On April 1, the city of Burlington welcomed a team of six international experts from IBM’s “Smarter Cities Challenge Initiative.” Their goal: Spend three weeks meeting with Burlington stakeholders to figure out how to reduce the city’s carbon footprint. Seven Days previewed their arrival in the March 27 story, “IBM Wants to Help Burlington Reduce Its Carbon Footprint — No Strings Attached.”
On Thursday night, April 18, after more than 40 meetings with over 150 people, the IBM team reconvened in Contois Auditorium with their findings and recommendations. Their advice was summed up in six words by IBM team member Christian Raetzsch of Prague: “Make Burlington synonymous with green tech.” In other words, Raetzsch advised, build off Burlington’s unique strengths, culture and infrastructure and use them to create a “new ecosystem” of sustainable, renewable energy.
The IBMers, who hail from Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Brazil and the United States — and whose consulting services over the past two weeks are worth an estimated $400,000 — focused their efforts on five areas: transportation, Burlington’s new smart grid metering system, renewable energy, energy efficiency and stormwater lake protection. The team offered up four major recommendations, all of which will be spelled out in greater detail in a written report available within a month. Those recommendations include:
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IBM sounds like an app for finding the restroom. Wakka Wakka.
Does that include sending 300 execs to Washington so they can lobby FOR CISPA?
What a complete charade by the City of Burlington and aided and abetted by Seven
Days.
McNeil biomass burns trees for fuel which is the most carbon
intense form of energy that exists, yet they all wink-wink, nod-nod, pretend it
is “carbon neutral”. For details, see:
http://www.maforests.org/Vermo…
McNeil is also the biggest polluter of conventional
pollutants in Vermont:
http://www.planethazard.com/ph…
Orwellian doublespeak is alive and thriving in the Green(washing) Mountain
State and sadly enabled by its in-bedded media.
The transportation system in the Greater Burlington area hasn’t changed much since I started riding many, many years ago. Sure, some additional buses, commuter lines and such – however the overall system still revolves around an off center hub that seems to make the assumption that everyone is headed to or from downtown Burlington. It ends up resulting in much longer bus rides compared to cities using ‘Point A to Point B’ routes (similar to subway systems) with multiple crossover/transfer points. The end result is much longer rides for many commuters – unless you are one of the lucky few who works along or near the bus line you also live on or near. My current commute, for example, is 11 minutes by car, 15 minutes by bicycle, *45* minutes by bus and just over an hour walking. However, because of the bus schedules and 10-15 minute wait at Cherry Street, the bus ride actually consumes about as much time as walking. In Boston, DC, Tampa and other cities riding the bus can actually be faster and cheaper than driving, especially when you account for parking. I would love to ride the bus every day, if I could only find the time.
There are a multitude of reasons for why Burlington’s public transit system is designed the way it is – most of them having to do with the limits of federal resources available for a city the size of Burlington v. the major metropolitan areas that you cite (Boston/DC/Tampa). For a city/region our size, Burlington’s “hub” system is the appropriate model given available resources. Transit is a fairly complex and heavily subsidized service to deliver that is based on highly data-driven decisions so it does not always make sense to the public, but CCTA is deemed to be one of the more efficient systems among its peers. Doing more with less is an on-going challenge.
Thanks for the Insult Liz – I chomp data for a living. I let the data drive the model – not the ‘that’s the way we do things’ attitude I’ve always received from the CCTA. That said, I realize the CCTA’s challenges – 5 hour minimum shifts for drivers due to the union contractual obligations alone makes things challenging. The grant programs are always underfunded and on a time sensitive basis – which is typically not enough time for the average rider to become accustomed to the transit (a la the Green Mountain Flyer).