Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So look at that. We're back Wednesday afternoon, 01/28/2020 House Transportation Committee. We have our old friend Patrick Murphy back, and he's online. And bring us an update on mileage based user fee. Gosh, don't know if this is the first time we've seen him this year. Happy

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: New Year.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Can you say happy for me up into February? Yes.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Welcome, and nice to see a familiar face. We're looking for an update on MyLab based user fee program and where we're at, and I guess even more importantly, how we're going to get this ready to go by 01/01/2027. Isn't that the plan?

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: That's right.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Alright. You're gonna tell us where we're at and how we're gonna get there?

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: Yep. So for the record, Murphy, state policy director for the Agency of Transportation. Originally, this was intended just to be an update, a brief update on where we are right now and and where we're headed for this legislative session. Then went to present in the senate. Members there had all kinds of questions. They brought in a lot of others to give testimony. And, as has happened with, last year's transportation bill, this slide deck, you might notice has tripled in size. So

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Well, you know, Patrick, when you get stuck in the dungeon all day, that's what they do down there.

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: So who well, I I do think because a number of you, weren't maybe even in the legislature when this was first introduced as a concept in 2022. I do think that this deck provides some context for both what other states are doing and how we learn from those states, but also what our decision making process was that allowed us to get to the point to where we are now. I won't be able to go through all of the slides today. So, it's intended really as a a resource to go back to. So, you don't have to go to the legislative report to to dig into that necessarily. You can see where where the key decisions were that we made over the the course of the past several years. So, I'll call up my slides now. Can you see this okay?

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Great.

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: Feel free to jump in. I can't see you all, so just shout out. The first legislative action that happened on this was in 2023 when the sort of framework was built out on how the legislature would want us to design this program, authorize us to apply for and expend a federal FHWA grant, and then also authorized half of the state match to be able to implement that grant. The following year, the other half was authorized, and then because of the delays with FHWA and getting the program announced and then also getting the funding out, you all have moved in the direction of implementing an EV infrastructure fee, a flat fee that was set lower than what the average amount of use would be for the average gas vehicle, but something that you all determined was reasonable as an interim step towards this mileage based user fee. Last year, those based on sort of the work that had been done with an implementation report that was submitted in 2024 and then changes to some of the design elements, we revised some of those, that framework last year, and then also included some intent language that this was to be an interim step towards a mileage based user fee for the rest of the fleet. So this year, what we need is actual statutory language. All

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: we

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: have right now is just direction and the ability to continue development of the fee for implementation in January 2027. So we'll need some language, and we plan on presenting that in the next couple of weeks. A key piece of that is also the rate setting formula. Because this is one of those things that is up exclusively to legislative discretion. If we wanted to be able to have a third party also look at a methodology for setting the rate, we went through a competitive solicitation, chose UVM's Transportation Research Center to come up with a methodology with a report on how other states are doing it, how they came to proposed rate, and then what those impacts would be on individual households throughout Vermont, both in terms of demographics and demographic data. So that is being worked on. I just reviewed a draft this morning. You all should have a copy of that memo within the next week or two that can help shape the discussion around how you would like to see the rate designed, and then that feeds in, of course, to the legislative language. Just to review the the basic points of the program, this came about because we were making a lot of progress on ED adoption. We had incentive programs in place and all kinds of federal investments that continue. So we wanted to be able to account for the shifts in our fleet towards electrification and align that with our climate action plan and our comprehensive energy plan. The way that we came to it, and we'll get into more of the decision making, but the annual vehicle safety inspection process was an existing process that was the most cost effective way that we could see in being able to get the data that we need to apply a fee, but also to avoid some of the privacy concerns that we've seen throughout other states and through some of the survey work that we did in the initial road usage charge study. So, and then we also invested a significant amount of funds, roughly $50,000,000 in the IT core systems for DMV. And so this facilitates the ability to build off of that and more cost effectively implement a fee. The other thing that we looked at was just making sure that there were flexible payment options for equity sake, that people were not hit with a large bill just that registration renewal, but that to be able to pay on a more frequent basis, whether it was on a schedule of monthly or quarterly, but possibly also on a pay as you go basis by taking photos of the odometer readings, sending those into, through the MyDMD system, and then sort of settling up as you go. This leverages federal funds for implementation. So where it's been done elsewhere to date, it's been done with a lot more state resources. Earlier iterations of this program were a fifty fifty federal state match, and so we're maximizing the amount of federal funds that we have to to put into this at an 80% federal, 20% state match. And really the key piece of this is that we intended to start small with it. We're just focusing right now on fully electric vehicles, because up until recently, they've they were not paying any sort of fuel tax or accounting for the the usage of the highway network, but also because it allows us to something to build off of, that it can evolve with complexity over time, but to get something in place to begin capturing some of that revenue, it is a good way to start learning. Other states have, as you'll see in the next slide or two, other states have gone through decades of trying different pilot programs. We've learned from those. We think we can implement fairly quickly an actual program, but use this as a sort of pilot to then be able to think about how the transition to the rest of the fleet as is envisioned in last year's T Bill would happen. This these are some of the keys yep.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Alright. What do you mean

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: by the rest of the fleet?

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: So there's language in last year's T bill that views this mileage based user fee for electric vehicles as an interim step towards basically having the rest of the state fleet, the rest of other passenger vehicles participate in the mileage based user fee?

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: The rest of electric vehicles or less all cars?

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: Well, the legislature said basically all passenger vehicles, and that is upon elimination of the gas tax or fuel tax in the writing of it. What we're proposing is just a mileage based user fee for electric vehicles.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: What do you do when somebody drives out of state?

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: Right now, the method that we're proposing is an odometer reading for the through the annual vehicle safety inspection process. So it it doesn't we're just getting the the number of total miles between inspections that a vehicle is driven. We're not able to account for whether somebody's been in state, out of state. You know, right now with the gas tax, we're not able to do that either, but it is one of those things that over time we'll have to grapple with. So we're starting with electric vehicles because for a long while they had not been paying into the transportation fund through some sort of user fee. And so we're going to getting to a fairer system in that way. But, you know, intent is not just to end there, but to evolve the program to become even fairer in the future. And so when we have the ability to then be able to either work with other states on reciprocity and how you apportion revenue that was coming from miles driven in another state versus ours, until we get to that point, this is the simplest way forward to be able to get a program in place. So we recognize that as a weakness, but the strength of it is that it does not come with the same kind of high costs for the administration of a program that other states have seen. So here on this slide we have Utah, Oregon, Hawaii, and Virginia, who have all had some sort of voluntary program, and what we've seen, particularly in Utah, Oregon, and Virginia, they're in some cases, are allowed to sort of just be charged for the in state miles because in Oregon they have geofencing where a device, plug in device, is used or in vehicle telematics are used to be able to know, okay, this vehicle has crossed over state lines, and so we're only charging for the vehicle miles traveled within the state of Oregon. The administrative costs to that are huge. We've seen a lot of testimony, like I said, in the Senate over the past few weeks where people have seen 40% of the revenue is going right out the door to administrative costs, because of how much the devices cost and how much the service costs when it's administered by a third party. So those are the trade offs, and that's how we came to this more manual process of the dominant reading. Our program is more closely modeled after Hawaii's that, you know, who also learn from the experience of Utah, Oregon, and Virginia, where they're just using the annual safety inspection process in the odometer readings. Now, they do not have the same geographic challenges that we have, being an island, but the principle is the same, that they are using their existing processes to be able to leverage data already collected and be able to administer a fee. Any any questions on this slide? Yeah, we can definitely come back to it if things come

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: up. So,

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: there are a number of different ways that states have come to this, and, we went through road usage charge study with a number of stakeholders back in the 2021. Sorry?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay. That is very sensitive microphone. I asked if that was a diagram of s six five corners.

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: No. It's not.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Pick up

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: a second. No.

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: I said that, you know, the the animation there, every second represents a year in the development of this v. So we started with a study. We got direction from our administration to just move forward to implementation. That there are at that point, there were a number of studies that had happened. There were some pilots that we had had the benefit of being able to review and learn from in Oregon, and Hawaii wasn't quite there, but they were developing theirs in Virginia and Utah in particular. So the decision was made, let's move straight towards implementation, fill the gap that we know exists right now, and and then be able to think about what comes next. So we're moving instead of doing a pilot. We're moving to a small mandatory program that, like I said in the a few minutes ago, that we intend to look at as functioning like a pilot, that this is not the last iteration of the program. Just to kind of go back to that slide with all the different states, that one of the key differences is our program will begin as a mandatory program for all battery electric vehicles. Hawaii is moving in that direction. They implemented last year in July, but by, I believe it's July 2027, they are moving to a mandatory program, so right now they have a choice of a flat fee, you either pay $50 or you pay the mileage based user fee. That flat fee option is going away in two years' time. Here's where you can see below from our study there was, you know, investigation into how much all of this might cost. A CAM, Commercial Account Manager, is a very expensive option because it also usually comes with some of these other reporting methods that involve more technology. So what we're we're trying to do is keep costs as low as possible, keep it closer to what we see for a fuel tax administrative costs, which is more like 1%, we're looking at about 3.5%, and that's of gross revenue that we bring in, and making it a state administered system, so that our ongoing costs are also sort of just subsumed into the ordinary operations. And then as I said, our program will be implemented with 80% federal funding.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Keyser has a question for you.

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: Thank you, Chad. So the capital costs, does that also include 80% federal money?

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: No, so the capital costs here? Yes. Yeah, so the capital costs are to just get the thing up and going, and yes, that

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: So it is 80%?

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: That's right. So we have we have a grant that will cover $3,000,000 in in federal funds of our program, and it'll take about 3,750,000.00 to implement this.

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: And then can operational costs be covered by 80% federal?

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: No, so this is a one time grant, and it's intended for other states and FHWA to learn from and figure out how they might do something at the federal level.

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: The to implement this program would be The capital cost would be 80 percent on the Feds and then continuing operating costs would be found in AOT's budget.

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: That's right.

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: Thank you.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: I can understand why we're trying to get get monies from the electric cars to pay towards the road tax but but why do we bother all the people that drive gas vehicles? Why why all of sudden we gotta bring them in a couple of years? I don't I understand that. And if you're saying that you're gonna sit there and charge a miles based user fee close to the gas tax, why would you bother doing it unless you plan on the future easier way of raising it? Drive a lot of miles. I'm in construction, I drive

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: a lot of miles.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: I don't really appreciate me being involved with all my vehicles or gas because there's electric cars on the road. Don't know why. Down my way, there's not a lot of electric cars in my district.

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: Sure. So let me just clarify. So the language that is in last year's T Bill was added by the legislature, specifically the Senate, that this was seen as an interim step towards incorporating the rest of the fleet into a mileage based user fee program. That was not the administration's language. Beyond that, I would just say the intent to have this be equivalent with what the average gas powered vehicle pays is really to act as a user fee, so the gas tax had originally been trying to get at by proxy how much a vehicle was using our publicly funded infrastructure. Over time, because of the changes in fuel economy, that became highly differentiated because of advancements in engines and the like, so that it became less and less of a valuable proxy for actual road use. So the intent is to get back to the point where people are paying, not based on how much fuel they've consumed because vehicle engines vary widely now, but on how much people's vehicles are using the infrastructure that we fund. So I hope that answers your question.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: The answer is it, I guess.

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: So the Center of Transportation also wanted us to frame some of this in terms of how did we approach the design of the program that we will be proposing to you all, how did this come about, what are the key decisions that we made, and there was a guide that was developed by our consultant, released in late twenty twenty three, that sort of laid out, this is sort of the graphics that you see to the left, laid out a possible ways of approaching this for other states to follow. So, I don't want you to get kind of confused or bogged down by the references to that guide, just to understand how we came to think about the fee in the way that we did. So we did sort of narrow things down from seven different scenarios through a road usage charge advisory committee, which met several times in the 2021, had folks in and out of state government represented. We had survey work that was done with the support of RSG of hundreds of Vermonters, many of whom own EVs. And this all kind of shaped how we narrowed down those seven scenarios to a mostly odometer based program building off of existing systems. We had these guiding principles. I won't go through them right now. It shows that the place that we were starting from and how we the the sort of lens through which we made a number of these decisions.

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: That looks like

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: a has a question from the advisers?

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: Yes. Sure.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Patrick, I just want to piggyback on representative Casey. So if we are looking to go to a mileage based user fee for electric vehicles and gas driven vehicles. Are we responsible? Because they're still going to be filling up with gas, so I'm assuming we're taking out the state gas tax, but they will still be responsible for the federal gas tax, correct?

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: Yes, so again, just to clarify, what you will get for a language proposal this year is just to implement a mileage based user fee for electric vehicles. Okay. What did what the legislature decides from there in terms of how it wishes or not to transition that fee to other vehicle types or classes is, I think, a question that would be probably taken up in future years.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Okay, so you're not recommending that at this time?

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: No, and the primary reason is because we want to do what's the simplest, we want to get it right, and work out what we know will be challenges, things like vehicles that are registered along borders that maybe do the better part of their driving in another state. If we don't want to make a system more unfair, so there's a lot that needs to be worked out before we're prepared to start moving into other vehicle classes.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay.

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: There are things that other states are looking at, have done, you know, where instead of elimination of a fuel tax, there are fuel tax credits, so it's almost like you're paying the fuel taxes in advance on the Myers based user fee, and then it's credited back against what you have to pay at the point of registration, but we're not at that point right now what we're proposing.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Okay. Thank you. Sure.

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: So

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: as I said, I doubt that we are going to be able to get through all of this, but it is a number of these slides are intended to just give you a sense of what were the key decisions that were made and how do we make them. So these are sort of the seven biggest from our perspective, and this is how we walked through things. This is from a slide deck back in the 2023 as we were assembling the legislative report submitted the following January. So a key piece of this is, you know, who will be the authorized agencies? DMV obviously would have to be involved, but in other states they've really outsourced all of this to third party vendors, either one or multiple third party vendors, And what we've seen is that when it's outsourced to multiple vendors, or even another third party vendor, in terms of who collects the revenue, it quickly goes up in administrative costs. So using DMV, the systems we've had, the MyDMV as a portal to be able to pay, There will be other methods of payment allowed, but using that was the more cost effective way to proceed. We evaluated our existing systems, so the FAST system is DT trips, it's what you've invested in over the past several years, roughly 50,000,000 vehicle services, driver services, being able for people to more easily complete transactions online. Parsons manages our vehicle safety inspection process, the AVIP system, so they are the party that would be collecting the data that we need, and then there needs to be an interface between these two systems developed so that the FAST system can receive that data and then appropriately apply fees according to the business rules that we set.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Sorry Patrick, interruptions.

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: Sure.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: Inspections, there's been some talk about extending the, like maybe going to a couple years between inspections.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Yep.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: I don't know if you've heard about that. I don't know if it's going go anywhere, but what would you do then? Just take a picture? Take a picture and send it in or?

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: So, you know, I think it's too soon for us to know what all the impacts of that would be.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: I agree. I was just wondering if you thought it out. That's all.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I didn't know if you

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: you guys thought it out at all.

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: Yep, get to that. So, we do have the capability, as far as I understand, to be able to have drivers submit odometer readings using a mobile phone, taking a picture and sending it, and paying as you go. So that might be one way that we get around that by being able to have that pay as you go process, and then the, final reconciliation happens at registration renewal after you have that odometer reading on the two year cycle. Certainly, if inspections were done away with altogether, then that creates an issue, but we just don't have enough information right now to give you a sense of how things would be impacted. We'll learn more as we're getting now into the IT project phase of this. We'll learn more about what are those edge cases that might not have been seen that could come up with moving from one year to two year. Anytime you sort of lengthen the amount of time between the receipt of data to be able to true up, It might open up new questions and some costs to address those. Subject vehicles as we talk through was a key thing, key decision point. Our original road usage charge study looked at not just electric, fully electric vehicles, but plug in hybrids, conventional hybrids, highly fuel efficient vehicles, regardless of engine type. So the decision was intentionally made to focus just on electric vehicles where there are fewer complications to consider and deal with in the initial implementation. Rate setting, I will skip over this, I think, because there was a significant section within the report that was submitted on sort of proposed ways of coming to the rate, but we will we will share with you that report that UVM is working on within the next week or two, and set up some time to have more of a discussion on the rate itself, and different things to think about and incorporate into it, so I'll just leave that for the moment.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Patrick, representative White's got a question for you?

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: Sure.

[Rep. Candice White]: Thank you, Patrick. Just back one slide, I'm looking at subject vehicles decision apply mBUF to light duty battery electric vehicles only. Is that excluding heavy duty electric vehicles or are those not part of?

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: For the moment, yes.

[Rep. Candice White]: So like F-one 150, is that considered heavy duty electric vehicle?

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, sorry. What we're looking at is in terms of there was, I can't remember now, I think it was the DMV miscellaneous last year also changed sort of, how those vehicles in between heavier light duty vehicles, and how they're treated, and so they would be included in this, like the Ford Lightnings, for example, although they're on the heavier side of things, they would be included within this class, but, you know, vehicles above, I think 10,000 pounds, we're not going to get into just yet. That may be a next phase of things, but there are enough different nuances to heavier duty vehicles and how they're used that we would put off dealing with them in this phase.

[Rep. Candice White]: I guess on the one hand there may not be that many heavy duty EVs on the road. On the other hand, if they're heavy duty, they're heavy. And so they're wearing the roads more than the light duty. So just making a note of that. Thank you.

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. The numbers are quite small, so that's why it's also less of an urgent task, I would say.

[Rep. Candice White]: Right.

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: There's also already language within statute that those vehicles are are being paid, are being charged, excuse me, one in three quarters times the registration fee for a gas powered vehicle or a diesel powered vehicle. I think, I don't know the genesis of that, it goes back many, many years, but I think maybe to account for, fuel taxes that aren't collected. We do have in our grant space to be able to think through what are the next steps from here, and that is one of those that's sort of top of the list of where it makes the most sense for us to, once we are past this focus on light duty battery electric vehicles, to move into heavier duty electric vehicles, and think about some of the systems that have been set up for heavy duty vehicles generally for freight, that look at interstate travel and apportionment of revenue between states. So that's another sort of avenue for research that might lead to things that inform what we do in the light duty sector.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: So

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: I see I'm running up against time here, but I just highlight choice was a key piece in all of this. The Senate heard from a number of states about how they put in place different choices, the key distinction being that many of those programs were and are voluntary, so choices become more important to get participation, and there's different dynamics with that that influence design. But we wanted to preserve the ability to pay on a frequency that made the most sense for the user, and that was a key piece. We wanted people to be able to continue to use all the payment methods that are available for all the other fees that exist. We wanted to have the same processes in place for people, for example, to be able to appeal if they disagree with an odometer reading or something in the way that the fee was applied. So there's, you know, people don't have much choice when they go to the gas pump, but to the extent that choices are available, we have attempted to plan for that. Privacy, security, data security is obviously quite important when you have multiple systems with personal information and using odometer readings from vehicle safety inspection process helps to limit the amount of privacy issues and concerns among folks using the program. Compliance was intended to be for the vehicle itself and not the person, so we didn't consider you know, license suspension or something because of for lack of payment, it's really about has the vehicle that's been impacting the roadway network appropriately been inspected, had odometer readings, and has paid their fair share of the roadway use. And so the attention again behind the approach to this was to fit compliance and enforcement mechanisms within existing processes and be able to handle that at the point of registration, and to use, in the absence of an odometer reading, a higher flat fee, so that we are still capturing revenue before people are able to release the hole in their registration. Again, yeah we've got just a minute left, so I'm happy to take up some of this when I come back the next time to talk more about the rate setting, and dive into the statutory language, the framework that we'll need to get in place this year to implement for January 2027.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We have another question for you, represent Keys.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: All these ideas, they come from like an advisory group. I I think you spoke something about it. Was it is there did you have, who's the group of people that came up with these ideas there as far as?

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, I can send you a link. They're not necessarily people that came up with all these ideas, they came up with the general framework for how things ought to work, we met over the course of many months in 2021, the fall going into the winter, and that was to narrow down, like, what did we then want to dive deeper into, but then, you know, we've had a lot of give and take with the legislature who adopted this sort of framework in Act 62 of 2023 and then revised that somewhat last year with Act 43.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: It sounds like a one-sided advisory group though, right? It sounds like

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: In what way?

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: They're not biased or anything like that. Are they all electric car drivers? Did you have a mix of people that

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, we had, like I said, we had a mix of people within the state, external partners, and then we did a lot of survey work as well, that looked at all kinds of groups that would be impacted, and there was a strong preference among even those who drive EVs, there was a strong preference for a mileage based user fee as that was seen as a fairer way to collect revenue than than through a flat fee.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Pouech?

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yes, thank you, Patrick. I appreciate the fact, you know, we're kind of going back from the beginning and talking about, you know, everything. But I do look forward to discussions on setting that rate, which I think is probably the most important step in along the way to moving this forward. And it was I don't know if I've seen it or we've seen it before, but looking at a three and a half percent overhead for actually collecting the fleet is quite small. And I mean, I think that's an important piece because anytime you have to spend a lot of money to collect a little bit more money is seems like a waste. So while it's not quite as low as the gas tax, which is around, as you said, one percent, we've been doing it for a hundred years. It seems like, you know, we're we're heading in the right direction. I look forward to hearing more on the rate setting piece and some of the intricacies of actually using the inspection program and the multiple ways people might be able to pay.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Sure.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: You feel comfortable with January 1?

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. So, you know, we've been having multiple meetings with folks at Agency of Digital Services who signed off on this, have begun to assign resources to the project, who have engaged with our, again, we have existing IT vendors, so FAST and Parsons to be able to work with within our current contract constructs. So there's not going to be sort of delays with solicitation there. And all of the IT folks feel that we are able to make that deadline. A key piece, didn't get into it today, but a key piece to all of this, and that has made other programs more successful, that's needed, is just communications, a public outreach, an education strategy that allows people to become more aware of what is being developed, that helps in the implementation of things as users are able to provide feedback and help with the design of that interface with the public, but that just generally builds acceptance, more broadly, awareness of the funding challenges that we face here in transportation in Vermont. So that is another key piece of the work that will be going on alongside just the IT development over the next year.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you. Representative White, I guess we'll wrap up here.

[Rep. Candice White]: Thank you, Patrick. Okay, I'll try to make this quick. So going on representative Casey's, one of his comments about cars traveling out of state, which I think is a valid concern because if I drive down to Florida and I'm driving on everybody else's roads, yet I'm paying Vermont for use of the roads, that doesn't seem quite right.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Is there, I mean, look

[Rep. Candice White]: at all these different states that have electric tolls going through New Hampshire on the way to Boston, the easy past. Is there a network of states that share some of that data? I'm just wondering if I could testify, you know, if I could testify at my annual inspection, oh, I drove down to wherever and there's evidence at the New Hampshire easy pass, not the Massachusetts easy pass, not that like, without trying to make something like onerous, but there is so much data out there, I'm just wondering if you all have thought about a way to tackle that challenge.

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, I mean that is one of the central challenges, and it's really a big trade off. So as representative Pouech noted, like, the 3.5% admin rate is fairly low. Those pilot programs that have run that have attempted to account for those out of state miles, are upwards of 40% administrative costs, some programs that are not even breaking even right now, those are pilot programs, and they're voluntary, but it's a real challenge, so no state has really figured this out. Our hope, and part of the grant work, I include the sort of main tasks within our grant, and the fourth deliverable is this transition strategy, how it might look to transition to other vehicles, and the thing that we have to figure out is how could we cooperate with other states within the region to fairly appropriate revenue that's gained through one state and for miles driven from an out of state driver and vice versa. That's the piece that we intend to work on, but right now I think it's getting something in place that we can then build on and learn from.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Patrick, thank you very much. You're right, we took the forty five minutes plus. It sounds like we're going to have you back again as the session goes on with a further update. Thank So you very much.

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: Thank you.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I understand we have our next witnesses waiting

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: patiently

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: in the hallway. Thanks Patrick.

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: Go ahead. I'm

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: happy as a to pay the tax. It sounds like the administration is okay with moving forward with this tax. Does that mean they're not gonna approve the budget with this new increase in taxes?

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: Oh, it's not taxed. I usually just

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: take taxes.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So fees or taxes. It's different.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Up for about two years. The

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: only reason why I

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: keep bringing up because I just don't think it's fair. I could care less. I think that's

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: the true benefit. You're

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: going buy a new thing, aren't

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: you? Oh, no.

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: Told him But You're

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, Agency of Transportation)]: still on it.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: It makes sense to tell. So that's all I'm not I don't really think it's a foolish question to ask. How are you going to solve this problem? So I wasn't trying to

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: No, I think it's a good question.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: It'll all fire it up. But it's fine.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: Thank you. I think it's a fairness thing.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Good afternoon. We are still live. We're still online. We're transitioning to our 02:00 testimony right here at 02:10 on time. We're gonna have transportation time. Sure. So return guests. It looks like Matt's going first. So, Matt, you

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: Just getting myself all set up here. Apologies. Just just continue meeting, sharing my screen. Bear with me. Check the technology here. It's like a silly sneeze. Whoops. Oops.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yeah. I'm meeting myself.

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: Yep. Yep. Gonna do that straight away here. Great. And I'm just gonna do a test share of my screen too just to make sure that that all works. Excellent. Okay. Thanks. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Matthew Orencio. I am a Regional Planning Manager at the Vermont Agency of Transportation, and I'm joined today by Aaron Sisson, our Deputy Chief Engineer, and Matthew Bogacci, Highways Program Manager, and my co project manager for this project. So thank you very much for having us in today. We're very happy to be here and report back on just the work that we've been doing under this effort so far. And so just to kind of give you a little bit of a run of show, I'll just give you an overview and the background of how we got here today, and then an overview of the process and where we're at, and then finally some examples of the documents as it's been drafted currently or not available on the road guide. So if that sounds okay with you, chair Walker, I'll I'll dive right into it and get going. Yes. And so just as a reminder to folks present that our Vermont multimodal roadway guidance is an update to our Vermont state design standards. And so these design standards were last published in 1997, roughly thirty years ago. So just as a point of reference, that's around the time that Rick Van Winkle was asleep. So we weren't asleep, we were just designing and now here to update the document. And the purpose of this document was to provide clear technical direction to designers on transportation projects in Vermont. And so achieving some level of cohesion and uniformity amongst projects. Yes, please. Just a quick question.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Last published in 1999, were there updates to it on the way, along the way, or pretty much

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: that was it? We periodically do individual design updates that are called highway to meet highway Engineering. Engineering instructions. Yes. So specific updates to specific design elements. But the overall document itself, this is the first major update. Thank you. So why this update, to your question, is just, again, to keep pace with national standards, certainly during the course of thirty years, design practice and thought around transportation and transportation planning and engineering changes. Thinking about an approach that is Vermont specific and Vermont tailored transportation planning approach is very important as well. There has been a significant amount of external feedback and engagement around the need for an update, most notably with our multi mill design and delivery M2D2 stakeholder engagement process that predated and led to and ultimately were recommended and ushered in the process by which we are updating the multimodal guidance. And finally, serendipitously, also just thinking about the future land use context, which is certainly near and dear and important to all of us with Act 181 coming online and thinking about how Vermont grows in the future. And so in light of all of this, best practice, thinking about Vermont, hearing back from folks, it made sense to reflect on this document and move it forward. You know, really, one thing I wanna call your attention to, first and foremost, that is at the core of this document, is the idea of context based design. And Matt and Aaron will both vouch for this in saying that often in our meetings, I joke that we should have a context jar where I just put a dollar every time I say context, because I feel like I say it a lot, and certainly this is no different. But kidding aside, it just highlights the importance, again, of design principles and roadway design and transportation infrastructure management that is inspired by a reflection on adjacent context. And so when we made adjacent context, that is both a reflection on land use, reflection on safety, a reflection on incapacity of that infrastructure, and a series of factors that altogether, as an ensemble, creates a design context in which we work. So this

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yes, sir.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Know, even within last year, you said you were close to getting this done. So when was it done? The date? We will get to that. Okay, this is the one that you didn't know what the name was going to be. Okay, thank you. I just refreshed my mind. Thank you.

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: And so again, just to the point of this slide, this is an example from another national practice design document that makes this point that we have many different land use contexts and transportation infrastructure response to services those needs and is a reflection of those contexts. And so it is important to to design those spaces and those transportation spaces accordingly. I highlighted Act one eighty one. This comes at a uniquely serendipitous time where as that context grows and changes, we have an opportunity to align and think about roadway context design, contextual base design, relative to those land use contexts. And that's been a key and important part of this effort as we've gone through the document update. And so just to answer some of the background questions after setting the stage for this, we have a consultant team, DHP. This study is enriched by three different advisory groups. First, an external stakeholder advisory group composed of regional planning commissions, external groups like Transportation for Monitors, AARP, Local Motion, and others. And at the same time, an internal working group, our technical working group composed of representatives from across the agency that are also reviewing the document. And then finally, a steering committee. So the steering committee is composed of agency leadership that ultimately has final decision making authority, but that is, of course, enriched by the feedback that we receive from both of these stakeholder groups. And I'll come back to the kind of extensive process by which we work with these groups, just to get a sense of what that's looked like. But in terms of the document preparation and work itself, we concluded our completion or creation of an annotated outline with feedback from both all advisory groups in April 2025, and that set the stage for the phase two of this project, which is creating a draft document. And so responding to our legislative request, we submitted to this committee and also to our Senate Transportation Committee a draft a draft full Word document, plus a draft completed chapter fully formatted in January 2026. Since the submission of those two documents, we've come back and have released both documents or the entire multimodal roadway guidance to an online shared review, which is an agency wide review of that document for additional feedback, and also to external stakeholders to have their feedback as well. So where we're at right now is draft is done and submitted in the hands of those who would like to review it, and we will be going through the spring and and early summer of this year through that review process and feedback process to complete this document by hopefully July 2026. So I touched upon external stakeholder engagement because it is a crucial piece of what we do as part of this work. Again, just recognizing that this impacts all and the idea that with this multimodal roadway guidance, we want a document that serves as a menu of design options and inspirations internally for the agency, but also can be a guide for external stakeholders as well at the municipal level or in any additional transportation planning capacity, consultants, you name it. So what does this look like? Internally speaking, we have weekly office hours where folks who are involved in the design of the document and also review of the document can meet and brief and talk and just go over topics of interest. We have biweekly meetings with our consultant, with our technical working group, to go through specific details of interest that require additional work. And then finally, apart from that, continued stakeholder engagement through myself and others. We said that anybody can really reach out to us within our design framework to have a conversation. We're always happy to have a conversation about this as it does impact others. So just some encapsulating, again, the importance of really building this together and moving it forward together. And I think that's been a personally speaking, I think that has been an interesting success point of this to date so far. I want to provide you some examples of what this looked like as you review it to get a sense of what to expect and how the paradigm shift has played out in terms of the formatting of the document. So there are four items of interest that I think that are denoted in the next two slides. The first is the context, right? So we talk a lot about context, different land use contexts, and those different land use contexts being inspired by the future land use context encapsulated in Act 21. So on the slide here, we have an overview of our rural land use context and what designers will look at when they have an opportunity to work within and design for rural context. And so you'll see plenty of graphic examples, again, a desire standpoint, graphic examples, and apart from that, decision points that help inform what ultimately is the final design or the optimal design for a facility. These graphics were created through our consultant team, again, with an eye to Vermont specifically, and again, seek to present a range of options within a specific land use context that inspires that design process. On the next image, have design elements. So if the first piece, the context overview is what's around, the second design element is what's on. So specifically, what are the design elements pertinent to that facility within that specific land use context? In this case, this example, this is a screenshot directly from the Word document submitted for review. This is an example of a design menu option for mid block curb extensions. So this document doesn't say that mid block curve extension should go everywhere relative to a specific land use context, but where it makes sense, these are the parameters that that designer should be inspired by to arrive at that conclusion and seek to have that fit accordingly. And so it runs the gamut both in terms of a broad overview of where a facility should be placed, as well as the specific design of that facility relative to that context. And so, again, seeking to guide designers as much as possible through this process.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Where is that?

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Furniture, like a bench, a park bench or something. What is street furniture? I see that. Provide space for street furniture. Is that like a park bench or something on the street? So provide I've never heard of that.

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: Street furniture is essentially that. It's where space allows for it based off ADA and other compliance. If there is subsequent space that where a curb extension could be used for other facilities, that's just an example. So again, providing menu options and examples that a designer can be inspired by and work off of relative to that context. Thank you.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Representative White?

[Rep. Candice White]: Yeah, I'm just looking at this sketch in front of us, and this mid block bulb out for pedestrian crossing. It looks like if there were a cyclist on the shoulder, that that cycle lane goes away at the pedestrian crossing. Am I reading that correctly?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yeah, we're reading

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: it. And so that all depends, and that's the nature of the design decision making process. And I'll talk more about that in the next slide too, but just to allude to it, one of the items that we focus on within this design document is understanding which users will most likely, prevalently, will prevail in a location or be prevalent in a location, and again, designing facilities that overlap accordingly. Now, specifically from a curb extension and bike lane standpoint, there are ways to design and superimpose into the boat, either via a ramped bike facility that ramps up on that curb extension and ramps back down, or a sunken facility at grade that then bisects the curb extension. And so there is a way to design for its superimposition of both of those facilities, and this just highlights that first element of it, the Mid Block Boston. And then with our designers, there would, of course, be subsequent conversations of, if this is a marked bike route, how else would bikes or other roadway users be incorporated into that design?

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: So this

[Rep. Candice White]: is really focused on the pedestrian crossing, not really that it may also be a biking friendly area. Perfect.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representatives I'm sorry. Representatives of the Pouech.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: Isn't that picture just showing isn't that showing it's elevated, the road?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: No. I mean, right now Looks like it's

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: a step down on Lee Jen. Yeah. So there is a pedestrian ramp step down on either side of that McLaughlin Crossing. Yes. The elevation of the roads up a little bit. So two steps. Right? So it's 14 inches or so up or something like that. That's why it has that. I'm sorry. That's why it has the That's why it has those indentations to allow for the step down. Yeah. That would

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: be an ADA compliant pedestrian ramp. And so again, thinking about the design of the facilities, a curb extension that would be installed would also have to account for ADA compliance, which is a component of design considerations amongst other design considerations. So safety, additional facility users and capacity of the roadway and what have you. So that's what this document is seeking to bring to the forefront, that if you are to do this, these are the design elements that should be included with it. And of course, as we start to design for more complex facilities, the design details will evolve through that design process.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So I'm assuming these little rectangular lines are parking spaces, so if you were a bicyclist, you'd probably be outside of that bump out anyways, because you're going between the traffic and parked cars.

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: Correct, and I think just to differentiate here, if I may, the importance here is that this is not designed typical. This is a rough guideline. It's not a rough guideline. It's a guideline that has been devised to show a concept for what this could look like. And then, of course, design detail is vetted throughout the entire project development process. President Burke and then Representative Keyser?

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Yeah, so interesting. So the graphic that's with the roadway on the left here, so are you sort of saying that the most ideal situation is the wide shoulders, or are you just saying that these are just different ways to look at it?

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: There are different, the reflection here is that there are different ways to look at it, and it's relative to the context based off of adjacent land usage. And that's why you'll see a range of options too, as opposed to one specific, one size fits all approach. Again, expecting that arranged based off of those contexts is important to consider.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: So once these design standards are in place, then choices that are made could be made, like when we made this choice, because this was an option. It took a wider latitude in terms of decision making.

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: That has been the intention in this document, is again to provide that wider latitude via a menu of options, as opposed to one specific standard needs to fit here. So the designer says, well, we have many of options in it. We think we can get in this curve extension near relative to the wider shoulder and what have you. That is something that we can work towards, especially if there's input from local planning processes and regional planning commissions and from other agency staff that it makes sense to go there. It provides that latitude of menu based decision making.

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: You talked about stakeholders. What users groups did you use as stakeholders? User

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: groups? Can I ask for a point of clarification?

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: Truck and Bus Association. Those that AAA for motorists, that type of thing. I wasn't there. I was an obvious user. So anyway, just the point is, what user groups did you take into account?

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: So just to go back to some of the groups that I previously mentioned, certainly Transportation for Vermonters, which is a live consortium of different kind of transportation groups, Locomotion, and that's more from a bike ped perspective. There have been other I will, if I may, answer that question There by responding have been other groups that have been solicited in providing this part of this, from a broad range of workplace user perspectives.

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: Very good. Then what you're saying is, or not what you were saying, what the document is saying, is that land use will dictate road construction. Is that true? No. In fact,

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: land use is an important consideration amongst other series of considerations, including So context, land use is a consideration in the same way that safety and security along the corridor, other users on the roadway. So land use is best viewed as a design input, certainly a very important design input, but a design input rather than a control. Has it been part of your design strategy before? It has. So I can say that certainly any conversation that I've had with our designers

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: So the document that precedes this has land use in it?

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: So that is something I would have to get back to you on to make a new point

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: is, it's a new concept, isn't it? Relatively new to us. Okay, so what you're saying is that land use will dictate what roads are, what the roads design is and that type of thing, which is a reasonable spot to start, I suppose. Roads have been in since the Indians have been walking. It's been used for certain spots to go from place to place. Land use on the other hand changes, won't you agree? The land use changes over time? Okay, so my concern is that if you have something that is the land use is agricultural, Can I put a road through that and put a development out there? It appears to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that if you put this in, if this is put in, you would require another level of review and delay and cost expense if you put land use as another layer over what has to be done to be able to build the road. Is that Am I not base? I think

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: Shai, answer that or

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We give it a shot, and then we'll go It's his floor for now.

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: Okay. So I think I'll just return to what I previously said, which is that land use is a design input amongst a series of other design inputs, but also the second point of your question. This a facilities design manual. This is not getting to universe facilities, let's say, extension and or development. And so what I mean by that is that certainly if a new roadway this is not promulgating saying that we shall build new roadways It is saying that if there is a new roadway to be built, these are the design inputs that should be taken into consideration.

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: I understand. And so what you're saying is that if land use around where I wanna put my 20 new houses in, it goes through a field and that's agricultural. That means that I'm gonna have to have There's gonna be some layer of oversight or regulation about what I have to go through to put that road in there, because the land use is different for a road that goes through agricultural than goes through an urban environment, for example. So what I'm feeling here is that we're a layer of regulation and permit review. And that if you have such a thing as this, even though it's a guidance, we may run into the fact that, well, the guidance says you shall do thus and such. And that means you have to go back to the town or the city or whatever it is and change the land use in order to build a road.

[Aaron Sisson (Deputy Chief Engineer, VTrans)]: So for the record, Erin Slison, Deputy Chief Engineer at the agency. And I think I would offer to build on what Matthew was saying, is it's maybe not quite as black and white as that. And we could definitely talk offline more if we want to get into some more details. But I would also offer that this is distinct from the processes with which we would review permits for projects or look at implementing a new road. And so this wouldn't add a layer of reviews or a layer of complexity necessarily. This is just so that

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: Fine. I disagree. And I do not understand how when you say you need to have context, and so you're going to have context around this road, and you're going to change the road, because the road changes more than land does, and that you're putting another layer against development, and it's going to increase cost. And I'll leave it there. Said I'd leave it there, but there seems to of be some fences about, well, if you're gonna put it in development, if it's gonna be for the public good, you should allow such things without context of what you're gonna put through. But that's neither here nor there. But anyway, that's my concern.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Lalley and then Representative Casey.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Yeah, I just wanted to say that I think in a broad context for how we do things in the state, where the assumption is that we're going to use cars to get around most of the time. I think this is very helpful in tying this in with right investment, right place so that we can be more strategic about our very limited dollars that we have unfortunately to invest in licensing and pedestrian to make sure that they are being used the most beneficial way for the context. I think this would be very helpful as we are implementing Act 181 so that we can actually help to focus housing in walkable compact developments where we say we want to have it. And I see this as a I think we're very much on the right track with this.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Keyser?

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: Does that two fifty play any part in your plan? I mean, do you guys refer to that at all or is it? That's an entirely separate conversation from this. Okay. So they don't I was just trying to spin off of what I think you were somebody else was sitting there talking about maybe back two fifty impacts of going a road to a field or something, pervious services and all that type of stuff. Didn't know. That's kind like when I was

[Rep. Candice White]: Doctor. White? Nothing, just I want to clarify my understanding, and maybe this will clarify some of other questions, maybe it won't. This new document basically lays out different options for towns, the state, so that if a road I I'll just pose a hypothetical example. Route 100 comes through my town. There's an elementary school also on Route 100. And Route 100 needs to be repaved. And instead of paving it again the same way it's been paved, which is more like the existing travel lane with the shoulder on the side, instead of just doing option A, our town can take into context that it's a school zone. And they might say that, Oh, a lot of students ride their bikes to school. So instead of looking at option A, we might want to look at modified option A or even modified option B, which uses the same

[Aaron Sisson (Deputy Chief Engineer, VTrans)]: space of roadway,

[Rep. Candice White]: but built in a safer bike lane for these students to go to school while still accommodating traffic going in bike in both lanes. Am I interpreting that correctly?

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: Yes, you are, representative. So in terms of this, again, the idea is to have a common vocabulary, if you will, in terms of the planning process and the planning process employing the design process. And so if we all have a common vocabulary, both internally and externally, as what we mean when we say a specific type of roadway facility within a specific type of land use context, that helps to, again, receive local and regional input into our facility design process to make sure that needs are met to the best degree possible.

[Rep. Candice White]: That makes a lot of sense.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So are

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: these suggested options for whomever is building this route, or who gets the final decision on which one of these options will be used. So to Representative Keyser's point, if the road is simply, I don't know, 50 yards to get to a development. Is somebody, I don't know, going to mandate whether they don't use the existing option, but they must use a modified option A.

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: Thank you for asking that question. I think it opens up a really important piece of this, which is the audience for this document, which is, again, our internal, our agency designers, so folks, for example, on Matt's team that would be having a roadway project and dialoguing directly with municipalities along that stretch of roadway to have an understanding of what specific designs or requests should be incorporated into the design of that roadway. So if you're thinking about audience for this document specifically, it would be primarily agency staff and designers within agency staff. So design engineers, certainly designers as well. And then externally speaking, folks within the regional planning commissions engage in transportation planning activities, town public works departments, and others who are engaged in town planning processes, and then finally advocacy groups and other external stakeholders that help support those through technical assistance. And so if you're thinking about the audience for this document, long story short, it would be designers, both internal and external, that will be making decisions inspired by this document. And I'll just add on that, again, any of the images that you see here are really conceptual. So there will never be the A, B, or C option only. And so this is, again, the name of the game with this is context and then range of options within those contexts. So there's never gonna be and the specific reason for this document is to get away from you only get design package A, or you only get design package B. And so instead, this provides and instead breaks those elements into more individual decision making processes that as an ensemble help inform the design of the facility.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Okay, and then my final question is, is the landowner ever involved in the designing process? They own the land, they have a vision of what they want to do with the land. Is there, you know, what they want to have done? Have them consider it as you go. The dining and planning process. I'm sure the landowner hires an engineer. I'm assuming this engineer has to work with the state, Vermont Multi Motor department, whoever that may be, in the state. So I guess that's, know, landowners are trying to build homes to the least expensive way to get houses in there so we can build more housing for Vermonters. I And if think this is where you're going if we're putting in more hoops for them to jump through, know, well, you can't have a road that's only 26 feet, now it has to be, you know, 34 feet because you need an eight foot shoulder around it to get 50 yards into a housing development that has four houses in it. I think that's what you're trying to say that I don't want it to be so prescriptive that designers are just like forget it.

[Aaron Sisson (Deputy Chief Engineer, VTrans)]: So if I can address that really quickly, Erin, again, Ms. McCoy, I would say a couple of things. To your first point about who gets the final say, a lot of that would depend on who owns that infrastructure. So if it's a town maintained road, that's a different case than a state maintained road. That plays a piece of it. And as with any property discussions, to your point about the residences or the businesses in the area, that conversation comes into play in a couple of different ways, one of which upfront at the planning process when that leanings context is being set and that vision for what that future looks like is being set, as well as once the design starts coming underway, any individual property that is impacted by whatever the potential outcome is, is consulted through the regular process as a general rule of thumb as well. So I would say, yes, they are involved at different levels to different degrees at different phases, in short.

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: Let's see if we can move. Right, and so just, thank you Chair Walker, I apologize. Just two more additional elements that you'll see within this document, again, are from a framework of this document, the audience of it being designers working at different levels of government, in this decision making process, seeking to provide as many tools or guides as appropriate to inspire those designs and to get to what would be the best design for all. And so one of the elements that we've put in this is mobile focus, the idea of who can be expected to be most prevalent within a facility to help inform, again, that conversation around, for example, if a curb extension would require also some sort of bike lane component or what have you. And so that idea of modal focus is somewhat linked to those land use contexts, but certainly independent of that too. So then finally, apart from that, a final piece that you'll see within this document are case studies. So these are real case studies that have happened within Vermont. Again, to provide examples of where facilities like this already exist or where design modifications and changes have already taken place along the lines of what is being proposed in this document. So in this case, the case study here is a roadway reconfiguration where, because of the roadway width, it was possible to then install buttered shoulders with bite points. And so, again, seeking to provide as many tools as possible to aid in that decision making process. So this is where we're at just to kind of bring it home here and being respectful of time. We concluded our annotated outline in April Our 2020 draft has been submitted in January 2026 under extensive review. We're targeting completion in July 2026. And then we will move to a phase three, which is implementation and training upon this document for folks within and external to the agency. So with that, that's what we have for you all today. And thank you very much for your time. And certainly if there are any additional questions or clarifications, we're happy to talk at your requests.

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: The full document can be found on that, when you say questions, the next slide if you have, but that's where that document resides.

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: So the document, I sent it to the committee clerks, and so I can also send it to you individually. We didn't post it on the website yet, so

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Yep, she is.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yeah. Back to one page over there, please. You. And represent Burke, you had a question?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Oh, just a comment. We've been hearing about this for a few years now, and it's really great that it's finally here. I went through the process. We're in the draft stage.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Yeah. The draft stage, just, you know, interesting what they what you're developing. Thank you, representative.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I guess we weren't as far

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: behind as I thought we were.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: My apologies. What's that? I got one more. Oh, boy, only

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: pardon me. So bike lanes. I think we hate bikers a lot, because we put bike lanes on the next roads that are high speed, and then they disappear. Is there any guidance in this document to help those poor people? In other words, why would you have a bike lane that goes on Route 7 North and then disappear and put yourself out? It's unsafe. So anyway, I hope this document applies to that. The other thing I hope this document does is it makes a serious attempt to separate bikes from vehicles. And by putting it into a separate spot, like you have in Europe a lot of places, where you walk on one side and you fight on the other. I just think it's terrible what we do to bicycles. So anyway, there's my opinion.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: Anybody else?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you for sitting in the chair today.

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: And thank you for your time.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: know what I need to tell, but I need to let others

[Rep. Candice White]: These are all in the same right away. It's just like using less space for the cars in certain areas.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Safe.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: The safest place for bicycle is out in the woods.

[Rep. Candice White]: Yeah. That's

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: my favorite place for

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: I want to ride in your ready vehicle. I agree.

[Rep. Candice White]: But if you're using it for transportation, it's hard to get there at once.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: I'd say that's important.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: It's insane. Just like

[Aaron Sisson (Deputy Chief Engineer, VTrans)]: Cars are dangerous to drive.

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: I know that I would get around.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: Everybody's helped you not to ride a bicycle.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Other thing I have bicycles, I would drive around. Used to ride around the cars.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: It's motorized

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: cars

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: and stuff like that, they drive around.

[Aaron Sisson (Deputy Chief Engineer, VTrans)]: Yeah I mean I haven't been picked by far.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We're good then. Oh, all right. Molly's making tea for everyone. So we are still online, we're still live, and we are continuing into our next presentation. I would take the chance to mention that both the last presentation and this presentation are committee member requested. And most of the time, I accommodate wherever possible the committee member requested testimony. So Bonnie, you owe your time here today to at least one of these. May You not know it from the last presentation, but at least one person here

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: has to support what you know.

[Rep. Candice White]: We're culinary people.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Appreciate that. So welcome

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: to the committee, and thanks for coming in.

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: Thank you. My name is Bonnie Donahue. I'm the landscape architect for VTrans, and I've worked for VTrans for about four and a half years now. And so today, I'm gonna go over very quickly what we do for pollinators at BlueTrans. Yeah, and feel free to ask questions as I go. So the things I'm gonna go through are pollinator seed, native pollinator friendly plantings, rotational mowing, give you an update on the FHWA roadside pollinator grants, and then touch quickly on this conservation agreement for the monarch butterfly. So we have been testing and implementing or testing and planting pollinator seed and plantings for a while, but certainly for the past five years. So this map here and this data show what we've planted since 2021. So we've installed 28 projects with pollinator seed, 31 projects with plantings, and over 16 acres of pollinator seed. And we're mapping it currently in GIS so we can see the spread. You can see it's across the whole state.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: I just want to note, now it's at O'Bee, Wells, Scarlet on the left. On the left. Oh, yep.

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: I think that might be Poultney. Yes. Yes, right. That's a good question. So starting with talking about pollinator seed, these seed mixes are different from standard turf grass mixes in that they include habitat for pollinators and food for pollinators. And so food would be flowering plants. And so these are some of the species that are in some of our mixes, but there's actually many species in the seed mixes that we've been testing and using. And also, there are native grasses that and other grasses that provide habitat for pollinators to, like, shelter in over the winter or lay their eggs in. So it's a mix of species, and you may even recognize some of these already just naturally occurring on the interstates or really anywhere. This is an example on I-ninety 1 in Linden of a pollinator seed trial that we did. The first image here shows it very early in the season. You can see the sort of light green as a cover crop that grows up and underneath are the flowering species, and they sort of appear over a series of years. The next image, which is what maybe everyone imagines palmatar seed is, is this beautiful show of black eyed seasons. And so this was late in the first season. And then the second season, I probably could have timed the picture differently, but you can see weeds coming in, different other species are coming in, but there still is evidence of their seed heads that you can see that were passed by the time I took the image, but also some current flowering plants. So just to kind of show that pollinator sites change over time, and it isn't always gonna be this beautiful image, but the seeds show up based on the conditions that are optimal for them, and it's providing benefits longer term with the different species. The second thing that we do is install pollinator friendly native plants near rivers and in wetlands. And so this case, these images are from rivers. We plant I guess, we're testing different techniques also, trying to get a low cost, but, like, high impact, I guess planting out of this rather than just tossing down turf grass seed. This is another example of how we've used pollinators friendly and native plantings on a really steep slope on Route 16 in Hardwick that maybe in the past would have just been seeded with maybe left as stone, but typically seeded with turf grass. You can see we planted little tree and shrub plugs, the woody plants, within the slope, and then the whole area was also seeded. In the following year, I think, or in this series of a few years, you can see the woody plants starting to grow up, which is great. This would take a lot longer if nature was doing it. In the next image here, you can see even more evidence of the woody plants growing out from the herbaceous layer. And then in this image two, which was very exciting, this was this fall, the woody plants are really starting to get above the grass. So we are using them for erosion control as well as pollinator habitat. What's the timeline? That is a great question. I can get back to you with the exact timing, but it was probably 2022 to 2025. Okay. Two counts. Another thing we do in maintenance is rotational mowing, which you may be familiar with. We mow the clear zone annually. That has to be done for safety. But with the other part of limited access areas and interstates, we try to do a rotational mow. So we mow one third each year and then we leave two thirds idle. And that idle area is where that allows flowers to grow and some of the grass species to remain up. So that's a way that we support pollinator habitat without actually even changing any of our practices. We just continue to do this. That brings us to the FHWA Roadside Pollinator Program grant that we were awarded in December 2024, we had proposed to plant five to 10 half acre pollinator seed sites in limited access areas of the or or interstates and limited access areas, and also to put up signs for mowing contractors and the public for education. We the last so there's a timeline here. Oh, go ahead.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Casey, just wanna ask,

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: are are most of these plantings on the side of the road?

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: The the pollinator seed is on

[Rep. Candice White]: the side of the road.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: And is that for convenience or is it kind of a convenience thing or

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: Oh, yeah. I think that's it's just where it's where our projects are. So whenever we do a programmed project, that's when we would evaluate whether to put the different types of seed or plantings, and that's where we put them in.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: Now I just wondering, don't a lot of them bugs wind up in somebody's grill when they're going down the road?

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: Right. I'm sorry.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Just came up. I just I

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: know. I mean, looked Electric cars don't necessarily have radiators, but the gas ones do. I clean my radiator out once in while.

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: I see a bunch of bees there and I was like, those darn pollinator areas. I'll say, I never, to be honest with you, honey, I never gave it a thought. Think it's a great idea. I think the bees need

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: need some help. Yeah. You know, for sure. I was just I was just wondering if you guys concerned about all them winding up in somebody's grill.

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: So far, that has not been a concern, but there is there are people researching outside of Vermont. Like, are we creating a hazard for pollinators? And so far, it seems like the benefits outweigh the

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: So there's a lot of pollinators out there, the histological things. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yep. Good luck.

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: All right. So the FHWA roadside pollinator grant. We got to In May 2025, we submitted a grant agreement. FHWA, we were getting closer. And during the summer, we developed a list of potential sites and kind of vetted and prioritized them. However, in August 2025, we were informed by FHWA that eight of the 12 pollinator grants that were given out to different states and organizations were moving forward, but Vermont was not on that list. And it's unclear at this time whether that's a delay or something more permanent. So that is disappointing. What

[Aaron Sisson (Deputy Chief Engineer, VTrans)]: was the

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: total of those brands, money wise? Total was $150,000 The hopeful thing is that if this grant opportunity is reopened, we ready to go. We would jump right into environmental review and the development of construction documents. So that's at least a positive. Representative Moore? So

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: is there any maintenance or upkeep with these? Like, do you have to, like, weed out some things so that these pollinator plants can still survive? It's such a good question, and I wish I had

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: mentioned it before, so thank you. We do not do that. I think if you ask different people in research pollinators, they might say you need to weed and especially mow the plots. But we've been finding that we can still put the seed out and match our current maintenance potential. Or what maintenance is currently doing, we can still have success doing that without asking for more from maintenance. So that's been a really great sort of in between that or sort of finding opportunity within constraints, I think. So you do get weeds, but I think there's still evidence of the plants growing.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Okay, but you don't go out and weed them, but obviously the weeds will take over, but you're hopeful that these pollinator plants will stay. Okay, because I recall, and I don't know if you do, Representative Casey in Route 4 between Exits 4, Route 5, no, 5 And 6, between Castleton and the Queen Bridges. There was a plot in the middle, there's a huge grass median, and one year they planted a whole bunch of flowers, and they were just prolific, but through the years, like, there's no flowers left anymore. Yes.

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: Think part of that may be mowing. We're also, I am personally new at this sort of, we're going and testing things out and seeing what's possible. But yeah, it seems like They there's still

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: left that plot though for a few years. They did

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: not know Okay,

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: that's good. They kept it for several years, but it's like, I think the weeds took over because after a time, there's just no flowers left. Yes.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay.

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: Yeah, I think we will see what happens. Also, some of the weeds also tend to have flowers, or can have flowers, so there's sort of a could be a beneficial relationship. But it would is You're welcome.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Just one more question on that

[Rep. Candice White]: same day. So looking at your previous photo with the mowing, rotational mowing, that's what I was looking for. Are you able to I mean, it looks like you At least in this picture, there's a clear zone that needs to be mowed annually. But I mean, do you see any actually savings on not mowing some of these areas that traditionally maybe would have been mowed throughout and now maybe you're mowing one section and leaving two others idle. Always looking for ways to save

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: a little. That makes sense. I think that is one of the advantages of doing this technique, though I can't really specifically say. If you'd like, I can try to quantify that and get back to you. But just a general we think it's maybe pointing to some savings. Definitely, because you're not having to mow. Mean, sometimes the right of way can be very large, but not having to mow the whole thing every year would be helpful. So it's an

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: incredibly small amount of patriots to test, guess, is what we're saying. The nationwide piece is still a test that there's a Is there, in this program, in these grants, is this some idea that this would be something that would go nationwide with size? This is an issue all throughout the state, or all throughout the country. Some places mow an unbelievable amount, we tend to mow the least amount. With this little amount of acres, does it if there were more money or if there were more spots, there's discussions about where it could or couldn't go. I mean, I guess because these are such small plots that it really is a test run. Mean, you have 10 acres on the size of our interstates, we're not talking about hardly anything.

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: Right. That's true. I think different state agencies do things differently. And so I can't really speak to the budget piece, but how can I get answer to your question?

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: Maybe. They

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: talk about it when applying for the grants, what's the long term goal of the program?

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: Okay. I don't recall. I can get back to you on that. But I think it is sort of a best management practice that we're seeing across The US. And actually maybe getting to the next slide may give you a little more information about this, showing another national effort that we joined that maybe shows that this is a piece of a bigger picture, although Vermont is very small. But even within Vermont, those pieces you're doing are very tiny. There's one by Milton,

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: '19 that 90 I've seen, and I have particular interest in seeing what it could be expanded to. Anyway, I'm just not sure who's there, and maybe you

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: can just go to your

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: next slide and talk about what other people are trying or testing and what the thought is.

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: Okay. I think, yes, we covered this. Alright. So that brings us to the monarch butterfly, which is our last slide. As you may or may not know, the monarch is proposed for listing as a threatened or endangered species. And if listed, B TRANS would be required to get permits for typical activities like working in the meadows along the roadside. And so in 2020, joined or B TRANS joined this program, which is called the Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances for the Monarch Butterfly, which basically means in exchange So if the species is listed in exchange for having to get permits, we agreed to practice rotational mowing, which we're already doing on interstate and limited access areas, planting pollinator seed and planting some expanding that, and then doing annual monitoring of the habitat across the state. And so the CCAA is, I think they're getting more members as time goes on, but it tends to be DOTs and utility companies across The US. I don't know how many at this moment, but this part of building and protecting pollinator habitat on the interstates goes toward protecting the monarch butterfly, and that's like a nationwide

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: Keith, do want to do it?

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Ethics are just in common or I mean, these are, they are small areas and we're a rural state, so they appear very small. Some states, this is the open area that you have. But it seems like since we've gotta maintain them, we're gonna, constantly be around them if we have best practices which can incorporate pollinator plants and other plants that might help things. It doesn't necessarily have to cost more. It's just a better way than just money.

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: Yeah, I would say that's what we are trying to do is work within what we can do and what Or just sort of shifting current practice to do things just a little bit better, and I think it has big effects or big positive impact. Does

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Download May help? I mean, we almost got to the May year simply because we ran out of time to mow. Did you did you get that? Oh yeah, that's huge. Does, I mean, usually dandelions and

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: pye hair. Yeah, which also actually are great for pollinators. Yeah, I think what's great about No Mow May is that it gets the message out there that we maybe don't have to mow as often. And that there are insects that rely on the habitat even in our yards. So I think it does make a difference in that case. And if people are interested, they can expand that practice or adjust for their property. Yeah. Representative Burke and then Representative Keyser.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Yeah, this is so interesting. I remember, I don't know, maybe seven years ago, we used to plant beautiful, you know, brattleboro, like, as you get up at age at three. And then I asked about it, and I said, well,

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: we couldn't do it if it

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: was just growing up in weeds or something. I don't know. And I I sort of thought that everything had been abandoned, but

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: this is great that you're of keeping a

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: new And what this reminds me of, it's a little bit different because it's habitat, but is the Highway Beautification Act of Lady Mary Johnson, where she noticed that as they were driving from Texas to Washington DC, all these terrible, you know, billboards, representative billboards and junkyards and everything. And she set out this whole program to unify America, helping thinking that it also helped with people's mental health, made everybody feel better. And it's a really interesting concept. It ties us into an environmental Yes, I

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: love that. And I also would say rather than saying there are weeds, we're saying, yes, there are weeds. And it's still, you know, We are accepting that there are going to be weeds, and that's Okay. It's part of it. It's nature.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: Isn't milkweed one of their preferred weeds? I mow around them on my put my can.

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: When I run the eggs, I mow around them.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: I used to mow them and then my daughter pointed it out to me. And she says, Dad, don't mow that. So isn't

[Matthew Orencio (Regional Planning Manager, VTrans)]: that bottom plant there?

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: Is that a young milkweed plant right there?

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: It does

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: have all the buzz on it.

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: Yes. Actually, both of them are the sweet and flower. And there's different species, but this is one type. And then there's a modern caterpillar from our this is live. Well, maybe it's not live, but it's from the interstate. Yeah.

[Rep. James “Jim” Casey]: So I guess everybody, the next time you're mowing your lawns, keep my daughter in mind and mowing around me.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy]: Just have Dan.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative White.

[Rep. Candice White]: Thank you so much for this, Mollie. This is great. So

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: the $150,000

[Rep. Candice White]: grant that was pulled back sounds like you're ready to go, if somehow $150,000 appears again. And that would be the next step in expanding this program statewide.

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: Terms of that grant, yes, but you can see we're already able to We can continue doing things. And I think I should state too that we manage our budget and support the governor's recommended budget as presented. So with that, yeah. Just in building on what representative Burke was saying, that

[Rep. Candice White]: it looks like there are so many benefits to doing something like this. I mean, probably some cost savings, beautification of the state, supporting these threatened species, the weeds. I would imagine you've probably got a list of bushes that also are supporting pollinators. If one area was getting overcome with weeds, putting a couple of bushes in there that are a little bit hardier than could survive around the weeds. So, yeah, I just would like to express my great support for this program, and figure out how we can support you continuing this work. Thank you.

[Bonnie Donahue (Landscape Architect, VTrans)]: This is my last slide.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Well, the timing's perfect because we had just enough time to get

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: to the floor. Bonnie, thank you

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: for coming in today.

[Aaron Sisson (Deputy Chief Engineer, VTrans)]: Thank you.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And members that want to hear specific pieces of the