[Danielle Balocca]: Hey Medford Bites listeners, before we get into today's episode, I wanted to mention that on the day of this recording, the verdict was announced in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse. After killing two people and shooting another in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Rittenhouse was on trial for first-degree intentional homicide, along with other felony charges. Although this case was decided in Wisconsin, it highlights the ways in which the criminal legal system is constructed to protect certain people and condemn others. No communities are immune to this truth and it feels important to acknowledge and hold space for the ways in which the outcome of this trial may confirm or exacerbate a feeling of unsafety among groups that have historically been harmed rather than protected by the criminal legal system, especially black and brown people. If the outcome of this case shocked you, perhaps that is something to think about and help to fuel your energy to continue to improve or dismantle these harmful systems. The interview in today's episode challenged me to step outside the ways in which certain infrastructure systems in our community are set up and the values they create and reinforce. I hope it sparks thoughts for you too. This episode is being released on Sunday, November 21st, 2021 in observance of World Day of Remembrance for road traffic victims, which you'll hear more about from our guests today. And now on to our interview. All right, hi, thank you all for joining me. I think this is the fullest the SHE-SHED has ever been. I'll just start off by asking you to introduce yourself, say your name and pronouns.
[Emily O'Brien]: I'm Emily O'Brien, SHE-HER, and I'm representing the Medford Bicycle Advisory Commission.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: I'm Ellery Klein, SHE-HER also, and I'm representing WAC Medford.
[UJBcHvzH4YE_SPEAKER_06]: And I'm Emily Stein, SHE-HER, and I'm here with WAC Medford and also Safe Roads Alliance.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great, thank you all for being here. We'll start off with the first question that I've been asking everybody. It's just your favorite place to eat in Medford and what you like to get there. You want me to go first?
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: All right. So this is Ellery. I do love to go to Neighborhood Kitchen on Spring Street. I told the woman working at the counter there that I either am eating their chicken sandwich or dreaming about it.
[UJBcHvzH4YE_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, that's a good one for mac and cheese. They have the best mac and cheese in Medford. I'll also put a shout out to Tenoch in Medford Square for like the best quesadilla, tacos, or tortas. They're pretty awesome.
[Emily O'Brien]: I am partial to Pikaichi ramen in West Medford, and it is really nice on a cold winter day. Like we've been having today. Yeah.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. It's a good ramen day.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. Awesome. So I know you all had a ceremony today with the mayor and all the teams and had to talk about that and just sort of describe what you all do for these different groups.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, today we marked in Medford, we asked Mayor Lunger-Kern to officially proclaim Medford as part of the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, which is happening on Sunday, November 21st. And she declared Sunday to be a day that Medford would observe the day and every, what is it, the third Sunday of November hereafter. So we will continue to observe this day in Medford. Yeah, so we met and the mayor gave a speech and the new traffic engineers were there, Todd Blake and Amy. I don't remember Amy's last name. I can't remember. But we have a new traffic engineer in Medford, Amy, which is very exciting because, what, five years ago we had no traffic engineer and now we have two. So, you know, the city is making this a priority, thinking about these issues, which is really exciting.
[UJBcHvzH4YE_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it's a good day to recognize and, you know, for other cities and states, well, countries across the world to gather. It's really helpful for victims or anybody who's been impacted by a traffic crash to connect with other people so you can grieve collectively but also grow your advocacy and I think you know today in Medford it was it was a small gathering but it was it happened and I think it was so good for everybody to see the police are on board and have an understanding of traffic safety it's not all about enforcement it's also about educating and um and for the engineers and the mayor and other leaders in the city to recognize our advocacy work and also recognize the importance of collaboration across the city to make the streets safer for everybody.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah and also just to remind everyone that this is something that's preventable and that we don't have to tolerate or live with. I think sometimes it's very easy to gloss over because cars are so ubiquitous that the side effect of centering our infrastructure around cars is that people die. And it's good to just take a day and be like, actually, we don't have to. People don't have to endure these losses or, you know, the fear of these losses, like the way that we do.
[Emily O'Brien]: And I think it's also worth mentioning that the number of people who die in traffic crashes every year is kind of in the same ballpark as the number of people who die from firearms. And for all of the political fights about firearms we kind of forget about traffic crashes because it's just kind of much more widespread. There aren't like those handful of major shocking incidents that get everybody's attention and it just kind of keeps happening a little bit under the radar. And also that it's not just about deaths, that it's also about major injuries and loss of productivity and even just property damage. You know, somebody who loses several days of work and their way of getting to work because they got rear-ended by somebody else, those are not meaningless costs either. And it's worth keeping those things in mind too.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, this morning I just said a few things and one thing I pointed out was a journal of pediatric health. article from 2021 they point out that over three generations the amount of space allotted to children by parents like that parents feel safe allowing their children to roam is shrunk by 90% so you know kids used to be able to go out and like see their friends and go to the park and now You know, we have 10% of the space that they used to, and traffic has increased tenfold. And the article's authors, they were focusing on bicycling, you know, just saying that kids need a way to feel empowered and like they can make a change. And they were arguing that bicycling actually, despite the fact that we're talking about all these fatalities, you know, doesn't really carry that much more risk than like playing sports or other things. that we do need to, like, think about how we build our environment because, you know, we can see from these numbers that kids are just, they feel trapped. They mentioned saying, you know, kids feel frustrated because they're always being yelled at, like, stay healthy, stay fit, get exercise, and then we've built this world where they can't actually leave. You know, some kids can't even walk three feet out of their door without being at major risk of... of getting run over and it's for me it's like let's stop and ask ourselves what have we done you know like our kids deserve better and then from kids you know we have senior citizens who are only going to be growing in number you know like thinking about all the ages and all mobilities but kids are such a good symbolic like group of people for that issue.
[Danielle Balocca]: And like innocent too I feel like when I hear people talking about like bikes people biking and particularly people that are driving while others are biking, it seems like, well, that biker should have done x, y, and z. But you're in the car. You're in the big, powerful machine. And perhaps with kids, there's an innocence. We couldn't blame the kid for the kid getting hit, but we could blame that adult biker.
[UJBcHvzH4YE_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah. Yeah. And the kids see it. I mean, they see, at least my kids, see drivers on their phone. They see drivers speeding. They're seeing their own parent or other adult doing unsafe things as a driver in control of the car and it's you know I think we have the opportunity to raise a whole generation of kids who feel safe walking a little farther or walking to school on their own but also being able to to recognize, okay, these are the dumb things that adult drivers are doing, and we're hoping that the generation now can grow up not only being aware of drunk driving and that being socially unacceptable, but also distracted driving and just aggressive driving, because it has gotten out of control.
[Emily O'Brien]: It has gotten it has gotten really really really noticeably worse since the pandemic happened. Speeds in particular have gotten much much higher and aggressive driving has gotten much higher and one thing that I keep coming back to is during this whole pandemic we all upended our lives completely in order to keep each other safe. And we all wear a mask when we go shopping, partly because that gives us a little bit of benefit personally, but the biggest benefit is when everybody does it. And wouldn't it be nice if we could say, you know, if we could upend our whole life for a couple of years to keep each other safe from a disease, can't we slow down to the actual speed limit for the same reason. Can't we make it at least socially acceptable if you're in the car with a friend and they're going 30 and the speed limit is 25 to say, hey, maybe we should slow down a little bit. And that's something where I wouldn't go into a store without a mask. And it's not because I think I'm going to get COVID if I don't wear a mask. It's because I want to be part of a society where people take those steps to keep everyone safe and everyone benefits. And I think traffic safety is very much the same thing.
[UJBcHvzH4YE_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, and I think there's a piece to it where if every driver also rode a bike, also walked, then you have so much more respect for that perspective of a cyclist on the side of the road and the cars coming not only too close to you, but going by too fast. And I think if we all, if people got out of their cars, and biked every now and then. We're all pedestrians, but I don't think everybody's a cyclist, and that's why we're also changing the language from a cyclist to people on bike, pedestrian to people walking, because I think we need to just have that, oh, just that sympathy, that recognition of what it does feel like to be a pedestrian walking on Route 16, where there's technically a path, But you don't feel safe when cars are going 50.
[Emily O'Brien]: And I think it's also since so many of the political discussions in Medford Center around cost of housing and the cost of living and parking. It also should be a really big deal to talk about things that make it just a little bit easier for people to have fewer cars per household. And it doesn't mean everybody has to be able to do everything all the time without a car, but if it means that a couple can have one car that they share instead of having to have two cars that makes a big difference and that's one fewer parking spaces and that's a huge cost savings for those people too in a place where it's really expensive to live and a house that has a driveway costs more than one without. When one of the biggest complaints about neighbors when there's a new development planned is where are all those people going to park? Just making it just a little bit easier for a few more people to do a few more things while owning just fewer cars, I think is a really important thing for the community and can alleviate some of these major concerns.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so I'd love to talk a bit about Walk Medford's platform that we released. So two years ago, with the last election, we did a questionnaire for all the elected officials. And basically, you know, we realized when you talk about the problems, there's pretty much no dissent among any politician. Like, no one likes speeding cars. No one likes, you know. traffic and no one let you know what I mean. So we felt this year that putting a questionnaire out was a waste of everyone's time. Like why make the elected officials fill out one more long questionnaire? So we just put a platform out and asked people to sign on to it. It's got nine points. And these points are, Walk Medford advocates both for greater awareness of drivers, driving safely, and things like that with personal behavior, but a lot of it is pushing the city for infrastructure changes. Because a lot of driver behavior is just influenced by the fact that they feel safe looking at their phone because the roads are so built to just coast cars along, right? Just real quickly number one is follow the city's complete streets policy on all transportation infrastructure and policy projects from the simplest repaving or street repair to the comprehensive plan. So the complete streets policy is something that says, you know, every time we deal with something with the road repave. We should just constantly be thinking about and planning for making our roads friendly to all users. And kind of putting that into our future planning as well as what's going on now. So we should never rip up a road and put it back the way it was, or at least think about whether or not it should be put back the way it was, right? And Mayor Burke signed us on to Complete Streets in her very first term, right at the start. And I think, you know, the fact that we have two traffic engineers says a lot for both Berks and the current administration is going to be committed to the issue. So number two is implement basic safety improvements to all existing crosswalks in Medford by the end of 2022. It's really easy to put a lot of paint and things that just really mark out where the pedestrians are and keep drivers aware. It's very expensive to rip up roads and put new curb cuts and narrow the roads and things, but we can do a lot with paint and tactical signs and things. Number three, and this is my personal baby, the one that I insist to go in there, prioritize planning for safe walking and biking routes to schools, parks, and recreational facilities to keep our children safe. And we know that pedestrian deaths are up 50% in the United States over the last 10 years, which is not quite as high in Massachusetts, but that is a shocking number. And I think it just shows that we're kind of at a crisis point. So, and for me, you know, the next generation is kind of the priority in that I just think every kid in Medford should be able to walk and bike to school and feel safe. And so if we can focus on routes to make that happen, I think Medford's going to be a much better place. Number four is plan and implement innovative, tactical, low-cost pedestrian safety improvements at high priority locations. Number five, overcome institutional inertia at the Department of Conservation and Recreation, that's the DCR, to improve safety on DCR's parkways in Medford. So I don't think people realize a lot of times when you see a post on Facebook like, oh my gosh, this road, people are driving crazy, and guess what, who owns the road? It's not Medford. It's the Department of Conservation and Recreation, and we in Medford have the second, well I've heard both, I've heard second or third number of miles of DCR road running through our town, we're second only to Boston. Although someone did say third, so now I have to see which one it is. But either way, out of all the cities in the state of Massachusetts, Medford is dealing with a huge number of state roads that are run by an institution that is underfunded and understaffed. And so whenever we want to deal with these issues in Medford, we have to get Donato involved and Garbali involved and Barbara involved. And there's a lot of waiting around for someone to answer the questions. And so we're hoping, pushing the city to really kind of cut through some of that red tape and demand better responsiveness, better funding. And we're hopeful that with the infrastructure bill, that there'll be some money coming that we should be the squeaky wheel for. Number six, plan for walk access to the new green line extension stations that will serve Medford. We're really hoping the city's thinking about that and pushing them to make sure that that's happening. 7. Plan for and implement walking wayfinding signs. This is a project that's going on in the city right now. Just putting some signs up to kind of spur people's awareness of like, oh it's only a 15-minute walk to the library from here, like maybe I'll try going on foot. Malden has some really nice signs that if you've been through Malden you might have seen those that we want to mimic that in medford and that's happening in the city right now. number eight fund and prioritize implementation of the pedestrian accessibility study recommendations from june 2021. that means they looked at all the sidewalks that were owned by the city of medford and so now we've got to work on what to do with all the findings of the city going out and looking at our City on sidewalks. So a lot of them are DCR and a lot of them are private ways, so The private ways also if you live on a street, that's private way. It wasn't part of that study And number nine keep walkways clear of ice and snow in the winter And currently we've been working with the City Council and the mayor on trying to get more clear enforceable mandate to make sure everyone clears their sidewalks, and also to find resources for people, you know, like a senior citizen that really can't do it anymore, strengthen the ways that they can find to get help doing that. So those are walk Medford's priorities. Yeah. A lot of elected officials signed on, so we're excited.
[Emily O'Brien]: And anyone else want to share anything about the commission? Sure, so the Medford Bicycle Advisory Commission is a city commission. It's an advisory to the mayor, but we do a bunch of events with helping to disseminate information and we do things like distributing helmets and lights to kids. We've done some kids bike skills events, things like that. A number of years ago the bike commission put together a Medford bike master plan where we went over a whole bunch of different roads and corridors through the whole city and made recommendations. And that was some years ago, so we are looking to update that now. Some of those things have been implemented, some of those places have changed. Some of the things that we were trying to say, what's the least And what's the least invasive, most low impact thing we could ask for? Now we feel like we're maybe getting to a point where we can ask for a little bit more. And so we need to revisit. We plan on revisiting that. We've done a number of other projects lately with providing recommendations to the city to where to put bike racks. tried to lock up a bike outside stores in Medford. There are not very many places to do it, but there will soon be more, we certainly hope. And we've been doing a lot to let people know about other upcoming projects around the city. We do work closely with Walk Medford We share a lot of similar interests, a lot of similar goals, and I would also say that the Bike Commission can be a really useful resource either through the website or through email or through the Facebook page, just if you're interested in biking someplace and you want to figure out a safer, easier way to do it. because one thing that is definitely the case in Medford and it's kind of like this through a lot of Massachusetts is there's the obvious straightforward way to go someplace and that's usually the major road that if you're not a confident cyclist you probably don't feel comfortable doing that but a lot of times there really are a lot of really great alternatives that are just all the little ins and outs that the people who live in that one area know. So there are ways to get in touch with the local knowledge of everybody in every neighborhood. One project that we do hope to do in the future is to put together some signed routes that help give people quiet alternative routes to get you to useful places that kind of make use of some of those little back roads. And some of them will require a few changes or a few tweaks, possibly permission to use different spaces and things like that. But there really are possibilities that we can make it easier for people to find and use and make it easier for people to get to the places they need to go without having to be on the major roads that are quite as intimidating. Sounds like an awesome resource.
[UJBcHvzH4YE_SPEAKER_06]: And we have such great bike paths in Medford.
[Emily O'Brien]: Like really great bike paths. We need them to connect a little bit more. That is one thing I really hope that DCR can eventually get better at is the wayfinding signage for some of these things because a lot of people don't realize Once the clipper ship connector is built. You'll be able to get from assembly square all the way out to Concord entirely on bike paths and There are just a number of those places where you just have to cross the street. It's not very far It's not difficult to do but if you get to the end of this section of path and you don't already know where the next section is You stand there and you go, what now? And maybe you go and Google for a PDF on your phone. Like, who does that? So I think that is one case where we have a ton of resources and a ton of great stuff that's already here that we could make much, much better use with good signage. And that's a really cheap thing to do. It just means coordinating all of the various people involved.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: yeah yeah route finding is definitely the the aside from safety you know people always say i would bike more but i don't feel safe um but also just like i don't know how to get there on a bike and you know it does take time you just sit down and like figure out your route but it is so true like you get on the side roads and the bike paths and you know, besides the fact that we do have this inherent danger in, you know, our road traffic, but I always try to say that 97% of the time when you're on a bike, you know, you're like so stress-free and enjoying the outdoors and you get to stop and look at some cool bird and a tree or like see someone you know and you can just stop and talk to them. I'm a big believer in just, if we got out of our cars and walked and biked more around our communities, a lot of this political division would fade. I actually think a lot of the political division comes out of our car-centric culture, where you get in your car, and when you get behind, just we were talking to Buckley today, Chief Buckley of the Medford Police at the event this morning, and he was like, something happens to people when they get behind the wheel of a car. just become different people so angry and full of rage and I really it's true you know and it's really hard to be full of rage on a bike unless somebody is actively like trying to kill you with their car but otherwise yeah you're so happy to be alive I just love being on a bicycle yeah all five senses are just like come alive whereas when you're in your car maybe
[UJBcHvzH4YE_SPEAKER_06]: You're listening to the radio, but you don't like right. I saw a great blue heron Biking on Riverside and like I grew up in the middle of the woods and that was the only great blue heron I've ever seen but they're in Medford like I was driving. I wouldn't have seen it, but it's so true. It's like it's this lovely sensory experience when you're on a bike or
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: And I feel like so often, you know, because it is so important to make it safer and, you know, to stop people dying, but often I feel like we forget to say but. But the risk isn't that high and the risk of experiencing a really lovely bike ride to work instead of sitting at stop signs and having people cut you off and give you the finger. I mean, which they might on the bike too, but you know.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think that makes me think of one of the things that I really love about our neighborhood where we live now is right behind our house there's a dead-end street and there's a shortcut walking path. And so what that means is that dead-end street is actually only a dead-end for cars, but it's not a dead-end for people. So lots and lots of people walk through there or ride bikes through there and they stop and they talk to each other and everyone on that little dead-end street knows everyone else and I've never lived someplace where I knew so many of my neighbors and I really think that the fact that this is a corridor where there's actually pretty heavy foot traffic there's pretty heavy people traffic and no car traffic just means that people wander around in the street and have a conversation and their dogs run around and their kids run around and it's a remarkable thing and it doesn't work that way when there's just cars whizzing by everywhere.
[Danielle Balocca]: when you're not interacting in a pleasant way with anybody else in the car when you're in a car. Emily, is there anything that you wanted to add about your work?
[UJBcHvzH4YE_SPEAKER_06]: Yes, well, Safe Roads Alliance is a non-profit. We do work nationwide, but locally we're really trying to help push legislation that will make our roads safer. We worked really hard to get the hands-free law passed so people, drivers wouldn't be holding their phone while behind the wheel. Unfortunately, that went into law like two weeks after we shut down with COVID. So it seems like drivers have just completely forgotten that that law was passed or they do, but you know, we're just in our, you know, COVID fog. But there are two pieces of legislation that I think are really important and it's relying less on driver's behavior and enforcement. And we're really hoping to push those pieces of legislation so they can hopefully get passed in this session. One of them is automated enforcement. So municipalities can opt into speed cameras or red light cameras, or even a camera on the stop bomber of a school bus. So each town or city can decide, okay, what are our issues? And that way you remove the potential interaction with police. Police can focus on other areas that are probably more important, but also there's less risk of profiling, there's less risk of both police and driver being a vulnerable road user on the side of the road. So that one, I think, I'm really hopeful that that will pass. And nobody's going to like getting a ticket in the mail, but then you'll learn. I don't go through this intersection at 40 miles an hour when it's a 25. And then the other piece of legislation is called an act to reduce traffic fatality. It's looking at bike, we call it the bike bill, we call it the truck safety bill, it's like an omnibus bill that helps to define who's a vulnerable road user, how much space should a driver leave when passing a cyclist, and it also talks, you know, work zone safety and Trucks, like trucks, should have side guards underneath. They should have convex mirrors. And they should have backup cameras. Because a lot of these fatalities, especially in thickly settled areas, I know a lot in Boston and Cambridge, pedestrians or cyclists were killed by trucks who were just backing up and could not see. So it's, hopefully, this bill will pass too and just again looking at how can we reduce the fatalities that are truly preventable. So I can give you links to those two bills for the notes and we're encouraging people to write their elected officials so we can really, you know, the more we, as Sean Garvely said today, the more noise we make about a certain bill, the more they'll pay attention and really try to push to get it through because Road safety is a bipartisan issue. It's everybody who wants to see the streets be safer. I think we know when we're behind the wheel ourselves, we tend to think very selfishly at times. But in general, I think these are laws that really could get passed and be effective.
[Danielle Balocca]: Does anybody else want to share ways folks can get involved in the work that you're doing or ways they can support your work?
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, both walk Medford and the Bicycle Commission meet monthly so walk Medford is a not we're not a nonprofit and we're we're not associated with the city of Medford We're just like a group of people that want to keep poking the city and so we We actually just switched to having meetings the first Monday of every month. Right now it's on Zoom. It's 7.30 p.m. Probably because Emily couldn't make it at 7.00. But we welcome anyone to come. This morning a woman named Jennifer spoke very eloquently about her daughter who was hit at Winthrop by the parks there. She came to a Walk Medford meeting a couple of months ago and it was great to have her come and talk about her experience and quite honestly it lit a fire under me because I've gotten a little passive about things lately and it just kind of re-fired me up because I think about my own kids. Thankfully her child was okay in the end, but it could have been a bad accident. I just think we just got to keep motivated. So anyone's welcome to come and see how they can help, whether it's You know, leading walks, like you can come up with your own idea too. We had a woman for a while that was very excited to lead walks. She'd like, people showed up and walked with their dogs one day, and they went and did a historic walk one day, and she got busy and that stopped. But it's sort of like, if anyone shows up with a good idea, or something that they want to work on, like an intersection that has been problematic, you know, we're excited to have people. One thing that we looked at in the past was, neighbor ways, and we'd love someone that's motivated to do that. They've done a bunch of it in Somerville, and basically if you're on kind of a not super major street, but a street that is a neighborhood street that people are speeding on, you can get your neighbors together and do some tactical things like painting or putting up pots with plants in them or, you know, just ways to kind of traffic home, and it's It's a really cool project, and the city of Somerville actually, after they did it sort of in a guerrilla fashion a few times in Somerville, the city of Somerville actually pays for people to do this now. And we'd love somebody motivated to do that on their street. Yeah, a few streets around here that could benefit. Exactly, yeah. It's just, you know, it takes time, and someone needs to be willing to put in the time, go and talk to their neighbors. But, you know, the big thing of something like that The guy that ran the project in Somerville came and talked to us at a meeting a couple times. And he said people had amazing experiences just getting to know their neighbors. And he's like, one guy had lived on the street for 40 years, and he met another neighbor who'd also lived on the street for 40 years. And they had never met each other. But they got the block together to work on traffic calming. And all of a sudden, they made this connection. Like, wow, you've been here 40 years? So have I. So just, you know, I feel like there's so much potential for just building community in this. It's not just about, like, slow down everybody, stop speeding. You know, it's not just about scolding people. It's about rebuilding these neighborhood networks and getting to know your neighbors. One of you mentioned keeping the sidewalks clear.
[Danielle Balocca]: That's how we've met all of our neighbors. It's in the winter, like, shuffling, like, helping the old lady at the end of the street, right? Like, that's, they wouldn't have met anybody if it wasn't for those terrible blizzards in 2015, right? Oh, yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, that year gave you plenty of time for it. The bike commission meets the fourth Wednesday of every month, and it is a city commission, but the meetings are all open to the public. They're also on Zoom these days, like everything else. The public is always welcome, and we welcome the input of all comers. If you have particular ideas, particular concerns, by all means, come and speak up. And we can always use people who are motivated, just like with WAC Medford, people who are motivated to put in the legwork on specific issues or specific projects. Sometimes the way that one of these things happens, especially things like putting together a signed alternate route for something, it really is a question of having the human being sit down and hash it out. So we always have projects that we can use extra volunteers. and to help out at any of the events that we do. Yeah, and always connect on Facebook. The other thing that's also really useful, Emily, the other Emily mentioned having people write to representatives, write to your representatives, call or write to city officials, but also if you sign up for the mailing lists or the Facebook groups from these local organizations, There are often things that come up before the traffic commission or other public meetings that relate to specific projects and specific concerns that people have. And just having more people show up to those kinds of meetings really does make a big difference in showing that there are a lot of people who care about these issues and who are on the side of making these improvements.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it can be hard to get people out that are in favor, which is usually the majority, but often the minority of people who are really mad about the change are the ones that show up and they're very loud and angry, you know.
[Emily O'Brien]: It's the three people who have lived there for 40 years and don't want to see anything any different than it has been all along versus the, you know, 30 people or 100 people or 300 people who go through there every day and do care, but maybe don't make as much noise.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and what are the groups specifically, the mailing groups that you think people should sign on to?
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, Walk Medford and the Medford Bicycle Commission has an email list. The Facebook page is also a good place to go and keep an ear to the ground for those things. And there's also a bunch of regional organizations like MassBike, Boston Cyclist Union, all of these things. You know, we think about just what happens in Medford, but Boston is not very far away. And even if you travel through multiple municipalities to get to work, which basically who doesn't, you can sign up for the equivalent organizations in some of those other places. have to work together a lot of the time because roads cross town lines all the time and it really does matter what happens at that town line crossing too so.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah that actually reminds me that there's a group in Somerville that they're starting to advocate for the Mystic Valley Parkway and that area of 16 and we Martha Andres of WAC Medford showed up to that meeting and got them to add the stretch of 16 where that pedestrian signal is opposite Medford Square so they're going to try to just get some funding to make some changes to make that stretch of road safer. It's one thing we've been talking about a lot in WAC Medford is trying to connect with Arlington and Malden and Everett and Cambridge because these roads do, you know, we don't want to just have like great bike infrastructure and then it ends when you get to the Medford city line, right? So we do have to build those crosstown connections.
[Danielle Balocca]: And somebody mentioned like affordability too of living here and like people being pushed out from other communities and working in the city and having to get through all those other communities to get to work without a car, right?
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: And is the bike commission still looking for new members? Yes, actually.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think so. I have to double check where we are in that process. But we have openings. I don't remember if we if we're still accepting applications or not. So that's why I didn't say anything, because I can't remember where we are in this process. But if nothing else, even if we're not, even if we have filled the spots or even if they're not accepting any more applications at this point, you can always show up and participate and help out in working groups and that kind of thing. And everybody's welcome. And then if you've been doing that, by the time we need to find more members again, then you'll be on the list. You'll be already there. Yeah. You'll be right there.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, thank you all so much. Is there anything we haven't talked about that you want to make sure we mention today?
[UJBcHvzH4YE_SPEAKER_06]: No, just to all the drivers out there. Take a bike ride. Walk your errands. Look for the crosswalks.
[Emily O'Brien]: One thing I think is worth saying, even if you don't feel comfortable getting on a bike, just try walking someplace that you haven't walked before. One thing that I found is several years ago, I decided that well my bike commute is really short so some of the time I'm going to walk because it's a little more exercise and I've ridden everywhere on my bike to get everywhere my whole life and I had never really walked that much and when I started walking even on the same exact route that I was biking on all of a sudden I noticed all of these things that, you know, some good and some bad and some, you know, oh, this house has some really interesting flowers. Oh, this crossworks situation is really atrocious. And it was places where I'd been biking back and forth for years and never really thought about what it looks like from the sidewalk and I tend to think that on a bike I'm more likely to notice things like that than if I were driving a car but even still when I did start walking regularly I did really notice a lot of those things that I just hadn't thought of before and so I think just taking from time to time taking the opportunity to Try one of the other methods. Change up your mode.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. I heard a great quote the other day from a traffic person that thinks about these traffic things, which is like, you know, we need to build our cities for the speed of life, you know, of people moving at people's speeds. And then, exactly, you start to notice these things. I find too, you know, when you walk around, you start to notice things that you're like, oh, that could be what if we had this here and you can start to dream a little bit about where you live, you know, like with the pandemic, we've all been stuck at home and it's like, oh, we can't get on a plane and fly. And just like you were saying, the pandemic gets you thinking about things. My big question is always like, what if we made Medford into a place that we didn't feel like we needed to take a vacation from?
[Danielle Balocca]: I think I was talking to Jenny Graham, I think in the beginning of this podcast, and she was saying, like, she wishes the town she grew up in didn't have a Dunkin' Donuts. So she was like this idea of like, you had to leave town to do anything that you wanted to do. So what about bringing some of those things to Medford? Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think it's also worth pointing out that people who are biking can really, really easily stop and pop into a cafe or pop into a store on the spur of the moment. and it's not complicated to drive around the block and find a parking space and then you're facing the wrong direction and it's complicated to get out again. Like, it is really, really easy to see a nice, see a little cafe and be like, oh, I wonder if their coffee is any good and just pop in and find out. Yeah, that's a great point. It makes it much easier to spend money on the spur of the moment.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Well, the studies show, right, that businesses who are in places where they build bike infrastructure and see an increase in customers. Because it turns out, you know, people who drive, it's much harder to park your car. Exactly. Yeah, so.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, thank you so much for your time today. And I'll put some of the links that you mentioned in the show notes so people can access that information.
[Emily O'Brien]: Thanks for having us.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, thank you.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you to Ellery Klein, Emily O'Brien, and Emily Stein. More information about the groups and organizations they mentioned are linked in the show notes. If you have feedback about this episode or ideas for future episodes, you can email medfordpod at gmail.com. You can also subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Never Bites. Never Bites.
[Emily O'Brien]: Good job.