Regional Transit Partnership (2017-2025) Meeting   8/26/2021

All right, good afternoon.

Welcome to the Thursday, August the 26th Regional Transit Partnership meeting.

I welcome everybody this afternoon.

I think we may be glad today that we are inside in the air conditioning.

The way it feels outside is pretty brutal.

The first order of business, I'm going to read the notice of electronic meeting.

And this meeting is the Regional Transit Partnership is being held pursuant to Code of Virginia 2.2-3708.2, which allows a public body to hold electronic meetings when the locality in which it is located has declared a local state of emergency and the catastrophic nature of the emergency makes it impractical or

Unsafe to assemble a quorum in a single location.

And the purpose of the meeting is to provide for the lawful, for the discharge of its lawful purposes, duties, and responsibilities.

This meeting has been being held via electronic video and audio means through Zoom online meetings.

It is accessible to the public with closed captioning and there will be an opportunity for public comment during that portion of the agenda.

Notice has been provided to the public through notice at the TJPDC offices to the media website posting and agenda.

The meeting minutes will reflect the nature of the emergency.

The meeting was held by electronic communication means.

and the type of electronic communications means by which it was held.

A recording of the meeting will be posted at the TJPDC.org website within 10 days of the meeting.

All right.

And Lucinda, I'm going to ask us if you will help us take the attendance.

If you'll read out the names of the folks present and if you all will respond.

so that we can catch a good accurate attendance record.

That'd be great.

Thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

Mr. Sherman.

Is it Davis?

Yes.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you.

Ms. LeBeau?

Ms. Pennington?

Here.

Ms. Shackelford?

Okay, I think we caught everybody.

Thank you, Lucinda.

Our first order of business is the matters from the public.

Okay.

All right, then I'll move on to the next agenda item, which is welcoming the change of leadership.

And I just wanted to thank Lloyd from the city of Charlottesville for volunteering and agreeing to be our vice chair this year.

We really appreciate your stepping up to the plate.

I know everyone on this Zoom call has lots to do and I appreciate you taking the Vice Chair position and taking the time to do that.

It's really nice.

The other position that are the staff changes that we wanted to note, Sandy, would you like to go over the TJPDC staff changes?

Yeah, we've had a few.

The most important to this organization, and I just want to also make sure everybody is aware that Mayor Walker joined us as well.

The most important one though is that Jessica, while she is on the call today, has left the PDC to work with Albemarle County.

So she'll still have a presence here, but all of the work on the transit planning grants and the administration of the RTP

has shifted over to Lucinda.

All right, thank you.

The next item on our agenda is approval of our meeting minutes.

And these are the meeting minutes from July of 21.

Are there any comments about the minutes

So this is Becca.

At the end of the minutes, it talks about three football games in a row.

And it's going to seem like three football games in a row.

But it's actually just three football games early on.

So I don't know.

Anyway, we have three.

That's the way the schedule falls, right?

But I'll leave it the way it is.

I just want this body to know they're not every single week in a row.

There's two weeks, then a pause, then a minute.

So anyway, no need to change minutes.

Yeah, and it's an unusual schedule.

Yeah, a little unusual from what we're used to.

Yes, I can't approve it because I wasn't here, but you said July 21st.

I think I said July of 21, which was what I thought.

Maybe I misspoke, but you're right.

I was on my way to France.

You were.

I so move.

Thank you, Hal.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

Thank you, Becca.

I appreciate it.

So let me run through then.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

And then any abstentions?

And that would be Bea.

Bea is abstaining.

And I don't think anyone else is abstaining.

So looks like we have our minutes approved.

Thank you.

Then our member spotlight is next.

And Lucinda and Counselor Snook are going to be the spotlight folks today.

Let's have ladies first.

Lucinda, you wanna start?

Thanks, Diantha.

So as you all know, I'm Lucinda Shannon.

I work at the TJPDC.

And I grew up riding transit with my mom from a very early age.

We didn't have a car most of the time growing up, so we were riding the bus.

And I took public transit to high school.

And even before that, I was taking inner city buses and trains to visit friends in other regions.

I took the train all the way up to Montreal in high school.

It was really fun.

And when I went to UMass in Amherst, they had a really good bus system.

It covered the entire region and I was always on it.

Even when I had a car, I preferred to ride.

And after getting my master's degree in public administration from UMass in Amherst,

I moved to DC and worked at Easterseals Office of Public Affairs on federally funded technical assistance programs for transit, disability, and aging service providers for 10 years.

Then I went into private consulting for three years working on transit studies and transportation research board reports.

I did a lot of case studies.

And now I'm in Charlottesville to be closer to family and friends.

My husband's from this area.

I'm excited to be in Charlottesville and that this community values transit and is forward thinking.

And I get really excited about mobility management programs, travel training, bus rapid transit, and accessible pathways.

I'm also passionate about land use planning for transit and walkability and bus stop amenities and maintenance.

That's really cool.

I didn't know that you foster and train dogs.

I am.

So I started fostering gosh, like 15 years ago.

So I had a lot of behavior problems with my fosters.

So I learned how to kind of do that, like leash aggression,

Resource Guarding, those types of things.

And then I got into training my own dogs and I joined a freestyle club, which is dog dancing, where you train your dog to walk with you and do little dance moves with you.

And I am taking a class now to become a certified care and prior dog trainer.

which is like 100% positive dog training which has really helped me also in my personal and professional life because it turns out you can train people like your husband.

This is really cool.

You are a good person to know.

I may be calling you for a different reason about the transit.

The other thing that I think is interesting is you do make a good point because I've heard over and over again that one of the actions that communities should take is trying to get their young people, high schoolers especially, to use transit because it gets, even at an earlier age if possible, because it gets them used to transit

And then they will use it as an adult more freely.

All right, does anybody have any questions?

I kind of asked, jumped in and asked Lucinda questions.

Does anybody else have any questions for her?

Well, in Charlottesville is a very small universe department.

Lucinda's mother-in-law is Judge Jeanine Shannon, with whom I shared office space 36 years ago.

And when we were talking together a couple of weeks ago,

I was sharing some stories with Lucinda about Janine's doings that I hope she can use to good effect in family circles.

My main interest in transit has been that I am convinced that Charlottesville is needing to transition from being a suburban thinking town to being a city thinking city and that transit is an important part of that.

It is also, I think, an important part of an affordable housing strategy and a city planning strategy to deal with questions of, you know, for example, there's no way we could park all of the cars that would be necessary for downtown Charlottesville to be a one person, one car kind of community.

and transit for the long run has to be a part of that solution.

So for me, it's purely a practical urban design kind of issue that I see the city and Charlottesville of the future to be one that is transit dependent.

That's great.

And Lloyd, you're really, you're spot on.

And I always say to people when they talk about how Albemarle County is urbanizing and I say, no, we have urbanized.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We have a rural area, but we have urbanized.

Yes, I agree.

And I'm going to ask just a quick minute.

Christine has emailed me about or texted me about something and the technology skills.

I'm just going to, yeah, I didn't want to interrupt.

I was going to let the transit discussion happen the way it was organically, but it looks like I want to take responsibility on behalf of the PDC, but it looks like our intern is not present and there may have been, oh, Lucinda is putting her finger up.

You're muted Lucinda.

Okay.

I just wanted to alert you guys that we may, if he is not present, we may need to boot that agenda item to a future agenda.

Great.

That's good.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

So we'll just go right on through and see how it goes then.

Next agenda item is, we actually discussed in the pre-agenda meeting, moving the transit provider updates to more of the body of the meeting because most people are so really interested in those updates.

So we thought we would try that order today.

So with that, Karen, I see you're ladies first again, so.

Sure, I would love to.

Thank you.

So I kind of broke the update down into sections.

And I'm going to attempt to show you a couple of slides that I put together about some things that we've been up to as well.

So we'll see how that goes.

First of all, service updates.

I would

I'm pleased to let you know that ridership is coming right back and this is trending up and our services back to full service in all areas, despite the driver shortage that we're experiencing.

I'm also pleased to let you know that the Crozet Connect is back up and running full service and no longer running on a COVID

schedule.

And we got up and running ahead of when Becca had let us know that employees might be coming back.

And so we wanted to make sure we got any of the kinks out of it and to make sure it's operational.

So very excited about that.

And hopefully that ridership will return.

Many of those people I know, professionals will be able to telecommute, et cetera.

But we had such a great ridership before COVID.

And I'm hoping that that will come back

All right, here, I'd like to attempt to show you a couple of photos.

So here it goes.

Can I share my screen, Lucinda?

Yeah, okay.

Here we go.

Stephen's gonna make fun of me.

But here we go.

One of our most exciting, can you see that?

Is that?

It looks like, there we go.

So one of our most exciting projects recently and Stephen who's at this meeting helped definitely spearheaded this effort.

He arranged for a free on demand demonstration of software called Spare.

And he designed the test and Stephen you're welcome to jump in to talk about it.

But in short, we tested it in the urban area

And we tested it in a rural area, which specifically Louisa County, to see if connectivity would work in the rural areas.

And it did.

This is just a couple of fun slides.

Over on the left, you'll see the pickup drop-off.

You'll see the vehicle, just much like Uber.

So that was a Jaunt vehicle.

I was tracking on my phone.

It gives you an estimate of when the vehicle will arrive.

So I had a great experience.

I requested a pickup.

They came and got me and I decided to go to Trader Joe's.

And when I was in line checking out, I requested a return trip and the Jaunt vehicle came and picked me up and took me back.

And so it was really terrific.

We learned a lot from this.

Obviously this is just the beginning, but this is a model that we are committed to bringing

to our service offerings and to our communities.

So there's the group.

Drivers jumped in, they were excited to try a new model.

We had pretend passengers all over the place using the app.

Just to add that, you know, a major motivation for doing this test is that software is extraordinarily difficult

to Procure.

You can go through a really robust RFP process, but you're still not going to see every element of a software package before they want you to sign the line.

And so we were pretty adamant with this company that we wanted to try doing something a little bit different.

So they went out on a limb and this is the, we're the first company that they've ever done this for, but they allowed us to install

the software on our tablets and run it on our vehicles with our drivers and our staff interacting with the software.

And I think that really speaks to the confidence that the company had in their software.

So this is just the beginning.

But we're very excited.

So the next thing I wanted to update you on is some community connections.

We were thrilled to welcome Becca and her management team to Jaunt.

And the synergy, the big word, was amazing.

They got picked up in a John bus, brought to our home base, and we had

I don't know what, three hours of meeting where we were brainstorming, where we can make connections.

And from here, we've committed to meeting regularly, setting some priorities out of the brainstorming that we did and really meeting and then breaking down into small groups and really brainstorming some solutions to some of our problems.

Off the top of my head, I will say that a pain point for us is

providing service to UVA Hospital because the Jaunt buses are large.

It's very congested.

And especially at the cancer center, we're not allowed to go through the pickup area.

We have to wait back towards the garage and work with their staff to try to get the passengers.

So anyway, that was just a great example of Becca jumping on, helping to brainstorm some solutions to that.

And that will go a long way

to making our staff really happy.

So anyway, more to come.

It was a great time and so glad to have them here at Jaunt.

No, I can't thank Karen and her team enough.

I love looking at Kendall right here in the middle.

That list of brainstormed items, very valuable for us to move forward together.

And I can't thank Karen enough for the hospitality and the proactive get us together.

We had fun.

That was my first Wordle, by the way, like in a decade.

So I was very proud of myself.

I found a bust shape and everything.

But those were all some of the ideas that had come out of our meeting.

OK.

So now I'm going to stop sharing because that's the end of the cool stuff that I have.

And then I'm just going to drone on and on.

So let me just get you back up and running here.

Can't find the stop sharing slide.

Let's see if this works.

OK, there we go.

OK, great.

My IT specialist for here, I hate feeling.

Anyway, so that was fabulous.

Continuing on with the community connections.

I had an amazing tour and meeting with Peter Thompson over at the center.

I'm embarrassed to say that it was the first time I had been over there since it opened.

It is so beautifully designed and it was warm and welcoming and serene.

And Peter, I've told all my staff

That when we get together for coffee, it's going to be at your place.

And it was just so calm compared to my work environment too.

It was a really great meeting.

We found a lot of connection also.

I mean, obviously John's been providing service to the center and at the previous location, as well as this one.

And I was pleased to see John buses coming and going as we were talking and

I'm sure that the perfect service that was being provided had nothing to do with the fact that we were sitting there.

But anyway, I was proud of my staff.

They were doing a great job.

So Peter and I also talked about on demand and how that could really be a valuable model for his membership.

And so that might be something we discussed further.

And of course, I extended an invitation to him and his team to come on over to Jaunt

and tour and meet.

I think that would be really terrific.

A quick little community update.

Our TomTom bus is getting wrapped right now.

So stay tuned.

It's a great design this year.

I'm expecting it to be done by September.

So we love this program and we were sorry to say goodbye to our robot bus, but this new one is going to be really exciting.

A couple of updates regarding COVID.

We're tightening up our policy in-house.

As you know, we reopened, so we're back to masks in public spaces.

Small meetings between people who are vaccinated can unmask.

It's so sad that we're having to deal with this again, but as you know, drivers and passengers on public buses are all masked, so that's

stays in place.

About 75% of our staff are vaccinated, which is pretty good.

I've been encouraging in a variety of ways.

The next steps that I will be taking here at Jaunt is we have arranged for a mandatory education session with the Blue Ridge Health District via Zoom for everyone in our agency that has some direct questions, some answers

right from the health district itself, followed up by the mobile unit is coming on grounds at Jaunt to provide vaccination to any staff that might want to take advantage of that being literally in their own backyard.

And you're all welcome.

I'll send out that date if you know of people who might want to come over to Jaunt and take advantage of that.

It's free.

We're also on the wait list already to get the mobile unit to come back out and do the booster shots.

So that's lined up as well.

So I'm trying to do as much as I can to make it as easy as possible for our staff to become vaccinated.

Luckily, knock on wood, we have not had any cases in a very, very long time, which is wonderful.

Drivers, as we discussed last time and this time, there's definitely a national shortage and definitely a local shortage.

I was just taking steps to put a recruitment bonus in place only to realize that both CAT and UTS totally offered much bigger bonuses, so I had to revisit that whole program.

I think that's my frugality that was coming out, but I think I need to pump that up a little bit.

I am happy that our drivers have stabilized.

And Garland, I only know one driver that's going over to you.

So far, I'm keeping my drivers here at Jaunt.

In an effort to recruit drivers, we are participating in two hiring events through the Virginia CareerWorks.

We currently do have a class of drivers in training and about to be released, which is terrific.

We've been having town hall meetings so that I can talk with drivers directly.

And we're having our first post-pandemic, kind of post-pandemic rodeo at Albemarle High School back in the marching band lot.

We're doing it in a very truncated way.

So it's very efficient and distanced, but just kind of want to build the skills, have some fun, let them compete a little and kind of get us back up and running.

So I'm excited about that.

I want to conclude, and I want to take everyone's time, but I just want to let you know that I'm pleased to announce that Stephen Johnson has been promoted.

He is now the director of planning and process, and he has earned every bit of it.

And now we'll have a transit planner directly reporting to him and a data division here at Jaunt.

And he, as you know, has led some significant projects.

Spare, but Crose Connect, the architect of that.

And so I'm very excited to really release Stephen's potential.

So anyway, joining and congratulating him.

And that's all I have.

That was a great update.

Questions for Karen?

It's actually not for Karen as for Mr. Johnson.

I know you mentioned about the software at any point in time because someone mentioned about a year ago to me the software I think was Mr. Williams about using UVA

Maybe there's someone from Jaunt, but using UVA software for the rides, the students seem to be very in tune with that software, when it was going to pick them up, when it was going to arrive and everything.

Yeah, so as Karen mentioned, we are fostering a really strong partnership with the EVA and UTS.

We do already collaborate with the Transloc software, which is the primary software that UTS uses to communicate with their riders.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

Bea makes a really good point because I think this board over the years have we've discussed how important it's going to be

for our users to have a seamless process, even if we have different software packages, right, for the different providers.

For the rider, it needs to be seamless so that they're not having to go to multiple apps to get where they need to go.

And that's what I think Bea is getting at when she asks that question.

And I was going to ask Karen, you and Stephen the same thing.

So I am thrilled.

to see that you all are following through on some of the on-demand work that we've done.

I'm excited, but for our urbanized county portion, Lowe's and Fishes, for example, would be a great pilot spot for the on-demand.

But having said that, what, Stephen and Karen, would this new app that you're using, is there a way that we would be able to eventually interface so that the riders don't have

Don't have to go to all these different apps.

So I think we are at the infancy of us and what both Bea and Diantha, both of what you said is really important and valuable.

And I think we've all been challenged by communities where everything is kind of broken and disconnected.

It is one of the great things about being on Transloc with Becca's team because you can see all of UTS routes, all of our connect routes in real time.

So it's really exciting.

And our riders are using that app to track the buses already.

So definitely Transloc is, actually, it was one of the hot topics in our brainstorming session with UTS.

And we will have some connection on that to learn about it even more.

And actually,

Becca had offered up a very large and robust offering to have some of my staff go with them down to the headquarters for TransLink to really get some information.

Right, that's great.

Other questions for Karen or even Stephen?

Everybody good?

Well, that's great news.

In terms of tracking the buses, that's a question for Garland.

We're not on Transloc.

We have a contract that's still in existence with UTA, UTS.

UTS and then UTA is the company that we just contracted with for APCs.

So that contract is still valid through I believe next year, but we do have a way of potentially putting out for bid.

We are looking at the possibility of doing that.

We've been in contact with UTS about some updates we needed them to do with marginal success.

So we are looking at trying to do something that is

more user-friendly.

Remember we have to put it out for bid.

So it could be a trans local wins it.

It could be others who win it.

At the end of the day, and I don't know how I'm not a technology person, but it's really going to be important for transit in this community that for our riders, it's seamless.

Yeah.

Google, Google, uh,

Google Transit basically can help that part of it.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, great.

Any other comments or questions?

Then the next update was going to be from Jim Foley, Albemarle County Public Schools.

Jim couldn't join us today because he's driving a school bus at this time right now.

And he said the good news to let you know was that this was the last day this week he was going to have to drive.

But unfortunately, he is missing our meeting.

Yeah.

Hey, good afternoon, everybody.

And Karen, thank you so much.

A really great update.

With UVA, of course, a lot of it is so much tied to the academic calendar, and it

It changes the fabric of what we're doing.

So just want to remind everybody that, in case you didn't notice, the students are back.

They started moving into the dorms on August 18th.

We started our new route package on the 16th to get a few days under our belt and classes started on the 24th of August.

So we implemented our full new service package

on August the 24th.

Some of the key dates that are ahead of us are those two Saturday football games, but I just don't want people to lose track that there is a Friday football game on September the 24th.

So as we know, transit and parking are tied together very closely.

So we've been watching that uptake of parking permits because that's oftentimes an indication of how many people are back in the office and what potential riders we have.

for CAT or Jaunt or Afton Express.

And on August the 1st, about 55 to 65% of the academic employees had purchased their permits as compared to pre-COVID.

So just in the last three weeks, that number has now increased to 85%.

of the permit holders, employee permit holders on grounds have purchased their permit.

And that's, I mentioned it just because of how parking and transit is so tied together, especially in the last mile transit model that we have.

When you look at our bus rider, of course, we've spoken before about how our employee routes run the same every single day.

If the clinics are open at the hospital, that schedule never changes.

But even in the last two weeks, because of the School of Medicine and the School of Nursing being part of the health system, ridership on those routes have increased from 2,800 passengers a day, boardings a day, to 3,000 boardings a day just in the last 10 days.

On our academic routes, as you can imagine, the sleepy little, oh, we're moving 2,500 people a day,

And as of Tuesday, we are now moving 10,000 passengers per day on our academic routes.

That is an increase of four times the number of people that were boarding 10 days ago as are boarding today.

So our daily boardings are up around 13,000 a day.

That is our pre-COVID boardings were around 15,000 a day.

So give you an idea.

And all of that service is in the last mile, every bit of it.

I want to congratulate everybody on the Afton Express ribbon cutting.

It was a great event.

That service starts on September the 1st, and I'll restate what I said at the ribbon cutting, and that is to encourage every employer in our region, look at your HR data, pick out the zip codes that could benefit from the Afton Express and promote it.

It's going to start on September 1st.

It's got stops downtown.

It's got stops in the county.

It's got stops on grounds.

It's free for a whole month.

So please, I encourage all employers.

UVA is not the only employer around to do that.

Talked a little bit about staffing already.

And yes, since our last RTP meeting,

UVA has implemented a bonus to the driving staff.

It is a total of $2,500, but it's paid out similarly to CAT where it's going to be $1,000 payout right away for our standing staff and $1,000 for new staff.

And then after two full semesters of driving, the rest of the bonus.

So it's paid out similar where you don't get the whole $2,500 right up front, you get

$1,000 up front and then you get $1,500 as you stick with us.

So that's encouraging.

We don't know yet how well it will build our staffing.

We just know it's the absolute minimum that we had to do to even try to build

Staffing.

That said, we are able now to hire student drivers again.

We were on pause for that for 18 months.

That's very significant to us, but we are in the clear now to hire student drivers again.

We're always looking for very goody-two-shoe type, you know, Love Transit, Shannon types, Lucinda types to become

become bus drivers.

So we had a very sick, there's a activity fair for the students and we got a lot of leads on that.

So hopefully that'll bring us some staffing relief, but this bonus thing is becoming an industry standard.

There are some that are staggering around even just around the state or around the country.

And this condition is impactful to everyone.

We also, with this return of the academic session, of course, that means some of the academic programming up at North Fork is going up a few notches up there.

And just so this body knows, and if there's any connection to have the reach go a little further, we are doing a transit survey of the UVA tenants at North Fork.

to see what their needs are because the Park Connect stopped running back when COVID started.

It has not restarted and there are no plans to restart it.

So we're kind of going back to square one with a transit survey to those employees.

I did submit our route changes

They're attached to the package.

I noticed that I wrote 23 bullet points, which is probably

20 bullet points too many in certain groups.

But this is exactly the internal briefing document that we all shared at UVA.

And I know you guys are technical transit loving people.

So if you got through all 23 bullet points, I salute you.

I'm not going to go over them because the gist of it is we pulled our daytime service off of McCormick Road.

and are serving from a transit hub on Whitehead Road.

We are serving McCormick Road weekdays after six and on the weekends.

So there's a lot of bullet points but that's very much.

Your package also has the route maps

for the weekday before six and the weekday after six and weekends.

And so if you have any questions or suggestions, like I said, the Cavalier Daily is on me.

They've written me twice during this meeting saying, can we talk?

Can we talk?

And I'm like, okay, we're on day three of this service.

So welcoming,

Feedback on that, but we're very much in the first 72 hours literally of this service package.

And early indications are that we need to battle with the students.

Why isn't the bus on McCormick Road and why is COVID restrictions still impacting transit when 99% of the students are vaccinated?

So that's gonna be a trick, especially since the mask mandate has been extended to January of 2022 on public transit.

So it's gonna be a constant battle.

I'll open it up to questions for Becca.

I'll stop with a thank you so much to Jaunt for a great start to

Well, it is a really, when we see the different transit providers collaborating, it makes all of us just really smile and very happy.

I have a quick comment, Becca, and we don't have to go down, talk about it a lot, but I would love to get back to the very last bullet, direct communication with U Heights management team on alternative transit approach.

I would love to get with you at some point because I hear a lot from the folks at U Heights,

about struggling to get transit service.

And to be honest with you, the folks I'm hearing from are not the UVA students that live there, but we do have a portion of immigrants that live there that don't have access to cars and driver's licenses.

And I know at one point a few years ago, one of them was trying to take a job across town and it was

seven transfers round trip.

Our service there starts on Tuesday and it was built based on a transit survey that I believe they did with their residents and it's a van service that's not going to be public transit, it's van service.

Yeah, and that discussion with you also would need to include Garland, but that would be something we could talk about maybe offline that the three of us could chat about.

Anyway, and speaking of Garland, you are next, sir.

And I think you're going to report out on not only CAT, but of course, your pupil transit system.

And you know, Garland, I'm having trouble hearing you.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Can you hear me now?

Yeah.

So I would just say one of the last points we are looking, we've had our consultants to look at how to get our transit service closer to your heights.

So we are working with Becca on that.

We have been in communication with her.

So we'll continue to look at that and see what we can do.

But for CAT's update,

of the transit side of it as opposed to pupil first.

We had a bus shelter design charrette that was on the 10th of August.

It went really well.

It introduced numbers, individuals from VDOT, the planning staffs from the county and the city about the processes that we have to go through with the state and the feds.

to make shelter purchases and installs happen.

So I think that was eye-opening, but it also gave us an opportunity to kind of assess from a style and architectural perspective what kind of shelters would be able to fit within the public right-of-ways and whether we could potentially do something that is unique to Charlottesville that could be built and designed around incorporating

Not only CAT, but University Transit and Jaunt, so we would make it kind of a place of our own.

So that went well.

We're gonna follow up with that in about another month or so with some preliminary designs, and we'll shoot it out to everybody and bring a different group together, because we need to kind of talk through that.

On the 3rd of September, TJPDC staff will be over for a visit.

I want to kind of introduce them to my team, give them the lay of the land.

It's not very big, so it's not going to be a big meeting.

So I will also say that we're going to show them some of the potential capital projects that we're going to put on so they would be able to kind of have a little bit of insight before we start to submit those.

It is already on the state's radar, but I think, you know, it's time now to get the local

Our local groups are kind of involved in the discussions.

Additionally, we have our first draft and we're finishing that up pretty quickly because the timeline is running pretty quick.

The trips grant with the state that allows that may allow us to go fare free for an additional three years.

So there was a study completed by Kipling Horn

Our portion of the study was done.

It looks pretty favorable for us to be able to potentially do it and continue.

One of the requirements is the money that the state provides is declining in nature over three years.

And the fourth year has to be picked up by the jurisdictions.

So that preliminary study has been sent out to a couple of our partners.

to take a look, get some feedback, and we'll have other discussions pretty quickly here in the next week or two.

We may need approvals, an ordinance or a resolution, probably just a resolution of support from the city and potentially even the county.

But there's also maybe an opportunity for our partner at UVA to potentially help out, because there will be

fare free for the entire region for additional four years.

So the last thing I wanna say is one of the great things that we've been working through and it's coming to fruition finally is that the APC project, which is the automatic passenger counter project that we've been kind of working through all of the APCs have been installed.

The validation process is going on right now.

It looked very favorable, and we're gonna be able to potentially use the temporary APC information that we had on, because it's the same model, it's the same, then the same software to do our validation process, which can help us speed it up, to allow us to actually report APC data to the NTD, which also reports to the state, our ridership figures, which is a really good thing for

for CAT, and we'll hopefully normalize our ridership fluctuations and also provide a boost because it's much more accurate for us to be able to count with automatic passenger counts instead of the fareboxes.

The bonus component that I wanted to kind of talk through is, like Becca said, ours is $2,400.

It is three payments of 800 bucks.

The first one in September, the second in December, and the last in June for existing drivers and for our eight bus aids.

And then any new driver or bus aid will get their first installment of the bonus 30 days after coming on board.

And then they'll fall in line with the additional payments with everyone else.

Unless they come in after December, they know that the first one, it'll double up in June.

I mean, yes, in June.

So we're working through this model pretty well.

We've also set up flu shot vaccinations for our team that's gonna come in pretty quickly, the regular flu.

And also we are in contact with Blue Ridge about doing a mobile vaccination just to make sure.

but we do have still on-site testing for our team every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on that side.

Switching to, we have a first day kicked off, some hiccups, but as well as I think it could have gone.

We are all short in drivers and like Rebecca said that it's a national crisis.

The bonuses are one of the things that you used to look at as a luxury, but now it is a necessity to even keep your existing staff.

A lot of folks with CDLs are in demand, not just for transit, but for over the road.

And some folks are finding it safer and easier, health-wise, for them to be over the road as opposed to carrying passengers.

That's what I've heard.

I'm not sure if that's true, but that's how they're feeling.

So a lot of them are particularly

having taken their CDLs and doing over-the-road transit where they're by themselves.

So we're doing everything we can to keep and maintain our existing and build upon that.

But on the pupil side, we have a pretty good robust campaign that we've been rolling out.

You may have seen some of the ads in the papers and on the radio.

We've had in-person driver interview sessions.

We've had, you know,

10 or 15 people come and do those.

Most just want to drive.

They'd really probably don't even really want to work as a bus driver.

They wanted to get that experience, but we have, but our efforts have been fruitful and we've hired five and potentially two more bus drivers for the city pupil side.

We are lending six bus, six transit drivers over to pupil.

They have been enticed to do so.

And then we are going to be adding additional service and capacity on pupil size starting September 13th.

Oh, one of the things I forgot to say is that because we know there was going to be potentially some high schoolers that were going to use our service.

We added additional service during the peak periods of time on Route 9, which connects

to the YMCA and to Charlottesville High School.

So now they're a service that leaves downtown on the hour and on the 30.

So it's basically 30 minute service getting anyone who wants to go, not just students, but anyone who wants to go along that route to make sure we cover ourselves with the FTA.

It's not designed just for the students, but it's designed to make sure we

Moving staff in the community around as efficiently as we possibly can.

We are aggressively trying to hire, we are 22 drivers down on transit side and we are 20 drivers down on pupil side.

Until those numbers get up, the efforts that we wanted to make to roll out the new service cannot be done because we don't have the staff to do so.

So we're aggressively hoping to be able to get more in the house.

And we have hired, we're in the process of hiring about 10 transit drivers.

Those have all been offered.

And one to 10 of our temporary drivers have now switched over to permanent part-timers, which is also going to help the situation and make our efforts a lot better.

So once that takes hold, then we'll be able to assess when we can actually roll out the new enhancements.

Thank you, Garland.

These were all great reports.

Does anybody have any questions for Garland?

I just wanted to say, Garland, that I'm very interested in the bus stop.

information.

We're re-engaging with Old Trail.

We had early discussions.

We're kind of uncovering documents about things that we had discussed with them back two years ago.

But anyway, our team also had come to the realization that something really unique in design would be much more appropriate than some of the standard things that we were looking at.

So please keep us in the loop on that.

Also, I would love to have your APC information.

That is an issue for us on our commuter routes, and Stephen and I have been talking about that.

So love to see what you're using.

And then finally, just for the team, we are also conducting fare-free study for the ADA service for Urban Albemarle and Charlottesville, as well as our rural areas.

First blush, for us, we were also preparing for a trip application, but

It looks like because of the in-house savings that we have made as a result of going fare-free, we may not need to pursue that.

Actually, over time, with our projected growth rate, we might be able to stay fare-free without additional burdens to the locality.

So stay tuned.

I would just say, yes.

It is never the intention of us to leave Jaunt or University Transit out.

So the initial charrette was designed to get really kind of a one-on-one session with VDOT and kind of the players on the city and the county side.

But now we need to bring our partners in to kind of work through the model and we'll do that.

That's the next meeting.

And we're using UTA.

Fortunately, the procurement process they went through, UTA gave us the best proposal.

And one of the major things that they emphasized in their proposal is that they currently provide the APC information support to University Transit.

which was a big plus on our evaluation team.

So that was very helpful.

That's great.

Peter, did I see your hand at one point?

Yeah, thanks, Diantha.

Garland, your audio was breaking up a little bit, at least on my end, when you were talking about short-handed.

So you may have addressed this, but it didn't quite hear it.

We are in the final processes of getting their approvals.

The last piece that we have to do

which we will hopefully be able to kick off next Friday is get a consultant on board to finish up the required Title VI review from the changes based on the feedback that we got from the community.

Once that is done, it has to go to council.

And we will also share that information with Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.

Once all that is done, then we can set a date firm to make the potential enhancements and advertise it and start installing required bus stops in locations that don't have them.

Because as we're implementing bi-directional transportation, you have to have bus stops installed.

Your location is one of the places that we have to install a bus stop.

So the bus stops will come up.

You'll start to see them probably like two to three weeks before service starts.

That would be the key indication as to when we will go, but we will announce it and advertise it and make a big fanfare of it because it is a big thing for us to potentially implement these changes.

The timeline is continuing to shift because we're having to use some of the manpower from transit to help get students to school.

So until we can backfill,

I can't give you a firm date.

Unfortunately, I wish I could, but I can't.

One of the things we've got to do is, we've got limited staff and we're recruiting as hard and as quickly as we possibly can, but we've got to be able to provide service, public service, transit service to the region.

But we also got to be able to provide service to the,

School System.

I wish I could snap my fingers and get 50 more drivers, but that's not how it works.

City council technically has already approved the route changes, contingency upon

us really not having any rough findings or harsh findings for the Title VI analysis.

I need to bring that back to them.

That was one of the things that, you know, I came to them and said, this is, and they, it was basically, okay, we've shown you, this is kind of what we want to do.

We're going to do the public meeting requirements.

And then now we're working through the final pieces, which are getting

Everybody on board is saying this is, you know, this is affirmative that it doesn't violate any title six issues.

These are the final tweaks from suggestions and feedback from the public.

And now we can potentially move forward.

Okay.

That's really good information.

And I will say, Peter, I'm going to share a link with you because we have a great podcast that one of our staff members has done on transit along the Rio Road corridor.

And the center is mentioned several times and you might be interested.

Matter of fact, I'll just ask Lucinda to send that link out to everybody.

If you're interested in transit in the urban area, Albemarle, it might be an interesting

Podcast for folks to listen to.

And with that, I'll just make a suggestion that Karen, when you're looking at your on-demand, the area over that we were talking about earlier with U Heights might be a really interesting place to look at as well.

That's the type of, the on-demand is what I think is gonna really solve some of these issues that we have, yeah.

And unless there's somebody else that wants to make a comment

I am thrilled to say that we have Sam here, Sam Pittman, our TJPDC intern.

And Sam, oh, there you are.

You just popped up.

Great.

I'm going to turn this, the agenda over to you right now, because you're going to give us an update.

Well, thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

It's good to see so many familiar faces again, including TJPDC staff and members of the RTP.

I've actually been out of the TJPDC for about a month now, but obviously have some updates based on some of the work we were doing between the last meeting I was at two months ago, the RTP actually, some of the interactions, some of the work we've done based on the interactions with many of you, kind of where we've come to.

And I'm gonna focus on two things today.

That's Peer Cities, and then the Driver Appreciation Report, which has been a long time in the works.

We hopefully will get wrapped up with some different suggestions in the near future.

So I will share my screen if that's okay.

And I'll have...

There are four documents today to go over each of you.

And the first one has to do with peer cities.

So based on our last meeting two months ago, as far as I remember, we had the cities nailed down.

We're looking at some work being done there.

Hopefully it's more info to get back to each of you.

I'm happy to say that we have different best practices and other plans that these cities has put in place, as well as contact information.

I will say one of the barriers we've run into is that most of this relates to transit and isn't necessarily totally applicable to things like Charlottesville schools and Albemarle schools, but there is a little bit of overlay there.

So I put together a document with, I think, some of the most interesting things that we ran into as well as, you know,

myriad of other information from the places we looked at.

First, I want to start off with fare-free transit, which is something that's been discussed a lot today, kind of like two case studies relating to that.

The first is when we were looking at Missoula, Montana, we noticed that they have had fare-free transit actually for about six years.

And so I think it'd be really interesting to look at there and the impacts that it had before COVID, during COVID, hopefully,

coming out of COVID, hopefully in the near future at some point.

And so I think it's really interesting looking at Missoula and see the impacts that have happened there with it.

Kind of in opposition to that is their abandoned Champaign area in Illinois.

They have been fare-free transit through the last 15, 16, 17 months.

But actually, as of about two weeks ago, August 15th, they changed back to changing fares and doing front door boarding and all of their transit systems.

So I think, again, it could be interesting when the spring comes to potentially invite somebody like that if they're willing to come.

to present about maybe some of the challenges they've run into with that in the months that they've had it implemented, but also maybe see what their revenues are and just how it's going overall since they've re-instituted fares.

And then finally, we've had discussions about electric buses and RTP and kind of transitioning to that.

Duluth, Minnesota is really interesting case study in that they have found some successes in transitioning to electric, but they've also found a lot of challenges.

Obviously it's a little bit colder there and the terrain's not exactly the same, although it is particularly.

But again, it is a pretty interesting case study in that what can go right and what can go wrong in electric buses.

So again, I think it would be really interesting

organization, Duluth Transit to bring in in the spring to kind of talk about the challenges they faced.

And of course there are highlights from other cities that are noteworthy, especially Burlington.

I know Supervisor McKeel, we've had a couple of conversations in RTP about, you know, bus systems running the same lines.

They have a really interesting proposal in that their transit system will actually start calling kids around in the rural areas to kind of get rid of those duplication of routes.

And a few other things relating to transit, school districts, things that are applicable to UTS, really all around.

Okay, so on the driver appreciation front, I'm thankful to most of you for being able to get back a lot of information.

This is something that's over a year in the works and we're able to get a lot of your data points on pay, you know, how long people stay there, all of that.

Obviously not everything is applicable to all agencies again, but I'm thankful for those of you that have responded.

I will say there are a couple of barriers to this, and I'll get to the second one here in a minute.

But the first one is that when I was talking to one of your agencies, there was a concern about FOIA.

I believe in the meetings last summer, there was a lot of interest in sharing this information between agencies to see what other people were doing, what other people weren't doing.

Maybe if there's a little bit of room to improve bonuses or other things, you know, how that would work.

But again, if that is a big concern amongst the group with FOIA, I think that is something that needs to be talked about.

And then I'll get, again, get here to the second thing in a minute.

But the idea, again, a year ago was to come up with some kind of document that we can pass around different recruits for the different agencies, whether it be Albemarle School, Charlottesville Schools, UTS, John, whatever it may be, to kind of look at the highlights of each one.

Again, not necessarily like, oh, they pay more and all of that, but really two or three data points or belief systems that exist within each organization that they think are their highlights and really drive their organization to be maybe the best one to work for.

So we don't have an official document that we put together but maybe just an idea of what it could look like is a one or two page would be passed around with different information about each agency that again points out the highlights.

The second problem that I want to talk about where we kind of run into is that this is really difficult to do, especially if it's just one person applying to one agency.

That agency probably isn't going to want to say, oh, but this other agency is doing all these great things.

And so really the only way this would be possible would be through something like a shared recruit pool or a shared driver pool where people apply into one system

And then all five agencies essentially select their drivers out of there.

There was some interest in that in the conversations I had with a few people, but there was also pushback between or amongst a couple of different agencies around that.

So again, these are all, you know, we have these documents of the TJPDC, again, with the driver information,

or the information about each of your agencies.

There are some concerns about FOIA, but I'd be happy to share any of the rest of them with you.

And if we do agree as a group in the RTP.

to share the agency information amongst the different agencies, sorry.

That'd be something that we have ready to go.

But I'd be happy to try and answer any questions.

Again, I've been out of this for about a month now, but obviously Lucinda's here and we've been working together a little bit as well as Christine.

Thank you, Sam.

I think maybe you can take your presentation down so we can see.

That way, I can see if anybody has a question for you.

And we really appreciate you jumping back on at the last minute today.

Thank you very much.

I'm still around.

That's OK.

OK. All right.

Good enough.

Sam.

Just wanted to say, it looks like we owe you some information.

Sorry about that.

Any other comments or questions?

Sam, I would love to see the peer cities document for sure, because we are talking about having

A virtual tour perhaps with Blacksburg in the spring.

This group has talked about going and having a visit to a peer city at some point.

And I think the decision was to try Blacksburg in the spring.

But I just love to see that document.

Could you share that with everybody?

That would be great.

Any other comments or questions for Sam?

All right, thank you very much.

We appreciate you jumping on at the last minute for us like that.

Thank you very much.

And let me just check my agenda.

So we have, oh, DRPT grants update from Lucinda.

So these are our two grants that are working their way, the work for the grants are working their way through the system.

Yeah, I have a presentation.

Just to remind everybody, we have the one grant that's working on transit in Albemarle County, specifically three areas of Albemarle County.

And then we have the other regional

transit grant that is looking at a visioning plan for our entire community, the Charlottesville and Albemarle and as well as the university area.

Okay, great.

So the Albemarle transit expansion study, I want to just point out that we have

Two different grants that we're working on.

The transit expansion study is a short-term project and it's just within Albemarle County and it's to expand transit services in the near term.

So that's a feasibility study.

And I'm not sure how much you guys have reviewed this in the past.

It started in June and the budget is $106,000.

And it covers the Pan Tops area, the Thomas Jefferson Monticello, and along Route 29 north between the city limits and the UVA research park.

So those are kind of the top three areas that the study's looking at.

And what they'll be doing is doing some analysis and stakeholder outreach.

Well, actually, next slide.

So they're going to start off doing a needs assessment, which is going to include some market analysis and service analysis and some stakeholder outreach.

We already have a website up and we've been doing some, we've been having, so the market and service analysis is complete.

We have the draft that we're reviewing now and it should be out soon.

And that market and service analysis was shared with stakeholders and the public.

So we had two public meetings, three stakeholder meetings, and we also presented at the Places29 community advisory committee.

And we have a technical committee that's meeting monthly and reviewing these types of things as well.

Any questions on the Albemarle Transit Expansion Study?

I can't see either.

Yeah, all right.

But we can, at the end, we can have questions too.

So the Transit Vision Plan is a little bit longer, and it's for the long-term project, and it's for the entire region.

So it's going to go over about 18 months.

It should be completed on June 30th of 2022.

And it will look at the entire region, do an analysis of the land use and the current services and the reach out to stakeholders and the public, and then develop a vision for the plan.

And then the final product will be

of transit vision plan that has implementation as well.

So the project kind of has like two phases.

They're going to gather information and then develop models based on that information.

And then there'll be a final vision plan.

So right now we're in the gathering information phase.

We've kicked off the project and we've made data requests from providers and gathered land use data.

We're developing a website and a logo.

We're also developing a survey and interactive map that we'll use to get feedback from stakeholders and the public.

and we're looking to meet with the stakeholders in early October and then after that meeting we'll meet with the public and this will help develop a vision statement which will be the next step.

So here's the first couple steps in the gathering information and then after gathering information we'll develop models that will look like that and it'll take us out to 2022.

So I think that's

All I have for this segment.

There it is.

Okay, here we go.

All right.

Any questions from the group on either one of those, the work on either one of those grants?

Looks like everybody's okay.

Thank you very much, Lucinda.

Appreciate it.

All right.

Hey everyone.

So I just wanted to give the group an update on Tri-Transit.

We brought this as a potential collaboration between the transit service providers and RideShare

I think back in June, and we have had some really amazing momentum of coming up with some cool stuff that we're going to do for Tri Transit.

Tri Transit has changed a little bit this year, much like last year when they did

Transit Appreciation Month.

It will no longer be just a week-long event but another month-long celebration and it's going to be called Discover Transit and that particular theme is set from DRPT.

So they will have some promotional materials and things that they are doing throughout the state that we will obviously promote but we wanted to put a nice local spin on it and help all of the folks

in our region discover and understand and overcome some of the barriers to riding transit.

So what we have so far that I wanted to just briefly share with you guys is we're going to do a different kind of category or theme for the journey every week of that month.

We'll have some promos leading up to folks know, you know, teasers that things are coming and to be on the lookout.

And week one is going to be all about planning your trip.

So whether that's through an app,

whether that's calling the reservations desk at Jaunt but what can you do to start the process and sometimes the hardest part is just planning the trip to figure out how you can get to go to the places that you want to go to so all of this will be conveyed in both social media campaign as well as videos that we will be featuring and explaining some of this process through and CAT

Kyle at CAT has graciously volunteered his wonderful video shooting and editing skills and we are thrilled with that because we know he does really good work.

So then week two will be about show up and what that means is okay once you've figured out that you can take transit to get from point A to point B

And you know where to start the journey.

How does it work from there?

One of the things that we really wanted to highlight is the fact that fares are free right now.

And so that is a wonderful asset because paying and understanding how to pay is a barrier or something that intimidates a lot of folks.

So we wanted to talk about that and to definitely talk about the fact that that isn't an issue right now and hopefully won't be for a little while.

So again, you know, how to read a timetable for CAT and for UTS.

So different aspects of like once you've figured out you're going to take a particular form of transit, how do you really get to the point to where you're getting on the bus?

and then the third week will be about enjoy the journey so we're going to talk about the destinations and the origins from where trips can start and some of the connectivity that we have with all of the different transit service providers so showing that you know sometimes maybe if just one mode won't get you there if you combine CAT and Jaunt or UTS or the Afton Express with RideShare that you can make your whole trip happen

and it isn't necessarily as complicated as it sounds if you have to look at a transfer.

And then week four is the one that we're most excited about and we're still kind of working out all of the details here but it's going to be called Bus or Bust.

So it is week four we told you all the things you need to do to explore transit so now

It's time to put it to work and to give it a try yourself.

So we're hoping to come up with some different ways to be able to give out some swag or some, you know, materials, something fun for people to enjoy to reward them for trying it.

So we're really excited about all the opportunities for thinking about

possibly you know doing the giveaways through like a hashtag contest if they use the the hashtag that we're going to use throughout the whole promotion and they show us that they've taken a trip with a photo or something like that like I said still working out those details because that's the hard part initially we wanted to get on the buses and give away prizes but with COVID we're thinking that maybe that might not be the best particular route for that but we have a great team

with Jaunt and CAT and UTS and Lucinda and I with RideShare who have just come up with fantastic ideas and I could not be more excited to getting back to doing these types of promotions.

So that was the quick update there.

One other just really quick thing, I'm just going to reiterate what Becca already did.

African Express starts September 1!

I can't believe it.

It's finally here.

It's really exciting to see the culmination of a really big project and a regional collaboration again with the folks over at the SAWL MPO and CSPDC.

There will be additional promotions to look forward to because much like every other transit, folks who ride Acton Express at least two days every week

are eligible for Guaranteed Ride Home.

So we're going to do a little promotion.

If folks make that commitment to take that mode, at least the two days a week and sign up for Guaranteed Ride Home, there may be some prizes in there for them as well.

So we're just giving away all kinds of stuff.

September is about just giving away stuff.

And oh, what I failed to mention,

Not only was Tri-Transit changing to a month-long promotion, it's moving from September to October.

So we'll have these two particular things back to back.

We feel like we can really get a lot of great messaging out to folks.

Great, Sarah.

Thank you.

Questions for Sarah.

I just had a comment.

Sarah, it's awesome to see the

transit partners back together again promoting transit together.

I remember, you know, there was a lot of great synergy back in the day and it's great to see it back.

Jody's really having fun with it, talking it up here.

Thank you.

Yeah, we're really excited.

It's been a fun planning process yet.

Great.

Okay.

Any other comments or questions for Sara?

Thank you.

Then the next agenda item are our updates.

So I think it looks like to me, Lucinda, you have a couple and then we'll go to Sandy for hers.

Okay, so I have another slide.

So this is our work plan update.

It's for fiscal year 2022.

It starts in June and it starts in July and goes to June.

And so I just, I'm going to go through the major tasks on the work plan.

Program administration is mostly like these meetings, getting the agenda, finding topics and speakers and things like that.

That's ongoing and it's obviously happening since we're having this meeting now.

And then the next task is transit grant support.

So we've been working on supporting the Albemarle expansion grant and the vision plan.

And the Albemarle expansion grant will be ending in January of 2022.

The vision plan will go on until the end of the fiscal year.

For the driver appreciation, I'm going to start working on that now and try to wrap it up pretty quickly.

So I might be checking in with people and getting you some information as soon as I can.

The funding applications is in November.

We're just going to ask the transit agencies what they're applying for.

We're obviously here if anybody needs help with any other types of applications or anything.

And we're going to help see if we can include regional transit partnership

programs or projects in the SmartScale process as well by specifically identifying transit projects that will be eligible for SmartScale.

So that'll be starting around November and applications are due in February.

And that'll lead into the strategic plan, which we're just, in this year, we're going to write a RFP and a scope for the project, and then we'll start looking for

Consultants, and make an award and work on the plan in the following years.

And that's about all I have for that.

I have, yeah, I have one more slide after this.

All right.

So the 29 North Corridor Study update

I've been with you guys before kind of introducing this project.

So we're in the project bowl phase.

They've finished the future no build memo, and they've had a couple of stakeholder meetings, and they're going to have a public meeting on September 9th.

Please share the word, come if you would like.

The meeting will be virtual using Zoom.

And it's going to inform the public of identified issues and concerns found in the future no-build memo.

And then also get feedback on the draft goals of the study.

And then they will be finalizing the goals and starting to work on alternatives, which this is a corridor study for roads.

So the alternatives would be looking at

intersections or corridor lengths that were identified as high need in the future no-build memo.

And they'll design options to try to meet those needs and design some solutions for that.

Then we'll evaluate those solutions based on the project goals and have more public meetings and stakeholder outreach to finalize the alternatives that

We are selected and then we'll present a final report to the community.

Just a quick comment, Lucinda.

I don't have that September the 9th date or anything on my calendar.

I'm waiting on the consultants to get us some information about it and I'm hoping to send out something early next week and start advertising it.

Okay, that's good.

Thank you.

Any other questions for Lucinda?

Sure.

I will also pull up my screen real quickly so we can

I can talk through this.

The first thing we're going to talk about is that it's time for our monthly SmartScale process update.

But in our meeting in July, the MPO did select the four projects that are going to be moving forward for SmartScale preparation.

And so the next thing that we are going to be doing in September, this upcoming month, is appointing the advisory committees for the one project really that needs that level of support.

So again, I'm going to keep it really high level out of respect to counselor Snook who's seen this and knows the decisions that have been made already.

But if you have any questions, we can certainly go right for those.

The four projects that the MPO decided that they would move forward on are going to be the District Avenue Roundabout.

Again, this is over in the shopping center.

And this is largely in Albemarle County, but has some significant impacts for the city as well.

While

We talked in the policy board meeting about needing some additional engagement.

It doesn't seem like we really need an advisory committee necessarily since the project is already fairly discreet as it is, but we do want to make sure that we are doing some substantive outreach for the residential community right here, especially since

This project will likely result, not likely it will result, in at least the removal of one duplex.

So we are going to make sure that we're doing some outreach to that community and walk through that process with them.

The other projects that we're moving forward on is the Urbana River bridge crossing.

So we've already talked about some of the things that we'll need to do for this one are to identify the route, look at some of the connection options and just go through really assessing that feasibility and determining which of these

Potential design considerations or design options for this bridge will be most competitive to actually receive funding as well as meet the community needs.

So this is one where there's already been a significant amount of work and there already is good public engagement, but this is one where we really want to make sure that we're continuing to engage the public well.

So this will have an advisory group appointed to advise us through the process.

And then we also are going to be pursuing some multimodal improvements along Avon Street.

We're going to be starting in the north at Druid Avenue.

There's a bike lane that drops off at Druid Avenue.

So we want to be able to extend the existing bike lane that goes from Charlottesville into Albemarle, make sure we're extending that.

At a minimum, we want to make sure that we get the bike lane or the multimodal improvements.

It's probably going to transition as it moves from the city to the county to the type.

But we want to make sure that we get down to where the park and ride facilities are on Avon Street.

But ideally, as we go through this feasibility study, we're going to look to see if we can move it further south as well to get to the connections of the street shopping center.

And then the last project that we're going to be looking at are some multimodal improvements on 5th Street.

We're going to be looking again at doing some intersection improvements at the 5th Street Station Parkway, but then also incorporating some multimodal improvements, largely bicycle.

I think it was on-road bicycle lanes extending north.

That will also create some connections to the

to the Fifth Street Trails project that was approved in the previous round of SmartScale.

Both the Avon Street Project and the 5th Street Multimodal Project have both recently completed a pretty significant corridor study that had significant levels of public engagement.

So while we do plan to go back to those groups that were involved with developing the recommendations in the plan, we're not going to do the same level of extensive public engagement as we're planning for the Ravana River Bike and Pet Shopping.

A question about the duplex.

So what is the process when you say that it will probably destroy those two homes?

Yeah, this is something that will really have to be relying on the city and on VDOT to help us navigate, but they do have a process that they use when they have to go through this to make sure that the owners and any tenants both have some opportunities to be relocated and make sure that they're able to maintain their standard of living, recognizing that it's still like a very disruptive process, but making sure that

So let's jump in because Chuck Proctor, I see Chuck from VDOT is on our call.

Chuck, do you have anything to add to this process and to respond to Nikuyah's question?

Our right-of-way section will negotiate with, once we identify the limits of the impacts, we will negotiate with the property owners and on compensation for

the right-of-way, whether it's a total take or a parcel take or whatever the damages are.

And there's a process that we'll go through for that.

Regarding the tenant relocation, I'm not exactly sure how that process goes, but that's part of that process too.

And I'd have to get the folks from right away who are more experts in that process to understand how it works.

But we will try to relocate them.

I mean, it just depends on if it's a business, we look at comparable locations where we can put them.

If it's tenants, I'm not exactly sure if those are relocated or how that works.

Most of our dealings are with the property owner itself.

I really appreciate you, Chuck, being on the call today because it was very helpful to have you here.

That, and just so for folks that might not know, that roundabout that we're discussing is at District Avenue, which is at Stonefield.

And I frozen?

Yeah, it's at this intersection of Stonefield and Hydraulic Road.

and it was part of the first recommendation.

The hydraulic work around trying to get that hydraulic intersection safer and that's a really bad area for wrecks and so the roundabout was a recommendation that came out of the

the hydraulic group that worked on that, trying to make that intersection safer.

We're gonna work with the MPO moving forward to, I know we're gonna relook at that concept because there's subsequently development that's been approved on the Northwest Quadrant that we'll have to look at.

and the actual functionality of the roundabout when it was originally designed went with the grade separation at hydraulic and 29 and without that we're gonna try to modify it a little bit so it's not as impactful but and I know we'll be reaching out to the folks from the Meadows neighborhood as part of that outreach.

We did a significant outreach effort before with them so they were understanding and I know the people that live on that road

Peter Hill.

They were concerned about the cut through traffic through the neighborhood.

Yeah, and the hope is that the roundabout will improve everything for them.

But we'll see.

Why just encourage, you know, there are, you know, limitations in terms of like once it's decided.

eminent domain and things like that where the owners have limited say and so I hope that state and I mean city and county that we especially when we're talking about housing prices we don't know how long the tenants have lived there once the owner is negotiated with whatever that looks like which is typically not favorable to them either that we just you know go above and beyond to make sure whoever is going to lose housing if they have to lose it

that we just help them out a little bit more.

I can imagine that the cost of living there, where they would go to, it's going to be an increase for them.

Yeah, you make some really good points.

I agree.

And Chuck, I'm really glad you were on the call today.

Thank you very much.

I should add some more to what Lucinda was saying about the 29 more study.

I know you raised the question on the information.

Yeah, I'm reviewing that information this week.

We're actually going to be putting out a MetroQuest survey, which is an online survey as part of that study.

And that should be going out probably the end of next week.

I'm going to get them comments back tomorrow.

And then we'll be pushing press releases and

Yeah, so it's helpful that Chuck is on here as well, but I just wanted to let you all, make sure you all were aware that VDOT has developed the pipeline process that they're going through to help make sure that we continue to have projects lined up for the smart scale application cycle.

So the next one is going to be in the spring.

And so in addition to the projects I've already been identified by the MPO that we'll be planning to move forward on, VDOT is undertaking a couple of other initiatives.

One of them is in Nelson County at the at the intersection with 29 and Main Street or Front Street.

So if you're driving down there and you get to the stoplight in Nelson County, they're going to be looking at that one.

But the other two that are in the MPO area are on 250, so looking at improvements along the 250 corridor in Pantops and then also in Shadwell, looking at some improvements.

VDOT is putting a lot of resources into this, which includes participation from our state agencies, the MPO, the local government, Chuck's part of those.

So we have some really good opportunities to make sure that we are incorporating all of these different initiatives from transit,

and for the bike pud and multimodal improvements from RideShare to make sure that those are all being incorporated and considered as they're designing these road improvements and identifying potential projects for future funding applications.

Yeah, we had the initial kickoff meetings last month and the beginning of this month

and we'll be having another stakeholders group meeting end of next month, beginning of October and we'll also have a public outreach effort about the same time and we'll be putting up websites with all of the information on the studies that'll be rolling out about the same time.

This is a new initiative that central offices has pushed out to where we can start looking at

the very critical needs across the state that were identified in the D-TRANS long range plan process.

And these were the, we went through the whole district and looked at locations where we had the tier one, what they classified as tier one needs.

And those are the ones we recommend for projects.

And these are the two in

The Albemarle area that we were able to get recommended for funding or to move forward with the studies.

We're going to look at, I know you guys are looking at, as part of the MPO, they're looking at the transit plan for that area.

We're trying to include possibly a location for a park and ride lot.

As Sandy said, we're looking at transit,

possibly some transit stops and transit improvements related to the infrastructure part of it not necessarily the routes or anything that would work with any proposed route changes that they would want to do in that area to better circulate people throughout not everybody have everybody have to drive their vehicles into the city.

So any input you can provide as those studies move along would be greatly appreciated.

And that holds true for the 29 North Study too.

We are looking at the roads, but we're also interested in to know if there's any transit stop improvements.

Great, okay.

Any other comments or questions then?

Yeah, this is just a really quick one, but I just wanted to also let you all know that in years past before COVID hit, we had started holding joint meetings each year with the Stanton Augusta-Wainsboro MPO.

So we have tentatively determined that we are going to keep an eye on COVID conditions and tentatively plan to hold that meeting in November.

We have some really interesting agenda items if we're able to move forward with that meeting, which would need to be in person.

including probably the highlight of that will be looking at how the Afton Express launch is going and maybe having an opportunity.

So we will start having an opportunity to maybe take a short ride on one of those buses with everyone.

But I will certainly keep you all aware of how that progresses.

Again, we're going to be keeping a close eye on the numbers.

It is being hosted on the other side of the mountain this time.

Okay, great.

Any questions for Sandy on any of her reports that

Any questions you might have come up with?

Yeah.

All right.

That brings us to other business.

I don't have any other, any updates or reminders.

I just want to open it up to the board if you all have anything you want to put on the table or new business of any sort.

And I don't see anybody jumping in to say anything.

So with that,

While I hate to do it, I think I'm going to adjourn us 10 minutes early.

And our next meeting then will be on September the 23rd, as you all know at four o'clock.

And you all have a great month and stay safe and enjoy the Labor Day holiday.

And with that, I will adjourn our meeting.

Thank you.

Good night.

Thanks, everyone.