News and Updates

Today at the Leahy ECHO Center on the Waterfront a collection of heavy hitters in the energy field came together to talk with the general public. The meeting was not given a clear focus, but it provided a good overview of how Vermont ties into the larger nationwide energy debate. Bernie Sanders, along with Dan Ricter (sp?) from New Capital Energy Corporation gave the major presentations of the night. All in all a good presentation. One issue I thought that was oddly not discussed was the RGGI (Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative), especially since Vermont was the first of the 7 states to pass the necessary legislation.
After Dan was done the discussion began to focus a bit more on Burlington, and how the City can become more sustainable in its energy practices. My focus was largely on Scott Johnstone. He brought up some great points on how transportation systems have been funded, and why it is clear that pavement and vehicle transporation projects have been funded versues rail or other infrastructure projects. The pay off time and depreciation rates simply mean that the costs versus the benefits of these projects have a much higher per year ‘benefit’ than the same amount of cost for rail for instance. The only way forward on this is to put a long planning horizon on these projects - requiring a 50 to 100 year planning horizon instead of the traditional 20 year.

Scott also mentioned that other initiatives such as Way to Go Week have been amazing successful, but must be carried further into real like long term changes in travel habit. We need to have “TDM on steriods.”

As the City moves forward into the Burlington Transportation Plan it becomes even more necessary to integrate land use, economic growth, transportation into a systems approach by understanding that all impact each other. The need now comes to study things not in a vacuum, but in a holistic ‘total systems’ analysis way.