MPO Technical Committee Meeting   10/17/2023

Yes, I'm here.

Michael Barnes, Christine Jacobs.

Here.

Lucinda Shannon.

Any motion of public, both here in person or online,

Yeah, so thanks everyone.

We heard last month, Alan and Will were here from EPR, who is a consulting team that is supporting the Moving Toward 2050 development process.

And they've really been supporting a lot of the analysis from the public engagement feedback.

So we got a

A high-level review of the feedback and the level of engagement that we received last month.

And Alan has been working on developing the public engagement report, which was included in your packet.

And he's going to be able to go into a little bit more detail on findings today.

All righty.

Thank you.

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

Sorry, I can't be there in person.

I'm down in Richmond today.

I'm going to be covering a couple of things today.

As Sandy mentioned, we completed the public engagement report for this effort and you all should have a copy of it.

I'm going to go over that first.

We talked about this last time.

So apologies if you were here last time and you've already heard some of this.

I'm going to go into a little bit more detail than I did last time.

But we're also going to move through that and we're going to move on to discussing the waiting scenarios.

Sandy's going to talk about that.

That's kind of the goal of this conversation.

So I'm going to set up a conversation by talking through the Engagement Report and then we'll move on to talking about the waiting scenarios.

The first section here, the agenda.

So like I just mentioned, we're gonna recap the engagement goals, the engagement report, and takeaways and outcomes, and then we'll move on to waiting scenarios and next steps.

So just real quick, we'll talk about the engagement process and goals.

So throughout the year, MPO staff collected stakeholder and public comments to help shape the planning efforts, goals, and needs identification dates.

The goals were to set and prioritize the plan's goals, identify travel needs, and inform the travel need and project selection prioritization process.

Efforts that were included in this report

included an online survey, in-person engagement, and past engagement efforts that we analyzed.

So during this phase, staff reached nearly 600 individuals just as part of this effort, attended 16 community events, and we reviewed over 2,300 comments in total, and that includes past engagement efforts.

So we attended stakeholder meetings, we had a virtual public meeting, open house events, the online community survey through MetroQuest, public intercepts, CAT meetings, and then we looked at the Seaville plans together survey, Albemarle County's 2044 comprehensive plan survey, and the transit victim plan survey, and anything that was related to transit or transportation from those surveys, we pulled in and analyzed.

So the engagement report, which you all should have a copy of,

In total, we had over 2300 comments.

This pie chart shows the breakdown of where those comments came from.

About half of them came from that online survey through MetroQuest.

39% of them came from those past engagement efforts that we just mentioned, those three, Albemarle County, the Transit Vision Plan, and Seabill Plans together.

And 12% came from in-person engagement.

So the community survey, the online survey through MetroQuest, which is an online mapping platform and survey platform, it ran from June to August at 334 responses.

And it was in four sections.

So the first one was about scoring priorities.

So that's about ranking transportation needs, safety, environment, multimodal accessibility, land use coordination, and efficiency and economic development.

Then there was a section on trade-offs.

So there were three scenarios.

or mode choice access and climate action.

And people kind of had to indicate their position on how they felt about two different scenarios for each of those categories.

And then there was an interactive map.

So anyone taking the survey had the opportunity to add markers for public transit, bike and ped, roadway, safety, and other categories.

We got a total of 1100 markers.

So we had 334 responses, but 1100 markers.

So we had many people left more than one comment.

and then there was a section on demographics that was optional and we're going to go over that a little bit as well.

So the first section was scoring priorities.

Safety was ranked highest, an average score of 2.99 out of five, it was one to five ranking, followed by environments 2.43, multimodal accessibility was down at 1.87, land use coordination and efficiency and economic development were at 1.23.

So safety was definitely the foremost concern

followed by environment and multimodal accessibility.

And mode choice, that was the first trade-off scenario.

Most participants favored a multimodal system over roadway improvements.

So this is about bike and ped and public transit over cars and a system that kind of prioritizes lessening congestion and facilitating cars.

People tended to favor multimodal systems instead.

In terms of access between access to jobs and access to non-job destinations, pretty evenly split.

Didn't see a lot of strong opinions either way.

Most people were neutral or kind of on either side.

So kind of evenly split there with access.

And then with climate change, in terms of what to do about that, two options, kind of similar to the first scenario,

Should we reduce congestion or should we promote active and public transportation?

And that was pretty overwhelmingly towards the active and public transportation side.

Next, we had the interactive map.

So I'll show a preview of the entire map of the region on the next slide, but a breakdown of what we saw.

So we had 481 comments that were related to bike and ped needs.

That was by far the most prominent category.

248 were related just to safety concerns.

234 related to roadway improvements, 139 were about public transit, 63 comments were marked as other.

And note that some of these were, for instance, there were some comments that were bike and ped and they also related to safety, but there was some that overlapped.

So this is a map of the whole region.

This is a lot of dots, I know, but you can kind of get an overview of where people were leaving comments on the online survey.

Obviously, mostly in the densely populated areas, Charlottesville, Crozet, a lot of comments up Route 29, and a few scattered throughout the region itself.

And one thing that we did that we can provide a link to is we made an online, an interactive map that has all of these comments, including comments from other engagement efforts that we're going to go over later in this presentation.

as well as a list of candidate projects from other planning efforts that people can go in and look for themselves.

You can zoom in on particular areas and see where people left comments, see where there are potential projects already in the works or potentially in the works and kind of prioritize from there.

We'll go over that a little bit later.

Next, we're going to talk about demographics.

I just want to be clear here that what I'm about to go over is just from the online survey.

The in-person engagement efforts that happened after the survey was launched were specifically designed to get feedback from community members whose profile differs from people who took the online survey.

So this is just for people who took the online survey.

So we saw, in terms of people who answered these questions, 66% of people indicated that they drive alone as their primary mode of transportation.

Biking came in at 11%, walking or mobility assistance devices at 9%, carpooling at 7%.

Most people answered this question.

We only had 1% of people prefer not to answer this question.

So this was pretty well represented.

A lot of people who drive primarily followed by people who bike, walk, and carpool.

Next, we have race.

So 77% of participants indicated that their race was white or Caucasian.

That was the overwhelming majority.

People who indicated their race as Black or African American, Asian or Asian American, multiple races or other represented 2%, each represented 2% of people who answered this question.

But we also had 14% of people not answer this question at all, so there's a big gray area there.

1% of survey participants identified as Hispanic or Latino.

American Indian or Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islanders represented 0% of survey participants, and almost no one who identified as those races.

So the breakdown here, mostly white.

In terms of comparison to the makeup of the region,

According to a 2020 report from the TPDC, 70% of the plain district population identified was white, so that cracks here, but that report also shows 13% of the population in 2018 identified as Black or African American, 4% of Asian, 3% is Hispanic, other races representing about 6%, so

In terms of the white population, it's in line with the region.

Other races were not as well represented, but again, we have that 14% unknown there.

So the engagement efforts that came after this were designed to target people that don't fall into this demographic.

So that's the online survey breakdown of race.

In terms of age, most people were over the age of 35, 28%

for 35 to 44, 22% age 65 or older, 17% 45 to 54, 14% 55 to 64, and 4% 18 to 24.

So skewing 35 and older, again, we had 11% of people not answer this question.

In terms of income, this one, 52% of participants reported annual household incomes of at least $100,000.

A few, a bit high there, although we didn't ask how many people were in each household, so we're missing that information.

14% between $75,000 and $999,000, and 9% between $50,000 and $74,000.

Only 6% reported annual household income below $50,000.

But we also had 19% of people not into this collection, so there is a bit of an unknown there.

But the numbers that we have here showing that 52% are reporting at least $100,000 annual income.

And in terms of gender identity, 48% identifying as male, 42% as female, 1% identifying as gender non-performing or non-binary, 8% for not answering the question.

So that was the breakdown of demographics from the online survey.

The in-person engagement results that we're gonna go over now, public intercepts, community meetings, that sort of thing, the idea was to capture voices from people that didn't take the online survey.

So in terms of the in-person engagement results, we compiled all the comments we received from all those in-person engagement efforts, and we manually sorted them into one or more transparent to meet categories that you can see down here on this graph.

In terms of the in-person engagement, public transit,

ICONPED and SAFEE were the top three categories.

Another activity we did for the events was a money game.

So basically, participants were given monopoly money to kind of distribute between different priorities, kind of show what they thought was most important.

This kind of approximates the scoring priorities question from the online survey.

So see here,

In general, it's a bit mixed depending on the event.

Transit Center ranks the multimodal accessibility highest.

Center of Belvedere was pretty even between all categories, but for safety and economic development were a little bit lower.

National Night Out environment ranked first.

In the open house event, multimodal accessibility was highest.

So we're seeing a good mix here.

Multimodal accessibility might've edged out.

Again, here we have a map showing in-person engagement comments and fewer comments obviously than the online survey, but basically I went through and looked at all the comments, anything that mentioned a specific location I mapped.

So we see a lot in southern Charlottesville, central Charlottesville, downtown area,

Route 29 corridor, a lot of comments there, Crozet as well.

And then last we had the PASS engagement results.

So those three surveys that were done in recent years that relate to transportation.

So those combined, we did a similar analysis of the in-person engagement results.

We categorized each comment and then we mapped them if it was related to a specific location.

So here we see public transit,

Bike and Ped, similar to the in-person engagement with the top two.

Land use came in third.

Efficiency and connections were close.

The Albemarle survey, there tended to be a lot of discussion about land use in terms of concern about residential growth and how that would impact traffic, the need to manage traffic and include public transportation and additional residential growth in the area was a common one we heard there.

And again, we have an overall map of past engagement comments that were specific to a location.

Seeing a lot of the Pantops area, again, downtown Charlottesville, the Route 29 corridor dominated those comments.

So that's a recap of the public engagement.

Also wanted to talk a little bit about candidate projects.

So to add some more context to this prioritization process that we're gonna talk about,

Like I mentioned, we created an online map showing the locations of the candidate transportation projects and all the markers from the engagement efforts.

So everything's overlaid and you can see where the hotspots are and where there's already projects potentially in the works.

This is a map showing an overview of that.

Again, a little hard to read here, so I think it'd be beneficial for people to take a look at that online map to kind of zoom in and see what it's showing.

Plenty of projects have been proposed or thought up or funded.

There are various stages.

So each DOT has data associated with it.

You can click on it and see where the project came from, what phase it's in, what it's covering, that sort of thing.

So just to wrap up here, engagement takeaways and outcomes.

The overarching themes that we heard from this include an aid need for safer roadways and intersections,

Dedicated and protected bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, and enhanced public transit system.

The community appears eager for solutions that prioritize pedestrian and bicyclist safety, public transit, and accessibility over traditional car-centric designs.

That was the overarching theme we saw there.

A few takeaways.

This is not by any means comprehensive.

The report goes into a little bit more detail with a longer list.

but these are what we heard most commonly, so desire for expanded bus routes, longer operating hours, bus service for specific locations, shopping centers on Route 29 North and the airport, we heard about that a lot, concerns about lack of benches, proper lighting at bus stops, travel time inefficiencies, long waits for buses,

Emphasis on the need to connect communities, including Crozet, other areas outside of Charlottesville and around the region.

Charlottesville and the county in general just expanded their public transit system.

Some suggestions to provide more frequent small bus transit options from high-density housing areas into the city.

For bike and pet infrastructure, there was a lot of demand for protected bike lanes throughout the city.

People mentioned challenges with bottlenecks.

physically at train bridges impacting safety of pedestrians and vehicles.

A lot of concern about safety and crossing Route 29 for pedestrians, desire for dedicated paths leading to landmarks, schools, parks, better connections in general, promoting alternative transportation methods, scooters, e-bikes, that kind of thing.

A lot of people wanted to see approved projects get finished.

That came up a lot.

Unmarked crosswalks, ADA accessibility, dedicated bike corridor between Crozet and Charlottesville, a lot of suggestions for specific infrastructure projects, tunnels, bridges, bypass access ramps, rectangular rapid flashing beacons at crosswalks and other enhanced pedestrian features for crosswalks, and need for more sidewalk connections, whether they're missing particular or near housing developments and schools.

Land use and environments calls for greater residential density to reduce commute distances, concerns about the impact of growth on traffic, the need for better road infrastructure planning before allowing growth in an area.

We saw that a lot in the Albemarle survey.

Suggestions to update zoning policies to prioritize renewable energy systems, restrict parking requirements, promote solar energy and EV, and concern about greenhouse gas emissions from increased car traffic.

Roadway and safety and efficiency improvements.

This is the last slide here on the engagement takeaways.

Some suggestions to close University Avenue through traffic for pedestrian safety down the corner.

Calls for the redesign or modification of certain roads and intersections, especially Preston Avenue in Charlottesville.

Calls to widen roads, include bike lanes.

Again, talk about intersections and visibility issues due to road slopes and parked cars, street configurations in general.

Free Bridge came up a lot, Pantops area, access point between the city and the county.

We're concerned about the safety of that bridge, the status of it, need for more multimodal access across that bridge.

Traffic disruptions near Main and 5th Street and Cherry Avenue due to speeding came up a lot.

29, concern about the congestion there and some desire to see some alternative routes.

Decongestion on Route 29 to improve general traffic patterns, slowing down traffic on roads where there's a lot of speeding, and there's a lot of support in general for traffic circles and route-a-bouts, the calling measure.

Just to wrap up the engagement part here.

So the outcomes of this engagement process, which we're about to talk about here, the weighting performance measures to identify travel needs, supporting prioritization of projects, directly influencing the selection of those projects, and forming alternatives for future project lists.

Yeah, and Alan if you wouldn't mind just continuing to advance the slides as we go since you're the master of the presentation at this point.

So what was in your packet is basically one of the things we've been working towards with all of this public engagement is specifically to help inform how we're going to evaluate priorities and needs in a couple of different ways.

And one of those is going back and looking at

Our transportation system analysis where we're analyzing the data and weighting each of the prioritization categories or our goals

differently based on what the public engagement has indicated as a priority for us.

So this is again, I just want to emphasize, I don't think I can say this too often, just to make sure everybody in this room is clear that this is one type of evaluation that we're doing to help identify the priority needs.

And then we're also going to be looking at sort of the

What we'll be looking into what all the comments are and you know finding the alignment between what the data analysis tells us what the comments tells us and then overlapping those with what the

what the candidate projects would potentially be able to do to address the needs that are identified.

So in terms of the weighting scenarios for the actual data analysis, there were three general categories or general weighting schemas that were developed by the consultants that developed the prioritization process.

So I think these are a good guideline to at least start the conversation.

It doesn't mean that we have to choose any of these explicitly as they are, but I think it gives us a framework to start talking about what it is exactly that we want to prioritize.

So we'll start by talking about the weighting scenarios because that helps us look at it, or the weighting scenarios for the prioritization categories because that helps us look at it a little bit bigger picture and then we can talk about the specific

metrics that are going to be evaluated under each of these prioritization categories.

So the first category is accessibility focus.

So this is really emphasizing and giving more priority to projects that are helping people get to where they want to go.

And again, this does have a multimodal component to it.

So we're looking at access along with different modes of transportation, not just car-centric access.

So in all of these, safety was a very high priority for everybody, so we're keeping the safety score pretty level across all these weighting scenarios.

But the accessibility focus, the primary difference is that it's going to put very little weight on the efficiency and economic development score, which is really the one that's measuring the congestion impacts.

Although it does also measure the travel time reliability and the on-time performance for

Transit Service Operations as well.

And it's putting a lot more emphasis on the multimodal accessibility and the land use factors.

The balance scenario basically says all of these are priorities and we're going to weigh all of them equally.

And then the mobility focus one puts more emphasis on increasing the travel time reliability and less emphasis on the land use coordination pieces.

So we're focusing more on how can we make

the system more reliable and decrease congestion as a higher priority than the other scenarios.

So I think it's pretty clear to me that at least based on the public engagement, the public would seem to, if we were going to put these in front of the public and ask them to choose one, seems like the public feedback

would most support the accessibility-focused general schema.

So I think that's probably a good place to start that conversation.

And Alan, I keep trying to switch to the next slide.

Can you switch to the next slide for me?

So I think probably more of our discussion today might be around how we want to break up the scores within each of these actual metrics that we're going to be evaluating as part of the data.

If you recall, each of the goals basically had a couple of different metrics that we were going to be using to

to determine how well the system is performing or what the potential opportunity is to improve the system based on the different metrics.

So if we're focusing just on the accessibility focus currently, and again, this has just been developed to put something before you all to respond to, but I think some of the questions might be that, first of all, if you all agree that the accessibility focus is probably the best baseline to start with, and then discussing whether or not the breakdown of how much weight we are putting in each of these subcategories under the prioritization category

make sense to you all.

So a couple of questions specifically that I had is do you want to weigh the roadway improvements and the bicycle and pedestrian and transit improvements equally or do you want to give more weight to one or the other?

And then specifically for the metrics that have

Do you want to give those additional weightings the same amount as we're giving to the non-disadvantaged population metrics or is there a different score breakdown between the disadvantaged populations and the non-disadvantaged populations that you'd like to

See us start with.

So maybe that's a lot of information.

So you might have questions for Allen.

You might have questions on how this relates to the public feedback or you might just have general responses.

I have a question.

Sandy, this might be projecting, but it sounds like you said

Oh, I don't remember the table breakdown.

Hold on.

Let me look at the table.

So SMART SCALE, the- SMART SCALE is basically going to not, it's going to basically sort of act like environmental is in this table.

It's going to be applied to the other factor areas as a multiplier versus a separate factor that you would evaluate.

So, Alan, could you go back to the previous slide?

So for our area type and SMART SCALE, under the new proposed changes, safety would get 30% of the score.

Congestion would get, oh no, safety would get 25% of the score.

Congestion would get 25% of the score.

Accessibility would get 20%.

Economic Development would get 20% and Environmental would get 10%.

So it probably would be a little bit closer to the mobility focus.

And it sort of seems like the mobility focus is aimed at more roadway projects in general.

Perhaps.

Sort of along the smart scales, doing this route.

I was just kind of like trying to like bring

but given the public feedback we're hearing through the comprehensive plan update I would say we feel safe going with accessibility focused as well.

Sorry to be nitpicky but mobility focused doesn't add up to 100% unless I'm mapping wrong.

If you want to have a discussion about mobility focus, we have five points.

Yeah.

Can you go to the next slide, Ellen?

Yeah.

That is the potential for accessibility improvement.

Planning time index.

So it's basically a measure of reliability.

The travel time index is a measure of congestion.

So what is the regular backup?

And then planning time index is how variable that congestion or that travel time could be.

Thank you.

20 in 10.

I would be like 17, 13, I don't know.

Counting what?

they are i think some of them there are score there are like um um i guess like tiers to the score so um we can also look at maybe how that could influence um like you know the ones that have a higher percentage of the population could get a little bit more of a boost that way is there also some

That would be incorporated in the land use coordination score.

Yes, because you're talking about

What the opportunity is to improve accessibility.

So I think that would also look at where there are network gaps and how you could fill a network gap to provide better accessibility.

Or I don't know if it will discuss, I don't know if it will catch where there are actual network gaps, but it will discuss where there's an opportunity to improve like the comfort

of the travel path.

Sandy, can you remind me, is the PI one that started with a lock score?

Definitely land use coordination.

That's land use, OK. Yeah.

The PAI is the one that, we have the blocks.

Okay, so it sounds like, do you all want to discuss any of these other categories, the multimodal accessibility, do you like that point distribution or that weighting distribution?

And then for the efficiency and economic development, there's slightly more emphasis on the transit on-time performance, but there are also two measures for the travel time.

Well, is there any other feedback that you all want to provide?

Oh, go ahead.

Travel Time Index is basically measuring the level of congestion and then and then the reliability is measuring how like yeah yeah like like how consistent like yeah basically if you're always going if your trip is always going to take an extra 15 minutes during peak hour conditions the planning time index is going to be low because it's consistent yeah is that right will okay

Yeah, you could have poor traffic conditions or congestion, but if it's really reliable then, you know, or the opposite where the traffic's not too bad but the reliability is pretty bad.

Do you all have any other questions or comments or maybe observations about the public engagement while Alan and Will are with us?

because it does measure whether or not the road has the capacity to support the traffic volumes.

So it's like a measure of the performance.

Yeah, well, like example, we're doing a transportation plan in Blacksburg and some of the traffic

The level of service was pretty good.

It wasn't too bad.

But 81, there are accidents on there fairly frequently.

And whenever there's a backup or lane closure, then everything backs out onto the parallel networks and just the whole system shuts down essentially.

So part of the reliability is trying to figure out also what variables are in play here that are causing those issues.

Like on 64 and Free Bridge, if there's an accident on 64,

Forget Pantops.

Pantops just gets completely overwhelmed.

So what's happening here that's causing that reliability issue?

So it's a little bit less about focusing on the congestion mitigation.

That's going to show up with travel time reliability.

I mean, they both can be important.

Like Will was saying, the reliability is, is it consistent?

Travel time is just how bad is it?

So you're measuring really two different things.

If it's consistent and it's consistently bad, then we can fix the bad, but we don't necessarily want to change the reliability.

So travel time reliability, I understand as a road user why that matters to me.

What are the factors that go into measuring travel time reliability?

That might be, I need to cop out.

That might be my check question because we pulled that data from VTRANS because VTRANS has kind of made this shift where it's not, to use the words of WOIPI, it's not a state plan as much anymore as it is a tool and a source of information.

So they really want all of us to use their data sets when we're doing our analysis.

Not to cop out on it, but we really are pulling from the data that's in V-Trans, how they measure travel time reliability.

Not off the top of my head.

I mean, we'll talk to it.

They look at how it varies over time for the reliability.

And as long as it's within a certain range, then it's deemed reliable.

If it's outside of that range quite a lot, then it's deemed unreliable.

But it's got to do with, like he said, it could be a crash on 64, but it doesn't necessarily could be, you have to look at each segment of roads separately.

or each corridor separately because the variables could change.

Like something that the issues at the intersections on Pantops could basically back traffic out on 64.

Is that what you're asking, Jessica?

Yeah, I am asking for data.

I'm trying to figure.

I will tell you a lot of it's got to do with our actual ability to count traffic, but a lot of it's got to do with because everybody has cell phones and even cars have connections to the internet,

It's actually measuring how quickly those vehicles travel the network and not individually but as a group and it can show where those hotspots are and that's where it's getting those numbers from.

It looks at that because they're going to be data you're going to get for every day

year in, year out.

So you can measure that information.

I mean, that's how the hot lanes and all these things in Northern Virginia work too.

They do speed congestion based on that same data.

They're looking at it in real time.

Yeah, I was going to jump in there right before Chuck did.

I remember Nick Donahue and Chuck, I remember we were in this room when he gave presentations on this.

Like as soon as we were starting to kind of take this new approach on V-Trans, but he kept holding up his phone.

That was his prop he would have.

He said, we have this and we use this information to track kind of

How long it takes to get through areas.

So I'm imagining with the reliability, I'm assuming they're using that as street light and other data sets and bring that in.

Great.

I did want to compliment staff.

I know that a lot of MPOs out there, they'll do a survey and say, great, done.

And then they'll move on.

But I know

Just kind of looking through it and part of why we ask the questions on the survey is to figure out who's at the table, who's not at the table, who needs to be here.

And I think looking at that and staff really made a point to go out and do public intercepts and go out and talk to the Charlottesville Housing Authority, attend their meetings and really get out there.

So I know a lot of efforts been made on staff side of really trying to get out there and get that representative sample and make sure that

that they include as many people as possible, when a lot of places would just kind of move on and say, well done.

The other thing that I'll mention is that we have not shared that mapping resource that Alan has developed that shares all the feedback and the candidate projects and things like that.

So if you all would like to have access to that, we can send it out if it's helpful for you all to review.

or just be able to reference if needed.

But thank you.

Thank you, Alan.

You're welcome to stick around.

Great.

Yeah, thank you.

All right.

So I am going to share my screen in just a second.

Let me get to the right slides.

So next thing we're going to talk about is everybody's favorite topic, smart scale.

Let me share my screen.

OK, so the first thing I want to do today is you all had indicated that there may be some interest in developing some recommendations for a position for the policy board.

So we can talk about whether that is something you all want to move forward on.

But the first thing I want to do is just go through what was discussed at the most recent CTE meeting and discuss those changes.

So the first thing I want to mention is that

One of the updates to what was previously developed is the types of projects that would be eligible for the high priority project definition.

And so there were two additional project types that were added.

This is the transit transfer station and new bridges.

So this doesn't have to be a vehicular bridge.

It could be a big pud bridge, but there are some additional, those were the two project types that were added.

So the MPO would be eligible to submit those types of projects in addition to the other six we've been talking about.

Well, we can talk about this a little bit further, but one of the reasons that they added these two project types is because they wanted to be consistent with how projects were tiered based on the number of economic development sites that were being entered.

So we'll talk about what that means a little bit later.

In the review of the economic development methodology recommendations, that was also an outcome.

My understanding is that probably they're done discussing the eligibility types for the projects, though, so it's not likely that there will be others that are added.

What that means as far as us are concerned, we can come back and talk about this a little bit, but what this means is that based on the list of projects that have been identified in our region, this is probably the list of candidate projects that the MPO and or the TJPDC would potentially be eligible to submit.

So there's the Diverging Diamond Interchange at I-64 and Fifth Street.

We haven't really been talking about this at the MPO, but it is a priority project for Albemarle County and it is an eligible project for the MPO.

The Ravenna River Bike Ped Bridge would remain eligible and the Hillsdale South Extension would remain eligible.

I think previously there was maybe some concern whether or not we wanted to move forward with the Hillsdale South Extension, but we can continue to consider it since it's one of a very limited number of projects MPO.

Yeah, it would basically be making a connection from where the roundabout is being put at Hillsdale near the Whole Foods and connecting it straight to 250 and then doing some reconfiguration of the ramps.

No, the 29 and 250 interchange, so it would direct the local traffic through that Hillsdale extension through that network instead of having them go through the 250 ramps.

I don't think it requires Kroger to shut down.

Chuck, jump in if you recall.

But to do the Hillsdale South extension, there would be some significant right-of-way impacts.

So I don't know if that puts a wrench in.

We'll bring these back to you all probably next month when we're closer to having a final decision to get some ideas on what you all would recommend moving forward.

But this is our candidate list right now.

And then there are two VDOT pipeline studies that are occurring right now that could also identify some projects that are potentially eligible for the MPO to submit.

So that's the U.S. 250 and Barrack Story project and then the Ivy Road and U.S. 250 interchange.

if a project is identified through those pipeline studies.

So just keep in mind that MPO will have two applications.

I'll buy a GoPro just to document it for you all.

So really the biggest discussion, the biggest new topic that was discussed at the last meeting are changes to the economic development methodology.

So just a little bit of background information is that the current governor administration, economic development is a priority.

And so he's basically instructed or directed all of his secretaries to make sure that they are considering economic development impacts and all of their other processes.

So the economic development measure in the SMART SCALE process is really intended to evaluate what type of economic development impact a transportation project would have.

And it currently includes three scoring measures.

So the first one is the one that we all spend most of our time working on in this room is basically the project support for economic development.

So that's the measure that requires us to upload all of the site plans for the project within the buffer area.

and type in manually how many square feet each project is, et cetera.

But there are two other measures.

That's intermodal access and efficiency and travel time reliability.

And those that's just data that's pulled into the system.

That's not what we're required to to enter.

And and those are also there are no proposed changes to those other two measures.

So we're really we're just talking about that project support that that ED one factor.

In order to make some recommendations on adjustments to the methodology, the OIP staff worked with the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, so these recommendations are coming from the EDP.

The way the current methodology works is that we upload the site plans and basically depending on the type of transportation project there's a certain like buffer area that says you know you can enter all of your site plans for proposed projects or projects that have not basically reached

final construction phase.

You can upload all of those and then we can and then basically they're pulling in the square footage.

And so the the different tiers which is what I was talking about before when I was talking about the different project types means like how big a transportation improvement is or how intensive that project is.

There's a different level of impact that is considered for the economic developments.

So for these tier three projects, which are the biggest projects, which are things like new bridges and new interchanges, those kinds of things, there's a three mile buffer that's applied.

So you're uploading your site plans within a three mile buffer.

And then for the smaller, less intensive projects, there's a smaller buffer area.

So just to demonstrate this, that's kind of

kind of this is a schematic that the EDP put together to sort of show the buffering so depending on the size of the project more site plans or more eligible sites will be pulled in and for smaller projects a smaller number of site plans will be pulled in.

The change is the actual methodology.

So we'll, yeah, yeah, we haven't gotten there yet.

This is just background information.

All right.

So I'm sure many of you in this room will agree with some of those criticisms.

The biggest one is that the current methodology requires the manual entry and upload of all of the information, which is probably what we all

I have spent the most time on with the SMART SCALE project, specifically when we're doing something that requires coordination with both the city and the county.

We're trying to upload information from two localities into our applications.

But from the state perspective, from the feedback they heard from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership is that this also doesn't actually reflect metrics that are important to them when they're talking about the economic development potential for a site.

And so specifically, the way that the economic development score is

is functioning.

It doesn't address industries that they prioritize as far as adding to the gross state product.

It doesn't address the actual economic impacts that VEDP is concerned about like job creation or capital investment.

Capital investment is important because it also increases tax revenues and then it doesn't consider the market demand of the site.

And so basically, the recommended changes are all in an effort to create an evaluation criteria and scoring system for the economic development that will address those three major areas of concern.

All right, so this is just the evaluation that VEDP did that sort of shows how well the current methodology is at supporting those primary areas of concern that they're focusing on.

And you can see that, at least up at the very top, the current process is not doing that.

And there's a limited alignment with strategic priorities for economic growth.

So they have made some recommendations.

First of all,

They are basically going to work with SmartScale to use a predictive model that will help determine the estimated benefits or the estimated job development and capital investment that a site could potentially generate.

So they're going to be looking at data that they're pulling in from their database, evaluating those characteristics and using that to determine

different characteristics of potential sites that would also display those characteristics in order to determine how likely it is that the potential sites, economic development sites, would create jobs and encourage capital investment.

They're also pulling in a site visit factor.

And so one of the things that they're looking at is they're going to measure how many site visits eligible sites receive over a three year period.

Based on their information, the site visit factor, site visits are kind of like a final determination of after they go through after potential

Developers or businesses go through a site evaluation process.

By the time you get to a site visit, you have a short list of sites that you think would potentially be of interest to you and your business.

And so it's a really good indicator that your site is attractive to potential businesses that would want to be cited in your locality.

And then they also wanted to pull in some information with site funding factors.

So that's looking at what kinds of investment have already been invested into the property from things like the Tobacco Commission, Go Virginia, those kinds of other opportunities that are available to help get sites prepared and fund site readiness.

So one of the things that they're recommending is that we go away from a manual update process and move towards pulling in information from a database.

So they are recommending that the site readiness and the eligible sites are being pulled in through this Virginia scans database.

This is a statewide database.

But it is something that has to be updated and maintained by your economic development staff.

So they would basically be inputting sites into this database that potentially meet the criteria to attract some of these different growth industries and the

SMART SCALE analysis would basically be pulling information from this database in order to score your economic development, like give your projects the economic development score.

So it wouldn't be manual.

There wouldn't be the same level of validation that's needed by the VDOT and OB staff to review the site plans and validate them.

But it does require some ongoing maintenance effort by other locality staff in order for your projects to be able to receive the economic development benefits.

And so this is the scoring breakdown that they're recommending.

Basically the jobs and capital investment predictive score would be 65%.

This site funding factor would be 15%.

So that's how much investment or funding has already been invested into the site.

The site visit factor would be 10%.

And then the level of site readiness would count for an additional 10%.

So I just wanted to show this is what kind of the information that is populated in our area looks like.

So this is something that you all probably would want to start talking with your economic development staff to determine if there are additional sites that would be eligible to enter into the Virginia Scan database that aren't uploaded yet to make sure that if projects are being submitted that they are able to get those economic development benefits.

And then these are just some examples of where projects or where SMART SCALE scores could have potentially been changed with this new methodology.

So there's nothing specifically in our area, but you can see that some projects are increasing in score.

And part of the reason for that is that there's just limited staff capacity to prepare applications.

So there are some places where eligible site plans weren't being uploaded into the SMART SCALE application.

And then there are some places where the scores will go down because while there were eligible economic development sites that were uploaded, they didn't necessarily meet the priority criteria that VEDP has identified.

Overall, what they shared in the Commonwealth Transportation Board meeting is that economic development scores would typically go down.

But some of that also could be

a factor of the economic development sites not necessarily being maintained to the full extent that they possibly could.

So it would be a little bit difficult to know how many potential sites do we have that could be identified in our region that aren't at this point.

You all may have a better indication than that, but I'm not sure.

So basically there's a Commonwealth Transportation Board meeting today that we're not at obviously, but they're talking through what the recommended methodology would have been if it was applied to Round 5.

And so that will probably give us a better indicator of what the potential impacts are of this change in the scoring method.

But I wanted to review that first before we discuss anything else.

Just ultimately it comes down to that list of sites.

So I guess we just want to make sure we're all coordinated.

So if there's like, I don't know how they factor, like state-owned land, UVA land is state-owned.

So we have Fontaine, which is really a lot of development opportunity there for job creation or whatever through research and clinics.

I don't know how that process works.

Why don't we go to UVA for people to move closely with the trails global partnership for economic development, CBTED.

to make sure that these sites are uploaded also, and go Virginia through the night council to live in close contact.

And a complete side note, if anybody's going to the governor's transportation conference, Jason L. Cooby from VEDP is the plenary speaker.

Yeah, yeah.

All right.

So you all had indicated previously that you may want to develop some recommendations for the policy board on potential areas of concern.

I did send out a survey.

We got pretty limited responses on what the areas of concern might be.

So maybe I'll just open it up for discussion first of all.

Great.

Well, we'll use the survey responses as a guide, but feel free to add additional impact.

I did print out, because I have a dashboard here, it doesn't show the full question, so I did print out the questions, so we would have those to review.

So the first question was about reducing the application cap.

So you can see that there was a little bit of discrepancy between whether or not we overall supported that one or not.

Do you all wanna discuss that one?

Oh, well, that's because I only shared my PowerPoint.

I jumped off of the PowerPoint.

There we go.

All right.

So there was a little bit of discrepancy.

Two to one agreed with the reduction in the applicant

application numbers, one person disagreed, but any?

Yeah, it was two to one.

I'll just go through the findings and then we can go back and talk about it.

So the second question about ensuring application readiness, everybody agreed that that was appropriate to make the changes to require all of the information to be updated.

There's a lot of discrepancy over this question about addressing the project cost overruns and what impact that might have on project selection and the consensus scenario from the CTB.

There seemed to be a little bit more disagreement with this question 4 about using future congestion conditions versus current congestion conditions to evaluate the congestion impacts.

Everybody disagreed on the proposed change to limit the high priority projects eligibility.

It's across the board on the adjustments to the scoring steps, so changing the way that the high priority program funds are allocated.

That was a little bit all over the board as far as initial feedback.

And then there was

So a little bit of a mixture on the changes to the land use coordination score.

So removing that as a standalone score and changing it instead to a basically multiplier.

And then the last question, there was broad disagreement on how the points should be reallocated if land use becomes a multiplier instead of a standalone scoring measure.

So maybe these two might be good places to start since there's agreement among everybody who took the surveys.

Is there, I mean, I don't want to assume that everybody in the room agrees on this, but are there, is there specific concerns that you all would like to express related to this?

Part of that is a language and not necessarily going to be how the policy is applied.

OK.

Sandy, if I could zoom out a little bit.

I wanted to say thank you for putting together this survey and helping us to go through it question by question.

However, I think that bringing something to the policy board and requesting them to submit some sort of letter to VDOT, my concern is not necessarily on each specific thing, but broadly how all of these changes would work together and then become so inconsistent with what

and just this inconsistency between our own prioritization processes and what we're hearing from the community and what our community members want, what our Board of Supervisors wants.

And then this feeling that I'm getting from all of these SMART SCALE changes, and I did listen to some of the recordings, and especially the combination of reducing the influence of land use

increasing economic development.

What I'm hearing is we don't care what you've already built around your communities and we don't care about people getting there, but we do care about people getting to really big job sites just to go to work and get home again.

New job sites.

Big job sites.

And it just feels really inconsistent with what we're hearing that people want to get to the places that already exist.

And it's not just about getting to work.

There's a lot of things that people want to travel to.

I'm curious, I've been following these surveys, and I did not see this for someone looking at this one, but oftentimes when we look at bike pad surveys, people ask these questions, where do you want to go, work, school, or recreation, you know, and then oftentimes you find this kind of in between, you want to do it all.

I don't find myself seeing surveys for the driver.

That was a fairly interesting discussion of where you draw the line between whether like a park is a destination versus you know if you drive a car to a park to get your bike out and drive it that would be considered a non-recreational trip based on the discussion that you're having but if you ride your bike to the park and then you ride around the trail at the park it's like the recreation is the whole trip so there are some distinctions that people are making that

Maybe it's a discussion they're having more broadly at the state level, what they consider recreation versus what they consider a transportation function of the network.

So would your suggestion then, Jessica, be to focus more just on the high level and not necessarily comment on the specific recommendations?

I think it's a combination.

I do want to paint a bigger picture, at least for our supervisors.

If I had to concede a point, I understand VDOT's limitations in staffing to be able to help with so many applications.

So I understand the need to reduce the number of applications that we submit.

We might have to change our goals to a better, or not a better goal, but like... That was to Christine's point earlier, was resetting these weightings based on what our priorities are and what our goals are, and these are pretty much in conflict.

I think the multi-coordinates understand that.

I mean, I'm assuming maybe I should ask you all this.

Would you like us to be drafting a letter that is capturing this?

That's basically the recommendation by the MPA Technical Committee to see if the policy board would consider

It might be useful to ask them if they're interested in us providing them a recommendation at this point.

I mean, they don't seem to be super concerned about providing a letter to the state.

I think the unofficial comments we've received are this is less about are we able to influence the process, and more so how do we re-learn the changes that are being made so that we can position ourselves to be successful.

So we haven't heard a lot about, you know, we need to put our opinion forth.

Not that they would not if we could suggest that and say that technical committee is requesting you all consider a letter.

But unofficially, there's been more conversations about, you know, what is one more letter going to do?

I remember the Virginia Association of MPOs, when they first came up with SMART SCALE, we wrote a letter from all

And we got a one-sentence response back that was pretty clear about how they thought about the feedback that we submitted.

The Virginia Association of MPSS did submit a letter.

I think we got, we at least got a response that asked us to copy other people and additional correspondence, so they received it.

Christine, I definitely hear the same thing that you were just saying from our elected officials that we're not going to influence the scoring process, so we just need to figure out how to be successful.

We could be really successful.

We could submit two things and get those two things, but we're not going to necessarily, given the changes in the scoring, we are not necessarily going to be successful in meeting our own priorities.

Are there other specific changes you want to discuss?

It sounds like the biggest concerns are over the types of projects and then the land use scoring.

I have a question from the reply.

Okay.

It could be adding a lane, it could also be like, yeah.

Yeah, okay.

So I think,

I think the feedback I've heard is that the changes are not consistent with the locally identified priorities that we've heard across a range of engagement efforts.

That the focus on the new SMART SCALE process is looking at new job sites, not existing destinations, and the land use impacts are important local priorities compared to the economic development impacts that are state priorities.

And then it's also going to limit the ability of locality staff to move forward on their locally identified priorities.

Does that capture it?

Is there any other feedback you all want to provide?

Okay.

All right, I think that's it for that then.

And then the last thing we're going to talk about today is, I'm going to talk a little bit about TAZs.

So I think Chuck, are you good to give some background information and I'll get the slides up and you can go through them.

Okay.

Yeah, okay, the travel demand model is what we use to develop

Review where the problem areas are from a traffic standpoint.

It doesn't really look at bike and pedestrian, or it does transit a little bit, but mostly automobile.

And it basically like this map here from the last model run from the last LRTP, the red areas are where we're seeing the biggest, where we figure that the biggest

impacts are going to be that we need to try to address with our LRTP.

That being said, most of our projects that we look at are small, like intersection improvements and sidewalk bike ped projects.

And those actually don't change anything in this model.

Unless you're going to add capacity to a corridor, it's not really going to change

most of these colors, or it's just gonna move the problem somewhere else.

So basically that's it in a nutshell.

We typically don't use this for anything else other than to develop a long range plan and to identify where those needs are.

So that's the gist of what we do with the model that we work.

It's federal regulations that once a model is developed that the MPO has to maintain it.

In the past, we've used it and updated it.

A lot of times, some of the long-range plans, we actually just looked at the previous one and then we updated the LRTP based on the previous model runs.

We didn't actually update the model at the time.

So it's just a matter of the process and maintaining the model.

The model basically looks at the census data to pull social economic data

development areas in the region and those are assigned to what's classified as a TAZ zone or a traffic analysis zone and then it the basically model

routes traffic from each zone to each other zone and to external stations.

And then from that, it'll basically generate volumes on particular segments of roadway in the model.

And that's what generates that first map that we saw.

These are the TAS zones currently for the model area.

When we built this model, we were expecting that the MPO would grow and include Fluvanna and

Louisa, part of Fluvanna, Louisa, and part of Greene County, which they changed the rules for

what would be eligible and those basically went away.

So we're not gonna change the model this time.

We are actually going through an update of the model, but it's not gonna be ready in time enough for us to use it for the current LRTP.

So we're gonna use the existing model and update the census data to a more current year and then use that to show where

Thanks Chuck.

Yeah, sure.

So right now there are approximately 250 TAZs within the NPO.

VDOT has informed that these boundaries need to strictly align with the census block and that the TACs not intersect across the road network as much as possible.

So staff has been revising the TACs to those standards.

We're about 25% complete.

In our first effort, we were trying to think of a better way to gather the data from off the census quickly.

So we went from about 250 TAZs to 60, sent that to VDOT, and they said that will not work.

So anyway, with that said, we have to include

We're looking for the road projects to include Berkmar Drive extension.

And there might be one or two other projects that they need to add.

And as Chuck mentioned, we're going to exclude the TACs outside of the PTO boundary and those external stations.

Let's see.

So the MPO is working with VDOT to get the SE data for this current model run.

Yeah, the data has to be approved by the policy board before we can use it for the model run.

So really what we're trying to do is to let you all know that we're in the process of developing this information to give you all some background when it comes back, because we're basically going to have a list of numbers.

The TZ zones are going to be numbers.

We're going to have a lot of data that's assigned to it.

And you're going to look at it, and it's not really going to mean a whole lot without looking at a map.

It's just going to be a list of numbers.

Well, what it's going to do, I mean, understandably, it's not going to the types of projects that we are going to be

interested in our probably not what's that will impact the model.

But what it will do is it will help us if we go back to this first slide is that will help us understand like when we do consider congestion, are we like if we have an opportunity to align a project with one of the areas that are going to experience future growth congestion based on the model, we can sort of discuss that we're trying to plan for further time horizon out and just mitigating the current congestion conditions.

But the impacts of the projects themselves are probably not going to show meaningful changes.

It might be more of a qualitative consideration.

Yeah, typically in the past, it's done post-processing.

So we'll get this model, and then they'll basically start to look at the bike and pedestrians.

Afterwards, and how that might affect it, but we can't really, there's not an input into the model for bicondestrian.

We don't have data.

So we don't have a network built that would show the bike and pedestrian network, the volumes like we have for a regular vehicular model.

So,

Yeah, so given all that, given that in our region especially, there's, you know, the model answers very specific questions and our utilization of it is going to be fairly limited based on the types of projects that we're likely to move forward.

One of the things we're recommending is to basically meet the minimum requirements for the update but not necessarily, and try to, one of the things we talked with VDOT is try to also overall simplify the model.

and create a model that can be run efficiently at the VDOT administration level and can be maintained as efficiently as possible by our staff.

Yeah, so.

I think one thing that we do want to get feedback from you all on, I think just to clarify, is that in order to run the current model to get these inputs for our current long-range transportation plan, we are interpolating the data that was developed for our previous long-range transportation plan, basically saying we have the

2015 to 2045 growth projections, assuming those growth projections still apply and basically just doing an interpolation to assume linear growth between 2015 and 2021 to use the data.

And we just wanted to state that that is a commonly acceptable methodology for updating that.

It is within the threshold when VDOT did some quality control checking against the Wilden Cooper Center.

And so just wanted to get general feedback from you while that it is appropriate and you're okay with moving forward with that methodology.

Cool.

Any other questions on the model or the TAZs?

Okay.

It'll come back before you with a long list of data and numbers and we'll go through it again, but let's get you some background.

Thank you, Chuck.

Okay, let's do it.

Not too much to report on RideShare.

We are still working through the fiscal year, sort of celebrating RideShare month here in October, and hopefully getting ready.

Really quick, so just for a little bit more detail on your CAP strategic plan, because of how we added additional funding to it, I don't know if it was communicated, we're trying to get approval on the contract through the Office of the Attorney General because it's the first time we've done it.

So that's the only reason why there's a little bit of delay is just we're waiting for the OAG's office to approve that.

So everything else, the money's there, is just we're waiting for OAG to come through.

City is now a member of NACO, that's the National Association of Speed Transportation Officials.

We're hoping to use that to sort of learn and bring in some more updates to our standards and design guidelines.

CAT is still doing its alternative fuel study.

We're currently in discussions with a few other transit agencies who have gone through a similar transition, sort of learning what kind of decisions they made and why they made them.

We're going to bring that information to Council and our stakeholders

There should be a second round of engagement next month to look at those service recommendations.

We are working on scoping a re-striking plan for West Main and doing a little bit of discussion with David Koch

Actually, I was only going to add one thing.

The county will be kicking off its microtransit service at the end of this month.

There will be a kickoff event, but look to county communications for that because I don't have any more details.

But it is going to be even better than we initially thought with the ability to not only travel within the two microtransit service areas, but to also travel between them so you don't

Sure.

We are currently trying to schedule a regional safety summit.

But as of now, it's not as visual.

So, you and I have to let you all know that we have information.

You'll be here?

No, probably city space.

Yes, good morning, almost afternoon.

So first of all, within the week, we should be setting out to all of our MPOs updated DRPT representation letters.

It's obvious we have not updated since Taylor Jenkins is no longer with us, but you will be receiving updated letters and we will make an effort to be more present so you don't have quorum issues.

I did not realize that you didn't have quorum today, so I would have made the effort if that was the case.

Besides that, this week we are hosting our Coordinated Human Service Plan meetings that started on Monday through about Wednesday.

Actually, I believe that you all might have attended the one that was on Monday.

But there's information in my agency update.

The main thing I want to note is that this is sort of additional points

for if you're planning to apply for any section 5310 funding for the fiscal year 2025 cycle.

Also, we did an update that is related to our CHISM plan that includes a story map version of the plan.

So it could provide some more information on regional population, transit data, and it's a little bit more interactive about kind of human service coverage throughout the Commonwealth.

So I do encourage you all to take the link in the agency update and look at that.

The last couple items I'll mention is that we did open up earlier this month our mid-cycle grant opportunity for our Transit Ridership Incentive Program.

The CTV did take action to approve additional eligible project categories, so typically TRPP had only had regional connectivity, as well as the zero fair or low-income program.

We now have two additional categories.

One is under public safety as well as passenger amenities.

So we are currently entertaining applications for that mid-cycle grant opportunity.

It will be closing the Hall of Business October 24th.

And then we will also have our regular cycle in our FY 25 timeframe.

The last thing I'll mention is that from any of our grantees as well as MPOs, you may have received correspondence about our new grants administration platform that's going to be rolling out December 1st.

We are going to be hosting two webinars to kind of get all of our grantees acquainted with the new web grants platform.

The first one will be on Monday, October 30th at 10 a.m., and then the second will be Tuesday, October 31st at 2 p.m.

So there's two opportunities.

I believe the recordings will also be made available if you aren't there, but we do encourage everyone to get acquainted because it is a very big departure from Olga, which some would say is a good thing.

So any questions about the new platform, anything, please feel free to reach out to me or any of your DRPT representatives.

But as a note, as we make that transition December 1st, we are going to be placing a hold on any reimbursements or contract activities starting November 15th through December 1st.

And I believe that's all I have for my update.

Yes, we are making our rounds with the localities, kicking off SMART SCALE and identifying, presenting the PSI locations and some recommendations for projects they may want to consider.

We've hit, I know we met with Albemarle in Charlottesville, met with Green yesterday.

So, but we're making rounds around the district.

So those will be coming

out and then we're going to follow up probably next month with the localities to see if they've identified which projects they might want to consider so we could start working on them.

To get back to the SEED SMART SCALE changes the CTB is meeting today and tomorrow so on those changes so hopefully we'll find we'll know more about what they're

The virtual town hall is going to be the end of the month, so it'll be the 31st.

So you may want to basically tune in and actually provide comments during that forum if you want to.

And then they're going to be taking action in December on all the changes that they're proposing.

So hopefully we'll know more in the next two weeks about what's going to be approved in December.

Great.

Anyone else that would like to make a short comment if I may?

Actually, I'm Peter Krebs from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

I have a short comment and then a

Just a broader thing to say.

So first of all, I thought you all might be interested in the process of VDOT, it's really VDOT standing up the State Trails Office.

They're having a webinar on November 1st at 6.30 p.m.

I hope to send an alert out, but I don't know if I'll be able to get one out before that.

For information on that, you'll go to bit.ly slash sto-northern, all one word.

So that's implications for the Culpeper and the other districts clustered around the north and central part of Virginia.

That should be super interesting.

Then I also just wanted to briefly touch on SMART SCALE.

So PEC, as I've said a number of times, has been involved with SMART SCALE since it was born and we're concerned in following the existing changes.

The sense that I'm getting actually is

And what I'm being told explicitly is not to make assumptions right now about where the CTB is going to go.

There actually has been a lot of pushback against the proposed changes.

And I'm a little bit disappointed that our MPO seems to be accepting and adapting to a scenario that actually we don't know is going to happen.

A couple of people in this room talked about the importance of really focusing on what our locality's goals are and what we're trying to do and doing all of our planning around what our goals are.

And as we talked to the CTV, which is what they're there for, I myself sent comments to Captain Byers speaking about how the proposed changes are not necessarily in line or helpful with what we're trying to do as a locality, both in terms of process and setting ourselves up

Well to work together but also the types of projects and land use.

I'll say as an aside that

To focus on congestion or getting people to greenfield sites is land use.

So we shouldn't pretend that this is de-emphasizing land use.

This is taking a different look at how transportation interacts with land use.

And this is coming from an administration that certainly will not be here for the lifespan of the current CTB.

and definitely will not be here for the lifespan of the LRTP as we pointed out.

So there's sort of two levels.

There's like, let's think about how SMART SCALE can be made better.

Chuck did a great job of pointing out the exact dates of when actual decisions will take place.

And then also be sure to, as

We as a community plan our transportation future, focus on what our goals as a community are, and do the best we can to pull resources from federal sources, state sources, and everything we can find.

Anyone else online?

Can I have a motion to adjourn that?

There's no meeting?

Meeting adjourned.

Unofficial meeting adjourned.