AI-generated transcript of Medford Bicycle Advisory Commission 08-24-22

[Emily O'Brien]: The August meeting of the Medford Bicycle Advisory Commission will come to order. Secretary, would you please call the roll?

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Jared Powell, who I see as not being here.

[Jenny Graham]: He did say he could come.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yep, I'm here. Bruce Kulik. Okay. Emily O'Brien. Here. B. Dan Fairchild. Here. Ernie Monnier, who we all know is perhaps recovering. Doug Packer, who I do not see here. Peter Cowles. Here. Gaston Fiore. Here. Daniel Nuzzo-Muller. Here. Dana Phillips, who I do not see. Rebecca Wright.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Here.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: And for our guests, I see that we have Lily Worth joining us again, and Dennis here as well, from Planning and Development. Okay, take it away. Sorry, I would normally call for an approval of the minutes, but I don't think we can, or the previous two minutes, but I don't think that we can do that since we don't have a quorum.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, that was going about to be my next statement. So announcements, I don't think we have anybody who needs introductions. So announcements, our biggest one is that one of our members, Ernie Munier, was involved in a crash. He has no memory of the event. He's recovering. There was a ring camera that caught some footage of it, which he has not seen yet. None of us have seen it either. He was on the email list. He was saying he was not sure whether he actually wanted to watch it or not. But I think Daniel went out and took some photos of the spot. Do you want to describe any of that, Daniel?

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Sure. So I actually live on Woburn Street, although I live on the intersection of Woburn and High Street. So this is on the other end approaching Placetet Road. So from what I've seen, that intersection has no markings to indicate crossings either from Woburn Street that there's a side street that's going to be letting out from both sides. There are two separate streets, I believe Smith And then another small private lane that comes from the west, I forget the name of. But on top of that, both of those streets, both the private lane and Smith, neither have any indication that there should be a stop. There's no stop sign. There's no stop line. There's no signs indicate yielding to traffic coming down Woburn Street. And as said, from either northbound or southbound on Woburn Street, there's also no indicators that there could be cross traffic coming out from side streets. These are both pretty small. They are residential streets. And Smith, particularly the downhill side, so the westbound side of Smith Street, has very broken pavement.

[Emily O'Brien]: Isn't it like Smith Lane or Smith Road or something? I believe so. I don't know if we're able to find it on the map.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah, I can if people want.

[Peter Calves]: According to Google Maps, it looks like it's Smith Lane on one side and Shirley Road on the other.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yes, thank you. I do have pictures of that intersection that I can There, believe I might be able to get rid of this. So this is from Shirley Lane, looking northbound. You'll notice that there's no, you know, there are no, you know, markings. Let's see. This is actually, so this is southbound on Woburn Street. Again, hard to tell, no markings. This is the direction that we believe that Ernie was traveling. As you can see, there's broken pavement on the right. Also no markings, no stop line that was ever painted there from what I can tell. no street signage. You'll also notice that over here on the left there's a bush and a slight retaining wall that makes visibility to the left very difficult. Visibility to the right is decent but you could pretty easily see how anyone traveling on a bike would have a lot of trouble with this section at the bottom of the picture here and would probably ought to stay further to the left to try to stay away from potholes. This is perhaps taken a little bit too far to the side to give a valid view from where a car would see things. So it would probably be located more to the left side, closer to the yellow line. and they would probably have a little bit more visibility to the right. But as you can see, this bush here on top of this retaining wall that we saw in the previous picture makes it very difficult to see much outside of just that immediate intersection. Again, there are no markings here to indicate that, aside from the yellow line break, which can be a little hard to tell with the number of patches that have been done and no repainting can be hard to identify whether there's a continuous line or there isn't. Infrastructure is obviously a little dated here. These are different pictures that I went the wrong way on. So this is at least from, I went a couple of days ago, maybe two days ago, I wanna say. And this is what I observed.

[Emily O'Brien]: That's useful. I mean, this seems like a bit of a difficult spot just because it is two small side streets and we haven't seen the video, but it is a good illustration of a case where, especially in the downhill direction, it's certainly conceivable that bicyclists, for one reason or another, are less able to pay attention at an intersection or less able to deal with unexpected things that happen because they were already dealing with all the potholes.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I believe that there's, oh, I think someone else got them. Okay, great. Coming in.

[Emily O'Brien]: So I think that's all something that we should be in touch with Ernie and wish him all the best. And if we can keep an eye on what happens with this and see if any of us can have a look at that footage, if it's available to us, that would be great. I don't know that there's a whole lot more we can do at the moment. But. But it's certainly good to keep in mind for when anytime we need to make a case for fixing something like this. It would be nice to think that maybe this could be a higher priority to fix now that a crash has actually happened there. My one hesitation there is that it also seems to me that there are potentially lots of other places in the city that look like that too. And it's kind of the luck of the draw that this is the one that had the crash, but it could happen in any number of places. So does anybody else have any other comments?

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, that does seem particularly hazardous to have no signage, no markings at all. Actually, looking at the pictures, it reminded me of an incident where my son got hit by a car a few years ago. um and it was right it was a side street coming onto college ave and none of the at that time none of the side streets had crosswalks or stop lines painted on them and like how he It was somebody kind of creeping out onto College Ave and not looking, so he wasn't going very fast. And we happened to be riding down the sidewalk, and he pulled out and T-boned my son at two miles an hour. So he wasn't seriously hurt. But it's a similar situation where there's just no marking there. And had it been there, it could have prevented something like that happening.

[Emily O'Brien]: Gaston?

[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, I just wanted to ask whether there's no ordinance or law that requires at the corner where there's the bush and the retainer wall to basically remove the triangle. I mean, I'm from Argentina. In Argentina, there is a law that basically you cannot have like a sharp corner like this. The building needs to sort of, you need to remove the triangle. And even in small town where I have a house on there, you can not have like a bush in the corner. You've got to remove it and you're going to clear, like, you know, leave the triangle like empty, sort of in the corner. I remember because this was probably 20 years ago, my granddad actually had to remove the bush because they forced him to sort of like clear the triangle in the corner. So I was just wondering whether there's a similar ordinance or law here So then, you know, the visibility in the corner improves.

[Emily O'Brien]: I've never heard of that, but I think it is a good point about the markings at the very least. And it also makes me wonder how many other intersections there are in the city that have really no markings at all. And I know that there are a lot of places where small cross streets don't have markings and don't have crosswalks and so forth, but I wonder how many places there are that really have absolutely nothing. Peter?

[Peter Calves]: Just to take Asan's point, I know that there are just from working in traffic for private developments, that that's a thing you can request for new developments, but I don't think it's a statute, but it's a thing that a municipality can request as part of the approval process for new development, but I don't think there's anything for existing development.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Grandfathering, effectively.

[Peter Calves]: Yeah.

[Emily O'Brien]: Are there cases where, is that request made kind of as a matter of course, do you know, or is that?

[Peter Calves]: I know when I typically be doing a traffic study for private development, it's almost assumed that you're going to be, whatever vegetation is near the driveway cut, you're going to be clearing that back so that there can be proper site distance. I don't think it ever even gets to the point where it is made, because at this point, if you're designing it, you just assume that they're going to want a proper site distance clearance.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I would assume that this would be one of the situations where any further, I don't know what you call it, permits to the retaining wall would probably. Yeah.

[Peter Calves]: Basically, if anybody wanted to touch that corner from the city to the homeowner, probably get a request from somebody to cut back the bush. But as long as nobody touches it, it's not going to go anywhere.

[Jenny Graham]: I think in my neighborhood, I live in an intersection where there's a bus stop and there is a large hedge on one corner. that makes it very hard for cars coming to their four-way stop to see each other and also to see pedestrians. And we requested it to be trimmed and it was deemed okay and not in no need of a trim, even though like every day. This is like a six foot high hedge, very, yeah.

[Emily O'Brien]: I mean, is it a city property hedge or is it?

[Jenny Graham]: No, is this intersection a city property one?

[Emily O'Brien]: No, I was just I wasn't sure what you whether you were something that you'd asked the city to trim their own.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, no, yes, we asked kind of reported like it was a personal, personal property, but just like, you know, request to kind of for sightlines just because we kind of see, see the issues with ourselves and with kids every day. Yeah. I also just checked this five closest small streets to me. And it's the same thing where there's no stop line, no stop sign either. So I think this is a, it's not just this intersection, it's the city wide. And I don't know if it has something to do with a lot of private ways. I'm not 100% sure how things work, but it seems to be common at a quick glance.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I know that the more I think about it, the more I haven't gone out looking for these places. But the more I can think of a lot of neighborhood streets that I don't know offhand if they're private ways or not, but that have, you know, that are small side streets and just don't have much. And some of them even at intersections have weird configurations. So there's kind of a surprisingly large expansive asphalt in an intersection, even though it's like an intersection of kind of a couple of really small streets with minimal markings in the same way that like a lot of narrow side streets that are too narrow for a double yellow line just don't have anything painted on the whole street anywhere else.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I mean, there's a similar road right off of High Street, Whitman Road, right past me, similar situation. It's coming out onto 60, and it still has no markings. It's a hidden little thing. Yeah, it's common.

[Emily O'Brien]: I'm also thinking of places where there's a, there are side streets that have, there's a street sign, but when you're on the main road, like off of High Street, where it's not immediately obvious that there is a side street and maybe more crosswalks in more of those places would make it a little bit more clear. But when I lived in West Medford, there was a spot where I would often turn left off of High Street onto Why can I not remember the name of the road? Something with an H. Hastings? No, maybe. Anyway, it was a left turn that I knew that there was a side street there, but you could easily just be going down Route 60 and not realize. And I had so many people pass me on the left when I'm on the left side of the lane with my left arm sticking out. And I think it was just because it was not immediately clear that there was a place to turn left. Like I was doing all the things you do to turn left, but they didn't realize that there was actually a street there to turn onto. So I wonder if this is, maybe this is something we need to incorporate into the master plan or add it to our to do list. We can't vote on anything tonight, but we can say we need to address all these places that have just not the markings that they should. It's kind of ended. It is a kind of a systemic problem across the city.

[Jenny Graham]: I think one thing just kind of because it could be widespread, but especially if you're looking at the bicycle plan and thinking about neighbor ways or kind of small streets that might be connected street, like prioritizing ones that might have multimodal traffic that would be logical through streets. And then like Somerville gives sort of like a tan bump out paint treatment. So you can kind of see that those intersection are highlighted that there's going to be kind of a through traffic on that. And maybe that's something to kind of think about and then work way down to kind of all intersections, hopefully. But prioritize the ones that are kind of like a good cut through to get to avoid a bigger street that might have kids, families, bikes, pedestrians, just as a way to kind of be systematic about it.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I think that's a good thought. Prioritize the things that get you somewhere.

[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, I mean, here.

[Emily O'Brien]: Oh, go ahead.

[Gaston Fiore]: No, sorry. I just wanted to say that looking at the picture, one of the pictures that Dan sent out, then there's.

[Emily O'Brien]: Gaston, you just muted yourself.

[Gaston Fiore]: Sorry, I just wanted to say that based on one of the pictures that Dan sent, coming down from, I think it's like High Lane, there's no sidewalk on the left, on the left side. I can only see a sidewalk on the right side, but not on the left side. So how, I mean, that's just not good. So yeah, and then you can see that as that kind of lane continues, there's also no sidewalk on the left side. So, and then there's a huge fence, the white fence. So if you wanted to walk, I'm not even sure how you do it because you've got the fence, no sidewalk, and that narrow kind of street. this looks pretty bad for both walking and biking.

[Emily O'Brien]: And that's the sort of thing that in practice, people basically walk in the street. So all of these things that are visibility issues for bicyclists are just as much a problem for the exact same reasons in the exact same places for anybody that's on foot. And in some ways, having lots of quiet side streets and people walk in the street, that's kind of a normal thing if we can convince people to also drive slow enough to reflect that.

[Peter Calves]: As long as we don't have large vehicles driving high speeds.

[Emily O'Brien]: Right. You can't have speeding pickups down that street and also people walk in the street.

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, I wanted to chime in and just mention that one of the things that we're looking at and thinking about as we make the bike network plan is definitely thinking about neighborhoods type streets, but kind of in conjunction with places where we can do traffic calming. So if there isn't room like physically on the street to put in a bike lane, for example, but it is a useful side street as a connector, something that would be ideal to go in tandem with that is like some amount of traffic calming. I will mention that private ways are definitely like kind of a hindrance here. I'm starting, I'm still kind of learning about how they even work and what the city is allowed to do. And I've had like a little bit of investigation so far. So that'll be kind of an ongoing process. And I plan to talk to Tim McGibbon from DPW knows kind of a lot about this. So I'm definitely gonna check in with him about how to handle that and what's our best option when kind of incorporating these streets into the network, if possible.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: As a question, does traffic calming, is that perhaps only things like speed signs and the like, or are we also talking about speed humps, speed bumps, so on and so forth, like actual physical traffic calming as well?

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: That's a great question. I mean, really the ideal is physical infrastructure and that's something we'd like to plan for in the future. We don't currently have the resources to deploy those things yet, but it's definitely something that we would want to plan for in the future because they are, we get requests all the time for people saying like, can we get speed humps? Can we get signs? And, you know, that's, I see why people want them. We definitely, you know, we want to be able to do that.

[Emily O'Brien]: there's a speed camera right outside my house, or I mean, one of those radar signs, and I can't help but look at it every time somebody drives by, and it is not good for my mental health.

[Peter Calves]: Oh yeah, those definitely have a diminishing return. They're really effective as soon as they're put up, and then once people realize there's no consequences, they just might get the high score.

[Emily O'Brien]: This one also was put up in like the exact worst spot in terms of it being visible at the right time when somebody might actually like see it, notice it, take action, et cetera, et cetera, but whatever. So I think that's, I think those are good things to keep on our list of thoughts about the master plan. I had one other question about the private ways and the neighborhood networks while we're on that topic, though, which is I'm wondering whether you're thinking about more contraflow options, especially on a lot of those side streets. I sprained my ankle like last weekend and so I've been riding like slowly and gingerly and trying to avoid hills and busy intersections more than usual and taking more one-way streets the wrong way as a result. And most of the time, I really try not to do that. And I took some yesterday. Most of the time, they're such small streets that it's not a big deal. And we have two-way streets that are just as narrow and or have worse visibility. So I think something like the north end of College Ave with that blind curve, can be a two-way street, then any one-way street could be a Contra Flow and still be better than that. So I'm wondering what your thoughts are.

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, that's a great question. I am definitely a fan of Contra Flows, and we are keeping them in mind as we make the plan. Our strategy, I think, with those, because they're relatively new, I could be wrong, but is the South Street one the only one in Medford? We basically what we're going to try to do is I did. Sorry.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I think South Street as well. Along the side of. Right.

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: That's the only one I knew about. But I thought, oh, I hope I haven't missed it.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: All right. Sorry. I apologize.

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, so our strategy there is to try to identify kind of like Emily was saying, like the best possible examples to kind of start with contraflows and maybe put, you know, be very kind of judicious about where we recommend them to begin with so that we have, you know, we can kind of set ourselves up for success. And then if, you know, if it turns out that they're successful, there's like a kind of second, almost like a secondary network or other places where we could also recommend them. So we're going to start by trying to identify like a few really key spots that are going to be A, the most useful for people to ride ContraCo and B, kind of like the safest, both for people riding bikes, but also people driving, kind of like knowing where to expect people. So I think that's kind of like the strategy that we're thinking about with ContraFlows.

[Emily O'Brien]: That's great. Thank you. Um, do we have any more on this topic? I see we have, um, a person says the name says Kathleen Connolly. Um, is that a guest? Another person who entered.

[phPK_rgTxTg_SPEAKER_06]: I don't know. That's that's me. That's my wife's name. I'm Matt. I've come before in the past. I just logged in with my wife's name.

[Emily O'Brien]: So that's fine. We just want to make sure that you're on the list as having been here.

[phPK_rgTxTg_SPEAKER_06]: Okay, cool.

[Emily O'Brien]: Does anybody else have anything else on this topic?

[phPK_rgTxTg_SPEAKER_06]: Oh, I guess I see a sign for the neighborhoods put up over by the park on the river. It's like a tester sign or something at the intersection of Winthrop Street and the community garden over by

[Emily O'Brien]: I think Walk Medford put up a bunch of those signs.

[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, Walk Medford put them, yep. Oh, gotcha, gotcha.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I like that idea, and I wonder if that's something we can also expand on. It's a little bit of the pseudo bootleg version.

[Peter Calves]: I see some of those wayfinding signs up over at McDonald Park as well.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I know. I know McDonald Park is one of these places where there's just this kind of unless you're looking at a map, there's this bewildering network of little pathways. And I know that there's one of them that actually goes all the way through and goes someplace to where you're going. But when you just get there and they split off in all directions and some of them curve around and they go this way and that way, unless you pull out your phone and ride around looking at your phone, or you have your GPS hollering at you, you know you can get through, but you can't just You can't just like go straight on the road and get through.

[Peter Calves]: Yeah, that's why I tend to stay on the one right next to Mississippi Parkway. Yeah.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I don't. I don't usually go that way just because I don't want to have to. Deal with it. Uhm? But those those wayfinding signs are were great. I I am. I know that that route that we've had been talking about off and on. is a little bit more complicated because it involves the path by Tufts and the parking lot by Tufts and kind of in its in its easiest to use version would also involve some amount of contraflow and some private ways and some tough stuff, even though it is a route that a lot of people ride on every day now. But maybe there are other places that we could put up wayfinding signs of that kind too.

[SPEAKER_11]: Dennis, we can hear something.

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I think Dennis was trying to explain that the wayfinding is going to happen this weekend, some of the installation. I'm missing definitely probably a lot of what he was going to say, but I know that a lot of the installation of other wayfinding signage is happening this Saturday. That's great.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, that's great. I always, that's, as most of you probably know, this is a little bit of a pet peeve of mine, especially with DCR paths, because we have so many that go useful places and they don't have signage. But anyway, you've all heard that from me before. Shall we go on to upcoming events?

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, we've got quite a few upcoming events. This is our busy season for those. There's, let's see, starting in September, there's the Mystic River Celebration on Saturday, September 24, noon to four. Then there is in October, on Tufts Community Day on Sunday, October 2nd from 11 to 3. And then the following weekend on Saturday, October 15th is Harvester Energy Fest, which is noon to three. And in the past, we've participated in all of these events. Each one's a little bit different, but they've been really good opportunities to reach out to people. And I think we could consider which ones we'd like to participate in this year, what sort of resources we have in terms of staffing. what sort of activities we might want to do and what kinds of things we might want to feature or talk about. So I would leave that open to discussion and maybe we can generate a few ideas.

[Emily O'Brien]: I know we can't vote on things tonight because we don't have quorum, but I think I feel confident signing us up for any of these that we have interest in personnel for. I don't think anybody will have a problem with that.

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: I know.

[Peter Calves]: I don't think so.

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, maybe to start, who would have interest in taking part in which ones?

[Emily O'Brien]: Would you go down the list of dates one more time and type it into the chat?

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, that's a good idea. So the first one up is Saturday, September 24th, Mystic River Celebration, and that's noon to four. And that one's down by the Condon Shell. It's sponsored by Medford Cachet. And that one's kind of a tabling event, but there are a lot of activities that have been in the past, craft vendors, music. So that one's kind of fun.

[Peter Calves]: Yeah, I was going to say.

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: And then next up is, so that's, let's see, that is the 24th. Then in two weeks after that is Tufts Community Day. That's Sunday, October 2nd, 11 to three. That one's a little more of a, that one's pretty big. It draws from Medford and Somerville. A lot of community organizations, a lot of Tufts organizations. And they have, there's usually a cookout and a lot of entertainment, a lot of activities going on. And then the following week after that one, Saturday, October 15th from noon to three is Harvester Energy Festival. And that one is the, that's a city, Harvester Energy Festival. event and takes place over by the middle schools, usually right under the wind turbine. And the focus of that one is more various sustainability initiatives. It's a little, little smaller than like not as big as Tufts Community Day. But it's like attracts a lot of people who are bike riders or interested in you know, sustainability issues. So that one's a little bit of a special interest with us. It's always a great event and really good opportunity to, like, maybe talk to people about somewhat more technical topics, because people tend to be really informed there. So that's kind of the rundown of the three.

[Gaston Fiore]: So does anyone know whether the clipper sheet connector is going to be finished by the Harvest Year Energy Festival? Because it would be great to use it.

[Peter Calves]: No. It hasn't even gone out to bid yet for construction. It won't even be started.

[Emily O'Brien]: I was going to ask if somebody knew what the status of that was, because I hadn't heard anything in a long time.

[Peter Calves]: Last I heard, it was going out to bid this summer. And we are quickly running out of this summer.

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, that's the latest information I have. And that's one thing, like every event, people always ask us about that.

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I'm afraid I don't have any answers on that, but I'll try to find out.

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I checked in. It was doing some tabling event. Actually, I don't think I provided a report back on that. We were at the Medford Farmers Market last month and that was very, very well attended. We had a bunch of maps and partnered up with Walk Medford and also Bike to the Sea. And that was like the best attended farmers market I've ever done. We had so many questions and it's like, a lot of people who were, you know, a lot of bike riders, a lot of people rode their bikes down there. So that was really, really exciting to see.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, it looked like it was hopping. I'm sorry, I couldn't stay.

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, that was nice. It was like a lot of people from like a lot of our members were able to kind of drop by for a little while. So I think like probably half the commission members showed up there at one point or another. And that was nice, very like kind of casual and laid back. But again, a good like good opportunity to talk to people. fill them in on things and like yeah everybody's asking about the clipper ship connector, the bike network, blue bikes. That's probably the top three questions we got.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah it would be great if we have an update on any of those things by the time we're at another event where people want to know

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I do know that the contract for blue bikes with Lyft has finally been signed. So now things can at least start to move. This, I think, happened yesterday. Wow, that's great. So there's a step in the direction that we want to go in. That's an important step.

[Emily O'Brien]: So I'm, at least for myself, I'm looking at those dates and I know I'm away on the 24th of September. So far, I think I'm potentially available on the other two, and I can probably promise to be able to do at least one of those.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I can most likely help with the Mystic River Celebration. I'm not sure what my October looks like yet.

[Peter Calves]: Likewise, I know I'm available for the first one, the Mystic River Celebration. Me too. Also Leah says she's available too. She's currently trying to see if she can find the project.

[Milva McDonald]: Don't get your hopes up.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I'm sorry, Peter. I'm taking, what's your significant other's name again? Leah. Leah, sorry. I know we've met before and I feel bad about it.

[Milva McDonald]: You only exchanged 15 emails.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: That's a fair point.

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: All right. How are we feeling? I think I am available for Mr. Grover's celebration or harvest your energy. How are we feeling about the Tufts Community Day? I want to be mindful of it's kind of three events within a month. you know, we don't want to, like, overtax ourselves and overcommit. And we do need to, like, actually register for these things soon.

[Gaston Fiore]: I can do Harvest Your Energy Festival. I'll put that in the chat, sorry.

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Okay.

[Emily O'Brien]: I mean, I definitely wouldn't want to commit to doing two of them two weekends in a row. And I'm sure that's also I'm sure that's also the case for a lot of folks. My thinking about Tufts Community Day is that since Tufts is a university and lots of college students ride bikes and so forth, I think it is important to have some group there that represents bicycling interests, but it also seems fairly likely that there still will be, even if it isn't us. Whereas Harvest Your Energy, is really a Medford thing and we really should be there. It would be kind of nuts for us not to be there unless we really couldn't drum up anybody to do it. So between the two, harvest your energy seems to be the higher priority.

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I will say like the Tufts community. I'm kind of leaning towards maybe let's not do Tufts Community Day this year. It's nice. It's like a lot of kids come because there are a lot of kid-oriented activities. So that's kind of a nice aspect of it. But it does, like, necessitate doing something that's a little more interactive and thought out rather than just like handing out information. And it is, one thing that is a little different about that is that it's a really good networking opportunity for like to like make connections with people outside of Medford and within Tufts. So And the other thing is with any one of these, even if we don't have a table, you can still go to them and talk to people and bring some materials to hand out and stuff like that. So that's another way that we could participate.

[Emily O'Brien]: I mean, if we had people enough people interested, it would be great to do all of them. But I don't want that to turn into like, Pat has to do all the work for all three of these things. And then we barely have anybody else who can make it for enough time.

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: yeah okay so part of it i think like i think kind of what i'm hearing is let's sign up for um mystic river celebration and harvest your energy um go with those two i think like the way that like things have typically worked in the in the past we kind of keep it casual i think i can I can commit to getting our materials there and setting up and stuff. It always works out that other people come by and help out. If anybody who's able to commit now or in the next couple of weeks, just let me know and then I'll schedule it out. And I do, we should think about like what do we want to promote? What's your message? What do we want to highlight? Um, I think we do have our display materials with the maps. We don't have a lot of stuff to hand out or give away right now. Um, although we could, I know Ernie's been like, uh, got a lot of the bike light kits and maybe we could do something with those. Um, but I'd probably want to consult with him, um, on.

[Emily O'Brien]: And just see how he's doing by then. Yeah. Gaston?

[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, I just wanted to ask maybe Lily. So if the comprehensive plan would be released by some of these events, it would be great to address how the bike commission and the city with the biking plan would sort of dovetail into the comprehensive plan, the overall kind of city plan If the release, the official release will happen around then, I'm not sure, but I'm assuming it will, at least like for the Harvard University Festival. So if there's going to be some promotion about the comprehensive plan, it would be nice to sort of, you know, we as the bike commission, how are we going to build upon the comprehensive plan to address biking for the city?

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: That is a great question. I actually don't know, but I can find out what the timeline is for the final draft of the comprehensive plan. I know that the draft for public comment is already out, but I don't know when they expect to finalize it. But part of what Amy and I are strategizing about for the bike plan is figuring out exactly, as you said, ways to piggyback off of it and make sure that they're linking up. Yeah. I actually, I don't know when the final draft will be, but I will find out and get back to you.

[Emily O'Brien]: I had another thought, which, um, and I have not finished my portion of this, but a while back, um, I met with Gaston and Ellery. A couple of other people. Um, and we were talking about filling in some more information on the energy environment website. Um, kind of giving people a little bit more like nuts and bolts details about how to go about figuring out how you get around in things other than your own personal car. And so my portion of it is writing up things like how do you find a bikeable route using Google Maps? How do you set it so that your phone can give you directions? How do you carry your phone so that you can see it? How do you figure out a multimodal route kind of just all of these all of these like little nuts and bolts details that somebody who none of them is a huge thing by itself but somebody who is considering you know riding their bike to the subway or riding their bike to the grocery store for the first time or trying to figure out an alternative to driving to work some of the time, there's just all of these little details. So if that material does get posted on the website, that would be something that would be useful to point to. Or if we have other pointers like that, we could make our own postcards that give kind of either postcards that give bullet points, or postcards that give bullet points on one side and a map of alternate routes through Medford on the other side or something like that. And that wouldn't be, if it's a postcard-sized map of Medford, it's not going to be really enough to actually follow that map. But if there's a link to our website that has a link to a Google map, where actually you can follow it. then that would be something that we could think about. And I can start, I can get some of that together when I finish writing up what I was writing up already.

[Jenny Graham]: I feel like another thing that I hope I would like to get information out is the state passed the new e-bike law and e-bike rebates, and I don't necessarily know when there'll be information on how someone can use that, but I feel like That's always a lot of people don't know that just happened.

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, actually, you know, one thing I forgot about Harvester Energy is we're going to actually rep for MassBike at that. I said I would do that. And that might be a really good opportunity to, like, tell people about the e-bike bill and e-bike rebates and things like that. Because that's an issue that MassBike really took the leadership role on. So yeah, kind of studying up on that, making sure that we have some answers would be good.

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I'll jump in here to say I'm meeting up with Galen of MassBike in early September for another event. And I'll ask him if he has any literature or postcards or any kind of stuff all ready to go, because that very well may be something that they have already talking about the e-bike rebates. I knew that past, but I don't even know the details. So if they have that and can give that to us for the festival, that would be great.

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, that would be terrific. Actually, if you're connecting with him and have an opportunity, he said he would give some stickers and maybe we could do bike lights. But if it was convenient for you to get those materials then, that might be a rather useful thing to do at that point.

[Jenny Graham]: Absolutely, I'd be happy to.

[Emily O'Brien]: So I guess we're going to sign up for Harvest Your Energy and Mystic River Celebration. And you'll get some, Pat and Lily, you'll get some stuff from MassBike about that. Pat also just put in the chat, one thing we could do for the Mystic River Celebration is another DIY bike rodeo on the path between Winthrop and Whole Foods. That sounds like fun and I was, I might also expand that to say, if, since we sort of at the last minute we're trying to throw together some bike rides to the farmers market without really quite enough time to publicize it appropriately. Any of these might be a thing that people can start thinking about if you want to lead rides to, from, around any, either of these events. This might, we might want to start thinking about that sooner rather than later too. Rides or convoys or whatever. Something like a ride from the end of Harvest Your Energy over to Medford Brewing or something or to ice cream or whatever. But that might be good to think about now.

[Peter Calves]: Yes.

[Milva McDonald]: On it.

[Peter Calves]: While we're on the convoy topic, do you want to?

[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if you'll take a walk in right now.

[Peter Calves]: Yeah.

[Milva McDonald]: Um, I, I lead a convoy of one from Wellington on Mondays and Fridays, uh, to downtown Boston as part of like Boston bike unions convoy thing. And, uh, I have no clue how to publicize it, but I'd like some company, I mean, from anyone, but preferably like from people who don't.

[Emily O'Brien]: But I really needs to go there. Not from somebody who just like, Oh, I'll go right downtown and then go home and go back to work in my, well, no, I, I worked downtown anyways, so it's okay.

[Milva McDonald]: I'm just doing my normal route, but yeah, maybe if like Medford like advisory commission could help share that on their social media. That'd be cool.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, is there a website or a link or someplace that people would go to get information about that?

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it's on Boston Bike Unions that they made a website about it. I can have Peter. Oh, that's great. Yeah.

[Emily O'Brien]: I saw something about that on Facebook, and I was going to try to share it to the Medford Bike Commission page, and then Facebook was making it stupid, and I didn't.

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I did. Actually, I've shared, Peter, I have shared, he now has access to the Medford Bikes Facebook page, so he can post stuff up on that. I also shared the Twitter and Instagram logins.

[Peter Calves]: Yes. After tonight, I will make use of that.

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, so if you, yeah, if you wanted to go ahead and like, like, you know, do a post on the convoys, that'd be terrific.

[Peter Calves]: Yeah, I mean, you're just, you're leading Monday, Friday, do they have people?

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, there's someone named Jack leading Tuesday, Wednesday. There's technically no one leading Thursday, but if, you know, if someone wants it on Thursday, all they have to do is come find me.

[Peter Calves]: Yeah, so you're going to be biking in from approximately Wellington on Thursdays anyway.

[Emily O'Brien]: Can we add this to the bike commission website to somewhere, especially with the green line, green line, orange line?

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's the idea that it's only during the orange line shutdown. I have not committed to Mondays and Fridays for the rest of my life.

[Peter Calves]: Yeah, it's part of Boston Cyclist Union's response to the orange line shutdown.

[Milva McDonald]: Right, and I know there must be like some people from Medford who commute from Wellington or take a bus to commute from Wellington, but it's, you know, it's mostly not everyone, right? Because there's plenty of people in Medford who live nowhere near it and plenty of people who don't work downtown. So it's very hard to find the few people who actually might need that.

[Emily O'Brien]: Right. Yeah, I think that's, I hope we, I mean, it would be good to put something on MVEC website. I always feel like the problem with Facebook is you can easily be diluted into thinking that everybody is on it and everybody sees it.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. But in general, people in our, our area are not necessarily on like the Medford Facebook groups.

[Peter Calves]: Don't know why. The general East Medford area is not on Facebook as much. All right.

[Milva McDonald]: That's my two cents. Bye, everyone.

[Emily O'Brien]: Oh, that's great. If you can stay in touch about leading rides to from around.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, let's let's do like a, you know, after party kind of situation here. I think that'll work a little bit better than a convoy.

[Peter Calves]: Yeah. I think, because then you already have the people around.

[Emily O'Brien]: Right. Yeah. Stick around. Stick around and come have ice cream or beer with us. Yeah.

[Jenny Graham]: Sounds great.

[Emily O'Brien]: So our next topic is the possibility of Vision Zero for Medford. I think this is just opening a conversation. And I think this is also Jared's suggestion, and he's not here. But I think this is a great conversation to start having. So I don't have the details in front of me of everything that that usually entails. And I don't know how much that involves changing statutes and how difficult that might or might not be. But if anybody has other thoughts.

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I actually have done some work in this area trying to figure out what it would take to adopt Vision Zero for Medford and I've made up kind of a little bit of a roadmap. I wasn't really like I know about Vision Zero but I wasn't really familiar about the what does it take so it's kind of several different steps. And they all seem feasible it doesn't really seem like a lot of like you know statutes or ordinances necessarily need to be changed but one of the stepping stones is collecting data and kind of creating a high injury network map so that kind of resources can be be prioritized to places where they're needed the most. This has, I'm just going to kind of give a very brief top-level overview because there are sort of sub steps. You would also need to create a vision zero task force comprised of representatives from the community and also representatives from the city. There would need to be a formal statement of support from the mayor and the city council. And then there would need to be a vision zero action plan, which is sort of interesting because I feel like if we are developing a bicycle network plan for the city, this is potentially something that could really be developed kind of at the same time, or at least like, you know, some of the same resources and sort of points. So that's a major component of getting the vision zero status. And then a lot of this is kind of setting very clear goals and timelines with specifics. And then I think the next step is kind of just like having it be officially recognized by the Vision Zero kind of collective or authority. So that's kind of an overview.

[Emily O'Brien]: Thanks, that's really helpful. I know we can't, like, we can't vote on it tonight. Gaston?

[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, I quickly wanted to say that. So I, so in Vision Zero and sort of related to the bike plan stuff. So I've been sending a few emails. I think unfortunately Lily wasn't included because this is like kind of old. I started probably four months ago. Tim McGibbon was there, then Todd Blake was there too. And I think I started with Jared at the beginning, but then I think Emily, you were in one of the last ones. So, and for this, like, so we, what I think would be the most productive way to proceed for Vision Zero, the bike plan, et cetera, sort of a complete streets plan. And then finally an ordinance that sort of like hooks up the city to basically follow what's on the plan. is to work in the disciplinary. So I've been to, you know, talking with people from WOC-Metcorp and they're super interested. The environment committee is interested as well. And of course we are interested too. So there have been some discussion about forming some sort of working group to sort of work on all of these issues together. So combining, you know, the multimodality, walking, biking, environment as well as sustainability to get this sort of like complete streets plan. then it leads to an ordinance. So I'm just, you know, wondering what everyone thought it would be like a good idea to sort of how we could collaborate with, you know, other committees. My understanding is that the Complete Streets Committee has not been meeting at least for several months. When I inquire about that, I don't get an answer. So I'm not sure if someone has an official response about that, but yeah, so maybe, You know people that are interested from from each of these groups to work together, and then you know we just need to figure out how to best. work together with CD as well, because, as we mentioned, ultimately, I think the Mayor needs to sort of commit to it and the City Council need to commit to it and, of course, City staff also needs to work hand in hand with us.

[Emily O'Brien]: So is this something where we need to start by asking for a meeting with the mayor and or members of city council and kind of have them, you know, put them in the position where they're asking us to put together this working group or do we assemble ourselves a working group with some of these other groups like you mentioned and start there first?

[Gaston Fiore]: I was gonna follow the latter. So meaning we just form a group of interested people and then we sort of request the city council and the mayor, but that's not the only approach. So I'm open to, I think as long as we have like enough political mass to work on this, but I mean, good people get busy and stuff. good enough number of people. So when someone gets busy, and you can get taken over by someone else, then I think it would be it would be a good start. But I can tell that there's several people outside the biking commission that are very, very interested in this as well.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I would imagine that that walk Medford and and a number of the other commissions would be would certainly be interested. Since we can't vote on saying that we want to send somebody to start assembling this working group, I wonder if that means that maybe Gaston, if you're in the position, since you're also connected with WAC Medford, maybe you can be the point person and any of us who are interested in participating should go to you. And that's kind of the first step. It's not something we can vote on since we don't have quorum tonight. But I think that's certainly a thing that anybody here who's interested in participating in can get in touch with you and get the ball rolling that way.

[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, that sounds good. I was going to contact a few people from here and outside the commission. But if anyone is interested in this, just email me. and I will put people together and then send an email and then we can sort of meet either online or in person, maybe at the library soon to sort of discuss how to best move this forward.

[Emily O'Brien]: And just a reminder, I don't think that this will probably be a problem given that people have busy lives, but we have to make sure that there is not a quorum number of bike commission people on one of those email chains or in one of those meetings. But that sounds good. Next up, I see bike lights project update, if information is available. I think Ernie did send out Something about that recently. But I think that's also maybe should wait until Ernie's ready to. to talk about it himself. I don't think it's super pressing until we have events where we need to distribute them. And we'll know more by then. Pat, does that sound right to you? Or do you have more to add?

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I don't have too much more information about it. And I think, yeah, let's wait. It's really been his project, so he should give me the update on it.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. So our next item is bike infrastructure improvement updates. And this includes Summer Street by Barry Park injury, Winthrop Street repainting, Maine and Medford repainting. And I just want to also say, Daniel, thank you for being on the ball and getting this all together when I was completely out of town and out of touch. And thank you for getting this up and out and running. No problem. I guess, Lily, do you have updates on those spots or does anybody have other details?

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: So I can definitely speak to Winthrop Street and Main at least as far as those proposed bike lanes were passed at the traffic commission meeting. So everything went well there. And there was also a bike lane on Steve Miller Drive up to the high school. Everything there was passed as well. I do not have the designs to hand. I can't remember if Amy already shared them or not, but there were a couple of tweaks to the design on the stretch of Main Street that she needs to do before she can kind of have something finalized. So she's out this week, but hopefully we can get those shown at the next meeting. I think she did send them to the list. Oh, she did? OK, great. Perfect. So everything went well there. I actually am not, I apologize if I'm out of the loop, I'm not familiar with the injury on Summer Street. So does anyone else have more info on that?

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I'm sorry, I put that on, but I thought, Pat, that wasn't something that you had emailed me?

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: No, I don't know about that.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I'm sorry, I might have added that. And I'm trying to keep straight in my head where I saw that. It might have been actually something that Jared emailed to me.

[Emily O'Brien]: So, if there was something from Jared about it.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Oh, I'm sorry, yes, it was by Jared. Noted that Todd is aware of the issue, but I saw someone posted on Facebook describing her son who was injured at Summer Street by Barry Park, hit by a car. They added flex posts to help a little, but this street needs a redesign. I know the master plan process is underway, but we really need to fix this street with some real traffic calming.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, that's the spot where there were the movable flex posts, and then they put the permanent flex posts, which immediately got squashed. And now they have, and then there was nothing for a while, and now they have the movable ones there again.

[Jenny Graham]: That's a street I take almost every day. One of my favorite sort of quiet, well, should be a quiet cut through. Problem is the drivers take it as a cut through, and they go very fast. And it's, yeah, it kind of needs much more permanent flux posts slash bollards, curb out, something to kind of slow it down. Yeah.

[Gaston Fiore]: So where is this? Which intersection?

[Jenny Graham]: Summer Street and Walnut, I think. Yeah. Walnut's also a good cut through street for bikes.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, that's how I go home too.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, that's also my dream contraflow route.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. I go this circuitous way that's different on the way in from on the way home because of the one-way streets. It's the best main street alternative too. Yeah, well, that's that's ultimately that that route that we were talking about that the continuation of it and up to. It involves. Involves that Tufts parking lot in that path by Tufts in the private ways by Tufts in the one way Street by Tufts.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, but some are Street. I know drivers really. Motor yeah, yeah I. I want to be surprised if they're well over 30.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Here's a question. I know that George Street has the four-way stop up where College intersects. I don't use Summer Street a lot. Does Summer have any stop signs down at Stretch?

[Emily O'Brien]: I kind of don't think so, because it's the larger cut through and all the side streets coming off of it have stop signs. And I think those ones actually do have them. They actually are They're not completely left with nothing. At least all the ones that I've noticed. But I think that is a case where Summer Street is thought of as the cut through and the other ones are the side streets. So Summer doesn't have stop signs until it gets to Winthrop.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I realize that this might not be for this meeting, but this would be traffic commission, but I keep wondering, because I do remember going down there in the past when I used to live in South Medford, would stop signs near that quasi four-way intersection with Gorley and Walnut make sense? I guess simply a thought.

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: I don't think so, because they're not aligned in a way that it's really a four-way. And I don't think that you'd be able to, I'm not quite familiar with all of the regulations around that, but I don't think it lends itself to that.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, all the side streets on one side and the other side of Summer, I think in a number of places, are just offset a little bit. But it is notable how much of a difference it makes when those movable posts are there versus when they get moved out of the way or when they get knocked over. I wonder, I know this isn't really done around here, and I don't know what the regulations about this would be, But one thing you see a lot in Germany anyway, is they have a lot of like low curbs that are maybe an inch or two high and they're rounded. And if you're in a car and you drive over it, you'll definitely feel it. And it's definitely noticeable as something that you shouldn't be crossing. But it is also low enough that if you're on a bike, you can actually just steer over it if you're paying attention to what you're doing. You don't have to be, You don't have to be like the kind of person who can do a sideways bunny hop up onto a curb just to ride over it. Or even the way that the cycle tracks on Beacon Street and Somerville in one direction at least have just a raised, the cycle track is higher than the street, but lower than the sidewalk. And there's just a little bit of a ramp between it. So again, if you were in a car and you drove over it, you would feel it. But it's not so much that you couldn't, like if you wanted to just steer your bike back and forth over it, you wouldn't have to be like any particularly fabulous bike handler to do that.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, the mountable curve is what they called it.

[Emily O'Brien]: So I wonder if there's a if there's a possible treatment that could be essentially like a really little long skinny speed hump. around that corner. So it's not even like the whole surface of it is higher, that there's just like a little ridge. And that's not something we do around here. But I wonder if that could be a more economical compromise option to help improve some of these places. It would be more economical than building the whole thing higher. And it wouldn't prevent a truck that needed to get around that corner from making the turn. Because you can still drive over it, but it does give you the impression that you shouldn't.

[Gaston Fiore]: You mentioned the serrated kind of surface. So in Somerville, I've seen this multiple times where it's kind of a downgraded version of what you just described. I would prefer your version because I think it's a little bit more kind of violent for the car, meaning like, oh, this is not good, like I need to get out of here. But in Somerville, they put like a serrated kind of surface on the corner. So as you kind of, it's the same idea. So if the car turns, it's obliged to sort of follow a very tight radius. And if you go over that, then it just like vibrates the whole suspension.

[Jenny Graham]: Oh, I know what you mean.

[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, that's in summer building. There's one, I was thinking, look, there's one on Medford Street and South Street.

[Emily O'Brien]: Central Ave too.

[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, in front of Forum Lab, there's a new one there. They made it probably like a few months ago. And it's Yeah, I don't know how well it works. Your approach, I think it's a little bit, you know, cars would stay away from it a little bit better. But this is another way that maybe, you know, since it's in Somerville, maybe, you know, we can try it here in Medford.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I know this is not really an update on any of these things, but. But We know that this is an important spot, given that it's an important side street route if you want to avoid Main Street, not to mention that there's a freaking playground. So there's kids who want to go play and cross the street. So we should definitely keep an eye on what happens there. Um? Lily, did you have other? Updates on either of those other spots.

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I don't have any updates on the other spots, but one of the other ideas that I was thinking about that is sometimes implemented, and I know it exists in a couple places, at least in Cambridge and Somerville, is chicanes that you can create by basically flipping the parking to alternating sides. And I don't know of any place where this has been deployed in Medford, so I don't know if that's a precedent that's already been set, but it's, you know, obviously have to get through the traffic commission, but it's basically no cost because you just flip to one side. So that's another traffic calming thing that has worked.

[Emily O'Brien]: There's a spot like that on Lowell Street, Becca knows where it is, in Somerville. And they also, I think they did that first. And as far as I could tell, it didn't, Well, they changed the side of the parking and they did something like that. It didn't slow people down much and they ended up putting in two speed humps. And those actually slow people down. It's kind of amazing how many people feel the need to floor the accelerator in between the two speed humps.

[Jenny Graham]: It's actually therapeutic to watch. Yeah, it's like, well, when they get to the speed hump and then they're like, oh.

[Emily O'Brien]: It's like you do, I know you, most of you drive the same way every day. You know it's there. Do you really need to go as fast as you can in between the two only to slam on the brakes when you get to the second one?

[Jenny Graham]: Columbia Street and Cambridge is also kind of another, I think, example of chicanes.

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, that's actually what I was thinking of. I used to ride on Columbia Street in Cambridge every day, and I always chose that route because it seemed more calm. because of the chicanes. I also ride on Lowell Street almost every day, and I'm very gratified when people have to slow down for those speed humps. They are very steep speed humps. I'm not complaining.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. I'm so happy about those speed humps. I feel like the chicane thing is a little bit of a double-edged sword, though, because when it works, it's really nice to have people driving slower and a little bit more calmly. But when it doesn't work, you have these spots where you have to get, you know, you have to get around an obstacle and you have people coming up from behind you who don't want to let you. So it's one of those things like bump outs are kind of like this, that when they work they're great. And when they don't work, it's like another, it's another thing making your life harder. And it's, you know, it's maybe more stressful to ride there than if it wasn't there. And they can kind of do both depending on who's behind you.

[Gaston Fiore]: So I have a question related to this issue on the bike plan. So for someone that is a transportation engineer or similar, is there I'm assuming there are templates for this. So that little roundabout that Rebecca sent, for example, the great example. So is there a way to sort of, you know, adopt some sort of like best templates and then on the bike plan, based on the intersection dimensions and stuff, then just make sure that, you know, it fits and obviously, you know, the roundabout can be smaller and bigger, but is there a way to sort of, know that we abide by a set of you know the best standards um and then it makes it very easy to know you know well in this intersection the next time needs to be completely redone then we're gonna do this and then we're following standard blah blah blah blah which is the state of the art safest um you know that there is is it possible to do something like that or are we gonna always be in a case by case basis um in terms of like when we when that needs to be redone we'll see what we do.

[Peter Calves]: I think we talked about something similar to that a few months ago when we were talking about something kind of similar to a cycling safety ordinance for Metro or a street safety ordinance for Metro talking about when a certain type of street gets done.

[Gaston Fiore]: But, for example, that's why this thing that we're talking about right now is a great example because, so Emily mentioned, you know, what's using germite, those little bumps in Argentina, they're also used. Then I mentioned the serrated kind of, you know, to make the radius a little bit more stringent than just having a line. And then Rebecca sent the mini roundabout. So is there a way to, it seems that there's multiple solutions. So I think it would be very, you know, it would be ideal to sort of like already have a plan on which of those options, for example, you would choose. And I'm assuming again, that someone has studied this and then based on the intersection dimensions, then we know that this, you know, the little roundabout is gonna work. And then let's just pick that one, for example, rather than, well, we'll see what we pick when we get there.

[Emily O'Brien]: So one thing I don't know about how many of these things fall into this category, but I think there's a lot of things that Somerville and Cambridge are doing that are considered experimental. And so they're not on that list yet. And a lot of these things that we're saying, oh, we like how this works, we don't like how this works, are things that we're hoping will be on lists like that in the future, but they're implemented to see how they work now. I think in the past, we've been a little bit less, and Medford has been less inclined to do experimental things unless Cambridge and Somerville are doing them first.

[Peter Calves]: Yeah, I mean, there's definitely an act out that is what Rebecca linked to that has a lot of things that a lot of cities are doing around the country, but are not necessarily approved by Federal Highway. And to the extent the city will want to take that on at an experimental state, the appetite may not be as strong as for a Cambridge or Summerville. I mean, they're great and they're standard. And speaking as a transportation engineer, we go off them as much as we do federal standards when we're doing urban work. But that depends on what Todd and DPW are willing to take on.

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, there is actually precedent for installing something experimental, which is the bike box on the intersection of College Ave and Boston Ave. And that was done a few years ago, I would say like four or five years ago. So that was successful, and it is something that's been done before.

[Peter Calves]: So yeah, I mean, there is precedent for this, but that would be something to talk about with Todd and Amy, and probably with DPW as well.

[Gaston Fiore]: And NatCo is, it would be kind of the experimental set of templates that you would say- Yes, they have a lot of the more,

[Peter Calves]: Kind of forward looking stuff. Although, I mean, when you talk, when you get into, I mean, kind of for more of the like street stuff, NACTO is good, but I mean, getting into bike lanes and varying degrees of separation, and we've got that already at home with Matt Mastad has probably the best separated bike lane guide out there right now. So.

[Emily O'Brien]: So I think that is actually our whole agenda, which I know we're kind of, we can have conversations about things, but we can't really take specific actions tonight. Does anybody have other additions or requests or input to things that we've already covered? Um, requests for agenda items for the next meeting. Um, I think I think, uh, touching back onto the vision zero idea, um, getting an update on that might be a good thing to add for next time. Um, and if we have a quorum, we could vote on a statement in favor of that. Um,

[Jenny Graham]: I think at a previous meeting we talked about making a neighbor ways working group, but we needed quorum for that. I wanted to put that back on the agenda for next meeting.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. I think that is also a thing that any of us who have ideas about that, we can all start by making our own Google Maps that show where we think neighborhoods could go, should go. And then if we have it on the next meeting, we can all, those of us who have come up with things like that, we can share then. That's something that people are interested in doing that and presenting next time. We don't need Quorum to go home and make things on Google Maps.

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I'll add that from a planning and network planning perspective, that would be very helpful for Amy and I to kind of help see what you guys are thinking about for low stress streets. So anything of that nature that you want to share would be awesome.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, and I think also I mentioned maybe at the last meeting that I was looking at a map that Somerville had put out that made me start thinking about the parts of Medford near Somerville in a different way, because we tend to get so focused on getting around Medford, and we forget that Medford's really small, actually, and most people go on trips that cross town lines all the time.

[Jenny Graham]: HAB-Juliette Boone, COB.: : full conversation on Facebook about us a couple streets on the Somerville medford border where it abruptly changed and everyone was like you have to talk to medford about that, but it cut across. HAB-Juliette Boone, COB.: : Very slightly and so yeah I put that on my sort of list of streets to kind of think about for.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, so I think that's that's another thing that if, as we're thinking about this, you know, maybe think about not just where do you get from your neighborhood to all the other neighborhoods in Medford, but think about where you get from your neighborhood to places in Arlington, Somerville, Malden, etc. But that can be our collective homework. If we don't have anything else, we might actually end early. Do we have a movement to adjourn?

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Motion to adjourn. Seconded.

[Emily O'Brien]: All in favor?

[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Aye.

[Emily O'Brien]: Aye. All right, meeting adjourned 14 minutes early, 24 minutes early.