Completed in June 2006, this web resource has been developed as part of the FY-2006 VTrans Transportation Planning Initiative (TPI) Work Plan Task - "Identification of Marketable and Developable Property Adjacent To Railroad Rights-of-Way Throughout the State of Vermont".

The utility allows the user to view natural resource and land-use data about the adjactent parcels for Chittenden County towns along the Western Rail Corridor and the New England Central RR Line traversing points eastward.

All of the town maps along those rail corridors have parcels, which the user may click on to obtain corresponding information of the property. Grand List information was used here instead of E-911 for this purpose. Each town (except for Bolton) functions for this feature. There is currently a problem with matching Bolton's parcel data to the grand list information. Additionally Bolton's parcel data is from 1993. Zoning and Natural Resource data is available for viewing, with corresponding description information.

According to a CCMPO TAC member, this TPI work task was instituted as a result of the Rail Council's request for statewide rail siding information, for the purpose of preserving their infrastructure for future rail property marketability. Although this issue was not addressed in the actual Work Plan Task document, It may be anticipated that additional data will be added to the web utility (e.g. a rail siding identifier, any other natural resource/transporatation data) in future fiscal year TPI work tasks.

If such a utility as this is to be deployed statewide, we feel it should be hosted utilising VTrans's ArcIMS-based Online Map Centre. In order for ease of regular data updates (e.g. zoning, parcel, grandlist, et al.) as well as maintaining statewide format uniformity from region to region, we strongly suggest this be maintained at the state-level, in cooperation with the Regional GIS Planners.

For any further information or comment on this task, please contact us.

October 2006