Regional Transit Partnership (2017-2025) Meeting   1/23/2025

I don't

Well, I guess he's raising his hand for public comment.

I haven't even called the main door yet.

I'm just trying to figure out what's going on, just so I'm clear.

All right.

So are you ready for me to call the store?

Yes.

Make sure our technology is... That Garland, you're going to have to sit back down so you don't miss yourself.

You can start wherever you want.

You're the chair, Mr. Keel.

All right, with that I'm going to call our Thursday, January the 23rd of 2025 meeting to order.

Welcome everyone.

And Lisa, we don't have any more zooming in that we need to invite in.

We don't have anybody that will zoom in.

Okay.

round table of introductions.

So we'll start with Garland.

Taylor Jenkins, TJPDC Director of Transportation.

Lucinda Shannon,

With the TJPEC and I wanted to introduce Taylor Jenkins.

Thank you so much.

This is my second week.

Everything's been great so far.

I'm from Richmond, Virginia, and before this I was at Michael Baker International as a transportation planner.

So I was in the private sector for a little bit, and then before that I was with the Commonwealth of Virginia for about four years, most of that time spent at DRPT as a transit planner.

So I'm from Richmond, that's where I live right now, but we're moving down in about a month, so I will be down here in the neighborhood very, very soon.

Other than that, I have two cats.

I like to be outside.

I've run in the past.

Thank you.

Yes.

Yes, and I'm really excited to get to work a little bit more closer to the local level.

Igor Kalana, and he is our new PATH transportation counselor.

So we now have Sara and Igor.

They'll be working on doing some transportation solutions workshops with community partners, bus field trips at community partners, outreach at different events, and answering phones and referring people.

That's great.

Cool.

Oh, yeah.

I'm Sarah.

I'm a member of the school of math and engineering here.

We've both been working with you for a little bit, but no, it's been really interesting.

Gretchen, I believe, is out sick.

She's definitely not here.

That's what I was wondering, who was taking notes.

So speak up, folks.

Project your voices.

There you go.

All right.

Then come right again.

I have two.

One is that next Wednesday from 1130 to 1 at the Ting Pavilion, the city is hosting an e-bike demo day.

So if anyone is around and can take a lunch break and pop over to check out some bikes, take them for a spin, the city is hosting it but it is focused towards downtown business workers who are, you know, maybe commuting to town but also the county.

You know, the county office building is nearby so hopefully

to try it out as well.

So just spread that in whatever channels you have.

We have a flyer for it too so I can send that out at the end of the day.

And then the other thing is that the city's been offering a program all of last year, continuing it this year in our village.

I haven't ever brought it up in this setting before but every month there's a neighborhood walk where anyone from the community can come join and

take a guided tour through one of the city neighborhoods.

And I would like to just extend that invitation to anyone here.

The next one is going to be February 9th, and we'll be walking through the Fry Springs neighborhood.

I'm sorry.

Sorry, it's five, the flyer right here.

It was first written last month.

It's five fill this month.

We'll be meeting, it's always the second Sunday of the month.

We'll be meeting at Buford to walk through the neighborhood at one o'clock on the Sunday of February 9th.

And it's a couple miles, couple hours.

You can leave early if you need to.

It's just nice to get together with people and check out a neighborhood that you maybe aren't that familiar with.

So, especially since we have some new people to town, it might be fun to kind of start adding those to your calendar.

And again, the second Sunday of every month.

Yeah.

All right, with that, I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda.

And a second?

Second.

All right, Natalie's seconded.

Mr. Pinkston?

Yes.

Counselor Oschrin?

Yes.

Supervisor McKeel?

Yes.

Supervisor Pruitt?

So we have an agenda that's been approved, and the next item is approval of our minutes from the meeting on December 12, 2024.

And they are in your packet, and I don't know if anybody had any comments or edits about them.

I'll give you a minute to if you did.

If not, then I will entertain a motion to approve the meeting minutes for December the 12th.

So moved.

Seconded.

You all have a good team here this time.

Councilor Oschrin?

Yes.

Supervisor McKeel?

Yes.

Supervisor Pruitt?

Aye.

And Ms. Miller?

Yes.

Thank you very much.

The next item on our agenda matters from the public.

And I don't know if we have anyone signed up.

Yeah, the person who emailed, I don't see them on the guest list.

But Peter, you can unmute your mic and speak.

Hey, folks.

I'm actually not a matter from the public.

I'm a non-voting member of this board, so I was just raising my hand to say I'm here.

Anyway, sorry to dial in remotely.

I just had contractors in my house till a few minutes ago.

And that's great, Peter.

We were just confused, and I saw your hand up, and I just wasn't sure what about.

are kind of the public, I guess, and Sean Tubbs.

But no one signed up to speak.

Well, no one signed up to speak.

Yeah, that's good.

Lucinda, can you add Grant as a panelist just for the legislative update?

OK, so we're good.

And Peter, we can see you now, so that's great.

All right.

And next item on our agenda are our meeting dates for the next year.

Oh, I meant to put it as a voting item.

OK.

Sorry.

So we have an attachment.

You can see that the meeting dates are listed.

And as usual, what we have scheduled is to cancel the July meeting.

And we combine the November and December meetings.

So July is skipped, and the November and December meetings both move to a December the 11th meeting.

So were there any questions?

And what time does your work session start?

I did check them and I did not see them.

And we always have a few of those that are a little tight for some of us.

So I think that we can go on and vote on these dates.

Well actually there is an asterisk there.

It's just not after your name.

It's after the meeting dates as of voting.

Oh, I see it now.

That's correct.

That clears it up.

So I'd entertain a motion to approve the dates of our meetings for 2025.

Seconded.

So moved.

Councilor Oschrin.

Yes.

Supervisor McKeel.

Yes.

Supervisor Pruitt.

Aye.

And Ms. Miller.

Yes.

With that, I'm going to take a minute to just let everybody know that we have a celebration today.

We wanted to celebrate that we now have a regional transit

And then we'll have the presentation.

So let's everybody go again.

We have something to celebrate.

We now have a...

And so we'll have all of that when we have a chance to talk about it.

So.

Thank you for that.

First of all, I didn't tell you where to sit.

This presentation is what, 90 minutes?

Can it be 9?

Five is good.

I'm excited that we have all of our speakers.

Are those on there?

I don't know how to actually do that, so there's no kind of advice.

I'd love to hear about chairs for everybody.

It's amazing to make things like that.

Called my guy Jason.

He took so many pictures on that trip that he went to for me.

He created a folder on our cue drive.

I was like, dude.

He was an enthusiast.

We are required to send them out.

When we're doing the first series of buses, someone has to go for the check.

Because there's a check listed, someone has to sign off on.

Especially if we're making a small tweak.

So we made some changes to the interior, to color coding, some railing.

I guess it's a practice that went away, John, that I'm trying to bring back.

I'm trying to decide who goes and how many.

Yeah, he and I talked about him listening in.

I appreciate that.

So to start this off, we actually took two trips to Champaign-O'Bannon.

I'm sorry.

The guests online are not seeing your presentation.

Let me just double check.

Jason and Peter, can you all see?

Yes, we're all good.

Perfect.

Me too.

I'll eat double cookies next time.

All right.

You did it.

I don't know how I did it, but I did it.

All right.

So we did two trips to Champaign-Urbana.

Basically, it was paving our way to a zero-emission fleet.

Two fact-finding trips, I guess you would really call them.

Exploring some hydrogen fuel technology that they have there.

They're kind of cutting edge.

So this presentation basically highlights the fact that they are a sustainable transit agency that's operating in the Midwest.

So objective.

primary detective for the two trips to the Mass Transit District in Champaign-Urbana to reserve ground breaking hydrogen fuel cell technology and learn about their critical aspects in getting their transition done and then they talked about how they use hybrid diesel

right now and they're looking at battery electric as a future consideration.

These trips were aimed at getting the elected officials that attended.

We had elected officials on both trips, really educated and an opportunity for them to engage with one of our peers and let them have a kind of hand on experience and ask as many questions as they can.

I think it was a great trip.

All in all, we took 32 people.

to over two trips to Champaign-Urbana.

A lot of coordination, but it worked out really well.

So, first starting off about the why Champaign-Urbana by MTD, we looked at the city comparison, very similar in nature, both for Champaign-Urbana and Charlottesville have major universities.

The University of Illinois is the major university there and the University of Virginia here, of course.

similar transit profiles in the sense that they have a they're in a transportation district so it's really not covering all of Champaign and Urbana that was one of the things but they were they were innovative in the sense that they are one of very few transit agencies that started their transition with hydrogen as opposed to battery electric and we're going we went there to learn kind of their

their thought process, then how did they make the transition, and they made it kind of flawlessly.

And they talked to us about their mistakes, I guess you would call them, and how they really corrected them.

So Garland, let me just ask, as we go through,

Do you want people to ask questions as we go through, or do you want... What are your options?

Alright, so if you have a question, you can go on and ask them.

Either way.

So give you a little comparison between the two organizations.

MTD was founded in 1970.

CAT was in 1975.

The service population is the thing that I want to really focus in on is service populations of 135,000 versus 87,000.

They have 114 buses versus our 48 at the moment.

And it's 48 because we're really about to

get away six of them, decommissioned them so we'll have 42 in our fleet.

Number of routes, they have 26 versus our 12.

They have a yearly ridership of about 9.5 million versus our 1.3.

And we're going to really talk about that 9.5 because it's an interesting fact that you peel back the layers.

Number of employees is 377 versus 135.

85% of their fleet is hybrid.

We have 15% of our fleet is a hybrid model right now.

They're free to the students based on the students pay actually a fee every semester to use the bus and then the general public pays a dollar.

We are operating share free thanks to the state grant.

This is the last year of the state grant and next year the jurisdictions will pick up that cost.

But very similar.

But if you look at the breakdown in the ridership, this is the thing that

highlighted the impact of the university on their ridership.

So of the 9.5, 7.7 of it is associated with the University of Illinois.

The general public itself is only about 1.3 billion, if you look at the other side, so two columns.

The student is 7.4 of it.

the faculty, and they have a safe ride program that basically operates at night, 34, almost 35,000.

They have K-12 students that they have a contract with the school system that they provide transportation to, and then they have 88,000 service that's theirs versus the universities'

And if you look at the general component here, it's like 1.3.

That's very similar to our number, the 1.3.

And they have annual passes and the breakdown there.

And if you look at ours at the bottom, it says CACS fixed route total 1.3.

We're 10,000 rides higher than theirs.

This is actually on something that was on the slide.

When we look at the fact that

MTV is using like a one dollar per trip flat rate.

Is there like an infrastructure saving component there?

Because I imagine that's much simpler to handle.

Everything is one dollar just handing a dollar.

The point of sale doesn't have to have different things.

I know you've talked before about how it's actually not at the scale we operate.

It's not always actually a cost saver to implement fares.

So for us, we were charging fares and the amount of money that we were collecting

that didn't even get, so there's a ratio in transit world we call the fare box recovery ratio, right?

In most transit agencies, that's double digits.

In most high performing transit agencies, that number's about 20, almost 20%, 20% or higher, right?

We were in the low 6%, 5%, 6% on a good year.

We were actually probably in some years spending more on

Counting the money up with our staff, having the armored car come service.

When we added all that up, it was more expensive to actually collect fares, collect the money and pass it on than not charge.

So that's one of the things that we had a beautiful conversation with the state about when we applied for the church grant money.

We pointed that out.

We weren't really collecting more on a good year.

Did I answer your question?

Yeah, I mean it sounds like a lot of the cost drivers for that aren't affected by having a simpler fee structure.

Yeah, so I think part of, so some transit agencies collect fares to prevent abuse of the service.

And that's

That's a policy decision, right?

So I'm more interested in, from my vantage point, getting as many people to use the services as I can because the benefit to Caddy is, the more riders we have, the model that works for the state is, I potentially get more revenue to operate ourselves.

It was 25-30% off every single time we counted the money.

So that is a major concern in getting away from those antiquated fare boxes.

we'd have to come in with the state and change our whole infrastructure and there's expectations that we go to a new model, mobile pay and all sorts of things that are kind of the standard in the model now are very expensive endeavors for us to challenge with a limited staff.

But that's a conversation for the elected folks to have later on about whether to allow CAT to start charging fares again.

So next slide.

Spending and revenue.

What we noticed in having a conversation with them, their budget is $57 million.

Much bigger system.

They have a dedicated funding source that comes from there.

There's a property tax

for their dedicated revenue.

So they're spending money, you can see, almost $33 million of it is in operations.

Their maintenance facility, which is wonderful, by the way, was $11 million to operate.

General administration is about $9 million.

The Illinois terminal, where they do the majority of their major transfer hubs, like 1.8 to operate annually.

And then they have a capital expense of about 1.2, and then debt service that they operate every year.

So those two numbers were almost about $2 million for their capital needs and then some additional expenses $380,000 a year.

So the main trip, I'll give you a quick list of who attended that first trip.

Diantha McKeel was on that first trip.

I think it went very well.

So we had individuals from the city and the county.

on that trip and catch staff.

And then we had our consultants from Kenley-Horn.

Ben was on that trip the first time also.

And so it was Ann Wall.

So when we got glowing reports from the first trip out, came back, I think we talked it up so much that it prompted us to do a second trip.

But on the first trip, we had a very, it was, we,

took an opportunity to have a luncheon with them.

That's something that they said that they don't normally do with most transit agencies pretty much in and out one hour or two hours and they're pretty much done.

At our luncheon we had an opportunity to really have a discussion with them.

In the discussion, we really focused on these four major points.

Transition to hydrogen fuel technology buses, the benefits of the technology, funding and partnerships, and challenges and solutions.

Those four areas that we covered, we were supposed to be there in one hour.

We were there two hours and 20 minutes.

It was a wonderful discussion, if I will say.

So it went really well.

We also got the opportunity to have a conversation about their interaction with their school system, which also prompted us to, on the second trip, invite schools to come.

So great opportunity, great information sharing about their technology and challenges.

So on the October trip,

another group, additionally, city county staff.

We also invited some of our outside partners, Virginia Transit Association and University of Virginia, King Chamber, John, TJPDC, and we had an advocacy group from Climate, Community Climate Collaborative, C3 also attended.

I would say on the first trip also, I will highlight that

Sean Tubbs.

The reporter actually was not part of our group technically, but he attended because of the elected officials that were there, so we made it available to him.

He drove out and attended all the meetings.

He had a great article that he put together, so if you have it on his page, take a look.

It's still out there.

It talks about all of the time and effort that

NTD spent with us.

They had their professionals there that talked about the hydrogen technology and hydrogen technology electrolyzer.

Their vendor was there.

I don't think we could have done it any better than that first trip.

We didn't get a chance to have the vendor there on the second trip, but

I was just going to say, Garment, to add to what you were saying.

I didn't know a thing about hydrogen fuel cells when I went, and it really was an education when you say, Ann, and for those of us that went in, what hydrogen fuel cells are all about and how they work.

But I was just, I learned a lot about it and you're going to get into a lot about it.

Technology part is fascinating.

They talked about their funding structure was fascinating.

They talked about the challenges and they're in a really cold climate so they get negative 15, 20 degrees there.

So they talked about some of the advantages of having their facilities built so that they can park all of their buses inside.

That was another thing to highlight.

And you saw the scale and magnitude of their operations.

went very well.

So in that second discussion, we covered all of the things we did with the first group and the four, but we also talked about the organizational structure of their services and the integration components with the school system, and they're partnered with the university.

We talked about funding.

We really drilled into their funding model.

They laid out how the dedicated funding and what it does for their model and how they continue to support.

And we found out that in Illinois,

Transportation is considered a right.

So they are really dedicated to making sure that their system runs as efficiently as they possibly can.

Challenges and Solutions was another one.

Once again, slated for an hour.

We spent two hours there talking through the model before we got a chance to go on a tour.

They exceeded the second one.

We did

We did explore their technologies on their facilities, but they also did a tour of the university.

And we got a chance to see some of the major capital project that they were able to leverage because of the nature of the transportation district.

They were able to lay concrete basically all around the university.

That cuts down on their maintenance costs, all the streets that are operating on because you don't have to worry about the asphalt breaking up because

We didn't get a chance to this time tour the second trip.

the transfer center.

We were walking over there and there was a change in school with the kids so they said we're going to prevent that so we said we're going to come back but the tour took longer than we anticipated with all the questions and their interactions but we did get a chance to get on property.

We got a chance to look at the hydrogen production facility, the fueling station and their actual great facilities and went up into the

one of their training rooms and had a nice discussion about an hour before we ended.

So, I want to give you a layout of what you would see if you were actually on the tour.

So, you see the hydrogen production that's over in the corner.

It's actually three components that are built in, which has a storage unit and an electrolyzer and then

an infiltration component to it at the beginning, their fueling station which does their diesel and their hydrogen at the same nozzle and that was one of the things they pointed out if they were to start over or build it again they would build separate areas for fueling

One line dedicated strictly for hydrogen, one line strictly for the diesel because if one delays the other, then it throws off their ability to fuel everything.

It creates a backup.

And then their maintenance facility, which is expansive, they house just about all of their vehicles inside.

I think as they are growing, they said there will be an opportunity.

They will have to start parking a portion of their vehicles outside.

They were concerned about that, but they had just done a major upgrade to their facilities, I think five or eight years before doing this in anticipation of going to hydrogen anyway.

Solar farm, which is, we didn't get a chance to see this, but it's literally right across the street from where the facility is.

As you can see, it was

They're generating 2.2 million, 2 megawatts of power daily, which is enough to fuel, I think, all 12 of their hydrogen buses at this point in time.

They are very interested in scaling that number for their hydrogen faster.

So they're talking about not doing all of the production on site anymore, but they're going to potentially truck some of the air in there.

So if you look at the way that the electrolyzer component is filled there, you see the solar connection, the electrolyzer, the cooling compressor, the storage, and they have that area in the blue

Do you know when they built the solar field?

It was in conjunction with right before the first buses came in so I can't remember

five or six years ago.

Correct.

So it just happens to be across the street in unused land and you're not going to be able to put anything on it anyway.

Mr. Krebs has a comment.

He says that's amazing.

Correct, yeah.

Then the problem with solar is that it makes energy when you may not need it.

And it's absolutely, I mean, what they kept stressing to us is if you want to say that you're clean, this is absolutely clean.

They want to be clean from

production all the way through dispensing and use.

And I think adding to that point was that Champaign-Urbana is a huge engineering school.

It is.

They are a world renowned engineering school.

And they said, we have to, if we say we're going to be clean, they said our university folks are going to say,

Ann, remember, they were talking about this and that we actually have to prove to them that we are doing what we said we were going to do.

Absolutely.

It took a while.

Carl Gannett is their CEO there.

Wonderful guy.

I could talk to Carl

My God, like I talk to him probably two or three times a week, every week on our way to go each trip.

It's like you're talking to an old friend, very knowledgeable.

His staff was great, every single one of them, which by the way, each one of these trips, he bought seven to eight members of his team to answer every single component that we needed.

So wonderful opportunity if ever get a chance.

He said everybody wants to get into the weeds about the colors.

That's right.

He said his thing was get the hydrogen.

Don't worry about it whether it's red, blue, green, gray, doesn't matter.

He said because eventually what's coming out of the tailpipe is zero.

So that's, we are, they're doing their job on the back end.

I didn't know when we talked about this during the city county joint meeting.

I didn't know what this meant.

So for anyone else who's listening who does not, apparently this relates to the prominence of the hydrogen and how green the production and delivery of the hydrogen to its source was.

Which speaks to what I was going to ask, which I saw also Ethan asked in the chat, which is if I'm remembering correctly,

Not yet.

So as they expand the number of hydrogen buses, they will be expanding it by

transporting some in.

And that's when, that's where their concerns about, they're not getting into weeds about what the color is.

So currently it's 100% offsite production.

It is.

If I could make a point about the color of the hydrogen.

So I didn't,

Let me see if I can frame this.

It's not that the color doesn't matter per se, it's just we can get lost in that conversation, whereas if we move towards using hydrogen in this way, it seems like to me that the suppliers are going to catch up and provide the green, whatever you want to call it, responsibly sourced hydrogen.

The source will get cleaner, absolutely.

That's a good distinction, thank you.

I mean, if they were out burning trees to create nitrogen, that wouldn't be what we want.

But that's not what's happening.

What was interesting to me is, of course, we'll see with the new administration how things go, but there's definitely a lot of efforts at the federal and state levels to unlock this potential.

And even what I found remarkable was

Loves, is that the name of the gas stations?

So Loves is actually in the hydrogen business.

Yes, correct.

So I guess what I took away from the supply side of this from going on the trip was a little less

reticence or caution or worry about how the hydrogen is made and more optimism that the industry is going to get to a point where it's, quote, clean hydrogen.

That said, I can appreciate Mr. Hyles over there.

I can appreciate his perspective as well.

So I don't want to push that aside.

They are really fortunate.

And I'm just fortunate.

They are.

They have this two megawatts of power is a lot of power from solar.

And thank you for that clarification.

I believe I understood that the county was going to deed us like eight or 10 acres.

Next slide.

So the post-tour sit down with MTD, we really drilled down on a few areas.

We drilled down on the hydrogen startup costs.

We learned that their initial grant that they got was about $20 million.

And that $20 million bought them the electrolyzer, paid for some of the solar and all of the actual hydrogen buses.

Their electrolyzer at that point in time was about $4 million and the rest was spent on the buses.

The numbers are changing because the buses themselves are becoming much more expensive than they had eight years ago when they got their grant.

The fleet comparisons, we talked about ours versus theirs and where they're making their major investments because they're really ramping up.

Starting basically in two years, they'll be adding significantly more vehicles to their fleet.

So they have 118, they're expanding up to, I think, 160 was the number he said.

Not 140, I'm sorry, 140 vehicles by the time they're all done.

The majority of those vehicles, by the time the majority of their fleet, I think 80 percent will be hydrogen, 20 percent.

The backing will be battery electric.

Battery electric is going to be a part of, and that was the thing that it emphasized with us, battery electric is going to be a part of their model.

They just inverted.

We're looking at battery electric first and then hydrogen on the back end.

They did hydrogen first.

battery electric on the back end.

So what they're doing is actually providing redundancy.

They are.

And that's what we would want to do too.

That's exactly what we're trying to do.

And so they started with the hydrogen first, right?

The hydrogen failed.

They're going to back, yeah.

And we were just reversing that.

So you said that the buses that they bought were X number of dollars, but now they're more expensive.

Because little secret on the transit world,

You have very few people who buy buses.

Very few transit agencies, right?

You have a limited number of them.

It's not in the interest of the manufacturers to lower their costs.

So, if you're paying a million dollars today, you're going to pay a million dollars tomorrow.

You're going to pay a million and one a year from now.

I came from GRTC and they told us, oh, when we bought CNG vehicles, it's like 50-some thousand dollars.

Well, that never was going to go away.

That never, never went away.

It's not in their interest to make it go away.

Once again, you're paying it now.

Market share is small enough.

Market share is small enough.

And I would add, Garth, there's no such thing as mass production of transit vehicles.

Every single vehicle is built to spec.

And so like down to seatbelts and radios and everything.

So they're not, you know, it's not like a

a Ford where they build certain models and then they just tweak it for Cat versus Jaunt versus Champaign-Urbana.

I'm glad you brought it up because that's why we've had these conversations about why does it take so long for Cat to get a vehicle?

Because different transit agencies need different things.

So you may need a stronger suspension system because you live in an area where there's more hilly or you need something stronger, right?

Because the industry says you do based on your past performance.

They'll tweak that model for you.

That's not the same frame that they're putting on my vehicle versus yours.

So we go through this process, we actually send a person when it's time for us to put our buses on the production line and they go through every single component that we have.

We have to sign off on every single one of them and then they will start the process.

When they do start the process, it is actually fairly quick.

They put the vehicle on the production line, ten days later it's off.

We have a bus.

Is there a part of that problem that is government-side procurement driven?

No, it's just that there's very limited production facilities.

I think that's really the case because think about it from that context.

I'm not going to have 15 facilities around the country.

I've got maybe one or two and that's really, Gillick has their main facility in California and then they have a parks, I think in Texas or something like that.

Between those two, that's where all the production is done.

So when we send our folks out to California, they actually make the product, they drive it here, or drive it to wherever.

So that's where they're breaking the vehicle in for us on their way, to see if there's anything that potentially goes wrong.

And there have been opportunities in times where they've had issues with the vehicle and they've turned it around.

So when you say so many localities, so think about the number of properties, I can't remember.

It's like 200 something properties?

When you say buses, buses is a subjective description.

So if you're talking about a commercial bus that is 29 foot or higher, that is on one production line.

If you're talking about a body on a chassis that's something smaller than 29 feet, like some airport we use, or a joint vehicle, that's a different production line, different companies.

If you're saying there are a lot of folks who may buy the jaunt model, there may not be a lot of people who are buying 29 foot or higher.

And your refresh cycle on a big bus is?

12 years.

Right.

And ours has to be more than five years and more than 100,000 miles.

So like, I mean, if we're only going to buy

15 vehicles a year and Garland's got 42 to 48 in his fleet and he only refreshes them every 12 years.

We're talking about onesies and twosies every year.

But there are transit agencies that are buying hundreds of buses at a time.

And because of that, smaller transit agencies like CAT benefit from that.

So we just benefited from Philadelphia canceling 50 of their bus order.

Because they canceled 50, we were able to move our production up eight months.

So we would, we're gonna potentially, we're gonna get

the end of February, first week of March.

If we wouldn't have done that, we'd be looking at September, October, maybe November before we get buses, because that was when we were scheduled to be on the production line.

But when people canceled and we got a small order, they said, hey, you can get your 10 or your 8-10.

Someone else can get another 10-10 if they need to do it, because they had 50 slots that were available.

In the US, 60% of all electricity is fossil fuel, 43% of that is natural gas, 21% is renewable, 19% is nuclear.

Yeah, I was just responding to Ethan.

I don't need, yeah, he was just saying that a lot of hydrogen comes from natural gas.

So it does, it's good for your local air quality, but the larger climate is not necessarily addressed at this point until Chapey or Banner, they make their own energy.

So we can take comments and questions from the public after the presentation.

So going back to the major points of discussion as the posts sit down.

So the startup calls, the fleet comparisons that we talked about and how they're going to ramp up their changing their model.

Their station expansion, they talked about the hydrogen station expansion.

They're going to

be adding capacity to store more hydrogen.

And they're talking about when is the proper time for them to expand their actual production components, meaning add an additional electrolyzer.

That was a part of the major discussions.

Advantages of the hydrogen and how they feel it's more reliable than the traditional battery that tomorrow was a part of our major discussion at the end also.

giving you kind of a footprint of what their model looks like.

If you look at the MTV service area, the two areas in that, all the green is where they operate in or have a presence, which also includes their paratransit service.

So you look at the university and the downtown components, and then on the routes and the hubs.

So there's kind of four major hub components that kind of connect everything in their system.

They run almost like a grid pattern that connects the routes and the routes throughout their system all day long.

So it's blanketing it, and if you look at where they...

Sorry, back to that map.

There's no measurements on there, so what's the scale of that?

Absolutely.

But we do know from the earlier slide the number of people that were in there was like 187,000.

That was the service population that they have a connection to.

So we talked about in great detail about the MTD fleet comparison versus they've got the 12 hydrogen vehicles.

If you can see, they're expanding their model from 12

24 to 46, to 51, up to 70, which is they have it out to 2040.

They're on the same scale that we are, trying to be zero emissions 100% by 2040, but no later than 2050.

Same model for us.

We're trying to be zero emissions by 2040, drop dead no later than 2050.

So giving ourselves that 10-year cushion,

With all the infrastructure improvements and everything we need to do, we may need that additional 10 years.

We'll see what happens.

And it's a very expensive model to pay for.

But it's also showing that the battery electric model, as you can see, 2035, they buy four.

And then they ramp up.

They buy 30 the next year, and then they get to

4850 is what he said in the last model, but this is the scale.

And they're gonna be adding additional vehicles in their model because they're expanding their footprint.

One of the interesting things, Carl and I talked about this in pretty great detail as a side note.

When I called him for the second one, I said, hey, can you pick us up at the airport?

And he said, we cannot.

We are allowed to operate to the airport.

So we actually had to schedule a private charter to get from the hotel downtown to the airport.

He said that is the thing that's causing him the most concern, and he's trying to fix that.

But because the model says that they are in that footprint, they can't go outside of this footprint.

legislation will not allow them today.

Did he provide any background as to why that's the case?

The airport doesn't charge for parking.

It's a very small airport.

It's owned by the university.

It's owned by the university, absolutely.

So one airline.

It goes in, it's American.

It has the airline, the airport itself, no flights in after 8 p.m.

So we were looking at one of the, we had two opportunities to leave on Saturday.

And every time we went there and we left on a Saturday, it was either get there at 5.30, 6 o'clock in the morning to leave out or 7 p.m.

the afternoon and that was it to get out of Champaign-Urbana.

Not a lot of traffic into the airport whatsoever.

All right, so CATS comparison we talked about.

So we're buying two battery electric vehicles through a grant that we got from the RPT.

And then based on our authorization from city council, we're doing two pilots.

First one is the battery electric one.

We're adding two battery electric this year.

We're looking at two next year.

Katy, we're going to change that number to two.

So that brings us to our four.

And then we're looking at

FY 27 border for delivery FY 28, three hydrogen fuel technology vehicles for our second pilot.

And then we will aggressively go in the direction that we get the most success.

And we'll figure out, so that's why that green color is just whatever is zero emissions.

We'll figure out what the composition looks like once we have the real data in our

are pilots as opposed to pilots from other buildings.

So that's where we are.

Projected costs, once again, they talk about what they spent on their station, $8.6 million, the solar was $5 million.

They only spent $3 million on the buses, $3 million on the buses for the 12 hydrogen buses at that time.

That is not the case anymore.

and the facility upgrades to 2.4 and then the consultant almost a million dollars for 20 million dollars.

State picked up 63% of their costs.

The feds only picked up 27% it was a 10% local match.

Those numbers are unheard of.

Not going to get that anymore.

We're going to work with Katy to get as much discretionary money as we possibly can to make our numbers happen.

But that is just kind of unheard of.

You're not going to buy 12 buses, any 12 buses for $3 million.

And they got 12 hydrogen buses for $3 million.

I don't know how they did it, but great for them.

Action items.

adopted hydrogen fuel buses.

During our phasing plan, we're looking at kind of what our integration is and how quickly can we get there.

We'll be working with consultants to work through the mechanics of the implementation of it.

So we're hiring, we're in that process of hiring consultants right now to help us work through the battery electric phase of our pilot.

and then we'll be working right after that to hire a consulting firm that has a hydrogen fuel technology experience to make sure that we are good stewards of the public dollar and do it right the first time as opposed to haphazardly working and going into this.

Infrastructure development is, the technology is changing so rapidly and so fast but lessons learned, making sure that we don't combine our fueling stations was a major component

You don't have to have as much separation as we thought we did, which was also a great thing learning.

And then aggressively developing training for the team.

Our team has great experience on the battery electric because we have hybrid right now in our fleet, so the battery electric component is not the major

training that we're really going to need.

There's a significant training component on the hydrogen side that our team will have to integrate that and we'll be working through that with the consultants.

So all the research has been done.

No more.

We're not buying any more fossil fuel vehicles starting January 1st of 28.

So 27 is the last year through December 31st of 27 is the last year we are

We're committed to buying any fossil fuel vehicles right after that.

It's either the battery electric or the hydrogen that is it.

Because we're committed to making sure that we complete our transition by 2050.

And our model, we said we potentially could get there by 2040.

So implementation plan, kind of the next steps, getting our funding model working together with the state to make that all happen.

Partnering with the university and John on potentially whether they're interested in doing any of the hydrogen components themselves because we can make our facilities a little larger and if we can work with the university we could actually potentially get our ridership higher.

So that is also a thing that we're working on and hopefully we are fruitful in those endeavors in the very near future.

Conclusion, TRIP was outstanding.

Did the education for us.

Viable insights on the hydrogen technology shows the operational efficiencies of using that advanced technology.

Got us a deeper understanding of their sustainability plans.

The impact to CAT was they have really influenced kind of our trajectory.

It shows that hydrogen is a viable source

It showed the elected officials is not You know, it's not just theory in some book.

Lucinda has been keeping track of questions and comments that have been coming in through the chat.

We will take care of those and share those at a later point of day, because we have to finish our business meeting here.

But I do want to open it up for questions from the board.

Did you have one?

Yeah, absolutely.

I was not a question for explaining this quick.

OK, I agree.

That's great.

So I had a question about the ridership piece because you just mentioned that in that last slide.

How much of the decision-making for Champaign-Urbana and obviously we're prioritizing environmental mitigation impact for this hydrogen thing but how should the ridership influence the

planning in the infrastructure bill.

I don't think I'm asking this right.

So all transit agencies get additional money based on ridership.

They are like us and they're getting an additional

which is designed around small trans agencies similar to us because their number is so much higher than the normal mid-level trans agency, small trans agency.

They get an additional supplement of funding and it's about $300,000 per million riders I think is like what he said.

So every million riders above what the feds consider to be the norm for the small urban needs, they get additional supplements.

So they're weeping the benefit of having that connection with the university, their ridership being so high, it is helping drive.

But even if that wasn't the number, they were going to go, they were making the transition anyway.

Okay, so it's not this, I'm thinking way strangely here, but if they were not, if their numbers showed that, that's why I noticed,

But if their numbers showed that there wasn't that ridership, are all sized vehicles ready to run on hydrogen?

So great example, but the practicality of trying to run minivans for an urban system, we do have loads that are much higher than six, seven.

that is not even a part of our equation.

And when you're running a fixed route system, I think that's the thing that people misjudge.

Every single stop you're not gonna pick up a full load.

But over time when you start from the first stop to the end stop, the goal is to have the capacity there to pick up 12, 15 people at a time and continue to pick up people.

So transit buses are designed to have people seated and standing.

So you have 35 seats, but you can also have 20 people standing for a load of 55 people.

You can't do that in a minivan.

Technically, you would have a hard time doing that in a smaller body-on-chassis vehicle.

Urban designed vehicles, buses, are designed to do that.

There are companies that are working on manufacturing hydrogen vehicles for all levels.

I don't know if this bottle

on the manufacturing as well as I probably should.

But I would say that I don't know whether you have to send that type of vehicle throughout the alternative testing or not.

I would imagine that they do.

But I haven't seen that pop up that it has gone to the alternative testing yet.

Thank you.

So any other questions?

Really quickly, I know that we have this number that's 7.7 million university-related humans.

I've heard about for decades.

So, let me say it this way.

Some of their number,

because of the way that they operate their system and they're designed to change their frequencies to meet the needs of the hospital, I can't count those riders because as a public transit agency, I have to advertise my schedule and stick to it.

I can't just arbitrarily change it because the hospital calls and says we need more buses.

That can't happen on a federally funded transit agency.

So we have to remove those routes.

We could try a project with them where we would pick two or three routes that serve as grounds, I'm learning, that would have an opportunity to partner with them through a kind of a management contract where we'd be able to capture their ridership and then we'd be able to potentially expand from

I could give you the full number but it's going to be jaded because I know I'm going to have to take a big chunk out of it because when they are changing daily, sometimes hourly, like I said the hospital calls and says we need more buses coming out here and they respond to that, I can't do that kind of model.

It could be three.

Interesting.

And I just want to make sure, Peter, you are essentially in the room as a member.

So many questions, but let's keep the meeting moving.

You're absolutely right, Dan.

OK, thank you.

If anybody has anything, they are more than welcome to give me a call.

And I can talk through it with them.

So don't let this be the last conversation you want to have.

I was going to say, this is not going to be the last conversation we have about this, though.

Thank you very much and you will share the presentation now with Louisa so you can see it and get it in the inbox, that's great.

Yeah, and I just, so our policy specialist provided a short list of some of the legislation that you all might be interested in.

I will say, full disclosure, we can't say whether or not you should lobby for it or if DRPT supports or opposes these bills and grants on to be able to answer some questions, but I know he has to hop off and set them, so if there's any questions you all have that we can't answer, I can take them back to our policy team and get you guys answers.

So some of the bills, the transit and rail bills, there's one HB 1982 SB 1097,

The Commonwealth Mass Transit Fund Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission.

That would be to provide 2.5% of the Commonwealth Mass Transportation Fund to Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission for the tied light rail.

It includes various provisions and requirements for such a fund and requires through enactment language that DRBT disperse its emergency reserve and fiscal year 27 to temporarily hold homeless impacted agencies.

HB 2619, SB 919, private companies providing public transportation services, employee protections that would require certain public transit providers to compensate and benefit private contractors of public transit to at least an equal amount to an equivalent public employee.

SB 779, railroad safety, a minimum train crew used in movement of freight,

with the civil penalties.

So that requires railroads to comply with federal rules requiring two man crews with some exceptions.

It authorizes the SEC to enforce these rules and spells out the fines for violations.

So transportation in general bills, there's various bills about changing, expanding or otherwise tweaking rules regarding photo speed monitoring devices or license plate readers.

The HB 2234 SB 1250 expands liability protections for management of the Transportation Trust Fund to the Central Virginia Transit Authority.

Some studies of interest are H.J.

445.

This directs the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission to study transportation options in rural areas for persons with disabilities and identify ways to expand or enhance such transportation services.

This bill is a recommendation of the Virginia Disability Commission.

Mike spoke with the Virginia Disability Commission related to this several months ago.

H.J.

449 requests the Department of Transportation to study options for taxation of hybrid and electric trucks to account for the shortfall in gas and diesel tax revenues that will result from the use of such vehicles.

This may impact the Commonwealth Mass Transportation Fund.

And finally, the Joint Subcommittee on Growing Needs of Northern Virginia Public Transit met several times in the fall and released its interim report.

This report mostly covered the reports and presentations received by the joint subcommittee, but also included the possible sources of funding to be evaluated by NVTC for feasibility benefits, etc.

These sources were a regional highway,

Could you go to the crew bill?

And that's come up before.

That's been a fight, Katy, I believe.

Because I remember that one specifically, Mike.

I think it's been a federal issue.

It has been.

And I'm sure when you're looking at a federal issue, you're talking about very huge stakeholders fighting back and forth.

So I'm curious, is it a union that's on the other side?

That's what Mike would jump out to mean as an obvious opposing stakeholder.

But certainly there's a safety.

That's why I would assume it's a union.

I was going to say, I like a two-man crew on my airplanes that I fly.

It's interesting.

So any other questions?

Katy will get back to you.

Any other questions on bills or anything that Katy will help us with?

Peter, you didn't have any?

You're good?

OK.

So I'll start and then I'm going to quickly punt it to Lucinda and Ben.

As Supervisor McKeel mentioned, both the city and the county enacted the CARTA legislation, which

and essentially created CARTA, Charlottesville Area Regional Transit Authority.

Our board has designated two members to serve on CARTA, Supervisor McKeel and Supervisor Pruitt.

And I believe that the city has designated two members.

Our two members are here.

So CARTA, this is CARTA, welcome CARTA.

And our working group, one of our next,

work items to tick off the list is to begin the process to establish meetings so that the CARTA Board can get together and start reviewing bylaws and work plans.

And the first action of CARTA is to explore a grant.

So we need to get together as a city and a county together at CARTA and sort of hash that out.

So when are you all recommending that the people that have been appointed the car to start meeting?

Right, I think that that's what we were going to do is work on the initial meeting to coordinate schedules so we can determine that.

What's the appropriate time?

We're going to have to get public notice out.

Right.

And so we're going to have to back up a little bit on that date, figure out the date.

and then start figuring out everything that we need to do to get it done.

I'm thinking when some of our other advisory boards and agencies and authorities that we've created will go through seasons of being a serious workshop and workplace where their meetings extend past the normal two-hour phase.

Right, there's a lot of standup work that needs to be done.

The bylaws, we do have a fairly good, I would say a solid draft.

They probably need some tweaks and we need the card out and board to tell us that.

And then to establish what the work plan would be, we're going to quickly have to have conversations about budgets.

And then once, hopefully, the grant application will be successful and we can get some information from the grant application and then that will be where

Just where my head's at, right?

Mike, I always, you know, just saying that it's important that we establish the times and the meetings and we hold to those times because we're all, we wouldn't have them, we may have some long meeting scheduled but we would know that they're going to be long.

I don't like surprises.

None of us like surprises, right?

And we have our meeting schedules around other work.

But yeah, we'll do the best we can.

But I think if we can get one meeting scheduled, and then we can talk all of this through and figure out how we want to do it.

But I think it's exciting work.

I'll send something out in early in February.

The earlier you send it out, the better, even if the meeting is mid to late February, because we need to get it on our calendar.

We actually we have I think our work group has a meeting.

I do think it's Monday.

I feel like it's February.

Well, that's that's not that for this week.

It's Tuesday.

It might be the 31st.

And then obviously this group that's meeting

I mean, it'll be an agenda item.

Our work group, I'm sorry, I'm just confirming.

It does mean on Monday.

Yeah.

Anything else we need about this particular, any questions?

All right.

Albemarle County Schools were the first transit provider update for this evening and Jamie had to bow out.

They had some issues and she couldn't make the meeting look at her designee.

UTS, Scott.

Yes?

He didn't send him, so there's nobody from UVA.

I just wasn't sure up on the screen if there was anybody from UVA that I wasn't seeing.

Alright, so Garland, you're a cat in the city of Charlottesville.

So I'm going to do the report out on the school's transportation first.

We have about 28 battery electric school buses.

But our first wave is two battery electric school buses that we just ordered three and a half weeks ago now.

That's about 15 months, one million years of buses.

So a little quicker than transit.

So we don't have a whole lot of time.

In the sense that all of the infrastructure, all of the site plans, all that stuff has to be worked out to make sure that we are able to charge the buses before we receive the buses.

So in talking with Dominion, though, they basically tell us they, once all of the planning

So it's a pretty quick turnaround on their end because they've been doing this in places other than the zoning thing for Albemarle County and a bunch of other school systems.

One of the things I continue to point out is the agreement between Pasadena and Dominion with the city and Dominion would be they will pay for their infrastructure

So it's not every single battery energy bus that we buy would have to be on the charge.

That would cause a major issue for us to be able to do so.

On the transit side, we are getting ready to start our NEPA process, which is the first step so we can actually get our infrastructure put in place so we can actually have charging stations for our battery energy buses.

The team will be

Signing off and putting a purchase order in next week for our two battery electric buses.

So that starts our clock, 20 months.

I hope it's going to be 24.

We need the time.

We've got a lot to do to make sure it's part of a larger infrastructure need that Cat has, but that's kind of a phase

Made this facility temporarily even after we look at doing a brand new facility for the Nintendo battery and hydrogen in the future.

That's it.

Any questions for Barbara?

Okay.

All right.

Mike, I believe you're next.

Like everybody else, there's a lot of time and energy going into the state application process next Friday.

We are engaged in a

Grant process right now that is with Dominion and some other partners.

It's also taking some time and leading towards a go, no go decision about whether we can actually take advantage of the grant that they landed, mostly because

and the grant only being able to pay for chargers.

So we'll see where that one heads.

Sadly, there's a lot of time and emotional energy going into a really challenging

Medical benefits renewal year for us where the rates are not awesome.

So it is a really tough process to try and balance how we can take good care of our employees and also manage dollars well.

But it's going to get decided within the next couple of weeks.

and you know most significantly since we've been together last I held a full day retreat with our board last Friday and Grant and Katy were able to join us from DRPT, Christine was with us, Garland was not able to be there that particular day and it really for us with a real blend of people who've been on the jaunt board

seemingly since before we were born and those who it was their second meeting it allowed a really great opportunity to get everybody to understand all of the variables and what's driving us both from what we learned in the past where we are today and

and the considerations as we chart our future course.

I think maybe more important than any of that is when we got to the afternoon, the board went through a really great exercise to issue some priorities for the year ahead.

We're going to kind of wrap up that work by extending our regular board meeting in March to kind of wrap up that process.

And I think that

Those priorities are about being a part of the region and collaboration and codifying our relationship with CAT on ADA and securing the right tools.

We are woefully behind on technology and some of the other things.

The other thing that I guess I convinced them about was internally

How important it is that we revolutionize some of the people practices.

It's really difficult to have a high performing organization when most of the people I inherited have never had a performance evaluation.

Yeah, I mean, we have, you know, the TDP is the strategic plan, right?

And so that is a part of the input.

So what I was asking the board to do is really look at the TDP, all the studies they've received.

What is the landscape in the local market?

What did they learn from rural transit needs?

Put all those inputs together along with what our needs are for technology and people and everything else and say, you know, what does success look like over this next 12 to 18 months?

And it might be when you already, and if you'd like to, to have an agenda item for us around that, if there's things that you'd like to share with this group,

Lucinda Nowell and we'll put it on the agenda.

Yeah, yeah.

I think that would be great for us to hear as well.

All right, any questions for?

And Katie?

I don't think I have any big updates on DRPT's side going into the application cycle closing on the 1st of February.

So that's a big push with working with the transit agencies.

Looking forward to Kat, John, and TJPDC's applications coming in.

And the next week on Monday is the VTA's Transit Advocacy Day.

And so I know a lot of our team will be at a lot of those events.

I wanted to mention one thing.

Maybe most people know this, but Colette Sheedy is retiring from university in June, I think.

So she's been at the university for, I think, 40 years.

So she's a really important person in this community in relationship with all of us.

And Colette was one of the

One of the university representatives went on a trip to Champaign.

Thank you, Brian.

All right, staff updates.

We don't have any staff updates today.

OK, and other business.

I only have one quick question, and I honestly can't.

And Peter, if you had a question or anything, just let me know.

I just want to make sure.

Good.

Someone asked me the other day about budgets, because everybody's preparing their budgets to present.

And I honestly can't remember.

And you all presented your budgets to us in the past.

I was thinking you did.

Yes.

And I thought you all did, too, as well.

And that makes perfect sense.

The last I remember I stood up and talked about, I gave everybody a little shoot to say how easy that was like.

And that was what I was remembering, but I just wanted to check on the time.

Was it June or July?

Okay, well it's not going to be July.

I did some research on that bill.

During the Obama administration there was a federal rule proposed mostly under pressure from the national locomotive operators union to institute two-man crews.

It was ultimately signed off in the final year of the Biden administration.

Long gap.

But the main pressure is coming from the union mostly to protect job security but also our

the ability to respond to things, probably energized by the Palestine disaster.

That requires now all federally regulated rail service to have two-person crews, but I think there's probably intrastate service, shorter route service that is not applicable, so several and several

states in which unions have a stronger political presence had previously implemented local requirements prior to the federal rule.

And now it looks like others are trying to follow it up.

So I think it's probably not fair to characterize it as a union versus industry kind of debate, but also potentially implicates the price of goods that go through frame.

And my memory is that the whole discussion came about because of an incident, as often happens.

It was a safety concern of some sort.

And it may have been that.

I keep distracted by things.

All right.

I don't think I have anything else to remind me if I'm supposed to announce something else.

And that clock is not right.

I keep looking at that clock, but it is not correct.

All right.

So with that, I will adjourn us in February 27 at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.