Katharine Otto, of the Southern Windsor County RPC, at the 2012 National Rural Transportation Conference.

1. RPC Involvement in the Recovery of Vermont’s
Transportation Network after Tropical Storm Irene
NADO Rural Transportation Presented by Katharine Otto, Southern Windsor County RPC
Peer Learning Conference
2012, Burlington VT on behalf of the Vermont Association of Planning and Development Agencies

2. What happened in Vermont?

3. Damage across Vermont
Maps produced by Pam Brangan at the Irene Local
Roads Response Resource Coordination Center.
9/30/2011. pbrangan@ccrpcvt.org

4. Southern Windsor County

5. Cavendish – Winery Road Bridge
Photograph by SWCRPC staff

6. Cavendish – Carlton Road
Photograph by SWCRPC staff

7. “Cavendish Canyon” on VT-131
Photograph by SWCRPC staff

8. Traditional Role of
Vermont s
Vermont’s RPCs
 Coordinated
regional planning
 Transportation
planning
 Local land use
planning & zoning
 Emergency planning
E l
& preparedness
 Natural resource
planning
 GIS mapping &
analysis

9. What was our task?
 VTrans requested assistance from Vermont’s 11
Vermont s
RPCs
 Specific tasks
 Mapping & data collection
 Resource matching
 Communications
 Technical assistance
 FEMA PA assistance

10. Strengths
g
 Pre established
Pre-established relationships with municipalities
 Transportation
 GIS mapping and infrastructure inventories
 Pre-established working relationships and
partnerships with state agencies and volunteers
 Inter-RPC mutual aid assistance – less impacted
RPCs help more impacted RPCs

11. Areas for improvements
p
 No pre-defined role for RPCs to assist VTrans in the
pre defined
manner requested
 Not all RPC staff had adequate knowledge and/or
training for tasks
 Communications challenges
 Continuously changing expectations
 Collecting too much information

12. Picture from Town of Weathersfield facebook page
Thank
Th k you
Contact:
Katharine Otto kotto@swcrpc org
kotto@swcrpc.org
Pam Brangan pbrangan@ccrpcvt.org
Michele Boomhower mboomhower@ccrpcvt.org
Catherine Dimitrik cdimitruk@nrpcvt.com