The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors held a work session on May 28, 2025 at 2:00 PM in Room 241 to review the draft Transportation Chapter of the AC44 Comprehensive Plan. Deputy Director of Planning Kevin McDermott and Planning Manager Tonya Swartzendruber presented community input, planning commission feedback, and an overview of the chapter's objectives for both development and rural areas. The board discussed the distinct approaches for the two areas, the concept of a multimodal transportation plan, and specific action items.
Please call the order of this meeting of our credit supervision this 28th of May, 2 p.m. through 241 back to our office. County office building. I'd like to know at the table we have Supervisor Mike Bruitt of the Scotchville District, Supervisor Blue Priest McCurner District. Supervisor Dan McKeel from Jack Hewitt district Supervisor Anna Malic and the White House District. Supervisor Calloway today. We're also joined by our uh county executives, every wall and thank you. Um Mr. Richardson is on able to attention today. Uh Mr. Andy Herrick, our county attorneys here. Uh and Ms. Claudia Gorderson, our clerk. Um, also let me please welcome the county Caldemoro County Police Officer President present, excuse me, officers uh Shaka Joiner and Regina Crying. Welcome. Thank you for being here for the service here today. Um we have one major item uh on the agenda, uh which is a work session on HC44 draft transportation chapter. And I believe this is being on the table here. Um deputy director of planning. I'm sorry, Clinton McDermott, deputy director of planning. Tony's horse and road planning manager. Sorry, I thought that was like that too quickly. Uh and Barcelona, deputy director of media. Welcome. There's others as needed. Um thank you. Thank you. I am Tanya Schwarzenegger, planning manager. Um here to speak about the transportation chapter of the AC44 comprehensive plan. So just a quick agenda for floor today, go through some um community input themes, a summary of the PC um feedback that we heard a couple weeks ago, and then uh the chapter overview and an upcoming schedule. And as always, we have the focus topics uh slides that will show up at the end of the presentation as well for you to reference. To start off, we heard a couple of things about transportation in the development areas, mainly about um providing safety and comparable infrastructure for all the modes, including sidewalks, paths, and bike lanes. Um that's separated from cars. Something else we heard is that transit needs to be frequent and reliable for those that are choosing transit over driving. Specifically related to driving in cars, we heard that we need to slow cars down and potentially reduce parking requirements to reduce the amount of space and impervious coverage coverage for parking. There was a concern about traffic congestion and infrastructure keeping up with growth, as well as safety in general. The rural area, a little bit heard a little bit different, but some similar themes. Um we'd like to explore and implement ways to make walking and biking in the rural area safer, both um by small scale improvements and potential improvements to um to rural roads, like widening shoulders and adding signage. Um increasing access to transit in the rural area, especially um access to the urban area of the development area to serve daily needs for those that live and work out there. What we heard from PC specifically on development areas is there needs to be additional bike and pedestrian uh connectivity, not just um or sorry, in addition to bike and pedestrian connectivity, we should promote vehicular activity. And what this means is eliminating cul-de-sacks and dead ends so that you know cars can move more freely and have other choices to other routes to get around. Um we heard that we should consider completing a study to enhance um connections to the airport, prioritize infrastructure investments and multimodal connections despite the funding challenges that we've all been hearing about at the federal level, and then consider a recommendation to establish a parks and trail fund to support public space and greenways. Specifically in the rural area, what we heard was, as I mentioned before, explain expanding the rural road margins, which is that shoulder piece outside of the line markings for walking and biking along our major multi-road routes. And then we then we were asked to consider moving rural rural roads away from the floodplain where flooding occurs, or at least when roads are being laid out to really focus on keeping them out of the floodplain. And then we did have a bit of a focus on recreational users specifically in the rural area. Really felt like this might imply that all the other users are lesser priority and they should be prioritized the same. Thanks, Tanya. To start out with, uh you might have noticed from Tanya's description about the feedback that we've been hearing is that there is real distinct difference between the way we look at transportation in the development area and the way we look at it in the rural area. And so that's kind of a theme that you'll see as we move through the chapter that there is a difference. We have different goals, different uh objectives and different needs.