[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Okay. On March 29th, 2023, Governor Haley signed into law a supplemental budget bill which, among other things, extends the temporary provisions pertaining to the open meeting law to March 31st, 2025. Specifically, this further extension allows public bodies to continue holding meetings remotely without a quorum of the public body physically present at a meeting location and to provide adequate alternative access to remote meetings. The language does not make any substantive changes to the open meeting law other than extending the expiration date of the temporary provisions regarding remote meetings from March 31st, 2023 to March 31st, 2025. So without further ado, take it away.
[Emily O'Brien]: Thank you. Then the August 23rd meeting of the Medford Bicycle Advisory Commission will come to order. Secretary, would you please call the roll?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yes, Jared Powell. Who? Present. Yes, perfect. Bruce Kulik. Present. Emily O'Brien. Here. B. Dan Fairchild. Here. Ernie Munier. Present. Doug Packer, who I do not see, and I have not- Has anyone heard from Doug in a while? yeah i we should check on him just see if he's still around um uh let's see uh daniel nozzle muller present um no more of any lips i just messed that out badly um it's ready i guess for the record No, that was that was on me. Mary Kate, who I think said she was. Did she just say that?
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, there was just a technical difficulties BRB, so OK, I'll come back to. I think that counts as here. Or here she comes back.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yep, no, we were on there for now. Then Kevin Kutterbach.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: Kevin cut it back up.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Okay. Leah Grubstein, who told me she was not going to be here. Rebecca Wright.
[Jenny Graham]: I'm here, I just had to unmute myself slowly.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: And Abigail Stone.
[Emily O'Brien]: Who we still haven't seen.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: We have not seen. Okay.
[Emily O'Brien]: And Mary Kate, if your technical difficulties are solved enough to say that you're here. Oh, maybe not.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: OK. We can revisit that. And then I guess for our guest, who is always here for us, hi, Lily. Let's see, and I guess we also have another name and now I don't see it.
[Emily O'Brien]: Oh yeah, Dan do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, hi everyone. I'm a South Medford resident and bicycle enthusiast. If I if I can sit in as a guest, I'd just love to hear what y'all are up to. But if it's there's another avenue for me to learn more, that's that's fine too.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, you're absolutely welcome. Thank you for coming. And yeah, you're always welcome to be here and you're welcome to speak up if you have an opinion about something. I think we don't have a particularly heavyweight agenda today, but you never know. So I hope you'll also keep coming and, you know, we can always use another willing helper. So thanks for being here. First item is approving the minutes from the last meeting, July 26th. Any questions about the minutes? I'm taking that as a no. Do we have a motion to approve the minutes? Motion to approve. Do we have a second? Seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye Announcements and upcoming events. We have Harvest Your Energy on October 14th and Jared has been handling this for which I'm very grateful. I've been a little bit out of touch away at things. Do you have anything to add? I know that's a little ways away, so we don't totally have to have people scheduled to be there, but I hope that we have some people who can be there. Jared, do you have anything to add?
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I mean, probably nothing new, but I don't know if we, it's probably old hat for some of the folks on this call. It might be a new event for others, so I might as well kind of mention it, but it's Harvester Energy is kind of a combination fall and energy and environmental and sustainability focused event that Medford, that the city puts on. in October, I think, generally. So sometimes it's, I don't think they've ever had it outside. I feel like it's been inside the past few years, maybe due to inclement weather. Yeah, it was outside. Was it?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah. It was outside. It was outside.
[Jared Powell]: All right, good. Everything gets fuzzy. But it's a really nice event. There's a lot of different community organizations. A lot of people show up, a lot of families. I feel like it's always been surprisingly well attended, maybe not surprisingly, but very well attended. So it's a great opportunity to talk to people who are in some cases, both bike friendly and sustainability, sustainably minded, or just people who are one or the other or a sustainably minded, maybe don't know as much about what's happening with bikes in the city. So it's always a good way to kind of make connections and talk to people about what's going on and reach out to the youth and whatnot. Distribute helmets, lights, whatever we may have available to distribute. So I will plan to be there. I don't have the specific time commitment in front of me, but I can provide that as we get closer and I can look it up while we're on the call as well. But Usually takes a few people to a couple people to man a booth most of the time or to kind of stand at the booth and talk to people. So if any other folks want to come, that would be that would be great. I'm sure I'll be able to be there for some amount of it. Maybe not.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I hope I'll be able to make it. I have a couple of schedule things that are up in the air at that time of year, but.
[Jared Powell]: Date again, please. I just pulled up the email. It's October 14th and it's only from 12 to 3. So pretty, pretty limited time commitment. You know, show up a little early, stay a little late, that kind of thing.
[Bruce Kulik]: But Bruce, you have your hand up. Yeah, two things. I always enjoy going to that, that event. So I'll certainly be there. And it's an election year, which means all the politicians will be around and it's a good chance for us to meet them, talk to them, et cetera.
[Adam Hurtubise]: So I encourage people to show up, even if they're not at the booth. Great point. Good reminder, Bruce. Thank you.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, that's good. Next is the farmer's market, bike themed farmer's market is tomorrow. And it looks like from the email list there, we actually do have some good coverage. Jared, do you want to talk about that one too?
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, sure.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think we're just covered, so hopefully people can... I may be able to make it too, but it just depends on how far I get.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, fair enough. So I think our basic coverage is... If I'm not mistaken, anyone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we've got Daniel and Noam for setup. Leah, a little bit after that, 4.30ish or so. Mary-Kate around 6.00. And then, wait, do we have somebody? Oh yeah, Mary-Kate, you could be there 6.00 to close, that's only until 7.00. So that, hey Ernie, I see you there.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, I'll be there randomly. Yeah, I don't know when, but I'll be there too.
[Jared Powell]: Okay and my schedule is probably similar on the later side but I will be there at some point. Pat who was formerly chair and secretary and vice chair of the commission will be there at some point to drop off some materials as well kind of promoting bypass to bite to the sea. A northern strand trails. So that's that could be pretty helpful for people since that's a popular trail in the area. Yeah, if anyone has not spent any time at the farmer's market, it's really great. I think it started a while back and was kind of a little fledgling farmer's market for a while and has since really blossomed and become a really great place to go. And it's very bike friendly as well. It's kind of a bit of a cargo bike scene, frankly.
[Emily O'Brien]: It's pretty cool how many cargo bikes you see there.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I feel like that is, I can usually identify most of my friends by their bikes and then get to meet new ones by theirs as well. So it's a lovely place, so please come. If you weren't on that list there, you're still welcome to just like pop by even for a bit and hang out however long you care to. It's a very friendly and fun crowd. So please join us. I think the one logistic thing that is, that we need to make sure where you've got covered is the ability to take home stuff at the end. So the farmers market people are going to set up a tent, table, and a couple of chairs for us. They are providing that. They will set it up for us and they will take it down, which is very, very generous and much appreciated. But we will have you know, some signage and that sort of thing that I think, Daniel, you're in possession of now, that we both have to get there and get away from there. So someone toward the end needs to be able to nab that stuff. It's not a ton of things, but it's not nothing either. Like that sign is kind of the size of a, I don't know, carry-on suitcase, something like that. Dan, is that about right?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: uh yes the so i would say that the sign the sign that i have is approximately three feet long and eight feet or eight inches in diameter um right that like sign package that rolled up that rolled up soft sign or the the freestanding oh i guess we could always make do with the okay we could always make do i suppose with just like the
[Jared Powell]: the rolled up sign if we couldn't get the other thing there. But the other one is a map. And half the time, people come up and they want to talk about routes and how to get through the city. So having that map is super useful.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I will check my stuff, but I'm not sure if I have the map. I think I have the large sign and one of the stand up. But let me double check on that. I could be wrong.
[Jared Powell]: Okay, well, I think the sign may be packaged with the stand-up stand.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Okay, yeah.
[Jared Powell]: If I'm not mistaken, but we're checking.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I can get all of that down. My question is, do we want to bring helmets?
[Emily O'Brien]: It would be a good opportunity to distribute helmets, but then somebody has to bring them down and bring them home.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I might be able to. manage that, I can probably get my partner to drive me all of, you know, half a mile down to there with that stuff. Normally, I would offer to do it, but I don't have a lot of use of my right arm. But, you know, I carry it down, which isn't a problem. I could probably get them back home.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: talking about, I can probably bring them down.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: I can fit a lot of stuff on my turn. I mean, if anyone is willing to help me. Yeah, that's all I have, but I mean. Yeah, I've got a box bike, so I can fit a few as well.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Is this stuff like at your house, Daniel, or is it like at City Hall? OK.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah, it's at my place. I'm at the intersection of Woburn and High.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Oh, perfect. Okay. Yeah, I'm just up the street by the Brooks School. So I can easily cruise by on the way to the market and pick stuff up.
[Jared Powell]: All right. So Daniel and Noam, I'll maybe leave you guys to touch base about getting stuff there. Mary Kate sounds like you and I can get stuff away. Yes, sounds good.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: Cool. Sounds like a plan.
[Emily O'Brien]: Thank you, everybody. I'm glad that that's all working out.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: Where do we land on helmets, though? And are we going to be able to transport helmets in this equation?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I have them in a large box. It's definitely something that's pretty easy to walk with down from my place. It would just be hard to have that and the signage. you know, carry that all down. But the boxes themselves are not, I mean, they're helmets. They're quite light. The boxes are bulky, but, you know.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: How many do we have that we're bringing down?
[Jared Powell]: I think we're still- I don't know that we need like a ton. I mean, I wouldn't bring any more than one box and maybe less than that.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: I have one- I should be able to accommodate that, yeah. Okay. I have a large bike too, so.
[Emily O'Brien]: Also, hopefully there won't be too many to bring back.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah. We might get lucky.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. So I'll update the Facebook page. I'm going to say I'm resharing the farmer market page saying we'll be there staffing our booth, answering questions about getting around Medford by bike, admiring the cargo bikes and giving away helmets. I mean, can I go ahead and
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. And Ernie, do we have, do you have bike light kits available?
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, that's the problem. The last event was unforeseen by me. And I think we got rid of 40 of them at Circle of the Square, which I had, you know, which I was, it was suggested I do. So I have only eight and I do have to place an order tomorrow. Cause I, you know, didn't know of last month's meeting and that will mean that it could potentially have almost 500 sets in, I'd say, mid-October, maybe in time for the event on the 14th, let's hope.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: I think I've got four here, but someone else would have to come get them, because I'm going to be heading into Boston for the afternoon tomorrow.
[Emily O'Brien]: So maybe don't, why don't we say that if, Ernie, if you think of it, bring the ones that you have.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, I'm going to bring the eight, but I'm going to sell them to the highest bidder to help defray costs instead of giving them away, or at least get a pizza, you know, something.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, there, I have one other thought about that. But while we're on that subject, let's also authorize Ernie to buy more. I'm not sure if we need to do that, but we should do that. if that hasn't been done. Bruce?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Bruce, I saw your hand up. Sorry, technical difficulties. Motion to approve to approve Ernie's purchase of lights.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Second. Seconded.
[Emily O'Brien]: All in favor?
[Ernie Meunier]: Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: All right. Ernie is approved to buy some more lights.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yay. Thanks.
[Emily O'Brien]: Awesome. Thank you for that, Ernie.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, thank you.
[Emily O'Brien]: So I guess we will not be distributing lights tomorrow, but we will be distributing helmets. And that would be great to announce, Kevin, if you're. Thank you. Sorry.
[Jared Powell]: No, sorry, I was just going to say, I mean, if we if you feel like you can get more than one box down there, Daniel, like. I guess you can, I can commit to easily fitting an entire box on my bike, no problem. So if we have an entire box left over, I can still get it home. So.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Okay. I can, I think I can get, I can definitely walk down with at least one. If someone can take the other, then that's easy.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, I can plan to stop by on the way to the market. Great.
[Emily O'Brien]: And let's see if that's all on the farmer's market. The next is a youth bike safety workshop that Ellery Klein has worked on putting together. And let me pull up the information about this. It has, I told her that we would be able to, I told her that I didn't want to say that it was sponsored by MBAC, because she came to me with this two days after our last meeting, so we couldn't vote on saying that it was us as a group. But I said we could say, you know, volunteers provided by MBAC, particularly for just doing quick bike tune-ups and checks, check-ups. And this is This is a link at the library, which I will post into the chat. Bike Safety Workshop, Saturday, September 30th, three to four, which seems very short to me. But she has Vivian Ortiz with Safe Routes to School involved, too. And she would like just some help with you know, checking over bikes, it would be a good time to have helmets available. There'll be a table with information in the cafe from three to five with Vivian Ortiz from Safe Routes to School, and helmet fittings and questions from four to five. I guess I have to read all of this, because this looks more laid out than I was thinking, time-wise, than I was thinking it was. But it would be great to have some volunteers for that. I'm pretty sure I'm available. And it would be great if we have some others. And I think in terms, if we have just a couple of other people who can look over bikes and make sure the brakes work and advise on... What time is it again? Let me post the link into the chat and you can... And what day is September 30th?
[Bruce Kulik]: Saturday. Saturday. Saturday, okay.
[Emily O'Brien]: here's the here's the link in the chat it's medfordlibrary.org slash event slash youth hyphen bike hyphen workshop um so uh get in touch with me if you're available to help out there i think you know the more the merrier and it's great to have more of us available to check on kids bikes and answer questions and um you know if you particularly have experience with biking in medford with kids or You know, if you have helped ferry some of the kids to school or any of these various things, it would be great to just be there and be able to answer questions based on your experiences.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm willing to help out with this, both in terms of any mechanical work that needs to be done. And as a bike instructor, I can also do some of these learning sessions, but it sounds like you've already got someone for that.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I think that is squared away. I'll double check with Ellery, but I'm sure that's squared away.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, if she needs any help with that, I'm happy to help as well.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah. Yeah. I, too, can bring tools, a pump, et cetera, to do the basic tire pressure, seat height, brake adjust stuff. It's always incorrect. Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, of course. Kids have that inconvenient habit of growing, too.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes.
[Emily O'Brien]: You think their seat height is right, and next thing you know, it's all wrong again.
[Jared Powell]: I can likely come to that too. I need to double check with some personal commitments, but I expect I'll be able to come.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. It sounds like we probably won't have more bike light kits by then.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, that's the risk. I don't think so, but it'd be close.
[Emily O'Brien]: But I would say that we all have lights for our own bikes of one kind or another. Even if we don't have any lights to distribute, I would suggest that we should all make a point of bringing bikes with lights on them so that we can say, hey, it is fall. It's getting darker. This is an example of what your lights should look like. And come to the harvest your energy, and maybe we'll have some to give you by then. but having some examples doesn't hurt.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, maybe we could have a sign-up sheet or an attendance sheet and anybody who came, you know, who expresses interest maybe gets a light later at some point or something like that.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, something like that.
[Emily O'Brien]: So I'll send out more on the email list just to make sure that we're keeping in touch about having personnel for that. But it sounds like we will have some people, so that's good. Anything else on that?
[Jared Powell]: This is probably a question for Bruce, and it sounds like it's a non-issue, Uh, there's no concerns about like liability or anything like that for working on, on other people's bikes.
[Bruce Kulik]: Usually the way we do that is we explain to them what needs to be done and kind of like say here, here's what you have to do to your bike to fix it. And then if they say fix it, it kind of alleviates that liability. But yeah, there is always that question. on, you know, being a mechanic of sorts. So we do have to be careful what we're touching.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, if I can jump on that briefly, when we had the rodeo at Tufts Park, there were more than a half dozen instances where watching Growing kids as Emily noted, who are too low on their bikes and wobbling along and when mentioned to them that how much safer and more control, they'll be the proper height. I would adjust if the parents were there get permission adjust the seats. higher and then watch the kids going away at much greater speed and control, as is the case if your seat's high enough. So that activity put me maybe slightly at risk. On balance, I thought it was a good thing to do, to actually improve their bikes, not just tell them how to do it. or, or, you know, ham fisted parents without tools, they're not knowing what to do when they got home.
[Bruce Kulik]: I would suggest that actually adjusting the brakes is probably something you don't want to touch. Explaining how to do it and having the parent do it and helping them do it is another thing altogether. But that's the kind of thing where, you know, if the cable's faulty, for example, you adjust it and then it breaks and something happens, right? That's questionable. So that would be my non-legal advice about that kind of thing, just, you know, from a comfort standpoint.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, I can see that. It's also hard to do when you're static anyway. You need to do a road test. So yeah, it's best to get it deferred, but you can sort of statically tell if a seat's too high or low and not have, you know, enter a situation where a kid thinks they have better brakes than they had. And then all of a sudden they enter a you know, the street and get hit or whatever we have to protect ourselves against. So, okay.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think that is a good thought though, Bruce, to don't actually adjust brakes. Just tell them what you think it needs and tell them how to do it. So,
[Adam Hurtubise]: And obviously also say, if.
[Emily O'Brien]: If the shifting doesn't work, you don't have to go crazy about trying to adjust it or whatever. But you can say, this should be an easy job at a bike shop. This looks like a really complicated job at the bike shop. This bike looks like it might not actually be worth the amount of time some mechanic is going to take. Or this bike looks like it is worth the amount of time. People kind of have no idea sometimes. And sometimes somebody thinks, oh, this bike has been sitting in my garage. It's going to need a huge expensive overhaul at a bike shop. And a little bit of chain lube, and it's good to go. And sometimes they think, oh, it just needs a little bit of a tune up, and it'll be fine. And it actually needs all new cables, and all new brake pads, and all new chain, and all new everything. And by the time you do that, that's worth more than the bike. So you can always give your best advice as long as they know that you're a volunteer. I know some of us have been bike mechanics in shops before, but we're not there in that capacity.
[Jared Powell]: We can also probably point people to online resources. I'm sure there's others. I know Park Tools, for example, has pretty exhaustive online guides for learning things. So kind of in the order of teaching someone to fish, maybe we could point people in that direction.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, that's good. Anything else on that?
[Ernie Meunier]: Does anyone have a free air sign? Or do we have to bring a coin-operated pump?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Just kidding.
[Emily O'Brien]: I will accept quarters for the use of my bike pump. But I won't swallow them. Next up is business owner requests for bike racks. This is something that we've had some questions about whether there's a good way to handle this in the past. It would be really nice to provide a channel for business owners who want them to request them from the city. Or, you know, for business owners who want to pay for them. I don't know if this is I don't know if this is another thing that we can provide an avenue for someone who wants to pay for their own bike rack to be installed. That's kind of sticky because it's on city property. But we can at least point them in the direction of the DPW to ask the question. I think we have talked about putting a sign-up form on the website just so that we can collect information from people who want to request them, and so that we can forward that along. Or we can put up a page on the website that says who to get in touch with, which would be Alicia, possibly, and also Todd and Lily. So to say, maybe we put up a form that sends an automatic email to those people. Does anyone have any other thoughts about that or how we could go about providing that sort of a channel? I have a question. Yeah.
[Jenny Graham]: Can the city install BICORRECTS if the form is completed or is it more to kind of judge interest to maybe then find
[Emily O'Brien]: I think it's hard to judge interest. And so that we have now a list of, you know, here's a bunch of business owners who have been asking. And also, so that the people responsible get, you know, we hope a steady trickle of inquiries, just to kind of keep the pressure on and keep the keep that wheel squeaking. We've had a hard time getting anything to happen on the bike rack front. And this might be one more way to increase the pressure.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. I feel like making it clear, if it's to kind of get interest, not necessarily you put in a form and then you magically get a rack showing up at your door. Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, that's a good point. Ernie, yes.
[Ernie Meunier]: Emily, do you remember that years ago, we talked about this when we got into bike racks and him, who had just now been in charge of that, you know, in his new role, was saying that there needed to be a cleavage between city supplied and city installed ones and those requested and to be funded by private commercial locations where they wanted a rack and were willing to have them have fancy ones with their own logos on it as an example. You remember, we couldn't we couldn't bridge those two.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I remember Tim being kind of cool to the idea of a business owner being able to pay to install their and whether it's branded or not, being able to pay to install one, because then it gives preferential treatment to people who can afford it. And that was the concern. So in this case, I think we're definitely not promising anybody that they can have a bike rack in front of their business just for the asking.
[Ernie Meunier]: But it is- What if they ask to pay for it? What if they say, we'll fund it?
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, that's the question. For that matter, what if they say, we will buy it, we'll order it, it will be delivered, we will pay the people who install it, we just need permission. And after which point it becomes city property because it's on city property. And that, I don't know if that's, and maybe not very many of them would actually go through all of those steps and actually do that. Maybe some of them would. But So that's that's 1 question as to whether that's possible. Even Lily.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, I may be able to shed a little bit of light on this because I had a conversation with Todd a little more recently because a business owner basically asked, like, what could we do to get 1 in front of our business? And it seems like the. kind of public private divide is the sticking point but Todd seemed amenable to the idea of if a business wants to pay for it on and put it on their own property you know we're obviously very happy for them to do that if it's installing it on the city sidewalk that's a little bit more complicated because we don't have any racks currently we have written this grant to try to get more but in that case on the public sidewalk we would want to kind of Treat people equally and try to probably follow the map that you guys created to kind of place them in strategic locations. So when businesses request or ask this of us, or at least the couple that I've seen recently, we have said we'd be really happy if you were doing this on your private property and we're happy to help place it and kind of meet you and sort of show you where is optimal to place it. But in terms of the public street, I think that's where it's a bit more of a, of a can of worms. That said, I think it is important to have a channel to collect these requests, which will help inform where we put them, but also maybe additional pushes to get more of the racks. One other point on that is that when new development happens or when we have projects where it's possible to provide bike parking, again, on the developer's dime, we do push them to do that. And there's one You all may have noticed in Medford Square on Salem Street, outside of the blue Fuji restaurant, there's a new bump out. The developer there was meant to provide bike racks and they put two there and they're not good and we're making them do it over and they'll provide four and there'll be city standard in a row on the bump out. It's like little individual situations like these where if we see an opportunity to have private entities put bike racks, we can do that. Yeah, I think that one might have been a that one is maybe a bit of an exception. It may have been a condition of their approval to do that bump out. It was part of a project. So it wasn't quite the same as like having individual ones placed outside of businesses. But we are trying to kind of use every avenue to get more parking. So it is very important.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. And I know that the sorry, the hardest places to park a bike are also the places where there's not the, you know, where there's like a sidewalk with nothing on it and there's no place where a property owner would be able to put one on private property. um and that's you know that is like there's the business districts that have big giant parking lots and then there's the business districts that have businesses on the sidewalk and the big giant parking lot is kind of one situation and the sidewalk is another situation and um and it's those sidewalk situations that I think we tend to hear the most complaints about. A lot of, some of the big giant parking lots don't have bike racks or they have inadequate bike racks, but I think people mostly know that they kind of have to go through the property owner at that point. And you're not trying to, and it's only one, it's like one property owner with a bunch of large stores. more likely that you care about parking in front of, whereas the ones on the sidewalk, it might be, you know, 10 little shops in a row with small business owners and none of them have a place to park. Sorry, I interrupted, I think Kevin and then B-Dan.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, let's see.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: I forget what my earlier point was, but it does sound like, oh, I know what it was, which is, is there... So in the chat, I put, we are talking three different things. There's advice to private people on private property, advice to private efforts on public sidewalks, and then there's, hey, the city should put one here because it's a great place for a bike rack. In all that, is there a known number of such city-standard, city-paid bike racks that happen each year? Can we say the city has a plan to blank? All right, so there's no act now.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I would say there's no sort of quantifiable plan as such, but we do have a standards that we use in terms of rack type, the dimensions, where it's installed, the distances between things. And I've gotten, so we have this now in the city engineer's office. So anytime a development comes up for review, if they're doing any bike parking or anything, We can point them to that and hold them to those standards that we don't have like ineffective bike racks, but in terms of the number and the placement, I don't think we have that yet, but that's a really good goal. And I think this conversation is also speaking to the need to have. some sort of explanation for this process, maybe on the city website somewhere. Like we have a whole parking website for cars. Maybe we can do a subsection perhaps on the transportation site that just talks about bike parking and what the city's plans are and how you can request one or how you can, you know, even, yeah, and setting up the channel to sort of point people towards. So it's clear to everybody, whether they're a business or just a resident, like, well, what can you do to advocate for one? And it would be nice if something I'd be happy to work on.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, it would be nice if we could eventually have something where we could say the city has a commitment to install 20 bike racks a year. I mean, I don't think they they haven't they aren't installing 20 bike racks a year, but.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: Well, I mean, even if it was just, you know, we have every place that we've done a curb bump out, we'd consider a bike rack. You know, if it was complete streets, schools, commercial districts, even if there was just, like, these themes of what has the public purpose, where the city would spend its own money, And then a separate description of, but if you're a business and you happen not to be in one of those places or, you know, happen to be on the edge or far from where the city's one is going to be, here's what you do. We'd love to work with you. And, you know, first-time bike placers often get it wrong and put the rack too close to the building. Right, uh, you know, whatever those extra. Tips are for the isolated business that's never going to get a city rack, but.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, for that matter, it can be useful to say, like, we have we have submitted a map. where we had like first tier, second tier, third tier priorities for locations. And those we picked by looking at where the business districts are in Medford and trying to put them so that they're equally distributed. So not necessarily based on where the needs are the highest, but just making sure that there is something everywhere. But as we go down that list, it could also be really useful if there's a business owner that says, you know, hey, I have 10 customers a week complaining that they can't lock their bikes, and there's one bike rack on this whole block, that is still good information to know about, like, you know, hey, that's a, this spot is a high priority. I had, be Dan and then Daniel.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: I was gonna say, it seems a little weird to say that we'd be giving preferential treatment to people, you know, who are funding the entire thing, when it wouldn't... that would increase the total number of bike racks. Like that, you know, if we're saying, we have these places that we want to put bike racks, if you want to pay for it, you can get one placed that is not one of those places, That just increased the total number of bike racks doesn't mean that we're still going to place them, you know, in the places that we've already chosen.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I mean, I agree. I don't know that... I agree with you. I, you know, I don't know that that's... But since it is on, we're talking about on city sidewalks and they might feel otherwise that that still means like, hey, if you can afford it yourself, you can have one. And if you can't, you just have to wait for however many years it takes until the city does one for you. And I think that was kind of the concern. My thinking is that it seems like The only business owners who are going to want to spend that, it's not like it's that much money, but it is a whole project and it is money. They're only going to want to do it if they have high demand from their customers for a bike rack. So that proves that the benefit to the rest of us is that much greater. because that's clearly a place where it's needed. But that's... I mean, maybe we can double-check with Todd about that.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Right. I guess the main thing is, it doesn't seem like we should be basing things off of the barest chance of an appearance of impropriety, right? you know, we shouldn't do things that are actually illegal, we shouldn't do things that are actually immoral, but like, oh, you know, it could potentially be seen as slightly improper by someone, but it will be of—overall, it will be of a benefit. That's still an overall benefit.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Um, Lily, do you have a— Yeah, I'll just briefly jump in. I'm not sure if the idea of, like, being fair and kind of if that originated from a comment Tim made or whether it was Todd, but I'm happy to check in with both of them to see if maybe we can come up with just some criteria or some sort of framework that we can explain to people, you know, how we're trying to implement the bike parking without. I think it would help a lot if we had a lot of, you know, more racks to actually place and the time for DPW to put them in. But at the same time, we also do want to encourage businesses to, if they want to do their own, then great. But in terms of the public sidewalk, I think having some sort of framework to talk about it would be great. We don't want to, yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: There's something we can tell somebody if they say, we want to have a bike rack on the sidewalk in front of our business. We understand that people can park there and go shopping other places, but we will buy the rack and we will pay somebody to install it. We just need permission for it to be planted in the sidewalk and it will become the city's property after that. Is there a mechanism for that to happen? Is there a way we can facilitate that? I can't imagine that it's going to be that many people, but it does seem like the only place, the only times when some business owner is going to want to go through all that much trouble is going to be when it's really, really needed. And that could be done sooner than it takes for the city to get around to buying more bike racks. And it doesn't take the time of any DPW personnel if that business owner is going to pay somebody to do it. And all they need is permission. It would be nice if we can at least tell them that. Ernie, in just a second, but I had called Daniel before, but I'll get back to you.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: So I guess I actually pulled up a discussion I had had with Todd on a related note or on a somewhat similar note. So how does, I guess, so I know that some of the speed tables have been installed or at least paid for by, for example, Lawrence Memorial Hospital. How does this necessarily differ from You know the installation of bike racks by a third party, because at least some of this indicates that like some of some of those speed tables around the city have been installed or at least paid for by third parties.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: That's a great question. My understanding and I don't know specifically about the ones on Lawrence, but many of these types of things are either done by 3rd parties as like a mitigation effort, which means it's specific to the location of wherever that 3rd party, for example, ever source or utility company. Would be working, or there have been other cases where those types of interventions have been done as part of like a grant, which is again, usually location specific, um, you know, whether it's a certain radius of a school, or a certain radius of an intersection. So, sometimes the constraints are basically related to the funding source. What would be great is if we could get like a prioritization list of traffic calming, which is something I think is one of our goals, you know, for just generally where would be good to have speed tables and traffic calming, you know, unrelated to any particular grants or mitigation projects.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I think what I'm I'm sort of curious about is not as much the traffic calming is that's more of a thing that I feel would fall to the traffic commission, despite the fact that we have probably shared interest, just the. I guess it seems like the city does have some element of like third parties paying for or, you know, contributing monetarily to things that like. for the common good. So I'm curious just like if this could be seen as falling into a similar sort of bucket.
[Emily O'Brien]: You're saying basically if Lawrence Memorial Hospital can pay for a speed table, then Tamper Cafe should be able to pay for a bike rack.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Effectively. I mean, I hope that isn't too much of a logical jump.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I think that's a very compelling point and I'm happy to revisit this with Todd and also to see what we can do to come up with what our guidelines are for businesses and communicate that clearly. I will say the couple of inquiries that I've seen were more businesses wondering if the city could pay for and install bike racks for them. We'd love to do that, but we were hoping that they'd go ahead and do it themselves just for money and staffing reasons.
[Emily O'Brien]: I mean, there are places where the business owner knows that they don't have a place to put it themselves. It would be great to be able to say, hey, the city can't do it right now. But if you really want one, here's how you can do it yourself. And here's an approved vendor. Here's an approved style. Here's a contractor you could hire or a list of contractors. Here's the type of contractor you would need to hire. Here's how you get permission to drill it into the sidewalk. Basically, we can't do it for you right now, but here's how you can do it yourself, even if you don't have a parking lot to put it in. Ernie?
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, this is coming a little bit full circle. One of the tallest trees in this forest of opportunities is, of course, our own bike shop here in town, JRA, where years ago, and I think this was where, when we started to talk about bike racks, I asked them, would you like bike racks? front of your place. And they said yes, and it sort of didn't happen. And I brought up the issue of the possibility that they got their own, they'd love to have their, their own cast emblazoned, you know, logos on them, etc, because it's a bike shop. And it didn't go anywhere. And I have to think too, that if they're going to buy their own racks, then maybe they're not going to want to double up on paying for bike lights. next time I asked them. So I don't want to also be put in a position of semi payola. We're saying if you buy the bike lights, we'll install a rack on your sidewalk. But I mean, they are a glaring example of a small concern that's now owned by them. They bought their property. There's no public parking. and people show up there with bikes and have to put them inside where it's very crammed, et cetera. So a fairly close by sidewalk space for bikes would be very, very useful. And I would think once again, that they would be willing to even pay for at least the customization of their racks, if not for the total expense. as well as helmets in the future when we get around to asking about a campaign around that. So I think, you know, talk about the tallest oak in the forest that should be looked at. I think JRA would be a good example of a public-private opportunity that we should see as a marquee, especially because it's a bike shop in our town. Bruce, thanks.
[Bruce Kulik]: Do we have any examples from, I would say, maybe Cambridge or Somerville? Surely, they must have had even more demand than we do in that regard and have some sort of, particularly Cambridge, I think, would have like a program in place that allows this public-private partnership without running afoul of any kind of equity or other laws of that nature.
[Emily O'Brien]: Right, as long as it has a lot more public bike racks in the first place.
[Bruce Kulik]: So I don't know if it was true, but I'm just suggesting that it feels to me like they would they would have more opportunity. I mean, maybe this is part of the mitigation from a developer, for example, right? There's a lot of development going on, and maybe they can say, yeah, you're doing this development, but you also have to pay for five bike racks. Problem solved. You're not you're not saying, oh, you're rich, so you can afford a bike rack out front. I'm just suggesting that maybe there's an opportunity if we have contacts in other cities and towns to get a sense of how they might handle that. And also even just check with the city solicitor to see legally what is, you know, what is the situation? Is there something legally the city can do? Because if that's the case, then the question becomes more of a political one of, well, is it apropos to do that as opposed to, you know, someone who can't afford a bike rack not getting one. Just some thoughts.
[Adam Hurtubise]: That's a good point.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Additional question there too. I don't know if you know, Lily, some of this fall under like planning, development and sustainability. Don't they typically like work with businesses and things to create incentives like this, right? It's good for the city and it's good for all the above described reasons. So is there a collaboration opportunity with that department?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I think there definitely could be, um, I work sort of part time between both of the departments and, um, I think we're city hall is small enough that we often have these conversations together and there's definitely an understanding in the planning office that bike parking is important. Um, we currently are. Sort of short our economic development staff there's, I think vacancies in. economic development director and economic development planner, but I expect that when those vacancies are filled, we could restart that conversation. I think it is definitely an important one to have, and it's definitely an avenue that may not have been adequately explored yet.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Looking at Cambridge's website, it looks like they have a, well, they request people ...request bike racks through ClickFix for installation on public property... ...but that's just a request, not, you know, pay for it. They require private development to install bike racks... ...as part of new development. but it doesn't look like they have a pay for a rack on a public sidewalk thing. They may just have enough money that they don't need to, though.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I mean, I feel like we're so far behind Cambridge or Somerville and then just the sheer number. You know, we have blocks and blocks of highly trafficked business districts with zero bike racks. And you'll see like, you can, I have photos of like taking a photo down the street, and there's A bike, there's two bikes locked to every signpost. And then there's a bike locked to the side of a trash can at some weird angle. And then there's another bike leaned up against the side of the building. I was going past Colleen's the other day. And of course, we're always telling people, hey, go on a bike ride to get ice cream and go to Colleen's. And there's no bike racks anywhere on that block. And there was a group of kids who had gone on a bike ride to Colleen's for ice cream, and there were bikes all over the sidewalk and leaning against the building, unattached, unsecured, unlocked to anything. And, you know, what else are they going to do? I've locked my bike to the bench outside Colleen's, but I'll only do that in the winter when I know nobody's going to want to sit there. So, you know, we have so many business districts that have nothing or that maybe have one. And it's really, I think we, And we really are far, far behind Cambridge and Somerville and Arlington in that regard. It doesn't mean that there's always a bike rack when you want one in those places, but it's not a complete bike rack desert in every business district in the city in those places. And I think we should be you know, we might need to be thinking outside the box in ways that they don't need to anymore, or that they just, they installed bike racks so we don't have to worry about, you know, hoping that maybe one or two businesses might be able to come up with the money to install their own. You know, if one business comes up with the money to install their own bike rack in a lot of these places, that's a, 200% increase in the number of bike racks for some of them. You know, if you count like, if you count a sign as half of a bike rack, I mean, it's like.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Yep. Can I share my screen for a moment?
[Emily O'Brien]: While you're doing that, Ernie, what have you got?
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, I was going on B. Dan's inquiry. Do you get the sense that Some of these squabbles have already been played out in that I can imagine that richer store owners in Cambridge would have taken the opportunity, if allowed to, to put up bike racks, stroller racks, benches, whatever, partially obstructing sidewalks to divert and allow more traffic to their enterprises that Cambridge must have stepped in and said, no, this is public property. We control it. If you want a bike rack, we may put it in or there's one close by, but you have to go through us. You cannot bogart the public way. So that's the legal private Well, I think we're also asked that lily was mentioning before that I think we may run into and maybe that they have already decided. So.
[Emily O'Brien]: We're also not advocating for people to just put them in anywhere they want. It still has to be, it still has to, the sidewalk still has to be wide enough. And there are going to be places where for various reasons, they can't install one, even if there's a need for one. We're not, you know, we're not necessarily saying you can just put whatever you want, wherever you want. And I'm sure the same would have been true in Cambridge as well.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: So here is Cambridge's existing bike parking map. You can see just how much they have. And most of these are existing. There's a handful of approved, but not yet installed, because they're still installing more. Most of these are small ones, but there's also some larger ones. And they've got the major business streets, like Mass Ave, completely covered, basically. and then a pretty good number scattered around other places.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: Aside from making my teeth ache with jealousy, why am I being shown with this?
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: So yeah, that's what we're... In terms of how far behind we are, it's pretty far.
[Emily O'Brien]: So to bring things back to what we can actually do right now, we can, first of all, add on our website a channel or instructions for what business owners should do if they want one, or if they want to comment that they feel there's not adequate bike parking in front of their location, and maybe more than just C-Click Fix is what we want. Jared?
[Jared Powell]: I had a comment up until the last phrase that you just said, which is about C-Click Fix. I mean that that I think was my simple suggestion just add let's let's just recommend that the city. Request bike parking as one of the as one of the forum options on see click that so that businesses and residents can just request bike parking at whatever location. They care about we know this is a need I think the city knows it's a need. They probably need to hear it, frankly, from people who are not us. They probably care about the general public as well, and we might as well. The forum can be the thing that already exists, see, click, fix, and we can be the publicity arm of telling people that that is the channel that they could use. It's a start using existing channels.
[Ernie Meunier]: We need to provide sign-up lists at our events for people to put down addresses where they think a bike rack might be useful and just see what that reaps.
[Emily O'Brien]: Here are those little stickers that people can stick on the map.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yes, yes, of course.
[Emily O'Brien]: Billy is adding that category to See, Click, Fix something that could happen, do you know?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I'm not sure but I'm happy to ask I, I feel like I remember having this conversation with Amy before she left that she had maybe floated this idea or thought about it but I do agree that there's something, it's compelling to just use the existing channels. sort of hesitation would be that C-Click Fix is currently sort of more effective as a way to report things that kind of need immediate attention. And I think the bike rack question, well, I believe it needs immediate attention, but realistically, it's going to become part of a more long-term effort. However, maybe what we could do is see if we could add it as a category and then just have a response explaining to people that when they submit the request, here's what the city will be doing and what we intend to do with that information going forward and what the ballpark timeline is. Because it's probably not going to be, one will get installed in the next month. I'm happy to see if we can add that.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: A poll. It functions as a poll, but I like, you know, just as the city goes, thank you so much for your interest. It's been noted in the logs. You know, when we have budget, we'll pay. And if you have budget and ready to go, maybe Todd will visit.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, maybe and maybe if there's maybe if there's 30 requests per week for bike rack locations, though, it'll light a fire under somebody. Yeah.
[Jared Powell]: And there's already a repaint bike lane option. I mean, this is a form that can be adjusted. There's five separate ones related to trees. So I think we can add another one about bikes.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. I think when I submit C-Click Fix, the things are usually open for years, and I don't know if they're ever resolved. I guess I didn't even know that it was meant for immediate fixes because I didn't, that hasn't been in my experience so far.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, there are definitely potholes that I submitted on there months and months ago that have not been, that have not been touched.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I definitely hear you I've, I've seen the C click fix logs and there's, it's a little bit all over the place but I think there's been a renewed push to try to address at least the urgent things. It's, it kind of just depends.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, but if that information is saved and there's a growing list that says this is this is where you know this is this is how many requests per week we get for bike rack locations, maybe that. gives the purchase of some more, a little bit more urgency. Maybe we do need to contact the city solicitor or touch bases with Todd again about what it would take for a business owner who wants to pay for the whole process. Or for that matter, a citizen group, a group of business owners, some local club or a neighborhood organization, any group of people or individual person, somebody who just decides, you know what, I want to have a bike rack on this spot that I like to go shopping. And I don't mind buying one for $400 or whatever. And my friend over there is a licensed contractor and will install it for free. And we just need permission. If there's a way to make that happen, these things are not actually that expensive if you just want to buy one. And we can say that we want it to be one of these approved styles or whatever, but if there's a way for somebody to go about doing that, that might also be a way to get a few more.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: I think ideally, we'd say that the city is going to buy 20 or whatever and put them in our 20 top priority places, but if someone wants to add on to that, then we could make it 21 or 22 or 23 in a year or something.
[Ernie Meunier]: Again, I fear that because it's public property, both to make sure a standard of quality of construction and use and safety, that we have to do the installations. And whether or not they pay for it and get customized product is sort of a separate category. We should have people plunked down of bike racks that they buy or any other.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: But no one's suggesting that.
[Emily O'Brien]: We're saying we're saying with, you know, with with full permission. I mean, the thing is with if it's a question of adding it to the city's number that they're going to install that still adds person hours to the job. And if the DPW is limited in those, then it may not be just a question of paying for it. It may also be, this is how many hours of the available total we can allot to this. And once we get to that, we have to tell those people to go out and fix potholes instead. And so that's where if somebody is able to completely handle the purchase and the installation and every step short of making sure that they have permission to do it, that's where it doesn't take any time on the part of anybody who works for the city at all after they say, yes, you can use this one, you can put it in this spot, you can do it using this method.
[Ernie Meunier]: It gets tricky. My neighborhood is filled with neighbor install stop signs on trees. They thought their intersection was hazardous, so they bought a stop sign, nailed it to a tree. City has done nothing about it. I mean, there's that kind of, I just have to be careful about the kind of private device.
[Emily O'Brien]: But again, that's something somebody did, just did without permission. And we're not talking about.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay.
[Emily O'Brien]: I mean, we're not talking about people just doing whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want. We're still saying they have to get permission, the location has to be approved, et cetera. So maybe this is something to check in with Todd if there's a way to create a process here. I know. We're not going to tell somebody to just buy a bike rack and bolt it to the ground. And that's not what we're talking about.
[Jared Powell]: Maybe I just don't have my finger on the pulse here. I can't help but think that we're talking about an infinitesimally small like use case here, like business segment here that is really going to want to do this. I feel like we probably, yeah, yeah. I feel like we know where the bike racks need to go. We just, ideally we would have the, the money and man hours associated with slapping them down.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Let's hope.
[Emily O'Brien]: So, Lily, will you check in about adding a bike rack request to CClickFix? And I think that's where we are for this topic. Do we have any? And you can also pass on how vigorously we all agreed that we need more.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, we're progress with a capital P.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I will do that. I will say if I ever get opportunities to sort of intervene with the bike parking situation, I do. I helped our city engineer figure out what to ask this developer for who made the two terrible looking bike racks on Salem Street. So he's now aware of the standards we should use and to push developers to do more. So in the question of installing them, the city, I believe, is sort of fine having third parties do the installation. But as you said, provided it's approved, it's approved to our standards, and we basically have to make these guys on Salem Street rip it out and start over because they did it wrong. So there's a little bit of oversight there that involved extra manpower.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I know that none of this is none of this is take zero. None of this takes zero labor hours. It's not. We're not. We can't be so lucky. But that's good. Next, shall we have our infrastructure updates? I think we have had the bike lights.
[Jared Powell]: Sorry, one quick question, Emily, for Lily. Is the master plan update. I know we talked about this like a long time ago. Does that include some of the bike rack design guidance that you were just referencing there?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yes, that will definitely be part of it. The design guidelines, but also include the prioritization framework for the placement of the racks and what it also should include, which is, you know, this conversation is really helping me think about these things is, you know, the questions of private installation on private property versus businesses requesting it, sort of the categories that Kevin broke out for us, those are very valuable. So I think having that additional level of detail is good and should go in there.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Great.
[Emily O'Brien]: Thank you. So infrastructure updates.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Right. So this one, unfortunately, will be a little bit lighter. I don't have all that many updates for you all, unfortunately. So I talked to Todd today about what are the next lanes that we think will go down. He's basically actively trying to schedule the painting of the lanes on Main Street. You'll probably notice the pre-markings for everything that's north of what Eversource has done. So we're hoping that will be next. And also the portion of Salem Street that again kind of runs up to where the paving has just gone down in Haines Square. I believe it's from Dudley Street to just about to Fellsway. So basically there's a small amount of bike lane there now that got paved and striped I think about a week ago. And then the city will pave the rest or not pave but stripe the rest of the bike lane. No time estimate on that, but those are the 2 that are kind of. Coming next George Street is on hold because we don't have a time estimate of when the repaving will happen, which I think we kind of already talked about and. It's pretty unfortunate, but there you are and college of is also kind of paused pending Tufts construction that's happening on that street. There's a couple other tidbits from Winthrop street. We got a grant for school zone. signs and those actually I saw them get installed today, which is kind of exciting. And there'll be a little bit of reshuffling of some of the signage on Winthrop. There's I think a sign that says bike lane ends. And obviously it doesn't end anymore crossing into Winchester. So we're going to move that sign to the other end of the corridor to mark where the lane ends on the bridge across from Auburn Street. Um, and then there were definitely, I maybe some of you guys have put these requests in there were some requests for. Um, bikes may use full lane signs in different places. So we're definitely taking those into account and, um, hopefully. I'm not sure what the timeline will be, but we're definitely looking at additional places to put those.
[Emily O'Brien]: Is there a possibility? I know that I think maybe we've talked about this before. You know how the bollards in crosswalks that say yield to pedestrians and crosswalk is in white and then there's a thing in yellow around it that says state law and it reinforces the idea that this is not unique to this one spot, but that that's a feature of crosswalks, whether they have the sign or not. And I wonder if there's a possibility of adding a yellow placard like that to BikeMay useful lane signs to reinforce the idea that that is a state law and it's not just in this spot because of this sign. that that's true everywhere else too.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: Right. Any road, any time. Right.
[Emily O'Brien]: But I think that state law placard, the same way that we have something like that for pedestrian signs, just because based on conversations with people and things in the Facebook groups and so forth, I think there's definitely a lot of confusion on that point.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, it was I saw a discussion about it and it was phrased as like where to bike lanes and that we need this and my first thought was I wish I had one on Boston and because I refuse to ride in that door zone of a bike lane with my children on the back. And it's my right to use the full lane even if there is a bike lane. So Um, I do think that we could consider putting them in places where we know we have. Unsafe bike infrastructure as well, that's going that we want to be used because it's taking people to transit.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I mean, I think this is so tough because of course, we don't really want to have unsafe infrastructure at all. But, you know, certain things are just the way they are. I will be happy to look into this. My hunch is that because that particular like any kind of addendum or sign that would reference like state law or, you know, any lane or something beyond the existing signs would be not an MUTCD sign and therefore an advisory sign, which would have to be yellow, which is fine. But I'm not I'm not sure such a sign exists. That doesn't mean we can't look into it, but it would probably end up being some kind of a custom order. But that's not to say that it can't be done.
[Ernie Meunier]: There's a sign with less patronizing language from the perspective of car-centric roads state bikes will use all lanes or this lane. rather than may use as though we're second-class citizens. Does that exist, whether it's yellow or white, to further state the normalcy of a shared road?
[Bruce Kulik]: I've seen in Somerville similar signs. There's particularly one along the frontage road on McGrath Highway. right near Highland Avenue, and they have striped in an advisory bike lane, it's basically sharrows with dotted lines, in the right-hand lane of two lanes, and they say, I believe it's more assertive, it says, bicycles use full lane, change lanes to pass, or something of that nature. I have a picture of it somewhere, but it's a much more assertive language. Clearly, those are custom signs, not just an R number that they used for it. But it's like the bicycle may use full lane sign, but it's basically saying, use it. Take the lane.
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, painting it in yellow and using more assertive language is all of it. That's what would be a good idea. Because when I see a may use the lane sign, it's sort of like, oh, do not enter 4 to 6 p.m. You just kind of don't pay attention to it. I don't think many drivers do. It's just not critically present enough.
[Emily O'Brien]: I like the idea that if we could get like the yellow placard that says state law, I like the idea that that indicates to people that it's not just in this spot where the sign is. And if they start seeing that around in a lot of places, it's sort of like how they know that not everybody yields to pedestrians in crosswalks, but basically everybody does know that they're supposed to, and they still know that they're supposed to even in the crosswalks that don't have that sign. because they've seen it around enough. And so my hope would be that to the extent that this matters or that signs can affect how people see these things, if there's that yellow placard just emphasizing that this is not a unique situation, this is actually true everywhere, that then maybe it can help improve things even in the places that don't have one.
[Unidentified]: Ah.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I like I like those and I like especially that when it says change lanes to pass, that's a specific and actionable.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, yeah, and I think I mean, I think those lanes came up at some point. And the striping of those bike lanes was also a. a special thing that was non-standard that they had done.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm standing in the truck parking the bike lane. You can see here, it's basically two lanes. Two lanes here on a frontage road, light enough traffic, slow enough traffic. And it basically says, here's the bike lane, but it's a shared lane. And between that and the signage, I found that this particular place is quite comfortable to operate in.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I found the same thing. And I've, I really like that, that dotted bike lane inside a travel lane approach. And I would, even though it's a non-standard marking, I think that could be a good option for all of the roads we have in Medford that don't, that really don't have enough road width for any bike lane of any kind. And we have kind of a lot of those.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: I'm trying to think of a good two-lane example, though. I mean, I- Well, that's the thing.
[Emily O'Brien]: We have so many places that are just one lane in each direction, and there's no room to do anything.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: Lillie, can I do a little, you know, is this the DCR or is it the city? But right there on Fells Way West, where you're eastbound, and if you turn onto Salem Street, then you're going right into Haines Square. There's a bike lane on Fells Way West that there are always 3 cars parked in the last 3 cars worth of that bike lane. Can Medford enforce that or is that all state-ies?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Unfortunately, that's also a state road, so we don't have any authority to enforce there, but... Alright.
[Emily O'Brien]: Um, on that topic, since we're there, and since we talked about the Boston have bike lanes. The last meeting, we discussed enforcement in of people parking in bike lanes and. At the time, the topic came up about the new bike lanes on Winthrop Street, which were not finished at that point. And it still has not been very long, even if they are completely finished, which I'm not 100% sure. But this might be something that we should keep in the backs of our minds. I know of a number of places where like boston ave is one where there is a bike lane and it's one of it's a door zone bike lane and the parking lane is really not very wide and it's really common to see larger vehicles park there and even a larger truck that parks even right up against the curb is still encroaching on the bike lane and so this may be a case where um we need to talk to the police department or think about possible strategies. to improve the situation in these places where that happens or to enforce a small cars only rule or something like that. Maybe this is an avenue to think about for the future. And I think probably we should wait and see how things shake out after the bike lanes on Winthrop Street have been there for long enough for people to sort of get used to them. On Boston Ave, I had been not wanting to say anything because there were a lot of construction workers' vehicles parked near the Green Line Extension project, but that's over now. But it is really common that there's vehicles that stick way out into the bike lane there, and there's just not a lot of space otherwise. So in the interests of, you know, we all know that door zone bike lanes are a compromise all around, but in the interests of making it as not terrible of a compromise as it possibly can be. Maybe this is something we should be thinking about if you see situations in the next couple of months where people are parking, encroaching in bike lanes, get some photos. I mean, I know I have a lot of photos and probably a bunch of you do too, but maybe start taking some more or pulling them together or get them organized. Maybe that's something we can think about discussing in future upcoming meetings or maybe if we ask for a meeting with the police department or something like that. That could be something that we think about going forward. Do we have anything else on any of these topics?
[Jared Powell]: I have something. Let's see. One of the things on there was potential revisions to bike infrastructure. And I want to be very clear that when I'm talking about any potential revisions or something like that, it is not me dumping on the good work that has been done. It is just more of a recognition that nothing is perfect. And sometimes, you know, you need to see things in practice before you could really fine tune them. So I just want to be very clear about that constructive criticism, not meant to be overly negative, but can be clear eyed, I think. One potential thing that I've been thinking about a bit, and I've actually mentioned to Todd as well, but I thought I'd talk about it with the group, is the Winthrop Street bike lanes, which in general I think are terrific. You know again is is it a 100% exactly what I would like. Maybe maybe not but is it a 100 times better than what was there before yeah, I think so I'm so I'll take it. But the particular thing that I'm talking about here is I have a picture of it but think of Winthrop Street right by the community garden between South and 16. Between the community garden, the baseball field. Northbound The traffic there is a northbound and Winthrop is very heavily biased or the right turning traffic. Most of the time so it's cars turning right off of Winthrop to get on 16 to head toward. you know wherever East whatever Eastward destination there they're going to maybe 93 maybe something else. And the left lane is the through lane that goes up toward the rotary at high Street across 16 tends to have much lighter traffic on it because just so much of the traffic tends to be headed eastbound pretty much all the time different volumes but it tends to be that direction but most of the time. We installed a shared bike lane right turn lane kind of not too far away from not a world away from the thing that we're sending those you sharing your screen before that on Somerville that kind of bike lane in the middle of the lane and exactly that but kind of like that same thing that we installed I think technically on Somerville property. But under Medford's guidance southbound on Boston have at 16 as well there's that shared bike lane. dashed inside of the right turn lane there. So that's one thing that I am suggesting that we consider changing whenever revisions are possible for this particular stretch of the road and that we should try to think about some way to make it so that if it does have to be a shared lane between the bike lane and the gravel lane, which is probably likely because everything is connected to everything else and you change one thing and it requires lots of other changes, Let's see. Yeah, that's the, yeah, there you go. Thanks, Bruce.
[Bruce Kulik]: That's the one at Boston Avenue.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, exactly. So that's the one where I think it works pretty well because the right turn traffic there is pretty light. Yeah, exactly. So it's not too hard to get up to the front or close to the front when you're headed down Boston out of that direction.
[Bruce Kulik]: I also find that in that particular location, there is enough space where if I, I don't know if you can see the cursor here, but if I position myself right about here in the bike lane, cars can still get by me safely to the right. I mean, it's only a couple of feet. It's probably not strictly legal, but from a convenience standpoint, it means that I'm not blocking somebody. They're able to make their turn. I'm not unsafe. I'm able to be the position I want to be in when the light turns green to continue. you know, it works all around. I don't know, I think there would be enough space on Winthrop Street as well, because that's a bit wider there, in fact, is my recollection. Well, here's kind of a little, sorry.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah. I don't know if I can get this to focus or not. No, that doesn't focus. It's very blurry, but you can see what's happening. But that's just a photo that I took while I was on Winthrop. Maybe if I can turn up the blur effect, I can improve that. But it's the same thing happening, the same view. But what happens is just that the... Maybe you can see it there.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, it's not striped in this particular view, but...
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, but there you go. That's the right, oh, this is mirroring. Am I getting a mirrored image? All right, well, imagine you're in England, I guess. But basically cars are backing up in that right turn lane. And so it's very difficult to use that shared lane on a bike because there's always cars in, kind of at pretty much any time of day. So what it means is that effectively, When you're going northbound on Boston Ave, you basically just kind of have to take the left travel lane, which is not an unreasonable thing to do, as we've talked about, right? It's just, it does mean that the bike lane that exists is always under a long queue of parked cars for the most part. So what I'm suggesting is that we consider some way to make it so that shared lane, if it has to be shared, is shared with the through lane, not the right turn lane, so that it at least can be very visible and not just underneath a queue of cars such that it's not really doing anyone much good. There are a variety of approaches. And I was thinking, well, how about just throwing in a full bike lane between the through lane and the right turn lane I think the problem with that is that to do that while there's physical space, it would shift the northbound through lane so far to the left that it would then be somewhat overlapping with the southbound left turning traffic from Winthrop. on to 16 such that you end up with a potential head-on collision, which may be unlikely, but I know is something that people in the city have complained about before and not wanting to have to do some kind of a jog. So I think that's something I wanted us to consider. I'm getting folks take on that, but I like the lanes and I think they're great. This is kind of nibbling at the edges for where I think we can make an improvement without really having to just rip up all that much.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. Along those lines, I think also at that same end of Winthrop Street, The way that the, if you're heading southbound, the way that the bike lane terminates is that the dotted line just kind of curves off into the curb. And then the rest of Winthrop Street has nothing. And it's true it's a dotted line and the dotted line is permeable. But if you just look at the visual impression that it creates, The impression that it creates for somebody in the travel lane is that the traveling just goes around the curve and you don't have to pay any attention to anything. And if you're in the bike lane, it looks like you're laying just veers off onto the curb and it's done. And there are shares there now. And that helps. But that's, but I wonder if If there's ever an opportunity to change that, I wonder if that, instead of just kind of veering off into the curb, if that could morph into, again, the dotted shared bike lane like Bruce showed the picture of. Because, and that could actually, it would be great if that actually continued for the rest of Winthrop Street because that's basically the only thing we're ever going to have space to do there. I think we've looked it up and that road is 24 feet curb to curb. And so you have, you really have nowhere, even to put a bike lane on one side. But that dotted shared lane at least makes it really, really clear that that's where you have to be. And if the bike lane transitions into that, I think that's a more visually persuasive method than having it veer off into the curb and then there's a couple of sharos and then you're on your own. Um, and that's, you know, just a, and I have mentioned that to Todd too, but that's just a, that's a, you know, that's a small thing for where it ends right now. Um, and of course the part of the cars are merging. What's that?
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Basically because the cars are emerging, but they have to merge with somebody.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. Right now it doesn't really look like that. It looks like anything that might be to their right just goes away. Um, So, and I know the rest of Winthrop Street was outside of the scope of this particular project anyway. But it is, you know, from talking to people and from writing on it myself, I think it's a high demand street to have some kind of treatment. And I definitely have gotten honked at and yelled at on a pretty regular basis. by people who want to get past me, especially in the southbound direction. You're slightly uphill and there's often a headwind and, you know, and if you're carrying stuff, like I don't go fast on that road in that direction. I can go fast in the other direction, but heading south, it's not a fast, it's not a fast road and so that would be high on my list and it's also one that a lot of people have that I've heard from a lot of other people at events or on Facebook or out and about or whatever.
[Ernie Meunier]: Did we as a group write a note or a letter about this? I think it's more than a tweak. I think it is a safety issue where it's tending to tell motorists that bikes cease to exist at that point.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think the problem actually comes from a subtle change in the MUTCD, where when lanes merge in from the side, like imagine a freeway lane coming in, an entrance ramp, the line is dotted at the end of the ramp. It used to be nothing. And now it's dotted. And so if you use that same topology on a bike lane that's ending, you end up with a diagonal line from the bike lane side to the curb. And we've seen that more and more. And I agree with you that that visually gives the wrong impression. I think it's just that guidance comes from an ill-conceived change to MUTCD. That's my thought on that. I don't know what we do about it.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, should we, you know, we can all individually continue to provide our opinions there. We can write a, we can write a letter saying that we have concerns about this method of terminating a bike lane. And we could also write a letter with our recommendations for this or concerns for this one particular spot. You know, with the understanding that this is in one in the case of where Jared was talking about, this is stuff that has just just been done and maybe hard to change right now. And the spot that I was talking about, it just just has been done. And it connects to something that isn't on the list to be done at all anyway. But so we can we can get ourselves on the record as making those recommendations.
[Ernie Meunier]: What do you think, Lily? Are you just going to whisper in Todd's ear?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: No, I mean, this is all really valuable. I'm also, you know, it's good to hear the, you know, enthusiasm or at least interest in advisory bike lanes. I'm also, you know, I like them. I'd rather have advisory bike lanes than Sharrows or nothing. They are considered an experimental treatment. And they're meant for, I think it's roads that have a certain. It might be like, under 3000 vehicles per day or something. It's it's so it might be hard to implement that on a street like, but. I don't know that it doesn't mean we couldn't investigate that. Um. But, yeah, I agree that the, the terminating point. on the other end of Winthrop is not good. And it may have not been thought out. I'm not sure, I don't actually know, so I don't wanna, don't quote me on that, but it could definitely be improved.
[Emily O'Brien]: I wonder if there's, maybe we can, maybe we just at the moment ask you to put a bug in Todd's ear about the advisory bike lanes, because some place like Winthrop Street, and I think Harvard Street is another one like this, where these are really, really difficult roads to ride on, and also really difficult roads to avoid. And we have a number of roads that are like that and are just narrow enough where there is not a possibility short of, you know, eminent domain taking people's front yards, short of there's just is not enough width to ever have any kind of bike facility otherwise. um it's it's sharrows or nothing and um you know or we make or we try to make it into a one-way street for cars and two ways for bikes but that's a huge change um we really have these we have a number of streets like this and where we just have no choices um so i think this would this would be something we really should be looking at in these places because it's You know, it's that or Sharrows. Go ahead, Kevin.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: Lily, I know you said that there was work being done on Main Street. I just want to share my screen and ask a question about... Sure. I am, let's see, are you looking at a Google map now?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Not yet.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: Or are you looking at my, hold on.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Looking at a blank screen so far.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah, it just says you have started screen sharing.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: All right, let me try that one more time. I want to share screen three. Share.
[Adam Hurtubise]: And it's still black. Very black. Oh, there we go. All right.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: Very often, I'm coming south on This is south, yes, south on forest past the post office and coming through to get into this shoulder bike lane here, but like right here. That that treatment that just says, you know. There may be a bike either coming from Salem Street or from Forest Street that's going to be in a lane that wants to get over into that bike lane on the side. And then once I'm in the bike lane on the side, I'm good. But when I'm here, I'm feeling unprotected or unadvised. And so the people around me are unadvised. The other one that I just really want is, is I want to get onto South Street. And the only way I could do it is go two more blocks right on the sidewalk, get back, come around, you know, or I dismount and I thread my way through the cars, and then I'm back on. Is there any, you know, in New Jersey, they might do a jug handle here, but is there anything that could be done to make this right into the contraflow on South Street? Is the... Yes, that's a great question.
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, didn't we talk about that last year, where you cut through the path in the forest and re-enter South Street later.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, there's the path on the other side. Yes.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: If I had turned down here and come around this way and then come that way onto it. That's legit. Yeah. Yes.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I never realized that cutting through the woods was the thing I could do.
[Emily O'Brien]: Getting to that path from Main Street is kind of annoying because the curb cut is for getting you across the whatever that spur is that's parallel to Mystic Valley Parkway. Maybe that is Mystic Valley Parkway also. So you have to kind of go past the curve and then like do a u-turn to get oh yeah here yeah it's kind of an that there's not uh an easy you have to just turn right you have to sort of turn right and make a u-turn and get back to that um it's a sort of an awkward maneuver it's not impossible um but it is it is okay it does feel awkward to slow down enough to do that when there's somebody coming right up behind you
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: All right, here's a crazy ask. Could this be marked for bikes? I covet all of the asphalt on Mystic Valley Parkway in both directions, bridge or ramp. But here, this is theoretically one lane of traffic that's supposed to be merging and yielding anyway if I were here, and then just pulled over and used the light to cross. That's kind of what I should be doing as an experienced cyclist. I actually shouldn't be getting on this.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Technically, I believe that is legal there, without any markings.
[Emily O'Brien]: The problem with doing it right now is that then you have people who kind of come flying down that ramp that you have to merge with, and you would have an awkward It would be I have to merge with them, though.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: I mean, these people have the right of way. So theoretically, there's a yield sign in here somewhere. Yeah. And I'll do it.
[Ernie Meunier]: I don't know if there's a yield. I think it's an. It's, in practice, it's people alternate one after the other, the cars, in order to shift.
[Bruce Kulik]: Especially it's in Yale because it's a right turn merging into the entrance. However, to go back to Kevin's suggestion, I would think it would be ill-advised to make a left turn at that crosswalk. which is what I think you were implying.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: Well, I would do it as a straight across. I would go over and push the button.
[Bruce Kulik]: You would go to the right and become a pedestrian effectively and then cross, which would be perfectly reasonable. Yeah. There's not a lot of room there, but it's reasonable.
[Ernie Meunier]: It's so narrow, especially where we have the path right next to it. Yeah, I'm not sure there's a specific reason for that either.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: The paint may be cheaper than the curb cut is kind of what that this there's see there's actually a railing here that yeah that's it's a difficult about um
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, getting onto the path is really awkward. But I think getting off, if you took the street instead, getting off of the street to the point where you could push the button would also be, as it is right now, would also be a sort of a not easy thing to do.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, because that lane narrows.
[Emily O'Brien]: I mean, that could be improved with another path connecting that street down. There certainly could be a way of building a short section of path that would improve that.
[Ernie Meunier]: But I can imagine the ire of motorists who say, goddammit, they have their own road going through the nice forest that is safer to use.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Motorists have no idea that's there because they can't. They really don't.
[Emily O'Brien]: They can't see it from the road. They have no idea.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: They think it's just drug deals back there. Don't worry.
[Bruce Kulik]: I would like to comment just, again, advice, not anything that's like, based on law or anything but as a rather I consider myself to be a pretty assertive maybe aggressive street cyclist and that is not a place that I would feel comfortable operating in the street to make that maneuver. I mean, maybe you do. I know there's places that other people feel comfortable operating. I find myself not. And even though it's all perfectly legal in that spot, because it narrows down the way it does and because traffic comes off Mystic Valley Parkway, absurdly at times, I would find being at that location to be very uncomfortable. And therefore, I always take the, I either avoid that particular route by going on to There have been times when I have taken the sidewalk on South Street to get to there or in general just stay on High Street, depending upon exactly where I'm going. I find the need for me to go from Main Street to South Street is lower and possibly to the point where I go as far as Emerson Street and cut through the neighborhood instead. Just some
[Emily O'Brien]: So I'm just in if you're heading that direction and you're trying to get to South Street is if you go, if you take the. The footbridge that's adjacent to that crosswalk, you can you could turn right on if you're coming down from forest or Salem, I guess you could turn.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, that's that's an easier left and crossing to make for sure.
[Emily O'Brien]: take High Street and then you can easily get to the where it says the John D Hand footbridge. You can get to there. The footbridge is tight quarters and you can't pass another bicyclist in this opposite direction very easily or somebody with a stroller or whatever. I usually if there's some if there's a pedestrian on the bridge, I usually wait until they're all the way off before I go just
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: if you can't tell when you're starting.
[Emily O'Brien]: Often, you often can't tell. It is it is really tight quarters on that bridge, but I use it every day. And so you can do that. And depending on where you were coming down from on forest, you could even get on to governors and then you just go straight across High Street. But that would but that's an easy way to get to South Street, then you have the issue that nobody stops at that light. But
[Jared Powell]: Oh, the crossing. Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah.
[Jared Powell]: The ramp of that Pan Memorial Bridge there is a real bugger if you've got a real large bike. Yeah, I tried it once.
[Emily O'Brien]: If I have the cargo bike, I go through the armory parking lot instead because I can't make the corners.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: But anyway, the point, Lily, sorry, was just in general, this from Main Street, and sorry to get all turned around on the map here, but it might just be a sharrow here on Main Street that just says there's a bike here because they're lining up for the bike lane that's coming. But you see that we have three bad options for turning right. We have the bad curd cup we have the highway on ramp and then we have the it's it's not actually permitted um and so i do end up going to emerson i contraflow on emerson would be the other one uh because right now i get on the sidewalk at emerson take it to walnut and then uh Half of them. Emerson is two-way until mid-block, and I forget exactly where mid-block you- I think it's until the parking lot entrance.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah. That's correct. But yeah, to answer your original question, and I apologize, I got booted off the Zoom, so I missed a big part of that discussion. But I think In my opinion, from a practical standpoint, it could be possible to engineer a solution to make that right onto South Street across the ramp with some kind of stop, maybe a raised crossing, jug handle sort of situation. I think that is totally possible from a practical standpoint because cars come to a stop at that point and they're supposed to creep along and make their turns. The big problem with that is that the ramp is a mass dot property and so they would have to. You know, sign off on and probably do all the work to create that sort of solution and they may not go for it. So we have limited control at that point. I will say personally, I've tried going that way a couple of times and. I find it reasonably safe, so.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: I'll give you one more, which is if I had gotten on the sidewalk over here and wanted to cross back, some sort of marking even in here might let me go from the sidewalk across. I don't think it's well shown here. But the bike lane, the contraflow I mean, it's Contra, so if you're walking backwards on the Contra Flow, it sort of peters out, or it's not clear where the Contra Flow starts. It's just, you know it's happening by the time you get to here, but it's not clear where the Contra Flow started.
[Bruce Kulik]: Right now, it starts at Walnut Street.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: There is actually a sign, I believe, at the part where it starts, and that's where the hatching appears in the buffer. But then there is that yellow line that's a little ambiguous, where technically it's not a contrafold lane. But I often use it that way, and I wouldn't be surprised if other people did too.
[Emily O'Brien]: I could remember that we talked about making it go at least as far as like the couple of houses that are there. Yeah, those are things that, you know, somebody might want to go to or from even if it's just a couple houses.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I mean, this was an intentional choice, like at the time to not bring it all the way to me just for all the reasons you're describing there, Kevin, like it wasn't within like, the design budget and whatnot to deal with this very complicated ramp issue and all that. So ideally, at some point in the future, when that intersection gets gutted and redone, then this can hopefully be resolved in a more elegant way. For now, I'd go across the hand bridge if I were you.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: I feel heard.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: The thing is, we're asking MassDot for things. Asking for a curb cut to actually get onto the path just at the end of the bridge. At the Craddock, yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: Which would also, we could also be asking for a crosswalk to cross that point.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Yes, which you also need to get to connect the Clippership Connector, because there's not otherwise a good way to get across there. But that would also be sort of the simplest and best solution
[Emily O'Brien]: that, you know, doesn't involve... That would be a relatively... There's a railing, but otherwise it would be a relatively minor... Right.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: That just involves changing the sidewalk as opposed to, you know, figuring out how traffic patterns would do weird things if potentially bikes were coming across in places that they aren't now.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I believe we have Howard Stein Hudson looking at this intersection, particularly where the Clipper Ship Connector will come out to sort of anticipate some of these movements. I'm not quite sure what the status of that is, but that intersection is definitely like we're trying to make something happen there.
[Emily O'Brien]: That's really good to know.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: And like, we know that we need functional lights there, which we don't have, so.
[MCM00001143_SPEAKER_09]: Street lights or traffic lights? Traffic lights.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: As in, there is no functional light at South Street. There needs to be a functional light there, and coordinated with the one at Medford Square, and probably one in between, for anything to work.
[Emily O'Brien]: Which has been a big topic of discussion for a long time. Yep. Jared, I see your hand up.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I have a I know we're we're running short on time here so I had kind of a comment I wanted to make that is not related to this particular point. But it is it is relative or it is related to the broader topic that we were talking about about just like infrastructure improvements and whatnot. I I'm under the impression that there are a lot of people who very much appreciate the Winthrop Street bike lanes that have been put in, myself among them. I think that I'm watching people use them and I posted something of this effect online, but this seems very much like an, if you build it, they will come scenario where I think one of the big things that people really held against this sort of project when it was in development was that no one rides on Winthrop Street, therefore you don't need bike lanes on Winthrop Street. I mean, we know why that logic is wrong for the same reason that like, you know, I don't see bikes on the highway and yet I'm pretty sure that I would probably like to go most of the places that highways go, you know, like on, on a bike. I still want to go to those places, but it's inappropriate to ride my bike on that. Illegal as well, but ill-advised at the very least. So when you make something safer and more friendly and more accessible to people, they use it. And I have absolutely seen people using those bike lanes like very quickly. And You know, I don't know what usage is gonna look like in a year. Hopefully it's significantly higher than where it is now, but it is up from like very low numbers of like the braver among us to, you know, dare I say normal people who are not so assertive, you know, to use your language before Bruce. Like I see people writing, I've seen actual children writing in it. I've seen parents writing with their children in cargo bikes and all that sort of thing. I've seen a lot of kids And families going to the high school to get to the fells camp that's been up there over the course of the summer. I see parents going to the nursery school that's that's that's there like right next to the high school. People are using it still it's still early in the in the process, but it is being used. And one thing I want to kind of request that we all do is do everything that we can to both provide positive feedback to our elected representatives about that. Personally, I can't direct anyone to do that. We're a commission and we work at the pleasure of the mayor, obviously. But I think it is also very much our responsibility to get feedback, solicit feedback from the citizens that we represent here, and get their feedback about what they think about these lanes, including normal people who like them, but don't say that, right? I think that there is a vocal minority, same people who opposed it before it went in and will always oppose bike lanes, who are just that, they're always going to oppose bike lanes. So they don't like them then, they don't like them now. And they're going to complain about it. And I believe that they are complaining now to our mayor and to our city councilors and doing everything that they can to essentially get this ripped up. I think that those voices exist. I don't think they're really all that many, but you don't have to be all that many if you're very loud. So I don't want us to take this sort of thing for granted. I don't want the people, the vast majority of the people who are generally happy with this to be silent about it because that doesn't help anyone. And it definitely makes it so that if the only voices that are heard are the contrarian voices after the thing gets implemented, We're going to end up in a situation where everything that comes next is a lot worse than it should be because the city is going to feel the need to be much more risk averse and not want to deal with those voices and those complaints after the fact again. We're going to end up with things that are worse than they should be going forward. Even if they're not going to change what's there now, it does set the tone for what happens in the future. I want us to be very clear about that and be mindful that I really think that it is one of our responsibilities here to get people to speak up in support of not only before, not only showing up like at the Traffic Commission meetings, as important as that is, but also continuing to show support for the thing that they now enjoy and have started to use, so that there are more voices in the room than just the ones who want to rip up the good work that has been done so far. That's a great point.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. Um, and, um, yeah, I think that's, I think that's a great point. And I don't, I want to, I know we are actually past time now, um, but that's, that's good. And I think it's, uh, we can take the opportunity on the social media and at events and so forth. Um, when we talk to people, you know, encourage them to write in and say, thank you.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Kevin, for the significantly more active social media presence. You seem to have a knack for it because I feel like you're getting an awful lot of comments on the posts and things. So thank you for doing that.
[Adam Hurtubise]: You're welcome.
[Jared Powell]: A little controversy, you know, ginned up some discussion there. It's always good.
[Emily O'Brien]: Ask a question and you'll get a lot of answers. Yeah.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, let's let's take that to heart and like try to do what we can to really get people to to speak up because it doesn't really do all that much good for like us to tell the mayor hey you should really do more for bikes and the City Council a do more for bikes they know us right that they obviously know we think we've got bike in our name right we we need we need other people the normal people. Yeah to to to speak up we represent them, but they need to hear it from the normal people I think so thank you all for everything you can do to to push that forward.
[Emily O'Brien]: On that note, are we about ready to wrap up?
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Motion to adjourn?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Seconded.
[Emily O'Brien]: All in favor?
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: Thank you, everybody.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Thanks, everyone.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Thanks so much.
|
total time: 0.58 minutes total words: 66 |
total time: 7.1 minutes total words: 740 |
||