Category Archives: Transportation

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

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We appear to have a combustible situation in the tiny Northeast Kingdom town of Glover, whose population includes our current lieutenant governor.

At issue is the dirt-track road seen above on Google Street View. It’s called Rodgers Road, and Lt. Gov. John Rodgers wants to claim part of it as his very own private property. He would allow recreational access, but block any motorized vehicle traffic. Rodgers is not the only resident of the road, and others would be inconvenienced (to put it mildly) if they could no longer use it. He has reportedly bullied the town road crew, and is threatening to take his hometown to court if he doesn’t get his way.

Nice guy, huh? Kinda sheds new light on his stated intent to work with all parties in the Legislature. C’mon, the guy can’t even get along with his own selectboard.

This situation was reported by WCAX-TV way back on May 8, which shows you how much attention I pay to local TV news. I am rather stunned at the lack of follow-up by other media outlets. It’s clearly a story of public interest and WCAX’s report was backed by emails between Rodgers and town officials. It was worthy of coverage by VTDigger or Vermont Public or Seven Days, the latter of which devoted significant space in January to a profile piece identifying Rodgers as a potential future governor*. You’d have to ask these outlets why they’ve chosen to ignore this story. It’s maybe the kind of thing we ought to know about a potential future governor, no?

*That story quoted Rodgers as saying “We need to hush the noise from the left and the right and govern from the middle for the benefit of all Vermonters.” Again, he can’t even get along with his own damn selectboard.

There has been follow-up, by WCAX, the local daily, and at least one national news operation. Let’s catch up, shall we?

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The City of Montpelier Needs a Lot Less of This

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Montpelier is in the beginning stages of a social and economic shift, and the city will have to make some significant changes if it wants to take advantage of emerging opportunities and avoid being left in the dust.

The evidence is outlined in a pair of recent stories by Phil Dodd in The Bridge, the city’s twice-monthly free newspaper. The first, published in mid-April, recounts the struggles of downtown merchants due to a dramatic drop in foot traffic. The second, posted on May 7, describes a “weak” market for downtown office space.

The root cause is a significant increase in remote working, first triggered by the Covid pandemic and intensified by last summer’s flooding — and likely to be exacerbated by the ongoing buildout of high-speed Internet. One example: The Vermont League of Cities and Towns, which has sublet part of its City Center offices because almost all of its 50 employees now work remotely. Right there, that’s 40 or more people no longer spending weekdays downtown, getting coffee, eating lunch, and running errands.

The big enchilada, as always, is the State of Vermont. Dodd doesn’t cite numbers, but it appears that a large percentage of state workers are now working from home. I can tell you anecdotally that it’s a whole lot easier to park near the Statehouse than it was before Covid.

Historically, downtown Montpelier has thrived on the foot traffic generated by all those office workers. Now it’s going to have to reinvent itself. My suggestion: Cut down on parking and build more housing. Lots more housing. Turn Montpelier into a living space. It’s a natural, thanks to its small footprint and the presence of key merchants like Shaw’s and Aubuchon Hardware. Easily navigable on foot or by bike or mobility device.

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Veepies Resurrexit a Mortuis

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It’s been a loooong time since I last awarded the Veepies — @thevpo’s honors for exceptional stupidity in our politics. But the end of the year seems to have brought out the stupid in folks, so here we go!

First off, the Any Old Excuse In a Storm Award goes to the fearless folk who wear the uniform of the Vermont State Police. This has to do with their continuing failure to bring Daniel Banyai into custody. They allowed the original arrest warrant to expire. Now, they seem to be in no hurry to act, in spite of the fact that Banyai is defying a court order to turn himself in.

That’s bad enough, but there’s one singular item in VTDigger’s account that spurred the Veepies Board of Trustees to action. VSP spokesperson Adam Silverman helpfully told Digger that Banyai is one of roughly 5,200 people in Vermont with some kind of active warrant. I guess that’s supposed to impress me? But c’mon now, most of those warrants are not at all time-sensitive. Banyai has been defying justice and terrorizing the town of West Pawlet for years, as chronicled in a recent New Yorker piece. He ought to be on top of the VSP’s priority list, and they shouldn’t have the temerity to even suggest that he’s merely one among thousands.

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The Machine Will Eat What It Wants to Eat

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Well, Burlington City Council went ahead and did something that it had no good reason to do, and had no choice but to do.

The topic of this riddle: Council’s approval of a 25-year extension of the Vermont Air National Guard’s lease at Burlington International Airport. A lease that wasn’t due to expire until The Year Of Our Lord 2048, which is so far in the future that Gov. Phil Scott doesn’t mind planning to cut greenhouse gas emissions by then.

Now that the lease will run until 2073, I guess the VTANG can go ahead and buy green bananas and renew their magazine subscriptions. (Surely they’ve got a coffee table in the break room littered with old copies of Aviation Week & Space Technology, Janes Defence Weekly, Combat Aircraft Journal, and such.)

Really, it was pointless. But Council was forced to act by the rules about federal airbase spending. See, the feds won’t invest in ANG bases with less than 25 years remaining on their leases. And airports like St. Patrick Leahy Memorial International are dependent on the infrastructure improvements that money will buy.

It all works together, and not for the good of anyone outside the military-industrial-aviatic complex.

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You’d Think a Governor Who Spent His Life Building Roads Would Have a Flawless, Efficient Road Construction Process

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Now comes Auditor Doug Hoffer with all kinds of cheery news about the Agency of Transportation’s road construction effort. His latest performance audit takes a look at VTrans’ work in cost and scheduling of paving projects, and he didn’t find much for former contractor and now Governor Phil Scott to be proud of.

In fact, Scott ought to be embarrassed.

(Full report downloadable here.)

Hoffer looked at 14 major paving projects and found… “significant deviations” in project scheduling, especially in the preliminary engineering phase; “a lack of consistent record-keeping” that made it difficult to determine why delays took place; a lack of performance metrics for scheduling; and while VTrans did fairly well with simpler projects,

… for the more complex projects, VTrans always exceeded the initial cost estimates provided to the Legislature by more than 50 percent and completed them up to six years late.

That sounds like abject failure to me.

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PARKING PANIC!!! And the Reactionary Nature of Local TV News

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Local TV news does more than its share of ridiculous things, but this one from WPTZ really got my goat. It’s about the modest changes to North Winooski Avenue approved by Burlington City Council Monday night. And it’s called…

Businesses in Burlington’s Old North End unsure of their future as North Winooski Parking Plan is set to happen

AAAAUUGGGHHH Parking Panic!!!!!!!!

The story, such as it was, quoted two — count ’em, two — Old North End business owners worried about the plan’s reduction of 40 parking spaces along the corridor.

This sort of thing is the red meat of local TV news: Raising fears about the unknown.

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Can We Get Some Transportation Imagination Up In Here?

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This, friends and neighbors, is a typical streetscape in Amsterdam. Note the balanced, complete integration of auto, pedestrian, bicycle and public transit.

Meanwhile, here in America, the best we can do is staple bikeways and walkways onto existing streets and roads in ways that put non-motorists in danger and force our buses to fight their way through traffic. And I fear that our coming investments in infrastructure and greenhouse gas reduction will do little to change this dysfunctional reality.

Funny thing. The Netherlands is a far better place to drive than any American city. In fact, it’s been rated the best country in the world to drive in. It’s faster for motorists in spite of the relatively narrow roadways, and it’s a damn sight safer.

And before you can say “Oh, well, the Dutch have always been weird,” their towns and cities used to be car-centric until fairly recently. And they were loud and crowded and difficult to get around in, just like their American counterparts. But the Dutch made a concerted effort to define “transportation” as it should be defined: “getting the most people from one place to another as quickly as possible.” And that doesn’t mean more and wider roads, because more and wider roads actually slow things down.

Vermont’s Climate Action Plan includes a lot of pretty noises about equity, creativity, and alternative modes of transportation. Sounds nice, but Gov. Phil Scott’s plan focuses almost entirely on electric vehicle subsidies and infrastructure. That would mitigate our climate footprint, but it would do nothing to make our transportation system better, safer or more equitable. Right now we have a flood of federal Covid cash to invest; if we adopt Scott’s plan, we will squander this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

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Being a Senator: A Lesson in Two Parts

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2021 is a singularly difficult year to be a first-term lawmaker. You can’t get a feel of the place. You can’t have the casual conversations that make life easier. You can’t grab a colleague for a brief word of explanation about something that’s hard to understand.

That said, I have to note a couple of troubling passages in the maiden voyage of Sen. Thomas Chittenden, D-Chittenden. On two separate occasions last month, he acted less like a senator than like a state representative from a specific community. In hearings on Burlington-area transportation improvements and school funding, he spoke entirely on behalf of his hometown, South Burlington.

On February 19, the Senate Transportation Committee held a hearing (video available here) on potential improvements to I-89 in the Burlington area. Nothing’s happening imminently; the committee and VTrans are looking a few decades into the future, assessing options for handling traffic flows that will almost certainly increase from the already heavy volumes of today.

The committee and a VTrans official discussed options for making the Burlington area interchanges work better. One of the options is a new exit on I-89 at US-116/Hinesburg Road. This hypothetical Exit 12-B would provide a direct pipeline into South Burlington.

Well, Chittenden gave a strong (and rather parochial) endorsement to the 12-B idea.

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Dick-Swinging at the DMV

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, From left: Officers Buddy, Bubba and Junior

Does anyone else see a problem with this photo?

The DMV chose this image of burly officers with pimped-out pickups to represent its own police department, whose tasks are mainly bureaucratic in nature. It’s a picture of testosterone run amuck, straight out of a Boss Hogg wet dream.

It’s a small thing, but it illustrates a toxic cop culture. It’s the old-fashioned image of policing — a matter of billy clubs and guns and beefy officers enforcing the peace. It’s a man’s, man’s, man’s world, no place for nuance or sensitivity. That shit’ll get you killed, bud.

Could the DMV have possibly hustled up a picture including at least one female officer? Or a person of color? Or someone who doesn’t look like a former football player?

And those trucks. Good grief. Overcompensating much?

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Did Phil Scott break the law this morning, or just bend it?

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The official Phil Scott Twitter account sent this out today.

That’s some dedication there, being out on a chilly October morning, waving the signs just a few feet away from interstate freeway traffic…

… hm.

In many places, it’s illegal for candidates to stand that close to the freeway. Looks like Phil’s most enthusiastic companion is only a few feet from the right of way, and the candidate himself is about ten feet off the pavement.

But is it illegal for Team Scott to be standing in that particular location? Unclear.

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