Regional Transit Partnership (2017-2025) Meeting   6/27/2024

I'm with UVA-UPS but I'm subbing in for a spot.

Allison Day.

Allison Day.

Allison Day.

Allison Day.

Allison Day.

Allison Day.

Allison Day.

Allison Day.

Allison Day.

Allison Day.

Allison Day.

Natalie Oschrin, Trails Missing Council, Peter Krebs, the Piedmont Environmental Council, Peter Thompson, Charles Flair Alliance, Ben Chambers, Transportation Planning Manager for the city, Ann Wall, Deputy County Executive, Albemarle County, Lucinda Shannon with the TJPDC, Gretchen Thomas, TJPDC, and I'm going to pause for a minute.

because we have a few new people at the temple and we have some new folks.

So let me just go around and say that Hal Morgan, who is the John Representative for the World Family, this is your last name.

And I just wanted to let everybody know that this is your last name.

and John Corgan in general because the way in which he served as an ambassador for John included in elsewhere.

So he would certainly be best.

And we will obviously have a full representation.

We had a little bit of a wires crossed here today.

I know that we'd be saying goodbye to Lucas Ames as well, who's really done a great job serving on this team.

But we will be having and observing today is the town of Countess Lopez, who represents Albemarle County.

St. Lucas could not come today.

He was seen as a grandfather.

He's been turned into a grandfather.

He's caught up in the camp transportation shuffle, as I understand it.

I was speaking from my viewpoint as a grandfather, and he's much other than that.

So, and I just want to, you know, sit on it, and welcome and smile,

You're officially in the beginning of your next job, but I welcome you right through here.

And then going around, Jamie, would you like to introduce yourself?

My name is Jamie Gellner.

I'm the director of transportation for Omaha Public Schools.

Prior to that, I worked in the strategic planning office and I was the director of special projects.

Prior to that, I was the Assistant Director of Transportation, so I'm coming back to the department after about seven years.

And I also worked with Fairfax County Public Schools in their transportation program.

That's kind of my background.

I'm excited to be back with a larger team.

Strategic planning is really fun, but it was fun only.

That's great.

Well, welcome aboard.

Your name is Scott Scott.

And I think going around, I think that's all that we have for a new table.

And I'm going to stop us for a minute.

and the reason is because before we approve the agenda, I'm gonna chair privilege because we have new people that are leaving and new people that are here.

We have some treats on the table behind us, some water and some fresh coffee and let's just take a break, go over, help yourself, come back and it's okay if you eat while we have a, I'm just saying because if you wait

So let's do it now, if that's okay with everybody, and we'll take five minutes.

Help yourselves.

And that coffee is decaf.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Is it better if we just do it from up here?

It's actually better if you do it from here.

Okay, so I'll just leave it alone and then I'm ready to go.

So what I will do is I will then go to Teams.

It's in the Zoom button.

So I'll go here.

And then when we're ready to go, just scroll over the window somewhere.

Okay, and then I'll share.

So I can close Teams down.

It looks like Teams is not open.

Thank you.

And I set everybody up to be talking at even at the same time, so I apologize for that.

So if anybody online would like to make a public comment use the raise your hand section now.

So with that, Garland from CAT was going to present the CAT 2025 plan.

We all thought we had the best chance.

She's giving you one.

I've seen some of these numbers already.

All right, while we're passing that out,

A lot of information, I tried to convince them after 15 minutes for the request.

So what we have here is kind of a condensed version of what I gave to city council in November when we were doing our budget process, but it's more tailored to the RTP in the request that is of this board to make a presentation about where

So I don't think anybody has ever seen the vision for CAT from the RTP.

We gave this presentation to city council, like I said, in November.

And I just wanted to kind of highlight the fact that there's a vision statement and a mission statement that we go through and have a patent approved.

So our vision is safe, reliable, accessible, public, and pupil transportation that connects people with opportunities and powers

equity, and combat common change by reducing individual automobile usage.

Our mission to enhance the quality of life and economic health of the city of Charlottesville and the urban ring of the county of Albemarle by providing reliable, safe, and affordable public transportation options and dependable, pupil transportation services to the Charlottesville City School System.

With that, our presentation started off by

highlighting our board chart.

And the green that you see there are, according to city council, that's not approved.

These are new positions that are coming on that are effective July 1st.

So thank you very, very much, because we need them.

So we have a procurement specialist that's being added.

We have a number of major capital projects.

Katie and the state have been very generous to us to allow us to move forward to make some major capital improvements.

That procurement person is going to be very key in making sure we stay on track and move that along.

We're going to add a transit planning manager for the time that that will have and we will take some of the weight off of VIN.

I've been relying on him heavy this last year and then we're adding eight new transit operators that will help us get our service model up.

It's not exactly what we need but we're getting closer and this is a

a market improvement from where we were and where we will be and then we're adding three full-time customer service agents so we can hire the downtown transit center man on a permanent basis so it'll be six days a week and there'll be somebody there the whole time that will own it and we'll be able to potentially extend out so we're working on that.

So give you a little highlight before we move on to 25, kind of give you the context of where our budget has been

from FY19 through 24, which is currently right now.

We've gone from 9.9 with $10 million to about 14.2.

And in FY25, you will see a jump from there.

FY24, once again, our real number on the back end was because we did something different in the FY24 budget that we didn't do in the previous budgets.

We actually, there's a pass-through amount that goes to Jaunt.

for our 5307.

That was allocated in our general fund allocation this one time.

So you will see a $2.2 million source there.

And you will see in the numbers, our federal numbers, there are two federal sources, our normal 5307 allocation, which is the top line, CARES, our R funding, which has kind of been our fallback and our gap filler for us over the last few years, last three years.

and then we got our state operating assistance and then we have a TRIPS grant that we have that gives us zero, that allows us to continue to be zero fare.

That's there and that is diminishing.

You will see that in the next slide.

And then there's local contributions from the city and the county.

There's money from UVA specifically for the trolley program and then there's a rental allocation.

We have not asked the university to

If you have their regular allocation since COVID hit, that will turn back on FY26.

I've already had a conversation with Scott about that.

And then advertising, and then our full model.

If you look at FY25, we've pulled out the money that we give to junk.

We don't know what the exact number is.

It's probably somewhere close to 2.2 or maybe less than that because I think there was some CARES money associated in that.

2.2 became over the last time.

We need to figure out what that exact number is.

So what we show right now is our federal allocation that we're going to be using is like $4.6 million from our 5307.

That includes about 600,000 that was unused from a prior fiscal year that we didn't use our allocation, not the money that we gave to John.

So it was money that was unspent from CAT.

Our CARES money, which is

Advertising budget is still remaining about $25,000.

Our objective as trans and when I sit down with my team in early August and September

is trying to figure out where we want to kind of outline our programming as we move forward.

So we looked at four pillars for us.

It's trying to be much more reliable, frequent, increase our ridership, and then our fleet transition.

So that's really where our budget focus is.

As we talk through this, I just want to keep those four pillars in mind.

So challenges that we face, we're returning our service level to pre-pandemic.

increase in reliability and frequency, increase in accessibility and mobility options, transition into a union environment, which is a significant component for us, comes with a heavy price tag, and then the fleet transition, which is also happening where we're taking a major investment in our capital needs to do so.

So, what's also is

We had to outline everything that we are thinking about for FY25 and in the future in our TSP, which just right before I got here went to the state.

Accepted by the state before the June 30th date.

So it's the 27th, so we got that.

So we are three days ahead of time.

It's a great day for Trent.

We are celebrating.

We are celebrating, Trent.

CAT is celebrating, let me let you know.

So there are things that we did to get there.

We had some stakeholder work sessions.

And I just want to highlight the fact that when we did that, there were themes that kept coming out

And as we looked at that, we used that as our means for building out a new budget.

So, strengthening our system, people like the zero fare service that we provide.

That was a major component.

They liked where we go for the most part, most destinations that we are able to access.

They said it was a strong pedestrian and bike network that allowed access to the transportation room.

That was great for us.

There are critical areas in the region that we want to make sure

But there were also concerns, they were slow, we were unreliable, infrequent, but there are things that, you know, this is kind of like your Gantt chart of things that kept popping up.

So we were trying to address a number of those in the FY25 budget.

The survey also highlighted the fact that frequency, more frequent service, was the driving thing that people were asking us for.

That was the number one thing that they asked for out of the surveys that were completed, which was 523.

And then major reasons for riding the bus was people wanted to save money and better utilize their time.

So we are thankful that these are the kind of results that are coming out that's showing that people want to use us for purposes that

What does CAT go for?

Shopping, work, home, getting a new home, getting a social event, those sorts of things for the purposes of trips.

Those are ideally what transportation is supposed to be about.

So, things that they didn't like though, it took us too long, it's not as real enough, it doesn't go where I need it sometimes, I live too far away from the stock.

Those things that we're working on, it's fresh on our mind and we're going to try to make significant changes in the future.

Snapchat before we get into the real nitty-gritty of the numbers.

FY 25, that's $15 million, $15.1 million.

That's without, like we added the last time, the $2.2 million that we, as a pass through the jaunt.

So if we added that, it's a $17 million budget.

That's a significant increase in where we were.

It needed to be.

because transit needed more resources to make us more frequent and reliable.

So we are on our way to doing that.

What I'm really focusing on is there's a transit side of the house and then there's a microcad component that we're working with the county.

That's a separate budget.

So that's $1.9 million that's in the budget for FY.

That's our working number for FY 25.

$100,000 increase is what the numbers drive out to be based on the contract we have with VF.

Where we are right now is that with the additional resources, additional positions, we go to 106 authorized positions, 66 full-time positions, 10 relief positions, 8 full-time mechanics, and we're looking to increase that number because as we increase the number of vehicles, we're going to need more mechanics to make sure we're reliable.

We have 40 buses.

We are increasing that number by five.

We're reducing some of our, well, we are disposing of some of our assistance.

We're adding two battery electric and the actual, the gross number or expansion number for diesel buses is three and two, three diesel buses and two battery electric buses for a total of five.

So we will go up to 45 vehicles once we get those in-house.

13 routes, 1.4 was, that's like 23.

About 1.4, almost 1.5 million in FY24 when it's all said and done.

So we are increasing, which is really where we want to be.

Success stories before we get into the nitty gritty of the numbers.

FY23 and FY24 was good for us as we applied for a number of grant opportunities and we were successful in getting them.

We were able to get $2.4 million to buy two battery electric buses.

We got an administration grant.

We worked with the county for $1.4 million to do the microtransit project, microCAT.

We got capital funding for our two major capital projects that are happening over at CAP headquarters.

And if you haven't come over there, please come by.

It's a beautiful place.

We want to show you it before we start making some significant changes to it.

but that allows us to do the NEPA and the 30% design.

And then we have specifically on the house $324,000 to allow us to do some bus stop improvements.

It is remarkable how long it's taken us to get through all the workings from the city, the county, and the state to get some bus stops and some shelters in the neighborhood.

We're plowing it as fast as we possibly can.

We have identified

12 in the city and 11 in the county 13 in the city and 11 in the county

And that's the questions, that was kind of the highlight, but what I provided to you was a handout, and I want to go through the handout really quickly.

It has two sheets, the first part of the sheet is basically an overlook of our actual expenses and buy category, and then it gives you an approved budget for FY25, and then a projected number for FY26.

We had 27 on there, we took it off, and I'll tell you why we took it off, because the numbers are rapidly changing.

and we don't know what the numbers are because we are still working with our consultant about adding service and so we can figure out what that number looks like.

I didn't want to give you a number and it'd be stuck there but we have, this is apples to apples, 25 to 26 and we did nothing else.

Just based on the contract from the union, we were basically $1.9 million difference, full implementation of a full year of the contract.

So that is the difference between these two things.

If you turn it over, how we allocate the funds is we spell it out.

So everybody can see we give this number to the city, we give this number to the county, we work through this.

and you will see that the number of hours were projected by route and then the total cost for that, that is the yellow line that says projected schedule cost, that is the total comes up to $15.1 million and you can look at the top section in the city, the bottom section is the county, this has additional changes that we are contemplating doing in FY 25 which we're splitting into two egg,

So we will have one leg that goes to Fifth Street Station.

The second leg, we will go to PVCC.

So that is accounted for in our numbers.

We are also doing some modifications to the three.

We're going to turn up the frequency on the six.

If you look at last year's model, the amount of hours that we were expending for the six was only 3,500 hours.

We doubled that because we were going to make it a 30 minute model.

So that's $7,000.

That doesn't affect the county whatsoever.

Then in the county side of the house, you will see the increases associated with the 2A and the 2B, which is directly linking the jail, Fifth Street.

I think that's what you wanted to know.

And this is kind of spelled out.

If you look at beyond that, it tells you projected federal allocation, how we expend our federal dollars,

to match the numbers.

You can see on each route how we put federal dollars to make the numbers whole.

So for the example on one, go to the C. It's going to cost us about $400,000 to make the one op-ed in the CIGS portion.

There's $121,000 from federal sources that we allocate to the one.

and then there are state dollars that come in.

We allocate about $73,000 from the states.

The jurisdiction, which is the city, the money that they give us, we allocate $182,000 of that pot and then there's money that we're using from the CARES and ARP funds to close a hole that's about $24,000 and then there's advertising.

There's a $25,000 advertising, we put in $613,

almost $654 and that brings up to a total of $452,075 which matches the exact cost to the riders.

And we do that for every single route whether it's city or county so everyone can see how your money comes in, what it costs for each one of these routes per jurisdiction.

So the way that the agreement for the CAT between the city and county based on what was written through this organization, RTP put that agreement in place.

is that we are a cost, our cost-based model is hourly.

It's not by models.

So we have to figure out behind the scenes our planning efforts, say there's the amount of service that we wanna run, we run schedules.

Based on the schedules, we can produce a number, an hourly total.

We look at how much of the hours is in the city versus the county based on where the route is on a daily basis.

When we do that split, then you can see how many hours for the total route is in the city versus the county and then you start the allocation based on the amount of revenue that comes in from our own sources.

No, we decide, we decide.

We have the ability to do that.

It's based on the amount of service that is city versus county, so percentages.

So right now there's a split of about, I think 35 to 36% of our total system is in the county versus the city.

I used to have that number on there, so that's what I was looking for.

So the split is not there.

It's like 36% county versus the city.

And then based on those numbers,

We try to allocate in those buckets based on that percentage.

What we do have though, I want to make sure you understand, but I know your question.

In the states, we added a bunch of hours, but we also have allocated money for the 11th to get to December.

That is in our numbers.

We are working through that.

We are working through that.

We have our consultant who guarantees me they're going to have our schedules done by September, which means in September, we will be able to post those.

I do so if we're putting the costs on the city in the county based on the per hour basis I'm curious why we're looking at the average subsidy per hour the city is paying 25% more for every hour of services

Yes, I'm looking at the average subsidy per hour for each of those, and they're a little bit different.

I think this is the amount, and Barry and I had this conversation earlier, the sheer amount of the volume of service that was being provided.

And then what we're trying to do this time is different than the last one.

It's the effect of the union contract on the county just for this year.

It makes a difference.

It will not be that way in 2016 because we were so late in getting the contract done that the county had already seen the number that had been so far in the model.

We were authorized by SAM to say we're going to take that hit this year

and everybody will have to put it back all in the pot in FY20.

So thank you for that.

I appreciate it.

If you look at the number, if you look at the CARES number, even though the county is only 36%, they're getting more of the CARES number than the city.

The county is being allocated 714,000, where the city is going to be allocated 582,000.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

We need to leave a pair for next year.

Yes, you've seen it for the last four years, so.

You know what's coming.

There's nothing new under the sun other than the fact that we knew that number was going away.

26, it doesn't go away.

It's only like $276,000 a pair is going to go.

Back on page one, I'm looking at the overall cost and the maintenance throughout the whole time when service was down is climbing at a very high rate, like way higher than any of the other categories.

It does look like it's managed to level off between 25 and 26.

But I'm wondering, number one, what's going on with that, then how that is

Could be affected by restoring service and also adding different categories of buses.

Let's start with different categories of buses.

It's not going to affect the cost whatsoever.

It's the driving factor.

So whether it's a small bus or a big bus, you're all getting paid the same.

I'm talking maintenance though.

Maintenance, we have a generous state allocation model, so the maintenance on the vehicles is pretty much the same.

We're going to be able to dip into that bucket to maintain each one of the leaders.

So why is the number driving up?

All right, so two years ago, there was this race to the top for drivers.

And you kept increasing the costs, whether we did it, county did it, Albemarle for the schools, or Jaunt did it, UTS did it, everybody's trying to

make sure that they keep their drivers because CDL drivers are at a premium.

So we had a 21.3% increase for wages last fiscal year.

Prior to that, we had a 6% increase.

So we went six, 21, and then whatever the number is, I don't remember the exact figures now, but it's based on the union contract.

So based on the fact that I'm your official timekeeper, and you're writing a little bit behind, if you have any more questions about this, please send them to Garland, email them to Garland, is that alright?

Absolutely.

So the twenty five thousand is what we anticipate

I'm going to look at it and I think Mike you're on.

It was my fault.

if you can copy it copy it okay um oh you want to actually just paint where do you want to drag it to wherever you want to take it to

I mean I have it on that computer right now so I can look at it.

So what do we want you all to know about the

Jaunt Budget.

Well the first thing I want to say about the Jaunt Budget is that I inherited it.

So six out of the seven localities were written before I got there and so then I had to figure out how to make that work within some of the demands that we were hearing after the fact when we actually got into budget season and talked to the localities.

That said you know we were

actually challenged by some of our localities to bring those original numbers down which we did and so we're delivering an almost flat budget here and the operating budget has some overall decrease and we've got a big capital project coming in

really reshaped the parking lot at Jaunt and so we're doing an engineering project this year and as you're aware there was a whole two years that Jaunt was not allowed to purchase vehicles and so we are in catch-up mode and so there are big capital expenses associated with that.

At some point that'll level out a little bit because Jaunt historically pre-lacure letter and some of those questions about the budget at Jaunt was on a four year replacement cycle and we've moved to a five year.

It causes a bit more on those capital repair costs but it's not as much as replacing a whole bus

And so we'll see how it irons out for us over time.

We're only in like year two of being in a five-year cycle instead.

So we'll see how it plays out over time.

Like Garland, we continue to be fare-free entirely.

I did have the pleasure of spending a good deal of time with the folks in Winchester on

Tuesday afternoon about their transition to a microtransit service.

I'll share a little bit more about that later.

And they are bringing back fares on Monday.

So we'll get to watch some other folks around the state who are making decisions in their locality about what works for them going forward.

Jaunt, as many of you may know throughout history, has been

I won't say reliant, but heavily associated with providing some agency related contract service.

And we have seen that steadily decline.

And so instead of presenting to our board about how it's way off on budget versus actuals next year, we're budgeting at a much different revenue expectation coming into the new year.

and I will say that Grant and Katie have been really helpful to me in clarifying exactly what the expectations are around agency billing and for some folks who have historically felt like Jaunt was a good resource for that, there will be some cost adjustment that will be necessary

Like Garland, we needed to get closer to market with a number of roles.

One of the first things I did was create a new classification and compensation system.

We are about caught up to the starting pay now on operators where we were about 18% lagging when I joined in January.

However,

the rate of escalation that's called for in the union contract we can't match and so we'll fall behind naturally again.

Our scales about top end are roughly aligned, it's just that Charlottesville gets it a whole lot faster than the CAT system.

It's still kind of amazing to me from the day you order a bus to when it's on your lot how long it takes and so, but it's a real thing and it is a factor.

You know, some of the other supply chain issues have loosened up for us.

Can I ask you a quick question about that?

Yeah, absolutely.

So it got worse with the pandemic.

It started to shake loose, but it's always been about 18 to 24 months ago.

So they're making them suspect.

So there's only three or four authorized manufacturers that we can buy from based on the state contract.

So that, meaning those are the only ones we have to send an order to, and they're taking hundreds of orders

overseas, and here.

Mostly.

Mostly.

There's some things that, we had a seatbelt snafu recently where they're like, we can't get you that seatbelt.

So, yeah, I got that seatbelt today.

Okay, thank you.

Sorry to interrupt.

No worries.

In order to smooth out the effect, and a lot of these, you know, multi-jurisdictional organizations like John Jay or Blue Ridge Potential, so if you do this, you've got these five-year rolling averages.

As it turns out, in the next year, the five-year rolling average won't cover the actual capital costs, and so there is an increase that is noted in this budget as a result.

And we still have federal capital funding for urban services.

The budget is, like Garland, at least in part, drafted based on this notion about hours and also miles as well.

This is just a visual representation of that.

I know we're crunched for time, so I won't ask us to linger on the bars.

Revenue.

We do have some dollars, like Garland, available to continue to be carefree.

One of the reasons that we're able to take the budget down a bit but it also makes the revenue look reduced is we did take in a lot of revenue in the year that we're in for all these state studies, many of which I'll report to you all about in the end of the summer and the fall because we're bringing three to conclusion.

Rural transportation needs had their last meeting today.

Microtransit and

Battery Electric Vehicle Implementation.

One of the things the board requested is that we have managed our dollars and cash flow in such a way that some of the holdings are in an interest-bearing account.

And since it generates six figures a year, we are adding that in as a revenue source so that it is anticipated.

The expenses, the real highlights here that I would point out to you are when I looked at the budget I saw some opportunities in the admin staff and also it's true that we have about 87 drivers but we don't

actually have 87 times 2,080 hours worth of driving time.

And so when we actually look at what that is in full-time equivalents, you know, then we can actually set budget for 72.

So we're able to, although we gave large raises to our operators, still stay within the budgets that we had from the prior year.

And so that's that 15%, or the 15 driver decrease

We are operating with a different overall structure that allows us to reduce the amount of administration that had been previously planned, which is good.

I think that overall, this is a pretty responsible budget.

The other big highlight is

So I don't have a fancy sheet that's two feet long.

But what I can tell you is that I'm envious is what it is.

The budget, what I would have you all know is this.

It is essentially flat.

You can see that the majority of our revenue comes from Albemarle County, followed then by the city of Charlottesville, although we have some significant amount of revenue coming in from both Louisa

and Green.

And that's reflected in the service patterns as well.

You can see here a different lens of this in the jurisdictional breakouts, which I can't read without leaning into this, but this reinforces the point I was making.

So when you look at the city and county,

Combined, it is a little more than two-thirds of the non-corruption.

When we think about the capital side, there is no CARES funding around for us anymore.

We did have an increase in state revenue.

Of course, we needed more local match in order to base this budget.

Our capital reserve is a bit larger.

We did talk with the board and the shareholders about carrying over the excess capital from the last year.

And so that is going to prevent us from needing to ask for quite as many local dollars, which is good.

There are some

dollars and projects that did not get completed, or I know won't be completed by Sunday, that will carry over into the new year.

And I've already talked with you about how that five-year average drove the costs a bit.

What we should know is that on this horizon, you can see that the line share cost is about vehicles.

Not all of those vehicles are about

The one year do understand that I'm still taking delivery on vehicles from FL-23s, FL-24s, you know, but all of that has to be captured.

That's it.

I do kind of have one.

Can you explain why?

I can say that as it has been explained to me, and I'm happy to have this conversation tonight, but maybe not in this room.

that the thinking on the DTSDOT is that while it's possible to allocate them for both capital operations that they have been considered operating dollars and that when we look at the overall means that the city will be asked for the capital dollars in the city allocation in the local appropriation rather than taking them out of it.

Because here's the thing, 5307,

The partners, particularly the city and county, they're going to pay for both Jaunt and CAT or whoever was doing paratransit to pay for capital and operations either way.

The pot of 5307 is the pot.

Right?

Because our population and the ridership is the dollars you can draw back.

So, I mean, we can play a game where we, you know, rob Teeter to pay Paul, but that's what the understanding has been to date.

Thanks, Ben.

Thank you very much, and thank you, Carlin, for your presentation.

Again, any other questions that come up?

I know that both of these young ones would be happy to answer them if you said anything.

All right, the next item is something that I think we've been looking for equally, which is our Charlottesville, Albemarle,

Regional Transit Authority Work Group update.

And if you all remember we charged them several months ago to look at what it would look like or what the steps might be to move towards an authority, which was always the intention of this group.

So this is our first towing.

It's way out in the sky.

We bring our towing water here.

Ann and Ben have been doing some great work for us.

I will say that there's nothing today that we're going to be doing that requires a vote.

This is like information.

And I will say right up front that Ann and Ben will be coming back to us again in August.

So with that little bit said,

Right, that's exactly right.

I'm going to start off.

I'm going to do a few of the slides and then I'll kick it over to Ben to talk a little bit more.

And as Supervisor McKeel has indicated, this is really just for information purposes only.

We want to hear questions, concerns, comments.

regarding regional transit authorities.

What we're going to do today is we're going to talk a little bit about the purpose of forming a regional transit authority.

We're going to talk a little bit about the history of effort related to this.

Spend a little time talking about the current work that has been undertaken at this point

to address the structure if we were to go forward with the Charlottesville, Albemarle Regional Transit Authority.

And we're also going to talk a little bit about what a draft work plan might be like if the community were to go forward with the Regional Transit Authority.

You will hear us speak about CARTA.

and CARTA is our shorthand for the Charlottesville, Albemarle, Regional Transit Authority and we collectively as a group, Ben and I, Christine and Lucinda, we talk about CARTA and RTA and to us they're sort of interchangeable.

Next slide.

So let's just talk a little bit about the benefits of creating a regional transit authority.

It really could serve as a collaborative, multi-jurisdictional entity that could identify and solve transit issues.

It would serve as a forum for planning and working out decisions that are difficult, decisions such as funding formulas and service,

for services and capital, service expansions and alternatives and analysis related to that, relationships between service providers, as well as exploring other opportunities to look at regional planning and regional transit on a broader basis and the opportunity to pursue legislative requests to the General Assembly when needed.

Eventually, when and if revenue becomes available, a regional transit authority could serve as the vehicle for sort of collecting and distributing that revenue to the service providers.

We've all talked about, and I think it's just important to put in the room, why regional planning is important.

And here's a whole laundry list of items related to why regional planning is important for transit.

It improves the efficiency by reducing duplication.

It provides for seamless connectivity across localities.

Expanded coverage would increase mobility, particularly in underserved areas.

For economic development purposes, regional transit could provide service and access to job centers, education, and healthcare.

A well integrated system could be an attractive investment, particularly for federal and state grants.

Regional transit is really an issue of social equity.

It ensures that there is accessible and affordable transit for residents regardless of income.

We all have talked about the environmental benefits, reducing congestion, fewer cars on the road.

Regional planning could provide improved data collection, which could help with more informed decisions about transit and transit services, improved customer service and customer communication, the ability to leverage technology, additional apps,

Real-Time Tracking and really help customers to really engage with and access transit in an easier way.

And finally, regional planning and regional transit potentially could provide opportunities for greater revenue sources, different revenue sources.

So let's just also talk a little bit about the history and key efforts that have been sort of in the community related to this.

Back in 2008, there was, as well before my time with the county, there was a study that explored a unified structure of governance for transit.

And from that study,

The General Assembly in 2009 approved the CARTA legislation and that CARTA legislation, it really created the Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional, let me say this, it allowed for the creation of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Transit Authority and by membership of the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County and any surrounding county that might, or one of the four

members or the associated counties, the four counties that ring our area could participate if they so chose.

And it was focused on regional planning and for those transit services, but it did not include, that original legislation still does not include today, any opportunity for state authorized revenue generation.

In 2016, again, there was a study done, the Regional Coordination Study, which looked at the same question about activating this CARTA legislation.

And what was sort of settled upon was the creation of this body, the Regional Transit Partnership, and which was created in 2017.

So then we come forward to 2022.

This group, along with the TJPDC, pursued what would be considered the Regional Transit Vision, which was a clear, long-term vision for efficiency, equitable, and effective transit service in the region.

But what that study also identified was a need to support it and to be able to fund this broad and ambitious goal for providing transit.

and in 2024, as this group knows, that was part of the time that I joined the county, the regional transit partnership along with the TJPDC finished the transit governance study, which recommend, and we'll spend a little bit more time as we go forward, setting up CARTA,

as an oversight board for transit and a potential vehicle for answering funding questions, talking about operation and really being collaborative as we approach transit.

And let's spend just a few minutes talking about that regional transit governance study.

I have a copy of it here with me.

That study reviewed relationships between the transit, the existing transit agencies and the jurisdictions in the region.

their governance structure, their funding structures.

It also looked at peer localities and how peer localities across the country were providing transit, what their governance structure looked like.

And finally, it also reviewed existing transportation authorities in the state of Virginia in Williamsburg, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Northern Virginia.

And finally, that governance study spent some time looking at the enabling CARTA legislation, that legislation that's been on the books since 2009.

And that legislation, and Ben will speak at length about that in his part of the presentation, identified that Charlottesville and Albemarle and portions of the county would be the initial members, that the counties, the four surrounding counties could participate if desired.

It pointed that interjurisdictional transit planning was the key role of a rural transit authority, regional transit authority.

It talked about the composition of the board, provided for the hiring of the executive director, and also again to point out there were no mechanisms included in that legislation to provide for revenue generation.

We've gone ahead and listed on the slide the four major findings and the four major findings are significant and it's really why we are here today and that is the study recommended that this community consider activating the CARTA legislation and creating a regional transit authority that we needed to consider the need

the needs of the rural communities and conduct a transit needs assessment for the rural communities.

We needed to continue to engage with the rural jurisdictions as we looked at legislation and also to continue to talk about the benefits of a regional transit authority.

And then we needed to engage with the University of Virginia leadership about their interest in participating in a transit authority.

So since that time, this group created a working group.

I'm part of the working group, Ben Chambers, Lucinda, as well as Christine Jacobs.

We've all been meeting since March.

And some of our work, we've drafted bylaws.

Ben will spend some time with you all talking about the bylaws.

We've engaged with localities.

We've visited with each of the four counties.

We've talked with the staff.

We visited with the University of Virginia.

We are working to reach out to our transit partners to really understand what the transit needs are, to talk about alignment and coordination.

So I will jump in and sort of dive into those four points a little bit more and give you some more details on the work, but go for it.

We'll talk a little bit about the bylaws and then future steps, next steps.

Yes, yes, you're driving.

So you want to go back one?

So before we jumped into drafting bylaws, we thought it would be a good idea to look at the CARTA legislation and has described it a little bit.

The first thing that we needed to note was the initial membership that is noted in the initial CARTA board is Charlottesville and Albemarle County or portions thereof.

The legislation also provides opportunities for participation for the surrounding counties.

It focuses the authority on regional planning and coordination.

It serves as a contracting agent.

It can set rates for services and it can appoint staff or hire consultances to carry out some of this planning work.

And as Ann mentioned, does not include a state authorized revenue generation option.

You do have the option of putting in general funds into this authority, but it doesn't have a way of generating its own funds.

So that led us to what do bylaws need to look like in order to conform with those.

So we wanted the bylaws to include rules on membership composition, committees, officers and duties, meetings, voting, and conduct of business.

Luckily, the legislation gave us a bit of a head start telling us exactly how the composition of the board is supposed to work out initially.

The board of directors needs to include two members of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, two members of Charlottesville City Council, and one member of the governing body of each jurisdiction that joins CARTA as a voting member.

So right now, it would just be Charlottesville and Albemarle, it would be two supervisors and two councilors.

Additionally, there are up to four non-voting directors representing the interest of agencies or institutions within that region.

I believe UVA has specifically called out in the legislation as one of those institutions that would be considered a non-voting member.

So to start with, the board composition would just be Charlottesville and Albemarle.

There wouldn't be a tiebreaker involved, so there would need to be some consensus decisions being made.

But also, you would have some non-voting folks at the table supporting you in forming those decisions.

There are two committees that we laid out in the draft bylaws.

One is the finance committee.

We feel like there's probably going to be quite a few questions about finance coming through this authority.

That would consist of five members appointed by the CARTA board, and they would review, comment, and recommend on annual budgets, adjustments to those budgets, financial policies, quarterly expenditures, and any financial statements that are being shared with the board.

There would also be a technical committee.

That would be one staff member from each member locality plus non-voting members from DRPT and VDOT.

And they would review and comment and recommend on any planning project or program prioritization selection or programming matters for service.

These are the two committees that are included within the bylaws currently.

As a board, you also would have the flexibility of adding additional committees if you felt that there was a need for them.

So in addition to writing down what we think bylaws are going to be, and frankly that was some dry work that we worked through, we also got to get out into some of the surrounding communities and do some outreach.

We held a series of meetings with staff from the surrounding rural counties as well as UVA, and we've had some meetings with transit services as well.

What we've heard is that the needs that were in the rural jurisdictions are largely unknown at this point.

They know that they get their jaunt service and they rely on their jaunt service, but they don't really know what they need beyond that.

So they're still thinking through what those needs are for their residents.

There are opportunities for more coordination between transit services, particularly when we're talking about things like public-facing apps, microtransit, commuter services, electrification.

These are all things that our transit agencies are all looking at separately.

There's an opportunity to look at them together and maybe find some savings, find some synergies where we can make this work more smoothly because currently it's difficult for any of those agencies to sort of take the lead and bring the other two along with them.

Rural localities are also interested in spending transit services, but they're concerned with the risks that are associated with sharing those planning responsibilities with the entire region.

They have the services that they have in their areas today that they plan today.

They don't really have a lot of interest right now in seeing their neighbor come in and tell them what to do.

Yeah, I think we heard some interest in transit expansion for some specific needs like commuter needs, some tourism needs, but there was some uncertainty to the level of investment that was going to be needed.

So there's still some opportunity out there.

And just to share two things.

The feedback that we got from the counties were not uniform across the four counties.

Different feedback from different counties, some with a bit more interest than others.

And I think that even the transit governance study, what it talked about is to continue to build rapport and communication with these adjacent counties.

so that they begin to understand the benefit of it, knowing that it might not happen overnight.

And that's the way this particular group that we're going to sit in our table started.

We started that by the folks not really recognizing what we were going to do, trying to prove that we could plan the same thing possible.

And we proved that.

And as we've gone along, for example,

UVA has been a voting member.

They didn't used to be a voting member.

So that's what we've been doing all along.

And my anticipation was that some surrounding counties will be more equal, some will be less equal.

As we go along, I think, and other surrounding counties grow and they see their need and see what's happening, things won't change.

And the good news is that the counties are very interested in that information.

All right, so where are we going from here?

So what is the draft work plan for CARTA?

We sort of thought of this in three different phases, so there's sort of a setup phase of getting CARTA put together and operating, and then there's a phase of CARTA becomes a planning

oversight board basically.

The third phase is the one that I think we're interested in getting to but we need a path to get there and that's dedicated revenue.

This is not something that we're going to get in year one probably.

This is going to take some work for us to get to and we're going to have to work through the setup of CARTA first to prove that we can come to the table and then we're going to have to do some planning to show that we're effective at that table before the state is going to be interested in giving us that capability.

So what our work has been focused on is really what happens in those first two phases.

The next steps of the setup phase, we're kind of sort of in the middle of the setup phase as we're doing all this work on bylaws and budgets and work plan.

The next phase is bring this information to city council and the board of supervisors to review sort of all of this work plan, bylaws, information, budget, and consider enacting CARTA.

Passing some sort of resolution or ordinance, it's actually a little unclear in the legislation, which it has to be, but passing one at both bodies to set up CARTA.

In the meantime, as we're developing that information to bring to city council and board of supervisors sometime early this fall, we're also developing an interim budget for CARTA to figure out what's it gonna cost to do the rest of the setup work during this fiscal year.

This is not something that's really budgeted

in our budgets right now, so we're gonna have to figure out what else do we need to pay for in order to make sure that CARTA gets to being in the next phase of being a planning body.

We're hoping to wrap up all of this work in the current fiscal year, so we've got 12 months starting in three days, and then

The next phase, oh, I have one more slide.

After we enact CARTA, we will need to establish the CARTA executive board, bring you all together for a meeting, establish the finance and technical committees.

We're going to have to nominate some folks to serve on those.

Develop a working plan and budget for fiscal year 2026.

So this is what are we going to do once we're set up and become a planning body?

How much is it going to cost to do the work that we need to get done that we've agreed that needs to get done in 2026?

During that time, during this FY 2025, some of the discussions that we're hoping to have as a board in sort of the nascent stages of the board are what are the short-term wins that we can rack up?

What are the short-term regional improvements that we can identify, that we can coordinate between Albemarle and City of Charlottesville that we could count as something that is a regionally significant improvement?

There are some funding sources at the state and federal level where if you can point to this is a regional significant improvement there's a little bit more money there so we want to start finding which ones those are and naming them so that we can figure out how to get them funded and on the ground quickly before we have figured out the whole dedicated revenues stream.

We also will need to think through what are the planning needs in FY26 and what are the staffing needs that are associated with that as we're building that budget and work plan.

And just to make sure that I'm clear and everybody else is clear, we can set up CARTA, pass that and set that up without any funding for projects specifically.

We don't have to have funding, but setting that up is going to involve staff kind of

So the funding that we're talking about is meetings and time and all of that.

Yeah, it can be.

We're saying that when we're talking about funding, there are two sort of different types of funding.

How are we going to do the work in the next year?

So hopefully we can get through all of that in FY25.

It's going to be an aggressive push, obviously, but that leads us into FY26 and hopefully it lines up with sort of the city and county budget cycle over this winter and fall as well so that we are going into FY26 ready to go on day one and start doing some planning work.

So these are some different things that we might want to look at during that planning phase.

and it includes identifying a path to securing state authorized dedicated regional funding for transit.

That's item number one on our list.

Work with neighboring rural jurisdictions to assess rural transit needs that could be served by CARTA.

So not just what needs are out there, but what needs are actually relevant to CARTA as a regional authority.

Working with TJPDC on regional transportation demand study that they've already identified in their work plan to identify opportunities for investing in commuter bus services in the region.

Identify planned future expansions that would be regional in nature, those regionally significant improvements, to start looking for opportunities to accelerate the study and deployment of those services.

review formulas for local service providers, revisit local urban paratransit provisions, determine the best way of expanding Micro CAT and determining the success of the existing services.

So a lot of things that we can be doing with CARVA in FY26 and beyond.

As part of the next phase that we're trying to get to is the dedicated funding phase.

How do we get to past just planning how we get the money, but actually getting the money.

This will change what CARTA does pretty significantly.

We're talking about in the second phase, it is a planning oversight body.

In this phase, once we get to getting dedicated funding, it becomes sort of a banker for the funding for transit in the region.

So that very much could change the relationships between CARTA and the jurisdictions and their budgets, as well as CARTA and the service providers and how their budgets are taking in those revenues.

Specific answers to how that is actually going to happen,

We cannot tell you today.

Those are things that we're going to have to work through during that planning phase.

And it's going to take some time.

But the fact that we know that we need to have those discussions shouldn't necessarily be a barrier to setting up CARTA.

It's actually the reason why we need to set up CARTA.

We have to set up a table for us to sit at and have those conversations before we can come to a conclusion to those conversations.

We should move through the first two phases and maybe worry about this piece on the back end.

So the key takeaways that we'd like to leave you with, this has been a process that's been going on for a long time.

We've been moving towards having a transit authority for quite some time.

We've all identified a shared need for us to collaborate on planning so that we can get expanded and more efficient transit services.

I think we all agree that that's why we're here today.

CARTA can serve as that collaborative multi-jurisdictional body that can reserve

Resolve questions about revenues and some questions about relationships between providers and jurisdictions.

Rather than serve as a barrier, these questions are the reason why we need CARTA so we can figure out what are the answers and that will lead us to you know potentially getting more revenue once we have those answers.

Setting up CARTA is a key

It's a key tactic for us to maneuver into a position that allows us to ask for legislation that will allow us to get that dedicated revenue.

And getting that dedicated revenue is key to getting

That transit vision plan fulfilled.

So this is all connected to our planning efforts.

We're just trying to set up a vehicle to make it clear to the state that we can be responsible with funding, that we've planned out everything that we're going to pay for with the funding, and that we work well together.

And with that, I think that's the end of our presentation.

That's a lot of work y'all have done.

And I am going to open it up for questions.

And I know we've probably had a lot of questions.

But Mike, you had a question.

So these bullets, at least as they were read, or at least as I heard them, sound a lot more like a big AFO than they've been described in all previous meetings and private books.

So depending on which

funding, you're talking about CARTA having some say about.

So is an idea interpreted

One of those is how the formulas and funding would work.

We can't tell you how it would work or whether it would deal with all the funds that are coming out of each jurisdiction's general fund.

I do think this.

I wouldn't take all these bullets to indicate that it was supposed to be a big A authority to take responsibility for all revenue.

I don't think that that was the intent or the goal going forward.

I think Ben is correct that CARTA will evolve over time.

How it starts is not how it will look at year five.

I think our intent, though,

Our intent is to use CARTA as a vehicle to pursue this transit vision plan, which will require additional revenue.

That, I think, is really the goal more than taking authority and responsibility away from entities.

Is that fair?

Because what I, in my head, and I'm always one person, but in my head,

I've been saying that if you're never gonna have a robust transit system, you're gonna get another source of funding.

And so that doesn't mean that we're going to, the county and the city, I guess you could say, but the county will have only funded transportation through this authority.

We might very well, and I would imagine we would have, have funds in our budget.

I believe that there's no doubt about that, but I also believe that part of what took seven years to get to where there was a vote to say, yes, this is what we're going forward with, was an understanding about what was being voted on.

I thought that was kind of the whole reason, one of the big reasons we like an authority.

To finish articulating the question I was going to ask, I don't know what kind of credit that entity comes into if we impute their credit of its primary partners onto it.

And as I scan it right now,

I do not see anything about debt.

It says issuance of revenue bonds.

But I feel like some of this early language was some boilerplate that was borrowed from other transportation, transit authorities, and other jurisdictions.

And again, an evolving organization that at this, as we've described it,

is really to pursue this transit vision plan and begin to identify revenue sources that could support it.

I think it's a great question and I think for an attorney I think that really makes sense.

Well I hope that we'll keep that possibility in mind.

Again, as you all do this work,

The jail board that we're on can issue debt.

RWSA takes on debt.

And one of the beauties of an authority is that the authority can take on debt without impacting some local standing board.

You still have to pay for it.

Exactly.

But that's a long ways away.

And I do want to just make the comment that the bylaws and the event that we had in front of us are really modeled after what we have, the ability, and what the General Assembly told us years ago.

So that's why some of this seems a little different, but it's based on what we had permission from the General Assembly to do.

And I will say that I think some of us,

You guys stopped me because you all are the ones that have been down in the weeds on this.

But some of us thought that we would be ready to go to the General Assembly and the upcoming General Assembly session and be asking for certain things.

Right.

I would say a couple of things, Supervisor McKeel.

The first thing is that the bylaws are formed by two big buckets.

One is the legislation that was approved because that's what we can do.

The second is we modeled much of it from other jurisdictions that have transportation and transit authority.

So we didn't go and create a whole bunch of new rules about meetings and forums and all that.

We just sort of borrowed from that.

We had lots of conversation about moving forward and what we believe is that enacting CARTA and creating authority is really important, but that we should be methodical about it.

We should make sure that we get some traction with the authority before, frankly, we make a pitch to the General Assembly to ask for revenue.

Ben mentioned this idea of, what did you call it, regionally significant?

Transportation Project.

So what we would ask is if you do have some time look at the bylaws let us know if you have any questions and then we will bring back to this group we'll finesse this I'm going to reach out to my chat a little bit with big A versus little a and

So they would then go to city council and endorse it?

Correct.

Lucinda?

Just the August meeting, I have the CAT field trip.

For the agenda items, I have the CAT field trip.

the walk audit that was done with the Charlottesville Area Alliance, and then Mike's Jaunt studies, which there's several of them.

So we'll work through that.

We'll work through that.

We'll work through that.

As you have questions that you think about, don't hesitate to shoot them to, shoot them, send them to Ben or Ann or one of them, and then they'll look at those questions and then they will inform some of the discussion and questions and answers we're gonna get a full use in all of this.

I think this is really critical though, I think we're all interested in, yes, don't.

If it works, I'm going to move us on to transit provider updates.

And how are our cases?

Jamie, no pressure.

You're the first to report out.

And it's hardly fair to ask you to go before us.

It's fine.

It's been really interesting.

Thanks for including us.

I was trying to think about updates that people might be interested in.

I mean, I guess we're informing a lot of human work, but our customers are students and families, so we certainly have

And one thing that's been expanding over the years that you may or may not be aware of is high schools.

High school students are being allowed to have different career learning communities and attend any of our large high schools.

And so we've had pretty small numbers and have just been shuttling, but I can see that expanding over the years and with kids staying at different schools, they'll have needs to get there earlier, of course.

So we're building a center by Albemarle High School, but the plan is that students can attend any of our large high schools, which are located all around the campus.

And so we have very small numbers right now, but if it doesn't expand out,

and all of our high schoolers utilized it.

That would be a great thing, but it also would be really critical to have transportation.

One of the things that my plate manager wanted to share is just an update on our electric fleet.

So we've had four electric school buses that we've had for about 20 months.

Right now we're not seeing too many cost savings and people just doing that.

We're still learning about how to utilize

And I keep saying to people, when I rode into the electric bus, which were really just running in the early rain, it was right now.

Really?

I don't remember the name, but she said that because it was quieter, right, and they're not screaming it.

She said, I've been driving buses for

Our first fully operational day will be July 1, so Monday.

We hired and entrained nine drivers and two dispatchers, so RMC is out for staffing for us and it'll be fully operational with UDA employees, so especially keeping out our contractor, I guess.

Another thing that we just recently settled on, I think Scott may have talked to Mike about our ABL contract with Translope.

We went to RFP.

As of in the last week or so, we did sign an agreement with Translope

Other than that, we added an additional bus route this summer, due to construction at the Bongane East Park, Purple Line.

And as quickly as I went online, it'll probably go offline.

Any questions for Emilya?

Just a comment that I've heard recently, RideShare is special about marketing for the mouse.

It's like, it's over-flowing.

And that's what you're referencing.

All right, Carl, you are.

All right, so Cat's out first.

I heard my presentation about it, I think I heard it.

I neglected to mention that you look at FY26, that's the last year that we are, for region, Albemarle and Charlottesville have to pick up the cost for the zero fares because of the way the grant.

27, we have to make a decision about going to the church at all.

So we are on the hook for one more year, 25 to 26, and then 27,

And that's about half a million dollars that you can see from FY23 numbers where that's the number you made at the state that was reported that the property was lost.

That's October 24th, 25th, 26th.

We fly out on the 24th, all the activities happen on the 25th.

by backing on the 26th.

It's a really informative trip.

Check in on it.

MTV is doing wonderful things out here.

We've requested the presence of our state partners to come with us this time.

The DA will come with us.

We'll be able to get other requests for other partners to come out.

It's a wonderful operation if we're gonna try to incorporate that as a really good, fun example

Okay.

But not the week before.

And I encourage folks to really

I know M.R.

County Public Schools has expressed an interest in that and I'm encouraging the university to say that.

It is really worth seeing.

Closer to home, our downtown transit station, if you want to meet some upgrades in the neighborhood.

So there's a major project to do kind of

Upkeep, we're working through that.

We have meeting this morning with the construction team, project management team.

They're potentially pulling the trigger on getting the starting, kind of the first phase of the improvements, like I'm saying, October-ish.

When they start the project, it's a 90-day project, hopefully, 90 to 120 days,

So if you see activity down, that's what it is.

It's just keeping up the asset that the state and the feds put a little amount of money into.

So it's just trying to make sure that we are keeping track of this.

And that's kind of transitioned to pupil now.

One of the things that we were fortunate about to get was additional two positions from the school side.

For drop groups, we are close to actually, for the first time in a long time, we are off-rocks of 22 total positions.

We have three folks, three additional drops that are in queue, so we would have 21.

We are really close to having 22 positions filled by the start of the school, which is off the school team.

It's the first time that the band has said it since I've been here.

That's the only time you would believe that.

We're working hard to make sure that's going to happen.

We're advertising like crazy.

We're on television, radio, and print, and social media.

We're going to all stop to get the media out of the can, because when you train something up, they give us a reflex.

So when you have that training pipeline open, as long as you pop the can, you can see they could option us, Albemarle,

And the goal for us would be to have all of our training done so it would be ready when we hop off the stairs.

No.

So we are authorized for 22%.

30 to 39 hour positions, 30 to 35 hour positions.

And then we were hopefully, so we filled basically all 10 full time.

We have all the slots for you right now interested in 30 to 39.

We'll be going back to school to make suggestions about filling some of our third party services where we take kids that have IEPs, but they're

We're working through that model so we can pull that back in-house because it is a higher level of efficiency and sharing some of the responsibilities and getting more opportunities for a full-time position and that hopefully will make the model work better.

I'm sorry, I'm not doing my case.

That's no one's question.

Congratulations.

I will note on that, that won't change the parent responsibility zones around the schools.

Those are staying the same as they were.

Jaunt, let's see, I've said it earlier, we did that time meeting recently for a kind of youth assessment today, and I've just got a message from my planner that the coach at the state club joined our board meeting on July 10th.

I'm a little weird about presenting to you all before my board, so I'm glad that we've got that sorted.

And you'll hear more about those recommendations soon.

Battery electric vehicle was not wrapping up much more than I might have hoped.

There were some issues with the reality of the power and

I had to really clarify with the consultant that we really have the capacity to grow the size of our fleet whether that meant for capital reasons or the financial constraints and that dropped the possibility of electrifying the fleet from 75 to 100 percent to about 38 percent so because of the

the range of our vehicles, the cost of en route charging, all of that.

But more to come on that, though we're not finished mapping up that order.

And there are many reasons for that.

I'd like to wish off a visit to Winchester, who over the last couple of months has transitioned 90% of the first round and all of their immediate transit to a microtransit facility.

about their joys and struggles so that we can learn from that.

But I will say it was an overwhelmingly positive and encouraging visit with them.

And we're moving in a positive direction with the consultants.

That's it.

As I view it, the consultant has provided us with five scenarios that are reasonable to pilot for

and the others, followed by a brand new approach for Greene County, something that would be worked out in order to extend 29 cadets as the third.

So we'll see how that one works out in the end.

Sounds right, yeah.

That's all I have.

I don't know.

There's more texture you could put on that?

That sounds like they blew up the trampoline program.

And I'm not even sure if Mike.

They only have two fixed routes left, right?

And there was not a lot of satisfaction with the frequencies and things like that.

It was a really great peer locality for me to be visiting because the city of Winchester is just over nine

We go a little further into Albemarle County than they are willing to go into Frederick County.

They really stay within the city limits, but because of the three-quarter mile buffer, they have to.

It was a really good comparable.

Gwen Chester, I think you were, back in the court piece, 200,000 ridership.

We're at 12.6 million.

All of them different.

And we're not dealing with the same, our number needs to be back over 2 million riders.

We're talking about 10 million.

Yeah.

Yeah, so.

All right, and number one is after six o'clock, guys, we're gonna start losing data.

Okay, that's a good one and then I think until we

Thank you very much.

Lucinda, if we can have a couple of really quick mobility hand-to-hand dates.

Okay.

We'll skip those, but I just want to share that our mobility management program now called PATH has a flyer out there and we're trying to get people to call us, so please share the flyer, the 800 number with anyone who you think might need help finding a ride.

and we've been tabling at different events.

We're gonna be at the Healthy Streets, Healthy People event on Saturday.

Oh yeah, sure.

And any other business, I don't have anything so it looks like we're good.

All right, so we are canceling the July meeting,

I appreciate it.

And so our next meeting will be August 22nd.

Same place, same time.

And with that, I will adjourn us.

And I really appreciate everybody.

Good meeting you.

Good job on the presentation.

I'm really comfortable with that.

Okay, as long as it's Ben and not me, I'm ready.

Okay.

Did you see the book?

So, I was lucky to have the opportunity to be part of this community and to be part of the community.

We have plenty of time for questions.

All right, my dear, thank you very much.

Yes, I noticed too late for it to matter that the agenda timing switched back to five o'clock at seven, six o'clock.

No, the time restarted.

Yeah, it went five, 545, six to 605,

Okay, I got it.

It's not important.