MPO Technical Committee Meeting   5/16/2023

The first program source is PL funding.

That's the funding that comes through the Federal Highway Administration.

And then the second source of funding is through the FTA.

And then you'll also see that we have different fiscal years identified in the work program.

This first line where it says FY24-PL funding, that is the new funding that is allocated for the MPO for fiscal year 24.

And then we have some rollover funding from previous years that was already identified.

And so you will see that

You'll see that the total amount that we have budgeted in our work program for the MPO expenses is $516,000.

And then there's this additional line item for 170,000, which is the VDOT state planning line item.

And that goes directly through the VDOT department.

So that does not come through the MPO, but that is to support MPO staff engagement or the VDOT staff engagement with our MPO programming.

As was presented in the draft work program, can you minimize the speakers?

So what was presented is what we had talked about last month or in our last set of meetings.

So we had basically we'll continue to work on the long range transportation plan.

And then we had also budgeted thirty thousand dollars for the comprehensive safety action plan, which is to support additional

staff engagement and the safe streets and roads for all grant program to develop this comprehensive safety action plan.

And then we had identified some on-call services, which are intended for the MPA staff to be able to provide technical support to localities, but also

regulations.

I know that there are probably as long as all things you can write them up so that they can use them to be reimbursed.

It's one of the engineering services.

I know that there's an extension that Charles Fills on here, had to deal with individual aspects of it, but it is

If you make it publicly, all of what you have, use it for your university code, not once you can get to it.

That's helpful to know.

I think one of our goals is that this will meet all of the compliance requirements, so it would be eligible for any VDOT projects or eligibility.

I think some of the questions are probably things that we'll have to work out with our attorney once we sort of know what the interest is for the localities.

That's kind of where we are right now is reaching out to a locality and saying what kinds of services would be beneficial for you.

But our goal, I think, would be that

Yeah the Charlottesville struggle they are about to create an alcohol contract sometime in four or five years and have not been able to do that for them.

It might be a big service to them.

Yeah, and there's also very specific, I mean, there are things that will have to work out, specific language that has to go to the procurement to determine what kinds of services are eligible for participating in jurisdictions to receive through the on-call program, and then also if there are any sort of budgetary limitations on how much those services can cost through an on-call program.

So the funds, are those in addition to the grant now?

This is all directly to our staff to supplement what was requested through the grant and legal to develop the program.

But I'm glad you mentioned that, Roy, because what I wanted to show you is that we are going to request your feedback on a proposed revision to those line items.

And the reason that we are requesting this revision is that as part of our coordination with VDOT specifically and the development of the Comprehensive Safety Action Plan, they have identified a need for some of their, not Michael and Chuck, but some of their

District staff to participate.

We need to basically identify some additional resources in order to be able to compensate them to coordinate and participate in the project.

So VDOT has developed a cost estimate of approximately $13,000 for VDOT staff to participate and engage in the development of the Conferences Safety Action Plan.

So based on having that awareness and information, what we would like to recommend, if you all are amenable to this, is revising the amount that we are allocating to TJPDC staff in the unified planning work program from 30,000 to 43,000.

So basically we would be reducing the amount of TJPDC staff

staff time that is covered from the grant amount and reprogramming that into the regular work program.

So is that your need because you definitely weren't sold out under the grant?

Well, the grant was an 80-20 match, so it required a 20% match from the localities.

So what we were trying to do was to maximize the amount that we could get out of the grant itself while also minimizing how much we were reaching out to the localities to contribute.

And in the scope of work that we wrote into the grant application, it didn't include compensation for VDOT.

It didn't include that we would be working with them as a partner, but then we learned that it would be helpful if we could compensate their staff for being engaged in that.

So with all that said, this is what was advertised, and that's what's in the draft work program.

And then we are requesting basically guidance from UL on whether it would be appropriate to make this adjustment.

But we need a recommendation from UL today on the recommendation for the approval of the FY24 Unified Planning Work Program.

We were a little bit late getting that information from VDOT, and I actually don't think that that's going to be a significant amount of effort based on getting the preliminary information, but we didn't have that when we started developing the work program for FY24.

Just the maps and the information from all the census information, it was already just much later than we had anticipated getting it.

So, that's just like the whole thing.

We're not working on it as a standalone item.

I mean, there probably are some ongoing places where we could continue to provide some support on it, like the RTP TDM and general bike peds support, we could continue to make some efforts.

But our goal is that we have a completed at least initial draft to sort of wrap up with that specific task.

And I don't

Well, two things then.

One is, I went back, I missed my TED meetings two months ago when my presentation was on the long app, and then I went to watch them on video and see if they were all linked there.

It doesn't have that particular meeting online, so I wasn't able to use the recording to all provide on the long app.

Second thing, how do we want to prioritize multi-modal stuff with the LRTB?

One of the advantages of One Map is to put down not only the existing infrastructure but the planned infrastructure on One Map so we can start to look at what kind of connections make sense.

Part of the board boards invite that to the community and start using that as part of a planning

and more quality modes.

So on that really, I mean, it got to a certain point that it reached to what the infrastructure was in the county.

In the end, obviously the city is vital to the polygons and not lines that were beat up just recently in cities by some of the facilities.

But, you know, the one map basically showed

Well, I see that presentation was still on the stuff was, he did an infrastructure plan infrastructure on there.

And one of the things that we recognize is sort of a need for an overarching plan and trying to coordinate the two jurisdictions within the NDS.

We're basically using

The 2000-19 era, we don't even know the plan.

And, you know, the public projects are coming early, any time later for second and third tier projects to do that.

So I'm just kind of curious, how are we going to, kind of like the goal of One Map to really help the community get privatized so that we can really plan to move on.

Yeah, I don't know that the prioritization was actually one of the expected outcomes of the One Map, at least where we are right now.

I think we anticipated that it could be used as a planning tool, but not necessarily this One Map project would accomplish that specific purpose.

I think we are well aware that there is a need to prioritize these projects.

What I would say, though, is that the City of Charlottesville is working on their own prioritization process and then

Albemarle's County is also working on a multimodal plan as part of their comprehensive plan and I think once those are completed it might make sense for us to have a bigger conversation about the region on you know where's their alignment between these where there may be some discrepancies and have a conversation but I think we need to

Give that some due diligence to let them get through those processes first and then we can have a regional conversation.

I will say we are well aware that there's a desire and a need to do some multimodal prioritization.

Some of that may be identified during the long range transportation plan, but I think we're also kind of working through what some next steps might look like.

It's just not something that we can necessarily take on with what we have already planned.

Yeah, I think that's an important part for us, because you know, Charlottesville's the only part of the nation that's really going to vary.

They're not looking at citizens who might not be one in the battle.

Nothing in some respects can count on the same thing.

So we've got this very small community where like most citizens felt like they could not

I think we're in the dark and I think fortunately it'll be interesting to see how LRTB works before I do that.

It's interesting enough for someone, you know, the, I think you meant a week ago, we had 10 years to really make a fundamental change for climate change.

Obviously, switching to a healthy bill would slowly be bumping out of this community especially if you've got, you know, parents in the hospital or as bad as it may be, definitely even their, you know, the expensive building orders.

And I think we have a need to focus on this, and there's a sensitivity to it with the climate change and the recent deaths in the area and our community.

We may have even seen, obviously again, I missed picking that up last month, but I think we're missing an opportunity to do that when we get that accomplished last year with one match.

I disagree.

I think part of one match really was using it as a planning tool so that we could do prioritization without being able to see where we're playing around with the market.

We can't see where we're playing against.

It was part of the intent.

I'll move back.

So I think we missed that opportunity.

I think that one map really was.

It's supposed to be one map where not only the quality of the existing facility worked, but the plan once worked.

And sometimes the facilities that people in the counties had picked up, because there were ideas out there

The various planning processes have been looking forward to the wider area and so there were ideas out there that came around over the years that still aren't on the map.

I think there were opportunities that were missing and I think from a capital planning perspective

We're lacking the tools to talk about regionally.

What are we trying to accomplish between UVA and the city?

We're going to be dying.

So I understand maybe we're not working on that this year.

I think you guys should eventually work towards a way to tackle this.

You won't reach a lie if you're being planned by anything.

The deliverable is a combined map of all of the infrastructure facilities from all of the areas.

But one of the challenges that we had consistently run into was sort of the ongoing maintenance and maintaining multiple data sets.

And that's been one of the challenges that we've had to resolve.

Yeah.

And Rory, I apologize.

You missed a sort of update at some point at MPO Tech, but the meeting that Michael's referring to, yes, it was the March meeting.

And yes, I am aware that the CTAC meeting is actually in the place of the white pet meeting.

I wanted to see if he would go there and see it, but yeah, he did.

In March and April of last year,

It was the city's request to not pursue their end any further until they had a planner in place.

That was February, March, April.

Ben did not arrive until November, so there was a delay there.

Right now, we just met with

both the city GIS folks and with, I believe, Dan Butch from the county who's worked on it from their end.

At the March meeting, the city's going to get together their staff to look over their data.

They also have another GIS technician who started, so we hope to get that information.

The way I would be careful to say that there's no regional bicycle and pedestrian

There is one.

It dates back to Mr. Will Cockrell and even before that.

Plus I know that the city does a master plan of some sorts.

I know they had a bicycle, pedestrian master plan of some sorts and perhaps the county does or has relied on TJPDC's regional plan.

So there is a bicycle and pedestrian plan.

There are ideas in place.

The scope was written to be flexible.

I can't pull up the scope now.

I'm not connected to the Wi-Fi, but the scope was written to be flexible.

And I think it encompassed it to be a planning tool, but also allowed for expansion of ideas from my perception

or even the county, well, the county's been helpful.

Yeah, I'd just come back and say, agree, there is a plan that TJPDC needs to be able to hold.

I believe at the time that they were undertaking that, they threw up a lot of the gaps out there, but it was described during that process that when we're doing a region plan, we don't have the capacity to get into the fine training aspects of what's happening in the NPO, alignments to any facilities where the gaps were, that kind of analysis didn't really happen.

And it is, there's a lot of credit for being the first plan to show both the city and the counties

It doesn't really seem to have a strategy towards where we will try to win people from one side of the area.

It doesn't sort of seem that there might be a whole group out there, but it doesn't really seem to go away.

freedom under the line strategy of both the city and the county.

The series of bike trails are all over the place.

I've noticed some things like the city parks and parks working on some trails right now that are, you know, we're talking about having bike facilities and they're putting them on a web-wide.

They're putting them on a web-wide.

They're putting them on a web-wide.

They're putting them on a web-wide.

And that doesn't show up on plan.

It's like it's harder to fix something that we're really trying to work on as a community.

We don't have a good plan.

Again, one map in context was that we found the existing facility, which seems like we got to control that and appreciate that.

But it doesn't show the potential.

But I can tell on there.

Related to this, are you suggesting that we not recommend the UPWP and that there are amendments that you want to recommend to the policy board?

I can tell you exactly what you should take out for the end.

I'm just trying to emphasize the fact that we don't have a very good prioritized regional facility.

And I don't see how we do that with the former existing plan by using what the city makes about their model.

I want to really clearly acknowledge that we understand that we just can't do everything all at one time.

So that is something that the where where needs to happen at some point.

I think we have a pretty big workload already going into next year with things that we are kind of committed to carrying out either because we're required to or because we have a big grant that we just signed an agreement with.

Maybe something to think about for that 125 then.

And maybe that's where I would be happy, is that I think we need to come back and have a brilliant focus on how these systems will work together.

I can do a little green bar, I'll get to the county, I'll get to the little county, I'll get to downtown, and you get, you steal my map, you need to like try to figure out, oh, this is the corridor we need to get along, and then you go and do your restriction.

And part of that should be the city.

It seems like a fundamental problem.

And then it was up to the three jurisdictions to provide their data in that data model, which

And so there's really no place for that data to live.

We're getting into the five road study here.

City, University, Airbase is right there, but I don't know if I can tell you, you know, how those systems, you know, any university that belongs to the county, or the city, or the county.

And I will say too, Bill, and I have seen GIS files.

I think I'm probably the one that's worked with it the most at the NPO level.

I mean, I think what the county and UVA have done has looked pretty decent.

There are some attributes that are missing in the files, but even with the UVA, some of their data is different.

So for example, they've got bicycle lanes on the side of the roads for some of the

Some of the shape files and then bike facilities that are part of the center link.

And so there are multiple layers of things that need to be worked out.

So maybe, I mean, in terms of.

It seems like there's some way of putting some funding into, again, I couldn't even begin to tell you guys would know better than any of us probably, where you could allocate some funds to at least work through those technical challenges that are out there.

Because I don't know, the county doesn't have

that I've seen a clear cap that is either.

So there's some money put into that to continue to go to these bullet boards and not to wait a whole year to mobile tackle it to the other five.

And then to the other five, we're just going to be that much further out of date with the existing data and then start tackling these technical issues.

I think we could generally include ongoing discussions about it with the bike pudd.

Like this general line item right there could support, you know, maybe not as targeted of an initiative, but ongoing like discussions and coordination with it and preparation.

What I think needs to be communicated though, is that we have a very highly skilled GIS person on our staff right now that has been sort of providing a lot of guidance based on their experience in both localities that

are in this region as well as sort of understanding the ongoing like management of the system that has been really providing a lot of suggestions and feedback into this process so this isn't just a discussion about you know we want to just cross it off a list this is based on what we're hearing based on her experience and expertise as far as

We could go through a lot of this and create a lot of alignment and have a separate data set that we manage, but the problem is that these data sets aren't necessarily being held specifically by a formal department at the agency, so then we're creating another data set that has to be managed separately and that can create a lot of confusion.

So one of the things that we're doing is as we're developing this One Map, we're developing it with an eye toward how can we provide for the ongoing maintenance and update without having to consistently dedicate a large amount of staff resources towards that.

So that's one of the things that we're considering.

So I mean, that makes sense to me, right?

I don't know, Ryan.

I think the idea would be like we can provide the open data.

I don't know about the actual map interface on our website, but it could be something that's downloaded and pulled into other interfaces.

And we could also regularly publish PDF versions of those along with the data, for example.

But I think the idea is really like the combined data set.

Is that consistent?

So we have the data center down there, then the localities in each, the attitudes.

I mean, that's our goal, yeah, is to identify how.

There's also this process in GIS, Bill, you can probably talk to this more than I could or Michael, maybe, where you have to identify locations where they snap together so you can make sure everything is aligned.

You lose the quote when you start getting

You need that and the end goal is going to be to stand up for what it is going to be worth.

But from a planning standpoint, I just keep coming by and I say, from a planning standpoint, don't be bored with things that somebody says, I don't know, I'm bored with trying to go to state pent-ups or downtown.

How are they supposed to get there?

How are we going to get there?

who are community.

I don't know if we have a solid plan.

I just, the aspiration here, but you start talking about that.

And so anyhow, I'll wrap up this, but I think it's something that we need to come back to.

I don't know if we'll get you to be sitting in the cabin.

Try to do a little bit of a job planning.

I mean, I'd say the City of Defense, they're the only ones who really are publishing useful data sets online in a continuously updated format right now.

And so I'm definitely much more interested in you guys getting something published that is usable and updatable than in working on a divine case.

So does this pipeline match up exactly with that pipeline?

Is that accurate?

I'm CODA.

Yeah.

Thank you.

There are motions we recommend with

Yeah, so in your packet you have

draft amendments for the FY 2124 Transportation Improvement Program, Traffic and Safety Operations, Preventative Maintenance for Bridges, and Preventative Maintenance and Systems Preservation.

Thank you for listening.

Traffic and Safety Operations.

As you can see, the old table shows about $4 million.

That increases up to $6 million.

Second Amendment, approximately $16 million for maintenance for bridges.

That's increased to approximately $21 million.

And then lastly,

preventative maintenance and system preservation from $44 million to $55 million.

Those are the three amendments that VDOT has informed the MPO that need to be made for our MPO.

The hope is that the tech committee and the CTAC committee make a recommendation to the policy board to approve the amendments.

Policy board is scheduled to approve it at their May meeting.

From a staff perspective, I think we have no issues.

Typically, you're on 2, though, right?

How is that?

Yeah, we are in federal fiscal.

Yeah.

Yeah, just, Ryan, I looked through this the other day, there's a couple of, I think, published errors in here, and I just talked to Chuck about it, he had a chance to go do it and find who to come, and I told him, you can see numbers are wrong.

That's the next item.

Yeah, that's the new TIP.

Well, I can get you on that one too.

I think, sorry, let's go on.

So including your packet is a draft 24-27 tip.

It includes one interstate project, two primary, two secondary, three urban, and five groupings.

It also includes CAT,

and John Relation.

Also in the tip, we've got the adopted 2023 MPO or state performance targets and measures MPO has adopted those.

This tip is based off of the current long-range plan.

As you are aware, there is an effort for 2015.

The DOT program, I guess Ted or Zadie isn't here, but in this draft, you will see Jaunt information, but we were informed by Jaunt that they will be revising their capital plan for the next several months.

And that was probably about two months ago.

So we are somewhere,

in that process, so what's shown for Jaunt may be amended shortly.

As I said, the Policy Board is set, we're scheduled to approve the draft 24-27 tip, as well as the amendments to the 21-24.

No public comments have been received.

As of yesterday, I do need to check my email and voicemail

for today.

And then the recommendation would be for this committee to recommend that the policy board adopt the 24-27 tip.

The next slide is that I just, in fact, I mean, I apologize.

I didn't upload the newer slides, but I do have the tip broken down.

But if need be, we can go to the website

Look at specific projects if you have questions.

It goes to the draft 24-27.

Okay.

So I'll... How many were there, did you say?

Let me just do this all alone.

It may be a subscriber error or something, but it may just be wrong through the box.

Just see if there's an example.

There's a UVC number in there or something just for projects.

So it's an industry project.

Okay.

Some of these things that keep money all the way to close out, I really ask, sometimes it just takes a little bit of really long time to close out a project.

So moved.

All right, do we have a second?

Second.

All right, is there a motion and a second?

All in favor?

So most of you all are familiar at this point with the SMART SCALE process.

Just as a refresher, this is the state's process for selecting.

This is kind of the opportunity to get your big transportation projects funded.

Applications are submitted biannually.

So round six is going to be submitted in August of next year.

But because we'd like to be proactive and make sure we have low-bedded projects, we are starting to develop

Our project applications for round six now.

That said, the CTB has not officially approved which projects from round five will be funded.

I think the draft six-year improvement program with the CTB recommendations will be

Reviewed at their meeting I think it's next week and then that will be approved in June so we are making some assumptions about what projects will be funded in round five at this point and we may need to go back and have conversations if those assumptions are incorrect.

Based on the previous rounds, the MPO is able to submit up to four projects.

In order for the MPO to submit projects, we have to meet these eligibility requirements, which means that all projects need to meet a need that is identified in the state's transportation

VTRANS, that for MPOs specifically, projects either need to be along a corridor statewide significance or they need to be a project that has a benefit to the regional network, which is defined in the state's transportation plan.

So last meeting we talked a little bit about how we are in a different phase of development as far as projects and while we had adopted a process for round five that included some significant engagement and project application development prior to the applications that may not make sense at this point because we do not have this

Long list of projects ready to queue up.

We're working on developing our next set of priorities.

And so what we had suggested is that instead of picking one or two projects for the MPO staff to focus on extensively, that we provide some ongoing support for the development of new projects through the VDOT pipeline projects that they have been identified.

We'll talk about those more in a minute.

And then

And then look at whether or not there are some additional scoping revision opportunities for previously submitted projects that we had identified that were high priorities, but we had not been successful in implementing yet.

So what I did to develop this slate of projects for us to be discussing as far as what we may want to move forward into the development of a Round 6 SmartScale application was looking at the high priority projects that were not funded in previous rounds and then also looking at what projects we may not have submitted yet that have been developed through some of these pipeline or corridor studies.

And so this list is the one that I came up with that would indicate where we might have some opportunities to submit round six projects.

The District Avenue roundabout at Hydraulic Road, it actually scored fairly well.

Sandy, for that one, I believe that's evident in some of the work.

We'll keep our eye on that one.

There you go, new information.

So maybe we'll keep an eye on that one and see what happens with that one.

The Fifth Street Extended Multimodal Improvement Project, if you all recall, this was looking at some intersection improvements at the intersection of Fifth Street and Fifth Street Extended into the Wegmans Shopping Center.

This project did not score very well, but I think at least my read is that improvements along Fifth Street

continue to be a fairly significant priority for the community.

And so one recommendation may be to review what was submitted in round five and determine if there's a way to reduce the scope of that project to try to reduce the overall project costs to resubmit that as maybe

either looking more specifically at the intersection improvements or at some of the multimodal improvements through that intersection.

Yeah, I was going back and looking at that a few weeks ago.

And the typical sessions didn't have bike lanes, where there are bike lanes now.

Yeah.

I think there's a technical definition that the study uses that might be different than what VDOT uses.

Gotcha.

But it wasn't intended to be both bikes.

It was put in a firewall for VDOT's scoring process for their ranking methodology.

I don't know about that.

I questioned that because throughout that process, I wanted to verify with Chuck that

to be sure that this was going to be a foot asphalt path.

And I was assured by Chuck that that was going to happen.

All right.

Now you know.

There was a project that scored pretty well that was part of the US-250 pipeline project that VDOT worked on last year.

This was the US-250 Rolkin Road pedestrian improvements.

This was basically to facilitate pedestrian crossing on three different sides of that intersection and then to extend a sidewalk along 250 between Rolkin Road and

What's the next word?

State Farm?

State Farm.

So this one is in green because it scored pretty well.

It would be fairly simple to resubmit it.

However, I don't know that it has been identified by the county as a very high priority.

And it also doesn't have that same sort of nexus where there's a strong benefit to both Charlottesville and Albemarle.

But it is a project that would be fairly straightforward to resubmit.

And then we have a couple of VDOT pipeline projects that we could also consider.

So VDOT has two pipeline projects that are currently about to kick off or will be underway in order to prepare or identify projects that could potentially be submitted as part of round six.

The first one is the US-250 and Barracks Road.

Interchange, looking at some improvements there that will likely just be, I think Michael, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that expectations that that will just result in one project recommendation.

And then there's a section of Ivy Road that includes the US 250 interchange that is also being reviewed.

And there could be multiple projects that are identified out of that pipeline study.

We're going to start the project, so who knows exactly what we'll come up with.

And it could well be the very subtropical ones.

I think you're right in assuming that I wrote the problem.

Potentially, there are a lot of issues out there, so it could be multiple projects.

And then there was one project that was identified in a previous VDOT pipeline project, which was looking at the North 29 area.

Yeah, engine.

Yeah, Ravenna Station.

It's the intersection that provides access to Ravenna Station.

So there were potentially some recommendations that were developed as far as that study is concerned, including potentially looking at a modified signal or an archive at that development.

So that's also a project that we could spend a little bit of time working on to develop, to determine what the preferred

projects, maybe, and developing that application.

So that really is intended to be the slate of projects that we will be considering for application development.

Obviously, if there's any adjustments in what projects are funded by the CTB for round five, we can certainly go back and look at those projects.

And we also have to consider that there could be changes to the SMART SCALE program.

We know that we've been able to submit four projects each round before, but

Well, those four TJPDC slots can be supporting any jurisdiction's application.

That's typically how they've been selected, yeah.

So, I think exactly in the arts, it's kind of a deficiency that I see in the hydraulic product we're undertaking now.

So right now we've got this pretty nearly neat fighting network from downtown to the 29 area.

You go up Shanks Branch, you have to get to Baseball Field, but you cut through McIntire Park, you've got the trails back there, Short Stinch Grove, and then we have the new Cherokee Spot all the way down to 250, and then we have Hillsdale all the way up and soon to be to Rocco, right?

But there's this gap

The new VDOT project will extend this year's path to Brandywine.

And that's where it'll stop.

I think the Meadow Creek Bridge is probably a constraint.

And so I expect that this might end up being a very expensive gap to build, probably to the point of it being for the SmartSCALE project.

As part of the model, the city looked like, you know, well, I don't know if you can find it, but I can work on it on the side of the hill.

I think it was directly identified, the shared feedback along 250, was imposed from down the drain line.

We were directed in a quarterly meeting with the city to locate this chain over it.

Thomas and James and the city came after the public hearing for things like this.

So then the city wants to add a change order to make that connection from Reddy Drive to Mickey Drive.

Okay.

We are looking at that right now.

And of course the city is working on some of the extended charity map, Mickey Drive up to Greenbrier Drive.

Yeah.

It was sort of parallel.

So that connection you made

You know, I mean, I would direct you back to there's still two gaps in there that haven't been filled.

And then the Parks Department has plans to probably dig back to the mid-teams or the gap between where the whale tail was.

There's two gaps in this process that we talked about that are behind the firehouse.

And those gaps haven't been addressed for

That might be a better place to look if you're actually looking to try, you know, looking for something that might plug a gap, but there are two gaps that the city has been working on and have well-planned.

And that would be below loans.

Yeah.

I mean, to me, that gap is less critical.

I mean,

The actual peak was easier than I thought.

This part is pretty low stress if you go through the CHS connector.

The rear work is not too bad.

But if we get to make it drive, can you still have this gap here?

It's not about room between whole foods.

That's a real problem, you don't know the right way.

That one's problematic.

But we're looking to try to close that gap.

Okay, great.

And for solving the mental problem, that seems like the biggest part to me, where we're potentially going to be rich.

Great idea, Rory.

I mean, that's true, right?

I think for the purposes of the MPO, we're not going to be able to provide a lot of technical support to develop these applications, so it's really the idea of taking something from a conceptual state to develop it into a project application with support from VDOT.

I think typically what we have done and I think what I've heard from the policy board is they would prefer that we move forward project application development for projects that already have had some sort of public engagement.

We just need to like work on sort of better defining the scope.

But I think if there's some work that's already been developed, we could potentially undertake that.

I wonder if the city did do a study

So what would happen in the LRTQ process if we would potentially identify needs where there's no like identified solution and that would sort of help us determine what our planning priorities need to be.

in order to help consistently develop that pipeline.

But it could come from a number of sources.

It could come from a corridor study.

It could come from a small area plan.

It could come from a feasibility study that the localities undertake.

I mean, we've had projects developed through all of those different channels that we've been able to move forward.

Until we start developing our next pipeline of projects, which is one of the things that we're working on right now.

Yeah.

Yeah, we've actually worked through most of the, we've actually worked through all of the constrained projects, so all of the high priority projects.

I went through and reviewed the projects with the localities and the long-range transportation plan that were on the vision list.

A lot of those are being undertaken by local initiatives specifically for, you know, Charlottesville is addressing a lot of those from what my understanding based on

Some of their local priorities.

And then the other ones, some of them are like really visionary, like what's the new connector, the eastern connection road from Sunset to, my gosh.

Yeah, it's a Fontaine.

Yeah, like that one probably is not going to be a strong candidate.

And there were some recommendations along Ryer Road.

Yeah.

Sure.

I mean, I often say that.

I said that before, and I'll say it again.

The Regatta Bridge alignment is the wrong alignment, right?

Like, this committee voted unanimously, including the county representatives, to support the other potential alignment.

The cost was way lower.

I think we saw that reflected in the VDOT estimate.

Well, we will find out about our RAISE grant application at the end of June, so maybe I'll have an update for you at our next meeting.

Any other feedback?

And to be clear, you guys talked about VDOT doing work on this.

I mean, you talk about studying, you really talk about VDOT.

Just to be clear, I didn't talk about that.

Yeah, I mean, I would assume the same kind of support that VDOT has provided for the other project development, yeah.

Sure.

Yeah.

So back then you were looking at two alignments, one was to Chesapeake Street, where they have a pretty shot to downtown, versus the Bullen Mills alignment that lets you off on Broadway, which has been facilities.

Regardless of whether the bridge goes there, if we are going to double down on the bridge, then I think that's critical.

I think that was outside of the defined project scope last time, like that was outside of the area.

I wasn't really closely involved at the very beginning, but there was like a mile radius I think that was identified.

Then we went a bridge somewhere in the circle and I think that probably was outside the circle.

Well, let's see what it sounds like.

Okay, oops.

You hope they blow up?

That it was a different one.

The Chesapeake blood or something?

I don't know what it is.

I mean, interestingly, we're going to talk about it.

The city got shared with that, down at the Meade Park.

There's an old band of people right away, but these folks being on Meade Park, they don't know what you're talking about.

I think the idea was that there were three different locations where there was an identified desire for a bicycle and pedestrian bridge and they felt like the one at the southern end kind of provided the most utility as far as being both a recreational resource and a transportation resource.

Well, it's not the policy is we're the ones who want to keep doubling down over and over on this full bills alignment.

So you could speak to your people and speak to mine.

To that point, do MPOs, if it's parts of the project, ever go to the Planning Commission?

It doesn't have to go for approval.

But as a work session, at least I think for something that's meaningful and important for both city and county, you think having a work session might make sense.

The presentation and housework discussions, you know, because at least the electives, at least for our commissions, they're usually joined and the councilors there, in theory, maybe they pay attention to us, we hope, or pretend.

Yeah.

I mean, to me, one of the things is, sorry, I'm open to moving back up.

One map, you have an idea of where you're trying to serve the whole neighborhood.

How are you going to really get folks who are in handouts to downtown as a destination?

When Matt starts talking about the alternative, he may be able to, I'm one that maximizes communication, using transportation, I don't have to get that done.

When we work on these corridors, we work on small area land, and sometimes we lose the, you know, the trees in the forest here.

I just don't think we're having a big enough perspective on a lot of these things.

We have different ones that are coming from WYO trying to get to downtown, say the shopping, the small square that's used by some of the shopping centers at WYO and the 29th.

Maybe WYO is the best way to do that, maybe it's not, but we can go WYO or we're studying that becomes a last priority, we're not looking at it in the context of it.

Maybe you can come down the hill state and cut the tunnel along the railroad and pick up the

John Warner, John Wood, I mean that is a artery in the woods in a very flat way in your centers.

We don't have a regional look at what we want to do on the edge of taking this opportunity.

I think that's why this great project started to be better.

It's really too far down the stream to be a new solution, right?

It doesn't serve when we're going to have a pandax.

It would make us be reliving.

Well, that picked the location.

I sat in the meeting when we picked these first projects.

It was very narrowly closed.

It was a bridge down under 3 Park, and it was one on about 20 South.

And the other option was to follow up with items

Steve Sherry's pack and all the bypass from the resident squad to Free Bridge.

They talked back prior to that and seeing a bigger picture of who we need to be known in this community.

And that's not all of you.

Yeah, so I wanted to first of all, so I want to preface this by saying that, you know, last time we looked at the lenses goal or the goals and objectives and we got some stakeholder feedback about those and made some proposed revisions.

And then based on the feedback we've gotten from the MPO committees from CTAC and you all, as well as kind of starting to work through the public engagement and the survey instruments, we made some additional revisions.

So I'm going to go through what those revisions are, and then we'll talk about our public engagement.

But I really want us all to be keeping in mind that the goal after we have this next set of meetings is that we'll be ready to start with our public engagement next month so we can start getting some information and start working through the process of prioritizing our projects and identifying where our priority system needs are.

So the couple of revisions that we made is that as we were developing this different framework thinking about we have these goals and objectives and it was really getting really difficult to communicate within the goals and objectives how important some of these different frameworks were.

We decided to adopt this system of developing a set of lenses.

So these are intrinsic frameworks that are

So we're kind of overriding how we consider all of our goals and objectives.

So they're not necessarily going to be clearly communicated within the language of the goals and objectives, but they're so important that we're saying that this is a lens that we're viewing all of these from.

So we had started with identifying climate action and equity as two lenses.

And then as we were talking about this, we thought it made a lot of sense to also add quality of life as a lens, since the purpose of establishing

Safe and efficient and accessible transportation system is really to improve the quality of life for the people who need to use it and rely on it.

The second change we made was related to economic development.

We struggled kind of to know exactly how to integrate economic development with this plan.

For the reason that we think it's important, it's a national goal, but it didn't seem to be a major

a major priority as far as planning transportation.

It felt like economic development is important, but it was hard to really sort of identify what the most appropriate nexus was to consider economic development priorities as far as planning.

So we kind of went back and looked at the identified metrics that we were planning to use and looking at what maybe made the most sense for things to be grouped together.

And so originally we had grouped economic development with the land use piece.

And after thinking about how economic development improvements are captured at the national level, we thought it might make sense more to group that with efficiency, which is really related to freight movement.

So I think there's an argument to be made either way.

Before we had a group with the land use, which I think there's an economic development argument to make that if you have

A community where things are close together and accessible to each other, that could be an economic development argument, or there's this argument that really moving goods and people through a transportation system efficiently is economic development.

So we made the adjustment to put economic development with efficiency.

That made sense to us at the time, but would be happy to hear feedback you all may have on that.

And then we also changed the land use school language in order to better clarify what it is we were trying to capture when we were talking about how we were considering land use and evaluating transportation system priorities.

So the revised language is that the land use goal is to connect community destinations in a manner that aligns with local growth management priorities.

And then the new language for the efficiency and economic development goal is to efficiently and reliably move people and kids through the multimodal transportation system.

And then as far as communicating sort of how all of this fits together, I think some of the areas were going to the wrong places and this table that was in the memo, so I apologize for that.

But we created the line graph that kind of shows the interconnection.

I think one of the things that was really challenging to communicate is that some of these objectives are really supporting more than one goal.

For example, if we're talking about improving the operational efficiency of a system, that is improving efficiency because it's improving how transportation systems are able to move efficiently through their networks, but it also has an environmental impact by reducing congestion.

and Reducing Emissions.

So this graphic was really intended just to communicate the interrelatedness of all of these different factors and to show how there's some subjectivity into how it's all grouped.

But ultimately when we talk about safety or multimodal accessibility or land use coordination, a lot of the objectives that we're going to be measuring are really pointing to more than one.

One goal.

And so all of these things that we're considering are not necessarily going to show up under each goal individually.

So happy to answer any questions or get any feedback.

If there's something that's still confusing, I'm happy to hear that.

I appreciate the work you guys do on how to do this.

I know that it's been a long slog, how you do these things, the lens thing, the concept, that's a good one.

One thing I'm still a little bit, and it's nice and close when I hear you speak, just how does this differentiate one body from the other?

Well, okay, as far as helping us differentiate all of these projects against each other, one of the things that we're going to use for each of these objectives, we're developing metrics or we have metrics that are developed.

And so those metrics are going to help us evaluate how the system is operating and identify where there are priority needs.

And so we're going to take this framework

apply data that helps us assess it and then that will help us evaluate the system to see where there are deficiencies based on these overarching ideologies.

As far as the assessment, like how will we know if we meet our goals?

Do you want to say anything about how that's done within the LRTP or what really the purpose of goals are within the LRTP?

Yeah, he had to work here.

Yeah, I think it's a good question, but it's hard to bring in more value than what you just said.

I mean, certainly the goals and objectives as it's done with the other 15 long range transportation plans across Virginia,

That is really what guides the development of those performance measures on projects.

But kind of the secondary or tertiary values of the goals would be that those goals' objectives should also help in terms of the design of those projects.

So let's say there's a need that's identified, there is a product that's needed, and so those goals should help with the development of different transportation alternatives to address that goal.

I think also these goals and objectives are helpful as you're defining what your needs are.

So obviously if you develop a transportation project, you want that project to address the need.

You wouldn't have a project that's pushed forward that's not doing something that's defined as a need there.

So I think the goals and objectives there are helpful to help define what those needs are across the region.

And, you know, we just had a conversation about the DWD and I think the good LRTPs, I think are ones that go beyond, you know, the limits of just the plan itself.

It should really be integrated into everything else that the NGO is doing.

So when you're, you just had a discussion about, you just had a discussion about

So goals and objectives should be considerations that the MPO and its committees take into account when you're looking at the work program for the MPO.

In terms of measuring how have we accomplished these goals, the real purpose of the long-range plan is the project list.

And the document itself is really showing the justification to that list there.

And so, I mean, there are some things that you could do.

I know that some NTOs have talked about, you know, having more like an annual, air quotes, there's no such thing as like a formalized review, but some sort of check-in each year to see, hey, these are the goals and objectives that we've stated, you know, how do we feel we're doing kind of in a qualitative way of kind of moving along those lines

We'll probably talk about those in either July or August when we get there.

Before we start actually running the evaluation of the project scores, we'll have to

You're talking about the OIP contract?

That's not what they're doing.

So you said that the goals here about metrics would be used prior to that project.

Those are part of that prioritization process that we worked through.

And if I could add just really quickly, also the structure essay is kind of seen as generally best practice.

So we've worked on the rail now with a lot of your transportation plans.

It's funny, like the parallel thought is you showed me this graphic and that's the exact same graphic they came up with.

They didn't even tell you about it.

Roanoke used a pretty similar process, Norman Schengel, Valley Regional Commission, used a similar structure and process that Sandy's talking about.

Lynchburg, LRTP, same basic structure to it.

So, you know, I think staff's been looking at other long-range plans across the Commonwealth and put a lot of effort into finding, you know, what are best practices from, you know, just our consultant view, I think,

It's only going to do the projects and throw a lot of thought and energy into it.

And you put it very well and I encourage you to continue to develop that thinking of

The goals and objectives that we use to identify projects and design them, so that this is the need that we're, as you put it very well, this is the need that we're building with these projects.

That should be your measure as well, right?

So a lot of it's weighted to architecture, post-occupancy evaluation, right?

So after a building's done, and we usually do it, we don't do it immediately because there's a lot of things going on, right?

And just say, currently after maybe just six months, over a year, we're going to evaluate where safety's goals met.

We're aggregated for the multimodal transportation and access and visibility met.

And so I think these are things that can be done.

And you should build it in.

It shouldn't be that complicated, because as you said, you're identifying the need.

So once you identify the need,

And that helps too with like the travel and modeling process too.

It's good to, you know, once you've developed a project, monitor

evaluate, and then that helps to make for a better shot than that model too, because you get to basically test it out.

The model said it would do this, but we built it.

You know, how did that work out?

And maybe you need to reevaluate some assumptions with the modeling process.

But yeah, it should do a lot of different things for you.

The core is what Sandy was talking about.

It really,

That scoring process that helps identify those projects.

And we're required to do that according to federal requirements.

And I will say, I remember back earlier, LRTPs, when it wasn't necessarily done that way, it was kind of more like a, what are the local official gut dealings, what should be the projects that they report?

That said, are there any other comments on that?

Any other feedback?

All right, so that said, we have a data-driven process, but we also need to have a public participation element to this plan as well, and that's really important.

And so the purpose of public engagement, as far as us thinking through what that's gonna look like moving into the summer and moving towards getting feedback from the public for this plan, is that there are a couple of different things we are trying to accomplish as far as this first phase of public engagement.

First of all, we want the public to be aware that there is a long-range transportation planning process that is underway.

We want to inform them on what the purpose of the plan is, what the requirements of the plan is, and why it's important for them to be engaged.

So this is largely about helping raise awareness and helping to inform them so they know that their participation in the plan is going to be valuable and meaningful.

We do want to start getting high-level feedback on the goals from the public.

So one of the things we're going to be asking in our MetroQuest survey is for the public to tell us how important are these different goals related to each other.

And that's going to be information that we can take to determine how much weight do we get to each of these metrics as we evaluate the system to determine where are the highest priority needs based on the community's feedback using a data-driven approach.

And then the last thing we're going to do is we're going to have a mapping exercise where the public can drop in their markers to show us where they see a need for transportation improvements.

Based on Will's commentary, this is actually where we're going to expect to hear the most valuable feedback from the public.

And so what's going to happen is we have the public that is going to be helping inform how much weight to give, all of the different goals in terms of evaluating the data that we're collecting and using to analyze the system for the needs.

And then we're going to get feedback on where the public actually sees identified needs.

And both of those together are going to give us a really good view of where there is commonalities between perceived needs and data needs that are identified by our data analysis process and also help us see where there might be some discrepancies.

And we're going to use that information to help us start identifying where the highest priority needs are.

The purpose of identifying the highest priority needs is that then we can go back and look at our slate of projects that have been developed through other pipeline efforts to determine what are the projects that might make sense to start pulling into this process to prioritize as far as our future funding applications.

Or it will help us identify where there's a really high system need, but we don't have an identified solution to that project yet.

And so that's what's going to help us build our pipeline, our planning pipeline to identify these projects in the future for future funding requests or implementation.

So any question about that as like a general process?

Okay.

All right, so our public engagement schedule tentatively, we're planning on mid-June, we'll do a project kickoff slash open house.

We'll do both an in-person event at this space.

That will probably just be like a poster set up where people can walk through.

There probably won't be a presentation.

And then we'll also plan to do a virtual open house that will be more of a presentation driven.

Again, the goal from this will be to have some opportunities for people to provide comments on maps,

We'll have information about how to take the survey available there and then also just to provide background information to inform and raise awareness of the project.

We'll be reaching out to the stakeholders that we'd already identified and then we're also working to identify other community contacts that can help us get the word out.

We'll be looking for opportunities to meet with

table at different events or high traffic locations throughout the region, as well as meet with the CACs in Albemarle County, and we'll be reaching out to the homeowners associations.

We do have a survey that is available that we've drafted that we're planning to develop.

I don't know if anybody took a chance to look at the link, but do you want to talk about kind of the purpose of the survey?

So being just this stage in the planning process, one of the main objectives is to identify needs.

So how do people define their needs?

What specific issues or concerns do they have?

And so as Sandy was saying, that map is probably, from my experience, that's the most important information you can get out of the survey here.

What you can do is you can take the responses from the map

You can turn it into a heat map, overlay it with projects, overlay it with other data like PSI locations, level of service, VC ratios, and get to see what's the correlation between these people concerned with those needs and issues and what the data says or what the projects show and so forth.

Another thing that that does is sometimes the data doesn't show you everything.

That secondary data is good,

but there might be some missing pieces to that that you wouldn't otherwise pick up from the spreadsheet or from some other data set.

So getting that feedback on the concern side, the issues driven part of the survey is really helpful just to see that what's missing and then staff can take that and determine what additional data gathering efforts might be needed to really fully define what those needs are.

Also having here the goals, so a little bit more like a goals driven approach

Surrays are not really good at goals.

Surrays are great at identifying concerns, needs, problems, issues.

It allows somebody to write.

It's a good solid survey function.

But really defining goals, it's a little bit weaker there.

However, stakeholder groups are great people, Nikki.

And so staff has gone through stakeholder groups, has talked with this group here,

And so now this isn't a more appropriate function of the surveys.

These are the goals that we've come up with and to get reactions on those, help prioritize those.

The prioritization here is important because how you prioritize goals then affects that triangle working its way down.

to the performance measures and how you evaluate those projects.

So this is kind of an indirect way, but it is the main way that we use to define what is most important to the community, and that then affects how that scoring happens, what does that spreadsheet look like, and the scoring of those projects.

So it's really focused on

So needs driven, so identifying needs, focused on evaluation goals, so the goals-driven aspect to it.

And then I did like how staff had kind of a trade-off tab in here in the survey to get into a little bit more nuance.

And I know these are really hard questions to ask, and I know staff spent a lot of time really trying to wordsmith these, but I do think

What comes out of it will be important because as you're looking at, an important part of this plan is there will be needs identified, but there's not currently a project in place.

There's a lot of projects, there's a backlog of projects, but there are still guaranteed needs out there, but there's not an existing designed vetted plan project in place.

So as we identify those needs and the orphan of any solution currently,

No, thank you, Will.

One thing I want to mention about the trade-offs is that I think we all anticipate that we can predict how or what responses to expect, so it's not that we don't understand that multimodal planning is a really high priority for this region, but this trade-off is really intended to help us sort of understand to what extent should we consider multimodal

improvements against roadway improvements.

Is this a strong preference or is it a little bit of a weaker preference?

So I want everybody to understand going into this that we do have a strong sense that we likely can anticipate what the outcomes are, but in terms of actually assigning value to the performance measures, this will help us do that a little bit more accurately.

Any questions or comments on the survey tool?

All right.

Any other questions or comments?

All right, well, we're leaving our committee members, Rory.

Anyone have any updates?

Bill says all of them are going to be closed, also.

Anne Lane Road, Boston Hospital, and Massey Road, things like that.

So it's going to be a mess over there.

But it'll be done with this number.

It's evening.

The other case?

There's all sorts of other great stuff there.

We had the bike bus this morning, which we had a little stop out here at EEC.

There could be two county events.

I'll let you update on those later.

That'll be on Monday, probably Saturday to Monday, probably.

I don't know if I got solidified by variety Friday after five.

We're going to do a celebration event and see if you realize that's graduation weekend.

That's like counting updates, secondary to your plan, one of the words marked with that, it will be over.

And then updates working on phase two,

There are a lot of trees and stuff, it's interesting.

And then, Freewoods Lane, Pilot Park is still progressing.

And then, for the route 23's path, we've got some conceptual drawing materials, I think, so far.

The technical matters that we could take to get a series back down there.

It will be interesting to see how it's what 11 they turn to be fast, basic stuff, deal with how it reacts, like all the objects around there.

So that's all I have for the county.

Okay.

So the deep, now that it's starting rewrites,

and then have a consolidated draft by a month and a half or so from now and then plan a mission and council delivery.

So ideally we'll have some by in the year, certainly.

I was going to say, I wasn't sure if VDOT had an update, so I didn't want to jump in really quick.

So just a quick update, as mentioned with discussion about steps and tips.

Our draft fiscal year 24, six year improvement program is available on DRPT's open data portal.

That's available for any of our grantees or any recipients that applied for any of our grant programs in the late fall, early winter.

So we hope to have that presented to the CTB and approved for implementation on July 1st.

We are also currently reviewing our fiscal year 2453-03 applications, so thank you for the great discussion on UPWP.

Because it is the first bits of time that is actually completely online.

So it is using kind of the ArcGIS story map layout.

I'll provide to the staff and my agency update a link.

So I encourage everyone to look at it.

And we are going to keep that format, hosting it through DRPT and doing periodic updates to the map or to the plan.

It's roughly about a four year timeframe for FRA to require all seats to have their Braille plan updated.

I encourage you all, especially if you are very much a GIS fan, I can't say nerd, but fan, to kind of explore it.

And then there's also a wealth of data.

So I think if you're interested in this discussion about passenger and freight rail, take a look.

And I think the last thing I want to note is that we have been working on a Discover Transit campaign.

We launched it in the middle of April, but we are continuing to do a campaign also on the huge list of us finishing up our 30th year anniversary promotions that we've been doing.

We're trying to use all of our communications and our marketing materials to be able to bring people again back to transit and public transportation in general, especially after the impacts of COVID and the pandemic.

So if you are interested in kind of looking at materials, media placement, we are also going to do some targeted advertisements throughout the Commonwealth, but more information can be found.

And I'll provide the link in my agency update.

There was also a webinar that we did host.

So if you're interested in the full breadth of information, you can watch that on the DRPT YouTube page.

But that's all I have for my updates.

And it was wonderful to kind of listen in as kind of like a for MPO person to hear the discussion about the TIP and the UPWP.

So I'm glad you guys are continuing the great work you're doing here.

Thanks.

All right.

Anybody else?

Bye.

I can leave that out, actually.