Sharp cost increases one more reason to halt $800,000 road study

The world hit its hottest year (again), car travel is the No. 1 contributor to climate change, yet it’s business as usual at the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission, where planners recently voted to add nearly $200,000 to their $526,000 study of a short section of Interstate 89 and some new and existing interstate exits — car-centered improvements that would cost tens of millions of dollars and do nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

And more cost overruns are expected. The organization’s director said they now expect the study to cost $800,000 — a 50 percent increase over what was approved in the spring of  2019. More cost overruns above that cannot be ruled out, the project’s manager said in a recent meeting, online here (see 33.56 and 1:11:58) with most of the added costs related to studying the new and existing exits.

And amazingly, the same traffic assumptions that the planners used pre-pandemic are still being used to guide decision-making, as if the sharp drops in traffic demand due to the pandemic never happened.  We’ve seen a 40% drop in workplace traffic, and a rise in telecommuting and telehealth as people stay closer to home. 

More recent traffic data collected by the state Agency of Transportation shows a 20 percent decrease on the key sections of I-89 in this study. Given these trends, it is time to halt this study and focus on how to enable more people to drive less — whether it is telecommuting or other travel demand measures, options that will be far less expensive, and better for the climate, than building new road infrastructure.

The added costs are mostly related to further analysis of existing and new interstate exits, the project manager said — despite decades of evidence that new exits increase vehicle use, add sprawl to rural communities and will cost in the tens of millions of dollars. 

Spending $800,000 on studying a road is one thing, but unfortunately, those funds come from other planning projects. The regional planning commission is charged with planning for Chittenden County, working in partnership with state agencies and the region’s towns. The regional commission spends about $1.25 million a year on transportation planning. This coming fiscal year, starting in July and ending in June 2022, about 30% of those planning dollars (plus an additional $55,000 from VTrans) will be spent on this one road study — planning for new infrastructure that will probably never be built. 

It makes no sense to take precious planning dollars as the world heats up — and pour them into another road study. 

To pay the additional costs, money is being reallocated from several town projects — projects the organization stated were already going to be delayed—- including a transit study and two projects related to bike and pedestrian planning. 

Yet, because these town projects are delayed and funding is now available, rather than dump the $200,0000 into the road study, would it not make sense to invest in planning that reflects the organization’s stated goals of greenhouse gas emission reductions and increasing non-motorized forms of transportation? Staff at the organization have led and proposed many good projects over the years; why let the road study take all the resources? 

Take telecommuting, for example. A recent survey by the Center for Research on Vermont found overwhelming support for more telecommuting options for Vermonters — which would reduce traffic on our roads substantially. The pandemic has allowed employers to understand that employees can work from home productively. Employees are discovering that they like it. Survey after survey confirms this. 

And companies around the country and in Vermont are reducing their central office spaces and allowing more work-from-home options. Since traffic is down sharply at this moment, good planning would focus on how to continue those trends and not go back to business as usual. 

And most importantly, there’s the issue of equity. The I-89 project does nothing to help those too young or too old to drive, or those without access to cars. It does next to nothing for those who walk or bike as a form of transportation. And investing new dollars in I-89 will almost certainly create an incentive to live far from urban and suburban areas that are served by transit, sewer and water — places where Vermont has already made significant infrastructure investments. 

Instead of putting more money into this road study, planners should take a pause and think about where planning dollars could be best spent — at this critical moment  —  and initiate and invest in studies that provide more than a continuation of the status quo.

This article was originally published on VT Digger on 1/29/2021.