Pine Street and Vermont Racial Justice Call for Champlain RIGHTway cutting King Maple Traffic 59%!

Pine Street Fights for Environmental Justice, Safe Walk and Bike Accommodation, and Economic Growth in a Champlain “RIGHTway Street and Street Design Pine Street Wins Key Change in Parkway: Still Miles to Go! …first build Railyard connection to Battery Street slicing current traffic in King Maple by 59%, then build a redesigned the Parkway to a complete “RIGHTway” by safe accommodation of pedestrians and bicyclists, employing “best practices” for minimizing injuries for all, preserving Englesby Brook and slashing 1.5 lane- miles of excess roadway. “Stop it! Stop it Now!…We’ll be back!” Mark Hughes, Vermont Racial Justice Alliance Parkway Hearing, July 29, 2020 Two years ago—June 6, 2019—the grassroots Pine Street Coalition stopped the 1950s South End still gargantuan highway proposal in its tracks by filing a lawsuit in federal court. That lawsuit caused the feds to apply new Environmental Justice regulations to the 2009 Parkway route which today cuts in half the King Maple community of color and 26% residents with poverty incomes! Lower upscale Pine Street traffic drops 76% while stressed King Maple gets flooded with 37% more cars and trucks! Suddenly after lawsuit federal officials who in 2006 dismissed the City fight against the King Maple routing retreated saying OK, you can bypass King Maple as originally advocated by our Mayor and Council with a connection between Battery Street and Pine Street adjacent to Curtis Lumber. The “Railyard” project now in planning cuts King Maple traffic by upwards of 59% while still cutting the majority of traffic along Pine below Flynn Avenue. Still, federal and Vermont officials want to build the current design first with its full bore devastation on King Maple only to come back at some as yet unknown future year “cure” the Parkway harms. Bypass King Maple now! Kill the Parkway through King Maple! A “RIGHTway” design saves millions in cost in a project now topping $100 million! Our all volunteer Pine Street Coalition, now about six years old, is composed of about 200 citizens.  Pine Street is an outgrowth of Burlington Walk Bike Council analysis and concerns 2014-2016 over lack of safe, separate walk and bike accommodations  anywhere along the Parkway base route, and a larger community opposition which caused a complete rewrite of the planBTV South End to include a future vision of the South End with and without the Parkway as then designed.  Add the numerous laws, policies and plans now in place since the 2009 now rescinded environmental document--plus the one the ground changes like the South End City Market Coop Store, Blodgett Oven moving out being replaced by a generator space type development, etc.  Those laws, policies and plans include, among others: Vermont Complete Streets Law (2011), new Environmental Justice regulations, federal requirements that highway funds decrease serious and fatal injuries, and our own City plans and policies which include our the Climate Change Emergency (2019), Transportation Plan (2011), Racism as a Public Health Emergency (2020), and our landmark and regularly revised Climate Action Plan which dates back to the 1990s. Vermont Racial Justice Alliance and Fortieth Burlington (Innovation Center) Pine Street expanded last fall by joining with the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance (VRJA) which together with a long standing association with Fortieth Burlington, LLC (Fortieth) creates a larger group in a common cause. Fortieth owns the former 1800s manufacturing complex now reborn as a modern office complex, Innovation Center on Lakeside Avenue. Without the appeal of the Act 250 permit to the Vermont Supreme Court by Fortieth, the current atrocious and harmful Parkway design would be in place today with devastating impacts on the King Maple community of color and a harmful bubble covering the entire South End! So, our Pine Street Coalition formed a joint effort with VRJA and Fortieth last fall and individually and jointly continue initiatives along a common set of accepted re-design guidelines originally developed in a community process years ago which continues today with little change--see the new "one-pager" which describes our common design elements we seek in a re-designed, Railyard first built modern transportation facility.  It is this "Railyard first" which means an immediate and permanent reduction in traffic, stress and pollution in King Maple which has come to the fore in our thinking and advocacy over the past three months!  Our common cause separate, parallel and joint actions. Both VRJA and ourselves are proud of the Vermont Sierra Club inaugural Transit Equity day award early this year, a joint award which recognizes our common cause efforts to address racial equity in the King Maple neighborhood as well as a quality, safe, “equality” streets Parkway design.    We here at Pine Street mark with sadness the recent passing of a founding member of our "presentation team", Charles Simpson, also a long time member of Neighborhood Planning Assembly 6 Steering Committee, and retired SUNNY Plattsburgh professor, expert in community land use and urban development!