 Hello, and welcome to Under the Dome from Town Meeting TV. My name's Bobby Lucier. Under the Dome is Town Meeting TV's coverage of the Vermont legislative session. In this series, we speak with legislators and advocates about the bills that move through the legislative session this year, and what they might mean for you and your neighbors. On today's program, we'll be talking about the transportation bill, the agenda of the Transportation for Vermonters Coalition, which a group of individuals, organizations, businesses, and institutions aiming to achieve a sustainable, accessible transportation system in our rural state. So joining us today to talk about transportation, we have Jonathan Weber, who works at Local Motion, and is an organization that's a member of that coalition, as well as three representatives who sit on the Transportation Committee in the House. So thank you all so much for joining us. We have Representative Kate Lally from Shelburne, Representative Phil Pouch from Heinsberg, and Representative Leonora Dodge from Essex. So thank you all so much for joining us. Great to be here. Awesome, thanks, buddy. So Jonathan, maybe we'll start with you to just talk a little bit about this coalition. What is Transportation for Vermonters, and what do you hope to accomplish with that group? Sure. Yes, as you said, Local Motion is a member organization in Transportation for Vermonters, which is a coalition of businesses, organizations, and institutions that works towards a more sustainable and accessible transportation system in Vermont. So it's basically housed at the Vermont Natural Resources Council and coordinated by them, and then membership includes it's a wide variety of organizations. We're not going to list them all, but Local Motion, AARP, Old Spokes Home, Car Share Vermont, the Vermont Sierra Club are all members as well as a bunch more. Gotcha, OK. And you said it's only been around for a few years. How long has this coalition been around? You know, I've only been involved with it for a few years. I'm actually not sure exactly when it was established. All of the groups involved have been working on these issues for quite a long time. OK, gotcha. And so now we'll kind of move into just taking a look at our transportation systems currently. What you all see are the needs that Vermonters are feeling in terms of our transportation systems, how our systems are meeting or failing to meet those needs. And what the vision is for the future of transportation in Vermont. So maybe, Kate, we can start with you. What do you see, how do you see our current transportation systems meeting or failing to meet the needs of residents of Vermont? Well, I think the starting point is that transportation is our second highest affordability index, I guess, after housing for most people. And it's also 40% of our emissions. So I think if you look at it from that standpoint, one of the things that we have currently is sort of a ruling paradigm that is transportation through communities. And I think that it would be great if we could start to shift to approaching transportation as something to distinguish transportation within communities from transportation between communities. And those two things could be very different. And then that would, I think, set up the kind of communities that are very unaffordable, yet very desirable for many Vermonters, which is housing in dense walkable patterns, near to many daily needs. And I think that would make it perhaps easier for us to help address our housing crisis at the same time as we lower emissions. Thanks, Kate. Phil, what are you seeing in our transportation system? First, I'd just like to say, I think the coalition, again, we're all new here. So I think they were well representative, at least to the House Transportation Committee. We had much testimony when we were considering different things. So that's good to see those voices at the table as we discuss the large amounts of money and then the policy within the transportation system. So I sort of see this transition from maybe 10 years ago or 20 years ago where the transportation budget was all just about roads and getting cars and single occupancy vehicle cars from one place to another as quickly and effectively as possible. And now there's a transformation of single occupancy vehicles are difficult for climate reasons and cost reasons. And it's more about, as Kate was saying, within villages and towns having a transportation network so people can walk a bike to the store or to school. And I'd say within Heinsberg, which is where it'd been for 40 years, there were no sidewalks. When we first got there, now there's this interconnectivity within the village. And I just see lots of kids walking to school and stuff. So I see this transition. And I think the Transportation Department, the AOT, is sort of coming along and starting to realize that it's really not about how many roads you might pave. You know what? Yes, thanks for having us here today. So I think that keeping in mind the rural nature of our state in large part and then the towns and villages, obviously I think we are still going to have to have transportation between communities, as Kate was pointing out. And I think that we talked a lot in our committee about the need for the electrification of that in-between transportation, especially, right? And so our big challenges are to we are one of the best states in terms of per capita rates of electric charging stations. But that's still so under what we actually need if we are to really transition. And so I'm excited about some of the federal funding that we have dedicated towards that. And then the attention that we started to pay to the electrification potential at multi-unit dwellings. I think that that's really a key to bringing everybody aboard on the transition to electrify. Again, I think that the e-bike incentives and the other incentives that we talked about matter a lot to me. And so to the Vermonters. So I'm excited about I think electrification is a key component. But I also think that reducing the need to get out of where you reside in order to be able to work, be able to go to school, be able to be a consumer. So you're starting to talk about some of the things that you all worked on this session. So the Transportation Committee, as I understand it, passes essentially one really large bill, the Transportation Bill, which feels kind of unique to other committees, which are working on a few other things. There's this one big behemoth bill that you're working on for the whole session. So can you just talk a little bit about sort of broadly, I think we'll get into some of the more specifics, but broadly, how does that bill work and at the 30,000 foot level, what's in it this year? I'll start. Sure. So it's the T Bill. That's how it's known. And it has to pass because it's all the funding for that annual funding for transportation. I don't know if I said it's $860 million for this year. And basically it starts by the administration, the agency of transportation, and their white book, which is a big book of all the things they are presently working on that aren't complete, projects they plan to work on, maybe it's a paving or a road reconstruction or a bridge reconstruction, or rail and there's sections about public transportation. So they outline everything they hope to do in the next year. And then it comes to the committee and that's when the committee looks at where the money is going, is that those the right policies and projects to move us in what direction, I think that the legislature's looking to do. And generally we followed most of what was in there, but there was a lot of discussion about electrification, incentives, complete streets, things beyond just paving, bridge maintenance and road rebuilding, I guess. Do you wanna speak a little bit more about you mentioning complete streets? What does that mean and why are they important to communities in Vermont? I'll let Kate take that on. Complete streets are, I would say broadly, about increasing access for all abilities and ages, and also getting us away from just vehicular transportation, which has been sort of, you know, unfortunately the standard that we've been following for many decades. So it's about multimodality. It's also about placemaking and recognizing the inherent value in our communities for more than just being places to get cars through, but places for living, places for creating jobs in new businesses and for having public spaces that draws together so that we can have a functional and productive civic life and for improving our physical health, right? To be able to get around on foot or by bike is incredibly important for just the health of our bodies but also our minds and it helps us run into each other and feel part of our community and be connected and you know, all that. Yeah, so is it literally just, it's a street that has a car lane, a bike lane and a sidewalk or is it more than that? Is that pretty much it? You know, there's sort of an evolving sense of what complete streets means. I think that that has been how it has, it was originally understood to mean and we were starting with trying to have streets that were capable of supporting more than just cars but I think that we're realizing, particularly in Vermont, you know, we have very narrow rights of ways and so the context is very important. How, you know, it might not be possible to do all things in a given context. So there's a more nuanced understanding of what complete streets means in a given setting than I think that's, there's an emerging understanding of that and Jonathan is really gonna be the expert on where things stand with that. I don't know, I think, I don't know if I can do better than that. That was a quick answer. For every street in every corner, complete streets is a little different. You know, here in Burlington, bike lanes, you got enough bicycle traffic to support both but in Hinesburg, I'll say, you know, 40 years ago, we didn't even have a crosswalk, not one crosswalk and we tried to put one in and the state didn't want to because it was considered unsafe at that spot. So now we have several, we're putting in flashing lights so people can get across the street. Sometimes it's just adding curbing so when you come to the light and you wanna walk across, you've got a spot to be safe and maybe a little wider for bicycles. In Hinesburg, we've pushed now to put fog lines on the town roads three feet so that you feel like you're walking and bikers have their own spot even though it's shared. It does help give a little bit more safety. Yeah. What is a fog line? Those are the white lines on the edges of the, so you have a yellow line in the middle and then you have white lines along the edges. Gotcha, okay. Yeah. And rather than just being right there at the edge of the road, you move it in a little bit and it gives a feeling of shared road. Yeah. Just to give some more examples, yeah, a complete street doesn't mean that you have to have everything for everyone, right? You don't have to have necessarily a bike lane. You don't have to have necessarily a sidewalk. You don't have to have necessarily lanes for cars. It's all dependent on the context, right? So I think we all think about church street as a complete street, right? Even though there's no real bike access for people to bike along it, you're not supposed to. Car access is very limited to basically deliveries during certain hours but that's an example of a street that is built well given its environment and its intentions and it meets all of the needs that it needs to meet. And so when you think about sort of going from there as basically car speeds and car volumes increase the degree of separation that you need for people in walking and biking and taking transit generally increases as well. And it's an evolution for every community in terms of what they're building, right? So in a place like Heinsberg, you might see sort of in that first generation of bike infrastructure, a lot of painted bike infrastructure, which some folks are gonna feel comfortable enough to get out and use that. A lot of folks are gonna say, that stripe of paint doesn't really feel like enough safety to me. And so it takes time for communities to work from that sort of first generation of painted infrastructure to more protected, high quality infrastructure that's gonna be usable for more folks and also for more of the year, right? Like bike lanes on the street tend to get filled with snow. As soon as you move them off the street it's much easier to maintain them. So you see in Burlington and in some other communities in Shannon County that are farther along, more progress towards that kind of protected, separated infrastructure for walking and biking. And one of the things we really need to do at the state level is open up more resources and improve state policy so that it's easier to build that kind of infrastructure everywhere. Right, yeah. So what is in this year's transportation bill that will support and sort of proliferate complete streets? Well, yeah, I'll say one thing is new road standards. So we've asked the AOT to, and they were looking at it, but to develop brand new road standards. And the, you know, again it's transformational probably 25 years ago road standards were just focused on vehicles, single occupancy vehicles. How fast can we not necessarily, you know, 100 miles an hour, but how, you know, taking away hills so that you don't have to go up and down to go straight, straightening out curves, which just keeps the traffic flowing, you know, smoothly. And so those complete streets were all about that. Now, I mean the road standards, now the road standards need to bring in the complete streets piece too. And whenever the transportation, whenever a road is getting rebuilt or an intersection or adding a light, then the expectation, and I think the AOT, you know, would agree at this point. It's like, okay, we're doing this work. What else should we do? Should we, you know, put a pedestrian crosswalk here? You know, how do we do it? And so we're looking forward to those standards being completely redone. And I think we'll be looking to see that they incorporate all the complete street pieces that we expect to be considered anytime work is done on our normal transportation system. Right. I guess I would just say that I would just add that, you know, beyond just how we build our streets and the roads that connect, you know, a village or, you know, street where you live and walk and drive is kind of everything else around it as well, is, you know, how are you best going to serve the folks that may not read signs the same way or use transit the same way? And so, you know, we might, the complete streets is sort of like an overall philosophy of how to build, but then the T-bill included a lot more, you know, of other considerations about, you know, where we put money and how we target funds for accessing transportation and removing barriers to transportation, which, you know, our mantra was always, you know, if we are not thinking about transportation from an equity lens, then we are essentially failing to remove one of the principal barriers to get out of poverty. So that was, you know, that was a really critical approach that I feel, you know, we were constantly thinking about, what does this rural community need? What does this urban community need? What does this suburban community need? Who, you know, who are all the people that may or may not be living there even if, you know, we don't always think of Vermont as maybe multilingual place to live or a young place to live. And, you know, we found out more and more looking at, you know, transit studies and demographic studies that we, you know, we have to make room for everybody and we have to remove those barriers to transportation for everyone. Right? Yeah, as we kind of shift now to looking at public transportation and how we invest in those systems in our state, what's in this year's transportation bill for our public transportation system and how, you know, are we changing the way that we invest in public transportation to better accommodate the needs of rural communities and communities that need better public transportation? Well, I'll just, I think, like almost $50 million toward public transportation, which is one of the highest in the country, if not maybe the highest. And, you know, that makes you think of buses. So we have a rural system here, Green Mountain Transit, and there are some, I mean, urban system here, Green Mountain Transit, then there are some rural systems, Bennington, Brattleboro, they have public transportation buses. Those are the typical ones that go from, you know, there's a route and you know where the bus stop is and it comes every half hour or every hour or twice a day. But then there are other things, and one would be microtransit that's being invested. And I don't know if you wanna talk about that. There's, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Well, I was just gonna say the microtransit in rural, as a rural Vermont delivery system is was very, very exciting to learn about and to support. And so one of the ways that the T-VIL supports that is by creating incentives for making it easier to afford electric vehicles, fleets of electric vehicles that can then be used to deliver rural transit opportunities. And so that public transit happens very differently in those, in that context from how it happens in say Chittenden County, you know, where you have the GMT bus that we're all familiar with. And so some of it looks really like just, like an Uber might be the best analogy. And also in the context of Chittenden County, the rideshare also has access to those EV funds. So it's an exciting way to introduce, well, to electrify these fleets that provide this vital service, but at the same time introduce folks to the advantages of having electric vehicles, which they might not otherwise have contact with or get to see. And then the very exciting thing that we've also done, I found is making e-bikes a lot more accessible, which is a whole other kind of micro form of transportation that makes it quite a bit easier to get around in communities because one of the key challenges that people cite over and over is the distance in a rural community like ours between destinations. So this, particularly in rural Vermont, where those destinations and distances are even farther apart, an e-bike can help bridge those gaps. So you might be able to be able to get around a five to 10 mile radius, certainly in the better weather months. And, you know, for the intrepid, these things can be outfitted with fat tires and used in the layer too. Yeah, you mentioned microtransit, so essentially kind of publicly funded ride sharing in rural communities. How close, is that happening in rural communities now? Or what is that? Is it sort of a fair model? Like how does that work? Well, there's one in Montpelier that's been running for two or three years. They were sort of the experiment, see how it goes, see how the apps work and how people, you know, and then there's been a lot of surveys on how they like it. And it seems to be going well, and now you've got a couple of non-profits that are out there looking to expand it to five more areas and they would use electric vehicles. And it might be that some people would end up paying and some people might not pay depending on income. So, but I think that you're looking to own a car in a rural area is very expensive. And I will always say, if you can take a family who thinks they need two cars, if they just need one car, that's a huge cost savings for folks and will, again, reduce traffic in the villages and all that. At least five microtransits up. I'm trying to remember exactly where they're going, one in Barrie maybe. I thought that, yeah, I thought that there was car share right now, which runs out of Burlington. And is that just a separate non-profit or is that state? That's a separate non-profit, yeah, yeah. And so, you know, what we did was normally, like for the electric vehicle incentives that we had, we let sort of one household get one big incentive for a new expensive $50,000 electric vehicle and they can tack on the federal incentives as well. So you end up getting like a good, sort of almost $10,000 off of a big car. But it's, and then the lower your income is, the more money you would qualify for as an incentive. And it's supposed to be like one buyer per, but because ride share, because car share and this new pilot program that is being developed in Montpelier made the case, well, we serve lower income people. So instead of tying, limiting us to only being able to get one incentive as an organization, can we get up to five of those highest level incentive and you know, we had some back and forth about it. And so that was one important way. So they qualify for lower incentives for the rest of up to 20 cars, up to 20 vehicles. But five of those vehicles, they could qualify for the highest tier of incentive, which is gonna be up to about $6,000 off. And the lower level incentives are only about 2,500 within electrifier fleet. And then, GMT, that was kind of the hot topic, one of the only real differences that we had with the agency's first proposal of the T-bill. So I guess, last session, there was a request that GMT no longer maintain the zero fares. And this year, you know, GMT really made the case that an abrupt ending to the fares given different conditions on the ground, the reality that the fare boxes were no longer, you know, that had been used, that they were counting on using were no longer being made and so they couldn't get serviced and they couldn't get enough new boxes as they purchased new buses. They made the case that, you know, we wanna be able to do better outreach and education to the community to warn people, you know, because one of the biggest challenges for the drivers and for the efficiency and fluidity of the public transit system is at the point of getting the rider on the bus and figuring out, how do I pay you, how much do I pay you? I thought it was free is gonna be this extra layer, right? Of complication and possible conflict and just, you know, unpleasantness and again, like this challenge to being able to get on a bus. And so we've had this zero fare, you know, now for two, three years for the pandemic initially to protect the driver, you know, from having too much face to face contact and so we made the case pretty strongly that we needed a slower, you know, a more gentle transition back to fares and that we couldn't just start charging $3, you know, a ride willy nilly, but that really folks who need more assistance should be able to still ride for free or at a reduced fare. And so we had a big discussion about how to fund that we all kind of agreed that we wanted to get there. And so rather than ending the zero fare abruptly this end of the fiscal year, so July one would have been the start of full fares again, it's going to be extended till January one and we've asked GMT to come to us with a report before the session even starts to just tell us how they're going to institute a multi-tiered system, which they're calling fair fares. And we also made the case to the Senate about how we would fund that. And so we are taking $850,000 from, of kind of money that has been unused and was going to be able to pass over from last fiscal year, $850,000 from the maintenance fund and then GMT would top it off with $150,000. They have that transition. So rather than an abrupt change that this allows them to transition and they are looking at this fair fare, how do we provide transportation to those who need it and are economically challenged to come up with that versus commuters and stuff that use it and can afford to use it. So. Right, yeah. So one of the, just to kind of back up a little bit, the fair free was something that was supported through ARPA dollars, which are kind of coming to an end. So there just weren't the resources to continue it. So we had to get creative about how to provide, continue to provide that essential service, which over the pandemic and with free access became ever more essential. So the priority to do that was rose in our view. So we're pretty happy with the solution that we came up with and stay tuned, we'll see how it works. It seems like that's sort of a theme of this session was ARPA funds are running out and how do we continue some of the great work that we started a few years ago during the pandemic? But the IJA, the infrastructure funds from the federal government have come on board. So the last year and a half, two years, they're coming on board and they'll continue for the next two or three years. And that's a huge amount of money coming in to our transportation system, which we need to match 20%. And so there was some discussions about where that money's coming from. The administration wanted to pull it out of the general fund to pay for that transportation. And I think the legislature feels that the transportation system is funded by fees, your license fee, your registration fee. And it's also, so those fees you'll see are in the budget as being increased to help maintain the amount of money that's coming in the transportation system. Gas taxes are also going down, not the actual amount, but the total amount that's collected because people are driving more efficient vehicles and are driving less. And that's been happening for the last 15 or 20 years. So this year the legislature decided to look at a new fee-based system rather than a gas tax as a mileage-based. So electric cars don't pay any gas tax, yet they use the system. So this mileage-based system would look at how many miles a vehicle has driven and then you would pay the same as if you had a gas tax. You report your mileage and then you pay. During the inspection of the vehicle, they know how many miles you've driven. And it's roughly, for the average driver, about $120 a year. So it's certainly a fair amount to put in to the transportation system. So those are the two ways we primarily fund transportation gas tax and the fees. I know there's a lot more that we wanna get into. Yeah, that's okay. We know that we're out of time, which there's so much more that I wanted to ask you about. There's decarbonization issues that I wanted to have better understand as well. But I think that about wraps it up for this program. So maybe just if you have a quick second to just share where people can learn more about the transportation bill and what you all worked on this session very briefly. Is there any place we can talk about that? Sure, I mean the AOT, the Agency of Transportation's website, the state website has an awful lot of information. So there'll be information about complete streets. There's information about all the incentives that are out there and there's a lot to help electrification. And all of the incentives are income sensitive so that we're not providing a lot of money for those who can already afford electric cars. The idea is to provide money for those who don't. So I would go to that website and the legislative website too has all the bills and a lot of information on it. Great, thank you. Yeah, so Leonora, sorry, do you wanna just- No, no, I was just gonna say and that's another good place is to get on Facebook and just follow the Agency of Transportation because they do often have public hearings related to equity issues related to public transit related to decarbonization and GMT also has a- And then any large project they're doing an intersection or rebuilding a road, there's public input for that too, right? Yeah, and if people who care about transportation and their communities wanna get involved in this kind of advocacy, check out Transportation for Vermonters online on social media as well as local motion and it's a great way to find out what's going on and how you can start advocating for a more sustainable, more equitable transportation system. Jonathan, thanks so much for joining us. Representatives Leonora Dodge, Phil Pouch, Kate Lally, thank you all so much for being here and talking about the work that you did this session. Thanks, Bobby. Thanks, Bobby. Yeah, and thank you for tuning into Under the Dome from Town Meeting TV. Under the Dome we'll continue to recap the legislative session over the next few weeks connecting you with your legislators and your community. So you can find this program on others at our website, ch17.tv or on our Town Meeting TV YouTube channel. Thanks so much for watching and sharing Under the Dome. Have a great day.