying to get through those.

I will say that December 1st, they're going to be kicking off a

Enhancement to the SMART portal, which includes a pre-application module that will allow you to go in and localities to go in and actually enter project information in that and then get it pre-evaluated.

And then you can import it into your applications and it's open to any year round for any application.

So if you wanted to start early on your SMART SCALE applications, you could go in and start entering some information into there.

And then they're going to be coming out with some training on that module, but it's basically just like the regular application in the portal.

And it has the same kind of fields and you can enter as much information or there's minimal information you have to submit.

include, but you can include as much information as you want.

And then, like I said, when it comes to the application, like SMART SCALE opens in March, you can import that into the SMART SCALE application.

So you get a head start on entering information anyway.

And like I said, the webinar on the changes for SMART SCALE is going to be on November 20th, 22nd, excuse me.

So chime in on that.

I actually sent a message to Brooke Jackson, who's been coordinating a lot of these changes for SMART SCALE on the question you ask.

And John Boldicek from TMPD, who does the bike ped coordinator for the state, he has a list of items that they

review for bike ped improvements.

And it's pretty specific and lockers and bike protected bike racks aren't on that one of the items on that list.

Cool.

Thanks, Jeff.

Do I miss anyone?

Well, Christine is on the phone, but she's driving back.

So the only thing that I'll say is just we are still hiring for a transportation planner.

If you know anybody looking that wants to work in Charlottesville, please feel free to pass some of the information.

They're better than any bonus.

All right, let's go to Matt from the public.

Yes.

Thank you, Rory.

I'll be quick, mindful of time.

Just wanted to let folks know that Kevin was talking about some rezonings that are big.

One that is

Medium-sized but has pretty big transportation implications that's going to Board of Supervisors tomorrow, and that's the Rio Place project at the corner of John Warner and Rio Road.

Really well connected with a lot of other things going on.

The sidewalk, he was talking about the Rio, which is very high priority.

Thank you for doing that, the roundabout and other things.

Also, I'm excited about the

Rivelna River Bridge process getting going.

As the meeting was going on, I was literally in the process of writing an email to the CEO of Bonimos, who is the tenant taking over the State Farm site.

So you got some good excitement there.

Tobias Dingell from Willow Tree is already very excited about it.

So all working together through various

You know, different groups working together.

And that relates to one other thing I just want to keep on the back of your agenda, which is, although there's some staff transitioning happening in the city, county and TJPDC, I think it's important to keep alive the flame of the bicycle pedestrian advisory group or that informal working group that you guys had.

And I raise that here because it certainly, I think, should be a creature of the MPO.

And it looks a lot like the MPO tech group.

So there's lots of overlap.

So as you guys are each bringing in staff people, let's look to get that going, perhaps in the beginning of the year.

Because we did a lot of work to overcome the entropy of not working together.

The default is to not work together.

And so we have to actively keep that burner going.

So thanks for the good work, everybody.

Great.

Thanks, Peter.

And if no one has anyone else, anything else?

Let's go ahead and adjourn, make room.

Have a great day.