The person in charge of keeping the buses running in Charlottesville has explained more about his organization in the run-up to the development of the city’s budget for FY2025.
“I tell everyone we are a planning organization that happens to run transportation,” said Garland Williams, director of Charlottesville Area Transit.
Williams appeared before City Council on November 20 for a budget briefing and gave an update on where things stand and where they may go in the future.
The FY24 budget for CAT is $11,995,775 with a transit revenue budget of nearly $12.2 million. That does not include about $2.3 million in pass-through funding for Jaunt. The total budget also does not include $1.9 million in total funds for the Microcat project that CAT is supervising for Albemarle.
In FY24, the University of Virginia contributes $84,900 to support the trolley-style bus, a figure that has decreased over time.
Of the nearly $12.2 million in revenue, Williams said 38.8 percent comes from the federal government, 25.9 percent comes from the state, 23.6 percent comes from Charlottesville, and 10.8 percent comes from Albemarle County. That share is determined through the service levels in each jurisdiction.
“We have automatic passenger counters so we can tell you specifically how many people got on at every stop in our system,” Williams said. “We have a cost system agreement with the county that we will split the cost by hours.”
Ridership in FY2023 consisted of 1,147,016 “unlinked passenger trips” down from just over a reported 2.4 million in FY2013. The decline comes despite pandemic-related federal and state funding to make riding the bus free through June 30, 2026.
CAT has begun the process of updating its strategic plan, as I reported back in July.
“This strategic plan basically sets how we’re going to operate for the next eight to ten years,” Williams said.
A community survey garnered 523 entries and Williams said desires that rose to the top included more frequent service, expanded coverage areas, expanded weekend service, and better bus shelters.
“All things that we’re already working on and you’ll see that as part of our FY25 budget,” Williams said.
Williams said there were five challenges facing CAT including returning to previous service levels, increasing reliability and frequency, and transitioning to a unionized workforce.
Another is the transition to a new fuel source with the firm Kimley Horn hired to complete what William said is a mandated study. He had news about a successful grant application from the federal and the state government. (read recent story about the fuel study)
“We took an opportunity to put in a grant application and we won two battery-electric buses which is outside of the norm because they normally don’t do that until you’ve completed your study,” Williams said.
Williams also said CAT recently got $324,000 to upgrade bus stops across its service area and will work with Albemarle County, the Virginia Department of Transportation, and the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation to implement the upgrades.
But back to those plans Williams mentioned. He said an optimization plan was conducted during the pandemic to study existing routes.
“We were looking to phase that in before we go to the larger model which is the plan developed by the TJPDC in conjunction with the transit organizations about an unconstrained or constrained model which puts everybody in the same boat in terms of trying to make the best system we possibly can,” Williams said.
Williams said that will take more resources.
Charlottesville Mayor Lloyd Snook had the last word.
“I hope you are planning and that we’re all planning for CAT’s role in the city’s growth because the way forward for a lot of reasons for Charlottesville is through transit and I would love for the director of CAT to be seen as a climate action hero,” Snook said.
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