Regional Transit Partnership (2017-2025) Meeting   12/12/2024

Gretchen Thomas, TJPDC.

Thank you.

I have a couple of notes as we get started.

I'm going to ask for approval of the agenda in a minute, but I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to add to the agenda

The Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership has requested a designee from us for a representation.

I, as the chair, I attend Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership, but they are asking now for a substitute.

All of that, that's another word.

How do I call the teachers on this?

My alternate.

And so at the end of the meeting a lot of us just had a quick discussion and asked if someone could volunteer to be at the alternate.

The other thing that I'm going to ask for at the end of the meeting is a letter of support from us, from the partnership, for a PATH, a PATH grant that is coming up.

So moved from.

All right.

And is there a second?

Second.

OK. Do we have a motion and a second?

Lucille, would you come forward for the vote?

Supervisor McKeel?

Yes.

Counselor Oschrin?

Yes.

Oschrin?

Here.

Hi.

Director Parker?

Ms. Miller?

Aye.

So the agenda's been approved, as amended.

The next item on our agenda is approval of our draft meeting minutes from September 26th.

It seems like such a long time ago, but we had them

at your table, I believe.

Lucinda sent them out during the day today, but you do have a copy at your seat.

And I'll give you a minute, since they were not in the original packet.

I'll give you a minute to just take a look at them, and then I'll take a motion for approval on the meeting minutes of September 26.

Thank you.

Mark had it in.

Can you say that again for me?

Yes, so we have a motion to approve the minutes from September 26.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right, Natalie has a second.

Supervisor McKeel?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

We don't have anyone who signed up.

If there's somebody online now or in the room who wishes to speak, you can raise your hand.

If you're online, you can raise your hand using the raise your hand button at the bottom of your screen.

So with that, we're going to move to the third item on our agenda, which is John is presenting

on microtransit.

I'm going to ask, if it works for everyone, if we could switch the order and let microtransit go first, just because that allows our presenter to not say what they're holding if he chooses not to, which I think is advantageous for him.

Sure.

That is not.

Lucinda follows those.

Sorry.

Great.

I just wanted to make sure it wasn't them.

No, Lucinda follows the chat for us.

All right, so microtransit potential presentation.

And with that, I'm going to look to Jason, I believe.

Who is?

Are you introducing?

You're introducing.

So Mike, would you introduce, please?

I will try, you know, and I said a lot of nice things about Randy yesterday at the John Ford meeting and I may have used it all, but you know.

So Rain Farwell is the primary on this project from BASH and this is a project that had

I was already in flight when I joined Jaunt at the beginning of this year and I want to give credit to Randy and his team for inheriting Jason and I who had a little bit different way of interpreting their data and vision and iterating with us to what is really an important and useful project for Jaunt.

on this study and I think it gives us good direction.

I'm eager for you all to hear about today and for the job board to continue to consider the ramifications when we have our retreat in January.

Mr. Farwell, you just unmute yourself.

and we're good.

Thank you very much.

Mike, Jason, thank you very much.

I'm Randy Falwell.

I'm with Benesh and I'm a transit planner and I specialize in the application of technology to mobility and

really the development of microtransit types of systems.

So I'm going to share my screen and ask for a thumbs up if you can see the screen.

Did it work?

Perfect.

Perfect.

Then I'm going to move right ahead and try to go through this presentation quickly and then get to any questions you have right afterwards.

So, as I said, you know, happy to be here to present this project.

It was a very interesting one, especially as Mike alluded to.

So,

Essentially, we're looking at introducing for you a discussion of microtransit as a potential service delivery option for Jaunt.

The presentation explains what microtransit is and how it works.

It describes three operating scenarios that we examined in the feasibility study and presents the recommendations for developing microtransit applications for Jaunt.

So what is microtransit?

So it's a shared ride, curb-to-curb service that operates within a defined zone.

Riders are requested by the user, or rides are requested by the user in real time and can be pre-scheduled.

That means I have to multitask.

Let me go back.

There we go.

So microtransit rides can be requested using the mobile app or web browser or by calling the call center.

The service is customer account based, and this means that each user has an account profile that includes any mobility limitations, contact information, payment information, home location, and frequent trip destinations.

Microtransit uses a cloud-based software as a service platform, a SaaS,

and a series of user weighted objectives that are used by algorithms to provide trip planning, trip booking, fare payment, and to optimize trip requests and assignments of those requests to vehicles, as well as the sequencing of vehicle and customer pickups and drop-offs.

The service optimization is continuous throughout the course of the operating day.

So with each operating day, the service history helps the system better understand what the next day service is going to look like.

So this becomes really important in terms of

of right sizing the amount of service that's needed for the services as you're moving forward, as well as providing really important information for future planning.

So all services would continue to be ADA compliant and serve the general public as well as persons with disabilities.

And the service scenarios that we developed all assume that John is using their own vehicles and using their own drivers.

All right, so again,

What is microtransit as it relates to jaunt?

So our findings are that the microtransit concept appears to be a good fit for jaunt.

It will enhance and optimize the existing operating model by finding more shared ride solutions and adjusting to changes in real time conditions throughout the course of the operating day.

It will be an attractive option for a larger portion of the population.

It will expand options to request rides for immediate same day and future as opposed to requiring one to call 24 hours in advance.

It increases accessibility to mobility for many more people.

within the service area and it increases access to opportunity by doing so.

It will improve operating performance, that's productivity, ridership and cost effectiveness, and provide greater operational flexibility to serve mobility needs in the rural areas as well as trips between Charlottesville and the surrounding counties.

And the map

that's shown here include a heat map of ridership activity, as well as ridership activity along the Connect routes.

And the ridership activity from the Connect routes is from May of 2023.

So our feasibility study purpose was to examine existing mobility need, mobility services, operational and financial performance, and assess whether any existing services would benefit from the application of microtransit operating concepts and technologies.

They have mobility needs at the census block level.

The map on the top shows a bivariate analysis of mobility need and population from low to high.

The lighter shades reflect lower need and lower population, and the darker shades reflect higher needs and greater population.

The map on the bottom represents mobility gaps.

So these are areas where mobility need or transit propensity is higher, yet services are more limited and identifies where access to services are more limited.

This analysis highlights opportunities for improved access to mobility and was used to inform locations where a microtransit service may be tested.

A series of operating concepts were considered and assessed

for likely viability and to serve as pilot projects.

All services considered would be required to be ADA accessible and they were designed to be ADA accessible.

As service concepts were developed, we determined the operating rules, the service span, the vehicle requirements, ridership productivity and operating costs.

These were compared to existing operations and performance

We also determined the functional requirements of the SAS platform to facilitate the services.

The operating concepts all assumed existing vehicles and drivers would operate the service, and three concepts were examined in detail, and two of those are recommended for initial pilot service consideration.

Since the largest and most expensive service operated by John is the ADA paratransit service in the urbanized area, and since it serves a population with limited mobility options, the top priority objective in this study was to find ways to improve ADA service delivery for the customers and to make service more cost effective and sustainable.

We modeled serving the ADA trips using a microtransit operating concept and a SAS platform.

The service would be only available to ADA eligible individuals and it would be fully ADA compliant.

It would also expand options to include immediate and same day requests as well as pre-scheduled trips.

We found that the efficiency of the microtransit model as applied to

The ADA service area would allow Jaunt to serve existing daily ADA demand more cost effectively through increased service productivity from greater ability to create shared trips.

This will have beneficial fiscal impacts for Jaunt in the long term, but it will also provide better, more responsive services for ADA customers.

For Greene County, we created a microtransit pilot and we recommend this pilot.

The pilot would use a cloud-based SaaS platform to provide circulator, which is the localized trips within Greene County.

We examined existing travel demand and noted the primary focus of demand in and between Standardville and Rutgersville.

Through modeling, we found that the existing circulator trips can be operated at a higher productivity requiring fewer peak vehicles, so six as opposed to nine, and would provide capacity for up to a 25% increase in ridership.

During the pilot, we propose examining

demand to and from Charlottesville and to assess the requirements, operating costs, productivity to serve the link trips as a microtransit service or extending the US 29 North Connect route to Rutgersville.

With microtransit providing localized circulator trips, a direct connection to the connect service at Rutgersville is likely to increase ridership and cost effectiveness of the connect service.

So the connect services, the fixed route piece of it, the links are those on-demand connections between, in this case, Greene County and Charlottesville.

We also looked at potential services for Crozet.

So John currently serves few

trips daily on the Crozet Circulator service.

So that's the localized service within the Crozet service area.

The majority of trips are provided on the Connect service between Crozet and Charlottesville, and then on the Link services, more on-demand services between Crozet and Charlottesville.

We developed and modeled two service concepts.

One involves serving

The Connect, Link and Circulator services with a combination of localized microtransit transfers to the Connect service and serving the Link trips as microtransit.

The second concept focused only on the localized microtransit service in Crozet and so that would be similar to providing the Circulator service in Crozet with a microtransit model.

and to provide connections to a streamlined connect service between Crozet and Charlottesville.

Our results suggested that the demand for localized circulator service would increase if operated as a microtransit service.

This would increase revenue hours.

would also expect an increase in demand on the Link service, and this would also increase revenue hours.

Ideally, changing the service model to operate microtransit locally in Crozet and serving travel between Crozet and Charlottesville with a streamline

and more frequent Connect fixed route service would provide a more attractive and cost effective service.

However, the increased demand would likely increase the amount of service needed, the revenue hours and thus the operating costs.

Therefore, our recommendation is to wait on a Crozet pilot and consider it after operational experience is gained from the Greene County pilot.

So our recommendations in summary are that, one, the microtransit concept used in a cloud-based platform and operating services with jaunt vehicles and drivers would be feasible and would result in increased ridership and service cost effectiveness.

Jaunt should consider advancing a microtransit operating pilot for the ADA services in the urbanized area.

It would provide immediate and same-day travel benefits for riders and a more cost-effective operation for Jaunt.

Green County existing ridership is high compared to other Jaunt service markets.

and a microtransit service concept is expected to increase demand, ridership and benefit shock through a more cost effective operation.

A microtransit service would increase access to mobility, better connect people to places and provide immediate same day and scheduled services.

A microtransit pilot is recommended for trips within Greene County.

However, or in addition, during this pilot, we recommend

that monitor the demand for linked services to and from Charlottesville and examine the viability of extending the US 29 North Connect route to Rutgersville in the future.

4.

To accomplish these microtransit services, Jaunt should license a cloud-based SaaS platform to provide the software and functionalities needed for ride requests to support account-based customer uses, facilitate optimized operations, and data collection and reporting.

Future services should be considered, including defining a microtransit service for Crozet and other communities, as well as assessing the need and potential to extend the US 29 North Connect service to Rutgersville to provide improved travel between Greene County and Charlottesville.

All right, I'm going to stop sharing.

Okay, I would be happy to take questions.

I know I covered a lot and I tried to go through this fast.

Yeah, so I've actually seen this presentation already.

So I've had a little bit of time to stew on it.

And I think one thing that I was a little confused on was maybe the first slide where we're defining what microtransit is.

If that slide would be any different if we changed it to what is paratransit based on what's listed on there.

So that's it.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

So look at the slide as people are asking questions if you can do that.

It kind of seems like we're talking about a microtransit that is just paratransit with better scheduling and a microtransit that's actually serving all users in a rural suburban setting in a specific area, rural specific area.

And I don't know that that differentiation is made here.

Yeah, that's a good point.

And what we've done is microtransit, the way it's described here is, in fact, how microtransit is being deployed in most places.

There's been some evolution to the service.

Initially, microtransit was really just testing whether or not the technology worked.

and it then evolved to serving spaces and generally was focused on serving first mile, last mile connections to fixed routes or just serving areas within or demand within an area.

The point we're at today is really looking at using micro transit

a little bit more strategically to provide those curb to curb trips for anybody within a defined zone in the jaunt service area because

The only fixed route is really the connect services.

What we've done is we've broadened it to say, OK, well, we're going to, for example, this is where we struggled a little bit with Crozet, because logically, it would make sense to expand access to the Crozet service.

by providing that first and last mile connection to the Crozet service and that makes perfect sense.

The difficulty we ran into though is that because the circulator services ridership is so low in Crozet, pretty much anything we did is going to really explode the amount of ridership which is going to

be disruptive to the existing costs of Crozet services.

And so, to be prudent, we're suggesting looking at doing a

microtransit model in Greene County first where the circulator demand is already high and we have better ridership estimates for that service.

The other thing I'll say about in terms of designing the microtransit services.

It is an on-demand service immediately.

It is app-based, so you can get a ride in 15 minutes, you can get a ride in three hours, or you can call for an advanced ride a day or so ahead.

However, the differentiation, and this is really important, is we've designed the services to be mobility for all, which means

The access to that service is fully ADA accessible from the point of requesting the ride to accessing the vehicle.

And what we've done is we've

We've designed the services so that we're equally serving the general public as well as persons with disabilities and through that account profile that I mentioned, it provides the information that

is necessary for the service to know if I'm picking somebody up that's going to have a personal care attendant with them, that's going to need some assistance with boarding and lighting the vehicle.

So we've really kind of focused on doing the best of both worlds in terms of

of providing a ADA accessible service that treats everybody.

The same where we find the benefits though is through the, in addition to that, is through the shared ride solution.

So what we're finding is that

Even where we have service areas where we have a high percentage of ADA eligible persons riding the service, the costs per trip are really going down.

And what we're finding is that most of those trips are also commingled.

So we're getting shared ride solutions.

Yeah.

When we look at the job service area, which is about 2800 square miles, and looked at some of those intensity gaps that you saw early in Randy's presentation, why these three areas got more analysis were this.

In the ADA area, in the UZA, we have both the right concentration and frequency and an eligibility overlay that makes it attractive and can help us improve the service.

In Greene County, Randy advanced to the Greene County side.

Why it makes sense in Greene County is

I couldn't hear that.

And Mike is is is popping in and out.

So what you see on the Greene County map is these lavender lines.

And so what we're analyzing is thousands of trips, 18,000 trips that happened in Greene County.

But the overwhelming percentage of them is about Stanardsville and Rutgersville, right?

And because of that concentration, we can apply this to their whole catchment area and still serve as one-offs that are going to other parts of the country.

As Randy said, bike rosé works less well is, I put in a constraint that said, you know, no more hours, no more vehicles, you know, than we use today.

And because we have really high ridership on the connect route and low use of the circulator, we would be, no matter what scenario, vanish put together for us.

And I know that sometimes the consultants' averages on micro-transit

are inflated.

We've all talked about that, at least many of the people in the room have, right?

But they would drive the cost up.

We weren't prepared before we piloted this to ask Albemarle for any more money for Crozet.

Crozet is a really attractive market for John, and there's a lot of people who are riding that on the commuter route.

For me to say it's a good use of asking Albemarle for money, if they're bringing themselves to a bus stop now to pick up a connect route, the only value is will I bring people from Old Trail over to the great value?

And I don't know, but we should ask for more money for that right now.

I think my concern is more of a how are you gonna marketing

these different areas.

Microtransit is an application versus how we would market it, right?

And in the same way that we do to Washington DC,

It's extraordinarily clear what they're marketing with those ADA vehicles, right?

Microtransit to me is the concept, the use of the optimization of the software and doing things differently as a business.

more so than how we tell the public.

What we tell the public is we're going to give you, instead of one to seven day advance service, we're going to give you real-time service in addition to reservations.

And in the city, we bargain that as you're still only the customers that we deserve because we're in no way trying to do something differently.

Right.

Yeah, and I think that's the goal for everybody.

Yeah.

All right.

Yes.

Yes.

So I think if there were general public here,

For your constituents, we don't serve the general public, so it would be not applicable.

For Greene County, which is the only use case that we're piloting, it's about the nature of the reservation.

They have free access to the service today.

All of our services are fare-free.

What's really important about this is

is what I mentioned in terms of creating greater access to mobility, because the biggest problem, especially in the more rural areas, is access to mobility.

Unless you are on Medicaid or you're disabled, you know, you generally, now John has services, but

But generally, those are hurdles that are really difficult to overcome in most communities.

What we're really focusing on with designing microtransit for is really increasing that access to mobility for everybody.

And it is particularly powerful for those persons who don't have access to a car.

Think about the young adults, 15 to 24, that may have a high need to travel but low resources to get around.

persons that are aging in place.

In Sarasota, we developed, redesigned their transit network and introduced microtransit to integrate with their fixed route impaired transit.

And what we found surprisingly is that 30% of their riders are people that are 55 to 75, and they're mostly using the app.

but they've got this, they're traveling a lot more than they would otherwise.

And we're finding the same thing with persons with disabilities that are used in the services, rather than traveling, you know, a couple of times a week or every few weeks, they're traveling a lot more freely, which is a lot more, you know, liberating for

individuals, and that's a really good thing for quality of life.

So my question is kind of more like in the Green County, and maybe I misunderstood this slide, but when you're talking about Green County, my understanding was it would provide transit for people who need the ADA requirement.

Absolutely, and that's how the service operates today.

Right, but what's changing now, from what I'm understanding, is now it'll be more immediate for scheduling.

It's not.

Yeah, if I can comment on this.

There is a big difference in that when you call an Uber, you're getting a

an individual in their vehicle who's coming to pick you up.

And if you have a disability or if you have a disability, you don't have the same access.

So this addresses that, but it's also addresses the point of,

All right, so Randy, we're at the point of some agenda management decisions here, so appreciate your time.

And we might want to very well come back to this topic again at a number general.

I would.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right, Mike, with that, Rural Transit Needs Assessment and the Rural Transit Needs Assessment Board.

So let me.

OK, quickly.

Your question is, why is it different than if our system remains fare-free and people who have curb-to-curb service today

What it is is a refinement and a different level of access.

That's all.

It's increasing your mobility, allowing for more immediate scheduling and trips.

That's the part.

I was just going to say, too, when we're talking about Uber, we're talking about a non-governmental service.

We're talking about a service that people know the drivers have been vetted.

There are all sorts of things that they need.

I'll offer one other difference, which is the connection that Uber will provide to you, they will drive you from Greene County all the way to downtown Charlottesville.

Right.

OK.

So it's what you could do with an Uber, but pay for it.

But this is just restricts your service area.

So it's increasing mobility in Greene County.

Yes.

This is what the Greene County Board of Supervisors

Sure, and I'm not out here arguing against it, I'm just trying to figure out what the difference is.

It's a fair question.

Yeah, it can be confusing.

A lot of people, they talk about microtransit, they use an uber analogy because it's kind of on demand.

But the differentiators, I think people have said it here, is that this is still a public service and the algorithms will

I was going to say, I just want to make sure...

The differentiator is that

We have missed a lot of meetings during this fall where it didn't fit into the schedule exactly right down in favor of harder discussions.

And the work was done by some folks from North Dakota State.

Jason and I will be here in the room with you and be responsive to all the cues about whether to stop talking, which is an advantage over online presentation.

Jason's going to take you

through how the study was done and what we're looking for and what drives transit progression.

Great.

Thanks, Brian.

Well, many of you have already seen this, right?

So maybe you're second or third time, but some of you it's the first time.

Just to keep it interesting, I

updated it a little bit.

So this is a new presentation, hopefully get something else out of it.

The study overview is these components.

Jeremy, like everyone else, when you give it to a consultant, they look at the population demographics.

Everyone does that.

They look at existing transit service levels.

They look at service gaps, recommendations, and conclusions.

And that's the structure of the report.

I'm going to keep it brief and really talk about the service gaps and basically talk about recommendations.

If you really want to satisfy your curiosity, Jeremy provided a 76 page report that outlines many different models used and why he chose the one he chose, etc.

So you can certainly go there if you want it.

Just a quick snapshot of the existing demand response trips per capita.

Many of these areas, as you see the rural areas, a lot of them are 0.5 trips per capita, which is lower, right?

You can see green, it was talked about, had a higher, they have history of internal transit there and there's more ridership risk because you have stands in the Ruckerville kind of tied at the hip in the school system and so forth.

So, Louisa has some as well.

But Jeremy again looked at this, he looked at, he has a lot of maps in his report.

Please feel free to check them out.

It starts with a peer analysis to see what they learned, lessons learned from, oh yeah, here we go.

What we see in other rural areas in terms of ridership and service, a mobility gap, he explains what it is in the report, it's the number of trips not taken because of the absence of a vehicle, right?

Ridership models, he outlined two or three, then he chose Y and he chose his own.

Because his looks at demographics, those populations that are more transit dependent or have higher propensity for transit, mobility limited, and he compares that to, he sort of does the intercept and service levels to estimate demand.

So he estimates demand.

He established ridership targets, so one section he did, he set goals for ridership based on service levels.

Three different goals, and those goals were like numbers of riders that you can get to if you improve service.

And for each of these goals, he comes up with a deficit, which is essentially the target that he establishes based on peer communities and other research, R squared, things like that.

Minus existing equals the deficit to reach each goal.

So if you want to hit a goal, the deficit to overcome it is what you need to.

So these are the

Wireship goals, time of service levels that he introduced and found for the report.

So right now, TRIPS fiscal year 2023, this is existing TRIPS.

The goal, for example, Albemarle is meeting goals one and two.

They can invest more to get to three.

He describes the goals as like a basic needs, goal one is for basic needs.

Goal two is on par with other transit agencies, sort of a middle level, and three is really doing well, high performing.

We can go back to these if people have questions, but I want to get to another slide.

County-level ridership deficits.

These are the deficits.

So you take the target,

take existing, subtract them out, and these are what you need to get to in order to get to a certain goal level.

Make sense?

All of the estimates that he gave us were, except for Albemarle and Green, to reach goal one.

What do we need to take to get to reach goal one based on where you are now, just the basic needs.

For Albemarle and Green, he said, what's it going to need to take to get to goal three?

These are the estimated operating costs to meet those desired goals.

I think this is based on about $37 per trip.

That number can vary.

And again, we can come back to these if people have questions.

I just want to get through.

We have three maps, the two maps that he gave us.

I only chose to use Goal 1 and 3 because those were the goals that were set for the communities.

So all of these communities are below Goal 1.

Nelson, Buckingham, Flauve, Agusta, Luisa.

And interestingly enough, even though Albemarle, as a county, is doing well on Goal 1 or 2, you can see

So a lot of that meeting the needs is really concentrated in the urbanized area of Albemarle.

It's making the whole county look good, but there's still areas of rural Albemarle that need help.

So don't get fooled by the county level outrage.

And then of course to reach the goal three would be Albemarle and Green would be targeting their goal three deficits.

So, you know, obviously these consultants are aware of each other's work, but not exactly at step as far as the timing.

We continue to refine and banish on microtransit.

We've got microtransit in Crozet kind of in slot three as far as piloting, so that's a little bit different than this recommendation here.

We have really

When you look at the amount of coverage of days of the week in Albemarle, we're in pretty good shape in relationship to this goal.

It really would be about a concentration on particular areas of the county.

So right after this was presented to the boards, I went down

met for the afternoon with the folks in Buckingham County and really they feel like from talking to their residents there would be not enough demand for the kind of circulator service within the county and that if anything they're interested in a third workforce solution, a third connect route

But this recommendation, for them, thinking about the investment of further local dollars, was not a hit for them.

They love the workforce service.

They feel like it's super important for connecting people to jobs at UVA and other places in Charlottesville.

Savannah County, and actually interestingly on the conversation with the county executive's office about this right now, we'll be out there making a presentation on January 8th about the upcoming year.

There is a real gap on the days per week and the hours per day.

However, years ago,

They cut back the number of times that there was a link between Albemarle, Charlottesville, and Flugano.

And it's down to only Tuesday and Thursday right now.

And they want to see that go up to three, four, or five days.

Yeah, there's a little bit of intensity at the beginning and end of the days.

And then for Greene County, who I just presented to Tuesday night and gave them kind of a combination of this presentation and the one you heard previously from Randy.

They just had to turn over the service to jaunt to run in 2020.

They ran a on-demand service through phone call dispatch when they used to run it themselves.

They would be super excited about piloting microtransit out there.

They would like to have a conversation with John and Albemarle County about whether there's any possibility of shared interest on the cost that it would take to extend that route from where we stop on the 29 North route in Hollymede and make it go out to Rutgersville.

And interestingly, something that's not, well, two things.

Our current weekday service out there, which they like and is five days a week, training should get people home when they take them there.

And right now, based on their request, it ends at 5 p.m., which is not awesome for workforce, right?

So we need to look at how can we do that.

Ann, the chairwoman of the board out there asked me, can we give them a pause on Saturday service, which I've never seen out there, and we'll have to look at it.

Um, next please.

Uh, Wheaton County, uh, I have talked with Christian about this, uh, I think in the year that we're going into, we're asking for a flat level of service.

They're aware of the study and its recommendations.

Go ahead.

Nelson.

Nelson County.

Um, we have an extraordinarily passionate Nelson County representative on our board.

who is certain that we ought to serve Nelson County 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Outside of that, we are in conversation with Lucinda, Christine, and a group from Nelson that is not exactly in sync with what the board and the county executive's office there has decided that they want to appropriate the dollars for, which is to deal with one side of the mountain over there where they feel like there's more socioeconomic need.

but we're trying to match that up with other creative solutions about funding and see what can be done there.

We do have a conversation scheduled to talk to them particularly about the midday link.

I think that what happens with a lot of these services is at different points in time they took out this midday service but they didn't understand that some of the people they ride the bus in

Not necessarily because they go to work at UVA every day, but they were going to an appointment at one of the clinics.

You know, it's a free ride in for more than an hour from some of these places in Nelson and Buckingham.

And even in Green, it can be 45 minutes depending on 29, right?

And you might get out of your doctor's appointment at 9, 30, 10 o'clock in the morning and we start running people back to Green County in Portland in the afternoon or back to Nelson County.

So it's really inconvenient.

getting that midday schedule back in there is a high priority for some of these more rural organizations.

And then I think last is Goochland.

So all evidence led to Goochland ought to be talking to GRTC or somebody else.

Goochland asked me if we'd be willing to continue the conversation, not for anything within Goochland and not to run them to Richmond.

They think that they have study results that tell them enough of their people

are accessing both medical and retail in science crossroads that they'd like to pilot a service where we run people from the western part of Goochland County back and forth designs.

Because there are, I think, both UVA and Martha Jeff clinics there.

And then, of course, there is a concentration of retail.

I must admit, and I probably wasn't alone in this, I was surprised when I saw Goochland pop up.

Yeah.

It was at their request.

And so, you know, as Jason said, when you're looking at these jurisdictions, of course they have unmet needs.

And there is a place where the resources meet what's possible.

And what you all should know is that we've taken these recommendations.

We're in active conversation with each locality about them.

And it serves as a good reference point

Perhaps we go forward over these next couple of cycles.

Can I add one more thing?

I don't think so.

We're four minutes over.

That's why I asked for more time from Madam Chair.

Yeah, absolutely.

Go ahead.

Let me stop sharing.

I took some notes.

I want to speak.

First of all, there was a component that wasn't really talked about a lot in this presentation.

There was a stakeholder interview process with this study.

And we did get some qualitative feedback.

Surprisingly, a lot of that

Echoed what the recommendations are.

It's like, yes, we need more mid-day.

We need longer service spans to accommodate shift workers, and we got it down.

A lot of those recommendations are very similar to the recommendations that Lucinda found in her survey.

And I think those two combined provide a nice nexus of rationale.

Other than that, a couple of things on the microtransit, just to backtrack, I was like, what's happening?

No?

I was trying to do takeaways from that.

We'll have another discussion.

All right.

And another time, right?

Can you go back to the slide that showed peer analysis?

Can you go back to that slide?

I just, and I'll be frank, I did not read the report, okay?

I'm sorry, I did not.

There's 76 pages on it.

Okay, I did not.

And I just want to make sure that I understand the methodology between identifying the needs.

So he takes this, he takes like a profile, he inputs some data about your community and he has a profile based on income and a whole bunch of factors and out it's

it spits sort of this need based on this profile that he's created.

When I was a kid and I put up all those maps for that I was like here's why you have this concentration of people who are over age 65, people with disabilities, people who are you know incomes under 35,000, people who you know youth populations

Vicky has looked at the demography of different communities that make them have a higher propensity towards use of public transit or having a mobility issue.

Okay, because for lack of being able to converse with these folks, I mean, I understand some stakeholder group, but for lack of a be able to say, we know that there are

The other question I had is, is there a way that he feeds into this model

and maybe I don't see it on there.

Is there a way that he feeds into the model, the sort of the dynamics that exist here with services, i.e.

Charlottesville UVA as a medical center,

I don't think that that's well represented in the model except that he has

But the model we're saying, no.

Demand side, like attraction side of that was really value.

He's taking everything from demographics and he has, for example, trips per year for population 65 and older.

And he's building on the THCRP, which is the transit,

they've done studies like 2009 and he said my model is taking 2017 and I'm adding into the basic all those numbers like six trips per year for this group, five trips for that group.

That's all been like successfully worked on for many, many, many years.

So he's building on that.

What he's adding into it is the, he has an algorithm that says if you provide face service, it'll generate this many trips, but if you provide

This much service, you're going to get more.

So that's where he got the three goals.

Right, and I'll just say I can recall as we were doing some of this work with the RTP and visiting with some of these counties and several of them acknowledged the need to understand the population.

And what I think Lucinda brought up the point that if you talk to the people that are riding the bus,

They're already your audience, right?

They're taking advantage of the service.

What you need is to figure out those that are not accessing the service and why.

And I often wondered how you did that.

I actually think this is kind of

I might go back and read this report.

Maybe not Christmas Day, but you know.

Right.

But what it does is to me, it gives it tries.

It makes a shot at giving sort of voice to those that might need a service who who don't know how to tell someone they need this service.

Can I see the slide with the costs to meet the gaps?

So are these operating costs coming out of his model, or are they the operating costs associated with the recommendations that you're...

It didn't go that far.

He's using data from fiscal 2023 to understand what it costs for each trip, revenue, etc.

I didn't know if that was how they did this math or not.

The other one, the other question I had is was there a set of recommendations for Albemarle County?

And can we go back to that real quick?

For the recommendations, yeah.

Is that from the report?

Are those recommendations on those specific services

Absolutely.

And he got that just by analyzing the day.

Crozet needs some rides.

And here's where you could supplement them with rides.

Is that right?

And so I think when you were pointing out the goals and how they align with the specific areas within the counties and not just county as a whole, you were pointing out that there was rural needs within Albemarle County.

So I'm guessing that first bullet is supposed to be helping us under recommendations.

Still learning.

Are these rights, these goal rights, rights not being achieved or are these rights that John can achieve that may be provided some other way?

You see what I'm saying?

No, what I'm saying is like,

In 2023, when I looked at this dataset, 160,000 passenger trips happened in Albemarle County.

It's probably just looking at the census track information, telling you where the activity centers are and using an algorithm telling you based on the numbers that they have, there's potential for you to do more trips to activity centers based on their model.

That's normal, just basic planning.

Correct.

It's not asking that.

Because it probably doesn't know what, it'd have to look at your, the actual trip patterns for existing road traffic to be able to predict that.

But that's assuming that, so when you add transit, you're going to make those trips available.

If there is no transit, they're using single occupancy vehicles, right?

So the chicken and the egg concept, right?

As soon as you put it in, there is pent up demand.

There will be usage.

And some of it is switching, and some of it is people who don't get to the places where they want to go as often as they'd like.

And I'm going to, with all due respect, I want to make sure we get to some of the other points.

Are there any other questions that really have to be asked right now?

Certainly at your all's request we can come back to this and have another discussion for some of this.

All right.

We won't have any slides for today because the slides that we have are the same ones that you have seen before.

We are now going before county board of supervisors yesterday and city council on Monday to remind them of our presentation that we made to the joint session back in September.

and asked them to approve their membership in CARTA.

So CARTA now exists because it has one member, Albemarle County, that's very excited to be a member of CARTA.

But we need a second partner.

So we'll be coming to the city council on Monday evening, showing them the same slideshow presentation and hopefully getting the same result as we got at the county.

And then the next step is coming before the council and board of supervisors again in January.

to name the members of CARTA, the specific members who will sit on the board, two from the county, two from the city.

And we'll also be going before the board and city council to ask for an endorsement on a grant application for DRPT.

We'll be going after a technical assistance grant to look at the transit vision plan and decide what in there is our priority as a region.

What should we be going after first?

What do we need money for to build?

So before we can go to the General Assembly or to the state government and ask for more money from the state, we need to have some priorities set that we can all agree on and say that those are our regional priorities.

That's where we're headed next year.

We've got a full year ahead of us of setting up CARTA officially, getting some technical and finance committees started on their work and doing bylaws, approving those, making sure that we understand what everyone's roles are, and then moving forward with the planning work that CARTA needs to undertake.

So one of the goals will be then to go to the General Assembly, obviously not in the session that's coming up, but in the following session.

And by that time, we hope we'll have

And I will say, I'm getting a lot of questions from folks at this point about, well, now that you're setting up the authority, is the regional transit partnership just going to shut down and go away?

So Ann and Ben, I'd like you all to help address that a little bit because

Yeah, I think that's really going to be a part of the discussion that CARTA as a board is going to need to have in its early infancy.

I think that's also a conversation y'all will need to have and we as part of y'all will need to have as part of the RTP is what is the appropriate role for the RTP going forward?

Is there an appropriate role for the RTP going forward?

Do we need to change what the role of the RTP is to address some of the things that CARTA

as a legislatively enabled body can't really address.

There are some differences between the regional transit partnership.

We have a lot of the same makeup, but UVA is not a voting member of CARTA.

How do we deal with how we are organizing UVA versus county versus city?

So there are some things that still need to be discussed.

But just to clarify for folks who were, I don't think that you're going to see the original transit partnership just disappear in the next two months.

No.

Correct.

I mean we're talking six, eight, nine months.

Right.

Maybe a year.

Right.

So we will continue.

Only when Katano left the jaunt board, he was the only part of this group, right?

I had a question about, do you want me to give you a new jaunt urban representative for the RTP?

Will the RTP function long enough for that to make sense to on-board somebody and come up to speak?

Right, it is fair.

For the next six to eight months and a minimum.

And I do think as we get into this, things will come up that we're not anticipating as well.

So just saying.

All right.

Are there any questions about the authority in this update that we just had?

OK.

And we're thrilled that it's going to city council next week.

I may come with Jim O'Bella.

All right.

Transit provider updates at this point.

Well I appreciate you all including us and this being I think I've learned a lot since the second time I've come and I'm still trying to piece out what would be important to share but I think everyone knows I just started this school year in transportation for the public schools and it's been a real big rebuilding year we were very short and we were able to hire a lot of folks including probably 15

We've spent a lot of time this fall just improving processes and rebuilding the department.

One of the places we're still short is with our special needs drivers and vanum drivers.

So we've just seen an increase in our sped population of kids that need to go to different schools that maybe we can't service within Albemarle County.

I've also recently partnered with a vendor, Everdriven, and we utilized them this school year and I've also recently partnered with River North, which is VIA Transportation, the microcad service, and we will be starting with them in January to kind of try it out and see how it goes.

Something else that's been interesting is the school division as a whole have identified TSI schools, so schools that need targeted support and intervention,

and they are getting priority services across the division from all departments and so those schools have asked for more tutoring service or Saturday school service and we've been able to provide that so far and that's been good.

But that's really an interesting update.

That's great.

We really appreciate that because I don't think those are things that we would normally be thinking about.

And I do see some connections as to how maybe we can all support each other in some of those.

It's kind of resolved.

Yeah.

Really interesting.

OK.

I think I have a question for Jamie.

All right.

I'm Scott.

You're on, UTS.

I'm still waiting for those small buses to get on the railroading.

Santa came early.

They are here.

Really?

Yes.

That's wonderful.

We just have a very lengthy process to go through to get them, or else we're ready to put them on the street.

They literally just arrived last week.

We have five of them on our lot.

The e-jest, we're talking about the Carson e-jest low-floor micro-transit buses, mini-transit buses.

They're on our lot, we are doing, they have cameras installed, they have Translope getting installed, which is our GPS tracking system, they've got our sign packages, so they need to be safety training, we've got a whole package that we're going through to work with electric vehicle safety for our maintenance crews and our service fleet, but I will confidently say that they will be placed into service for

This is me coming to this meeting.

Squares can be made in January, and I can tell you I'm not pressuring you.

Let's do it right.

So five buses, we'll use them on basically lower volume routes.

So our night pilot, which is our late night bus service, especially when it's 10 PM to 2 AM, we'll probably start using them there.

We might use them on our silver route.

And another great feature of that, and I looked at it myself when I was on it in the summer when we had them here, is they're so maneuverable around the tight streets of Charlottesville.

Oh, that's right.

You know, from the Ronald McDonald House to the medical center around the medical center route because we're looking at how we can partner with our own health system to manage transportation.

So yeah, they're just, we're excited.

We just have a lot to learn and we're dipping our toe into that water.

So and then on that vein, we also were, I think Gellner called us a couple of months ago and said hey we might have some slots available for our Valley Electric buses based on the quarter change.

So we popped on to that opportunity and sometime in June or July of 25

And then the only other update I have which is less on UTS and more on Wahoo Commune goods to the point about single occupancy vehicle conversions.

If you remember Patrick Clark came here a year ago and talked about a launch date in September.

I was the first incentive to not drive to grounds by yourself in a car so that is now we're into two months of operations.

We're up to about 550 participants that have actually signed up and said yes I'll do it.

It's kind of like what I thought a lot of people that are already doing things are now going oh you're going to give me a dollar a day to do that?

Okay I'll do it.

But we have had people turn in their parking grounds which is one of the conditions.

I guess I do have one question about Wahoo Commute.

So you have 500 or so folks who have signed up for it.

Yeah, we are and we try to put some strings to it We didn't just want people to go, yeah I'll do it and then get an e-book.

Kendall Howell, I mean he's a huge proponent, he's a vamp-hole, but we actually, and I'm forgetting which one it is, I want to say it's not a theme, it's a chair.

There's something on the academic side who is a huge, is it Afton Express?

I can't remember.

So we've been, I think I said before, it was, we didn't want to get overwhelmed so it's kind of been a slow launch.

It's definitely been spreading because there's a lot to it.

I think I said when I talked about it before that the carpool, we made some pretty significant changes to the way we were doing carpooling and so that took a lot of effort to kind of walk some people back from some frustrations.

We took away some of the benefits

The marketing will really come in the coming year.

And the other thing that we're working to do, which is, okay, now that we've got a couple of months of experience, we've got some feedback, is how are we going to actually, like, how do we know that walk-in commute is a success?

What is the measure?

Is it, you know, greenhouse gas reductions?

Is it, you know, number of permits that are turned in?

I'm getting the sense that Jamie might like to talk to you in that carpool of incentives at some point.

I'm looking into watching her body language.

Any other questions or comments?

All right.

I'll start on the school system side first.

So there's an EPA grant that we were able to secure that allowed us to get two battery electric buses.

That program, we've actually ordered the vehicles.

So we're on a time frame now, probably 14, 15 months.

So all systems go.

We are in communications with Dominion.

They've come out to the property.

A couple times now and they're starting to do the design and layout to put the infrastructure in place.

The agreement though, I think this is one of the pieces that was

Not always known, but we are aware that there's a provision in the agreement that we will sign with Dominion because they'll pay for all the infrastructure.

In the summertime, they have to be on the chargers from noon to six.

because they're using them as kind of a support to the grid.

So we are working through that model.

So saying that because that means if we were there, the more we do, then that takes the vehicles away from us for usage in the summertime.

So we still have a responsibility to get students to and from school in the summer.

So we're moving that model out.

So we're doing two this year, and then we're putting in a potentially looking at whether that's two, four, whatever it is for next fiscal year that's coming up 26.

But our model probably between two and six, let's say, at some point in the future.

That will be our first piloting test.

to see how well we can integrate the battery electric technology buses at the school side.

On Cat's side, we're enrolled on the battery electric.

So we're January, we will be officially putting in our order to Gillick to buy two buses through the grant that was authorized us by the RPT.

That starts our timeframes and our model over there is a whole lot different.

There's a lot more infrastructure because of the amount of energy that's needed to charge the buses.

That time frame is a whole heck of a lot longer so we are working through that.

We are aware that once we put in the order we're probably 20 months before we get it.

That's probably, we're cutting it close because all of what we need to get done

with some of the other infrastructure improvements that need to be done at the facility.

We'll be starting a survey in a NEPA process because these are major capital project outlays that FTA is requiring us to do.

So that process also starts in January.

So there's a lot of momentum on the improvement side for alternative fuel vehicles.

We're also in discussions with potentially getting a new consultant on board to look at starting to lay out the design infrastructure components necessary to do the hydrogen portion of our fuel which is coming up in 27.

We need to start that conversation now because that time frame to bring hydrogen is a lot longer than two years.

It's probably three

years before we'd be able to have everything we need and identify a fueling source to bring in if we're not doing on-site electrolysis ourselves.

So, great news.

We're dipping our toe into both rounds.

We'll do battery electric and hydrogen.

I had an opportunity to do two tours at MTD in Champaign-Urbana.

I think we've learned a lot of lessons from them, some things that they're doing, so they have kind of inverted what we're doing.

And that's a great segue because I want to thank CAB and the City of Charlottesville for supporting and sending 20-some people, close to 30 people, perhaps, to Champaign-Urbana to look at this model.

And then we're Albemarle County folks, the City of Charlottesville, UVA folks, school folks from Albemarle County public schools.

I love the fact that the region was very interested in this.

And it's a great model.

We wanted to try to bring our state partners, but unfortunately we couldn't make that happen.

But the feds love this kind of thing.

It's when we are able to, as a region, try to look at something before we ask for the big money, which we will be asking for the big money.

We're going to be working with our state partners to do the application, the grant writing side, so that is coming.

We know if we partner with them, we can make their application much stronger.

We all know exactly what we do.

We are aware, though,

So there are times, there are times, there are in the existing legislation, I think there are sunset provisions of the 27, in the 27, which means the money's available through December of 27, December 31st of 27.

I don't know what happens after that.

But we can get in the queue before that and hopefully we can

There's steps, which is why I'm saying there's things that we have to do to be able to get to the money.

So the survey, the NEPA process, that's about a year and a half for us.

So the time frame is pretty quick.

The other thing I would add, and I'm not trying to take up all of the conversation here, but I do think it would be beneficial for Garland to give a presentation to this group around the Champaign-Urbana trip and some of the information and what we found.

I know a lot of people here went on the trip, but people did not, and it would also be good for members of the public if they wanted to watch it.

So I'd like to see that go on our agenda after

Service updates, yes.

So we had our first of two required service updates based on our union contract.

So I will definitely make sure I call Peter and say, hey, we did it.

And I didn't get a call from him.

So that is something, a Snickers bar or something.

But so that has been done.

We are working on no.

We had a route that was 70 minutes that has been corrected.

All of our routes now, the longest one is 60 minutes, but we're working through that.

We have plans to update some additional service that's continuing upon the service requests that we want to do or continue upon getting more drivers in FY26.

But one of the key components that we're trying to get done is the enhancement of the two, making it bi-directional, sending it by the jail.

That is on our queue, but we do not have the number of drivers necessary to make that happen yet.

That is the key, so that's one of our major requests for FY26.

As soon as we can get those drivers, then we can actually make that service happen.

It takes more drivers than we thought, because what happens is you're layering routes because there's two spurs.

One will go into Fifth Street, and then the other will end at PVCC.

That main trunk will have very high frequency service, but everything else main on a 30 minute route would require two to three vehicles.

So great question.

I just had this.

I do know the answer because I just went through this with Sam.

So for our budget, we had we were chipping away at that.

We had three of the eight filled and then we lost through retirement and then some discipline issues.

We have lost four.

So we're back to the original eight.

But we have one, two, three,

Thanks.

There is another piece of work that we engaged in about battery electric buses which has been a bit more challenging to bring to a close but it is a part of our approach and we are actively engaged on another much larger electrification project where we're partnering with Dominion, Virginia Power and Bay Area Transit

rather large federal grant that they did called Project Safe, which would allow us to not only put in the infrastructure we needed to join, but also to cite the opportunity chargers out in the community that make in-route charging capable.

And so we are in the planning stages of that grant right now, a combination

John Bay Area Transit, Virginia Clean Cities, Guidehouse Consulting, it's a large, it's budget season and I have the joy of seven different localities and so we're here, there, and everywhere right now and the state budget for us, you know, is due

We've got quite a lot of work right now.

We're very solidly done with the operational budget.

The capital budget is undergoing some refinement right now to have that be totally ready.

I'm excited to say that we've got a strategic day planned with our board, full Friday in January on the 17th.

walk through where have we been and what are some of the big drivers for John and for our region and talk a little bit about what we should be prioritizing.

I had a super cheerful meeting with DRPT last Tuesday and Wednesday in Stanton about what was about six months ago being referred to by DRPT as the fiscal cliff

And I think somebody gently coached them to stop saying that.

However, you know, I think that from our perspective, we've had some conversation, understand about some alternatives.

It's not a 26 issue so much as 27 and beyond.

There's good news in that, right, which is that there's lots of communities that are identifying that they haven't had service and that they really need it.

It's just that the pot isn't growing to accommodate them, right?

So we need to be thinking creatively about how we go forward.

I guess the last thing I would say is that we're taking a little bit different approach to celebrating our team.

In this holiday season, regardless of the holiday you celebrate.

And at their request and in also deference to their schedules, we are hosting the kind of in and out sort of, we have the whole back room at the exciting Wood Grill on Monday from 11 till 3.

I'll put that on my calendar, everybody else should do that as well.

A little bit of what Mike alluded to is the 5311 funding shortfall.

So we've definitely had a lot of public funding over the past couple of years that is running out.

And a lot of our rural service across the state has expanded, which is awesome.

We're able to see that, but now we're kind of getting back to our base.

And luckily, you know, Virginia does have a lot of dedicated state transit funding, so

We're hoping to come up with a scenario.

We're going to ask for a lot of input from the rural transit agencies on how this is going to look and see if there might be need to be some CTE action to raise the amount of state funding that can be put on some grants, hoping to kind of keep agencies whole where they are and, you know, try to meet some of those gaps in future service needs.

So it's definitely a work in progress.

Again, it's less of a concern for this grant cycle, but looking at 27, it is

to figure out what that will look like.

We also have a new director, so the past couple months, Zach Traubman has been our acting director.

Tiffany Robinson is coming from the governor's office.

She has a really extensive background in state government in Maryland.

So we're excited.

She seems to be looking to really support our programs as they are, which is great to see.

And so, you know, she's been there for about a month.

And then our grant cycle is open on December 1st until February 1st.

Great.

Any questions?

OK.

All right, with that, then staff updates.

Yeah, so on the table in front of everybody is a letter of support.

We are applying for a DRPT grant to continue our mobility management program, otherwise known as PATH.

We provide a

Collins Center to direct people to transit and help kind of counsel them and work them through finding rides.

It's for older adults and people with disabilities.

I've given some presentations earlier about the program and our success in our first year.

There you go.

Is there a second?

All right.

I heard.

You did it first.

Mike, would you call the roll for this please?

And I will sign this before I leave today because I know it's time.

Thank you.

Supervisor McKeel.

Yes.

Alright, so you have your approval.

Thank you.

The only other thing that, oh, did you have anything else?

No.

I'm going to add, as I mentioned earlier, the Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership has requested a person identified from us that would be an alternate for me.

I'm enrolled as the chair, but they're trying to get alternates from all of the localities.

I do promise this is not because I missed so many meetings.

That they're trying to figure out what I look like.

I think it's just standard operating procedure for them to know.

Would you mind describing the work behind it a little bit?

Well, it's a regional group that comes together made up of the localities that you might expect, Nelson, and they talk about affordable housing initiatives.

There are some developers on the committee.

There's a variety of folks.

I think it's two on second Wednesday.

And it's two o'clock on Wednesday, so you have the second Wednesday.

Don't meet every month.

I represent not Albemarle County, but transit.

And the reason that they wanted someone with transit was because there's definitely a connection between transit and affordable housing.

That would be if I needed someone filling for me.

And I've so far, I think I've missed one, maybe two meetings over the last few years.

But I'm happy to make it advantageous for you all if you have a desire to go to a meeting.

I can volunteer to do something else.

But it is interesting.

aside from being engaged in the work that they're trying to do around affordable housing, my responsibility at each meeting is to report out what the Regional Transit Partnership is doing.

All right.

Can I ask Ben?

Sure.

So let's have a motion to

Supervisor McKeel.

Yes.

Counselor Oschrin.

Yes.

Supervisor Pruitt.

Aye.

Director Parker.

Yes.

Miss Miller.

Yes.

Director Silsdorf.

Yes.

All right, thank you.

So Brian, I appreciate it very much.

And I really thank you, Mike, for thinking about the volume.

That was a good sketch on your part.

And hearing no other comments or questions or objections, I'm going to adjourn us to January the 23rd, 4 o'clock, same place.

And have a lovely holiday.

And then Monday night.

Okay.

I don't know how long.

He's at 8.30?

Yeah, probably.

Damn it.

Damn it, damn it.