 Well, we actually, yeah, we have quite a bit on the agenda here in a couple of hours ahead if we need it. My testimony today, if I understand the agenda, is going to cover the incentive program. In addition, fees for the use of electric vehicle charging stations under control by the state. After that, the transportation nexus to Vermont's climate and energy strategies, and that would include the comprehensive energy plan and also the Vermont Climate Action Commission's recommendations. And then the last topic would be the EV charging network in Vermont. I'll go over the state goals for a highway quarter fast charging network and also talk about the BW grant program for charging. If I need to put my name on the record again, it's Dan Dutcher, Environmental Policy Manager with E-Transmit. So I'm going to kick around a lot of acronyms and some of them you might know, but if you don't just stop me. EV would be electric vehicles, of course. And when I talk about EVs, it means pure battery electric vehicles or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. The non plug-in hybrids are considered conventional technology already. They're not really included in our policies or metrics. But the term EV does include plug-in hybrids. Correct. Yes. EVSE is electric vehicles supply equipment. For our purposes, it means charging equipment. I think they called it supply equipment to maybe eventually cover hydrogen electric vehicles. So the acronyms take longer to say. I know. It's replacing. Right. So those are the basic ones and there's some more as we go. Just stop me. I've got four main subject areas and I'll stop after each one for questions. But I really welcome and encourage questions as I go. It'll break it up a little. What we try to do, Dan, is at least we're on the section. Okay. And then broader discussion after I get it. Yeah. Maybe at the end of these sections. Maybe you could tell us when you. I will tell you. Okay. So first item, an EV incentive program for low and moderate income Vermonters. First, the reasons for the incentive program. And I think you've got the section in the current draft of the transportation bill behind me. The draft section contains proposed findings as well as the basic elements of the program. One of the biggest barriers to EV adoption is the upfront cost of the vehicle. There's a lot of research and experience now to back that up. And purchase incentives have been proven to be an effective means of overcoming that barrier. The purchase incentives are linked to increased sales of EVs. And consumers who take advantage of incentives regularly report that the incentives played an important part in their decisions to enter the EV market. In its final report, the Vermont Climate Action Commission, which I'm going to talk about more later, recommended building an EV point of sale consumer incentive. And Governor Scott took that up in his, in his, in his book, and Governor Scott took that up in his budget address and called for a 1.5 million EV purchase and lease incentive program. V-Trans, with the assistance of the agency of natural resources and the public service department, put together the basic elements of this program and drafted the proposed legislation that's now in the T Bill. Many Vermonters lease rather than own their vehicles and many Vermonters who purchase vehicles purchase used vehicles. So the proposed program is intended to cover both new and used EVs as well as both purchases and leases. The proposed program is designed to benefit low and moderate income Vermonters in order to help ensure that all income strata in all regions of Vermont starts to enjoy the benefits of vehicle transportation as quickly as possible. Transportation energy burdens are especially high for rural low income Vermonters and the incentive combined with the lower fueling and maintenance costs of EVs could significantly lessen the transportation burden for Vermonters. In addition to directly benefiting the consumers who take advantage of the incentive, this program will function as an education and outreach system to a broad segment of Vermont society. The central task in electrifying Vermont's fleet as quickly as possible is to bring EVs to rural areas into all income levels. Vehicle electrification is not going to work unless it works for everyone. EV owners tend to be very satisfied with their vehicles so this program will help get the word around about EVs and help move Vermont toward a renewable transportation system. So moving to the elements of the EV incentive program, right now I think the bill is drafted. It has the public service department and the lead, but we're still working that out. It could be VTrans. It's just going to depend on, you know, budgeting capacity and that kind of thing. So we have to iron that out still. But one of us will take the lead on it and administer the new program. And whichever agency does not take the lead will play a supporting role and the agency of natural resources will also be involved. The three agencies, VTrans, A&R and the public service department tend to coordinate very closely on vehicle electrification issues. And we also bring in other agencies including buildings and general services in the Department of Health. We're also going to try to coordinate marketing for this new program with existing and new distribution utility, EV and EVSE purchase incentives. You're probably aware the utilities tend to have their own incentive program as part of tier three for months renewable energy standard. Also part of the incentive program will involve trying to recruit utilities to provide a level two home charger to be offered in conjunction with EV purchase incentive. And the level two chargers would, you know, also be provided under tier three of the renewable energy standard. Tier three requires the utilities to help her mantras reduce her use of fossil fuels for heating and transportation. Excuse me, Dan. Yes. I think this question actually is for Michelle. This is a little different than what I'm going to hear. Is that the section that you wanted to take out is actually already out on this track? Yeah. It must have opened up in the last time. Okay. No problem. So as the program would be structured, incentives of $2,500 would be available to households with income levels between 100% and 140% of the state's most recent median household income. The MHI right now is somewhere in the neighborhood of $58,000. And then additional incentives up to about twice that amount would be available to households below the MHI. And this approach, just depending how it shakes out, could translate into 200 or 300 grants over the course of the program. The MSI? MHI, median household income. So essentially we're talking about household incomes between about $58,000 and maybe $78,000 or something like that. Ballpark uniforms and what the vehicle costs. There's the whole range. Right. And I'm not exactly sure how much the low end ones are $30,000 to $25,000. I think you can get down to about $22,000 roughly. And the reason for sort of taking the spread approach on this is that a lot of low income households may not qualify for the federal tax break. And so we're trying to sort of increase the opportunity through this program to account for that. So I just wanted to know how much of the cost less this incentive. All right. Well, what we'll do maybe is bring back some examples of different vehicles both on the purchase and on the lease side and give you an idea of what that might look like. Thank you. Are you good? I'm sure. Just as you're doing that, I'm sorry, but if you could include any information on you, I think it's probably early days. Yes, it's absolutely beginning. If anyone watched the Super Bowl, you might have seen the ad for the Audi e-tron. That's not going to cost $25,000. Does it exist yet? No, you can make reservations. So at current funding levels, it's in the proposed budget. I just wanted to make sure that I heard you right. You said $200,000 to $300,000, correct? This is what you're anticipating in FY 2020? Something for over the two years of the program. Yeah. It depends on interest and because there's going to be a range of $2,500 would be the baseline, but then there'd be an increased grant for lower income levels. So the exact number would depend on the budget interest. And so the idea here is that the base manufacturers suggested retail price of $35,000 or less would be eligible. So the program wouldn't be funding luxury vehicles. The program, as I just mentioned, would run for two years from the date the state makes the first incentive payment available or until the funds are fully obligated. And the idea would be to spread the incentives evenly across the two years to the extent possible. And funding would be available on a first-come, first-served basis in each year of the program. And subject to state procurement requirements, the lead agency, public service department, or VTRANS may retain Drive Electric for a month as a consultant to assist with marketing program development and administration and we're anticipating up to $75,000 of program funding would be set aside for that purpose. So that's the reasons why we're doing this and the basic elements of the program is we've been able to think it through to this point and this would be a good time to stop and take questions or discussion. So to follow up on my earlier question, I see in the findings the opportunity that the governor emphasized in his budget address is really re-emphasized around the transformational amount of money we could save for monitors if we really convert to EVs. I'm really excited to see a point of sale incentive. I'm wondering how this compares to our neighbors like Massachusetts and their EV incentive policy and I'm also wondering what performance indicators are we really looking at and there's reference to the comprehensive energy plan and when I look at where we are now and the couple thousand EVs that are referenced here and the fifty thousand that we're talking about trying to have in Vermont's fleet in just five or six years, two or three hundred grants, how do we, it just seems like a very small drop in the bucket, an important one, a good start, how is the agency really seeing this contributing to that bigger goal and how do we get from here today? Well, two parts to your question. One, what are other states doing? I don't have a graph or a table on that and I think it's kind of a shifting landscape. They're sort of cobbling things together as well as they can and as we are here with the funding available so we could get you more information on that. The second part of your question really goes to metrics how do we really know that this is going to make a difference and this is a question that's come up at conferences that have been too involving other states and there's not really a great answer to that. I don't know that we can do this on a totally sort of quantitative level in terms of, all right, exactly what kind of yield are we going to get from this investment? Essentially what we know is that the incentives work, people do take advantage of them and they get into the market and they get around. So I don't really have a better, more robust way to ground through this program. That's a really good question. First one was, okay, Paul. You show maybe somebody could analyze past incentive programs the purpose being to jumpstart a market that is not good now and that we want to see happen. It might not even be in transportation. But when the government does that, when has it worked, when has it not and how much does it take to have the effect that we want. I think that subsidize something for a while and then stop subsidizing anything. Well we know from the Nissan LEAF experience that the incentive there was very effective. Vermont persuaded Nissan to come here and use this as a kind of a laboratory to sell the, I think it was a 2018 LEAF? Absolutely. And it was a $10,000 incentive and we ended up selling more LEAFs here than anywhere except someplace in California. And some of the research has shown that if you make the incentive robust enough, people who weren't even in the market for a new car will go out and buy an electric vehicle just because they want the deal. So we do know they work, you know, exactly where the cutoff level is. I'm not so sure, but the utilities have offered more modest incentives and they don't seem to be having any trouble getting rid of the money. Then you've got to ask, well, would these people have purchased an electric vehicle anyway? You know, kind of hard to know. Mommy. Sort of following up on the next question. So we must know, like, how many, what is the impact of X number of electric vehicles on X number of emissions? Can we know that? Yeah, I think there's a rough way to calculate that. So I think that's sort of the way at least what I'm thinking about is how do we know if we're going to, if so many electric vehicles are bought, what would be impacting on our emissions? We know that our emissions have gone up. We know that in order to meet our statutory goals, we need to start on the downward trend. So that would be something I would be really interested in knowing so that we can set some benchmarks. So we know that if we do this incentive program, we're going to reduce this. This is going to have this percentage of impact on our emissions. Not that it's the only thing among the leatherization but just specifically for this program, I would be really interested to know. Well, I can tell you that even if this program is phenomenally successful, two and a half years from now or whenever it's over, it depends on other trends, but we still have a very small percentage of electric vehicles out of the total fleet. So, you know, you're not going to see a dramatic effect from this program alone. No, but we could see what impact it's having and what might need to happen in the future. Yes. For example, you know, if the goal is what, you know, 10% of the fleet by 2025 and 25% by 2030, what would that, what would that mean? Yeah. Well, we do track some of that. E-Trans issues a transportation energy profile every two years and we contract with the University of Vermont Transportation Research Center and I'm going to talk a little more about this later, but one of the things the profile does is really the main thing it does is just specifically track how the transportation sector is doing with respect to the goals and the comprehensive energy plan for transportation and part of that is greenhouse gas reduction, you know, and greenhouse gas emissions. Some of the metrics are extremely difficult to come up with. So even the transportation energy profile uses estimates. The agency of natural resources gets into more detailed data, but it takes them a long time. So there's like a, at least a few year lag between the data they use and the time they get the report out so I think there's some pretty sophisticated modeling involved. So, you know, we can dive as deep as you want to on this. It gets pretty thorny. Okay. And more questions on the incentive program? Yeah, I have one more. And I heard talk about the used cars. Why? I mean, I purchased four more used cars today. Right. I'm wondering why that makes sense. Well, the idea is... The cars will be there. That's right. They'll take cars in the market. Right. So how is it going to move the market, in other words? It's certainly a fair question. The thinking is that most people do buy used cars and one of the ideas here is to try to get a broad segment of our society into electric vehicles and if we apply the incentive to used cars it will give, you know, more people an opportunity to get into vehicle electrification. And as I said, most people are quite impressed once they start driving electric and they want to stick with it. So it would have a kind of marketing and education effect. I'll just add to Dan's comments which would be one of the key incentives is to make sure that low-income households have the opportunity to participate in this market because it will be a significant transportation savings in their household budget to be driving electric versus driving a non-electric vehicle. Mary? And I think I've heard somewhere that electric vehicles on the used markets seem to go bad at the state. Why is that and how do we keep them here? Do we work with manufacturers or... Those are... That issue was addressed by the Vermont Climate Action Commission and some of its recommendations. So the question has been raised. I'm not sure if the answer has been discovered at this point but certainly that problem has been recognized and that's something we have to figure out. I'm wondering what the proposal looked at. Did you work with dealerships to come up with this number? I was really impressed with there's a Northeast Kingdom-based dealership who the lease model, the lease was their best-selling lease just flat-out compared to any other vehicle because it had the lowest monthly payment. So did you, when you created this was there conversations with dealerships on what would bring it down to a monthly payment that could be comparable to other cars? Well, what I can say is that we've been involved over the past decade with Drive Electric Vermont and part of the membership of Drive Electric Vermont is not only governmental and nonprofit and utilities but also automobile dealers and so we have been sort of in this conversation four to five times a year as we meet about what trends work and what direction things appear to be successfully moving in. So it's kind of based on that broad exposure and experience. We've had a lot of conversations in that group with the Mile Valley Forward and other dealers who have had good success and so we knew that that was an element that worked for a lot of consumers and we thought it might be important to include that. I guess my question was a little bit around the folks who are able to get a lease based on this income if this is actually the group that would then be able to take advantage of the incentive. I guess our research wasn't as deep as the question you're asking. I'm afraid. In terms of qualifying for a lease is that what your question is? I don't know. That blends a little bit into mine because just my concern would be used is the cost of the battery and that the incentive has to take into account that someone buying the lesser car because that's all they can afford needs to be protected from buying something that's going to need several thousand dollars up to easily ten seems to be kind of the figure used as a replacement part. Who knows what future. So just the lease program I think protects people a little bit from that extended cost that hidden cost in way. Well everyone's asking really interesting questions that's almost in the nature of account metrics you know how do we actually quantify what we're doing figure out what the yield is going to be mathematically and we're not quite that sophisticated at this point. I just have a quick question I think you mentioned it but I might have missed it how much is this incentive program going to cost and is it built into the budget or is it an anticipated revenue zone I see from increased forecast. The proposal is a one point five million dollar program over the course of two years and this idea was generated by the Climate Action Commission after a state settlement with Volkswagen involving consumer fraud and the Climate Action Commission suggested to the governor that a portion of that settlement be used for this kind of purpose and I think it was the administration that came up with a one point five million dollar figure I'm not exactly sure about that and there will be a separate line in the appropriations bill to fund this. So the Saturn R budget is across the... Yeah so this is not in the transportation program budget this is in the general fund budget and so there will be a separate line in the general fund appropriation directing these resources. And what we're using Volkswagen from the settlement funds which basically those settlement funds after the attorney general sort of cut off the top of any settlements the state receives they go into the general fund and I think while the climate action commission had suggested three point six million which was the actual settlement not taking into account the AG's fees be the amount the resources from that particular settlement settlement had already been distributed into the general fund and used for other purposes and so there was a carve out in funds that will come from the general fund and potentially in from other settlements that may be pending related to similar cases to the one the BW consumer fraud one so we're pinpointing 1.5 million dollars in general fund you know if more settlements come on board we can hope to enhance the program for those resources. So this 3.6 million is on top of the 18.6 million. That was a different settlement right. Is it subject to the same restrictions? No and it's no it's completely different and those funds are gone. So it just it lacks restrictions. It lacks restrictions yet it doesn't have the same restrictions as the other BWs. So would you have to come back to us if you did work for more laws we received more money is this built into it or how would that work? No there would need to be either if other settlements occurred before the end of this session and we were able to incorporate those into the appropriations recommendation then that would happen before the session otherwise we'd have to come back next year and request those funds potentially if there was a settlement between June 1st and the end of the year calendar year we might do it through budget adjustment to bring more money in but given that it's a two-year program you know we'd have to look at do we need to act immediately or if it's only another $500,000 can we just do it through the regular legislative process because it's a two-year program. So we're committed to 1.5 so that could mean a may or may not run out so it could be a one-year program we don't really know how long we can haul out I think we would probably make an effort to phase the money over two years just from the standpoint of the fact that there will be a little bit of start-up time to get the program up and running and advertised etc we want to raise awareness and not just have the money go out to the door to a particular group of folks who've learned about it but maybe everybody wasn't aware of it yet so I think there's an important point of being deliberative about having it be a two-year program and those rules being done eternally we want to see those be done after the fact but yeah I mean we would just develop a program based on the general guidance that was provided by the legislature rather than having you know it's not something that would lend itself to rulemaking necessarily because it's a one-time program it's a small amount of money it's you know going to have you know a transparent process for awarding things I don't know that it would be something that would just be done under a program that applies very and when you say the funds are gone basically the money was put into the general fund right and so that's okay the governor can do that without our authority to just I am not an expert in the nuances of how settlements come to the state and then how they get incorporated into the budget but I believe that those those funds were received and budgeted and implemented wherever they went last year now Neil is in the room and I don't know if Neil has any other background that I have on this but we could certainly get somebody from the budget office to come in and explain how settlements are distributed I'm afraid I just don't have the detail for that well the fact is you recommended this money in the big bill you can say yes or no oh yeah and this is not settlement money this is just general fund money 3.6 million that was in last year's big bill put it in the public in the settlement my understanding is that part of the settlement is available each year right so 10 10 years well there's two different settlements okay there's the 18 million dollar BW settlement which has nothing to do with what we're proposing right now totally different program that has all kinds of different criteria and restrictions this other consumer fraud settlement it was money that came to the state my understanding as Neil pointed out was that it was received into the general fund last year the legislature proved however those funds were used for whatever general fund program they needed to hold a bill so we're just like saying that there will be new general fund money that is being recommended for this program there may or may not be a revenue source from a case that fills that pot of money but one way or another the state will make this program available if you're interested in more detail about the 3.6 and how that sort of went around the books I'm happy to get somebody to talk about that I'm just going to have those details the speaker asked me to look into all this because I think she was concerned that a lot of people are spending this money the 3.6 no all of it and my help if I can clarify something what I did her request was I asked for a memo from joint fiscal she suggested it was Stephanie that would write that memo for me and then I also went to Ellen her last name she used to work with Aaron and she knows a lot about this I didn't realize this she used to work at the U.S. Justice Department and when this was happening she's going to write me a memo can you stand how it cannot be there's like 4 different settlements that came to the state or something like that I'm going to talk a little bit more about this later on but it might be helpful to say right now that the $18.7 million that came to Vermont was the result of a national settlement and that was Vermont's allocation based on the number of vehicles sold in Vermont with emissions to feed devices and that whole national settlement was rolled by the terms that they came up with in the northern district of California where this happened and A&R is administering those funds and I'll get into more details later as Michelle said those funds are not being used for this and they could not be used for this under the rules then in addition to the national settlement there have been state lawsuits under our own consumer fraud laws and I think we're talking about maybe the second one the results of the first one the money from the first one they just sort of vaporized into the general fund so the climate commission kind of pounced on this one because it came along I think last summer and they said look some of this should be used for an incentive program so that's sort of the broad comment couldn't some of the up to 15 percent of the 18 be used for this for charging stations yes for charging stations and for education and outreach but not for incentives and even that only up to 15 percent of the correct I think that Mike and then what the co-chairs of the climate action commission they might remember this correctly they signed a letter that said that all of the 3.6 million should go to an electric 3.7 program and then the the climate caucus during budget adjustment also wrote a letter to appropriations recognizing and referencing that letter and so that 3.6 million really disappeared in between the beginning of the fiscal year in budget adjustment that's not our understanding and that's why I think having an expert from MIT might be helpful in this building a lot of people are telling very different stories about what happened to that money and to see 3.6 million become 1.5 when you had a very bipartisan recommendation from a thoughtful commission that said this money should be spent in this way that was frustrating to a lot of us that was a member of that commission so I understand the concerns and I know we worked on this through December trying to understand what the amount was available because we thought it was 3.6 and then we received communications from our budget office from the commissioner of finance that that money was not available so I'd love to find out more as well I'm thinking it's 3.6 minus 2 that went to the 2.1 and that means 1.6 how did you say that 2.1 to the attorney general because I think we should look at that money and it's not the settlement it's like damages you can do what you want with damages even when you sue somebody because you've heard two things it's just damages that's just money I think without restrictions anything else on the incentive appropriate I think you've got some questions you've got the list alright so I know you're very good at that I know we didn't insult you I don't take it that way okay so the next topic is fees for the use of state owned or controlled charging infrastructure I think there's a section here about that starting here so right now under current law agencies cannot charge the public fees that are not specifically authorized by law just sort of as a general operating rule so v-trans agency of natural resources public service department and buildings and general services collaboratively drafted this proposed section of the transportation bill that would authorize state agencies to charge it for the use of state owned or controlled electric vehicle charging equipment so v-trans has purchased two gear battery electric vehicles an e-sign leaf and a Chevy Bolt and plans to purchase additionally these going forward v-trans installed a level 2 charger at its office building in Berlin and plans to install a fast charging station in White River Junction v-trans will most likely purchase additional EVSE to keep its growing electric fleet charged v-trans would like to make the charging infrastructure available to its employees to charge their own vehicles and also to members of the public visiting v-trans facilities however to do so v-trans needs to be able to charge a fee to help recover its costs and this section of the transportation bill would enable v-trans and other agencies to do that other agencies have their own fleets and VGS runs the state motor pool which includes EVSE and EVSE and which continues to electrify so other situations could arise where a state agency may need to charge a fee for the use of electric vehicle charging equipment although the agencies are not right now planning to get into the EV charging business an agency may at times need to take over a public charging station we have an example of that right now the Washington Electric Co-op installed and currently runs the charging station at the Middlesex Park and Ride the agreement between Washington Electric Co-op and the state the equipment will soon belong to v-trans it was a sort of limited period and the EVSE would leave the equipment behind when they were done sort of a pilot type program so v-trans will need to be able to charge for the use of this equipment unless v-trans finds another third party that can somehow take over so other scenarios could arise where v-trans or another agency enters into a public private partnership with a third party providing EV charging on state land with the state owning the EVSE at the end of the lease in the near term v-trans and other agencies may not realistically be able to fully recover their costs from the use of their EVSE by their employees and the public full cost recovery may require charging prices that would need to be set on realistically high the proposed legislation allows for the changing economics around EVSE by permitting the agencies to charge below cost at cost or at the regional market rate as a kind of cap it could be difficult for state agencies to determine exactly what their cost would be in some situations this regional market rate what act is a sort of a cap or a high end on charging fees by the state and could be determined by looking at prices set by publicly available charging stations in the area by not limiting state agencies to their charging costs and by not requiring the agencies to go through a review process every time they want to charge change their charging fees the proposed legislation would end up treating EV charging fees differently from other authorized fees people have no choice when it comes to permits and transcripts and other matters that the fee statutes address linking fees to costs and requiring changes in fees to undergo legislative review for these matters is therefore appropriate however the state doesn't have a monopoly over EV charging so if people don't like the price that the agency is asking they do have the option to charge elsewhere so it makes it sense to afford the agency some discretion for how much they charge for the use of their chargers so the agencies can set prices at the level they determine with best advanced vehicle electrification while also recovering their cost to the extent practicable so that's the idea of the change to the fee statute we found out that we have these charging stations we thought it would be a good idea to let employees and the public use them but then we found out we couldn't charge them for using them so then the issue came up well ok how much should we charge and that kind of thing and that seems to be kind of a moving target so what we've done here and what we're asking for is the possibility in that regard so we can try to manage the situation according to our best judgment Marley? I'm just wondering about the other parking rides I think that makes it 9 I don't know who's charging I'm asking about the charging stations that are at some of the parking ride lots on I-91 I know there's one at 8-9 I think there's one at 8-8 I think there's one at 8-4 so who owns those and would those be subject to this do you know who owns those I think exit 8 which is the Berlin facility I'm thinking about exit 8 on that's Windsor off the top of my head I'm afraid I don't know who owns those or properties we've leased to a charging infrastructure company or how those work but I'm happy to come back to the committee with those details I think the point of this is we want to be able to both enter into agreements with charging company providers so that we can have chargers at parking rides if that's the right location or at a state office complex or other places where the public may be frequenting and dwelling for level 2 charging or just passing through for level 3 parking rides or state locations may or may not be the right spot Dan's going to talk more about where we're starting charging around the state later in this presentation but I think we also really more to the point want to make sure that if we have charging stations on state property that we're managing or you're in an agreement with another company on that we are able to promote those as available to employees and the public and not have to say oh we have one here but you can't drive forward and use it because we can't charge you for using it so yeah we don't just to follow up we don't know exactly what the state's role in all this is going to be going forward everybody around the country is kind of making this up as they go and it's a little bit of trial and error but we think right now as I mentioned earlier we're probably not interested in getting into the charging business so we'll buy EBSC for our own fleet and try to make it available to people through this bill but in places like parking rides where we don't need the equipment for ourselves as Michelle said what we anticipate is getting into sort of public-private partnerships where we would make the land available but somebody else would own and control and operate the equipment and one good reason for doing that is because there are many but one reason is that D-Trans is responsible with other agencies for administering a lot of the grant money that's going out right now for EBSC and if we started taking grant money or that kind of thing we'd be disqualified just fading in that process we don't want to do that EBSC is a fast charger no that's electric vehicle supply equipment and it just refers to electric vehicle charging stations fast chargers if you want another acronym right now would be DCFC direct current fast charger aren't they all here? have a test they're not, no Becca and then Barbara started my question which is I'm not really understanding the difference between the private public partnership and just having like EVGO or chargers be the third party provider so just for the example I'm in wider conjunction I'm so excited about a level three charger why have an EV would it be that I would go to be trans and you would have a private public partnership with EVGO and I'd use my cards like I do everywhere else or is this a totally separate world? it depends how it works out it's possible that VTrans could contract with a company like EVGO even for its own charging equipment and one of the things that ups the price is the software that goes with it and if we want to allow employees and members of the public to use some of this equipment it's going to have to come with a software so you can put your credit card through and figure out what you're paying and all the rest that's one option to have somebody else just run the equipment completely another option would be because VTrans might be using this or will be using some of it for its own fleet that VTrans would own it and figure out how to charge people so I don't have all the answers to that right now just to follow up on that one more thing I am really interested in that question because I don't understand the regional market rate because and I could be completely wrong I assume that the provider with EVGO set that rate so I don't know if that language is facilitating a relationship with providers or if this is really saying VTrans would do it and that would just be the automatic what's intended by the term regional market rate is just what others are charging in the area that's all that means it's not a sort of administratively established rate can I just follow on on that related to Dan's response one of the things we're grappling with is that the EV market rate is immature at this point and there are no set regulations at this point related to notifying the consumer how much they're being charged for their charging because currently in Vermont you cannot charge by the kilowatt hour as a provider of an EV charging station so you set either per hour rate or something of that nature the Public Utility Commission has a docket open and they are looking at helping to standardize and allow for charging on a per kilowatt basis or whatever we also need to find a way to create transparency in this market so that when a consumer goes up to the charging station like just when they go to the gas pump they know the rate is X amount of kilowatt per kilowatt hour or hour whatever so at this point we don't even going around to all the charging stations we have to be members of some of them to find out what the rate would be we don't have a mechanism for that and some of our chargers maybe inside the fence so to speak in other words we may have our own fleet of vehicles and we just have our own private charging station just like we have our own private gas and lean pump for our vehicles so it's not, we're not too here to imply that any charging station that VTrans develops will be publicly available just want to clarify that I had a couple of questions and one I'm glad Amphi is with us because I would be curious on page 21 lines 3, 4 and 5 speaking to the state being subject to the same law specifically governing the EV charging stations I'd love to see what those are because they're referenced but they currently are okay so okay that's one answer because it also I remember in prior session talking with the public service board to figure out this whole how to recharge piece and I'm a little concerned that this language does remove our voice from the conversation because I'm not really hearing anything about how we do balance the fact that a gallon of gas helps pay for an inch of roadway and that's not in this conversation yet I've heard so I'm a little concerned that we're making our voice out of the conversation when I think we have a very clear and important concern well that's not intended at all they cut me off there as Michelle said there's a lot going on other than what we're talking about today the public utility commission is looking into highway user fees for electric vehicles and they are I'm always reluctant to make predictions but I am certain they are going to allow charging by the kilowatt hour nothing else really makes sense and I'm confident also that they're going to largely or entirely remove their jurisdiction over charging stations that aren't run by public utilities so lots is happening and they're probably going to put the agency of agriculture food and markets in charge of the weights and measures piece to make sure that prices know and so forth so all that is being worked on I think Riley Allen might be coming in here on Friday and he can tell you all about the public utility commission's work this is a problem I have nails correct and assuming that the agency's FY20 budget assumes zero new revenue coming in from the space that would be true because there is no mechanism to enable revenues to come from the speed source at this time if it goes into effect on July one it will need the revenue that revenue investment could be zero that would be fine and if it was zero and you actually put anything into effect in FY20 that would be okay because the revenue just comes in a cheap amount of money okay I believe all of you received a letter from the public utility commission with their sort of recommendation on the legislative fix to how you take the non-distribution utility electric vehicle charging stations out of the regulatory scheme and it has some information in there about standards that are being developed by NIST that could be used by the weights and measures department whether or not finalized yet if you don't have a copy of that letter we can certainly make sure that you do I don't recall seeing it but it looks like Barbara does well I'm searching can you recall seeing it? yes I saw that I read it with great interest I'm wondering is our friends on either the senate or house energy committees taking that up already or is that language just been emailed to no bills to my knowledge it's reduced on this if I have a nasty word about it I'm sorry so we are probably in our final day or so of communications with the public utility commission relative to that letter and sort of having them bless us bringing that language to you for inclusion in to the bill so I'm hoping that within the next couple of days I'll have a draft of a language that implements the PUC recommendation they didn't feel as though the public utility commission needed to take over that piece on their own they were fine with it going forward legislatively as indicated in their letter and so we are just going to take their draft and create the findings and bring that to you hopefully early next week and I think I told the committee that I have put in a request with third party charging just so you know so that it doesn't have to be a distribution until we've got charges that can be people who own the infrastructure do you foresee that we could actually have competition with gasoline salesman? some day, yeah, we have very low volume right now so I think eventually that market forces will take over one of the things to consider is that everyone who can which is about the vast majority of EV drivers are going to charge at home some people can't because their wiring doesn't support it or they live in multi-unit dwellings that aren't equipped with that kind of infrastructure but people who can will charge at home so there won't be as many stations for EV charging as there are for gasoline but that will work itself out over time and every home could charge more yes even if you're in a corner of a window yeah, but with the modern electric vehicles it's not going to really get you very far because it's so slow well is that going to change if level one will become obsolete? yeah, because I mean you're not going to it's just not going to get you anywhere these vehicles are going to have an enormous draw when they charge it's going to be like half a big box store plug one of these things in and trying to stick your car in the wall plug is that's because the range is so they have a 200 mile range they're coming out with 400 mile range Tesla is working on a 500 mile range roadster and those cars cannot charge over 12 hours a month? they could but it's still going to be probably a drop in the bucket because these batteries are going to have absolutely enormous capacity what I'm getting at is I'm hoping that the person who goes the range of their car can always plug into an 120 year old outlet and they may have to charge it for 12 hours or days when the range gets up in the hundreds it's more than 12 hours absolutely, yeah but they'll have level one but they'll have level two every house can come at level two you have to have an electrician plan some houses might not have the wiring to support it I don't know a lot about it the house just won't have that capacity in some older homes do you know what the water is? I can't remember that's the voltage the water determines that's the power but I would think that almost every house could come at a given time yeah no house has free phase 480 which I just learned most houses can use level two yeah so I just wanted to because when you use words like enormous so back in high school for instance are familiar with EVs we've driven a few different models our friends at work have them and we drive them frequently what did he say was enormous it's like a 400 mile range enormous the draw the draw can be enormous but when you just think about the capacities of the batteries they're like in the 10 to 20 kilowatt hour range and that's about what my house which is a pretty efficient single family home it takes to charge up the bolt for instance to go 250 miles so just to give you a sense of the scale because when you say it's enormous it is a very big draw but it's not that big when you compare it to like a dryer for instance it's not huge it's not such an enormous draw that I don't want people to be left with the impression if you're not familiar with these vehicles like oh you know you're talking about today's electric vehicles and they are going to increase in capacity but there doesn't seem to be any concern about available electricity to power these things there's going to have to be some rate design and things like that so people are encouraged to charge at certain times well I'm actually concerned about that we're going to be heating much of Vermont with SRC problems driving electric cars we obviously wouldn't have that purchasing on line today well Riley can tell you more about that but a lot can be done with time abuse rates Riley is really the expert he'll fill you in on that it's just the enormous part of it that's the last big word I'm going to use if you plug it in it has to be plugged in for 12 hours or more though there's different levels that's the slow one but I mean if you're at home it would be the slower one then you have you can do a six hour choice at home level one and level two on that one you need an electrician to come and put in a 240 volt circuit for just that a dedicated circuit it's nothing you would keep but you could okay thank you we'll have to move on in a sec but just to put this in context the grand scheme here the sort of the big idea is that all this extra load from electric vehicles and heating is actually going to create downward rate pressure because the utilities are going to be able to sell that much more electricity so it's all sort of win-win if it works I just want to make sure there's going to be electricity but it's not that we'll find this out as we go along but I have concerns about the grid because the grid ten years ago was a serious need of being rebuilt and I'm not sure what progress that is and I don't expect you to I'm going to finish all this to Riley Allen so when he comes in I'll be asking that might concern you that's why I'm just trying alright I've got a simple question so what would be the cost to a consumer of a level 2 6-hour charge I don't know do you know the answer to that I personally as a Green Mountain power customer they cover the cost of the charger for me so there was an incentive program but it was going to cost me $600 and I had a lovely electrician put it in for me at cost that's the charge oh to charge it just a regular you know plug it in Green Mountain power has a program where it's a capped amount so I have unlimited charging for $29.99 a month and if I wasn't doing the program I would probably be paying $100 to $150 a month to charge at least that's one and you can only charge in off big hours no I can charge in all hours I mean I'm subject to events like you know I can't for my understanding there is an event I get a little e-mail from Green Mountain power and I don't charge during usually a short window of time but it's never a event for my high usage time oh like I get a little e-mail and it's like we're doing something and I understand well the intellectual just came out with a new rate that was comparable to like 60 cents a gallon so it substantially was that one maybe just off big it should be just off big it's a great thing to be doing at off big hours this is a lot of I find your comment about you got this special rate of 30 bucks a month versus you said it would be 150 I mean that seems like so that's just to come along that the company is giving you in reality it's going to cost customers 150 bucks I mean that's comparable to what I was paying like 500 to 750 bucks a month in gas no use of our chance I mean the answer to that yes I'm a high use driver just to be clear I'm a very high use driver so that just so you know it is far far less than what I was paying yes so what do you know about that Mary? well the only thing I think all these utilities because I know they were working on it before I went to the budget department a couple of years ago that a ton of use rates had definitely come down and the cost like the hourly rate at nice utility pace it's really really low where during the day everyone creeps up and when you charge a car at night you're using that really cheap power and as long as you know they can figure out the time of use rates you know it won't be an insensible just because of the rain Barbara? Well I just have to say that my reaction when we're talking about a public service department asset which let me speak is and that I'm glad that you're getting the benefit but it means that someone else is paying that other 120 dollars and it's spread out yeah and so that's just the piece that's the whole point about it being a public service utility everyone pays for the whole cost of the system so we need to not lose sight of that and it may be worth it because we're buying something as a society I presume that we're looking for making a change in an impact but there's cost Yeah I mean it's the second question which was well what I approach from that question is how much do we do this when we stop when we face it out, when it's worth it, when it's not and that's the big question I guess I would encourage you to bring that question to Riley on Friday because part of what my understanding of this is that the utilities are contracted to buy a set amount of electricity regardless and right now they're not able to necessarily fully optimize the electricity they have available to sell and so all consumers are paying more for the kilowatt hours that are contracted versus if we had more people purchasing electricity even if it's not heat rates at that favorable price which is where they want it to be because then they're not purchasing the spike cost electricity from another market beyond the contracted one and I'm sure there are people in the room that are like I can't believe she's saying these things because it doesn't make any sense but there are people that know more about this than I do but the point being that that this could actually become a more favorable matter in terms of all rate payers to have more people purchasing the power that we already have to contract to use that might not be as optimally used as it is today and so Riley will who's the expert really get into that but please make sure to talk a little about that this could be Michelle or Dan but I think that we got into a place where we were really talking about the benefits or the potential pitfalls of electrification and could you just bring us out to the 30,000 foot level before we go away here because the work that I do in my day job in the comprehensive energy plan and a lot of things are going on in this whole building our entire state is moving for electrification for a whole number of reasons and the some of the sort of incentives while we're down at the like 3,000 car that are full gutter EVs are going to have to be very different as we move forward and I love that we're having that conversation about what it looks like but what what key performance indicators what things are we looking at to get back to Molly's earlier question my earlier question we're here in 2019 we've got these goals in 2025 we're talking about the an incentive that green mountain power has of 30 bucks a month of auto limited charging to try to get people in the habit that we talked about being somebody said David I think said on representative Potter there was a comment that obviously those things are going to change as we get to adoption could you maybe put a finer point on the kind of big transformation that's happened because I think past this committee I was here a few years ago was not really focused on being part of that transformation and it's like I'm so excited about this conversation so maybe you could just talk about what this means in that context so I'll take that first and I think this is going to be an ongoing conversation that we have I think in terms of the metrics you know we have a sort of pointless and with the I say stand because it is a changing environment with the comprehensive energy plan and those goals and what we need to do you know I don't have it laid out for you every year we need to do X Y and Z because right now we're not even meeting those goals and we haven't had the tools that we needed and so I think last year was the first time that I've seen in the past four years where the legislature really started about talking about what are the tools we're going to need and there's a lot of small tools that we need right now there's some big tools that we need getting back to the point of transportation fund impacts you know right now electric vehicles on my back of the envelope calculation last year have about a $200,000 impact on the transportation fund as opposed to fuel efficiency which is about a two and a half million dollar impact on the transportation fund in recent years so there are a lot of things in play that we need to get off the ground to move the dial on these sort of suite of public policy matters we want to address and we're going to have to keep revisiting these as you mentioned as the whole process matures and as we get closer to meeting the goals as the market sort of dictates how quickly we meet those goals in some respects and so I can come back to you and we can you know it's a collaboration between public service and agency of transportation and natural resources we can come back to you with some suggested metrics and framework we don't have those today Dan's going to talk a little bit more about the comprehensive energy plan and some of the other efforts but I think you know we're not going to get to it all this morning but great questions and I've taken a lot of notes so we can continue this dialogue yeah thank you Dan we should keep it moving here for the second half yep alright so maybe this session will help answer some of these questions the first couple items I talked about were actually I thought going to be kind of discreet but they led to a lot of spin-offs and these next two really aren't discreet boxes so the conversation could go anywhere so let me just try to set the table I'm going to talk about the comprehensive energy plan in the Vermont Climate Action Commission and the Nexus to Transportation and then the last subject I wanted to talk about that's on the agenda is the charging network in Vermont and the BW program so still quite a bit to do so on the comprehensive energy plan it's required by Vermont law and statute the public service department updated the plan in 2016 updates are required every six years so the next update is due by 2022 they may do it sooner I think there are probably pieces in there they're already obsolescent because things are changing so fast the CEP comprehensive energy plan advances multiple policies to move the state toward renewable energy and establishes an overall target of 90% renewable energy over all sectors by 2050 along with interim milestones and sector specific goals and I should just say I don't have all the details about this but these numbers weren't just pulled out of the air it's sort of a reasonable estimate of where we need to be to avoid the worst effects of climate change and of course there are enormous co-benefits to renewable transportation including clean air energy independence so forth as the CEP points out the transportation sector is the state's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions responsible for almost half of the state's total the transportation sector also emits more greenhouse gas than any other sector on the national level and we're probably going to see even the transportation sector occupy an even larger slice of the pie as the distribution utility sector gets cleaned up so while we are seeing cleaner sources of electrical power motor vehicle emissions of greenhouse gases have been increasing with population and economic growth as of 2015 and remember I said there's a little lag in some of the data but as of 2015 greenhouse gas emissions in Vermont were 16% above 1990 levels and 10% above 2013 levels so we're actually moving in the opposite direction from where we want to the CEP as we've discussed establishes a goal of 10% renewable transportation by 2025 and at least 80% by 2050 and to get there the CEP recommends four main strategies one is smart growth also known as smart land use planning to advance the state's overall of compact centers surrounded by rural countryside the second main strategy is transportation demand management which basically means moving people away from single occupancy vehicles through alternatives like bicycle and pedestrian transportation public transit car pooling and telework third strategy using renewable biofuels to power heavy duty vehicles and then the last strategy is increasing the efficiency of light duty vehicles while rapidly moving toward an electrified passenger vehicle fleet I'm going to concentrate mostly on the electric vehicle piece I'll just say briefly that using biofuels to power heavy duty vehicles does not seem to be making much progress in Vermont and the rapid advances in electrical technology do raise some questions about whether biofuels represent a needed interim technology or whether policy initiatives should focus on moving the heavy duty fleet directly to battery technology certain biofuels like ethanol which is already required by law do not reduce greenhouse gases when you consider the life cycle of the fuel and they have very harmful side effects because of the increased land going into corn production Smart growth is a very complicated subject and suffice it to say that about three quarters of the development in Vermont does not go through Act 250 in a patchwork of local planning, zoning and enforcement does not always capture the rest the extensive discussions around Act 250 that can be expected in the legislature this year and probably next year will likely address some of those land use challenges with regard to transportation demand management VTrans has been working on that for decades VTrans increasingly incorporates complete streets including bike pad facilities into its projects and put significant resources into passenger and freight rail and public transit in addition VTrans runs to go Vermont commuter program a robust network of state and municipal park and ride facilities these efforts remain important and worthwhile but will not translate into rapid progress toward meeting Vermont's targets for renewable transportation the electrification of passenger vehicles can potentially move the states towards sustainable transportation faster than any other strategy although it should be used in combination with the rest to accelerate vehicle electrification VTrans and other Vermont agencies are working on several policy initiatives many of which we're talking about today the CEP's goal of 10% renewable transportation by 2025 translates into about 50,000 EVs or 10% of the passenger fleet on the road by that date and as of right now Vermont has only about 2,600 EVs and EVs are just 3.5% of new passenger vehicle registrations so when you think about 96.5% of people who are still buying combustion vehicles those cars have an average lifespan of something like 12 to 14 years so this is going to take a while to turn around and the quicker we can get people into the EV market the better so we're not yet on track to meet our transportation question? I know we're talking about electric vehicles but when you're talking about gas combustion have they made strides towards reducing their emissions as well though the newer models are much more they're more fuel efficient but that's not going to affect greenhouse gas emissions except there's less fuel use fewer greenhouse gas emissions as a result of that but the other emission control devices aren't going to affect greenhouse gases you've got to let it convert alright so as I mentioned earlier VTrans contracts with the University of Vermont Transportation Research Center to biennially issue a transportation energy profile and that provides greater details about the progress Vermont is making toward the transportation climate and energy goals of the CPP the motor vehicle market is undergoing a dramatic shift toward electrification and while it is safe to say that transportation electrification is coming fast it's also safe to say that it's not coming fast enough to meet the science based transportation climate and energy targets that Vermont and many other jurisdictions have established public policy is needed to move the market until market forces can take over meeting Vermont's transportation electrification targets will make Vermont attractive to employers workers and tourists and will help grow Vermont's economy by keeping transportation energy expenditures in state and even though Vermont is falling short of its EV goals Vermont is near the head of the class on a per capita basis when it comes to EV ownership compared to other states some place like number 5 possibly so that was the CEP if I could pause for questions here or go right into the climate action commission any questions from okay so the climate action commission recognized that transportation is the leading energy driver in the state and numerous recommendations for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector these recommendations fall into two main categories one is continued work on transportation demand management which I discussed briefly a few minutes ago and the other main strategy is accelerating the pace of vehicle electrification so with regard to vehicle electrification the report made 12 specific recommendations and I'll just list those provide a state funded EV purchase incentive that applies to new and used EVs with incentives targeting rural and low to moderate income for Monters that was recommendation 8 recommendation 9 strengthen the used EV market number 10 work with auto dealers to collect and publicize deals on EVs and use the drive electric website to generate sales leads for EV dealers recommendation 11 implement the recommendations of V-Trans's fast charging corridor study to provide DCFC direct current fast charging within 30 miles of all of Monters number 12 develop and execute a strategy and a VW settlement fund so we're going to have to fast discharging within 30 miles and I'm going to flesh that out a bit later because we actually closed the screen on a document it's not really terribly general what do I do just press home here maybe that can help get the documents you sent because I'm able to follow but I don't have any people here following I don't know if I have a handout specifically on that we've got exactly three tenor agenda yeah okay so you just want that well it just makes sense it helps people follow a little bit alright thank you page 7 we'll accept it we have it it's available it's about where we are okay yep so just carrying on here with the recommendations of the climate action commission relating to electric vehicles conduct research and analysis needed to support the PDUC investigation of issues relating to the charging of EVs under act 58 of 2018 do you want me to scroll this up as I go okay alright some of that 14 leveraging enhanced EVs drive electric Vermont to maximize the impact of education and outreach campaigns and stakeholder engagement to build awareness and encourage purchase consideration for EVs 15 implement ride and drive events to give Vermont was a chance to test drive EVs 16 work collaboratively with auto dealers on developing and deploying strategies to effectively engage customers who are interested in purchasing an EV and to make the sale 17 make EVs available through traditional rental car rental, car share taxi and ride hailing services 18 use EV settlement funds to jump start a transition from diesel to electric transit and school buses in 19 investigate and utilize grant funding and finance strategies to help overcome the high up front cost of electric transit buses so VTrans and the other agencies are already at work on several of these strategies some of them especially the public education and outreach type pieces are going to take a little longer because they involve contracting and budgeting but a number of these incentives we're already working on so for example we just discussed the basic structure of an incentive program for inclusion in this year's transportation bill a grant program for charging infrastructure which we call the BW EBSC grant program is also in place and underway and I'm going to talk to you more about that in a little while also ANR is leading an interagency team to administer the rest of Vermont's share of BW settlement funds and is starting that effort with a pilot project for electric transit and school buses ANR is now committed to using all the national BW settlement funds on vehicle electrification and none on replacing or converting older diesel vehicles with newer diesel technology so the whole 18.7 million dollars is going to go into electrification so Deputy Commissioner Riley Allen from public service is going to talk to you more about the PUC workshop on Friday we'll cover rate design strategies for addressing demand charges at fast charging stations demand charges is the charge that the utility assesses for having electricity on hand so even if you're in a relatively quiet operation so you've got a factory and you just fire up your conveyor belts and assembly line once a month you're going to get hit with a very heavy demand charge because the utility has to have that energy available for when you need it and that's proving to be a big challenge in DC fast charging and the PUC is going to look at that I'm sorry again could you ask Riley if he's able to bring an engineer I doubt it I think he's an economist so Mr. Chair I warned everybody that you're an electrician you're in the right place so that before moving along we do have an interagency team including VTrans that's working with the PUC and other stakeholders on their electric vehicle investigation so VTrans is also using additional federal funding there's a no-low grant program to bring two full-size electric transit buses and two cutaway shuttle buses to Vermont this is outside the BW pilot bus project these are the two GMTs and then there will be two shuttle buses in Montpelier two buses right two GMT buses and two cutaway shuttles and the GMT buses should be here I think in the summertime maybe a year later let's a cutaway shuttle it's what you see buzzing around Montpelier stops by the capital in the short buses just a small bus called cutaway shuttle shuttle is cutaway right? yes yes sometimes I want to say cutaway that's not right so in its preliminary report the commission recommended the market-based cap and invest system for the transportation sector and Governor Scott has now committed Vermont to work with other jurisdictions in the northeast and mid-Atlantic states of the United States through the transportation and climate initiative which is run by Georgetown University and the idea is to develop a cap and invest program by the end of this year at which time the states involved in this effort will decide whether they actually want to adopt the policy that's developed so if it's adopted or if it's created by the end of this year when would it actually go online and do you know that yet? we don't know that the first milestone is to come up with a program that makes the most sense and then the states have to evaluate it and decide if and when they're going to adopt it so if it would work like Reggie but it's not Reggie correct something like that but I think all options are open at this point and that process has started to ramp up Reggie that's used for the power sector and industry so right the idea would be to extend that or something like that to transportation possibly okay not necessarily I think that's the thinking but we just don't know how it's going to play out so just to wrap up that part of my testimony vehicle electrification is a key strategy for meeting the states climate and energy goals for transportation and the state is not on target to meet these goals but just we're not necessarily going to proceed in a linear fashion either so it is possible that even though we're not on target now we could get to a point of exponential growth and make up for lost time and this will probably I'm not sure we're going to meet our targets but I do anticipate sort of snowballing growth in the electric vehicle market it's what we've been seeing so far and in the next few years probably we're going to start seeing more vehicle models that are suitable for wintery off-road type applications and various other models that will appeal to a broader audience and we're going to get to cost parity in several years how will those models be different that you just described we're going to see pickup trucks and SUVs with all-wheel drive and high ground clearance and right now we're seeing sort of the low slung Teslas things like that and they probably weren't buying you'd have to talk to a driver the electric vehicles tend to be heavy because of the batteries and they have a nice distributed weight so as far as I know if you put a pair of snow tires on you're doing okay but a lot of people like to drive SUVs and pickup trucks and we're going to start seeing more of that come fire out of this in a couple of years probably a couple of years Ford says they're going to come out with an F-150 electric version but they don't have a date on that there's a new company called Rivian that's got some really interesting vehicles 14 and a half inches of ground clearance all-wheel drive 400 plus miles of range no no pure battery electric vehicles 0 to 60 in 3 seconds and a lot of really interesting design features and I think they're saying the Rivian right now is going to cost about $69,000 so that's pretty expensive but not really compared to a souped up sort of super duty pickup truck so we're going to start seeing a lot of changes any questions before I move into the last section on the last point so we learned from Barbara Donovan or transit they wanted to get a long lasting battery a good battery warranty to be nervous about the life of the bus so putting an extra $200,000 just for that warranty for the CMT buses it was both the cost of the bus from $700,000 to $900,000 the basement diesel is about half a million so that $400,000 is actually made up according to the PDIC you guys had analyzed this on my cycle cost the vehicles were actually cost about the same how does that analyze for passenger owned vehicles I think right now it depends on what I guess what we have to do is compare sort of comparable vehicles you know luxury electric vehicle and luxury combustion vehicles and so forth to try to figure out just what your life cycle cost would be I believe overall it's already cheaper to get into the electric vehicle market over the life cycle of the vehicle and eventually we're going to start seeing upfront cost parity excuse me I'm sorry I was going to point out that Drive Electric Vermont has a very comprehensive website that I believe addresses that question if you really wanted more detail we'd be happy to bring in somebody to testify on that if you can't find the information you're looking for I don't know if they're on this Drive Electric Vermont I can get Maddie the contact information they've been a great resource and they've done a lot of the public outreach and keeping everybody organized towards this mission we'll probably rely on Drive Electric Vermont for some of the education and outreach goals and the climate conditions recommendations we have to go through state procurement so it could be someone else but they've been a pretty good partner ready to move along? we're more or less on track so moving to the next big section here it's about the EV Charging Network in Vermont so I'm going to talk about the state goals for the Highway Corridor Fast Charging Network and then also the VW grant program so in 2017 VTrans Consult was completed a report on Electric Vehicle DC Fast Charging on Vermont Highway and of course I might have a copy of it here if anyone wants to take a look I can pass this around the room and it's also available online pretty much everything I've referred to today is available online so the report identified seven sites that if equipped with fast charging would put a publicly available fast charger within 30 miles of nearly every address in Vermont and form the backbone of a statewide Highway Corridor Fast Charging Network each of the reports proposed sites is near an interstate exchange and was screened for proximate Phase 3 power you have to have Phase 3 power to run DC Fast Charger and that actually turns out to be a significant limiting factor on where these cities can be located just for your information when you say Phase 3 that actually sounds like some char 3 phase 3 phase get that this is why I warned you well it's good to know actually you really sound like you're talking about phases of yeah yeah 3 phase so 3 phase power is a limiting factor but the report did screen the sites for that also site amenities 24-7 access and willing site hosts so that the Du Bois and Cayne report that's going around didn't just look at sort of general geographic sites that looked at specific properties to locate these facilities so there was a multi-agency team again with A&R and the lead which identified a handful of additional general locations along major Vermont highways for fast charging development and there's another handout that looks like this do you want me to try to get that on the stream okay got that so this is the basic Du Bois and Cayne map with a few other places added the western corridor looks like route 9 at the south couple places like that yeah the there you got me the level 3 charger and weight reproduction is that an additional charger recommendation on top of what you're suggesting that would be the one I mentioned earlier okay that's what you're referring to that would be to charge the trans's fleet and so that's the kind of thing that we could make available to the public or to employees you know if we get the authorization to charge for charging but the Du Bois and Cayne study did make its own recommendation for a site at White River Junction and there's a place there's a business there I can't remember the name of now it's something like the carriage house or something like that it's not quite right but there was a place that's willing to host the charger and White River is of course a great spot because of the intersection of the interstates okay so you are suggesting two level 3 chargers within my town yes but one of them would be for v-trans's fleet and so I can't make any promises on whether it's going to be behind the fence or not but White River is a prime location and it's certainly a place that needs to be populated with fast chargers yeah we have one you have one already? a fast charger? where we studied we were all from in this community it was personal what is Chatterville? was that on the map? it's a location of something I see in Brattleboro there was a Tesla well those are different kinds of chargers there exists because we have a couple well as the chair said you have level 1 charging which is a plug in your wall you have level 2 charging which is a specific device with a specific kind of outlet that fits into your car and that's all universally fit all electric vehicles unfortunately with the DC fast charging there are different kinds of plugs one of them is the SAE combo and the other is the Tesla and this is obviously creating a problem that they're not all intercompatible and you would think that you could just have a conversion device like if you go to England and you want to plug in your phone but for some reason it's not that easy the Chatterville vehicles tend to be from Asia and the SAE combo electric vehicles tend to be from North America and Europe and then Tesla's got their own system I think Tesla does have some converters that can be used as some of the other chargers but I think if you have an SAE combo plug you can't use Chatterville and vice versa correct so long answer to your question yeah it's all enough to make your head spin oh yeah just that aspect but you know I come from the old world I see when I come to the legislature the two charging stations down here on the center of the capital and I visualize in my mind like if all the legislators had electric vehicles those stations I come from up over the mountain I probably have to charge here it's not like I'm going home and it just seems like there would be a lot more need for chargeability across the state and I'm just talking about a legislature maybe a hundred cars come in here and I will rest a month earlier of course many of those people are charging at home I understand that and then I visualize gas stations in my mind but you go to the gas station you're there for maybe a couple minutes filling up it's a lot different when you've got to plug in and charge for a while it just seems like there's an awful long ways to go now maybe he can talk about that to make me feel good and there is a long way to go but as you said most people will charge at home which is very convenient for folks like you who are going to be staying overnight you're going to need another option probably you're going to be able to take advantage of a level 2 charger which are for longer dwell times so eventually we're going to see those maybe along the streets at hotels restaurants you can expect to just park your vehicle for a while park and rides and things like that and if you need a quick charge you'll have to go to a fast charger how would you like just take capital and all those cars parked out back there how would they all charge well they've actually submitted an application for funding under the DWEVSE grant program for the new construction that's going to happen there for a bank of level 2 chargers in the parking garage like a whole row I can't remember how many they've asked for and I can't remember if they were funding which isn't totally public yet anyway but that's how it's going to be the parking garages will have some level 2s and the fast charging is eventually going to be very fast so it might be 40 minutes now or something like that it's going to be 20 minutes maybe 5 minutes to just get this super quick high power charge and some of it might even be able to happen wirelessly so you don't even have to get out of your car so let's see how that goes so are they working on a solar charger they will charge all the time probably this is going to be ways away when we start getting to off grid and micro grid type electrical systems or distribution systems but yes eventually you'll have solar power that will then need to be stored probably in a battery and then that could be used to charge and some people might even be able to do that at home as well I mean right on the vehicle itself I don't know but you might need more panels than could fit to charge something I thought they were working on these little tiny well I don't know anything more about that I think it's going to be a ways off but take that with a grain of salt all of these charging stations sounds ugly aesthetically well they're a lot cleaner than gasoline and filling stations no spells a slew of charging stations kind of you've seen them haven't you there's probably um oh nice there are electric cars just on the solar side but it's very small doesn't go very fast totally quiet the ones that were around have you seen them in what way like 20 or 30 years ago but they didn't even have batteries they just got out there and had to stop so you could be charging a battery but it would be small and collectors would rather large so this vehicle would just look like a big solar system going down um was this you have my bank cash and mirrors but did you want to follow up on that well I just wanted to speak to this issue the proliferation of charging stations and where are we going to need them etc I think part of what we're trying to convey is the size of the battery and the distance that a car can travel on a charge is increasing so if you have an electric vehicle that gets 400 miles on a charge even if you are a representative potter who's coming from Rotland you can probably get to Montpelier and back and then not have to charge again until you get home if you're somebody that's driving from Montreal down to Montpelier and you want to make the round trip back or go to Boston then you're probably going to want to if you spend the night at the Capital Plaza look up over there and charge or a salesperson driving around the area you're going to want to charge overnight at the Capital Plaza when you stop there or if you're just driving all the way through from Montreal to Boston you may want to stop at Berlin exit and get a fast charge so I think the way we think about how we gas up compared to how we're going to charge up is a very different sort of apples and oranges comparison and so I think it's going to be important to help people understand the framing of this we're not going to see charging stations on every block it's not as though you're going to need them everywhere because the way we are we're going to fuel our vehicles is going to be very different in the future that's a really good point electricity is just you have to get used to this it's not a new system of course it's not an energy source but it's it's not like any other the electricity itself is actually not stored cannot be stored it's not electricity it's like we're going to be doing more and more with electricity and we've done a lot with it so far but it doesn't sit those transformers on the poles there's no electricity in there until someone's using some it just can't be stored so it's not like oil or gas in a tank utilities just have power when you use it and they always have to have a little more sure because they don't know exactly how much we're going to use especially on a peak of the day so that that difference is manifested in all these things it's just very, very different the charging station is coming there's no electricity in there there's only electricity when someone is closer and it flows it doesn't work it doesn't sit it's always moving at the speed of light it's quite incredible and the electric motor I just have to say is one of the greatest things we have ever invented like 150 years ago and it got invented in Vermont branded that's right be smart Vermonters you can't get away from I have a question about difference in costs between a 400 mile battery and that 150 mile battery that you're talking about what's the difference in cost well it's really all about at this point the longer range batteries do cost more and so the vehicles they are in cost more but the prices are coming down because the battery technology isn't improving and there's also sort of a market scale in terms of when you have a new invention that new invention but is you forget more in production you have more available so I can't tell you dollars and cents why I would say between now and next year keep your optimism up because they're coming it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when and it's on the media horizon Mary but because we'll probably buy a full electric within the next couple of years because the chairman feels free to go off topic is there a protocol like these things are just out there like we have one at the bottom of you know as we come in on Georgia get arrived can you go up and like somebody else's once you know that yeah there's certain customs and that kind of thing probably what's going to happen with the rate structure on these publicly available charging stations is that you're going to start to get charged extra if you overstay your charge so people will have an incentive to move and there's a lot of software associated with charging so you can if you're at work for example in that all the level 2 charging stations are filled up you can get notified on your phone when one of them is free some things like that will be coming along too actually already exist I'm sharing the microwave right here you can take some of these food after it's done I'm going to the water man I'm going to the water just a life cycle of a battery a length of time before you have it in any places here do you know that 10 years or something I'm thinking it's 10 years it's around 10 years thank you what are the D and K proposed stops on the Du Bois and King the green octagonal those are where Du Bois and King found specific site hosts for fast charging stations in locations that would get a fast charger within 30 miles just about everyone in Vermont there's a little bit in the northeast it would be cut off and that's separate from the ones that are suggested as the red star as the fast charging right we thought that there would be some additional places that you know could really benefit okay and just to follow up on representative Potter's question about how much of this are we going to need just skipping ahead to the end here a little you can play around on the US Department of Energy's alternative fuels data center pro light projection it sounds like really hard to use but it's not just go to their website and here in my presentation you can go to their website and what I did for this talk today was to just plug in 50,000 which is our 2025 goal to see how much charging infrastructure we would need and the EV pro light projects that 190 DC fast charging stations will be necessary right now we have fewer than 30 and they're not strategically distributed so that's a lot of fast charging and I didn't do the exercise with level two but it will allow that too 20,000 I think level two chargers by 2025 so you know a lot of it can't be structured so a lot of people knocking at the door to build these things I mean it's a people seeing profit potential coming to you well the emphasis on potential I think there's possibly maybe money in the level twos right now with the companies getting into this I think are looking toward the future for one there's greater volume and there will be profit and many of the level twos you see now are put in as amenities to other facilities so there's some convenience stores in the mid-Atlantic states that are offering level two charging I think it's level two and you know other hotels and businesses like that ski areas are offering these things just as an amenity to their customers I'm just curious when you were giving that level two count would that include ones that people have had installed in their homes no these would be publicly available chargers yes is there another question do you have an idea like you own a car and you're going to fuel up or you know charge up whatever what percentage like on the lifetime of that vehicle will it be from home charging and what percentage will it be from people who have home charging available they charge at home about 85% of the time because as Michelle said even with current ranges but especially with longer ranges you're going to get home again before you're out unless you're a sales person or on a long trip you're probably not going to have to charge on the road so I think we covered the basic the goals for fast charging and the maps that we've come up with I just wanted to mention too that B-Trans does have electric vehicle charging as part of its strategic plan for 2018 to 2023 and they're really only about five major blocks in that plan so for fast charging to be in there is a pretty heavy emphasis and priority so we will continue to work on that so then the last thing I wanted to get into today is the B-W-E-D-S-E grant program we talked about a little bit of this earlier under the national settlement related to the Volkswagen fraud you know they put their devices in their cars they made it look like the emissions were cleaner when they were being tested and then the devices turned off when the cars were on the road to give them better performance it's really kind of shocking that people would do that but they did and it costs them billions and from all the billions they need to invest they're hoping to make even more money so I think it might help work out for Volkswagen we'll see I actually hope it does so there were various dependencies to this nationwide settlement you could be dealt directly with consumers you could get a new car or refund things like that under Appendix C Volkswagen subsidiary Electrify America needs to spend $2 billion nationwide on electric vehicle charging infrastructure and some education and outreach and it's all going to be brand neutral and they're underway they're going to have four investment cycles we've been trying to persuade them to invest in Vermont we've missed cycle one we'll probably miss cycle two so maybe we'll get something in three or four but because of our low traffic volume we're just not an attractive place for somebody to put money down if they want to make money in the long run one thing that's interesting to note is that Electrify America admits that even after spending all $2 billion it's probably going to only need 10% of the nation's charging needs so there is going to be a huge demand and I think a half a billion has to go to California but the rest is not a portion so they don't have to invest in Vermont they don't want to under Appendix D the states got essentially formula funding out of the settlement based on how many of these defeat systems cars with defeat systems were sold and Vermont likes Volkswagen's so we ended up with $18.7 million and under the terms of the settlement Vermont is entitled to dedicate up to 15% of that amount or $2.8 million to passenger vehicle charging equipment and as I said the remaining amount the 85% is going to go to heavy duty vehicles including transit and school buses and under that 85% of the the big chunk you can include charging infrastructure for the heavy duty vehicles as part of your investment you just can't include passenger vehicle charging infrastructure that's under the 15% so A&R delegated responsibility for administering the passenger vehicle charging infrastructure grant program to ACCD because they have some prior experience in programs to downtown areas for charging infrastructure and A&R was at about capacity an interagency team supports ACD and that includes ACC ACC of Commerce and Community Development so the interagency team includes VTrans agency of Natural Resources Department of Buildings and General Services and the Department of Health so ACCD has just awarded funds in the first grant round funding for the first round was capped at $400,000 out of the $2.4 million available after administrative expenses there were over $1.6 million that were requests so the program was way over subscribed I think just by that measure it was quite successful funding went to nine different towns and organizations across the state I think there's going to be a press release about this in the next day or two most of the I wrote that wrong it really shouldn't say some of the funding supported a DC fast charger and the rest went to level two so there's one DC fast charger that's been offered funds in south Burlington and that was not one of the Du Bois and King sites by the way so we've got about $2 million left and we're going to get going on the next round of grants in one or two or three months it will probably be capped again at $400,000 and I think possibly eventually what we might do is create a carve out in the funding for DC fast charges maybe have a grant round just about fast charging or where there's a specific sum of money that will go exclusively to fast charging right now we're waiting on that and one of the reasons is because we'd like the PUC to address the issue of charging for charging and demand charges in fact fast charging and some other things so we think we might be more successful if we wait for the PUCs recommendations and rulemaking or legislation to embody those and possibly $1.2 to $1.5 million would be needed to build out the basic fast charging network in Vermont based on this map and maybe a few others and it's just not going to be profitable at this point but some companies may be willing to get in with the incentive that we're providing with an idea of maybe profiting in the future and VTrans does have an additional $300,000 set aside for EV charging and we're not exactly sure what we're going to do with that yet it might go to charging facilities probably through some kind of grant program again so we don't have to owner operate the chargers and it could be used to go with fast charging just looking at the $300,000 that was carved out I'm making a leak that may not be making that the $400,000 cap covered potentially the cost of one DCFC is that true no they're not that costly no it wasn't I can't remember offhand what happened is that there was an overall cap on the grant program of $400,000 and then there was an overall cap by county and I can't remember the figure it might have been $200,000 and we ended up with a situation after all the scoring where two pricey projects in Chittenden County came in one one was for a fast I think it was for two fast chargers in South Burlington and the other was for a whole bank of level two chargers maybe at the university mall or city market or someplace I can't remember specifically but what we did is because the cap was exceeded we scaled them both back and so they're going to each be made an offer which is like here's how much we can give you and the the fast charging folks can either build both fast chargers for less or they can come in with a new proposal for one fast charger which will then find and then we'll pick off somebody else at the next on the list and I think the fast charging project it might have been in the area of 90 or 100,000 dollars so 300,000 if you were looking at the level two would cover several depending how many stations so on the 300,000 in the B-trans budget I think the objective of those funds and we haven't finalized this objective at this point but would be to figure out how we can best leverage the BW EVSE program and the B-trans money to make sure that we have the fast chargers in all the locations that are strategically outlined in the Du Bois and King report and to the extent that we can make that happen and still have money from the 300,000 left over because we do want public-private partnerships for these then we would probably look at level two chargers in maybe best areas or other locations that would be appropriate to where the need is so the parking rides who are looking at the fast chargers yeah I mean either a parking ride or somewhere near an interstate interchange we're really trying to make sure that it's not just interstates but it could be route seven in Rotlin River, Bennington or Manchester make sure that the highly traveled routes in the state where we're going to have interconnections with people that are doing through travel or and it's not necessarily heavy travel because where they're referenced in the state we just need to have a fast charger it could be in pain I don't think that's on the map but that we have populated those in a place where a person is likely to get off and spend 20 minutes on the fast charger charging the level two chargers are a little complicated when it comes to the the park and ride locations because oftentimes people are leaving a car to park and ride for eight or ten hours and you can get your level two charge in about three hours and so we don't want that level two charger tied up with somebody who's leaving their car there all day that's why we're building our new parking rides with level one charging so you can just plug in and leave your car there all day and you can charge so it's still a work in progress we're trying to make sure we get as much bang for the buck as we possibly can at the right location for the type of charging we're trying to incentivize I think I've been through all my prepared marks and we've covered a bunch else so I'm still available for questions if there aren't we have covered a lot very good thank you yes Mark no question and a comment I just want to appreciate all that you're doing to be trans I've been on this committee this is my one year and I feel like there's a real effort to move forward on this given what we know about what's happening in the climate given the dire reports that we've got this fall from your governmental panel on climate change and the lack of action from the federal government I can set an example it's a start and I really appreciate what you're doing well I appreciate all you're doing as well thank you well I know it was mentioned earlier on the drive electric for a lot of connection and I just wouldn't encourage people to look at their website because it's really helpful for a lot of and it would be a great interface for just a public use I just wanted to say one more thing too and I think people always need to remember this it's economically beneficial and beneficial to our public health in terms of the kind of emissions that come out that affect their quality and asthma and things like that so a win for the environment and for public health and for people's I brought two copies of my testimony did I need to do that do you want that alright good thank you very much so we actually have a break until I don't know if I'm scared could you call me if I can good morning some people are at a press conference maybe not okay shall I still get going now or yes okay thanks for the record my name is David Pelletier I work for the agency of transportation the policy and planning section I work closely with Michelle she trusts you so much she's left apparently I'll let you cover that seven second thoughts no yes so here I'm here to just give a representation on the completion of the long-range transportation forgive me I'm alright so we're gonna I'm a little technology challenged just swiping I'm a phone and laptop guy I'm not a tablet guy so this is good I'm stretching out today a little bit so I will kind of fumble with my paper here because I do have a few notes but just a brief agenda to kind of frame what we're gonna talk about here a quick overview of the purpose and context of the state's long-range transportation plan very brief on process and approach to updating it too much into that but there is there are a couple slides to kind of provide an overview of how we what about the public process and the stakeholder engagement process and then most importantly the really the goals and strategies to implement the long-range transportation plan focus on mostly so purpose and context of the plan this is this is kind of a broad high-level plan it looks out it's required by federal law to look out at least 20 years so we chose 2040 as our target year for our out year for the plan for the horizon it doesn't mean we're gonna only update it in 2040 and do everything we have to do between now and then and we update this preferably every five years or so it's actually been a number of years more than that since the last update time slipped by us and the last adopted plan was 2009 it was much longer than we'd like for an update an update cycle but one of the benefits that provided was that there was a lot to talk about in this plan much has changed in the past decade or so in terms of technology and transportation trends so it was a good a good plan to dig into and take a look at transportation in the broadest sense this does cover all modes of transportation if you look at the inverted pyramid there on the screen it kind of gives the context of the few major plans that we house in the agency of transportation this is the broadest and highest level it's very much a setting general directions and priorities for the agency for transportation in Vermont and then at the very bottom of the pyramid you see the modal plans those are the rail plan, the transit plan that's where you'll see actual programs and projects really well defined this is not a project plan per se so you're going to see more generalities less about a specific project which you'll find out in those modal plans the one other thing really to mention here is just that I made a point of underlining that it's the Vermont long range transportation plan this isn't just a plan for the agency of transportation right below that you see that the AOT strategic plan mentioned in that pyramid that's our work plan for the coming five years or so where we pull from this long range plan and kind of take priorities and work on them in a more focused manner and some of the things I won't get into that because that's a whole other rabbit hole but you know some of our focus in the next five years or so I have to do some of the issues that you might imagine EV infrastructure and electric vehicle system build out some of our rail initiatives to increase passenger service intercity bus initiatives et cetera so you'll see some of those things coming to the more in some of the more kind of tactical and shorter range plans on that for now we could talk about that for hours or I could probably sleep in it process and approach we very we very deliver it making sure that this wasn't a long drawn out process kind of culminating in a massive document that was really unapproachable and hard for the average person to digest so we really aimed for a succinct document it's about 60 pages or so there's a link at the end of this presentation to take you to the actual final document if you want to get into any more detail about what we're going to talk about today and in terms of the update process we really relied on our existing framework of relationships with the original planning commissions and many other state agencies and interest groups such as AARP, local motion for bike pad issues Vermont League of Cities Towns Vermont Truck and Bus Association our rail advisory committee public transit advisory committee we kind of relied on the existing framework rather than going out and doing massive very intensive public meetings from scratch so we were pretty efficient in that way in terms of the update process unless you have any specific questions on that I'll leave the process part at that and feel free to follow up after we ask questions this is a very basic timeline of the process and you can see we met at three points with a stakeholder meeting that was formed specifically for this process and then you can see mention of meeting with the regional transportation advisory committees through the regional planning commissions at a couple points as well and you can see it took place over about a year period culminating really at the end of this past summer getting into the material itself here so the vision statement that the stakeholder committee led us to is on the screen there and it's it's really kind of a modification of the existing vision statement from the 2009 plan it's very it's big picture and broad as you might imagine especially in a plan of this nature but the committee ultimately thought that it really reflected the priorities in a really high level broad sense what the plan need to be looking towards moving right into the goals and the way the plan is set up is that there are six primary goals and a number of strategies under each goal to implement that goal and what these slides really the rest of this presentation shows about 10 or so slides here are each of the goals and then the graphics or the pictures really illustrates some of the specific strategies that are under each of those goals it's not completely inclusive but it gives you a good idea of the flavor of the strategies that are included there so goal one improves safety and security across all modes transportation this slide is really reflective of the highway side of things and you can see from the left to the right click it or ticket sleep belt check stop for reflecting our pretty extensive highway safety program that some of which we house agency transportation infrastructure components and also of course our DMV enforcement component and state police partners so there's a big component of that in our strategies the middle photo shows a work in a work zone and work in a work zone so safety's been a big push in recent years as well obviously those workers are extremely vulnerable in these situations as our drivers if they're not being attended through those areas and then last but not least over on the right there is just a reflection that in light of especially in light of initiatives like complete streets and just our general push to have a really multimodal users like bicyclists and pedestrians really need to be considered in all of the work we do and accommodations need to be made for those users is that me I asked is I've never seen anyone else have different types of paniers on it it's an old photo and I actually can identify the rider I don't think we would mind but that's Chapin Spencer it is it's an old photo and I've been criticized for you need any photo but I this is a great photo right that's Chapin from his local ocean days I think yeah but if you want to submit one I can use an updated one thank you very much so continuing goal one safety and security are so paramount in what we do in this plan there are I think three slides for this one goal the rest of the goals I promise there's one slide each not to make them any less important I'll capture it all in the slide here this slide is really to reflect that we are talking about all modes here and rail safety especially as we work to increase the condition and the speeds and the effectiveness of our rail our rail network we need to be cognizant of crossings crossing safety and just general condition of the system for safety and security purposes same goes with our public use airport system they've got very specific needs to their industry we have ourselves and other organizations and advocacy groups are keeping a watch on our airports to make sure they have the correct safety features and security features and then this last slide for safety and security reflecting safety and security it's really to capture the technology side of things there's been so much change over the past decade and we expect that to really continue hopefully to be something that we can really leverage in terms of safety and security these few images here from left to right the left most image is a photo of a screen bank in our transportation operations center in Berlin by the airport and this is where all the information that we collect through our roadway information sensors as opposed to you see on the side of the interstates and a whole host of other information sources that are out there are channeled into this so that our operations staff can keep an eye on road positions incidents and can leverage technology to manage those and hopefully avoid them when possible this is where you see weather advisories on the variable message signs there's somebody type that in probably from there maybe remotely but that's where that stuff is being typed out of the center picture is a bit cartoonish but really reflects the fact that vehicle technology and infrastructure technology evolve rapidly you'll talk about I'm sure you've already talked about vehicle automation and the various technologies associated with that cars will increasingly become more complex and communicate with each other for safety purposes and also with infrastructure now that's what's going on with that signal right there is just the concept of vehicles communicating electronically with infrastructure to increase safety and also increase effectiveness of the transportation more capacity out of the road if we've got people more effectively technology has some promise for some of those advantages as well and then on the right just a quick screen grab from a tool that agency transportation has been developing in partnership with a few other organizations to take a look at how rivers and roads relate and take a look based on data based on experience and based on information about river corridors and highway infrastructure where we might need to be making investments to avoid really costly and dangerous transportation infrastructure damage goal to preserve and improve the condition and performance of the ultimoral transportation system these photos were chosen pretty deliberately and again my photo on the right is a Chittin County very dated but it's a great photo so apologies these three areas really pavement condition, bridge condition and travel time reliability is what's known as in the industry that's basically just a reflection of congestion on roads these three areas are ones that we're particularly interested in in that there are federal requirements for reporting on all of these conditions and we are required now to set goals for ourselves and show progress towards them so what was the best management practice for many years and what we've been doing anyway is now a requirement through the federal transportation authorization so these are important considerations can I ask is that actually the portrait in the middle or you don't know I don't know I'm not sure what piece of equipment that is and I can't tell from this photo if it is apologies well that's what I'm wondering if it's the one we invested in or if it's back when they were still hiring now you went down to see that it looks like it but like I said you can't see it that might be it we only have one of those yeah I think I saw it being used down by the Formula 4 dealership in the roundabout there's a rail bridge right there that was being inspected over the past maybe six months or so it looks really big in this picture which is why it has a tape but it's the same idea we only have one Barbara we hired out the job so it could be right just for the novelty of it I will look into it and find out as you know Goal 3 Provide nobility options and accessibility for all users of the transportation system these images are somewhat self-explanatory but on the right there public transit and transportation for all users of the system are paramount goals everybody has access we've got a pretty strong solid transportation or public transportation system especially for a small rural state we've had a few intercity bus routes start up in the past five or six years one very recently down in Bennington County connecting over to to a rental area in New York to the train station over there so we're working these alternative transportation nodes but we're really trying to make sure we have a comprehensive system that everybody has access to and then the photo on the right is an image from an online trip planner that we manage through the Govermont program it's actually Ross McDonald in the public transit program you've already heard from him down here and that's just to reflect the fact that once we invest in these systems or even as we invest in them we need to make sure people know about them and make sure that they have tools to use them so that they are easy to take advantage of because everybody knows if one has access to a personal automobile it's usually a lot easier to just pop in that and go from point A to point B so if we're going to get people that have the option choice riders on these other modes and easy to do so we'll continue there's strategies to continue these programs and investments and those kind of the catalyst for a lot of positive change in some of these communities that's one of the areas that are emphasized in the goal and the strategies in this goal Brian, Mike did you guys recognize him oh yeah oh yeah he's buying jewelry when we did our streetscape we spent a lot of time talking about which light fixtures there's a console that definitely got a few extra hours out of the video in the middle there this I was I don't know most of you probably do this is the island line it's the causeway of the culture it's causeway yeah and this is unique enough that this was the cover photo for this is a screen wrap that I took of a piece I can't remember if it was in the glow over New York Times I should figure that out but it was an article about the best five bike paths in New England got to visit sort of things you know it kind of goes without saying that this is the kind of thing that we want to be known for I think and to the degree that we can make investments and coordinate with other agencies and partners to develop these facilities I think it really stands to benefit the state in a number of ways including obviously the tourism dollars that it brings to the state and then on the right just reflective of the fact that we've been for many years working on some pretty important passenger rail service extensions one to Montreal and then the western quarter extension so those will continue that's about as close to the specific projects as we get to really mentioning in this plan just because they are such they are such premier projects and Santa really near to the state for economic vitality go five in the plan is practice environmental stewardship and these few photos here represent some of our bigger initiatives and work areas both at the agency and with other organizations as we implement this plan on the bottom is a stormwater retrofit of an interstate interchange I think it's exit 10 although I'm not positive and that just reflects the importance of water quality and I know that you all worked a lot in the past couple of years on water quality issues and making sure the transportation is doing its part and so we have we have a lot of energy being put towards that investments being made in that and on the center top that doesn't need much explanation we are involved with many partners and ensuring that the charging infrastructure build out in the state is taking place and taking place in the right places and in the right way and we'll continue to be involved in that process as well and then on the right top that is a partner of ours from agency natural resources and what he's showing there is a really sensitive wildlife habitat quarter and we're trying to do more coordination with what the experts in these areas is to make sure that when we're making improvements and working on our highway and transportation infrastructure we're being cognizant of where that habitat is trying to do our very best to minimize impact to it certainly and then if there are ways to modify projects or the infrastructure that we actually improve conditions at the same time that we're out there doing work we're going to be doing anyways to incorporate those design elements into the infrastructure and then finally goal six, last but not least support livable healthy communities guess on the community in that photo? yeah and again a similar situation like a convergence of a number of projects and agencies and organizations and municipalities making a concerted investment in a downtown area and this happens to be this is a real this is scoring oh yeah yeah you got it that's just to reflect that the investment and the focus isn't completely on the villages in downtown it's the connections between them and these other facilities that sometimes go unnoticed but really are important to our communities and overall public health as well this is really the last slide about before my contact information and the link to the plan itself and I just wanted to share some of the themes that we heard in the feedback and the outreach as we traveled around the state we went to all 11 regional planning commission regions and sponsored public meetings to solicit input a lot of the input came from their members themselves they often had guests from the public that joined to provide input as well but these were some of the things that popped for me in particular and that were kind of hurting in more than one region and since we sort of ended on that within the Cisco trail and some of the other slides there this emphasis on recreation related to tourism we really heard about that in many areas in the state there's so much going on there with recreation tourism related to bicycling and then the LVRT the Loyal Valley Rail Trail we heard a lot about that and just wanted to see that proceed and progress to its fruition for the same reason that we've seen so much success in some of those other facilities like the Colchester bike path photo this is another like greater regional northeast region draw to get people up here to recreate we still have consistent support for public transit and passenger rail as reflected in the presentation here we did see it's nice to get kudos every now and then although I'm sure you wouldn't get this compliment today observed improvement in road surface conditions and just an appreciation for maintaining our existing assets we get a lot of work to do this spring we'll just leave it at that let's see making sure that we appropriately address the vehicle technology opportunities as they arise and then leveraging technology and using intelligent transportation systems that's the ITS one apologies for system management so again that transportation operations center photo that I showed you making sure that where it's wise to do we're putting in infrastructure that can be leveraged but what's address connected that's really that's really just the reflection of what I mentioned earlier that as technologies evolve the cars themselves will be communicating with each other and with the infrastructure increasingly so you know you have lane assist in some cars right now instead of braking in some of these technologies that are sort of confined to the vehicle that you're in I think you know what you'll see more and more in what we're seeing technology moving towards vehicles that actually communicate with each other so that you might not have only one car seeing another and slowing down you might actually have platooning opportunities to get more efficiency out of the network where vehicles are communicating to keep an even space between themselves and then again the autonomous part is I think the part that gets so much press is self-driving cars so I think everybody agrees and you can see it rolling out slowly everybody agrees it's going to continue to evolve I don't think that we're I think everybody also agrees we're not going to wake up one morning in five or even ten years and all the cars are going to be driving themselves it's a long slow process for fleet replacement and technology evolution Laura is the connectivity does it include to when you're showing us the traffic light cartoonish picture where it's speaking that's part of the whole connectivity concept connected vehicle technology is usually framed in kind of two components vehicle to vehicle or V2V sometimes and vehicle to infrastructure V2I those are the two main tracks keeping an eye on both of them is there any federal or state regulation about how agencies like VTRIAN use the data that's collected by as we roll out devices video and we know where cars are and identifying data that can tell you whose car is what it seems like it's wild west right now if I understand it is there anything in our conversations happening that you're aware of protecting individual and data as we roll out devices? Yeah I hear the question I cannot provide a real specific answer to that I don't know I've not been involved in conversations at that level of detail and I know some of this is probably bigger picture kind of federal FCC issues at kind of the federal level that will dictate what we can do down here in terms of information and what not but I don't know nothing specific to transportation that I'm aware of? I'm recalling Joseph Galli telling us that we bought a trove of data that told us about vehicle locations right right I don't think any of that had identifiable data but it was hanging off of bluetooth from cell phones and that's the thing that gets to me smart people will know how to figure out where this came from anything else in there? so thank you very much for having me here today if you do want to take a look at the planet itself available at that link and if you have any questions feel free to reach out to us well this was great and actually very nice to finish our morning because we got a lot of information being up to your issues actually kind of all specific we're not live version of we're going to rock well into my next presentation so that people are all you know very very easy to understand I know springs around the corner thanks a lot