MPO Technical Committee Meeting   12/5/2023

I do not call this meeting to order.

Do we need to do attendance?

Yes.

Start with attendance, Mr.

Freeze.

It's not here, I see Tommy is here.

So Gretchen, for the record, Tommy, how do you say your last name, Tommy?

Safranek.

Mr.

Chambers with Charlottesville.

Here.

Oh, sorry.

Ms. Hersh-Ballering with Albemarle County.

Mr. Carina-Plun with Albemarle County.

Mr. Carrazana, Albemarle Planning Commission.

Yeah, he may be just coming in a minute late.

Mr. Barnes with VDOT.

Ms. Jacobs with the TJPDC, Jaunt has a vacancy currently, Mr. Palmer with UVA, Mr. Wagner with DRPT, Ms. Pennington with RideShare, and the TJPDC staff that is present, Sandy Shackelford,

Ms. Shannon, are you present online?

Yep.

She'll pop on as needed.

Ms. Thomas is here and Curtis Scarpinato is here.

All right.

Match in public.

At least so, yeah.

And as a point of clarification, that is the September 19th

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

Any abstentions?

Any abstentions?

Any abstentions?

Any abstentions?

Any abstentions?

Any abstentions?

Any abstentions?

Any abstentions?

All remaining minutes.

Second.

All right.

We have a motion and a second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

All minutes are passed.

Sure.

So I am going to share my screen.

And

We have not had a lot of an opportunity to dive in and provide some some deep exploration of what these outcomes mean, but I did want to share the progress that we have made so far.

So the first thing that I'm going to start with is the transportation demand model and the travel demand model and update you all on those outputs.

So if you recall, we

We use the travel demand model basically to estimate what the demand is going to look like on the transportation system network, both in the present day, so we use the baseline of 2021 to look at what the volume over capacity is currently, and then we project that out to a future growth year.

So we're using 2050 for this long-range transportation plan.

The future growth here includes the existing transportation system plus any committed projects.

So one of the committed projects are projects that are funded but have not yet been constructed.

So there's funding awarded but they haven't been implemented yet.

One of the things that we discussed in the previous meeting I think is that the network is not necessarily going to or the model is not necessarily going to reflect substantive impacts of projects that are not

projects that increase capacity.

So things that aren't like new roadway alignments or additional lanes being added aren't necessarily going to show a substantive impact on the travel demands model.

So while the committed projects have been incorporated into the model, those might not necessarily show up as outputs.

So what I did when we developed these maps was we got the output from the VDOT modeling staff using the growth projections that we had discussed in our previous meeting, and they developed the volume over capacity ratios.

And so in order to compare apples to apples, what our network looks like now versus what our network would look like in 2050, we standardized the volume to capacity ranges that are reflected in the maps to

Correlate with a level of service and what you'll see is that I combine E and F together for no other reason other than my GIS skills are limited and I had five categories so I fit everything into one.

So what that means though is once you get to one, that means that the volume on the roadway is at capacity.

So anything one or over means that the road can't maintain any other volume.

So that seems logical in my mind, but we can certainly update that with people who can change the number of categories.

So we do have some maps, and you all may have had some trouble getting into the PDFs on these.

I'll make sure that these get updated in a story map format, but just for the purposes of being able to show some initial outputs.

And again, there hasn't been a lot of evaluation of these yet, so I don't have specific points that I want to make, but I did want to show a couple of areas where there are some pretty significant differences.

This first map shows the Garth Road and Ivy area.

On the left-hand side, you'll see what the current volume over capacity looks like in 2021 compared to 2050.

And what you'll see is that once you get into the orange and red, that's where you start getting to those volume over capacity ratios, where the volume of projected traffic is exceeding the capacity of the roadway.

So you can see that, for example, along Garth Road, it's yellow right now.

And by the time we're looking at 2050, it's all orange and red, meaning it's at those levels D, E, and F.

Um, you can also look down here.

This is, let's see.

Is that like a peak level of service or average?

That would be like the worst.

You know, that's a good question.

I think Chuck, do you, do you know when they do the modeling, is this peak hour conditions or is it, or is it the maximum volume that would be expected during like a one hour period at the peak?

They're typically daily.

So it's looking at the ADT for the whole, for the day.

They can look at hourly.

Usually they go in morning or afternoon, peak hour, but typically when you do these maps, they're for the ADT for the entire day.

The course of the whole day.

Correct.

I mean, like I said, they can run them for a specific morning or afternoon.

It's good to notice that the

29 Bypass is going from orange to red, and then the lower section south of Ivy Road, it's definitely going to orange.

That's been historically consistent in the model.

Sure.

So by 2050, we're going to get close.

All right, so looking at the northern Charlottesville, so this is the northern portion.

Can I ask a sort of general question?

What is the assumption of the amount of cars that are going to be included here?

Yeah, I think I'm going to maybe Chuck or Michael jump in as well.

I can answer your question generally in that the socioeconomic data that we provide as part of this model has demographic information that would impact the assumptions made about the volume of traffic.

So it includes things like the number of school-age children, the average number of people per household,

Like is there parks or businesses and things like that?

So there's all this data that we're providing, number of like parking, if there's like parking facilities in those places.

So there's this data that we're providing that I'm assuming there are some like ITE types of standards associated with that would help them make these projections.

Yeah, they use basically vehicles per household as the cutoff, and that's based on the American survey that was done.

Why did you ask that question, Ben?

Well, because if we change the mode, if we shift the modes that people are using in the city to more pedestrian and bicycle,

These roads aren't going to light up, right?

We're just assuming that there's going to be so many cars based on the number of household cars that we're going to get more cars.

And that's just an assumption that we're making.

Well, keep in mind that this is the no-build condition.

Sure.

Yeah.

We're still making changes on land use by adding people.

We are saying that based on the current present day assumptions, if those continue, this is what the network would look like.

And it's also based on a past trend line.

I mean, if the city passes a zoning ordinance, you can have more density.

This is a different modeling of population growth estimates only.

and on the trends that we've been following.

Is that right?

It is based on using the same growth projections that were used in the previous plan.

And for the city of Charlottesville, I forget what the exact rate was, we assumed a universal, like a standard growth rate across the entire city between 2021 and 2050.

So we assumed that everything was going to grow at the same rate.

No, across the entire city.

For the MPO, we used the same linear projection that was developed for the 2045 plan, but the projections were different for each of the TAZs, for each of the analysis zones.

Honestly, I'm less concerned about the population changes and more concerned with, you've been saying we're going to invest in bike-ped and now we're saying, look at this model that doesn't take into account bike-ped infrastructure investments and doesn't then take into account any

That almost seems like it's leading us down the path of, we should fix this bypass, more lanes.

Well, I think part of this is to say, if we don't do anything, this is what it might look like.

But a solution to fixing the bypass is not just build more lanes.

But then how does that show up when we say, look at the no build, look at the build?

You can adjust the factors in the model.

The thing is we're basing this on survey data that we've gotten from surveys.

So if you're going to basically do that in the future, you've got to basically change people's behavior to actually use that network versus

what they historically have done so if the data changes those numbers will change in the future um if that makes sense you can't force people to make the mode shift if they don't want to do it yeah i'd say we do i understand what you're saying i mean we've looked at this a number of times we've looked at park and ride lots and and sensitivity analysis on different ways we could try to

Get people to do that.

I mean, you could put a toll restriction in the city.

The city could do this and basically pull cars as they enter the city.

But just because you're seeing red in the city doesn't mean it's people that necessarily live in the city.

It's people going from their residence to jobs.

And the jobs are in the city.

And so those people are driving their cars to those locations.

And they're using the roadways to do that.

To and from, and the people going to events in the city.

It doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have people walking.

That's included in the model too.

It's just not,

We're basically doing that on diversion versus actually modeling it.

But those models are factors that can be changed in the model.

Yeah, it makes sense.

I just think we probably want to talk about changing those factors because sticking with the status quo is probably not going to tell us whether our goals are being met by multimodal projects.

So we should probably be looking at what

Yeah, yeah.

So once we get to a point where we start prioritizing projects and creating sort of like our preferred scenario for what the 2050 network would look like, we can go back and model this again and say, this is what it looks like if we don't do anything.

We just don't have the projects to put in to model that yet.

So this is just showing if we don't do anything, this is what the network will look like.

So I think even in the no-build scenario, even if you didn't build any bike bed projects, I'm still finding it hard to separate land use from the projections.

If you take the assumption of population growth in all these different places and the same mode, share, split that we have now, average across these places,

You know, that is an important assumption, right?

But if you, like, where the land use goes, or where more intense land use, more residences go, is important, right?

Because if you look beyond those averages at the micro level, we already have very different, you know, places with very different mode shares, right?

Like, you look at the modal split of my building, like, it is very much more like walking and maybe bus,

than the driving chairs of most of the rest of the area.

And if you make more of my building right over there, right next door, the people who would move in would be expected to have the mode share similar to my building.

And whereas if you put them out in Holly Mead, they're going to have a mode share similar to others in Holly Mead.

I think we get worded up over the model pretty much every time.

Yeah, so one of the things that I would say, for example, is that we are using this because we're required to.

So there's not necessarily, other than using some of the future growth projections for our land use coordination evaluation factor, there's not a lot of this that is actually going into the evaluation of the system network.

It is illustrative.

And the other thing that I would say is that, if you recall, when we were talking about congestion, congestion was a pretty

low scoring factor weighting overall compared to where the priorities were overall with the region.

So a lot of the other factors, I mean, I think we do want to consider congestion because if there's a place that's going to become very, very congested, we do want to make sure that we are forward thinking, especially as we design what kinds of improvements might come up for the projects.

We want to make sure that we are factoring that future congestion.

But

Other things like accessibility and safety are going to be much more highly weighted.

The other thing that I will go ahead and mention, and Rory I think you weren't at the last meeting so you didn't get the benefit of hearing this, is that this

We did want to be efficient about developing the growth projections for this particular model because basically, as soon as VDOT hires some additional modeling staff, we're going to move into a process of updating the model.

And that's going to be the opportunity where we can take a much more comprehensive review of what our assumptions are about where growth is going to be located throughout the region.

Good discussion though, guys.

I think it's important that we're all paying attention and that we all understand what this is and is not doing.

And I think it's a good opportunity for us to just sort of understand how to engage in the planning discussion.

And then we'll look at North 29.

One thing that I thought was really interesting in North 29, and again, I didn't have time to dive into this, but I'm sure it's related to some of the projects that have been implemented, is that there's actually an improvement in volume ever capacity that is being shown along the segment of North 29, like around the Holly Mead area.

So we will develop this.

There are high resolution PDFs that were linked to the packet.

I don't know.

My suggestion might be to use a gray color for the eight streets, stuff like that, so they can go back to the background and do more problematic ones.

So it's really the yellow, orange, and red ones that we probably want to take notice of.

Okay.

So, we can keep going into the needs prioritization.

Unfortunately, we have not completed the needs prioritization yet, but I am fairly confident we'll be able to finish it before the end of the year because we started with the hardest factors and we got through those, and I think the other ones should be more straightforward.

So today we have completed the bike ped safety and we have completed the multimodal accessibility.

That's the potential for accessibility improvement needs prioritization.

And then we're very close to finishing the roadway safety.

So as soon as we finish the roadway safety, we're going to start working on the other two factors, which should be much more expeditious.

So again, just to give you a little bit of a preview, and again, I want to be

offer the appropriate caveat that this is based on our initial review of the data prioritization.

These are not intended to be considered as individual performance metrics, but will be cumulative across all of the different performance metrics.

However, I do think that looking at these individually is a good opportunity to make sure that the data makes sense so that when we do combine it, we're combining things that are logical and rational.

And I also want to reiterate that the data analysis is only going to be part of how we are prioritizing the projects.

We are going to overlay this against a heat map of public commons and determine where things are lining up and whether there is some discrepancy.

And we'll use that cumulatively to identify where our highest priorities are for the needs.

So this first one is looking at the bicycle and pedestrian safety prioritization.

So if you recall, this is using data that is pulled from the pedestrian safety action plan, which also includes bicycle safety components.

You all had indicated in a previous meeting, we had some issues with the data quality that was in the mapping when I pulled this for review.

So you all had indicated, I think, that you wanted to use the top 5%

of the statewide corridors because there were some issues with the district corridors.

However, the parameters that were reported between the statewide and the district parameters were different, and when I went back to pull the data, the data had been corrected.

So what we ended up doing was using the top 5% of the regional corridors or the district corridors because that covered the full range of the top 5% of the statewide corridors.

And if we just use the top 1% of the district corridors, there were some areas that would not have been included that were in the statewide top 5%.

So there was a little bit change in the data that we used, but I made sure to use the data that covered all of the

locations that you all had indicated you wanted to be evaluated.

So again, the darker red show where the highest priority needs are and the lighter show where there are low needs.

And if you recall, this is measuring the difference between current access to jobs using bicycles.

And I believe it was a, I don't recall the specific threshold.

It might be in the packet.

What the minute was, I think it was maybe like a five mile distance between where you can currently access them at a level of travel stress of one and how many jobs you could access if you could access all of the level of travel stress four or less.

So it's showing

Yeah, it's showing basically the opportunity to improve the, if you could decrease the level of travel stress for everything to a one, this is where there would be the most opportunity to improve access to jobs.

This is also showing this by census block of the starting location.

So it's not necessarily showing the segment where the improvement should occur, but it's showing where the opportunity is to improve access from where people are starting based on their census block.

Any questions on this?

And again, we'll make all this data available.

Do you want to keep looking, Ben?

You look very engrossed.

Ignore what I just said, because this is all by pet safety, which is much more easy to explain.

Unsafe or uncomfortable, correct.

And so I think these two images together, again, and this is why I think it's interesting to talk about cumulatively, they're almost capturing different segments of the MPO area.

Because if you look at where the safety improvements are needed, it's largely in the urban center.

How big is the district?

It's the VDOT district.

So basically, there's a bicycle and pedestrian safety action plan map.

And basically, what is shown right here is basically the full range of the corridors that are identified on that map.

They're just prioritized in different ways.

So you shouldn't see anything on the VDOT map.

Where it identifies the top 5% corridors that isn't lit up here.

It's just a matter of prioritizing among what those identified corridors are.

So that's the safety.

So if there are safety problems in the middle of downtown, why don't those show up on the access to jobs?

It's because you're not looking at the number of accidents, you're looking at basically the level of travel stress, which is about the

the infrastructure that's available.

The other thing to keep in mind that this one is a little bit confusing for is that this is highlighting, what's getting highlighted is the census blocks that people are traveling from.

So they might be going to downtown, but they're coming from these other areas.

Yeah.

In the next step, what do you mean the next step?

Well, I mean, this gets applied to the needs and so... Yeah, so then we'll apply all of the weighting factors to each of these, and we'll develop one map with all of the weighting factors cumulatively that will show the overall needs throughout the region.

And so does that mean, like, say that these road segments are showing up to probably be places for projects?

It's going to show us where there are problems with the system.

So then we're going to have to review what those problems are and whether or not we have a problem or a project that could address that problem.

or those problems that cumulatively.

So maybe it's a safety and an accessibility issue.

What projects do we have that might resolve that issue?

It could be on that actual road segment.

So when I'm looking at this,

Now I'm looking at, what is that?

That's not, this is the road, the northern road, the blue, is that really spill road?

This one right here?

Yeah, okay.

So if I'm looking at that, I can't assume by looking at that where they're going.

I think there is some level of qualitative review that we'll have to do.

This isn't perfect.

It gives us an indication and we'll have to use some judgment about how we interpret that.

One thing I want to mention for here is that we tried, we started with 45 minutes because that was what was recommended by the consultants, but this is what 45 minutes looks like.

And I think we had a discussion with the consultant team and

We determined that 45 minutes for a region our size might not give us very good data because you can get most places in our region within 45 minutes.

We went with a 25, we're suggesting we use this 25 minute threshold for measuring the potential for accessibility improvement because that is, I think 23 minutes is the statewide average for commute times.

So that seemed to be a little bit more illogical as far as highlighting the

areas that would have the highest needs based on this category.

Correct.

These are in the MPO.

And you're probably driving into the city.

All right.

So this one is a little bit unique.

So we have the transit access to jobs.

And this is measuring the access across America data to the best that I understand, because one of the questions I had when I looked at this is that this is not necessarily just capturing existing transit routes.

But the Access Across America data that was used to generate this map is capturing where people who are using transit are starting from.

So it includes any like walking trip or if they're driving to a transit stop and then getting on transit it would capture those trips as well or that would all be part of the transit trip.

No, because it's using historic data.

I believe it's 45 minutes.

Either 45 minutes or it might be an hour.

I'm curious because we're not seeing a whole lot of needs for additional transit in the city or in the urban areas.

Just wait.

So maybe to complete that.

Sorry, Ben.

So maybe we should reduce the transit time?

OK. We could run that and see if that makes a difference.

I think we can do it in any five-minute interval.

Would you like to say 45 minutes and a half an hour?

I'll ask Alan.

I think he's good at it by now, though.

The first time is hard after that.

So wait, people are somehow originating, walking, or driving to transit from, like, I-V?

Well, so does that transit include, like, the satellite parking buses that UVA runs?

I would assume so.

I really need to, I can find that out.

Right.

Yeah.

That's how you trace it.

Everyone always wanted to party around us.

So if we go and look at the transit access to jobs by disadvantaged populations, we kind of get, again, we flip it over.

So what this is measuring is it's using the equity emphasis areas that are developed in VTRANS.

And so equity emphasis areas are kind of like a cumulative composite.

of different segments of the population that might be considered more vulnerable populations.

So people over, I think it's over the age of 70, people with disabilities, people who might be in minority demographic groups, things like that.

It's a composite of a lot of these factors that

are normally considered as part of the equity considerations.

So for this evaluation metric, you are only comparing the census blocks where people are originating from of the disadvantaged populations based on the equity emphasis areas where there's already existing transit service.

So in here, you are basically comparing how can we improve existing, the way that people who are currently using transit can, how can transit be more efficient for those people, basically.

And I'm assuming this is also in the hour of the report?

Mm-hmm.

Maybe not quite everywhere, but yeah.

But again, we're weighting these a little bit differently, right?

So I forget what the breakdown was.

So I mean, is it looking at communities and people to potential jobs?

And that's what we're looking at here.

So not necessarily the folks that are currently using it under those labels,

Yeah, we are measuring where there are census blocks that meet that disadvantaged population definition.

So that's the first thing.

The red is showing where there are census blocks of people that meet these equity emphasis areas definitions and where there are opportunities to improve the efficiency of transit to provide better access to jobs.

So if transit was operating as efficiently as

Automobiles were operating during peak hour conditions.

Are you planning on just doing one combination or doing a combination for each prioritization?

My hope is that we'll be able to maintain that information because the goal is to have a cumulative map where we're weighting all of these things differently.

We're going to have one set of priorities, right?

So we'll have to do that eventually.

My hope, though, is that the way the data is captured and the way that that's coded onto here is we'll be able to be able to look at what is contributing to that score.

Yeah.

OK. Any other?

I think that's the last one.

Yeah, that's the last one.

Any other comments or observations or questions so far?

Well, we're working.

We'll try to finish up the rest of these by, fingers crossed, the end of the month.

So for those of you that did not watch the Commonwealth Transportation Board meeting, that was a fairly interesting one to watch.

But there was a Commonwealth Transportation Board meeting yesterday, and the big thing that they voted on was the changes to SMART SCALE round six.

Yeah, it's actually a pretty interesting meeting.

So Chuck, and I know Jessica was watching too, feel free to jump in or correct me if I misspeak.

So to summarize the decisions that were made from yesterday's meeting about the updated changes to SMART SCALE.

The first item for discussion was that the OIP staff had proposed using a future looking congestion factor, looking 10 years into the future to calculate project benefits.

They did not approve using a 10-year growth horizon.

They approved using a seven-year future congestion factor.

So we will be using seven years.

And the logic behind that was basically it takes a year to build the project.

I don't know.

I think it was you're receiving funding

Sure.

So you're using a future congestion year for when the project will actually be constructed.

That makes way more sense than what I was trying to remember.

The changes to the economic development measure, if you recall, they were talking about instead of inputting manually information from site plans, they want all the information to be submitted to the Virginia Scans economic development database.

And so the nice thing is that it's less manual for anybody who is validating or inputting applications, but there will be a little bit of a transition to get all of the information

and to Virginia Scans and it's also a different type of economic development that goes into Virginia Scans versus the site plans.

Yes, approved site plans would not go into that.

Yeah, it would basically be like,

What's entered in by the localities?

I'm not sure if that's really qualifying.

Probably.

Amar County has started to talk to our economic development staff, and we're trying to figure it out, but there's a lot of unknowns.

There's also some updates happening to the Virginia Scan website, which is going to complicate all this, but just letting you know.

Yeah.

If that's possible.

No.

There was an approval of some modifications to the high priority program eligibility, so I'll talk about those in more detail.

It was not what had been presented previously, so I'll go through that.

If you recall, there were also some proposed adjustments to the application limits, and they had been talking about introducing a three-tier application limit, but in all those proposed scenarios, they were reducing overall the number of applications.

That motion actually failed, so we are retaining the same number of applications that we had previously, meaning that the MPO, Albemarle County, the City of Charlottesville, the TJPDC, the transit providers would all get four applications for our area.

And then there was a lot of discussion about adjustments to the weighting factors, and there was approval of an alternative weighting scenario from what had been presented, and I'll go through that in a minute.

First of all, as far as- Sandy?

So we just eliminated it as a factor area.

There was some discussion at the meeting about the legality of that.

So we may hear more in the future.

So stay tuned.

So stay tuned.

That discussion was pretty interesting at the CTB meeting, if you have an appetite to go back and watch it.

So we'll start with the factory waiting modifications.

They removed land use completely.

If this moves forward as was voted on by the CTB, then land use will not be considered at all.

If you recall, the MPO is Area Type B.

So there were some adjustments.

So what had been proposed by

The Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment and their staff was to

Keep safety at 25%, congestion at 25%, and accessibility at 20%.

So the final vote reallocated that weighting a little bit.

It was a very interesting discussion about how safety should be considered.

The commissioner actually made the point that he was concerned about giving too much weight to safety because once you give safety that

amount of waiting, it would be difficult to ever take it back away from safety.

And so his opinion was that it might make more sense to redistribute that waiting to congestion and accessibility instead of congestion and safety.

And he also made the point that we have a specific program for safety improvements, the Highway Safety Improvement Program.

Interestingly, it was only for type B that the Commissioner's recommendation was adopted for the other types.

It was either the overall staff recommendation or an alternative recommendation for the distribution of the weighting factors that was considered or that was voted on or approved.

So until further,

Until we hear anything further, this is the waiting that we'll assume will be used to evaluate our SMART SCALE projects in round six.

And then the other update is that they did finalize a definition for the high priority project.

So if you recall, these are the project types that the MPO will be eligible to submit for the high priority program because MPOs, PDCs, and transit agencies are only eligible to submit projects to the high priority program.

Last meeting, and in a couple meetings previously, they had added this new bridge category, and they did not specify that that would have to be a highway bridge.

In the meeting yesterday, they did specify that that would have to be a highway bridge.

It's only going to be new bridges with a highway component that would be eligible as a high priority project for MPOs, which means that there is some question about whether or not the MPO would be able to submit the Ravana River Bicycle and Pedestrian Bridge.

The only reason I say that there is some question is because one of the other things they did was they added as an eligible project type, this last bullet here, entire corridor improvements that were identified as preferred alternatives and stars,

which is a safety improvement study that VDOT is able to develop for areas, the pipeline studies or they added this category MPO study that is done in coordination with the state.

Again, this was just added at the CTB meeting.

That was the first time we heard it.

So I think we'll need some clarification on what type of project that that would include.

So I think

We'll see.

No.

Sandy, one point I wanted to add is in the discussion about the application limit.

One thing that came up, and I'm not clear where they land, there was discussion of administratively directing VDOT staff to throw out applications that were not complete.

So I know, at least in our county's experience, there were things that we were waiting on to submit with our applications, and we received those things after the deadline, and we were still able to submit those applications.

Yeah, there was some discussion on that because what the Commonwealth Transportation Board member said is, well, you know, we want it to still be a little bit nuanced.

Like if it's 90% complete, we still want you to be able to use some judgment or some discretion.

And they did not take formal action on sort of like having a motion on that point.

But I think, you know,

I will say that I actually had a conversation with Brooke on this a couple weeks ago and our district was one of the highest districts with the highest

And Chuck, when you say other areas not doing a very good job, you mean submitting very incomplete applications?

Correct.

We're doing a very good job, like over 90% of our applications are complete.

So what this means is that as I think about what is going to be eligible for the MPA to submit around 6, we are looking at potentially the DDI at I-64 and 5th Street or another improvement at 64 and 5th Street at that exit.

potentially the Hillsdale South Extension is still potentially would still be an eligible project if that was something that MPI wanted to move forward with or with the addition of that last category for those corridor improvements or roadway improvements that were identified as part of a preferred scenario in a VDOT plan we could submit some of the projects that were identified in the round five pipeline study as a complete bundle so instead of just

Like the Peter Dufferson Parkway improvement and the Rolkin Road improvement.

We could submit both of those together as a preferred alternative for that corridor as an example.

And there might be some other

I know Chuck and I had a very brief conversation.

There might be some other corridor studies that have been completed that we might have some bundled up projects that could be eligible if there was interest in moving those forward.

And then we still have the two VDOT pipeline projects that don't have preferred alternatives that have been recommended yet, but are clearly being developed to prepare for our SMART SCALE round six.

So.

Any other discussion or questions or things to add on that?

Isn't it TJPDC will be able to submit four?

Yep, I forgot.

I forgot that they changed it.

So yeah, we'll be able to submit four now.

Thank you.

Yeah.

All right.

Um, we, uh, are working on phase two.

Uh, they've, we've issued the notice to proceed.

So the consultants actually working on developing the alternatives.

Um, we had a meeting with them yesterday, yesterday, and, um, uh, we're probably looking at meetings, teams meetings and stakeholders group meetings in the first part of January.

And we're looking at public outreach probably later in January.

Once we get through those meetings in early January.

So more to come on that.

The Ivy Road corridor is probably going to lag a little bit more because it's got a lot of stuff that they're looking at.

So it will probably be in February before we get to the public outreach for that one.

And later in the month of January for those actual meetings.

But that's pretty much it.

Thank you for reading out those talking points I just gave you.

I don't have anything else.

That's it for SMART SCALE.

Just as a question that I feel like we should know the answer to, so I'm admitting that I don't.

Through the LRTP process, we decided to go policy board meetings monthly, which means as these are going through the public process in January and February, there'll still be enough time to get it before MPO Tech and MPO before we're submitting applications.

That said, I do think that the pre-applications will need to be submitted in March.

Is that correct?

And I guess also I'd say the big push is to try to figure out, really, now the projects could be ones that would be studied by VDOT that aren't part of the pipeline study or some of the previous.

Obviously, the ACIP 120, some VDOT is looking at right now.

There's other projects.

I would imagine probably January at the earliest

So we do have 25 more minutes for set up, if you guys want to chat about it.

I think, Chuck, correct me if I'm wrong.

For Hillsdale South, we'd have to look at it and see, make sure we're clear on the concept.

The other thing that we may want to do is to, not just to see if it's complete, but to consider if we want that scope to remain as it is, or if we want to break it out any further.

That project was pretty expensive, you know, two rounds ago.

And allow them to change to that area.

Sure.

Yeah.

Nice.

Yeah.

I mean, we'd have to get resolutions from the city for support of that project too.

Yeah.

I mean, my recollection from two years ago was not that there was anyone in the city that was particularly against it.

I was probably the most dominant of anybody, but a big man of Szechuan, so this would tear it down.

Yeah.

So we want to talk about the bridge briefly in terms of the subject, but if it does,

Yeah.

Do we submit it?

Do we submit it in the same way?

Yeah, I think regardless we could reapply for the RAISE grants if we wanted to.

The MPA wouldn't necessarily be eligible.

I guess it's not necessarily that it's a complete no-go, it's just that the MPO may not have a path forward directly.

Unless through race grants.

Except through the race grant.

Are you saying the debrief is like why you didn't get or we didn't get the race grant?

Yes.

Okay.

It scored very high and was a merit project.

It just didn't make the cut for the funding.

Like it met the highest scoring threshold that it could meet and not get funded.

The race grant was submitted to complete the preliminary engineering because one of the reasons the cost of the bridge was so high is because the contingencies were so high because there hadn't been any level of

So, some question maybe.

You guys said Albemarle.

Why wouldn't the city be eligible?

Oh, because of the, right.

Well,

Just because I hear when I talk to her and I follow along with this project as a volunteer and so forth, the chosen alignment that we just mentioned, is that for sure?

No, the Stakeholder Committee was almost unanimous in supporting the Chesapeake alignment.

We, as a committee,

On policy, county supervisors want the alignment to go to their very nice new adaptive reuse project over there.

Yeah.

The Chesapeake, I think one of the factors is that there was a higher rate or there was a higher risk that some sort of mitigation would be needed at the southern alignment, but there were more options for adjusting the alignment at the southern option compared to the northern option at Chesapeake.

So at this point, the decision has been made by the policy board.

They made the decision, especially as far as I'm aware, they've only made the decision to choose that alignment for our last smart scale submission and to approve a raise grant with that alignment, right?

Just to clarify though, we did have the support of the MPO to apply for the RAISE grant, but the TJPDC was the applicant for the RAISE grant.

The confusing part is Jessica was working here when I watched you on TV presenting the project.

So, let me also ask maybe, well, so first, the city, would the city be eligible to submit the other alignment?

We have extra slots.

Yeah, because it, because it starts in the county.

Yeah.

But again, we had other priorities and we weren't submitting it anyway.

Of course, not that the city really maybe is planning to use.

I don't know what the city's smart skills situation is.

But let me ask a different question.

There has been some talk loaded.

So let me clarify, let me clarify Chuck, VDOT would not do another feasibility study, but if we determined, or if the city determined that they wanted to put that forward for an application at a specific alignment, could VDOT, I mean, it's in the city at that point, right?

I think ultimately you're building a bridge to East High and it goes through that.

That just makes it easier because it doesn't involve as much in a domain.

And then what we do with the property is a little bit tangential.

I mean, hopefully you tie it in, you have a nice park or whatever it is.

But that could be similar from that kind of bridge there.

In fact, maybe puts a little bit more urgency on doing that thing.

Otherwise for 10 years before we even think about it,

It could be on this.

Yeah.

And I appreciate there was a thing going on with the city, but the question I think you did ask was, would VDOT do another concept plan for it?

Right, but if, I mean, it's part of the application, VDOT's been helping me do this, you know, to help with the plan.

Kind of a simple kind of question.

Yeah, pretty much.

And you're welcome to that issue with the city, whether they can apply for projects at all.

Yeah.

You know?

Right.

So, it's kind of holding us to issues, but I'll just come back to that second question though.

Do they need to be done?

Typically the stuff we're doing in the other ones is like

Faculty analysis, our engineering design, Western Magico, we picked a roundabout, intersection Y, and we do the concept plan and the estimations.

Just throwing out that a bridge, I don't know exactly how that works.

I mean, part of it is where do you want to put the bridge, which is that easy building above it.

Chuck, do you want to jump in?

Yeah, there's a little bit, there's a lot more details that go into

doing a bridge versus doing a roadway or sidewalk project because you're talking about a lot of unknowns with the geotechnical and from the design perspective how many piers it is dictates how deep the beams are and getting the clearances over.

There's a lot more work that goes into the bridge design and our L&D section actually doesn't do that.

That would be something that

Bridge section would do.

And we haven't typically done a lot of those.

So I know with this last one, we had a consultant that did all that.

Okay.

And what are the last feasibility study costs?

The county recently did some conceptual level feasibility studies for the $20,000, $30,000 mark.

What was it with this one?

I'd love to go back and look.

I feel like I might recall that it was like

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, the eligibility requirements are going to be the kicker for this.

We'll have to get more direction on the Ravana Bridge project, whether that's even still eligible project or not.

Actually, after the meetings, they were asked a question several times during the meeting about bike and pedestrian bridges and the clear response was no.

So that's going to have to be something we have to discuss or ask questions about.

Other than that, I think the gray area is the corridor studies.

They just said recommended improvements from the studies.

Um, and you can't break up a study.

You've got to do the whole, the whole, all the recommendations.

And that was the difference.

Um, but, uh, we don't have that many.

Um, we do have a few, I know Sandy and I talked about them, but I don't think some of them are in a place where we'd want to submit all of the recommendations.

Right.

Originally a product that had transit on it?

Yeah, that would make it eligible.

What about capability for future transit?

I would imagine that you would have to, if you wanted transit to be considered, it would have to meet whatever design standards are for transit.

And correct me if I'm wrong again, Chuck or Michael, I believe we talked about this a little bit when we were talking about the overpasses and crossing with hydraulic.

You can't just build a bridge for transit though, right?

Yeah, it would be a different design.

It would be much heavier design.

for a transit vehicle.

I mean, we're accommodating maintenance vehicles and stuff on a bridge, but for daily use, it's different.

Yeah, I think the reconnecting communities, if it's the same notice of funding opportunity that was originally, it also had to be the transportation system that was causing the disruption.

It was like, run there.

You know, to make the case that Prebridge itself is a problem.

This one?

There are very few transit applications in general in SmartScale.

I think one of the differences is that for SmartScale, it's for capital improvements versus operations.

If they have to build a giant new facility for

their fuel study situation, would that be a big capital outlay that would qualify for SMART SCALES?

Yes.

They would have to pay for that probably for, I'm talking like 80% of it coming from the FDA, but that other 20%, yeah, we would need to make up some state and local funding.

They've been part of the discussions about the design of the park and ride, so they know that it's an optional feature.

But no, you're correct, they're not going there right now or in the near future.

It's okay.

There was an unprecedented amount of projects already approved in previous rounds and we're at the tail end of those within the existing LRDP.

That makes sense.

All right.

Well, hopefully round seven's criteria get better anyway.

So as you may have heard, the TJPDC was awarded a Safe Streets and Roads for All grant to develop a multi-jurisdictional safety action plan for the region.

And the plan would identify opportunities to reduce and eliminate fatalities and serious injuries on the roadway network.

And we are currently getting underway with this, with the plan's first working group scheduled to meet on December 14th.

And we are also scheduling a regional safety summit for January 10th.

And we are inviting elected officials, executive staff, and other professionals from the four E's of roadway safety with the goal of getting buy-in and commitment to Vision Zero.

That's all.

We don't have an exact timeline at this point in time.

It is geared towards elected officials and county admin that the public is

Cool.

Oh, I forgot.

Yeah, so we received a mobility management grant, and we are working with Java to fulfill that grant.

We started getting funding in October, and we will be starting to provide services in January.

We're hiring somebody now to help out to pass them out.

We've created a data system to collect the data and we've been practicing making calls.

We're working with a marketing company on getting a name and a logo and a brand that seniors and people with disabilities can trust.

And we will be working on our grant application for the next year, which is to February 1st.

And then the regional transit governance study

will be ending in December and in December.

The final report will be presented by AECOM in the January meeting with recommendations.

Great, thanks.

Yeah, I'm just going to give you all a heads up.

So I know everybody loves it when we do amendments to the transportation improvement program.

There's going to be some significant ones coming up because since 2015 we have always included John's scheduled expenditures in our transportation improvement program and it just

It suddenly occurred to me that Jaunt does not directly receive any funding within the urbanized area and they do not need to be included in our TIP.

So we will be doing some amendments to remove those references to Jaunt's expenditures and then what we will be doing is they are a sub-recipient through CAT.

They provide the paratransit services for CAT and so we will be including

The funding that Jaunt is scheduled to receive from CAT as their paratransit provider under CAT's expenditures in the TIP and then there are going to be some other changes to CAT's expenditures based on some funding that was awarded that wasn't originally part of their estimates.

So you will

Yeah, and this is really just an FYI.

So the tip basically tells us what is scheduled to be spent.

And then every year, we receive a summary of what was actually spent, which is the annual obligation report.

So we have received that information from DRPT and VDOT.

The document has been updated and is on our website.

All right, roundtable updates.

The paint has slowed down because the leaves have fallen off the trees and apparently our paint team doesn't like to paint over the years.

So we're waiting for peak leaf to finish so we can get back to doing some paint.

In the new year they're also going to be looking at some of our safe projects and how we're going to go from plastic to concrete so that'll be a fun process.

Bike parking inventory is mostly wrapped up with that.

You know, we're looking at locations, particularly around downtown and West Main Street to put in additional parking lot staples, lot of equipment that's put down on the ground.

Sort of in response to our zoning code changes, we are looking at doing a review of our parking permit strategy throughout the city.

We're engaged in

We're also looking at procurement for two basically restriving plans, one for West Main Street and one for Fifth Street.

We're working directly with the consultant on West Main Street and Fifth Street we're working with VDOT's flight pet office, hopefully accessing the consultant with them, also with their funding.

We are working through, I believe we're in chapter three of CAT's TFB right now, which is looking at all of the recommended changes to service.

And we are lining up chapter four, which looks at what the capital requirements of those recommendations.

We're trying to align that up with our alternative tool studies so that we know exactly how many buses we need and what kind of fuel source can actually be done on the routes that we're suggesting.

So we're working through that right now.

Our ADA transition plan, we have collected all the data on physical infrastructure at this point and are heading into a prioritization process.

It's largely going to be focused on equity, but we're also trying to tie in the draft prioritization process that we did last year on sidewalk projects so that once we finish the ADA transition plan, we can come in and finish that sidewalk

Finishing sidewalk priorities by June, so we should have a pretty good idea by the end of this fiscal year, what we'll be building in the next fiscal year.

Well, I don't know that everybody's aware that we have a bicycle and pedestrian graduate committee that we're meeting this Thursday at five o'clock, it's the first Thursday of the month, and our ADA coordinator Paul will be there to explain that update to anyone who's interested

via Zoom and links on our website.

One other thing I would point out, come 2024, I'll be starting to do a neighborhood monthly walk series.

And the reason I think that might be beneficial for you all is outreach opportunities might be helpful as you're thinking about some of your programs and your projects within that.

but also if there's anything that you see that might be beneficial for me to communicate to people please let me know as I'm taking people hopefully walking through our city.

I don't have, I wish I had more details on this.

I am working with UVA sustainability department and the county's

What is on Jesse's office of Equity Inclusion?

Office of Equity Inclusion, to some degree, with MLK Walk, starting downtownish and running through Bikeville, potentially the new Tonsler Park, and so forth.

From the city planning commission side, I guess the only big news is tonight is the public hearing for the new zoning code.

You should all show up.

Tell your thoughts to council.

We, you guys, the city is doing a lot of on the ground stuff.

We are in a very conceptual, philosophical space.

We're working on our comp plan.

I think that's really taking up all of our time right now.

Thank you.

Well, we made, I think, the comments follow up to a bunch of pipeline.

Personally, I'm going to be on the last day of the VOC in a week.

You can play the other side.

Well, maybe.

I don't know.

Obviously, we are all that hot.

Yeah.

Dear Eugene.

Morning, everyone.

I'll be very quick.

My first update is a little familiar to you all.

As you've probably seen and heard, especially on MPO staff, we have officially updated our grants management system.

So we're now on web grants and our launch coincided with the opening of our FY 25 grant cycle.

So anyone who's interested in participating in the FY 25 grant cycle will have to go through our web grants website in order to apply.

and there is plenty of information on our website as well as the DRPT YouTube channel as far as how to set up your account as well as going through the different funding opportunities.

And then the second bit of news is a little bittersweet.

You may have seen our director Jennifer DeBruhl is retiring come June 4th.

So we will be in search of a new director this summer.

So if you're interested in being my boss's boss's boss, the secretary's looking.

But definitely want to highlight an amazing more than 30 years of service, both with VDOT and DRPT.

And we're wishing her well in her retirement.

And that's all I've got.

I do have one DRPT question, actually.

So I know that you all had submitted the Commonwealth Corridor East-West train to the FRA Corridor ID program.

Last I heard, they were supposed to announce the recipients, well, it was supposed to be like spring or something, but last I heard was November.

That's an awesome question and I think is probably more appropriate for either our rail team or VPRA, the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority.

So I'm happy to follow up on that 100% we can check with our rail planning team and see if they've got a sense of that.

Yeah, and it turns out just the other day North Carolina said they said they're like well-run as they're still knocking off the whole system.

This will also be pretty quick.

We are having our official official kickoff of the CAT strategic plan that's the commuter assistance that RideShare falls under.

through DRPT on next Thursday, 14.

So we hired the consultant and have worked through all of that.

We were waiting on some additional funding since the funding structure kind of changed.

We were able to access the additional funds through DRPT from, I think, the feds.

And that kind of put everything a little bit on pause for a moment, but we have now all got all that paperwork figured out.

So we will start the official kickoff next week and still anticipate at this time to have it completed by the end of the fiscal year.

But we have confirmed that there is some legal room due to that delay if we need to extend in the other.

But right now the schedule looks like we'll be able to complete it.

So there will be a little bit of some stakeholder engagement.

It's going to go over, you know, target marketing, all kinds of different things.

So we're really excited to get

It is Launch Consulting.

Cool.

Other CATs?

We captured the two, TSP and that alternative that we'll study are the two major efforts going forward.

We're also working with DRPT to come up with plans for shelter locations around the city.

They should be wrapping up with the first one next week or two, and that'll be the Delmont Park.

We've previously constructed as a shelter location that's put in a not great place.

We're moving into the different part of the park, making it more immediate and quiet.

Oh, good to know.

OK. Yeah.

UVA?

We're believable about it.

They've completed Commons Bridge, Carl Simon Shoot,

All right.

Anyone I missed?

No?

Good.

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

I do not think we do.