[00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to our weekly webinars hearings that occurs here on our Web page every Friday at noon. My name is Brianna. I'm a sustainable transportation Vermont intern. And I'm so excited to introduce our speaker for today, Deb Sachs. So I'm going to give a little introduction of who Deb is and what her work has been in the past couple of years. And then I want to introduce a new feature before Deb presenting. So Devore's a native Vermonter, a graduate of UVM and has more than twenty five years of experience advancing transportation efficiency, climate action and sustainable development. She's been a contractor for governor 2012, providing technical assistance to listen to reduce the cost and environmental impact of transportation, among other renewable electricity and sustainable development projects. Deb Deb collaborates and coordinates with more than a dozen entities to encourage transportation efficiency across Vermont and beyond. In her capacity as CEO of Eco Strategies and director of Net Zero Vermont. So today that's been talking about working together for transportation, agility and positive behavior change. So what we're gonna do a little bit different today is for anyone that has questions, you'll actually be able to join the stream if you'd like. So I will post a link in the comments section to access the stream. And then once the Q&A starts, you're welcome to join the stream. And ask your questions directly to death. If you don't feel comfortable with this. Feel free to just do it the right way of just posting your comment in the comment section. And I can say it for you. And if anyone has any questions, please ask me in the comment section and I'll try and get you as soon as possible. And if you decide to use the link, I recommend using Chrome. It just seems to work better and less, number one. All right. Thank you so much for being here.

[00:02:02] Thank you. I'm I'm really glad to be here today. And would you bring up the slides as we're. Of course. I really appreciate them. Appreciate all my friends being here today with me on this. And, you know, you mentioned that I am a graduate of DVM. That was quite a while ago with a master's in natural resources planning. So I think there might be some students on today's webinar as to welcome. And I know where you where you're at. Having been at UVM. Well, you know, I think my whole message today is working together and working. And I'm privileged to work with a lot of different folks on on transportation efficiency, on this problem, climate change. And I'm both concerned and hopeful. And so there's one thing what I'd like to leave with you today is that to keep a big picture about this in front of you and remind ourselves that that and yourselves and others that we need to invest more time and money in the problem.

[00:03:20] So you go to next slide, please. Well, as the introduction said, this webinar, the curtain dropped on March in March when the governor said stay at home waters. And this is really going to be a really defining period in our lives. This is ushering in the pandemic will usher in an economic depression. We're experiencing health. Our health and economic systems, we're we're already suffering before the pandemic. And public transportation was waning to actually for the last 10 years, we've seen declines in public treatment. Right. Riding the bus. And why? And next slide, please. This slide shows the impacts of global emissions, but the impacts of Koven on global emissions. And as you can see from this that we saw a terrific. And this is pretty hard to see on this. Wondering if I can make this bigger. Oh, I can. Okay, great.

[00:04:54] That surface transportation took a big dove.

[00:04:59] And as you can see, it's in green there. But overall emissions, global emissions declined with Kovik. But the top slide shows that the U.S. really is. Per capita, the largest user or largest emitter, if you will, of greenhouse gas emissions. I have in the source is this chart on the right hand side from the the Global Carbon Project is showing how emissions actually declined from.

[00:05:42] February, March, and dropped down to its lowest point about April 7th, and then actually were recovered in terms of emissions. And so the Global Carbon Project is also sourced here.

[00:05:56] And shows that, you know, who would have thought our carbon dreams would come true right overnight. The question is, will they be short lived or is there an opportunity to pivot?

[00:06:11] And that's part of today's discussion that I think here in Vermont. We have a lot of opportunities for taking advantage of those opportunities. We still have a lot of work to do. But we're we're making progress. And I'm going to give you a snapshot. Next slide, please. A snapshot of how we're working together in Vermont. Through a few projects on transportation agility, and I like the word agility because it just is really understanding that our transports heat. We need to be thinking about our transportation system holistically.

[00:06:51] And while we have challenges in front of us, we can meet those by advancing our work to decarbonize our transportation system.

[00:07:02] Next slide, please.

[00:07:06] So.

[00:07:09] I took this phrase from my good friend and partner, David, but her staff and, you know, he remarked that crisis equals change and change equals opportunity. We really have slid onto the other side of peak oil and we really are in a world now with more constrained resources. So it is vital that we take this opportunity that the pandemic has given us at reducing our, you know, at seeing our greenhouses drop. We are we really have have an opportunity to really seize the moment. One of the things that's critically important is that we you may have been guessing we've heard this before in past presentations right here on Fridays at noon from many illustrious friends and colleagues. But we we need to really move into electrifying our transportation sector and investing more in public transportation. I will say that Vermont really has invested and flexed a lot of dollars, even from the general fund into public transportation. But the question is, is are we making enough headway to actually address this global climate crisis that we're in as well as health and economic crisis?

[00:08:47] And.

[00:08:48] My world. What I've worked in most most of all is is is trying to encourage behavior change.

[00:08:59] And.

[00:09:00] This change and opportunity before us is really looking at the more efficient and carbon friendly modes of transportation, and that's boats moving things by boats and trains, busses. And I'll speak a little bit about micro transit. I know that that was mentioned in past presentations. I'll try to give you a sneak preview on behalf of Go Vermont. And I believe maybe Dan Currier might be listening in and able to join us, too. So if there are questions, I'm going to just say to my friends. Let's get a dialog and answer the experts that are here to answer those questions. And finally, it's been looked at and politicized and what not.

[00:09:50] But I really believe that we really need to pass a carbon pollution tax in order to leverage the resources and make the resources available for us to tackle this huge problem, especially right now in this economic crisis.

[00:10:09] Let's go to next slide. So.

[00:10:13] The big picture, and this is a busy slide, but this big picture really kind of frames, I couldn't really get one image on what agility means transportation agility means, but really is looking at the entire system of transportation, how we're linked, how we're our communities are designed and structured in terms of accessibility to pathways and sidewalks and connecting neighborhoods to to. Services and such, and will then actually look at a snapshot and in a few minutes about what the attitudes of Bery residents are towards a variety of things as getting there. You know, we really have to get rid of the car, must recycle it and get into investments in public transportation busses, trains, and really look at using our legs more. As we heard from Dave Cohen last week, bicycling bikes, the promise of Pete bikes and and electrifying busses and and and eventually trains. And that needs to happen through Vermont's continued work on investing in renewable energy. And we can't do it without building wind and solar and a whole lot of efficiency. And thankfully, our friends at government and partners are working together on that.

[00:11:56] And I would like to turn it in. Next slide, please.

[00:12:04] And this is just images and, you know, a name is back to the future, if you will. We used to travel by train right here in Vermont, had 90 train stations. We have a fleet thing. Thanks to a private investor, David, who invested in trains. We have trains ready to get on tracks. We have investments already happening through V trains and other partners on electrifying our bus system GMT.

[00:12:35] Actually just got its first bus. And there's a couple of other bus companies in Vermont. One other at least that are trying out and trying to understand whether large coach busses can actually function in Vermont's winters. And I'll make mention of the green ride bikes here. That's in Chittenden County. And I think this is an image of cargo bikes in Brattleboro.

[00:13:10] So, again, these are folks that are advancing and but we we need to go faster. Yes. Life looks.

[00:13:21] So I think my secret sauce is in working with many of you and hopefully to work with more folks on this transportation agility on bringing the integration of clean and green transportation options that are easy, successful. Next slide. And I really feel privileged. I said it does, and then I started to get, you know, a slide of all those that I'm working with that have the talent. And this is kind of like mind boggling how many of us are working on this in some aspect of planning, health policy, electrifying in great resources.

[00:14:08] And I might add.

[00:14:09] That each one of these in their own right. I mean, I have the regional plan, this Chinen County Regional Planning Commission mentioned here up at the top, they're affiliated with 10 or 11 others that also have connections that are advancing good work in the regions. And we can, up on the right hand corner, helped co-found the Can. I was one of the co-founders of Buchanon Tremendous Group trying to give, you know, opportunities and support to volunteers across the state to leverage their energy and resources to address this problem. And I'm going to mention a few more of these as I talk about a handful of projects that I'm associated with that I'm excited about, that I've been part of for a few years. And let's go to the next slide and talk about a project program that's been been around this I've been privileged to be part of, which is called The Way to Go Challenge. And we made it into the way to go to school challenge a focus a couple of years ago with locomotion and a few others, the Regional Planning Commission go Vermont. And it's a voluntary program that's branded and enjoys, which was not listed on all those folks that I partner with.

[00:15:44] I neglected to put the businesses that have helped make these voluntary programs successful and possible. But this is basically a behavior change program statewide, working with schools to encourage walking, biking, carpooling, taking the bus, just getting back to the way we used to travel versus drive alone. It includes recognition and incentives. And I'll note that we've had some very handsome incentives and donations to get attention to this in a sector that's that's really about teaching kids and not so much about transportation. So we really have worked hard as a collaborative group with many of those that I mentioned in the slide before on on getting out there. And this is just a snapshot. Next slide, please.

[00:16:50] Public engagement, I mentioned Barry City and they contracted with eco strategies to help them with public engagement on their energy plan. And last March town meeting, we conducted a survey of 165 folks from town meeting, completed the survey. And this is just one question in thinking about Barry's transportation future. I'll just note that most people drive alone in Barry, but a fair amount do take the bus and carpool. But what I was curious to see is all the options of making resources more convenient and reliable and affordable.

[00:17:37] Bus service sidewalks, train service making carpooling and van pooling easier transportation options for older of Vermont older adults, that sidewalks came in as the highest. No. Important to people, so those those community connections connecting their neighborhoods to services came in. I mean, all of them represent real support between the blue and the green. But I was curious that sidewalks came in as the highest number. Next slide. Next slide, please.

[00:18:17] So that's part of what Barry has done over the last few months, is engage the community and gather stories and put up sort of information, tips, if you will, on front porch forum and on Facebook. And what's been clever is to get folks to chime in and do a little YouTube message from their business. So drives business for the community, but it gives them a community message as well. How do you do a spring bike checkup? What do you look for? This is Darren, who if you go to this city's Web page, which is in the sources, you'll be able to get a chance to see what that community message is.

[00:19:08] So every Thursday, there's an information tip that goes in and Jared here is showing people how to check their tire pressure because, of course, that's an energy related thing. If your pressure in your tires not there, then your efficiency goes down.

[00:19:26] And so it takes a, you know, a lot of research and understanding and checking and rechecking and then producing these little YouTube's really keeps this in front of very residents.

[00:19:41] Next slide, please.

[00:19:45] Now, I'm going to talk about a Baruth that hasn't started yet.

[00:19:52] And but what I'm really excited about is a project called Walk to Shop and joining joining me today, hopefully in a chat room will be Phil and Stu, who who worked with this is their idea.

[00:20:12] They came to net zero, Vermont and asked if we would help.

[00:20:17] And we also, through Vermont, is interested in promoting any zero net energy and a walking culture.

[00:20:27] And a visible walking culture is really important.

[00:20:32] In my opinion, and thankfully, partners like Cathedral Square and AARP and the city of Burlington are all on board with this project. And so with some funding that's pending, we might be able to pilot trolly share project. And I'm not going to say too much.

[00:20:53] More about that as we could talk more from Stewart and Phil next up.

[00:21:06] This Timor. When we talk about Mike Roach Granth.

[00:21:35] It looks like Deb lost connection, but she's back once the.

[00:21:54] Can you hear me now?

[00:22:03] Yes. OK. You hear me now? OK. Let's see. Technical difficulty here.

[00:22:13] We're going back to the micro transit's slide.

[00:22:26] Let's see. OK, here we go. Great. Thank you. If you could go back a slide. Another one. There's just three more slides.

[00:22:42] Micro transits. Non demand, real time public transit offering, which is is optimizing your transit, your transit last mile option. And deach, France recently obtained a grant to pilot this in Montpelier. And at the at the nudge and urging of sustainable Montpelier coalition and B, Tranz working together. Fingers crossed, we're hoping to launch in the winter of 2021. COGAT certainly has put a, you know, a realistic damper on things. And, you know, hopefully this will still happen. But stay tuned. We could have our very first micro transit. That could be disrupting fixed route transit. And in GMT is involved in this. And I don't think I know that GMT is involved. And hopefully we'll see something new and promise on the micro transit level. Next line.

[00:23:57] Thanks. Lastly, I'm going to feature Go Vermont, who is, you know, a central clearinghouse for transportation, all things with a mission to reduce the cost and environmental impact of transportation. And this is a screenshot of a portion of their page.

[00:24:15] But Dan Currier and Ross McDonald and I are, you know, along with the network of partners, we're empowering communities and service providers to meet the challenges of access, affordability and convenience. And we've got a new trip planner that's being featured and rocking its way through the sound waves. And so I would invite you to join Vermont and try out the trip planner and the other great free resources available on the site. Next slide.

[00:24:51] One of the things that you should do is these are great apps that are downloadable.

[00:24:58] You can see where your bus is through the transit app. Many of you probably know about this, but be sure to take take advantage of the ride share app and the token transit so you don't have to have change. Well, actually, right now busses are free, but these are all apps that are great and not many people know about them. And that's our job to promote them.

[00:25:27] That's about all I have. These are some of the sources and links to the comments that I made.

[00:25:34] And thanks for the. The technology challenges.

[00:25:43] Well, thank you so much for that. And you have quite a few people waiting in the street. So if you're comfortable separating them up. Yeah. OK, great. So you and Phil are here. So I don't know if you want to start with them. And they can talk a little bit about the trolley project for sure.

[00:26:05] I mean, I think what we want to try to do is if there are questions for them or, you know, if you're if you're seeing questions in the chat, bring up the people that is there any questions that you have on the trolley?

[00:26:20] Yes. If anyone has questions about the Charlie, please post them and what not. Or posting any questions, I'll just ask two questions that have been posted.

[00:26:33] So, Jacob Wineskin, who is an intern for Sustainable Transportation Vermont, is asking, what do you think is the biggest challenge towards getting car dependent Vermonters to change behavior?

[00:26:45] Oh, that's a good question. Car dependent Vermonter's and changing behavior, I think meeting them where they're at is a good rule of thumb and making note that there's any, you know, just improvement of any kind. Small and incremental, generally speaking, I mean, incentives and programs that make it easy for people to engage and be challenged.

[00:27:14] Some people are you know, they're motivated by challenges. Other people are motivated by financial. A lot of people are motivated, motivated by health. So we pick, you know, pick different partners to come up and dream up programs like the ones that I just presented.

[00:27:35] Thank you. And John Capling has a question. One challenge he sees in Vermont is our land use and zoning laws and local ordinances. What efforts are there to get towns to adopt and enforce? Smart. Yes. And he also said that we need to get that right.

[00:27:58] Yeah. John, you're here absolutely right. And the efforts, I think it will harm your organization for hosting a forum on complete streets and bringing more dialog and conversation by a diverse group is really what we need to continue to have and forums on discussion. We need to. I think we need to simplify some laws. We need to bring people in to understanding that some of the laws are working against us on. And certainly right now with Cauvin. And what I perceive as an exodus from cities and cities have have have long been in existence through pandemics. I'm hoping this will just be temporary time where people lose their fears and we get past Cauvin and they returned to communities. But investments in our communities, in infrastructure, that's for green transit, transportation, green mobility is where we need to do that. I really answered the question, but the complete streets transportation for Vermonter's. There are some some folks out there. And I would I would what I would say is that I would challenge our organizations like the Vermont Planners Assoc. Association and the regional planners actually harness this opportunity to also d complicate life, reduce permitting that's overly overly arduous and whatnot.

[00:29:43] So that's the line. So one question popped up about the Charlie Semenov bring felons to.

[00:29:56] Hello. Hello.

[00:30:00] OK. So this question, Fillery, they're.

[00:30:06] You're seeing a piece of paper, Phil. Or something.

[00:30:15] OK, I'm going to. I'm going to keep the paper. OK. There you go.

[00:30:24] Well, we can't hear you, but I'm going mean ask the question.

[00:30:31] So am an intern friend.

[00:30:33] Sustainable business. Vermont says, I think the shopping trolley is a wonderful idea. However, it seems they would only useful in cities and towns that are already walkable. How can we bring that corner store?

[00:30:47] Things going along with John Bryson in Zone one, Vermont?

[00:30:54] Well, I think one of the as you look at the top left right of our screen where we have the green triangle pedestrian's is the paramount. It's the top one. And as Deb said about Berry, the most important issue was sidewalks making and making things more accessible for that. And we did a map of Burlington where we took the center of a circle being a grocery store, which is one of the things we all do, a universal activity. And it turned out when we drew a circle that was three quarters of a mile, which is 15 hundred steps, over 90 percent of the population of Burlington lives closer than 15 hundred steps. So why do we drive? And as Deb looks at it in in terms of behavior modification, how do we how do we change that? So that's part of the impetus behind using trollies, autonomous transportation. We don't have to have electric vehicles. We just have to have a good parachute's love it.

[00:32:14] Well, thank you for that. And if you either of you want to say anything else about the trolley and then if anyone else has any questions, we can certainly bring them both up or if you have any questions for Deb.

[00:32:32] I think I think that's a good project and I think any support and the idea is to make it transparent and transferable so that it could be in other communities as well.

[00:32:44] To see a visible way of walking in the need for safe walking.

[00:32:51] And there's not one solution. Everything is a mix choice. Only one part of the puzzle, but it could be an important one.

[00:33:00] OK. Well, thank you so much.

[00:33:02] Well, I do have to say one thing about Phil and Stu. They started a bicycle parking in or was instrumental in starting a bicycle parking in Burlington. And look that it's that stock. So it takes a while for these things. And my only comment is, is that we have to move these things faster. We shouldn't be having to have bake sales to address Cobh it and and walking and biking.

[00:33:29] So, yes, no.

[00:33:32] OK, I'm going to bring some other people that are in the stream. So thank you. Failing to help. OK. So someone in history, Isabella.

[00:33:46] Since the. So I think you're on mute.

[00:33:57] Windsor. OK. Hi. I was great.

[00:34:06] OK. Yeah. My question. I think similarily too was in here. I asked. One of the fiala of the first questions about changing the car dependent behavior. I think you brought up the idea that COGAT is such an opportunity rechanged. What do you see? What kind of like actionable steps do you see other than promoting all these organizations and promoting behavior change? What kind of smaller steps do you think should lead to a result in the long term?

[00:34:45] For more walking or biking? Biking. Most smaller steps. The I think that the. You know, that coalbed is right now has an opportunity because people are feeling safer biking and walking and small steps would be to do more of what we're doing with, like, Darren at the bike shop and those folks like Dave. Dave Cohen from VE Bike Personal Consults. Those sorts of things make such a huge difference because I think people see an obstacle that they don't feel safe, even with the infrastructure that's in place. But our friend Dave Cohen said, you know, I said to me in the past. You know, someone that said, I never get on a bicycle because it's just not safe? Well, he had a of a personal consult, which he did, and talk to her about putting a flag on her bike and, you know, putting, you know, all this stuff safety gear on.

[00:35:53] And suddenly she's now become a, you know, avid visible biker in Brattleboro. Yeah.

[00:36:03] So small steps, small steps are in how we can support and advocate together if we all decide we want to get you know, I think the bike challenged local motion. Did a national participate in the National Bike Challenge.

[00:36:16] That's the sort of thing that actually providing framework for folks is a reason to do. It just gets people out and gets them comfortable. But there's a lot to it. Thanks for the question. And I answered that well.

[00:36:32] No, that was great. I think there's just too much power in small community action. I think you really have tapped into that, especially in various city and just so many other projects.

[00:36:41] So I'm going to just just tell everybody that you're interning with me this summer and I'm just so blessed.

[00:36:50] We have a great time to get these things around. Yeah. Lipping, Jill.

[00:37:02] OK, so I think we have one less person in the stream, and it's David, so I'm going to bring David up and then. Yes.

[00:37:16] Hello.

[00:37:18] I just knew myself.

[00:37:23] David. Hello.

[00:37:27] Hi.

[00:37:29] Do you have a question for Deb or would you love something about any project that you're currently working on?

[00:37:40] Really, no question. As Deb said earlier, that we are in a time of tremendous change and crisis and it's a time of opportunity to do something much faster. And the question is, all the folks that are working on these transportation issues, that we have to be a little bit bolder and take some bigger chances of moving off of the automobile as our transit, how we're moving around. So. And right now with COGAT, people are going back to the car. So that's a problem. And so I don't have all the answers besides saying we're going to have to do something different. And it's just not voluntary. It's going to have to be directed by some leadership that we're going to be changing things and putting pricing on things that we don't want and encouraging through incentives, dollars and things we do. So.

[00:38:54] Definitely, definitely. And I think Deb is frozen right now. But for all viewers watching. A lot of viewers have so much information that you have to check out after the webinar or even now. But I'm just going to. Well. Thank you, David. And wow.

[00:39:23] Never moving. Reloading. I'm just going to play next week's events. So next to Brackley going to Livestream. Who wants to keep going? So any of you want me or you want to see. What the sickness looks like online, we will have it changed. If anyone has any questions about that, please feel free. It's not Justin. Well, Deb, I'm just closing up, but thank you so much for being here. This is so amazing.

[00:40:00] Thank you. You're a big, big help. And thanks to all the all the participants.

[00:40:04] Yeah, absolutely. Please let us know what you thought about having people on your screen. We'd love to hear your feedback, but I hope everyone has a really great weekend.

[00:40:15] Thank you very much. Bye.