association and everything to me good morning and welcome i want to just thank all the community leaders and members who came out this morning to join us i think we got lucky with the weather sounds like the worst is coming tomorrow the the annual business summit i was surprised to recognize that and every year we try to do a topic focus on ideas and concepts that support and further the pig mission so for those of you don't know this our mission how does transportation and transportation choice serve the b b a mission you can see very clearly the focus on economic vitality but we also build out a bunch of different categories i wonder if we should add transportation in there because that is such a vital part of the discussions we need to have and we want to grow our downtown every time a new project comes along the mediate has to get involved as folks now we were pretty strongly involved in the redevelopment of the mall we worked a lot with ma of ministration to move things forward we also work on things like the bike path and improving city hall park but specifically when you're doing downtown development every development especially in project includes housing parking the term we use that becomes part of the discussion and every project has to have a  plan here's the latest one but i'm asking the question today should we think of transportation plans rather than party plans for our city there's cambrian rides that's a project that projects can sometimes struggle with moving forward and there is a very moving forward with their parking plans eagles landing for example because of the close proximity to downtown and the number of students living living there made a hundred more even though burlington studies show that we have a veil of available parking lot of times this issue comes up when we're trying to redevelop our city especially when we focus on density so we're bringing the transportation topic to today because i think as we look forward to the big forward we want to be proactive about how we as a community solve these problems and we know that parking is emotional in two thousand and fourteen when the b b a worked with the city of burlington to try to make some improvements of parking but parking is just one example although it is the most common prominently of how we move around the burlington so i'm going to do the typical audience poll and it is january and it's been cold snowy out but how many folks walked to the events how many of you throw in your own personal car that's pretty common you know that more than seventy five percent of the people that come in and out of burlington on again any days it's by car how many people  finding a parking space become downtown i'm really happy to put the see the government really because as you can see we've been working with the city of burlington sense two thousand and fourteen to create major change in our parking system this was a free press article that was a rough ride that was the cover when we started this project so we've tried to improve the park and system to make it a little bit easier to park but as we've been looking at parking we've also been looking at what other options we can bring to the table so that when people want to develop downtown they have choices people boys have choices and employers have choices of people who live here have choices we know that with more and more people living downtown they're going to want to have walkability and access to services and we also know that work for me to be that loves to get outdoors loves to do things so our solution for burlington going forward it really needs to look at all of those options and all those choices and some of the things that we've done in the last couple years i'm going to have my team member derek writes in over here raises hand and i know i'm not cheap i'm a supposed to be here today but i don't see and yet together our team and their team has really worked hard to improve burlington hopefully some of you have noticed some of these changes and what's that magic number five hundred five that's the number of previously only privately available parking spaces that have been opened up opened up for public events mainly nights and weekends those faces are privately run and we often get a lot of questions about the rates the city doesn't set the rates for those places and then they tend to have different amounts that they charge so you know where and i still think that even got we got in the bass viol space with cafes people like to walk around it's really the heart and soul of berlin and we took that chance and i think it worked out pretty well today technology and transportation is moving very quickly and it's going to change how we move how fast that comes to northern vermont can be debated how quickly it will be part of our day to day lives a bit of that can be debated this is this is the latest news from twenty nineteen they're going to put a lot of us vehicles on the road in the city of phoenix google's drives program which is now called way mo is actually testing thousands of vehicles already transportation is going to move but so i am asking you to listen and think about marlborough leads and what kind of city we've been working hard to grow downtown and we've been working hard  for us to come together and have a discussion about it now we also want to track more employees down time we do have the seventy rural location where i live ten miles outside of town and i'll tell you when i get to buy a house it's a very different place terms of density it's tough for me to  to get this information out the people that are coming to visit so some other parties emotional parking a car coming down kind of parked cars one form of transportation mark or i want to ask you to stick around for a day to be a part of our discussion and our panel presentation i want you to bring your concerns because i know they're out there your dreams and your ideas to get or look forward and i have to end with guy who put forward he made a bad san francisco at a men's club for fifty dollars that you could write drive a car cross the united states in less than ninety days there were no roads at the time it was a famous journey he made it that was when people were mainly still getting around by yourself but we're a city of risk takers we've created amazing things together in burlington thank you for coming today to help us figure out what's next system and i hope you all keep this short cock feeling that we've come a long way the last six years and optimistic about where we're headed from a transportation perspective so let me say more about what i mean by that  certainly i buy into the idea that we must continue this conversion in these underutilized downtown spaces the parking lots that the properties like the mall property and there's a long list of them  pointed out with the map from plan b t e we have a surprising amount of underutilized lots in our downtown that represent an easy opportunities in some sense to create more jobs create more housing in our downtown without you know in a way that is completely consistent i think with what the great majority of both parties would like to see for the future that in the bill of these lots for these higher better think was a vision of brilliance and there was a risk six years ago we had essentially had a broken housing market where we had created almost no new housing for more than a dozen years and that is a big part of what we have turned around in the last six years is that market is working again we have out you know hundreds of homes that are currently under construction and i think as those home start to come online that's you know they're they're starting to see the grocery project already starting to come online the champlain college means that that's how the average proletarian so it's an even higher percentage of your comp making the average salary and that is very threatening i think to our vision of burlington as an equitable inclusive place if you have that kind of housing pressure means you are forcing people out who are putting up walls as people who want to live here and that's not what role in this and we are so we're doing something about that as we do something about that it does put more pressure on these transportation systems so what are we doing on the transportation side and i think it's a it's a long story so let me start with the car you know it's a good place doc about how we know it's always a little skeptical of this but you know if we we come back here and have this conference in t is more than doubling our historic level of any wall investment in our roads so that we keep them up to standards which which was which was a real challenge intil that both kelly talked a lot about the parking progress that we're making i see that is a critically related element it essential character that is definitely part of the tree and its network although we don't always think of it that way and the progress we've been all is you know what's wrong with the fact that we have so many cars one of the big things that's wrong is the congestion and the parking pressures and the functioning of the people getting around the heart of our climate change challenge that we have struggled most to read it we've actually been moving in the right direction certainly with our lecture speed you know we now have this remarkable milestone we had two thousand and fourteen of sourcing one hundred  plan implemented which we are closer than we've ever been to that would be a big further step in the right direction there and i think that the day where we don't really see heating of the good of our buildings driving climate over the last couple of years to really proactively about how we try it's form our vehicle fleet both of them on the mass transit side where we've been experimenting with electric buses but even more promisingly on the personal better position to push your point than just about anywhere else and you're starting to see it happen we haven't since we announced an incentive program at the beginning of the summer at all local incentive program to go along with the state federal and in fact sure have seen dozens of burlington households get rid of their gas guzzling vehicles by electric vehicles and every time we do that you're making a real transformation and you know my household was one of them it's been a really exciting day changes the way you think improves our streets is also leading to a a total turnaround in the way we take care of our sidewalks one hundred thirty miles of sidewalks and rights and and we're only replacing about one have more than triple that historic output which gets you down into about the right range you know because what sidewalks you last day care about right thirty or forty years and so we we have you know if we can continue this and we will continue this for the next both respects the biking and walking just sort of replacing thing carol we have is not enough and we know that and that's why a year and a half ago we with the city council passed a really strong vote a walk by master plan that really leaves out what additional active transportation projects we will be pursuing over the next fifteen years it was very detailed what we are going to try to do in the next five years and  stuff that's happened over the last few years that affects each of those three areas of the law public interest research group put out this report in two thousand and fifteen dead was sort of a challenge to us that said you know the way you made your transportation system better is by doing you know it's not always by doing these big expensive capital intensive days where you're building your highways or a new dell systems or whatever but that sometimes what is involved is making  systems work better and using modern technology to work better and you know what really thing you're not doing so great and that was the message of their report they they put us down towards the bottom of the i think we're fifty six sixty nine city list in for having it it that it was they were giving us credit for having who were at the time when it wasn't even really legal for her to be getting operating at the time and i've got my timing right so you know since then we have we have m important changes to our ordinance of the goober and lift our operating here and there's been an explosion of use of that type of technology in all of the audience are voting with their feet on that and they are saying that this is a really important  it's generating almost exactly one hundred ten thousand dollars a year dead out we need to reinforce that system while we've also added a tactic you know in part because you were left to ride the tax you stepped up their game and they added tax accounting technology be something that we pushed hard for and that is up now is real time transit data for mass transit riders so that you can look on your  some of these things but we have come a long way in terms of adding these technologies another one is on the near horizon which is by sharing we kept a number of people the room our are working hard to try to car light or even a car for you lifestyles for people living within the city what does that mean well i look at my own life and i think this what it means you know we we are one car family even though we've got two working parents and one when these things start working together when you have better and better walking and biking infrastructure working hand in hand with with these technologies you really move towards a place where people are have to buy two cars and that is that ice ice huge positive the car share and lead you're way ahead of the game or where we could be and i think if we get this better and better more and more households will start to think in that direction so where do we go from here transportation needs major arterials that come in and you know radiate out from burlington i think represent a real opportunity for additional housing and job creation i think that's where we gray as we get actually is for jason policies right as the world continues you know it as the technological advances continue at the spectacular rate we've really i think that is very likely the futurists who say that it is going to decrease the parking need in the future i think are going to be right i think we've hit peak parking demand we see we miss out on these other important public values is as things continue to evolve i think you are going to see the possibility this is something again and again another three years i really want to work hard on and i think when we through this green infrastructure that also cursed quality of life of our streets i mean that is an image of what it might look like in front of security in just a few years which you know think about the times i've been there with your kids trying to and you know you're just in this sea of asphalt you know and we don't even get got you straight it could be so much better and i think that's going to slide shows and i think that's where we're headed if we keep working on these issues together so ranger on the scene and next to me like many others probably could have said all right this is just we should stop doing these things these are unsafe we should the way that it is that the families involved create a movement that has led to one of the most extraordinary we get groups a b c indeed to come and sit down so we can do a wrap up here for the really thank you for participating and we're going to see what they think about some of the things you guys were done so we'll start with her big and the police some group tracks and it is intimidating and abiding and roads are complicated believed by some of the cyclists don't pay for roads and as a result should cater specifically to carts people that use public transportation are like made infrastructure projects are expensive and take forever kelly what do you think about that i'm doing that i'm go live a couple of my panel members to address that but i'm going to talk about number four structural projects they are expensive and they do take a long time if you start looking at road miles that we have a community like pearlington i think that we as members of the community need to continue to think about not only what that investment cost today but what it costs over the long term and you know burlington is not a big city in our general fund budget is about sixty sixty five million dollars  think it's a good part of the conversation to remember that that any kind of capital improvement or infrastructure work is our communal investment in our future so i have to agree with the statement and i think it's an important thing to really be thinking about when you think swoop everybody has a unique view of that they are the only ones that have all the challenges that they have children that they have to drop by the care they have a dog that they need to take care of a habit of urgency during the day to fix a public transportation i might not be able to get home and what they're missing is the ability to use multiple boats of transportation or there are many programs of incentives out there like the right already is a cab that there's many different ways car share is a perfect example being a member of our share and having that as a fallback the public transportation people are like me i guess i could go one step further this might be a touchy subject but there's a lot of of folks are low income and can't afford a car so if they're the ones  tend to write good public transportation all the time then after a while they get it gets if you go well that's for pork or i'm not for that's for somebody to get it that there's just a stigma out there and we really need to do a better job of communication and marketing it sent tips and showing people that all of these opportunities aren't as difficult as they seem to be ok so you are agreeing on some of the solutions so let's have just finished up with a group w  just starting to go here with the those public rights of way are for the public to use and it's for all users walking fighting and cars and i think what we're really trying to do with with those rights away  try to find the right balance of use for them so we don't need ninety percent for cars if there is a a lot of vehicle traffic on that road if there are really we have a volume that requires for a way to route traffic that's fine but where we don't we need to find the best use for that right away and so just sort of like go to another town yes up early to we looked at wilson road there was a segment where we didn't need four lanes converted that two lanes of traffic added bike lanes the other it's really it's a public right of way for all the users ok so jeff generational differences and views about biking and walking at this is a really great way and i think the example we just used in our regatta is some generational different views on smoking you know there was a point in time when i was you know as a kid where it was children who told their parents what wasn't good for them and that's pretty much what changed behavior about smoking was then another generation to realize it when you're older generation wasn't doing you know it was something you need to change i listen to howard dean speech and you are just last week on people a chance to hear that about passing the torch having a next generation come in and that quite honestly feel the same way i feel like right now there's a moment in time where it's my kids generation that wants to be involved in months of change things and our ability to let that generation take that leadership role as fast as they possibly can because there's two options one is they're going to field alienated and not be involved go back to reading the book bowling alone you know where we're just all going to live on our own little private world but the be our goggles on and just not even care about each other or we're going to do exactly the opposite and we're going to create that way for issues like this and this isn't the only one our venue for people to get involved active in the change happens and we can help facilitate god i don't think we're quite done doing our work yet i hope everybody here in this room feels we have a lot to do but i do think that what that generation has see doing from a business perspective if you look at the places they're choosing to live and look at walk score and all those other measures about how walkable communities have become the most in demand type of urban environment we're going to see a change that happens because of those bigger issue as someone who does advocacy work you know when a transportation issue comes up are one of those and i can tell you i get a lot of phone calls and another part of the challenge for downtown is that biking is not as safe as it really needs to be to support the number of people who may choose that as a vote given safer alternatives i wouldn't say that it's easy to get it but i can understand why there's a broad base perception that biking is on say one of the things that's engined here and solutions is an education campaign and talking to walk bike advocates i think we've got to do education on both sides of the equation about that i think we all have seen bikers acting in an unsafe way and certainly the skateboarders and we've also seen cars not paying attention so we've got you know we've got two sides of that issue that we can work on also i mean if you want to see what saved by may look like in the future for burlington a lot of those ideas are in the walk by master plan i think because i represent a business community and many of you here are members i'd love for more of our members to really think about it what they see in that plan is the future of burlington that they envision and what parts of that plan make sense and what parts don't because these issues are going to continually come up in the public forum in the public discussion they'll be votes on them and i'd like to have more of a dialogue with our organization to see where we fall to the generational point and kelly starr reports here from a r p we know from data that they've collected it's both the boomers and the millenniums that want the main reason is because there's not a space there for them but clearly you want to try a bit of that on the other one of the other two well i guess just in terms of how i think about this is really each one of these systems to make them better so that it's easier to make the choice that's right for you these are all individual choices that we look at collectively but we're providing a choice a choice in your presentation you talked about using technology to make it easier want to chime that was the solution let's build another garage downtown to bring macy's to keep people here i'm going to put a ninety out there that i happen i'd love to hear anybody's feedback on it if people are coming to burlington only because the park is convenient we are missing what we are really marketing this city is is much much more that free parking twenty years ago it might have been a different story but we have created an incredibly vibrant downtown and there is so much we can do to make it more vibrant what i think the key is development of the side streets i think one one of the reasons i was so supportive of the mall project is opening that street cred and i think we need to start thinking that people are coming down here for an amazing experience and at a certain level they're willing to tolerate less convenience they may experience out a task corners because the experience is that much better compliment from some work for everybody else i just want to follow up on that is just the year we're talking about transportation but transportation is just a service right now of us get up in the day to dr  to put that in scale when you look at say federal transportation policy the fact that the united states right now does not have a federal transportation program at this point the first time of my life that the highway trust fund is basically bankrupt is of money that we've been able to make these kinds of projects happen whether it's been local projects here or on ten or larger projects around the country that needs to change in new york state where i live we're working now on the largest  project i've ever seen two hundred million dollars empire state trail to connect entirely cross the state to give every community a path like the one that's here buffalo to albany new york city the poncho that is being funded one hundred percent with new york state money because there is no ability to tap into that larger resource that used to be there we're going to see that money again public sector will come back around we'll see that happen be ready for that opportunity by having the private sector in your local bonds working on the nonprofit and other organizations that are here all working together in the resource will find the good projects that happens every time i don't know whether charley wants to but you want to talk about lack of  i've been really struck just recently in the last maybe two years of the conversations that are going on in the transportation profession about the changes coming from technology is just it's going up a curve like this  going from cars to what happens to this technology thomas vehicles and everything that comes with it and it's good it's going to there's going be a lot of changes that happen mobility is a service where you know robert lives are at the front of that it's going to keep changing you know think about if you didn't actually have to pay attention when you drive a car you know what would you do with that time would you move that happening right now at all clearly all m h three where you're stuck but but you know be certainly better but there's a lot of change coming and i guess i don't know the answers to how we all respond to that change you know certainly nobody in one nine hundred twenty envisioned the interstate highway system and i think you know we're at one of those times now and so i would just say i mean i don't want to skip over on the singles help groups like the elderly i mean we are all going to have to explore what this new mode of transportation looks like and how it fits into our community and it's going to come at some point we just don't know when but i think it's a it's an important point to not mess that when people become mobility challenged for raii of reasons out a variety of ages this kind of service could be a game changer for folks that right now you know not i think that they have quote consequences you really careful about technology we've seen this happen so many times in our society about the things that we think are going to change or problems for us it's going to still take effort it's about making  it was a at the end of this event couldn't you nearly half of what we do without the help of great partners and volunteers so i want to make sure i say a great big thanking to the members of our board who work here  all the stuff possible if you want to continue the conversation and spend more time with jeff we're so excited to have him come and hear from him that we created a community event where we've invited the larger community of burlington the compass of the site or a whole bunch more folks show up and it's going to be a less formal set up we'll hear from jeff will also get to hear from hans von east's who is the general manager of a hotel room honest people don't know they're doing a lot to offer more transportation biking transportation for their leading the effort from an employer standpoint on how you tell york employees break down some of those barriers because one thing he may tell you tonight is and we didn't really talk about today when you the evening we open for sponsorships will be opening up registration surely we're looking for nominations for our three awards the business of the year business person of the air an architectural or so keep all that it might take you so much for all of you that a