This would cost an insane amount of money that Vermont quite literally does not have, and would in many cases be incredibly slow.

You keep using the Ethan Allen Express extension as an example of something cheap. It only achieves it's "cheap" status, by being slow, extremely infrequent, and on track that already exists, was fairly straight, and was already in fairly tolerable shape.

VT estimates it'll be another $250m just to upgrade the two existing services to FRA Class 4 track (79mph). Which does not mean the average speed of travel will be 79mph, to be clear - because that doesn't mean the many, many curves limiting speeds are all going away.

Building rail lines that have never existed through valuable property in topographically difficult terrain, will be billions of dollars. VT could vote for the highest taxes in the country and somehow acquire the highest % of federal spending in the country, it's still never going to have the money to build it, and certainly won't have the $ to maintain it.

Rebuilding lines that once existed but haven't in a long time is only very slightly more plausible (and will also piss off a lot of people who enjoy the rail trails they've often become)....and doesn't change that even in the peak of rail many of those lines were very slow.

As reminder, the historic criteria for getting people to ride a train was "is this service better than walking or riding a horse". Because that was the competition. That is not the competition today for getting people to ride a train.

Many of these routes can't even generate enough public transit demand to make a bus pencil out very well on ridership - and that's with the bus going a lot quicker than the train likely would.

I would pretty much throw the whole idea away and replace with investing every dollar VT has or can acquire into:

• Continued speed improvements on the two existing services + extension to Montreal.

• Attempt to partner with other states on extending more trains into VT for more frequencies on those lines. Extending Springfield/Valley Flyer runs to WRJ (or Burlington/MTL) or Empire Service runs Rutland/Burlington is the most obvious.

If we ever manage to hit 5x+ a day and/or actually decent travel times, maybe then you can re-examine something new. The state's plans are for Albany-Bennington-Rutland(or Burlington) as the most likely future expansion beyond MTL.

(And the state rail plan basically agrees with me, as this is more or less their listed priorities).

Transit ridership is: speed, frequency, convenience. I don't see the scatterbrained approach as going to achieve any of them.

The artist who did the "everybody loves a parade" in Burlington mentioned this as well but Ultimately said he didn't care it was taken down.

Can’t they just take it down on the grounds that it’s objectively bad art?

Good thing they said they’re camping, then 😜

Gatta love rutland

I’m an artist and this was my understanding 🤣🤷‍♂️

We the People. Try googling "US oil subsidies"

I prefer a large farva

So do we! Funny to hear another person with our consumption

I’ll apologize upfront for not being well versed in quoting in Reddit.

To you response to my #3, in an ideal world you would have researched all 7 candidates. But that’s not where we live and and in fairness, if you’ve found someone that represents you well, why keep looking. I’m glad you at least recognize it as a fair point.

To Your response to my point 2, it maybe poor communications due to typing everything out and trying to be concise. What I was getting at is they’re all running against each other in round 1, but then the lowest vote getter is dropped and those votes redistributed. If there’s still not majority, the next lowest tally gets dropped and those rankings redistributed, at this point when you’re casting your ballot you have no idea who those three left maybe. Because you don’t know who is actually in the “runoff” part how do you know how you want to vote. That’s how Burlington’s worked. I apologize if there’s a different scheme to it now.

That 65% was for both candidates, thus the necessity for a runoff… Montroll was heavily favored, Wright had strong support for a Republican, no one like Kiss and the other two were fringe candidates. I believe Kiss had like mid 20% of the first round tabulation, but seemingly picked up all of the fringe voters and well… we got Kiss who stole roughly $35M of unauthorized funds to build Burlington Telecom (which isn’t a point on the merits of BTC, just criminal malfeasance by the mayor).

To your response to my point 1. I understand the logic that’s it’s akin to not voting, but at the same time it’s not the same. If I chose to only rank 3 candidates because I think the other two are crooks, and all my candidates get knocked out and my vote can no longer be distributed than I have voted, but my vote has effectively been tossed out. I didn’t CHOOSE not to vote, I went to the polls, took time out of my day, etc to go cast a ballot. I have the right for that ballot to be counted. In order for my ballot to be counted I would have to vote for one of the remaining candidates and that’s coercion. I realize that’s very principled argument, and that may not be important to everyone. But in a traditional runoff I have a choice to vote again or not, in IRV that choice is made for me based on how everything works out.

For the sake of argument I’ll pretend everyone can be educated, but point out that in the meantime we are discounting a lot of peoples votes and I’m still not sure what the benefit is 🤷🏼‍♂️

This is what we are afraid of. Hopefully getting more inland will help.

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You obviously agreed to participate. Do you have any documents? I think you voluntarily agreed to sign them, didn't you? Why don't you do like Kaczynski and go to the woods, running away of this shitty society if you don't agree with it? That's because society feeds you and gives you the comfort you want and, in return, you are forced to follow their rules. Contratualism itself isn't even about signing something, it's about how the society evolved to what it is today, with humans don't living in their natural state at nature anymore due to a general consensus of creating a civilization with laws made to avoid its collapse.

As I said before: this specific bird is more relevant to the society than a random deer, you liking it or not. A judicial system isn't made exclusively by reason. A judge always considers the context, the people involved and even the feelings behind a happening. If you've killed a old man just because you wanted to do so, you'll face heavy consequences. If you've killed a old man who raped your son in revenge, then this context and your feelings will be considered in the judgement and you'll still face consequences, but they're definitely going to be less intense than in the first case.

Otherwise, let's kill the President and then a random ordinary stranger and see what happens. They're just two corpses, aren't they? The consequences should be the same for these two murders, since they, objectively, are the exactly same thing in your logic: someone shot someone. As I stated before: the bird has its importance and that's why someone who kills this specific animal is going to be in jail in no time.

You can agree or disagree with that. You asked why someone who killed a bird would be in jail and I gave you the answer. You asked why a deer isn't as important as this specific bird and I gave you the answer. Now it's up to you agree or disagree with that.

Nice

If there was a state that would spearhead a passenger rail system focused on the needs of the state, it would be Vermont. If there was a state whose citizenry would be viciously opposed the development of a passenger rail system focused on the needs of the state, it would be Vermont.

Of course I would love that. How big of a priority would that be. Just the tracks alone (not including any other expenses) would be over 100 million (based on the 1-2 million dollar estimates for cost per mile). Is there enough squeeze for that when there is already a Boston to Montréal proposal going through Maine?

All about the tourists and second home owners

Is that why the purple line does its little jag west? And no WRJ- STJ

Denver has a ski train!

Agree. Not to mention how are the right-of-ways going to be achieved? Would require massive eminent domain action, like when the highways were built.

No, just crepe joints in Burlington

Costco is one of the few places that doesn't throw corn on the bottom of their pizzas, so you know, I eat it because I won't die

I'd love to see an East-West train across NH and into Maine. Maybe Burlington-Montpelier and then following RT 302 to Portland?

There is a reason there aren’t any train lines doing that.

I’m going to come off as an asshole but if you make 80k and can’t afford heating oil your living outside your means. Just because the bank approves you for a certain amount doesn’t mean you need to use it all.