 This is Dennis McMahon and welcome to Positively Vermont. Today, our special guest is Sandy Tivol, Executive Director of the Chittenden Area Transportation Management Association, otherwise known as Catton. We have some very interesting things to talk about, facilitating transportation, getting to and from work and everywhere else in Chittenden County, so welcome, Sandy. Thank you. Thanks for having me. First of all, tell us a little bit about yourself first. Give us your background. Sure. Sandy Tiva, Executive Director at CATMA. I have been the Executive Director here at CATMA since 2012. I actually joined CATMA in 2002, so have been here well over 20 years, and I just really enjoyed the mission of the organization and working with our membership and trying to help people find ways to get to work other than driving alone has been really fun. So I'm a Champlain College graduate, and it's wonderful to be here today. Thank you. Tell us, what is this group? How did it get started? Is it a state agency, or is it a private facility? Give us the history and scope of CATMA. Sure. So CATMA is a nonprofit membership-based organization where 501c3. We were established back in 1992 by the three Burlington Hill institutions, Champlain College, the University of Vermont, and the UVM Medical Center, and the mission is to jointly plan transportation and park in in collaborative ways that better coordinate land use, reduce environmental impacts, and provide alternative transportation options for the employees and students on the Hill. In 2015, we expanded to a regional association, which means we opened up membership to businesses and developers in Chittenden County. They were seeking help to inspire the employees or the residents to use alternative transportation options, such as biking and walking, taking the bus, carpooling, and now telework support post COVID. We also created a transportation coordinator network that any business, developer, or municipality can join for free. The member simply designates a person at the site to serve as the coordinator and Katma's point of contact. We keep the coordinator informed on transportation, such as bike workshops, transit schedule changes, route changes, and other local events that they can share at their site. We have about 90 members in our network today and it continues to grow. We know working together is a recipe for success. So Katma will continue to serve as a leader and the regional gateway connecting major institutions and employers and developers in Chittenden County with sustainable and effective travel options and solutions. So that's just a little overview of who Katma is and how we were found out. Sounds like a very daunting task. Can you give us an idea of the transportation picture in Chittenden County and the surrounding areas? What are the basic modes that people use to get to work or for entertainment? What are you dealing with? Yeah, so we have programs here at Katma that we provide to our membership. So we have incentives for people that bike and want to work. That helps people to think about rather than getting in a car. That maybe I could bike or walk to work. We have Green Mountain Transit. We have a great transit system here in Chittenden County and throughout the state. And they have been operating fair free since March 2020 when the pandemic hit. And so transit is a great option for people to travel within Chittenden County. Green Mountain Transit also has routes that serve St. Albans and Middlebury and Montpelier that come into Burlington. So those are excellent travel options for people. We have a regional electric assist bike share program that just launched here in the cities of Burlington, South Burlington and Winnowsky this summer. So people can simply create an account on the BIRD app, BIRD is the vendor. And then they can use these bikes to travel to and from work to get their groceries, to do errands, appointments. They're very accessible to folks and easy to use. They can take the bike to get to a transit stop. So it kind of can serve as the first, last mile solution. And we have Car Share Vermont as a local nonprofit that offers great programs and services here in the Burlington area. And then there's car pooling and there's van pooling. There's people can park at the park and ride and maybe take a bus or hop in a car with a coworker or someone in the community. So there's certainly a number of transportation options. I think for Katma it's about providing our members and our community with the information and the support that they need to take these modes because behavior change is hard. It takes time. So those are some of the essential transportation options in our community. What about the specialized services like SSTA? Do you work with those groups? Katma does not, but that certainly is a service available for folks. So this is primarily for people who are mobile and getting to work or medical appointments or things like that. Yeah, pretty much we work with employers and developers to help their employees get to work other than driving alone. So that eliminates the parking demand for an institution or a city or developer. Parking is very expensive to build and maintain and we really want to create that culture and environment. We are in a climate crisis. So this is serious for people to think about how they are traveling around, but primarily Katma works with employers and developers. You must be in a transition or an interesting period now because you did have this remote situation during the pandemic and a lot of places are coming out of it now expecting their employees to be back physically. How are you coping with that? So for Katma, I mean every employer is handling the telework policies at their workplace. What Katma does is provide some telework support and resources on our website for employers or commuters, how to talk about this. So we simply provide the resources and tools for employers and commuters, but every employer really develops their own policy and I will say I think it continues to be updated. We have hybrid schedules, people are coming into the office or to the work site two or three days a week and then working at home two or three days a week. So I think it continues to evolve and we conduct annual surveys for our members that we are working to monitor those trends. What is the transit use? What is the biking use? What is telework looking like at the employer? So I really think we're looking at baseline data post pandemic because life has changed, traveling has changed, a lot has changed. So we'll continue to monitor those trends. And what is, you're going to have a transportation summit? Tell us about that. We are. So last year we held our inaugural transportation summit. We Katma took the initiative and led the summit. We wanted to provide a space to bring people together to learn, to share and discuss current transportation, post pandemic environment, what are the services? What are the programs, policies and funding available? So this will be an annual summit. So our second summit is going to be held on Thursday, October 12th, 2023 at the UVM Davis Center. It is an in-person event that is made possible by our incredible generous sponsors. Our theme this year is transportation means business. And that was inspired by Katma receiving calls from employers that are challenged with recruiting employees because of a lack of transportation or retaining those employees. And I really felt like housing is a challenge right now. Some employers are now building their own housing. We have economic development impacts with transportation. So it seemed like a really timely theme for the summit this year. Transportation is really complicated. It's really challenging. And everyone deserves the right to travel safely and affordably and no matter what age, ability, income or race. Our program, just really quick, if I can give a quick snapshot of our summit program, we will have a morning keynote address by Michelle Boomhauer at the Agency of Transportation. And then we have a really engaging panel that's gonna discuss jobs, housing and vibrant growth and proving transportation connections equitably. We have some incredible panelists. And then we'll have some breakouts, sessions in the afternoon that will be broken out into four tracks, Housing and Workforce, Equity and Justice, Smart Growth and Mobility Solutions. And attendees can attend whatever session they are interested in. And then we have a closing keynote legislative panel this year who's gonna reflect on the conversations they heard throughout the day and share with us some of the priorities for the upcoming legislative session regarding transportation, housing and jobs. We have Senator Tom Chinden, Senator Keisha Ram-Hensdale, Representative Emily Crossnow and Representative Kate Lopley. So I hope that people will join us for the summit, share the event with your colleagues. It's gonna be a great space to network, to strengthen those connections, learn from professionals and people can simply go to the Katma website, katmavt.org and register for the summit, see the programs and the speakers and the days events. And we have general admission tickets that will be on sale through this Friday, September 30th. So I hope folks and employers and developers will join us. We'll have a good number of legislators and policymakers in the room. And it's important for people to hear the transportation challenges. This is a very interesting, could maybe just tell us one of your roles is advocacy. And Congress is in session and the legislature will be coming up again in 2024. Tell us what things you're interested in, in terms of advocacy and how people can help with that. So Katma does do some advocacy work as a nonprofit and we participate in local, regional and state projects that explore and identify upgrades to infrastructure and mobility improvements. It could be corridor projects. It could be the Winnowsky Bridge. It could be Colchester Avenue, Exit 14 Bike Ped Bridge. So we're at the table for any of those projects. We also provide testimony to the state transportation committees advocating for funding and policy to support transportation demand management. That's an industry jargon term. The acronym is TDM. And basically it's a set of strategies to help people get out of their cars and use other modes, such as biking and walking and transit. We work with our transportation providers really closely. We have great relationships with Green Mountain Transit and Locomotion and Carrier Vermont and the Go Vermont program. And we just wanna ensure that our members and our community's needs are being addressed to the best way possible with the funding and policies that are in place. We work with municipalities that are exploring and implementing TDM policy. And we're an active member in the Transportation for Vermonters Coalition. This has been in operation since 2017. It's a group of individuals, organizations, businesses and institutions that are committed to working together across all sectors to achieve sustainable, accessible transportation in our rural state. So I encourage anyone to follow the legislative agenda on the website and they're always interested in hearing policy or challenges. So folks should feel free to reach out to their legislators on any transportation matters. That's great, Cindy. This has been very helpful. What I'd like to conclude with is what do you need or what do you want from the general public or businesses in order to assist the goals you've mentioned today? What can people do to help? Well, I think what people can do is really think about how they are traveling and getting around, do I need to get in my car? Can I carpool with my neighbor? Even if it's one or two days a week. Again, people have some hybrid schedules now. So maybe they're not going in the office every day or to the work site, but consider if you could carpool with someone in your community. Katma has a trip planning tool on our website. Govermont has a carpool solutions platform for the entire state. So I would just ask people to take a look at what the best schedules are. Can you take a bird bike to a transit stop and just really think about how you're getting around? For employers, I would say, take a look at the Katma website. We offer turnkey comprehensive programs, incentives and services and join our transportation coordinator network. As I mentioned, it's a free network. We're just really trying to get more employers at the table to hear their voices and what their challenges are. So I would encourage employers to take a look at the Katma website to look at our transportation coordinator network, look at our membership plan and package. And for commuters, I would just recommend that they think about how they're commuting every day or doing their errands. So we have to work at this together. We have a climate crisis. We need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and Katma is a part of the solution. That's great. Could you just tell us the website? We're gonna publish it on the titles, but what is it? Could you verbally tell us what it is? Yes, absolutely. It's Katma, C-A-T-M-A-V-T dot org. KatmaVT dot org. Excellent. Well, that's great. And we'll be in touch in the future to see what progress you're making. And I wanna thank you for appearing on Positively Vermont. This is Dennis McMahon. My guest has been Sandy T. Volk of the Executive Director of the Chittman Area Transportation Management Association. Thank you for watching.