AI-generated transcript of Medford Bicycle Advisory Commission 09-24-25

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

[Bruce Kulik]: Yes, Daniel Nuzzo-Miller, chair, is absent. Emily O'Brien, vice chair.

[Emily O'Brien]: Here.

[Bruce Kulik]: Bruce Kulik, secretary, here. Gerard Powell, appears absent. Ernie Meunier.

[Ernie Meunier]: Here.

[Bruce Kulik]: Noam Reuveni.

[Ernie Meunier]: Here.

[Bruce Kulik]: Mary-Kate Christopherson, appears absent. Leah Grodstein appears absent. Rebecca Wright appears absent. Adam Shire. I'm here. Chris Stivers.

[SPEAKER_14]: Here.

[Bruce Kulik]: Hannah Renkert.

[Unidentified]: Here.

[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you. And we have a quorum, we can continue.

[Emily O'Brien]: Great. Let's see. We also have a number of guests. Can I get you to introduce yourselves or at least give your name? Looking down, I see Adam Klein.

[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, Adam Klein. That's a new one. Yes, you're right.

[Emily O'Brien]: Feel free to unmute and say hello, introduce yourself.

[Bruce Kulik]: Why don't we return to him? Hi, is everyone there? Oh, there you go.

[SPEAKER_05]: Hi, I'm Adam Klein. I'm actually the manager down at JRA Cycles. So I got wind of this meeting tonight, so I figured I would hop on as I run the bike shop in town.

[Emily O'Brien]: Great. Awesome. Thanks for coming.

[SPEAKER_05]: No worries. Thank you.

[Emily O'Brien]: I see Anton Rapitov.

[SPEAKER_07]: Hi, so I'm actually from Arlington Bicycle Advisory Committee. We got your email about the repainting of two circles between Arlington and Medford, and so I came here. for this reason. We have some explanation of how this happened and what's our thought about it and we can discuss it. If it's not the right time I can come to the next meeting. I'm sorry I haven't announced my presence beforehand. I was sick and so it's just basically Thursday when I'm sort of well.

[Emily O'Brien]: No, that's great. Thank you for coming.

[Bruce Kulik]: We have an infrastructure agenda item scheduled for about 755. If necessary, we could move that forward at the discretion of the chair. I guess I appreciate it.

[SPEAKER_07]: I also have two children to put to sleep.

[Emily O'Brien]: I think that would be fine to move that up if you have things to do. We would like to hear about that. Louis, looking down the list. Scott Benevitz.

[SPEAKER_14]: Yes, hi, my name's Scott Benowitz, just a local Medford resident. I've had some conversations around a pump track up at Carver Park with Amanda Centrella up at the city and I reached out to Bruce actually to see about just presenting to this committee, just some of the concepts, just to have discussion around it and maybe help or support from this group in addition to maybe some others to gain some traction and help for it.

[Emily O'Brien]: Great, thank you. In that case, do we have a motion to approve the minutes?

[Bruce Kulik]: One more person, someone, Kaitlin.

[Emily O'Brien]: Oh, Kaitlin, I forgot that you're not actually a member since you come a lot.

[Kaitlin Robinson]: Thank you. Hi, I'm Kaitlin Robinson and just a Medford resident interested in biking issues. And I was actually reflecting just the other day about like, how much it feels to me like I'm seeing more bicycles now compared to like 10 years ago, which has been nice to see.

[Emily O'Brien]: That's great. Thank you.

[Kaitlin Robinson]: That's it.

[Emily O'Brien]: And there's Dennis. Rebecca Wright just showed up, so add her to the roll. And did I miss anyone else? Is there anyone else on the list?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Dennis McDougal?

[Emily O'Brien]: He works for the city. He doesn't count as a guest. He's welcome, but he doesn't count as a guest. Cool. OK. Are there any questions about the minutes from the August meeting, which was actually in the beginning of September.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I just had one question about the, um, so we, we discussed the Medford bike master plan and I, I didn't see an action item there. I thought we had, we're going to follow up. Someone was going to follow up with the city where things left off. And I couldn't remember, but I didn't see it in there. So I thought maybe we should put it in there to follow up on.

[Bruce Kulik]: It's a part of the eight o'clock review of goals, priorities, and procedures master plan. Uh, we can discuss it at that point.

[Emily O'Brien]: There were a couple of things that Daniel was going to follow up on too, and he's not here. And I don't think he sent an update about those things. So we'll come to that when we get there. Were there other questions about the minutes?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Move to approve.

[Emily O'Brien]: Is there a second?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Second.

[Emily O'Brien]: All in favor?

[SPEAKER_02]: Aye. Aye.

[Emily O'Brien]: All opposed? And the minutes are approved. Thank you. Next up, announcements. Does anyone have announcements to start off with? I'm just pulling up what I've got. If there aren't other announcements, there is the Harvest Your Energy Festival that's coming up.

[Bruce Kulik]: We have that under events 735.

[Emily O'Brien]: OK. We have that. You're right. Sorry. I missed that. I think anything I would have said for announcements would have been under events anyway. So I'm going to suggest that we move up the discussion of the two circles between Arlington and Medford since Anton is here to tell us about that. We had some concerns about that the last meeting. and in particular that it doesn't do much to facilitate movements just going straight through or to indicate what bicyclists should do or to indicate that bicyclists should be in the middle of the lane if they want to go straight through so that you can go straight through and not get right hooked. But Anton, do you want to tell us more?

[SPEAKER_07]: Sure. So we do agree this. So the current painting doesn't really help when you go through. And I do actually travel on my bike each day when I go to my work. I go to Winchester Centre train station by bike from Arlington Centre. So I go through and then turn left in Medford. So, and what I do is I merge earlier and go like I'm a car. And there is no indication that it's okay. Like if you are a proficient cyclist, you would know and you, but yeah. So, but it's not, it wasn't DPW, right? It's neither Arlington DPW nor Metro DPW. It was a state, MSDOT, I believe, who did the painting. They did send, as far as we know, they did send Arlington, and I guess Medford as well, their planning. And then our DPW didn't tell us that this is going to happen. And in the planning, it wasn't even clear how it's going to be done. So I guess, yeah, so that's the issue. Thought is that we want to ask MSDOT to put a shadow on the road, like in the circles themselves and before the circles to indicate that it's okay for a bicycle to be on where the cars are. Like probably shadow there and a bicycle in this actual bicycle lane if you turn right. And we'll try to go through our DPW. If you go through your DPW, it probably would also help. Yeah, this is a crack. So our thoughts is to ask to put a shadow. Also are the same is within three years. They're going to redesign these two circles anyway, and that should go through public meetings. And that's when we can go and talk. I'm done.

[Emily O'Brien]: Great, thank you so much for that. We kind of had the same conclusion that we would like to see sharrows at the very least, since that doesn't require reconfiguring or removing anything that's already painted. It's a relatively simple thing to add. And I think it would be most effective if it comes from both our commission and also from yours. We did, I think we did ask, last meeting we did tell Daniel to write to MassDOT. Or was that Daniel? We said somebody was going to write to MassDOT to that effect. Is that correct?

[Bruce Kulik]: I think I don't have the minutes. I can bring it up and confirm if you want.

[Emily O'Brien]: I mean, I'm pretty sure we did that. Maybe it's worth checking. And if it's not in there, then we'll... He definitely sent a draft email. Yeah.

[SPEAKER_07]: If you have a draft email, I guess it would help us. And do you think it would make sense for us to agree where we think they should put shadows or it should be enough to just ask them?

[Emily O'Brien]: That's a good question.

[Bruce Kulik]: What was that question?

[Emily O'Brien]: Should we specify exactly where they should put the shares or should we just ask them to put some?

[SPEAKER_06]: I think we could specify, but that's just me. Yeah. I mean, I think we could at least suggest where they put them. I mean, if we're already sending them a letter, might as well give them as much info as we think they need and they can use it or ignore it, I suppose.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. Looks like the email Daniel sent went to DCR. If we're confident it is, in fact, a MassDOT project, we might want to redirect.

[SPEAKER_07]: I'm not sure. It might be DCR. So DCR is probably more likely. Yes, I'm sorry. I was just wrong. Probably. DCR, yeah, not MassDOT.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: So he did send that on September 5th with a copy to the commission. He included some photos.

[SPEAKER_07]: Okay, so if they already sent, should we just also duplicate it? So who is Daniel? Is he part of Bicycle Advisory? Point of order.

[Bruce Kulik]: You had requested who was authorized, and I did get the minutes. Yes, Daniel was authorized to write to DCR. Sorry.

[Emily O'Brien]: Great, thank you. Thanks. Daniel is the chair, but he's not here tonight.

[SPEAKER_07]: Okay, so he's Bicycle Advisory Committee, not DPW. Right, right. Yeah, okay, sure. We can definitely send this Arlington Bicycle Advisory Committee. As far as I remember, we thought that would have more weight if we asked our DPW to do it as well. We just lost our liaison to DPW because she went to private sector and we haven't hired anyone. So my take. He was really good though. It's such a pain.

[Ernie Meunier]: Ernie? Yeah, I would like to see that if there are separate proposals from Arlington and Medford and how the sharrows are in place, that that be coordinated and also a review of the final plan before work is actually done. I would hate to see that there are two different sets of logics or even painting visual options to be in place for the rotaries. entrance and exit from each direction should be homogenized and logical.

[SPEAKER_07]: Sure. I agree that we should have, and it would be better if we had the same logic and that they should be using. So our next meeting would be in October. I think third Wednesday of October is a back meeting. I think if we, yeah, I think we would, like, how would we coordinate better?

[Emily O'Brien]: I see Chris's hand up. My suggestion for you, just before I get to Chris, my suggestion for you is that you can either, if you email us, we can send you the draft text that Daniel used if it's helpful. But I think it's ideal if your letter comes in addition to ours as soon as possible. If you can get your DPW to contact them as well, the more the merrier, and that's better. I think Daniel's has already been sent, so if he didn't specify exact locations for Sharrows, then it's too late to put it in that letter unless we want to write another one. But if you all do the same, I think that would be probably the best we can do. And if you can get your DPW to contact DCR as well, that would be even better. Chris?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I was just going to say, I mean, is it crazy to ask them to black out some of the paint to create dashed lines, the places where a bike would want to enter into the rotary? Because that seems like it's almost the biggest challenge, is there's no indication. Like, yeah, OK, bikes can be in there, but there's really no way, even for a bike to understand, because I'm a cyclist, like, where do I cross over? It's really hard to know if there's dashed lines, which it won't be perfect, but you can accomplish that with some black paint. So I would push that we propose for that as well. If they're going to be out there painting sharrows, take some black paint and make dashes.

[Bruce Kulik]: Bruce? Yeah, I'd like to suggest that we actually get more formal about this. We need somebody to kind of take the lead on giving us a design, whether that be Arlington or whether that be us. And then we review with the other team and come to a consensus on what we want to present. And I think the idea of blacking out the lines is a great one, just so that it's clear that It's perfectly okay and encouraged if you so desire to take the lane and ride the rotary like you normally would, because frankly, that's the only efficient way to get through there. Yeah. So, to that end, I will suggest that we take the lead on that. I'm not quite sure who can do this in a timely manner. I am going to be traveling for a few days and back on Wednesday. That seems a little bit late. So unless somebody else can volunteer to do it on our side, then maybe we should ask Arlington to take the lead.

[Emily O'Brien]: I guess there are two moving parts. One is when we actually send in a drawing of what we think it should look like. And the other is that Arlington has to, they have to meet before they can approve a letter to that effect. So if we have a design, I assume their next meeting is going to be before our next meeting, if they meet once a month and we meet once a month, or it's at the same time.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yes, it's 15th. Our next meeting is on 15th. Yeah, so Arlington can send a letter

[Emily O'Brien]: sooner than we can approve some other design. So if it's possible for Arlington to come up with a design and approve it by their meeting, then that would be ideal. If they can't do that, then they can at least submit a letter as of their meeting. And then at that point, they can refer to the fact that we will come back with a diagram as of our next meeting. So then we can approve a diagram a month from now, but they can send another letter in whatever it is, two weeks or whatever.

[SPEAKER_07]: Coordination is hard. Can someone of you come to our meeting? So at least you can raise concern with our proposed... I might be able to. Let me check my calendar.

[Emily O'Brien]: I'm going to miss the board time. 15th at 7pm. 15, 1-5.

[SPEAKER_07]: It's October 15th, 1-5 at 7pm.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Guys, what I'm sharing is just like, I mean, I don't know how formal you're thinking, Bruce. Well, that looks interesting. I'd be happy to do something.

[SPEAKER_07]: Let's try those. I mean, this is a good idea to do, but just earlier. That's my thought on that.

[Unidentified]: Oh, yeah. Now I see what you mean. Yeah, right, right. Yeah.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, so I mean, I'm happy to do something simple like this, take some photos, and then propose some simple sketches of locations for dashed lines and sharrows. And that's something that can be done in a couple few days, at least as a starting point for the two groups to hash out via email. If we want to put together something a little bit more formalized to put forward, then maybe somebody else can take it from there.

[SPEAKER_07]: Okay, sure. Yes, I have shared with you my email. And I think you should already know our chair's email, who is Christian. Or do you not? I can share his email. Um, okay.

[Emily O'Brien]: And email address just to read into the record or for anybody watching is, uh, w I L L I R two nine at gmail.com.

[Bruce Kulik]: Is that in our chat?

[Emily O'Brien]: That's in our chat.

[Bruce Kulik]: Okay, good. I'll copy it from there. Thank you.

[SPEAKER_07]: I'll send them out. Sure. Yeah. Christians email.

[Emily O'Brien]: I guess you can just- And their chair is Christopher Tonkin, and that's t-o-n-k-i-n-c at comcast.net. Thank you.

[Bruce Kulik]: And our Chris, Chris Stivers, was that you that produced that diagram? That very simple sketch? Yeah. And is that something that you're comfortable doing, I mean, from several angles? Because that was pretty quick and easy and better than that.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: pretty easy panelists to just go out and take photos from different directions so I can get all the streets of relevance and then just do some simple sketches indicating where to start and finish dashed lines and where to place some shadows and at least be a starting point for discussion and then we can review it as our groups.

[Bruce Kulik]: I think that if you and I can work together, I'd be happy to do that. And you can come up with a proposal. We can kind of run it past a few of us, not as an official vote, but just to get ideas and then present it at their next meeting. Again, not as something we have definitely approved, but as a starting point. And then we can come back with hopefully an approved version from them. maybe perhaps another representative or Anton can come and then we can work out in conference committee, if you will, any changes we need, or hopefully we'll just need to rubber stamp it at that point.

[SPEAKER_07]: I think that sounds like a good plan. When is your next meeting? It's October 21st, right?

[Emily O'Brien]: It's whatever the fourth Wednesday is.

[SPEAKER_07]: Oh, Wednesday, October 22nd. Yeah, sure. I should be able to come online through Zoom. So can I repeat what our current proposal is to make sure I didn't miss it?

[Emily O'Brien]: Our suggestion is that we will attend your meeting and bring a diagram of where we think the sharrows and dotted lines should go, or where this is not approved by us officially, but in the interest of time, a couple of our members will attend your meeting with a picture. And at your meeting, you can choose to adopt it or choose to make changes and vote on it officially. And you can also vote to officially send a letter to DCR. Saying that you want that you want sharrows and the dashed lines like we were talking about. And like you mentioned, I can send you the I can send you the text of the draft letter that Daniel wrote on our behalf that was already voted on and sent by our group. But if your group either uses signs on to the same letter or write your own. I think that would be that would be a particularly that would be beneficial. And then if you're also able to talk your DPW into contacting them as well, that probably doesn't hurt either.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, yeah.

[Bruce Kulik]: So can you... I'd like to make an official motion so we can close down on this because we do need to move on to the car pump track.

[SPEAKER_07]: Quick thing, can you just, once you get the image, can you send it to me and Christian before the meeting so we can look at it? Otherwise I'm good.

[Bruce Kulik]: I would like to make the motion that we authorize Bruce and Chris basically to do the verbiage we just talked about, come up with a diagram, get it sent to Arlington, attend the Arlington meeting, at least one of us, and then come back with a proposal that we can vote upon.

[Emily O'Brien]: Great. Is there a second?

[SPEAKER_03]: Bruce, I'm likely traveling the 15th, but I can do everything up to that. I can definitely go to the 15th, no problem. I've already checked my calendar.

[Emily O'Brien]: All in favor? Aye.

[SPEAKER_03]: Aye.

[Emily O'Brien]: Aye. Opposed? And the motion carries. Thank you, Bruce and Chris. And thank you, Anton, for coming.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, thanks. Just in case, I think you need to register to attend our meeting. Pre-register. It's not just a Zoom link that's shared. But it's, yeah, some clicks on the website, as I remember. Thank you. I appreciate you taking the time.

[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you, too, Anton. We'll see you in a few weeks.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, have a good night.

[Ernie Meunier]: Bye.

[Emily O'Brien]: All right, next up, the car park pump track. Request and presentation from Scott. Scott, I see you're here, so take it away.

[SPEAKER_14]: Yes, just maybe really quick. I've got just a really quick deck to show you. Honestly, the biggest thing for me is just trying to get some direction. I've had very initial conversations with the city. I met with a couple years ago before car park had started I met actually with a landscape architect that was part of the project pitching to what's called a pump track and I'll go through this in just a second but it was going to be part of the car park kind of overall construction projects. And just, you know, I reached out to Bruce, just trying to get help and assistance, especially from an organization that works with the city on the regular. I'm just obviously a local resident who was interested. So, let me just share here real quick what I have just pulled together to give you some details.

[Emily O'Brien]: Excuse me, just a sec. Let me make you a co-host if you're not already so that you can screen share. How do I do that? Why is that not showing up?

[Alicia Hunt]: I have to do it. I'll do the host. But he should be able to just screen share because Chris had asked earlier that I just make anybody screen share. OK, good. Thank you.

[Emily O'Brien]: He's coming back in.

[SPEAKER_14]: I apologize. I was booted out because I think it was saying I couldn't share for some reason. So hold just 1 2nd. Everybody see this all right? Yes. All right. So first off, what's a pump track? So this is a rendering, and I'll have some pictures here in just a second, but really what a pump track is, is a space for people of all ages to ride bikes. And the reason why it's called pump is it's contouring on the ground for you to learn how to maneuver your bike. And it's something that's very simple for kids, you know, as young as one to two years old that are on a bike to learn how to maneuver a bike. and they've become really popular over the last, I'd say five to 10 years, not just in mountain biking, but also in BMX. And so there's actually, Adam, who's on the call, he used to race BMXs on the Wakefield BMX pump track back in the day, and it's still there in that facility. And there's also been some that have been built over the last, again, five to 10 years. So this is just a rendering here But here are some examples of different pump tracks. Some of these are in open air dirt areas. Some of them are built in the woods. When we were going through the car park kind of design phase, it was one of the things that had gotten some votes from local residents to have a space for Kids to go ride bikes, the space in the woods in car park has often been not used or honestly, if it has been used in the past, it's been for loitering and partying for kids. And it's actually been, they've done studies to show that pump tracks are actually a great way to cut down on people loitering in the woods and using them for other reasons. So some local ones that are examples. This is Russell Mill here in Chelmsford. It's actually right behind a soccer field, kind of similar setup to a car park, and actually goes into a trail network off of the pump track. This is something that's been built over the last 10 to 15 years. And then Acton actually built a pump track that I believe they opened two or three years ago, and then I'm not sure if you're aware, but Arlington just opened Hills Hill, which is a pump track skills area right off of the Minuteman bike path, and was just opened. And I've been talking with Josh Fenalosa, who is an Arlington resident. He was part of the process in pitching that project. It's a much bigger scale than what we'd be thinking about doing at Carr Park. So I have some pictures that I can share and pass along to this organization after this as well to show them. Here are some pictures.

[Bruce Kulik]: Point of order, Scott. When you get a chance, could you provide either a link that everybody can use to reference this or a PDF, whatever works best for you?

[SPEAKER_14]: Of course, yes. And I've got more documents than just what I have here.

[Bruce Kulik]: If you could pop that into the chat now, that would be great. Otherwise, we'll get to it later.

[SPEAKER_14]: OK, great. I'll do it after I finish the presentation, if that's OK. That's fine.

[Unidentified]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_14]: And so this is actually the grand opening of Hills Hill in Arlington. So it's like I said, it's a bigger scale than what we'd be talking about with the space we have in Carr Park, but they've already had some really positive turnouts. It's something that kids of all ages are using, adults use as well, but it's a great family space as well. So for me, just real quick, I've just gone through what a pump track is. The objective is pretty clear, getting people outside, utilizing the additional space at Carr Park. It's right behind the Disc Golf and Dog Park. If you know where Stowers Ave feeds off of Bell Ave into the park, they actually built a kind of wood chip mulched trail. When I originally walked with the landscape architect that was working on the project, we had found a space kind of in the back up the hill from that that we believe somebody could do some work to build a pump track and it obviously would entail some volunteer work as well. The biggest thing that I'm trying to get is more help with the city or in terms of funding and direction. I'd spoken initially with Amanda Centrella a couple of times but I know there's a lot on her plate in regards to the overarching car park plus many other things with the city. Sounds like the city is open but they're looking for funding. What I have down here in the bottom is actually the last communication on the car park rehabilitation or the construction was a phase 3 that said something about identifying funding for a pump track, but I'm not, I don't know what the situation is of that. So, but there are some things Adams on the call. I've talked with cycles because there are bike shop in town and 1 of the, I would argue best bike shops around definitely 1 that people travel. throughout the state to come down and visit. And to have something like this would be a really great connection into that as well. They talked about having a fundraiser to help raise some money for it. So I've got some more financials and things that I can share from the Hills Hill project. Ours would be obviously scaled down. But again, just looking for this organization maybe with some help or some direction in regards to where to go from here.

[Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to move that we create a letter of support, perhaps sending it, I guess, going to the mayor might be the right place and identify people who we would want to provide the letter to.

[SPEAKER_14]: One thing too here, Bruce, just to tell you, so this is the picture right here. So if you are familiar with, any of you are familiar with Carr Park, Fulton Street obviously comes over here along this side. This is Winslow here. So the dog park's right here and there's a disc golf right here. This was space that kind of down the hill from up here, there was space here kind of situated for a pump track. So this is what had been designated when we had originally talked through this, just for a visual reference.

[Emily O'Brien]: Great, thanks. Bruce has a motion on the table to write a letter of support. I'm wondering if we would have a volunteer to write said letter. I don't want to necessarily volunteer Daniel, because he's not here. But Adam.

[SPEAKER_14]: I was told he's an avid mountain biker, and somebody that Brian at JRA had already told me that I should connect with. And I'm happy to work with him as well in pulling this together. Like I said, I can get more details, whatever we feel is most helpful.

[Emily O'Brien]: I'm sure he would. Yeah, I'm sure he would be happy to. It's just I don't want to give him assignments too much when he's not here. Of course. But Adam, any interest?

[SPEAKER_06]: I cannot commit to that. You don't want a letter from me. I don't write well. A letter from chat GPT maybe would be better than mine. But I do support the pump track, so don't get me wrong.

[Emily O'Brien]: Well, in that case, then I guess we can, since I know that Daniel is going to be pretty in favor of it, we can tell him to do it.

[SPEAKER_14]: And I'm happy to connect with Daniel as well if you want me to.

[Emily O'Brien]: And I can do it too.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Do we have time to look at the rest of the presentation? I think it would be helpful to see the financials.

[SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, I mean, it's pretty nitty gritty. So it's not like something that I think would be worthwhile to kind of walk through right now. But I'm happy to, like I said, I can drop them in here and go through that. So I can tell you just ballpark. Yeah, ballpark. Hills Hill and Arlington was approximately 400,000 initially proposed. I'm not sure where they netted out. But like I said, this is at least a quarter of that, if not maybe smaller. So again, pure ballpark.

[Emily O'Brien]: Okay, one question I have on that is whether there's what are the what do the ongoing maintenance costs look like for something like this typically with this, you know, ultimate, what would come down to is it's it'd be volunteer work and that's something that also I'm not sure if.

[SPEAKER_14]: I'm assuming some of you are familiar with NEMBA, the New England Mountain Bike Association. They are familiar with this as well. I have already talked with Adam Glick, who's the president, I believe still the president, and Mary McCarthy, who's the head of the Greater Boston chapter. They are fully in support. Trail maintenance and things and volunteer work that we can tap into with that as well as local Medford residents that would probably be willing to put in some time, which is what Acton and Russell Mill do. It's really just a matter of getting out with some dirt and doing some contouring over time. So it's not a lot of maintenance, but just kind of keeping track of erosion over time.

[Emily O'Brien]: Great, thanks. Are there other questions? I don't want to go too deep into the financials for this just because it is, we will get behind schedule.

[Bruce Kulik]: We need a second on a motion if someone's willing to do so. I second. All right.

[Emily O'Brien]: All in favor? Aye.

[SPEAKER_03]: Aye. Aye.

[Emily O'Brien]: Opposed? Great, thank you. We will instruct Daniel that he can write a letter in favor of the pump track.

[SPEAKER_14]: I'll share this document here. And then if you want, I don't know if you have an email that I can send the other things to that you can share out to the group. Just let me know. Bruce, you have my email too.

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, it's probably best if you actually follow up on that thread. That way we'll be sure to get it.

[SPEAKER_14]: All right. Sounds great, Bruce. I'll do that.

[Bruce Kulik]: And you'll put the link in shortly?

[SPEAKER_14]: Yes, I will. Thank you for the time.

[Emily O'Brien]: Great. Thank you. Next up, bike racks. There's a thing that says update from Hormel Stadium Commission, and that says Dennis, who is not here. So I think we'll have to move that for next month and hope that Dennis is back. Asking Todd regarding estimates for installation costs. I don't know if my emails are disappearing into the ether. I'm not getting anything. I'm emailing and emailing, and I'm not getting any answer. So maybe the next step is to ask Tim, who Todd is usually our point of contact. But Tim is presumably able to help answer this question. And hopefully, having been a member of the bike commission himself, would have some interest in helping us move this forward. You know, that's so that's, that's all we have about that. It's we're, uh, we're trying hard to ask the city to put in bike racks and they want to know how much it costs and we need somebody to tell us. Um, so that's, that's where that is, Ernie. Yeah.

[Ernie Meunier]: Have you inquiries just been from yourself or as chair of the commission, or do we need to make a motion? To write a letter as the commission to sort of give this a little more. I think I'm going to just try.

[Emily O'Brien]: I think I should just try writing to writing to. Oh, I do. Tim, one of those T names. I think I should just try writing to Tim. It's just a straightforward question. The motion that we really want to make is to come back to the city council and the mayor and ask to add a certain amount of money to the budget. And we just need somebody to tell us an amount to add.

[SPEAKER_02]: Chris? Does he have a phone number we can just call him up? Or is that crazy?

[Emily O'Brien]: I think he's in and out a lot. I think he's out on the streets a lot during the day. It's possible, but it might take a fair amount of phone tag. Maybe that's worth a try.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: That's worth a shot, right? I mean, I don't know. I see Alicia saying, reach out to Tim. That's a good idea. The other thought I had is we've got some friends over in Arlington now. Do they know how much it costs to install my crack? And can we just use those numbers? They're going to be probably close enough for a budget number, right?

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I would think.

[SPEAKER_07]: OK.

[Emily O'Brien]: So yeah, I mean, Alicia, do you have any inputs here?

[Alicia Hunt]: If you're not getting prompt responses from Todd, then ask Tim. Tim is actually his supervisor. And part of the question would actually be whether an outside contractor is doing it, or is it being done as part of a project that's already occurring, or are there city staff to do it? There are very many variables on installing bike racks, as I'm sure you all are aware, but I would go to Tim if Todd's not answering you.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, we know that there are a lot of variables and we know that it could be outside contractors or city staff or something and that might affect it, but it's nobody's job right now and nobody has any instructions to buy them and install them and we don't really care whether it's outside contractors or whether it's city staff and we just want to be able to bike to a store and have a place to park.

[Alicia Hunt]: Right. And I'll just share as the, not all your members, I don't know if all your members know me, I'm the sustainability director. Dennis is out sick. I'd invite you to copy me on that email. Okay. Because we can also move it along in here because we care and I have a lot of bikers in my staff as well.

[Emily O'Brien]: Well, thanks. We'll certainly do that. It's something we've been asking about for a long time in various places, but haven't I haven't managed to get any progress, so.

[Alicia Hunt]: If I know that you all have active requests in, then it's much easier for me to just sort of push those along rather than, I don't want to have different requests or separate things. And I would like to personally see more bike racks. I keep locking up my bike to signs, so.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, well, thank you. We'll we'll send you we'll copy you on that.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah. Are you sorry? Are you suggesting to be copied on the email to Tim?

[Alicia Hunt]: Or once we hear back from Tim about how much it costs the email about that on the email to Tim, he and I walk across the hall from each other as colleagues and also. and we collaborate on a lot of projects. So yeah, feel free to copy me just in general on the bike rack stuff, because I'd like to get it moved through in a better clip. Great, thanks. We'll do that. And I'm also just going to mention that I'm probably going to leave in a few minutes, and I'll make Emily the host. I think you guys are all set. You don't need to. Thank you.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, we're good. Thank you. Appreciate it. So we'll wait to hear from Dennis about bike racks for Hormel Stadium. And we need an update from Daniel about C-Click Fix, but we need to hear that from Daniel, and he's not here. So next up is events. I think he's not here, but he is coordinating the people to be there. Bruce wanted to talk about the mystic river celebration. We.

[Bruce Kulik]: We had gotten kind of blindsided by that. And I realized what happened is we had an email exchange about it. And it never made it back into any of our official agenda. And Emily, I think you were involved in that email thread as well. And so at the last minute, we thought we'd try to put it together, only to discover that there weren't sufficient. We didn't have enough manpower to do it. So we wrote to Cash and said, we're not going to do it. So bottom line there, we don't have to worry about it. And yeah, you're right, Daniel's taking care of Harvest Your Energy, that's in a while. Do you want me to move on with the Tufts Community Day?

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, go for it.

[Bruce Kulik]: Okay, so I'm the coordinator for Tufts Community Day. And whoops, hang on, let me.

[Alicia Hunt]: Sorry, Bruce. Yes, one more thing. Harvest Your Energy is October 18th, so actually maybe before your next meeting. And we really want to have the bike commission represented at it.

[Bruce Kulik]: We've already applied as far as I know.

[Alicia Hunt]: Committed? Good.

[Bruce Kulik]: How can I tell?

[Alicia Hunt]: How can you check that? I'll check my list on my end.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I think we had already agreed to go and we should be. Great, we should be signed up.

[Alicia Hunt]: Great. I'm double-checking that.

[Bruce Kulik]: All right. While we're checking that, we could move on. So Tufts Community Day is October the 5th. And I at least will show up. And we are there. Good. All right. And I'll send out email to anybody who can help volunteer for that. It's kind of standard tabling. We'll show up and answer questions and say hi to everybody. So that's that.

[Emily O'Brien]: Great. Thanks.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Sorry, do we have people identified for that? I think I was planning on going.

[Bruce Kulik]: No, but I'll do so before then by just watch your email. I'll send it out to the whole list and we can coordinate any scheduling or logistics.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: How many do we need typically for that?

[Bruce Kulik]: One person will do, it's just, you know, if you're there for three hours, it's kind of, you get a dry mouth and it's always useful to have two people because often people show up in pairs for some reason, you know, so it's good to have two or three people at the booth.

[Emily O'Brien]: I will say also that that one, it's kind of a long trip if you need to use the bathroom. So if there's only one person and you need to use the bathroom, you're gone for a long time. So.

[SPEAKER_02]: He tells.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. Next step is bike light report. Ernie.

[Ernie Meunier]: Hi, everybody. I'm really glad that both Alicia and Adam are here. I hope Alicia is still here for a few minutes. I sent out a report to the commission last week that Anna took up my invitation to help me pack the lights for this fall's go-around. And she and I, in a record three hours, packed 200 bike light kits last week. And I distributed them to the five schools and a few miscellaneous the following day, last Thursday. So we're all set. In visiting JRA, I found out from Adam that Alicia did pay their invoice for last year's supply of lights, which I'm to receive from JRA soon, and that I followed up with an invoice as directed by us, the commission, for 2025 to 26 bike light kits and the needed 500 copies of the uh, American bicycle leagues, uh, whatever they're called, uh, quick guide. Yeah. So that's an invoice total of just over $1,800. Uh, Adam at JRA is to submit that to Alicia, hopefully for payment in a reasonable due course. And that's it. So distributing 160 last week leaves 200 packed and another 40 or so to use this fall and winter, a total of 80 spares. And then we get into next year's supply in the spring. Which, again, was pre-purchased this past summer to avoid tariffs and to keep the price lower by combining shipping. And that's why the expenses for last year and this year kind of piled up on each other. And that will bring up, you know, discussions about funding for us in the future. And if I should be segueing into a working group report now on helmets next, I could just continue with that if that's okay with our secretary and the chair.

[Emily O'Brien]: Fine with me.

[Ernie Meunier]: OK. So the three of us were charged with looking at that. And thanks to the help of Eric quickly saying, just go to Helmet Saraz, we determined that, and with great thanks to Virginia Tech's labors in testing the entire universe of helmets therein, we found a star helmet with a substantially decent score of three stars out of five, which at $11 each meets the criteria of looking kid-friendly, modern, safe, available in three colors, can be purchased. can be purchased in a minimum lot of 24, but with Logo, if we wanted to get Medford about it, we'd have to order 480. Those helmets are their so-called model nine, which is infamous for being a knockout value at $11 each. They come in small, medium, large, and extra large. We also found a toddler, a smaller helmet that is on sale right now for about $7 instead of $11. And all these sizes, colors, and styles could be mixed up to make an order of 24. The events we had in the past, I think we would give out roughly 50 helmets or so at each event. So I would suggest that if we can come up with some funding that we should spend, it's about $500 to get 50 helmets for a next event to give them out and to have and to evaluate. and start an efficient campaign around this. But if we wanted to, you know, blast the city's kids with a thousand helmets, you know, it's going to cost us $10,000. So this is a significant amount of money that we have to find funding for. But I'm going to propose, I think, that I order 50 helmets of a variety of sizes that we need, maybe three quarters for kids and adults and one quarter for toddlers. And they come from Washington, D.C. I'm sorry, Washington state. So it's not waiting five weeks from Singapore. And yes, maybe we could duplicate their kinds of efforts in scouring Asia for great deals. But it looks like helmets are doing a pretty good job of that and maybe only making a modicum of profit such that we needn't reinvent the wheel here. as we have not been able to find out who the source was of our original supply, nor would it cost the legal team who sponsored them to get them, especially if they were paying for their logos to be put on and required such a large minimum printing effort to have a minimum order of 500 pieces, which is just onerous for us at this stage. So that's it. I'm hoping to just open a small discussion now as to how to proceed and whether we should jump on this experiment or whether we just table this and look for $500 or $1,000 to start to fund this campaign. But, you know, we have now wiped out this year's budget with the bike-like kits and the quick guides that we need. So we are looking for some funding. So I'm glad that Alicia is here to respond to that. And I'm just, again, thankful for Adam and JRA for acting as an intermediary for some of our purchases and distribution of funds. and asking Adam if he's about to send to Alicia the invoice I presented last week for next year's needs. So how fortuitous and serendipitous that we're all here at the table tonight. Thanks.

[Bruce Kulik]: Do we have any other possibly identified fundraising sources. Did Brookline Bank not step up? Did I hear that from before? Or is that another one? Or are there other organizations we think we might be able to get some funding from?

[Ernie Meunier]: Well, Bruce, I'm sorry. Yes, I am in receipt of Brookline Bank's check for $500 that I have to give to Alicia when I bike down there. So that means that yes, the invoice I'm putting forth for $1,800 is really only $1,300. because of that donation. There had been a couple of smaller donations in the past. Wegmans was so difficult to get through to and with such delay that their $250 effort, I haven't tickled yet. I'm not going to ask JRA for a similar effort because of the work they're doing as liaison for us and that they are the bike store in Medford and part of this community. An untapped one that sits high in my priority list to knock on is waste management, who is so invested in the city and a large. part of the city's infrastructure that I think that they should come along with funds to help us out. But no, otherwise the larger the bank, the thicker the boilerplate to try to get through to get some funding. Smaller organizations are much easier to talk with and develop a relationship with, but it's hard to ask them in these times for funding for community efforts like this.

[Emily O'Brien]: Anna, I see you coming up.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I just wanted to inquire, and apologies for not knowing this, but in terms of exactly what the commission is a lot of, if you're going to apply or look for funding, they'll ask if you're a 501c3, what officially is the commission and in terms of going about looking for funding, are there any like limitations with that that we should know about?

[Emily O'Brien]: Um, the commission is an advisory commission to the mayor. Um, so we're not a nonprofit. We're not anything like that. Um, Alicia, I see your hand up. You can explain it better than I can probably.

[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, I feel like I should jump in because actually the city is a nonprofit. Um, And in a way, so we are a tax-deductible organization. But it's complicated, and it can get difficult. Technically, when the city gets donations, the city council is supposed to accept them. I don't know that this always happens. It happens on big things, whether or not we jump through those kinds of hoops for something like this. It's also complicated for the city to receive donations for directed things, which is why you might notice that there are a lot of organizations, like the library has friends at the Medford Public Library, and the community gardens has friends at the community garden. And that is so that they can receive money and spend money outside of the municipal legal government framework. And so I just sort of put it out there because there isn't like anything like that on the bike side, but there are bike organizations that might be willing to work with you. Just to sort of think out of the box, because if the group did serious fundraising, it could become a problem because you don't actually have a way. Like if I get an unsolicited check, it goes to the general fund. It doesn't come to my office. It has to be for specific purposes. But we can try and figure out how to work it out. That said, yeah, I just kind of wanted with this, the fundraising piece. The other thing that I just want to feel like it's really helpful for everybody to know is that there's, because when the, because you're an official arm of the body of the city, you have to follow municipal procurement law, which is cumbersome, difficult, annoying. 100%, it's ridiculous. But it does mean that for purchases like over a certain dollar value, so any expenditure that our office makes over $100 in advance, we have to make what's called a purchase order in the system, which basically reserves the money in the system. So if you guys are planning to spend money, I ask that you email us first and tell us about it first so we can get that set up. and preferably with some sort of documentation. So I actually took the email that Ernie sent, and I sent it to my head clerk and said, please create a purchase order for JRA cycles for this dollar amount. And then when the invoice comes in, I can pay the invoice. Technically, I'm supposed to do that before you spend the money. Anything over $1,000, we're supposed to get multiple quotes for. And I know like Ernie does all this research and gets this information, but then I need copies of like the other places that were too expensive so that we can put it in the file and give it to the procurement office. And all of that is because it's an official arm of the city, whereas if you were like just a friends group or a separate nonprofit, you could spend money however you wanted to. But we do provide the bank account. We have a tax ID number for you that we can provide.

[Ernie Meunier]: An intermediate question then, let's say we're going through with initial purchase of bike helmets, $500 or $1,000. Do you want to be the purchaser of that or again go through some scheme where I pre-purchase to get inventory quickly and then you have to figure out how to pay me?

[Alicia Hunt]: And this is the problem is that where we came into like reimbursing residents for large sums of money starts to look sketchy when the city gets audited, right? And we get audited all the place. That's kind of part of it, right? So it's better if we could make the purchase, but we can't just buy from everywhere, which is where the problem that we ran into, right? Like it was a firm in China and they couldn't give us proper looking invoices, like nothing looked legitimate that our finance office felt comfortable paying because they work, they operate in a different worldview than we do.

[Ernie Meunier]: Right. Is there a dollar amount limit that you're telling us we should be careful to operate differently above or below, like $500 or $1,000? Right. Over $1,000, we absolutely need like quotes, examples of what other things, like

[Alicia Hunt]: that you quoted it with multiple places that you were being responsible, and we have to issue a purchase order before you make the purchase.

[Ernie Meunier]: So because the shit may be hitting the fan, so getting 100 helmets for $950 is something that we may be able to move more quickly on than a larger stocking order of helmets.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I would assume, Alicia, that we could. I assume we could go look, you know, we've, there's like five or six of these different companies that provide low cost helmets. I imagine we could say like, all right, here's like three companies that provide low cost helmets. A hundred would cost $9.50 here, $1,000, $12 here. So it may not be that much more time consuming. It's just, we gotta do the diligence to show that we've looked at pricing at multiple suppliers.

[Alicia Hunt]: Which you guys are doing. It's sort of like get the printouts, get the screenshots and send them to us so we have the documentation. And then it's better if we reach out to the company and see if we can make the purchase. We run into problems where the city doesn't have a credit card. We can't buy things on credit cards. We literally can only buy from companies that will sell us something. And then we send them a check after we receive the product. And that is also archaic, but we haven't been able to get the finance office to move on that. You've been paid out? Sorry? even to use PayPal? Yeah, we really can't do that.

[Ernie Meunier]: Instant money? Yes.

[Alicia Hunt]: We actually have an Amazon account that is a business account where we order things with our Amazon business account and then they send me city invoices and the city sends them checks. And we do the same with Home Depot. So there are larger companies actually understand this conceptually and work with us. The problem is this, it's really horrible because we want as a government, we like, or as value-based people, we want to support small businesses, but we actually, because of Massachusetts procurement law, have trouble, a lot of trouble supporting small businesses. By the way, as voters, I'm letting y'all know.

[Emily O'Brien]: To bring this back around to where we stand right now, we have now a good line on a good model of helmet to get and where to get it from. We have to figure out what are going to be the mechanics of making that happen. It seems like our options are, one, we go through the procurement process that Alicia just described, in which case That vendor has to be somebody that the city can buy from. So if this it's if the city can buy from that vendor, then that seems like a good plan. We then have to figure out how to get the money. to do that because we have used up our budget. The other thing we can do is work with another organization. I don't know if this is something we could ask MassBike or BCU about and see if they would help us facilitate this process. Um, I wouldn't be surprised if MassBike would be willing to, we can't possibly be the first city group to have a similar issue like this. Um, so that might be worth an inquiry to see if they can help us facilitate this. In which case, then if we find a donor who is willing to spend or donate the money for helmets, then that donor donates to MassBike and MassBike can buy the helmets. Adam says, looks like helmets are a sorter form would allow for them invoicing the city and the city sending a check.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: So that's- That part strikes me as like, that's a pretty typical process for businesses.

[Emily O'Brien]: So then the question is the fundraising side of it.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I guess my question remains, like, for the fundraising, if we want to do the fundraising, do we have to go through an actual 501c3? And if so, would that be the first step is to find a 501c3 that would sponsor if we can find a donor and then find it?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: That's what you're up and saying, am I right? They could be the intermediary for accepting a donation.

[Emily O'Brien]: and then buy the helmets. If there's, Alicia, can you remind me again what you said about if we had donors who were willing to send the city a check?

[Alicia Hunt]: You'll bank them out to the city of Medford, you'll go through my office, but try and talk to me in advance, because then I can try and figure something out. I might go to the finance office and ask them, how should we work this out? At one point, we worked something out for the dog park, but like literally creating a revolving account also involves going to the city council for a vote, none of which is completely impossible, but it's like a lot of hoops. But once you've done it, you've done it. I'm trying to think the other thing that could like that as you were talking about finding donors is sometimes we actually try and find somebody who will do pay for it directly. I mean, with the Harvester Energy Festival, Mass Energy Alliance doesn't give us money to pay musicians, they pay the musicians directly for us, we set it all up, but then they pay them. And we've said that that is sort of also an option that if you found like a happy donor that wanted to work with you, asking them like, hey, could you actually just buy us these 900 helmets or whatever? And then you don't have a problem. Yeah, you might want the city like I don't know if you've ever seen like the mayor will go in front of the city council with like the bang and say they're donating all these backpacks to us. Yay. And the city council, by the way, votes and accepts those backpacks.

[Unidentified]: Hmm.

[Emily O'Brien]: So in that, if we have a donor that does that, then we need to ask the city council to accept the donation of the helmets?

[Alicia Hunt]: I mean, and that's something we can talk about. It's kind of a good thing to do when then everybody gets good, happy PR.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. Okay, so then our next question, it seems like if we have, if we had like one or two donors willing to spend 500, donate 500 or 1000, we could just ask them to buy the helmets. And I doubt that the difference in Pricing or shipping would be much versus two orders of $500 versus one order of 1,000, since they're bulky and they have to ship in big boxes that are not the entire order anyway. So if we have donors, they can just buy the helmets.

[Ernie Meunier]: It appears to be about 20 helmets per shipping crate, either from helmets or us. So they're going to have to be stored in multiple locations anyway. But yeah.

[Emily O'Brien]: In that case, it might actually not be a terrible thing if we have a bunch of small donors who want to donate $250 at a time. And then we only have to store $250 worth of helmets until we run out and find some more.

[Ernie Meunier]: Well, that's 25 helmets. It's about half. Right cover one event. So that's why I'm thinking more and 50, 50 lot units, which is storable and. $500 is not too onerous, and it's what I usually start when I'm asking for bike donations. And if someone says that's onerous, I'll offer them half of that, when I really hope that we could get $1,000 sponsors and not just $500. That hasn't happened yet, even with Brookline Bank.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: In terms of quantity, one other thing to consider is, because helmets do expire and the foam wears out, we don't want to have too many because then they start to be unsafe. Maybe better for that reason to have smaller quantities and refresh them more often.

[Ernie Meunier]: Well, the technical information I have on that is that if they're not used and stored well, they have unlimited shelf life. They're 15 to 20 year things if stored as new old stock. It's only if you use them for a year and get them sweaty and then they deteriorate and dry. UV exposure. And you get UV degradation as well.

[Emily O'Brien]: So in interest of keeping this moving along, I think where we are is that we have identified a source of helmets. We need to identify some sources of funding. Ernie, are you willing to keep asking around or do we need to see who else is willing to go looking for donors?

[Ernie Meunier]: Oh, please join on board because I'm a Not completely tapped out here, but I'm lacking creativity as to who to ask. The real estate companies promise they'll help, and then when it comes down to it, they don't pick up the phone. So there's that kind of thing. Maybe insurance companies, other helpers in the city, but again, the larger the institution, the bigger the boiler plate and the more they're apt to say, Oh, we already give to 20 other concerns stand in line. And that's reasonable too. I mean, Alicia has perhaps a lot more to say on this too, dealing with, you know, similar activities and donor networks.

[SPEAKER_06]: Adam, do we have, um, I don't know exactly how to explain this. If you're asking for donations for these helmets, what do we tell people they're for? Do we have a standard like, hey, we're buying these helmets, we do this all the time because people don't have enough helmets? How do we propose this to people?

[Emily O'Brien]: It's a life. We have distributed them at events, like when there's community events, if we have a table or when we have a bike rodeo, we basically only deal with kids' helmets. We take every opportunity we can to get them on kids' heads, especially if we can get to kids who don't have them yet.

[Ernie Meunier]: And it's a state law. that kids on bikes have to wear helmets.

[SPEAKER_06]: Well, I'm not arguing that people should have, that kids need helmets, but I just, when we're, you know, if I'm going to call up a bank, what am I going to say to the bank?

[Ernie Meunier]: Well, you can start with that argument. It's a legal requirement.

[Emily O'Brien]: I think his question is not whether we should be asking them to, whether, not why we want to give kids helmets. It's how and where are we giving kids helmets?

[Ernie Meunier]: Yes, and you can also say that every year 500 new kids enter the public schools, and maybe 200 of them ride bikes. And then there's a whole lot of backlog that we haven't covered yet. So the need is for thousands of helmets in order to assure every kid in Medford who rides a bike has a helmet. So I'm not sure that the argument needs much backup or rationale. It's a state law, it protects lives. Lights are a little trickier even. The helmets to me are a slam dunk except for their logistical complexity. They're big and they cost money and you have to fit them.

[Emily O'Brien]: Adam, was your question about how we are actually getting them to the kids?

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I guess, I guess what I'm not hearing that might make this more compelling to potential donors is like, you know, we have a thing we do every year where we donate, you know, X amount of helmets to kids who don't have one. We're asking for donations to buy those helmets for that thing this year again.

[Emily O'Brien]: You're talking about targeting a specific event.

[SPEAKER_06]: I don't really know. I'm sort of brainstorming here, but it feels like it would be easier to solicit donations if we had a very specific ask with how we're going to get them to people and all of that.

[Ernie Meunier]: Well, let me just answer. With the bike lights, it's easy for me to explain that the public schools have a supply and they distribute them at need to the kids who come to school without bike lights or who request them through the principal's office. And that's worked really well. I don't have to put the bike lights on the bikes. I do that and, you know, there's only a certain percentage of success there. With the helmets, it's trickier because we can't add to our event-related fitting of helmets a scenario of saying we're going to drop 25 helmets off at every public school for the principal's office to distribute to the teacher's pets. They have to be fitted. I want to not lose that fact that bicycle helmets on kids should be fitted well by us. And that's why we've been reserving it, or partially why, to events where we can do that. Have a conversation with the parents, a guardian, fit the kid to a helmet, watch him smile, watch him ride a bike. So with bike lights, it's been easier. I don't know how to cross that bridge between a specific event where we fit helmets and free distribution through the schools or other less monitored activities.

[Emily O'Brien]: I think it's fair to say that we do distribute them at events where we have people on hand ready to make sure that the helmet fits and fit the straps and so forth and make sure that we have a, you know, we We are talking to the parents at the same time. We do show up at a number of events every year.

[Ernie Meunier]: So start and we may be able to divest ourselves, one way to put it, of 200 helmets a year that way. I have five or six events that we do. And maybe that's just the way we'll start this, right?

[Emily O'Brien]: So I want to keep us moving along because we are going to get quite behind schedule. And do so in the meantime, we need We need people to go chasing down donors. We now have a idea of what the process looks like for getting the money turned into helmets. Do we need to make a motion about this? Is this something that we need just whoever has ideas about donors to talk to Ernie and form a working group?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Can we just start by confirming what's our initial order quantity? Like, do we want to start small? I don't know, Ernie, what were you thinking? 50 helmets?

[Ernie Meunier]: 50 to make sure we don't run out at one event.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, or 48 to round number for their cartons. And then we've got a starting point. That's a relatively small dollar. I mean, in the scheme of things, a small dollar.

[Ernie Meunier]: It's about looking for $500 for 50 helmets rounded. For what event, I don't know. I haven't synced it to our calendar for this fall.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I would be happy to continue with the helmet working group and working with Ernie to try to, to the extent that I can help identify some funding, come up with some options and try to get to the 500.

[Ernie Meunier]: And is Noam on our working group as well? I forget. Sorry, no. No.

[Emily O'Brien]: Say that again.

[Ernie Meunier]: Say again.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: I said, I am on to.

[Emily O'Brien]: So, do we need to make a motion to ask the working group for helmets? to go ahead and make the purchase if they identify the funding? Or are they good to keep working on this and give us another update when they have one?

[Ernie Meunier]: Well, by making the purchase, that means notifying Alicia to make the actual purchase, even at this level? Or will Alicia, for a $500 invoice, how are you going to pay Chris or me for buying them?

[Alicia Hunt]: That's my point, is that actually we think that from looking at this company's website, Helmets R Us, that they can take a purchase order and a check from the city. So I'm saying don't buy them. Tell me you want to buy them. Excellent. And what the source of funding is. OK.

[Ernie Meunier]: And then the city makes the purchase. First order of 50 pieces, according to sizes and colors, I think won't embarrass too many little boys who are looking at a box of pink helmets. And we'll proceed.

[Alicia Hunt]: OK. They had an order form. And it was pretty clear like you could even fill that out with like what it is you want to buy. Right.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. Okay. So, um, the helmet working group can continue with their work.

[Bruce Kulik]: Do we need to authorize anything specifically for them to authorize them to ask Alicia to purchase approximately 400 or 48 helmets or whatever the number is at rounds appropriately.

[Emily O'Brien]: Assuming they find the funding for it because that's the,

[Bruce Kulik]: Correct.

[Emily O'Brien]: Do we have a second? Second. All in favor?

[SPEAKER_03]: Aye.

[Emily O'Brien]: Opposed? Thank you, everybody. That motion passes. And the helmet working group will continue working on helmets. Next up, we have infrastructure updates. Hoping Todd is here, which he is not. There's a question about Clippership Connector access update. I assume that we have all written on the Clippership Connector now.

[Alicia Hunt]: I don't... Question, because I'm actually the main contact with the state for the Clippership Connector.

[Emily O'Brien]: Um, I think about, I'm not sure. I just see Clippership Connector access update with a question mark. And I assume that means the spot where there's still like construction access and maybe whether that will be another point of access.

[Bruce Kulik]: I think it was primarily the, the Clippership Drive Main Street, um, interface, possible signal, et cetera. That's why Todd needs to be involved because he was going to present what's happening with the Contra Flow Lane, et cetera. And that's what we're waiting for on that.

[Alicia Hunt]: The last update that I got on that, so it was approved by the Traffic Commission to do it. But it is actually a real construction project because there are bump outs that need to get, sidewalk bump outs that actually need to get cut back. in order to create it so it's not just a paint and signal thing. And when I asked Todd about timelines, he was talking next spring at the earliest.

[Emily O'Brien]: OK, thanks. But keep asking him. Yeah, that answers that. Looking down here, I see review of goals, priorities, procedures, et cetera, budget proposals.

[Bruce Kulik]: Emily, you had asked me to add a door zone bike lane question. Right.

[Emily O'Brien]: On our initial. Yeah, and I was thinking that might be under the review of goals, priorities, et cetera. Although, since I see that some of this was Daniel. But thank you for that reminder. I had a question that I'm wondering if we want to take a position on, which is the question of door zone bike lanes. There are a bunch of places in Medford where Basically, we've ended up with a compromise situation where you have the seven-foot parking, five-foot bike lane, 10-foot travel lane situation. Boston Ave is one of those. And that ends up being something that looks like you have a bike lane. But in reality, that bike lane is really not safe to use. It means that the entire bike lane is the door zone. Vehicles that are wider than seven feet don't even fit in that seven feet and many of them are and that's already assuming that everybody parks all the way to the curb, which they don't. And with a five foot bike lane sandwiched in between a seven foot parking lane and a 10 foot travel lane. you can't possibly use that bike lane and expect it to actually be a safe place to be. And this is a situation that we end up with in order to not take away parking, and it's considered a compromise. And this is sort of like, this is how we put a compromise in that makes everybody happy. And this, And I think this is something that maybe when the Boston and Ave bike lanes initially went in, maybe made some sense because we didn't have any other bike lanes in Medford or very few. And having some paint on the road that looks like a bike lane at least makes it clear that you should be in the street and not on the sidewalk. But that was 10 years ago, and the vehicles are wider now in addition. And we have more people on bikes, more awareness that at least you're probably not supposed to be on the sidewalk and so forth. So my question for the commission is, do we want to make a state a position about door zone bike lanes? And in a case where you don't have more room, to make that bike lane wider or make that parking wider, would we rather have Sharos or Super Sharos or something else instead of that door zone bike lane, even if it means we can't have a bike lane, if that parking lane is not going to be removed or if we can't get the parking removed, would we prefer that door zone bike lane or would we prefer to have no bike lane at all? And my personal feeling is that in this case, if we can't have a bike lane that's actually safe to use, then we shouldn't put in a bike lane. Having a bike lane that's not safe to use just means that we encourage people to ride someplace that they shouldn't. And we also encourage drivers to get mad at you for using the full lane because they think you should be in the bike lane and they don't care or know whether or not it's safe. So that's my question. This is a thing that comes up a lot. You see these in a lot of places around here. We have them in Medford. And so I think it may be worth some discussion and taking a position on this. Ernie, I saw your hand up first, I think.

[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, and I'm going to ask Bruce, who maybe has more experience biking in many more locales internationally. The then me what is the technical? Fleshing out of the options here. I'm thinking that you could have shark's teeth foot wide 18 inch wide buffer zones between the painting of a bike lane and the beginning of a parking space and sort of a no man's land for the door to be opened. And if that established minimum that might be prevalent someplace else can't be had, then Emily's right. don't even bother to try, because a too narrow bike lane is an invitation to disaster. So is there a standard augmented bike lane with door zone or other narrowish hazard model that's in place elsewhere or in care? Useful?

[Emily O'Brien]: Ernie, there are bike lanes in this area that have a buffer, and there are cases of a painted buffer between the bike lane and the parking lane, and in some cases also between the bike lane and the travel lane, and that does exist.

[Ernie Meunier]: Are they standardized enough so that people would know what they're for?

[Emily O'Brien]: Yes, yes. But the question is, what do you do when you don't have enough space for that?

[Ernie Meunier]: Well, then you can't have anything.

[Emily O'Brien]: I agree. And that's really what I wanted to bring up, is in places where there's enough room to have a buffer that creates that space between here's where you bike here's some, as Ernie put it, no man's land where the car door might end up, and here's where the parked cars go. That's one thing, but if you don't actually have enough space for that, is it better to put in a bad bike lane than no bike lane, or is it better to have no bike lane than a bad bike lane? And that's my question. Bruce?

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, so just a couple of clarifications regarding Boston Avenue. Are you referring to the whole distance or specific blocks? Just so I understand the context.

[Emily O'Brien]: I'm looking for some of the photos that I've taken. I don't use the part between Winthrop Street and Route 16 all that often, so I don't have photos of it. I used to live in West Medford, and I used to go that way all the time, and I don't as much now. But the part definitely between Winthrop Street and College Ave has quite a lot of parking utilization during the day. I think some of it is because of construction workers parking there. Some of it I think is MBTA workers parking there. Some of it might be Tufts employees. But there's a lot of people coming and going. They open the doors a lot. I think there's a fair number of people who actually take their lunch break sitting in their car. while it's parked on Boston Ave. So that's the stretch that I have the photos of. But the other part of Boston Ave is a similar configuration where I think it's a 10-foot.

[Bruce Kulik]: I have a lot of experience riding Boston Avenue all the way from High Street to College Avenue. I do find that the lane on the lower, I guess maybe it's the upper part, towards High Street is narrow, but does offer sufficient space, being aware of the possibility of dooring, which is the case even when we don't have bike lanes. So I'll put that out there, that putting the bike lane in or not, I don't think for an inexperienced rider has much effect on the possibility of touring. In fact, if anything, the bike lane might increase that. That's hard to say. I will definitely say that if the roadway has any sort of a downhill, in that area, that configuration is absolutely inappropriate, as we've seen on the downhill side of Boston Avenue, where we've chosen to put in sharrows. And that's because simply any inexperienced cyclist can get up to 18 or 20 miles an hour without breaking a sweat, and that becomes extremely dangerous to be in a door zone at that speed. On the uphill side, on the other hand, cyclists, including myself, are often going significantly slower, 8-10 miles an hour, and therefore the the notion of being in the way, which some people are uncomfortable with, is higher. And it would mean that without a bike lane, there's things we could use to mitigate it. But you would be out in traffic more, going slower, which does become uncomfortable for a lot of people. and for motor vehicle operators who feel they don't have enough room and don't know that they can cross the line. And of course, at rush hour, you can't really cross the line on Boston Avenue because there's too much traffic. So one of the other points is that if there are no bike lanes put in, then the default configuration is to center the yellow line so that there's equal amount of space. However, if you were to leave the line where it is currently, and not provide a bike lane, you would effectively have a 14-foot lane on one side and a 10-foot lane on the other side. It looks funny, but I'm not quite sure what that would do. So the real question here is, given the lack of space, what does the paint actually do or not do? And is it really more dangerous to have an uphill bike lane at that location than nothing at all. I'm torn and you know how I feel about a lot of bad infrastructure. Yep.

[Emily O'Brien]: I found the picture that I wanted to share. OK.

[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, and by the way, the area where the construction is is a whole other deal.

[Emily O'Brien]: I don't think we should even bother talking about that. That's another story. The actual construction project, especially since that's temporary. So this is the photo that I wanted to share. If you notice right here, this car door is just about to open. And I have another photo right next to this one where I think that door did open. And you see this person riding here who just barely missed getting hit by that car door.

[Bruce Kulik]: I will say- You were completely stopped prior to this because you either knew the door was opening or you staged this?

[Emily O'Brien]: Where did this come from? No, I stopped because there were so many- It was fortuitous that the door opened. I had stopped basically because there was that vehicle up here. the bike lane, and I was going to just take a picture of, you know, I'll look at this row of cars blocking the bike lane, and if anybody opens their door, somebody's in trouble. And then this other cyclist rode by, and then the door opened. And so this is a case in particular where a lot of tough students ride here. They see the paint on the ground, and they think that's where they're supposed to be. And not only that. I get yelled at on a fairly regular basis for not being in the bike lane in this spot. And so part of my objection to a bike lane that is inherently not a safe place to be is that it makes people think that they have to be in it even if it's not a safe place to be.

[Bruce Kulik]: Kind of like the rotary situation we discussed earlier. Yeah, exactly.

[Emily O'Brien]: And it also makes drivers think that they have to be in it. And so you have somebody where somebody thinks that that's maybe not a good place to be, and they're not really sure or they're not that confident. And they get yelled at, hey, you're breaking the law. You're supposed to be in the bike lane, which is not true. But that's what they hear. And then from then on, they think they must have been wrong. Now they go back and use that bike lane and they get doored. And it's not as big a problem at at low speeds if you're going uphill, but you can still get doored uphill. And you can also still get yelled at for not wanting to ride in the door zone uphill. And so my concern with this configuration is five feet plus seven feet is 12 feet between the edge of the bike lane and the curb.

[Bruce Kulik]: And that's- I think it's only four feet for the bike lane as well.

[Emily O'Brien]: Well, I think it's five counting to the outside of the white lines. Oh, I see. OK. Um, but that, that is 12 feet for a parked car and a person on a bike. And if that's adjacent to a 10 foot parking, a 10 foot travel lane, and it could have a city bus in it, that's 10 feet wide. That's inherently not enough space. And so we shouldn't put paint on the ground that says that makes it look like it's enough space or makes people think that there's space when.

[Bruce Kulik]: So I want, I want to be clear about what your proposal would be. You would want us to have a minimum set of width that before we recommend a bike lane, otherwise we would recommend share us.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's my, that's where, that's where I'm coming from. Chris, I saw your hand up.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I think it's a really good discussion. And I ride my kid to school every day of the last year up and down Boston. I have a couple of thoughts. And Bruce, you bring some really good points about width and hills make a big difference in these decisions. It's not hard to be totally one size fits all with this. One thing to consider is a lot of e-bikes are going to be going really fast uphill. So depending on how much boost you could be crushing 20, although class ones are going to top out at 20 miles per hour, it's pretty hard to do uphill, but then you've got the class twos that can go even more than that. So speed can be a factor uphill. Which technically you shouldn't be in the bike lane, but. Agreed, you should not be, but. And I do most of my riding, I do it on my bike and I do it on our cargo bike. I always use that bike lane and I feel more protected being in it. Now, I will often ride on the outside edge of it, being wary of doors. And I feel pretty comfortable that I'm safe and can anticipate when that's going to happen. And if a door is starting to open, I can nudge out into traffic a little more. If there's ever a scenario where a car is parked a little further out, I can anticipate it, go out into the road a little bit. I have no problem taking that space. that's obviously not happening across the board. One thing I appreciate about having the bike lane painted there is it tells cars you cannot go there. So it at least gives you a safe space all the way up to the edge of the line. And I don't have any problem straddling that and going into the lane a little bit. So I'm a little reluctant to give up that. If you took the bike lane away from Boston Ave, I'd be a lot more nervous biking my kids up and down it. I feel pretty good having that there. I know it's not perfect, and I wish there was a better way to signal. Maybe the bike lane needs to be narrower with a striped line, like stay out of this right side of it. I don't know that I would jump on board, don't have it at all.

[Emily O'Brien]: And I will say, before we moved, I lived in West Medford, and then I did bike up Boston Ave every day. And I was living there at the point when that bike lane got painted. And I agree, it really did make a big difference. I had better experiences on that road after it went in.

[Bruce Kulik]: I think the biggest difference is the yellow line has moved left. And so the lane is effectively wider with or without the bike lane.

[Emily O'Brien]: And there is the argument that the bike lane being there makes the lane look visually narrower. So it's theoretically supposed to provide a traffic calming effect as well.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: It does.

[Emily O'Brien]: So Anna, I saw your hand up.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, my experience is also totally anecdotal from my own writing. And I would be curious if there's any research out there, I haven't done it, on what Sharrows actually do for people. Because I find that when I'm riding on roads with Sharrows, they're there and no one gives a single crap about them. And I ride up and down Main Street a lot, and granted it is narrower, but people are whipping by me all the time, not leaving that much space. And so I find that riding up Main Street or riding on Boston Ave, I feel much safer on Boston Ave with that lane even. I agree with what Chris is saying of being wary of doors and being more on the outside edge. But yeah, I would be curious to know more about Sharrows and any research done on how much people actually follow them in a way that I do think cars follow and stay out of the bike lane.

[Emily O'Brien]: Adam, I saw your hand up.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, other comments I wanted to make is that I think having a bike lane can remind people who have just parked their car or like getting in their car or are about to open their door in any case that there might be bikes coming by. There's like an indication that like, oh yeah, bikes go here. But I, yeah, I don't. I don't think there's a perfect solution. As me, I agree with what you're proposing as just me as a bike rider. But as me riding with my kid to Davis Square, I'm happy that that bike lane on Boston Avenue, for example, is there. And also kind of the, I think what we've been talking about before, like if you're coming back from, uh, Davis going up college at, I liked that there's a bike lane going uphill. Cause we're going well. And that feels better. Um, yeah, but in any case, I I'm saying that I think direction makes a difference. I agree with that sentiment that other people have expressed.

[Emily O'Brien]: And I know when that bike lane went in originally, we did make a point of telling them that we wanted it on the uphill side and not the downhill side, if it was only going to be one or the other.

[SPEAKER_06]: Mm-hmm. That makes sense. Yeah. The other thing I wanted to say was, why not? I mean, sharrows might not work that well, but why not both? Why not put the bike lane in, but also put the sharrow in the middle of the road?

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, it doesn't cost a lot to do that. Ernie?

[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, then you make the bike lane marker dotted line showing that it's an option. That's interesting. Going back to what Bruce was saying about asymmetry of car lanes as a function of bike lanes, that you should be, if you get rid of them and just go to shadows, that you should repaint the center line. I'm not so sure about that. I think that if it's uphill or downhill, has an interesting effect there. And in general, for the other reasons that we stated, we should maybe ensure that there's a wide bike lane on the uphill side and then go to shadows downhill in general. and maybe make the width of the bike lane differential as to how severe that hill is, or the local speed zone of congestion there. The example you picked, Emily, that photo, is showing the minimum for the identification of a bike lane. So it is hazardous to use. It doesn't warn anybody in a car that there's anything there like a bike lane. There's just another line painted three feet away. So I'm thinking that if we ever want to institute bike lanes in these situations, especially uphill, that they be super bike lanes painted green, have extra wide striping, a signage, something or other, because If I were dooring or being doored in the example that you showed, and I think that was a flat place of Boston Avenue. Yeah. Yeah. So I would say, ah, geez, this is a half-assed attempt at doing it right, and it didn't succeed. So I think there are variables here that have to do with downhill, uphill, congestion, speed, and diameter of the street.

[Emily O'Brien]: They all have to be taken- The diameter of the street is the thing where if the road width is enough, then you can put in plenty of buffer and it's fine. And what I'm talking about is here, where we now have a four-foot passing law, for example. And theoretically, that still applies. If you're in a bike lane, they're still supposed to pass you with four feet. And if you figure that a person on a bicycle is roughly 30 inches wide, and a lot of the time, it's actually wider. A lot of mountain bike handlebars are wider than that. A lot of cruiser bike handlebars are wider than that. Panniers can be wider than that. A large person with their elbows sticking out is wider than that. But if you say a person on a bike is 30 inches, that's a little bit under three feet. And a minimum bike lane is five feet, and a parking lane is seven feet. If you need three feet to stay away from that car door, that I have, but- You are already hanging out. If a car door is three feet and they're parked right up to the edge of that bike lane, then you get two feet left and you're wider than two feet. And your travel lane that's next to you is 10 feet and you can have 10 foot vehicles in it. So this isn't a question for what should we do if there's actually lots of room to play with. This is a question of, is this necessarily the thing to paint in these situations where there is not mathematically enough room for these people to be on this space at the same time. Bruce?

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I think that I understand your dimensions, and I've looked through them myself. I think, practically speaking, in an urban environment like Boston and Medford in particular, That is not a practical set of criteria for deciding whether or not a bike lane fits, because we just do not have the room, period. I always contrast it to what it would look like without the bike lane there. And I'm going to have to say that I can't support your minimum concept that you're putting forth because I think what would end up happening is it would end up getting painted in a symmetrical way, thereby narrowing the uphill lane significantly and making it worse. The only thing that you've really put forth as a potential safety hazard is people who are not aware of the door zone and do not ride accordingly and that is not going to change actually if a bike lane is taken out because people will not ride in a narrow lane out where we think they ought to, because they're afraid of harassment, they're afraid of getting hit, they're just not playing comfortable with it, etc. And so I think that even though it is not ideal, I don't think we have much of a choice but to go with the absolute minimums, which is what we've done in this situation. So I've got to say at this point, I can't support this, if it would be a resolution, I can't support going that route and saying that we should only recommend them when we have a certain amount of width, otherwise we'll put sharrows in.

[Emily O'Brien]: Chris?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. I mean, I think this is a really useful conversation. There's no easy answers here. And I think I'm just reading what Adam put here in the chat, which is these urban design guidelines. And I'm wondering if maybe instead of taking a sort of binary position of like, we don't want this, maybe we do a little bit of follow-up homework of what other sort of urban guidelines are out there such as this that would be like this is you know we we support this as a strategy for designing and it may not be like outright no bike lanes but we suggest this is the preferred this is our next best and this is best so like can we get behind something that's already out there with some good research behind it that you know is our sort of stated um preference for designing new new bike lanes

[Emily O'Brien]: And I wonder also, Ernie mentioned kind of just in passing the possibility of having dotted lines on the bike lane. And a possibility could be to make the bike lane dotted and put sharrows in the travel lane in addition. And that's generally not a thing that's done. They don't usually do that unless there's a specific reason or a specific request. But that could be another. That could be another angle where if the bike lane by itself doesn't have enough width to keep you out of the door zone, then we want these extra additions to make it clear that you don't have to be in the bike lane.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I kind of think there's some creative solutions to have your cake and eat it too like that. I think that's one great suggestion. But I don't, what do you guys think? Should we?

[Emily O'Brien]: I don't think we have to. I'm not asking that we move on this today if we don't have an immediate strong consensus or anything. But I know that this will keep coming up. There's bike lanes added in a lot of these kind of minimum situations pretty often. And this is not the only one, and it won't be the last. And so I think it does make sense if we have a little bit more to offer here than just, you know, we're so desperate for a bike lane that it's okay if it's not actually a safe place to ride. And we're, you know, we're currently we're in the position where we have these door zone bike lanes that are not really a safe place to ride, but people don't feel comfortable moving out of them when they need to. And you do get harassed when you don't use the bike lane or when you move, you know, when you're just over the edge, because there's because there's somebody parked or whatever. And I think that's You know, we have this situation now, and every time we build another, I know we also have this situation in places that have no bike lanes. So I think this is something we should be thinking about, even if we don't move on it right this minute, just because it will keep coming up. Adam?

[SPEAKER_06]: I just wanted to say, I think people on bikes are going to get harassed, whether there's a bike lane or not, right? If there's not a lane and you're riding in the middle of the road, you're going to get yelled at also. Um, so I, I don't know, I, I guess if we are going to sort of support or have a resolution for anything, I would just say it's for more sharrows and more, you know, bikes may use full lane signs.

[Emily O'Brien]: And I think Todd has said in the past that they don't recommend the bikes may use full lane signs where there's a bike lane, but maybe that's something we need to push back against. Maybe that's, I mean, maybe that's what it is. But, you know, every time I go past that one stretch on Boston Ave and I see the Tufts kids riding in that bike lane, I just wonder who's going to be the first one to get doored and throwed in front of a construction vehicle. Bruce?

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I'd like to reiterate that if we remove the bike lane, that we retain the asymmetrical lane widths so that there's sufficient passing room. Otherwise, you're going to end up with a 12-foot lane and absolutely no space for anybody.

[Emily O'Brien]: Ernie, you're muted. I see you talking.

[Unidentified]: You're muted, Ernie.

[Ernie Meunier]: hitting the wrong button there. Temporary compromises to paint it green, just make it more visible. This is where you're supposed to be bicyclists, so you don't get yelled at. And this is where your door is going to open, because it is a bike lane construction worker, even if you spill your coffee.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Sorry, on that note, Ernie, does anyone find that the green painted lanes are more slick when it's wet? Yes.

[Ernie Meunier]: I, yeah, easily remedied by using textured paint, as is.

[Emily O'Brien]: It's, I think the texture also starts out pretty good and then it wears off and you're and you end up with paint with the grit.

[Ernie Meunier]: It has 20 year life. Like in car auctions, where they use a lot of their safety paint, cars go around them and people have to have traction and icy boots throughout the day. They're remarkably useful and can be, I won't say lifelong, but certainly multiple years, if not decades. It's a matter of how much money you want to spend, really is.

[Emily O'Brien]: Um, so it is 9 o'clock. Um, we had.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Can I just share my screen real quick? Because I just quickly found something that I think is. So, elucidating the dash line concept here and some different bike markings. So there is. this advisory bike lanes in narrow streets. It's sort of a two-way road where bicyclists can go over, but cars can as well for narrow roads. But it could actually be a desirable thing to have. What authority is this? This is Bike Minnesota, Bike Alliance of Minnesota. OK.

[Ernie Meunier]: That's Tim Cain.

[Emily O'Brien]: He probably didn't write it.

[Ernie Meunier]: I don't know. He's good.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: They have a three-foot passing law there, apparently.

[Bruce Kulik]: Could you put a reference in the chat, please?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. But I mean, I think, I guess where I would land on this, personally, is doing some kind of follow-up research to figure out, like, what is the right? And there's so much out there. A lot of research has been done. Like, can we sort of say, like, here is our, What we subscribe to is the best practices, and we advocate for when we're evaluating designs or trying to push for new lanes.

[Emily O'Brien]: That's good. Thank you.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: And I like the link that Adam sent to. That was a really nice one.

[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. So we can revisit this in the future at the next meeting or at another one. And I think those are good ideas. I think that definitely makes a lot of sense. I think none of this is, nothing gets painted over the winter. It's not like it's a huge emergency, but I think it's something that is worth spending some time and some thought on because it's going to keep coming up.

[Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to make a motion. Yeah. Are we ready to move on to the next piece? Because I wanted to make a motion.

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

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I want to make a motion that we table this until the next meeting. And I would like to move it as the first item in the agenda, possibly at the expense of other items that we, cause we never seem to get to this and it's an important issue. Okay. That's my motion.

[Emily O'Brien]: Do you have a second? I second it. All in favor?

[SPEAKER_03]: Aye. Aye. Aye.

[Emily O'Brien]: All opposed? Great. Thank you. This is tabled until next meeting and we'll put it early on the agenda so that we make sure that we give it the attention that it's due.

[Bruce Kulik]: Motion to adjourn. All right. Thanks all.

[Emily O'Brien]: Seconded. All in favor?

[SPEAKER_03]: Aye. Aye. Aye. All right, good night, Kerr. Good night.

[Emily O'Brien]: Bye.

[Unidentified]: We seconded the deck.