 You know what, I think I'm gonna go ahead and start. It looks like the number of people coming in has slowed down to a slow trickle. So good evening, everyone. My name is Charlie Baker. I'm the executive director of the Chittany County Regional Planning Commission and I'd like to welcome you to this webinar tonight as public meeting on the I-89-2050 study and welcome you on behalf of not only the Regional Planning Commission but also VTRANS and our consultant partners in this VHB. Thank you very much for joining us. We really do appreciate it. I also wanna thank Time Meeting TV for livestreaming this and recording it. This will be available as a recording both through Time Meeting TV afterwards and also on the project website and vision89.com and on the public process page. So if you wanna reference this at a later date it will be in both places. And we have about 30 minutes of presentation. And so not knowing how many people we'd have participate and it's a pretty good number for over 60 attendees now. So we're gonna run through the presentation and then open it up for questions and comments. And Sean will give us, from the VHB team will give us some more detail on that. And just to introduce the project team who's on the screen right now just so you know whose face is who. I'll start with the RPC staff. Eleni Churchill is a project manager. Yeah, you can wave and say hello. And Jason Charest is a senior transportation planning engineer. Thanks. And on the VHB team, David Saladino, project manager, Karen Sentoff and then also Diane Meyerhoff is helping out through. And Sean whose face is not visible is more on the IT team. So he's making sure this technology works all right for us tonight. Welcome everyone, really thank you. And Dave, can you pull up the presentation? Sean has a couple of opening notes. Yeah, sure, sure. Hello folks. So when we do get to the question and answer session, section of the meeting tonight, we've got two different ways to participate. We're gonna be using the question and answer feature of Zoom if you are on the computer or on a mobile device down at the bottom of your screen, there's going to be a Q&A box, Q&A button. You can click to type in any questions or comments that you have. You can add any question there at any point in time and we'll get to those as they come in or as we start a question and answer section. If you'd like to ask a question, allowed or verbally out of comment, you can use the raise hand feature down at the bottom of your screen. That sends me a notification that you would like to speak. And when we get to that point, I'll call on you by name and let you know that you have been given the ability to unmute. The floor is yours to ask your question. If you are dialing in by telephone, you can raise your hand in that way by dialing star nine. And I'll go over that again once we get to the point where we will be getting to questions. All right, so as I indicated, if you just signed on recently and missed the opening, I just wanted to welcome everyone to the public meeting tonight on the I-89-2050 study and thank you for attending. We're gonna go through the presentation and then as we were just mentioning, we'll take questions, comments at the end in the manner that Sean just suggested. So a couple of meeting goals for tonight. One is to review the interchange evaluation results and we're seeking any feedback on the interchange is to include in what are bundles that we'll be looking at at the next phase and then also to gather input on what kinds of additional investments to be included in those bundles. Next slide, to give you a little bit of background. This project came out of our long range transportation planning process that we do at the Regional Planning Commission. The name of that is, we adopted that plan in 2018. It's branded the 2018 ECOS Metropolitan Transportation Plan. And just to give you the sense of priorities that came out of that was most of the funding, 70% going to preserve our existing system. Then there's a smart growth priority of getting to at least 90% of growth in our villages and downtowns. We're not quite there yet. We've been averaging in the high 80s. Safety improvements, technological improvements which we call intelligent transportation system investments and then increased transit, parking rides, carpooling, car sharing, otherwise known as transportation demand management, walking, biking and then kind of as a last resort, if all of those things don't have the system functioning properly then we might look at roadway capacity expansion but only when needed. And important point to make here is that this is all part of our larger regional plan that not only talks about transportation but also talks about our lane use goals, climate goals, energy goals and all of these investments and programs are intended to meet those goals including the state's climate and energy goals. So I wanna make sure people have that context. In terms of this project, we are looking at the entirety of 89 within Chitton County. So it's 37 miles, there are seven existing interchanges and of course you can see here the zoom out in our core urban area. We're spending more attention. We have more issues there. So that's the study area. And this is really a graphic of the scope of work that we hired VHB to perform. We're kind of squarely in the middle of this work. You can see we started off with understanding the background, developing a quarter vision and goals and then in task four, we spent a number of months here for good reason because the interchanges get very complex and our giant investments. So we've spent a bit of time on the interchanges to try to narrow those down. I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. And now we're turning to a task five, which is actually trying to put things back together in a package of alternatives. And then later this fall and winter we'll look at developing the recommendations and implementation plan and final report. So just to focus in a little bit about where we are right now, you can see here in the upper left, we talked about we're in task four, we're trying to finish up task four. We did a first round of interchange screening. We started off with 10 different interchanges and got down to five, which is what we were evaluating in this latest round two of a detailed evaluation. And you can see the funnel graphic there in the center. We've kind of tried to shake out the interchanges to narrow that down and now we'll be looking more holistically. And that's really the stage we're at is identify what additional corridor or investment should be made in the 89 corridor or in the region to reduce traffic in the corridor. So that's the stage we're at right now. And again, this slide on the left iterates again, task six and task seven that will be in the future. So talk about the interchanges a little bit. I mentioned we got down to five after the first round of evaluation of interchanges. We're now down and these five going from south to north. One was exit 12B. There were two options we looked at in the exit 13 location. And then two options we looked at exit 14 and Dave will give you a lot more detail on those interchange ideas in a minute. Next slide. And so I mentioned we've done a lot of discussion over the last few months about these interchanges. We did bring them multiple times to South Burlington community committees, council. There was a vote a couple of weeks ago at the city council, South Burlington in favor, it was a three, two vote in favor of exit 12B moving forward for further evaluation. And you can see lists of their South Burlington committees. Most of them favored exit 13, one of the alternatives there, Dave will talk tell you what the SBDI stands for in a couple of minutes. And so you kind of split opinions about what you move forward to further evaluation. And I do want to pause here for a moment to say these decisions and opinions are not decisive in what will get done. This was really just to evaluate what should move forward in terms of the next step of evaluation. And I see a question in the comments here. And thank you, Megan Emory for correctly pointing out the Economic Development Committee actually had 12B and 13 in their recommendation. Next slide. So we got a lot of input and we were initially trying to get to a point of either 13 or 12B. And what the project team is putting on the table tonight for your feedback is first let's start with all of the things we can do before we get to big investments in driving. And so you see the first number of items here investments, public transit, biking, walking, transportation demand management I mentioned like parking ride lots and ride sharing, the technology, intelligent transportation system, any kind of geometric safety operational improvements we could make. And then we included the diverging diamond interchange in this category because it was really reducing capacity at exit 14 and really fit in better with encouraging alternative use of other modes and is not a capacity expansion investment. So that is kind of, you can see checks in all those rows for all three bundles. So kind of the intent is let's do everything we can to reduce vehicle traffic and then layer on in bundle two, one bundle that looks at exit 13 single point diamond interchange and one bundle that would look at exit 12B so that we can kind of compare those three alternative bundles to each other in the next phase. And there is still an outstanding question about the capacity of I-89 particularly between 14 and 15 and would a third lane be needed or can we reduce enough traffic with all of these non auto investments that we don't need to do any more capacity expansion? So that's kind of, we'll come back to this question. This is really what we would like feedback on the most tonight. Any details about what kinds of investments should be made or what specific investments and biking, walking, transit, all those other things. We would love to hear those things and certainly any feedback about how these three bundles look to you in terms of going to the next stage of analysis. So Dave, anything I missed there? Oh, I think you got it. Okay, and next slide. And so I turn it over to Dave now to talk in more detail about the interchange. Okay. So to build off of Charlie's comment, we're going to go through the three interchanges that are proposed to be advanced through one of those three bundles. So what we have up on the screen now is the proposed diverging diamond interchange for exit 14. Just to orient folks, obviously I-89 is heading north-south. We have the new double tree, old Sheridan in the upper left, Staples Plaza bottom left, Holiday Inn on the upper right, and CBS to the bottom left. And that's kind of the orientation. You can see kind of underneath the existing cloverleaf configuration just to get a sense of scale for this improvement. So basically the diverging diamond, it's a bit of a unique animal in terms of kind of traffic operations. For those of you who are familiar with the proposal, proposed modifications at exit 16 in Colchester, very similar design. This involves crossover twice. So for somebody who's coming out of, let's say out of Burlington and heading towards Williston, you're heading eastbound on Wilson Road, you cross over onto what is essentially the other side of the road. As you cross over the I-89, you have the option instead of having to wait at a light to turn left to go north on 89, you have now, this is one of the benefits of a diverging diamond, you have a free movement to be able to head north. And this movement in particular is one of the heaviest movements at the interchange, particularly at 4.35 o'clock in the afternoon. So this really facilitates that movement for all of those commuters to head back north. And then it's the reverse movement in the westbound direction. One of the real benefits, and Charlie alluded to this concept here is that it's a little bit hard to see on the screen, but this kind of orange line shows a shared use path. So 10 foot shared use path on running along both sides of Williston Road. And you can see it crossing over into a central 14 foot central shared use path that crosses over 89 and then diverges again in both directions. So what this really does, it facilitates as just a hypothetical, walking or cycling trip from, let's say, the Holiday Inn to the Staples Plaza. You will now with this proposed configuration in place, you have a clear path, you're crossing over, you have a signalized crossing where you're crossing Williston Road. You have no conflicts as you're crossing over 89 and then another signalized crossing. So this is a fully protected movement as you cross. So it not only allows you to go across the interstate, but also north and south across Williston Road under signal control. So that is the diverging diamond interchange alternative at exit 14. At exit 13, this is another somewhat unique configuration referred to as a single point diamond interchange. Again, to orient everyone, the existing exit 13 is underneath here. You can see here off to the right Dorset Street. This is South Burlington City Hall here, South Burlington High School is just off the screen to the right, obviously Spear Street here. And so what we have today, if for those of you, I imagine many familiar with this, I-89 has the westbound direction and eastbound direction are split. This proposal brings those together. So it essentially removes the eastbound barrel or eastbound direction of I-189, shifts that north to align adjacent to the westbound lanes to effectively create a four lane boulevard similar to Kennedy Drive just to the east of Dorset Street. So you've got two lanes in each direction, potentially with a landscape median. So kind of moving this less from an interstate facility to more of kind of an urban boulevard type feel for this roadway. What this then does by bringing both of these approaches in allows all of the movements at the interchange to be operated under a single signalized control. And so you can see here all of the on and off ramps kind of all converge at this single point, thus the name, single point diamond interchange. And what this also does is open up all of the movements at the interchange. For those of you who are familiar with Exit 13, there are certain movements you cannot make today. So coming from the north, for example, if you wanna go to Kennedy Drive, you can't do that today. In the future in this scenario, you would just come off, go through the traffic signal and be on your way to the airport or to Kennedy Drive or so forth. So this configuration does open up all of the movements through and into the interchange. And this is just a zoom in of that single point. We'll also note this does also include a new shared use path that would connect from the terminus of the existing shared use path on Kennedy Drive and Dorset Street. And this will carry you across the interstate along this new roadway and then tie into the shared use path at Spear Street. So this would be a brand new connection where today there's no ability to walk or cycle across through the existing Exit 13. And then the third interchange, this is Exit 12B. So we've got Heinzburg Road, Route 116, kind of north-south here, Tilly Drive, medical office buildings along Tilly Drive. We have Technology Park off to the right here. The Whales Tales are just off the screen to the right. And so this configuration is a little more typical, although it has its unique elements. In this case here, we have the northbound on and off ramps, unlike a typical interchange where all of the movements would be occurring kind of right at the main, the kind of connecting arterial. Because of some of the constraints, topography and land ownership constraints, we're showing the northbound on and off ramps coming off to the east of Heinzburg Road and teeing into Tilly Drive where then drivers, there's a future city street plan, so drivers can then continue north to the airport, for example, or turn left or right to go out to Heinzburg Road or through another new connector out into Community Drive and to points east or north. The southbound movements are much more traditional, so we've got just a typical kind of southbound off ramp and southbound on ramp in this configuration as shown here. This proposal also includes a new bridge over I-89 that accommodates both a 10 foot shared use path on one side and a sidewalk on the other side. So again, greatly enhancing opportunities for cyclists and pedestrians to cross safely in this location. So we looked at these, the three interchanges that we just showed plus the other two that were screened out through the second round process through a fairly detailed evaluation matrix process. And that matrix was really informed by close to 40 separate metrics, objective metrics that we looked at for each of those five interchanges. And we aligned those metrics with the six goals that have been identified for this study. These goals have been identified through a fairly robust process working with, we have a technical committee and advisory committee and got public input on these goals. And so you see the first three here, so safety, livable, sustainable and healthy communities and mobility and efficiency. So those are three of the goals and you can see the bulleted points here are the metrics that we were using to evaluate each of these interchanges against those. So what are the safety implications? How does the ramp spacing affect safety at each of those interchanges? And those were all assigned scores so that we could evaluate these as objectively as possible. This is the second set here. So we have environmental stewardship as our goal, economic access and then system preservation. So that rounds out the six goals and then the 38 metrics that we evaluated. So once we were able to identify all of those metrics, assigned scores, do the evaluation, what is shown in the top half of this slide are the resulting scores for each of those interchanges. And so just as an example here on the left, this is the exit 12B scores, kind of summarized by each of the six goals. So it scored 16 points under safety, 13 points under livable, sustainable and healthy communities and so forth for a total of 74 points. Just to note the green shading indicates which interchange scored the highest in that particular goal. So in this case, exit 12B scored the hot, got the most points of the three under economic access and so forth. So you can see the total scores here, the SBDI did score under this analysis, the highest. And then just to note a couple, I won't read through all of these, but there are some important distinctions between the different interchanges that we looked at. One example, so exit 12B was found to have the largest, it has the greatest reduction in traffic, existing traffic at exit 12 in Williston. So it results in about a 14% decrease in traffic at exit 12. It also has the greatest reduction in traffic on Williston Road east of exit 14. So in the kind of wind jammer section of Williston Road, so about a 15% decrease in traffic there. On the other side, it does have the largest kind of public, private property impacts impervious area. And it does lead to the largest percent increase in traffic on 116 just south of I-89. As you can imagine, by putting in the new interchange, you would imagine some additional traffic, primarily in this case, south of I-89 on 116. I'll skip over the hybrid since that one has been kind of screened out, but the SBDI, the other alternative that was looked at, this one, so this in comparison to exit 12, which really helps exit 12B, which helps reduce traffic at exit 12 in Williston, exit 13 has the best bang for its buck at exit 14. So we see, if you build the SBDI by opening up all of those additional movements, we see about a 13% reduction in traffic at exit 14. And then also about a 17% decrease in traffic on Dorset Street, because this now allows for movements to come in and out of the mall. For example, if you're leaving the mall, not everyone has to head left and go up to Williston Road to get on an exit 14. You now have the option to go south on Dorset Street. So that greatly improves operations on along Dorset Street. So then the other, we also evaluated kind of separately using all of the same metrics, the two options that we looked at at exit 14, the DDI is the one that was showed previously, the plan for that, that was the one that scored, scored the best and was advancing forward. So you can see how that scored against all of the goals. The DDI in particular, the strengths here, as I mentioned, the kind of the fully signalized path for pedestrians and cyclists, it does result in a net reduction in impervious area, which is a positive thing for water quality in this area, particularly with the Centennial Brook, immediately adjacent to the interchange. It does also, as Charlie noted, there is a reduction in overall vehicle capacity. Today we have a clover leaf interchange that has about as much capacity as any interchange can have, all free movements. So by shrinking the size and slowing some of the movements, putting in those two signalized intersections, we do have some decrease in vehicle capacity. And one of the things that we saw by reducing the capacity, kind of narrowing the size of the pipe there for vehicles, it did send some traffic onto adjacent parallel routes. So in this case, we saw a slight increases, about three to 4% increase on the Winooski Main Street Bridge over the Winooski River, so just south of the circulator in Winooski, and then Lyme Kiln Road on the east side of 89. So as you reduce capacity, it does send some trips in other directions to find the quickest path to their destinations. Okay, so that's, that was kind of an overview snapshot of the interchanges. Now we'll turn it back to Charlie to go through the bundles and other potential improvements for the corridor. Thanks, Dave. I apologize, I hope you couldn't hear me typing. I was doing my best to respond to questions that are in the Q and A. So, and I just do want to make sure, Dave, there was one question that someone heard you say that exit 14 improvement, which I assume they were referring to the DDI, increases capacity of that interchange. Can you clarify that it does not? That was, if I stated that that was an error, it decreases it by about 10% from the current cloverleaf layout. Thanks, Dave. So, this is just a quick slide, just to give you a flavor of the kind of comments and topic areas that we've heard about to date, particularly by competitive structure, crossing 14, climate change, also some of the interchanges should be improved, HIV and transit lanes, more investment in transit, ITS and technology, noise walls, livable communities, reducing auto dependency and widening IED-9. So, as you can tell, that's a wide range of comments and viewpoints on this. So, we're still really kind of taking more feedback to this point and need to do more analysis. And Dave, next slide. And again, just to come back to this slide, where we're kind of looking at these bundles, one with just a decreasing capacity at the interchanges is bundle one plus a lot of investments in reducing auto travel. Bundle two is a lot of investments in reducing auto travel and looking at the 13 single point diamond interchange. Bundle three is lots of investments to reduce auto travel and then looking at 12B. And so, what we're doing is trying to bundle things. You know, we're looking at 2050, which is almost 30 years away from now and seeing what seems to make sense given assumptions about what that future might look like. With a huge caveat that we know our models and predictions are not exactly right. So that's really another task is to really think about the implementation plan, phasing, what should come first. There's a lot of those things in the first six rows or so that we should probably be doing sooner and not waiting to do and then wait as long as possible for any big investments, you know, tens of millions of dollars into the interstate for auto traffic, absent the need to replace infrastructure, which is also a big consideration here is that there's infrastructure is over 60 years old now in the interstate and getting to a point in its life where a lot of it would need to be replaced. We want to be prepared with ideas of how to replace it with the best investment possible. And Dave, I think there's one more slide up to this. Yeah, so here's the question to the group. What issues or opportunities do you see for the eight and nine quarter over the next 30 years? There's another set of bullets here just to get you thinking but we'll open it up for comments in a minute. And I think maybe just a couple of slides, right? Dave to talk about next steps and then we'll come back and we'll sit on this slide. I think the next steps and just so you expectations, we would like if you're not able to give us comments tonight, we would like to get them over the next week or so by May 7th, if you can. And you have mine and the Lainey's emails down the bottom. You can also give us feedback through the website, Twitter or Facebook. We have an advisory committee on May 19th and so we're having this meeting really to get input into that advisory committee. And I mentioned earlier talking about the tasks here. We'll evaluate the bundles over the next several months, come back and do more public engagement this fall and winter about what we learned from that evaluation and then try to get to some degree of closure about how might we move forward. So still more questions and answers that we have at this point but really looking for your thoughts about what we should be moving forward. So at this point, I think we'll open it up for questions and comments. And Sean, do you want to help us out with that? Definitely. All right, folks. So there are a couple of different ways to interact this evening. If you are on a computer or mobile device down at the bottom of your screen, you will see a Q&A button. You can click or tap on that to enter your question or comment by text there. If you would like to ask a question or give a comment verbally down at the bottom of your screen, there's a raise hand button that will send us a notification that you would like to speak. When your name comes up in the queue, we'll call on you and let you know that you can unmute your mic and we'll hear your question or comment. If you're dialing in by telephone, you can raise your hand in that same way by dialing star nine. And we will call on you by the last three digits of your telephone number. And Sean, are you going to read off questions for us? Yeah, okay, great. Right, yes. So we have a question from Megan Emery. Megan says, please break down the economic access since we were told that areas within one mile of an interchange stands to gain in economic growth. Please break down the economic access since we were told that areas within one mile of an interchange stands to gain in economic growth. Yeah, Megan, we may need to have an offline conversation. I'm not sure I fully understand that. We do in the projections of growth for this area with or without this study, there are certainly projections for growth and employment in this area in South Burlington in general and Burlington in general. That's pretty significant and it varies depending on location. So we did do some in the scoring criteria. There was some differentiation. More jobs are expected to occur in the exit 14 area. So that got higher points. Exit 12B, I think had the next highest and 13, the third highest. So that was kind of the, Dave correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that was the... That's right, that's right, Charlie. Okay, thanks. All right, so we'll move on to the next question. Ian Stokes says, the goals are excellent. However, it seems that they can only be achieved if there is a park and ride PNR with a bus stop at each interchange. Exit 11 has both, but PNR with insufficient capacity. I don't see provision for PNR at any of the proposed interchange plans. For instance, the sections of roadway closed off in the proposed reconstructions could be used for PNR. Yeah, I think that's a great comment. We have not looked at parking ride lots. That's really what we're proposing to do in this next stage. So we will take that as a recommendation for park and ride lots of interchanges. If you have more detail you want to offer on that, please do. All right, so we've got a few folks who have raised their hands. Richard Watts is first. Richard, please unmute your mic and we are ready to hear your question. Thank you, Sean. Thank you, everybody. Do you see me or not? All I can see is a little black box. We will just hear folks' voice when they participate tonight. Okay, well, so I have a couple of concerns about the studies I've articulated before, but a couple of questions if I may, and then if I could, I'd just like to make a brief comment. Do we know when the traffic count assumptions, the assumptions that Charlie just mentioned that this is based on, when was the traffic count data collected and have we thought about the changes that may be happening with travel behavior here during this pandemic and how that may or may not affect the future? I'm going to say yes to your second question, but I'll give you a fuller answer. And to your point, Richard, yeah, this is based on data that was pre-pandemic for sure. And so that does inject a higher degree of uncertainty and less confidence in the numbers at the end of this that we're projecting. And so I think we've been trying to be very mindful of that issue, and there are other issues beyond the pandemic, right? What are electric and autonomous vehicles going to do? Are people going to keep working at home from the pandemic or are we going to have new transit systems and technology there? And so I think we recognize and everybody involved with the study recognize there's a significant degree of uncertainty in the future. And so one of the comments or points if you look at the goal statement for this project, you'll see a statement there about how important it is to recognize that uncertainty and to monitor things for the future. And that's why I've been trying to be careful. I hope you've heard me. There are no commitments to doing any of these things, particularly the capacity projects at this point because there is just too much uncertainty and it's too far away. We need to keep track of what's happening and see what makes sense in the succeeding years. Okay, and then a similar question if I could, Charlie. The overall CCRPC MPO's goal is something like a 2% reduction in VMT by 2050. Is that right? I wouldn't say that was a goal. That was an outcome of our analysis of making a lot of TDM investments and trying to do everything we could to meet the energy plant goals. So I think it's a 2.4% decrease in vehicle miles of travel and a 70 something percent reduction in greenhouse gases because of conversion to electric vehicles. For instance, so yeah, those were outcomes of the metropolitan transportation plan. And then overall, I think you've told me before but do you think the study now is gonna cost somewhere around or up to 900,000? Has that changed at all since in the last three months? That is probably a pretty good ballpark estimate now and I think it could be more depending on how complex the analysis gets in the next stage. Okay, I'm sorry, but you're saying now it could be more than $900,000? That's possible, it really depends on the feedback that we're getting from the community and if more analysis is needed to kind of evaluate those ideas. So I don't wanna, I don't want you to walk away from this meeting thinking that is the final number, it may not be. Hey, well, I just went underscore for folks that two and a half years or so ago when this started, the number was $526,000. And then as little as three months ago, I think Charlie and others said they didn't see it costing more than 900,000 and now I'm hearing that it might be above that. So there's lots of issues or different ways you can think about the study but I just for a minute wanna articulate my biggest concern about it. And that is that it puts roads at the center of planning our future. So we call this Envision 89 and we're gonna spend somewhere like $900,000 thinking about a future that kind of circles around this road and the interchanges. Imagine just for a minute if this study was called Envision, a system that was less car dependent or Envision, a future that had less dependence by all of us on motorized vehicles and you spent $900,000 on envisioning that future, you would come to different outcomes than what we're gonna come to tonight. And Charlie said very articulately that the future is uncertain, the assumptions that go into this study are uncertain. I mean, we already know that one of the major assumptions is based on traffic data that was taken before the pandemic. The whole world has changed. People are telecommuting more. People are teleworking more. It's more acceptable to telecommute. Traffic is down and maybe it's gonna bounce back but we don't know that. So the biggest sort of rethink I think here is that planning should be the guidance of future action. Planning should be about building the future that we want, not on building a future that's based on questionable assumptions. So what kind of future would we want in 2050? Is it a future that's, you know, puts us all in the same status quo system of being completely dependent on motorized vehicles to get around? And what does that future say for those of us who are too young or too old to drive or people who don't have access to motor vehicles? We know that as a proportion of your income, the less money you make, the higher percent it costs you to live and work in this existing system. And what does it say to this enormous conversation that's going on in this country about racial and social justice? And the planners here will tell us whether they're taking that into consideration and they're thinking about it. But I think that we're way down this path, but we really, and so people are thinking, what's the best we can get out of this? And I think it's, we should just stop, pause and let the world, let us take a minute and see what's happening in the world and then think about how we want to spend. And I don't know how much of this has not yet spent. Maybe it's 300 or 400,000. And I'll make a last point and then I'll stop. But that is that some of what we are is in this plan are things that are just inconceivable that will ever be built. Political support aside, but hundreds of millions of dollars for interstates or a hundred plus million is on one of these slides for an exchange. Where is that funding gonna come from? Do we really want to build out a plan that has in it suggestions that we're gonna spend a hundred plus million dollars on an interstate exchange? It's just unlikely. So thank you for all your work. I know you guys work really hard at this, but I just think it's about, it's all of the reason it's all about a road is it's all about a road. And if we really wanted to do things differently, it wouldn't be this project. Thank you. Thank you, Richard, for that. And I think I'll try to give a brief response, which is I don't think we are thinking that differently about our future. And I hope you heard me say, like these capacity ideas are the last resort. So I do think we share the same notion and vision about let's talk about what are the best investments in our community for our future for the livable, climate friendly, racially just and equitable future that we want. And so, and the other thing, I just want to quibble a little bit with Richard's characterization because I don't want anybody listening to this to think that there's a plan. We do not have a plan to do any of these things. We are exploring options at the moment and you are part of that process and we welcome all feedback to help us make sure we're exploring the right options and the best options. So this is really a critical time to tell us about all the other things that you think should be done in and around these interchanges. For better or worse, 89 is here. It carries a ton of traffic and it is a barrier in our community. This is an opportunity to try to get to a better future than what we have now. So I'll take the next question, John, whenever you're ready. All right. Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Charles. The next person with their hand raised is Noah. Noah, please unmute. We're ready for your question. Can I be heard? Yes. All right. I would like to first thank everyone on these various committees for all of the work. I know it can be thankless and I appreciate everything you're trying to do for South Brownton. My question, it may be simple and maybe not, it may have been covered before. This is my first time attending one of these meetings on I-89. I have a question about the scoring evaluation summary for the various exes that were proposed. How were they weighted or valued? I'm not trying to argue any one in particular. I would just like to know, is there a place for me to find how exit 13 or 14 was rated higher or lower for economic impact or environmental friendliness, et cetera. That is all. Thank you. Yeah, there is, that Dave presented a real kind of bottom line summary, scoring summary. There is, if you go on the website, yeah, those, there are more details. There's a detailed matrix. Dave can maybe tell me what that is called or where it is, but. There's a link to it right on the homepage, envision89.com to the full matrix. And then I think if you were asking like how were different metrics weighted? The, I think the simple answer to that is we had six goals, which Dave reviewed earlier. Those six goals in the initial scoring were weighted equally. So safety was just as important as the economy was just as important as preservation of stuff. And so that meant because there were different numbers of metrics in each of the goals, there was some math done to normalize the scoring so that each of the goals got equal weight. Hope that helps, Noah. All right, thank you, Noah. Thank you, Charles. The next person waiting to speak has the username mb, mbeta. Please unmute your mic and we're ready for your question. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Smarta. I also want to thank all of you for providing so much detail in such in-depth study. So that's really appreciated. I've basically a couple of comments and a question. In terms of the comments for, I'm here representing a few of my neighbors that live at Heather Field, which backs up to where the exit 13 interchange is. And it's a pretty tight space already. So one of the questions would just be if you can speak to how that would increase traffic and noise. And if you have gotten far enough to think about what kind of environmental buffer you would have because if you look at the diagrams you presented, you could also see the houses how close it is because they're on your diagram. So we have some concerns about that and any expansion there. And also I can't back this up with a study, but it does seem like there's a wildlife corridor here just from what we observe. And so that would be a consideration. And the other third consideration would be that there's a lot of, there's two schools there and a lot of foot traffic we have going back and forth. So the idea of expanding and building out highway in that area where we already are walking and what the impact would be on our schools and the residential communities that are really right central to that area. So the question would be on the impact of this on the school and the residential neighborhoods with an exit 13 alternative, if you could speak to that. Yeah, I think one thing I'll note is that we have not heard back from the school district. So that is definitely a constituency that we would like to get some more feedback from. And Dave, I don't know if you have more specific answers to your questions. Yeah, one I guess overarching answer and get into some of the specifics but this is still very kind of concept level design. And this would have to go through a very rigorous environmental review process. If any of these interchanges were to move forward. And so if an interchange 13 were to move forward basically everything that you enumerated. So noise impacts, environmental impacts, traffic impacts those would all need to be identified specifically and mitigated to the extent that there are significant impacts. And so for talking noise walls or environmental mitigation stream buffer plantings or those types of things. So at this stage and kind of the planning stage don't necessarily get into that level of detail. We did look at potential environmental implications for this neighborhood and specifically we did identify we looked from a noise perspective of the two options that we looked at at exit 13. We did feel that this the SBDI the single point diamond interchange had less noise implications to the Heatherfield neighborhood specifically because it pulls the ramps further away from the neighborhood as opposed to the hybrid which you didn't see tonight but that one had ramps much closer to the neighborhood. So that was a consideration kind of as part of the overall scoring as well. Well, thank you for considering that. That's good news to hear. And I totally understand that some of those are longer term but want to just representing this neighborhood and kind of living close to it represent some of the things that cross our minds. When you talk about development in this area affecting all three of those things. So if you can just take the into consideration as you determine which what did you call it? What are you calling them? The little buckets or? Bundles. Bundles. The bundles that you're looking at. So thank you. Thank you for taking input to really appreciate it. Sure, thank you. All right. So I would like to recognize we have lots of written questions and many people whose hands are raised. So for the time being, we're gonna take one more hand and then go to for a moment the written questions and then bounce back and forth. So Megan Emory has her hand raised. Megan, if you have something to add from your previous question, please unmute and we are ready. Okay, can you hear me? Yes. Good, all right. Yeah, just to build off of the committees in South Burlington as well as one of my questions I can wait for that to be answered but regarding federal guidelines and policy in response to our carbon emissions and the goals to reduce them and really face our responsibility with regard to climate change. Something I said at the April 19th meeting is that I will be coming forward this coming Monday with a resolution whereby the South Burlington City Council will be considering all future policy decisions through a climate change lens. And I asked my fellow counselors to hold off on this vote until we could look at that resolution and deliberate with regard to specifically this study as well as all the future decisions that we'll be making. How could that resolution potentially participate in future discussions that you have with the public or with the advisory board? I would certainly like to submit it to you. We're certainly happy to take that input and sorry, there was a lot to unpack there. But I think one thing I'll say to you is that, I think we do have an obligation to address the issue of climate change. I don't know that the federal government has gone much further than that but I think our state government has gone even further to get to 90% renewable and other climate goals that will probably get stronger over the course of the next year or two. So I think we're in agreement that we need to make sure we're addressing those goals. So and we will take any feedback on how to do that better but it certainly is a shared goal. So for instance, one of the things that I've been discussing with constituents is the land that will be taken up by these interchanges could be used for housing or for biking and pedestrian infrastructure or for civic services that could be closer to residential areas south on Vermont 116. And I would see that as a reduction in the need for the use of cars and motorized vehicles of all kinds and that this should be our goal because we know I believe it's the second greatest contributor to the carbon emissions, it's traffic. And so if we think about exit 13 being just a half a mile away from the 12B interchange does that make sense to use that land for an interchange when it could be used for housing and ideally affordable housing so that more people could live closer to those employment centers. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right, so we're going to bounce over to some of the written questions. Charles or one of the other, sorry, okay. So we've got a question from Ethan Pepin. Why is non-standard design listed as a weakness? FHWA and AAS-HTO standards have been slow to adapt and innovate and have favored designs and lane widths that have been proven to be suboptimal. Dave, you got that one? I think that may be referring to the left turn exit and entrance on, I'm not sure what that was referring to. I believe it was for the DDI and it's a very good point that Ethan makes and really there weren't a lot of weaknesses with the DDI to be honest and so we wanted to identify some things and one whether you term it as a weakness or not, it is something that drivers will be unfamiliar with and particularly the first time they drive through it and there hasn't been kind of precedent for large kind of collisions or increases in crashes but it is something that takes some getting used to just like when roundabouts were introduced it took a little bit of getting used to people were scared and now you don't think twice about it. So it is just a little bit different than the kind of usual particularly with your drive when you're driving on the other side of the roadway but a good geometric design you won't really know the difference. All right, thank you. So we've got another question from Erica Quallen. She asks or she says, I appreciate the shared youth path use paths at all of these interchanges but what are they connecting? Particularly on Heinsberg Road since there isn't a path this far out. Also will Williston Road path actually happen for this to connect to? And so Dave you may know the answer to this better than I do but I do believe this offering and does plan for a path down Heinsberg Road. So this would be consistent and have to do that over and interchange the interchanges there where 116 crosses I-89 and there are sidewalk just recently built to the north there. So there's something to connect to. I think if I understand the questioner rightly asking what's it connecting to going south that infrastructure is still in need and this is long range planning. So there are things out there that certainly aren't done yet that are in others plans particularly the city of South Burlington. And I do think going north it would be to connect to a path on Williston Road ultimately as well. And Dave, do you have any more detail on that? The Williston Road path I think she may be referring to the kind of complete streets conversion of Williston Road and I don't know if we have other representatives from the city who could speak more to the timing of that but I believe that's still advancing. Yeah, and I believe there's a path even in the busiest section of Williston Road like from Dorset to Kennedy as well. So thank you Erica. All right, thank you. So we've got another question. This is from Jesse Robbins. How does the bike and pedestrian bridge at exit 14 that was studied by CCRPC and StandTech fit into the plans for the exit? The double diamond exchange will be a slight improvement for non-automobile traffic but this is the busiest section of road in Vermont and a completely separate bike and pedestrian facility would be much, much better. I live and work in Burlington and bike for many errands but after one trip won't cross 89 at Williston Road. Yeah, so we will definitely take this as a comment supporting that bike head bridge. For those of you that may not know we've worked with the city of South Burlington and there's a conceptual plan for a separated bike head bridge just south of exit 14 closer to entering into the back of U-Mall and one of the conversations has been is that maybe that's an earlier stage investment that gets made and whenever the structure, the bridge at exit 14 needs to be replaced. Maybe that's the time that we improve that with a DDI or some other improvement that makes it better for bike paths there but in the meantime, there's an alternative to the current bike path there. So one doesn't necessarily replace the other but they could both be supportive of each other. We've got a question from Srinivasan. If the implementation had to be prioritized for material reasons can 14, 13 and 12D be approached on a sequential need basis? I guess I'm wondering what's the top priority for Chittenden County? Sorry that I don't pronounce that correctly. Chittenden County, yeah. Yeah, this process will help inform the priorities. We don't know what the priorities are yet and that's certainly more to this process over the coming months to try to get to a better answer to this question. So I wish I had a better answer for him at this point but I think that is part of the purpose of the study and that when we talked about step six, task six in this project, the implementation plan this kind of question about sequencing and prioritization and phasing will definitely be part of that task. All right, thank you. So again, we're gonna take one more written question and then go back over to the verbal questions. Michael Mitag asks, comparing exits 13 and 12D shows that there would be much higher land acquisition costs for 12D because the land for exit 13 is already federally owned, right? Dave, I'm gonna look for you to shake your head, yes but I believe that is a correct answer, yes. That is correct, yes. All right, very good. Then as someone who's raised their hand, I see Tony Reddington. Tony, please unmute and we are ready for your question. Thank you very much. Thank you, Charlie. And thank you, David, for your work on this. I'll make some general comments and I do expect to submit written comments by the 7th of May, according to the deadline you've given. I'm sort of in the same vein as Richard Watts that I'm concerned, and it centers on the roads at the center of our future and using the term envision. I think it's in the case of interstate exits, it's an oxymoron to say that we're envisioning something as with cars at the center of our future and talking about bike lanes and pedestrian safety and so forth at interstate exits. I just think there's a clash of a sense of where we're going. I found that in the last year, I think a lot of us have been acting differently because of the pandemic and I realized, oh, wow, I haven't taken a, I have successfully not taken an airdrip since the beginning of the pandemic and I'm more than a year now without air travel. But then I thought about these exits and the interstate. I also have the situation in which I have never, I have not been on an interstate highway in over a year. I wasn't purposely trying to avoid I-189 or I-89, but so this whole discussion is sort of foreign to me in a way living in Burlington. My name again is Tony Reddington. I've had, as you know, a couple of decades as working for the Vermont and New Hampshire departments of transportation. Some of the comments that are related. It was interesting that you showed one matrix in which you showed that safety scored higher on a particular option and you, but it didn't win the preferred option, so to speak, in the overall matrix. Just note again, that safety should be the most important thing. Equal weighting really is not fair. We note that the AAA, which has done a study of metro needs and congestion and this, a lot of what's been talked about here really is dealing with handling more cars or the cars that we have more efficiently. The AAA foundation has done a key study. You folks aren't aware of it. It's the Cambridge systematic study of metropolitan transportation areas in the country. And they found in the larger ones that serious injuries and fatals were twice the cost of congestion and even for the smaller metros like Burlington. That was also the case. I think we need to keep that in mind. The United States is 19th in the highway, 18th in highway safety in the world. We have used to be number one. We have 21,000 excess deaths, a pandemic of deaths on the roadways, perhaps about 35 deaths here in Vermont are in excess. And 2020, even though we know we decreased our car travel but we still had a surge of 13 of 8% in fatalities and the pedestrian death rate in the last, the number of pedestrian deaths nationally has increased by 50% in the last decade. So I'd like to point out that this, if you look at the structure of the Regional Planning Commission, I want to say some good things about Chittenden County and Regional Planning Commission at the moment. But if you look at the makeup and the way we vote, I think we've all been hearing about how important one person, one vote is in the today and how it made a difference in this recent election. We have an antiquated system of voting at the Regional Planning Commission in Vermont and probably most states where it's one town, one vote. It's not one person, one vote. I sort of speak about how Jericho has a vote and Underhill has a vote and Burlington has a vote. They're all equal. This is a problem. And I think this particular planning exercise is an example of a result of not having a fair representation of concerns and interests. Let's talk about I-189. It's the only one that comes into Burlington or our border. And the traffic on that actually peaked in the 1990s. It's about 20 to 25% below its peak. And in the last decade or so, it's down about eight or 10% when it hits Shulban Road, Route 7 by the shopping centers on Route 7 on Shulban Road. And also the North-South travel. This is before the pandemic, by the way. This is pre-pandemic. And North-South travel in Burlington on the Southern part of the city. And I think you're familiar with the fact I've looked at this data. Both Pine Street and Shulban Road are down single digits from the time they peaked again in the late 1990s. Traffic is not growing except in a few sections of the interstate. And the fact is that we should be first investing in safety and the needs of safety in our region rather than in thinking about changing the interstate highway exits. Let's take an example. We have in Burlington, 20 intersections on the high crash list of 111 that the state has. As you know, we're building the roundabout at one of those at the 21st intersection, which was a high crash intersection on Shulban Street at the so-called rotary. That took 20 years to address that dangerous high crash intersection. We have 20 other intersections that require that, and I'm sure there are many other intersections in the county that are on the high crash list. I would think that that's where we should be putting our money if we have any money over and above maintenance of the system, not in looking at any kind of capacity increase. We're worrying about how we move pedestrians other than maybe that one separate bridge that you've talked about, Charlie, I think that's probably a good idea to get pedestrians away from the Williston Road exit and bring them over to the shopping center. I think that the, one of the problems we have, and it hasn't come up yet, is that in Burlington, we have the area from, roughly in the Champlain Parkway area over to Winnowsky, the entire town of Winnowsky, that whole North, old North End, King Maple and Winnowsky itself. It's really the old economic engine of the county, but today is actually Povertyville with 26 to 29% of the residents who were poor. And those areas in Winnowsky and an old North End, 30% of them don't even have access to a car. That's why I mean, it's so jarring to be talking about the interstate. And I think that there's, we're finding that the issues of economic justice and social and racial justice are very much at stake in both the, in Winnowsky and in the older neighborhoods of Burlington. And those desperately need attention. And I think that hopefully, as I think Richard Watts also referred to economic justice, that we need to reorient ourselves in terms of where the real needs of our lower income population and our minority pop and persons of people, persons of color, let's be quite clear, persons of color are not in a good place in transportation in the Burlington area. Now, finally, in terms of priorities, you know, we're talking about $100 million projects here at these exits. We talked about at the University of Vermont, the STEM building, the big science, physics and math building, that was $100 million. And the expansion of the hospital, recent new rooms, which are definitely needed in the new wing, $100 million. And actually the Champlain Parkway, when you add in, and I wanna thank the Regional Planning Commission for supporting the real enterprise project will allow us to, when it's put together with the Parkway to give us a choice to avoid cutting the King Maple neighborhood, which is a pure case of environmental and racial injustice, to be able to bypass that intersection by combining in some manner, in some phase, the real enterprise project and Champlain Parkway. Thank you, Regional Planning Commission, because when Charles Simpson and I attended one of your meetings, Charlie, it was two years ago, there was discussion of the real enterprise project and you used the term dream or vision of the real enterprise project. Well, thankfully, in part because your support and the commission support, that is a real project now. And it can very well be a solution to, that we're all moving to, so that we have a good quality, a Champlain Parkway project and go forward which would not have been possible without this real enterprise bypass. I think I'll sort of leave it there. I've got some other comments. I think that the issues have been pretty well drawn here. There's a lot of money. All the projections of traffic are really, as you point out, Charlie, they're pre-pandemic and they are certainly less firm than they were even a year ago. I wanna thank you for your time and I appreciate the opportunity to speak. Again, Tony Redington, I live on St. Paul Street in Burlington. Yeah, thank you, Tony. And we look forward to getting your comments by the seven. Thank you. All right, so the next person we've got here is Jerry Silverstein. Jerry, please unmute. We are ready for your question. So thank you. I'll start with the question and I'll explain it. Should you at some point down the road choose 13 or 12B? What plans will the transportation planners have for exit 14, which I do not believe can continue to exist in its current configuration? I moved here in 85, going into Burlington every day from South Burlington. I never thought about it. I cycle year-round. Now, anytime I cross that area, I am always like an owl with a 360 degree head looking in every direction possible, trying to figure out how I can safely get from point A to point B. So if you were to elect either 12B or 13, my question is, do the transportation planners understand that exit 14 cannot continue to exist that it is currently configured as time goes forward? I'm gonna say that I think you're addressing some of what could be covered in this study as it moves forward. One of the things we're looking at in the bundles is the first bundle number one does have a redesign of exit 14 to be much safer for bicyclists and pedestrians and slow vehicle traffic through there. So yeah, I think that's your, one of the central questions we're trying to get to is the question you just asked. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right, and the next person is Marcy Murray. Marcy, please unmute and we are ready for your question. Great, thank you. So regarding the work you've been doing, I appreciate all the good intentions and also the sensitivity that you have to the three to vote that happened in South Burlington recently. And I encourage you to give the climate crisis related items, excuse me, more weight than the other goals given that everything, including the economic access goal will be affected by how we address climate change. And in making any interchange selection, it is very important to be forward thinking enough to imagine a non-car centric future and to ideally use a climate crisis filter to incorporate the cost of carbon, both of construction of whichever, if any, interest change is constructed and also the cost of carbon that would result in the post-construction usage. And then as a resident in one of the large neighborhoods off Route 116, it's clear that exit 12B, if that were to go forward, would definitely harm the quality of life in nearby neighborhoods by increasing the already significant traffic noise, which right now can be significant depending on the weather. We can hear the interstate quite loudly at times already. And then due to the fact that 12B would increase traffic on Heinzburg Road by an estimated 39% south of that new exit, that would slow residents' travel time to grocery stores and schools. It could negatively affect air quality from the increased admissions of that increase of 39% in new traffic. And it can make it much more stressful and less safe to bike to Williston Road in addition to perpetuating a sprawl. I think it's really important, and I know this is a South Burlington issue, but given that four key committees did not recommend 12B, I'm including the Planning Commission, Energy Committee, Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee and Natural Resources Committee. I think it's very important to be very cautious about considering adding 12B. And I applied City Councilor Emery's plan to introduce a resolution to use a climate crisis filter when considering future planning and spending. Thank you. Thank you. And I just want to, Sean, I know you're going to call on the next question, but I'm noting that we have probably 50-something questions that want to be asked or people that want to get questions on the table with less than 40 minutes left. So if people could kind of try to keep their comments down to a minute or two, maybe we can get through all of them before nine o'clock. So thank you very much. All right, and thank you, Charles, for the next raised hand. We do have Erica Quallen. Erica, please unmute. We are ready for your question. Hello, everyone. Very good to see this project team. Really great work that's been put forth here. First, I will keep this quick, Charlie, I promise. No problem. First, I would like to just push back on a couple of things. Vehicle miles traveled is actually the exact same as it was pre-pandemic. It was down at first, but it has gone back to where it was. People are just, aren't traveling at peak hours. But my thought, a lot of, since climate change is coming up with the Global Warming Solutions Act, with an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas by 2050, a.k.a. the year that this is looking at, I really wish we could do that reduction through bike and ped facilities, but I think that it's going to be so much more the shift to electric vehicles. And although Park and I's may not work the greatest, but they are great, providing stops for people to charge up their vehicles. So I would recommend at least having some stops like that that you're looking at, to reduce that range anxiety along this corridor, particularly people that are doing long haul trips through here. My other, my actual question is, is there any land use modeling that's going on in tandem? So you're knowing where the new trips are coming from since so many kind of smart growth designations and city center type developments are happening, just so you know really where the new traffic is coming from. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, on the land use side, that is a really good question and really central to the climate change and ability to use other modes, right? It's very hard to live in a rural area and walk to work if your office is 10 miles away. And so that, I think two answers to that, one is we did try to bake into our long range plan, getting denser as an urban area. So, and we set out a target of 90% of new housing units in the areas where we already have existing infrastructure and I mean that in a broad sense. And then secondly, with specific regard to this, we did take another look at what would happen, particularly with any of these interchange investments, if they were gonna attract more growth and so there's an additional increment of land use modeling, kind of considering those changes in land use and primarily the most significant finding and you can find this online. You can see the technical memo and I think it may be referred to as a Delphi panel. Dave can correct me if there's a better name for that link, but was that there was gonna be 12B would attract more development to that area, but some of that would come from more rural parts of the county or even outside the county and so from a land use perspective around smart growth and climate change, that actually could be seen as a positive, but the local impacts are another part of the consideration. Are those local impacts worth the bigger picture? So, there's a lot of competing tensions here, land use is definitely a huge factor in this and we're not growing that fast relative to the rest of the country, but there is still some opportunity to get a smarter land use pattern and really that really is increasing density. So, I'll leave that at that. It's the next question. Thank you. So, for now we'll take one more hand and then move back over to the written questions for a bit. Sarah Sortuno, please unmute your mic. We are ready for your question. Hi, can you hear me all right? Yes, we can. Okay, hey everyone. So, I just kind of wanted to reiterate the point that given the fact that we are in a climate emergency, trying to envision a future with more car infrastructure is really unacceptable and millions of dollars that we do have access to really shouldn't be going to upholding the status quo and we really do have a lot of work to do in order to make Burlington sustainable and we brand ourselves to be sustainable and this money should really be going to transforming this infrastructure. We really have to incentivize train, transit, electric bike riding and just public transit in general, but yeah, I mean this project really doesn't serve to reimagine our transportation system and expanding infrastructure for vehicles that rely on the industry that's destroying our planet and taking away all prospects for a enjoyable future for the rest of my life is not. It's not really, that's not envisioning a better future and I trust that people have good intentions in doing this work, but I mean, I think a lot of the considerations that are being considered just aren't, like you all are considering like the implications on the environment and on marginalized people but expanding this infrastructure in the first place is negatively impacting marginalized people and affecting our environment. So I really think that we really just need to be shifting all resources over to a dramatic shift away from car infrastructure because there's really no way forward along these lines. So yeah, really just think about it. And any more specific suggestions of like what kinds of investments or efforts would help move that shift, please send along after the meeting today or whenever. Yeah, I mean, I think that investing any money that is being put towards this project and bike lanes and electrifying the bus fleet and just expanding the bus fleet and the routes that buses cover and things like that would definitely be worthwhile as we are in a crisis here. So should treat it like fun. All right, so thank you. We will move over to some more of the written questions. I know we've got a few, Megan Emory again asks does the federal government provide specific guidelines regarding road infrastructure in line with federal policy designed to reduce carbon emissions? Yeah, I think I answered that verbally earlier. Okay, good. Then we've got Tony Reddington. Let me know if this was also part of his conversation. What is the absolute reduction in serious and fatal injuries in these proposals versus investing those same funds in the many high crash intersections in the county, 20 alone on the federal system in BTV? Yeah, I don't think we have the answer to that specific question. And it's a little bit of a false premise. I think we're certainly investing in those high crash locations is going to happen long before we make an investment in one of these interchanges. So I guess I kind of want to respond, yes. We should address those high crash locations. All right, thank you. And we've got a question from Surim again. What does the mobility efficiency safety metrics take into consideration? So do they take into consideration mega trends like shared EVs, self-driving truck fleets and cars, e-bikes and other small motorized modes of transportation? Dave, my quick answer to this would be not too well yet. I think this is another area where we said we need to see how the world evolves to better understand the implications of those changes. It's correct to point out the changes. We just don't know exactly how they're going to affect our community yet. And maybe just to add to that, the funnel chart did show one of the steps that will come up is developing identifying triggers. And so the idea is that none of this infrastructure would move forward if the traffic congestion ever materializes. So if people continue to work from home and are biking and walking more, that trigger will never get met. And so these interchange enhancements would never move forward. So there's that mechanism there to handle those unknowns about what the next 20 years will look like from a traffic perspective. Thank you. Our next question, Roseanne Greco asks, have you held meetings with the folks in Williston? If so, what was their view of exit 12E? Just as kind of a layered response. We did have a public meeting there last year asking for feedback. I think I can't remember the exact feedback we got. We did not have the same conversation with the Williston Select Board as we did with South Burlington because we had just finished a process that was rather lengthy and complicated called Cirque Alternatives in which we worked with the city or the town of Williston to come up with a lot of transportation investments to address issues in Williston. So in terms of what their view on 12V might be, they might really like it because they would take some traffic off of 2A and off of exit 12. And I think that is probably a conversation we do need to have in this next round of engagement this fall to get a little bit wider view from all the municipalities and certainly the impact of municipalities in the county. But Dave, did you have anything to add to that? No, I think that was good. Yeah, thanks. Right, and similar to a question just before, Gordon Miller asks, any consideration for self-driving vehicles, how would that impact traffic? I don't have a better answer than my previous one. We don't know yet. It is, but it's an important thing that we need to keep track of. Nothing is being presumed or assumed yet about that. And there are scenarios out there amongst the experts that think self-driving cars are either gonna save a lot of traffic if we go to a shared mobility model or if we go to a place where your car drives into work and then drives back home, we could have even a lot more miles of travel even if they're electric and not spewing emissions, we could have more traffic. So that story is yet to be told. And I think there's a lot of decisions that will be in front of our community broadly to figure out how to handle that new future. All right, thank you. Trisha Gustafson asks, how did these proposals affect the traffic on Kennedy Drive? Kennedy has become so busy over the last several years and excessive speed is a huge issue. It's mainly a residential area between the Heinsberg Road and Williston Road. Thank you. Remember the... Yeah, I just looked at the spreadsheet. It's about a five to 7% decrease depending on which alternative you're looking at. So 12B in the 213s. And so this is Kennedy Drive east of Heinsberg Road. There's a slight increase west of Heinsberg Road but the section that the questioner was asking about, it sounds like east of Heinsberg Road. There is, any one of the three would reduce traffic slightly less than 10% east of Heinsberg Road. Thanks, Dave. All right, thank you. So we've got Daniel M. who asks, listed as an investment in all of the bundles is investments in public transit and investments that would decrease the number of highway trips. Could you talk a bit about what those improvements might be? What percent of the total investments would go to these items? Well, I think in terms of what those specific things are, that is part of what we were asking for feedback on. What would you like to see those things be? And in our initial long range plan we were hoping that we could get to a place that would kind of double transit service. I don't remember the dollar figure, Daniel, I apologize. But I think we can kind of put that together when we put these bundles together and get a better picture of that. And I apologize for not being able to recall those dollar figures. It was significant, partly because transit, of course, is not a one-time investment. There's ongoing operating. So it's significant. Eleni or Jason, do you happen to remember that better than I do? I don't remember it, Charlie, but I'm looking for it right now. Okay, maybe you can respond to that one in writing if you can. Yes, I will. All right, so another written question. Andrea Morgante asks, what criteria were used by the Economic Committee that made it decide that 12B was the best? Is that because there is so much available real estate to be developed? You're gonna have to ask the Economic Development Committee. I'm sorry, I wasn't in the conversation. I know that they felt that getting an investment in a higher paying jobs around exit 12B ought to be a higher priority. And I don't know if you can remember a little bit more flavor of that, their position. But I hesitate to speak for that, so apologies. Yeah, I guess the questioner asked what criteria were used. They did use all six metric, or all six goals and all the same criteria that all the other committees were looking at. Yeah, and that's what they had available to them. Right, yeah. I mean, my takeaway from their position was that they were waiting the economic goal much more significantly than the other goals. If you wanted to try to quantify what happened there. All right, thank you. We've got Ashley Truex asks, there seem to be many signal intersections added. Can you talk to why we do not see more rotary or fluid traffic options? Can the multi-use paths be removed from the intersections altogether with overpass, underpass? Dave, I'll let you take that design question. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So at the exit 12B interchange, it may have been hard to see on the screen, but we did note, so next to each of the traffic signals, we do have a roundabout icon, so we're kind of staying noncommittal to which kind of control happens at those intersections. And then at the exit 13 and 14 options, we did look at roundabouts as alternatives to the signals. And just given the volume and the directionality and the turning movements at those intersections, we would have needed at exit 13, for example, a three-laying roundabout to accommodate the trips instead of a single signal at the intersection. So we did look at roundabouts and we did want to give equal weight to both, but in those cases, signals did operate better. And what about multi-use paths being able to be overpass or underpass? My quick non-expert response would be, I think that starts to decrease the use when they're separated from the main line, but I don't know if you have a response to that, Dave. Yeah, yeah. I mean, in general, that is the case if you're going under, if you're going through kind of a dark area, people don't feel safe, if you're going over, you're climbing, and so people don't necessarily want to expend the extra energy. As an example, the exit 14 overpass though, in that case, you may, given the topography in the area, that may be more of a straight shot if you're going from CVS to Staple Plaza, not quite as much of a climb. So it really is kind of more psych dependent looking at the grading, and it certainly is a possibility from an engineering perspective. And Sean, I'm seeing we're losing some of the people that have their hands raised. Can we maybe shift to the people with hands raised so we get those verbal questions out on the table? Absolutely. So we've got, as the next person, Isaac Bissell has their hand raised. Isaac, please unmute. We are ready for your question. Great. So this is about climate change again, and I just wanted to say humanity really isn't a truly desperate situation when it comes to climate change. And in the last few years, the picture that scientists have been painting is dramatically worsened, and it's going to take something pretty miraculous for us to overcome the challenges that we face. And this will require out-of-the-box thinking. Yet what I'm hearing here is that we're studying how to best double down on the status quo through a focus on 589 and vehicle traffic. It's frustrating to hear when the insufficiency of these plans are pointed out by questionnaires that the question gets turned back on that person, raising the issue as if any one person has all the answers to the problems of this magnitude. We're planning for a future that cannot come to fruition. You mentioned something like a 2% reduction in vehicle traffic and a 70% reduction in greenhouse gas. Gas goals, if we meet these targets, these types of targets, just like the Targets in the Global Warming Solutions Act are deeply insufficient. And if this is the best we can do as a society on a wide scale, then the results will be truly catastrophic. The idea that electric vehicles are the solution is a green growth fantasy, completely out of touch with our carbon budget and a real realistic view of the problem we face. The plan we are trying to implement is the attempt to decouple economic growth from emissions growth. And it is deeply delusional when you consider the latest studies on the pace of climate change and our dwindling emissions budget. I am a relatively young person and when I listen to this type of discussion and envision the future, I see the abundant life on this planet slipping through our fingers and it is deeply depressing. I feel like we're being failed by our political leaders who are unwilling to address the true scale of the problem. We cannot simply continue to give lip surface to climate change while planning for a future that is completely incompatible with addressing it. And we shouldn't spend any more money on this study and I don't have a question. Thank you, Isaac. And yeah, I do, I'm sorry if you felt like I was turning the question back on the commenters, but we have spent quite a bit of time looking at investments to get to a more non-auto oriented future. They do look insufficient. So I'm genuinely asking for more suggestions and ideas from other parts of the world of things that might work here. We're not the biggest urban area in the world. So we don't have high speed transit. We don't have that kind of density but what kinds of things can we do? And what do you think would work better here? We're open, thank you. Thank you. Our next question or comment is going to be from Laura Jacoby. Laura, please unmute your mic. We're ready for your question. Hi, hi, thanks. I'm Laura from Old Spokes Home. Hi, Charlie. Yeah, so our Old Spokes Home, a lot of our customers rely on their bicycles for transportation. And I guess my question is in terms of, well, I guess my comment is to echo everyone else who says, I mean, it would be wonderful if we could build for the future that we want and not prop up a system that we know doesn't work for everyone, a transportation system that doesn't work for everyone. I mean, in terms of emissions, but also equity. And so when we look at the economic, the scoring and I see access to jobs as being part of the criteria. And again, I would just kind of ask jobs for whom because we know that there is a large segment of our population that there's no way they could get themselves to that area. We know, I talk with employers now out on Heinzburg Road, who literally can't fill positions because people cannot get there. People that can afford the kind of transportation that can be purchased on those wages just can't get there. And so because the buses don't go on this, the late shifts, also the buses don't go all the way out there. So again, I don't know who they're looking at in terms of access to jobs. But if we want to build a more equitable future, we should be putting our resources into helping people, everybody get to jobs, not just people who can afford an individual motor vehicle, whether it be gasoline powered or electric. Thank you. Thank you, Laura. Our next question or comment is going to come from Jack Hansen. Jack, please unmute your mic. We're ready for your question. Great, thank you. And thanks for the opportunity to speak and weigh in. Just one note process wise, I think just given the hour and folks trying to speak, I would ask maybe that you all just give everyone who hasn't spoken the opportunity before sort of offering responses or going back to people for second or third round. Just not that I don't appreciate the responses I do, but just because folks have taken the time out of their evening to try to weigh in, just trying to get everyone. Jack, that's what I wanted to go to the people that wanted to speak. So thank you. Great, great. So just a question and then some comments. So my question is what does each plan overall do to vehicle miles traveled, each proposal? Do you remember the scoring or the metric on that? Yeah, it's less than 2% either way. So across the county looking at total VMT countywide, there's some that go up one or two percents and they go down one or two percent, but it doesn't move all that much for these new energy changes. Okay, okay. So that 2.4% figure that was related to this study. I wasn't sure if that was a broader sort of goal. No, that was related to our metropolitan transportation plan that did not include. Okay, but these particular changes also kind of fall within that scope. I guess maybe, yeah. And I think that's why I was trying to say the interchanges themselves are not the purpose of this study. The purpose is to try to figure out how to reduce traffic on 89. So I feel like there's a little bit of commentary that is mischaracterizing purpose here a little bit. We're, I think we have a shared agenda. So anyway, continue. Yeah, I just, I mean, I echo really a lot of the other comments and I really appreciate folks for weighing in on this, but we are in a climate emergency and transportation is the biggest sector that needs to transform and rapidly and it needs to look a lot different from how it does today. And really we just, we need much deeper reductions in VMT than 2% or 2.4%. So I just think spending all this money on these plans kind of within that framework, within a framework that really is just sort of tinkering around the edges versus to Richard Watts point at the beginning, like what if we spent $900,000 studying how to reduce VMT as much as possible and how to, this is that project. Like weigh in on how to get there. Okay, I don't feel like this is that project. I would love it to be. And that I guess is my feedback. I wanna see us using these resources to answer the question of not how do we reduce traffic congestion or shorten the time that people have to wait, getting on and off the intersection. I want to answer the question of how do we cut down emissions and how do we get people out of cars and how do we make it safer, more accessible, more affordable for people to walk, bike and use public transportation. And I certainly have plenty of ideas because I have worked in the field for a while in terms of transportation to man management and boosting public transit. And I'm happy to share those. But I guess my broader point is that we should use the expertise and the money and resources we have to answer that question. And you're gonna be able to come up with better answers than I could just based on my limited time and expertise but devoting those resources towards that question it would be my biggest recommendation. That is the next step. And really when you've heard me again maybe I apologize for not communicating more effectively but the bundle, particularly bundle one is really trying to get at that. Can we get to a future where we don't need to invest more in driving? That is the question. Okay, well, I think we just need to raise the bar then and shoot for a much deeper reduction in VMT than 2% and- That was not a goal. That was not a goal, that was just an outcome of one set of investments. So the question is, what kind of investments? And again, I apologize for being so inarticulate in how we're asking this but we really are looking for more ideas about how to change, how to get to that future. So any ideas that you have or think we should explore, please let us know. Yeah, I mean, I think keeping fair free transit going. I think expanding transit service and access and frequency, having dedicated lanes for high occupancy vehicles in transit, having shelters at all the bus stops, having really strong bicycle infrastructure like they do in the Netherlands or in Denmark that where people can get anywhere in the county safely by bike regardless of their skill level. You know, transportation where folks can walk safely to where they need to go and there's strong pedestrian infrastructure and low speed limits. I mean, continuing to invest in rail and trying to build out rail infrastructure, those are some of the ideas. And I just wanna see you all, I think putting out those proposals before us as more of the focus versus what we're mostly seeing tonight in the presentation was around some of these in your changes but didn't really seem to look big picture at some of the ideas that I just threw out there. I appreciate it and sorry to take up a lot of time. I know there's other folks looking to get it. Yeah, thank you, Jack. And I will apologize too, because the interchange I think has been, the interchange conversation has been a big tangent but it's not the purpose of the project. So yeah, well, thank you, Jack. I look forward to getting hearing more from you and shall we move on to the next person with a question. Thank you, Jack. Sophie Aronson, please unmute your mic. We're ready for your question. Okay, I'd like to thank you all for facilitating this meeting and opening this space here. But yeah, I'm mostly reiterating what Richard, Tony, Marcy, Laura, Sarah, Isaac and Jack have said. I think to say that we're trying to be forward thinking means that we need to be focusing on moving towards sustainable public transportation that's accessible to all people and is not car-centric. I feel very strongly against the conversation construction of exit B12. I think it would be such a shame to put so many resources into something that's not serving the people and isn't going to be propelling us towards like better positions regarding the climate crisis. And yeah, I just think those resources could be utilized so much better. $29 million could use so much more if it was put into making more comprehensive bus routes and having the bus seats be electric. And so yeah, I just wanted to say that and say that I'm feeling more supportive of bundle one. Thank you. Thank you, appreciate it. All right, thank you, Sophie. I've got Steve Crowley next. Hi, thanks a lot. I don't know what I really have to add. I put a few questions, specific questions in the written questions, but really, people have been asking some great questions and I wanna support that. And maybe I would ask, why build for the past instead of the future? And it really comes down to that. So I'll just leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. We're going to move over to written questions and get questions from those that we haven't heard from yet. Can we hear from Roseanne? Yeah, Roseanne, you can unmute now. We're ready for your question. Oh, okay, hi. Thank you for listening to me and I'm not going to repeat what everyone else said. You can hear me, right? Oh yeah, yeah. Okay, but I don't know if you're keeping a tally of what you're hearing and I've posted a bunch of stuff in the Q and A's, but I just want to echo the things you have heard from Richard and Marcy and Isaac, which was just out of this world statement and Sarah and Sophie and Jack. I can't strongly express my feelings about that we're in a different world. And if we are ever to survive, we got to dramatically change the way we think first. You say, Charlie, that this is about looking at the planning in general, but your whole presentation is about concrete and exchanges and car traffic. So I came away with that's what your focus is. It's all about cars and what we do to the interstate to make it easier for cars. And you're well aware of what happens when you expand roadways and add more exchanges, just get more cars. For the record, I'm totally against exit 12B, but I'm also against doing anything for the other exits to before we look at other ways of moving people that don't take fossil fuels. Exit 12B and anything else is going to take massive amounts of fossil fuel to construct. It'll destroy natural environments. So it'll be counterproductive. It's going to add more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It's going to take away the natural resources that we have to absorb carbon dioxide. So it's a double whammy. You talk about the economics, but you're looking at apparently the economic benefits, not the economic costs to doing something. And there's always an economic cost and the environment costs also are economic costs. One last thing, about 10 or 11 years ago, the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission brought this idea of 12B to us. And what we haven't talked about here is what happens when the cars get off the road? At that discussion 10 years ago, it was to get the cars to the airport. And that meant driving right through residential neighborhoods in South Burlington. If you're going to put an exchange in, which I hope you don't, in fact, I hope you don't spend any more on planning for the interstate. I think any money you have should be devoted to how do we do things like what Jack was suggesting? Let's make it easy and safe for people to use bikes. But this exchange will destroy huge parts of South Burlington because the traffic will zoom through them, just like they zoomed through Williston Road to get to wherever they're going or going to Burlington. So long-winded, add my name and number to those who say put the environment first, we're in a crisis, let's act like we're in a crisis. Thanks for listening to me. Thank you, Rosanne, I appreciate it. So thanks, Sean. I think we got through everybody that had their hand raised. Yes. I'm seeing that there's like 60 questions in the Q&A, which I think will have to just digest and work on responses to make sure we're considering all of them. I don't even know how to consider them. And do you have a better suggestion or date? So I can pull a report and have a record of these questions. Okay. Yeah, so just seeing that it's a few minutes before nine and we kind of said we promised we would do this seven to nine, I really want to express my sincere appreciation for everybody that took the time out of your personal time to contribute to this conversation. And I hope you feel that we were listening and that these are important issues. I think we are talking about what is the future of our community? And it is up to all of us, not up to me, even as my role of County Regional Planning Commission Director, for better or worse, I don't tell people what to do here. We try to make good investments in policy, like the zoning bylaw or work with VTrans and municipalities on good investments in transportation infrastructure and GMT and local motion and car share, all those people who are trying to move the ball here. I guess I was listening to it and I'm struck by the challenge that we have and that we try to make a lot in our planning, in our MTP, a lot of investments in transit and biking and walking. And it is disappointing for at least our estimates, we're only like 2% of vehicle miles travel reduction. So it just kind of points out to me that collectively as a community and as a society, we have a ton to do to change the trajectory we're on. And so I hope you see us as a willing partner in that work. But it's also kind of like eating an elephant, we gotta just keep chewing. So we'll keep taking bites out of that and work towards that. So I will end with thank you and thank you for your patience, all of you that stuck with us to the end and stay tuned for more. We appreciate it. And any more comments you have, please get them to us by May 7th. Thank you very much and everybody have a good night. Thank you.