Regional Transit Partnership (2017-2025) Meeting   8/24/2023

So I see Christine, okay.

I need one more for a four.

Is that correct, Lucinda?

Are you counting the additional statistics?

At least you can double check the minutes.

Yeah, that's what we're talking about.

That's a good one.

Oh, okay, great.

I'm hoping you're here as a representative of UTS.

All right.

Where's your new boss?

Oh, we've got a bubble.

And Garland, since I'm looking at you, I'll get you to start.

Garland is the director of Charlottesville.

I don't want to go over roots in the organization.

Yeah, a lot of splashes.

Let's do it.

Good afternoon, Lucas Ames, John Urban, Ann Mallek, Adam O'Kenden, Donald McKeel, Albemarle Valley, Brian Pinkston, Charlottesville City Council, Steven Hicks, intro and deputy city manager of operations, you're the new guy, Lester Sanders, well thank you, glad to be here, thank you, Peter Thompson of the center, I'm representing Charlottesville area alliance,

Jen Glacier, from the Ridge Health District, Danny Shackelford, TJPDC, slash, um, uh, Jarzla Albemarle, and you.

Lucinda Shannon, the TJPDC, and the staff for this conference.

The Zoom folks, there we go.

And then Lucinda, side note, can you promote Ms. Miller from DRPT to a panelist?

And Charmaine?

Yes, Charmaine White, Director of Albemarle County Transportation.

Thank you, everyone.

Sara Pennington, TJPDC, and the RideShare program.

And Katie?

Katie Miller with the Department of Rail and Global Transportation.

That's great.

You should have the April 7th.

I just want to give you a minute because...

So then we have to, if there are a million of you out there, put your hands up.

So we'll put it up to about three minutes.

OK.

Any abstentions?

Supervisor McKeel, Ms. Miller from DRPT is a voting member and she's online.

You need to share where you're located and the reason why you're sitting, which is pretty general, right?

And I needed to be on to because I had to be in the office today in Richmond.

Great.

And there's no one on Zoom?

If anybody on Zoom would like to speak, please either raise your hand or start talking.

So we know you're there, I guess.

Yeah.

Everybody's not there yet.

Yes, I can.

That's great.

Yeah, that's the Zoom part.

Hi, I'm Jen Fleischer.

Now, I don't do that anymore.

Well, and you did an excellent job.

Okay, questions and online questions.

I'm not reading your body language.

Kendall, question.

Great work.

Thank you.

So thank you for teaching me that.

I'm here to break the ice.

Great question.

But I'm really the badger.

This is specifically a health system initiative that includes these aspects about transit because we need to have better transit to have better health outcomes.

All of the efforts from 2019 were derailed by COVID.

And the map to health, how does that relate to this?

Does that help, Brian?

Thank you, I'm so glad you're a part of that.

Transit as a topic for help was very unknown but so acute, so it's really fascinating to get to this, get to help from this direction.

But then you've done the hard work and then community partners can kind of carry it forward and you get on to the next thing that needs the startup.

So I have real appreciation for how long it takes to get something.

Are you reaching those?

And then I tracked it there and then I put it up on the website.

Just curious.

Would you go back to the page that shows those?

Lucinda, are you able to check through your screen or just to make sure?

OK, that's great.

And improved public transit is a really broad...

So it's a pretty robust goal.

in the works for a while.

And that's part of the chip is saying, you know, this is the improvement plan for the whole business.

I mean, what's your follow up with us going to be in the community?

Yeah.

I can't answer questions.

Yeah, the PhotoVoice.

PhotoVoice, yes.

Can you tell us a little bit more about that and will everyone be able to see that?

It was all barriers.

Do you want to show them on the website?

So starting with that.

So it's not like they're just stuck in there.

Yeah, but is this your term, or is this somewhere else?

It's like using, instead of using qualitative software, this is a framework for capturing that data.

You know what I mean?

If you search PhotoVoice, you'll see some interesting photos.

We so often have to make decisions based on anecdotal feedback, and just having a picture instead or along with is so meaningful.

That's great.

Yeah.

Any other comments or questions?

And Peter is representing the Charlottesville Area Alliance's Transportation Working Group, CAATWG.

Somebody in front of the camera's going, stretch it, stretch it.

All right.

Okay, that's good.

I'm sorry, Ted, what was the answer?

One in four, 45%.

Maybe a couple of us, yeah.

Keep going!

illustrates that the community's elected leadership has made that commitment to work towards making their community a great place for all ages.

Again, Albemarle, Blue Band, and Charlottesville have all joined through CA doing some of the work.

and we intend out of that, in fact, Jen and I were just working on this the last 24 hours with our impact advisor about how to use those four hours together because that's a lot of time to go by pretty quickly and making sure we walk out of the full plan, at least a plan saying how are we going to look at this, who's going to take a lead, what are some of the issues and challenges in that.

I do think that the invites for that have gone out.

It's like well maybe we can look at that so Jen has actually been driving that train has a very nice bed.

I think the invites are out there and I think folks can make sure they're in there if they need to.

And if we get some no's then we'll extend it a couple more further.

So let me open it up for questions if anybody has any questions.

Anybody have any questions for Peter?

Thank you.

Yeah.

Well, that's great work.

Thank you for having us.

Ted, you're first on the list, so I will start with Jaunt.

You'll be traveling, so you won't miss the first one.

But I'll get to the second one.

That's it.

Anybody have any questions for Ted?

And it's an acronym.

And I cannot remember what it means, but it means fast charging stations.

So maybe we'll put it at a Walmart or something like that.

Alright, Charmane, Albemarle, would you like to give us your update for all of our public schools?

So Garland, I will be giving you a call.

Looking forward to it.

Yes, we do.

So more to come and I will be giving you a call.

All right, any more questions before we turn in?

How are you?

I'm fine, how are you?

What's your question?

Would you mind if I reached out to you to kind of pick your brain a little bit about your Type A vehicles that you guys are using?

Please feel free to give me a call.

Yeah, awesome.

Sure.

Alright, alright.

What do we need to do?

So whoever you all decide to sit.

Interruptcy?

We're not worried about it.

So we're going to get another new person, and I'm going to try really hard to get that second new person to come for Jump Street.

Because we have struggled to get that representation here.

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

So the CAT report and the City of Charlottesville school report from Garland.

So most of the time, we've been able to get four or five weeks at schools.

I believe that I've heard or saw or read somewhere that some of your high school students were utilizing CAT to get to school, the CAT system.

But there has been zero incidents whatsoever of the kids going to school.

Charmane, did you have a question for Garland?

Probably my questions are going to be more specific concerning the routes themselves.

So you can get to him a little bit.

Yes, we would have to have one-on-one.

Does anybody have any questions about schools?

So we've got to be very careful if we have vehicles right now, today, out of our 40 bus fleet, 20 of our buses are down.

Half.

That's a lot for us, for a small transit agency.

It was like 6,000.

That's where we're going.

Sandy?

Sure.

So, can I put it up?

Service improvements?

CAT's not designed that way.

They're coming to us.

So, the county has an assignment.

That's all I wanted to hear.

and any update on best guess and timeline rounds?

Not going to spill the thunder before we have a conversation with the board, so I would never have provided a plan.

And that's next month, right?

And probably, we'll be able to confirm how quickly they can get them to be working on that.

So looking forward to hearing more from you.

I think the biggest one is that so two weeks ago we had our pre-award workshop presentation

And other than that, just always a reminder, reach out to planning or program staff at DRPT with any questions or concerns.

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Sorry, I can't no longer hear the audio from the meeting very well.

All right, so unless there are other questions.

Yeah, we'll see if we can get them.

I can hear it again.

If we want to take an innovative approach to hiring drivers and stuff, and we want to study the concept, would that be a tech assistance eligible activity?

I know they're definitely trying to expand that to really focus on the workforce development component of it.

You're hearing better.

Yep.

This is probably more of what I was trying to figure out when I talked about the moneys.

So those are the different benefits that are calculated when you're determining what the benefits of a project are compared to costs.

And then

So tell me a quick question.

I'm just trying to figure out a way to talk about it.

Yeah, so basically, if the city of Charlottesville, I'm not thinking of the city of Charlottesville, but they would look at project delivery when they were making decisions about final outcomes.

Because we have the two examples.

Even in the county where we're not administering a project, if there's tremendous discord in the community, they're not about a project.

They don't have a platform, so we do have to get on the program.

The first step is to take all the projects that are eligible for the district grant program funding and prioritize those projects within the construction district.

The next step is a little bit confusing.

So the recommendation is to eliminate that step too.

So if you're looking at it where your application is in a much less expensive area, then you're perhaps going to get one.

Yeah, I'm trying to make it very quickly.

I just am watching that time because I'm the additional time.

This is an ongoing conversation, so if you have any questions, I'll be happy to.

And all of us are gonna hear this again a couple of times.

Yeah, hopefully a little more.

Quickly, because of time, Sandy, MPO, Long Range and Entrepreneurship Update, is there anything critical?

Great.

Transportation Implementation Plan, the TIP, okay, anything critical?

The only thing I wanted to say about that is that the policy board last night approved an amendment to add $10 million in CMAQ funding to support passenger rail service from Roanoke that would go through the Charlottesville region.

I can save it for the next meeting.

Well, I think I have a question.

If there's a question, that's great.

Yeah, it'll be really quick.

I just, yeah.

That's the Springfield Reserve.

Okay, Broadway Virginia is one of their major funding sources.

So that leaves us about eight minutes because we really do, this is kind of sensitive Lucinda, my understanding is so if everybody can, there's you have a copy of the letter at your place that and this letter is to Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, Lucinda I'll let you explain it because people have a copy in front of

I'm asking the RTP to sign the letter of support for our application for that program.

I would think this needs to be voted on.

So I would entertain a motion if someone... Yeah, I move that we endorse this letter requesting support from the Obama grant supporting implementation of the mobility management program.

Have a good one.