 Good evening, Burlingtonians and Chinden County viewers of our program. This is the Housing Fair, Safe and Affordable. It's a show that three statewide housing programs of the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity do, and one of them is my program, Fair Housing Project. We also have in that category Vermont Tenants, providing advice, information, referral and advocacy for tenants and mobile home program, which does likewise for people primarily in mobile home parks. And tonight I have here with me a guest who was good enough to take a little time out of the evening and be with us. His name is Richard Watts. And because you folks at UVM sometimes have so many overlapping and twisting kind of titles and functions, I'll let you explain that. Okay. Well, thank you, Ted, and great to be here. So mostly we're going to talk about transportation. And for a number of years I worked at something at UVM called the Transportation Research Center, which looks at how we can make our transportation system work for people and also reduce its environmental and energy impacts. Right now I teach in communications and I teach in policy and I teach in media, and I directed something else called the Center for Research on Vermont, which is about understanding some of the great things we do in Vermont and how they relate to larger things happening in the world. So yes, you're right. We have way too many complicated, oh, whatever, but basically I teach, I think about policy and I think about Vermont. So as was mentioned, the transportation is kind of the main focus. And of course, being the Fair Housing Project person, I like to keep tying it around to the role that transportation plays overall in creating more affordable and more inclusive communities that people of varying incomes and people of varying backgrounds can afford to live in locations that are more affordable to them, that have better access to resources of municipalities, of services, the jobs and all that comes along with that, and also the inherent efficiency that provides in terms of both reducing costs to the people living there as well as the positive impacts on the environment, obviously. So I guess, let me just start with a question for you. How expensive is transportation as a part of the common budgets of people? And I am of course particularly interested in percentage of income that lower people would have, that lower income people would have to pay. So one way to think about this is when we say transportation, people often in their heads will do it. So if I ask you how much did it cost you to go to Boston, people often do a calculation of how much it costs in terms of gasoline. And we don't always think about the sunken costs of owning a car if we own a car and what all the money that goes into maintenance and all those things. So there's a long way of saying that on average owning a car can cost somewhere between six and $12,000 a year. When you take in the cost of the vehicle and the cost of the energy to run the vehicle, it can be as much as 30% of somebody's income. And as your income goes down, those fixed costs still exist, so it becomes a higher percent of your income. So people of very low income may pay as much as 50% of their total household costs goes to maintaining the transportation, goes to allowing them to access a system that they can get places. And we know in the bigger agency that my program is a part of, CVOEO, there's many programs primarily for lower income people and trying to help people in various kinds of crisis situations and so forth. And the whole car factor and the dependency on cars is really pretty dramatic in terms of the impact. If somebody's car breaks down, they can't afford to have it fixed. They get involved in an accident, can't afford to get it back on the road, in addition to what's already been mentioned, to just upkeep the insurance, all the things that go along with maintaining a car. And that's especially bad, the further those people have to live away from where they need to go to work, to go to the doctor, to go shopping and all those necessary daily things, it can create a huge isolation factor, yeah. So we know a bit about this in Vermont because there's an organization here, VEIC, that just did a study where they looked at how much your transportation costs depending on where you live and it makes sense that people sometimes move further and further away from where they work because those houses are cheaper. And yet at the same time, the further away they are, the more expensive it is to get to work. And so when you look at this map that this VEIC put together, it's just stunning and you can imagine it the further you are out from Burlington and those sort of commuter sheds, the more expensive it is, your transportation might be and if your income is low, that's a higher proportion in your budget. And I think that part of what we've done over time is we've become trapped in such a car dependent society that there isn't really any options for getting around for some people. And we really need to think about ways to allow people to have other options besides just driving places. Yeah. I know that I was involved in a study a couple years ago in the Northwest Quadrant of the state and we ultimately kind of drill down to the town of Georgia to focus on and talking to their planning commission some of the facts about transportation and housing location issues. This interesting dynamic came out that they have, it's a pretty small town so there's not a huge amount of a number of jobs there but there are, there is some small industry and people working there are having to live north of Georgia where it is cheaper to afford the housing and then they commute down to Georgia. Then you have people living in Georgia who work in Chittenden County, some in Burlington who can't afford to live in this area and live in Georgia. So you have this very interesting transportation dynamic. Yes. No, I think that we've got 90 years of building the system that we have. We really have to start thinking about ways to allow people to have other options and we're trapped and we spend so much money supporting the existing system that if we could rethink it we could give people more alternatives, cheaper alternatives, alternatives who would add to the quality of living. Well you know one of the things I, because a large part of what my fair housing project does is has less to do with individual cases of discrimination although we're concerned about that also but it has to do more with systemic issues with the kind of ways that zoning by-laws, that permitting processes and all of those things that tend to make it more expensive to build housing especially less expensive multifamily housing closer to downtowns and so it seems like when I talk about transportation issues a lot of times people especially further out in the state and smaller towns say well we're never going to be able to afford public transportation and in some cases maybe they actually could someday but aside from that given that they cannot they most likely will not at least in your future then you don't look at just the transportation but you look at where housing is there for people and are there ways that you can induce or at least eliminate barriers that keep people from producing more housing closer to where people need to go. Yes. Now sometimes we talk about this in transportation terms mobility, the ability to go anytime anywhere you want and access, the ability to access the things you need and if you reframe it a bit as access then you start talking about where you live you know because then you can access the things you need without having to have a car because in this society the way the system is built the only way you can have complete mobility is be car dependent but if you think about in terms of what do you need then you might think about in terms of where you live and the other message that we're talking about here is that it is more expensive than people realize to live further away and you make that choice because housing is cheaper but at the same time you have these other costs that aren't always factored in. Right. Yeah. Yeah so the complicated individual math that you look at well where can I actually afford to pay my rent and keep up and not get you know evicted and so naturally that's kind of the first consideration if you're seeking housing where can I afford to live in terms of the actual cost of the housing but then as you say there are other costs that kind of counterbalance that but people caught in that can't help it because if they were in more expensive housing then they would possibly be out on the street. Right. No housing. Right. Right. So it's what it ultimately does is tends to drive their standard of living their ability to get out of you know any kind of state of poverty or lower income just keeps spiraling down. Right. Well you've thought about this a lot Ted but I'll give you one idea and see what you think of this. So okay transit we talk about public transit and then we say we can't afford it and it's too you know but part of the problem with public transit is that most people many of us don't ride it because we have cars and we can afford our cars and parking is free or almost free. So why wouldn't you drive your car you already have all the costs associated with owning the car. So my suggestion on those along those lines is that we need to think more about making it more expensive to park. We do that at UVM although we haven't changed the rates in 10 years so people do pay to park and then bus is free. So that incentivizes everybody to ride the bus and the more people to ride the bus then the more constituencies there are demanding more bus service and then the more potential bus routes are there are and then there's it makes it a better option for more people. Right. Well one of the things that I wanted to ask and this is kind of leading you know some of the stuff we've already talked about leads into this but how do we build places that allow people to walk, bike and drive less that allow people to ride buses and walk and bike for instance. Right. Well I think we need champions we need leaders we need policies public policy at the government level and at the company level so there's a lot of companies that could you just instantly overnight start trying to incentivize their employees to drive a little less. Start charging a little for parking make the bus really cheap and as those people start riding the bus then they ask for more routes and it becomes a positive feedback loop and as far as building places that are great Burlington there are many great places in Vermont. One of the interesting things about Vermont is we have 235 village centers and they haven't been destroyed although many of them are challenged but we still have these small walkable places if we could just invest more in our sidewalks and in helping people figure out ways to make those attractive places to live in a way we have these little dense pockets that then could be connected via transit systems. Well I know that in terms of the work I do is often focused on trying to work with municipalities on ways that they can create more affordable housing opportunities and you know in the context of our discussion I would say more affordable housing and more affordable situations locations as well in terms of the transportation aspect. Some of the things we run into are some of the what in most cases is an antiquated system of zoning bylaws they require a couple of parking spots per a lot of parking and that require huge acreage per unit of housing and that require huge setbacks right from streets and that even though it begins to fly in the face of some of the state law they often will to the best of their ability exclude multi-family housing sometimes senior housing is considered okay but even that is often not looked on positively so this is a matter of getting people you know because people will only change I think with several factors one of course some people just recognize well this is not good for other people there's not you know we may have our nice home here in the town center but this is not good for all those other people but then also there are people who on businesses maybe want to expand businesses maybe want to increase the number of people consuming their you know buying and consuming their whatever goods and services they're selling so what we're trying to do is really convince people and there's a lot of information backing this up that generating more affordable housing closer to downtown's increases the economic vitality of the town so it's not just a you know a thing you do for other people it's a thing you do for the good of your own town right you know your own self-interest right that's a great vision so you know in that context obviously creating zoning that that enables more density right also creates more opportunity for public transportation exactly because if you don't have people scattered all over creation you know it makes it more affordable to provide the transit people can access yeah no there's a direct relationship and many people have studied that a certain density is helpful one stop because you don't you don't want multi stops on a bus because it slows it down yeah yeah yeah yeah in fact James Howard consular who wrote this book the end of know of whatever it is he says you couldn't build one of our villages today under present zoning I know yes absolutely I've seen some good presentations that looks at some of the the more significantly sized towns in the state now and goes back to sometimes in the 19th century when they were much more densely populated than they are now so people you know tend to get this mindset that oh this is we just want it like this way it's always been you know but well no not necessarily the way it's always been and and those towns have been you know had their dynamism and some of them have lost their dynamism partly because of the fading population and the density close to you know where their businesses and you know services or yes yes yes yes so I understand that you have that and this is a curiosity to me I mean I have some ideas but you have concerns about electric cars that are often being promoted as the answer to states energy environmental impacts and I'm curious what your concerns are you talk something about that sure and ironically I used to run a electric car project but so I have two two concerns I do think that electric cars are part of the solution to reducing this the energy and environmental impacts of transportation but what happens too often is that we lead with electric cars is the only solution and that's because it's easier for policy makers because they're basically saying you don't have to do anything different we're simply going to switch the fuel in the vehicle you drive and what it does ultimately so that's it's easy for policy makers to say we're going to electrify everything but what it does ultimately is it takes those folks in the first adopters of electric cars are going to be the most impassioned about change it takes that entire constituency out of doing alternatives because once you have a car every study shows you're going to drive it that's that's why you have it and you can't really encourage people not to use their cars you can't really promote public transit you can't really promote biking or walking if everybody is driving and so you can we can argue about the environmental benefits of electric cars from all the way from building them to the processing the plastic and mining the rare minerals you need for the batteries but just putting that argument aside what I am concerned about is that by saying electric car electric cars the solution is undercutting these other solutions that we really need to do and it leaves out people who can't afford to own a car people who don't drive for whatever reason those who are too young to drive those are too old and we know now in this state that you outlive your ability to drive probably by seven to ten years so there's whole constituencies of people that aren't going to be able to fit into a car-only world and we need to start with the alternatives work on those like crazy and then say and we can also do this that's my argument Ted yeah and you're sticking to yeah and you know some of my environmentalist friends say yeah but you can't do it Richard it's a rural state you know we're all going to drive and yes there's always going to be driving but why can't we at least try and start bending it a little bit to make the actual options more yeah you know I think it's important to any time you have a kind of a movement to replace one thing with another thing but yet still have basically the same kind of systems you know the same roads they run on the same distances between locations then you have an added factor with electric cars of especially lower income people are not going to be able to afford them at least for a long time and so they're still stuck and maybe even worse stuck if it becomes harder to get you know the only kind of internal combustion car they can get or the kind of the dregs that are what they already get unfortunately right that are break down easily and cost use a lot of gas and imagine if all those electric car drivers are riding on the bus and they were like we need every 15 minutes this bus the Wi-Fi has to work right this bus shelter is freezing yeah yeah get some heat panels yeah all right so we've already touched on a lot of this but I have a question here what are some of the consequences of our car dependence and I don't know if you can name any more than we've already well we so often we think about energy so in Vermont right now about 40 percent 30 to 40 percent of all the energy we use is used in transportation and because it's almost all purchasing gasoline almost all of that leaves a state and it's been identified as about a one and a half billion dollar leaky bucket so we are spending Vermonters collectively almost one and a half billion dollars all of which is exported out of the state okay so there's an economic issue there we haven't and then there's the environmental impact so again transportation is leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions in Vermont there's also other things associated that comes out of a tailpipe okay but in addition to those there's all these social factors that we have identified related to our car dependence so for example as a country we're getting heavier and heavier there's a direct relationship between the fact that we drive more and more every year Robert Putnam the sociologist did this political scientist did this fabulous work about relationship between your community and how much you spend driving and he found statistically that every 10 minutes you spend driving commuting away from your community you're 10 percent less likely to be engaged in your local community and so there's there's a direct sort of relationship between all that time we spend in our cars which is a week to two weeks a year and how much we time we have to participate locally yeah yeah when I when I think of us the kind of commutes you know when especially when you get outside of Vermont into you know some of the big metropolitan areas and the kind of commutes that people do in the time they spend commuting right you know it just boggles the mind really you know that they can even you know manage to live that way but you know what's happened is that the car is this really robust thing it's attractive it's comfortable the radio works you go in this bubble some of the smartest minds are designing ads to hook us on this culture and so it's it's and we spend so much money supporting it you know 90% of the state's transportation budget supports this system so changing that is going to be really difficult but I think that there's a whole lot of people who are left out of the system and that's part of why we need to change it yeah well it you know all of this is is really like I really like to have a holistic view and analysis of the intersections between things like housing housing location housing cost right transportation costs and and clearly there's a very distinct link between where people live and how much time they're going to be driving if they have to drive at all and in some cases in the right locations they might hardly ever have to drive if at all but what we have in in Vermont almost in different from you know big metropolitan areas you tend to have concentrations of very low income people in abandoned downtown abandoned by white people and people with money although there tends to be some reversing of that which has its own problems with yes yeah but those people have to you know in order to get to what to what they in order to get to what they need to do you know because there's virtually no fresh food there's you know so few opportunities in so many ways there they have to travel and generally they do not cannot possibly have their own cars for the most part so they have to you know use overburdened and not well maintained public transportation to get out then you have the people the more tend to be more white and more higher income you know traveling into the suburban areas and sometimes some downtown areas and so this whole kind of segregation thing that's both racial and socio-economic feeds the transportation issue it does it does and often these big infrastructure projects are located in poor neighborhoods yes exactly I mean that goes all the way back to you know the late 50s early 60s yeah well I've had the signal that we're approaching the end of the show and I just want to say that I think this has been very interesting discussion I certainly appreciate your willingness to come on and share your knowledge and expertise with us and I hope that people who are viewing this may come away with you know some thoughts and you know you can get in touch with us you know if you have questions you want to run by our suggestions or whatever for sure so let's be my pleasure Ted and it's good for me to get reminded of all the housing issues and how well they connect with transportation yeah they really do thank you very much again thanks