The Equality Street--A Step Up from the Complete Street, Accounting for Racial Bias

The Equality Street: Battle for a Champlain Parkway “RIGHTway,”

                      North Street Burlington, and Beyond

The Pine Street Coalition battle in the South End for a Champlain RGHTway moves to a new level as the City Council may well shortly approve building the Railroad Enterprise Project (REP) before any current pending Parkway is built—this would assure the King Maple neighborhood gets immediate relief from current levels unsafety, traffic, pollution and congestion instead of an additional onslaught of traffic from the City’s’ current obsolete, unsafe Champlain Parkway design. 

The REP was always wanted by the City as the Parkway route through to Main Street (Alternative 1 in the 2009 environmental document) instead of through Pine. REP extends from Kilburn St/Curtis Lumber on Pine Street to Battery Street so the Parkway route effectively bypasses King Maple neighborhood. King Maple has the lowest median income in Burlington, over 80% low and moderate income population and highest Vermont concentration of persons with black and brown skin.

  Pine Street and Two Principal Allies, a Major Victory

    —FHWA Funds Railroad Enterprise Project for $20 million and Likely Moves to the Front Burner 

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) promised to walk away from the now $100 million project unless the Parkway cut King Maple in two and increased Pine Street traffic there 22-37% through King Maple to Main Street. The Parkway current design through King Maple degrades pedestrian safety and delay with two traffic signals replacing all-way-stops at Maple and King thereby raising speeds and pedestrian injury rates by 20% (all-way stop or a roundabout equal in their pedestrian safety superiority). 

Mayor Kiss and City Council rather than losing all funding accepted the current route under the duress in 2009 in spite of long time community opposition. The grassroots group Pine Street Coalition began in 2015 and following the leadership of the Burlington Walk Bike Council and undertaking community outreach, adopted a set of Parkway re-design guidelines, little changed to this day. The basics: (1) full sidewalk and separate bikeway along the entire route (none now, not an inch); (2) retaining connectivity between Pine Street and Queen City Park Road Kmart Plaza versus the current design dead ending Pine short of the Parkway; (3) use of engineering “best practices” including safest-for-all modes and climate change prevention champion roundabout (the one and only FHWA pedestrian safety “proven countermeasure” intersection); (4) cutting 1.5 miles of expensive excess lanes miles of roadway; (5) preservation and protection of Englesby Brook, the City’s largest stream entering Lake Champlain which the Parkway would stuff into a long pipe; and (6) accepting the Parkway as an ordinary City street and dropping full controlled access restraint at Pine/I 189 intersection. 

The Pine Street Coalition re-design guidelines and challenge documents issued in April 2018 clearly led to a change of heart by FHWA which suddenly offered the City the REP it rejected in 2009, and later even sweetened the offer with a better financial deal for the City after Pine Street Coalition went to US District Court on D-Day, June 6, 2019. Thanks to Pine Street’s long time partner (they were there before Pine Street) Fortieth Burlington, LLC owner of Innovation Center on Lakeside Avenue and joined by the second Vermont Racial Justice Alliance (VRJA) in summer 2019 during the now ending Environmental Justice two-year-plus outreach—a direct result of the Pine Street lawsuit—REP has now moved from a $20 million initial reluctant offer by FHWA toward front burner status. 

One cannot overstate the importance of the Environmental Justice process for the education it brought to all in detailing the blatant transportation racism and injustice not only in King Maple now acknowledged, but also the special core role the safest pedestrian design plays in avoiding disproportionate negative impact of roadway projects on communities of color and low income. That core safest pedestrian design when twinned with the best accommodation of bicycles is the very definition of an “equality street” in all senses of descriptive—from transportation equity for all modes to racial equity for communities of color with their far higher dependence on the walking mode. 

  Next Challenge—Achieving Champlain RIGHTway "Complete," “Equality Streets” 

Very simply, an equality street is first and foremost a busy street with sidewalks and roundabout intersections which also contain either on-street cycle track (protected bikes lanes) and/or a separate safe two-way bikeway. There now is not a single inch of “equality street” along the existing Champlain Parkway and Rail Enterprise Project design! Quite the contrary the current Parkway and REP design are clearly racially and transportation unjust and discrimination by the inferior treatment of those who walk and bike versus those who travel by motor vehicle. Burlington actually established a landmark “equality” street model in the North Avenue Corridor Plan (2014) which contains three basics—sidewalks and roundabouts at key intersections, and end-to-end cycle track. 

It was the Parkway Environmental Justice process and leadership of VRJA, its director Mark Hughes and their staff, that led over the last two years which led to the expanded and deepened definition of an equality street. Expanded in the sense of applying directly to the lexicon of racist transportation practice where a community of color or low-income neighborhoods are present or affected. Deepened in clearly defining sidewalks and either all-way-stop or roundabout intersections as the minimum standard of pedestrian design of busy streets. It is the Parkway converting of two all-way-stop intersections with many pedestrians to traffic signals which set up the real life conflict which has arisen in the Parkway Environmental Justice process. 

The Parkway environmental document of 2009 and previous public process ended two years before the Vermont Complete Streets Law (2011) enactment which calls for consideration of safe accommodation of pedestrian and bicycle modes in road projects. Even a cursory examination of that law along with Burlington practice and plans shows the use of a shared use path treatment in the Parkway and REP fails the Vermont legal standard and is inconsistent by mixing two modes to the detriment of both as well as in an unsafe manner. Key to understanding the equality street definition, particularly the need for a pedestrian sidewalk treatment, is recognizing that neighborhoods of low income and communities of color are in fact disproportionately dependent on safe walking facilities because they are significantly pedestrian and transit dependent. In Burlington’s King Maple and Old North End neighborhoods fully 30% of residents lack access to a car. Burlington Public Works Commissioner and UVM professor Pablo Bose is not only a researcher in this regard, he is also active in assisting New Americans and others lacking a car obtain necessary transportation services.

Further, the pedestrian mode has always been pretty much ignored in transportation by government. For example there have been incentives and tax breaks for solo commuter drivers to give up their annual $2,000 parking garage spaces and $600 surface parking lot space, incentives for van group participants, incentives for taking transit to work and incentives to bicyclists—but never any formal incentive to the sizable walk-to-work set who cost the employer the least and do so in a healthy way! In a word, the pedestrian mode is the apartheid transportation mode, the right-turn-on red allowed today which kills about 30 pedestrians being the most obvious outrage of transportation discrimination not to mention the 50% increase in pedestrian deaths since 2010 (two such deaths in Burlington). 

In the larger picture of discrimination, people of color die at 50-90% higher rates per population than white-non-hispanic (Native Americans 2 to 3 times the lower "white" rate). We must assure the highest level of quality and safe pedestrian facilities in our urban neighborhoods, particularly where there are numbers of low income and persons of color—something totally lacking in the current Parkway and REP. With tabulations showing a bicycle or pedestrian injury weekly in Burlington (plus two car occupant injuries) and a bicycle or pedestrian death every five years, safety on our streets is major concern.

  Parkway/Railyard Enterprise and the Controlled Access Versus a Complete, Equality Street Standard

The Parkway and Railyard Enterprise Project are a vestige of 80 year old ring-road around Burlington concept with the circle to be closed from I 189 by the Parkway through the South End, through the waterfront and Old North End to the VT 127 Beltline which dates from the 1980s— finally the completed circle via the Circumferential Highway from Colchester through Essex to VT 289 and interchange with I 89. The Circumferential Highway was effectively canceled by Governor Shumlin in 2011 and the waterfront/Old North End section of the ring road was discarded decades before. 

Pine Street Coalition has assumed from a the start the “controlled access” of the interstate is relaxed, ending at the I 189/Pine Street/Queen City Park Rd/RIGHTway interchange intersection. From that intersection pedestrian and bicycle facilities as well as additional intersections (like one at the City Market South End parking access, for example) could be installed as the RIGHTway onward becomes an ordinary busy street following the Vermont Complete Streets Law (2011) which calls for safe accommodation of pedestrians and bicyclists, a step now better described as employing the “equality street” model contained in the City’s North Avenue Corridor Plan or the Pine Street/VRJA/Fortieth Burlington, Champlain RIGHTway design guidelines necessitated by the presence of a community of color and a number of safety considerations, pedestrian safety paramount. 

  The “Shared Use” Pedestrian/Bicycle Facility—Second Class, Racial and Low Income Discriminatory

    Accommodation for Bicyclists and Especially Pedestrians

The current design of the Parkway and REP both utilize either nothing or a shared use path (REP) exclusively thereby mixing high speed bicycles and e-bikes with on foot children, families, and those who move either temporarily or permanently by cane and walker. In a rural setting this might be satisfactory but in a busy metropolitan center like the South End of Burlington with practically unlimited space for a sidewalk and separate 2-way bike lane through out the REP and Parkway use of a shared use path considering the community of color is nothing but straight, blatant racial discrimination and injustice! 

It can be expected the REP/Parkway which connects at either end with the Burlington Bikepath (a recreation path) will bring a large number of visitors and City residents making a “circle” tour—Bikepath and "South End Bikeway”—as Pine Street supporters envision thereby aiding the South End economy. Further the longer term promise of a full service bikeway from the north tip of ONE south to Queen City Park Road is moved ahead with the “South End Bikeway.” South End residents during public meetings on the REP expressed the importance of their using the REP to access the Bikepath—now with only two South End at grade connections—one via Austin Drive/Oakledge Park and the other at Harrison Street opposite Sears Lane. Note the “new” Parkway roadway sections with right-of-way acquired decades ago (including Road to Nowhere) are about 100 feet in width to accommodate the early planned four lane divided highway, now to be two lanes requiring less than half the 100 foot width. Spending $100 million where there is more than sufficient right-of-way and getting not a single inch of sidewalk or separate bikeway is pathological and discriminating street design! 

  North Street and Beyond 

Burlington has a major task before it addressing the 20—all but one signalized—intersections on the State high crash list, 18% of the 111 statewide and averaging 1.5 injuries a year. The 19 signalized intersections (not all were tabulated in the statewide report) represent over one in four of Burlington’s traffic signals which total about 75. Not surprisingly many of the high crash signalized intersections are in the Old North End (ONE), including four of the six on North Street between North Avenue and North Union. North Street with its many commercial businesses is truly a “community street” and it can easily and cheaply be converted from perhaps the least safe Vermont community street to the most safe using the knowledge developed in the South End RIGHTway, the Environmental Justice process now ending, and the North Avenue Corridor Plan endeavors. The inexpensive mini roundabout first suggested in the AARP Vermont Pine Street Workshop (2014) is particularly adapted to the narrow right of way along North Street. So, the many lessons learned during the past several years can be applied to problem streets and intersections throughout Burlington. 

Tony Redington 

onyRVT99@gmail.com

Easy Converting Burlington's Most Unsafe and Dangerous VT Community Street to Safest!

Burlington High Crash Intersecitons "BTV Crash-20"

“BTV Crash-20”: Burlington's 20 Intersections in the Vermont High Crash Location Report 2012-2016 Note: This paper is a substantial expansion of a paper developed earlier. Twenty of Vermont's high crash intersections reside within Burlington—20 or 18% of the 111 tabulated high crash intersections statewide in the Vermont Agency of Transportation (VAOT) 2012-2016 report containing five years of data. They are the “BTV Crash-20” in Burlington averaging at least one injury a year. These 20 intersections on average generated $3.2 million cost per year in injury and property damage as well as assumed police, emergency and other related costs. The cost of a roundabout—the one proven safety countermeasure type intersection—to prevent or cure a high majority of serious and fatal injuries as well as overall crash reductions—can be as little as a few as $20-$50,000 in the case of mini-roundabouts. Roundabouts can be design and built in the case of mini roundabouts in a matter of weeks. Burlington's BTV Crash-20 averaged 1.5 injuries each per year—and received an overall rating taking into account injury severity and other factors. A roadway fatality occurs in Burlington about every three years. Four of seven recent Burlington fatalities were a pedestrian or bicyclist and all but one occurred at a signalized intersection (never the standard for safe intersection traffic management). Not only did Burlington hold six of the top 20 high crash slots (30%) on the statewide list, the BTV Crash-20 list did not include the Shelburne/St. Paul/Locust/S. Willard intersection, locally known as the “intersection of death” because it is scheduled to be a roundabout in 2022 under a 100% federal highway funding program for safety investments. In addition there are likely several more high crash intersections but only intersections on the State’s “federal aid system” are tabulated in the state report. Note the average cost per crash per year provided in the State report ranged in 2014 dollars from a low of $11,300 to a high of $110,720. The bulk of the 20 cost per crash were in the range of $20,000 to $30,000, a total of 12 of the 20. So, for example, where an inexpensive mini roundabout the payback in reduced crash costs would be about two years. The AARP Vermont Pine Street Corridor report (2014) recommended minis along Pine Street where ages old development precludes larger roundabouts, quite similar to the North Street corridor containing four high crash intersections. Based on four of recent intersection fatalities a pedestrian (3) or bicyclist (1), a pedestrian or bicyclist occurs about every five years here. Nationwide the growth of pedestrian fatalities, over 45% since 2010, led to the highest number of pedestrian deaths in 2018, over 6,000, since 1990. Note that six of the last seven Burlington fatalities were at signalized intersections—the two 2018 fatalities were a pedestrian at an unmarked crossing at North Avenue/Poirier Place and a car occupant at Shelburne Street/Home Avenue, site of a pedestrian fatal in 1998. Roundabouts according to an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety 2001 report reduce serious and fatal injury crashes by about 90%. While the “Burlington Transportation Plan” issued in 2011 states safety as a “critical” element for transportation improvement there remains not a single “safe” intersection, aka roundabout, built on a busy public street in the City or in the County. Note the $47 million Champlain Parkway project will introduce six new obsolete and unsafe traffic signal installations which promise a backward step in Burlington safety by increasing injuries and crashes in Burlington's South End. (It must be noted in view of the climate emergency a roundabout instead of a signal reduces global warming emissions 22- 29% amounting to from 3,000 to over 10,000 gallons of gasoline reduction along with associated global warming emissions compared to a signalized intersection—the higher the traffic volume the higher the reduction in gasoline use and global warming emissions.) Federal Highway Administration safety website for “Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety: https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/ped_bike/ This one page summary in turn refers to “Proven Safety Countermeasures”: https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/provencountermeasures/ The four paragraph “Proven Safety Countermeasures” lists 20 treatments in graphic form and states in part: “This list of Proven Safety Countermeasures has now reached a total of 20 treatments and strategies that practitioners can implement to successfully address roadway departure, intersection, and pedestrian and bicycle crashes. Among the 20 Proven Safety Countermeasures are several crosscutting strategies that address multiple safety focus areas.” 20 measures Only intersection “traffic management system” “proven safety countermeasure”: Roundabouts. Another proven safety countermeasure are “Medians and Pedestrian Crossing Islands” are an integral part of any roundabout design. Burlington High Crash Intersections—Mostly Signalized All but one of the BTV Crash-20 intersections are signalized—the one sign controlled high crash intersection is North Street/North Union with three-way stop sign control. The BTV Crash-20 are about a quarter of Burlington's total of about 75 signalized intersections. Burlington's share of high crash locations has been going up over the last three reports, from 14.5% in 2006-2010 to 18% of high crash locations 2012-2016. Burlington also features the number one highest crash rate in Vermont, the intersection of Main Street and South Winooski Avenue. Main/South Winooski in the five year period experienced 11 injuries—over two a year—98 crashes total with 90 crashes property damage only (PDO) (no injuries resulting). Based on frequency, just about every household has a member involved in a roadway crash every decade in Burlington or elsewhere. With about 150 injuries a year in the City and 1,400 property damage only crashes--about 16,000 crashes each decade mostly involving two vehicles or the equivalent of 30,000 affected households in a City of 16,000 households. Those fortunate not to be affected by a highway crash certainly observe a crash each decade or know those affected by a roadway crash. The BTV Crash-20 costs can be calculated from value of types of crashes provided in the State report—it comes to $2.5 million a year, $12.4 million for the five years of data tabulated. These costs go into the costs of auto insurance policies for vehicle owners. The BTV Crash-20 represent about 10% of all injuries each year and a similar proportion of property damage only crashes. Finally, note the Vermont report uses a fairly conservative estimate for the economic cost of a fatality and injury. The $1.5 million for a fatality Burlington High Crash Location Intersections Data 2012-2016 Base Data from Current Vermont High Crash Report Data from“High Crash Location Report: Sections and Intersections 2012-2016” Vermont Agency of Transportation --6,840 PDO 2013-2017. 1,368 per year Citywide. 696 PDO 2012-2016 at 20 high crash locations, each year 139—10% of all PDO citywide! --per decade approximately Citywide: 13,700 PDO crashes, 1,500 injury crashes; about 15,000 crashes overall Citywide per decade—equivalent to about one crash per decade per household in Burlington. About one third of all annual injuries or 50 injuries are a bicyclist or pedestrian, about equally divided. 2012-2016 High Crash Location Report --“The average economic costs in 2014 as used in the report are: Fatality (Death) $1,500,000; Injury (Disabling Injury) $88,500; No Injury Observed $ 11,300 [property damage only, PDO]. P 6 [Note the U.S. Department of Transportation uses a value of life method, right now a life is valued in excess of $10 million.] --20 BTV Intersections: 1 fatality, 147 injuries [1.47 injuries per intersection per year], 29.4 injuries/ 20 intersections per year--equals 19.6 of all roadway injuries recorded yearly (~150 based on recent survey) --All are signalized except North Street/North Union --111 Intersections reached threshold for high crash status, then are ranked --the 20 BTV intersections are 18.0% of the 111 high crash intersections tabulated; 21.8% of the highest 87 crash ranked intersections --696 property damage only (PDO), 139 PDO crashes per year, 7.0 PDO crashes per intersection per year —cost of Burlington High Crash intersections (2014 dollars) Fatality $1,500,000 (1) Injuries 3,000,010 (147) Property Damage Only (PDO) $7,864,800 (696) Total: 5 Years: $12,364,810 Cost per Year: $2,472,962 Source: “Vermont High Crash Location Report: Sections and Intersections 2012-2016.” 2017 VTrans https://vtrans.vermont.gov/sites/aot/files/highway/documents/highway/Formal %202012-2016%20High%20Crash%20Location%20Report.pdf Since the 20 Burlington high crash intersections are about 10% of all crashes and injuries recorded a rough approximation of the cost per year of highway crashes and injuries is ten times the cost per year figure of the high crash intersection, $2,472,692 or $24,700,000 annually in 2014 dollars, $31,616,000 in 2021 dollars. The costs developed for individual crashes by type include public costs for emergency, medical, police, etc., costs but not intangibles like pain and suffering, effects on neighborhood quality of life, etc. 2010-2014 High Crash Location Report --19 of 132 intersections tabulated or 14.4% --169 injuries 33.8 injuries per year, 1.8 injuries per intersection per year 2012-2016 High Crash Location Report Tabulated Burlington Intersections—19 signalized, 1 3-way stop control (dollars per crash) #1 S. Winooski/Main (Alternate US 7) 0.990 5 years/98 crashes/11 injuries/90 PDO ($20,311/crash) Total Crashes (per year): 98 (19.6) #5 Colchester/Barrett 0.990 5 years/34 crashes/7 injuries/1fatality/26 PDO ($71,312/crash) Total Crashes (per year): 34 (6.8) #11 South Prospect/Main (US 2) 0.220 5 years/72 crashes/9 injuries/65PDO ($21,264) Total Crashes (per year): 72 (14.4) #14 South Willard-US 7/Main 2.110 5 years/65 crashes/9 injuries/58 PDO ($22,337/crash) Total Crashes (per year): 65 (5.4) #15 Colchester/East Ave 0.430 5 years/44 crashes/9 injuries/35 PDO ($27,091) Total Crashes (per year): 44 (8.8) #20 North Union/South Union/Pearl 0.000 5 years/19 crashes/5 injuries/15 PDO ($32,211) Total Crashes (per year): 19 (3.8) #23 North/North Champlain 0.220 5 years/43 crashes/12 injuries/17 PDO ($30,219) Total Crashes (per year): 45 (8.6) #24 Main/St. Paul 0.250 5 years/39 crashes/7 injuries/32 PDO ($25,156) Total Crashes (per year): 39 (7.8) #25 Pearl/South Prospect/Colchester 0.930 5 years/40 crashes/12 injuries/34 PDO ($33,633) Total Crashes (per year): 40 (8.0) #31 Battery/Main 0.220 5 years/45 crashes/8 injuries/38 PDO ($25,276) Total Crashes (per year): 45 (9.0) #32 VT 127 Beltline 1.340 5 years/5 crashes/6 injuries (Location ?)/2 PDO (110,720) Total Crashes (per year): 5 (1.0) #38 North Winooski (Alternative US 7)/Pearl 1.310 5 years/61 crashes/13 injuries/51 PDO 
($23,489) Total Crashes (per year): 61 (12.2) #40 Park/North 0.280 5 years/19 crashes/4 injuries/16 PDO ($28,147) Total Crashes (per year): 19 (3.8) #46 North Winooski (Alternate 7)/North 1.620 5 years/19 crashes/3 injuries/16 PDO ($23,489) Total Crashes (per year): 19 (3.8) #47 US 7 North Willard/Pearl 2.420 5 years/57 crashes/13 injuries/47 PDO ($29,502) Total Crashes (per year): 57 (11.4) #52 Main/South Union 0.520 5 years/37 crashes/9 injuries/30 PDO ($30,689) Total Crashes (per year): 37 (7.4) #64 US 7 North Willard/Riverside Alternative 7 3.050 5 years/27 crashes/5 injuries/23 PDO ($22,337) Total Crashes (per year): 27 (5.4) #76 Swift/Shelburne Rd. (S. Burlington/Burlington) 1.720 5 years/60 crashes/1 injuries/59 PDO ($12,587) Total Crashes (per year): 60 (12.0) #87 North Union/North 0.300 5 years/15 crashes/0 injuries/15 PDO (3-way stop) ($11,300) Total Crashes (per year): 15 (3.0) #110 North Avenue/North 0.180 5 years/20 crashes/4 injuries/17 PDO ($27,305) Total Crashes (per year): 20 (4.0) Tony Redington Safe Streets Burlington ( SafeStreetsBurlington.com ) TonyRVT99@gmai.com @TonyRVT60 TonyRVT.blogspot.com June 10, 2021

Pine Street/VT Racial Justice Call for Railyard First, then RIGHTWAY to cut King Maple up to 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!  

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!  

What if Burlington City Council Does What NYC City Council did with Veto Proof Vote to Suddenly Spend 6% of Budget for Fed Housing Vouchers

The VT Housing Finance Agency vhfa.com seeks comments on $1.5 million to be spent on covid relief without addressing the underlying income gap. Below are my comments submitted today, May 29, and the address for anyone to submit comments, etc. https://www.vhfa.org/news/blog/dhcd-seeks-public-comment-recovery-housing-plan COMMENTS: Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Plan for use of federal recovery funds received by Vermont. This opportunity to comment was provided by a VHFA tweet in the last day. First and foremost as anyone knows who even takes a cursory look at Vermont governmental activity in the area of housing, there is no comprehensive housing plan and the pandemic has held up a Agency of Human Services doing even a plan for older Vermonters. The housing "problem" is summed by the Center for Budget Priorities as a need for an additional 16,000 fed type "affordable housing assistance" (shelter security at 30% income max rent) for Vermont (not including homeowners and mobile homes on rental sites) with 14,000 units in place serving on in five renters. Vermont so-called "affordable housing" (tax credit non-profit and Burlington "inclusionary zoning') is best described in the annual HUD report of tax credit housing where 24% of households pay in excess of 30% of income and 6% pay over half their income for rent. So, no plan for Vermont and a need which is clearly not addressed. The use of any public for funds for homeownership makes no sense while the 1,000 households, for example, sit on the Burlington Housing Authority waitlist, for example. New York City's City Council remarkably this week passed a veto proof budget with 6%--for the first time--set for affordable fed type Section 8 assistance vouchers (30% income max rent). There really are no such City budgeted units like this today! Vermont and BTV also do zilch here while doing "pretend" short term treatments, sort of like having an emergency room of housing with no wards for longer term treatment. If Burlington employed 6% of their general fund for fed type vouchers it would create about 600 vouchers, end homelessness overnight and address a good chunk of our Housing Authority waitlist. It is also time for Vermont state government to stand up and act like an adult in the room. The 30% requirement for a household income needs to be dropped to 25% as it was until the Reagan administration--30% if frankly confiscatory and exploitive of the lower income classes. The entire are of providing transitional assistance where there is no promise of longer term assistance is in itself cruel and unusual aid--depressing to those who administer the funds and those who received them. We must--as then Sen. Harris' Rent Relief Act called for--make Section 8 type aid as universal and not dependent on the drugs you do or do not consume. Drug addiction is a health issue not a housing issue. Finally I would refer you to Mathew Desmond's book "Eviction" and particularly the 60 or so pages of notes which comprise a graduate course in housing policy--and note that he like myself subscribe to universal vouchers--when we reach that point the behavior issues can be handed off where they belong--in the human services and health fields! Thank you for the opportunity to comment and this program design--it is not a plan. There is no housing plan for Vermont or the City of Burlington. That must also be addressed! Yours truly, Tony Redington

Some Comments on Transportation, etc. to the VT Climate Council--Motor Fuels, Walk, Transit, Rail

VERMONT CLIMATE COUNCIL PUBLIC INPUT FORM https://anrweb.vt.gov/ANR/ClimateCouncil/PublicInputForm.aspx?PKID=2633 Below are comments submitted today, May 20, 2021 Good Day All: My comments--as former transportation policy development chief for VAOT writing its first two policy plans incuding Act 200--centers on transportation but also from my experience as a statewide housing and rail planner in NH as well as a director of the NH Housing Commission there. VT in transportation is really in an enviable position compared to our northern NE neighbors even considering we had an unexpected growth of population 2010-2020 according to first Census reporting. Immediately below note that going into 2020 when we know there was a sharp drop in vehicle miles (13% nationwide while road deaths increased 8%) we only needed to drop motor fuel consumption 16% to each a goal of 1990 motor fuel consumption. We likely came within a percent above or below motor fuel consumption of 1990 this past year--though this creates a lot of pressure to maintain that in 2021! https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2019/mf202.cfm (FHWA, Highway Statistics, Series) Net Motor Fuel Taxed (000 gallons) State Vermont Maine New Hampshire Year 1990 329,543 709,799 550,014 1995 391,512 732,829 626,638 2000 411,065 856,796 770,059 2005 415,386 895,578 812,635 2010 388,988 850,450 803,334 2015 379,108 974,479 808,211 2019 381,931 914,922 835,032 NH: 2019 versus 1990 +51.8% Maine : + 28.9% VT: +15.9% No reason to jump for joy, but an clear indication that CAFE standards and beginning efforts at demand management and other actions to reduce driving have had a substantial impact creating a downtrend in motor fuel usage for a decade in Vermont! The major cause of Vermont and national sprawl has been federal and state subsidies of car use and homeownership--yes, we have such subsidies, Canada does not have federal housing and transport programs and has half again urban densities as a result. Electric cars will not overcome Vermont sprawl, only a stop to federal and state subsidies for auto ownership and operation, and misguided tax homeownership policies. This must be part of any climate solution policy set!! We live in a period of a highway fatality and serious injury pandemic---now 21,000 excess deaths in America (30 in Vermont) yearly versus the top four nations average (Norway, Ireland, Switzerland and UK now on top, US now number 18, we being with UK number 1 in road safety in 1990!). Vermont needs to adopt a program of replacing hundred of the approximately 400 traffic signal systems with modern roundabouts. Each roundabout will aid in reducing sprawl, reduce engird consumption the equivalent of 3,000 to 20,000 gallons of motor fuel use, and enable safety walking and bicycling in our downtowns and urban centers, the exception not the rule (think Middlebury and Manchester Center) today. AARP, Geico, AAA, and Insurance institute for Highway Safety--all advocate converting signals to roundabouts for safety. There is an equal reason, cutting climate change emissions! Vermont has no transport policy in the area of safety or climate change. This vacuum must end. Evidence of change toward walkability and bikeability can only be measured by the number of roundabouts found in downtown, mixed urban areas, etc.--and miles of cycle track installed. Note that our Vermont downtown roundabouts in 52 years of data did not record a single bike injury, just one non-serious pedestrian injury and average one injury a decade versus, for example, 20 Burlington high crash intersections which avenge 1.5 injuries per year! There is an equity issue at play which has been ignored as walkability remained in the vineyard of apartheid transportation. Those living in poverty including much of the population of Vermonters with black and brown skin are disproportionately dependent on walking and transit as 30% of residents of Burlington's Old North End and King Maple neighborhoods lack access to a car. Nationally pedestrians with Black skin die at almost twice the rate of white, Hispanic persons about 50% higher and Native Americans at two-three times of white pedestrian fatality rates. When spending to help well-to-do to own e-vehicles, we must also invest heavily in walkable urban and near town centers, particularly along transit routes (safe routes to the bus stop!) and locations with multi-use land development. National and Vermont transportation investments can be characterized as malign neglect and if we make safety the first consideration--as USDOT Peter Buttigieg espouses--the walking and bicycling investments will be made so incentives to use transit, walk and bike, will have a fertile context rather the lumps of coal now mostly in place. You will find my commentary on the role of light rail and commuter rail at my blog, TonyRVT.blogpost.com In short, we need to install a light rail network in Chittenden County (about 3 years to do as the $6.3 billion Cdn. begins operation next spring to be supplemented already another $10 billion Cdn. being pumped in on Montreal island. We could do a light rail system here in three years too. Intercity and commuter rail should also be on the table which when connected to Greyhound and VT Translines and our regional transit operators brings an entirely new system, lower levels at low fare and fare free, for moving around Vermont in our daily car-free! Yours truly, Tony Redington Walk Safety Advocate 125 Saint Paul St Apt 3-03 Burlington Also cited SafeStreetsBurlington.com website