[Denis MacDougall]: might stumble over a few things. So on July 16th, 2022, a law was signed, a supplement of COVID-19 fiscal appropriations was signed in extension, extending through March 31st, 2023 of certain authorizations relating to public meetings. This new law extends remote meeting provisions of the governor's March 12th, 2020 executive order, suspending certain provisions in open meeting law. In accordance with the 2020 executive order, this meeting of the City of Medford Bicycling Advisory Commission is being conducted totally via remote participation using Zoom, including community members and the public. The use of Zoom complies with the law's requirement to provide live, adequate, alternative means of public access to the deliberations of the public body, instead of holding meetings in a public place that is open and physically accessible to the public. Persons who would like to listen to or view this meeting while on
[Jared Powell]: You went on mute, Dennis, there for a minute. Yeah, Dennis. Mute without intentionality, I suppose.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.
[Denis MacDougall]: I get the language in that mail. They change it on me.
[Jared Powell]: Unfortunately, we only heard the first half of it.
[Peter Calves]: Oh, for god's sake. It's OK. It was closer to the first 2 3rds. Sorry, the first 2 3rds.
[Jared Powell]: We could see you talking, but we couldn't hear it, I'm afraid.
[Denis MacDougall]: Well, I think that's the most important part of the date, so when we're good through having these meetings. And so I will say that the end part said basically if you We've got a copy of this meeting, it'll be available on the city's public access cable channels, you know, email, I mean, email website very shortly. So you can read the whole thing and hear me only give the first two thirds of the notice.
[Jared Powell]: Sounds good. Thanks, Dennis. All right, well, with that, we can call to order the July meeting of the Medford Bicycle Advisory Commission. Thanks for joining, everyone. As you, I'm still hearing an echo on my end. I'll pretend like I can't hear it as best I can. As you can tell, I am not Emily, who would normally be leading these calls as chair, but she's out tonight. I forget if it's a, potentially a recital, if I'm not mistaken. So good luck to her on her very impressive musical endeavors. All right. Let's see, Daniel, would you mind doing a roll call for us?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Sure. Jared Powell.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Present.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Patrick Binnon.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Here.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Bruce Kulik. Emily O'Brien is not here. B. Dan Fairchild. I do not see. Confused. Nope. Ernie Monnier. who I believe also told me he was not going to be able to make this. Doug Packer. Did I hear Doug? No, I don't see Doug in the meeting. Peter Cowles. Here. Gaston Fiore, who I do not see. Daniel Nusselmuller, present. Dana Phillips, who I do not see. And Rebecca Wright.
[Jenny Graham]: Here.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Okay, great. So I guess that's six of us.
[Jared Powell]: Yes, six. One shy of a quorum, I'm afraid. But we'll still do our best. All right, who else do we have on the line here? Lily, Amy, Dennis? Anyone care to say hello? Welcome.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Hi there, Amy Ingalls, transportation engineer for the city of Medford.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Hi everyone, I'm Lily. I'm a transportation intern with the city of Medford and a student at Tufts.
[Jared Powell]: Wonderful, welcome back. Welcome back. Uh, let's see, we don't need to approve the minutes because we don't have a quorum with which to do so, I suppose. So you've got a month's reprieve on, on reviewing them. Um, but last time we did talk about circle the square updates, infrastructure updates, the master plan process. And also we chatted for a while about complete streets and potentially a safe cycling ordinance as well for, for everyone's reminder. So I think we can go ahead and jump into announcements here. First up, the website domain. Pat, you don't have to present this, but I think you know the most about it.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, so that expired and I re-upped it for 10 years, so we won't have to deal with it for a while.
[Jared Powell]: Terrific, thank you. Is there someone else who can do that so that it doesn't come knocking on your door again in 10 years?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I think it's associated with the Medford Bikes Gmail address. So presumably in 10 years, we'll get another notification. And whoever is in charge at that point can take care of it.
[Jared Powell]: Perfect. Sounds good. Thanks for doing that. Let's see. There's a couple of other things on my list here. One that I wanted to chat about was a West Medford resident who lives on Boston Ave. John Levine actually had a project lately. Amy, this may be something that you're familiar with. I imagine you helped if I had to guess. But he was a little concerned about traffic speeds on High Street around Boston Ave. put out a survey in his neighborhood and tried to get people to participate with, I think, a mailer and kind of some door-to-door, good old-fashioned door-to-door outreach, and got quite a few survey responses, I think, about 150 or so, 100, 150, something like that, getting people to basically agree with his request to see what the city can do about slowing down traffic speeds there. And I know that Todd was in contact with him, I haven't seen it yet but my understanding is the city put out some kind of traffic calming measures posts things like that maybe some signage to slow people down a little bit. I don't know if that's something that you could speak to Amy or.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: I'm Todd definitely can give you the all the details of the whole story of how it all unfolded because he was speaking directly with the community member but yeah we put out there had been previously had been some of the calm looper cones they're like the tall skinny cones that you can like move around we'd had those outlets. season. And so we're kind of in the process of putting out, re-putting cones back out for this season. And some are getting changed a little bit, you know, depending on feedback from the community. Some not going back at all because of a lot of negative feedback. But I think this one is going back or went back in a slightly less intense version of the original. I think it's pretty minimal, but it does kind of like help that right turn onto Boston Ave from High Street to be a slower, smaller radius turn. Because I think that was one of the movements that people were really flying through and scaring people when they're trying to cross.
[Jared Powell]: Sure. Bruce, I see you there.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, so I live not very far from there so I drive and ride and walk through there quite frequently. My recollection is the last go round, the biggest impact had to do with narrowing the lanes on Grove Street approaching high street, as well as narrowing the lanes on Boston Avenue approaching high street. And that seemed to serve no purpose, frankly, because there are many cases where people would queue up for a left turn and you need to be able to get get past them on the right for example to make your right turn before they could make their left turn, and so forth. Meanwhile, the. HAB-Michael Leccesereeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee quite rapidly. And so the other part is as people come through this kind of an S curve at that location, and people certainly are going faster than the 25 mile an hour speed limit, so a little bit of narrowing, I guess, might help there. On the other hand, That's not necessarily beneficial for cycling through that area because the narrowing makes it difficult to basically traverse that in the lane at that point, especially if you're concerned about high speed traffic. So I'd like to see I mean, I don't remember seeing anything recently that was done. It might have just been that I missed it. or whatever, but yeah, clearly there has to be some sort of look at that to figure out what more permanent infrastructure could be put in there, but that also accommodates cycling easily.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, it's part of the reason that we start with those like movable cones is to so we can get the can try to figure out what the best configuration is and get feedback and change it as we need to, in the hopes of yeah, doing something more permanent in the future. I know that, you know, High Street is, you know, we want to do what we did to other parts of High Street where there's bike lanes, do that as much as possible on High Street. So that would be something we'd take into consideration before creating any kind of like permanent design.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Is there anything in the works to reduce crossing distances at the moment at that because I know that that's a pretty long cross to get across Boston have.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: So the original. configuration that was out last year for, I'm not sure how long, did kind of do that. I believe it kind of created some like, quote unquote, bump outs with the cones and some paint. But a lot of people responded negatively to that. Not to say that we could try it again. Any type of stuff like this is still relatively new in Medford. So maybe after another year, people seeing it other places, people can start getting more comfortable with it. I'm not sure. But yeah, that is definitely one of the things that we're trying to mitigate there.
[Peter Calves]: If you don't mind me asking, what was the negative feedback? Did they not, was it because it was in the way of something or was it just... I haven't seen it. They want to take the turn faster because I don't know that I think that, oh, I want to take this turn faster than I should safely take the turn. Great argument for not doing it.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, all of it but the most negative feedback I heard had to do with the approach of Grove Street to Boston Avenue and the approach of Boston, I'm sorry, approach of Grove Street to high street in the approach to Boston Avenue, high street, which have been narrowed. mostly to get what you described as nearing the crossing distance of Boston Avenue. But it struck me that there would be another way, which would be to increase the island while still permitting the egress lanes from Boston Avenue. For example, Grove Street's not so bad right there to cross. But Boston Avenue is, especially because of the real sweep on the right turn from High Street, that's probably the most treacherous part.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: I didn't see all the negative feedback. Some of it, I think, happened before I started working for the city. But what I had seen was, I don't know, not terribly constructive, I guess I can say that. But any negative feedback, even if we don't like the reasons, are still negative feedback. These are still constituents and residents of the city. So we still have to consider that in our bigger picture.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I think I heard some as well that was maybe just lack of familiarity with that sort of thing and confusing lane narrowing attempts with creating extra lanes and people tried to like go around some of them on the right when they were intended to to narrow the main traffic lane. So people just kind of slalom through them. I think a little bit rather than kind of staying in the main traffic lane.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah.
[Jared Powell]: less than ideal. Permanent solutions will probably help us avoid that a little bit. Harder to avoid curves.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Exactly.
[Jared Powell]: Well, thanks for working on that. Can I ask Amy, you mentioned feedback from the community there. I know, you know, John did the survey effort, but is there other ways that we can be helpful with getting that feedback? Like, how do you get feedback when you're working on a project like this? Like, what can we do to make sure that the feedback that you get, I suppose, is a reasonable representation of the users of that area and not simply, you know, the people may be most likely to be upset by it?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Right. I mean, The survey idea by the resident you mentioned, that was great. I mean, I know not everyone is willing to necessarily put in the time and effort to do that, but that does help create a more representative picture, I think. Of course, who knows how he selected who he talked to, those types of things. But really, most of the feedback we get is just directly from the person, the email, either the mayor or someone's email address that they have. the city or they do see click fix or something like that. Those are the two main ways and so we just kind of, you know, talk to them through email or sometimes phone calls as well.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Sorry, my brain just shut off there.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: It happens.
[Jared Powell]: Okay, thank you. Yeah, I'm just thinking out loud. If there is something that you need feedback about, maybe something in particular that a constituent requests or something, that may be something that we might be able to help solicit feedback on. I mean, obviously, the people who might be attentive to our issues might be biased toward bike things as well. But, you know, we do have, I mean, I at least have experience with that sort of thing. I do a lot of survey work and things for work. So I'm happy to help with that sort of thing.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: It's good to know. Thank you.
[Jared Powell]: Sure. All right. Let's see. Next on the list, Pat, you sent this out. I had it on my notes as well. The Arlington, let's see, Mystic River Path to Minuteman Bikeway Feasibility Study has just been released. Has anyone gotten a chance to look at it or read it? I've gone through it very quickly. I'll post it in the chat. Um, but that's a, those are, that's a project that I think we've talked about a fair amount, right. You know, extending, making a new path that follows kind of the connect the border between Arlington and Medford. Um, and then would create kind of a more Northern connection to the minute man. So they've been through quite a few rounds of public. Uh, feedback and focus groups and things like that. Uh, I know B Dan was on one of the, was on one of the focus groups that they did. for that. And so we've participated as a group and individually, I think, in quite a few of their efforts. But so now they've got a big feasibility study out. It looks great. It looks very nice. It's got lots of nice ideas about separate bike paths where you can fit them and separate walking routes where you can fit them as well. So funding it and designing it, I think, will be kind of the next things. But at least they have a a very nice plan that I know would take a bit of coordination with Medford as well to be able to execute it since it affects some Medford roads. Like High Street, the two rotaries there, that would be, they're proposing a full redesign of that. Let's see, I can probably pull it up here.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: So Todd and I were on the kind of what they call it stakeholder group or whatever we met. I'm not sure how many times a handful of times preparing this and you know, most of, yeah, the study area is Arlington, but as you say, it does border on to Medford and the things that they do and the Arlington partner, you know, will affect what we end up doing here in Medford. And I guess some of the main takeaways that I was able to get from it was that there was a lot of interest and desire to utilize the space for You know when there was extra space or whatever quote unquote utilize the space for different types of users as much as possible try to accommodate different types of bicyclists so like, yes, a separated like shared use path kind of keeping in the the character of other parts of the path system, but also if there's space, as you can see on this slide here, you know, having in-road facilities as well, or at least a shoulder, a paved shoulder for people who want to ride faster. And so having those types of options as much as possible was one of the big major goals, which is nice.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, thank you so much for participating in that. If they're able to execute this, I think it will be significant upgrades to, I mean, it'll be nice to have that extra connection for sure, you know, just to get people more options to get over to the Minuteman and those parts of Arlington. But those are some significant redesigns of really problematic roadways there, which will be really terrific to see. And this sort of thing is obviously kind of a different approach than what they have in, I think, I think I'm reading this right. I'm still new to looking at this document, but it looks like it's primarily still like for these rotaries, for example, just tightening them down and making them conducive to cycle traffic. It doesn't look like these are a separate kind of bike ring road, like a powder house. Am I reading that right, Amy?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, so I think the idea is mostly shared use path crossings. So you can see in the bottom right, the green bike lanes ramp up onto the sidewalk level. And then it's shared crossings through both circles.
[Bruce Kulik]: I have to say offhand that this design is not satisfactory for bicycle use. Basically, the bicycles are put up onto the sidewalk with sharp radiuses sharing with pedestrian traffic. And I'd have to say that I would object to this particular configuration as planned in this document.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Well, I mean, it's a very, very high level preliminary concept, for one thing. So the angles and stuff will be obviously massaged and optimized. I think what they were trying to do with this graphic, I believe, is try to come up with more of a quick, quicker solution than like a full reconstruction of this area.
[Bruce Kulik]: And the motivation for that was pointing out pointing out a couple of myths that I've always never been fond of with this sort of a design is. there's not really good access from the bike lanes proposed on the bridge onto the so-called shared use paths, which are actually only sidewalks. I mean, it needs to have a much better flow that still allows the protection that people desire, but allows also the throughput of cyclists that are not pedestrians with wheels. That's one of my gripes with exactly this sort of design is that It does get cyclists off the street, but it's really not effective for even moderate speed cycling. I got to be frank about it. That's all.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: All right. But as I was saying, the approach for this was done with the purpose of creating something that they could implement in the near term rather than a full reconstruction, because there is a bridge involved. And if you want to change If you, yeah, reconstructing a bridge is expensive and will, you know, basically happen when it needs to for the bridge, which can be many, many, many years. They're trying to do something that they could kind of do within the footprint of the bridge and the footprint of what is existing out there today. So that's kind of the motivation for this. And it is a, you know, at least the approach of it is a fairly standard type of design in this type of scenario with a single lane roundabout. It's not unusual.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I thought this was interesting, just noticing these kind of the two-way bike routes on both sides of the bridge, I guess.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: That was the whole preserving the bridge as it is, because if you make those two wide shared-use paths, for example, or even sidewalk-level bike lanes, then you're adding weight to the bridge. So what they're trying to do is not do anything that's going to add weight to the bridge and change its load.
[Jared Powell]: Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Would this all be paint then, Amy? Or would this be any type of built up?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: I don't think they specified that, but that part probably, at least most of it, is off of the load bearing section of the bridge, I'm guessing. But that would be part of what they'd have to figure out is where that line is. So it could be potentially paint and maybe I don't know, posts something like Potterhouse or some other kind of vertical object that's not very heavy.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I think I would, I'm going to second Bruce's point. I actually have less of an issue with the way the bridge itself is designed and more the access points to the bridge. it definitely creates a very confusing situation when you are not on the bridge specifically. You end up nixing pedestrian and cycle traffic off the bridge, whereas on the bridge, it seems fine.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that things will probably change a bit once they're getting closer to a real design, and I think we all want to be. stay involved in that process, right, you know, to make sure that we kind of see what we, what we want to see as a part of this. And so obviously this is, I know a lot of work went into it, but it's still, I suspect is fairly preliminary as far as the specifics of the design go.
[Bruce Kulik]: Two things I would support certainly in this, in this design are the crosswalks that have been added across I'll call it Route 60 because it's not High Street, the whole place. Currently, there are no crosswalks at 3 or 7. And the crosswalk to the east of 5 is significantly further up the street. Plus, there aren't any entrance islands that do help slow down and divert the traffic. So I think those are all good features of this particular design.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, absolutely. People blast through these things so fast right now. It's just very easy to have a nice straight shot across it if you're in a, if you're in a car with very little reason to treat it as, as a true roundabout.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Well, one other thing I might point out on the rotary on the Medford side, bottom, let's see in this case, bottom right corner, that is a car directly to the right of where your mouse is right now. I think that that is an auto repair. I don't know if it's been discussed with them, but they have effectively a, I believe this will cut off some of their access. Not that that's necessarily the highest thing on the bicycle advisory's list of concerns, but I would assume that you might run into some real resistance there since they become sort of locked in. I believe, if I know that area correctly.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, we use that gas station from time to time, and right now there's curb cuts, I think almost the whole way, so it is a little bit of a free-for-all, but certainly the design has shown landlocks the northwest corner of their property in a way that If I were the station owner, I would not be very happy about. Again, as you point out, that's not necessarily in our interest. But nonetheless, having designs that are accepted by the community, I think, is in our interest.
[Adam Hurtubise]: And so that is a good point.
[Jared Powell]: Absolutely. Well, we will keep our... I encourage everyone to read this, right? And then maybe... we'll have opportunities to discuss it in more detail once we've absorbed it a little bit. It's certainly worth our time to do so, I think. Thank you, Amy, for participating in that process. I'm excited about some significant improvements here. All right. Let's see. Next up on here, those are all the announcements I had.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Does anyone have anything else? All right, sounds good.
[Jared Powell]: Up next, Farmer's Market. That is tomorrow. Let's see. I'm not sure who's in the best position to talk about this, but I'm guessing it's Peter. Peter and Pat, probably. I think you've got different roles in it, but I think the two of you are both involved.
[Peter Calves]: Yeah, I mean, Leah is the person who organized the Facebook thing is right here.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm here too.
[Jared Powell]: Oh, wonderful. Well, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Let me scoot you into frame here.
[Jared Powell]: Sure, sure. Why don't, why don't you tell us about it then, Leah?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I've posted a very haphazardly on everything is free Medford, looking for volunteers a couple of weeks ago, asking if people who, you know, cycle regularly in Medford would be able to lead some rides from their area of town to the farmer's market. So that maybe people who don't usually ride because they're not sure how to get there safely. would be more okay with doing it in a group. So got some people together. Emily put us on an email thread. We've got a ride in Wellington area that Peter and I are doing, one from South Medford and one that starts in Fulton Heights and goes around to West Medford. So covering like the four corners. with Medford. I'm trying my very best with social media, but I'm not that good at it. So if anyone has any friends they know who might be interested or any Facebook groups they can post the event in, please do so. I just want some people to show up.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, thank you so much for putting that together. We really appreciate it. I'm sure, I'm sure. So we'll have those three rides then. Is anyone else able to attend those or join the convoys?
[Peter Calves]: I believe Daniel is part of the Fulton Heights West Medford crew.
[Jared Powell]: Okay, great.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Pat, I think you're... I'm sorry, I was just gonna say, I can see about getting a few more of my friends to come to that as well. All right, sounds good.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, and I looked at like the routes, like you all had routes planned that you provided on the map as well. So you could kind of see where people are going to be going. So those are going to be useful, I think, for posterity's sake as well, right? We can be sure to share those sorts of things and show people like, hey, it's not just a one-time thing. You can still use that same route in the future. So thanks for putting those together, Leo.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: For the event itself, which runs from three to seven, we're teaming up with Walk Medford. I see Ellery is here, so she'll be at the community table with us. And then I'll be representing both the bike commission and bike to the seat. So I got in touch with Todd and Amy, and they provided some quick updates on various projects that we've got in the works right now. So I was just making little labels to stick on our big pull-down map. So we can highlight a few things around town that are going on, like the Clippership Connector. I looked into that. There aren't really any new developments on that. But we can still talk to people about it and tell them that it's happening. It's coming at some point. And then the Also highlighting the Tufts GLX station Medford Square route, which is progressing. The South Street Contraflow, which is getting some finishing touches. The Winthrop Street draft plan, which is going to be presented to the Traffic Commission on August 16th. So that we could encourage, we haven't seen that yet, but we can encourage people to attend the Traffic Commission meeting. the Route 28 underpass, and then the Mystic Ave bus and bike lane parking, so the Medford portion of Mystic Ave. And then the Salem Street lanes and markings, which were approved by the Traffic Commission a couple months ago. And then blue bikes are coming. So those are kind of the things that I wanted to point out, and I'll mark them up on the map. And then for bike to the sea, I put together a map just showing some routes. How to get from the farmers market to the northern strands community trail through Medford and just letting letting people know about that it's so close to Medford and there are a lot of exciting things going on on it. So that's kind of the plan.
[Jared Powell]: That's great. Thank you, Pat. As far as logistics for coverage at the table, you mentioned you and Ellery and I think Daniel and Peter, were you able to cover that at all? I feel like one of you said you could.
[Peter Calves]: I will be there, obviously, after the convoys roll in. Yep.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Great. I will not be able to. I have another thing this evening that I can't.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I think it'll be I can, I'll be there from three to seven. So I think it'll be pretty manageable. I've done it quite a number of times before, and Lori will be there too. And then like, yeah, anybody who can pop by for a little bit, or, you know, that's always great to just have more people on hand to talk to people and answer questions is terrific.
[Jared Powell]: Sure, I'll be able to come by for a little bit, but not too long. I'll have my spouse and younger kiddo and baby kiddo all in tow. So I'll be able to be there for a bit. Not biking yet. The youngest one is only nine weeks old, so not quite biking age, close. Let's see, that sounds good. Let's see, we might wanna adjust our agenda here a little bit. I will also just put in a plug for the farmer's market. Has anyone on this call not been to the Medford farmer's market yet? Just raise your hand if you have not been. Daniel, all right. That's just awful.
[Bruce Kulik]: It's a- Do you mean this year or do you mean ever?
[Jared Powell]: Either one, either one.
[Bruce Kulik]: I haven't made it this year, but I've been there before a few times.
[Jared Powell]: Fair enough, fair enough. Well, it's I feel like it's it gets better and better every year. I know a lot of people are working hard on it, but it's it's been really nice this year in particular. You know, it's obviously probably one of the most scenic places to have a farmers market in the area. So many of them are just in parking lots, which is, you know, fine, you do what you gotta do. But you know, having right next to the river and the giant The giant trees and everything makes for a lovely space. Beer garden very often, or half the time, maybe, something like that. So it's a nice place to go. We try to bring the kids and hang out there for a while. So looking forward to it. Hope everyone can come.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: It's doubled in size, I think, in the last three years. It's really exciting. So it's huge this year. If you haven't been this year, there's over 20 vendors.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, it's kind of a scene at this point. It's nice. It's cool.
[Denis MacDougall]: So just to jump in, not as a city person, but as a person person, I'm on the board, and so it's good to hear this. And so please come on down tomorrow or come down wherever you can. Tomorrow, we do actually have a beer garden. We will have another beer garden again tomorrow. And come down. get your shopping in, get some beer, get some food, enjoy. And now my city hat is off and I will go back to it. My city hat is back on. So.
[Jared Powell]: Well, thanks, Dennis, for all the hats you wear and the work you're doing there. We appreciate it. Well, let's, since Pat, you kind of ran through some of the things that we wanted to talk about and, One of the things on the agenda tonight was to kind of talk about some of those and make sure that we were on the same page with some of those infrastructure projects. We might as well just do that now you gave kind of a quick rundown of where a lot of them are I know based on just some conversations I think that you've had with with Amy and Todd. But I'm wondering, Amy, is there anything else that we could fill in here or any other details that we might be able to provide people based on some of those, either more detailed plans or high-level discussions of what we expect to be happening at any of those? I could see Winthrop Street in particular being of interest before the Traffic Commission meeting.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, yeah. The detailed plans will be coming very soon. I don't think that this was mentioned, but Winthrop, we're actually, in part because it's such a long street, but also, more importantly, because we are kind of implementing this according to Eversource's schedule and when they finish the work that they're doing. So we're implementing this in two phases. So this time, we'll just be focusing on the northern boundary which is the town line of Winchester and then all the way down to roughly the intersection of Lawrence. And so since it is going to be two phases, we will need to alter the design slightly just wherever it ends up ending, wherever it seems like a good natural location to end that also is not somewhere they're going to dig up again. We all need to alter it a little bit just to make sure the transition makes sense and all that. But with the second part, we also want to happen and are prioritizing that as well. It's just a matter of our resources not done in that area yet. So it has to happen later.
[Jared Powell]: So the second phase would just be everything south down to 16?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Correct.
[Jared Powell]: Okay. Could you give us some, I don't know if you're bound to not describe too much at this point or if there's any detail that you can provide or high level description of what we're going to be seeing in these plans?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: So when we first started designing these, we ended up with kind of two alternates, I guess, two options on either end of the extreme, as far as removing parking and providing that space to bike lanes. We decided to go with the more, you know, preferred option which is removing more parking. There's still some parts of parking that we do need to keep for various reasons but for the most part what we're going to be bringing to the commission is to know, remove a lot of parking and make those bike lanes. Now, what ends up coming out of it might be somewhere in between those two options, you know, add a block back here or maybe, oh, we don't really need this block as much as we thought, or those types of things. So there might be some shifting as to exactly where parking stays, but Um, we did a lot of data collection and most of it is not used at all. So, uh, there's a lot of space out there and we think it would be better put towards bike lanes. So, uh, so yeah, we're going for as much as possible and, uh, hopefully, you know, people will just say, great, let's do it.
[Bruce Kulik]: Are you describing available before the traffic commission meeting or will they only be presented at the traffic commission?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: We will send them to you as soon as we are able to. Yeah.
[Jared Powell]: Great. Yeah. We, we certainly appreciate that because I know that we'll want to have, you know, we have opinions. We'll always have opinions for you. And we'd like to contribute as much as we can to making them as strong as we can as a group. And that way, maybe we can also provide feedback before the traffic commission meeting as well. So that like, when it comes to that meeting time, we're able to kind of present a relatively unified agenda to the extent that we can, so that it doesn't sound like, you know. like we're trying to pick it apart at that point so.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: That would actually be very helpful as it turns out with this meeting is going to be pretty jam-packed and long. As some of you may know, traffic commission doesn't meet during the summer for the most part. I don't know if they've ever met in August before. There's always been July and August off for vacations and these types of things. But that also happens to be the time that construction things happen. Since we're trying to do a lot of different stuff, including bike lanes. We convinced everyone to meet in August. But that also means that there is a lot of stuff that we're trying to fit on this agenda. And within the span of hopefully two to three hours, we're trying to not go over three hours. The other big ticket item is talking about parking near the GLX station. Because as you probably know that there's, you know, a whole lot of stuff changing regarding residential parking in the city and how that works. And so we're trying to kind of dovetail those conversations and make sure that that station area is functioning properly with resident parking and also people who are parking for the station. So that'll be another big conversation that's happening that night.
[Jared Powell]: Is that kind of a proposal to have like zoning parking for the for the hillside neighborhood essentially?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: I don't know the details of that. That's not really been something I've worked on.
[Jared Powell]: Fair enough. Well, I'm certainly excited to hear that about Winthrop Street and trying to cut out some of that parking that's really non-existent. Anytime I go through there, there's, I feel like you see a bit of parking maybe kind of by the park. And then other than that, it's just open road. So very excited about that corridor. I mean, it has the benefit obviously of, you know, you've got the high school there and it's one of those streets that maybe a lot of people don't really ride on. Even though they could, it's the most direct route to a lot of places through Medford, in and out of Medford and Winchester, that sort of thing. So yeah, very excited about that.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, even even Dennis collected some nighttime parking for us since he lives in the area, so that was very helpful.
[Jared Powell]: Terrific, terrific. Let's see, how about South Street? Could you describe some of the some of the additional work that's going to happen there to the Contra Flow Lane?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: So it's still just partially implemented in its current state. That is mostly due to coordination with Eversource and the ramp, the curb ramp locations for the crosswalks. There was just a lot of back and forth and kind of, yeah, I guess maybe some miscommunications. We'll get into the details of all of that. But essentially, it was holding up the rest of the project. And then, of course, we ran into weather last year as well. We can't put down the payment markings and when it's when the ground is frozen basically it just doesn't stick. But now it's warm enough so we try to do all these things and work out the whole crosswalk thing and I think we've done that. So now they just have to, you know, essentially get out there and do it but they're doing a million other things in our city as well so it's about scheduling and that stuff will be coming soon. The pre marks have all been done and approved for the crosswalks and so that the next big thing is for them to do those ramps for the crosswalks and then they will do the rest of the striping. for the bike lanes. That includes like kind of more robust striping of the median, I guess for lack of better terminology, basically the yellow parts of striping between the bike lane and the travel lane, particularly where the contraflow lane starts at Walnut. There's a bit of markings to kind of guide people through there and make it obvious that something different is happening, that the spike lane is starting. And so that part has yet to be installed, but will be. And maybe some flex posts. We're trying to get, we have some extra money in a different pot that we are trying to use on this, which sounds really easy, but it's obviously not. Often not that easy to, yeah, we can't just spend money on what we want to do all the time. There's rules. But hopefully the people who control those at first will say yes, and we'll be able to get some nice yellow flex posts for that.
[Jared Powell]: Excellent. I'm excited to hear that as well. Let's see. One question I had, I don't know how this gets implemented. Bruce, you're our resident Google whiz, I suppose, but can Google Maps at some point be trained to pick up that contraflow lane so that it shows up as part of people's directions? Because I think I messed with it and tried to make it where like, if I'm using the biking directions and getting from east to west, just along that segment, it will put that in and it will say, yes, ride your bike from east to west. But if you give it any farther directions and say, start at a different point, and that's the natural route, and ending up somewhere farther west, it will route you around that. So I don't really know how that process works.
[Bruce Kulik]: So the thing is, at the time that I was at Google, I tried to get an understanding of how bike lanes were determined. And a lot of it is done through Street View, and an attempt to see what looks like a bike lane through basically machine learning. that's maybe only 90% accurate, if that. The rest of it comes through, effectively, complaints. There's a feedback section on the maps, and you can actually write in and say, hey, this is wrong. And eventually, somebody will get around to look at it, maybe, and say, oh, yeah, the AI said this wrong. Or they might have a field inspection or get some more crowdsourcing or that sort of thing. And eventually it gets updated. I don't know that there's any way to actually force that issue and basically say, hey, we're from the bike commission, we're from the city, we're from an agency that does bike, whatever the case. I've never seen that happen. And it's really kind of a secondary, you know, yeah, Google provides it, but it's not sort of the main thrust of what Google Maps does, unfortunately. I wish it were.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I actually just had an experience with this work where we got a private way added to Google Maps. And one of the requirements is that it had to have a street sign. So once we put our street sign in, we had our Google My Business manager contact Google, and they were able to work it out. So it's not exactly the same situation, but we were successful with that.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Interesting. That had not occurred to me. But yeah, that's important to have in there. I can try to ask around to some folks I know at other cities, too. Clearly, it's not the first time someone's run into this problem. So maybe there's a way.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah. Yeah, that would be great. That's just a really useful connection, I think, for a lot of people. And if it shows up on the maps, then that would be great. you know, more useful than any social media postings that we can make about it, I'm guessing, since people rely on that. Okay, terrific. Let's see, a couple others I just wanted to make sure we hit on. Let's see. GLX to Medford Square, those bike lanes, do you have a sense of the timing for that, Amy?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Trying to get that as soon as possible. The crews know about it and are planning to do it. What needs to happen first, at least on George Street, is we're, I think we talked about this last time, we're just repaving like a five-ish foot section on the right hand side, basically where the bike lane would go, so that we're not forcing people into a five foot strip of crazy craters. So yeah, so that needs to happen first. We also, we have asked them about potentially striping the other two streets first. So they, just to get them striped, and then, you know, do George Street whenever they're able to do that. Haven't heard back about that idea yet, or if that would you know, help adders at all or make it faster. You know, it's just, yeah, they just stretch really thin and they're trying to get to it as soon as they can.
[Jared Powell]: Do you think that's a this year thing or?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Jared Powell]: Spring thing, okay.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yes, I mean, I can't say definite, but like we are, yeah, we are expecting it to be done this season. Yeah.
[Jared Powell]: Okay, that's good. My only, my only fear is that people are going to see that pristine six foot stretch of pavement to the right and be like, ooh, I'm going to drive in that because at least that way half of my car isn't quite as bumpy as the rest of the road.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, yeah. We'll see. We'll see.
[Jared Powell]: Let's see. Anything else on the docket of what we talked about there, what Pat brought up that might be happening this year, like Mystic Ave repainting, Salem Street bike lane, blue bikes, or any of that? That's usually one of the things that when we're at these public events, people really want to know, when are these things happening?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: All three of those. We intend for all three of those to happen this year as well. Bluebikes are, we have a lot of different funding sources funding the stations that we're putting up, so it's going to happen in kind of little bits here and there, but we have essentially three that we are doing first in addition to a Well, I guess it's already there there's one at Wellington station, now that Everett put in and through an agreement that will become ours, but it is there, it's in place you can use it. And then three others that we have our funding from a grant, and you'll hear more about that very soon. We have to go through a public process for that we're just waiting for the contract to be signed. A lot of legal, just people get everyone getting comfortable legal and financial things that you know these contracts look a little different from anything the city has ever done, just because it's a unique type of thing. So just making sure everyone's comfy before we sign, but we're very, very, very close. The Mystic Ave is basically in the same schedule type thing as South Street. We had a lot of discussions about where the crosswalks would go, what curb ramps they would redo or do from scratch or whatever. And all that is being worked out. And we're expecting them to be doing it very soon. And Salem, hopefully, you know, is also on the cruise radar. So another thing we're just waiting for them to do, basically. Yep.
[Jared Powell]: Terrific. Can you remind me of the Mystic Ave repainting? Does that include making the bus lane into a shared bus-bike lane for certain hours of the day?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, so it's kind of like that. It's the only example that I know of in the area is in Roslindale on Washington Street. So during the bus lane hours, it's a bus lane and bikes can ride in it too. During not bus lane hours, it's parking and an adjacent bike lane.
[Peter Calves]: East Arlington might be like that too.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Oh, is it?
[Peter Calves]: I think so. I don't know if I've done it in a while, but I think it's parking and a bike lane.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Oh, you know, I think you're right. Yeah.
[Peter Calves]: Where in Eastern Lincoln? Mass Ave.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah.
[Bruce Kulik]: Mass Ave is, oh, approaching Alewife?
[Peter Calves]: Yeah, approaching Alewife.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Um, you know, but as you may know, if you're out on Mystic Ave in that area, often the parking on that side doesn't get very well used. So you'll probably have the whole space to yourself if you're trying to bike. Um, so that's nice.
[Jared Powell]: Gotcha. Well, that sounds good. Hopefully people don't drive in the parking lane too much, but I imagine there will probably be a decent learning curve with that sort of thing.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: There'll be some.
[Jared Powell]: There'll be some. Yeah. There was a lot of anger in Cambridge, I know, from dealing with the new bike lanes on, bike bus lanes on Mass Ave there, the north part of Mass Ave toward Arlington. That caused some anger, I know, unfortunately.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: In this case, we have less walking businesses.
[Jared Powell]: That's true. Amy, quickly on the Blue Bikes thing, by my count there, you mentioned four stations, three that are coming, one that will come from Everett. It's there. It's there, right, right. We'll take ownership of it, I guess.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah.
[Jared Powell]: That'll be four. There's more coming, I think, in the longer term, right? Do you have a tally of how many that would be?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: I can't give you a definite number right now, but a lot of them depend on various things, but we did get confirmation for four more from another grant source. That one, we haven't signed the contracts yet, but we have them. you know, doing all the things we need to do to get the contract paperwork together, all the submissions that we need to give them, but we have won it. So that will probably happen later in the year, just depending on how long it takes them to do their part and sign everything and send us the signed bit so we can purchase the equipment and all that stuff. But we're also talking to some private uh, sponsorships, uh, with some various businesses, um, both existing and developers, you know, uh, wanting to create, create the businesses. Um, so like I said, it was, you know, it's all gonna really happen a few here, a few there over the next year or two, probably. Um, but yeah, the ones that will happen in the first year, I think we'll get up to somewhere just under 10 ish.
[Jared Powell]: That's quite a bit.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: That's great. Everything falls into place. There's a lot of moving parts.
[Peter Calves]: And I do think that's, that's really good. I forget if I brought this up in another meeting, but I feel like blue bikes strike the gateway drug for a town like Medford, where it's like, suddenly you have all these bikes that you don't have to own a bike to ride and you can just go. And then suddenly you realize you'd like the roads to be safer for biking.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: This is what we're hoping. Yeah. Yeah.
[Jared Powell]: Well, so that's that's eight ish and then you mentioned like the four coming from the other grant I think like the new cannabis shops, I think I read the like each of those has to buy a station and pay for its maintenance one of the. The grow shop or something like that's part of their Community agreement or something so that's a few more there as well, like that'll be on top of the ones you were just talking about I think right.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: yeah yeah several.
[Jared Powell]: The Tufts is buying.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: There's like seven or, yeah, I think seven possible privately funded ones in various stages of agreement, plus the seven that we have grant funded. Definitely. Then there may be three more that we have grants funded, but we're not totally confirmed on that yet.
[Jared Powell]: That's great. Thanks for thanks for going after those. I'm happy to hear that like those numbers are more than just like one or two in particular, right? Because like you get one or two and all you can do is tie them really close to the existing station. So they still don't really serve to help that much of the city. So you can blanket it a lot more with, you know, with a dozen stations, at least, you know, within whatever guidance motivate has for, you know, how far apart they have to be and whatnot. So very exciting. The only other one I think on the list we talked about was the Route 28 underpass over there. That's a little farther out, I think.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: It is. We're going through the process of like, we have to essentially create a mass dot project in their system and do all this funny paperwork stuff to receive some of the funding that we're getting for it. So all that stuff is going on. I don't really know what the timeline would be as far as actually building the thing. I'm not sure yet.
[Jared Powell]: Peter, I think I heard you there.
[Peter Calves]: Oh, no. I was just commenting. As an engineer who works with MassDOT fairly frequently, I love the MassDOT project initiation process.
[Jared Powell]: Well, that's all very helpful for us as a commission and in advance of kind of public meetings that we have like this. Anyone else have any questions about these projects?
[Bruce Kulik]: You had mentioned Wellington and Greenway, and maybe that segues with the last item on the agenda, which is the Wellington Station developments. but I know at one point there was a plan to extend the greenway formally to connect to the paths underneath the highway there, underneath Route 16. Do you know if that's proceeding?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: We have funding to do a feasibility study for that. There's a lot of different landowners in that area, so we need to figure out who they are and what is possible, basically. That's kind of the first step.
[Bruce Kulik]: On a summer- Is this part of the grant that Catherine Clark mentioned about six months ago? Maybe it was last summer?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Say it again?
[Bruce Kulik]: Congresswoman Catherine Clark had mentioned that there was funding for that available at one point.
[Peter Calves]: I think that was funding for the Wellington Greenway project, the underpass.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah. No, no, that's what I'm talking about.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm talking about the extension of the Wellington Greenway, which currently terminates in the parking lot at the MBTA. TAB, Tila Duhaime): Oh right sorry allowing that to proceed to connect to the.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: TAB, Tila Duhaime): That's the one that's in the mass dot process.
[Denis MacDougall]: TAB, Tila Duhaime): Sorry.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: TAB, Mark McIntyre here.
[Denis MacDougall]: TAB, Mark McIntyre here. get all the signatures from all the property owners, because there's like four or five of them from that stretch. There's, you know, the state, there's private owners, there's the T, there's the one that owns, the former Kiswanawake building. So I think we have them all now. So that might actually be coming before the ComCom sooner rather than later, because one of the proponents on that really wants to push it forward. So we might be getting that fairly soon because, If once we get all the signatures and they can go ahead at least and get that because that's just sort of the stage one, just saying that all that means is that, you know, when they want to do the work, they have permission to do so, you know, from the Weapon Protection Act so that, you know, make sure that resource areas are treated well.
[Bruce Kulik]: That's usually my concern is if Medford actually goes ahead with the air rights development that's in this last agenda item. Clearly that will impact access from the Wellington Greenway out to route 16. And, you know, they need to be coordinated that was my, my reason to bring that up at this point.
[Denis MacDougall]: Well, unfortunately, none of the property that would be affected would be the T or it's basically most of the land that they're doing are actually state owned land, not T owned land, along the river that we're going to be doing it on. So hopefully, it'll be a little less impactful.
[Jared Powell]: Gotcha. Well, in that case, I mean, since we're on the topic, we might as well shift forward to that agenda item. about the Wellington station air rights. I can put a link to it in the chat there. I mean, I don't have any insight into this. There are others on the call obviously, who obviously have more, but a very exciting thing for us to be paying attention to. I mean, this is a huge amount of land that the city basically seems to want to, consider getting developers testing the waters, I guess, to see what developers might be interested in pitching for the city there. That's a huge amount of land, a lot of property, a lot of development opportunity for something really transit oriented that could tie into a lot of cycling infrastructure for sure. So that's something that will need to be plugged in as a part of that process.
[Bruce Kulik]: Does anybody from the city actually know the scope of the property ownership that Medford's seeking here? Because I had always assumed that that parcel was MBTA-owned, but apparently it's Medford-owned.
[Denis MacDougall]: I honestly don't know much, but my understanding was that it is the air rights are granted to Medford. So the TESOL does actually own, but Medford has the right to go up. I'm generalizing very, very simply.
[Bruce Kulik]: No, I see your point. Thank you.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, so they could basically drop a giant set of buildings on top of it, right?
[Denis MacDougall]: As long as the first floor provides parking for the T. I think that's really the difference. So as long as the parking situation doesn't change.
[Peter Calves]: That's what I was going to ask. Is this the Wellington Yard, or is this the huge, mostly unused parking lot in front of Wellington?
[Denis MacDougall]: That's basically between the river and the station. OK. I mean, honestly, the open lot two years ago was pretty full. That lot was really hard to get a parking space in some days. But it's changed mightily in the last few years.
[Peter Calves]: Yeah. I've only known it since I moved over there in 2020, so that's fair.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I mean, that article describes 28 acres of air rights that the city owns, which is a huge assembly row on steroids, I suppose.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: It does seem like having the Wellington Greenway completed in advance of that project could be an advantage, because then it's, you know, then the developers will presumably want to hook into it and have good connections to it.
[Bruce Kulik]: I presume John Piotl will want to bid on that. given that he's got all the developments nearby and tends to be a pretty good proponent of alternative access as well. So that would be exciting if he's involved in it.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, he's quoted in that article about it. So quite a bit of interest, I would think. Maybe something to help the city's coffers as well. Commercial revenue never hurts. All right, anything else about that topic anyone wants to chat about?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I have one item I wanted to quickly bring up. This is actually for Amy. Who would we go to to talk about the funding for bike racks, like installation bike racks for people to walk by?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Right. As far as I know, we don't have any dedicated funding for bike racks. I think that there are potentially a couple pots that could fund bike racks in the future, but we would have to talk about that and get that approved, obviously.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, that is a project that's kind of stalled. I know Emily and B. Dan and I were kind of most actively involved with it. Maybe, I'm going to say it's like been over a year ago, and I know that I've talked to Tim McGibbon about it. We prepared a map with proposed locations and recommendations on styles and things like that. So I think it is good to keep bringing that up and reminding people that we're interested in that, we've made a proposal.
[Bruce Kulik]: Didn't Tim work with some sort of, with a DCR, piggyback on the DCR purchase or something and got them at a substantial discount? I don't think it is.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: So, um, um, uh, uh, wait, let's see, uh, MAPC has a, um, operative purchasing program, um, which is how we got the first round of them a few years ago. Um, and that is still, uh, when I last, I talked to David Lautenheiser about it, like, I, yeah, it was over a year ago. Um, but that's still an active program and something we can participate in.
[Jared Powell]: Okay, great. Yeah, those will be useful if we're able to able to get some more funding for bike racks that that never hurts. All right, we can bump back.
[Denis MacDougall]: I was just wondering whether it was so I just kind of looked and apparently, Community Preservation Act funds could be used for So that may be, I don't know the full specifics. You'd have to talk to Danielle Evans from our office, who's the staff set. Which pod did you say? What was that? Sorry? Which pod did you say we could use for that?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Is he breaking up for everyone else? The CPA money. Yeah, CPA. Thank you.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, that's I suspect that's true. I suppose kind of philosophically, I mixed feelings about that right since it feels like that's kind of more grant or public works type funding generally, right, like for for bike racks, like maybe we could use it for that. But I guess I could also imagine that money being used for maybe more exciting or exotic.
[Bruce Kulik]: That money was used to build and repair the wall along Grove Street in some places. I don't know how that's all that different from bike rack infrastructure to encourage outdoor recreation activities. But it would be up to the commission to decide whether it applies.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah.
[Bruce Kulik]: I mean, not our commission, the CPA commission.
[Jared Powell]: Right. I guess I'm hoping for for both right getting bike racks from normal city project money and then something more creative with the with the fun money from CPA. I wanted to bounce back quickly Ernie's not on so I can't I can't pretend to speak for him, but we did I think before we realized that he wasn't going to be able to tend to have a. a Medford Bike Lights project update there. Just as a reminder, Ernie's been logging his work here and I haven't gone through it all yet, but he has frankly been a machine about getting funding for pulling together these really useful bike light kits that he's been distributing on an almost breakneck pace, I think, to kids and adults around the city. He's raised quite a bit of money to pay for this stuff. So it's very nice that we're able to get the word out about, get some good sponsorships out there and also get a lot of lights front and back, pretty high quality ones in the hands of people who may not have them otherwise. And it's the kind of thing that it's not coming out, frankly, of our budget either because he's done such a good job of getting so much support. Maybe we can get some more details on him for exactly what that looks like. But at this point, it seems like he's getting all the companies around to be able to chip in and pay for some of those kits. So we should have more of them coming and fully funded, which is very exciting. They're very popular whenever we have them at tabling events or things like that. Whether people need them or not, they want them, but we try to guide them into the hands of people who will use them or need them for sure. So I don't have anything else on that. And then maybe should have talked about this earlier, but Lily and Amy, while we have you on, is there anything about like the master plan update process that we should chat about or any updates there that we could help with or contribute to in some way?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: That's a great question. I think we're still kind of finalizing what our timeline is going to look like. So we're hoping to have a draft by the fall. And at that point, we'll want to really start the public outreach process. But that doesn't mean that you guys can't give input at any point sort of before that. So what I'm doing right now is basically mapping and kind of using a combination of Working from the 2016 plan to kind of use as a baseline, I have a map of all of the existing infrastructure, all of the proposed infrastructure and everything that hasn't passed yet. And other sort of key things such as the blue bike stations and trying to make sure that we account for all of these new destinations in what is going to be our network. And the other big piece of this for me has been looking at what other communities that are adjacent to Medford have been doing. For example, Somerville and Arlington and sort of seeing where the connection to other communities and making sure that like what we are going to have is going to match up with what they have. There've been a lot of questions from other communities as they've made their plans, what's Medford gonna do too? So that's kind of where I'm at at the moment. I will also probably in the next coming weeks be doing a lot of kind of in the field scouting out of different things. One of the things I'm thinking about isn't just what streets will have, what will be suitable for actual built infrastructure, but in places where there really isn't space or where the terrain is too difficult for, you know, built infrastructure such as actual protected lanes or things with flex posts or buffers, where can we identify kind of low stress bike routes that maybe don't have built infrastructure, but might have like traffic calming or kind of like if anyone has heard of like the Neighborways concept, either sort of low stress, low speed routes in places where there aren't infrastructure. So kind of all of these pieces are coming together to inform our kind of draft map.
[Peter Calves]: Yeah, I think we've discussed Neighborways before in this committee.
[Jenny Graham]: I have a question. Neighborways is one of those things that's been kind of bouncing around in my head and I use a lot of the ones in Somerville and it's a great way to cut across areas and kind of like small streets, low stress. Is there a way we can help you kind of because I mean, there are some streets I've heard other people who bike who kind of have made requests or some I use that are great cutthroats. I don't know if there's a way we can help or provide information or if that's going to be more of part of the outreach process?
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: I mean, I'm definitely going to try to use that during a later outreach process, but that shouldn't preclude you from just sending me an email anytime. I'll drop my email in the chat if you guys have ideas or places that I should be looking. I'm still getting to know Medford myself. I live in Somerville, but I bike around a lot. The more input I get, the better. This is a little bit tangentially related, but I also met with some folks at a company called Metro Mobility who are doing an e-bike pilot. I'm not sure if anyone is familiar with this, but they're deploying several e-bikes and e-bike docks at Medford Housing Authority properties. Eventually, when they've given them all away and really deployed the stations fully, they will also be getting data about where people are going. which is going to be hopefully a really good resource to help figure out. I know you guys talked last meeting about whether it would be useful to use Strava data to kind of figure out where people are going. I sort of am of the philosophy that the more data and the more input, the better. So we should be looking at, you know, all sorts of different options. And I'm really interested to see how the people at the MHA properties are using these bikes and where they're going. So that, that also will be informing what I'm doing. But yeah, also send me an email and just happy to take tips and advice anytime.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: To actually ask a question about that, Lily, if you work with the City of Medford, do you have the ability to send a request for Strava Metro? Because I think we discussed this the last time, there's the only way to get access to it is to have a City of Medford email or a municipal email address. So yeah, just raising that.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: That's a great question. So I'm technically like a guest in Medford, and I don't have a Medford email, but I'll certainly investigate and see if it's possible that I can use either another email or sort of another mechanism to get access to that. Maybe Dennis knows.
[Denis MacDougall]: Yeah, I mean, you could probably use mine, and we also have just a straight viral at the environmental office. It's just environment, but when we used to be just an energy environment, but we still have that email address that we could use if they don't require that. you know, we can figure that out. Yeah, talk to me tomorrow and sort of work on that.
[Jared Powell]: Perfect. That would be that would be terrific. A couple things, neighbor ways, we do have one of them that we've mocked up kind of a plan for basically from from Medford Square, south through through hillside, along Tufts kind of a way to bypass Boston Ave to get over to kind of between Ball Square and Lagoon Square. So that's one that we've kind of worked out a lot of the details for. And that could certainly be one that could be included. And the work's already done for you. So we can forward some materials about that for sure. I'm wondering if it would be useful as well for you, Lily, like sometimes we do working groups, which would be kind of ad hoc groups of smaller numbers of people on the commission who can kind of meet whenever they need to without a full quorum of the members. So we can meet more flexibly than just once every month, like through our normal meetings. So that's something that we could convene as well. If you want some other people on occasion to be able to join you for brainstorming sessions or something like that, we could arrange that.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: That would be great. I think that will be super useful, especially as I get out and start writing some of this. I think there's only so much you can do by mapping and doing research. And at some point, I'll be out there riding around and trying to get as much info as possible on the ground.
[Jared Powell]: All right. Sounds good. Let's see, my Roberts rules of order are rusty here, but let's see, Bruce, is that something that we, can we create a working group like that without a quorum? Is that something that we can do in a smaller group like this?
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, that's not really a Roberts rule so much as an open meeting question. My understanding is that the working groups, as long as they don't constitute a quorum and are not making binding decisions on the commission, that's fine. Basically, the working groups would come back with a recommendation that then gets presented and approved by the full commission. So when it comes to providing advice to the city, I don't see that there's any issue there. That might be something if we really are concerned about it to check with the city solicitor. But in the past, we've done working groups, you know, to discuss exactly this kind of thing, which on our own, And I don't think we had a commission meeting. Sorry, what's the word I want? A vote to actually do that, so.
[Jared Powell]: Well, I was wondering specifically about to create the working group. Like, do we need a quorum to authorize the creation of a working group in this instance? I feel like we often have. I feel like we've usually had motions to do that, which may mean that we need.
[Bruce Kulik]: Maybe best to wait till the next meeting and then do it.
[Jared Powell]: Afraid so. Well, we can email you individually, Lily, but perhaps we can have a more official group authorized for the next meeting. Just out of curiosity, is there anyone on this call right now who would be interested in that sort of thing? Just to, there we go, Becca, I see you there. All right, sounds good. Well, that's, all right, a couple of havesies there. All right, good. All right, well, we have some people who will be able to join. All right. I have run through everything that I had on my agenda. Potentially in a bike commission first, we may have run out of agenda topics before our allotted two hour time here. A function perhaps of a smaller group and pulling together the agenda and things a little bit quicker in Emily's absence. But that's okay. Is there anything anyone else would like to talk about or things that we should be talking about on this particular meeting?
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Jared, just while I'm on here, I just registered with Vision Zero. Last year, we hastily put together and got the mayor to officially observe the World Day of Remembrance for Traffic Victims. And she said we would do it every year. So I just signed up with Vision Zero through Walk Medford to do that again. And I'll be reaching out to the bike commission to kind of hopefully plan something with more like, I think we had a week last year to plan it and we put together a thing, but you know, we might try to plan it a little sooner next time. So just like throwing that out there. It's in November 3rd, Thursday in November, something like that. So it's a ways away, but I just kind of like, while I'm here on this meeting.
[Jared Powell]: Sure. Yeah, thanks for mentioning it. We'll be sure to participate. Thanks for arranging that, Ari.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yep.
[Jared Powell]: All right. Well, in that case, I think we're able to close the meeting early, and we can enjoy the rest of your evening. Move to adjourn. Seconded. All in favor?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Aye.
[Jared Powell]: All right. Well, thanks everyone. We really appreciate it. And come to the farmer's market tomorrow. It should be a lot of fun. All right. Thanks everyone. Have a good night.