Regional Transit Partnership (2017-2025) Meeting   6/25/2020

Also accessible by telephone conference call.

Notice has been provided to the public through notice at the TJPDC's offices, to the media, website postings, and agenda.

The meeting minutes will reflect the nature of the emergency.

The meeting was held by electronic communications means.

and the type of communication means by which the meeting was held.

A recording of the meeting will be posted at tjpdc.org within 10 days of the meeting.

And with that, I want to welcome everybody.

I see a couple more faces.

Welcome, Garland.

I'm going to ask that Gretchen do a roll call of the people that are present in just a couple of minutes.

But I just want to remind folks, if you will mute your computer, just so we don't get a lot of extraneous noise.

And I think we agreed last time that if you

want to speak just to let us know.

You can raise your hand or put your hand up or something and we'll try and catch you.

And let's see what we need to go over.

We only have the one vote today, I believe, for the minutes.

And I'll just call those as the

in favor of and opposed to and absent pensions.

So that will be pretty easy.

Speakers, public comment will be limited to three minutes each.

Well, I think with that, we can just move forward.

And Gretchen, would you please give us a roll call so that we can establish a quorum and know who's here?

The people who I have in this meeting

to as of this time at 4.03 is Sarah Pennington, Gretchen Thomas, Chip Foyles, Brad Sheffield, Bea Lipisto-Curtley, Diane McKeel, Neil Sherman, Lucas Ames, Becca White, Frank Deviney, Garland Williams, Lloyd Snook, Trevor Henry,

Jim Foley, Jody Saunders, Sandy Shackelford, Andy Bowman, Sean Tubbs, Dan Butch, Randy Parker, Jessica Hirsch-Ballering.

So you called out more than just the members.

Yes, ma'am.

So we have established that we do have a quorum.

Yes, ma'am.

Oh, that's great.

OK. With that, let's go on and move to matters from the public, because that is next on our agenda.

Okay.

Oh, Sarah, there you are.

I'm sorry.

I recognize your voice.

You're so far away.

I'm having a hard time seeing you.

Okay.

Thank you, Sarah.

All right.

Then with that, let's move on to our minutes from May the 28th of 2020.

And we had one typo that needed to be corrected on page five of five.

This is Becca, I submitted some to Sarah.

Just a clarification, wasn't changing any meaning or anything.

Yes, obviously was after the packet was out.

Okay, there was no, it didn't change the meaning.

Sarah, it had to do with my transit update.

It said something like our routes are online.

And I wanted to clarify that what that meant was we were publishing our route operational status online, not that our routes were online.

And so there was a small wording

to clarify that the sentence really meant to say our operating status is posted online, not that our routes are online.

All right.

Go ahead.

It was on page three, paragraph five, second sentence.

And the change was all of the routes are online to

Changing to UTS operating status can be found at the UVA Parking and Transportation webpage.

Great.

Okay.

Sorry about that.

Sorry about that.

My dad, Ann Mallick knows him.

He served the County Board of Supervisors in Warren County for many years and City Council in Fairfax City.

So I take it as an honor to be mistaken for my very honorable.

I'll second.

All right, so Lloyd Snook has made the motion.

B seconded.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

And any abstentions?

So the minutes have been approved.

Great.

All right.

At this point, I'm going to turn the agenda over to Jessica.

Yes, I do.

I hope I live up to that.

Let's see.

All right.

Can everyone see my screen?

Okay.

So yes, I'm going to talk about the incredibly large topic of COVID-19 and the future of transit.

So there is, hold on one second because I won't be able to read my slides if I don't change how I'm seeing everybody.

Okay.

So there is a lot of information out there regarding the impact of COVID-19 on transit systems.

Jeanette Sadik-Kahn wrote a piece for the Atlantic.

Universities are doing research.

The APTA is releasing recommendations.

So the purpose of my talk is to summarize all of this information and recommendations being made by public health experts and transit advocates to supply transit agency staff and local decision makers with succinct talking points regarding COVID-19 and transit.

If there's time at the end to inspire discussion about local efforts to combat disease transmission and assure the public that transit is safe and identify additional opportunities for local transit agencies to collaborate in the near and long term.

So quick outline.

I have three main topics to discuss.

The first is that transit is an essential service during a pandemic.

Next, it's talking about ensuring the safety of transit users and operators during the pandemic, and finally, planning a post-pandemic future for transit.

So for each of those topics, I have a quote to start us off.

So this is our first topic and our first quote.

And it was said by Jeanette Sadik-Khan and Seth Solomonow in the Atlantic article that appeared on June 14.

So even during a pandemic, public transit systems show themselves to be indispensable, transporting essential workers to jobs while also acting as a major engine of economic stability and equity.

Okay, so transit operations during COVID-19 have highlighted transit's essential role and its inherent value.

Most importantly, transit serves essential workers.

Transit is how hospital staff, pharmacists, grocery store and hardware store workers get to work.

Nationally, 2.8 million workers in essential industries commute by transit.

That means that 36% of essential workers make up 36% of all transit users nationally.

Large medical centers, think about the UVA Medical Center, rely on transit to address serious parking concerns.

And essential workers count on transit.

Limiting transit service can cause significant stress to essential workers already taking on a significant disease risk burden and working longer hours.

Also, transit ensures all community members have access to disease testing and ongoing healthcare.

Basically, the same people who relied on transit before the pandemic are going to continue to rely on it through the pandemic.

Trudy Henson, the Public Health Program Director at University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security said, closing or suspending transportation can make it difficult for people to get proper medical attention, which can actually increase the spread of a virus.

Now, knowing that people are going to use transit to get to healthcare, we need to remember that some transit users are going to be sick.

That's how it's supposed to work.

And finally, reducing service can make it difficult to maintain proper physical distancing.

And that's especially important when we recognize that some transit users will be using transit to get to disease testing and healthcare.

Now, especially people outside of this room often think about transit as more of an urban amenity, but transit is an essential service in rural communities as well.

Nationally, 1 million households in predominantly rural counties do not have access to a vehicle, and the majority of counties with high rates of zero car households are rural.

It's also important to note that rural populations may have a cascade of risk factors during the pandemic.

They might have reduced access to information because of limited internet access.

They're already at a greater distance from health facilities.

Other problems like that compound on each other.

Alright, so despite transit being super important and essential through the pandemic, transit ridership is at record lows.

Nationally, transit ridership decreased by 73% and fare revenue decreased by 86% in April 2020 versus April 2019.

So in areas like Richmond and Petersburg area transit in Virginia, places that are buses, they had about 40% ridership decreases, whereas commuter trains had the largest decreases nationally.

Chicago's Metra and San Francisco's BART had a 97% decrease in ridership.

You could note that commuter train riders have statistically higher median incomes than bus riders, so there might be more choice riders on those commuter trains, which might account for some of that difference.

But even with this record low transit ridership, it needs to be put in the context of overall reduced movement, which can be evidenced by VMT reductions.

So nationally, there's been a 39% reduction in vehicle miles traveled.

If you look at particular urban areas, many of those urban areas have an even more drastic reduction.

So Arlington had an 85% reduction in total VMT.

That was comparing April 2020 to January of this year.

Alexandria had an 86% reduction and D.C. had an 88% reduction.

Now, these numbers came from an analysis of streetlight data.

So I had one of our other transportation planners in here at the TJPDC do our own analysis for Albemarle County.

I don't have the percentages, but what you can see is the dashed gray line is the average VMT for January 2020.

and then you can see day by day or really every other day by day the daily VMT in Albemarle County and you can see the state of emergency was declared on March 13th and you can see that there was plenty of traffic before then and then after the state of emergency begins there is a precipitous drop-off that continues to be low for a really long time and only now in June is starting to creep back up

Okay, so transit ridership has decreased because of an overall reduction in travel.

There's been inter and intercity travel reduced because of stay at home orders and other restrictions, shifts to telework, increases in unemployment and other behavior change.

So we expect to see low transit ridership because people aren't going anywhere.

But we also have to recognize that there is a fear of transit in particular.

So another quote from that same Atlantic article, the assumption that transit was accelerating infections stoked public fears and quickly hardened into conventional wisdom.

So now a little bit of respiratory disease basics, just in case you're not aware.

So respiratory disease is transmitted primarily in three ways, large droplets, aerosols, and fomites.

So large droplets come from sneezing, coughing, talking, breathing.

If you've ever seen a picture of a sneeze, the large droplets are all those lovely drops of sneeze that you can see in the high quality picture.

These large droplets carry plenty of viral particles, but the nice thing is that they drop quickly.

The belief that COVID-19 spreads through large droplets accounts for the recommendation that you stay six feet apart because six feet is enough distance for those large droplets to fall and not infect another person.

Aerosols also come from sneezing, coughing, talking, and breathing, but they're much, much smaller than droplets.

The problem with them being smaller is it means they don't drop so quickly and they can linger in the air.

So depending on the size of the virus, that determines how quickly the aerosols will fall.

So for COVID-19, the best estimate of how long these aerosols linger in the air is about three hours.

And then finally, there's fomites.

Large droplets and aerosols can land on surfaces or an infected individual can cough in their hand, touch a doorknob, and disperse the droplets and aerosols that way, resulting in indirect disease transmission.

So how do we stop transmission?

So avoid close contact settings.

You don't want to be sitting up next to someone and having a chat with them.

If you avoid those kinds of settings, you can avoid catching the virus from those heavy droplets.

Avoid closed spaces and avoid crowded places to avoid those aerosols.

Mask use can be helpful depending on the type of mask.

It either protects the wearer or it protects people from the wearer.

And regular cleaning and disinfecting addresses the filmite issue.

Okay, so let's see.

In summary, my next few slides are going to conclude with current research suggests transit is no more dangerous than any other indoor space.

But backing up a little bit, in late April, an economist at MIT released a working paper titled, The Subways Seeded the Massive Coronavirus Epidemic in New York City.

At the same time, initial recommendations were released by the CDC, suggesting that employers encourage employees who typically use transit to drive alone instead.

So at the time these recommendations and this paper were released, there was just a lot of fear about the virus and there was a lot of fear about transit in particular.

And because the virus started or seemed to be worst in New York City, people linked the spread of the virus to transit.

But it's important to note that there are numerous issues with the analysis by Harris.

He's the economist at MIT.

And I won't summarize those numerous issues.

If you are truly interested, there's some great public health research papers out there that can explain it much better than I can at this time.

And also, the gold standard, the kind of gold standard work that's been done to actually quantify the subway's impact on other respiratory disease spread, and one of the most famous ones was done with H1N1 in 2009, that gold standard work uses viral transmission models.

So that kind of work can't be done yet because COVID-19 is new and we don't have accurate viral transmission models.

So if you want real research, we don't have a clear answer of whether or not the implication Harris made that transit was a big problem in the coronavirus epidemic.

We just don't have solid research to tell us either way whether or not that's true.

However, we have some really great anecdotal evidence that suggests that transit is not the problem or it's not a big problem.

So other countries with heavy transit use and high levels of contact tracing are not finding case clusters attributed to public transit.

So for example, Hong Kong.

Pre-COVID, Hong Kong's public transit carried 12.9 million people per day and transit use hasn't fallen as drastically there as it has in other places.

Even so, with all of those people crammed together on transit, they've only had 1100 COVID cases as of June 14th.

For another example, in France, between May 9th and June 3rd, so almost a month, French officials found 150 clusters of COVID cases, but none of them were traced to public transit.

Similarly, no clusters have been traced to transit in Japan, which also has a lot of transit use.

Now I'll add one caveat.

It may be difficult to trace clusters to transit.

The reason for that is that we are on transit for a much shorter amount of time than we are at the places that transit takes us to.

So it's a lot easier to trace a case back to an exposure at a workplace where you know your coworkers and you're there for eight hours versus

Tracing a case back to an exposure on a bus where you were only with the exposure for two stops.

Okay, so the same reasons that it might be hard to trace a case back to transit are the same reasons that transit might just not be causing disease transmission in the first place.

Conditions that might contribute to limited disease transmission on transit include the short time we spend on transit compared to the places transit takes us, the fact that there's some air circulation through frequent door openings, and the fact that there's limited talking.

So transit is not a place where people tend to get very chatty, and that's a good thing in this case because it means that people are not producing those heavy droplets or aerosols that can spread the disease.

Okay, so I haven't talked very much about operators.

I've talked a lot about passengers and that's just because I'm thinking about operators and disease transmission opened up a whole new set of articles that I didn't have time to really dive into.

But there were two important points that I wanted to share.

So the high rates of infection and death among transit operators might be evidence of a high risk of viral exposure prior to implementation of any safety measures.

So thinking about New York City, there was community spread of COVID-19 before transit made a lot of changes.

I think in the subway in particular, transit operators were not allowed to wear masks, even as community spread was happening.

There was community spread even before they transitioned to rear door boarding.

There was a lot going on in New York City in particular that is different than how we might operate transit now.

So there's a lot to be learned from rates of infection among transit operators following the implementation of safety procedures.

And a quote I just really liked, the work of transit operators should be considered sacred, not sacrificial.

The work they do is important.

It's essential.

It should be respected, but we shouldn't expect them to take on a higher disease burden just by doing their jobs.

Okay, so immediate recommendations for transit agencies.

There are a ton of recommendations out there.

What I did was dive really closely or dive really deeply into recommendations by the American Public Transportation Association, which had very specific and very detailed recommendations.

NACTO, the National Association of City Transportation Officials,

had less specific and more big picture recommendations and CityLab, which is kind of a popular press set of recommendations and I included that because that's what people who are reading about transit but aren't like part of transit agencies are hearing when they are hearing about what transit agencies should be doing.

And those common recommendations that were common to all of those are on the right hand side.

Staff should wear PPE and passengers should wear masks.

Action should be taken to increase physical distancing like rear door boarding and maintaining service schedules so there's enough space on every vehicle and use barriers to physically separate vehicle operators from passengers.

It's recommended that there's frequent cleaning and reduction of high-touch services.

For instance, eliminating fare collection.

There should be protocols established for staff exposed to COVID-19 or showing symptoms.

And finally, pandemic safety education for passengers.

and increased and improved communication.

A lot of the problems that transit is going to be facing through the pandemic are ones of perception, so education and communication can combat those perception issues.

This is a quote from Alan Levy and Eric Goldwyn from How US Public Transit Can Survive Coronavirus.

Historically, it has been during times of crisis that agencies have deferred maintenance, cut service, and canceled expansion projects.

It's these choices that have crippled American transit agencies before.

Okay, so let's take some lessons from the 2008 recession.

So right now transit agencies are losing revenue due to reduced ridership, increased cleaning costs, diminished local taxes, other impacts from a contracting economy.

Back in 2008 with the recession transit agencies are facing a lot of the same

revenue losses, with the exception of increased cleaning costs.

Facing revenue losses in 2008, transit agencies typically cut service and limited large projects, and that correlated to dramatic ridership loss.

As a counter example, Seattle Transit notably increased service and projects and saw an increased ridership.

So what projects should transit agencies focus on during COVID-19?

Broadly, focus operations on serving community needs and support other COVID relief efforts.

Specifically, that means make strategic reductions in service.

Try to reallocate staff and vehicles to focus on routes that serve essential workers going to hospitals and medical centers, as well as grocery stores and hardware stores, while maintaining enough service to permit social distancing on board the bus.

No matter the route.

creatively support priority populations.

So some examples of how transit agencies have done this is some transit agencies have used their vehicles to deliver Meals on Wheels.

Others have used their vehicles to make Wi-Fi hotspots for places that lack internet access.

Finally, explore alternatives for transit dependent communities.

As an example, Detroit created a program for a $2 on demand ride to COVID testing centers.

Additionally, continue with necessary and planned maintenance.

This might give an opportunity to reallocate staff and thus prevent layoffs.

And it also just continues the forward momentum that transit agencies have had in the last few years.

Okay, so how might COVID-19 impact long-term transit planning?

There's been an early assumption that decreases in ridership are most pronounced where there's a high proportion of choice riders.

I kept reading this in the articles over and over again that commuter trains have all these choice riders, people who take commuter trains are wealthier statistically, and they have the choice to ride or not ride.

But a question I want to pose is what if the impact is less from making the choice not to ride transit, but more so just to transition to telework, eliminating commute trips.

The same kinds of people who ride commuter trains and have higher have higher incomes also tend to have the kinds of jobs that transition very easily to telework.

Will telework and other measures to reduce COVID spread like staggered work hours become permanent after the pandemic?

And if so, are we looking at a paradigm shift for transit planning away from the commute trip and a focus on new ridership populations?

So in summary, transit serves essential workers and is vital to the continued health, safety, and economic vitality of both urban and rural communities.

Transit is perceived as a dangerous vector of disease transmission, but research and the experiences of other transit dependent cities and nations

show that high levels of transit use can safely continue throughout this pandemic provided certain precautions are taken by agencies and individuals.

And the future of transit hinges on the decisions made right now.

Budget saving cuts must be strategic and plans must be in place to prevent those cuts from becoming permanent.

Transit agencies and their communities should creatively envision how transit might make communities healthier and more resilient now and in a future new normal.

And then I will make sure this is available on our website.

There's a lot of references.

These are just the articles that are directly referenced in this presentation.

Thank you, Jessica.

That was really interesting.

Let's open it up.

Does anybody have, it would be interesting to hear Brad and Garland and maybe Becca thoughts on this, as well as maybe some of the rest of you have questions or comments.

Who wants to start?

I think transit is going to need to look at how it serves the population very similar to somehow some ways that businesses will be looking at this no matter what steps we take to keep the vehicles clean and take the protective preventive measures with our staff and drivers and so forth and all of that until that

You know, quote unquote consumer confidence is strong enough.

All of that won't matter much.

And so it starts to come into more of a communication and just repeatedly getting that information out there so that when that rider who used to ride one of our services starts to think about riding again, they're looking for it and they're reassured at that time.

So

I was just preparing just in case.

A lot of information was given by Jessica.

So from the local and I guess larger trans agencies have a little more ability to be

Selective because they have a lot more operators to make changes to their service levels.

As a smaller transit agency, it becomes really difficult to do that and also protect and trying to get the barriers in.

There are a lot of things smaller transit agencies or all of the transit agencies kind of got caught behind the

The Wheel, so to speak, because we were really trying to get the PPE, the mask, the gloves, that sort of stuff.

the protective barriers are coming, right?

So we are in that process of purchasing them.

We've put in a protective shield right now.

It looks similar to a shower curtain, but it's thicker.

It's designed to put in another layer of protection, but those additional permanent barriers are an additional product that still doesn't have anything to, still doesn't make it 100% safe.

There's a lot of things that a lot of transit agencies and we're one of them that are exploring how to you know clean the air.

That's another component because you know it's three hours that you know the small particulars can stay in there so we've issued Lysol to all of our drivers.

It's a small thing to try to in case somebody sneezes or coughs on the vehicle so they feel safer and they can clean the air themselves quicker but we're looking at you know ionized lights that we can put into our on our HVAC systems

all those sorts of things.

You know, transit's kind of really figuring out what are the next products to help us keep our vehicles safe and clean.

We're putting in all the measures we can to clean as much as we possibly can.

We've hired, you know, some of us have hired professional cleaners to do certain things on the weekends.

So we're trying to do everything we can.

There are also another steps that we're getting from our cues from the feds and the state about our service levels and how many people we can carry on our vehicles.

So there's a lot of things that we're trying to navigate right now.

We're all in this together.

It's a salad that keeps changing up on us every single hour.

I wouldn't say every single day.

It keeps changing every single hour on us.

So we're trying to do everything we can to stay proactive in front of it.

But this is one of those areas where we're trying to start planning for what the system looks like.

a year from now we're trying to also really figure out how to weather this storm for the next year because you know you have a staff that you want to keep if you lose them it's going to take you a long time to get them back and get your service levels back up so there's a lot of competing

elements that we're trying to figure out and deliver a service level to the communities that we are in.

Becca?

Well, thank you to Jessica and thank you to Brad and Garland for detailing all those things out of trying to figure out what I could add to that and

I can offer that the

Expectation of telework being a permanent thing.

If the UVA as an employer is any indication, I do think that that is going to redefine that work trip and that focus on the work trip.

And then transit becomes much more about, well, can I not have a car?

And can I survive and thrive without a car?

As much as before, we were very interested in that work trip.

I think that just as colleagues are finding out at UVA that this work from home thing can work and it changes everything.

So I would add that as one of 10,000 employees at UVA that are successfully working from home, as you can see,

Number one and number two, just the difficulty of being nimble.

Garland referenced it a little bit in terms of how to be responsive quickly and you know

That's really, really difficult for a publicly funded transit.

It's really difficult for even for a non publicly funded transit to put everything in place to rearrange your bus routes to serve the new demand that's out there.

And I know Neil's working on new guidance for passenger loads and that sort of thing.

and there's guidance out there about taking only taking essential trips on transit and you know these are these are guidances that that has been out there already limiting the number of passengers that physical distancing is going to be with us for a year probably or more so even

despite what phase we're in with the governor's recovery and all that stuff.

So I guess those are the two things I'd add to what Jessica and Brad Garland said so well.

Anybody else?

I'll just add one other thing before we get on is that one of the bullet points in the presentation was getting our writers to use your mask.

That's kind of, you know, it's, some want to do it.

I know the governor has put it out as an executive order.

But the enforcement is the health department, it's not the police department.

So we're offering them, but we've got some folks who just will not put them on.

They don't feel they have to, so they're not putting them on.

But we're making it available to everyone.

We're educating them about the effects of stopping the spread by using those face masks.

But we have some who just will not do it and

Unfortunately, we've had a few incidents where we've actually had to call the police to help resolve some issues on our vehicles because individuals became a little, you know, belligerent on our buses saying that they're not going to use it.

So, you know, there are things that we're, you know, we appreciate, I know I appreciate the time my operators do.

the governor's executive order asking folks to use face coverings on public transit.

But the exceptions where you can say you know you have a medical condition that you don't have to use it and we can't verify it kind of leaves that that back door open.

Yeah.

Jim did you have anything you wanted to add?

Yeah, I mean our business is a little different.

Garland and I share a student population, but you know we're looking at how many students we can put on a bus.

CDC in the state said student every other seat.

I think we're gonna go with a student in every seat, so that will have less of an impact on our bell schedule.

and I think other counties are looking at that across the state.

I know Virginia Beach and Chesterfield are gonna go that way too.

So yeah, and some of the things we'd like to do, like the shower curtain thing, the state won't approve that because of flammability and vision impairment.

So we're just gonna have, all our drivers are gonna have to wear masks and we're gonna require the students to wear them too.

And if they don't,

they're not gonna ride the bus.

Yeah, Garland and I spend a lot of quality time together now.

It is interesting because certainly what we're seeing in the county is less need for office space because more people are gonna be working from home.

So it does get to what Jessica was saying is

Some of the ridership is going to go down just because people aren't going to need to be riding this much, I think, in the future.

That's something that we have to figure out.

Very quickly and selfishly, I'm going to ask Jessica, would you send me your presentation?

I have a Virginia Transit Association board meeting tomorrow and a couple of those

Bea, did you have something like that?

Yes, I was just wondering whether or not, because Jim and Garland both said that, you know, Jim, you said you could, the students would have to wear the mask.

Garland, you said some people don't want to wear the mask.

I've noticed in some stores, is there any way that we can just make it mandatory, i.e., you don't

Yeah, I mean, so we're, you know, my situation is a little different with students.

I mean, Garland has students too, but so I guess what we do is if the parent was there or if they were an older kid, we just wouldn't let them on the bus.

If they're a younger kid and there's no parent there with them, we'd probably take them to school, try to isolate them on the bus.

It may impact other kids that are riding, so we might have to get a

A bus to come back and pick the other kids up.

And then once they got to school, we'd have to let the administrator know and then they would contact the parent.

Yeah, I mean, really the state is saying that one can carry 12.

I mean, most systems are asking for the exception so you can carry one child per seat, which gets you up to 24.

Oh, the exec, and Neil, you may want to help me out on this one a little bit, but it's the executive order for public transportation that basically spells out that the governor is saying that you should wear a mask while wearing public transportation.

But in that executive order, there are like five exceptions to that.

and one of those five, you could just basically say that I have a phobia of wearing a mask or I have a health condition.

And it also says, I can't check your health condition.

So therefore, all you got to say is I got a health issue.

I can't wear a mask.

I didn't know that.

Okay.

Yeah.

We've tried.

No, but we're not, we would prefer not to advertise that component of it, but we want to make sure we are still educating everybody we can.

And we are passing out masks.

So every morning our drivers leave with between five and 10 individually bagged masks to hand out to individuals.

If they run out, we have a supervisor that will actually take them.

And I'm looking at our time, our official timekeeper here.

So if there are any other comments or questions that anybody has.

Well, that was really interesting, Jessica, thank you very much.

I know we all appreciated it.

So this is really just reopening the discussion.

It has come up a few times about looking at joint marketing and public relation efforts for all of the systems together.

It is actually in our strategic plan that SIR did, goodness, two years ago.

That was two years ago.

Wow.

So Chip and I thought it might be a good time to revisit this to confirm that this is something that RTP thinks has value and to begin convening all of the service providers to start looking at how we can use resources that are scarce these days to be the most effective in letting people know

all the different ways to get around in the region.

I think that's kind of the key component is there's so many pieces and different services work better for different areas.

So throwing that out then, thoughts?

I think I've already seen Brad and Garland.

Yes.

So we did a joint PSA.

It's actually a commercial that's running now.

It's a 30-second commercial that encourages individuals to use face coverings.

Any thoughts about what Sarah's referencing?

It would seem like to me it would make perfect sense to have some sort of a joint marketing effort with the providers.

So I guess, Chip, would this be something that we could look at a committee around?

I mean, I hate to be another committee, but I'm just trying to think about how to get at this.

Mine would be on more of a technical committee of having staff people begin working on it, because I see it as two opportunities now when, of course, when this was

selected in the strategic plan, there was no COVID, so we weren't thinking from an emergency standpoint, but now I think we can look at an immediate type of partnership where we can start to brand a message

for now, but also for the longer term future.

And I think this would start building the base for it.

But most of the transit operators, we're already getting together for different tasks.

I think the easiest thing to do is just tack this on to that and perhaps get a couple other people

Okay, seems like there's agreement about that then.

Hearing no objections, yep, all right.

Yeah,

Most of you all have met Jodi before in many of her roles in the community with communications and public relations.

But on June 15th, Jodi has officially joined John full time as our director of public relations.

So she'll be tackling quite a bit of our communications that

has been discussed here and many other settings.

So she was an outstanding candidate and I've worked with her before in other settings and was happy that she had applied.

So I imagine she'll be joining in on the RTP meetings just so she can be kept aware on just things going on from a regional standpoint.

Great.

Yeah, I'm here.

I'm lurking.

I wasn't expecting to be introduced.

Welcome.

Can you share your video or are you on the phone?

Maybe you're...

There she comes.

Hello.

We're gonna push the envelope here, Jody.

Well, welcome.

Whatever you want, Diana.

We're glad to have you.

Alright, I guess with that then we have committee updates and the first one I think is the budget technical committee.

I certainly will but I yes what I can let everyone know as part of a process that began whoa

A year and a half ago, we had an RTP committee that helped to develop a memorandum of understanding between Albemarle County and City of Charlottesville for CAT services within Albemarle County.

What we've begun to do now as a function of the RTP is to assist both City of Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and CAT to continue to monitor that funding agreement.

and begin to hold quarterly reviews.

Normally, the budgets do not change a whole lot between when they're developed, the grants are awarded, you know what the revenue sources are, and then the expenses remain usually fairly confident.

I'm not trying to speak for the transit operators or Garland, but unless fuel just really skyrockets or drops or petroleum-based products change a lot, usually the expenses remain fairly constant.

That is not the case anymore.

FY20 and FY21 will be quite different than what it looked like.

So beginning in early July, we have a technical committee

CAP, the City of Charlottesville in Albemarle County that includes some of the financial staff, administrative staff, and then the transit operators that will begin to look at this on a quarterly basis.

And we'll be able, with the RTP staff people,

to review any changes that have occurred such as CARES Act funding that came in and be able to just provide a report to the city council and board of supervisors on a quarterly basis of those changes.

So we've got a meeting scheduled that will kick this off and I believe right now we're shooting for July 9th is the date.

For your first meeting?

Yeah, this is the kickoff meeting, so that... What it'll be set up is that, so after the end of the fiscal year, June 30th, it normally takes 30 days to a little bit more for all of the financial transactions to come in, and so that should give enough time to start reviewing what the actuals were for the last quarter of FY20.

And just for Albemarle County, for Trevor and Bea, especially, this gets at what we talked about, I think, in our budget meetings about getting quarterly updates around transit and CAT.

I think that's what...

Yes.

Yes, ma'am, I believe it is.

Great.

And then that report will come back to the Board of Supervisors and go to City Council as well.

So yeah.

Okay.

Any comments or questions?

Okay.

All right.

So then the next one, the next committee is the Equitable Driver Appreciation Committee.

Yeah, so I'll just be brief.

I'll talk about both committees at once, basically.

So on June 16, we had a meeting of both the reporting subcommittee and the equitable driver appreciation subcommittee.

We talked about purpose for both of the committees and how we wanted to move forward.

We set a few next steps.

And one of the other things that came out of that meeting is that TJPDC had completed a task put on our to-do list from a previous meeting to create a shared folder system for all the subcommittees.

We've done that.

People are already starting to use those shared folders to share things and comment on things.

So that seems to be a success so far.

Another thing that came up during both of those meetings was a lot of conversation about COVID-19 and we decided to add yet another subcommittee.

I'm not sure how often we'll meet, but we'll definitely use the shared folder to share resources.

basically just giving people the opportunity to connect and share ideas and share frustrations as we continue through things.

Any questions about the Equitable Diver Appreciation Committee or the Reporting Committee questions?

Everybody's good?

I think at some point the idea is that there will be specific

Yeah, and one other thing I should have mentioned because it's kind of an exciting thing.

One of the first things that the reporting committee is going to work on is creating, pulling together all the agency's information about routes and putting together, overlaying them on a GIS map to create one map for all of the transit routes.

And that'll be a good starting point to identify relationships between the routes and begin the conversation.

for how the reporting committee wants to move forward.

That should be something that we should have.

I know we talked about that at the driver appreciation committee as well, was looking at interactive maps so we could see where the routes were going, where they were overlapping, and that was not only for Kat and John, but for the school systems as well.

Yes.

All right, any comments or questions?

All right, then the next one is a very easy one.

According to our bylaws, I need to appoint a nominating committee for the 21 officers for July vote.

And Lloyd Snook and Bea Lupisto currently have graciously agreed to be that nominating committee.

So I have no slate right now to mention, we just have the nominating committee and we thank you for volunteering your time.

And we'll be hearing more about that in July.

And I can't see Lloyd.

Thank you, Lloyd.

I did all that.

So the next agenda item are the staff reports.

Yes, I'll talk about that.

And Afton Express, there's really not a whole lot because of things have slowed down a little bit.

Neil may be able to provide some updates that I haven't heard about because most of what I've heard has just been a slowdown in both of those processes.

The Virginia Breeze, I think I reported earlier that an affiliate of Megabus or Megabus has won the award with the state to provide that service, but I haven't heard any updates as to when that will actually begin and as well as where the actual stop will be.

I think I reported earlier that there

Their last look was up on 29 because of the time it takes to bring a bus into downtown and get back out.

It messes up their schedule trying to get to DC and away from DC.

So that's about all that I've got on that.

Afton Express, very similar.

I mean, they've done a lot of work and have put together what their logo will be and their marketing campaign.

But they are waiting for the official award from the state.

And most of what I've heard, and again, Neil, please correct me.

on this is that a number of those awards will be delayed.

Yeah, I can give you an update on both of those and actually the contractor for the Virginia Breeze is Dylan

Dylan, the bus company who operates a lot of the mega bus.

And they actually were in Charlottesville today reviewing the stop and times.

And so they are probably very close to putting the final schedule together.

We are looking for this particular route.

to start in August.

We have a marketing company that will probably, after we finish things next week, as far as times and fares and things of that sort, will start doing

Marketing, and then the website will open up for reservations.

I don't think the actual reservations system will open up until about 10 to 14 days before the service begins.

We are starting with the first existing route, which was from Blacksburg to Union Station.

That's going to start in

later in July.

And then the other two routes will start in August.

And so I think early next week, we will probably have all the times situated in all the locations.

And Chip, you probably are correct where the stop is headed to be.

But I know that, like I said, they were in Charlottesville this afternoon with a bus.

So some people may have seen a bus in the town.

to do some testing, turnarounds, and things of that sort.

But we are sort of excited.

The website will be talking about how much seating will be available with the pandemic and things of that sort.

And as far as the Afton Express, it is correct that most of their projects for public transportation will not be out in the,

the Commonwealth Transportation Board will not approve the projects probably not until September and then there will be 30 days public meetings and public drafts so they would be approved in October and so that is about as much we can talk about that because obviously some of these things are changing rapidly but hopefully you know that

That's hopefully the latest that we'll know when the Transportation Board will approve projects.

Well, yeah, you may be looking later than that.

I would think, I don't know.

The earliest would be November.

I mean, I think November will be kind of, they'll get a notice, but there's still a lot of administrative work.

Right.

You're talking on into next year before you start.

So we're talking first of the year or past.

Okay.

I was being ambitious.

Okay.

Any comments or questions on those two services?

All right, the next item that we have is our 21 meeting calendar to discuss and Sarah put a copy in your packet.

What jumped out a couple of things to just kick off the conversation, I noticed that

July the 23rd, historically no meeting.

The reason for that was because in July, the last couple of Julys, the city took the month of July off.

And because the city wasn't around to participate, we canceled the July meeting.

I'm not sure we need to do that now, to be honest with you.

And I'm just asking Nakia and Lloyd and Garland and whomever from the city,

Well, I am supposed to be probably on the last day of a vacation on the 23rd.

I could zoom in, I suppose, or we may end up coming back a day early, who knows, but it's just a

But I don't think the city this year is camped, because really, for the most part, the last couple of years, the city shut down for July, and that was historically the time they took off.

We're having, it's earlier in the month versus the second meeting of the month this year.

So I guess that leaves us with if we don't have anyone from the city at the meeting,

We can't vote or do anything.

If there is a need to have the meeting, I will make myself available.

All right, I'm going to throw that out to the group.

Thoughts from you all?

Would you like to just cancel July?

Dan, isn't it just a workshop meeting anyway?

It's not a business meeting, so we wouldn't be voting anyway.

That's right.

Yeah, I'm just, that's fine.

We could do that.

Then we have had some interest in Brad and Karen presenting to us their on demand model.

That would probably be on the agenda.

It may be I don't know if the city would be interested in hearing that.

I mean, you know, so I guess I'm just what what are your all's thoughts?

So Garland, would you be available in July?

So July 23rd, I'm just looking at the calendar.

All right, so my birthday is the 25th.

So thank you.

I had to look at it to make sure it wasn't, it's a Saturday, which I thought it was, but I was trying to take off a few days that week.

Okay, well then let's do this.

I'm just going to make a decision.

Let's just cancel July and we'll go back to the next month.

Sounds like July has enough people going.

And we'll move that on demand to August.

So the July meeting will be canceled if that works.

Now what I would prefer not to do, if you notice the list, it says November, December, and January, we would not have meetings.

If you looked at the holidays last year,

We split the difference between November and December and had a meeting in early December which would be, if you looked at the calendar last year, Thursday, December the 10th, we would cancel the November meeting and then have the December meeting early on December the 10th.

That would be one thing to consider and perhaps my recommendation.

rather than canceling both November and December.

And December the 10th gets it away from Christmas enough that most people can make a meeting.

Diane, could we do the 17th?

Let me be sure.

What, the 17th?

Uh-huh.

The 10th, this doesn't work.

Yeah.

I was just looking at last year's calendar to be perfectly honest with you.

I'm happy to adjust it.

Sure.

Would the 17th work?

Yeah, I'm just trying to get one in between those two months, you know?

Sure, the 17th is fine.

Any other?

It works for me, too.

Just the 10th is going to be a 10th.

Yeah, I can't do it December 17th.

OK, all right.

Okay, well, why don't we do this?

Well, we can send out a doodle poll and see what day works.

We'll pick a couple of dates in December.

What we can agree to today perhaps then is to have a meeting earlier in December to get away from the Christmas holiday.

and we'll send out a doodle poll, see if we can find another day.

Okay.

Correct.

It's usually committee assignments.

Right.

Well, so I'm opening up again for your all's thoughts.

We could cancel the January meeting.

If we do that, it's especially important probably to have a meeting at least between November and December.

Thoughts?

Or would you prefer, I mean, I'm throwing a lot of things out here because I'm trying to make it as easy for you as possible.

We can meet in January on the 28th and cancel the November and December.

Maybe that's easier.

I'm not familiar enough with the workflow of the organization to know whether it matters

November, December, January.

Chip?

No, nothing in particular.

Well, Lloyd, maybe the easiest thing to do is to cancel November and December and then have the January 28th meeting.

That sounds good.

Alright then Sarah, you don't have to send out a doodle poll.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

So that's good.

That's done.

And it's time for our service provider updates.

So if you'll go back to Sarah, there you go.

I like seeing the faces.

So we'll start with, I guess we'll start with Kat.

You're listed first.

Okay.

If I can, one thing here, if the host will let me give me the screen.

I was going to show you our ridership numbers.

Just see you.

Disabled.

Okay.

So, um,

Nope, still.

OK.

Ah, we're wasting time.

So what I was going to basically highlight is our ridership numbers for the last quarter.

April, our ridership was 29,355.

May's numbers were 33,937.

Fall off in May was an 87.7% drop in our ridership.

Our June numbers, which I'll be able to pull at the end of the month, a few more days, our ridership is probably going to be somewhere in the same range of 70 to 80% now, which is what's to be expected now.

The hope is July, as we start going back into our freezing and we're starting to add a little bit more service, that we will start to see a little increase.

in our service, but it will not be back to the levels that we've seen before.

Typically in a June or July month we're at 140 plus thousand riders.

I don't expect anywhere to be near that come this July.

But we're also

Finalizing the final pieces to hire the consultant to bring them in to do a little technical workforce, looking at all of our routers, our routes, getting the runtimes really looked at.

honed in.

We've got a request from the center to make a modification to one of our routes to have bus service to the center.

We're working through that model still.

So July, August and September will be our really active months with the consultant and hopefully we'll be able to in the fall implement a new service model that is

has more realistic running times and we can see what happens there.

That's cool.

That's great.

I see Becca smiling.

Brad?

I don't have as much of a robust update as Garland had.

But we've mainly been focusing on that returning to normal operations as normal can be meaning just

Reoccupying our offices with our reservations and dispatch staff and bringing back more drivers to start just rotating them through different shifts.

And so working through those policies and procedures to make sure we're taking our responsible steps with prevention and such.

That's mainly what's dominated our time.

From a ridership standpoint, we're seeing that slight increase going on with our urban ridership.

That's something that we're watching.

I don't have numbers that I would share right now because we need a couple more weeks to see what that trend looks like.

I can report that back out to the localities, but we are seeing it tick back up from the low that it was at about three or four weeks ago.

So we're going to start reaching the expectation of that capacity that I identified, I believe, last time we met that

our capacity, essentially like school buses and others are cut in half.

Thank you.

So last time we met,

We clarified that we're running, right now we're just running that one route to get workers from a remote parking lot on grounds down to the hospital.

The ramp up for ridership on that route has been slower than the hospital projected back a month ago.

Thought that maybe by the end of July, that ridership would be back up to its normal daily ridership of about 2,000 riders.

We've only gone from 800 riders a day to 1,000 since our last meeting.

So yes, it's ramping up, but I think it's a little flatter than the hospital projected.

A couple of reasons, because the inpatient bed census is about the same as it was pre-COVID now.

It's been built back up.

But the on-site outpatient visits have been

Declining, I think because some of the telemedicine stuff has been really well received and people are just happy to see their x-rays on Zoom and to come into the hospital.

So the outpatient counts are up and high, but the onsite demand is still being suppressed.

So our other big news, of course, is

Planning for the students' return, which I'm sure everybody saw UVA's epically long release about all of that.

And if you read through it or didn't, sort of the high levels are that there really is no declared return to work day for staff.

It's gonna be entirely up to the department whether people can continue to

telework and teleworking is going to be highly emphasized so that that commuter work trip will be highly impacted.

The students will

start trickling back onto grounds here in the next couple of weeks.

They're just a few small student cohorts that are coming back.

And then the resident staff that man the dorms, they'll be back around August 1st and the students will start moving in on August the 15th.

So by August 25th, when classes start, UTS will be back to full service or what our new version of full service is gonna be.

Because our entire service area is only 1.2 square miles and because we have these epic crush loads on the buses of fully loaded 50 passengers a trip, we were faced with having to redesign our routes entirely to emphasize transit from the endpoints of our service area

rather than the trips that are very, very, very short, much shorter than a typical transit distance between bus stops.

We have so many that will board and just ride one stop.

And so we cannot put that on the driver to have to manage to keep that loading.

to the limit that is safe.

So we ended up proposing a redesign of all of our routes to emphasize that the shorter trips are gonna be walking trips and the longer trips will be where we're gonna really invest our transit.

And our longer trips are only, you know, a mile.

So, you know, it's all very compact.

We're a little delayed and I thought by this meeting, I'd be able to say, and it's all been approved.

And here's, here's the maps.

But UVA is a little It's a little bit slower than I thought it would be.

So I really can't throw up a bunch of maps of Brad and Garland are aware of what's being proposed and

We're engaged in conversation about what those impacts may be on our connections to John Connect and Kat.

But I really can't put up a map yet.

I'm hoping by the end of the speaker, we can get everything ready in time to start running.

I don't know.

Yeah, so the deadline for students to make that declaration is July the 1st.

And so there's going to be some little bit better understanding of that.

And then another milestone is in mid-July when all the schedule, the class schedules will be out.

And that's when people will know whether, you know, is their class going to be online versus is their class going to be taught in person.

Okay, but no matter what we are going to we have these routes designed where we're going to be testing them over these next few weeks and then staying in good touch with Brett and Garland and you guys, I can't thank you enough for receiving my crazy crayon drawings of

Soon we'll be able to, and if we get a word or whatever you want to call it, approval to move ahead.

If you don't mind, Sarah, I might send an update to you so that the RTP can be well informed as to where we're heading with it.

Thank you.

Yeah, so Rideshare is a quick update.

We did receive approval from DRPT and the Commonwealth Transportation Board for the rollover of funds from the last quarter of FY20, which was something I mentioned in my update last month.

And the CTB did meet to approve

first quarter funding for the ride share program.

So we are in, have scheduled meetings with DRPT about how we will be moving forward in the budgets that we have been given and what are the supported funding requests that we can make with those funds.

So we are continuing to promote telework and we have our telework guide for all employers

to help them look at formalizing since, as we've talked about a bit in this meeting, telework may be the new normal for many people, making sure that employers have a firm and a solid telework plan that all of their employees are aware of and that they feel very comfortable with for having any more long term situation.

Okay.

Any comments or questions about?

Oh, Jim, I'm sorry.

I need to get to you.

Oh, yeah, real brief.

As I mentioned before, working out bell schedules, assuming 24 per bus.

We completed an RFP for fuel last about five, I think it's five years.

We looked at locking in a price now, but we just

and we can satisfy the monthly volume amount, but we can't do it on a per delivery because our tanks are too small.

So anyway, we're gonna just go with our RFP rack pricing.

And lastly, DMV is backed up, which impacts our drivers renewing their licenses and permit testing.

So hopefully, that starts freeing up a little bit.

But right now, you have to make an appointment.

And they're really backlogged.

So hopefully, that doesn't hurt too much.

You only have to go in to renew your license every few years.

I think it's five years.

So it's not a large volume, but the permit testing will hurt.

Because we're going to try to train our coaches

to get their CDL because we may not be able to provide athletic trip support.

So they may have to drive their own bus.

So to do that, though, they have to go in and get a permit test.

Is it your understanding that if your CDL expired during this time,

Yeah, August 31st, right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right, and then I think, unless there, are there any questions for them?

Any other questions?

Yeah, council appointed a few members to the CAT Advisory Board.

We did not have enough applicants to fill all of the slots available, so we will be having to re-advertise

Diana, you had mentioned a couple of people, perhaps from the county, who would be good people to add in.

And so the opportunity will arise again.

Normally, our sort of workflow on these appointments is that we try to have one big batch of appointments quarterly.

And so we had a batch of appointments in June, just a week or so ago.

We appointed probably 25 people in different boards and commissions.

and ordinarily they would not do another round of appointments until September.

However, since we're having to re-advertise a planning commissioner, we may be able to re-advertise and reopen the CAT Advisory Board.

And I know you, I say you had mentioned some names and Carla, I think at some point you and I ought to talk a little bit more about how we're going to move forward with this.

But yes, we want to get the CAT advisory board repopulated.

I think it's fair to say that council as a whole was just sort of oblivious to the fact that we had to be doing something about that until I said something to them recently and said, you know, this board of which I am the representative

has never met during my time.

I don't know when the last time was that it did meet.

The only person who had ever expressed interest in being on the board has now resigned from the board.

We better get going.

Well, and I would suggest Bea and Brad and those of us that live in the county, if we know people that would have an interest to be, because we want Albemarle County folks on that advisory board.

And once I know that we have officially reopened, I will get that word to you and then

You know, I can send a copy, you know, the link to the application that has to get filed and so on.

But until it gets officially reopened, the link doesn't work.

And I'd like to ask, Lord, is it, would you be meeting once a month and for approximately how long?

It's a quarterly.

They asked for right now to be quarterly.

That could change.

I mean, you probably could do every other month, bi-monthly, which makes six meetings a year.

I do think that long term, I know we're still trying to populate the advisory board, but I do think the structure of it probably does need to be a little more enhanced.

We need some from the business community.

I think it would be extremely helpful, at least in order to maybe chamber, because I think what's missing is

They need to be educated about how CAT works because I can't really do anything unless there's a funding mechanism to do it and the jurisdictions have to allow me to actually do the extension or change the routes and then there has to be a pretty big, robust public participation process

on the public side.

So there's some frustration I've heard from some of the business members already about you know Cat can't do X.

Well Cat can but it's a matter of

making sure we go through the process and then making sure everybody understands I just can't take service out of one area that potentially has a high poverty rate and it's moving because you know business wants it.

Thank you.

Well I would suggest and

This is, I agree completely.

I think someone from the Chamber itself should be, and I would love to see someone representing a minority business and a business in Albemarle County perhaps.

I'd like to get more than, you know, let's actually think big here because I think that's how transit is really going to move forward.

And Becca, someone from the University, a student that's interested in transit would be great, I would think, Lloyd, on the Advisory Committee.

So just saying, and maybe even Garland, it would seem like to me, maybe Brad would feel differently.

But when you're talking about referencing what your restrictions are, it might be that having a representative from Jaunt to speak to some of what they're able to do and some of the on demand

on the citizens advisory might actually be interesting too because we are all one community and we're trying to move people around and however best we can move people around is what works for our citizens.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, but, um, uh, I think then I'm, I'm not opposed to that, but I don't want to mess.

Uh, I don't want to muddy the waters and

It is.

It is.

Okay.

I get what you're saying.

I gotcha.

I think part of making sure that we keep it clean is that the cat advisory will be doing just that.

The role of this group is to make a recommendation that we can bring forward to.

And that makes sense.

to city council or to the board of supervisors.

My role is, I'm staff, I'm really helping to provide structure and guidance.

But ultimately, the final two decision makers are city council and the board of supervisors, because you're the guys who can fund the product or make the changes.

Well, it would be great, Lloyd, and for being me, you know, for us to be able to submit some names.

So I guess what I'm hearing is that we could do that.

If you all want to change the membership of CAC, you

This is council's

Advisor.

This is, you know, their group.

And I think the bylaws or the last time I saw it, there was a place for an Albemarle County representation.

I'm not sure that I saw any representation from the chamber or a business or a minority business or anything like that.

I think it's right discussion and Lloyd maybe some thoughts, Nikaya.

Of course, we can, even without formally changing the statute or the ordinance or whatever, we can, council can sit there and say, you know, we'd really like to have somebody from the chamber.

Let's make sure that if a chamber person applies, we make them one of our candidates.

So we can do it without changing those bylaws or changing the ordinance.

But I think it needs to be clear what the intention is if we are changing the makeup of the group.

You're saying that we are now going in a different direction.

That's a discussion that needs to be had.

And that's very different from who made.

I was on the, well, somewhat on the CAT advisory before you, Lloyd.

And there was even the question of whether that advisory board was needed because that

that existed before RTP and was that needed in place of RTP?

Was there a place for membership on RTP?

Is that a committee?

So those conversations were being had when I was sitting on just a couple meetings that I went to because it was, again, it wasn't very structured.

I had a time conflict.

We were trying to change the time.

So there was a lot going on.

Well, according to the website, the CAT advisory board members will consist of no less than seven CAT riders.

They'll be broadly representative of CAT ridership.

at least one rider from the city of Charlottesville, one rider from Albemarle County, one rider from UVA may request representation by agencies the board deems relevant to public transit.

And the purpose is to advise council, recommend to council policies regarding the services to be provided and the appropriate procedure for implementing CAT plans.

So on the one hand,

You've been on the board at least a little bit.

I haven't been at all.

All I know is what I get when I take a look at this website.

But it's pretty vague, it seems to me.

Well, I don't want to take up a whole lot of our time because it is Ural's CAT advisory board.

Okay, all right.

And with that, DRPT technical assistance schedule.

Who's doing this one?

Is that Neil?

I can probably just let you know, very similar to the other grants from DRPT that's needed for the Afton Express, we have sent in both applications for the technical assistance grants and as Neil said, we're expecting sometime into fall rather than the summertime hearing whether we're awarded or not.

I'm just pleased.

I know everybody's happy that we managed to get those grants applications in and our money sorted out for our matching funds.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Regional visioning and Albemarle expansion studies you've already covered.

So, um,

I am open to, is there anything anybody else wanted to ask or discuss?

We're running a little early, but usually you all don't have a problem if we adjourn a little early.

So, but I'm open to anything anybody else wants to add.

Madam Chair, if I could just remind you, it came to my mind, we were talking about the schedules and somebody said that they could get notes from someone.

I just wanna remind everyone that according to the Freedom of Information Act with the new emergency public meetings,

These are being recorded and they are on the website within 10 days after the meeting.

On the TJPDC website, that's right.

Right.

All right.

Well, with that, then we decided we were not going to have a July meeting.

So I'm going to adjourn us into August the 27th.

And I believe an agenda item as long as it still works for jaunt will be the jaunt on demand pilots and what that might look like for Albemarle County.

So with that, stay safe.

And thank you for joining us.