Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Good afternoon again. Today, Tuesday, February 10 in house transportation, and we have a guest on Zoom. We are reviewing a little bit of T Bill language where the AARP is mentioned. And we wanted to do our due diligence to make sure that somebody tells us these changes are good or bad or why we should or shouldn't make more. So good afternoon. Thank you for coming back to the committee. We'll turn it over to you.

[Kelly Stoddard Poor (Associate State Director, AARP Vermont)]: Great. Well, wonderful. Thank you, Chair Walker. Hello, I'm Kelly Stoddard Poure with AARP Vermont. I serve as the associate state director on behalf of AARP Vermont. And I was able to take a look on page ten and eleven, changes to the public, transportation or sorry, public transit advisory council, which I have been participating on for the last several years and know that there is some language changes taking out COVE, which has dissolved. It was the Council on Vermont Elders organization. They were also an advocacy and outreach organization focused on the needs of older adults. They closed they I wanna say it's been about two and a half years now and replacing that with AARP, which we welcome that change in statute and look forward to continuing our participation on the council.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you very much. Well, I've got you then. Is there anybody else you think should be on the council that isn't?

[Kelly Stoddard Poor (Associate State Director, AARP Vermont)]: That's a good question. I don't think so. I mean, I think that most of the people who attend on a regular basis are they part their participation is very high, and I haven't noticed any gaps otherwise. But I'll take another look at the the list, and if I have any recommendations, could send them to you in a formal memo, if that works. That

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: would be outstanding. We appreciate you very much being on the council and participating and coming in to testify or interrupting your day and for taking a look at it. So I want to thank you for all of those things and the work that you do everywhere else. This is a small piece of the bill, but if we're going to make some changes, we want to make sure we make them all. I don't know if there's any other questions from anybody in the committee. We're working on Section seven twenty four VSA 5,084, page ten eleven, Public Transit Advisory Council, which now will the AARP has been attending and been working, but now we'll try to make it if this passes eventually that it'll be an official participation as a member. We

[Kelly Stoddard Poor (Associate State Director, AARP Vermont)]: appreciate that. I will just say it's been excellent, the council, and it's been run really well. Representative Burke also participates on the council. And it's Ross does a really terrific job of making sure that we have all the materials ahead of time and just able to to dig deep on some really important pieces around transit.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Does anybody have any questions or comments at all regarding this particular piece? It may seem like a formality, but that's okay. I just want to make sure that we've crossed our t's and dotted our i's. Representative Pouech?

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Like what are can you just name two or three issues that you discuss and how your counsel might influence public transit or maybe as D Trans develops your budget on a regular basis?

[Kelly Stoddard Poor (Associate State Director, AARP Vermont)]: Sure. Well,

[Kelly Stoddard Poor (Associate State Director, AARP Vermont)]: I will say we were kept up to date really closely on the changes that happened with Green Mountain Transit over the last year. Changes also to ridership. We're we're given a great deal of data and information, which is very helpful to understand trends that are happening within transit. We've also talked extensively about volunteer drivers and important role that volunteer drivers play in Vermont and how that has declined during the COVID years and how and last year, the legislature appropriated additional funds to help support and bolster that program, which was really fantastic. So those are some of the topics that we cover, and we're always able to add agenda items as well. So Ross puts together with his team a comprehensive agenda, and then also the consultant that he's been working with on a number of different of the, you know, assessments and policy reviews has joined us as well. So it's a it's a pretty packed meeting every quarter.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Alright. Thanks, Ben. Just to help sort of fill it out. And certainly, those are, like you say, the volunteer drivers, you know, are critical issues for AARP, I'm sure, and also for all of our for the entire state in trying to provide transportation to those who need it.

[Kelly Stoddard Poor (Associate State Director, AARP Vermont)]: Absolutely. Representative Burke?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yeah, I was just gonna add, it's great to have Kelly on the group, on the board. They do also do a public policy Sorry, I have the name in my head a minute ago. Public transit policy plan. I think it's every five years and we review that as well. That's sort a high level plan that's what he said. What's the plan for the next five years?

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Has the council discussed the upcoming contract award for the Medicaid

[Kelly Stoddard Poor (Associate State Director, AARP Vermont)]: funding? We did not discuss that in our December meeting. Our next meeting is in March. And I haven't I haven't peaked at the agenda yet, but I would imagine it'll be on that on that one.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: It's it's certainly one on my radar.

[Kelly Stoddard Poor (Associate State Director, AARP Vermont)]: Yeah. Absolutely.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay. Well, I guess I would say, Kelly, thank you very much for reviewing it. Thank you for the testimony and for the piece. It helps us make sure that we're being thorough. And if you have any additional comments on membership and whatnot, certainly share them with Ross and with the committee, And we'll certainly take a look at it. We've got a little bit of more time before this will get put to bed. Thank you very much.

[Kelly Stoddard Poor (Associate State Director, AARP Vermont)]: Excellent. Thank you so much. Have a good afternoon.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: We have a few minutes extra. I don't know if there's any concern with anybody whether we start it into our next piece or anybody wants to wait five minutes. If Jeremy is ready to move on to the next piece, we'll I guess we

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: can probably put a check next to that. Well, think it's all warmed up, Jeremy.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: We're Hoping those were the tough questions.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Well, have guests in the back too. And we're trying to understand what the long term views within the fiscal constraints that we currently operate at the agency and where they operate at the agency and what we're going to look at here and then how that's going to provide some background to what we look at the rest of this week with the regional planning commissions with a

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: few other subjects put forth. So

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: we're still trying to paint a picture to all of the other legislators in this building of what is really enough to get their attention about what the deficit was, but we also are starting that conversation about what are all the other things we're not doing that our communities wish we were doing to a certain degree or another. Think that gives you a chance to get into the chair and welcome back. We appreciate you coming in to present the agency's ten year plan. For

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: the record, Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Agency of Transportation. I've just got a couple slides today to basically illustrate how the current program is basically populated with asset driven projects. And as we discussed a week or two ago, we're not really taking any projects through the BPSP2 program just because we know we won't be able to deliver them in any sort of timely fashion, and we just want set realistic expectations.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Is a ten year plan requirement by the federal? So,

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: we have to do what's called a long range transportation plan and a couple other things like a long range trade plan and things like this. This is, I'll say it's a plan. Really what it is, is a series of Gantt charts that are stacked on top of each other for specific projects and current estimates with some, what we'll say is just projecting out what our available funds will be. So, I think a long range transportation plan is much more detailed and granular than what I'm presenting. We're just trying to slot projects in given the best assumption we can make on both the cost of the project at the time of construction and with the available revenues at the time of construction. So actually, in my next slide, we can get into some

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: of those assumptions. Is the plan required in statute or it's just something you guys are doing? You're doing other ones too, and then you're just sort of doing this. Is this something that's typically just maintained over time?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Correct. I mean, this is not a formal plan that's submitted to everybody. A lot of the background stuff I won't show you because I'd hate to make a town think, okay, we've had this committed to coming here in 2032, and that's not true. It's like any projection, the further out it gets, the sphere of inaccuracy grows. So, I called it a plan. We could call it sequencing schedule, anything like that. But it certainly doesn't have the same level of thoughtfulness that some of our obligatory plans do bring to the table.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: There is something on the website that talks about the same year or long term annual That's probably

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: the long range transportation plan, and that is a federal requirement. So I think we update that every five years, if memory serves me, and that's probably on the website. Yeah, and again, this is largely just looking at projects based on some assumptions on available funding and what those projects will cost. Really, this is something I've emphasized since I've become chief engineer, because I think someone sat at this table longer remember the roll in the carpet and how projects were always getting pushed, we always had this kind of surplus of projects that we could never get to. And so, this is an effort to what I'll call have a little truth in advertising and be able to properly commit to a town or a municipality or region. Yes, your project is in our program and this is when we think we're coming. Again, there's still going to be some level of inaccuracy the further out you get, but at least we're actually taking those bigger projects and starting to slot them into the program five, six, seven to ten years out. So, one of the principal assumptions we have to make is the funding. And obviously, every five years with reauthorization at the federal level, that changes quite a bit. So I'll just take the current targets that we have, and that's basically a $325,000,000 target. Now, that number is significantly less than what you may see when Candice did hers. So, this represents formula money dedicated to construction projects. This doesn't look at emergency relief funds. This doesn't look at other federal highway money that may go to our asset management work, our bridge inspection work, things like that. So, you won't see on the pie chart where the Secretary's opener or anything, Candice produces a $325,000,000 target. This is a target specific to highway, given the available funding through formula funds. So, when we take that $525,000,000 target, we can break it into three or four principal programs, and that's $100,000,000 in paving, dollars 100,000,000 in bridges. That's roughly, again, trying to prioritize the NHS system, dollars 55,000,000 on the interstate system, 25,000,000 the state system, and $20,000,000 of town highway bridge projects. Then you've got $40,000,000 in roadway, 40,000,000 in traffic safety. So that's both just replacing signals or roundabouts, Excess 17, big project just finishing up. Some of that was funded because there were two zero seven intersections. Some of that was under traffic and safety money. And then we have $30,000,000 in emerging needs and preservation projects. So those are monies that we carry year to year for, okay, we had a rock fall, we had a slope failure, a culvert failure, things that aren't identified, but we're pretty sure we're going to need throughout the course of the year. And then if we don't, we can oftentimes repurpose that money for district leveling or maybe some preventative maintenance type treatments as the year comes to a close. And then obviously there's some park and ride like pad money aren't part of the core programs here.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: The $100,000,000 Jeremy, thank you. Does the $100,000,000 in paving have sort of a breakdown goal underneath it, like you did under the bridges? Do we have sort of this idea of the The US system versus the interstate system versus our state roads? Is there a there's not a Not really. Goal in mind before you get into the prioritization? Not really. So

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: the way and really what this breaks down to is if you look on your budget on a page, bridges are broken up into interstate, state and town highway, where it's paving, it's just paving. And that's where I've sort of broken this up. Obviously, when we do our analysis, we do prioritize interstates and NHS routes because that's what the Fed score us on. We've got some guesstimates of what, say, the Class I Town Highway Paving Program will be from year to year, but they're not set targets that we're trying to hit. And honestly, the bridge targets, depending on the condition, we can modify those as well. I think I've stated previously that our state highway bridge condition is really pretty good, largely because of some of the flooding, and so that's why you see what I'll call a de emphasis on the state system, because our state network bridge condition is actually pretty good. And so these are fluid. These are just kind of what we're targeting today.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Keyser is off. Thank

[Rep. Chris Keyser (Member)]: you. So this is state money. This is total.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Federal and state money? Correct. So the way it basically breaks out is we take $275,000,000 in federal money and $50,000,000 in state match. That's roughly a 15% match across the board, and that gives you your $325,000,000 total.

[Rep. Chris Keyser (Member)]: Because I'm thinking of the $9.50 budget, million And the fact that we're going to do 153 miles of paving at $153,000,000

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I don't jive.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So this is exclusive of the $10,000,000 purchase in years, which brings

[Rep. Chris Keyser (Member)]: Excuse me, I'm sorry. But this is a projection and an informal document and that type But of we were gonna So this is state and federal enough.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Where's the

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: rest of it?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I'm sorry. Sure. So I'm trying to remember what the T fund is. I think it's $3.30 something, I wanna say. 100,000,000 goes to maintenance as a for instance. Administration, I forget what that is. I want to say rail, it's 30,000,000. I think Candice's pie chart kind of lays out where the coupon goes.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I'm sorry.

[Rep. Chris Keyser (Member)]: Yeah, I understand.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Thank you. So, and this doesn't include even highways like administration money. So this is just the match money going to formula projects. Structured projects. Correct. Gotcha.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you. So are you saying one third of all of the money that's in the budget gets down onto an actual project work?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Well, one third of the money in the budget goes to formula projects. Gotcha. There's other If we have CDS projects and things like that.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: That is exactly my question. How do we get to 03/25? Maybe instead of agency of transportation ten year plan, would be

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: highway evictions. Myopic on that question.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: So

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: if we don't need the $100,000,000 in bridges, would that money get put over into paving? Or could it be?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Potentially. So generally speaking, on the federal side, yes. The majority of our state match for bridges comes from the TID fund, which we can't use for paving. So, we have to select our TID usage, which is $16,000,000 roughly for projects that have a longer duration life cycle. And so we don't have as much flexibility with that. Federal money, we've got a little bit more flexibility with.

[Rep. Chloe Tomlinson (Clerk)]: So just going back to Representative Keyser's question, trying to center

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: where we

[Rep. Chloe Tomlinson (Clerk)]: are in the budget. If I look at the I think this was Michelle's 26 versus 27 appropriations comparison. Is it fair to say that the program development section minus the program development administration is roughly the budget distribution we're looking at?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Under circumstance, yes. However, your budget on a page includes all the Federal Highway ER money from the 'twenty three and 'twenty four storms. So when you look at the roadway budget, that were 67 in 'twenty six and fifty '3 in 'twenty seven. So that includes some Federal Highway ER projects that aren't part of the traditional formula based load of projects. Similarly with Bridge, there's going to be $77,000,000 and 26,000,000 and $84,000,000 Again, there's a huge portion of ER money there.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: So there another way to look at it and say, this is the amount of money we have to build the way?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Well, this and CDS is discretionary grants, projects are all in the white book. This is the baseline. Guess that's probably the best

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: way This to is how much money you'd have for this.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Are just formula funds we can count on. There's predictable funding coming in over that five year surface transportation bill.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Is there another hand? So

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: that sort of sets the stage of how much money we have to play with. Now, we've projected this out ten years because we've got, assumptions on either side, both the cost of the project and, what I'll call increases in, revenue or federal funds. So what we do is we are talking strictly in $20.27 dollars, $20.26 dollars, excuse me.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Question? That's where, well, maybe you're gonna cover it, that was my one of my questions. You probably know how many interstate highway miles we have. We have very limited, compared to some states, very limited amount of interstate. And it was built fifty years ago, and I think I've shared it before that we're sort of in this redo, new model, rehab, replace. And then we had however many years when there really wasn't any interstate bridge prep. If we ever get there, then that money can go be spent on something else. Are we ever gonna get in x number of years down this ten years that we don't have to spend such a huge portion of our budget on interstate that we could be doing some of the other bridge work? Potentially.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Again, we look at the condition and let that drive our decision making. As I said, the state system's in pretty good shape. The interstate system is at that critical juncture where it's aging and either significant rehab or replacements need to occur. If we say from 1960 to I think 'eighty three was the last segment, we're in that fifty to seventy five year window where we know there'll be a lot of needs. Other thing that will show up here, but isn't necessarily intuitive, is all those deep culverts on the interstate that may be a five or six foot culvert now, but will just due to current design parameters go to a full bridge, which will be a six to 20 foot or even over 20 foot. And so, if you ask me today, what's the number of bridges? It honestly changes throughout the state on an annual basis because we oftentimes upsize. And so, all of those deep culverts under the interstate that are at the end of their life will be in this program as well.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: And if I recall, we had several failures. Do we have any currently that we know of? Or that were failures? No. We had to park a vehicle to keep people from driving in a lane.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I'd call that a fifth. No, no, no. We do not have any current failures. We are obviously monitoring some projects. We do have a big solar project up on 91 in Linden that we're actively progressing. You mentioned Richmond. We're certainly looking at the northbound barrel and monitoring that as we speak.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Mean, the ones up in Franklin County and a few of the others must set the project, the whole budget back a fair amount in terms of

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. That's the unfortunate thing. And just trying to figure out how to take what is probably hundreds of culverts at $15,000,000 a piece, and on scale, how can you possibly address them all? You can't spend 15,000,000 a piece, so you've got to figure out how to either put a liner in at a significant discount, try to extend that life. The whole approach is to flatten the curve, not to bring up PTSD from COVID, but if we see the spike where the interstate was built and we let everything fail at the same time, we'll just never have the resources. So we've got to try to prolong that failure curve with preventative maintenance and preservation treatments.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Do you have a heat map of the interstate that shows the interstate and like ringing where bridges are? They're brand new, everything's good, maybe culverts, and then these are bridges that are in the next five years going to have to be dealt with.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Visual it's

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: of that.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So VTransparency will show anything that's slated for construction in the next three years, I believe. Also, NVTransparency, you can click on any project or any bridge, and see what the inspection is and see what the condition is. It's not necessarily color coded, that'd be awfully busy. You can click on any piece of roadway and see the pavement condition that is color coded, but we don't do that with bridges.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So what you're saying really is we get these bridges, we know about them, they're labeled bridges because of the size and we're going through and it makes sense that, hey, some of these, if I can get twenty five years out of it for a quarter of the cost, that's worth it. Otherwise, they all happen at once. Exactly. But we also have all these culverts that also need to be not just replaced, but more than likely upgraded to meet the latest storm predictions, I guess.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, storm predictions and just environmental standards for aquatic organism passage. There's two benefits to upsizing that are obvious. One is resiliency and those sort of storm lows, but the other is the environmental impact. So if we look at our $55,000,000 target, obviously, it's it's basically full out to 2038 and and then some. And so you could see obviously it goes up and down and as we discuss building the budget, we know that there's going to be carry forward and things like that. So as we go from year to year, this will sort of flatten out, but where we've initially slotted these, you're going to see that we're generally at or above 55,000,000. And this also goes to the presentation I gave on sequencing, how we always carry a little bit more just if a project slips, we have plenty in the pipeline to sort of back that in or fill the program.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So on all these bars, we could list projects. Yes. To make up that bar, there's

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: and that's that's what this is. This is a pullout of a spreadsheet we have that does just that. It just has specific grades across the top. Across the top, it has the year, the projects are down the left column and we have a price and it just sort of is a staircase going down.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Like you say, the farther you go out, the less

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: accurate it is. And that's why I'm hesitant to sort of make that public because I just don't want people to be like, you told me my project was coming in 2032. A lot can happen between now and then.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: That's good. Thank you.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So as we look at roadway, again, $40,000,000 target. There we are well over every every year out to 2043 even. A lot of this, or some of this anyway, are some of those legacy projects, Pittsburgh Random, Cabot Danville, Swanton, Putney Road. We made some commitments before all of our times probably to do really significant roadway projects, and it just takes a lot of resources to do them, not only to develop them and acquire the right of way, but they're expensive. And so you see that the roadway target is certainly over full for the foreseeable future. And then paving, we do have a little bit quicker development time for that, so that is a much shorter sort of projection. We can put together a paving project very quickly, and in fact we have. So, we try to be a little bit more nearsighted on that, I'll say. But nonetheless, certainly out to 2,033, 2034, there are plenty of projects in the program to meet that $100,000,000 target. Obviously, the 'twenty seven budget under the Governor's recommend is not what you see here. This just hasn't been updated to reflect that. But I've shown you the projects that we would advance, and then we would be pulling in other projects from the out years, and then obviously repopulating the program with that money.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Getting out of ways, won't inflation have an impact on all this?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So that's one of the assumptions we make. Like I said, we try to do this in $20.26 dollars, but as IHA taught us, if we have 40 to 60% inflation and only a, whatever, I think it was an 18% increase in money, yeah, your spending power drops and this graph looks entirely different. Conversely, not that I think this would happen, but if we in some way saw a reduction in cost and revenues increase, then again, it would change.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: And you're not building any

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: new roads to pay? This is strictly asset driven projects. I will say what we've done under the roadway program is we've tried to identify some of those legacy projects and stagger them in a way that we can actually get them built. So, Pitzerland is going now. I think we're doing Swan Or Cabo Danville next, and then Putney Road's in there, and some of the remaining segments of Pitzerland. We also have 22A as a point of interest to a lot of folks. Time to, the way the program is set up today, can't do more than one a year or one at any given time. So we've got to sequence them because in addition to those legacy projects, like I said, some of our traditional culvert replacements are here, slope stabilization projects, Route 2 out, Bainfield is going to be a great example this year. Any of the ledge work comes out of the roadway program. So there's significant work that occurs beyond what what you would consider as roadway reconstruction. Welcome centers are in roadway. Interesting.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Is is is there any plans on building any throughways or parkways going east and west at all?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: No. No. Woodstock? No. No. I mean, that's that's the the joke in Vermont. I figured what it is. I think there's only seven East West routes, nine East West routes, one the whole state. And that's

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: What what would it take to put in a Well, I don't have the equipment. Got a little small excavator. Yeah. Yeah.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I wouldn't even dare venture a guess. I mean, if if I had to just ballpark to build an interstate today, it's probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000,000 a mile. Something like that. I mean, that's a that's a five more. I mean, it depends. Right? You're going through Mallets Bay, the environmental permitting is going to be 10,000,000 a mile. If you're on something that's easy to permit and the wider waste heat, that drives the price. I was thinking like a Super Route 4 is what I was thinking. There's probably not a lot of difference between a super Route 4 and an interstate, honestly. Yeah. And super seven was that mid eighties. I don't know what that cost, but pretty similar. Try not to make promises we can't keep, and we clearly can't keep that one.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Minus a political bill or tsunami and some other change, this is where it's at. So you mentioned about five or six significant projects, maybe one a year at the

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: most, the other year. Within the roadway program, yeah. Just trying to clear that backlog of legacy projects. Legacy projects, what we found. So there's half

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: a dozen of these legacy type projects. I would suspect there's another queue somewhere of another half dozen. I wish they were on that list.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I mean, I think you either have or have will hear from the RPCs that they have priorities as well that aren't necessarily being brought into the program. So I'm sure if I solicited input, for Gens five Pass being an example, there would be people who'd be like, yeah, if you've got $100,000,000 or $200,000,000 I know where you can spend it. But that's just not a feasible

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: we're seeing public feedback on the Jen's bypass. But that wasn't on the list of the six or seven I heard mentioned. Meaning that's a minimum of ten years. Unless a political change of some standard or whatever we got. But obviously,

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I guess that's a given on any statement if there was some other major change. Yeah, so we spent some significant effort with a Pell study, which is, I can't remember what that acronym, Project Environmental Linkage Study, I think it is. And they looked at various alternatives and they came up with some estimates and it's just out of reach at this point to try to progress that in any meaningful way. Just like you mentioned 22A and

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Route 2, Cabot Danville, 8, the Putney Road, Route 7, Brandon Pittsford. I don't know if I missed one in there. I'd have

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: to go back and relist it. I think that's it. 22A, Route 7. But I think there's three more segments of Route 7. Obviously, we'll look at does it make sense to do them all? As we're doing with all of these, representative Barak knows we looked at Putney Road and we found a scale down the project to something we can deliver. And we're doing that throughout the entire program, because we do have numerous projects from town hard bridges to traffic and safety to roadway that you know, they were scoped, and it just doesn't make sense to, you know, progress them at this point anymore.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: You're speaking at twenty two a. When's that?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: When are we talking? Probably after we're both gone from here. Really? Yeah. I tell you. I mean, again, there's there's assumptions built on assumptions here, but given the current program, it's just very difficult.

[Rep. Chris Keyser (Member)]: So,

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: this is built on the expectation, the federal funds, you know, at least come at the level that they Correct. No reason for us to think that's different. And also the assumption that we'll have the matching despite, you know, some reductions in in that those income numbers. And so let's say we we got you know, the matching money is there. The federal money is there. This is for the next ten years sort of the plan. At the end, do you think our bridge quality and road quality and and all that is the where it is now?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: The short answer is no. Think I've testified in the past that a 100,000,000 or 103,000,000 it was last year paving program, we will see a deterioration in that condition. Bridges and why we're continuing to invest in them at the levels we are, they deteriorate slower, but they're a lot more expensive to bring back into condition. So, we're trying to maintain that investment level, even though our bridge condition is very good. The paving condition, and I think this helps illustrate it, we can develop a lot of paving projects really quick if the money became available. Also, to some extent, a road can only deteriorate so far, and it may not be comfortable to drive on, but it doesn't necessarily fundamentally change the treatment that we would do when we do that project. So you

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: can't drive them. You're just going to complain every couple of miles.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Well, that and when we do get there to do the project, the scope of the project's the same. It fundamentally doesn't alter what we would do.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: You could fix it a lot faster than you could fix a bridge. It's just deteriorating, is what I hear you say. If you get behind in that area, your confidence level, I guess I'm assuming, is that you could catch up that area a lot faster than if you let bridges go, then it would be a lot harder to catch up and a lot more expensive.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Exactly. And history proves out both of those points. Think when Representative Brennan and Representative Westman were in this room and the TIP fund was created, the bridge condition was pretty poor. And they said we need a dedicated pot of money for bridges. Similarly, we can go back to, I want to say 2013, 2014, maybe a little bit earlier. Our paving conditions were a lot worse than they were today. And we had a handful of years, six to ten years, where we really did a lot of work and the paving conditions were actually improved drastically from that point.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So is it reasonable just to say, you know, if we got more state money and or federal money, it would tend to fall over into the paving versus the structures.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: At this point, yeah. I think that's a fair assumption.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Jeremy? I'm sorry, Ross. No. Good. Anybody else had a hit? You know, one of the things that you look at in other parts of the country, the interstate system, and some have substantially more interchanges, substantially more exits. And one of that theory is that if you have an exit, it will drive growth substantially around that. Or growth has gotten to a level in that area that in order to handle traffic congestion, we need to change. Ever heard anybody talk about what an unbelievable economic driver, additional interstate interchanges would be in the particular areas?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: The only conversation, and I wasn't part of this professionally, that I've ever heard was Bolton. They were looking for an off ramp at one point in time. I think up in Chittenden County, CCRPC is looking at those interchanges just because I think they're reaching their capacity. And so there's a fairly lengthy meaning it's looking at an out years effort to what should I think it's Exits 131415 And 16 look like. Obviously, we're doing the Divergent Diamond this year, which is connected to the interchange. I could see how it would drive growth, But again, we're really focused on asset condition now and safety. Certainly within the traffic and safety realm, when we look at intersections and we look at off ramps and on ramps improvements, like at 17 last year, we're looking at either condition of something, safety, or just trying to make some minor capacity improvements.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Well, hear a pretty substantial dialogue about the need for more taxpayers and not more taxes, and more growth, and a lot of place for them to live. I would say that something that does not get discussed here, I guess I'm reiterating the same point, is interchanges drive growth dramatically in other parts of the country. Exits and entrances do for people that focused in terms of getting in and out of their area, but it has not been part of the conversation here, I'm just throwing that out there. Representative Burke?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yeah, I was just going to say that I've heard people in Brattleboro say when the interstate was coming true, that they advocated for three interstate exits, which we have. You have, yeah. And I think that might have been a conversation, you know when you're building a new state, now just trying to maintain things and building new capacity, you know what's the balance of building an estate if there's not enough housing, you know what I mean? I understand your argument, the costs of doing that are so great that it seems like the, I'm not an expert at all, but just the cost of doing that compared to the cost of maintaining what we've got. Yeah, we've heard that numerous times, and people say, yeah, remember advocating for these great exits and it's great that we have them because there's a lot of tourist cars coming to your town and allows for, we don't usually have traffic cameras except when there's even any one break that's closed. It's been a while. I

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: was active when CCRPC was looking at, I think, a very big traffic study and some of them were, you know, an exit at 116 in South Burlington, maybe changing the exit on Dorset Street because it only goes in one direction. There were a few of those, but it seemed like they also looked at, hey, there's some maybe outside of the highway, a couple of intersections that could be modified to allow people to move around, to reduce traffic congestion without actually changing the interstate.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I'm sure it was.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Diverging diamond, I guess, was part of that.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Right. If you look at exits, I'll just say 13 and potentially even 12 up through, it's difficult to adjust one without having a regional impact. And that's just the proximity and the capacity that they have today.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And looking at a bold new exit, people in Richmond were saying that's gonna reduce the traffic coming through our town and same thing in Waterbury, I think, where people end up getting off. It's like, I guess, when you pull the string and something else moves. Representative Tomlinson, Representative McCoy, look for it.

[Rep. Chloe Tomlinson (Clerk)]: Scissors, bakery. I'm here for scissors. I just wanted to make sure I was understanding something correctly. So did you note that with the $100,000,000 towards paving at that rate of investment, we would still be falling behind in terms of the standards? Correct. Is that in terms of the projections for bridges and roadway and those other categories, are those also falling behind or is that keeping pace with?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: The bridges largely will keep pace just because they deteriorate slower. And we've got a lot of new bridges with federal ER funds and stuff like that. So we're seeing relatively steady deterioration levels, paving because you can see a full life cycle on a paving project in ten years, whereas a full life cycle on a bridge is at least seventy five years probably. Okay.

[Rep. Chloe Tomlinson (Clerk)]: And in roadway and traffic safety, are there concerns about this being the appropriate amount of investment?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. We think it's the appropriate amount of investment. And roadway and traffic and safety touches on a lot of different things. So, it's not only safety projects at intersections, but it's also our line striping annually that we've got to do. It's also just replacing signals on a timely fashion, so there's not outages there. So it's a little bit tougher to actually project where that condition will be just because there's a lot of components to that program. But we're, in today's world anyway, comfortable at that program level.

[Rep. Chloe Tomlinson (Clerk)]: Okay. And these targets were also developed with a sense of our revenues and what reauthorization might look like? Or is this more I guess, is this intended to be a realistic estimate of how much we can plan to be investing? Or is it more aspirational?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: No. So this is the target that we set once we knew what reauthorization was for IJA. So this was actually just that we set this maybe two years ago. Obviously, these targets will change once we know what reauthorization does. Because the only thing I know is it won't be this. It might be more, might be less, probably be more. And once we know that, then we'll change.

[Rep. Chloe Tomlinson (Clerk)]: Okay, thanks.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: So I'm just gonna piggyback on Representative Casey. So Route 22A is, I think our concern probably is more of a safety issue. There's a lot of tractor trailers that use that road. There's been a lot of deaths on the road. Not having it even in a ten year or eleven year plan. I know that we've spoken about that, I know we had public hearings on it too. I realize there's a lot of right of way purchases that have to happen up through that roadway, that's a heavily transit. That's the only road we have on the western part of the state. That's it. People get off Route 4 and that's it. You know, that's a concern for me that there's a lot of people that travel that road daily. My concern is the safety issue. Any crossways, because there's very few of those coming through, but it's just a road itself, it's narrow, and there's no soldier involved? And

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: we've heard that, and I think we did a project maybe two or three years ago there to try to improve it, and we'll still continue to do some of those incremental. But as far as a full rebuild, widened everything, that's a bit further out.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Okay. You plan on doing incremental?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, we'll continue to look at that and that's through the paving project. Are there things we can do to improve safety? But it may not be a full reconstruction as was desired.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Might have to ask some of the old timers that are around, but is that twenty two a because back historically, plan was major Super Route 4 to Rutland and Super Route 7 north and South So that was sort of like that wasn't going to be the main travel route, that it was just all about Route 7 was headed towards becoming a limited access all the way North and South. They only got so far, but that was the plan. The right of ways were brought up all the way along there. Was 22A sort of suffered because of that? That I don't know.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Before my time, for sure. Well,

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: we'll ask Senator Bennington. There he is. But I will say, as far as Senator Westman, well, they both started here. They started here. I don't know. I don't think they know what happened. Would be before that. I suspect long before that.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: And that's sort of the challenge is the way we build a budget is we start at the 03/25 and work backwards, not start at the needs and work up to a number because we know we're resource constrained. And it is a bit of a zero sum game. So, yeah, we could do more roadway projects, but which bucket do you wanna pull from? And and so it's it's not a loss on me that there are unmet needs, but it's also their unmet desires. But it is a bit of a zero sum game with the current revenue forecast. If you're not

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: in that list of legacy projects, unless something dramatically else changes, you're not getting into them. Not in the near future for sure. That near future is a year and a half or more for each one of them from Pittsburgh, Brandon, Putney, Route 78, Route 2, Cabot, Danville, let alone those are all before for Jens Bypass or 22A or anything else. And those are a year and a half each. That's an eight to ten years minimum before you're going to see anything else unless there's a major political chain in that area. So that's what sets the tone for the next group of people that are going to tell us a similar thing on their smaller projects potentially or not. We'll see what they have to say.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, I think this slide illustrates it as well as anything. If we're looking at a $40,000,000 target, we're over $40,000,000 all the way out to 2043.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Casey? Do they have more roads than us today? Or I believe about the same area parity?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I think they have a little over 5,000 and we've got 3,300. They yeah. They've got

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: I see their budgets quite a bit lower than ours, they not tons, but I just wonder how they how they do it, do their roads for less than us. It looks like little over 100,000,000 Well, so I was just Yeah. So so I don't We're doing our best practices. Right? I mean

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: I I mean,

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I I will say they do things differently in New Hampshire. I'll also say that they have the flu. Right? And so that alters the paradigm.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: And we can't do that because we because we accepted government money to build the highways that

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. So so if we wanted to create a toll road, we could do that, but we would have to pay for it ourselves and we could only toll the portion of the road that we built ourselves at this point. So if we wanted to just, for instance, add a lane on I-eighty 9 between exits, whatever, 12 and 17, you would have a lane set off to the side effectively that we built ourselves. You could pull that lane, but people could build right in the other two lanes.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I think the other two lanes I forgot you

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: can see. And

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: you're forced to go into pain.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Is that

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: how you I'm sorry.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: How about 22A?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: There you go. Well, so I will say I'm aware I'm aware of the bill. Again, trying to guess what it would cost to build a limited access all the way through that. Yeah, I mean, we're talking billions probably. And so then the question is, and this is the other thing with toll roads that are sort of alluded to, you get something that's called leakage, where people don't take that road. So, what happens to the traffic on Route 7? What happens to the traffic on some of these other routes? Because they're not yet Route 30, so they're not going to take 22A. So, it not only is a problem on the funding piece, because now you're not getting the revenue you thought you were getting, but now you've increased the load on those sort of spur routes. And so it becomes a challenge to build a neutral road given this client.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: No

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: comments from the Northeast Kingdom.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: NRC No. Eight fourteen coming up.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Some of these issues of these large projects, does it affect things like the Burlington And Winsky Bridge

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: that's moving forward either way? Yeah. So that's going forward either way. And I think you all know Costa Pappas, who's done phenomenal work helping us get funding for that project. Some of those bridge projects, they are easier to predict funding because of the TIB, because that's the only place that money can really go, and they're not fighting for T fund. So again, we've been fortunate on a couple of fronts on the bridge side. One, more predictable funding, and two, the emergency relief funds that came in that were above and beyond our formula funds.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you very much for coming in for the conversation. And I know we'll see you again here in the committee. So we are adjourned until 03:00.