Regional Transit Partnership (2017-2025) Meeting   1/26/2023

Right, I'll call the meeting to order on Thursday, January the 26th.

Welcome everybody.

The first item on our agenda is often introductions, or always introductions I guess I should say, and I'm going to ask that we go around and introduce ourselves in the area that we're representing.

We do have a couple of changes today.

I think TJ PDC has a new staff member that we're going to highlight, right?

And I want to welcome Anne Malek as one of the new Alar Academy representatives.

We're going to miss B.

And I know, but Anne is, you know, in January we were assigned boards and commissions, and so Anne and B traded a couple of items.

Anne won.

That's exactly right.

Ted Rayden, John.

I'm Morgan, I'm with Columbia Academy and I sit on the John Ford as the Vice President and I represent, I'm a rural representative from John to this group.

Brian Pinkston, Charlottesville City Council, Diane DeBakeel, Albemarle County, Lloyd Stone, City of Charlottesville, Kendall Howell from University Transit, and welcome.

I'm also with UDS.

Right.

Two for one, yep.

That's good.

Sammy Chalkford, construction planning district commission.

Ruth Emmerich.

I just started one day as a planner.

Welcome.

Did you want to ask more questions?

No, that's okay.

I'm the administrative assistant for a few meetings.

All right, and I see somebody else back there.

Great.

All right.

Thank you everybody for joining us.

And let me just make a note that Trevor Henry from Albemarle and Garland from CAB are not able to attend today.

So they'll be absent.

Peter Thompson's emailed us and said he would be joining us a little bit late.

So I'm trying to see.

So Wood's there.

And Sandy is the logo.

Sandy Grisham.

Good.

So you know you guys have to really wave your hand and jump up and down and do something to catch my attention.

It's so easy to miss when you're on the screen.

That's great.

All right, now onto the agenda.

I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right, so that's A. M. Elling and Brian May the second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any nays?

Any abstentions?

All right, we have an agenda.

The next item is the draft meeting minutes.

and these are from December the 8th because as you all know the November and December meeting sort of pushed into the December 8th meeting.

So are there any notes or any comments about the minutes?

I don't see none.

So that's from Brian.

Is there a second?

All in favor please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

All in favor please say aye.

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All in favor please say

to ask folks if they had a chance to look at these dates.

I did notice that we canceled the July meeting, and that is because normally the city and the county over the last couple of years have taken some deep breaths and stepped back a little bit in July.

That works for everybody.

And of course, if there's something emergent that we need, we can always call a meeting.

Because December the 14th wasn't as close to Christmas, I think was the thought here.

Rather than combining the November and December meetings and changing the date, we just canceled the November 2013.

I think that was the thing.

So unless someone has a concern about a particular

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

So we can update our cameras, which I think it is doing right, shouldn't I?

Yes, I am.

Matters from the public.

Ladies, do we have anybody from the public who's here to speak?

So that's me.

I'm trying to find Matt on the screen.

OK, so he's just going to stay.

All right.

Greetings everyone, Matt Lawless, Scottsville Town Administrator joining from the office because of a scheduling conflict.

I really appreciate the work of the board and try to join these routinely.

This particular agenda looks really good and I look forward to seeing everything, particularly commending the

John Final Report is very informative and describes the goals of the agency really well.

I just want to represent the Scottsville neighbors who rely on this service, elders going to appointments and a few younger commuters who are really happy to use Jaunt regularly in their commuter service.

I've occasionally done that myself and appreciated it.

Keep up the good work.

Thank you, Matt.

We appreciate it.

And who's next?

That's it.

OK. All right.

With that, we will move on to the John report.

You are next on the agenda.

So the John 2022 review and then looking ahead to 2023.

And it starts with your presentation, I believe.

So we did have this in our board packet.

Just kind of gave a great refresher and now we're all pretty much in tune with transit.

But just real quickly, Sean is actually the public service corporation.

We're owned by five municipalities.

Albemarle County, the city of Charlottesville, Louisa, Nelson, and Luhanna.

They're all stockholders.

We have two other counties part of our system, but they're not stockholders, Greene County and Buckingham.

But we have ex officio status on our board.

Even though we're kind of a closet,

Public entity, we have the ownership of a private company as well.

Our organizational structure is the same as GRPC and Richmond.

But we do try to follow the public requirements.

Again, we try to support people by giving them opportunities for independent life, which not only leads to good work, but also to medical appointments to create more healthier outcomes.

We think we're a good investment in the community.

Other studies have shown that every dollar spent on transit turns over seven times in the community.

So you spend a dollar, you get seven dollars.

That's because people who use transit either make money or spend money.

And in that economic activity, they generate a kind of a nominal effect in investments.

And also we can promote equity as well by taking down barriers to jobs and education.

John has been set the challenges in the last couple of years.

No news.

A couple of years ago, the agency was in royal and some controversy.

We had some staff members that made some bad decisions.

As part of that process, other issues were discovered, which I'll go over in a moment.

So those have been kind of consuming us for a little bit of time.

We're also looking at some, looking ahead to the future, not only alternative fuel vehicles, lightwood transit is a service delivery mechanism you might want to get into.

We're also planning for the future, as Matt was mentioning.

And again, we're trying to recover from the pandemic, why should we be increasing over these periods?

Addressing some of the issues that were discovered,

There are three basic areas.

One is how we handle information, how we contract for services throughout the community, how we use some of our funding sources.

There are a myriad of other issues which are relatively moderate to address.

On performance data, there's not much to say about it except that

The accuracy of the information was much to be desired.

We think we had people trying to game the system, get more money out of governmental agencies and the process by which we obtained money was not very transparent.

We changed that and we're working hard to be a lot more transparent about our data, we're tying our data

straight to operations.

So if we tell you we run some of the hours of service, we'll be able to show it to you how it came about.

Whereas in the past, that was not always the case.

We've also not billed some of our social agencies correctly or trying to address that.

What are the issues we're trying to deal with this?

How do we allocate costs?

And that's really an complicated issue, much more than you'd think it would be.

and I'll try to explain that a little bit more in a moment.

We also want to have better contracts with our funding partners and then just kind of work with the agencies to better tie compensation to services which have not been as strongly developed as they need to be.

Another area that's of concern to us is job rates, which is really a fairly separately complicated business.

We operate in rural urban areas.

We have funding attached to each jurisdiction, each geography.

You can't mix them sometimes.

And each funding entity wants to know how its share of the product was being spent.

So it kind of creates a puzzle for us to put it all together and make it all work.

One of the things that we discovered is that you can't mix rural funds with federal funds.

I'm speaking on the urban side, not the federal side.

Rural and urban.

So we would use rural money to support services in the rural areas, I mean in the urban areas.

That wasn't really quite right.

On the right,

shows that in the blue areas, rural, the green is still the ADA zone, but there's some white areas which are also urbanized for which we have no urban federal money to cover.

Even though in the past we've been doing that, that was not acceptable.

And that creates some problems for us.

First of all, we have a fair amount of service coming in and out of both the rural, urban areas, as well as the ADA zones.

So if we were to not serve the, what we call the deserts, people would be left behind.

Unfortunately, it really impacts the county more than anybody else.

That has to be paid for by somehow.

And we're starting to see some issues related to that even now.

We would be able to, for every dollar we spend on capital, 80 cents can come from the federal government, 16 from the state, and 4 cents from the locals.

Because we operate in a mixed environment, and because we often receive federal urban capital money, we can only use part of our money from the federal on capital.

So instead of getting 80% reimbursement, we want to get a 48% reimbursement.

That means the locals go from 4% to 36%.

Our average annual capital expenditure is around $2.6 million using the local ratio.

In the past, we would only need $104,000 out of all of our funding partners.

Now, it's almost a million.

And that's falling more heavily on the urban part of the city and Albemarle County than anybody else.

And that's creating some issues.

It's a problem.

We have solutions and we're trying to work through them, but it's a nut-crack with some of our partners.

It causes even more issues because we have an 18 fleet.

We have 108 vehicles.

We think we've got 22 men, so we've got to get rid of some of them.

And we're going to be working on getting rid of them in a systematic fashion.

Our vehicles tend to last only five years, 115,000 miles.

and it's easy to put the models on especially in rural areas.

The price of vehicles used to be around $96,000 and pay six months to get them.

Now they're $160,000 and almost two years to get them.

So as our buses were relatively new, we did great.

20 and 21 is on the right side of the chart.

We're seeing about 20, 25,000 miles between breakdowns.

Not too bad, but it's not a favorable trend.

The blue line is the average age of our fleet.

We've been taking out 20 excess vehicles that we have.

The average age of our buses today is 4.2 years old.

And I already told you that life expectancy is usually about five years.

So we have a very low fleet.

We have a constraint on the capital side because we don't have sufficient

All right, so all this is creating between recognizing the deserts and recognizing the capital program and being more transparent with our cost structure, it is putting pressure on all of our local communities.

They're seeing an increase in how much we're asking from them, anywhere from 20% increase, in some cases up to 200% increase.

Now, we have ways to deal with that, and part of it is the funding shift,

but also we have to give our bus operators 20% raises back in April because Chardonnay must take all of our drivers.

So anyway, we're playing whack-a-mole on the wages issue.

Also, we were transparent about how costs and funding were being distributed.

And when you play the game correctly, it hurts some people and helps others.

And then of course the capital funds is an issue I've already talked about.

This is a chart from LALISA and it's kind of typical of some of the challenges we're facing in redistributing our costs and our funding allocations across jurisdictions.

I'm gonna tell you, if your quality jurisdictional cost allocation of funding is an issue, the RTA will have to take care of it.

So we're already kind of piloting some of that issue.

will be an issue that we'll have to grapple with in the future.

These charts, these bars show different funding sources.

There's a job in federal operating in the far right, and the bar shows what percent of our expenses are being covered by that funding source.

So in the case of the average job community in FY24, we're covering about 35% on federal operating systems.

And that's typical of other communities.

Well, part of it is because we had COVID money.

COVID money gave us a lot of resources to throw at people.

And you can see in most cases, like in Lalisa, they're getting more than 50%.

And that gave them better than the average community in John.

Now that we're trying to get everybody on equal playing field, they're seeing an increase in the local share, and they're not happy about it.

And other communities are seeing similar results.

And the board, we're working on how to deal with that.

We may see some service cuts in some areas because some communities are going to refuse to increase.

A more positive note, we are looking for the future.

If you want to stop me and ask questions, you can.

I'm looking for the future and obviously we're concerned about the environment.

And one of our goals is to reduce greenhouse emissions at John by about 45% by 2030 and that's over 2050.

These are goals that are I think are locally or state derived.

So we engage the consultant, the same consultant that Kat is using to see what other ways that we can propel our vehicles.

Some basic ideas would be C and G, hydrogen, which will create fuel cells, which generate electricity, or just do battery charging vehicles.

So we looked at them, we had an advisory committee, composed of different stakeholders, including the environmental group, and we went and we worked through.

The recommendation was

next week to grant requests next week to the ERPT to fund the implementation of that technology in our system.

The demand response vehicle, this is a chart showing how far our vehicles travel, and the vertical dash lines are how far a bus on a battery electric vehicle can go.

As you can see, we probably have more on the right side.

They're well within the range of an electric powered vehicle, so that should not be a problem.

So probably our first deployment may be up for a commuter bus.

And we'll be looking throughout the counties, we know where our

Senator Raffi's are for services, so we probably locate fast charging stations there.

Hopefully, the public private partnership.

Microtransits on everybody's terms these days.

We are applying for a grant again next week to explore that service delivery method for John.

We think that's a way to go.

We need to make a spontaneous trip.

Our current benefit is you've got to call ahead to make a reservation.

We think people want to travel more spontaneously.

So we're looking at that.

Where in our region should that be?

And what should the rules of engagement be to operate that service?

We are actually in fact negotiating with a national microtransit provider today, the C of L partnering with them on

and more immediate deployments.

We just completed a, we're about to complete a transit development plan.

The board will be asked to vote on it in about two weeks.

And it's the sixth year looking ahead for our services, seeing where our needs are and how we might best meet those needs.

We've looked at various demographic patterns.

You know, where do people who need transit typically live?

This is our seven-county area.

Dr. McCollum and Dr. Meade.

These are the low poverty population concentrations.

These are older adults where they live.

And as you can see, it's pretty well widespread on both of those demographics.

This is a transit needs indicator, which is an accumulation of several factors in the Dr. McCollum and Dr. Meade.

And another grant that we're applying for next week is to do a more deeper dive into the needs of the different counties to quantify it, both in terms of how much service we need and how much of that service costs to satisfy that need.

We also did a stakeholder satisfaction survey for John, probably not a statistically valid survey, but one of the ones that we did get back.

John seems to be doing a pretty good job on both

They made a number of suggestions, like an app-based smartphone and how people track their trips and book their trips, various service improvements throughout our service area that we will be looking at in the coming months.

In fact, we're discussing with Nelson to actually go to a county-wide service, which we don't have today, and to go a five-day service, which we don't have today.

some of our conversations as well.

So some communities are embracing transit, others maybe stepping back a little bit.

Let's see.

This is right.

You're still here?

So we're trying to

We cover from COVID and we're trying to do some image building campaigns and marketing to get people out of the bus.

We are seeing an upward trend in our ridership, which is another factor which is increasing our costs as ridership goes up.

Sure, you've seen us around, but have we been formally introduced?

Since 1975, Jaunt's professional operators have offered compassionate and inclusive transportation for everyone.

And in the past two years, we have delivered essential workers to their jobs, taken patients to critical health care appointments, shuttled voters to the polls, and helped you stay connected.

We are grounded in service to our community.

That concludes my presentation.

I think I went through it.

Well, can I make a question for you again?

You still have questions here.

All right.

So we'll open it up for questions.

Personally, I feel like I just rang from a fire hose.

But it's really good information.

Well, I'm sorry, I think.

No, it's OK.

It's just a lot of information.

So let's open it up for questions.

I don't know what the number of this slide is about, the yellow, orange, squiggly lines.

Oh, I'm sorry.

What they are are patterns where our services operate.

So they're carrying passengers from one tourist area to another.

And it just shows you the interconnectedness of our rural, urban, and transit deserts.

It's all together.

So it would be difficult to cut part of it out without affecting the other pieces of it.

And before I go much further, I want to thank the PDC.

They wrote endorsement letters for us for our grants that I mentioned.

So I want to thank you.

All right.

Do you guys look at ridership as a function of capacity?

Oh.

Well, that is a consideration.

Right now, capacity, even when our wire shift is high, is not an issue.

The biggest cost we face is our bus operator.

So whether we're driving a standard vehicle or a vehicle car, we're probably going to pay the same amount of money for them.

So the buses that we typically run are flexible in the sense that we can carry a lot of heat through one person in the wheelchair.

wheelchairs, and it's easier to move wheelchairs on and off a less than you normally do, which is more productive and more efficient use of our driver's time.

Our average vehicle may have two people on board, very rarely more than three.

And I think maybe one of them might be a wheelchair user.

Are you able to go back to sort of your, maybe I should interrupt you.

to talk about, I guess, the cure.

So looking back towards the last issues that the agency is trying to address.

The pieces you brought up about deserts and how your funding streams are such that it's not like you can provide a fully sort of fungible, doesn't sound like

completely scalable type system because of the ways the types of money you get and what they're designated for.

How much of that was always an issue and was just only recently discovered because of the work that you all are doing or is there something that's sort of a new

I think this issue about mixing urban and rural has been around for decades.

And it's really bad for the city of Charlottesville because they have not, the only federal money to get is for urban is from Charlottesville.

I don't think John has been on the shopping list in the past, but it needs to be in the future.

The problems have been around for years.

We're just now recognizing them.

And it's kind of a shoot and messenger.

We've left communities to tell them about all this.

And we had a very frank discussion with the city administration this past Tuesday.

That's the reality that we're facing.

But we do have some ideas that we can work around.

So not only did we use the money in an incorrect way, we got money we were supposed to get because we cooked the books.

So now we know why Garland's not here today.

Garland's actually a good partner about how we might pursue urban capital money for John, where we're going to see if we can work on that together.

So he's going to be a good partner.

I think the relationship between John and me I think has improved.

It's always been a tense relationship that I understand.

And I would agree with that.

Other comments, questions?

I'll just throw out, related to that spider of all the different colors, the map is there are lots of people way out in the country who

are perfectly able and want very much to work, but they cannot work.

And this is even back to 2010 when the previous court decided to cut service dramatically and these families and their moms or somebody came and very clearly showed how important it was for the life of those families to be able to keep that bus running through early so they're allowed to, but it's not that kind of thing.

And these are conceptual lines.

Now, to go off your point a little bit further, there seems to be a myth that if you got a car, you don't need transit.

That's not really true.

There are people who are kind of on the margins that have to have a car, but they have to make a choice.

So I keep your car on the road so I can go to work or go out and pay the rent.

And so you have that population, and John and Kat can help people

their discretionary dollars a lot further.

Just to your point, I mean, we've seen studies, I think most of us, where some people are spending over 50% of their income, which is not doable.

on transportation.

So yeah, not doable.

I have another question if nobody has one right this minute.

I am, to be honest with you, surprised.

I'm used to living in a world where school buses lasted 15 years, 14 years, 16 years.

We're talking five years for the world.

But that is a big difference.

Our buses are basically trucks.

So they're like a D350 pickup truck that you see on the road with a bus body on it.

Well, I'm glad when I drove for the news run of your buses years ago as part of the education fleet,

Old Number 33 was the one I used for about 10 years.

And it had very mushy shock absorbers and had at least 250,000 laughs on it.

So I know that when you get to those, it takes more to keep your mechanics from doing a whole lot more work than is worked.

You talked about in the rural area?

Well, we apply for a grant.

We will apply for a grant thanks to BDZ.

and how do we go about implementing battery electric buses in our fleet in the rural areas.

So they'll be looking at, you know, where should the stations be and what do they need to look like, you know, there's some public-private partnerships we might be able to attend.

So they'll be taking this step a little bit further, presumably when we get down gas money, because our thinking about applying for some calendar grants to buy the buses,

Albemarle has got rural areas too.

Yeah.

So somewhere in there.

Albemarle and Charlottesville is easier just to be able to have a base in the middle of everything.

Like Louisa, maybe Tyne and Crossroads.

I have one more.

I see Monticello Micro Transit.

Well, it's one of the, you know, on the Albemarle expansion study, there were three zones.

The two that you're looking at now.

That's what that is.

They just said

Because this was not the Monticello Magisterial District.

In the study, we

Right, it's that same zone, and I don't think the county would have to be a park right now.

And we pushed it off because we weren't ready for it.

But Lucid is right, it included some of the area around the historic home.

But it certainly was not much of a magisterial district.

I'm just trying to get that whole area down in that area.

And then I have, so Nelson and Flugman, a five-day week is what you were saying?

Those two counties.

Okay, that's great.

We gotta help you figure out what happened to that sweet, sweet UDA money.

Well, that has already offered some money.

And we're going to use some of that to offset the cost of Buckingham and saying, yeah, they can't afford the increase that we're showing them.

So I see a couple of other bullets here.

The John Paul Turnoff Feasibility Study, I saw you referenced it.

Do you have another presentation, or is this pretty much it?

This is it.

OK.

The Feasibility Study was mentioned.

Alright, that's great.

Alright, thank you, that is very interesting.

And I guess I should look up at those.

Are we good?

Christine doesn't have any questions.

I don't see anybody's hands.

So, okay.

Pacific, I'm going to turn this over to you.

The Motability Management Letter of Support.

and this is going to require a vote.

So we will need to have a look at this and then determine if we want to support the vote.

So I think we talked about this a little bit.

a little bit at our last meeting, but I'm going to go through a little bit more about what we're planning and applying for and ask you to support it with a letter of support.

So, DDPDC is applying for a 5310 mobility management grant.

It's a MTA section 5310 program.

It's discretionary and the DRP, the Virginia Department of

of public transportation and rent, manages the FTA grant.

So we're applying to the RPT at the end of this month.

It supports capital operating costs and mobility management.

So mobility management is basically to help people with disabilities and older adults who sometimes have difficulty using public transit.

get rides and have transportation options that work for them.

So it kind of goes above and beyond the Americans with Disabilities Act.

And you can do a lot of different things with mobility management, but the three goals are to increase public transit projects that exceed the 80 million Americans with Disabilities Act, improve access to fixed route services and decrease reliance on paratransit,

Fair transit typically is very expensive, so if we can get people fixed route, that helps the community in the costs.

And then build alternatives to public transit that older adults and people with disabilities can use if they're not able to use the public transit system.

So we talked with DRPT, suggested that we talk with Foothills Area Building System.

They are part of the

Rappahannock, Rapid and Regional Commission.

And they were very helpful.

And so we're working to tailor our product program kind of similar to what they started with.

They've grown a lot.

So they have a lot more than we would start with.

But we're just going to start small and keep building.

So in the first year, we would introduce the concept of a revenue management to the community.

working with human service agencies and transit providers.

We would start a call center and a website.

So it's called a one-call, one-click center.

And people can call and get referred to transit.

So we're not going to provide transportation services.

We're not starting anything new.

We're going to work with the transit providers to try to make sure that people are able to get to where they need to go.

So it's a referral center, but it will have

One unified vision so that people don't have to try to figure out how to transfer between Kat and John and, you know, they would just go to one place for all the transit options.

Rabbit Head and Rabbit In offered to loan us their data system, which is really robust.

So we will also be gathering data on meetings.

We'll call people back and make sure that they were able to find a ride, and if they weren't, we'll take notes on that as well.

and we'll be building partnerships with the service providers and the aging and disability communities.

So the start-up details is the first year budget is $110,000.

It's a 4% local match which is going to be covered through TJP.

We're not asking for any more funds for that.

Building a half-time manager for 12 months and a full-time staff member

for six months or thereabouts, we have to hire somebody to cover that.

And Lucinda, just as my packet said 125,000, so 110 is the... We started with 150,000 and... Oh, that's the right direction.

So then we hope to continue to grow.

We're going to talk with the funders outside of DRPT and continue making partnerships.

We can develop programs to meet the unmet needs that we identified.

We can also work on programs to support transit, coordinate scheduling between transit and other riders.

We can do travel training, which helps people who have difficulty, like barriers, riding the bus.

Maybe they don't know when to get off at their stop or they're worrying about doing it by themselves.

A travel trainer will come to your home, go through with you the barriers that you have, and then strategies to fix them.

and then they ride the bus with the person until the person feels comfortable and then they follow the bus to make sure that nothing happens.

So it's kind of like a bus-buddy kind of thing.

And that will help people get on the public transit system, the fixed route system, and increase ridership and reduce the demand on paratransit.

It will also give people freedom

to move around and not have to schedule things a day in advance, things like that.

One of the things that we could do is a unified transit interface.

So again, the transit agencies would look at one service.

If we ever had fares again, it would be one payment.

We can really unify it from the outside and basically also just help with efficiency and collaboration.

So that's the end of my presentation.

You don't have some questions?

What's the time frame?

Yeah, I didn't say that.

So the grants are awarded in June or July.

This is regional.

Yeah, so I've been going to the Interagency Council meetings and finding that there's a huge need for transportation in rural areas.

So, you know, and then I've been talking with them.

There was some misunderstanding about job services.

I worked with John's customer service representative and I'm going to be going back to the Interagency Council with some

So just little things like that I think will help a lot.

And so yeah, that would be something that would be under the mobility management program right now.

So you're asking the Regional Transit Partnership through TJPBC, right?

To support.

All right, so we have a motion from AN.

Is there a second?

Second.

You two are a team today, aren't you?

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

Great.

So I think you have the letter.

Good try.

And remind me to sign it before, because I see my name there.

Transit provider update is our next agenda item.

No, I think I pretty much covered it a couple times.

No, wait a minute.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

We have a new Chief Operations Officer starting on Monday.

His name is Randy Cantor from North Carolina.

A considerable experience in

Rural public transit, paratransit.

And then I'm hoping later in the month, a woman from Northern Virginia, who has a lot of urban paratransit experiments, she worked for Randy.

I hope you'll run to the meetings, I got an invitation.

We can.

That'd be great.

We've been working on some strategic plans to address driver shortages.

So that being said, I have presented several times to the superintendent and his cabinet

The next step for us is to, now we're going to have two by two meetings with the board to hear some of the plans that we want to move forward with.

Part of that recruitment and retention, as you know, we went up to $21.50 an hour.

One of the other wonderful things about this increase, and you're going to hear more about it, is we implemented what is called the step scale.

Now making $32, $38, $35, $40 an hour because of their years of experience.

So we are going to launch a campaign around recruiting drivers.

So we're going to hear a whole lot more about that step skill.

But anyway, we're really excited about that.

The other thing that's happening for us is our electric buses.

We do have them.

We have two electric buses that we're getting ready to put on the road.

We're going to put those in our urban ring.

And we also, part of our alternative transportation, we also put our Type A buses, we didn't put those on the road, to help support with the driving shortage as well.

Type A buses are 14 passenger on that CD cable.

Well, you don't require CDO buses.

And so you're trained by the EV, but not the full blown training that you have to go through if you were driving one of the larger buses.

There's not maybe a particular personality.

So we have a lot going on around the, we're working on what is what I call a career path for bus drivers.

So that's part of our strategic plan that we're looking at.

So we really do want to turn this around and do something about it.

This drug is yours.

So it's a lot of work that we're doing to make a difference.

So we'll see what happens.

And you might want to mention, I can guess about your request for proposal.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

We put out the RFP for outsourcing transportation.

So that's another

to what we're doing to try to address that driver shortage.

We're writing the evaluation process, so I can't give you any information on it, but to let you know that it's in full bloom, it works.

And so we are working through the logistics of that.

I can state some of the things we put in the solicitation, though.

What we put in the solicitation was to look at just a limited portion of our transportation.

This doesn't mean we're eliminating jobs.

Absolutely not.

What we're trying to do is get some relief for our employees.

Right now, they're doing a lot of double back runs, and I'm trying to figure out a way, how can I help the employees?

And so, sometimes, some way or another, this is not a favorite for them.

They're fearful.

They're thinking, somehow or another, are you taking our jobs away?

Absolutely not.

So we in Albemarle, we're giving our students the opportunity.

We call them COC Learning Centers.

giving them an opportunity to go in other locations and explore education and look at it differently.

But they need transportation to get there.

And I just want to add, Charmaine, just so the city folks know, they're aware of the RFP.

They're just waiting for us to make a decision.

And then we're going to probably sit down and talk about

how we can share efforts, how we can maybe, because we wrote the contract so that we can do a joint alliances.

So if anybody wanted to write the contract, you'd be able to do so.

So that's just a little bit of what we do.

Right now I have four, and we're going to do more because again, it's an opportunity, because I have some teachers who are interested in driving, so if they could help support

that was done for John as you're moving towards some electric buses.

Maybe right now we are confined to, we can only use these buses in the open range because

There's also going to be some need for

Two things I'll just ask about or add.

Your career pathway thing, I hope that you are in contact or could get in contact with the workforce centers here in Oregon because they will help to develop all that curriculum and so forth.

Safety programs.

Back decades ago when I was driving a truck van

There was a two-day safety course that all of us had to pass.

That's why colors, before you've been allowed to rent a bus.

Okay, so even though you're not required to have a CDL license, you still are mandated to go by the, what is, the Department of Education training, the training curriculum?

that encompasses the safety components that is necessary for you to know to transpose to it.

So no, it doesn't take you away from that.

It just takes you away from a little bit of the DOD requirements to drive that vehicle, but not away from DOE safety guidelines and regulations.

You're still mandated to follow all of that.

thing.

Are any of the electric vehicles that you're looking at, do they have the capability to charge the batteries while breaking?

Because I did look briefly at an EV automobile before I gave up on it and decided I would wait another generation.

And that was the situation with that one.

As it was in operation, it also had some kind of base that was put back on the system.

I just have no idea.

Thank you.

All right.

I think Kendall, you're next from UTS.

All right.

Thanks for having me.

And also, Allison, you guys.

We returned to our 15-minute headways on our academic student routes last Wednesday.

or more specifically right now Spring 2023 service because all the changes that we've had to make through COVID and everything.

We are running what we call continuous service on our UVA Health commuter routes so that really boils down to about three or four minute headway.

I don't know to what extent Becca has explained our night pilot and kind of our overnight offering that we have.

We run one route that kind of goes through the most popular areas like the library, the corner, to the dorms.

And then we run what used to be known as Safe Ride, but it has been rebranded as UTS On Demand.

Kind of, if you imagine that donut in the middle, On Demand

covers the rest of the canvas outside of that donut with the big shroud covers.

And so it's an interesting kind of like mix of the two types of service.

And we're experimenting with that.

I think maybe we can speak to it a bit more in the future, RTP, after we have a bit more data on how it's working.

We have four, we call them battery electric buses or VVs.

We have four that are on their way.

We're heading down there this summer to actually see our buses be made.

There is rebuild South Carolina at Proterra.

And so we'll have those buses with a whole ribbon cutting.

You guys will be invited.

It'll be a whole thing.

But we'll have a ribbon cutting probably in September or October.

And we hope that those buses

before the end of the year.

Meanwhile, with that safe ride replaced by UTS On Demand, this is one of the reasons I asked you this question earlier.

We kind of figured out that we didn't need these big ass vans that we have running this overnight service because they were filling them up, average rider shift was lower.

then we needed to have a van for it.

And so what we're doing is pivoting a little bit.

We'll have a few vans.

We have some ADA requirements that we have to cover, but we're actually purchasing a few shedding bolts to run our overnight on-band piece, which, you know, it's been online, you know, that kind of reduction of size and cost.

Driver-wise, we currently have 31 active full-time salary drivers.

We need 43 to get back to the base level that we want to have, which is a 10-minute service on our academic routes.

We have hired a recruiting and retention specialist whose name is Al Turner.

I would love to connect with especially the school bus, pupil transportation, Kat, John.

All together sort of a recruiting coalition, if you will.

I don't know if that's pie in the sky, I'm new here.

But I think something like that would be would be awesome.

And Al's been doing great work for us in the couple of months that they've been with us already.

The main thing I think for me is this concept of elevating a bus driver in the public consciousness from

sort of an entry-level type position to a trade, to a training that you choose, like, you know, on the level of an electrician or a plumber, you know, make it an honest-to-goodness trade.

And finally, I know you guys have met Sally Leveaux.

She's been at RTP meetings.

We have a new UVA health contact.

Sally got a promotion, so she may still be involved.

But our new contact, her name is Vicki Marsh.

I think it was an E, D-I-C-K-I-E.

Okay, I'll leave her email to Abby.

Do you want me to take Sally off?

Nah, I don't know yet, don't do that.

That's great.

I don't want that on my hands.

We need to have you at every single meeting.

I've been counting Red Bulls all day.

What do you want to say to this beard, by the way?

Come on.

We'll talk about it later.

I want to see you go up against that guy from Greene County in the mustache.

Yes, I always hate going after Ken.

So I'll start with the transit side.

We have a lot of studies going on.

We have the alternate fuel study.

We have the TSP, which is about to go out in the microtransit.

So the microtransit, we're trying to put that out soon.

You see, we've poured to the board and the draft is almost finalized, so that should be going up soon.

And that is to cover microtransit for the US 29 area and the PANDUPS area.

And so we're trying to get that ready up and running by the end of the year.

As Charmaine said, you know, we are trying everything we can to recruit drivers.

I think, you know, to voice everyone's, we all have a shortage and we're all trying things.

I would like to thank Charmaine for pioneering the STEP program show, I think, for us.

We've been asking for that.

We haven't been able to do that quite yet.

So thank you.

And I'm very interested in type A as well.

We have thoughts about getting it, but we're not sure about the licensing and all that.

It kind of looks like we still have to go to the DMV to get a test.

What did you say in this room Stacy?

So as we turn to the school bus side, you know, we are aware of the third party contract that

And because they could have paused for us to be able to jump on that as well.

We'll see how the city decides to handle that.

But we are trying our best.

We're going to put ads out soon for city people, school bus, to try to recruit.

I think I heard you say on the microtransit aiming for the end of the year.

I know it was first announced it was beginning of the year.

Last week I thought I heard it was summer.

Now I'm hearing maybe end of the year.

I don't know if there's the time or the cutoff date.

But we are about to put the RFP out and that is going to be up for, we want to finalize that within two, sixty days and then have that vendor in place to roll it out.

And like I said, by the end of the year we want it open and running.

And that's kind of what we heard in our meeting.

Okay, I thought I had listened to the whole table at the OSB and I couldn't get it there.

The Center and CAA is very interested in helping promote that when it gets going so that the demonstration proves the need.

So I know Garland has mentioned a date fairly soon for at least the Center and then the Route 6.

We don't know yet because you know how many vehicles we're going to have?

Yeah.

I don't know how many garbage they're associated with depending on the shift.

Let's talk after the meeting.

That's great.

Well, see, that's what this means all about is getting people to go out and talk and then share their issues and solve their problems.

I think we all need some red books.

We are the best way that this is a most fun meeting we've been to.

Okay, so Neil's not here.

Great, I hope you can hear me.

I just have one update and this is an update that I'm sure all the transit agency folks are very familiar with.

Our grant season is open and will be closing on the first.

And I would assume that's February 1st.

Correct, that is February 1st.

All right, any questions for Wood from the RTP?

Okay, thank you Wood, appreciate it.

Yeah, I just wanted to give a quick update.

I know the citizen around the annual report to the RTP list a few weeks ago, I believe,

It wasn't the annual report, it was about the public comment for the schedule changes.

So we can definitely get the annual report out to the list as well.

Ridership numbers are looking great.

I think probably

Since the last time I reported, we had November and December come through, which were a little over 1,700 riders for both of those months.

So really excellent.

We even had several days that were up in the 60s, which is kind of like our high point that we're reaching, but still averaging right around that 50 riders per day.

So the other more exciting news is about the schedule changes.

So the schedule has not been finalized just yet.

The public comment period closed on January 17th.

So they are working through all of those comments but have sort of an idea of what those schedule changes, which really is mostly the addition of the two routes to serve the UVA health workers.

They are doing tests at the moment with literally this week of running the buses to make sure that the timings are all coming out correctly and that will be the final step before those new schedules get published.

Looking at hopefully the beginning of February for that information.

But kind of what the new schedule is looking like is it will be adding a morning trip back to UVA hospital to pick up those workers at approximately 745 a.m.

The other trips for the mornings will all stay the same.

In the evening, there will be two new pickups at UVA, one at 6.45 p.m. and then a second one at 7.45 p.m.

So the whole idea there was to be able to capture and help those 12-hour shift workers that they have.

So p.m. one and three, which I realize

Even I don't have full association for what exactly that schedule is, but those are staying the same.

It does look like there will be an adjustment on the PM, two of the PM trips, which was two and four, of 15 minutes.

And the idea behind that one was to work with the UVA facilities workers who actually ended their day at 3.30.

We heard direct feedback from a couple of them that they were actually waiting around about 50 minutes

to get on that PM route and the fact that they were willing to even wait that long just I think is a testament to how important this service is.

But it did look like with some of these new routes they were going to be able to hopefully get them a little bit closer on their pickup in the evening.

So that is pretty much the main ways that the schedule does look like to change.

Obviously once we have those official

Times.

It will be up with the link on the Rideshare website as well as the Bright website that operates the Afton Express and then you will hear lots and lots and lots of advertisements.

Yes, very exciting and it's been a long time coming.

In fact, what, you know, to echo everyone else's sentiments here, what has delayed this the most was drivers.

Oh, right.

Yes, so keep it a high level.

Also, if you'll give us the update on the NPO.

Yes, ma'am.

First of all, we are working through the Long Range Transportation Plan, so we are starting some stakeholder outreach next month in February where we will be meeting with stakeholders for some discussion groups for an initial review of our draft goals and objectives that are being developed for the plan and then

We will finalize the language that we will use when we go out for broader public engagement.

Once we review any feedback we get from the stakeholder discussion groups of the MPO committees.

So you'll probably be seeing a lot more about that in the months to come as we really start kicking off the engagement process.

The state streets branch for all grant application that we submitted

I think it was August or September somewhere around there.

We should be hearing back about the grant awards for that any time now.

So we are hopefully crossing our fingers that they'll be successful.

The FAQs on their website said that they are planning to award hundreds of these grants for safety action plans.

And given that the application requirements were not incredibly stringent, we are hopeful that we'll be hearing some good news about that shortly.

As most of you are probably aware of, but maybe not everybody, the Commonwealth Transportation Board did receive the recommended projects from the staff on which projects should receive smart scale funding.

So there were three projects within the urbanized area that included improvements to Peter Jefferson Parkway and 250, which also included an 80 lot park and ride.

that also included an intersection improvement at Belvidere and Bayeux Road that was submitted by Albemarle County and then some multi-metal improvements on Avon Street that start at the Druid intersection and go into the Albemarle County about where the, it's where the storage units are, I forget what that intersection is, but

So we are thankful for the projects that did get funded.

Our construction district did do very well as far as receiving funding, but obviously the amount of funding that is available is not as significant as it was in the previous round.

Can you give me a little more clarity on those three projects and where they stand?

Because I got missed different information from some people emailed today that there wasn't that money.

to do those.

Yeah, so these are just recommended right now.

The final of the allocations and commitments will be made when the Commonwealth Transportation Board approves their six-year improvement program in June.

And then the projects will start like three, four years under.

So the last thing that I'll mention is that one of the applications that we did submit was for the bicycle and pedestrian bridge over the Rivanna River that would connect the Woolman Mills neighborhood to the Pantops Garth area.

That project, because it was over a river, there's a lot of information that's still unknown about how much it would cost to construct that project.

So based on that, the contingencies that were added to the base cost estimate were significant.

So the project base cost was $18.4 million.

When we added contingencies and inflation, the fiber cost estimate submitted with the application was $42 million.

In reviewing sort of that process, what we realized is that we just really need more information because the project benefits were very high, specifically for things like improving access to jobs for disadvantaged communities, and the opportunities for this to have significant environmental improvements for the area.

There's a lot of cross-community that occurs over the river community and across the military areas.

So there are quantified demonstrated benefits for this project.

Of the policy board meeting last night, they voted to support the preparation of an application for federal funding to complete the preliminary engineering work.

So what that will do is that will help us answer some of these other questions to develop a more accurate concept to hopefully make the project viable for future funding applications.

This is a discretionary grant program, it's highly competitive, but there's been a lot of work, there's a lot of

different strange benefits from this project.

And so it seems like it is worth continuing to pursue to see if we can find a viable opportunity to get the bridge implemented and constructed.

Great.

This is terrific that it's gotten, the bridge has gotten to this point since 2002 in this room that Charlie was talking about.

All right.

And Lucinda, we are all excited about the idea of an authority.

So, but the first step is the government study.

Yeah, so we have completed the first tech memo which is in your packet and there's a link to it on my website too.

It covers the existing conditions of the transit agencies and the legislation allowing for authorities in Virginia.

So I found it really interesting.

It talks about how transit agencies now are governed and make decisions about transit.

It covers the revenue, how they get the revenue, and operations.

And then the second part looks at the legislation.

So we currently have authority legislation.

We just have the revenue signed.

So it takes that.

The chart at the end is a little cut off in the paper, but it's on the website.

The chart covers all of the different types of authorities that allow transit, that fund transit in Virginia, and then it compares them against each other and the current legislation that we have.

We've started working on the second tech memo, which is

We're reviewing peer regions and looking at different ways that they address having an authority, managing funds, and bringing in more funds.

So that should be done soon.

And in March, AECOM will come and give the MPO and RTP an update on the project.

So we should have those two technicals by then.

And let's see.

We're going to have a steering committee meeting in March.

I'll be sending out invitations after the grant proposal that is in, so probably early February.

And I'll distribute the first ECMO as well.

The tech memos are not like distributed to the public at this point because they may change.

They're going to be put into the final report.

But as we continue to do the study and work through it, there might be things that we want to add or take away from them.

So that's why we're not broadcasting it out to everybody.

But I do want the committees to have it and be able to look at it and give any feedback that they feel they need to.

Oh, sure.

Let me just ask quickly.

Does anybody have any questions about what Lucinda just presented about the hot day?

And just for clarity in my head, so as part of the government study, we will be getting back any recommendations that we would need to take to the General Assembly next year based on the authority that we received such a long time ago.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

So go ahead.

How many meeting packets should I print out?

I printed three today.

I don't know if you guys want me to print more.

You're trying to figure out saving paper.

And I just bring my own book because I can print it out ready to help.

And I think right now I'd send the meeting notices out individually.

Let's see, so that takes us to other business and I'm going to just let you guys know I know you're disappointed but I don't have any other business.