Further work underway to review transit plans to inform CARTA’s next moves

One of the first tasks being undertaken by the newly-formed Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Transit Authority is to sort through several recent plans to identify what the new entity should prioritize in its initial years.

To do that, the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission has hired the firm RK&K and the four CARTA members got an update on March 24.

“You have a regional transit vision plan that was developed back in 2022 that had a constrained list services based on the funding that you had available, but also had a vision plan element, an unconstrained network of services,” said Jennifer DeBruhl, director of rail and transit for the firm RK&K. “Your localities, your transit agencies, other neighboring regional transit services, all have studies that have been done as well.”

The idea is to come up with a strategy to secure more funds for any of the various transit providers to expand service. DeBruhl, who served eight years as the Director of the Virginia Department and Public Transportation, said the work will inform future requests similar to those made by the Central Virginia Transportation Authority.

RK&K put together a spreadsheet with many of the various directives in more than 20 recent studies, each of which call for specific transit improvements.

“The good news is a lot of those things overlap,” DeBruhl said. “The bad news is they overlap, but they’re not exactly the same. So we’re starting out, we’re pulling all this information together, then we’re going to optimize it before we prioritize it.”

These break down into three categories. The first is expanded route coverage which would include new service, realignments of existing lines, and the introduction of bus rapid transit. The second is increased frequencies and the third is extended hours of service.

Through a series of discussions with stakeholders, the team came up with a conclusion that 60 percent of the study should be about increasing intensity and 40 percent should be about increasing the footprint of service.

Garland Williams, the director of the city-owned Charlottesville Area Transit, said the agency’s System Optimization Plan and Transit Strategic Plan focused on making existing routes better but CAT needs to expand into Albemarle.

“You got to get out towards 29,” Williams said. “We got to get out on corridor at Hollymead, that area area potentially but not necessarily going to the airport, but all that corridor is where a lot of the activity centers are that people want to go to. We know there’s a lot of activity coming down that corridor going to the university.”

However, Williams said there is a lot of demand to increase frequency on popular routes like the 7 and the trolley-style bus.

City Councilor Natalie Oschrin said there is an urgency at play.

“We need to do what we can to increase our ridership as quickly as possible,” Oschrin said. “If that is intensity and frequency, not only is that a benefit to the rider shift that we have, but ideally it will increase rider shift. Then we get money and we can do bigger things that are more expensive.”

CAT has only been able to make limited changes to its existing routes. Council was briefed on those changes in May 2021 and they later became part of the Transit Strategic Plan. Further route changes will happen as the city hires more operators and staff service. In recent years, both Route 4 and Route 6 have been expanded to 30 minute service.

In December, Council heard details of a plan to employ 42 new drivers over four years and committed funding for the first ten in FY27.

DeBruhl and her team will come back to CARTA in late May with a draft lift of service improvements followed by a public survey in the summer to get feedback.

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