What if We Had a Pandemic and No One Cared--No Lives Matter, mostly, in the US Highway Fatalities Pandemic

What if We Had a Pandemic and No One Cared--No Lives Matter, in US Highway

                                       Fatalities Pandemic

  “Yes, ’n’ and how many deaths will it take’ till he [a man] knows that

  too many people have died.”

—“Blowing in the Wind” 1963 

The analysis that follows this introduction outlines the Burlington and Chittenden County huge proportion statewide of high crash intersections and the lack of addressing those intersections with even a single roundabout built to date.  But this data takes place in a nation which itself is in a pandemic of highway fatalities.  Here are some of my thoughts on the larger question followed by the high crash intersection analysis.

There is a wholesale breakdown in our US highway fatality pandemic with its 21,000 yearly excess deaths extending from from top to bottom—the fed level, state (note a few states/provinces make the roundabout the standard, NY did it in 2005), metro planning (CCRPC) and our particular Burlington Department of Public Works.  (My home town, Keene, NH has five going on seven roundabouts, including one on Main Street at the Keene State College/Post Office gateway to downtown paid for with $4 million property tax monies.)  When it comes to highway safety in the United States a policy of “no lives matter” mostly prevails.  I have come to the conclusion a mix of factors is involved including but limited to: simple resistance to change, lack of leadership at every level, malign and benign neglect, a black hole in highway engineering education in regard to systemic safety, publicly employed traffic engineers too often diverted from any safety concerns for those who walk, lack of a "transportation safety" Fauci--all a reflection of systemic failure.  We all know now what systemic failure is, we are daily living or dying with it in the form of Covid-19.     

Norway seems to have broken away from #s 2, 3, and 4 nations where in 1990 we stood at #1 (and Sweden dropped to 5th in the most recent numbers).  Even admitting variance in national collection data, Norway latest year, 108 highway deaths versus Vermont average of about 70 now.  They did not record a single "child" death--US 15 and under highway deaths top 2,000.  Norway is now putting in median treatments on two lane rural roadways to prevent head on crashes and it has gotten measurable positive results.  We cannot get protected bike lanes yet much less roundabouts.  

            Chittenden County—26% of State Population, 42% of 111 High Crash 

               Vermont Intersections (Burlington Even Worse!)

Chittenden County (County) and Burlington streets and roadways hold a disproportionate number of Vermont high crash intersections.  

High crash intersections are those on major roads and streets averaging at least one injury a year in the most recent Vermont Agency of Transportation tabulation of 111.  A large majority of high crash intersections (all but one in the case of Burlington) are signalized, a now mostly obsolete and dangerous technology.  Most concerning is the apparent lack of any effort in either Burlington or Chittenden County to replace injury prone traffic signals with “best practices” roundabouts proven in Vermont downtowns averaging about one injury a decade.  Roundabouts cut serious and fatal injuries by about 90%.  (See Vermont high crash locations report here: https://vtrans.vermont.gov/sites/aot/files/highway/documents/highway/Formal%202012-2016%20High%20Crash%20Location%20Report.pdf  )

America itself has suffered three decade collapse of highway safety in fatalities per mile of travel, slipping from 1st to 15th among nations since 1990, the first year a roundabout was built in the US.  US now records 21,000 excess deaths compared to the performance of the top four nations.  This is the very definition of a “highway fatality pandemic.”  Add to this the 50% increase in pedestrian fatalities over the last decade which disproportionately affects African Americans and Hispanics. US excess deaths exemplify real carnage and permanent mark on the Federal Highway Administration whose funds traditionally drive all Vermont roadway capital investments.

  

Applying the national numbers to Vermont, about 30 of our 70 road fatalities per year are excess stemming from lack of “systematic safety” which begins with safe infrastructure investing.  Unfortunately Chittenden County and Burlington high crash intersection data show them worst of the worst.  Even more disturbing is not only the lack of attention to safety in investments in the County and Burlington but the specific inattention to dealing with high crash intersections—the “BTV Crash 20” high crash intersections injuries record of 28 injuries per year represents 18% of all injuries (including one fatal) tabulated in the 2012-2016 period.   And those roughly 150 injuries a year are composed of about one bicyclist/pedestrian injury weekly and two car occupants weekly.

For the County—using the 1.4 injuries per year per BTV Crash 20 intersection—the frequency of injury (66 total) at the County’s 47 high crash intersections is above one per week!   

There is a systemic failure to address unsafe intersections in the City and County.  As the third 3-year term—9 years—of Mayor Weinberger administration nears it end, not a single one of the BTV Crash 20 intersections is scheduled for a roundabout.  In fact there are no roundabouts in the County—a “metro area” and likely one of a handful in the nation without a single roundie.  While a roundabout is on the drawing board in Colchester, Mayor Weinberger was handed ready to design/build with 100% federal funds a roundabout at the “rotary” on Shelburne Street bordering Christ the King Elementary School—and after nine years could not move to construction!!   This intersection, known in the neighborhood as the “intersection of death,” is desperately wanted by those who live in the area.  Now the target date for that roundabout has slipped to 2022.  (Note the Burlington “intersection of death” was previously in the top five statewide but was taken off the list since the project was ticketed and programmed for final design and construction back about 2010.)  Just this summer a demonstration of a roundabout at a BTV Crash 20 intersection was dropped by the Department of Public Works and now will be done in 2021—the first roundabout presence at any busy public intersection in the County.  The roundabout situation in the County and City brings into question what the use of the term that safety is “critical” in highway investments (Burlington Transportation Plan, 2011) means in actual practice.  

Vermont was an early leaders in US roundabouts in the mid and late 1990s, then faded.  The first roundabout east of Vail, CO and north of Maryland was built in Montpelier in 1995 (19th in US) followed shortly by the first Manchester Center in 1997 and first 2-lane roundabout as well as interstate interchange in the northeast in 1999 (Brattleboro Keene-Turn).  But by 2005 when NY State Department of Transportation adopted the “roundabouts first” regulations a few other states undertook significant roundabout installations (over 7,000 today in North America).  The New Hampshire Department of Transportation leads now in New England, 

         State Numbers

Overall 41 of 255 Vermont municipalities recorded at least one high crash intersection 2012-2016.  But only eight municipalities recorded more than three high crash intersections: Burlington 20; Bennington 9; Brattleboro and South Burlington 7 each;  Colchester 5; and Essex, Williston and Winooski 4 each.  

Obviously Burlington sticks out like a sore thumb with more than twice the high crash intersections of any town in the state.  And the County towns listed (plus Richmond with 3) total of 47 amounts to 42% of the State total. 

Since Chittenden County is the only “metro” in Vermont and its Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission (CCRPC) has a yearly Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) planning funds entitlement of about $550,000 (2018).  It is well known that Governor Phil Scott has been supportive of roundabouts in the past, recognizing their safety aspects as a race driver.  The Winooski traffic circle often is referred to as a roundabout—it is not one and about five of the Montpelier sized roundabouts would fit in what is really an old traffic circle design and still leave plenty of room!  The Winooski circle is in fact about the same size—500 feet by 200 feet—as the quarter mile oval at Thunder Road in Barre Town where many of Governor Scott’s racing victories occurred.  It is also noteworthy that the former CCRPC transportation policy director has for more than five years has been director of VTrans Policy and Planning Division including during the time when the VTrans secretary retained and imposed six injury generating and global heating signalized intersections on Burlington when the issue of “best practices” roundabouts came up in 2015 revisions decisions on the Champlain Parkway design.

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Finally, AAA has been a recent Paul Revere in US highway safety (see their 2017 report https://aaafoundation.org/safety-benefits-of-highway-infrastructure-investments/ ) and the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety have led in providing data and sounding the alarm starting with their 2001 research showing roundabouts reduce serious and fatal injuries about 90%.  And we must be thankful for the Organization for Economic and Community Development which hosts the International Transport Forum which produces an annual report enabling us to understand the American road safety plight within modern nations as we have plummeted to the lower depths.   https://www.itf-oecd.org/road-safety-annual-report-2019

Vermont Population/Seniors Growth a Tale of Two Realms

With another year of Census population data now in for 2014, it becomes clear Vermont, Chittenden County, and Burlington trends are best represented by a flat line for population and a continuing senior growth leading to a 2000-2030 doubling from 12% of total population to 24%.   Vermont population grew a grand total estimate of 817 during the four years 2000-2014.  That equates to 17 persons monthly, equal to about 7 households composed of two adults and one child.  Yet during the period 2000-2013 Census estimated an annual increase of 1,946.  One-year growth in the Vermont aging population—1,946—more than doubles the 817 total population growth 2010-2014. 

Burlington—6.8% of Vermont population—grew an estimated mighty one person a month 2010-2014.  Meanwhile senior population—growth of those 65-and-above—grew 14 a month.  On an annual basis: Burlington population up 14 a year, senior up 132 a year.  For Chittenden County (exactly 25% of the Vermont population 2010) grew 4—that is right four!--persons per month on a pro rata basis to the statewide growth during the period 2010-2014.  Meanwhile, senior growth estimated in the same manner grew 40 monthly in the County.

Economic Art Wolf in a January 2014 column in the Free Press using history as a guide concludes Vermont rural populations will decline in the future as the State returns to pre-1960 population trends dating back to the mid-1800s.  Meanwhile one can expect Burlington and other urban areas to increase population as the younger population increasingly chooses urban locations, drives less, owns cars less and get driver licenses less.   Seniors seek housing in built up areas where public transport and services are nearby. 

FORCED BUSING—AN UNFAIR COMMUTER TRANSPORTATION PRACTICE

Feel “transportation discrimination”? Well be a commuter in or out of Burlington, VT exercising “commuter choice” by abandoning the car and what do you get?--second-class transportation in the form of a stuffy, jammed and sometimes standing room only bus (and room for only two bicycles). Welcome to the transportation quality of service typically found in less developed nations!

The first paragraph clearly paints a totally unfair picture of the Chittenden County Transportation's (CCTA) spectacularly successful commuter buses, the “Link” services introduced in the last few years--east to Montpelier, north to St. Albans and south to Middlebury. CCTA ranks as one of the best is not the best public transportation services in the nation in a small Metro. But the first paragraph description also indisputably tells us that the regional commuter routes by bus only, the Link services shouldered by CCTA, primarily reflect a State responsibility, a failed responsibility to date marked by clear lack of foresight and policy direction. The commuter environment shows, again, the citizens and their demand for modern transportation finds public leadership either asleep or scrambling to catch up (or both!). As the saying goes, the Vermont Agency of Transportation (VAOT), the Legislative Transportation Committees and northwest Vermont regional planning agencies “just don't get it.”

Every month Burlington bound and Burlington outbound commuter numbers increase with 310 commuters regularly served by Link buses, roughly 20% of the potential commuter market. The three older Link services growth since last July average 26%, not including a fourth Link service between Burlington and Milton begun within the past year.

Regional planners and the VAOT focus goes to all kinds of new “park and ride” investments while ignoring in the first place of providing a quality set of services built around self-propelled, high passenger capacity, rail-diesel passenger equipment. Moreover current Link services leave the State's largest private employer, IBM with its unique railside access, unserved and a skeletal service to downtown Waterbury (from Burlington only) with its major State complex.

Note that free commuter park-and-ride lots and employee parking continue a major subsidy to workers, a subsidy generally discontinued in mature public transportation services, including commuter rail. In the meantime all one needs to know about federal priorities comes from the fact that every type of commuting to work qualifies the commuter for one individual income tax credit or benefit of another except one—walking.

Note that a review of the three Burlington corridors—east, north and south—market potential for commuter rail amounts to about 5,000. Certainly an initial potential use of commuter rail based on Link performance might well reach 30% or 1,500 commuters. The Link services as well as shuttle connections from rail stations would continue as a supplement and feeder for what really becomes an overall integrated rail/bus system. Bicycle and walking modes facilities supporting the integrated network must be a given.

Then there is the larger question of inter-city services enabled by current Link type services today, for examples, connecting Burlington to St. Johnsbury via Montpelier and Burlingon to Rutland via Middelbury. While inter-city and commuter rail services get separate treatments in terms of federal funding, in a small state like Vermont they naturally overlap. The recent Vermont intercity routes built off commuter Link and Link-type services (plus Amtrak) perfectly illustrate how both services connect an re-enforce each other. Extensions of commuter rail to eventually provide intercity links to every major community along with services designed to strengthen the tourist industry also naturally grow out of upgrading tracks and building of commuter rail services. The choices for rail clearly find expression in three major studies dating from 1989—the only thing remaining comes in dusting off the studies and build off the pioneering commuter services CCTA and other public transit agencies have built which show a new reality as more and more Vermonters want out of the unsustainable and uneconomic auto-centric lifestyle.

Time now to catch the growing wave of commuters wanting a quality alternative to car commuting which awaits Legislative, regions, and VAOT leadership. All aboard!

UPON FURTHER REFLECTION....VERMONT COMMUTER RAIL IMMEDIATELY CURES THE “VERMONT STATE OF TRANSPORTATION EMERGENCY”, THE PHENOMENON OF CITIZENS ABANDONING CAR COMMUTING IN DROVES

Upon further reflection, the startling growth in numbers of Vermont commuters already using various commuter oriented bus services throughout Vermont reflects a “state of transportation emergency” curable only by undertaking an immediate installation of commuter rail services to handle demand for commuting without a car.

The surging growth of commuters shifting to bus services to get back and forth to work constitutes the proverbial canary in the coal mine signaling needed action now as the automobile as a mechanism of travel no longer serves as the satisfactory core transportation mode in a post-auto age for Vermont. Consider that a commuter rail service starting from the State House complex in Montpelier would include within about an hour stops at Middlesex, downtown Waterbury, Bolton, the center of Richmond, the IBM parking lot, Essex Jct., Winooski and Burlington Union Station. All these stops in a total trip time about the same as the Montpelier Link bus which can only service the outskirts of Richmond along with central Burlington and Montpelier. Overall commuters potentially served by a commuter rail total about 5,000 on the Burlington-Montpelier corridor—another total of 5,000 potential exists for the two other lines ending in Burlington from St. Albans and Middlebury.

Lots of planning and transportation money now goes to investing in park-and-ride lots which would be much better diverted to starting up the long term future of Vermont transportation—a network of commuter and intercity rail services connecting all the State's urban areas and many of its tourist destinations. These services would utilize mostly self-propelled single and two car sets with seating capacities of 80-150. The same equipment was proposed as a cost-saving demonstration in place of Amtrak services from St. Albans to New Haven, CN.

Yes the auto industry will fight the return of the rail car based service just as it funded the demise of urban rail a century ago, but continuing to fund and subsidize an auto mode no longer sustainable as the core network of transportation no longer remains economic (if it ever was) and can no longer be afforded.

Meanwhile, New England car travel numbers now trend negative, Vermont population under-65 population growth level flat lines for the foreseeable future, and three decades of stagnant wages with no end in sight—all contribute to the high growth of bus and Amtrak numbers which yearly hit new highs. And those same factors provide the underpinning for a shift of the Vermont transportation core network from one centered on cars to one centered on sustainable rail passenger and freight services.

Let's recognize that the bus trip represents a lower tier level of comfort and ease for commuters and travelers in general versus commuter rail. People only put up with buses if rail is unavailable. Besides, practical commuter bus capacities are about 30-50 while a two-car self-propelled rail car set capacity easily amounts to 150, expandable to several hundred by just adding more passenger cars.

For years many argued that we will not abandon our cars for a bus—but more and more Vermonters are abandon the solo car or carpooling for the bus every month—the three commuter “Link” bus services out of Burlington have increased about 20% each year for the past for two years.

The three musty Vermont commuter rail studies already provide the basic blueprints—the only elements missing now are leadership from Governor Shumlin, at least one member of the Vermont Congressional delegation, and the municipal leaders of affected communities—to the north along the line to St. Albans, to the east Montpelier and Barre, and to the south Vergennes and Middlebury. Add two other initial potential lines: (1) a Connecticut River Valley line connecting White River Jct., Windsor, Bellows Falls and Brattleboro; and (2) West Route—Bennington, Manchester, Rutland and Middlebury.

An initial service, say either of the three Burlington routes (IBM expressed a preference for a St. Albans/IBM/Burlington service) might take two years at most. Note while the entire core Montreal Metro system construction took about a year, Vermont rail lines for service are in place, the St. Albans-Brattleboro line with a 60 mph service level now serves Amtrak daily, and the desired rail equipment already operates on two commuter lines, one in Portland, OR.

Cost? Well federal law requires Chittenden County and the Governor directly command $50 million annually in capital and public transportation investments which involve federal funding. A first commuter rail service line could easily be handled with about $5-$6 million for the first year or two, affordable with current funding streams. The rail equipment and costs for service were thoroughly examined in 2008-2009 when the Amtrak demonstration of the same equipment to reduce Vermont subsidies (still a good idea!!).

The tide in transportation began to turn about two decades ago away from an auto-based dominance and now that same tide can be seen clearly—it is time now to respond to the “state of transportation emergency” and begin the welcome task of establishing a core of commuter and intercity rail passengers in Vermont as part of a workable, sustainable, and economy supporting backbone for the transportation system.