Regional Transit Partnership (2017-2025) Meeting   3/23/2023

Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome.

Just a couple of housekeeping thoughts.

So we don't have a forum, but we do have someone from the city.

So if we don't have someone from the city and a forum, we can't have a forum.

Right.

So that was what I was thinking about.

So we've reached one of our hopes.

So I'm just going to make the decision that we're going to start the meeting.

And the reason is because we have some folks this afternoon that are going to need to leave early.

There's a lot going on in the community tonight.

So I did want to get us started.

and if we suddenly have a quorum then we will go back and do whatever we wish to quorum.

But let's go on and take a minute and at least introduce ourselves.

I'm Curtis Carpignano.

I am the Public Service and Planning District Commissioner.

Here we go.

I also am with ACALA, working on the transit governance study.

Diana McKeel, Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.

Thank you.

We've seen a big up to Thomas Jefferson playing with Mr. Commissioner.

And we usually go the back row as well, so.

Alright.

Great, thank you.

We appreciate everybody being here.

Okay, that's it.

Welcome.

And we have another program.

Fantastic.

Madam Chairwoman, should I try it?

Good to know.

There we go.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

Now, what we can do then is go on and approve the agenda.

I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda.

Ann has made the motion.

Is there a second?

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

All right.

Approval of draft meeting minutes from January 25th.

Does everybody have a chance to take a look at the minutes?

And if so, will we entertain a motion?

Thank you Hal.

Is there a second?

Ann is going to second.

All those in favor of approving the meeting minutes for January 25th, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

All right, so we have the agenda now and the meeting minutes.

That's great.

We do not have anybody who has signed up to speak.

All right.

I don't see anybody jumping in.

All right.

Then we'll go right to the Regional Transit Governance Study update.

Yeah, so when we did the regional transit vision plan, I'm sure you all will remember that one of the recommendations was to do a regional transit governance study.

And so we are

During the governance study we were generously funded by DRPT, Albemarle County in the city of Charlottesville to do this study.

We hired AECOM to do it and the study is going to look at how we can increase the transportation pie and add to that so that we have enough revenue to implement

the suggested services in the vision plan and add those services in.

This study will help the region and the localities come to a consensus on what they want, how they want

Thank you, Lucinda.

So what we are planning for this afternoon

is to give a brief overview of the project activities so far and have a short discussion session.

So I think we can boil it down to a 25 minute presentation.

Feel free to stop in between to ask questions and then a discussion time.

And then we'll look at some next steps.

So currently we're, just to remind us of,

Lucinda reminded us of the objectives of this study.

The core objective is to identify potential governance models and potential funding revenue generation schemes or strategies.

Right now, we finished phase one and two of the study, which looked at existing conditions, which you all had a chance to review.

There were the memo and also the peer study, which looked at peer governance structures around the country, looking at regions or systems similar to the Charlottesville region.

In phase three, which we'll be initiating now, we'll be looking at potential revenue generation.

At this stage, we'll also be doing more one-on-one discussions with the localities to try to get some more feedback on their perspective in terms of what they want as a relief for transit and for their localities.

Following phase three, we'll go into now looking at the details of what alternative governance

and then formulate some that are associated with funding as well.

And so that's the general overview.

Now for this afternoon,

Our discussion will cover first the existing legislation that we have.

So in this region, this existing RTA legislation, so Regional Transportation Authority, will look a little bit more at the details of what that entails and get a better understanding on that.

We'll also look at the peer governance structures to see the variety of models that other regions that are similar to the Charlottesville area

are using and begin that discussion of what are some pros and cons of applying some of those strategies in this area.

We can also identify any funding issues that we anticipate and also start discussing some of the goals we have for this region as well.

So as part of phase one, in looking at existing conditions,

We looked at the CARTA, which is the Charlottesville, Albemarle Regional Transit Authority, which is the existing legislation, which is not operational, but that's what we have now, and compared it to some of the other Virginia models out there.

So we looked at the MBTA, the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission, the CBTA, which is the most recent one from 2020,

and then some other frameworks out there.

So for example, the Public Transportation, Public Service Corporation model, as well as the District Commission model.

Now, what I want you to notice from this is discussing the details of what the CARTA legislation looks like and how it differs from some of the other Virginia models

and thinking about that, I mean, thinking about the goals we have for the Charlottesville region.

And so for me, what we have now as a sort of a historian for me, is a legislation that allows us to form an authority with Charlottesville and all the parts of Albemarle County, all portions of Havana, Rio, Luisa and Nelson,

County, including private nonprofit, tourist driven agencies, higher ed facilities, public transportation agencies, and any other cities or towns that would want to opt in.

And so it's very broad in terms of what the membership could look like.

The composition is also, or such a board is already prescribed.

It would be two commissioners or representatives from

Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville each and then one member from any other member community that decides to be part of this and up to four non-voting members.

I think the core issue with this legislature

is that it doesn't provide any revenue generation mechanism.

And so it provides for a structure to organize, to plan, to even operate transit, but then it doesn't provide for a means of dedicated funding.

And so in looking at this, we can compare that now to some of the other Virginia models we have out there and see if we, moving forward, if we can

If the CARTA legislation is good enough for the goals that we have, or we would want to build on something else that we see in other parts of Virginia, for example, from MBTA, Hampton Roads, or CBTA, or even looking at some of the peer governance structures we looked at, identify what are some of the strengths that we would want to implement in this area.

So just in

in comparison, and I hope you have the print out there, but some of the things that I'd like to point out, the details of this, this table here is a comparison of the Carter legislation, which is for the Charlottesville, Albemarle area, compared to some of the other Virginia funding models.

Now, some things that I would like to point out here is the board composition of the representation.

We see that in the other three models that have funding authority, that is your authority to levy some sort of tax or provide dedicated income.

Their board composition also has a lot of state representation.

So there's elected officials, but also there's

State Legislatures from different committees, there's a gubernatorial appointee, the Commissioner of Highways, depending on what the funding is.

On the next page, we see that these entities were also approved for not only transit funding, but also broadly transportation funding with a transit component.

And so even in thinking about what has worked well in Virginia, this is something that we could consider for this area.

If we want to be focused directly on transit, we will want to go more broadly.

What is something that will

the localities would be open to what would be a needs better and how can we practice in that sense.

And so this CARTA legislation is just a starting point, right?

And so there's different things that we can consider in moving forward.

And once we get to phase four, which is actually looking at potential governance,

models is when we can now pick and choose, or not pick and choose, identify the key priorities that we want in our scenario.

The list here you see are some of the objectives we may want to consider.

The current legislation lays out

the membership and everything pretty straightforward right now but that can also be modified if needed and so not only do we have to think about how much the level of funding we want to generate but we can, a way to think about that is associated with the possible futures we want and like Lucinda mentioned is building up on the transit

vision study that we looked at or that was recently completed to identify what are the options of potential transit services that can enhance the lives of the people living here in terms of transit.

We had the options of the, there's the constrained versus the unconstrained models and everything in between.

And so that gives us an idea of what are the different services that my locality can have, how can we increase it, in what way, and how.

How much is it going to cost?

And then that's where the question comes in, how are we going to pay for it?

And so thinking of that, thinking of what potential boundaries of the district might be, whether it be all or parts of certain localities.

What is the appetite for that?

What would a government board look like?

We see that the current legislation only has local representation.

But like we've seen in most of the Virginia models, if we do want some sort of additional state tax or funding, we may have to include state representation.

And so that's also something to think about.

And then some of the other

long lists that will come up thinking about duplication of functions, the appropriation of effectiveness when it comes to operations in the region as a whole.

So these are some ideas to think about and to begin the process of what would that legislation look like.

And in that, the courses of action for moving forward to page four would really be one of the three, right?

The first would be

Completely start from scratch.

Let's identify blue sky.

What is our wish list?

And then create what that entity would look like.

Or we can start with the existing harder legislation that we have that is not in effect.

But start with that and try to modify certain sections to match what we need and what we want.

Or we identify some other model

that we see elsewhere in Virginia.

So the models like we talked about from MBTA or CPTA or a public service corporation, a transit district, some other model and modify that for our region.

And so those are the discussions we'll be having more and more, especially when we talk individually with the modalities as well.

So with that in mind, we also, after looking at the models in Virginia, we also proceeded to look at what other regions with similar characteristics to the Charlottesville area are doing and how they govern the air transit.

And so we had a set of criteria for selecting these peers.

And some of the key things that we wanted to look at were, besides the operating characteristics, we also looked at the presence of a major university

and in cases where they had multiple agencies also operating in the same space.

Now, the agencies that...

The agencies we came up with or the peer agencies were in Ann Arbor, Iowa City, Bloomington, Blacksburg,

State College of Pennsylvania, and Ithaca in New York.

Now for each of these agencies, we follow a very systematic process with a framework for accessing them, looking at their services, a brief history of how they evolved, their structure, their governance, particularly trying to talk a little bit more about their interaction with the universities, and more in the presence of collaboration or some coordination with the other agencies in their region.

and fun things as well.

So starting with Blacksburg, and the details of these are in a memo that you'll see, you'll get to review very soon, and also in some of the handouts.

But with these, for the purpose of time, I'll just point out some of the interesting things from each of the tiers.

With Blacksburg Transit, I think

The most important thing here, it operates as a department of the city.

So it's a city department.

But the funding structure said that Virginia Tech makes a majority of their local funding.

And so although they're accountable to the city council, they approve all of their budgets and everything.

The university actually is a major funder with very little funds coming from the local government.

Now this probably evolved because of how the transit agency started out with a push really from the university rather than from the local government and so the university was happy to continue to fund this way.

Now what this looks like is in terms of their governance and making decisions for planning as well is really between the staff

and the university, talking about their priorities and coming to a consensus of how it's going to be funded.

And so there's a lot of trust in the staff.

and in Bloomington that is set up as a municipal corporation and that really is similar to a transit authority.

It has the same powers that you would think of as a transit authority.

It's very independent within the boundaries of the city.

What is interesting here is that they also have a dedicated funding source, not only from

their existing local property tax.

But just recently, last year, 2022, the city passed a new tax that would provide additional transit funding at about $4 million per year in addition to their regular property tax.

And so they have a system where it's transit supported.

But what really pushed this is pushing the idea of interesting projects within the city that

the public could really get excited about or back up for it.

So even thinking about our region, what are some of those regional projects that we could come up with to create that level of interest to the public to get that level of support if needed as a potential way to increase the revenue?

How do we communicate that to the public and make that something that can work in our benefit?

They also have a very close relationship with the university system.

So there's a separate university system campus.

They actually share a facility, a transit facility with campus.

The transit agency owns the building and the university owns the land.

And it's been like this for several years now.

We spoke with the transit director there at Bloomington Transit and even talked about potential for

them to merge in the future to consolidate.

And so they worked very closely, and they tried to share some of these costs.

And so we saw a very close relationship with the university.

And we think that's something that we could think about how that would look in our region.

What does it look like for UVA to have a closer relationship with the agencies here beyond what we already have?

And so we can talk about, we can discuss some of those ideas as well.

In Ann Arbor, its situation is a little different.

They weren't as close to the university.

There's definitely collaboration there, but they are very independent in the sense of the way they operate, they plan, they make their decisions.

It's also a transportation authority.

They levy a property tax.

and they serve three jurisdictions.

They have power but it's the land, the city, and then the township.

And they have all the regular powers of the transit authority as well.

They also have some other agencies that work within the area.

Like I mentioned earlier, they don't have too close a relationship with the university system, but

What is interesting here is, in addition to the local property tax that they have for the jurisdiction served by the transit system, there's an additional levy on the city of Ann Harbor.

And because of that, they also have a supermajority on their board.

But that gives them more funding to do the projects that they want to work on.

They recently increased their

Yeah, property millage installed last year.

So there's an overall positive outlook on transit in that region.

For IOS City, their structure is similar to that near a city department, similar to

Blacksburg Transit as well.

So the City Department, they kind of work with the City Council.

They also contract our private transit service to the county service.

So they have what is called the Johnson County Seats, and they operate the private transit service and also other demand response service.

So it's very similar to the situation we have with Cat and John, where John operates over a larger period.

What is interesting here is that there's a separate university system, the campus.

And they don't have a formal relationship, but they do interact in terms of some bus stops, some fare policy, and they do some long-term planning.

However, interestingly, the director also talked about how in their regional plan, one of their priorities is to move towards a regional model for transit.

And so they are starting to look at what would that look like between the campus system

Coralville Transit, which is a neighboring town, and the Iowa City Transit.

Iowa City Transit being a city department interestingly also has a dedicated transit tax.

They have a local property tax earmarked for transit.

So that's very interesting in that it's not usually common unless they're, it's not usually common with city departments.

They also have as a source of local revenue, they have this mixed use transportation center that they rent out for retail or restaurants and this is also a significant portion of their funding, so that will be interesting.

They have apartment contracts as well.

We saw this in another agency where they contract out service to student housing facilities and apartment conferences as a way of increasing their local, yeah, internally generated funds as well.

In thinking about that, I mean, looking at the university system,

What this region is like, is there a possibility of doing, implementing some of those strategies here?

Do we have a market big enough in terms of student housing, apartments, for some kind of contracted service within as well?

Or it makes the youth development center that could also be a source of consistent revenue in addition to any other sources.

These are some of the things that we can think about.

The disadvantage here though is that, not really a disadvantage, but in the Virginia context, the agencies are not able to levy their own property tax.

So it would have to be at the state level and legislation would have to be passed.

So that's a difference in, for example, between Ann Arbor's

In New York, this

This was a very interesting peer because three agencies started in the cities and they actually consolidated into one.

So there was one for the city, one for the university, Cornell University, and one for the county.

And they began consolidation very slowly.

They actually started by, first they set up an operating committee to identify what are some redundancies that can come up, cut out, what are some of the efficiencies that can improve

personnel operations, et cetera.

And then the next step was they moved into one facility and started sharing costs.

And so they're still operating as usual, but they're cutting down on some of those costs.

A few years later, they had state legislation passed, but it wasn't until almost a decade before they entered into a joint venture agreement.

And we were talking in our previous

meeting that their situation is very unique in that they are organized as a non-profit, a 501C3 non-profit because they weren't able to get the push they wanted on a three from the state level and so because they did, there was that much interest and need for them, they organized in this fashion

through a joint agreement and they've been operating since.

In 2005 they adopted the branding for TCAT and it's been working well for them so far.

So we see that even with the process of trying to consolidate or

reduce some inefficiencies.

It took a pretty long time and it was very systematic.

By the way, they were able to at least start somewhere before and then where they wanted to.

And so even with us in our situation, we might have an end goal that we wanted to see, but it doesn't mean that we start at step 10.

We start at one and then move gradually towards what that would look like.

A con here with Ithaca's model is that because they are set up as underwriters of this non-profit organization that they fund, they have to fund it at equal amounts.

They have an amortized tax that comes in addition, but the locality also contributes.

But because the way they set up has to be equal, sometimes they have to go through periods of negotiation

Even if one jurisdiction or locality is willing to pay more, the others have to come on board too.

And so they talk about how this is sometimes an issue with them.

Finally, we have that State College in Pennsylvania.

State College is set up as a joint municipal authority.

Now this is very similar to

in terms of powers and authority to the CARDA legislation, which is the Charlottesville, Albemarle, and John Tranter authority, because it has all the powers to operate and fund the regular powers of an authority, but then it doesn't have the authority to levy a tax for their state law, which is very similar to Virginia as well.

And so they

They still need the contribution, the local contributions from the localities and from the state and the feds.

They also have apartment contracts going on and a pretty sizable portion of

there are funds coming from Penn State as well.

And so, in many of the cases where we saw a close relationship with the university, we saw that the contribution from the university was very substantial.

In some cases, upwards of a million dollars.

I think the lowest one we saw was about 600,000, but the rest were about 1.2 or 1.3 million in contracts from the university.

And so that was a pretty substantial amount to help make it available.

the local contributions and so again it got me thinking like what does that look like for Charlottesville like how can we work together in such a way or get to the point where there's either trust or need to identify the ways in which we could work with the university

If it's even possible, I think that's why he left because I was going there.

But what are some of the ways in which we could work together like we see in some of these other regions where they work closely with the university and they're able to support them in this way and they don't only, those agencies don't only provide

In some cases, the universities have their own services.

they still have that contribution, that significant amount of contribution.

Correct.

Yeah, yeah.

Another interesting thing we saw in State College was them changing their contracts with the apartment building.

So they are starting to think about changing it from a per ride basis because during the pandemic, it dropped now to a per bed basis to make it more stable.

And so that does seem very interesting in trying to stabilize their transit funding in a way.

But again, the State College is in the same boat that we are in here in that they need the state to approve if they want to get a dedicated local tax.

There is some discussion about some of the larger agencies in Pittsburgh and sets up wanting to lobby for them to be able to have a local tax.

So we'll have to wait and see how that goes.

In summary, this table here is a comparison of just some of the key points of all the six agencies we looked at and now thinking about what that looks like in our context.

What are some of the things that we saw in each of the peers that we liked and what are some things that we did not like and why?

What are some of those things we think can be implemented or strategies that could work well for this region?

but all the while keeping in the back of our minds that in Virginia they have certain models that have worked well in the past.

We have the examples from CETA and ETA, etc.

So how do we merge those with the future that we want?

And so even thinking about that,

Just some key takeaways that I think I've already mentioned throughout our discussion.

One, what would the government board look like in Virginia?

We know that we may have to have state representation of those boards to have a diversity on the board.

experiences what we've seen in the other areas versus in other places where they can have citizen, pure citizen boards and have no problem with having the authority to levy a tax.

In Iowa City, like I mentioned, is a city department, but they still have dedicated transit funding.

So if the city, it's still something that we can look into about

What would that look like if we wanted to go the route, some other route?

We could, we know what it would look like if we set up, we started with the CARTA legislation.

Maybe that could be a stepping stone of having a level playing field where the different localities feel like they can all contribute equally to

whatever system is provided for operating or planning the service.

Even if before we get to the point of letting the tax or increase in some sort of revenue, what are some potential ways of organically increasing those local contributions if we were to start with what we have or modify it in some other way, knowing that it will be a process that will take some time

Like I mentioned before, the universities as well, looking at what that post-collaboration would look like and inter-agency collaboration and coordination.

So amongst the peers, we saw that between

The neighboring agencies or some of the other agencies that provide a different types of service, they have minimal coordination.

But where it works well, we can see a very strong improvement in the way they actually move into the same buildings.

What would that look like for this region?

If there's a need, how do we improve that or increase in efficiencies in that way?

And lastly,

What are some innovative regional projects that could create that increased interest for the localities here?

That could be a potential way of talking about increased funding.

What would that look like for each jurisdiction according to the goals that they have?

And so we won't have a breakout session at the end of the morning, but more of a discussion session open for, I think we have about 10 minutes or so.

But at this point, I'd like to open it up with questions or thoughts on one, maybe we can just start out with what we like or what we didn't like, or what are the goals that we would want for this region?

If we are thinking about transit governance in this region, what goals do we want to accomplish?

I can start with one, which is we probably want dedicated transit funding, maybe.

But what are some other goals that we might want in this region?

It seems to me that one goal would be to have a system that lets us

At least do the unconstrained network.

To me, that would be a goal.

Here we go.

We wore a suit and a good one on this roof.

If we had carpet, I think we called it, and it had teeth, then it was able to actually function as a

Yeah, very good, thank you.

Can you say a little more about, to me, the funding piece of what's really going to be

So let's just pretend that we had John and... John, just pretend.

This is a thought exercise.

Assuming we had Kat, John, and UTS all under one umbrella, how

Given those assets and given the funding streams that come from those three different organizations, I mean, how could this work?

What would an ongoing financial model look like with those three?

I think maybe that's the next part of your study, I'm not sure, but to me, it would cap what is in a lot of the federal money, obviously, and if John has its sources of funding,

and then the university is, you know, that's the other thing for me with the university.

That's one that's a very large percentage of our service hours are what most people would call parking on the shuttles and so I don't know if your scope has that in it in terms of what federal funding and state funding and regional funding

is able to pay for when it comes to parking lot shuttles, but I'd say that's about 40% of our service hours.

And so the question for us would be, you know, is that, could that be included in the umbrella or would UVA still need to maintain the fleet and maintain those operations?

Probably the latter, I would expect.

But at the same time, you know, the service that's run

quite frequently through what everybody in this room would probably call student neighborhoods, 14th Street, Redby Road, Princeton, you know, kind of get higher frequency and run their proper service hours such that it really does keep students from bringing cars to grounds.

We do have a lot of data that shows that a lot of the students by way more frequent behavior than

Everybody in this room probably leave their cars at home and don't bring them because of the high frequency bus service.

But then again, is the region ready to make that investment so that it truly is an option to not have a car and then how about extending that courtesy to this network that would then say, okay, maybe an employee doesn't have a car either.

And so that's

Those are just what comes off the top of my head.

And I know I was super late.

I also have believed, super late.

But thank you.

And Kendall, I'm sure you've introduced yourself.

So thank you for the opportunity to say that.

But I think the biggest thing would be, and I don't know if it's in your scope, about these parking lot shows.

But if those shovels were part of the giant organizational operation and just funded by the University of Michigan funding today, then that's another opportunity.

Right, but I think there may be some stuff about the equipment that's used, like the rolling stock that's used in there.

I don't see a restriction in your model.

I mean, if you were to serve parking lot shuttle, as long as the vehicles are going into the general public, that would be permissible.

Right, but if you look at a more expansive system, there are precedents where transit systems do provide remote parking shuttles.

This is a really good conversation, but because in the interest of time, I want to bring us back out and look at the bigger picture, because where you're going is where we all want to go.

I think.

But it's like a really big step.

So what we were hoping to do is take smaller steps and get to there.

That's like the end goal.

But the middle beginning step, actually, we're in the middle because we already have authority, legislation and everything.

One of the steps to get there, which is how we wrote the scope of work is to look at bringing in additional funding and creating some type of organization, an authority or something else.

that would have representatives from all of the participating jurisdictions and would have a system to make decisions around how that funding was spent and that would be one step and then we can continue going on.

And as in some of the board compositions, you know, there's some, there would be some leaps of faith

For the university, which we are all brothers and sisters here, we all want the same thing.

And that's what's really going to tie us together is that we all want the same thing, which is to reduce single occupancy vehicle, to have transit be a true alternative to having a car.

And so we all want those same things.

So just keep that in mind, you know, especially for

That's a big question.

So, Senator, you mentioned funding that can be brought to bear.

What sorts of funding will have you brought here?

I just wanted to call out one thing, and I don't want to interrupt the conversation, but I'm sorry I wasn't at the very start of the meeting.

Peter Bourne is with the AECOM team, and

An interesting parallel I saw in the comparison between what could happen here and the three different regional funding authorities elsewhere in the state.

There's a line that each one of them collects money and then distributes to operators.

It's not the operator itself.

And they're not necessarily, those ones are not necessarily just distributing for transit funding only.

who they're distributing for with a share carved out for transit.

So, you know, that is still, we still have the opportunity to explore that as a model here.

So state tax,

In the state, what are the sources we're seeing in Virginia?

So for example, in the case of NVTA, they have a sales tax, they have a transit tax, they have a transportation district set up in Northern Virginia that also does a fund transfer for transit.

They have an interstate operations and enhancement program

Fund.

In the case of Hampton Roads, they have the additional 0.7 retail tax, they have a fuel tax, they receive... Fuel, you said fuel, I'm sorry.

Yes, fuel.

Fields, right.

Wholesale, so this is at the state level.

They also have the HOV tools on some of the highways.

Then they have the dedicated transit portion, which is the regional transit

So that's the recent one that was added that can come up to about $20 million annually from the state reputation taxes.

So for CVTA, that was the most recent one in 2020.

They have a 0.7 regional sales tax, sales and use tax, and also a wholesale gas tax for potential for future tools.

And in the vision plan, we looked at CTEAs

So I guess my question is, again, a little bit over

I can't stand it when people want to jump ahead.

There's a process, and I appreciate that.

But one question I have about everything that you just mentioned was, and, boy, help me out here, I would assume all of that would require legislation.

Correct.

For us, yes.

From, frankly, an administration or whatever that is anti-tax.

Right.

My concern, and there's a lot of the things that you just said, is I think that would be ideal, absolutely.

And I think we would actually locally, we can't even get permission to do a one cent sales tax for our schools.

Did any of your studies show a model that grabs money from parking?

It's not, but definitely have examples we have.

Some of the fears it was.

They have the apartments one, they have the

It's kind of tough though, especially with the fuel taxes and the parking fees that the goal is to reduce vehicle use and then we're trying to fund vehicle use.

Exactly.

Especially as you influence people's behavior to drive and park, it becomes unstable.

That's what we found with mobility initiatives is that if you can pack it to the parking

So the other one on, it's going to be...

The other one is big sales.

PTOs.

One of the other, of course, is we're talking about funding and realistic funding, because it's impossible and puts that in

In addition to, are we going to talk about just transit or transportation, and it may be that the revenue stream would not be strong enough to do anything but transit.

I'm just saying.

The scope of your study, I'm hoping that there's some risk analysis or whatever you want to call it, or the probability of certain futures coming true versus others.

Yeah, I think a good indication of what could happen in the future is what is happening in the past.

Yeah, I'd be very interested in understanding more how they pulled that off.

And CVTA in Central Virginia, it's just 15% of that funding that's set aside for transit.

And many people in the region feel like it should be a higher percentage.

But that's a decision we could make, the transportation is going to be transit and transportation or just transit.

So say, again, if I'm jumping ahead to Phil's process, I'm sorry.

Say, meet all your stakeholders and everyone from the various jurisdictions, be like, yes, sign this up, we're the departments.

I'm glad we have this legislation that exists, that's for good.

And we all come together.

I guess that group of people could say, you know, we want to dedicate a certain amount of our general funds from our locality to subsidize this, or we could pool our efforts and have federal dollars brought straight to us as opposed to going through.

So those are all things that could happen, I guess.

Correct.

One of the localities, I believe,

The question was asked earlier about the inventory of financial funding sources and if there's any now that we have the name of the entity to utilize.

I was curious about something, and I'll freely acknowledge my ignorance here, and you'll probably be one to click there once I ask my question.

I noticed that Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, Hampton Roads, Central Virginia Transportation Authority all talk about

that I'm having a responsibility for transportation and they distinguish between transportation and transit, which I assume therefore means that transportation is to include roads, road construction, does it include road maintenance?

It seems like, and yeah, I think that I have

I know I've been told, whether I remember it correctly, that counties rely on the state for a lot of their road maintenance, is that right?

All of them.

I think there's an extra layer here.

The northern layer is an extra taxing district on top of what the counties do.

And Arlington and Henrico are the other two that did their own vote.

They got into that charter thing 50 years ago.

Well, just thinking about the issue that we can talk about at noon, Louise is saying what's in it for us may be one of the things that for them at least might be some greater attention on roads and road maintenance and things that are more important for them than perhaps our needs that are not being met by the state or at least needs that they don't have control over.

So if we're sort of thinking about things that could be attractive to them, maybe one of the things we would end up with is some understanding that there would be some freedom on the part of Louisa to handle certain needs of theirs that maybe the city wouldn't have.

One thing that seemed to be very positive from the chart on page four, whether Scott

that the more successful ones did have a lot of legislators on that.

This is essential because we don't and they just don't pay any attention.

It's like the River Raising Commission is like ten legislators and they get loads of state money and Robin has done and we don't get money.

Even beyond the legislature is the Department of Railroad and Transportation, the CTV member and the decision, the other state connections beyond just legislature.

As long as they're all focused on the same thing.

There is a hazard of having people who don't want to do what the rest of it is for.

Well, that's why you'd need a chicken in there and pots in there, like the mayor's smoke was talking about.

And you allocate certain amount of funds for certain purposes for certain jurisdictions in order to get their vote.

And if you scale back your transit plans, right now the region spends locally, I would say around $10 or $11 million in local money,

thinking about local contributions of roughly 30% versus state and federal of roughly 17%.

On the federal side, I think you're kind of maxed out because the urban portion of our federal money is based on population.

That's it.

The rural population of media is based on some sort of department.

I don't think it would at all.

Because the allocation, I'm not talking about, I don't want to get too into the weeds, but the base allocation of capital is strictly based on population factors.

I don't think we'd get any more federal.

When the federal's here, right?

But on the state?

Oh state, maybe.

I don't know about the state.

Well if you put everything together here,

We're getting about 40%.

So if you do the math, our budget and the council are about the same.

If you were to normalize it, it's probably close to 50%, 60% here, federal spending, the rest is local.

So we're getting about a $10, $12 million loan.

Our combined budget is about $24 million.

But even the unconstrained proposal was going to be fussed on like $38 million.

The unconstrained was $38 million, the unconstrained was $38 million, the unconstrained was $38 million, the unconstrained was $38 million, the unconstrained was $38 million, the unconstrained was $38 million, the unconstrained was $38 million, the unconstrained was $38 million, the unconstrained was $38 million, the unconstrained was $38 million, the unconstrained was $38 million.

There may be some savings.

There's a couple of issues.

One, if we do combine the systems, I don't know what our respective overhead rates are.

It might be possible if we reduce overhead and it works.

So something similar occurred in Indiana and Bloomington, where they wanted to combine the systems a couple of years ago, because their state funding would have gone up significantly.

The other operators, it meant lobbying from the other operators in the state and they stopped it.

But now the state formula has since changed and so they're going to move forward in that direction of trying to consolidate again.

So Stephanie, I'm the official timekeeper.

Yeah, I think that feedback and getting your thoughts, because this is just a beginning for the discussion.

And so we appreciate all of your comments.

We've taken good notes.

And there'll be more of these coming out so that we can talk more about it.

The next phase of this study is looking at the potential revenue generation.

So this is where we get into the phase of looking at what is possible here in Virginia.

Well, it was a great discussion.

If you don't mind, I'm just thinking about that whole idea of standing by and having a character over the whole areas of transportation.

I don't know why everyone seems to work with the other authorities.

They tend to be a little more urban and smart-scale than it could be with multiple needs.

Usually in the counties around Purdue, smart-scale is addressing safety needs.

But it's a little bit of a smaller sort of a pool project, maybe in comparison to some of these other jurisdictions you're talking about.

I think what they're using their money is matching and buying down the sparse scale cost and making the cost benefits better.

I think that's the way that those ones work.

Because it may not be a carrot for things like this.

Yeah, that's a good point.

Yes.

We need a really good acronym.

Yeah.

Well, Carter's pretty cool.

That's me.

If I had anybody in the process of all this have additional thoughts, please pass them on to our staff so that we can get them back on your phone.

And we'll send it to you more personally.

Just one process, question for you to think about is how to carry out those sort of local check-ins.

If this is going home,

As opposed to individual conversations, I personally would love to hear what other people say because I know some of you get to hear a lot of questions, but there are more questions to ask.

Yeah, so if it's in the individual discussions, we'll have more workshops that you have in that tune.

So we have three more coming up in the next group.

Group?

Yeah, group.

Yeah, and sharing out the comments and questions I think would be helpful to the group.

Okay.

If we could, you know.

Sure.

Alright, so, in an effort to keep us going.

Transit provider updates, next on our agenda.

Oh, I was a question for a compliment, but anyway.

So how much do you drive our challenge right now?

I think we're doing alright.

All right, Charmaine called me just a little while ago and said she was ill and could not come this afternoon at our county public school.

She did say that they're continuing to work on commercial privilege and recruitment.

We're doing terrible with the virus.

You guys all heard about Becca's retirement in June.

OK, so we're back.

We're currently in what we would call full service, spring of 2023 service.

We switch over to recess service, which is slightly reduced on May 2nd.

That's when we switch over.

And so we go to summer, try to do our big recruiting and training segment, then

And just again, same question, how are you doing for drivers of BTS?

We're tracking about 18%, 15% down, which is better than 25 or 30% down that we have been.

Right.

And so we're slowly, slow to getting there.

Yeah.

Is there anything we can do to drive it?

It does, and it always has been.

but just don't need to have jobs like these.

The big project that we have going on right now is our alternative fuel study.

Next meeting

Okay, so the agenda, that's great.

Thank you.

Lance, I think it's worth clearing for CAD, too, that the RFP for microtransmit is issued in our plan.

And that's the Albemarle County microtransit pilot that we will be doing, so the RFP is out there.

What's the, how many vehicles are in the pilot?

No, go ahead.

That's part of it.

I don't know that they'll all be out on the streets.

Please, please let us help a little bit.

We've been through the school of hard knocks a little bit.

So the pilot concentrates.

And the title concentrates on the pan tops area between them all.

Yeah.

All right, that's good.

Yeah.

I was out doing park and ride inventory today.

We do quarterly inventory for ride share and then VDOT has also asked

Many of the areas to take on doing some more extensive infrastructure inventory of those lots.

So the timing just didn't quite work out.

So big after news.

Obviously, last time we met, I told you about the new schedule that was going to be rolling out in February and now it's

the end of March.

So we have rolled that out.

We do have some February numbers to report back to you.

The average ridership for the month of February was 58 passengers per day.

So that was actually up just a little bit from those January numbers and pretty on par with what we were seeing at the end of last fall.

So we haven't seen any big jumps yet, but we are still doing a lot more marketing and promotion

to make sure that folks are aware of those new times and stops.

with that route information.

The folks at Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission, which the Afton Express is their demo grant, have also asked me to pass along that they are starting to look at forward planning for the service, which is always a good sign.

We've just been too on top of things and we've actually been able to implement almost all of the things that were in the initial plan.

for the service, which is a terrible problem to have obviously.

So with that said, they are looking for any feedback, any suggestions, any thoughts of potential things that could be implemented in probably a five-year plan that they will set down to do.

On their radar, obviously, is the new park and ride lot for the Crozet area.

I do know we still have a couple of years before that becomes or comes completely to fruition and to in the building stage, but they do have that on their radar to be considering in those five year plans that once that lot is open,

that they are looking at possibly implementing that into the route as well.

But any more ideas, we would be happy to take that into consideration as we move forward in that planning.

I have a question.

Sarah, on your computer routes, are there enough

That is a great question and definitely something that I'm pretty sure that they kind of have on their radar to maybe look at.

My guess is about the enough seats is it would probably very much depend on which act and express routes, you know, that varies.

Some are more popular than others and that probably would also vary depending on those connect routes.

their timing and how many folks that they are picking up.

But I do know that they have been in contact with Jaunt initially about that and have it on their radar to keep those conversations rolling as we look at that lot and how it can best be utilized.

You know, one of the things that we certainly are very aware of and don't want to do is create too much redundancy and be inefficient with the resources that we have.

We want to make sure

that, you know, we're serving as many people as we can within the resources that we have.

Awesome.

We would love to hear that.

We have a lot going on here right now.

So the first thing I'll start with is the long range transportation plan.

We're in the process of kind of just starting to ramp up for some public engagement for that.

Developed a list of our goals and objectives.

We held three different stakeholder group meetings in February to get some initial feedback from different stakeholders.

And so we'll be finalizing that language for recommendations and for review by the NPO committees next, at the NPO meetings in May.

And then we'll be preparing for public engagement over the summer and meeting with lots of community groups and investing in events and that kind of thing.

We also have finished a project prioritization process so this is just to develop the methodology that we're going to use for the evaluation of where our system needs are so we haven't identified what the system needs are yet but this process will help us facilitate sort of a quantitative analysis that will match up against the public feedback that we're getting as well to help us sort of paint a picture of where are the priorities for where we need to focus on transportation improvements.

And then we are also working on developing a project website, so that should be out probably the next month, so that as we start this public engagement, we have a good resource to direct people to where they can see all the information.

We have two federal grant updates.

The first is that, as I think you all have been notified, we were successful in receiving the State Streets and Roads for All grant.

So we have been meeting with the USDOT and going through a lot of our kickoff meetings and reviewing our grant agreements and things like that.

So we are going to be working with all of the localities just to review the scope of work that was submitted as part of our grant application.

And then we'll go ahead and move forward in preparing an RFP to get some consultants on board in order to start moving forward on developing these safety action plans as

I think we're all aware, it feels like we're hearing a lot of information about some of these safety outcomes recently and so I think this feels a lot more, the significance of this is resonating with me very personally at this point just because of the news that I feel like keeps coming out so I'm hoping that we'll be able to find some good strategies to reduce the news that we're hearing.

We also

We submitted a raise grant application to fund the preliminary engineering phase of the Urbana River Bicycle and Pedestrian Bridge.

So basically we, after having a conversation about it, there were just too many unknowns for the project to be competitive for funding.

The contingencies were really high because it's in a project that is in a potentially sensitive area.

There's a lot of potential mitigation that may need to happen.

So we really determined we needed more information in order for us to be able to better estimate the construction costs of that project.

So I'm very thankful to VDOT for

getting behind us and doing something a little bit different than they've done before and working with us to scope out the project.

So we will find out at the end of June if we were successful in that grant award.

And then other business that is happening right down at MPO is we are working on the development of next year's new effect planning and work program to identify what our tasks are going to be that we'll be undertaking.

We've also started a discussion about preparing for the next round of smart scale projects.

So just

Just so you all know, we are not actually done with round five yet.

There have been staff recommendations in areas for projects funded, but those are subject to change based on any sort of feedback from the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

So those selected projects would be finalized when the six-year improvement program is adopted by the Commonwealth Transportation Board in June.

Yeah.

And then the other thing that I mentioned to this group specifically is that DRPT had reached out to our MPO and requested that we provide a letter of support for a corridor, forget what it was called, a corridor improvement plan or a corridor... identification.

Thank you for reading your pathway, Ben.

A corridor identification project to look at the east-west passenger rail between the Hampton Roads area and going all the way to southwest Virginia.

One of the things that they're looking at is potentially looking at the feasibility of a future direct connection between

So we at the NPO provided a little bit of support for that project.

And just a little bit about corridor identification.

So this is an FRA program and it's really related to infrastructure act funding for electricity passenger rail around the country.

I will just let folks know that

Albemarle County continues to work with the VRPT as well as PEM on trying to get approvals for shelters and paths in Albemarle County on VF roads.

The Department of Governmental Services has to approve all the permits for every shelter that goes on every VF road

It appears that they look at putting transit shelters just as if you were building a house, but without the bathroom and kitchen.

It's really, really for the roadway.

We continue to work with that and the RPT.

I think, I don't know if Kate wants to add anything, but certainly my information from June to April of the RPT is that there are counties all over the state of Virginia.

who are just as frustrated as we are in Albemarle County.

They are trying to work the process, but it is a big ship and it's taking a long time to turn that ship, so.

Well, yeah, I don't know if they're, well, we'll see.

Well, we should put a kitchen in the bathroom.

That's to increase our chances, yes.

With that, unless anyone else has any new business, it is 5.30 and I know some people do have other things they need to get to this evening and you all have never objected.

All right, everybody, time.

Very close.

Hearing no objections, then I will adjourn the meeting, and our next meeting is scheduled for April the 22nd.

Same place, same time.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Welcome to the meeting very much.

Thanks to all the people.

It was great.