Who subsidizes driving?

This. Not sure what the rates are at that little campground at Lake Willoughby but spending the summer at Kingdom Trails and the Lake sounds wonderful.

If a $26 million dollar project using existing track is a pretty BIG project, you’re proposal is nowhere near feasible.

Gorgeous photo.

From what I could find only Wyoming received less in Covid relief funds than Vermont, so while we got a lot of assistance it’s not much as all in context.

The govt will never dump big money into a rural mountainous state to build rail. If they won’t do it in Texas or California it’s not happening here.

Most Vermonters have no idea what good food is. Especially Pizza.

Those expansions didn’t require totally new track. They run on existing track owned by freight companies.

Yet. The Climate Crisis will incentivize people to move to the Northeast by the tens of millions.

I am as pro-rail as they get, but some of these lines are just not feasible. Bennington to Brattleboro includes two very substantial mountains. I lived on VT 9 in Woodford for a while, and I can tell you trains aren't going over that mountain. And tunneling would dwarf the nearby Hoosac Tunnel which is less that five miles long and took 135 lives during construction. Getting a line through Killington would be similarly challenging.

A more practical line which is absent from your map would run from WRJ through Keene and Winchendon using an abandoned right of way (push that rail-trail to the side) where it could connect to existing MBTA rail in Fitchburg. That gets you the Montreal to Boston connection along with Rutland to Boston. (Sorry, Cape Air.)

Living in Dorset, I'd love to see passenger trains come through Manchester, but some serious infrastructure work would be needed. For example, the line runs through the middle of the r k Miles lumber yard with trucks and fork lifts crossing the line all day. Unless you want passenger trains running at 10mph you're going to need some new grade-separated crossings along the line.

Your Rutland to Bellows Falls line already exists - the Green Mountain Flyer. What it needs is regular, scheduled service.

This happened to us this weekend. 😓

DONT READ THE ARTICLE JUST RANK PIZZA SPOTS!

I’m serious please I need good pie

It’s just missing rail lines from White River Junction to St Johnsbury, and from Brattleboro to Manchester. Both of which are feasible because of the Connecticut River valley and the West River Valley respectively.

It might not make sense for Vermont alone, but that Concord to Lebanon line for instance would allow for direct travel from Montreal to Boston, which are much bigger market.

Yep. I would honestly consider murder for faster transit out of Rutland, especially ones where I don't have to drive. But we have a rather gorgeous logistical nightmare in the middle of the state.

Suggestion: both of you join The 251 Club. This late spring-summer-fall, drive together to every one of the towns in VT and chronicle the stone houses you find. You’ll have a fabulous time!

https://vt251.com/

Well I just paid 1500 for 250 gallons of oil which is the second full this winter

First: I appreciate this comment laying this out. I'm going to respond out of order, I've slightly edited quotes just to make what I'm responding to a bit more clearly - my intention is not to misrepresent one of your points by cutting out context, if I commit this error call me out. It would be due to incompetence and not malice.

> 3.) traditional runoffs allow for additional time to vet the two candidates. 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.

Shouldn't you already have researched all 7 of those candidates anyway? If you researched just 1 candidate and know "I like them" you should know why you like them over other candidates.

I see what you're getting at somewhat, though. Candidates you may have discarded because of not liking them as much as your #1 won't be researched as thoroughly. Fair enough.

> 2.) it’s completely obscure and which candidate is running off against which other candidate isn’t clear prior to casting your vote

I'm not certain you understand how ranked choice voting works, to be honest. They're all running against everyone.

> there were two other candidates that had 65%+ of voter support

130% of people voted?

> 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.

Your ranked-choice vote will, at minimum, count for the exact same amount that your FPTP vote would count. Just to be sure that I'm understanding you, could you lay out a situation where you're saying that a vote will not count?

> 4.) voter education

Absolutely. By far the biggest issue with ranked choice. But at worst, it's equivalent - ie, you could just vote #1 as the candidate you want, and that's equivalent to the old system. Education will happen, and I think in the last 10 years people have learned a lot more about voting systems. The world is in a better place to understand now than it was then.

> 1. IRV violates the one vote- one person principle that is the foundation of our democracy

That's not a foundation of our democracy. 3/5s rule, anyone?

> 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.

This is literally equivalent to saying "if I don't vote for a [govt position], I don't get a vote!". Yeah, you're right: if you don't vote, you don't vote.

> If I only rank one person and they’re eliminated, my vote is effectively tossed out in the trash

I mean, sure? But you could say the same about voting for anything other than the party that's going to win right now - ie, if your candidate isn't super strong, voting for them is throwing away your vote anyway. This is an issue with the current system just as much as ranked choice.

In general, let's avoid "if I do something wrong, bad things happen" type arguments. I've already said that education will be a big challenge, but for the sake of conversation now, let's pretend everyone is educated about how it works and votes properly. Eventually, everyone will understand it if it is implemented, so let's just assume for now.

There used to be a rail line on that corridor. The bridge that caries US 4 over the Queechee Gorge, just west of WRJ, was built as a railroad bridge in 1911, and was converted to a highway bridge in 1933. I don’t think much infrastructure or right-of-way remains, at least not much that hasn’t been repurposed.

Beyond that, how do you get the right-of-way for a commercial line? You’d have to shell out a ton before you laid any track.

I wish rail travel was more feasible here but I often see these proposed rail maps that do t take into account much beyond “it would be nice if there was a train from here to there”

The cost of tunneling is dropping drastically with each decade too. I was wondering if we would get a railway/interstate from Rutland to white river after tunneling gets sufficiently cheap and the traffic gets bad enough. I-92 was supposed to go that route but was never built. It’s one reason there is an interstate like route near Bennington.

The fuck you do. Maple syrup does NOT belong on pizza.

Vermont has nowhere near the population density for any of this.

Tunnels are expensive. A quick search indicated $250 to $500 million per mile in Europe and more in the US. We are a rural state, transit tunnels make zero sense.

There is an rail tunnel in Burlington between winooski and the waterfront but it is 350 feet long and was built by hand in the 19th century.

😆