Name: Bicycle Advisory Commission 08/27/26
Uploaded: 2026-08-28
Duration: 1 h 41 min 47 s
Description: The commission met without a quorum to discuss local safety incidents, upcoming community events, and infrastructure updates from the Transportation Director. No formal votes were taken, but the group reviewed plans for new bike lanes on Park Street and Lawrence Road.

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 met without a quorum to discuss local safety incidents, upcoming community events, and infrastructure updates from the Transportation Director. No formal votes were taken, but the group reviewed plans for new bike lanes on Park Street and Lawrence Road.

0:00 Call to Order and Administrative Tabled Items — Meeting called to order with only three members present; no formal votes or decisions could be made, including the approval of minutes.
0:53 Announcements and Safety Incidents — Members discussed a life-threatening hit-and-run involving a pedestrian at Harvard and Winchester Streets and a separate crash at Harvard and Arlington, noting the need for better safety data and infrastructure advocacy.
17:06 Farmer's Market and Community Outreach — The commission reviewed their recent tabling at the Medford Farmer's Market and discussed the utility of educational handouts regarding defensive cycling.
22:05 Infrastructure Projects and State Agency Coordination — The group discussed the construction of a MassDOT shared-use path underpass at Route 28 and debated strategies for better communication with state agencies during the design phase of projects.
36:51 Event Planning and Tabling — Members coordinated volunteer staffing for upcoming events including Tufts Community Day, the Harvest Your Energy Festival, and a local Maker's Fair.
45:35 Digital Administration and Meeting Schedule — Updates were provided on the commission's website and Google Drive organization, while a discussion regarding shifting the November and December meeting dates was deferred.
55:41 Transportation Department Project Updates — Chris relayed reports from Transportation Director Todd Blake regarding an upcoming contraflow lane on Park Street, the 17th Blue Bike station installation, and potential bike lane feasibility on Lawrence Road and Riverside Avenue.
1:30:02 Membership Recruitment and Board Roles — The commission discussed the need for geographically diverse new members and reviewed a draft document outlining the responsibilities of various board positions.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: We'll, we'll start the meeting, so this is the August 26 meeting of the bicycle advisory commission. We do not have quorum. So, no, no decision making. Until we can get to 5 members tonight.

[Bruce Kulik]: Thanks Chris diverse chair. Present present Emily O'Brien vice chair, not present Bruce Kulik secretary present. Jared Powell present. Bernie Muneer, not present. Mary-Kate Gustafson-Quiet, not present. Leah Grodstein, not present. And Adam Shire, not present. We have one guest, who we know. We can't approve the minutes. So the next thing would be the announcements. You following along here, Chris? Do you have the agenda?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. Do you have a, uh, are you able to share your screen? I'm trying to, are you able to share the screen?

[Bruce Kulik]: Um, yeah, it's very, it's my note taking screen, but, uh, that's fine.

[Bruce Kulik]: Seeing meeting announcement for July met for bicycle advisory. Oh, all right, except acknowledge. Sure. Right. All right.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right. So, so back to announcements, Bruce, you want to briefly touch on region? Yeah.

[Bruce Kulik]: So, Mark, Mark Hoffman is that his name has been loosely in touch with me about. trying to get a time at the regent. And I've asked him a couple of times. He doesn't have any time yet. He's expecting at this point now, like October, probably. So we'll see what happens. And basically, he just needs to contact the other organizations that we've turned him onto so he can get information. know, our role is just basically say, yeah, this is happening, but that's about it. Cause we can't, you know, we can't really sponsor with him since it's a private, uh, private event that he's got. Uh, the other thing is we got a note, or at least I got a note about the office of energy transformation is holding some sort of an event, uh, at Tufts. And, uh, this is mostly just informational. I will probably go, or maybe I won't because, um, I know September that's a month from now. Yeah, I can do that. I was thinking it was August. I'll probably go just because I'm always interested in that kind of stuff and we can see how it applies to bicycling and I'll come back with a report. But nothing formal at this point. If you want to see the flyer, you can link through there to get to the flyer.

[SPEAKER_01]: Link through where, Bruce? I'm sorry? Link through where? Where's the flyer?

[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, yeah, the agenda that's here, this is, oh, you downloaded the PDF? Because I added a couple items to the agenda. I sent an email out regarding that. So unfortunately, you don't see the link in the agenda. I'll put it in the notes.

[SPEAKER_10]: I can change the thing that I'm sharing, if I can find the right email for it.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Cool. And while we're doing that, we've got 1 more person here. Caitlin.

[Kaitlin Robinson]: Hi, I'm Caitlin just a resident interested in bicycling. I've been to several of these meetings before. Thank you for your work.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, thanks for joining Caitlin. Thanks for your interest participation.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Got it. Clean energy transformation, September 30th at Tulsa. Okay.

[Jared Powell]: I had one announcement that's generally related to what we're doing. I don't think there's an action item really associated with it, but I saw the Medford Police Department posted something on their social media feed about a hit and run with a pedestrian on Harvard Street and Winchester Street, which is a very popular cycling route.

[Jared Powell]: Winchester Street. Harvard and Winchester in Medford by like the Gymnastics Academy of Boston, Tufts building around the corner from Semolina.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: There was a separate one that happened at Harvard Street and Arlington Street. Oh, really? Sorry, continue. I'm pretty sure it's different.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, this is Harvard and Winchester. I ride through there all the time. And as I was riding through like an hour ago, there was a news crew interviewing, I think like maybe people in the family that like live right in the house that live kind of looking there. But yeah, it was, I'll put the text of their post into the chat for the record, I suppose. But hit and run 5.30 AM at Harvard Street and Winchester Street. Pedestrian was walking westbound on Harvard Street, crossing Winchester and the crosswalk, struck by a vehicle turning left from Harvard onto Winchester. It's not obvious to me which direction they were going then, if they were eastbound or westbound.

[Bruce Kulik]: I heard that they were westbound, that the pedestrian was westbound. Oh, it's not clear whether the car was, it was a left turn they said, right? So that would have meant that they would have been traveling the same direction. Westbound.

[Jared Powell]: I guess if they were going north. So, yeah, left would be southbound onto Winchester. Right. I guess.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, fair enough. Everything's on a diagonal. Um, see, but life-threatening injuries apparently. So, uh, that's, that's scary.

[Bruce Kulik]: And that is a route that like they had, uh, people, if they had any footage to provide it. And I did a poke around on Google and there's a ton of surveillance cameras in the area. Uh, there's one at Tufts. There's one at the gas station on the corner. There's one right there at the building that I guess is a construction building or something. There's a couple of items there, and there's at least one ring camera right down Harvard Street. So they ought to be able to get some footage to see what's going on there.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: That is terrible. Jerry, did you have anything specific that we should discuss as a commission related to this accident?

[Jared Powell]: Not really, I think just the general, the importance of what we do and what other people are doing here. I haven't thought about it enough to know if there is maybe an action item, but again, we might need quorum to go too much farther, but just that is a route that we send people on all the time. That route between Harvard Terrace and Winchester Street is a very active cyclist route that allows people to avoid either Mystic Ave or Main Street or or a Boston Ave, you know, it's just kind of a different option there. So that's like our neighbor way in the area. That's sad. Yeah.

[Bruce Kulik]: Is there a number of people right across Harvard Street at that place, like from Winchester or from the Tufts building, either way? Yeah, I see people riding there a lot. OK.

[Jared Powell]: I actually stopped and chatted very briefly with one of the cameramen in the van and he said that I was like the 10th parent who had ridden by in a pretty short amount of time with a kid on a bike while they were doing that story.

[Bruce Kulik]: And Chris, you said you thought there was another crash at Harvard.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I see a bunch of the CClickFix requests for sort of the local area where I live in West Medford. And there was one maybe a week ago or so, somebody put in a CClickFix request for it, having witnessed, I think, a hit and run at Harvard Street, right by Duggar Park, Harvard Street in Arlington. That's Harvard Avenue. Um, that's Harvard. I'm sorry.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. So, um, and I, there's no other details than the very brief description of that. Somebody added there. Um. Yeah, I mean, I think that 1, I. I think either of these, you know, in terms of the commission and what we would potentially do if we had quorum to vote on something, but I think there's a question of, is there infrastructure improvement that could help prevent these kind of accidents where there's now more of a case to advocate for something? Or is there some other sort of uh, letters, advocacy work that we'd want to do to help, you know, push for other, some other safety measure or solidarity. Um, so I'm less familiar with the, the one that you mentioned, Jared. The, the one over by me, I don't have enough details about what happened there. Um, it's not a particularly fast, busy street. You could maybe advocate for traffic calming measures, but, um, so I, I don't have immediate thoughts as to what, what else we would do right now.

[Bruce Kulik]: Why don't we, why don't we make this an agenda item for next next meeting? And hopefully we'll have a quorum and can can come up with some concrete action if you'd like to see.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I think this kind of goes back to the conversation with Medford Police, which Emily and I and Simon have not met. So I'll have to follow up with Emily for the next one. But I think that this maybe falls into the bucket of data collection as well. And how do we, where is there? uh, a way for us to see the, um, the map of, of traffic accidents in the city where we can use those data to help guide, um, where additional efforts are needed.

[Bruce Kulik]: One of the things I'd like to see is, um, a breakout between pedestrian and bicycle crashes. They're often lumped together and it becomes difficult to really understand Yeah, whether whether it's just a pedestrian area, that's difficult. Or if it's just a bicycle area, that's difficult. Or the intersection as a whole is problematic.

[Jared Powell]: Hopefully, we could talk to Todd maybe at some point on the next meeting about that. Harvard Street there is tough, right? Because that is a connection that goes all the way from Powder House Circle straight to the honor ramp of 93, right? It's one of the few cut throughs like that. Yeah.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Maybe using that as a segue to the next set of announcements, because I forwarded out to the group a laundry list from Todd.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Got it. Got it. Sorry. I was thinking it was right there. OK. I can pump that to down there then. Thanks for keeping me honest, Bruce.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: All right, shall we move on? We do have the note here about the 17th Blue Bike Station.

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, that's also, that's, again, I adjusted the agenda. And I'll send out a PDF next time so that we have the up-to-date PDF when that happens.

[Jared Powell]: Sorry, Bruce, if you could tell me when that email came in, I'll find it. But for some reason, I'm not seeing it. I can switch to the right agenda.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I see the one from, yeah, two days ago. That's all I have. Stuck in the drafts folder, maybe?

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, call for them. We may never send. OK. If you go to the link that was in the original email, it will take you to the same document, but you'll get a refresh.

[Bruce Kulik]: No, no, no, no, no. That's, that's, that's, this is all my mess up. Sorry, everybody. Let me, um, let me go and put a link to it in, in the chat.

[Bruce Kulik]: I think, let me know if you need permissions to get to it. It should be open generally.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I'd say, Bruce, if you feel free to just shoot an email to the group, too, for plugging this for the folks who are unable to attend and may not be checking the notes immediately after. All right.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yep. So I think that brings us to recap of the farmer's market.

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I'll be real quick. Basically what I said right here, you know, we had a table. Eventually we staffed the table for all four hours. Good attendance at the market. Several people stopped by. That's all.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: All right. Great recap. Were those those handouts that I printed, were those useful at all?

[Bruce Kulik]: Actually, yeah, several people picked them up and we chatted about. You know what it means and why we have the handouts there and. Discussion about what we can do about better infrastructure, but also about things that cyclists can do for defensive driving. Right so we were able to show the situations that can occur. You know, when you're riding your bike, they need to watch for even if you have infrastructure. Or whatever, because. You know, they can happen just like the pedestrian, you know, probably wasn't watching for a car making a left turn, probably shouldn't have had to be, but nonetheless, I can imagine, for example, a runner crossing the street and not realizing that somebody's making a left turn behind them. You know, I'm not saying that's what happened, but that's a scenario that I can envision. And, you know, it's like, even if you have the green light, you want to make sure that somebody's not making a right turn on red in front of you, et cetera. So, yeah, they were they were useful.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yep. Well, we can just keep tabs on if those that are running well, and I'm happy at some point by just putting a big order with more of the online printing companies and make a bunch of them. I don't have a good enough printer at home to do it. So. But yeah, I'm glad. I feel like it's helpful to have some educational packets. It's interesting what you're saying, because it sounds like it helps drive some conversation with folks too, which I think is great. Great to get that feedback. For everyone's info, I think this is what, yeah, here I'll, if I can take over sharing just for a sec. Yeah, here's the graphic that we're talking about. I had just printed a handful of these, 20 or 30 or something, to give to Bruce right before the farmer's market. I think it does a pretty good job of just identifying some of these situations where that kind of advanced awareness of it can help people watch out. So that's all. Back to you, Jared, and the sharing. We can keep plugging away at the agenda.

[Jared Powell]: So that brings us to... Thank you, Bruce, for doing all of that tabling stuff. I think it was really productive. Several people came. Several of us were there.

[Bruce Kulik]: One of the benefits of being retired now, I can bail out in the middle of the day and just hang out. And I enjoy doing it.

[Jared Powell]: That was nice. You get some good, good interest from people. They want to know, you know.

[Bruce Kulik]: So we were going to talk about the goals, but I don't think we have enough people to really talk about them.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I think it's kind of a shame. We want to keep pushing this forward, but I think we do want to have more of a quorum here. So let's see if we. I guess we probably aren't going to have quorum tonight at all, so let's table this until next time and maybe I'll plan to. Maybe I could do a little bit of sort of homework on the side and just come in with a whole bit better of some talking points to help us go through this.

[Amanda Centrella]: Sorry to interject. Just a little administrative moment. I'm going to log off, but I just want to make sure it's OK that I transfer host permissions to one of the commissioners. Yeah, I'm happy to take that. Cool, great. I'm going to do that now. Recording is set up. AI note-taking summary is set up. And so everything should be running good.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: So yeah, OK, so this I asked to put this on the agenda this. This riverfront path connection near Wellington. I don't know if any of you have heard of this. I have to find the. Link here.

[Jared Powell]: The under bridge path that mirrors the Somerville path is that we're talking about connecting. Station landing.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, this actually I saw this in a streets blog newsletter. I'll plug it in the chat here. Yeah, Jared, if you want to pull it up, you'll see the plans here.

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, there's actually two aspects to this project. One is the bridge under Route 28. And then the other one is the connection, basically a better connection up to the parking lot to the paths that go behind what used to be KISS 108. Yeah.

[Jared Powell]: So this I know about. This is where they're building that one bridge that mirrors this. That would be very nice. I actually personally was over here in the other week. And I rode this path on the way here, but then I came back up Fells Way here and intentionally took the pedestrian crossing right here on my bike. I did it just to try it because I never actually had, like I knew it was unpleasant, so I'd never actually tried to ride it before. And it was truly awful, like just really, really terrible and felt dangerous. And it was just a great reminder of like, yes, this will be very valuable to people to be able to skip that entirely.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, completely agree. I bring it up because this is the kind of project that. I think the commission should be looking at and helping provide input on before it's being constructed. And that's the kind of thing that we. Who do we talk to at DCR to have that conversation, to build that relationship, to have them plugging stuff to us before? And maybe this is a case of something had gone through a public process and I hadn't seen it. Yeah, Simon, you want to jump in?

[Simon Alcindor]: I want to say, if I remember correctly, that one of the things with this project that's very specifically weird, because that whole Wellington Greenway project, it's some sort of partnership, the way that they do it. So I don't even know if it's... From what I'm aware of, it's been a weird special case. I don't know. I'd have to look more into it. But that's where I remember seeing stuff about it.

[Bruce Kulik]: I was told that this particular one's actually a DOT project for some reason and not a DCR project.

[Simon Alcindor]: Sorry, it's where it goes under the rail bridge. And also, I think the bridge generally All the bridges are DOT, not DCR.

[Bruce Kulik]: The thing I remember about it is being told that if DOT does it, the specs are different than if DCR does it. I didn't quite fully understand why that would be the case, but apparently when DOT does a project, it needs to be more permanent. Whereas DCR basically said, oh yeah, we're going to put a walkway on stilts, and we'll see how it fares.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Um, it does look like the streets blog article says, and are being getting construction, but the plan, the sort of schematic image is a master on master letterhead. So. Who knows I did, so I, and I'll get this more in the Todd update section, but I met with Todd. Yesterday morning and. Part of that, he kind of went into like, I guess the process from is that they, they do, they have so many rounds of sort of internal review for everything that they are responsible for. So that by the time anything gets out to the public, it's, it's, you know, they're, they're really trying to have it near final. And then they, they tip, they will do. I think it's like a. they basically do a public meeting where they solicit comments, but that's it.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Because he seemed to make it sound like there's really just like one public comment period where they don't necessarily really know what's happening with that afterwards.

[Bruce Kulik]: The 25% is usually pretty well underway, as you pointed out, that there's been a lot of internal discussion before it gets to that point. And so when it gets presented, In my opinion, it's not really a 25% design. It's more like, you know, 80% design.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, so maybe this had gone through public meeting and. before I was paying attention to it. But I think this is the kind of example, it'd be great to have eyes on it too. And Jared, just to further the point you made earlier, I rode that path recently along the, they said the little river path there, kind of through the woods and the marshy area over there, coming out onto Fells Way, I think I was going to Assembly. And that's a lovely path. But it sort of dead ends onto this weird little bridge, which is fine, but it's kind of very hard to do, especially on a cargo bike. And then there's no clear way to get out to a sidewalk. You got to kind of get off the bike and drop it down a curb. And so I don't know how that's being addressed in these plans. And maybe that's going to be fine. But these little sort of on the ground design things that I think the cyclists Perspective, especially folks who've been over these roads and know the exact problems. That's the kind of feedback we want to be putting in on these. So, um, I guess the, the thing that I wanted to bring to the commission is like, you know, is there assuming this was a project, you know, is there a person that we can reach out to, to, to just. Start, you know, kind of push that conversation of like, hey, hey. Hey, guys, please include us in these plans and sort of advance heads up as these things are in the works.

[Bruce Kulik]: The 2 people that I'm aware of for the green waves would be. Amber Christopherson is usually a good contact about all the green way stuff. And the guy spoke with about. the Rotaries, but he's not very responsive. Last name is Flynn. I don't recall his first name. I'm going to say it might be Ed, but that doesn't sound right. And I guess what I would like to see, but I really don't know how to make them do it. I wish they could be a little more proactive in You know, just as a favor getting back to us about stuff like that. But maybe it's either. Either policy, or they're just too busy to. You know, if you remember to do that, I'm not really sure. If that's the case, then it would mean maybe we would periodically. Want to just tap them and say, hey, what's going on, you know, whatever. You know, maybe arrange to have a 15 minute meeting. Once every couple of months or something that they can review anything that might be in our purview. Again, I don't know formally how well that would work because. I am on many mailing lists and so I do get all these. Notifications of all the public hearings and so on. Um, but it would be good also to know what's going to happen instead of just, Oh, Hey, it's next Wednesday. Kind of a thing.

[Jared Powell]: Right. Yeah. Yeah. I totally, I totally agree. Like, this is a great point. Like, like Chris, like I, I feel like there was like a public process that some of us attended for like that bridge, but it's the same kind of thing. Like we find out about it too little too late, you know, it's like, we're just attendees like everybody else. Um, I remember. a while back, but it was a little over a year ago. I'm only remembering this specifically because I found the email. But when MassDOT was talking about, had their early public process or public presentation to talk about the Main Street improvements, like near 16 at South Street, and Todd got them to do an early presentation sooner than they normally would have. I remember we had the same complaint, which was like, How do we find out about this? It is a public process, and yet it is very difficult for us to know that it's happening. And I specifically emailed the management team that it said to contact at MassDOT if you have questions about this project. And I just asked, is there a distribution list so that I can get status updates on this? And he said, no. like we don't do that. It literally said, currently there is not mechanism of project updates other than keeping in contact with your Department of Public Works. And then he gave me the date of like the next public meeting. And I followed up with him suggesting you probably should start a distribution list for this sort of thing so that people may be aware of it, to which I got no response. But I totally agree. I don't know how to keep up with these sorts of things. Leah and Bruce, obviously, you brought a lot of things. Leah is also another person who seems to maybe have some more knowledge of that than I certainly do.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, she's moved around a little bit, so I don't know exactly where she is now, but she certainly did in the past. I'm not sure if she's right at this point.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: She might still be in the state, but I'm not sure. Yeah. And I mean, to that point, I do suspect it's something with, well, it could be a number of things, but it could also be budget related. Like it can be a lot of work to manage those kind of, do the comms work is it's a, it's a full-time job. Um, yeah.

[Bruce Kulik]: I do know that MassDOT does have a whole pile of maybe it's. Maybe it's some other division of the Massachusetts government, but a whole pile of mailing lists you can subscribe to. The problem is you kind of have to know the project exists to get on that mailing list. And, you know, if you don't, if you didn't hear about it, like in the news or that kind of thing, you don't know that there's a project to do X, Y, or Z, right? Once you find out about it, you can get on that list and then you find out about all the meetings. But I find that, you know, it's harder to figure out what's actually going on without looking in like a tip or periodically looking at the whole list of mailing lists you could be on.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: So there is, I mean, I haven't explored, I'm just looking at it right now. not looked at this before right now. There is a list of projects on the MassDOT website and you can filter by town or city. So there is, if I look at Medford, there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 projects in construction, including the Medford shared use path connection at the Route 28 Longton underpass. And then several others in design out of this bunch that are complete. It's probably worth, um, yeah, looking at this on some periodic basis to see what, what's in here.

[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, yeah. Sign up for news and project updates. Is that the link you were looking at?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Um, no, here it's, it's, uh, if you go to a website here, And then just click on the city dropdown list and choose Medford.

[Bruce Kulik]: So I'd like to suggest that we push this to when we actually have more people who we can talk about this and figure out kind of get someone who would be responsible for doing that on a regular basis, just, you know, and scouting out projects that we could consider.

[Bruce Kulik]: I'd be a good candidate for that, except I'm already doing a zillion things. So I'd rather have someone else do it.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I think this gets, yeah, this will get back to where we We're not moving too far down the agenda, so let's keep moving. But maybe two final thoughts here. One is we need more members to spread the load. So I think this is something I'll make a note. We'll circle back to it at some point here. The other thing I'll say, just specific to the DCR thing, I did get another name. I reached out to the author of the Streets blog article. So the two people he suggested getting into contact for DCR, Amber is one, but also Gerald, who is the DCR's Director of Trails and Greenways. So, I was going to plan to reach out to them just to introduce, say hi, and try to at least open a communication channel so that there's... Do you know what the relationship between Amber and Gerald is? I don't. Amber is a Greenways Planner for DCR, formerly at MRWA.

[Bruce Kulik]: But that probably means she reports to Gerald in some fashion, if he's director.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: That would be my guess, but yeah. Maybe there's a org chart somewhere, but let's keep chugging through.

[Bruce Kulik]: But what's key is that these people are Greenways planners at the DCR, which is different than the stuff they do in the streets, as I've discovered. So there you go.

[Jared Powell]: Yes. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a time to plan this event with Pat, but he did let me know that they're having another event this Saturday from 930 to 1130. That's kind of a combination between a partnership between Tufts Medicine and bike to the sea. So they're doing kind of bike rodeo rules of the road kind of stuff with helmets and refreshments at their facility by the bike kitchen. So 9.30 to 11.30, I think there's a big educational component to it, right? About like not putting children on motorcycles that are incredibly deadly. I understand why people want to have that freedom, but holy cow, it's causing a lot of problems. So there's an educational component there, not to start editorializing. And then they're also having like a bit of a bike ride from 10 to 11 as well. So if that's something that like we want to attend or we want to promote, we're welcome to.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Is this linked somewhere or can you drop it in the chat?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. I can just plug it into our website to link it there as well.

[Jared Powell]: But I am going to continue to try to find a time when that can work.

[Bruce Kulik]: All right, next one's mine, Tufts Community Day. I am officially a champion on that one, so I will make sure we get organized and go do it, recruit people to help out. It's still over a month away, so, you know, time to get people involved, but I will continue to do it.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, thanks, Bruce. Maybe since you've got Jared and I and Simon here as well, Do you like anyone else able to spend some time helping out Bruce table that event?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: It overlaps with the Brooks Fall Fest, which we'll probably take our kids to. But if I can peel off for like an hour, hour and a half, I'd love to try to join you, Bruce. But I can't commit to it just yet.

[Jared Powell]: I can probably come for at least part of it, because I'll probably be there with the kids anyway, unless there's something that pops up that I'm not aware of right now. That's a really nice event.

[Simon Alcindor]: Glad they do that. I should be able to go, too. Excuse to see all my friends at Tufts.

[Simon Alcindor]: No, I'm at Suffolk right now, but I have a lot of various college organizing friends from Tufts, and also College Dems and stuff like that. Got it.

[Bruce Kulik]: It is? I forgot that. You agreed to be a champion at some point. At least that's what I heard.

[Jared Powell]: That's fine. I've gone to that every year for several years now. So that's no problem. It's a nice event.

[Bruce Kulik]: So I think it's sort of the same thing. Gather people offline and just adapt. I've got the tent and the signage. We've got to refresh that signage badly. I'm not even sure it's worth it.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Bruce, maybe ping Adam and I offline about that. and if there's some changes we want to make, let's see if we can. If it was something we want to do before the next couple of tabling events, then I think Adam has been wanting to help in that in the past after last year's tabling.

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, so we, uh, we should get a designer. Maybe we can get, maybe a tablet help us with it. If not, we can muddle our way through. Um, and then it needs to be printed on like a special size vinyl sheet that you, you connect to the, um, to the display.

[Bruce Kulik]: There's two things. We have the logo signage, which is getting pretty battered and it really looks unprofessional at this point. Then the other signage is a standing sign. I forget what we put on it. I think it's got a mini map, but it's really out of date as well.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Bruce, we were going to make I think you did this for us, right? QR code for the website and then just print that and put it on the table. Oh, we were going to do that. Yeah.

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah. And I recall you had one and then I said, Oh, here's a better one.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I just grabbed a free one and you're like, no, dude, don't do that. So I thought we had one. Yeah.

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah. Um, all right. Let's make that as a note. Um, get QR code for website. Yeah, we can be in the modern era. Okay, cool. Emily's not here, so I'll take this for her. She just, this is almost an announcement more than it's anything else. Apparently someone she knows is creating the maker's fair and they're looking for bike repair advice station. So it's not even doing the repairs. It's like, you know, oh, you should fix your break and here's how you can do it sort of thing. Whatever it is This this Saturday, I guess is that the 30th Yeah, yeah, so I'd say anyone interested show up that's basically it Saturday will probably not be able to make it Sunday.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Sounds fun, though. Where is it? Oh, it's the library.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: They do some cool stuff for it. It's up there. That's interesting, though.

[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, Sunday, maybe? Oh, no. Never mind. I'm not going to say any more on it. And finally, Chris, you had said in one of your emails that you wanted to plan ahead for more MBAC participants and add to the calendar.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, these ones are a good example. We're great. We got it. We got well, six weeks, almost a month for the Harvest Your Energy. It's a little more time to plan because in the past, sometimes these events come up like the Farmer's Market was a good example. It's like, shoot, this event is next week. Who's going? And then it's just so hard for people to plan stuff, at least especially for me. Usually if I'm planning stuff, I have to do it pretty far in advance. So I think as In general, it's going to be easier for us to staff events if we can have visibility a few months ahead of time and start talking about like, hey, what's the events that are happening? Obviously, stuff is going to come in later, but the things that are happening every year that we know about, let's put them on the calendar early. Let's have visibility and let's bring that into a meeting. Like, okay, who's staffing these events that are a few months away? Let's have that planned ahead so that we're not scrambling last minute. I think it's just a good rule of thumb for us. Okay, with that in mind that. Are there any other events beyond October that we're aware of?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Cool. So I think we're in decent shape here. And then Bruce, it sounds like we'll have hopefully two or three of us for Tufts. Jared, you'll take the lead on coordinating folks for the Harvester Energy. Yep. Cool. All right. Let's jump to website updates. which dovetails with the last point there, because I did add at least those two events to our website. I've made a handful of edits to at least get it to be current, so there shouldn't be any out-of-date elements there. It's a pretty bare-bones website. Simon and Caitlin, you guys are good test cases. We welcome any feedback for things that we should do differently or could do better on the website. So right now it's really just sort of basic info, a link to this Zoom meeting, and a handful of upcoming area-related events. Right now it's really just those two. I'll throw on the, when I get a chance, I try to add some of the bike-to-see stuff, but there's not a lot there generally. We do have a calendar, a Google calendar you can subscribe to. That was all for website. So unless there's questions, we can keep going.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yes, let's do that. Yeah, this is the next point. Similar thought here. this is really more looking ahead all the way to like November and December. And, you know, are there meetings, we have, it's the fourth Wednesday of every month, so are there meetings where we know that it's gonna conflict with Thanksgiving, for example, Christmas holidays, where like, let's just change it now?

[Bruce Kulik]: Rather than- Yeah, we have almost never had a November and December meeting. It's always been like an early December meeting. Yeah, partly because fewer people are cycling at that time of year. And the holidays happen to hit, you know, right at our meeting points. So, what would you suggest that we do at some point just declare that we're not going to have a November December meeting, but instead will be a winter meeting. On, you know, 2nd, week of December or something.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, we can, we can take this up the next meeting, but maybe we just, uh, maybe we look at splitting the difference between, um. Yeah, that 1st or 2nd week of December and say, no, yeah, no end of think, no end of November, no end of December, just early December. And, um, we can let Dennis know ahead of time. I can put that on the website. Yeah, so we can bring that up for the next meeting when we have quorum.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. This is something I noticed, Bruce, is that so I have access to our Medford Bikes Gmail account, and so I can see all the Google Drive files, but Without that, I can't. And so I think the way it works is there are a handful of folders within the massive array of folders that are in there that are shared with individual people. whether that list of people matches the current set of members is almost certainly not the case. And it's certainly not all folders that are shared across the same number of people. So it brings up the question of like, should we have a better file folder organization scheme for everyone? Or Do we even need it? But like if there's files and folders that we need, that we want members to access, then we probably want to rethink this a little bit, clean it up a little bit. It may not be a big deal. I just think about it partially because I've been saving a bunch of stuff to my own computer, but then it's like, well, some of the stuff is maybe useful for the commission. It could be good to save it. Where do I even save it? Oh, I have to access it this way. I don't have share access. It's not a particularly big deal right now, but it's something we may want to clean up if we find that people are needing to collaborate on files.

[Bruce Kulik]: I'll throw that on my list of things to think about as far as how we might want to reorganize, and particularly with a view towards access controls. Because there are some things that We just want available to the general public, so anyone with a link can do it. But then there's other things that we want, um, just the commission and then maybe select other people who are volunteering with us to access it. And they might be editors, modifiers, or maybe they're just viewers. Um, but I see your point. It's like, um, is it only individual folders? I mean, you can share an individual document as well, right?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, you can share, I mean, you can share pretty much any level with other people. So it's an entire drive or individual files within that or folders. You're pretty good fine-tuned control and the level of permissions that can be granted. Yeah, I think it's a good point. Like when your audience is everyone in the commission versus other, you know, public facing, yeah, there may be some, I mean, There's a lot in there, so it may not be that we want to just share everything, but maybe there's a subset that's useful for everyone to have access to. But I mean, I haven't really spent time pouring through it myself, so it may be that there's not all that much value in it anyway. So this may not be a high-priority item. bring it up just in case anyone else had thoughts, concerns.

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I've found that I, from time to time, I can't find stuff, you know, and I know we have something, and I don't know where it is, and I have to dig around, and sometimes I find it, and sometimes I don't, so maybe that would be useful.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I'd say it's probably low priority given the sort of Limited bandwidth of the commission right now. So maybe we just table it until it becomes a bigger problem.

[Bruce Kulik]: I just, I made a note that I'll review it and make a suggestion and then we can figure out how to implement that. I mean, basically I've got, I'm the one with most of the control over that stuff now, anyhow, since I'm the one that primarily logs in on that account.

[Simon Alcindor]: That was back when we were talking about the website. Oh, okay.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: So yeah, it the mass dot website interface harks back to like the early 90s.

[Simon Alcindor]: Oh, no, I was saying that when you're talking about somebody to test the to test out the commission's website, it was like, yeah, I am a young person.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Oh, that was you. Yeah. Also. Quite. I mean, yeah, well, that's what you get for a free Weebly.

[Bruce Kulik]: All right. High Street Rotary, no updates. I've got to bother this guy named Flynn and just see if there's any. I mean, I suspect you're just not going to do anything.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I mean, the saving grace here, it's frustrating that we haven't been able to move the needle on this, but I guess I'm not aware of the sort of worst case scenario that we've been fearing of happening. I do think there are benefits in having reduced the width of the roadway in helping reduce vehicular speed. It does that.

[Bruce Kulik]: It also channels the motor vehicles a little bit more precisely, I found.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, and it does force most of the entries are forced to turn a little bit around the rotary so that you can't just go full speed through, which is really good.

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, especially on the right turns. That used to be a big problem where people would hold their speed if they're just making a direct right turn, and they'd go through at 25, 30 miles an hour. Whereas now the lines encourage you to enter a little more vertically and stay within the line. So yeah, I do feel that overall it has improved. You just have to ride safely in a couple of seconds as you go through it. But I'll still see it.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I mean if nothing else it's just good to sort of have... The communication channel opening and feel like they're listening to us and not just ignoring.

[Bruce Kulik]: I mean, I've been witnessing. I've been witnessing riders basically do what they need to do now. Appropriately, and not just stay within the line. So, like, if you're making if they're making the left turn, they go up. Past the lakes, this is a popular start. People are moving over into the rotary at about the right time about halfway across the bridge. They just move left claim the lane and make the left turn around the rotary and keep going. So people understand the paint is not rails, if you will. Yeah.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, so it looks like you copied everything in there. And yeah, I talked through this with Todd yesterday. So yeah, I can just kind of You guys may have read this already, but there's actually a lot happening and maybe just backing up a little bit to give a little bit of the context for being with Todd. Part of it was just for me personally to learn a little bit more about how his group operates and his role and how the projects come in and prioritization and decision making and really how can we work together to sort of put our cycling lens on projects and do that in a way that's sort of most least burdensome to him and the work he's doing. And Bruce and Jared, you guys probably already know this, but Todd's a great advocate. He's doing a lot of work to try to sneak in cycling safety and pedestrian safety projects wherever he can and doing that basically without any budget. And with really no team, he is the transportation department and sort of covering whole bunch of areas where some of our neighboring cities have whole teams and massive budgets to tackle these types of things. So I get the impression that he's really doing a lot with the very little that he has. And so this was actually, I'd say, a pretty exciting list for how little there's a sort of comprehensive plan to do something across the city. And so, yes, just going through in the order here, Park Street is one that's probably happening the soonest because it's sort of a kind of get this for free. Then Park Street.

[Bruce Kulik]: I rode by there today on the way back from the gym. The paving on the section between Washington Street and Central is really good. They basically paved that lane and it's nice and black and smooth and, you know, it looks like good pavement from Central Avenue up to Salem. It's still a little bit rough, but not terrible. And I'm just waiting for the paint to go in because. I would like to ride that route from time to time. Uh, when I come back from the gym, sometimes I come right back Salem street and through Medford square and other times I feel like being lazy and I'd rather go up past the school because it's just a little bit. It's an easier ride a little bit longer, but, you know, it's a, it's not as, um. You know, Riverside Avenue, you got to really be on your game for it. Medford Square, you got to doubly be on your game for it, you know, to go through. Whereas going into the neighborhoods, it's a little more relaxed.

[Simon Alcindor]: Simon? Two things, because I commute that way. One, does the repaving on, do you know if the repaving on Central Street has anything to do with that? Because it sort of seemed like it was, but it was like, it's kind of weird. They like repave. A very specific portion of Central Street from like, I want to say it's parked down to, it's not Dudley, it's the one after, I think, down to Otis.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Without seeing a map, I mean, maybe this answers it, I'm not totally sure because I don't know what the section was talking about. The reason that this project was, you know, is possible and was delayed is because I guess the way it works is when National Grid comes in, does utility work, they dig up their trench, they put like a temporary patch on it. The temporary patch is supposed to be six months or something, you know, a few months. It settles a little bit and then they come back and do a wider Permanent patch. They don't have to do the whole street, but they could do a wider patch. And I guess in this case, this was like, I don't know, 6 years ago or something. Todd said that they did this work in this temporary patch. And so it had never gotten done. And so they weren't, they didn't want to put a bike lane on this jagged trench, but it finally came back. And I guess, at least on Park Street. did the trench, which happens to be where a bike lane, a contraflow bike lane could go. There's no parking on that side, so it's not controversial for taking away parking. So Todd was like, we can slip this in pretty easily.

[Bruce Kulik]: It's a good place for it. It really is. For a contraflow, it's kind of like South Street in that it's not quite as wide as South Street was, but still it's a good connection to get through there.

[Simon Alcindor]: Yeah. My second question. sort of related because of the paths that Sora forms from the Mythic River trails, is like, is there any plan to put in any Sora signage for that, like, one weird little section, I think it's between Ship Ave and Park Street, that, like, is technically, I think it's the one way, but I'm not... There's, like, that, like, awkward section when you're go- if you're trying to go between the... the river paths, like, with the Clipper Ship Connector and the... In Park, not Park Street, Riverside Ave.

[Simon Alcindor]: Like right at the south end of Park Street, like where, after you cross on.

[Bruce Kulik]: Marine Street, yeah. Marine Street. That's a great question. We get to pick you from Somerville for that one. where Somerville did an experiment, which I was really scared about when they first did it. And that was one of my favorite cut-throughs, Hancock Street. And I forget what the other one is adjacent to it.

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, it's closer to Porter Square. But it's, hang on, let me get the actual street names. It's Hancock Street and it's Elm, isn't it? Well, it goes to Elm. I guess it is Hancock Street the whole way. But basically, it's two one-way streets. What they've done is they put Contraflow because it's two one-way streets in opposite directions, but they put Contraflow so that you can ride your bike, all the way through either direction. So if you're going through Lexington Park to connect with the path, so it now makes a really good connection between Elm Street and the community, which makes it really easy to get, you know, basically get to Boston from there.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: So I mean, I think the answer is based on reading Todd's email again, I think the Contra Flow is just Salem to Washington.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: So it's not going to go all the way down to Riverside.

[Bruce Kulik]: Right, because park is two way from Riverside up to Washington. But you're talking about Marine Street as a separate entity.

[Bruce Kulik]: It would be a good comfortable lane. I don't think there's enough space to put a lane there, but if you just said bicycles may operate you know, both directions, that would be helpful. Because you're right, because then you can get to Park Street.

[Simon Alcindor]: Yeah, and sort of like what Somerville does, like put the little two-way, like the, not two-way, but like... The yellow line. The bike lane at the end, yeah.

[Simon Alcindor]: It's just the neighborhood, so it's not... Yeah, you usually go through it at like 11 o'clock at night. It's not fun.

[Jared Powell]: just pulled up the street view of that Hancock Street thing you're talking about there, Bruce?

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, that's my suggestion is that Marine Street could be the same way where it's basically two-way bicycle operation is permitted, but there's not really any extra infrastructure other than some signage at the beginning.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Okay, I'm happy to send that along to Todd. I mean, he's very receptive to input from the group if we've got sort of priorities that we want to share with him.

[Jared Powell]: You can see the signage there too. Do not enter except bicycles. It's got one of those little tags on it.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Uh, I also learned that apparently the city really, it does not have a signage budget.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Joking. Of course. Uh, should we go to the next on the list?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. Yeah, obviously we're, we're eagerly awaiting this 1 part of the delay. Apparently that the whole, like, little explosion that happened in Medford square was a problem. Blew up some new equipment and that has caused some problems. So there's all this unexpected stuff that's happened. I think he's still hoping we might be able to get it in this year, but it's, it's not clear that's going to happen or not.

[Bruce Kulik]: Does he feel that the contra flow lane. Terminating and directing people to use the sidewalk is not a good idea.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Honestly, we didn't talk too much about it, so I don't recall... I wasn't under the impression that it was waiting on the new signal there, that that was going to be a big part of the next phase of the Main Street project.

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, clearly you don't want to be making the left turn there coming out of Clippership without a signal. But I feel like the Contraflow lane that then directs you onto the sidewalk the way signage currently does would work fine. Maybe he doesn't want to encourage people to make a left turn at Main Street. And since there's no budget for signage, you wouldn't be able to put a sign that says bicycles, no left turn.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I'll ask him if he can share the final design of the. Of the plan there.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Um, yeah, the main street project. This is the master T project. The main street. Um, yeah, I don't have much more to add. Yep. He's saying his estimate is, yeah, maybe construction starting sometime next year, but. Um, is that the right date? I thought it was. Yeah, at least at least spring 27, maybe later wrote down. Yeah, okay. South Medford Connector, this is the... So Bruce, you were going to write a letter in support of the Conservation Commission?

[Bruce Kulik]: Yes, I was. And as I was reviewing the news today, I realized I had forgotten to do so. So I got to get a hold of Ryan Hayward at the Medford Historical Commission, see what he wants me to do about that.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. No, and on that topic, I was going to draft a letter in the wake of the Louisa Gagg billing to support some of the local groups. But I couldn't, in my notes, find if we had spelled out any specific initiatives that we were trying to support. I had written down a bill number, but that didn't seem like the right one. Does anyone have any other recollection?

[Jared Powell]: We did talk about an update to a past letter that I wrote. Yeah, so I have that as a template, but it would have been like.

[Bruce Kulik]: I don't have any specific bills in the minutes. I recall that there were no. Yeah, there were no specific.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: There is like a truck safety bill going through this house maybe right now, but I don't know. I don't think that was it. So I thought I thought we had discussed sort of jumping on and supporting some of what like the Boston Cyclist Union was advocating for. But then I didn't I couldn't find what it was. So I'll see if I can dig back through the transcript of the meeting and maybe find it.

[Jared Powell]: We did talk about the side guards on trucks. Maybe it was that one specifically. That's been in the House and the Senate for a long time.

[Bruce Kulik]: What's the current status of bills? Aren't we coming up on like The end of the session just ended a regular session.

[Bruce Kulik]: So, what does that mean that. There's some weird loophole there, like bills that have been oh, I know what they are if they're in conference committee. They can continue, but any other bills are effectively dropped at this point. So, I'd have to look to see if there's any of these cycling bills. Still in conference committee to be worked out.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: See, this is where you're able to do that legwork and then shoot me a note. That'd be great.

[Bruce Kulik]: Okay. And we could. Yeah, this would be where I should call the people I know the state house and say, hey. What are the bills relative to cycling? I don't know if Sean would do that. Christine, who of course is vacating the seat to run for Senate, would have been helpful.

[Jared Powell]: MassBike often has a list of current legislation that they're supporting.

[SPEAKER_06]: That may be a good place to start. Yeah, why reinvent the wheel? All right, what's next?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, they do have an act expanding truck safety requirements on their list here. Okay. That's helpful. There's no mean I can tie off offline on this.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: just so we can get through our list here. Yeah, bike parking. So we mapped out locations a while ago, but there hasn't been movement on it. I think it's partially for the city stuff. It's a DPW, just bandwidth issue. There's only so many people to go around. So it does sound like that's likely to happen. this construction season. And then the, yeah, hopefully pretty soon. And then there's the other 40 from this MAPC grant that will be third-party contractor. So it's going out for bid, I think, pretty soon. And he's hoping they can get it in before the end of the construction season, before the winter.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: That's right. Blue bikes, we touched on briefly. 17th station already put in. 18th is likely going to happen in October. Yeah, Medford's got a lot of blue bike stations.

[Bruce Kulik]: There's enough stations that you can actually take blue bikes to Medford. And I think the furthest north station is up in Fulton Heights, maybe even Wright's Pond area.

[Simon Alcindor]: Yeah, the next, there's two others that are sort of near there, which there's one at the high school and there's one at Lawrence Memorial.

[Jared Powell]: So yeah, we're using them all the time. I'm waiting for the Tufts one. Is that, is that this, the October for Tufts?

[Simon Alcindor]: Yes. I literally only use blue bikes right now. So I am so excited for the Tufts one.

[Bruce Kulik]: It's like, if they needed one, it needed to be right there. I mean, Tufts has several blue bike stations already, doesn't it?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Not within like half a mile. Have you seen Somerville?

[Simon Alcindor]: The closest is Powder House. Yeah, Powder House. And there's one that I believe it's, I don't remember what the continuation of Winthrop Street is called, but where it continues through Tufts. There's one at the section of that.

[Simon Alcindor]: The one that goes right through the middle, it's us. Yeah. Yeah, because the connectivity, like, because I've been going to Hillside a lot recently, and like, yeah, the connectivity over there is horrible. So like actually blue bike over there. So very, very excited for this.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. I mean, that's good feedback too. To hear that, like where is there's a gap in the network and they probably know as well, but we can also plug from our end.

[Bruce Kulik]: Wow. I really thought Tufts said more than that. Well, that will be a good one on Boston Avenue.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah. They said years ago, they're like, oh yeah, we're going to put like multiple stations here and then I don't know, they had a tough time finding the money or something.

[Bruce Kulik]: So it looks to me, it looks to me like the furthest north blue bike station is actually the one at the high school. Unless there's one in Winchester that I don't know of.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: So, just to round up the updates here. So, yeah, I don't have anything to add to this last one, speed humps in South Medford. So, I think in general, Todd's, you know, it's a lot easier to add in these kind of traffic coming things when there's already construction happening. There's just not the dollars to do it separate from that most of the time.

[Bruce Kulik]: I would say as annoying as the speed pumps are, they're very effective. Yep, here on Grove Street, we have 1. I'd love to get another 1, not too far from our house. But there's 1 down the road and people. Don't get that very fast, so they're generally Bruce.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I actually reached out to Todd on this, uh. Separate from the commission a while ago, but I think the, the, the construction of the speed dumps those raised. And kind of raised crosswalk type deal is is, um. pretty expensive, but those flashing showing your speed signs are actually relatively inexpensive. And so that kind of thing Todd can do on sort of a ad hoc basis. So something to keep in mind if there's a place where you see folks are speeding quite regularly, that can be a decent solution in the absence of physical means of slowing speed. Unfortunately, they're not effective. I suspect effective for some. I find they're effective for me. But yes, probably not effective across the board, not in the same way that physical barriers are.

[Bruce Kulik]: Once they start having speed cameras, they will probably become more effective. Because people, especially from out of the area, will mistake them for potential speed cameras. And therefore, like, OK, better slow it down.

[Jared Powell]: I find people only really, unless they're true do-gooders, which is a small chunk of the population, people are generally only responsive to like money or damage to their car. And they respond to those things.

[Bruce Kulik]: I have an idea. Why don't we have AI bots, sentry bots, hooked up to the speed thing so that when people come by, they can throw spike chains or something like that over speed.

[Simon Alcindor]: First of all, Bruce, don't let Facebook hear that comment. I was just curious, with the speed humps that even includes the ones, like someone has some of their speed bumps are literally just humps of asphalt. So I'm kind of curious if it even includes that, the ones that aren't particularly custom. I presume it's just the labor costs that make them so expensive?

[Bruce Kulik]: They're usually a little bit more than just chunks of asphalt. They're rectangular, so they're not quite as jarring as like a curb would be or just a U-shaped hump.

[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, the ones on Powderhouse Boulevard were deliberately made that way, but that's another story.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, Todd has talked to us about that, like the difference between them. Like some of them are meant to bring you down to the speed limit. And those are like the speed tables that Medford tends to prefer. And then there are the ones that like actually bring you down way slower than that.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah. And like in Somerville, some of those are responsive to like a person being killed, like right there on Powder House in front of that school. They added a couple of the speed tables. I think they qualify as tables, not hubs on George Street and Medford. And those have been really great. They don't slow people down like that much, but it takes the edge off. And they also installed crosswalks there. There's school bus stops there. And so that's been really nice. But Chris, you asked me before when I brought up that hit and run accident there on Harvard and Winchester. if we had like an action item. And I didn't at the time, but seeing that the city is interested in putting in traffic calming in South Medford, well, ding, ding, ding, maybe a Winchester and Harvard need to be on that list too. Cause there is a crosswalk there, a lot of tough students, a lot of people who work at those tough buildings there. The gymnastics Academy of Boston is right there. It's not far from both Green Line stations that span that distance. Harvard is a cut-through street. Winchester itself is a bit of a cut-through street for people trying to avoid the other arteries on the side. So maybe that needs to do something where we advocate for slowing people down a little bit.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I'm just looking at the map on that here. I will, um, I got a few notes. I'll send it to Todd after this, but I think that's a great point. Jared. Thanks. Okay. Um, the last thing I'll say updates from Todd on the list here, but, um, he did plug a couple thoughts, you know, in general, he's open to our input. For where we see needs across the city. He does still reference the bike master plan. Which a little out of date, but still relevant a couple of things he mentioned specifically, I guess. There's a project on Riverside. I think he said it's where there's an opportunity to do some repainting and maybe. Add some bike lanes, so I don't sound like I didn't there wasn't a lot of information about that. But something for us to try to keep an eye on here.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Um. I didn't write it down. He said between Locust and... I think it's going to be... Yeah, I think it's a Locust... Where's Locust? Yeah, between Locust and Commercial, I think is what he said.

[Bruce Kulik]: Basically, they're going to do some repaving, and so they'd be able to extend the bike lanes that are currently from Commercial Street out to Fellsway in both directions. Those could be extended all the way up to Locust, which would be really useful because the lane paint has faded tremendously, and there's a left turn pocket lane at Riverside and Locust that's not well honored. Putting in putting in bike infrastructure across there would be very useful. Once you get west of locus. Riverside gets a little bit too narrow for that.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, sadly, because that's a that whole Riverside would be great to have better bike infrastructure, but I mean, you can have a bike lane on 1 side.

[Bruce Kulik]: But you wouldn't have room. I don't think for bike lanes on both sides.

[Jared Powell]: Todd presented us a plan of that a long time ago, like years ago.

[Jared Powell]: No, no, but I think it was what you just were describing, a single lay-in. Because I remember we had that conversation. He was like, which side should it be on? Yeah, right.

[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, yeah, you're right. And I think I suggested that it should be on the side leading to the school on the assumption that the traffic density for anyone riding their bikes to school would be higher as they arrive as opposed to when they leave?

[Simon Alcindor]: Anyhow, um, I do recall that. I mean, like, I think that also narrowing the actual perceived road is a lot of it with Riverside as well, because currently people take it crazy speeds because it looks wide as hell, even if it isn't necessarily the widest.

[Bruce Kulik]: Well, there's typically no parking on it. That often increases speed by five miles an hour.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Um, the other thing that Todd mentioned for for potential projects, um, is Lawrence road.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty wide street. Um, and I think he said there's some interest. Um, from, uh, I think more from the high school. to people riding out and coming that way on bikes to have a safe route to school.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, so Todd felt like it probably would be not too hard to knock off parking on one side. I can't remember if he said they had done a parking study or I don't think they have done a formal one, but it's like, It's kind of a no-brainer. It's so poorly utilized, and everyone there has driveways.

[Bruce Kulik]: I rode that on the way to the gym this morning, and there were probably three cars parked along, one of which was a delivery truck parked along between Winthrop and Forest Street.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: So that's one that, you know, he was saying, like, yeah, we could probably do a project there.

[Jared Powell]: That would be great. We could have something really ambitious there, you know, like something more like on Winthrop Street, right? Like up toward the high school. Yeah. We could have something like that. Yeah.

[Jared Powell]: yeah yeah i would say like i don't know i feel like i've been i'm a big fan of those bike lanes in general though i am always surprised by like the number of people when driving who really seem to disregard the right hand white stripe and almost seem to be doing their absolute best to like try to remove the paint with the right tires like they drive in that track like all the time like on winter. Yeah, in winter, they disrespect the bike lane in order to keep more of a distance.

[Bruce Kulik]: When nobody's there, I think that's very true because typically the bike lane narrows the travel lane down to about 10 feet. And therefore, when there's nobody there, people like to keep more shy distance to the yellow line. And that deliberately puts the right wheel onto the bike lane.

[Jared Powell]: Yep. You see it all the time. And the jog in the street that has a traffic calming function is something that people also really enjoy ignoring. So people driving it more so, maybe less of the jog back and forth on big separated lanes.

[Bruce Kulik]: I've not had any trouble in the bike lanes on Winthrop with any cars like deliberately buzzing or that kind of thing. I found that they're very comfortable to ride in.

[Bruce Kulik]: you know, a big improvement to not having anything there at all. Where people would treat the road as almost having two lanes.

[Simon Alcindor]: The one thing I just want to note, at least with Lawrence Road, is that it would be really nice for Connectivity State to have, like, some sort of, like, either contraflow or signage from, whether it's Winthrop on Wyman Street, sorry, to get from Winthrop over to, like, to Wyman Street and like sort of into that neighborhood. Cause like right, I feel like right now it's sort of like a missing link if you're coming from like Fulton Heights or like the North part of Glenwood there, be able to actually get like straight over to, to be able to get over to like Medford Square very quickly.

[Bruce Kulik]: I think our master plan had some sort of treatment for that. Yeah. Coming from Lawrence to get up onto Wyman. I think there's a park in the way right now.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: And yeah, yeah, I agree with that. It's a weird intersection there.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, that's a great point though. I think it's a. I completely agree with that. It would be really nice to be able to go up. The only the only downside with that is it's. Why man's like quite a hill. That's not for everyone. Yeah, well, I mean, don't get me started about that section of High Street and not having a bike lane there.

[Simon Alcindor]: I think it still is better to at least, like, actually going on High Street, I feel like it's also like a very niche thing for like folks who are specific like the other options also going up Suffolk Street having controversial lane there like it's mostly for like the The group of folks who are trying to get from like the northern part like the northeastern part of the city over to West Medford like it's a It's probably fairly common to want to do that and I I could see I

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, that's an interesting question of how best to direct that traffic. I mean, honestly, what I would say, like if the simplest thing I would think is just put a bike lane on High Street from the rotary, from the Winthrop High Street rotary, and then you've got, you take your left hand turn from Lawrence onto a bike lane on Winthrop Street, and you go on a bike lane on High Street all the way up to the top of the hill. Anyway, I would love to cut off a, half a minute going up Suffolk or Wyman, but I'd take a bike lane on High Street.

[Simon Alcindor]: After my birthday, which is also the primary election day, okay? Like, you know, it's a very important day.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Happy almost birthday, Simon. Yeah, I mean, I think the other thing that would be great is to not just increase membership, but to try to, it'd be great to have a diverse presence on the commission. And we're, well, of the three commission members here, we're a little heavily weighted in the west side of the city, where Bruce and I are located, and maybe southwest. So, yeah, I don't agree. Hillside for me. Yeah. So, yeah, it'd be great to have some geographical representation, maybe even different sort of experiences, types of cycling. I agree on that a lot. That's important. I think that would be the sort of most useful or sort of the most powerful commission would have broad representation, different voices to be heard. to help advise in the city. This is, you know, I think a couple of things we can think about, especially as we have our fall events coming up, is these tabling activities or maybe opportunities to plug that. And, you know, Bruce, now that I say it, like, maybe we even want to make a little sign that says, like, Superview new members.

[Bruce Kulik]: That's a great idea. Like a little stand-up frame sign or something that gets everyone's attention. And even go so far as to say we're interested in people who are not, how do you want to phrase it, you know, serious transportation cyclists, for example.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, or maybe it's like, you know, riders of all abilities and interests.

[Bruce Kulik]: One of the problems is that a commission like this is slightly self-selecting. in that it tends to get people who are already more interested in writing and do it a lot and therefore have a slightly different bent than the less experienced people do. I think one of the types of commissioners that I'd like to see us have, and we did for a while, but we unfortunately always lose them to basically family duties. You know, parents with young kids or parents with, well, I mean, Jared's a good example, although he's getting older now, but you too?

[Bruce Kulik]: Same ages. Beginning cyclists with young kids. is another one or less experienced cyclists who kind of really want to get out and do it. Because you guys have taken the jump already, right? You know how to do it. You go out and you do it, et cetera. It's another thing for somebody who is just barely starting and their experiences. Yep.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, totally agree. Lots of different voices, lots of different experience levels. Like that's, we need to hear from. I mean, we've talked about this before, right? Like people like us are comfortable on the streets. We need to hear from people who are not so that we can draw more of those people in so they become comfortable on the streets.

[Bruce Kulik]: I mean, I can be the advocate for not screwing it up for people who still want to stay in the street, but I'm not so good of an advocate for, you know, people who would rather be eight miles an hour on the sidewalk, you know, so. I agree with you.

[Bruce Kulik]: So, what are we going to do now? Do you want help contacting the mayor? Or is that something that you feel comfortable doing? How do you want to move on this?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I guess my first impression here, because honestly, you guys may have some idea, but what do we think the mayor's office is going to do for us to help with recruiting? and the type of recruiting that's gonna be useful to us?

[Bruce Kulik]: I think in my opinion, a little bit less the recruiting and more the selection and advertising and saying, yes, we're going to do this, and we're going to appoint six more members or some number, and that it's on the mayor's radar. And the city is like, yeah, we're going to do this. do some advertising, because they do that from time to time. They send out emails and other sorts of communications, like even the reverse, what is it, 311 now, where they send out information that, oh, we're looking for commission. You get the call. It used to be Barry Clemente, but it's not anymore. It's often the mayor. Who's the person who usually does it now? It's the same voice, but I don't know who that is. Any idea?

[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, there's often, there's often, um, it's a male voice that often, you know who I mean? And I don't, I don't know who it is though. I want to think it's somebody from Alicia's office or something, but.

[Bruce Kulik]: Maybe. I don't know. I mean, that's a name I recognize, but I don't, I don't associate a voice with it.

[Bruce Kulik]: Anyhow, that particular channel is one place that recruitment can occur. And it's usually lumped in with vacancies on, you know, and then they list 3 or 4 different commissions that have vacancies.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Who is your contact in the mayor's office? Just the mayor? The general email?

[Bruce Kulik]: I just call the mayor myself. And then if I need to follow up, there's different people I look up and You know, we'll call them or talk to them about it, but. Yeah, just the mayor's office, the general number is reasonably responsive.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I don't know that we need. Well, I mean, we don't have quorum so we can't officially. Create actions, but I don't know that we need to here.

[Bruce Kulik]: I can do the communication, but I'm going to invoke you as as president as well. And basically both of us.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Great so the other thought I had is just, um, I mean, we each have our own networks and in many cases, cycling. Communities in groups, and I think we can use those networks to just put the word out and it may not be that. Our friends and acquaintances are are necessarily, but, you know, just asking folks to keep in mind that by commission is looking for new members. Um, yeah, all can try to get. Broad representation across the city, different. Ages abilities, et cetera. Um, so anyone who's who's interested in just helping improve cycling safety and in Medford. Willing to be a part of that effort.

[Jared Powell]: And we talked to someone, I would say we talked to someone, one of Simon's friends at the tabling event at the farmer's market. We had lots of good thoughts and apparently, yeah, it was apparently like a, like work as a planner for Somerville. And I was like, oh, you should be on the bank commission. He was like, oh, I'm already on the energy commission.

[Simon Alcindor]: No, no, I'm only joining one commission. There's still other stuff I need to apply for, like Medford Dunn stuff. I have too much already.

[Bruce Kulik]: So we still need to do the roles and responsibilities and that's kind of in conjunction with the very early item we had, which is. Review 2026 goals. Yeah.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: And this is, Jared, I think I sent you an email. I just, I had created a draft based on the conversation I had with Daniel over what the chair's role is. And so just created a sort of draft document. And I think you had raised your hand to help author something that would be, you know, here's what the different, Board position members, uh, their responsibilities are, but then also general members, which is going to be especially helpful for new members. Like, what to expect, you know, what's the sort of responsibility lift? What's sort of the, you know, the, the commission look like and participation in that that. If we're in the process of bringing a new members that I think is going to be helpful. So, I just did it as a 1st pass. Um, so if anyone wants to take a look offline.

[Jared Powell]: Could you, you said you emailed me something. I'm sorry, I've been in and out this past month. So I, I feel like I saw your thing about legislation. You very, very well did. I just I've missed some things lately. I know you asked, I know I saw the thing about the legislation. Well, either way, you can send it to me offline. I'm happy to work on it.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I'll find, I'll either forward you my email or I will send it originally in case I haven't actually sent it, which is possible. All right, cool. That's good. All right. Maybe it was just in my, oh, okay, yeah, I got it here. Anyway, I'll forward it to you.

[Bruce Kulik]: Cool. Here's the dilemma. Since we don't have any votes, how do we vote to adjourn?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Executive. All right. Unless, unless anyone else has anything else to fill up our last two minutes here. Cool. All right. Simon, Caitlin, thanks for hanging out with us to the end. Executive action. Caitlin, you're still there?

[Bruce Kulik]: Amazing. Any comments on all the stuff we've been talking about? We didn't hear much from you.

Bruce Kulik total time: 30.81 minutes total words: 5069