City Council Work Session   5/25/2021

The band was started 95 years ago because two community members in Charlottesville thought that they needed something for celebrations.

And now a huge part of what we are is we are a free celebration for everyone.

Anyone that wants to come through our doors are welcome free of charge.

It's a fabulous band, it's about music, but we also stir the heart, enrich souls, perhaps sometimes challenge people to think and feel about community values.

Well, with the brass quintet we had the opportunity.

There's a burn camp that comes locally every summer.

So I really like to think the Charlottesville Municipal Band is the town's band.

The band, of course, is about music, but more than music alone, it's about the ties that bring a community together.

Good afternoon.

Ms.

Mayor Walker?

Present.

Vice Mayor McGill?

I'm here.

Councillor Hill?

I'm here.

Okay, thank you, Mayor Walker and Council.

The first agenda item for today is to discuss the City County Court Complex Memorandum of Agreement and discuss the parking requirements that are part of that agreement with Carroll County, with Albemarle County, apologies.

Currently, a previous council had approved for the city to pursue building a parking structure as part of that MOA on a site at Seventh Street and Market.

And we've been working on that.

And we're here to discuss with you both that option as well as other options that perhaps may meet more current needs and demands of the city and council's vision.

Just as a reminder, we have the MOA which is in your packet, I believe.

We are responsible to provide anywhere from 90 parking spaces to an excess of 100 parking spaces according to the location as part of the agreement for the renovation of court rooms at the courthouse complex.

Chris Engel is here with a presentation to walk us through several of those options and what we will need from council is just direction on where to go from here because there is currently a

Approval and Resolution by Council to continue with the pursuit of a parking garage there.

Without a change from that, that would be the direction of staff.

But if you would like to change that with one of the options that Mr. Engel provides today, then we would begin to move in that direction.

And so we're here to explore those options, look at the background, and then discuss with you what the opportunities are to move forward.

Chris Engel, Thank you, Chip.

Hopefully everybody can hear me and you've got a visual on the PowerPoint slide.

We are here as Chip referenced to talk about the city county court project and the MOA that was

agreed to by the city and county in 2018 and specifically as it relates to the parking for the new courts project and how council would wish for us to proceed at this point.

I'd like to take a quick moment and introduce the team that has been working on this project.

They include David Brown with Public Works, Crystal Rittervold and Scott Hendricks also with Facilities Development and Public Works, Tim Mosh

is on board as well, and Rick Siebert, along with myself, make up the team that's been working on this project for about two years.

So with that, I'll briefly cover the key elements of the MOA.

We did send a packet to you in advance that had a narrative on this, as well as the actual MOA for your reference and the resolution from 2019.

But just briefly, and for the public's benefit, the agreement talks about the court building and the city's contribution to it.

And then much more specifically and in much more detail, the parking, which includes 15 on-street spaces, which have already been allocated for county use.

And that happened at the execution of the agreement back in 2019.

And then most of the agreement spends time speaking about how to fulfill the needs of the court with regard to parking and a new parking structure at the 7th and Market Street location, which was previously owned jointly by the city and county.

It is now transferred full ownership to the city as part of the agreement that has happened since it was executed.

As Chip mentioned, the city is obligated to provide 90 dedicated spaces for the exclusive use of the county.

There are some other key dates, including a start date, which is next May of 22, and then a completion date, which is November 30th of 2023.

All these dates were aligned with the expected completion of the court building.

and in general terms, both of those are continuing along the same path.

Also included in the MOA, if the city fails to build a structure, there are two options that the county has to ensure that the parking requirements are completed.

And one of those is to reconvey

one-half interest of the East Market Street parcel, which, as I mentioned just a minute ago, was previously jointly owned by the city and county, and allow the county to use that parcel for its court parking needs.

There are 63 surface spaces in that lot.

The county would pay fair market value back to the city, one-half of that interest.

however the city would no longer have use of that property for the length of the agreement which is a 20 year term with a one year renewal so essentially a 40 year term or the other option is that the county could request the 100 spaces in the Market Street parking garage at or below level two

and those are for the exclusive use of the county, meaning they would be essentially reserved during business hours for court use only and not available for others to use.

So those are the key elements of the MOA.

Progress to date, as I mentioned, the MOA was signed in 2018 after several years of negotiation and back and forth with the county.

Since that time, an appraisal has been done, a survey has been done, geotechnical work, feasibility study was done and is resulting in at least one of the concepts that's before you today.

The CIP, the capital improvement plan for the city, has had funding in it in several years for this project.

As I mentioned, the transfer

of the half ownership of the jointly owned property occurred in 2020.

The council on December 2nd of 2019 approved a resolution to allocate the funds to do that and to move forward with the project.

That's the item that Mr. Boyles mentioned at the top.

The purchase of the parcel happened, as I mentioned, in April of 2020 and a design build RFQ was issued

to gather qualified respondents who could potentially be available to build this project.

I'd like to pause for just a second and have Scott Hendricks, who's on the team, give a little bit more flavor and color on the design build process and how it differs from our usual process and where we are in that at the moment.

Sure, I'm on, Chris.

Thank you, counsel, for hearing us today.

The design build process is different than usual procurement process we would go through for construction, which is typically a design bid build format, low bid, so to speak, format for purchasing construction.

Design build is different in that you would pre-qualify design build teams.

A design build team

is not consisted only of a contractor, but it also consists of the design team.

They work in partnership together to design, build, design slash build the project.

It has some advantages over design bid build in that it typically moves a bit faster.

And the designer and contractor are working in partnership instead of an adversarial relationship, which is most common in design bid build.

So it's an interesting and new way to procure for us.

It's particularly well suited to parking structures.

Many parking structures have been constructed that way.

It has some additional steps to go through on the front side of the project, and we are in that now.

We have completed what is called the request for qualifications.

We've shortlisted three firms that

who we think were the most qualified in that group of 11 that were submitted.

And those three are slightly on pause right now while we get through this meeting and how things may shake out from that.

But assuming we were to move forward, those three firms would then submit proposals and detailed proposals, including preliminary designs, schematic designs,

of what they're proposing.

It's a very large investment for these teams to produce.

It costs them thousands and thousands of dollars to do.

It's a big risk for them.

So we want to make sure before we push on any further in requesting those requests for proposals or those proposals be received based on the request, that we know exactly what our scope is for this project.

Exactly what the scope is in Council's mind as well before we invest that kind of time and money in those efforts.

Beyond that stage, you would move into design.

Like I said, the designer would work closely with the contractor, constructability issues, cost issues, and nailing down the project details to a high degree.

And a lot of this work can happen as documentation for site plan approval is pushing forward.

Okay, thank you, Scott.

And just to summarize this slide, the progress to date that you see here has resulted in about $1.5 million being spent.

Obviously, the majority of that was on the land purchase, which occurred with the county, but there were other additional funds to cover these other items.

So just so you're aware of where we are with regard to dollars spent to date.

This is just a graphic that shows the two parcels that we're speaking of with 7th Street on the left-hand side of your screen, 9th Street on the far right, and then Market Street in the foreground.

Next slide just speaks a little bit more to the timeline and kind of lays it out and overlays the CIP funding years, the fiscal years at the bottom, just to give you a sense of

the timing on all of this and the big flag of today is where we are at this moment.

And then the design and construction process, which has a little overlap in it, as Scott described to you, and then the completion date of the November 30th, 2023.

And as you can see, this is starting to compress and

and be a challenge.

Scott did mention we are at the point where three are shortlisted, but they are not at the point where they are designing anything into that 15 month period.

So we are a little off the schedule, even as we speak, but getting clarification and clear direction from you all today will help us figure out how we best move forward.

As you can see, this year's CIP

included $1 million for this effort.

FY21 included two.

That's obviously not enough based upon an estimate of about a $10 million project to proceed.

As Scott mentioned, there's considerable risk for the design builders to put forward proposals, and the city obviously doesn't want to put anybody in a situation where they would be spending large amounts of money for a project that may or may not

be ready to happen at this point.

In addition, the city has a general requirement that the funds for projects of this size be fully allocated before the contract is issued, and that's to cover everybody's best interests.

And as you can see, if we were to continue along with the CIP funding of $7 million to happen,

in July of 2022, that would impact this schedule, meaning the completion date could not be met if we delay or if we continue to wait for that future funding.

So to best meet the schedule, something else would have to happen, a supplemental appropriation of some sort to move funds a little sooner.

Otherwise, just know that things would potentially be delayed.

So moving forward into the options, and we'll detail each of these for you briefly, but as Chip mentioned at the outset, staff has been proceeding from the direction of council from 2019 to work towards a design-build project that can accommodate the parking needs of the courts, as well as some additional needs in the downtown area, and that's really item 1A, continue as currently

contemplated and underway.

1B is a slightly smaller facility on half the parcels, half of the property, the east parcel.

1C is a surface lot on the east parcel.

And then option two there is just to stop everything for the moment and reconsider what the best options might be.

So I'll jump into these real quickly.

Some of these you have probably seen in previous briefings, particularly this one.

This is Concept 1A, which is a structure that has ground level commercial street activated.

So on the Market Street side, there would be retail spaces to activate that sidewalk and then 200 to 300 spaces above

in a four-level facility.

This was designed conceptually.

It's not designed.

It's a conceptual concept at this point that was done by Kim Lee Horn, the professional engineer that engaged with us on this project.

It is the one that ultimately they explored several concepts, but this is the one ultimately settled on.

A lot has been said about 300 spaces.

There's no magic to that other than that's how they

that's the total they came up with when they finished the concept but until it's designed that's really not until it's designed we don't know for sure with respect to to why 300 spaces from our perspective the the county requirement is for 90 spaces so that plus the 63 space surface lot which would which would go away

is essentially the baseline that we would work with.

So 153 would be the minimum to not lose capacity in the downtown area.

So we asked them to at least cover that as well as work within the buy rate zoning that is on this site.

And given the zoning has some step backs after 45 feet of height that make parking structures significantly more challenged to build.

So essentially they recommended

staying within that by right zoning and envelope and staying at the four levels.

We're also aware that some spaces will be lost in the general vicinity of the City Hall area, including the ones that I mentioned at Court Square that are part of this agreement.

Those are within a walking distance of this site, as well as the Water Street Trail, which was completed last

about a year ago.

There were some street spaces that were lost there.

And the big one here is obviously the Belmont Bridge, which is scheduled to start soon.

And that results in a loss of 50 spaces just over the railroad tracks from this area.

So kind of factoring those in, 200 to 300 spaces would seem to be a reasonable number to help

cover the MOA as well as the surface lot in the nearby lost spaces that we are aware of.

Option 1B is the east parcel.

So the parcel that's at the corner of 9th and Market.

And so this would essentially leave the surface parcel

at 7th and Market untouched and you would potentially preserve that for future development and build a smaller facility on the east parcel and this just shows that approximately 140 to 200 spaces once again not designed so to be determined exactly once it actually would get designed.

This does include some commercial space.

It's obviously less than the other larger version.

So it would have some street level activation, but not as much as the previous option.

And this is option 1C, which was designed in-house by staff in a rough fashion just to get a sense of what could be accommodated on the east parcel if a surface lot were to be implemented.

and you're looking at somewhere between 30 and 40 spaces.

There is some topography here that causes some challenge to the western side of the site and a retaining wall to be put in place.

But in any case, this is an option.

It does add some capacity to the area in terms of available parking and could help meet the overall demand.

So then this chart just simply shows those four options across here and kind of lines them up with does it meet the timeline?

What is the approximate cost?

Does it generally in general terms meet the MOA?

And then the last column is a little bit more subjective in terms of the impact on the downtown area from a business visitor, people doing business downtown kind of perspective.

and 1A is the larger facility so obviously the considerable capacity is added to downtown.

It is the most costly and that is an estimate at the $10 million and it's close on the timeline although we would have to move pretty quickly to meet the absolute dates.

The east parcel costs a little bit less and once again very much an estimate

it does add some additional capacity, so we see that as a positive overall for the downtown as well as accommodating the memorandum of agreement.

The surface lot is certainly considerably cheaper and believe can certainly meet the timeline.

As for the impact, it does not add additional capacity, in fact,

would lose capacity if you were to designate the entirety of the 63 space lot plus whatever you generate on this site would barely cover the need for the county, the county's need.

So it generally does not add considerable capacity.

So it's not necessarily

beneficial to the overall downtown situation.

And then obviously, if you were to cancel, that's probably the worst of all scenarios and leave and not do anything.

Certainly saves money in the short term, but leaves the county with the option to pick between the two options, which would certainly have impact on the area.

And this is the last slide, and this just summarizes those again, 1A, B, and C, and then the cancel option.

I should also note that the memorandum of agreement is very detailed as it relates to a number of items, but it does not necessarily contemplate item 1B or 1C, and depending upon how that's interpreted, it may require an amendment to the MOA.

to allow those to meet the agreement.

We don't know how those would be received, but I do want to mention that obviously 1A happens.

That is fully within the context of the MOA and don't see any issues there.

I would also just mention we're having this conversation within the context of the joint court project, which is driving a lot of this

conversation in this need and this demand.

But the Market Street parking garage, which is close by and has been mentioned as a potential place for the MOA to be, you know, for the parking to be placed.

But that facility is 46 years old.

itself, and we haven't really had significant discussions internally or with council or others about the future of that.

It's about to have a structural reassessment as it does every five or seven years.

That'll be happening soon, so we'll get another glimpse as to what its lifetime might look like, but it's probably in the city's best interest to start thinking about what a plan for replacement looks like.

Obviously having another facility nearby would help alleviate that when and if the day comes that Market Street is no longer available.

So I did just want to add that as an additional piece of context as you consider what the direction might be.

Thank you.

The question that I had was, I was reading recently, like last few days, that the county is getting advice that perhaps they don't need as much court space as they had originally thought.

I'm wondering, number one, do we know anything more about that

Councilor Snook, yes, I did have an opportunity to meet with county staff earlier this week, yesterday, and while

The demand on the courts has been documented as being lower than the original estimates.

There's still the need to renovate the same square footage of the courthouses.

There'll be one less courtroom, but they're not anticipating any less staff people.

There is a change in how they'll do court business, especially after the pandemic.

But the county said that they still are anticipating the same need and parking based on the same square footage of renovation as before.

And I can say as part of that same conversation, though it was not with the Board of Supervisors, the staff felt very comfortable in saying that as long as parking was provided in the close proximity to the courthouse square, whether it was in a parking garage, surface parking, or anything else, that that should be acceptable.

It's something we would have to get addressed officially

Yeah.

Are these parking spaces for staff or for court visitors or what's envisioned here?

It's a combination of both.

It's our understanding that the staff I can't specifically speak to, but their visitors, their jurors, their visitors to the court have the option to

Well, they can park wherever they want, but they many park in the market street parking garage.

There's a validation system, as many of you are aware, and the county participates in that system, whereby if you bring your ticket, they will validate it with another ticket that will allow you as the user free parking, and they pay that cost.

So the majority, as we understand it, the majority of their

Jurors are directed to the Market Street parking garage.

I don't know if they all park there.

They could park on the street.

They could park elsewhere.

And I cannot speak specifically to where the staff parks.

Some.

There's a parking area next to the Levy Opera House that's probably 20 spaces or something like that that will get converted to other uses.

Yes, that's correct.

Part of it is that they're contemplating, or at least they were contemplating until the most recent discussion,

The 100 space number, as we understand it, you know, this is a couple of years ago now, but that was generated by their court consultant that looked at the caseload and did a projection.

Now, all of that's changed a little bit, but as Chip just referenced, they're still going to have the same number of staff and the same square footage.

So it's our understanding that this is a significant investment for both parties, more significant for the county, obviously.

And they had concern about the parking being available for the duration of the building, if you will.

So a significantly long period of time.

And so they're not only looking at today, but, you know, 20, 30 years from now.

That is correct.

There are no reservations in the Market Street parking garage as it operates today, which allows it to operate fairly efficiently.

The county was clear about having exclusive use of the spaces, and that to us means a sign that says, you know, county court use only eight to five Monday through Friday, which is

This has been asked before, but, you know, there's the 60s, around 60 spaces on the existing surface lot.

What is it that blocks the feasibility of meeting the court's agreement by providing, you know, a very small structure

parking with another deck behind it providing you have 30 or so spaces on the west side of a lot as opposed to the east side of the lot.

So that option, the 7th and Market Street corner option was looked at.

It's shaped a little differently.

And given the notion of having some ground activated, some retail on the ground level, essentially makes the first level pretty limited.

So I think the number of spaces per level on that site was somewhere in the 25 to 27 per level.

So you could do a three or so level deck.

You essentially get 80 to 90 spaces out of it in the best case scenario.

So it could be done.

It's not terribly efficient and it becomes one of these things where it's almost like a corkscrew because it's so tight.

So you're doing a lot of turning when you're going up, if you can envision that.

What sort of estimated cost level is it?

It's probably similar to the east parcel option that we just showed you there.

But once again, these are all general estimates.

The one we have the best kind of faith in is option 1A that they spent a little bit more time digging into.

And then, given the concern raised about, you know, even pursuing the surface lot option that it's not, you know, providing full replacement of spaces lost, has there been any contemplation if, you know, or that direction combining that

I don't think we've spent a lot of time thinking about it in regard to the surface lot piece.

That's a fairly new option that came along within the last couple of months.

I'll have Rick maybe speak a little bit about that.

He's on with us today and he's been active in communicating with the Comprehensive Plan team and adding some language about

Transportation Demand Management Techniques.

You're on mute, Rick.

Yep, I'm off now.

Transportation Demand Management's not magic.

It's getting people out of their automobiles and into another form of transportation.

It is generally a very long-term solution and it requires a lot of comprehensive cooperation.

If a lot of the people who work and visit downtown come from in the county or neighboring counties, then we need to work with those counties in working out

Mass Transit options that are more attractive than driving your car or we have to work out park and ride lots that somehow are more attractive than driving your car to the Market Street or Water Street garages.

It's simply a very complex issue.

Other communities that have done TDM plans have generally worked on them

for years and years to reduce the single occupancy vehicle trips.

Well, and I

Somewhat, you know, one of the questions I think looming over all of it is just the extent to which COVID does or does not, you know, change parking utilization.

Because I would just highlight over the past four months, at least from the data from the city, I think even at peak utilization, there's never been less than 600 spaces available in Water Street and less than 100 in Market Street.

That could be off, but that's a data visualization I'd seen for someone in the community.

Of course, the question is, how permanent will that be?

Certainly won't be that forever, but how much has changed?

Likewise, the caseload has gone down over 60%, as Councillor Snook mentioned earlier, for the courts.

The final question I would have right now is sort of open-ended is, you know, has it ever been contemplated to

I'm not aware of any conversation to that extent.

Yeah, yeah, nothing in any detail.

Just the most recent conversations really seem, the county seemed to hold steady of the need for the 90 spaces.

Are there any other questions at this time?

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

We've got 17 people in the audience right now.

If you'd like to address counsel, click the raise hand icon in the Zoom webinar to get in line.

Each person will have one opportunity for a three-minute set of remarks.

If you're watching via Facebook,

or Comcast or Boxcast and you'd like to join us, join the webinar at charlottesville.gov slash Zoom.

Right now we have two hands up.

The first one will be Joan Fenton followed by Chris Schauper.

Joan, you're on with council.

Hi, thank you for taking my comments.

I just think that if you look at the number of parking spots that have been lost downtown and will be continuing to be lost downtown,

This is a neutral amount of parking spots that are going to be added.

We have lost so many spots, and with the Belmont Bridge coming up and several other projects, this is simply going to replace the parking that's being lost.

So it's not a, oh wow, we're going to get a whole lot more parking.

Downtown is continuing.

No matter what happens with the results of COVID, the entertainment venues are going to continue to be bringing downtown.

If you talk to any one of the venues, they'll all say that they see the need for additional parking.

It's lovely to think that people are going to walk downtown, but face it, you're not driving your bicycle to go to a concert and go home at midnight.

People are going to drive.

And this is a critical part of the city's economy that I understand that you don't want to spend money on parking and there's so many other needs.

But if we do not have the parking spots for people, it's a net loss for the city.

Parking garages pay for themselves in the long run.

The investment now will pay for itself.

And in the end, you're going to make money because businesses will thrive and will bring people down.

You'll collect more taxes.

And you also have a credibility problem.

If the city doesn't follow through on agreement that they had with the county on this issue,

You already have people that don't trust the city to keep their word.

And this is another example.

I don't see how you can think that any organization, any business, let alone UVA or the county, are ever going to want to partner with the city again if you just walk away from this.

This was a long time to get negotiated.

There was a huge issue to keep the courts downtown, and this was a major piece of getting the county to agree to do it.

And I think walking away from that

means that every council can undo everything that every previous council did.

And I just can't fathom doing that.

I think I've said all I want to say.

Next up is Chris Shopper, who will be followed by Crystal Passmore.

Chris, you're on with council.

Hey, everyone.

Thank you for letting me speak to you guys today.

I think I'm going to have an interesting contrast to what Joan had to say.

I've actually attended upwards of five concerts via walking or biking.

So you can already tell there's a bit different of an approach.

I've taken the bus to a concert, I biked over, and I've walked from my apartment on First Street where I used to live.

And

I guess I don't quite see it as I don't see the need for parking as pressing as what Joan was talking about, particularly for concerts, which she mentioned as one of her big parking demand times.

The times when those are occurring are oftentimes in the evening or on weekends where

Peak parking demand is Monday through Thursday from 9 to 5, so there's really not a ton of overlap there between the people that are using it, and there's never been issues with availability of spaces during those times, but

On a broader, more macro level, I had emailed counsel last night just highlighting some trends that I think should make us really stop and think about this project.

In particular, I think the way in which people are working is very different.

My company, Merkle, had previously we would have 240 people out of the office

And we commissioned a survey across 15 of our offices nationwide.

For the Charlottesville office in particular, only 39% of those that work there indicate that they plan on coming back to the office eventually.

So that means people that typically would have driven from Albemarle, from Crozet, are not going to be making that drive in anymore.

And I actually look nationally, it looks like that 39% tracks

with what other businesses are seeing.

So if we're anticipating that parking is going to come roaring back and that demand is going to be where it was in January or February, maybe that'll happen.

Maybe it won't.

But at least from my perspective, I think it's a little early to make that judgment that

Water Street and Market Street will be as crowded as they were at least for the next several years.

So I think in some, I would lean towards wanting to go towards Option 1C or Option 2.

I think the issue with the massive parking structure is it's very difficult to decide, hey, we don't need this or this isn't necessary anymore.

And all of a sudden, we've got this huge concrete structure that can't go anywhere.

But obviously, we'll defer to you guys.

I had gotten a nice response back from Lloyd yesterday that kind of continuously illuminates that there's a lot more going on behind the scenes that I don't understand.

So obviously, you guys are juggling that.

And I only have my perspective here.

So I think that's all I've got to say.

We have four hands raised right now.

Next up is Crystal Passmore, who will be followed by Jarrett Gold.

Crystal, you're on with council.

You've got three minutes.

We can.

Okay, great.

Thank you for taking my call.

I also just kind of wanted to push back on the thought that the parking garage would pay for itself.

I don't know if we've paid off either of the other two parking garages that we put up recently.

And I think the way that the city charges for parking is a very low charge for those spaces, such that it doesn't end up paying for the garage itself.

I also think if we think it's going to pay for itself,

by bringing in business to the city.

Maybe the Downtown Business Association could chip into the cost of building the garage.

You guys also mentioned, I'm sorry, I tuned into the call a little bit late.

You guys also mentioned encouraging other modes of transportation and how that takes some effort and some thought.

It occurs to me that maybe not

If we don't provide parking for people, if we don't provide an excess of parking for people, that's one way of encouraging people to take other modes of transportation.

If what we keep doing is building more and more parking structures, we're never going to encourage anyone to take another mode of transportation.

So that could be, and I'm not talking about taking away parking spaces at this point, but in order to get people to use other modes of transportation, you have to make

Parking look less nice, look less good.

You want people to have like for other alternatives to look better.

I know we're also doing the land use map right now and it would be nice if we could get more sidewalks and if we could get people living closer to downtown such that they didn't have to drive into the city and park in these spaces.

I think that's that's all I want to say to you guys.

I mean,

Again, I joined a little bit too late, but any choice to make that doesn't involve building a massive concrete structure, I think is preferable to building a massive concrete structure.

We currently have two hands raised.

Next up is Josh Karp, who will be followed by Kirby Hutto.

Josh, you're on with counsel.

We can.

Okay, I wrote you all a long-ish email before, so I'll try and keep it short today.

So yeah, I think you've already heard some good points about maybe building something smaller or taking more time to consider your options.

I just wanted to make a few points about transit demand management.

So Rick Siebert's the expert.

I think you made a good hire with him.

And he's right that TDM isn't magic and it isn't easy.

It takes years of work to get it right.

But you got to start somewhere.

So we got the report in 2015.

I know there's been some work on TDM since then.

There was a brief pilot on metered parking downtown.

And I know there are reasons why it's been hard to focus on parking because bigger stuff is happening in Charlottesville lately.

I get that.

But we have to start somewhere.

And we should have started six years ago.

Given that we didn't, we should start now.

And I'm not saying it's easy, but we should try something.

And I just want to mention a lot of TDM policies are frankly unpopular, right?

Like I don't like paying a meter.

Nobody likes paying a meter.

Some stuff is easier than others.

And I did want to reiterate the suggestion to look into a parking cash out program for city staff and for other downtown workers.

For many years, I worked out of the Omni Business Center at Center for Open Science, living in Belmont, living in North downtown.

and I got free parking and I didn't always use it, but I had it.

And so I didn't give it up because why would I give it up when I have free parking?

What you can do as an employee yourself and encourage people to do on the mall is to say, if you don't want your parking, you can have the cash value of that parking.

And if you said to me, do you want to go up your free parking for nothing?

I'd say no.

If you said, do you want to go up your parking pass for a hundred bucks a month?

I would say, yeah.

I live a mile away.

Yeah, no problem.

That's not going to fix parking downtown by itself.

Some businesses already do it, some don't.

But it's the kind of thing that would have pushed me living in Belmont from driving most days to figuring out the bus, biking, walking.

All I'm saying is there's stuff we can do.

And if we do nothing, we'll get nothing in return.

So sorry, this is not as short as it's supposed to be.

But yeah, I think let's try something more than nothing.

And let's try and take our time and not build anything that we're going to be stuck with for 50 years.

Thanks for your time.

We have three hands raised.

Next up is Kirby Hutto, who will be followed by Chris Yor.

Kirby, you're on with council.

Thank you, Brian.

Thanks, counselors, for letting us chime in here.

I want to emphasize sort of the long view since I've been involved with downtown since the early 90s.

Back then, downtown was dead.

I mean, there was very little retail.

The upper floors of the buildings were empty.

Council at that point made a wise decision to build the Water Street Garage, which provided the

the inventory to allow businesses to come down and open.

Since that time, we've really transformed downtown into a destination.

It's not simply the nine to five workers.

It's not simply retail.

But now you have that evening traffic, which is transient.

So it's people coming downtown to dine, to go to the movies, to go to a show, to go to a festival.

It's going to be very hard to move those people into other

forms of transit because the hours that they're coming down are oftentimes going to be after the buses have quit running.

So we need that peak demand if we're going to continue to see all that thriving activity.

The other piece that's really important to think about is we have lost hundreds of spaces since the last investment in a type of structured parking.

You have to stem that loss at some point, and really this proposal simply stops the bleeding for a while.

We know that we're going to continue to lose spaces as the Belmont Bridge takes 50, the Levy Avenue development, which is now mainly city employee parking, that's going to be redeveloped in the near future.

All the small

Projects like the Water Street Trail that loses a dozen.

Over time, those add up and you have to replace it to keep the health of the community.

And then the big fear that really worries me is what are we gonna do when Market Street is at the end of its useful life?

So on the plus side, you've got a complete block of mall front property, which is a huge potential for redevelopment there.

But where are you gonna find the replacement

where you can build new structured parking to accommodate that need.

So that need, it may lessen over the years.

We're seeing a little bit of a trough right now with COVID, but if we have faith in downtown, we know that demand is going to come back because we have seen that people want to work downtown, they want to live downtown, they want to recreate downtown.

And we want all of that because that generates the economic activity that provides jobs and that generates tax revenue.

And you have to be taking that long view.

And I think that this project is simply critical for that.

And I encourage you to continue on the path forward.

Next up is Chris Ewer, who will be followed by Jamel Bowie.

Chris, you're on with council.

Thank you, Brian.

And thank you, council, for listening to our comments.

I wanted to first speak to Kirby's comment about the downtown coming back.

And I think some of this is transferable to the offices as well.

Obviously, when you're in the venues, I am at the Paramount Theater.

When you're in the venues, your biggest fear is we may book them, but they won't come.

And so we're not sure how they

Patrons are going to respond to being able to relax all the safe distancing, etc.

Well, we went on sale on Monday.

A promoter is bringing a comedian to the Paramount and we went on sale at 10 o'clock and within two hours we'd sold over 800 tickets to the point the promoter added a second show.

So then the next day by 11, we were over 1,200 tickets.

So my response to that is people are just really clamoring to get out of their houses and do something.

If that is any indication that the downtown will be coming back,

They will be coming back.

And I know Kirby and I are both really working hard together to bring the downtown back because we know when we're open and we're thriving, so are the restaurants and the shops and we work together as a team down here.

And frankly, hearing the conversation that the parking garage isn't going to be built, it's almost like a kick in the stomach after working so hard to remain open during this crisis and do what we can for the downtown area.

And I don't know where our patrons will park.

And frankly, a lot of these people that bought these comedian tickets are not from Charlottesville.

They're regional addresses that we see in our database.

So if we make it difficult for them to come here, they'll go to Altria or they'll go to another venue.

And that is a lot of lost revenue for the city and for the downtown businesses.

So I really do beg you all to rethink this commitment to not just the community of the downtown area, but everyone in general.

As Kirby said, we've spent years building up the downtown area.

Please don't get in the way now.

It really has a promise to come back swinging.

We have one hand raised at this time.

Now two.

Next up is Jamel Bowie, who will be followed by Rory Stolzenberg.

Okay, thank you.

Hi, thank you for hearing our comments.

I just want to make a couple quick points.

The first is that I think when

thinking about the necessity of additional structured parking, we really should be focused on whether or not there's been any demonstrated need for it.

And the data the city collects, the 2015 parking study, both strongly suggests that with better parking management, there's all the parking we need downtown.

There's a need for an additional structure.

I think also

When we're thinking about an additional structure, we have to think about the opportunity cost.

I think Joan had said earlier that it'll pay for itself.

What else will pay for itself that isn't a parking garage that adds, I think, actual use to people who live in the community?

And I think that's my major point.

A parking garage that goes there is going to be there for 50 years and be there for 75 years.

Once it's built, by the time it comes down, I'll probably be dead.

Most of the people talking about this will probably be dead.

Do we want our children, our grandchildren

to have a downtown Charlottesville that is dominated by looming parking structures at a time when we know that we're transitioning away from car-centric development, that we're transitioning away from a paradigm that focuses entirely on bringing tourists to downtown rather than encouraging usages for people who live in Charlottesville who are residents.

And I don't know that if we're thinking in the long term that's what we want to do.

Because once we do it, once we build the structure, it's there.

It's there for a generation.

And so instead of thinking of this, I think in the short term, short term business revenues, short term parking needs, needs that we know are already being met.

and are subject to forces that could radically change them in just a few years.

Rather than focus on that, I think we should be looking to the next 50 years.

What do we want Charlottesville to look like in 2071?

And do we want that Charlottesville to be dominated by parking structures that may not even be used down the line?

So as council makes a decision about what they're going to do with the garage, I would strongly encourage them not just to think about

the next five years or the next 15 years.

But think about the life of the building itself and what that will do to the streetscape, what that will do to the neighborhood such that it is, what that will do to the things that attract people to downtown, which aren't parking garages.

They are the activities and people have been more than willing to come to enjoy those activities, even in the face of what some say is a parking shortage.

Next up is Rory Stolzenberg, who'll be followed by Jake Mooney.

Rory, you're on with council.

Thanks, Brian, and good afternoon, council.

Staff are asking you today for additional funding for their pet garage, the tune of $7 million.

That's 70 years of funding in the CIP for new sidewalks.

In addition, for a total of 141 years of new sidewalk funding dedicated to their garage.

To do so, they're once again presenting a wildly skewed version of reality, aligning obviously relevant information that you all are well aware of.

They're spinning you this story about losses in parking, down to the detail of seven on-street parking spaces lost for the Water Street Trail.

But they're completely omitting all of the new spaces that have been added downtown.

There are, in the next year, 308 spaces in the Apex Building, 192 spaces in 323,

74 spaces in code, not including the 63 spaces coming online in Article Lodger.

That's 574 new private parking spaces created for free by our parking requirements that drive up the cost of buildings but get us parking provided without government expenditure.

They talk about spaces lost for the Belmont Bridge

not talking about how spaces are coming back, not talking about how the city is paying for 60 new spaces to be created on the empty grass field next to Champion that will be public parking.

They write in their report that it's inconceivable to accommodate port parking spaces in the Market Tree Garage.

They give this threat to close Market Tree Garage entirely to hourly parkers to rile up the Downtown Business Association in their defense.

It can be really easily conceived of that these can be accommodated, not just because these spaces are already being used by courts partners,

But I would also remind you that, according to Rick Siebert, in January 2019, 150 city employees park in the Market Street Garage every day.

Now, somehow in their report, they didn't once mention the Water Street Garage at all, but we do know that the Water Street Garage always has many spaces available.

We could offer city employees an incentive, a monetary incentive, to park in the Water Street Garage instead.

We could even make parking free for them instead of the reduced cost, $60 a month,

And it would cost a tiny, tiny fraction of what this garage costs.

Now, Ms.

Benton, Mr. Hutto, and Ms.

Ewert mentioned venues, and I think that's a great point.

In fact, the data show that nighttime, when venues and restaurants are busiest, are exactly when we have plenty of parking.

The peaks happen in the middle of the day from commuters, and spaces available at night are more than ample.

Now, Mr. Siebert dismisses the idea of transportation demand management.

But transportation demand management is more than transit.

It also includes carpooling.

It includes working from home.

We know that remote work has blown up.

And one day of work moving forward at home per week per employee equates to a 20% drop in demand for garage spaces.

It's easy to see a time where transportation demand management can make our current garage spaces, which are already ample,

more than abundant and eliminate the need for any new parking, especially for... Thank you.

Mayor Walker, next up is Jake Mooney.

Jake, you're on with counsel.

Hi, thank you.

I've already sent you a letter and I don't want to rehash all that.

But I just and of course, Rory just made my point.

But I just wanted to say, you know, a there's not a parking shortage downtown.

B, there is really not a parking shortage downtown at night.

I mean, that's the city's data.

The garages are not full at night.

So, you know, I love the Paramount.

I love the Pavilion.

I wish them both the best.

But there is no shortage of parking spaces for the people who use those venues.

And so really, we shouldn't even be talking about that.

And that's all I have.

and anyone else who'd like to speak to Council, please click the raise hand icon.

All right.

Thank you.

So, Council, I'll just start off since I didn't ask any questions for our discussion.

I

Because of all the work that the previous council did, we came in and there had been a lot of tension.

So I understand the concerns about credibility issues, because there were a lot going into the decision about this parking garage.

And I feel better that there are

other options than the, I think, 1A options to still meet that need for the county.

For me, being someone who had worked in the court system previously and knew how difficult it was for clients to be everywhere they needed to be, it was important for the courts to remain downtown.

I thought it would be a challenge for people to try to, you know,

get to two different court systems and attorneys who already have a challenging time serving, especially low income, what the court system calls when people need indigent defense, that if those attorneys are traveling back and forth from a county to city,

Courtroom and very different places that that would have decreased the already little time they tend to spend per client.

So that was my decision point, trying to make sure that this worked out so that we could keep the courts together, because unfortunately, a lot of our citizens are still spending too much time in both court systems.

I think some of the points that were just brought up, but I had them in my notes too.

What does post-COVID that peak hours Monday through Friday

look like, what is staff considering in terms of work from home and is there a possibility that to decrease the demand on parking that that becomes part of our plan?

I think it should be a part of our plan no matter what, but if that is an option.

I also was on the PDC for a while

and I know that there are conversations happening

about ride share, park and ride.

And so it seems like even though that's that it isn't magic that it's possible for us to just tie into some of that existing work to try to expand for the need for people who live outside of the area can't afford to live downtown or there's not enough housing to live downtown but need to

you know work downtown or when people want to visit downtown and the last thing that I think is hopeful is the

hopefully that because we have seen that things are possible with our court system and COVID that those docket numbers can shift.

We are talking about in the Imagining Just Seville work group, what does diverting people pre-charge and keeping people out of the court system.

So if the city and county makes a commitment

to keep their citizens out of the courtroom when it's possible.

then that should also limit some of the impact on, you know, parking even for the need that the county this deal is for.

But I still think that the council the project and not honor our parking needs with the county should not be part of, should not be a part of, it should not be an option.

and but I think it also doesn't have to be 1A and I am interested I guess one of my questions is the severe rating on just using the surface lot I will you know after I'll probably have some more questions

And the severe rating was on the cancel project option.

Thank you.

I don't have it in front of me.

All right, then I don't have that.

Sure, I'm happy to try and answer that.

I think that the primary answer is those are private developments that are being built to serve the development itself.

Most of those will not have a public option, at least not during the business hours, as I understand it.

So the other piece is they're not proximate to the court.

So, you know, parking over

on Garrett Street to go to the court is not going to be as attractive to obviously parking in the Market Street garage, for instance.

But the primary, I mean, the caller is correct in that developments are building parks, some more, some less.

But they are, for their internal uses, first, if they have excess, they may do monthly rentals or something of that nature.

I don't believe any of them have plans.

to have kind of public access as our public garages do where anybody can come in at any time and pay a fee.

So that I think would be the response to those.

They are new spaces but they're not available certainly during peak and the callers are correct.

Peak is midday and it's weekday.

In the evenings we have plenty of available space

Thanks.

Yes.

Well, first, another question.

I know one of the ideas that has come up in the past had been

there's those 60 existing spaces on the surface lot and the idea of looking for partnerships or acquisitions which could provide those additional 30 spaces to meet the deal and just going over again, what were sort of the limitations of that and what prevented it from coming together.

And likewise, is my understanding correct that in the agreement,

and any other option that we would want to raise would have to be agreed to by the county.

That's my interpretation.

Thank you.

Any options like that to identify existing parking spaces that could

combined with the surface lot during those court hours from 7 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

Were any of those explored or contemplated with obviously the caveat that it would need to go to Albemarle County to approve that option?

But was it ever explored as something that could even be brought to the county?

I can say in general terms we have looked all around the area for additional spaces and have made inquiries and have not had success.

We have not taken anything to the county for their review because of that.

As Chip referenced earlier, it sounds like as long as it's proximate they would be amenable to it.

But the landscape is what it is.

You look around, there's not a lot within close proximity that's available.

Okay.

Well, yeah, I mean, I guess my general thoughts, as I've shared before, but we'll reiterate is, I think, I feel like there's sort of three simultaneous issues that I'm thinking about in terms of, you know, the direction to go.

And one is

or four really.

One is the court's agreement itself.

And I think we all agree the importance of meeting that and to eliminate any risk of the court, the admiral courts moving from there.

The second is the cost and the opportunity cost.

and spending 10 to $15 million on a parking structure versus what that money could be spent on.

We're having a conversation with the schools tomorrow.

Certainly this project alone, the money from it wouldn't get us to school reconfiguration, but it's a piece of it when we're looking at the opportunity cost there.

Third for me is the efficient use of land on such a critical entrance corridor so near to the mall.

And fourth is this broader issue of parking in the downtown area.

And I guess for me, again, meeting the court's agreement, I don't think there's any suggestion from anyone that we shouldn't do that or that it's not a priority to do that.

As I've said before, I think spending 10 to $15 million on structured parking is just not the most efficient and wise use of our money when we're looking at all our competing needs and how tight our CIP budget already is.

Third, when it comes to this broader issue of parking in the downtown area, you know, one of the things that just continues to concern me is, you know, we hear a lot about perceptions, but I haven't seen a lot of data to back up that there is a severe parking shortage.

Even before COVID, there were always spaces available in the Water Street Garage when the Market Street Garage was full.

As others have mentioned, it only reaches peak capacity occasionally during midday, during weekdays.

So we're spending $15 million to address a problem that exists for a couple hours, which could always be resolved by someone going to the Water Street Garage.

And that's in addition to all these other private spaces that exist, which are always available, as well as

paid parking that is always available.

And one of the data points that I always like to say, because it just sticks with me, is the perception of parking shortage versus the reality.

We have our 2015 study, which didn't recommend new parking study, but I don't think it got into perceptions, but Richmond did.

And

Peak utilization during day 67% downtown, peak utilization at night 69%, always 30% or more of spaces available even at peak hours.

And yet over 70% of people said there's not enough parking.

I think we're in a similar situation here.

I haven't seen data to support that there's a parking shortage or that the existing parking stock is doing any damage to downtown businesses.

It would seem that pedestrian traffic helps them.

So to me, it seems like the damage from option one, see the surface lot is not that

I don't know if there's really any damage there and that that couldn't be combined with transportation demand management, which is also in our draft comp plan.

And if we think that it can't or isn't feasible to implement, well, then perhaps you should just take it out of the comp plan.

I don't think we should do that.

But it seems like the kind of thing we could implement to solve that issue there.

And to me, I mean, the ideal would be exploring, just seeing if there's a way to meet the agreement with the combination of that surface lot and the Market Street garage or other parking and taking that to Admiral County.

They may say no, but to explore that option because it's the cheapest.

And even though 1C seems better to me than building a new parking garage because it's way less money and also preserves the option.

to explore a better use in terms of lining up financing or plan to do a mixed use structure, potentially with housing, other things that we know isn't feasible in a year or two years, but may long term, we are still demolishing the existing businesses to there, which to me is still a loss because

They're some of the only affordable businesses in the downtown area, and that's a real loss.

But I recognize we don't exist in a perfect world.

And if we're forced to choose from these options, it would seem to me like one sees doing the least damage.

That said, I would just add, I realize it may not be likely or possible, but would still be interested in, given how much has changed and the fact that court cases have gone down 60%, the change in remote working and how permanent that may be, at least asking the question to the county, whether they would be open to something like

Robert, M.D.

: Reverting ownership of the existing surface lot to them without them needing to pay for it, or perhaps whether they're open to having those spaces on the surface lot combined with, you know, a little less than 30 in the market street garage to get them to that 90 and that way we can do it.

Robert, M.D.

: Without additional costs are displacing those businesses and I realize again that may not be likely or possible, but to at least raise the question and ask given how much has changed.

Robert, M.D.

: So.

Like the county is open to alternatives as long as they receive the parking that is in the agreement and that, you know, we're not asking their citizens to walk a great distance and so

I think there may be some other options than even the one that you just presented, Michael.

I'd like to respond a little bit to some of the points that got made.

I agree with part of the analysis that comes from Josh Karp's very good data.

The part that I agree with is that there is apparently, even before COVID, not really a problem

with parking in the evenings.

There's a little bit of a bump around seven o'clock, particularly on Fridays and Saturdays, but there's never really a problem there.

Frankly, my experience parking downtown in the parking garage on a Friday or Saturday evening is getting out of the garage because it can be 15 minutes, 20 minutes just to get out of the garage after a show is

over at the Paramount, but not the availability of the spaces.

Midday is a real problem.

Before COVID, there were usually about 50 parking spaces available in Market Street and about 100 parking spaces available in Water Street.

I'm talking now between basically 10 and 2.

And so if we were looking at reasonable expected growth and looking particularly at the county wanting to reserve spaces for its own operations, if it hadn't been for COVID, we would need those spaces unquestionably.

With COVID, it's very hard to say.

Now, the other thing I'll point out, Rory Stolzenberg had mentioned

the various parking spaces coming available in the code building in 72.

Well, code building people, as I understand it, had an agreement to rent 125 spaces in the Water Street parking garage because they recognized that 72 was never going to come close to cutting it as far as their demand goes.

In fact, if you look at the average number of people per square per thousand square feet that you expect in office buildings, like code, like the apex energy, like 323 Garrett, you could reasonably expect to have, I don't remember what the number was, something like a thousand more, more people coming to work in those buildings.

And apparently only about 500

Parking spaces were being provided.

So we could see that, again, pre-COVID, we were heading for a real problem with those places coming online.

So I decided a couple of months ago, however, that I thought that the changes from COVID were likely, number one, were significant right now.

Number two, were likely to continue for at least a year or two

and perhaps longer.

The people ranging from the Chamber of Commerce, nationally, all over the place, were saying that we could have as many as 50% of the office workers working from home or telecommuting or doing things other than working in conventional office buildings.

And so I figured let's wait until we see how that all shakes out

and particularly at a time when we've got a lot of crunch in our capital budget it seemed to be a good time to to not commit to spending that money particularly as I've mentioned before because I think that that that particular spot that particular lot and that particular design don't do very much for the way that I think that we want to be developing the city.

I've said before if we

If we built that structure, we would probably look back 10 years later and say, what were we thinking when we built only that parking garage?

If we're going to do something on that corner, and it can well incorporate 300 parking spaces, but it ought to be something more.

All of that's a long way around to say, I still think we need to adhere to, absolutely, we need to adhere to the agreement that 1C is the approach that makes the most sense for me in the short term, if it turns out

two years down the road that the downtown parking demand, the midday parking demand returns full force, then we will have about a million dollars in sunk costs, no question that that, and some of that was gonna be sunk anyway to tear down buildings and whatever all else.

So it would not be as horrendous, but I really think we're going to end up having to, I think that say five or 10 years from now, we're going to want to be building that parking garage.

I just don't think we need it now.

And if I can just build and use,

When we were discussing some of the other needs that the downtown buildings could potentially serve, it was definitely down the line.

But even thinking back to the city center idea that came up before, I hope that we keep that parking, the surface lot in play, because if you are

Talking about that current garage at its useful life at some point in the near future, I guess we'll hear more about that after the assessment that Chris Engle was talking about, but that creates an opportunity where we can say to the public that this land is being used for another, this will be a parking garage, but this older parking garage is going away for this new thing and that may be a better sale.

to the community if that corner lot is indeed the best place for a parking garage.

And from the limitations that were shared during the meetings a couple of years ago, that may be a better place for a parking garage.

And then where the current parking garage is at, we can reimagine that space for something that serves the community better.

And I would say, I actually agree with many of the points raised by my colleagues prior.

And just to Mayor Walker's point, just now, and what Lloyd has just said, I agree that this is an aging garage.

It's right on the downtown mall, and it is only going to go so far, and it's not going to be redeveloped as a garage in the future.

But I do have concerns about how we get to that point, because I do believe that a garage in some other capacity off the mall is going to be in our future, and

I would argue that we probably need it sooner than we think, but I also understand the many competing priorities we have and just the cost and opportunity costs have been raised.

But the loss of the parking spaces is going to be real, especially for city employees.

And we have to figure out within the organization, how are we going to accommodate our own employees?

And I think that's going to have to be some creative thinking around how do we get our own employees into the downtown area without providing them with parking immediately adjacent to city hall.

But I, you know, for me, it is this long view.

I, again, I just, I believe we're going to need something like this down the road and not too distant future.

And it's really, what are we going to do when we hit that point and we find that when we realize that's the case.

because it's gonna take a lot of juggling and it's gonna be an 18 month process and it's gonna be painful.

And so that's kind of the main thing weighing on me.

But right now it's just hard.

There is a lot of uncertainty given COVID, given the changes that we're hearing in terms of just the demands on the courts and what the county might be willing to negotiate.

I'm also interested in ways that we can increase the revenue that we take from the private sector, as someone was alluding to, that there's certainly demand coming from our public garages from the private sector.

Portions of those garages are intended for that purpose, and is there a better revenue game that we can be playing there to make that investment return on itself?

So I just

I, for me, there's just no way I could get on board with the number one thing is making sure that we follow through on a court suit on this agreement that the county will align with.

And I was, I just, for me, a non-starter was saying that we're going to take that out of the market street garage.

I don't think that's a viable solution.

And while I do believe that we need a structure, I certainly understand the position that we're in as a community and

I think that the only best kind of compromise option is to maximize as much of that surface parking.

Not that I want to be making surface parking lots in the downtown area, but this seems to be kind of where we are as we're in this wait and see mode and might have a sunk cost of a million dollars.

But I certainly hear where my colleagues are coming from.

I just, I understand why it's such a struggle to kind of get our heads around a significant investment in parking structure, but I do believe that we're going to get there.

If it's not today, it's not going to be too far in the future.

And then we have to really rethink what we're going to do with the existing garage down the road.

When I do believe that in the future, that reliance on cars will be less.

I just, I don't believe that we're there now.

And all of this commercial real estate growth that's happened while COVID has been going on, I do believe it's going to create tremendous demands in the downtown area.

And I want it to thrive.

Mayor, if I could try to maybe summarize what I'm hearing.

then perhaps you as a council will give us the definitive direction is that we should continue to explore and discuss with Albemarle County any type of options that they would be willing to consider, understanding the intent of the agreement, making sure that we honor the agreement, but seeing what type of opportunities and alternatives that we may have to provide parking

that the county needs and then the proximity that they need, understanding that their needs may be changing.

The second thing, if I'm hearing correctly, is that we should cease the movement towards the 200 to 300 spot garage and pursue the option 1C with the surface parking

Yeah.

And I would only add, you know, exploring with the county if there's any way to meet it without the need to demolish the two existing businesses, just because, you know, we already control 32 spaces there.

So we'd be demolishing two businesses for eight additional spaces.

Well, even though those spaces, there's 32 spaces outside of the surface lot, they are used for those businesses, but they're under the city's control.

Yeah, I agree.

And by the

I understand that point.

I just don't see them as 32 available spaces for the public purpose and I'm very sensitive about us reducing any of these number of spaces further than we already are considering given the other projects that are underway.

I'm hoping that we are going to be

So I haven't really spoken up too much about this.

I've been, I think, pretty clear where I stand on.

But just for myself, I am very much in favor of looking for some more creative ways to meet our obligations.

I definitely feel that we have, I have no intention of backing out of our obligations.

I know that was brought up earlier in some public comments and that is not something that I have any intention of doing and I don't think anybody else on council does from what I've been hearing.

I hope though we can also be investigating some other things that will help alleviate some of the parking demand downtown with things like park and ride lots, et cetera.

which would also help our mass transit in the future because as we're encouraging those that will then be helping to provide parking for people who are working downtown who can't afford to park in the parking garages on a regular basis.

I'm thinking of restaurant workers and retail workers who work downtown who

have to do the two hour shuffle by running out and moving their car.

So hopefully if we can also come up with some solutions on that end and reduce the parking of the people who work downtown, it will open up the parking for tourism and outside of the area parking and not put the pinch on the businesses as well, so.

I'm trying to look at this very holistically.

Thank you.

So it sounds like that we need a resolution.

Do we have the... Ms.

It's...

We can try.

It's difficult to prepare resolution on the fly.

We can do it Monday if that works better.

Yeah, I think that would work better.

All right, thank you.

It's a week from Monday.

We're off next week.

Yeah, okay.

Unless you want to do it on Memorial Day.

All right, so that takes care of item one.

Thank you, Mayor and Council, and thank you for that action.

giving direction and upcoming action.

It really helps all of staff for us to know what direction to be moving into.

I do think, speaking of direction, Darlene Williams, our Director of Charlottesville Area Transit, is going to provide a presentation on some proposed service route changes, and I think some of what he'll talk about will actually touch on some of the ideas that were brought up regarding providing alternative modes of transportation and trying to ease parking needs

in the downtown area.

Thank you, Mr. Boyles.

Good afternoon, council.

I have with me today Jim Baker with Kinetics Transportation, Ben Carson with Kinetics, Ben Chambers with Kimberly Horn, sorry, and Barry Herring with CAT to make this presentation.

So

Part of what we're doing today is going to bring some information to you.

Per the FTA, the governing body needs to be aware of any major changes that happen in the transit.

So I know this may be new to council, but as CAT continues to get bigger, this will be a routine occurrence where we'll be before you, talking about potential changes, getting your input, and making sure that CAT is going in the direction that council wants.

and then also making sure that we don't do anything that violates Title VI.

So part of what we are going to do today is we hired Kimberly Horn with their sub kinetics when the pandemic hit and we were looking at ways to be stronger when we came out of the pandemic.

So part of the service proposal today, we're gonna go through and Jim, will you pull up the presentation that will allow us

an opportunity to really go through and say, these are what we're looking at for FY22.

This is not designed to be a total revamp of our system.

This was kind of a stopgap measure because, as you know, over the last six years, CAT's ridership has been declining precipitously.

So what we're trying to do right now is stop that, build a nice foundation, and then build from there.

So part of today, we're looking at the existing network.

And as you can see at the bottom, it says CAT system optimization support services.

So what we've done in the heart of the pandemic is take a look at our system.

So pre-COVID, we had 13 existing routes, which included one free trolley.

Our span of service was from 6 a.m.

to midnight.

We had limited

Transportation Services on Sunday.

And our accessibility was about 62.5,000 people within a quarter of an hour of our service.

19.7, the minority population, 4,500 low income, and 2,800 had no vehicles.

So during the pandemic, we did make some changes to our service.

It did not affect our coverage.

We reduced our evening hours to nine o'clock to keep the exposure down for our drivers, reduced the frequency on a number of select routes, and we eliminated our Sunday service, which was our lowest ridership component to use that as a dedicated cleaning day.

Next slide.

So as we are going through kind of our historical trends,

which is what I wanted to show you is that, you know, our ridership has gone from in 2013, 2.4, went down in 2014, went back up a little bit in 2015, and then continued all the way down through 18.

And our ridership revenue hours, the number of passengers per revenue hours has continued to decline also.

It's gone from 27.1, 24.3, 23,

22.7 and continues to decline, but our costs continue to go up.

This is a recipe for, you know, not doing very well performance wise.

Next slide.

So our historical trends, we're looking at annual down projections about 15% over the last five years, where our bus hours over 100,000 hours

100,000 miles, 100,000 hours have increased about 17% of the same.

Our productivity has decreased about 27% over this five years, which also is a key that we needed to really take a look at our system.

Once again, the region is going to be doing a more

detailed deep dive that's gonna be done by the TJPDC.

But this is what Kat was doing to kind of be ready to come out hopefully in July, August of this year.

So recent trends for the weekday, as you can see, we've had an opportunity to actually get some data, which was really important.

And it looks like our ridership over the summer prior to COVID hitting,

We averaged weekday about 5,700 riders per day in the fall that went up due to primarily due to students coming back and went to 6,900.

And then the summer when COVID hit it went to about 2,600 riders.

Go to the next slide for me.

On Saturday, our summer ridership, same scenario happened summer ridership was about 3,100.

the fall was about 3,900 and then it dropped off to about 1,100 per day on a Saturday and then Sunday which is our lowest ridership with only four routes out there was 787, 940 and then zero could be used as a dedicated day for COVID cleaning.

So the primary objectives was, and I'm gonna turn this over now to Jim Baker with Kinetics.

Sure, thank you, Garland.

Yeah, just a real quick thing on those ridership trends.

What CAT experienced during COVID was really very common across the industry.

A lot of agencies were experiencing 50, 60, 70% drops in ridership.

A lot of them responded by immediately reducing service.

you know cat reduced service by about 30% and that was pretty typical in the industry as well just to try to you know respond to COVID so as we started this project one of the first things we did was we sat down with Garland and his team there to just understand what are some potential objectives as far as you know how service might be restructured coming out of COVID and

This slide here just kind of shows the elements that Garland and his team asked us to look at.

One is getting service on South First Street, providing service to the center on Ryo Road, getting Sunday service back to at least pre-pandemic levels or better, and getting more 30-minute or better service along some of the key corridors in the city.

Also, there was a few routes pre-COVID that were running at worse than 60 minute frequency, so we didn't want to have anything less than 60 minute frequencies.

And then to get the trolley, which is such a key part of the CAT system, back to a 15 minute frequency.

That was a route that service frequencies were reduced because of COVID.

As we looked at service changes, one of the things that

was built into our service proposals was assuming that at least on a temporary basis there, the downtown staging location would have to be moved because of the reconstruction of the Belmont Bridge.

And then we just also wanted to make sure that the new service plan had consistent spans of service that a customer would understand that they can rely on

service being out on the street for a particular amount of time there that they won't get stranded in the evenings and such.

We've got a couple maps here that just shows kind of the pre-pandemic versus pandemic maps here.

This one shows peak period and this next one shows midday period and it shows basically the green is 15 minute or better service, the red is

20 to 30 minute service frequencies and the blue is 60 minute frequencies.

And there's a lot of nuances here that's kind of hard to tell unless you really, you know, drill down and look hard at the map.

So just to kind of summarize that at a little higher level, I put together this slide that kind of summarizes what the major changes are that's being proposed.

And the first is to improve service frequency between the UVA campus and the US-29 corridor.

Right now, there's one route that serves that corridor.

We're proposing to extend another route to get two routes serving that corridor.

The second is to introduce a new crosstown service from South Charlottesville to the employment and shopping opportunities in the US-29 corridor.

The third is to enhance the where there's 30 minute or better all day service.

We've added some weekend service coverage that we thought was needed.

And we've added some new service coverage.

Out in the county along Mill Creek Drive.

First Street South, which is one of those objectives, as well as that I just mentioned, you know, some extending a route to enhance coverage between UVA and the hospital to the US-29 corridor.

This is just kind of a summary here as to what that proposed service would look like in terms of hours by route and just a split as to what that city-county hours and potential costs could be.

It's about a 65% of the service would be in the city.

And I would just say there, go back to that slide for one second, Jim, is that there

What we've also proposed is a small change on the amount of service that goes to the county versus the city in the year prior to.

The percent of service in the city was about 72%.

The percent of service in the county was about 28%.

So we've shifted some of the costs and some of the service, and that's what made up the difference.

It's about almost $150,000, $160,000 difference

And it's still the number of hours of service within the city is still slightly better than what it was pre-pandemic.

It's just that a lot of the additional services added out in the county.

That's

So we looked at just kind of on a high level what this potential network does here.

And in terms of like overall population accessibility, there's a little bit of additional coverage.

There's 1.7% increase in weekday coverage.

But really where it makes some significant improvements there is the 30 minute or better service.

It's a 20% of

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You know, a 5% increase in Saturday accessibility as well because of some new routes that are proposed on Saturday and a 10.5% increase on Sunday.

So improving some of that weekend service accessibility for residents.

I mentioned that, you know, that one of the

assumptions here is that there need to be some temporary changes to the downtown routing.

And so this is what would be proposed while the Belmont Bridge is reconstructed using High Street and Market Street and having the buses stage on Market Street between 6th and 8th while that bridge is being reconstructed.

And then just I wanted to kind of go through, you know, fairly quickly here on just kind of the route by route, what

kind of a existing being pre-pandemic versus proposed service changes would look like.

So you get a sense as to where the changes are occurring.

And this first slide here is just showing Route 1.

And there's really no alignment change that's proposed here.

But what is proposed is that this route currently only operates on weekdays.

And we thought it'd be very helpful

if this route could also operate on Saturdays as well to provide some new Saturday accessibility for residents along this route.

I've got slides like this for each route.

This basically shows existing versus proposed revenue hours for this particular route as well as the city county split in terms of the hours of service on the route.

And I've got some

Yeah, accessibility metrics as well in terms of general population, minority, low income population and jobs.

I would just kind of caveat that that when you look at these, you know, statistics on a route level basis, you know, you'll see some decreases on some routes.

Keep in mind that that's because part of the route was, you know, replaced, you know, was put on another route.

But in this case, route one, since we're not changing the alignment, the accessibility metrics are the same existing versus proposed.

Route 2 has a very significant change that's proposed.

Currently, it operates as a big one direction loop down Fifth Street and back up Avon Street.

And as a transit service planner, as Garland can tell you, big one direction loops is something that we really try to avoid because either on your way to your destination or your way from your destination, you're going to have a long trip.

And I will just say that change will make it easy to access the parking lot that's sitting right beside CATS headquarters.

And you'll see in the next slide, the coverage on 5th Street is replaced with another route here.

So when you look at the service statistics, this is what I was just commenting on earlier.

You look at the accessibility metrics and you see a decrease in the route to accessibility metrics, but that's because some of those, the population and jobs is now on another route.

So that's why caveat to keep in mind as you look at these route by route statistics.

But you do see a significant increase in the service hours because we are increasing this route to 30 minute, you know, all day service and both directions of travel.

And then we just wanted to kind of visually show

where the concentrations of population and jobs are.

This is again kind of at a high level because we're dealing with census block groups that can be kind of large, but basically, you know, a light green is where there's a high concentrations of population, a lighter blue is high concentrations of employment, and the darker colors is where you have high concentrations of both.

You can kind of see existing versus proposed, just what kind of those

You know, demographic characteristics look like along the route.

And then we did the same as just kind of graphing out or mapping out the minority and low income populations and to show what the accessibility looks like.

And these, by the way, are quarter mile buffers around the proposed route alignment.

So, you know, trying to indicate who might be within walking easy walking distance to the route.

And again, the yellow is kind of more the high concentrations of minority populations, the light blue

concentrations of low income, and then kind of that dark color is, the dark blue is kind of where you have high concentrations of both.

Route three, today on the map on the left, it's a route that goes down Fifth Street, and then it also serves the area just kind of to the south, southeast of downtown Charlottesville.

It's actually today at 30 minute peak in the peak periods and 60 minute frequencies in the midday.

A lot of the ridership is on the 5th Street part.

And what we really wanted to do here is break this route apart into two routes.

You know, the 3E can be called, you know, another number, but we just called it 3E for the east side for now.

But we really wanted to get 30 minute all day service on 5th Street, all the way down to Albemarle,

County's office building and to this current end of line.

And also get Sunday service on Fifth Street.

There is currently no Sunday service today in this corridor.

We thought that would be very beneficial.

And then 3E, where the map on the right, that would continue to operate as it is today with regards to 60-minute service frequencies.

And here's just basically the metrics here.

We're not changing any coverage, so that's why those numbers look the same.

And you can see the split there in terms of, you know, it's like 7,000 hours a year going up to 12,800 hours a year.

Route four, a city route from Willoughby Square to the UVA Hospital to downtown.

operates at an odd frequency, 23 minutes in the peak period, 70 minutes in the midday, and really the ridership isn't there for such robust peak period service, so we thought it'd be better to reallocate those resources to some of the improvements I just talked about.

and get this route on a consistent 60-minute frequency because those 70-minute frequencies, it doesn't really help when you get to the Downtown Transit Center and you're trying to transfer to another route because you cannot time the transfers, you know, you're always missing a route.

So at least getting it on a 60-minute frequency allows the opportunity to provide some time transfers.

and the metrics here actually a slight reduction in revenue hours because we're reducing some of that peak period service.

Route five, this is the route that currently runs from Barracks Road up to well to Fashion Square Mall and then on up to Walmart.

and what we've suggested here is, first of all, just ending it at Fashion Square Mall.

We've got another route, Route 7, that'll go up to Walmart.

And then second, just extending it from Barracks Road down to UVA and the UVA Hospital to get that extra service between Barracks and the UVA area.

And this,

Would you know today this route operates at 30 minute frequencies, we would propose doing the same in the future.

And you can see the the metrics here significant change in the accessibility metrics.

And, you know, fairly significant change in terms of the revenue hours as well.

And then this those maps there that just kind of visually shows where the densities are in terms of population and employment.

and where the densities are in terms of minority and low-income populations.

Route six in its current configuration is kind of an odd route.

It runs from downtown to Willoughby Square, but it makes a jog to the UVA hospital, but only in one direction, only when it's traveling southbound, I believe.

And so this route, this is a route we used to get some better coverage on the First Street South corridor and we cleaned it up to where it just operates between Willoughby Square and downtown and you'll see some changes later on Route 8 where we're picking up that lost coverage there to UVA Hospital.

And

you know actually because we eliminated that deviation of the UVA hospital we've got some savings in hours that we're using elsewhere and some reduction in accessibility metrics but again that's being covered by other routes there.

And then again this is just we're kind of showing where the densities are and then also for minority and low-income population.

And then Route 7, which is a very productive existing cat route.

It currently runs from downtown to barracks up to Fashion Square Mall with a split alignment there at Seminole Square and shops at Stonefield.

And what we wanted to do, really two things first.

It was get rid of that split alignment so that you have consistent two direction service on this route.

And so we've done that.

And we also, since this is a higher ridership route, this is a route that's connecting this corridor to downtown.

This is a route that we thought we'd prefer to have extended up to the Walmart, which is a major transit rider destination.

So that's what we're showing here.

We suggested this route would operate at 30 minutes, but with additional service,

between barracks and downtown to get 15-minute peak period service, at least on that part of the alignment.

It runs by Seminole Square, and we've got other coverage there to provide service to Stonefield.

And here's the metrics on that.

And again, there's this kind of map showing where the densities are with population and employment.

and Minority and Low-Income Population.

And then this is the Route 8 that does provide that service to Stonefield.

We've actually got two routes that provide service to Stonefield, this being one of them.

And this route currently operates from downtown to Stonefield,

We thought this would be an opportunity to create a new crosstown route from South Charlottesville for residents on the south part of town to get up to the US 29 corridor without having to go through downtown and without having to make a transfer.

So that's what's reflected here with this proposed alignment.

And you can see the metrics here in terms of

you know, accessibility and hours of service and the metric, visually seeing where the densities are in terms of population and employment and minority and low income populations.

Route nine makes a, currently runs from downtown

to the UVA Hospital, then makes a jog to the YMCA, and then ends on the north side of the high school.

We've suggested, and it's a very poor performing route, we've suggested that it could perform better if it got extended to the US-29 corridor, to the

the routes that connect there, the US-29 corridor.

So that's what's reflected here.

We've got so much other service providing routes covering the UVA hospital area.

We felt like

that that would be sufficient there, that this would be more direct route.

And as far as the service to the high school, we kept in the deviation to the YMCA where there is a paved path between the YMCA and the high school that could be used.

And this is another route that had a very odd 70 minute frequencies, at least just getting it to a 60 minute frequency so you can create opportunities for transfers to other routes.

and there's a slight increase in hours and then a slight decrease in some of the accessibility metrics because we took out the UVA piece.

And you can see visually here.

And then that gets us to Route 10, which serves the pantops in the hospital area

This was a route where it makes a deviation currently up to Abamor Apartments where there really isn't any ridership that's being generated there.

So we wanted to kind of clean this route up, get rid of the big one direction loop at the end of line.

and just get this route at a 30 minute frequency on weekdays and just feel like there's enough out there that right now it's a 60 minute service in this corridor and to get that to a 30 minute frequency we think would really help generate ridership and improve accessibility for people.

And see obviously with that frequency improvement, there's a big jump in the revenue hours and really not much of a change in terms of the accessibility metrics.

And then Route 11, basically similar to the alignment of today, we had to modify a few of the deviations this route makes just north of downtown.

in order to buy time to include that stop at the center at Rio Road there that you can see on the map on the right.

So, but it was very low ridership and still within walking distance of the changes that we made.

That extension to

to the center is an obligation that the city has to the center.

So this answers that part of the agreement to provide public transportation.

And then the trolley right now, you know, the trolley right now is at a reduced frequency because of COVID.

So, you know, it's just getting the trolley back to how it operated pre-COVID at, you know, 15 minute frequencies on its alignment, you know, through the UVA campus there.

So, and there's, you know, really no change and change in hours and accessibility as well.

So I, you know, we were working within, with Garland within a defined budget to see what we could fit in.

And there was certainly some improvements that we were also considering that

We were not able to put in that.

We just wanted to highlight some of those other considerations.

One is getting that Route 6 that would run on First Street South from downtown to Willoughby Square at a 30-minute frequency.

Instead, we have it at a 60.

I mentioned Route 7 before where we were able to

Beef up the frequencies between Barracks Road and downtown, but only in the peak periods.

We would certainly love to add extra service on that as well as get 30-minute Sunday frequencies on that route because it serves so much employment.

Route 8 was a crosstown route from the south part of the city up to the US-29 corridor that we think would be beneficial if it could eventually get up to 30-minute frequencies.

And then Route 10, that route that goes out to Pantops into the hospital, we were able to get that to a 30-minute weekday frequency, but because of the nature of the employment and jobs out there, it would be great if eventually that could get to a 30-minute Saturday frequency as well.

So the next steps that we have to do is city and the county have basically authorized the budget that allows us to kind of move to the next step.

This starts our public participation process by informing you first.

Now we'll have

We'll schedule two, potentially two to three public meetings to look at whether the public has any issues with any of the adjustments.

We'll conduct a Title VI analysis determining if there's any adverse effects or impacts to minority or low-income populations.

Those two to three meetings that we talked about, we're hoping to schedule them probably within the next two to three weeks.

work to finalize the temporary and permanent downtown routing assumptions because of the bridge and when that starts incorporating that into kind of plan A and plan B. Bus stop locations need to be worked out and implemented so when we do start that people know where to catch the bus because what we will be introducing is a number of locations where we have bi-directional meetings on both sides of the street.

routing, which makes it easier for folks to access the system, go across the street if I want to go north or across the other way if I want to go south.

And then Jim and his team, once we get the final go-ahead from the public and from city council and the board of supervisors, we'll start preparing the new schedules, blocking and run-cutting, which means that we'll work as hard as we can to keep our costs down to provide the most efficient system that we possibly can.

And with that, the thing that we'll bring forward once we get the Title VI analysis, and we'll have to report that to you, that's the final step that FDA requires us to do, make you aware of whether there are any adverse effects, and then we will move forward with that implementation schedule.

And a resolution will be brought to council to accept the final changes.

Thank you so much.

Great information.

Galvin, if I could just ask you also, hopefully you were able to hear the discussion on the downtown parking.

You commented about the Avon Street Park and Ride lot that these changes would help to accommodate.

Absolutely.

So what we've looked at is a couple.

So the 2A to 2B split allows us to do a couple of things, potentially set up a park and ride agreement with Fifth Street station area.

So we would be able to potentially earmark, you know, 25, 30 parking spaces there.

And that provide a different level of service on 2A to 2B.

We'd actually, you know,

make the frequencies a little better than the proposed in this model.

We did have a cost to look at doing that to improve the kind of the park and ride model for the city.

I think it's approximately like $400,000 per year to do that.

We also looked at, I know you and I had a conversation about potentially using Route 8.

I think it was probably using Route 9 where we would go to

Fashion Square, potentially using that as a parking lot as a location, potentially bigger spaces.

But we're also working with Kim Lee Horn and Ben Chambers who's come on.

We're looking at a longer term study where we're looking at potentially doing some parking lot locations throughout the region and especially up on 29.

So I'll turn it over to Ben to talk about the effort that we're starting.

Did he want Ben to say something?

I'm sorry.

Yeah, I'll just echo what Garland was saying.

We are looking at beginning a study that would look especially at 29 north, first determining where the demand for park and ride would be best on 29 north and then potentially

That long term, having a presence, a bigger presence for Catapult 29 is paramount to the system expanding and becoming really productive.

Long term, we may need more than one park and ride location, depending on the nature of what the study finds.

Having that opportunity to kind of lock in a dedicated ridership model, too, will help CAT in our performance metrics with the state.

Part of what we're tasked with doing right now is being good stewards of your money, but also making sure that the system is productive so we continue to get state funding.

That's a delicate balance.

So we brought in, I think, what we got with the right folks helping us with Kimberly Horn, Kinetics,

kind of look at that model.

But ultimately, we have to come back before you and know that council, this is the direction that council wants us to go and move forward.

So when we have, you know, we put this information before FTA, they know that council was aware that the changes that we've made, and the council has signed off on the changes that we need.

And I have just had questions around,

connecting with the public, both A, when you were talking about these coming public meetings, like how are you connecting with the current ridership and as well as beyond that, just to kind of get that input, but then maybe even more importantly, when these new changes become effective, how are we conveying that in a meaningful way to the broader public so that they recognize, oh, there's a shift and this shift is intended to be a positive change.

Great questions.

So part of what we're going to be doing over the,

over the next month or so is start the engagement process.

But Kyle Irvin on my team will start to put together a marketing package, which will probably consist of at least probably one commercial.

So we're going to do some television, radio ads, the paper.

We're going to use every method that we can to encourage folks to come to these meetings and hear what's going on, give us their feedback, maybe even create

Survey Monkey Survey that allows us to get that dialogue from individuals back and forth.

Once that's all done, then we were going to really kind of nail it where we'll probably do a larger insert with the paper that basically spells out each one of the changes to each one of the routes.

I have questions about the so the last consultant that presented possible changes was able to provide a tentative schedule what the new proposed schedule would look like so on your list of next steps it has that at the end and I'm just talking about detail stop by stop we were able to receive like what would be cut out what stops would be added

Not yet.

So we would work through that as part of what we're doing right now is making sure that council didn't have any major pushback on what was proposed.

And now the detailed work begins about which, you know, the kind of the left right turn sheets and where the potential stops would go away or potentially be added or

Okay.

Yeah, I wonder, so the last time we had this conversation, that was what created kind of the hangup, because every time there was a request for a new stop, there was a potential cost increase.

you know for that stop or for that change if the public was asking for something so I'm just wondering like what exactly what we be committing to for the fiscal year the next fiscal year budget and how much flexibility is in that for the public input and for the final when when the information comes back to council to change it

without increasing potentially the dollar amount?

Because there were always more requests than were able to fit into the previous budget.

Yes.

So I think part of what we all experience in the transit world is we always have a finite budget, but the request from the public is always

more than what that budget is.

So at this point, council and the city council and the Albemarle Board of Supervisors have authorized their budgets and we're determined to stay within that limit.

If there's an adjustment that needs to be made, we would have to come back for additional funding.

So you would be aware of any potential changes for service enhancements that would cost us more money.

and we will provide you with the funding source to do so.

So we're not looking to potentially add more service that we can't afford to pay for.

There is a little bit more money that we have available to us, but it's not a tremendous amount of money.

So we'll be really tweaking around the edges.

But the plan itself is designed around, once again, this was not designed to be total

a total rehash of our whole system that's coming as a part of the PJ PDC, TJ PDC's vision plan.

This was designed to once again put a foundation in place so we can stop our rapid decline in ridership and actually be more productive.

Oh, no, I think that's perfect.

I think the only thing also to keep in mind is some of those requests from the public may be for additional stops that wouldn't necessarily equate into more cost, but it adds more time, decreasing the service quality.

But if we're trying to stay within these 30, 60 minute timeframes, then that's not, if that's what we are proving, then there's not going to be additional routes added that would expand that back to a 70 minute route.

Exactly.

Because in the last meeting, I see First Street was added, and that was a big conversation, but there were conversations about 10th and Page area stops that had been removed a few years ago, Riverside, Grady Avenue, you know, and some other areas.

So as you were presenting...

Especially when we got to this slide, I'm just thinking the public feedback is going to bring all of those routes back into the discussion again.

And so I just want to kind of prep us for how we're going to handle that.

And I understand that what you're saying, that at a later date, we will be thinking about this more, I guess, comprehensively.

Couldn't have said it any better, Mayor, but we are dedicated to making sure that we provide the most quality service that we possibly can.

There's always going to be pockets.

And remember, this is urban mass transit.

So we're trying to put the resources in where it's going to provide us the greatest access to individuals and getting those individuals access to activity centers or origins of whether it's a hospital or shopping center or a school.

That's kind of our primary focus.

Not to say that

The changes that happened before I got here hadn't had a detrimental effect on the CAT system.

I think it did have a degradation on the system, partly.

We're trying to kind of, once again, put a stopgap measure in right now, allow us to continue to operate without our ridership continuing to fall as we continue to plan with the public engagement around

the larger system, which will actually potentially put, you know, service back on grading or areas that was, it was pulled off a couple of years ago.

You know, what we were trying to do is a quick measure.

That's a longer to more substantive discussion with the public about, you know, what does CAT look like, you know, three to five years from now.

And there will be budget considerations when that happens.

So, you know,

I don't know to any people who are gonna wanna give up their service.

I've got a few questions I've written down.

So one of the things I was wanting to know is when planning, were the UTS routes considered?

Cause I noticed when we were looking to add the barracks to UVA

Extension and cut the other piece.

So I don't want to speak for UTS, but we've had some conversations with UTS about resources and what's the balance of the role of public transportation versus a university system.

I believe that we should be trying to play much more of a

Dominant role in the major arteries by which we're traveling.

What it does is a couple of things that allows us to, once again, the ridership model, the funding model from the state is continuing upon us having higher ridership to get more funding.

If we're adjusting our model to capture more of the higher ridership corridors, our numbers will look better.

Therefore, over the rolling three years, we will continue to get more and more funding from the state.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, you're absolutely right, Garland.

You will need to have growing ridership to get more state and federal funding.

We did consider UVA routes when we were looking at changing service infrastructure in that area.

That just seemed like a great area for CAT to get some more of the ridership for itself.

Jim, can you actually chime in also?

Well, it would be a different route because that route does not go.

Boy, I'm sorry.

Prospect and guess what?

So Old Lunchburg Road, what's Old Lunchburg Road between downtown the fire station and Willoughby?

Okay.

I was blanking on that part of that road, what the name was.

Okay, just making sure.

Because if you're walking, it's harder to get, one thing that looks like you can get to it on the map, walking you really can't.

The goal of this plan, the adjustments was to be a little bit more strategic in how we align the new, the routing, but we're not trying to lose any coverage.

So that was one of the major effects of the adjustment.

What we have taken from one route, we've particularly covered others because in the transit world, turns slow the system down, the more direct you can be, the faster you can move, and the more productive it can be, and the individuals who are using the system can get to and from where they are faster.

Just a general question.

Because there's not another place up on 29 for us to really terminate at this point in time.

Long term, there needs to, I mean, long term, this is more of a regional discussion about

positioning of assets for CAT that allow us to take advantage of expansion.

There is a lot of parking with the spaces.

There's not much at Faster Square now, but it's perfect right now for us to kind of stage.

That potentially moves as we build out our infrastructure, whether it's up on 29, multiple places.

That allows for movement up 29 towards the airport or

or to design a route that actually moves quicker down 29 to go in towards the university.

There's a lot of things, but it's the infrastructure need that's the concern right now.

Yeah, ideally we considered like, obviously Walmart's a bigger destination right now, but there's limited space there and it adds cost to run all the routes up there.

Is there a way for the people who live at Mallside to easily get to the, so Mallside is a kind of across the street on Rio, across the street from Fashion Square Mall?

Is there an easy way?

Well, it's not a very safe crossover.

So I just, that was just.

We'll definitely take a look at it.

It may be a conversation.

Okay.

Or maybe even adding a stop.

It would probably stay.

Yeah, we're not changing.

It would stay.

And then, I mean.

There's not a lot of bus stops that we're actually proposing to take away.

Okay.

We're actually adding.

Awesome.

And just when we were talking about letting people know, will there be, once it's determined,

that it will be changing and how it will be changing.

Will you be giving out like, I guess, changes in the buses themselves too to people?

Will there be like a lead time to let people get used to what it's going to be doing?

And you might want to consider maybe we could partner and put it in the water and gas bills as well.

Definitely.

We can set up a website, a link where we can actually send more information to them that way.

But it's going to be pretty lengthy because we're really talking about changes to a significant number of our routes.

We're going to create a booklet that we will be able to hand out.

Thanks so much.

This is just step one.

Step two would be the larger system one.

I don't want to take away from, we're not duplicating, we're not trying to duplicate the services by the larger one.

This was kind of a, this is a stopgap measure.

I would just like to comment that this is really, really good news.

I think it's exactly the kind of thing that we need to be doing.

If we have a chance to increase transit ridership, particularly for people getting to downtown, given the debate we've just been having about parking garages, this is absolutely the golden opportunity right now to

If we can make a change and we can get people thinking differently right now, that would be wonderful.

And it might help solve a lot of the other problems that people have been identifying about parking and everything else downtown, too.

So go for it.

So what I'm glad you brought that up that what we've also done in with your blessing is we've

We've made CAT fare free next year also.

So it gives people an opportunity to try transit at no cost to them.

We're using the remainder of our CARES money and our heart money, this designed specifically for transit to offset that cost.

So as we continue to make changes and build out the system, we're hoping that this will entice individuals to at least try transit.

If we get it right and continue to use transit at least two or three times a week, that will do

wonders for our ridership, for the environment, and also for our roads, keeping our maintenance costs down.

So we just signed the contract with UTA.

for the automatic passenger counters.

I think it was yesterday.

So that we're going to give them the notice to proceed and hopefully within 60 days we should have APCs installed.

Now that's about six to eight months if we're good and everything aligns.

Realistically it's about 10 months for us to get through the

implementation, validation, execution process so we can actually see what the difference is and then start reporting the APC's numbers versus our antiquated fare boxes.

This is a marked improvement for the system.

You will see instant changes because the fare boxes weren't doing, they weren't counting correctly anyway.

Well, Garland, one, I think, opportunity here and I'll put a plug in for what I think is one of the most underutilized programs

that the city does help fund is the Thomas Jefferson Planning District's Ride Share Guaranteed Ride Home Program.

Hopefully you all know about that, but too many people don't.

If you are carpool or if you're using a parking ride lot and you take transit to work every day through that,

One of the concerns we hear is, well, what if my kid is sick and I need to go pick them up at school or something else happens and I need to leave work immediately.

I can't wait on the bus.

This ride share program pays for a Uber or taxi ride for you to get

to the school or to your home.

The city has been contributing into this program for years as well as the rest of the localities in the region.

And it's very, very low utilization on it.

I think it's because many people don't know about it.

All right.

Any other comments from counselors?

All right.

So, Mr. Williams, what I'm hearing is that there's no increase in the budget impact at this point.

There will be opportunities for public weigh-in.

there may be some flexibility for some changes, but not much without additional dollar amounts.

And what you're asking for from us today is just whether based on the presentation, council is aligned with moving forward.

Correct.

So, counselors,

because we don't have a resolution or anything for this either.

I will be bringing back, like I said, what we're going to get now that we know that once we get confirmations on council that this is the direction is OK, we're going to actually the second part is I go to a second set of consultants.

We'll do a Title VI analysis based on the plan.

that this team did.

When that is complete, I need to report back to council.

All right.

Well, I think there is agreement that you are moving in the right direction.