So we're just gonna have to get started here.

So on our agenda today, um, first up we have Bridget Massingale from Regional Partnership.

And she's here.

Um I know it says regarding the civic experiment grant on our agenda, but um, she tells me she's actually here to give a strategic update, which is um fine as well.

So we will um hand the floor over to you, Virgin.

Awesome, thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and thank you, council members.

I am thrilled to be here today, and I think it is kind of providential that we call it the civic experiments because some may know we've been at it for 13 years now, and it started as an experiment in essence, and so today I want to give you guys a lens, a strategic lens into the work of your regional organization, thrive regional partnership.

And I always like to start no matter where I am with just putting us in position as we think about what Thrive does and the region that we serve.

So here we are, we're in the corner of the cradle of Southern Appalachia in the southern Appalachian foothills.

We are surrounded by 15 other counties and 76 other incorporated cities and towns of this region, and the secret is out.

The infrastructure of this region is doing what it was built to do first.

It was first rail, as the Chattanooga Choo Chu brand tells us, and then by river and now heavily by road.

Nature in this region is functioning in a way that it was also created to do, which is to flourish.

And now our brand of Scenic City, just like it said it was.

Um, and then today, what we know about this growing region is that we can't rest on our laurels.

We actually don't have a choice because ready or not, here comes growth, and it's not just growth that we are all seeing, it's accelerated growth.

So Thrive has been mobilizing around this reality for the past 10 years.

Um, three years prior to that, when it was simply planning the experiment for for a better word, and we were watching the population trends of our entire region that I just showed you, and seeing that by 2055 it was projected to be 1.4 million, and as you can see, we are right on track with what that growth was projected to be as we monitor that each year that we get those statistics out.

But here we are right in the bullseye, and when you are looking at a region of 1.1 million people, interestingly enough, the Chattanooga MSA has 52 percent of the region's people living right here in the core of our region.

We see it in new housing growth.

So these numbers are between 2020 to 2025.

There were 29,000 new housing units that were added across that regional footprint, and what a glaring reality of where the majority of that is.

So with 49% of the new housing units over the last five years being built right here in Hamilton County.

It's interesting, you can look down at the next what would be the next one down, and that's Bradley County, but that's only 10% of the new housing units of the entire region.

We also know that regional economic growth has been happening as well.

And so this is actually a four-year period where we've seen 4.8 billion dollars invested in regional economic growth across the region with 11,800 jobs that have been created.

Where are the chunk of these jobs?

So we have a combined 40 percent of the region's jobs are in freight dependent sectors.

40 percent.

So it's manufacturing and trade, transportation and utilities, and I would almost argue that some of those others as well.

We know that um anything on there is gonna be dependent on freight getting it to their front door to their business to whatever it is that they do in this region, and our infrastructure feels it.

So you were looking at those freight generators.

It's a live photo.

Just yeah, yeah.

We are live streaming as we speak, and as we know, and we look around and we see the differentiator here in Chattanooga is most certainly the volume of trucks that we do see on the road, and with our freight generators as they are, we also know that it's not just by truck volumes, but it's also by our daily commuters.

So we were able to pull out just the city of Chattanooga, and when you look at the city of Chattanooga, each day, there are 134,000 people that are commuting into the city limits each day.

And when you look at the city of Chattanooga, each day, there are 134,000 people that are commuting into the city limits each day.

52,000 of them, just almost 53, we can round up, live in the city of Chattanooga and work in the city of Chattanooga.

And then 26,000 of the residents live in Chattanooga, but are also leaving for their work into other areas of the region.

And they're sharing the roads with a significant significant amount of freight in this region.

So what you're looking at here is according to the freight analysis framework of the business, sorry, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

So on the left side, you're seeing the current truck volume along those corridors that we all know.

That's 75 coming up from Georgia.

Right there at our pinch point, Mox and Bend area of 24, 75 going up towards Knoxville to the right, or I guess the east and then to the west up 24.

And what you're looking at is I want to talk to you about the Mox and Bend portion of that.

So in the 2022 figures, there were 5,060 daily truck trips carrying more than 39 million tons of freight annually around Mox and Bend.

I also want to point out that the projections of that, this was in 2022.

The projections that those forecasts had said was that it was going to be 33 million tons by 2035, by 2035.

So just to back up and say by 2022, we resurged past those projections.

And then if you look on the right side, the projected truck volume along the Mauccasin Bend area of I-24 by 2050, those are the estimates there.

They're estimating 8,500 daily truck trips with more than 69 million tons of freight annually.

So just imagine nearly doubling the amount of trucks and freight on the road by 2050.

And here's a sobering truth.

Those projections were made in 2017.

So the FAF data doesn't come out every until every five years.

So our very own I-24 binds itself on that American Trucking Research Institute top freight congested list year after year.

But why does this matter?

So on a national cost, it costs us 1.8 billion dollars is the national cost of congestion.