Hope everybody had a nice restful Labor Day weekend.

I'll tell you what, the weather couldn't have got better.

Thank you.

And welcome.

We need some rain now.

Okay.

Okay.

The former needs rain.

Okay.

Well, since I get blamed for the weather, I'll say we're going to do all right.

If we could go ahead and get rolling.

So this is the council.

At this time, we'll be joined by our colleagues with Hampton Roads Transit.

We'll be joined by Ray Amaruso, the Chief Planning and Development Officer for Hampton Roads.

Welcome, Ray.

How are you doing?

Thank you, Mayor, for that warm welcome and good afternoon, members of council city manager.

It's nice to be back again.

I'm here today to talk about our system optimization plan, which actually is something we're very excited about.

To share with you, we're we'll be doing this for the six member cities that we serve.

Your city council is the first one.

Um is talk about an effort that uh I believe um is extremely important for the future transit in this region.

So the system optimization plan, by its very nature, is looking how HRT can put its limited resources to the best use by reducing low ridership local bus service and reinvesting those savings in routes with high ridership demand.

Why is that important?

You have heard before how we are struggling as many transit properties throughout the country in getting enough bus operators to operate the 68 bus routes that we put out on the street every day.

We simply just don't have enough.

So when I talk about limited resources, is not just typically you put in the uh characteristic of financial resources, but it's also human resources.

Uh why is the SOP needed?

A really good question.

Um, as you all may recall, we get funding through a variety of sources, but our biggest funders, in addition to the six member cities, uh the federal government that helps pay for operating costs and capital costs, and the state government, the Commonwealth of Virginia.

And uh they award funding very much so the state by uh looking at productivities of bus routes and how many people they carry on an hourly basis or per trip basis.

So the goal of the SOP is to increase ridership by putting service where it's most needed, not must needed.

Sorry for that typo.

Improving reliability by having enough operators to support the schedules that we put out and the number of routes we put out.

And therefore, the net effect of that is reducing costs for the local member jurisdictions by making the system more efficient.

So a little bit of background and context of the system optimization plan.

We have an ongoing operator shortage that pretty much manifested itself at the start of the pandemic.

And we've been struggling like a lot of transit properties around the country.

We're currently short about on any given day of the week, 50 bus operators to get back to pre-pandemic 2019 service levels on Southside routes to fully implement our regional transit or RTS network.

On top of that, we need another 45 bus operators.

For those who may not recall, the regional transit service network, the uh high frequency backbone routes is something that was identified in the legislation passed by the General Assembly back in 2020 to deliver 13 regional backbone routes that serve all six cities with 15-minute high frequency service with a consistent span of the service week and the service day.

Doesn't worry about uh what city pays for what.

Um, but then needs to deliver 15-minute service, you need more operators for that.

HRT needs to match its service to its resources, plain and simple.

The lack of bus operators means we cannot reliably put out on the street all the trips that we publish for our customers because of the ongoing shortage of operators.

Right sizing the network, the local bus network means our HRT can keep its compact with its customers and not miss trips due to the fact we are lacking bus operators.

Again, we're not alone in this.

This is happening all over the country.

Everyone's experiencing bus operator shortfalls.

We've talked about microtransit or demand responsive service in the past.

It gives us another mode of service in our portfolio of services that can better serve lower demand markets.

HRT can use microtransit to fill in gaps where we might eliminate some services due to low productivity and still meet the demand, transit demand for customers who rely on transit.

And then finally, fully implementing the remaining high frequency service on the regional transit system routes requires freeing up bus operators.

Without freeing up the operators, it could take almost a decade to implement the remaining 10 routes that get 15 minute service.

So there's a total of 13.

We have three in place today, two in the north side on the peninsula and one on the south side along Virginia Beach Boulevard.

Some guidelines for service planning guidelines or principles about optimizing service on low performing routes.

Since the merger in 1999 and even before the merger on some of the older cities like Portsmouth and Norfolk, there hasn't really been a touch of bus routes and a hard look in the mirror in terms of system performance.

We're operating rubber tired solution on some old uh streetcar lines in downtown Norfolk that in its day perhaps had a reason to exist, but now are carrying fewer and fewer passengers due to uh different um, it's not just Norfolk, but due to different development patterns.

So streamlining or consolidating routes to remove duplications or nearby routes is pressing into our mind that frees up operators and preserves financial resources.