Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Transportation Committee, Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Date: Tuesday, June 16, 2026
Place: Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 1h 19m (video)
Official meeting video (Fairfax County): https://video.fairfaxcounty.gov/player/clip/4184
Official Board of Supervisors page (Fairfax County): https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/boardofsupervisors/

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-27. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:00] Good morning, everyone. With that, I am calling the Board of Supervisors Transportation Committee meeting to order. We will try to be expeditious with our time, but if we go over, blame Dan Stork for running an excellent prior meeting that went a few minutes late. We've got a lot on the agenda today, so I will start by asking if anybody has any updates to the meeting minutes. I didn't think so. So with that, they are adopted. As my chair's prerogative, I wanted to update everyone very

[00:00:36] briefly before we got into our agenda with a recap of the Transportation Hill Day. A week ago Thursday, I went up to the hill with Andres Jimenez, who is our legislative committee chair, who asked me to join him to advocate for the transportation priorities of the county.

[00:00:57] We met with seven different offices. I met with six of them, but had to leave a little early. But we focused on four major key components that touch on federal funding and our priorities of the county. The first was capital investment grants. Richmond Highway BRT, the Route 1 BRT, is paid for in part with capital investment grants from the federal government.

[00:01:22] We know it's also paid for in part with grants from NVTA, so this works really well with our meeting today. The House Appropriations Bill included $150 million in it for Richmond BRT, and we wanted to support that. The second issue we were talking about was WMATA funding.

[00:01:40] $150 million in PREA funding that goes towards capital was also included in that House Appropriations Bill, which had just been passed, and we wanted to make sure that that was something that was protected as well. A third major priority of us was bridge formula funding that also was in various bills because we care about our connections across the Potomac Ocean. American Legion Bridge, Woodrow Wilson Bridge, we badly, badly, badly need a new American Legion Bridge, and the latest bridge funding formula increases the amount of money for those types of bridges.

[00:02:14] We obviously support that. And the last of our four major priorities was the Long Bridge, which is funded, but we want to make sure that there are no problems down the line. The Long Bridge is a very important connection, will help us with VRE, will connect the whole corridor, frankly, opens up the southern eastern seaboard to rail traffic.

[00:02:36] So those were our four major priorities. When you go into a Hill office, you have to get them out very quickly. So I practiced a lot. And with that, I think I've only taken three minutes to talk about it, which was the effort here. But with that, we will go into our first agenda item today, which is a presentation from Monica from the Northern Virginia Transportation Association. Sorry, it's authority.

[00:03:05] Thank you. And I want to start off by acknowledging Chairman McKay, who serves as an authority member, Supervisor Beerman, who's on our planning coordination advisory committee. And I know Supervisor Herity is not here today, but he's an authority member as well. In the interest of time, I will be brief, but I did want to note of the authority to date, we've programmed $5 billion in regional multimodal transportation investments around the region.

[00:03:40] Of that $5 billion, nearly $2.3 billion is programmed right here in Fairfax County. Not to go into a lot of detail, but you see a snippet of some of the projects. The one, as Supervisor Bill mentioned, Route 7 BRT, Innovation Center Metro Station, Westox Bus Operations and Maintenance Facility, bus purchases, Richmond Highway, the Whitening, Fairfax County Parkway, Frontier Drive, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:04:06] The point is that we've programmed a lot of money in Fairfax County. Additionally, because our monies are 70% regional revenues, 30% local, the local distribution transfers to Fairfax County to date total $575 million.

[00:04:25] But I'm here to talk about the one, the Regional Bus Rapid Transit Action Plan. Now, I'm here because this is high level. We are nowhere near implementing branding or anything of that nature. I'm talking to you because to date, the authority has funded five BRT routes. This action plan is a blueprint for what we would like to see in the future.

[00:04:51] It is not in lieu of any metro rail expansions, but it's something that would get us high capacity, high quality transit in the near term so that we can leverage the five different BRT systems that we're currently advancing and add on the additional 23.

[00:05:09] So our BRT action plan outlines up to 28 routes to expand connectivity, capacity across the DMV. And you can see the five routes that we currently have funding on. I will note the one, Richmond Highway BRT, has the largest amount of any of the BRT routes, has the largest amount of any project that the authority has ever funded because it's such a critical project.

[00:05:37] And of the 28 routes, Fairfax County, of course, by its geography, population, etc., you are in the center of the BRT action plan. With 22 out of the 28 routes involve Fairfax County.

[00:05:53] Of course, there's B1, Richmond Highway BRT. There's BRT for Gallows Road, West Ox Road, Fort Belvoir Express, and Old King Mill Road. The reason why we really wanted to touch base with you, because again, we are currently advancing five BRT routes, but we want to try to get everyone to include these routes and incorporate BRT into your facilities planning, into your comp plan, into your transit plans, so we can help align you for potential funding.

[00:06:30] And, of course, into NVTA's long-range transportation plan. For those who are unaware, in order for NVTA to fund any project with our 70% revenues, the project must be in transaction. And guess what? We're in the process of updating transaction right now.

[00:06:48] Now, the window is closing, but we want to make sure you get these projects in. What I will say, having your projects in transaction right now does not mean you're ready to apply. We want to stage some of this. Some of these routes will come online a lot sooner than other routes, but it's about getting the planning in place. Again, we know how long it took for the silver line. It's about getting the planning in place. We also want to continue to advance a regional coordinated strategy. Update routes to be included in transaction. As I noted,

[00:07:22] a part of this transaction update is doing additional work for BRT. Once we adopted this plan, the authority adopted this plan July of last year, we did hear from some of the localities and agencies, can we make some tweaks? Can we tweak some things? So we are doing that now, or we will begin to do that work. The jurisdictions and agencies, we want you all to continue to be involved. We had a bus rapid transit working group. That working group is continuing to go and do the work to ensure that this plan is cohesive. We want to partner with you,

[00:08:00] continue to partner with your staff. The big one that I'm always asked about is funding. So the authority, we can fund capital investments. We cannot fund operations and maintenance. And this becomes critical. I had a conversation a few weeks ago with Secretary Donoghue. I said, we need to get this work into your V-trans. And he immediately said, why? To get yourself in alignment for smart skill funding? Yes, thank you. The administration is in support of BRT, but we're not stopping at the state. We're doing work to try to get federal funding because, again,

[00:08:36] this plan will outlive several administrations. So we are trying to do the ground work and just continue to collaborate. So for the user, it's seamless and efficient. And again, I end on this particular slide because even though Northern Virginia is what we cover at NVTA, this plan included Montgomery County, WMATA, Prince George's. We went outside of the region because as a user, You don't want to stop at jurisdictional lines.

[00:09:07] You don't want to stop at Northern Virginia lines. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I'm open for any questions. Thank you, Ms. Backman. Excellent. I'll start with the real Mr. Chairman. Go ahead. Well, so first of all, for those not familiar, this is the excitement Monica always has.

[00:09:25] This is not abnormal today. This is how excited she always is, and we love that about her. I will just say, first of all, the regional cooperation piece becomes really important because these BRT systems run through multiple jurisdictions in a lot of cases, at least some of them do, and that will be really vitally important.

[00:09:45] I will also say that the one will be the largest BRT system we've ever done, and it would not, I just want to be clear about this, It would not be happening if it wasn't for NVTA funding.

[00:10:02] And so going back in time to when NVTA was created and people had the end of the last meeting talking about political willpower, the political willpower to generate funds to support transportation, this project would not be happening. The size of it, the scope of it, the cost of it could not be managed by the county alone.

[00:10:21] And so without the NVTA money, it wouldn't be happening. So we're very appreciative of that. The one thing, and I know that at the beginning of the BRT action plan process, there were some concerns about, you know, NVTA's role vis-a-vis NVTC's.

[00:10:41] And just to be clear, as you mentioned, you can fund the capital but not the operations. A lot of the work at NVTC is about planning and capital, but it's also a lot about the operations. So if you could just for a minute tell us, and I know on the last page there's all these key partners that we have in this work, if you could just for a moment explain the partnership with NVTC and why this was important for NVTA to do and why it's important to continue to partner with NVTC on it.

[00:11:10] Thank you, Chairman McKay. So we have a partnership with NVTC. They do primarily transit. We are more multimodal, but they are doing Envision Route 7. We are following that as well because we want to be in a position to advance that project. As Chairman McKay said, we legally cannot fund operations and maintenance.

[00:11:29] Now, what you do with your 30%, you can fund it. But that 30% pot is very, very constrained. We know where it's going, and it's not a lot of room. So really, we look for MBTC because they do have some commuter choice funds. Can they partner on some of the operational and maintenance needs?

[00:11:47] And, of course, we're looking to the state as well and possibly the federal government. But it is a true partnership. We do include Prince William, Manassas, and Manassas Park. They are not a part of the WMATA Compact, which is under MBTC.

[00:12:03] But because, again, we want to create a seamless system, we want to make sure MBTC and all of the other agencies, as well as the localities, are at the table providing input.

[00:12:15] I appreciate that, because we want to be clear that this is not a duplication effort, but this is a partnership effort, and I think it's really important to reiterate that, because there are strengths of both organizations, and frankly, given the multitude of things here that have to happen, the regional planning standpoint, the intercoordination with WMATA and the WMATA compact jurisdictions, but also including those who are not in that, there's a lot of moving pieces here, and just want to stress again the importance of this being a partnership as it is now.

[00:12:46] And I thank you for your work on that. Thank you. And if I could add, we do assume that WMATA will run some of this. And that's where we really have MBTC taking the lead and working with WMATA. It's not our role to determine who runs what routes.

[00:13:02] But because of MBTC's relationship and really statutory responsibilities, we see them in that key role. Thank you. I saw the first hand that went up was Supervisor Alcorn. Then we'll do Supervisor Palachuk and then Supervisor Alcorn. All right.

[00:13:18] thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Monica. I really appreciate you getting us past what I consider a chicken or egg problem because, you know, we have not gone through this process locally. Our land use is not aligned with these routes necessarily, particularly our future land use, but somebody had to get the ball rolling. And so, you know, these lines are going to change, uh at least in fairfax county i'm confident you know that the lines are going to change so anybody watching this and assumes that you know this is what we're going to go out and do funding

[00:13:52] and and start building uh not yet uh it's it's coming but this is a very very important step to get us there and something else that we're doing uh in fairfax county last year we updated our policy plan the comprehensive plan that now calls for uh development of transit ready communities. And that's a huge change for us. It didn't get a lot of attention or discussion.

[00:14:17] We've done a lot of TOD in Fairfax County, a lot of it extremely successful, but it's around existing transit, planned transit nodes. And this actually takes us to the next level. So actually we look at building, seeing communities so that they are transit ready.

[00:14:38] So integrating this type of plan with our next step in the comprehensive plan development, which is the concept for future development and some other elements, is going to be really, really important. So thank you again for helping us get past that. The other point that I'll make, and this is also relevant to our comprehensive plan next steps, last week Metro adopted bus service guidelines regionally and this had been an effort across not just metro uh but also

[00:15:12] connector across all the bus providers around uh the region and most of whom are in actually northern virginia besides metro bus um but what was really important that's going to be relevant to this is some definitions that are now included in those bus guidelines so there are now at least and they're going to change they're going to evolve but there are regionally accepted definitions for what brt is and that's really important as we look at these long-term you know capital intensive even brt much less than rail but still there's a capital uh element to that as you well stated

[00:15:50] so the other piece that's in the bus service guidelines that's i think really important and it might mean we have different lines for this in our comprehensive plan one day is other ways to designate bus priority. So BRT is at the top, but we also have bus priority medium build and bus priority quick build.

[00:16:10] And a lot of these are opportunistic. They all involve some type of capital investment to make successful. But I would encourage all of us to be working together to figure out how we get to the ultimate endpoint of these BRT systems and how to integrate the land use.

[00:16:31] So there's a lot of work to be done. But, again, thank you for getting us passed chicken or egg. Thank you, Supervisor Palchuk, and then Supervisor Jimenez, and then Supervisor Sizemore High. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you so much. Monica Ms. Backman, so good to see you. And I appreciate this work. As someone who sits on and chair at MVTC, I really appreciate it.

[00:16:50] I know getting this started was a little bit tricky. And for me, it was we all want bus, so let's figure it out together, right? So I was very excited to see this plan. And my caution for us and for the community is these are long, long-term plans, right?

[00:17:08] And so we are really looking at potential final builds, right? I think it's very exciting. But in an almost fully built-out community, right, I do think we need to be thinking collectively about interim conditions, about last mile micromobility.

[00:17:27] how do we, you know, in a community where there's just not a lot of space, whether it's through technology, which we're looking at for BRT7, or really breaking it down to different areas, I'm excited that NVTA is taking a big role in this, because some of the big challenges are around the built space, right, VDOT countywide requirements and positions, as well as thinking about how we work with them moving forward. I was just in a conversation yesterday about how we

[00:18:03] created, you know, a plan for Tyson's, how to do things differently in Tyson's. So we may need to, and with your help, start to think about what do these future routes and prioritizing the ones coming up sooner mean for our coordination with VDOT. So does that mean we start to look at similar agreements with them? I don't know if you've thought a little bit through that piece of it. So I will say VDOT is a part of the working group. And the two questions I'm often asked is about VDOT involvement, what they will and will not allow for their road space. And then what type

[00:18:40] of BRT? Is it dedicated lanes? Is it signal preemption? Oh, if it's not dedicated lanes, then it's not BRT. Oh, you can't make me take away a lane. Number one, and it's easier to answer that one. We're not here to tell you how to plan for your community. You are to tell us how to plan for your community. And that's why outside of the five lines that we're currently advancing, we're trying to get ahead of this because we know that it is going to require in a lot of cases amendments to your comp plans or your transit plans, strategic plans, and things of that nature because it is a changing of communities and you do want to build around transit. And this is why

[00:19:17] we love the one, because it is a model of what can happen. And I will say sometimes comp plans are amended to put BRT or other projects in, and sometimes they're amended to take them out and put them back in. I remember I used to work for Prince William County. When I was there, we had BRT in the comp plan on Route 1, and then it's not there, and now there's conversations, hey, in order to execute this plan, we need to give this a second look. Regarding VDOT, VDOT has been a key player.

[00:19:46] they are open to listening to the localities. Well, I'm on the BRT, listening to localities as to what do you think is best. Now, they will, and they have opined, and when I say they're opening to listening, I am not going to jump to, they're going to say what your idea and what you would like to do is best, because again, they do have that autonomy. But I've had VDOT at the table from the beginning, because we can't bring them in, and the last, and especially as we've seen with the one, VDOT is doing the road work. So we want to make sure they're involved every step of

[00:20:21] the way so there are no surprises. And then we run into timelines where we can't meet our deadlines because there are stalls and time is literally money. So VDOT has been at the table. And if there is something that you were not seeing, please notify us and we'll make sure it gets to the right person. I guess my only comment on that is the one is wonderful, but just like everyone is saying mosaic's great now let's replicate it the one is works in the one right and i think each brt route is going to be very very unique right so just making sure that we realize that and also i don't want it to take that long but i want to be able to think about starting in the community

[00:21:00] understanding where that route is and starting with okay what are the challenges and what are the opportunities and how could this look here absolutely and the last thing i'll say to that going back to Prince William County, because that's a recent example, we funded widening of Route 1 in Prince William. So now if they're going to do BRT and we have to, by code, make sure our investments reach their life cycle, you know, maybe it will not be a dedicated BRT system.

[00:21:26] These are things we have to have conversations about. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Jimenez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Monica, for that great presentation. It's really, We were going through this packet. It's really helpful. But also to Mr. Supervisor Alcorn's point, this is not going to be overnight.

[00:21:45] But as we move forward, I think just to touch on what the original comments Mr. Beerman made going to the Hill and why we were there, part of that was to actually work on partnerships with our delegation. And I think that we need to continue to not only look, as you mentioned, for state funding, but we can't forget about the federal piece.

[00:22:04] You know, as Mr. Bierman and I and our staff went into each office, you know, we saw a lot of hands or heads shaking yes. Like a lot of folks who are interested, they're excited. And so I think we just need to continue to work on this long-term project with our federal partners as well as our state partners.

[00:22:20] And I really want to touch and say thank you to Mr. Bierman and his staff. I believe Olga is here maybe behind me and Vanessa and Noel from our legislative team for all the hard work that went into that Hill Day. So thank you, Mr. Bierman. Thank you.

[00:22:35] I have Supervisor Sizemore-Hyser and then Supervisor Lusk. Thank you. Great. Very excited about this. I think it dovetails well with our conversation earlier this morning. As we in Northern Virginia are kind of transitioning our economy, our society, into kind of the next step, the future of Northern Virginia, this is a critical part of this, a transit system that's really designed for getting people around Northern Virginia as opposed to from Northern Virginia into D.C.

[00:23:02] or maybe into the Pentagon, right, which I think our current transit system was heavily focused on in design. So my first question is, as you're looking at this, how much of the focus is on redesigning or creating new routes versus a lot of the assessment, of course, is on current routes.

[00:23:18] But is there a gap analysis as to going hand-in-hand with some of our economic development and housing plans to say, here's the gaps if we want to have a transit system focused on getting around northern Virginia. Here's what you're missing right now that we need to be added or changed perhaps. Thank you. That's a great question.

[00:23:33] And so this entire study was born because we do the long-range transportation plan. The current plan was adopted in December of 2022. When we do that plan, we look at, okay, here are the projects that are bottom-up, and here are the projects that are top-down submitted from the localities and agencies.

[00:23:49] And when we're trying to run the model, we saw gaps. We saw the gaps, and we wanted to look at what could we do to really fill in the gaps that can be a lot sooner than some of the other transit planning, and we wanted to make sure it was transit. You know, we didn't want to say, hey, we want to put this money on roads or even fill the gaps with roads because, you know, there's that build it and they will come thing. So we looked at the gaps, and this entire study and action plan was born from noticing that there were gaps in our transit network. So we wanted to do this hoping that it would create a more

[00:24:25] seamless transportation, but still yet multimodal network. Now, and this is why I'm here today. The authority, we do not nor control land use, nor do we want to. That's your jobs, and we want to come in here from you. And of course, with your staff working on the BRT Working Group, they are a vehicle as well to inform us what's going on in the individual localities from a land use perspective. That's great. And I would love to kind of learn more. Maybe we can talk offline about what went into that gap analysis in terms of what were the criteria used to determine what kind of gaps you're looking for, right? Is it gaps in getting ridership to where they're currently

[00:25:02] going? Is it gaps in where our future is going? I just would love to kind of dig into that. It's several things, so we can, of course, talk offline, but one is origin and destination. Number two is making sure our network functions at at least a level of service C or better. We don't want deed, definitely not E, and definitely not F. But again, looking at what investments could be made and what system could we implement in the future. One other question, I think, I don't know how much in the planning went into sort of, you know, I looked at page 15 and it talks about, you know, some of the different key benefits and one is increased transit accessibility to jobs.

[00:25:41] But I'm wondering how you look at the connection between human services and transit. Like one of things I hear a lot for folks, I heard this in hypothermia shelters, I hear it, I mean, look at the new Medicaid work and volunteer requirements for people with disabilities who are a higher population who have need for access to transit, and there isn't a conversation, I haven't seen it here, right, about the human service transportation need. The biggest thing I heard from folks in hypothermia shelters was the difficulty in getting there, right, and saying we're accessing services, getting to places, and saying the Medicaid requirements are new now, but down

[00:26:17] the road there may be other things, and in general, as the cost of gas goes up, the cost of cars go up, are we looking at that connection from transit to other needs outside of getting to jobs? So that's a great question. What I will say, access to jobs is number one.

[00:26:32] Of course, and it should be. But as part of this relook, if you will, or doing more detailed work, that is something we can definitely take a look at. and again, we need to hear that from you. Are you hearing from your citizens that access to certain centers is a problem? And it may not be an employment center, but you know, different types of land uses. Now, what I will say, we do take the approved land use model from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. I cannot tell you which version they are on, but we use the latest version and incorporate that into our work. And I'll just end with this. I think that Transit is a holistic service for everybody.

[00:27:12] I think is from what I've seen a growing understanding, right, as opposed to just transit related to jobs. And I think sometimes maybe certain gaps get created that way. So I'd love to talk to you about that. Well, that's a great point. And to that, I will say we have seen that if you're low income, you may not have as much of the access necessary to get you to and from your employment because where you work and where you live are not really on par.

[00:27:40] But that's something we're trying to take a look at as well. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Lusk. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll just start by saying thank you to Monica and NBTA for their commitment to this BRT system from a more regional standpoint, but then specifically with what we're trying to do here in Fairfax County.

[00:28:04] Our residents are looking forward to seeing the system built, and I know we're making headway, but I did hear you make some comments about the funding. So just maybe if you wanted to share, thinking about some of the federal components, helping us understand maybe from your standpoint when we might get some information back from the federal government on the funding and maybe on the possible amounts of funding possibly.

[00:28:32] Because I know this is an area that we've got to sort through because it's going to affect what we have to do here on the state and the local level. So I will say MBTA is committed to this project. We look at it as a model.

[00:28:48] Again, no other project has received the investment from the MBTA that this project is. I think we're at 638 in a few weeks at our July meeting. We will be voting on our latest six-year program, which covers fiscal years 2020.

[00:29:04] Well, it says fiscal year 2026 to 3031, but I want to be clear. We're just adding fiscal years 30 and 31. And right now, the recommendation, and because it's out and it's public, is to put $116 million on it. This is hopefully to give the county and the team an opportunity to work with the federal government to try to get some federal funds.

[00:29:26] We would love that. I'm sure you would love that as well, but if it doesn't happen, we're putting some things in place because this project is too critical for it to die, and we want to make sure that it continues, but with 116, that's for now, and again, because we're doing out years, we want to have the opportunities for conversations to happen.

[00:29:50] Got it. Supervisor Loss, we are committed to continuing the hunt for the funding from the federal government as well as any sources. However, if they don't come to fruition, we will be working with Ms. Backman and others to ensure that we can move forward with this project. And I appreciate that comment, and I appreciate, Monica, your statement on that, because I think it's important for the community to know how important this project is and that we are going to continue to advance it.

[00:30:15] And I know we have some headwinds, but we're going to continue to push to look for alternative financing options as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Backman. And I think what we all heard is a forward-thinking plan, lots of long-range planning, an overall vision to move people around the county more efficiently and effectively in areas that have been challenging spots like the Route 1 corridor, like Route 7.

[00:30:47] I think we all appreciate the work that has gone into this, and we very much appreciate your support. So thank you for coming today. Thank you for having me. Great. um well with that uh we are we started 10 minutes late and we're only 10 minutes behind schedule so we're actually kind of on schedule here uh but we are going to move into the next portion of our meeting which is an overview and analysis of uh transportation project timelines this is an interim update uh in response to a board matter that i passed about a standard project development

[00:31:23] guide for active transportation. And with that, I believe I'm turning it over to Martha Coelho. Our Director of Transportation is out today, but yeah, he's doing okay, but still. Yeah, go ahead. Yes, thank you very much, and thank you for setting that up. You did a good job there.

[00:31:39] Setting the background for our discussion today, yes, Martha Coelho's transportation. We'll just go ahead and get into it then. We have here, we heard the audit recommendations for active transportation projects last month. Here we've outlined all the recommendations that we received.

[00:31:55] We put here and tagged all the deadlines we have for completing those items, but our discussion today is focused on what we have highlighted in green, which is an interim update on this guide or job aid for project managers. Our goal is to, by the end of the summer, have a more final and complete guide to be available.

[00:32:17] All right. And as the background as Supervisor Biermann stated, the actual recommendation is to improve the resources available to staff, including a standardized project delivery guide to support project managers. And as part of the board matter that went forward in May, there are four elements that we wanted to touch base on, which is the start of this standard project guide.

[00:32:37] It is what we have provided addresses key roles and responsibilities, descriptions of project phases, typical durations of project phases, anticipated handoffs, as well as key project decision points. So we're going to go ahead and outline what those things are and how they're showed in this interim guide. We did send a copy of this document to Supervisor Beerman as chair of the board transportation committee. If anyone else is interested in seeing this kind of midway point of the guide, we'll be happy to share that with you. So feel free to reach out. So as we go here, the very first area of rules and responsibilities, we've broken that out in terms of What are kind of in our internal staff versus some of our stakeholders?

[00:33:18] We have also taken the tact with this guide that it's for a lot of new project managers. We talked about how we have new project managers coming on board. There are different skill sets. How do we make it very clear and explicit what their responsibilities are? They're responsible for managing the budget, managing the schedule.

[00:33:34] They are the point of contact. But in addition to that, there are other roles in our leadership to make sure that we're providing guidance to those project managers. we're providing support to them and supporting stakeholder meetings moving forward we even have utility coordinator very critical role in the department to make sure that well yes we're not in the driver's seat for some of those discussions but we do play an important role in making sure they have the information that they need and this utility coordinator needs to have everything ready to go and be well informed of those issues we have two key outside kind of stakeholders that That is Land Acquisition Division and Utilities Design and Coordination Division in Public

[00:34:14] Works that we work very closely with on these projects. So we want to make it clear again for these new project managers, what should be the expectation of the folks outside of our department? What is the expectation back on us internally? So we've outlined that a little bit in that interim report.

[00:34:32] So we came to you last Board Transition Committee and we outlined six phases of a project. know, it's a very high level overview. In this interim project guide, we've gone in and broken those, each one of those phases into smaller steps to kind of give that guidance to the project managers. What does it mean to initiate the project? What does it mean when you're collecting information to do, examine the existing conditions? What considerations do we need to take account of so that we can create an accurate or best we can estimate at an early stage and concept for a project.

[00:35:10] We're doing the same with pre-design in terms of talking more about how do you validate the scope, verifying the funding sources, laying these things out step by step. One thing I do want to draw your attention to is the last bullet under pre-scoping. We say potential early stage community engagement. If you recall, when we came in April, we provided a recommendation that said, can we get an advance of some community commentary so that if there are scope revisions that are needed, Can we get that earlier in the stage?

[00:35:38] Maybe that will save us some time in the future, potentially. What we'd like to do, and what you'll see in this interim guide, is that we have, in essence, kind of put forward an early coordination point at the prescoping stage with your offices to say, is this something that you're interested in pursuing for that particular project?

[00:35:54] It's not going to be a one-size-fits-all. That's why we want to have that conversation with you guys. There are some instances where you're going to say, we really do want to make sure we've fully vetted this. We want to, you know, turn over every rock and see we want to do this. But there may be a tradeoff in terms of that's going to take some additional time to do that outreach and do that engagement.

[00:36:14] In other instances, it could be a project that has been discussed, you know, you guys have heard this for many years. You want to put it a little bit more on the fast track. You say, no, we're going to try to move forward, but you're going to accept that that communication, that outreach may happen at a later stage and maybe more problematic from a scope perspective if changes need to be made.

[00:36:34] So we'll put that out for you guys. We're going to be in communication with you all. We're going to have you guys kind of help us tell us what that looks like for pre-scoping. Moving on to the other stages, design we mentioned was one of the longer time periods.

[00:36:49] We've broken that out into different milestones. When do you have to do a traffic study? When are you going to go out for more community engagement? When do we do this constructability review? Another thing that I'm going to mention a little bit later in this presentation is we've also added key decision points. What needs to be done at 30% design for you to be able to move forward?

[00:37:10] Then we get to land acquisition. Again, this is where DOT, our job is to prepare the materials to make sure land acquisition has what it needs to be successful in land negotiation. We have to prepare right-of-way an easement plat. We're laying those things out for the project manager.

[00:37:27] Okay. As we continue in that project phase, we also have utility relocation. We've all heard many things about utilities. We still need to be monitoring. We need to know what the steps are. We need to know where the utilities are going, and that's laid out in the guide as well. What kind of oversight and monitoring do we need to be doing in the meantime when we're not in the driver's seat? What do project managers need to keep trying to understand so we can inform you guys of where things are? And then lastly, we go to construction. Again, we're going back to the UDCD in public works. We're required to provide the construction authorization package. How do

[00:38:04] we do that? We need to inform these younger project managers of the types of different construction contracts. And again, what are the activities that UDCD is doing? Even though the project manager is not responsible for it specifically, we need to understand what those are to be able to communicate them well. You all saw this slide back in April. This is laid out the different months for each phase. What we've done in this presentation, and we've done more specifically for each step in the interim project guide, we're going to take the design phase as an example of how we've broken it out in the interim project guide. So that design phase, which overlaps

[00:38:42] Atlanta acquisitions, is about 24 months for a sidewalk trail of about $500,000. In the interim project guide, we've broken those 24 months out into specific weeks and specific steps. This is a level of detail we're getting into. What's unique here in the design phase, you'll see, is there's some purple rows. That coincides with where we need to overlap with land acquisition, which is the table on the right. As we go through these steps, the table on the right, they'll be moving forward with land acquisition. We still have things to do on the left. You can see them in that kind of purple area, but we still need to wait for the land acquisition. Once that land acquisition is

[00:39:19] done, it'll move to those last two rows of permit submission and permit approval. That's how this timelines come together. But again, that's about what things are happening at the same time. We need to make that clear for project managers. Then we go to our key decision points. As I noted, every single phase has a key decision point. What questions the project manager needs to be asking?

[00:39:40] What is the objective of that particular decision? And what does that mean for what the next step is? As you saw in that previous slide, we have broken down into more individual steps these phases. We currently have a project management software that we are using. We are actually working on rolling out a new one at the, in March of 2027. In the meantime, we're going to take a lot of those breakdowns of specific weeks and activities and use Smartsheet as a project management tool to help us flag the timelines for those things and hopefully in anticipation of that, of meeting,

[00:40:16] you know, if it says 10 weeks and we're at week seven, we can start pinging and flagging those things proactively. That's the goal. So we're going to start utilizing that. Our hope is to get that started here at the end of August. We've already got our staff getting introduced to it and taking trainings for that and getting the right licenses. The audit also recognized the importance of handoffs internally. So that is when one, the project itself moves from a more preliminary stage with pre-scoping and moves from one group in FCDOT and moves to another group in FCDOT to do the

[00:40:50] pre-design. Here, we're very explicit about what approvals are needed by division leadership and also what needs to be in that package. And we put on a time frame for those two project managers to meet, ask questions, get the background, and make sure everyone has what they need to move forward.

[00:41:09] Another key handoff is with UDCD. Again, the folks that construct our things in public works, we also have to make sure we have met all the conditions to initiate that handoff. We have a construction authorization package that has the necessary approvals and then also another timeline for the project managers to meet discuss answer questions set up that communication so that we don't have questions too many questions moving forward we can try to handle some of those things at that handoff stage and lastly flagging for escalation when we came it was very clear you know the need to have more communication with the supervisor how do we communicate when things

[00:41:45] change in terms of the schedule and cost those are two things that were specifically addressed in this guide. For schedule, for example, we have based it based on milestones. There are many listed there, but in essence, construction milestones, whether it be land acquisition or construction notice to proceed. If those things start shifting, we need to communicate that with you. The gist of it is, if there is any change to the schedule, we need to be communicating that to you and providing an understanding why that is, a justification. I will have that conversation with you all so you understand. We also talk about cost increases. That will depend on where the project is in that phase. At an earlier stage things are a little bit more fluid I think and so

[00:42:25] we have a higher kind of threshold there and we're still figuring out our funding sources at times and trying to pinpoint that. As a higher threshold we will then go to you and say this is coming in higher than we anticipated. At a design stage those thresholds get a little bit smaller because we should have a better picture of what it is but depending on the size of the project we've identified thresholds to then talk to the division leadership and then escalate it to the supervisor as well. And obviously there are things that are more immediate, things that happen unexpectedly that we know need to be more immediate to the supervisors. That includes if we have an unknown, I've identified a previously unknown environmental impact, whether we have a major scope of vision, whether it be from community feedback

[00:43:04] or changes in guidelines, we need to share that shortly after we learn about it. And the very last thing we'll say is external agencies. We're talking about what we control. There are things that while we don't control them, we know we can follow up. So here we have more, again, explicit guidance about you're providing a submission to an external agency. They have a 30-day review period at 30 days. We don't hear anything. We need to follow up. And if they don't, we're going to escalate it up the chain all the way to division leadership.

[00:43:36] And then if it remains unresolved, we're still not hearing anything, we need to inform you of the potential for delay or where we need assistance. So with that, that's generally our outline for the interim project guide that we have put forward so far. I'm happy to have any discussion or questions related to what we currently have in there or where we're headed with it to.

[00:43:58] Thank you. Thank you, Martha. Chairman McKay? Well, first, thank you for the update. I mean, this is, for all of us, critically important, and I appreciate that this is an interim update and that you'll be coming back.

[00:44:14] I think, is it in August with more clarity? Yes. The plan is to have the guide completed in August, and we could follow up with another presentation or briefings if need be. Yeah, I think it'll be important for us because, you know, some of the things that are in here are things we identified when we began talking about this and reacting to the audit. But, you know, a lot of this is also driven by, I know, a collective frustration of everyone in the room that these things seem to take too long, period. And going back and looking at, you know, ways that you can sequentially handle things, ways that we can cut timelines, ways that software can help jump out at you and say, hey, there's a potential

[00:44:53] problem coming here to get ahead of it, so that instead of dealing with the delay, we're prioritizing how to solve the problem while we're still in the window of time that we're supposed to be in for that activity. And I think the other thing that's really important here was the last thing you said, which is all the external agencies that we deal with.

[00:45:13] I know these are, you know, complex projects, a lot of them that seem to get more complex over time. But this system will also help us identify where the friction points are that are outside of our control, which is really important because from a credibility standpoint, when I and others sit down with VDOT and raise concerns about some of their procedures, we're raising those concerns predicated on the fact that our own internal procedures are working well, that we're not pointing a finger at somebody else if there's some things internally that also need to be improved. So I think it improves our relationship with them, but also will help us

[00:45:50] identify where there are challenges. And I think they exist. I think there are things that our outside agencies need to be improving upon as well. And certainly I hear that a lot from the private sector and something that I'm working on with the Secretary of Transportation and some of our home builders and other folks about some challenges they have on the VDOT end, which we are not immune from. And so this system will help clarify and identify those. But my hope is that, you know, when we look at the process timeline by project type chart, that all of the initiatives

[00:46:24] that we're undertaking internally are being geared towards tightening these up as best we can. And I know that's a lofty expectation, but, you know, try in the general public to tell people that a small pedestrian improvement that needs no land rights or utility relocation and is valued at less than $150,000 should take three years. It doesn't go over real well, especially when some of those projects are projects related to real public safety improvements that are necessary.

[00:46:57] And so I'm assuming all of this work is being met with a full embrace that we can tighten these numbers up if our systems, our internal systems work. And part of that is what you talked about here. So I just want to make sure that, you know, we're staying focused on that end goal, to be more spry, to be more efficient, to do things quicker, and also to identify where our outside agencies need additional help. The last thing I will say is I know that we use contractors for some of the work in some of the phases here. We didn't talk a lot about that. You know,

[00:47:33] I don't want to focus just on VDOT, but we have a lot of contractors that this county pays to help do some of the work that's in here. I hope that a part of this process is also looking at the accountability measures that are in the project, in the procurements that attract these project managers in the first place, but then we're making sure that we're holding them accountable.

[00:47:53] If we're going to go to outside help as opposed to do something in-house, we have to make sure that we're holding them accountable to the same things that we hold ourselves accountable to. And so maybe you could share a little bit about that piece of it for us, or we can wait until August.

[00:48:08] I just want to make sure that part of it's not lost. No, absolutely. Thank you, Chairman McKay. Yes. So if you recall in April, we did note that we need to work more on the quality assurance and checklists, actually, that we plan on developing for some of our consultants and contractors.

[00:48:25] That's something we likely will try to address as we move forward in this guide. We kind of flesh things out a bit more. But certainly it makes sense. We focus here on, again, active transportation projects. Our projects, as you know, vary so much. We just talked about Richmond Highway BRT and what a massive project that is.

[00:48:42] We do everything down to the crosswalk, you know, our median refuge. So some of that is sometimes right-sizing it. So some projects may have more of a focus on contractors and consultants than others. So that's just something that kind of the nuance that we'll just have to keep in mind. Our focus right now is on those active transportation projects, so we don't rely as much.

[00:49:00] But nevertheless, I think your point is well taken about looking at that and improving the quality and accountability for when we do use those outside resources. Because I do think, I mean, and we do use some of them for active transportation projects, too. But I do think that, you know, what we're learning from this look at this one subset of projects can absolutely be applied to all the work that DOT is doing.

[00:49:20] Because while the complexity might change, some of the actors might change, the philosophical backbone that we're talking about here, which is being more spry, being quicker, having accountability as a factor, all of those things transcend over all of our projects, not just one.

[00:49:37] And so I appreciate that we're starting by looking at this, but the other piece of this is we're going to go through this exercise. Let's make sure we can take elements of this and apply them to all the work that DOT is doing across the portfolio of projects, whether they're tiny ones or big ones like, you know, the one that we talked about a few minutes ago.

[00:49:56] And so I think you're on the right track. I appreciate the work that's been put into this. I appreciate the self-examination, ways that we can improve. I appreciate that you've taken to heart what a lot of us on the board have said in previous meetings. And I, for one, am looking forward to, you know, what comes back to us later this summer or in the fall and ways that we can make sure these improvements are happening.

[00:50:19] So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I agree with all that. Go ahead, Vice Chair Smith. Thank you. I appreciate the clarity this is going to bring, especially since you mentioned with changeover of staff that there's something here. The one issue that I ran into was staff not knowing that there was a proffer with a project.

[00:50:41] And I think this would happen at the beginning of a project being listed. But is there any consideration about that connection between a project and knowing if there's already a proffer to do it? I think that's certainly an area that we will be looking into.

[00:50:57] I think you make a very good point of some, we have a lot of those kind of instances where it could be easily missed. So we need to work on building in those checkpoints so that we are making sure that at early stages we're noting where we have proffers we can make use of those funds or if there are any kind of special rules we need to be aware of.

[00:51:15] Thank you, Professor Smith. Thank you, and great point. Supervisor Alcorn. Yeah, thank you. Excellent point. That's a different subject for the audit committee. We don't talk about that today. Oh, there's an audit on it. Exactly. Right, exactly. That one was done.

[00:51:30] So this is obviously an important step. Thank you for the standardized project delivery guide and moving forward with that. You know, I'm not surprised. One of the things we haven't really talked about, I mean, there's some fundamental structural things that we're dealing with that make these projects hard.

[00:51:49] I mean, the fact that we're doing projects on somebody else's property, you know, first and foremost, and somebody else who, mostly VDOT, you know, whose priority is moving vehicles, not actually, you know, moving pedestrians and bicyclists. So that creates a challenge, you know, from the get-go.

[00:52:10] So having better project management is definitely, hopefully will help with that. But what I would also ask is, as you continue to look at this, is some of those areas where they may be a little bit more structural And maybe might require a little bit more bold suggestion, perhaps outside of our control, but perhaps something the General Assembly could help with.

[00:52:37] For example, I'm honestly not sure why – I don't think the process is working very well where for a project that have no land rights, no utility relocation, takes 34 to 37 months, like the chairman said.

[00:52:54] That should not be the case. And I think the primary reason for that is we have, in effect, our system, VDOT has their system, and there's a lot of overlapping interests, analysis, approvals, concurrence that go across those systems.

[00:53:15] If there's somehow, even just if it's for active transportation, we could go forward with a proposal, you know, to somebody that says, look, it shouldn't be this hard. There needs to be one unified process for design, you know, for construction and oversight.

[00:53:35] Boy, that sure would be helpful. So I would encourage staff to think about maybe some of those more creative ways and things. And I know some discussions have been going on along those lines, and if there's a way that this board can help move that forward, we'd love to do that.

[00:53:54] Speaking of that, I believe I am going to be speaking with the Secretary in the next seven days, and this might be a good opportunity for us to provide him with the things that we need done in that vein. Yes, that sounds like a great idea, County Executive Hill.

[00:54:13] And great point, Supervisor Alcorn, definitely co-sign all of that as well. Supervisor Palkchik. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you so much, Ms. Coelho. A co-sign as well, I guess that's the word we're using today, Supervisor Alcorn, Vice Chair Smith, and the Chairman's words.

[00:54:32] I guess I have one question for you because as I'm trying to understand, and clearly we're not the experts, and so when we put forward a proposal or when we're working with a team at fcdot to look at potential solutions we're or i'm assuming that they've been vetted through engineering that they've been vetted through viability they've been vetted through risk assessment i think it's addressed a little bit here but we don't own our roads right we don't the majority and so we do have to understand right until we can get

[00:55:08] changes made, how is VDOT going to look at this? What is the potential of delays or non-approval, right, because of that? And I'm not sure I always have the exact answer on that. And, you know, I'll plan it out to everything that's beautiful, but we need the reality check. And where does that come in here? What does that sort of reality check of, okay, this will make it through VDOT, this will not make it through VDOT, really happen and manage those expectations? I think you turned it off you're totally right thank you um yes so we try to do it a couple different we have a very initial one kind of at that pre-scoping phase we're trying to have those discussions with them

[00:55:48] there may be additional analyses that we're trying to do during that pre-scoping phase a very first one sometimes the challenge is until you get into more details that's really when you start getting more comments from vdot so we are both at the pre-scoping stage as well as a design stage continually getting these comments and things seem to evolve or standards change at times so we're kind of doing it in multiple locations honestly so the first one is we're having that initial discussion doing those analyses and then also using that to develop the scope what we think

[00:56:25] is feasible what is not but as soon as you get into more detail that could be refined further and and that's where you you may run into some other comments that need to be addressed right so my question is because it sounds a lot like going through our development process that we're trying to improve right is that those initial meetings give you an overlook overlay but then as we get into more details more things arise right and again i know it's easy for me for us to point at vita and say they're the culprit but we have to understand right what their capacity is

[00:57:00] And is there a better way to have those initial conversations, to have more of that feedback, to make sure the right people are hearing, oh, this is something that absolutely can happen? Or no, this is, we're just giving you initial feedback, but really, it's never going to make it.

[00:57:17] So I don't, it looks like there's a little bit of maybe more regular communication between our team and theirs. I don't know how often that happens now, as well as thinking about that if we want that flexible consistency, we still, I think, have to clean up a little bit our end to better partner with just the reality of what they are.

[00:57:38] But I think the county executive wanted to say something. Yeah, I want to go back to the topic of pre-scoping. I think what we are going to do going forward is absolutely start to quantify how many of these developers actually go through this pre-scoping concept. Many of them don't even know it exists for whatever reason.

[00:57:55] So we're going to start looking a little bit more intuitively within our operation and maybe helping them understand maybe there is a different process they can use to move it along a little faster. So I'll get you some matrix on that. Okay, but I think I agree on that.

[00:58:11] But for the active transmission on our end, it seems like that may need to happen as well. I don't know if that's happening. Okay. Yeah, I'll just very quickly say, yeah, we understand that. I think there are very similar conversations that need to happen.

[00:58:26] I think you pointed that out. So in that sense, from the developer standpoint, having some early feedback, but also at the same time, how do we get that internally so we can make our project successful? And I think that when we partner with and we talk about, we may need a joint effort on that one in our conversations with the VDOT.

[00:58:43] Thank you. Okay. Well, I want to bring it all home because this is obviously an issue very near and dear. And I fought to get this audit to happen and pushed for this standardized project delivery guide.

[00:59:03] Supervisor Palachuk just said, is there a better way? And that's the whole point of what we're doing here. The whole point is to try and put together a standardized delivery guide because there has to be a better way. It can't be the case that a small pedestrian improvement takes 34 to 37 months.

[00:59:19] There has to be a better way. I'm sure people at VDOT feel like there has to be a better way. And so what we are trying to do is set something up that is going to allow us to succeed. There are some things in this presentation that I really love. I love the fact that we're looking at pinging and flagging proactively certain things that are coming up in the process with our new smart sheet.

[00:59:44] I love the talk about flagging for escalation. I love the idea of things that overlap with land acquisition so that we're not all just doing, okay, we do A to B and then we do B to C and then we do, you know, all in a line, but we're trying to do things together.

[01:00:03] The point of this guide is also what Chairman McKay was talking about. It will be to create a system that helps us identify the friction points that we continually see so that we can cut down on those friction points. I will also say, you know, I care a lot about sidewalks, but I also care a lot about roads. I care a lot about everything that we're doing across the county.

[01:00:31] So what we learn on the smallest of the small is something that we can translate into the biggest of the big. That has to be the overall mission here. And while Supervisor Alcorn is right about fundamental structural challenges, part of this is also figuring out what structural challenge becomes a huge impediment and needs to be changed.

[01:00:55] We are Fairfax County. We have one-eighth of the people in the entire Commonwealth of Virginia. If something needs to be changed, we need to go and make that change. What I think is very important as you finalize this standardized standard project development guide, granted, I did receive later last night the first draft of it.

[01:01:19] But what I think is very important is that we do have identified checklists in it that are accessible to a project manager, a supervisor, and even to some degree the public. That they know what is actually happening. The other thing I think that is really important is that while the guide is in part about identifying the friction points in the system, it is happening at a time where we need to be thinking big, we need to be thinking bold, and we need to be thinking

[01:01:55] ambitiously. So every single timeline that is in there, you should be thinking, how can I cut this timeline substantially? It needs to be ambitious. And if you, in the end, can't meet that timeline, but you were ambitious, I will be happier than if you were less ambitious, but didn't meet the timeline. In the last meeting, we heard from the business community, and there was a speaker who said, do something different, do something better, do something that's not being done across the country. That was kind of the charge. And it was about housing and it was about business

[01:02:33] development. And it was essentially a clarion call that we're Fairfax County. We're pretty good at things. Let's get even better. That's the point of all of this. It's not to punish people. not to, you know, it's not to get angry. It's to get going. Because I think we really do have an opportunity to lead on this. And we have an opportunity to lead on this in a county that is changing. In a county, you know, I had this string of times where I had Boy Scouts and Girl

[01:03:10] Scouts come meet with me for their citizenship in the community badges. And there were like eight meetings in a row of kids ages 12 to 18 in the McLean area and every single meeting was why is it so hard to walk around McLean? Like every single one. These kids could have chosen anything and that's what they always chose. So trying to take areas of the county that were designed in one way and update them for the future, for the next, you know, dozens of decades, maybe not

[01:03:46] dozens of decades, but you get the point, is really important. And I think this is a really good first step. I can't wait to see what comes back on August 31st. Be big, be bold, and you will have the support of this board if you do that. And we will, I think everyone up here is open to looking at the interim guide and to trying to engage in additive behaviors to make this better for you. So with that, I think we're good on that topic. And now we are actually like five minutes

[01:04:21] ahead of schedule, I think. Thank you very much, Martha, for your presentation. And we will move on to the next topic, which is phase two changes to proffered transportation demand management in Fairfax County. And I will briefly just preface this by saying transportation demand management is obviously very important as we continue looking to develop the county and everything that we've been talking about today so with that sorry

[01:04:58] yeah the floor is yours sorry don't know who's speaking first oh thank you so much thank you for having us here today we are here to present about the phase to changes to the proper TDM program for Fairfax County. This was a effort started back in 2024 basically to, oh, sorry. I am Matthew Koprovik from FCDOT and I have with me RJ Wiersma also

[01:05:30] from FCDOT. We're transportation planners. So going back to what I was saying, this was a program that we started back in 2024 to modernize and streamline the proffered tdm process as part of that under phase one the uh we proposed the rate changes to reduce the overall traffic for new developments that come in with tdm programs overall we proposed in phase one a five percent reduction for non-tyson's tdm programs and a 10 reduction for tyson's tdm programs and the point

[01:06:08] of this was to right size the tdm reduction rates to ensure that the programs are both reducing traffic and benefiting the tenants and residents of these buildings while also still being achievable for the various tdm program managers across the county so what we are seeing so far in tracking these tdm programs is that on average the peak hour trip production for sites with a tdm program is sitting at 60 and that's since 2013 when the current guidelines were adopted Additionally, programs that are reporting are on average exceeding their reduction rate goals

[01:06:44] by 31 percent. And we currently have 58 different programs across the county. Most of them are in the Tysons and Reston area, but we do have some along the Richmond Highway Corridor, Route 66, and a few other scattered locations across the county. And we have only so far had one instance of a site failing to meet their reduction rate goals. And then after remediation, they have since met their goal for the next three years following. So only general success overall across the program as a whole. As part of our phase two outreach and coordination, we have worked with

[01:07:21] various traffic consultants and TDM managers as part of a monthly coordination meeting we host with FDOT, VDOT, and these consultants just kind of to identify the concerns with the current guidelines and how we can improve going forward. Additionally, we presented the phase one rate changes and the planned phase two guideline updates to various committees and stakeholders across the county such as the transportation advisory committee the tyson's community alliance or the rest and association we also met with some of your offices as part of a response to

[01:07:59] the meeting that we had with the btc in february 2025 to follow up and provide feedback to some questions and concerns that were raised during that meeting and then lastly we attended the NVBIA and NA IOP meeting to present both the phase one rate changes and the phase two guideline updates last month in May. So what are we changing and why when it comes to the guidelines? And this is both based on the data we have been receiving since 2013 as part of the TDM reporting and from feedback from the industry, as we mentioned. So when it comes to pre-buildout, we are providing

[01:08:39] new sample proffer language that allows applicants to proffer to the guidelines rather than housing every single aspect of the TDM program in each individual entitlement proffer, which is a very cumbersome and confusing process for a lot of applicants. So in this case, they will be proffering to the set guidelines instead of having all of this listed. Additionally, we are streamlining the TDM requirements for the issuance of RUPS and non-RUPS. In this, there's a second proffer in which it's basically a checklist for both the applicant and LDS to ensure compliance of these different programs. Can you just define RUPs for everybody? Yes, of course. It is a residential use

[01:09:17] permit and a non-residential use permit. Sorry about that. We are also updating the guideline language for both clarity and flexibility. Currently, the language is a bit cumbersome and hard to understand, especially for those who are not coming with a traffic consultant. And then we are also providing new standard templates for the annual reporting and TDM plans. And this also benefits those who do not have an existing consultant and are doing their own in-house TDM programs. When it comes to post-buildout, we are providing for greater flexibility on the reporting of multi-phase sites. And this is probably the biggest change

[01:09:54] we are making. Currently, when a multi-phase site comes online, let's say they build one building, that building is stuck in what we call pre-stabilization until the entire site builds out. So there is no way for them to earn back their remedy and penalty funds once they've shown that they can meet their goals in the applicant control period.

[01:10:14] What we're proposing now is that a building can be deemed stabilized and enter that control period once it has been built out and reaches 85% occupancy. So in this way, these multi-phase sites can build each individual building and show that they can meet their goals and be refunded this money that would otherwise be sitting in a bank account for 10s or 20s of years.

[01:10:40] We are also standardizing the review timeline for the TDM plan and annual report submissions. Currently, they are on a 60- to 90-day cycle. We are bumping that to a 30-day cycle so that the response rate is much quicker. and we are also providing clear standards for when trip counts can be conducted at a site for their TDM monitoring. So how will the new guidelines function? The point of this is of course for ease. So they will proffer to the guidelines similar to how sites may proffer to the road fund or the bicycle parking guidelines today. The applicant will also establish the type

[01:11:18] of program whether it be a Tyson's TDM program, a non-Tyson's TOD program, or a non-TOD program based on their site location in addition to this in this proffer they will also set the reduction rate for their site and then they will provide a second proffer basically detailing all the things they need to do in order to receive their residential use permit or non-residential use permit and that's so they have an easy checklist for both of them and lds to keep tabs on to go through the site plan process and that is everything we have today i want to thank you

[01:11:53] you so much for letting us present today, and I will open the floor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the presentation. I think this is long overdue. I appreciate the flexibility and standardization as being kind of drivers of this, because so often we make things so complicated that, you know, it's hard for us to understand, much less applicants to understand. I guess the one question that I have is for the non-TOD locations. We put in there in the chart the TDM expectations for more than a half a mile from this metro station. But where does that end?

[01:12:29] So, you know, that's not everyone else. The expectation would be a non-TOD site would be anywhere in the county that is building a office and or multifamily residential building. They would have a TDM program. So no applicant will come through and you don't envision a circumstance where any applicant would ever come in and not have one of these? For those types of developments, yes. And I guess, you know, the only concern I have about that, but I don't have a concern about it at a high level, but at a granular level, you know, once you get beyond a half a mile

[01:13:03] from a metro station, conditions can change quite rapidly. And the expectations of what your TDM standards are would also change rapidly with that, yet we still have the standard, you know, 30 to 40 and 20 to 30. And so I would just say when you get outside of that half a mile, I think the flexibility piece of this is going to become really important because once you get outside a half a mile, you know, conditions in the county, existing infrastructure, a whole lot of other elements can change quite rapidly. And so that's not a one size fits all. That's a goal. And I think we just need to maintain flexibility, particularly in that

[01:13:43] category. Of course, and that's part of the reason why the TDM plan that they submit is so open-ended and flexible. Instead of them dictating the exact strategy that they do, they basically use it more like a menu where they outline everything they could do to implement their TDM program, and they do whichever works best for their site as a whole. We do not dictate what strategies they must use under these new guidelines. More, we track to ensure that they're meeting their proffers and meeting the reduction goal. How they reach that goal is up to their own purview. Thank you.

[01:14:16] Supervisor Alcorn and then Supervisor Pouchik. Great. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, this is really a good news story, I think, here. I mean, it's very impressive how well these programs have operated. I don't think a lot of people realize that, that they've actually exceeded the goals significantly. So I'm all for making these adjustments. The one question I have, And maybe this is more of a DPD question, but there are a couple places in our comprehensive plan where there are area-specific TDM measures.

[01:14:47] I know Reston has it. I believe Merrifield has it. Would those be updated or, I mean, I like the idea of having one non-Tyson's TOD and the other. But how do we do, how do we, which one applies or do we have to update the comp plans?

[01:15:04] Jeff Herman with Fairfax DOT. I think the way that we're going to handle that is we're using the guidelines when they're going to proffer to the guidelines. With the comprehensive plan, it is still a guide in that sense. So since they're both a guide, we'll use the TDM guidelines to drive what happens in the proffer.

[01:15:21] And as those plans come around, we're probably going to take those reduction goals out of the plan, make the plan language simpler. But it would be a long-term process. It's not going to happen anytime soon. I'm all for it. Excuse me. Let's just make sure that's communicated with our industry partners.

[01:15:37] So, okay. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Palcic. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate that question. Your response, Jeff, was music to my ears. And I think the words of today are flexible consistency, right? I think my other question is, you currently, I think I was 25, had 58 active TDM programs.

[01:15:58] And I guess my question to you is, with the potential of these growing in size quite a bit, let's just say, have we thought about how to continue to manage or have them maybe communicate and maybe start to, especially in areas that have many of them, like Tyson, start to look at more creative ways so that you don't have 58 individual TDMs but maybe a little bit more coordination with each other and with your offices? One of the nice things is that there's a handful of consultants

[01:16:33] that do these and so since we develop really good relationships with those consultants it helps us to make the programs happen a little bit more efficiently in that way so similar contacts different programs and so I think that kind of gets to solving that growing number by having the same number of entities working on those programs if you if you get what i'm saying with that so it's same number of contacts but the context of the programs are rather similar across the board so the growing number doesn't really it doesn't really change how we implement them or how we enforce them i should say um but i don't know if that helps yeah and that helps a little

[01:17:12] bit i guess my next question is as we continue to actually and and communicate this i had residents at one of these buildings say to me, oh, the county requires a shuttle. We don't require anything. We have a TDM program. And I think there's a desire to have the different managers and owners maybe come up with solutions where there's one shuttle versus two or more. Is that something we are looking at? Or is that something I guess we need to ask for us to look at? I do think we're at the point in some of these areas where there are many to start to think about the next level of TDM yes Martha Koala transportation I think that we can have

[01:17:50] that conversation I mean we need to get some more details in terms obviously we have this put together how many programs do we have what kind of appetite is there for that - you know again we're very much in terms of that flexibility for certain projects and properties we can have those conversations and then kind of reach out if need be see if there's any interest in it okay thank you and I will add that we do meet with these various consultants especially the ones that work on most of these projects on a monthly basis so any questions that are coming up or concerns do get brought up to us every month basically if there

[01:18:22] is one that comes up great any other hands well sorry great any other hands no hands well I think this is really great work this is really important as we continue to develop the county to try and reduce trips that come out of new developments and to try and tell that story to our residents so thank you very MUCH FOR THAT. WITH THAT, WE ARE ENDING A MINUTE EARLY, EVEN THOUGH WE STARTED TEN MINUTES LATE.

[01:18:54] THANK YOU TO ME. THANKS. WE ARE ADJOURNED.

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