AROUND THE REGION

This past Friday, Mayor Levar Stoney introduced his budget for FY2021, which you can look through here (PDF). It's a big document, so, if you're looking for a place to start, read the Mayor's Message portion to get a handle on the focus of this year's new investments—one of which is transportation.

HB 1541, which has almost finished working its way through the General Assembly, will create a new Central Virginia Transportation Authority (CVTA) to fund local and regional transportation projects. The Mayor's FY2021 budget relies on these new funds in a couple of ways:

First, some of that new CVTA money will go towards $30 million of road paving alongside several million dollars for building and maintaining sidewalks.
Second, the Mayor's budget cuts the City's contribution to GRTC by 50%, from $15,915,367 to $7,957,683. It then looks to the CVTA to fill that gap, allowing GRTC to maintain their current level of bus service within Richmond.

As noted above, the Governor has not yet signed HB 1541 into law, and the CVTA has not yet been created or staffed. GRTC is also required by HB 1541 to create a regional transportation plan for approval by the Authority. These things will take time, and it's incredibly important that GRTC have enough funding from the region's localities to maintain existing bus service while the logistics of the new Authority are worked out. Further, any regional transportation plan created by GRTC and approved by the region must be centered around bus rider voices with high-quality community engagement.

Regional cooperation around public transportation is brand new for Central Virginia! As such, the region needs to be diligent with the details, take the time to get it right, and, most importantly, protect the bus service we have today.

—Ross Catrow