MONDAY EDITION
ADDISON COUNTY
INDEPENDENT
Vol. 30 No. 23
Film explores prehistoric art • Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” documentary will be shown at THT on Oct. 3. See Arts Beat, Page 10.
VCET rewards businesswomen • Middlebury-based center gives $25,000 in grants to emerging entrepreneurs. See Page 2.
Donahue to leave college • Key official heads south for a new professional challenge. See Page 32.
Key home game for Tiger football
• Rutland was set to visit Doc Collins Field for the MUHS homecoming contest. Read about it on Page 18.
Storytellers to speak at college
• ‘Cocoon’ features storytellers on the theme “origins” at the Mahaney Center for Arts on Oct. 5. See Page 15.
Middlebury, Vermont
Monday, October 1, 2018
32 Pages
$1.00
Residents demand fewer trucks through city Three options pitched at forum
By ANDY KIRKALDY VERGENNES — About 70 residents and officials from Vergennes and neighboring towns on Wednesday weighed in on potential ways to ease the burden Vergennes faces from the 700 trucks, including 362 semis, that rumble through its downtown every day — the highest totals in the state. Attendees brought a familiar list of complaints about the trucks: They are noisy, dangerous and harmful to the downtown’s historic buildings and economic prospects. Listening were the people who since June have been studying the issue — a task force including officials from the Agency of Transportation (VTrans), the Addison County Regional Planning Commission, and
ALMOST 400 BIG trucks like this one rumble down Main Street in Vergennes every day. A task force is studying the problem and held a public meeting in the Little City last Wednesday. Independent photo/Trent Campbell
Stantec Consulting Services, a traffic design and engineering firm. They offered some hope for results this time around after earlier bypass
studies, one in the mid-1990s and one in the early 2000s, went nowhere. “The next 10 years of meetings could be moving the project forward,”
said Stantec traffic engineer Rick Bryant. The task force will make a recommendation for a possible solution out of a menu of three options. It will go to the regional planning commission’s Transportation Advisory Committee, which will in turn make a final recommendation to VTrans. THREE OPTIONS Those options are as familiar as the complaints, and two have been on the table for decades. Most attending the meeting appeared to favor the option of a bypass that would take trucks from Route 22A through mostly undeveloped land in northern Vergennes. A 1995 study backed that route. That bypass would, heading northward, leave 22A west of (See City trucks, Page 31)
Planning for Tri-Town bike loop progresses By CHRISTOPHER ROSS NEW HAVEN — A tri-town bike loop in Addison County is one step closer to becoming a reality. Coordinated by the Addison County Regional Planning Commission (ACRPC), the town of New Haven and city of Vergennes have teamed up to apply for a Municipal Planning Grant to develop a master plan for a designated bicycle route connecting Bristol, Middlebury and Vergennes, via New Haven. “This is very significant for the walk-bike community,” said Claire Tebbs, who wrote the application for the ACRPC. “This is the first regional master plan proposal of its kind for Addison County. It is a step (See Bike route, Page 16)
Four proud artists
GRETA JENNISON, LEFT, Isabelle Gallivan, Reese Laliberte and Anna Stillwell pose in front of an interactive mural and sculpture created by seventh-graders at Mount Abraham Union Middle School for the recent Bristol Harvest Festival.
Photo courtesy of the Vermont Creative Schools Initiative
Middlebury narrows down rail platform sites By JOHN FLOWERS MIDDLEBURY — A vast majority of Middlebury residents who’ve weighed in on the siting of a proposed passenger rail platform would prefer to see it placed in one of four areas: the Middle Seymour Street area, in the vicinity of the Marble Works, the former train station building and behind the parking lot of the National Bank of
Middlebury on Seymour Street. That opinion came through loud and clear in a recent survey conducted by the town of Middlebury and its engineering firm, Vanesse Hangen Brustlin, Inc. (VHB). The Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) has offered to pay for a 300-foot-long-by-12foot-wide passenger rail platform, with minimal
covering, to serve riders of an expanded Ethan Allen Express train route that Amtrak is slated to run along the states’ western rail corridor beginning in 2021 or 2022. That route from Rutland to Burlington will include local stops in Middlebury and Vergennes, and the state wants basic amenities in place before the train service begins. (See Rail, Page 7)