Regional Transit Partnership (2017-2025) Meeting   9/26/2024

I will call the meeting of the Regional Transit Partnership to order on Thursday, September 22nd.

Welcome, everybody.

Our first item of business is to approve and invite Katy Miller from BRPT to join us electronically.

Katy's on Zoom.

So we have a motion for Brian, a second.

Great.

That's all right.

Supervisor McHale.

Yes.

Counselor Oschrin.

Yes.

Supervisor Pruitt.

Aye.

Director Silsdorf.

Yes.

And I'm going to back up a minute because, Katy, I forgot to ask you to give us your location.

Well, welcome.

And I assume the order is okay, even though I missed the order a little bit.

But we're good.

All right.

With that, let's do our normal introductions.

I'm Peter Krebs from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

Thank you.

Welcome, Jason.

He's having a good time.

There's no hurricanes around him.

He's on the beach somewhere.

I'm Ben Chambers.

I'm with the city's transportation planning manager.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

All right, and Gretchen Thomas, TJPDC.

Garwin, Director of the Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

And?

I'm Jessica Bush-Gowery, and I work on the community development.

Great to see you, Jessica.

All right, introductions.

Announcements, I don't think we have any announcements that I know of today to get started.

So our first action item that we're going to give them is approval of the agenda.

I will then have a motion to approve the agenda.

Well, I just made a motion.

Second from Natalie.

Supervisor McKeel?

Yes.

Counselor Oschrin?

Director Silsdorf?

Yes.

Oh, Katy doesn't vote.

She does vote.

Yes.

There you go.

All right, so that's everybody listening.

All right.

We also have the meeting minutes in our packet from August to

So moved.

Second.

Mike, you made a motion.

You second.

Scott seconded.

Does anybody though, quickly, just want to ask, did anybody find anything that they wanted to, any edits or changes, anything that's okay?

Just want to make sure.

All right, so we have a motion and a second.

Councilor Pinkston?

Yes.

Councilor Oschrin?

Yes.

Ms. Miller?

Yes.

All right.

So we have an agenda.

We have our minutes approved.

If there's anybody in the room or online who would wish to speak as a member of the public, please use the raise your hand function.

I don't think there's anyone in the room.

The first agenda item is the remote meeting policy update, which most of us are aware of.

The General Assembly made a few changes, so this is our chance to review.

So legislation adopted by the General Assembly necessitates some changes to our remote electronic participation in all virtual meetings policy.

In your packet is both a staff memo and a copy of the revised policy.

The Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission approved this in their July meeting.

Since you all are an advisory body to the commission, you also have to follow that same adopted policy.

So I just wanted to detail a couple of those changes to make sure everybody understands.

So the changes include the ability to hold all virtual public meetings limited to up to 50%.

That was previously 25%.

So they've increased the ability for you to hold an all virtual meeting, which means everybody participates online, no in person.

For example, if you guys meet ten times a year, up to five of those are permitted to be all virtual.

It has to be posted publicly, that'll be held in an all virtual setting.

It cannot have, your body cannot have more than two consecutive all virtual meetings.

You do have to continue to have an in-person quorum, at least every other meeting.

You have to provide the public access through electronic communication means.

We have to be able to give them a way to call into us if virtual communication is disabled so that they can no longer hear the meeting and the meeting would have to go into recession while we fix that issue.

We cannot continue to hold the all virtual meeting if the public cannot access it.

and then there's a couple expanded provisions on the use of video and sound.

In order to establish quorum in an all virtual meeting, cameras and sound have to be available.

Anytime the camera is turned off, you are considered absent during that portion of the meeting.

Any votes that are taken, you have to be able to be seen and heard when it's an all virtual meeting.

The other provision in there is that it now requires an annual adoption of a proxy, not just as changes are made.

So you guys, this will come before the body every year.

assuming that the RTP is still around any year.

And then finally, this is just informational.

You guys don't have to take any action on this because it is a policy of the PDC.

We went through that very efficiently, but I will ask if anybody has any questions.

We did have the policies in our packet, but does anyone have any questions?

No?

All right, I'll just add this because I know there's some, sorry to interrupt you, there's some confusion sometimes.

There were not changes to, if there is an in-person meeting with a quorum in person, the way that people can participate electronically, that did not change.

That is still up to 25% for the same reasons, illness, personal matter, up to 60 miles, all of that remains the same.

Is it safe to say that our sort of default is going to be to continue to...

The commission itself is considering some virtual because they're traveling from all six jurisdictions.

So most of our urban centric meetings, folks are still very happy to be in person.

But for those that are already traveling 60 miles, they are requesting that we have some rotation.

And it is nice that Katy from Richmond can join us when she can't get here.

So that works very well for us.

All right.

So we're going to have a report now, a presentation on the Charlottesville aerial lines.

We all caught it.

Thank you.

So I'm reporting out for Charlottesville Area Alliance and they partnered with AARP and America Walks to host a walk audit workshop.

It was back in July.

The CA transportation work group got a technical grant from AARP for livable communities.

And so the grant was put into action to host this walk audit and bring community and government agencies together and organizations and non-governmental agencies into the planning fold.

And the questions they were trying to answer is, what is truly accessible when it comes to walkability and what is important to this group and to walkers, folks, pedestrians in general?

There were 34 attendees from nonprofit, governmental, and community agencies, and it kind of had a three-fold mission.

Educate, assess, and evaluate the nearby walkability and accessibility of the area we chose, including access to transit in that area.

The trainer kind of

section of the walkability audit, that goal to make it a more sustainable effort so this wouldn't be a one and done, you know, that we could actually complete this with other community members and neighborhoods further on, and then design solutions that work for everyone.

So with that sustainability, any solutions that came from the walkability audit could be replicated for all walkers and rollers and mobility in general.

So the vision for this walk audit was investment in infrastructure will, with thoughtful and inclusive planning, enhance opportunities in underserved Charlottesville and Algol neighborhoods by providing better connected walkability and transit, leading to improvements in community health and access for all.

And so this audit and training centered on equity was

The vision was to strengthen partnerships and then generate ideas based on what we saw when we did the blocking piece of this, or the pedestrian piece of this, and then establish foundations for the future.

So going in, all 34 groups that attended were really keeping these four pieces of the vision in mind.

And that's VDOT.

VDOT was one of them.

So we did the walk audit.

It was again up on 29 on Hillsdale and these are just some of the results I pulled from.

There was a survey that was done during the walk audit and there was discussion.

So I've compiled this from CAA.

So which part of the walk audit was most walkable?

It was Hillsdale because it was even, wide, and smooth space.

And then another question was describe one or two locations which were not walkable.

Along 29 North, the sidewalk is not rollable.

It's cracked and slanted.

The curb slopes were too steep.

Now, this language comes from a VDOT participant because I don't know this language myself.

Minimal buffer, pedestrian head timing too short, and high speed traffic.

So, I mean, now I know what those look like.

But that was to say that VDOT was also on the adventure with us and recognized that these things were an issue.

And we chose this area because it was city and county and VDOT.

Everyone had a hand and everyone had a share in this geography, in this physical location.

Did I describe that right?

Yes.

Right on the road, yeah.

If you tripped and fell, that would be not good.

Yeah, that's what the minimum buffer is.

Yes.

That's the time between, so when the light says change.

Which one?

Say it again.

Yeah, from changing to white walk sign to blinking numbers to stop, that timing is too short.

Yeah, it was too short to accommodate the majority of walkers

And just for clarity, when I look at the map, that whole area is in the city.

The only corner of that intersection, of that hydraulic intersection,

It's in the county is the Stonefield intersection.

Which says a lot.

That really says a lot.

Having said that, once the city and the county finally get when we get the pedestrian bridge built, this will open up this whole intersection much better.

But just to let you know that all of that that I'm looking at right now where you were walking is in the city.

Most people don't realize that that intersection, the only corner of that intersection that's in the county is the stone pillar.

Yeah, it was under construction.

We weren't really, we were close to that, but we weren't in that zone yet.

And then maybe the construction probably didn't happen.

No, we

And I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I want to call you out.

No, I'm fine.

Thank you.

That's helpful.

And I really do appreciate Natalie was with the group.

Yes.

I think what like the infrastructure, part of the infrastructure that we were looking at was old.

So it was not up to code.

It wasn't up to those standards.

And the other thing too is that that was all in the city.

So while the city takes care of their own roads, right?

So Vito was there.

but you see there's, VDOT has given the city permission to take care of their roads in the city.

It's very confusing.

I think we take care of the sidewalks on 29th.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

That's when I'd have to look into it.

The decision was when we were doing all of the work around that intersection, it was a VDOT and an Albemarle and Charlottesville endeavor.

So the three localities were working on this intersection and the roundabout.

Jason, I think maybe that's what you're referring to?

Yeah, that's why I think I'm with Ben and you on that.

My conversation with VDOT was more about the sidewalk itself, and I think that did fall under some jurisdiction but was very outdated.

The sidewalk is along 29th and it's going south there.

I would say yeah, it's probably quite old.

Not surprising just because of the code.

because I called the other day, I called VDOT about a question about just right over on the bypass, right on that area, because I assumed that the 29 bypass was VDOT.

And she said, oh no, that's the city.

It's very confusing.

Fascinating.

It was very unclear.

I mean this picture you're seeing was VDOT showing us the new improvements to come and they kind of ran through that but we talked about what could improve walkability so the overall the overarching kind of theme that came out of those results was design infrastructure with people not cars in mind and that would look like wider walkways, vigilant maintenance that was

Really a piece of this that came to light because we had someone in a mobility device and we had two wheelchairs that we used to roll and test out rollability.

The maintenance became even more clear to those of us doing this path.

Adding shade came up a lot.

Mixed use path.

It's quite narrow, this sidewalk that's here.

Again, old and narrow.

If you had a child in a stroller, an adult and another adult, there would be a standoff and someone's ending up in the grass.

So that was kind of mixed use in all kinds of ways that that can be applied.

One of the other maintenance things that someone pointed out that I was like, oh, yeah, that too.

was some of the trees were hanging low.

So if you were visually impaired, you clocked yourself on some of the bridges.

So that was another, it's not just the roadway, it's also above.

That's part of the accessibility.

Because we would all just duck, but then we realized we can see where we're going.

Absolutely.

Yeah, that maintenance has a broad swath of the visual maintenance.

So all of us took kind of, you could kind of take turns in the wheelchair and it was really, I thought it was so revealing.

But moving as a pedestrian is hard, but in a mobility device is way harder.

And it was striking how much more time consuming and difficult it is to take transit on a wheelchair.

So we all

and then walked the rest of the way.

So we had at least one mobility device for the bus and then one other wheelchair, usually with someone in the wheelchair, so that we could see kind of what it's like to get on the bus, how to position that person on the bus.

And to be fair, if I was a driver,

another bit of technology is the driver.

You're lowering the ramp, you're locking the person in.

Plus we were a gamble of 20 people all at once.

So some of the groups had different experiences from others.

Some got on easily and some did not.

So that was, again, an eye-opening experience about the transit in a wheelchair in particular.

Just because the sidewalk isn't rollable.

And then this part about the maintenance with the trees and also adding more trees, the lack of shade was very clear to us.

Remember this is July, so we were like,

on 29 getting blasted, and that's not going to get any better.

And then the bus system is clear, like we were with, in my group in particular, we were with an everyday rider who was in our group.

and he had, before we even left the building, he had the app up and could tell us when the bus was coming, but if you're, and if you're a frequent wider rider, that's great, but if you're not, there are barriers to being a new rider.

It would not be clear to you that those options that he had through the technology were available if you just walked out of the hotel as a guest and were looking for a bus stop.

So that was, in this location, what was one of, some of the takeaways.

and then moving into next steps, like what do we do with all of this information?

So there is a move to consult neighborhood leaders and associations to, again, train the trainer to do their own walk audit.

Support city and county initiatives that are already doing walk audit efforts.

We know Ben's department has done that before.

We know that that's happened in the county.

Keep community members connected to that walkability work.

So in the literature from AARP, in the past, government agencies have done walk audits with their staff.

And this recommendation is grab folks from the neighborhoods you're going to impact,

also who have strollers and mobility needs and get the community involved in that walkout.

Make a concerted effort to make it outside of your staff to meet those needs.

And then our new PATH program, which you'll hear, the transit field trip and bus buddies pilot.

Should I talk about that later?

I'll talk about it.

You'll hear more about that, which is very exciting.

Open it up for questions.

Would you go back to the map?

Yes.

So just, it's really a thing for who's us to think about this from the city and the county, because that area that we're talking about right now from the hydraulic intersection down past what I call Chicken Row,

Dan, Chicken Roe, having said that, when we, when the city, and this gets to Jason's point, when we were the city and the county in VDOT, when all of the representatives were trying to figure out

what we were going to do with that intersection, that dangerous intersection.

And we finally settled on the roundabout at Whole Foods and the roundabout at Stonefield and the pedestrian bridge.

And that, what did you call it?

Chicken?

The chicken strip.

The chicken strip.

And so, because Angus Road runs right there by the chicken strip and the traffic improvements also went across the road and I forgot the name of the hotel that's over there where you have a road that comes down from the bypass by that hotel.

So there were going to be, if we had a plan to improve that whole area, we had to pull it out because

it came back as so expensive that we couldn't afford the other work.

The city and the county of VDOT couldn't afford the other work.

So we pulled that out, but VDOT said at the time that they would be coming back to us with a different recommendation for that connection from the bypass and from chicken strip.

and Angus Rowe.

So they're going to be looking at that very area.

It would behoove those of us in the room when we're having hearings on it and we're talking about those improvements when they come to look at some of these recommendations and say we need more trees, we need better access, we need to reach out to the communities around them because that will go through

just like we did with these movie alleys.

See where I'm going with this.

That's it.

There's a bunch of grocery stores.

Yeah.

That was kind of like apparent.

Yeah.

Low income housing on the other side.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Now the pedestrian bridge that goes across 29th would help a lot for connection.

What I hope at some point is if you go further south that we can have another bridge or some some better pedestrian connection between the meadows which is this kind of island off to the north northwest of

So that they can get, their kids can get over to schools.

So I hope that at some point we can build some bridges or we can do better pedestrian crossings.

We've got something we want to catch up with you and the neighborhood leaders there.

When we were talking about this area,

Yeah, and we couldn't, we submitted that through smart scale, did not get funding.

We were competing with a three million dollar tunnel.

So what we did when we couldn't get the funding for that Great Separated Intersection, we came back and then we parsed it out and that's how we ended up with the two roundabouts and the pedestrian bridge and we even had to take out the area you're talking about, the improvements to the meadows, Angus Road, and that whole

because that was part of the plan.

And we had even had hearings with the people that lived in that at that time.

So when VDOT comes back with a proposal, that's the time to jump all over this.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Literally, they chose the right intersections.

Why?

Because there are no challenges.

And as Peter said, there are grocery stores there that people need to get to.

And there's a lot of growth changing.

Natalie, what did she notice in terms of bicycles and that sort of thing?

I mean, I would, ugh, biking onto my own is a little weird.

I mean, I try to bike around the city as much as possible, but like, biking to Trader Joe's is still a thing I get to conquer.

but the pedestrian bridge will help with that.

So that's something that I was keeping in mind is like getting to that quarter is, I mean, if you cross lower, there's like gaps.

It's just like, you can't really do it well.

Yeah, I mean, Hillsdale's got shoes.

All right, listen.

Yes.

So you guys have all probably heard me talk about the Mobility Management Program and the 5310 grant that we received last year.

So it's now called PATH, which stands for Partnership for Accessible Transportation.

And I just, it's nearing the end of our grant fiscal year.

So I wanted to give you all an update on what we've done so far and where we're looking to in the future.

So as our population grows, we're gaining more and more elders who will need transportation support.

As recognized also by the Blue Ridge Health District's Community Health Improvement Plan, transportation is one of the number one barriers to a healthy community for our region.

and PATH is working to build connect coordination among transportation providers and human service agencies to expand and improve transportation for older adults and people with disabilities.

So this year has been mostly a program startup.

We have been working to form partnerships and secure funding for the program.

We also, we were able to

form an agreement with Java to host our call-in center, which would provide, it's an information and resource center to provide you information about all of the transit options for people.

And then we also worked on making, conducting a marketing study that was funded by UVA, parking and transit.

and we hired and trained transportation counselor Sarah and we started marketing our information and referral center.

So part of our marketing was

We conducted the research and produced marketing materials that you saw in your packet.

We also produced a webpage for PATH that has links to all of the transit providers on it.

And we really depended on human service agencies and organizations that work with and intersect with older adults and people with disabilities so that we could connect with the Inland drivers.

And we

tabled at events like West Haven Day, handing out flyers and talking with people and giving them our phone number.

We presented to many, many community groups.

We covered all the food banks.

We worked at the community centers, adult day centers, and other connection points to work with our target audience, handing out materials at all those events.

And then some of our efforts even included Blue Ridge Health District sharing a social media post for us.

and a public service announcement on WNRN.

So we're on the radio.

So the services that we're offering and we've been marketing is a one-click, one-call information center which will have information for all the transit options.

So if you want to use public transit, you can connect with us or go to our website.

and we'll help you learn how to ride the bus.

We will kind of, we call Sara a transportation counselor because she'll like look at all the options.

If you're having difficulty reading the schedule, she'll go through that with you and she'll just really walk people through all of the systems and how to use them.

And we also, we haven't been taking calls for very long, but I wanted to share some data that we've collected so far

So we have a really extensive data collection system that I'm pretty excited about.

So I don't know why it looks like that.

It should be in color, but we'll just go with it.

Most of the callers that called us needed a ride to a specific event, and that mostly was medical appointments.

So they had something next week or in two weeks, and they didn't know how to get there, and they were asking for help.

And then the second highest type of call was asking general questions about transit and what options are available and how to use them.

And Sara answered them all.

Most of our calls, we received calls from all of Region 10.

Most of them, we even helped people, the other is people who called from like Buckingham County or outside of our Region 10.

but we helped them anyways because they were going to a place their destination was in our region.

And you can see from the number of calls they correspond with population density with Albemarle and Charlottesville being the most highly, the most calls are coming from those jurisdictions.

The top reason for travel, 84% was to medical appointments

People needed transportation to essential services that they were having difficulty getting to.

So I just want to pause and think about, you know, if all the non-drivers in the area and if they're having difficulty getting to an essential medical service, what else are they missing?

What other destinations are they having difficulty getting to or just not going to?

So we referred most of our callers to Jaunt, and they've been a terrific partner and a terrific resource for older adults and people with disabilities.

We keep a comprehensive list of all the transportation options available, so we always refer first to CAT, and then if that's not working for the person, we'll help them with an application for ADA service, we'll walk them through it, and then we'll get them connected with Jaunt.

if that's not available because a lot of our rural communities don't have a lot of options.

We have an extensive list of transportation providers, private providers, taxis, Uber, Lyft, just people that we know who provide rides.

Sara will call churches and just kind of rack her brain, volunteer organizations to see if she can get a ride for people.

So that's been really helpful.

She also, because she works at Java, knows a lot of insurance things and she's been able to talk with insurance companies and be able to get people reimbursed or rides to medical appointments through insurance too, which is very great for people.

There's a whole other part of, and I'm sorry, I don't know how to fix the thing, but there's a whole other part to the PATH program, which is community partnerships and

the goal of increasing transportation options for non-drivers.

So we're pursuing and enhancing our collaboration among service providers for both transit, human and medical providers.

And we have a lot of partnerships right now that are working really well for us and we're looking at future partnerships.

Some of the projects that we're working on right now, Jen alluded to,

So the Charlottesville Area Alliance, which is a group, like a coalition of providers who work for older adults, and they want to have a livable community, and so they got an AARP livable community grant, and they've been doing a couple projects, and we've been helping with some of them.

So one of the things that we're working on in partnership with them is a bus field trip with Kat,

and we're going to, our first one is October 8th at Innovage and I have details on that after my presentation.

You all are invited if you'd like to come and we will have a group of seniors from Innovage.

We're going to do a workshop on how to ride the bus, how to read the schedule, all of that and then we're all going to walk as a group to the bus stop and take the bus to the downtown transit center.

Our partner Kat is going to have somebody there speak about the transit center

and the safety of it.

And then we will have lunch at the pavilion and then take the bus back to Innomage and do a little debrief about how their experience was riding the bus.

We're also working with the Charlottesville Regional Development Redevelopment Housing Authority.

and we're going to be doing presentations and kind of like transportation workshops for all of their housing sites on how to ride the bus.

If they're not able to get to the bus stops for CAT, then we're gonna sign them up for John and we're gonna kind of work with them on helping them find solutions for their transportation needs.

And we're also talking with, in the future, volunteer driver programs like Seville Village

and what we wanna do is support them in enhancing their services and increasing the services that they're offering.

And one way that we're gonna do that is we're applying for funding to be able to reimburse their volunteer drivers so that they are encouraged to go further for appointments and things like that.

Where is Seaville Village?

So Seaville Village is kind of new and they just started a volunteer driver program.

They cover all of Charlottesville and a mile outside of Charlottesville into Albemarle.

And you have to become a member.

It's pretty cheap.

And then you can use their volunteer services, which one of them is volunteer driving.

They have other services too, like fixing your home or

I don't know, other things.

Sara knows.

Sara knows it all.

So what was the date one more time?

October 8th, Alex.

The PATH aims to enhance transit services by providing a centralized phone number and website to connect community members with all available transportation options.

We provide coordination and support to improve transportation services, and we have a complex data collection system to frame informed decisions, expansions, and changes in transportation services.

We conducted one survey and we'll

We plan on doing one every year, so that would be an ongoing way to collect data.

And then using the 5310 grant, we're really an infrastructure and funding foundation for an expandable model that serves multiple stakeholders and programs in the future.

So we're not going to be providing transportation, but we're going to be working with providers and helping them and providing support for them.

That is the end of the presentation.

We have materials in the back and if you would take some and share them with people who are non-drivers or maybe thinking about being non-drivers, that would be fabulous.

We've been really promoting our materials a lot of different places.

So I didn't say that because it's embarrassing.

We've had 113 calls.

Most of them were from medical, and a lot of them, there were no services available for those people, which is where Sara really tried hard, you know, calling all different places.

Yeah, so Sara was hired in May.

We made the partnership with Java in September and they have a hotline, like a senior helpline, and so we did answer those calls for transportation and

worked with them.

I trained their staff how to answer those types of calls and things.

And we met with John.

Our staff met together to talk about this.

So yeah, it was from September to May before Sara was available.

Yeah, so we did count those calls that came in through the hotline, which is just Java's general hotline.

So it sounds like there's work to be done in terms

Yeah, one of the things that we realized was our model was with Rappahannock and they don't have Kat and John and all of the fabulous service providers that we have here because they're a lot smaller.

So they are actually providing services themselves and we're not doing that.

So they were like, oh, you know, you're going to get a ton of calls.

but unfortunately because we're not providing any services and people can call John on their own, there's not a lot of reason to call us, which is where we pivoted and now we're looking at enhancing and increasing the services that are available, like working with the volunteer driver programs to increase the services that they can offer.

And it was also really important, it was intentional, you know, phased

because we didn't want to get out ahead of ourselves and get a whole bunch of phone calls that we didn't have staff and we didn't have anything to offer.

Okay.

Feel free to add to the conversation.

I just wanted to say like the aging service coordinators that work at Java also are, you know,

reasonably knowledgeable about the transportation options in Charlottesville for sure and in some of the counties.

And so as they got used to me being there, I think they answered a lot of questions on their own and were doing that previously as well.

If they were working with somebody on something else and then those people had questions about transportation as well, then they would just answer them or help them.

as best they could and recently they started bringing those calls to me or transferring them to me or referring me or whatever but in the beginning that wasn't happening as much because it was very easy for them to just answer the question if they can.

Yeah, for the folks who were not able to be

Can you talk a little bit more about what that gap was?

Okay, yeah, so it's various things.

Sometimes the majority of people that couldn't be served lived in the surrounding counties outside of Albemarle in Charlottesville.

And it might be because, you know, they have a medical appointment and

So I don't know a whole lot about insurance.

I just have to put that qualifier in there.

But a little bit that I've picked up from working at Java and also, you know, in previous stuff that I've done.

So I know that Medicaid does pay for transportation in a lot of cases, but it is, you know, there are conditions on that.

And so oftentimes they couldn't get transportation paid for through their insurance.

If they live in a county where John operates on, say, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and their appointment is on a Tuesday, or, you know, in a different county it's Tuesday, Thursday, and their appointment's on a Wednesday, things like that, then that's not an option for them.

And rescheduling their appointments these days is also very difficult.

I've had people tell me if they rescheduled, they're looking at, you know, sometime next year.

And

To get round-tripped to a doctor's appointment and back, even if you just live in, say, Southern Albemarle or someplace that's not all that far away, it's still upwards of $90 per round-trip thing.

Oh, I'm sorry.

With some of these paid transportation services.

So there's non-emergency medical transportation.

There's a lot of them that go through motive care, which is the Medicaid one.

But then there's some private ones.

One's called Reliable Rides.

There's another one called Vietnamese Transport.

There's one called Premier.

Taxis and Ubers.

There's not just Uber.

A lot of them won't go to the counties because it's too far away and it's not, you know, there's nobody else for them to pick up out there or it's too far for them to drive.

They're only getting paid for whenever they drive the person back in, not for the trip out to Louisa, for example, so a lot of people aren't willing to do it.

And so that's a big thing.

The paid transportation companies that we refer to also have surcharges based on distance, based on time, things like that.

So that's always an obstacle

Another thing that happens sometimes is, you know, it might be someone who does normally drive themselves, but they're going to a procedure where they're going to be sedated and they don't have anybody else who can drive them.

They're not allowed to drive themselves.

They're not allowed to leave and take joint.

They're not allowed to leave and take cat.

They're not allowed to leave and take Uber.

So there has to be somebody who will wait there with them and be responsible for them when they're discharged.

And so that's also very difficult to find.

And again, those some of these paid

um non-emergency medical transportation uh companies they will do that but it's very expensive because you're paying at least fifty dollars per hour for the wait time you're paying for the trip you're you know all of these things and so that's difficult um some

Occasionally people would not, I couldn't find something for them because they would call me about an appointment that was the next day and there was just no way to find something, but chances are good that if they were in the same situation as these other people that have called that I couldn't help, that I wouldn't have been able to help them even had I had a longer period of time.

I think it probably did.

When my mom became a non-driver, and she's also never good at technology, she would call me, tell me where she was, I would call her Uber, and then she'd be able to go her way, and that's how we probably saw.

That helps pay for that?

So that's one thing that would definitely help and that's one thing that, one of the things that we're working on, I'm sorry, just told me to be quiet.

That's one of the things that we just are working on doing is having a fund that we can use to reimburse people or to pay for those transportation things.

But so for example, I had one person in Nelson County who had to go to dialysis four times a week.

And there wouldn't be a fund big enough to pay for that for him.

So, you know, whenever we start this, we're hoping that it will, it's going to be a last resort whenever people can't find anything else.

And it's probably only going to be able to serve a couple people a month, at least at the beginning, unless, you know,

Eventually, maybe we could grow that to be bigger, but it's, you know, that would be hard to keep that sustainable because it would just require so much money.

So I think if we can, you know, work in the counties to grow volunteer driving organizations or things like that, that that's a problem.

And then we can, hopefully, if people are donating their time and we're able to help them with insurance and gas money,

Katie Miller had a question.

Yeah, I mean, I think you kind of touched on it.

I was just going to kind of clarify on that payment gap being part of it, of understanding that that is was my understanding that, you know, moving forward using some of that 5310 funding to be able to provide

like vouchers or subsidized rides or free rides for seniors and individuals with disabilities who qualify.

This is how we got involved with this, which might have been before you were even on RTP, which is that the UVA had spent in 2022 $500,000 unbudgeted to pay for rides.

And they wanted to stop.

They wanted to figure out a better system.

They're using all the same providers that do it path.

And so the end result was that people were being left in the hospital because they could not get home.

And we know that a lot of the insurance drivers

will accept the ride and cancel it when they learn that it needs to go so far.

So this gap has existed for quite a while and UVA has not figured out a way to solve it.

And they have an Uber voucher package.

But again, it's the distance problem that we're serving such a wide circumference of rural distance in that non-billable zone.

We realized that people were being readmitted to the hospital because they could not get a ride home.

So that's when the kind of like Blue Ridge Path thing came together.

And I appreciate that this is a solution for the situation that we have now.

And, you know, it's something that isn't it.

It's me.

It's trying to meet our current moment, but

It's also a, it's addressing a symptom, not reaching the root cause, the root cause being that people are too far away.

And the way to improve that is by building more closer so that people don't have a distance problem.

So that becomes a, it's not a transportation problem, it's a housing problem.

And that's I think something that we also kind of need to keep an eye on.

is there's affordable housing in the city.

People can age in or move back to the city to live in and then they're going to be closer to all of the providers.

They're going to be closer to activities that they want to do.

And so that's a broader thing to keep in mind.

I would also suggest that we're talking about the Regional Transit Authority now that would connect, would provide the money to connect

I guess my question is there are Medicaid and Medicare providers.

Is that gap so large that they want, that you could close the delta?

Meaning you would also apply because a jaunt, for example, could

I don't know enough about insurance.

I do know or have learned at least that there is not like

in my ignorance, thought that there was Medicare and that there was Medicaid.

But apparently there are dozens of providers of Medicaid and dozens of providers of Medicare, and none of it is the same.

And half the time, the people with the insurance don't know what they have.

And so that's a problem.

Medicaid will provide a good number of rides for people per year.

Right.

Medicare is much fewer.

I think it was maybe 24, 48.

and they're counting that as 48 round for each direction.

So that becomes a problem and a lot of people don't have it.

So this is for the conversation for later, but in Richmond there was a, this was 15, 20 years ago, they were doing Medicaid

That's a very interesting idea.

So far, the majority of calls that I get are not people who have Medicaid.

They almost always only have Medicare or they have the hybrid Medicare, Medicaid thing, which is not very good on coverage for transportation, apparently.

When I used to work with people with disabilities and I had to arrange their transportation, Medicaid was wonderful, but that was not for medical appointments.

Generally, that was going to employment or day programs or things like that.

And they got basically, you know, a year's worth of everyday rides Monday through Friday without any difficulty.

But those people had, you know, staff of whatever agency they're affiliated with to drive them to medical things.

So

Yeah, that hasn't been something that comes up very often.

I haven't had a whole lot of calls from people who have disabilities, but are not older adults.

Or Mike is your pagsaw.

Mike.

Thank you for this presentation.

I know a lot about Pat, which Mike has seen it.

I'll make sure he gets it for him.

We have been working together, with DRPT and Mike, and having conversations on how to bridge these gaps and what's allowable, what's not.

So we're working on solutions, we're getting there.

Just know that that's happening in the background.

So I think that's indicative of the people who are finding you.

Because I look at the trip purpose that we do for demand response in ADA, the whole rural area, medical trips, I can even share with you, I need all these pie charts, but like medical is only 25%, employment 31, social is 30,

So it's a little more balanced in terms of what people's needs are.

But it's just a reflection of who's calling you and how it compares to the actuals that we're getting in the five-minute service.

It's interesting when you go through jurisdictions, it's usually about the same.

Albemarle's about the same.

Charlottesville's about the same.

When you get out to Savannah, it's like 52% employment.

There's more people coming in for work.

And the same with Green.

again a lot of social and you get over to Louisa pretty balanced then you get to Nelson and it's 65% social so it's like you know speaks to the different me which I really liked what you didn't present you have in there the findings from the survey and I like the insights that you had there because it speaks to the pain points that people are feeling when they're trying to use or navigate transportation

What I like about that is you interview people, right?

We recently did a rural transit needs assessment study.

You will get a presentation from it.

I'm going to steal the thunder from that.

Right.

Good study, very academic.

What I like about this is talk to actual people.

And there were stakeholders in the rural transit needs

When we have that December discussion, let's have this

at the table as well, not to necessarily show it again, but just to remind folks that, because we do have people that are missing out on this today, and to connect to.

I think that's a real good idea.

But I do feel like I need to make sure that we connect this as we're going forward to our regional transit authority and figuring out how we're going to move transit out into the rural areas because Nelson, for example,

Ann and Vins were reaching out to the rural areas.

For example, Nelson was very interested in the authority and being a part of it because of the need.

I think one thing to really look at too that we didn't notice until we kind of started working together, which we noticed in medical care providers on the health side of things, but it was reflected in transportation is that proportionately we have enough providers

but we don't have enough providers who will complete a ride so it's good to kind of peel back and look at that deeper like oh yeah you have 72 like Barbies you know whatever you know transport we'll do medical transport but they still aren't picking up enough people and completing those rides to the county and so it's the same thing we have with dentists proportionally

We have plenty of dentists in Charlottesville, Albemarle, according to DMAS and Medicaid, but those dentists aren't taking new patients.

So it doesn't do us any good.

Right.

So it's that same, you know, like just be careful when we look at that stuff that we have, you know, we have Medicaid options, but not enough Medicaid drivers who will follow through.

And so that's been a that's why PATH is so helpful in another way, because the direct call and the like, see it to the end is really helpful versus just sitting there and

I think commuting is really important too.

We talk all the time about we want our firefighters and our police officers to live where they work and

I've talked to many firefighters and police officers over the years and sometimes they want to look when they don't work because it's nice for them to be able to go to the grocery store and not be caught by, I'm just saying.

So we have to really recognize that, just because it seems like it's one in your body.

I was going to note that after Counselor Oschrin said that, is we have to be very mindful of the fact that, yes, this is an affordable housing.

Their family is in the rural area.

They have new roots in the community.

I think the other benefit of mobility management, the PATH program, though, is so many of these situations are very individual.

You know, we might have a solution that'll cover 80% of them, but there's some of these, it's one person who needs stretcher service, exorbitantly expensive, and you have to work with that person to try to figure it out.

Or, you know, I read through the notes of the callers just for my own curiosity, and there are times when people, there are options, they just

will not elect to take them.

So they're within the micro-cat zone, but they don't want micro-cat.

They don't want to do it.

They want to do it a different way.

But all good things to think about as we're establishing the authority, reaching out to the rural areas, trying to figure out how we can get this connectivity, don't you think?

Looking at the bigger picture, I would really like to get a bunch of partners together from like UVA Health, Sentara, maybe the Blue Ridge Health District, and John and Pat, like the service providers, and try to come up with like a big picture way of addressing those needs in the rural areas and in the urban areas for medical transportation.

Yeah, so we have, thanks to DRPT, we have next year's funding, which will start in October, and it will go for a year, and we will be applying for fiscal year 2026 funding in January.

So right now we're looking at partners because one of the great things about the 5310 program is that we can help support transportation services.

So we're looking for partners who will expand the services available and meet some of those needs that we're seeing.

We're really talking a lot with John and DRPT because I don't want to silo everything and have like little band-aids everywhere.

I'd much rather

work with an established service provider who's providing those services already and just help increase them to meet the needs that we're seeing.

So we've been kind of looking at big picture stuff.

We're also working on the little stuff.

Yeah.

So I want to invite you all to our bus field trip.

It's at Innovage.

And we are doing a presentation training from 10 to 10.30.

and I'll send out an email with the full schedule.

Great.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Katy, do you want to add anything just on behalf of the RPT to this discussion?

Yeah, I mean, we have, you know, as everyone has kind of mentioned, some ongoing conversations with John and with TJPDC about how we can

So short term and long term goals as many issues, you have to have solutions that are appropriate for the timing.

I will say, though, that just as in our community of Charlottesville and Albemarle,

when we have all of these transit providers running around between UTS and CAT and two public school systems.

I mean, it just in general, that's a lot of people trying to provide services and we still have a need.

And when you talk about all of those services that are now

Well, maybe two more things, partly about what Jason was talking about, but I think that the callers that we get, and this might account for the low number of calls as well, is that people call us as a last resort when they've tried calling John and tried calling Kat or tried using these other services and it didn't work.

and they're like, what can I do now?

And so they call back.

And I think that accounts for a lot of the reason why the majority of our calls are looking for medical services is because those aren't optional.

Whereas something social or even work might be more optional.

You can change your schedule at work maybe if you have a supervisor who's cooperative or you can elect not to go to something social or you're likely to have family members going with you to something social that can maybe drive you if you can't take John Dorkat.

So these are the people calling that just couldn't figure out anything else on their own, couldn't figure out anything with the help of family, and that's also why there's such a large number of people that I couldn't help.

Some of the medical trips are a little more complicated because of the times and when you get discharged.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Michael Garrett works wonderfully for that, but currently only in those two areas, not inside of Charlottesville or in the surrounding counties.

And yeah, that was another thing like the people who who from the counties who sometimes didn't want to use Jaunt, even if it was available, would be because they're they're going to a medical appointment.

And so they're already not feeling well likely.

and there might be a four hour gap between when they can arrive in Charlottesville and when they can return home to Green or Louisa or whatever.

And, you know, they're 84 years old and not feeling well, so they're not feeling like sitting there in their doctor's office for that long.

And so it makes it, although it's there and it's available, it's not a viable option for that individual circumstance maybe.

And so that is something that I encounter fairly frequently.

And the lady I think that you're referring to who just didn't want to take MicroCat,

to her doctor's appointment.

I couldn't understand that, but you know, it is what it is.

So I think that would be part of the discussion with this budget side effect.

At that point, we will be able to discuss whether or not we want micro-capability in the city, like how we want that to die out, because there are lots of other options.

Correct.

Not the whole thing.

And I understand that, but at least when we're talking about timing and trying to get something up, that's going to happen quicker than perhaps the authority.

So I would caution everyone when I say,

Because of it, we have made sure that it is in two areas.

It's not the full count.

It's the urban aspect.

When you pull that model into the city, the resources are going to get stretched pretty quickly.

You're going to need to potentially talk about a larger portion of the city that are going to command a whole lot of trips pretty quickly.

A couple of scenarios we've lived through with them for what it potentially cost to make that model happen.

But I would say it's a pretty conservative, radish of estimates in the model.

Yeah.

We're finishing up a micro-transit study, which will break to you as well.

And it's some of the things, if you build it, people love it, and all of a sudden there's a demand, that becomes a cycle of, okay, now I gotta meet that demand, how do I do that with my existing set of resources, which, anyway.

It also can produce more efficiencies, and it could work in some rural areas,

area around an activity center or evenly green around Charlottesville standard school which we looked at.

But taking people from the rural area, driving all the way to the urbanized area, microtransit's not that important.

A lot of places are using it like the first model I saw, connections.

You gotta keep the area pretty tight.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

We talk about choice of where people live.

Of course, there's going to be folks who prefer a county or a lifestyle.

This is not discounting those, nor is it entirely about those kinds of folks.

This is about the people who are on the phone with you because they're already struggling.

They can't afford to get somewhere on their own.

They maybe don't have that family support, as evidenced by the fact that there's no family there to take them.

to where they need to go.

And perhaps, as the people that I'm thinking of when I made my earlier comment, they're forced to live somewhere more affordable because that's where the affordability is.

And that makes it harder for them in other aspects of their life.

They can't get around if they don't have that kind of connection.

So providing additional housing in the city to make it an option to be closer where they need to be.

That's who I'm talking about.

All right, so, Elizabeth, thank you very much and thank you very much for joining us.

This was great.

And can I just say too, one last quick thing is that all of the feedback, or nearly all of the feedback that I get about, especially MicroCat and Jaunt, because the majority of my callers aren't using regular CAT just because they're, you know, right, or because they have a disability and they're using Jaunt already, but

You know, number one, Jaunt is so easy to use, and people don't call me because they don't need to if they're already set up with Jaunt, you know, at least in Charlottesville, Albemarle, and all the feedback that I get is really, really good about both of those programs specifically.

So I just want to put that out there.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right.

So I think, Lucinda, your presentation.

So we're ready to move on to the transit provider updates.

The first one is, if you remember, I've been here a little over a year now, and I think it was the first, maybe the second, meeting I was here where Patrick Clark from my department came and presented on the Commute Club Initiative.

It was a presidential, Office of the President award that he had won with

from the Office of Sustainability.

And it was an incentive program to get folks to try alternative commuting patterns.

So we have been working really, really hard for the last year.

And we have officially launched on Monday.

So what was called Commute Club, maybe, when this body last heard that presentation, is now Wahoo Commute.

And so we launched on Monday.

And so it basically, I'll just recap, because I don't spend a year, if you don't recall, it incentivized

So we are literally paying people to bike, to walk, to scooter, to use public transportation, to carpool, and to vanpool to get to grounds.

So if you're familiar with Who's Well, which is sort of another similar program that rewards you to exercise and to see your doctor once a year with an actual financial incentive,

It is directly tied, it's just for faculty and staff I should say, it doesn't apply to students unfortunately.

But the reality is, when you look at our mode split, every three years we look at how folks move around the university and come to the university and the faculty, staff, we're the

Anyway, it launched Monday, and it's tied in.

You have to log in with your university ID, and it's got a commute calendar.

The platform is LUM, L-U-U-M.

If you go to our parking.union.edu, you'll see right now we've got a big banner.

This is why we commute on there.

We've had two people already.

Oh, I should I should probably say a few more things.

So basically you can get paid Approximately if you did it every day if you did one of the non if you don't bring your car biking walking riding transit you could get a dollar fifty per day so that directly goes into your into your income to your paycheck right and so three hundred and

We know that we're at first going to be paying people that we're doing this anyway but we're also excited to see because we didn't have any information really other than you know people occasionally saying hey could you have like right here or hey there's this need now we're actually it's also I should say it's gamified so there's a leaderboard so people can record you log in you voluntarily log in where you're riding from so it's tracking your miles it's tracking your

So what area?

Yes.

I understand you're adding another vehicle.

Yes.

and the raffle.

So if I'm an employee or faculty at the university, where do I have to live to be able to access this?

In the city of Charlottesville?

But yeah, if you come to grounds here in Charlottesville, whether you're coming from Stanton, Fredericksburg, wherever, Kendall is making out with his vanpool from Short Pump, he's on the leaderboard, I think he's in the top 15 of transportation.

I would say quiet because people know about it, but we haven't like completely done a press release or anything that will come in the coming weeks to make sure.

Yeah, it's an official launch, it doesn't open to any UVA employee.

It's incentivizing what we want them to do, which is not going to be harder.

So that was my one big, any other questions on that?

So yeah, oh and it did also change our carpool program a little bit.

This is about actually this woman you mentioned last time.

You had ordered the small you just... That's number two.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, so any other questions?

Like I said, so it's just last Monday.

We have about 90 people doing it already.

I'm excited.

When you think the time is right, just let loose and then we'll put you all on the agenda for another day.

So that was the first thing I had and then the second one is I think at the last I whetted everyone's appetite by saying we were strongly leaning towards purchase.

We've now made the purchase.

The purchase order has been

And so these are the ones that will go under the railroad.

You guys got to worry about the five American transitions.

That's correct.

Five new ones.

Okay, so a couple things.

So that went out at the end of Tuesday.

She's coming from Winnie's birthday and just ten years later to try to work her way back into

$4.30 for $29.50, which would have come December, January of 26th.

So that is wonderful news.

Let's keep the process up.

So against Canada, older people that are coming, so that's a major maintenance issue right now.

And we're working through, we had a very good meeting with our consultants to work through the next planning and phasing of building up our infrastructure to support alternative

We're going to be working hand-in-hand, you know, right there, Jinder Rogers moved with Oregon State.

The application is as tight as we possibly can.

On the transit side, on the pupil side of the house, things are going as well as we can expect.

We've got four potential more additional drivers that are in the loop.

We're going to be starting a pretty aggressive

I'm so sorry, Peter's not here to hear that himself.

So we've got to get the contract.

So that is phase two, two.

We're looking to put it into our service improvements for the spring slash summer, which is May, June.

So that would be splitting the two.

One quick question.

So you all are continuing to find success with your middle schoolers and high schoolers utilizing cat buses.

That's correct.

We do not do that.

It's hard for us to track.

So, yes.

On public transportation, it's either I track everybody

or I can't track any of them.

There are ways that we can track people.

We have fought hard not to do that.

There are services out there that we can actually use your phone to track where you are.

But the problem is it doesn't stop when you need the bus.

So they're using a tap car.

So that's how they're getting the students to.

But I'm saying the students are using their bus.

Correct.

We're going to zero fare right now so there's no incentive for anybody to do anything.

But that's a conversation that we need to start having about whether we're going to continue the zero fare month.

If we do that, then I'm going to be coming to Katy because our fareboxes are terrible.

We're going to need to upgrade.

She's heard this deal before.

We need to upgrade everything.

Ask her how.

There.

And so we're probably talking about at least a million dollars to upgrade our technology to make sure that we just, we don't want to, when we upgrade the fareboxes, all the new technology and things that people want,

That's what we're going to have to go to the new generation, meaning mobile pay.

So those are the sort of things that are really expensive.

They sound like it, they are, and then we're going to have the back office support systems built in so that it's encrypted so we don't want it still being built in.

I'm assuming that the school system would not be to check with them, but I'm assuming the school system is probably attracting some outside, some of the kids.

We do ask the kids in the schools how they get to school.

So we have it there.

I can count for one.

Ta-da!

I know another one.

I mean, to tuition that we'll be rolling out.

So we'll sort of generate some good conversation about just things like bus transportation and what we're going to do, and then microtransient and all that.

So some interesting findings from those.

And then rural transit needs is in December.

We have one little service update.

We are, on Monday, September 30, implementing a slight modification to the Buckingham Connect route.

We pretty much were trimming the ends.

There was no ridership at those stops.

And we were driving up to Duck Store.

And everybody had another 15 minutes.

It was just a waste of money.

So we are trimming it.

And I think 29 or 70 East stations messaged that we're reducing.

It sounded like we were cutting it.

All we're doing is not finding a route to be more efficient.

Yes.

And a lot of them get off of UDA.

Yeah, basically.

There's people in Buckingham who don't know about it.

There's probably people who are going to say they don't.

The people that take the next services, we've heard they live up there.

They're designed for a club.

In terms of bringing people in with the plans and the warning and giving them back out to the community.

Could they do longer shifts?

It's just another resource.

But I know that you accommodate the shifts as best you can.

To your point, one of the things that we added with the longer community was that

That's good.

So that's it.

Yeah, no, I wouldn't say any huge updates on the RPT side, I will just, you know,

I feel like someone on the DRPT team has been up in the Charlottesville area a lot recently.

There's a lot of exciting stuff going on, and we're always here as a resource.

You know, technical assistance, or if we can help fill some of those gaps with state funding, we're going after federal funding as well.

Alright, thank you.

Anyone have any questions?

Just to make sure for Katie, or for Jason?

I have just a quick update.

September 30th through October 6th is Week Without Driving Week.

It's through America Walks and they do a promotion every year nationwide asking people to consider not driving for the week.

that could include carpooling or getting rides and you can drive if you have to.

So we're not advertising it this year.

But we're looking at next year maybe promoting it.

Yeah.

But I'm promoting it right now.

OK. All right.

I want to just remind everybody there is no meeting in October because of the trip to Shannon, Atlanta, and I think there's a conference as well.

What is that?

Meeting for us in October.

Sorry, we were just both confused.

So can we all hope that a wonderful trip?

All right, with that then, I will adjourn us to our next meeting, which will be December the 12th, which sounds like a long time away, but remember, because of Thanksgiving and Christmas, we split the difference.