City bike-ped study advances

Article originally published as “City bike-ped study advances” by Gordon Dritschilo

January 27, 2023

Rutland Herald

The city is planning for a long, hard look at its streets.

The Community and Economic Development Committee voted on Thursday to recommend the Board of Aldermen allocate $7,500 from the newly created grant-matching fund to cover the city’s 10% match on a $75,000 Better Connections grant it hopes to use to develop a comprehensive bike/pedestrian plan for Rutland.

“Rutland doesn’t have a full-time planner the way other communities do,” said Alderman Michael Talbott, the committee chair — a frequent talking point for several of the board’s newer members. “The way we do these things as a result is very piecemeal. A comprehensive bike-ped plan is one of the things we need.”

Talbott said the effort is driven in part by the rise of bicycle-oriented recreation and tourism in recent years. He said the city wants to be able to take advantage of the Velomont Trail, a Long Trail-like network of bicycle paths, which is expected to pass through Rutland. Pedestrian safety also is a recurring issue in the city, Talbott said.

“At the last Board of Aldermen meeting, we approved a Department of Public Works project looking at traffic safety in several intersections,” he said. “This would tie into that.”

The plan also will play a role in the city’s efforts to establish a tax increment financing district, according to Talbott.

“We’ll have visualization and designs we can use as part of our TIF package, whether it’s attracting investors or showing voters what things could look like in the future,” he said.

Shelley Lutz, a prominent member of the local cycling community, said improvements in the city would be welcome. She said distracted drivers are such an issue in Rutland that she avoids cycling on city streets. She said that’s something infrastructure could help change.

“If you go into Burlington, in all the lanes they have bike lanes on them — the drivers know the bikes are there, they respect them,” she said. “If we had more bike-friendly streets, streets without potholes, bike lanes, I think you’d see a lot more people riding in them. ... Bike paths are tough to build because they’re expensive, but it’s not hard to for streets to have designated bike lanes.”

Talbott said the city should know whether it has received the grant by late March, after which it will have to go out to bid for a consultant. He said it likely will take 18 months to put the plan together.

The grant-matching fund was created last year using a portion of the city’s American Rescue Plan Act money and the remnants of the old Zamias Fund with the expectation it would be replenished annually through the budget.