MPO Technical Committee Meeting   10/15/2024

All right.

Well, Jim, first,

Yeah, I can hear you.

Sorry about that.

All right.

I'm out of Warrenton residency and I'm definitely more than 60 miles away.

Sarah Simba Jason Despe

Bill Palmer here.

I'm Mitch Huber.

Sure.

Thank you.

Would you mind taking your voting points?

My name is Bill Emery.

I live in the Willamals at 1604 East Market Street in the city of Charlottesville.

I've been corresponding a bit with Ben and Sarah about the FFC.

You know, since 1988, the Willamals neighborhood has corresponded with Charlottesville city councilors regarding

traffic calming in the neighborhood.

And so we were somewhat caught unawares by the request to reclassify Market Street and Chesapeake Street as minor collectors.

We are hoping to get more information

regarding the reclassification.

There are a lot of great links in the August 28th agenda for the policy board.

But in addition, we'd like to get a map of city streets with an overlay of planning districts.

The 19 planning districts

which would reflect not just the streets that are requested to be reclassified, but the federal classification of all the streets in the city by color code.

And also we'd like to see a copy of the form that Transportation Planner Mr. Chambers submitted to the MPO.

We're a little bit

alarm than concern just because the normal collaboration that we're used to having with the city, say for instance, when the Streets of Work program was done 10 years ago, has been totally absent and we just are surprised and want to be reassured of all the potential consequences of being reclassified.

Good morning everybody.

I'm Peter Krebs from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

This is just a

A thing that I'd like to make sure is on the radar of the planners that are in this room.

The Venn diagram representing UVA, City, County, VDOT, MPO, potentially.

So we were making a lot of good progress on bike pedestrian projects of City, County interest for a long time.

And then I want to say about

three years ago, progress has really sort of stopped on the number of projects that are pretty high priority for both localities.

And it's the same situation we had before the bike ped plan where it's like kind of a hot potato city county who's going to do these projects.

Four of them come to mind that are pretty high priority that we do need to get moving on in some kind of way.

and people ask me about these all the time and I can kind of just say this I don't know where they are and I hope it's not because the answer is they're nowhere but I suspect that might be the case actually so we have the Ravenna River pedestrian bridge

We have the Route 20 shared use path.

We have a potential tunnel at Greenbrier Park and the John Werner Parkway.

And we have a fairly new project, which is Morris Creek Greenway between Fifth Street and Old Lynchburg Road.

So it sort of seems to me that when SmartScale made it hard to do BikePad,

we as a community had the attitude well we'll use smart scale for that type of stuff and then smart scale went away for that for a while and so there is just not a plan B maybe smart scale will be good for that again in the future but we need to find other ways and so I would like to just ask that the community as a whole the transportation planning community as a whole

not lose track of bike ped projects and especially not lose track of the city county border area where stuff is really languishing and one example of a project that you are doing which is on the city county line very auto centric but it has a bike ped component too which is barracks road now the projects I named are pretty expensive

But from what I've seen, the sum of those four projects is comparable to just the cost of Barracks Road.

So let's not lose track of ways that we can work together and benefit together and maybe be a bit creative in solving those problems.

Thank you and all who would like to say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

All right, we have an agenda.

I also ask for a motion to move the meeting minutes from August 20th.

All right.

And a second?

Second.

Thank you.

And all in favor, say aye.

Any opposed?

One exception.

All right.

Moving right along to new business.

Yes.

So included in the agenda for a federal functional classification are the

the proposed revisions, the staff memo, and the resolution of support, the revised version.

The discussion was that the Virginia Department of Transportation coordinated with MPOs across the state to review and update the federal functional classification.

In May, the Charlottesville Albemarle MPO introduced the update to local staff and boards, allowing stakeholders to provide feedback until June 17th.

VDOT reviewed the revisions, and by August, the MPO recommended deferring decisions due to the unavailability over revised draft map.

By October, VDOT responded to the requested changes, incorporating most local recommendations.

Charlottesville, Albemarle MPO is not considering final approval of the updated FFC map.

which will then be submitted to the Federal Highway Administration for review and finalization of the map.

of the public.

The functional classification is the process by which streets and highways are grouped into classes or systems.

According to the character of service, they are intended to provide basic processes, the recognition that individual roads and streets do not serve travel independently in a major way, but serve as a part of an overall network.

Most travel involves movement through the network of roadways.

It becomes necessary to determine how this travel can be

channelized within the network in a logical and efficient manner.

Functional classification defines the nature of this channelization process by defining the part that any particular road or street should play in serving a flow of trips through a highway network.

VDOT, Transportation and Mobility Planning Division, is responsible for maintaining the commonwealth's official federal functional classification system

Okay, so is this telling us that we are reporting to them what power issues are currently functioning and how we expect them to continue functioning?

Yes.

Okay.

I hope that the discussion is submitted, and that's the policy's question, but we have to see the forum.

But there's a process, right, to

No, there is a federal funding formula, or a funding formula that VDOT uses that is partially based on the functional classification system.

And that's for things like money that we get for bidding.

Specifically, arterials get higher payments per lane mile, locals and collectors get the same amount.

So from the city's perspective, these changes only get us more funding with respect to sharing.

Yeah, I double checked that all of our changes are reflected in the finding map, but one question I do have, Mill Creek Drive, I think that it was actually the city that suggested we needed a change and it's not reflected in the way it was communicated to us.

It looks like Charlottesville staff requested to change the classification from local road to major collector.

and but in the map it's listed a minor collector.

That was based on TMPD.

So it was sent to TMPD when that request only came back and granted it.

Who's everyone in the city feel good about that?

I think the other question I had, in 2021, in the county, we had already reclassified a lot of these things, Yvonne in 1953 and some others, other entrance corridors since only arterials to the entrance corridors by statute and they were violating statute.

But there were a bucket here as changes.

I don't totally know what happened, but we did identify those as not being properly reflected in the first version of the map and now they're where they're supposed to be.

I don't know if that changes the classification of the road.

No, just the shape and number of miles.

And not just for us online.

I'm actually having a hard time hearing you.

So, and I'm here, so if everybody could, Jeff.

All right, now I have a motion from someone to support the resolution of support for the Federal functional classification provisions.

Seconded.

All in favor of this motion, say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Any abstentions?

You have an abstention?

Cool.

All right.

Next up, we have VDOT project.

That'll be Sandy or Chuck.

I think Chuck is.

That's gonna be me Basically, we've developed some based on your questions.

We came back and put together some presentations one on 5th Street one on the Future pipeline and stars study look preliminary study locations and the third one was the Ivy Road update So I'm gonna share my screen maybe And present that material

Give me a second here.

I've gotten used to hearing.

I said.

Yeah.

This is the 5th Street corridor.

This was the application for SmartScale this round.

We have completed all our work on getting it together and validating it and we're just waiting for it to go through the scoring process.

There were some questions came up about the cost estimate and why we

didn't look at additional alternatives, and I'm just going to go through some of that.

Basically, this is the project development process that we typically go through on a project.

We do an application overview, process the constraints, develop a list of alternatives, we develop some high-level cost estimates, and then the timeline for the application and the next steps.

Basically, this is the process we typically go through.

We assess the existing conditions, identify the alternatives, then we evaluate all the alternatives and we select a preferred alternative for a project.

And then we go through and finalize the concept and we develop a base cost estimate and the application material.

As part of that process, towards the end of it, we also look at the risk and contingency as part of the development of the final cost estimate.

And I think that's where a lot of the questions are that have been raised about the process.

This is the overall sort of all the people that are involved and how we develop it in it.

It's compressed schedule.

For this particular project, we didn't really identify it as a submitted project to work forward with until like late fall of last year.

So that gave us six to eight months to do this whole process, which is really constrained and compressed for

and Interchange.

We had done a previous study of the corridor, Fifth Street corridor study, where we had had a preliminary high-level alternative recommendation for DDI, but we hadn't really done anything else regarding that.

So what we had to do with this study is basically flush that out.

So we

basically looked at it from as a new study from that perspective and looked at various alternatives that we had somewhat recommended from the previous study and developed an alternative analysis reached out to get public feedback and identified what the preferred scenario is and that took several months in the early part of this year where we were able to get consensus around the preferred alternative which was the divergent diamond

part of the reason we felt that was a the best solution is cost because it's typically you don't have to do full bridge replacement and we didn't find that out until later in the process but basically once you do that we had a consultant Baker that we brought on board to do the work for us and work with L&D and us and traffic engineering to go through and develop the

alternative, the Interchange Justification Report, which is part of the process we have to go through now for SmartScale, which adds a lot of complexity to the process, because it's a lot more detailed analysis work.

So that took a little bit more time to do that, but we were able to meet the deadlines for the preliminary application

for the preferred alternative.

We just hadn't done a lot of the later analysis and the cost estimate and any of that, all that stuff, which basically started in, we were working on it, but we really didn't get to it until later in the process, which is June and July, May, June and July is when we actually started to really get details into that part of the process.

Basically, as part of the process, we developed the crash analysis, we identified the goals, and these are the alternatives that we ended up pursuing.

Moving forward, as several of them were, the existing conditions plus sidewalk optimized diamond were some of the

short-term solutions that were identified in the larger corridor study that we'd done previously.

The divergent diamond was recommended at that time and then we actually looked at a spooey tube because of the right-of-way impacts.

We felt that would be the better fit for the location if we looked at an alternative interchange treatment.

As part of the evaluation, we basically did a V-just analysis and we looked at the crash modification factors and the relative cost.

As you can see here, the 0.74 for the DDI is not the best, which would be the SPUI, but it's definitely not better than the existing conditions.

For the crash modification factor, .73, that's the best you're going to get out of all of them.

The .12 for the sidewalk only is really just focused on the pedestrian crashes, not the operation analysis for the other crashes that occur at the interchange.

So that's why it shows up as better, but it's only looking at pedestrian and bicyclist crashes, which is a very small number.

crashes at the intersection.

And then we looked at relative cost as a comparison of the three.

And like I said, it's cheaper to do the divergent diamond than it is to spooey, but it's definitely more expensive than optimizing the diamond or just adding sidewalk improvements.

Sorry about the noise in the background.

Basically, so here's an overview of

The biggest thing is we did get a lot of feedback from the public and they were mainly focused on the divergent diamond because it provided the most benefits of the alternatives for the least amount of cost per se.

So this is the alternative that we ended up submitting for the application.

Um, and like I said, we had a lot of favorable public feedback, um, and it did meet all of the requirements of the scope of the project, developing, providing a shared use path across the, through the corridor, um, and actually address some of the safety issues at the intersections and the interchange.

the cost estimate.

This is where flags started coming up for everybody.

Basically, we saw the 79 million cost estimate.

It was significantly greater.

And when you get into the details of it, because of the structure itself,

the entire bridge deck had to be replaced to accommodate the additional loads and structural work we had to do the deck to put the shared east path across the middle and when they started looking at that part of it and integrated into the substructure they felt that the

substructure would have to be replaced as well and we didn't find this out until very late in the process and it didn't really give us enough time to go back and consider any other alternatives because we were like in June and July at this point where we're trying to finalize the application.

And basically here's a

timeline of why we went to where we're in.

Like I said, this June, July through August timeframe is when we really identified when the entire bridge would have to be replaced, because that was the recommendation we got from the bridge section, and it didn't come in until late in the process.

And then we got the final estimate from L&D for the application, but they actually didn't submit the

actual final estimate until late August.

And we had just the cost, the application reflected.

and currently I think L&D just got comments from central office on the cost estimate on that they're trying to address so with Barracks Road I know we had to go in and actually make some additional changes because we had forgotten to include the removal of the sound wall in the estimate so we made some modifications and had to change the estimate last couple weeks ago to its final version.

This is just a comparison slide that we put in there.

We felt it might be advantageous to look at it, the comparison between last round and this round.

And you can see that for the HPP projects, there's a reduction because of the limited number of eligible projects that the regional bodies can submit.

And that was the biggest change.

The other thing is, by eliminating the land use factor,

it's going to increase the cost of most projects.

The combination of the two definitely is going to end costs and you can see that reflected in these tables.

Significantly the HPP and the less than 20 million dollars and 71 percent less than 20 million dollars.

That's a big change.

and then some more information about more of the local projects that we submitted last round comparison between the two 50% were less than $20 million and now we 100% were more than $20 million.

So basically we didn't submit any applications less than $20 million for the high priority system because of the eligibility changes to the process.

but you can see between the average cost of all the projects how it went up and that's significant.

Part of it's got to do with inflation as the biggest part of it because we look at the unit prices for the bid tabs from the contractors when we're developing those as well as all the factors that go into it from the PE standpoint that we have to replace to address the safety and the operational needs.

I think that's it.

Let's see, two more slides.

Basically, the next steps, we're going to wait till we get the scoring and the

rankings which will come out in January and present it at the CTB meeting and then after that we will go and possibly re-look at it.

We can talk about it when we get to the study slides.

One of my suggestions would be to re-evaluate the interchange with a shared use path on a separate structure next to it to see if that can dramatically increase or decrease the cost of the project and make it more

competitive.

We're not sure how it's going to compete this round with the changes they made to SmartScale, but we'll just wait and see.

But we are planning to relook at it again as part of, as a pipeline study for next round.

That's going to be starting here in the next couple of months.

I have some questions, Chuck.

Sorry if you've already talked about this at a previous meeting.

I wasn't here in August.

But given the need to completely rebuild the bridge deck, if we were going to put a shared use plan on it, how healthy is this bridge?

And would it be eligible for state of good repair funds?

Not something we can do as part of SmartScale.

IID doesn't let us co-mingle those types of funds.

It's not at a point where we're going to rebuild it, but it's not very far away from it.

I think it's rated 6 out of 10 right now overall.

So once it gets below six, we'll have to put it on the list of projects to actually look at refixing.

And it just depends on what the fix is.

Could be that we're just gonna basically resurface the deck, which not replace the deck, basically mill and latex overlay the deck.

It just depends on what we can do with SGR may not be necessarily,

what we would do with a project because we're having to redo the put barrier and redo the entire surface of the deck we had to replace the entire deck because you have to put barrier on both sides of the shared use path and the way the bridge is built it's got a joint in the middle that runs

longitudinally along the bridge the entire length, and it's not necessarily straight.

So we're having to figure out how to do that.

So basically, and the other thing is that scuppers that are in the travel lanes outside of the sidewalk along on both sides of the bridge.

So those are all have to be replaced.

And when we started looking at some of that, integrating the barrier, we had to replace the whole deck.

So that was the first thing.

And then once they looked at replacing the whole deck, because the substructure was also rated at six, they basically felt that if they went ahead and redid a new bridge, we would end up having to, it wouldn't necessarily work with the current substructure.

So that's what they basically said, we'll have to replace the substructure.

We didn't find that out until really late in the process to where we couldn't really go back and make any changes.

But to your question, SJR, they don't let us commingle those type of funds.

And then what we would do for SJR may not address what we, what our needs are for the project.

Do what now?

If part of the project, the bridge debt or bridge has to be replaced and it can't be used by SCR funds, you can't commingle them.

We pulled some of the numbers.

Sandy went through the cost estimate.

It was like around 20 million dollars for the bridge.

And that's out of the existing funding.

Yeah, I mean, I talked to L&D about it.

If we don't, if we can move the shared use path somewhere else, the amount of improvements we'd have to make would be just

very minimal to the bridge deck because you're talking about where the center island runs across for the left turn lanes we might have to take out some of that and reconfigure some of that sidewalk or curbing and median but that's about it everything else could stay the same we don't have to touch anything else

There's a lot of other items, especially for the radiuses of those ramps to work that are going to require retaining walls.

So a lot of that's factored into the cost of the project and you're going to have that regardless of whether the shared use path is there or not.

But I think that if we don't have to replace the entire bridge and can just do some minor modifications to this deck by having that median island

reconfiguration.

We don't have to put a barrier in there.

I mean, we don't have to integrate anything into the deck.

It should be minimal cost for that bridge, for the project.

So I'm thinking that that it should be substantially less to put a bike ped bridge adjacent to it to get the pedestrians across that same corridor.

Just a clarification, so if you don't make the improvements to the subsurface, you mentioned that it's already at six,

So if you make these improvements, is that bringing it up from a six?

Not that it's substandard.

It's just that it's it's in a it needs it's going to have to get some repair work done to it.

Whether it's like I said, you could mill and overlay it.

There could be some sandblasting and

We could do it as part of, they could, we could coordinate it because of the timeframes.

It could be that they could do the mill and overlay as part of the median improvements separate from the project.

as a maintenance portion of the project.

So can I try to summarize in my head what was just said?

The project got substantially more expensive because the need to replace the deck of the bridge

the project included a shared use path but if we remove the shared use path from this project you could get away with not doing a full redeckings and therefore lower the cost of the project and then you would look at potentially adding some sort of bike head bridge parallel to this current traffic bridge

funding from which we don't know where it would come from.

Typically the shared use path points would come out of land use.

And I'm not saying we would remove it, we just wouldn't include it as on the bridge itself.

We would include a separate structure next to the bridge with the project for just the shared use path.

The other thing is, I was going into this, I felt that we would have to do the deck replacement regardless.

I wasn't planning on doing a full bridge replacement, which includes the piers that hold up the bridge deck.

they're saying we've got to replace the whole thing.

And that's where the rub comes in.

I wasn't expecting to have to replace the entire bridge because we could have looked at a different, totally different type of bridge at that point.

And my thoughts is that's too expensive.

So the bridge, the deck replacement, I felt that that was something that we may end up having to do anyway, initially.

But I felt that that was cheaper than a full bridge replacement.

So the bridge has to be replaced.

No, no, no.

The newer project, the new project would not include the deck replacement at all.

Let me try, and maybe I'm the only one getting confused on this part, but I'm thinking about next steps and actions that this committee needs to take.

So what you're saying is that our application for this round of SmartScale has already been submitted.

It is an expensive project that would replace the entire bridge, but still get us all of the features that we included in the application if it were to be awarded.

It's really going to be awarded.

So now we're already thinking about the next round of SmartScale.

in the next round of smart scale.

We don't know yet, but it sounds like your professional opinion is that it might be cheaper overall to separate the shared use path from the existing bridge, make minimal improvements to the bridge itself, build an additional structure, still get all of the pieces that the group wants, hopefully cheaper in the future, in a future round.

Correct, I mean part of the part of the issue with this it's an interchange so there's a study process that we have to go through called an IAR which we have to get buy-in from the feds and central office all these folks have to buy into the alternatives we didn't consider that as an alternative however even if this project is funded

When they start doing the design work, they'll go in and do some value engineering and they may look at that and come up with that solution as a valued engineering alternative to the current project.

So we might still end up there anyway, even if it is funded this round.

we may end up there in the end.

I'm just saying at $79 million, I don't think it's competitive enough to get funded.

So I'm already planning to relook at it for next round.

Still provide all the same features and amenities that we want.

It'll just be on a separate structure and hopefully we can get it at a lesser cost.

Because typically around the $20 million range last round was the optimal

will cost for projects to get funded.

We've got most of our projects are more than $20 million, so it's going to be that number is going to change, but I don't know what it is yet because I don't have any data to base any kind of estimates on on what we could expect that number to be in the future.

Yeah, I feel more clear.

It's just, uh, like I said, if we had a little bit more time, we're trying to do that.

That's why we're looking at starting pipeline right now.

Um, we're starting our star studies, which we're going to be talking about those in a later presentation, um, right now.

So that we, by the time we get there, we've got a lot of, uh,

Bigger picture, and I think I'm making a request for information and the committee agrees for this.

You showed one slide, Chuck, that had comparative costs for projects from round five versus round six for the Culpeper district.

Is it possible to get more information comparing

Round five and round six costs for similar-ish projects from different districts.

I think that's just a bigger picture question we're curious about.

Hopefully we can look at the data.

Sandy pulled this slide together, so we

We had some data available, but all the data is not available yet.

The more time we spend getting finalized in cost, getting the final cost estimates, the more accurate we can get with this data.

Thank you.

All right, just give me a second here.

All right, see the new slides?

All right, hopefully this will go pretty quick.

Basically, we've got the proposed scenario planning and some recommended strategies for the corridor.

Basically, I went through this whole thing and what we finally agreed to with the county and UVA and the community is basically this group of projects would be the recommended solution.

It includes the roundabouts at Boars Head and a roundabout at Canterbury.

and a median between the two roundabouts.

So you would close off that those access, not close the access points off, but close off them to full access.

It also included a previously studied the roundabout or triangle about for that quadrant on Old Ivy Road.

includes the ramp improvements on 250 bypass north of the Old Ivy Road interchange, those on and off ramps, extending them.

The northbound would extend all the way in Leonard Sandridge and the southbound would just be extended back about halfway to Leonard Sandridge so that they would not create a queuing issue and allow for that because a lot of people that want to go to Leonard Sandridge, they'll come down and use that

the city to get there.

So

a way to handle that and it would lessen the merge weave issue that we've currently got on that northbound side in the morning.

And then the would accommodate there be a shared use path along Old Ivy Road as well as some improvements at the underpass on the others on the east side railroad underpass and typically we're going to reduce it down to one lane underpass and provide pedestrian and bike facilities on one

along the east side of the underpass and then basically we'll provide still right now we're looking at two-way traffic with signals we'll see if that's going to work when we get to that point if it's funded and we're going to remove that eastbound left turn lane movement

So that's the group, and then the A, B, and C are how we group those projects for smart scale applications.

We felt that the triangle bout and the shared use path would be something that possibly would be locally funded as opposed to part of a smart scale application.

The ramps would be a project, and that could be something that the MPO could submit.

And the roundabout and the

shared use.

I mean the median closure could be an application that the county could submit or the MPO could submit both those projects together.

So that's basically the preferred scenario.

Yeah, I got questions.

Well, I'm just saying if we can come back.

The other slides are just on the more longer terms.

They're not preferred scenarios, but they're recommended things.

They're the locality recommended in the future as the needs arise on those locations.

And that's basically the western section and the eastern section.

but we can go through those real quick and come back to the slide.

So the western end, basically you have various alternatives in the western package one.

And these will be, like I said, these are stuff that the county could consider in the future if they start to see issues along this corridor at these various locations.

And this is west of Boars Head.

but includes parallel roads, some intersection improvements, roundabouts.

various, but something that they might want to consider.

And then you have the same thing for the middle section.

We have the long-term improvements, which is basically, eventually if we have issues on Barracks Road or the bypass, from a capacity standpoint, we may have to look at expanding this roadway, or if we have further issues with the interchange.

And that basically would

Re-building

Bypass is integrated where the railroad bridge is integrated into the roadway bridge.

So they're on the same structure.

So we'd have to replace both of those if we wanted to expand those, lengthen those bridges to accommodate any future expansion of the bypass.

And then, like I said, we'd also replace the bridge over on Old Ivy Road.

And then the eastern end, again, these are more long term.

suggestions that the county could consider for these various intersections between the interchange and Old Ivy Road.

And basically this is where we're at.

We're reviewing the final report and we're developing some planning level cost estimates for the preferred scenarios.

Now these aren't going to be necessarily

the final cost estimates for like an application, but there'll be more higher level.

We'll have to go through, if these are something that the locality wants to submit, we'll have to go through and do some more work on those, but it'll give you an idea of what the costs are gonna be.

Okay, that's pretty much it for that.

What's the timeframe for your next steps?

Well, we'll probably, we can start, the earlier we start the better.

I know for even the ramps, we'll have to go through some sort of OSAR type of study similar to what we did for Barracks Road, and that's going to take a little bit of time to do.

So the sooner we can start on that, the better.

We'll just have to coordinate with the localities and the MPO on

What do they see their applications will be for the next round of smart scale?

Now it's whether we start on them now or whether we wait till we see how everything plays out.

Like for 5th Street, I'm already looking at doing it as a pipeline study coming up.

combining it with the 5th Street Station intersection so we can relook at that corridor since the city's looking at doing something different on their portion of it north of there.

I noticed that the map you had in the presentation was a little bit older.

We had a newer map that was in the delete pack

back in August.

I just sent you the email for that attachment, if you don't mind bringing that up for people here to see.

It's about the same.

Jump now.

Do you know what slide one is?

This is the one that we were with preferred.

This is the one that it's actually the slide that the county presented and I put boxes over top of it with different conversions and I redid the grouping based on what we had discussed to come up with a preferred scenario.

But there is a different one and either I'll be able to bring it up, but that's the

We don't include the groupings.

One of the pieces that was really clear to us from different meetings and different conversations that the county is not interested in like using the triangle about as an interim measure.

We don't want to, we know that the roundabout at Canterbury is really necessary to make that triangle about work.

I mean, that's fine.

I mean, like I said, we're basically going to put together the study, but I think we were looking at, from discussions that we were looking at, the stuff along Old Ivy Road, we were thinking would be something that would be more locally pursued and we would focus primarily for smart scale applications on this

the ramp extensions and the 250 improvements.

I don't want to fully speak for the county, but my impression from our conversation with the board was that this would be pursued as a complete smart scale package, at least in the first attempt.

That's fine.

I mean, we were looking at it on

Just to clarify, one of the reasons to divide them into project groupings is because there have been some discussions that the projects could be submitted as subgroups as complete applications through the high priority program.

So that would leave multiple smart scale projects that can be submitted as smaller subgroups.

The biggest concern is we're looking at is from a high priority standpoint, I don't know if they would let us do all of this stuff as a high priority project because the bulk of it's going to be not eligible.

So it may not be eligible for the MPO to submit the entire study improvements.

I don't know.

Correct.

I don't know.

Like I said, I don't know what they're going to change with regards to the eligibility.

And right now, according to the eligibility, everything in it, all the recommendations from a pipeline study would be eligible.

So the MPO could submit all of these.

Well, I've got some more detailed questions and so the shared use path, so I'm still learning the whole funding component of this, but the actual shared use path part of this project is currently kind of dead ending into Old Garth Road and is because

is the one way of kind of that triangle going over the 250 bypass bridge, like allowing us now to use that bridge for bike ped.

So it's not Jessica shaking her head Chuck.

So you mean the shared, and that's why I said the shared use path is something that

It's not something that's an easy solution.

I think we've got the eastern end done, worked out.

But I mean, we're not talking about a shared use path under the bridge.

We're talking about a six to eight foot separated area for bike and pedestrians to use.

Getting it to qualify as a shared use path is going to be a stretch.

It's just getting it getting it under there I want to I want to make it safe and it's just how much space we need to get that how wide can be to get in underneath that bridge and still function as a one travel lane and a bike pedaling

and because they're going to have to be separated by some sort of method and it's what that method is.

I have to make it safe because I don't want a vehicle go down through there.

If you just put delineators down, I don't think that's going to be enough of a protection for pedestrians and bicyclists to have them feel like it's comfortable to go through that underpass.

There's no relief.

You're basically talking about the side of the underpass and the travel lane on the west on the other side.

Correct.

That's what I'm saying.

But it's going to be raised and it's just how much it's raised and what the separation is.

Is it just going to be a six-inch curb and sidewalk?

I don't know.

We haven't gotten to that level of design or detail yet.

Yeah, so I have a comment.

The left turn lane would be removed from Ivy Road in this... The eastbound left turn lane.

Correct.

It's still two-way traffic so the right turn lane would still go through.

What we were talking about, if you can't maintain two-way traffic,

that we would allow the westbound movement to be the dominant movement and and move forward as a single lane way to go but I don't like I said that's a lot of that we've got the analysis that shows right now that it works but once we once we get to the point where we were ready to build it and and and fund have a funded application

We'll have to relook at it.

But right now, the analysis that we have with the study shows that a two-way signalized application would work there from an operational standpoint, with or without that left turn lane.

The left turn lane is very small volume.

make that corridor, so underneath the railroad pass, railroad bridge, one way during certain times of the day and one way the opposite direction during other times.

possibly.

Like I said, it's all got to do with signage and you don't want people coming down there and then it not be, they'll not be allowed to get, then you got to turn them around somewhere.

So it's, we're going to have to make sure that we provide all the accommodations for whatever scenario we're going to come up with for that.

Right now, we're looking at as a signalized two-way movement underneath that underpass.

If we want to do something else,

by direction, we'll have to look at it.

I mean, I know that we've heard a lot of conversations from the folks that have kids at STAB that go from the high school to the middle school and use that corridor as opposed to going around.

A lot of people would have to weigh into it and decide which way.

So my final comment, and I'll stop talking after this, is as some of you all know, we put 300 people on the road biking and walking in this corridor a couple weeks ago.

and they all did 20 miles and this was the most dangerous part of the feedback I got was this is the most dangerous part of the entire experience for them and adding some sort of facility here, I'm personally a huge fan of doing something sooner rather than later because of the need of not just the people who we put 300, put down on the trail

It's like thousands of people here can't access a grocery store without driving safely through that underpass.

So walking and biking under here, I just want to reiterate how important I think this project, this part of the project is.

All right.

All right.

Let me switch this out then.

I know, I've got to get back to the... All right, here we go.

Share.

All right, hopefully this will go pretty quick.

Stars and pipeline.

Okay, we've already kicked off the stars process.

We've already actually sent in the

Scopes, and we've got cost for the preliminary phase of those projects.

Pipeline, we're just identifying the locations right now.

So basically,

We already have, like I said, an overview of the program.

This is basically a comparison of the two different programs.

They're very similar.

One of them is run by coordinated with TMPD, which is VDOT, and the other one's coordinated with OIPI, which is the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment that's run through the Secretary of Transportation's office.

So they're a little different.

Basically, the pipeline process came out of the STARS process.

They just tweaked it a little bit when they wanted to set theirs up.

But basically, the purpose of them is there's a little bit of flexibility.

Pipeline is mainly geared towards addressing the needs that are identified in VTRANS and the highest priority needs that are identified in VTRANS, which is our state highway plan.

and that also is run by the Office of Intermittal Planning and Investing, where TMPD coordinates the other one.

And this basically has a lot more flexibility.

The whole program started out as a strategically targeted, affordable,

We started with the first STARR study on the 53 corridor and the Route 20 corridor in Albemarle County.

We're two of the first two STARR studies that were done in the state.

And it's basically changed a little bit over time to where we can pretty much do just about any type of study with this program.

But basically you have a

several different phases.

STARS primarily has two phases.

You have the scope phase where you sit down, have a look at what's going on out there, try to have a kickoff meeting with localities and identify who your stakeholder's working group is, and you develop a scope that's going to carry on in the second phase as the study.

where Pipeline basically does that a little differently.

They do a phase three phase approach where they basically do some of the preliminary stuff similar to the phase one.

You don't have necessarily have a framework document that you've got to sign off on.

You want to get agreement to the scope, but you're basically still nailing down what the scope is.

But you're also getting some public feedback.

And that's at the end of the kickoff phase one and the beginning of phase two.

the phase two is basically where you're doing your alternatives now development once you've gotten your public feedback and your input from your stakeholders and then you go through that process to develop your preferred alternative scenario and you reach out for the public feedback again on the various alternatives so you can get feedback and then decide on what the preferred alternative and then step three is basically where you're

finalizing your preferred alternative concepts and developing your cost estimates that are submitted typically as applications for SmartScale, but they don't necessarily have to be.

Those second two phases in the STARS program are just combined.

That's the biggest difference between.

There is some more flexibility as to what type of projects you can do with STARS versus what you can do with Pipeline.

So basically we looked at our corridor, we got a list of locations that central office provided as well as feedback from the various residencies across the district and the traffic engineering and L&D and we came up with these four locations.

We reached out to the county and the city to get their feedback and

One of the big issues was the we're starting to have a lot of issues with at exit 118.

And there was a lot of concerns about how the left turns were being created.

we're having queuing from the previous application that was built several years ago for the southbound left turn movements on to two fifth or 64 east is queuing up so we wanted to really look at that interchange and we also wanted to look at stuff north of 29 of

on the northern end of the bypass where you have the 29 interchange and hydraulic road because those weren't really studied in solutions 29 so we felt we need to look at those because they're starting there's a lot of issues going on there and all of the

Forecast and the analysis show that they're going to start to fail miserably in the future.

So we wanted to get some sort of solutions for that portion of the corridor.

And then the other portion is north of hydraulic is the top safety locations in the district, both at.

Greenbrier and at Woodbrooke.

Those are number one and we also have the number one segments in the district.

Number one through one and two and three I think are right there in that corridor.

So we want to look at that section.

So we looked at doing those as two applications.

and then we did the West Main Street.

We wanted to look at something in the city to see if we could come up with a process that we could work with the city on doing some of these studies where we could get the process nailed down on what, how that would work for these type of studies in the city.

And that's basically our four projects.

All three projects.

The other one, the fourth project is up in, is not in this area.

I mean earlier in the IV study, you're recommending six leaning the bypass.

There's been a lot of stuff that's been looked at here over the years.

I've looked at this interchange several times.

I know with Places 29, we looked at converting it to a spooey, which is basically a single point urban interchange where you had triple lefts coming from the ramp.

You'd basically remove the loop ramps and just have ramps coming straight in to one signal that's underneath the bridge.

We haven't really gotten anything.

Most of the other solutions that we came up with for this corridor in the past have been like some sort of flyover.

Solutions 29, we didn't actually look at this interchange, so we don't have a solution for it.

We didn't look at Hydraulic Road either.

We had some things that we've talked about, but we never really

They never really moved forward other than to have some high level discussions on.

So we want to really focus on what we can do here.

I think the sixth laning is not necessarily up through this point.

Most of it is south of Barracks Road because you get all the people that are coming in from Georgetown To the interchange and then going southbound So you're getting you're combining two major streams going southbound at Barracks Road interchange and then coming northbound They they basically are going up there splitting up.

So between barracks and the 250 or the 29 interchange you don't really

Okay.

Well, it's also include like looking at getting some sort of like head facilities from south of 250 to north of 250.

We've got the center median sidewalk right now, but you know, connecting to the Hillsdale shared use path seems like a big missing gap in in the network there.

Solutions 29 and the hydraulic small area study was the Hillsdale extended which basically extended that shared use path to the basically the connection along 250 didn't necessarily go across the bypass but at least it extended it further to the south.

We can talk about that as something that we might want to look at how we get across there as part of this project.

I mean, like I said, if you wanted to look at a flyover or something like that, then you could look at, well, how can how this if we did a flyover type of improvement here, how that how we could change the the use of Emmett Street.

from south of hydraulic road you may be able to look at a different total configuration difference therefore because you don't necessarily you're taking the through trips out of that segment of road

and so it may function totally different.

There's a lot of options there, but let's look at all the options and explore the possibilities and then, and that's what this study wants to try, I want to try to do.

And we also want to look at that section south of 250 on Emmett Street from Barracks Road, because it's not been studied.

I mean, the other portion of it is going from Woodbrook, from Hydraulic Road to Woodbrook, which is just the first intersection north of Riot Road.

So we have two studies on the corridor.

We're going to run them concurrently.

Together, we have one consultant.

Baker's going to do both of those studies.

So I'm hoping that we can keep those together.

Baker worked with us on the Solutions 29 project.

They did the Fontaine project.

I think they're working with the city on some of the stuff in the city south of

5th Street and south portion of 5th Street.

So we're basically bringing them back to try to help us with, come up with solutions for this.

Like I said, I know that when we did the hydraulic, the solutions 29, we looked at the hydraulic intersection.

We didn't impose improvements to it other than that extension of the one left turn lane.

But in the future, it starts to

and I think we're starting to experience some of that now so we may want to look at something different configuration there so it will continue to work now and into the future and as part of that we may be able to look at how we can get pedestrians across at that location as opposed to just through the underpass where you're walking along the creek.

Specifically 29 itself?

I mean we're gonna have to look at some of it especially if we look depending on the alternatives for 29 because I don't want to get into get lost in the weeds I want to focus on because we've got a lot of issues on the corridor

I mean, serious safety issues where we have some intersections have like 70 crashes over a five year period, which is crazy.

So we want to focus on how can we improve those locations and make the operations better for safer for both pedestrians as well as vehicles.

That's the primarily focus on the corridor study.

But I don't want to discount the other modes of transportation.

I want to make sure we're looking at how pedestrians are going to function and bicyclists in this corridor, how they can get across the corridor, how we can make it safe for them.

Because if you have to cross eight lanes of traffic walking, it's crazy.

At two foot per second, 180 seconds, that's going to kill your intersection.

So we have to figure out how this is all going to happen.

I don't know.

Um, but we're going to look at grade separations as well as at grade improvements, alternatives.

So we're going to look at the whole gambit of things.

And if it may be routing traffic a different way, that could be an option.

Um, I don't know, but we're, we're looking at the parallel network to the extent that we are addressing the issues on the corridor.

Well it's, I mean they're all safety related and operations.

It's mostly safety is what's the main driver factor for most of these for all modes because I mean there's issues at Ridge Street where there's been pedestrians getting killed there.

So we got to figure out how to fix that intersection so that it works for everybody.

I mean, I saw bicyclists get t-boned there at the intersection.

So I mean, I want to figure out how to solve that problem, but we need to do it, develop a way to do it so the city, we can work with the city on what the solution is and the process we're going to go through to get to the solution.

And that's what I want to work through.

That's why we only picked one intersection as opposed to a bigger corridor.

Because I want to set the ground rules for the process

and then we could look at other things.

But these other intersections, these other quarters are in the city too, as well as the county.

So we're gonna have to work together on those.

But those are more of a, this one's more of a city focused project.

The other two are more of a regional significant project.

So we need to look at them in that regard.

I haven't gotten to the pipeline studies yet.

This was just S.T.A.R.S.

For pipeline, we were looking at these two corridors, which the 5th Street corridor, we're looking at it from, we're looking at the DDI as well as look at re-examining 5th Street.

That was a previous application that the MPO submitted or the TJPDC submitted in a previous round, but they weren't eligible to submit this round.

So we're going to look at it in combination.

this round in pipelines so that it could be something that the MPO could submit as a full improvement as well as just submit the interchange as a standalone project.

And then the other one was the 118 intersection and we took it to the interchange at Fontaine because of the whatever we do at 118

the distance between the two interchanges is really short.

So some of these alternatives, we looked at a DDI originally, will impact the weave merge between those two interchanges so we have to carry it all the way up through the interchange to actually make it work because we may have to do some additional improvements.

One of the alternatives for the northbound merge weave was to expand the bridge and run a lane across the bridge so it can merge further to the north and allow that

provide more distance for that merge to occur.

So we may have to go back and look at some of that stuff.

So that's why it's bigger.

We're also gonna look at a park and ride lot.

There is a small one at Teal, but we're gonna look at expanded, expand that and provide transit access to it so that it could be better utilized.

For the 5th Street one, there was one that was completed in 2021, January, that is essentially the same scope about.

It just doesn't cover as far south on the county side.

And it had the recommendations led to roundabout at Old Lynchburg and 5th Street in the DDI and some recommendations for Harris Road.

But we're not going to look at south there, all that stuff, relook at the stuff south of the interchange.

We're mainly looking at, is there something we can do differently at Fifth Street Station versus what we already proposed?

Because it was submitted previously as a smart skill application, it wasn't funded.

The city is looking at a different improvement for their portion of the corridor.

So once you get to 5th Street, I don't want to have something that's going to be different from what the city's doing.

I guess the bicycle, the road diet.

OK, so that's kind of looking at that.

Because I'm looking at the recommendation.

It says that Harrisville, 5th Street will have a

a sidewalk charity's path, but I guess that's that's not planned and you're going to have to instead of remove lands in case you want to look at a different name.

Yes, so that helps to keep it going.

Yeah, yeah, and then right after this study that you're looking at from 2021 was completed, we also did another alternative analysis on the Big Street burn section that the main charity in Parris Road and the alternative we came up with for that didn't do so great in fact analysis.

So that was sort of put on the shelf, but now we're looking

5th Street Station and Harris Road with our new alternative.

So it's just a matter of incorporating what they want to do through this intersection.

And I guess looking forward too early, but with respect to the

the DDI and also PEC having a study done between Old Lynchburg and Fisk Creek for that Greenway, would that project, the Greenway line, would that be included in addition to the DDI if it's expected or maybe like, there are thoughts that the design availability will actually change to be more of a separate series path bridge.

And we're going to basically put the connection on that side of the of the interchange so that it can be incorporated in.

I mean, it's just a matter of crossing the ramp.

Versus.

OK, and then OK, and then for the one that kind of line up of the 18 and 29 interchange,

that the 118 exit 64 is being studied right now by, or Safe Feeds for All by Community Horn.

How is this project different from what they're doing?

No, I'm talking about what's happening right now.

The Safe Feeds for All work

I'm not sure what they're going to come up with or if they're going to come up with anything for the interchange.

We reached out to Kimley Moore early in this process, where she talked about that since she was there with her lab.

But one of the things that they told us is that their analysis is not going to be as comprehensive as what would be included in the STARS study.

So I think there's room for coordination, but they encourage us to go ahead and move forward with requesting additional funding for this.

We're actually looking at a mistake we had as fairly also the operational analysis piece of it.

So I guess you're going to be doing a more in-depth look at that interchange.

Well, I guess CHH for all would be more of a safety operational look.

Just safety.

Well, I think, I think, I mean, this is something we did discuss with them.

And I think if they have our recommendations, we would certainly pull that into the, into the SARS study.

I think part of the answer to that, correct me if I'm wrong, depends on what,

you all as the regional or local body what to do with that information once you move forward.

Like if you're moving forward to apply for an implementation grant that might be a different conversation and then there's information that comes from that study that can be integrated into the STARR study.

Do you have anything you want to add?

I don't know what you guys are pursuing from a

implementation grant.

I keep talking about something that's awesome.

I think we met with, we were in that meeting and someone from VDOT to identify locations.

And I don't remember us using exits 118 and 18.

So to your question, I don't think it can be more if we can give the same thing as Chad was looking at, from my understanding.

Because in that meeting for the county, we came up with specific locations based on everybody's opinion.

It was data from locations based on the high injury network.

I don't want to contradict you, but I do think that we are looking at that same area.

It just was referred to by a different name.

And that meeting happened before we heard anything about the project pipeline stuff.

We went on site visits before we heard about project pipeline.

I think what Elvera is getting at, and one thing I'm really curious too, Sandy and Chuck, is how do I explain to my elected officials why we're

doing two separate studies on the same area?

And are we double paying for things?

What are the two separate things we're going to get out of these two separate studies?

How are they going to coordinate?

We've got two different sets of consultants.

I just want to make sure that maybe we need to go back with Himley-Horn and say, hey, this better project pipeline study is coming along.

We don't need you to do that, to look at it.

And we want to move our money to a different location.

Yeah, check back on it that we might want to have this discussion, we might want to have a follow-up discussion because I think this depends on how much of a priority this is as part of the State Streets for All project because the one benefit in keeping it on the State Streets for All list is that it also gives you the opportunity to apply for a different funding source for it.

So it could be a discussion around how do we coordinate the two, if State Streets and Roseboro all is a priority, if this is a priority for State Streets and Roseboro all, how do we make sure that we're also considering the additional operational analysis that we need to make sure is addressed as part of that.

And I would doubt that we're the only region that's doing a state of the access plan and trying to wrestle with

scale as a pipeline.

Is there some way to do that?

What we're getting out of our federal safety planning into a way to sort of have a pipeline, the smart scale from the back.

I think a lot of our smart scale applications that we would want to go after, they have a strong safety goal.

I mean in the stars, we're getting to a certain point.

Stars more so than pipeline.

Pipeline, if you do phase three like Ivy Road, we're only going to get some high level stuff.

If we want to submit an application, we're going to have to go down and do a lot more detailed

sketches and cost estimate to come up with a application material.

I think we're wondering if the same thing is going to happen with safe streets, where we're going to have a lot of conceptual good ideas that we might want to develop further.

Yeah, it definitely is a good point because as long as this is a

So we're just framing this as this is the next step in that funding opportunity.

My timing is what I'm concerned about.

What would be awesome is if the Safe Streets thing happened first and then that fed into the project pipeline process.

What I really don't want to happen is to have blank solutions.

So I appreciate you suggesting we have a follow-up conversation.

I would love to schedule that.

We can do that, Jessica.

I mean, the biggest thing is we're trying to get started on this early enough so that we can get material together for smart scale application.

And that's why this is one of the locations that has a significant need that we want to figure out how to solve.

And it is an interchange.

It's going to require an IAR.

So it's a lot more in-depth type of analysis and study that we have to do for this interchange versus an intersection on another corridor.

So I just want to make sure we're giving it enough time and refer to get something good in the end.

I mean, this interchange has been submitted several times.

The first time we submitted in round one of SmartScale was a $175 million interchange project.

And that project today would cost probably several hundred million dollars.

And I want to make sure that we're going to get something.

We ended up breaking it into pieces and submitting it as several small pieces to actually get the improvements that we have out there now.

And we're starting to see those start to not function as well as we would like.

So we're going to have to go back and look at something else.

And that's what we're trying to do here.

and we also want to look at that park and ride lot and that's a key thing because there's not really, there's a small park and ride lot there and it doesn't really have transit access.

We can provide something there that's going to have a significant

facility that does have transit access, I think it would be beneficial both for the city and the county.

Because you could bring people, they could come in on 64 and park there and then take transit in.

And I think that significantly will reduce the traffic going in and out of the city.

I mean, it's not going to be 100 spaces, but, or it might be 100 spaces, we'll just have to see what we can fit on the

area, but definitely a step in the right direction to try to keep people off the roads.

I mean, we do have the transit lines on the corridor, and this would be a good place to start to focus on a plan where we're using the interstate as a transit rail line, so to speak, to get people to and from the city from the outside of the area.

But like I said is is and currently there's no way you're going to put any kind of pedestrian or bicycle facility through that interchange.

All right, well, I'm going to keep us moving along here Chuck.

Thank you for the information.

We've got about 15 minutes left in our schedule, so I'm going to move on to our next topic.

If anybody has any questions on this, please follow up with Chuck and Sandy.

I'm sure we're going to hear much more about those coming meetings.

Yes, so during the month of September we conducted six site visits for Move Safely Blue Ridge, two from which were in the City of Charleston and all of our

We did visit multiple locations within those counties.

As I said earlier, those locations were identified based on the Hyndry network.

So I think that the data from Move Safely Blue Ridge and SmartScale kind of needs to work cohesively.

The main goal of both projects per se is obviously zero injuries and fatalities if safety is priority.

The next thing that we will focus on from Blue Ridge will be the public engagement for round two in which we will ask for feedback on the potential solutions for based on the site visits and issues that were identified.

That's going to come in November and I think by December we should be

reaching back to the jurisdictions to discuss that feedback.

Oh, yes.

Thank you, Sarah.

We have a working group member meeting this coming Thursday.

It is going to be our fifth working group member meeting, and it is from 10 a.m.

Any questions on New Safely Blue Ridge, Safe Streets for All?

It's going to be virtual.

The next update is the December NPO Technical Committee meeting is going to be on December 10th from 10 a.m.

to 12 p.m.

Thank you.

We've got roundtable updates.

I will go ahead and kick us off with the city of Charlottesville.

Had a couple of busy weeks recently.

You know, part of Safe Streets for All and Safe with Blue Ridge, the city council said their commitment back in May to reducing serious injuries and deaths.

We looked at setting a target of eliminating deaths on our streets in Charlottesville by 2045.

About two weeks ago, we did not make that target,

We had a death on Elliott Street.

Someone trying to cross the road at First Street South in a crosswalk.

So very visible area, very seemed very avoidable and very quickly realized we needed to do something about it.

That includes, you know, continuing our work with Safe Streets for All grant doing that planning, but also we're waiting to hear back on a grant for supplementing that planning so we can do some traffic calming.

that would look at calming things on some of our local streets.

LA is obviously an arterial, so not in that category, but it's made us realize we need to have some conversations internally to make sure that we can get traffic calming devices on our streets.

That includes talking with some of our different departments that have large vehicles, so transit, fire departments,

the things that we're putting out on the streets aren't going to hinder their operation, but that they're also going to help us identify what we can put out on the streets.

So I've got some conversations this week looking at those.

We also realize that we have some issues with what we've said are design speeds for traffic in our city and what we actually have as speed limits.

They don't really match.

So we are, as my boss, the deputy director, deputy city manager of operations,

announced at our city council meeting last week.

We are going to be looking at a pretty comprehensive review of our speed limits in the city, looking at lowering a lot of places.

We also understand that's going to require us putting some traffic calming stuff on the ground to make sure people are actually following those speed limits and are not relying on our police department to enforce them.

So those are two big things that have come out of

It seems like it's a lot of planning things that we're doing, maybe not necessarily a lot of action.

I do want to acknowledge some of the things that we're currently working on and trying to get done.

Tommy is trying to design some sidewalks right now and he's just about done and we're about ready to hand those off to Public Works.

That means he gets to jump from looking at sidewalks to looking at West Main Street, figuring out how we can put some protected bike lanes on West Main Street.

So that's something we'll be scoping this fall.

Right now, we are also working on 5th Street.

We've got, they have finished their first round looking at the traffic in houses.

We're doing a road dive on the southbound lane of 5th Street.

That would allow us to put in a bikeway in that southbound lane.

The initial traffic analysis says in the short term, we should be okay doing

and Pax would be if you're on one of those side streets, it might take a few seconds longer to turn onto Fifth Street.

The problem comes when you look at the long-term impacts.

The intersections at Fifth Street Station and at Harris Road end up failing because there's a reduction in capacity and we know that there's a lot of problems at Fifth Street Station.

So that was part of the discussion we had with VDOT about what their pipeline projects would be where, hey, we're about to

We could potentially do this thing that looks great for us in the short term but looks like it'll be a big problem in the long term and the problem is right here at this intersection.

So we're excited to work with VDOT on that, redefining what that intersection will look like because it is definitely a problem for us at the city.

We're also working on Safe Routes to School.

Safe Routes to School has done a lot of paint and plastics sort of stuff over the few years.

This year we are

parking some of those things.

We just put down a new sidewalk on Azalea Drive and a new at and school bus stop there.

So we're getting a few of those improvements out over the fall.

In the meantime, we're also looking at our school bike fleets.

Most of our city students have some amount of bikes they use for PE programming.

We're looking at expanding those so that, you know,

they won't show up to school and see if there's a few broken bikes that they won't be able to use in class.

We're also looking at expanding them so that we can use them for after school programming and other parts programming in the future.

So we're looking at what does that look like?

What does it take to sort of have an absolute management plan for the bikes that they're using every day.

But the other thing about bikes that I want to mention is we are working on rolling out e-bike subsidies sometime in the next month.

will be publicly announcing that when the sign up would happen with that.

We are looking at a lottery system, so we'll have several weeks to a month period of like people sign up for this lottery system and then we will take a lottery and hand out some vouchers to people.

We're looking at a voucher program as well, not a rebate program, so we're basically handing people a coupon and saying go buy it like it's slightly cheaper on the city.

So we're working on that right now as well as looking at some things internally for how we promote the bikes for city employees, both for our own private use and for our use while we're at the office trying to get between things like city hall and the city yard.

So a lot of fun work on that.

And lastly, I will mention that we are working on improving transit in the region, working with the county on setting up a regional transit authority.

We had a presentation

about a month ago, it was between the joint session of City Council and Board of Supervisors where we shared sort of the next steps for setting up the Regional Transit Authority.

Everybody at the table seemed to be pretty much in agreement, but that sounded like a good idea.

So right now we are working to develop the resolutions or ordinances that will be necessary to have both of those entities both to set up the Regional Transit Authority.

And then our next step is figuring out what the Regional Transit Authority is going to be first.

That's going to be looking at certain grants that are going to be available this January and February through DRBT and through some of our other federal and state partners.

And seeing if there are opportunities for us to start moving quickly to getting improvements to transit in the region.

So that's all the fun stuff that we're involved in.

We're working pretty hard to make sure that things are safer on our streets and trying to do a really good job.

I mean, Rory, do you have any additions to that?

Yeah, we put over 200 people.

We got 300 plus people to bike and walk during Loop to Bill, which is pretty cool.

We had a monthly walk this past Sunday through the Venable neighborhood.

The next two ones we have in November and December is the Clinton Beach neighborhood.

and the Lewis Mountain neighborhood.

So both of those are pitched because they kind of surround you to get air.

And so we'll reach out to some of the students there and trying to get some grass pollination between the long-term residents and the short-term residents of those neighborhoods.

Okay, perfect.

Do you have anything else for the city?

I guess me.

So the webinar for CAA, that's kind of a follow up to the walk, the walk audit meeting that we had in June.

That will be a grant for the CAA for America Walks Smoothly Walk audit.

We're going to be doing some panels and discussions virtually from the next few months.

So I think the first one is on

Yes, the second one.

But that'll be a discussion about ways to improve infrastructure and talk about equities.

That'll be taken into the Q and A and do that.

Probably our accounting updates.

The only thing I'll add for those CA webinars is that those are really open to anyone.

So we'll make sure to share the info with you guys if you don't already have it.

I wanted to share, we are going to be finally kicking off the three bridge lane promenade pilot program.

This is going to be a year long pilot program to close three bridge lane between Elk Drive, Darden Town Park, and 250.

Closed to one vehicle is open to everybody else.

Open to enjoy, walk, run, bike, whatever.

So what does success look like?

We do have counters.

We had counters out for about a whole month of August.

So those are our pre-intervention data and we'll get this thing going a little bit.

Got it.

What does failure look like?

We don't have a date for sure, but

We're looking very soon.

Information should go out, I think, for this week.

Yeah, with specific info.

There will be a take-off event.

They're going to have a gate closing event.

I can finally tell you later, but the official work will come out soon.

All right.

I'll keep this brief so we can get everybody in.

Should be getting a draft of the CAP strategic plan, hopefully sometime this month, so then we'll take a deep dive into reviewing that.

and I'm sure we'll have it out for folks to review as well before it goes to the commission for final approval.

We also are participating in a statewide initiative through the month of October for new commuters to enroll in the Connecting VA, also the Rideshare app.

Any new folks who register and log trips will get entered into a special drawing so it's fall into a new commute.

In addition, all of the regular drawings and rewards programs for current users are all still there, but we are trying to draw some attention and get some new folks involved in that.

VDOT, do you have any other updates?

Yeah, the DRPT, Mitch Huber sent me some of that, so I'm going to read them real quick.

The DRPT connects communities initiatives aimed to enhance, promote the benefits of local transit agencies across Virginia.

The campaign is focused on increasing awareness and usage of public transportation options, highlighting their role in creating connected and thriving communities.

Some of the key messages are enhancing connectivity,

economic benefits, accessibility, and sustainability.

There's also a partner toolkit available with customizable ads.

DRPT hosted a transit service delivery advisory committee meeting on Tuesday, October 8th at 10 a.m.

There is a link in the update in the contact if anybody needs more information from that.

FY26 grant application workshop.

DRPD will host the annual grant application workshop on November 13th at 11 a.m.

Additional details and registration will be released closer to the event.

TDP TSP agency feedback survey.

DRPD is engaging in all our transit agencies on their most recent TDP TSP development process

from the collaboration of the usefulness of individual chapters.

The RPD is seeking to enhance our planning requirements for agencies.

To take the survey, you can follow the link here, which is through SurveyMonkey.

Thank you.

I don't see anybody from FHWA or FTA here.

Kat, the only update I have is that we are

Can you guys roll out a nice dashboard?

I talked about these a lot in previous meetings, but there's three studies we've been working on.

We're finally getting a chance to roll some them out.

Rural Transit Needs Assessment was rolled out to our board and then to our stakeholders.

We're going to present today at R-TECH this afternoon.

A lot of you probably are on the meeting stream that haven't seen this presentation in a while.

So it's going to be brief today.

It's going to be the board-level presentation for the Rural Transit Needs Assessment.

The Mobility on Demand slash Microtransit Study we've been working on.

is also almost ready to be rolled out.

We're hoping December for the LGP, perhaps?

December 12.

December 12.

That's the goal.

And that one, I think, is going to generate some good conversation just about that technology and how we can use it and what it can do for us in our region and other areas.

So I know that CAT is working on their success.

And so that along with this might

have some good conversations here with this route or with the RTC.

And then lastly, there's a bus electrification fleet study that's also in its final phases of being wrapped up.

And that'll probably be rolled out in early 2018 or 2025.

And we'll also have some interesting conversations about

That's it for me, John.

Alright, thank you.

Phil, do you have any updates on your year?

Not a whole lot.

So I'll try to speak a little bit more loudly this time.

I remember back in the old days when that would have been federally functionally classified as a minor arterial because everybody from Route 20 going south used to use free bridge lane as an access to 250.

And so the county ultimately took care of that, put in some blockades and stuff.

But that is what I would call an inappropriate

use of a local road when it was being used as a minor arterial.

And that is sort of my beef with the federal functional classification.

So it seems to be more of a quantification as opposed to looking at things from a quality standpoint and a planning standpoint about how do we make the city of Charlottesville and surrounding areas a place worth caring about, a good place to live.

And so on this,

Back in, maybe this classification has gone away, but back in 1989, the Commonwealth Transportation Board defined residential cut-through traffic as traffic passing through a residential area without stopping or with at least one trip ending in that area.

It's traffic that would be better served by the local street system intended for through traffic.

but which for various reasons uses residential street traffic.

And we have this situation occasionally where trains pull across Carlton Avenue and all the traffic, or not all the traffic, a great deal of the traffic from that arterial is sped through the neighborhood and inappropriate use of local streets.

I know you guys have been talking about this reclassification since May.

Stakeholders were alerted in June, but I guess neighborhoods aren't stakeholders, but I would encourage you as part of the public process to educate people.

And I'm now getting more educating and saying that maybe the new reclassification to minor collectors is not such a bad idea, but

Thank you.

Thanks, Larry.

And I think that's all we have on our agenda.

Let's hear you.

You're good?

All right.

I guess with that we can adjourn.