One quarter of the truck traffic on a 24 mile segment of route 7 through Brandon and Middlebury could be eliminated if a 5.3 mile spur of the Vermont Railway is built.
A Record of Decision for the project has just been released by the Agency of Transportation.
Currently 73,000 trucks a year (up to 115 per day) travel between a quarry in Middlebury and Omya's marble processing plant in Florence. This traffic would be moved onto the railroad on completion of the spur, hauled in a single daily train.
According to the draft Environmental Impact Statement for the project, "The high volume of trucks traveling through Pittsford, Brandon and Middlebury presents safety concerns for pedestrians, restricts access to businesses and side streets, and detracts from the character of these village centers, all of which are National Register Historic Districts. In addition," the report says, "the level of truck traffic has raised concerns about aesthetics, traffic, vibration, noise, and economic impacts."
This is the largest single truck flow in the state and converting it to a rail haul would make a huge difference to the quality of life along route 7. Changing from truck to rail shipment would make a huge reduction in the environmental costs of the shipment, eliminating most of the diesel particulate and global warming gas emissions.
OMYA is a key industry for Vermont and it needs efficient movement of its product. It's the state's role to provide transportation infrastructure for everyone, including all businesses. The state does that now by maintaining Route 7, but providing a rail option would benefit the state as a whole by lowering the impact. It would also help Omya by lowering it's costs.
The spur is planned to travel in a wetlands area and would have some impact there (though much, much less than if it were a road).
For a more detailed discussion of the rail spur by its main sponsors, see:
