Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority Meeting   7/24/2025

And the business is always introductions.

And I'm normally sorry to you, but I'm glad.

I'm Gretchen Thomas.

Bryce Pinkston, the Provost for Supercomfortable.

I'm Eric Campbell, County of Los Angeles Supervisors.

Christine Jacobs, T.J. PDC executive director, staff.

Welcome.

All right.

Noah Ellington, Albemarle County intern.

There you go.

With that.

Diantha, do you want to join mine?

Oh.

I didn't see them.

Yeah, not to be left out.

Grant and Katy, would you introduce yourselves?

Oh, in order for them to be able to respond.

Can we do a soundtrack?

Yeah, I can hear you.

Yes.

You're faint, but we can hear you.

OK.

I'll try to speak up.

Great.

And I think Lucinda is giving you some more volume for us, so that's great.

OK. And Katie.

She dropped off.

Dropped off.

Well, she'll come back.

All right.

Welcome.

Thank you.

All right.

I think we have everybody.

Or we have an agenda in front of us, and I will need a motion and a second to approve the agenda.

Move for adoption of the agenda.

Supervisor Pinkston.

Supervisor McHale.

Yes.

Supervisor Pruitt.

All right, we're having the gym.

Maybe the heat's gone over.

OK. We also had draft meeting minutes for May the 2nd.

There, so I'm going to have to have to stay.

That's a good question, if you're not.

Did anybody have any corrections or anything for the next meeting?

We can amend them.

All right.

Go ahead with the corrections.

We'll go again.

All right.

Sounds good.

Matters from the public limit of three minutes per speaker.

I'm pastor of Charlottesville First United Methodist Church and serving this year as co-president for IMPACT, which is an organization of 27

Interfaith Organization, 27 different congregations in Charlottesville and Albemarle, and I'm a regular rider on the 5, 7, and 11 lines here in CAT, and we have been, as impact, have been working for several years on this transportation and transit network system, primarily working to try to increase the number of drivers to make this system more reliable.

I think I'm here really just to encourage you in your work.

I think what you have before you is really important and it feels to me like the next step in building a reliable transportation network is having the city and the county and hopefully the university together to try to put a fragmented system together.

So I recognize and I'm grateful for the fact that we have a

For a small city, we do have a system that people can use for essential services, but it's not reliable.

We heard at the city council work session on Monday that the on-time performance for CAT is only 68%.

And even Garland Williams noted that that was abysmal.

So building the system and finding new revenue streams for the system feels to me like a very important task.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Anyone else that wants to speak?

Nope.

If there's anybody online who would like to speak, you can raise your hand using the Zoom Raise Your Hand tool.

OK. That's Tonya.

OK, so we're good.

I'll move on then to legislative update.

and your story.

So I'm David Blount.

I'm deputy director of legislative services here at TJPDC.

First thing I'm going to say is to apologize in advance, as I've had some laryngitis this week and still trying to get back to full voice, which is good in two ways.

My wife and son have been very happy this week, not having to listen to me.

And maybe you all will have to as well.

But just wanted to give you all a little update and follow up on some of the discussion that you had at your meeting in May on legislative activities, particularly some of the things that the working group had been addressing.

Probably most importantly is a meeting, actually two meetings, that we had with the three state legislators that are representing Charlottesville and Albemarle.

We met with Delegate Carson and Senator Deeds, and then separately met with Delegate Lawford.

I think we did a good job of educating and informing them, I think particularly delegate Carlson and delegate Walker, having not been familiar with some of the discussions that stretched way back, you know, prior to the legislation in 2009.

So we talked to them about that, talked about the enabling legislation, you know, picking back up after, I guess, like gap following the 2009 session too.

talking about the regional transit partnership and the work of the partnership and bringing on up to the formation of CARTA and again, some of the work that had been going on with CARTA.

They all asked really good questions.

Elliot Laufer followed up, actually asked for some additional information during our meeting with her, particularly as it related to

The organization and ridership for CAT and Jaunt and University System in World War II, with a team effort provider with that information.

I guess some of the takeaways, there was some emphasis that was stated.

Making sure that we're talking with UVA as this moves through and that we are going to be able to provide as much detail as possible as to what we're working toward, what kind of projects, kind of enhancements that we're talking about.

And I think also that everybody came away, which we certainly want to continue to do, is that we continue the conversation as we

as we move along.

In fact, I walked out of another meeting with Elegant Law for yesterday.

It was the first thing that she mentioned to me about CARTA and transportation in general.

So she has already inquired about it.

So again, good meetings.

We'll continue to have some updates with them in the future.

Other things, again, just as a follow-up to the meeting in May, the staff from the two jurisdictions have started talking internally about some of the revenue options that might be available, that might be feasible to look at, and knowing that there would be enabling authority needed for some of those to be enacted.

So those discussions are going on.

The working group that I mentioned earlier, which meets on a regular basis, is very close to finalizing a one-page, actually it's going to be two pages, I'll add one-pagers, but we couldn't get it all on one page.

But looking at having an informational kind of background,

educational piece where some of the things I mentioned when we discussed with the legislators, talking about the history, the work of the RTP, both the transit vision plan, the transit governance study, and again, some of those things related to the initial work of this body, as well as the work of the staff working there.

So once we get that in kind of its final draft form, we can share that with you all and ask you all

review apps, and providing any comments that you may have in terms of additional information that needs to be in there, et cetera, et cetera.

And then the final thing I would say, just as we're just kind of continuing to look at what's going on, what the landscape may be, we're headed into the next General Assembly session.

We're really trying to watch what's going on in other parts of the state, if we're to

discussions that they're having about transportation.

Just had some information came through the other day with regard to Northern Virginia Transportation Commission.

Up there that's working with, there's a multi-entity group called DMV Moves.

It's not our DMV, it's District of Maryland, Virginia Moves.

It's trying to primarily address WMATA, which is the metro system up there on some of the bus transit issues up there.

But some news coming out of them in terms of the endorsement of a funding concept.

Looks like Hampton Roads may be coming back with

Some legislation that they had this past year to try to get some additional authority to increase some of the regional taxes in that area down there.

That was passed by the legislature in detail.

Hey David, quick question.

You might have already done this, just putting this on your radar, but I would definitely encourage you and the team to touch base with your Commonwealth Transportation Board member.

If you've already had conversations with him,

That's great.

I do know, you know, watching the CVTA legislation as it was being developed, Carlos Brown, who was the CTB member at the time for the Richmond region, played a huge role to advocate for that legislation.

So again, you might have already put, that might already be on your radar, but just bringing that up.

That's great.

Anybody else?

All right, any other questions or comments from floor members, Stan?

All right, well, David, we really appreciate it.

Yeah, great.

I got it.

She would have let us know if she could.

She would have made some motions.

We included in your packet a final version of the prioritization study scope.

The first scope of work that you all saw was the draft that we included in our grant application that was approved.

And so after we received that approval, we got back together as a group, TJPDC staff, Charlottesville, and Albemarle staff to workshop it to make sure it had covered every single activity that we'd be looking for before it went out.

to DRPT's bench consultants.

So a couple key changes that are in there.

We removed references to a steering committee after we reexamined the list that was in there.

Really that was a group of key staff that worked at each of the jurisdictions and the steering committee would really be the CARTA board.

And so we removed reference to that and recharacterized that as the core project team.

We also added a few additional members to that project team, understanding that if they were to be doing this technical work, it should include other partners in the region who are doing the transit planning currently.

And so that includes a staff member from PATH, which would likely be Lucinda, staff from the Charlottesville Albemarle MPO, Albemarle County Public Schools, and Charlottesville City Schools.

And we wanted to make sure we covered all the bases there if this were to be our technical team.

And then finally, we added an additional task just to clarify that we were looking for draft plan documents and final plan documents and whatever data we'd want the consultant to provide to us at the end.

So those are the primary changes.

In the scope of work, we did include both the clean version and a track changes version in your packet.

So this is an actual item.

Yes.

We need to vote on this to accept it.

And we'll get enough questions.

I guess maybe tell them what the next steps are with it does approval.

Following approval, we plan to send it out to DRPT's list of bench consultants that they have and give them about a month to turn around proposals.

Once we receive those, staff as a working group would take those and review them as a team before we make any selections.

Yeah, I wasn't here at the last meeting, I guess.

People talked about this, and I looked through it.

I'm not willing to cycle back.

I mean, I've been taking since class.

My time that I'll be involved in these things is only five months or so, but I just wonder the length of time that this is going to take.

It's no criticism of anyone.

All the consultants and studies and how much of this has already been studied is something like with all of the

So we're starting from scratch.

What is this?

Yeah, part of what is driving that schedule is this is as long as we could possibly take.

We have to spend this money in a certain amount of time.

So we did the vision plan first, then the governance study to say, okay, how do we implement that vision?

This is more of the, okay, how do we do the implementation now that we have the governance in place of those things that you mentioned, the vision.

And since then, we've also had a CAT TSP adopted, a TDP

So there's some things that we want to catch up.

There's also, we kind of want to open it up a little bit to see if there's things that we missed.

We've had changes in political leadership over that time period as well.

So we want to leave it a little bit flexible, but also say we're basing the work off of the transit vision plan, which then informed the governance study that led to CARTA just now leading to the CARTA priorities and kind of have that, that logical flow to it.

So long as we're poking at that underlying concept of this implementation study.

I do wonder slash worry.

I think the goal would be that we come away with something that we're like, finally, we've done study number one.

And this will give us the road map of what we can actually then take and deploy to a prompt.

And you just touched on the interrelation

In intrinsically subsequent nature, we have a governance study, very robust, we've all read it.

Now we're doing an implementation study, and those are stacked on top of each other.

I'm also thinking there are things in the governance study that are essential to the implementation process.

The governance study deals centrally, and I think governance is centrally, about the margin of our funding streams, which we are still deeply excited about.

Yeah, so that's actually, we had this discussion earlier today, so it's very timely.

Because I think when we're looking at this, should we be looking at a certain amount of priorities?

And really, the amount of priorities that come out of this study

I would say not at this time.

I know we're not ready, but maybe we can just kind of get ready.

In other words, I mean, I thought the government study said the best idea and maybe I'm just remembering selectively is

Let's do a one-cent sales tax that we have people vote on.

It seemed like of all the options that were there, that was the one that had the most support.

Am I remembering this right, Christine?

Yes.

So why don't we just say, hey, we'd like to be able to do this.

Go ahead and pitch it to the General Assembly.

And if they don't vote on it this year, fine.

I don't know.

And I do think we have to realize that, in fact, to get to what you're saying, and Christine and I were having this discussion earlier, the localities are going to have to fund this transit implementation.

The state is not going to be giving us money.

We're an authority, and we have to come up with the funding.

Now, we have to go to them for permission, as we always do for almost anything.

But we have to recognize that to get to what you're saying.

Well, it seems like to me, though,

The community in our respective boards had said, OK, CARTA, go for it.

Put in you four people on there.

What do you want to do?

Come back to a recommendation.

They could put in legislative packets for this.

Ben, I'm being in too big of a hurry.

The one thing that sort of tempered our expectations

If you can go and explain to them exactly how you're going to use the money, it's not so easy to get the money.

The one thing I will note, though, is by making this local investment, we aren't just going to be going it alone.

Eventually, by improving the size of our transit system and the ridership of those transit systems, that increases the amount of state funding that comes in.

It just seems like when they ask, what is it you want to spend the money on?

Y'all came to us this past Monday and gave us an update on how to get it from red to green to blue.

And we all know what you want to do.

Why can't we just say that it will cost this much of money?

This is what it takes for mechanics and for

drivers and this is what we think it's going to take for infrastructure and none of the IPOS numbers at some level.

So PAT did provide those numbers for different scenarios of investment on Monday night to the city council.

That includes what PAT is listed as a national or fiscal year 27 and beyond.

I think that we certainly want to do that, but I'm saying for this coming fall, if you go ahead and begin the process of getting money using the CAT, I mean if Jaunt and the university did their own thing for another five years, I still think that there's plenty of work that CAT could do.

You guys have got the road map.

City council, it comes down to money.

These are massive investments, and you can let me all pay for this smooth operational piece a year on the book for the capital.

Right.

I'm open for more calls from staff on this about timing.

It looks like to me that the timing for a consultant

We put that in there as a not to exceed.

We announced the initial study for the 30-notch trail, right?

And I was thinking, well, hell, it sure would be nice if that's done before I'm dead.

Literally, right?

I'm not sure of the point, right?

And this doesn't even resolve any brick and mortar, and it is still, well, potentially some stations, right?

But we're not building, right?

We're not building physical objects that are the same scale.

We're deploying new services.

It feels like we should be a master on that.

I get that we're constrained by a planning process, but it does feel like we could actually start to move the ball.

The planning process is going to be 20 months.

We know it will take probably two bites at the apple with the general assembly.

That does not sync up.

We could potentially, if we start attacking presently, be able to have something ready to actually deploy something when we're ready to deploy something.

I think that's not going to end up

I remember there was an adage when I was in my MPA program that really stuck with me, which is policy professionals will always want to, and by that I mean staff, right?

Policy professionals will always want to have the most exquisite data, make a decision, and a policy decision maker of having to act with their purpose.

I think we might already be at imperfect data point.

We can start making a decision.

knowing that there will be work on the back end to make those fit.

We're in the impact, it was like in the spring, and we, at that point, we were told, well, this is going to be a criticism.

But at that point we were told we had 65 drivers and we got to 82 then everything would be great.

We found out last Monday instead of 82 it needs to be 90 or something.

I mean, those sorts of complexities are basically just like, you know, it is funding literally FTEs and

To me, we could come up with something for the General Assembly where we say, this is phase one of a larger plan.

This is phase zero of a larger plan.

I don't know, whatever you want to call it.

But what we want to do this first time is to be able to make investments in our drivers in the fund system that our community wants.

and we know the cost of that, we can estimate it out, come up with this.

Again, I think we should, I thought that all the sort of the end result, all the conversations about the funding in the sales tax, I would suggest we just stick with that and ask the General Assembly, this is our proposal.

Yes, a quick question, because I think Brian makes a really good point and I understand though.

Would it be helpful if we sat down with our representatives, which is what you all have already done, and really have an honest conversation about what exactly do they feel like we need to provide?

Because I'm not sure that I know.

Maybe we just need to call a meeting next month or this week or something and sit down with them.

David, I'm just throwing that out.

I was going to say one of the things that Grant mentioned earlier, something about the CVTA, one of the things that I think also helped to make them very successful was the specificity that they came in with, which is what we're talking about here.

There's two different thoughts, schools of thought, I think, on it.

You can take multiple bites of the apple on things.

When I started out working in the General Assembly, there was a legislator there who had put the same bill in for almost 20 years to have Virginia move from being appointed school boards to elected school boards.

And as you know, it finally passed in the early 1990s.

I think if you've got something that is not ready for prime time, it will get treated as not ready for prime time.

And it will, you know, probably not get much of a hearing.

I do appreciate what you say because I think one of the things, and I don't know if this group has talked about it, I know we've talked about it in our working group, is if there's not going to be a specific proposal that is coming from the jurisdictions or from this group that the legislators representing you all are agreeing to put in, it is good to be able to be in a position to be able to act.

Who knows what this next General Assembly session is going to be?

There's going to be a lot of focus on the budget.

There's a two-year budget.

There's going to be gaps that they're going to be looking to fill.

There's going to be a new administration that's going to need time to get up and running.

All that being said, we could get down there and things start gelling and coalescing towards doing some work in transportation.

Do we have a sense of what that specificity would be and what they would mean?

Because, I mean, are we just, I mean, I like the idea of, you know, this is the first phase and then this is the second phase because you can be more specific about a phrase one and let the phase, that inform phase two, right?

So I like that idea.

Does that help us at all?

Agree on what we were actually trying to do with phase one mission.

It's something that we're going to have to do through FY 27, but the discussions about what CAT is doing at FY 27, which is why we're starting this discussion fairly early in the budget process.

Yeah, I think you do that in phases.

We've got a city council retreat in a few weeks, so one of the topics is going to be transit.

And there is going to have to be a discussion, a shift at some point from what this looks like.

CAT is a city department.

It's funded through the city budget.

And my thought would be that this body would all be signaling either way.

I mean, to me, you need to get, you all know what we'd like to do to be able to get to a 30-minute model.

You've got that scoped out.

While we couldn't say, if you want to make an initial, this is supplementing work that's already being done in the city,

I think it would really address your question in terms of, you know, meeting with the legislators, certainly, if you wanted to do that.

I'm just wondering if that would help to have a sit-down conversation, if they could help us with it.

I think with regard to the specificity, when we met with them, it was like as much specificity as possible.

I do want to just raise before we get off this.

I do agree with Brian, I think we should be talking seriously in general in some way about

on the implementation study.

I do want to also just voice this for the record because we're talking about specific solutions.

And I know Diantha and David both know this because they've heard me express this, but I personally like chili sales taxes the first way we would look to fund this.

That's a sentiment I've similarly expressed on school capital.

The difference is that school capital, there's already significant political momentum.

in the general assembly over multiple iterations behind sales tax being the way to fund that.

Here we don't have that momentum binding us to what I think is probably the least equitable tax source that we could use.

And I would be much rather look at different funding options unless I'm radically outvoted.

And that being said, I also hate Dylan Rule.

I would still be supportive of requesting the authority for it, but I would vote against it on the board.

Well, and I guess I'd have to also point out that you, as localities, already have some powers to raise taxes.

And if you could come to agreements together on taxes that you want to raise locally, they're already within your powers so that they go towards training for services this year or in the future years.

You're already well within your powers to do that.

And I guess I just comment that I understand what you're saying.

Having said that, the advantage, and I use that, because I understand it's not a great tax, no taxes already.

No, I get that it's a

It gets us quite far.

Also, like, I probably shouldn't say this out loud, but it's politically easier, right?

It's politically easier than the equivalent amount of property tax.

My understanding of the data is that the equivalent amount of property tax actually does burden our poorest people less.

Well, you know, I mean, we didn't talk about it.

I'd like to add a tax to Airbnb and use it, but that's not going

We need it.

That's only going to be a little small sliver of what we need.

And it's not as consistent as a sales tax, right?

So there are problems with it.

But yeah, I mean, I think all of us could come up with some small tax that we would like to use.

I think this conversation does speak to the point that there's a lot of

There's a lot of discussion still happening at the staff level and staff to elected level to make sure that there is consensus before going in with an ask.

Because this isn't something we want to waver locally on and then expect the state to support holistically that we're all in consensus.

That's the part where we are now is we need to get to November.

And that's the problem because if we're not in consensus, to take it to the General Assembly would just be disastrous.

I can appreciate what you're saying about we know the plan.

We know what we want to be doing, right?

We have study after study.

We have system optimization plan.

I think it's really important to note that the transit vision plan is for the entire six jurisdiction region.

It has commuter service out to the rural areas.

It has bus rapid transit up 29.

It has

Expanding the drivers, the frequency of the existing service.

I think what we need this implementation plan to do is say, okay, yes, what you guys want to do just for CAT may be the phase one.

We also have to keep in mind the associated costs for the Jaunt ADA that's going to come with that system optimization.

And then what is the second phase and what is the third phase?

How are we saying

to the General Assembly.

We have mapped out exactly what we want to do in the order we want to do it.

This is what it's going to cost and this is what we're going to start with.

I think we know what we want to start with.

I don't think we have as long of a roadmap to be able to tell them.

If we were to get the authority and we were to get the revenue, how are we going to spend it and in what order on which priorities?

And right now, the three of us don't even agree on the funding source.

I'm just saying.

And I'm not picking on Mike or any of us.

I'm just saying that that's a- That's the work that's needing to happen right now.

I want to just ask, to switch us to something else.

I am very concerned about the consultant

Do we pay our consultants enough to get them?

I'm just saying that what our experience has been with consultants is that they zoom in and sometimes they're, you can't hear them.

They're not.

I mean, I'm just saying, I want to make sure if we're going to do this and we're going to pay your consultants, are we offering enough money for the consultants to really work with us and get them

And if we need to pay, if it's a matter of payment, right, if we're not paying them enough,

I mean, I'm just saying it's really frustrating.

Yes.

And we've had them zooming from Richmond and we can't follow, you know.

I'd like to move that we adopt the prioritization study update as presented in the agenda and backup.

I'll second that.

Does that work?

Does that motion work for everybody?

Okay.

Supervisor McHale.

Yes.

Aye.

The voting is really short.

All right.

And I guess maybe we should continue this discussion, or at least staff will help us with the timeline, is we can help, whatever.

Yeah, I think we're going to have continuing conversations in the city.

Well, I will say, and I'll stop with this, the advantage of getting UVA at the table with us and the advantage of getting the two school systems at the table is increased ridership means more money.

And that's a plus.

So with that, all right.

There was a memo within your packet, we've been talking for a little while, as CARTA ramped up that the RTP would eventually sunset, just really high level, you know, RTP was established in 2017, we all know that, it came out of the transit coordination study that really identified before you should establish an authority some more work needed to be done locally on communication coordination, you know, visioning,

And so the RTP has successfully met that critical role in building consensus, approving the vision plan.

It launched the transit expansion study in Albemarle, which resulted in the microtransit pilot.

It completed the transit governance study, which recommended starting up

CARTA, laying the foundation for CARTA.

I think we've hit a significant milestone.

We want to be really mindful of resources and not have duplicative meetings going on into perpetuity.

And so, you know, staff would recommend that the last meeting of the Regional Transit Partnership be December of 2025 of this year.

Yes.

Oh, yes.

Absolutely.

We started the RTP with the intentions.

I said, we need to work ourselves out of the job.

We need to get to an authority which will bring in the money for what we need to do.

But we had to concentrate first on, should we all play in the same sandbox together?

And we proved to the community that we can play in the same sandbox and work together.

So in all those studies, people said, we all didn't do anything.

Regional President Partnership, and I said, well, look at all that work we did preparing us for this point in time.

And with our CARTA prioritization study, we have that project team and you all still involved.

So we will be announcing this.

That's just our recommendation.

I think it's appropriate.

And we'll talk about that in the next part of safety, as most people are aware.

Let's go.

Any other comments on that?

I'm sorry.

Was that not received as an action item?

It probably would be.

And then actually, if anyone votes on the PBRTP.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's my question.

Yeah.

We'd say maybe vote a little bit longer, but if we're ready, we're ready.

That's great.

Cause it will help us move along faster.

Okay.

Other business updates and reminders, I don't have any other than that our next meeting is September the 25th, which would be the CARTA meeting.

Yes.

Yeah, we did good.

48 minutes.