SAFE STREETS BURLINGTON: Selected Comments Against Current Champlain Parkway Design--Envionmental Justice Outreach

Thursday, October 17, 2019

Selected Comments Against Current Champlain Parkway Design--Envionmental Justice Outreach

Burlington residents speak out against the Champlain Parkway current

design: some comments submitted as part of the Environmental Justice

Outreach Meeting September 26, 2019

Note the complete statements of these commenters below can be viewed at TonyRVT.blogspot.com

Next Pine Street Coalition Meeting, 9:30 a.m. Wednesday October 30, Krestel Coffee (formerly Maglianero), Maple Street between So. Champlain and Battery

Diane Elliott Gayer ...There needs to be a new EIS study. The conditions that the engineering and landscape design are based on have dramatically changed. There are [m]any traffic and environmental conditions that will be worse with this current plan.  1. Do NOT dead-end Pine Street at South Burlington. Make the connection to 189 a roundabout facility. ..3. Do NOT design the Parkway for high-speed clearances and then post it for low-speed travel. This does not work...4. End the Parkway at Flynn Avenue...5. Develop a coherent plan for King and Maple Streets before shoving more traffic through the intersections...

Carolyn Bates, Carolyn Street ...Now this project must undergo an environmental justice review. This means the project planners must show that the project will not have a disproportionate impact on low income and minority neighborhoods like mine.  I think it does have a horrifically huge discrepancy and impact. This project must be stopped NOW, and never go forward. Look at your own projected chart on the volume of traffic in the multi page handout you gave to us. It is on Pg 27. Wealthy neighborhoods have a reduction of 72% and 56% in traffic. Lakeside, with some low income people, has an increase in 9%.

Our neighborhood of King and Maple, has 37% increase at Maple St and Pine and another 22% on King and Pine. It is the second poorest neighborhood in Burlington, with 200 section 8 people, and at least 21 housing projects. It also has a huge population of non-English speaking African Americans...

James Lockridge, Maple Street ...I also wish there were roundabout-style intersections at King and Maple Streets, which keep polluting vehicles moving past homes rather than idling in front of them, and are known to be safer than traffic lights for pedestrians. If any kind of roundabout fit into those intersections, it would be closer to best practices for transportation safety and neighborhood wellbeing than old fashioned traffic lights would...

Mark Hughes, ED, Burlington, Justice For All Coordinator, Vermont Racial Justice Alliance http://justiceforallvt.org...since these plans began and the adverse and disproportionate impact that this project has on one of the most diverse and socioeconomically disadvantaged communities in Burlington....We can do better and we must do it now. Stop the project and include the impacted community in planning.

Michael Long, Brookes Avenue ...With regard to the Champlain Parkway design as proposed, the projected one third increase in traffic through the King Street/Maple Street neighborhood is incongruous and unacceptable for a project that is ostensibly intended to alleviate traffic congestion, particularly through residential neighborhoods...A 20th century road is senseless when we’re nearly two decades into the 21st century already.

Jack Daggitt, St. Paul Street ...If a street connecting Shelburne Road and Lakeside Avenue is opened up it is foolish to think motorists will observe a 25 MPH speed limit on a smooth freshly paved surface. Without roundabouts at critical intersections we can only expect increased speed, air pollution and danger to both bicycles and pedestrians.

Shared use facilities for both bicycles and pedestrians serve the needs of neither. Bicycle need protected bike lanes not just a white stripe on a road heavily traveled by motor vehicles.

Charles Simpson, Summit Street ...New USDOT requirements include consideration of disproportionate impact on low-income and racial minority populations. The planned route will dump considerably more vehicles than at present into the Pine/Maple/King area which is well above city averages for those over 65, for racial minorities, and for low-to-moderate income residents...Our Municipal Plan calls for complete streets, which include not only separate and distinct bike and pedestrian paths, but street connectivity. The current plan for the parkway adds zero separate paths and creates dead ends on numerous streets that are now connected. The most significant of these truncated streets is the main commercial thoroughfare of the South End itself, Pine Street. This will deprive residents of essential access to the adjacent commercial district in South Burlington, including low income residents in South Meadow and will further congest Shelburne Road, making it the sole route out of the South End. Buses and emergency vehicles will be greatly limited in their routes as well as walkers, bikers, and drivers. Commercial routes from Pine Street will be cut off. This makes no sense and is retrogressive from a traffic planning perspective...

Tony Redington, North Winooski Avenue ...A closer look at King/Maple shows perfectly the direct connection between the past 30 years of highway investment and the disproportionate impacts on low income/minority populations. Our two highest proportion of low/moderate and diverse populations in the City of Burlington—the Old North End and King/Maple (both over 80% low-moderate income)—also are neighborhoods where about a third have no access to a car and therefore are dependent on walk, bicycle, and transit modes! For 30 years minority and low income areas have been neglected at all governmental levels either by design or neglect when it comes to transportation investments—the current Parkway design is the very embodiment of that practice...While residents already complain about the traffic levels and associated noise, walking discomfort and pollution, King Maple very simply must face a 29-37% increase in daily traffic as outlined in...traffic analysis...

Place to sign petition to support a new EIS/modern roadway design:

https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/re-design-champlain-parkway-for-safety-climate

Websites: SafeStreetsBurlington.com

https://www.facebook.com/SSBPineStreetNOW/

Note the complete statements of these commenters below can be viewed at TonyRVT.blogspot.com

Pine Street Coalition October 17, 2019

No comments:

Sign Support Petition! Re-Design Guidelines! Re-thinking the Parkway

NEW! Sign the New Petition to Stop the Hurtful Parkway and Start a Public Re-Design for a Street Our City Can Love!! Use the comment section to make your views known!

https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/re-design-champlain-parkway-for-safety-climate

Our Mission!!

The mission of the Pine Street Coalition is re-design of the Champlain Parkway by re-opening a new EIS process in order to incorporate “best practices” of today which include: (1) re-directing the “purpose and need” to meeting the needs of theSouth End neighborhood and away from facilitating the movement of cars to downtown; (2) reducing instead of increasing the number of roadway injuries to residents and visitors; (3) decreasing the environmental impacts, particularly in regard to the stressed Englesby Brook; (4) provision of separate and equal facilities for those who walk and bike along the corridor; and (5) utilize modern roundabouts to reduce injury rates to all users, cut global warming emissions and other pollutants, reduce gasoline use, reduce delay for all users, manage speed and thereby reduce noise levels and add scenic quality.

CHAMPLAIN PARKWAY REDESIGN GUIDELINES Let's Do it Right the First Time!

The Champlain Parkway Redesign Guidelines (Guidelines) arose from meetings and discussions in the South End and throughout the City. The grassroots group, Pine Street Coalition, seeks a new design process incorporating new laws and plans, particularly safety changes. The Burlington Walk Bike Council developed a number of walk and bike facility recommendations. Safety remains the principal consideration both dismissed and ignored in the 2009 environmental document and current design. The Guidelines provide a framework for viewing changes to the current obsolete design of the Parkway and present a new approach on choices possible in a new democratic design process once the current project design reaches its well deserved end. The Parkway dates from 1960s, the current design from a decade ago—times do lead to changes! The Guidelines include dealing with four major flaws reflective of the obsolete, invalid 2009 environmental document:
--Cutting 1.5 mile lane miles of roadway, including constructing on (not two!)--streets between Home Avenue and Flynn Avenue. Also provide for a safe, quality access to both new developments, City Market South End and Petra Cliffs --Retaining full connectivity of Pine Street now set to dead end short of Queen City Park Road which forces South End residents onto Shelburne Road to access Hannaford, the Palace and Lowe's
--Installing roundabouts instead of six new obsolete and unsafe signalized intersection to prevent an increase of about eight injuries a year to South End travelers --Providing separate and safe sidewalk and bicycleway from Home Avenue to Curtis Lumber
—Improve air quality and safety for King Maple low income/minority neighborhood while Flynn Street ending of roadway insure minimal traffic changes on Pine Street
--Conserving four acres between Flynn and Lakeside Avenues for economic development of the “Gilbane” property (now a large parking area) and for protection and improving stressed Englesby Brook

Online: https://www.facebook.com/SSBPineStreetNOW/ SafeStreetsBurlington.com

Southern Connector Rethinking

By Steven Goodkind P.E.

The Southern Connector Project is one piece of a larger transportation plan for Chittenden County that was formulated over 40 years ago. It consisted of a network of highways that would encircle the county through Burlington, South Burlington, Williston, Winooski, Essex and Colchester. Parts of it included existing state highways and the interstate. There were also proposed new roads i.e. the Northern and Southern Connectors and the Circumfential Highway.

These proposed new roads share many common characteristics. They were to be for the most part limited access routes that would take traffic from existing local roads and reassign it to these new segments. But just as importantly, they all contained a huge conceptual flaw by relying on the perceived benefits of the ring road concept. .

We have learned a lot in the transportation field in recent decades and it is now widely recognized that it is generally better to improve our existing system to make it safer and more usable to all modes of transportation, than to build new

roads. We have also grown to appreciate the benefits of neighborhood connections that are not separated by manmade barriers such as limited access highways or large development projects. (The Burlington Town Center is an example of the latter case).

As a result, only portions of the original plan have been constructed. They are the three “bypass segments”, including the so-called “road to nowhere” in Burlington. The ring road concept is essentially dead.

However, the old concept does live on in at least one project. The Southern Connector, especially the piece from Home Ave. to Lakeside, is a classic example of old thinking, the benefits of which are far outweighed by the negative aspects it delivers. Because the latest version of this project dumps its supposed

reassigned traffic right back onto Pine Street without a connection to Battery Street, it fails to provide any significant transportation benefit that could not be achieved by simply opening the “road to nowhere”. The current plan eliminates

existing neighborhood connections and removes the connection of Pine St. to Queen City Park Road. A better name for it might be the “Southern Disconnector”. It is a costly and unnecessary relic of the past. This is further compounded by a design for the Pine St segment that is not up to the standards that Burlington has set for “complete streets”. Even our Public Works Director has acknowledged this when he recently said, “if we were designing this project today it would not look like this.”

If we hope to be a 21st century city, we need transportation projects that have designs that reflect 21st century thinking, not 20th century throwbacks.

The Mayor and his associates say they have done their best and it is too late for that. If we don’t proceed, we will have to pay back $7 or 8 million to the federal and/or State governments. This may be a possibility, but making the city payback money for a project that has been significantly changed, (notice I did not say cancelled), is unprecedented in Vermont. Here are some examples:

1) At the last minute the Northern Connector Project was modified to end at Manhattan Drive rather than at Battery and Pearl. This was to avoid destroying a good part of the Old North End.

2) The Circ Highway has been substantially redesigned to use existing routes and much of the originally proposed design will never be used

3) About 25 years ago, governor Dean stopped the construction of the Southern Connector from Home to Lakeside because of the uncertainty that a connection to Battery Street could be built.

4) Even though ROW had been secured and some railroad facilities and the DPW offices in its’ path have been relocated, the Southern Connector route from Lakeside to Battery through the Barge Canal was abandoned.

5) The “road to nowhere” was constructed 30 years ago but never completed and never maintained.

6) In the 1980’s, South Burlington decided not to participate in a segment of the Southern Connector that would have been in their community.

In none of these cases were the communities asked to repay the money they had spent on the project. There has never been and there should never be a penalty for making a project better and/or less expensive. History in this case is clearly

on the side of RETHINKING, REIMAGINING AND REDESIGNING the Southern Connector. It is the smart thing to do! It is not too late!

SAFE STREETS BURLINGTON

Thursday, October 17, 2019

Selected Comments Against Current Champlain Parkway Design--Envionmental Justice Outreach

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