Regional Transit Partnership (2017-2025) Meeting   8/24/2023

All right.

So help me a little bit, Lucida, with who's on Zoom.

So I see Christine.

OK.

I need one more for a quorum.

Is that correct?

Thank you.

Well, Lisa is the expert, so she says she's confident.

So, I need one of those.

There's somebody from UTS.

So, should I sit over here?

Yeah, let me tell you.

That's great.

Yeah.

So have a seat in the back room.

You can.

You add to our quorum.

I'm just trying to figure it out.

All right, how are you?

Good.

How are you?

All right, so we've got one.

Awesome.

He'll be here anytime.

What's up?

Yes, we have a quorum.

Excellent.

With that, I'm going to start the meeting for the Regional Transit Partnership Thursday, August the 24th, and we're declaring that we do have a forum at this point.

So, the first item on our agenda is always introductions.

So let's have introductions around the table if we can.

Garland is the director of Charlottesville.

Great.

Great job.

I don't know why you're waiting for my goal to stop.

Great.

I'm Daniel Powell from UVA slash parking and transportation slash university transit service.

Wow, that's a lot.

Let's do it.

Glad to be here.

Thank you.

Peter Thompson with the center.

Gretchen Beecher, Gretchen Thomas with T.J. Peasey.

OK, great.

Excellent.

Do you want to do the online?

Oh, yeah.

Christine, do you want to?

I do.

Yes, go look.

Welcome.

and let's see, somebody's bouncing around, Sarah Pennington.

She might not quite be there yet.

Hi, Katie Miller.

Oh, sorry.

Thank you very much.

So I think with that, we are good.

The agenda today is for you, and before we approve the agenda, just a couple of additions.

We are needing to add the April 27th minutes to the agenda, and you have a copy at your table.

So we're gonna be voting on the April and May minutes.

And then I'm going to add under number seven, item number seven,

Other Business, we're going to be discussing a letter to the Charlottesville, Albemarle Community Foundation regarding a mobility management grant.

So with those additions, I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda.

Senator?

Ann has made a motion.

Second.

Brian has given us a second.

So if we can have everyone approve the agenda, please say aye.

Aye.

Any nays?

Any abstentions?

And I'm going to give you a minute for the minutes because you do have to be set in front of you.

So let me just give you a couple of minutes to take a look at the April 27th, which are the ones that were added.

Please put up your hands.

Please put up your hands.

Please put up your hands.

Brian's good.

I'm just looking to make sure everybody is good for the minutes.

And I would entertain a motion to approve the meeting minutes from May the 25th and April the 27th of 2023.

So we have a motion.

Second.

Second from Brian.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Oh, OK.

I will be voting.

You are correct.

I am so sorry, Katie.

I forgot that you were there, the voting member.

So we need to make a motion to approve you to Zoom.

Right.

So let's go back to Zoom.

I apologize.

That's my fault.

And I must say, I was used to New York.

And so let me just say, you'll unmute yourself.

All right.

And I very much apologize.

So with that, I'd entertain a motion to approve Katie to Zoom.

So moved.

All right, so we have a motion and a second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

All right, so Katie you're now legit.

Thank you.

I appreciate it there.

All right, so then we can move on to, we had a motion for the minutes.

and I want to make sure, for those two sets of minutes, and I want to make sure that Katie has an opportunity to vote for that.

So can we go back and do that one again?

I'm sorry, but it's a little complicated, but she does need to give a vote.

So let me entertain a motion to approve the minutes for May the 25th and April the 27th.

So moved.

Second.

Okay, now all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

and I see Katie saying hi.

Okay.

All right.

So we've got that.

Thank you very much.

Matters from the public.

Lucinda, do we have anyone?

I don't see anyone here, maybe.

Is there anyone here who would like to speak from the public?

I don't see anybody doing that.

OK. All right.

Then we'll proceed to our community engagement with transit and health equity.

We have two presentations.

And Jen, I'm going to turn to you because your presentation is first on the agenda.

Great.

Thank you.

We're looking forward to it.

And this is the Blue Ridge Health District Community Health Improvement Plan.

Great.

and Jen, and then you introduce yourself, Jen.

I just wanted to make sure folks on Zoom can see the presentation.

There we go.

Charmaine, can you see it or?

Right, that's right, thanks.

Thanks.

Is that the zoom part?

Hi, I'm Jen Fleischer.

I am the Championship Program Officer at the Blue Ridge Health District.

I was formerly your

COVID vaccines are.

Now, I don't do that anymore.

What do we got for you?

OK, wait.

The only problem is, let's see, this is not going well.

Oh, fantastic.

I know there's like six things named CHIP in Charlottesville, sorry about that.

And the transportation objectives in particular.

So the 2022 Map to Health is a process that includes UVA Health, Sentara, Martha Jefferson Hospital and the Ridge Health District.

The three of us are the convening entities that bring together this year 85 agencies over 135 participants over a 12-month period.

We review local, state, and regional data and have work groups on Zoom.

This year was quite different.

We did it with a leadership and a locality council.

The leadership council were legislative folks and elected officials who had any impact on policy.

And so we had, for example, Juan Diego attended meetings.

And at that time, Siena also did.

So we had a lot of folks that had not participated in a map to help before.

The Mattel is required for Santara Market.

Jefferson is a non-profit hospital for their IRS status every three years.

But for the health district from VDH, we're also required for accreditation to do that.

And so we kind of feed two birds with one's going to get together and do it together.

And UVA participates because they're our other major health system.

And once we gathered the three of us and all these folks together for the year and looked at the data, the work groups, and then a Photovoice project, which is a

Qualitative data capture where folks go out and take photos based on the themes that we're exploring.

We published the 2022 National Health Report.

So as far as the topics in that report, it came into four policy targets, transportation, digital access and skills, health care workforce and mental and behavioral health.

in transportation.

So most folks at this point are like, I'm sorry, what does transportation have to do with the health district?

Now that I know a lot about transportation, now that I know too much to be dangerous about transportation, I can tell you so much depends on transportation.

So in the meetings, this topic of transportation and transit in particular really bubbled to the surface.

So we have convened at this point

Luisa Green, Nelson, Flubana, Albemarle, and Charlottesville as work groups and we had representatives from that whole 180 mile radius participating and overwhelmingly transportation became the leading barrier to health.

So not what you need or how much you exercise, but how you move about in the world.

There were five main topics that came up as barriers.

Reliable transportation, inconsistent schedules, lack of walkable routes in rural localities, which you would imagine, transit services in rural localities, and then specifically the Luisa work group, the sheer size and multiple municipalities that Luisa covers were considered a barrier in themselves.

The screenshot you're looking at is one taken from the report that talked about car ownership, Kat and John's role in transit, and then kind of because the map was focused on the social determinants of health, racism as a public health crisis and health equity, we focused on who is using and what folks are able to access transit and transportation locally.

So some of those stats have to do with who rides and who walks and who can head access.

And I'll take questions, sorry, I was mentalized, so I'll take questions just at the end of that.

But if there's some burning questions, please call or my name and I'll stop.

At the end of the map, we came up with recommendations.

So nothing in stone, but what we heard repeatedly from all six localities that folks wanted better transit and maybe ride share, Sarah's happy to hear that.

But most of that was about bus stop improvements,

how to get to and from hospital and medical appointments, expanding the footprint of route ranges, sometimes how it was referred to in those meetings, a shared GPS system to navigate transit, how to advocate for investment in transit and transportation, and to advocate to decision makers from community, funding vouchers for Lyft and Uber for folks to have rides, and expanding the Medicaid Transport System contracts.

The next steps of a map to help a community health needs assessment is a community health improvement plan.

So that's where the rubber meets the road, right?

Where, how do you make this assessment start to move?

So we began the CHIP process in December 22, and then we started to confirm and to organically find kind of through a light

organizational assessment and a kind of look at who other having other organizations who are participating refer organizations they work for to form groups and find conveners to move the needle on some of those recommendations and then have those conveners really pare down and say what's possible in three years.

That's your limit from the IRS to complete some of your improvement plan.

We put that in writing in April 3rd.

We launched the plan officially on the Blue Ridge website and other

Outlets, and from June onward, we've published a report and I update the website at Blue Ridge with progress from all of the four policy targets, transportation being one of them, and all of the objectives that they are moving forward.

So just kind of by the numbers, we started the transportation conversation January 23rd, and we had our first meeting with many of you who are attending this meeting.

We brought in decision makers on transit and kind of leaders in the transit space.

And we tried to determine how do we amplify what's in progress, knowing that transit and transportation initiatives take time to activate.

And so was there anything that was already going on within CAT, Jaunt, TJPC that aligned with what the community identified as their recommendations in the map to help?

and then what was missing from those or what could we move on that was missing.

And we had a lot of discussion about transit versus transportation, realizing again that we only had three years, we really had funneled the chip into the transit space and we let pedestrian and walking and bike live as a recommendation but not one that is getting a priority amount of space only because MCO is dealing with a lot of that in the safety realm, etc.

More of the requests focus on transit.

So that was one of the first things I learned that transportation was a bigger word than I knew.

So then we have transportation alone, we have goals and objectives.

So we have nine of those.

And that was that time after January.

So now we've been determining the capacity for folks.

to convene, to meet, to move the indicators and targets after they've been defined and really be able to get to those goals.

And then those goals include 25 tasks.

So right now there's a lot of partnership.

Emailing, everyone in this room is my pen pal.

We have a lot of reassessing of when we make progress, where do we need to go from there, if we're lagging in progress, what's causing that barrier, and kind of just working to that end of 2025 goal of can we improve on these objectives and these goals.

So what that looks like is a really gnarly spreadsheet that I gave you a screenshot of that I track regularly on progress based on the target completion dates and those targets.

and where we really landed is better transit, faster service as kind of our tagline.

So what's really, how those recommendations have distilled down to the granular tasks are working at improving public transit from multiple angles, many of which Kat and John are already working on.

The John Rural Needs Assessment, which is beginning to be launched, we're trying to decrease ride time from the emergency departments on discharge.

We have a real shortage of drivers and we have a shortage of contracts for both UVA and Sentara and they have a shortage of systems to track how they're getting folks home.

So this one is really bubble to the surface hence it's getting a bold in the slides because it's been a real move from the social work department, the transportation department, and the medical departments at the ED to get folks out of the emergency department

under four hours which is pretty much what our average is right now at both hospitals and to kind of really bolster that system.

The shared GPS app is also bubbled up from those recommendations.

UTS, John and Kat will be working on that which is led by Kat as they finish the kind of funding for that project but I think that would be a great, that was a great and new initiative from this group that met in January that had a little more legs than I think even the folks recommending it

in the map new because the three agencies were willing to work together and it makes a lot of sense as a rider to be able to connect particularly with the micro transit project moving and kind of thinking of collaboration and cooperation.

The one that you'll hear soon from Peter that I'm really excited about is Community Voice and Transit Decision Making.

This was also, it came from the math, it was discussed with the group and it was supported by DRPT in the recent equity report.

So this, the Charlottesville Area Alliance is convening and leading that charge and has recently won a grant from AARP Virginia, you'll hear about that in just a minute but

we're convening again a lot of groups and then riders who will be facilitated with impact mobility another agency to kind of come to the consensus on what the best mechanism to capture community voice to have decision-making power will be and so that's we're really looking forward to that group and where the advancements all made.

The microtransit pilot is part of the CHIP as is the TJPC mobility program, another one that we're working closely with Lucinda on.

And so you can follow the CHIP and the progress at the health district website and that's updated about every two weeks.

It's not

the most beautiful chart you'll ever see but it is rich and you might find that you are interested or the constituents or residents that you work with would have a great voice in contributing to the chip and they can reach out to me to do so and I can get them involved in any of the work groups even beyond transit and transportation.

Thank you, Jen, very much.

I appreciate it.

So I'll open it up for questions.

Garland, look like you were going to say something.

Garland, what fits?

All right, Jen, stop writing me.

That's what it is.

Yeah, hi.

Thank you for all the work you're doing.

Thank you.

I just wanted to say that Feed Two Birds with One Scum is chef's kiss.

It's a pleasure.

It's something out of the chip, Pamela.

I'm really glad to have you here.

I'm victory.

Thanks, thanks.

So is the chip, the sort of, the owner of that, is that VDH or VDH?

So the chip itself is co-owned by VDH Sentara and Blue Ridge.

But Blue Ridge, I am driving the chip.

I'm like the project manager of the chip.

So all three of us track our own entity's participation and Sentara a little more closely than UVA because they have an incentive to do so with IRS tracking.

But the three of us, we regularly review the progress.

Exactly.

You as a Charlottesville has actually participated in a CHIP in some form or fashion for the past

13 years, so Evan's recycled for that.

This is the first time we've had a dedicated badger.

So it's the first time we're actually making real progress because 2019 got derailed.

It informs the improvement plan, the community health improvement plan.

So I think broadly speaking, we usually looked at,

food security and access to health care and those are embedded into some of the products that are for policy areas but this was the first time we really looked at policy targets moving more upstream from the policy level and really tackling systemic racism and discrimination as a health impact and then how that spreads out amongst the workforce and transit and serving vulnerable communities to really reduce health inequities.

The General Assembly, you know, declaration of racism as a public health crisis kind of was the kickoff to the map this year.

I remember probably 10 years ago or so, early generation, and it was focused on lack of available good healthy food in the food deserts and obesity and lots and lots of community engagement during that.

So this is really fascinating to see.

It's been a couple of years since that sort of

Thank you, I'm so glad you're a part of that.

And just to say, it's not to say that the health district or Central Arabia are not concerned about food deserts, they are.

Yeah, I think what happened this year was there's been so much momentum in those areas that they just didn't bubble to the surface in these work groups and the, for example, Charlottesville

used to be community gardens, you know, they cultivate, they've really taken the lead and have engaged the public so well that it's not an ongoing topic.

Yes, yes.

So I never knew three years was so short until I started something like this.

The nine goals of the objectives that you mentioned earlier, how are you measuring your success?

Yeah, so each goal and each task has an indicator.

Percent of folks who would engage through ride microtrains

So I work with Juwan and we develop those indicators and we set a target date for when we have that percentage sorted and that number, for that instance, the number of riders and then I'm batching him for every turn.

As my group tends to want to launch, where are we with that?

So it's

It's that kind of back and forth.

And did the Cetera UVA, the core group, while you were pushing this along, were they the ones who kind of identified that?

Or was that through some type of input process?

Yeah, the input came first from the general work group that started.

So that January group that was everybody, we started with let's really define the golden task, what was feasible.

and who can convene.

And that's where kind of CAA and Peter Cannon, for example.

And then as we made smaller work groups to get each task or each objective and then their tasks done, those leads for those tasks would help, would work with me to define them.

Then I would report back to Santero Media and say, do you have to know anyone else working on this?

Is there anything going on internally that should be added to this?

So it's less

and then every Thursday I promote the chip on our social channels and our newsletter and then I do the NBC 29 stuff and so with partners I'm constantly kind of marketing it to pull anyone in.

It's really hard to

and everyone to join, but as far as indicators go, those got filtered down and then decided by the convener for pulling that off.

I never want to touch a spreadsheet ever again, but yes, I am so happy with indicators and targets.

I mean, you know, I don't think they're realistic.

I wanted them to be like,

Everyone gets a bike in Charlottesville and we flatten all the roads and it's flat and you're riding like it's Amsterdam.

You know everyone's like no that's not possible so Jen what can we do and so that it was great to learn what's to tie into what was reality and how that's so aligned to what the public actually wanted.

There's still huge gaps.

There's still plenty of voices we need to collect but I feel good about the indicators

compared with these other health districts and other non-profit hospitals in the state, I feel like ours are very robust.

And I have on my team a data analyst who is very, very good at that.

And so he's really second that notion to say, OK, these are doable, they're achievable, and they're accurate.

And we can go for that.

And I just want to make sure that folks on Zoom don't have questions.

Yeah, if anybody on Zoom who is a member of the Regional Transit Partnership would like to ask a question, you can raise your hand or start talking.

Most of them are in the panelists.

I just want to make sure.

Yeah, I've been monitoring and there have not been any questions raised.

So just a couple of comments.

So when we talk about the microtransit,

Obviously you're talking about the grant that Albemarle County is working on.

So that has not started yet, but it's in the works.

So you'll be connected for information around that.

All those lines, I didn't want to, it got down to, we refined that to improve all transit infrastructure.

So improved public transit includes bus stops that are designed with mobility and access.

And can we work with VDOT and private landowners to get more accessible bus stops?

So it's so many things under that that

I just kind of gave it a short hand, but that's a good point.

Yeah, that includes scheduling service, like John's getting a new scheduling service.

Can we track how that does and will that make it easier for riders?

It's part of the emergency department piece.

It's the bus stops.

It's the microtransit getting folks to places faster and more connected.

Right, and of course everybody I think knows that Garland has been working up until now and it is close to some of the the um the shelters you're talking about and how we're going to knock on wood right and is this where we're going to knock on wood?

And how we might get an access to right-of-way now on county roads to put those shelters in place.

Yeah.

So that's a big piece that's been

Definitely, and we've talked to DRPT about designs.

I've looked at the schema for bus stops.

Now I know with a bus, we have to use a certain metal that comes from a certain place.

It's fascinating.

Do not, it's not gonna be an MPH to learn so much about bus stops, but I now have both pieces of knowledge in my brain.

So yeah, so it's been, it's just, I think one of my pieces that's really important on the chip is this promotion piece, not only to find out who's missing, who's not at the table, which is crucial to our success,

but also the public to inform them so they can be better advocates for themselves.

And so that when they go to counsel they and they ask for a better bus stop they know what that entails.

And so, you know, a lot of it is in marketing, I mean I do a lot of

promotion.

I mean, it's not as enticing, you know, it's not so fun to do a bus stop thing on TikTok, but it's, you know, definitely, you know, I know, I can't use TikTok as a government employee, it's true, but you know, it is trying to get, I intend to get the word out.

And just one more quick question.

What's going to be, what's your next step?

When will we hear back about the work that you're doing?

Great, great question.

So I would say at any point you can check out the website on demand products.

but I'll work with this initiative to do a December potentially or January update because some of the target dates are end of the year just based on when grants were awarded and to see if we can get some microtransit, you know, if the microtransit gets going in the fall, can we track it for December?

Okay.

All right.

So let's work on something in maybe the first of the year or something like that.

That would be great.

Yeah.

That would be a great time for a month.

That would really be great.

Okay.

Sounds good.

It's awesome.

So this was hosted by Moon to Health Equity, which is a coalition of a lot of health minded organizations, etc.

They funded this project.

It is a way to

We gave disposable cameras to five groups of folks and said, well, we're looking at transportation, digital access, health care, workforce, mental health.

Go out and shoot pictures about what that means to you and how that is affecting your life and where you live from all the localities and the city.

And then they had work groups to discuss their photos and what they meant.

And so it is a formal qualitative cross data capture, but you can see all of those photos.

Like this is the one you're seeing on the screen that's on the cover of the report that's of the Flubiana Health Clinic.

That's one of the photo voice photos.

So we have that portfolio in the back of the map.

And all of the areas that folks

It's almost all barriers.

No one took a photo of, like, this is the perfect thing.

Do you want to show them on the website?

Yeah, it's an app.

Well, she said that you gave out disposable cameras.

Disposable cameras.

No, Photopoice is a true data

process.

Conceptually, I really like that for transit services in general.

Yeah, it's great.

A lot of folks did.

They rode the bus or they took John and they took pictures of themselves getting on John etc.

It was really great to

You really get first-hand, without convening people constantly or surveying them, they actually get to show you what their life is like and then to talk about why they capture that.

And it's really fascinating and gives you that first-hand voice and view.

Oh man, thank you for the term.

I know, right?

Yes, I agree.

And you know, this is not National Geographic.

You're going to get a long bonus.

It's great.

But you can still hear the story.

So yes, Lucinda's pulled up the plan on the BRHD website, and

There you can see the PDF report of the plan.

I don't update as much as I do the actual the actual kind of grid.

But you can see that we have transportation.

And then when you go to transportation, you can look at some of the data we reviewed to get to transportation, some of the partners.

And then

The spreadsheet of the overall objectives, the details of each task to achieve the objectives which should then achieve the goals, that big huge spreadsheet is in the appendix of the book.

Kendall's going to go down the rabbit hole, I can tell.

You can see initiate a sustainable mechanism for including community voices in transit decision making.

And Charlotte Area Alliance is leading that.

We're going to try and finalize that group by September.

Here's our target date to have that totally done.

We have the indicators, the number of participants in the group, and then the progress is the last column.

They got a grant and it was awarded in June.

So I keep updating that progress thing.

Yeah.

All right, thank you.

So Peter, I think you're on.

While she's pulling that out, first, I want to give a shout out to Lucinda.

I get to work with a lot of folks, a little bit less with Sandy and others, but Lucinda's been a rock star for our CAA TWG.

She actually shows up, she does homework, and really has been a great thought partner for me and the group.

So, shout out to her, and it's very appropriate that I...

I follow Jen.

I'm sitting here envisioning her as a badger.

I haven't engaged with badgers a lot in my life, but if that's a badger, I want to make some more friends with a badger.

She's really fun to work with.

We reconnected after working together in other projects a hundred years ago, and when I read the map report that came out last November,

I was so thrilled to see on top of C3 and PEC and people looking at transit as an environmental issue, you all looking at it from a structural standpoint that you're doing with providers, workforce folks are looking at it to connect jobs and workers and get people to their place in the business.

You have folks who work with low-income housing, are working at an economic equity standpoint, and then talking about everything else, it's a public health priority.

And that is a really powerful thing that I hope you all are putting your careers into it, to know that there's a lot of bubbling up here that I think

To me, it gives me some optimism that when the vision comes out and we're actually going out to the public trying to get people to support this more, there's a lot of different folks really interested in improving our transportation from a lot of different angles.

When I work at public TV, you know how you do it.

If you do the pitches, you know, if you support public TV, support us.

I've been there about a week.

They threw me in front of the camera.

Give me another minute.

Stretch.

All right.

And I'm assuming that the folks on Zoom can see this.

We're good?

Alright, so when you all elected the Charlottesville Area Alliance as a non-voting member to this group a little less than two years ago, I think, I did a little bit of an overview, but I was in the qualified himself with my wife, so it's kind of two minute, here's where the CAA is.

We actually haven't had a chance to really give an overview of why Charlottesville Area Alliance is here and who we are.

I know some folks heard a little bit more about it at city council chambers the other night.

This will be a little bit of a repeat, but also some new information.

So I'm going to give an overview of who CAA is, which hopefully will help you understand why we're here, and then focus on the transportation component.

So, one in four, what does that data point mean?

I guess it should be, it would be at the Charlottesville Area Alliance being an age-friendly group.

I'm sorry, what was the answer?

Good answer!

In our area, 1 in 4 households have somebody over age 65 by about this time, right?

It's not just a small group of folks who are on a number.

Let's see, anybody here over 50?

I'm really daring it.

So this, I didn't have a chance to update this, and I think that Chris Miller did at the city council, but this gives you a sense of the growth of the aging population, and this is for the entire planning district, going over 130% basically in a generation.

We are on track to do that.

It's basically an entire other city of Charlottesville worth of population in our district.

over the age of 65.

And of course there's a lot of different ways people look at seniors at the center.

We talk about 50 plus, these data points are mostly 75 plus.

So back almost 10 years ago now, Gary Selwisy at WCBR pulled a bunch of folks together who were new at the Alzheimer's and Java and John and a few other places to talk a little bit more about aging in our work.

And at first we just kind of met over lunch

And that was perfectly fun.

We learned a little bit more about each other, what we were focusing on.

People say credit me, which would not be unusual for me after a while, five or six meetings saying is there a point other than lunch and a little conversation, getting to know each other.

And that's when we decided the next time is like, is there a point beyond that?

Is that good enough or is there something more to it?

And everywhere, Alzheimer's, hospice, Java, the center, Molly, a lot of different folks were at the table.

But what we realized was we had one thing in common while we were focused on different parts of an age-friendly community.

The Venn diagram was none of us felt that the community was paying attention to aging as an issue.

We all do respect policy makers.

grant funders, private philanthropists, community partners, the health department was a little bit at that time.

Our health systems were not paying attention to it very well and so it's like you know we need to pull together and we talked to a lot of other people that formed alliances and created in 2015 the Charlottesville Area Alliance.

We are a group of do-gooders.

We don't have a budget.

We don't have 501C3 status.

It's a bunch of people like me and Ted and Lucinda and some other people around the table that get together and talk about age-friendly issues.

So you see a list, including many of the folks here.

In fact, pretty much everybody around the table is a member.

TJBC, BRHD, the city is, Almonte County is, John is,

So it's a good representation, not just of the usual folks that you'd expect like Java Wheels on wheels in the center, but again also the health district, planning district, the Chamber of Commerce, United Way, and others.

We do have a steering committee of 13 members.

There's a core of folks such as the center in Java that are constantly on it, and then we elect at-large folks each year.

And then we have work groups that focus on our three priorities that I'll talk about here in a minute.

Vision and mission.

You know, Charlottesville, we love to punch in love.

Our weight in Charlottesville, Albemarle, the surroundings.

We don't settle for being good or better, but we want to be the best.

So our vision is to be the best, most aid-friendly community in the country.

And our mission of CAA is to lead the advancement of that work.

So age-friendly, when I was a little sharper here, starts with saying age-friendly is about people, then you click the extra thing and the knock came up, but obviously I missed that this time.

So the joke is already out there.

Age-friendly is not about people.

It really is about everybody.

The idea is that it is good for everyone.

Planning and needing for the needs of an aging population

Check off the needs for all ages.

One of the most common ones that everybody here would think of is curb cuts.

Those are friendly for people in walkers and wheelchairs with mobility issues, but if you're pushing a stroller, you're really appreciating curb cuts too.

It's something that's friendly for all ages as a prime example.

How many folks, some of you I think were at, when Java and the Center did an event at the Jefferson School City Center a few years ago, a map from the Hill came and talked about age-friendly issues.

It was a great group, very thoughtful group.

It really helps a lot of things moving forward.

And this is his quote.

Matt is out of Richmond, but they do work for Bank of America and some of the biggest insurance companies and organizations all around the world, Home Instead and others.

Winning communities in the future will be the ones that invest in creating great places to live, work,

learn and play at every age, Charles Larry Lyons had the right idea at the right time.

He did some pro bono work to help us think about whether it was worthwhile to do what we were talking about.

So when a bunch of us got together thinking about this issue and trying to

raise awareness of aging and age-friendly issues in our larger Charlottesville community.

We looked at a lot of different models out there, and we ended up going with the World Health Organization, partially because who is highly respected.

They have big reach, they have a lot of research and data behind them.

It's not just something that they, you know, write a white paper, they really back it up.

So they actually identified that the aging of our globe was the most important demographic issue we faced around the world,

as early as 2006.

In 2014, AARP joined as the American partner.

And the idea is that well-designed, livable communities promote health and sustain economic growth and make for happier, healthier residents again of all ages.

And we really like the World Health Organization dimension because of the very holistic approach that I'll spell out in a little bit here in a moment.

which, again, the city of Charlottesville, Albemarle County and Savannah County are members of the age-friendly network.

Here, the governing bodies voted to approve that several years ago.

CAA, actually Kathy Dimick, who I think pretty much everyone on the table knows, who worked for the city at the time was very active.

She actually did most of the writing on behalf of the city, and Albemarle at the time was the vantage point there as well.

And membership and when you are a municipality in the OOARPA friendly network.

I know particularly U.S. elected officials have a lot of folks saying, you know, this is the number one priority, this is the number one priority, we've got 10,000 number one priorities, and your stove's only got four burgers, maybe eight.

There's just too much to do.

What we're really trying to also help is, again, the city, I think

and Warren Flumana have made a commitment to this.

We want to be a resource to help you advocate for the types of things that you already want to be able to be doing.

So it does give access to a global network around the world, including a couple hundred here in North America, access to information.

We get emails regularly and access to symposiums and webinars and conferences that some of our partners go to.

Public recognition that you are committed to being an age-friendly community.

I know growth's an issue in our community, not everybody's in favor of it, but for those who do see growth as a good thing, it's certainly better than decline.

Being a place that is known to be aiming to be more age-friendly is good for all of us.

speaking engagements, and then the Rural Lab.

And Lucinda and Marta made sure I brought that up, because the Rural Lab is a group of municipalities that are more rural in nature or entirely rural, which many around the table are.

And certainly a lot of Alamo County is rural, physically speaking.

And you have to be a member of the eight friendly networks, have access to the Rural Lab and the work that they're doing and the grants that they're doing.

So for some of the rural counties that are members of TJPEC, they're not members of CAA yet,

we are still more than welcome and encouraging for you to join us and take advantage of the Rural Lab, excuse me, the Rural Lab.

So there's eight life elements I mentioned in an age-friendly community, but I go right through these fairly quickly because I want to focus on the Transportation Department, but CAA did a lot of work in partnership with BRHAD and the university to research, do both quantitative and qualitative studies

out of these eight dimensions and age-friendly, what do people think we need to be focusing on?

Because again, CAA has no budget, no staff.

It's a bunch of people like me and Marta and folks around the table who are doing the best we can to have a full-time job and then do this civic work on top of it.

So we really wanted it to narrow down.

And so we ended up narrowing down to three of the eight dimensions, which I'll mention at the end of the eight.

So I won't describe all of these in the essence of time.

but it won't come as a surprise to any of you because you all do planning and you understand transit is intertwined with housing and it's intertwined with buildings and outdoor spaces and certainly the importance of public spaces that are age-friendly that everybody can have access to is a really critical component, particularly at a time where often what we consider public spaces are actually private spaces and there is a big difference about what you can do in a private space versus a public space

Housing, I think everybody well knows is a big priority.

Social participation, that's actually our major in the softball team.

We do a partnership with City Parks and Rec.

The Surgeon General did a report here in Maine that the biggest public health issue in the national level is loneliness.

And that's not just for older adults, it's for all ages.

And I think there's a growing awareness of that.

Respect and social inclusion, which is related to making sure that degenerations interact with one another.

Civic Engagement, a big component in the center.

That's a couple of our volunteers at the center of Belville here.

Communication and information, that continues to be a big issue.

I'm trying to continue to use technology, but also being aware, as Jen talked briefly about in the other areas of CHIP, is digital literacy.

I'm trying to help more older adults and other people for economic reasons who are not accessing the internet.

Communication and information is a big component.

Then community and health services, no surprise there.

And then transportation being the one that we'll focus on now.

And one of the summary points that they may mention at HU and ARP is driving should not be the only way to get around.

Pedestrians need sidewalks and safe crossable streets.

Dedicated bicycle lanes benefit non-drivers and drivers alike.

Public transit options can change in scale, can range in scale from rail to rideshares.

When we then dug down and said transportation is one of the issues and the center is very involved in that because of our strategic planning and since we built the center of Albemarle, the thing we're increasingly hearing is people can't get there if they don't have a car.

Big surprise.

Even though it's in the northern urban range, there's actually fairly good bike and connectivity if you get up to that area.

The question is being able to get up to that area.

So the center is in

committed more of my time to this, and Marta asked me to chair the transportation group a couple years ago, and we looked at what some goals will be, because again, there can be a lot of different things.

This is before the chip came out.

So one was to create a one-call, one-click information nexus for transportation service.

So we're really excited that TJPDC is now taking over the mobility manager component,

We're looking really forward to working together with Java and TJPDC to explore what we can do to be able to get people to either make one click, one car, to figure out all the different alternatives to transit.

As we've learned about around this table the last couple years about having a community do that, much better than we're able to do that today.

So we're really excited about working on that.

And when things get going to promote that service,

There are no bus job improvements again, no big surprise.

That was a big priority well before we realized how much Cat was looking at doing that.

We are going to advocate for that and continue to and work with Garland and his team to try to make sure that that happens.

And one of the benefits again about being part of AARP network is we communicated

with our AARP Virginia office and they are connecting an expert on age from the design of public shelters to connect with the DRPT as they look at things because ADA is one level.

The ADA, as many of you know, is kind of one-on-one.

There's a lot of things that need to be done to really be age-friendly for a wider audience and so we've connected somebody from our

had no cost to the state to be able to look at that to help create even better designs that CAP and others can take advantage of.

And then advocate for transportation in the rural areas.

We're happy to have Hal who's been a very active member of our work group as well.

And again, we look forward to working with the mobility manager on how you can look at rural, not just in rural counties, but again in the massive amount of rural areas that Albemarle County includes.

And then again, I just want to emphasize that CAA sees themselves as a resource.

AARP Virginia has picked CAA three years in a row now.

They picked one community in Virginia as kind of a focus that they want to invest some of their resources in.

and they're excited about some of what's happening in transportation.

They're very aware of it, some of what this group and others are doing.

And this year they brought, what it is, they bring pro bono technical assistance.

And so they've done virtual webinars the last couple of years for us.

Many of you attended some of those last year.

I know a lot of folks, including Lucinda, had some really significant takeaways from that.

I know the center did as well.

So this year we have a group called Impact out of Minnesota.

that is going to be doing pro bono technical assistance for us, and many of you have been invited to the table.

It's one of the things that Jed mentioned, September 21st and 28th, there will be two two-hour sessions virtually with about 15 community leaders, including a couple of transit riders, to look at trying to bring a public voice to the table effectively for public transit.

Is that advocacy, not adversary,

advisory or advocate role or is it just a public voice?

What are the barriers to doing that?

Why do we need to do that?

Who has to have that voice?

Who needs to hear that voice?

Is it the policy makers?

Is it the operations folks?

Is it all of the above?

Didn't I see something?

But because it ended up fitting it, even though it wasn't part of CAA's goals, at about the time, you can see our goals are pretty much moving forward right now.

We're kind of there ready to support whatever Garland's trying to do with bus stops and whatever T.J. Beeson and John were doing around mobility manager.

So we kind of, it's like a lot of our goals were on hold and about that time we got the pro bono assistance again, this idea of community voice came up and we had a group talking about it and we began to write that and some of the challenges.

Kendall, I'm looking at you.

Kendall brings the energy.

Instead of coming, I didn't get it today.

You know where to find me if you have any questions or comments?

Thank you for your energy.

Perfect timing, it's five o'clock and we'll move on to our transit provider update.

So,

Okay, as I mentioned, some of you heard this before, but we launched our microtransit analysis study today where we're very hopeful that we can reduce our costs and also provide superior service in our service area, looking at rural and urban applications to what John does.

Next month, as Jen mentioned, we're going to be launching our Rural Transit Needs Study.

I think Supervisor McNeil and McKeel and Mallory are going to be on that committee.

We'll get to the second one and then we'll have other ones too.

So we're looking forward to getting that going.

We are also going to be launching a bus electric vehicle

implementation study and as part of that we're partnering with Dominion Energy to install possible fast charging stations in the rural areas.

That's great to be used for both John and public opportunities out there so we're very excited about that.

That is really interesting to hear.

So we'll be hearing more about that I'm sure.

I'm sure.

Okay.

What's that project that Dominion has?

Are there locations?

Well, they're filing a grant with the Department of Energy.

It's called SINK.

So if our study succeeds, then what that grant will do is help us fine tune the engineering designs

and construction of an actual charging station.

So let's say we picked La Lisa as a location and then we would have them have a more fine-tuned location.

They would engineer the process and then help build it.

The idea is that there may be some low-income areas that could benefit from electric vehicles, but they don't have the capital to buy charging stations.

So the idea would be to have a joint public-private charging station that would be available to jobs during certain times and the rest of the time to private citizens.

Our vehicles can't get through a single day on a single charge, so we would have to stop in the middle of the day to recharge it and not to drive on the brake.

So that would be very fortuitous for us, but at the same time, a public person could use it as well.

That's great.

Great.

Anybody more members have any questions?

Anybody?

Yes, hello to everybody and I'm sure you all have heard in reference to the fact that we had

about a thousand children that we weren't able to transport because of the driver shortage.

So our efforts is really, our focus this year certainly is recruitment and retention.

There are a number of things that we're still working on.

Even though we have a thousand students, we have gotten that number down.

It's down to 700 now, and we're continuing to work on it.

It is not a way of life for us.

That is not what we want.

We certainly are trying to get our students to school.

And I will like to, I know we're hearing a lot of the negative side of it, but 90% of our students, 90% of the students who request transportation, we are able to get those children to school on time.

So we're really excited about that component of transportation.

But again, we're still working to get the other students on board.

The other thing that we're focusing in, you know, as we look at recruitment, our retention is critical to help aid us in this driver shortage.

So there are plans and things that we're doing

within the department.

We call it our department improvement plans, our work around engagement and the things that we're doing with our staff to engage them more, to hear from them, to hear their feedback.

So I'm real excited about the number of things that we're doing internally to engage our employees, to be a part

of the solution.

So more to come around that.

I will say that we have implemented

what we call our strategic plans around our route development.

Certainly the focus of our route design was to indeed target students who needed transportation the most.

So we do have a SOP in place for that.

We implemented guiding principles so we can explain to families how we landed on our decisions around routes.

So it's in line with our strategic, with the school's strategic plan.

So

Again, I'm really excited about the work we're doing around it.

Garland, I will be calling you shortly because what we're looking at is evaluating the number of routes that are open to see how many are actually on the CAT line that's already on your route and see what those options are.

I told someone nothing is off the table.

When it comes to trying to get our students to school, we're going to safely do it.

We're going to do it legally.

But if there's an opportunity that we can share efforts, I'm certainly I'm not going to hesitate in putting that information on the table with the superintendent and the school board.

So more to come.

Yes, we do.

We have two and we're having conversations around our plans with moving forward.

I know we certainly, in Albemarle, of course you know we're a big county, and in order for us to add more electric buses, we got to talk about infrastructure.

I know, Ted, you reached out and I got some folks that are going to be reaching back to you.

I know your plans are around Dominion Electric.

You want to do some

infrastructure work around that and see what what efforts we can share.

So we will be in touch with you.

I've got two people that I want to reach out to you and be a part of that process and see what our interests or see what we can do to make or to even improve that.

Who am I talking to?

Not at all.

Thank you.

And that's one of the beauties that I think this group is to bring people together and people can share ideas and get connected.

And it's really, really worked well.

All right.

Is there any more questions for Charmaine?

We'll go to Kendall, UTS.

You're next.

With me today is Allison Day, our general manager at UTS.

I don't want to miss the opportunity to kind of reintroduce Allison.

Also, our new director of parking and transportation, his name is Scott Silsdorf, like Wilsdorf,

He started two weeks ago yesterday and the current plan is for him to join us here at next month's meeting.

I have some questions that I think maybe it's inappropriate to ask in this forum, but I'm going to just do it.

For voting member status and all that kind of stuff, how does that shake out?

Well, BECA was a voting member.

So whoever is replacing BECA.

And it is a little awkward, the structure of this organization, I will say with the voting and non-voting is a little different.

At some point we may want to very well revisit all that.

But having said that, BECA is listed as a voting member for UTS.

So we decide?

Okay.

Alright.

I didn't know if there was like

American Bangators.

You know what?

The Hunger Games.

I'm not going to steal Garland's thunder, so I'm going to wait until he goes to mention another thing.

So there's a little cliffhanger talking about who's driving.

I'll wait for Garland.

Actually, I thought you were going to talk about something.

I can talk about it.

Go ahead.

OK, so we just had our graduation last week for our Who's Driving program.

In conjunction with UDA's pipelines and pathways, we did some community outreach.

It's kind of a continuation, if you will, of the Go Driving program.

We brought in some folks who interviewed and we were able to provide, through that program, we were able to provide some workplace training, like essential skills, some English language learning, and then Cat was wonderful enough to host the training.

We were able to get them through a good portion of the training to get their CVL permits.

and so we currently, UTS has eight go-drive, I'm sorry, who's driving graduates in our training program in-house and I believe Kat has three.

So this is something that I feel like has some hiccups, as it always will, but it was just a wild success and we'd love to do it again and maybe expand it out to include, you know, John, to us, everyone else.

Maybe this is something we can talk about on the RTP level a little bit more.

Maybe do a presentation or something to kind of show you guys a little bit more about changing subjects.

Our bus lot currently is a construction site getting our charging infrastructure installed.

Our buses are still on

scheduled to be delivered in December, late November through January.

It's kind of our window.

Who we've purchased from is Proterra, and you guys may have heard they just filed for Chapter 11.

It's going to be fine.

It's going to be cool.

But we'll keep you guys updated on that.

Maybe we'll buy.

What do you think?

Anyway, yeah, so they're going to be sold and it's going to be very interesting to see who actually does buy Proterra.

How many give you a little order?

We have four on the way and we've agreed without paying for two next fiscal year.

So we have currently a 40 bus fleet.

We're trying to right size maybe down to 36 with a 12 year replacement cycle.

We're trying to replace our whole fleet with battery electric buses.

So it's a little bit unnerving, like right before our first group of buses, like drive over the horizon and appear.

This kind of happens, but we're rolling with it.

And let us be the canary in the coal mine, if you will.

Thank you.

We have Vicky Marsh as a member to replace Sally LeBeau.

And I don't think that Vicki has ever attended, but she's our main transportation contact at UVA Health.

It's an important thing.

She's actually retiring in January, we just found out.

Yeah, I just wanted to give you guys a heads up that that is happening.

That's great.

No major pickups of the starter school.

We have 14 routes.

which was the same number that we had at the end of last year.

We have three car routes or van routes that are being used right now.

We have six individuals that were in the background check process.

One cleared yesterday and I just got a text message that says the

Another one is on my desk so I need to see if hopefully they pass the background check also.

So they're starting to trickle in.

That process has taken longer than we anticipated.

It's been about 40 days.

Normally it's about a two to three week process and we're trying to figure out how to speed that up.

So that's a good thing.

We also have

A partnership that we're working in a pilot with Network to Work to also look at getting some additional school bus drivers in the pipeline.

They provided us with six names.

That number has now dropped to six.

We have put those six into the background check process.

We're hoping and anticipating to get

Those probably done in the next two weeks because they're all one ends of batch.

If all of those pan out, we would have completed our full complement of drivers per our off-road number of schools, which is 20, and we would have four, five extra if we're allowed to overfill.

So that should help us clean up some of that wake list.

Remember, this is getting through the process and then we have to train them and hope that they all make it through the training process.

So our training process is four to six weeks.

We've been speeding that up, but we're asking them to get their learners per day prior to starting the training.

That has helped.

So most of the time we've been able to get four or five weeks at schools.

Good question, while you're still in schools.

So we have high schoolers and we have middle schoolers that have been using last year and they're continuing to use it this year.

We've seen that being very successful last year.

It's very safe.

I mean, there's like 11 cameras on a cat bus.

So we can tell exactly the position.

Anything you want to know, we can figure out.

Now, the driver's not responsible for the child because this is a public bus.

This is not a school bus.

So the individuals get on, and they're riding with the public.

Great.

and I saw Charmaine lean in.

I just want to make sure while you're still in schools that somebody doesn't have a question.

No, I do not.

Yeah, I saw you lean in.

I just want to make sure.

All right, then go to your seat.

There you go.

All right, trends aside, so a few things on trends.

So first, we'll start with the alternative fuel feasibility study that we've been working on.

There was a presentation to city council on the 17th of July.

Our consultant, Kimberly Horn, and I made a presentation to council.

Thank Ben for all the background work he's been helping us get done.

In that analysis, they did kind of just the legwork of seeing what is out there, all of the possibilities, looking at the ranges, the concerns about that.

There was no decision made by city council.

It was presented as what this is the lay of the land.

Now there's the real work of figuring out, once we have another round of meetings with community groups and internal stakeholders,

there's a potentially looking at doing some tours that we can to give a perspective of kind of real world what's happening out there and the lay of the land that hopefully then we'll be in a position what we say October, November, late October, early November hopefully come back to the council with a recommendation.

That recommendation will inform the state and the feds on

where we are and what fuel type and then the real work begins with the writing of the transition plan itself.

And that's the key document that's needed for us to really pull down on any funding to take care of infrastructure.

This is, but we got to keep it keen on the reliability aspect because it does us no good to buy alternative vehicles that are going to sit if they don't work.

So we're at 40

Bus Company.

Now we just got, as part of my report, we just got five new 35 footers in, one 29 footer in.

It's taken us 22 months to get those.

They're diesel and one VOC that has taken 18 months to get in.

We're waiting on four more of those.

So when we're buying something, it takes a long time, but we got to keep it 12 years, 500,000 miles before we are able to

Dispose of that item, that's at TA doors.

So we are running still our lifeline service.

We should have been off lifeline, but we can't, we're a liability.

It's calling us an issue because we bought hybrid vehicles that weren't ready for flight.

So next thing, transit strategic plan is a thing that we have to do.

It's a state and federal requirement for us.

We're completed chapters one and two.

Chapter one is kind of the intro stuff.

Chapter two is more of the system performance.

There we go.

Since the performance, we're actually going to be getting into the nuts and bolts of what routing potentially changes that are going to be going on in the future chapters.

So that's a really good thing.

As a part of our TSP project, we actually did a survey that had over 500 individual responses.

The number originally was like... Yeah, we had a lot of spam, a lot of bots.

Yeah, it was a crazy number when we looked at the individual IP addresses.

It came down to about 5 a.m.

So that's still a wonderful response.

Microtransit, we awarded a contract to a provider via, we're going to be making a presentation to the Board of Supervisors on September the 20th.

And bus stop improvements, so

Ben was drafted to pull this project together and working with VRPT, VDOT, CAD, and Albemarle County to make sure that we work through all of

oh my god all the issues with VDOT standards of putting things in there public right away that process is going fairly well we're at the point now where the state has hired an engineering architectural firm to give us site plans so we have picked sites in the city are all of the sites in the county been selected at this time

So we were looking at potentially 20 of these in the county and 10 in the city as our first batch.

We still have $324,000 available to us to make that happen.

That's about 30 bus stops to make the numbers happen.

The goal is to get those in as soon as possible.

I also have taken the liberty of working with a firm that's actually doing some

A.D. accessibility for the city.

We added on an addendum.

We're going to do a bus stop accessibility assessment.

That's about $17,000 that we're adding on.

They should begin Monday.

We'll start adding that on.

Hopefully within 30 days we should have preliminary results.

But that'll be a great thing because it'll also help us when we're going back and asking for additional funding to improve additional restaurants.

Great.

Questions?

Questions?

I see a couple of hands.

Well, yeah, the other question I had is we're getting a lot of feedback from the Long Range Transportation Plan that's probably more appropriate for UL as part of the transit strategic plan.

Do you want that mean to pass along those comments to UL?

Is that useful?

About the stops and things like that.

But it's not some service improvement.

So can I put it up, bus service improvements?

In fact, we hear a lot about it's not just up to tax, right?

So service improvements really mean you're having a conversation with us about what you want, but we have to make that conversation and inroads with city council and board to approve them.

When we lay out our budget, it is

There is no extra.

It is designed to fill every single route.

And we have a spreadsheet that we provide that tells the timing of hours, the timing of hours we're using on each particular route.

If we're going to make any adjustments to that, we're really pulling service from one to give to the other, unless there's extra money that's going to be assigned to make those improvements.

So that if anybody wants improvements, those conversations need to happen now.

So we can make a presentation to city council about facilitating that.

Because there is no extra.

But I think the comments would be great to be shared.

They're actually shared with us.

Because I do think, and I know Peter had a question too, but just quickly, my understanding is for the

the bus stops that you all are looking at, those will come, the ones for Albemarle County will come back to the board for prioritization or at least for our input is what we talked about a couple of years ago.

I'm not sure what process the county planners are using.

Yes, we're good.

And I'm happy with that.

Two questions on the microtransit.

One confirming that both pilot study areas, both Pantops and 29 are going to launch.

September the 20th.

So after that, you want a better idea?

Hopefully.

That's the goal.

We'll have a better understanding of where we are.

Because that's, again, where CAA and our partners are eager to help be part of the marketing.

And I've been talking about it a lot around the center.

People are really interested in what that looks like and how they can use it.

So if you have any questions, or post-award, sorry.

So if you have any questions about post-award activities, feel free to reach out to myself or any of the DRPT staff.

One of the biggest kind of changes that was announced during that is that this coming grant cycle, so the grants that will be, applications will be opened in December, all major new, like all new

Major expansion projects will be required to do a reapplication.

It will be due by December 1st to be eligible to apply for a major expansion project.

So, you know, a good time to start thinking about what applications you might be putting in for the grant cycle opening December 1st.

I do have a question for Katie.

Yep, I'm back on.

With workforce development kinds of tasks,

Do you know?

I would say I would it would be eligible for technical assistance, but might be more applicable under the new expanded workforce development internship.

Great opportunity, I think might be a great opportunity.

Any other questions for Katie?

No, thank you very much dear.

Can you hear OK now?

Alright, it is 5.30 and Sandy, it is time for the Commonwealth Transportation Board's Smart Scale update.

Yeah, so I'm going to try, and I apologize because I know there are a few of you on the server who have been hearing about this multiple times, but this is a good opportunity to reinforce your understanding of the changes that are coming.

I'm also going to tell you upfront that this has been probably, they probably have 10, 12 hours of meetings on this at the Commonwealth Transportation Board, so I'm doing my best to summarize a lot of really technical information in a very short amount of time.

So, just as a really, an overview, because I know not everybody has been following this as closely as I am, Smart Kids Scale is the largest funding program that we have to implement major transportation improvements in the state.

So basically we moved to this program about 2017, 2018, somewhere around there.

And it's a competitive process where we apply for grant funding to implement transportation improvements.

So there are different entities that are eligible to submit applications, PECs, MPOs, transit agencies, as well as localities.

And basically the applications are scored and the high score projects are funded.

Smart Skills actually, we talked about the Smart Skills program, it's actually two different grant programs.

The first is a district grant program.

So the state is divided up into different construction districts and there's funding that is allocated to each of these regional construction districts.

That funding is competitive just between the other submitting agencies within those construction districts.

And then there's what's called a high priority program, which is competitive statewide.

So that's a larger part of money and everybody in the state is competing for that funding.

The district grant program is intended to fund projects that are locally significant.

So these are intended to be smaller projects, and basically if a project meets a need that is identified in the state's transportation plan, called V-Trans, it is eligible for funding through the district grant program.

But only localities are the eligible applicants through the district grant program.

In the high priority program, there's more funding.

It's competitive statewide.

This is intended to fund projects that are of regional or statewide significance, so intended to be bigger projects.

And so in additional localities, that's where MPs, PDCs, and transit agencies are also eligible applicants.

To be eligible for this program, the project must meet a need that is identified on a quarter statewide significance.

So in our region, that is 29 or the 250 slash 64.

The other background information that would be helpful to understand some of these other changes is that

There are different scoring factors, so remember projects are scored.

These are the scoring factors that are scored on safety, congestion, accessibility, land use, economic development, and environmental impacts.

And then the state is divided up into different area types.

And so what happens is that the weighting of each of the sporting categories is different depending on which area type you're in.

So the MPO area, which consists of the city of Charlottesville, the urbanized portions of Albemarle County is in this purple section right here.

So that's area type B.

It's a more urban area.

So what you'll see is that in the more urban areas there is a higher percentage of points that are given to things like accessibility and greening accessibility and congestion relative to the more rural areas.

Anything in our region outside of the MPO area is area texty, so a little bit more rural.

And so this is going to get a higher percentage of its points from safety specifically.

Okay, so what has happened is that in February, the secretary charged the Office of Intermittal Planning and Investment staff, who is the staff that oversees the SmartScale program, to basically do a comprehensive review of the SmartScale program and determine if it was meeting the state objectives.

And so they've done this analysis, and these are some of the outcomes that they've identified.

and so they are coming back and saying that based on our assessment of how the smart scale program is operating and looking back at what our stated purpose and objective goals were for the smart scale program there were some areas that they have highlighted that might be a cost for them to want to review whether or not they want to make some changes and so based on this analysis

The staff has developed a series of recommendations that the Commonwealth Transportation Board is considering.

So I'm going to go through those very, very, very briefly.

This is an ongoing conversation, so the CTV is not finished maybe having this discussion yet.

These are all under consideration right now, but they are not implemented right now.

The conversation will continue again in September, and

and all of the recommendations will be finalized for feedback in October.

The first concern that was brought up is that the overall size of the smart scale program has increased in size by 50% since it was originally put into place, but the capacity of the staff at VDOT does not increase accordingly.

So what's happening is that the same staff that are responsible for supporting the development of applications

are also responsible for scoring the applications and are also responsible for actually doing the project delivery, so actually implementing the projects that are funded.

So what's happened is that as the size of the program has grown and the number of applications has increased, there's starting to be a backlog that trickles down from just like the development of the applications to the actual delivery of the projects.

And so they did some analysis, found out that there's a lot of time being spent on applications that are not being successfully funded.

So one of the recommendations that the Woodmead staff has made to the Commonwealth Transportation Board is to reduce the number of applications that each submitting entity would be eligible to submit.

So they're reducing it currently.

We're able to submit four applications for our size area.

They're recommending that we reduce it to two applications.

And then there's some other recommendations related to just making sure that at the application deadline that all of the required attachments, cost estimates, supporting documentation that are all in place at the time of the application that isn't likely to impact our area significantly.

There's also been a discussion about for localities that administer their own projects, the localities staff, not VDOT staff, is actually implementing the construction project, managing the project.

There are concerns about project delivery in some cases, so there's also this discussion about factoring in

So I thought Charlottesville thought implemented a lot of their own projects.

We do not reuse graphs.

So that's the difference.

So when it says project delivery, that's what they're talking about.

And Sandy, perhaps one other element too is that

They're not going to have a program.

So that's kind of related to the administrative part.

And for these next sets, there's a whole analysis, and I'm not going to go through the complete background of why all of these recommendations are going in place.

I just want to give you a preview.

But if you want more information, I am happy to provide that.

I have a number of resources that are already developed.

The second issue that we haven't really talked about and like at any of the meetings is that

and I'm not sure that this is going to be a significant impact is that there's also, they got a lot of feedback when they did a stakeholder survey requesting that they use a future birth projection when they were basically assessing the benefits based on the congestion mitigation.

And the reason is because it takes five, six years to implement a project.

So basically the argument is that we are

facing the congestion score on the current conditions.

So by the time the project is implemented, there are going to be future congestion conditions.

If we want to be proactive about thinking through what is going to happen, the biggest congestion benefit should be looking out for 10 years.

I don't have a good sense of how this would impact our region.

And they're going to come back and talk about this more in September.

Things that I also want to note is that if they are changing this benefits score for the congestion factor, they've indicated that it would also have sort of like a trickle-down impact on how they evaluate economic development accessibility and environmental measures as well.

Any questions on that one?

All right.

So this is where I remember when we first talked about this, there are two grant programs, sister grant program, high-priority program.

So we spent a lot of time in the Commonwealth Transportation Board meetings talking about what types of projects specifically are being funded through the high priority program.

And one of the concerns is that between rounds one, two, and three, and then going into rounds four and five, a higher percentage of the projects that were funded through the high priority program have been under $10 million or what they consider small projects.

and specifically there's a concern about the number of high priority program projects that are small that are being funded that are bicycle and pedestrian projects.

And so the concern or the discussion that they're having is that the high priority program is really intended to fund projects that are going to have really significant meaningful impacts on sport orders of statewide significance or regional network.

And so it

that the number of small projects that are being funded through the high priority program has troubled between rounds three and four.

So what they discussed at the Commonwealth Transportation Board is that right now, the eligibility to receive funding through the high priority program is based on where a project is located, either on the corridor statewide significance or the regional network, but there's nothing that really defines what types of projects are eligible for the high priority program.

So they are considering limiting the types of projects that would be eligible to receive funding through the High Priority Program to those that are listed here.

New Capacity Highway, Managed Lanes, which would be like an HFT or HOV Lane, New Work Group Interchanges, New Work Group Passenger Rail Stations or Service, Freight Rail Improvements, Fixed Guideway Transit,

And the only thing I really want to point out here is that this would limit the MPO, PDC, and transit agency who are only eligible to submit applications to the High Priority Program to only being able to apply for those types of projects.

So I did look back through all the projects that have been submitted in our region.

So I looked at the projects that were submitted by the MPO, by the PDC, by Charlottesville and Albemarle,

I did not look at the rural localities because I do not believe that we would have been eligible to submit any of those projects at this point.

But these are the projects, so out of rounds one through five, these were the projects in our area over the last five months or so.

So there are six projects I know for sure would have met this and an additional two that maybe would have met this definition.

And just as a comparison, not counting the locality submitted projects, the MPO with PDC submitted a total of 28 project applications.

And the MPO was the applicant for all of those projects.

So out of 28 project applications, six and maybe eight would have

met this criteria.

I will say that the MPO was the applicant for these, so at least in terms of the MPO being the applicant for these regionally significant or projects that are statewide significant, we've aligned that pretty well with who was submitting the applications in our region.

All right, and this is a little bit complicated, but the next

The change that they're talking about making is a change to how the high priority for group funding is awarded.

And I'm going to walk through an example in a minute because I think that this is going to make way more sense.

But basically, the first step in the process is you group all the projects by the construction district that the application comes from.

Regardless of whether it's only eligible for high priority program funding or district grant program funding, all of the projects are grouped together by the construction district.

I'm going to walk through an example.

But you allocate the high-priority program funding on a district-wide basis.

That's how that works.

And then it's not till you get to the third step that it's actually a competitive statewide process.

So we're just going to look at a hypothetical construction district with made-up projects.

So the first thing that happens is we put all the projects into their construction districts.

We're going to look first just at the district grade program.

And we're going to say, you know what?

Our district grant receives a certain amount of money.

The projects that scored best are going to receive, are going to be funded.

And the lowest scoring project that is funded is this West Lane Shared Use Path.

This West Lane Shared Use Path, which is the lowest scoring funded project in the district grant program, sets the threshold under the current funding steps, sets the threshold for how well a high priority program must score in that construction district,

in order to receive funding.

So currently, if a high-priority program scores better than the low-scoring district grant program, so in this case it's a 6.4, and the total amount of that project is less than the total amount of the project, of the amount of funding in the district grant program, that project is funded instead too.

So in this case, West Lane Sheriff's Pass sets the threshold for a high-priority program to receive funding.

And in this case, this interchange improvement project would receive the, would be awarded funding through the high-priority program under this step too.

That's super straightforward anyway, right?

Yeah, so what happens is that if you are in a district where the lowest scoring funded district

And so that high priority program funding is going to be dependent on how well your district grant program scores perform.

So what's happening is that there might be higher scoring projects in different districts that aren't being funded even though they're relatively scoring better because they're in a different more competitive construction district.

And the cost of construction in that district is a big part of how this cost-benefit ratio is scored.

Yeah, especially right-of-way with the right-of-way compensation requirements, things like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this doesn't seem to necessarily

This doesn't necessarily seem like it would impact our region significantly, but if you're in a region that scores generally lower, what this means is that you're less likely to have a guarantee that you'll get some of your high priority program projects funded.

I'm watching the time I'm saving.

Yeah, yeah.

We've got to get two more.

Alright, so the next change is related to the land use scoring factor.

And so there's a lot of analysis that was done with this.

But the major concern is that there are projects that are receiving a land use scoring benefit or land use score that is significantly higher than the amount of benefit that they're receiving in other scores.

And so there's this concern that projects that are smaller and specifically by PED projects might get a majority or

like 90%, 80%, 70% of their score from the land use score not be demonstrating significant benefits and other scoring criteria.

And so that land use factor is driving the selection of projects.

So what they are recommending is that they convert the land use scoring factor from a standalone score.

So instead of getting a land use score, you'll still get your land use benefit calculated.

But instead of that being a score, that would be converted to a multiplier.

And so that multiplier would be multiplied against the total number of points that you're getting and all of the other scoring criteria.

So if your project is a project that has the highest land use score for that round of smart field, your total sum of your scores and all the other scoring criteria will double.

and everybody else will get a multiplier somewhere between one and two based on how whether ladies benefits are compared to the one that's worth the best.

So this will largely impact projects that are smaller in nature and also will heavily impact bicycle and pedestrian projects that have

that are typically getting a large percentage of their points from the land use factor.

So I did a quick analysis to see how this would change the scoring outcomes.

You'll see the biggest impacts are to the Avon Street multi-modal project, pedestrian improvements, and bike ped projects.

And then if I run this scenario with the changes to the land use score, the outcome is that the only project that looks like it would have been funded

in the MPO region during this last round would be the CS250 Peter Jefferson parkway.

We wouldn't have gotten other projects funded.

Yeah, I recall that project was later substituted out for the District Avenue roundabout, but that would have been the only project that would have been recommended for funding.

And then because that land use score is no longer a standalone score, what happens is that we would have to reallocate those points that were going to land use before

and so the recommendation for type B would be to add, that would take 15% of their points from land use and for the type B localities, they would add 5% to safety and 10% to congestion and then for type C, it would be, that would take 10% of their score from land use, 5% would go to safety and 5% to congestion.

So this is the sort of the,

What the outcomes would have been statewide if all of these recommendations were implemented.

The size of the projects on average would have increased, I think that's about, I don't know, I calculated that at 40%, that might be right, from 15 million to almost 22 million.

It would increase the number of highway projects by one and the most significant impacts would be on the number of iPad projects would be funded.

That would have been reduced from 51 to 13.

So yeah, that's a very highest level summary.

And I know I still went over time a little bit.

But I think just know that there are opportunities to comment.

This is an ongoing conversation.

Because of time, unless there are really any questions, we could move on if that's all right with folks.

It is very complicated, and the more often we hear it, the better.

Quickly, because of time, Sandy, give me a long range of information update.

No, if I put out the postcards in here when taking the survey, yeah, please take the survey.

It's running through August 31st.

That's excellent, yes.

We're all set.

That was our theory, that's great.

And quickly then, because I really do need to get to this CACF letter that we need to talk about.

But Lucinda, do we have regional transit governance study?

Anything that we need to really hear right now?

Sure.

I saw you had different scenarios for revenue generation, sales tax, discount tax, whatever.

Was our utility tax considered as a possible source?

No.

As we move to electric vehicles, that might be better than a gas tax.

Good job.

I know there's one transit system that uses the utility that I'm aware of.

Okay.

Interesting to help with that.

Okay.

Broadway, Virginia has its own major funding source.

I didn't say nothing about trans.

Yeah, interesting.

Good catch.

It was a good call.

Thank you.

So that leaves us about eight minutes because we really do, this is kind of sensitive, Lucinda.

Yeah.

My understanding is, so if everybody can, there's, you have a copy of the letter at your place that, and this letter is to Charlottesville Area Community Foundation.

All right, so the Mobility Management Program, you all probably know we were funded through DRPT.

Our original budget for the full cost of the program was $158,000.

We were awarded $119,370.

We did reduce our ask for DRPT to $129,000.

So we have about a $30,000 gap.

and funding for the project.

So we're looking towards other funds for this because what that did was reduce the hours of staff as to work on the program.

And so we're applying to the community foundation for a BamaWorks grant for, I don't know how much, but it's like I think 8,000, what do you call it?

It's under 10,000.

Yeah, it's under 10,000.

And the deadline is August...

It's September 1st.

I'm sorry, September 1st.

So that's when I'm trying to get to this tonight before we leave.

So, has anybody else had a chance to look at it quickly and see if there are any other edits?

I'm looking to Brian because he's real good at that too.

So we'll change the date, and are there any objections, any comments, any thoughts?

I would entertain this.

As amended for today.

As amended for today.

There we go.

And seconded for May.

So all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

So, yes.

Thank you very much for allowing us to get this done.

And I don't have any other business.

Does anybody else have any other business that they want to join or mention?

OK. Then hearing no objections, I will adjourn this September 28th, same place, same time.