 Welcome, I'm Diane Meyerhoff, host for a special program today about the Interstate 89-2050 study. I'm joined today by David Saladino, the study manager from the consulting firm VHB, and Charlie Baker, executive director of the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. Thank you both so much for joining me today. Thank you. Thank you. So Dave, actually, you know, I think we're going to start with Charlie, right? We're going to talk about how the study came about. Interstate 89-2050, 30 years from now, yes? Wow. Tell us where that came from. It's a long ways away. I was actually thinking about, was I actually going to still be alive? Absolutely. I was doing the count, you know. Of course you are. Well, it's a long way up. It's only 30 years away. 30 years, okay. But it's the Interstate highway. Interstate projects are complex and expensive. And so really talking to V-trans, they're like, we need to get thinking now about what we might want to do in the future. And there may be some things that happen sooner than 30 years from now. But we wanted to look out that whole time frame just so that we're being as inclusive and as thoughtful as possible about the long-term future. And then some more background about this. It really came out of our efforts to do, we do a long-range transportation plan for the county, Chittenden County. And we did that about a year and a half ago or so and looked at all kinds of improvements across Chittenden County and what that would do to our transportation system, how do our roads work, transit bikes, pads, all of that. And as we were doing that work, it really became obvious that we didn't have a solution for what happens at Exit 14. Which is, which exit is that? So that's the Burlington, South Burlington exit. Wilson Road. Wilson Road, Route 2. And at Exit 14, if you've driven south from St. Albans to get to Burlington in the morning, you know what that's like and similarly leaving in the afternoon. And we also know it's not going to be a simple answer. Just widening it doesn't really fix what happens when you get off the interstate. And so we really concluded that we needed to take a deeper dive and take more time to figure out what should we do on the interstate in all of Chittenden County with a focus on Exit 14. But we are looking at other things, how it impacts in Milton, you know, Richmond, Williston, Colchester. So we're really trying to get ideas and issues about what needs to happen anywhere on 89, including safety issues and things. But also what do we need to do for the future capacity of it and particularly interchanges in South Burlington area. So north and south of Exit 14, where it really doesn't work too well right now. And going forward, we're looking at it working even less better. And we know it's just not the interstate. To make the interstate work, you have to be able to get off and the arterial roads, Route 2, Route 7, whatever road you're getting off on, you need to be able to move once you get off the interstate. So anyway, the problem is obvious that we need to do something. We're starting probably a good year or year-and-a-half long planning process. So we're not trying to rush through this. But we're just at the beginning of it and taking some initial public input coming up soon. Okay, great. So Dave, tell us, you're in charge of the study, yes, of a team of folks who are working on this. Part of a team, that's right. Yeah, so tell us, what does it look like in the next year and a half, two years that we're going to be working on this? Yeah, so we're just getting into our first round of public input, public engagement with the meeting this Thursday at the City Hall in South Burlington. Meeting starts at six, runs from six to eight. There will be dinner there. So come, free dinner, got to come. Okay, good. And we'll keep telling you about that. Yeah, for those who can't make it, on our website, we will be live streaming the event so folks can, from the comfort of their homes, watch and contribute to the meeting. There's not going to be an opportunity to pose questions, provide input as we go. We'll have several breakout sessions throughout the night. So there will be opportunities to do that. Don't want to discourage anyone from coming out in person because you'll really get a real flavor for the discussion. But we love when people watch Channel 17 because Channel 17 is going to be doing the work, the taping that night. So we love when people do that too. That's right. So if you can't come out, we hope that they'll take advantage of the website. Yep. And then in February, we'll be headed into Williston. We'll be there February 13th, from 68, same program, just a different community. Then in March we'll be in Manuski on the 11th, evening of the 11th. So that'll be our first round. We're also doing targeted focus groups with specific groups that we've identified in addition to this public outreach. This first round, we have three rounds of public outreach throughout the process. This first one is really listening. We'll be talking about the project, but then putting our big listening ears on and we want to get as broad of an input as we can. So we're trying to hit every possible opportunity to get that input. And then from there, we move into evaluating some of the opportunities that Charlie was talking about. Are we looking at an additional lane or lanes on the interstate, additional interchanges? Wow. Additional lanes on the interstate. Potentially. That's big. I mean, it has not changed in the years since it's been built, correct? That's right. But just about 50 years ago. We were there maybe? Yeah. Maybe Williston, Manuski Bridge maybe? Is there an added lane there maybe? But so really, that's 50 years, two lanes each direction. Something like a new lane. I mean, how does one even imagine that? I mean, we have bridges. I mean, we talked about interchanges and how complex they are anyhow. What happens if you add another lane? Yeah. There's a lot that goes into it. The engineering part is certainly complicated, but that comes kind of after. We've got a lot of work to do to get to the point where we need to make sure that that's the right answer. It's obviously an expensive option and we don't want to just jump to that as the only solution. Really, you kind of mentioned kind of 2050 being a lot of ways out there. One of the other reasons that we picked 2050 as that planning goal was that we were looking at lining up with the state's energy goals of being 90% renewable by 2050. And so there's even more issues than just the typical transportation issues. How do we move traffic on the interstate? It's also looking at what else is going to be changing here. The legislature is having conversations about climate and greenhouse gases this year. And certainly the automotive industry is evolving, autonomous vehicles or that technology is increasing every year. So I think we're really trying to set up a system that plans for the future, but doesn't drive the future. We're trying to make sure we're prepared for the future. It may be an additional lane. It may not be. You know, maybe technology is such that cars move much more efficiently and we share rides much more than we do now. And we don't need a third lane. That's an okay outcome of this as well. But we are, there are enough issues going on that we know we need to be prepared for that future. Whatever the future turns into we need to be prepared and have investments ready to go because doing a project on the interstate takes a lot of engineering. But at this point over the next year or so we really want to make sure that the public has been able to participate in this process fully so that what we're coming up with on the to-do list has buy-in and it's publicly supported. And that's really the most important part of this planning process. And I'm interested in the sort of the whole growth issue because certainly except 14 we're seeing much more growth happening there now, the new city center, etc, etc. Does that put a lot of pressure on the interstate as we know it at a time when as you say some of those intersections aren't great right now? What do they look like? Do you have a projection of what they might look like out in 10 or 20 or 30 years? Yeah, so we did do projections for population housing and jobs. And you know, we're talking about population growth is fairly slow, probably like a half a percent or so about I think we're looking at maybe another 20 to 25,000 people in Chinden County and maybe another 15,000 households, housing units. So that's a lot. There's a big number to say 15,000. We have about 60,000 now. So that is a big, so that is, yeah that's all county, but that's a 20-25 percent increase in housing units. And you know as we know Chinden County's been growing faster than the rest of the state, nationally we're not growing that fast, but relative to zero or less than zero feels like a lot here. And so there's a lot of pressure on Chinden County because of job growth, which is even growing faster. The real concern about that is if we have more job growth here than we have housing growth, then that means we're importing even more employees than we do today. And so that means more pressure on surrounding counties to house commuters into Chinden County, which isn't really good for greenhouse gases. It's not good for just people's costs of living, that they're spending that much on transportation in addition to their mortgage or their rent. And so a lot of what we're trying to do with this is look at the big picture, how do we reduce long-term costs and all the things that the negative parts about driving long distances and in a lot of congestion. So it's a complicated story, but we are trying to deal with a growth issue recognizing that right now it's not good situation out there. All right, so it's interesting because you've got this growth pressure, housing, employment at the same time looking at the energy plan, ways to reduce gases, so it seems like you just have this kind of perfect storm forming together. I mean, I hope there's a perfect answer. Demanding that we do something. So let's figure out what to do together. Yeah. I think a lot of the solutions or many of the solutions have been articulated already in the previous planning, long-range planning that the Regional Planning Commission has done. So looking at things like doubling transit service, that's one way to get people out of their single occupant cars into a bus that's more efficient. And so some of those things are base assumptions that we're assuming through the study so that there's going to be much better transit, more transit service out there. There's going to be path sidewalks, accommodations for those things to get people so that everyone doesn't have to get in the car by themselves and drive. There still will be that subset and it's probably in the 85% of commuters are still driving by themselves and probably will be in that range going forward. Even in the best case scenario. It's hard. How do we know? But we have a fairly good transit service system today. Some may argue one way or the other but we have got a pretty robust system for the type for the size of the area and we're struggling to get higher numbers with ridership. So I think we're making the best assumption. We're going to be doubling transit. We're going to be providing these things but we'll still need to focus on what does that mean for all of the cars that are going to be driving around. And I assume the transit in the case of buses still need to take the interstate in many cases, right? For commuters and such. So that's still going to be, that's still added to it, although maybe not one person in one car but exactly that adds to it. And is it true that when if we see some of this growth, which sounds like we will, does that make transit more amenable for folks? Does it make it less expensive or? It depends on where those people land. And will they land in communities that are less expensive, the housing is less more affordable? Is that kind of what you're thinking? So those ideas almost work against each other, right? Because people drive further to find housing that's less expensive, which means they're driving more and they don't even have a transit option. So in order for transit to work, I think we're really trying to encourage more density and increases in zoning to have more people live where the transit routes are. It doesn't always mean it's less expensive though. But household size has been decreasing. So we are looking at, you know, there's a lot more construction of smaller housing units going on right now, which are less expensive. But it is different than, you know, living in a house, you know, out in the woods, which we have, we probably have enough supply of that kind of that part of the market right now. But this is, that is going to be the big challenge, you know, can we make it more attractive and easier to live in our urban areas where we have good transit, biking and walking, where we do get those energy benefits and cost benefits long term. I want to just make sure we get a, we bring up the map of the study area because we've talked about Chittenden County. I don't know how many people are really familiar with which towns those are and how they fit into, particularly the interstate. So maybe one of you could just sort of run us through the towns and what we're looking at on this map. So the project study area, we're looking at the entire interstate system in Chittenden County. So I'll just start from north, you know, Milton is our furthest north town. Having said that though, we are communicating and inviting our neighboring Regional Planning Commission and those towns to participate in this process. You know, if they have ideas about what ought to happen within Chittenden County because they use the system, please let us know that as well. This is not closed, you know, just to Chittenden County residents. There's obviously a lot more people in Vermont that use this road that don't live in Chittenden County also. So from Milton through Colchester, Winooski, Burlington, South Burlington, Williston, Richmond, Bolton, right? Those are the towns where the interstate lives, but the interstate also has implications for other towns. In particular, we're going to be looking, you know, with these growth issues and what's, you know, I kind of keep coming back to the rub at Exit 14, one of the things we're also going to be evaluating is should we be looking at a new interchange somewhere that relieves the pressure from Exit 14 by having an alternative north or south of there. But that could have implications if that ended up somewhere like 116 has been one of the locations brought up. You know, 116 leads you down to Hinesburg, leads you to Addison County. So it could have implications for those communities as well. So it's not just the towns that have the interstate running through them. It may cause growth pressures in towns that, you know, don't think that are very connected to the interstate right now. So we're going to, that'll be a complicated discussion to go through later this spring and summer I think we'll be getting more into the interchange. Should we have a new one? If so, where should it be? How would that work? What are the implications of that? How do we make sure it's a positive impact and not a negative impact? Yeah, I was going to ask you talked about implications and sort of said they tended toward the bad and I wondered what maybe they might be good for some people who would have better access, quote unquote, to the interstate perhaps. I think one of the things that we're really focused on now is this first. So the project kicked off back in May and so we've got, we have a technical and advisory committees that have been established, technical committee more to focus on the technical pieces, the nuts and bolts of the study itself. But the advisory committee is a broader, close to 30 stakeholders to help guide the overall process. And one of the things we've been engaging them with is developing kind of the overarching vision and goals for the study. And those are really where we start to get into what is a good outcome? What is a bad outcome? Because one person's good outcome could be another person's bad outcome. So we're really trying. When here they are, they're actually up there for us to take a look at. Maybe talk a little bit about, first we should just say 37 miles and seven interchanges. That's pretty impressive, right? It's more than I would have thought. Tell us a little bit about these goals here. Yeah. So these, the goals that are, that are shown now, these are goals for the, kind of for the team to, as we make it through, as we move through the project, will be successful if we can kind of work through these things. And so our task collectively is looking at the capacity of the, of the interstate, making sure that safety, operational and resilience issues are addressed. But then this third bullet really gets to the visioning goals, same word, the different set of goals for the corridor itself. And so these vision, that visioning goals are really focused on what does, what does a good corridor look like in the future? What, what do the kind of the collective body of stakeholders? So kind of in the community, what the community kind of sees as a future? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, so far, and, and this will be at the public meetings, if you're able to come, we're on the website, if you plug in there to give us feedback. We've, the advisory committee, working with the advisory committee would have developed six goals. And I know sometimes this is kind of the boring part of doing planning. Oh no, not no. But it actually is very believable. But, but this is what grounds, what comes out of the study, how do we evaluate ideas? We look, we kind of test it against how well are we achieving these goals. So one being safety. So, you know, can we make the corridor safe for mobility and efficiency? Can we move throughout the corridor? And that means for all users. So it's one thing for your cars and trucks to be moving on the interstate. But at the interchanges, what do we do into bikes and pedestrians and transit users at those interchanges? So we'll look at that environmental stewardship and resilience, economic access, livability. So that's where we're going to get into, are we increasing movement in a more urban way that helps, you know, all modes of transportation? Or are we just increasing sprawl and encouraging driving? You know, that's a question we'll evaluate. And then just system preservation, maintaining the transportation system. So we'll also be looking at, you know, when do, when are bridges probably going to need to be replaced? Or when are we going to need to really replace the pavement, not just resurface, but full depth reconstruction? Because the pavement is 50 years old. And so that was one of the things V-Trans kind of brought to the table of like, we're going to have some more maintenance issues on this road as well. And so anyway, those are kind of the six goal areas, if you will. And part of the stage now is to, you know, how do we measure if we're doing good things or negative things, you know, to the environment or to our communities or to mobility? So that'll, that'll be, this is really the starting point for those conversations. At the upcoming public meetings, we'll have two breakout sessions, one of which is focused entirely on these vision and goals. And we will find a way to make them more exciting. But we are really looking for feedback. Are we, have we hit the goal, the goals that Charlie talked through, are those the right ones? And there's some more detailed objectives under each of those. And are those, are we heading in the right direction? Are we quantifying the right things? And then we move into, you know, what are the ideas that we want to evaluate? And so the second piece, the second breakout session, part that we'll be listening for is ideas for the corridor. Is there, is there a great idea for new guard rail types or new, yes, landing strips? You know, who knows? I mean, we're thinking 30 years. So, you know, any idea is a good one. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking about, you mentioned autonomous vehicles. I mean, where do we even start with that? I mean, do we even know enough right now to even know what that might look like? No, when I think about that though, I think one of the potentially and hopeful, I'll remain on the hopeful side, outcomes of that kind of technology maybe that our roads get used much more efficiently, right? You don't need to wait for the car in front of you to move before you hit the gas, right? All the cars move together. It's like a train. Right, right. It would be like that. But you get a lot more capacity on the road system. But also, the hope is also that there's a lot more shared vehicle, you know, kind of the Uber, you know, or Uberpool type system where, hey, there's a car coming by and they're going the same direction. I'll hop in and share the cost, right? But if that kind of future happens, then maybe we don't need a lot more capacity on the roadway system. And so, I brought it up as like, it's something that we need to kind of keep monitoring and not jump to making tens of millions of dollar investment for an old technology. So, I think we'll have to kind of build into this study, you know, as we get further along, how to make sure we're making the right investment at the right time and not investing a lot of public funds that we don't need to ahead of time. So, it just makes it complicated. But we're not going to know the answer right now. But I think we'll have to live with that ambiguity. We don't need to know the answer right now. We just need to be prepared for, you know, that maybe two different futures out there. One of the goals of this study when we're all done is to have a set of kind of triggers in place so that when X happens, so when traffic volumes get to a certain threshold, then we start looking at a third lane, let's say, or, you know, a new improvement. That may never happen. It's really say, you know, if autonomous vehicles really work at, they follow the path that gets cars off the road, we may never hit that trigger. But the goal right now is to identify those projects and the correct triggers along the way. All right. So, if the autonomous vehicles really worked, and I can't really quite imagine what that looks like, but maybe at some point, the lane, we could actually have one lane. We could go either way, right? Although with the growth, if the growth really turns out to be the case, that may not be real. And it's hard. I mean, like, you kind of, most of our assumptions are based on what we know, you know, right? So, we have, you know, history to guide us. But there are game changers that happen in the future. You know, I mean, you just think about 100 years ago, you know, cars were not what they were today, right? People were getting around with the horse and buggy and trains and bicycles were a much bigger part of the mobility system. And so, I think the autonomous vehicle change, I've heard it kind of reference to like, this is, it's another fundamental shift in our transportation system akin to when really cars burst down the scene when we had a lot of other modes of transportation that were used much more, right? So, we'll see how this evolves. And again, I think we want to be just be careful not to get too ahead of ourselves or too rooted in our recent history, because our, you know, not too far in the future history maybe, or future maybe quite different. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about the website that you've put together. I think that's Envision 89 with an E, Envision 89. And you all have a little survey you started and I'm kind of curious to hear what's the survey about and what are people saying? Are they giving you some feedback already? We have started to get some feedback. Yeah, the survey launched. So, for those who go to Envision89.com, you'll see kind of the top box is a notice for the upcoming public meetings. So, it's a landing page. That's the same page where if you go there on Thursday evening, you can watch the live stream. Right now in place of the live stream is a link for a survey, which has, it's fairly short survey, but it does ask where do you live? Where do you drive through? What are your concerns around the corridor? What do you feel is the most important things to address on the corridor? So, we have been getting some very specific feedback on specific turns on the interstate, some interchange operations, as well as some more broad feedback about improving overall safety and mobility along the corridor. So, we're just starting, it just went live a few days ago. So, encourage everyone to get out there and fill it out. So, get viewers get out there. Yes. And so, we have that, that's our meetings that are coming up on January 30th, that's this week, February 13th and March 11th. And those meetings are all the same, it's the same meeting, it's just in different places. So, perhaps a little bit more of a local focus if that happens. Yeah, I imagine the questions or the comments will be more driven by the people who are from that town. Right, right, right. And I assume you pick South Burlington because as you said, there's a lot of pressure there around around 14 specifically. And the other part of it is that we have developed projects that some of the other interchanges. So, exit 16, you know, which is kind of the Winooski Colchester exit, you know, there's a project that is ready to start construction soon, as soon as the litigation and appeals end. But that, so there's an improvement already developed there, exit 17 also has an improvement to get to the islands. And, you know, that improvement, you know, may not be too far away. And, you know, really kind of came out of some safety concerns there. And so, and similarly at exit 12 in Williston, there were also been plans developed that came out of the CERC alternatives process for what to do to improve that interchange. So, the other part of think of this overall story was like, we've been looking at some of those individual interchanges and developing projects and what should happen there, but not in the center of our region. We're kind of come back to, oh yeah, what about 13 or 14 or, you know, 15? Like, what happens in the core? And we've been looking at, we've been looking at a lot of data. The segment between 14 and 15, so between Williston Road and Route 15 in Winooski has the highest volumes, has the highest crash rates, has the highest number of issues along the corridor with geometric issues. So, it seems to hit all of the checks. I mean, that's the segment, you know, where you're most likely to get stuck in traffic that, and then you've got this big bridge there that, you know, is one of the most critical links in the entire state's transportation system. And that's just the Burlington-Winooski bridge. Yeah. Which seems to always be under study and under some kind of work and such, yes? They tend to always be doing work on it and trying to patch things together a little bit. Patching the pavement a little bit, yeah. Yeah. I think it's, the plows are tough on that and the winter's tough on that bridge, so, you know, but I think they kind of come in and try to keep it in as good condition as they can to, because it is the heaviest volume segment in the whole state. And you're doing an interstate study, but you'll still be looking at that bridge as well, or just as that bridge brings people to the interstate? How do you, how do you determine that? We are looking at the functionality, the state, the condition of the bridges, bridges and culverts along the interstate. And so, as we look at evaluating some of these ideas, if an interchange or a segment of highway has, you know, a failing bridge or a culvert, I would think that that would help to move that up in priority, because there's, you'll have to be looking at that bridge or culvert anyway, might as well look at the other adjacent improvements at the same time. It's interesting you talked a little bit about safety. How does one improve safety on an interstate? I mean, what does that look like? What kind of things do you look at? Because that's, I think that everyone would say that's a priority, improving safety, right? I don't think that people would argue about that. Yeah, it's hard. It's like mom and apple pie. Exactly, exactly. The segment from exit 13 through 16, I believe, has been designated as a safety corridor for the last maybe year and a half, by V-Trans in recognition of the fact that the crash rates are just much higher than really anywhere else on the interstate. That's mostly around, you know, just getting the word out there that people should be, you know, make sure you're not supposed to be on your cell phones anyway, but certainly not in that area, be paying closer attention as you're changing lanes. Yeah, slow down. Yeah, the basic education and enforcement, right? So that's why you see the state police there, you know, or you may see some additional signage that reminds you to slow down. Right. Yeah, because a lot of these things are, you know, a little bit of just a little lapse of attention and all of a sudden you've got a rear ender. Yeah, actually enough to cut you off right there. Believe it or not, we have actually filled a half hour. I know it seems shocking, right? You're ready to go. We could have done another half hour. We could have done an hour program. So we might have you all come back because you have another series of public meetings coming up. I think we can look at what's ahead in the future as well. We have our upcoming meetings in the next couple of months and then you have more rounds after that, right? Yeah, later in 2020. Later in 2020. So hopefully both of you will come back and tell us what you've heard and what sort of those next set of meetings are going to be about as well. Willing to do that. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. And please, viewers, come. Come to the three public meetings upcoming. Plenty of information on Envision.com. And I would like to Envision89. I'm sorry, Envision89.com. Yes, there we go. Gosh. Thanks so much for joining us.