Regional Transit Partnership (2017-2025) Meeting   5/25/2023

And both of them are going to be available.

So we'll put the minutes off, at least for right now.

But just a couple of cupcakes, or just to let you know,

Lloyd is not going to be here.

He's traveling.

Charmaine can't be here.

Kendall from UVA cannot join us.

And Trevor from Albemarle can't join us, but we will do it.

You don't look like Trevor at all.

So with that though, let's do have our usual introductions.

Sure, I'm Lucinda Shannon.

There you go.

I'm Gretchen Thomas, and I'm with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

I'm Jen Fleischer from the New Year's Health Service.

in high care, Juan Lewis is the director of the health care office of the family, Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang Dang

Welcome.

And we have seven public attendees and seven for the

we have no one signed up however if anybody from the public would like to speak now raise your hand

or yeah, there we go.

Hey, everybody.

Yeah, Dantanic Miller here.

Let me know if you can't hear me or if the audio is not great on my end, it isn't great.

And sorry, I would have preferred to speak a little bit further into the meeting just so I know I'm not off base.

But I did want to chime in briefly and say that I'm really optimistic and excited for the electrification of our infrastructure here.

And one concern I want to bring up

succinctly that I don't see coming up a lot that worries me.

I'm a data scientist that works a lot around international supply chains and from a taxpayer perspective here in Charlottesville, I'm very concerned that over the

The medium to long term investments that we make into ICE vehicles, I'm really worried essentially that the networks that provide all these parts, right, we know that ICE vehicles have an order of magnitude more moving parts than EVs.

I'm quite concerned over the medium to long term that

Those vehicles, we could lock ourselves into vehicles that are going to be increasingly really expensive to maintain and repair.

That's sort of what I wanted to introduce was sort of this other, I guess you could say financial fiscal responsibility side to this that I think may be interesting to people who aren't just treat others like myself.

I think that you were referencing electric vehicles versus... Electric vehicles versus internal combustion vehicles and just the amount of moving parts in an internal combustion vehicle that will need to be replaced over time.

Thank you very much, we appreciate it.

Okay, I'm going to go with the online first and then we can do in the room.

Ethan, could you email me your comments and I can send them to the committee.

And Dan, no wait Dan, I'm sorry.

Dan, could you please email me your comments and I'll send them to the committee.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I hope you can hear me.

My name is Ethan Heil.

I'm an energy engineer at the University of Virginia, and I wanted to personalize my appreciation.

I was able to join the John Alternative Fuel Advisory Committee.

I appreciated that opportunity, and I thought that was very valuable.

I hope we have a similar opportunity to sort of share the results from the Charlottesville area transit study as well.

Again, it's kind of hard to weigh in ahead of seeing the results.

But one thing I did notice is common in these discussions is that there's a piece related to environmental impact that's usually left out.

And that is climate warming due to methane leakage upstream.

So usually,

These environmental analyses just look at tailpipe emissions and I would urge everyone to consider upstream emissions as well.

In particular, methane is the primary component of natural gas that has a warming potential up to eight times more potent than carbon dioxide and so

It was unable to be included in a job fuel study.

And so whatever you're looking at in terms of the results, in terms of global warming emission, consider that it could be 30 to 50 times greater if you do have those upstream emissions.

Thank you very much Ethan.

All right.

So could you come up just in the front?

I would like to make a brief comment that I think goes a little bit in line with something that Ben mentioned about the timing of these comments.

It's not the first time that I speak to this board, but I do think that on many occasions if I say something that's about to be presented

It will feel out of place.

You're not going to be out with the topic in your mind yet, so something that's happening one hour from now is not going to be too late.

But if I wait until the next meeting to talk about the topic, then it's going to be too late as well because the topic is fresh in your mind.

So I would like to kindly suggest that members of the community have more than these first

I ask questions or make comments.

It doesn't need to be all over the meeting, but whenever there is a presentation or a significant topic that Mitch commented, if there is a small five minute, ten minute opportunity for community members to ask questions or make comments, that would be very valuable for this to be more interactive and also disconnected from the topics of presentation.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

All right.

Moving on to our next item, alternative fuel feasibility.

And I believe you said our first city summer presenter is Tim.

And I will ask that the folks that are on Zoom, if you can for some reason see the presentation or hear the presenter, please raise your hand or let us know in some way or another that you'd like.

I think Lucinda's monitoring the chat, but you can also raise your hand.

Okay.

I will briefly present our work with John

on exploring, alternatively, penal vehicles.

This is really a 20, 25 minute presentation.

We've got to get them in 15.

So I'll go a little quickly.

So where are we then?

Our goal was just to dip our toes into the alternative penal arena.

We wanted to see if it made any sense for John to look at these kind of vehicles.

Our inspiration was Garland, who was doing a similar study, and we actually

Thank you, Donald, for being an inspiration.

So we're looking at establishing goals for our program, what are the different technologies and where do we go with the different ideas.

Again, we're just kind of exploring, does it make sense for John to have these kind of vehicles?

My experience, very limited experience with this,

Cars do okay with electric vehicles for example and bigger buses but the market at the point that I was aware of wasn't quite there yet for vehicles of the type that John ran but we thought technology is always evolving so therefore let's take a look at to see where we should be.

It would help us inform our future calendar program as well.

The goals for the project, again we worked with an advisory committee.

We had

3C on the thing.

I don't know if you were part of it or not, but we had a few people giving us feedback.

Lucas Ames was also on the committee.

And we established a goal to, I think this is Virginia's standard to have 45% greenhouse gas production by 2030.

We wanted to see which field technology would make the most sense for us and what our high level strategy would be to move toward that if it was named to be worth more.

We looked at just about all the different types of ways you can propel vehicles from diesel to fossil fuels all the way up to hardware, electric, and propane.

The case, the economic case for these is pretty conformable.

This is a graphic showing the equivalent, the element cause for different fuel types.

At the top, that blue line, it's propane.

In the middle there are various fossil fuels.

So electric would have the least cost per gallon.

It's also where I came from, I had mostly a CNG fleet.

And we were looking at electric.

In fact, we had four electric buses before I left.

This is a profile of vehicles that are operated in transit.

I believe these are mostly state buses like Garland operates.

But as you can see from the graphic, most of the fuel is either diesel or gasoline.

and Tyler Williams.

It's very ill-elected by itself.

This is kind of going over some of the different phenotypes in Willie Foote.

I'm really conveying information from the consultant who knows far more about this than I do.

Sangier, propane, they work in similar fashion to the hospital field in the sense of gaslighting diesel.

And now it is in that fossil fuel, but the performance is very similar, has similar ranges.

And in Tulsa, we operated these vehicles.

It was not distinguishable from the few vehicles that we had with diesel that they operated in the same way.

The only difference was the fuel costs were a lot lower for CNG.

They would work very well.

I mean, they're a fixed route for demand response of service situation.

The point of CNG not being net zero was made.

I believe the reason is we looked at well to wield considerations for these fuel types.

And depending on how CNG is actually produced could create methane levels that Nathan was talking about.

I don't know about beyond that, but certainly that was a concern on that.

Even though CNG itself was relatively low in many

The process of getting there was maybe not very favorable.

On electricity, again, it's a very different propulsion system.

Again, the range is a little bit more limited than you would see on a fossil fuel-type vehicle.

And the weather can be an impact and the terrain can be an impact on the performance of those vehicles.

Again, range is a big issue, and that really hurts us, but I'll talk more about that in a moment.

And for John, our fixed-use services, our commuter buses are probably more open to this field than our response.

Speaking about potential, if we were to go that direction, I think that's our lead.

We would need to establish fast fueling stations, fast charging stations for an electric vehicle.

The green dots on the right side of the map are areas where we tend to focus on in our rural areas.

All of our rural areas tend to feed into a more urbanized part of the counties, and we could establish fast charging stations there, possibly the driver lines break of recharging vehicles would be a possibility.

Hydrogen fuel cell that takes hydrogen to gas and turns it into electricity.

This technology works in a similar fashion to electricity.

It's not a new technology.

For those of you familiar with it, the Ocala Space Program used fuel cells in journeys to the moon, so it's been well over in use for 50 years.

The main challenge with hydrogen is producing it.

There were difficult ways of getting hydrogen to a station to create it, and this does indicate there are upstream emissions related to that as well.

However, it could pretty much work if you can get past the production of the fuel.

In looking at John's situation, we have two types of services, fixed route and demand response.

This chart shows our various work that we do on the fixed route side.

and it shows how far our buses tend to travel.

Those are the horizontal lines.

The vertical lines are the ranges of various technology.

All three of the vertical dash lines are various assumptions about how far you can get out of electric charge.

And the worst assumption, which is you only get 40% reduction, you're only able to get 40%, 60% of the charge out of electric charge.

Most of our services would fall within that range.

So it would appear though our fixed route component of our service could probably work well with an electric power vehicle.

Demand response is a different question.

Same nomenclature here in terms of the graphic.

Most of our demand response would exceed the range of an electric vehicle.

Well within the range of natural gas and hydrogen, however, if we were to go with electric, we would have to have some sort of way to fast charge the vehicles, which would allow us to keep the vehicle operating much all day in our services.

We operate in the rural areas, but we do tend to go in and out of the urbanized portions of the rural areas, and that's probably

We've had a very qualitative look at the different technologies, pros and cons, battery electric, maybe good on a small scale with our fixer and buses, but the vehicles are costly, and so is the charging equipment.

Fast charging, we would have to have a network of charging stations throughout our service area.

CNG, RNG, hydrogen have their issues as well.

In terms of reducing emissions, RNG, Renewable Natural Gas, has the best of the term.

It looks like a battery is second, hydrogen is a close third, and then the other two are not as attractive.

This is a chart that has high level costs comparison.

and the potential emission reduction in the best ones would be the RNG.

However, battery electric with the fast charging is a little bit more expensive of all the options, though the operational costs tend to be a little bit more attractive than the other modes.

So the recommendation from the group was that we look at implementing battery electric vehicles,

Maybe start with a small scale for a fixed route fleet, looking at developing partnerships between the rural areas of the fast-charging stations.

Some of the funding that I think Aaron Mills is going to talk about may help us leverage some of this stuff.

In fact, we did submit a proposal to the ERPT to look at implementing electric buses in our service area.

We've been given a green light on that, if I'm intended.

And so hopefully starting in July, we'll be able to get a consultant going to see where we are and when we might do this kind of service.

Sorry, Ted.

What?

Are we going over?

No.

I have a clarification that you said you submitted, what did you want to do, RTP?

DRPT.

DRPT, I was going to say.

So that's for DRPT.

Right.

The RTP was going to be, okay.

Oh, it won't take money for anybody.

I'm sure, but thank you.

Yes, our energy is renewable natural gas.

It involves cows.

Which is interesting.

Yeah, so we can talk about that in play or company.

I wasn't planning on it.

So by invitation you would be invited, you would be presented to sit down.

Well I haven't been asked to sit down.

That's what I'm saying, by invitation.

Do they like that, have proposals submitted?

By invitation we'll sit down.

Yep.

And Dan is presenting.

Ben Chambers, I'm the City of Charlottesville's Transportation Planning Manager, and I'm helping Kat out with this study as long as I can get this to cooperate.

Alright, so I'm not even going to worry about the whole screen, y'all can see the slide over here.

So what's the first big difference between us and Johnson?

So we're just at the beginning of this trying to figure out what is the fuel that we want to move forward with and then based on that how do we program out the space at our yard figure out where we need to put fueling sources where we need

is looking at how we can go from what we have now, mostly a diesel fleet, to a low or zero emission fleet.

This is in response to our climate action goals.

Reduced reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 45%, by 2030, and reach carbon neutrality by 2050.

There's a lot of funding out there, a lot of federal funding right now for zero emissions transitions.

And that's what we're setting ourselves up for.

You have to have the plan first before you can ask for them

The other thing that's driving us is market and industry trends that are pushing everyone towards low and zero emissions vehicles.

That's both on the demand side of transit agencies are looking to be more green.

Their constituents are trying to push transit agencies to be more green.

There's also that from the industry side where they're like, this is a good move for us.

These are better vehicles for us to put out.

The issue that we're running into and why we need to do a feasibility study is

There's concerns about these new technologies.

We've been running on diesel for a long time.

We know how it works.

We know that it's reliable and we can move people with it.

With these other technologies that we're moving to, some of them are newer and we have concerns about vehicle range and about the timeline of our capital plans and how that might align with how these technologies are done.

A lot of what you're going to see in our presentation is focused on those two points.

I'm going to start off with the vehicle range point because it is different for each technology.

So to look at how our range issues would be affected, we needed a network to apply this analysis to.

We used our system optimization plan.

That's the plan that CAP put out two years ago.

They looked at how we can expand from our existing

System would have 15 routes.

It's a little bit different than what we have right now.

And we have 26 operating blocks, and that's basically a vehicle work cycle.

So some routes have more than one vehicle on them.

Some routes may have vehicles that serve them at different times of day.

And we're accounting for every time a vehicle goes out, we want to make sure that it can get back to the yard without having to be towed back.

So we looked at several different scenarios for each of the fuel sources that we're looking

We also looked at three battery electric scenarios and we'll get into a little bit more why.

One scenario is looking at, based on current technology, you probably need extra buses just to make sure that you can cover all the bus work that happens during the day.

So you would need more than a one-to-one replacement for your diesel buses.

The scenario that we looked at was just one fast charger just at the downtown transfer center and for the most part that was able to help us get through all of the range needs of Wooten.

The last battery electric one we looked at was a one-to-one replacement ratio which just assumes that, you know, fairy dust is going to fall on the industry and it's all going to get fixed and we're going to be able to run a battery electric bus.

We also looked at hydrogen that is going to assume the construction of a new storage and fueling facility and as well as CNG and its cousin RNG that would also assume construction of a new fueling facility.

So first we'll talk about the battery electric bus analysis and this is very similar to the graph that you just saw on Ted's presentation.

This is basically saying

Two thirds of our routes we wouldn't be able to serve with one bus.

You'd have to, at some point in the day, take out another bus to make it serve the rest of that service, or charge it on route, or have that magical improvement in battery storage.

So based on that, you only have a few routes right now that we know that we can run battery electric buses on today.

There's a handful of routes, there's shorter routes,

But some of your longer routes, your more heavily used routes, like the one by seven, like the trolley, are a little bit iffy, if not completely infeasible with the current battery technology if we're going to move on to one replacement.

So then we can look at what does it look like for actual transition and what are the timelines look like when we're talking about changing our fleet over and ideally this is

We went with any fuel that was one-to-one replacement.

With all of these, you're going to see there is a ramp up in the first few years, and that's to account for the expansion so that we can serve all of those routes that we have in the system optimization plan.

In all of these, you're also going to see, I don't know how well you can see it, but there's a light blue, little tiny box.

Those are battery electric buses that are already put into our capital plans.

We have two,

This transition does assume that we would be 100% zero emissions by 2040, which would mean that we meet our goals and also assumes a 12%

But not every scenario is going to be able to look like this.

And not every scenario is going to look like this.

In actuality, even if we program it to look like this, we also have to account for it.

Some of these we might have to do some additional work with utilities.

So there are some factors that can change this timeline.

But the biggest one that looks different is what happens if we switch to battery electric buses based on current technology today and said, we want to mitigate that risk that we might have if we rely on just technological improvement.

And this is what it looks like.

You basically have to double the size

This is a little bit infeasible.

So this is kind of pointing us towards, yeah, we might want to wait and see if the technology is working out, because there's no way we'd be able to afford this.

So when we're looking at battery electric buses, we know that there is, on the one end, sort of the issue of it's going to be really expensive.

On the other end, we're waiting to see how the technology goes.

So there are a few ways that we can deal with this, and we're hoping council will give us

The second would be doing a massive restructuring of all of our bus network and system.

If you want to put money into planning, I'm more than happy to do more planning.

The third would be to do on route charging.

There are some difficulties with, especially with the downtown transfer center, like bringing electricity in there, finding a site where we can put

There are a lot of considerations that we have to take into account.

There's also some issues of, you know, do you really want a lot of big electrical equipment right there, right next to the downtown mall.

So there's some issues there.

The last option would be to buy really, really expensive battery electric buses that are big and heavy.

It's not as interesting, honestly, as the battery electric buses because there's one reason why you can't depend on them quite yet.

The fuel cell electric buses, this is hydrogen.

This is really dependent on the maturation of this technology and by that I mean the delivery of the fuel.

Right now we don't have anybody in Virginia that's selling hydrogen and definitely not to any transit agencies.

So that's a big issue.

If we wanted to start generating hydrogen, that's a whole other ballgame.

That's another big investment in a capital facility account.

So that would be the issue with hydrogen, natural gas, similar issue.

We would have to figure out where the fueling station was going to be to get the emissions benefits.

We would want renewable, which is an even more difficult thing to develop.

We're showing CNG and RNG are a little bit different than what Ted was showing because we're accounting for it.

There's dirty CNG

Those are the same outcomes as what Ted was saying.

The CNG may be cheaper, but you're going to get more emissions.

The battery electric buses are going to be really expensive, but they're going to do really well on emissions.

Hydrogen performing about the same as battery electric, but as I said, there's a lot of tackle issues with that.

Alongside all of those quantitative factors that I just showed, there are other considerations that we're going to have to talk through.

There are issues with resources.

There are issues with operations.

And third, sustainability.

So we need to be talking about the local impacts of emissions as well as the global impacts of energy generation.

We also need to be looking at how resilient we are.

So, you know, if our electrical recording goes down,

And lastly, why I know there's local and regional policy, which leads me into what our next steps are.

The next steps are internal stakeholders in the city are going to be meeting next week.

And by that, I mean Garland and I are going to be sitting in a room with all the department heads saying, how do we make this work with what your department is doing?

Public works, what are you guys doing with few things?

Then we'll be identifying external stakeholders that will be public.

Albemarle County, TJPDC will be invited to the table as well as private and advocacy entities will be invited to come join this discussion where we'll present everything and be presented to the internal stakeholders who will narrow things down a little bit and sort of told us what the city is capable of doing.

From that external stakeholder meeting, we're hoping to take some recommendations back to the internal stakeholders so that they can verify that those things are possible, that we can move forward, and we can provide a recommendation to council based on that recommendation.

We're looking to have that recommendation in front of council in July so that they can say, yep, this is the fueling strategy we want to go with.

and everybody else wants to.

Thank you.

All right, DRP&T, Daniel Wagner is next.

Always happy to.

All right, so my name is Daniel Wagner.

I'm from the Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

And I'll do a quick high-level rundown of our Modernizing Transit Fleets project, which, to give a pretty quick summary, is going to be a resource guide for our transit agency.

Obviously, y'all's agencies are already starting the groundwork to get this done.

We are really focusing on how can we as a state agency be supportive in them delivering their goals.

So what is our role and where can we provide almost like a one stop shop playbook for them to use as they're pursuing these transitions.

And I think importantly what we're trying to do with this effort is to focus on specific

A lot of our larger agencies in major urbanized areas are ahead of the game in this area.

They're concentrated around D.C. already, so they have a lot of resources and more financing that's available to them.

So we're really trying to tailor make this so that everyone has access to these resources, but we want to focus on our smaller urban and our rural agencies that need a lot more help and guidance getting to where they want to be.

So a quick high level overview of the entire project.

And then I'll actually dive into utility planning and the financial and emissions reduction planning piece, because I think that's really pertinent to really talk about how complex these approaches can be.

But our first piece is going to be doing extensive stakeholder outreach and agency engagement.

We're going to be working with our agencies across the state.

We're going to be talking to OEMs, which are the original equipment manufacturers, so folks who are producing buses, who are producing batteries,

What are the struggles that they're already experiencing and where they need the most help they can to move forward?

Then we're going to dive into that utility planning.

For most of our agencies, they'll be working with Dominion Energy, but we do have a number of electrical cooperatives around the state.

So we'll be creating a database for folks to access so they know who is the best person for them to reach out to.

And then from there, we'll discuss some strategies to really tackle that utility planning piece, because that can be one of the most important pieces as you prepare to think about moving in this direction.

to deliver on your facilities projects and do that major capital plan.

I'll get more into that a little bit later.

The next, we'll do background research on the industry, some trends that are emerging to make sure that we really understand the state of play.

A lot of this has already been completed by a lot of our agencies and also was part of the effort that we underwent last year when we developed the equity modernization study, which took a hard look at how public transit has been and can be part

A big piece of this is emphasizing transit has been at the forefront historically because when we think about reducing carbon emissions, we think about reducing vehicle mass travel

It's fun and tricky, especially for our data and finance nerds.

We have a lot of work to do to develop a financial planning toolkit.

And so what that will look like is two, kind of twofold.

We'll have one that's going to be statewide.

How much is it going to cost the Commonwealth of Virginia to transition to zero emission public transit police in the whole economy?

And then we'll also drill down into the nitty-gritty of building financial planning tools, sort of a plug and play, although a lot more complicated than that, for individual transit agencies so that they can understand for their capital and operational planning what it's going to take to get there.

And in addition to that, also take a look at different emissions reduction scenarios.

So if we have this

And so everything along the way and that as both Ted and Ben already touched on, there's a lot of moving pieces there.

I'm going to get a little bit more into that soon, but there's a lot of moving pieces to consider to develop it.

It's not just a little Excel spreadsheet where you can plug in a few numbers.

There's a lot to consider to be able to reach those goals.

Another piece which I think is actually very exciting as far as an opportunity to make

So what are we doing as a state and also within our agencies to bring our teams along with us?

So our existing mechanics, our existing operators, all of the staff that makes transit possible in each of our realities, what can we do to provide them the resources to be brought along with this transition?

We know that there is a massive opportunity and also a massive skills gap.

We have tons of hugely competent diesel mechanics that have a huge opportunity to now

everything in between.

What are we doing to make sure we're convening these resources appropriately to save our agency's money?

Because if you can keep your talent, then you've made a huge step there, but also bring them up with us so that we can see wage growth in the public transit industry.

That's a huge goal of ours, and we want to see where can we be to play a supporting role to help convene the appropriate people to make sure that that's doable.

And then next, which will be one of the more practical pieces, a transition plan template.

So getting you basically FTA ready-made template for going after federal grants so you could buy zero-emission buses.

Pretty straightforward.

It's going to be getting us like

We're probably going to have one for rural, one for small urban, maybe one for large urban.

We'll see how that takes shape as we go through the process, but basically being able to give you a tailor-made template where you can say right now I have an application ready so that I can go after federal money.

And lastly, the DRPT action plan.

What does DRPT need to do as far as our grant funding programs, state commonwealth web policy changes that we might need to pursue in order to make sure that we're supporting all of these efforts across the commonwealth?

I think that would be a really interesting internal look into how DRPT functions, where our grant programs need to either grow or maybe be tweaked a little bit so we can support these efforts.

So I'll dive a little bit deeper into utility, private provider, and engagement, and that financial planning piece, and then I'll wrap up because I know my colleague over at VDOT here has a great presentation waiting for us as well.

So this is where it gets a little complicated.

I hope you all can appropriate that's a legend of graphic.

This just gives you a quick snapshot.

I've pulled this.

It's a resource from Dominion Energy, which gives you a little bit of a layout and understanding.

of where each of the steps are in getting your facilities ready to go for these transitions to electrification.

And you have to really see the number of steps.

These are just like a very high level snapshot.

Each of these takes an immense amount of coordination with the utilities.

A lot of constant contact and a lot of money.

The big thing is you have to understand first, where is your grid capacity when you want to do your charging?

Second, do you need to make upgrades?

Because if you need to make upgrades to your infrastructure, that's a huge capital upfront cost.

Utility providers will typically find a way to work with you to help mitigate the size of that upfront cost for that capital expense.

And then from there,

We want to find ways where we can help our agencies collaborate for other shared truck infrastructure and also rate design.

So finding a way to maybe find some cost savings along the way for our agencies and also explore a little bit further where there's opportunities for feeding back into the grid.

How can our transit agencies actually be part of the putting energy back into the grid.

There's been

A little bit of talk about vehicle to grid technology, which is typically surrounded school bus fleets, but we want to explore a little bit deeper and how public transit agencies can be a part of this equation as well.

My colleague Aaron over at VITA will talk about the NEVI plan.

There's a lot of opportunities, which is the

so including public transit, single occupancy vehicles, freight, and long haul trucking, etc.

So she'll get into that a little bit deeper, but we want to really emphasize where does public transit play a role in the McDonald's plan for this.

But the biggest thing we can emphasize here is you need to work with your utilities early and often, and often and often and often and often.

But you'll end, we'll get to talk about a little

So the next piece is this agency financial planning tool.

And I'm not going to just read all of these because it's quite exhaustive and it's still not even close to everything that you have to consider.

But there's huge pieces that you have to consider, including those infrastructure upgrades.

But when you're moving, when you're trying to move towards these transitions, these facilities, you can't just unfortunately often retrofit your existing facilities.

Often you're going to have to build new facilities.

In addition to that, important to us is operationally, are you still delivering high quality service?

We don't want to put ourselves in a situation where we're actually

The bus still comes on time.

Still comes as often, if not more often, I assume we want to get to the goal where we're having even more frequent service at some point.

So what do we need to consider from a financial planning standpoint to get us there while also moving in that direction of zero emission fleets?

There's a lot of moving pieces.

And this, again, is just sort of a small snapshot of a lot of different pieces that agencies need to consider moving forward.

And then a very exciting one, I think,

The emissions reduction tool will be fun for advocates, fun for agencies to really play with and really kind of get a sense of where are we, where can we be when we move forward with these food transitions.

So this will be a tool, we'll develop a standardized methodology for how, with implementation timeline, how we can reduce emissions for our agencies.

So there will be, just like the financial planning tool, there will be a statewide emissions reduction tool where we can see how we're doing as a commonwealth and also individual agencies, how they're doing and performing to reduce their emissions as well.

And I won't, again, take questions now, but if you're looking to follow up with me on this project, I'm more than happy to chat with anyone.

Thank you, Dan.

I appreciate it.

And while we're transitioning, I just want to make a comment that I see their comments from the public in the chat.

Oh, sure.

And Lucinda, and they've been popping up all along.

Lucinda, will you make sure that when you're doing the minutes, you include those comments from the chat in the minutes for this meeting so that we can all read them?

Yes.

I think that would be a great idea.

And there may be some questions that can be useful later.

All right, so we have Erin Belt.

And Erin, I'm kind of looking.

I can.

There you go.

Just want to make sure we work.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Perfect.

That's perfect.

So I wanted to give out my appreciation for being invited to the meeting this evening.

I spent some time talking about the NEVY program yesterday with the policy board and altered this a little bit.

So there may be some things that a few of you have heard yesterday.

I'm going to cover the NEVY program pretty quickly, but want to talk more about the charging and fueling infrastructure discretionary grants today and some next steps for planning.

For those of you that don't know me, my name is Erin Belt.

I'm the decarbonization lead in the environmental division in Richmond, be that central office location.

in the newly formed Office of Transportation Sustainability.

So we're about a year old.

I am just under a year at VDOT, but I spent most of my career in construction stormwater and a good chunk of that time at the state's regulatory agency, DEQ.

So today I wanted to talk a little bit about the Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act and then talk about our NEVY formula program and Virginia's deployment plan.

I want to talk about alternative fuel corridors and how they play into all of the federal funding programs related to electric vehicles, discretionary grant, and then some next step considerations and resources.

So for those of you that are familiar with the bipartisan infrastructure law, that is the same thing as the Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act.

Those names are used interchangeably.

So if you hear one or the other, it's not confusing at all, of course, but they mean the same thing.

So you can use those interchangeably.

This is the law the president signed in effect in November of 2021.

and it provides over 550 billion dollars through 2026 for a lot of these types of projects.

What we're going to talk about today are the electrification of vehicles and what that means in your community.

So I'm not here to tell you what's the best fuel type.

I'm not here to tell you which fund to go after.

My goal is just to make you aware of the available programs and the money that

can be sought after from your agencies.

So with the NEVY formula program, this is formula funding that Federal Highways dedicated to states, including DC and Puerto Rico.

In order to receive that funding, all of those jurisdictions were required to submit

A deployment plan by August 1 of 2022.

So using only guidance at the time, because the federal rulemaking for NEVY had not yet been issued, BDOT, under the guidance of the Secretary of Transportation, submitted our application and deployment plan in August of 2022.

We received our formal approval from Federal Highways in September.

And we have been allocated over $100 million in a five-year period to build out the alternative fuel corridors in Virginia.

However, we only have the fiscal year $22 and $23 available at this time.

I'm currently finishing up a competitive process to award Navy funding.

So what this will be available for is for

companies and entities to apply for this.

You have to be a legal entity, be able to do business in Virginia, not be debarred from business in Virginia.

And it's an 80-20 split.

So most of these federal funding programs through BIL are going to be an 80 percent federal subsidy and then require a 20 percent non-federal match.

And that means that if you've got money from another entity like EPA or Department of Energy, you cannot use those other

federal funds to make that 20% match, which is critical and very important.

So for our alternative fuel corridors right now through round six of nominations, which ended in 2022, round seven just opened last week.

We have 985 miles along these routes in Virginia, so

Rounds one through five which started in 2016.

The definitions of corridor ready versus corridor pending for electrification those definitions have changed a little bit.

So if you were to look at round six and round seven nominations again round seven is open right now and VDOT is working on that.

and we'll soon have a public survey for folks to be able to provide input on proposed new nominations.

Corridor ready means that you've got stations no more than 50 miles apart, no more than a mile off of the alternative fuel corridor, and they are publicly accessible with a minimum of four ports that can charge all at the same time at 150 kilowatt hours.

So very few stations meet that.

Thankfully rounds one through five have a different definition, but at this time we've got roughly 17 stations statewide that meet that at the fast charging level, that level three DCFC charging speed.

And so the goal of NEVI specifically is for light duty vehicles and to build out that DCFC charging infrastructure along AFCs in the state.

So more importantly for today, I wanted to talk about the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program, which is a mouthful.

We commonly refer to that as CFI, but it actually encompasses two programs.

And Daniel kind of hinted at this a little bit.

We've got the corridor program, which allows for communities and municipalities and other state entities, or I'm sorry, other state

and government entities to competitively apply for grant dollars to build redundancy onto the corridors.

So going back to the AFC is currently I-66 and I-495 are considered built out because they have the minimum number of stations.

in the right distance apart from one another, but nothing precludes those localities like Fairfax County, for instance, from going and applying for a corridor grant to add redundancy to the system in their county.

The other component is community charging and community charging is very important because there are components related to multimodal transit, buses to fleet operations, which is really important when it comes to regional transit partnerships.

because those are funds that you can buy for that do not have to locate those charging stations on an alternative fuel corridor because it is community related and brings those charging opportunities into the community and away from the corridors.

The application this year is the first time it's opened up.

This again is also a five-year program, so there will be additional opportunities to apply for these grants.

Because it's the first time and unfortunately did not sync up with localities budgetary processes, I think there was enough pushback on FHWA that they have now extended this year's application.

opening for an additional two week period.

If you think you might ever in your lifetime apply for one of these grants or any other federal grant, please go and register for an account at grants.gov.

It takes a significant amount of time depending on how many application requests that they've gotten

In a span of time for them to respond, their website even says it can take us weeks to reply to you.

So the last thing you want to do is go through the process of developing a grant application and then at the last minute you're not able to submit it.

So, again, because of these being fiscally year oriented only fiscal year 22 and 23 funds are available for CFI grants, and this is nationwide.

So, this funding is

just as applicable to folks in Southern California as it is for folks in Maine.

Anyone that is a government entity that meets those qualifications for these federal grants can apply to these.

For this year, Virginia DOT is not applying for a grant and I talked a little bit about this yesterday.

So one of the reasons why is because we still have not released our Phase 1 NEVI funding

It would be really not responsible of us to ask for additional dollars when we have not spent the money that we already have.

So we are taking a backseat this year and letting Virginia Clean Cities lead the charge on providing application assistance.

We're still doing Q&A and assistance on answering questions and application questions and site resource questions.

But Virginia Clean Cities is doing even more.

They're providing sinking partnering opportunities.

So if you happen to be an electric vehicle service equipment operator, but you don't have a host, they may be able to sync you up together.

But also they're providing a gap application statewide.

And that's an opportunity that I'll talk about in just a few minutes.

So again, I wanted to cover with community charging.

It focuses on rural areas, low to moderate income neighborhoods and communities with limited parking.

So think about multifamily housing units, renting, people that may not own the outside of their structure to actually install charging equipment at their home.

But the other part that their NEVI formula funding falls short, the CFI grants are across all fueling types.

Does everyone hear that noise?

I'll fix it.

We'll turn it on.

That's okay.

I just want to make sure it's not me.

The CFI grants, both corridor and community charging, allow for funding opportunities, not just for electrification.

That's the NEVY formula funding program that only allows for electrification, but CFI also

allows for hydrogen, propane, and natural gas.

So one of the things that John and Kat talked about is which vehicles we should move to and is it right?

Well, the opportunity is there if you're not sure that you want to go to electrification, you've got the opportunity to propose grants for propane, hydrogen, and natural gas.

There is a minimum grant request, so this is another opportunity that if that $500,000 mark for a community charging program grant is a little bit triggering for you, that you have the opportunity to submit

There are some restrictions to that because you cannot have multiple entities responsible for the fiscal reporting, the data reporting, you have to identify a lead on your application.

but you can still submit a joint application with multiple entities together.

There is a max award of 15 million on community charging but if you are interested in corridor charging which has to meet the requirements of being no more than a mile from an alternative fuel corridor there is no maximum award for that.

All right, so some of the next step considerations.

One of the things that DRPT and VDOT have talked about offline together is vehicle replacement.

Is it necessary now?

So if you've got vehicles, traditional diesel, and it's not at the end of its lifespan, does it make sense to replace it now?

Well, it depends.

Are you replacing it with another vehicle

Say you go full electric, are you replacing it because you've got the opportunity to receive a federal subsidy to install charging?

Well, the cost of that vehicle is still astronomical.

So one of the things to consider is the pairing to the bipartisan infrastructure law is the Inflation Reduction Act.

So while I'm not covering that today and I'm not a tax expert, the Inflation Reduction Act provides significant tax incentives and tax reductions on purchasing vehicles that include medium and heavy duty vehicles as well as fleets.

So consider that, look into that.

For those of you that have consultants like Kimley Horne, John and Kat folks,

Kimberly Horn's probably done an analysis of IRA already and can provide you with some of that information as well.

But then also take into account that it's not just USDOT that's providing money.

There are multiple grants, not just through DOT and federal highways, but also Department of Energy.

and EPA.

So if you're looking for vehicle replacement on top of tax incentives and on top of money related to the infrastructure piece, you could potentially replace your fleet even if the time is not right and the end of life of those vehicles has not been reached at this time.

Consider the benefits that you're providing.

Are you providing better air quality and equity in your communities?

This is a huge push from this administration, which is fantastic.

If you've not heard of the Justice40 initiative, that is a federal

concept and program that requires that 40% of the benefit of a federally funded program under the bipartisan infrastructure law, 40% of the benefits of that federal fund must be realized in disadvantaged communities.

So that means if you've got communities of color, communities with poor health indicators, all leading to things like poor air quality or suffering from poor air quality,

That equity and transitioning your fleet to lower emissions is a fantastic way for you to serve your community.

And then Daniel talked about this a little bit with utilities, but site selection is critical.

If you want to partner and share locations, obviously space is going to be a huge need.

The larger the vehicle, the larger the space.

Consider that

You have the opportunity to partner with other transit entities in your area, but utilities are going to be critical.

Daniel highlighted Dominion, which was one of our three investor owned utilities in the state, but there are a slew of cooperatives in the state that don't have the tools and the resources that our investor owned utilities have.

Where Dominion has an electric vehicle mapping tool available for anyone in the public to look and see if

Three phase power is available at a specific location.

Down to the granular level, you can look directly on your road and see what kind of power is available.

The co-ops don't have those tools.

So where Dominion may tell you it'll take a couple of weeks to get back to you, it may take a significantly longer amount of time for the cooperatives in the area to be able to provide the same service.

So just be aware of that.

I wanted to highlight that VDOT has a public input website.

So on this website is general information about our NEVY program, our plan and that process, but also resources.

I try to, it's not exhaustive, but I try as hard as I can to kind of collate all of the valuable resources

that you can find everywhere and put it in one place.

We've got information about the discretionary grants, we've got locality resources or local government resources, in addition to things like Dominion's mapping tool if you're interested in taking a look at that.

and then a couple more resources.

So I've provided this presentation to Lucinda so that she can send it out in PDF form, but you should still be able to click on the links.

If you're interested in reading every single one of the grants available through the BIL, there's more than 300.

You can look at that guidebook or look at them directly online.

Again, our public input website, Virginia Clean Cities website,

And then mostly, these are specific to NEVY and the Formula Program, but you can read about the discretionary grants on that page.

It's a real humdinger to read.

So my suggestion would be if you have specific questions about community or corridor charging, just reach out to me.

You're welcome to do that with my VDOT email.

And if you're interested in signing up to be on our stakeholder list,

This is just an Excel spreadsheet that I send out maybe five to six emails a year about program updates and information about when we're going to be releasing funding opportunities.

You're welcome to request that as well.

Thank you, Erin.

I appreciate it very much.

Well, we have really received a lot of information this afternoon.

I'm in sort of information overload.

Having said that,

We did want to open it up for questions.

And I'm your official timekeeper, so we have time here.

So questions?

I would be interested if Mr.

Chambers could go back and share one of the slides, because I think it's indicative of number one.

I guess while he's working to get that pulled back up,

Do people really think that hydrogen is more capable?

Or is it, it just feels like something in these cases because they owe hydrogen?

Okay, since we actually have our committee on consulting the effects of marijuana.

So, do you think you have a couple of words for them on that?

Do we need to promote him?

Yeah, I just, one of the things for me when you try to evaluate options is if there's one in the table that's like

Seems interesting or unique or whatever, but really is not ever going to work.

Just sort of take it and set it to the side.

And I just wonder, people continue to bring up hydrogen.

Hydrogen is incredibly dangerous in terms of fuel.

I can understand in terms of the thermodynamics why energy per unit is why it would be a good fuel source, but

My understanding is that the United States can't even, they don't even have adequate hydrogen supplies for industrial uses.

So I'm just wondering, is there anyone out there really, really taking hydrogen seriously?

I'm just...

So

So the main entity taking this seriously is the United States federal government.

The Department of Energy has an $8 billion program to establish hydrogen as a reliable and renewable and sustainable fuel source for a variety of uses.

I don't want to get too far into it, but the short answer here is

The US Department of Energy is aiming to create 10 regional clean hydrogen hubs across the United States.

There are several in the East Coast area, one of which is relatively nearby, and that's something we'd be considering in some of the transit applications that we've talked about today.

In terms of the actual technology itself, it is

Something that is viable and used at other agencies across the United States, but more so in Europe.

Hydrogen really got hold in Europe and has been growing in popularity.

So there are specific points that you want to probe on, happy to do so, but that's kind of the high level.

The one you had with the difference between if you've bought a bunch of buses to resolve the issue with, yeah.

So this is the one where you buy a bunch of buses to take care of the fact that you can't recharge quickly enough, right?

And then there's another one where you basically say, we're going to have, go back to that,

So the battery, the option battery electric with 94 vehicles.

That's the one to one replacement that you're seeing where we have that huge ramp up.

Right.

And then the battery electric with fast charging.

So you've got vehicle costs versus facility costs.

It just seems to me like it's a no brainer that the battery electric with fast charging would be much more financially

Doable than the other.

Right.

And financially, you are correct that it is probably much more feasible.

It comes down to where are we going to put the charger and how feasible is that specific location in terms of construction of that.

But even given that.

OK.

Sure, I did want to go back to the hydrogen question.

So while we have not at VDOT received a significant amount of interest in hydrogen specifically, keeping in mind that the CFI grants, you have to go directly to the federal government to apply for those and I'm managing

The NEVI program, the formula funding that's specific for electrification for light duty vehicles.

We are talking to the Port Authority for what their needs are in the state, both at their Hampton Roads port locations, as well as the Richmond port.

And they have indicated that they have large manufacturers of heavy duty vehicles asking the port, what are you going to do about hydrogen?

Because we need to make a business decision on how to move forward with what type

of vehicles we start purchasing or manufacturing.

So I don't have their names.

They wouldn't even give it to me, even though I asked.

But the question is there.

Because of the prevalence of it in Europe, you're already seeing the range in there.

They are being able to use the hydrogen to get the range, the hours, the amounts that they need as a carbon source.

And I would ask that members of the public that have questions, please put them in the chat and we'll capture them with our minutes later.

Can I just add a few?

Yes.

Likewise, those online that can put it in the chat.

But we're trying to have a board meeting here with the members of the board, right, to answer questions and get through on our meeting time.

So everybody that's not a member of the board, put your questions in the chat and then we'll be recorded and we'll get to them and answer them.

So hydrogen is not explosive and we don't need to worry about where we put these tanks and then they're going to go boom.

It could be that Mike can, I think Mike has dealt with this more deeply, but I do think

No, Daniel's right on.

We are used to dealing with flammable or explosive fuels.

And of course, when everyone hears hydrogen, they go Hindenburg, right?

That's the knee-jerk reaction we all have.

That's not quite the truth because that was a very different time in a very different manner in which the fuel was being used.

Another myth to dispel, and to be perfectly clear, I'm not trying to advocate hydrogen as the best fuel source, but rather keeping it on the table as an option.

That's something we're keeping very clear through all of our studies throughout not just Charlottesville, but everywhere.

The way that the fuel is actually used in these vehicles, it's not combustion based.

It's an electrochemical reaction, uses a membrane within a contained cell.

There is no explosions of any kind within a vehicle.

And so the way the systems are set up, they're very safe and rather reliable as well.

The second piece is the fixed equipment, you know, the storage tanks out of sight.

You know, we're talking about cryogenic liquid hydrogen.

There are fire codes that are applicable to all of these types of things.

The tanks have to be rated very specifically.

You know, the linings of all of the pipes and tanks have a certain there's a lot of there's a lot of regulation that goes with that and it keeps it as a safe fuel.

The last comparison that we tend to draw on is in the event of an emergency, then what happens?

We want to plan for the worst.

With CNG, we have the same type of detection equipment within enclosed areas, enclosed facilities, roofs, canopies, whatever it might be, the same type of detection or similar type of detection equipment we use for natural gas as we do for hydrogen.

It identifies the leak and shuts it off and there's all the safety applications.

The last thing is if there were a leak and it were to ignite for whatever region, hydrogen being so energy dense is actually more likely to flare out if it were to catch fire.

And this is similar to how you see if a natural gas line bursts and it flares and it catches flame, it will continue to burn as long as the fuel is being fed to it.

Hydrogen actually burns so quickly it flares out and then it just becomes a leak.

The one piece, and this is my, sorry, I said last point.

This is the actual last point.

The last thing to consider is hydrogen is basically inert within the area.

So while natural gas, if you breathe it in, is toxic or harmful, as well as vapors from gasoline or diesel, hydrogen is inert.

You can breathe it.

It's all around us all the time, and it's not toxic.

The toxicity isn't there.

So there's actually some benefit as it relates to that being present within a working area or things of that nature.

So happy to hit on those little points here or there, but generally it's safe.

Erin, did you want to add anything?

I saw you shaking a knot in your head, and I just want to make sure that you didn't want to add anything to the discussion.

You're okay.

All right.

Okay.

Well, other questions?

This has been very helpful.

I'm the timekeeper, so I'm watching our time.

Are there any other questions from board members?

Garland, did you want to add anything?

We are excited about the opportunities that are before us, but we just want to make sure we measure our steps, right?

So we're talking about significant capital outlay.

The media is right.

We need to make sure that the process we go through, we are taking our time to allow the technology to catch up to whatever we buy.

There will be significant improvements.

It's not the same product it was five years ago.

It's not going to be the same product five years from now.

So we just take our time to get into the process and then it catches on whatever few sources we buy.

if you want to reduce your cars and all by itself.

And if we put something that is a nice toy, that is a shiny object, it doesn't work.

It doesn't help any of us.

That's all.

I think that is the EPA, okay, they've done a lot of both.

The climate subcommittee, various communities all around the country have

to come to the shiny digital again.

Now have a million dollar, these are small communities, you don't have a million dollars just there.

And they are horrified at the impact of what they bought.

I thought I wrote it was the hype of the day, but it didn't work, it requires all the time to go out.

Madison's cousin has seen the fire engine, to see if you weren't great, you're lucky, but I will try to get all those episodes that I can share with you, contact all these people, you can find out what their experiences are.

We all love learning from other people's mistakes.

It's like buying a computer or a car the very first year it comes out.

You don't want to be a baby tester.

So thank you for your caution.

And we shouldn't have to reinvent the way the leverage I'm wearing.

I just have a couple of comments because I had an opportunity yesterday to join Power BI Public Schools to ride on their electric

We all know Albemarle County ourselves, we don't have a transit fleet other than public schools.

So, it was interesting though, and I'll mention this just because what I learned yesterday, and I'm talking about a classroom now, is that their mileage, they have a longer range, I guess that's the word to use, when they are air conditioning

as opposed to heating.

Good minute.

I thought that was interesting.

So maybe that's a good thing for climate change, but maybe it's not.

I don't know.

I'm just saying without, if we were running out of school buses.

But I thought it was fascinating that they did find that out.

They have, I've already had public schools, they have two electric vehicles.

They have two more coming in September.

They have had issues

with none of the electric vehicles themselves, because what they're using is they have these two, and they're gonna have two more, and they're using them as pilots to figure out what the ranges are doing right now and how they can best utilize them.

So the two that they're using are running through the urban rain in Albemarle, of course, which makes perfect sense.

But they have had issues with the electric grid, with the charging stations,

for lack of a better word, going down and not, you know, you pull up and all of a sudden the electric bus is fine, but you can't charge it because the chargers, the charging station is not working properly.

Now they said they thought they resolved that, but I didn't think it was interesting.

And just one more comment, and I would say that in a perfect world, if we were using electric buses and we were talking

charge buses in rural areas.

The discussion in Albemarle about moving our school buses, assuming there would be electric at this point, and our charging stations to our rural schools, it would seem like to me that we would certainly want to think about how Albemarle and Charlottesville and Catt and our school bus system could partner together because there's no reason

We would have those charging stations at schools and John and Kat not be able to use them.

I'm just saying.

Just something to think about in the future.

And I'm probably taking this down to the knees here, but it did occur to me yesterday when I was riding that electric bus.

I will make one comment.

Everybody knows that we at Kat

for the next year, we put in as a part of our expansion, not a replacement, an expansion to battery electric vehicles as a part of our pilot testing the technology out there, right?

So I know CTE, I wasn't able to see whether that stayed in as a part of the submission because we're required to have our

Alternative fuel study, the transition plan completed before we technically should be able to get funding to do these things.

We were far enough along that we were able to submit.

So that was a good thing for us.

And hopefully we'll be able to get those too.

That doesn't mean we're buying more.

I would love for us to concentrate on when we buy, we were buying them as a part of expansion, not as a partial replacement.

Then the replacement model will allow us to continue to provide a reliable service while we work out whether a case happened.

And we don't buy too many, but we have a huge problem with it.

If it still happens within 12 years, we've got to get half a name out somehow.

They're used to buy and purchase for and they're used to try and really get a sense of how they play out.

It was fascinating, and I don't need to keep going down this well, I'm sorry, but it was fascinating because on a school bus, the drivers were saying that the behavior of the children on the electric buses isn't true.

And they are, yes, what the drivers said to us was that the bus is so much

All right, so another thing to put in there, we're in this, and that is, a lot of people later on the weekend are reading about the lack of maintenance

because they're starting to rely on these things in other places.

Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and California, they're way ahead of us.

And they pull up and everything's closed.

And so these are often, I guess, not in the same control of the system.

They're not in somebody else's.

and that's what alcohol is like because the school system is fighting with the sanctions.

I just, I wanted to provide some context to the model of looking at acquiring electric vehicles in addition as a pilot.

Shout out to my alma mater here, the University of Georgia.

I used to drive their diesel buses when I was a student.

And over time they have started acquiring electric buses and now have the largest fleet for university.

of electric vehicles, both with their fleet vehicles, but also the buses.

So if you're looking at a model that's already done that, that would be great.

And I love being able to say that I used to work there.

But they may be open to having discussion about what's worked and what's not worked, but they've got roughly

The main campus is over 600 acres and they've got over 33 electric buses that are running routes from as early as five o'clock in the morning until one o'clock in the morning for the next day.

Very interesting.

And what we have done is reached out to localities and systems to ask them to zoom in and speak to us.

So we'll make a note that that might be an interesting outreach for us.

to hear some recipient experience, right?

Yeah.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

No questions.

And I'm going to move as it is 5.30, so I'm going to move us on to our next agenda item, which are our updates on Albemarle.

And Taylor, you're first.

We're looking at 18% service cut and green counted and decided not to fully fund those.

And we're looking at a 10% cut in Buckingham on the main weekend service to the UVA.

So we're working on that.

Wow.

So tell me how that affects those communities.

Well, Buckingham is not a bad decision.

They have very low ridership on the weekends.

Oh, man.

Alright, anything else?

Okay, Charmaine could not join us today, but I think I talked a little bit about how we're going to go back to school and what they're doing, and I know they're still working on

drivers as well.

I think everybody's working on drivers.

So with that, UTS, do we have, we don't have anyone from UTS.

We did, we talked enough, so no big thing, can't wait until the next time.

Okay.

So Dave got one.

Katie, is Katie on with DRBT?

Yes, she was there.

She was here.

Are you still here?

All right, she had to leave then.

I just wanted to share some updates on the projects and my activities with the RTP.

So the governance studies in the third phase of five phases were investigating potential revenue sources and we're starting to schedule meetings with the jurisdictions as individual meetings with us and the consultants and the jurisdictions to talk about what we've found and better understand what they're looking for.

In April, CAT shared the annual update and we had the presentation tonight.

I've been participating in the Charlottesville Area Alliance Transportation Working Group and I'm helping to work on and

AARP projects.

It's still in the scoping phase right now but it's looking at possibly starting an advisory or an advocacy committee like just kind of detailing out how that would work and how it could be effective and then I'm also working with the Blue Ridge Health District on their CHIP plan and Jen's here I'm going to get her on the agenda as soon as I can

to improve transportation for health, improve bus stops, and investigate the transit advisory committee.

The mobility management grant will be, hopefully, approved by the CTP in the beginning of July

We put out an RFP and collected proposals and we're meeting with prospective partners in the next few weeks.

We also have been meeting with some agencies who are interested in receiving mobility management services like supporting their volunteer driver programs.

and today Peter and I presented to the Albemarle Rotary Club.

We actually spoke to the whole three Rotary Clubs now in the last couple of weeks.

I've got to go back to work.

I mean, pretty much people, as the president of each club, have had to cut the conversation off.

So it's all been in favor of what we've been talking about, needing to have community voice, needing to improve service, looking at bus rapid transit or light rail, how's all that part of it.

I've been very pleased because it can be

You know, to a lot of people, it can be a fairly dry topic.

But I thought people were very engaged.

Yeah.

Today, people were really interested in light rail going up and down 29.

It keeps coming up?

It keeps coming up, yeah.

Every community wants one.

I don't care where I go.

There's always something in the library.

It works really well in Toronto.

Just a few more.

About 5 million.

I've just been planning to see so that people know, community leaders and Rotarians, that this stuff is going to be coming.

Look for it more.

We're going to need public support for these types

So what presentation did you all use with the Londrey Club?

Would it be fun for you all to share that?

Because you probably sort of created it for that group.

Would you share that presentation with all of us?

It might just be fun for us to see.

Yeah, sure.

When you see at the start of it speaks a little bit about the Charlottesville Area Alliance and why.

Because it might show why the center is involved, why it's age friendly, why CDA is involved, and then give the bulk of it to the subject area experts.

And I will say that this group at some point, I think the Regional Transit Partnership, it would be great if we could somehow or another offer an opportunity for the business community of Charlottesville and Albemarle to come and speak to us about what they need rather than us telling them what they need.

One very second thing.

Our chairs have been working with the coalition against bigger trucks, which is what became the Congress.

Just yesterday, the House Transportation Infrastructure Committee has two bills that will engage whoever is today, which are infrastructure again, to push back to the 91,000 pound limit, up 10,000 pounds from what's currently allowed in a tractor trailer.

which I think means top grade 88, temperature above the current weight.

So anyway, we're getting back engaged enough to try to make sure that this is the hell on the house floor, but the last thing he must need with our pedestrians and our transits and our bus drivers is more braking trucks falling off the roadways where I'm following the drains and getting in the way.

All right, with that, any other comments, questions?

Because if not, then I will adjourn us until June 22nd for our next meeting.