Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority Meeting   6/5/2026

Good afternoon everybody.

Thanks for joining us on this lovely Friday.

We have a little bit of a different agenda today, but I do want to emphasize that it is a discussion

So, we are going to have some opportunity for our service providers as well as those of us up here.

So, we'll start with a interview.

Oh, I don't think so.

Do you want me to?

Niall Lewis, Executive Director of TranVid, City of Charlottesville, and Director of TAN.

Jen Fleischer, City Councilor for Charlottesville.

There's Christine.

I'm the cognitive sports interviewer.

I serve as the planning manager for Albemarle County.

Chest and pandemic, principal transportation planner, Albemarle County.

Ted Parsons, the executive director of Central Division of Education.

Sarah Linton, program manager for the Rideshare, our computer assistance program.

Okay, amazing.

And everyone at DRBT, who usually we see on the internet, it is nice to see you.

We will now call into motion for the acceptance of the agenda.

All in favor say aye.

And now we will open the doors to the public.

Yeah, if anybody in the room would like to speak.

There's no public comments.

Okay, great.

Then we will firstly move on to the presentation film.

Well, these chairs really slide.

All right, thank you very much for the invitation to be with you today.

My name is Chad Parsons.

I'm the executive director of the Central Virginia Transportation Authority.

We represent the Richmond region, and I was asked to come talk about, I think, just the CVTA in general and kind of the legislative pathway that we followed in setting up the authority back in 2020.

So feel free to stop me as needed with questions.

I'm going to provide a brief overview and

hopefully leave some time for conversation at the end.

So the CVTA was created, we're the third major regional transportation authority in the state.

The first two were in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.

Those authorities were both legitimized in 2013, created earlier, but there were some port issues, some legality issues that needed to be figured out.

And

Those legal challenges were resolved and these authorities were created.

The operational methods that those two authorities use are different than each other.

NVTA operates, they all collect tax revenues, but NVTA operates on a 70% regional, 30% local model.

whereas their allocations of funding go out, 70% are dedicated to big regional projects, 30% go to local needs.

HRTAC is 100% regional, and they are fully debt-oriented.

They are paying debt service with their tax revenues right now.

And as a result of that, I've been able to fund a lot of major work

related to the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel and other express lanes and other kinds of big regional projects.

So following those two organizations, the 2020 General Assembly saw the introduction of an additional measure to create the CVTA.

We used the HR Tech

Foundation as a model where it's minimal staffing using contract services from the Planning District Commission to provide a lot of background support, you know, back office needs, rent, copiers, all that kind of stuff.

After the work that MBTA and HRTAC did, the concept of a regional taxing authority was much more acceptable across the board at the GA. And so the CBTA was created without much fanfare, and it was seen as a way to compete for our region to compete better statewide, whether that's smart scale or federal grant applications or other kinds of competitive funding mechanisms.

So our model is threefold.

50% of all the tax revenues collected go directly back to the jurisdictions that are members, and that's proportional to where those taxes were collected.

35% stays with the CBTA to be put towards big regional projects that are competitive, application driven.

We do ranking priorities analysis of

the travel demand model and other kinds of things for those applications so that it is, when it gets to the desk of the elected officials on our board to make decisions, the data that supports the decisions hopefully does a lot of the work for them and they can have an easier time making those jumps.

And then the final 15% goes directly to GRTC, which is our regional transit provider, and that funding is to be used for regional public transportation.

It is not necessarily for fixed route service.

because we have nine jurisdictions.

Not all of our jurisdictions have GRTC service as of 2020.

So there was some work to do, some legislative kind of things, analysis within GRTC on board membership and all kinds of different things that

got us to where we are today, which is all nine jurisdictions being able to have access to benefits from that 50%.

So with that legislative background, the CVTA was created through the General Assembly.

We have two major sources of revenue.

The first is a gas tax, which is indexed for inflation.

It was started in 2020 about 7.3, 7.4 cents a gallon.

Now it is up to 9.3, 9.4, the last I checked.

And then we have a sales and use tax, which is 0.7%.

So those are our major drivers.

The revenues in general are mostly from the sales and use tax.

I'd say about two-thirds of the funds are from sales and use tax.

So looking at our last three full fiscal years,

Through that, those two mechanisms we've been able to create most recently in 2025, about $229 million for that fiscal year that are able to be used for those three different directions that I mentioned in the previous slide.

About $172 million of that was from the sales and use tax.

So that's continued to see increases.

You can see the lighter green in the bar chart over time.

The fuel tax is relatively stagnant.

It hasn't been decreasing yet, but there's all kinds of different factors that play into how viable that fuel tax is.

And then the distribution of funds.

As I mentioned earlier, we've got our three-part pie model.

In our last round of funding, we do funding every two years.

And in our last round of funding earlier this spring,

we're able to put funds towards 12 new regional projects.

I see some grins.

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This is what AI is for.

It's the best I could do.

Regional project funding, so that 35% mentioned

In our last round of regional funding, this is the split of where that funding has gone.

And it really depends on the project and how the project stands up.

It's not going to always be the city of Richmond or Henrico County.

As you can see, some of the percentages make sense, like Chesterfield and Henrico are kind of leading the way at 29% and 24%.

But you follow that with the Kent County, which is 15% of all the regional funded projects so far in that this is the lifetime of the CBTA.

But the reason that is, is because I-64 runs through the Kent County and

There's a major widening project between Denon, Richmond, and the beach that is adding a third lane to 64 in both directions and that runs through Newton County.

That made the most sense for regional projects in terms of impact and efficiency, so depending on the project needs, that's what we can, that's where we are today.

Our splits have moved, so for the lifetime of the CVTA.

Most of our funding, as you can expect, has gone towards highway projects.

A major chunk of money has gone towards bike pedestrian work, which is predominantly about $120 million right now has gone into the Fall Line Trail, which is a new regional trail north-south from Ashland all the way south to Petersburg.

So that's a major

benefit for the fall line to be a regional trail through Central Virginia.

Transit.

And this is this is regional projects.

This is not our 15% carve out for GRTC.

So there's still been an additional 60, 65 million for transit projects that have been applied for through our regional funding.

So there's nothing that precludes, you know, a transit application aside from that 15%.

Other funds are available as well.

So in terms of GRTC, in FY 25, the funding commitment was about 34 million, 34.3 million.

Lifetime is about, it's been just over 174 million.

And the allocation predominantly is used for previous years of bonds.

GRTC has taken, for example, right now they are operating off of FY 25 funding commitments.

So through

through June 30th of last summer, that funding is being used for operating right now by GRPC.

They're using that mostly for maintenance of service, but some additional capital expenditures have been used and believe that's mostly leveraging opportunities that have been presented.

So now for the current year, FY26, the idea is to bank that and use it for next year so that there is always some more stability and flexibility at hand.

and you're not looking at what is exactly coming in that month in particular.

The Regional Public Transportation Plan, and this was actually adopted by our board this morning.

You can see FY2026 under CVTA revenue, it's the yellow highlight.

That is the amount of funding that was committed this current year, about $35.1 million.

31.2 of that in orange has been used for maintaining service levels.

And then another 2 million, as I mentioned, was put towards capital needs.

And that's mostly going to be for grant matches for leveraging other sources of funding.

And then there's a remainder there, about 1.9 million that has been put in restricted funds for future use.

So that's the direction that GRTC has taken

so far in our first six years in terms of how to approach regional public transportation.

This is all code language, and I believe there's copies of the presentation, so I'm not going to read through each one, but this is what is established in the code that kind of gives us our marching orders for how TRTC and that 50% in particular should be directed.

Just kind of to highlight,

GRTC has to create a separate special fund for all the CBTA revenues to be accepted.

Annually, they have to do a plan for regional public transportation.

That's what I was just talking about.

There needs to be sufficient documentation showing where those funds are going.

That's not special for GRTC.

Our locality numbers have to do the same thing.

If we cannot prove at any given point

where the CVGA dollars are going, the General Assembly has the ability and the authority to take it back and to put us in arrears in terms of being able to move forward.

We have to do a prioritization process for our regional projects.

It has to be objective and quantifiable.

So that would be something that can

can match up potentially a, say, a BRT extension with a widening project, VASI Predator.

And we have to have this process established where we can quantify and show the benefits to the region of both of those types of improvements and give the best possible information to the elected officials so they can make those decisions.

And then finally, the last bullet, there are continued responsibilities for local transit funding.

By statute, no locality embraced by the authority can reduce its local funding for public transit by more than 50% of what it appropriated as of July 1st, 2019.

So that keeps everybody honest.

And although we would like to say everybody maintained 100%, that's not an easy funding decision.

So this is at least something that the GA took into account when

when establishing the authority so that there was also that minimum commitment to public transit provision.

Our regional allocations, and I'll just run through this fairly quickly, it covers all minutes, including transit, highway, bike pad, bridges, and PE.

The priority that the CBTA established from the beginning of 2020 was leveraging.

So our goal is to

Well, our history so far is going to make those smart scale applications more attractive.

So if we are able to leverage 10 million of CBTA funding on a hundred million dollar application, Fairfax may not be able to do that.

And so a 90 million grant ask versus a hundred million ask is always going to come back in our favor.

And that's been very successful so far in terms of the recent rounds of smart scale.

since 2020.

We've been able to support 77 regional projects totaling almost a billion dollars.

So lots of good wins in that regard.

And then the next few slides are just some of the highlights from round four.

I'm not going to go through each one, but it's

It's fairly diverse across the region.

It's not only urban jurisdictions, suburban or rural as well.

Different types of projects, whether that is capacity projects or we have a $15 million award to the applicant, which was Henrico County, but that was for

to establish a labor facility in Fulton York so that Amtrak has some capacity for growth when all the new Richmond to Raleigh things come online later in the next few years.

Bridge over Arthur Ashe Boulevard right near the Powermax Park and the Diamonds, extending VRT west through Henrico County and funding 13 new station platforms.

So that's a big expansion of VRT from the current pulse line west to Peregrine.

and then other types of improvements as you can see to help out.

The Fall Line Trail, as I mentioned, the total estimate for that project is almost half a billion dollars.

We already have about six miles, five and a half miles open.

constructed and open on the northern end from Ashland all the way through Hanover County to the Chickamauga River.

The southern section is also a design-build project and that'll go from the southern shore of the Appomattox across around Virginia State and up through Petersburg into Chesterfield County.

Those projects are in a way, and there's a lot of local segments that have also been funded, mostly through either local CVTA funding or regional applications, not from anything else.

So diversity in funds, we still have a remaining need, but we're working hard to fill that gap.

So things that are next, we want to keep projects moving and keep them ahead of schedule.

We typically, this is just a conjecture, but I think it's safe to say we've cut it half the time needed to develop and construct projects, the ones that have received regional dollars.

Our next round of regional funding is every two years and it all sets smart scale rounds.

So that'll be in FY28.

We have the authority through General Assembly to issue bonds, much like Tampa Roads has done, but there hasn't been the appetite yet to do that.

So that's another tool in the toolkit for the future.

and one of the things that our elected officials want us to do better is to talk about it and tell people what the CVTA is and what we do because it's still not a household name and it's not something that people understand in terms of the big, you know, future plans for transportation in the region.

Just in closing, if you were like me you were glued to the TV screen when Artemis was going around the moon and one of the things I learned about was the overview effect

which is when you're out there and the astronauts coming back, especially know this, everyone back on Earth shares more in common than we realize and borders and divisions aren't visible from space.

So that's something that we want to, you know, replicate at the regional level to make people aware that, you know, we have a lot in common.

It's not about political boundaries and

We all work together.

We can put our regions and our Commonwealth in a lot better position.

So that's it for right now.

We have time for questions.

OK. No time.

What's that 50% locality split doing?

Is it earmarked for anything in particular?

You didn't call that out specifically.

Yes.

That's a great question.

The 50% for localities is intentionally flexible.

So we have a lot of variety of localities from Charles city with this less than 10,000 people to, you know, in Redwood County or Chesterfield.

That 50% funding can be used for anything transportation related.

So our smaller jurisdictions are hiring staff that focus on, you know, six year plan and doing transportation work all the way up to, you know, crosswalks and safety improvements and capacity bikes, bike shares, those kinds of things.

Every quarter, our localities are required to submit status reports.

So I have an extra study this morning for the third quarter.

We probably have, well, it's an 11 by 17 printout

about 10 pages.

of 10 point fund, all of the different projects that have been committed through local funding.

So there's a lot of different diversity in projects and it ranges, you know, the city of Richmond does a lot of paving work and, you know, regular maintenance kind of things to very specific, you know, bricks and mortar improvements at different locations.

I'm also curious of this transit authority that has had its full enabling legislation fairly recently, so there's no institutional memory.

You know, all these details like the 50% split and all that is contained in the enabling legislation, very prescriptive, which makes me immediately curious kind of who, what group of persons was really in

I was actually MPS staff when that was all being done.

I think that there is

importance in having people involved at that stage that have historical knowledge of what's going on.

You know, regional cooperation was a topic for decades in Richmond and lots of reasons it didn't proceed until now.

But it's also important to have

all the major people involved, whether that's the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

In our case, that member played a huge role in getting the legislation put together.

I think that you need to have, in our case, it was imperative to have the legislators that were introducing the Patriot and everything involved from the beginning when that language

So like, my assumption might have been that those particular people would have been the ones that actually drafted.

Like, I might expect that if we were told you have to get in your application today, that Anne is going to write a lot of it.

No attack, but like that's just, I think the way I'm feeling our power shaking out on this.

Well, when I say involved, I mean leading the drafting.

Sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

One last question.

Were all your localities embraced from day one?

Yes.

Yes.

That was very interesting.

That is another important distinction.

Right.

I didn't mention it, but our footprint is exactly the same as the MPO can be seen.

Talk geographically.

Green is designated in the legislation as being, could be included, but it's not yet.

Could you just, for the group, can I ask a question?

Could you just sort of talk a little bit about who your members are, who your jurisdictions are?

It's probably off this pie chart, but could you just go over that with groups, city versus county?

There you go.

Yes, so starting in the dark green, obviously City of Richmond is the center geographically and spiritually.

We have Henrico County to the north, the darker blue at the bottom, Chesterfield County to the south.

Those are our big three, for lack of a better word.

Hanover County is north of Henrico and is growing leaps and bounds

And then to the east, we have New Kent County and Charles City County, more rural in nature.

New Kent has 64 and that big widening and new Buc-ee is coming and, you know, lots of birth opportunities there.

And then to the west is, you'll be more familiar with that, probably Goochland and Powhatan.

So those nine jurisdictions make up the region.

We'll say Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield, or Urban,

at the core and suburban at the edges.

Chesterfield still has some rural land.

Hanover is mostly rural, with pockets of development.

Does that help?

Thank you.

For the minimum funding donated piece, you said that no local economy can reduce local funding by 50% that was appropriated as of that date from the United States of America.

Is that by a percentage of their total budget that year or is it a hard number from the United States of America and that will not be adjusted with an inflation as... That's still in our budget.

At this time, I'm not aware of any concern.

Um, I don't know if the GA has intended to follow up on that or, you know, look into it.

I was thinking about like far in the future when that dollar amount is so much less.

Right.

And then can you talk about growing up with this question about how the different localities kind of exist.

So city of Richmond and Eureka County own and maintain most of their roads.

Otherwise, Chesterfield, the big one, VDOT has ownership and responsibility for most of the administration, you know, over 90%, I think, in all the other jurisdictions.

So, in terms of our funding structure, the projects that we have committed regional money to, especially, we operate on a reimbursement basis.

So we have legal agreements, project agreements for all of those regional projects, the 77 projects I think I mentioned.

Those agreements are between CBTA and whoever's responsible for administering those funds.

A lot of cases, at least the big projects are going to be beat up.

So it's fair now that we've been doing it for a couple of years, it's fairly straightforward.

but it's essentially the locality or VDOT as the administrator has to submit a request that meets certain criteria, includes all the contracting invoices and all of the background supporting materials and they're able to submit this, reimburse the request and we worked with our fiscal agent to put this

Hills.

And did that cause any tension or weirdness when you were figuring that out or?

No.

Just been doing it for so long.

I got a couple questions.

Yes, thank you.

Chet, remind me, was the legislation, did it fail the GA a few times or was it drafted and then it passed the first time it was submitted?

It passed the first time.

Okay, yeah.

And do you recall what the strategy was on landing on the revenue sources, fuel tax and the sales and use of tax?

Well, I would like to say, as you know, considering when this process happened.

Well, you may be able to say better than us.

I believe the first time we did not make it out of the committee.

The second time we did it, and then it passed when it went to the general assembly.

One of the key sparks was

GRTC had a re-imagining project for its whole system.

The GRTC project was extremely successful.

Once that happened, I was a member of established by a marshal in the Turkish, in Rockville County, had a conversation about all the experience in the area with, you know, was slated to happen just in front of the planet, how fun

those ideas and when it kind of blew me from there.

And that really, I think it was unstructured that some final narrative by this book about how it makes us spend on potential reality.

But I would say the executive crew, like Ned, it didn't take them very long once they got in the room.

They saw what do I need to have the collegial

especially for a traveler that was concerned.

Probably, I would say it was normal, not three months in May, so not with an idea about how to find this thing.

Yes.

They talk a little bit about how one of the guiding things around CVTA is being able to leverage funds for something like SmartScale.

Can you talk a little bit about, are you able to start and complete your project sooner because you're able to leverage funds on the front end of your project?

So I know one of the big pinches about SmartScale is sometimes the projects can't start until four or five years out, right?

Because they're in the six year plan.

It's still early, just in terms of transportation development.

But it's a project like, yes, CBTA funds are available immediately in a lot of cases.

We still have to do our own six-year plan where we line up allocations depending on what the application action says.

You know, we're using this for PDE or we're using it for highway, etc.

and then where that matches with other funds, other sources of funds.

So if it works out to spend CVTA money first, we'll do that.

A lot of times it doesn't just because of the nature of the project, but a case like the I-64 Wyoming, it was like a $750 million project.

we put in $100 million on the CVTA side.

And I think that $100 million was used in the early part of the project because there were strengths on the other components, whether that was federal warranty or coming from the Commonwealth.

Okay, that's a good question.

I think

In our case, if I'm speaking about the members of the authority that I work for, not everyone is as keen on provision of transit, depending on the locality and the type of development that's happening, urban, suburban, rural.

So I think just getting the excitement there around the table for everybody to buy in.

might be more

It depends on the circumstances, I think.

I was really struck by how compelling some of the enticements are in your presentation, but many of them are about, you know, ways in which you can support multiple and other transportation projects as opposed to the

Was there a list of like prioritized projects that accompanied the legislation to show the GA what could be?

No?

Yeah, so once the

And that was a whirlwind.

Like once the legislation was adopted, we held our first meeting.

So that was spring of 2020.

We held our first meeting in August of that year.

Everybody remember August of 2020?

So that was in the convention center with, you know, 10 feet between each member, masks and everything.

and then we approved our first regional funding commitment.

I believe it was in November or December of that year.

And the majority of that was the fall intro.

So big regional idea that everybody could get behind that really takes us off.

May I ask a follow-up just on that?

I'm interested that it was this one project that took, and so was that, was there, I feel like this might have a little bit where Grant was going, that fall line trail, was that out there?

Right.

I don't think there was that connection, at least at the GA level.

Okay.

But I think there was definitely community support and excitement about the fall line.

So once we were, I think the GA was focused on how are we going to compete with Hampton Roads?

Okay.

And, but once the, once the authorities created, it was very natural to immediately move into that.

What are we going to do with it?

Oh, everybody's excited about the fall line.

Anyone else over here?

Anyone else by any chance?

All right.

Thank you so much.

Absolutely.

Great presentation.

Thank you.

Again, Grant Sparks, I'm the Director of Statewide Transit Programs for DRPP.

And just a high level overview of who DRPP is for those of you who are not familiar with us.

We are the catalyst to connect and improve the quality of life for all Virginians through innovative transportation solutions.

And our vision is really to connect the Commonwealth with an integrated mobile mobile network.

We work with a bunch of stakeholders.

I'll go over those stakeholders here on the next slide.

but we were established by the General Assembly back in 1992 as an independent agency from BDOT.

We used to be a division within BDOT.

We then split out with that GA action in 1992 and that is actually what makes us unique nationally.

I believe we're one of the only states where the transit department is separate from the DOT.

So Maria being our director works hand in hand with Steve Bridge, the VDOT commissioner, and they both report up to the secretary of transportation.

So that's kind of the general structure.

And then what we do at the core of what we do is obviously funding.

We provide state and federal funding.

to our different providers in the Commonwealth for capital and operating grants.

But in addition to funding, we also conduct a number of studies and plans to help our providers implement projects.

And down at the bottom, very important, I need to stress as best as I can that technical assistance is really also at the heart of what we do.

We don't like just being called a funding agency.

We really want to help our transit partners implement their projects by providing that hands-on technical assistance.

So Katie Miller is on my team as a program manager, works very, very closely with Garland and his team and Mike and his team to implement projects for both Cat and John.

Excuse me.

So getting into our partners and services across the Commonwealth,

At the very top, we actually do operate transit.

We have five Virginia Breeze bus routes.

Those are operated by DRPT.

We do contract those services out.

But the most recent service that we just launched comes through Charlottesville, the Tidewater Current Route.

But additionally, we have 41 transit providers in Virginia.

That does include WMATA up in the DC metro area, as well as VRE.

and so 39 kind of traditional public transit agencies in Virginia.

We have 60 human service transportation operators.

Those are more like nonprofit agencies that do senior transportation and transportation for individuals with disabilities.

And then we have 17 transportation demand management programs and these are programs that really focus on reducing single occupancy vehicle travel through various TDM strategies like Vancouver.

So the 41 transit operators across the Commonwealth, this is just a high level kind of overview of where those agencies are and the communities that are served.

So we are really all over the Commonwealth, as you can see.

And I do just kind of want to shout out, you can see where Kat and John lie on this map.

I will mention that to the west, you got CSPDC Bright, who connects into the Charlottesville region,

to the north.

I think it's technically 37.

But Virginia Regional Transit is one of our rural operators and they connect Culpeper to the Charlottesville region.

And then all the way at the south, we have Blackstone area bus.

I think they're number 14 here.

I believe they connect with JUMP.

So this gets back to

connectivity and multimodal connections across the Commonwealth, but this kind of just gives everybody an overview of where transit is.

So now I'm going to get into funding, and I will preface this by saying that transit funding is not easy to understand, so please bear with me.

It's fairly technical here.

State funding is definitely way easier to understand than federal funding, and I'm going to kind of touch on both, but

I thought it would be a good idea to kind of walk you all through the different state transit funding programs that we offer, as well as some of the federal funding programs that flow into this region.

So first, I'm going to work left to right here.

The Transportation Trust Fund is technically, I believe it's 49% of the Commonwealth Transportation Fund.

which is a combination of sales and use taxes, gas taxes, recordation fees.

It's a wide variety of fees and taxes collected at the state level.

When it gets to the Commonwealth Transportation Fund, again, it's then split out and the Transportation Trust Fund gets 49% of those revenues.

So you can see that stacked bar chart.

We get 23% of the TTF goes to public transportation and that's what makes the Commonwealth Mass Transit Fund.

All this is in state code.

We have a few off the top programs before it's distributed within the CMTF before funding is distributed to our more traditional programs.

Those traditional programs being of 46, and we're looking at the pie chart here on the right, 46.5% of the Commonwealth Mastering of the Fund goes straight to WMATA, which operates the DC Metro service.

And then our second biggest program is our Merit Operating Assistance Program at 24.5%.

We have Merit Capital Assistance at 17%, Transit Ridership Incentive Program, six.

the Virginia Railway Express gets a dedicated share of up to 3.5% and then Merritt Special Programs at 2%.

We work in a world of acronyms, so I should mention that Merritt is making efficient and responsible investments in transit.

That was part of a series of transit reforms at the GA, I think it was back in 2018.

So the Merritt programs were adopted back then.

but that just kind of gives you an idea of where the money flows.

Yeah, so yeah, right around there, so I'll kind of go over these individually in a little bit more detail.

So starting off with Merritt Operating Assistance.

So the FY, the draft FY27 SIP, which will be adopted later this month by the Commonwealth Transportation Board includes almost $139 million in Merritt Operating Assistance to our transit providers in Virginia.

And this really operates as like the backbone funding program for our transit services in Virginia.

This is the only program that we have that is formula driven and also installment based.

So our transit agencies are not coming in for these funds, coming in for reimbursement.

These are cash out the door installments to our transit operators.

So long as they use the funding for operational expenses, it doesn't matter.

We don't need to see reimbursement on those.

but the formula that decides how much operating assistance goes to each of our transit providers is based on a combination of sizing metrics and performance metrics.

And this is kind of dictated by state code but Commonwealth Transportation Board policy really goes into some detail on how these different metrics should function and the DRPP provides technical guidance.

I should highlight that on the sizing metrics, you can see that those are cost, ridership, hours, revenue hours, and revenue miles.

So the idea behind the sizing metric, that's to be able to compare the largest transit agencies in the state to the smallest transit agencies in the state.

So we use these four metrics to basically define what we think it sucks.

and then the performance metrics, passengers per hour, passengers per mile, cost per hour, cost per mile, cost per passenger.

Those are like performance.

We kind of call them performance adjustments.

All the money flows through the sizing metrics.

And then based on the agency's performance, agencies might get a little bit more or a little bit less.

And roughly the performance metrics account for five to 6% of an agency's operating allocation.

So again, for the FY 27 draft SIP, Charlottesville Area Transit has roughly $3.7 million in operating assistance, and Jonathan has just under a million dollars.

In terms of the share of state operating assistance compared to our transit agency's annual operating budgets,

This funding source accounts for, on average, 23% of an agency's operating budget.

So that's operating.

On the capital side, a little bit of a different program, the FY 27 draft SIP includes about $100 million for capital assistance.

CTB policy and actually GA legislation requires that

This program is mostly focused on state of good repair needs.

So this is replacing assets, not expanding assets or buying new things.

It's replacements.

I think state code required that at least 80% of the funds in our capital program go to the state of good repair needs.

So in our FY 27 SIP, Charlottesville Area Transit is slated to get $6.3 million.

for replaced vehicles.

There's engineering and design of a new facility, maintenance equipment, ITS equipment, and a handful of other projects.

And then for junk, just under $2 million for, again, vehicle replacements, spare parts, maintenance equipment, and onboard tablets.

In terms of match rates, so this is a reimbursement-based program.

State funding typically accounts for 68% of total project costs.

That's for all projects with a cost of under $3 million.

If the cost of the project is over $3 million, then the state share goes down to a maximum of 50%.

but this is another one of our big programs and Pat and John compete for this funding every year.

Also should mention this is discretionary funding.

So this is competitive funding, not formal.

And then some of our other programs here, transit ridership incentive program.

This is kind of a stranger program.

There are four sub programs within TRIP and TRIP was created back in 2020.

These project types are typically like routes of regional significance.

So new or expanded transit routes that have a regional component, zero and reduced fare projects, public safety projects, and passenger amenity projects.

So Kat is going to be a recipient in FY 27 SIP of just over $1 million for bus shelters.

We also have what we call our special programs.

These special programs fund pilot projects, so demonstration grants, innovation projects, so testing new technologies, new studies and plans, and then workforce development projects.

Jonathan has received some money in FY 27 for pilot projects in Flubana, Louisa, and Green County.

And then of course our big statewide multi-modal program is the smart scale program and this funds much larger capital projects that expand capacity.

We've had a number of transit systems in Virginia with successful smart scale projects, but these are usually for expanded buses and infrastructure to support larger types of services like BRT.

Just to put a bow on all that, so $16 million came to this area, or is proposed to come to this area later this month when the CTB approves the six-year improvement program.

That's for FY 27, so $16 million.

a tiny little bit of that.

So that's for the Culpeper district.

So a little bit of that is outside of Charlottesville, Albemarle, kind of this area.

But most of that is for John and Kat.

So you heard the kind of broken out.

I just want you to know like 16 million for the next year is what the state is investing in transit for this area.

So thank you.

And so there's also some federal funding that's coming into the area, of course.

And so FTA does their allocations for federal funding a little bit differently.

They apportion transit funding based on geography, not agency.

So what I mean by that is there are kind of three primary areas, area types that FTA defines.

They define large urban areas, which are areas of urbanized areas with a population of over 200,000 population.

Small urban areas that have population between 50 and 200,000.

So that's the Charlottesville urbanized area.

And then rural areas, which are areas with population of less than 50,000.

So the way that federal funding flows to these different geographies is a little bit different for each area type.

For large urban areas, there is a single identified designated recipient for each large urban area.

The Commonwealth of Virginia has four large urban areas.

Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke is technically a large urban area.

And so each of those areas have a designated recipient, and that is usually the primary transit provider in that region.

For small urban areas like Charlottesville, it is a little bit different.

FTA regs actually have the state, the RPT, as the designated recipient of funding that flows to these areas.

Charlottesville area transit has historically been the direct recipient of FTA funding in this urbanized area.

So every year we have to write a letter to our friends at the Federal Transit Administration

indicating that Charlottesville area transit is getting X amount in the 5307 program and X amount in the 5339 program.

But that is kind of a unique relationship that we have with our small urban areas.

And then in our rural areas, it's even more different.

DRBT is both a direct and a designated recipient FTA fund.

So direct recipients get their FTA money directly from the federal government.

They seek reimbursement from the federal government.

And so CAB does that for the 5307, 5339 funds that come to this region.

John, on the other hand, for rural transit funding, has to seek reimbursement from us and then we seek reimbursement from the federal government.

So John currently does not have a direct relationship with FTA because we act as that direct recipient.

It's a little kind of weird how they structure that, but in terms of the funding programs that come to this region, this graphic is a little much, but I just wanted to kind of highlight there are so many different FTA funding programs and they kind of flow a little bit differently.

Great.

I have to say, when we do the Pennsylvania Recipital

All right.

That's a good segue into 5307 here.

So the first program I'm going to go over is the 5307.

This is the urbanized area formula program.

So this is the primary federal funding program for urban transit.

And it can be used for either capital or operating expenses.

The funding formula that the federal government uses is based on the population and population density.

of the urbanized area.

So they're trying to divide funding across all urbanized areas across the country.

Right.

We just have to do it within Virginia, but FDA has that they can do it in every urbanized area across the country.

So they're factoring in population and population density as the primary drivers of their formula.

But unique to small urban 5307 funding is they have something called small transit intensive cities or STIC funding.

and this is a kind of something that is put in the federal regulations that gives basically a funding bonus to any small urban transit providers that are deemed as high performers.

So I'm going to go into what that kind of looks like here on the next slide.

But here at the bottom, I mentioned this already,

The 5307 funding for small urban area goes to states who then sub-allocate these funds to the transit agencies And in the FY 27 SIP Charlottesville area transit is slated to get 4.3 million dollars to the 5307 funding So the small transit intensive cities program, I just want to quickly highlight this

This is all straight out of the Federal Register.

So this is just not my work.

This is there.

But you can see listed on the left column all of the different small urbanized areas in Virginia.

And the way this works is there are six metrics the federal government looks at every single year.

And you can see those metrics.

It's passenger miles per vehicle revenue mile, passenger miles per vehicle revenue hour, and so on.

and what they do is they take an average across the country for the large urban areas and the systems that serve those areas and so that's the 4.71630 passenger miles per vehicle revenue mile figure.

So they take the national average for large urban agencies for each of those six metrics and then any small urban

areas that meet or exceed those six metrics get a bonus on top of their formula funding.

So I've highlighted the green cells here on the STIC table.

Those are bonuses that the Charlottesville region gets out of STIC funding.

And this was from the last Federal Pistol Year 26, so this year.

And the way this works kind of going left to right,

is that for each factor that meets or exceeds the national average, the agency gets roughly $542,000 in additional funding for each metric picked.

So Blacksburg is a consistent good performer in STIC.

Charlottesville is right there behind Blacksburg.

Well, these are not my numbers.

So yeah, I looked at that too, and that one kind of stood out to me.

The weird part about this, and we might have a conversation about this in a few slides, but this is an urbanized area reporting.

It's not just for Fredericksburg Transit.

The Fredericksburg urbanized area also has commuter services that go from Fredericksburg all the way into Washington DC.

So when I looked at this data, my immediate thought was the agency that is providing that long distance service, they're actually capturing the data in the Fredericksburg region.

So that's why you see some really strange things in this data, but I'm pretty confident that's what's going on with that.

Good catch.

And then standing, you can see some zeros here.

They do not report some of those data points, so they don't get credit for those.

But yes, state funding is certainly something that I think it's in everyone's best interest in the Commonwealth to bring these federal funds into Virginia, because otherwise they're going to go to other systems across the country.

So moving on to the Rural Formula Program, we call it Section 5311 Program.

This is the primary federal funding program for rural transit providers, John being one of them, can be used for capital or operating expenses.

The federal funding formula for 5311 is primarily based on rural land area and population.

There are no performance metrics baked into this formula.

FTA apportions funding to states and then states sub-allocate those funds to rural transit providers.

The way that we determine allocations to Jaunt and all the other rural transit agencies in Virginia, Jaunt and all the others provide operating budgets to DRPT on an annual basis.

And based on that operating budget, we are then able to make an allocation.

On the capital side, it's a little bit different.

We use our same prioritization process through the merit capital program to determine amounts.

It's a little bit different for capital.

but junk combined for operating capital is slated to get the FY 27 SIF, about 3.25 million dollars.

And then there's 5339A, of course, that is available for both small and rural areas and this is for capital only.

and this funding comes directly to the state and then we have to determine what capital projects we want to put this funding on.

The formula is based on land area and population and in the FY 27 SIP both Kat and John are getting some 5339A funding, Kat 2.5 million and John just over 600,000.

and just to wrap up the federal programs, USDOT offers a build program and this is really all things transportation.

Formerly it was TIGER, it's been called RAISE.

This has gone through a series of changes over the years, but this is really the big transportation funding program from USDOT and there's some minimum award levels there.

Specifically for transit projects at the federal level,

If this region were to ever pursue a BRT type of project, the capital investment grant program or the SIG program is probably the program that would be most relevant.

These are intended for major transit infrastructure projects, very competitive federal funding program.

FTA bus facilities of 5339B

This is for, as you can imagine, buses and bus facilities.

It is also a very competitive funding program with an 80% standard federal share.

And then there's the FTA low and no emissions program or 5339C.

This too is very competitive and it funds low and no emission buses and infrastructure.

And the federal share for those are 80 to 90% depending on the project type.

So this kind of wraps it all together.

And this shows actually both federal and state funding.

And Maria mentioned the state funding.

This shows the federal and the state funding that's coming to Cat and John combined for each of these programs.

So you can see Cat's getting $13.9 million

John $7.2 million.

And so total $21 million we had in Bethlehem.

OK, so real quick, just to kind of wrap this up here, wanted to quickly touch on transit performance in the region compared to the rest of the Commonwealth.

So performance metrics, as I mentioned earlier, are used to determine both our state operating funding as well as that STIC

funding at the federal level that I mentioned.

I do have a bullet point here that we are currently in the process of working with our advisory committee on changing the performance metrics on the state side.

So those will be likely changing in the coming months.

But every month DRPT collects ridership hours and miles from all of our transit providers in Virginia.

And we post all of this data on our open data portal.

So all this is public information.

What I'm about to show you is nothing new.

And we included a hyperlink here in this slide in case you want to take a look at that.

So small urban metrics.

So here we're going to go over kind of the four core metrics that we look at for our small urban agencies.

and so you can see where CAT, who is a small urban provider, stacks up against its peers in the state.

Don't have a panic attack on cost because the next slide is actually going to show you that CAT actually provides the most service in the Commonwealth for our small urban agencies.

So that's why costs are the highest and I'm going to quickly flip back.

Ridership is a very interesting one.

You can see Blacksburg is really off the charts with ridership.

Blacksburg has the benefit of operating the university service as well as the town of Blacksburg service.

So that's also why Blacksburg does very well in the FTA STIC program is because they have that type of relationship.

Blacksburg also notably does really well in the state operating program because of all that ridership.

So I'm trying to just kind of

makes you guys understand that performance does factor in to both federal and state funding for our small urban providers.

And generally speaking, as performance goes up, as ridership goes up, the funding will go away as well for both state and federal funds.

So now moving to rural.

Jaunt is also in the top for many of these metrics.

As you can see, we have a lot of rural providers in the Commonwealth.

We have 20 of them and they range in size all the way from Bay and Jaunt being two of our largest rural providers that have huge service areas.

all the way down to the town of Chincoteague, which provides a seasonal trolley service for only a few months of the year.

So a wide range of agencies and services in our rural areas.

But John, you know, for each of the metrics is, you know, for the top for each of them.

So just to leave you all with some regional considerations.

There are currently no transit authorities in Virginia that receive dedicated regional transit revenues.

We heard from Chet earlier, that's a transportation authority, not a transit authority.

There is one other transit authority in Virginia, and it's the Williamsburg area transit authority, and they do not get any dedicated revenues.

I don't believe they've ever attempted to get dedicated revenues.

So with CARTA being established,

If regional transit funding were sought, it would be the first of its kind in Virginia and could potentially be a model for other systems across the continent.

So additionally here, the second bullet point, I already mentioned this, but there are definitely some opportunities in this region to bring more federal and state transit funding.

If performance metrics are improved, those funding programs specifically,

Merit operating and STIC.

And certainly I know that there have been some conversations over the years about the relationship with UTS and the metrics, possibly, you know, reporting to the federal government.

If that were to ever happen, then certainly some additional funding would flow into the region, federal funding.

And then just to kind of close here, Chet mentioned this earlier also, but regional transit can come in many different forms.

In Richmond, GRTC is the operator of transit service, but they get some of their funding from CVTA, Transportation Authority.

In Northern Virginia, it's a little bit different of a dynamic.

You have one regional commission or NVTC with a bunch of different local providers.

So kind of just a rhetorical question at the end here is what does regional transit, what should regional transit look like in a major Charlottesville region?

I have a question.

There were multiple models of entity.

So DRPT, we have the Commonwealth Mass Transit Fund, which I'll just go all the way back to the beginning.

The Commonwealth Mass Transit Fund has to be used for transit by state governments.

And so those are the funding programs and the CTV develops the policies surrounding each of these programs that are specifically transit.

You can actually see on the, it's shaded out on the left, the transportation trust fund.

You can see the rail fund.

DRPT has a rail component.

We have a rail team.

And so they use those funds to provide grants to freight rail providers.

D.P.R.A.

is kind of separate the Virginia passenger railway authority.

They do it a little bit differently.

The construction programs, the 53 percent that's grayed out, that is what funds SmartScale.

SmartScale is a fully multimodal program.

So all, I don't want to say all modes, but it's, you know, bike, ped, transit, roads, bridges.

So when it gets to the C.M.T.F., it's

If I could just note, I like to remind folks that buses run on roads and so roads actually do matter quite a bit to transit.

So some of our programs, for instance, we are funding

some of the western extension of the GRTC BRT project, right?

We're not only funding the buses, we're actually funding the road improvements and other things that are part of that.

So that's a multimodal transit project, right?

VDOT funds and CVTA funds some road projects that have transit elements to them.

There might be a bus stop on there.

There might be other elements by ped, things that get worked into that.

So when we talk about multimodal,

It really is like, how do you think about those other modes and the design of it?

And so I think even here in thinking about you can only fund transit, how do you define transit?

I'm assuming the legislation maybe tells you that.

Maybe it doesn't.

But one can think about

your sidewalks.

If you don't have sidewalk access to get to transit, that can be a problem.

So is a sidewalk part of a transit project?

This is a debate that happens in a lot of communities.

And sometimes it's the locality that's funding a sidewalk, right?

Or the bus shelter or the bus stop, a transfer facility.

In some parts of the country, it's also multimodal, but it's also, do you have the opportunity to do development as part of that or other things?

So I think if you're very constrained by

transit as your authority.

You might want to give yourself, if you can, or ask for permission of how do you define transit.

So it's not just that.

The other thing is technology, critically important these days to transit.

So how do you fund things like the software development, like the big data systems, like all this stuff that's fueling transit.

also can have multimodal benefits as well.

And then I did just want to flag on the TRIP program that Grant mentioned, there was that program each year, the General Assembly just keeps working it, working it, working it.

So this last year they modified it and we'll be coming out with more information on that, but that will additionally be able to fund paratransit, but also micromobility, which we want to have a transit nexus to it.

So if you think about bike share, if you think about e-scooters, if you think about,

Well, I appreciate Ryan being kind of turned on what I'm reading towards which is the Wi-Fi shared component considering that as an infrastructure that is expensive and

is there a great opportunity for Charlottesville to be able to, Charlottesville, Albemarle, we want the network to be in the urban as well to say like, hi, we don't necessarily need to fund this at the moment.

So I'd say stay tuned because we are in the process of updating what that will look like for the trip program.

And then we'll take that to the Commonwealth Transportation Board to present information to them in September and they will vote, take action in October.

But you will see reflected in the grant opportunities that we unveil in December what exactly

we can fund within that.

I would say don't expect, I could be wrong, but don't expect DRPT is going to fund a full wide city bike share program.

But if there's bike share, that is a direct nexus to transit.

If, should you decide to do that?

Did anyone else have any questions?

Um, on the federal funding for like the rural areas in the small urban, that's based primarily on the land area and population.

Do you have like a, I assume it's like a formula, but do you have like a ballpark idea of like, say a population we base about 30,000 people, like how much extra funding?

Yeah, so, so first of all, federal funding is based on the census.

So it's every 10 years, new numbers come in.

It's not like they're recalculating every year.

But

The way that the 5339A funding works, I think this is what you're talking about, is it is based on the state's small urban and rural areas collectively, what their population is compared to all the other states' collective small urban and rural areas population.

So going up 30,000 wouldn't show up on the radar anywhere.

I mean, it's usually like growing states, which we are a growing state,

We get a little bit more of the pie every time a new census is released, but it's, I mean, for this program in particular, I think for this one, we're only, we only get roughly, I want to say $6 million, $7 million a year.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

When that new census comes out, we have some rural areas that all of a sudden become a small urban area.

And actually, I think in the 2010 census, Danville used to be smaller when they went to rural.

Okay, great.

So I would love to first start by saying to Ms. Zimmerman, the appreciation we have for you here and committing this time both yourself and of your staff.

You know, it's been great to have you at the table with us.

Chad, always a pleasure to have you to learn the great successes of CDCA, but also your processes and what we can do for you.

So thank you all for being here.

I think what we would love this time to be is just really open dialogue back and forth, inviting voting members, non-voting members, our guests, to just really kind of talk through where we are as a region, where we're trying to go as a region, and do some Q&A back and forth, utilizing the expertise in the room.

and a lot of experience and expertise both at having done the authority, sitting on the boards of all the existing authorities, running transit operations, and so just kind of coming together for open dialogue I think would be really helpful.

Certainly have to kick us off with a question, but if anybody has a burning one that you want to start with, we're happy to just kick it off.

All right.

There's actually a problem that I have paired just in case that happened.

I actually am going to pivot back to the question that was ending in the slide is, what should regional transit look like here in the greater Charlottesville area and how would we utilize the authorities to utilize that vision?

Who would you like to stay?

Big question.

Perfect.

Next one is, this is more towards the DRPD team.

Can you share some transit priorities that you all have?

Does the state agency

Sure.

Great question.

And again, it's great to be here with you all.

We had some conversation before this as well, so that was great and appreciate those who we were able to kind of talk through some things earlier too.

But

Coming into this role, I have worked on transit and rail issues for a long time here in the Commonwealth but also nationally in the DRAT team has done a lot of great work long before I came here obviously working with you all and one of the things I'm always struck with is you all come up with the projects.

We don't come up with the projects.

You come up and we can help to fund those and we can help to be a partner

whether it's providing technical assistance, the planning to kind of move them forward.

But then it goes back to you.

You are the implementers, right?

And so I think one of the goals and the priorities that this administration, and by this I mean from the governor to the secretary to myself, is transportation is critically important to the Commonwealth.

It does drive our economy.

It's kind of that backbone that everything relies on.

And transit is the safest

most affordable form of personal transportation that we have.

And so how do we really grow transit ridership?

How do we address really critical capital and operating cost challenges that our transit operators all across the state are facing?

and how do we do that part of it is to make sure it is safe, it is reliable, it is affordable, and it is more accessible, both more places that are needing transit investment, but also that transit itself is going to be accessible to all those who need it.

So that's really kind of a guiding star for us is how do we work with you all to see that.

We've been really excited to see transit ridership.

We had 154 million transit trips taken in the Commonwealth last year.

We've increased, I think, 146% since the lows of the COVID time.

So most parts of the state have seen transit recovery.

It's uneven across the state.

Certainly commuting patterns have changed for folks.

But I think transit itself has kind of changed.

And so we're looking at how as we, again, as your partner in this work, help you to think about how do we take advantage of new technologies, but also the changing dynamics of transit

even in rural communities or particularly in some rural communities.

Critical for getting to the doctor.

We have people commuting much longer distances and so commuter transit service, van pools, things of that like really have grown in popularity across the state.

We're seeing a lot more interest in our programs to help to fund and support that.

So it all gets into how do we grow ridership.

Part of it also relates to a priority that is connected to that in my mind.

We're hoping later this year to kick off what I'm calling the transit transformation planning effort of really better understanding as a state

we do have incredible transit systems that you all are supporting and operating and making happen.

But I don't know that everyone in the Commonwealth is really familiar with what do we have and what's really the value to the Commonwealth and what's the cost.

It's not cheap to provide transit.

It's very labor intensive.

But it provides a huge amount of benefits even for those who aren't taking it.

So we want to kind of work with all our localities and all our partners to tell that story

but to re-envision what's, here's the transit we have today, but what's the transit we need in the future as we have an aging population, as we have a growing population, as we have metro areas continue to expand.

What's transit's role in that?

Again, what's the benefits of it?

So we're excited to work with you all on that.

Transit really only works as good as the land use around it.

We as a state agency,

don't have a lot of say in that land use.

Again, that's really reliant on our local partners.

But we are going to be kicking off just later this month a transit-oriented development statewide study to really look at what is the state of TOD across the Commonwealth, and how can we really think about the potential for new housing at our existing and planned transit stations and rail stations.

The state's making a lot of investment in rail, and we know places like

Lynchburg and Roanoke and others want to think about what's that development potential around their rail station.

That relates to the last thing I'll sort of throw on the table.

We are in the process of updating the statewide rail plan and that will be completed this year and that's really going to be kind of this route map for what is the future for our passenger and our freight rail investment in Virginia.

I think we were on a great track to keep the metaphor going.

but there's a lot more need and potential out there and one of the things I'll put a pin on with that is around safety.

Safety is really a critical priority for the Secretary and he's been convening DRPT, DMV and VDOT that were collectively thinking about how can we improve safety on our transportation system, our service transportation.

Transit and rail, super safe.

But what's the least safe part of taking a transit trip?

It's getting to and from transit.

We know that there are certain intersections where there's some wonky intersections.

And railroad, if we think about railroad crossing, it's not just a safety issue.

It's also a delay issue.

And so we've got some priorities around how can we really take a much more targeted, data-driven approach to addressing some really key safety needs.

So those are a few of our priorities for the year.

Great.

Really great story, thank you for letting us back to what's on the horizon.

I was particularly heartened to hear your discussion of land use and doing the Trans-Oriented Housing Development Study.

I don't remember if it was RTP or NPO.

At some point last year, the year before, it's in this room.

We've got several board meetings in this room, so the option is on.

We were talking about our rural neighbors getting to specific medical appointments and how that's a challenge.

I brought up the fact that that's a transportation challenge, but it's really a housing challenge.

And if folks could afford to live closer to where they need to go, often people will choose that, not everybody, which is fine, but some people don't make that by choice.

It's by default.

And so I really love to hear that that is a priority because I know it's out of your

as transit, that's your scope, right?

So the General Assembly actually included a little budget amendment to volunteer us to do this.

So we're kind of breaking it out.

According to the GA, and hopefully we will in fact have a budget here soon in Virginia, it has a December deadline.

So we're kind of looking at this in multi-phases.

So phase one will be the General Assembly directed study.

But it's really a commitment we're making long term.

So there's going to be phase two where it's going to look more of what's the technical assistance we can be providing.

We think we have an opportunity with some of our grant funding to maybe hopefully in the future provide some COD planning grants.

and really kind of building out that muscle that we can work together to really link these things up.

While we have a housing focus with some of this currently, to your comment I would also mention we see that with major employers and with health centers and even senior living facilities, right?

Everyone's looking for where land can be cheap to have those big things.

And then they say, oh my gosh, we need transit to come and serve us.

And the cat, right?

You're like, wow, that's kind of complicated to get out there.

Because everything is just proximity.

We're just all trying to solve proximity.

Thank you.

Sure.

So I think the initial at the creation of the CVTA

the engagement of the rural jurisdictions was, I think, was necessary to get it established and get the legislation passed.

But I think it was also enticing because there might be some services that could be provided through the auspices of an authority that might not be able to be achieved otherwise on their own mostly.

I think five years in,

We're starting to get some questions from our rural members about what are we getting out of our taxes and I think it's a very real question and it I think it's healthy because it causes us to go back and you know look internally in terms of our processes and our you know all our data and and the way we assess applications and see if there's any adjustments that can be made.

It also gives us some notes

to eventually go back to the General Assembly with, you know, to see if there's something in the code the way it was organized that could be adjusted at some point.

That's always kind of a touchy thing in terms of asking the General Assembly to amend something.

But I think it at least gives us pause to, you know, be intentional and figure out the best way to include everybody.

So there are some, I think, some very real questions right now about the number of tax dollars that have gone in.

And most, I think most directly, it's is the current transit provider the best one to provide the services to our community?

There's a couple of our more rural jurisdictions that have multiple transit providers, but only one is named in the legislation.

So

Other questions from the group?

Can anybody get any?

They want to throw out?

I've got a little question.

So, when funding becomes, in fact, 15% for transit, is it support funding?

I think so, yes.

It's very broad, intentionally, so that there can be some greater freedoms to come up with the best options.

when they put financials here, they will want to use CBTA money as opposed to their own.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's that's probably the case across the board.

That's why there's that language about the minimum contribution, because, you know, everybody has multiple needs that they need their general funds to go towards.

There's the CVTA money support and all the directions to use running through their IP auto.

Does that money support that also?

Yes.

Sure.

Yeah.

Most of most of the CVTA contributions go into that operating line item, which includes a zero fare, which is a very small portion of the overall need.

You asked if all of the jurisdictions had some level of service prior to the authority.

I guess that's being used to like really decide a lot of things.

I thought the maintenance of that front line was specific to transit.

It is.

It is specific to transit.

I should also mention

So I think Powtan, New Kent, Ashland, these are all new services that have come online since PBTA was created.

So tie into my presentation, the TRIP program, GRTC came in for state money and then matched the state money with the CBTA money to get five years of funding for those services for microtransit in those communities.

So as a way to

I would like to ask Maria and your team, in obviously what you already know about our region and the work that we've done in the last several decades, but also being here today, are there questions that you have for the board, for the voting members that you want to hear more about?

Yeah, no, I mean, I think I'm still kind of sitting with, and Chet was mentioning this too, I mean, kind of the challenge or the moment you're at where your MPO is larger than just Charlottesville and Albemarle, your commute shed

you know, the draw that is Charlottesville as both an awesome place, but also we were talking about the UVA and what that means, not just from the incredible university that it is, but the health care presence, the special destinations, all the stuff, right?

And I'm thinking in full disclosure, I did have a project last year that was great to work with, with Jen and with the Jaunt team and Zoe and others.

talking with seniors and people who rely on John's service here in this region and was struck by it really is expanding into that larger footprint.

And we were talking about this before too.

Like I know quite a few people who either live in Charlottesville and one member of the household is commuting to Richmond or vice versa, or they're in the middle, similarly between Charlottesville and Stanton and Harrisonburg.

And so

you're kind of a hub in this much bigger region.

And so it does seem important to your ultimate success.

And that's always the challenge of regionalism, right?

Of how to get people to understand your shared future does rely on one another.

And those growth pressures are real of your counties

getting more population.

People are moving there.

It's more affordable.

It's this, that, and the other.

So I am curious of kind of where you're at and what the thinking is of how to bring in some of those other county partners that it's tough, it's challenging, it's hard to work regionally.

But without that, you're a little bit constrained.

And so I'm just kind of curious

you know how you grapple with that how you're this you've clearly been having these conversations for a long time and they will continue but and I think again having lived in Richmond at the time of CVTA and Chet you mentioned this it wasn't it was hard to get regional cooperation on a lot of things and very similar like Richmond you know parts of the region skeptical of what's going on in Richmond and vice versa and I do think

kind of being forced to all come to the table with this funding thing, it has changed that dynamic and kind of broken down some barriers.

And it's a work in progress, right?

Like there's, as you keep getting into it, there's a legitimate questions of what's in it for me.

And you need to be able to answer that.

And if you don't have an answer, okay, okay.

But I'm just curious again, when thinking about the transit authority, yes, there's the urban needs, but there truly are growing needs in some of the

more rural counties.

This is not the answer you're looking for, but it's my thought, which is it's not as much, as the doctor said earlier, it's not as much a transit problem as a housing problem.

Rural counties are becoming less vulnerable because they can't move closer to the

urban centers.

And who's going to get there first, transit or housing development, you know, urban centers is kind of the, is where we put the energy.

I know that's, that's where did we put the energy up, where managing those, those things and stuff like that.

But more to our transit providers put the energy is that's their responsibility.

But we had a meeting recently where, I mean,

the connect to Buckingham was at the top of our list for all the metrics pointed to that as the thing we should focus on.

And so that's a borough county that's not immediately adjacent to Charlottesville, but that's where we have a lot of years for it is, near this high.

there's also things

there's the dimension of we do already provide existing commuter services to most of our Albemarle communities, some of which could stand to withstand benefit from significant expansion from taking the visa.

There's a huge need between employees at that and more or less commuter services.

And there's growing need in creating this, creating this last thing of spoiling our region.

We've had like a sequence of explosions based on our nation.

Um, but I, you know, and maybe Michael disagree with me on this, but I'm not sure what product we can offer to Nelson Johnson that would be reasonable, that would be enticing to participate in because we're already offering the product that is close to as good as makes sense for the density and size of Nelson Johnson.

I think it's complicated, right?

And part of it is about the value proposition.

And that's to say, right, like the RCP and part of it before, you know, went to the localities and the elected officials for a vote, they did outreach and nobody was ready to raise their hands yet, right?

It's about that value proposition for sure.

and at Jalt, they're already owners.

They're already shareholders in a regional transit agency.

And the two localities that buy into the service have an agreement about how to get the service they want and they can really direct what those services are.

And so I think that it's hard for those rural jurisdictions to understand

when they can negotiate directly with that and actually dictate to John, we would like this service or these times more than that, what the value of being in the heart of it would be.

And so there's more work to be done on the storytelling.

And I don't think that's just true in the rural jurisdictions.

I think it's going to be true here in Charlottesville and Albemarle as well, because before this two years of John, I was 25 years in the city,

and never once reviewed a citizen survey that said that somebody wanted to pay for transit with their tax money before schools or public safety or firemen or anything else, right?

So I do think that there's this major communication hurdle in order to be successful with CARTA that remains.

When I look at the capital program of the city right now and realize that outside of that outstanding middle school,

next newest school building in their portfolio is over 50 years old, right?

Like, I wonder how to make it work.

I'm glad I don't write the city budget anymore.

You know, I do think that there's a lot that when you take this out to voters that'll have to happen.

And I do think that in these long run commuter routes, sure, there's people who want more of that, but they are already getting that.

County, they have to figure out how much more they can afford.

I'll say it, my first round of going to local government budget work sessions, which I had to do like, I don't know, at the interim, like six weeks into the job, I had to fight more in Fluvanna County over $8,000 than a almost $400,000 increase in Albemarle County.

There's a different mindset in these localities that I don't know that we always have an appreciation for.

I had another thought and I, sorry for kind of speaking adjacent to the things that we in this room have immediate people over, but something that I, just thinking about rural expansion and coverage is sometimes I look at the overlays of similarly sized U.S. cities versus cities in Europe that either are similar in geographic or a size of anatomy or both.

and the level of transit, trams, light rail, heavy rail discrepancy between the coverage there and the cost per mile to build it as well is so different.

And so we in this room can't immediately affect that cost per mile, but it is something you can think about when you come up to legislators

Grant, can I ask a question regarding, I know GRTC is looking at doing a potential BRT project, right?

That's the North Sound links.

East South, North South, he's unconnected.

And I think what's the potential cost of that?

They're still in the planning phase of it.

Just trying to be kind of respectable.

Very reasonably.

Yeah.

Very reasonable cost, considering the length of it.

Imagine what has happened since then.

Yeah.

When we talk about rail, I think it's like a billion dollars a month.

I mean, it is wise when you look at what they can do in Spain versus what they can do here.

And they have unions there too.

Yeah, pretty crazy We're running out of time.

So Thank you for this discussion.

I'm supposed to be at a five o'clock dinner.

Excuse me, and I have a little blitz.

So these remarks, I was asked, you know, be different and directed more towards our special guest.

We are in our 50th year.

and so I want to take this opportunity to say to you in person that we'll be celebrating that on September 30th and we hope that you, Greg and Katie will be back in Charlottesville for that reason.

We're excited to have brand new branded buses on the little 14 of them driving around and they look great and we're excited about it.

I have

Newer to transit, but not new to local government.

And so what was compelling to me when I was asked to come in to the job a few years ago was just how much our drivers were committed to serving people.

They are the lifeblood of the organization.

And while there was a lot of things were just not okay when I walked in the door two and a half years ago,

that's what really convinced me to stay a little bit longer.

And so the other thing that has been kind of amazing to me having worked with every state agency during my local government career is kind of the ethos of the DRPT team.

There are a lot of agencies that don't operate like DRPT.

They're

with the idea of playing gotcha or to exert control and so credit to your team the way in which they operate.

Grant, Katie, I don't know if anybody else who we talked to, Avery, Tiffany, and the Godson and his Allen, you know.

I don't know about you, but I'll just say it's really refreshing.

There are things that I would say are harder about transit than most of the industries I've worked in in government.

And I would just highlight for you, if you could find a way to make it less onerous, to get qualified people trained, not just as operators, but what needs to happen to get the special certifications and safety and procurement is absolutely absurd in this industry.

It's a nationwide problem, but I'd like to see it fixed in Virginia.

The other thing that I want to highlight about our partnership with DRPT is John made some serious mistakes five or six years ago and was held to account for that.

And it cost the localities millions of dollars that were in ongoing costs on match rates.

And I have to credit your team with really hearing

my plea that we were doing business differently and giving us access to 5339 to alleviate these local governments from 36 and 37% match and getting us back into the reasonable 4% range in the one year and potentially this year that spending of that has happened, it will save these localities over $2 million.

We're doing some amazing things through demo grants,

revolutionizing our software and getting away from the idea that we're only going to take phone calls after 50 years.

And that's because of the support of your team for sure.

One thing that's not represented, because Grant in his slide showed the 27 SIP, is that we're getting almost $4 or $5 billion in the year that we're in to put in a parking lot that

For the first time in 50 years, Jaunt will have secure assets.

We do know we have 104 vehicles that have never been behind us.

And putting cameras and lighting that is appropriate.

So really incredible support from you all and hopefully support for five years of software.

Once we get that chosen in partnership with other localities, which I think is another

A great idea from the state to give that access to small agencies who don't have the luxury like we do of having a procurement officer.

Thank you.

So I echo a lot of what my colleague Mike just said and the support from DRAT.

It's been amazing.

and I will just say regardless of who has been our program manager, Gage has done a wonderful job.

She always kind of makes sure that, you know, my emails, she'll tag me or say, girl, do you remember this, Tom?

So that's a very thoughtful thing.

We continue to do that.

And I would just say your team of Allen and Bethel on putting in

how complicated it has been to put it in a single bus stop.

It is amazing how much time we have spent to get through the VDOT process and then get through the planning process.

Zoe had been extremely helpful in helping us push that along, but it is amazing how onerous the process has become.

Every site plan has to be done, all of the approval processes,

and as we're doing that, the cost continues to go up.

So we spec out something two years later by the time we get there, we thought the cost is now 30% higher than what we anticipated it was going to be.

So I don't know how to solve that problem, but I will just say whatever we can do to help that, I don't know how we, I don't know, a lot of you guys

as regimented as they are about their processes, but we need to sort it out.

And on a good note, I will say the money that you provide to us for battery electric charging equipment, we're about 90% on that, including on our project.

All the demolition has been done.

All the trenching has been done.

You will see that all the coring with the concrete, the wiring, all that stuff is now we're actually installing the charging stations and the cabinets.

livestock that are running.

So we're really waiting on the final steps from the Navy now.

There is an agreement that has to come to them.

But I will say today, we looked on their worksite and they did say that our project is slated for and having a completion date of 7-28-26.

So that's the first time I've ever seen that.

So that's a good sign.

because if you asked me a week ago, I would tell you that there's nothing out there.

I have no ID.

So at least that was updated this morning.

And I would say Blue Whale, who's their preferred vendor, has been doing a wonderful job.

And they've actually helped us check out a couple of issues that were on property with no cost.

So that was wonderful.

And I would say the next piece for us is

and Katie, we're working through our design for our newly made facility.

Once we get all these alternatives, we have to find a way to actually maintain them.

And we need to do this as a separate project.

We have to make sure that we make sure we have the space

we probably wouldn't be able to do that.

So that's a potentially $30,000 for the million dollar project.

We helped us to get the design money where I think it's 3.7 million dollars total, which we got.

Well, that's a lot of money that the process happened, but I would say from our standpoint, all the repair has been done, traffic analysis, study has been completed,

We're working with WSP and the RFP team to hit the RFP rate loop, trying to figure out the method of delivery that's important for the speed.

We want to try to get this done as fast as we can.

And I would say, hopefully we'll have a contract RFP on the road by early August.

That's kind of our time frame.

I would say,

On a different note, we are also trying to be much more transparent.

We require a lot of our information to you, but we have a dashboard.

We call that phase one, phase two.

We're doing some, I believe, some visual adjustments of that.

You will see that when we roll out on late October, early November.

The second piece that city council basically asked us to be

I agree with what they've asked us to do.

They're giving us more money.

Board of Supervisors are giving us more money in 527 by giving us more resources.

So we're going to make sure that we put out some information to the community.

We have a new marking tool that's going to be basically showing how we're using most money.

And that will go out to all the residents, all the girlies, and a lot of it's called frequency.

So we are talking with the Secretary of Transportation about as part of the transportation conference roundtable in the fall to kind of do a CEO roundtable around

workforce and rising capital and operating cost issues and really like, what's working?

What are the issues?

What are the challenges?

What can we do better as a state?

We are also talking with the Department of Labor about the workforce issues.

You know, we fund a little bit, some interns and things like that, but that's not going to make a dent in any of these big issues.

So we'd be happy to follow up with you guys anytime, one-on-one, this group, whatever.

Feel free to reach out to the team or I on that.

And we are also

making, going to be rolling out some changes over the next few months but it's a much longer term thing around how can we as DRPT really better help and support agencies with the project delivery.

Alan and Bethel are great but they're very small and so we're actually going to be creating a new, we're calling it a safety and design division to really kind of build up more engineering expertise for DRPT so we can work with folks and

We have a seat at the table with VDOT to be building and strengthening that relationship with them, too.

So more to come on all of that.

But with the new SIP, we have 1,200 projects that we're funding around the Commonwealth.

So we share the desire of time's money.

But I also will say that the gap is

Yes, yes, yes.

Do you do that?

Your money is being well spent?

Well, I'll just say,

At the university, you probably know this, and I don't know how much you know about UVA Transit or UCS, as many people refer to us.

We don't receive state money for our operations, so I don't know if you are familiar with what we operate and how we operate, but I will say that we as an institution are committed to working with these guys, which you were working with a minute ago.

And we do move regularly on some of the things you talked about.

I mean, at the institution level,

We, and I'm excited about presenting to this before about our local community program for transportation and management.

So I mean, from my own office, I can think of three or more folks who come from the valley.

Some of them are trying to get onto Athens for us and really participate in that effort.

Others, the two animals from Richmond.

And as you said, I mean, UVA and Charlottesville really are sort of the heart of the tractor here.

So we're going to continue doing what we do

and I think that if that was questions or comments about multimodalism and land use planning, it is kind of interesting.

I mean, my job, the other part of my job, the parking piece, that really drives, really, really does drive for our faculty and staff the decision as to whether they're going to drive alone or whether they're going to try biking, walking, hard pulling, hand pulling, riding, transit.

So it's

All right, wonderful.

Thank you so much for staying a couple minutes extra.

We've got to get Mike out of here.

I have to tell you, so May 1st, the beginning of Bike Month, there was a big event with the first husband with the proclamation, and I was standing next to somebody who's a big bike advocate in Richmond, I won't name them, and I said, hey, we're launching the city competition, and I was like, hey, you should be promoting, and they're like, we don't need to promote it, Richmond's just going to win that.

The other thing I'm sorry I didn't mention this before and I know we got to get you out.

I just want to mention on the inner city the Virginia breeze we are about I think

Monday we're going to be announcing we have a special fair that we're running for the Juneteenth weekend and for the Fourth of July weekend.

It's half price fairs.

The tall ships are going to be in Norfolk on the Juneteenth weekend.

And then we're also running some additional service on July 4th between Charlottesville and Richmond if folks want to go back and forth.

And we also have extra service for running up to DC for the big firework extravaganza.

All right, thank you so much.

We have a motion to adjourn.

Seconded.

Seconded.

Seconded.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right, thanks everybody.

Really good meeting, really good meeting.

This is really a wonderful meeting, great presentation.