 Good morning and we're going to reconvene Ross McDonald's with us this morning for public transit which is as a big issue in the state of Vermont and I just was mentioning a few moments ago that you see they're going to start charging again uh we had that year or so no charging and uh so everybody will pay a little and it'll be effective and we want everybody to share a little bit of it so Ross it's all yours thank you thank you I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and I think I need to be enabled I was just coming from the house uh committee and uh we ran a little late so I appreciate the patience Who's the chair? I was coming Sarah Oh, Sarah Yeah, I, I confirmed I got this under a bill He has, he has, he has I don't even know Here Who's the vice chair at the house? Somebody knew because of both the chair and the vice chair and what? Charles Oh you gave a cover sheet just for senate you must have had one for house too I did And I changed one of the slides that I gave Mike but I think we're still pretty close But thank you for having me for the record Ross McDonald I'm the public transit program manager I'm the resident of Pechum and been with the program for 16 years and the manager going on for I know that this group has not been here previously but to remind you we have a pretty large vision where we want to help people who are dependent on transit provide access to employment and other modes mitigate congestion preserve air quality promote efficient energy use and advance the state's economic development objectives all in a safe reliable and cost effective and environmentally responsible manner so we do touch upon a lot of areas and contribute to all of these efforts and Vermont is in a really unique position where we are probably the the the most well funded rural program than any other rural state ends in the in the nation which really does put us in a responsible position to try to help other rural areas understand what they can do as we are working through the type of support that we're provided many states use federal transit administration formula funds only with maybe a few state dollars for us up to 47 percent of our budget comes from fhwa flex funds or they flex fhwa funds into our fta account at the federal level for us to contribute to the transit system in addition to our budget 44 million four to six million dollars also come from our local providers who help with those non-federal shares as a result we're able to provide fixed routes with 88 paratransit service some of our fixed routes in the less dense areas will deviate upon request to pick people up we have a demand response program called vermont elders and persons with disability program and that works in conjunction as a braided system with the non-emergency medical transportation or the Medicaid demand response having that all under one roof with our shared infrastructure and scheduling dispatch software is critical to maintaining the system as is we support inner city services and we have a transportation demand management program over a month that I was able to work on 15 years ago that really is to help employers and individuals find alternatives to single occupancy vehicles clear but which section do you put the microtransit into the inner city no that would be the demand response program and we have the one pilot that's operating now in montpelier and we have announced five additional pilots but you have the demand response that's vermont elders versus the disabilities but you would kind of sit down since it's very similar since it's a demand response it's real-time demand response I'm sorry real-time demand response and it's really a hybrid we are replacing fixed route transit with this demand real-time demand response microtransit and so that's kind of where it is I should have included microtransit on this slide and will today we'll talk about microtransit as you see the COVID ridership impacts as we maintain a lot of the sanitization processes that were put in place that transportation demand management grant program will review look at our electric trains and vehicle update talk about those demand response pilots and what we're doing with AHS as we further our partnership there and the community driver program as we move from volunteers to volunteers plus other options to try to better serve the demand response needs that are growing and are costly so when you say demand response is that microtransit and medicare is that everything or it's it's it's everything when I talk about demand response generally speaking it is the dialer ride 24 48 hours in advance notice we're seeing an uptick in needs we're also seeing a reduction in volunteers since the COVID pandemic and so we're coming up with a way to try to fill that gap between the full transit rate that we'd pay or that 61 or 65 cents a mile what about that space in between can we have a different hourly rate can we bring folks on to drive their own sedans at the regional level and then maybe become interested in becoming CDL because we know that there's a possibly a CDL drivers in the state as well and so almost an entry level driving position so I'll talk a little bit about that as well to those pilots maybe I'll talk about this but those microtransit pilots do those overlap with dialer ride or do you need them to be separate for federal regulations or the needs of food driver I think we need to overlap as much as we can it'd be as equitable and as efficient with Medicaid and elderly and personal disability general public job access all using the same infrastructure and process we feel that may be the better use which will be revealed through these five pilots that are in disparate communities trying to figure out as best in Barry or Windsor and so that's part of the initial pilot sweep of expectations and plans we've been working on some studies that are ready to go the zero fair study and analysis has been sent to the legislature and happy to present that or have Steve Fawble our primary consultant present those that analysis and we do have a conclusion in our city assessment every five years required yes sir can we just do with it there's a chart yeah it gets complicated as you talk about the impacts on riders versus an urban and rural and urban systems you have so much service and so many trips that the impacts of a fair free services is far greater than in our rural system and the rural system before COVID a third were already fair free two of our providers were entirely fair free and so the conclusion is I think it's worded and it would be understandable if GMT urban went back to fairs to fill some rural budget issues that they have while maintaining fair free outside of the rural area it's about a $450,000 item for all of the rural area outside of our one city and Steve did a really good job Steve Fawble did a good job of showing you know the the relative diminishing return on fair free once you get that robust service and one chance announcement is in line with that yes they saw this and I think they might write for it and that they'll be able to talk about their other pieces the inner city assessment is every five years we need to show what how many people are we serving how many people have access to inner city and we have a responsibility to spend 15 percent of our operating as a way of accessing FTA funds on inner city services unless we can show that less than 15 percent still results in a reasonable inner city service so this is what we did and right now we're over 50 percent but in the future if we were to make some changes we had the assessment to allow the governor to make that type of declaration to get out from under that requirement we don't want to we want to spend money for where we want rather than where it's required through you know these funding formulas. Root performance report is something that every year and I have just a slide or two from that study I'll be more than happy to come here and that's the deep dive of 123 routes by class how are they performing how are they what does it cost what's the overall percentage of activity in the state and that's a big one that's what we use to assess which routes are performing which ones may be changed or even cut we haven't used that for any status service changes since pre-pandemic and so we're a little bit behind on that type of activity because we didn't know where we're coming out so is that an internal management reporter is that one of the gazillion reports that we have mandated it's mandated and it's it'll be done it's out for comment yesterday was the last date for public comment through the providers and it'll be sent to like through the legislature next week my question I guess for all of us it's when we are asking for reports I'm kind of on trip only here but the amount of resources and the extent to which that the report has utility it sounds like the way you're describing it is it provides essential data to help you make sound administrative decisions and sense of how the money's being spent who's benefiting you know are we getting the return and so forth so on the way you talked about it it seems like it does have utility for both the provider community so regional transit as well as statewide administrative purposes yeah so my question is am I assuming that that is correct or should we look at that report or would you be doing it anyway it's the single most important report we do on an annual basis and the consistency over 20 years has really allowed us to track trends and also i dug deals with our national transit database requirement through fta which we have to provide a lot of the same data and then we can slice it up for our own management perspectives it's also something um yeah so without a mandate we'd be continuing $15,000 about a year to produce it it's it's worth it that's good to know we have a winner and people read it i'm assuming and they do we serve a lot of this reading at least the uh summary i hope i can present uh especially this year as things have changed over the last several years and we are seeing increased costs and per trip cost and i think it's time to to speak to it address and then talk about what we're going to do about those types of things all coming from our performance report so happy to come back it's been a half hour presenting that to you and i can send that around once it goes to the legislature and have put it in your inboxes as well through like i'm also just a because of that room performance report and seeing costs and efficiency declines i've been putting together a core that budget dashboard through the last seven years before during and after or you know with this new normal but just where we are with operations and admin and preventive maintenance and demand response local share state share all trying to just provide the baseline of data so any questions that you would have i would have the ability to just very quickly demonstrate where where we are and to identify the areas that we need to work on that are making up more of these cost increases than others that's just something that our staff is working on right now so to move forward real quick the ridership has bounced back from a low of 2021 or 70 we expect 2023 to be closer to the 4.1 4.2 million at the end of this fiscal year so but that all needs to be completed and audited and so we'll have those real numbers of a projected where we're still on the upward trend i don't know there i will say that chin county has bounced back they're in town roots has bounced back faster than the others i think you have a lot more need riders more people relying on that system without other options don't worry we're all so that cuts down a lot of traffic that's it's interesting the big figure right here because you know i have the city of rolling home now that's wow yeah my staff continues to produce from their homes primarily i like to go to the office every day but you can see on here overall the local bus shuttle is reflective of all of these types of trip travel or ridership bounce backs the one area that is an outlier that isn't bouncing back quite as fast is this commuter route and just as you had mentioned it's not a surprise the real question is what are we going to do or do we reduce frequency from three times a day to two times a day that you lose people that are on that bus and you'll hear from them and i will too um and it's not something we relish but um i don't know what's gonna happen this working home is going to stay here i think it's here for a long time i've got a gentleman who's in his 60s who works from north berlington operations manager at tmt for 20 years he's it seems like our best producers continue to produce and for for me i'm very thankful he's got that opportunity maybe he's going to stay on for a little bit longer and and tim will has been producing the same way you know since he's probably come out of college but anything like that that has helped i also was able to rehire our financial person from morrisville when we moved to berry she said that's a bridge too far i'm not sure i'm going to work for ahs and she did well since speaking with her at barbara's memorial i was able to convince her to come back to be trans and we're picking her up in the morrisville park and ride uh or not morrisville park and ride the waterway park and ride when tim comes down on his two days a week um and so that type of stuff i do have a better staff that's happier as a result i don't know if that's the way it is for everybody and what they do so many different scenarios yeah um so that's where we are with ridership but in costs you can see why the core dashboard and what we're trying to uh look at is really identify why that 48 49 million in 2022 became 52 million we know gas comes we know ridership was down and there wasn't the 2.2 million in um uh fairs we um we have new contracts union and otherwise everyone's paying differently um and so uh vpta the vermont public transit association and i and our staff had a conversation yesterday we'll be putting together an efficiency committee and really diving into getting back to the sustainable services that we've uh been providing but we require elimination of routes potentially and and because that our performance report had been used every year to really look at those four or five routes they have to the performing since we started there's been a change that business went out of business those types of things um we hadn't made any changes so now we have about 12 routes that are not meeting those thresholds and commuters are not the least of which but there's other uh adjustments to make we just sent that out of the draft and the route performance reports that folks on those hundred performing routes looking at 52 million and looking at what we need to do i need you to ride the buses and to assess and to see what they would suggest on making those improvements could you downsize the size of the vehicle and then if it's under 16 you don't have to have a cvl driver those were all kinds of options that would be part of this announcement absolutely and as you can imagine we're already starting to get emails from people who are concerned about cutting costs or cutting routes i'm getting one from northeast kingdom trails who are i think they're on the list and we'd rather not see that trails don't ask for a lot of help from the state but you know we're going to put our plug in for that to keep that room going if we can we had that conversation uh yesterday after the conversation when we brought that forward i was like boy look at Burke and but it was the first year we usually do three year of uh new start assessments um the iija allows us to use c mac dollars for more than just the three year new start uh we can now fund that forever that's a huge difference because of our form funding formula when i go through the budget i'll demonstrate that we've got a year or two the canadian borders open we understand that there's some really good tweaks that they've made uh we don't need to cut we need to fully address those those routes and maybe make cuts where they make sense but um that's a great example of where it doesn't make sense this morning it's taken a long long time to get to that point to pull uh rug out from under this after the first year would be um probably uh you know premature yeah i think it takes a long time for people to figure out where that where that works going and it's the services there and so i'm happy to hear that great thank you but i can take one i had the conversation yesterday morning um so uh the transportation main management grant program was uh started by uh uh these committees uh three years ago um it's uh called the mobility and transportation innovations grant program or the mti grant program it's managed by dan currier our golemant program manager who replaced me as a previous golemant program manager and it really is to um help people access more modes reduce the use of single occupancy vehicles reduce greenhouse gases all of those things that you see in this wheel of tm tools and for the first two years we have been supporting micro trains of pilots and studies feasibility studies with those funds bike share and e-bike programs public transit rider support incentives communications those types of programs we didn't provide a telework resource through kathma who was really trying to help the hill institutions wrestle with this new normal at center maus was talking about uh and uh the car share mobility support uh we are uh you know very much involved in those projects ban career it was more than happy looking forward to coming and sharing more details about this type of activity this year uh more e-bike share programs expanding that they have been utilized and people are interested um we're starting a new operations five new micro transit pilots i'll get to you right after this um very um thankful that yeah um and uh and we're gonna be so we'll also that that's a good example of being able to pull in the new housing uh and they're saying hey maybe they have some e-bikes to utilize some mobility um off out of those hours really excited about that pilot um and certainly we use some of these funds to try to get people back on the bus and ensure that it's safe and clean and fair free um or it was so this was uh basic information generally for the houses that benefit but if you remember it really the concept is moving from a route hoping that our times and our bus stops are serving the most people to just drawing the regional service for demand response allowing for pickups closer to an elderly or person with disability or a general public member bringing them as close to their destination as possible no no surprise sales people telling me it's going to increase ridership by 3.5 percent you know that that hasn't materialized as you know and it did increase cost to an extent right what we did in Montpelier was we had three vehicles already through the capital shuttle the city uh commuter by the city uh circulator and Montpelier hospital hill so we already had three of those vehicles the transition to microchains was maintained through vehicles with a 30 000 software as a service with their tablets and now with a little bit more of a call center it's costing um a little bit more the pilot has not been able to be managed the way that we were anticipating to begin with driver shortages reduced those buses from three to two and then the numbers just started you know kind of plateauing it was a real disappointment to VTrans not that GMT could have done a lot about it but we are pressing them to put the service back on as designed so we do have these apples apples comparisons in terms of cost but it's a new technology it's we have successful case studies all over the country we the current ridership was blood done before the pandemic and we just thought this may be more flexible and more convenient for all these people and it does speak to equity because the people with Medicaid or the elderly disabled um our and the general public are all using the same infrastructure and system and vehicles everybody gets the same and um so in Montpelier it has it has worked to do that but we're learning that 70 percent of the trips are the Montpelier hospital hill so do we re-institute that with that one vehicle and then use the other two vehicles for demand response to and from that trunk service almost the last mile first mile which is overwhelmingly nationwide um the most common use of microtrains getting people to the trains and the buses that's the fixed services so but for us as you can see on the map we have five new pilots that we were able to fund primarily through the assistance of this of these transportation committees where you may available 1.25 million for the non-federal share for these three pilots over the next three years so Windsor is starting next month Manchester is putting their RFP out for that type of service starting service starting service yeah and it's a big planning and outreach trying to uh stand up the advisory council the biggest metric uh to success uh that we've seen is community involvement and you've been involved in this one um and that's been key middlebury berry as you can see Rutland Manchester Windsor all these are so disparate because we're trying to identify the best use for microtransit service in Vermont um and we're hoping that in addition to Montpelier uh that will be partially revealed through these next five studies is it an area like Windsor without public transit but has quite a bit of command response service for the elderly and Medicaid is it a morris though or is it buried where we are going to bring folks from the from a larger area into the city to access the the core services we don't know um and um i don't think anyone does i'm on a uh a transportation research board and i'm on the the webinar trail around the country providing our uh experience and plans and we're we're far ahead of most rural areas and russ are any of these going to be with fans instead of the small cutaway because i think that was one of the popular yeah that was a concern and certainly i can understand that we have funded GMT to purchase the big the vans when you're talking about a seven person van and getting in and you may be you know next to right next to yeah you know unhoused folks and those types of things i don't know what that's going to do but certainly would help a little bit with operations not much in terms of the cost per hour but it's more it could be a better marketing piece and it could be more efficient and why wouldn't we want to do that more stills looking at vans on colorways and then the cdl driver as you mentioned i'm trying to you know deal with that issue with the passenger van i drove it for a long time on route two um so it but it it takes a lot to organize it we've got a bill and so forth i have one question and you keep talking about um the Medicaid piece and um it's your current discussion around reimbursement and is there an interplay between zero fare and Medicaid rules that would say if you're if you're giving senator engels free why should i why should we pay for me who might be going to a Medicaid funding appointment so um are we actually compromising our ability to get those Medicaid dollars with our fare free and i'm just asking that question and in other words free is for everybody whether you're on you know um a Medicaid which does require that um and and so um what is the status of that free to the individual is not free to the system right i know there's no such thing as a free lunch and there's no such it's heavy weight somewhere but um the whole thinking behind the braiding of the Medicaid and the end was to get the advantage of that Medicaid funding which is a lot of on demand um because particularly in rural areas so i was just wondering to what extent we uh complicate or um have a negative impact on revenues from from that program by this fare free policy to an extent it is affecting our demand response services generally are free to the individual and that is the services that the NEMT non-emergency medical transportation program uses is that infrastructure that dialer right service in those instances where you could offer a bus and you could charge twice the fare those revenues are being lost and in champion county it's a much larger number because it's got more boxes for us we're not seeing an appreciable difference there's other factors like the per member per week numbers or clients have gone down since COVID and so there's fewer dollars going out to cover those types of trips and there's I believe VPTA just signed a six month extension with diva department of Vermont health access to continue providing the services while addressing some of the shortfalls have been identified with these new costs that are associated with transportation services so in the zero fare study we do show that in addition to potentially going back to fares in the urban area is to charge a nominal fare for demand response micro transit it's a little more expensive as you mentioned and to capture ADA services as well we can charge double fare if there's no fare we're losing that it's a big issue for these areas and for we're hoping that we can continue to work with diva and VPTA to overcome those challenges if we have a better system and a better service in place we're going to have to find a way to make this work for everybody but your braided service model is something that we continue to to try to maintain and we're even thinking of going out on the street with a study to identify what the braided service model in Vermont means for all of Vermont not just our program or the diva program and what it means in the future as we look at these types of services well it was I think around 13 million at one point so it was not in consequential it's 15 now 15 and that's the the delta they're trying to work on but it's it's been challenging it's it's going to be challenging for us too because of these these cost increases that we're seeing across the board we have a hugely hugely successful program in South Bureau of the Sider how is that fun because I know a lot of donations but that's a huge success up there it is public transit they do all the private bring up the doctors appointments and everything it's meals on the list yeah is that any funding at all there's something about their subcontractor to GMT and so GMT is an out in that area providing the services they're paying Sider Sider pays for that 20 non-federal match with those local funds you're talking that's why we don't need it yeah and Sider really benefits from doing more than just transportation I don't make meals on wheels right all that all the social engagement that they do is really a a model that would could could be replicated and serve other areas other areas state there's not like Sider not like Sider they've done some with RCT with school good kids with different school schedules transport for example and so there are but not them I don't think on the meals on wheels sort of that but the volunteer drivers are you know you're going to put somebody up your vehicle up on the Newark Ridge you probably are using a volunteer but they're harder to come by we're curious if in addition to any MT and our fixed route services being braided is there more AHS activities that can be managed by VPTA because again if we have these regional mobility managers doing more for you know other programs reach up and like there could be some additional benefits and that's kind of what we wanted to pull out of that assessment of the braided service model how how how more how much more could we do and would that be more effective than having different divisions and different entities or agencies trying to largely replicate or become redundant in some of these scheduling dispatch functions a lot a lot to assess but right now first is fix it um and maintain the the current service where's with that redundancy occur right now like Department of Corrections um and they have a secure transportation DCF has kids that require child seats they have contracts with other people that are not VPTA and so they're making those calls and trying to oh yeah because DCF had this big scheme they're going to save money and it didn't we budgeted the savings and materialize um so okay yeah as far as the sightings on these on these new places are they um are you sighting around hospitals or that that's there's not the main driver services um uh were a part of the consideration when we did these feasibility studies we did 12 and we went to our six local providers advanced transit small enough and doesn't isn't looking at this right now we said let's pick two for feasibility studies and then let's see what that means and that is the areas that they in the regional level are hearing about the paucity of demand or our services morrisville there's going to be a new housing uh uh program that will be looped in it's going to be coply and most of the residential areas very it's going to be a little bit different but that is part of it is uh is connecting people to essential services absolutely and are all your vehicles are you and i i feel kind of foolish about asking this question right all your vehicles are you compliant with did you have to be compliant with ada is our until everyone so so you must have a little problem with some of these vans i mean when you're trying to cut services down these vans are ada compliant for the most part for the most part if we're going to use federal transit money uh they you're going to have to be ada but we have a bunch of vans that have ramps um that will hold one wheelchair and that that's maybe all we need um and certainly all the cutaways and the other buses we use i'm our ada compliant and that's and that does allow us to manage them in a little bit more fungible way where we don't have to worry about uh oh that vehicle needs to pick somebody up and it's not ada compliant and now you know that it becomes very inequitable um so that's where we are i just a few more slides and um i very much appreciate the extra time um a transit app when we go to the airport we look at the train schedules it's the first thing you want to know where's the bus and 123 routes are captured throughout vermont it's free to the public we spend about 15 000 dollars to provide this service and it really is what you see in cities and the like it's great size for vermont it's working very well and we just upgraded to what they call the transit royale they're in montreal um and the transit royale allows for feedback how it was the bus on time was it clean um uh rated and and made comments that's the type of information that is more important than any other information we have uh that we can get and it's new and so this is a good step in the right direction e-buses uh you're looking at an electrip uh uh model from latenda this is being uh developed outside of montreal for uh no no coincidence there or just a coincidence there um we work with veic and put applications together for our low and no emissions bus program with the utility the provider uh with vtrans and with their assessment and ongoing case studies it has really proven to win the day we're six for six in applications and um as a result we're we're doing pretty well uh we just did sign an mou with department of environmental conservation for 2.2 plus million from vw funds to help on that match the non-federal match they do and um they uh they approached us and i wish i had approached them previously but we now have the ability to i uh use those funds for the non-federal match on these awards which can be 85 federal so this could mean that we replace 25 large buses we can't replace cutaways with the vw funds um large buses um and actually have spend less from state and um local funds than if we replace it with a diesel bus that's a good step in the right place we're learning a lot um the overall range um that the buses currently have can replace 80 percent of our routes today and those ranges and those and those specs are improving every year and certainly um we've got a ways to go the big surprise here has been the charging issues because i'm also the longest entry court they hold but i see that they only hold the extension court i'm photoshopping that out of there um but uh yeah and so uh this is a good example of these buses having hit the us market we will get the first four that the fta has waived to come into the market and they've been developed from the ground up they're lighter the cabins are heated are insulated for better h back uh efficiencies dual turn and there's seven to 12 year buses right now we replace uh cutaways as five year buses we cannot buy five year electric buses because of that increased capital we are only going to look at seven or 12 year buses this meets the uh fits the bill and uh we're looking for that one uh seven this one 160 180 miles which would cover the battery life life battery so we do uh purchase we have been purchasing warranties um that on these i think it's best to understand the batteries in a big big factor a couple hundred thousand dollars absolutely and some uh the good news is we haven't seen uh batteries being the issue we need them to last for 12 years and then maybe they can be used downstream on mechanics or stuff well but we are protected at this point until we can get through some of these life cycles and see it's a learning curve you know what and that learning curve again but because there are phones charging our cars charge i wasn't expecting that half of the downtime related to e-buses are because of the charging infrastructure and it's just a lot of electrons going in um and that's a lesson learned and we're looking at other options but that's you know it's been a overall positive experience but not without its uh hiccups where did the CDs were made these are made out of um outside of montreal and they're standing up a facility outside of detroit and one of those is different than the other electric bus company from kovac there's nova is the other one and they are totally different although a lot of the managers and people are from nova well it sounds like though you know jib with the group that we had in here before i think we're going to continue to hear it is that as this technology comes forward we're just we're going to have to learn we're going to have to learn and there's going to be some learning you know try not to repeat the mistakes of the past but you're going to learn and it's there's going to be some failures but i can't i can't i mean i can't define the program you know yeah interesting and uh yeah it was just one of those things where i think it was a blind spot for me personally and uh but now uh we know that we have to redouble our efforts on the charging infrastructure considerations how many are running now because i see the one electric bus sometimes there's six on the road now two being registered another four to six coming in this fiscal year in regular service and they're in regular service and they're putting them around to show different you know usages the hilly areas the longer routes and they do want the public to see one of the big limiting factors is the cutaway replacements haven't had the range that we needed the the 140 180 they're about 100 now so we've been waiting for testing to come through for a better mousetrap for a better option i think we have one um but all i know is what the last salesperson tells me right and the cold weather have you had any like a really cold weather where they just the range is so much about 30 give back and uh the h back is is such a pull and such a draw that many of these miles have a diesel heater on top of the bus and even though they comply with you know emissions it's not something that doesn't have a good luck now well and it reduces the greenhouse gas my stuff pickups and and so uh but that's why this this cabin is insulated right and that's why they're using lighter componentry for all of those things that um so many of these electric buses were just take the drivetrain out and put in that see what happens and um we're and they're learning as well right um and so this one that's exactly right um it's they say it works great until 10 degrees or colder that's we guys you know we have a wood fire your car yeah whole whole okay it was a ski van one sort of with a wood stove and said um the nominal fees that you're charging back um now and you probably said it early and i apologize what's that putting back into the system as far as money is the nominal fees from uh the amount of you know you're charging down for fares that you weren't far charging before what's that put back in the system right at 2.2 million dollars if ridership continues on the current trend and when we provide the fare free analysis you'll see it pretty spelled out 400,450 something like that on the herb on the world side 2.2 on the urban that's why in urban they're they're looking at a different approach yeah um we are partnering with ahs not only with their diva program but we have a recovering job access ride um so we had a demand response for elderly people with disabilities we now offer services for those in recovery to keep them in recovery to access the uh appointments and counseling that they wouldn't otherwise be eligible for and we're also offering job access for a week or two just a week or two to get tuned from a new job opportunity to get a paycheck to fix your car buy a car get a car pool we'll work with the employer to get a van pulled together but job access is one of the best ways to keep people in recovery and it's also to keep people from spiraling uh you know into having to be in recovery we've lost about half of our volunteer drivers we're moving the program from our volunteer driver program to our community driver program and you lost the meaning they couldn't do it because the regulations they just don't want to do it because they don't want to be in a car COVID related issues primarily the risks or like regulations concerns there's nothing to keep people from maintaining but you know when we're bringing in the masks and asking people to pre-screen and identify if they have COVID that didn't scare and then we and the average age is well over 60 for our community drivers or volunteer drivers so we want to build that back but we've always relied on volunteers to do 60 or 65 of these 750 000 demand response trips and it was always tenuous maybe and so what we thought is we have the full allocated transit rate at $100 or so per hour we have a 65 cent per mile option what's that middle ground is there an hourly wage that we can pay people to drive the sedans at the providers can we contract with them like a Uber or Lyft driver giving them the tablet and giving them a different rate so that it's costing us $30 an hour rather than $100 an hour and so we're really trying to fill in that middle area $40 000 media buy we're hoping that it results in an extra 100 statewide volunteers and trying out some of these pilots for those other options and if we get somebody driving for pay rather than for volunteer mileage reimbursement will they become a CDL driver can we get them in the pipeline there's a dnb's going by there's some of them as the retirements oh they're the retirements oh yeah yeah many trucks dnb vehicles yeah many trucks oh yeah they got plenty don't worry about that they uh wow you can be over a little over in the interstate today you don't have to worry about it look at those trucks i think we got jeez man now we didn't say wow and i'm all set i will just that you mentioned the commissioner minnoli uh she is putting in these posters that all the dnb stops as well i'm trying to help us so another you know intra agency um coordination to help us but i'm very exciting stuff always a good update yeah that was very exciting very very very informational across the very project that's that's the one with capstone no that's a different and so that's that's part of that middle area at $68 an hour and if gmt's providing those van trips at $82 an hour again bending that cost curve down can they help us get more volunteer drivers in addition to provide those trips themselves um and we are they just signed the contract looking forward to that and then we have the the uh microtransit and berry for the last mile first mile with capstone is that going to be that mobility for all model i don't know but this is maybe our best opportunity at this time to that contract because i know there were some issues earlier on that yeah um well microtransit they're wondering gmt's wondering if they should do a turnkey approach with let's say a via where they provide the vehicle fans um drivers and they and gmt just pays an hour to break um that may be one of the nuances of that model to see when we go statewide and we expand microtransit are we going to do more of that turnkey transportation as a service rather than software as a service and i'm happy to come yes yep um they're uh they're scaling up to such an extent um they didn't warn me that they're not going to be bidding on one vehicle here and there but um berry was interesting enough to them to do that and um they know that mopili or uh vermont is the leader and uh microtransit in the country so they're maintaining that relationship with us okay and i was asked to deliver this for the next present presentation um and from that's from andrea and uh yeah thank you everybody thank you so we canceled the last one okay you're all right you're right on what's your idea what you're going to involve microtransit okay all right you're a director of policy planning and research wow a lot of stuff i know scary stuff state networks a little slow today yeah there's some problems uh across the country and even vermont it's not really so early faa the faa system was down yesterday and then something was going on with vermont um i can't remember you know what it was but something was on the airlines if i don't pack it up i know oh my god that's the last one it's helping the trains yeah yeah i guess you're right that's right i thought of that buses join without the deal or with we don't need to see me right okay yeah get the system fixed up or something even for check now set up okay okay yeah your mic mic and speakers speakers is the zoom setting it's got me on your computer seems to fix how about now am i good you're good thanks committee sorry about the little technical difficulties you did better than i would have well as you folks may know we actually don't use very zoom very much at the state we're required to use teams so we have to use it we're a little humbly so thanks for having me um as the chair said i'm amy bell i'm the current director of the policy planning and research section and i'm replacing i replaced joe um segali back in august of this past year so you may remember joe previous presentations he retired and i've taken over from him but i have been with the agency for about 25 years and worked in the policy planning section for a little over 15 so i've got a lot of familiarity with what we do so um so it started i this is a really brief presentation i think i'm going to get you guys out here quicker than you thought but so the policy planning and research section of the agency is really basically comprised of five different sections we have obviously policy planning research but then we have these other sections we have the developer review and permitting services section and we also have the mapping section so it's um it's a pretty diverse section and i report directly to michelle boomhauer we all know very well um this is i always say about policy and planning we're kind of the incubator of new and uh maybe not always great ideas but um all the federal initiatives and all the you know like when you folks come up with an idea for a legislative study we oftentimes will be the section that staffs that study gets consultants and convenes internal stakeholder groups and external stakeholder meetings with communities to discuss those topics come up with a report that sort of thing so we're kind of the place where they're the kind of the incubator of all the new ideas that come in whether it's a federal mandate or whether it's something that comes up at the legislative level or it's something that we as an agency an organization are interested in pursuing so um policy and planning i'm going to just kind of get brief overviews of each of these individual sections one thing i forgot to mention there's 22 full-time employees that are part of this section of the agency and we deal with a lot of really diverse topics and issues so i'm just going to list a few here to give you just a general sense of what we do but certainly if you have any questions so we do all our statewide plans and legislative studies all the federal policy development and grant applications um we oversee the better connections program that's a grant program run through the agency the transportation planning initiative which is our cooperative relationship with the regional planning commissions that's administered and overseen through our section we also do corridor management planning now we've got the number of plans that are currently ongoing the us2 ones that are mentioned on the slide and roof four over in Hartford Woodstock we also do all the long range planning so we have a long range plan we're required to have by by federal statute that's something that we oversee and then we do all the modal planning doesn't matter whether it's public transit um bike and head park and ride highway freight all of those are overseen through our section and then another big initiative that we're overseeing right now is the transportation equity framework um work that's underway with the agency that's also through our section we do all the national and international coordination so all this stuff related to interactions with folks at the federal level New England as well as the Canadian provinces all that happens through our section and then we do all the monitoring um an implementation of any of those any of the directives that come down from the feds um in the federal legislation which is the IAJA I have a question about that sure that boat wall that the art work on there because I heard that that wall was coming down or had to be rebuilt then I saw that the art work on there but maybe that art work is easy to come up if there are actual panels that are attached so they can do it pretty easily yeah and then I wanted to highlight these this is an example of an idea but I just wondered if they're going to have to carry a wall down that they're going to lose the art this is an example of an issue that came in we were getting lots of requests from the agency for art work in the public right of way but yet we didn't have a policy regarding it we didn't we had inconsistent responses across the state and then it's like all right let's put some time and effort in and convene an internal state culture group to work on developing a policy so we have this new policy called art installations in the state highway on state highway facilities and you can see some examples in this the bottom picture is actually some paintings some murals that have been painted on the um understate these are here in Bob Filiere this is a gateway park if you go down route 2 there you don't see them from the road they're on the backside but their plans are their plans for up to 15 in total down here on these peers yeah interesting how they how the graffiti artists have a respect for them you know they're not they haven't these were put up last fall to my knowledge there has not been any vandalism yeah and there are series that are over on the city did on the bike path as well and those have been up for an extended period of time and have limited issues with so that's an example of so you know that's an example I just wanted to give a something that came up and how we resolved it and our staff oversight that mentioned the transportation planning initiative and this is the agency's 30 year now we just celebrate 30 years of our cooperative relationship with the regional planning commissions across the state and with the Chittinick County MPO and just provided some statistics here this comes right from our performance indicating work that we do with them we want to find out how many communities are participating to see the numbers are pretty impressive 241 communities in the state actively participate in transportation planning that's a pretty remarkable number for a state of our size and then you can see some of the other statistics a lot of the monies also I think that's really important to highlight is about 50% of the monies that we give the regional planning commissions go directly to support of municipalities so it is a really important the RPC is a really important connection so just a budget formula grant or it's a formula grant yeah yeah by size yeah it's based on the number of towns that the community the RPC serves the number of road miles both state and and local roads as well as population so it's a it's a formula based what's a what's that what kind of management are we talking about I think total right now we're around the total was around 2.3 2.4 million dollars 10 or whatever yeah and then on the right hand side is just the coverage map we have we have we have individual staff members who are assigned to specific regions so we have direct liaisons working with those regions and being our eyes and ears and also helping these regions but also the regions are tremendous help to us they help us fulfill a lot of our federal and state requirements as far as public participation they're an immediate element if we need a response to something we've got an outlet to just say what do you guys think about this and that's really unique and really valuable to us because it's a it's been a really beneficial collaborative relationship and we've gotten lots of really good feedback over the years so then I mentioned we also have the research section and there's a we're federally mandated to have a research program and currently Emily Park and he's the current manager of that program and we have five research projects that are completed this year seven more than are ongoing she does a lot with technology transfer and transfer of information through lots of symposiums, newsletters, meetings she's very connected in both the national as well as the regional level with other research institutions and then we do a lot of collaboration with other Vermont institutions you know whether they're colleges or they could be consulting firms there's a lot of consulting firms that do a lot of really good quality research work in Vermont and then also as I said she's very engaged at both the New England level as well as at the federal level is that the team that works on like how to use recycled glasses and roadbed she would be overseeing any research that would be conducted to see how we might utilize that and then after that research was conducted then it would be sort of handed off to the program manager in that area to figure out how might we then start utilizing this product and or this method in our actual practices so again it's very much an incubator of an idea how might we then transfer it into meaningful use and you work with universities and there's a number of consulting firms that also have significant research arms knowing the mapping section and they're kind of the unsung heroes I say they're kind of you don't hear a lot about them but they do a lot of really cool things and we all rely on them tremendously all the maps you see generated by the agency is a result of our mapping section there's five people in that section they do all the town highway maps you're familiar with that with your work probably with municipalities they do all of the town highway mileage certificates they maintain all of the GIS data related to transportation that all state entities and municipalities use so they really play an important role and they support a lot of our other agency activities they do way more than just planning work they support the entire agency they just are housed within the planning division and then they deal with all the town highway reclassifications and they maintain one of our really recent things and when Andrea has her chance to speak to you understand she's been delayed for today because you're not going to have a quorum but when she does able to speak about our environmental policy and sustainability program this transportation resiliency planning tool has actually been moved over into her shop but it still is maintained through our mapping section the actual application then we have the development review and permitting services and these are folks who deal specifically with permits to the state highway system so anytime someone is doing any kind of form of development or a utility needs a permit for work in the state highway our utility permitting services folks are the ones who would be whom they interact with they do a lot with trying to do access management to ensure safety along the corridors and that sort of thing and then we also have a staff person who oversees Act 250 he's the person who basically spearheads our response to any Act 250 applications as the agency is a party to many of those applications and then also the same person oversees our Act 145 the transportation impact fee management process that came through or is it 2017 maybe you folks that's not right it's the basically having developers pay small amounts over time towards improvements instead of this you know this used to have this problem with the last person in pay for all the improvements on the road but that's what the Act 145 process is it's basically getting bringing in funds in pieces and parts based on number of vehicle trips to then go towards large scale projects so that the last developer in doesn't have to spend an inordinate amount of money on improvements and this is my last slide and I'm just leaving it with you just because if you ever have any need to reach out to any of the staff in my section this is kind of a functional breakdown it's got everyone's contact information and then as well sort of topically what are the topic areas that they specialize in and one thing I neglected to mention at the beginning with the org chart is I mentioned so between last year and this year we've had a considerable discussion in-house about breaking out five sections currently in policy planning and research last year there was a sixth and that was the environmental policy section was also part of ours and now the current proposal is to actually move that section which Andrea Wright over here represents and Andrea's section is dealing with all of the climate energy EV it's a huge it's a she's got a huge lift it's sort of the newest and evolving things that we're doing are in Andrea's section and Andrea will be doing her own presentation at the time but it's in planning now it will stay in planning it's just going to be doing a direct report to Michelle that's the difference so we're sort of elevating it organizationally and also additional staff have been hired so at the time a year ago there was only two staff people now there are three and they're soon to be two more so that would be Patrick Murphy to work with you exactly yep yep Patrick and Andrea so I just wanted to let you know that Andrea Andrea will be giving you more details technically right now I think you're still part of policy planning and research but with this legislative and budget round we're actually she's going to have her own budget line item and assuming everyone is in agreement that this change is beneficial then that change will be formalized so that's it for me questions thank you very much appreciate it thank you I'm sorry Andrea about today but we had one is out and the other one had leaves so I just want to mess it all up it would be better for you if they're here if they get it here yeah yeah I definitely move for that and it sounds like Michelle will try to schedule it so that would be a good time for the program and the budget and all that Senator Chittan's been out for the week and Senator Kitchell had leaves so I said I'll let that for all everybody here yeah a lot going on with climate energy and are you new now that we're taking your testimony how long have you been with it? I've been with the agency for 22 years always in environmental capacity but I'm new to policy planning you guys heard from Dan Dutcher last year so he retired and I took over two years ago I don't think last year he was here I think last year he was with Patrick right at the beginning of the year and I think a lot of the electrification stuff Patrick came in to present on he didn't seem that old Dan Dutcher like how many right on the he's just about like a lucky retiree you know he's in his early 60s I think so yeah he's having a good time well thank you folks