[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: All right, everyone here is the verbiage on March, 29th, 2023 governor Healy signed into law a supplemental budget bill, which, amongst 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. All right, folks can take it away with the roll call.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay, thank you. The October 25th meeting of the Medford Bicycle Advisory Commission will come to order. Since Daniel isn't here and he has the most readily available up-to-date list of members, we're going to call a roll as follows. I'm going to read off of the participants who are in the meeting. If I call your name, say that you're here and that you're a member of the commission. Noam Rouveni.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Present and I'm a member.
[Emily O'Brien]: B. Dan Fairchild.
[Ernie Meunier]: Present and a member.
[Emily O'Brien]: Ernie Mounier.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yes, and a member.
[Emily O'Brien]: Kevin Cuddeback.
[Ernie Meunier]: Here, and a member.
[Jenny Graham]: Becca Tierling Wright.
[SPEAKER_09]: On mute.
[Jenny Graham]: Here, and a member, and off mute now. Leah Grodstein.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Here, and a member. I'm busy today, so I'm going to keep my video off. Is that OK?
[Emily O'Brien]: That's fine. That's just fine. I'm kind of sick, too. Mary Kate Gustafson.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: Here, and a member.
[Emily O'Brien]: And other members that have not been mentioned yet are not here. We do have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Oh, and Emily O'Brien, I'm here and also a member. So I think we do have quorum. And then we have one visitor, Paul Morgan. Would you like to introduce yourself?
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: Hello, I'm Paul Morgan.
[Emily O'Brien]: Are you a resident, an interested party, et cetera?
[SPEAKER_07]: I am a resident of Somerville. I am an organizer of family bike ride events. I was invited by Mary Kate Gustafson, I think, to discuss something along those lines.
[Emily O'Brien]: Excellent, thank you and welcome. Okay, so our, let me get rid of this so I can see the agenda. There we go. Our first order of business is approval of the minutes from last meeting, September. Does anybody have any questions or comments about the minutes from the last meeting? Do we have a motion to approve the minutes?
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: So motioned. Second.
[Emily O'Brien]: All in favor?
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: Aye. All opposed? Motion passes, minutes approved. Thank you. Announcements. I know we have a couple of events to report back on. One that's not on the list is I and a couple of other folks of us went to the library for the kids bike clinic day. Ellery organized that. That involved a safety clinic given by Vivian Ortiz. And we had a good batch of us outside of the library with tools and stuff to check over bikes. As it turned out, for most of the time that we were there, there was not really anybody looking for us. They were all inside at the safety seminar. But at the moment when they came out, they all The handful of them that were in there all wanted us to check over their bikes. So we had our short burst of activity then. Our general conclusion was that it would be great to do more events like this, but we don't really need to have bike mechanic volunteers sitting around for the whole entire time. They just need to be there when the people get out of the indoor session. And at that point, they're ready to have somebody look at their bikes. So just notes for notes for next time. And then the following weekend, I set up at Tufts Community Day, which was a great event. Well attended. Lots of people. I saw a friend of mine, a cycling friend of mine that I haven't seen in years who lives in Wellesley, and he came to sell Tufts Community Day. So it was it was great. There was a lot of good conversations, a lot of questions about How to get around Medford here and there. My thoughts following that is that we might print out maps of those 5 rides that we have on the website. or maybe tweak them or update them if we have thoughts on that. There's definitely a lot of questions about that sort of thing. Also, maybe we could put together a Q&A about how to use things like the bike layer of Google Maps, which people don't necessarily know exists, or how to just use Google Maps to create a route and drag the line around, and also with links to things like Ride with GPS for interested folks. But a very quick and dirty handout of how to use these basic free tools that are probably already installed on your phone. might be helpful for a lot of folks to start figuring out how to find their way around. I know we had some other events, Harvest Your Energy, for example, if somebody else who was there, I popped in, but if somebody here was set up at that one, do you want to say something about that?
[Ernie Meunier]: Mary Kate joined as well. I was there for the duration. I think it was a success. I think it was well attended in historical perspective. We gave out about 30 bike light kits. That's all I had left. more came that weekend and I have so part of this the second part B of this announcement is that I have put together 50 of the next shipment for anyone who needs to use them in the next month at an event as I'll be away for the two middle weeks of November. So just contact me if you want some bike-like kits. In the meantime, or pick them up in front hall in my absence. I'll leave some there in 10 packs. And that may be it for me tonight as I spent the last night in the ER at Mount Auburn with a toxicity issue. So I may fade early, but we'll see. But thank you for that.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, and thank you for doing that about the bike light kits. Did you say you need somebody to take delivery while you're gone? Is that right?
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, I have 50 packaged. When I leave, I'll leave the balance of what that is in my front hall in 10 packs for people to retrieve. If anybody needs any for an event in the next two weeks, exactly, they can come pick them up or call me, because I will be here for the next two weeks, but not two weeks following that. That's all.
[Emily O'Brien]: If you don't mind, Ernie, would you do me a favor and just write an announcement to the email list to the effect of what you just said, just for the benefit of anyone who's not here. And so it's easy for anybody who wants to find that. Thank you.
[Ernie Meunier]: Will do. Thanks.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: Will you include your phone number too? Sure. Thanks. Yeah, I just wanted to echo that there. I wasn't even there for that long and I think there were like three. I think it was there for the last hour and there were like three people who wanted to know if we had maps. So I think maps would be a great idea. And I'd also love to share out about the safe routes to school table that I did at the Brooks Fall Fest whenever is a good time.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, this seems like a good time to segue into that, so go for it.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, so I had a table at the Brooks Fall Festival. I think it was on like the 15th. And thank you, Lily, for getting that map printed. I got parents to highlight their walking and biking routes, and it was nothing shocking. Well, actually, I do find it shocking that no one uses the parkway along Duggar Park. No, no one highlighted that. And I was like, that is a parkway. How is no one biking on it? Like there's so many neighborhoods. So I thought that was interesting. But I think there was a lot of really good data and I know that there's a lot of excitement at the Brooks. I've also been attending PTO meetings and I've been working most closely with Emily Stein at the Brooks and then also Ellery Klein. We would love to get You know, Medford by commission and safe routes to school and walk Medford in a room together a zoom room, whatever, but to talk about. How we can team up and I think specifically, I don't know if there's like, grant opportunities that we could think about, but there's I know there's a lot of excitement at the Brooks in particular. And I'd love to be kind of like a pilot school or to be able to try things. to think about how we can make our walking and biking routes safer for the children. It was a really successful table. We had the kids also make thank you cards for their crossing guards, so that was great. We had some reflective gear to give out to the kids like little bracelets and key chains. It was really well received. Yeah, and we should think of a when would be a good time to invite those other groups to talk about teaming up. Oh, and the bike light kits. Thanks, Ernie. We did hand out bike light kits. So that was also exciting.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. Mary Kate, I think that would be great if we can get those groups that you just mentioned, if we can get at least a few people from each of those together in a room, the more the merrier, but at least a few. Maybe you and I and Ellery can talk offline and start finding a doodle poll or something for when we might do that. But I think that would be great. For all the rest of us, keep an eye out for that and you can, in the meantime, be thinking about things that you would want to suggest to a coordinating group like that, especially specific projects that might benefit safe bike routes to school, but that would also be. you know, important benefits to cycling safety in Medford in general. The thing that springs most immediately to mind is the handful of major through streets that are really difficult to avoid. and what things we might do in those places, whether it's raised crosswalks or something like that. That's just me spouting off what I've thought of in the last five minutes since you mentioned it. We can all be thinking of those things in the meantime until we have this coordinated effort, but I think that would be really great.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I have a dream that Lawrence and Wyman would be a bike boulevard and we would slow people down and put a bunch of green paint all over it with bike signs and bike paint. And then the kids wouldn't have to bike down High Street. They could just, we would slow down the neighborhood streets. That's my dream. That's my dream someday.
[Emily O'Brien]: Leah, I see your hand up.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I was wondering from the map where people were drawing their routes, was that digitized in any way once people put their routes on it? And could it be if not?
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: That's a good question. I do have a map, a Google map from the walk and bike to school day. that was in early October. And that is, it's probably mostly representative of, yeah, I could add to that. Actually, I ran out of layers. So I have to figure out how to add more layers. But currently, it's still in analog form.
[Emily O'Brien]: you should be able to take a photo and then. Yeah, I can do that. Somebody who has the time can.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, take a photo, share the Google map and then it can be a collaborative process to transfer that.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Sure. Well, it was the map made on GIS by any chance, or was it just Google? Just Google.
[Emily O'Brien]: You mean the printed map or
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Oh, I don't know about the printed map.
[Emily O'Brien]: Lily, I thought you said you made the- Yeah.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: The printed map was a GIS-based map and I actually at this point have a decent enough base map that I used the Safe Routes to School as prototyping, but I can make additional maps for other purposes and I'm happy to do that and it helps me practice GIS. If anyone has ideas or uses for that and we can print them in large formats, we can certainly do that. One of the things, and Leah, I'm really glad you mentioned kind of saving them because if folks want to either return the printed maps to me or take photos of it, I think having that digitized would be great even for, you know, the city's kind of uses for our kind of, you know, we might want to use that in the future and or save it in some way.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: It was also really great, like parents were really excited to talk about their routes. And I also got them to use post-it notes like where they felt like whatever they were like dangerous spots or other things that needed to be addressed. So it really was like I again, like I hope that this is a pilot for models that other schools can do to start to like engage the families but also gather some really useful data from the people who are walking and biking every day.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: That is great. That is so great to hear you. Any of that that can come back to the city would be incredibly useful and so appreciated and will really help us tell the story of why it's important to have safe infrastructure.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: Great. Yeah. I'll probably email you something. Does that sound good?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, that would be great. Really anything you have and we can kind of maybe going forward if there are future activities like this, we can kind of fine tune what we want to what we want to collect, but that's that's fantastic. So, thank you.
[Emily O'Brien]: Sorry, I'm just making myself some notes. Um, I also along those lines, I just had a thought that it would be. I think it would be interesting to. Put out a Google survey on social media and on our website. Asking people, where is where do you where where would you like to bike? But you don't feel like, but you don't feel comfortable doing it surveys basically be 3 questions start point destination. And why do you not feel comfortable biking between these 2 points? I think that could also be. interesting data and also maybe a nice way to engage people. It could be something we could set up on paper at an event, but we can also easily make a Google survey for that. And we can kind of keep it as an ongoing thing. I suspect that there are actually a lot of places where there are good routes, but people don't know how to find them. And then there are other places where there really are not good routes. We can all think of places that are bottlenecks, but having that input from more people just lends weight to when we have to come back and say, hey, we really need to prioritize this spot. So I've made a note for myself to make a survey like that, and we can put that up various places if anybody has input or comments. Do we have other announcements? So the next item is Halloween event research, which sounds extremely exciting. The various other municipalities have Halloween bike parades and bike rides, costumed bike events, and Medford has the Chamber of Commerce trick-or-treat event. But that's not really a bike thing necessarily, although of course it would certainly be possible to bike to it. So, I think this topic here is about how we can talk about getting something like that going up and running in Medford for next year. I would imagine that we would, it would be really, really nice to use the ClipperShip connector. So maybe we'll have some updates on that with our, everyone always wants an update on that. And I guess we'll hear about that later, but do we have other comments on this topic?
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: Well, yeah, I can talk about, I went to the ride that Paul organized this past weekend and it was a blast. And every time I go to these family biking events, my friends and I was like, this is bigger than it was last year. This is bigger than it was last year. We're already looking forward to I know this is you don't organize the holiday lights, right? But there's like a ride through Somerville to see the Christmas lights and we're already looking forward to that. But Paul did a fantastic job of. You know, finding a park that we could all meet at. I mean, it was I'll see if I can find some of the pictures and post them, but I mean, just huge turnout at Magnolia Park. Biked along the minute man and. Anyway, Paul just did fantastic work making sure that we had safe bike routes the whole way. My daughter rode her own bike. She's six. She doesn't even have any like gears on her like she just has a single speed bike and she rode 10 miles and had a great time. And it's just such a. fun event for the kids who are on their parents' bikes, and it's a really safe and empowering event for young early riders, and a really encouraging pro bike environment. So first of all, thank you, Paul, for doing that. But I would love to hear your thoughts, because I know that you've also mentioned that you're always trying to connect different cities or go to different places and Medford is on your list. So if you have any thoughts about that, I would love to hear those.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: Um, I do have a spreadsheet of routes that I want to do and, um, I have a couple different things in Medford that are routes in Medford that I'm sort of thinking through. And I would love if there was somebody who could, who actually knows Medford, who could help me figure them out and figure out if I can adapt the formula.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, you're in the right place for them.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: So, um, uh, but yeah, I mean, I'm trying to introduce people to say, Hey, you can get to this place this way. It's relatively safe. We're going to hold your hand for this event. you know, cause you haven't been there yet and then you might want to go on your own another time. Um, and you know, I'm just trying to promote, promote bicycling and fun and fun and creative ways and, um, you know, promote peer, uh, positive peer pressure, you know, just social marketing and getting, uh, A lot of people, um, you know, just comfortable with the idea. Um, so, and we're crazy jealous.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_09]: What's that? And we're crazy jealous of your success. Um, and why, and, and do you want to bring it to Bedford?
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: So I right now I've penciled Medford for fall for Halloween right of 2024 or spring of 2025. And the choice is kind of based basically on whether or not I can figure out a route and whether or not I can like. Like, I don't want to take up too much of the committee's time on discussing different route options, but yeah, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_09]: Well, I mean, backing up, I mean, I kind of think of our research job, we had sort of a safety and liability, what is it like to bike with a costume on, you know, I've never done that. Um, I've never gone on a naked ride either. So I haven't experienced either extreme. Um, I saw those in Seattle when I was growing up there, but I'm not going to be bringing, uh, uh, but I mean also, you know, just questions of, uh, lights, helmets. I mean, how, so I think I have three questions for you, Paul, which is one, how do you find your audience? What, what do they think is. your job and what do you think is their, in other words, where does the, you know, how do you find your participants? Where is the line between the things you need to organize and the things you say are their job, right? And one of those that's important to us is helmets and lights and safety and, you know, pop-up bike lane and things like that. But tell us how you think through those things.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: Um, well, I mean, there's the last two rides of that 40 volunteers, um, which is really hardcore. Uh, but I just, I just can't, I just, my standards, uh, my stamp, my amount of worry I have about having an intersection not covered, even if there might not be any cars or even a driveway. I don't do residential driveways, but any kind of commercial driveway, uh, generally, uh, so, so I have a lot of people doing different things. I mean, I'm, uh, I mean, I have a built up. Email lists, which if you did it, any kind of event, you know, I, I sometimes share events that seem like that are not organized by me, but they might be interesting to people. I mean, I put up signs in parks. Um, I'm not exactly clear what the return on, on that, because I'm not very good at understanding QR codes, but. Google analytics says that some people are clicking on those. I don't really understand how many, but I'm just doing it anyway. Um, because I'm trying, I figure any click, like I'm reaching someone more valuable than I, than just getting someone online. Who's already maybe comfortable with biking, which, you know, I want to get them to, cause I want to reinforce things, but, um,
[Emily O'Brien]: We're getting people in a park that you wouldn't have gotten other ways. So that's.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, yeah, I'm trying. Yeah, getting people who aren't already clued in. To the community and the events. I think I've forgotten some of the questions I don't, uh, uh, bike maintenance. Historically, I haven't had any part of that. I mean, there's only like three mile ride. So it's not the same as like a 20 mile ride where you need to have someone who can like repair bikes. But that is changing because we have a new sponsor who is a mobile bike repair place. And as part of like promoting them. we started to say like, oh, they're here. You know, if you have a breakdown. Can you remind me of other questions?
[SPEAKER_09]: So the boundary between the work you have to do as organizer and the things, and you've created a whole new category, which is 40 volunteers, and then the things that you expect participants to do, like, uh participants will bring a working bike uh because it only has to last for three miles um so i i think that gives the flavor uh of of an answer to our question um the parents have to be with the kids in my with my events i don't there's no kind of drop-off i don't know if um
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: I don't know, that's just one thing.
[SPEAKER_09]: Have you flyered at schools? I think right now, particularly sort of with the cargo bike contingent, you know, lobby in Medford, it would be great to catch them at school or any other, you know, farmer's market.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: If I see a cargo bike at pick up a drop off or a park, I typically give them a sticker whether or not it's consensual or not, but most people like it.
[Emily O'Brien]: When Mary Kay just posted in the chat, she says it would be cool to send flyers home to the schools. I think if there's something like this afoot, we do have people in most of the schools at this point who are, I'm not sure about the high school, although Alicia could probably help there. And we have a couple of teacher contacts there. But definitely through the other schools, I think we do have contacts at those of people who, of parents who are sufficiently active to be able to get flyers out. to people through the schools.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: Well, if yours is a Medford event, then you can more easily go through those channels. I did have a gym teacher at our summer ride as the sort of ceremonial ride leader. and if you're having a Medford event, well, I don't know what you're thinking about doing, like how long or whatnot, but I thought that was a nice symbolism.
[Emily O'Brien]: I would say with regard to routes, we have lots of route in Medford expertise here. We aren't able, we aren't supposed to deliberate on our email list, but we can disseminate information. So if you have roots that you're looking to, that you would like input on, or you're thinking about, you know, wanting to kick around some root ideas, my suggestion is send those to me and I will post them to our email list. And anyone who has input can get in touch with you directly. And I'll give that instruction in the email list. We probably can't really discuss it back and forth on the email list. But I can say, hey, remember this guy? He has some root questions. Get in touch with him here. And you'll definitely have answers to all your Medford questions, probably more than you want.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: Also, another part of the formula is that I have elected officials participating, and that there's multiple goals that I'm trying to accomplish with that. I mean, it started off because I was desperate for volunteers, and it was Saturday night, so I was texting whoever I could think of. But I also try to get parents more politically active, And since my event is a fun event and not a bike committee type event, I'm potentially getting people who might not be involved now, but maybe I can, like, you know, maybe eventually they'll get on a committee or something, or maybe if they have some concern, maybe they'll bring it up to the elected official at some future time because I've maybe broken the ice. And I'm, you know, also hoping to, potentially influence the elected official, maybe half a degree towards safer streets, you know, wherever they are currently, just inspire them a little bit.
[Emily O'Brien]: For whatever it's worth, I have a neighbor who is saying to me, you know, oh, I really want to go on one of these fun Halloween rides. And they're all a little bit too far away for her to ride with her. kid and her dog in the basket of the cargo bike, because after a certain amount of time, the kid and the dog start fighting over leg space. So she was like, well, if it was right in Medford, we could all go and it would be really fun. But if it's going to take us 45 minutes to get to where it starts, we're going to turn into a pumpkin too soon. Yeah, there's a lot.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: It seems like there's a lot of like mystic river paths and things in Medford that you could use. And I'd be happy to. Yes. Hear about any of those things and, um, give any ideas if you wanted any, um, my, my, my event that I'm thinking of for next year or maybe the spring after I'm trying, my goal will be to try to get my core. people to go to Medford, but then also get people in Medford to sort of maybe create some enthusiasm. Um, so like this last one, I got some Belmont people who hadn't participated before and probably had no idea that there's all these people that do have cargo bikes and whatnot. But then I also introduced all these people, Hey, you can go to Belmont. You can go have lunch at this pizza place. It's really easy to get there.
[Emily O'Brien]: I don't know how you feel about this question, but one thing that might be particularly of interest to us is. We do have a pretty nice path network that goes through 1 narrow stretch of Medford and once the clipper ship connector is there, we'll have. You know, a nice long stretch, but it would also. Be kind of nice to go someplace that ventures a little bit off of those paths, just to say, just to make the point that, hey, you can. We have these lovely paths you can bike on, but look, you also can bike on the street. And there's other places you can go. It's okay to, you know, and it doesn't have to be the, and it could be just the, the streets on the way to the mystic lakes or something. I think there are quiet streets that could be used that would be worthwhile, but to go off of the paths and onto streets at some point, um, would be.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: A lot of people going to the ride, like have to go on the streets to get there. So you're still inspiring some of that behavior.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: I mean, if the city is going to organize this, so you don't have to worry about insurance, right? This would be an official city event.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think that could be arranged. My guess is that that would not be a problem. And get in touch with me too. I can connect with you about who to specifically talk to that works for the city about this.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: I think Alicia Hunt would... Oh, no, I meant for whatever event you were planning. I already have insurance.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay. Well, I mean, same deal then, yeah. I thought that was what you were talking about.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: Uh, yeah, I just, I mean, if you're going to do one that, you know, is just, is inside Medford, um, and it's not something I'm organizing. You don't, I mean, most people don't have insurance, but you're talking about going off paths on the streets. I don't know. You, you know, you might want to just have it be the city. That's have it be an official city event. Although, I mean, we didn't have it for the first. for the first two years, so, but.
[SPEAKER_09]: Kevin? One of the things that I saw on social media was that you had a pop-up bike lane just for a small, you know, either you were making a missing link on Concord Ave or some other. Yeah, yeah, we created a temporary bike. Tell us a little bit about that process and that's in Belmont, right?
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, the Belmont, Town administrator and the Belmont select committee approved. My suggestion to create a temporary bike lane, I had to use my own cones and go out there at 5 in the morning to do it, but they. They agree to that we are just taking 2 right turn so we weren't. We weren't stopping cars, but the cars. in this particular spot tend to just go wherever they want, even though they have a nice wide road, but they would just go on either side of the road and there's no striping or anything. So, um, yeah, we, is this under the train under the train? Yeah. Yeah.
[SPEAKER_09]: That's world famous. Yeah.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: So something that just occurred to me, the sea closes streets for like road races. Right. So potentially for a large event, the city could close some street, you know, like on a weekend and just say, this is going to be the route we're going to close. Do it. Do it.
[Emily O'Brien]: I would like that depends on how big of an event it actually is.
[Jenny Graham]: I mean, to close the road in Medford Square for a road race recently, it would be nice to close the road and say, hey, what if we could bike through here every day?
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I went to I went to some Medford festival in Medford Square and. My daughter is like, why didn't they close the streets for this? I don't understand.
[Emily O'Brien]: They did, um, the thing, uh, the event Oktoberfest event, they close Riverside Ave, but they don't close like forest street and high street also. Yeah. They don't, they don't use all of the streets there.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I'm flirting with getting there, but these like fun runs have like two or 3000 people, which I don't know how they do that. I guess they've just built it up over years or something. Um, and I met, I mean, this last one, our record was 430, which feels fantastic to me, but it's not at a fun run level. Also like ours are usually over in 15 minutes. So I don't, I don't know, but I feel like, I, uh, you know, 1 ride that I thought of, I don't know how long you're going to let me talk, but, um, 1 ride that I thought of is going on the. I don't know what you call the road, but right to the right next to the mystic lake. Um, uh, the mystic Valley Parkway, like by Sandy beach. Yeah, yeah, on the way to like the boat club that Winchester Park Shannon Beach the way there. To me that feels like the next Memorial Drive closing on Sunday mornings. Possibility and I would like to have a ride that closed it just like for one event and maybe. You know, maybe it was our event in combination with some sort of Medford event. And, and, um, and that's who we tried it like one time. And what's that?
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: We have, we have other like Halloween events, but I guess the pumpkin floats at Wright's pond. That's too far.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: If you did it one time, people might be like, oh, this is cool. And you like kind of introduce the idea to everybody. And then you'd be like, and then over time, someone could suggest like, Hey, why don't we close it for two hours on these Sundays? Hey. And then like over time, try to. Build it up to a memorial drive level of closures. No.
[Emily O'Brien]: I'd like to keep us moving because we did get a late start.
[Ernie Meunier]: Sorry. Yeah, I'd like just to make a small comment on that. We have to be careful Paul that that's an MDC Parkway. So it's state controlled. Yeah, yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: Um, I mean, so I think I think these are all great things to talk about, and I would love to pursue some more of these ideas. I also wonder if, uh, instead of a full road closure, maybe a partial road closure or something in between a partial road closure and a pop-up bike lane might be possible, like, you know, someplace like Forest Street or, um, or High Street. If you say no parking during these hours, and then you have a pop up bike lane. Where the parking lane would be, you don't actually have to close the whole road, but now there's, but now there's space and that might be a compromise for an event that has a couple 100 people as opposed to a few 1000. And that might be a sort of a more palatable thing. And especially someplace like High Street on a Sunday, it's not all these people with urgent business in city offices and stuff. It might be also a more palatable time to do it. But we should continue. Paul, please do be in touch. We'd love to get in on this if you're wanting to plan something in Medford and we will be as much of a resource as we can.
[SPEAKER_09]: All right, great. I mean, not to say that we're done with our research on such events, because, Paul, we said we know that we can't pull one of these off this year, but we would love to learn from what Everett and Waltham and you and all the other nearby rides are doing. But, I mean, I think Part of our research shows that you, Paul, would like to do a Halloween ride in 2024 and that the alternative, if we don't get that slot, it won't happen in Medford until April of 2025. So I'd like to, I mean, I mean, maybe next month, I'm going to officially make this motion, but I'd like to say. At least where I would encourage us all to think is what do we have to do? Paul, if if those are our choices, is it not legal to say yes?
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: Is it not legal for anyone to discuss routes with me outside of this meeting format?
[Emily O'Brien]: No, no, that's fine. We can't discuss routes with you as a group that has a quorum of our members, and we can't deliberate on our email list. But individual people can discuss routes with you one at a time. And if you send me in from, I can't add you to our internal email list, But if you send me the information, I will forward it to the email list. And anyone who feels like they have input can then get in touch with you. And you can go back and forth with those individual people as much as you want. And you can go back and forth with a group of those people as much as you want, as long as that group doesn't have fewer than seven commission members.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: OK. All right, great. I'm going to reach out to you and Mary Kate, if it's great, since you've been to our rides, if you wouldn't mind brainstorming routes with me, that would be nice.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, well, thank you.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_06]: It's really just whether or not I can find a route that I'm comfortable, I can pull off safely. And how many volunteers does it require? How much police, like what's required to make it fit the safe standards that we need to make people feel comfortable with it? And to get people to there and make them want to go to that start spot. But anyway, great, thank you.
[Emily O'Brien]: Great, thank you so much. Thank you for coming. Um, uh, next step, uh, is. City engagement and we have bike racks and we have 4 foot passage, passing signage. Sourcing and locations, and I expect you have something to tell us about these things or ask us about these things.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Sure, is the question just what's the timeline on those items?
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, and what do you need from us? Do you need anything from us? I know for the bike racks we have submitted a map several times that has several priority. The map has several layers with different priority tiers as far as where the you know where we where we think the most the top priority spots are to ensure first of all equitable coverage and then. filling in the gaps where more of them are needed. And just as a reminder, we created that map by looking at where all the business districts are that have sidewalk spaces. And the first layer was making sure that all of the business districts that have sidewalk space, so this doesn't count the ones that just have big private parking lots, Nobody really wants to use a bike rack that's on a little bit of a strip of sidewalk. And then there's a giant parking lot. And then the place you need to go is on the other side of it. So we didn't count those places. But all the places where there's a business district with a sidewalk and a logical spot for a bike rack, that was our first layer. And then our second and third layers were filling in the spaces so that the places that have higher demand have more racks. And if anybody at the city needs that map again, I can provide that link. I know they have it, but just in case.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'd like to share it on social media. I mean, as soon as it's game for feedback or, you know, it's going to happen, these 40, I would love to share that on social media and just say, because people love maps.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yes, people do love maps, which is great. So, in terms of is it fair game to share to share on social media? The answer is yes, the city actually made an official announcement today of the grant that was awarded, which included the bike parking. So now it's like a free for all you guys can post about it. The map that you guys created for the 40 tier 1, like, high priority locations is where the 40 racks that we have the grant for will go, but there is some amount of flexibility. We obviously will want to go out to all the sites and really make sure that we're putting it exactly in the right spot because it is, as Emily mentioned, just putting it. We want to get a very tight scope of where it actually is. A few inches can even make a difference. I believe, and I would need to confirm this with Todd because we don't quite yet know what the timeline will be on when we might want to start going out into the field and looking at all those spots, but that's absolutely something that we would welcome your help and support with if anybody is interested in that. Not since I wasn't around when the map was created, like, I'm not sure how much did you guys do it completely on your own? Did you have any interaction with Todd or Amy or anybody at the city at all? Or.
[Emily O'Brien]: The way that it originally happened, and this was like, this was a lot of years ago for something like this at this point. I mean, I think this was pre-pandemic. I think I remember us sitting in the room in City Hall and working on it, is we started with We did it on our own, and this was because Todd or maybe Tim had asked for our recommendations at that point, expecting to buy more racks back then. Um, and I think our, our 1st tier was maybe for 25 or 30 of them. And our 2nd tier was for another 25 or something like that. We did also at the same time send in a bunch of. placement guidelines. So for things like it shouldn't be right next to a pole or a signpost because somebody can park on the signpost and then somebody can also park on a bike rack. And if you put them next to each other, there's the same number of parking spots that there were before. And also things like keeping it away from solid impediments. If you put it next to a trash can, then the bike has to go perpendicular across the sidewalk, for example. So there were various guidelines like that and references to the installation guides from some of the bike rack manufacturers. And then there were also some kind of qualifications where we said that if there's a spot where we've specified that we want one, and you can't satisfy, and for whatever reason, maybe you can't dig there, maybe there's a bus stop, maybe there's, you know, whatever extenuating circumstances in that particular spot, that it's better to, instead of installing that bike rack, you know, around the corner where nobody will see it, it's better to just go down to the next location on the list. That was another thing is that they need to be, Clearly visible from the entrance of the businesses where people are going to use them for if there's a great spot, but it's around the corner. Then, you know, people don't it's all the same things as parking car. They don't want to walk that far, or they don't feel that their vehicle is safe. If it's out of sight. Or also that you don't, if it's not in a place that you expect a bike rack to be, and you can't see it from where you're trying to go, you won't even know to go looking for it. So you just. even if you would have used it, you won't find it. So we had a list of those kinds of things. And then the instruction that if there's a spot that we've specified that it turns out it can't go there, then we would rather have it go to the next spot on the list instead of around the corner or right next to a signpost or all of these other things that make it less useful. and I can find that again and send that out again. Right.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I do think we have it, but I'll be happy to take that again when we're ready to.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think you probably do because I've sent that, I've re-sent that, I think at least twice.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I do remember reading it, so I know I have it somewhere. And Todd is meticulous about saving things on our server. What we will probably do is actually go out and pre-mark all the spots, like literally where each piece of you is going to be on the sidewalk. And until we have a better sense of the timeline on when we're going to have a contractor and when they'll do the install, I won't know when we're going to plan to do that because we'd want to make sure that if we're out there pre-marking, we don't do it too early because then the markings will fade. But once it's time to actually do that and go out and mark where they'll go, I will send out an e-mail or if I'm not around, Todd can do this to let people know that that's happening and invite participation. I think definitely having a second pair of eyes on these things is always helpful.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I'm sure you'll have plenty of takers for that. And forfeit passing signage sourcing and locations.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yes, oh, I forgot about that. I actually asked our DPW folks today if they had received them because I believe I saw on some social media from MassDOT that they were starting to send them out to municipalities. We have not gotten our signs yet. But when we do get them, part of the process for requesting them, I believe Todd had to actually give them a bunch of locations for where they're going to go. I don't have that list off the top of my head, but there is a set list already, which we can certainly get more feedback on. I'm happy to send that out.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, if you would, if we don't have that for a meeting, if you could send that out to the list, and then just again to remind everyone, don't reply and send your feedback directly to the list, because that's deliberation and we can't do that on the email list, but you can send your feedback directly as your individual self. Once the information about what your feed, where to go, where to send it is announced, we can disseminate information, but we can't deliberate.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yes, and I just I'm remembering now that there was a. Like, a very tight turnaround for, like, submitting the request to mascot to even get on the list to get these signs. So I think, like, ideally, the process would have been a little more long and we could have actually had more feedback. But I think Todd was just concerned about getting the sign. So.
[Emily O'Brien]: Do you know what they look like? Does it just mention the four-foot passing, or is there any additional instruction like changing lanes or crossing the double yellow line to pass, or do we have any plans for anything additional like that? I think we've talked about that before.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I believe the signs are just four-foot to pass. I've seen a mock-up of those. I think that's all that they put on them, but I'm not 100 percent sure on that.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think we've, we probably have talked about this. Oh.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Oh, God, let me unblur my background.
[Emily O'Brien]: Nope.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: There we go. There's my, our little mock up.
[Emily O'Brien]: Great. Thank you.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. That's what a student of mine calls the grandma method.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I was like, I'm on my computer. There's no way I can figure out how to get this thing from my phone to my computer before we leave this topic. Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: Hey, sometimes the grandma method works. So that would be. Yeah, that's that's great. And I guess we'll wait to hear more with those come in. If are you looking for input on where we think the top priority places for those are, or do you have. Plans already, or just Todd, I should say.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Sorry, there was a little bit of the zoom cut out for a 2nd. so I couldn't hear the 1st part of that sentence.
[Emily O'Brien]: Does do do you all have have. locations in mind. For the forfeit signs?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah. As a condition of getting those signs, Todd needed to provide a plan to the state for where we're going to put them. He does have a big list, but I think there's some amount of wiggle room. They're not going to come check where we put all these things. I'll see if I can get the list from him and send it out so you guys can have a look.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Do you know how many of the 4,000 Medford's getting?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: That's I actually don't remember off the top of my head, but he had to account for like every. Single one I. I don't know. I feel like I'm going to say a number and it's going to be wrong, so I'm not sure there were a lot though.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, right? Obviously when you share the list will figure that out.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, Ernie.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, I'm going to be a little Debbie downer on this one. Leah, can I see the sign up again? I've seen signs showing four-foot distances for passing that are fully graphic, used in Canada especially. Bicycle on one side, a left and right double arrow, and a one-meter mark. It requires no translation from other languages. It is much faster to understand than a three-line prose. So we locked into this really compromised semantics geometry of this sign. If we have to buy these, I think they're just too confusing and too hard to read. And I don't think the target is really good. And it certainly doesn't work in any other language. No one could read three lines of a second language quickly enough to know to leave a meter or four feet between a bicycle and them. All you need is a double arrow and a picture of a bicycle and a picture of a car, and it's done. So there are other examples far cleaner.
[Emily O'Brien]: So, in this case, in this case, the signs are already bought and they're on their way. The city didn't buy them.
[Ernie Meunier]: Oh, boy.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, this was like, I'm sure we if we had. Been in charge of this, we would have designed a different sign, but this was kind of an opportunity where the state made these available to municipalities. And so, yeah, it was, it was free stuff and kind of given the choice of getting a bunch of free stuff and getting nothing. We chose to try to get the free stuff, even though all the typical caveats about whether signage, how much effect it will have, we're aware that it might not really change behavior as much as we might want to, but we think it'll probably improve over the status quo.
[Emily O'Brien]: just hate to put them up twice okay bye well we can also always I'm sure it's not going to be that many of those we can always get others that are different and put up more if that's what we do going on subcommittee updates if available speaker series I Daniel did the agenda and I'm not sure who this refers to. I think it might be.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: We have a very sad update, which is it took me two weeks to figure out how to find Bruce's email. Oh no. So I sent an email. I haven't gotten any answers on it yet, but that's the sad update.
[Emily O'Brien]: On a similar topic, though, Everett is working on getting a bike ped committee or organization or something of some sort up and running. I think it's sort of still TBD as to what that actually ends up looking like, but they are working on getting a. Event series or speaker series started up at. Night shift, I think, or was it 1 of the others? That's right near there. 1 of the breweries over there. There's there's a handful that are right over in the same place. And so that's something we can. Keep an eye on, I think that's an exciting thing. It's relevant and close by for us to we should certainly. help promote that when it's up and running. I can't remember if they had announced a date for the first one and then there turned out to be a schedule conflict, so they took it down and made it date TBD, and I can't remember if they've announced a new date again. But that's still a cool thing and it's nearby, so we should keep that on our radar. Lily, do you have other infrastructure updates?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I do, and I'm glad that folks mentioned the clipper ship connector, because honestly, it's become almost background noise to me that I haven't thought of. Oh, this is an important update. So there will be a groundbreaking ceremony in the next couple of weeks. And the contractor doing the construction was actually in the engineering office today, getting permits and paperwork sorted out. So it is definitely imminent. The shovels aren't exactly in the ground, but keep an eye out on city emails and social media channels for an announcement soon about when the groundbreaking will be. Let's see, I have some notes here. Many of you have probably noticed that there's a new blue bike station already open at Auburn street near the whole foods that went in last week, which is pretty exciting. And as part of the grant that we just got, we will have 4 additional stations in the future. The 1 that was installed at Auburn street was actually from a previous years grant. So there were 3 new stations from that grant of which now 1 has been installed. And then 2 more from that cycle, 4 more from the new cycle, and then Tufts is putting into. So, we have currently 8 stations active. And probably. This is the committed future stations will be 16. I was going to give a time estimate on that, but I'm honestly not sure. Hopefully the spring by the spring, we will have that. Tufts is hasn't really given us a time frame specifically for when they're going to do their 2 stations, but we've been told the fall semester. So I'm hoping it'll happen before December and then for from the city side, the next station that we are hoping will be active is in West Medford. We have a location confirmed. It's an off street situation on. Harvard Harvard have I always get Harvard have and street confused so that we're aiming to do in next month. This is a little bit. We're somewhat dependent on. Blue bikes themselves, because they're busy taking away stations that go dormant for the winter, which is kind of sad, but none of the Medford stations will ever go away for the winter. Everything that we've cited so far has been a permanent location, which is the goal.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Question on that, you know, is that going by the fire station or is that.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, that's exactly right. Okay. Yeah, right by the fire station.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: What's the public land there? That's great.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, exactly. It was surprisingly challenging to find a good spot that was off street and ideally already public land that was going to kind of work and be close enough to everything. But that's what we came up with.
[SPEAKER_09]: And when does it go in there?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: We're aiming to do that sometime in November. It's dependent on Bluebikes ability to kind of make their staff available.
[SPEAKER_09]: That's my election precinct and man, it would be well, actually, I guess it'd be one way. But I've always locked to a post across the street from the fire hall right there. Yeah.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I suspect it probably won't be in before the election. Unfortunately, it might be more later in the month, but we're always pushing. So, I think I believe if anybody saw the announcement, there was for the blue bike stations, there were some locations named for the 4 next round ones, and they're going to be somewhere near the convent shell up by Lawrence Memorial hospital. We're going to put 1 another sort of East Medford Glenwood neighborhood area and then some. At some point, kind of connecting everything in Hillside, but that also is a little bit like we want to kind of. We're a little bit dependent on when Tufts is putting theirs in because we want to be able to kind of thread all this together. When do those happen? Do you know? So, Tufts has been telling us the fall semester, so yeah, it's kind of anybody's guess the 4. so those. I'm honestly not sure my guess would be next spring and summer. That's the timeline that we've sort of. Anticipated and that's what we've kind of. Put in all of our grant documents that doesn't mean that's what's going to happen, but that's really. The most realistic timeframe is maybe start the installs in May and try to do them through spring and summer.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: So, it's tough not even decided exactly where there's are going to be.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I believe they're on College Ave. Both of them are kind of near the College and Boston Ave intersection. I don't know precisely where they're putting them. Todd may know that, but that hasn't been shared with me.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: In theory, we could at least plan for locations in Hillside based on the locations of those.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yes, we do know, like, approximately where we're going to put that, but we haven't tried to put that on to the schedule of when we're going to install them. And I don't even know, like, I think there's still a couple different possibilities that we haven't nailed down because that area was also surprisingly a little bit tricky to find a piece of land that's both visible, sort of equidistant from the other stations and off street. Um, there are a few we have a couple other sort of infrastructure updates more related to bike lanes. Not a lot, but Riverside have between commercial street and fells way has been repaid. And the striping for that will happen. It was supposed to happen tomorrow, but it's gotten pushed back. So hopefully it'll be next week. But Todd and I were out there today, pre marking some of the bike pieces, like the bike box. There will be bike lanes in each direction. It's it looks good. It's a bit of a dodgy intersection generally, but having those pieces of infrastructure there will certainly help. We've made the bike box. Nice and big and having a buffered bike lane in each direction will certainly help. I believe it might have been Emily who gave us some info about the bike detection loop on Winthrop street that is broken. Eversource is going to be fixing that. So.
[Emily O'Brien]: The one that I contacted Todd about most recently was, it's at Winthrop Street, but it's not actually on Winthrop Street. It's on the cross street. I think that's Suffolk. That's right. At that intersection at Lawrence and Winthrop?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yes. We actually went and tested it and more than one leg of that intersection had a broken loop. There's a lot to fix out there.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: We also got feedback at the farmers market that the high school loop doesn't work for bikes. I don't know if that ever made its way to you.
[Emily O'Brien]: Interesting. I mentioned that to Todd like a couple of years ago, and I think it was, he said something about having it on a list. I was, I think he mentioned it again at one point, but I hadn't heard anything about it since.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Okay, I'm just going to make a note to chat to him about this. So the loop by the high school. So what what motion are we talking about coming out of which coming out of the high school?
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: I think you're coming out and you're going to the left. We had an employee in the building come up to us at the farmers market and be like, you know, I always have to run that light because it won't detect my bike.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Interesting. Okay. I'll ask Todd about that and see if we can do anything. Okay. Well, I'm sorry it's been such a long time.
[Emily O'Brien]: Do you know since you mentioned Riverside Ave, is there any plan about repaving the rest of it? I know there's there's a number of potholes and it has a bunch of these these cracks that run perpendicular to the road direction that there was the one last year that like finally I. hassle Amy enough that it actually got filled because multiple people had like crashed and broken bikes and ended in the hospital on that one pothole after people had been reporting it on C-Click Fix for months and months. The problem with that one was It's on one of those cracks, so it's kind of long, so it's hard to avoid. It has slightly curved in edges, so it's hard to see. It looks like it's much smaller than it actually is until you're right on top of it. You have traffic passing you that doesn't want to give you enough room to get all the way around, but I bring it up just because There's so many of these other cracks that have potholes that look just like that one, right near where that one was. And they're only, you know, you fill one and it's whack-a-mole. You fill one and then there's another one. There's, you know, there are a couple that are big right now, and then there's a number of up-and-comers. Um, it's a really, you know, there also is a lot of really bad visible rough road where it's really bad, but at least it's really obvious that it's really bad. But there's these, you know, these, these ones in those cracks that have that kind of really bad combination of, they just don't look like they're as bad as they are because of the shape of the top edge until you're right on top of them. Um, and that's just a really bad combination.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, no, I know that it's it's I was actually out there earlier and it's quite bad. It's my understanding that the whole of Riverside is slated for a full reconstruction at some point in the future, but kind of. As with almost all of the full reconstruction street projects, like, the city has a whole sort of prioritization list and. We know the order, the approximate order in which they're going to go and how bad they are, but not necessarily when we're going to be able to do them. So it's definitely something that will happen in the future. I just don't know when.
[Emily O'Brien]: You know, how far down the list that is.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: You know, I'm not sure, but this is sort of maybe seems like a cop out, but the engineering division actually has the list posted. It's really it's not necessarily a list the way, you know, with a 1, 2, 3, it's a. An index, a condition index with a lot more information than just like a ranked list, but it's on their website. So it kind of gives more info about, like. There's like a value that was assigned to every single street based on a number of different factors. And then there's a recommended treatment, but there isn't a time frame associated with that treatment.
[Emily O'Brien]: Right?
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Leah, I see your hand up. Yeah, Lily, I know I literally nag you about this, like, every meeting that I'm on, but a great way to know about when the city might be reconstructing a road is if they'd update their CAP.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yes, I'm sorry, I don't have any updates on that. Unfortunately, I don't know what the time frame is on that, but I completely agree. And this is something that's definitely, you know, a goal. Unfortunately, I just don't have any more info.
[Emily O'Brien]: All right, well. I assume that. I mean, I know they assess a whole lot of factors. When they decide what the priorities are beyond, you know, just this. constituency of people who ride bikes. But it does, do you know how much that, how much the cycling conditions weigh into assessing the priority of some of these things? You know, there's some, in that there's some kinds of things that are obnoxious and obnoxious for everybody, but it's just annoying versus other things that are really annoying but also likely to land somebody in the hospital. For cyclists especially, there really is a difference between this road is awful and it's really rough and it's in terrible condition, but I'm probably not going to crash versus this road is going to really hurt somebody. I know that can be hard to Um, hard to really pick apart, but there are some factors that. You know that you can that you can use.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, to be honest, my guess and I don't know for certain because this is the report and study was created in 2021. my guess is that the conditions for cycling was not something that went in specifically was not something that contributed to. The, the report or the development of, like, a value for how bad the street is, but many of the associated conditions that you're talking about, like, the number of potholes, the location certainly did go into that assessment. I don't think that there would be anything specific to bikes.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: I have read the. report that Stantec made for the city of Medford, and I think that that is correct. It's based on general pavement condition, which is, I think, the way that most of these types of reports should work.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah. Thanks, Leah. I haven't read the whole thing, but I've definitely skimmed different parts of it.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: I saw it linked in a Facebook comment once, and I was like, ooh, let me read this. This sounds fun.
[Emily O'Brien]: I know that there are certain things that might be of very narrow interest that can make something turn into a particular hazard spot for bicyclists. And some of those are things that might not even affect motorists very much. Parallel cracks are a real diversion hazard for bicyclists and probably barely noticeable. or not noticeable very much to people in cars. So there are some things where, you know, if you have a choice between which of these roads is worse, that's, you know, that's a, those are the things where we have concerns that are sometimes slightly different, but I understand that they have to, they don't have unlimited resources either.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: I mean, thinking about it a different way, like the roads that are really far gone, which is an unfortunate number of them have to wait for reconstruction. The ones that have smaller problems that we can feel on bikes may get some preventative treatments for doing our pavement management like that. So that's something.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, well, we can hope if you might. If you do think of it, if you mentioned to Todd that there's a bunch of holes on Riverside that are a lot like the one that I mean this. This was a thing where there was somebody there were like somebody on. Somebody had crashed in this pothole and a motorist who saw them posted on C click fix that they just watched a bicyclist crash there and then the next day the bicyclist who crashed. posted and said, oh, hey, I was the one who crashed, and this is the details of my hospital experience. And so I'm just bringing up that spot because I know, and I knew of somebody else who had crashed and broken a rim in that same exact pothole. And that one did get filled, but now there are a whole bunch of them in the same general vicinity that look really similar to what that one looked like. Maybe it would be nice to maybe prevent. Another go round of that.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Right, that's awful. Was this thing you're talking about on CClickFix? Was that something that happened fairly recently or was this like a few months back?
[Emily O'Brien]: This was the last year. It was about a year ago. Yeah, it was about a year ago. It was on Riverside near Park Ave.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yep, OK and.
[Emily O'Brien]: And just in the same in the same vicinity, there are a lot of others that look similar. Some of them are bad. Now, some of them aren't yet, but will be imminently. So. Be Dan.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Something I just want to mention very quickly in relation to the new blue bike station. Is that on the master plan, we have contra fellow lanes on cutting street and West Street. Those would what at least 1 of those would be great to get in in combination with that bike station because there's otherwise no legal way to travel East past North Street.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: That's a great point to bring up and I actually had that exact conversation with Todd today as we were kind of looking at the map, because we know once that station went in, that's just going to create more demand going East on those roads. So we're definitely looking at both of those streets as possible ways to we want to be able to provide a low stress contra flow connection in that direction.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, that's great. I know. Yes.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Because people will ride on the sidewalks or ride the wrong way. So it's something that we need to do. We need to be able to provide a legal and safe connection there.
[Emily O'Brien]: West Street is really wide. It's probably not wide enough to stripe it the whole way like on South Street and it has parking on both sides, I think. But certainly for the way that Hancock Street in Somerville has it, it's way wider than Hancock Street. It's wider than the last bit of College Ave, which is a two-way street for everybody and it has a blind corner. And I always think, well, if College Ave in that part can be a two-way street, we should be able to have a Contraflow bike lane anywhere we wanted.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I come down that part of college all the time and I'm always amazed that it's totally fine. Some of the factors that go into sort of figuring out if we can do a contra flow, a lot of it is dependent on the traffic volume. So we need to get good information about the volume on West street. I'm not super familiar. Like, it seems like it should be a low volume street, but I'm not super sure.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure it's low.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think it's, I mean, I've used it enough times. I think it's, I've, I hardly ever see another car while I'm on it.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: Um, but that would be, that would be really exciting. That would be great, especially since the, um, the paths along the river. whether depending are not always necessarily that viable. Even the paved part has drainage problems. It has ice. It has snow in the winter. You know, that can be relatively impassable even when the streets are perfectly usable. So if that's the only way to get back and forth there, then we really do need that alternative. Leah, I see your hand.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I was wondering, I think we heard a couple meetings ago about, like, an update to the bike plan or the bike network plan. I was just thinking, you know, about this conversation on West Street, that it would be really great to be able to reference that map or have the blue bike stations on that map and take a look at routes that way. Is that something that's still in the works?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, it's definitely in the works. Like, I'm not sure honestly, like, we were set back quite a bit by losing Amy is the transportation engineer. So now we just have Todd and then me a couple of days a week. So we definitely have a draft, but it needs. I think it is a well thought out public engagement strategy in my opinion. Because this is now an update that is coming from the city, I think there is going to need to be some careful, a careful rollout of a draft. We want to be able to engage with people who do bike but also It's going to take some kind of outreach process, which we have not developed yet, but we certainly do have a. A draft, which includes a lot of the things we've talked about, including contra flows on West Street and. Possibly other spots, but it's not really at the stage where we can just put it out to the public and say, we're ready to update the plan.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Is it at the stage where you could put it out to us?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: To be honest, I'm not sure I'll need to defer to Todd on that. Okay. I think at the, it's a lot of it is just a capacity issue. Like, we don't have. We're kind of losing the ability to do the planning ahead and we're doing a lot of the on the ground stuff that just needs to be done before, for example, the pavement contractors come and do the striping. So a lot of times we're just getting pulled in all these different directions. That's not a great answer. I think planning is really important and I'd like to be able to put out a draft, but we've been set back by a lack of capacity.
[Emily O'Brien]: Is the city looking to hire for Amy's position?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I believe so the position was posted and then it was pulled and I believe it's being reposted. At a higher rate, which is good. We want to attract a good candidate, but I honestly haven't had any updates. I, there may be a. It may be the case that it needs to get the. like the reposting, maybe like a job transfer or something like which would have to get approval from the city council. I'm not actually sure. I should probably stop talking because I don't actually know the real answers. But this is one of those bureaucratic things that I don't quite understand. So as far as I'm aware, the job has not been reposted yet, but it is definitely the intention to hire somebody because we need someone else.
[Emily O'Brien]: Great. That's great. Do we have anything else? Um, in that case, we are almost getting towards 9 o'clock. Um, any last questions, comments, or do we have a motion to adjourn?
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: I would say real quick that if, uh, I don't even know if it's possible for the city to, like. Give the Medford bikes email address, like. access to their GIS or anything, but if you needed extra people to work on that in their free time, that's very limited. I don't have GIS.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, I don't, you know, that would be great. It's funny because I don't even, I think there's one person, maybe two people who have GIS licenses in engineering division. I don't even have one. I'm using my Tufts one, but. But yeah, I can certainly see if that's possible because, yeah, it's certainly helpful. We have one GIS staff member who does all the GIS work for the entire city, so he's totally slammed all the time. I think there are other people who can do bits and pieces, including me, but not at a high level.
[Emily O'Brien]: Great. Thank you, Leah. Anything else?
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Motion to adjourn.
[Emily O'Brien]: Is that a second? All in favor? Aye. All right. Meeting adjourned. Thank you, everybody.
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