Knowing absolutely nothing about engineering this sort of thing, I also wonder if a tunnel/series of tunnels might be the better solution.

Brandon has been actively trying to get a whistle-stop train platform for a while now. There's already a viable spot for it on Union that wouldn't badly impact traffic through town. If it were realistic to hop on the train just to run errands in Rutland or Middlebury for a few hours, I think a decent number of people would do it (I would be first among them).

A mural honoring the Underground Railroad is now out of step with DEI mandates… curious…

Wait until they pass the "Affordable Heat Bill" That adds an additional 70 cents per gallon charge. Just because the environuts want to force you to change.

You asked what ME had to do with it and I explained the reasoning for bringing it up. Your displayed maturity level is a part of that explanation, ergo no ad hominem attack rather it provided the basis for determining your lack of first hand experience with IRV along with not having lived in ME.

But here goes…

1.) perhaps most importantly, IRV violates the one vote- one person principle that is the foundation of our democracy. I get a vote and you get a vote. With IRV however, if I don’t rank all candidates (and there are several valid reasons someone may choose not to) then depending on how the future rounds break down, I may not actually get a vote. If I only rank one person and they’re eliminated, my vote is effectively tossed out in the trash and that’s about as anti democratic as we can get. Especially at a time where voter participation is encouraged.

2.) it’s completely obscure and which candidate is running off against which other candidate isn’t clear prior to casting your vote. Who is matched up in the 3rd round is literally anyone’s guess and how an individuals ranking plays out is as well ( I strongly suspect this is what happened with the Kiss re-election but I have no evidence for that, there were two other candidates that had 65%+ of voter support, no one thought Kiss had a shot and would have been eliminated in an earlier round). Voting should be crystal clear which candidates are running and which candidates are available to vote for. This uncertainty disenfranchises voters, especially if they know their vote may not count. In a traditional runoff you’ve got 2 clear choices, there is no confusion and it’s a straightforward as it can be.

3.) traditional runoffs allow for additional time to vet the two candidates. If you’ve got 7 candidates in a field it’s hard to get to know them all well. Maybe one candidate seems like a stellar choice and you vote for them, but they don’t make it through the first round, now you’ve got a chance to become more informed of the remaining 2 choices. IRV would force you to lose your vote, or make uninformed choices about other candidates. You should never be coerced into voting for a candidate you’re not comfortable with just to have your vote count.

4.) Even IF the prior experience with IRV was due to voters not understanding the system instead of a weird anomaly, you would now have to educate the entire state, everyone from Brattleboro to Montpelier to the backwoods of the NEK… when it couldn’t be done in Burlington… a college town full of educated people. Many of those same people still vote and would have the same struggles they had last time. Make it easy for people to cast their vote, not harder.

5.) we have a system that works. Don’t fix something that isn’t broken. Work on fixing the broken things.

I love to travel by train , and was so happy about the downeaster from Boston to Portland Maine when it actually happened. Taking trains all around Vermont would be so beautiful anytime of year

Careful it can make you antsy in the pantsy

The Windsor one has new ownership and have opened the bar side again, and have a ladies night now. It's solid "in-town" pizza.

maple syrup mold is special! look it up bb

please no on light rail...

I will always support fennel heavy sausage and hot honey. I'd swap the mushrooms for pickled baby sweet peppers.

But why would you ever buy a Costco pizza? The hotdogs are RIGHT THERE!

Dunno, nobody ever dares to actually go there, and if you're there you probably can't afford to escape, or internet for that matter.

fair enough, but still, is there anything being done with this proposal? like, are you writing up things to go with it and sending it somewhere, or just reddit? I'd love to support it elsewhere!

> The Ethan Allen Express expansion

this is kind of a disappointment. as a Rutlander, I was excited to be able to take a train to Burlington. I would be willing to pay 50% more to go 20 minutes slower, but having my only option be depart at 8pm arrive at 10pm makes the service completely unusable. I wish I could use it, to send the message "I want this!" and have service be expanded, but getting there that late makes it worthless to me. Plus, no possibility of day trips.

But I'm just whining with no solution or helpful advice here, lol.

If Shelburne, Middlebury, and Wellesley, MA can put up with it, I'm sure Woodstock could manage.

I’ll let you hang out in my yard for 15 mins.

Yes please! Going west to east in Vermont takes forever

Got my vote!

Dude, if you’re really from Philly like me, you don’t get to talk shit about Montreal.

Did you ask the good people of Woodstock if they would like regional rail in their backyard?

That would not work, especially in the current day with availability of online reviews and the shortage of available labor. If you rip off customers they will leave poor reviews, leading to decreased business. Rip off employees and they will leave for a better situation.

>Your restaurant might have good profit margins, and you can still be clueless about what it takes to run a good restaurant

That's just a terribly stupid assertion. The margins are notoriously low in the restaurant industry so if you don't have a solid understanding of how to operate one you won't have high profit margins outside of very specific conditions such as captive audiences(pizza places in Vermont don't qualify). So if you care to fill me in on the non-germaine reasons I'm wrong let me know, but so far none of what you've said makes any sense

This is mostly true, but it shows that large investments in small states is possible.

We could cut military spending by 1/64th and have enough funding to build light rail in most of the country...

I just have no idea where you'd physically put it in Sherburne Pass. What's not already road is either steep or wet. Or both.

Compared to some of the other proposals I've done, I think this is pretty feasible!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_Allen_Express

The Ethan Allen Express expansion, a very real network expansion that happened last year, was a pretty BIG project. However, since it utilized existing track it only ended up costing $26 million, a far cry from billions of dollars. Of course, that track is state-owned, which not all of this is, so that would incur additional costs. However, a lot of what I've constructed here also includes other states and cities, including economic centers like Montreal and Boston, which would appreciate a direct connection so not all of the funding would fall on Vermont's back.

Other commenters have discussed federal money being required, which would make sense. As climate change gets worse, though, I think that getting ahead of the curve now before oil prices skyrocket, resources become more scarce, and our environment generally gets ruined would be ideal.

Costco pizza is better than any pizza I have ever had in VT.