 Major sponsors for Ableton on Air include Green Mountain Support Services, empowering people with disabilities to live home in the community, Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Ableton on Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, WWW, this is the Bronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Powered Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International, Anchor FM and Spotify. Partners for Ableton on Air include the HOD of New York and New England, where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity, and Montpelier Sustainable Coalition, Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx, Roosevelt Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx. Ableton on Air has been seen in the following publications, Park Chester Times, WWW, this is the Bronx.com, New York Powered Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, WWW.H.com, and the Montpelier Bridge. Ableton on Air is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England Chapter, and the Society of Professional Journalists. Welcome to this edition of Ableton on Air, the one and only program that focuses on the needs, concerns and achievements of the Divinely Able. I've been your host, Lauren Seiler. And on this, before we get to this topic today, transportation and micro-transportation, let's thank our sponsors, Green Mountain Support Services, Washington County Mental Health, and many others including the partnership of the sustainable Montpelier Coalition and many others for helping with the production of Ableton on Air including the Division for the Blind and the Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont. Thank you, Elizabeth, for joining us on this. Our guest today is Elizabeth Parker from the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition. Thank you again for joining us. Oh, thanks. It's my pleasure to be here for sure. Okay. Before... And Arlene, I hear you're on the phone. Glad that you're here with us too. Okay. At the time I found it. Okay. Let's get into our show today. Before we get into the new happenings of the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition, what is the mission and goals again for those that don't know of the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition? So the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition came out of the 2030 Sustainable Montpelier Design Competition which was held in 2000... Gosh, 2017. And it was a wonderful competition where design groups from all over the world, from Europe and Africa and Asia and the United States, all submitted plans of what Montpelier would look like if all of our... 60% of our downtown parking were housing commercial space or third space, green space for the community to use. And so out of that, the entries from that competition, we had some suggestions, one of which was reimagining transportation and shifting land use so that we would have... The parking lots would be turned into housing and commercial space and green space. And also, since COVID, we've been working on community engagement through the Capital Area Neighborhood Coalitions. You said Capital Area Coalitions. Neighborhood. So what does that encompass? So Capital Area Neighborhoods was started almost 12 years ago during one of another economic downturn. And so when we had been talking about it, Mayor Ann and Sustainable Montpelier had been talking about it. It was originally an initiative started by Mary Hooper when she was mayor. It worked for a while, but then didn't have administrative support, so it sort of dipped. And when COVID came along, Mayor Ann was like, we really need to energize these networks again. So there used to be 12 neighborhoods across Montpelier and Sustainable Montpelier jumped in to help organize and we realized that according to the zoning map now, there are 50 neighborhoods and that neighborhoods self-identify in smaller groups than what had been there before. So there are now 20 neighborhoods throughout Montpelier organized by 30 volunteer coordinators. So no one gets paid. No one gets paid. It's not a paid position. No, it's not a paid position for them. And so what we do, Sustainable Montpelier is, so Hanif Nazarali is the new liaison for the Capital Area Neighborhoods and he crafts a newsletter at least once or sometimes twice a month that he sends out to the 30 coordinators and then they have a network that they send this newsletter out and it's got all sorts of information about events, different messages from the city and there are 15 community partners. So that's one thing. And then for the first time during this past election, the Mountain View Capital Area Neighborhood, Peter Kellman asked for a District 3 candidates forum and I don't know if you had a chance to watch that. You're not in Districts 3 yourself. So you probably didn't but the four candidates who were running for the two Districts 3 positions had an amazing hour and a half discussion moderated by the former executive director of the Calicober Library, Tom McKeon. And it was just fabulous. They talked about all sorts of Montpelier issues and so that's the first of four forums that we will help organize this year and it is really up to the capillary neighborhoods or the city to request a forum. Now let's talk about micro transit and the importance of now big cities like New York and Boston have bigger transit situations and also bigger stresses with the situation with transit. So explain this article in Bloomberg and how it came about. Yeah, so a reporter who writes for Bloomberg Online got in touch with us to talk about My Ride by GMT, which is the micro transit pilot project that started June 4th in 2021. Get my numbers straight here. So it's been running for about 15 months now and this is the first time that micro transit has been piloted in a city under 10,000 people and so the reporter was really interested in how it was working for us. He interviewed a couple of other transit specialists and may I add, both of them were not very supportive of micro transit so it gave a little bit. Why is that? Because I just think it's their personal opinion. I think it's really hard. Public transportation used to be privately owned and then it became government run organizations and there's what we call traditional transportation which is fixed route, fixed schedule buses which is what you have a lot in larger urban areas like New York and Boston and that makes sense because you have a larger population so it makes sense to be going across down certain corridors that are popular on a regular schedule. However, because of the population density in my pillar it doesn't always make sense to have fixed route schedules and so what we did with this pilot project back in January of 2021 was to take three fixed schedule bus routes and shift them to this on-demand system. So now there are three buses that are going around my pillar and there are a couple of ways that people can request a ride. You have to call. There's a calling, the GMT call center which, oh my god, I'm going to have to just look it up just a moment, it's 802. Just a moment while I find it I can't believe I don't have it up here. Do you have it there? 802-223-7287 Yes, you got it. Okay, I was going to say that but if I said it wrong. So 802-223-7287, that's one option and that's an option. Right, and so that's an option for people who don't have a smartphone or a laptop. The other option is there's a URL that you can go to and you can find it on the GMT website on the My Ride page. You can go to a URL, use your laptop and get into the My Ride app there and request a ride. And then the other option is for anybody who has a smartphone that you can download an app either on Android or Apple and use that app to call a ride. So whereas with fixed route, fixed schedule you could just go to a bus stop and get on the bus stop the difference is that with My Ride you actually have to schedule your ride. Okay, did you want to start asking questions? Yeah, so I want to repeat what she said. What if someone doesn't have a computer or a phone or internet connection? Yeah, and so that's a really important question. It turns out that in December of 2020 we contacted Vermont, the disability rights Vermont and talked with them about how to give universal access so that anybody who needs a ride can schedule a ride. And originally we thought that it would be good to use tablets at different locations around the city but disability rights Vermont suggested what I call a transit phone. It's like a courtesy phone that you would find at an airport where it's like an old-fashioned pay phone and you have a phone, you pick it up and you immediately go to the call center. And so those would be put in key locations for instance the transit center downtown at the Berlin Mall and at Price Chopper, at Shaw's, at the Maplewood truck stop and a few other locations probably the My Peeler Housing Authority locations down in My Peeler. And so that would give people who don't have phones the ability to actually, I have my dog with me who's insisting upon coming up the camera. It's a CC, she's our mascot. And that would allow people who don't have phones to be able to make the calls that they need and so then they could have that as an automatic ride. So does that explain Arlene? Okay, go ahead, any more questions? Yeah, no, is there possible, these buses are small. So is it possible like for larger wheelchairs? Well, all of the buses that are now running are wheelchair accessible and so what is interesting is that there's this whole controversy around the buses that are running now are diesel based and there's a lot of talk about electrification and one of the quotes I love to use is from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policies and UC Davis which says that communities that engage in electrification and ride sharing can cut their CO2 emissions by 80%. So everybody's like electrification, electrification. Well, it turns out that we have a little bit of a bottleneck at the federal level. Not all of the small vans that we would like to use have been approved for public transit. They have to go through rigorous expensive testing at the federal level before they can be used. So what we call cutaway buses, the Ford cutaway buses that we use are on the same chassis that a smaller van would be on. That might be electric down the line but we're just not at that point. So I encourage people to contact their congressional delegation and ask that the Federal Transportation Authority, you know, test smaller vehicles. Now you have some PowerPoint slides that you're going to talk about. I do and so the PowerPoint slides that I have is that with the traditional transportation fixed route, fixed schedule, the buses only went along certain routes. So I have a slide that we can put up now which shows that the areas... And then let's put up the slide. Well, I don't think that they have it right now. No, that's a... Right. Okay, good. Yeah. So they'll, and so you'll see that the blue, the yellow and the red areas on the map are the only place where the bus used to go. So people would have to go to those bus routes in order to get on the bus, which really wasn't very feasible. So what's exciting now is that the entire area of Montpelier and popular areas in Berlin are all accessible by the bus. So the My Ride bus goes from where to where? It goes from where you are to where you want to go when you want to get there. And so it's, but it's within Montpelier and key areas in Berlin are where the service area is now. Yeah, because I know it goes, it goes from, say, pioneer apartments to Walmart. Yeah. And it goes to some other... And Shaw's and... Price shop. And but also for medical appointments, it goes to all the different doctors' offices that are up around the hospital. So it's really important for people to be able to have that. Now, part of what the Bloomberg article brought up was that it's after people try out microchances, sometimes they discover that certain routes need to still be fixed route, fixed schedule service. And so there's discussion now of, since 40% of the traffic that we're seeing is on the previous hospital hill route, which ran from the lane shops, pioneer, through downtown Montpelier, up Berlin Street to the hospital, to Walmart, to Shaw's, and then it would have deviations up there for doctors' offices and whatnot. 40% of the current traffic is on that schedule. So there's the discussion that after the pilot that a route would be replaced and that the other two buses would be used for other types of transportation within Montpelier. And so that's called a hybrid system. It turns out that that fixed route fixed schedule cannot be integrated into the software package. It would be a standalone on its own. Why is that? Because it's a different type of function. It doesn't work with the software. Now, in the other part of the PowerPoint presentation that you're going to show now, you're owning a car, almost $300,000. $500,000. Over the course of a lifetime. Over the course of a lifetime. How did you guys come up with those numbers? So that's some research that was done in Europe. And there was actually, I think it was 480 euros. And I put 500,000 as a low estimate. But they actually thought it was closer to $650,000 per person over the course of a lifetime. Is it depending on the state or the place? No, it's just an average. It's a federal average. And then the other thing that we don't realize about car ownership is that there are hidden costs. The wear and tear on roads is more when you have a lot of individual cars going over those roads than if you had fewer public transit vehicles. And so the average cost for each individual in this country over the course of their lifetime in taxes would be $280,000. And that's for roads and support of the car industry. And so one of the things that people were like, oh my God, Bloomberg said that the cost per ride on my ride is $16.75. And that's so high. And of course what happened was that my ride launched during COVID. So at that time, we could only have four people on the bus at any time. Everybody had to be masked. And then in general, people were staying at home. Yeah, that's why they switched over. Because from what I observed and probably other people is that before it switched over to my ride, there was no one on the bus. Yeah. Is that the main reason? Yeah. Well, we didn't switch over because of that. It just was coincidence that we adopted and launched the my ride service at the height of COVID just in that December, January period where it was so intense here in Vermont. And so the cost, OK, so nationally, all public transportation during COVID went way down. It went down almost 50%. And so it is believed that it's going to take another two years for the numbers to come back to what they were pre-COVID. We've already seen a lot of steady growth with my ride. Every month we have more riders using the service. So that's exciting. And one of the goals for us is that we have people who are transit dependent riders. Those are people who don't own cars. I am a transit dependent rider. I have voluntarily chosen for nine years to not own a vehicle and to use public transit because I am like a super green person. So you won't go in a cab? You won't go in a car? Well, I don't own a car. I do use cabs occasionally. I use a my ride. Occasionally I rent a car. I use the train a lot. I use the link to go to Burlington, for instance. So I use public transit or I will rent. But the idea of car ownership just isn't something that I believe in. I think that we should have access over ownership. But anyway, the whole thing I'm getting at is that we were talking about the cost of my ride. So of course the cost per ride is going to be higher because there are fewer people using the service right now. However, that being said, we used to have a fixed route fixed schedule bus route which was called the capital shuttle. The cost of the ride on the capital shuttle was $25 for ride. So sometimes if a service isn't being highly used, it can be very expensive. But the reason I talked about car... Also it's a considerable waste of time because if no one's using the bus, sometimes the driver's just going around. Yeah, right. They're on a fixed route and so that's one of the other things. But I just want to go back to the cost. So when we talk about the cost being exorbitant for a public transit ride, that's the reason I gave the information about what it costs to use a car and what the hidden tax cost is. So just let's use an estimate of $780,000 over the course of a lifetime. When you look at that, then you realize the fact that the cost per ride, even on a not very often used route like the capital shuttle, is still less expensive than personal ownership. Now, the thing is during the pandemic, GMGA stopped charging for rides. Well, usually people that live in special housing, they get free transit cards. But normally it's $0.50 for disabled and $1 for regular riders. And link buses are different. But is that going to change? Well, there's discussion now, and it hasn't been decided. I don't know that its final decision has been made yet. However, there's been discussion about keeping the my ride service free of charge. So as soon as that information comes out, you'll see it publicly in the paper and online. Did you want to ask any more questions? Take your time. Yeah, the masking. According to CDC, according to CDC, as of April 18th, they're going to make a decision whether or not people have to wear masks on buses and planes. Exactly. I don't know whether it's the 18th or the 14th, but mid-April is what we know of as the masking deadline at this point. But they're reevaluating on a regular basis. So we know that at least for a little under a month more, there will be a masking requirement. It might be extended even longer than that. Because after all, safety is a big concern. And I have to tell you, the average trip length of a ride is 11 minutes or something. So it can be shorter than 11 minutes. It could be maybe a little longer than 11 minutes. The CDC's guidelines back at the height of COVID was to not stay in enclosed space for more than 15 minutes. So the exciting thing about my ride is that you're in the bus for a shorter period of time than most people are going to the grocery store. So it's really not, as long as you're masked, it's not a huge thing to do. And they made it a rule that if you go on a bus, you can have your computer bag, but you have to not have so much. I think it's because of COVID, carrying so much on a bus. Is there a rule? Well, you can bring, for instance, if you go shopping and you have a trolley cart, you can definitely... Or a shopping cart. Shopping cart, yeah, a little, I call them shopping trolley. So I have one. I use all the time. And so you can bring one of those on the bus. You just have to secure it so that it's not in the way of someone or rolling around the bus. So you can carry things on the bus. And go ahead. You've got seven minutes left. Check your time. Okay, can you repeat the question? Okay, I'm going to... Repeat the question one last time. Sorry. We can re-edit this. So what accommodations? Well, yeah, okay. Okay, okay, I pretty much understand. What accommodations? What accommodations? Is there, like, any, like, for people that are deaf and hard of hearing, is there a TTY service for them? Yes, there are. I believe that there is. Thank you. Yes, thank you, Arlene. Thank you, Arlene. And Arlene, I wanted to finish the question about access to transit phones, because we never finished that. So just this past week, I was talking with the TRANS, which is the Agency of Transportation, one of the public transit coordinators, and about getting transit phones installed. And it turns out that there's federal money for this purpose, and that the Green Mountain Transit will be responsible for, you know, asking for that funding. But the Agency of Transportation will support Green Mountain Transit in any way that they can to help locate phones at the appropriate place. So that's a big step forward. So you would open up a latch, the phone would be there, pick up the phone. It probably would be like a pay phone almost, and it would just be a box with an old-fashioned cord and handle, and you would just pick up the phone, and when the call center is there, you would dial right to the call center, and you could talk with them. They had almost something similar up at the hospital like if you needed a cab. Yes, the hospital, and we don't have to put a transit phone at the hospital because in the lobby at the Central Lawn Hospital, there is a, just next to where the gift shop is, there's a phone right there that you can use. It's against the wall, it's a grade unit, and so that's always there if you're at the hospital. You know, one of the challenges that we have, unfortunately, is the fact that worldwide, there is a scarcity, there's a shortage of CDL drivers. I was going to ask, what is, I'm sorry to piggyback off your question, but what are the major challenges? We've got time. What are the major challenges around transportation and people with special needs? Right. You were going to go ahead. You know, I think we should be so proud because you know, so many times we're trained to complain about things and I just want to give GMT credit because this is the first, so the software provider that does the app is called Via. They're from down Boston and they have people that work for them worldwide, they have worldwide services, but this is the first time that they've really worked with an operator because oftentimes they work privately with people, they're not public transit oriented. This is the first time that they've had to work with anybody, any group that has a strong union component and so GMT and their driver union work very closely together. The drivers get breaks, they get lunch breaks, they get all sorts of things that private drivers using the app on a different system would not get. So that has impacted our learning curve on how to always have availability, but the challenge is that there just aren't enough people driving now and we would have extended hours if we had drivers and so for instance when I talk about the phone at the hospital, I think about people who go up during the day, they take my ride up and they're in the emergency room but then they get out after six o'clock, there isn't a my ride to take them back home and if we could get more drivers, so our bottleneck is drivers, if we could find more drivers to drive then there's money for extended hours, we just don't have drivers. But this is not just my ride's issue, this is an issue all over, so then there's been a discussion of well, could smaller vans be used that don't require CDL drivers and it's the same challenge, there just aren't people interested in driving the way they... And you can't get a volunteer driver? No, volunteer drivers are used in some aspects of the GMT system to help move people who need to go to Dartmouth-Hitchcock and back and forth, that's a whole different system but that really wouldn't work on a long-term basis because it's a big responsibility driving human beings around. It's not like your FedEx or UPS where you're driving packages around, you're actually driving humans, so it's a big responsibility. And people would want to be confident. Yes, exactly. So I just wanted to say that we started up an ad campaign in the Montpelier Bridge and so we have had two, let's see, so the first one was the March 9th, March 22nd bridge and we had this wonderful ad which is a rider and she's got... My ride picks me up where I am and takes me where I want to go when I want to get there and then, of course, one of the things that's happened is that the gas prices are going up so high and so our ad in this issue of the bridge is my ride, high gas prices got you down? Take my ride for free today. So we're just trying to encourage people to try my ride during this crisis so that they can just leave their car at home and, you know, not worry about these short trips around town. And the other thing I wanted to say, Larry, is that it turns out that 50% of trips taken in the United States are three miles or less. So the my ride system really is designed just for that. It's for little local, you know, trips around town and so it's really designed to help with that. Anything we didn't mention, we have a couple of minutes left. Sure. Yeah, so that, I mean, that's one of them. I really think that GMT, you talked about people with disabilities, I have to say that GMT is really amazing about working with anybody who needs wheelchair access. There are lifts on all the buses. However, when you make your call or you go online or you use your smartphone, you really need to make sure that you say that you need lift assistance to get into the bus because that takes a certain amount of time and that has to be factored into the scheduling. But, you know, GMT is amazing in the way in which they accommodate people with disabilities. And I think once transit points are in place, then the issue of universal access will be really complete. Anything else you want to add? Yeah. Is there any point where there will be longer days, especially in the summertime with the trip, so is it going to stop at 5-something? So it stops at 6 o'clock now. So the schedule now runs from Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and on Saturday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Arlene, if we had drivers, we could extend those hours. But until such time as, you know, we wave a magic wand and all over the world more drivers appear, you know, but it's a real challenge. It's a challenge in Europe. It's a challenge in Asia. It's a challenge with truckers, you know, it's not just bus drivers, but it's also truckers. So it's a huge issue that we're having to face worldwide, and we have yet to crack the key and, you know, figure out how to get more people interested in doing this. I think that GMT bus drivers are like echo warriors. They're like, they're shifting how we use gas, how we do transportation, and they really are, in my opinion, the, you know, ecological heroes of our time. But nobody talks about them that way except me. Well, we would like to thank, we would like to thank you, Elizabeth Parker from the Sustainable Montpellier Coalition for joining us on Ableton on Air. Now, for more information on booking a ride on GMTA, you can, in my ride, you can go to the number 802-223-7287. That number once again is 802-223-7287 or www.GMTA.org. I think it's GMT. GMT? Hold on a second. Let's just look that one up too. I'm sorry. GMT.org. And I think they're .com. It's GMT.com. Right, Arlene? Yeah. Okay. So that number once again is 802-223-7287. What is the website for the Sustainable Montpellier Coalition? So we're sustainablemontpellier.org. Okay. Yeah. And more information on the Sustainable Montpellier Coalition, you can go to www.SustainableMontpellier.org. And we would like to thank again Elizabeth Parker from the Sustainable Montpellier Coalition for turning us on able to ride on air. Thank you to our sponsors, Green Mountain Support Services, Washington County Mental Health, the Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, and partnering with DBBI over Vermont as well and many, many, many others. The website is www.RideGMT.com. That's rideGMT.com and 802-223-7287. Thank you. See you next time. I'm Lon Siler. See you next time on the next edition of Abledon on Air. Major sponsors for Abledon on Air include Green Mountain Support Services, empowering people with disabilities to live home in the community. Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Abledon on Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, www, this is the Bronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Powered Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International, Anchor FM and Spotify. Partners for Abledon on Air include Yechad of New York and New England, where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Center Vermont Habitat for Humanity and Montpelier Sustainable Coalition, Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx, Rose of Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, but Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx. Abledon on Air has been seen in the following publications, Park Chester Times, www, this is the Bronx.com, New York Powered Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, www.h.com and the Montpelier Bridge. Abledon on Air is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England Chapter and the Society of Professional Journalists.