Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Candice White (Member)]: Good

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: morning again on Wednesday, 01/07/2026 here in House Transportation Committee. We have a returning witness and guest that visits us every year, at least once, if not twice or more. Dan with the Vermont or the agency of transportation director of rail. Is it rail and aviation?

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: No. No. It's We we separate

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: updated twice. Yeah. We separated aviation. Robinson is the director of aviation. And Dan is fully focused on rail. And when he's not running the whole thing, he's out fixing the last of the line to get the Amtrak to Montreal.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: All of that, yes.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: And Bennington to

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And Bennington, most importantly. More importantly, yes. For those of you who haven't been on the committee for the last twenty five years and are going to be on the committee for the next twenty five years waiting for the Montreal and Bennington first priority projects to move forward. That's a terrible way to introduce. Could we cut all that? I know you have an annual report and some pieces to present to us. I appreciate you adjusting your schedule and being patient with us. And I will hand it over to you and help us check off some of the lists of things we have to hear about, need to hear about. Great.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Well, thanks for having me in. If the conversation

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: goes elsewhere in the rail, I'm happy to do that too. Off the rail.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Off the rails. Yeah. We don't like to say that.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: An answer.

[Candice White (Member)]: You're friends.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: So, yeah, thank you for having me in. So I was asked to do a legislative report, which was due in December, regarding the revenue that we create or generate on the railroad right of way property that the state of Vermont owns. So we have four active railroads, four rail trail properties. Obviously, the main purpose of the active rail is railroad operations, either freight or passenger. But there are times where there may be some excess property that we may be able to lease to and a butter utility crossings, driveway crossings, things like that. All of those things, we generate agreements with folks. Those agreements generally come with a fee. Those fees come into AOT and come into the T Fund. So we were asked, what is that? How much is that? Specifically, I was asked to focus on either telephone communications or broadband communications. And then sort of the third category was everything else. So in the report, and I don't know if everybody saw the report.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Is it posted on our webpage or is it on the, I know it came out as

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: an email. I don't know where you posted. I gave it to the person who sends all our reports in for AOT and they send it to you guys. I don't know where you posted it. I do have it right here in paper form, and there is a math error in the one that I sent in. So I am going to be sending a corrected version because one of the totals is incorrect. When we did the spreadsheet, when you do sum total, you have to highlight. Well, there was a portion of it that didn't get highlighted. So this total is off by $50,000 actually. But I have enough copy. Can send if you guys want to see a paper copy. Normally, you guys don't like paper, so I didn't just pass them out because Alright.

[Candice White (Member)]: I'm looking to see if it's posted on our website.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: It's in here.

[Candice White (Member)]: One forty three way report.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yes. That's right. Is that it? That's right.

[Candice White (Member)]: And for you I don't

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: know who you are. Okay.

[Candice White (Member)]: It's on reports. Yeah. They were at the bottom. December 15. Was

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: sent to Yes.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: That's correct. That's the correct.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Resources on the page.

[Candice White (Member)]: Okay. So under

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: the active railroad

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: But I would love the copy if

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: you want see Absolutely. We can yeah. Send them around if you guys want a paper. Take one if you want, and don't take one if you don't want. I know you guys don't like paper, so I just didn't

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Some people don't.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: I like

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: loggers, they got work to do.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: There's plenty there for everybody. And the corrected total is on there. So what you have in front of you is the correct number. Alright, so let's get into specifics. So for years and years and years, we had telephone companies that were strictly telephone. Over the, I'm going to say last five or ten years, a lot of the telephone companies are now also providing broadband. So the category under telephone, that number has shrunk. The category under broadband has gone up. So in in the report on number two, on the original total was 148,311. That's an incorrect number. The corrected total is 199,888. So that includes revenue generated by companies that provide a broadband service that have wires in our railroad right away. So that's what that is. And then the third total is sort of everything else. So that's like power companies. It's driveway crossings, it's if you lease a little bit of land. So there are some cases where businesses actually come onto our property for like a parking lot or something like that, and we will lease them some land. That's kind of examples of what the third category would be. So I think the question that started this conversation, why they wanted this report was they were looking for this. I think this sort of was generated from the Senate side, think. But I don't think it came from you guys.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: No, they were upset. A particular senator was upset with fire legislation from the year before taking us out of the loop when we approved leases. We used to have some oversight on that, but they didn't like that. So that sort of evolved for us to say, all right, what's out there? Should we have a seat that's paid before the exclusive society? Sure. That

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: part was discussed, but there also is, well, every report out of Act 43 was requested by the Senate, I like to make that very clear, as often you will hear that over and over again. I'd love to say that to our agency friends to make sure that they know where it came from. There is a lease issue that was discussed in conference. There also was, there is a sort of a,

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: I know, I'm gonna make

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: sure I characterize it the right way. It's a significant asset the state owns that goes through a significant portion of three zero four miles of active railroad party, another 140 miles that crisscrossed the state. And in fairness to the people that are pushing for this direction is, is it or is it not perhaps an opportunity? Is it used? How is it used? How does it generate revenue? Does it not? Is it appropriate? Those are questions they're looking to get into. This was the goal to find some data for them to help in that conversation.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Whether

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: increasing those fees or adding fees or opportunities, that's another, or is part of that discussion, that's part of what drove this request. And I would say that I would speak in a limited piece that I investigated into it, positions that were shared, is that it has been the policy of the state of Vermont for decades that we wanted broadband access, internet access, cell phone access for the rural for as least expensively as possible. We put a lot of money into it in the legislature

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: and if anything had been

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: done on fees related to that area, they would have made that more expensive. So across multiple administrations of both parties, the policy was to not pursue a lot of these activities or these fees or potential fees or additional charges. But however, that doesn't mean that now we have a situation where somebody's asking for a lot more information about what goes on in the right of ways, this particularly rail focus. I'm just trying to provide a little bit of context around sort of what drove us to this spot. And I think that there is some effort both in the House and in the Senate to dig further and this was intended to give them information that might or might not take the legislature in different directions. That

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: frames it pretty well. And just also for your rec, just so you know, I came from Senate to here with this same discussion. So I had this discussion about an hour ago in Senate. I will also give you some information, questions that came up in that committee, so you're aware of some of the stuff. One of the questions was, when's the last time the rates were reviewed and adjusted? So there's on our website, VTrans, if you go to rail under property management, there's a rate sheet that is on our website. And it explains like, if you put a power pole in the railroad right away, it's x amount of dollars. If you put a longitudinal wire, whatever, half mile or whatever it is, it's X amount per foot. If you just cross over, it's X amount per wire every single time. And that rate for communications and power, that rate hasn't changed since 2004. What has changed on that rate sheet is when we do a excess property lease, if say there was a parking lot or something or somebody wanted to use a piece of land that the railroad wasn't using and we wanted to give them a lease, that was updated in 2024. And how that was updated was AOT has an appraisals division that knows how much property. Tim, you know, appraisals, that's what they do. They update them quite often. So in 2024, we looked at all the towns that had railroad property in it, and we have a rate sheet per town on that website, which shows if you X amount of square footage, I mean, price per square footage if you wanted to lease, if it was available to lease excess railroad property. So, the utility side hasn't been updated since 2004, but the land appraisal value was updated in 2024. So, that was a question that was asked to me this morning. I figured I would just offer that up on timing. I figured you guys would probably would have that same question. But yeah, I think multiple administrations have had that same sort of let's get broadband throughout the state. Let's not sort of create more hurdles for them to do that. We haven't really had any specific conversations at AOT whether we should be updating rates or not. It just hasn't happened. So there's no directive that said, don't update rates or do update rates. We just really haven't had the discussion. So yeah. So I don't know. That's basically what's in the trip for. It's broken down by phone, broadband, and then everything else. And everything else would be, like I said, water, sewer, power, because electrical generally, electrical companies don't generally provide broadband or phone service. So that's in the other category. But I'm happy to answer anything else you have about this report.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Representative Pouech? Is there, as far as the utility sort of leases or is there a lot of activity? Is I mean, is there, like, all of a sudden somebody's looking to a ton of 20 miles of of communication or power along So we have

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: a fair amount of like one offs where someone wants to just put another power line across or something like that. We don't have a lot of sort of longitudinal like long miles of run. Did have there was a fiber optic company about two or three years ago that wanted to run from Rutland down through the Green Mountain Barewell Corridor towards Bellows Falls. I mean, we work with them and I don't believe that's been installed yet, but I believe we have an agreement. I'm not sure, 100% sure where we are on that, but I know we worked with a company that was sort of the last big longitudinal occupation for fiber optics. But no, you're right. It generally doesn't happen where someone's looking to go end to end.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: It's just sort of one offs crossings and

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Yeah, obviously each one of these utilities isn't in every town. So they're focused on where they actually are. They're not I mean, if say this to utility company that's in Bennington, they're not looking to add a wire up in Burlington. It's wherever they are.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: A difference on that sort of what you cross and versus longitudinal versus latitude? I think we heard testimony in the past that when it comes to the national rail issues and rules, running something along the rail is very different than crossing it. Is that true or is that my where am I remembering that from?

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Well, so so you might have an apples and oranges situation here because if you're typically just gonna cross over, 99% of the time, it's airy. Right? It's just over the top. It's just running around the top. If you're going end to end, then you're generally burying it somewhere along the line, which if you're a railroad, you're looking at, am I ever going to need that where it is? Because once you put fiber optics on there, you're typically not going to build something on top, right? So there are more rules when you start burying things and more restrictions as far as how a railroad is going to be able to operate in the future. So some restrictions do apply, starting to bury stuff. And there's something called ARIMA, which is an engineering standard for railroads where you have to put, typically put things in metal casings so it can take a pounding because that's what railroads kind of do. There's a lot of weight there. So typically, the ones that crossover are in the air. Along up and down, they're on the ground.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Represent Well?

[Candice White (Member)]: Yeah. I this is really interesting. I'm kinda thinking ahead to the CHIP Act that we just passed. And, you know, one of the things that we're we have over 200 unsewered villages in Vermont and kind of ahead thinking like, how does that overlay with where rails are and try to bring wastewater, probably community wastewater to these locations and do the railroads right of ways, how does all this sort of talk to each other? And that would probably, obviously never be crossing perpendicular, but also potentially parallel line. And I'm wondering if you guys have thought about that or if there might be some kind of opportunity to to think about it and consider it and develop maybe some sort

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: of an MOU for this is how this works, just so we can get that investment forward as quickly as possible. So to be clear, we at VTrans aren't out saying, Hey, come put your stuff in here. We're more reactionary where they'll say, Can we come and put your stuff in there? So we're not out knocking on doors saying, sewer lines. We're not saying to these two types, Hey, you guys want to connect? But if they came to us, we would definitely look at it. And we would look at what's the proper engineering standard that they would have to meet is first of Well, I guess first of all is does the railroad, are they okay with it? Because once you put a sewer line in, they can't put a train on top of it typically running the whole length. And

[Candice White (Member)]: how many are the right of ways typically? Does that change?

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: It does. It's not standard. Varies. It goes in and out. One of the things on that report, there's a link on that report, and that's accurate. So if you wanted to see it's not just to be clear, it's not survey grade, but it's pretty close. We did a GIS sort of overlay layer that gets you pretty close, a couple of feet probably. So if you wanted to see where the railroad right away is and it does, it goes in and out. So if you wanted to zoom in on a certain area, you could see there's kind of a blue outline where the railroad property, our railroad property is. So you could see where it goes and how wide it is. But no, there is no standard. It's not always 33 feet or 66 feet or it's not always that.

[Candice White (Member)]: Okay, great. Well, it may be something that you guys might want to think about at some point.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Yeah, I mean, we have requests all the time and we look at them one by one to see if it can fit in there. Certain utility companies are number one sort of customer, I guess, if you would say, because they need to cross. Just need to go over. Like chairman said, we go end to end and people need to get from one side to the other. So we're kind of in the way sometimes.

[Candice White (Member)]: Thank you.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: So that's essentially what the report said. You know, we like I said, we our our utility rates are, I would say, less than For state owned property, we are I'm not going to be exact here, but we're approximately half of what a private railroad would be. Like, New England Central, for instance, is also in Vermont, they would charge more than what we charge. But we're a state owned asset. We have simple, for instance, documentation fee of like $300 I don't know their numbers exactly, but I know their documentation fee is quite a bit higher than ours. Their annual fee would be higher than ours. But again, we're state owned properties, we are less.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So if you want to run one of these things, pay application fee on this doc fee or the doc fees that we're in?

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: So for state run, we basically have a doc fee. There's no like

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: First time, one time or

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: First time dock fee. Unless you amend your agreement, then we have enough. Because we had to run through our attorneys and it's time for us. If you Either the initial agreement or an amendment, there's a dock fee. That's it. And then, oh, I will say this, on these land leases, there's typically a CPI adjustment every five years. So if you have a twenty year agreement, every five years, we look at what's the rate compared to CPI, and we adjust it for that. So that will be the only increase. Representative White?

[Candice White (Member)]: Just following up on representative Lalley's point. From what I am understanding, from what you're saying, active rail lines, not a great place to put underground conduit because it conflicts with active rails.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: It depends. But the answer is we look

[Candice White (Member)]: at each one individually. But the rail trails, different scenario? Yeah, sure. You put a septic line underneath that, maybe they have to dig it up, but they're digging up pavement, maybe paved or maybe dirt rail trail.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Okay. Different but the same. And when I say different but the same. So there is no track rate on the rail trail, so constructability is a lot easier. However, same ARIMA standards, same engineering standards, because when we rail bank a property, these rail trails, for instance, we go in and we sign the paper that says railroads can come back there tomorrow. If they wanted to come back tomorrow, they can come back tomorrow. So we want build all this infrastructure that won't hold up a train. Exactly. I know. Know. That's unrealistic.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: I know. It's funny what I just think of that.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: They could do it tomorrow, but we can't make anything build or happen.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Well, we

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: can hear this doom and gloom idea that they would come back tomorrow.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: I don't mean it I'm not picking on you,

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: but we all do that. Like Yeah. This could happen. Yes, it could. But it also takes a hundred years for things to change. But it takes a long time for things to change.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Right. But what you

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: don't Definitely But the reminder is, if rail became a thing, they could always take and change that trail back.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Yeah, so what you don't want to do is put a sewer line, say end to end, that doesn't meet the ARIMA standards and say on the day you want to put a train or whenever that happens, say, well, now we've got to put in millions of dollars upgrading the sewer line because it won't hold a train how we designed it initially. So when they do ask for that kind of utility in the right of way of the rail trail, we still look at the arena standards.

[Candice White (Member)]: And I would imagine those are, what she said, standards so that heavy train would be running on top and everything So I would imagine that those standards are pretty stringent and probably inexpensive. Yeah, there's definitely, it's

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: a higher standard than trains weigh a lot.

[Candice White (Member)]: Do you ever see Would we ever say, for example, the Mollie Valley Rail Trail, it's going be a permanent rail trail, we want to put a sewer line under there for these two towns, and we're going to abandon the future opportunity to put a rail right there, just hypothetically?

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Slippery slope because the federal rail banking Basically what federal rail banking is, is it says, so one hundred and fifty years ago, we created this corridor. When the railroads created that corridor, they either bought or took property to create that from somebody one hundred and fifty, two hundred years ago. When you say, so railroads have a different sort of set of rules that create that, the ability to create that corridor. Once you say it's never going to be a railroad again, a lot of those rules go away and some of those property rights change automatically as soon as it's not rail banked. So if you say it's always going to be a rail trail forever, that changes the legal status of those parcels.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Anecdotally, I remember several years back, Rutland City, Park Street, the water or sewer line broke and they had to go under the rail, but Park Street ran perpendicular to it. So I know it was a heavy lift to get that done, and there was a lot of

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: was a so not to get into the weeds too much on that one.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: I mean, so you know, it is I mean, that rail is used I believe. That rail yard. Yeah.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: That's right next to the rail yard. So there's trains there all day long.

[Candice White (Member)]: Yeah. Yep.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: And it's a good thing. They did do it, I think. Yeah. They did go under it, but it was Yes.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Yeah, that was an interesting project. And that was Actually, there was a I think it was like two years. They did something two different years in a row there. So we worked with the city for So a lot of there's individual agreements. There's, like I said, four different roads, four different rail trails. So if you're Comcast and you have something on everyone, you've got four different agreements. Right? So we have the the way we have it set up is per either railroad or rail line. So you may be like Comcast or somebody like that and and have four different agreements with us. Anyway, but they're all the same. Like, if you want to, again, if you go on our website, there is a fee schedule that shows how much is a pole, how much is a wire, how much is a guy wire, much how is a crossing? What's the documentation fee? All of that, it's on our website. How about in

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: the world of rail doesn't move as fast? Anything in the six months since we've been last year, seven months since we were last year, or any other interesting pieces going on in the side of things that we'll hear about when you're budgeting. You can't get ahead of the budget. Yeah, can't talk about numbers. Or about anything, accomplishments or activities that have happened in the last six, seven months.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: So you mentioned Montreal. We are still working on that.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Well, here's what has changed. The political environment

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: with our two countries talking to each other, to be polite, you know, it's not the same as it was a year ago in these conversations. It's still happening. We are moving slower. We're still having our monthly meetings, but we have not made a ton of progress, I'll be honest, in the last six or eight months. Our next step in Montreal is to literally take a study that was created about a year ago, take that study and convert that into an engineering document that says, okay, this is the concept. This is how you build it. You take that concept. This is how you engineer and build it. This is I'm talking about specifically the station now and the pre clearance facility. And then the next step after that will be to take that engineering document and bid it out because we don't we have a concept of how much this is gonna cost until you actually put it in front of a contractor and they bid the project. You know, it's it's an estimate until you know what the bid document is and the bid amount is. So that's where we are. We were there here about a year ago. We've made very little progress since then on getting that study into an engineering document because it was Quebec that had said, we're gonna take the next step. So now we're trying to figure out how we get to the next step. Representative Burton?

[Candice White (Member)]: Who's pays for that? So

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: That's all part of the question. Right? So that's the concept is this. And then once we figure out how much it costs, then we have to sit down and say, you're gonna pay x, you're gonna pay x, you're gonna pay x. Here's the total, you gotta figure that out.

[Candice White (Member)]: And to be frank, it is this sort of alluded to this, is the political situation, the government is not benign to?

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: And I'm not saying they're not, the people that we talk to, we're all the same guys around the table and well, that hasn't really changed. What has changed is They're talking to your department. Their support, it's still there. But right now, we'll put it this way, the next step required money from Quebec. Quebec had verbally had said, yeah, we're gonna pay for this next step. Well, all of a sudden budgets got cut and changed. So now we're trying to figure out where does the next step dollars come from. And Quebec isn't saying that they're never going to pay for it. They're just saying it's not in their budget today. That's all.

[Candice White (Member)]: I think it would be beneficial to them. Oh, yeah. Move this along.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Again, verbally, there's support. It's we're just trying to get to the next step. And I just think it's not stopped. It's just slow. It's just not, we're not moving as fast as we were moving two years ago. We were making pretty good. We got that whole study done. It was going great. And then we got the study. We need to take that study and make it into an engineering document. And all of a sudden, we're struggling to get to that step. That's all. And I think it's going to get there. There's still support on both sides.

[Candice White (Member)]: 2009, they said it was gonna be three years.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: No, I know, I don't know where that three years came from, but that didn't come from me.

[Candice White (Member)]: That was before you, but you know, sort of, I sort of feel like they're on a swan, just waiting for Western Corridor to get finished.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Well, got to Burlington. We got that done.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: Maybe we should focus on things that are possible, you know, manageable.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Maybe Bennington to somewhere.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: I finished

[Candice White (Member)]: all those bridges, right?

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: There you go. From Rutland down there to Hussek, we just did all 29 bridges. Those are all two. Yeah. That's right. Well, so there's several steps. So there's the rail that's there, it's jointed rail. It's old. It's 90 pounds. So we need continuously welded rail. And then we need more light gates at some of the public crossings so that we can increase train speeds through there. So, hey, bridges are number one, right? We've got to get the bridges and then track and then crossings and then stations.

[Candice White (Member)]: Just saying, someday you'll be able to take the train.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: We got it to Burlington. Yeah,

[Candice White (Member)]: so that's interesting. So if you have, what do you call a light gate? You have, so the things come down.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Gates, yeah, lights and gates.

[Candice White (Member)]: Allowing you to go faster through that section?

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Yeah, so there's a safe so there's criteria per crossing, and it depends on so many things. There's a lot a lot that goes into it. It's speed of the train, speed of the vehicles, how many trains, how many vehicles? Is there hazmat? Are there school buses? How far down can you see the train from each direction as you approach the crossing? All of this stuff goes into our formula that kicks out a score per crossing. And based on that score, whether we need lights, just lights, or whether we need lights and gates, what type of gates? Is it just single? Is it quad gates, meaning all four? There's a lot of things that go into it that we look at when we design a cross. So all part of it. Okay. What was that one?

[Candice White (Member)]: I had a couple questions. Thank you. First of all, the engineering plan that you're talking about for the Montreal line, is there any estimate on the cost of that?

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: The next there's an estimate. It's so the next step is probably in US dollars, it's probably half $1,000,000, probably $500,000 to get to the next step. To take the study and convert that into more engineering numbers and drawings. That's the next thing. So about a half million bucks. That's not exact, but ballpark.

[Candice White (Member)]: And then when we're talking about some of the Amtraks, the lines that goes from Burlington over to Albany, Burlington, Middlebury, Ethanol. Ethanol.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Yeah. So it goes down to Rutland. Yeah. And then it goes what's called the CLP. It goes over to New York and then down to all.

[Candice White (Member)]: Exactly. Yes. So is there is there any work on speeding that train up? I think that that stopped for an hour in Rutland.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Good question, because this past summer, the piece from Rutland over into New York, which the state of Vermont doesn't own. That's called the Clarendon and Pittsburgh. That's actually owned by Vermont Rain Systems. They upgraded I can't remember the number of miles, but a significant number of miles of that was upgraded to brand new continuously welded rail. We are currently working with I mean, I had this conversation yesterday with the railroad and Amtrak. We are currently working on speeding that training up train up and taking minutes out of our Ethan Allen run. And we're going to publish a new schedule, I'm going to say in the next couple of months, which is going to take a significant number of minutes out of that train. Yeah.

[Candice White (Member)]: That's good news.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Yeah. And we actually replaced some of the it was already continuously welded rail between Rutland and Burlington that was put in like twenty five years ago. We actually upgraded that to new continuously welded because it was starting to get worn a little bit. So that was done with Amtrak safety money. It didn't come from us. It came from Amtrak that Congress put in their budget for safety projects. So that was great. So I I say in the next couple of months, you're going see a schedule change on the Ethan L.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: So this comes from a completely selfish point of view. We used to train all the time. And since the expansion into Burlington, I'm glad it happened, but coming out of Rutland, you now cannot get overnight trains out of New York City because you come in too late. And that means you have to drive to Albany in order to keep on the train. Are we gonna get into Well, New York City to two

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: I don't know about 02:30.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: Well, that's when they go to Chicago.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: Lakeshore Limited, right? That's Lakeshore Limited, Yeah. So we are looking at the Lakeshore Limited's connection. I don't know that we're gonna I can't remember the answer on that. We are we we we understand the problem. Okay. Good. We understand the problem. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

[Candice White (Member)]: I just had one more question. And apologies, I don't remember. Are you also dealing with freight, not just passengers? Sure. So we talked a little bit last session about the incredible, just the differences between freight delivery versus truck delivery, how it's much more efficient on rail, emissions are less, etcetera. Is there anything that we can do, has anything been done to try to incentivize trucking companies to switch their delivery system from trucking on the road to using our rail lines?

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: So we work with the railroads very closely, and we have something called a three way program, and there's also Northern Borders grants, things like that. So to give you an example, an exact example, in Barton, there's a trucking company there that we have worked with. There's been a Northern Borders grant and what we call a three way program where we will pay a third of the cost of a rail siding. The railroad pays a third, and then trucking company pays a third to add capacity for sidings, things like that. So we can get more freight on the railroad. So more of a bit of a transload issue. The Barton example, well, so that trucking company started in the Lindenville yard. We expanded to the point where they outgrew the Lindenville yard, and now they went to Bart. They are now growing BART. So we are doing more on the railroad with a trucking company because you're right, they can bring it to Vermont on trains, and then they can take it on their trucks shorter instead of driving their truck all the way to Boston or all the way to Montreal or wherever they're coming from. They can bring it in on train and then they can do the Vermont portion on a truck. So yeah, we're definitely doing that every day. And there's one in We're working with the railroad in Brattleboro and New England Central for Brattleboro. There's an extra one in Brattleboro right now. There's not a big expansion, but there's a small change in Shelburne possibly. Yeah, we're doing this all of those things.

[Candice White (Member)]: Is there more capacity? Is there more opportunity to have more deliveries on rail versus on trucks on our rail system? We have capacity. So if there is a company out there that would like to receive freight rail, we would work with

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: them to figure out how to do it.

[Candice White (Member)]: The reason I've been thinking about this, you remember back maybe six months ago when Amazon was talking about coming into Essex and big public outcry, didn't want that kind of traffic, etcetera. And you're just thinking about Amazon's got a company with a lot of resources, and if we could have said, Amazon, can you truck your, excuse me, bring your wares on our rail system into Essex Junction's already rail there? That would decrease significantly the street traffic, the trucking, bringing Amazon wares into Essex. And then from there, whether they use trucks, electric trucks or whatever, for the last part of the delivery.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: We would have worked with them. That question never came

[Candice White (Member)]: to us. Exactly. So I guess my question is, how do we, is there something we can do as legislators to try to encourage thinking like that. So our answer to Amazon is not, go away, we don't want you here. Because we know that Vermonters use that service, just like many people. So instead of just saying no, coming up with different ways of thinking about how we could accommodate their business needs using our rail line to listen to the public concerns about added traffic. Keeping it on rail, to me, is keeping some of that off of our roads and protecting our roads. It seems like a better solution than just saying, Don't come here. Yeah. So freight rail

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: is really good at moving things that are big and heavy, right? And or large quantities of whatever. When you start talking about Amazon, that's like most consumers are like immediate, right? I want it today or I want it tomorrow. Rails not good at that. It takes us, you're switching in different yards all across the country and it'll take a couple of days to get you here, right? So typically when you're talking about Amazon type deliveries, that's coming in on a plane because they can go from California to here in a day or we can't do that on the train where I'd love to say, yeah, I just don't know that rail and Amazon are the right partners, but rail and fuel oil, rail and lumber, rail and, you know, things. Yeah, aggregates. Yeah. Those are the railroad commodities that make a lot of sense.

[Candice White (Member)]: I just think this is a really interesting value proposition for our communities that we're struggling to make more walkable and livable. I'm thinking of the model of Disney World, where all of this stuff happens invisibly. Built everything for that. It seems like the rail lines are I represent Shellbard. We've got the rail line just going right through the village, but we also have these enormous 18 wheelers, the white trucks we call them, that are bringing natural gas through and people are uncomfortable with that. I was like, well, would you like it on Route 7 or would you like it on the rail? Mean, it's gonna come through. That's just reality. And it seems like when I look at the highest and best use of our village Main Street, being a conduit for these enormous trucks seems a very unimaginative, impoverished use of an incredible state asset that could be used to generate an awful lot more grand list value, which we need to get in the state desperately, if we could figure out how to get things off to the rail. So maybe actors would be interested to talk to you about what little small changes you would expect.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: They're looking to make a siding a little longer into that. I don't think it's anything they're not expanding much.

[Candice White (Member)]: We have a salt shed right now. We're sort of a district level area for salt distribution. But you wonder if that could be thought of more imaginatively for some other purposes, precisely for the livability questions that we're thinking about right now.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: But I agree with you. I mean, this heavy freight that's on Route 7 or wherever it is in Vermont, it can move on a railroad a lot more efficiently. And one think about it. One train car, typically, depending on what the commodity is, one single train car is either three or four tractor trailers. Yeah. So if you put 10 train cars together, it's 40 trucks on the road.

[Candice White (Member)]: Just to push that a little further, so are we saying, Representative Lalley, bringing salt in on rail versus truck or bringing natural gas in on rail versus truck in these areas would be really beneficial. I think so. To just reduce some of the, I mean that's an interesting data point. You've got three, four big 18 wheelers come through the village. We could have, we have many of them coming through every day, we could have fewer of those, that could be a game changer for us. And I'm kind of wondering about the properties that the state owns that are affiliated with the rail. Could we be making better use of this if we looked at it more comprehensively? There you have a lot to do again? I'm not suggesting that it's something for you to take on. But I'm just wondering if maybe the policy side of the AOT might might sort of, you know, look into this interesting question.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: We also our planning section does work with the RPCs around the state on sort of abutting railroad properties, excess property that could be used for additional railroad sidings or new commercial customers or things like that. Road salt does mainly come in on the rail already. So that's how that generally comes into the state of Vermont already, which is great because that's a heavy commodity, and we use a lot of salt.

[Candice White (Member)]: So the RPCs are

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: They're tuned into our rail network and what we have for They often ask us in their regions a lot of times, what do you have for excess rail property? So we communicate with them quite often. We have something called Rail Council, which is quarterly. A lot of the RPCs will come to that meeting and learn about what's happening in rail. And then often will reach out to me after with specific questions. I think they're fairly tuned into it.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Well, is certainly what Southern Hopington and Model Rail Systems does every day is to look to market to where there's additional opportunities. That is certainly what their goal and growth.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: And New Central, right? So I mean, not just state owned, but New England Central, we work with them too on the same kind of thing with the RPCs and access rail properties. From my desk, it's statewide, even though we are focused a lot more on what we own. But we want rail to grow on all of our roads. Because I agree it's a much greener way to move heavy freight.

[Candice White (Member)]: Yeah. It seems like it would align with many of our goals, economic goals, but client action stuff too. Coordinate nicely with them. Okay, I think this is my final question. And it's two part. You see, you've given us examples of commodities that work really well on rail, like granite, fuel, like salt. Are there other examples that you see out there that are relying on trucks that you think would work well on rails that are not utilizing rail right now?

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: I apologize, I'm sorry about that. So here's the thing that we also look at, which not The problem isn't specific to Vermont, it's sort of New England problem. A transload facility for container traffic. There's a whole bunch of transfer facilities, sort of Massachusetts area, the ports come in there, all these containers come out. There's no sort of intercoastal transload for things that come in a container. We are looking at that you know, somewhere it would be great if there was somewhere in Vermont where things could come in they come in from China or wherever they come in from, and they come in on these containers, and then they get trucked from Southern New England into all of New England. Wouldn't it be nice if we could put them off the ship onto a train somewhere more north? Because they have it in Montreal and they have it sort of Boston area, but there's nothing sort of in the mid. So that would open up different types of things that come in containers, not just like fuel or lumber, things like that. So we are looking at that. We thought we kind of had something, an idea started a couple of years ago. It didn't work out, but we continue to look at that. But, yeah, I think we could instead of seeing all these trucks that have containers on them, getting a little closer on trains and have, you know, 10 or 12 cars worth of double stack containers coming in instead of 40 or 50 or 60 trucks.

[Candice White (Member)]: Is there something we could do legislative wise, tax incentives? Do we incentivize that type of

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: So I just talked about I just mentioned the word double stack. We do have some restrictions, meaning there are some bridges that are lower that we couldn't get to containers through. So not all of our railroads are double stack capacity. That is one of that's the it's in our rail plan to eliminate those height restrictions. It's just you can't do it all, right? You gotta pick and choose your priorities. And if we're putting in a new structure, we'll make sure it's double stack. When we did the Middlebury Tunnel, we made sure double stack could go through. So as we work on projects, we make that correction. But there are still some height restrictions. So we can't go everywhere. But but there are

[Candice White (Member)]: certain areas that have double we can't accommodate double stack containers.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: So Northeast Corridor in Island Pond, there's Saint Lawrence in Atlantic. That's right to Island Pond. That's a fully double stack route that can go come into the Northeast Corner of Vermont, fully double stack. We could not go up the Western Corridor. We couldn't go from Bennington to Burlington double stack. There's some restrictions, some other bridges. There's a handful of bridges there. Again, we're working on it. To answer your question about what else could happen, if we had double stack capacity, we could do container traffic. Was that both parts?

[Candice White (Member)]: Yes. Okay.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Make sure I have both parts answered. There's a whole world of international transportation that goes on throughout Vermont where all the way to St. Albans from New Jersey, you're looking at 400 plus tractor trailers a month that get hauled up from New Jersey all the way to the industrial park in St. Albans that's coming all from the Far East. You've got a huge amount of containers that come to Montreal and are trucked down across the border and then into all areas of Vermont. It happens on a regular basis, could be expense in a huge size than the timing. They're willing to pay more to get it there faster, etcetera. It's a challenge everywhere. And then making any major changes in investments to building any kind of container yard and things that happen, this state of the beach challenge. But those opportunities are out there, and it is what the Montrail systems and New England Central, I'm not looking into the house, we just happened at four times with Montrail systems they're looking for. And the trip that we took up in the Northeast Kingdom earlier this year, it's amazing the expanse of multiple side rails that they have now in that facility up in From one, was a guy there that was telling us about it. He couldn't believe they were putting a side into this one field in Barden fifteen years ago, now there's four or five sidings.

[Dan Delabruere (VTrans Director of Rail)]: So there was nothing there. Was just the main line. The main line just passed through. Now there's three tracks there now, they're gonna put another one in. Yeah, so like I said, they kind of outgrew the Lindenville yard, moved north, so it's seeing a lot more traffic. Dan, thank you very much for coming in. Thanks. Good morning

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: and everyone on our morning and updating us on the report they've required to by the senate to do. And have a great 2026. We'll see you again in New

[Candice White (Member)]: York.