Vermont
Advocates Push Metro and L.A. City for a More Multimodal Vermont Avenue; HLA Compliance Challenged – Streetsblog Los Angeles
This week saw the beginning of what could be the first legal challenge under the city’s half-year-old Measure HLA requirements. Metro is looking to make significant changes to Vermont Avenue, mainly new bus lanes. Advocates say Metro needs to think bigger; Streets for All says the latest plan falls short of complying with HLA.
Vermont Avenue has long been among Metro’s (and the nation’s) highest ridership bus streets. For at least a decade, Metro has been glacially slowly planning Vermont Avenue bus improvements. The project gained momentum with 2016 Measure M funding, but Metro studies in 2018 and in 2019 didn’t quite get the fiscally-cheap and politically-expensive project ready for its c. 2024 scheduled groundbreaking.
Recently Metro scaled back what might have been 12 miles of full-fledged Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) to about six miles of bus lanes and bus stop improvements (details below). Unspecified, unfunded future phases remain a possibility.
Advocates see Vermont as a key opportunity. If you can’t go big, be thorough, and make transit and transit riders a top priority on one of Metro’s and the nation’s highest ridership corridors, where can you?
The Alliance for Community Transit (ACT-LA) is currently circulating a letter (sign on as an individual or organization) in support of improving Vermont for people on bus, bike, and on foot – from Sunset Boulevard to the Metro C (Green) Line Athens Station. ACT-LA and two dozen organizations are calling for following features all along the nearly 12-mile-long project:
- uninterrupted bus lanes
- protected bike lanes
- pedestrian scrambles at high injury and bus transfer intersections
- tree planting, non-hostile shelters, signage, wayfinding, trash bins, and a bus rider bill of rights at every stop
- wait time displays and public water at all major intersections
- electrification of buses along the corridor
- preserving all street vending and expanding the sidewalk in areas with high vending concentrations
For the near term, Metro is looking to spend its Vermont Measure M funds on a much less expansive project.
According to a recent Vermont Transit Corridor presentation, Metro is looking to add about six miles of bus lanes (2.5 miles from Sunset to Wilshire Boulevard and 3.7 miles from Gage Avenue to the C Line). Metro would also add “light rail-like stations with enhanced shelters and more passenger amenities for comfort and safety,” featuring off-bus fare payment, all-door boarding, and “bus bulbs at stations [that] would extend the pedestrian area and shorten crossings with less exposure to vehicle traffic.”
Metro is including little for pedestrians, and nothing for cyclists.
In the same presentation, Metro asserts that the project is consistent with the city’s Mobility Plan and that it “helps support” the city’s Measure HLA.
Streets for All disagrees.
The city Mobility Plan 2035 [map] designates all 12 miles of the Vermont Transit Corridor project for bus, walk and bike upgrades. The entire length is designated to receive bus lanes and pedestrian enhancements. South of 60th Place (near Gage Avenue), the plan approved protected bike lanes, and from 60th Place north, unprotected bike lanes.
Measure HLA now requires that planned bus/bike/walk features are installed during nearly any city road work at least one-eighth of a mile long. Generally street resurfacing is what triggers HLA, but the law is a little broader than just resurfacing. HLA requirements are triggered by “any paving project or other modification” excluding really small stuff: “restriping of the road without making
other improvements, routine pothole repair, utility cuts, or emergency repairs.”
For about six miles of Vermont, Metro is planning new bus lanes, new BRT stations, while omitting planned bike upgrades.
This week, the advocacy group Streets for All, the main proponent of Measure HLA and one of the signatories of the ACT-LA letter, wrote to Mayor Karen Bass and Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins in support of Metro’s Vermont project proceeding in full compliance with Measure HLA. The letter states:
As designed, the BRT project brings (welcome) improvements to Vermont Avenue… Those trigger the City’s obligation to install Mobility Plan enhancements. Therefore, were the City to issue permits for the project without assuring implementation of its Mobility Plan enhancements at the same time, the City would violate its ordinance, waste public funds, and allow Vermont’s dangerous conditions to remain despite the voters’ mandate.
Streets for All notes that the project complies with the city’s plan for transit and pedestrian facilities, but not for bikeways.
It is not entirely clear what is behind Metro’s omission of planned Vermont Avenue bike lanes. The fiscal cost of adding bike lanes (contrary to pre-HLA fearmongering) is minimal, especially during any kind of restriping. There are political costs, though, in re-allocating car space to bikeways. Especially north of Gage, adding the approved bike lanes will mean reducing on-street parking (or narrowing/eliminating car travel lanes), which the city and Metro have been reluctant to do, even in population-rich, transit-rich locations like Vermont Avenue.
SFA’s letter notes that there are other projects that Metro is doing in L.A. City that don’t comply with Measure HLA. Sadly, Metro has a history of omitting planned bike facilities – from downtown L.A. subway stations to Rosa Parks Station to many other projects. Streetsblog has compiled a list of several future Metro projects that do not appear to be in compliance with the city’s Mobility Plan (it’s unlikely that this list is comprehensive):
105 Freeway Express Lanes
Metro and Caltrans planned 105 Freeway Express Lanes project includes widening several surface streets leading to the freeway: Central Avenue, Fir Street, Bullis Road, Harris Avenue, and Imperial Highway. Some of these are outside the city, but Metro plans to widen L.A.’s 90-feet-wide Central Avenue by 11 feet to add more car capacity. The Mobility Plan calls for narrowing Central to 70 feet and adding protected bike lanes, which are not in Metro’s plans.
East San Fernando Valley Transit Corridor
MP2035 designates Van Nuys Boulevard for protected bike lanes for the entire 6+mile length of phase 1 of East San Fernando Valley light rail. Two miles of Van Nuys have existing unprotected bike lanes that appear to be slated for removal in Metro rail plans.
Florence Ave bus lanes
Metro plans to add about five miles of new bus lanes on Florence Avenue mostly in L.A. City (plus a short stretch in unincorporated L.A. County). The project was initially expected to be completed in 2023, but has been delayed multiple times. The project website now forecasts a Winter 2025 opening. Under Measure HLA, the L.A. City part of the project is now required to also add new bike lanes and pedestrian enhancements.
K Line Northern Extension
Planning is underway to extend the K Line north. Depending on the final alignment, the project will trigger numerous MP2035 upgrades, likely including:
- Crenshaw Boulevard: bus lanes, bike lanes, and walk enhancements
- Adams Boulevard: bike lanes and walk enhancements
- Venice Boulevard: bus lanes, bike lane upgrades and walk enhancements
- San Vicente Boulevard: bike lane upgrades and walk enhancements
- Fairfax Avenue: bus lanes, bike lanes, and walk enhancements
- La Brea Boulevard: bike lanes and walk enhancements
Wilshire D Line Subway
Prior to HLA, Metro asserted that D Line subway construction is not subject to the city’s Mobility Plan, as the full three sections of the project were environmentally cleared prior to 2015 MP2035 approval. Measure HLA makes no exceptions based on project approval dates, but applies to when street work (resurfacing, striping) takes place. Section 1 D Line subway construction street reconstruction (currently nearing completion) was perhaps too far along for HLA to trigger upgrades on Wilshire Boulevard, La Brea, and Fairfax. Section 2 construction could trigger Constellation Boulevard and Avenue of the Stars upgrades. Section 3 may trigger upgrades to Wilshire, Gayley Avenue, and Westwood Boulevard.
LinkUS Union Station Run-Through Tracks
Metro’s LinkUS project includes changes to North Main Street that appear to ignore Mobility Plan designations for bus lanes, protected bike lanes, and pedestrian enhancements.
This commentary is by Peter Langella of Moretown, a public high school and college educator.
Imagine that education in Vermont is a game of chess.
Over the years, many pieces have been taken away from the board. Student enrollment has declined, but there has also been a steady stream of cuts and consolidations, spiking during Act 46 mergers and now again over the past two years.
Conversely, many other pieces have been added that don’t mesh with the original rules of the game. This is because the United States (and Vermont, under Gov. Scott and his vetoes) has rejected many social foundations and safety nets; and schools, admirably, have often tried to fill the gap by employing special educators, social workers, psychologists, intensive paraeducators, behavior interventionists and a plethora of other important and helpful humans.
So when legislators and bureaucrats talk about “right-sizing,” they are mostly trying to play a conventional game of educational chess based on Carnegie Units, the metric developed in 1906 that awards academic credit based on the number of “seat time” hours in a given course, especially at the high school level. This is the “Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic” model many of today’s decision-makers experienced as students.
Simply put, it’s stagnant, outdated and inequitable.
So, Vermont has a choice. We can react to this education funding crisis by further cutting and consolidating, trying to put all the pieces back the way they were and play chess by the original rules, or we can flip the board over and play a new game — completely transforming our model of public education.
READ MORE
Public schools in Vermont must become more personalized and community-based, partnering with local organizations for experiential and service-driven learning. Schools must think about what it means to be a compassionate human in our modern world and appropriately backward-design curricula to grow young people to meet that challenge. Schools must be interdisciplinary, creating a fusion of conventional academics with the arts, outdoor education, and sustainability. Schools must center inclusion and intersectionality, striving to represent, honor, and affirm all learners in a way that shares power. And, schools must value the whole student, concentrating on physical, social and emotional well-being above all other metrics.
The possibilities abound. We have so many creative and empathetic people here. We also have so many amazing students, who are truly our resident experts on what school is and what it can be.
We could harness that, but we aren’t, at least not at a statewide level. For example, the Commission on the Future of Public Education, by statute, was supposed to “represent the State’s geographic, gender, racial, and ethnic diversity,” and it knows it failed on multiple levels of its most basic charge. There also aren’t any current educators or school employees who are part of the group, and there are no students, who repeatedly lack power, access and representation in official spaces where their future is being decided, especially when they come from marginalized backgrounds.
On a more micro level, this isn’t happening in most districts or schools, either. Like many around the state, the district I work in had its budget defeated last year. The school board moved quickly to adopt a new number, and district and building administrators were tasked with identifying cuts.
Instead of having a more transformational conversation, they cut librarians, drama teachers, music teachers, business teachers, French teachers, personalized learning coordinators, restorative practices coordinators, mentoring coordinators, instructional coaches, intensive paraeducators and JV sports programs.
It was and is horrendous.
Imagine something better. Imagine flipping that chessboard over and looking at an open canvas. Before talking about tax rates, yield bills and common levels of appraisal; imagine centering teaching and learning. Imagine a visioning process where we, all of us, collectively redefine what school can be.
I’m not naive enough to think it would fit my exact hopes, and I’m not idealistic enough to think it wouldn’t include some cuts and consolidations. But at least it would be intentional.
The current narrative around this crisis is reactionary. The state is trying to force its way back to the chessboard, and it’s being falsely portrayed as the harder choice.
The harder choice, in actuality, is to transform. Create a bold vision and initiate a brand new game of school — creative, holistic, inclusive — that could serve as an example for the entire country.
The 2024-2025 Vermont high school winter season has begun. See below for scores, schedules and game details (statistical leaders, game notes) from basketball, hockey, gymnastics, wrestling, Nordic/Alpine skiing and other winter sports.
TO REPORT SCORES
Coaches or team representatives are asked to report results ASAP after games by emailing sports@burlingtonfreepress.com. Please submit with a name/contact number.
►Contact Alex Abrami at aabrami@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter:@aabrami5.
►Contact Judith Altneu at jaltneu@gannett.com. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter: @Judith_Altneu.
TUESDAY’S H.S. GAMES
Girls basketball
Burlington 68, Champlain Valley 59
B: Bree McDonald 24 points. Nylah Mitchell 20 points. Atika Haji 16 points.
C: Zoey McNabb 23 points. Kaitlyn Jovell 10 points.
Note: Burlington defeated CVU for the first time since Feb. 17, 2012.
Oxbow 64, Peoples 33
O: Braylee Phelps 24 points. Maggi Ellsworth 15 points.
P: Daisy Berg 13 points. Sophie Beck 11 points.
Note: Phelps made five 3-pointers to lead Oxbow, which led 40-16 at the break.
Harwood 44, Lyndon 34
H: Eloise Lilley 14 points. Maddie Ryley 9 points. Kendra Rocheleau 8 rebounds. Adelaide Chalmers 5 rebounds. Roanha Chalmers 5 rebounds.
L: Ella Marshia 15 points.
Note: Harwood led 25-17 at the break and 24-29 through three quarters before pulling away for the road win.
Winooski 36, BFA-Fairfax 31
W: Ashlyn Parris 9 points. Taraji Bradley 8 points.
F: Anna Villeneuve 16 points.
Note: Winooski opened a 26-7 halftime lead.
Windsor 58, Lake Region 18
W: Sophia Rockwood 20 points. Amelia Rockwood 14 points. Audrey Rupp 8 points.
North Country 64, Spaulding 27
NC: Sabine Brueck 20 points. Ava Patten 10 points. Addie Nelson 10 points. Marlow Maxwell 9 points.
S: Taylor Keel 9 points.
Lamoille 60, U-32 34
L: Alyssa Small 17 points, 10 rebounds, 3 assists. Evie Pirie 10 points. Ava Baisley 9 points. Maddex Percey 8 points. Alana Crittenden 7 points, 7 assists, 5 rebounds.
U: Paige Parker 14 points. Clara Wilson 12 points.
Twinfield/Cabot 60, Northfield 35
T/C: Kendall Fowler 16 points. Jorja Washburn 12 points. Carly Mancini 11 points.
Williamstown 58, Danville 52
W: Julia French 20 points, 5 steals. Natalie Beliveau 15 points, 15 rebounds. Hannah Spencer 14 points. Courtney Beliveau 8 points, 5 rebounds.
D: Myah Morgan 15 points. Lauren Joncas 15 points.
Rutland 46, South Burlington 28
R: Brinley Gandin 18 points. Lanza Bellomo 9 points.
SB: Lexi Paquette 18 points.
Montpelier 49, Woodstock 42 (OT)
Randolph 47, Thetford 41
Stowe at Richford
Enosburg at Hazen, ppd.
Boys basketball
Rice 78, St. Johnsbury 56
R: Owen Eaton 22 points. Dallas St. Peter 21 points. Evan Eaton 16 points.
SJ: Rex Hauser 23 points. Michael Rodriguez Guerrero 12 points. Will Eaton 8 points.
Note: Owen Eaton drained five 3-pointers for Rice, which led 38-19 at the break.
South Burlington 76, Milton 29
SB: Deng Aguek 22 points. Oli Avdibegovic 14 points. Paul Comba 13 points. Kai Davidson 10 points.
M: Keegan Fitzgerald 7 points. Carter McGregor 7 points.
Note: Host South Burlington led 24-6 after the first quarter and 41-14 at the break.
Champlain Valley 60, Essex 36
CV: Owen Scott 21 points, 3 assists. Luke Allen 10 points, 9 rebounds.
Burlington 93, BFA-St. Albans 48
BHS: Abdi Sharif 19 points, 10 rebounds, 4 steals. Pascal Munezero 14 points, 7 rebounds, 4 steals.
BFA: Gabe Howrigan 19 points. Ryan Munger 11 points.
Note: Host BHS (6-0) raced to a 51-24 halftime lead.
Woodstock 61, Brattleboro 52
W: Elvis Lavallee 18 points. Caleb Sammel 17 points. Caeden Perreault 10 points.
B: John Satterfield 18 points. Oscar Korson 14 points. Jack Cady 10 points.
Colchester at Mount Mansfield
WEDNESDAY’S H.S. GAMES
Boys basketball
Games at 7 p.m unless noted
Williamstown at BFA-Fairfax
Fair Haven at Middlebury
Winooski at Richford
Lyndon at Montpelier
Lamoille at U-32
Lake Region at Hazen
Thetford at Peoples
Randolph at Mount Abraham
Twinfield/Cabot at Danville, 7:30 p.m.
Girls basketball
Games at 7 p.m unless noted
BFA-St. Albans at Missisquoi
Essex at Colchester
Rice at Burr and Burton
Boys hockey
Burr and Burton at Colchester, 4:30 p.m.
Woodstock at Harwood, 5 p.m.
Hartford at Rice, 5:25 p.m.
Milton at St. Johnsbury, 6 p.m.
Stowe vs North Country at Jay Peak, 6 p.m.
Middlebury at Burlington, 7 p.m.
U-32 at Brattleboro, 7:15 p.m.
BFA-St. Albans at South Burlington, 5:15 p.m.
Essex at Champlain Valley, 7:40 p.m.
Missisquoi at Mount Mansfield, 8 p.m.
Girls hockey
Kingdom Blades at Middlebury, 5 p.m.
Woodstock at Spaulding, 5:15 p.m.
Stowe at Hartford, 5:45 p.m.
Champlain Valley/Mount Mansfield at Essex, 6 p.m.
Burlington/Colchester at BFA-St. Albans, 7 p.m.
U-32 at Missisquoi, 7:15 p.m.
Wrestling
Champlain Valley, St. Johnsbury at Essex, 6 p.m.
(Subject to change)
Take a Bow
Saturday 11
New York City’s DragonBoot Quartet bring compelling string compositions to Waterbury Congregational Church for an afternoon of nimble musicianship. The vibrant foursome — all current students of the Juilliard School — plays familiar favorites by Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as well as contemporary works by American composer and Pulitzer laureate Caroline Shaw.
Best Rest
Wednesday 15
Girls’ Night Out With Beth Kruger at the Essex Resort & Spa invites women over 40 to step into the New Year seeking balance, harmony and a bit of self-care. The event kicks off with a refreshing spa experience — including use of the sauna, hot tub and steam room — followed by refreshments around the fireplace and a deep dive into Kruger’s “Menopause Toolkit.”
Finding Their Footing
Saturday 11
The Marble Valley Dance Collective captivates audience members with New Dances Dawning, staged at Vermont State University’s Casella Theater in Castleton. Eighteen dancers from the state’s southwest region evoke a sense of unbridled joy, community and belonging through movement — emphasizing the nonprofit’s mission of forging deep connections through dance.
Clap Your Hands
Saturday 11
Prolific local songwriter Matt Hagen takes center stage for Burlington’s FlynnZone Kids Hour — a monthly performance series in the Flynn lobby designed for wee ones ages 3 to 5. Through musical improvisation, Hagen leads kiddos and their caregivers in interactive, playful songs built to foster imagination, make memories and introduce children to the arts.
Ski Ya There
Saturday 11
Sleepy Hollow Inn’s Full Moon Ski Party in Huntington invites snow sports enthusiasts of all ages and abilities to ski beneath the milky twilight and snowshoe out on the moonlit floor. The event opens with a free ski lesson, followed by folks taking to the trails with headlamps — or opting for the 1K lighted loop. The adventure concludes with music, hot drinks and treats by the fire.
Dynamic Duo
Saturday 11
Boston juke-joint revival band the Smack Dabs and virtuosic New England foursome Rhythm Future Quartet light up the night with a soulful double bill at Next Stage Arts in Putney. Audience members get groovy with the former’s 1930s good-time swing blues and the latter’s hot-club jazz tunes (think Django Reinhardt) — an energy so contagious, listeners can’t help but tap a toe.
Swiss Scapes
Ongoing
Acclaimed German artist Thomas Struth‘s exhibition of large-scale color photographs at Hall Art Foundation in Reading showcases the rural landscapes of Northern Switzerland. Struth’s soft, unidealized shots were taken in the early 1990s and began as a commissioned project for a private hospital in Winterthur — the works serving as a portal for patients to the outside world.
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