[Emily O'Brien]: November, December 18th meeting of the Medford Bicycle Advisory Commission will come to order. Secretary, would you please call the roll?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Jaron Powell. Present. Bruce Kulik. Present. Emily O'Brien.
[Emily O'Brien]: Here.
[Ernie Meunier]: Ernie Monier. That is a ghastly looking me, isn't it?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Doug Packer, who I don't see. Daniel Nuzzo-Muller, present. Noam Raveni, present. Mary-Kate Gustafson-Quiet, who I also don't see. Lea Grazi. Okay, and Rebecca Wright, who I don't see. Okie dokes.
[Emily O'Brien]: And no guests as of this moment. So do we have a motion to approve the previous minutes? And are there any questions about the minutes? Do we have a second?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Seconded.
[Emily O'Brien]: All in favor?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay, minutes approved. Thank you. Next up is announcements. Bruce, I think you had one. You might have to send that link one more time because I'm not sure if the people who came in after you sent it.
[Unidentified]: Really?
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay.
[Emily O'Brien]: I don't know. I mean, Bruce sent a link to the chat.
[Bruce Kulik]: You got three of them. Yeah, so, okay, so this came into my email box and I followed it because I said, oh, that's kind of interesting. And it's basically, it was done by someone at the Harvard Crimson, and it's pretty well done. They took four or five intersections around the Harvard area and just did some discussion about it. Didn't offer any solutions, but simply pointed out what they viewed as some issues with them and questions and was sort of a, let's talk about this article. The reason I brought it up is because I thought it was interesting to kind of. see what the discussion was and some of the points that were made regarding what's good what's bad about particular infrastructure and I also thought not that we've ever been able to really kind of do something like that with any kind of regularity but It does make for an interesting, we could have discussions about intersections in our area as well with either hints about how to get through them or what we ought to do about them or pointing out issues with them, whatever. It was just sort of food for thought. And I just threw in the announcements because I thought it would be something that on our own time, we can all do a quick run through. If anyone has it open, you can see that if you browse down quickly, there's a handful of little maps that have been put together, depicting the layout of the infrastructure, and then some verbiage about what's good, what's bad about it, and so on. So there you have it.
[Emily O'Brien]: That's great. Thank you. That makes me wonder if maybe we could interest somebody at the Tufts daily into doing something similar?
[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, that sounds fun.
[Emily O'Brien]: I mean, at least at Boston and college, maybe at other places.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, for example.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. Another announcement is there were a couple of incidents over the last several months where one member, first it was Jared who had had a bad experience with an irate driver harassing him and his family while they were on their bikes. He wrote an e-mail to the mayor and a bunch of city officials and police department and so forth. And that email thread had petered down a little bit, and then another member of the commission had another bad... incident with somebody harassing her for the same kind of thing, like not getting the HE double hockey sticks out of the way fast enough when there's parked cars and nowhere to go. And that kind of sparked off another discussion, among which was Chief Buckley had written back to me and offered to meet. And I emailed back several times and never got a response when I emailed back saying, OK, let's set up a time. So I emailed back again thinking, well, maybe my messages are all going to spam. And I wrote back to the whole group. And the mayor wrote back to me and also to the chief and said, let's try to get on this and pursue a meeting time after the holidays. This is all to just kind of fill you in on this, even though nothing much has come of it, but that those officials are aware of the kinds of incidents that I think we've all seen and heard about. And I hope that we can at some point get a meeting and get closer relationship with the police department. One, I think an important thing for us in Medford in particular, is that we have so many important through streets that are just too narrow to have bike lanes. And in some cases, too narrow to have bike lanes in both directions. In some cases, too narrow to have bike lanes in any direction. We are going to be in the travel lane for the foreseeable future in a lot of important places that we need to go. And we know that speeding and speed enforcement is an issue. you know short basically short of making important throughways one way there just is not going to be space for bike facilities so sort of regardless of how anybody does or doesn't feel about the idea of vehicular cycling This is what we're left with in a lot of places and I think that's disproportionately the case in Medford as opposed to in Somerville and Cambridge that have a lot of these roads that were wider to start with. So you have the option of reducing a travel lane, but if you only ever have one traveling to start with, you can't you can't do lane reductions there. So. The point that I'm getting at is I think it really is especially important that we be in contact with law enforcement in Medford because we know that the education and enforcement aspects of this are especially important to us because we don't really have We don't really have prospects of separated bike infrastructure in a lot of these places, and they're not easy to avoid. This is to fill you in on, hopefully, we will get that meeting. Hopefully, we'll get something. If we get a time that he can only meet with one person, that's great. If we can get him to come to a whole meeting, that would be even better. If we can get a couple of people to meet, that would be great. I haven't gotten anything concrete yet, so I don't really have anything else for you. I hope that at some point I do have something. Leah, I saw your hand up and then Ernie afterwards.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I was just wondering if we've ever sort of published our goals and asks that we came up with a couple months ago in a public place, because I know having a regular meeting with the police department was one of those so that we could give them credit for when they do set up a meeting.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, thanks. I did send that to various people by email. I think we may not have actually gotten it up on the website, but we should do that. for sure. Um Ernie?
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah we've batted this around for a long time and almost had a liaison officer who um you know between the schools and us as an example who wanted to get more involved. I don't know if he still does but uh and to maybe attend regularly, whatever that means, are meetings as a formal liaison between the police department, the city, and us. I think that's a path we should grease and not outside meeting, hang on, between people like the chair who makes inquiries on the side and gets the mayor involved, et cetera. We should have a formal liaison to do this. I want to back up to what Bruce was saying about data feedback from our own site visits to problem areas. That seems like a natural information-getting methodology for developing master plan items, right? group of people study a problem site using whatever model, like the Harvard one you found, and that can then lead up to a major suggestion and project for the master plan. So I like that idea, especially it can be implemented in that way. So my suggestion is we get that we answer Buckley first if this is an ongoing lube and ask him to attend a meeting.
[Emily O'Brien]: So I did mention that, and I mentioned that I wanted to set up a time. And he just doesn't get back to me. And this has been the issue with the other times that I've reached out to people at the police department is I'll get an answer the first time, and then I follow up, and then it's crickets. And so I hope that if I can get the mayor to give them enough of a nudge, then eventually we can get something out of that. But that's just to sort of fill you in on where we are with that particular thing, because it has been going on a little bit in the background. It started out as just Jared having a horrible day and contacting all of these people on his own behalf.
[Ernie Meunier]: But in addition to just firefighting in this way or narrow, not important topics, but we could also make it easy for Buckley by asking him to appoint someone to talk to us. Because she's too busy.
[Emily O'Brien]: So there's a couple of things that I think it really is actually important to talk to him. One is that we need to talk about what kind of training Medford officers receive in bike law and bike strategies and safe bicycling. The conversations that I have had sometimes with police officers, not just in Medford, but in other places, is If they don't have specific training on that, they don't know any more about it than anybody else, which is not surprising. That's exactly what you would expect. And what most people know about that is not really a lot. So they will say things like, well, just get over to the right for your own safety under circumstances where that is absolutely emphatically not a safe thing to do because there's nowhere to go. And where that might actually, even if you're being harassed in that moment, moving over to squeeze to the right might actually be worse. But they haven't been trained on the reasons why that might or might not be good advice. And they don't know any more than anybody else if they don't receive that training. So that's one thing. And then the other thing is the crash reporting like Leah just posted into the chat is, There needs to be a system for that, and I wonder if there's also a way of coming up with a system for reporting harassment incidents, even things that don't result in crashes, because these are also, you know, the crashes are the really rare things, but the harassment is really not that rare, and we would certainly like it to be a lot more rare than it is.
[Ernie Meunier]: Again, I'm just going to suggest that we somehow make a motion to contact the police department to delegate a liaison officer to periodically attend our meetings to collect information, our complaints, and put together strategies to move forward. Otherwise, it's going to be continued happenstance.
[Emily O'Brien]: I mean, we can do that, but I have been emailing and following up and haven't gotten replies.
[Ernie Meunier]: But if we send it to the police department through the mayor's office, maybe we get a little bit more juice.
[Emily O'Brien]: I mean, it hasn't worked yet, so maybe that's worth a try. Let me get Bruce.
[Bruce Kulik]: Hey, yeah, so 1st of all, Emily, I want to thank you for doing all that work. I know it's a lot of follow up work and it sounds like there's at least. a notion of some motion with them, which is better than we've had in the past. I mean, the fact that the chief himself is actually contacted rather than a lieutenant of some sort is actually, I think, a good sign. At least, I think it's a good sign. I'm assuming that the conversation was cordial and inviting to discuss issues as opposed to, oh, what's this all about?
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. All I've gotten was very short emails. It was not combative in any way. It was not a problem. It was we take this seriously and we want to talk to you.
[Bruce Kulik]: Right. The fact that the mayor is also interested, I think that really shows some good motion on the part of the city. Yeah. I would look forward to having a one-on-one meeting starting with the chief if he's available so that we can have a frank conversation about what do we want as far as policy goes? What do we want as far as education goes? Because I think that's the big thing. We need to know that we're supported. And if we make a complaint to the police, at a minimum, it'll be noted. And preferably, if we get a license plate, et cetera, a polite phone call. Right, which is simply, you know, informing them of what the role, the rights of cyclists are. And in many cases, that would be enough to let somebody say. Yeah, absolutely.
[Emily O'Brien]: And especially, you know, 1 common 1 common element of a lot of these incidents. that, and I've heard this and I know other people have heard this too, is a driver screaming at the cyclist saying, I'm driving perfectly legally, I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing, get out of the way. But in fact, they're not. In fact, they're not. Maybe they're just saying that and they know they're wrong, but I think that most people who put it in that way are not saying that thinking that it's not true. You know what I mean? I think they believe what they're saying. And so I think that's an important thing. I also have to wonder, you know, for all of the times that I know I or somebody else has had a bad experience and called the police department to report something like this, how often does a driver have some cyclist in the road in front of them and they get pissed off and they call the police department saying, you guys got to do something about these cyclists in the road. I bet that does happen, and I wonder what the police tell that person. Do they tell that person, oh, that person has a right to be there and they have good reasons to be there, or do they tell them, well, that person should get out of your way, essentially?
[Bruce Kulik]: These are all mystery things. I appreciate that the department is at least making What's the word I want? Outreach, I guess is the word. Yeah. I do hope that we're able to get something together. You said after the holidays?
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. The mayor said we'll try to help make something work after the holidays. I have a fairly flexible schedule most of the time. If he offers a time, I will do my best to make that time work.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm available to it. I would like to extend as possible.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. If it's a time that other people can make it, then that would be great. If it's a time that I can't make it and somebody else can, that would be great. I feel like I want to make this as easy as possible for them and just be as accommodating as possible to make this happen.
[Bruce Kulik]: Thanks again for your efforts on this. I appreciate it.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: This is obviously anecdotal experience, but the times I've had interaction with Medford or Winchester police around bike safety, there hasn't appeared to be a large awareness of the vulnerable road user law, right, which is kind of new and goes hand in hand with all the signage and stuff. So I suppose just to maybe refine the question around training, helping to get a better understanding from the police department, and maybe this is also a statewide policy thing, but what's actionable in a situation like that and how is that Law enforcement or how is it used and, you know, maybe to the point Bruce is making right? Is there a road safety brochure that people can can receive? Because the experience I always had is like, if the responding officer didn't see it, it might as well have not happened in terms of public records.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, that's the case with a lot of stuff.
[Emily O'Brien]: And what I have also been told is that they. is that the law is such that in order to take any official action, and I don't know if there's a place in this for the polite phone call, but if they didn't see it and you don't have a video, then they can't do anything or they can't issue a ticket or anything like that. And if they can't issue a ticket, they don't feel like making the phone call. I don't know if they can make a phone call and give verbal instructions without the threat of issuing a ticket or something.
[Bruce Kulik]: That's an interesting point. I'd like to get that clarified if possible. And maybe it's more of a legal thing than it is a law enforcement thing.
[Emily O'Brien]: But if they can't issue a ticket.
[Bruce Kulik]: Can they even go so far as to harass someone or warn them? Right.
[Emily O'Brien]: Run the plate and call them up on the phone or something. I'd like to know, and I don't know if this is kind of a legal gray area where they don't feel like calling somebody on the phone if they don't have any jurisdiction to write a ticket or something, so they don't feel like it's worth the trouble to call them up because they're not going to do anything, or if it's that they can't actually.
[Unidentified]: Right.
[Emily O'Brien]: So that's another question, but I think it is really important to have a discussion about that. So in the meantime, I think it's not going to be until after the holidays that we get a meeting time, but it could end up being in January before our next meeting happens. So in that case, Anybody who's here or who's following this later, send me any bullet points you have just so that I go with as much input from the group as possible. Any things that you want to make sure get covered if I get that meeting, and I hope that we'll have more than just me there. Send me your comments just so that I have as much to bring as I can. Ernie?
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, two things. In my case, I recalled as it happened to me that the police will retroactively cite you in an altercation even though there's no witness. If there's a particular piece of legal information, they can strap onto it. What happened to me is I was in an accident with someone in a crosswalk. wasn't witnessed, as far as the police were concerned, they weren't there. I was retroactively cited and had to spend $1,500 to get a lawyer to find a witness who proved in court that I was not viable in that the ticket was then revoked. So they can, in a way, act arbitrarily. That was five or seven years ago.
[Bruce Kulik]: Although I don't know if that's- Was that as a cyclist or as a motor vehicle operator?
[Ernie Meunier]: I was a motor vehicle operator, and this was a pedestrian, ran into my car. And because it was a crosswalk, the police decided to retroactively issue a ticket. Interesting. Interesting. And it costs a lot, you know, time and money to get fixed. But I don't want to harp on that because I know our time is wasted. But I worry again, Emily, about, well, two things. The bandwidth of the captain. getting time, getting the sit down. Yeah, you deal with the leader, but I'm hoping they can delegate someone who can be there routinely for us at our meetings. I don't want to mention it many more times, but I think that should be stressed. As well, if you are no longer the chairman of the group and you're meeting later with the mayor, can you speak for MBAC with the strength of the mayor's office as the commission chair? Is that even a question that's pertinent here?
[Emily O'Brien]: I guess, well, two things. One is getting a liaison to come to our meetings is one of the things that I plan to ask him for. Yeah. That is something that we can add to the list, but definitely send me an e-mail to that effect so that I have it. And I have it in writing that you wanted that. And we have talked about that before. And I do think that's important. But in terms of having a reporting system and having a policy about training, that really is something that has to go to the police chief first.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Does the traffic commission track these kinds of incidents? I know they have metrics about car accidents and stuff.
[Emily O'Brien]: What I have been told is that, and this is why I want a tracking system for harassment incidents, is everything is different if there's not actually a crash. And so this is what Ernie was saying, that is an actual impact. And so they know that something happened because two things got. actually physically collided. But we want to reduce the things that most of the time are not crashes, but a small percent of the time could be crashes. That's how you reduce the crashes. And these harassment incidents, most of the time, nobody actually gets hurt. But it's really unpleasant. It's really scary. And it also means that those are the things that encourage cyclists to ride in the door zone and to ride in places where they're liable to get right hooked and T-boned and stuff because they're scared of people harassing them from coming up from behind. And if we're not paying attention to those incidents, then we get more crashes.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think it's also a key reason why many people choose not to cycle. You're not genuinely afraid of getting injured, but they are afraid of being harassed, which is uncomfortable, as we all know. Even if you have a steel will, it's sort of annoying to get into a verbal altercation with someone.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, nobody wants to be there. It sucks. So hopefully we get something out of that. As to whether I can speak for the commission, I have two suggestions on that count. One is that I will certainly be in contact with whoever my successor is and we'll work together on this and hopefully that person will be able to come too. The other is that we could also make a motion to say that I can speak for the commission at this meeting should it come about.
[Ernie Meunier]: So moved. Yeah, seconded.
[Emily O'Brien]: All in favor? Aye.
[Ernie Meunier]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Sorry, I put a question in the chat about your email because it's remembered like 3 different versions of the same.
[Emily O'Brien]: They're all me. Okay.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Great.
[Emily O'Brien]: They're all, they're all fine. Don't ask how many emails I have. And so the next thing on our agenda is electing new officers. I did, by the way, check that and I checked in with the mayor's office. And they said that if we want to have co-officers for anything, she's seen co-officers of various kinds before, and she knows of no rule against it. So if that makes anyone a little bit more willing to take on any of those roles, we can do that. I guess the one caveat is we couldn't have co-chairs and co-vice chairs and co-secretaries and only have 11 commissioners because that would constitute a quorum and that would be too many. Short of that, I think we could actually split those jobs if we want. Do we have any comments, discussion, nominations for any of those three positions? I guess one other thing is if you take on any one of those positions, for example, in some ways, the one that's the most demanding on a specific schedule is usually the secretary. If you take on that job, it doesn't necessarily mean that you personally have to do it all the time, every time. You just have to make sure that somebody else does it if you're not going to. So, if you think you might be interested in being secretary, but you know that you can't make it to every single meeting. you totally can still be secretary as long as you just find somebody else to take the notes when you can't be there and make sure that the meeting gets announced when it needs to. And if you can't do that yourself, then make sure that somebody else does it. And I think the same is true with chairing the meetings. Even if there's not a co-chair or a vice chair or a co-vice chair or anything like that, it is fine for somebody else to run the meeting. You just have to delegate somebody to do it. So that's where that is. If you're feeling like you're considering doing this and that's your stumbling block, you can totally delegate some of your duties. It just means that it's your job to make sure that it gets done. Any discussion or nominations?
[Bruce Kulik]: I do have one quick question, which is, do we have new people? I thought there were some additional people coming on board.
[Emily O'Brien]: So there I got, I also got a list of new applicants. And I haven't gotten back to the mayor's office about them yet. And I thought that since we're about to elect new officers in any case, and any new people wouldn't have any idea who any of us are, we might as well elect the new officers, and then I'll discuss with the new chair those applications, and then we'll go from there. The spreadsheet was also like, Kind of confusing. I was on the plane.
[Bruce Kulik]: And how many people are missing from today's meeting?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Three.
[Bruce Kulik]: Three, okay. Doug, Becca, Mary Kay.
[Emily O'Brien]: So we can elect one of them chair, one vice chair, and one secretary, right?
[Ernie Meunier]: Excellent. My question is, who's volunteering for what? And if there are no actual volunteers, you know, I'll make a suggestion for co-chairs and maybe a secretary too. But shouldn't we start by asking who wants to put their
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, I will say what I know, which is that I think Daniel is willing to be roped into being chair or co-chair. And Jared is happy being vice chair.
[Jared Powell]: Or not being vice chair at all, which my family might prefer. What about Bruce?
[Emily O'Brien]: And you have been chair and then vice chair for a while. So if you feel like it's your turn.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Do you want to be secretary? You can trade down all the roles, do all the officer positions.
[Ernie Meunier]: What about Bruce or Emily for co-chairing with Daniel? Or Jared? I'm just thinking about continuity.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I would not dismiss it, but one of the beliefs that I have although perhaps I shouldn't worry about this at this point, is it's important to have... It's important to pass the championship along, if you will. A lot of organizations that have kind of a founder and a champion, when that champion disappears, the organization falters. And one of the things we did with this commission was deliberately make sure that we had people moving forward in different roles. That was something that I initially made sure that we set up the first time we had transitions moving forward so that there'd be a lot of different people. Yeah, so along that line, I would not say I'm 100% against my doing it. I would have a preference to not doing it just yet, maybe again in the future. But if push comes to shove and there is nobody else willing to step up and say the vice chair, I would be, I would entertain the notion.
[Emily O'Brien]: And I would also be willing to be vice chair, which has been also a kind of a tradition we've had too, is that chair steps down.
[Bruce Kulik]: You step down.
[Emily O'Brien]: Vice chair, yeah.
[Bruce Kulik]: There'll be more in keeping with the tradition, actually, to have you.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. I know I had reached out to Leah about possibly being secretary, but you were not that interested. Noam, any interest?
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: I'm not quite there yet. I think I need to spend more time as a lay member before stepping out, but mark me interested for the future.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay. Bruce, you haven't been secretary yet?
[Bruce Kulik]: I am not a good secretary. I self-admit that I get too distracted and wound up in meetings to keep good notes. It doesn't work. So I'm going to say no, I won't do that.
[Ernie Meunier]: Leah, you don't want to do it? Secretary?
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, given that I constantly have trouble finding emails and the drive, I feel the same way as Bruce. I'm a very bad note taker. I'm Googling stuff and sending emails during this meeting.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: You all never read my notes. Not for me. They're not good.
[Emily O'Brien]: It's fine. I mean, honestly, I can show you what you need to do the meeting announcement every month. It's not a big deal. We could also... If you're saying hard no, that's okay too.
[Jared Powell]: I think that the note-taking is important. The note-taking is also, frankly, something that is the easiest to outsource to an AI entity now. That is the single thing that they are absolutely best at, quite frankly. And Well, no, those are those are free. Those are free. All you need is the all you need is if we can get a transcript or a recording of this, we can get AI summarize notes, which would certainly be something that a secretary could do, but would lighten the lift of what the secretary has to do, such that the main thing the secretary really needs to do is just feed that into an AI tool, and then be the person who uploads the agenda and whatnot on a
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: I guess the other- And the other- It's work as someone who's a little skeptical sometimes of the AI.
[Jared Powell]: A person who's skeptical of AI is the absolute best person to employ it. Oh, no, no, no. Quite frankly.
[Emily O'Brien]: Here's another suggestion. So the secretary really does two things. One is put together the agenda and announce the meeting. And the other is take the notes at the meeting. And if you can just make sure that the meeting announcement gets out on time, and then you make sure that somebody else is taking the notes, that's also good enough. We just have to make sure that those things get done.
[Bruce Kulik]: We could, in theory, split those two as well and have a position of reporter, if you will.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, we could totally have two jobs.
[Ernie Meunier]: Who are the three people who are members who aren't here? Sorry, Daniel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who are the three people, or any of them? Mary Kate, Becca, and Doug.
[Emily O'Brien]: I bet Mary Kate would be good for one of those, for some of that.
[Jared Powell]: She's also the safe routes to schools person at the Brooks School. I don't know to what extent that takes up her non-MBAC time for bike things, probably worth checking on.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, I wonder if we need to table the quest. Well, I wonder if we can table this secretary. and leave the secretary vacant. If Daniel wants to take over as chair and we can vote him in, then I will promise to send the agenda out for next meeting and try to be there and take the notes. We just have to make sure that that gets done and we'll have to add getting a secretary ironed out to the next agenda.
[Bruce Kulik]: If we're- I move that we postpone the selection of secretary until the January meeting.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Okay, we could also see about getting new members and then because, like, I, I, I started in the secretary role, like, my 1st or 2nd meeting on the commission. Um, who is it? Uh, Emily Duraco was the secretary before me. Lisa Duraco, yeah. Lisa Duraco. And then she wanted to step down and I just, I mean, like, right, I just was like, fine, I'll wing it. Um, so we might get more bites. That's a good point.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay, so let's do that. We'll get our new members on board and then we'll postpone the secretary discussion to next meeting. Did we have a second for postponing that?
[Unidentified]: I think we did.
[Emily O'Brien]: All in favor?
[Unidentified]: Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay, great. We will postpone the secretary selection until next meeting.
[Bruce Kulik]: Point of order? Yeah. I just, this is something that has been, I guess the word bugging me is the right thing. According to Robert's rules of order, the correct procedure is to request ayes and then separately request nays as a voice vote. And although pro forma, there's also the option for somebody to object to the vote. So it's sort of, You know, there's always that if you don't quite follow the rules and no one has so I'm not saying that that's a big deal, but I just wanted to point that out as a, as a. A walk of robbers rules of order. Okay.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I know that. I think I was aware that that was technically a thing, but as long as I can see everybody's faces on the screen.
[Ernie Meunier]: I was going to act as secretary pro tem for the next two meetings, let's say. I'm a little leery of having a pure newcomer be the secretary until at least we've established that they can speak in full sentences.
[Emily O'Brien]: We'll probably be able to figure that out pretty quickly.
[Ernie Meunier]: Okay.
[Emily O'Brien]: My guess.
[Ernie Meunier]: So is it Jared or Emily who wants to be co-chair?
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, I think Jared sounded like he was happy to step back from that. And the tradition is that the chair goes down to co-chair or vice chair, rather. Co-chair would be different. And if Daniel is willing to be chair.
[Ernie Meunier]: Is that the slate? Is that the nomination?
[Bruce Kulik]: I nominate Daniel to be chair and Emily to be vice chair. Now we have a slate.
[Emily O'Brien]: Great. Do we need to second that or can we go straight to a vote? Just in case, I'll second that. Any discussion?
[Bruce Kulik]: Any points to be made by the candidates?
[Emily O'Brien]: I think we've made them.
[Bruce Kulik]: Call the vote. All in favor of that slate?
[Emily O'Brien]: Aye. All opposed? And we have one abstention because Jared has to step away for kiddo duty. So, uh, this slate passes. Daniel, would you like to take it from here? And I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you.
[Emily O'Brien]: I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to
[Ernie Meunier]: I can sense he needs a bathroom break. Give him a minute, will you?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I mean, I just make one of them is anywhere. It's like all of a sudden it's like, Daniel, can you take over right at the meeting? I'm like, I'm still taking the notes. I'm still taking the notes. No, no, no, no, no. Don't worry about it. I forgot.
[Bruce Kulik]: I make a motion to suspend the rules and appoint Emily as chair of Pro Tem for the remainder of this meeting.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Seconded.
[Emily O'Brien]: I guess I better say all in favor then.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Aye. Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: Although if I am not yet chair pro tem, I don't know if I can do that.
[Bruce Kulik]: Let's move on. We've got that sorted out. Next up is the
[Emily O'Brien]: The route 16 Auburn Street walkthrough recap Ellery and I put this together. Ellery really put this together. We had been talking about this spot. This is the spot with the guardrail to get smashed into all the time. That we've kind of chosen to fixate on a little bit just because it's an example of a place where DCR can't possibly know that it's a problem because they have to keep repairing the guardrail and somebody writes the checks for that. So. Ellery put up a write-up. In attendance were me and Daniel and also Todd Blake, Carl Alexander from MIRA, Senator Jalen's chief of staff was there, Councilor Lazzaro was there, Ellery Klein was there, and Sarah Reinfeld from WAC Medford. and Medford CPA Administrator Roberta Cameron, and a number of other Medford residents. The observations, none of this is going to come as a drastic shock to anybody. Auburn Street Bridge bike ped path. The guardrail is repeatedly crashed into and replaced, demonstrating a lack of safety and traffic calming. Traffic calming is needed. The guardrail is also clearly not sufficient against modern heavy vehicles. We have photos of that guardrail having been smashed into to the point where it was completely across the path, blocking the path and hanging over the edge of the bridge that's right there, which it wasn't in that state at this point, but we have seen it and have photos in that state. The path is a shared bike and pedestrian facility, but it's only five feet wide in places, and it's not really clear when it's a sidewalk and when it's a shared facility. One of the attendees actually expressed alarm that people would be allowed to ride bikes on that spot because it looks like a sidewalk. But there's no on-street alternative, and there's not a clear way that you would go between the bike path and the street if you were going to do it that way. And if you went into the street, then you would be on the street where the people smash into the guardrail all the time. The paths continue directly from Mystic River Path between Winthrop and Auburn. The facilities should be made appropriate for sharing, and it should be clear that that's what's going on. This is also a spot where two lanes diminish to one, and the point where it goes down to one lane is at the eastern side of Auburn Street. And that's around the corner, so if you're heading east, you don't necessarily see where one lane reduces.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to make a quick proposal with regard to that. I know there's also a Somerville-ish committee that's looking into traffic calming on Mystic Valley.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Bruce Kulik]: But it does seem like there's no reason for it to be four lanes in the section between Auburn Street and the Rotary at Zilboy Field.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: It was brought up by Todd Blake, I believe, at that meeting that they were going to be producing lanes coming down towards Medford as well.
[Bruce Kulik]: Incidentally, if it was reduced to 2 lanes, that would provide sufficient room for bicycle lanes as well, and possibly a turning lane if they reconfigured that road. I mean, for those who don't want to ride on the sidewalk slash shared use path, which doesn't exist in that area.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, and I think that could also make enough room for a bump out where the guardrail is.
[Bruce Kulik]: Even changing it as two lanes would reduce it from being a super highway type road that some people seem to think it is. Of course, if you've tanked up a few too many at some local tavern, which I suspect is maybe the cause of some of these crashes, maybe that won't make a difference.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I mean, I think it, I suspect it also is people late at night who like, you know, are essentially drag racing on it. Um, and I, I don't know that, but that's, that, that's a possibility. And the, you know, the fact that if you don't already know what's about to happen, that lane reduction happens with no warning right after a curve. Um, So there's a number of things I can actually pass along this document to anyone who's interested. There's also a lack of pedestrian crossing signals across Auburn Street. You get a walk signal to cross Route 16, but not to cross Auburn Street at either crossing. It's a fairly long way between pedestrian crossings and the intersections where you can cross are not without their own problems. In addition, so there's a, there's kind of a long list. I guess I won't read the whole thing because it's. Five pages. There's a number of recommendations here. The main thing is that this is a DCR road, and it's not a City of Medford road. But we're hoping to get some more attention from DCR to this spot.
[Bruce Kulik]: Do we know if the bridge is DCR or is that a mass thought?
[Emily O'Brien]: I have not heard anybody say that it isn't DCR.
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay.
[Emily O'Brien]: That doesn't mean it's the train bridge.
[Bruce Kulik]: No, no, no, the bridge over the river often bridges are.
[Emily O'Brien]: Different jurisdictions surprisingly, I haven't heard anything about it, but that doesn't mean it's not Leah.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: I probably should have asked this earlier or done a point of order or something, but could we have a visual for those of us who are not?
[Emily O'Brien]: Yes, I can do that. That's rather silly of me. Someone with a functioning mouse, which is not me. Hang on just a second and I'll pull it up.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: If I can see where we're looking, then I can check on the jurisdiction of the bridge.
[Emily O'Brien]: Oh, great. Oh, hang on a second.
[Bruce Kulik]: I've already got on my screen. If you want to just let me share, but that's where you're trying to figure out.
[Emily O'Brien]: No, I've got it. Uh, share, share, share. Ernie, you're muted if you're trying to say something. Hey.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, I'm dilated. So make it big.
[Emily O'Brien]: All right, I'll do my best. Where did the thingy go? Oh, there it is. Here we go. Sorry, I'm having Zoom difficulties. Can everybody see that? So this is the Whole Foods. This is the Mystic River Path. And This here where you can see this guardrail with a dent in it in the satellite photo.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Would this also be the bridge we're asking about? Yes.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. And where's the lane reduction you were just talking about?
[Emily O'Brien]: Here it's one lane in this direction, and right up until here it's two. If you're coming this way, you've got this slip lane here and it's still two lanes, and it's still two lanes here, and it's one lane here, but you don't know that.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: When the other lane is not for turning or anything.
[Bruce Kulik]: It's prohibited to make a left turn on Auburn Street at that point.
[Emily O'Brien]: Although people do it, and that's another problem. We saw several people do it while we were standing right there.
[Bruce Kulik]: Conversely, it is not prohibited to make the left turn southbound onto Auburn Street.
[Ernie Meunier]: The left turn on Auburn is particularly interesting if it's as there's solar glare in the afternoon when you're coming from 16. So it's a very hazardous illegal turn onto Auburn.
[Emily O'Brien]: And so what happens if you're biking this direction on the path, you get here. And if you want to head, continue along the Mystic River paths, you're either going to get to over here, or you're going to get to over here and then go kind of in front of the U-Haul. And it's a kind of pick your poison situation. Would you rather have the bad sidewalk by the U-Haul or would you rather have to get over to here somehow?
[Bruce Kulik]: Which is a very awkward movement to get from the river, to get from the path to the west side is very awkward through those two intersections.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. You can either do it this way, in which case, this is actually where one of the resident attendees was dismayed that anybody would actually be biking on the sidewalk in this little corner, which of course, if you were going to take this crosswalk and then take this crosswalk, that's what you do, or you just, you know, more often you cut, a lot of people cut through that, but that's not, that's not like legal or sanctioned. This crossing doesn't have a walk sign at all. There's nothing to tell you when it's, when you have a safe phase to cross and you just have to kind of guess. And cars can be coming from over here and they're kind of, it's a long intersection so they're far away and you can't necessarily see this light if you're standing over here. And the same here with this crossing at Auburn street, there's no walk signal here either. And then there's. can I zoom in more than this? Yeah, there's this island here and this one and this one. If you want to get across this way, this is also a very awkward movement to do on bike. This is another awkward movement to do on bike. You don't get a walk signal or any kind of guide of when you can cross here. This slip lane has no nothing. And that's definitely. you know, trying to get across here is kind of a fraught thing to do too. So you're kind of left to guess and make it up as you go around along and hope for the best.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: The entire intersection and bridge are owned by DCR. Okay.
[Emily O'Brien]: Good. And so, in particular, in light of the fatality on Mem drive in a spot where a car went careening off of the street over the curb onto this onto the side path in a spot where people had been telling that this is this is speed and this is. a problem for a long time. We were hoping to get some attention to this spot and hopefully others like it by saying, well, you also clearly know that this is a problem because you have to keep replacing the guardrail. And we would like it to get dealt with before somebody actually dies there. So we had We had somebody from Senator Jalen's office, and Todd Blake is on board. The next step is that we will those of us who are there, we'll look at, look over this document of kind of suggestions and things that were discussed at that meeting and hope that we can get some attention from DCR. I think the mayor's office and the city council will be happy to back us on putting this, you know, getting attention to this. And hopefully that will get some movement here. There certainly are bigger, longer-term changes that could be made involving ways to build bike lanes or cycle tracks or wider side paths or wider sidewalks, et cetera, et cetera, if a lane is removed. But there are also shorter-term things that could happen much more quickly and much more cheaply, and even though DCR may not like to do kind of the cheap temporary stuff, this seems like a case where the conditions really weren't doing as much as possible as soon as possible, even if it requires a bigger project later. Ernie?
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah. Are one of the recommendations that eastbound traffic after the light include sharrows in the right-bound lane or even the reduction to two lanes there? Well, from one lane, from two lanes in the eastbound direction, or a bike lane? I'm actually afraid that because people who zip through that light when they finally get a green one have an obstructed view because of that S-curve, and they've been banging into that guardrail repeatedly. Now, I substitute the guardrail as a whole bunch of us bicyclists. What we do temporarily to make it inviting to us, I think we're at great risk if we put ourselves in the space of a known hazard intersection.
[Emily O'Brien]: I don't think we're suggesting that. One of the things, at least not right now, one of the suggestions is to make it go down to one lane east of this whole intersection because it's Yeah, sorry, west of this whole intersection. It's already one lane east of the intersection to make it go down to one lane west of that. So they're not trying to funnel in to one lane at the last possible minute when they didn't even see it before, right as they get to the intersection.
[Ernie Meunier]: That would be important. Yeah, then we're going to get a lot of trouble for people who want to make the right turn to go to Whole Foods. Is that what that risk is about?
[Emily O'Brien]: No, well, you can still have a right turn lane, but that doesn't mean that it has to be one. It doesn't, that still mean, and there's a slip lane there. So that still doesn't mean there's two lanes entering that intersection.
[Ernie Meunier]: Okay. Then that would work. Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: And that was one of the things that Todd had mentioned and that Todd has, um, has mentioned to them before. Um, so. So that's, so yes, and if that was done, then there would be more room, then there could even be like temporary barriers or plastic barrels or something in that space where it's two lanes in the middle of the intersection, because at that point it would have already gone down to one. And now the part adjacent to the guardrail, you could put like more visible barriers or barrels or something.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Leah? This is just another. Like, a little bit of information that I found while I was looking for stuff about this intersection that I did want to point out, which is that it is not a crash cluster. Yet, but, you know, it's just something interesting to think about. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't do anything here, but it is not. You know, statistically and crash related only, it is not the most dangerous intersection in Medford. We have a top 200 right quite nearby and some other crash clusters as well.
[Emily O'Brien]: Would you actually would you do me a favor Leah that would if you if you get a chance, would you make a list of or share with the share with the group and you could just send it to the email list that we can add it to the agenda later for later meeting, but it would actually be really useful to know where those are and and see if there are things that we can that we should be talking about with those.
[Bruce Kulik]: And my question, there's a crash cluster all out the differences between pedestrian cyclist and motor vehicle to motor vehicle crashes. Sort of a aggregate of, oh, this is. You know, checks a number of boxes, so we call it a crash cluster.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: There are different kinds there. There's kind of the overall top 200, which is which that like kind of. You get higher in the top, you know, intersection crashes the top 200 crash locations in the state by having more fatal and serious injury crashes, and those include motor vehicle, pedestrian, cyclists, you know anyone. And then there are specific pedestrian and cyclist crash clusters. Um, that are about specifically the, you know, those kinds of crashes, but that does not mean that. Other kinds of top crash clusters don't have those crashes.
[Emily O'Brien]: Um, that's helpful if I can ask you 1 other question about that, actually, because this is something that I've wondered about with this specific spot. 2 is, you know, I don't go there. I don't go through there every day, but I go through there fairly often and. You basically, every time you go through the guardrail is a slightly different shape and when you see it at its worst. it's smashed up all over the place and you think, wow, that must have been a crazy big crash. But if you see it every day or every week, it actually looks more like people hit it, not necessarily that catastrophically, they just hit it a lot. And I suspect that at least some of those people are in are still able to drive away after having hit it. Just not as like cataclysmically hard.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there's there's the caveat is that crash data is reported, right? And I often reasons that I would say, you know, just because it isn't a top crash location doesn't mean we should do anything there. Because aside from not reporting things like near misses sometimes. Crashes are not reported to the police. If they were reported, they would be called like property damage only.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I was wondering how so that was going to be my next question is how does that factor in?
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, definitely not not thought of as as bad as something that caused interesting to see how many times the guardrail has had to be replaced when there has not been an accident at the site.
[Bruce Kulik]: I can believe that most of the crashes into that guardrail are the result of late night shenanigans. Maybe I'm just being speculative here, but the person would, as Emily pointed out, still be able to drive the car away and not want to have the police involved.
[Emily O'Brien]: I get the sense from other people who live closer to that spot than I do that that might be the case. but the other part that concerns us too is that this area of the path almost always has a sharp piece of metal from the side of the guardrail sticking out into it. I have almost run into that on foot myself because there was somebody on a bike coming the other way who surprised me around this corner and I jump out of the way and almost hit this.
[Bruce Kulik]: There's no protection on the sidewalk side of that guardrail. At least on the Eastern side of the bridge, I don't know about the Western side because I never use it. But on the Eastern side, the guardrail posts are basically I-beams that are about 4 inches thick and have sharp edges. So if you run into those I-beams, it's not comfortable.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, and they and when there's and they're almost always yeah, they're almost always sticking out into the path until the guardrail gets fixed. And then they're where they should be for a little while. I think that guardrail has been replaced at least 4 times this year. Maybe 5. Um, and if nothing else, that costs money. Um, but that, that area of path is just constantly littered with, like, broken up car parts. It's a, you know, it's, like, it's not, it's not pretty. It's not nice. You don't feel good stopping to look over the edge into the river there. Noam, I see, I've seen your hand up for a while.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah. So, um, I live around there and I go by all the time. And I've noticed like, again, these are my observations, but when it's like bumper to bumper traffic, you get these aggressive incursions where people are racing to get to the lone spot where it goes down to one lane. No, in our grail. Just kind of like, so I feel like if there's an architecture that's worth like, Advocating for is something really similar to what's going on down at powder house because that's like a transformation, you know, where now there is it's controlled. Like, there's very little speeding. Traffic gets through efficient efficiently and that. The intersection here seems in fact, it's almost too narrow.
[Bruce Kulik]: In my opinion, that powder house, but I know what you mean. It works well for traffic control.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it definitely slows you down if you're going too fast. So I feel like that that's one, whether it's in intended or unintended.
[Emily O'Brien]: Ernie.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, no one took the words out of my. but we had just said that the eastbound traffic there, where it says Mr. Valley Parkway, will be down to one lane, so there won't be that competition in the middle of the bridge for who gets to go first, which I postulate results in a lot of people swerving to the right and hitting the guardrail. Nonetheless, if that still can somehow occur, The guardrail is no longer an unreported accident to the police and therefore not a crash cluster. But it's one of us getting killed where it immediately becomes a bright crash. So I'm just a little worried about balancing these two somewhat opposing characteristics of this intersection.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think the important thing to say here is the reason we were talking about this spot in particular is that we have seen that guardrail get replaced so many times. They can't possibly say there's no problem because they've been writing the checks to replace the guardrail.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, and even a dented fender or bumper is a thousand dollar incursion, but a lot of people have that if they don't have collision on their own and they've caused the accident, which. there are no other vehicles involved, it's their own property, it's onerous to make a claim. So I think there are, I would say most of those incursions with that guardrail are probably not ever reported, because there's no insurance claim, therefore no police report. Because those are prerequisites for each other.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I mean, I think that may be true. And more than just that guardrail, there are a lot of things that make it just feel like a very fraught place to get across, either on bike or on foot. And especially given that we've been talking about the connection that the clipper ship makes with this whole corridor, and this is part of that corridor too. We need the attention to this spot and we need the attention from DCR more broadly to all these connections that have to be made between all of these pathways. If you want to use this corridor, you have to get across all of these intersections.
[Ernie Meunier]: Does Todd state that the reduction to one lane for their west coming east is already in the works? Because I see that as a prerequisite to anything that could involve having bicycles on that intersection.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, I mean, his suggestion is what, like, you could fairly easily change it to one lane somewhere down in here. You know, you've got this kind of, if you did it somewhere down in here, that doesn't really have to change anything else. And even if that change farther east comes later, then if you do it here where it's a straightaway and everybody can see what's going on, and then it's already happened by the time you get to the intersection, that changes really very little.
[Ernie Meunier]: I think the people at whole Amazon or Whole Foods would be so grateful for that, that they would put up bike racks.
[Bruce Kulik]: There are bike racks at Whole Foods.
[Ernie Meunier]: Oh, all right. OK.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, they do have actually decent bike racks. One of them is broken, but they do have them. OK. Anyway, that was really kind of an update on what that is and where that is and why that spot. And hopefully, we'll get some more movement on that. Sorry, I think I muted myself. Leah, if you have that information that you can share on the top 200 crash sites nearby, or at least in the city of Medford, that would be awesome.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: I put the whole map in the chat. Oh, great. I've got a broken mouse, so I have no ability to scroll. Oh, and I also can't share, but I could share the map real quick for Medford. There's only four locations.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: But I'm not allowed to share.
[Emily O'Brien]: You should be able to now.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: There we go. You see in my screen, oh God, this is making it even worse. I have one of them clicked on. That's not what I want. All right. Um, yeah, so in Medford, we've got. These 4 there's this. The blue is pedestrian clusters. So there's this guy. Place dead and route 60 ish. Uh, there's this guy, which is a pedestrian crash cluster and I believe a top. Yep, top 200. Um, by the way, they sort of cycle these out every. Year or 2 with new data, so these are the years that are closed, which means all the. Data is like all set, um. And we've got this 1 on Salem street. Really there that's pedestrian cluster. And finally. good old Wellington Circle, pedestrian, top 200, and whatever orange is, top 5%.
[Bruce Kulik]: And right in front of the police station, no less.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Right in front of the police station, indeed.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yes, the one in West Medford, pedestrians or vehicles, you know, making that left turn onto Harvard, stuff like that.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: This one.
[Ernie Meunier]: Or buses crashing into each other, trying to get by trucks.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: This one's a pedestrian cluster.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: People trying to cross in front of the tracks, and there's no good way to cross in that area.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and this one's massively driven up by the fact that there have been two fatal or serious injury crashes here in the last, you know, 10-ish years.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: fatal and serious injury crashes are weighted super highly over property damage only, because when you're talking, it's really horrendous, the sort of distinctions you have to make to decide where are the most dangerous places in the entire state, but that's kind of how they have to do it.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Is there a correlated list of projects, or do these sites get actioned by the state based on the data? Because the one you just highlighted, yeah, it's pretty terrible to cross, and there's a lot of left-hook action from high street to placehood.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, that Medford Square MassDOT project that we've discussed, that is one of those spots, and they did mention that in their information about that project.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Top 200s are frequently acted upon. There is no correlated list of projects. You have to dig through the capital improvement plan of the state. The intersection and safety programs will have them.
[Emily O'Brien]: Looking at this, I think I'm looking at, it looks like Salem Street and then Fellsway West are two separate ones.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Oh, you've been a victim of my lack of mouse control.
[Emily O'Brien]: I'm sorry. Well, you don't see that. I mean, it looks like that, but only when you scroll in enough. But I'm wondering if, and Salem Street is Route 60 there, but I'm wondering if some of those are things that might be more fruitful in that the city of Medford might have more ability to affect it independently of the state and therefore be able to do things a little sooner. But that's really useful and I think we should Keep keep that to hand.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's something to think about. Like I said, you know, with a grain of salt, it doesn't mean that they're the easiest places to fix. It just means that by this metric there, you know, statistically. Very unsafe.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I and I know this is this is a. there's no perfect metric and you have to come up with a metric somewhere. But if you have a couple of serious injury or fatality crashes, and it's like one or two over 10 years, and you have two intersections that otherwise have the same number of people getting their foot run over, and one of them looks more dangerous because those two serious injuries happened in that one spot. That's such a small sample size that by this metric, essentially just statistical noise, means that one of those looks a lot more dangerous than the other, even if they're otherwise would be similar. And I know there's no perfect metrics for this. I think that covers that topic. Anything else on that? That's kind of to update you, and that's in the works. And we hope that we'll get some more movement. It's sort of just a part of our ongoing issues with getting DCR to help us make the connections from one place to another across Medford. Next on the agenda says federal grant for blue bike expansion to $21.6 million grant to, I think that's, assume that what that means, to fund blue bike expansion, new transit shuttles, other congestion relief solutions in Metro Boston via MAPC. I don't know if this is essentially an announcement item or anything else to discuss on that. There is a link in the agenda.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Bruce, I think you were the one who sent this one to me. Hang on. It might have actually been Ernie. Hold on.
[Emily O'Brien]: And then maybe something that Todd would have more to say about where the next round of stations will actually go and how much. How much of this will actually go to mid for getting blue bike stations 1 2nd?
[Bruce Kulik]: I lost my agenda here. Here it is. So, what was this federal grant for? No, I would not have sent out. Blue bike expansion grant typically.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, that's in there and we have that information. I think it's it's kind of more of a general announcement until we know a timeline and where they're going to go or if they're asking for suggestions on locations.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Sorry, it was sent to me by Ernie and it looks like he stepped away.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, I think it I mean, unless there's something else to discuss about this, I think it's good to know, but there's not. It needs to trickle a little further through the process before there's a lot to discuss about it. Ernie, did you have anything else to add about the federal grant to fund Blue Bike expansion? I think we probably don't need to talk about it beyond saying that it's a thing until there's more information about how many stations we're going to get and where they're going to go.
[Ernie Meunier]: No, I figured that was the case. I needed to step away for a second, so excuse me. So nothing to add. Nope.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay. Thanks. Infrastructure updates were available. The update that I have is that I asked Todd again, and also Alicia, if we have any word on the bike racks that there supposedly is a grant for. Does anybody remember, were we hearing that there was a grant for that one year ago or two years ago? Yeah. In any case, nothing's been signed yet. We're still waiting. We're supposedly getting 40 bike racks citywide out of this round. That's nice. And that's 40 more than we have right now. And that's great. I feel like I kind of think this was something that Amy tracked down before she left. In which case it has somehow taken 2 years to not quite get to the point of having a signed contract that will involve getting 40 bike racks and we still don't know when they'll actually get installed. So. I think it's also important that if we want to keep getting more bike racks until we eventually actually have enough places to park, that you can go someplace with a friend and both have a rack to lock your bike at. We have to really keep on the city to add more bike racks. And if it's going to take a two-year grant process, they need to be starting the two-year grant process for the next round.
[Ernie Meunier]: Do we email Todd or Tim on this, or both?
[Emily O'Brien]: I think we start with Todd, and maybe Todd and also the city council and the mayor. And it could also be a matter of making a recommendation to the city council that they appropriate money to just buy some bike racks and install them. So. That's do we have do we have comments on that? Do we have thoughts on that?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: What's the chance that we actually get? Or is this money for buying new racks or money for the installation?
[Emily O'Brien]: I think this as I understand it, and I could be wrong. This should cover buying the racks and installing them. OK. And I have, and I think we have been told in the past that having the personnel to install them is really the sticking point more than the purchase price. But one way or another, we are still not getting any bike racks out of it.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Do we know if that's, If they're hiring an external contractor to do it or does it, is this going through?
[Emily O'Brien]: I don't know. I don't know. And I don't know if it would end up being different because it's grant money that has to be spent in more specific ways than if the city was just spending its own budget. I don't know. So I, Yeah, that's where we are with that. We probably need to just keep on that and keep on the city to start the process of the next round after these 40. I think according to the map that we have put together, this number would cover the first tier and part of the second tier. And the map kind of has three priority tiers. If all three tiers were finished, that would mean there would be at least one bike rack in most business district areas, or at least one bike rack, I think, in all the business district areas on most blocks. And in some of the highest demand areas, there would be two. So even if they finished the whole map, you know, Medford has a lot of area that needs bike racks and doesn't have them. So even if they finished the whole map, that wouldn't be enough to necessarily like have four people meet up at the same restaurant and all lock their bikes up at bike racks.
[Ernie Meunier]: Do we know enough about the DPW hierarchy to know if they have any leeway in following through on the projects that they're directed to do by Todd or Tim?
[Emily O'Brien]: I mean, I'm not sure what you mean by that. Well, I think it tells his staff to do something.
[Ernie Meunier]: I assume that his staff about the installation of the racks that they might be on a list of to do things for the DPW, but because some of those members are kind of anti biking.
[Emily O'Brien]: I don't think that's that. I think if they get assigned to stick this pole in the ground, they go stick this pole in the ground. I don't think that's the hang up. They don't have the racks yet in any case. They are still waiting for some stuff to be signed before they can spend the money and buy the racks. We are not at that point.
[Ernie Meunier]: My remark is premature.
[Emily O'Brien]: Do we have anything else?
[Bruce Kulik]: I just wanted to comment that I'm somewhat pleasantly surprised, as I sometimes bike in parts of the city I haven't been to for a while, that I see more and more bike infrastructure making its way in, mostly in bike lanes, some sharrows, but I'm glad to see that, and I guess I have to give credit to Todd mostly for pushing a lot of that forward. So credit due, I guess.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I think Todd really has been pushing hard for the things that we want, so we're really very fortunate to have him. Leah, I see your hand up.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Thanks, let's figure out the video. There we go. Change my shirt. I have 2 things. 1 is that. I think it just for us to note that there was that petition to the city council that went through about lowering the. State owned road speed limits to 25 miles per hour. I don't know if we'd ever want to officially sign on to at some point or if we have.
[Emily O'Brien]: I don't know that we have, but I think we certainly should.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and the second is a question which is like maybe. And I have another thing that I remembered too, but go ahead, go ahead. Would this be a good time to ask about the city's repaving list for the spring? I noticed that they have a list of stuff that they were completing in the fall, but it's just crack sealing and patching, so there's really no opportunity to Do any striping changes, but I have to assume that if they're doing stuff in the spring now would be sort of the time to take a look at those streets.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, that's a that's a good thought and I can or Daniel and I can contact Todd about those things will need to so we need to ask about the paving schedule for the for the spring and what what streets could have some we could have some input on. And to your other point, I think it would be great to pass a motion saying that we support lowering the state-owned street speed limit to 25 as well.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Just in case, I'm not going to put that one forward.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay, fair enough. Do we have a motion to... Ernie?
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, just in the holiday spirit, I still have a 10 pack of white lights in a box in the front hall.
[Emily O'Brien]: Can we circle back to that really quick? Can we circle back to that in a second?
[Ernie Meunier]: I thought you were calling for adjournment. I'm sorry.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: No. May I make a motion that the MBACC endorse lowering the speed limit on state roads in Medford to 25 miles an hour?
[Emily O'Brien]: Do we have a second? I can second that now. All in favor?
[Unidentified]: Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: All opposed? Okay, motion passes. Daniel, you and I need to contact the Mayor and City Council and say that we support that effort.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: I'm abstaining.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yes. Thank you. And I'm just going to make myself a note.
[Bruce Kulik]: Actually, technically, in a case like that, you should call for a roll call. But again, it's a de facto roll call, since she's the only one who said she abstained.
[Emily O'Brien]: Right. OK, then good. Where was I? Oh, there was one other announcement about a serious injury of a pedestrian crossing at Um, mystic valley parkway by up by the mystic lakes and what was the cross street?
[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, yeah, ravine road right near where I walk all the time.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah.
[Bruce Kulik]: Across that crosswalk many.
[Emily O'Brien]: Many days of the week, do you have do you want to say anything about that? Bruce, since you.
[Bruce Kulik]: The speed limit is 25 miles an hour on the parkway. Most cars do about 30, which is not unreasonable. And of course, a minority, but large enough, you know, create like an expressway and we'll be cruising past at 50 miles an hour. In the evening, there tend to be frequent motorcycle drag races, it sounds like. I can't, well, I was only out there once when there were a bunch of them, but that's not so much relevant for what happened there. I don't know the details of the crash, although I think I read that the driver said the person stepped in front of them, but it is a crosswalk. It's well marked. It's one of the few crosswalks that are actually on Mystic Valley Parkway. I think the next 1 is probably a Shannon beach. And then up at bacon street, there is no crosswalk at high street on the rotary. The visibility at ravine road is a little bit. I know. Sorry. Yeah, that was ravine road. It's a little bit limited. I know that, for example. When I'm riding my bike out, I will deliberately come out at Sagamore so that I can see left and right on Mystic Valley Parkway. But on the way home, I will turn onto Ravine because it's a more direct route. If somebody is traveling at the speed limit, it's not an issue. If they're traveling 50 miles an hour, it's potentially an issue. I don't think the injuries were particularly serious. From what I read, I believe a dog was injured and taken to, they said a nearby vet, of which there was one just down the street. I don't know if that's what actually happened. And I do not know the individual who was struck by the car.
[Ernie Meunier]: Can I ask if it was north or southbound vehicular, or the car was traveling south or north? Because that's important.
[Bruce Kulik]: I don't know that the report, that the news article mentioned it.
[Ernie Meunier]: Okay, I've driven that.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think it was north, and I feel like I saw a photo of maybe of a police car or something in the intersection that made me think it was north, but I could be wrong about that.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, I've driven on that every day for, you know, going on 40 years now, mostly with cars, used it as a test track when selling cars. At the south end, where Bruce is talking about, one has to know if you're starting there you accelerate you can get into the 50s pretty easily to through the twisties however coming back heading southbound where is where it constricts very tightly and is hellish. And that crosswalk there is an unfortunate invitation for pedestrians because it's not well lit, it should have blinking side markers, and it's impossible to see on a wet surface. So southbound traffic coming down from 45, 40 to the old speed limit of 35, not knowing they should be going 25, can only be further, I think, softened by the introduction of a relatively benign 25 mile an hour speed bump, just as is and exactly like as is duplicated on Grove Street for the same purpose. You can come down Grove Street in a car from Winchester. You can easily go 35 or 40, 35 being the old speed limit. And then the warning too, that it's going to get congested after the cemetery to 25. is enabled brilliantly by a perfectly non-violent 25 mile an hour speed bump and a speed monitoring beacon on the right. If they were to do that on Mystic Valley Parkway, I think that problem would go away. It'd just be the safest thing to do. Yeah, so I think that... Replicate what they did on Grove Street, or what the city did on Grove Street.
[Emily O'Brien]: Right, and of course, this is a DCR road, too, so... That's the problem.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, so... We should also be aware that there's a redesign currently in effect for the parkway and the trail adjacent to it.
[Emily O'Brien]: Right.
[Bruce Kulik]: We don't know if it's serious yet, if it's at what they would call 25% or if it's still at concept.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Is that south of high street or is that or is there no, it's between high street and the Shannon beach area. So, I didn't realize that.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay. I don't think I've heard of it being at 25%, but that I don't think I have either.
[Bruce Kulik]: That's what I was asking. I think it's, I think it's concept.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, well, maybe this will bump it up the queue, but.
[Bruce Kulik]: Um, do we have short term short term fixes? Ernie? I agree with you that something like that would actually be useful. Because, um. It's it's being used as a pretty major commuter thoroughfare, both by bicyclists and by motor traffic. Commercial traffic is not permitted, which is 1 saving grace. But yeah, I wish that most of the cars behave like most of the cars do, like all the cars would behave like most of them, because generally people are not traveling at ridiculous speeds, but it only takes 10%, right?
[Ernie Meunier]: Sure, and the speed bump will take care of dragging motorcyclists too.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah.
[Ernie Meunier]: It really will. Especially when you're decelerating into tight corners, The one, you know, it's hard enough to see a wet cross rock, but to have to negotiate a speed bump is suicidal. So you just, you do slow down.
[Emily O'Brien]: So there, hopefully that will get bumped up the queue.
[Bruce Kulik]: Do we have a recommendation coming out of this that we want to vote on or not?
[Emily O'Brien]: Um, I think it was just on the agenda as an announcement of that incident.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: But, um, but I think they're just as.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, just to be to be aware that it was that it happened, but I think especially if we're hoping to get more attention from DCR via the spot with the guardrail, this would absolutely be a good example of, you know, while we have another data point and another point that these are. You know, we sort of picked the guardrail spot as an example, not as like the one spot that we think is the most dangerous, more of a, you know, we need some attention on these roads.
[Bruce Kulik]: It's a somebody's going to get killed here spot.
[Emily O'Brien]: Right.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: Right. You know, we picked it as a poster child, not as the one spot that's dangerous. So this is absolutely another spot that would be on that list. Ernie, you had something about bike lights?
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, just that there's an event over the winter. or someone's attending a citywide event and wants to distribute bike lights. You know, I have a 10-pack sitting in the front hall and a USPS priority box. You can just come grab it any time between now and the next meeting and thereafter too. I won't do the mass distribution until the spring of all the schools from the next shipment. But there are some around if you want some for any miscellaneous reason.
[Emily O'Brien]: Ernie, would you do me a favor and also just make that as an announcement on the email list so that anyone who's not here has it and has your address? I think that's an allowable thing to do. We are also down to five because Leah had to leave too. And we are through our agenda, but I think we don't have quorum anymore.
[Ernie Meunier]: Do we naturally defuse or do we formally leave?
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, we could still discuss it.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: I heard that phrase seconded.
[Emily O'Brien]: Thank you. All in favor of adjourning for tonight?
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: All opposed? All right. Thank you, everybody.
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