ACTION
ALERT – CHAMPLAIN PARKWAY
Action
Alert:
Please Sign the Petition! https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/governor-scott-federal
Note Governor Scott by federal law has power to stop the Parkway
- Contact City Councilors by email/phon, and/or attend, speak Monday, June 3 at City Council Public Forum at 7:30 pm, Contois AuditoriumCity Council members email and telephone: https://www.burlingtonvt.gov/CityCouncil
- Oppose $2.5 million in City taxpayer funds to pay for Parkway contaminated soil removal/disposal, $700,000 more for City share of project approaching $50 million
--City
$2.5 million costs for contaminated never discussed publicly
--Mayor
Weinberger pushes for entire $3.2 million spending without a word of
discussion or explanation – a councilor will have to object in
order for this to be discussed and voted on
--the
project in addition to up to unneeded 1.5 miles/6 acres asphalt has
no “best practices” roundabouts (intersection safety belt) and
separate/safe walk and bike facilities
--goal:
stop the project, start new blank slate environmental impact
statement process driven by this generation of South Enders and BTV
residents
What
is at stake?
The
Parkway will proceed to construction this year with only the Pine
Street Coalition effort in courts able to perhaps stop this hurtful
project. The project not only increases injuries to South End
travelers, it destroys key connectivity to Queen City Park Road,
sharply increases climate change emissions, fails to address
environmental justice to our lowest income neighborhood, creates
about six acres of asphalt better used for economic development and
public space, has no safe entries to new Petra Cliffs and City
Market, builds two rather than one quality street between Home and
Flynn Avenues, and forces higher ongoing street maintenance than
necessary including six new traffic signals, a long ago discredited
and outmoded technology.
Goal:
A new environmental impact statement process, the goal of Pine
Street, starts with a clean slate in a community driven process to
design a roadway our City can love! Let's do it right the first
time!
This
meeting is the first since the illegal public hearing on project
necessity and site visit early in 2018—we were not allowed in a
public hearing to speak on the merits of the Parkway!
The
now decade old 2009 environmental document—340 pages—and project
design harks to 1950s car centric design and when it got watered down
from a four-lane divided roadway only increases injuries to South End
travelers, walls off the South End from Kmart Plaza, Hannafords,
etc., does not contain one inch of new separate and safe walk/bike
facilities, and does not conform to literally a dozen laws and
policies at all levels ranging from the Vermont Complete Streets Act
(2011), the federal requirements for best safety practices (2013),
and the City Transportation plan (2011) along with planBTV Walk Bike
(2017).
There
is not one paragraph of safety analysis in the current base Parkway
document, the the Weinberger administration itself erased the one
safe sidewalk in the Parkway about 2016, now to force pedestrians to
share space with high speed bicycle commuters, E-bikes, and likely
E-scooters. Weinberger this action makes walking and bicycling
“safer” for South Enders -- in a recent year on a shared use path Lebanon-Hanover, NH a bicyclist crashed into an killed a pedestrian, a second similar crash sent pedestrian to hospital in critical condition.
Key
Docs: Chapin Spencer Memo on funds to City Council:
https://go.boarddocs.com/vt/burlingtonvt/Board.nsf/files/BCNN6B5ACC3A/$file/DPWMemo-CC_Champlain%20Parkway%20CAA%207%20Rev1.pdf
City
Council Agenda:
https://go.boarddocs.com/vt/burlingtonvt/Board.nsf/Public
Parkway
items 5.18 and 5.19 set to be approved on the “consent agenda”
without discussion.
No comments:
Post a Comment