Bicycling Advisory Commission: Chair Election and Road Safety Advocacy - 2026-07-22

AI-generated summary. Written by gemini-3-flash-preview from the transcript below, which is the record. It may be incomplete or wrong; it does not report votes. Every item links to the moment it began.

The commission elected Chris Stivers as the new chair following the resignation of the previous chair. Members also established a working group to engage with local police on road safety and enforcement following a recent cyclist fatality.

1:30 Approval of Minutes — Approved the minutes for the June 2026 meeting.
2:25 Chair Resignation Announcement — Outgoing chair Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller announced his resignation effective in August due to moving out of the city.
5:00 A Simple Machine Film Presentation — Filmmaker Mark presented his indie film about cycling economics and requested the commission's help in connecting with local cycling groups for future screenings.
21:33 Election of New Chair — Elected Chris Stivers to the position of chair.
26:23 Vice Chair and Secretary Positions — Tabled the election of a vice chair and secretary until the next meeting.
29:12 Farmers Market Tabling — Coordinated volunteer coverage and logistics for the Farmers Market Bike Fest scheduled for July 30th.
34:28 Upcoming Fall Events — Approved participation in Tufts Community Day on October 4th and the Harvest Your Energy festival on October 17th.
37:27 South Medford Connector Path — Voted to sign onto a Historical Commission letter supporting a riverfront path for the South Medford Connector while acknowledging a temporary ramp as an interim measure.
44:57 Road Safety Advocacy and Police Engagement — Formed a working group to meet with the Medford Police Department to discuss cycling safety enforcement, data tracking, and incident reporting following a recent fatality.
1:11:15 Legislative Advocacy Petitions — Authorized the chair to sign road safety petitions and legislative advocacy letters on behalf of the commission between regular meetings.
1:36:22 Routine Maintenance and Bike Rack Reports — Reviewed a complaint regarding a West Medford bike rack and confirmed that the Medford Square bike lane is currently marked with appropriate no-parking signs.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I hereby call the July 2026 Medford Bicycle Advisory Commission meeting to order. Secretary, will you please call the roll?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Daniel Nuzelmuller, chair. Present. Emily O'Brien, vice chair.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Ernie Menier, appears absent. Noam Reveni. Is he still with us?

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: No, Noam handed in his resignation via email, I want to say like a month or two ago.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Okay, he is gone. Mary Kate Gustafsson. What about her?

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I have not heard anything from Mary Kate. I should reach out to her. I'll make a note.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: was interested in scaling back, but I don't know what her actual status is with regard to membership. Similar. In any event, she's absent. Adam Shire appears absent. And Chris Stivers? Present. Present. OK. With five out of nine, we have a quorum. We can proceed.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Okey dokes. Let's see. Do I hear a movement to approve the minutes for June 2026? So moved. Second. All right, I hear a second. That was from, oh my god, my brain is shutting off. I'm sorry. Yep. All right. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed? Okay, hearing none, the ayes have it. So June 2026, minutes are approved.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Moving to announcements. The bicycle film at Regent Theater, A Simple Machine. Mark, would you like to say a few words? Oh, wait, before we do that, were there any announcements? Oh, I'm sorry, I thought that this was part of the announcements on the agenda. I don't think we have any. The only announcement that I think we're all aware of is I will probably be officially changing my address out of Medford mid August. Either that or late August, so I may or may not be able to be a member at the next meeting so. I think we're going to go over this a little bit later, but just wanted to call that out that I will. I will probably try and call in once or twice as just a member of the public. Um, afterwards, but, uh, you know, I will not have any voting rights. So I just want to make that, uh, let you all know I'm not totally disappearing, uh, at least you next few months, but, you know, uh, the chair will be vacant. Hopefully not. We'll miss you. Thank you. Thank you. I hope that, uh, I didn't steer the ship too too much into uh you know the through the rocks yeah no not the suez canal right uh god where where was the strait of hormones yes yeah yeah no then i then i can get it

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Just a thank you, Daniel, for all the effort and hard work you put into being a member of the commission.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Thank you. I feel like we've made a lot of progress in the last year, and I really credit that a lot to all of you driving things forward that have probably been you know, just hovering in a few spots here and there. But, you know, I hope I think we're on a good on a good path forward to help make cycling safer and more enjoyable for all of Medford. So, yeah.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: And with that, next time I see a bike lane I don't like in Northampton, I'll know who to complain to.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll see if I join the the Bicycle Commission out there, try to get myself on the Traffic Commission or something. Who knows? I'll figure that out in a bit.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Well, thank you, everyone. I appreciate the, you know, I'm glad that I've not left, you know, you're not all like, all right, now get out the door, Dan. Thank God, finally. All right. Okay, with that, on to the bicycle film from Mark. Does that work for everyone? All right. Take it away.

[SPEAKER_04]: Hey, guys, can you hear me fine and see me fine? Yes. Thank you. Well, yeah, it's this is the first meeting I've done of this sort. So, yeah, normally I'm yeah, we've been doing a lot of festivals with our film. I've been connecting with people through email and stuff, but just For some context, we did this indie film about two years ago. We shot it. It took a long, you know, this is something that's, it's all self-funded film out of Portland, Oregon. A lot of filmmakers here.

called Powell's, which is a big kind of renowned bookstore. And it did well, there's kind of a cult novel and all about a guy trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life. And he's totally devoted to his bike. And so that was the book. And then we worked for a long time on the screenplay. And we shot this about two years ago. And we've been going to film festivals, we've done really well at film festivals. You know, it's hard for an indie film that's off the radar of Hollywood or the studio kind of system to get a foothold, but we've done really well. And now we are self-releasing our film in theaters, indie theaters, art house theaters around the country. And so we've just started that process. We have our first show in Seattle next week. and we've been talking with the Regent Theater in Arlington, I guess. I've never been out to Boston, so I'm not quite sure of all the geographical, where everyone's situated, but I think you guys are close to Arlington, right?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, the Regent Theater is probably about a mile from my house, personally. I live in the western part of Medford. Same. And it's, you know, people go there all the time for offbeat films, I'd say, and performances from time to time.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I saw a cycle touring film there a year or two ago. And also one quick clarification.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I'm sorry to interrupt. You said Portland. I presume you mean Oregon, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. Yeah, I know. There's two Portland's. Yeah. At least. What else? So yeah, we've finished this project. It's to tell you about the story. It's about a guy trying... It's really about... It's about economics and affordability and a guy trying to get himself out of debt and the bicycle symbolically is this thing that helps him get out of debt. He gives up his car. He devotes himself to fixing up an old bike. He starts shedding things. So it's a lot of the film is a commentary on consumerism. And the bike in the story is this symbol for economic independence.

So as the reason I was and that's why I was interested in the story. I'm not a huge cyclist myself. A lot of the people who worked on the film are avid cyclists. But the bike and the story is really about the symbol of economic independence. And what's been very interesting about this project, as we've shown at festivals and theaters around the country, we've been kind of spontaneously organizing bike rides. We did the first one in Indianapolis. We did the big one in Cleveland. We've done obviously in Portland. There's a big bike community out here. And so what I didn't expect to happen with this project is how it would connect so well with the bike community and how so many cities around the country are just looking back at their structure and infrastructure and trying to bring bicycling and other forms of self-propulsion that are outside of cars

the importance of that and how it helps people, you know, in tougher economic situations, but also it just gives freedom and just beautifies the city. And so these bike events have kind of happened spontaneously around the film. And now as we book theaters, I've just been reaching out to bike groups like your group to see if they want to be part of part of the showing or the screening or the event, if that's a platform for you guys to spread the word about your... your group, or you want to organize a bike ride around it.

I'm not sure yet if I'll come out to Boston. I'm hoping to. But I just wanted to pretty much put this opportunity out there. We're going to be coming. And if these groups are interested in planning a ride around it, if that, I don't know if you guys do that sort of thing. Yeah, this is the first official meeting I've been a part of, so.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. Do you have a date yet? We have a date. Can you hold on one second?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I've been- Yeah, you can send it to us a little bit later. I just wanted to make sure that you had a real event that you weren't still kind of fishing around to figure out if you're going to do this or not before we proceed with further questions.

[SPEAKER_04]: No, we're going to do it. And that's why there is some flexibility though, because I did want to leave it open and the booker who I'm working with and the owner of the theater we wanna try to find the time that works with any bike group that wants to partner. So there's some flexibility there, but we're looking, I think it's beginning of October, like first or second week of October is the window that the theater was talking about. And that's what I wanted. Yeah.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: One suggestion, if you haven't, I would get in touch with Charles River Wheelers. which is a cycling club in this area. They're pretty big. They have a lot of events. We have sometimes very rarely run rides, but we don't tend to do a lot of that. But Charles River Wheelers brings people in from all over the metro area. And they would be a good place to go check. Also, I'm not sure if Arlington Bicycle Club is still active these days. That would be another one.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: CRW.org. Would it make sense to actually, Mark, I'm not sure. Have you reached out to our Arlington equivalent? They also have a bicycle commission that we could put you in contact with. And since it's in Arlington, I mean, you might also get some traction there.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I would love that. I reached out to some bigger groups in Boston, but it's sometimes it's hard to, you know, Boston is such a big area. I don't have the specific contacts to some of these smaller groups. That would be wonderful. And if you have any emails to pass along, that would also be amazing.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Another question I have, Mark, is- I think we can do that.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, okay. Mark, is the organization that is doing this a nonprofit organization? Are you incorporated as such? Are you incorporated as a corporation or exactly what's the structure, I guess, that we're getting at of the organization that's pushing this forward?

[SPEAKER_04]: It's an indie film. It's just me. So every indie film you kind of create, I guess, you know, I register as a business. It's not a nonprofit. We are trying to... but we are not profitable. I can't be totally honest about that. It's an art project. It's a film.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: The reason I ask that is I mentioned in my email that we need to be a little circumspect about endorsing commercial ventures. And although it's, you know, you're not making any money and it's an indie film, it would appear that it is a commercial venture. And so we need to figure out if we did anything you know, what we could possibly do as a city commission that's not in any conflict with, you know, endorsing a private business.

So I don't know what folks think on what we might do, could do, want to explore.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I, my guess is there's probably a non city based group that might be better at sort of. Organizing a ride, and we can be, we can participate in helping champion the ride portion of it. And so let's say Charles River Watershed or Charles River Wheelers organizes the ride that we can help promote. Like, hey, there's a ride happening without directly promoting a film. And we can certainly help connect you to there's lots of groups in this area outside of Austin, as we've seen a couple of. I don't know if you see the chat here, but there's a bunch here that we're coming up for options.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: The other thing about city groups is we're a city commission. if you're not from this area you might not realize that in this area all of the cities are really small and jammed up next to each other and they're all completely separate municipalities and their governments run all different ways and some of them have a bicycle commission which is kind of more city official and some of them have a bike committee that's not that structure and so some of those just depending on how that committee or commission or group is run, some of them will have more flexibility in this regard than others. And so we're kind of limited in what we can do because we're an official city appointed commission. But every city is a little bit different. And, you know, Arlington is right next door and Medford is what four miles across. I mean, this is,

All of the cities in this vicinity are all a little different and they all have a group kind of like us. But they're all a little different and some of them are going to be more. Restrictive in this regard than others, but there also are a whole bunch of just regular cycling clubs. That, you know, organizing rides is the central thing that they do. Most of what groups like us do is like. Has to the city for better bike lanes and stuff so.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to make a motion that we basically just put Mark in touch with the groups that we know of that are basically non-city affiliated. And maybe even like Arlington, since we know them as well. I'm thinking there's, you know, I've been in touch with Viking Brookline, done some rides with them, and there could be other few organizations in the area that might be interested in helping to sponsor it. I don't know if other organizations like kickstand cafe do that kind of thing or whether it's in competition with what they might do.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Quad cycles might do something. They're a bike shop in Arlington and they organize rides out of the shop sometimes.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, so that might be the kind of thing where, you know, as separate commercial entities and non-municipal organizations, they would be able to help out in organizing and so forth. So, actually, I don't know if we really need a motion for that or if we can just, a few people can maybe You know, provide mark with some information.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: What do we want to do if we can have his email address in the chat? Maybe the.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and my apologies. I'm not on my computer, so it's hard. I can't see the chat stuff. But Bruce, you might have my email there. Yes.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yes. OK. Let me provide that. And also, while we're looking at the chat, I see that somebody had mentioned the possibility that there are two other theaters that do, well, three, I guess, that do these kinds of films as well. Brattle Theater, Coolidge Corner Theater, Somerville Theater, and what's the other theater in Arlington?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: And I know there's a wrinkle there because Capital and Somerville Theater just got sold.

[SPEAKER_04]: Is that what you're going to say? And I'll just say, you know, from our end, it's very hard. Theaters have so many, you know, restrictions you guys are talking about. I totally get. And then you would be amazed by all the restrictions that theaters have in showing movies, especially indie movies. And so the one in Arlington, the region, they're open to that. Like this is the one theater that we have to work with. So my booker knows the kind of ones to reach out to all around the country and the region is one of those. So, but I appreciate that extra information.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's a simple machine, the movie at Gmail. But I can also send afterwards, I can send you an email back Bruce and just, and then yeah, I'm super grateful if you guys are able to pass on any of the more like just community-based groups, that would be wonderful. And mostly really just getting the word out, you know, it's for any group that might find, might like the project and find it being, you know, useful to do a bike event around it for their own advocacy.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: All right. There's Mark's address in the group. Oops. You know what? That's... Hang on.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Zachary, did you have... That's it. Question, comment, yeah.

[CAS00002535_SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, sorry, I don't know what the procedure is for a member of the public. But I just wanted to say, so I'm right across the border in Somerville, actually, near the Somerville Theater. If there's something that having someone who's in the neighborhood and is a degree of separation from that theater can do to help, I would love to help if I can. my emails in the chat, and I'm also a regular volunteer with Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville Bike and Street Advocacy Organization. So I'm very happy to help pass any message along to the leadership of those groups.

[CAS00002535_SPEAKER_05]: It's zmyaro at zmyaro.com. Z as in Zachary, M-Y-A-R-O.

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I really appreciate you guys, yeah, being interested in our project and I'll let you get to more official matters, but I appreciate it and thanks for the time.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: So here's what I'm going to do as well. I'm going to send a note out to everybody that has his address and what we kind of recap. And just independently as interested people, we can send him information as we see fit. That all good with everybody?

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: All right, let's see. And with that, moving on to the election of a new chair. I think I already gave a little info on this. I think we are looking for someone to take over the chair position. And I believe that Chris has expressed interest in that position.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Go for it. I said, did you say Chris is interested or Chris is interested?

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Maybe my connection here is a bit. I wanted to clarify. No, no, I know we can't. I know that we can't get you to take that position again. I understand that.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I am interested. Yeah. And I, you know, it's been a, I think I've been here for coming up on a year now, and it's been, I think, for me, really fun to get more involved in the city and, and I'm excited, excited to see what the commission can do in, you know, really help drive some improvements in the cycling infrastructure. Cycling safety in Medford forged these connections with all these great groups in the area and would be more than honored to take that role. I will caveat with two small kids and a wife who's going back to work in the fall. I am going to have some restrictions on my time and so we'll certainly need the support of the rest of the group in terms of working events and doing the in-person work. But I also, you know, if there's other folks interested in the position too.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: A point of order, a point of order here. We actually need to go through a little bit formal approach here. I know it's very dry and seems not necessary, but I've spelled it out. We first need to vote to elect a new chair, then we need nominations, then we need a roll call vote or affirmation if no one else is running. We can run through that quickly, but Daniel, you're the one that's got to proctor all this.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: All right. All in favor. All right. All opposed. Okay, hearing none, the ayes have it. So we will move to elect a new chair. All right, wait, from here, what, we do the nominations, Bruce?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, nominations, and you know, you basically ask if there's anyone else who wants to be nominated, et cetera. Hearing none, you know, we move on.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yep, okay, so do I hear any nominations for the chair position?

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: OK, so I have two nominations for Chris. All right, do I hear any other nominations? And OK, hearing none, I hear only nominations for Chris Stivers. So I think we'll move forwards to, I guess, a vote. Wait, to a vote at this point, Bruce?

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: All right, vote of affirmation. Wait, how does the affirmation?

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Correct. Congratulations, you are now the chair. So in that case, I finally can make motions again, which is a great feeling, because I can't make motions. I just have to wait.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yes. And thank you all for putting up with my pedantic Robert's Rules of Orders.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I'm glad someone's holding us to it. Daniel, I'll request that maybe you and I connect offline sometime to go through the procedural elements or Bruce either. Yeah, I can help you with that for sure. Thanks.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I won't say I'm an expert parliamentarian, but I know it pretty well.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I'd say you're as good of an expert as anyone, as any of us out here.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Well, great. With that election complete, shall we move on to review the vice chair and secretary positions?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I'm going to suggest that since there are not that many of us here, and I think that Bruce would sort of like for somebody else to take over as secretary, and there's not that many of us here.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Well, I wonder if we might have a more fruitful attempt at that particular task at next month. And we can, I don't know, spend the next month.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: We can certainly review that. Let me clarify my position. willing and somewhat interested in giving up the position. But it's not like I want to bail out because I don't want to do it anymore. It's just like, eh, it's kind of work, and I kind of don't want to do it anymore. But if no one else wants to do it, then I would retain the position. So maybe we'll take your suggestion, and I'll continue to seek nominations separately if people are interested, and we can review that next week, next month, rather.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: And otherwise, it sounds like you're not going to get a motion to review the vice chair position or the secretary position at this point. Do we need a motion to table this for next meeting? Yes, I'll move to table the secretary position decision to next meeting.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Aye. Aye. The motion passes. Do we need to do the same thing for the chair, vice chair?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: No, I think we just don't do anything because there's not sufficient interest. We don't need to vote to elect a new chair. So there's like a nothing, right?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: For clarifying where I stand on that, where I stand on that is I'm happy to keep doing it. And I'm also happy for somebody to take over if desired. It has typically been somebody who has been chair before, which is kind of useful, but it's also certainly doesn't have to be that way either. So. If there's an arm you feel like twisting or whatever, like I said, I'm happy to keep doing it, but I'm also happy for somebody else to take over and I can go either way.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: OK. So we'll table both till next month. OK. Great. Let's move on to farmers market tabling. And is that, Bruce, that's yours?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Well, we were going to look for a champion last time around, but I have become the de facto champion on that one somehow. And that's fine. So basically, we've got the Farmers Market Bike Fest, which we've gone to every year, July 30th. So what is that? That's a little over a week. I guess it's... Wait, when's the market? Yeah, it's a week from tomorrow. Okay. So looking for volunteers, you know, I can actually go there the whole time. I'll be there to set up for sure. And, you know, would like to get some more volunteers. So again, we have kind of a short staff today, right? But maybe I should offline look for people who can help out.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Just a thought, is it worth, since our commission membership is down to, Simone, did you have a question?

[Simon Alcindor]: I'd love to help out with that if needed, though. That's what I was just gonna say. Amazing.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: You know what, we've had people of the public help us before, so I think we can take Simon up on that offer.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, that's kind of what I was getting at with where I was going to head with this. Given membership is down with folks leaving just the last couple of months, I think it's a great idea to see if there's others in the community who want to just participate. That'd be great.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: It's probably not even not a bad idea to chase down some former commission members and see if any of them are potentially willing or interested, too, if we need more people.

[Jared Powell]: I think Bike to the Sea will be there. Maybe we can ask Pat to abandon his table and come over to our table. Will Bike to the Sea be at this one? I thought so. I thought Pat told me that. I could be mistaken, but they often come to things like this.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, Bruce, I would volunteer. I need to check with my wife. She has an event that evening, so I'll be on kiddo duty. But I'll see if maybe there's an hour or so I could stop by earlier at least.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: OK, that brings up actually the next point, which is kind of related to you. At some point, you had kind of quasi-volunteered to be the lead for an evening ride on the Northern Strand Trail.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, yeah, I can speak to that. I haven't figured out a date with Bike to the Sea yet, but we've been talking about it. We need to hash out a date, but probably at some point in August at this point, we can make it happen.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: And would it be still from the Farmer's Market in your thinking, or not necessarily?

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, that was the plan that we talked about. Farmer's market, longer ride up and back. So I'll let everyone know as soon as we have a final date for that, but it's a casual thing.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: All right. So I'm just noting that I do think it's going to be in August. That's fine. All right. We don't have any other action then other than for my other people to show up. How many folks do you need for Bike Fest tabling? It's useful to have two on the table at the same time. And it's also useful for people to have no more than two hours at a time, just because four hours is a long time to be hanging out there.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I think you can also cut down and show up at 3.30, stay till 6.30. I mean, I think see what numbers we get, but I think we could. Yeah, I mean, we should we should connect again with Adam because I'm trying to remember all the things we discussed after the tough stay last fall where we had, you know, we're talking about getting. all stickers with our QR code for the website to direct folks there to try to make the tabling a little bit more useful other than, I mean, the feedback is always great for folks, but what were the other lessons we learned from tabling? Because I don't think we've done tabling since then, right? Have we done a tabling activity since Tufts Day?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Harvest Our Energy, maybe? Or was that before Tufts Day?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: That's, I think it was before, yeah, I don't know. We're coming up on almost a year though. I'll reach out to Adam.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, so I've been contacted by Tufts, speaking of Tufts, and Harvest Your Energy about our participation. Again, those are two items that we've traditionally gone to. Sunday, October the 4th, and Harvest Your Energy, Saturday, October the 17th. So I think the main thing is for us to just make sure we have a champion who's going to do all the things necessary. And that means, oh, actually, no, I don't think we yet voted to go to those two. So those could be the two things that we really need to do. And then we need to have a champion that will follow through on, you know, filling out any paperwork and then getting people volunteered and so forth. So I will make a motion that we attend the Tufts Community Day.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Okay. Okay, all in favor of attending tough community day on October 4th.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I'm going to, I think, since I'm not going to be here, I'm, I will abstain.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Or, oh, so we did we lose Jared? Do you need my vote? I mean, I can realize this may be improper, Bruce. You can correct me.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I think it doesn't matter how you vote, but we need Jared in the room for the vote to count.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. Or maybe. Let's circle back to this. Okay. I mean, I assume we'll go through the same thing. Harvester Energy, Bruce, anything you want to say about that event?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: You know, it's kind of one of the premier events we're at. And certainly if we were going to cut down on any events, I would cut down on Tufts before I cut down on Harvester Energy. Not that I think we need to do that, but it's just, you know, A lot of people from Medford show up. And so we do, we've traditionally had a lot of outreach regarding what we do and so forth at that event. Where is that one? It's next to the middle schools in Riverbend Park. Got it.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Every year it falls on the same weekend as ghost train trail race that I go to. I'll have to do that one.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: All right, so we'll come back to those. Let's move on to the South Medford Connector. Bruce?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, so I got contacted by Ryan Hayward, vice chair of the Medford Historical Commission. They held a meeting on July 13th and they had actually asked if we had any comments to make regarding the regarding the path. And I said that since we are an official commission and we didn't have a chance to vote on it, we wouldn't be able to make any formal commentary about it. But what I've done is I've added the items that he provided, which are all mostly DCR items that talk about what the plan is. And people might want to look at it. But he's asking whether or not we want to provide support of the letter that they sent regarding having the path go closer to the river. So we'll come down to having a vote. Oh, wait, I saw Jared.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, Jared's back. And good timing, Jared. You had sent out the email about this. Historical commission meeting, did you attend that meeting?

[Jared Powell]: No, I wasn't able to, unfortunately, but I think I kind of understand the gist of it, though.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, and I saw, thanks for sending that email out too. I looked at some of the materials and, you know, without having gone into too much detail, I think it's something that we would generally want to support. So, Bruce, to me it makes sense that we should I don't know if there's a need for additional voice support as a commission. For what? Assuming we do agree with the path and the plan and the latest letter, but I think that had helps add some additional voice, voice of relevant groups in the city.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I agree that we should as well. Um, the, uh, the one reason we. way of creating a path. And that was my understanding and I'm thinking that maybe that's not the DCR's understanding anymore. That they thought that that was a permanent solution as opposed to having it near the river. So I would be in favor of pushing it more towards the river personally, but not at the expense of not getting a path in there even if temporary.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I was going to say the exact that near the river looks nice and that would be nicer than the original plan, but I would rather have something than nothing. And if, you know, if the, if the near the river plan involves enough additional complication that it doesn't happen, then I would, I wouldn't want to see that happen. And if the original, my understanding also, I thought was that the original path was temporary and they were going to have to

a nicer way of doing it, a more permanent way. But whatever we advocate for, I don't want to push for the pretty path at the expense of getting any path.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I'd like to move that we support the- Sorry, Jared had a- Andrea's first. Go ahead, Jared.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I had a similar take. I would request specifically that our feedback is that we recognize that one is a temporary solution and that one is a long-term solution, and that we'd be very careful to not suggest that it would be acceptable to choose a short-term, let's call it, worse option And that that would simply be good enough, because it's better than no option. That we be clear that we view one as a Band-Aid and one as the actual goal. And we are not supportive of making the worst option a permanent option for the sake of expediency. I don't want to lose that second option. We support both. One is an interim solution until the other one happens. But we want the better one to happen as quickly as possible. That's kind of my take on it.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: As a commission, we sign on to the letter, but recognize that the temporary solution is better than no option at all. But not as a permanent solution.

[Jared Powell]: Sorry about disappearing there for a minute. My battery died with no warning.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Better than kid waking up screaming. Anything else South Medford Connector before we move on Bruce?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: No, that's basically what it was. You know, everyone should be aware of it. And, you know, it's great that there'll be another path across the river. And yeah, even better if it was right along the river instead of up on the highway. Yeah.

[Jared Powell]: I recall a year or two ago, we got a report from Todd about a walking audit the city did of the idea of putting a path along that. I don't remember exactly who it was, but concerns about being hit by cars in the process of that audit because it felt so dangerous.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I did join a ride on that ramp several months ago. I forget exactly when. It wasn't that bad, but you know, it's not for everybody. Everyone knows that I tend to be a little bit more, what's the word? Risk tolerant. Yeah. Maybe that's the word. Right.

[Jared Powell]: You're that guy I see riding in the HOV lane on 93 all the time.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I don't go in the tunnel anymore though. I stopped doing that.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Why don't we circle back, Jared? We postponed our votes on our motions to vote on having the Tufts Community Day and tabling at Tufts Community Day and Harvester Energy Day. So let's go back to that now that we have quorum again. So did I hear a motion to table at Tufts Community Day and Harvester Energy Day? Can we group them into one?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I'll make a new one. I would like to motion that we attend both Tufts and Harvester Energy.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: All in favor of attending both Tufts Community Day and Harvest Your Energy Day this year? Aye. All in favor, the ayes have it. And Emily, do you want to give us the summary of the tragic accident?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Before we do that, just, we want to get a champion for those two items. So I'm, I'm volunteering to be the toughest champion.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I cannot attend harvester energy, so I can't champion that.

[Jared Powell]: Um, I'm pulling out my calendar harvester energy is, is what day? October 17th, Saturday.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: You don't necessarily need to attend. You just need to organize it, whoever's the champion.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I can't make the commitment on that day. And I'll attend it if I can.

[Jared Powell]: I can be the champion for that. I should be able to attend. Thank you. I usually go to that anyway.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: So probably most of you or probably everyone here is aware that Lou is a guy who worked for the city of Boston, was recently killed in a crash in Boston on Tremont Street. And I wanted to bring this up in case there's anything we wanted to do either as a direct response to this or as a kind of a kick in the seat of the pants for any of our other safety-related initiatives. What came to mind initially is that it's a little bit unclear what happened. It might have been Um, it, initially it looks like it might have been a right hook and John Allen thought it might've been a right hook. And then what the Globe published looks like the truck driver wasn't actually turning right. They were swerving to go around a vehicle that was trying to turn left. Um, but what immediately strikes, comes to mind either way is we've had a number of complaints of harassment of cyclists in Medford. And an important part of the harassment issue is that the things you can do as a cyclist that stands the best chance of protecting you from some of those types of crashes, especially since we don't have bike lanes in most places in Medford anyway, are exactly the kinds of things that will get you harassed. So cyclists are really resistant to, for example, taking the lane and people end up riding to the right of traffic and putting themselves into positions where those types of crashes are more likely to happen. Nobody should ever feel like they can't use the best strategies they have available because they're going to get harassed by someone who doesn't know the rules or doesn't care.

And we did have a couple of meetings with the police department about this. We didn't get really very far in the second meeting. The person we met with was extremely distracted and didn't really seem to be paying a lot of attention to vote. we were saying. Um, but I think this is, um, this is another, we have a couple of reasons why this might be a good time to circle back and pester them and maybe come up with a more specific list of asks. And we can bring up the Louisa Gagg fatality. We can also bring up that we have a new chair and we want to introduce a new chair or whatever, whatever we need to do to come up with reasons why this is the time. Um,

I would say we should we should come up with a specific list of kind of questions and requests, one of which is be that they need to have somebody on the force who rides a bike in Medford. Inviting. some of the traffic division on a ride with us at a, you know, at a, well, it's still summer because the traffic picks up quite a bit in the fall. And while I'd like them to see that, I also understand that it is easier for somebody who's kind of scared of it to do it in the summer.

I would like to know what they have to say about how they track incidents that involve bicyclists, whether that is actually tracked separately from pedestrians. And so I think it's important to kind of come up with a list of specific questions and requests. And I think we also should have a lot more both buy-in and communication from the police department about things like the speed limit and the four-foot passing law, and the bike may use full lane signs and all that stuff, because they have a credibility with certain groups of people that we do not.

So, you know, we can help them, we can help share a post that they make, for example. But I think that posts coming from, on social media, for example, that come from the police department are viewed differently than posts that come from us. And I think that's important as well. So I think there are a lot of things We have a lot of potential, there's a lot we can do here, but we should get the ball rolling again with a list of specific things that we're after. And some of them can be easy short-term things, and some of them can be longer-term things. Having a full-time officer on a bicycle is probably a longer-term thing because they don't have that position currently, but it's something we should be looking towards.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Um, when we spoke to them before they were talking about how many fewer officers they have than they used to. So I don't know if that's that they don't, that they are, have open positions that they can't recruit candidates for, or if they just don't have the budget for as many positions as they would like or used to have. So I don't know if the hangup is really essentially budgetary or if it's a question of finding qualified people for what.

[Simon Alcindor]: I just wanted to know, at least with this, because I actually following up literally yesterday, I just passed by the ghost bike and memorial. I will say that like, With this, it's not even a place where there isn't any infrastructure. Like, there is currently an unprotected bike lane there that obviously is not much help. And I think it really highlights the fact that, like, there needs to be more of a push just straight up for more infrastructure. I also, like, the thing that pops in my head, like, basically immediately after hearing about it is,

I don't believe the Medford has a cycling safety ordinance like Cambridge, Boston do. So I think that now would probably be a good moment to push for that. Yeah, I don't know if that necessarily needs to go through this group. I mean, at least like formally, but I'm willing to talk to city council about that and I would presume that they're pretty amenable to that.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I think it would be. And yeah, I think that's a good point. I don't know too much about what the cycling ordinances entails in other cities. And maybe, Zachary, if you want to chime in first before we get into that.

[CAS00002535_SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, just from my experience, as I said earlier, I don't know if I'm a member of the public, not on the commission, and I live just across the border in Somerville. But yeah, one point on the previous thing, Boston doesn't currently have a Safe Streets Ordinance. That's one of the things that Boston Cyclist Union has been kind of redoubling our efforts to push them to adopt, like Cambridge and Somerville have. I don't know how things are as far as the politics of making it happen in Medford, but getting protection on bike lanes. One of the biggest, I joke about it with friends, but it's also true, like you can tell you've crossed into Medford because the flex posts go away.

There's a painted bike lane where Louisa died, but the lack of any sort of barrier is what allowed the truck to swerve into the bike lane to pass the stopped car, is what it sounds like. Something that doesn't require that sort of infrastructure change is, does Medford have any sort of movement to formally legalize the Idaho stop? It's usually called cyclists being able to treat a stop sign as a yield sign and be able to cross an intersection on a pedestrian signal without worrying about that a police officer is going to harass them for that.

like other drivers making it the law doesn't necessarily stop the harassment but it's at least something that you can point to because those are also the sorts of things that help avoid right hooks if you can get just that little bit ahead of drivers in the right lane and get in their field of view.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I know that Medford doesn't have any movement about the Idaho stop Um, I suspect that that would be a hard sell in Medford until it has already happened in all of the surrounding towns. Um, and my concern with it actually is that this, the state of Mass in general and, um, and Medford and every other city around here in particular have also done really not a great job of publicizing the forfeit to pass law. And a lot of drivers screaming at cyclists or posting on the Internet or whatever are unaware that a bicyclist is allowed to use the lane in the first place. So they complain about cyclists running red lights now and

who's gonna, if we don't actually have the ability to publicize the changes that happened recently that were statewide and we can't even tell them that you have to pass by four feet now, I think that's gonna be a hard sell and hard to make that productive unless we can figure out how to actually get that message across when it happens. One thing I just want to say briefly too about the issue with protected bike lanes in Medford is that we do have disproportionately a lot of roads that either are super narrow and narrower than a lot of them in Somerville. And we just do not geometrically have the space.

And then the other thing is that we have a disproportionate number of roads that belong to the state that are DCR or MassDOT. And so between those two things, there's a lot of, we really have a lot of limitations about where protected bike lanes could geometrically go in a lot of cases. I think we could also work harder at getting some of them, but that is also that both of those things are also.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I think someone had something and then Bruce after someone, anything else you want to add there?

[Simon Alcindor]: Yeah, I just wanted to say, at least for the cycling safety ordinance, from what I'm aware of, but I might not be the most, like, I'm not necessarily the most educated on it. It basically mandated, like, certain benchmarks for building bike lanes, which would be, like, according to the plan, like, I know Medford has a plan currently, basically mandating that the city actually work to enforce that plan. Um, which is why, like, considering that Medford already has a plan, I think it would be something that would be feasible and something that, like, we could do. I think the issue would probably be funding there, but, you know, that's a whole separate thing.

Then, yeah, I don't remember what the other thing... Oh, and I was gonna say, at least for... I think that it's... In a lot of cases with at least city council, I, again, like, I think that the city council itself is amenable to it. I don't know what the rules would have to be with, like, going through, like, traffic commission and the state. I know probably with some of that stuff, with, like, home rule petitions. But, like, at least the city council, I don't doubt, would be amenable to it just based off, like, what I'm aware from other projects and whatnot and, like, where they generally stand politically. But, yeah.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I have one other question or something to think about. And maybe this is something we vote on now, or maybe we vote on it next week, next month after we think about it for a month. If we are actually having met with the police department, the first meeting we had with them, Um, you know, we came in saying after a number of really bad harassment incidents had been described to them and passed around the city council and the mayor. Um, and we came in with some of our concerns and the first thing that we heard was, well, what about all those bikers who run red lights? And I.

think that politically and in terms of getting the police department to actually help us, it might be more productive to say to them, we do think the rules apply to everybody. We don't mind if you pull somebody over for running a red light. They're not supposed to do that. But that is important to point out why they often do that. And you need to make sure that we're also addressing the reasons why people think it's important to be able to do that.

And the other reason that it might be worth our while to think about enforcing the things that cyclists do that are not legal is that There are also a bunch of kids riding around on illegal e-bikes and that's through the state house now, that's gonna be more heavily regulated. There really are problems in that area that we are gonna eventually want the police department to address. And if we say you have to be hands off for anybody doing anything on a bike, but we want you to pull people over on a car for passing by less than four feet, we're not gonna get anywhere with that. Um, and so this is, this is maybe something to think about for next meeting. But if we do go to them with a request to pull people over for passing by less than four feet or for harassing, um, and for all of these things, we will probably be asked, well, what about all those people who run red lights? And we need to have an answer for that.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Bruce, you want to add something? I do. Actually, two things. One is a clarification that I wanted to find out more about. But first, regarding the Idaho stop, and there's also another state, they call it the something yield, I forget what state it is, that specifically deals with being able to roll a stop sign as opposed to being able to proceed on a red light. It's my understanding in the Commonwealth that traffic regulations are mandated at the state level, and that the individual cities and towns actually do not have the authority, other than fines on their own streets, to be able to change the traffic laws. And if you think about it, that makes sense. you don't want to be guessing every time you go into another city or town exactly what you can or can't do in that city or town. So for Medford to come up with this own version of Idaho stop or the stop sign yield would not be able to work administratively as much as I'm in favor of both of those.

So I just wanted to make that that clear. Now whether or not the city could control enforcement by the police department is a different story. That's something we'd need to have someone look into to really understand the nuances.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I mean, I think in, Zachary, you commented in the chat here that that, and that's basically what Somerville's done. They've sort of, in theory, their police department is not enforcing the Idaho stop law, method of stopping.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: But as Emily points out, you know, the general public doesn't understand any of that. Yeah, what they see is is bicycle scoff laws, even though almost every single driver is a scoff law. By not obeying the speed limit or any number of other infractions that that people just don't recognize.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: So I didn't want to dwell on that all that much. I wanted to get a clarification on one of the aspects of a Louisa gag incident that happened. People were saying that they thought after the reports, because I haven't heard any of these reports other than a truck turned, but it didn't say exactly what. We're thinking at this point that the truck entered the bike lane. Is that what we are thinking happened?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: They reported that in the Globe. That may or may not be entirely true.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: It sounded like she was on the side of the truck, in the truck's blind spot when the truck turned into the blind spot.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: The Globe just said that the truck swerved to avoid a car, but didn't specify whether it was a parked car or they swerved left. But it makes more sense now that I'm hearing this. We've seen this happen, for example, at the corner of College Avenue and Winthrop Street. If you're heading inbound, it's a similar situation where people will queue up to make a left turn and people will swerve into the bike lane to clear the parked cars. And it also points to, you know, the defensive driving aspect of it, which is understanding, helping, you know, we can help cyclists understand these sorts of mistakes belligerent or just ignorantly that drivers make to keep from getting in that kind of a situation.

We hate to do that because no one wants to give up their rights to operate on the road the way the rules say. But at the same time, for those of us who operate motor vehicles, we know that if a dump truck makes a mistake, you don't fight the dump truck and say, I'm right, kind of a thing. So as a cyclist, Even though I ride quite aggressively on the street, I'm always watching for these kinds of mistakes that can occur and trying to proactively avoid them. But in any event, we have some good suggestions about what we could do as a city about that. I think one of them was the protected bike lane is one in which at least the truck would know they were running over a bunch of

a bunch of flex posts, if nothing else, and know they had done the wrong thing. But I also didn't hear anything about the truck being cited as a result of illegal lane change, for example. That's another thing that the police ought to be able to enforce if there's an incident of that kind where it becomes a much more serious offense for the truck driver if it has a tragic ending as opposed to, oh yeah, they just made somebody stop abruptly or whatever.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: But that's where I think we should also be talking about enforcement of illegal lane changes even when nobody gets hurt. And the same with the same with a lot of the aggressive driving maneuvers that most of the time, nothing bad happens. And so everybody thinks that the bad thing is not going to happen to them. And I'm not going to be the one who kills somebody today. And it's really hard to convince them to reassess that risk calculation and make them think that they're going to kill somebody today. But you can convince them that they might get a ticket today and they still don't want to get a ticket.

[CAS00002535_SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I just wanted to quickly follow up on the question of like how it can be done at the local level when certain things can only be changed at the state level. And sometimes it is, as I said in chat, like a direction from the mayor or from the city council that the police are just to not enforce that. It's definitely imperfect because individual officers have not gotten the message or not chosen to go along with it, but it's a thing that the city can do. The other thing is just signage. Obviously, every sign costs money, so they can't do every intersection, but Cambridge wants to eliminate right turn on red, so they are gradually, intersection by intersection, putting no turn on red at every signal, starting, of course, with the highest crash intersections. And so for things like being able to cross on a walk sign, there's like a standardized bike may use ped signal sign. And again, starting with the intersections that need it most, they've been putting those up. And I think there's like a...

different variations of like sign for cars and then like accept bicycles or like stop bicycles yield or something like that. Again, like it's not as instantaneous as just passing a city level law, but it's the thing that they've been rolling out at particular intersections. Same with like the riding contraflow on traffic-combed one-way streets. Those have like a do not enter and add in accept bicycles.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, this is a great suggestions, Zachary. I appreciate it. I think, yeah, I've heard about that. I think I've seen one example in Somerville of the allowing cyclists to pass through unread. Simone, what you got?

[Simon Alcindor]: First of all, I just want to note, it's Simon. I literally just realized.

[Simon Alcindor]: I just realized that you've been pronouncing my name wrong this whole time. I figured it was, yeah, anyway, Simon. It's funny, because I had so many people mispronounce it from random phone calls from campaigns. But anyways, one of the things I wanted to note with this specifically, which I just sort of remembered, is that one of the major factors, no matter what the actual crash mechanic actually was, was the fact that the truck did not have any sort of safety guards to anyone's knowledge. And I think that stuff like that, for example, also highlights the fact that maybe one of the things that can be done is more state level advocacy, especially since this is an official city commission. I think it really does have quite a bit of more sway than most groups really could have in terms of being able to lobby our state legislators, especially since we're about to have a bunch of new state legislators, most likely following this upcoming election. So yeah, it's a thing to note.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: That's a good point, too. So I have a few thoughts here as well. I think, number one, Emily, coming back to the whole point here. Oh, sorry, Jared, why don't you tag in? I'll come back.

[Jared Powell]: Just just just quickly. Yeah, just quickly. I thought Simon made a great suggestion just then for us and one thought that I would have is that I'm unaware of what specific bills might be in the state legislature right now to push for mandatory side guards on municipal type vehicles, anything like that? I'm not sure if there is, but if there is or is not, I'd like to find out. And if there is or is not, I think that we should consider drafting a letter at least on that topic and maybe others, but at least advocating for that to our stakeholders.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Well, Chair, just to finish up on that point specifically, I would imagine that that may already be in the works from some of the other local groups and Zachary, maybe you have an idea of this, the Boston Cyclists Union, especially groups that are in Boston. probably up in arms about this and there's been a lot of public outcry and advocacy work in the wake of this. So if that's already happening, then I think it's an opportunity for us to sign on as a commission in support of a letter and then try to, you pull in other groups as well and say, hey, let's all collectively support this and get a larger coalition that is really calling for some change here.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Can I make a motion that, because sometimes this stuff comes up fast, can I make a motion that if BCU or another local group has a petition like that and is looking for groups to sign onto it, that we deputize Chris to sign onto it on our behalf if that happens before our next meeting?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I think I've heard enable the chair to take executive action regarding petitions.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Aye. Aye. OK. Great, yeah, and so I'll rely on anyone who sees that, send it my way, and we can definitely tag her name to it. And Zachary, I'm just reading this here. Do you want to maybe quickly summarize for us?

[CAS00002535_SPEAKER_05]: Leaders in the BCU passed along the message that Senator Brownsberger filed road safety amendments to the economic development bill. There are also, I don't have the bill numbers handy. I need to bug BCU folks to link them on the website if they aren't already. But there are bills dedicated to speed cameras, red light cameras, truck safety devices. and a few other road safety issues. So yeah, if they aren't already linked on the BC website, I'll nag them to link them there so you all can find them more easily. The truck safety devices, one, is also a major issue. I work at MIT, and so those are also things I could have saved Min-Ti Nguyen in 2024, as well as one of the other people who was killed by a truck in Cambridge in 2024.

Yeah, we've been pushing our legislators to move that one forward. It's disappointingly difficult to move things forward in the State House, but anything you all can do to push that bill forward would be great.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, as a point of information, we have written letters in support of that sort of legislation before Zachary. I've got a form letter I drafted a couple of years ago that was exactly on that topic.

[Jared Powell]: No, no, no. I didn't mean it that way at all. I meant that we've got precedent for doing that and should do it more. So I'm totally in support of what you're saying.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: chair do you want to forward that along as a template because um yeah i'm happy to i mean i'll want to read this uh this bill but uh i assuming there's nothing controversial for the group then i can draft a letter and send it uh to um i mean i guess we'll probably send it to our local reps which will change again here potentially in a couple months but

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Just to remind everybody too, anything like this that we sign on to as a group, you can also send a letter on your own behalf in addition. even if you copy and paste from the group letter. And you can also hassle your friends to do that too. And I think it really does make a difference if they hear from additional more people that are not just us. So if they hear about it from the Bite Commission, but then they also hear about from a bunch of random names that they've never seen before, I think that also can be really important.

So any of this, spread the word and pass it along and tell your friends to do it too.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: We've got another point of information question. I thought that we actually had some sort of a truck guard for municipal vehicles or state vehicles that had already passed. Does anyone recall that? or was that just in session?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I thought there was something like that too, but it doesn't cover everything and I don't remember the details.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: No, it certainly doesn't cover everything. That was my recollection that it didn't cover private vehicles, which would be more important.

[Jared Powell]: That was a local ordinance, like a Boston only thing. I thought it was. I have seen some of the trash trucks in Medford with those, not uniformly, but I have noticed that even- What is a safety guard?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: It goes between the front wheels and the back wheels and it extends down a good two or three feet so that there's maybe only a foot between the barrier and the roadway. The idea is that if a pedestrian or bicycle were to fall, instead of being left underneath the truck, they would be pushed out of the way so that if If they are hit, it's a glancing blow by the rear wheels. In many cases, the fatalities are caused because the person falls under the truck and is run over by the rear wheels of the truck.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that. Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His): How does it work case if I if I dropped a letter, can I send it by email before next meeting and then anyone can replicate individually or is that Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His.: : In violation, I think if it's Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His.:

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I think, yeah, as long as they're not deliberating, basically, if you take executive action, it's reasonable to inform the commission that you did so.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: But the rest of us shouldn't come respond to the email and be like, well, you should change this, and I think you should say that. That's what we can't do.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, but I can do that and then it's up to everyone if they want to copy and paste, make changes and send it individually. We all may have different, at least, reps for the Statehouse, depending where we live too. Good discussion, guys. I did want to follow up on a couple of points coming back to Emily's, you know, the original topic here and a conversation with the police department. I agree, this is a good opportunity to raise some points.

I think, you know, pulling in this conversation about the Idaho stop and, you know, whether we, that could be a good, at least a conversation to have with the police department.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: My sense, having spoken with them once, I don't think we should go there. That is my advice based on my interactions with them the first time.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Well, let's talk about what I'm saying, because personally, I think the right... I'm not actually 100% in favor of the Idaho stop. I think the right... the right sort of compromise is pedestrians universally can go on a pedestrian walk signal after a full stop.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: So the other thing that they said that is somewhat relevant is that they said, oh, well, it's only a $25 ticket. Anything you give to any ticket to a bike is only a $25 ticket, and that's not worth it. So my guess is they are not ticketing cyclists for basically anything. even things that we would probably think they ought to be ticketing people for. So since they are not actually out there writing a whole lot of tickets to bicyclists for running red lights, I don't want to start with, hey, y'all shouldn't ticket cyclists for running red lights. They're not doing that anyway. We want them to start ticketing people for doing things that are super dangerous.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, if your sense is that that's not an issue to begin with, then let's not push on it.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: And it's also very possible that they would come back again and say, hey, what about all those cyclists who run red lights? And I think a more productive answer would be, if you really think that that's a big problem and it's dangerous, you're the traffic division and you can use your judgment to pull them over for it and give them a $25 ticket. Yeah, because this is about deterrence and traffic safety. This is not about how much money you get from the tickets. And so I'd like to raise sort of don't think they're going to do that, but.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Would it make more sense because I mean, I remember being in that meeting with you, Emily. Does it make more sense to take the approach of, and I see, Simone, I see your comments there. I certainly agree. I have not seen any traffic stops in Medford in my years here. Maybe it makes more sense to take the approach of asking them what their plan for traffic enforcement is or see if we can get them to commit to doing a certain number of traffic patrols or just to increase their visibility

and sort of see where that takes us. Because you're right, it seems like cyclists are not getting the brunt of enforcement, neither are drivers. And maybe it becomes a question of like, can we push them? Can we see if the mayor will put weight behind the need of just engaging in enforcement first?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: The other thing that they seemed, or that Sergeant Canova seemed excited by the idea of anyway, and maybe this is just because it involves playing with gadgets, but he did seem kind of excited by the idea of like making videos and riding around with GoPros. And so if we could also, he was completely against the idea of ever getting on a bicycle in the city of Medford because he says it's too dangerous. which is a shame. But another way of attacking this is be like, how about we get one of us on a bike, maybe even get him on a bike, ride around with cameras and radar detector and a GoPro, try to put them in hidden spots.

And then we have some footage that we can look at and decide what to do with. And my guess is that know, if you ride around with a camera and radar every day for a while, you're probably going to have some incidents on that footage that you can go back to the police department and say, here's an example of what we're talking about.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: So maybe we should try to wrap this conversation with the police department. I guess, Emily, what do you think is the best next steps for re-engaging, having this conversation? Do you want to hash this out yourself? Do you want to form a small working group to put together a conversation? I think I would love to meet the chief and have the conversation, but I'm not going to interview on it.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Yeah my suggestion is we form either just form a working group or form a working group that has specific instructions for specific things we want to ask them about. I think the data collection is a really easy one to just ask them how they track incidents that are reported to them involving bicyclists and whether that's separate from pedestrians because a lot of places it's not and anybody that's outside of a car is a pedestrian and anybody that's inside of a car is in a car. And that doesn't give you useful data. So that would be one question. We can also just say we want to form a working group and trust the working group to come up with a specific list to circle back with them.

But I think we should have kind of a specific agenda of a handful of things that we want to ask for.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I think a working group should hash out that list and have a pretty thought out plan of what to bring into a conversation.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: And I'm happy to work on it with you, Chris. I think that would be great as the incoming chair. Yeah. Do that. And if there's somebody else who wants to join us, I think that would be great too. It's fine if it's just the two of us too.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: make a motion to form a working group consisting of myself and Chris to meet with the police department and whoever else wants to join us, assuming that it's less than forum, but me and Chris for time being.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I'll second. Before we vote, is there anyone else interested in joining said working group?

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah, I am interested, but I will refrain for obvious reasons.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to be informed of it. I don't know if I'll be able to help out with it, but at least have some consideration about it.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: All right, so working group of at least Chris and Emily with Bruce's and maybe all in favor. Aye. Aye.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: The ayes have it, motion passes. One thing I'll note, Simone is asking if there's any way for the public to help. I couldn't answer that at the current time, but I mean it might be worthwhile putting some thought into whether there are ways just to

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I think there's no reason why we can't involve Simon in a working group because there's no issue.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I'm sorry, am I mispronouncing? Please feel free to drop on me if I am mispronouncing a name. I don't feel as bad anymore.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Oh, you can do that. I take no offense to that whatsoever. I'm embarrassed. Let me extend my apologies. I'm just going to... Good thing you're getting me out of here.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Well, I think we would recommend to the mayor that he get appointed when we go to the mayor regarding new membership.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I think you can fill out an application on the city website anytime.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, well, I mean, unless we've been specifically asking to see them recently, nobody will send it to us.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: But email one of us once you've filled it out so we can expedite and not have it get lost in the system for months and months and months. Do you have our emails?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Okay, all right, please. I had 2 other 2 other comments just circling back to the tabling activities. This whole conversation about site safety. Makes me think that at 1 point in time, Bruce, I thought we had some little safety handouts. And do we still have some of those? Do we need to refresh?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Because there's so much information that you can pass out about, what are we prioritizing? Is it rules of the road? Is it how to protect yourself from a right hook? And I think it's worth some thought as the best way that we can, in a small packaged way that somebody is actually going to read, try to- We've been using speech parts by John Allen.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, is available at a nominal cost. I will say that while. Street smarts explains really what you ought to be doing. And how are you ought to be doing it? It doesn't necessarily teach about some of the. Defensive measures you ought to be concerned about, like right hooks. Like, not passing a bus or a truck on the right. What else? Watching for people making left hooks in front of you, left turns in front of you. I mean, there's so much that can be done defensively that we basically don't teach.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: And that's why I'm thinking there might be a simple infographic that has three or four of the major. I'm thinking like a little one pager that you can fold into a booklet that has like four things that, or even just you print out a bunch of flyers that people can take as they're coming by the table.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Some of the stuff is, I won't quite say controversial, but there's a fine line between what people think of as defensive driving and blaming the victim. Um, as I was trying to allude to earlier where. I've had an experience with some bicycle advocates who. Don't think we should have to worry about that kind of stuff because that's not our responsibility. And, you know, you can imagine the discussions I've gotten in with them. About that, I think that cyclists have a responsibility to. watch out for their own safety and to employ defensive measures as such. And sometimes, as Emily has pointed out, what I jokingly call offensive measures, as in defense versus offense, where you're taking the lane where you need to, you're controlling the traffic, etc. uh in order to prevent people from doing things or at least let them see you so they don't do silly stuff like turn into the bike lane in front of me because they didn't see you right knowing about blind spots knowing about some psychological i mean the whole you can get me going on this uh but as you asked if there was a brochure street smarts is the closest we have to that and you know otherwise we'd have to build our own i think

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Emily yeah I think part of it is what makes it get kind of thorny is that there's the There's also the concept of what's used to be called vehicular cycling more. And now is goes by other names is not necessarily that popular with a lot of bicycle advocates. And I think it can be problematic for us because on the 1 hand. It's you're asking for 2 different things, like teaching people to. operate their bike as if it's a car is not the same as asking for a bike lane. But these things are also not necessarily mutually exclusive. We can still ask for bike lanes and give people more information skills. And also, I think sometimes it's permission to do the things that keep you

better able to stay safe and use the roads that we have now because you're not going to stand there at the beginning of a block and wait for them to build a bike lane before you proceed. You need to go where you need to go now. And we can still be asking for bike lanes and also saying, These are the times when you should be riding in the middle of the lane. You have every right to do that. We should be making the effort to normalize that, both among bike riders and car drivers, because we need to all be playing by the same rules. And that doesn't mean that we don't keep asking for better, more effective bike lanes. but it's also, you know, those are the things, those are the skills that will let you use the roads the way they are today, not the way that we hope they'll be in five or ten years.

So I think it's important to present it maybe in that way, that it's not a substitute for better infrastructure, but it's still something you need.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Um, Bruce, do you want to double check what our inventory of the cycling got the street smarts guys?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Okay. Do you want to reach out to Ernie? Yeah. Great. And then, um, Oh, thanks for posting that Jared application in the chat. Um, Yeah, I'll try to poke around and see if there's like a nice 1 page flyer. That would be easy because something that's easy to just print a bunch of pages cheap. I can do that and pass them on and then it could be another. Additional material that we hand out that just helps general education around the city. I mean, I think it's something that we can do for low cost, especially a nice thing as a tabling activity.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: You know, I might ask Becca, who used to be a commission member and is no longer, if she has any graphics that she would be willing to send us. Because she actually did draw a bunch of stuff like that. And now that she's not a commission member anymore, there's no conflict of interest.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: My plan is to see if there's anything pre-made on the web that is kind of what I'm imagining, which is like maybe four corners of a one page talking about how to avoid right hook, how to avoid left hook, maybe any other sort of common things to watch out for cycling. And then don't ride next to a large 18-wheeler if they can't see you. But I'm pretty sure AI could make one of these in a few minutes.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: And I saw one account that was sharing a bunch of stuff that was basically AI that looked like it had been trained on bikey faces style, Becca's. cartooning style that was public that put out a bunch of stuff that was about like three foot passing laws and the the images they used i don't know who decided that this was a good picture to use like it had the bicycle looks like it was passing the car on the left or like things facing the weird directions there was a bike lane that like disappeared in a weird way like everything you think about what happens when two cities build bike lanes and they don't talk to each other and they do this It was in their picture about like three feet to pass and there's three feet on an arrow that doesn't point to anything. It was just like so unbelievably awful. And it was like clearly plagiarizing the style of somebody that I know.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Well, hopefully there's one that somebody's already made.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. I've looked at various times. It's hard to find ones that are good. There's a lot of really, really, really bad ones out there. And either they're bad because the graphic designer who made it doesn't really understand the geometry of the situation at all, or they're bad because somebody who does understand the situation made it, but they don't know anything about graphic design and it looks terrible.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I was going to say, I thought they were bad because they're just plain wrong.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: You know, people have a lot of opinions on what is right, but don't necessarily look at the law or look at, you know, the reality on the road, if you will. Anyhow, I'll shut up. go on forever about this stuff.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: All right, guys, let's try to run it over quite a bit. So let's try to wrap up here. Bruce, we can get to the Medford Square bike lane.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: These next two items are really quick. Basically, I took a look at that concern and the bike lane has a no parking sign. There is no parking meter. Everything's good.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Except that they don't actually enforce the no parking part because people do park in there, even though it's not a legal spot.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I have not seen that, but I'm just reporting what I saw a couple days ago when I went by there. The second one is we had a question about placing of a bike rack in West Medford. And we forwarded the email to Todd and the mayor's office. And basically we said, it's not our place to be talking to individuals about these decisions. Once a decision is made by the city, then someone official like Todd needs to speak with them. And I think he said he was gonna reach out or had already do it. For people who are unaware of what it was, they were concerned about the bike rack being blocking access from the passenger side door of people who are elderly or handicapped to a particular establishment.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Where was this? This is in West Medford. One of the locations we had picked out? Yes. Yeah, it was the one that's in front. Go ahead.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: For what it's worth, I went and looked back at my photos because I took photos of all the locations that we marked, and Todd, reiterated that he thought that that spot was fine. And then I looked back at my photos and one, it's actually not right in front of the establishment in question. Two, it's not directly in front of any door. Three, you can see where the bumper of the car is in the photo when we were out there. And then you can also see in the street view image that the car bumpers are also in the location that it still is between the two bumpers. And then the last thing, which we didn't even think about, but this I think really kind of puts this in the clear, is right adjacent to the spot that we marked in the street is a storm drain with giant big old holes. And if you were letting somebody out of a passenger side door, and that person has any kind of mobility issues at all, they are not going to be one of stepping on that storm drain with the giant holes in it, especially if they use a cane or a walker, because their holes are like this big into storm drain. So it really, and the sidewalk is super wide there. I mean, I think this is, I really think this is somebody who kind of

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Yes. Yeah. OK. And kind of freaked out. And then it got picked up by some other people who have political access to grind. And it went really farther than it should have. But if you actually look at what it looks like, and I reviewed the photos that I took, especially with it just happened, we didn't try to put it right next to that storm drain, but that storm drain is to me pretty persuasive that nobody who's mobility impaired is trying to get out of the car in that spot because the storm drain is hard to get out on top of it.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: And I'm a little unfamiliar with kind of what happened here, but Bruce, do you think any sort of formal follow-up from the commission is warranted here?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: No, I don't. I think that it's up to Todd to reach out to any complaints that we feel. We can discuss it ourselves to make sure we understand the situation, but I think Emily in a private email stated it precisely that it wasn't up to us to reach out to the community and make corrections. And yeah, okay, that's it.

[Jared Powell]: And I'd say, like, I followed, I followed that thread. And it was, it was pretty rough. Like, it was really rough. People were very angry, like unbelievably angry, quite frankly. And so Facebook. Yeah, it was on it was on Facebook.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I think there was a lot of political motivation going on there that Finley Vale That was my take on what I read.

[Jared Powell]: It wasn't super thin, frankly, but there's a lot of overlapping concern.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: What I meant is even though it was anti-bicycle, the motivation was more broadly political.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, for sure. For sure. It's a good reminder that perhaps The things that we or any other body of the city are doing right now are under more scrutiny than they ever have been before. And we should be very mindful of that and thoughtful about it and try to dismiss the bad faith actors, but if there is something that we can learn from it to make our work smoother, then let's do that too. But we are likely to be under a microscope. Thank you, Jerry. A lot more than in the past.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I think we're going to punt the broader Facebook conversation until next time when Adam is here. I mean, I don't think I need to say this, but if anyone's participating in any of the social media conversations as such, then we should all keep cool heads and make sure we represent the best face of the bike commission. I don't need to say it, but. just to be clear.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I think the rest of the- Just about the Facebook thing, just so that we have it on our radar for next time where we can think about this. I think Adam's point was a good one because the last time we discussed it was probably before he joined the commission and also a number of others. And Facebook is, The something where somebody has to be in charge of that account and multiple people are, and either we just post things one way and never respond to comments and never answer questions. Or somebody is in a position of speaking for us in that capacity. And it's probably not a bad idea to periodically vote in whoever Is just officially choose whoever is the working group to do that. Because either, you know, either you keep up with it, or you just don't do it at all. And there's no possible way to review every Facebook thread in a meeting. that's public. So it's just, you can't run social media that way. So it probably is worth our while to revisit this and actually vote in a working group for social media and say that they have the authority to answer, you know, answer comments as the commission.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I don't want to open up this too much. I'm just curious, Zachary, you're in Somerville. Is there a sort of, is there a a similar Somerville bike-related social media group? Because I know there's various newsletters that the city puts out there for communication, but is there a social media presence as well?

[CAS00002535_SPEAKER_05]: Most of what I hear from the Somerville Bike Advisory Committee is just their email newsletter. I'm not really on Facebook as much these days, but as far as I know, I don't think they have any active social media. But I'm not entirely sure.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, okay, thanks. Yeah, all for discussion next time, because I do think that's an option as well for communication is the newsletter route. This is something that came up in past discussions with Anna and Adam and I in one of our working groups. And something I would aspire to have us put out eventually, but I know it's a lot of work doing that. So I don't think we have the resources at the moment, but we can discuss more next time on the whole social media communication piece.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I've noted that we moved the Ernie Light and Helmets to next month. And the only other thing is the website. Do we want to move that as well?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Let's move it, because there's really nothing to report. And Bruce, you and I can meet offline, as we've already discussed. Yeah. All right. Move to adjourn.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: All right. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Hey, thanks everyone for joining. Simon, Zachary, I appreciate you guys coming and participating. Yeah, thank you very much. And Caitlin, even though you didn't say anything. Oh, Caitlin, yes. Oh, hey, where'd Caitlin come from?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Okay, I didn't have a note of that. Was she the, not the dentist?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: No, there's another Caitlyn who's not Dennis, who I think has come, I'm assuming it's the same Caitlyn who has come before. Hi, yeah, I am. Sorry, I was in the middle of doing dishes when you started talking, but yeah.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Robinson, all right, thank you. And are you a Medford resident?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Okay, thank you. I had not heard of you, and I suddenly was like, wait a minute, when did that happen?

[CAS00002535_SPEAKER_05]: All right, thank you for putting- It happens when you're too small and people get cut off when their videos are up.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Thank you for putting up with me. I appreciate it. Good night, everyone.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: All right, everyone. Chris, let me know if you'd like to just touch base with anything else, either before or after I leave Medford.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, just reach out to me. I'll shoot you a note. We'll find some time, maybe early August or something.

Bruce Kulik total time: 22.73 minutes total words: 3668	Zac Bears total time: 0.59 minutes total words: 51