A plan to erect a park-and-transit center at Vermont’s busiest intersection is making slow and steady progress.
Unlike the often-agonizing pace of traffic at Williston Road and exit 14 of Interstate 89, cautious momentum for the proposed facility is by design, officials say.
The transit plan would give Burlington-bound motorists the option of parking near the junction and shifting to shuttles, carpools or bicycling and walking paths. The proposal takes another modest step forward at a public forum set for 7 p.m. Thursday at the Sheraton Burlington Hotel and Conference Center in South Burlington.
The meeting’s location is appropriate to the discussion: A two- or three-story garage might rise within the footprint of the conference center’s parking lot at the hotel’s northeast edge.
The purpose of Thursday’s meeting is to gather new information and to share a study of existing conditions in the area commissioned by the Winooski-based Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission.
In a best-case scenario, the facility might be built in about five years, “give or take,” Bob Penniman, who chairs the project’s steering committee, said Tuesday. “It won’t take decades.”
But, he was quick to add, “It’s not a done deal. It will only happen if the political will is there — and the need.”
Chittenden County and the traffic it attracts from other northwest Vermont communities is ripe for at least two such “intercept facilities,” he said; another remains in the planning stages near the western terminus of Interstate 189.
Penniman is no stranger to traffic decongestion. He’s the executivedirector of the Campus Area Transportation Management Association (better known as CATMA), a group that has greatly reduced the demand for parking in Burlington’s Hill Section by its core members: the American Red Cross, Champlain College, Fletcher Allen Health Care and the University of Vermont.
Other local partners, including the city of Burlington, have embraced the model as a way to attract visitors, customers, clients and patientsThe feasibility of an exit 14 park/transit park is being studied actively by CATMA members as well as city planners in Burlington and South Burlington, the Burlington International Airport, University Mall and the Vermont Agency of Transportation.
The consensus: Funding for the project likely will come from public as well as private sources.
Some of the money is in place, Penniman said. A $7 million earmark, secured in 2005 by Vermont’s congressional delegation, will help: $3 million will pay for construction of the “missing lane” at the intersection near Staples Plaza; the remainder is approved for a southbound I-89 exit spur that would ease motorists’ entrance to the facility.
The underlying land at the site is owned by UVM; the Sheraton manages the existing parking lot under a long-term lease — and would retain its allotment of those roughly 425 spaces, Penniman said. The new structure might accommodate a total of 1,000 vehicles.
