A Charlottsville bus.

Five years ago Charlottesville Area Transit (CAT) had a ridership of 2.4 million; this year the city’s transit expects to serve just 1.7 million riders. The system lost more than one-fourth of its ridership since 2014, and CAT’s new director Garland Williams says it’s in a “death spiral.”

By Williams’ own admission the current system is failing riders due to unreliability, decreasing coverage, and one-way routes that serve CAT better than they do its customers. A growing affordability crisis in the region has pushed low-income residents—the backbone of CAT’s current ridership—ever further into surrounding counties where its buses don’t reach. A regionally-connected transit system would be more useful to them, and could help win back riders.

The CAT routes. Image by CAT.

Facing skyrocketing housing costs, sprawl, growing traffic, and the reality that transportation is the Commonwealth’s largest source of carbon emissions, there’s no time to lose when it comes to fixing Charlottesville’s mobility challenges. Local leaders and activists see regional expansion as one way back to a healthy transit system, but a similar effort to grow CAT a decade ago collapsed. Will this time be different?

A regional challenge

On the hunt for solutions to the region’s mobility crisis is the Jefferson Area Regional Transit Partnership (JARTP), which aims to foster communication, coordinate services, set regional goals, and evaluate whether a Regional Transit Authority (RTA) could help solve Charlottesville’s crisis. With the Department of Rail and Public Transportation facilitating, this advisory board brings together leaders from the City of Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and JAUNT—a local nonprofit microtransit provider. The group’s growing momentum has even attracted the city’s most prestigious institution to the table: the University of Virginia.

Charlottesville is located in Albemarle County. Image by the author.

Currently the region is served by three separate transit providers: CAT—the fixed route bus system owned by the City of Charlottesville, UVA’s student shuttle, and JAUNT which focuses on regional commuters in Buckingham, Culpeper, Greene, Louisa, and Nelson Counties. If the three are able to stitch together their services under one umbrella as a regional transit authority that could unlock new state and federal funding that none are eligible for on their own.

There is precedent for an RTA. In 2008, Virginia’s General Assembly passed HB2158 authorizing the establishment of a Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Transit Authority. Lacking a sunset clause, local leaders could likely use this existing legal language to transform today’s regional partnership into a fully-fledged authority.

Greater urgency around transit amid the climate crisis

Many local advocates are worried about CAT’s ridership, which is falling during a period when mobility demands across the region are growing.

“We haven’t done a single thing to reduce the reliance on single-occupancy vehicles in this community, even though we’ve been trying. What the JARTP allows is a chance for us to figure out what we need in our community,” said Sean Tubbs, Field Representative for the Piedmont Environmental Council, a nonprofit that focuses on sustainability in the Piedmont region.

Whether these talks lead to fleet electrification, a fully-fledged regional transit authority, or just closer coordination on mobility, he believes the JARTP has already achieved more progress than the abandoned talks in 2009.

“We’re trying to provide options so people don’t have to rely on driving. Everyone here realizes we’re not building any more roads, so people are focused on figuring out how transit can be a solution,” said Tubbs.

The Piedmont Environmental Council's Sean Tubbs wants more car-free ways to get around. Image by Sean Tubbs used with permission.

Historically there hasn’t been much opposition to transit expansion in the region, but there hasn’t been much support either. The constituency demanding better bus service long remained relatively small, but last month’s city council races in Charlottesville ushered in a new batch of local legislators promising bold action to solve the region’s interlocking crises of housing affordability, mobility, and climate change.

“This past election, every Democrat came out in favor of action on affordable housing and climate change, and in both areas having a robust public transit system is essential to the goals we’re setting as a city,” said Michael Payne, an incoming Charlottesville councilmember.

Sena Magill, another winning city council candidate, was surprised how central a role transit played in this year’s elections.

“I knew our bus system wasn’t in the best shape having tried to use it a number of times myself, but during the campaign I heard more about transit than I ever had before,” Magill said. “The environmental groups have been pointing out for years that we cannot keep being a culture dominated by cars, and mass transit is a way to move away from being so car-centric.”

Magill agrees with Payne that CAT’s goal going forward needs to be more robust frequency—ideally buses at 10-15 minute intervals—in order to lure residents back to being riders.

“Transit is a public service we neglected for a long time,” said Magill. “It’s going to be hard to get ridership up at first because it will take time for people to trust it, but once it’s seen as reliable again it has the potential to save people a lot of money. The higher rent of an urban area should be countered with better transit, more bike lanes, and walkability so that people have access to low-cost mobility.”

CAT bus signage in Charlottsville. Image by Sean Tubbs used with permission.

Will this time be different?

Payne hopes the JARTP’s ongoing discussions will result in greater regional coordination and possibly even a regional transit authority. A decade ago, the regional transit talks fell apart not because of lack of coordination, but over disagreement about how localities would fund it. This time around, the jurisdictions seem to understand that you get what you pay for.

“We can’t expect to recover our money from mass transit. It’s a public service just like the roads we pay for,” said Magill. All the same, Payne believes transit around Charlottesville is such a good investment that the state will be willing to help fund it.

With sprawl on the rise and more locals driving to work from far-flung counties, it makes sense that the region is seeing a renewed push for transit—and may be willing to pay for it.

“Public transportation is the backbone of smart growth, and if we had funding support from the General Assembly, then we could have a stronger transit system with more robust service and get it all off the ground a lot faster,” said Payne. “The general assembly is shooting itself in the foot if it uses its transportation funding to cling to a car-centric view of development and growth.”

Wyatt Gordon is the senior policy manager for land use and transportation at the Virginia Conservation Network, and an adjunct professor at Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Urban Planning. He's a born-and-raised Richmonder with a master's in Urban Planning from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and a bachelor's in International Political Economy from American University.