MPO Technical Committee Meeting   12/2/2025

Paul Esterford, Ben Chambers, Kellie Brown, Tommy Safranek, Rory Stolzenberg, Tanya Schwartzendruber, Alberic Karina-Plun,

Lonnie Murray, Charles Proctor, Sandy Shackelford, Christine Jacobs, Sara Simba, Jason Espie, Bill Palmer,

Mitch Huber?

Present Online.

Thanks Mitch.

Thank you.

Wood Hudson?

I can do voice.

So all in favor of letting me participate remotely, say aye.

Aye.

Any of those?

Any abstentions?

All right, Mitch, welcome to the club.

Since you don't have a clock, I'm going to set one for myself to keep myself disciplined.

So if everyone starts chirping, that's Peter Stauffel.

All right.

Hey, good morning MPO Tech and members of the public.

I'm Peter Krebs from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

I'm here to talk about the Fifth Street I-64 interchange project.

You all have been working on for a long time, not just you but the whole community.

It's really one of the highest priorities, if not Albemarle County's top priority.

It's way up there on the list.

We're trying to solve three problems simultaneously, which is relieving congestion, improving safety, and also increasing connectivity.

And I'm going to speak mainly about the connectivity piece of it, because this is one of those legacy barriers that has been erected all across America, where a interstate or some major highway subverts a community right in half.

And I

When I speak to other advocates, sometimes they get sidetracked about intentionality or negligence or how we got these barriers.

And I don't really think it's useful to talk about that, except that it does sort of eliminate where we are at the present.

As far as the solutions that I've seen presented, it looks like there are two possible directions.

One would be doing a

A comprehensive project that addresses connectivity, congestion, and safety all at once.

This seems to be a bit disfavored right now because of high costs.

Another approach would be to just solve the congestion and the safety and leave for future generations the connectivity piece.

I would strongly, strongly advise you not to do that.

This is exactly how we got in this situation.

VDOT recommended some alternative approaches, which I actually favor, but do not leave those as vague future work.

And speaking to the third option would be to do the congestion and safety just on the bridge and pursuing alternative routes, for example, Biscuit Run, Morris Creek,

as well.

And in fact, if those are done by the localities, they might be done quicker.

But it's going to need coordination.

And I think the MPO is the perfect body for that.

After all, 10 years ago, basically, the MPO started the Fifth Street Pub and Trails Project.

And the reason why that was the first real bike ped project done is because that's a highly strategic spot.

So I would like to, I'll be back to the policy board again, talking about how we're going to need leadership from the city and the county to really solve this comprehensive net of problems with a comprehensive solution.

All right.

The other comments, so emails.

So next we're going to move on to General Administration.

Their stuff is with human acceptance of the agenda.

And I get a motion to accept the agenda.

Thank you.

And all in favor of accepting the agenda, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

All right.

I'll move forward with this.

Now we're going to look at the meeting minutes for October.

Does anyone want to make a motion to approve, or do we have any questions or commentary on this?

So moved.

Second.

All right.

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

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

All right.

Next up is going to be new business.

We're going to start with SmartScale, round seven, project locations.

Do you want me to?

Several, yeah.

Morning, everybody.

So we're going to talk about the SMART SCALE round seven projects and before we get into that there's a little bit of additional information that was made a request that we review beforehand and this will help frame the discussion around how we are, as VDOT staff who is trying to support high quality applications that stand a high chance of being successful through SMART SCALE,

The framework that we are evaluating these projects under and give you a little glimpse into maybe the assessment process that we're going through as we work through these projects.

There's a lot of information to go through.

I'm happy to answer questions, but I'll try to keep it pretty high level at this point.

So the first thing that is really important to start thinking about is what type of priority a project aligns with.

So this table is not necessarily completely comprehensive.

It's a best effort, but it starts showing how you can start thinking about which type of priority a project is based on what kinds of projects the funding programs are intended to support.

SMART SCALE supports the top two projects that are on the table, the high priority project program and the district grant program.

These are intended to fund projects that are identified as priorities through the statewide transportation process.

So the high priority project program is intended to fund projects on borders of statewide significance or regional networks, projects that will have a significant regional impact, they're competitive statewide.

And then the district grant program is intended to fund priorities that have a benefit to cost ratio within the different VDOT construction districts.

So these are more local priorities in nature, but the way the prioritization is determined is still assessed by the statewide transportation plan.

So that's kind of the first screen.

For projects that might be high regional or local priorities that don't necessarily fit well within the SMART SCALE buckets, there are a number of other programs that can be considered.

The federal discretionary grants, just listing a few here, there's BUILD or RAISE, there's Safe Streets and Roads for All, there's Reconnecting Communities.

Folks in this room have more experience with some of these than VDOT does.

These are not within VDOT purview, these are federal grants.

The MPO has applied, localities have applied for these.

But that would be the first step in determining if there's a more impactful project that doesn't fit well within SMART SCALE.

Is there a federal discretionary grant?

There are challenges with federal discretionary grants that's dependent upon continued federal funding.

That's a quick question.

So there may be some of these federal discretionary grants that we need going after that we need coming out of a project that is a VDOT study.

I think to the extent, so for example, with the Romana River Bicycle and Pedestrian Bridge, VDOT was very happy to partner with the TJPDC to provide the administrative support, enter into a contract.

Especially if it comes out of a VDOT study, that's a win for everybody, right?

If we can get additional investment into it.

It could.

I think potentially it could.

Because you're right, you know, depending on

What we imagine the source is that determines what benefits we're trying to achieve through the project.

It would be really important to document that as part of the planning study though.

Any other questions?

Okay.

For projects that are local priorities, the main way that these get funded, aside from SMART SCALE, is through revenue sharing.

There aren't a lot of criteria as far as the way a project is scored.

The most important criteria is that the locality has identified it as a priority and are willing to commit a 50% match.

There are limitations on the amount of funding that's available.

$10 million in state match per project is the limit, matched by an additional $10 million for a locality, so you have a project up to $20 million.

And then each round, each locality is only eligible to receive $10 million.

And that's a biennial round, it's off year from SMART SCALE.

It's based on the type of project.

So basically projects that have received previous funding get funded in full first.

And then the next round is that projects that are either V-Trans priority or are in a localities capital improvement program get funded.

What typically happens is that a project isn't funded in full the first round, but once you start receiving funding through revenue sharing, you'll be a higher priority for the following routes.

With revenue sharing, it says localities.

So I don't think an MPO can be the direct applicant, but they can certainly support the project.

One thing that's really interesting about revenue sharing is that locality can apply for a project in a different locality as long as there's support.

So this is kind of the first consideration.

It's sort of like which bucket your project falls under.

If it's a high priority identified through VTRANS, SMART SCALE is a good option.

If it doesn't align well with VTRANS and with the SMART SCALE program, maybe start looking down the list to see if there's another program that would fit better.

The second thing is that in addition to sort of what bucket the project falls into,

We try to use what we know about the SMART SCALE program and how SMART SCALE evaluates benefits to determine the likelihood that a project is going to receive benefits.

And I think, you know, a lot of us have like an intuitive sense of like this project is going to improve safety or this project is going to improve accessibility, something like that.

But it starts becoming really important to see what the actual SMART SCALE score is going to be.

So for example, for a safety score, a project will only receive a safety score based on the history of documented crashes at that location over the previous five years.

So while there could be a project that improves safety, if there's not a documented history of the types of crashes that the project is intended to improve, then that safety score isn't going to be very high, even if intrinsically or intuitively we understand that it will make things safer

for the region.

And so these are just some notes about how SmartScale, what SmartScale considers as scores for a lot of these different categories.

Congestion mitigation is important because it uses a combination of the peak hour traffic volumes at an intersection or along a road segment.

and it creates a multiplier that's based on population density.

So depending on what the population density is within your census block, there's a multiplier that's assigned, that multiplier is multiplied by the peak hour volume along the road or at the intersection and that gives you your estimated person throughput measure for the additional throughput you'll get as part of a bicycle or pedestrian improvement.

That is important because that factor

is getting used for the accessibility and for the environmental quality measures as well.

So it's important to keep that in mind when you're determining what the condition mitigation accessibility and environmental quality benefits are going to be.

And then the last thing I want to mention is just the changes in the land use score from being converted from a standalone factor to a multiplier around six and how that

has really impacted the importance of getting scores and safety congestion mitigation and accessibility.

This chart was my best attempt to look at all of the projects that were funded within the MPO area that were principal bicycle and pedestrian improvement projects.

And it looked at what percentage of the score came from the land use factor as part of the original score.

And then how that score would have changed once land use was converted to a multiplier.

So this doesn't account for any of the other changes in project scoring from land use from round to round.

It just shows how the projects that got 80% plus of their score from land use, the scores declined significantly once land use was converted to a multiplier.

But the projects that had about 50% of their score from land use still did really well because they were getting scores in other factor areas.

So it's really important to understand that you need to get those scores in safety, accessibility, congestion mitigation, and then the land use helps bump those scores up even higher.

Any questions about this before we get into the projects specifically?

So what we wanted to do was look at the list of projects throughout the entire MPO area and I think the MPO is going to facilitate a discussion after this about moving forward on recommending projects for the MPO to pursue for round seven.

This is the list of all of the projects that we are aware of that range from applications in Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and the MPO as well.

This is a just big picture map that shows the location of all the projects.

I think Charlottesville's project is a little bit hard to see, but it's right there.

And so the first project is this bikeway improvement and intersection improvement project at Ridge McIntyre and West Main at the intersection.

And Ben, I certainly don't want to steal your thunder.

If you would like to talk through it, I'm happy to let you, or I'm happy to take it from here.

So this is not the final concept.

We're working on updating it.

But the main improvements that are considered as part of this project is that there will be a two-way bikeway along the north side of West Main Street from 4th Street to the Ridge-Rishmek entire intersection.

So what's different from this concept is that the two-way bikeway is going to continue through this intersection and it's going to continue along the south side of West Water Street to Second Street Southeast.

That's next to the garage, the parking garage.

Water Street is going to become a one-way street going westbound and it will use South Street as the one-way pair.

And then the final concept is also planning to maintain the contraflow biplane along South Street.

The slip lane at the west intersection at West Main Street, this is going to be removed.

The island is going to be removed.

The statue pedestal will be relocated to the corner.

And the center lane right here that is currently shared through left lane will become a shared through right lane to help

topic volume at that intersection a little bit more effectively.

And then this pedestrian crossing right here is going to be squares.

This is not the final concept that we're shared.

This was the close to fund that was developed as one of the alternatives for review in the first round of public engagement.

All right, so moving on to Albemarle County.

The first project is a resubmission of the old trail in US 250 roundabout.

Do you want to say anything about that?

It includes a hybrid roundabout at Oak Trail, which is one of the entrances to Western Albemarle High School, and also includes improving the shared use path that would connect to the shared use path going to the school.

Some questions about this one.

So right now, where the traffic server was proposed, that's where the crossing guards are, right?

So you're saying there'll be another crossing, it'll be further down than the crosswalk, but where will the crossing guards be?

And I guess that's what I'm saying, because there's a lot of kids that walk the trails to school, and I'm asking if they're going to travel to school.

One of my classmates was actually hit by a car, you know, at that intersection.

It's why the crosswalk exists now, one of the fights.

Yeah, there still will be crosswalks there.

I would have to defer to the people who, you know, the police department does that.

I'll make a note to find out about this.

These are all questions for like traffic engineering and the police department and the schools and things like that.

So I can see if we can get some answers to this question.

And ideally the situation that we need long term is we need, and I know that's not going to, you know, fund it, but I mean, really we need an ability for

Like a bridge?

Yes, kind of a bridge, yes.

Ideally, that's what's needed.

That's what we're going to be able to say.

Given the volume of kids that walk, this is a high volume of kids that walk and run, both from a school generative, but then also from an old school generative.

What I will say is that this would be a project that's submitted by Albemarle County.

The next set of projects is they're going to mix some of the UNDIA and the Albemarle County projects together but we wanted to show all of the projects for Barrickshire and all the projects for the Ivy Corridor together so you could see how if all of the projects move forward

What they would potentially look like cohesively.

So the red are MPO projects that are under consideration and the green are Albemarle County projects that are under consideration.

So starting with the MPO project, this is the extension of the eastbound 250 northbound 29 ramp extension coming off at Darrick's Road.

And then this would be combined with a double left turn at the interchange, intersectional barracks right itself.

There would be sidewalk improvements from the northern interchange ramp here connecting down to the sidewalk, the existing sidewalk in the city of Charlottesville.

What I did not show that I realized later is that we were planning to also do the sidewalk.

on the other side of Barracks Road as well between the interchange route.

And then for the project that the county is considering, there would be a right turn lane from Barracks Road southbound to the on-ramp on US 250 westbound.

The East Project sidewalk, that's the one right here.

I'm imagining it would be five feet plus the buffer.

You know, that's a good point.

It may not need a buffer.

When you just mentioned, you mentioned something.

You mentioned something about, it's not shown on the map, but the project would include some sort of sidewalk connection on the, I'm gonna call it the northbound side of Barretro between the on-ramps.

So there is a sidewalk there.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it does.

It's more that it's not compliant.

So I know we talked about this at length the last time, but so I did walk out there with the county staff and looking at the center side of it.

And there are two things that we're sort of talking about that occurred to us when we're looking at that is one,

Is there a way for that sidewalk that's going underneath the bridge to be multimodal and not just strictly pedestrian sidewalk?

I think the answer is no.

So that being the case, as they were considered, maybe instead of having sidewalks on both sides to actually have some of his multimodal on one side and then have

While we were sitting there, we saw multiple bicycles going through there.

But I think it's the buses, right?

You'd still walk.

I mean, you'd have a sidewalk, but you'd have a crosswalk.

So it would be a little bit of a weird maneuver.

So you walk down, you cross the road, you go under, and then you cross again.

But that would allow for everyone to go under as opposed to

I see.

In the county, you just have to use sidewalks.

We can.

It's obviously less than ideal to have a narrow sidewalk under the bridge, but if it's a relatively small bottleneck and then the sidewalk widens later, it seems like people could probably negotiate passing under the bridge.

You can just melt under the bridge.

Oh, the issue is that it has to be a logical terminus.

So can we just have a 10-foot sidewalk with a buffer?

I can't believe the logical termini thing given the fishery concepts you guys gave us where the shared use path ends abruptly in an interstate on-ramp than sidewalk on the other side.

Yeah.

For the sake of it, let's just say it's not a shared use path.

It's just an eight or a 10 foot sidewalk.

Okay.

I will, I will find out.

I will find out what the concerns about that are.

I think there are, there are multiple considerations beyond that though, because as you increase width that also increases the impact to like the road right of way, things like that.

If there are utilities that increases the impact to the utilities.

So I will find out, I will find out more.

information on what the impact of that would be.

But it sounds like the question is to keep the sidewalk as wide as it can for until there's a bottleneck that would prevent it to narrow down.

Yeah, I mean, I'll be here when you come back.

But I'll be here.

Thanks, Sandy.

You know, going back to the

And you guys, as VDOT, are pushing back and saying, oh, we can't help these sidewalks or these pedestrians as part of this project because that would have to be a district grant project because these are for statewide priorities.

Like, I think what's happening here is we're doing a highway expansion for a statewide priority and we're potentially making the situation worse for bikes and pedestrians.

We're creating an impact as a result of this project and what we're asking you is for these pedestrian improvements, bike and pedestrian improvements, in order to mitigate that impact that this project is creating.

So it's very much a part of this project in particular.

Because that, you know, triple lane, high burning curb radius crosswalk there is going to be dangerous compared to what's there now.

I mean, we're doing a highway expansion, right?

Right.

To the extent that we're able to, we're trying to do that with you all.

I want you to hear that.

We're trying to be a partner with you all.

We're also trying to

Yeah.

So let's get into the Ivy Road improvements.

So this is the set of projects that were identified that are being considered right now, the Albemarle County and the MPO.

There's a set of two roundabouts, one at US 250 in Boreshead, one at US 250 in Canterbury Road.

I also want to point out that Traffic Engineering has done some pavement.

They just repainted the pavement at the off-ramp from 250, the off-ramp at Old Ivy Road, to on a left-turn lane to help move the left-turning vehicles away from the vehicles that are trying to go through the intersection there.

So the two projects, the two ramp improvements that the MPO is eligible to submit would be an off-ramp extension at Old Ivy Road.

and then an on-ramp extension from Old Ivy Road onto the bypass and this would tie into Leonard's Average.

I think we talked about this one at length, but these are planning level concepts.

So this is not necessarily what the footprint of the Roundabout would be or what the Roundabout would look like, but it can give you an indication of how it might impact some of the area around it.

That's the one at Canterbury Road.

So something that's always bothered me about that, and I guess is really like for Albemarle County, but you know, so when you grow up on Huntsville Road, it's amazed me that you got traffic lights and other things like, I've always had it in Farmington, and yeah, the Huntsville Road, if you guys point for a higher volume of traffic coming out of Huntsville Road on T-50, doesn't even have so much as a stoplight.

And so,

I think Chuck would certainly know this off the top of his head.

Okay, so we talked about 250 a little bit.

We talked about the 5th Street DDI a little bit.

I want to spend just a minute going through this because I think there's a lot of desire to do a full

multi-modal connection across this street and we certainly would like to do that as well.

We're left in a situation where we have a lot of constraints on this project so figuring out how to move forward is challenging on this one.

Most of you were here for round six but we submitted the DDI previously as part of the round six slate of applications and it included the full shared use path down to median one of the street.

What happened at that point is that our bridge section determined that they could not accommodate the shared use path without the bridge having to be reconstructed.

And so the cost of reconstructing the bridge ended up being accounted for as part of the cost estimate for that SmartScale application.

The cost of that project was about $79 million.

So when we blinked at the benefit score, which was 16.9 benefit score,

and looked at the lowest-scoring high-priority project from round six.

We found that in order for the benefit-cost ratio to have been high enough to have been funded in round six, the bridge could have cost no more than $42.7 million.

So every round is different because projects are compared against the other projects that are submitted as part of that round.

So we don't know exactly what the comparisons are going to be for round seven,

But $42.7 million gives us a little bit of a frame of reference for where this project would have needed to lay as successful.

The average cost of high priority project funded in Round 6 was $27.2 million and the highest cost project that was funded through Round 6.

I think our best guess is that it's going to be similar to this round, which is a little bit below 500 million and might have been closer to 400 million.

So our goal as part of the pipeline study was to value engineer the previously submitted concept and to come up with a concept that would be a little bit more viable for SMART SCALE.

So what this project is intended to do is to get the DDI funded and provide connections to the bridge itself.

Connecting it to the 5th Street Cup and Trails project that was previously funded.

So there would be a connection to that shared east path.

The connection to the shared east path would connect to the sidewalk that's currently on the bridge.

If we are able to widen the sidewalk on the bridge itself, we certainly want to do that.

And then it would connect to the south to the existing sidewalk that is basically at the intersection across from Pinehurst Court.

So it would provide the pedestrian connectivity

It would help with the traffic backups along the interchange that is occurring at this intersection.

We understand the desire to also accommodate bicyclists throughout this project area.

Our concern is that if we start trying to add some of these shared use paths as part of the project application, that we're going to start getting outside of those 42 points.

If there is interest from the localities participating, there could be some opportunities to leverage funding to try to get more into the scope of the project without negatively impacting the score.

But that would be a different discussion.

A couple of things.

OK.

I don't know the answer to that.

It's going to be dependent on what the bridge department says.

OK. Because last time, the problem with the bridge

Not being able to accommodate ESP was that there's a longitudinal joint down the middle, right?

Yeah, that was part of it.

It was a longitudinal joint.

There are also some considerations for drainage.

We can't impact the drainage on the bridge.

So that's the other big consideration.

And then the other issue is how any additional concrete actually fits to the bridge itself.

I think 8 feet has an absolute minimum with a decent barrier on the side, probably like a jerky barrier.

If you don't have a buffer, it would probably accommodate.

Bicyclists, it wouldn't be comfortable.

10 feet would certainly be better.

I guess my only follow-up question then is when will we know?

A lot of the concept development is outside of my control.

Okay.

It does have precluded.

This is very high level conceptual.

So it's to give you an indication of what we're trying to do.

It's not like,

So, the one thing that does concern me a little bit, and I think I'd be, I'm not sure if I'd have met you on this, I don't know, or not, because Route 76 is completely dysfunctional.

I think a lot of people,

It seems to me that people are taking another route that then goes, you know, up through this street.

And so when you look, when you look at, like, a strong wind map, you learn the number of cyclists that run through that corridor, it's actually quite significant.

And so if we're severing, we've already made a set of six useless through our area.

I mean, if that's, if we're doing anything to disrupt bicycle traffic in that area, that would be a big problem.

So I mean, I don't know if you're considering how we put in your application to talk about that about the, you know, you're talking about national significance, regional significance, the fact that, you know, this is a, not people, not only through counties, but in the country.

Yeah, but I think the regional question is much more significant.

So Albemarle's first great global redevelopment, we've been talking about it for decades, is happening on 5th Street.

So there's going to be a lot of settlements right south of 6th and 4th and many counties.

So although there is a national significance, it's a highly, I mean this is,

Almost the closest place someone could live anywhere in Albemarle County to downtown.

And rightly, it's being much more intensively developed.

I think I have more of a process question for TJPDC staff.

Yes.

Are you generally supportive of moving these projects forward?

And I think with this one, we all want something out of the one.

We have seen some very clear design questions that we have.

The answer would be yes to move this forward?

Yes.

I think the feedback I would give, and I won't be here to make a recommendation, and I'm certainly not the decision maker, is that this is a project that is on the verge of being extremely useful for connectivity in this area.

and also on the verge of being entirely car-centric and further cutting off one of the largest growth areas in the county.

The one thing I say, we understand that.

I want you to hear that.

We understand that.

The challenge is that we may not be able to do everything with one application, and we may not be able to do everything through SMART SCALE.

And that's where we're a little bit stuck right here, right?

Because if we try to do everything with one application through SMART SCALE,

So I hear that, Sandy, and I think I could be wrong, but what I'm thinking is

If we say, cool, let's move forward with SMART SCALE on this project, remove some of the bike pit facilities because they're going to cost too much and we'll worry about that stuff later and some other project, the likelihood of those projects getting funded in SMART SCALE or perhaps any other state funding is unlikely.

We just saw how hard it is to get those type of projects funded, especially since land use is only a multiplier now.

If you're going to come back after doing continued application development on this and you have to say, you know, we've got to cut the bike and pet stuff out.

I think we'll also need to hear how are we going to get you the laughter funds for that bike and pet stuff separate from SMART SCALE.

Like we need to know the answer to that as part of our application strategy.

And that's how Albemarle, Charlottesville, or CJPDC can go up to those funds, not tell VDOT.

Is there another either discretionary grant program, reconnecting community, is there something else that can support parallel

bike ped infrastructure.

The challenge I think we're going to see is there's no guarantees of that being awarded because it's all competitive and there's now a required local match in all of those types of grants where SMART SCALE does not require that.

Yeah.

I think we need to know what that looks like on that.

So a real challenge is that Ron is on funding, right?

It's that Albemarle

Yes, I was just about to bring that up.

What buffer?

I don't know if it's failed though.

I do have another process question, and I think I feel like I missed an email or something.

The recent survey that looked at

You know, all these other projects in this area.

What was that about?

Why were we asking about, what were we trying to gain about the feedback about asking about all these other additional projects?

Like, just to say, are people supportive of these things?

And then you would take those to decide how to potentially implement those projects for the future, knowing that we probably aren't going to be able to

That was specifically requested by Albemarle County.

Right.

Well, because there's interest in knowing which of these projects to move forward with if there's opportunity for something of them.

Okay.

If I may point something out.

So yes, it would be good to use a sidewalk as a vermin style shared use path, but the existing sidewalk is not adequate past sidewalk today.

Well, you know, it has a below hip level rail where even being startled, you could plummet down to the highway below.

So I think it would be a not small question to know how much sidewalk you can have just for the sidewalk piece of this lead loading series path.

Good question for the bridge team.

Yeah, there are discussion on this one.

All right.

I want to spend just a second going through the history of 118 because there are folks in this room who probably haven't been here since 2011 when discussions on this whole area started.

There were some studies that were done starting in 2011 and 2013 looking at the 118 interchange and at traffic from Fontaine.

And at that point, the concerns that were identified as part of these studies were traffic backing up on westbound Fontaine,

going to the 29 bypass interchange.

Weaving on 29 northbound, which leads to I-64 westbound off-ramp and then the Fontaine on-ramp.

Weaving on I-64 eastbound between the two loop ramps right here and then weaving on 29 southbound between the two loop ramps right here.

And then also safety concerns about the 29 northbound operating traffic.

I say all this because when we put the survey out and we haven't finished vetting it, so I'm not prepared to share results from the survey today, is there a lot of questions about why can't we go back and rebuild the interchange, and this gives us a little bit of a history of how we got where we are today.

So these are the concerns that were originally identified in the set of 2011 and 2013 studies.

And so when the study was done and the recommendations were developed, the recommended improvement was this braided diverging diamond interchange.

This included grade separations, so the diverging segments wouldn't be controlled by lights, but they would be grade separated so they could be free-field movements.

It was submitted in the first round of SMART SCALE, an estimated costing $146 million, and basically functionally got a SMART SCALE score of zero.

So it was not funded in SMART SCALE.

So what happened is that the folks at VDOT started pulling apart the different issues individually and seeing what we could do to address these concerns one at a time.

So one of the ways to eliminate both the weaving concerns on 64 eastbound and on 29 southbound is to eliminate this loop ramp right here.

So the concept was developed to have the 29 southbound traffic stop at a traffic light, turn left to get onto 64 eastbound, and then put in double left turnways.

This was submitted in SmartSCALE Round 2.

The funding amount requested was just under $6.8 million.

It was not funded.

During that same year, however, there was a scale back concept that was submitted through the Highway Safety Improvement Program.

It was submitted later that same year.

It involved a single left turn lane, but similarly removing the loop ramp and having that traffic from 29 Southbound and 64 Eastbound turn left of the lane.

This project was funded at a cost of $1.3 million.

We're able to address the weaving issues on 64 Eastbound and 29 Southbound.

At that point, though, it was identified that this left turn at the intersection was going to be a shorter term alternative.

It worked in the current scenario at some point before the future year scenario would break down.

I do want to mention, though, that while this was the concept that was submitted and was funded, this is the concept that was actually constructed with the double left turn base.

So it does have double?

It does have double lefts, yeah.

All right, so that addressed the weaving on 29 southbound, it addressed the weaving on 64 eastbound.

To address the weaving between the 64 off-ramp and the exit on to Fontaine, there was this ramp improvement project that was submitted in SMART SCALE round two, submitted for, the cost was $2.9 million, and it was funded.

So they were able to address that weaving with a $2.9 million project.

We still haven't addressed the lefts from 29 northbound onto 64 westbound or the backups that are occurring on Fontaine, especially with some of the additional development that was being planned at Fontaine Research Park.

So in SmartSCALE Round 3, the summer diverging diamond at Fontaine was developed.

The total funding request was $41.9 million.

We got a pretty good benefit score, but it wasn't funded.

Now, a lot of you all are aware there was some discussion after this project was funded to revise the concept.

What I want to point out, though, is that the project that was ultimately funded was $12.4 million.

And it addressed the safety and operational concerns for the 29 Northbound to 64 Westbound Movement.

and the operational concerns at Fontaine Avenue.

So what happened is that through this series of smaller projects, this is what we were able to get funded at a level of $16.6 million net accounting for post-award cost adjustments compared to the original concept, which was $144 million.

But we still have this outstanding concern to address those 29 southbound to 64 eastbound movements that was introduced

And so what we see here is that some alternatives that were identified that could help eliminate some of the problems that were seen at that 29 southbound movement to get onto 64 eastbound.

So this is a median U-turn where the traffic goes further south past the ramp to get onto 64 eastbound.

There would be a medium turn to allow those vehicles to turn at a light further down 29 South and then come back out to access the ramp.

There's this improvement which would just moderately move the intersection south a little bit to increase the storage capacity of the existing left turn lamps.

And then there was the sunset down here that would basically reverse the ramps where there was a staff control.

So instead of having the 29 southbound traffic stop to make a left turn onto 64 eastbound, you would have 64 eastbound traffic coming off the ramp to turn onto 29 northbound.

We have not processed the results from the survey yet.

We will be doing that and then having a meeting with the study work group to see what direction they want to move forward with.

But these were options that

We were considering as part of that larger slate of projects that have already been implemented to address the overall concern.

The process will be to, we'll have the public starting with the study work group and then we'll also look at the future build scenarios and once we

Yeah, we'll determine, those are already, we already have information on this, but basically we'll look at what the future growth rates are and apply those to the project improvements, make sure the improvements will function adequately based on what the future productive traffic volumes will see and work with the study work group on the recommendation and then it will come back before this committee and ultimately the policy board to determine if there's support to submit the application.

I guess this was built in the 1970s-ish as a change, and obviously there's a lot of stuff that's not standard today.

Is there any way, unless this ever started to be debated well, is there any way to use that total infrastructure or stay with some of those old standards if it's just, if it's infeasible to redistruct it because of the price or whatever?

Yeah.

I think we should put a roundabout.

Yes, it would include an improvement to the park and ride.

We don't really have a concept sketch for that, but there's a sort of an unofficial park and ride right here along Teal Lane.

And we would make that an official park and ride that is paved.

And I don't know what the capacity would be, but the intention would be to potentially, if there was in the future,

In the development, it was proposed to us that a street that was proposed to be a crosswalk across 29, and a lot of us sort of scoffed at it.

Sandy, in that left photo, how does the length of the turn lane where the U-turn is, how does the length of that compare to what exists now?

Because one of the major issues is that people are stopped into the through traffic way back.

Way, way back, like people are flying 60 miles an hour and coming upon stopped traffic.

So it would be, let's see, like what's there now I think is maybe 500 feet, 500 feet, something like that, 400, 500 feet.

Because I feel like that traffic goes way past this interchange.

It can sometimes.

It can sometimes.

I think the question is how much of that is like people who turn left that are blocking the other traffic.

And then that's mixed with people who are just stuck there trying to go through that camp because they're getting blocked.

So, but that's one of the things that we would have to look up in the next round and do the operational analysis.

Well, I think we would probably, the study work group, I don't think they'll meet in December, so we're probably looking at January for the study work group, and then we can start narrowing it down.

and so forth.

They do have some very significant projects going on.

They have to have a transportation authority.

So they're raising local or regional revenue that they are using to leverage Smart Scale funding.

So there's a bigger funding program, but it would have to be a high-priority interstate need to qualify for some of those.

And then the CTB also is able to submit projects through SMART SCALE, and so sometimes they submit larger projects.

Manager improvements.

Other questions?

Sure, thanks, Sandy.

So what was included in the packet was a staff memo that really just recapped the projects that are currently under consideration.

The only note that we have on those, so the MPO has four application slots that we can submit for final applications.

At the point of pre-application in March, however, we can submit up to five just in case one of those four were to screen out for eligibility.

or readiness issues at that point.

And so staff would recommend that we submit all five of the projects under consideration, but we will be asked to prioritize so that if all four of them end up going in, what's the fifth one that we would want to pull out of there for evaluation.

And so we proposed in the staff memo that the

U.S. 29 northbound and 250 eastbound on-ramp would be submitted as that fifth application slot, so the lowest priority.

But since we sent out the packet, staff have learned more about the significant operational issues that are actually present at the 29 southbound and 250 westbound off-ramp extension, even though that has a lower V-Trans need.

No, what we're saying is, and let me see if I can get it up on the screen, give me one second.

Hey, Gorjan, do you already have that pulled up?

Or a packet that we can zoom into?

No, just to pull up the staff memo.

But to repeat what I was saying, Ben, and so we would submit, we have five project locations that are currently under consideration right now for the NPO to submit, and we have to determine what's going to be that fifth application that we would pull out if one of those four, our application limit slots, were to screen out for readiness.

and eligibility.

And so we were saying that the lowest priority one would be US 29 southbound, US 250 westbound off-ramp extension, but we're saying we should swap that with the 29 southbound, 250 westbound off-ramp extension instead.

So the ramp was backing up further than initially realized.

I think through the analysis that's being completed as one of the stars in pipeline studies, it was showing that the cars are actually backing up a lot further than we initially thought.

And so for that southbound, westbound, off-ramp,

Even though that one has a lower V-Trans needs, it's experiencing higher operational issues.

So the V-Trans needs for 2024, 2025 were just released, but they aren't prioritized.

Like they're not recommended right now, like V-Trans one, two, three.

I'm not sure what they've been said.

2019.

But once it goes to SMART SCALE, the V-Trans and SMART SCALE scores are not, they speak to each other, but they're not exactly the same.

So the way you're going to get your score is based on what the actual improvement reflects in terms of the analysis of the project itself.

And so Ben, you talked through with Sandy a little bit already about what the question is here for today.

And so the question is, are we supportive of continuing to move forward to develop these for submission in March?

And I recognize it sounds like the consensus of the group is we really want to figure out some of these answers to the questions about the width of the sidewalk.

Is it possible to do certain changes?

I think that we've said that about most of the projects, that we have questions about how they would perform with no concerns that we have going forward.

I don't think we have those questions about Old Ivan because we don't really have more people with concerns that are being addressed there.

So that's the only one I have a real question, Mark, on is the two-way Old Ivan.

Is that something that we want to develop?

I think where we were not finding consensus last time we talked about this.

Some of the other ones that maybe are going after that strategy of going after congestion needs and safety needs that are identified for SMART SCALE so that we can leverage them to get multimodal investments.

Yeah, so these are just pure highway lightnings, right?

It's a highway light.

Connected two ramps to make it a three lane on the northbound side.

I mean, it's not going to help much.

It'll just fill up again.

That's one thing we have learned in

Traffic planning at this point, hopefully in 2025.

2964?

I think we can have a SMART SCALE application running for it.

I mean, not beyond what it was originally planned to be.

I think we're on track for the study schedule.

Okay.

So the, the one that we're saying that out of the two old ideas that we would want to prioritize would be the offering, right?

That, that would be our fourth.

We decided to move forward with it.

I mean, they would certainly both work together.

Clearing the rest of that?

There's still a stop sign or a stop sign following a stop that's there, so if it's paired with a triangle, maybe that would alleviate some of it, but if you're still in a stop station and you're not backing up, you'll have a turn that needs to be put in, that need not be put in.

So let's see, that might change some of the metrics.

So when queuing is backing up under 29, is that not because it's backed up from the light at IV past the stop sign all the way up the ramp?

I don't know off the top of my head, but I know that there's the stop sign there, four-way stop right before the bridge.

So we're just now looking at old IB and IB.

Wait, what did you say we could?

The only way we could do that is if we submitted basically all of the recommendations from the pipeline project.

Right, right.

So, the thing we talked about a while back.

Right.

Doesn't sound like that part of this.

So.

You can absolutely do it in that way if that's what you want to communicate to the policy board.

What the policy board wants to know is do you all support continuing to move forward with having us invest time, resources to creating these applications.

That's what they want to know from you all.

Right.

Any second on that?

Seconded.

I agree.

All right.

Can we, problem roll?

Yep.

Ben Chambers?

Yes.

Rory Stolzenberg?

Aye.

Albert Karina-Plun?

Aye.

Sandy Shackelford?

No.

Christine Jacobs?

Aye.

Jason Espie?

Bill Palmer?

Aye.

I feel kind of compelled to put the timeline out in front of folks because while we keep saying we want more information and it's going to come back to us at a further stage, there is one more meeting of MPO tech before pre-applications are due.

There is two more meetings of tech before final applications are due.

So I think it's really important to understand come the next MPO tech meeting will be the final, do we support this project moving forward to pre-application or not?

So just want to throw that out there.

Policy board meeting next week?

And then pre-applications are March 2nd.

Thank you.

That's very important.

All right, moving on to our next topic.

Thank you everyone.

For those who don't know me, my name is Gorjan Gjorgjievski, I'm a regional planner at the GPDC.

I'm here to talk about the performance safety targets for the year 2026.

This is a fairly mandated process.

I'll try to be brief and focus on the data as we're a little bit out of time for the meeting.

Just a little bit of history.

This process was established by the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st century, 2012, and now it's under the pipe artisan infrastructure law since 2021.

Objectives or performance targets are set by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation and define the transportation safety needs across the National Transportation Safety Network.

The targets filter down to the states who are tasked with adopting the targets and finally MPOs who are also tasked to adopting targets that will support the state targets.

The primary reason, well not the primary reason, but one of the key reasons we adopt performance safety targets is to be in compliance with federal funding requirements.

MPOs are not held accountable for meeting those targets.

They're responsible utilized for the state.

However, MPOs have to support the states in achieving its safety goals.

Historic, in the same field, has adopted alternative targets until 2023, where they adopted state targets, and then in 2024 and 2025 adopted aspirational targets, which are in line with the comprehensive safety action plan, Move Safe for Flourish.

Small state, which is VDOT, provides us with valuable data.

to inform our strategies, where they include a recent trend line and a long-term trend line.

When we adopt performance safety targets, we focus on five key metrics.

That's the numbers of fatalities, serious injuries, their rates, and also the number of fatalities and serious injuries for the non-motorized transportation modes.

One thing I want to note is that sometimes the long-term trend line and the recent trend line will show increases in the number of fatalities and serious injuries.

And while this may seem counterintuitive, it's just to show how we're using the data to inform our strategies when we adopt the safety targets.

The final column or the final table represents what the empirical percent change

would be for the safety targets that they choose to adopt.

So responsibility for the adoption is going to be with the MPO Policy Board, but we're asking from the MPO Technical Committee today to make a recommendation on which targets we're looking to adopt.

So we have four options.

As I said, the state provides us with some data, which is reflected here.

I'll start from the right to the left.

We have the targets that the state adopted.

They have a decrease of 1.31% in the number of fatalities and serious injuries and a decrease of 0.96% in the non-moderated fatalities and serious injuries.

Then we have the recent trend line, which shows a significant increase in the number of fatalities and serious injuries, their rates, and also a significant increase in the non-modernized fatalities and serious injuries.

The recent trend line, or the long-term trend line, I'm sorry, shows an increase in the number of fatalities, but a decrease in the number of serious injuries, and a very slight increase in the non-modernized fatalities and serious injuries.

And finally, the aspirational targets, which are, as I said, aligned with the comprehensive safety action plan, which shows a 2% decrease in all numbers of fatalities between motorized and non-motorized loads.

These targets, the aspirational targets, as I said, are in line with the comprehensive safety action plan and they're based on the commitment that the City of Charleston and Albemarle County made for the development of that plan, which is about 2% annually until 2045.

Yes.

These aren't year over year increases, though.

These are basically five-year averages rolling over a year.

Should this API Technical Committee decide to recommend the aspirational targets to the MPO Policy Board, this just shows the difference between last year and this year.

So as you can see, the number stays the same, and then the fatality rate has increased slightly, and then the number of serious injuries is increasing.

Is the rate just like how often it happens?

Yeah, so all these calculations are based on the VMT.

For this year, I think the state has, as we're projecting about 2.51 increase in VMTs for 2026, based on their calculation for our,

annual rates.

We're excluding the COVID years here because they show anomalies.

We're thinking that for our IPO probably be around 1.37% of increase.

So if the VMT percentage increases, it might not necessarily impact the number, but it will definitely impact the rate.

So do we also track these on a major improvement basis to the before and after we take a major traffic signal here?

I don't believe we're tracking in that way.

The issue is also like fatalities and injuries are pretty low frequencies of sort of low resolution.

So one of the biggest questions that this MPO Technical Committee and the MPO Policy have had in the past is what are we doing to kind of meet these goals.

One of the options that I wanted to talk about is the Safe Streets and Roads for All program.

So as TJPDC has developed a comprehensive safety action plan, there's going to be one more round of funding available.

We're anticipating the NOFO will probably be somewhere in February, March, approximately, but there is 1 billion funding available and all applications require 20% match requirement for

All right.

And the ones that are being recommended by staff are the aspirational targets that you will be adopted last year.

We have been a little bit more aggressive with the trend lines in the past couple of years.

I remember this conversation previous year and it was like, let's be aspirational.

I remember it even earlier.

I'll do the re-record and the assignments.

Second.

That is not a requirement that we have to recommend but we have to include the number of how we got to the number so in the draft letter that we provided as part of the packet that VMT number will be included there but it's not necessarily a requirement for us to but it's sort of five key metrics or the number of fatalities serious injuries and then

Yeah, it's not a metric that we're trying to set a target for.

We're not setting a target with that one.

Exactly.

Yeah, that would be the projection that the SMPO.

Well, I've got a first and a second on the motion.

I'll go ahead and take a vote on that.

The Regional Transit Partnership was created in 2017 as a committee of the MPO to provide recommendations on transit-related matters to decision makers.

In December 2024, the city and the county at a joint meeting voted to activate the Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Transit Authority, which is the body that has elected officials on it that would have the legislative discussions and be the forum for transit decision-making for the region.

So they began meeting officially earlier this year their first meeting I believe was in February and so now we are working through the transition of sunsetting the RTP now that CARTA is activated and has elected officials appointed to it.

So what's included in your packet was a letter from the commission requesting the dissolution of the RTP, an RTP MOU amendment that would officially sunset the committee that would be signed by all six of the signatories that signed that original MOU,

And then just for your information, the CARTA MOU, so the Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Transit Authority, the MOU between the city, county, and the PDC for the administration of that body.

Any questions on this one or if you have a motion?

All right, all in favor of moving forward with these recommendations, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

So we have three tip adjustments for this one.

The first one is Charlottesville area transit.

We have questions from Rory last meeting regarding the funding for CAT 003 project.

Just wanted to say that we've worked closely with CAT and we acknowledged that there were some errors in the formulas in the Excel sheet.

So we have corrected that issue on our side.

The next step is to

and from DRPT so they can update their STIP.

The next adjustment comes from VDOT for the streetscaped project.

That project has been postponed a little bit.

So the funding for the Garvey Bonds is extended as well.

And the final adjustment comes from

My request from DRPT is for the Autism Sanctuary Incorporated.

Just moving the funding from 2025 to 2026.

What is this?

What is that specific?

Yeah.

That is the federal 5310 project.

So the autism sanctuary is an organization that's just outside of NPO boundaries, but because of the type of funding that they include, we had to include it in our TIP document for the region.

They're outside of the NPO boundary and yeah, just to purchase paratransit vehicles for them.

So this,

This project was added through an amendment in the TIF in past meetings and now we have done two adjustments to it.

So the annual obligation report, a draft is included in your packet here today.

It's a document that we have to post every single year publicly that shows basically an accounting of which federal funds of the projects included in our TEP were actually obligated in the previous federal fiscal year.

And so it outlines in that document what those obligations were.

I will say the caveat is for the transit projects.

We received a list from DRPT.

It only had about three lines in it.

And that's because CAT is a direct recipient of a lot of their federal funds.

And so once we have a final document, we'll bring that back to you all.

Hopefully CAT can provide us with just a quick table to include for the federal funds that they had obligated for federal fiscal year 25.

This has to be posted on our website by December 29th, and so it will likely be posted before that final comes back to the group, but it is shared just as informational.

Great.

You've been right along to CTAC.

Gorjan, could you pull up the CTAC NMO, just for folks to be able to see on the screen?

So since the spring, there have been ongoing discussions with CTAC and with the Enfield Policy Board on the structure and the purpose of the CTAC committee.

It was originally established as a committee for the long range transportation plan, but it eventually evolved to continuing to meet even outside of those LRTP update years.

We've had some challenges over time and this purpose discussion seems to continue to come up probably every four or five years around the time after we complete an LRTP for

What is CTAC actually supposed to be working on?

So coming up at their next meeting in about two weeks, the MPO Policy Board will be taking action on the structure of CTAC.

And so staff has put together a staff memo that really looks at what are the decision points of the MPO?

Where do we have the most impact and the deliverables that we're able to provide?

And where could CTAC potentially fit in with those opportunities?

And so we included three different scenarios just to help guide and really give the MPO Policy Board something to have discussion around as they think through their decision.

And so the first scenario includes CTAC being an advisory committee for the long range transportation plan specifically.

So really taking it back to its original roots back when it was first founded to give that really

dedicated and focused citizen input on the long-range transportation plan.

Since that's our largest deliverable as the MPO, that's the plan that we have the most control over and that really sets the regional vision for what we're looking for in our transportation projects and investments.

The second scenario is CTAC as outreach and educational support for the MPO.

We identified a handful of items that are actual deliverables that the MPO has within our purview once again, and that would be the public participation plan.

CTAC would provide input on the Title VI implementation plan, our annual work program, so what the MPO will be directing its resources, what projects we're going to be working on each year, still including that long-range transportation plan, and then also SMART SCALE project submissions.

This scenario specifically,

These would be the items that would be brought to CTAC for action.

And if they wanted to hear or have input on the more technical items like projects, they would come join an MPO tech committee meeting or an MPO policy board meeting to learn more about those activities.

And then scenario three, should the policy board decide that CTAC should no longer be a committee?

That's also included as a scenario here as well.

And so we did put these before CTAC at their last meeting last month, and they had a lot of discussion about them.

There was not consensus on we would definitely want to go for one of these, but there was interest in scenario one and scenario two, maybe a combination of both of those things.

I think my question on one, if I can just ask what my question is, is why have, as a standing committee, if it's mostly an ad hoc committee for the update process, and would that potentially cause problems in that, like,

You have people who are appointed to it and stay on it for years and years at a time.

In fact, I think if you served one term, you might not even see an LRTP.

And so in practice, you're serving a decade or more and taking someone to serve here for almost a decade.

That's too long to be with me.

And you said the policy board will be taking action at the next meeting.

I think staff would be really interested in the LRTP option.

Like that is really a really great opportunity for Citizen & Mythlet on a really big work product.

But we will deliver the feedback to the policy board from what the CTAC committee has said that they do want more time.

And so they could decide they want to take action that day on one of these, they could decide that they want to wait and give them more time.

At risk of now expressing an opinion, I think if you are going to go the LRTP route and you do feel that it is worth it to have a committee that can meet annually to talk about amendments and other things, and that that's actually a value and not just a way to sort of keep it on life support, I might suggest that you structure the terms of things so that you get a new ad hoc committee for an LRTP

And then that becomes the committee for the implementation of that LRTP.

Then when the next LRTP comes around, you have a fully new process to appoint a new committee.

Any other discussion on this one?

No, but we already talked about the updates.

So we wrapped up the two studies that were pulled out of the Thanksgiving holiday.

So what we're working on now is prospects for the Saturday, responses for pipeline studies, and how we can move everybody

And then for the SART studies, we have met with the study work groups to start going through the preliminary alternatives that the consultant team is worked on to develop for the corridor.

What we're working on with the study work group is to narrow down the preliminary alternatives to

Sounds good.

Yeah, so more safely, Blue Ridge, we're rocking off.

We have two reports to submit, which are the final reports for the plane itself.

Those are going to be submitted before December 15th because I believe they're changing the submission process after December 15th.

So we're trying to submit them as quick as possible.

I believe we have everything we need to do so.

The final quarterly report submitted to FHWA and was approved.

And then the final invoice as well.

That's kind of the biggest things that have happened.

Nothing new on the application through the MPO.

Any questions on that update?

All right.

Well, DVM study that we're working on for this fiscal year, we are still waiting on a couple pieces of data for the existing conditions report.

We've had a couple more follow-up meetings, but specifically we're waiting for BO micromobility information.

What's your question?

Do you guys have direct access to their data?

Not currently.

That's something that we are working on.

But they just signed a new permit like within the last 30 days.

They were in the past, right?

All right, any questions on the TDM study?

All right.

Yep.

So just want to mention that TGPDC is going to undergo renovations in their office space starting January 5th, I believe.

So we're suggesting that the next MPO Tech meeting, which is February 3rd, be all virtual.

All right, all in favor of making the next meeting on February 3rd, 2026, virtual.

Any noes?

Any abstentions?

Oh, same.

Thank you.

All right, so we will be meeting virtually in February.

My perception is going smoothly after that.

Roundtable updates.

Gotcha.

Well, we're obviously working on town facilities right now.

And then for the big one is three notched trail project.

Otherwise, that's the me I'm taking right now.

All right.

Just a couple of quick things.

We did a transit focused giveaway in September, and in November, we just finished up a carpool and vanpool focus.

So as folks log those trips, they could be entered for the monthly drawing instead of just anybody.

So we're looking forward to seeing what that translates data-wise into participation.

And really the big thing is, as of yesterday, the DRPT grants dropped.

So it is officially great season for the next two months to work on getting in our operating fund for next year.

So that'll be kind of our focus.

Awesome.

Of course, just keeping it brief, our fiscal year 26-53-03 contracts

have been reviewed internally and should have been distributed to all our MPOs.

So, well, right now WebGrants is down probably for the rest of the day, but once you're able to get back in, please review contracts and approve those as applicable.

We held our grantee workshop just before the holiday in November.

So if you need a recap on that, that's available on our YouTube channel as well.

Our grant applications have opened, so between now and February 1st, please go in and apply for all your potential funding for the next state fiscal year.

If you have any questions, please reach out to me or the relevant program manager for any questions on applying for any specific programming.

Thank you to all our MPOs for cooperating with us on our fiscal year 27 to 30 STIP development.

We're continuing to finalize our recommended projects to redistribute back out to our MPOs for consideration for the next STIP cycle in the coming months.

The statewide rail plan kickoff will be held early next year.

So be on the lookout for any updates on that.

And if you have any questions or comments ahead of that, please let me know and I can help incorporate that into the plan.

Our 2025 Chisholm Plan update is moving along quickly and should be approved by the end of this year but comments are still available through December 5th of this week and I can send the survey in the chat for anyone interested if they still want to provide any input on the Chisholm Plan and that's the Coordinated Human Service Mobility Plan for those unfamiliar.

as well as FRA's NOFO for passenger rail for their federal state partnership.

Grant program is open until January 7th.

If you have any questions about that, reach out to me or our rail planner, Taylor Holden.

Mitch, this is the last time I'll ask you this.

Yes, we did have a press release just the other day in our email chain.

But basically, we've formally announced who our selected vendor will be.

Awesome.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Okay.

Let me start this.

You have any updates from CAT that you want to share?

No.

Okay.

Yeah, just a few things.

Mike Murphy, our CEO, presented to City Council in early November.

That's from online.

That's the good state of the union for Jaunt, right?

We continue to work with TJPDC and PATH on future 5310 supported funding for areas not served.

We're still in the process of talking about that.

Applications are gonna be due, as Mitch said, in February.

We are in the final stages of hiring a chief operations officer.

We're very excited about and because we have a lot of operations changes coming up with demo grants for capability on-demand software for ADA Green, which will probably, hopefully, fingers crossed, roll out late winter, early spring.

We need to onboard these senior managers and they come with a lot of transit experience.

So we're very excited.

Continue work on marketing communications efforts.

We're hiring a communications manager.

We'll be interviewing four people tomorrow.

Excited about that.

It is our 50th anniversary, so this next year we're going to be rolling out different kinds of communications and marketing related.

In the throes, some of you would participate over in the middle of a rebrand, so stay tuned.

Some interesting colors and logos and stuff.

We have submitted to RTAP for funding, which would enable us to extend commuter bus to green.

We had interviews with them, so we're shortlisted.

They told us they'd tier by late November, early December, so we are right there with them.

And that's about it.

All right, that's a lot.

Thank you.

I don't think I have anything, really, to report for entering these events over these buses and all that.

We are in budget season, just like everybody else.

Last week, we went before the funding commission to talk about our CIP.

Last night, the city manager gave an overview of sort of

The topic of transportation and what we're thinking and how we're dealing with it in our budget.

There weren't a lot of hard numbers behind the information last night, but still a lot of good information and a lot of sort of the philosophy of what we're doing moving forward and captured in that.

As well as, you know, acknowledging some of our challenges that we've run into with some of our projects and pointing out, hey, we've been successful with a lot of our projects as well.

So please go back and watch that presentation from last night.

The other big update that I wanted to make sure that we all acknowledged, which Rory has brought up a few times and Bill just acknowledged, we are going to be losing a committee member.

Our long-standing friend here, Rory, has been on the committee for quite a while and is rolling off and we appreciate, acknowledge him and appreciate his support that he has done for this committee specifically.

I know you've been

So thank you for all your service.

And with that, I don't have any other updates.

So I guess we can make a motion to adjourn by all standing up unless there are any.

Peter, you're good?