Dan Hoffman: 0:08

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Ralphs Review. Uh, for the moment, I'm the city manager, Dan Hoffman and, uh, forever. This is your PIF forever. You can't ever leave. Okay. Uh, I, I can leave, but you are gonna be chained to your desk, uh, until you plop over. So, um, enjoy doing the rouse review forever. Uh, no, but in all seriousness, folks, uh, the. The word at this point is, is definitely out. A lot of you may have noticed that I'm leaving the city. Um, it's definitely with a heavy heart. This is a, this has been a fantastic environment for the last five years. Uh, and it's because of, uh, the folks you've heard frequently on this podcast. Uh, the folks we're gonna talk to today, Kenny and Justin, about Win Ready. Uh, it's because of Sarah. Kit, it's because of, um, you know, Mike Ruddy, Jeff Bitner, Perry. I mean, I could keep going on and on, uh, at how deep our bench is here and how talented this crew is. And I, I just hope you know, my only one of my many wishes, I guess I should say, as I exit the stage is. Residents of Winchester. You have a fantastic group of public servants here. Uh, I've tried to use this platform to emphasize that, to help build trust and transparency with your elected officials because not not your elected officials, I don't know if I can do that, but with your staff, with the public servants here that are, um, really doing the work day in day out, many of which could easily go make more in the private sector. Um, but. We have many folks here that have been here for 15, 20. We got some, we got some lifers for sure. Uh, and they've dedicated their life to serving the city. And I for one last time, just wanna remind the residents of Winchester that these folks that serve you every day are part of our city. Not my city. Uh, not Sarah's city, not. Any individual city, it's our city. The collective decisions we make, uh, and local government are the ones that directly affect your day-to-day life, and you're most effective when you're advocating for the people that do the work every day. So remember that during the next budget, during the next council meeting, if you have an issue. Reach out to us, talk to us. That's the most important thing you can do, uh, if you want to really be part of our city. So with that, yeah, there's a council meeting tomorrow night. There's a bunch of second readings. Nothing super controversial if you're into easements and, uh, bond issuances and, and all that kind of jazz, uh, they're, it's all there for you tomorrow night if you want a lot of quasi procedural stuff.'cause I think there's like. Eight or nine, uh, public hearings. Um, but hey, if you like seeing, uh, Corey Sullivan open and close the public hearing time after time,

Sarah Frey: 3:21

he's so good at it. He's so good at it.

Dan Hoffman: 3:22

Uh, just go ahead and, uh, you know, either watch it online or, or show up. But, um, it will be my last city council meeting. Um, I will be. Because we have a, a bye week and kind of an extra week because of the way the calendar falls between, uh, now and our next meeting. Uh, it means that this will be my last meeting. So, uh, if you want to come say goodbye, come say goodbye. Um, but you know. Just keep in mind that being active, being engaged, you know, that is your, um, it's not just your right, but I think it's your duty, uh, here in local government. Alright, and with that, I'm gonna take a breath and let's talk about what's coming up in the city.

Sarah Frey: 4:16

All right? There's a lot coming up in this. City going in full bore to the bur months, starting with Saturday, October 4th is just going to be a massively busy day around the city. Mm-hmm. Because of two specific events I'm gonna talk about. The first one is the City of Winchester and WPS Winchester Public Schools are having a full scale emergency exercise on Saturday, October the fourth.

Dan Hoffman: 4:40

Yes. Do not freak out folks. If you see a whole bunch of fire trucks and police vehicles over at John Kerr. Don't freak out. It's just an exercise. It's

Sarah Frey: 4:49

just an exercise. Nothing is wrong. We are flexing muscles that you don't get to flex every day. Mm-hmm. We're making sure that things work the way they're supposed to work. It's the second time we've done something like this. We got some great lessons learned. We came back, we've been implementing some changes, and we're just testing our strengths and our weaknesses and figuring out what we need to do.

Dan Hoffman: 5:10

Our public safety team. Uh, and our emergency management team that, you know, puts these on it, it's, it's unfortunate that we have to have to,

Sarah Frey: 5:22

yes,

Dan Hoffman: 5:23

exercise and practice these types of situations, but, uh, your city's completely prepared. If these things happen, we continually drill on it. We continually train. Uh, and this is just another example of how we are always vigilant, continually improving to make sure we have the safest city possible.

Sarah Frey: 5:41

Absolutely. And so just so you know, it's gonna be happening at John Carroll Elementary School Saturday, October 4th from eight to noon. So we will be between there, Winchester Medical Center and Daniel Morgan Middle School. So if you see increased activity around those areas, that's why there's gonna be a couple of road closures. Mostly just Meadow Branch Avenue. So just be aware, try to avoid the area if you don't wanna get caught up in some traffic and. Wish us luck. All right, next up is something more fun happening on Saturday, October 4th, which is for our native plant lovers. There's a native plant festival hosted at Jim Burnett Park from 10 to two, where we'll be giving away limited quantities of free tree saplings to city residents. Oh, baby trees. We're gonna have native. Plans for sale kids activities, and tons of educational booths from our partners, like B-C-U-S-A, sustainability Matters. The Audubon Society Master Gardeners, the Cooperative Extension, all kinds of cool stuff going on out there. That's cool. So go visit Nette Park, learn about our wild or our pollinator meadow. It's gonna be a great time.

Dan Hoffman: 6:45

Get there Early. Limited qualities. Uh, limited qualities. No. There are unlimited qualities here. Yes. But there are limited quantities of, uh, free tree saplings and get your, bring home a baby.

Sarah Frey: 6:58

And if you plant that baby, you can even then apply for some stormwater credits. When, when? There you

Dan Hoffman: 7:01

go. There you go.

Sarah Frey: 7:03

All right. Last, and most certainly not least, we are in the final stretches of our community survey.

Justin Hall: 7:08

Yes.

Sarah Frey: 7:09

So please, if you received a community survey in the mail. Please take it. Respond to it. Mm-hmm. Let us know what you think. Tell us. Candidly, we use it all the time.

Dan Hoffman: 7:20

Yep.

Sarah Frey: 7:20

I see Dan reference those numbers

Dan Hoffman: 7:22

all the time. Constantly. It's a guiding document for us,

Sarah Frey: 7:25

and we are in the midst of working on our next five year strategic plan. It's going to be incredibly important for council to have. Everybody's real thoughts, opinions, and concerns. Mm-hmm. So please let us know what you think. Yeah, and if you submit a survey, you can be entered in for a chance to win a$500 Visa gift card from our partner at ETC Institute who does the survey for us.

Dan Hoffman: 7:47

Excellent. Yeah. Especially if you got it in the mail, folks, that please, that's, that is where our, you know, we want to have the most reliable, statistically valid data, uh, possible when making major policy decisions. And this is your way to directly influence those. So if you got it in the mail, fill it out. Send it back. We'd appreciate it.

Sarah Frey: 8:07

All right. And that's what's coming up.

Dan Hoffman: 8:08

That's what's coming up. And uh, the next thing coming up is Kenny and Justin. We're gonna talk about, uh, Winchester Transit. Stick around. Welcome Kenny and Justin. Here to talk Transit. You guys, uh, have the honor of being my very last podcast interview for the city of Winchester at least.

Justin Hall: 8:31

Yeah, I'm not too sure. We're excited about that. We're definitely, definitely gonna miss it.

Dan Hoffman: 8:35

You get the distinction of, uh, uh, hearing my final ramblings on this, uh, on the Rouse review. But the work still goes on. And, uh, one of the things I am incredibly proud of in my time here is, uh, everything that Win Tran and Win Ready, uh, and y'all's team has been able to do, but the work goes on. So we're gonna talk about try Transit Week, which technically was last week just for the record. But because of our scheduling, uh, we're talking about it this week because you should always give transit a try. It's, uh. It's the best way to get around if you want to reduce your carbon footprint, if you want to, uh, not drive in any irresponsible manner or, uh, really just get to where you want to be in a very affordable manner. Uh, and all the changes that we've made to win Tran with the addition of written ready have. Really, I would say, made it so much easier, uh, for people to get to and from where they need to go. Uh, so welcome guys. Uh, first off, uh, how did Winchester participate in Tri Chance at week?

Kenny Johnson: 9:48

So we participated by, uh, donating some punch cards. Anytime anyone wrote any of our services, any of the routes when Ready, para Transit, Laurel Ridge, the Loop, they could log their trips on connecting VA through DRPT. And, uh, they were entered to win free punch cards, free rides.

Dan Hoffman: 10:04

And by the way, uh, that's Kenny Johnson. Everybody, he won. He runs Win Ready, uh, and win Tran. We, we, it's really like 90% win ready at this point. Right. We still have the loop route, but, and technically we're win Tran, but Win Ready is the name to know at this point, I would say. Right,

Kenny Johnson: 10:20

right.

Dan Hoffman: 10:20

Exactly. All right, so that's Kenny. Um, if you hear his voice, you'll hear from Justin in just a second. Um, so. Tell me about if someone wants to ride when ready, how do they, how do they do that? Because there's no stop that you have to go wait at,

Kenny Johnson: 10:38

right? We call them virtual stops. They can be anywhere in the city limits. There's no traditional bus sign that you're gonna wait at. But anywhere you request a ride from, you're gonna, you're gonna see a bus come pick you up. It can be within a couple, uh, blocks from your house up to 800 feet. Once you re request a ride, we're gonna get a bus to you at the nearest location that we have a virtual stop point. You can do that by downloading the win ready app mm-hmm. And booking it right off your smartphone. Or you can call into the office. Uh, you don't need to have a smartphone. You can call in, we'll give you the location. The bus is gonna be to pick you up and the time that we'll be there,

Dan Hoffman: 11:10

I want to emphasize that real quick. You do not have to use the app, you can just call in. Now, we would love you to use the app. It makes things a lot easier for us. But if you do not like, like technology, if you do not have a smartphone, which I'm pretty sure that's the easy, it's hard to not get a smartphone these days. But let's say you just don't like folks tracking you and you don't like your cell phone, um, you can just call us. Now if you are part of, you know, this century, then. Use your cell phone. It's super easy. You'll get real-time updates, uh, as to where, how long your ride is away and, and all kinds of information. Um, just make sure you have your location services turned on. That's one thing I, I was speaking with a resident just the other day and they're like, oh, the app doesn't work for me. The app doesn't work for me. And I asked them, do you, well, you know, that's, that's strange. I, you know, what, what is it doing? And they started describing what happened, and they're like, oh. Um, it doesn't know where I am. That's right. And I said, oh, you should, you know, you have to have your location services turned on if you're gonna use the app. Oh, I don't like, uh, I don't like people tracking me on my phone. All right. Pick up the phone and make a call if that's the case, but if you're gonna use the app, turn your

Justin Hall: 12:26

location services

Dan Hoffman: 12:27

on,

Justin Hall: 12:27

folks. Yeah, if you use the app, it's really easy. It's gonna, in real time, it's gonna tell you, show you where the bus is and how close, and even if a new bus gets reassigned to you. Um. You'll, you're gonna see that so your time could, could get updated. And if you call in, can you correct me if I'm wrong, but you were gonna get a five minutes, uh, phone call letting you know the bus is coming, so to be ready.

Dan Hoffman: 12:49

Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, the app needs to know where you are. That's correct. So if your phone doesn't know where you are, the app can't know where you are. So, uh, alright, now. It's changed a lot. We've changed, uh, and when I say it, I mean transit here in Winchester, uh, a lot in the last two years, of course, because of the addition of, of Win Ready. But there's a bunch of other smaller changes that have happened recently. Uh, what are they?

Kenny Johnson: 13:19

So we've made a few adjustments, and this started July 7th. It was effective. We turned the loop route into one bus instead of two. So every stop along that route is now serviced every 60 minutes instead of every 30 minutes. And Laurel Ridge is now running Monday through Thursday, starts at seven 10 in the morning and goes till five 40 in the evening and makes nine trips down to Laurel Ridge campus in Middletown and back. Uh, that route is actually showing some really good signs of high ridership. We're averaging over 30 people a day Monday through Thursday, even with the adjusted times, and that has allowed us to reallocate some resources to when ready. We have more buses on the road, uh, from start to finish, 6:00 AM to 8:00 PM. In the month of August alone, we had 91 new riders that took their very first trip on when ready. That's awesome. So, uh, even this far along, we're still getting new people create accounts, new people try riding, uh, the bus and, uh, finding out that they really like it. And it's really easy to use user friendly, uh, quick trips. Uh, and a lot less of a waiting time than it was before with those extra buses on the road and not

Justin Hall: 14:20

to cut you off in. So now typically before in the mornings we start off with four buses. Now a lot of times we're starting off with seven. Mm-hmm. So availability is, um, is there now?

Dan Hoffman: 14:30

Yeah, that's, it's important for everybody. Remember, we don't have infinite capacity, so if the wait times are higher, it just means it's popular. People are being used. It doesn't mean it's broken. That's right. Um, it just means we're at capacity like a bus. If a bus pulls up to a stop and it is full, then more people can't get on. Same thing happens here, uh, but now with these extra buses, the wait times should go down and we want to continue to add buses'cause this is a, a transformation that doesn't happen overnight. Uh, now routes, I mean, fairs a less fun topic. Mm-hmm. Uh. After COVID, we reinstituted fairs, you know, a lot of federal money went away. We introduced, uh, win Ready and, you know, there, there is a value to this service. So we charge a, a low fare and we're pretty low compared to other folks in the state. Uh, if you've been paying attention to City Council, you'll know that they had a discussion at the last meeting about transit fairs. Um, ultimately that is their decision. Uh, staff isn't proposing that we increase the fares, uh, but at the request of the city council, they asked us to take a look at it. Now they've tabled that and I don't think there's gonna be any changes until, um, at the earliest next July one. And the future discussion on this will probably happen during the course of the budget discussion. So. Before then, sometime between now and the end of the year, give transit a try. Try when, ready. Tell us what you think. Um, even if you, even if there's some constructive feedback you wanna give us. Um, but don't forget, we also like, uh, positive feedback too. And the city council needs to know that this service is important to you. Uh, so give it a try. Um, and. During the budget process, advocate for what you want. Do you want more buses on? When ready? Do you want the wait times to go even lower? Um, what do you want to see in fares Advocate for yourself? Uh, this budget season when we talk about transit and the process we go through in updating fares is actually pretty regimented. Um, who wants to talk about what that process looks like?

Kenny Johnson: 16:48

So with any major change, uh, to any of our routes or fares or service times, we have to go through a 30 day public comment period. We receive comment via email, phone calls. We like to have, uh, meetings, multiple meetings where people can show up, voice their opinion, get more information on any of the changes that we're proposing, and that information goes back to council. And they ultimately make the decision based on, uh, some of the feedback we receive and some of the changes that we're suggesting we're putting into the budget. We also have a win ready advisory committee that we like to meet quarterly. Uh, you can be a part of that committee. A lot of those meetings have regular attendees, but then we also advertise, it's a public meeting. So any topics that may be important to you during that quarterly meeting? Uh, this last one we talked about fares. The time before that we were talking about expansion and moving things from the loop route over to win Ready. We received a lot of good feedback and a lot of our regular riders were able to attend and, uh, give us their input on those items.

Dan Hoffman: 17:45

Just another way to make your voice heard. So, closing thoughts. What's one thing about Win Ready that from each of you? What's one thing about Win Ready that you wish more people knew?

Justin Hall: 17:58

The flexibility, the, um, capability to get to where you need any, basically anywhere in the city. Um, you know, this is a city where you can come live and you really don't need a personal car. You can get everywhere you need to go. Um, yeah.

Kenny Johnson: 18:14

I agree with that. Uh, item, I'm gonna say something just operationally that's gonna help a lot of people out that may be struggling while we're adjusting to expanding, getting more win ready buses out there is that you can book in advance. You can book two days in advance for any, you may have a work schedule, may have doctor's appointments, and you don't have to stress about getting a ride that same day, um, or the availability of buses. So you can book an advance, tell us exactly what time you need to arrive somewhere. And we're gonna pick you up at a certain time to make sure you're not late for that appointment or, uh, getting to work on time.

Justin Hall: 18:45

Yeah. And actually I attended a meeting yesterday and we talked a lot about, um, uh, bikes and how they could u help utilize when ready more. Mm-hmm. And all of our buses have bike racks on'em, so some areas you might wanna bike to, the weather gets bad. Um, you can jump on a when ready, put your bike on and get to where you need to go. So you have. Different, different ways to travel.

Dan Hoffman: 19:05

And all of our buses are a DA accessible as well. Uh, paratransit is, has is different. It's a little different, but all of our buses are also capable of doing para paratransit. Now, if you wanna book a paratransit ride though, tell me about that process. Is that different?

Kenny Johnson: 19:23

So we don't offer same day service for paratransit riders, uh, for the on demand piece, but they have a wider window to book. They can book up to 14 days in advance. Mm-hmm. So once you're an approved paratransit rider, there's the application process that goes along with that. We get you approved. Uh, you can go anywhere that anyone else is using when ready, and you're gonna be seated on a bus that is a DA compliant. Like you said, everything has either a ramp or a lift. So if you, uh, are traveling with a mobility aid or in a mobility device, you're gonna be secured, you're gonna be with a driver that has a lot of years of experience working with, uh, paratransit riders. So we're gonna cater to any of the needs you may have or, or maybe, uh, you're just a little worried about using the paratransit service. We have a lot of new paratransit riders as well that now that we've launched Win Ready, they were unaware of the paratransit service before. So we've even experienced some new paratransit riders. You get a lot of the same, you get a lot of the same perks that everybody else has on when ready, except that little bit of a wider window to book. And we're gonna take you door to door. We're gonna drop you right off at the location that you need to go to. That way you don't have to walk any distance or wait at a corner for that.

Dan Hoffman: 20:29

Fantastic guys. So to wrap up, try Transit Week. Uh, although it was last week, uh, it's really. You can try transit all year round. Uh, if you have any concerns or questions, reach out to Kenny and his team, Winchester va.gov. You'll find all the information there. Uh. Kenny will be happy to chat with you if you've got an HOA meeting or a civic association meeting or, uh, your apartment building would like to learn more about how to use the service. Kenny will gladly come chat with you about transit, uh, and we hope to see you ride when ready. Thanks guys.

Sarah Frey: 21:06

Thanks you.

Dan Hoffman: 21:14

Okay. That is it for my lastro review. Uh, it has been, um, a pleasure and an honor, uh, to do this. Uh, you know, when we started it, you know, some folks questioned like, oh, this is a waste of money, or, oh, the po you know, we, we reach more people through this an hour of work. Uh, through this podcast and we have in any town hall I've ever seen, yes, we don't get hundreds of people showing up to a town hall. Uh, but this is a, a valid vehicle for us to really get factual information out to you. Uh, and improve transparency in the city. So, uh, it's been my pleasure to speak with all of you every other week for quite a while. It was three years, maybe

Sarah Frey: 22:03

four years longer than I've been around.

Dan Hoffman: 22:05

That's true. That's true. Uh, so. It, it's been my pleasure. Um, and I don't know what the future of the podcast holds. Uh, we've got a, of course, the work doesn't stop. There's a lot more important information to share, so, uh, I imagine it will continue in some way, shape, or form. Um, but until then, we'll see you around City Hall.