Sen. Weeks urges study of a self‑funded western Vermont highway; agency officials flag cost and scope
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Summary
At an April 8 House Transportation hearing, Sen. Weeks outlined an "Interstate 22A" study to explore self‑funded limited‑access highways linking Vergennes, Rutland and Bennington. VTrans and regional planners welcomed discussion but warned the study and any construction would be costly, multi‑year and require refined scope and funding.
Sen. Weeks of Rutland told the House Transportation Committee on April 8 that the western corridor of Vermont — from Vergennes through Middlebury and Rutland toward Bennington — has been "largely stagnant for the last 80 years" and asked lawmakers to consider a study of self‑funded, limited‑access roads he described as an "economic corridor" or "Interstate 22A." He said the study should inventory routes, propose alignments and funding, and calculate a return on investment before any decision to proceed.
"Constructing self funding limited access roads in Vermont" would, Weeks said, allow the Legislature to see costs and benefits in numbers and choose whether to move forward. He repeatedly framed the proposal as an effort to start a conversation about long‑term economic development rather than an immediate plan to build roads.
Regional planners and agency staff told the committee they value the conversation but urged realism on scope and funding. Adam Lehi, executive director of the Addison County Regional Planning Commission, noted the office had completed a planning and environmental linkages (PEL) study for Vergennes that recommended advancing three alternatives into NEPA, and he urged support for projects already programmed in the short term.
"We completed planning and environmental linkages study, which is a precursor to a NEPA application," Lehi said, and asked the Legislature to back movement of the Vergennes alternatives into the permitting phase.
Vermont Agency of Transportation staff said a full corridor study — and certainly construction — would be a major, multi‑year undertaking. Jeremy Reed summarized the Vergennes PEL as a roughly $2,000,000, four‑year effort and gave a high‑level, order‑of‑magnitude estimate for a new 60–70 mile interstate‑scale corridor in the billions: "in real rough order of magnitude, any new highway would be roughly in the $4,000,000,000 range," he said, while acknowledging significant uncertainty and variables (alignment, standards, environmental mitigation, right of way and federal requirements).
Agency witnesses also cautioned about federal tolling rules and practical limits. Reed explained that while a new toll road can be built, federal rules and policy mean existing non‑toll parallel routes cannot be legally restricted in ways that would force traffic onto a toll facility (a phenomenon staff described as "leakage"), complicating payback calculations for a tolled corridor. Committee members pressed on how tolling would interact with goals to reduce truck traffic in town centers and whether bi‑state coordination with New York would be required to complete meaningful westward connections.
Multiple committee members urged focusing on near‑term projects already in VTrans' program — for example, the Vergennes bypass alternatives recommended by the PEL study — while continuing higher‑level conversation about a western corridor. Witnesses and members agreed a serious corridor study would likely require dedicated consultant funding (several hundred thousand to multiple millions) and two to three years to produce defensible economic and environmental analyses.
The committee did not vote on any measure at the hearing. Chair Walker thanked the witnesses and encouraged continued engagement between legislators, VTrans and regional planning commissions to refine scope and next steps.
