THE BURLINGTON TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM

GETTING A WALKABLE, BIKABLE BURLINGTON, VT—THE PATH AHEAD

         ...plus a touch of rail passenger services

 

1.   Burlington traffic decline started 25 years ago—8% to 28% declines on major routes into downtown area—North Avenue, Beltline, Pearl, Main, Shelburne and Pine.  The State projects that traffic decline continues.

2.   Burlington workers travel to work—a third on foot, transit, and bike—is a remarkable statistic, over three times the U.S. urban average of 10%.

3.   Those traveling to downtown and the waterfront will increasingly go by bus, passenger rail, bicycling and walking—it’s been the trend for decades now and will continue into the future.

4.   While walking and bicycling occurs in a “bike and walk friendly” City, the City is mostly neither walkable or bikable along busy streets with two notable exceptions, the Marketplace and Riverside Avenue.

5.   Only through major investments on busy streets of cycle track (protected bike lanes) and intersection roundabouts can a walkable bikable City become a reality.

6.   Bicycle and walker injuries and fatalities—car occupants too—continue on our streets with the costs of poor safety infrastructure outweighing by far the dwindling costs of congestion as car traffic declines.   The tragic deaths of Sam Lapointe on the crosswalk at the Colchester/Barrett intersection last year and Dealer.com employee Karen Borneman while driving through the St. Paul/Main Street intersection two years ago illustrate the need for safe street infrastructure investments.

7.   Most busy City intersections can be served by single lane roundabouts, cutting walker and car occupant serious injuries by about 90%.  First step, analyzing all busy intersections for roundabout conversion, then building five or so yearly, a figure based past Western European rates.

8.   All in Burlington who walk and all who bicycle--regardless of age and skill--deserve walkable and bikable infrastructure on major streets.

9.   Large increases in State funding from general funds must occur for the State’s cities and town walkable and bikable infrastructure as well as for needed rail passenger services (intercity and commuter).

10.        A truly walkable, bikable busy street features sidewalks and cycle track along its sections paired with roundabouts at key intersections.

STATES SING "SAYONARA GAS TAX"

NATIONS’ CAR DRIVERS AND PASSENGERS DUMP CARS, GAS TAXES FLOUNDER EVERYWHERE, AND NOW TWO STATES MOVE TOWARDS BROAD BASE TAXES FOR TRANSPORTION BUDGETS WITH ONE, VIRGINIA, ALREADY ACROSS THE FINISH LINE WITH ITS ABOLISHING IT’S 17.5 CENT GAS TAX LAST WEEK

                   …more shocks and tremors from the “transportation tectonic shift”

The realm of transporting people from place to place in America changes now before our very eyes. 

The century’s first decade brought a drop in car travel for every age group, flattening or even decline in vehicle miles of travel in most states, and since 1995 a 20 percent drop in the proportion of the under-30 driver licensing with their car travel down even more 22 percent. 

States and the federal government this century continue experience an even greater drop in motor fuel and car-related taxes from more fuel-efficient vehicles and driving cutbacks by consumers. Now in 2013 comes a revolution in state finance of all transportation led by Virginia and Massachusetts January proposals looking to fund needed transportation programs and projects with broad base taxes, quitting the practice of about a century of funding highways and most other transportation needs from motor-vehicle related taxes and fees.

  

Less than two months after Virginia Governor Bob McDonell proposed it, the financing plan passed by large margins in the House and Senate last week.  The new law abolishes the 17.5 cent Virginia gasoline tax and moves to a sales tax on motor fuels along with a dedicated  transportation 0.8% sales tax on top of the current 5% for all goods and services except food.  The new approach raises over $3 billion in the first five years versus under the old regime.

Meanwhile in Massachusetts, the plan put forth by Gov. Deval Patrick raises $1.9 million in new revenue yearly, mostly from the income tax, with both all transportation modes and education getting needed funding—particularly the MBTA, a backlog of highway and bridge projects, and expansion of passenger rail service statewide.

Governor Patrick’s plan includes some tax reform, such as reduction in the sales tax by a penny, sets gasoline and motor vehicle taxes and fees into an automatic increase schedule in line with changes of inflation.

With Virginia and Massachusetts in the lead—one with a Republican governor and legislature and the other Democratic—can the rest of the nation be far behind?

VERMONT TRANSPORTATION FINANCE

 

FINANCING VERMONT TRANSPORTATION NEEDS

As Vermont transportation funding—even just matching a thin federal funding stream—reaches a crisis point the traditional approach of just increasing gas taxes, vehicle taxes and fees no longer addresses a changed marketplace. Governor Deval Patrick this week in a radical departure from the past points to a new path to fund highway, public transit and highway needs—he rejected a 19-cent gas tax increase and calls for transportation and other infrastructures needs funded by an income tax increase. 

Vermont faces two sharply divided trends--a slow but relentless decline in car travel and associated revenues and rapid increases in public transit and Amtrak growth plus demands for new Amtrak, commuter bus and commuter rail services.   Literally hundreds of Vermont workers abandon driving their cars each year for bus and other ways to get to work.  Now Link commuter buses started about a decade ago number 50 from Montpelier, St. Albans and Middlebury to Burlington carrying nearing 500 commuters each workday.

Let’s separate the funding of highway and transit/Amtrak since each area—one in slow decline and the other growing like topsy—require different treatment.  Before raising more highway revenues the Legislature needs to find out who wears out the roads, who is responsible for costs—cars and various truck types.  Armed with that information, revenues can be increased or decreased fairly for all highway users.  How to downsize the highway system and its costs needs to be looked at—not just revenue increases.

Meanwhile, transit and rail passenger services really are regional and statewide services and deserve needed additional resources to accommodate the shift of “business” there from the car and highway set.  The Legislature needs to focus on the transportation “customer”, how to serve those customers needs (particularly those traveling to and from work).  And the Legislature needs to look at transportation as a “market” just highways with transit, bicycle, walker, and rail transportation afterthoughts.