MARLBORO — Panelists at last Thursday night's Transportation Cost Forum provided a review of the governor's brand-new Comprehensive Energy Plan, shed renewed light on the fast start of the state Agency of Transportation (AOT) after Tropical Storm Irene, and offered a glimpse of our own livable future.
The forum was held under League of Women Voters' auspices. The Brattleboro chapter of the American Association of University Women of Vermont co-sponsored the forum.
The plan stresses increased use of renewable energy sources (which include hydroelectric power from Canada), greater rail transport, and doubling public transit ridership by 2030.
The panelists displayed terrific creativity, candor, and camaraderie. In modern Montpelier, good ideas are clearly bubbling up from the ranks, and ideology seems to have gone on vacation in favor of sound vision and good leadership practices.
At this meeting at least, there were no apparent dictates from on high, no finger-pointing, and nothing held back.
Chris Cole, the AOT's director of policy, planning, and intermodal development, Brattleboro state Rep. Mollie Burke, and Matt Mann, senior transportation planner for the Windham Regional Commission, knew their stuff and told it like it is.
We learned that safety and tourism were one-two in the Irene response, that it would have been better if river engineers from the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) had been embedded with AOT efforts from the start, and that AOT employees were truly indefatigable, committed, and professional.
With workers from New Hampshire and Maine Department of Transportation and members of the National Guard from all over, 3,000 people were out in the field. Federal highway staff and employees from the Federal Emergency Management Authority worked hard. The Whetstone Brook impact was awesome, but the town of Brattleboro responded well.
We also learned the importance of developing good ideas and selling them.
Last year's complete streets legislation came about in large part because AARP members researched the needs of bicyclists, walkers, runners, and disabled people and then held statewide gatherings to gain citizen support for the legislation.
Today's AOT funding comes relatively equally from Department of Motor Vehicles fees, purchase and use taxes, and the gas tax.
In time, the latter may be replaced by some kind of mileage tax, such as the big haulers pay today, because of revenue declines since 2006 as we drive less and start to use electric power. (There was no discussion of a percentage tax on gasoline, which varies with price.)
The feds are involved in everything the Vermont AOT does except rail support and snow plowing, but lately they have become increasingly flexible. Vermont is second only to California in per capita federal funding for public transit.
Maintenance costs have increased the past decade, making new Vermont roads unlikely. Vermont needs to be creative, by keeping big trucks off the streets, encouraging folks to move into town, and using the countryside for recreation rather than commuting.
In the post-Irene period, we'll be “throwing up” some little-used bridges, completely closing some roads temporarily for bridge reconstruction, and encouraging folks to use alternative modes of transport.
We learned that purchase and use (transportation) revenues still go elsewhere (like education) and that no school buses are used for public transit, but that in denser locales, government can provide subsidies for younger students to use public transit rather than school buses and for students of driving age to use public transit instead of cars.
Irene taught Vermont to use federal dollars better, to limit permitting delays, and to put our own energy to work.
It felt great to see good government in operation and to get a glimpse of important changes to come.