Statewide Integrated Mobility Initiative
DRPT’s Statewide Integrated Mobility Initiative assists the department and its partners in navigating the rapidly changing shared mobility landscape. This initiative developed recommendations rooted in stakeholder input from DRPT’s staff, transit agencies, and research.
New and alternative transportation services — often involving shared use of a vehicle or other mode and enabled by technology — continue to evolve and enter the market, providing people with greater convenience in requesting, tracking, and paying for trips. Examples of these services include on-demand ride services (transportation network companies [TNCs] such as Uber and Lyft), microtransit, technology-enabled shuttle services, carsharing, bikesharing, and scooters.
Additional Resources
Grant Programs
Mobility initiatives are eligible for funding through several DRPT grant programs listed below.
MERIT- Capital Assistance: DRPT uses a prioritization process to allocate and assign resources to capital projects and investments. Under this process, DRPT scores and prioritizes projects.
- State of Good Repair: Capital projects or programs to replace or rehabilitate an existing asset, excluding major capital construction projects with a total cost over $3 million (State Match: up to 68 percent)
- Minor Enhancement: Capital projects or programs that add capacity or include the purchase of new assets with a total project cost less than $3 million. This category also includes vehicle expansion projects of no more than five vehicles or 5 percent of the existing fleet size, whichever is greater, and all projects for engineering and design (State Match: up to 68 percent).
- Major Expansion: Capital projects or programs to add, expand, or improve transit services or facilities, with a total cost exceeding $3 million. This category also includes vehicle expansion projects with an increase of greater than five vehicles or 5 percent of fleet size, whichever is greater, and all projects that include the replacement of an entire existing facility (State Match: up to 50 percent).
Demonstration Project Assistance: Funds demonstration projects that support local efforts to improve transit reliability, access to housing and employment centers, and public transportation mobility options. Applications for Type-2 project specifically fund technology and innovation
Technical Assistance: Support studies, plans, research, data collection, and evaluation projects to help improve public transportation services. This includes providing technical analysis and guidance on operations, service delivery, customer service, expansions of service, and program delivery
Transit Ridership Incentive Program (TRIP) : Provides funding to transit agencies and governing bodies for the purpose of creating more accessible, safe, and regionally significant transit networks. TRIP funds four project categories: zero and reduced fare, regional connectivity, public safety, and passenger amenities and facilities.
Project Summaries
Virginia Rural Microtransit Deployment Initiative
DRPT partnered with Bay Transit, Mountain Empire Older Citizens, and Via Transportation on the Virginia Rural Microtransit Deployment Initiative, a demonstration project testing the feasibility of microtransit and a service delivery model for rural on-demand transit. This project is partially funded by the Federal Transit Administration Integrated Mobility Innovation Grant and the Commonwealth’s Innovation Technology Transportation Fund. Microtransit technology enables customers to book trips on demand or in advance through an app or call-in number. It supports efficient real-time routing, trip sharing, mobile payments, and flexible scheduling within a designated service zone. The demonstration projects, Bay Transit Express and METGO, launched on June 28, 2021, and will operate for a total of 18 months. DRPT shared the project findings in a final report. Both Bay Transit Express and METGO continue to operate with additional service zones launched in 2025. DRPT partnered with Bay Transit, Mountain Empire Older Citizens, and Via Transportation on the Virginia Rural Microtransit Deployment Initiative, a demonstration project testing the feasibility of microtransit and a service delivery model for rural on-demand transit. This project is partially funded by the Federal Transit Administration Integrated Mobility Innovation Grant and the Commonwealth’s Innovation Technology Transportation Fund. Microtransit technology enables customers to book trips on demand or in advance through an app or call-in number. It supports efficient real-time routing, trip sharing, mobile payments, and flexible scheduling within a designated service zone. The demonstration projects, Bay Transit Express and METGO, launched on June 28, 2021, and will operate for a total of 18 months. DRPT shared the project findings in a final report. Both Bay Transit Express and METGO continue to operate with additional service zones launched in 2025.
Albemarle County Transit Expansion
Based on the Albemarle County Transit Expansion Study developed by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, Albemarle County and Charlottesville Area Transit (CAT) implemented microtransit services in the Route 29 North and Pantops service area as part of a 12-month demonstration project in October 2024 under the name MicroCAT. The microtransit services would remove an estimated total of 100 single-occupancy vehicle trips per day between the two service areas. CAT will be the transit operator for the microtransit services, procuring four 20-passenger transit vehicles and using current transit operators to implement the microtransit pilot. The final report for the study can be found here.
Hampton Roads Transit (HRT) Regional Microtransit Demonstration Project
This project will plan, deploy, comparatively evaluate performance, and share lessons learned for on-demand microtransit services in two unique use cases for microtransit services over a six-month period. The new service will provide shared rides in small vehicles for short-distance trips and allow the Hampton Roads region to determine if microtransit is a feasible alternative and complement to existing fixed-route transit. The project will also help explore new markets for transit and enhance organizational capacities. HRT has selected Via as the microtransit operator and will include two service zones in the Cities of Newport News and Virginia Beach. HRT has modified service heading into 2026 with microtransit service zones in the Cities of Hampton, Newport News, and Chesapeake.
Other Microtransit Projects
- GLTC FLEX (Lynchburg)
- GRTC LINK Microtransit (Richmond)
- HB Flex Microtransit (Harrisonburg)
- WinReady (Winchester)
- Valley Metro Microtransit (Roanoke)
- OmniRide/PRTC Microtransit
- ART Microtransit (Arlington)
- Loudoun County Microtransit
Technology Innovation
DRPT supports the creation and maintenance of GTFS for many transit agencies in Virginia. Several other transit agencies maintain GTFS outside of this effort.
Connecting VA by DRPT provides a one-stop shop for exploring mobility options in the Commonwealth. The site provides an award-winning trip planner that lets you plan trips across modes and transit services. The platform even provides trip information for demand response services
Fairfax County/Dominion Energy Relay Shuttle (Completed)
GLTC Mirrorless Buses
DASH Automated Wheelchair Securement System
AI assistants (Arlington coming soon)