IMPACT takes transit frequency message to CARTA

A coalition of area congregations has long spent time advocating for various issues including better medical care and more local investment in housing for people with low incomes.

This year, IMPACT focused its attention asking elected officials in Albemarle and Charlottesville to spend enough money on Charlottesville Area Transit to enable the city-owned agency to hire enough drivers to implement long-planned frequency upgrades.

In late July, one of the group’s co-presidents attended a meeting of a new group formed to bring in additional revenue for the area’s transit providers. Both City Council and the Board of Supervisors agreed to join the Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority late last year.

“I think what you have before you is really important,” said Alex Joyner, pastor at First United Methodist Church in Charlottesville. “And it feels to me like the next step in building a reliable transportation network is having the city and the county and hopefully the university together to try to put a fragmented system together.”

Joyner spoke at CARTA’s meeting on July 24, 2025.

In addition to Charlottesville Area Transit, Jaunt offers several commuter routes as well as paratransit service. The University Transit Service is a separate entity operated by the University of Virginia.

Joyner said many people rely on transit as an essential service and CAT’s on-time service record makes it difficult for those who do not have a choice. He said CARTA seems like a necessary first step to improvements.

“Building the system and finding new revenue streams for the system feels to me like a very important task,” Joyner said. “And I just want you to know that we’re watching and what you are doing is important.”

After Joyner’s comment, the group got into regular business including a legislative update from David Blount, deputy director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission. He’s met with local legislators who represent the Charlottesville Albemarle area to brief them on what CARTA hopes to achieve.

Delegate Amy Laufer had asked for specific information about ridership for the three local agencies. Blount said there were many takeaways from meetings.

“There was some emphasis that was stated making sure that we’re talking with UVA as this moves through and that we are going to be able to provide as much detail as possible as to what we’re working to what kind of projects, kind of enhancements that we’re talking about,” Blount said.

Blount also said Albemarle and Charlottesville are talking internally about what revenue options they might be interested in having CARTA pursue now that it has formed as a governing body that can seek new tax revenue. He said there are other parts of the Commonwealth where legislation is being pursued in 2026 for regional taxes.

CARTA itself was enabled by a bill in 2009. However, a bill to levy a sales tax dedicated for transit failed to make it out of a committee that year.

Leading up to CARTA’s formation, transportation planners at the TJPDC have continued to prepare for a grant application for another study to help prioritize what the agency should do. If the project is approved and a consultant is selected, the study would kick off in September and take approximately 20 months.

City Councilor Brian Pinkston will not be in office then as his term ends in December.

“I just wonder the length of time that this is going to take is no criticism of anyone,” Pinkston said. “I live in world of consultants and studies and how much of this has already been studied?”

Before others answer, here are links to two recent studies:

• Regional Transit Vision Plan by TJPDC dated November 30, 2022
• Region 10 Transit Governance Study by AECOMM dated February 2024

Ben Chambers, Charlottesville’s transportation planning manager, said the new scope of work is about developing an action plan for implementation. He also said work also has to be coordinated with CAT’s transit strategic plan.

“[University Transit Service] has changed their services some over the past couple of years,” Chambers said. “So there’s some things that we want to catch up. There’s also we kind of want to open it up a little bit to see if there’s things that we missed. We’ve had changes in political leadership over that time period as well.”

Pinkston reminded the CARTA board that there has been pressure from IMPACT and from other members of the public to invest in transit using local dollars. He suggested the board vote to recommend pursuing revenue options soon.

See also: Charlottesville City Council briefed on budget scenarios for expanded service, July 24, 2025

Chambers countered that if legislators are going to carry bills to increase revenue streams, they want to know how the money will be used first.

“Without going to them and saying this is the priorities that we’ve set and this is how much money we going to use to pay for it, they’re a little hesitant to go to their fellow legislators and say, ‘hey, can we get them some authority to raise taxes?’” Chambers said.

Pinkston said City Council’s presentation in mid-July had real numbers to satisfy IMPACT’s demands. For instance, getting to 82 drivers a year would increase CAT’s budget by $3 million.

“What we want to do this first time is to be able to make investments in our drivers to in the fund system that our community wants and we know the cost for that,” Pinkston said.

Pinkston said he would support a request to ask for the enabling authority for a one cent sales tax in the upcoming session given the declared interest from IMPACT.

Blount, who serves as a legislative liaison between local governments and the General Assembly, said it is good to be prepared with a good ask. He also noted that there will be a new Governor and a new General Assembly in January.

“All that being said, we could get down there and things start gelling and coalescing towards doing some work in transportation and we may be in a position to be able to jump on board the train,” Blount said.

Pinkston said Council will likely further the discussion at its retreat on Friday at the Wool Factory.

Christine Jacobs, executive director of the TJPDC, pointed out that the Regional Transit Vision Plan covers all of the member localities.

“It has commuter service out to the rural areas,” Jacobs said. “It has bus rapid transit up 29. It has expanding the, you know, the drivers, the frequency of the existing service.”

Jacobs said the scope of work would set up a plan for seeking funding for those projects as well as implementing CAT’s system optimization plan. The four-member CARTA Board voted to proceed with the scope of work.

At the end of the meeting, Jacobs explained to the CARTA Board how the Regional Transit Partnership that had been formed in 2017 to advance the authority will sunset at the end of the year with a final meeting in December.

“At that time we’ll reflect more formally on the accomplishments and make sure we pay respect to the people that got us to where we are now,” Jacobs said.

For more on transit and transit development, do take a look at Information Charlottesville with nearly five years of reporting. For a real deep dive, take a look at the very first transit-related story I wrote for Charlottesville Tomorrow back in May 2007.

MPO Policy Board indicates desire for CTS to go “fare-free”, May 18, 2007

Watch the CARTA meeting on YouTube:

Before you go: This story was first posted in the August 11, 2025 edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement and then posted here two days later. It would likely be prudent to have a more unified content management system and perhaps that will happen. Learn more about Town Crier Productions here.