MPO Technical Committee Meeting   8/20/2024

If we're going to get started.

All right, call this meeting to order.

James Frias, who's not present, so alternate, Thomas Brennan.

Here.

Roy Stolzenberg.

Here.

Jessica Hirsch-Ballerin.

Alberta Corina Juan.

Charles Proctor.

will be attending online.

Very good.

Thank you very much.

And then for non-voting members, just to check attendance, Tony Cho, Steven Miner.

Do we need reasons for remote people or do we still wait until we pass this policy?

Say that again.

No, we can vote to allow them to participate electronically now.

No, you still need a reason.

All of what you have in any person meeting

and somebody is joining electronically, all of the same rules have left.

Those haven't changed.

What has changed is when you choose to hold an all virtual meeting.

But also that we have to re-adopt it every year.

And we have to re-adopt it until... I'll go through all of those changes.

But we're still on the old policy, which requires you to give a reason.

Oh, I thought we had eight for in-person quorums.

No, there's seven.

All right.

Staffing update.

All right, so I want to introduce you guys to Boryan Korkievsky.

He has been with the PDC working under a different federal program.

He is sliding into transportation planning.

He will be the lead staff member for MPO Tech moving forward.

You guys have already met in the back, I hope.

Sarah Simba, she will be the lead staff member for the Policy Board and for CTAC.

So you will be seeing a lot of them.

We're very excited to welcome them.

We're very excited to be keeping Borean in a role that keeps him with the organization.

He was previously working with BODI, the broadband brand.

Broadband is a finite grant that someday will end.

And this was an opportunity for him to slide into something that he was really passionate about while also being able to keep him on board.

So welcome, Borja and Sarah.

Great, welcome to you.

Thank you.

Any changes to the agenda today?

Do we have any matters from the public?

Matters from the public.

Peter, you want to talk?

Sure.

So thank you.

I just wanted to share a couple of quick announcements from the Mobility Alliance.

We're having a

We've been adding socials to our calendar roughly monthly.

This month we're having a joint social with our counterparts from the Shenandoah Valley, the Shenandoah Valley Bike Coalition.

That's going to be a week from Thursday.

That's August 29th in Waynesboro.

And we're going to get a tour of Sunset Park from Waynesboro's Director of Planning, Parks and Planning, and

Wayne plays a role in Waynesboro, sort of like Chris used to play here, where he does actually a lot of transportation work as well.

So Wayne's going to talk about Sunset Park, which is pretty cool, but he's going to also talk about some stuff that's even perhaps cooler about assembling a large landscape park network in Waynesboro, as well as show use path connectivity from Waynesboro all the way to the Efton Tunnel.

as well as Tishon-Indoette National Park and increasing access to that.

So I have a little pile of flyers over there.

I hope to send another email reminder, but anyway, that's Thursday, August 29, 6 to 730 in Waynesboro.

So that's exciting.

And then also I wanted to let you know that the Mobility Alliance's next meeting is on September 30th right here.

I believe that's four o'clock.

Let me just check real quick.

Yeah, that's four to six right here at Water Street Center.

The Monday after the loop de ville, I'm sure Tommy's going to talk about loop de ville.

That's going to be plenty social, so that'll be our solution for the month.

And then the mobility alliance is working on a bunch of cool stuff.

One of them is a

what we call easy routes, which is a simplified way to find one's way across the urban area, Charlottesville, Albemarle via bike on Westgrass streets.

I won't be surprised if Ben or Tommy links that in their updates.

I'm not going to get into it.

If not, we'll let you guys know more when the time comes.

So anyway, hope to see you all late from Thursday in Waynesboro.

Do we have a motion for approval on the minutes or any changes?

Do we have a second?

Second.

Do we have a motion on the second?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

New business, remote electronic participation in all virtual meeting policy.

also within the general administration was the office.

Oh, yes.

All right.

We have an election for officers.

We have a slate of nominees already.

Ben Chambers of the John Ford and the airport authority board and for vice chair Alberic Rita Plum of the county.

I'm opening the floor for additional nominations.

Do we have any additional nominations?

All in favor, aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

I'd be abstaining.

I just want to make sure I'm doing it right.

That then changes the chair.

Yes.

Do business.

Great.

So in the 2024 General Assembly, legislation was adopted that necessitates several changes to the remote electronic participation and all virtual meeting policy that was previously adopted.

In your packet is both a red line version that is edited from the original to the current, as well as a final plain version.

The original was adopted by the policy board in September 28 or 2022.

Just so you guys know, as an advisor to the policy board, it's actually the policy board that adopts the policy.

And then you all follow the adopted policy.

But I wanted to share it with you because they will be considering it next week.

So in your next meeting, this policy will likely be in effect.

The changes include the ability to hold all virtual meetings limited to two meetings per calendar year or 50% rounded up to the next nearest whole number.

So for MPOTech, if we have six meetings a year, you are allowed to hold up to three of those meetings in an all virtual format, meaning no in-person forum is required.

You are not allowed to have virtual meetings back to back, however.

So if you did virtual, you would then have to come in person before you could hold another all virtual meeting.

All of those need to be posted publicly, whether it's in person or all virtual.

Also, it has expanded provisions concerning the use of audio visual tech during all virtual meetings.

So if you're holding an all virtual meeting where everybody is participating online and audio visual is being used, everybody has to have camera and sound on in order to establish a form.

So you have to not only be able to speak, but you have to be able to hear the members when the roll call is taken.

Additionally, any time audio visual is turned off, that member is considered absent from the meeting during that time.

And so if there are any votes that are occurring in all virtual meetings, cameras and sound have to be on, they have to be able to both see and hear the votes as they occur.

So that is new for this year.

And then additionally, a change is it used to be that you could adopt a policy and then that policy stands in effect until the change is made.

Now you are required to annually adopt a policy.

So you have to put before the board every year a policy with either amendments or the same.

And then I already told you, policy board will take action on this next week, but all advisory committees, so that would be CTAC and DOTAC will follow their adopted policy.

This is an informational item.

Just wanted to make sure you guys knew it was coming down the pipe and if you had any questions.

I think the only other question I would ask of you all is the interest level in holding all virtual meetings for MDOTech.

Every board is a little bit different.

Every committee is a little bit different.

Some find a great deal of value being together and discussing and others, you know, find it easier to attend virtually.

We are allowed to do either once this policy is in place.

I just want to throw that out for any thoughts or comments.

I mean, I think one advantage of all virtual is that for the people who are usually virtual, it can be difficult for them to participate and for us to hear and see them.

There's not a bogey with you all.

We'll work with the chair when establishing the agendas, whether it would be more appropriate to hold that one virtual or in person.

I will make a recommendation later in the agenda.

We're going to talk about changing December's meeting date because the policies were called on Christmas.

So we're going to talk about moving it up.

I'm sorry, before we go into that, we never take a vote, I guess, to accept all our virtual people and get a reason.

Yeah, we do.

All right.

Wonderful, thank you.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'm, I am sick.

That is an,

Absolutely.

Legitimizing.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All right.

Welcome to the meeting.

It's a little late, but you're plenty to do.

So there's no vote on this.

These are just minor adjustments.

And all of them are to update fiscal year, the actual fiscal year 2025 funding.

CAT amended their table 001 for operating assistance and 009

for purchasing support vehicles.

And they just updated the numbers.

They had estimated numbers in fiscal year 2025, and they put new numbers in that are actuals.

And it's the same thing for the TJPDC1 table, which is a new table added to the TIP in fiscal year 2024 for the Mobility Management Program, which is a 5310 grant.

And they

added the fiscal year 2025 numbers to fiscal year 2024 because of the difference between federal funding as federal fiscal year and state fiscal year.

So that's all there is.

All right.

Federal functional classification recommendations.

Just as a high-level review, I know all of you have seen this before, but VDOT is conducting a major statewide update to the Federal Functional Classification, which historically occurs after the Decennial Census.

VDOT staff coordinated the review with each of Virginia's MPOs.

VDOT requests that MPOs approve a resolution acknowledging the coordination effort within Virginia.

The draft FFC map that was shared in May was circulated as well as a comprehensive guide for the review.

Stateholders then had until June to provide comments back.

Staff and MPO tech, as well as staff from the local jurisdictions, made some suggested revisions to the draft map.

They were submitted to district staff, which are then reviewed and forwarded on the central office for their review and shared with FHWA.

We were told that the review was anticipated to be finalized by September of 2024.

Since you guys only meet in August and October, we put it before you this month.

In the packet there is a resolution with a suggested revision attached.

So since Central Office and FHWA have not yet had an opportunity to provide comment back on the suggested revisions, originally we put in your packet a resolution that said we recommend that you recommend the policy board adopt said resolution with the suggestions attached.

I would be more comfortable revising my recommendation as staff and that I would actually say that you guys

recommend that the policy board defer a decision on this matter until central office and FHWA review those revisions and provide a final draft map for consideration.

I think there is some concern by MPO staff that if a resolution is passed on the existing map, then the changes that are being recommended, if they are not incorporated, then you all have voted to approve it without those suggested revisions.

So we would recommend holding off on a vote

We have communicated to both VDOT and we've talked to other MPOs in the Commonwealth.

Even though there's a deadline of December, it's very evident that a lot of MPOs are not going to have this completed by December because they too are waiting for a final map before they ask their policy board to have consideration on that.

So our revised recommendation, I'll read it, is MPO staff recommends a motion

recommend that the policy board defer a decision on the resolution approving the proposed updates to the FFC until a thorough review by VDOT staff and FHWA occurs and a final revised map is available for consideration and final approval.

Chuck, jump in if you want to, but I think originally they were requesting that this be completed by September.

That was when we had communicated initially.

I do know that some other MPA's do not have this on their agenda until later this fall, though.

We're trying to get clarity on the central office process for reviewing the requested revisions and what the feedback is going to look like from them on what they're going to do with these requests.

Hopefully we can get some feedback tomorrow at our meeting on what they're going to do.

Typically, the way it works is we submit any changes to the central office.

They review them and then approve them, and then they incorporate them in maps, the map, and then they forward that to FHWA for final approval.

But basically, because of the way the percentages of different

Roadway types varies.

We've got to stay within those parameters.

So they're going to review them and make the determination on whether they comply with the guidelines or not.

OK, but we don't have a date.

We do not have a date.

Hence the change in our recommendation.

So the recommendation we're passing at this time is please defer on your opinion

Yes.

All right.

I'll move to defer.

Second.

All right.

All in favor, say aye.

The policy board in their next meeting has a presentation on FFC.

You all said that you did not mean that they were very familiar with it.

So they'll get a presentation on all the different classifications, what is arterial, what is length, all of that.

And then at the end, we'll say the same thing we just said to you all, that while we had anticipated this to be completed, it doesn't appear that it will be based on additional review that needs to occur.

Excellent.

See here to the right one.

All right.

All right, cool.

Let me see if I can get it to work.

There we go.

All right, I'm going to give you an update on the pipeline studies.

We have the Ivy Road study, which is currently we're working through the developing what the first scenarios are for that one with the locality and the localities in the MPO.

And then we've got the update to the smart scale

projects that we were submitting this round.

Basically, here's an update on the agenda.

We're going to talk about the Ivy Road.

We'll talk about the Campo projects, and then we'll talk about the Albemarle County projects.

This is an overview of the Ivy Road study.

Basically, this is the corridor.

It goes from Farmington, Edmond out to the west to Alderman in the east.

but mainly main focus was the central area with Old Ivy and Interchange and the intersections at Bel Air and Ivy Road.

This was basically the preferred alternative that we presented and discussed at the SWG stakeholders working group meeting and we were working with the county to finalize the

items that were going to be included.

Basically, this is what the preferred solution is.

It includes a roundabout at Boars Head and Ivy Road, a roundabout at Canterbury Road and Ivy Road.

That's there at the market, Bellaire Market, and then a median between the two roundabouts along 250.

It includes the Triangle Belt, which is basically converting those one-way roads, Faulkner,

Garth Road and Old Ivy Road right there into a series of one-way circular roadways.

And then ramp extensions on both on and off ramp to Old Ivy Road from the 250 Bypass, a shared use path along Old Ivy Road from Garth Road to the Ivy Road intersection,

on the east end.

It also includes reconfiguring the intersection or the railroad underpass at the east end.

These are the preferred solutions that we're moving forward with as part of the study recommendations.

We have a couple of discussions about how we could group these to make sure we could get eligibility for the MPO to submit some of these applications next round and we met with the folks from OIPI yesterday and went through this and basically we grouped them into three different packages that could be submitted by the MPO, well two of them could be submitted by the MPO.

the both the roundabout packages and the ramp extension packages could be included.

We were looking at the shared use path and the triangle about what could be done with outside of the smart scale application process because those are probably more viable in other funding programs.

The triangle about could be done with safety funding actually

as a higher equipment project.

So one thing I will point out is that we are doing some further analysis on the railroad underpass at the eastern end to make sure we're including a

pedestrian facility underneath that underpass, but we want to make, do some further analysis to see if we can still maintain two-way traffic or we would have to go with one-way traffic.

And that's one of the things we're going to still work through in the future.

Yes.

So from understanding the, so the,

Those three roads right there in the middle,

You basically have Old Garth, which is the ramp and Old Garth Road.

You've got Faulkner Drive on the east side of the Triangle, and you've got Old Ivy as a southern part of the Triangle.

Basically, it would make those all one-way streets in the counterclockwise direction.

Does that make sense?

We don't have this particular slide.

I did send it out to this morning this morning, so they can send it out.

Okay, I'll move on.

We have a couple of other longer term solution packages that we were going to be including in the study, but therefore consideration in the future as needs arise, and that deals with some of the improvements at the western end of the corridor.

that were presented at the, as part of the survey.

But these, there's not a lot of, there are needs, but they're not great needs.

So these could be something that the county could consider for improvements in the future.

That's the western end, which includes the improvements that, and some of these are, there's two packages of improvements.

So we're not necessarily saying these are the preferred ones.

will include both sets in the recommendations.

And then this is the longer term at the interchange, which basically would include reconstruction of the bridges across 250, as well as reconstruction of the existing ramps to connect to 250.

And this would be a major because it's going to

and basically rebuild the railroad bridges too, as well as the railroad underpasses.

This would be a very long-term project.

And then the last one would be the eastern end with intersections and still free re-colonades and some median work in there.

There were two options for this that were reviewed, and we're going to include both those in there as something the county could consider in the future as needs arise at those locations.

All right.

Next steps are, like I said, we're going to do some further analysis on the railroad underpass at the eastern end to make sure the preferred alternative is going to work.

And then we're going to update the analysis to show how the system works as a whole.

And then we're going to develop some planning level cost estimates for the various components and then compile the final report.

So that's it for Ivy Road.

I guess you want to ask about the planning level cost estimate just.

Before you even get to doing, you know the actual back of the napkin math.

What's your ballpark?

Lot.

Yeah, I mean the cost estimates

currently are pretty high.

Normally the sketch tool doesn't give us the same rigorous estimates, but they've just updated the slice tool, so we'll see what the numbers come up with once we get to that.

The roundabouts are probably going to be in the $20 million range for both roundabouts.

So I would say it's probably gonna be for that, just the roundabouts and the median closure is probably gonna be close to $50 million.

The ramp extensions on the bypass, those are probably gonna be about 10 to $12 million a piece.

So you're talking about somewhere 25 to $30 million for the ramp extensions.

The shared use path, I don't really have a good idea on that one.

um the um triangle about peace that's something that's low cost we could do that for probably less than a million dollars a couple hundred thousand because it's just basically restriping for the most part um the railroad underpass that's a little bit more detailed um but it's probably gonna be less than

$10 million, probably $5 million, maybe.

Because it's basically just putting in a raised crosswalk or crossing underneath the bridge parallel to the road and then some striping.

It will include possibly some signalization to put in the signals for the two-way controls, if that's the preferred scenario.

We see a price tag of like $80 million come back on this.

I would probably pull out the triangle about the shared use path and do them with other funding mechanisms.

It goes on the west side or the west or south side of Old Ivy Road.

Yeah, I guess maybe that.

I don't know what

What's the connection over 250?

There is a state of good repair project to replace the

um, improve that bridge, but it's basically in kind improvement and there's funding restrictions on what can be done with that that don't allow for us to widen that structure.

Old Garth.

We'll have to work through that because getting underneath that underpass is something that I don't know if it's been worked out yet with the county.

In the current configuration, once we do the roundabout,

All right, sorry, one more thing on the Syracuse path.

I kind of alluded to this last week, Chuck, but I still have some heartache about the eastern end ending at the

basically at the underpass and at the car wash.

It looks like the project limits go to Alderman and Copley.

And if you get to Alderman and Copley, you know, you can get to UVA basically.

And while there's that crosswalk there, that pipeline there is like terrible.

I don't think we looked at that necessarily.

We looked at getting just under the underpass to connect to the existing facilities that are at that on the other side of along Ivy Road, not extending it further than that.

Because right now there's nothing there.

beyond that, I mean, as part of this study.

But there are facilities there that would get you all the way to Alderman.

So just to be clear, though the project, the study limits extended into the city, all of the recommendations are located within the county?

I mean, originally to go back to the beginning, the original scope of this project was mainly to look at the interchange and it was expanded over time.

And the logical term and I just basically worked out to be Edmond Road in the West and Alderman in the East.

But those weren't the main focus points of this study.

We added a bunch of stuff.

based on feedback we got from the localities to extend the project limits out further.

But the main focus area ended up being mostly the Old Ivy Road and the intersections on the west side of the interchange.

Because that's where the biggest demands were for both safety and

Over the next couple of years, developments on the north side of Old Ivy, including Greystar's Old Ivy residences, are going to be building a spare-use cap that's going to connect Leonard Sandridge to Old Ivy.

So I'm just like, I guess, reaffirming the need to then let a facility be built on Old Ivy that's going to tie into that infrastructure.

Did I read correctly on that Eastern Railroad Tunnel?

Where does that shared-use path end?

Does it turn into a sidewalk of sorts going underneath the tunnel or is the shared-use path going to continue?

We're going to look at what we can put under there.

We can't fit a shared-use path underneath the tunnel.

There's not enough width.

So we're going to put a six foot wide sidewalk underneath there on one side of the road.

It's one way.

It's going to be one travel lane and one six foot sidewalk.

And there's not enough room to do a charities path because there's two travel lanes right now.

I guess I'm surprised.

You also have to consider what the VDOT standards are.

Yeah, we're going to try to do the best we can there.

But yeah, that's

That's what we ended up with for the concept.

But like I said, once we get further along, if it becomes a project, we can try to get a little bit more out of it.

But part of it is the alignment of the road and the grades between the road and the underpass.

It's skewed going through there and we can't change that.

Right.

Because it won't meet, we can't get it to work.

to meet.

From the Eastern side.

Yeah.

Both on both sides.

Yeah.

Well, I will say, uh, come out September 28th and you'll see hundreds of people biking and walking on this corridor.

So.

I'll leave these here for you guys.

Take plenty of photographs.

I agree.

We got four smart scale applications by the MPO.

Fifth Street, I do have cost estimates on some of these that are included.

We're still validating most of them, but we can go through them real quick.

This is the DDI interchange at Fifth Street conversion with the shared use path running through the median.

I don't have the cost estimate on, this is one of the ones they're still working on.

and doing the final review.

So I don't have a cost estimate on this one, but basically this is going to convert it to a diversion diamond with the shared east path running from the existing, the new trail project at the east end to the existing sidewalk at the west end.

The next project is Pantops and it's two separate slides and it's looking at $36 million for this project.

It includes the sidewalk and reconfiguring of the intersection to accommodate pedestrian crossings at Rolkin.

and then the other part of it is the construction of a park and ride lot at Peter Jefferson Parkway, closure of the crossover just to the west of the intersection here, and then adding a right turn lane and converting this intersection to eliminate the through movement.

So you're just going to be able to make throughs or lefts and right in, right out from the side streets.

The main line will still have the same movements.

And like I said, this one,

Part of it is because you're basically having to buy all this right away.

The actual road improvements aren't going to be that much.

Just as comparison though, I think if you combine both of these projects that were submitted in the previous round, this one actually did not increase very much in price.

Some of them did.

Yeah, more amazed.

The Ralton Road is like more than half of that, or around half of that.

All right, the next one is

This is the corridor for Barracks Road, basically includes the roundabout at Georgetown, the double roundabouts at the interchange and the shared use path running all the way through the corridor.

Price tag, $129 million.

Does include some pedestrian, some reconstruction of the

Millmont intersection to meet ADA requirements, as well as many of the crossovers on the north side to meet ADA requirements and provides high visibility crosswalks at both ends of the roundabout at the interchange, as well as crosswalks of all the interchange ramps.

It does include crosswalks at the roundabout at Georgetown with raised platforms.

and it does include future, we're going to put in the pads for the bus stops that are there and reconstruct those bus stops and for the future installation of shelters by the county or the transit agency.

And there's also one at, there's two at Georgetown, or one at Georgetown, one at

Surrey, and there's one in the city, I can't remember, it's shown on there in the yellow box near where the trailhead is, comes in.

Yeah, opposite Cedar.

I'm sorry, can you repeat what you just said?

I'm a little flummoxed.

The bus is straightening it out.

Ooh.

No.

We talked about that at the previous meeting, why we're not able to put a crossing at that location, unfortunately.

But there will be one on the southern or eastern leg of the rabbit belt, and that's the closest one, so there's one on either side.

One of them is really close.

I think one of them is like 500 feet.

The other one is like 300 feet.

They weren't both the same.

One of them was Melmont's closer.

But I can't remember.

Part of the problem is there's a vertical curve on Barracks Road in the westbound direction and you can't meet sight distance for the crosswalks.

at that location.

My question is less about the project itself and more about process.

In previous rounds of SmartScale, have we gotten the cost estimate after we've submitted the project application?

Typically, that's the way it's worked out and we do a preliminary estimate and then we don't I usually this is the first round I well, we usually get the cost estimates usually after the fact Just because it takes so long to develop them To get that material.

I mean we can try to start earlier and that's what we're going to try to do next round because L&D is developing these cost estimates and

Yeah I just I think when you're coming to the local jurisdictions and to our MPO and asking us to you know endorse something and get behind an application

It's a very different discussion when you put a dollar number to it.

And we didn't have that discussion before we submitted this application.

We had sort of a rough idea that this is a big project, but I don't think if you had put $130 million in front of our decision makers locally, that this is where they would want to spend all of those dollars.

I will say that this isn't local money.

This is coming from the state pot of money.

You're competing for these funds on a statewide basis.

Yes, but we are making decisions about how we want to compete in that.

And, you know, we might have better places where we might think 130

I can, I can agree.

And I can understand that it's just a matter of the process.

We try to find out where, what the locations are early on in the process so that we can develop the, do the studies, develop the sketches, develop the cost estimates.

And that process takes eight to nine, eight to 10 months to do.

and we don't get the process until the end of that process.

Yes, but it's not necessarily the same as identifying the need.

This study alone cost almost 300 million or $300,000 to do this study.

Sure, so we're having to invest a lot of money on these studies up front to actually get to this point.

So it's it's we don't want to spend that money if it's not a viable project.

And I totally understand that,

A lot of the other steps in the process that you've mentioned, including that $300,000 worth of study, absolutely necessary to come up with a concept.

I just think the last couple steps of you get a concept, then you go ask the locality if they want to back it, and then you tell them how much it's going to cost, seems out of order.

So I don't have a problem with the process leading up to that point, but right there, it sort of seems like we have a weird handoff that might need to be addressed in future rounds.

Back at the Ivy Road study, you kind of gave us, you know, back of the, you know, napkin math.

Like, did we come close to this and talking about, like, back of the napkin math for this project?

Like, I'm new to this, but I think the pre-application we

it was in the ballpark and maybe 60 to 80 million?

For the pre-application, we try to develop those and I've tried to develop that every round.

For smart scale, for the pre-application, you just have to put, you could put a dollar in for all the different PE right away in construction.

You don't even have to have a, definitely have a final estimate for the final application you do.

But I try to, we try to develop some sort of,

very high level cost estimate at Pre-App that you guys can look at.

It's not going to be, that's why I said we'll do a sketch tool estimate and that's going to be what it is.

It's just going to be a sketch tool estimate at Pre-App and you guys can look at that and make your decisions based on that.

But like I said, those are, I actually had L&D do them this time in past rounds.

I've actually done a lot of

So, we'll do our best to get you as much information as we can as early in the process.

For us to get to this point is not that easy to do.

to have, because this, once it's, if it's recommended and it's approved for funding, this is our budget to build this project.

If we don't meet these numbers, we may not be able to build this project.

So that's why you guys were able to do like a portion of it, because if we find another

Even if it's not the recommendation that was in the pipeline.

Correct.

I mean, the interchange is an eligible component, and that's what, if we go to the next slide, I can show it better.

Okay, this is the other MPO application.

This left portion of the project,

could be submitted as a standalone project by the MPO without the shared use path on the east end.

But this eastern section is a lower cost project, lower cost component of this project.

This is a separate application.

Chuck, having seen all the projects from across the district now and their cost estimates, do you think this has a chance?

I mean, we didn't get that much.

Well, if you count high priority funding, we probably got about that much, but because of the changes in the rules this time, it's not as clear as to how competitive we're going to be for high priority funding because they took out land use, which was a significant

gave us a significant advantage over some of the other areas.

With that change, I don't know.

Typically, my breakpoint was like $20 million before.

Above $20 million, I was hard-pressed to get stuff funded.

Below $20 million, we were real competitive.

This round, because of the changes, I don't know how it's going to play out.

And since these applications are applying for high-priority funding,

It depends on what everybody else across the state submits.

But typically when we've had projects that are of this magnitude, they haven't done very well.

I have some clarifying questions while you do that, Sandy, to the answer that you just gave me.

I was under the impression with pipeline studies that the NPO can only apply for either the entirety of what's in the recommendation or

like these interchange improvements that we're eligible for.

Did I hear you say, even if it's an interchange improvement, it can be different than the scope that was in the pipeline recommendation?

Yes.

So there is really nothing about the pipeline study that's holding us to a particular design, particular features that can be

For SmartScale, yeah.

Then you have to do it in its entirety with the scope that is the recommendation.

Yeah, I was thinking about also applying it to the Ivy Road.

No, you said that during that part, but that was what Chuck talked about.

And I try to look at that every round and do my due diligence to make sure that we're trying to give us the best project.

Okay, for the just pulled up the application for the right away cost for this project with the interchange and the shared use path, the right away cost alone is $18.8 million.

and most of that is the interchange itself because we're having to condemn several properties, total takes on the west side of the property and that's just the cost of the right of way is really horrendous.

But you can see on this the red lines that are shown, those are the right of way lines that we're going to have to get right of way.

It is inflation because we have to inflate it out to the year and for right away, right away doesn't start till 2031.

So you're getting almost six years, seven years of inflation on top of the base cost.

for that item.

The base, the base uninflated cost right now is like $14 million for right away.

And it's inflated to 18.8.

And that's part of the issue here with smart scale.

We're looking at,

We're not looking at funding the projects right away.

We're looking at funding them in the end of the six-year plan, which gets adopted next year.

So you're talking about 2027 is the soonest we can start expecting funds on these projects.

So we're escalating any cost estimates we do to that start date or whenever the phase, whether it's PE right away or construction, starts.

Hold on, give me one second here now.

65.8 million or 65.9 million.

That does include the contingency for the various items in the cost estimate.

But the contingencies are relatively

Not that high.

PE is 15, right of way is 30%.

Construction has a 42% contingency.

And then CEI, which is your cost to build a project.

Why is construction contingency so high?

It depends on the type of structure.

This one, the bridge is the biggest issue, getting underneath the bridge and building the retaining walls and the geology to build those roundabouts.

Because that whole north quadrant, there's a huge retaining wall there with sound walls on top of it, and all that's going to have to be torn down and reconstructed.

to a degree we can, but we don't get into the detail.

We don't have surveys, so we don't necessarily, there's so many unknowns at this point that we can't really, we do our due diligence to try to accommodate it and then because we're at such an early stage, there's risk involved and you sign risks based on how much information you have and we don't have enough information and we have this with every project.

and there's ranges that we use for those and 40% is probably near what it should be for construction given the time frame between now and when it's going to be constructed, what the variables are that can change.

Okay.

Let me get right to the screen here.

All right, Albemarle County, we got the Old Trail, the Hillsdale, Rio intersection improvements, the other Georgetown portion of the Barracks Road as well as Plank Road down south.

Old Trail this one's a roundabout conversion at in the Crozet area for where the Old Trail 250 intersection is and we're looking at a cost estimate on this one of 16 million dollars 16.7 million basically you've got a

two lane road with an entrance to two lane road.

It does include a shared use path along the north side, as well as connections to existing sidewalks on the north side.

And then there's a proposed sidewalk on the west side of, and this is actually not the latest drawing.

We are actually including a crosswalk on the south leg of this intersection that leads into Western Albemarle High School.

but that one's actually in validation right now.

We've pretty much finished our validation.

We're waiting on Central Office to complete their portion of it.

This is the Rio Road intersection with Hillsdale and Old Brook Road.

We're looking at a peanut between it because there's two closely spaced signalized intersections and we're going to convert it to a peanut.

This one's

The estimate is still under review, but it's going to be pretty expensive.

There's a lot of right away impacts with this one.

There's a proposed site plan for the one

building on the south side of the or the north side of the intersection, which would be the lower part of the screen.

That's going to be we're looking at it as a from a right away perspective.

It may be a total take because of the utility impacts, but there are a lot of utility impacts on the other quadrants of the intersections that are causing the cost estimate to be going to be pretty high.

The next one is, we already talked about Barrick Trail.

This is the county portion.

The real difference between this one and what you saw before is we are adding a right turn lane at the ramp terminal in the eastbound direction, and we're adding crosswalks on the west side of the

that interchange terminal ramp, which aren't currently there.

So that was actual recommendations from a previous study.

And for this to be standalone, we have to make those improvements.

And the cost estimate for this one was $37 million.

So you had 92 for the one application.

37 for this one.

I think the whole total cost of the whole quarter was 29 million, 129 million.

So they're pretty close.

There is some savings from the larger project in cost, but it's not significant.

Any questions about this?

I know these are shockers, these are shockers to me too, but in talking to my counterparts across the state, I think everybody is seeing the same sort of escalation in costs from previous rounds.

The next project is the last one is Plank Road down in the southern part of the district And we're basically just converting this intersection or series of intersections to a series of our cuts And I haven't gotten the cost lesson on this one yet either Basically you're taking a

full intersection, unsignalized intersection, and putting in directional splitter islands in the median, so that you can only make, it doesn't allow the through movement, it only allows the left turns on the, from the main line, and then you have to go down.

So is this basically so people going southbound on 29 can go get pizza, Dr. Ho's left?

Most of them have turn lanes there already.

Most of the crossovers are already in place.

We are modifying the one at the north end.

We're shifting it around to improve the site distance at that location, but the other ones are existing crossovers.

We don't have that number off.

We do have that data.

I don't have that information right in front of me.

There's a study that's part of the application, so we have that information available that we can provide you.

This eliminates that, right?

The other thing I will point out, Peter, is that we didn't look at it, and we're not showing any bike or pedestrian facilities out here, but if when we get to construction, if that becomes a concern, there are

there are improvements we can make so that the bicyclists don't have to make the right in the U-turn.

They could go straight across, but we'll have to look at that on a case-by-case basis.

I know that question came up in some of previous applications around the smart scale.

Well, the other thing is there's a fire station on one side of the road, and we're going to design the one median crossing so they can go straight through with a mountable median.

the way they don't get held up in their travel time.

All right, I think that's it.

I think I managed to formulate this in a way that won't get me in trouble.

There's been a lot of discussions about a lot of projects on the Rio corridor.

If you look in the study that the county did, they do have that alignment in.

There's a development on the north side.

You've got Putt Putt Lane there and where that would be next to the, I think it's Verizon building.

We were looking at realigning Hillsdale through that corridor and putting a roundabout at that location and then having the entrance from the development on the north side connect to it.

It would involve

figuring out how to deal with Putt Putt Road, that street right there, because it would be right next to the intersection.

We can look at that again.

I mean, there's been a lot of discussions about it, and that's an alternative.

Even at this location, in the study that the county had Lyon and Gray do, they had some alternatives for this intersection where they basically realigned the entrance to the

one property opposite Old Brook Road over to Hillsdale and all realigned Old Brook Road over to Northfield Drive as an alternative.

But they, this was basically what the county wanted us to work with them on as an application.

So that's why we went with this one.

This was like I said, this wasn't something we presented to them.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

I will say one, I'll give another plug for one more thing.

We have another round of STARS studies coming up and we're trying to identify locations and it'd be good, I mean, especially from the city, if you guys have some locations that you might want to be thinking about.

we can have a discussion about it and start to get those in.

The other thing is I have the next round of pipeline studies is gonna start in January.

So we'll be circling up with you guys on those locations.

Hopefully we'll get some updated V-trans priority needs this fall and we'll have a better idea of what locations show up on the V-trans needs.

Those are like the pipeline studies, except there's a little, it runs similar

we do the public outreach and we do the surveys and we do the studies, but there's a little more flexibility there.

And it's gotten, basically we can pretty much do a lot of stuff with those studies.

Yeah, we definitely have planning needs in the city and I definitely need some support from VDOT

Thank you all.

Christine, turn it back over to Cordell for Safe Streets and All.

Thank you.

So I'll start with the background.

Move safely to Blue Ridge is the region's plan to reduce COVID fatalities and serious injuries for all road users no matter their choice of transportation.

I have to emphasize this is a regional project and covers the county's new DJQDC jurisdiction.

Albemarle, Havana, Green, Louisa, Nelson, as well as the City of Charlottesville.

This grant comes from the SS4A federal program which supports the United States National Roadway Safety Strategy.

So the long term of this goal is to reduce traffic and serious injuries by zero using a safe system approach.

I'll talk about the activities that we have completed today, but I want to start with the process.

So we have a four step process.

The first step was identifying issues and opportunities during spring of this year.

we completed well actually it was June we completed the first step through extensive public engagement we conducted a survey that allowed the local residents of the jurisdiction to share their specific safety concerns so we held six in-person public meetings one in each jurisdiction and one virtual public meeting for all jurisdictions

We also organized and attended 21 top-up events across the jurisdiction where we conducted the survey.

Step 2 is currently in progress.

That is extraction and analysis of the survey data.

This data will look crucial in helping us establish priorities for the safety initiative.

Step 3 has simultaneously also been in progress.

That includes reaching out to the jurisdictions and scheduling site visit based on the high injury network communication.

So this step will lead to the development of targeted safety strategies based on the priorities.

All those three steps serve as the foundation of the final step.

and that is the development of the comprehensive safety action plan that will outline specific actions or measures to enhance transportation safety in the region.

County Board of Supervisors revised December schedule.

We're going to make a recommendation to the policy board that they meet

Wednesday, December 18th, which usually is a board meeting, but it no longer is, so that's available.

But if you all the Tuesday before that, that would be MPO Tech on December 10th from 10 to 12.

If there is not a conflict and we are able to establish a quorum, I'd recommend that we do that meeting virtually in order to accommodate a change in the schedule.

And if that works, we'll go ahead and send out the calendar invite.

and just in terms of the materials in December, I'm sure we don't really know everything that's going to be on the agenda, but do we have any idea?

Not that we are aware of to date.

I have no idea if federal functional classification will come back to in October or December, but we don't have any action items lined up that we know would be better to hold in person.

And as a matter of fact, we've even talked internally as staff, if there are not,

important action items, we'll work with the chair to say, should we cancel the meeting?

Because I don't want to hold people together if there's no reason for it.

Great.

Christy, at the January meeting, the policy board actually voted to hold their December meeting on December 3rd.

So do they have a new conflict with the December meeting?

They said that they voted for December 3rd, and it doesn't look like they have a board of supervisors meeting scheduled.

I think it's a Tuesday.

Yeah, I don't have that date.

So granted, I need to go back to policy board.

All right, well, I'll go back to the housing board chair.

These are the dates that he recommended when we came to the setting.

Or you all have to be two weeks after you did.

I mean, you'll meet the third week of October and then potentially as early as the third week of November.

Yeah, if we can, if the policy board wants to make this change, I would request that they go tech policy so that the meetings are spread out as possible.

Because that decision was also made when they still had monthly meetings, not every other month.

Yeah, that's how it happened traditionally, but also I think they moved the, they changed the month they were meeting anyway.

So, but, but just wanted to,

So we will, it would be December 10 and 12.

I'll send that, we'll send out a downward invite for that for virtual.

All right.

Assuming it's a problem where it doesn't make a change next week.

Yes.

They do.

I wanted to update y'all on it is we are going after a State Streets for All demonstration print.

This is in addition to the safety action plan that we're currently doing with TJPBC.

We are looking to do a demo, a set of demo projects on a city mobile road.

So our roads in the city have different typologies except for the ones that are in everybody's name.

the ones that are outside your front door we don't have a typology board we don't really have great standards or practices or design guidance for we lean pretty heavily on UTCD for those sorts of roads and that changed over the past year to have less warrants and things for a traffic engineer to lean on to say whether applying a traffic calming intervention one way or the other is a good idea someplace or not so we want to be able to test those things and

some local funds and get an 80-20 match from events to be able to do all these testing.

We're looking at six different traffic calming interventions and we would be looking to apply those to at least six different corridors throughout local neighborhoods.

We are wrapping up that grant application like today or tomorrow, this will be next week.

The other thing I wanted to update everyone on, Tommy would kill me if I didn't, is Louisville.

It's coming September 28th, that's National Public Lands Day, last Saturday of the month.

Hundreds of people will be out on the Ravana Trail walking, biking, running.

In the past it's been, you know, do the whole 20 mile loop.

This year they have a new feature where they will have sort of cheer zones along the way every five miles or so and they'll tell you when the bigger group is going to be coming by those cheer zones.

If you want to just hop on and walk for five miles to the next one or just be a part of the pack for a little bit of the day and not the whole day, that's an option on their advertising when those people are going to be coming through.

So we'd love to see all of y'all out there at some point in the day, maybe not the full day, but there's also going to be a party at the end of it once you get back to the Urbana River Company site.

music, drinks, fun time.

I hope everybody can make it out.

If you don't make it out on the 20th because it's raining, there is a rain make-up day.

The next day, only 20 minutes.

So as long as the trail is good to walk on, we will still get out there one way or the other on that weekend.

I've got a few extra flyers here.

If you guys want to take them back to your offices to share the information with your colleagues, you're welcome to do so.

starting a brand new fiscal year while also wrapping up the last one is always very interesting time and just getting everything together.

Just came back from the ACT international conference in Denver where I got to hear a lot of good presentations about the Renaissance of carpooling and vanpooling.

So it looks like that's starting to

garnered some more attention and heard some great presentations on some bike infrastructure and biking campaigns that we're hoping to implement, you know, leading up and into Bike Month again for next year.

So you've got to be thinking ahead.

We are also still working through our CAP, which is the Commuter Assistance Program abbreviation strategic plan that we will be doing or that we're doing for the state.

due to some funding issues, we got a later start than was anticipated.

So DRPT has extended up the deadline to be able to have a full year to be able to complete that.

So I think we're wrapping up the last couple of chapters and then hope to have a draft from the consultant to review possibly by the end of this month, beginning of next month, a little bit of a moving target as we finalize a couple of the last details.

Um, DRPT is kicking off a campaign for connecting communities starting September 1.

So that will mostly focus on transit and we will be assisting them in promoting that, um, which ties very lovely into also September is the anniversary of the act and express.

So I'm sure we'll have some promotions and some things revolving around that much.

I don't have anything else.

Well, I think, I mean, I pretty much said everything before working on smart scale.

I gave you the updates on the future studies.

We're also looking at, probably this fall, starting the TAP and revenue share outreach to see if you guys need any assistance with that, for those programs for next year.

Awesome, thank you.

Sure.

Two quick updates, just two federal grants to give everybody a heads up about.

First one is a railroad crossing elimination program NOFO.

that was released by the Federal Railroad Administration.

Applications for that are due September 23rd.

If you are interested in pursuing one of those, feel free to reach out to me and I can help put you in touch with our rail folks.

Second one is a Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program, NOFO.

It was announced on July 3rd.

There's more than 600 million available for capital construction and community planning grants.

applications are due September 30th.

If you're interested and not prepared, USDOT is running all sorts of grant writing clinics and having office hours for people that are interested in applying.

I have a bunch of dates.

I'm not gonna sit here and rattle them off.

I'm happy to email them around to everybody if there's interest in receiving that information.

FHWA.

Do we have someone from?

Stephen's still on.

All right, we'll move on then.

FTA?

John?

Yeah, we finished up a neural transit needs assessment study last June.

It was presented to our board

We might also be a good audience for the Rural Transportation Advisory Committee.

Okay.

Alright.

Thanks.

We have a couple studies that are still in its last stages.

One's on electrification and the other one's on microtransit.

Looking at possibilities for Crozet, maybe green.

More to come on that.

Very little.

Other than school is in session starting I think next week, so all the students and bus schedules and stuff will be back to their normal.

Yeah, and I I will give one UVA slash city crossover update.

Oh yeah.

Crossing next week actually maybe happening today.

at Brandon Avenue at JPA.

So a Scramble Crossing is all of the cars are stopped and all of the people can cross whichever way they want to go.

So my understanding is this is the second that has been put in in Virginia.

yeah it's it can be used as such but it's not yeah it's not marked it's not marked the only other one that's marked as this ramble crossing is in Harrisonburg yeah and if for those who don't know we have a new upper class housing building it's actually two different two buildings opening on Brandon

next week.

And, um, that'll put the population of students there at like about a thousand.

So that's a lot of kids coming up Brandon and crossing over to go to their classes on a pretty regular basis, plus all the buses.

Okay.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Really excited about that one.

Um, all right.

Madison public.

Do we have any other?

All right, so I guess we can adjourn.