All in Community

Interview with Amy Seidl

Interview with Amy Seidl

Anthony LaSalle
energy, Community

The University of Vermont (UVM) is regarded by many as an eco-friendly university. Every undergraduate student is required to take a course relating to environmental sustainability and the Princeton Review ranked UVM within the top 5 green colleges in the nation four consecutive years from 2017 to 2020. While the university might be making an impact on its campus, the state of Vermont still struggles with sustainable transportation. Transportation is estimated to account for 40% of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, making up the largest share of any sector, according to the Vermont Agency of Transportation. As Vermont looks forward, electric vehicles (EVs) will undoubtedly play a large role in the state’s effort to minimize its carbon footprint, but if the energy used to power these vehicles is still being generated through burning fossil fuels, EVs are still resulting in emissions down the line.

Amy Seidl, Co-Director and Senior Lecturer of the Environmental Program at UVM, has been using renewable energy collected from her roof-top solar to work around this issue. Living in a house off-the-grid has allowed her and her family to charge their one fully electric and their one hybrid vehicle directly using the electrons that their solar panels capture for almost 8 months out of the year.

Nicole Losch: 16 Years of Building a Better Burlington

Nicole Losch: 16 Years of Building a Better Burlington

Cate Phypers
planning & design, Community

Sixteen years ago, Nicole Losch entered the Department of Public Works in Burlington to work a part time position coordinating small bike projects and managing trash haul licenses. This Friday, she finishes her decade and a half career with DPW as a pioneer of Burlington’s walk and bike infrastructure.

Nicole Losch has worked her way up through several positions at Burlington’s DPW to her present-day position of Senior Transportation Planner. Roughly five years into her time with DPW, she took over as Transportation Planner. “That’s really when we started to shift bike and ped planning away from any other transportation,” Nicole remembered. Today, this branch of the DPW is seventeen employees strong and continues to do incredible work for the city of Burlington.

Intern Profile: Victoria Peguri

Intern Profile: Victoria Peguri

Hanna Hartman
Community, planning & design, infrastructure

This semester, Victoria Peguri worked as an intern for the Burlington Walk Bike Council. The Walk Bike Council is a citizen group dedicated to improving Burlington infrastructure for walking and biking. They are collaborating with Local Motion, a non-profit advocacy group, to evaluate Burlington’s progress on the official city plan for walk/bike projects. She has been interpreting data from progress over the last five years to create a Five-Year Progress Report. This work “entails going through a lot of data, putting it into graphs, and trying to understand what it means,” said Victoria in our conversation on Saturday morning. This data includes comparing the number of mileage of bike lanes that have been built in Burlington to the number that the Council hoped to achieve in the last five years. They also have investigated sidewalk mileage, but there were not many built.

Intern Profile: McKenzie Kelly

Intern Profile: McKenzie Kelly

Hanna Hartman
Community, planning & design

McKenzie Kelley spent the semester interning as a research analyst for the University of Vermont’s Office of Sustainability. In this role, she has done both data collection and data analysis. She is a computer science and biology double major with a minor in statistics.

The primary projects she worked on are focused on making campus more walkable.

Abby Bleything, the Sustainable Transportation Program Manager at the Office of Sustainability, is McKenzie’s supervisor. In McKenzie’s internship, the day-to-day work looks like lots of spreadsheets and some fieldwork, especially if the weather is good. Her projects include analyzing the energy efficiency of university-owned vehicles.

Intern Profile: Hannah Fleming

Intern Profile: Hannah Fleming

Hanna Hartman
Community, environment

Hannah Fleming is an intern on the Sustainable Transportation Vermont (STVT) communications team, where she co-manages the Instagram account, @SustainableVT, among other tasks. She is a junior at the University of Vermont, studying environmental studies in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources with minors in political science and business administration. She is passionate about environmental change and sustainability policy.

Vermont State Climatologist Offers Advice to Young Climate Activists

Vermont State Climatologist Offers Advice to Young Climate Activists

Hanna Hartman
environment, Community

In these times of uncertainty and mounting pressure in the wake of climate change, our desire for answers prompts us to look to experts for guidance. Dr. Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux is one of these experts. She has been a Professor of Geography at the University of Vermont since 1997. She also is an adjunct professor in Geology and is a Fellow in the Gund Institute for the Environment. Her research focuses on “hydroclimatic natural hazards and climate literacy as well as the use of remote sensing and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) in the fields of spatial climate and land-surface processes” according to her profile page on the geography department’s website. She teaches GEOG 040: Weather, Climate, and Landscapes, a required introductory course for geography majors. I am taking this class this semester. Professor Dupigny-Giroux is also the Vermont State Climatologist.

Promote Sustainable Transportation on Green Up Day 2022

Promote Sustainable Transportation on Green Up Day 2022

Ian Bailey
environment, Community

Green Up Day 2022 falls on May 7th. There is less than a month to round up a group of friends, grab a trash bag, and choose a sidewalk or pathway you want to keep beautiful!

Cleaning up trash locally encourages walking. Walking is the most sustainable form of transportation because it only requires your own two feet. People want to walk more when they enjoy the spaces they travel in. Would you like to see piles of empty beer cans, old tires, and lost facemasks all along your journey? Pedestrians are more likely to choose the path that is cared for and vibrant.

Richmond Town Planner to Take Over UVM’s Transportation Internship Course

Richmond Town Planner to Take Over UVM’s Transportation Internship Course

Anthony LaSalle
Community, environment

The University of Vermont offers students the opportunity to participate in a mentored internship through one of their several Communities of Practice. Students that enroll in these programs build not just their resume, but their practical skills that they will use in a work setting after graduation. Once a student enrolls in one of the internships, they are paired up with an organization that they are interested in working with. As the name suggests, these internships are community-oriented, and all of the programs are focused on supporting local and state-wide organizations. The topics covered by the Communities of Practice include media, transportation, planning, legislation, sustainability, and public health.

The Energy & Transportation Planning Community of Practice will be led by a new faculty mentor starting in the Fall of 2022. Ravi Venkataraman will be stepping in for the current faculty mentor, Faith Ingulsrud. I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Ravi about his new upcoming role.

A Brand New Face for the Old Spokes Home

A Brand New Face for the Old Spokes Home

Cate Phypers
environment, Community

Jon Copans, a Brattleboro native, has recently taken over as Executive Director at the Old Spokes Home in the North End. I sat down with him to chat about the new role and his passion for the bicycle.

Jon has always loved biking, and has been drawn to the sport forever. “Bikes are the thread that has run throughout my life,” he said. “[They are] incredibly elegant, simple, and efficient machines.” As he spoke, his eyes lit up with excitement. He continued on, speaking about the ways bikes connect people, and how people-centered, rather than car-centered, infrastructure is an incredibly important objective. “ A community where [people] are a priority is by definition, a more fun, more livable, more dynamic place to be,” he explained.

Net Zero: Towards a Carbon-Neutral Vermont

Net Zero: Towards a Carbon-Neutral Vermont

Hanna Hartman
Community, planning & design, environment

Net Zero Vermont is committed to providing paths to a carbon neutral future in the Green Mountain State. Their mission “is to encourage people to adopt a shared vision for a sustainable future, meaning to re-localize, re-direct, and leverage the necessary resources to build model sustainable towns and cities across Vermont and beyond.” Debra Sachs has a long history of sustainability work in the state and graduated from the University of Vermont twice with degrees in forestry and natural resource planning. Sachs is co-founder of the non-profit that is now Net Zero Vermont in the mid-90s as Community Climate Action.

Greenride Bikeshare Gets Everything Right, Except Bikes

Greenride Bikeshare Gets Everything Right, Except Bikes

Anthony LaSalle
infrastructure, Community, technology

When I first heard the University of Vermont was getting electric bikes on its campus at the end of the 2021 school year, I was fired up. I had never ridden one before but what part of the term “electric bike” doesn’t sound cool? It combines two very exciting words into one phrase, kind of like “free food” or “cookie cake”. The bikes would be coming to UVM and the Burlington area through the Greenride Bikeshare program. As a student without a car on campus, this news was exhilarating. Even though I had a bike, the thought of being able to finally ride back up the hill from downtown Burlington to UVM without using every ounce of energy I had was an incredible prospect.

Car Convenience over Pedestrian Safety: VTrans Values Traffic Speed over Safety of School Children

Car Convenience over Pedestrian Safety: VTrans Values Traffic Speed over Safety of School Children

Cate Phypers
infrastructure, Community, planning & design

The difference between 25 and 30 miles per hour to a driver is nothing. To a biker, this could be the difference between life and death, according to AAA. However, this doesn’t seem to be a concern to the Vermont Agency of Transportation.

A recent speed limit update has been added to the entirety of Route 116 (Hinesburg Road), reducing the posted speed limit from 35 to 30 miles per hour after years of studies and requests from the city of South Burlington, according to the city’s website. While this is a win, South Burlington’s goal was a reduction down to 25 miles per hour. This may not seem like a large difference, but according to a 2011 study by AAA, the risk of severe injury by impact for a pedestrian is 25% below 25 miles per hour and doubles to 50% at just 31 miles per hour.

Taft Corners zoning rewrite slowed by developer opposition

Taft Corners zoning rewrite slowed by developer opposition

Karson Petty
Community, planning & design

A disagreement over whether a pre-planned development project in Taft Corners should have to conform to a new set of zoning rules came to light during last week’s meeting of the Williston Planning Commission.

The debate was sparked by developer Chris Snyder’s housing proposal for the Essex Alliance Church property along Route 2A, which has already received preliminary approval from the Development Review Board.

Developer opposition grows to Taft Corners zoning changes

Developer opposition grows to Taft Corners zoning changes

Karson Petty
planning & design, Community

Developers pushed back on proposed rule changes to turn Taft Corners into a walkable downtown area at the latest Williston Planning Commission meeting.

The Feb. 15 meeting was the second one held by the planning commission where Williston residents and developers could weigh in on changes to a working draft of new zoning rules. The rules are called form-based code, which was formally introduced in a Feb. 1 planning commission meeting, but has been in discussion for about a year.

Completing the Puzzle: The Future of South Burlington’s Walk/Bike Paths

Completing the Puzzle: The Future of South Burlington’s Walk/Bike Paths

Cate Phypers
planning & design, infrastructure, Community

Connectedness. That is the theme for the next several years in terms of South Burlington’s bike and pedestrian infrastructure.

As it is, South Burlington’s bike paths stretch and wind for a whopping 24 miles throughout the city. These paths, which began construction in 1990, link neighborhoods, parks, and schools all around South Burlington. Much of this is thanks to the Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee (BPC) whose mission is to oversee and maintain the recreational paths in the city. However, there are missing pieces that need filling. I sat down with two of the committee members to discuss the future of South Burlington’s pedestrian-centered infrastructure.

Main Street Construction Set to Begin Soon. Will Local Businesses Survive?

Main Street Construction Set to Begin Soon. Will Local Businesses Survive?

Anthony LaSalle
planning & design, Community

The Great Streets BTV initiative has been underway for years now. A public vote in March 2015 set the project in motion and the city has produced notable results. The initiative is comprised of 3 interrelated plans, which include implementing street standards for all Downtown Burlington streets, reconstructing City Hall Park, and an overhaul of St. Paul and Main Street.

Developers push back on proposed Taft Corners zoning rules

Developers push back on proposed Taft Corners zoning rules

Karson Petty
Community, infrastructure, planning & design

Proposed rule changes that aim to make Taft Corners more walkable and people-friendly were met with pushback by local developers at a Williston Planning Commission meeting held on Feb. 1.

The new rules, known as form-based code, do away with the notion of residential and commercial districts. The rules would put more priority on the town’s goal of creating more pedestrian-focused developments that are pleasing to the eye.