[Jack Buckley]: Good evening and welcome to the special meeting of the Medford Traffic Commission. It's August 16th, 2022 and the time is 5.02 p.m. This meeting will now come to order. Alba, could you do a roll call for the commissioners?
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: Commissioner McGibbon. Commissioner Hunt.
[Alicia Hunt]: Sorry, I'm still getting logged in. I was getting texted from somebody who was having trouble getting into the meeting.
[Jack Buckley]: We hear from Commissioner McGibbon.
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: I'll go back to Commissioner McGibbon. Commissioner Pezzaturro. Commissioner Brzezinski.
[Jack Buckley]: I'm here. I think Anne Marie is here. Can you hear us?
[Alicia Hunt]: I just let in a group of people from the waiting room. Hold on, people are still arriving.
[Jack Buckley]: We're just going to give us a couple more minutes with apologies, folks. Just give us a minute to get everyone in. Sure.
[Alicia Hunt]: Can I make like just an administrative request? I think given such a big meeting and with the difficulty sometimes people have with my can we have the security set so that people cannot unmute themselves, but that when we call on them, we'll tell them to unmute and give them permission so that we don't have accidental background noise interrupting us throughout the meeting. And I'm happy to help with some of that administratively, because I know it's hard when you're on that big screen.
[Jack Buckley]: I think that's a good suggestion for tonight, but we'll use all the help we can, because you have co-hosting privileges. So.
[Alicia Hunt]: All right. I'm going to turn off the ability for, so if people are co-hosts, they'll be able to unmute themselves and nobody else will be able to, um, and we'll have to raise their hands and unmute them. Um, typically we allow the members of the commission to be co-hosts. Um, and we might want for simplicity to have, um, the staff Todd and And Jim, who are.
[Harold McGilvey]: Yes.
[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, Todd points out in Amy.
[Jack Buckley]: Amy angles that we're doing that right now.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Thanks for that.
[Harold McGilvey]: Let me give him some.
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: Rosemary, Henry Henry Henry's iPad I think that's
[Alicia Hunt]: Just to be clear to some people are asking in the chat, people will be allowed to speak, they just have to raise their hand, indicate that they want to speak at the appropriate time, as if we were in City Hall at in the city council chambers and then you have to approach the microphone and be recognized and then you can speak. This is like that, where we'll have a meeting and the commissioners may have conversation. And then members of the public can indicate that they want to speak either using the raise hand function, which is at the bottom of your screen, or you can put something into the chat. So under the bottom of your screen is the word reactions with a smiley face. You can click that and choose raise hand. If you don't see that, you probably see three dots at the bottom of your screen. Click on the three dots and there's a menu and it has reactions. If you're on your phone, you should also have those options, like the three dots, there's a raise hand function. You could also put in the chat that you would like to speak on something and we can acknowledge that as well. But the idea is just to minimize people's background noise and interruptions randomly. Is that clear? I'm sorry, we're still letting people in very, very actively.
[Jack Buckley]: Again, folks, with apologies, I'm just giving the large amount of people. Okay. Uh, that's enough time. It's five 11. Uh, uh, the meeting, uh, again, it's called the order Alba. I'm going to ask you to do the roll call. The commission is one more time formally and, uh, to assure that we have a quorum. Okay.
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: Commissioner McGiven. Commissioner hunt here. Commissioner Pesce to a row. Commissioner Bozinski.
[Jack Buckley]: I'm here. Chief Buckley present. That gives us three members. We do have a quorum. Also present this evening for the general public's knowledge is the secretary with the traffic commission. That's Alba Erickson. I have Sergeant Larry Rogers for the method police department traffic unit. Sergeant Harold McGilvrey method police traffic unit. Todd Blake, director of traffic and transportation is online. Amy Ingalls, the transportation engineer and Jim Silva, who's the special project coordinator from the mayor's office are all present this evening for today's meeting. So since this is a special meeting, there'll be no discussion regarding the minutes of the June 22nd meeting. Those will be handled come September and the next order of business will be new business. But I wanna make a special note here for this agenda is pretty It's got some larger issues and we want to try to keep to the timeframes. And so the first item on new business is 2022-36 resident permit parking. This is the resident permit parking pilot program in the vicinity of the new GLX stations. that is South Medford Ball Square and the Medford Tufts Greenline stations to include discussion in a vote as it relates to making all public ways within approximately a quarter mile of both stations permit parking only if they are not already part of the resident permit parking program with an opt-out option if requested by a majority of the residents on the street that want to opt out. and exceptions and details near non-residential users will be in discussions. For the presentation of this issue, I'm gonna turn it over to Todd Blake, Director of Traffic and Transportation. Todd, I believe will be assisted by Jim Silver. I think you both have host capabilities and should be able to go ahead and take the screen and make your presentation. Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: I just want to comment. I just let, uh, commissioner Tim McGivern in. So he's here.
[Jack Buckley]: Okay. Thank you. Commissioner McGibbon, you want.
[Alicia Hunt]: Give us a visual thumbs up. He needs to be made co-host in order to be able to unmute himself.
[Unidentified]: Yep.
[Alicia Hunt]: Account can do that.
[Todd Blake]: So I'll start while Tim's joining. Hi everyone, thank you for attending. So as the chief mentioned, the purpose of this is, as many of you know, our current system of providing resident parking to assist residents with parking on their street to limit competition is currently street by street with a petition process by the residents themselves. So this, given that the Green Line extension is coming to this area of South Medford and Hillside, indicated by the two green dots on the map here, the city wanted to take a little more of a proactive approach to help address parking issues that may arise once those stations open. So usually what happens is when a neighborhood or street gets permanent parking, the neighboring street to them that doesn't have permanent parking then gets parking issues. So this is an attempt again to proactively try to help the area in the close proximity to the stations. So this map, the two circles on this, the two green dots represent the new Green Line stations roughly. The two dash red circles around the green dots represent a quarter mile radius from those points. So this has been described as approximately a quarter mile from the new stations. But once you see it mapped out like this on one map, you see that there's not much space in between the two overlapping circles of quarter mile. And then it just made sense. You wouldn't put Resident Permit on half a street necessarily. So we extended it all the way out to the next major bordering street. So that's how we came up with the dark blue line that's on here. So on the west edge it's bordered by Winthrop Street and I could zoom in as well to show the neighborhood a little more closely. George Street on the north side, Main Street predominantly on the east side with Medford Street on the southeast side, and then the bottom border is just the city of Medford City of Somerville line, the border. So that's the area we're targeting. And a majority of the streets in this area are either resident permit or they may be private ways. So this particular pilot program is focusing on the streets that do not currently have resident permit, or if they do, there might be some question about that they have signs, but we don't have records of it, or we have records, but no signs up. So it's just meant to, clean that up and save the residents time from coming in street by street and do about 15 streets or segments of streets at once here. So, for the residential local streets. The proposal is resident parking all day all night for the major streets such as the not what's considered major street Boston have. PB, David Ensign — Hermon Zuckerman, PB — he's not here. We want to provide to our parking, 8am to 8pm to allow turnover for businesses and things like that. So I do want to step back a second and say, this is for all currently unrestricted public streets in this zone. So when, what I mean by unrestricted is. If it has resident permit already, that's a restriction. If it has no parking already, that's a restriction. If it has a handicap parking space, if it has a 30 minute zone per business, none of that will change. This is just filling in the gaps of the streets that currently don't have any restrictions. So for the major streets, what that means is if there's pay for park, like a kiosk on large segments of Boston Ave, we're not changing that either. This is just filling in the gaps. that don't currently have any restrictions in this area because the commuters will find those areas. So that's the intent. Some other, yeah, it's also, the resident permit is except Sundays and holidays to be consistent with most other streets. So on Sundays and holidays, the resident restriction would not apply. I believe that covers it. Now there's a list as well of each individual street and segment. I could bring that up or I could zoom into the map. Not sure if the commission themselves had questions on this. So let's see.
[Tim McGivern]: Good question, Todd. There were recommendations made by the mayor's committee. Can you talk about how this aligns with those recommendations.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, that's a great point. So, yeah, as some of you may know, an audience and on the commission. The mayor created a commission on parking policy and enforcement. About a year and a half ago I think I believe, and Jim Silva was one of the. chairs of that commission. It was a temporary commission that met for a year and it was comprised of Medford residents and Medford business owners. And they conducted many surveys of residents and business owners. They contacted neighboring cities and towns to see what their policies were. They really did a lot of due diligence looking into issues and coming up with recommended solutions. So they produced a report that recommended solutions and Some of it is exactly this, we're targeting certain areas of the city that, as many of us know, South Medford and Hillside may experience different parking issues than say North Medford or West Medford. So even though it focused on the whole city and every business district in the city, there was a particular focus knowing that the Greenline Extension was coming to this very densely populated area that we all know already has parking issues. So the recommendations were to move toward potentially move toward a district zone parking in all of those neighborhoods. But this is an incremental step because at the time when we made this agenda item, we thought that the Green Line would be opening the end of this month. So we wanted to provide some sort of relief while we're waiting on progressing with some other larger efforts as recommended by that group. Does that answer your question, Tim?
[Unidentified]: Yes. Yes, it does. Thank you.
[Todd Blake]: So the streets, I'll go by one by one. There's Albion Street from William to Medford Street, both sides. There's Boston Ave from City Line at Ball Square, Somerville to Harvard Street. But that's one of those ones where the recommendation in this fourth column here is you would need resident permit only except Sundays and holidays, all day, all night in the areas where there are residential homes. But in areas where there's a non-residential use, it would be two hour, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., but there would be exception. If you were a resident with a permit, you wouldn't be held to the two hour. You could park there four hours. That's for people that aren't residents. So it allows businesses or non-residential uses to have some turnover for their business. And that also excludes Sundays and holidays. So I'm Chester Chester Avenue the entire lane Colby street Colby streets one of those streets where one block may be signed and one block not, which is trying to clean it up to make it clear that the whole thing is resident permit and will be signed as such. Harvard Street mean to Winchester. And some of these are just one side so Harvard streets only parking on the south side even side. And again if the area near say the furniture store, the furniture repair shop. That's a business that's a non residential use, you know, it would have to our parking at 8am to 8pm on the frontage, if there's already. When we get to Winchester Street they already have, say a 30 minute zone, none of this will change any of that. So then there's no, no would the entire lane Medford street, so Medford streets, interesting one, because right now we're just proposing the west side of ministry which is the odd side from Morton have up to Magoon Square Somerville, or up to the city line which is essentially moving square Somerville, and we're just attempting that right now. As a, you know, as relief for that street and then if and when the green line opens and the opposite side of every street feels that they want it they could come in a petition and we can revisit that. But at this time, that's what we're proposing Morton have is already resident permit, except from Winchester Street to the dead end portion with it railroad tracks are. So we're trying to fill in the gaps of any street that may have a missing block or two. So Radcliffe Street, Bowdoin to Yale, Spencer Road, Wareham Street, Wedge Manor, Winchester Street, with the exceptions I mentioned on the non residential use area. Those would be two hour except by permit, 8am to 8pm. Winter Hill Road and Woodbine. College Ave was on the original list that was sent out, but that area that has parking in College Ave is currently paid apart with kiosks. So, in those areas we're not recommending any change at this time. So, that pretty much covers the list. So if you're not on this list, you're either public street that already has permanent parking, or you're a private way. And for the private way folks, it's not necessarily covered by this traffic commission, but the city does plan to resend out or communicate with you in some way to give you the same information that the chief and I had presented at the private way parking meeting that was held a couple months ago to try to guide folks to what's available to them. Does any other members have any questions?
[Jack Buckley]: Oh, so any of the commissioners, any questions for Director Blake?
[Tim McGivern]: Just a clarification, Todd, that column that showed, I didn't catch the top, like resident permit parking, that's the change, right? Not the existing condition? The recommendation, that's what the plan is for the future.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, the recommendation in that column is the plan for the future. But it, it only applies to currently unrestricted areas of that street. So if, if a street was only parked on one side, it's not changing the no parking on one side. That would remain this only applies to the areas that currently have parking and currently don't have any other restriction posted. Okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: So as one of the commissioners, I would say I've been sort of thinking about this for a long time. I don't have questions. I would really, I think that the city would be better served by having this region designated as a region and as a regional permit parking rather than a street by street permit parking. I know that was actually one of the recommendations from the report. Um, I understand that that is not what is in front of the commission tonight. Um, the, this is just to increase the street by street, which many of you have probably not been watching commission traffic commission meetings for the last two and a half years, but I've spent every time a street has come in front of us for permit parking in the last two and a half years. I have said, I would rather see a regional prop, a regional system. So people could park around the corner from them and on. on streets near them and not with just one street. I have been told that there's opposition to such a thing. I have not seen it, but other people have. And that doesn't, that's not in front of us this evening. However, I think that we need to consider At this point, is it my office, is the planning office that puts that forward? Is it a parking office? Is it the mayor's office that moves that way? Is it a group of residents who would like to see regional permit parking who puts that request in front of the traffic commission? That needs to be determined. In the meantime, we know that people will park wherever they can find a spot legally to hop on the train. They'll probably park illegally too, but we can't do anything about the people who are parking illegally other than give them tickets. This policy can help with people who are willing to follow the rules by making it easier.
[Todd Blake]: For the people who live on these streets to park on their streets, at least you really acknowledge that you raise a great point Alicia, because it that is the recommendation from the port to go to zone district. So, again, this agenda was put together because the thought was like the green light was opening this month right so we wanted to provide some sort of relief as you just mentioned. So the good thing is. if this was approved tonight, it wouldn't preclude that, right? And logistically, it gets signed poles that may be needed and signs up that could later be reused or repurposed for a district zone. So it's a good stepping stone. It provides some relief in the meantime.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. And so I will acknowledge also that, so some people, people who have come to us requesting that their streets be permit parking, have an understanding of what that means. I'm also not fully in support of what all of our permit parking rules are, but they are what they are right now. And that is, you must have your car registered to the address on that street. So if you are living in an apartment and your car is not registered at that address, you will not be able to get a permit. But if you are living there and your car is registered, and you know, I have a large family and I have three cars in my house. I could register all three of my cars. I register all three of my cars at my address. I could get three permits. If you have five people living in your house and all five cars are registered at that address, all five right now can get permits at that address. That's a different question that we would address at a different time is to that permit system. but we are basically talking about that existing permit system. So as many, it's both, you have to be registered at the address and you have to, I guess you're living there, it's for your street, but there's an unlimited and frankly, the cost is, I think $10 a car per year. So it is not a prohibitive cost at this time. So those, Like we're sort of making these assumptions and usually when a street comes in front of us and we're putting this it's a pain, but to take to have permit parking on your street, but some people really like it because it keeps other people from parking on your street. There is the only exceptions that are reasonably made is that if somebody lives on a corner. they can come to us and ask to have a permit on either of the streets that their house is on, but that's actually a special request of the traffic commission and not automatic, if I am remembering correctly. So, you know, if somebody is living in an apartment and doesn't have their car registered, they can't get the permit. And if they are working in that area, but not living there, they can't get the permit, they'd have to use the two-hour work, like the permit commercial district parking. I think people need to be aware of that. Are there other things that we're sort of touching on? Because I think there are, people have a lot of questions and comments on this, and I hear those, but I just want to make sure that we're sort of like, we are clear on what it is we are considering tonight and what we're not considering tonight.
[Jack Buckley]: Well, that's a good point that I appreciate the comments Commissioner at the end, the responses director Blake. It is, it is somewhat clear that what we're trying to do tonight is to address the. pending opening of the GLX station. So we want to get a program in there that is, that will work for the city of Medford and for the residents right now. There is an ongoing research and debate and question over this sort of zoned or regional parking. And it's not as director Blake indicated, that's not out of the picture at this point in time, but it's also not up to debate tonight. We can't turn this evening into a debate over that. where I just wanna make sure we stay focused on what the petition is for this evening with the understanding that those other issues are for another time, because there's much more debate and time to go into that. I wanna just give the commissioners one more chance to make any other comments because we need to open this up publicly. I do recognize that there are a lot of questions in the chat room. You just have to be patient with us. We're gonna try to get to some of those, some of the hands raised, but commissioners last chance before I open this up to public comment.
[Bob Dickinson]: I'm fine, Chief, no comments here.
[Jack Buckley]: Okay, let us go to open this portion of the meeting to public comment. I know Mr. Bennett has had his hand up for a while. Why don't we start with him? Eric, can you unmute?
[Chris Bennett]: Hi, my name is not Mr. Bennett, it's Ms. Bennett.
[Jack Buckley]: Apologies, Ms. Bennett.
[Chris Bennett]: That's okay. I just have some concerns about the size of the radius that you're talking about. Currently, I bought a street that kind of dissects, it's called Mason Street and half of Marshall Street already permit parking. Our street gets inundated, especially when tough students come in and they're looking for some place to park or people who live on Winthrop Street who don't have a driveway. And so I never kind of pushed it that because it's like those people need a place to park. But to know that the Green Line is coming, I can walk to the Green Line from my house. in less than 10 minutes. So to sit there and say that a quarter mile is going to be sufficient, I disagree. I'm concerned. Already we're inundated. People park halfway over driveways. It's a mess here because we're one of the few streets that is not permit parking. So if everybody around me is going to be permit parking, it's going to get worse.
[Jack Buckley]: So thank you for the comments and the questions. Commissioner, Director Blake, I want you to see if you can answer that because we have talked about this and there is some sort of discussion, but it's easy if he pulls up the map and just kind of shows you a little bit about this. Director Blake.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, I just want to make sure I'm answering the right question. In terms of the quarter mile, the red dash is the quarter mile, but in some cases, it actually ends up being more like a third or even upwards to a half. It's just we, it was difficult to describe this polygon of the blue line on a robocall.
[Chris Bennett]: Well, one of the polygon, the polygon actually shows that it cuts off at Winthrop, and we are right across at Winthrop. So it's definitely an area that is utilized a lot by people that live on Winthrop Street and people who live on all over around this area that don't live on the two streets I mentioned, which were Mason and Marshall. So it's already a problem. And once this green line comes in, as I said, I can walk to where that green line is in less than 10 minutes from my house. We are diagonally across from George. So it's going to be chaotic. Already, they've taken away a bus route because they say people can walk from my area. So to sit there and say that that's not going to be a problem is a fallacy. It's going to be a major problem.
[Todd Blake]: Hopefully they don't do that, the city wrote a letter in defense of keeping that so hopefully that doesn't go through, but your points are well taken. So, yeah, at, at this time we had to pick a, we didn't necessarily have to but we attempt to pick a line that we thought was reasonable for the immediate case that doesn't mean it precludes all those other things that you're saying. So, for instance, the commission could say, you know, at the end of this conversation that we're having with the community, you know, this border plus another block of Boston Ave, you know, but if Boston Ave's already paid for park, it wouldn't be covered for this anyways. But if, you know, the commission could entertain going beyond this, it's just that it could be hard to define right now. And there are other opportunities now that the Green Line was, delayed till I believe late November. Correct. We have September, October, November meetings as well to address those or reconsider a wider area. But if we were to do that I would suggest approve this and then work on that basically and then work with the community because again the purpose of this is to help the community. That's the sole purpose and again you know there are bigger ambitions but With the time with the clock running out this was a way to try to give some relief in some manner.
[Chris Bennett]: So, I understand that. I appreciate the work that went into that. However, it again. It's like oh that will be taken care of later, what is a serious concern for me because we already have. permit parking around me. We are one of the few streets that isn't in this area. So that, although I appreciate what you're stating, that cutoff is going to be extremely problematic for us.
[Todd Blake]: So, I mean, again, a suggestion would be, you know, the normal processes to petition your street individually. But again, the city could consider in the spirit of cooperation and time, you know, a lesser amount of signatures to speed up that process, or even wave it, and then go to the opposite like we're suggesting with this. I do want to circle back and say that for this area. Basically we're saving these 15 streets or so in this zone from from having to go door to door and get a petition. And this is doing it kind of ripping off the band a doing 15 streets at once. And if for whatever reason one of those 15 streets or didn't want it, they could get petitions to opt out of it the opposite.
[Chris Bennett]: So, yeah, I get that.
[Alicia Hunt]: process question here. I think what we actually because I my impression in the chat is that Ms Bennett is not alone that there are a number of people in bordering areas who think their streets should be part of this. I will say as a commissioner that I do not think that we can tonight. I will I will not approve permit parking on people's streets if they have not been duly notified. Right.
[Chris Bennett]: Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: So I would not vote to expand this polygon tonight because nobody outside of this has been duly notified that that was a potential. Therefore, I think that we should on the fly right now, come up with a process for the people who feel that their streets should be included. And we need to decide whether we're telling them that they should send an email somewhere with that information so we can start to collect it and consider an expansion for another meeting. Or whether we should say to them, here's the process, get the signatures on your street. That's process. By the way, if you know somebody in North Medford who wants permit parking, that's the policy. There's a process. It was posted in the agenda. I just want people to know that, that there is a process that anybody could undertake. to get permit parking on their street with the signatures. But we should figure out, rather than having 15 people say tonight, I want it on my street A and I want it on my street B, and what's the right thing for them to do with that, those requests, if they are outside the area we are considering tonight.
[Todd Blake]: Those are great points, Alicia. I 100% agree, it will become unwieldy if you start entertaining individual streets outside the border. But that doesn't mean we don't care about the streets outside the border, obviously. So yeah, we should, in lieu of another email, you could email myself, tblake at Medford-ma.gov, or I would presume Medford Police, Alva, because that's the person you would normally contact with a petition. But yeah, we should be able to, I would think, develop a process that might be able to accelerate or even waive the petition. But I couldn't make that decision on my own. But that is a great suggestion that Alicia's pointing out for the streets that may be just beyond and want it as well. See, what happens is, for those who haven't been on meetings like Alicia said in the past so many years, sometimes the people on this call say they want it on those streets. And believe it or not, you know, we may not agree or wonder why, but there may be some people on your street that don't want it. So that's why the petition process existed in the first place. But, but anyways, we're here to help and we want to help, but I think the suggestion by Lisa was great to focus on this region, this particular region, just for tonight in this special meeting.
[Alicia Hunt]: Chief, I think you're muted. You don't, oh, you're talking to people in your room.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you, Director Blake for the response. And Commissioner Hunt, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I do not believe we can take a vote tonight that goes beyond this petition as it's posted on the map and as we did this. One thing I can say as chair, as the traffic commissioners, we didn't know how this vote was potentially going to go this evening. And we're here to kind of get as much feedback on the process as possible. And so we will put in both Director Blake's and Secretary Alva Erickson's email address up on the board tonight. And if you live beyond this, just send an email to one of those two individuals indicating your support if you reside beyond that quarter mile. We have now the luxury of another September meeting where we can put this in place. plenty of time, we can get you on the agenda. And like, as I said, at the beginning of the statement, we are here to kind of evaluate how this is going to be accepted. And I'm not, we've only heard from a few people. And it seems to be popular by looking at some of the chat room comments, but we don't know how this will turn out. But it seems that if it is successful, we can then expand it beyond the quarter mile. That is not beyond the realm of possibility. And there's plenty of time for it. So we'll put in the email addresses, let us know. We'll do another meeting in September. It's the second Tuesday of every month. And so I don't know what that is. September 13th. So that'll be the next meeting. And we will, if we get the correct sort of feedback, handle it in the same manner that we did this evening with a little bit of an out process, as opposed to having residents go and start collecting petitions, which is the traditional way of doing it. So that's just from the chair. I want to make sure that I do kind of comment on I cannot go and go beyond a quarter mile as of this evening because that's the way the agenda lists in the petition, but we are not beyond the rubble of handling this in plenty of time.
[Todd Blake]: Chief, if I can add to that, before I get the flood of emails, if you can, I have a request to put in the subject line, RPP or resident permanent parking, because I get hundreds of emails and that will help me sort them appropriately.
[Jack Buckley]: RPP, resident permanent parking. I also want to let, there's a couple of other hands up. So I want to kind of move forward. So can we move to, do we have to unmute them? Jodi Sandler, next up on my list. All right. If I'm going out of order and you have the hands up, I apologize. I'm just going with what I have on the board. Hi, welcome.
[SPEAKER_06]: Hi. Can you see me? I can't see me.
[Unidentified]: Oh, we can see you.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay. Anyway, it is, so I'm Jodi Sandler. I live on Boston Ave right where the next abroad between Broadway and Harvard. And I actually did a petition because, um, I was concerned about the two hour non-resident parking. So first I appreciate that everybody is actually thinking about us in our neighborhood, what kind of parking we need. In the one block between Boston and Harvard Street, there's 133 residences right now, about from my calculations. And there's, from what I've heard, 75 more are gonna be built in the next few years because they're gonna take where the gas station is and St. Catharines. So that'll be like over 200 residences on one block. even though it's really close to the T. So there's a lot of concern right now, because it's already very difficult to park. We don't have the permit parking yet, four meters. And only one side you can park on, and there's probably 30 spots. And what I heard tonight, with it in front of companies or something, Like if there's a storefront, it's not in front of a house that that won't be, that will be the two hour non-resident parking is gonna create bigger problems because that will leave us like 15 parking spots for like 133 residences.
[Todd Blake]: So the, if I may answer the model that we're, Modeling this after is very well known in neighboring communities such as Somerville. So on major streets, it's very commonly two-hour parking except by permit. So if you live on that street, as you do, and you have a permit, the two-hour doesn't apply to you. You could park there eight hours. It's people that aren't residents could park there for two hours from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
[SPEAKER_06]: That is still very problematic, even just for quality of life, like people have in-home medical care, we need plumbers, electricians, we have people who won't even come to our houses, they're like, I'm not dealing with that. So just to even limit it more, and we used to have, you know, someone might need a babysitter. So just the ability for people who like, and we were, with the visitor passes, they'll be able to park, but it's gonna create a real, real problem because it's already a problem. Like sometimes we come home at night and there's no on-street parking. And we used to be able to, or can still, I guess, that between Harvard and college is now metered parking. And I've lived here for 17 years. And that has gotten more congested. It's made it difficult now that we have the metered parking. Like if someone's visiting, like just to have a life, to have friends, like it's very challenging in this area and the T is gonna make it so much worse. And around us, everywhere else is resident parking. There's just Broadway and Somerville has the two hour and for them, every other street is all resident parking. Even like next to the park. not on Broadway, but like the adjoining streets that feed into Broadway and Somerville. So I did end up doing a petition. I have over a hundred, well, no, I think I have about a hundred, I think I got 99 signatures, possibly a hundred. And I did that in one week. So I'm sure if I went out about again, I could improve that. And everyone was, The petition was to support 24-7 resident parking from Broadway to college. And based on what you've said, even if call it the Harvard to college at night, even though there's meters there at night, it should be resident only.
[Alicia Hunt]: Todd can you clarify that that's some of so because the idea with this some of it would be for two hour only if we don't put resident permit parking in we anticipate that people parking at the T will park in there in the way of these properties but anybody who gets a permit can also get visitor permits. So if you have a plumber coming, you give him your visitor permit and put it in his dashboard or an aid or whatever. And the hope is that by you having a resident permit parking program, there will be spots for them. And that there's some level of confidence that without this program. There won't be a spot whether they had a permit or not. So what it sounds like what you're saying is, don't allow the two hour. Yes, commercial parking.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, so the, so the two hour. is only in front of non-residential use. So for instance, St. Clemens properties, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: Right, and that's about five of the 25 spaces.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, so it's about a thousand foot or more block between Harvard and Ball Square. And there's about 80 feet or 60 to 80 feet or so at the Ball Square end and then about 200 feet at St. Clemens block end. So it's a measure that cities and towns like ourselves take to have some sort of compromise with non-residential uses, depending on what those may be. So if St. Clemens gets redeveloped and it's residential condos or rental apartments, then it will be two hour. But if it gets redeveloped and it has, say, a convenience store in it, then that's to be
[SPEAKER_06]: compromising and accepting of businesses and their needs as well which also help the community so we also sorry well we also have no parking on the other half of the street so it's not even like we have both sides with 130 residences so you're leaving us or not you personally but the plan is leaving us with just about 15 parking spots to use for every single visitor in need that we have for 133 residences. And that to me seems fairly unreasonable.
[Todd Blake]: Those are good points. One thing we'd like to point out and, and Alicia had a great point as compared to the existing setup, which is no restrictions at all. The proposal will help you as compared to existing but you're saying you want to be helped a little bit more so understood in terms of parking on a street available number of spaces, as compared to the houses or registered vehicles. It's very common in all, you know, Medford, Somerville, Cambridge, elsewhere, that there's not enough spaces on the street to accommodate. So what these programs do is just limit the competition. So right now you're competing with your residents and anyone else who may come by that doesn't even live in Medford. This just limits it. It still doesn't guarantee you a space. And again, understood your point. I think the chief wants to, there's other agenda items.
[Tim McGivern]: hold on but can we just clarify the block we're talking about i heard different blocks but you're getting very specific with numbers miss sandler are we talking about between broadway broadway and harvard broadway and harvard so that first block that the t is actually on okay so i'll bring up the map yeah it sounds like the plan would be an improvement from status quo on that street
[SPEAKER_06]: To some extent, but we'll also have the influx of everybody on the green line for that street to share. which is just going to compound things, as you all know, because you started doing this process.
[Todd Blake]: Well, that's one of the reasons. So the resident permit helps with that. And then the two-hour, we believe, also helps with that. Because typically, someone wouldn't necessarily hop on the Green Line and get back in two-hour period. That's why it's two hours. So it should help with the Green Line community.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I get what you're saying. But they could just go to Union Square and back. I mean, there's so many things that people are going to try to do.
[Todd Blake]: So it's this blue segment of Boston Ave on the screen. I'm trying to get it blown up here. So the areas that she's talking about, the Titan Gas Area and the St. Clemons properties are currently non-residential uses, right? And then at that Ball Square end, there's a few spaces next to the Ball Square businesses on the corner there opposite the new Greenlight Station.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, there's also businesses at the park with the parking lot behind the ball like you just pointed to near Broadway. Yep. Would that parking lot be considered resident? Because that would that be the resident parking? Would that be business parking?
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, so right now, it wouldn't be business it's two hour, except by permit so if you park there, you know, all day while you go do whatever for eight hours, you'll take up that space or anyone else with the resident permit. It's only, you know, when you leave or when another resident leaves, it allows for two hour for for businesses or for other doesn't have to be a business use but it's something other than resident residential use. But this is mimicking the program we have that exists throughout the city on any other resident permit parking street. Besides the two-hour piece, usually the resident permit ends at the frontage of a corner business. So that, again, it doesn't mean it can't be revisited as compared to the existing condition.
[SPEAKER_06]: I get that it's based on past practices, but now that there's a new T and we'll be left with like 15 spots for 130 residents. That's challenging.
[Tim McGivern]: I just did a Google tour. It looks like a lot of those triple-deckers have driveways, so that has to factor into the equation as well. I think if you didn't limit parking to residents on this street, you'd be in a very poor situation. To me, just in the face of it, this stretch needs to have resident permit parking only, and it needs to have to our limitations for the businesses because we can't restrict the parking for the businesses because that wouldn't be good for the businesses. And plus the driveways.
[SPEAKER_06]: But the businesses aren't in Medford.
[Tim McGivern]: There are non-resident entities on that street. So we talked about a couple of them.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I guess I've shared what the residents want with over 100 people signing. And there's been no T. So as far as precedent, there's been no T here before. So something- I'm not clear on what the difference between what you want is and what we're proposing because we're proposing- I wanted no to our non-resident parking on our street. I'm not sure that's what I'm proposing. So like, you're definitely getting us part of the way, but still with only being left with 15 spaces, we can depend on to have a life and needs met. None of it's ever guaranteed, but it would just make it easier to have contractors and things come in and have a place to put those visitors when they arrive.
[Jack Buckley]: even though I'm caught a little bit on this one.
[Alicia Hunt]: Can we say being noted and hear the rest of the comments? I mean, there are a lot of people who want to make comments. Yeah. So we need to hear all the comments before we can make any decisions.
[Jack Buckley]: I'm just thoroughly confused because I don't think there's that many two-hour parking between Broadway and Hobbit.
[SPEAKER_06]: I counted the spots because there's a lot of driveways in between there and there's a handicap and a few I think there's three fire hydrants and the way the lines are marked a lot of times it's like it can only be one person parking in certain places so when I went and counted the actual spots the most would be in front of St. Catharines and at that top of that street so it cuts off like half.
[Jack Buckley]: My alma mater.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, St. Clement's. I apologize. I apologize.
[Jack Buckley]: OK. I mean, we can look at that. But it's just, in my mind, I don't see where there would be too many two-hour parking spots anywhere that this is such a problem. I just am not picturing in my head where there would be. I mean, I know you have St. Clement's there. But it's pretty much been closed down, and it's all allowed. Well, thank you for the comments. We're going to have to think about that one as we move forward and dwell on this. We do have a petition, by the way, It is here, we have it recognized. Let me move on and maybe we can come back. Jenna Palm. Hi, welcome. Hi there. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so I wanted to offer a business owners perspective. I have been in business for nearly 10 years. My yoga studio is on the call. corner of Main Street and Harvard Street. And as it is, parking is very challenging. It's the number one complaint that we receive from our students who are coming to take yoga classes. And the nature of our business is that everyone shows up at the same time to practice in the same group class. And with the congestion in the parking that's typically on Main Street and Harvard Street during our classes, we usually advise people to park on Wareham Street. And I know it looks like half of Wareham Street was in the graphic of being voted on tonight for full resident parking. Frankly, I think if if that happens, it would put me out of business, there would not be enough spaces for the students to come at the same time. So I wondered if you might entertain a two hour parking limit for at least part of where ham Street, because I'm sure I'm also not the only business that's affected by this. There are many other businesses on main street that I'm sure have trouble with their customers coming to park, but it would really be detrimental for us if we lost Wareham as a parking option for our students.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you for your comments and for participating tonight. Do commissioners have any comments or questions related to what was just asked of us?
[Alicia Hunt]: I just wanted to, I didn't quite catch where on Main Street her school is. And I asked that because there will be public parking down Main Street, the Tufts lot, and there's the Yale Street lot. It's a couple of blocks, but I wasn't, sorry, you said where in Maine, Wareham in Maine? Harvard in Maine. Harvard in Maine. So actually it would be highly appropriate for the students to be parking at the Yale Street parking lot, which is a public parking lot.
[SPEAKER_05]: Some do, some do. Again, we have close to 20 students arriving at the same time, and there's often not enough spots, especially the times of day that our busiest classes are, usually in the evenings after work where it tends to be busier on Main Street. We do have some people park in the Yale Street lot and still have issues with folks having trouble finding parking.
[Jack Buckley]: Let me suggest this in the most respectful way. This is for all of us. We definitely are like many other cities and towns. We have way too many registered vehicles, but way too few parking spots. We're always going to be faced with this problem. And we want to be as respectful to our residents as we are to our business owners, because we have to support both of these. Sometimes the argument to sit there and say, yeah, it's okay to go park on Awareness Street and take theater spots isn't, you know, something that the Traffic Commission could just generally approve, but I suggest to you that there are other options that we have helped businesses in the past, and it may not necessarily need to be addressed tonight with this resident apartment parking sort of program, that we can come back and have a discussion with you after the fact about maybe making some variances or et cetera.
[Todd Blake]: I think you pointed clarification to on the local side streets. So the current practice and this is what we're going to model after the current practice on a local side street like this is that the two spaces next to the corner business on main and where him would not be the sign for resident permit would end at that. property where the business begins. So there would be a couple spaces on that side street. And as other people pointed out, this is for Harry. It looks like it's about a four minute or less walk from the street lot, which is pretty underutilized, and then main street itself from where him towards Tufts Square is also unrestricted, largely. So there are some other areas but as you said, we're trying to balance business needs and residents needs from the resident side they say we need this and the businesses say we need this so we think we're striking a decent balance here.
[Alicia Hunt]: And I. Go ahead. We will need people to realize that sometimes they're going to have to walk a little further. I frequent a vet that's on that block, and I sometimes park as far away as the Tufts school down the road that's like four blocks away, carrying my pet. It's a reality that when parking is tight, people will have to walk a few blocks to get to their businesses. And maybe they'll choose to carpool or bicycle or drop off and not stay. These are things that people have to consider.
[Jack Buckley]: All problems in modern cities right now. I want to move on to, I believe Melissa is next, but I want to make a comment to some of the chat, which I sometimes can't keep up with. A lot of questions about renters. Renters are eligible for the Resident Permit Pocket Program. You don't necessarily need to be a homeowner. If you're a renter, you can participate in the Resident Permit Pocket Program, if you're with the program. Students, as a different, different set of programs. Yes, a student does not have to register in the vehicle in Massachusetts, but they do have to register, say, with Tufts University, which means they register with us, and then they can then openly get apartment parking there. And I believe at some point now we're gonna do a student parking sort of program with that. But if you're a renter and you decide that you just don't want to register your vehicle in Medford, I don't know what to tell you when it comes to that. I believe you have to register your vehicle in Medford, so you will need to do so to participate which is a permanent parking program. So that's just a quick comment on some of those comments I see.
[Alicia Hunt]: Melissa, no, it's- And Chief, I just wanna add, I checked in with Tufts before in preparation for this. If somebody is a student at Tufts, they can choose to pay $70 a month to park their car overnight on the Tufts campus. So while it's inconvenient, and if there are students in this region, they can choose to pay that and to have their car on campus and not parked at their rental location.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you. So Moshe, can you unmute yourself? We can see you now.
[MCM00001520_SPEAKER_14]: All right, I think I'm unmuted can everyone hear me. Perfect. Melissa know what 64 George, the corner of Georgian would bind, I just wanted to quickly say thank you to Director Blake the commissioners and all the town staff that are here tonight because this stuff's tough you guys have been dealing with it for a long time. Um, and also thank you for including the full streets up until the blue border, um, and not cutting it in half because as somebody who lives in that kind of halfway area, that could have become very challenging. And, um, I will be, uh, emailing, uh, director Blake and Alba to get on the next agenda because I'm one of those corner people. Um, and This is kind of, you know, just to say thank you for being here and doing what you're doing and also to ask a question about George Street, because it's an emergency artery, and I know it's not covered under this specific agenda item tonight, but as we all know, during the winter or even today, it gets pretty crowded out there when people are parked on both sides of the street. And it's quite an impediment, you know, during rush hour getting up and down the street. And then we add wintertime on top of it. So is there, you know, what's the correct pathway to start the discussion about something to alleviate the challenges of everyone parking on George Street once the train opens?
[Todd Blake]: I would say at this time, George Street isn't captured by the blue border, but that doesn't mean we preclude George Street from applying or being considered in that next order that after we receive all the emails we consider. I guess that's, yeah, at this time, that would be my recommendation. So as you said, email us.
[SPEAKER_24]: Okay. Perfect. So thank you for being here tonight. Hopefully it goes smoothly.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you, thank you for your participation and your comments. Larry and Betsy.
[SPEAKER_13]: Oh, I'm very sorry. I hit unmute and it did not unmute. Larry's here, Betsy is not. She's in the room. I just want to flag an issue that's come up recently is the MBTA is looking at bus routes in the area and is planning to eliminate the 96 bus going down George Street and up Winthrop and back along Boston to the new Tufts-Medford station. And I'm sure you're aware of it, but I can see that having some sort of impact on parking in the area, especially north of George Street, you know, you could park there if you wanted to and grab the bus and then go over to the red line in Davis, or now you'll be able to go, or shortly, you'll be able to go to the green line at College Ave. So again, I'm just flagging that as something to consider, how it might impact the resident parking program and impacting those neighborhoods that are outside of the blue line right now.
[Jack Buckley]: All right, thank you for those comments. Yes, obviously we are aware of it. We have been debating and trying to, you know, impact that decision for quite some time now. It's been in our thoughts as we were just playing together and it will continue to remain as a consideration as we move.
[SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, there was a neighborhood petition in the works against eliminating that route. Thank you.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you. Thank you for your participation and comments. I see no other hands up. No, there were a number of comments in the comment section so the commissioners have anything else I want to try to keep on track. A timeframe for this one was six or five we did start a little bit late trying to get everyone in here.
[Todd Blake]: Chief, quickly, there was a comment in the chat that I think is relevant for streets that already have resident permit in the blue area. So Brookings made a comment about they already have resident permit parking 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., but there's then change to all night, all day, all night. So at this time, that's not what we're proposing, but we could revisit that as well. But at this time, that's not part of the proposal, so.
[Alicia Hunt]: I'm going to also skim through some of these questions. One of them was about whether the so this if I understand correctly, and I just want to make sure I do understand this. Some of these locations will get new to our parking where there was no restriction at all before. Is that correct?
[Todd Blake]: Yes, so all of the proposals are in areas that don't have any restriction at all, whether it's resident permit, two hour, 30 minute, no parking. So basically you're allowed to park and nothing says how to park. Right.
[Alicia Hunt]: So that'll get that. So somebody did ask whether that would be metered parking. And at this time, it is my understanding that it is not intention to add meter. pay parking at those locations. That's not part of this recommendation. That doesn't mean we wouldn't consider that in the future. Is that correct?
[Todd Blake]: Correct. We're not proposing any pay-to-park and we're not changing any areas that are currently pay-to-park.
[Alicia Hunt]: Okay. And then a lot of the questions are what we had addressed about. I think that we've addressed most of the questions and I just wanted to re-emphasize, somebody had a question about whether they currently have certain permit, would that change? Blanketly, no. If you have a permit, nothing is gonna change. That means you're not part of this recommendation. This is only affecting people who don't have permit parking at all in their streets. So if you have a permit for something, whatever that is, it's not gonna change.
[Jack Buckley]: Before I move on to final comments from the commissioners, Director Blake, I want you to assist, essentially, the petition is coming from your direction, so to say. So if you could stop picking up on the formulating.
[Todd Blake]: Sorry, you're breaking up a little. I think you're away from the mic, I think.
[Jack Buckley]: I'm pretty close. Just if you could stop formulating and help us come up with a motion that will carry through this. It could be just passing up the petition. The final comments from the commissioners, anything?
[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, there was one other thing that I had put in my notes previously was that we should have an effective date. We don't usually do that, but I think it would be a good practice because it sets expectations of the public, of everybody. And that effective date needs to take into account DPW's ability to put up signage and the parking commission department's ability to start taking parking permit requests, stuff like that. And honestly, that actually points out that they can't take, like there's some point when the parking commission can start taking the requests because their software was updated. And then there's a later date at which point this would start being enforced. So I think we need an enforcement date in this to set people's expectations correctly.
[Jack Buckley]: Before I move to Commissioner Brzezinski, Commissioner McGibbon, this is sort of kind of lies getting them deployed and then notice, et cetera. Has that been, any thought been given to that? Have you got a plan for him?
[Todd Blake]: And- Oh, Tim, I was going to say, this is a very unusual case because we're doing 15 streets at once. Usually the practice is one street at a time. So we hope to time it with, by the green line opening and then whatever Tim mentions.
[Tim McGivern]: The timing with the later opening will help out for sure. We will probably, we can't do them all at once. And I don't know exactly how many signs we're talking about here, but we're going to have to plan it out. I mean, it's not going to happen all at once. It's going to be multiple weeks over the course of, we have to squeeze it in amongst regular duties. So usually I think when we do one street, they can do it in a day. They don't need to put new poles up. So I don't have a timeline, an exact one. We're going to have to figure it out based on how many signs and all that.
[Todd Blake]: It's probably a few hundred signs. And then poles is a different number too.
[Bob Dickinson]: I just had a question about, and I understand there's so many complex issues and I hope the constituents understand that. But, and I think if we may come up with something, it's absolutely not gonna be perfect, but are we prepared as a commission and then our parking department to, if this thing does get implemented tonight, to be able to continue to visit this once the Green Line gets going. I'd like for people to understand that this is not going to be a perfect fit, presuming that it gets approved, but please work with us and understand that, you know, as these streets like, you know, The yoga owner provided we're going to have to continue to kind of visit this as we go along and maybe do it street by street, even though we can't do it street by street tonight, but are we prepared to approach it that way or is this one of those things we're going to set it forget it. That's what I'm afraid of.
[Todd Blake]: That's a great point. Yeah, it's a great point and I'm glad you brought it up. Typically, and I forgot to use the term pilot. My apologies. It was on the map and it was on the sheet. So in cases like this, we call it a pilot program. And in the past practice the commission may choose the chief of whoever proposes the motion may choose. to say six month review or in this case, because it's going to take a little longer to get the signs up and then be in operation for six months, you might say month review, whatever the commission decides. But it is meant to be a dynamic situation, as you pointed out, and to revisit it.
[Bob Dickinson]: Because I would like people to understand that, you know, some people are going to be incredibly disappointed by what's decided that some are going to be incredibly happy about what's decided, but I hope they can rest assured in the fact that we as a commission and then the parking department will be there to kind of field, not complaints but constructive criticism on how adjustments can be made. either street by street or area by area, you know, once this gets implemented, particularly because we're implementing something for that hasn't happened yet. We're just personally, you know, predicting what's going to happen and we all know that it's going to be difficult when it happens but at the same time. I hope we can go back and allow for people to come in and offer constructive items and work with us on how to make adjustments once it gets put in place and we see that some changes need to be made.
[Todd Blake]: That's a great point. And another comment that's come up is about enforcement. This wouldn't be enforced until it was signed right so in in because the signs will take a while that gives. I think Alicia touched upon this early that gives the residents that didn't necessarily petition for this time to go about getting their permits and things like that a little more time than what's typical. So, so we believe the timing will work out by the time the signs are implemented, you'll have had plenty of time to get your permit and enforcement wouldn't start until the signs were up, which could be. I think Tim had mentioned, at least weeks away.
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah, well if figure a couple streets in a day, few days out of the week, couple days out of the week. What we're gonna have to do is sit down and calculate it out and work with the sign team and come up with a plan. So we'll have to do that.
[Jack Buckley]: And the enforcement conducted by the parking division and the Metro Police Department.
[Todd Blake]: And the intent, again, the overall intent is to help. It's not to rush out and put these signs up and start ticketing residents. You know, that's not what we're about. So we're confident that we'll get it right.
[Jack Buckley]: Yeah, I'm just reading the final part. Again, I apologize. I now see Ian starting to pop up. public comment is closed. We're going to try to wrap this up and keep to the timeframe, but I still see the comments about parking enforcement, parking enforcement is not being enforced. It is to my knowledge, I will look into this. We have a parking division that does enforcement, but I have a police department that also does this. We now want a new computerized process. So this will be enforced. I can't guarantee that to the extent that there's going to be Commissioners, anything else? Does anyone want to formulate a motion on this?
[Alicia Hunt]: I'm willing to consider that. I do feel like we should put a date in here and I will just September 1st, September 15th, October 1st, And obviously this is not going to start tomorrow. We're certainly not enforcing it tomorrow until signs are up. I don't like starting anything September 1st with the number of tenancies that turn over that day. Should we say something like October 1st or when the signs are installed on each street?
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah, you're gonna have to give us time to get all the signs up. even if you're talking a couple days out of the week that we're putting up signs just for this, then it's still gonna take us a month to do this with that timeline, and that is aggressive. So we're talking 15 streets here. So I would say if the ultimate deadline here is the opening of the station, we should give the DPW until, know, mid-October, if we can, to get all the signs up.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, I was thinking worst case November 1st, but I'm hesitant to, you know, suggest anything earlier because we may have to order more polls and signs and there's like some materials and things like that. So, the ultimate goal, as Tim just said, is by, you know, not that we're targeting late November, but
[Alicia Hunt]: What if we did it this way? What if we said beginning October 15th or once the signs were installed on each street, on the respective street? So right, if the signs are up on Morton Ave after October 15th, they'd be installed. If Spencer Road doesn't get its signs until November 1st, once the signs are up, that's when they'll start I just feel like we should give them some sort of date, right? I don't want anybody leaving this meeting or hearing the news of this meeting and then being confused. Why aren't we, should we just say as of November 1st or after the... I prefer the October date.
[Jack Buckley]: I do like a mid-October date, you know, over a lot of the other things. And I'm not against the idea of a date because it gives us the chance to kind of talk this up and to kind of promote it a little bit further once beyond this. It allows for any adjustments we may make in September.
[Todd Blake]: The approval that, if it were approved tonight, you're approving the regulation, not necessarily when the signs go up or when enforcement happens, so that's more logistics, but I get the point about notifying residents. So I would suggest that it's a not before this date, but not after this date. Not before, so people know when they have to get stickers by or permits by, and not after the opening of the green line. So if you said not before October 1st or 15th, but not after November, late November, when the green line opens, that would give a window that people know I have now until that not before date to get my permit.
[Tim McGivern]: But Todd, we're gonna, so the DPW, as soon as this vote is approved, if this is approved, we're going to begin, we're going to begin getting the signs, getting posts if we need posts, installing. So unless we're bagging signs, what are we doing with enforcement, right? I would say it's when the street is done and it's signed, then that's between now and, or if it's approved between now and sometime in the middle of October.
[Todd Blake]: Correct, the normal practices, the commission doesn't necessarily set a date because of these reasons. And it's when the signs go up, that's usually when the enforcement starts.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, but from a customer service perspective, that's really frustrating to people that they don't know. And if we don't want the parking department to be hit tomorrow with 500 people asking for this permit, unless they do it all online and they can do what you want online. But we don't, right? You need time for people to respond and deal with it.
[Tim McGivern]: We could do it off the list. We could have that list that Todd had there and we could just go in order.
[Alicia Hunt]: Alphabetically?
[Tim McGivern]: If it is alphabetically, we could do it alphabetically. We could do something.
[Bob Dickinson]: You could start close to the train. I mean, start closest to the station and move away from it. We could do that too. I do have a question for the chief, though, about enforcement. Are we going to give homeowners a chance if they walk into your office with a ticket and say, I just didn't get my permit in time? Are we going to work with these people? Or is it basically like, once the signs are up, that's it?
[Jack Buckley]: Unfortunately, that is not under my department. I do not handle all the tickets and ticketing appeals that are done through the parking division. I will tell you, we always work. be reasonable when it comes to this.
[Bob Dickinson]: I just can't give you that authority right now and guarantee because it's not doesn't fall particularly as being a Yeah, I see this as being a shock to these tough kids who are coming in because I presume these landlords are not going to advise them as to what's happening. And so I'm hoping that the parking department will work with the people who are actually living in the area that may not know what's going on or even the regular homeowners who may not know what's going on and give them a chance to kind of rectify the situation instead of being surprised.
[Jack Buckley]: I agree with that and I wholeheartedly agree with your previous comments about that. We're trying to do the right thing here and we may not get it right. And then we're going to kind of keep this sort of fluid and we want the community to work with us. So if we're going to ask that, I think we have to work with the community also.
[Tim McGivern]: Very good. Thank you. I have an idea, chief, we can do something where if it's approved tonight, then the regulation then becomes in effect. And then we're going to start, you know, getting the signs ordered and the polls and the polls and lining up the installations and all that we can batch them. and do robocalls to those streets and say, here is the anticipated date of the signs going up and enforcement begins. So we could do something like that, but that's gonna require me and Todd sitting down with the sign team and coming up with that plan. And then once that plan is in effect, then we can establish a communications to the residents through the communications office. I think we could do something like that. That is very realistic.
[Jack Buckley]: I think it's a great idea. Get them all made, get them batched, get a plan for when they're going to be installed, get a plan, and then keep the residents in these neighborhoods advised of what we're doing all along. This is it. The signs are ready. We're going to be installing them. We're going to be doing this. here's the time to go pick up your resident parking passes, et cetera, your visitor passes, do the whole thing that way. And we should take a lot more responsibility when it comes to this. And I think if we do it that way, it'll go, I almost said fine, it'll go okay. We'll get there.
[Alicia Hunt]: I'm sorry, Chief, I was just reminded that, so I did have the opportunity, a few of us spoke with the parking department about this recently, and it sounded like they need 30 days to get the software updated in order to be issuing these permits. So today is August 16th. If we could say, you know, starting September 15th, people can start getting permits and maybe Tim could just not install signs before September 15th, if they get made or bag them before that date.
[Tim McGivern]: We would have to bag them, I think, because I just think the amount of signs and the amount of work that we're talking about. Right.
[Alicia Hunt]: But you can bag them?
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah, I think we can bag them. I mean, it's one extra step, but it's definitely something we could do.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, we did talk to Faye and she did not, she thought that she needed on the order of 30 days to get her software updated to be able to issue these. Yeah, you don't wanna, which could say that the signs would go up but nobody will get ticketed on those streets until she is able to issue them because it's her software too. Although I think it might be easier if we could just bag them until and give her 30 days. Yeah.
[Tim McGivern]: If that if that is the case and we could confirm with Fay, whether we all need to just sit down in this, if it's approved, and just lay it all out, including communications.
[Alicia Hunt]: All right, we'll need a communications plan because we did a good, we worked hard, there was a discussion about flyering and I don't know that that actually occurred. for that, about this meeting. But maybe it's actually not too late to flyer those streets saying this has been approved on your street, blah, blah, blah. What they had said, the parking department had offered that they can put flyers on the windshields of the vehicles parked on those streets. They cannot flyer doors. Right, the robocalls are not reaching everybody. They're particularly not reaching tenants who move in and out. Really not reaching are the people who park on those streets, but don't live on them.
[Jack Buckley]: I have to, something in the back of my brain is telling me that leafleting vehicles is no longer legal. So I think we have to re, I'll take a look at that.
[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you.
[Jack Buckley]: And then, I mean, any, but I do agree with the commitment here from the from everyone that said that we have to just do our part here to make this work and to go beyond and to kind of work this. That means getting these polled. After tonight, if it gets passed, we get them signs working and installed, we can back them, we'll do as much public relations we can on this to keep as many people who are parking and driving cars involved in this process and move forward. We are now moving well beyond our timeframe and we have a number of other issues. So can I get a motion from a commissioner outside of the chair on this matter so that we can kind of move forward?
[Alicia Hunt]: I'll motion to approve this request with an implementation date beginning September 15th.
[Jack Buckley]: Okay, do I have a second on that motion? I'll second that. Okay, we have a second discussion from the commissioners. Non-roll call vote, Alva? Commissioner McGibbon? Yes.
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: Commissioner Hunt? Yes. Commissioner Brzezinski?
[Jack Buckley]: Yes.
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: Chief Buckley?
[Jack Buckley]: Yes. for the left and one absent motion passes. Thanks.
[Alicia Hunt]: I just, can we just comment very briefly that there were a bunch of comments about also enforcement in stickers. Stickers are cost prohibitive. The enforcement is attempting to be throughout the city, random, not targeted, and they are not responding to people who are calling in on their, the cars they don't recognize on their street, that that's not something that the parking department is welcoming.
[Harold McGilvey]: I'll go back and read.
[Jack Buckley]: Okay. 2022-37 Winthrop Street bike lanes, phase one, Winchester town line to approximately Lawrence road. The plan also includes two speed tables per ever source mitigation. The proposed plan is intended to improve bicycle accommodations in this corridor and calm vehicle traffic. The proposed plan includes some loss of parking on Winthrop Street to accommodate Buffett Bike Lanes, west side, south of Placestead Road. Parking will remain near the Temple, same side, and near Victory Park, same side. I believe we have Transportation Engineer Amy Ingalls to present this.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Correct, thank you. Before I move on, just real quick, I do want to introduce our intern that we're sharing with Planning, Lillian Wirth. who's on the line, since some of y'all haven't met her.
[Jack Buckley]: Welcome.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Thank you. All right, can I, looks like I do have the ability to share my screen. Get to sharing the right one. Um, so Winthrop Street, um, many of, most of you probably know, is, uh, has received some, um, upgrades by Eversource and, you know, they've been digging up the road and basically the, uh, the entire length of Winthrop Street. Um, and when that happens, sometimes we're able to kind of take advantage of the opportunity of Um, uh, putting the road back slightly different than it was before. Um, and so that is part of the reason for the timeliness of this, um, uh, this proposal is, uh, we want to be able to add bike lanes where there weren't bike lanes before or add buffered bike lanes where there were regular bike lanes before. Because as it turns out, there's just a lot of extra pavement on this street that is really underutilized in its current design. So we're going to be looking at today the kind of first half phase one, which is roughly the Winchester line right about here. down to right around the between Victory Park and Lawrence Road area. Where that actual line is will kind of depend a little bit on Eversource's ongoing work, and we will work once that line is fully decided, we will work to make sure that the whatever bike lanes scenario we pass tonight transitions safely into the existing conditions here on Winthrop Street. And then the second part of Winthrop Street will be addressed later as part of phase two. So similar to other proposals, I'm just going to kind of go through the design slide by slide, kind of describing what's there. And I believe that she said this, but I'm just going to reiterate it. Currently, there is technically parking allowed on a fair amount of Winthrop Street. But it is quite underutilized. And we know this, actually, before we go into the design, I'm going to show you how we know this. We took a bunch of parking utilization data at various times, different days. And you can see that data on the spreadsheet here, I think. I've highlighted the utilization rate, which is basically just the number of spots used divided by the number of spots available.
[Alicia Hunt]: We're still seeing your PDF diagram, not a spreadsheet where you're highlighting things.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Okay, thank you. Got it. Thank you for that. Fixed? Yes, thank you. I've highlighted here the utilization rate, which I said is just the number of spaces that were being used when we went to collect the data divided by the number of spaces available. I'm just going to quickly scroll through them. You'll see that they are quite low, 3 percent, 3 percent, 4 percent. 3%, 3%. Yeah, they're all hovering right around 3 and 4%. And we made sure to do this in different types of weather. I went out there during a youth baseball game and soccer practice and stuff by some of the fields. Um, you know, we want to make sure we have captured a, uh, representative snapshot or a series of snapshots into what the parking needs are in this area. And, um, for the most part, like, it's just not used. So, um, that is kind of why we are taking a more aggressive approach with, um, proposing to eliminate parking on this street than, um, streets we have in the past. And I think I'm, am I still on the spreadsheet? Yeah, sorry. All of these are different. All these programs are different. Oh, screen. I think I got it this time. Yes. All right. So this is the first page of the design. This is the Winchester street line. here, and you can see that we have a nice buffer between the travel lanes and the bike lanes. At some point, we may be able to put flex posts in them as well. That's not something we're doing as part of this proposal, but that could happen in the future. There are also two bus stops here. So you can kind of see how the bike lane is integrated into the bus stop, making sure that both parties know, the bus drivers and the bicyclists, know that this is a shared space. The bus pulls in and the bicyclists can wait behind. And we also might notice that there are these green conflict markings. We don't have any of these, well, actually there's one small location in Medford that has this, as far as I know. Off the top of my head, it's just over in Medford Square, it was part of a MassDOT project, but I don't believe the city has put in anything like this before, but you've probably seen it at a lot of other surrounding cities. including Somerville, over on Tufts campus, right up along the border with Medford and Somerville. So basically, this is just meant to denote an area where there's a conflict between bicycle traffic and vehicle traffic, often at intersections, whether it's just a side street, as you see here, or a more complicated intersection, which I can show you on the next page. So this has got streets on both sides. You still have those conflict markings here. It's just kind of to bring an alert to both parties that similar to the bus stop situation that, you know, there could be conflicts here to make sure they know it's a shared space and that to look out for what the other party is doing. So on this block, again, we have a lot of buffered bike lanes. The width of the buffer varies. The width of this road varies a lot as you go from one section to the other. So we vary that width of the buffer as much as possible and hold the other things stable. On this sheet, you also can see that part of the deal with Eversource is that they're installing two speed tables, which will help to slow traffic down and bring it to the actual speed limit range. And this is, we've cited this as a good location for one. We haven't done the analysis to figure out exact locations yet. That's why I just have this bubble. But we thought it would be a good place kind of leading up to this intersection here with Playstead, which we've been told by residents and others that a lot of cars speed through here just because this is literally all pavement and it just feels like a racetrack out there. So we're trying to, with some of this kind of tan colored stuff here, we're essentially trying to tighten up the road and show all the different modes where they should be on the road. And this is just paint here. Again, we could at some point put flex posts up there or something else if we want to. But as far as right now, it's just paint that we're recommending. You've probably seen this at other parts of the city. We've done some bump outs and various things with this tan paint before. and we think it's worked out quite well, so we're proposing it here as well. There's a lot going on, I know, in this intersection, so I'll kind of talk through it. Again, we're preserving the bus, or excuse me, the bus stops as they are today, just giving them better markings. I don't believe they're marked at all. They just have the sign. And these crosswalks are here today, but with this tan kind of bump out area where shortening the distance that people are exposed to vehicle traffic. So it's the same, obviously the same distance of walking, we're not changing where the ramps are, but this is the only area that they'll be exposed is the white part. You know, if the drivers are just following the lanes here. Um, so Placedead Road does allow you to go right and left on Winthrop Street. Um, and, uh, we actually had two versions of this one here, um, but I think having, uh, separate lanes like this might be a little bit easier, but we can certainly combine it into just one lane so that, uh, there, you know, um, only one car at a time can decide, uh, that they're turning onto Winthrop Street. Um, But this having the stop bar up here, it's supposed to, I believe it's right around here, helps put the cars out into closer to where the oncoming traffic is so that they can see coming around this corner here. And they can see bicyclists and pedestrians just have a better view of what's going on there. Let's see. And so, yeah, this is a crossing that is basically the same, but also shortened for the distance that there's a conflict zone is shortened. And this one remains the same here. We are proposing to add some additional pedestrian signage, which is what these letters and numbers mean. Here, here, and here, and here. There is some signage out there today along the corridor, but as far as pedestrian signage is concerned, but we're proposing to add to make sure that there are the highlighter yellow pedestrian signs that are back-to-back at each crossing and on both sides. So whatever direction you're coming from, you will see two, one on your left and one on your right. So yeah, we're posing that at all the crosswalks here. Some similar treatment here on Arden Road. Just to kind of narrow things up a little bit and guide the cars to a safe and kind of decreased turning radius so that they're not flying through here really quickly. They're turning a little bit more sharply. That way they have plenty of time to look and see if there are pedestrians or bicyclists coming and not rush into the lane. All right, this one is pretty much the same as some of the other stuff that I've showed you. I don't think there's any new kinds of elements here. So we can kind of keep going. And if anyone's kind of wondering which parts have parking today and which parts, you know, yeah, as we're going through this, like which parts we're actually taking the parking away, that's something I can kind of create a document or go through with you so you know which places have parking. parking is being lost, but there are definitely quite a few places on Winthrop where there is no on street parking allowed anyways. So it just kind of varies from block to block.
[Alicia Hunt]: Will you pause and walk through this one? Because this has been an area where we've just Lorraine Road, some sidewalks have gone in, we've just allowed, they've just built the road for a new subdivision, so to speak, right there.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, absolutely. So there's, I believe it's right around here, some new sidewalk that has just gone in or may still be in the process of going in. For a while, it was essentially an extended asphalt, I believe, sidewalk with not really any indication of where the street ends and where the sidewalk begins, which is clearly not safe or compliant. So now there's a raised curb in the places where there wasn't, and the sidewalk continues here.
[Alicia Hunt]: Is that one of the areas that's losing parking, or is there already no parking there? I'm off the top of my head. I don't know. Does Todd know?
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, it's okay. So yeah, the sidewalk was on the on the bottom of the screen. And this Oh, my bad. This one. Oh, that's right. Yeah, that I'm kind of I don't even know how to describe it. The triangular shape to the right of your cursor, that's the gas station. So yeah, the sidewalk's kind of in the vicinity of that and the Lint Parade Road, south side. Parking-wise, if you could scroll back Amy to the, just beyond the Placedead Road sheet. Yeah, one more. So yeah, the parking that exists on Winthrop is pretty much from opposite Arden Road. Yeah, so the side on the top of the page currently has no parking from the high school all the way to the Winchester line. So that top of the page doesn't have parking. The bottom of the page has no parking from Winchester line up to Arden. Then this block from Arden towards the Lorain Road section has parking currently.
[SPEAKER_05]: OK, thank you.
[Todd Blake]: On that bottom side as you're looking at the sheet.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[Alicia Hunt]: Thanks I just knew near that gas station was a pretty. It's been a highly scrutinized area over the past, say, two to three years, which is why I wanted to understand it. Sure.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: So yeah, this is this is the area in this segment that doesn't have sidewalk currently. a little more down the road where there's a similar condition on the eastern side, top side of this roadway. So this is the first signal that we are encountering in this design at Steve Miller Drive, which is where the high school is here. We're actually going to be talking about Steve Miller Drive in a minute. So you can kind of see that we have some proposed design on that street as well. Obviously, we have interest in helping high school students and teachers and staff reach the high school by bicycle. We've had specific requests to do so. And, you know, that obviously just makes sense. So this has been a big motivating factor for improving the bike lanes that are out there today. adding new bike lanes where there aren't any now so that there is a continuous safe bike lane all the way to the school. Unfortunately, just this little tiny bit here, we run out of room to continue the bike lane on this side, but only for a very short stretch because we do need to have this left turn lane here. But it's really pretty minimal impact due to the fact that there's no street down here on the bottom part. No one's turning across that shared lane. Again, you can see some kind of tightened up intersections that we have done here. This one is an interesting one. Again, moving up the stop bar to a place where you can actually see all the different oncoming traffic. I added a stop bar here. It was kind of unclear. Oh no, there was a stop sign here. way back here, but you can't really see much back there. So I moved that up. Again, just trying to make sure that people know where they're supposed to be and aren't surprised by various users can have a good view of what's going on before they make their turns. Okay, so now we're in the Victory Park area where there is some existing parking up on this side, and you can see that we've preserved it. It is actually kind of bumped in parking, which is a little bit unusual, but, you know, not problematic with our design at all. We were able to find enough space to actually have a buffer between the bike lane and the parking as well as between the bike lane and the travel lane to give bicyclists some space where they're not so close to the moving cars but also not in the door zone. of the parking spaces. As we know that these types of parking spaces near parks can be high turnover. People are going back to their car for multiple trips to get equipment and whatever else out. It seems like an easy scenario for someone to kind of absentmindedly forget to check before opening their door. So we wanted to make sure we had that nice buffer there. existing crosswalks here with additional signage. We're still able to, even though we have those buffers, we're still able to maintain a nice sized bike lane on this side. And we've also now encountered the location Approximate location of the second speed table. Again, being near the park, it just seemed like a good location. It's a nice straightaway. You don't want to put these on a curve where they're going to kind of sneak up on people. Excuse me. So this parking continues a little bit into the next page. But as you continue down, you can see that, again, it's just the same similar cross section as before, buffered bike lanes in both directions and no parking. This is, again, just moving into single family homes who all have ample driveways.
[Todd Blake]: Jamie, I just want to point out in the section, this section of Winthrop Street, it's primarily no parking already between Exeter and Lawrence.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Okay, thank you. There to the next slide. Yep. There we go. And so this is another traffic signal that we were encountering here again, having a need for left turn lane does mean that we need to remove one of the bike lanes for a very short period, just going into the intersection. And similar to the previous one, there is a street here, but it's not a very high volume turn, so there's not a whole lot of conflict here for the bicyclist. And then they're just back in the bike lane again on the other side of the intersection. And so that's basically the gist of phase one. Again, if you came in a little bit late, like once we determine where a stopping point is with respect to Eversource's work, we'll make sure that the redesigned side has a nice, smooth, and safe transition into the existing side while we let Eversource finish their work before we can begin to move on to the next phase.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, thank you Amy great job. I just wanted to stem some of the many questions that might pop up about why we're not including certain things. I just wanted to briefly state that the Eversource work, the, the MOU with that contract or written several years ago. included resurfacing of the road, pavement markings, ramps, and the two speed tables. It did not include full depth reconstruction or curbing and things like that. That's why the proposal is the way it is for now.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, good point. That's why we're not moving any of those curbs or anything like that, or the curb ramps rather.
[Harold McGilvey]: Here on the screen I can't do anything.
[Jack Buckley]: All right, thank you for the presentation. commissioners, any comments before we open up to public participation?
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah. Thank you, Amy. That was well done. I would like to go back to the playstead intersection, if you could. I think. Yeah, thank you. First place that right is one lane in each direction with a parking lane, correct?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yes, I believe so.
[Tim McGivern]: Gotcha, okay.
[Todd Blake]: Primarily on the cemetery side, this long stretches of no parking as well, but yeah, primarily with the median down the middle.
[Tim McGivern]: It does look a little bit busy, a little bit to me. I'm wondering if we looked at having the, northbound lane on Playstead just being one together, you know, like separated with maybe like a white line as opposed to a tan area. Yeah.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Combining these, yeah, I do have a version of that.
[Alicia Hunt]: But wait, so that it's actually a right turn lane and a left turn lane, but next to each other, because if we don't have a lane for right turns and a lane for left, people who are turning right will swerve around the person waiting to turn left and just go right.
[Tim McGivern]: I know, I get it. You're right. Having a left turn and a right turn, but next to each other, separated by a white line, as opposed to having the tan island in there, because that's just pain. I think it might clean it up a little bit too. And if I'm riding a bike too, if I'm going from Winchester into Medford on Winthrop Street, you know, having three things to cross as opposed to two, I think might add some unexpectedness. might be a little bit more clear if it's if it's to this is my opinion. It's a lot of campaign to I think we you know, I know we have a complete streets project in our priority list for this area. So just so folks understand that there is a lot of payment here. And we have recognized that for a while and it is in our complete streets priority list.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, I will add that in the complete priority list. And when we looked at the payment markings, we did consider this is a prime candidate for a roundabout. It's just given that this particular effort did not afford for curb changing, you know, whether or not vehicles would be truly deflected or obey with just markings alone was the question. So but that is on our radar for complete streets type project.
[Jack Buckley]: Any other comments, questions from the commissioners before we open it up?
[Alicia Hunt]: If Tim's done, I'll just say that my kids have biked to school at Medford High for the past four years. And I am pleased to see bike lanes going up Winthrop Street to help kids get to and from school. I know it's an issue. I've biked it with them myself a few times. I'm hoping this will make this a safer thing. I think that I would really love to see more of our students biking to school. It will really help alleviate some of the issues with buses if kids can just get out and exercise. I say that as of a parent of kids who've been doing it for several years. So, but I do agree with some of this cleanup at Placestead Road. I like the narrowing it. I have once seen an incredibly crowded situation go on with parking and stuff at Placestead Road. That was Medford High senior prom night. I don't recommend going to the cemetery that night unless you were part of that crowd going there to take pictures and limousines. But otherwise, for every other night of the year, this looks like this could be really, really helpful. I'm curious to hear what the public has to think about all of this, because I really think it'll make things a lot safer.
[Jack Buckley]: We'll open it up. I just have one more question for you. The buses that stay at the top of Playstead by Oak Road, do they just head right back down Playstead Road? I know as it looks here, If they continue on, I actually don't know which buses stop there and where it would go, but I know you have the bus stop. That's a staging area for them. What's the expected route of travel from that location?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: From this, where the cursor is?
[Jack Buckley]: Yeah.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, they would continue down the lane, basically.
[Jack Buckley]: It's not a Winthrop Street bus that would have to
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: No, I think it continues down Playstead. Todd, do you know exactly?
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, this is the terminus of one of the routes, the 95 variation that goes up Playstead. So northbound they actually come up and do a U-turn and then come around and sit there when they lay over. Yeah, the route that goes on Winter Street itself goes by here, not turning down, place it, and then place that as a route that comes up and does a U-turn and goes back down.
[Alicia Hunt]: So the way the bus stop is marked there is not actually adjacent to the road. Like, it seems to me that we ought to make sure that the pavement markings are in such a way that people can reasonably expect the buses will be staying in the areas that are marked and not, like, I think that do they actually have to swing wide and stuff like I just want to make sure that the design literally works for the buses so we don't put make it look like they're going to do one thing and then they they do something else because they have to in order to make their turns etc and then people are surprised and confused because a drop bus is driving where they weren't expecting it to be driving.
[Todd Blake]: That's a great point. I mean, Amy, feel free to chime in, but, you know, basically the intent is to tighten everything up as much as possible, but there's room within the approval of this plan to adjust things in terms of making that happen. So accommodate maybe the tan between the bus stop and the traveling, that particular segment, maybe that's not there. As long as we still get the deflection of the tan for the turn from the southbound vehicles and went to street that turn right on to place that road. So, even if you know if we're trying to accomplish the slowing folks down but also accomplish what you just mentioned the expectations and things like that especially if we supplemented with flex posts on our own. We want to make sure that the bus isn't constantly hitting that so. Yeah.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: And yeah, I'm wondering if we can reach out to MBTA and kind of strategize something. It's, you know, it's kind of a limitation of what we, what this project is, like, like we said, we're not moving curbs or curb ramps or anything like that. So obviously, I can't put the stuff here because it's not ADA compliant, not up against the sidewalk. So it'd be interesting to see what the T can come up with as far as solutions.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. And I'm wondering if it might be that the actual turn from Winthrop on to Playstead occurs a little earlier because it's a little bit, the problem is if it's not a tight turn, people will take it faster. But if it's too tight, people will ignore our paint and go where they want to go anyhow. And so if the paint is accommodating enough to what they want to do naturally, then they're less inclined to just ignore it. That makes sense.
[Todd Blake]: And sometimes when we're trying this stuff out, the paint is a little more aggressive and then the cones could be a little less aggressive so that we're trying to strike that balance. So yeah, you could look at all this stuff as some folks have pointed out, you know, wanting physical curb and we want that too. This is just a way to do a pilot to permanence type of strategy.
[Jack Buckley]: All right. Um, we've got quite a few hands up, but we need to get some public participation in order to keep this meeting going. Uh, well, can you hear me?
[Bill Giglio]: How are you, sir? So I just want to know if anyone has ever, ever came down on during the spring and fall seasons during on a Saturday and Sunday when other cities are coming in to play games and right across from Victory Park where both sides are being utilized for parking. And if you're gonna put a bike lane there, you know the next spot that they're gonna go to are on the side streets. And then you're gonna get a whole nother bunch of complaints. Do you know what I'm saying? I don't know if anyone's has ever come down during, actually I think Alicia used to have kids that play soccer. So she might know. the amount of cars that need parking space. Right now there's no parking for Victory Park. There's very, there's very, very little parking for such a big park and for other cities that come into this, that come into the city to play games for people to park.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah. Can you show us that section again?
[Bill Giglio]: Yep. Right, right across the street from, uh, right from right across the street from Victory Park. On Winthrop Street, obviously. Now I know firsthand because I literally live here and I see the amount of cars that park here because of cities that are coming in to play soccer against Medford teams. And it's all day long, it's all day Saturday, it's all day Sunday. So there's gonna be no parking for the other cities to come in.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, I mean, I did actually go out there at least twice, I think, when we had confirmed that there was a game going on and counted the cars. So there is some data.
[Bill Giglio]: What did you get? How many times did you get and for how long? I'll invite you down here on different times and I'll show you differently for sure. You might not have been down here on the right day.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: We did reach out to recreation for the city and to determine what the right times were to come out when the games were happening. And I came out during those times.
[Bill Giglio]: Okay. And? You only saw them parked across the street at Victory Park?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, mostly I saw them all parked on this side here, where my cursor is.
[Bill Giglio]: I'll tell you what I'll do. If you give me your email address, I'll take literally video pictures in every weekend when it's all backed up and I'll send them to you and I'll give you the exact dates.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Okay, I mean, yeah.
[Bill Giglio]: You'll see, you can definitely see that when other cities are coming in here to play against Medford teams, or there's tournaments or whatever that, you know, that they're utilizing both sides because it's a big park and not very much parking.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Well, one option for that is that we could, in order to make sure we have a bike lane in both directions here, we could add or put back even, depending on the situation, more parking a little further down. So there's like additional space.
[Todd Blake]: Amy and sir, that's a great point. What I was gonna point out is the high school parking lots, especially on the weekend, they're actually only a five minute walk from the park. I know that that's not what people are used to, but as long as it's not a reciprocal event at the high school at the same time, it's a 11 foot, 100 foot walk to the high school parking lot, which is about a 5.2, 4.5 to 5.2 minute walk. And it's not what people used to, but there's this big sea of pavement at the high school that's available for parking that could be a solution.
[Bill Giglio]: Now, I don't know, again, and I don't know if you've been up at the high school on the weekends, but on Sundays, they have some church up there. And on Saturdays, I believe there's like a Japanese type classes that go on. And there's a lot of cars. There are a lot of cars up there. and they do swimming, they do a lot of, there's a lot of parking up there on weekends. I mean, I know, I live, I literally live right here, so I know.
[Jack Buckley]: All right, well, Mr. Guglielmo, thank you for the comments. I think what we have is the commitment from the engineers to kind of look at that and come up with some solutions for additional parkings on weekends.
[Bill Giglio]: And also, I just want to say one more thing. You have to also take into accountability, and again, I'll say it first hand, pulling out of these driveways, if you're going to make this tighter, it's hard enough pulling out on, or even backing out on to Winthrop Street. So if you're making it tighter, sometimes you're going over the other side, especially with the, I know Eversource won't always be here, but if you're making it tighter, it's not going to be good. I can tell you that there's going to be a lot of problems. And I'm definitely worried about someone getting hit by a bike coming down and somebody pulling out of a driveway. It's gonna happen. I mean, I won't say I told you so, but when it happens, I'll call up and say, I told you so. I'm not saying just for deficits, I'm not even on a normal day, Chief Buckley, there's getting out of these driveways onto Winter Street It's not the easiest turn, it's not the easiest way to get out depending on which way you're going.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Well, one thing about this design that will actually help that is that we're narrowing the lanes on Winthrop Street, which encourage people to go slower. So when you're backing out, you won't have people going 50 miles per hour anymore that you have to contend with. You'll have people going closer to the speed limit. That's part of the objective of this.
[Bill Giglio]: I'm talking more of the bikes too. I'm talking to the people on the bikes are getting an hour. It's getting hotter. people pulling through their driveways to see. And if you're gonna, especially if you're gonna, I definitely wouldn't recommend the cones going up. That'll be, you know, that'll cause even more of a tie-up because, you know, you got buses that have to pull over for like, I'll tell you right now, for like my house, we got a special school bus that pulls up and, you know, they pull over and, you know, so.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you for the comments. Jared Paul, you're next. That's where I am on my list. Can you unmute yourself?
[Bill Giglio]: So I don't want to listen to anything I have to say afterwards.
[Jack Buckley]: I know that I talk too much. Mr. Giglio, with apologies, we've got your comments. Everything is taken under advisement, but it's not going to be a certain decision. It's the agenda that we'll forward on. Thank you. Mr. Paul?
[Jared Powell]: Yes, thank you for the for the opportunity to participate in this. My name is Jared Powell. I'm the Vice Chair of the Medford Bike Advisory Commission in the city. First, I just want to thank Amy and Todd, and their team for all the work that they've clearly put into this. Winthrop Street here, there's a clear desire line for people to get through this area in a safer way on bikes. You know, whenever we do public events, And we interact with the community we always hear lots about how people actually do want to ride bikes on Winthrop, but we see that cycling traffic here isn't as high, you know, maybe as we wish it was, but that's in part because people just don't feel safe with the existing conditions you know it's not because they don't want to write there it's because it's, it's really scary to write there. You know, I've worked with with Ellery Klein from from walk Medford I know she's on this call as well and she did a great job working with high school students at Medford high to lead a huge survey with with hundreds of students who talked about cycling and their desire to cycle to the high school and there was a clear desire for. a safe cycling route to school. And there's lots of fear about fast traffic and unsafe conditions, keeping them from doing so and causing the road to get backed up with lots of kids driving to school or being driven to school who don't need to be, frankly. Just past this past week, we saw a cyclist killed in Somerville nearby, hit by someone in a parked car, throwing open their car door carelessly. And I think we have an obligation to do better, to do much better. The opportunity to really change things and really change road design comes along very rarely, and we need to be ready to take advantage of it when we can. And that's the opportunity that I think we have here. I think this will make things safer. It'll encourage people to ride who don't currently ride. It'll let them get to the high school closer to all the nice routes along the river, closer to the Green Line. and so on. I will say that the Bike Commission does plan to work with Amy and Todd, and they've talked to us about this as they finalize these plans, so we plan to be involved and work with them to provide feedback about some of the specifics of implementation, and we appreciate that opportunity. I would say that I would like to see some more permanent and hardened measures to deal with turns and whatnot, but they've addressed why that's currently outside of the scope, but something that may be on the table in the future, and I'd certainly advocate for that. On the specifics, I'd say I'm a little leery about some of the large swaths of tan paint, as others have talked about, particularly like people turning right off of Playstead South onto Winthrop. I think there are hasty drivers who just won't wait their turn and they'll just cut across that behind any short backup that might be there in that queue. But just to kind of wrap up here, You know I hope and I expect that this will make things safer, it will make people more eager to ride it will really help slow down traffic motor vehicles just fly down these fast wide open lanes and that's super dangerous and road design can really help with that. And frankly, you know, something we hear about at the commission, people are tired of feeling scared to ride their bikes around the city. So, I really welcome the work that that Todd and Amy and their team are putting into this and the Traffic Commission for considering it. Thank you.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you for your participation and comments. Jack Martin, you're next on my list.
[SPEAKER_10]: Yes, good evening. Question for the designer about the northbound approach to Steve Miller Drive with his right turn bay heading up to the high school. I'll wait for the plan to come up. Yes. Will there be any signage for bicyclists to alert them to the split where the lane is heading north but bike users may also want to turn right. I'd like to see sharrows added to the right turn bay so that bicyclists know that they can turn right to head to the high school. Because otherwise you might have bicyclists who stay in the bike lane, realize they want to turn right to head to the high school and all of a sudden they're faced with conflicting traffic that is turning right.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Certainly, we can add some sharrows in there for sure.
[SPEAKER_10]: Will there be signage? Signage for the bicyclists to to alert them to the split.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: There is a sign here that basically kind of the other way around warns drivers that in order to get into this turn lane that they have to yield. That's also what this green paint is for. So it's kind of a dual purpose sign showing that there's a conflict zone in this area. Go ahead. I was gonna say, this kind of treatment here is a pretty standard type of treatment with a right turn lane and a bike lane adjacent to it. And then, of course, we can put the sharrows in here as well, the right turning sharrows to let bicyclists know that that's where they should be if they're going to turn right.
[SPEAKER_10]: Good. I mean, I'm a traffic engineer by trade. And, of course, we're always concerned about managing driver expectations, but I think we should also get in the habit of starting to manage bicyclists' expectations. So alerting them to the split there could be beneficial. Thank you for your time.
[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you. Before you move on, I just sort of, I do want to actually look at, if you guys can really think about the signage, you're going to have a majority of the bicyclists in the morning actually taking that right-hand turn into the school. And they're going to be your inexperienced student bicyclists who are just learning these things. So whatever you can do here to make this section as clear and educational and helpful as possible would be very good. I'm nervous about that right turn. And frankly, most of these bicycles, these kids are gonna move up onto the sidewalk for that right turn lane. That's what I would do if I was nervous. Yeah, that's a good point.
[Tim McGivern]: I'd be a good candidate for a bike box that gives them space to move and prepare for the right turn or go straight. But I may be speaking out of standard these days.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Hello. Welcome. I'm here both as representative of WAC Medford and myself. We just had a few comments about this design. I want to first echo what Jared said about the high school and also thanking Todd and Amy for all their great work and doing the work on this street. I think this is a really good step forward. On Winthrop, as we know, the high school is there. And I was the student advisor for the CCSR project doing a survey of the high school kids. And there's really a vast potential to increase the number of kids bicycling and walking to school every day. The survey kind of indicated that we have about 550 cars going in and out of that high school, dropping off. students every day, which is a huge amount of traffic for those local residents who are concerned about cars going up and down the street. The more kids we can get biking and walking to school, the better the traffic situation is going to be in the morning and the afternoon. Because all of a sudden, kids are going to be able to have their own agency to get themselves there. Right now, I'd say very few kids are bicycling on a regular basis to school. And as Jared said, the top reason for not cycling, one of the top reasons was lack of safe infrastructure. And we know this road has been in very poor condition. I cycle on it pretty regularly, and it's full of gravel and potholes and all sorts of things. So just having a good surface is going to help, but these bike lanes are going to be great. So I just hope that in this design and all future iterations of this road, the high school students' lives and safety and security on the road and traveling to and from school is the top priority in any road design over anything else, drivers or anything else. Our high school kids should be our top priority in the city of Medford. Um, so I, I just wanted to say, you know, I, I think that, um, the traffic calming will be great, um, because cars, as we know, go, go really fast on this road. Um, but I am noticing, uh, we discussed in Walkman for last night that there still seem to be a lot of, um, crosswalks missing across the road. As you go down the span of Winthrop there, there's several roads that meet Winthrop and yet no crosswalks. So I would consider putting in a few more. crosswalks as we go from Lawrence Road up to the Winchester line. Just really let drivers know that people will be crossing this road, and I don't think there's enough crosswalks that indicate that and allow people to do it safely. As we know, any road meeting intersection is an actual crosswalk. unmarked, so I'd love to see more marked crosswalks in there. And at Playstead Road, I echo what other people said about lots of tan paint. I realize that this is a first step, and we might, you know, eventually be looking more towards getting some kind of T intersection, especially if we look at the intersection there, if you can just scroll to it. You notice when you're a pedestrian walking down Winthrop, and if you want to continue on past the cemetery, You have to go left and then left again, and then right, and then right. So you're really having to go out of your way. So I realize this is a first step, but I would love for at least a long-term plan if we had a bigger budget. to really make this more of a T intersection, kind of like what was done at Tufts, with a much smaller road radius, and then enable the pedestrians to just cross across Playstead without having to go in a circle. My feeling is that a lot of people are going to just ignore the crosswalks and maybe just walk straight across. you know, be at higher risk. So that's one thing to consider, even if it's just down the line, is giving pedestrians a straighter way across that road. And I think that is it for my comments. Thank you so much again for doing this. I'm very excited about these changes and hope it's only the first step in making all our roads in Medford safer for cyclists and pedestrians. Thank you.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you for your participation, comments, and direction. Amy, did you want to respond to any of that before I move on to the next?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Just real quick, I guess I would just respond to the additional crosswalk suggestion. Definitely something I would love to do, but we, you know, just being the scope of this work that we aren't moving or adding any curb ramps. We're just changing paint and signs. We can't, unfortunately, stripe a crosswalk where there's no ramps. I know that there are locations that look like that in the city, but we can't do a new one. It's kind of the situation that it is. So hopefully in the future, we will be able to do that soon and change up intersections like this to make the pedestrian paths more in the direction that people actually want to go.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, even if I may add quickly to, um, there are since the construction of ever source reconstruct utility project. And to when this is going to be done, there will be two new crosswalks one was added across winter at Exeter. So, about halfway between victory and Lauren. So that has been added already. And then another one will be added soon, if not already, as part of the development projects where a lot of people in Medford refer to it as the big hole in the ground next to the high school, the blasted area. So those are two new ones as well that are in there. So this one shown here, and there's one north of the high school driveway where the new development will be in the new cul-de-sac will be. In terms of the, quickly in terms of the tan paint, we realize it's not a permanent solution. The alternative to the tan, that was a step to try to get more notice and compliance by drivers because The alternative without curbing would be a white edge line, a single white edge line, or a white hatching. And when we do white hatching, it typically blends in with the crosswalks, so it becomes very busy. People who live in North Medford probably know Fulton at Winslow was like that, and we try to black out the old So, so that's one of the reasons to try something new that some other communities use and then we've used, you know spotted here and there but but that's the attempts. That's why we're showing the tan anyways so if that gives some context.
[Jack Buckley]: Next up I have a comment Peter follow. Welcome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi. Yeah, I just want to echo things that Jared and Ellery had already said really excited about the changes the first step to a little nicer to bike in I ride my bike to work every day so I really appreciate changing this up to make a little more friendly. I had one question about the proposal for the areas on Windsor Street where parking is going to be eliminated in favor of the bike lane. I think we all know sometimes people driving cars kind of just assume that they can park in the bike lane. Will there at least be signage stating that there's no parking along those bike lanes?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: That wasn't necessarily proposed, but that doesn't mean that's not something we can do.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, I would say yes. We could try to accommodate that to make it clear.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: It doesn't need to need to be passed by traffic commission separately because, you know, bike lanes on their own you're not allowed to park in but we can certainly look into some reinforcing signage.
[Todd Blake]: PB, David Ensign — He-Him, He-Him. He-Him. PB, David Ensign — He-Him. He-Him. PB, David Ensign — He-Him. PB, David Ensign — He-Him. PB, David Ensign — He-Him. PB, David Ensign — He-Him. PB, David Ensign — He-Him. PB, David Ensign — He-Him.
[Jack Buckley]: PB, David Ensign — He-Him. PB, David Ensign — He-Him. PB, David Ensign — He-Him. Hi, we can see you. Can't hear you yet, let's try to get that.
[Martha Ondras]: All right, go. Thank you very much. Yeah, I just wanted to say that I fully appreciate how creative the team has been in getting this level of safety out of the utility. money, the utility project money. I realize it's not going the whole distance that we would like, but as a pedestrian, I have to say, I hope we find the complete streets money or other sources of funding to make the paint a permanent curb change. I live near Boston Avenue and High Street where, you know, paint and flexible bollards have been placed. And unfortunately, a lot of our drivers don't take them seriously, including the bus driver. And I think we shouldn't be over-reliant on, you know, it's a start, but we shouldn't be over-reliant on paint as a way to, to protect people from cars. I also think we should not be designing the roadway around surge parking. Just as a general comment, I think, you know, there are times when you need to park a lot more cars and having been a sports parent for many years, I know sometimes you have to walk a little ways to get to a game. So just wanted to leave that thought. in terms of priorities. And again, thanks to the team for doing a really wonderful job.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you for your comments and your participation. That appears to be it for public comment. I'll turn it over to the commissioners. Any further questions or comments after what you've heard from the public participation, and then I'll entertain a motion on the petition.
[Tim McGivern]: Are the speed table, the speed tables that we'll call them, we'll call them speed tables. Are they a regulatory item that we would need to vote on or not? I think we have the general location. I'm okay with that as a commissioner.
[Todd Blake]: It's a good question. It's come up in the past. I would say technically they are not but it's, it's been our practice in Newport to discuss them and in since we had the community communities attention with this plan we wanted to show them what that that improvement as well show them where we're thinking of. So, the speed tables. will help reduce folks to go the speed limit of 25 versus wherever they may be traveling today 35 or 40 in some cases in one of them was proposed to be positioned where we, we all commonly see the police near the cemetery, getting folks coming in from Winchester that typically speed down that hill from the Winchester line to place that road. And the other area of focus was the Victory Park area where we all want to improve safety near the recreational and where kids are. So those are two areas to target. So it's a good question, Tim. I would say, if you wanted to recommend, that would be great as inclusive of the plan, just because it will show enforcement or it will show support by the Traffic Commission. But it doesn't really change any regulation, per se.
[Tim McGivern]: Okay, I think I'm, you know, we've talked about this before. I'm aligned with that. I mean, I think it isn't necessarily regulatory, and I think we have general locations. We understand what the design is, or at least I do, so I'm okay with that piece. Any objection, Todd, from you or Amy, with potentially taking the three prongs of place dread and making them two? Like I was talking about kind of getting rid of that pan island in the middle, just to kind of tighten that up a little bit, clean it up.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: No objection here.
[Tim McGivern]: Okay. I would like to make that a condition when the motion comes.
[Todd Blake]: That should be. Yeah, fine. That's great.
[Jack Buckley]: The chair kindly reminds Commissioner McGiven he can make that motion.
[Tim McGivern]: I know. So why don't I make the motion? Okay, fine.
[Alicia Hunt]: Before we go to the approval stage, not that I'm going to not vote in favor in the big picture here, but is there, if there's any opportunity for keeping some parking around Victory Park, and I honestly, I'm really picturing with the little kids trying to cross the street there to get to the park because all the parking on the park side is full. And now, because there's now you're trying to come to the park with your kids and it's hard to get in there. It's, it is something I mean, it's a real issue. When there's a lot of stuff going on at that park. I do think and I'm reminded that. There's, I discovered once right as my children were ending soccer, that there's actually a very lovely path from the Medford High School parking lot through the woods to the parking, to the soccer field. And almost no one knows it's there. It ends in stairs entering the soccer field. And perhaps someone maybe on my staff can look into some signage, directing people that way might be beneficial. But I just, it is the one area that is super hard but it's also important that the kids biking to and from school are safe. So I just want to make sure we're balancing that in this section.
[Jack Buckley]: Yeah, emotion can take into consideration that the traffic department can. relook at the parking in this area to obtain as much parking as possible. But also we should be reaching out to recreation and having them when these sporting events have given them these, you know, the soccer teams or anybody else who's using the fields advice on where to park, you know, the plans and the maps.
[Alicia Hunt]: An interesting thing, though, is the soccer leagues are not actually out of the Medford Recreation Department. They are their own, Medford Soccer is their own organization. So it's a little bit more than us just reaching out to our recreation director and making sure he's got the right language in his outreach.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Oh, OK. I do want to note that we were able to find out how many spots are over at the high school there. And it's quite a bit more than 650. So that's quite a lot of spots.
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah. And I think Martha had a good point about not designing for surge parking. I think that's important. I think that if it comes down to it and we need overflow parking for a larger event or something like that, then we could even There's a put, you know, we could put a sign in Victory Park that says overflow parking at the high school or something like that if they can't find a space. Also, the fields there are not necessarily large enough to have some of these bigger soccer events. That's an important point as well. So anyway, that's what I think.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, so parking wise, out of all of our parks in the entire city, this probably has the most available parking within a five minute walk if you include the high school. And yeah, it's over 440 parking space at the high school. And there's about 30 spaces on street between Victory Park and Temple that we're showing. So I'm just trying to give some perspective to say like Carr Park or Morton or Tufts Park, like none of them have a parking lot that accommodates 440 cars.
[Jack Buckley]: All right. Commissioner McGiven, do you want to propose your motion now so that we can move forward? We still have three other items on this agenda. Okay.
[Tim McGivern]: I will make the motion to approve this plan with one change, and that is taking the northbound playstead lanes and keeping them together and having a left turn and a right turn lane, but just removing that tan island.
[Jack Buckley]: Do we have a second?
[Alicia Hunt]: I'll second it.
[Jack Buckley]: Seconded by Commissioner Hunt. I'll vote on a roll call vote, please.
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: Commissioner McGiven?
[Tim McGivern]: Yes.
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: Commissioner Hunt? Yes. Commissioner Brzezinski? Yes.
[Jack Buckley]: Chief Buckley? Yes. Approved four to nothing with one absent. The motion passes. Before we move on to 2022-38, Amy, I just want to make note. Commissioner does have a previous engagement, uh, at seven 45. Um, we have dealt with our most major issues. So I do appreciate all your help and your support. We still maintain a quorum so we can move forward on this vote. So if he has to jump off, but if you have any comments on, uh, you know, anything moving forward, I would give you this moment to speak real quickly if you needed it, uh, commissioner. Okay, we'll move forward. Okay, so 2022-38, steam builder drive bike lane. We've kind of just gone over this a little bit, but Amy, you want to take it again?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Sure. This one I think will be a tiny bit shorter, given that it's just one block. So to kind of orient you here, this is Winthrop Street, where we were just looking at. This is Steve Miller Drive, which goes into the high school, high school being up here. There was a request to add bicycle facilities to Steve Miller Drive itself. just as a companion piece to the Winthrop Street bike lane so that our bike facility is truly the entire way to the students' schools. And so, yeah, basically we're proposing this bike lane here going into the school. Unfortunately, there was not enough width to do a bike lane coming out as well and maintain these two turn lanes, which we we believed was necessary for both necessary to have. I did get some early feedback from some folks about having sharrows on both of these lanes, probably straight, regular sharrow facing straight for a little while here, and then the turning sharrows as you get to the separated lanes here for the different turns. So that is something I can add in. But sharrows are Not something we need traffic commission approval on specifically. They're not changing any regulation, just enhancing what's already perfectly legal movement to do. But I figured I'd mention that for anyone who might have been thinking that might be missing from what they're seeing here. So yeah, so the bike lane comes in. There are some parking lot areas over here and more school this way and I did talk to Ellery and I think somebody else as well about kind of where students are going from here like where the parking and things are and it seems like reasonable to assume that most students would continue going down this path and or hop up onto the sidewalk right here. So that is why I show it like the ending of the bike lane here and they can kind of go, you know, to their destination at that point.
[Jack Buckley]: Okay, sorry, we were just jumping off, muting back and forth. All right, thank you. Commissioners, comments, questions? Click that box up here.
[Tim McGivern]: I don't have any, but I'm in support.
[Alicia Hunt]: Move approval. This is simple.
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah, I'll second that. Yeah, I agree with that. But yeah, Chief might want to hear public comments.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, we can take public comments.
[Jack Buckley]: So I just make it a notation here, public comment. Commissioner Brzezinski you're up there first with your hand up if you want to make your comment.
[Bob Dickinson]: No, I know the comment I was just going to make is what my fellow commissioners had said I think this kind of goes with the overall comprehensive plan and I hate to shoot this one down when we've really approved. a more dynamic change to the biking structure. So whereas I'm open to public comment, I would hope that everybody would keep in mind that this is a great move and this just kind of adds to it.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you for your comments. Public comments. Jamie, can you unmute yourself? Welcome.
[Unidentified]: Can you unmute her?
[SPEAKER_04]: There was a little bit of a delay when I was unmuting. Sorry. So my name's Jen, and I live in West Medford. And my son has gone to the high school and crossed this busy street many times. I'm also proud of what Medford did. I've proposed this before, and I know it's beautiful that it's happening. on the table, but what are the chances of having these young bicyclists off the main drive and actually do bike lanes on the forest and also on the monument side and have it sloped down into Winthrop? So the bike lanes are off the main driveway, right? There's forest land on this side and then there's a monument The world will you know the war monuments, and there's plenty of room on the side that the bike lanes can easily just slope right into the bike lanes on the street and give the get the kids off this main road that a lot of student drivers and people in a hurry are utilizing.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: I think that's a great idea for a slightly longer term project.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just wanted to plant the seed and make sure that maybe it could. There's a lot of temperature changes, which are great. But I just think that would be a safer idea for the students.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, that's a great suggestion. Thank you. Is that something that your office Like even regardless we approve this tonight, your office could sketch that out to a point to tell us some level of feasibility, because I think that we would need a real grant to help with some of the grading and paving. It would be quite an expensive project. But if you could help us with a proof of concept that it's worth getting a grant for or get some estimates, then we'd be willing to help try and move that forward.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: I think that wouldn't be a problem side, what do you think.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, we're always looking to do more permanent solutions, as you mentioned, Alicia probably would involve a grant and whether or not we tried to do it on the existing raised element and cut into the grass here, or build out the curb into the roadway or one or the other. It will have varying costs so I would just like to point out to everyone, including the commission that some of these concept drives to get order magnitude of cost sometimes end up. you know, you got to take it with a grain of salt because if we go back to the 2016 complete streets list for Haynes Square and Tufts Square, they weren't estimated to be half a million dollars, they were estimated to be under $100,000. So we could definitely work on that. Absolutely. But just in terms of order of magnitude, that's the slippery slope you get into when you do concept and try to get order of magnitude cost.
[Jack Buckley]: Can I actually ask a question? Is it possible, Amy and Todd, that we put together some sort of advanced notification to the students with these designs, what their obligations are, a little bit of education to the students so that they get it, and some bike safety tips, a little bit of reminders ahead of time as they're approaching schools, whether it's a pamphlet or some sort of outreach on social media to them and kind of advertise what's going on and show them these plans you know, rather than showing up the first day of the school and having them working on all these, you know, the painting and lines and whatever they're going to be done. But I think the school would be on board with kind of that sort of outreach and maybe we get more kids to drive on their bikes to school. But at least we've reached out to have some sort of understanding.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: I think it's a great idea. Absolutely.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comments? Raise your hand.
[Tim McGivern]: or against... I wanna check that chat too.
[Jack Buckley]: Let me see the chat. We take as in comments, but we don't need to circle them up. All right, so I go back to the commissioners. I think... Hit back here, but I think... We have a motion by motion by Commissioner Hunt. Is that seconded by Commissioner McGiven you started to but I'm not sure you formally did.
[Tim McGivern]: Yes, second.
[Jack Buckley]: All right. No further comment roll call vote Alva Commissioner McGiven.
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: Yes, Commissioner Hunt. Yes. Chief Buckley.
[Jack Buckley]: Yes. On a vote of three to nothing with two absent now commissioner Brzezinski had jumped off. I appreciate his help. The motion passes. 2022-39 Main Street, Bikeling Northbound.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yep.
[Jack Buckley]: You Amy also?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yep.
[Jack Buckley]: All right.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Let me move my map over. So we're looking at segment of Main Street, basically at the intersection of Mystic and a little bit beyond to the north. We have looked at this area once before recently as far as adding bicycle accommodations. A few months ago we passed bicycle lanes going southbound. on Main Street in order to get people from Medford Square to the proposed GLX, not proposed, upcoming GLX station. And, but through some further investigation and really just kind of brainstorming on my part, I took a closer look at this intersection, which I think most people can agree is a little bit confusing and doesn't feel really all that safe for bicyclists and pedestrians, and came up with some ideas that I am going to share here, some further stuff I think that we can do with just kind of those quick build materials, paint and signs and perhaps flex posts. Um, so you'll see on these plans that I do have the, um, here, the stuff within the blue bubble is what we passed, uh, previously. Um, but I wanted to show it on there because it does obviously go together with, uh, the new stuff. So this is the, um, police station here. This is route 16. Um, Essentially, I am proposing that instead of having the two lanes approaching the split here, where eventually one is for people going eastbound on 16 and one to continue on to Main Street that I have vehicles stay in just one lane, which is what they're coming from from Misty Gav. And then a little bit later on merge over to the right. And then turn so that way it's just we're kind of like shrinking the area of where the merge happens or where a merge could happen, I guess I should say. And the reason that's important is because if we're going to add a bike lane here, we don't want this literally entire area to be the conflict zone. We want it to be as small as possible so that bicyclists are in it for as little as possible, for as little time as possible, and that they know when it's happening. Currently, there's basically hardly any pavement markings here at all and it's just very hard to tell when a car is going to cross your path to get into this lane or what really cars are supposed to do and what bikes are supposed to do. So what I was trying to do here was really trying to formalize a space for everyone and show people where um, they are, uh, where there's going to be a conflict zone and make that conflict zone as small as possible. Um, and that does, of course, include the driveway here, but you can see that, uh, proposing it to be kind of two separate zones. I didn't show the green paint here, um, but that is something, uh, I think that we could definitely add. And again, that's just an enhancement, not necessarily something we need to worry about bringing to traffic commission. Um, And then this ties in nicely to the existing bike lane, northbound bike lane under the bridge here. And I did add some flex posts. I can definitely play with this a little bit here. I think I was showing the flex posts end here as kind of an exercise of, you know, are we going to keep the scenario that we have here at this intersection the same way we have it now, or do we want to reintroduce some movements you know, I believe that the city does want to keep it having the movements it does have now. So in that case, I might mess around with trying to extend this nose a little bit here just to make sure that no one's going to try to sneak in and make a left. But again, that's not something that we need to necessarily pass today. I just wanted to make sure that people understood what was what they were looking at over here.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, Amy, if I may quickly. So because this is still somewhat an active area under construction by Eversource, MassDOT did agree at some point to revisit the drums that are out there now, but they didn't want to put anything more permanent or different types of equipment other than the drums until Eversource was gone, which, yeah, just to give some context there. Right.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Thank you. Yeah, so this would happen once every source is done in the area, kind of put things back together. So moving south a little bit towards Emerson Street and towards Mystic Ave is this intersection here. Again, you'll see in the blue area, all of Main Street past Mystic on this side is stuff that we've already approved. A couple months ago, and then this new stuff outside of the blue is the proposed for today. So, similar to the 10 areas that we're looking at in for Winthrop Street. Really, I'm just trying to use these areas to to show people exactly where they're supposed to be instead of having a wide swath of area that they could possibly be, giving each mode its own place, and hopefully slowing down vehicles a little bit to be closer to the actual speed limit. I'm not proposing the removal of any movements that are allowed today. You're still allowed to come here and make a right or make a left. You're still allowed to make a right or, well, I guess, sort of a right, a soft right or a left coming from Mystic Ave. All movements that are allowed today are still incorporated into this plan. It just kind of guides people a little bit as to where they're supposed to make those turns and you know, narrows the lanes a little bit to slow things down and make it a little more manageable for more vulnerable road users, such as bicyclists and pedestrians. And you can see a little bit of the design here for the bus bike lane that will soon be going, kind of going in again after a resource is done over here. So this will, you know, be a connection of two different bicycle facilities here.
[Jack Buckley]: Amy, can I ask a quick question? When you see in the middle of the main street, which would actually be called South on the triangle, and you have the 11 and 13, see near the 11 and you have the traffic arrow pointing down? That is concerning to me. So, just trying to think who's gonna- That arrow's backwards. It's either backwards or in either direction.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: So, okay. I mean, that's definitely an option. This actually, this turn, this bit was not here, not the first version of this plan, but Todd was telling me that, see how this is like slanted here, that it was, that there is a movement that people do and they make a left here and then right into this driveway. He thought it might be important to preserve that. And so that's why I have that here. But if we feel like that's, so another thing is these R5 signs here. Those are do not enters. So I thought that helped with the clarity. But if people think it's not worth preserving that turn, then that's definitely something important to know.
[Jack Buckley]: Oh, well, it's not really trying to see what you would be doing is driving right into.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, sort of. It is it is a little funky. I admit that. It's not my favorite. But yeah, I was trying to start from a place of not introducing new restrictions, I guess. Yeah.
[Todd Blake]: can't see it here so yeah so as as Amy said her in her defense her original plan did not include that Usually in the history of doing these sorts of things, we don't want to impact the business access that already exists negatively. It's not that we're opposed to that, we should clean it up or we want to clean it up, but there's an in-driveway at 7-Eleven between 7-Eleven and the medical building. And then there's also an in-driveway between the 7-Eleven and the Sprouts building next to it. So if working with the community development department and the businesses, if nobody was opposed to that, then we could clean that up.
[Alicia Hunt]: We just didn't want to assume that we would... Do you want to put that on the Google view? I was just looking at it to try to understand that.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Put it in the same orientation. So... Yeah, it's this area right here.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, if you do like a street view from the shaded 38 symbol up there if you're coming from Mr. Gav. And again, we've observed people doing it. So it's not that we encourage you to want it. It's just the way it's designed. It looks like it accommodated and we didn't want to assume that we would change access.
[Alicia Hunt]: I see how you can see, so you definitely like you can come up Mystic Ave and make a left there and go down Main Street. That's legit. Yeah. And that you're preserving.
[Harold McGilvey]: You should be going in that driveway. You're going the wrong way at that point.
[Alicia Hunt]: Is that driveway an exit driveway? It's an entrance.
[Todd Blake]: It's an entrance.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: But yeah, it could be that it's, it should be a right in, right out, you know, or right in, I should say.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, so in that, that seems like we're all in agreement on that, that, as Amy mentioned, the island that's right in front of the silver car here, if you go to the main street side, and then you kind of look back towards the police station. So that was cut like that for some reason, presumably the reason that we're talking about. Otherwise, this island would have been designed differently.
[Alicia Hunt]: I will say, though, that the islands have been there for decades, and some of these businesses are relatively new. There's been a lot of new, right, the stores, the turnover, the Little Sprouts is new. I remember permitting something right along here. The medical facility is new.
[Todd Blake]: I'll say, I'll state that I'm not opposed to what everyone's saying. I'm just qualifying and saying, if there was some legal arguments to be had by those businesses, I'm just highlighting that.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah. I am also not opposed to it.
[Jack Buckley]: And again, I've seen it over and over again. I'm more concerned about the actual arrow sort of directing people. And I know that might be sort of semantics. you might be directing people into oncoming traffic.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: I see what you're saying.
[Tim McGivern]: I think if we wanted to preserve that movement, it might make sense to not have such an angle of, I guess, the left turn onto Main Street. You could make that, get rid of the triangle and flare both sides.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah. Tim, I think you're on the right page, too. Coming from the left of the page from Main Street to Mystic Ave, that stop line just above Acursa, aiming to the left of the 11, the other stop line. Yeah, if that one was pulled back to align with the nose of the curb, then, yeah, this area without these different wedges of tan could be different.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, it could, I mean, potentially introduce a stop sign here as well. Since you're really, yeah, turning across three different paths of travel. I don't know.
[Todd Blake]: It's worth exploring, removing that move. I just didn't want to assume that the business... Right.
[Jack Buckley]: We're just speaking from 100 years of experience dealing right with that intersection. We know that they make turns there, but when it's wide open, it's done a little bit differently than when you narrow it and provide a lane of travel with an arrow. Just, again, I'm just looking at a map so it may not be as clear, but it looks like we're driving right into oncoming traffic. That would be a concern. Let me ask this question as far as this petition. So I know in a lot of the Winthrop Street, we wanted to get the designs out for Eversource, and we wanted to be ready for when they're ready to do this. Given this section of Main Street, not only need Eversource to finish and to kind of do, you know, mitigate the road and finish everything up, but we also need to work with MassDOT. Is this something that we can wait on until we get some input from MassDOT, or do you feel like we need to get something passed? I mean, I'm-
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: I'm inclined to keep moving it forward and the sole reason is just, you know, to enhance the blue bike. You know, use of our streets and to really complete that connection that we started with the main street George Street in college of between Medford Square and GLX.
[Alicia Hunt]: two things going on here. One is there's two sheets to this, the upper sheet, which seems more obvious to me, and this one, which is complicated. And second, I just admitted the fire chief to the Zoom call. He caught piece of the meeting, this piece, and was interested in discussing because of its relation to the fire headquarters. Sure. So, he can't unmute himself, because we have that turned off.
[Todd Blake]: Just following up with what Amy said, I would say, the reason why we want to. It's a great point about ever source chief, because, so I would say, if we split the two in that. The majority of what's shown in terms of, say, the tan bump out maneuvers to try to tighten things up, that could probably wait until it's resurfaced. But there was a desire, like Amy just said, based on the meeting where the other bike lanes were approved, that this was highlighted as a segment where we're providing green line all the way down to this point, and then it was challenging to get by this section of Main Street. So we're trying to accommodate that in the interim. So, so even if it, you know, included the Shero, the bike lane, north and south on the left edge of this page, and not all the tan in the interim, or just an edge line of white edge line. PB, David Ensign — He. Him. PB, David Ensign — He. Him. PB, David Ensign — He. Him. PB, David Ensign — He. Him. PB, David Ensign — He. Him. PB, David Ensign — He. Him.
[Jack Buckley]: right where we're talking about, and this is gonna impact his operation, so.
[John Freedman]: Yeah, can you guys, can you hear me, Chief?
[Jack Buckley]: Yeah, if you're on, we can hear you.
[John Freedman]: Okay. All right, so what I'm looking at here is, and I think this engineers would understand this, is that I'd like to see the radius. I don't know if those manila things are islands or- Just paint. Just paint. paint. Okay, so what I'd like to see is the overlay of the turn radius of both the tractor drawn and the rear mount traversing through there to see what that's going to do to this design. The other thing is we're in the right in the process of, you know, we're going to be hiring an architect, we're going to be designing the headquarters, how we're going to come out of there. In the very short future, I would think we'd be looking at this really hard. So I'm just wondering how that's gonna impact us getting in and out of there, that's my concern.
[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah. Thank you.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Understood, yeah. I mean, what we're proposing here is changes of paint and we made it not just because we were doing that, not just because we wanted to do it quickly, but also because we know, yeah, that that is gonna be redeveloped and that there are other other times that we can take a bite of this apple and do it more permanently. But in the interim, we did want to get something out. And I don't think it would preclude any kind of design in the future.
[Todd Blake]: Okay, so in terms of movements to Freeman, it's your points are very well taken so that's what we're kind of saying just as you hopped on. If you just kind of looked at this if everyone could imagine without the tan. Really, we're adding a share on the main street near the gas station, and then we're adding the bike lane along your frontage, those are really the two chain in the bike lane. Yeah, that other one that's being cursed. So, so the big change in terms of regulations here is or lanes is Mr. Gavin mean feed into this section in front of the fire and police, and it feeds into two lanes, even though each are only one lane. So this is keeping the one lane in front of the fire department until you reach the police department to become two lane. So that's really the only change in, like, I know I'm not trying to dismiss anything anyone's saying, I'm trying to get to the crux of like what's truly being impacted in terms of turns or lanes and things. All the moves, all the lanes are staying with the exception of the practical two lanes that are kind of in that block right in front of your building, not the driveway. And because it's all paint, a fire truck could drive over any of this stuff.
[John Freedman]: If that helps. Do we know if there's a, I know we looked at a couple of different designs for that South Street intersection. They were talking about putting a traffic light in there.
[Todd Blake]: Is that showing on this design or is that not know so that's a great question to so this what we're showing now is kind of. there's an interim that could be placed with markings this fall before Eversource comes back and repaves this next season. Then we could redo this after they repave next season. And then there's the longer term project that you're referring to the main itself, which now includes the main at Mystic, which would have that conversation. That's what Amy, I think was pointing out earlier. That project, that longer term project, which will touch curbs, could be worked out to work well with whatever the new fire station design is.
[John Freedman]: Oh, excellent. So we'll have time to be able to, you know, this is just sort of a temporary thing then. Then we can see how it works out. Then when we, and we should have some designs, we could kind of submit to you, show you what we're going to be looking for.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Totally.
[John Freedman]: Excellent. Then we can see how it's going to lay out. Perfect. All right. I just, when I saw those tan lines, I got scared. I thought those were curbs.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: No worries.
[Jack Buckley]: I think they'd be open if you had the availability to run your trucks out like we did before, uh, during the construction. Yeah, I think it's fine.
[John Freedman]: I can send the radiuses. I have them if they, if the designer wants to throw them on there and see where, you know, where the swath of where they need to. The wheels go and stuff.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah. You can send them to me.
[John Freedman]: Excellent.
[Jack Buckley]: Thanks very much. I appreciate it.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Thank you.
[John Freedman]: No worries.
[Jack Buckley]: Any other commissions? Any other comments from the commission? Public participation. Do we have anyone who wants to speak on this, either pro or against?
[Alicia Hunt]: There were some comments on the chat, and I'm wondering if those people want to actually raise their hand and put their comments on the public record.
[Jack Buckley]: I'll open it up to Jared Powell now with his hand raised. Welcome.
[Jared Powell]: Thank you for letting me comment again. This is Jared Powell from the Bike Commission. I was wondering if I could get a clarification. Amy, I think you mentioned this a little bit, but on the slide that you're showing right there, can you remind us what the paint situation would look like at that crossing point for the main motor vehicle traffic lane to get over to the right? I'm just a little nervous about Yeah, exactly. Given that this is all paint, what's to keep people from really still just kind of blazing through and making that kind of sweeping right very quickly like they want to do with someone kind of tooling along northbound casually in the bike lane and find a car kind of sweeping across them at a much higher speed than the cyclist might be moving?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, unfortunately it is a little tricky because we do have the bus stop here. Otherwise, I would, you know, want to put some flex posts here but obviously the bus needs to be able to get in and out. There could be a way that we could do some. still leave enough room for them to come in and out and maybe leave a few here. We would have to probably talk to BTA and kind of do some further analysis on that. But I share your concern and you know I'm hoping that at least with markings that maybe even just one flex post here to you know so that people aren't just like jamming over there right away. Yeah, I want to I want to try to do whatever I can to make sure that that is not the way that people go but but many people do follow markings and you know we'll take this route here, hopefully.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I guess I'm just thinking in the absence of harder more more permanent things at least making those dashed lines there at that conflict zone as as bright green as possible will go a long way. That's one where a lot of paint there is probably well-advised, I would think.
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: Sure.
[Jared Powell]: Thank you.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you for your comments. There was a comment in the chat, and I believe we addressed it somewhat, about inbound drivers accessing the medical clinic or the convenience store. I mean, the idea is that we still want that to be able to happen. If you're obviously traveling south, you could there is a little bit of access there. And it was just a concern about the design and the engineers are going to look at that as it's coming down on there. And so that we do our best and allow people to still maintain access to the business there. I think it's very possible that that gets done. So I don't know if that fully addresses the question in the chat room, but we are not looking to preclude that and stop that access.
[Alicia Hunt]: Actually, Amy, if you could look at something because maybe you'll have a signage recommendation I just zoomed around on a little bit on street view. And it seems to me that the legal safe thing that somebody could do today. but they probably most people don't know they can because of a lack of signage, is if you're coming up Mystic Ave, you can turn left on Emerson Street. And Emerson Street is two way up just to allow you the entrance to the driveway behind that medical facility. So that is the way that you are supposed to enter that medical facility's parking lot. And now you're in the behind the parking for the 7-Eleven. You can see. And so you could go in there and I think, but then it's do not enter Emerson streets one way after that. So you can't go any further. And it is my suspicion that people are not aware that you could turn left there and get into that parking lot and whether there's some way we could make that particularly for the medical parking this way or something. That's a good point. I hate to, you know, we care a lot about the businesses to interesting the 711 angled parking is designed for people to come off of main street.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, that's an excellent point. That is probably the way people should be going. With the parking in the back, I'm not sure what the shared parking agreements are. Some of the spaces say, like, for this use only and this use. So once you get back there, yeah, I don't know if 7-Eleven customers would be able to park there or not. I can't say for certain because I think there's some very specific parking in the back.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, we can investigate that, yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: I guess with this project, I really I feel like there's a lot more detail here going on that I want to make sure we're very clear about. I also want it to be safe, and I don't want, for example, my intern biking to work every day to get hit in this stretch because we haven't done what we need to do to make it more safe. And I actually think, Amy, you bike this way to work, and I figure if anybody knows what would be safest in this area, it's gonna be you, the bicycle expert who actually uses these intersections on a daily basis. And so coming up Mr. Gav, it's one lane right and that these days, it feeds into make where Main Street starts right here at the fire station it becomes two lanes immediately today. But yeah, that it's kind of not painted and it's kind of nebulous. It is. Yep. Yeah.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Hello, just wanted to relay Walk-Medford comments again. We had a quick question about, you know, we had been talking as a city about MassDOT getting involved in this intersection. We wondered if that, is that discussion going anywhere? Because obviously, you know, you guys are doing great work within constraints of a very complicated car-centric route here. And as pedestrians and cyclists, it's just very hazardous. And we just kind of wondered if there was any update on the long-term progresses of this as far as like MassDOT and that discussion about completely overhauling the entire thing.
[Jack Buckley]: Yeah.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, Amy or I could I could start naming just anytime. Well, you know we don't need a long summary obviously but just long term, long term the city is coordinating with mass do t mass do t has taken over the, you know, which is a good thing because they're paying for the design of main itself, the other ramp, and also made it mystic. So we're working with them on long-term plans. So this, think of these proposals just as buying time until that happens. And buying time until Eversource repaves this area as well. So it's kind of like a three-stage. For now, when they haven't resurfaced then, when Eversource resurfaced, then the long-term.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: And I guess that puts us in a little bit of a unique opportunity to, I don't know, make this a bit of a pilot, right? Because once Eversource comes in, then we can change some things if we find that it's not working quite right.
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Awesome. Thank you. Just wanted to kind of hear where things were on that. My only comment about this design directly is just going on to the route 16 eastbound. That crosswalk seems, I'm just looking at the curved bend coming from Main Street on to eastbound. It seems kind of set back. I would just be worried that someone would start crossing and then a car would just zoom around that. So I don't know if there's a way to maybe do some something, I don't know, maybe to bring the crosswalk a little closer to the radius of the curve or the, whatever the word is, but, you know, not so set quite so far back. So a car coming from main street, if they, people tend to hit the gas as they go around these curves, I would just be, I'm just a little concerned about that one spot. I don't know if there's a way to bump it a little closer to main street, so there's more visibility maybe. And that's, that's about it. So thank you again for all your work on this. And, you know, obviously we're, it's a, it's a tough street with, with lots of obstacles to making it safer for human beings. So you guys are doing great work. Thank you. Thanks.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, just to respond to the crosswalk thing. Unfortunately, it's kind of just the same situation as Winthrop. With this kind of quick build thing, we're not able to move any crosswalks. So that crosswalk and turn are really in the same situation that they are today, which is not ideal. But I do think that having these narrow travel lanes and bike lanes and stuff will at least make people approach it slower, if not do the turn slower. But yeah.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, just to further clarify, because we're not doing any ramps. So if it was just paint, but yeah, any new positioning of crosswalk has to have a new ramp. So we're working within the constraints of the existing ramp locations.
[Jack Buckley]: I see no other public comments. Commissioners, back to you.
[Alicia Hunt]: So we asked a bunch of questions, and I feel like there was some we could consider this stuff. And there's not all the paint that's on this one. I both want to see it moving forward, but I would also kind of like to see the final version of it. Like our jurisdiction is adding bike lanes in addition to removing parking. Like often we're focused on the parking and that's not really an issue here. This is really about Adding bike lanes and paint for safety. Is that right? I just want to understand what's our authority to be voting on here and what is at your discretion anyhow.
[Todd Blake]: I would say on this particular plan, it's swapping one formal travel lane in the area where the bus stop is to be a bike lane. And then just on the other side of that crosswalk, the informal lanes that you described earlier that aren't really painted, the practical informal two lanes and make it officially one lane. Yeah, right there. And then the bike lane in the small segment in this direction right there. There's really nothing on Main Street, that's a share of regulation so it's really just those three items like adding that bike lane sliver with a cursor is, and then adding the bike lane instead of the informal and then the short formal travel lane in front of the fire department and old police station. That's really it because there's no yeah there's no parking we're maintaining the police parking, we're maintaining the bus stop. It's a great point.
[Jack Buckley]: It's really not much commissioners left outside of the chair to make a motion. I mean there's three of us but there's two motion and second so.
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah, I was. Yeah, we spoke at the same time I was going to say that I agree with Todd as far as the purview goes, I mean we're talking the bike lanes and we're talking the shadows and adjusting the lanes. And then I think, you know, I'd like to make a motion that we approve the plan. But I would like the, the area that that you're talking about with the tan paint yes that one that 11 foot lane that needs to be tweaked and adjusted but i don't think it's within our purview i think that can happen in the engineering office so that's that's the motion and from the chair's perspective um
[Jack Buckley]: I sort of agree with that. We are a body that can vote on regulatory issues. And, you know, the TAN is just sort of paint that's, it's, I don't want to call it advisement. We want people to comply with it, but there is no rule of law that I can, you know, start citing people on unless they're sort of negligent in what they're doing. So I'm okay with that theory as a motion. Do I have a second from Commissioner Hunt?
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, second.
[Jack Buckley]: Roll call vote, Alba.
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: Commissioner McGibbon.
[Jack Buckley]: Yes.
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: Commissioner Hunt. Yes. Chief Buckley.
[Jack Buckley]: Yes. Three to nothing with two absence. The petition, the motion is approved. Where are we now? 2022-40, no turn on Red Forest Street to Lawrence Road. Proposed to improve pedestrian safety. Todd, we are exactly one hour late on our agenda, but I think you have the ability to get this done quick.
[Todd Blake]: Yep. Just pull up an aerial here.
[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, southbound. People love that right turn on red.
[Harold McGilvey]: There was a little girl that was hit there.
[Todd Blake]: So yeah. So basically, if people obeyed and did a full stop and looked before they turn, then we wouldn't have these issues. But unfortunately, people appear to do that.
[Harold McGilvey]: So there's a garage there to talk that they're having a hard time. A resident in that house has been sending us emails.
[Todd Blake]: So that the proposal is no right turn on red from forest to Lawrence coming from Roosevelt circle we know a lot of people do that right turn red but we're not taking the move away it's just. You know, if it became a queuing issue, there's a potential future to re-stripe it as a right. If you had a right lane, you could have a right green arrow, but because we don't have a right lane, you can't do that option. So right now we're just saying no turn on red. Could you change the striping?
[Alicia Hunt]: I always thought there was a right turn lane there.
[Todd Blake]: So at this time, it's striped right down the middle of the yellow. So it's a, it's a very practically, we know all of us that drive it know that people squeeze by and do the right, but it's technically not striped as two lanes, but in the issue of safety, based on the way it's currently striped, we're saying we're, we're asking for no right turn and right from Forest to Lawrence. And then I believe Amy also from Lawrence to Forest.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Yes, that's right.
[Jack Buckley]: Todd, I can see from Lawrence turning right onto Forest. Coming down Forest, you almost have to cross the yellow line to let a car pass you on the right to turn. I don't think there's even enough room for them to even get by. I know there's not in my truck.
[Todd Blake]: Well, I guess, um, the mill right turn a red would apply to whether there's two lanes there at one lane, whomever may stop be stopped at the stop sign whether it's one or two cars. So if it was just one that one may be turning right if it was to then the one closest to curbs are right either way the sign applies to either of them, I guess. I was just noting that we had a backup plan if for some reason the queue, because of not functioning that way, became an issue and cut through onto Westfield or something like that, which I don't foresee, but if it ever did.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: I do want to just note that we want to consider whether we're going to put bike lane there in the future. So that should be a factor in it too.
[Alicia Hunt]: I will tell you that if one were to start, great intern project, sorry, it's getting a little late, so I'm a little punchy. If one were to start mapping the main bus routes to the high school, I would venture to say that coming up, I think it's Pearl Street there the wrong way on the sidewalk, and down Forest is gonna be your main path from Fulton Heights to the high school. And so coming down Forest Street and turning right on Lawrence. So that's a really good place to put in a bike lane. Cause you can't take bikes through Roosevelt Circle safely, especially not high school bikes. And so having a bike lane coming down Forest and turning right on Lawrence would actually be, I think really helpful. We should think about that project. Yeah, I'm not objecting to this right turn on red, but I think that residents are going to lose their minds over it.
[Todd Blake]: Well, as someone said, there was an incident recently and it sparks us to look at it and this is what our suggestion is at the moment. The sign would go right here and on this approach. The sign is usually opposite, you know, go right here.
[Alicia Hunt]: Todd. I'm less clear why you want the no turn on red from forest, from Lawrence onto forest, because that.
[Harold McGilvey]: This is a response to a little girl getting hit by a car at that intersection.
[Alicia Hunt]: But which way was the car going?
[Harold McGilvey]: She, she lives in this corner house.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah.
[Harold McGilvey]: This corner, I don't know if you can, she was on this corner trying to cross the street to go to the school bus. and somebody taking a right-hand turn hit her.
[Alicia Hunt]: Was the car coming from Forrest on the Lawrence or Norris on the Forrest? Right, but we don't shut down everything because of one accident. And my point is that coming from Forrest onto Lawrence, people swerve around that, that can be a dangerous turn. But from Forrest or from Lawrence onto Forrest, that's a very different movement. And that's not as clear. People stop there. People don't fly through that intersection. So that's why it matters.
[Todd Blake]: So basically, if a pedestrian presses a button here in any direction and gets a walk signal, all the approaches, Lawrence and Forrest have a red. So without the no turn on red, they could turn. So it's basically people aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. And it's another measure to control them that, you know, they shouldn't be turning red when it's not appropriate to do so.
[Alicia Hunt]: So is there, there is currently an all way stop when the button is pushed?
[Todd Blake]: Correct.
[Alicia Hunt]: I've never, interesting. I've never seen that activated.
[Todd Blake]: So I mean, as I said, if, so if anyone had a question about a right green arrow, you only could provide a right green arrow when you have a right lane, like on the Lawrence Road. But that wouldn't even necessarily help the Lawrence Road approach because it's not like they have an overlap, there's not a left turn from Medford Square onto Lawrence that that right would go with, like the City Hall, right? turn lane, green arrow. So anyways, it's a measure of extra safety. So usually these things come down to safety versus convenience. So what is it a couple extra seconds of wait time if you don't turn on red and just wait for your green light?
[Alicia Hunt]: Well, there's also the difference that the forest to Lawrence, it is people, it doesn't queue up badly. It's just a little bit. It's really, it's people rushing, but the Lawrence on the forest that queues up badly all the way to governor's avenue. Like that already has really serious queue times. That's why this is striped the way it is. Like it's a different intersection from this direction. Yeah.
[Todd Blake]: So yeah, the two lane approach helps process double the amount of cars during the green. So you're right in terms of if someone wanted to take a right turn, yes, but I don't know how many actually do when this is a green going this way. It's not necessarily even safe for them to do so. So the second lane does provide double the throughput during the green phase itself. It helps during that.
[Jack Buckley]: Right on red, you have plenty of room in that lane to handle any of the queue. There's plenty of room to handle any of the queue there. Second of all, simply because of red doesn't mean a steady stream of traffic. I mean, it should be very limited opportunity to turn on a red light, especially at an intersection as busy as that. So the restrictions that we're imposing absolutely should be, the priority should be public safety and not
[Todd Blake]: I wonder if the resident is on the call. They stuck around this long.
[Jack Buckley]: She is. Go ahead, Erica. Hi. So my daughter was crossing Lord Lawrence and the car that hit her was
[SPEAKER_22]: on Lawrence taking a right onto Forest. And it was a red light. So, you know, we were crossing and because there's two lanes there, there are cars turning left from Lawrence to Forest. And this car was coming down that little side lane, ready to take a right onto forest. She did not see her and didn't stop. And she ended up on the roof of the car and on the hood of the car. But luckily she's athletic and young and was able to push herself off the hood of the car and land onto the sidewalk and did not end up underneath the car because she was going fairly fast. You know, the walk signs are outdated, they really need to be updated. People don't even stop on a walk sign and cars just go and they accelerate turning from Forrest onto Lawrence. My thought was, yes, maybe a no turn on red would help, but also I mean, and I know a lot of people will be upset, but also getting rid of that second lane on Lawrence to Forrest, and I know that would cause a big problem, but that is how she got hit. And, you know, cars just, they're not really looking left. They're just going. They don't care if it's a red light or a walk. They don't see that it's a walk sign, and they're just gonna go right. And that's what happened and my concern also is is that there's a bus stop at Clifton right across the street right off of Lawrence, and my youngest is going to be crossing that street, twice a day to go to middle school. There are many children in this neighborhood that are going on the bus and that are riding their bikes to high school. And even I've seen high school students press and get a walk sign and walk their bikes across forest to Lawrence and cars just keep going. They don't stop even on a walk sign and a red light. Um, so it's, you know, my other thought was if you jetted out the sidewalks and, and, uh, the corners, so that cars were forced to take kind of a wider turn, it slows them down and it kind of allows them time to kind of look around and see if there are people, but the neighborhood is growing. And I mean, there are more homes being built. There are more people moving in and people with cars. So my concern is, is that. I've always been worried about getting hit by a car and now it has happened. My car has been hit by a police car parked on Lawrence Road. When I was parked on Lawrence Road, the police car was running after somebody and he was very apologetic and very nice. I didn't press any charges, but it happens. People just go very fast and it's a dangerous corner. Anything that can be done to improve it will be something. I just would love to see something done to that corner to help slow traffic or allow people to be a little more mindful of how they're driving. So I appreciate you all listening. Thank you.
[Jack Buckley]: I appreciate you sticking around and participating in Timmy's story. I hope your daughter's doing much better now. We wish her the best in the family. So we'll see what we can do tonight.
[SPEAKER_22]: I appreciate that. Thank you.
[Jack Buckley]: I have a question. On far as turning onto Lawrence, that stop line is set back I mean, the roadway is designed for one lane, even though it's wide enough for two cars. So I have no problem restricting right turn on red, especially when most of the operators are, one, supposed to stop further back than normal, right? So those from the land side. And again, they're traveling in a lane that's not even designed for a lane purpose. But when you go back now onto Lawrence, turning onto Forrest, where we just were, I'm just sending this up to the engineer. Should this stop line also be set back? I mean, especially considering that we're going to debate the issue of no turn on red. If we were to debate no turn on red, would it make it safer even then to push this stop line back? Because the idea with the stop line being closer, you have a better field of vision, et cetera. But if we're gonna say, hey, it's an all stop and you can only go on green, should we set that back and make that intersection on that crosswalk a lot more visible? Just a comment to the engineer. it comes to them when we make a decision.
[Todd Blake]: So stop lines are supposed to be a minimum of four feet back from the crosswalk and the maximum of 30 feet from the projected edge of the other street. So there is probably room on Lawrence to move it back. But I mean, usually you move it back to accommodate, say, a turning maneuver like a truck or a bus or something that might need to Like the high school driveway, for instance, that has a staggered left-right that we looked at earlier, Steve Miller Drive. So that's to accommodate the school bus taking a left in there. So there really typically isn't a room reason to do it for this purpose that we're talking about, because if there's a red light, person is supposed to come up to the stop bar, stop, because it's red. look both ways to determine if it's safe to take a right on red. And if they did that, maybe they would have saw the pedestrian. So yeah, I mean, so there is room to move a stop bar back, but I'm not sure if in this case.
[Jack Buckley]: I mean, an upper model will be a lot more comfortable, at least once that's just making a no turn on red.
[Todd Blake]: I mean, I say that I'll measure it before.
[Jack Buckley]: And yes, that's the police department telling you that we should be out there and doing a lot more as an enforcement, but we're not everywhere and every time. Anything we can do to make it safer, especially when there's a school bus stop there. I mean, a horn flag, we should be considering this. I mean, a red light should be stopped. And the turn on red should be. There is some exceptions when there's least amount of traffic. So restricting it really should not be that much of a restriction on the public. Any comment on this?
[Tim McGivern]: And just real quick, I think right on red is something for intersections that that can accommodate it. But once you start having intersections that are too busy for that, then it's a no turn on red is warranted, in my opinion, as soon as you get into that zone where there's too much traffic and the perception is not safe.
[Todd Blake]: I just want to note that Amy did have a concept plan to tighten the receiving side of this lane. So that wide lane on Lawrence road on the other side. So not the two lane approach, but the lane going from forest towards Winthrop, that wide lane to put a shoulder in and potentially some flex posts or something like that.
[Jack Buckley]: All right. So I proposed it to the commissioners again. Do we have any. thoughts, comments, or suggestions, but a motion would be in order if there are none. I don't know what thoughts or comments.
[Tim McGivern]: I motion for the no turn on Reddit at this intersection.
[Jack Buckley]: In both areas, correct, Commissioner McGiven? Correct.
[Alicia Hunt]: I will say, I think there's a resident who still has her hand up.
[Jack Buckley]: Did I miss someone? Sorry, I apologize. Okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: Ellery's hand is back up because she put it down after the last issue.
[Jack Buckley]: Okay. Can you unmute yourself Ellery Clay?
[F9BRnpGt19U_SPEAKER_04]: Yes, I can. Sorry about that. No worries. No worries. I just want to say that I go through this intersection all the time. I'm going to have a high schooler biking through here. I bike and walk through there all the time. I mean, my perception is that cars basically don't really stop to go right in either direction. And as I noted in the chat, from what I understand, taking right turn on red away in the United States was done as a response to the fuel crisis in the 1970s. And there's a study done at that time that showed there was an immediate rise in pedestrian and cyclist deaths after right turn on red was taken away to save fuel. So I just think anytime we have a pedestrian and the question is, are we keeping our kids safe. You know walk Medford's one of our top platform items is that every child in Medford should have a safe walking and cycling route to every school in the city. And this intersection is pretty much the only way to get to the middle school, to the high school, to many elementary schools for many many of our students. So I just would say no right turn on red shouldn't even be a question. The safety of our students and kids and elderly and less abled people walking around any age, any ability should be the priority. Like no right turn on red, no question in my opinion. Thank you.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you for your comments. Okay, seeing no other further public comment that I missed, there is a motion from Commissioner McGiven, no stop on red, both on Forest to Lawrence and then Lawrence to Forest. Do I have a second from Commissioner Hunt?
[Tim McGivern]: I think it was a slip of the tongue, but you mean no turn on red.
[Jack Buckley]: No turn on red. No, what did I say? No stop on red, no turn on red. Yep.
[Tim McGivern]: There's no stop on red. It's okay. We know what you meant.
[Alicia Hunt]: And because one of the things that I feel like has been suggested, and I just want to make sure that you're not comfortable, is right turn on red after full stop. The thing is, this is a corner where I feel like you have to inch up to see around the corner. And if people aren't stopping and then inching up to see around the corner, then they're abusing the privilege. You can't see to turn right unless you stop and look at that intersection.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, the sign you mentioned, right turn right after stop, is a measure that traffic engineers could take to alert folks that that's what they should be doing. So that would be kind of a hybrid between what exists now, which is no sign. If that sign were to exist, it would keep the right turn right allowed, but it would warn people whether it's still there or not. And then no turn to red is the next step, which is actually just eliminating the allowance.
[Alicia Hunt]: Erica says the sign is already there. Do you mean that? It says there's already a stop on red sign at that.
[Todd Blake]: That's a different sign. So the one Alicia mentioned was stop on red after, proceed on red after stopping first. The one that's out there, stop here on red. So whenever there's a stop line beyond the 30 feet that I spoke of, Then you have a sign that has to be supplemental pointing to the where the stop line is to let you know where you should. So that's about where you should stop, not stopping on Red or not.
[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, that's coming down as a curved arrow to Lawrence. The sign is there. The line sign is not that that sign doesn't exist on the Lawrence Road portion of this.
[Todd Blake]: Correct, because when a stop line is within the range of 4 feet to 30 feet, you don't need that extra supplementary sign saying where the stop line is. But when it's further back, then you do. So that's a MHCCD thing.
[Alicia Hunt]: And the other thing that I've seen, some of the comments have referred to the pedestrian crossing signs. We have the pedestrian crossing signals. Right, like it's not like it's a better version of them, but drivers don't necessarily see them.
[Todd Blake]: Correct, so basically the signal heads for pedestrians are designed for the pedestrians to see when they have the right of way to go. And the red, green, yellow light is for the drivers to tell them when to proceed or not. So the signal heads for pedestrians aren't necessarily meant to be visible from the drivers. They're supposed to obey the red, yellow, green light So actually a lot of pedestrian signals that have the visors on them so they're more legible to the pedestrians blocking out like the sun and everything.
[Alicia Hunt]: Okay, I just wanted to make sure I really, I hate dragging this out, I've been here since nine o'clock this morning. in this chair. But I just want to make sure that we're really doing the right thing because once you put in signs like this, once they approve the traffic, they're there for a very long time. They don't get taken out lightly.
[Tim McGivern]: It's the right thing. The right turn on red, Alicia, is like a privilege that is meant for intersections not like this. Once intersections get this crowded and there's issues like this, You then then red light should be red lights, especially when we have walking during what do you call it when you press the button and if you have an exclusive pedestrian. like it's the amount of deaths that happen because of that one specific thing.
[Alicia Hunt]: I thought you couldn't have a right turn on red on an intersection that had a four-way all-walk thing. I thought that that was, right, if once you set up the four-way all-walk you can't allow right turns on red anymore or is it just that's a best practice and that's why I think that's true.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah it's not necessarily, I mean so people in Mass Ave and Western and Cambridge Yeah, so an example right out for all of us City Hall employees, City Hall Mall at Salem Street, right outside Tim's office, right? So that has a green arrow to facilitate the green when the pedestrians don't have a walkway. The only time that green arrow ever shuts off is when the pedestrian presses the walkway. But we still get complaints that people have the privilege of the right arrow, get frustrated when they finally do get a red and they don't want to wait. So, I mean, Anyway, so there is an industry movement to get rid of right turn on reds. People have said that. There's a nationwide or multi-state effort to transition back to no turn on reds everywhere for safety.
[Alicia Hunt]: Interesting. All right, fine. I second the motion.
[Jack Buckley]: On the motion of Commissioner McGibbon, no turn on red, both on Forrest and Lawrence. So Forrest and Lawrence are seconded by Commissioner Hunt. Roll call vote, Alba?
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: Commissioner McGibbon?
[Jack Buckley]: Yes.
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: Commissioner Hunt? Yes. Chief Buckley?
[Jack Buckley]: Yes. The vote of three to nothing with two absent, the motion passes. And let me just take a look at that. There appear to be no further business for this evening. Our next meeting is September 13th, 2022 at 5 p.m. Any announcements from the other commissioners, any questions or emotion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn seconded. Uh, commissioner.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, sorry. I had, I was muted.
[Jack Buckley]: I will actually do a roll call, just to drag this out further. Go ahead.
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: Commissioner McGibbon?
[Jack Buckley]: Yes.
[MCM00001607_SPEAKER_07]: Commissioner Hunt? Yes. Chief Buckley?
[Jack Buckley]: Yes. Three nothing, two absent. The motion passes. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you very much for everyone for participating and taking your time to contribute to us. We really, really appreciate it. Have a good night, everyone.
[Todd Blake]: I applaud the audience who stayed on the whole amount.
[Tim McGivern]: I get a leisure beat by two hours, by the way. I started at seven.
[Alicia Hunt]: But I haven't moved my butt from this chair the whole time.
[Tim McGivern]: I've been eating almost continuously.
[Alicia Hunt]: I had a half hour break.
[Tim McGivern]: Sorry. I moved around.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_14]: Thank you for the meeting, everybody. I appreciate the special meeting. Thank you.
[Tim McGivern]: Thank you.
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