[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Okay, so on March 29th, 2023, Governor Healey 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. Thank you.
[Emily O'Brien]: Now the December 13th meeting of Medford Bicycle Advisory Commission will come to order. Secretary, will you please call the roll?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yes, let's see. Jared Powell. Who I do not see. Bruce Kulik. Present. Emily O'Brien.
[Emily O'Brien]: Here.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: B. Dan Fairchild. Who I do not see. Ernie Munier. Who I also do not see. Doug Packer. I also do not see Daniel Nasr-Muller. Present. Noam Ravani. Present. Mary-Kate Gustafson-Quiet. Present. Kevin Cuddeback. I do not see Leah Grodstein, who told me she was not going to be able to make this till later. Rebecca Wright.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Here.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: And Abigail Stone.
[Emily O'Brien]: Who I've never seen.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah. So let's see. That is six present and seven not present.
[Emily O'Brien]: So we don't have quorum.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: We don't have quorum.
[Emily O'Brien]: So that means we can't make any binding decisions. So we can't approve the minutes. But we might as well go through our announcements and updates. We may have, if another person pops in, then we can approve the minutes. To that end, I know that Lily needs to leave. So do you want to give us our updates from the city first thing?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Sure, that would be great. Thanks everyone. So there's not a ton of new updates this month, but probably the biggest, most exciting thing is that tomorrow 2 new blue bike stations are being installed. 1 of them will be in West Medford. At the corner of Harvard and Bauer, so kind of opposite by the brewing company opposite Medford Brewing Company. It was very tricky to cite a location in West Medford because we were really trying to do it on public property and off street. So it could be continuous year round and won't get removed. So that's definitely a big win. And then it also it fills a critical gap since there's currently nothing in West Medford. And then there will be another one in at Logan Park. Sort of to the east, so that's a super exciting. There will be some publicity around that, but installs install will happen tomorrow morning.
[Bruce Kulik]: Is that at the fire station?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yes, exactly right. Yeah, we kind of have a little corner of that property and there's an asphalt pad that's been poured in a little bit of a retaining wall put there so that it kind of is out of the sidewalks way. Which is great and we are still. You know, trying to find good locations for other blue bikes docks. We always try to prioritize putting them on city property. And off street, if possible, because it just makes it easier, but where necessary, like, we may end up putting things on. On a private property, it just makes the arranging the contract a lot more complicated. So it's quicker and simpler if we can do it on public property, but it is super challenging. We're trying to locate 1 now. Sort of there was supposed to be 1 on mystic as part of an agreement with. 1 of the dispensaries that they can no longer fulfill, so they basically cut us a check for the. For another station, we just have to locate it ourselves. Let's see, I can't remember when the last meeting was and whether I gave folks an update on. Clippership, whether it was because the groundbreaking was about to happen or had already happened, but construction for that is actually underway. So they're going to be working on that. Um, throughout, which is exciting. Yeah, I don't know when it will be done, but, um. They're going to give us status updates as they go. And on the agenda, I had said that George Street, the bike street on George Street had been pre-marked. It actually got fully striped. Well, I would say about 95% striped a couple of days ago. So that is actually in and on the ground, which is one of the pieces of a network connection getting from the Tufts Green Line Station College of George street main street, so college of and main will probably will have to wait until spring at this point. Um, but the George street piece is done. There's a couple little details missing if you're very keen eyed. They're missing, like, the arrows on the bike symbols and the sharrows are not actually sharrows. They're just little bike. Symbols without errors, which is sort of funny, but it's, you know. We will make sure that those details are fixed, but it's basically 95% done and functioning as a bike lane, which is exciting. There's also been some work done in this office with I think we talked about this at the last meeting. And Todd is, um, has asked our JS coordinator to start. Adding bike infrastructure layers into our JS. Kind of assets, so we're hoping to be able to have. Usable maps for people to be able to look at on the website and kind of have that as our inventory. Of infrastructure, and that also includes pedestrian safety features as well. So we want to be able to map all of that and have that available and have it constantly updated. So that is something that's been started as a project here, which is super exciting. Um, that's I think that's pretty much it. Um, I believe I talked about Riverside have last meeting where a section from commercial street to fell. So it was paved. The striping is now. Done just like with short street, there's a few tiny details that the contractors did not get right that they'll have to come back, but nothing really substantial from a bike perspective. And then there are plans for the rest of the corridor that do include bike lanes. We have some. designs that would need to be approved by traffic commission, but that would be for a future project when the full corridor is going to be redone.
[Emily O'Brien]: Go ahead. You mean the rest of Riverside Ave?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yes, the rest of Riverside that hasn't been paved yet, like the tight narrow spots or the narrow spots basically from Medford Square to Commercial Street. We do have designs for, but it's not something that we can plan.
[Emily O'Brien]: Is that likely a bike lane on just one side or something?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: There there's only yes, for a large part of the narrowest part. There's only room to have a bike lane on 1 side, but. For some of the other sections. From commercial street, I'm trying to remember there's like, a little bit more length where I think there could be both sides, but for the stretch, like, outside. Freedom way, like, where the middle schools are, that's actually, that's too narrow to have 2 way. Traffic into bike lane, so it would have to be in 1 direction or the other. And I'm not, I think we have designs for both situations. So it's not yet at the point where we'd start to evaluate, well, which direction would we want it in? Which is the most beneficial? And we definitely want to hear from you guys on that, like East to West versus West to East. What do we think? But yeah, does anyone have any questions, comments or thoughts or things they'd like to have me ask the city about or ask Todd about?
[Emily O'Brien]: those not about those things, I'm wondering a couple of spots. I know we've at various times paid a certain amount of attention to Route 16, and there was that Route 16 walk and talk event a while back, and I know that Our biggest complaints there are things that don't belong to the city of Medford. But I'm wondering how we might go about getting a little bit more urgency on some of those things. A couple of pretty urgent things. One is the pedestrian bridge, the hand-foot bridge. the railing has been rusted out for months. And as it's more likely to have ice and snow on it, and somebody is going to grab onto this railing, and the last two points where it's embedded in the concrete, it's rusted out of the concrete. And so if you grab onto it, it will swing around. And I think Tim had said the owner of the bridge has been notified, but it's still It's still broken and it's a really, really heavily used pedestrian bridge. And I've seen little kids and strollers and walkers and wheelchairs on that bridge too. So definitely used by people who might need that handrail. And then my other question, kind of in a more immediate thing is, over by Whole Foods, the guardrail that keeps getting smashed into. I think at some point recently it maybe got smashed into again. And there's a piece of it sticking out and blocking the sidewalk. And so my question with that spot is, is there a way that we could figure out how much it costs the state to constantly repair that guardrail? Because it never gets a chance for the bolts to rust.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: That is a great question and also terrible. I don't know exactly where you mean. I will check and consult with Todd and Tim on this. There may be stuff that the city can do to push the state to take more action in terms of how much it has cost to replace it. I don't know, but we can certainly ask. That is a great question.
[Emily O'Brien]: That seems like given the clear issues and at Auburn Street, both sides of Auburn Street have no pedestrian signal. You get a pedestrian walk sign to cross Route 16, but not Auburn Street. So not only, you know, you have no way to safely cross Auburn Street right at the spot where the guardrail keeps getting hit. So that would seem like... a good argument for some urgency. And then my last thought on that corridor is a much easier thing to change. We've also all talked about the pedestrian crossing next to that footbridge. where people are really terrible about stopping for pedestrians and cyclists. And I've even had people yell at me for biking in the crosswalk on the walk signal and then run the light in front of me. So I wonder if we could put up, you know, those like, you know, bike pedestrian arrow signs that you have at trail crossings, something like that, or even stop on red for bikes and pedestrians, that should be a really light lift. But just to make it a little bit more clear. For whatever reason, they're way worse about stopping for that one than they are for the one that's down closer to the condom shell. So it may just be, for whatever reason, that one doesn't look important enough. I don't know. But maybe that's a, it might not do much, but at least it doesn't cost much either.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: We can definitely ask it's also the state seems sort of reluctant to make these sorts of small fixes that if it were city property, we absolutely would. But I agree that that's an awful spot. I've experienced the same things there myself. So we're happy to kind of push them in the right direction wherever possible. If I have any concrete answers, I can't promise anything. If we do hear anything encouraging from the state, I'll let you know. Because that's a really bad spot. We do get a lot of complaints about that signal from all sides.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I'm sure. And I know this is, and if there's other things that we can, other steps that we can be taking, other people that we can contact, we certainly are ready and willing.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, I will say this is more of a like putting my personal opinion hat on. I think the more advocacy around that, the better. So I know that the walk, the sidewalk that happened there was several advocacy groups kind of banding together. So I think that the more people can speak up directly to the state and through the city about that, the better. Yeah, yeah. It feels kind of like a cop out to say, like, you guys should keep advocating too, but really, like, the city can do. I just think the louder everybody's voices are, the more likely it is that the state will listen.
[SPEAKER_06]: Does the state have a way to receive feedback because I've tried to reach them in the past and just left anonymous voicemails that I feel like just go into an abyss? That's kind of a question I have as I always kind of wonder about that if they have an actual feedback method.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: They do. To my knowledge, it's not great and it depends on which agency you're talking to. I have had some, as a member of the public, I have had feedback. I've submitted feedback to MassDOT and gotten a response. I have not had the same experience with DCR. However, both of those agencies do have general public email. Both of the times I did it was by email. They both have email addresses for general feedback. And I think phone numbers too, but I've found the phone to be not very effective.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, yeah, the emails that I've got responses either but.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Sorry, does the city have any like named contacts or whatever at the state? You know, it seems kind of ridiculous at the same perennial problems happen and then it's like constituents go to this amorphous thing that is the state feedback system. But like, it appears that maybe there's some inequity between the communities were like. Somerville can pick up the phone and get something done and get a big project to straighten Parkway and do all this. Who at Medford owns that relationship to the state and to MassDOT?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: That's a good question. I'm not 100% sure. It tends to be sort of a different person, depending on which problem or area you're talking about. I do know that Todd, our director of traffic and transportation does have a couple of contacts that he regularly communicates with about particular problems, but. The people on the state end, I don't believe. That that line of communication is something that is open to the general public that the state wants for better or for worse. And I think it's probably for worse. Like, the state wants to channel certain types of feedback to certain places. So, is there a direct line that the city has to these agencies for certain issues and problems? Yes. Can we provide that to the public? I'm afraid we cannot. which is not the frustrating answer, but it's not like we are shouting into the void, but it does definitely seem that way from a public facing perspective.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: So it's fair to say, though, that we as members of the public, we could apply pressure to city council and the mayor if you want to see something done or like a more substantial presence with the state.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I think that could help. I will. I'm not sure exactly what action That concrete action the city council or the mayor could take, but I think it's always a good idea to raise these issues and make and remind elected officials and city administration folks that this is important. They may have other people that they're in touch with at the state for different reasons that they can kind of. talk to or advocate for. So I think that's a good idea. I'm generally a fan of more advocacy and any lever that you can press to sort of shift things in the right direction is a good idea.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: While we're talking about the state, I guess, same lines of questioning around the T. Notice that the bike cages on the green line have never been activated, so they don't work. Nobody turned them on. I personally reached out to the T. I also reached out to my state delegates and stuff, but I know the T is kind of In rough states right now, but that that seems like low hanging fruit, right? Like. Activate the lock that's already installed at the bike cage so that people can safely use it, you know, and that has a positive impact. So I'm wondering, does the city have like an MBTA contact that. Could be activated for something like that.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: That's a great question. I'm not sure who at the T we would get in touch with, but I'm sure we probably do, or at least Todd may. So I will add this to my list of stuff to try to take forward from an inside contact. I didn't realize that those bike cages locks had never been activated. That seems like a big miss.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they have an alert on the website that's like the pedal and park facilities on the Green Line are not active. Seek alternate stuff. I mean, you can put your bike in there and you can lock it up, but like, right.
[Bruce Kulik]: But the card, the lock is a little bit too narrow. So it doesn't fit.
[Emily O'Brien]: No one knows why, but you know, the slot doesn't fit the card.
[Bruce Kulik]: That's right.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: But everything's perfectly safe. Don't worry. Um,
[Emily O'Brien]: Anything else?
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: All right, well, thank you, Lily.
[Emily O'Brien]: Thank you. Do we have announcements? Other announcements?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: No official announcements.
[Emily O'Brien]: Then I will keep moving along. Working with Family Bike Ride, I think for the time being, I talked to, I'm drawing a blank on his name, Um, I can look through my Paul. Yes. Sorry. It's a long day. Um, and he has a whole system for how he does this. Um, I think the email that I sent putting him in touch with Alicia may have gotten lost somewhere, but I will, because he just the other day emailed me again about it, but I will try that again from a different email address and hopefully everybody receives it. Um, and. He has, so I think for the moment, there's not a lot that we need to do. He will work with Alicia and ask us for what he needs. He kind of has a whole system for how he does these things. And he will, he certainly is interested in our thoughts and feedback on root ideas, but ultimately he has, His considerations have to do with being able to have marshals at every single intersection where you have to cross the street because there's a bunch of kids. And so he needs to kind of come up with a route that works with his system for running rides. So I think for the time being, he will coordinate with Alicia and get back to us with whatever he needs from us.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I'll just jump in to say, Emily, if he is having difficulty, Alicia gets so many emails and she tries to be really responsive. But if there's any kind of gap or lag, feel free to have him email me and I can kind of get it in front of her. Okay, sure.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. And it's also possible, and I don't know this, but from time to time, Um, stuff I send from one, from the email address that I use the most gets shunted, not even into either into people's spam or not even into people's spam. It just gets filtered out. And I have not been able to figure out how to make that stop happening. And it's like, you know, every six months I find out about something where that happened. So it's not like it's that often, but it's often, it's just enough that I'm always, I'm always a little bit like, wait a second. Did that actually disappear into the ether or did they just not get to it or something? So I will do that and I'll CC you and then we'll make sure that those connections get made. Next. All right.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I got to hop off, but good to see everyone. And Emily, I'll make you host.
[Emily O'Brien]: Great. Thank you.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Thanks.
[Emily O'Brien]: Next up is joining League of American Bicyclists, which I assume means having Medford designated not joining as not, unless somebody was thinking of the bike commission joining as a organization, which is also a possibility, I think, but maybe not as beneficial since we don't need insurance for rides or anything like that. But what's under here is what should we aim to accomplish and determine steps to reach bronze level? So this is, for those who are not familiar with this, this is the League of American Bicyclists designates bicycle-friendly communities at gold, silver, bronze, and honorary mention levels. So this is looking at what Medford could do to reach bronze level and hopefully that these designations can be some incentive to make some of these priorities happen. Do we have comments on that? It's possible the person who wanted to talk about it isn't here, which might have been Kevin, I think.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Kevin was the one who gave me this agenda item.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. I'm going to say that since that was his agenda item, we should either wait until if he comes tonight or put it to the next meeting because I think he probably has a bunch to say about it. Next thing is subcommittee updates, including speaker series. There has been updates on the speaker series in Everett, by the way, it was, I think it was, they postponed it, but now they've reannounced it. For those who are, I can look up, let me look up the information. Or is it? I might not be able to find it that quickly. I think it was at one of the bike community committee in Everett is putting together a speaker series at one of the breweries. over by Santilly Highway. And I will try to find that announcement. But they look like fun events. I think that would be good for us to announce in all the various places and help, you know, signal boost for them. We could certainly think about doing something like that ourselves. I think that's what was intended with this agenda item. that may also have been Kevin?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Maybe not. That, I believe, was Leah. Okay. I do think she had something that goes to work thing until 8 p.m.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay. I'll put that off until Leah gets here, if she gets here tonight. We have bike light supply status from Ernie, who is also not here. And we've done our infrastructure updates. So do we, but one thing we also might just think about in the meantime is projects and plans for next year. Think about some other events we might want to put on, particularly speaker series or rides or a combination of those two. If there are other priorities, other projects, other areas that we haven't put our attention on yet that we could. Does anybody have thoughts on those things? Yeah, go ahead.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, well, I am thinking about, still have really high hopes of working with safe routes to school. And I don't know, just thinking about how we could multiply each other's forces. And if anybody has ideas of like, I guess avenues of action and also like resources that we might pursue to take action. I don't know. Is that a thing? Is that a thing for public infrastructure?
[Emily O'Brien]: Are you thinking of specific projects or? advocating for a specific infrastructure or outreach things or events or?
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: I mean, my first wish would be for a specific infrastructure. Yeah. And to have more like, I think Safe Routes to School has a pretty decent I've had a pretty easy time inserting myself into the school. I mean, I don't know, you show up to the PTO meeting and they're like, you're the best. And I'm like, thanks, safe routes to school. And it's been really supportive. And so I think that by teaming up with safe routes to school, we're also able to more easily team up with kids and families and advocate for infrastructure that's going to help everyone but focusing on like getting kids to school safely.
[Bruce Kulik]: Are there any chapters at other schools other than just the Brooks?
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: Yeah yeah and so that's what Ellery Klein has been organizing us and she has another email that went out and she's like what day you know we need to get together again and we email each other when we do like when we were organizing for the like walk and roll to school day and October. So yeah, there is an active group. And so there's a representative at every single school, elementary through high school.
[Bruce Kulik]: Are there any proposals or concepts that other schools have that are along the same lines as what they did on High Street?
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: On High Street, what do you mean?
[Bruce Kulik]: Well, the whole the whole infrastructure on High Street around the Brooks School was a Safer School project. and i forget where the funding for that came from but i thought i might have been involved with that so i was wondering if other schools if other schools have any kernel of an idea you know i'm thinking that mistletoe might have something on medford street perhaps or some of the connecting streets there or um what's the big long street that goes um Can't think of the street, but as a street between basically halfway between Main Street and mystic and mystic Avenue. That kind of parallels and that's another good. Low impact, but it would be good to have infrastructure. I know those are a couple ideas. Okay, I don't know what would happen around the Roberts. Certainly, the, uh, the middle school complex has all their. You know, the trails and the pathways, but maybe even work on Riverside or something like that could get involved in that kind of a project. These are just thoughts. I don't have any any insights on how to accomplish them. Just. You know, throw them as a kernel of an idea as to what what could be done in some of these areas.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: Well, and I want, um, yeah, I didn't know that the recent, like. Bike infrastructure updates on. High street by the books were a safe routes or were affiliated with safe routes.
[Bruce Kulik]: How is that funded? Unfortunately. I don't have anyone from the city to answer that.
[Emily O'Brien]: But I can ask at least some amount of federal grant or something, but I can't remember.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, that was my thought that it was and it was all coordinated basically. Outside of mostly outside of the city. Until it was time for approvals and that kind of thing. That was my recollection anyhow.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: Well, it's good to know. I'll ask, uh, Vivian Ortiz is our like state level person that we report to for safe routes to school. And she's very responsive. Um, and she's come to some of the safe routes to school meetings that we've had in Medford. So I can also reach out to her and now I know to inquire about that example.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I think I could see, I don't, I kind of remember there being something, part of the limit to the scope of the project of the Brooks was that for the, was that it had to be within a certain distance of the school. And that might make it harder for something on Main Street to count as like a safe route to school thing for the Missitech school, which it obviously is because you need Main Street to get there, but it's not, but it also is probably outside of that distance, if I'm remembering that correctly.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I was thinking Willis Avenue is the connecting street, which is between Main Street and Mystic Avenue, and it's like the main north-south route through there. You know, I'm not a bad bicycling street as it is right now, but for the kids might benefit for having something. I don't know how wide it is. I haven't really investigated. I'm just saying that that might be a target. Or what other areas are there?
[Emily O'Brien]: I guess, I mean, the thing is with Willis Avenue is that if you can't also deal with Mystic Ave, Main Street and Hancock Street, It's kind of, it becomes of limited use to make Willis fabulous. I mean, it's one of those network problems.
[MCM00001790_SPEAKER_07]: But so what when I was saying how like, it's great, safe routes to school, it's easy to like, get into the school community and talk to people. And I think that's another reason why it's great, because we can ask the families and see what routes they're taking and, and where their concerns are, too, which is helpful.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[Bruce Kulik]: So the Brooks project looks like it extended approximately 1,700 feet from the school proper, or maybe if I take the most conservative view, about 1,500 feet from the edge of the school property.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I don't know if that's a guideline. It actually ended directly past my house. I'm about the furthest point. It's the intersection.
[Bruce Kulik]: It's right across from Woodman Road, right?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Right. Yeah. It ends effectively past the intersection at Woburn Street, High Street intersection at 291 High Street. That's about the limit. Although it's not equivalent down into West Medford Center. The distance from the school, it actually only ends probably about half that distance down towards West Medford Center.
[Bruce Kulik]: 1,500 on Willis Avenue would take it to about Golden Avenue, just beyond Harvard, but that's worth. It would also mean that portions of Main Street would certainly be within Yeah, in fact, Main Street all the way through the Harvard and Main Street intersection would be covered by that distance. So just, again, a kernel of an idea.
[Unidentified]: OK, I've said enough.
[Emily O'Brien]: Do we have other? questions, comments, we're kind of, we're missing the people who had specifically asked for certain things. And we don't have a quorum.
[Bruce Kulik]: So I'm wondering if it makes sense to... Well, I think that means that in here, which is the next meeting, which would be end of January.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. And we can't, we can't, um, we can't approve minutes.
[Bruce Kulik]: So all we can do is let the people know that, Hey, they should have been here. So we got to both the quorum and their input.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[Bruce Kulik]: Otherwise I think we're done and I will move it to adjourn.
[Emily O'Brien]: All right. All in favor. All right. Thanks for coming everyone.
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