MPO Technical Committee Meeting   10/7/2025

Better Hearing, Assistant Director for Interactive, for Finance, Advanced Management.

Good morning, Jason Espie.

I'm Ben Chambers.

I'm in Transportation Planning at the City of Charlottesville and in current shape.

Gorjan Gjorgjievski, Regional Planner of the TJPDC, supporting the Charlottesville, Albemarle, and Keo Technical Committee.

Good morning, everyone.

Yeah, I'm Chuck Proctor.

All right, thank you.

Yes, they also need to state a reason for attending online.

And location.

All right, so Mitch, we'll start with you.

I am in Richmond, Virginia, and my rationale is I am based more than the limit perimeter established by the MPO.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We need to take a vote on that.

Vote to it.

Just one time, I'd like to vote no.

Ben Chambers, Kellie Brown, Thomas Safranek, Rosa Stolzenberg, Tonya Swartzendruber, Albert Karina-Plun, Lonnie Murray, Chuck Proctor, Sandy Shackelford,

All right, so moving on to matters in the public, and we'll be having a break here before that for online.

General administration, I'll do a voice for reviewing substance of the agenda.

Is there a motion?

All right.

All in favor of acceptance of the agenda, say aye.

Aye.

Second.

All right, thank you.

All in favor of approving the meeting minutes, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

All right, good to go.

Next up, we move on to new business.

Thank you, Ben.

For everybody that's in this room, the next two items are the TIP amendments that have already been in front of you a couple of meetings ago.

So I'll start with the first one, the number 12 TIP amendment, which is for the operating assistance for the PATH program.

In all the haste that we were trying to get out all the materials in front of you and MPO policy board to approve the TIP amendments, we did a slight oversight and did not conduct a public hearing for those two amendments.

So we're going back to do the public hearing.

So the public hearing has already been published and

For our public participation plan, it needs to be 15 days before the MPO Policy Board meets, which is on October 22nd of this month.

And I'm not gonna go to the details of all the tip financial stuff because nothing has changed in this tip.

We're simply going back to conduct a public hearing.

There's gonna be a new resolution which has not changed

since the last one, which was approved by the MPO Policy Board.

The guidance that we received from DRPT is that we don't need a new resolution unless we have any public comments due to the public hearing.

And so the tip resolutions are gonna be just for TJPDC's records that we have gone back and corrected the oversight that we provided.

The next TIP amendment is number 13 for the autism century.

Due to the same oversight, we did not conduct a public hearing, so we're going back to do so.

The difference in this one is that since the approval of the MPO Policy Board in this TIP amendment, there has already been an adjustment to the TIP, which is reducing $33,000 in the FDA 5310 funding.

With that being said, the new resolution that's going to be presented in front of you and MPO Policy Board is that it contains the new numbers.

So again, that resolution is for our TJPDC's records to provide action that we have gone back to correct the oversight.

You, through all that, well, I must not forget the tip adjustment.

So back in

In August, we received information from CAPT for their projects.

It was eight of their projects undergoing financial changes or updates, specifically in the FDA 5339 funding, as well as state and local match.

So we communicated closely with Barry Herring from CAT and DRPT to make sure that all of these adjustments are indeed adjustments and none of them requires an amendment to the TIP, which would have required public hearing.

So what was good for CAT is that all of these administration modifications counted as administrative actions, which did not require an amendment.

I'm not going to go to the details of all the financial.

They're included in your packet if you want to review them in details.

But just to let you know that eight of their projects were affected in this scenario.

Due to the oversight that we conducted for the SIP amendments, we are developing

a document that's called the TIP procedures that specifically outlines every action that needs to happen before TIP gets approved by the, TIP amendment gets approved by the MPO policy board.

So that document is still in draft form, but as we are learning, we're updating it accordingly.

And I just want to recognize ERPT and VDOT as well.

They have been really great partners in all this.

Their guidance was very much appreciated.

Question on tip adjustment.

What is it, a $3 million drop in new rolling stock, 3.3 million?

Good question, Rory.

Essentially, what we're doing is shifting it on a different wheel.

So we didn't actually do the wheel use period.

We just made it from one wheel to another.

Dr. Yeh is very specific about which gear they were actually going to be purchasing.

Shouldn't have been.

We were just moving it from one year to another.

This is the reason why we're doing this with them.

We weren't actually reusing those things.

We were just moving them.

That's David's name.

Actually, it looks like FY 25 goes down by 1.3 million, but FY 24 goes up by 1.52.

And so essentially what we're doing, I just want to add a little bit more context.

So we are looking for votes on TIP Amendment 12 and 13, again, as we go back and track that to hold the public hearings.

And what we're trying to do is just to make sure that we are following our processes outlined in the public participation plan for the NPO.

So for now you're looking for some motion for us to recommend.

Amendment 12 and 13.

All right, thank you.

All in favor of recommending the amendments 12 and 13 be approved.

Say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

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Aye.

Okay.

Can you guys see my screen?

Yes.

Okay.

Basically, we're getting right geared up for SMART SCALE this round, and we're going through and evaluating projects across the district to see what are eligible

and working with the localities on which ones they want to try to pursue for funding for this round of SMART SCALE.

Go over a few high level things and we'll get into some of the recommendations that we have.

Basically, the MPO is eligible for high priority funding versus district grant funding.

And the table here shows who's eligible for what.

The transit agencies can also submit applications.

They would fall under the same as the MPO.

So that would be high priority.

This is the area type for the MPO.

As you can see, you're an area type B, which gives you the most of your congestion and safety are pretty evenly split.

But for this, as you can see, land use is still in here, but it's a multiplier.

I will point out that the TJPDC, which is also eligible for high priority

to submit high priority applications.

They just changed from area type C to area type D. So the map's going to change in the technical guide.

Once they make that change, it'll go from the green will go to blue in the map and the MPO will still be the green hashed area.

One of them talks about CO2 emissions and the other one talks about historic resources.

Natural and Historic Resources that might be impacted within the area of the project.

It's a buffer zone set up and you develop the impact area and it's calculated based on the amount of impacts that you're creating in those historic and natural resources.

For the CO2, they actually look at their bike ped and get a reduction for your bike ped

diversion from the main line in CO2 emissions.

But it also works on congestion.

If you reduce the congestion, you get a little bit of reduction in CO2 emissions, but that's how it's calculated.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, thanks.

If you want exactly, it's spelled out in the technical guide, but that's basically,

The Two Cents version of it.

High priority.

They changed the eligibility requirements last round.

So there's only some projects that are eligible for high priority so the MPOs are restricted as to what they can submit.

It's basically got to meet one of these criteria to be eligible to submit.

It's got to be additional capacity, interchange improvement,

That's pretty much it for the most part.

That would be eligible for the MPO to submit.

Or the other option is at the bottom where if it's all the recommendations from a study, then that would be eligible for the MPO to submit.

Like we did the Ivy Road study.

If the MPO wanted to submit last round of pipeline,

MPO wanted to submit all the recommendations from that study.

Those would be eligible.

They could also submit the ramp extensions on the 250 bypass, which were also eligible because they're interchange improvement.

So those would be like the eligible projects that the MPOs could submit from that study, particular study.

So basically you go around and look at what's eligible and we try to

provide a list of those for the MPO to consider for recommendations, but we'll get to those later.

Any questions about this?

This came out beginning of last year.

This is the reduction in the amount of funding we're getting.

As you can see, they took $1.6 billion and shifted it from construction, which funds the SMART SCALE program, to maintenance.

And that's going to fluctuate from year to year based on

How much, how bad the snow is, if we have hurricanes, whole menagerie of items that go into what's included in maintenance, what maintenance is funded off the top, and then the other programs are funded afterwards.

This is just a slide that shows you how much funding we've got for each round of SMART SCALE.

The 4 and 5, you can see where the additional gas tax came in and we got that extra revenue and were able to fund a lot more projects, but now that's been phased in and we're back to our normal amounts that we would expect to get.

We've been lucky that we've gotten high priority every round.

That's not a guarantee.

You've got to compete statewide for that funding, but we've fortunately got some every round.

This is what we got last round.

As you can see, we got $68 million was our allocation.

We reduced it by $6.6 million due to overruns on previous applications that we had to cover.

And that comes out before they figure out what the funding is going to be.

And then we were able to secure some high priority funding for the Pantops project in the district.

So we would expect to get about the same amount next round.

Okay, we did overall, we did really well compared to the rest of the state.

Our average was higher, and our median scores were higher.

And we got all of our project in the top 65% of the list of the state, so we did really well.

Even though we only got four projects funded, they were all good projects and they scored really high.

Okay, some of the takeaways from last round.

81% of the applications that were funded in the district grant program were priority one or two.

VTRANS needs, and we're going to focus on that as one of the criteria that we're going to look at for this round of applications.

And the other thing is the average cost was like $18.6 million.

So we're going to look at both priority one and priority two locations, and we're going to look for applications that are around $18 to $20 million.

For the high priority, it's the same, but the cost could be a little higher.

So we're still going to focus in on that.

You can see Pantops was $38 million, which was well above the average, but it scored really well because it was a priority one location.

So like I said, that's what we're going to shoot for our applications this round to be as competitive as we can.

Any questions about that?

All right, now we get into some of the other stuff.

Like I said, we're going to focus on the priority one and two needs as spelled out V-trans.

That priority one midterm needs list was adopted in April of this year, but it was basically based on the 2023 data.

So it's updated every year based on the safety data and that data

I've sort of correlated it in the PSI data.

It usually comes out in the fall, so we're looking for the 2024 PSI data coming out probably in November sometime.

And then they'll update the priority list based on that new PSI data.

Schedule.

We're still off this schedule, so that's why I didn't show it.

We'd basically be in, if you look in October, that's pretty close to where we're at in the previous cycle.

So, but we're getting ready to, we want to get geared up early so it gives us more time to make sure we get good applications and we can

complete them prior to the cycle starting but like I said it starts in March and closes in April for the pre-application and then we review the applications and then they reopen the portal up in beginning of June to make any final revisions to your applications and then the final submissions are in August.

Okay, for the NPO, these are the studies we have going on in the area.

Sandy's going to be going over these later in the program, but they're listed here for your reference.

We've got the 29 corridor north from Barracks Road all the way to Woodbrook Road, and then we've got Fish Street Interchange and the I-64-29 Interchange.

These are the

Basically the PSI data as well as the V-Trans needs.

So basically anywhere that's red is a priority one or orange is a priority one or two need.

The blue is the PSI locations.

The heavier the line, the more dense, the higher the ranking in the,

And for that location, I only put in the top 50 PSI locations.

It actually, they show up to a hundred, but once you get below 50, they don't score very well.

So I typically don't put those on the map.

It's kind of hard to see.

I could zoom in if anybody, or you can zoom in on the file if you want to look at it, or you can go online and pull this stuff right out of the VTRANS needs listing on the portal.

These are the previous applications with a list of how they ranked and what was final, what they finally did.

Some of them were resubmitted and funded if they weren't funded that round.

Some of them we may recommend to reapply for or it may not be eligible anymore.

As you can see, last round we had one funded application and then we had one that we're recommending for resubmission.

and then we've got, I forget what these other two are, I can't see them, the pipeline study.

We're going to basically relook at those to see if there's something else we can pull out of that application to resume it.

And here's what we came up with for the list of potential applications for the MPO.

You only can submit up to five pre-applications and then four full applications.

Currently the 29 corridor study is probably not going to be done in time enough for SMART SCALE, so that would probably should come off the list.

Which one?

I'm sorry.

The one on the 29 corridor study, what's on the screen now is the list of what we were suggesting that the MPO could submit this round.

On that list is the 29 corridor study.

We're not going to have that study to a point where we're going to have an application for submission this round, so basically that would be one of the ones not to consider for this round.

But out of the rest of them, I think the rest of them are all good locations.

We've got the extension of the old Ivy Road ramps north of the old Ivy Road.

Those both came out of the study and those would be eligible.

We've got the alternative location on Barratt Road, which included the

Northbound off-ramp extension.

And the other one was dualizing the ramp at the intersection on Barracks Road to dual lefts.

And it also included the sidewalk along Barracks Road from Surrey all the way to the city.

That would be something that would be eligible as well as the Fifth Street interchange improvements, which we're still working through that study, but it's going to be the DDI.

It's just a matter of how the multi-use path and the coordinates with that

previous recommendations.

And then we're relooking at the 250 interchange or the 2964 interchange to see if there's some additional improvements we can make there.

And that one includes redoing the park and ride lot on Teal Way.

The other thing I wanted to point out is if the MPO, since it's more than five applications, or it's more than they can only submit a total of four, the TJPDC could submit to these five applications if they so choose.

They would be eligible.

That's pretty much all I have.

Chuck, we were previously talking about a shared use path on that Barracks Road segment where you're talking about a sidewalk now.

On barracks, that would be a county application.

If we do the alternatives that are identified in the study, we can't fit the shared use path underneath the bridge.

There's just not enough width because we're not changing the number of lanes.

The barracks, when we did the barracks road, the double roundabout, we reduced the lanes underneath the bridge.

So we were able to put the shared use path where the lane was.

So for the other alternatives, we can't do that.

Just not enough width.

So what we are looking at, there is enough room and there is some to connect the sidewalk through like is on the north side.

And that was previously submitted by the MPO.

I think in round three or four, I can't remember exactly which round, but it wasn't funded.

And it also included a right turn lane on the eastbound side to go onto the bypass southbound.

Correct.

We could possibly, but we weren't going to go all the way into the city to Barracks Road, which was, I mean, to Emmett Street with the shared use path.

Well, on the west side, because there's no sidewalk on the west side, we were going to go, that's a logical term and I on the west side.

So we're going to go from that logical termini to tie into the sidewalk in the city, which is a logical termini.

I just don't want to, if you put a shared use path, you're going to encourage bicyclists to drive down the shared use path.

And then they're going to, it's going to end at the ramps because they can't get and go anywhere from there.

711, like where the 711 is, but on the south bank side of Barracks where there is

There's a sidewalk that ends right there.

So, Chuck, Tommy here.

I feel like I've missed a couple of the last MPO meetings, so I might be behind on some of these decisions on the designs.

I would say they're not removed.

It's just, it wasn't, it didn't score very well last round.

So the, if we wanted to resubmit it, you could resubmit it, but the chances of it scoring better this round are very small.

So I don't want to waste everyone's time and resources working on application that's not going to get funded.

So one of the alternative recommendations that were in the study, which weren't moved forward, were the dual left turn lanes at the northbound off-ramp.

As part of that, we had a sidewalk shown, which runs from where the sidewalk ends at the city limits.

And we would run it all the way out to Surrey.

So that would be a project.

We don't have to add the sidewalk.

I was going to add it in to provide that facility on the south side so that people didn't have to cross the road necessarily.

And that's what we were looking to do with this potential application.

And then the other thing is there's the extension of the ramp extension on the northbound side too, on the bypass.

And they can be done as separate applications or combined.

It's just a matter of it's up to the MPO.

Chuck, I've got a question about the project selection here.

So towards the beginning of your presentation, you said we're focusing on BTRANS priorities one and two or PSI locations that are in the top 50.

We've got multiple priority three needs on here.

We've got

Several projects that don't need a top 50 PSI.

I mean, you don't have to submit them.

I'm just saying these are the ones that you could submit.

I mean, these are potential locations that the MPO is eligible to submit.

I don't know if there's any other locations at all that the MPO could even submit.

So in the previous table, you mentioned that the Hillsdale South extension

The hill cell south, it depends on, it was previously submitted, but I don't know if it would still be eligible.

If you build the ramp improvements at the south end, it is a new alignment of a roadway.

So it does meet the criteria

It's just whether it's going to be fundable or not, because I don't know what the cost estimate is going to be now, because the cost estimate is going to go up.

Yeah, so I mean, I don't know what's going to come out of that other study, and they may recommend the Hillsdale Extension.

The MPO has four submissions.

I mean, you don't have to submit four.

I mean, you're not going to put, we're not going to put pedestrian improvements along 250, the bypass, because basically it would be from the end of the current ramp, like 300 feet.

I guess the question is, can we do that without also doing the dual lefts?

I would say it's separate and it doesn't really, they serve two different needs.

I mean, if we do that, we have to do intersection improvements because we're going to have to provide the pedestrian crossing phase for that signal.

So, I mean, if we're getting into that, we might as well do the intersection because we're going to get into that.

I mean, you don't have to do the ramp extension because both the ramp extension and the dual lefts

do similar things in that they eliminate the queuing that goes out onto the 250 bypass.

If you do both of them, you're getting the same benefit for both applications.

Yeah, I guess the issue I have, I speak just for myself, is that I would rather have the

You're adding one lane width to the ramp.

It's currently two lanes now.

You're adding a third lane, so the pedestrians would have to cross the third lane.

They would be signal controlled.

We would have to put the ped heads in and all that stuff in addition to the sidewalk itself.

And then on the other side, we'd have to do similar things at the on-ramp.

And I think at the on-ramp, I have to look at the concept again.

I think we're putting in a right turn lane also in the eastbound direction on Barracks Road.

Let me see, I don't have the concept right in front of me.

I think we've sent the concept to the MPO so they can distribute that or we can get it out to you guys so you can see what it looks like.

I should have put in with these slides, but I didn't for this presentation.

They're in the packet.

You guys have it.

Okay.

There should be a memo that shows you what the concepts look like.

And it should show you the right, the sidewalk section as well as the dual left.

And then on the opposite side for the northbound on-ram, there are sidewalks there, but they're not ADA compliant and there's no frost law.

uh we weren't trying we were trying to limit going to the other side of the road i mean i just don't want to add in scope that is going to just drive up the cost and not give us any benefit by improving those we wouldn't get any benefit from doing that work and we would just add cost to this to the project

So I hear you on not getting any bump to our score, but when we're doing something that's like a highway widening, effectively a highway ramp widening, you know, I feel like I want to see quite a few pedestrian improvements that we can get as a result of getting all those points for congestion mitigation.

I mean, I think on the South, like I said, I don't know, we haven't gotten into the design of the concepts yet.

Like I said, adding stuff to the scope, to the application is going to add cost and not add any benefit.

But I understand what you're saying about trying to get as much for your, but if it gets too costly, it's not going to get funded anyway.

And that's what we're weighing.

I can't

I can't score it before we submit it.

Well, I think it would be good if you can to at least get the cost estimate for doing that north side.

And so we can weigh how much extra cost it adds against the fact that it won't add any points.

For the original project it did, because we were rebuilding the entire roadway all the way through the interchange.

But for this application we're not.

A dual left turn alternative that was not selected.

That we're talking about here, right?

Okay.

Well, that's one of the things I was going to say.

I want to say we were thinking about using a, let's see, there should be two slides with this.

There's the other one.

There's the other one.

I mean, we can price it out and see what it's going to be.

Like I said, it doesn't really give us any benefit, but I mean, it's on the concept.

And the concept doesn't have, sorry, there's no crossing of barriers for pedestrians on the concept.

There's the along on both North and South side of the road, but there's,

Looking at the map from Millmonts, I think.

Millmonts up to Georgetown.

Georgetown, there's not a single crossing of barracks.

Well, this is one application, because the sidewalk's got to terminate on the south side.

So this is on two separate slides, but it would be one application for this portion of the corridor.

And the other thing is, if the

If the county portion gets funded, which is still the shared use paths west of here, it would shorten this project up to the interchange ramp, because they would build up to this interchange.

Sorry, is the concept that we have in the packet not matching with what's being described?

No, it wasn't that.

It's within reason of getting funded.

It wasn't that far down the list.

So just for a process, those applications are going directly through the county.

and getting applied through the county.

They don't necessarily have to come through here.

We're talking about the MCO application and there's a separate.

We're waiting on the county to decide if that's one of the ones they're going to submit.

It would still have to need a resolution of support from the MPO that would have to go in because it is in the MPO area.

And this whole project was broken, this whole scope originally was from

I remember walking from Emmett all the way down to Georgetown, but the scope was from Millmont to Georgetown?

It goes all the way to Emmett Street.

Right, and Chuck, but at one point last year, were we breaking this up into three separate applications?

Last round, we had three applications.

The MPO submitted the city portion and the interchange improvements.

And they submitted the entire corridor.

So I mean, but since we're not doing the interchange, the roundabouts at the interchange, we're not rebuilding that.

We weren't going to do the other portions of it.

I think what we're struggling with, Chuck, is that we're looking at pretty well-developed projects that were very useful for bike bed connectivity and providing initial load options.

If I could offer it, it's not necessarily that we disagree with those goals.

This isn't about we think that those are good or bad ideas necessarily.

It's about we want to set whatever applications we have to have the best chance of being successful.

So I'm starting to struggle with some technical difficulties and I apologize for that.

But when I navigate this intersection as it has looked today, when I'm coming from Western Omaha and I'm turning left to get onto the bypass, what I see is the most difficult thing for me all of a sudden is the traffic that's backing up is trying to get on

on 29th and up on the right.

So you have to move through there because that backs up across that lane.

And then you got to move back again because all this traffic is going to turn left on the bottom.

That backs up there.

So you can be sure.

Doing this zig-zagging through the air, that seems to be the most dangerous thing to help people safely.

Well, what we're trying to do with this project is reduce the queuing that backs up onto the bi-path and e-found pressure.

So that's one problem.

I think what you're talking about might be something that we are addressing more directly with the current interchange project at Emma Street.

That's part of the STAR study.

Is that what you're talking about?

Because you're talking about the backup coming from Emmett Street and kind of all the backing up to this interchange.

I took like all the way to front of there, sort of, so like...

Yes.

But, yeah, I think...

I mean, this is...

I don't...

Oh, I'm just saying that like...

The lobbies are lower income.

Yeah, now Bear, this, what is this, a year ago we talked about that mid-block crossing as part of the electronic project?

And that was because there was a bus stop, right?

Yeah, there's a bus stop right on Bennington.

Yeah, I mean, I think

Ben highlighted where my mind is pretty well.

But I also think, Sandy, I think we hear what you're saying.

I also think that there is this friction between, all right, well, how do we get less cars on these facilities?

Because at some point, we're going to build more roads, and then there's just going to be more cars.

And if we get more of the folks that live over there biking and walking,

You know, like, I've got friends who live there.

Our coworker I share a wall with and just bought a house over there.

And she's like, when are you going to build a facility for me?

And I'm like, we're working on it.

But this wouldn't be that.

This won't help her.

You know, Sidewalk's not going to help her be able to get into town on her e-bike, for example, right?

So I have a hard time, you know, getting excited about these projects.

So- It's a standard project, but it's not going to ultimately solve some of the bigger issues on the intersection, sort of at the same time peeking down the road or something.

We're going to have to review this intersection.

So, you know, I think there's kind of a tension here between trying to get a project that has the absolute highest chance of getting funded to do what you're trying to do for the projects, getting its score versus, you know, accepting that we're willing to

expand this off ramp in order to get the points associated with that and mitigate that need for highway capacity.

But in exchange, I think we need to be addressing some of the actual priorities that we have as an MPO and as a city to build better infrastructure for bike head that mitigates the needs for highway expansions in the future.

And if we can tie those two things together, I think I will be here next year, but I will be willing to support the highway expansion if it gets us some reasonable improvement for bikes, pedestrians on the next road.

And I think I wouldn't otherwise.

Yeah, especially in that area.

And that's why I'm saying, you know, even if we can't fit it under the bridge to get the rest of it to be shared east path with, even though it'll terminate the city limits, you know, it's future-proofing so the city can improve it in the future, you know, future project.

Bikes are allowed on sidewalks in the county.

Wait, maybe can I ask this question?

Bikes are allowed in the county as opposed to not allowed.

Is there something?

They're permitted on sidewalks.

They're permitted.

See what you're saying?

There's no prohibition.

There we go.

See that's the difference.

Okay.

That means they're allowed.

okay all right so it's what maybe this is it maybe this maybe i can segue into this because i've seen a lot of sidewalk projects built by VDOT like Avon for example recently but i'm pretty sure they didn't build those sidewalks thinking that there would be bikes on them at some point right so and it was somewhat a way of saying

Whereas that area is prime for bike transportation, right?

Like people need to go along a mile or two distance along a arterial road.

So like in some respects, this is similar, but there's more like driveways and road cuts.

Like it is interesting to think that we are in this meeting right now talking about

Sidewalks and bicyclists using sidewalks to get from one place to the other because that's VDOT standards is only going to allow us to to build but in reality we're going to probably tell people like this this is what we want you to use for a bicycle.

Well that's what I'm saying we should build it to share these past standards and for the part under the bridge that we can't do without all the roundabout so there's no room

Yeah, I agree with you.

I guess I just said this is something that's been in my mind and since everybody's in the same room, I thought I'd share it real quick because I find it interesting.

But I agree that if that's what we can get, then that is, that's good.

But Chuck hasn't responded in a while to anything that we've been saying.

So I'm wondering if he even thinks that we can get it.

I don't know.

I mean, the problem is you've got to meet the pro way and it's got to be compliant and we just can't end something at a non-logical termini.

So if we started a shared use path and ran it east, we couldn't just end it and just stop.

No, the right entrance goes past that driveway, but it's by the bus stop.

Isn't there a back entrance there?

Not really.

There's no permissions.

So it sounds like we're dying these projects on the fly here.

And maybe what would be helpful, Chuck, if you could speak to sort of like the process for how this is going to look for the next round of SMART SCALE.

I just want to know, well, what happens is I have to work with my L&D staff to basically final

develop concept, the final concepts for the application, as well as the cost estimates for the applications.

And then, so I wanna know, I wanna be able to give them enough time to actually do a good job of that.

And so you guys can see it before we have to submit it in August.

And the more time I get to do that, the sooner I can get it to you guys to look at it.

And that's what I don't wanna wait until February

to make those determinations because then we're not going to have time to review it for the application submission date.

So that's why we're starting now to try to identify which locations you want to submit so that I can get them started on these.

Because especially the ones for the dual off-ramps, the dualized left turn lanes and the ramp extensions on Barracks Road, those weren't submitted last round.

So I don't have concepts for those other than what was in the study.

So L&D is going to have to go re-look at those and make sure it's going to give them all the information and they're going to have to develop the cost estimate from basically scratch for those two particular applications.

The ones on Ivy Road, we never submitted those last rounds, so those would also have to be done.

And so can we do today, so let's look at the locations that we have identified on the slide, or maybe even if there are other locations with veterans needs that you all would want to prioritize, and then hopefully Chuck and Sandy could take the feedback that we've heard today and incorporate that into future concepts that they bring.

for a vote as far as we want to submit these concepts for our smart field projects.

And so specifically, like I heard from you, Rory, what you want to see for barracks is can you see a cost estimate additionally for that sidewalk, bringing it up to ADA standards and compliance?

Yeah, but I don't know how long it's going to take to do that.

I just wanted to get the locations.

We will do basically these slides that are in the attachment.

We probably won't have cost estimates until we're ready for final applications.

But it's not likely that we're going to be able to say, okay, here's our component with these components.

Do you guys want to keep them or not?

I just want to get L&D to look at them to make sure that, because they haven't looked at these concepts yet, to make sure that they're agreeable to these concepts.

And then they'll have to basically detail the designs so that they can do the cost estimates.

So, you know, I think, not to speak for everybody, but the direction

OK.

I mean, this one has pedestrian accommodations in it.

It doesn't have bicycle because we need logical termini for the bike ramps, for the bike

for the Shared Use Path.

And we can't just stop it at the interchange and have a gap in the middle.

So pushing past the interchange with the Shared Use Path, like Shared Use Path sidewalk under the Interchange Shared Use Path.

I mean, it didn't do well last round.

I have to check with L&D about even the part underneath the bridge if they will say we can build a shared use path that's going to terminate at the bridge with no place for the bicyclists to go on either side.

So I don't know if they'll agree to that basically based on PRO-WAG and the regulations that they've got to follow.

The other thing we need to do, if the city's, if the county's gonna submit Georgetown Road, their application does have the shared use path going, but it has a crosswalk on the west side of the interchange.

And I think it crosses the bicyclist can go across, but it doesn't have any way to get through the interchange with the shared use path.

Because there's no bike lanes, there's nothing underneath the bridges for bicyclists to use.

They have to basically share the road.

We need to provide a recommendation one way or the other to the independent policy board.

I don't know that all seven of these are getting a recommendation.

I don't know that we have landed in a spot to say which of the seven.

It's not even really seven, though, right?

I mean, 29, 400 studies out, so that's six.

This Barracks Road thing is really one, so that's five.

I would think the IV things are also kind of one and not four.

We're already within our application limit.

Do we even talk about old IV?

I mean, what are we doing with that?

We're just doing the ramp extensions.

The county, I think, is proposing to submit the roundabout at Canterbury.

and 250, and then the MPO, the only projects the MPO is eligible to submit are these two ramp extensions out of that study.

They could be one application or they could be submitted separately, either way.

Now the one on the northbound side goes from basically where the ramp is now connects all the way to Leonard Sandridge.

So it's a auxiliary lane.

But basically they're just, because right now they queue up in the southbound direction, it queues up onto 250 bypass on a daily basis.

And in the northbound direction, basically people are getting, having to merge in and they get off because they're

There's no direct connection to Leonard Sandridge from the 250 bypass other than a ride out.

Sorry, I guess I'm going to just give you a little stab here.

I don't know that we're people today, but I think it's seven today.

So if I understand this correctly, you were

I'm not very enthusiastic about the word extension, like extending the ramps.

Well, that's what the MPO is eligible for.

There's only certain improvements that the MPO can approve for.

Yeah, let me go back to this slide, right?

Where's that?

Here.

This is the only thing the MPO can submit applications for.

It's this top line here, and then it basically recommendations from a study.

And it's gotta be all the recommendations from a study.

Like they could submit all the recommendations from Ivy Road study, but it would be over $100 million project.

and it wouldn't do very well.

We've done it before, we've done it multiple times and we've always had to come back and break the applications down.

We did that with barracks road last round.

We can draft up some language to put before the policy boards that the MPO tech committee did not have consensus.

on prioritizing the projects due to some concerns with specific concepts within some of the projects.

So we can just let them know that an in-depth discussion was had and perhaps outline some of the concerns, if that's helpful to you all.

But you don't have a, this is number one, two, three, four in this order.

I wanted to say that the MPO is, they're eligible to submit the

The greatest priority projects in the region.

And that's why they restricted it to the, cause these are typically the most significant, regionally significant projects.

Sidewalks in a small area is not necessarily regionally significant.

The other thing that might be that I just want to make sure everybody is aware of is that if a locality submits projects, localities are eligible to submit projects that are eligible to go to the program and the high priority program.

The MPO, however, or any regional entities, if they're only eligible for an HPP project, that means they're only eligible for that funding.

So these projects would not be competing for funding within the district grant program if the MPO's...

And that's additional money that we can get for this region, for this area.

We don't necessarily get that every time.

We've gotten it, fortunately, we've gotten it every round, but we're not, it's not money that we get to this district.

I think what I'd like to understand better is, is what the project scope is allowed to be once you have an HP geological project, right?

Like, so in this case, you're talking about adding a lat-turn, that's an improvement to a grade-centered, grade-centered, separated interchange

That lets you add sidewalks in the vicinity.

What's the main focus of the application?

Is it to fix a safety problem or is it to put in bike-ped facilities?

And that's what OIP is going to evaluate when they look at the application.

What are we trying to solve with this problem, with this application?

Are we trying to address multimodal on this corridor or are we trying to address the improvements at the interchange?

Well, in the interest of time, we'll look at our discussion here.

Can I just ask, since we didn't spend a lot of time on them, is there consensus around the two V-Trans Priority 1 needs, the 5th Street I-64 and the 29 I-64, is continuing to pursue those two as priorities?

I think it may be more honest.

Thank you Sandy and Doug for that discussion and hopefully we will get you some more direction going forward in the future.

Hey, good morning, everyone.

I'm here to provide an update and to share with you all a presentation that was requested by the MPO policy board about MPO administration and about CTAC and CTAC activities.

All right, so I will try to be precise since we're a little bit over on time.

But just to give you a little bit of background for

How we got here?

Beginning back in March earlier this spring, there was a CTAC election of officers and CTAC is our Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee of the MPM.

And after they elected officers, the new chair asked us to facilitate a bylaws discussion because there was a lot of questions, I think even articulated by CTAC members themselves about what's the scope of this committee?

What are we supposed to be working on?

And what's our purpose?

And so they began reviewing those bylaws

in May of this year.

So in June, we had an agenda item on the MPO Policy Board's meeting agenda addressing CTAC vacancies.

We had a number of vacancies on the committee that we brought to the MPO for guidance on how we would look to fill those.

And after that discussion, the Policy Board began talking about the purpose of CTAC.

They discussed some of the feedback that they had heard from members and staff alike and requested

More information basically in a meeting between the chair and the vice chair of the policy board and the chair and the vice chair of CTAC.

So in July that meeting happened and basically what was discussed was that there were a lot of challenges with CTAC's activities.

I think from all parties involved they talked a little bit about the intended function and what CTAC wants to do which we'll hear about a little bit more later on in this presentation.

And so an action item coming out of that July meeting

was to bring the MPO Policy Board a little bit more information to help them in making a decision and having an informed discussion about CTAC.

So for staff to pull together this presentation, we really went all the way back to the source regulation.

So we zoomed all the way out to think, what is the MPO ultimately responsible for?

To help frame the discussion about where CTAC might be able to fit into the activities.

And so 23 CFR Part 450 is where Metropolitan Planning

is merged in the federal code.

Subpart C is the one that's specific to MPOs, which set forth the national policy that the MPO is to carry out a continuing cooperative and comprehensive transportation planning process, so the three Cs, which we'll talk a little bit more about, including the development of major things like the LRTP and the PIP.

So just as a refresher, the MPO is a federally mandated body.

We're about 80% federally funded, and these are the initial activities that are written out in federal

talk about some other activities in different documents as well.

But in the source regulations, we have to develop a long range metropolitan transportation plan under LRTP, a TIP document, we have to establish performance targets, develop a public participation plan, and then annually develop a unified planning work program that talks about the activities that we will undertake each fiscal year.

So committee structure is actually not identified in the federal source regulations.

It's actually identified in the 3C agreement that's initiated by the state, and it's an MOU on the transportation planning process for the region that's signed by us, by the city, by the county, and by the state transit providers.

An article 2 of the 3C agreement, it identifies a policy board and a tech committee.

It does not identify any other committees.

Those are the two minimum ones that we have to have before the IPO.

The Policy Board is the chief regional authority and the decision maker for the transportation planning activities that happen in the region.

And the Tech Committee, which you all are well aware of, provides that technical review, the recommendations, and the supervision of that work being done.

And so now we will go into additional responsibilities and decisions, sort of a comprehensive outlining on the next three slides of all the activities that the MPOs are responsible for.

We have our LRTP that's completed every five years and it's amended as frequently as needed.

We've got our Transportation Improvement Program, or the TIP, that's typically updated every four years, but in Virginia we update it every three years to stay on the STIP cycle with the state.

Our UPWP, we do that annually, establishing and adopting safety performance targets.

The safety targets are done yearly, and then other performance targets like pavement, bridge condition, those vary based on the performance period, but also done in alignment with the state.

Next you have the 3C agreement that we talked about earlier.

Typically that frequency is a lot less frequent and the 10 years there is a star next to that because we've now found out that that happens typically after every major transportation reauthorization at the federal level and if there are responsibilities that change for all of the parties that sign that agreement.

We have our annual obligation report that's done annually.

That's basically an accounting document that looks at all the federal obligations that have happened over the year.

We have MPO boundary maintenance that we do following the update in each census every decade.

Our public participation plan does not have a specified frequency of update.

The source regulations only say updated periodically or as needed.

And then our Title VI plan has to be updated every.

Next we have our transportation demand model.

We have a minor update that happens every five years and a major update every 10 years.

Functional classification typically happens

And frequently, maybe every 10 years, but this can also happen at someone's request.

So the city or the county can request to update the functional classification of the road, the MPO requested, and work through that process with the state and federal highway.

For SMART SCALE, that's something that is not outlined in federal source regulations, but of course that happens every two years and MPOs play a really large role in that, including giving letters of support to our local jurisdictions.

And then of course we participate in any of the state-led plans and studies and other discretionary grants.

as we decide to pursue.

So I think that's the last slide for the responsibilities and decisions.

So the policy board requested this information, so we started with them, and then we provided it to CTAC in their previous meeting.

Is this on your website?

No, it's not.

It is, the materials.

It's included in the meeting packets, so it is where those are posted, but it's not...

So, sorry, are we able to meet our lines, anyone online getting a little bit of feedback?

The next thing that they asked us to bring to them was a little bit of information on CTAC's history.

So the MPO was established in 1982.

In 2001 is when we have the establishment of CTAC, which used to be known as chart.

And originally those three bullet points included on this slide, they did not get formal bylaws until 2013, but there was an initial document that they developed sort of in the format of a staff memo that identified the things that they were responsible for.

And so those bullets include developing recommending updates to the chart plan, which is what our LRTP used to be called.

Meet frequently as needed during plan updates and then meet no less than annually during interim years.

So at some point we've kind of lost that, what we've had, and it transitioned into meeting even in the off years of the LRTP.

And then present plan update recommendations for plan amendments to tech committee for endorsement and approval by the NPO Policy Board.

And that's also something that I thought was important to point out was it seems that the initial connection was between CTAC and the tech committee instead of CTAC and the Policy Board.

So when TART was first established, it had the following buckets for membership outlined in that original document that I noted.

So you'll see that there are a lot of very specific membership seats that were included on there for those initial members.

And we'll talk about a little bit more on the difficulty of maintaining that, that we've seen in staff memos from the past.

2013 is when we had a TART restructure and a name change.

That's when it became CPAC.

That's when the formal bylaws that were developed for CTAC and the membership was reduced from 18 to 13.

Things that we were able to find on our network and on our drives were staff memos, minutes from previous meetings that were held that really spoke to the difficulty of maintaining that very specific membership that you saw a couple of slides ago.

So for a transit rider or a bicycle rider, things like that.

So that was a rationale for why they made the bylaws a little bit more broad for who would serve on CTAC.

was because it was difficult to keep their seats filled.

Emphasis was also placed at this time on CTAC being advisory to the policy board and not other outfit bodies.

Again, we found staff memos, meeting minutes, and things that spoke to CTAC wanting to advise other bodies instead of just the MPO policy board.

They wanted to write letters to other organizations.

They wanted to ask them to do things outside of their own established processes that they had.

And so that's something that's kind of been a theme over time, as you can see.

And so we got those first bylaws in 2013 and then there was one revision that happened a couple months later for that.

In 2019, there was another purpose discussion.

What we found in our drives is that we had a couple of folders for this, right?

Like it seems like a recurring theme that every few years it seems like we're wondering, you know, what was the purpose of CTAC again?

What are their activities supposed to be doing?

And so in 2019, they had another one of those.

Specifically, these questions and discussions around these were noted as meeting minutes,

and staff memos that were provided.

So what will CTAC do outside of LRTP updates?

Does the policy board provide them with directions or should they develop their own activities and initiatives?

Should members be appointed by one body instead of three separate bodies?

So currently we have members appointed by the policy board, members that are appointed by the city and members that are appointed by the county.

And the CTAC requirement, many of those don't have citizen committees and should they only meet during LRTP updates?

So similarly, we're talking about some of those same questions again today.

The Policy Board also requested that we do some research on what other citizen bodies exist in the state, what does it look like for other MPOs.

So out of the 15 in the state, six of them have transportation specific citizen advisory committees, and only four in the largest urban areas are active.

So that's Fredericksburg, Hampton Roads, up in the DC region, and then Richmond.

Winchester, Frederick MPO had a citizen committee that was outlined and identified in their bylaws, but there was no

sort of evidence of the meeting.

There were no meeting packets.

There were no notices of meetings coming up.

So I put a star next to that one.

Other opportunities locally for citizen advisory committees.

Albemarle County has their community advisory committees that support county staff and the board in implementing the development areas master plan.

So the community advisory committee is typically the first stop.

Like if there's a developer that wants to grow something,

forward to planning commission of the board.

They typically start there.

Charlottesville has the bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee, and they really focus on the bike type work that's going on in the city and providing advisement and advisory comments for that.

Charlottesville used to have a place design task force that was an advisory board to the planning commission and city staff.

And then Charlottesville area transit had an advisory board that was established by resolution, but it does not.

So what did CTAC do sort of historically?

What are some activities that they've looked at in the past that they've spent sort of their time doing?

Typically it all revolved around the LRTP updates.

And so they have done a lot of public workshop planning and facilitation.

These two documents that are on the slide are things that CTAC actually led the development of.

So they provided information sheets for citizens to really help citizens better access to transportation planning process.

For another LRTP that was done, they developed a presentation and a survey to talk about the LRTP process, and they collected 57 public input surveys to be considered by the MPO as they went toward developing that LRTP.

And then in 2009, we found evidence of a resolution of endorsement for new Amtrak rail service through the region.

Some of the challenges of CTAC's activities, we spoke a little bit about this earlier.

So the desire to advise bodies other than the MPO Policy Board,

and a couple of instances where we've sort of documented instances of that.

The desire to perform more advocacy related work instead of following the guidance of the policy board that they've established.

The desire to develop staff subcommittees and have more frequent meetings, increasing the strain on staff and financial resources.

But of course the MPO right now, all of our committees meet every other month.

And so we would not have the agenda items likely necessary to support them going to meet every single month.

Challenges differentiating between CTAC's role and MPO tech committee's role.

And so you all, of course, already provide all that technical feedback for the policy board, but when things are brought to CTAC, they want to propose designs for projects.

They want to propose, you know, why isn't this stuff included in the model rather than just looking at public engagement related activities.

For staff, it's hard for us to orient new members without a clear understanding of CTAC's purpose.

It's hard for us to share, here are the things that you should

anticipate doing as a committee member if we also don't have a great understanding of what CTAC purpose and role plays.

That unfair chain of communication, so does the policy board assign them tasks or do they set their own direction?

Does the policy board value the feedback differently from CTAC other than feedback from the general public?

And citizens have also come to CTAC wanting to be added to agendas to present ideas for transportation solutions outside of the established processes or outside of a process that the MPO is able to implement.

So they've had a couple discussions following reviewing their bylaws and wanting to propose some changes to those bylaws.

We definitely have the sense that all of the CTAC members want to be more active.

Everybody wants to be there.

They want to make sure that this is the valuable use of everyone's time, but they want to inform planning processes that are not controlled by NPO staff.

So if there are VDOT studies that we're a stakeholder in, but we don't necessarily get to set what the process looks like for public engagement, what the process looks like for SMART SCALE, for the projects that we're able to consider,

It's hard for us to sort of navigate that with CTAC.

They also would like to propose technical solutions to solving transportation issues outside of construction processes and the desire to advise on local in addition to regional transportation initiatives outside the policy book.

We also looked at how public engagement might have changed since chart CTAC was established in the early 2000s versus present day.

So of course back in the 2000s, Outreach strongly relied on mail notices, printed newspaper ads.

We used to fax meeting packets to everyone and access to information is really limited by could you be there in person at that meeting.

Information was shared much more door-to-door through liaisons.

CTAC really had that role in the past, sort of being that liaison between planning staff and the public for increasing the reach of the activities that we were able to do.

And of course there were fewer opportunities for virtual outreach and public engagement back in the early 2000s.

So now, we've performed a lot of in-person outreach through pop-up events, tabling, paper surveys.

We're still doing the in-person outreach, but it is very project-specific today.

So it's less sort of overall umbrella and a lot more specific to what does this project require, what's the public engagement for this project that's outlined during that survey.

Of course, we have virtual and hybrid meetings that allow more flexible attendance and increasing that access to information.

We've got more email lists, social media, other digital communications, and of course the online survey and interactive data platform that we're able to use today.

And so the next steps for sort of this ongoing discussion, the MPO Policy Board requested that this is just a discussion item for them for their next meeting this month, just to revisit this conversation again, now that they've had the time to digest this information.

And what we're looking to do is to really understand from the policy board's perspective, what is the role of CTAC?

How is CTAC's involvement gonna be the most beneficial based on the things that are within the FBO's purview, all those roles and responsibilities that we looked at, really define the chain of communication.

And then of course, bylaws, provision, membership, and academic considerations that would come after that.

So I think that was my last slide, but certainly open to hearing sort of your feedback, your understanding and take

What they said, like, provide more feedback on the engineering aspects.

Are these people that know background?

So we have members that are more technical than, I guess, what you would call a standard citizen committee.

We've got researchers that are on there.

We've got folks that build models.

We've got someone who is an engineer, but I believe he's maybe like a mechanical engineer, but not specific to civil and to transportation projects, but there is at least one engineer that's going to seek time.

And so what we've received is, you know, we'll get like printouts with ideas on them for projects and, you know, we'll redirect and we'll say, provide this to VDOT, you know, this is their study, here's their process.

But they also want to be able to sort of amplify these ideas outside of that planning process.

So it became CTAC in 2013, I believe.

So currently, how many vacancies do we have, Sara?

Is it three or four?

Currently, they do not.

So I'm sorry, you said they apply, so their current government body appoints them to CTAC?

That's right, yes.

So I was looking at the member lists.

Right, so physically, who did that?

So like the city council?

Yeah, they go through the city council application process just like they would for any board application.

So what are the next steps?

So I think the first question for the policy board to determine is, do they still want CTAC to be a committee of the MPO?

I think that's sort of the first decision point that they'll have.

And if the answer is yes, looking to firm up, what is the firm of CTAC?

What are their activities that they're supposed to be doing?

What's the chain of communication?

or CTAC is the answer because we don't have a good answer on the other, in the low-cabin you see here.

You've had some examples that you have and the place committee, which is kind of a familiar instance, and training advisory committee, which doesn't really exist anymore.

There was a discussion.

Say more about that.

If the, you know, the implication I think of that a little bit was like, if we don't have CTAC, we've got to have committees in the city and county.

But, you know, maybe having a group of eight people who are maybe supposed to be representative of the broader community to get them in a room and talk to them and say that that's like engaging the broader community or getting the broader community's perspective is not the best way to beat that.

That is a big curriculum, I'm sure to say.

I kind of agree with Roy.

I mean, the LRTP is a process that is managed by a structured process, right?

That has a public engagement element.

And as you noted, the public engagement element has become more robust in current times in terms of being innovative about finding ways to reach people.

And if the purpose of the committee

was to help with the public engagement.

I don't know if that needed any more.

So I'm kind of like, if you're looking at citizen engagement, there are places for that to happen, like the county, the city, the LRTP.

So, I mean, my concern is that when you start to look at things like social media, there's a pair of eyes that the participants in social media doesn't.

And the volume of the voices that are there,

underrepresented voices, and I think a well-structured citizen committee would try to do a better job representing underrepresented voices.

So I think that might be something that we totally would help.

But also you mentioned CACs, and to say that I'm someone, you know, because I also, I'm on a per se CAC, and the CACs have kind of evolved over time.

The point right there,

They're becoming places where staff brings information to the CAC, but they're almost never achieving recommendations, which is, you know, the point of discussion, as I said, that should change.

And now they're not really providing a lot of terms of input.

And so, while I definitely hear what Lori is saying, and I think maybe there's some more dynamic ways to structure the citizen engagement at a meeting representative,

I don't know if that's something you can do.

I do think there are some major challenges in making a partnership decision.

Particularly, you think between now and the money in Charlottesville, things that I don't think are really being adequately discussed.

Whether it be real independence to do pedestrian and travel for years of there.

You know, the letter

I feel like some of the plans have been put out on the problem, just think about how they're doing things and how they're doing it, or how some of that is still happening.

What projects have

would get people, you know, given that it's like sort of a limited time horizon, it's getting people involved, you know, sort of from the start and they're excited about working with it versus sort of a standing committee where you have this sort of adverse selection of people who just sort of want to be on a committee to be on a committee that doesn't really have a defined purpose or unclear what it does, but, you know, it gives them the opportunity

For some of them, you know, some of them just want to do public service.

Some of them, you know, want to push their proposed, you know, interchange solution for hydraulic.

But you're getting a more maybe unrepresented sample when you're appointing people to that than when you're saying, hey, we have this, we're trying to think about transportation in the community for the next year to have

I guess I'd also call out Albemarle, like Lonnie said, has been, has had these CDCs, they've kind of changed over time.

I think they're currently undertaking a review of how they should work in the future.

You can go to feedback for me.

So for the RTP and CARTA transition, the Regional Transit Partnership, you all saw sort of the organization up on that slide for the MPOs committees.

The RTP was established in 2017 following a recommendation that came out of what was called the Regional Transit Coordination Study.

And it was originally established to sort of be that interim body that mapped out the activities that would get us from the RTP to the eventual activation of the Regional Transit Authority.

Since RTP was stood up, they completed multiple activities.

I think four plans and major studies came out of RTP, each with recommendations that this region followed, whether that was giving us new micro CAT service.

We created the Regional Transit Coordination Study.

We had the Regional Transit Governance Study that all came out of RTP.

And so now that the Regional Transit Authority has been activated as of December, that's when that happened.

And then their first meeting was held in February.

Now we're looking at transitioning that regional transit planning forum from RTP to being part of primarily.

And so that would mean the sun setting of the RTP would happen around in December.

And so we included in your packet a staff memo related to this, a draft dissolution letter that would go to all of the signatories of the RTP MOU, and then also a draft MOU

Similar to the RTP MOU, but it would outline the responsibilities of the city, the county, and the TJPDC and the administration of CARTA.

And so this is just before you as informational today.

We'll come back in December for a full recommendation and a vote from the MPO Policy Board, just officially following a process to sunset the RTP in December.

Questions on RTP?

So as you recall, we're working on two STARS projects that probably have been previously to the public.

So we're looking at the 29 corridor,

The first corridor portion of the project is from hydraulic road to Woodbrooke and then the second portion is from the hydraulic down to the barracks road and then includes that in a change with the bayou.

So last time I gave you the thing with the shunt report and it talks about what we were, what general types of faults we were trying to solve along the corridor.

I want to stress, and nobody in this room is going to be surprised by this, that our challenge with the 29th corridor is that it serves two purposes.

About 50% of the traffic traveling through this corridor is serving a regional purpose.

People are driving through the terminal without stopping, and about half of the traffic is stopping or originating along the corridor.

So we have one road that's serving two purposes.

There's a high desire from our local and regional stakeholders to improve the accessibility, to improve safety for vulnerable road users, and there's also a high priority from the state of trying to maintain the through for the longest form.

So it's a challenging needle to thread, and we are doing our best to try to make things safer for all road users, as well as maintaining the efficiency of this regional asset for the high volume of vehicles that it has.

So with that said, this just highlights, I'm not going to go into details right here, but this just highlights the solutions that we are evaluating at the different intersections.

The primary goals are to reduce the opportunities for conflicts at some of these intersections along 29, so that means looking for opportunities to remove a lot of left turn movements.

improve the efficiency of vehicles of the cross streets.

So 29 is, the traffic giving along 29 is being prioritized right now.

That traffic is going to be pretty well where you see delays of people coming from the side streets trying to access 23rd.

So we're looking for opportunities to make those movements more efficient without, while maintaining the throughput on 29 itself.

So that relates to improving the reliability of travel times throughout the corridor because we're reducing incidents.

And then we're also looking at how we can provide safer and more frequent pedestrian accommodations at targeted locations.

So the types of solutions we're looking at, I mentioned left turn restrictions, we're looking at access management.

One of the primary discussions we're having is how Pillsdale could be used as a parallel route to redirect some of the

Some of the more local traffic to use that.

Extending the existing shared use path on Hillsdale Lane, I think it currently stops at Greenbrier, so trying to extend that further to make that a consistent shared use path.

And then, you know, the challenges we've been talking about is trying to do this in a way, find those improvements that will make meaningful, that will have meaningful benefits that are also pretty cost effective.

So as we're looking at these icons, you'll see there are icons at

What solutions are being targeted at each of these intersections?

You're not going to see specific improvements.

I also want to emphasize that we're not necessarily talking about removing any pedestrian crossings where there are two state crossings.

So you're only going to see provide pedestrian combinations at places where there's an opportunity and a need to improve the pedestrian.

So this is the first section of the corridor from

The second section of the corridor itself goes from Woodbrook to Fashion Square Drive where you see the icon with the pedestrian access over to the far left.

We're looking at where there might be a good opportunity for a great separated pedestrian improvement or shared use path improvement.

And then up here where you see

This icon for reducing or mitigating crashes, this is related to the weave that occurs at the grade separated fire road.

So it's not at an intersection, but there's conflicts with vehicles weaving in and out between the local traffic and the through traffic trying to position to get to the land they need to be in.

So this is the section of the corridor.

And then we get into the interchange study area.

The needs are largely the same.

The approach is largely the same.

Again, we're looking at opportunities where we can relocate some of the low turning movements, like some of the left turns, for example, have very low turning volumes.

So looking at other ways that we can redirect those and make that interchange area safer.

And again, we're looking at opportunities to provide pedestrian accommodations.

I do want to clarify right here, you see a pedestrian icon.

Over here at Hydraulic in the bypass, this is approving the pedestrian accommodations across the hydraulic road.

Well, my understanding is that there's currently, currently people are using a culvert to access that.

It's signalized, but if you think about, so one of the challenges is that there's just a high volume of vehicles that are moving and the goal of the bypass, like that's where we say we want the high volume of cars to move as efficiently as possible.

So we could consider it, but considering the safety concerns that we're seeing on other high volume roads that have pedestrian access, I think it's a discussion of whether or not that is something that a direction we would want to go.

We could, I mean, we could talk about it, but there are ways.

I mean, probably if you want to improve pedestrian accommodations, that would be the safest way to do that.

The challenge with everything is the cost, right?

So it's all trying to thread that same legal.

It's a pretty key connection, though, for all the units going up here to be able to get to the city.

get an initial review of what kinds of alternatives are being brought forward.

I think we're going to reconvene with the study work group in a few weeks and get feedback and start reducing the number of alternatives that we're going to move forward for public comment.

I also want to mention the transit piece.

As part of this study, we have also skipped in to review some of the opportunities for higher frequency.

and Higher Capacity Transit that were identified in the Regional Transit Vision Plan that the TJPDC developed.

One of the challenges with this is that the road improvements that we're looking at, along with how to identify what the future transit needs are, is that they're kind of happening just on different

And so our primary goal is to make sure that we're considering what the desire for transit services would look like throughout the study area and make sure that we are not doing anything that would preclude those from the future.

But there may be some midterm opportunities to improve transit services while the region builds up to a donated or higher frequency service.

in the midterm.

So that is part of the scope of the study, but what you're probably not going to see from the study is recommendations on high frequency transit.

So I already talked about the timeline.

We had initially developed this project scope.

With the consideration that our goal would be to have a project ready for SMART SCALE, I think it's pretty clear at this point that we need to slow that down a little bit to make sure that we have opportunities to vet the alternatives appropriately and get good public engagement.

So we're going to go back and reconsider the scope to make sure that we have our built-in check-in.

We want to make sure that we are getting consensus on whatever recommendation we're looking for.

Just want to give you guys a quick update on the pipeline studies.

So we have the two pipeline studies that are currently in process.

You all will recognize these.

This is the DDI at 5th Street and I-64.

And this is US-29 at I-64 and exit 118.

So this is the Joshua Mapp southbound, that 29th southbound movement to the I-64 eastbound movement.

I know the county's talking about that as part of the seed property thing, so it might be a good time to... That is not developing, that concept is not scooped in as part of that project, but it is something that, you know, if the county found a concept that they were really forward with, it is something that we could incorporate into the project.

It was a great point of discussion for that.

So I said a little bit, and I'm going to get really loud and easy with this.

But here's the part that's actually a cross one plus something nice.

Unless you connect to Redfields.

All right, so the public, this is just kind of a summary of existing conditions.

So we show the crashes and the crash severity over here, and it shows up in the spectrum.

Here you can see the public, the public feedback from the survey.

The public confirmed the same concerns that everybody in this room has talked about related to this intersection.

The trucks on US 29 Northbound having difficulty safely making the left turns on this as 64 Westbound.

That is being addressed by a currently funded project.

And then we are limiting that solution for the other main thing that we saw in the public concern, which is that 29 South to 64 Eastbound.

While

A large majority of the crashes that occurred were property damage only or non-visible injury that were a total of 252 crashes in this location during the five-year period that was considered.

And then for Fifth Street of the DDI, our goal is to

Develop a project that's going to be more cost-effective and feature rounds than the administration's project was.

So largely what that means is that we're looking for solutions that don't require rebuilding the bridge on the street.

Same thing with the survey.

This is another high crash location.

There were 225 crashes.

So again, while the vast majority of those are not invincible or property damage only, out of 225 crashes,

10-7.44% is a fairly high number of injuries and fatalities in this project area.

So what we are doing now is we are currently working to vet the alternatives, and we would anticipate that the second public survey, which would get public feedback on alternatives already considered, would take place before Thanksgiving.

All right, we are going to turn back to staff.

Yes.

So biggest updates are that September 30th, 2025, that was the end of our performance period for the grant.

So now we have entered the closeout stage, which will last up to 120 days.

I think we're in good shape when it comes to receiving everything from our consultants.

We'll just verify our last invoices and our last progress reports and submit everything to FHWA.

The next step for us would be to reach out to all of our jurisdictions to kind of see if there's any interest in applying for that funding that I mentioned before.

As of right now, there's still one round of funding going on in FY26.

So we will wait to hear about the NOFO.

There's approximately $1 billion available with that round being the last round.

We think that implementation projects are going to be highly competitive.

So we're thinking that the funding is going to be split between 30% for development of new safety action plan and 70% for implementation.

So we're not exactly sure what the future holds, but we definitely want to try and use the final round to get these projects out there.

Thank you.

So the only update that we have for the joint MPO meeting was that it was held last Tuesday.

Thank you for those of you who I saw there.

We had some really great presentations from state representatives.

We had some presentations on our regional things that are going on.

So about CARTA, about Acton Express, the service that comes from across the mountain over here.

And we received really great feedback on that.

So I appreciate those of you who helped this planet and for those who are able to attend.

For the RAISE build project, staff did have the opportunity to attend a debrief meeting that was held September 25th.

And the takeaways from that was our overall merit rating for that project was highly recommended, which the reviewer who held the meeting with us let us know that that's pretty difficult to achieve.

And she definitely recommends that we resubmit it for the next round.

She said that the NOFO for that one would tentatively drop hopefully next fall, fall 2026.

But for all of the eight merit criteria, we received ratings of high, like the highest ones that you could, except for the innovation merit criteria.

For that one, we received medium.

We asked her a couple questions like what about it, received a medium versus a high, and she just read off the evaluator notes.

What they have, she was not the person who reviewed the actual application.

She was just involved in the overall process.

It just said that we did not propose any innovative materials for the project that would have gotten us from medium to high.

So those were the takeaways from that one.

We asked a lot of questions about, well, can you see our previous application?

Because this was a resubmittal to get some feedback specific to both of them.

She did not have access to any of those.

But it sounds like it was a great project.

It just wasn't selected this round.

Isn't that what they said last time?

This is a great project, but we're not going to give you the money?

Yes.

And some other stats that she threw out, she said 815 eligible applications received requesting $10 billion total in funding, but they only had $488 million to award.

30 projects were awarded, 23 were capital projects, and seven were planning projects.

And then for the TDM study, so this was an activity that was included in our UPWP for this fiscal year to complete.

Just letting you know, so staff are currently doing data collection and analysis for the existing conditions part of the study.

So we're gathering those previous plans and reviewing them for that document and some of the basic foundational data like census and existing infrastructure data that's out there.

We've also connected with VEO to request some dockless mobility data sharing for what they can provide to us.

And they've agreed to give us sort of a big data dump of what they've got so far.

Last week, I think last Monday.

I was in a meeting with both of those people right before this meeting and they mentioned something, but they didn't mention TJPDC was the requester.

Any other questions on the team notes?

Cool.

So we are over time.

I will announce that our next meeting is December 2nd.

It's been moved a little bit just simply about the holidays.