About 120 people turned out Monday night for an update on the long-stalled and not universally loved Champlain Parkway in Burlington’s South End. At the outset, moderator Greg Marchildon schooled the crowd on the purpose of the event, saying it was to provide information, rather than to be a forum to protest the $30-plus million, 2.5-mile road project.
“We are not here to litigate the design,” said Marchildon, executive director of Vermont AARP, which hosted the event with cooperation from city leaders backing the project. “The Parkway is moving forward.”
The meeting at Champlain School unfolded in an orderly manner with no rabble-rousing to speak of. After presentations on the road design by state and local officials, including Chapin Spencer, director of Burlington Public Works, a panel took questions from the audience, not via microphone, but submitted on index cards, which Marchildon read aloud to the panelists for responses.
Explaining the format of the meeting, Marchildon said he wanted avoid allowing anyone to dominate at the microphone. At the end, he said that he had enough time to ask all but three questions, adding that he “read them all verbatim” and “did not editorialize.”
The format was undemocratic said Burlington resident Barbara McGrew. There were people in the audience Monday who had things to say about improving the design of the road, but they didn’t get a chance to speak because of the meeting’s format, McGrew said. “The city is very good at coming up with processes that seem like they are orderly, but silence a lot of people.”
McGrew said she doesn’t see the point of the parkway, which would arc from Interstate 189 at the southern gateway of Burlington to Lakeside Avenue, and from there would connect with Pine Street to shuttle more cars downtown. A portion of the parkway was built in the 1980s, but never opened to traffic because of permitting problems. The road now has a state environmental permit and is scheduled for construction in 2018, despite opposition from some artists who work in the South End.
Even supporters of the parkway, including Spencer, acknowledged aspects of the project aren’t ideal. For example, it will dead-end at the southern end of Pine Street, missing an opportunity to link to Queen City Road. In addition the project will neither include a park-and-ride facility, which residents have requested, nor will it increase the width of sidewalk in front of the busy Arts Riot space on Pine, as has been requested.
McGrew said the supporters seemed to be saying: “Just build it, and we’ll fix it later. My question would be, if you know these things, why not build it correctly from the start?”
Others in the audience think the project will be helpful, with redesigned intersections, a new stretch of multi-use path on the west side of Pine Street, and the connection to 189. “It represents progress for the city, progress for a progressive city,” said Steve Conant, owner of Conant Metal and Light on Pine Street. The amenities will improve the experience for non-drivers on Pine Street, and on balance, he said, the road sounds like an improvement.
Conant was surprised by the mellow tone of the meeting. “I think the meeting was informative and unexpectedly civil.”
As Spencer explained, the current Parkway is not the four-lane highway that was conceived in the 1960s. Early versions would have plowed through Burlington’s waterfront, laying a thick swath of concrete and putting historic buildings such as Union Station at risk of demolition. He acknowledged that some of the people at Monday’s meeting in the Champlain School gym helped oppose the original design. “I want to thank you,” he said. “Today the project is vastly different.”
Not different enough for everyone, though. “Design for today. What do we need today?” asked Amey Radcliffe, a graphic artist who works in the Howard Space building on Pine Street. The parkway will only make Burlington more car-centric, she said, contradicting planning goals to reduce car use.
Some supporters said shoppers and workers heading downtown are frustrated by current congestion on north-south arteries such as Shelburne Road, which is “overtaxed,” according to Kelly Devine, executive director of the Burlington Business Association, which favors the Parkway.
Event host AARP lobbies for seniors-friendly transportation projects, which incorporate pedestrian and bike access and also public transit. The Parkway design has changed from a 1960s highway to a multi-modal street, AARP’s Marchildon said. “It has earned our support.”
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It seems to have been made difficult for residents to voice their opinions. “The Parkway is moving forward” translates as: “We’re doing it no matter what.” That doesn’t sound very progressive. I hope those who cut the trees on the west side of Pine to create “a new stretch of multi-use path” (Is it not multi-use now?) multi-use that path every day.
I would like to see a portion of the original plan, as I remember it, revised, redesigned etc. The portion over the Barge Canal, now that it appears environmental restrictions have been reduced, why make all the twists and turns? Go back to the earlier plan of a bridge over the canal and end the road by connecting to bottom of Maple St. it seems to me that was, or something like it, the original plan. I think it makes more sense than the Pine St. plan.
Adding more road closer to the lake is a terrible idea, a risk to the health of Lake Champlain with all the toxic and hazardous soils that are best left untouched. This plan risks polluting the Lake while pandering to solo occupancy vehicle drivers looking for the easy life.
I commute by bicycle, everywhere around town. This design is hardly much more than new paving. The design shows a portion of new shared use path and repaving the same old “sharrow” biker commute lanes. Bikers will continue to ‘share’ the same lane as automobiles- a tight, frightening squeeze between getting doored or getting hit by a truck! This is what this 43 million dollar project is “providing”: a repaving job, more pollution into Lake Champlain, and more traffic on an already congested street.
A dose of modern sense and the highest recognized safety measures is what this out-dated project needs. Wake up, look around, and understand what is already adopted by our very own State of Vermont -in Montpelier, Brattleboro, Manchester, the list is long and growing: roundabouts are replacing traffic lights.
Reason: less fatalities.
The proof is in decade plus of local, national and international record keeping.
This is why you are seeing roundabouts popping up in your travels.
Demand modern safety requirements. This is outrageous to be presenting a design that has traffic lights when we know that roundabouts already have proven themselves to reduce fatalities.
Amazes me. Our Citizenry of Burlington is witnessing a proposal that is $40 million dollars of lame.
The meeting was civil because the citizens were silenced with a Stalinist-style intimidation as if the speakers had willfully forgotten that they serve us, not themselves. The organizers were clearly trying to avoid another situation like the one when Plan BTV South End was revealed–a situation where citizens were given the microphone and allowed to voice real, serious, and thoughtful criticism. This meeting was a snow job. Chapin and the gentleman from Local Motion both admitted repeatedly that if the parkway were being designed today it would be VERY different and that the bike and walk facilities are substandard. Everyone on the panel told the same backwards story: we are excited to push this forward and make it happen even though it is a largely flawed project. After we build it we will spend years building other things to fix the mistakes in this plan. Could anything be more absurd? Chapin also thanked the members of the audience who had fought the original plan for the Circ. Too bad he and his cronies don’t have the foresight to listen to the citizens again–citizens who have sane, reasonable, and implementable revisions to the plan! If Burlington is still a democracy the leaders need to listen to the people and they need to provide an updated approval and review process for this outdated project, including safe and responsible evaluation of the dangers of moving and disposing of toxic soils in the area.
Check out the sane suggestions that the city wouldn’t hear for a revision of the Parkway plan at http://www.safestreetsburlington.com.
Very manipulative and condesending format. I’m glad I did not attend this meeting because walking out would have been my option. AARP could do much better and not act like a control freak when hosting meetings. Apparently they have not attended Town Meetings across the state. They should talk with retired UVM professor Frank Bryan, they might learn something about Vermont citizen’s democracy.
Build it now and fix it later….just like the “circulator” in WInooski! Maybe this new parkway can compete with it for the top spot for accidents in the state?
The C6 section of the Parkway, now morphed into the Railyard Enterprise Project, is designed to handle the increased cars from the C1 and C2 sections that will dump into an already congested area between Kilburn and Maple. I still believe we could be better served by completing and improving the current built section up past Sears Lane to a Park and Ride lot with solar roofs and regular electric bus shuttle to downtown. In addition, a much improved protected bike/walk lane from I-89 right into downtown. This “Park and Ride Way” access road could be shared with 25-mile-per-hour truck travel with well-designed egress points at Home, Flynn and Lakeside. Here are the problems an idea like this solves: 1. Provides a better plan for a bike/walk. 2. Removes noisy trucks from neighborhoods 3. Reduces cars (and greenhouse gases) downtown 4. Encourages alternate and public transportation 5. Lessens traffic on Pine St. allowing it to continue as a thru-street 6. Costs less than the current plan 7. Provides an option people might like, and 8. Represents one of many possible solutions designed for today’s problems – not those of the 60s or 80s. Add outdoor sculptures and landscaping around the lot and it could even be beautiful. Yes, the parkway plan has been around a long time. That’s not a reason to accept less than the best for our city.
When politicians and planners make a mistake, they typically resort to two tactics. When they hope to hide a mistake–such as the $300,000-plus that taxpayers will pay for removal of the pile of toxic soil from the Moran Plant area, now dumped in Leddy Park– officials hope for a low profile. It’s just the cost of making Burlington great, they seem to say. When they are heavily invested in a mistake–in this case the Champlain Parkway–they recast the plan as “improved”, “not your old Belt Line Connector”, line up a claque of supporters (AARP, Local Motion, SEBA, bba), and when public pressure forces an open forum, pretend that the decision has already been made. “The ship is moving; sure there’s the iceberg but we can’t change direction, so hang on; we’re standing by with duct tape.”
In any language, the Parkway is a legacy project, built and defined by past mistakes–specifically, the limited-access segment C1 already built. It violates all the current rules of connectivity–truncates Pine and four other local streets, dumps bikers and walkers at Home Ave., far short of shopping centers and housing to the south. It creates two right-angle turns–essentially intestinal blockages–at Lakeside, destroys existing remote parking facilities at Lakeside and on the C! apron, and plays havoc with Eglesby Brook drainage. And those thousands of yards of “contaminated” soil? They’ll just go back under the roadbed, VTrans tells us. Just as the Leddy Park dirt pile will go under the bike path. Right.
But isn’t that iceberg getting closer?
When and how was the current design designed and voted on?
Nine years after the last public meeting on the Southern Connector, the $43 million road appears resuscitated and renamed (drum roll) ~~~> Champlain Parkway! The design has undergone many changes in nine years (with no public input). At a public meeting on 11/30/15, 100+ people who turned out were informed that they were not allowed to comment on the design (no public input on design!). Then there was a presentation of the parkway design, and anyone who had a question was told to write it on a note card and pass it in. What are the doughboys afraid of? http://www.safestreetsburlington.com/