 Transportation has been such a hot topic in Montpelier and with good cause. I mean, it is the number one source of greenhouse gases for Vermonters and undoubtedly for Montpelier. So it's worth addressing. And there are a lot of organizations that are engaged in thinking about the future of transportation in Montpelier. And so tonight is really an opportunity to hear from a variety of organizations about their work and what the future may hold and to ask some questions about what they're presenting. So I've got the agenda up here in terms of the order. One other thing that I want to make sure that I don't forget to say is that the Regional Planning Commission for Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission is also planning a transportation event meeting, which is on October 2nd, also a Wednesday, in this same space at 6 o'clock. It's supposed to go 6 to 8.30. And one of the things that I'm really excited about for that conversation is that that will bring a more regional perspective. And of course, for a topic like transportation, it makes sense to have a regional dialogue as well. I'm glad that we're doing this still here too, but that's another opportunity for you to engage in this topic. So put that on your calendars as well. I just want to make sure I didn't forget to say that. And so just for the structure of how tonight's conversation will go, so we'll have a presentation from an organization somewhere in the ballpark of 15 minutes, but saving some time afterwards for questions, comments to be directed at that particular topic just after their presentation. And if you try to keep your comments relatively short, two minutes is a good ballpark if you're asking a question. So that's sort of the frame for everything. And I know there are a number of city counselors here as well. We'll be just operating in the same premise that if we have comments or questions, then we'll get up to the mic and ask them from here as well. So the public, once you have questions or comments, if you would come up here and introduce yourself, and then you can ask your question. I think that's everything. Any questions before I move on? Okay, that's the teacher in me. I have to, you know, just do a check. All right, so first up we have all-earth renewables. So I'd like to invite them up. I think they have a presentation. And so also feel free to introduce yourself. I mean, I could introduce you, but I will let you do that. Would you prefer that mic or that song? You can use either one. You can use either one. I see them, right? Yeah. That one is tape. You can't walk everywhere with it. Well, good evening. Can you hear me? Is that working? I'm Dave Blittersdorf from All-Earth Renewables, but I have all these other companies called All-Earth Rail and All-Earth e-bikes and All-Earth heat pumps. And so, obviously, I'm trying to do something about the CO2 crisis that we're up against, which I consider the biggest crisis human civilization has ever dealt with. So it's one of those things that we're all in. And it turns out I discovered after playing with model railroads or trains when I was a kid and growing up in near the Rutland area of seeing the freight trains that rail is a very important part of our future. So we're talking about the future, but we also have to look at our past and what we attempted to do before the automobile overwhelmed us and created suburbia, created the problems we have in consuming tremendous amounts of carbon-based fuels. So I'm going to talk for the 15 minutes here about a piece of this rail back to the future renaissance. And it's really talking about between very much failure. It's an obvious place to do a rail link. Thanks. So, keep going. So here we are, back to the future. We're going to have to change our lifestyle. The autocentric system does not work going forward. It's too energy-intensive, too polluting, and it's our number one cause of climate change. Lots of CO2, lots of oil used, and it's a big deal. So we're going to go and I think we're going to revive rail. And we in Vermont are small enough and hopefully nimble enough to do this. And so what I am bringing to the table, and I've invested a tremendous amount of resources to bring these butt cars to the state of Vermont. And you'll see as we go through what these cars are like and why they're important and why it's probably the appropriate solution to what we're trying to do here right in this corridor between Barry and Montpelier, and even around the whole state of Vermont. Next. So we call this community rail. It's not passenger rail, it's not commuter rail. Community rail connects communities. And that's what we're looking at. We have to rebuild our communities. We're doing things in this state based on the automobile that disconnects communities. We're breaking our, we're moving our elementary schools out of town. That's a bad thing to do. Things that are in your town that make the community are your schools, your hardware store, and living. And we have to rebuild these things. And that's what this is really all about. And one of the things, we have rail infrastructure that other states have destroyed and torn up, but we still have rail lines all around the state that can work. Next. There's a bunch of reasons why this can work right here. It's an obvious place to start. We can connect these two towns. They're small towns, even though they're considered Montpelier as a city. It's really quite small. And we have to, I think, build up the housing and the density and the people living in these two areas and connect them. There's a lot of jobs. The state has offices in Barrie. They have offices here. There's a way that people should move without getting in their car and going down and driving over the Barrie Montpelier road. Housing, all these other things. So here's the corridor. And keep going. So one of the things that was just put in is a build grant. So it's a planning grant to plan this corridor and how we can put rail into it. So it's a rail planning grant. It's put in by the local regional planning folks. And hopefully we'll have an announcement by the end of the year if it's granted. And it's a fair amount of money. It's a little less than a million dollars to plan this as we go forward. And as I said, it's basically we're looking at eight miles of track. The state owns the rail line. It's leased to Vermont rail systems. It's used for freight. They're actually hauling more granite tailings out right now. They're fixing up a little bit to keep those freight trains going at 10 miles an hour or less. Hopefully not derail too much or trucks run into them. But the track needs an upgrade. And we're not talking about welded rail. We're not talking about high speed or medium speed. We're talking simply class 2 30 mile per hour rail so that we can move passenger budcars at a reasonable speed because you won't go any faster. And right now, I believe V-Trans is working on a stretch of track laying down new track to avoid two bridges that have some issues with hauling a lot of freight over them. But that really doesn't matter to us. Our cars are little less than half the weight of a freight car that's hauling the granite so we can run over the bridges if we want. Here's you've seen the pictures of the budcars. The neat thing is I call it back to the future because these were all built in the 1950s. They were totally remanufactured. I mean remanufactured not refurbished. They were stripped and rebuilt with new engines, new systems in 1995. And the reason they last so long is they're all stainless steel. They don't rust. And they're ruggedly built and they're considered heavy rail. You hear about light rail but these are heavy rail cars because freight is heavy rail. You can never mix light and heavy rail so that these are the right rail cars to run. A little graphic of what it looks like has two engines under the floor so they're self-powered and they're bidirectional. So you don't have to turn them around. If we were on welded rail somewhere they will actually go 85 miles an hour. So they will get up and go. Next. There's an inside of one. They were kept in great shape. They came from Dallas, Texas. They were so successful in introducing the rail system there that they had to go to double-decker passenger cars and locomotive haul because they had too much ridership and it was because of these butt cars that they got ridership and got a system working. Just quickly on plan stops we're laying out basically our first guess at an operating plan just so that you know I own rail car assets. I am not an operator of railroads. That will be done by somebody else. A transit authority or either state or regional but I provide the hardware. So what we're out lying here or laying out right now is sort of a vision of what we think can be done. It has to be fine-tuned but it will be a start of what we're looking at. So here's the corridor start and stop and maybe a couple stops in between to be determined. Next. What we're looking at is to have some frequency three trips in the morning three late in the evening or in the evening and two midday. You need enough frequency to get people to ride so we need a midday run couple of runs. These are all half hour runs. Half hour each way. It's only seven point something miles and we think we can do that run in less than half an hour. Now when we stop we're not going to stop for ten minutes and sit around. It's like we stop and we go. It's like a bus in a city that you know you don't have ten minutes to get on the bus because your route is shot. So we're looking at the half hour run time. We think it's reasonable. Average speed is about 25 miles an hour. These cars will get up and go like I said so they're not like an Amtrak train that takes a mile or two to get up to speed. These will accelerate pretty fast but not as fast as subways. We estimated about 6,000 trips a year. Here's some of the estimated cost and what we think ridership could be and it's basically about a million dollars a year and that's our best guess at this point. We're still working on insurance and the infrastructure improvements of the track is not included. If we rebuilt using recycled rail, new ties, ballast we think the route could probably, the track could be upgraded for maybe three million dollars. We're totally sure without the study being done. But it's a good estimate. It's not 12 million, it's not 20 million. So it can be reasonably done. And again, we try to do it the Vermont way. We don't gold plate it. We do what's necessary to make it work. As far as some cost numbers, we think it would cost about $5.50 for a run each way. And compared to driving a car at 58 cents a mile $4.64 and then if you have to park your car, if you can't find free parking, it's more expensive to drive your car. A lot more. Again, here's what we're talking about. We're not going to operate. We're going to have to find somebody to operate Green Mountain Transits high on our lists and others. I believe we need a transit authority not a train authority not a bus authority. We have to integrate bus, trains, everything. And that's where a central authority or operator is very important. After coming up with a community rail idea in the name, we started doing a little research. It turns out in England, the United Kingdom they've been doing this for a number of years and Deb figured out and said oh my gosh, there's a whole section of England serving rural communities with community rail. There's thousands of people working this and it works. And it works at the lower density levels. So very important model. And a lot of the folks that are working on community rail in the UK are volunteers. They want this to work. The kids go to school on these systems. We can't even get kids to legally walking to school these days. But they put them on trains, they walk, they do these things. This is what we have to do. So there's this question of does rail really help your local community? Yes it does. If we invest for every dollar we invest in public funds in Dallas they figured out you got a $7 private investment because investment goes into rail stations when you get it working. And so the private money shows up. The other thing that happens is you have other economic activities. So it goes to 10 to 1 leveraging. It works. People do want to live around services. They don't want to drive anymore. So this is important. Here's what happens on the carbon side. There's multipliers that happen. That's direct fuel savings. It's not the whole game. It is about three times better for fuel. You get carbon savings about 5.3 and this was all done by a study that we referenced. And it turns out riding a train, one person instead of a single car is over 100 times less carbon. That's a big number. It's not just one to one but the whole system is less carbon. So this is a very, very important number. So if you get one person on train, that's like over 100 cars off the road. It's big. If you doubt it, go look at that study. It's very, very interesting how it all works out. As I said the model has already been done. We don't always like to look to the Europeans to model what we might want to do in the United States. But they have figured out some of this stuff and we really have to look at how it's done there. Next. So a few things you can do. One of the things that's always asked of me is, where's my train? Where's the train? Where's the train? Support Community Rail. Next. And as I said the Vermont way we have the cars sitting here. I want to use them in Vermont. I'm a Vermonter. I want it to work. I put a lot of money into it and now's the time to get moving. Next. Aren't they beautiful? Thank you. Any questions for Dave? Come on. Or would you, actually we could do this in a way where if we just have you speak from there, then it won't be picked up on the mic. Could you just repeat it? We could just repeat it. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, go ahead. Does the Amtrak Station go to the sorry, does this go to the Amtrak Station in Montpelier? The track that the state owns goes to the junction. It's just a matter of getting down there or not. Yes. Yes, it does go to... We can. We could go down to the junction to meet Amtrak. Well, it should be decided. Our first priority is to get back and forth between these two cities. And then, if we can get over to Amtrak, that's fine. Our ultimate goal is eventually to get to Essex Junction, Burlington, South, but that's a bigger problem. Alright, so we'll just say we don't have to ask you back and forth. How would you get people to get on train, which has fewer stops than the bus when it's currently a difficult... Yeah, the question is, it's difficult to get people to ride a bus right now. How am I going to get them on a train? Well, I have a little different vision of where we're going in the world, especially right now. You know, almost five percent of the oil supply just disappeared for a little while. It's going to be a major problem. We have major issues that are going to change our behavior and pricing. Oil, you've heard about peak oil. Well, actually oil is going to peak and it's really soon, and it's going to surprise a hell of a lot of people. And so we want to be ready. And if you're starting to pay $5, $6, $10 a gallon for gasoline, or even if you switch to EVs, your host system costs go up, your cost of driving goes up, you will move people. And especially if we can get a reasonably priced system working, and initially, I want people on this train no fares. Cities in countries around the world are starting to go to free public transit. And that's how you load your transit system and make it work. And then because right now, when you look at the bus system, you know, they're getting over 80 percent of their budget elsewhere besides fares and in rough numbers, you collect 20 percent fares and then half of it's due to collection costs. So why bother? And I think that's why buses aren't full. So we're going to look at it in a different way. Well, the operating budget at today's diesel prices, that's only 5 percent of the costs of operating. Our biggest costs is trackage, insurance, people. So those when you have a community system and we can get volunteers, we don't need to be having paid station people or anything else. So we're looking at ways to make this all work. But eventually the idea is we're using older technology based on diesels but eventually we'll electrify all this and then it will be less carbon and we don't have to worry about the fuel. Anybody else? Not precise numbers, but all you have to do is look at the road in the cars. There's a fair amount of people. I think there's probably more than 900. I think there's thousands that go each way. Every time I drive that road it's like, yeah. When will be the last train in the evening? Well, we aren't sure. We have a three hour window that we would maybe start at four o'clock, five o'clock, six o'clock, seven o'clock, maybe eight o'clock. But the idea is we can get the first stuff successful. We can always add. But the idea is we got to make it reliable on time. You have to trust the system. And that's why people don't use mass transit because they can't trust that the bus or the train will be there on time. You have to run it like the Swiss run it. In Switzerland, if the train or bus is going to arrive one minute early they stop before the stop and wait until they arrive perfectly on time. We have to start to do that sort of system. And that's the goal. The idea is to run seven days a week. You have to have this available. Oh, repeat. How do disabled or handicapped people get on a train that is running on a tight schedule? Well, we have places for the handicap wheelchair access. There will probably be a ramp where you can get on. If it's a whistle stop like if it's a flag stop, probably not. But there will be places to get on. And the second question is is the planning that you're describing going to address offset parking so that we can potentially repurpose some money that are planned for parking towards train traffic? Yeah, the first question was how do we deal with the Transit Center as it was designed? Well, these cars allow you to not have a platform to get on. A platform is better to get handicap to ask us because you're straight on. But they're designed for both ways. So we can deal with that initially. Because the Transit Center is designed with a rail platform. And you have been told that on numerous occasions. It's not being built now because there's no active rail, but it is designed to have a platform. So that problem is already solved. Thank you. So what was the second question again? Parking. Right. How do we offset parking with this rail idea? I think naturally there's ways to use like the Grossman circle for parking. We've got to move parking outside of the city. This is so valuable right out here. Why are we parking here? We can just be out there. A 10 minute ride. You're into where you want to be. So that's the idea. Displace parking. Because we have to reduce parking. Because parking is some of the most expensive real estate. And it's very costly. We have more parking space in the United States than people. And in some cities it's 10 times more parking than the people that live there. It's like it's kind of crazy what we've done with parking. I've understood that one slide that you had so for you Ms. it seems to me that if you had one person on the train, the gas mileage while it's diesel, I mean if it's electric, awesome. But if while it's diesel effectively the gas mileage would be worse than if it was a car. So how many people would you need to have on the train for it to be more worthwhile than driving? We used 30 people on, oh how many people would have to be on the train to offset versus a single car as far as mileage or gas consumption or oil consumption. We modeled 30 people on the train versus it can handle people sitting 100 and some standing up and these cars get 3 miles to a gallon. So with a little simple math you can say okay 33 you can get your effective mileage way up but that other slide where I showed the multiplier up to over 100 that is because of where people live and what they do in their housing and what they do when they live around a train station. They typically reduce their car use to zero sometimes. And so that's why that number grows so big because their lifestyle changed and that's the key to make all this work. So what your personal narrative was in buying these blood cars and taking this risk are you worried about being paid back? Are you wetting it out? What's happening? What was my personal story of why I bought these blood cars without a plan and am I worried about losing my shirt? I have over $6 million in these things and I have a full time person up in Barrie reconditioning bringing them up to Ready to Go I have 5 cars painted like that last shot Ready to Go. I'm getting more investment in. Am I afraid of or why did I do this? I did it because I believe possessions nine-tenths of the law. Basically, if you have the hardware someone's going to have to do something eventually. And that's where I came from on this because years ago I talked to some people and said when are we going to get trains running in Vermont? Decade or two. Business as usual. Basically, never. If someone shows up and shows pictures of this and shows that it can work I think we'll move faster. And the number one story when we hauled those 10 cars into Montpelier for the year two years ago in Vermont Business Magazine the number one story was bringing those cars to Vermont in the whole state of Vermont for a year. So there's huge enthusiasm it's just that we have to now do something about it. And am I going to lose my shirt? No. Every day since this is out there for two years I'm getting more and more requests to either lease the cars the recent requests are we want to buy them. I said no, I'm not selling them. These are the last 12 cars in the world that are of this quality and at this price and that can work. I'm not letting them go. I'm not letting them go to Vermont. If we get the green light how quickly can we go? Well it's fixing the track we have the cars ready it's really a problem of putting together the transit authority how it's going to be run, who's going to run it that's the trick putting that all together. So I don't know depends on who does it and how we're going to do it. I think we could do it in a year, year and a half. The rebuilding of the line won't take that long but we have to have the plan we got to get it out the bid and do it. You know, Vermont rail system they can put ties in they can rebalance this stuff ECI is a contractor that does this stuff we have people around that can do it it's just got to do it. There is no transit authority for the rail project what we're looking to do is to get someone to step up or create one. Whether it's Green Mountain Transit I keep talking about them join us in this transit idea but maybe it's another authority that is done because you can't do it privately and it has to be regional or statewide to make it work. Yeah, yeah somebody has to run this thing. Okay, thank you. All right, and I know we have a few people here from the agency of transportation I don't know what order you would like to go in but yeah, go ahead. Good evening, my name is Dan Delabriere I am the rail and aviation bureau director for V-Trans I don't have a presentation for you I was asked to kind of come and talk about what's V-Trans plan for the rail line through Montpelier so piggybacking on what Dave said we don't currently have a big plan to start commuter rail on this line right now the legislature has asked V-Trans to look at a kind of high level view not a detailed construction drawing plan but a high level view of what would it take to get this track upgraded for commuter rail not necessarily just not a specific type of car but commuter rail in general so it's kind of a general ask from the legislature and also piggyback on a little bit what Dave said I agree with Dave rail is a big part of the future not just for passenger but for freight you probably have noticed if you guys lived around here very long there's been an increase in train traffic through Montpelier it has been probably busier this year than we've seen in a long time we think that's going to continue so what's out there for track right now is it's okay for freight but it's old train does go very slow it's safe but it goes slow to turn it over to a commuter type rail it would need the upgrade that Dave's talking about we do not know what that costs but we like I said the legislature has asked us to look at a high level view of that we have to present that to the legislature this year and we will do that we're in the process of doing that now that study we also like Dave we're not an operator so the state of Vermont will not operate a commuter train just like Amtrak we don't operate it we pay Amtrak to operate the train that comes so we're not an operator some people have asked why don't you operate that that's not what we do we own the highways we don't run the trucking companies like rail we own the infrastructure we don't run the trains so we are infrastructure and that's what we do so I think I don't know that I have more to say other than that that's kind of what our plan is for rail you know we'll see where these budcars are an interesting thing for Vermont I think Vermont is fortunate to have this asset and we'll see where it goes I don't know that V-Trans has a plan currently people have asked me what's V-Trans plan for the budcars well we don't have one right now we again like Dave if someone came to us and said we have a plan to operate them on infrastructure that you own we're going to look at that but we're not going to operate it so let's start right here so the question is will the budcars can they run alongside or with the freight schedule that's going on so that's part of what we're looking at in the higher level view so there's FRA which is federal rail administration rules and transit rules and they have to kind of go together and so we have to look at all of that and the answer to that is I'm going to guess that if there's a commuter rail going back and forth there's not going to be a freight train going on the same track that's my guess that is not an exact statement but that's sort of a guess they wouldn't be able to work at the same time you're not going to see a budcar go by and then five minutes later see a freight train go by and protect the track so right start here this is kind of related this large view does that include light rail as opposed to heavy rail because from what you just said now if you're operating on you're not operating freight on the commuter then you might I know the budcars couldn't operate that way so we've been asked to look at we're not looking specifically at a budcar situation we've been asked to look at commuter rail which would include light rail so it's all included it would be light rail included so we have to look at commuter rail that's what we've been asked so yes so the question is can freight run when the times of the commuter rail is not running and hopefully it must be I wasn't clear so I would say freight would run at a different time than the commuter rail would run so they can run on the same track I would say not at the same time yes in the back I don't have the date in my head but this question is when are we supposed to report back to the legislature and I'm going to say it's sometime late November I think our report is due I'm sure I'll be in the state house this winter talking about it the question is what's the scope of the report and the scope of the report is from Montpelier and it's infrastructure upgrades only this is not operating cost this is not anything about operating a train it's infrastructure what's the cost of the actual you know rails and ties and ballast so so we're starting at Montpelier Junction so to answer your question about would it connect or possibly connect to the Amtrak Vermonner the infrastructure would be upgraded from Montpelier Junction to downtown Barrie there's station stops that we will put in a ballpark number four they're not going to be an exact design but we're looking at whether those have to be you know high level level boarding or if they can be low level those are the questions that are that we're looking at right now we're not very far into the study so I don't have answers to those questions but that's part of it is the part of the scope so did everybody hear the question or should I repeat that the question was do we intend to talk to the municipalities to give input into the report because it's such a high level report with not a lot of detail we will likely have a backtrack I don't think the municipality and Barrie is going to be surprised when this report comes out because this is not just like Montpelier and people know about this report however I guess I don't currently have plans to reach out to the city of Barrie but I can I certainly can we can get input a report and what is it going to take to get you to do a plan you know isn't that what a rail division of the B-trans ought to be doing again we are infrastructure we are not operators so as you can imagine it was probably all earth renewables that sort of started this question about commuter rail and before all earth renewables had these cars you know we didn't we weren't talking about commuter rail between Barrie and Montpelier we are not we are not an operator right so we don't operate commuter trains so we do have a statewide rail plan that talks about passenger rail the statewide rail plan evaluates the need for that kind of thing Barrie to Montpelier has not been identified as a need for that in our statewide rail plan which is updated about every 5 to 10 years it's not it has not come up before this it has not come up in our statewide rail plan sure yeah I don't know that there's a big connection okay sorry what the question was is give us an update on the run around track for those of you don't know what that is so if you go out over here where the distillery was just built currently the track sort of bears right and it goes kind of follows what's that route 2 and follows that over to the roundabout what the run around track is that project is taking that about where the distillery is and actually kind of bearing left and going across is that Berlin street yeah so over towards Saban's pasture and following along the other side of the river and coming back out and connecting back in over by the roundabout and the purpose of this project is there's two bridges bridge 305 and 306 to be exact that are old and are going to need some work eventually and with all the additional you know rock movements and things we're looking at what's the real fiscally responsible thing to do long term is it to invest and rebuild two new bridges or go on the other side of the river where you'd never need to cross the bridge ever right so there's no bridges the other way so we're looking at a project that would move the heavy freight on the other side of the river it's called the runaround track and it's going to go and actually this has been sort of talked about for a long time it's just sort of coming into as a project but so where the bike path goes and it meets over by the roundabout that bike path has been designed to allow for a bike path and a track so you know both of these projects can go together so we're currently in design we're just we're in preliminary design we anticipate building it but we don't again we have because we haven't designed anything yet we don't know what it costs right so as soon as we know what the costs are we can make a better informed decision to move it beyond design we anticipate that it will go beyond design but until we get the final number we don't know alright any other questions on rail yes the commuter rail the commuter rail connection I don't know I mean that's why we're doing the study oh sorry what is the what I think the biggest hurdle is to getting the commuter rail running and I'm going to say it's going to be infrastructure but that's a you know that's a guess there needs to be in my mind without knowing all the details I would say there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be upgraded you know platforms and track upgrades and things like that so not this study this study is simply Montpelier Junction to Barrie that's all it is and it's again high level not detailed but it's basically a cost estimate for infrastructure so go ahead now the question is does this study include electrification the answer is no so the question is once the last time that quarter was upgraded and a long time ago they do regular maintenance on it but there's been no I don't know when the last one is spent so long I've only been with the state for 9 and a half years so it hasn't been upgraded in my time other than you know a couple of crossing projects have been upgraded but the actual full line has not been upgraded in my time here alright sorry one more sorry so the question is is there any investment from the granite industry and okay so the granite industry pays the railroad to move their product the railroad is responsible for doing the maintenance so I guess indirectly the customers are paying for maintenance through there so they don't make any contribution directly to the state as the infrastructure owner sure so you know there could be could there be a potential advantage to the state if more granite moves so to get down into the weeds I guess a little bit we lease the operation of the railroad to washington county railroad washington county railroad pays us a lease based on which money is made on that rail line so the more money they make you know the state would eventually get money there's a not to get way down but there's a certain amount of money that has to be made before the state gets anything so we've never made it to that yet but certainly if we certainly if but we've never had this much freight movement before this is you know this is encouraging to see all this rock moved so but I'm going to tell you there's a lot of businesses in these two communities that rely on that rail so again rail is very important to businesses around here and jobs around here so I don't know if there was a question in there more of a statement so alright one more I guess so the question is I think it was this doesn't have anything to do with connecting to Amtrak so our study that we're doing the high level study is going to go all the way to Montpelier junction in case whoever is the operator decides that that it works into their schedule so if there's an operator or authority that comes up that says you know we're not going to just stop at the transit center here in Montpelier we're going to keep going all the way to the junction at least twice a day right meet the northbound Amtrak right yeah no I yeah so the statement was it's critical to get to the Amtrak station and we agree so again we pay the state of Vermont pays Amtrak to run that train so we want as many people on that train as possible and we talk to and work with Amtrak a lot about you know what's called the last mile right so it's how do you get from the train station to wherever people want to go and you know we struggle with that a little bit like a lot of skiers come up and they get off in Waterbury well how do they get up to Stowe you know things like that so we work try to work with that type of stuff you know it on busy weekends it's great but on weekends when one person shows up you know it's tough right for someone to operate a vehicle going back and forth so you know it's hard but we are working on that I agree the last mile is important you got to get people to the train so but we you know Amtrak Amtrak's doing our Vermont service is doing very well so we're showing that people are riding the train so it's a good thing so the question was when can we get back to Montreal I really wish I knew the answer to that so it's sort of it's up to a lot of people it's not just up to Vermont the infrastructure in Vermont has had a lot of upgrades and we are what we think we think we're pretty much ready all the way to the border but when you go across the border and I've actually taken a train that goes across the border all the way to Montreal on a trip that we were looking at to see what it would take you literally are going you're cruising right along you can tell when you hit the Canadian border because the train all of a sudden and it's slow so there's some significant infrastructure upgrades on the other side of the border number one, number two there's still some governmental issues between our federal governments that have to be worked out as far as will they let us actually work in another country so that's still going on the station there is no design for a station there is a sort of preliminary sketch whatever long story short it's complicated and we're a ways away and a lot of questions we are very involved and we're working on it I will tell you that V-Trans and the provincial government in Quebec we are having a lot of meetings on this right now so we're still working on it but we're a long ways away so there's a lot to do so the question is do I think that the community rail idea I guess would it work or whatever I think I'm going to pass on that question because I don't know enough about what so there is no in the train world there's no official word for community rail so I'm going to say I don't know to that question alright I'm going to pass it on to thank you very much John are you up that wasn't me right alright good evening my name is John Kaplan and I am the bicycle and pedestrian program manager for V-Trans so changing gears here no pun intended so I guess I was asked to just give a little bit of an update on some kind of what initiatives we're working on in the realm of bike and pedestrian transportation at V-Trans and I think so timing wise because we just announced the awards from this we have an annual grant program that is probably what we are known for the best and we just announced the awards for this year and that I think it's a little over 25 projects across the state that are using $3 million in federal funds and $300,000 in state funds for municipal projects Montpelier has been a regular and successful applicant to the program so there are a number of projects both of the path projects that are underway under construction right now have money that has been awarded to the city through our grant program and another grant program that's in the same section of the agency where I am the other grant program is called the transportation alternatives program and the sidewalks that are being built out on Elm Street out towards the ball field that is another project that was funded through our grant program so anyway wanted to at least mention that because that is what we are known for probably the most but that is not everything that I do in my position a lot of what I end up working on I would say is or sort of another big piece is making sure that our agency projects are considering the needs of bicyclists and pedestrians and that is probably a little more I guess heavily weighted towards the bicycle side of things because V-trans doesn't build much in the way of sidewalks on our own system and that's partly because we don't maintain any sidewalks pretty much municipalities are responsible for maintaining sidewalks we will build sidewalks for example if we are rebuilding a bridge in a community and there are sidewalks that lead up to that bridge that the town is already maintaining or they are agreeing to maintain we will build sidewalk on that new bridge and that is especially important because that is a piece of infrastructure that is going to be there for 75 or 100 years so it is important to get those right that's one of the things that I work on is coordinating with our structures section to have that discussion about sidewalks on bridges and then a lot of our bicycle infrastructure on the state system consists of paved shoulders on the state highways sometimes we will mark those as a bike lane especially on one example that is just finishing construction right now is the section of route 100 between Waterbury and Stowe so that is all a state maintained route and if you have been up there there are marked bike lanes in kind of Waterbury I guess it is Waterbury center kind of right from the interstate interchange heading north and then there is another section of bike lanes in Stowe as you approach the village so that is some bicycle infrastructure that we built as part of a state project and we will continue to maintain that in terms of refreshing those markings and I guess another kind of more local example is the Barry Montpelier Road that was a project that was very involved with in coordination with our paving program and also the town of Berlin that had just done a feasibility study on making the Barry Montpelier Road more walkable and bikeable and it was all kind of concluding right when the Barry Montpelier Road project was being designed and so that was a good kind of collaborative effort I just want to make sure I am not forgetting anything so that kind of internal coordination that is something that I do I would say I do a fair amount of what I would call technical assistance both in the agency and with municipalities so everybody has a question about bicycle or pedestrian facility design they often give me a call and we will have a discussion and try to come up with a solution so I guess one kind of longer term initiative that we have going on right now is we are just at the beginning stages of updating our bicycle and pedestrian strategic plan for the agency so that is taking a look kind of big picture where should we be headed as far as integrating, walking and biking into all aspects of what the agency does and coming up with some performance measures to kind of track how well are we doing at that let's see we get a little bit into the safety, kind of the behavioral side of things, that is not my expertise I am an engineer that is what I went to school for whatever 25 30 years almost now but we do work in partnership with organizations like local motion which is the statewide bicycle and pedestrian advocacy organization, they do a lot of education work around the state and we try to support them in however we can so that is kind of a real quick snapshot of what we are doing as far as bicycling and the state and like I said, Montpelier has been an active participant in our grant program and the most recent grant that maybe you know about I know Cory knows about it is one of our small scale projects which has been a very successful program that is the state funds portion of our grant program when it is only state funds it is much easier to develop projects and get them built with a lot of hoops to jump through so the small scale projects the city just was awarded to make a sidewalk connection on granite street from the sort of end of the truss bridge there down to where the path is coming out happy to fund that project okay so the question was about the bike lane on Barry Montpelier Road and sort of how well we're assessing whether that's working and also maintaining it in the future so I'm glad you brought that up that maintenance of actually all of our pavement markings on the state system is a real challenge and I'm actually in pretty active discussions with our maintenance folks right now about how we can deal with getting those markings refreshed more regularly I was just out there sweeping we have definitely gotten some feedback from the public about the condition of those bike lanes so I'm very aware of that and my short answer is we're trying to come up with a better way to deal with that and especially because we're doing more bike lanes now so we've got to figure this out I know that with our maintenance of like the long lines on the state system so all the center lines and edge lines that is now all done by contract so we do like two big contracts every year and those are I believe they get to all of them every year with the long lines but all of the other stuff that is considered hand work like symbols, words, bike symbols crosswalks, stop bars that all has to be done by hand so you can imagine that's very labor intensive we have a short construction window where pavement markings can be put down effectively so that's another challenge that we have in this state so we are aware of that and we're trying to figure out a way to be more effective at that and the sweeping as well I am talking with maintenance about that too so the question is are we looking at things other than pavement markings to distinguish bike lanes like different colored pavement I'm not aware that we've looked into that my guess is that it's pretty costly I know that we are pretty actively researching different types of pavement markings to see what holds up best and it's a real challenge with snow plowing and people driving over them actually on Barry Montpelier Road I know there were three or four different types of pavement markings that were used and there was an evaluation so we could at least for the green pavement markings we used out there for the bike lanes figure out which one of those products is going to work best for us so it sounds like a project I should propose to our research section we're going to do that we're going to do that so that question had to do with e-bikes and you also mentioned scooters I know that the legislature last session passed or I forget what the right term is but they authorized a pilot study of scooters in Montpelier and Burlington really? okay, I'm misinformed then I thought that had passed as part of the T-bill so yes, so scooters I know is one of those emerging issues that we don't have a lot of experience with yet I know that we have identified that to be discussed in the bike and pedestrian strategic plan that we're starting work on so that we can try to get ahead of that other states are struggling with that too do they operate as a pedestrian or a bicycle so there's a lot left to be figured out as far as that goes so e-bikes my understanding if you look at state law right now there is a definition of an assisted bike and I believe it's up to no, I think it's 20, I think it's 20 miles an hour or some amount of horsepower that is considered an electric assist bike then there is also a definition of what most people would call a moped which you are not required to pedal you can just twist the throttle and you have to have a driver's license it has to be licensed so there is some definition in state law already and it does say that you can use an e-bike anywhere that a bicycle is allowed I'm pretty certain the state statute is both of those it's miles per hour and whatever the horsepower is it's a fairly low number so the question had to do with are there emerging e-bikes that maybe don't fit or somewhere between those two definitions and that is possible it's a good question I think we have to it's another one of those emerging issues that we need to stay ahead of on the plus side my just anecdotally and just observations I've seen a lot more e-bikes on the street and to me that's good news we have a couple of people who maybe were intimidated by our hills we have a few of those around here we work up at national life so I'm very aware of that hill I've biked up it many times the e-bike kind of helps to break that barrier and get more people interested in biking for transportation so in general I would say e-bikes are a good thing as long as we can all play nice together so I think the question has to do with what I I think most commonly it's called a bike share program where and I know that the Burlington area is the one part of the state I'm aware of that has a ongoing bike share program that is up and running where you have like the kiosk of bikes and you either unlock them with a credit card or pay ahead somehow or you can just not steal what Dan was talking about in terms of operating versus infrastructure I don't see V-trans getting heavily involved in bike share from an operations standpoint I think it would be more a municipality who wants to expand their bike infrastructure if they have a bike share program I think it would be more a municipality who wants to expand their bike infrastructure if they have a bike share program so and I don't know a lot about the bike share program in Burlington it seems like it's working fairly well I know they have an issue speaking of hills with people getting the bikes up by UVM and the hospital taking them downtown and they end up with a sort of a surplus of bikes down in downtown that then have to be hauled back up and added to their bike share program I don't know, okay the question was about Granite Street and the grant that we just so that grant we just awarded to the city we don't even have our agreement with the city yet but oh the bike path, yeah yeah this other project that I was talking about is the sidewalk along Granite Street to connect to that path which the city just got that award so it's I don't know I think maybe someone from yeah that's more kind of a question for the city but so the question is I think basically the paraphrase is sort of how do we prioritize roads to get paved shoulders for people to be able to bike and were you talking about going north like up towards Worcester or so a couple of years ago we did an on-road bike plan where we evaluated the whole state network in terms of which roads had the highest potential for biking and there's sort of a dual score potential for biking was based on land use and then we also looked at existing bike use and then kind of put all of that together and came up with a prioritization for the entire state system so there's now a map you can find it on our website that prioritizes all of the state routes into either sort of high, medium or low potential or biking roads not to say that we will never do anything on a low priority road but given the fact that we have limited resources to help us decide where are we going to go on a road and get a paved shoulder we use that priority map for that and in general I would say we are trying to get at least three foot paved shoulders when we go out to repave a road one of the things that without getting too far in the weeds there's a lot of different treatments we do when we go out and pave a road they're not all the same sometimes we're putting a very thin overlay just to like eke out a few more years other times we do what's called a reclaim or we dig everything out and put it back and then there's like a full roadway reconstruction which is sort of the highest level so it kind of depends on what the treatment is as to how much shoulder we might be able to get but we definitely are actively trying to do that wherever it's you know there are some roads in the state where it's going to be very tough to get shoulder width because you've got ledge on one side and a river on the other side so we there are some constraints like that but okay so the question has to do with are we looking into like pervious pavement to help with stormwater issues I know that we have done we haven't looked at that but I know that there is one park and ride lot in the state at least one that was done with a pervious pavement where the water goes down through it and that is sort of being tracked to see how well that works in Randolph yep that seems like we should be able to do that yep so I guess the question is are we looking at a metric of like reducing the number of cars on the road yeah I mean and connectivity is part of that I guess because we're right at the beginning of this planning process I don't know if that will be a metric that we'll use that the agency will want to get behind I know that one sort of challenge we have around even we have very good sort of system in place for counting vehicles the technology is only kind of catching up now where we can reliably count bicycles without like sticking someone out there and having them count right so that yeah so I think yeah so he did ask two questions one had to do with are we going to have a metric about reducing cars because presumably more people would be biking if we achieve all of our goals and then the connectivity question that is something that we look for when we fund applications from communities is you know does the project contribute to a bicycle or pedestrian network and I know that there's a lot of planning that happens at the local level to figure out what are those networks so that people can safely bike around and I know Montpelier has done more than one planning effort to try to figure that out and figure out where are the gaps sure yep so the question was how is the public going to be involved in our upcoming strategic plan so we are definitely going to have a stakeholders group that will be you know we have a consultant that's working on the plan for us and actually we're meeting with the consultant for the first time next week and one of the things we're going to be talking about is the strategy for public involvement I think there's a lot of different ways we could do that in the past we like when we did the on-road bike plan we had a wiki map that was people could go online and leave comments at specific locations and say this intersection is terrible or I love biking on this road and that kind of thing so I'm not sure if we'll have something similar but there definitely will be lots of opportunity for public involvement thank you so much alright Green Mountain Transit this is a bit of a surprise I'm not with Green Mountain Transit my name is Barbara Donovan I'm a public transit program manager for V-Trans and I just wanted to basically introduce the micro transit project that my colleague Ross has been working on with the micro transit working group here in Montpelier of the sustainable Montpelier coalition right we have worked very closely with this group and one of the things that we did we have put in a grant application for a competitive grant to fund what they are going to tell you about and we want to work very closely with the Green Mountain Transit to see if this type of experiment and I'm going to call it an experiment because I'm a little more cynical than my colleagues to see if it works in an area this size with the kind of demand that we have there is we haven't seen it yet at the same cost as what it would cost to currently ride the buses however can we serve more people can we expand the reach can we do something a little different that will then provide more people with more mobility so we can turn it over we won't know about the grant we had hoped we would know by tonight but sometimes Washington lets us know in a shockingly short time and otherwise it could be over a year so we just don't know the answer to that but it's if anyone has ever used Uber Pool it's somewhat like that and we're hoping it doesn't have the same problems as Uber Pool so we don't want to be New York City so we'll do that so Jamie Smith from Green Mountain Transit will this reach over here hi everyone my name is Jamie Smith I am the director of planning and marketing at Green Mountain Transit and I'm just here to talk about our services as they fit into the landscape of Montpelier some of the projects that we have going on so just a little background I'm not familiar GMT is a municipality where the First and Only Transit Authority in the state of Vermont our services span five regions you can see we're governed by a 13 member board of commissioners representing all of these areas including Washington, LaMoyle Franklin County and Grand Isle counties the types of services that we provide in Central Vermont are deviated fixed root services meaning folks who have a deviation the route will follow a fixed route if somebody needs to deviate for whatever reason a medical appointment or not the route will the bus will travel three quarters of a mile off route to serve those folks we have commuter fixed root service END and Medicaid service elderly and disabled so this it's hard to see this map but this is just an overview of the services that we provide Central Vermont the upper left hand quarter is the actual Montpelier inset so that's downtown the main route serving downtown or the Montpelier circulator which sort of loops around downtown that one deviates one half a mile up from its route on request the Montpelier hospital hill serves downtown Montpelier the hospital hill area connecting to the medical center the capital shuttle route is a seasonal service route that operates during the legislative session and that's looping between department of labor downtown and then the city commuter which serves from Montpelier Berry City and then we have some regional services that connect through Montpelier the Waterbury commuter the US2 commuter which operates between Montpelier and St. Johnsbury we operate that in conjunction with RCT the Montpelier link express service which connects Central Vermont and Shining County and the Northfield commuter that travels between Montpelier and Northfield so some of the projects that we have upcoming this is not our project but we are working on the city of Montpelier fairly soon the Montpelier transit center will be open GMT is expecting to start operating out of that facility in mid November fingers crossed we believe we're working on some improved routing downtown that will minimize some congestion on State Street we have lots of buses that travel in that area so we're hoping to keep them over in the transit center and minimize some of that congestion and then the improved routing would lay out would come out with our new passenger schedule which is also expected in mid November the next gen service plan I'm sure many of you are familiar with that project it was a two year transportation study that we worked with a consultant it was a 40,000 foot overview of our services in all of our five regions and basically it was an opportunity for us to figure out efficiencies how do we operate our service better how do we improve serve the most amount of folks efficiently we have put that study the implementation of that study in central Vermont on hold currently as Barbara spoke about the microtransit service we had a lot of changes in the downtown Montpelier area that would be affected by the microtransit service if that were to come to fruition so we're working really closely with VTrans as they're awaiting to hear about that grant so we're excited to explore the benefits of that with them if microtransit does come to fruition when it comes to fruition it would likely eliminate the three corridor the three main routes in downtown that microtransit service will basically cover that same area so back to next gen briefly we have suspended that service but what we're doing as internally is looking at the pieces parts that won't be affected by the microtransit service and seeing if we can get some of these efficiencies into play for our November schedule so we're working on some improved routing of some service changes in the barrier area to better serve some of the the hospital and some grocery facilities and things in that area so I've heard from a lot of folks in the last few weeks about services not senior services folks not able to understand how to use the bus or there's some sort of hesitation or barrier so I wanted to bring up our bus buddy program who's essentially a group of pretty transit savvy volunteers who have volunteered to assist folks who might have a barrier or are intimidated to ride the bus service so that's a partnership between green mountain transit and neighbor rides in trending county but we can do that in any of our service area so folks need that service they can just call green mountain transit and we can connect folks with a volunteer so last is some recent technology improvements that we've implemented so we have launched transit app which is a real time bus tracking and trip planning app it's great if you have a smart phone if you don't have a smart phone we are about to launch a pilot project in central Vermont hopefully carrying that into our seasonal service this year which is a stop ID service each of the main stops in Montpelier the major stops will have an ID number and folks can call if you don't have a smart phone you just have a regular phone you can call it will tell you when your next bus is going to arrive at that particular stop and then we also launched an app called token transit which is a mobile ticketing app for us that was a huge ask in our last transit development plan from folks to have the ability to buy bus fare on their phone and use it immediately so we did launch that app in June that's all I have certainly sure we understand thank you not currently and that was one of the routes that we were soliciting feedback at our public meetings about that route currently it operates as to right currently in the plan it's not set to operate on the weekends but certainly after we implement some of these next gen service updates we are going to be working on a long term transit plan or transit development plan which is a five year sure if it's less than three quarters of a mile yes on the circle on the circulator oh sorry the question was can you call for a deviation to get to the M track station and that you're right that might be one of our we have a handful of routes that are half a mile not three quarters of a mile like a regular service so that is one that's half a mile deviation could not could not correct yes certainly you know and we're right well and you know I will say with that route specifically with the Montpelier transit center we're looking at essentially not to get too far into the weeds but our operations department they don't want to make a right hand turn on to the Taylor street bridge for whatever reason so some of our services are changing quite a bit in the downtown landscape so we'll have to we can talk offline about that and I can show you what the routing is going to be we can see if it would if it will change or if it matches up you know I understand what you're saying certainly yes sorry with the with the proposed microtransit service with that solve that problem so the microtransit service will operate within a five mile four yeah it's I mean it basically is serving the better part of downtown Montpelier up to the hospital hill area so you would be able to get there with microtransit correct sure so the service efficiencies that we were looking at making would coincide they couldn't happen without the paratransit service so with the delay of those changes we've also delayed the paratransit implementation so for now it's still going to be deviated fixed route service yes right I'm actually sure why we won't pull in there I'm sure that our operations department we could answer that so I'm happy to give you my card and we can okay are you Mary Alice right understood so I have your email Mary Alice and I was looking at that before I came here today so I will work internally with staff to answer some of those questions and I'll certainly get back to you tomorrow we do but always use more correct we are and to be clear it's not a guarantee that green mountain transit will be operating that service there's certainly a lot of factors in the microtransit program it could be another provider providing that service so we are thinking about it we're having those conversations with Ross with Barbara but you know assuming that the grant comes through and all that happens we still have to as an organization it would have to go to our board and we'd have to work on a plan at that point once we had approval yes the question was about as microtransit comes to fruition and replaces the downtown transportation services what outreach are we thinking about an outreach plan and what is that plan going to be again I think the questions about the program are better directed to VTrans at this point right none at this point we haven't it's a good question do you want to help put that funny sure suggesting that we're being on a I think we're evaluating what would need to happen and what kind of planning should the regional planning commission be doing with or without the grant and what should green mountain transit be doing to evaluate its capacity to manage such a service so from a regional planning commission so what I said back there is I'm Bonnie Waninger I'm Executive Director of the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission and in that role I serve as your commissioner for Washington County to Green Mountain Transit so from a regional planning commission earlier I think David mentioned that there is a grant application that the rail might look like through here we did help author and agreed to sponsor that application on behalf of the county and I think that's the positive move you're looking for from a Green Mountain Transit perspective right now Green Mountain Transit runs transit transit is rather taxed in the state which is why we're looking at the next gen plan we've done a lot of expansion in the past 10 years of fixed route and other types of services that Green Mountain Transit provides and the state and federal government have been very generous in doing that like roads and bridges we now need to keep operating those routes and that's been our focus right now is how do you keep the service you have going while some of these other folks work out that big picture of can community rail actually work in this state so if you're asking should Green Mountain Transit start putting together a study of capacity it's way too early for the role that Green Mountain Transit might play and so that additional study which be trans supported gets us to that next level great thank you alright and sustainable Montpelier coalition hi folks I'm Dan Jones I'm the executive director of the sustainable Montpelier coalition I have with me here Vanna White and other assistant the mind boggles hi I have Elizabeth Parker here is our community engagement expert I have Laura Byron who is our research director and they're going to have some parts of this presentation I get to start off however and I wanted to sort of echo something David Blittersdorf started with at the beginning here we are actually going to be entering more difficult times in the near future the model that we have had of how transportation works is about to be highly disrupted both from environmental effects economic effects and resources such as oil because of that we're now in a situation of trying to look at what are the best new options whether it's rail for the connectivity between centers we've been looking at the issue of what is happening actually in Montpelier so many of you may have seen this map before we made this up a few years ago all the red on there this is downtown Montpelier here's state and main the capital all the red is off street parking paved off street parking so you can see that a huge percentage of the real estate is into parking this is not a carbon neutral feature of the world right now it is also not a very good land use because there could be other more housing commercial spaces in here according to a study by stone environmental this area here is actually some of the most polluting hard surface along the Winooski which contributes to the city's role being a major polluter of the Lake Champlain we have to start thinking about other ways of doing things that don't necessarily require us having so many cars downtown we've been using the bus service for a long time the traditional transit fix route fixed schedule service which has been basically a service for those people who can't afford cars and sometimes people don't want to but we're now coming to a situation in which we've got to start looking at what are the alternatives for being able to get people around because they spend developments and technology that allow us to really begin to rethink what it is and one of the most interesting of these is the whole area of on-demand micro transit now two years ago I'm sorry a year ago this week we organized a round table up at National Life that several people here attended we had the major employers in town we had the Development Corporation we had the Montpellier alive nonprofits political and state officers and started looking at the idea of what could be done so David gave a presentation on the rail idea that was coming through then we had presentation on remote parking and we had a long presentation on from the company via on on-demand micro transit this began to give us the idea of a multimodal system that you know things had to work together in a way that they haven't been up until now so why do we think micro transit is really the next wave first of all it's hyper local it's a community based service we can configure it as a last mile service within a four mile radius of state in Maine last mile means this is how you get from the bus or the train or whatever to home and back it is not intended to get you the long distance it can use multi passenger vans which are more suitable to the local environment and population it doesn't require the bigger buses and then can work on more types of roads it operates on a software that allows people to call give their starting destination allows dynamic routing of the vehicles for the most efficient simultaneous routing of the riders well now this could mean that on your street or in your neighborhood at eight in the morning there's three or four people who want to go downtown to work and there's another couple of people who want to go to the hospital and the system is smart enough to know that it would send one van to pick up the people who want to go downtown to work and another one for the people who want to go to the hospital so we're not duplicating routes the other beauty of it is if it's in the middle of the day and there's no demand for riders rather than keeping running on the same route all the time we can actually sit there and not burn any fuel it provides curb to curb service so like from the middle of the block to close to where you're going this is very crucial for people because rather than having to go to a bus stop somewhere else the service comes to you and it comes to you on your schedule so you don't have to do a 24-hour rerouting demand you can call on your cell phone, you can call on a regular phone say where you are, where you're going and you can get service relatively quickly they say the average is 12 to 15 minutes in places that it's operating right now and properly organized it can have a massive reduction in local greenhouse gas emissions and we'll get into a little more of that a little later so out of the working, the round table that we had last year I got a call in mid-November from Ross McDonald who you keep hearing referred to over at V-Trends who works at Barbara and he said well I guess this idea is percolated up because I've been instructed to put together a working group and sustainable Montpelier are going to be our community partner in this that's great that we got to do all the work with no pay but it was worth it because it was what we believe is needed putting together the working group we had made sure that we had a couple of local counselors on the working group including Donna and Connor Casey Barbara Connery from the planning commission we had Peter Junkey from the Vermont Center for Independent Living to make sure that the voice of the disabled were a part of the discussion and we got the first meeting where we kind of laid out the challenges as we saw them for doing something new in Montpelier so since we had signed on to do the R&D report we were in a situation where we said okay what is the framework that we've got to talk about here because I heard from the questions that were just being given to GMT etc how are people going to find out about who's this going to serve etc so we had to lay out the potential user cohorts and what they needed to be approached for being able to use this so I'm going to ask Laura to come up for a second and give you a quick description of the research that she did for laying out how this was going to work within the community alright don't trip over that thanks you said me but it was really we it was myself and then Dan was a part of it and a few other people but so we formed a subgroup of the VTrans Microtransit Working Group to conduct an extensive market analysis of what on-demand microtransit would look like or could look like in Montpelier and so our first step was to broaden our understanding of the local market and we focused on two groups so the current bus riders the current users and then potential new users who would those people be and for it to work here extensive and focused public engagement has to be a part of it to change transportation behavior so Elizabeth Parker will talk about that the market research findings provided to the Working Group of the different cohorts that we researched and we interviewed and so we made a SWOT analysis which is strengths, weaknesses opportunities, threats for each of the populations we identified and one user group identified when we met with the Montpelier Senior Center they actually highlighted their excitement at the prospect of offering seniors increased mobility and then the opportunity of aging in place which was talked about tonight and finally we discovered that each potential rider group has specific needs of their own that require different outreach and engagement strategies to develop as a predictable user base and that's really important so some of the highlights in our market analysis I'd like to include here so there's roughly 7500 people living in Montpelier and if you take a look at the figures there's actually almost as many cars in Montpelier as there are people which is kind of amazing the paratransit numbers that we received from Vermont Center for Independent Living Montpelier residents they're about 235 and then Montpelier Senior Numbers people over 65 years old there's roughly 1500 people in Montpelier that's about 20% of the population and then the last two key figures that we should keep in mind there's 1150 people 1150 people who live and work in Montpelier who drive to work and park their cars in Montpelier so that's a big focus of this and then of that the state employees they're another important group here 562 Montpelier folks work as a state employee so numbers to keep in mind thanks Laura so armed with that we began to have a picture of what could be a way of approaching this we have to start with a plan to make sure that the current user base okay is served that's what we call the do no harm users and they're going to be the first focus Parker here is going to talk in a minute about how we intend to go about this but we've got to also consider different perspectives especially an operations experience and other companies so it wasn't just who the users were going to be but how could we find the best way of doing this so we knew that microtransit was happening around the country whether it was as Barbara mentioned UberPool or the main company we'd seen was Via who seemed to have the best operating work in fact they're around the world now and they're quite impressive another group called transloc we talked to them we actually reached out and had each of them do sort of a preview and market analysis of what it would take and how much to just provide service of the current populations etc so we had something to compare them with and then we reached out further and talked to cities that were using these services around the country already and seeing what their operational history was who was working who wasn't what could what was needed to work with the users and one of the things that was very clearly brought out initially was while the software was getting improved all the time while the ability of this to actually pick up people within the time that it said etc so again no longer calling 24 hours ahead of time it's 15 minutes you can get a call unless you had a way of reaching out informing the public training the public different cohorts within the public have different requirements and making sure that they understand it it will be a failure so I'm going to turn this over for you know to Elizabeth for a second Parker here to talk a little bit about what we're intending for a training program which Ross has said and VTrans believes has to be part of any introduction to microtransit hi so I just wanted to say that I am car liberated which means I don't have a car and I use public transit as my main way of getting around so I have been back in central Vermont for seven years so I'm a regular GMT rider a grateful GMT rider and I know very well what the current rider population is I've become friends with them as part of the culture of actually riding the bus is becoming friends with all these different people so I just wanted to give you that as an overview so our question is you know how do people learn to use a new service how do they go from fixed schedule to this much more flexible way of working so this past gosh was it this past spring when Laura was working on the market analysis and development plan I was starting to and developing Laura and Dan and the whole subgroup that worked on that that analysis actually went out and met with all these different groups there's a long list of groups that they went and met with and formed relationships with and so I started to think about well that's great to get that analysis but how will we make that transition how will we partner with the VCIL with Capstone another way all the important groups and there are many more than that and so what started to form was a writer engagement and marketing plan and some of the features that are really important to promote in this plan are the that microtransit has an ease of use flexible scheduling shorter transit times and a greater range of travel and one of the things that it's also driving the plan that I started to write is customer feedback driving how we continue to engage writers and current writers and transition them so I have done a two year plan because the project is going to be running for two years in six phases the first phase is developing a foundation and one of the things that in Laura's research nationwide it's super important to get kind of base data of what people are currently doing and to start to interact with the current writers so having done some work in the past my idea was to do a survey of the current writers and it turns out that the MyPillars Senior Center has already offered to help conduct that survey so we're very happy about that partnership another important thing that we learned from the national study is that it's important to create a strong brand identity so that's part of developing a foundation and that would be in the months of February through April of 2020 and then the other thing we learned from the national other national programs was that it's great if you can have the best practices and a way of recording best practices and integrating them into training and protocols so phase 2 after developing that foundation and what I'm suggesting in that first phase is just creating a place where those best practices can be recorded so that they can be integrated in phase 2 it's transitioning the current writers so at that point this initial survey would be done we would have more data to help us and then we would be working as I said before with the organizational partners and we would begin actual writer recruitment working with those organizational partners to help us communicate with the populations that they work with and also doing very targeted outreach to current writers according to GMT's current numbers there are an average of 174 rides per day for these three fixed route fixed schedule buses that Jamie talked about as being replaced by a microchansid so 174 rides translates to 87 riders so it's really hard because we don't have the data on how many individuals but it is not a huge number but a very important number and then I would be developing a media campaign to do short videos to explain to people that can be put out on social media and as Mary Alice said there are sometimes some different needs for seniors who are not on social media however my experience of writing the bus is that many many people are on social media so that will be one way of doing it working through the senior center as a partner will be another and so finally there would be the product launch in July of 2020 and then so our first and main focus is transitioning current users our second focus would be adding new users and so there will be four different projects that we've already described the seniors the senior center has you know is interested in this project and there are 1500 approximately 1466 seniors over 65 in my we would then work on recruiting legislators there are 180 not all of them spend the night in my pillar but many do 491 lobbyists and 90 support staff my numbers and then we would work on recruiting state employees the 550 who live and work in my pillar and then finally go on to smaller employers and so as we go around town over the course of the last year it's amazing because whereas you know I would say on demand microchance and people go what that now people are like yeah I've heard about that that's kind of interesting what's happening what's going to happen so there's starting to be a buzz about it and so our goal is to exceed the 25% increase that V-trans has sent and we feel that with all the numbers of people who are out there that'll be easily done so thank you okay just following up on a couple of things out of the research that we had done about nationwide stuff and the group determined that the company VIA would be the best software partner that would be had in this because they had the most sophisticated software so that was included in part of the development plan and the FTA grant was submitted as Barbara noted you know but when it will be revealed is yet to know but it will make a more robust entry although as from what I understand the pilot is included in the legislative budget for being you know put in from V-trans to the legislature so we're hoping that it's going to be happening one way or another that will be to some degree up to the legislature to determine city support is going to be crucial for this not necessarily money although I you know want to make sure that's in there somewhere but this is going to be a community-wide effort to try and reimagine how transportation can work instead of just thinking of it in terms of the bus system what we're looking at is a way of actually getting people out of their cars and into town because many of us oh you mean I could call I could get downtown I don't have to park I can get home I don't have to worry about parking or chipping the ice off the car and have some you know definite advantages and appeals so everybody we've talked about it with is that well yeah actually I kind of like that the besides the land use shifts that we talked about that would be possible if we can get enough cars off the road the city has a goal like much of the state of reducing greenhouse gases by 25% by 2025 now right now the nation is doing this with EVs everybody you know 900 EVs would have to be purchased and brought on the road we could actually do the same that say serve the same number of people with 50 vans and think about the land use savings and the cost savings if that were possible if this were convenient enough and we believe it will be so we think once again people are going to be excited and embrace it shared convenient transit is our best shot to provide you know a low cost alternative to large scale purchases of EVs future developments will be crucial to the pilot and to meet our goal of reducing the city's greenhouse gases you know we're going to have to get internal combustion engines off the road so the question is what's the most efficient cost effective way of doing it this will make this project eligible if we can achieve that for funding and support from the transportation climate initiative or TCI as it's called it's only becoming developed now but it could become a major source of support in the future so over here parkour has created today a yes I know so you can have an idea of what a multimodal system looks like you know the different pieces of it which you've been introduced to some degree tonight and this is a way of beginning to imagine how things could shift in the future rather than being entirely dependent on the personal car and so that's what we'd like to leave you with and accept any questions that you might have now oh circle okay so you know we'll start with the GMT commuter bus commuter rail you know no no no let's let's slow it down because we've got more to do there's intercity intercity are these two intercity which is within the city are these two can you just say these two yeah this is a possible bike share car share etc this is on-demand microtransit as okay when we get to the intercity intercity now you've got the buses like greyhound mega bus or whatever you've got the interregional rail amtrak whatever that and we think that there's a place for car share back and we've been looking at that as a possibility of creating in essence a co-op which would both do car share and bike share and we've just been exploring that for right now it's nothing to propose to you yet but it has some interesting ideas and then finally the you know intercity the commuter bus from GMT and the commuter rail so like the very link or the very commuter or the link bus etc are all fitting into those areas so this gives you an image of how it all begins to fit together in a pattern now this is a way of like I said supplementing what we're now committed to with the personal car okay Jack yeah I thought I heard you say that the microtransit would require 50 bands could you miss speakers no I was using that as a comparison I said to a court they would he thought he heard me say the microtransit would require 50 bands it will start with five bands okay and build what we're saying is the numbers we've gotten already from VN they be maybe actually more demanding than we think says we can displace 900 cars with 50 bands okay that that's where that number came from the 900 cars is that 25% reduction in greenhouse gases if they were internal combustion the vans are usually somewhere in the neighborhood of 7-9 passenger that's going to be dependent on the amount of use in other words the first year it's going to be at a price at a dollar per ride and we see what you know what the demand curve is we don't actually have an answer to this yet however there are currently subsidies depending upon earnings and so those subsidies would be continued and we would work with capstone in order to work out how that would happen but for regular users that will be dependent on the demand that's going to have to be paid for somehow if you can imagine however that it costs you according to AAA $8,500 to keep a car on the road and there are 2,000 second cars in Montpelier if we could displace a fair number of those that would be a huge savings for the potential users even if it was $200 a month for this because you wouldn't need the car anymore yes Bill but I heard the potential of replacing two or three routes of GMT bus the existing routes within town so my question is is the money sufficient to fund the start up is the money that is going to be allocated that now pays for the bus routes within Montpelier the circulator hospital hill capital shuttle is that sufficient to pay for the start up the pilot project yes it is budgeted for five vans operating with since you we've all seen the circulator writing around town with one person and we think this is a very easy possibility yes sir you yeah oh I'm sorry my mistake this is not from senior activity center this is demographics from the American Family Survey part of the census it's not I'm sorry if that was what it seemed like I misspoke if it was it was the American Community Survey the Montpelier senior center we spoke to we didn't get any demographics from them specifically oh okay yes but Mary Alice Laura was doing the research the numbers come from the American Community Survey under the census we will do that as soon as they are conveniently available well ma'am rather it's rather than ask a question if that's alright with you thank you for generously handing over the microphone I actually not understanding that this was more of an information gathering session than a forum put together so if I could just share this with you folks and I just wanted to say first of all that it was so exciting to hear all these presentations as a resident of Montpelier it's truly deeply exciting I wanted to point out tonight the net zero competition a few years ago and it's fascinating to me how closely we are detailing and preparing for the future according to the ideas that came up in the net zero competition so what this handout does a few excerpts from the different teams that competed on the back there are two images which I found kind of inspiring and on the front is comparing three of the teams priorities around well I was actually focused on parking but also pedestrian mass transit enhanced rail bus service and the benefit of increased density I wanted to make out add two points which I feel like are the perhaps the trajectory of now we're in 2019 they're on the right hand of the top side and the most important thing I think is happening is the growth of the net zero movement is this importance of being rid of cars and it is 10% of the energy that goes into making a vehicle up front the energy used to make a vehicle is 10% of its total life energy usage it's a really big number and if we could get every family that has two cars to reduce down to one that alone would be a huge huge thing so it's not just a question of mass transit transportation choices it's got to address the odd trips which would cause a person to buy a car rather than to use other methods and so I want to add two more things that haven't been discussed tonight just so that we're all thinking about them the other is the cab service which we do have here and Lyft and Uber which I've used a lot in other cities the more options we have the more little circles on that diagram the better and the other, the hitching post that's started in Worcester is fantastic the other is there are a number of different options for people who need a car unusual say they need to go to some place that's not on a public transit route that's outside the circuit of the mass transit or the local so say you needed to go to Dartmouth Hitchcock or Stoddard, New Hampshire in Boston for instance there are ways that there's apps where you can rent someone's private car so you wouldn't have to get out to enterprise, rent a car and then drive to New Hampshire I'm overwhelmed it's so great that everyone's already there's so much that's been discussed in that big competition I wanted to point out my other thing is that we really need to think outside of who lives in Montpelier and think about the larger network I have many friends who are getting homebound in Worcester Middlesex and I'm glad that the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission is coming soon to talk about that but what I wanted to point out here is what the three groups talked about which is I think a critical concept is that to really get people out of their cars we need to think of the walkable distance in Montpelier is very soon a car zone of car free zone and that there will be a periphery around the city maybe an inner circle and an outer circle of satellite parking at least three of the four teams emphasized how important that is so that when a visitor gets to Montpelier they would then have these options they would basically become like a citizen as they start to move around in the circle of Montpelier that is going to be critical for everybody to be able to get rid of cars even people outside of Montpelier is there will be other kind of transportation ways for them to get to the satellite parking or the nodes that will develop on the edge of town that would if we can get to a car free downtown be able to take advantage of all those spaces and then over time as the networks can grow and expand even more then even the satellites parking spaces can be used for higher purposes and I agree with something Ann told me this summer that the satellite parking spaces should not be on virgin land which can be used for other things like the possibility of existing satellite parking areas already that just need to be used and be thought of as peripheral nodes to the central node idea I think that was it thank you that was two minutes yes you'll be happy to know that microtransit will take you to the Amtrak station well that's what we're trying to accomplish with the microtransit project which is to make it more convenient available closer to their that as Elizabeth explained over and over that we are trying to educate we will be trying to educate and reach out and make sure that there is a community engagement process you can't shut up says Dan so anyway one of the things that we've talked about is with the Vermont State Employees Association is the idea of climate heroes the idea of making microtransit a benefit for state office workers and so how that can happen so we're starting to think creatively and that's just one example of several that we're working on yes and a number of the employers in town are very interested in this and would actually like to do it earlier than we believe is possible because there's going to be a shakeout period where we figure out how it all works Deb yes of course you can and thank you for the comment about the sustainable Montpelier design competition which my buddy Deb here and I managed so we've talked a lot on transportation tonight and it would be remiss not to mention Govermont which is a clearing house right at the state of Vermont at VTrans ClearinghouseConnectingCommuters.org and that is a place where you can find all transportation options and a guaranteed ride home if you carpool take a van pool or whatever all this information is online and available while we're waiting for microtransit and trains that's something we can use right away so 1-800-685-RIDE this is a commercial is where you can get a transit plan tonight yes question for this focus it's actually quite disappointed that it's focused almost entirely on people who work a lot of it is on the commuter on workforce but we're working in the trenches honestly I'm there working for Govermont in the trenches getting people two jobs two training and putting people together with each other to get there so if we'll sit down offline and we'll talk you didn't talk to me when you went to Govermont so question so the question was about having access to the presentations then graphics and information and I think that seems pretty easy to do so if presenters are still here if you just send me your presentations or graphics etc we'll make that happen great question Steve services could be cannibalizing each other over time it seems like the integrated planning between microtransit and rail would need to be done as part of it secondly you made the point that we really need to reimagine and rethink how we're going about this how could we do that if we're proposing to build a garage in the middle of town to throw a wrench in the middle of this vision well the last part of that is not my purview so I'm staying out of it the first part of it the first part of it is what the city is trying to do tonight is begin to open this discussion so thank you to the mayor etc so that we can begin having this discussion about what can we do yes there probably should be a more formal way of handling this but like David started earlier like I was saying we are in this paradigm shift we don't know how it's going to come out we're trying to that's why we created the sustainable Montpelier coalition which is to say how can we focus just on what's going on here in town and be an independent voice for this work as opposed to saying the governmental voice doesn't mean we'll go away yeah what's your comment I just wanted to say that already we've had several meetings with All Earth Rail in talking about where the potential train stops would be because that's integral to understanding some of the microtransit process so that kind of step is already happening the main thing to remember is at the beginning of something that is we're in historical change we're going to have to work together and this is where the city we're trying to be a conduit for helping the citizens have communication with the city treating them as allies not as antagonists we're all in this together to figure out how to get through this bump and we're doing it in a wonderful small city that has the capacity because of the people who live here to make change if they so choose which is not going to be the same for a lot of other places so that's why we think we can do stuff fairly quickly here we can do stuff that will be noticed elsewhere and stuff that will improve the life of the people who live here by working together so that's our alright well thank you everyone for coming out tonight and if you have more questions certainly please feel free to follow up with any of the presenters that I believe concludes the forum for this evening thank you all again for coming out