Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority Meeting   9/24/2026

We are only having three on the board today because Sally is going to the kind of school board meeting.

So, yeah.

Do we need to call roll?

We don't have to, but if you want to, I can.

Okay.

Natalie Oschrin, here.

Mike Pruitt, here.

Jen Fleisher, here.

Sally Duncan, here.

Michael Bergen, John Brown, James Freas, City of Charlottesville, Debbie Hissenvenger, Natalie Williams, Beth Ann, Susan Schallner, Grant Sparks, Virginia Department of Railroad and Transportation, Jen Fleisher, City of Charlottesville, Ann Wall, Sidhu Bhargava, James Chambers, City of Charlottesville, Agnes Corcoran, San Diego Borough, Algernon County, Katie Vailigan, Central Shenandoah, Manning, Bishop, and Shenandoah, Peter Krebs, Kim Hahn, Environmental Council, Gretchen Thomas, CJ Williams,

Great.

Thanks.

Oh, seven.

Saturday is going to go.

Three events to celebrate National Host Lands Day.

Come down to Urbana River Company.

You can hike a 20-mile loop or a three-mile fun mini loop.

Or, actually, we're full on.

We have like 500 people registered right now.

But it's going to be beautiful weather.

There's going to be lots of

Bella Ritori, beverages and food at the River Company.

So exciting.

So yeah, on Sunday.

And you can do as much or as little as you like.

Yes.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, maybe we have to get our annual picture for three.

That's right.

Yeah, yeah.

Perfect.

Also, this weekend is Charlottesville Pride, and our Saturday morning bike ride will be Pride themed, so come out for that.

We would like to ride bikes, and have fun.

We can't make it this week.

We hope we make it any other Saturday, because we're doing the better Saturday.

Go to BikesEval.com for more information.

All right.

Oh, hello.

Hello everyone, Scott Silsdorf, Executive Director of Parking and Transportation at the University of Virginia.

Okay, do we have a motion to accept the agenda?

All in favor, say yay.

And then a motion to approve the CARTA board minutes from August 24th.

All in favor say yay.

And there are no nays.

Great.

So then we'll move on to matters from the public.

Good afternoon, I'm Peter Krebs from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

As many of you know, my office is right across the street.

That's why I'm here so much, besides the fact that I love transportation plan and that's both reasons, really.

From that perch, every day I see just

You know, fleets of buses rolling out every single half hour, not as often as we'd like.

But let's see something else when I come in to work in the morning, which is that I live right next to a school.

And I'd like to say that, although I was a big partisan of expanding the student responsibilities of the city-specific, I know, but it's transit.

I think we have some unintended consequences that we really need to face.

The city schools have just so many people, single family trips to school.

It's creating a lot of congestion on our streets.

It's the vehicle miles that we're trying to avoid by having transit in the first place.

It's stressing out parents.

And so for elected officials in the room, I think if you want to be perpetually reelected, having the school buses come back in a larger number, I think would be a really good start.

After all, I think without a doubt, the most popular bus routes are get kids to school.

So as we're thinking about what we're about

I am very in favor of expansive views of what transit can do.

Let's not lose track of the sort of basic things that we actually grew up taking for granted.

And current parents don't really get to take that for granted anymore.

What can we do to bring back more transportation for students?

I know there are challenges.

I could imagine this, that it don't lose where someone will say, oh, it's a city thing.

Oh, it's a school board thing.

Oh, it's safe.

You know, it's a CAT thing.

It's a union thing.

Like, yes, all of those are true.

But as we look at solving big problems, let's also remember solving problems for the smallest among us.

Thanks, Peter.

Anyone online?

Like to comment?

Oh, we should have online introduce themselves.

I'm so sorry.

We're excited to have you all here and to hear from you in a little bit.

So we also have Katy Miller and Sean Tubbs in the audience.

So that's all.

Thanks for being here.

And then moving on to agenda item number three, our key policy question.

Thank you very much.

Good evening, members of the board.

So before we move into today's informational presentations, I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the discussion that was held at the last CARTA meeting last month at our special session.

When we brought forth a list of prioritized transit improvements, many of you expressed some difficulties with being able to weigh in on those, with so many kind of big questions still unanswered about CARTA, what CARTA's role would be,

and the future related to governance and the authority that it would have.

So we just wanted to let you know that we heard you all.

We heard you articulate some of the questions that you had and we made the attempt of summarizing those into two main themes that we heard you all talk about last month at the meeting.

So rather than coming back to you with that same list and asking you again today to give us input on that, we instead took those questions and we heard the following themes.

So what's CARTA's role in regional transit governance going forward?

And then what is the legislative and funding proposal and how do we get there?

And so we also outlined the work that staff would be doing to help you all answer those questions and answer them confidently.

And we laid out the pathway

of possibly doing that between now and May or June of 2027 and that would give both this board and your local governing bodies an opportunity to consider any information and come to consensus in advance of any legislative ask.

Yeah, I think you nailed the questions.

Is that right?

Yeah.

So we plan to, now that we've gotten confirmation that these are the right questions, we do plan to bring back to you at a future meeting more of a solid kind of sketch out for what you can expect at your future meetings and when you can get information.

Similarly, not for us, but how are staff involved in this from our perspective?

So before CARTA was established, back when we still had the Regional Transit Partnership, we do have a staff working group that was established where it's folks from the TJPDC, staff from the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle County that meet together on a regular basis to talk through some of the work that we're doing.

I will add, and I stated this at the previous conversation, I've also talked about this with Ann, but I know a lot of these conversations that we're talking about in this, I see as politically non-diligable, as in they have to be conversations that the three or four of us have, because they have political relevance and import, and can't be made wholly by staff.

I also realize that there's a question channeling problem there,

There needs to be a decision point that we are not expert and we need to have the problem framed for us.

So I recognized a pinch of it.

I think in my limited time, as has been

The option to have an analysis of alternatives is something that stirs debate and comparison into something because we will be given a finite universe of things that we can compare.

That is my limited experience with my own board is that when we have substantive policy discussions, it's because we have comparative points that we are operating and that gives us

And do you mean that in opposed to a loose everything we bring stuff to the table?

Yes.

On one end, there's the, here's a policy we have proposed for you, yes or no, or, and it set the edges.

On the other end is, okay, let's all talk about what we think governance should look like.

And then we try and come up with something and say, well, staff, how's that?

And that obviously doesn't work because then we also, we aren't able to talk about and frame, like,

Maybe there is an issue that would be raised that Mike has mentioned before about subsuming jobs into a government body that would interrupt other funding streams, or there's other reasons we wouldn't want to do that, that we wouldn't have that technical expertise to frame that briefly.

Great, good point.

All right, thank you so much.

Yes, I can see it.

And we can go to the next slide.

So first, thank you for allowing me to present or inviting me to present this same evening, but it's still, I guess, late afternoon.

to talk about the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority.

The NVTA was created by the Virginia General Assembly in 2002.

However, we did not have a dedicated funding stream until 2013.

In 2013, the Virginia General Assembly passed House Bill 2313, which provided dedicated revenue, the dedicated funding stream for the authority to invest in transportation projects that reduce congestion.

The revenue pot

per code was divided into two segments.

70% is to come to the NVTA to fund capital transportation projects that reduce congestion and meet other performance measures.

But we do have to give priority to projects that reduce congestion.

Then 30% of the revenues go back to our nine member jurisdictions.

We have five cities and four counties.

and that is receipt based.

The 30% is less restrictive than the 70%.

While we can only fund capital with the 70%, the 30% can be used for capital and operations and maintenance.

There is a criteria though before the localities can receive their 30%.

We do have to do on an annual basis

A maintenance of effort.

The code requires that each locality demonstrate that they've spent the average annual on transportation that we marked for fiscal years 11, 12, and 13.

That average, we have the number.

Once that information is certified, we send the 30% directly to the locality.

Next slide, please.

So in talking about how the 70% is utilized, the code requires that we develop and update the region's long-range transportation plan.

The authority updates its plan every five years.

This plan is fiscally and geographically unconstrained because it is a needs-based document.

So when you look at our long-range transportation plan, you will see projects in Maryland, you will see projects in the District of Columbia, in addition to projects in Northern Virginia, because we are so closely related when it comes to commuting and the transportation network in this region.

We analyze regional impacts and we develop a plan and project list in our Long Range Transportation Plan.

The current plan that we have was adopted in December of 2022.

We are currently working on the update.

The long-range transportation plan, which we call transaction, is critically important because the code requires that any project that we fund with the 70% regional revenue

be in this long-range transportation plan.

That is a must for us to fund any project out of the 70%.

Additionally, any project that we fund, it must benefit the taxpayers and the primary revenue where the revenues are generated in Northern Virginia.

That means that we cannot fund projects in Maryland or the District of Columbia

unless it's a project of that magnitude given, I'll give you an example, a WMATA project where they needed funding for traction power upgrades and you just can't do it in Virginia.

That is truly a system-wide improvement investment.

In that case, DC and Maryland must demonstrate that they have their monies as well.

Then from our long-range transportation plan and our current plan we have I think 415 projects totaling $75 billion.

I tell everyone we don't have $75 billion.

So then we get to our six-year program.

Six-year programs, we just adopted our eighth six-year program this past July.

We do the six-year program every two years.

And we call it a six-year program, but we're really picking up the last two fiscal years.

So we are doing out-year funding programs.

And before we go to the next slide, I do want to know where our revenues come from.

The bread and butter, if you will, of our revenues is really from sales tax.

Then we get 20 million from the commonwealth.

Then we get a percentage, it can fluctuate from 8.4 to 8.7% of the interstate operations and enhancement program funding.

And we get a portion of grantor's tax.

So from those four revenue streams, that is where revenues come from.

Next slide, please.

Grantors or recordation.

So if you sell your home in Northern Virginia, you will see in the disclosure documents, there will be a line that talks about the assessment that you are paying as the seller, because it's borne on the seller to pay that fee.

And I know because I've sold a home during

the passage or after the passage of HB 2313.

Gotcha, okay thank you so much.

Next slide please.

So to date those eight funding programs that we have adopted has resulted in six billion dollars of program projects.

We always talk about we are multimodal.

And looking at this slide, you can see the breakout of how we have invested in different modes in the region.

In Northern Virginia, there is no one size fit all solution.

We have invested in bike pad projects, roads, transit, bus, rail, intersections, interchange, transportation technology,

parking and other, other being we are allowed to use some of this money to hire staff and this is really on the 30% as long as that staff is dedicated to doing transportation work.

I will note we pay on a reimbursement basis so when we adopt a funding program

That's when the real work begins, believe it or not, because then we have to have the locality or agency, whoever the project sponsor is, execute a standard project agreement, and then we pay on a reimbursement basis.

Why?

Because the code does have details or really consequences if the money is spent in ways that it was not intended.

So we review all invoices and receipts to ensure that everything is in alignment with the project scope that was approved.

Next slide, please.

So of the roughly $6 billion we have program, we have invested this money into things that really result in improvements in the quality of life.

Every time we adopt a funding program,

We do an economic impact analysis.

Why?

We really want to see how these transportation investments impact the economy.

We know that there is a direct linkage, but we really want to get some of the details.

So we contract with an economist, a firm that does this kind of work, to tell us what do these investments mean.

It means new job, of course, $7.5 billion boost to the economy, 500 million hours saved in travel time, and this is by 2034, 43,000 new

job opportunities.

And I want to pause about the 43,000 because these are jobs that stay.

These are not jobs where you have people working on a project, the project is completed and they're going about their merry way somewhere else.

These are jobs that stay right here in the region.

And then, of course, there's the monetary savings of $8 billion of direct savings.

Next slide, please.

This is just a slide we put in here because we always want to show the citizens the results of these taxes and fees.

As we all know, transportation projects can take a long time from inception to getting to a groundbreaking or ribbon cutting, so we like to show the citizens, the taxpayers, where the funding is going.

Next slide.

Some of our regional multimodal investment.

If you could go back a slide, please.

When I talk about funding multimodal projects, we fund the Virginia Railway Express, we fund Metrorail, we have funded Bus Rapid Transit, we fund BikePad, we fund roadways.

I always joke, and it's really not a joke, but the only mode we do not fund is air travel because again, the investments, the projects that we invest in must

And of course you can't really do that with air travel.

Next slide.

So planning for the future.

We are working on a huge initiative for this region.

When we do the long-range transportation plan, as I noted, it's a needs-based document.

We are always trying to see what's the best bang for our buck.

We hear a lot about trying to extend Metrorail.

Well, Metrorail is a heavy rail system.

It's not something that can be extended overnight, and it requires a lot of money.

So one of the things that came out of our current transaction when we were doing this plan is looking at regional bus rapid transit.

Next slide please.

So with our regional bus rapid transit system, one thing that we knew we would have to address was the growth in Northern Virginia.

320,000 new jobs, 440,000 more people, and how do we make these investments that really

Keep the region moving so we are not stagnant.

Planning, investing in all of the modes, partnering with our jurisdictions and agencies, because we at NVTA, we do not implement the project.

Of the funding that we've invested, VDOT is a big implementer, but so are some of our localities as well.

Next slide.

talking about bus rapid transit.

So I mentioned, we said, what can we do that would bring safe, reliable, efficient, and quicker service transit-wise, something that we could do not in Lewin Metro, Upper Metro, but something we can do in the meantime.

And from that, our bus rapid transit action plan was born.

We have 28 routes,

Next slide.

Five of the routes we were already funding.

So if you look at this map, it shows the outline of the 28 routes.

If the system is implemented by 2045, it will result in 47 million riders annually.

27,000 daily car trips would be shifted, and then we would avoid

23 tons of car CO2.

On the right side, you see the investments that we have made in five of the 28 routes.

Right now we're talking to the localities to make sure that the other 23 routes are in their comprehensive plans, mobility plans, transit plans, or what have you, so they could align themselves for funding from us.

Next slide.

We put the logos of all of our partners and localities because for initiatives like the BRT action plan, for doing the long range transportation plan, for all of our work, we work collaboratively and we've done that pretty well.

I should note the authority is comprised of 17 members.

It's the nine member jurisdiction.

So it's the five cities and four counties that make up Northern Virginia.

Then we have one mayor from five of the largest towns in Northern Virginia.

The law describes the largest towns of those towns having a population of 3,500 or more.

We have two gubernatorial appointees.

One of the gubernatorial appointees is the Northern Virginia District Commonwealth Transportation Board member.

and the other is a quote unquote citizen expert.

Then we have two members of the House and one member of the Senate.

We also have the head of the Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

And the law says the commissioner of highways, but for efficiency purposes, his designee has been, since I've been here, the Northern Virginia district administrator at VDOT.

So that comprises our membership.

Next slide is the how do you stay in touch with us slide.

And you can go to that slide.

That is an impressive amount of collaboration and fundraising.

We'll accept any donations.

When you're

You mentioned the $8 billion in direct savings.

I'm just curious on a whose pockets kind of question, right?

Like, how are you quantifying that?

Well, it's really based on, so for every dollar that we invest and spend on a transportation project, we get $1.64 in return.

So when you multiply that, looking at out year of 2034, that's really how it was quantified because that dollar gets us more jobs.

It brings more revenue to the region.

So while we're spending the dollar, we're getting that $1.64 back.

I want to make sure I'm understanding that because it sounds like that makes it so that the savings number is almost just a plus and minus function of your economic impact and your costs.

It is.

It is.

And again, it gets to

What do the investments mean not only from infrastructure, direct infrastructure, but what does it mean for savings and new jobs created?

New jobs, new people, more people in the region, more people spending.

No, I mean, I'm now thinking about this, right?

Like, that is a government wrong pockets problem, right?

It's 8 million in new economic activity, which is for the region as a whole, but it's not 8 million in regional tax base.

And as this works, and I'm saying $8 billion, some of that is not only for Northern Virginia.

It's Commonwealth as a whole.

We are not solely benefiting, we being Northern Virginia.

It's the Commonwealth as a whole that is seeing these investments as well.

And that's because of the breakout for how much we send to the Commonwealth.

Thank you.

So two things.

We always strive for consensus, and it is in the law, but we don't need the law to tell us to strive for consensus.

We make decisions primarily based on consensus, but we strive for geographic balance and modal distribution.

So when we're looking at these funding programs, we're also looking at what are the needs throughout the region,

and where have the investments been made?

Additionally, the law has something and it only applies to Northern Virginia.

I know we have a few transportation authorities in the Commonwealth, but this only applies to MBTA.

There's something, excuse me, called long-term benefits, which says over time, each locality must receive their proportional share of revenues that we've received from that locality.

So we're always tracking.

where we are on our investments.

Now, right now, some localities may have received more quote unquote in investments.

Some may be a little under, but it is fluid because we are trying to address the needs.

But yes, it is a high level of regional collaboration.

When I'm describing the membership, when I say we have the nine member jurisdictions, I can be more specific.

The law says it's the mayor,

and chairs of those nine localities or his or her designee.

So when they come into the room, they are ready to work collaboratively, which really, really helps.

We put on our, or they put on their regional hats.

They're not thinking what's best for their localities only, but they're thinking what's best for the region.

Great, thank you.

I have a couple questions.

For the 70% spend that has to go on congestion reduction, who decides, I'm not going to try to ask this, who decides what is effective for congestion reduction or what are the parameters for that or what is congestion reduction?

Because you talked to some people, they think that means why they rose and you talked to other people.

I will say when we were new in the funding, maybe in our first funding program or first and second funding programs, a lot of people thought, oh, it's widening roads.

Well, it is not.

And what we have to do, we have performance measures.

And those performance measures have weight to them.

And there are certain performance measures that are specifically targeted to reduce congestion.

But safety is a performance measure as well.

So while we are priority to, and the law is specific, and it says we are to give priority to the projects that have the greatest level of congestion reduction relative to cost.

But key words in that is priority, too.

But we have performance measures that we look at.

And the authority, we make a recommendation as staff.

The authority adopts the performance measures and the weighting for those performance measures.

And I will say, even for smart scale, for Northern Virginia, per code, congestion reduction must be weighted

That was helpful, thank you.

So I'm actually turning to, because we're working on this as we speak as part of the transaction update, so our existing performance measures include total person hours of delay in auto, total person hours of delay in transit, duration of severe congestion, transit person miles and dedicated priority right-of-way,

access to jobs by car, transit, or bike for equity emphasis areas, quality of access to transit and the walk-bike network, potential for safety and security improvements, and now I'm getting to those performance measures that are not really geared towards congestion reduction, but those first five that are noted, those are the performance measures that are specifically targeted for congestion reduction.

So not only is getting people out of single-occupied vehicles,

OK, great.

OK, awesome.

Thank you so much.

And then my other question was, I saw in the Investing in Regional Multimodal projects, you talk about for the bike pen improvements, there's the trail, there's the Capital Bike Share, the multimodal connection.

Sure.

We really depend, because we don't implement, we really depend on the project sponsors and the localities when they submit these applications to us to really detail how the bike pad, whether it's a bike pad, interchange, intersection, regardless of what type of project, how it is going to connect into the network.

I will tell you the first time we funded bike pad projects, I got a lot of questions, a lot of questions on

How does this beat the criteria of the code?

But what I can tell you, all projects are analyzed and evaluated with the same criteria.

We don't have separate criteria for different projects.

So when we talk about capital bike share, a lot of that is looking at, well, are people taking bikes from, renting bikes or using capital bike share close to transit stops, activity centers, and things of that nature.

But they've been successful because we are really trying to address first and last mile travel

when we're talking about capital bike share and that partnership.

But the localities or project sponsors are the ones that bring those projects to us.

We ask them to bring the projects to us as well.

And so when you say, thank you, when you say the localities bring the project to you,

I'm sorry.

The localities apply for the project.

But before we get to the application component, we have conversations about the need.

Even though we're doing our long-range transportation plan, when we have our small committee meetings, we're having conversations about needs.

I will hear, and I have heard and continue to hear, hey, we need more bike pedestrian projects.

We need more safety projects.

We have two statutory committees.

The law requires us to have a planning coordination advisory committee.

That is the 14 member committee comprised of the five cities

four counties and then the five towns with that population of 3,500 or more.

That sounds helpful.

Not saying that we don't have a tech committee or a good group.

That's a good way to structure that.

OK, great.

I have one.

Monica, thank you so much for being here.

Sure.

So, you know, this area is unique because the Transportation Planning Board not only consists of Northern Virginia, you have parts of Maryland and the District of Columbia.

One of their long-range plans is the Constrained Long Range Plan, Visualized 2040.

That's a big difference between their plan and ours.

Our long-range plan is unconstrained.

Their plan is constrained, meaning that they have projects in their long-range plan that has a reasonable expectation for funding, but one of the biggest points of collaboration

is the federal requirements.

The federal requirements are that any regionally significant project, regardless of the funding source, must be modeled for its impact on air quality.

And the Transportation Planning Board, they are the entity, the federally designated entity, that is responsible for running the air quality conformity analysis.

So we work

through and with VDOT and submitting our projects that we fund to the transportation planning board to ensure that they are included in the air quality conformity determination.

So that is one of the big things.

But we also talk about for their constrained long range plan, they do a double check with us

to talk about our funding programs to ensure that the projects they have in their long-range plan, because again, it is constrained that we have committed to funding these projects.

So those are two of the biggest points of coordination.

Additionally, several of my authority members serve on the Transportation Planning Board.

So that gives us a higher level of coordination from

Sure.

So the Northern Virginia, and we have a lot of acronyms in Northern Virginia.

The Northern Virginia Transportation Commission

While we are responsible for Planning District 8, which is all of Northern Virginia, they are responsible for transit and it's really for the six WMATA compact member jurisdictions.

So while I talk about we have nine localities that make up Northern Virginia as prescribed by code, six of those nine members

are included in a part of the WMATA Compact.

The NVTC's focus is transit, WMATA, of course they are a co-owner of the Virginia Railway Express, so we are always working collaboratively with them and actually I should note

One of the five BRT projects that we have funding on is a project that NVTC is actually working on, Envision Route 7.

And again, when I talk about board membership, there is overlap in board membership.

But the short answer is they're responsible for transit, where we're multimodal, and their core is the six WMATA compact jurisdictions.

But we all work collaboratively.

And that's why I had the slide showing all of the logos of the localities and agencies.

Because while there is a lot of acronyms and a lot of agencies, I've heard that, oh, Northern Virginia has a lot of transit agencies.

We really do work well together.

Great.

OK.

Anyone else?

Okay, we're just about to get to our scheduled time for this conversation.

Thank you, it is a lot.

All right, and then up next, the Afton Express update.

Sure.

That'd be great.

Thank you.

Perfect.

Hi, everybody.

I'm Danielle Gannon.

I'm a transit planner at the CSPDC, and I'm just going to give an update on the Afton Express.

I won't go into a ton of detail, as I assume most people know a lot about the Afton Express in here.

So I'll just go into, just give a general overview and then I'll go into the updates from FY26.

So the Afton Express is a commuter bus service that connects the valley to Charlottesville and Albemarle.

There's 10 total trips starts in the morning and then later in the afternoon and evening.

We have three stops in the valley at the Park and Rheinlauf and Stanton and Waynesboro, then one in between at Fishersville at an Augusta Health location.

And then on the other side of the mountain, you can see here at Charlottesville and Albemarle, those are all the stops.

We have our two most popular ones at UVA.

We stop at Amtrak, Downtown Training Center, et cetera.

And

Let's see, the service is part of the greater right bus system, which operates in Stanton, Augusta, and Waynesboro.

The CSPDC handles all planning, marketing, funding, and admin, and then we have a contractor that operates the actual service.

And our Afton Express specific funding partners are the counties of Albemarle and Augusta, cities of Charlottesville, Stanton, and Waynesboro, and the University of Virginia.

The Afton Express specifically has been running for five years now,

And we have seen a steady increase in ridership each year.

And a large portion of our ridership is they are UVA affiliates, and those rides are subsidized by UVA, their parking and transportation department.

So that's really service as a nutshell.

Does anyone want to hear more about just general service before and after?

You can always ask later if you're really curious.

So what have we been up to this past year?

We had two major projects that we worked on.

First, starting last summer, we began a schedule revision project.

This had been something that we had been wanting to do for a long time.

Our schedule had been created pre-COVID.

And we also would frequently get requests for an 8 AM arrival time that corresponded to the course, a timely corresponding to an 8 AM start time at UVA.

Additionally, we had budgeted funds in to add in an additional trip in the morning, but every time we tried to fit it in and do minor tweaks, it just kind of threw off the whole schedule.

It has a trip system, so some buses have multiple trips, so if you touch one thing at the beginning trip, it'll affect all the other trips in the morning.

So rather than, also we really weren't looking for a complete overhaul.

We had a good schedule that worked really well.

We just thought some fine tuning would

elevated and really matched community needs well.

So we decided to put some time aside to figure this out.

We hired on WRA consultant to really weave through all the intricacies and dig into this with us.

So we compiled and combed through data.

So ridership, strip and stop data, survey data.

We also worked very closely with UVA to figure out gaps in service on their end and to really see what we thought on our end through surveys, drivers, data,

match what UVA knew about their shift times and their population.

So we ended up with three different scenarios for what service to look like.

Two were within our operating budget and more minor in nature.

The third one was more pie in the sky.

We had a bunch of bonds of what could service look like.

Looking at these, we felt that one, met our goals best.

And we took that scenario to our bright technical advisor, our bright transit advisory committee.

for approval, that was approved, and then we put that out for public comment.

In terms of feedback, we received about 80 responses and most were positive.

We had a rating question where respondents could rate the proposed schedule on a scale of one to five, and the average rating was about a four out of five.

We did have pockets of feedback that were consistent, really small groups who had similar feedback suggesting the same changes.

So we dove into those and did end up making many, almost all of those suggested changes.

So overall, the draft that we thought would work really well in public, seemed to think so as well.

So this schedule, all in all, had that trip arrival corresponding to that 8 a.m. start time at UVA.

It also had

More even spacing between the trips rather than if we did have previously a few large gaps in the schedule.

So having those even spaces made it more easily accessible and usable for riders.

And we also of course added in that extra morning trip.

Additionally, we did end up making a few of the trips, turning them into express trips.

So we cut off a few stops and that really limited usage, almost none.

So that saved us also a bit of money to add it to that morning trip addition.

We also added in capacity at the busiest evening usage time, so a lot of folks get out of work at UVA 5 or 5.30, so we added in an extra trip around that time.

So not only do those riders have options if you get out of 5 or a little after 5, but we also wanted to give extra capacity for both growth and to create a buffer in case the bus did reach full capacity.

We did have that happen only once, but

If that did happen, you'd only have to wait 30 minutes until the next bus, whereas prior you would have to wait 45 minutes.

So the new schedule was implemented December 1st, 2025 and has been well received.

So for our second project, this was really a multi-pronged initiative involving different marketing aspects.

We received a Commuter Assistance Program Special Projects Grant from

Virginia Department of Real and Public Transportation, and this was for transit marketing, specifically for the Act and Express.

So the end goal of this, of course, was to increase ridership.

We wanted this grant to correspond with the new schedule implementation, and that's why we worked on the new schedule at the first part of FY26, and then took off with the marketing initiatives after.

So we first wanted to get some new photos done for the service, so we hired on a photographer,

and ended up taking some good photos about a year ago.

Now it was fall.

Around the same time, we signed a contract with 29 News in Charlottesville for an ad package that included TV and streaming commercials as well as spotlight interviews.

So they were two to three minutes spots highlighting service at the end of a news hour.

And the campaign also included display us.

And these all aired into place between January and May.

Along with this campaign, we also had a separate

Digital ad and geofencing campaigns, so essentially display ads targeted in certain areas and in specific pockets of the population.

And then we also did some social media paid advertising and we worked with a graphic designer on some outreach and presentation materials.

So lots of different advertising angles, all promoting service and overall very busy year for App to Express.

So looking at where we are today, perhaps some potential outcomes of these projects to date from, if we look at FY25 compared to FY26, we saw a 21% increase in ridership, and we did see larger gains coming in at the second half of the fiscal year.

So comparing order four from those years, we saw a 25% increase.

And when comparing month to month, we saw the biggest jumps from

February to February and June to June.

So February, we saw a 39% increase.

In June, we saw a 45% increase.

Usually, we do see a bit of a dip in June with ridership, but those numbers stay very strong this year.

So since service began in 2021, ridership has been steadily increasing, so we don't attribute these increases solely to the work we did last year.

Of course, the increase is like they do to this work,

also to a variety of factors such as the natural increase that we have seen year to year with service.

And of course we have seen an increase in gas prices driving folks to drive less.

So we do believe there are many factors at play, but assuming our hard work did pay off with making a schedule to better align community needs and getting the word out on service, especially since we did see a bit of higher gains at the second half of the fiscal year.

So we do expect these trends to continue.

This year we'll mostly be monitoring ridership, including trip and stop data.

And we'll use that information for any future changes.

Also as of July 1st of this year, so the start of FY 27, we had a brand new fleet hit the roads on all routes.

This came with the start of our new contract and contractor that began at that time.

So really an upgrade to service with that.

And I know our dedicated riders were very excited about the new buses.

So this is what's been going on with Afton Express.

I'm happy to answer any questions about service service projects.

And thank you all for your attention.

So when the bus goes from Stanford

Okay.

Yes.

Where we've been considering, should we turn it?

Yeah.

But right now, no, we do have reverse.

I guess they don't like to be called reverse commuters, we learn.

So they do.

The atypical commute.

Got it.

Okay.

No.

Correct.

Some of them work at Augusta Health around, yeah, Augusta Health and they're overnight workers.

So they work like a 12 hour shift.

Any questions from anyone else?

OK, thank you so much.

Appreciate the update.

Thank you.

Great to see the numbers in the news.

And then next, we have our transit provider updates.

Sure.

So our battery electric charging infrastructure project

We're at 95% complete.

Having said that, the meaning of community has to connect to the power.

With Edwards, we're in the final state.

We've waited on permission until that can take between 30 to 25 days.

But we're not running on the long pole for that community power.

So we can charge the group for the agencies that are at the ascendant.

We applied for a discretionary grant through the No No Permissions grant program and the bus and bus facility program.

We are targeting two battery electric hybrid buses and two electric buses.

So for a total of $5.26 million, that split is $4.2 million from the feds and $1.2 million

Basically one of them from the city.

We want to thank Christine Jacobs, TJPDC for the letter of support, the director, the Superman for the letter of support, and the name-clutter VTA for the letter of support.

We needed to make the application happen.

We're helpful.

We got a great package, I believe, to make that happen.

Service improvements, one of the outline that the route seven,

You will see things even in frequency in a few periods of time by starting Monday, October 26th.

That is a direct correlation from the funding that was granted by the City Council and the Board of Supervisors.

Two mailers will go out.

One will come out in the next week or so, then down to service changes and also detailed

The microcad increase that will happen on January 1st.

The second millimeter will have the actual schedule itself and tell us so that we will not have to test the bus.

The route two split that we're going to be targeting, I'm assuming you don't want to get all of the infrastructure in.

We're going to be working in Phoenix to do that.

It should happen in February of next year.

that will provide their service to the EDCC.

In fact, we'll be able to service to the Albemarle-Shawls for the individual jail and the Barticella high school.

So, they get pretty close there.

Hopefully, also, we'll be able to, we're actively recruiting so that we can then, there's no drivers, we'll be able to turn up frequency for each service on file also.

September 8th, I participated in a peer-to-peer session talking about fair, free, and zero reduced service with some of the other things that the director has been moving a lot, asking the same questions that we all are about.

Is it really worth the effort to connect sellers?

knowing that the systems have been shown to be much more productive in many cases.

We don't cut fares, and people just get on the service.

The representative actually was my lady in that session.

On October 13th to 15th, I was invited to participate in the Governor's Transportation Conference.

Actually, on the 14th, I'll be participating in part of the Trans-CBL round table session moderated by the director herself.

Looking forward to that conversation, lots going on right now.

And the last thing I'll be reporting is our fuel costs are in the coming major concern for us.

For the last, we have a 10,000 gallon tank.

Normally we get about

7500 gallons every 10 days.

When I first started getting their gas pricing from the TV prices from $2.35, we're not going to say that again, but just a year ago it was $2.38 and now we're at $5.23 and then the projector gets $6 the next time we get fueled, which is in four more days.

The last building we had was almost $39,000.

It was just over $10,000.

It's a multi-spectrum attic.

This is a question that I asked to our staff recently, and I phrased it poorly, so I didn't get an answer because I phrased it badly.

Great question.

So we can't put the service out and run it until we have the ability to go to the bus stop.

So there is a planning piece of how to have the people in the car bus stops require that we have a site plan that's approved before we can actually go into construction.

We've been almost a year, year and a half, working through the VDOT process.

Benham, and Zoe.

I've done one in the job, marshaling that, branding on my team, trying to put that through, but it's still getting stuck somewhere.

So much so that I've actually added up to the city manager's office.

He's committed to having that conversation with me.

I'm trying to push that wall.

Our aim is to get us being the new planning process, so we can actually get to construction.

The construction itself, we've got folks that are on city contracts.

You believe it should be taking them over 60 days to get it in?

Once it's stopped.

Once we're out of permanent.

Once we're out of permanent.

So if that's the case and we get through the permitting process, we're all targeting November 1st to get through the permitting process.

That's a long time, but that means also out of the literally two years,

How does that process differ in execution when those stops for your route is in the county?

The process requires us to work

The other difference is that the private way is owned by VDOT in that case.

So what we're talking about is slowing concrete down, which is really what we're talking about.

Some would say that the process has been slowed.

I'm choosing anybody, but it shouldn't take two years to get through the process of this nature.

It's just a little bit.

So we have a process of what happened in all jurisdictions in this community lives.

And that's the main concern with me.

I wasn't coming to the other challenges in terms of VDOT, the challenge of the pedestrian facility.

So when we're talking about putting in the ADA accessible stops, we're also putting in the connection to being in an area submitted up in the facility.

Yeah, there's a stop here that's on Mill Creek Drive that's in front of the Foonbine where we have to put in additional pedestrian infrastructure to make sure that that crossing is safe.

Do you?

If I could just chime in.

This is a Commonwealth-wide issue.

This is just a Charlottesville regional issue.

The VDOT permitting process, just the whole process in general, is kind of a nightmare and takes years.

This has been on our radar to work

Close to the VDOT fix for quite some time.

We have been making progress solely with Shirley.

And our director has had multiple conversations with the VDOT commissioner on this.

So it's the right people are talking about this.

And our director just last month created a new division within DRBT.

It's a safety and design division.

When I first started DRPT eight years ago, we had one engineer.

The engineer was almost exclusively focused on rail engineering.

And that is Virginia passenger railway authority was created.

A couple of years after that, our engineering team went over there.

And so we had to basically build an engineer, a transit engineering team from scratch.

And so we brought on somebody from VDOT who I know

Garland has talked to a lot.

He has really transformed our engineering capacity.

So he is now our chief safety and design, I guess the chief of safety and design.

And he has been authorized to hire much more engineers.

So our hope is that as we expand our internal capacity here at PT, we can work closer with VDOT, closer with our transit agencies to kind of cut through some of this red tape, do a lot of the work on our end,

and kind of take that burden away from transit agencies and VDOT.

So it's evolving.

I just want to say the DRPT is one of the most well-funded teams.

The funding out of those teams is great.

They're a marginal in this thing as fast as they can, but once again, it's not the DRPT who's running the show.

It is VDOT who's running the show and their process of

Can you give us an update on what our current people transportation

policy range situation is?

What is our pupil transportation range policy situation?

Staff ones?

Where are they?

Are you guys standing up with fair responsibility?

Yeah, what is the radius?

Should we have, what are we?

So, yes.

So we have, we're off the ride.

So the process is we have a conversation with schools, budget time.

We tell them what we believe is necessary.

In the past, they worked that number back, so what they could have soldered.

Based on that, to date, that means that there are 10 full-time drivers.

I mean, there are 10, 12 part-time drivers.

Those are 30 to 39 hours.

We haven't started developing very similar, because we do know there is a need to have up to 22, between 22 and 26 full-time drivers for this model.

We're always recruiting.

We've had two recruiting days at CAT over the last month and a half.

We've got plenty of interest.

The majority of the folks who come in, move on right there, and they're seeking forms out of the matter.

Matt has the main problem.

Most of them can tell us that they have full-time bills, so they need full-time flow.

And although we do offer

We are not a VRS model, so we can't offer the full-time benefits by the VRS model thing.

And that has been a sticking point.

But there has been discussions about what this comparable model would look like.

I mean, from our vantage point, we're building shelter in April.

We're building based on resources that are provided to us.

The majority of those folks should work with CAT

All openings right now, so we have nine, so group three.

We've offered to four on the school side.

Most of them, once again, they want full-time benefits.

We're hoping that they can negotiate with you so we don't have an authorization to make them full-time at this school.

There was an effort when we had a similar shortfall that interrupted some service for some folks, I want to say two or three years ago, where schools intentionally were very deliberate about creating part-time opportunities within the schools themselves.

They are able to do that because they are a VRS model.

We're not able to do that because it's a city model versus the rest of the schools in the VRS model.

There's an old ability to bridge that gap, and that's been part of the problem.

You can't have both a school employee and a family employee.

There's an issue in the room where I'm trying to work on that,

There are other solutions that we can look at.

The easiest way to handle it right now is really to note more of the part-time or ultra-full-time.

That's more attractive right now because of the accountability.

They have a long zone that has three corridors for elementary and one for middle and a quarter for high school.

And then a specific school that was mentioned is Sunnock, which its entire service areas would have been not responsibilities on the right, but we've added a bus in the Sunnock.

Great.

This is something Dr. Atkins asked us about when I was at the city she wanted

Put people into cafeteria roles, instructional assistant roles, all sorts of other things to solve this problem.

The same issue has persisted over time.

Fuel is an issue.

And unlike the city who has a yard where they have the gas delivered, John has operated on a P car system and benefited from their public corporation status as able to

avoid taxes entirely through our billing system.

Now there are some geniuses in VIB who believe that maybe we don't qualify under code anymore and that we can get that, but only by way of rebate so that we should pay the full freight and then have to apply to get those dollars back.

Amazing back and forth between my CFO and the DMV right now.

And so we're working on that.

I may ask for some DRPT assistance at some point.

Mr. Sparks.

One collateral consequence of improved service for the Route 2 split is that there will be many more rooftops included potentially in the ADA zone that are currently not pleasured for a little bit to add to Albemarle costs when that happens.

I don't expect that that's like the day it happens in February expense, but over time, as we find people out of the world, you know, based on

What that area has in the way that the folks will be able to calculate in the 28th budget what we think the additional ridership demand will be automatically part of that budget of the course.

I'm happy to say that the collaborative scheduling that we've been doing with a number of other transit agencies has reached a determination and that they will present that to the board of the Grady Lynchburg Transit Company for seven than I expect.

that sometime in October, November, that Jaunt will interview the successful scheduling software companies, which I believe will facilitate us certainly by quarter two of the calendar year, so the last quarter of the fiscal year, to turn on on-demand scheduling, same-day scheduling throughout the seven jurisdictions to some degree.

Not for every ride, but certainly for the zones we create.

I'm targeting April 1, because the contract is not looking to be arrived at until mid to late October.

And then we're going to choose from those companies that receive the contract, which one fits the needs of our service area best.

Then we'll have to do some change management, perhaps from whatever software range.

We do have about three demo grants I've told you about before and after a wonderful meeting in Flubana County, I'll ask for your witness by Greg Jacobs and I.

We do want to have them go ahead to start all three of those since I expect.

In the calendars here, you're going to see that midday service I've talked about.

It's going to go both ways from Charlottesville to Flubana, Charlottesville to Louisa,

you know relieving some of those concerns about when I come in do I really have to wait until the end of the day and then we've been doing some planning on the Greene County Connect route and I'm anticipating probably just three stops in Greene County and I have talked with Scott's assistant director about a located stop inside of the UVA North Research Park

We'll look at the highest volume stops on our 29 North, if this would provide a relief there at that time, but all of that will come at the beginning of the calendar year, sometime in that first quarter.

in this budget season, which is always exciting.

And so, you know, we'll be crackling our budget being now in November and look forward to discussing that with both the city and county leaders at that time.

We are planning a board retreat in February.

The planning session that I brought to the board two years ago

that really set the course for our five priorities over these last two years.

Looking to repeat that exercise at my October board meeting on the 14th.

We'll talk a little bit about what the shape and size of that is, how we facilitate the priorities that we're going to discuss, etc.

So look for some product on that in the new year.

Last thing I'll wrap up with is, you know, many of you received an email from me today talking about a pilot that I'm about to do in our planning department.

And I'll just take this moment to put out there that

I think this is really important.

It's not just an opportunity for a job, but I think the biggest thing to be accomplished by this group, at least in the next three years, from my understanding, is about planning.

It's about coordination and collaboration.

Great.

Anyone have any questions, comments, concerns?

All right, excellent.

All of that, the latest in question.

Okay, I've got a few things.

Let's see.

First of all, a report, I think I reported last month on our service changes we added for students' service in the semester.

It probably starts on weekend service for all of our fixed routes.

So that's actually been going pretty well.

At least the first couple of weekends, the fighters were there.

We were a little bit skeptical that students

So we're recording some good ridership there.

We'll have a better picture as that evolves.

Let's see.

The other new service that we started with this semester, which I had also mentioned previously, was the FlexRide, UDA FlexRide, our Paratrans service, which officially replaced DAR.

That's also going really well.

Our student disability and access center is super happy.

It's still right now at about 95%

on a capacity like they have to do too good of a job or too much promotions as we will be swamped with requests.

But there's an interest, but it'll probably steadily ramping up.

But we're super happy with that service as well.

Had good feedback from the writers thus far.

So those are the two new things that started with the semester.

We also got our new delivery of

Carson Ejest, the Q bus, we ordered two more of them, so they arrived last week, so we now have actually 11 zero-emission vehicles, so that's some of those Carson Ejests, and the four Buick BBBs that are in service.

We also, you might have seen, the Ejests are now wrapped, three of them are blue, with wah-wah-wah on the side, it's actually kind of fun, really laying it out.

We have two other designs that will be coming out in the coming weeks, months, including for the VGs.

So hopefully by the end of the year, without all the buses wrapped, they won't be just playing James the way they had been for a while.

Any questions on that?

What's the maximum speed on this?

We don't take them anywhere to really test this.

They tend to, I don't want to say wobble, but they go to speed.

It's not a comfortable ride.

It's much better

slow.

It didn't feel like they were going to make it.

So we should say that old girl and I are allowed.

That's right.

That's correct.

I think it was a year ago those buses qualified for a Buy America waiver.

Now it has to be reviewed and I don't know the timing of it, but that caught our eye because those vehicles, obviously, they're a very different

Look and feel that your standard smaller bus and obviously yours are electric.

Right.

They started with diesel like 11 to 12 years ago.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So yeah, I can share more about the biometric waiver.

What's the fast moves?

There are 10 fixed seats, two flipped down, room for stay and needs, one out of wheelchair.

There are those who are, yeah, they're not big.

What's your relation?

For us, they're fine.

I mean, they last all day.

When we put them in service on the roster, we put them in the caveat being that we often put them down off peak hours so they're not there necessarily doing all day.

They're not, I mean, it's an 88 kilowatt hour battery, so it doesn't take long at all.

It's the same as most cars that are much smaller.

I would say it's, I don't actually have to give you that answer.

We fast charge them at our DC fast chargers pretty quickly, I would say in less than two hours, for sure.

Maybe probably less than an hour, I'll say that.

We only use the fast chargers on them.

And I'm just going to correct myself.

They are seeking comments on the Buy America waiver.

So it has not fully achieved that.

They stopped feedback three weeks ago.

But I think we actually submitted something.

I have to double check.

But most folks in the industry want this waiver.

I'd have to get back to their experience.

But it's the, Carson is the manufacturer and they're in Turkish.

They're not cheap.

I can't remember if I brought this up when I presented to you guys a few months ago, but

The funding profile specifically for Mike's capital projects could be changing over the next couple of years, or basically the rural transit federal funding.

We basically are pushing in all the operating costs as far as it used to, which means that Mike and all his capital projects, we might have to take the federal off, which then if the federal is not on his capital, then

Potentially, by America, it doesn't matter anymore.

Federal regulations are gone.

So it's bad that we have a plumbing shortfall, but there could be some silver lining if we don't have to federalize this capital project.

So that could also be a problem.

Mike, not Garland.

Not Garland.

Mike.

5311.

There is a kind of, I was, Art Holting was very impressed with a similar California brand

that was at the CTAV conference that has like 10 and 13 models that have, yes, and we are actually waiting to find out about the contract in February about looking into replacing six of our vehicles with those, much higher.

Our model doesn't work that, I mean, I know Scott's about to say something, but we need more seats.

Well, it's I mean, if there's so much demand for these, you know, the feedback from the labor commentary is going to be

And I think because I do have a non-electric version, I think that's actually a good thing.

Thank you.

The other two items I was going to share, and just sort of these guys, this budget season for us as well, it's a little different.

At the university, I wrapped it up, got it past my boss's level for what we're requesting on the transportation side to really share any details, to really even say that it might even get approved.

But we're seeking, as we always do, more money to do more things and better things, better service.

So look at the university, you see the grounds, the growth at Ivy Corridor,

and funding.

And then the last one, piggybacking off of that, the northbound parking garage is not necessarily a transit update, although we have our largest transit hub we'll be opening when that garage opens.

We are this close to getting our such a legal occupancy.

We need to kind of work with it for about a month or so, but I would expect by, I'll say early ACC basketball suit, it should be

in place.

But what I want to highlight about the garage, and I can't remember if I talked about that parking garage this week before, it's got not only, so we will reroute two bus lines to stop.

We won't be changing, we're not going to drop any stops, but the gold line and silver line will loop through the garage.

They will, they'll have a dedicated bus lane, which we will hope that we're going to keep cars out of, but then that's also right adjacent to our

First ever multi-modal of our Wahoo Wheels bicycle garage.

So we've had eight student interns that we've hired this year that are starting to work on that.

I don't know when we'll open that up, but it's come along.

If you've been by there, it's, it's, they're going to start bringing the defenses back.

Even after we have this configure off, you can see, it'll still be kind of blocked off in the next month and a half or so.

But it is kind of exciting for our ability to make connections, transit connections,

We finally put some e-bike chargers and a covered garage.

That's all I got.

I forgot to mention, I apologize for that.

UNC Chapel Hill Transit will be visiting and they requested to come and visit CAT and also anyone that's seeing UTS.

Any other questions for staff?

Okay.

Before we adjourn, I want to make one more announcement, which is October 1st through 8th is Beef Without Driving.

So let's say national, international challenge or lifestyle for some.

where you try to go the whole week without driving a single occupancy vehicle.

So you're allowed to carpool, take transit, bike, walk, and in some cases not get to the thing you wanted to get to because you're trying not to drive.

You can't get there.

You can't get there.

So it's about kind of learning how it is like for a third of Americans who can't drive, whether they're too young, they've aged out, they have a disability that doesn't allow, or it's too expensive.

So I encourage everybody to try that.

And if you can't try, just be conscientious of what's going on that week.

Cool.