Albemarle Supervisors vote to join Regional Transit Authority

After over 15 years of discussion, the Albemarle Board of Supervisors has voted to join a regional transit authority, a first step toward the county having more of a say in the future of public transportation.

Their action completes work that began in the late 2000’s that included a bill in the General Assembly that allowed such an entity to be created.

“In 2024, the Transit Governance Study was completed and recommended that the Regent initiate the formation of the transit authority envisioned in the 2009 legislation,” said Ann Wall, one of Albemarle’s two deputy county executives.

The creation of the authority does not mean that the body will be providing direct oversight of Charlottesville Area Transit or any other area transit agency. The idea is that the authority can begin to find new sources of revenue to implement a Regional Transit Vision adopted by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission in late 2022. (read that report)

Wall has been working with Charlottesville’s transportation planning manager on the creation of by-laws to govern the work of the authority which will go by the acronym CARTA.

“The intention would be that a CARTA or a transit authority would serve as a collaborative, multi-jurisdictional entity for identifying and solving transit issues,” Wall said. “The Authority would provide long range transit planning services to the region, could recommend transit priorities, advocate for transit needs to the state and federal partners, apply for grants and other kinds of funding, and could serve in the future as a vehicle for administering, potentially for administering and potentially collected dedicated regional transit funding.”

The authority will replace the work that the Regional Transit Partnership is doing and the first year will be about getting CARTA off the ground. As with the partnership, there would be two members of City Council and two members of the Board of Supervisors.

“It will have to start preparing its own budget and figuring out how it pays for some of this planning work and some of this engagement with our community,” said Ben Chambers, Charlottesville’s transportation planning manager.

The authority will be staffed by city and county personnel at first but Chambers said it may one day have its own employees working on the plan. One of the first big policy issues will be updating the 2009 legislation.

“The aim has always been to get us to having a regional transit authority so we have a table to sit down and have these discussions,” Chambers said. “The existing legislation gives us the fundamentals to actually go ahead and just do it.”

Charlottesville City Council will vote on whether to join the authority at their meeting on December 18.

Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District is the current chair of the Regional Transit Partnership and has been on that appointed body since 2017.

“We cannot in this locality continue to pay for transit out of our operational funds,” McKeel said. “This gives us a structure and the funding that would be possible to have a robust transit system.”

Albemarle currently contributes to multiple agencies including $7,090 in the current fiscal year to the Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission for the Afton Express. Albemarle also increased its contribution to Charlottesville Area Transit from $1.3 million in FY2024 to $1.86 million in FY2025. That does not include the $1.741 million paid to CAT for the MicroCAT microtransit pilot. Another $3.317 is going to Jaunt this fiscal year.

Other localities in the Thomas Jefferson Planning District are being asked to consider joining the authority in the future. Supervisor Michael Pruitt of the Scottsville District said whether they join may be a factor in the success of making transit that can work to assist with economic development efforts such as at Rivanna Station.

“It is also going to be like so important for our own economic development when it is so much easier to get like Nellysford and Stanardsville and Palmyra bodies to these amazing new economic facilities that we’re in the process of putting all this energy and frankly spending into,” Pruitt said.

Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District had just been elected to office when planning work to form the authority were going on in 2008.

“I’m anxiously keeping my fingers crossed that there will be a bigger partner who will join us coming forward on this to change those numbers and allow us to get so much more federal dollars down when we can actually count all the people instead of just some of the people,” Mallek said.

The University of Virginia is not joining the authority at this time and plans to maintain a separate bus system that only focuses on the immediate area around their campus.

One of the first pieces of business to come back before the board in January will be an application for a planning grant from the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

County Executive Jeffrey Richardson took the opportunity to thank the City of Charlottesville for funding two trips earlier this year to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, to see how a single transit operates for two cities and the University of Illinois. They also got to see how the Mass Transit District creates its own hydrogen fuel.

“When you go and you see seamless transit, when you go and you see alternative fuel and how it’s been implemented, and you see systems in place, and you see communities that have similarities to our communities, none of that we would have got to do without the City of Charlottesville,” Richardson said.

Richardson said representatives from the University of Virginia also took part in the second trip in October.

Paid subscribers of this newsletter funded my journey on the first trip to keep an eye on the first delegation in May. If you’ve not read or heard the report, take a look or a listen here.

Before you go: The time to write and research of this article is covered by paid subscribers to Charlottesville Community Engagement. In fact, this particular installment is from the December 12, 2024 edition of the newsletter. To ensure this research can be sustained, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing monthly through Patreon. There will be new options in 2025 if you’d like to wait. Just please know I’m glad you’re reading!