Regional Transit Partnership (2017-2025) Meeting   3/25/2021

Thank you.

Sandy Shackelford, Sandy was here, Sara Pennington, Sally LeBeau, and that's it, Diantha.

Jessica, is there anybody that has signed up to speak?

I just have to promote him to a panelist.

Garland?

That's just a small piece there that it's about Charlottesville area transit and Connecticut just gave the presentation for us.

All right, so with that change, if there are no others, I'll entertain a motion to approve the February 25th minutes as amended.

This is Lucas, so moved.

Second.

Second, Brandy.

And then all those in favor, please raise your hand or say aye.

Aye.

Okay, abstentions would be Rebecca or Becca.

No, not really.

The next item goes to, I believe Jessica, it's our Regional Transit Vision Plan.

That's really it.

Because you have this presentation in your packet, we're happy to put up a page again if you need it, but are there any questions or concerns that you'd like to raise at this time?

But can you point me to the scope of work as it exists today?

I'll share it with the voting and non-voting members.

At the very end, we'll allow a little time for him to give his, but we'll start with you if that works.

You can barely hear me?

That's better, yes.

That would be wonderful news that we can get that done.

Okay.

Garland, is that contract going to be written that it can be shared?

This is just for school bus drivers.

All right, then I guess we'll move on and then we can come back to Jim if he joins us.

Mr. Pisto-Kirtley had something?

I'm sorry.

Mr. Williams, could you please tell me, it looks like you're working with the school districts and I don't know if CAT has smaller buses or if that's just a jaunt thing.

So are you talking about on the CAT side or the school side?

Well, I know on the school side they have some, but I don't know on the CAT side.

So on the CAT side, we do have smaller vehicles, 29 foot or less.

So I'm glad to hear that you actually are working with the school district and maybe some of the smaller buses can be used in the rural areas where you only pick up one or two children.

We are working with schools as much as we, on city schools, as we possibly can facilitate the maximum number of kids getting them to and from.

Okay.

No other questions.

Thank you.

to actually where we'd be able to have it implemented, validated, then we can go through the process with FTA to change our reporting standards from our fair box to the APCs, which will be a tremendous improvement and allow us to take advantage of the active ridership increases, which is a good thing for our finances and actually for the overall system improvements.

Just a big picture, not exactly everywhere they go, but just to help us a little bit.

And the adjustments after that will be kind of the year after.

Are there any questions for Garland on the changes?

Sally, did you have anything you wanted to add?

Thank you.

That keeps our community safer, and I appreciate that.

Great.

Yes, Garland.

For CAT, it's the CARES money and the American Rescue Plan money that's going to allow us to continue to go fare-free, which is huge.

Did you say, do you know how long that's gonna, how long are you all anticipating?

And that would be the, basically the footprint to allow us to do that.

And how about you, Karen?

So I think it's really exciting if we can make this work.

But having said that, even pre-pandemic, we had, I think, some of those discussions.

So that's the goal for us.

So I'll let you take it away.

I will stop sharing my screen and that's it.

And then come back to us again in April after you all hear our discussion.

So we're willing to hear really broad feedback about what's of interest.

I'm looking at the folks.

who's eligible for the grants and um you know and all that stuff but at the same time if we could kind of keep us all in mind including us which we never we we don't really go for grant money but we but we would if it fit into the region's goals and didn't step on anybody else's toes

We just want to make things available and share information that we're getting from DRPT and yeah, allow for that kind of collaboration that the RTP was intended to do.

Karen, you're shaking your head, you wanna?

I'm glad that that's included.

Lloyd, do you have something you want to say?

Everybody should have a lot to say about what's intellectually honest to claim.

Trevor, do you want to speak a little bit to that, to what Lloyd's talking about as far as our, not to put a cue on the spot, sorry.

I think for what may be relevant for this group would be at a future work session kind of in the context of the work plan, having the key leads from UVA and the city and the county to come in and share what we're doing with our plans, where there is overlap or where there is some continuity to it.

Maybe once the city has determined their plan and we could, you know, see how they mesh together, I guess is what I'm saying, especially around transit and transportation.

But it's just the classic example of something where we all ought to be not just simply on similar pages, but on exactly the identical.

But our timing may be off slightly.

Well, it would be great to have an agenda item or so around this very topic to get to share, right?

Oh, Garland, yes.

So we need to figure out what makes sense for us and for this region.

Great point and I'm glad you look like you're reading my notes.

It really does lower our footprint and it allows us to have the reliability component that we need in case there are issues, whether it's on the CNG side or the EV side, we're not honing on just one type of fuel.

Huge, huge difference.

It's a bridge that allows us to get our carbon footprint, but also have the reliability factor that we need.

So this is probably would be a great agenda item for us in the future.

Are you good?

We hope by this time next year, we would as a state be able to bid something out for that.

If not, we'll move on, I guess.

And are there any others that you all have thoughts on that like, hey, this isn't great, but maybe this isn't the right time to do it, the priorities that we have for this upcoming fiscal year?

Is there any thoughts around that?

When you say that, Diantha, you mean push that off or actually make that a priority for that committee to complete that work in this upcoming year?

She was a part of that group as well.

Yeah, Diantha, I'm sorry.

Yeah, absolutely.

Can you remind me who is on that committee?

Lloyd's nodding.

I have no idea what it actually involves, but what the heck?

Gets us out of our own silo a little bit, you know.

So it's going to be a necessary component for us to do anyway.

That would help you?

So it kind of fits into kind of the virtual review component.

Christine, does that help there?

They're really building out up there.

I think it helps the region to make this kind of model happen.

Are you good, Jessica?

Okay.

So then let's move on because Sandy has a couple of agenda items that she needs to walk us through and I believe one of them is an item we need to vote on.

Maybe you did at one point, but I don't think you did.

Yeah, I had a mark that I thought I needed to vote, but that's okay.

But if anybody has any questions, I'm happy to

It's actually, oh, Peter, yes.

I don't know if that's going to impact Charlottesville Albemarle if we categorize as 100,000 in our urban area and or if that impacts the MPO funding.

I know what he's referencing, but you might just let everybody know in case some people are not aware of what Peter's referencing.

We don't think it's going to, at least in the immediate future, we do not think that it's gonna have a direct impact on transportation funding though.

I'm sorry.

So my apologies for that.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay so you had another one right?

So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions related to smart scale.

Okay, so Bea.

because if we have one and you're doing the same one or thinking of the same thing then we would let you have it and we could have another one but I mean you know just to make sure that as if that coordination is taking place

So we're communicating with the staffs and hopefully that will get translated to them communicating with you all.

Right because you initially said that you were mainly focused on 29 and 64 but the other projects there I see are in fact there's one in there it's a district avenue roundabout where is that?

That was part of the hydraulic 29 small area plan so it's basically just to the west of the hydraulic 29 intersection a little bit northwest of that

We just couldn't submit them all at one time, but kind of the rest of that package.

Thank you.

So I verified that all of these projects meet either of those criteria for the MPO to make the application.

Thank you.

This was for information.

The only thing is I need you to be thinking about whether or not there are any additional projects you would like the MPA to be considering.

Garland was able to update us on Charlottesville Public Schools, but would you like to have a few minutes to update us on the Albemarle County?

So that's about it.

That's a positive, I think.

We want to get them there.

Yep.

And then hopefully, you know, next school year, we'll be able to go back to normal, I hope.

So,

Thank you very much for saying that, Diantha.

Well, I mean, it's really been challenging and transit has really had as hard a challenge as any, to be honest with you.

You really see it during this pandemic.

We could probably talk and fill the time.

Can you give the team here just a little more information on that?

I don't know if it's going to be that terrible this year, but I think for the future, it certainly is going to be a big question unless something changes differently on some of the funding sources.

So what's happened is at the federal level, the previous administration changed the funding stream or the way that

I wouldn't really say it was the previous administration, I would say more it's a process of monies that comes to the state and how the state wants to use it.

Well, they changed that process.

Right, and I'm not specific to that.

And the state at this point, I believe I understood from Garland, has found some harm, maybe some hold harmless money, possibly for this year, but we're going to have to be dealing with it, if not sooner rather, later rather than sooner, maybe.

Yeah, I think it's a concern for the upcoming years, to be honest, and maybe not as bad as this year, but it is certainly something that we'll probably over the summer try to do some meetings with all the small urban because it does involve all of them.

To advocate for additional funding.

As CAT or Jaunt looks, Karen's looking to do a facilities improvement, or we're looking to do a facilities improvement, that local jurisdiction is going to have to pick up a lot more of that cost.

years ago or you know to get this flow moving and so you know yeah but we do do a good you know I think what happens we do a good job of moneys that are not being used unused balances things like that roll that in but it is a little there's a little different and again each state does it differently too so it's hard to compare states on it but

Is dealing with and communicating to our representatives in Congress, right?

Right.

Is there anything else you want to add?

And I was shocked when Garland gave me a couple of examples of what it might mean when we're talking about capital and the difference.

It's not on, is it April the, Christine, are you looking April the, where am I here on the,

I believe it's the 22nd.

Bye bye.

Bye everyone.

Bye bye.