EIS fails to accurately consider demographic trends & roundabout alternatives

The following are excerpts from comments filed by Tony Redington on the Circ EIS. Redington is a transportation policy analyst who formerly worked for the Vermont Agency of Transportation. You can also download Redington's full comments (a 29 page pdf document).

These comments in this presentation totally reject as misleading bordering on fraudulent the findings of the Berger Circ EIS, based on three major contentions:

1. Traffic throughout Vermont, including the target area, likely declines for the study period 2000-2030 for a number of demographic factors centered on population, and historical vehicle travel trends dating from 1990, almost 20 years ago, trends fed by a number of factors which include: (1) employment and income; (2) cost of motor fuel; and (3) growing initiatives to reduce pollution and global warming gases. Given this information the entire analysis, particularly 5.0 "Traffic and Transportation Affects of the Evaluated Alternatives," lack credible foundation and must be discarded as entirely
baseless.

2. The transformational impact of modern roundabout technology which applied to the study area as it must for the huge benefit cost not only places it as a necessary investment, a transportation categorical imperative if you will, but truly undermines and invalidates many of the conclusions regarding Berger CIR EIS performance measures particularly intersection Level of Service, accidents (both segment and intersections), motor fuel use, and land use. 

These comments suggest the need to redo the Berger Circ EIS to realistically consider the roundabout alternative for all study area intersections, and absent that study, the default conclusion must be "roundabouts only."  ...

(1) In spite of repeated warning comments by some participants early in the technical meetings, the Berger Circ EIS totally misses the composition of projected population growth (it is over 65 population only!) for the County and study area with 20-64 population growth of 2,703, a growth of 3%. More important, in order to feed a model for vehicle travel growth, we are supposed to believe that a 3% growth in the 20-65 age County population translates into a County employment growth of about 50% 2005-2025, an absolute growth of about 60,000! ...

(2) The Berger Circ EIS completely fails to even identify much less address the demographic impact of basically no growth in the main driving age population 16 to 65 during the 2000-2030 period while the over 65 age group in Vermont more than doubles, an age group which yearly drives about 40% less miles than the 16-65 age drivers, according to studies including the latest U.S. DOT "National Personal
Transportation Survey."

(3) The Berger Circ EIS bypasses the historic change in Vermonter driving, the collapse of growth and even decline in annual vehicle miles of travel (AVMT) a trend now two decades old, and fails to evaluate the related factors, i.e., increasing motor fuel prices, flat incomes, and shifts in public policy to provide incentives for reduced driving (such as, for example, the EPA commuter choice initiatives).

(4) The Berger Circ EIS displays a complete ignorance of the transformational power of modern roundabout technology, treating the roundabout as another transportation tool, not a revolutionary technology which among other impacts enables and catalyzes denser urban development. i.e., its role as a sprawl buster. ...