[SPEAKER_11]: Hi, everyone, and welcome to tonight's Intercorps Regional Community Meeting for the Bus Network Redesign Project. My name is Jason Silva, and I will be serving as the moderator for tonight's meeting. Next slide. I would like to note that all MBTA activities, including public meetings, are free of discrimination. The MBTA complies with all federal and state civil rights requirements, preventing discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, limited English proficiency, and additional protected characteristics. We welcome the diversity from across our entire service area. If you have any questions or concerns, please visit www.mbta.com backslash title VI to reach the Office of Diversity and Civil Rights. Next slide. I would like to remind everyone of the rules for participating in this meeting and also that this meeting is being recorded. While we wish we were able to do this meeting in person, we're hoping that we have designed an online public meeting that will be interactive and provide an opportunity for us to have a conversation together. Before we can begin that conversation, I want to review a few technical aspects of the Zoom platform. Next slide. We have ASL interpreters tonight for the meeting. If you would like to view the ASL interpreter at all times, keep your view settings in gallery mode. To pin the interpreter's video, click the ellipsis in the top right corner of the interpreter's video and select pin video. You will need to repeat this process each time we switch interpreters. We also have interpreters tonight who are translating the meeting, Spanish, Mandarin. If you require these services, please click the interpretation button on your screen, the globe icon, and select which language you wish to hear. In addition, we will be holding small group discussions later in the meeting. If you would like to be in a Spanish language or Mandarin small group discussion, please message a project team member in the chat so we can move you into the appropriate discussion section at that time. At the moment, I will ask all English speakers to please select English as their chosen language. This will allow you to hear translated non-English comments during the Q&A. I'll give you a minute to do that. Okay, next slide. You can view closed captions by clicking the closed captions feature and selecting from the option shown. Show subtitle will display a caption at the bottom of the screen. View full transcript will display the meeting's audio transcription in a window to the right. Next slide. All attendees will be muted during the presentation to prevent background noise. If you are viewing this meeting on a computer, toggle speaker view to see the presentation more prominently. If you are on a smartphone, swipe to change views. You may use the chat button to submit a typed question or comment at any point during the meeting. The chat is not open, but if you direct your question to ask a question, we will receive the comment or question. We will be monitoring the chat during the presentation, but ask that you hold substantive comments and questions for the question and answer session that we will be having later in the meeting. If you have a technical problem, please share your issue in the chat. I'll note that all project team staff members are listed with project team next to their names in the participant list. These questions will not be visible to all attendees once submitted, but we will try to get to as many as possible during the Q&A portion of the meeting. During the small group discussions, the chat will be visible to everyone, and we encourage you to keep any comments in the chat respectful to other attendees. If you use inappropriate language, you will be removed from the meeting. I'd now like to introduce Andrew McFarlane from the MBTA, who will first introduce the MBTA general manager and then begin the main presentation. Andrew.
[Walid Elhirach]: Thank you, Jason. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us tonight for our Bus Network Redesign meeting. Tonight we'll be diving into the communities of Brookline, Cambridge, Medford, Somerville, and Watertown, and what the MBTA's Bus Network Redesign proposal can mean for these municipalities. For tonight's meeting, we will have a presentation that I will co-lead with my colleague, Melissa Dulay, who's a senior director of service planning for the MBTA. After we review the proposal and the presentation, we'll break into small group discussions where you'll have an opportunity to talk with MBTA project team staff, review the proposals closely and provide more feedback. We'll then reconvene as a larger group, where you'll have an opportunity for questions and answers if you didn't get any of your questions answered in the smaller groups. Before we get started, I want to introduce the MBTA General Manager Steve Poptak to give some opening remarks. General Manager.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much, Andrew. I'm here live from Mattapan station, one of our really important nodes with both BUS and obviously the Mattapan trolley. And I want to thank everyone who joined us today. I want to welcome everyone who's joining us for this important conversation about the future of our BUS network. As you know, as everyone on this call knows, transit is really essential to this region's economy and our bus system serves our most transit dependent populations. And while this bus system has grown over the years, this area has experienced such dynamic change. We need a bus service that changes with it. And we're really excited to share this draft network map with you. We really view this process as a once in a generation opportunity to make bold improvements to the MBTA's bus network and to do it for the people who depend on us most. So this is not only a redesign of the bus system, but to be clear, it's also increasing the amount of bus service that we are delivering. The plan over the next five years is to increase bus service by 25% and that includes a 70% increase on weekends. It also means doubling the amount of routes that have high frequency service. And that's that's what we define as a bus stopping every 15 minutes or less throughout the service day. Now these changes can sometimes be difficult. There can sometimes be tradeoffs. But I believe the benefits to improving our bus system are really clear. So I thank you for your participation tonight. We're really excited to hear from all of you, particularly our bus riders. And I just want to reemphasize this draft network map is just that. It's a draft. We're really looking to make changes and hear your feedback and make this system as good as it can possibly be for our riders. So again, thank you for joining. Thank you for engaging in this process. And thank you for caring about the bus system here and our bus riders. So with that, I will hand it back to Andrew and turn off my mic here. I know it's a little noisy behind me, but I appreciate the opportunity to say hello to you all.
[Walid Elhirach]: Thank you, General Manager, for those exciting live remarks. I can't think of a better place to do that than live at our bus stop. Before we get started, we want to do a quick poll just to get a sense of who's in the room. Jason, could you activate the poll, please? So a poll should be popping up on your screen. We're asking folks, how regularly did you ride the bus and whether you've ridden the bus in the last month? So we'll give folks a few seconds to fill that out. Awesome, it looks like most folks have filled it out. So let's wrap up the poll. And it looks like, according to this, about 84% of you are regular bus riders, which is great. Really glad to see there's so many bus riders in the room tonight. And for the 16% of you who are maybe not regular bus riders, we hope that you are future riders under this new system. So with that, let's get started with the presentation. So what is bus network redesign? We know that the MBTA service area has changed a lot in the last few decades. New destinations and districts have emerged, areas like the Kendall Square area, Longwood Medical Area, Seaport District, Assembly Square. And we know that our bus system hasn't always met the needs of these growing districts. We also know that travel patterns have changed a lot in the last few years, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. And we want to make sure that our bus system really meets the needs of folks across the region, but especially those who need the service the most. So bus network redesign is just that, our effort to holistically reimagine the MBTA bus network and making sure that we're meeting the needs of current and future riders over the next few years. The bus network redesign is just one in a suite of initiatives that the MBTA is undertaking to really improve bus service and transform it for bus riders over the next few years. In addition to rethinking our bus routes, we are undertaking a major fleet and facilities program where we're looking to renovate and expand our bus garages and maintenance facilities. As part of that, we're also looking to transition to an electric fleet, making sure that we have the buses that we need to run more service. Additionally, we're working closely with cities and towns and other roadway owners to implement more bus priority on congested roadways. We know that a lot of our buses get stuck in traffic, and so we want to make sure that we're working with municipalities to put in bus lanes, traffic signal upgrades called transit signal priority, and other design upgrades. We've worked closely with many of the municipalities, especially the ones that are included in this meeting tonight, to do just that, to add more bus lanes, to make sure that we're getting the reliable service that we're looking for. Additionally, we're looking to improve the accessibility of bus stops, add more bus shelters, and there's another initiative underway to improve our fare collection system through fare transformation, where we're looking to move towards a system that would allow for all-door boarding. So with this proposed network, we're really trying to achieve five goals. First and foremost, we're trying to improve, make sure that our bus system is meeting the needs of those who need it the most, and making sure that we're concentrating those needs in areas where there are high rates of low income populations, people of color, seniors, people with disabilities, and people who live in households without access to a car. So I'll make sure that we're delivering the biggest benefits for these populations. Secondly, we're trying to provide a lot more frequent service. Time and time again, we hear from our riders, they want to see more frequent services process system. So like the general manager said, we're looking to double those in the coming years. We're also trying to provide a lot more all-day service. Traditionally, we've been very focused on trying to get folks to work at 9 a.m. and getting them home from work at 5 p.m. But in reality, we know that folks have a lot of different trip needs. Folks want to see more midday service, so they get to appointments. They want to have service later in the evening, so they can go see friends or get home from work later. We're also trying to provide a lot more service on the weekends. Many parts of our system don't have Sunday service, so we're trying to provide more seven-day service system-wide. Fourth, we're trying to provide new connections to more places. So I mentioned some of those growing areas earlier, the Seaport District, Assembly Square, Longwood Medical Area. We know that folks want to get to these areas, but there are also a lot of other areas, shopping plazas, community centers, other housing complexes that folks need to get to. So we're trying to provide more connections to places like that. Fifth, and finally, we're trying to provide a system that's simpler and easier to use. A lot of our routes have variations where they might have one type of trip at different times of the day, or they might not have service on the weekends. So we're trying to provide more consistent service seven days a week, 20 hours a day. So with this proposal, we are committed to a 25% increase in bus service hours over the next five years. This is really an unprecedented commitment to expand bus service, and we're really excited about this. We think this will have a major impact for how people travel in and around the Boston area in the years to come. Included in this 25% increase is a 70% increase in weekend service alone. And all this increase in service really allows us to serve many, many more riders. We estimated about 300,000 new residents would be within walking distance. That's within a quarter mile or so of a new high frequency service. That's a bus that comes every 15 minutes or better, seven days a week, 20 hours a day. In the Longwood Medical Area alone, we estimate that about 200,000 more residents will be within walking distance of a new high-frequency service that connects directly to the Longwood Medical Area. It also allows us to provide a lot more service to our equity populations, making sure that our bus system is providing the public good that it's intended to. As you mentioned earlier, we are proposing a doubling of high-frequency service system-wide. Today, we have about 15 routes that would be considered high-frequency service. These are often called our key bus routes. They include buses like the number 1, the 77, 71, the 66. These are some of our most frequent and most popular routes system-wide. And we know that folks want to see a lot more services like those. So in our new system, we are proposing going from 15 corridors today to 30 corridors that would be considered high frequency in the future. This means that half of the service that we would be providing would be high frequency service, which we're very excited about. This also allows us to add some municipalities to the high-frequency map that weren't historically included in that map. Those include places like Everett, Lynn, Medford, Somerville, and many parts of Austin. We're also looking to provide more crosstown connections to connect folks to and from these high-frequency services, and also make sure they can get to and from rapid transit more easily. So with that, I will pass it off to my colleague, Melissa Joulet, who's the Senior Director of Service Planning for the MBTA. Melissa.
[Unidentified]: Thanks for that introduction, Andrew. I'll start here with the map and describe the changes that we have coming for the north half of Brookline. I apologize, these are excerpted from some other materials that we've prepared. So this does include Austin and Brighton, but those were covered in our Boston area meeting, so I'll only be addressing the Brookline North changes. Another bookkeeping thing here, you'll see that we have identified some bus routes here with the nomenclature. The working name, we have the letter T and a number. That's what we're using to indicate any of the high frequency bus services. Those are the routes that we were talking about that are proposed to arrive every 15 minutes or better, seven days a week. for 20 hours a day. We were trying to come up with a way to say these are different from other routes in that you many times wouldn't even need a schedule to be able to use them. You can sort of show up with the expectation that within a reasonable amount of time, a bus would be along. Though the nomenclature of the T66 or the T70, that might be updated. So that's kind of our working name. For now, for reference, we were riffing off of the, you know, taking the MBTA because we want to make sure that bus is considered part of the network. Technically, these are all the frequent routes, but F routes sounded so, had sort of a negative connotation. So we're very excited to show that Brookline North, specifically the area getting on the approach to Longwood Medical Area, has many new high-frequency connections that are added to the map. There are already some existing connections, so you can see a route like the T57, which is pretty much identical to today's 57 bus. So actually, even for existing key bus routes like the 57, We are proposing to improve the off-peak frequency to be every 15 minutes or better, while today those routes are every 20 minutes or better. So even for routes where we don't have any route structure changes proposed, like the 57, we are suggesting that the late night service, for example, would improve from every 15 minutes to every, sorry, from every 20 minutes to every 15 minutes instead. Similarly, the T-66 is largely unchanged, with the exception of a very small reroute. Instead of from Brookline Village traveling directly to Brigham Circle, we're proposing that it would turn up Brookline Ave. and cut through the Longwood medical area to get a little bit better distribution into the Longwood medical area too. There's many places that folks are going for employment trips and also to opportunities for patient care. Though I'll note that any of the routings in the immediate vicinity of the Longwood medical area are subject to be updated. We have a deep dive study that we are keeping up with our MassDOT team to kind of look more closely at opportunities for bus priority, where we can put in bus layovers and other infrastructure improvements in a very busy and congested area. We also have some other new additions. For example, you can see there's a route called the T15 that starts at Oak Square, goes to Brighton Center, and continues down Washington Street straight through Brookline. That is promoting what's today's number 65 bus, and actually extending that a little bit farther, because today the 65 starts in Brighton Center. So this would become a seven-day, every 15 minute or better, service. It's very much used by folks in Brookline to connect to the Longwood medical area for commute trips. Today it doesn't have Sunday service so this is actually a big increase in seven day service with new Sunday service available as well. And the reason it's called the T15 is because it's mashed up with the number 15 bus that continues from Ruggles Station over to Nubian Square across Dudley Street and eventually would continue all the way to Fields Corner. So this becomes a sort of crosstown linking together Alston and Brighton, Brookline, Longwood Medical Area and parts of Roxbury as well. There's some other changes besides those high-frequency changes with the thick blue lines. You can see the darker brown lines or the lighter brown lines. Those are our medium and our low-frequency use. Some key things to note, we have the number 86 bus, which you can see starts at Reservoir, sort of provides a crosstown connection up through Austin and connects over to Harvard. It will actually terminate at Harvard. Today, it continues past Harvard. But the other half of the 86 is being merged with another route. So the 86, as we know, would be truncated to only operate between Reservoir and Harvard, with a transfer available for anyone continuing on to say Union Square in Somerville or Sullivan. There's also an extension proposed to the Route 60. Today it terminates at the mall at Chestnut Hill. We're proposing that that would be extended a little bit farther into Newton to Newton Center to get a little extra distribution to Langley Road and some other locations there. And lastly here, the Route 51 does not have any specific routing changes, but it would gain new Sunday service under our proposal. One of our themes is to just make more consistent service. And in many cases, we had routes that maybe didn't operate on Sundays or their service would dramatically drop off. So we're proposing to keep the 51 the same, but it would gain new Sunday service. Next slide, please. This shows South Brookline and then other parts of Boston that I won't be talking about here. But you can see the continuation of the 51 into South Brookline. And as I mentioned, that area will be getting a new Sunday service. But overall, Brookline is getting a substantial amount of new service. Overall, this plan represents a 25% increase in the amount of service that we're providing. And whether that is on evening service or weekend service or any of these kind of consolidations to create much more high frequency service. And that's something that we're really very excited about providing in Brooklyn. Next slide, please. Cambridge also has a lot of high frequency service. So it already today. had a lot of high frequency service. Today there's five key bus routes. Those would be the 1, the 71, the 73, the 66, and the 77. And aside from that 66 change over by the Longwood Medical Area, those routes are largely the same with the better off-peak frequency because we're promoting As a category, all of our key bus routes to be every 15 minutes or better, rather than every 20 so that means usually late at night, or maybe on weekends that we are proposing a frequency improvement for those routes, but we're actually proposing five. new routes that would come into Cambridge as well, and you can see there's quite a lot of those thick blue lines if you look at the map. So going through, we have one connection from the south that we're calling the T39, This would be an extension of today's 39 bus, which starts at Forest Hills and travels through Jamaica Plain. We're proposing that where the 39 gets to Brigham Circle, it would, instead of paralleling the E line all the way into Copley, we propose that it would diverge from the E line. It would offer a transfer to the E line at Brigham Circle for anyone wishing to continue to the Back Bay or Copley areas. But then it would travel through the Longwood Medical Area and sort of, I'll call it a mashup with today's 47 if you're familiar with that. So it would connect over by the BU Bridge, connect over by BU campus through Cambridge Port to Central Square. And then actually we would continue it beyond Central Square to Union Square in Somerville and up to Porter Square in Cambridge. So this is probably the biggest departure from an existing very heavily used route. But one of the things that we've been trying to do is figure out how to use our bus resources most effectively and to compliment our rapid transit networks rather than duplicate the rapid transit network. So what this does, although it does require a transfer for some folks who are traveling from JP and other areas into the Back Bay and Copley area, At the same time, it's making a far more direct trip for folks from JP who might be going to Cambridge or Somerville or to Red Line locations. And then similarly, it provides a direct connection for anyone coming from Somerville Ave, parts of Somerville and Cambridge, traveling into the Longwood Medical Area toward BU. So we see that there's a lot of value, and especially with the barrier posed by the Charles River, This provides another opportunity to add a sort of crosstown connection to our existing crosstown connections that we already have with the Mass Ave Bridge, the One Bus, and other Charles River crossings. Another group that we're proposing for that would be new for Cambridge would be the T70 bus. This is modeled off of today's route 70, though it simplifies it a bit so it would be all day high frequency with every 15 minutes or better from Waltham Centre into Kendal. So today, sometimes the bus goes to Cedarwood and sometimes the bus goes to Marketplace Drive in Waltham and sometimes it goes to Waltham Centre. So we're proposing that the high frequency portion of the route would be to Waltham Centre, which means that we would actually drop the portion of the route in Cedarwood and restructure the portion of the route out to the Market Basket in Waltham. At the same time, we're also proposing to extend the route to Kendall Square in Cambridge. One of the things that we've been trying to do kind of thematically with this plan is to connect some parts of our network that just for historic reasons hadn't been well connected. For example, the Longwood Medical Area, Kendall Square, and South Boston Waterfront. You know, some of these are very large regional employment destinations, and we see that there were, you know, lots of folks traveling to these areas from all over the network. So pulling in a connection to Kendall direct from the West. And while we recognize this does overlap with the red line, but we saw that there was a lot of trip making happening in that quarter. And also it happens to be the peak load point of the red line. So that seemed a reasonable place to have that overlap. Also, we have the T96 bus. This becomes, a very exciting crosstown connection linking together the red line, the green line, and the orange line to the north of Boston. We're proposing to restructure today's 96, make it a little bit more direct in the sort of area near Tufts so that it can pass by on College Avenue directly in front of the future Medford-Tufts station. So it would start at Porter Square, travel up to Davis, like where you can see the existing 96 operates today, and it would travel up through Ball Square, past Medford-Tufts, and actually, unlike today's 96, which starts and ends in Medford Square, it would continue all the way up to Malden Center, sort of a mashup with the top half of the number 101 bus. And the entirety of that quarter would be promoted to all day high frequency to create a really strong sort of northern crosstown connection. If you recall seeing the map earlier of the existing key bus routes, you can see that it was very slim in terms of the numbers of routes kind of to the north of Boston. So this is an exciting addition to the number of high-frequency services that we have. We also have the T101 bus. On this map you can see it starts at Kendall MIT and this would connect over to Lechmere, which would be the first time that we have a sort of direct MBTA operated connection. I know the the EZ-Ride operates there and then this would continue past New Lechmere Station over the Gilmore Bridge into Charlestown and actually would serve area along Main Street in Charlestown and then continue past Sullivan up into Somerville and Medford and we have some maps that show that so I'll speak about that a little bit more on the next slide. And then lastly, the T109 bus is the fifth high frequency connection. So this is the route that you get when you combine the top half of the number 86 bus that I mentioned was sort of separated from the rest of the 86 with the 109 bus. The 109 is slated to be, that's coming from Everett, that's up and down Broadway from Linden Square. down through Everett and currently terminates at Sullivan. We proposed that that would get mashed up with the top half of the 86 to create an all day high frequency connection from Everett through Sullivan and continuing on to Union Square in Somerville and on to Harvard in Cambridge. So this is exciting because today, you know, everyone coming from Everett is sort of forced to transfer to the Orange Line, whereas this is trying to knit together suburbs that are very close to each other. and allow for more opportunities for direct connections and through trips. And also just opportunities for better frequency because today the 86, you know, sometimes on Sundays it can be every 30 or 40 minutes, but there's really quite a bit of trip-making happening in that sort of Harvard and Union Square to Sullivan Square corridor. So overall, you can see there's a lot more high frequency service coming to Cambridge. There's also some changes to the moderate frequency routes as well. There are a few changes that I'll point out. So at Kendall, you can see that we have a proposed extension of the Route 55. This is sort of a combination of two routes. It's taking today's 55, which is route that connects the West Fenway neighborhood in Boston to the Green Line. We're proposing that would continue to do so at a future accessible Heinz station, but we're proposing that this would then cross over the Mass Ave Bridge and continue to Kendall-MIT. This is sort of kind of filling in and taking the part of the role of the CT2 bus as a way to connect Red Line riders to the Longwood Medical Area, or at least some Red Line riders who might not be within walking distance of, say, the new T39 bus that's also proposed to connect other parts over to the Longwood Medical Area. There's also a change to the 64 bus, it would be made more consistent. Today, sometimes it goes to central University Park area and sometimes it goes to Kendall, we would make that change consistent seven days a week. and would always go to Kendall. There's also a proposed change that's contingent on once the future west station is completed in Austin, the 64 would be slated to use that new station, but we have some alternate routes that would be in place until that future station is completed. There's also a proposed route change to the 83 Today, that is connecting from Russell Field down Rindge Avenue and connects over eventually to Central Square. That is proposed to instead be extended to Kendall-MIT to provide more opportunities to get from sort of the Port neighborhood and Inman Square over to Kendall because Again, for historic reasons, many, many routes have long terminated Central Square, but historically there hadn't been as much development as there is today in Kendall, so we're trying to reorient some of those services over to the Kendall area. And I'll flag that the 68 route is proposed to become a peak only service. So I do want to flag by peak only. This would include the school peak, because I recognize that those trips over to Cambridge and Luton are some of the heaviest trips that we see on that route. So when we define peak service, we define that to be inclusive of school travel periods. And then I'll flag that there are some changes for routes that you don't see here. But I do want to just kind of call out. So there's no CT2 shown on this map. No 85. The 47, as we discussed, was combined with the T39. So there's no 47. And there's no 74. Some of the 74 resources are slated to be sort of added to improve some of the evening span of the 75. and some of the off-peak frequency of the 75, but we're proposing to sort of simplify some of those West Cambridge services. So I did want to call that up. But overall, for Cambridge, there's a lot more service overall, and there's a lot more high frequency service. And that's something that we think can serve a lot more folks overall. With especially better, faster service to Longwood Medical Area, you can see we have 13,000 more residents who would have a competitive and fast trip to the LMA. Next slide, please. So Medford is an exciting area. Today, there are no high-frequency bus services in Medford, and we're proposing that there would be three new high-frequency routes. There's several municipalities, Medford, and Somerville, and Lynn, and many others that aren't on the high-frequency map at all today and newly get added to the high-frequency map. So the three connections that I'll call out in Medford. I'd mentioned the T96 when we were talking about Cambridge. You can see the bulk of the route on this map here. So it would connect to the new Medford Tufts station that's slated to open later this year. It would travel through Medford Square where today the 96 terminates and then It would continue along Salem Street out to Malden Center, and this is taking the place of the top half of the 101 bus that currently operates there, but also promotes it to all-day high-frequency service. So again, 15 minutes or better, seven days a week, 20 hours a day. Next, you can see there's the T101 bus. So this is kind of taking the other half of the 101. So this goes from Medford Square, would travel down Main Street. We actually have a reroute to keep it going all the way to Magoon Square instead of kind of cutting across the top of Winter Hill, so it would go down a little bit. I think that's Medford Street to get to Broadway, so it would travel through Magoon Square and then down Broadway and continue eventually into Kendall Square via Sullivan, via New Beechmere Station and Charlestown on their way to Kendall. And then the third high-frequency route that is slated for Medford, it's just a tiny corner of Medford, but provides a very useful connection, would be the T110, which connects over from Wonderland Station. And it's the identical routing to today's number 110 bus, which goes from Wellington across through Everett and over to Revere, where it terminates at the Blue Line. But it would be promoting it from you know, sometimes it's every 30 minutes or sometimes even longer during off-peak times, and would promote that to be every 15 minutes or better. So those are the three new all-day high-frequency services. And also, excited to point out that we're gonna have a green line in Medford soon. So you can see the other station in Medford there, right on the Summerville line, slated for Ball Square, coming shortly as well. The big thing I'll note by its absence would be the express buses. I know we have the 325 and 326 buses that had been suspended during the forging ahead process during COVID. Those changes are slated to be made permanent. And in general, one of the things that we've been trying to do with this map is to focus more on those seven-day-a-week travelers, trying to have all-day services, having simpler and more legible services, so things like a bus route that does the same thing seven days a week instead of sometimes doing one thing and then on other days doing a different thing. So one of the trade-offs that we've made with this map is to favor more of these all-day type connections, connecting to the future Medford Tufts station rather than having those direct express buses into Boston. And that was actually part of our plan even before COVID happened, but I think the pandemic has only underscored How important those off peak travels are because that's where we've seen some of our most durable ridership and our demand for travel into the downtown has dropped very dramatically. And even it's it's it's creeping back up, but some of the you know. hybrid schedules we think are here to stay. We're still continuing to monitor ridership trends. So as we think about the future of kind of commuting into downtowns and how much we orient our services toward the commute trips, that's something that we continue to monitor. Now there are other, besides the high frequency changes, we do have some other changes. So if you look at the dark brown roof that provides that sort of crosstown connection, that's the proposed new route 95. Today it actually goes to Sullivan. There's the bus route 95 that goes via Mystic Ave down to Sullivan. So we've flipped this to be more of a crosstown within Medford over to Wellington Station instead. This would go down Riverside Ave. And we're proposing that it would cut down to Mystic Valley Parkway. As we understand, there's an amount of new developments slated for that corridor. And also it provides connectivity to the retail Wegmans and other locations where it cuts down from Riverside Ave. At the outer end, on the West Medford end, this would be a route that would be extended consistently to Arlington Center. Today, half the trips go to Arlington Center and half the trips go to Playstead Road, where it intersects with Winthrop Street. So we're proposing, again, simplifying this to make one route that does one thing consistently. And that also means that there would be more frequent connections to Arlington Center and it becomes sort of a cross Medford route. This would be every 30 minutes or better, seven days a week. some other changes slated for Medford. We have the 94, which is doing a number of different things. So today, the 94 does connect from Davis to the West Medford area, where it views sort of across the Medford Square. But that was sort of, today's 94 is sort of, I'll call it V-shaped. And we've been trying to make routes that are more straight, so that they can be just generally more competitive with driving. You know, if someone were starting at Medford Square trying to get to the red line. They generally would never have driven there, biked there via West Medford. So we said, well, what if we structure this in a different way to get folks from Boston Ave and West Medford? We send the bus out Placestead Road. So this fills in from the portion of Placestead Road that was formerly covered by half of the 95 trips. And then we continue the bus up, actually out to Winchester, covering parts of the route that were formerly covered by the 134 bus. which would no longer operate in this. And it actually then continues out to the Burlington Mall and to the Third Ave area, Burlington, like where the Wegmans and other restaurants and other things are located. So this becomes sort of, this is just, we call it the 94, but this is quite a bit of a departure from today's 94 bus. And it would still provide a connection to the red line at Davis and perhaps also provides those reverse commute opportunities for folks going from Medford or actually out to Winchester and Burlington and some of the other suburbs as well. Let's see, on the eastern side of the map, I do also want to call out that there is a change to the 99. Today, the 99, the northern portion of the 99 is largely similar to what you see here, but it actually travels on the other side of the Malden River, south of Malden Station. So we're proposing to keep the 99 on the western side of the Malden River, traveling down Highland Ave in Malden and connecting up to Middlesex Ave in Medford, and it would continue to terminate at Wellington Station like it does today. We also have some changes to the number 100 bus. Today it terminates at Elm Street. We are proposing to extend this beyond Elm Street over to Governor's Ave and eventually over past the high school up Winthrop Street to what's labeled as West Medford on the map, the intersection with Placeda Road. This is doing a couple of things, so it continues to serve the folks who use today's 100. It's also trying to get a little bit closer to where the former Route 716 operated, though the 100 operates with full-sized 40-foot transit buses, and the former 716 operated with smaller contracted vehicles that are more like, I'll call them, hotel shuttle style buses. They were smaller and better able to navigate some of the extremely narrow streets and very steep grades that some of our buses would not be able. They'd bottom out and not necessarily make it over some of those. So we're proposing to take a It doesn't serve exactly the Fulton Street area, but it's trying to get close to other locations along Governor's Ave, Lawrence Memorial Hospital, and also the locations along Winthrop Street are filling in for places restructured from the former 134 West. So just before I move on, I do want to flag that, again, this does not have the express buses on here and also does not have the route 716 because those routes are not part of the proposed new network. So we definitely want to hear from you on the entire package of things that we have shown here. Next slide. This slide, it's labeled Charlestown and Somerville. We talked about Charlestown in the Boston meeting, so I'm actually just going to focus on the Somerville portion. But one of the exciting things in Somerville is that there are a lot more all-day high-frequency services. Somerville is another one of the municipalities that today has no high-frequency services, no high-frequency bus services. It does have the red and orange lines today. The Green Line is coming very, very shortly to much of Somerville and already exists in Union Square, so that is very exciting. There are in the Somerville piece four new routes proposed. I know the summary statistics here apply to both Somerville and Charlton. So there's four new high-frequency routes. I'd mentioned the 39 already when we were talking about Cambridge, but you can see the Somerville portion serving Somerville Ave from Porter Square to Union Square and then going down Prospect Street towards Central Square. And again, this would then continue over the BU bridge to connect to the BU area, the Longwood Medical Area, and eventually out to Jamaica Plain and Forest Hills. This also includes the new T96. So we've seen the Medford and Cambridge portions of the 96, and You can see that this would connect from Porter to Davis, Ball Square, Medford, Tufts, and on out to Medford Square and Malden. There's the T-101. So we saw the Medford and Cambridge portions. This takes the portion of Broadway in Winter Hill over to Sullivan Square. And then you can see that it connects out to Medford Square on one end, connects through Charlestown via the Main Street Corridor over the Gilmore Bridge and over to New Lechmere Station and Kendall-MIT. and we have the fourth all-day high-frequency route is the T109 bus. So again, we've seen pieces of this already in Cambridge. This is where the existing 86 operates today in Somerville. It connects through Union Square and then would continue out to Everett and to Linden Square. There's also, I'll mention, an area that has two overlapping medium frequency routes. So this isn't formally one of the corridors that we think that we'll be able to provide all day two directional coordination on. But I do want to flag that because I think once we build the schedule, this is one where we'd like to see what we can do if we could provide, say, you know, inbound coordination into Davis Square in the mornings or an outbound coordination from Davis because it gives the opportunity for, because they have the same frequency, to possibly try to coordinate those schedules. Now the reason we don't think we can get two-directional coordination is because they have different endpoints, so we'd only be able to coordinate in one direction at any given time. But I do want to flag that all the way from Arlington Center down Broadway, past Clarendon Hill and into Davis, we do have an overlap of our proposed new 87 and our proposed new 90 buses. So those two every 30 minute buses would provide frequency on the West Somerville portion of the map. So talking about the rest of the changes on the 87 and 90, we're proposing that the 87 rather than sort of duplicate the rapid transit network and also to fill in for some other changes like to the portion of Mystic Ave that would no longer be served by the 95 bus from some of the other restructuring changes. The 87 is proposed to go to Davis and then continue up via Harvard Street in Medford to get to Mystic Ave and continue down past the Mystic View housing and over to Sullivan Square. So this provides a new connection from kind of the north side of the Winter Hill area, so not the Broadway side, but just to the north between there and Davis Square today that doesn't exist. Those areas are very much oriented toward kind of Medford with today's 95. So this pulls that stretch of Mystic Ave, kind of connects it to Davis in a way that doesn't exist right now. The 90 bus is also, I'll call this sort of a combination of the 90 with the 88. So there's no proposed 88 in this map, but we wanted to invest some of the resources from the 88 into better Highland Ave service and do some things like today the 90 terminates at Davis Square, but we think it's important to connect Highland Ave destinations, there's the high school or even you have the Capuano and the East Somerville and other places connecting those over to the West Somerville side of things. So the 90 is proposed to be extended out not just actually to Clarendon Hill but continuing out to Arlington Center to meet some of the demand there and that would be consistently seven days a week. I know sometimes we've had The 87 extension is only on certain days and doesn't some days, but this would be a seven day connection Arlington Center past Clarendon Hill and continuing with the 90 corridor along Highland Ave. And then at the other end of the route, we're doing some interesting things that I wanna flag for you. So we're proposing to extend this over to Chelsea Station, which is right behind the Market Basket in Chelsea, if you haven't been there recently. And because this is really focused on connecting Somerville over to like Everett and Chelsea, one of the things that we wanted to do is try to make that I know it's not a direct ride, we're limited by kind of bridge locations, but we wanted to make that a little bit more direct. So I do want to point out that we're proposing that there would be one orange line connection opportunity. We're proposing that we would pull in to Assembly Station, and this would not be on Grand Union Boulevard, this would actually be closer to where Assembly Station is, and we would not connect at Sullivan and we would not connect at Wellington because again we're trying to make this connection stronger between Somerville and Everett and Chelsea. And because of the size and the circulation patterns at both Sullivan and Wellington, adding the orange line connections there adds quite a substantial bit of time. So one of the things that we were trying to do to make this more direct was to provide a really great orange line connection at one location. So that is proposed to be at assembly. So definitely hoping to hear your feedback and let us know what you think about that change as well. This would be also every 30 minutes or better, seven days a week. That does mean it would have much better span and frequency than today's 90. I know today, say for example on Sundays, the 90 can, it starts later, it might not start until 10 o'clock in the morning and it's done running by six o'clock in the evening on Sundays. So this would be a longer span to be more typical and representative of what our Sunday services often would have. So you can go out to eat at assembly and also come home. So let's see, what else do we have? I do want to flag Oh, we also have the 94. I'd mentioned this in the context of Medford so today that originates in Davis Square. As I mentioned before, that would be extended through Winchester, and up to Burlington to take over the portion of the 350 route that goes to Burlington mall and. over to the Third Ave area and Burlington, and also just for reference, the reason for having that extension to the mall is to try to make the 350 more direct and less circuitous. If you've ridden the 350 from North Burlington It's coming down from North Burlington and then it has a quite sizable spur to go out to the Burlington Mall over to the third ave area. So we sort of spun off that spur to have two intersecting but more direct routes. So let us know what you think about that as well. overall, there's more service in Somerville, and not just there's more bus service, but there's more bus service, and there's future Green Line service and the existing Green Line service. So there's more transportation opportunities proposed with this map, and we're really excited to hear more on what you think. Now, I do want to flag We've also been hearing some feedback on certain connections that become quite hard with this. I've heard quite loudly about the difficulty of getting between Davis and Union Square with this proposed map. We have some ideas that we're kicking around. I don't know if this is gonna make the, What's going to make it into the final plan, but I wanted to kind of plant some ideas and see as we get into the discussions later if any of these kind of have favorable reactions. For example, if we were to shift the location where the T96 and the T39 meet. to instead of being at Porter Square, if we shifted that transfer location where those two routes meet over to, say, potentially Union Square, that would actually create a direct connection between Davis and Union. And if that could, and also potentially for some of our existing 87 riders coming from the West Somerville area getting to the Union Square area to the Market Basket, take what would be a three seat ride, as in like three different buses that people would need to ride and have that become two different buses. Would that be a more manageable experience? So let me know what you think. Next slide, I have one more to talk about, Watertown. Today, the Watertown area has the number 71 bus and the 57 bus. And again, those are slated to get more off peak frequency. Every 15 minutes or better, but we're creating a new crosstown T-70 bus straight across Watertown on Arsenal Street and out on Main Street. So very excited about this. And as I mentioned, this gets extended to Kendall Square in Cambridge. very regionally important employment center. And again, more service overall with better access to many destinations. So with that, I think this is the last of my slides and I will turn it back over to Andrew.
[Walid Elhirach]: Thanks so much, Melissa. So I have a few more slides just to go through and then we will break into small discussion groups. Just first wanted to go over our project timeline. So like Melissa and the general manager said, this is a draft map. This is not our final map that we're going to be moving forward with necessarily. We are going to be collecting feedback from you all tonight, but also we've been in the process of talking to many stakeholders. We will be collecting feedback up until July 31st. At that point, we will take all that feedback, look at all the comments that we've received, and then make revisions to the map. We're looking to go to the MBTA Board of Directors in the fall of this year to ask for a final vote of approval. Once we have that vote of approval, we'll be moving into implementation, which we anticipate will take about five years. Starting in 2023, we're going up until 2027. This is obviously we're collecting feedback right now, but there has been a lot, a lot of public feedback that we've collected over the last few years. We've been actively getting comments from thousands of folks through myriad channels, through our external task force, through surveys, through focus groups. So this is just a continuation of a lot of outreach that we've done so far. So tonight you're in one of our community meetings, we have a couple of upcoming ones, including two that are in person, I just wanted to flag. There's one on July 19, that will be an open house style meeting at the bowling building in Nubian Square. We also have a in person meeting that will be at 10 Park Plaza, the transportation building downtown in Boston. In addition to these virtual meetings and in-person meetings, we have a number of station open houses where we're talking to riders directly riding the system that day. So we set up a table, we have planners talk to riders and ask them for their feedback on these proposals. So we have one on June 1st in Harvard Square. We have a few upcoming ones, including one on July 7th at Sullivan Square Station, which might be the most convenient one for folks in this area. We also have a number of other activities, street teams trying to promote this to riders and other parts of the system. I wanted to note that we will be at the Art Beat in Davis Square on Saturday, July 16th from 11am to 2pm. So if you're at that event in Somerville, come by and say hi, and you can talk to an MBTA planner. And in addition to all these meetings, there are many other ways for you to provide feedback. We are collecting feedback up until July 31st, like I said. A good website to keep as a reference is our project webpage at mbta.com slash BNRD, which stands for Bus Network Redesign. We are also collecting feedback through an online survey that's available on that webpage that can be found at mbta.com slash BNRD feedback. You can also send us an email to our project email account, betterbusproject.mbta.com. If you want to send in written comments by mail, you can do so. Send it to this mailing address. We also have our project hotline where you can leave voicemails. All those project comments will be collected and put into the final feedback database. So with that, we will break into small discussion groups. We have about 20 minutes for that, and Jason will give us some pointers for the discussion. And Jason, you might be unmuted just FYI.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thanks, Andrew. So as I mentioned, we will be having some small group discussions to get your feedback and ideas about the study. A lot of you have posted some questions, really good questions in the chat. We encourage you to ask those questions in your breakout sessions. As a reminder, if you prefer a non-English breakout room and did not indicate that preference earlier, please message us in the chat. Next slide. Thank you. Each breakout session discussion will focus on the same topics and questions, which are listed on this slide. Does the proposed network go where you need it to go? Does it run as frequently as it should? If implemented, are you more likely to ride the bus? And what would you change about the proposal? Next slide. Each breakout room will have a group leader who will facilitate the discussion. The conversation will focus on your feedback on the draft network map. We will reconvene here at, let's see, between 725 and 730 for then a general question and answer period, and then a discussion of next steps for the project. With that, Amanda, can you pause the recording? And Andrew, can you stop screen share? And then Amanda, move everyone into the breakout rooms. Thank you very much. We'll see you soon.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Hi, everyone. We should have everyone who's going to be in this breakout room. I'm just going to share my screen so you can see the discussion questions. One sec.
[Frances Mitchell]: Recording in progress.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: All right, can everyone see what I'm sharing? Hopefully. Yes, awesome, great. My name is Doug Johnson, and I work in the MassDOT Office of Transportation Planning. I'm helping with this project and facilitating the room tonight. Almost like we have about 23 people in the room. We also have a note taker in here. I'm not sure, yep, beer is in here. Beer, do you want to introduce yourself to everybody?
[Unidentified]: Hey all, I'm Veer. I'm on the project team and I'll be your note taker for this evening.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Thank you very much, Veer. So hopefully you all found the presentation that Andrew and Melissa gave really informative. We would love to facilitate a discussion in this group about what was shared in the presentation. This is actually the presentation from tonight that I have up. If anyone would like to go back and look at any of the slides, you don't have to do so. I can also bring up the maps specific to the neighborhoods and communities that were discussed in this presentation, if any folks would like to take a look at those. But in general, the questions that we'd like to get at in this session are basically, does the proposed network go where you need it to go? Does the service run as frequently as you'd like it to for those trips that you would want to use it for? If this were to be implemented, would you be more or less likely to use bus service and what would you change about the proposal? I just want to reiterate that at this point it is a draft proposal and we will be making changes to it based on all of the feedback that we get through the whole project process. So this is one of many, many community meetings and other outreach strategies that we're using to get feedback on this and then refine the map before we finalize the proposal. So if folks have any questions or would like to make comments, you can go ahead and raise your hand and then we can go one at a time. Alternatively, if you'd like to post in the chat, you're more than welcome to do that as well if you don't want to ask your questions verbally. So Shira, you were the first person to raise your hand. You can go ahead if you'd like.
[SPEAKER_23]: Hey, how are you? Hi, Shira. And so I live in Medford, in North Medford, in the Fulton Heights section. And the bus that, like the only bus that I have now is the 100 bus. So I noticed on the new route map, it's being reduced to potentially stop at 7 p.m. That's pretty upsetting to me. I mean, it's nice that like the actual route is longer, but the fact that this area will have no bus service. When the T itself runs till like 1230. I think it's pretty sad, especially since there's no real taxis running around there's no, you know, ubers or like ubers and blips are becoming more expensive and. Also, Logan traffic is becoming crazy with the tunnel closing. So keeping bus accessibility to the trains is really important to me. That's all I've got. I think I answered all your questions on that slide.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Thanks. Yeah, I should say, so that's exactly the kind of feedback that we're looking for. Thank you so much for saying that. No one has to stick to the questions that we have on that slide. There's really specific feedback. you know, experience that you have on the T that you want to see addressed through this process or any kind of changes you'd like to see made to the proposal, we would love that kind of feedback so that we can consider it as we continue to develop this proposal. Sure.
[SPEAKER_23]: I'm sorry, the one thing that I wanted to hammer was just the less frequency I guess is tolerable, but the fact that it stops so much earlier than it currently does is the real main sticking point for me.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Got it, okay, thank you very much for clarifying. Steve, you're next.
[SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, sure, thanks for the opportunity. And first of all, like, thank you for the whole team. This effort is clearly huge. And just taking in all of the desires and requirements and with a focus on providing more service where it's needed. I mean, in many cases, the results speak for themselves. the increased, I live in Somerville, and seeing the increase in frequency of service on some of these key routes is fantastic. It's something that will be felt by so many people who live in Somerville and beyond, so thank you for that. I'm part of a group called STEP that advocates for better transit throughout Somerville and beyond, and we've been listening to a lot of people in Somerville about some of the some of the pros and cons for this. And I'm gonna put a link to some of our thoughts in the chat. And I just wanted to touch on like just two things from that list. One thing that really stands out to many of us is that the Green Line, which now and very soon will serve much more of Somerville, is obviously brings new kind of connectivity. It's surprising to many of us that there are so few bus routes that connect to the new Green Line stations. You know, many of us who've been through the Green Line and its ups and downs on the roller coaster of that process, you know, we remember that we talked about the Green Line stations not getting parking lots or garages because specifically we wanted local people brought in via sidewalks and buses to our local stations. And so it's remarkable to see so few connections to Ball Square station, Lagoon Square, Gilman Square, and even Assembly. There's one bus, but it's It's surprising not to see more of that true multimodal connectivity. And related to this, you know, another thing that Somerville has suffered from a long time is, you know, the green line, the red line, the orange line, all kind of fan out from downtown, right, as they should. There's always been a big lack of connectivity running the other direction, north-south. connecting the spokes in the wheel, if you will. And it's something that I'm surprised the new proposal doesn't address more strongly. The CT2 is a prime example of a true crosstown bus that runs mostly north-south through Somerville and kind of serves that need and connects the various T lines, connects the various squares. It's something I urge you to take a closer look at. I know that busing through the streets of Somerville can be a little challenging, some of the narrow streets, but I really think it's important to take a look at that. So those are some of the two points I wanted to make. Thanks.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, thank you very much. Really appreciate the comment. I used to live in Falls Square for about eight years, so I know the area really well, and I hear your points. I just want to actually elaborate on that a little bit, if you don't mind. um the to the point about the sort of the radial system that the rapid transit network provides and the need to have that crosstown service that's definitely been a major focus of bus network redesign so that that was very intentionally worked into some of the proposals for route changes so the t109 i think is a really good example of that so this is the 109 um through ever right now the 109 comes down Broadway and it goes into Sullivan Square. So our proposal is to take it all the way across Somerville into Cambridge over to Harvard. So it creates some of that cross-town connection or connectivity between the red line and the orange line. So that definitely is a factor in the way that some of these routes were planned. But I do appreciate the comment about Gilmore Square, Magoon, Ball Square. And since you are from STEP, I would encourage you, if you haven't checked it out already, the MBTA did a study in 2019 and 2020 called the Systemwide Station Access Study. If you Google it, you'll find it, if you haven't read it already, yeah. So one of the key findings was really that at a lot of stations, The expectation is and reality for many stations is that upwards of like 90% of people who access a lot of stations are actually walking. Not to say that we shouldn't have bus services stations, of course, but I think with many of the Green Line stations, it's especially so that access will be very heavily skewed towards walking rather than other routes. But thank you very much for your comments and we'll certainly review the comments from STEP as well. Gabrielle, you're next.
[Ciccariello]: Hi, good evening. Hi, my name's Gabriel Ciccarello. I work with the Medford. No, it's okay. It's okay. I work for the Medford Housing Authority as their director of modernization and procurement. And I'm specifically just calling, advocating for our residents that live at one through 20 Walkling Court in Medford, Mass. It's kind of close to the West End or the hillside section of Medford. And the main concern there is the deletion of the number 80 bus. It's a very easily accessible bus. Walkman Court is a development for a low income, completely low income development for elderly and disabled residents. And having the access to that 80 bus on Boston Ave It's really, it's a two to five minute walk for our residents there. So the deletion of that row is going to be a big hindrance. And I just wanted to also make you guys aware that we are planning a complete redevelopment of that site. It's currently 144 units of elderly and disabled low-income housing. We are going to be increasing that to approximately 200 units of low-income elderly and disabled housing and possibly adding 40 low-income family developments. So having the really close transit access is something that's extremely attractive to our current residents and will be attractive to future applicants of the housing there. So just something if you guys can take into consideration, it looks like, I think it's a new 94 route that kind of runs down Boston Ave. It just stops short. It doesn't completely go down Boston Ave to where the existing 80 bus pick, you know, where our residents can pick that up.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, I think you can see my cursor here, right? So the 94. Yes.
[Ciccariello]: Yeah. And the old 80 line really was kind of not right outside their door, but they just would have to walk up North Street to Boston Avenue. It was extremely convenient for them. And like I said, just with the population there, it's an extremely frail population. A lot of them do use transit. And so we have heard a lot from the residents there.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Gotcha, thank you very much for sharing that. Yeah, I just brought this up. I switched from the presentation to show this. If folks haven't seen these, if you go to the project website, we've created PDF booklets for each neighborhood and municipality that the MBTA runs bus service to, to show what the existing bus service looks like, and then what the proposed bus network redesign has. And if you view one page at a time, then you can scroll back and forth between them to get a really good sense of how things are going to change. So I just wanted to bring this up to show folks so that they they would know what you were talking about. Thank you. Of course, yes. The 80 here starts Arlington Center goes down Boston Ave. And under the proposal, you know, folks on that corridor At least on this part of Boston Ave. It's still the 94 but obviously the for folks in the development that you're talking about it sounds like it would be a reduction in service.
[Ciccariello]: Yeah, and it's definitely for that for that elderly type of an elderly disabled people it is it's just a lot further walk from them to. to get to transit. So if there is a way to maybe connect that 94 to go a little further down Boston Ave, just to try to take that area into consideration would be greatly appreciated.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Absolutely. We'll definitely take a look at that. Thank you very much for sharing it. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Another sort of guiding philosophy, so to speak, for this process has been in situations where folks might have to walk just a little bit further, but we can get much more frequent bus service. That's been something that we've looked at, because for, you know, many folks, that is a better, ultimately, situation for them. But obviously, there's some folks who that extra walk is actually going to be a lot harder for them. So it's, you know, even if the service is more frequent, the extra walk is going to make it much harder for them to access. So these are definitely kind of the kind of things that we're trying to assess as we modify the proposal and improve it.
[Ciccariello]: Thank you so much for your consideration. We appreciate it. Yep. Thank you very much, Gabriel.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Have a great evening. Thank you. You too. Rebecca? And I can go back to the back to the presentation.
[Rebecca Schmaeling]: Hi, I am also from Medford. It's nice to see all the Medford folks here. And I just kind of want to throw my two cents in for the re-redoing the express buses. I know that the that this proposal gets rid of them in kind of favor of pushing us towards the T, which I understand. For me, the express buses have been super helpful. The T is usually already incredibly crowded, and I don't know that pushing more of us onto the T without more T service, which maybe is also part of the plan, uh, is really gonna help all that much. I know the green line hopefully will alleviate that a little bit, but, um, I, it's just for me for going to work in the morning and coming home, the express buses have been really great and a way to not have to spend like an hour and a half getting to work. Like, you know, it's like 30 minutes to the T stop and then an hour into the city sometimes. And it's just, it's so much more time than just getting on one of the buses. So. I understand if they have to go in favor of making things more accessible, but I would really appreciate them coming back.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Thank you very much for sharing your comment. Just to the point, I'm not sure that I can say anything about the express buses, but you did bring up a good point about a system that pushes more people to rapid transit. a system that sometimes has, you know, capacity constraints. The, to that point, the red and orange line transformation programs, capital projects, uh, programs at the T, those will go a long way towards increasing, uh, frequency and capacity on the orange and red lines. Um, obviously that's, you know, a multi-year project that has been, that has taken a lot of work and been, um, progressing over time, but still has a lot of work to do, but ultimately that will involve all brand new orange and red line trains and really upgrading all of the track and signal infrastructure to allow the trains to run more frequently than they currently do. So hopefully, through that effort and in the timeline of the implementation of bus network redesign, we'll both have a better bus network and the frequency and capacity that we need on the rapid transit system to support more folks transferring to it. But thank you very much for your comments about express buses. And obviously, I don't intend to respond to every single comment that folks make. I want to be respectful of all of your time. I just wanted to share that. Karen, you're next.
[SPEAKER_07]: Thanks. Thanks for the presentation. I know we're probably a few minutes left, so just be quick. I am in Somerville. I'm really sad to not see the 85 anymore, but I'm finally getting around to my head around that, like how I might be able to make it on time, even though like, I mean, like an alternative for that, but I see where you're going with that, but I'm really nervous about the 90 being only every 30 minutes. And I'm wondering, like my huge recommendation of everything is that that be a high frequency too, because Highland goes right through the center of the city. It's on the top of the hill. If people can make it up to the top of the hill, that's the main point of the city where we can get through and you don't have to walk down to the other side if you need to get on the bus line on the other side of the city. And as it is now, if I try to go from Davis home to where I lived by the high school, sometimes I can walk faster. then I can catch an 88 or a 90 when we've got two bus lines going down at the same time. And I can walk, I'm able to walk that far, but a lot of people can't. I just, I can't see how we could get the students to high schools, to East Summerville. My son goes to East Summerville Community School. We go there, we take the bus there every morning. There's tons of high school students going both ways. I sometimes take the bus back from East Summerville. And if it's only going every half an hour, I think is what it's, is it? Or I don't know if it's half hour, every 15. Yeah, every half an hour. It's just, it's not gonna serve the students in the city and they don't have school buses to rely on. I'll leave it at that. I have a couple other things, but I think those are my most important. I know this. You don't have to address everything. It's fine if you want to go to the next person to share.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: All right. Thanks, Karen. Yeah, in the interest of time, I think we'll go to Eric. And for any folks, there's still a lot of hands up. If we don't have time to get to your comments, please type them into the chat, because we will keep that record and incorporate it into the other feedback that we get. Eric?
[SPEAKER_02]: I thank you so much. I, I live in something, I'm not sure how much my new comments. Would actually matter for my, my research. I already heard something. So, let's alone, but I live in the summer right near where the summer. departments, so elderly and disabled communities. And yeah, I'm really excited to see the higher frequency. Like, wow, that looks like it could be fantastic. But at the same time, right now we have across Cambridge, we have the CT2 to Kendall, 91 to Central, the 86 to Harvard. And we're keeping the 86 connection, or it'll be renamed, I know. But we're completely losing central. And for Kendall, you'll have to go up to Sullivan. And you probably wouldn't remember walking to Kendall, which is a pretty central place. So that was disappointing. Again, like everyone else, I understand we kind of have to make some hard choices like these, but that's not what I was hoping for. I think this will be frequently enough. The bus will be running frequently enough, but I probably myself will take them less often if I'd have to choose to go all the way over to Sullivan in order to get Kendall to go to work. So that's my point. Thank you very much for listening. And this really is fundamentally exciting, even if all of us have been complaining about particular pieces.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Thanks, Eric. Yep. All of your comments are noted. And I know we're going to get back to the next one soon. So, Victor.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. Hi. Thank you. Good evening. Yeah, I appreciate the MBTA putting effort into this bus redesign and embracing the principle that frequency really is freedom. And I think some people tonight have spoken to gaps in plant service where maybe they're losing something they have today. And so I also appreciate those comments and people bringing them to light. And I guess I just wanted to comment on just I live in your central so I really do get a lot of service compared to other people and, and I think Cambridge is getting quite a lot of improvements which I definitely appreciate, but I just wanted to, you know, comment on. the traffic problems that buses face today, just because there's so much traffic, you know, in our, in our cities. And, you know, how can the T work to, to give better priority to buses so that, you know, if, yeah, that's, that's sort of what I wanted to say.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Thanks, Victor. Yep, we're working on getting bus lines on as many roads as we possibly can through a separate notice. We have 48 seconds left. So I encourage you all to type your comments into the chat. We'll save that log. But Evgeny, I hope I spelled your name or pronounced your name correctly.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, go by Eugene. Thank you for the chance to be able to join this meeting. Kind of seconding Steve's comment about the new Green Line stations being way underserved by bus lines, and especially the Tufts-Metford station being the last one. only served by two lines, one from the east, kind of, and one from the north, but one from the north running every 60 minutes, which is way too seldom.
[Unidentified]: People who are
[Walid Elhirach]: Welcome back, everyone. I think we're having folks join. Yep. Jason, do you want to set us up for Q&As or quick comments?
[SPEAKER_11]: That'd be great. So just a quick reminder, I want to ask all English speakers to again select English as their chosen language. This will allow you to hear translated non-English comments during the Q&A. So we were grateful for you to be back. I'm going to quickly walk through the instructions for the Q&A slides. Please hold comments, questions, or raising hands until I finish. I know some people are already eager to get their questions in. Then we will ask elected officials to speak and then open the meeting up for other questions. And Amanda, yes, could you please start recording?
[Frances Mitchell]: Recording in progress.
[SPEAKER_11]: I'm going to repeat what I just said just for the recording. I'm going to now walk through the instructions for the Q&A slides. Please hold comments, questions, or raising hands until I finish. Then we will ask elected officials to speak and then open the meeting up for other questions. If you would like to share a comment or ask a question, please use the chat feature at the bottom of your screen to submit your typed question or comment. You will submit those questions to ask a question. We will alternate between reading questions and comments already submitted and recognizing those who want to pose a question verbally. Please be as brief as possible so we can hear from as many people as possible. People who wish to share a question or comment verbally can press the raise hand button. For those joining on the phone, you can raise your hand by pressing star and then nine. All attendees who speak Spanish, please raise your hand to provide your comments, questions verbally for the interpreters to hear and repeat your comments. When you recognize your name, you will be unmuted and you may speak. After you share your comment, we will lower your hand and you will then be muted once again to allow the next question to be asked. Before we open the comment and question segment to the public, we would like to invite any elected officials in attendance or their staff to ask questions or make comments. Please use the raise hand feature so we can recognize and unmute you. And for any folks who have already raised their hand and are not an elected official, if you could unraise your hand for the time being, we would really appreciate it. So first I see Rep. Steve Owens.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_14]: Hi, thanks so much for putting this process together. I just want to, first of all, start with the good news. I just want to thank you for the increase in service on the number 70 bus. Watertown's Arsenal Corridor, in particular, has had an explosion of growth over the past few years and with more to come. And I just want to urge you to keep that 15 minute headway for the 70 and the extension to Kendall. I think it's gonna link two really important life science destinations. Also very supportive of the proposed 54. I think that's very interesting linking Waltham, Watertown, Belmont and Arlington in a way that it's basically impossible to get to under the current map. But I do want to mention this to the tea before and to others I really want to reiterate my concerns about the loss of the 74 going from Harvard Square to Belmont Center over over Concord have that proposal leaves the 78 but also results in. uh about a at peak a half a cut in service in half and a cut in service of three quarters off peak a significant cut um in a place that that is slated to grow uh over the next few years uh be impossible to get to the to the quadrangle from from harvard. There's 100 units of affordable housing. There's two assisted living, nursing homes, Mount Auburn Hospital. This is a pretty heavily used route. And I also want to comment on the 83 along Rinjab. It's really a lifeline to many low income people in Cambridge, the highest density in Cambridge for sure. The change is small, moving from Kendall to Central, but riders, will have to transfer to the red line, which is an increase in cost. I think that I've heard similar complaints from East Cambridge as well, which I haven't looked at as carefully, but I just want to make sure that the T is mindful that a transfer to the subway, to the red line or the green line is going to represent an increase in fares for some of these low-income people when you're designing these routes. So I just want you to be mindful of that. And thank you. I'll let the public speak for the rest.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you very much, Representative. We'll now go to Representative Mike Conley.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_24]: Thank you. Can you hear me?
[SPEAKER_11]: We can.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_24]: Terrific. Well, first and foremost, want to echo the concerns of many of my constituents, you know, we very much I think appreciate the overall goal here of 25% increased service over five years. And we know this is a massive undertaking. But as we've dug into the details, a number of concerns have been raised. Some of them echo what Representative Owens just stated. The proposed removal of the 80, the 87, the 88, and the CT2 buses. Really create a burden for residents on the Somerville side. The concern we keep hearing is sort of those cross city trips, you know, there's sort of an assumption here that everyone will be using the Green Line extension, or that everyone wants to get to the red line. But we hear a lot about the need to get from say the mystic apartments down to the market basket in Union Square. So how do we get those cross city trips and what can we do to adjust things to sort of have a map that's a little more evenly distributed. I noticed in the presentation at the beginning, there was talk about how it will be easier to get to the Longwood Medical Center. That sounds terrific, although I will say constituents of mine, as they've seen that the CT2 bus is being removed, they have doubts and they have questions. So I would ask that a lot more be done to really give us confidence that folks who wanna get over to Longwood will be able to make it over there. I could go on and on I'll try to wrap up with just one or two more quick comments. You know Somerville residents were told that no decisions would be made about the 80 bus until after the GLX becomes fully operational. And so you know that gets to a piece here which is there are a lot of moving pieces, including A lot of development that has been sort of permitted and plans but hasn't yet happened. So not only do you have to address the currently changing densities and let's remember Somerville. It's the most densely populated city anywhere. And these are all very densely populated communities. But these cities are actually growing and will continue to grow over the next five years and beyond, as this plan gets implemented so final thing I'll mention and again I could go on and on, but I don't want to take up time from the public. Our legislative delegation sent a letter to the T late last month, really asking that this process be slowed down even more and that more data be provided to the public so that some of our wonderful advocates can really dig in to understand how you're seeing things and how these decisions are made. So I appreciate all the engagement so far. I know you have the best of intentions and we're looking forward to working with you to really get the best outcome possible. Thanks a lot.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you, Rep Conley. I'll now go to Senator Jalen.
[Pat Jehlen]: Thank you and thanks to all the people who are here. So I won't repeat things, but I do think it would be helpful for all of us. I really appreciate hearing people's comments. I need to digest them and so do you. I'm glad we're gonna have more opportunities and it's not a final thing that we're looking at, but I do think that people would like to see other kinds of data. And one kind of data I heard was, what is the current ridership on these lines and which, What are the alternatives for people who will not have that service anymore? And also the current connections, what will be the changes there? So I think it was really great to hear all of the improvements. I'm very enthusiastic. even though I wouldn't be able to get on the same bus and go to the, I wouldn't be able to get the 86 all the way, but I just want to go to Harvard Square, so I won't worry. But there's no real recognition, in my opinion, in your presentation of the places where people are losing service. So it is a matter of trade-offs. And so I think recognizing those and understanding what the alternatives are for the people who are losing service, that would be really helpful in adding that to your conversation. We understand there will be changes and changes include losses, but let's recognize them and try to figure out how to reduce those and still keep the benefits that you're proposing, which are really great. Frequent service, reliable service, that's really important.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you very much, Senator Jalen. So now I believe that's all we have for elected officials. I don't know, Andrew, if you want to respond briefly or do we want to get right into, we are running late, so do we want to get right into public comment?
[Walid Elhirach]: I thank all the elected officials for their thoughtful comments. I do wanna just have an opportunity for attendees to provide comment as well. So let's move on to anyone who wants to do that. Thank you. And I think, yeah, thank you.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, so we're going to try to bounce back and forth between written comments and questions and verbal comments and questions. The first person we will call on is Pasquale DeLeo. Amanda, can you unmute him?
[Rebecca Schmaeling]: You should be able to unmute yourself now.
[SPEAKER_11]: Pasquale?
[SPEAKER_17]: OK, sorry about that. I was muted.
[SPEAKER_11]: Can you hear me now?
[SPEAKER_17]: That's OK.
[SPEAKER_11]: We can, yep.
[SPEAKER_17]: Okay, great. Okay. Thank you. Your presentation was great. And I was not aware that you guys are going to do this until I saw it on next door neighbors, you know, that local chat stuff online. And what caught my attention is that a few services are going to be going to be eliminated. So I live in Medford on Winthrop Street, which is at the corner of the 94 and 96 bus. And I don't know if it's true. Hopefully, one of the people who talked on Nextdoor maybe got it wrong, but they were saying they're gonna eliminate the Winthrop Street line and George Street line. And a lot of us in this neighborhood have a problem with that, okay? So is it true that that's being considered?
[Unidentified]: I can jump in. So there are some changes proposed. There would still be the T90, sorry, the 94 bus on Boston. And there would be the proposed new T96, which would be sort of straightened out a little bit compared to today's 96. So it would stay on College Ave. So you could either get, if you could get to Boston Street, you have the choice of the 94, or if you can go a little bit farther over to College Ave, that's where the high frequency seven day T96 would be located. And also that allows it to have a better connection to the future Medford Tufts Greenline Station. But yes, we do have some changes. It's still entirely within about a quarter mile of other bus stops that would remain in the proposed network.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, thank you. We'll go now to Brandon Langton.
[SPEAKER_09]: Hello, can you hear me?
[SPEAKER_11]: We can.
[SPEAKER_09]: Okay. I'd like to say thank you for letting me speak today. I think this is, I also think this has gone great. You've managed to take 70 minutes of the total two hour time to talk about your pitch rather than letting us speak as the people who have had access to these maps. Um, I think Melissa did a great job glossing over the number of small businesses that would be completely cut off by the 96, no longer covering the George street Winthrop street area. But my question is at the beginning, you asked us if we were regular bus riders and you defined regular as once per month. Do you guys really think that that is a regular bus rider?
[Walid Elhirach]: Just one. That was just, yeah, thanks for the question, Brandon. That was just how we wanted to give folks a sense of that. We know that folks have a lot of different times that they might be writing the system. So that was just the decision we made, but appreciate the comment. Let's move on to the next question, please.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you. We do have one written comment about asking if there will be a quote-unquote second draft once we receive feedback and incorporate the feedback. Andrew, do you want to try to respond to that? Yeah, would you say that once more, Jason? Sorry. Just the process moving forward, if there will be another proposal or a second draft based on the feedback we're receiving, and will there be another opportunity to provide it?
[Walid Elhirach]: Yeah, so we will be collecting all the feedback that we're getting from these meetings, online surveys, all the other ways that I mentioned earlier that we're collecting feedback, and they'll be going into like one database where we'll use that to make decisions about how we're going to inform the final map. We are right now thinking about moving towards taking that final map and bring it directly to the MBTA board in the fall. And then we will be doing a public process afterwards just to communicate what's included in the final map. That's the way that we're thinking about that process right now.
[SPEAKER_11]: Great. Thank you. Emily Bargava. Emily? You can unmute yourself.
[MCM00001520_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah, that wasn't my last name. Sorry, I didn't know you were talking. Oh, I'm sorry. It's okay. So my question is about the proposed change from the 95 on Mystic to the 87. We have a bus lane on Mystic Ave that has never actually been implemented correctly. And it's really disheartening to hear that we'll be getting a change from one bus to one other bus and there won't be more frequent service. What's the point of the bus lane? I mean, I know the point of the bus lane because it doesn't actually exist. It's three hours, there's no enforcement. So there it is. But currently, if I want to go westbound, I have to walk eight minutes to Shore Drive or eight minutes to where the stop is in front of the Burger King on Mystic. And I have to cross Mystic at some of the most dangerous crossings in Medford and Somerville, where people are regularly hit by cars. So I appreciate that the 87 will go to Davis now, but it doesn't make any sense for me to risk my life crossing the street to go to Davis. But of course, now I also could walk up the hill to Broadway and take the 89, except, oh wait, the 89 is gone. So I feel like mid-Somerville, Winter Hill is getting the short shift of this bus redesign. Because from Winter Hill, we can't get to Davis Square anymore. And if we want to take the Green Line, we have to pay more for it, because the train costs more than the bus. So that's it. 89 Mystic Ave bus lane doesn't really work. And what are you going to do to fix that? Thank you.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you. Melissa, do you want to respond?
[Walid Elhirach]: Melissa, I can respond about the bustling part, but if you want to talk about anything else, feel free.
[Unidentified]: OK, no. Go ahead, Andrew.
[Walid Elhirach]: Yeah, so thanks for your comments. For the bus lane design, totally hear the concerns. It's definitely something that we, whenever we do designs and work with roadway owners, we're trying to do those processes often iteratively. So I think some of those comments you brought up are all the more reason we might want to just kind of follow up with some of the roadway owners and just kind of talk through and see other ways that we can figure out ways to improve the design. But thank you for that comment. I did just want to do a time check. We have just enough staff time to kind of go until 8pm. So we'll take a few more questions, but just wanted to say that we will have to end the meeting at 8pm. Jason, do you want to do the next person?
[SPEAKER_11]: Thanks. Sure. I'm going to read a comment. The lower frequency and route change of bus 9496 makes it harder to travel between Medford Hillside and Davis Harvard Medford Square. Someone want to try to respond or answer that concern?
[Unidentified]: Certainly just in general, this is our draft plan. So we're trying to hear from folks which connections work better or not. Though I'll flag that T96 is a big frequency boost from today's 96 levels, though 94 is largely the same in the forecasted map, in the proposed map.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, thank you. Let's go to Daryl Haynes.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_01]: Can you hear me? Okay, thanks. I'm going to expand on a comment I made in the breakout session about mainly focusing on the 83. But I first want to say, I think you're missing an opportunity with the 68. And you're reducing the service there when in fact, I think there's an opportunity to expand it. If you understand that the library main library, which is very well used closes many nights at nine o'clock. And the 68 is right there by the library. And so If you don't have numbers for stuff that isn't currently happening, it's hard for you to understand how it could be beneficial. But on the 83, I think you're making a mistake in commission and omission. The commission is, I concur with what other people have said, you want people to take the 83 to Porter and then go down three long escalators to wait for a red line that sometimes doesn't come. I think this is just a horrible imposition for low income people, the heaviest concentration of which are right where I'm standing out where the 83 starts at Como Field. So I think really you ought to take a very careful look at not continuing a service of the 83 to Central. And there's an opportunity to extend it in the other direction or maybe add some other kind of service so that all the low-income people who are crammed in here could actually get over the bridge and get to the Fresh Pond Mall, at least, where the buses sometimes already have to go when the parking lot by Como Field is full. They already go down to Fresh Pond Mall and make a swing around that rotary. Why not extend that at least part of the day so people can go do their shopping at the mall? And I would say extend it even further down to Aberdeen or something like that so that people connect to Watertown without having to go all the way into Harvard Square. And I agree with the 96, too. The 96 into Harvard Square and from Harvard Square is quite useful. Anyway, thank you.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you, Daryl. Who wants to take this one, Melissa or Andrew?
[Unidentified]: Thanks, James. We've talked about this at the Cambridge Transit Advisory Committee or some other forum. So thanks for the feedback. And this is the type of feedback that we'll consider as we get ready to make the next version of the map.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you. So there were two Emilies with their hands up. I tried to call on Emily Bargava earlier, so I'll give it one more try. Emily?
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, thank you. This is actually Rahul Bhargav, but thanks for bringing me back. I am a Somerville resident, and I just wanted to reinforce some of the comments I've heard already, particularly around the idea that the crosstown service from either, if you want to call it east to west or north to south, it's just a real gap here. And it's doing a real disservice to the Green Line extension to not connect it to any of the other bus lines red line is multiple connected to bus lines, the orange line is multiple connections to bus lines, and really only at the Medford Tufts station is there any connection here all the way down to the green line. So I would really strongly advocate for keeping a line like the 89 which goes from one side to the other. I think that the idea that everyone's going to take the 90 and that it really isn't increasing in frequency significantly is, I think, is sort of a poor solution. And the idea that everyone's going to jump on the green line is similarly a poor solution. I think across the system, you have really nice redundancy. And I think we need to see some echo of that. particularly in that Winter Hill gap that another speaker mentioned. And I'd love to sort of hear some of your thoughts about how those those gaps in the bus service play out between Clarendon Hill to Powder House to Winter Hill. And what I've looked at the alternate approaches and again, sort of the 90 where it is, you know, there's tons of traffic and increasing its frequency isn't going to work. And it doesn't even, isn't even significantly proposed here on this plan to be a 15 minute route. So anyway, I just want to do a shout out to that, those gaps I see, and I feel like there's a better trade off that could be made there that I'd encourage you to reconsider, which echoes points other folks has made. Thank you for the time.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you for your comments. Andrew?
[Walid Elhirach]: I think those are great points and definitely echo some of the points that folks brought up earlier. So we'll look into them as we're going into the draft map, but thanks for raising them. I think we have time for just like one final question and then we do have to wrap up, so.
[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah. All right, let's go to, let's see, Michael Kirpin.
[SPEAKER_05]: Hi there. I was just wanting to ask about also the Somerville area. What are you going to do about all the connections you broke? You can't get from Sullivan to Davis anymore in your plan. You can't get from Lechmere to any of the intermediate destinations that aren't served by the Green Line anymore. You've completely cut people off and there's these huge gaps. Other people have talked about it before, but I just wanted to reiterate, how are you going to fix the gaps in Somerville?
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you for your question. Melissa or Andrew, do you want to take a stab at answering that?
[Unidentified]: Yeah, we're all ears. And I know, as I mentioned, we have some ideas that we've been kicking around. If you have any specific suggestions on send this down that way. Those are the types of things that we're going to be sharpening our pencils and taking another look over the coming weeks, as we get closer to the new version of the map, this sort of September timeframe. So if you have kind of specific links, but the one, the one kind of Complicating piece is the resources question. So we have a proposal that, you know, meets our sort of 25% more bus operators target and works for the number of buses that were slated to have in the near future. So as we're thinking about, you know, adding new connections and new links. The question is like, how do we do we dial down frequencies in different places in order to make the resources work. That's the tricky bit that is on us to figure out. But, you know, if you have specific ideas on, you know, hey, have this rig here or zag there. We're all ears. And that's what we're trying to kind of gather as many of those good ideas so that we can come up with a better version of the plan, because we probably didn't get it right. So how do we fix it and how do we make something that's even better? That's what we're here for.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you, Melissa. All right, well, this was exciting. I'm sorry we have to end the meeting, but I'm really excited about all the comments and the interest in all those who are in attendance who are really invested in this project and offered some really thoughtful suggestions, questions, and comments. It's a long process. There are a ton more opportunities to be involved and get involved. I'm gonna let Andrew go through some of those and wrap up the meeting, but just wanted to thank everybody for their involvement and participation tonight.
[Walid Elhirach]: Andrew. Thank you, Jason. And thank you to Melissa and the other project team staff for here tonight and all the time that they've been putting in to public engagement over the last few weeks. And we will continue to do so over the next couple of months as well. Just want to remind folks that there are still many more opportunities for you to stay engaged. Please visit our project webpage, mbta.com slash BNRD. There you can find links to our survey. We also have a version of this presentation available online and there will be a recording of this presentation in the coming days as well. So thank you everyone again. And I believe this concludes our meeting. Take care.