[Emily O'Brien]: What is today? The June 29th meeting of the Medford Bicycle Advisory Commission will come to order. Will the secretary please call the roll?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yes. Let's see. Gerard Powell. Here. Pat Bivens. I believe said he is not here, so... say Lisa Duraco.
[Emily O'Brien]: She actually wrote to the list to say that she's resigning from the commission.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Okay.
[Emily O'Brien]: We should take her off of the list. All right. We're all sorry to see her go because she has done a lot of work, especially with regard to bringing bike share into Medford.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yes. Sorry to hear that. Bruce Cooley. I do not think I see Bruce.
[Emily O'Brien]: I don't think he's here.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Emily O'Brien.
[Emily O'Brien]: I am here.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: V. Dan Fairchild. I do not see him. Ernie Meunier. Indeed. Doug Packer. Here. Peter Cowles.
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: Here.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Gaston Fiore here. Daniel Nuzemuller here. Dana Phillips. I do not see Dana. Rebecca Wright.
[Emily O'Brien]: She also said she was not coming.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Well, let's see. So how many people does that leave us with? I think we have just achieved a quorum.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I think so.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I've got a cat running around me, so sorry if I... It's all good.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay, so the minutes from last time, do we have any comments on the minutes?
[Denis MacDougall]: Oh yeah, I just have to read the notice about the remote meeting.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yes, thank you, sorry.
[Denis MacDougall]: I was trying to do it earlier, but I was having problems. Let me just switch back over to the actual text. On February 12th, 2020, Governor Baker signed into law a supplement of COVID-19 fiscal appropriations and an extension through July 15th, 2022 of certain authorizations related to public meetings. This new law extends the remote meetings provision of the governor's March 12th, 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. In accordance with the 2020 executive order, this meeting of the City of Medford Bicycling Advisory Commission is being conducted totally via remote participation using Zoom, including committee members and the public. The use of Zoom complies with the law's requirement to provide live, adequate, alternative means of public access to the deliberations of the public body, instead of holding meetings in a public place that is open and physically accessible to the public. Persons who would like to listen to or view this meeting while in progress may do so by using the link that was included on the meeting agenda posted on the City of Medford website. If despite our best efforts, we are not able to write for real-time access, we will post a record of this meeting on the city's website in the near future at the link provided in the meeting agenda. Every time I say it, it gets longer.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Thank you. I just realized I should also get the attendance of the guests. So I apologize. Can people introduce themselves?
[Denis MacDougall]: Charles, I'm Dennis, sorry, I'm Dennis McDougal. I'm just gonna change my things, because I realize I got the other one. So I'm Dennis McDougal with the city's environmental agent, and I'm just helping out.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Amy Ingalls, city of Medford, transportation engineer. And I would like to introduce, actually, we have an intern who's just started helping us slowly work, and she is on the line with us.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yep, that's me. I'm super excited to be here and meet you all. I'm a student at Tufts and I'll be interning, working with Amy in the transportation department.
[Emily O'Brien]: Great. That's really exciting. Welcome.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: We're glad to have her.
[Emily O'Brien]: Awesome. Minutes from last meeting. Have you all had a chance to look at the minutes or were there any comments, questions? Do we have a motion to approve the minutes?
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: Motion to approve the minutes. Seconded.
[Emily O'Brien]: All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed? Minutes are approved. Announcements? I think we had circle the square. Other things coming up? Recaps of that kind of thing could be under announcements too. What have you got? I guess Circle the Square was Pat and Ernie, and Pat's not here. Yes.
[Ernie Meunier]: Are you asking for- Well, just a brief- Oh, yeah. Okay.
[Emily O'Brien]: Sure.
[Ernie Meunier]: You're asking Ernie for brief? Oh, stop.
[Emily O'Brien]: Do your best, Ernie.
[Ernie Meunier]: look with provocation from Doug look at him fading in the background now put your lights on. I was there for the first half and managed to give out 30 bike lights kits. In other words, the attendance was quite high. And thankfully, I think Jared stuck out the, oh, Pat was, Jared was there for the whole- That's right. Duration.
[Jared Powell]: Not the whole bit, about half of it. Daniel came, did the last couple hours.
[Ernie Meunier]: Oh, you solo, Daniel? You were there alone? Was it as busy as it was when you arrived? Or did it tail off a lot? It was a very successful event. I think we talked to a lot of people. I don't remember much else about it, except that it was very successful. The band was a little loud, so conversations were a little tough, but despite that, we did well. As you saw, Emily, when you were there. We were right opposite the band, and they would, you know, lousy sound system.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I had a lot going on that day, and I only stopped in for a couple minutes.
[Jared Powell]: I'd agree with that, Ernie. I thought it was really successful. There were a lot of people who came by and wanted to talk to us, either to hear about what we were doing, and a lot of people I think were pleasantly surprised to know that we exist. One of the things that I certainly try to talk about a lot was that we have like city support now in a way that is new and appreciated. And I think that made people very hopeful for improvements in the city. So that was really nice to see. Anytime you get on these events, it's always really encouraging to me to see the level of kind of pent up demand for what we do and for cycling infrastructure and to make it more just friendlier in the city for this sort of thing there's always a lot of people who maybe they bike around here or they want to bike around Medford more or they bike at Somerville and Cambridge and they've got a lot of comparisons that they can make to different municipalities in the area. So, people have a lot of different perspectives and are always really excited to hear that we're doing what we're doing.
[Ernie Meunier]: I would like to comment that we just squeaked by with enough staff for the event. And certainly in some cases, it would have been helpful to have three people there. With two people, it was okay. But you know, I really did need to leave. So it's nice that Daniel showed up. exactly halfway so that I could be relieved. But with, I don't know, 13 members on the commission, come on, we should be able to have two to three people easily at these kinds of events. So, and I think Jared and I shared that opinion that, you know, we need some attendance at the public events. People want to hear about us, we have to show up and talk to them.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, so I mean I agree with you I feel, you know, of course I was super busy that day and I'm busy on the farmers market day and, you know, it's always something. And I understand that people. have busy lives too, but I agree. I think that would also be something that if we have former members or other people who aren't members of the commission but are interested and want to help out, that would absolutely be a really useful thing for people who are plugged into what we do and are interested in helping out. That would be a really valuable way. Yeah. keep your ear to the ground if you know anybody like that.
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: And I'm sorry, my wife was one day out of the hospital and I couldn't make it there. But I was at the bike rodeo.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, well, thank you for that.
[Jared Powell]: For anyone as well, who has not attended anything like that before? I mean, this is somewhat, I suppose, for people who haven't made it to this meeting as well, but they'll see the recording in the minutes, but they're really pretty fun to go to, actually. It's one of those things, like, maybe you think, oh, maybe I don't want to talk to that many people or something, but it's frankly, even for someone who's relatively introverted, like I am, they are actually quite energizing to talk to all these people, to hear so many like-minded people, or maybe not always like-minded, but opinionated people who are interested in what we do. So it's a really good way to force yourself as well to kind of learn about what the bike commission is doing, what the city's doing. And also really hear from people about what they want to see so that we can translate that to the city very well.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, and I would also add if anybody is interested in doing something like that and you feel slightly nervous because you feel like, oh, I'm new and I'm not totally sure I'm up on absolutely everything that's going on, or I can't rattle off all the projects that are happening in Medford off of the top of my head, that's totally fine. You don't have to know everything. Um, we have lots of resources. If you have any questions, um, we can always help you out and make sure you feel like, you know, enough that you can kind of point people in the right direction. Um, and, you know, and if you're coming to these meetings, you certainly know something about, um, what you'd like to see, what we've talked about, um, what, uh, what kinds of What kinds of things we've discussed, and you can direct them towards the website, towards any one of us, get their contact information. There's lots of ways to engage with people, even if you don't have off the top of your head every single thing that the bike commission has ever done.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, I want to second that. I was going to say for someone like me who has not all the streets in Medford memorized, it's helpful to have we have multiple displays of the maps, the master plan activity, and for newer members reading the master plan, etc. Just being there and fall back on some of you ask somebody or they'll mention where they live. You just look at the map and you find it with them and you talk about a project that might be nearby. It's all quite easy and casual, and if you want to know about policies and projects that are actually going on, Jared's always there with this encyclopedic memory, so it's been helpful.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I'd like to raise a quick point about that. We on those maps, we do have a series of numbered projects and I've been asked what those numbered projects are off the top of my head. I don't know what they are. So it might be useful to have. you know, a key for people. Yeah.
[Jared Powell]: That's a really good idea. I think at one point there was a legend that went with that, but it was a separate piece of paper and its whereabouts are currently unknown. A cheat sheet is a great idea.
[Emily O'Brien]: It might also just be good to review that next time.
[Peter Calves]: Especially if we have the numbers on the poster. If someone's going to ask us what the numbers mean. Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, also because I think there's updates on some of those since the last time.
[Peter Calves]: Yeah. I was going to bring that up as well. I remember being at the bike party and seeing that map and it's like, that map has a QR code that I think was for the
[Emily O'Brien]: last edition of the bike master plan which we're getting ready for the next one so yeah um so along similar lines ernie had mentioned um Uh, talking to the housing authority where, um, and I think the senior center where there are a number of other people kind of slightly outside our normal. Like target audience for these things who also have needs for the bike lights. Um, and I, I gather in particular tail lights, the rear lights for wheelchair users. Um, and I. I think to some extent, finding ways to get these same bike lights to those people might be slightly outside of our purview. But since Ernie did do so much kind of trial and error of figuring out which are you know, this is the best model that's available for a good price and in bulk, et cetera, et cetera. I think that is really valuable information to pass along to other groups that might be interested in purchasing them from the same place at the very least.
[Peter Calves]: Yeah. Do we know where that would pass along to? Like who could do that?
[Emily O'Brien]: So I think the and then the other thing is, I think that's also a good opportunity to connect with those people who a lot of them, even if they aren't, you know, bicyclists, strictly speaking, have a lot of shared interests with us. For example, somebody who wants a tail light for their wheelchair, it's presumably because they're going to be in the street. for ways when there's no curb cut. And at that point, they're basically a slow moving vehicle, just like a person on a bike would be. And there's not really that much functional difference to their needs in that situation when it comes to a safe place to be. So I think that is also potentially a good opportunity to touch bases on that. Go ahead, Ernie.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, I was just gonna say, I've already imagined that this would be a parallel activity that it, you know, the presentation of the product wouldn't have kids literature in it, et cetera. And I would format it some other way and try to get maybe the funding sources for co-sponsors would be different. And like you say, whether it's a housing authority or some disabilities bureau that apparently listen, that sits in the city somewhere, I'm gonna have to sort of look into that. So I guess we're at the announcements level for that. But when we get to talk about bike lights later, I'll segue into that.
[Peter Calves]: Yeah. I mean, it looks like just looking in the city website, there's a commission for persons with disabilities. So that would probably be the place to contact.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, if nothing else, Pat Bibbins, who's not here, his wife is on that commission, I'm pretty sure. Oh, yeah. So there's that. It also makes me think if there's that many different constituencies who would benefit from access to good bike lights. And I'm guessing that wheelchair users would be more interested in just taillights than both headlights and taillights, but I could be wrong about that.
[Ernie Meunier]: No, I think you are wrong. The guy I spoke with at length talked about dark hallways and getting in elevators in the 11-story building, which I had been shooed away from by the director for saying these are disabled and elderly people who don't ride bikes. And then all of a sudden, this guy says, are you kidding? You know how many wheelchairs are in that building? So it kind of got flipped around on me as not being a target for some support rather than to be avoided because of a non-biking demographic.
[Emily O'Brien]: Right. That almost makes me wonder whether it would be worth pursuing. I don't know if there would be a way that the city could have a program to just make those lights available at City Hall.
[Ernie Meunier]: Right, and the front headlight could be wrapped around a finger and use an instant flashlight for somebody in a wheelchair who needs to push a button.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, and those things can wrap around all kinds of, you know, anything the strap will reach, it'll wrap around all kinds of parts. Right. But I wonder if that's something that would be possible to set up free bike lights in City Hall. good for all sorts of uses, or free or for a very low cost or whatever. I mean, they cost a couple of bucks a piece, right?
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah. Well, we could call them safety lights. Yeah. Just repurpose the thing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Brainstorm this summer.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. So that would, I think that would be a, that would be a great thing to think about pursuing at some point. Um, I guess that does segue into our recap of circles where, which we already did, um, and the approval requests for the kits. Um, Ernie, do you want to.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah. Take into that. Yeah. I've been remiss in gathering receipts and all that, but just to, um, for ease of the definitions. The kit costs just about four bucks to put together, all in. I've gotten, and part of my pitch to a co-sponsor is that you share that with the city. So for our purposes, it costs $2 or $1 per light. I've spent, if I can just go through that, for the, Well, back up a little bit more. We ordered 480 kits for so far for 2022. And I've already given out 440 on bikes. It's really rather That's pretty good. So there are only 40 kits left for the summer, which is not, I'm not going to run around much in the summer, but I carry a couple with me and I managed to shed one or two a day, just bumping into people on the street and putting lights on or parents or whatever. So, um, uh, my expenses so far this year have been $1,914 for the 400, um, uh, 80 kits. It's about four bucks a piece, and I've been reimbursed 930, or just about half that, by JRA and AOY for automotive. So Dennis, wherever you are, is he there? There he is. Uh, so I am out of pocket, uh, from the commission's funds. $984. up until June just up until tomorrow.
[Denis MacDougall]: I know check just went out this week for the booklets which I don't know if that
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, I have the booklets, all the booklets that I need. I bought them before.
[Denis MacDougall]: Okay. All right. I'll check because that was what Teresa just told me that today was that the check just came in to get sent out. So I will look into that. Well, I'm including stickers to my right.
[Ernie Meunier]: My $1,900 expense includes 621 for the booklets.
[Denis MacDougall]: OK, maybe it might have been the check going to you. I'm not sure. So I know she said there was a check for the booklets that came in and she was sending it out.
[Ernie Meunier]: Oh, all right. Well, maybe I'll get that and we'll just split the difference later. So I've been thinking about. And so I want to talk about sponsors. I thought I had my next door neighbor Pompeo Insurance set up for a shipment that I would like to order right now or right after July 1st for the September market. All the principals I've talked to are excited about doing a mass distribution of bike lights for the fall. They want us to visit, do tutorials, rodeos, safety things, and give out lots of lights, even several hundreds per individual grade level. So this is a little daunting to me. At any rate, I was hoping to buy two orders. Remember, these orders are for $480 each, that's how they pack, and that's the shipping discount. So I was hoping to place two of those orders after July 1st to try to cover the fall season, thinking I already had a sponsor in hand, but that's what I want to talk about. So I certainly want to order one right away because of the five week delay. So at least have some lights by the end of August, maybe by the end of August, I'll get it and make another shipment. But I would like to chase a sponsor in the next month. I'm not sure who's right for that kind of stuff, and I want help from the commission on that.
[Emily O'Brien]: Hang on a second, Jared.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, Ernie, that sounds great in principle, but given the budget stuff going on in the city right now, I guess I'm wondering, do we know what our budget is going to be for the next fiscal year?
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, that's a good question.
[Ernie Meunier]: I had been told that it was unchanging so far. And that brings up the issue that if I get more sponsors, then there's no cost to the city. If I get two sponsors to pay for half of each of it, part of the spiel was that they're sharing the cost with the city, so they're not feeling like I'm just going out and buying a bunch of stuff and throwing it around, that the city is a stakeholder here too. But the way this has been working is I've been asking co-sponsors for 500 bucks or 480, you know, $500 stipend to pay for 500 lights, half the share of 500 lights that go on bikes with your swag included in the back, whether it's a sticker or a tire pressure gauge or a key ring or whatever it might be. I'm in process with Wegmans, but they take several weeks and a long lag time. Same thing with Eastern Bank, might even take them months. And like my next door neighbor said, you know, you have to talk about me for 2023. I do this ahead of time. I think he's just being cheap. But regardless, so he might be on board for the spring. So I want us to, you know, scratch our heads and think about the corporate entities in the city who would be interested in helping fund this and in a parallel venue if it has to do with wheelchairs and you know parallel distribution of lights but you know I'll talk about that later. I first want to get a sponsor for the next order of lights for us, which I want to place next week, so as to arrive by late August. So we at least have 240 of them for September and hopefully 480. And that might not even be enough, but so what? We'll consider it a success.
[Emily O'Brien]: So really quick for those who haven't been here for these discussions of this previously, those kits contain, it's a little Ziploc bag that has in it a tail light, a headlight that are USB rechargeable, a safety booklet, and some assorted stickers and other you know, odds and ends of stickers and cards and things depending on sponsors and so forth. But the main three main components are the headlight, taillight, and the safety booklet from the League of American Bicyclists. And we've been distributing these at events, and Ernie has been giving them out apace. which is great. I had one thought, which is possibly Colleen's, especially if we thought about hosting some, we've done some evening rides in the past. And so something like a ride to the ice cream shop, they often also do pop-ups in there. I don't think we would be like an entire pop-up destination, but if there was somebody doing a pop-up that we could coordinate with in some way, that would be another thought. I think my experience is that when I'm riding around at night, the people that I'm most likely to see riding around with no lights, especially this time of year, it's dark fairly late, um, I think are more likely to be like restaurant workers, um, people who work sort of later hours, um, and maybe live not that close to work, but have commutes that are kind of awkward or time consuming by transit. Um, and I am wondering if we can also just kind of brainstorm about how to reach the populations that we haven't managed to yet.
[Peter Calves]: You've done a pretty good job on school kids, I think. Yeah. The next frontier is the other sections of the population who might want bike rides.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, and especially like the people that don't come to Circle the Square. Maybe that includes people who bike in Medford but don't live in Medford. I'm not sure what the easiest way to get in touch with some of those people is, but it's something we could also be thinking about too.
[Gaston Fiore]: What about Melrose Wakefield Healthcare, which now it seems is part of us. I mean, they have their hospital right here. Since they're medical provider, they might be interested in sponsoring this and promote safety.
[Ernie Meunier]: I'm sorry, Gaston, your microphone isn't good enough to understand.
[Gaston Fiore]: Oh, sorry. So Melrose Wakefield Healthcare, that now it looks it's part of Tufts Medical. They might be interested in sponsoring some of this, given that they're a healthcare provider, and it might look good for them to sort of promote safety in Medford. And then they're based over here. So I'm assuming same as Tufts, obviously.
[Ernie Meunier]: I've been reluctant to. solicit restaurants because it's been a struggle for them for years, especially small, like snappy patties. Oh, obvious good guys. But, you know, they're struggling. I know they're struggling. So I'm thinking more about legal firms, banks, et cetera, who can just write a check without a thought for $500. And, you know, and we'll put a postcard in the kit for them or whatever they might want.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. Although at the same time that the postcard in the bike light kit that you give to your kids is not really that useful advertising for a legal firm, but it's a useful advertising for an ice cream shop.
[Ernie Meunier]: Right. Well, the hope is to try to get their parents. I mean, part of the motivation for this, we're talking about other populations, is that, you know, it's a struggle for us to get infrastructure done. It's a struggle to get teenagers to listen to you. It's a struggle to get adults to wear helmets, especially if they're poor. But the point was to get that booklet to the kids and protect it. to start at the ground up. Reaping the rewards of this program around the schools is going to occur after I'm gone. I'm not going to be alive when these kids are teenagers and are already trained to bike safely and wear helmets and have lights on them. I think that's the frontier that we have to try to address. So again, if anybody knows anybody who can throw $500 at this in the next week or two, let me know. And then I will want to place two orders for these by the end of the summer instead of just one.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay, Amy.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, I just want to mention this is, you know, obviously not a unique problem, trying to get at this demographic of bicyclists. One way that I have heard of some nonprofits do this is if they know that there's like a corridor or. corridors in the city that like a lot of those types of bicyclists ride on like literally just post up there at night and like or whenever you know early in the morning whatever you think you're going to see them and give them the lights you know um it might be helpful i don't know if anybody is bilingual um that could be also helpful in that type of engagement but also just handing them the lights is enough you don't have to necessarily speak to them um yeah just suggestion that's a great idea doug
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: Hi, not to throw a damper on this program or anything, but Ernie, how many kids are in school in Method?
[Ernie Meunier]: The mayor said 4,000. She figures at least 1,000 of them ride bikes anyway. It's probably more. And that gave me the idea, all right, try to get 1,000 bikes lit up this calendar year. That's the framework I was using. And we're almost halfway there. And given the interest in doing this, big time in September and October. All right, half the schools have been distributing these to the kids. Two of the principals thought, misunderstood me, and we were just responding to kids who found out about them, ride the bikes to school already, and went to the principal's office and said, do you have any lights? So that is obviously extremely meager. Once I said, look, you pull all the kids in the school to see who rides bikes and you say you have lights for them, I'm sure there'll be an avalanche, as there have been at two of the public schools already, who already get it and give it to kids as they are going on their buses. When this teacher knows, Jimmy rides a bike, here's your bike light kit. So the distribution has been uneven across the public schools because of the bottleneck of information getting to the kids themselves. And that'll be rectified in September and October when they all talk to each other and we do something maybe a little bit more programmed rather than me just running around with a backpack full of lights and
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: I'm just thinking of the kid that's at home, has a bicycle, and doesn't ride at the school, and won't get a light, and that way defeats the purpose of not giving kids lights.
[Ernie Meunier]: Oh, he gets a light. He just has to find out that it's available, and it's up to the schools to tell him.
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: And then there's little Johnny who says, yeah, everybody else has got a light, and I'm going to want a light too, even if I don't have a bicycle.
[Unidentified]: Don't get in the way.
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: I know. I'm just saying we've got four grand here. Four grand times five dollars a pop is how much? Somebody do the math for me.
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, I know. So I figure starting with 20 percent of that can't be too wrong. That's what I'm trying to accomplish this year.
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: And thank you for doing that, Ernie. I'm just saying. And it's going to be a It's going to be a fun project, shall we say.
[Ernie Meunier]: It has been already. I was being cynical, Ernie. Yeah, I know. Well, you're going to help me pack these soon.
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: Just because my last name is Packer doesn't mean I'm going to help you.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: All right. Before we keep going, do we need to do anything else to make sure that Ernie gets reimbursed for whatever is not covered by sponsorship? I think this is within our budget if it hasn't changed, and we don't currently have much else other than stickers that we need the budget for. And so I think I just want to make sure that Ernie is getting reimbursed and can place the next order as needed. Do we need to motion to approve for Ernie to order some more lights as needed? move just to be on the safe side?
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, for one order and then I'll ask again in one month or two for the second order once I get an answer.
[Emily O'Brien]: So this is a motion to approve Ernie for one more order of lights?
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: Seconded.
[Emily O'Brien]: All in favor?
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: Aye.
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: All opposed? Of course nobody's opposed.
[Ernie Meunier]: As a corollary, can I ask Dennis, have you ordered the stickers from the communications with Pat and I? Have you placed that order?
[Denis MacDougall]: I know because, well, the first one I misunderstood when he sent me the thing that that was where he wanted the stickers from. So now I know that it's Primaline, who the city has a contract with. I've talked to them. They're going to get back to me shortly. I sent them the info and they're just going to let me know exactly how much stickers are going to cost.
[Ernie Meunier]: Okay, but you're gonna finish that up and get them. Yep. So I'll show up sometime in a month from now with a bunch of lights and want some stickers.
[Denis MacDougall]: Yes, but odds are given the way the order is gonna go, it'll most likely be on next year's budget, not this year's, just given the timing.
[Ernie Meunier]: Right, and I have enough books left over, so the league's books are fine for the next shipment. I simply don't have any stickers and of course now I will order lights and we'll be all set. Thank you.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay, great. Our next item is bike infrastructure improvement updates. Before we start, one thing that I think I keep forgetting to ask Todd and Amy about is bike racks. We had last fall, I think, submitted a map with several priority levels of bike rack placement, and I'm wondering if there's an update on ordering those or installing them
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Not, not really. I wish that there was, I think that what you guys put together is very useful and, you know, I have bookmarked it for kind of a different time, I guess we were trying to really focus on some infrastructure stuff right now because of the pandemic. green line extension coming and blue bikes and stuff like that. That's been our main focus. To be honest, we have a hard time sometimes maintaining the ones that we do have. That's definitely a road we want to go down, but just not right now, I think.
[Emily O'Brien]: Is there anything else we need to do or are we just waiting for another round of ordering to happen whenever that happens?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: I actually don't know what If any budget there is for bike racks specifically, like there might be some that were bike racks, some pots of money where bike racks would be, you know, would count as something you can spend it on, but I don't think there is an actual budget just for that. I could be wrong. Todd is actually out of the office until Tuesday. So I can certainly ask him about that when he gets back.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay, that'd be great. And do we have updates on the list I have on the agenda is Winthrop Street, which I think was a bigger discussion, changing the configuration of Winthrop Street, especially around the high school.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, we're still kind of working on that, finalizing a couple of things with Eversource as well. So not ready to show you that one yet, but I do have the PDF of the Salem Street. I know I was having some technical difficulties last time and I wasn't able to show you that. So I've got that today.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. Yeah. And we're happy to see that anytime. OK, let me find it. My million post.
[Ernie Meunier]: While she's looking.
[Emily O'Brien]: Oh, she is already good.
[Ernie Meunier]: I was gonna say, while she's looking back on the bike, the bike racks. Oh, sorry. The schools are in need too, Amy. So just something to note that the schools need more bike rack capacity. Just something I noticed when I'm there. Okay, thank you.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: That's good to know. I don't believe that much change since the traffic commission meeting aside from the east end of it, but I'll go ahead and stay on this first page just so folks can see it. Maybe there's some folks who weren't able to attend the meeting. Did everyone see it okay? Should I zoom in anywhere?
[Peter Calves]: Yeah.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Did we see this last month? No.
[Emily O'Brien]: If you were at the traffic commission meeting where it was approved, you would have seen it then?
[Peter Calves]: I feel like I remember seeing it last month, because we talked a lot about the placement relative to the bus stop.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: I have the first version. Oh, that may be the first version. The updated version, yeah.
[Peter Calves]: OK, gotcha. The first version probably was in here.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: I was able to find that one in my email. I hadn't emailed this one yet. So yeah. This first page, as I say, is pretty much the same, I believe. What's this one? Let me know if anyone wants to zoom into any location.
[Emily O'Brien]: Are there particular changes since the last version that we saw?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: I'm pretty sure it was just at the end, the easternmost part. I can go right to that if you'd like. I may have actually massaged this a little bit and made it a little bit less of a Less of an abrupt shift, actually, right? Yeah, because I had to, that's right, I had to get it around this, the bus stop. So the reason I didn't initially do this is just because seven and five are kind of like the minimum widths for a bus stop and bike lane, respectively. And sometimes, you know, it's It doesn't feel good using a bunch of minimum widths, you know what I mean, next to each other. So that's why I initially selected the approach that you guys saw before. But after our conversation, particularly because of what's happening down here and the need to maybe move over to the left to turn left or whatever. It did make sense to me to have the bike lane separate from the bus stop and using these minimum widths here. I will say that though, just in regards to that type of bus stop, bike lane configuration in general, in our conversation, I thought a lot about that too. I do still think that the BTD method is a good one just because in these very constrained conditions because the intent is for the bicyclists to stop and wait behind the bus stop when there's not enough space to have both side by side. That makes sense. It doesn't matter if they're stopping here or here. What's PDG? Behind the bus. Oh, sorry. Boston Transportation Department. Thank you. Boston. Yeah. I borrowed a detail from them. a way to do these kind of bus stop bike lane situations when there's constrained width and there's not enough space for a bike lane to ride to go on the on this side of a bus stop and have everything be the right width.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I think this way works for me. I don't know how anybody else feels about it. I think the BTG way is to have the bike lane overlap with the right side of the bus stop, basically, right? Correct. So would it be also possible if the bike lane is overlapping with part of the bus stop, to just have it be overlapping with the left side of the bus stop instead of overlapping with the right side. Sorry. The only distinction being, and then maybe it's a very fine distinction, but just that if somebody is going to, it makes it look less of a good idea to try to squeeze through on the right-hand side of that bus when passengers are getting out. That's my real, beef with the method of having it be on the right, overlap with the right-hand side as opposed to the left-hand side. But this works for me too.
[Ernie Meunier]: Amy, are you comfortable with that scissors intersection where the bike and the bus have to cross in the middle? Will there be enough signage and graphics there and paint on the ground to indicate to bicyclists that they're going to be moving left to allow the buses to cross ahead of them?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, so this right here is the, this, sorry, it's just a code, but these are the signs for the bike lane ends. So I could even move it up a little bit more. You wanna keep it close enough to be where it actually ends so that people aren't like, I thought you said it ends, you know, and it continues.
[Ernie Meunier]: At the beginning of that intersection, noting that bicycles now will have to veer left to cross lanes.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Well, so the veer has not really anything to do with the bike lane ending. That's a different issue. These markings here is what suggests that you need to shift to the right or shift to the left rather.
[Ernie Meunier]: Nothing on posts, nothing that is winter proof or rain proof or
[Emily O'Brien]: erosion proof to indicate I mean I don't know that there is a sign that says bike lane shift left I mean we can oh no but you know to bicycles something or other you know or yeah also we're also only talking about the scissors is between bicycles and buses it's not between bicycles and everything everyone else until right a little bit after that which I mean that's that that that would be my thought just in terms of the how
[Peter Calves]: how in the weeds are we going to get on this movement is that the actual conflict between a bicyclist and a bus in this area is not going to be a super common conflict unless the frequency of both goes up fairly significantly.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: It's one that MBTA bus drivers have to do all over the place, all over the service area, so it's It's not unusual in any way. We are hoping that we can do the green markings here to make them a little bit more visible. We're still working on being able to order that. This is basically all the standard things that would be present in this type of a situation. In fact, these are extra. You don't always do all the dashes on both sides, and I have it on the buffer and both sides of the bike lane just to make really sure and clear that people know that it's moving to the left. Of course, if there's no bus coming, some folks might just stay on the right. They know they're going to have to turn right up here, and that's obviously fine.
[Peter Calves]: If there's no bus coming, that's not a problem.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. Yeah, I definitely appreciate the extra markings that you added there. I think that's, especially in Medford where people are still kind of in the stage of figuring all these things out. I think that's, I think that extra, just a little bit of extra reassurance is, extra instructions is good.
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, if that's Greenfield for the bikes to veer left from the right side to the left side of that sort of double lane, then that's even better. The Greenfield, I think, is extremely useful there. So.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, that looks that looks good. Thank you for all your work on that, Amy.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Sure, sure. The next page, I'm still kind of mulling around in my head a little bit because it is just a kind of particular situation. So because I don't know how much Todd explained this but I'll go ahead and explain it again, because Fellsway is a DCR roadway. They are, even though, and this is a city street they still have a stake, I guess I can say, in what the approaches to their intersections look like. What type of lane configurations and stuff there are on streets that intersect with their streets. That impact comes from how many lanes do we have on this side? What signals do we have? What phasing does the signal have? all those things are related to how many lanes and what kind of lanes we have here. Unfortunately, it is the case right now at its current state that this is just one big old lane. Carrying a bike lane further through this would be complicated because we don't know know people are making a right it's not now it's on the inside of a right turn like but maybe this is it's unclear like what all of this space is designated as I guess is what I'm trying to say and it functions now as two lanes oftentimes like when it's backed up.
[Peter Calves]: I was about to ask that Emily, I've driven through there and it's definitely I definitely did not know it was one lane.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, it's supposed, I mean, it's, it's ambiguous, right? Like, I don't know if it's two or one, like there is no markings, there's nothing indicating which one you're supposed to be in if you want to go straight. So yeah, so it's a confusing thing. And so we can't, we can't change this without and change the way that this functions without DCR's approval. So that's why I didn't do any bike lanes coming up into here. I did kind of add these sharrows as maybe an idea.
[Peter Calves]: I was going to say, what's the weird left turn sharrows? I mean, I'm skeptical of sharrows on a good day.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think those are great. I mean, we do have those in the turning lanes at Boston and College. They don't look exactly like that. They look more like the...
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: left and right the normal left and right turn lane arrows instead of like a share oh yeah yeah yeah yeah it's less less weird the uh the weirdest is less about the left turn sharrows to me and more about that there's just two different types of sharrows in the same lane quote-unquote yeah lane yeah that part is weird i think that the problem there is it's because we don't
[Peter Calves]: I don't really have a lane configuration to speak of.
[Emily O'Brien]: Right, right. Yeah, it does. I mean, it does look a little bit weird to have that with no like no turn lane indications for anybody else. Yeah. I would still rather have those than nothing.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: The big undifferentiated expanse of asphalt is the worst of all worlds.
[Peter Calves]: Sometimes in theory, the undifferentiated expense is supposed to be everybody being careful, but I don't think at Salem Street, at Fellows Way West, people are necessarily being careful.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Unfortunately, no. So yeah, I want to talk this issue through with Todd a little bit. I've tried to think if there's any reason why this could cause a danger, and I haven't been able to think of anything. Even though I've never seen it, like it logically makes sense to me. So yeah, I'm going to talk it through with him. And of course, we'll have to propose it to DCR as well, because even though it's not changing any regulation, it is, you know, essentially maybe changing the way that people interact with Fellsway. So
[Emily O'Brien]: If it if it helps in terms of conversations with DC are at various times when we've looked at maps to discuss trying to come up with quiet routes neighbor way routes that would that we could theoretically put signage to help people navigate off, you know, important routes that would keep them off of busy roads. The part of Medford that just always is a struggle to find anything like that at all is Fulton Heights. And that's a whole chunk of Medford that you have to get to from Fells Way West. basically from a lot of places, from a lot of approaches. And there are just only so many ways to get on and off or cross Fellsway West. And it is a big chunk of the city that you can kind of only access in a very few places.
[Peter Calves]: drive feels like lasting up to 93 on semi-regular basis. And it is a barrier that cuts kind of Fulton Heights off from the rest of the city.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. And then it also doesn't help that Fulton Heights has a couple, like two or three roads that go straight through to anywhere and everything else dead ends.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: But if you need extra ammunition, I've looked at looking at maps so many times trying to figure out, is there another route we could designate that would be a little bit more friendly than Fulton Street? Right. There's so few choices, but Fells Way West is critical no matter how you go, so if that helps.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, my only short comment with this is that if I happen to want to go straight, I would probably queue in the left lane. And if I have the shadow kind of pointing left, it's not that I would find it confusing, but I would not stay in the right lane because I would think that there could be a lot of cars turning right. So it doesn't really matter, but that's just my comment. So if I see three shadows on the right, but not on the left, yeah, it's not confusing, but it will call my attention as to what's going on here.
[Emily O'Brien]: I should have stopped to do this before, but we also have another guest who came in later, which is Kit Collins of Medford City Council. So welcome Kit, and if we want to add her name to the list of guests too.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah, already done.
[Emily O'Brien]: Awesome. Do we have other updates on Clippership Connector, Salem Street, anything GLX related like the route to the GLX station, Mystic Ave, are the other ones on my list for today?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Um, let's see, uh, Clippership, I actually reached out to DCR about recently just, um, to get ahold of their most recent design file. Um, just, you know, for connectivity purposes, since we're looking at some stuff, um, that would connect into that. Um, and yeah, he says they're working on like the, the final stage of design now. So. That's kind of an update on passing along, I guess. He didn't give a time frame for when it would be ready.
[Peter Calves]: I was going to say, do they have a ballpark ad date yet?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, he didn't say anything. I can certainly push him for that.
[Peter Calves]: I mean, just just just just one of those questions to just prod people to make sure that they know that they're, they know we're paying attention and we're looking forward to it so totally actually one of the things that at tabling events.
[Emily O'Brien]: That's probably the, one of the top questions that people are interested in. Um, because that's, and it's one of the easiest things to say is like, well, as soon as the Clippership connector is here, we'll be able to go all the way from over here to over here, all on bike paths. Well, when is that going to happen?
[Peter Calves]: That's the thing I'm most looking forward to is someone who lives in my circle. It's like, Oh, the Clippership connector. I can get all the way. To the Mr. Grower paths from Wellington all off road. That'd be great. Yeah.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, I think there's no way for the schools, for the students or teachers or staff members to go a safe way, basically, from downtown Medford to the schools there because Riverside Ave is just horrible. So yeah, I think everyone is really looking forward for the Clippers event.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: question. We had someone from 99 Riverside express dissatisfaction with the clipper ship connector to me at circle the square. Not that I'm personally worried about that. But I'm sure there is there an existing easement with 99 Riverside. Does it go through their property? Just so that I know, I'm uncertain at the moment.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: I do not know the answer to that.
[Denis MacDougall]: I can jump in. So when the proposal, they had to go before the Conservation Commission for that whole stretch. And so they did get agreements with the basically 99 Riverside, both properties on Riverside, the city and the Department of Transportation. So like the agreements to go forward have been it's just right now it's just for them it's just a matter of funding from DCR to go forward with that. So it's just they're trying to make sure they get all the funding for everything all at once before they get started instead of, because they don't want to start and then have to stop and then have to start and then stop again. They just want to be ready to go and just get it all done in one time.
[Emily O'Brien]: Thank you. Are there any other updates while we're on this topic?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Mr. Gav, we're still coordinating with Eversource to get the pavement markings down, hopefully soon. The GLX bike lanes that we had passed a couple of months ago, going from GLX, the green line extension station at Tufts to Medford Square, there's a couple of spots. basically the entire stretch of George where the bike lane would go and the spot on College Ave that we are kind of doing some touch up resurfacing on, not the entire street, but where we thought it was unsafe conditions to be putting a bike lane where it's so bumpy. So we're working on fixing some of that stuff first and then we'll be doing the striping as quick as we can. Great. Jared.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, on that topic, I'm glad you mentioned that, Amy, about the touch-ups on George Street. I was driving through there the other day and looking at the road and just thinking like, oh man, if this gets painted as is and people are riding in the gutter there, I was seriously considering maybe we should hold on painting this as a bike lane just because it is so rough there. like someone with a small wheeled bike or something like that, folding bike, I'm going to get thrown into the gutter.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, it's real bad. We're doing a strip, I think like a five foot wide, maybe six actually, foot strip that will contain the bike lane surface and then the painted line, and so resurfacing that whole width for the entirety of that bike lane.
[Jared Powell]: That's great. Beautiful. Thank you so much.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, thank you.
[Emily O'Brien]: Um, shall we go on to the updates to the bicycle master plan? Uh, now that we have Lily here. Um, do you want to, Lily, do you want to tell us what you've been, how you've been proceeding or, or you and Amy?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Sure, I can start and maybe Amy can jump in. So, um, I guess I've been kind of getting my feet under me, um, For the last few weeks kind of doing some research, I've looked at a lot of sort of recent plans from other municipalities in the area and some that maybe aren't in the area but might have useful sort of things just to get a sense of like what are the kind of valuable pieces of information that we're going to want to put in this plan and I've put together sort of an outline so we can kind of look at the breadth of information that we might want to include and then cut from there, reorganize depending on what's feasible. I just started to think about what kind of data do we want to collect, that kind of thing. Then I'm also very excited just to hear from you guys about what corridors you're riding on and where are the problem points in the city. I think also I'll be gaining some experience just riding around and seeing some of that for myself. I live in Somerville. Some in Medford, but my pockets of knowledge are very specific. I'm trying to think, Amy, do you have anything to add to that?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, so she's been doing, like she said, a lot of research and stuff and trying to come up with the scope of what we want to include, types of elements in the plan. Oh, and just a side note, some of you may have heard of this kind of movement to try to get away from using the term master plan. The term master can be evocative of certain things. And so we're now calling it a citywide bike plan. Don't always remember to say it right the first time, but that's what we're calling it. So yeah, so we're trying to come up with an outline, starting off with just basically everything we think could be in there as topics and stuff. And we are going to sit down with Todd next week, hopefully, when he's back and kind of talk through that and figure out what makes sense to include and what makes sense to leave for maybe a different document in the future. One thing that we... We'll talk about specifically is the public involvement piece of it, how much. are we going to reach out to the general public? And I definitely see that as a way that you guys can get directly involved, since you already have meetings and you have members of the general public, obviously on the commission and also attending your meetings. So I don't know if it means that our public meetings for this effort are essentially just us taking over your meeting or at least a chunk of it or if it's a separate thing. I'm not really sure the best way to do that, but I do see you guys as a conduit for reaching out to the public, if not for the full effort of public involvement, at least for a big chunk of it. I think we should try to do some stuff online that people can access online. I'm not sure of the different options, but they have those like wiki maps and stuff I've seen a lot of people do. And you can just put comments and stuff by right here, whatever. And people can talk about what they want.
[Peter Calves]: They're actually quite easy. I've used them. Oh, good.
[Emily O'Brien]: There's that one that we were gonna, I think that a link was sent out recently to the email. Maybe it was, I saw it somewhere else, but Somerville has a map they're circulating right now with a bike plan on it, and you can sign up and put comments. And I think there's a lot of, and Jared just put that into the chat, I think there's a lot of potential for approaches like that. And I would love to see us use some system like that more often. I think in some cases something like that could also be a good way of helping to develop some of those like back road, side street, Roots plan forgot about that.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yes, which is from a different department, but perhaps we could collaborate with them. Actually, Lily is working with both planning and engineering, so. Yeah, so all this being said, you know, conversations about scope. The reality is that we don't have like a separate budget for this, so like literally it's going to be all in house. We're not hiring consultants to do. The only thing that I, we might consider is if we need some kind of like specialized more specialized data collection that we don't have equipment for something like that we can use one of our on call contracts to do that. We might not need to do that, but these are just all the questions we're trying to ask now and just like nail down the framework for what it looks like and what the elements are. And of course, I would like you guys to be involved in making sure that you're comfortable with what's in there and you think it's worthwhile to pursue all those different elements.
[Gaston Fiore]: What about Strava? I know that this has been discussed in the past, but what about creating some sort of group or club and then people can just go there and then they share their
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, I mean, Strava is something that, you know, municipalities have used in the past and it's good. It's good in some respects, but it also tends to show the ridership of a certain.
[Peter Calves]: We talked about it a few months ago, if I remember correctly, we decided it kind of skews more recreational cyclists than what we were trying to look at in a more transportation capacity.
[Gaston Fiore]: Even, really, even for people that mark their stuff as commuting. My wife, for example,
[Emily O'Brien]: you know, every time she goes to work, I need 100%- I think there's a lot of categories of, there's people who never leave the house without turning on their Strava. And then there's people who turn on their Strava if they're going out for a bike ride, but if they're just like riding to the grocery store, they don't bother, especially if like they use dedicated GPS devices on like their road bike, but then they have a different city bike that they don't put that stuff on. Um, or, um, like I use ride with GPS, but I only use it if I am following a route that I have to navigate. And so then I'll sometimes have a reason to save the ride, but most of the time I don't. So I have, I ended up with like a very small number of saved rides in ride with GPS. And it includes none of my around town riding at all. And then of course there's lots of people who only ride around town and why do they care about Strava? Right.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: It tends to focus on kind of like, yeah, a higher income and not always recreational, but often, yeah, higher education, higher income riders.
[Emily O'Brien]: Or just people who, you know, people who commute, but also ride recreationally, as opposed to people who like, it's a utilitarian thing. And what do they care about, like getting a KOM on Governor's app? Like, they just want to go to the store.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Totally.
[Emily O'Brien]: Good question.
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, we've spoken in the past about the limitations of looking at existing bike travel density. And our concern, yes, is for transportation. Where do we want bicycles to go, not where are they now? And that will certainly affect our choices for infrastructure modification and development. We've done bike traffic counts. And we know places where there are no bikes because it's too scary. But it's obviously the best way to handle efficiently a transportation corridor. So we have to remember that if we build it, that's come is perhaps equally important looking at traffic densities.
[Emily O'Brien]: Can I get to Daniel and then Peter?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Just out of curiosity, has anyone looked into Strava Metro in the past? I think they made it free for municipalities. Jared is nodding, so I'm going to assume that that's already.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I can provide a point of information. I requested in the past. They rejected my request because of, like, from their perspective, they had a very formal thing where it's like, if you are not a city employee, which technically we are, but without the city email address, they wouldn't process it. If someone from the city, like Amy, if you were to request it, for example, they would give you access to it. It's a very rigid formulaic thing. No email address. It doesn't matter what flowery language and essays that I wrote for them. They were looking at the email address only. I mean, I would still use it, right? If it's free, why not?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, I'm not opposed to it. Just taking it with a grain of salt.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, exactly.
[Emily O'Brien]: It could be, it could be good for helping identify some of those like back roads, lesser known possible routes that maybe the sort of the local knowledge. In some cases, I wonder if there's like there's a. There's a cut-through path next to my house that people do bike on sometimes, but it doesn't show up on the map as someplace that you can get through. It looks like a dead-end street. I wonder how many other places there are in neighborhoods that I don't know as well as I know my neighborhood where there is a potential. It's a public path, it's a public right-of-way. It's not like you're encroaching on anybody's property or anything like that. It's totally legit, but it doesn't show up on the maps and it isn't obvious. So I wonder if there are other places, especially like in Fulton Heights, where there's a lot of dead ends and a lot of things that don't go all the way through to anywhere. I wonder if there are some possible things that just, you know, one of those heat maps might show, but that the map doesn't. Peter, go ahead.
[Peter Calves]: Yeah, I was wondering, and I don't know how possible this would be from a coordination perspective. I know MassDOT recently has been using, has been using streetlight data where they have streetlight data for the whole state. And that's a, uh, origin destination recording data. And that might be helpful because as Ernie said was the problem with Strava is that it only captures existing bike trips with something like, like onto a streetlight. You can take like. car trips under a mile and just categorize those as potential bike trips. I don't know what the possibility of getting that kind of information from MassDOT, but it is a data source that they have just lying around.
[Ernie Meunier]: And then even another permutation, maybe tangential here, is I often bike up Winthrop Street and want to go left across to Playstead. And they're all one-way streets. So we need contra-flow lanes in tight neighborhoods where nobody bikes. But it'd be so efficient to go east-west. across the city at that point, if there was a little contra flow and a couple of those streets that feed into that intersection on Winthrop.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well in terms of, I think also in terms of corridors of places that people want like destinations that people want to go I think there's some. Medford is not that big and there's a handful of places that we know are desirable destinations and we can sort of say you can break up like here's Medford Square, here's West Medford Square, here's Fulton Heights, here's the hillside area. You can kind of identify neighborhood pockets and you can identify the small number of business districts that we have, and then you can identify the closest transit stations and business districts outside of Medford. It's not that many possible dots to have to connect, but that's a really good starting point for not every single trip anybody needs to make. would get, I think, a long way towards covering a lot of the corridors that people will need to be able to travel along one way or another. There just is not that much of it. So even just the brute force approach of saying, these are all the neighborhoods and these are all of the important destinations and you should be able to find a safe, reasonable path between any two of those points. It's not like trying to do that for the whole city of Boston or something. So, and that also, while we're talking about this, I would also encourage everybody to look at that map from Somerville. One thing that I was reminded of in looking at it is we get, I certainly have found myself getting a little tunnel visioned and looking at a map of Medford and then forgetting, which I go into Somerville all the time, but then forgetting, oh yeah, there's, When we talk about corridors, we're talking about places beyond just Medford. And one thing that struck me in particular was, was it Bristol Road? That's basically the continuation of Willow Street, which crosses the Somerville Community Path and hits Elm Street near Wheelworks. So that is one way And so you can take it going from Medford into Somerville. But in the way back, it's a little bit awkward to reverse your path and especially to get back to like Boston Ave and to head towards Boston and college, because then you have like, you can't really make, if you make a right onto at Ball Square, you can't really make a left onto Boston Ave, although people find all kinds of ways to do that. but Bristol would be an example of a place where there could be a contraflow option. It wouldn't really be a contraflow lane because the road is not wide enough, but it is a very low traffic road and it would connect pretty neatly with that one of those corridors that we've talked about trying to create a quiet route. on otherwise that uses like the Tufts parking lot. And that's a little bit backburnered right now, I think because of the GLX work in the Tufts construction and stuff. And the fact that it requires using Tufts property, but it is it is a pathway that I think currently a lot of people already use, but that would be would be able to be signed as a designated route relatively easily if we can get permission to do it in those places. So that would be one case where if you just look at a map of Medford, it makes no sense to do anything to Bristol Road. But if you connect it with if you look at it next to the map of Somerville, then it really does. And especially considering the things that they're talking about doing on Willow Street, which is just across the street from it, then it starts to make a lot more sense to think about that. So I would encourage everybody to look at that map. And make comments and also we should really be thinking about how we can make those connections into Medford, coordinate with what's being planned in Somerville. Jared? You're muted.
[Jared Powell]: There we go. I had a couple of thoughts about this maybe questions for the group and and from Amy as well. First, I really like the idea of pulling the public into this process a bit. It just seems like Why not expand our reach and get the perspectives of a lot more people, it's just a lot easier to crowdsource solutions from a huge number of people than from 15 ish. So I like that idea a lot. I like what we're seeing in the Somerville, what do they call that their vision plan something like that. So I like that makes it easier for all of us to because we don't have to come up with all the solutions right. So I like that the comprehensive plan, you know guest on you circulate that and we've talked that up a lot right like I suspect that if we were able to. review some of the data associated with the feedback that people provided. A lot of the feedback, maybe because it wasn't targeted, this might not be as much as if it was focused on this. But I know I certainly provided a lot of feedback about pedestrian and cycling safety issues. And I know a lot of other people did as well in like reviewing that map. There's a ton of public comment there about that. So we probably have a lot of feedback about what people want to see in Medford that we can maybe pull from that map without having to start from scratch. So that's another data source we could probably rely on. The last thing I wanted to mention, and this is kind of a question, but I'm particularly interested in maybe Amy's feedback here. We've talked about this before. The last plan was really, specific road chunks with kind of a good better best set of scenarios right depending on the level of work budget available for that road segment. But then we've also talked in the past about. Is that the right approach? Should we move forward with that same approach again? Or what if we developed broad design principles that could be applied in any number of situations rather than having to look at every road chunk by chunk by chunk and just keep coming up with things from scratch. Are we focused on broad principles using something like Cambridge has, where they have their huge booklet that says, this is what a bike rack should look like. It should be this far from the building. These are the five different types of contraflow lanes that we approve of, all those sorts of things. And then they can just be applied whenever appropriate, as opposed to having to actually come up with five different potential recommendations for each street segment. The broad principles then getting applied in specific circumstances seems like the most efficient outcome in some ways, because you have a menu to choose from of good ideas. But there's downsides of that, and I also don't want to reinvent the wheel and just be like, see Cambridge's document, or try to rewrite Cambridge's document, paraphrase it. Medford speak or something like that, because that just kind of seems like a waste of time. So I guess I'm curious what you think about how to approach that.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, I think it will be a little bit of both is kind of what I was envisioning. I think there is a lot of benefit to having a having designated a bike network of some kind. And when I say that, what I mean is just a map showing streets that we are prioritizing to implement bike improvements on. It could be any kind of bike improvement, it could be just an intersection, it could be lots of different things. And it's not to say that we, you know, there are other streets that we, you know, we can't do bike facilities on other streets that are not in the map, but those are the kind of the priority and that's kind of how we can identify stuff like these like contraflow lanes and stuff like that that people have been talking about and like make sure that like our recommendations are part of a bigger vision and make sense together, instead of doing them in an ad hoc sort of way. However, I think there is a lot of benefit to, as we described, the kind of like, let's create a set of rules and apply them in the way that we decide is the best way to do it. There are certainly ways that we can incorporate that into a more specific network plan, particularly for like intersections or like types of kind of categories of streets. The only yeah, that one of the downsides of that approach is that just that really dig down into the weeds of any street intersection block like there's just a whole lot of other things at play that you know it's hard to really enforce strict rules on as far as like what goes there um so yeah so i i do have in my mind some idea of maybe having some standards that we develop, like what does a buffered bike lane look like in the City of Medford? What does a separated bike lane look like in the City of Medford? Those types of things, more kind of like design detail type stuff. But I do, I really do, I will push for having a designated network that we are prioritizing on a map. Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: Gaston?
[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, sorry. Um, no, thank you. So I just wanted to clarify that the I so the why I put them in for comprehensive plan there is because I think there's I know it belongs to Alicia's office, but there shouldn't be that much of an overhead to for us to be able for the city to be able to get him up and be able to start putting comments. Now, however, the way I envisioned this, both for the process and the end product, is indeed a little bit closer to what Somerville has in the sense of there's no reason why today we shouldn't be able to have a map that anyone can go and then see, for example, I live on Governor's Avenue, then what's gonna happen to my street the next time that it actually gets revamped? Is there going to be a bike lane? There's not going to be a bike lane. Like an easy way for me to just go and put a comment that then, you know, someone from the city can see and then either for something immediate or not immediate or feedback. That's a way that I feel like we should be doing this instead of just like, you know, coming up with. Some sort of said thing that either, you know, the poutine of exercise or someone else in the city. We should be able to engage as many residents as possible in a pretty kind of easy way. It has been done with a comprehensive plan. And then I can see that Toronto is doing a better job at adapting this specifically to bikes. And my personal view is that we should extend it a little bit more to walking and mobility in general there. So I think that's what we should aim for to make it easy for everyone to participate and also to make it extremely easy for residents to go and see what's coming into my street the next time that it actually gets redone by the city.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I think it would be I think the idea of having a map that people that the public can make comments on maybe that specific to either specific to biking stuff or specific to all forms of transportation that are not just personal automobiles would be great. And maybe we could do it in two stages as having one that doesn't have anything on it yet, but it's just soliciting lots of comments and feedback on what people are missing, what they would like to see, what problems they experience, what things they like and don't want to change. And then after there is a network on a map, then further comments on that. I think it would be really great to be able to point people to a map where they can leave specific feedback at any point. I want to move on to the next thing on the agenda really quick, but Peter, can I do Peter and then Ernie really quick before we go on?
[Peter Calves]: Okay, yeah, sure. I was just going to echo that because I know just from professionally doing this kind of stuff for complete streets plans in other towns, there is value in giving people a blank slate to say what do you want, but also a lot of times people will then look at that and be like, I don't know. And so there is also value in coming back and saying, this is the ideas we have, comment on the ideas. Because a lot of times if you give people nothing, they won't know what they do or do not want. And then if you put something, if you give them something to think about, then they'll have more ideas. So I think that two-tiered approach is valuable.
[Ernie Meunier]: Ernie? I just want to go back because I shared Jared's perspective about the continuum of standardization at one end and pure customization at the other because of specific needs and, you know, cow paths in Medford. We have professionals. We have Amy and now Lily, and of course, their boss, who have in their francolingua all the options in their head and their professional training. So I'm not trying to take their job. I don't want us to take their job. But at the same time, Amy, if you guys can come up with, yeah, the four ways that you handle a contrafold plane and something or a document that can be used for us and maybe for the citizenry as educational material. You know, that would be sort of helpful maybe the standard stuff that use all the time, you know, if you can't do a you do be 12 if you can't do that c plus works unless there's two you know you've got these formulas for how to handle traffic situations, it's your domain. We don't know about that. So somehow I hear Jared saying, hey, look, how do we do this? We've got the professionals. Let's all try to understand what can be applied so that we look at an intersection. We can have a little bit of an idea of what the options are, and that's been professionally available to us from your knowledge base. And that's it.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay, I think we have to move on. I want to go to the discussion of possibilities for a possible complete streets plan and or safe cycling ordinance. Um. Kit has joined us and she was expressing interest in that topic recently. Um. And we have. What are our options in some of these things? I think in some cases, the idea that Medford could have an ordinance that says every time you repave a street, it has to have protected bike lanes on it afterwards is fairly unrealistic. We have a lot of just geometric constraints in a lot of places. and we have some challenges that are different in some ways from what Somerville or Cambridge has. But I think there's also a lot we could do to institutionalize the good intentions that we all have. My thinking about this too is because of our geometric constraints, I would also be interested to hear anybody's thoughts in what we can do to make it basic, for lack of a better term, to make the vehicular cycling approach easier, more comfortable, safer, more accessible, just because we have so many roads in Medford that that is going to be the reality for for a long time, maybe not forever, but short of making some really, really drastic changes. We just have a lot of places where there isn't really space for adding separate bike lanes. And we all know where places like that are. So, Kit, I'd like to hear your thoughts. And then also, I'll get to you, Doug.
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: I have to leave. Are we going to vote on anything that we need a quorum for? Because if I leave, we're down to six.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think I think we'll be okay if you have to go ahead.
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: Thank you. See you guys next week. Next month. Thank you. Or whatever.
[Emily O'Brien]: Kit, go ahead.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. And thanks so much for having me all. I really appreciate it. Really excited to get connected with this group. I am a cyclist myself and also just, you know, want to do what I can to make cycling more prevalent and safer. in our city. So I, this is a new project for me. I'm not an expert on, you know, I don't have expert recommendations on what exactly we should do here. I want to be of service in, you know, thinking through or shepherding, you know, any legislative ideas that we do have. are encapsulating ideas for how to institutionalize this through the legislative process. I've been trying to familiarize myself with the cycling safety ordinances in some of our neighboring communities, which like as Emily just mentioned, some of the realms of possibility are a little bit different. I think that know, obviously, I don't think anybody's going to propose that we try to cut and paste Cambridge's ordinance because their landscape is just so different from ours. So personally, you know, I'm excited to hear from other folks, because I feel like I'm at the beginning stages of research on this in terms of what to recommend. So why don't I leave it there for now. Thank you.
[Emily O'Brien]: Great. Well, thank you for your support. And thank you for coming and any time you have any questions or input, feel free, and we're thrilled to have you here. Peter, I think I saw your hand first.
[Peter Calves]: Okay, yes, I just saw this on the agenda, and just talking about a complete streets ordinance, I'm under the impression Medford already has a complete streets ordinance. I mean, I know I've worked with the Mass.CompleteStreets program pretty extensively Professionally with I don't think we have an ordinance. Are you sure we have one? Uh, we got funding for projects through the mass up program years ago and that would have required an ordinance to do so somewhere. There is a medford complete streets ordinance because otherwise we wouldn't get funding.
[Emily O'Brien]: So are we, are then, because I had seen.
[Peter Calves]: I tried to look at it. I tried to look at the Mass Complete Streets portal where that would live earlier today, but the website was broken.
[Emily O'Brien]: So I saw a couple of things in the suggestions for the agenda about this too.
[Peter Calves]: Yeah, I just wanted to clarify before our discussion in terms of.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, thank you.
[Peter Calves]: What Medford would like to do versus what Medford has already done. And that complete streets ordinance and the I actually looked it up on the city website the prioritization plan that was developed back in I don't remember what year 2019. that was developed. So we are in the pipeline. So if we have projects that we would like, if we have things, complete streets, projects, complete streets, things we would like to do, that is a source. I do not know where the ordinance is specifically, but I do know, like I said, It should have been on the mass complete streets program website. I tried to look at that earlier today and it was the website was down. But I do it is kind of the and the evidence is there, we've, we have, we have the projects so. trust me, they are very specific if you don't have, I've worked with other towns that never did the ordinance and tried to submit for funding and the state was very insistent that you have to have the ordinance first, so the ordinance is somewhere. But that is also good because that is something that to get approval from the state to say, oh yes, you have the Complete Streets Program, you would have to have something that pretty robustly, whether or not the city has in the past wanted to enforce it says complete streets has to be a function complete streets it has to to some extent be a part of any uh anything that touches a street or the city can enforce that as part of the complete streets ordinance whether or not they have been raring to do that in the past so then the next just as a point of information uh amy said that we do have an ordinance is that something that you could speak to amy oh
[Emily O'Brien]: It looks like she just posted a link.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, I think that should work. It looks like the map is now working again on the Complete Streets, the mass.completestreets website. You can look and see what communities have participated and who hasn't and how far they've gotten. Hopefully that link works. That does make me want to find out why we don't have it on the City of Medford website and maybe we should change that. I will make a note to myself about that.
[Peter Calves]: There is perhaps an orphaned link under medfordma.org slash complete dash streets that I found through a Google search.
[Gaston Fiore]: So out of conversations that I have with people, it says, I found that, which this needs to be verified, but complete streets is a policy adopted by Mayor Berkey and positively endorsed by Mayor Lugo-Cohen. But I don't know what that means in terms of an ordinance. I've been trying to join a complete street comedy meeting, but I wasn't sure whether he was still meeting to try to see what was the progress related to that.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: It's been a little while since the last meeting. Just haven't had any updates to give them.
[Peter Calves]: Yeah, and I believe there is guess that speaking to your point, there is a difference between a complete streets policy, which is a a state mandated thing or not a state mandated thing, but a state defined thing that The city would have put in place to secure a state funding for complete streets projects and a kind of an ordinance would be more on the long lines of cycling safety ordinance in Cambridge and Somerville. That's a separate thing. We can have a complete streets policy that is completely separate from an ordinance and that we can move forward on the parallel track to do a cycling, some kind of cycling safety ordinance. But I wanna make sure that before we start that process, we don't try and call it a complete streets policy because people will get confused because we already have one.
[Emily O'Brien]: So should we then talk about what a cycling safety policy or a cycling safety ordinance would entail on either assuming that complete streets is in place, Are there additional things that we want to add to that from a just from a cycling perspective? Are there specific things that we think are either missed by Complete Streets in general or that are missed by what Medford has historically done specifically? Are there other specific things we can think of that would be useful to put into writing in this way? from a more cycling-specific standpoint.
[Gaston Fiore]: So I have a question for Councilor Koenig related to this. So my idea was that to get the bicycle plan or complete streets plan after it's developed. And once that is being done, to just have an ordinance that says every time that the city has to work on revamping a road, it will be done according to that complete streets plan. That also is a document that doesn't have to be completely static. It can be updated as, you know, new funding campaign or residents put new feedback and things like that. But everyone can go check it out, see the current version of it. And then the CD is required by law to basically follow that plan every time that a CD is going to get revamped. And then there's common knowledge about what needs to happen at every road. So that's my idea of what would be an ordinance. I do agree that reading the city, the Cambridge Cycling Safety Ordinance, it's, they have a timeline there and things like that, which actually hasn't worked out well for them. So I don't envision something like that, but I do envision having some sort of comprehensive plan, you know, citywide plan, and then the city being bound to follow that whenever it has to completely redo a particular street.
[Emily O'Brien]: I wonder if there's other aspects of this beyond just road improvements. For example, education programs for city employees, especially people who drive around a lot as part of their job for the city, or... I know they've done in, I don't know, in Cambridge, or it might actually be in the city of Boston, a lot of
[Peter Calves]: retrofits to make city vehicles safer around cyclists.
[Emily O'Brien]: Another thought would be education of law enforcement specifically regarding cycling safety issues. I know there's Everybody has something new they want to teach to law enforcement, but they are responsible for traffic and we're part of traffic to so that something. along those lines, or maybe even if it's just every time training requirements are updated, then the aspects of what police officers are taught about bicycling should be updated as well. So that's kind of the corollary to the statement that every time a street is worked on, then it should also incorporate bicycle improvements. Every time various other things that the city is involved with that might not be infrastructure, other policies for other things, every time those are touched, that it should also incorporate an update to bicyclists' needs. Go ahead, Peter.
[Peter Calves]: There's another thing, and I mean, this is something that's from the, I think at least it's from the Cambridge Cycling Ordinance, that is something that might be helpful in Medford's case, and something I know that the few of our infrastructure projects that we go through and talk about at every meeting is, I believe they also have something, they have some, I don't know what specifically regarding what has to happen, and I think Somerville has this as well, because it's something I've seen professionally, when other entities touch city roads, be it utility replacements, the kind of philosophy of do it all at once. If you're going to tear up the road to do some utility replacement, then you should just try and do everything while you're already, and that's something I've seen with just schedule wise with projects in Medford, I mean we talk about Mystic Ave and we talk about Winthrop Street, and we talk about, oh, we have to wait for Eversource to do this, that, and the other. And I mean, I think they're starting that process in Somerville with Highland Street, where you're seeing because somebody needs to touch a water main it's like okay everybody get in here while we're doing Highland Street and we'll do that all at once and that might be a way to do things just more efficiently and to get and also to a lesser extent to be to not have to rely exclusively on On as much city money because if somebody is going to tear up the street and repay that it's not it, then the city doesn't have to come back later and pay pay to do the whole project itself. And so it could just be tacked on to utility project that's already going to be there.
[Ernie Meunier]: Isn't that already in Todd's wheelhouse? I mean, he talked about the projects, the infrastructure projects that get done here that are dependent upon other works that would... I guess the question is... Schedule it.
[Emily O'Brien]: My sense, and I think other people probably would agree, is that my sense is that we're already doing that, but I don't know if that's just basically the choices of the people whose business it is to make those decisions, or if that's codified, and if it's not, then if there's any value in codifying it for, you know, future generations of city engineers. Um, and if there's, you know, if that's, I mean, it is kind of just, it is a little bit of a no brainer. So if we think that anybody in that job would think that's a smart thing to do, then that's, that's all well and good. If we think there's any chance that we might get somebody who would be like, ah, nah, just put it back the way it was. And we'll think of something else later.
[Peter Calves]: I mean, that was, I mean, that was kind of the sense I got. I mean, maybe I was misreading the situation with something like Windsor Street. I kind of got the sense of like, oh, we have to wait for them to be done with their Windsor Street stuff before we can come in and do ours. But I may have misread that and it was part of the same.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Eversource is literally doing the design that we tell them to do.
[Peter Calves]: Oh, that's nice.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: These are all negotiations that happen on a case-by-case basis as far as I understand. They're contract negotiations and they agree to do the things that we've asked them to do. It's not something we can codify like saying we can try probably, but I don't think we can codify that we do it every single time because it doesn't work that way, but we try to.
[Jared Powell]: We also, we also have the, you know, that complete streets policy, which I think was kind of some of Peter's earlier points like a, you know, a prerequisite of getting access to certain funding and things like that that was developed way back when. You read through it, it sounds quite good. There's lots of good stuff in there. I pulled out some of the language that stood out to me just through there. It's not a hard and fast rule for what has to happen on every street. There's a recognition that it has to be flexible. And there are there are outs basically like it's not a requirement that every street gets ripped up every year and everything is always getting better and rosier and there's protected bike lanes and cycle tracks everywhere it's like. know, there's the language in there is about things like being done as appropriate, as practical to the extent possible, you know, that sort of thing. And budget is obviously like a part of that, you know, we could, we could make a policy that requires a cycle track on every arterial street. Sounds great. I don't know if we have the funding to do that. Maybe we could, maybe we can make it, you know, maybe you can make that happen.
[Emily O'Brien]: That's one of those things that I think about the arterial streets that are left after you take out the ones that are MassDOT or DCR, and then the only way that you could put cycle tracks in both directions by taking away all the parking. an entire stretch which we're very long way from doing that. Or in some cases, the only way you could even get a bike lane in each direction would be to make a two-way street down to one way so that you'd have only one travel lane and then you would take that. That's also just like for having so few through streets, to begin with, and streets that cross, you know, we have train tracks and a river. And to have, and so it just seemed like we just have so many places where the geometry of what's there is very, very limiting. And I'm And that doesn't mean that we shouldn't shoot for as much as we can get and do everything we can do to require the city to do the best they possibly can. Some of these places I kind of think about the actual arterials that we're talking about and think, well, What is, if you measure curb to curb, what are the actual possible things you could do? And there really are not that many choices in a lot of places, which is sort of, which is a little bit frustrating and makes me wonder if, There's, I wonder if like passing an ordinance that says, you know, put these things in where possible, well, there'll be the six places where you can do that. And then everything else is like, well, it's not possible anymore.
[Jared Powell]: Language like where possible is up to interpretation.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah.
[Jared Powell]: By design, I think. Right.
[Peter Calves]: That's why these policies are- Yeah, I think there's a fine line somewhere between language that is where possible being a realization that not all things are possible and the language of where possible being like, oh, we're possible, so we don't have to do anything ever.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah.
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, we have made some progress. I remember years ago, I think it was Tim when he was on the commission told us that he found out that potholes on any roads in Medford that were to be resurfaced within two years won't be repaired in the meantime because of the doubling effort. for doing the repair. Fortunately, we've gotten past that, where potholes are fixed, even though the road might be resurfaced two years later. So just a point of reference there.
[Jared Powell]: I was curious about other people's thoughts on this, but thinking of one-size-fits-all ordinances that are hard to apply in a city with a wide variety of old roads, basically, to Emily's point, I am unaware of any other municipality in the area, United States even I don't know that has. policy in place where any road that is one-way for vehicles can be ridden as a contraflow for bikes. I don't think Cambridge has that because otherwise they wouldn't have five different types of approved contraflow paint styles and whatnot. But that's common in Europe as I'm sure plenty of people know. know it's just like if it's one way for cars it's two ways for bikes just automatically by default that avoids a lot of extra work and it simplifies things it works better and or if that's a blanket ordinance that affects the region rather than just one city.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah that does that does I think would require a fair amount of still would require a lot of site-specific signage just because Medford is so small and jammed up against so many other municipalities that have different rules. But I really do think that idea would be really useful. First of all, we have so many two-way roads where somebody has to pull over between parked cars to pass somebody coming the other direction anyway. The one-way roads are not any narrower than that. There's no reason why it's safe to ride a bike on a two-way road that's that narrow, but then it's not safe to ride a bike on a one-way road that's just as narrow. In some cases, I know of one-way roads that are wider than some two-way roads. I think that would be a really useful thing and would facilitate a lot of like crosstown connections where it's like you can almost find a route now, but you can't quite. I think there's, I think there's a lot of... Your comments about Willow before, right?
[Peter Calves]: Willow and Centerville being... Yeah, Bristol Road, Bristol Road connected to Willow and Centerville.
[Jared Powell]: I mean, that's a way to... I'm sorry, I heard something.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: No, no, go.
[Jared Powell]: I'm just going to say that's a way to put Medford on the map, perhaps. We are not the people involved in writing those ordinances, but if perhaps we know some Councilors who are interested, perhaps that's something that they might be interested in. Making Medford famous for creating a European-style bicycling
[Gaston Fiore]: Yes, so infrastructure. My understanding is that we can have a huge impact in writing the ordinance, pretty much like we can write it because there's a tree protection ordinance coming up. And then that was written by Chris Medford. So I think we can have a lot of influence on what gets written, working in collaboration with city councilors, obviously. but I, yeah, so if we try to think what we want, I think we're gonna have a huge impact.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay, go ahead.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you, yeah, just to follow up on that point really quickly, as you know, mentioning the trees ordinance, and just for anybody who isn't already aware, and maybe all of you are, but yeah, there's like a whole range of spectrum of options for how like involved A person or community group could be in the drafting of an ordinance, you know I'm, I want to be available for talking about next steps whenever the time is right for that doesn't have to be today. very, very possible and welcome for, you know, if this group develops a wishlist, more curated wishlist recommendations, you know, that can be a very collaborative process. Of course, it might change when it, you know, at any point gets to the chambers, but that's definitely on the table. Just wanted to make that clear.
[Ernie Meunier]: Ernie? Yeah, Emily, do we have helmets on the agenda for tonight?
[Emily O'Brien]: We don't, and we are just running out of time really quickly.
[Ernie Meunier]: Okay, because we are out of the sizes we need, and it makes a lot of sense to combine the lights with helmets in September and October for kids, so I think we should work on that in the next month.
[Emily O'Brien]: Can we add it to the next agenda, or do we need to approve something now?
[Ernie Meunier]: I don't know, Pat has been spearheading that in the past and he's not here, so I don't know what the plan is.
[Emily O'Brien]: For the time being then, let's add that to next month's agenda. Indeed. Peter?
[Kit Collins]: Oh, that's actually what I wanted to say.
[Emily O'Brien]: So I think we need to wrap up pretty soon. I think this has been a good discussion, and I think we can all go and do some homework about other ordinances in other cities and think about what that might look like in Medford. One question that I mentioned this before, a question that I have just because we have so many places where this is going to remain the case is, is there language we could add to an ordinance that could in any way help make it easier in the places where bicycles and cars are going to be in the same lane for the near future, or for the foreseeable future, as the case may be. I don't know what that is. I have looked around a little bit, and I will look around some more. But that's a specific question that I have, especially in terms of, you know, we have so many places that are like that now. In terms of it, you know, they had those for a brief time, there were those what they were calling sharrows on steroids. It was like a dotted bike lane down the center of a regular travel lane that had sharrows in it with a dotted line. There's one by. Uh, on by McGrath Highway in some real world, for example. Um, and they kind of move. I think they tried that, and then they seem to shape favor the green box super shares instead. Um, but I wonder if there could be. Use cases for treatments like that, um. just in cases where bikes and cars are in the same lane and there's not any room for anything else. But I don't know what other options there could be in that regard. So I think we can all do some homework on this and talk about it again in the future. Does anybody else have anything to add?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I see a couple of people there, Peter, your partner, associate?
[Jared Powell]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I was busy typing my comments in the chat, but I'll say it out loud. It's probably faster. Hi, I'm Leah, not on the bike commission. I'm joining from the public. And just wanted to make a note that a lot of the infrastructure in Boston and the surrounding municipalities that we have now, I feel like we have because of bike advocates pushing the city in the right direction for a number of years before you know these things were able to be implemented and just noting that like it's you know as someone on the outside it's somewhat disappointing to hear like the bike commission talk about like oh it might be tough to do something because of parking and I want to encourage people to not I'm not going to throw out those ideas right away, because if the city doesn't hear it from us, they're probably not going to hear it from anyone, and they're not going to be able to move in that direction that we want them to. So that's all I had to say. Thanks.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Yeah, I put this in the chat, but I just wanted to just wanted to say, you know, feel free to reach out to me anytime. I'm going to do my own research, but I also very much welcome and appreciate your recommendations. I put my email in the chat. And if anybody prefers to set up like a phone call or conversation, I'm available. So don't be a stranger.
[Emily O'Brien]: Thank you so much. Thank you for coming.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you.
[Emily O'Brien]: If that is it, do we have a motion to adjourn?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Motion to adjourn. Second.
[Emily O'Brien]: All in favor? Aye. All right. Meeting adjourned. Thank you, everybody.