Regional Transit Partnership (2017-2025) Meeting   2/24/2022

All right.

Welcome to the February 24th meeting of the Regional Transit Partnership.

I'm glad to see all these great faces and smiling faces.

First thing I need to do, of course, is read our notice of electronic meeting.

This meeting of the Regional Transit Partnership is being held pursuant to Code of Virginia 2.2-3708.2.

which allows a public body to hold an electronic meeting when the locality in which it is located has declared a local state of emergency.

And the catastrophic nature of emergency makes it impractical or unsafe to assemble a quorum in a single location.

And the purpose of the meeting is to provide for the discharge of lawful purposes, duties, and responsibilities.

This meeting is being held via electronic video and audio

The meeting minutes will reflect the nature of the emergency.

electronic communication means, and the type of electronic communications means, which the meeting was held.

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

Okay, with that, Lucinda, would you please call our roll in if everybody will either make sure we see your hand waving or respond in the affirmative?

Um, Diana, when you move your papers around, it's near your mic, and it

Okay.

Okay.

Ms. White from UVA Parking and Transportation.

Present.

Ms. White from Albemarle School System.

Present.

Mr. Thompson from Charlottesville Area Alliance.

I saw him.

Ms. Pennington from Rideshare.

Present.

Ms. Shackelford from CA MPO staff.

I'm here.

Present.

Great.

and also Supervisor Vila Pisto-Curtley.

I'm so sorry.

Oh, B, we didn't mean to miss you.

Well, I'm so short.

That's why you couldn't see me.

So many faces on the screen.

Our first order of business is approval of our agenda.

Second.

That's how.

Thank you very much.

We have a motion.

Is there a second?

I'll second it.

No, that's back up.

A second and thank you.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

That's great.

We have an agenda.

Next item is the approval of the draft meeting minutes that you had in your packet.

Does anybody have any quick edits or anything they want to comment on the minutes?

Ms. Becca, I'll make a motion that we accept those minutes.

Thank you, Becca.

Thank you, Lloyd.

There's a second.

All those in favor of approving the January 27th meeting minutes, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

All right, Lucinda, I think you have them.

That's great.

Approval for the minutes.

I'm trying to be quiet on the papers.

Our next item on the agenda, matters from the public.

We do have members from the public in the audience.

And I'm looking at the screen.

I don't see anyone with their hand up.

So, all right, next agenda item.

Members Spotlight.

This is a period when we take a few minutes for members to introduce themselves to the to the ship.

And today we have Miss Charmaine White and Chancellor Brian Pinkston.

but we'll start with Charmaine and we can always go back and catch up when Brian's able to join us.

Hello everybody.

I guess I was asked to just share a little bit about myself and I think often when I think about the transportation world, I remember my first time driving the school bus.

My first day driving with the students and the experience that I had that day.

At the end of the day, when I got back home, I said, no, this is not for me.

I gotta figure out something else.

This profession is not for me at all.

Well, that was over 30 years ago.

that I said I wasn't going back, but I was so glad I went back the second day, much to my surprise that I would discover that this is indeed such a passion for me.

I love working with our students.

I love this business.

Never a dull moment.

So I've been doing this for a long time.

I started out as a bus driver, drove for 10 years.

So I worked my way up to be Director of Transportation.

I've had the experience of working in the elementary schools, middle school, high school.

I work with at-risk students.

So I've been around the education arena

pretty much my entire working career.

So as I said, this is a passion for me.

I enjoy this business and I look forward to this partnership.

I'm working to see what opportunities that we can discover together in transportation.

especially now.

This pandemic has thrust us in a light.

We always struggle finding drivers anyway, but this pandemic certainly has put us in a situation where we got to be more innovative and look at how we can move forward.

So it kind of charged me up.

I had thought about retiring,

But when the opportunity became available and I applied for the job and I was awarded, it just gave me a boost of energy and it charged my thinking.

It just caused me to want to be more innovative in the business.

That's why I'm here.

That's why I'm serving in this capacity.

So as I said, I look forward to working with you in this partnership.

Thanks very much.

We're delighted to have you.

And with that, I see Brian has joined us.

So Brian, I'm going to turn it over to you.

You are our other newbie, so to speak.

Thank you.

Are you able to hear me, Diana?

Great.

Yeah, I've got this cute little earbud that doesn't always work.

OK, great.

Yes, I'm Brian Pinkston, Charlottesville city councilor.

Just briefly, we've lived in the area for almost 18 years.

I came to UVA to do graduate work in philosophy.

But my undergraduate is in engineering, and my background is in project management.

So the way I've paid my way through life, so to speak, and our family and so forth, is my work in construction and project management.

and facilities management at the university.

So I've worked in pretty much every type facility they have and all over grounds doing renovation type work, leading efforts like that.

I got involved in local politics in 2016, I guess, or politics.

I'd always been typically engaged, but became more so as I saw some things happening on the national scene that concerned me and

I ended up getting plugged into things locally.

Became the vice chair of the Charlottesville Democratic Party.

In 2019, I chose to run for city council.

Lost in the Democratic primary, wasn't sure that I'd run again, but I got some strong encouragement to do so and did again in 2021 and was successful through that.

So I'm glad to be here.

I had to try to leverage my management expertise to

to help the city and the county and the region make good decisions.

Or I mentioned I'm an engineer and my passions are really in the humanities where I've done graduate work.

I'm married with three adult kids.

They're all students at PVCC and CHS.

I guess I'm interested in transit because I think that, you know, this is one of the really interesting and neat ways where the region is knitted together.

I like seeing those kinds of commonalities and junctions and ways in which we can pull together in sort of

That's some of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

And I think that there's a lot to be said for a more regional approach to pretty much everything we do.

I am glad the university is wanting to step up more.

I've been very encouraged by that in recent years to be a part of the solutions that we need them to be a part of.

And I'm just grateful to be on this board to be able to see how the county engages with things, particularly in the transit arena.

Well, that's lovely.

We're delighted to have you join us.

And I'll throw it open.

Does anybody have a question for either Charmaine or Brian?

Because sometimes you will do have a question for one of the newbies.

I'll open it up if anybody wants to ask.

We can put them on the spot.

It looks like you all are safe.

All right.

Um, the really the

The majority of our meeting today is centered around the Albemarle Transit Expansion Study Final Report.

And I think probably most of you all have seen this document, which I've read and underlined and marked, but it is the draft of the Final Report.

And Boris is here today from Foursquare.

to present the recommendations to us.

Yeah, that's right.

We have a public meeting coming up tonight.

That's right.

So if we miss anything or we want to hear anything,

We can tune in at six o'clock to hear the presentation again.

Really appreciate your being here.

And I guess as long as Lucinda doesn't have any objections, I'm going to turn it over to you, Boris.

Introduce yourself briefly.

Thanks.

Okay, let me just get this up.

Yeah, so I'm Boris Palchik.

I'm with Foursquare Integrated Transportation Planning.

We were part of the consulting team that developed the recommendations for the Albemarle County Transit Expansion Study.

Today, I want to kind of go through and provide a summary of the study, the process of the study, as well as the recommendations that came out of it.

There's a lot, the report that Diana

just held up is much longer than this presentation so this is kind of an abridged version but if anybody saw anything in the report that they want to you know ask questions about we can address those too.

So with that I'll just start with a little bit of background most of you have seen this but just in case I know there's a couple of new people so the goal of the study was to identify specifically short-range opportunities

to expand transit service and key population and employment centers in the county.

We focus specifically on three areas, the US 29 North corridor approximately from the Charlottesville city limits to up to the North Fork UVA Discovery Park area.

That's this kind of pinkish red area.

We also looked at the Pantops area east of Charlottesville.

So that's this purple area here.

And then Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello.

So those are those are the three areas that we were tasked with assessing for opportunities for service expansion.

So when we started the process, you know, we started with a very open mind because there's a lot of different ways to provide transit service and to improve transit service in a community.

Each of those ways has its own ideal operating environment.

So this graphic kind of helps illustrate that.

As you get into more urban areas, you have a lot more service types to consider.

And then as you get further into the rural, suburban rural, more auto oriented kind of environment, a lot of your options fall away and you're left with with fewer options that would really be viable in lower density areas.

and density is really the key, especially for fixed route transit service.

The more people and jobs there are per acre, the greater the ridership potential of fixed route transit service is.

And fixed route transit service also requires the support of pedestrian environment because with fixed route service, people are expected to make their way to bus stops and from bus stops.

So there has to be that supportive pedestrian environment there to facilitate those trips to and from transit.

in lower density areas that are more suburban, more rural, and maybe have more of a challenging pedestrian environment because of maybe lack of sidewalks or very long blocks that require a lot of walking to finally get to either a bus stop or a final destination.

There are other types of service to consider, specifically demand response service.

So demand response service is a type of service that does not operate

along a fixed route with fixed bus stops.

But as the name suggests, it's where the transit vehicles are able to get to people get to where they are.

So one of the benefits of demand response services, it can cast a much, much wider net, because the vehicles aren't, you know, constrained to operating in a single corridor.

The modern iteration of demand response service is what's called microtransit.

So microtransit is kind of a technology driven approach to demand response service.

Demand response service itself is not a new concept.

Jaunt has been operating demand response service for many, many years in the region, but microtransit adds sort of a technology twist to it.

So it's a very kind of familiar process and interface for people who have ever used Uber and Lyft.

You use your smart device or tablet or your phone or whatever to dispatch vehicles in real time and they arrive.

You see where they are in real time on the app and you're given some instructions or information on where the vehicle is, how long you should wait for it to arrive and so on.

There are some key differences though with Uber and Lyft.

So with microtransit, typically you have a dedicated fleet of vehicles rather than with Uber and Lyft where you have almost an infinite number of potential drivers with vehicle types and so on.

Microtransit uses a set fleet of vehicles that can be branded specifically for your service.

The drivers can be vetted to your standards and so on.

Another important distinction is that microtransit offers more predictable and affordable fare structure.

And that's because with Uber and Lyft, you don't really know what price you're going to pay until the trip is completed.

They have surge pricing, they have distance based pricing, and so on.

With microtransit service, the fares are typically set by a public entity.

And so those kind of reflect more, they're more in line with what you would expect to pay for a public transit service rather than a taxi service or an Uber and Lyft type of service.

The service is pretty versatile.

So it can be used both for local circulation and for regional feeder service.

So usually it's a zone based approach to service.

So you develop a zone and then vehicles are sort of allowed to operate within that zone and people can take trips.

If they happen to live in that zone, they're going to destination in that zone to a supermarket or whatever.

That's kind of a local circulation trip.

But if there are other services, other regional services that enter that zone,

then microtransit can be used as a first and last mile connector to those regional services.

And then finally, one very useful element about microtransit service is that it's a very data rich platform, because all the trips are booked through an app.

And so all the trip requests are sort of stored in a database that can then be analyzed later to look for patterns.

In other words, if certain travel corridors emerge,

Then over time, those corridors can then later become fixed route transit corridors if it's warranted, if the demand is there.

Or maybe the zone itself can change in shape if it's clear that part of a zone is really not being utilized, you can change the zone.

and so on.

So it's a very data rich platform.

So that's microtransit.

And this is a technology and an approach to transit that is very useful, like I said, in lower density environments.

So when we looked at the environment in the three study areas, we found, at least for the US 29 corridor and the Pantops area,

They're fast growing areas and they are destination rich environments, both of them, but they're still relatively low density and they're still quite automobile oriented in land use.

So the third area we looked at was Monticello.

Monticello is a little bit of a different story.

It's a small kind of more contained tourist destination.

What we look at there is that

At least up to now, almost everybody that's getting there is getting there by car.

So 98% of people that get there, visitors are getting there with personal rented vehicles, 98% of employees, same thing.

There have been surveys asking people would they consider transit if it were an option.

It's sort of a lukewarm response.

So 6% of visitors have said they would be very likely to use transit if it was offered.

16% said they were just likely.

And then with employees kind of similar, 8% said they would be very likely to use transit service.

21% said they would just be likely.

So that's kind of the environment that we were working with.

So what we did is we developed service scenarios, preliminary service scenarios, and we developed two scenarios for each of the three study areas.

And the scenarios were a mix of fixed route and microtransit options.

We wanted to provide different options.

The scenarios were presented back in October at a series of public and stakeholder meetings.

There were 39 attendees of those virtual meetings

All the attendees of those meetings were asked also to weigh in on a web-based survey, a preference survey, and we had 159 responses to that survey.

Fairly robust participation, 159 surveys were submitted.

What we found in terms of preferences in the survey was that among both the attendees of the meetings and the survey respondents, there was really a strong interest and preference for microtransit service in all three of the study areas.

So a couple of the kind of quotes here from meetings.

Somebody said, I think microtransit would be more helpful for those with mobility concerns who find it difficult to get to a bus stop.

and who want reliable service for appointments.

Somebody else said microtransit makes sense for shopping centers where riders demand probably varies considerably by time of day.

And then among the Monticello folks, the survey was a little bit different for them.

Monticello did their own internal survey, but one of the key questions there was people's comfort with using an app-based approach to transit.

So among the staff, almost 90% of people said yes, they were comfortable with an app-based approach.

Among visitors, 85% said yes, they were comfortable with an app-based approach.

So there seemed to be a lot of interest.

And then when we asked people to kind of compare fixed route to microtransit options, we asked it in many different ways in the three study areas, but the results were always the same.

So in the US 29 area, the question was, do you prefer a smaller microtransit zone or a larger one?

and 59% preferred the larger microtransit option.

In the Pantops area, we asked if people prefer a microtransit solution or an expansion of fixed route service.

And again, people preferred, 63% preferred the microtransit solution to an expansion of fixed route service.

And then for the Monticello area, same thing.

We had a scenario that included a couple of fixed route options, including an autonomous shuttle within Monticello.

And then we had a different scenario that included a microtransit zone that actually was far larger than we initially were looking at because the Monticello area itself is kind of this dotted line area here.

What we found was that

For microtransit to really be viable in the area, it needs to be more of a mixed use environment.

In other words, if we just focus on Monticello alone, the utility of the service will be very limited.

Ideally, for microtransit to work well, you want a mix of multifamily housing, retail destinations, tourist destinations, whatever.

and so Monticello alone was not considered a viable microtransit option so we presented it as Monticello being part of a much larger microtransit zone that kind of includes the residential areas south of I-64 that are difficult, fairly difficult to serve with traditional fixed route service because of the land use.

We also included the PVCC campus in that zone and the Highland

James Madison's Highland property as well.

So in all cases, the microtransit was quite well received.

And so the recommendations that we ultimately developed, I'll go through area by area, but for the 29 North corridor, we recommended a microtransit pilot project that covers a 14 square mile zone.

That's what's shown here in pink.

This zone is entirely within the region's urbanized area.

It's a growing area that has approximately 15,000 people now and more than 6,000 jobs.

The ridership projections were initially about 75 passenger trips per weekday.

That's initially, which is fairly conservative, but the potential ridership in this area could grow up to 360 passenger trips per day over time.

The service parameters that we recommended were about 15 hours of service on weekdays only initially.

And if three vehicles, three microtransit vehicles are operating concurrently within this zone, then that would allow for wait times.

In other words, time from when a person uses their app to reserve the vehicle to when they're picked up.

The average wait time would be approximately 15 minutes with three vehicles.

So the estimated operating cost for the service is about 1.32 million annually.

This includes the vehicles themselves and the fees associated with the platform, the software fees.

And because this area is within entirely within the urbanized area, we recommended that CAT be the the sort of either the operator or the manager of this service, and it'd be branded as a CAT service.

Similarly, we recommended the CAT be the designated grant applicant, because ultimately, what this project was leading to was a submission of a grant to DRPT to fund the pilot program.

So and I'll talk a little bit about that later.

But I can, I can pause, I think I saw some sort of kind of puzzled look.

Yes, so the operating cost is the vehicle operating cost, which does include the driver cost.

We used

We use the operating costs of the local providers as sort of a benchmark to estimate what the vehicle operating cost would be.

And then, of course, there's also the platform cost.

And I'll show those details a little bit later in a slide coming up.

I think we do have one other question.

So that is a good question.

I do not have a number for the estimated savings, but the

The point is correct that microtransit can operate in an environment that lacks those elements, those supporting elements.

Fixed route service cannot operate effectively in areas that lack those things.

So microtransit is a good sort of introduction to transit service just because it is a service that is designed to be a little bit more flexible.

So when you're not quite sure where the demand will materialize,

You can cast a much wider net with microtransit service, but then also it has the benefit of being able to get to the passengers in the case where the pedestrian environment is not great.

And even when you do have things like sidewalks, that's not the end of the story in terms of the pedestrian environment.

It also has to do with, do you have a good grid network of streets?

In other words, can people get from their neighborhood to a place where they can catch the bus fairly easily?

the typical suburban land use where you have a lot of cul-de-sacs, where you have a lot of sort of circuitous streets that wind about to keep traffic volume down and speeds down and so on.

Even if you have sidewalks, oftentimes it's not an appealing option for people trying to make their way to a bus stop on a major arterial.

And then the major arterials themselves are also an issue in suburban environments because oftentimes they are very wide

and fairly high speed.

Even if the posted speed is lower, the actual speed is sometimes higher.

Thank you very much, and I really like the idea of the microtransit.

This is the second time I've heard this, so I'm really excited about this.

I do have a question regarding the 1.32 million annually.

And the reason why I say annually is because once you have purchased the four vehicles, then those are purchased.

And yes, I understand operating costs and everything, but so is the

Initial costs of purchasing vehicles actually weren't that was not included in this number because the vehicles that we are recommending for the service are already on order by CAT.

So they were planning to purchase smaller transit vehicles.

Vehicle, there's the called cutaway buses, or they have various names, but they're basically smaller transit vehicles.

Those are already in

programmed for purchase.

So this cost is the operating cost only.

An operating cost is the amount is what it costs to pay the drivers and fuels and you know, the recurring costs of service over the course of a year.

Yeah, let me show you, I'll go ahead and bring up this table here.

So the operating cost for, there's two, we haven't talked yet about the second zone, we haven't talked yet about the Pantops zone.

So the total operating cost of the two zones, and I do realize now that

Let's see.

Yeah, okay.

So this part here is looking at the 29 North area.

This is the Pantops.

So this is the operating costs for Pantops service.

That's one vehicle.

$100 an hour is what the approximate operating cost is for one vehicle.

So that's 425,000 annually.

On top of that, there's a software fee.

This is just for for Pantops.

The software fee is usually calculated in terms of a amount per vehicle per month.

So the number of vehicles you you operate, if that is if that grows, then this this grows as well.

So that's the annual Pantops cost, which we haven't yet talked about that.

And then this is the same for the 29 North.

So 29 North, we have three vehicles operating at a hundred dollars an hour.

So we came up, came up with 1.3 million for the operating cost.

The software fee is about 22,000, which again, it's more because there's more vehicles in the 29 North zone than in the Pan Top zone.

So then the combined is 1.32 million for the 29 North area.

And then the additional fees are our UC advertising.

So that's the first year cost.

So, Hal, you have a question.

No, I'm just having sticker shock, that's all.

And maybe a lot of that has to do, you know, I'm still trying to understand.

I mean, this doesn't even include the price of the vehicles and everything, but

The price is what it is and it's still a good program.

So Hal, go ahead, but you need to unmute yourself first.

Oh, you muted yourself back.

Unmute yourself if you don't.

Okay.

Boris, I thought we were talking about the Monticello Circulator.

Right now we're talking about microtransit service in the 29 North corridor.

My question would be when we get the Monticello.

So for

As far as the operating cost, I have a more detailed breakdown of it that I'd be glad to share.

I could send it to Lucinda, she can share it with others that help maybe clarify the breakdown of the cost.

But ultimately it's the fact that the service is $100 per

per service hour.

That's the approximation of the kind of going rate of transit service.

And Boris, let's go along with your presentation because we can come back later.

Yep, sure.

Okay, so that was a 29 North area.

The second area that we are recommending, or we did recommend the pilot project was the Pantops area.

So this is a much smaller zone.

It's only two square miles.

And with two square miles, you could theoretically operate it with a single vehicle.

We wouldn't recommend a single vehicle only because when you have a single vehicle with microtransit, you can't take advantage of the inherent kind of algorithms that are built into a microtransit

In other words, when a trip is requested, there's a process by which the right vehicle is dispatched for that trip so that you try to make the trip as efficient as possible, as direct as possible.

Because it's a small zone, we're recommending a single vehicle be assigned to it full time, but that since the 29 North corridor is actually quite close, this is sort of this little dotted line is how close it is from the southern edge of the 29 North zone to this zone, we would recommend that one of the three vehicles that operates in 29 North zone actually be a shared vehicle.

And it could provide service in the Pantops zone, if needed.

So

Overall, for the two zones, the 29 North and Pantops, that's a total of four vehicles, which is exactly the number of vehicles that are on order by CAT now for this type of service.

So the ridership estimate for the Pantops area is about 25.

passenger trips per weekday initially, and then a potential ridership of up to 240 passenger trips a day.

Same service parameters with one vehicle dedicated and one shared vehicle that would allow for the 50-minute median wait time.

The estimated operating cost, as we just talked about, is $432,500 annually.

That includes the vehicles and the platform, and again, it would be a CAT-branded service.

For Monticello, what we're recommending is to move the recommendations to the longer term.

So we were tasked with identifying short term recommendations.

But while we did make recommendations from Monticello, they didn't quite fit into the short term sort of timeframe for a few reasons.

One is that we did change quite significantly the definition of the area that we're looking at.

Initially, we were only supposed to look at Monticello proper.

We realized, as I mentioned, that really this only makes sense if you look at a much larger area for microtransit.

Also, this zone that we came up with would require two vehicles, at least two vehicles for it to really be viable.

Those two vehicles aren't currently available.

CAT has already

started the process of procuring four vehicles, which is, like I said, the exact amount needed for those other two zones.

Two additional vehicles would have to be funded.

There's no source yet programmed for those two additional vehicles.

And for those reasons, we are recommending this as a long term recommendation.

In addition to that, there was a long-term recommendation to continue studying the possibility of an autonomous vehicle to take over the Monticello visitors, the loop that connects with Monticello visitor center to the Thomas Jefferson property.

That loop already exists, but it's operating today with regular transit vehicles or small transit vehicles, really shuttle vehicles, but it could be in the future operated with an autonomous vehicle.

Although that technology is still in,

kind of the nascent stage and we think that it will take a few more years before it can truly be autonomous.

Today there are autonomous vehicles operating but they still have

a monitor, they may not be a driver, but there's still the manpower issue of somebody sitting there monitoring the service inside the vehicle.

So it's not quite ready for full prime time quite yet in our assessment.

So that's a longer term recommendation.

I'll pause there.

Well, no, no, actually it doesn't.

So the 5th Street Station is just north of 64.

So that's up here.

And this is really focused on area south.

So we do have some fixed route CAT service that operates in this area and does serve 5th Street Station.

So the idea is that, at least with the zone shown here,

You could have the connection opportunities from microtransit into CAT service that then could take you to Fifth Street Station.

However, since this is a longer term recommendation, some of those details could certainly change.

It may make sense to include Fifth Street Station as part of the zone, but that would need to be analyzed closer to the time of implementation.

Okay, thank you.

Boris, we have some questions in the chat.

Okay, and we're going to take questions from the Regional Transit Partnership members and hold the questions for the public meeting, which starts at six o'clock.

Sure, absolutely.

Really important.

I just don't know how long the presentation is.

Okay.

Um,

So there's a question asking on insights on coordinating with the microtransit pilot project with the existing 29 connect route.

So we did not recommend extending it further north.

But what we did recommend is in the longer term, so this is again, a change that is not funded.

So on the changes that were not funded, we

relegated to longer term recommendations.

The 29 North express service today operates just three trips in the morning and three trips in the afternoon.

This is a service that could operate more frequent service, more regular service.

And the microtransit service would actually help compliment it because the 29 North service, the way it's set up today, it's sort of a park and ride approach.

So people that don't have access to transit really can't

necessarily access it unless somebody drops them off or if they walk or so on.

But with the microtransit zone, people could use it as a first and last mile connector to the 29 North service.

So the two services would be quite complementary of each other.

We're not recommending extending it further north because again, the microtransit zone would provide service further north.

So that could be used to funnel people to the existing 29 North

stops.

Well, I asked it and it had to do with some of the affordable housing initiatives that have been discussed recently, and the proximity to the north end of 29 Connect, but no need to dive into it.

Okay.

The next question is the cost per passenger of the pilot is over $48 per person initially.

Uber to Rutgersville is $27.

Initially, it could be, but there are other reasons to consider microtransit other than the cost when it relates to Uber and Lyft versus microtransit.

And part of that is what I mentioned earlier, that it's more in line with public service in the sense that you could brand it more easily

You can ensure that all vehicles are ADA accessible in a way that Uber and Lyft, you really can't.

Uber and Lyft does have some ADA vehicles, but you have to request them.

The wait time for those vehicles is longer than your typical vehicle.

Same thing with vetting of drivers.

With these, with microtransit service, you can ensure that all drivers are vetted, not only from a background check perspective, but also trained to deal with people who do have special needs, so ADA eligible individuals.

So it's not just the cost, but over time, the capacity of microtransit vehicles

is greater than a typical sedan that you would see for Uber and Lyft.

So if ridership continues to grow, then over time, microtransit actually becomes much, much more efficient than Uber and Lyft service because you can transport a dozen people at a time versus one or two people at a time.

So initially, there will be a lack of knowledge, a lack of understanding, and

Based on, we had a lot of input from Garland with Kat about that.

When I showed this, you may have noticed that we have quite a large advertising budget assigned for both year one and year two.

Just to throw in my two cents worth, part of the goal of transit is to get more cars off the road, not to add more cars to the road.

Bea.

Yes, I'm not saying anything against Lyft or Uber, but there's also, in my opinion, the safety factor.

of knowing that this, you know, the people have been vetted and this is a publicly run bus service.

So I would feel a lot safer, frankly, just like I would in a jaunt bus or a cat bus.

Are there more questions?

We just have two comments.

One is that John has vehicles available and the other one is that autonomous vehicles today also do not work well in inclement weather.

Noted.

So the last slide that I wanted to cover is what next.

So the grant application for those first two, the Pentops and 29 North zones, the grant application was submitted to DRPT on February 1st.

It was submitted by CAT.

The grant, if it's successful, the funding would become available

or it will be awarded July 1st.

So the grant generally covers the first year of service and additional startup needs, including advertising, software training and other service related needs.

Even though it covers one year of service, the grant period can be up to 18 months.

So what that means is you can start using some of the grant funding to start investing in advertising, for example, even before the service begins.

So it'll cover a year of service.

So we have here on this diagram, January of 2023 is when the service, the first year of service technically begins.

But there will be costs even before that first year for things like advertising and, you know,

vehicle delivery and things like that.

So the first year of service would be theoretically funded at 80% by the DRPT grant.

So then the county would then need to be responsible for the remaining 20%.

The second year would not be funded by the grant.

So the county, if there are no offsets, the county would be responsible for the full cost of the second year of service.

Offsets that

would be available to the county, would be number one, fares.

So fares are one way to recoup your operating cost.

Things like advertising is another way.

And then additional grant applications, maybe not the specific DRPT demonstration project grant, but other grant applications you may consider.

But short of those things, the second year would be fully the county's responsibility unless there were offsets identified.

And that is the end of my presentation.

Now we can open it up for questions from the RTP members.

What questions do you have?

And I know, maybe we should take

I can't see if anyone has their hands up, I guess is what I'm saying.

When we had the technical meeting the other day, you said that there might be some hints as to whether the grant ahead of July 1, whether it's headed toward

being granted.

I think there aren't, is there anyone from DRPT who's on this call?

Yeah, I'm Neil Sherman, Director of Transit Programs for DRPT.

And so

If it is approved or recommended for approval, it will be in the draft Commonwealth Transportation six year step in April.

And then we will go through the process of making sure for public hearings and that there is local match available for whatever is approved.

And I will add that the Almore County Board of Supervisors have supported the demonstration grant.

Just so everybody knows in case they didn't know.

So we we've done our share of supporting it up until now, Neil.

As far as the, so for the DRPT and now I guess review process, I, you know, that's something that I think the county support letter or the county resolution kind of helps with that element.

It's not that it guarantees that the county would support it in the second year, but they were supportive enough to pass the resolution.

Thank you.

I'm looking for any other questions that folks might have.

Well, this is great.

We really appreciate the presentation.

And I guess with that, then, if there are no more questions, I can move us on to the next agenda item.

I don't see any hands.

So our transit provider updates are next.

And Ted, you have the honor of being listed first on the agenda.

Thanks, Diane.

I think too extensive, but I do want to report that Garland of CAT, Becca of UTS, and Charmaine of public schools, we all met at John on Tuesday to discuss opportunities to collaborate.

The big thing we're looking at is drivers or bus operators, Raul, Paul, and John.

And we looked at opportunities to grow the market, see if there's opportunities to help each other out if we're overlapping services.

One thing we're going to look at is do some of the cap routes.

allow yellow bus students to ride to school and we realize there's school bus regulations with regulations that we don't want to violate any laws.

but there may be ways to make that happen and stay legal.

And the same thing for Jon, there are some requirements for special education type trips that maybe Jon could do and still stay within the bounds of the school bus regulations as promoted.

But I thought it was a really great meeting on Tuesday.

I hope my partners think the same way, but I think we're going to

trying to get together in the future.

And I will say the idea of getting the other was Becca's idea.

So I do want to give her a shout out.

That's great.

Well, I know we're all thrilled you all are meeting.

That's all good news.

Yes, I do.

I concur with Ted.

We did have a really great meeting and

I'm looking forward to the work moving forward.

We came up with some really interesting concepts, some ideas, some communities that we haven't even tapped into yet.

So we got some work to do around that.

So more to come.

In Albemarle, my primary focus right now is recruitment.

We are going to have a job fair on March the 18th.

The location is going to be Fashion Square Mall.

So we're going to get out flyers and make sure that we notify the community because just like everybody else, we need drivers.

We're just going to get out there and do what I call boots on the ground, knocking on doors, meeting with various communities, working with organizations to include Java and the senior center and just making networking out there to see whether or not we can find some folks who want to transport our children.

Great.

Any questions?

I guess I should have asked any questions for Ted or Charmaine?

Move back around and make sure you don't have any questions for them.

Bea has her hand up.

Always.

I just wanted to say thank you very much, Ted and Charmaine.

I love the fact that you're thinking outside of the box to help our students, especially in rural areas where smaller buses or jaunt buses can be used.

Whatever way we can get through that quagmire would really help.

I've heard from constituents how a large bus will be in a very dense area and then that large bus has to go down a road with maybe

Two students in it and turn around in a driveway, which adds almost another 20 minutes to the drive or longer.

So being able to pick up those students in a smaller bus that are out in the rural areas will really, really make a difference in the time that our children have to be on the bus and travel that long.

So I commend

Yeah, no signs here, no signs.

Thank you.

And it is true that if we can get young people, high school students, used to transit, public transit, as opposed to just school buses or public transit, they tend to be transit riders as adults once they graduate from school, which is a really good thing.

I just concur.

I'm so thankful Ted hosted us and Charmaine and Garland and Ted and I just had a great first step and I'm looking forward to all we're going to be able to develop and help each other and help the region, which is really what we're all trying to do.

I don't really have any

update from UTS.

We are evaluating the new service delivery model that we implemented on January the 19th.

We kind of set UVA's spring break as our moment of reflection on that implementation.

And probably so then by the next RTP meeting, I'll have a few more

interesting updates, but it's so far so good on the combination of a very compact fixed route complemented by on-demand.

So it's not too, too dissimilar from the presentation we just saw.

So thank you.

OK, great.

Well, we'll be excited.

It'll be exciting to see how that works out, what your report back to us is.

Any questions for Becca?

All right.

Thank you.

I will also say that that was a wonderful meeting.

of the group.

And I think this is a good start for us.

And thank you, Becca, for suggesting it.

It's kind of pulling us all together and making us, you know, it was amazing to see, you know, the four of us interact and how we started to think out of the box when all four of us were in the room together.

So I will say that for CAT transit side,

The things that we're working on right now are we have some capital projects that we're trying to get working on.

We have a couple of bus stops, implementation projects that are underway.

One is over in Belmont.

You will see a real example of what an ADA compliant bus stop will look like.

So we're working through that.

That will hopefully kick off in the next two weeks.

The contractor was out doing surveys today.

We're getting really close and then there's potentially one or two more in the county that we're hoping to be able to announce pretty soon.

So we are really getting close.

It has taken time because there are a number of steps, whether it was in the city or in public, you know, probably right away in the county or on private properties.

All of those processes are different and we have, I think we have a way of getting through them now that we can, you know, document the processes and continue to

to duplicate them in the future.

But I'm really encouraged by where we are and hopefully we'll be able to get the contractor working, breaking ground and putting some badly needed infrastructure in place to support public transportation.

Mike Charmaine, we are actively doing recruiting, so you're going to see us.

We actually have a campaign right now that's been in the newspapers.

I don't know if individuals have seen them.

It's basically a get to know CAT, get to know our drivers, get to know our staff.

That's a project we started the month of February, but we'll continue on for the next couple of months.

Just getting people to see the faces behind all the hard work that's being done every day.

So it's not just drivers, mechanics will be highlighted, office staff will put in a face to the project.

Eager to, you know, I think Boris and the team did a wonderful job in putting the application together.

We submitted it for the microtransit project.

Hopefully we will be successful in getting that project done.

There's potentially opportunities for us to partner with, you know, particularly Don or, you know, a third party provider.

We want to make this, we're going to do whatever is necessary to make, if we are awarded, the project successful.

So that is Cat's goal.

to make sure that we can, once this is successful, we'll have a blueprint potentially to replicate it even in the city.

So that's kind of our report.

I was just going to say, Garland, could you speak to us a little bit about the demonstration grant?

Because certainly the public knowing about it

The marketing of that is going to be critical.

So, assuming we're going to be successful.

The team is working on a, I have my, my team starting to work on an ad campaign and a branding campaign for the microtransit project.

Given it as a specific name, I'm just going to use something that comes to my life.

It's a micro transcript, it's called a micro.

So if you branded it something micro, people will get as to what that means, and then the areas that are associated with it, because it's not everywhere, and we need to kind of make sure they understand it is in a specific area that the project operates.

Branding it as a certain thing will help us to do that.

which is what the additional funding is designed to do in the project.

When you launch new services, it is really important, especially up the first, you know, up leading up to it, the first 60 days leading up to a new launch of a new service to really get the word out about the launch of a new service, how it's going to be, how people will be able to use it and interact with it.

It also allows an opportunity to get the word out about the app process and how to use the app.

So it's

It's advertised, but it's also a teaching moment to try to people, tell people how to use the service.

The goal is if we're, so if we see in April that it is in the step, we will have start to have those conversations.

I'm going to be giving Becca a call and we're going to have a sit down cause she's already operating and see if there are ways for us to potentially piggyback off the software package.

Does it have what we need?

or do we need to do something else?

So those conversations are starting to happen internally, but we're talking about the branding component only with my internal staff right now.

But so I would just say in the next RTP meeting, I probably will have more information about where, what we're looking at potentially doing, assuming we're going to get the project approved.

So the team has been, you know, hashing out some, you know,

Yeah, that's great.

Good to know.

And I know we have had discussions in the RTP meetings before one of the challenges that

Pat and Albemarle County have had regarding our bus stops as far as the benches and pads and everything was dependent on VDOT and right-of-way.

Is that process coming along pretty well now?

We're getting there.

So there's a lot of email traffic between us and VDOT and DGS.

Steve McNally on my staff has been really on the emails.

We've been sending information back and forth.

We've gotten bills from the state about sharing information to make sure we're going to think.

So everything is proceeding the way it's supposed to.

It's just the process does take a while to get through.

We have the right people who are on the email strings now.

We have the right folks who have seen the

signed off documented wind and rain and whatever drawings that are supposed to be delivered.

So all of that stuff is at the appropriate people and I'm hoping, keeping our fingers crossed, in the next two weeks to have a sign off by all parties saying that we're ready to go and this is the process that we're going to follow from now on to make everything else happen.

So we're trying to get a global acceptance

Yeah, because unlike in the city, just for those people who might be listening, Albemarle County roads are controlled by VDOT.

So with bus shelters,

And to be able to provide for the community, we have to have permission from VDOT and right-of-way from VDOT.

So it's a very different animal in the county than it is in the city.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, that sounds good.

And did you have an update on the schools?

I was just going to say, we're recruiting hot and heavy.

So you're going to see an ad campaign from the school's side, probably starting next month.

Our push now is, you know, we're pretty much getting into preparations for the summer and then the next school year.

So we're still roughly 15 drivers short.

We're hoping to, you know, we're going to keep our signing bonus in place, which is still the $2,800.

So we're going to make sure we continue to put that out there and people let everybody know that, you know, we'll train you up, but we'll also provide a nice

That's great.

Thank you.

Sure.

And I guess, as we sort of mentioned, for the most of the agencies, the public transit agency side is reviewing applications.

And so, you know, the goal, obviously, to get the draft out in April with a new

Secretary, you know, we will, you know, we will work with the Secretary's office on how they want to proceed.

There will be, I think the public hearings may have already been advertised, whether they'll be virtual or not, I'm not sure.

But we are starting to reach out for grantees on questions and things like that.

And I think the other part that's been

A real issue for us and probably more for our grantees is that all our IT systems for our website and our online grant has been compromised, which has caused us not to be able to get contracts out.

Invoicing has been a real aggravation for the grantees and so

It is.

What I did try to find out today is when that would be, hopefully the websites would be back set up or what we call OGA, Online Grant Administration.

And we're hoping that maybe as early as next week, but it's just, you know, we have to go through the state IT agency to get some of this stuff corrected and approved, and you might get a bus shelter.

install first before that happens.

But it's been a real aggravation and I'm sure it's been more of an aggravation for the grantees because they really did a good job of switching requirements and how grants were going to be done this year.

And I would like to say everybody did a real good job following.

We had to change the rules and get people to submit differently.

But we're hoping the next few weeks that we can get everybody everything back on

Thank you.

And I do see Chuck Proctor's on from VDOT.

We always appreciate Chuck, you joining us.

We were using the word VDOT occasionally over the last few minutes.

Did you have anything you wanted to add or are you good?

Maybe he's not quite there, so that's OK. All right.

Staff updates, then we'll move on.

Rod Sharer, Sarah.

Oh, I'm sorry, Garland.

Got you.

Go right ahead.

I just saw your hand.

You're muted.

We can't hear you, honey.

Sorry.

So at the top of my list, the thing that I wanted to talk about, which was the APC approval, which is a monumental process for us,

It's taken us a better part of 18 months to get that done.

But that is going to be really helpful to making sure we have very accurate information on our ridership to convey over to the ERPT.

And that's going to help with the funding model.

Hopefully, as we correct the model, we're going to be able to accurately count, which actually helps us get more funding in as the process goes along.

My team was doing a wonderful job working with UTA, the same provider of the APCs that the university has.

So hopefully there's some synergies there.

We're allowing us to potentially change the data.

But this was, I can't tell you how happy I am to have had this approval because it does make transit life, bringing us into the 21st century of being able to report accurate information.

I'm gonna be able to, Diane, to now give you ons and offs

Time of day positions, anything we're creating.

That's wonderful.

Automatic, I'm sorry, automatic passenger counters.

There are little devices that are placed on top of the bus.

And because you break the beam and it's so sensitive, it can tell whether you're getting on or off.

And it gives you an accurate count of where it was, time of day, and all that information.

And that really is wonderful.

It'll be a game changer.

And we thank you very much for all that work.

Does anybody have any questions?

Questions from the members?

All right, then let's see.

Then we'll go on to ride share.

Just have a couple quick updates for the group here.

I always like to provide information on the Afton Express service that connects the Charlottesville, Albemarle County area with our friends over on Cross Afton Mountain.

Service in January

did see some days of inclement weather.

I think there were three days that service did not run, and then three days where service schedule was altered due to weather, which did bring down the ridership for the month for a little bit.

It was just over, or right about 261 riders, and we were seeing closer to numbers before the Christmas break in the 500s.

So it will be interesting to see how February, although a slightly shorter month,

But with better weather, how that service may have bounced back with that.

Since we are obviously in the first year, it is very much a learning curve and learning as you go into providing the best service possible.

We do have a fun promotion coming up with Afton that we will be doing for riders and potential riders in March.

So it's find the leprechaun and save some green.

So we will be running a contest where folks when they see the leprechaun, whether on the bus or at the bus shelters, can scan in with a QR code to be entered to win fare cards.

So we got to keep it a little bit fun when we can.

In addition to that, we will be doing some advertising through television, through actually streaming services, and then some additional geofencing advertising where we're targeting folks who come through particular areas, mostly around those stops, when they then log on to their mobile device on things like the weather app or social media, where you see advertisements

Afton Express advertisements will potentially pop up if you roll through those areas.

Most of those are targeted around the parking garages downtown, some areas at UVA, so we've worked with a group to make sure that we're capturing the best possible audiences for this particular service for people who would be potential riders.

I'm still looking at having an outreach event again at some of the satellite parking lots at UVA with weather and everything else that's been going on.

It's kind of gotten pushed back a little bit, but that is still on schedule to happen sometime this spring.

Sunny weather will be better because people will be more inclined to

stop for two seconds and talk to us.

If the weather's bad, nobody's going to want to do that.

So in addition to that, moving on to Rideshare, we are part of the group, of course, that applied for Commuter Assistance Program grant funding for our annual operating budget, as we do every year in February.

So still working with DRPT through that particular process.

have also joined a communications group with DRPT staff to help kind of better consolidate all of our promotions to work together on individual promotions, as well as promoting all of the state initiatives that they are doing.

And they gave us a lovely calendar of things to look forward to.

We will have Women's History Month next month, and we'll be promoting some of the transportation

options or history events that involve women in transportation.

Transit Operator Day will be in March as well.

Also, there will be a six-month telework promotion that will span from March

through October.

We're waiting on more details as to what exactly all that will entail.

I know one of the things that Rideshare specifically will be promoting during that time is the fact that telework is indeed a commute in our app and our rewards program so you can earn rewards for your telework commute.

And so that's definitely something we're going to, we feel like sometimes people forget about that option, that that still counts and that that still earns you points.

And that is still saving admissions, fuel savings, obviously less cars on the road.

So that will definitely be some of our concentration.

And then also just forward thinking in May, we have both bike month and then ride share.

And many of the transit service providers in this area often do

a clean commute promotion as well.

So plenty of things to keep us busy in the spring.

Great, thank you.

Any questions for Sam?

I don't see any hands.

All right.

Sure.

And I'm actually going to start with a non-NPO update because I don't see another place on the agenda to do this.

But Lucinda has actually just developed our draft of the work program for our rural transportation program.

And we'll be presenting that to the commission next week at their meeting.

And one of the things that we included is with all of this sort of momentum around transit planning is Christine and Lucinda met with John earlier this week to discuss what the PDC could do to support

better information gathering and planning around transit in the rural localities.

So that's something we're hoping to get some support for from the commission in order to take that on as part of our programming next year.

So just to expand beyond the MPO a little bit and let you all know about an exciting transit project that hopefully will be coming on board in the rural areas.

Otherwise for the MPO, we are mostly full steam ahead preparing for smart scale applications.

We've had a lot of activity happening recently.

I'm going to drop a link in the chat, but Bella has done a really great job of compiling information on all of the projects that are being submitted throughout the MPO area on smart scale.

You'll see that a lot of them are involved by competitive infrastructure, which as you all know is really

helpful and conducive to supporting transit operations in the area.

The big project we've been working on is some community and stakeholder engagement around the Ravana River bike-ped crossing between Pantops and Woolen Mills.

We had that public meeting on Tuesday evening.

We had about 25 people attend.

We have a survey that's currently live right now.

We have 696 people that have responded.

So if you are somebody who hasn't responded yet, if there are four of you on this call and you care at all about the bridge, you could just satisfy me personally by taking the survey and giving us to 700 at least.

But that survey will be open until March 4th.

and then we'll be having a special meeting with the MPO Policy Board to discuss all the information that we've received regarding that project on March 10th in addition to the regularly scheduled meeting on March 23rd.

So you're welcome to attend either of those if you want to learn more and I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Otherwise, we're working on developing a draft of our

MPO work program for next year.

The big things are that we're going to be starting our long range transportation plan.

We did successfully receive a technical assistance grant from the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment to help us develop a project prioritization process that will be integrated into our long range transportation plan.

And among the things that we want them to help us do is to help us evaluate how projects meet some of our community's environmental goals and equity goals.

So we're looking forward to having that assistance as we go into that plan update.

Sorry, and I do see a couple of requests to put some of the links into the chat for folks so if you can just check that, Sandy.

I will add, and Bea can jump in if she wants, but we're really thrilled that in Jeff Richardson's proposed funding request,

Albemarle County, if it goes through, we'll be purchasing our first sweep street sweeper for urban areas, which for our bicyclists and even our some of our pedestrians is really good news.

I'm thrilled.

So, any other questions?

I'm sorry, Bella just sent me a reminder that we do have the webinar for all of the SmartScale projects that are coming up on Monday evening at six o'clock.

So that's going to cover everything in the region.

We've been working with the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

Chuck will be presenting a lot of the projects, but some of them are a little bit preliminary, but we'll be able to at least review

Well, I will just add that both of our communities, Charlottesville and Albemarle, have a lot of construction projects that have been approved road and vacuum pedestrian projects improvements and we're really looking at proposing a lot more.

So that's all good news for our residents.

Yeah, so thank you.

The Albemarle County study is wrapping up with the proposal being submitted.

That's kind of the end of our part of the study.

I also want to update you on the governance study.

We submitted the proposal to DRPT in February, and we also put out an RFP with the scope of work earlier and received two proposals from consultants.

And then we had a selection committee meeting today to select one of the consultant proposals.

And I want to thank Albemarle County, Charlottesville, and the MPO for supporting

The grant proposal, there was a 50% match and they were willing to help out with that, which was really wonderful.

And then also thank Kat, John, UVA and UTS for participating and helping develop the scope of work and selecting the winning consultant.

And also Diane Tha for joining us with that.

I may have forgotten somebody, but I hope I didn't.

and then the transit vision plan.

The first round of public input for the vision plan is wrapped up.

Thanks to the additional networking from our partners.

I know a lot of you here helps share the word about the surveys that we had.

We were able to receive over 600 survey responses, so we doubled our response, thanks to the help of our networking.

Vision Plan has completed the transit propensity and the land use analysis.

Next week, we're conducting a week-long workshop with the transit providers, and then the consultants will start working, start drafting corridor-specific recommendations.

There'll be a second round of public and stakeholder engagement in the spring, early summer.

And at that time, we'll have draft recommendations for public review and comment.

And then a final report will be

Great.

Excuse me.

Is this the same study that we looked at a month ago?

Or is this something different?

I'm sorry.

A month ago we looked at something that was regional transit authority, like I'm laying the groundwork for that.

No.

So the governance study that I mentioned that first is the regional transit authority study that has not started yet.

We're waiting for it to be awarded.

Hopefully we'll be selected.

The Transit Vision Plan is the precursor to the governance study.

Okay, thank you.

Right.

And so that it's the precursor for the authority, right?

What the governance would look like with an authority.

But great question, Brian.

We really have a lot going on with transit these days and a lot of studies through DRPT.

So it's really easy to wonder what in the world is going on and confuse them.

All right.

I have one more thing.

So we also are starting at the TJPDC are starting to look at our work plans for next year.

Our fiscal year starts in July.

And we don't have a large budget for the RTP.

But I wanted to set you know, just let everybody all the members know that we are starting to look at projects for next year for the RTP staff.

And I'll be contacting most of you.

Yes, yeah.

Yeah, it's okay.

It's all good.

All right.

Hey, Diane.

Sorry, I couldn't chime in earlier.

This is Chuck.

I couldn't get to my

mute button fast enough.

Yeah, I just wanted to give you guys an update.

We do have the pipeline studies which are wrapping up.

One of them is in the Pantops area.

The public surveys closed last week and we're setting up meetings with the stakeholders group to review those results of the studies and we will be refining those recommendations moving forward for

those studies and hopefully we'll have some of those for smart scale.

Like Sandy said, we have a lot of smart scale applications in the area that we're working on and we'll probably look at including some pedestrian transit stops, our structures, improvements at along some of those projects, especially on the 5th Street corridor and on Avon Street corridor and in the Pantops area where

where they're needed, where we think they might be needed.

So we may need to coordinate with John and Kat as to where those possible locations might be for those applications.

So look for some inquiries from us as we move forward into that phase three of the design and the development of the smart scale applications so we can include those in those projects.

As they move forward into the application phase.

And that's great news to hear about the bus stops and working with VDOT on 29 and Pantops.

V's nodding our head vigorously for Pantops.

It's all good.

Thank you, Chuck.

No, that's it.

I do have one more thing.

We do have the 29 North study, which we will be working, hopefully to have some public outreach here, hopefully within the next month or so.

We're trying to get with the consultant and coordinate that effort on finalizing the preliminary alternatives analysis.

Great, sounds good.

Any questions for Chuck?

Everybody?

That's really good to hear.

All right.

That brings us to other business.

And I would like to ask Lucinda because we would talked about having another maybe virtual visit to a peer locality.

I spoke with Burlington, Vermont, and their topic was that they are their pupil transportation rides, public transit.

And they, I am corresponding with them about speaking possibly in March.

And I've also contacted a few other agencies.

Some have had a lot of turnover, but I will be hopefully having a peer city

Great, that's good.

Yeah, I think I see him there.

Boris are you there?

I am here.

I just couldn't find the unmute button.

I'm sorry.

I am here.

No problem.

So with the microtransit, I think we discussed this last time, but since there are three buses going up 29 North and one at Pantops, I think you did say that one of the buses from 29 North could go into Pantops if there was a need there.

Does that also mean that you could take people from 29 North, let's say to

Yeah, it's a really, really good question.

So part of the trick to making microtransit as effective as possible is to limit the distance that people travel.

So initially, while ridership is fairly low, you probably could allow for trips to go from zone to zone without much impact.

Over time, if ridership grows, then what you would want to encourage is for people to use the fixed route service to make longer distance trips.

And you can, you know, feed people into the fixed route service, then they can make their way from zone to zone.

You don't want you also don't want to cannibalize your fixed route ridership, right?

Right, right.

And I do want to say one one final thing that I want to commend Mayor Snook because I understand that he is proposing a change to CAT, which is Charlottesville Area Transit to ACT, which is Albemarle Charlottesville Transit.

So I just want to

I hadn't heard that.

Just kidding.

Wanted to make sure everyone was awake.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

Yeah, that's a hard no, that's out of my league, sorry.

If there aren't any other comments, questions, or any other new business, I know you guys hate it when we get out early.

We could sit here and just chat among ourselves.

I want to say thank you as we're wrapping it up.

Thank you for having us and providing us to work on this project.

Well, we're thrilled that the report is done and moving on to the next step.

And we're going to give you a little bit of downtime because I know you're going online again at six o'clock.

So you can have a little break and I'm going to our adjourn our meeting.

Our next transit meeting is March the 24th.

So we will gather around again in March.

And thank you guys very much.

I will adjourn.