 I'm the senior transit planner with GMT. I have been at GMT for just about a year and a half now and I've been working on Next Gen for the whole time that I'm here. My name is Devin Mason. I'm a transit planner with women on the transit. I've also been here for about a year and a half and my primary function is ridership, passenger counting, assistance and then various other projects. Great, so not a large turnout. Last time we had a meeting here at CVMC, I think we had over 40 people show up. So luckily Orca is here videoing us today and that will be shared. If you send us the link for this video, I'd be happy to put it on our website afterward. So the agenda is we're gonna talk a little bit about the history of the project, where we are now, a summary of the changes and then some exciting new mobile ticketing and real vehicle location apps that we are introducing in this area. So what is Next Gen? It's a comprehensive service improvement plan, which is a lot of words meaning we needed to take a step back and look at all of our service. GMT has been through a lot of changes. In the past 10 years, we used to be CCT in Chittenden County and GMTA in the rural area. They merged five years ago, I wanna say. And so we wanted to take a look back. How can we do that systems thinking, system-wide connectivity? So the big push with this project is we wanna help, always the balance in public transit is helping the most people and helping the people who need it the most. So with those two weights on the scale, how can we provide the best service to the people who need it and the people who need it most? Of course, always transit agency. We really wanna increase ridership and better balance services with demand. So originally, this project had different scenarios based on levels of funding. If level funding, 10%, 20% dream big kind of projects, we quickly realized that level funding was the more realistic scenario. So we turned it into phases because we didn't wanna lose all that good research we had done. So phase two is kind of a two to three year, what additional hours and days can we put on existing routes, so more trips and more of the time and on weekends. And phase three is gonna be future expansion. Thanks, Dan. I think we got some. Hi there. Yes, I am. So phase three is geographic expansion. So we looked a lot at what little more roots, what quarters of activity can we pull into the system? But that's kind of big picture, 10 years out. That's gonna be based on public interest in the service and funding availability. So this project started in September of 2017. Any project like this, you kinda start with big concepts. So the concepts were serving more people, better ridership, making the system easier to use. And you bring that up for public feedback and you get kind of more specific steps and then you bring those specific steps out and to the public and then you get even a more refined plan. So here we are three to four months away from implementation and we're bringing these very specific steps out to the public. So the purpose of this meeting is to get your feedback to inform you what our proposed changes are and to get feedback on those proposed changes. So we will be presenting this to the board later this month but what we'll be presenting to the board is this plan with the public feedback about this plan. So there is still room to make those small changes based on your public feedback tonight. Now the implementation is still a bit fuzzy. There's a Taylor 1 transit center opening up on Taylor Street currently slated for September. So there's a lot of moving pieces that all need to come into place for this service to be implemented but we're currently thinking sometime in September is when this is most likely to be introduced. So again, easy use. One of the things I'll be talking about later is real-time vehicle location with an app that works. Better service, single seat service from Bury to National Life on the city route. In the original proposal, we proposed eliminating service to CCV in the pool. You know, we met with CCV, we met with the nature branch, we really heard the comments there and we found a way to continue service, improve service, hourly service all day to CCV. And the pool. What pool is that? I guess there's like a rec field up there across from the college. Not the blind lady. Oh, you have a pool. Okay, I did not come out first of fitness pool. So addition of fixed route service to Hannaford and Bury, so that's on an extension of the city route. Increased service to hospital hill area, which I'll be talking a little bit more about in the following slides. Bidirectional service on airport road. One thing that we're also looking at is better commuter schedules. We did a really in-depth dive in one of the commuter routes that serves Chittenden County. And we found that just by tweaking a little bit, we were able to increase ridership by 30%. So we're really interested in doing that with this area. Meeting with, you know, business owners and seeing if we can get the shifts to work. But we do need a lot of responses to make sure that we're not gonna disadvantage any riders, current riders, by making these changes. So throughout this presentation, I'll be pushing you to come to our website and fill out some commuter surveys. If you have any interest in those services or use them or know anybody who does, do please share this, that's really valuable. Another thing that I'll be touching on briefly is an addition of the Barrie Link Express. I don't actually have that added to the map yet, a relatively new service. It's very similar to Montpelier Link Express, but it goes directly to the new state office complex in Barrie and the switch to paratransit. So what is paratransit? Currently, it's a requirement that we provide ADA level of service, sorry, the same level of service to ADA passengers to non-ADA passengers. How this works, set up to a three quarters of a mile from a fixed route, so not commuters, just fixed route, you know, every day fixed route, the bus will deviate. So the person will call in advance, there's a limit of two per route and the bus will deviate up to three quarters of a mile to that person's door. We're moving away from that into paratransit, which is still the same buffer zone, but it will be a single occupancy vehicle or a little minivan with the driver going and doing. So there's no limit to the amount of deviations that will be happening, not deviations, but trips that are, there's no limit to the amount of trips that are happening today, but there will be a limit on who qualifies. So in Chittenden County, we have SSTA and there's qualification process for who can use the service and we'll be implementing a similar qualification process in this region, not Memorial or Franklin Grand Isle, just this capital region service district. Unfortunately, we don't, you know, hopefully in the next week or two, we will have that link to how people can start to get signed up, but we have just a brief description here of who might be eligible based on this process. If you cannot independently, except for the assistance of a bus driver operating a Lyft, board, ride, or disembark from an accessible GMT bus due to a disability, or if you are unable to travel to or from a bus stop or wait a reasonable period of time at a bus stop due to a disability. So since these changes are proposed to happen in the next two to three months, we will be beginning the onboarding process very soon. Luckily, we did an outreach project with Vermont Center for Independent Living and the Central Vermont Regional Planning District and we were able to get a really great pool of potential riders and also contact information for a lot of potential riders and so we're gonna be reaching out in the coming weeks and starting the onboarding process. So just to go over the route by route changes, I wanna talk a little bit about the current service. So we have, I think five fixed rooms. We have Montpelier Hospital Hill, which travels from Montpelier to the Hospital Hill region. Berry Hospital Hill similarly travels through Berry on Airport Road and then back on the highway. We have the city route and city commuter, which is the main commuter between Montpelier and Berry and we have the Montpelier circulator, which does two kind of funky, it's like a figure eight, it does two loops throughout the day. We used to have a seasonal service called the Capitol Shuttle, which only operated during the legislative session. Last year we tried it year round, pretty fairly low ridership outside of the legislative session, but that travels just between the state house and national life. For commuters, we have the US2 commuter, which travels up to St. Johnsbury, the Northfield commuter down to Northfield, the link service into Burlington. I feel like I'm forgetting one, but I think that's it. And now the Berry Link service, which similarly, Burlington, Richmond, Waterbury, Berry City. So some of the proposed changes would be to eliminate 88 Capitol Shuttle. We'll be extending the city route. Currently, city route goes just from Montpelier and what we've heard a lot of is that single seat service from Berry to national life, AKA I live in Berry. I'm trying to get to national life. I don't want to have to get off the bus downtown and transfer. So we're extending the route from Hanifurt down in South Berry up to national life and back. And then we'll just do that all day. When do you anticipate that going into effect? So this is all, again, the start date is fuzzy, but September is the most likely start date. And then you've got regular service from Berry to Hanifurt now, that's a proposal. Yes. So route 92, currently there's a midday gap in service. We'd be eliminating that. So it would be all day service, simplified routing. So we're getting rid of that funky figure eight that it does. You know, if you've ever seen the bus mapping guide, it says loop one, loop two. It's just gonna be a loop now. Service to Northern Montpelier and CCV, you know, by request up to the North Branch Nature Center will be provided by an extension of the Montpelier Hospital Hill route. And then we're gonna talk about, we are actually considering two scenarios from the Montpelier circulator. And we're really interested in getting your feedback on those two scenarios. So we're gonna do a little bit deeper dive later. Route 89, city commuter and route 80, again, extended to serve national life. All trips would serve the price chopper plaza and 45 minute headways all day. Currently during peak hours, we do have 30 minute headways, but we found that by going to consistent, you know, instead of 30 on peak, 75 minute, we actually can provide more trips for the same cost. And looking at the load profiles, there's actually the same, there isn't more demand during peak hours in less than the middle of the day. It's the same amount of demand all day. So 45 minute service all day is what we're looking at now. When you say headway, can you explain the term headway? So headway is how often that bus is gonna show up at any stop. It's just how frequently the bus runs. So that's a sort of a 45 minute cycle, is it? Yeah. So hospital hill, northern extension to CCV pool. This is actually incorrect. It's the city route that would be serving the Haniford. So for the hospital hill area of service, you can see that this is all the same green hallway. So instead of Montpelier hospital hill and Berry hospital hill, it would just be Montpelier hospital hill via this region. Basically what it's gonna look like is we're gonna have two buses and all day long they're gonna be just doing this. But when they reach this hospital hill region, they're gonna be on demand for 15 minutes. So I get on and Berry, I get in here and as soon as I get to this bubble, I'm just gonna let the driver know where I need to get dropped off and then I'm either gonna call a dispatch or let the driver know when and where I wanna get picked up and they're gonna relay that to dispatch. So it's- I'm gonna use the Berry bus when it travels from Berry and goes to hospital hill. It travels on the- It ends up going down Granger Road, but so will it still take that loop? So our current proposal is to have it just be on this airport road. Airport? But again in the winter, I understand that this hill right here is really steep and it needs to be rerouted. So that's something we're considering. You do always wanna have a route go on the same road both ways. We're not sure that it's possible on this route. So it might continue having that heads out this way and it heads in this way. We're not sure yet. That's something that we're working on. But this is gonna be similar to how there was Berry Hospital Hill demand response. It's kind of a demand response zone. If any of you are familiar with that region, it's lots of little- Well, there's obviously CVMC the biggest, but there's all these little places that people wanna go on kind of gravel dirt back roads. So serving that with classic transit is really difficult because first off, there's small gravel roads. Second off, they're just kind of, they're not in a corridor. They're all kind of spread out in this area. So we feel that by offering this kind of, start a Montpelier or you start in Berry, and then there's these two buses kind of picking people and dropping people off as needed for every, for 15 minutes out of every hour, it's gonna be really kind of that better on demand service for people who, I got a call from a woman who wanted to use the Aquatic Center, but she lived in Montpelier and the bus wouldn't take her directly to the Aquatic Center. Now she'll be able to get on in Montpelier and get dropped off and picked up right at the Aquatic Center. On demand, does that mean calling? I've forgotten. Yes. So we'll be using dispatch software. The calling ahead like we do now for, if you wanna get dropped off at, first of fitness or Aquatic, you call ahead. Is that on demand? So you don't have to call ahead to get dropped off because you're gonna be on the bus and you're just gonna tell the bus driver, hey, I need to get dropped off here. And he'll kind of have, in order, one person needs to get dropped off here, three people need to get up, but for being picked up. Yeah, thank you. So I know you said that you like to stay on the same road going one way in the reverse, but there are individuals from Northbury Manor that get served this way, but others that will be at Green Acres, which is right off from Prospect, that don't have a direct line to that bus route. I'm just wondering if you had a way that it was more of a loop rather than just up and down the same access that you could actually expand on that location. So I'm not familiar with where that is, so I can't speak to it, but I'd love to touch base with you after and see if there's a way we can serve that property. Commuter service. So a couple of commuter services proposed. One is for Route 83, Waterbury Commuter, which travels between Montpelier and Waterbury. We'd wanna shift service onto the highway from Middlesex to Montpelier. So the original proposal was to switch it to 86 for the whole route and cut out Middlesex, but Middlesex is actually a pretty high percentage of the riders on that route, so we don't wanna get rid of service, but the thinking here is Route 2 can be in pretty poor disrepair. It's not a very nice commute, so this way we're not losing any stops, but it's a bit of a smoother ride for that distance between Middlesex and Montpelier. For the 86, we're looking at adjusting the schedules to better balance loads based on commuter surveys. I'm not confident that we have done enough commuter surveys to make sure that we're not disadvantageing anyone. So again, a really big push if you use the 86 or know anybody that does do please take the survey. It only takes a couple of minutes. For Route 93, the Northfield Commuter, there was the original proposal to discontinue the midday trip due to very low ridership. I'm not sure where we are at with that. I know there's been a bit of controversy, so I don't feel comfortable speaking to this now, but we are in talks with the select board and the town and there's been a lot of public comments. So that's something that we're still looking into. And again, adjusting the times based on commuter surveys. So other changes, we have the 87 Northfield Community Shuttle, which travels down Route 12 and then up to the mall, serving a lot of people who need this service once a week just to get to the store. Based on public feedback, we will now be servicing the shaws in addition to the mall, but you will have to pick either destination. In other words, you can't go to both on the same trick because it picks people up, it drops people off, and then an hour later it picks people back up again. So not enough time to go to both locations, but we did hear that very much. They would like to add the shaws. So I'd like to talk about the circulator trade-offs a bit more. Again, going back to the conversation we were having before about how it's always better to have service along the same way. So the, I don't know where my slide was talking about. Okay, so my gut is that we're gonna stick with loop service because the trade-off is with a loop, it's just less convenient because, you know, if you imagine a circle, I'm here, I'm here, I'm always gonna have to travel around the circle versus a straight line, right? So it's just a little bit harder to get around. You're always gonna have a little bit of a longer commute. But the trade-off is better service. So if you go to the line, you're losing geographic area, but you're getting better service versus having a loop, worse service, but more geographic area. But since the original plan, you know, proposed moving to this bi-directional service, we wanted to give you all the chance to comment. So this is what the loop service would look like. Again, moving away from that kind of figure eight that it was doing before, with the North no longer being served by the loop, it can be served by Montpelier Hospital Hill Route versus bi-directional where we would cut off service to Hunger Mountain Cova, Freedom Drive, and the Senior Center, and it would just do this all day downtown. So a better East-West connection through the town, but losing a bit of Southern service. So is it the purple line we're looking at there? The purple line, yeah. That would be cut? The purple line would be cut, but you see this little Southern part that goes down to Freedom Drive, Hunger Mountain Cova. These are the two scenarios that we're looking at. So we wanna know if you would rather keep Freedom Drive, Hunger Mountain Cova, Senior Center free prospect with the knowledge that it's just not as good service on the rest of the line, right? So you don't have that East-West connection. What you have instead is this loop that the circulator is doing. You would have less service from downtown to national life because it's going this way. You'd only have service from national life to State Street. On this route, that service will be provided by the extension of City Route, but I think the headways are, again, it would be 45-minute headways. So going from this would be closer to 20-minute headways anytime you're working at national life and you walk out the door, the bus would come in 20 minutes and you could get downtown. This would look more like 45-minute headways all day. So thanks to only a couple of folks. I'm just gonna go through the rest. And then I thought if there's any comments or feedback you wanna leave about this loop service, the best way is to just leave notes on the map and we will be collecting all of those and counting those as public comments. Can I ask a question about this? Yeah. Why was the decision made to go up College Street rather than keeping the senior center and the Colvin Shaw's move? Yeah. So we were just looking at how do we maximize service area with a given headway? And I believe the headway was 30 minutes. You know, you're always constrained by how far can the bus get in a certain amount of time and stay on schedule? And so that really was the constraint with routing. And so you're making some assumptions based on analysis, based on origin destination, based on public feedback. Where do people wanna go the most? These decisions were based on that and also based literally how many people show up at each stop every day. So Hunger Mountain Coal Off on average two people, Freedom Drive in the summer average two people, in the fall and winter average three people, senior center, daily average zero, three prospect, daily average zero. Rick, I'll do one question. With the change to the Taylor Street location as the primary transits and stop, right now it's shown as Shaw's on here. That is incorrect. I know, I know it will be, yeah, in the future, but what's the, do you see any scenario where, because this route right now here on the bi-directional doesn't even go through Shaw's, nor is the show going through Taylor Street. So is there like a transfer happening at like? Yeah, so. What's the, I'm getting to a different busses once. So Taylor Street. Yeah. Love this call. So Taylor Street is right here. And it's, you know, 50 feet or so from State Street. So there is a, this is kind of the most popular stop on State Street. So we first see if we go to bi-directional, you know, the stop would be here and people could walk down here to the buses that are traveling this way on Taylor Street. Makes good sense. Thanks. So I'm confused, but are they still gonna stop if the Shaw's is still gonna be there for now? Correct. Okay. So the Shaw's is not a good stop. And I think you've probably all experienced that. Taylor One Street is gonna be a building. There's gonna be indoor waiting. There's gonna be, you know, a lot more information available about when the next bus is coming, what the maps are. So it wasn't quite clear what the timeline was gonna be when these maps were originally made. So I apologize that they don't, all routes are, all routes barring this, circulator are gonna be traveling through Taylor Street, Taylor Street Bidge in order to serve that transit hub. It's gonna be the lengths, it's gonna be Greyhound, it's gonna be, you know, Mom Peeler has a lot of big dreams for this transit hub. Yeah. Maybe it's too soon to say this, but how does a disabled person that got their groceries at Shaw's, I'm hoping they're still going to be able to get a bus right nearby and they may not be able to walk well over to Taylor Street. I mean, I just wanna make, I'm concerned with people who have disabilities being able to carry their groceries. Yeah. So we do want to serve that population as best we can. And that's a good comment. I'm gonna take that to heart. With the move to paratransit, you're gonna, if you qualify for paratransit services, you can take the bus to and from any location on these fixed routes. So you would call ahead, you would schedule when you want that pickup and when you wanna get dropped off at Shaw's and when you wanna get picked up at Shaw's. So it'd be that door-to-door service and you wouldn't be walking anywhere. You wouldn't be getting on these main fixed route buses, in other words. And that would be like a first come, first serve, like, because there might be a lot of people needing to utilize the calling and setting it up. So if, you know, there might not be access for a person on a certain day if there's other people ahead of them. Yeah, so I apologize. I'm not 100% on the ADA requirements, but I believe it is we have an hour or two window to meet all demands. So there's no waiting line. In other words, if we switch to paratransit, then we will provide this service as needed. And one difference with paratransit is as long as you call the day ahead, it doesn't have to be two days ahead. If we have great amount of transits, normal end of calling time is just gonna be about 4.30, I can't remember. As long as you call by then, you can, in all five of the paratransit, you can get picked up whenever the bus starts, not today, it's six o'clock. Oh, okay. It's a very short. And it will be not a bus, though, you said it would be. Well, whatever the person needs. If they need an accessible vehicle with wheelchair, that's what would come. If they don't need that, a mail. Yeah, question in the back? No? Okay. I'm just curious, what's the yellow route or the yellow line? The yellow route is the city route. So that's Montpelier to Barrie. And here you can see we've extended it up to National Life. Okay, so some exciting new things is updated bus mapping guides. Here's just an example of what the new bus mapping guides look like. To this version in Chittenden County, we'll be moving to this version in this region. You can tell that there's just a lot more context. And to be honest, this one isn't finished yet. There's still a lot more detail that needs to be added, but I wanted to use an example from this region for this region. So another thing that we're looking at is, I think there's enough space to put every single stop on this map. So you don't have to be so familiar where you know where every bus stop is. There'll be these maps in the bus mapping guides that let you know where you can and can't get picked up. Is this the future route in September or the existing one? This is the proposed future route that goes from National Life and the extension down to Hannaford, yeah. And then along that route, if you wanted to be dropped off another location, you just tell the bus driver. So for example, if you are on that section by Hannaford, but you wanted to be dropped off at the city pool, because in the future, there might be more of a demand for that, or very internal medicine, because that is the proposed location where the merged two locations for the Granite City practice is going. Yeah, so there'll be stop here where the medical center and the pool is. We're looking at putting a stop in here by the high school, but that's a pretty tricky. There's a bridge and there's not a sidewalk. So we're thinking that the Dollar General might be the closest stop there. But this, so generally transit maps, these are just time points since there isn't enough space, these doesn't. So what we're looking at is putting all the stops in if there's space. It's always that balance between enough information and too much, but definitely more information than the old version. Just one other question. You said there's service now to Hannaford's, but is that daily? September, right? September. Well, I thought somebody made a statement that there's service to Hannaford's now. They're not gonna realize it. There is not a fixed-truth service to Hannaford's. There is a shopping shuttle, which is that one a week that goes down to Williamstown. But the proposed would be fixed-truth. Correct. Okay, that's the clarification. So other technology improvements, and let me preface this by saying we're not taking any options away. Cash fare, buying tickets, all bus mapping guides, we're not taking any of that away, but we are trying to add, again, a big push, make it more convenient, make it as easy as possible for people to use the bus. The state contracted with a company called Transit, and you all can download this app now called Transit. For real-time vehicle location, I'm at a stop. One is the next bus coming. It'll let you know. I don't have the picture. Maybe I do farther down. Nope, I don't. I used to have a picture of what the app would look like. Like, I think I took it out. So there's an app called Transit. I highly encourage you all to download it if you are a smartphone user. Right now, we have mobile ticketing. They're not the same app, but in the upcoming months, it'll all be in the same app. So, you know, if you have the app on your phone, it pops up. There's a little bubble in the corner. It says buy a ticket, and you can just buy a ticket. That's really great for people who don't carry cash, which is more and more people these days. You don't have to plan ahead to ride the bus. All sorts of ticket options will be available. It also gives you the opportunity to buy a ticket for someone else and send it to them using text messaging or email. So, you know, if you want to buy a ticket for your friend or your uncle, or if you're throwing a conference at CVMC and you want people attending the conference to be able to ride the bus, that's a fun function of that as well. So feedback, again, the reason I'm here is to get your all's opinion on this proposal. So we can be reached at feedback at ridegmt.com. If you want to view this more in detail, you can go to ridegmt.com slash next gen, where there are also commuter surveys available. Again, if you ride any of the commuters, please do take the survey. So that's all I have. Yeah. Is it time for questions? Yeah. Okay. So I take a bus from Montpelier to the complex in Warbury. Okay. And I'm picked up at the top of the paper. And I've heard that it's gonna, then I can go to the top of the paper anymore, which I think we're getting more people now to take the bus to the complex. So why are you going to get there? So it was part of the original proposal to remove service to the Department of Labor, but we are not removing service to the DOL. So the bus will still serve the Department of Labor parking ride. Oh, so you changed your map? Yeah. Cool. There's maps over on the side that show the two proposals. So now I think it's a good time if you all want to engage with the maps and you have any specific questions. That's again a really great way to leave comments, John. One thing with the new Bury link that I've got some feedback from some people on, if people not necessarily who can say, or living right in downtown Bury who can walk to catch that link if they want to go to Burlington. So there's no parking rides where it's a major issue trying to utilize that bus. So I don't know if anybody's tried to come up with some ideas around that. I mean, so one thing that we are looking at is it can it serve CVMC? I know there's a parking ride on Payne Turnpike, but it's like at capacity. So that is something that we're looking at. That route was developed really quickly because V-Trans had to move out of the National Life Offices, but it's a really good service. And so it's in its infancy so we're definitely still looking at how to make it more usable for folks, yeah. How many drafts of the time intervals, like the proposed schedules? Because that would make a difference for me about whether I could switch. Yeah, so there are kind of when a service starts, when it ends, and headways are all available online. Route by route, you can kind of click through and see. And so if you just go to ridegmt.com it's kind of that big splash page at the top. You can just click on that and it'll take you here for more information. Does this presentation show up also on the ridegmt? It's not there yet, we will be posting it later, yeah. Rachel, are there paper surveys available? Because I'd be happy to put them in our writing room. Yes, that is good to hear, and I have PDF versions of all of them. Oh, very fabulous. Yeah. So I'll get your contact. Okay, that's great. Does the very link stop in Montpere or is it directed in Wellington? Directed in Wellington. Does it stop in Waterbury? Yes, Waterbury in Richmond. Again, Park and Ride, that's that capacity, but, yeah. Speaking of the, I mean, that Park and Ride on Pain Turned by Kisropost for expansion. Yeah. And I think someone parked in there for a trip in Barlinton in the north of St. Louis. Yeah. So good, hopefully we can sit back and discuss. And I repeat, Alex, that's the only thing, so the route, you know, is successful and the Park and Ride expanded all at the same time. So two questions. The first one, we had a presentation from the Vermont Medical Center about the combination of the two facilities, the grant practice and very internal medicine. The discussion was that before that happened, that there could be more route beyond-demand services. And I don't know if they discussed with you about providing those on-demand routes. So I did read a statement in the Times Argus about this changing and that was the first I heard of it. I don't know of anyone that we've spoken directly to with them about this issue. But fortuitously, there will be service now to that with the extension of the city route down to Hanover, so. And the second I'll wait until the end, because it was more of just going over that route to see if there could be a way to add a spot on the prospect street, so. Great. So it sounds like we've got a couple of conversations we want to continue. In the meantime, again, if you want to engage with the map, if you want to leave comments, I also am going to take my business cards out if you guys have any follow-up questions after.