ORDER-2022-45 : An Order seeking information on the Administration’s proposal to create permanent bike lanes on lower Main Street

Transcript (~1 h 31 min @ 16:52)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 16:42 Cory Thomas: We have 1 order before the public works committee tonight. It's order. 2 02245 in order seeking information on the administration's proposal to create permanent bike lanes on lower main street. It's clear committees do we have some members of. The administration here can talk on this order. We do. I'm letting them as we speak.

▶ 17:24 Speaker 1: Good evening and welcome everybody. Thank you for all for being here. Mr. Chair, I think we need to suspend rules.

▶ 17:35 Speaker 1: You can still do it. They have a motion to suspend the rules. Motion to suspend the rules. Mr.

▶ 17:44 Cory Thomas: Motion to suspend the rules that comes with Stuart seconded by council.

▶ 17:51 Speaker 1: We call the role here, Thomas.

▶ 17:57 Speaker 2: Yes, vice chair.

▶ 18:01 Speaker 2: Yes, counselor McMaster.

▶ 18:06 Speaker 2: Yes, counselor. Yes, counselor Stuart.

▶ 18:14 Speaker 2: Yes, president.

▶ 18:19 Cory Thomas: Yes, 6 yes, I was to clear your committees the rules that are suspended. Welcome distinguished guests. Thank you for being here.

▶ 18:28 Cory Thomas: uh we already have a couple counselors with their hands raised um are there any um comments that want to be made by the administration before or do you want to just go into questions from the counselors i don't see none uh counselor stewart

▶ 18:50 Robb Stewart: all right thank you mr chair i'll actually cede my uh position to uh consulate uh the

▶ 19:01 Shawn M. MacMaster: next councilman thank you councilman mcmaster thank you mr chairman thank you council stewart for uh for deferring uh and i appreciate that as a maker of the uh order uh mr chairman with your permission i'd like to start this evening um with miss phillips uh perhaps if we could ask her questions after i'm done with asking miss phillips questions um have other consulates ask any questions of her before moving on to miss caracas ellis then chief lyle and chief kalina if that is

▶ 19:30 Shawn M. MacMaster: um okay with you that works with me absolutely thank you mr chairman good evening miss phillips thank you for being here it's nice to see you back in the virtual chamber i don't think we've seen you here since uh you came before us for your appointment so welcome back thank you can you uh

▶ 19:42 Shawn M. MacMaster: please introduce yourself for the public and explain your role as city solicitor absolutely

▶ 19:48 Speaker 5: so as you mentioned i'm the city solicitor for uh the city of belrose so in that role i provide legal counsel to city council the mayor department heads um any multiple member body or commission within the city um also in that role obviously that includes drafting written legal opinions when requested um relative to those respective offices or departments or relating to matter

▶ 20:16 Shawn M. MacMaster: within the authority thank you many of us in the council as you know miss phillips have heard from residents who believe that the council has jurisdiction to approve or disapprove the creation of bike lanes in melrose my first question to you is more general does the city council have authority over the creation of traffic and parking regulations of any kind

▶ 20:40 Speaker 5: in the city of melbourne uh generally speaking i would say no and uh over the summer the

▶ 20:45 Shawn M. MacMaster: uh administration suggested that it had uh unilateral authority to create bike lanes because they didn't consider them to be regulatory i challenged that idea and asked you to provide an independent legal opinion as city solicitor that opinion is attached to the agenda packet but for For those on the console, and for the public who haven't had an opportunity to read your opinion, would you summarize that for us?

▶ 21:13 Speaker 5: To the chair? Absolutely. The Melrose traffic commission was created in 1998 by an enabling acts by the legislature. It was. It was approved by the city of Melrose at that time. The act gives the traffic commission, the exclusive authority. Relative to any vehicular street traffic and parking issues within the city of Melrose on city controlled public ways and streets. So, to summarize my legal opinion, which took all of that into account in this issue of bike lanes, especially in this regard. I looked at the issue of crosswalks that has previously been found to be in the legal authority, exclusive authority, the traffic commission. I found that in, in fact, bike lanes and the improvement and placement of bike lanes within the city of Melrose is within the exclusive authority of the traffic commission. Not only does it involve parking changes, but it also would involve the flow of vehicular traffic along the streets, which are under the control of the city. The creation of bike lanes could conceivably create additional criminal and civil violations that could be enforcement by lawn for it could be enforced by law enforcement under chapter 89 and chapter 90. So, because of that, and the broad language of the authority given to the traffic commission, under the enabling act, it's my legal opinion that the approval placement of bike lanes lies with the traffic commission.

▶ 22:39 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you for that, Ms. Phillips. Mr. Chairman, I have no further questions for Ms. Phillips unless other Council is due. If not, I would be ready to proceed with Ms. Caracas-Ellis.

▶ 22:53 Jack Eccles: Councilor Eccles. Thanks. Thanks, Ms. Phillips, for being here. I just have one question. Kind of speaking retroactively, both on the crosswalks and the bike lanes, right? We have them in Melrose and we have them that were created by the city prior to separate legal opinions about the traffic commission being responsible for that is there anything that needs to be done retroactively about that or or are we good to just proceed with what we have and have the traffic commission be responsible to all like for all bike lanes coming forward through the chair i i i would have to look i

▶ 23:25 Speaker 5: would have to look into that further for you uh my my short answer is no i do not believe so um i I think the, I, I take a very broad reading of the language within the jurisdiction of the traffic commission. I'm not sure what previous legal opinions provided for it, but I understand it was the practice previously to allow for bike lanes without the approval and placement. So, short answer is no, if you'd like me to look into that further, I'm happy to do so.

▶ 23:51 Jack Eccles: I think that makes sense. I just wanted to know what your opinion was. Thank you.

▶ 24:04 Mark Garipay: Thank you, Mr. chair. This might be a separate a separate item, but when it just dawned on me when you talk about. Like, taking parking away, or just just in park, and if we're putting a parklet in there on a street, and it's taking a spot, is that changing the. The parking does that have to go in front of the, uh, the traffic commission? I don't know what the process is in order for that. I'm just curious if that is supposed to go in front of the parking commission. Also.

▶ 24:41 Speaker 5: Generally speaking, I mean, I have to look at the specifics of what you're referencing, but anything involving parking changes within the city of Melrose on a city morose. Controlled public way would involve the authority of the traffic commission.

▶ 24:56 Mark Garipay: In my opinion, that's just something I thought of just when you would talk. So it's no big deal, but I was just I was just curious on that going. Going forward, even though it's a, it's seasonal change. So I don't know if that it's not it's not permanent. So.

▶ 25:13 Cory Thomas: Just curious on that. Thank you. Are there any other counselors that have any questions for city solicitor? Phillips.

▶ 25:19 Cory Thomas: Council Phillips, if you wouldn't mind hanging on, um. You can move on. Um, anyone have any questions for director?

▶ 25:30 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good evening, Ms. Paracas-Ellis. Thank you for being here. And thank you for all of the work that you and your team have done to date, both on the pilot project and on the redesign. I had an opportunity last night to watch the public forum. I'm not sure how many of my colleagues did. So some of these questions are matters that you addressed last night. So, if you could just indulge us, and also members of the public who didn't have an opportunity last night to watch the forum, can you generally summarize the proposed plan for lower main street and how the current plan is different from the original pilot project?

▶ 26:15 Speaker 5: So, the proposed plan, the pilot project was, was really a little bit going out on a limb to see. To try something completely different than anything we had done before and, um. Try the, uh, the parking protected bike lanes that they have in other communities and and the ped bike committee was recommending this and the was recommending it as a viable option. And so, um, we. As I'm sure you've all seen, we piloted putting the bike lane up against the curb on the northbound side and the parking on the inside of that. And, um, you know, on the traveling side of that.

▶ 27:05 Speaker 6: Um, and the, uh.

▶ 27:06 Speaker 5: The proposed the currently proposed plan eliminates that configuration. Um, we, we, we went into it with an open mind. I. Really had no preconceived notion of whether I was going to like it or not and I know others on the city staff similarly. But this was worth trying and we saw it in other communities. Um. But as time went on, and as we spoke with the public safety personnel and operations, and just. I drove it many times myself, I biked it myself. And we just weren't pleased with that configuration for a number of reasons. The, um. The fact that there's not a lot of parking utilization along that stretch means that it's not really a parking protected. bike lane most of the time there really aren't that many cars protecting the cyclists from the drivers and even though there's more distance between them when you don't have that many cars parked it becomes somewhat of a confusing situation i think that confusion fed into the car accident that happened where someone wasn't expecting a car to be parked where it was and ended up plowing into the back of that car And just concerns with public safety personnel, not being able to get as close to houses during emergency responses, snow plowing to answer some of the questions during public comment. We don't have equipment that could clear, our equipment is 5 feet wide. So, depending on the exact size of a bike lane Um, that's protected with safe hit posts. We could maybe clear it, but, um. In some locations where bike lanes against the curb are permitted to be 4 feet, we wouldn't be able to clear it with our existing equipment. Um, we also that would be added time to our snow clearing and we already have difficulty during larger storms with, you know, the sidewalk plow routes and being able to get all those done in time for school to open and the like. Um, so we just had. We just felt as an administration that this was just not the, the best layout. Um, for this, this quarter. And, um, so that's the, that's the major change.

▶ 29:32 Speaker 5: And then the other minor change is that we did reinstate the parking in our proposed plan along the apartment buildings across from Mount Vernon. The 1st, 2 of 3, we reinstated the parking and I know it was mentioned that. You know, it seems like a potentially discriminatory practice to eliminate the parking in front of the apartment buildings, but there is more than ample parking in the rear of those buildings. And so it's really more short term. It's 2 hour parking. Anyway, it's more short term people pulling over deliveries. Amazon, UPS, the like, and we felt that by starting the parking in front of the 3rd building, the parking prohibition in front of the 3rd building, there was still plenty of room based on current utilization for all of those delivery drivers to pull over in front of the other 2 buildings and walk a very short distance to the 3rd building if need be. So, so that was the other biggest change also in the recommended plan, the recommended plan spans all the way to the Maldon line. Whereas the pilot program was really focused on the area that we're repaving between Mount Vernon and Sylvan. And so now we have much more extensive recommendations. South of Sylvan that don't involve any proposed changes to parking. Um, they're working within the alignment of of the road that's available and that would just involve blacking out some of the striping that's there and putting down new striping to make the intersections a little better defined. Um, turning lanes and through lanes for bikes, um, bike boxes and the like that is all very. Um, uh, safe and effective infrastructure for cyclists while not changing anything for drivers or folks parking.

▶ 31:21 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you Mr. Mr. chairman before I move on, I'm just wondering, unless we anticipate meeting this Phillips again, if she may be excused, she's more than welcome to stay on. But I know she's had a long day and may have family responsibility. So, certainly, it's up to her, but I just wanted to ask that of you and for her consideration if she wants to depart, I would be fine with that as a maker of the order.

▶ 31:46 Cory Thomas: Thank you Council McMaster. Again, City Solicitor Phillips, whenever you need to go, you know, please feel free.

▶ 31:59 Shawn M. MacMaster: I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Any other councillors have any questions for Director Parake-Casales? I have some more, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to see if Ms. Phillips needed to leave. So. Thank you. Ms. Paracastellos, when exactly, I want to talk a little bit about process, was the decision made to add bike lanes to Lower Main Street? And I know some of the bigger picture plans for the corridors, I understand it from having spoken with you, predates this Council and even my time on the prior Board of Aldermen. So if you could just talk a little bit about the decision making process.

▶ 32:32 Speaker 5: Yes, so back in 2016, when we instituted our Complete Streets Plan, Complete Streets Policy as a community, we started on the Complete Streets Prioritization Plan process. That process involved a working group where we had representation from the council, from the planning department, engineering, outside groups like Birth to Five. Actually, Kate Lipper-Garabedian was our representative from Birth to Five at the time. um a number of stakeholder groups the pedestrian bike advisory committee um i i won't pull up the list and bore you but but it was a a substantial group of folks um sergeant gock from the police uh stephen foherty from the athletic department at the high at the schools um and so that group looked at um information that was solicited from the public to determine um where folks wanted to see complete streets changes and we came up with a list of i believe it was 43 projects around the city we were at the victorian fair we were at farmers markets we had a public forum um and we took all those projects then the working group put them through a matrix exercise to rank them in terms of community priority and and um what what they would accomplish and how many people they would serve and the like and the main street road diet as it was called which is a reallocation of space within within a curb to curb roadway uh was identified as the fourth highest priority project in the city for implementation under the complete streets prioritization plan so that was in september 2017 that plan was rolled out um again we had public public input public meetings um so that's when this discussion started and then in 2019 when main street came up for paving actually in 2018 when we did the bike lanes and the other bike infrastructure on both the commuter route and the neighborhood route from wyoming to the wakefield line it was made clear that the reason we were stopping at wyoming was because we were waiting for paving on south main street before we did any restriping south of wyoming paving was scheduled for 2019 so we were talking at the time about you know how to how to start the project then um but then paving got delayed due to utility needs um we did water main work and uh national grid did gas main work in 2020. eversource did electrical transmission line work in 2020 into 2021 um so we are finally we we assume and hope we are finally done with people needing to dig in the road um and so now we're finally at the point of paving so we did start talking about ideas of how to do this back in 2017 18 19 and 20.

▶ 35:38 Shawn M. MacMaster: And was the, uh, the decision to actually pursue the act that the bike lanes, the pilot and what would become an eventual redesign with the traffic commission will vote on. Thursday was that made by a prior administration or this administration?

▶ 35:55 Speaker 5: The, the road diet concept always invited always involved some semblance of bike lanes. So, um, that was the whole idea of the road diet. So, I guess I wouldn't say it was necessarily. Um, I mean, it was under Rob Dolan's administration that we identified that as a project and that we ranked it so high in the prioritization plan. Um, but, but it wasn't until we really got into the design that we analyzed the, um. You know, the exact roadway widths and went out and measured. On the ground and started to lay out what could or couldn't work there. That wasn't until, um, really. June, July of this year, when we were preparing to do the pilot.

▶ 36:42 Shawn M. MacMaster: And in terms of the, the decision making process. to pursue the pilot and what that would eventually lead to. Can you talk a little bit about who was involved in the decisions and how it came about to identify certain individuals, either within City Hall or any external stakeholders at all? Who was part of those conversations and how were they identified?

▶ 37:10 Speaker 5: So back in summer 2020, we had applied for the Shared Streets Grant. And at the time, um, that was the grant that funded the parklets, the, all the slow streets and shared streets infrastructure. And we included in that grant application, 2500 dollars for temporary line tape. Because our original thought was, if we wanted to try to pilot something on on South Main Street. We would do it as part of the shared streets program. Um, we would implement it as a temporary shared streets. Um, you know, similar to all the other slow streets that we put in place. And so we had applied for that grant that involved the planning department and the and the mayor's office. When we received that grant, we really focused in more on the parklets and the and the slow streets. And there wasn't really the time or the. Mainly the time with coven to really get into. Putting that line tape down on South Main Street. So. So, we really didn't pursue it, um, per se and then. As we approached the this summer, and we started talking about, well, should we pilot something or should we just pave and then stripe the way we think we should stripe and bring anything to the traffic commission that requires a vote of the traffic commission. Um, it was really in the June, July timeframe that we said, yeah, let's, let's really try to pilot this. That was before the city solicitor offered the opinion of the legal opinion that the traffic commission would need to approve bike lanes, but we were always aware that the traffic commission would need to approve any parking changes. Any parking elimination, especially. But really any parking changes, so. It was kind of an evolving discussion and then at the same time, we applied for some free technical assistance that the ped bike committee. Uh, sort of started that process with and the planning department and were involved in that as well. And we applied for this free technical assistance that we ended up getting, although the timing ended up not being ideal. So, did provide some opinions on they came up just site visit before we did the pilot. They gave us some opinions on what they thought we should or shouldn't do. Um, they helped present at the July community forum. But that was really the extent of that grant, which had no monetary value. It was just some time from the MAPC. So, I know you had some other questions about grants. I think I've now answered, but $2,500 of line tape that, frankly, we didn't end up using because we ended up doing actual paint at a cost of $470 and we had the free technical assistance from MAPC. So, those were for internal. Applications, but coming into July, when we were really seriously considering. Piloting this, we reviewed the wish list plan from the head bike committee, and we had internal discussions as to what we wanted to pilot. And then we held the community forum to discuss it with the community at large before we put anything on the ground.

▶ 40:28 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you and the 2 grants that you mentioned the shared streets grant and the, the, the free technical assistance grant. Are those the only 2 grants that the city received in connection with this project?

▶ 40:40 Speaker 5: Only other money the city received from an outside source in connection with the South Main Street project was a 50,000 dollar earmark. That we spent on sidewalk block replacement in 20. 19, because we had applied for that, or we had requested that. When we thought the project was going to happen in 2019, and we were going to put it towards any elements of the project. But in the end. The money came through before the project came through and the only thing we could do in advance was sidewalk blocks that we were going to do anyway as part of the project. So. But, yes, that is the only outside funding. And I just want to stress that I have heard comments over and over from various folks about the cost of this pilot and who's paying for where's the money coming from. the pilot literally cost us 470 dollars that was paid out of the operating budget out of our line striping item putting down temporary line striping is really inexpensive and in fact putting down permanent line striping is also really inexpensive so this is not a costly part of this overall half million dollar main street project that involves utility work and paving and sidewalk repairs this is just a minor from a cost perspective a very minor component and for the shared streets grant

▶ 41:57 Shawn M. MacMaster: is there a timeline in which we would have to complete certain tasks uh in order to comply with any grant requirements or memorandum of understanding that we may have some yeah so we

▶ 42:11 Speaker 5: were supposed to purchase all of we're supposed to spend the money for the shared streets grant uh i don't remember the exact deadline but it was within 2020 and so we did we bought all of the Cones and barrels and the temporary line. Tape and the signs that say slow streets, we purchased all of that and then all the park with materials. We purchased them all within that grant time frame.

▶ 42:36 Shawn M. MacMaster: So, so there's no grant that says that we have to complete the project within a certain period period of time. Meaning we're not even though we may have deliverables that have been determined at city hall. there isn't a grant that says you have to do a b c and d other than the purchasing of the uh the items that you mentioned um that is i guess accelerating the need to get this done

▶ 43:05 Speaker 5: uh from a grantee from a grant perspective there is absolutely no there is nothing that puts us on any schedule any time frame for south main street

▶ 43:18 Shawn M. MacMaster: at all and what about complete streets money um or any other money that that would be used from the city to pay for the repayment what what does the the price tag look like from the city

▶ 43:31 Speaker 5: side complete streets grants that we have right now um the one that we're working on now is the hoover neighborhood that's 400 000 and that is our only complete streets grant that's presently open that does have a deadline but again not related at all to south main street the infrastructure project itself we had a fiscal 19 road bond that was allocated in 2018 approved by the council and south main street paving was on that list and was presented to the council as part of that that road bond we have spent the other project that's on that road bond is woodland where we're doing sidewalk work right now the whole rest of that road bond has been spent it was 1.685 million we have about 600 000 that's been sitting um in an account waiting for these two projects to be completed and then that road bond will be done um chapter 90 funding is just year by year so we've had main street on the list i think last year but then when we didn't do it last year we just you know We had plenty of other work that we still had to do. Um, so the funds just rolled to to this year's chapter 90 allocation. So there are. No, outside requirements, the road bonds, the robot money we have to spend. I think Catherine Armada will be upset with us if we don't spend it within the timeframe specified by. Bond Council, so I think that money in a way. Needs to be spent soon, but but that hasn't been any sort of a driving factor in our decisions either. It's just the condition of Main Street is our primary driving factor on needing to get this project done. We have to pave Main Street. The folks on Main Street have complained for the last couple of years and as we've done more and more utility work, the trenches, more trench patches, people say their houses are shaking. You know, the condition for drivers is really bad. bad the condition for the residents is really bad so we didn't want to let it go through

▶ 45:40 Shawn M. MacMaster: another winter we want to get it paved and thank you one of the things you talked about Miss Paracaselis earlier and last night was the infrastructural work that's occurred underground the water main the gas work and the eversource work I know we had an email communication and I had inquired recently about the project dates completion dates were you able to identify

▶ 46:06 Speaker 5: when those respective projects concluded so i did not get exact dates but um i do have them

▶ 46:22 Speaker 5: so i know i can start with the um the water service work was in 2019 um let's see water services lower main street were october 2019 water intersections on main street were july into august 2019 um see national grid gas work lower main street was started in september

▶ 47:03 Speaker 5: 2020 and was finished in it went into january 2021 but um i'm not sure if it went past january I'd have to double check that. I haven't updated this chart for 2021 yet. But it was completed in winter 2021. And then Eversource's work was sort of intermittent because during the summer seasons they had to stop their work because of peak electrical usage. They had to have everything up and running but let's see they began their project in construction began in december 2019 went through may 2020 started up again in september 2020 and went through june 2021 and then they had a little bit of work that they had to do that was mostly on howard street

▶ 48:05 Shawn M. MacMaster: um this summer okay and so since the the gas work ended in the the winter of 2020 and eversource work was later than that um do you have any concerns um about um those projects or at least the the latter project having not gone through a free cycle before repaving um main street because i do know that's a consideration when we look at other streets and i think that's just important

▶ 48:34 Speaker 5: to for the council and the public to know yeah so that is certainly something that we that we look at on um especially on the larger the longer trench projects so like on the national grid gas main work we do like to see it go through a freeze-thaw cycle and and it has um the eversource work the component on main street was really just in front of 228 main street it was one access pit that they just continually um accessed for months at a time and then close it up for the summer and then access the same spot again um and we we closely monitor their compaction um their trenches haven't settled they actually provided us with a payment in lieu of pulling up and and doing a permanent patch in that location pulling up the patch that they put in which is what they would normally do um but they've contributed the eight thousand dollars that they would have spent um toward our paving project so given that that that trench has held up nicely and it was just in one spot i think it's um it's fine to pave and it has been it has been months by the time

▶ 49:42 Shawn M. MacMaster: the paving goes down it will have been months and you you heard that the city solicitors uh opinion uh with respect to the traffic commission uh voting on bike lanes than being regulatory if If the traffic commission decides not to vote in support of the bike lanes, or other aspects of the project, which are necessary in order for the bike lanes to even occur, meaning the parking regulations. What happens with the money that's been been spent to date? Is there any type of a penalty that that we would face?

▶ 50:13 Speaker 5: Oh, so again, the money that we that we spent to do the pilot project was just the 470 dollars on the. On the line painting, and that came out of our operating budget and so there's no. You know, no, no 1 from the outside is looking in asking how we spent that money or.

▶ 50:35 Shawn M. MacMaster: Wanting any money back 1 of the questions that has come up. I know you've heard it. You've you've filled it as well from residents and I've heard it as the ward counselor is whether any other. Designs were considered beyond beyond the 2. Were there other designs considered and I'm assuming if if they were, uh, they probably didn't, uh. Suit certain, um, project goals or, uh, other. Things that you were looking at is as director, is that fair to say?

▶ 51:07 Speaker 5: Yeah, so the, the 1st, um. 1 of the designs that we looked at, um, is to do what we did on the north side of the city. So north of Highland. Which is to have a parking lane on both sides, followed by a bike lane followed by the 11 foot travel lanes. We were not able to fit that here. My hope was that that was kind of our. Worst case scenario was that if the, if the city didn't approve, the traffic commission didn't approve the reduction in parking. We would just put in the bike lanes in either direction the way they are on the north side. We realize it's not. greatest configuration for cyclists but you know it's better than not having bike lanes and and we thought that would be sufficient but the the smaller road width by just a couple feet really makes that impossible and and i wish that wasn't the case but we can't fit what we put on the north side um so that was one we considered uh we considered limiting the parking on the northbound side and keeping it on the southbound side but there are more houses on the northbound side and also there are more side streets on the southbound side and so that results in fewer parking spaces because there are all those street openings at ledge wood lodge kingsley woodruff and when you take into account all those streets and the fact that you can't park within 20 feet of a street it really makes for fewer parking spaces um substantially fewer on the southbound side than the northbound side so we did consider that um the consideration that i i would have liked to see that i think would be the ideal for for this section of main street is to do a shared use path or a raised cycle track basically a sidewalk level bike path on the southbound side or on both sides we looked at it on both sides moving the curb out into the street by the by about five or six feet and having on each side and having the bikes up at sidewalk level on the other side of the grass strip so you have the sidewalk separated by the trees and the utility poles and everything then you have the bike lane and then a curb and then parking on one side and then two travel lanes um that to do it on both sides added about half a million to the project and um the curb on one side would have been directly over the gas main for the majority of the length of the gas main so that's just not feasible and then we looked at doing it on the southbound side which was more like a 400 000 project because you only have to move one curb um but you did have to do quite a bit of drainage relocation and the like um and while i think that is a potential long-term project for the city and something we should seriously consider it is far more extensive in terms of design drainage design survey um it's just a different scope project it's more of like a tip project like what we did on lebanon street where the federal government funds it and you have you meet all the mass dot standards and you have a design engineer who puts you know full plan and spec um out to bid so that's just far beyond the scale of the money that we have and the need to just pave we we need to pave this section of roadway and i don't see paving this and putting line striping down as precluding considering that more robust project in the future i don't think it's a lost cost because we have to pave the rest of the road one way or another so um so those are all the the options that we considered and um you know we were really left with with and then the pilot and then the recommended plan those are the other two so we were left with really those two viable options and we in the end didn't like the pilot configuration that much and and so now we have the recommended

▶ 55:18 Shawn M. MacMaster: one of the questions that has come up um with respect to the southbound uh bike lane is why does it start where it doesn't mount vernon and why not uh further down uh at potomac and maybe have sharrows earlier um that's i've heard that from a few residents those who live near caruso's and closer uh to mount vernon so is there a particular reason why it starts where it does

▶ 55:47 Speaker 5: So, that was based on our, our looking at parking utilization. And, um, parking utilization, even along the, the portion from Wyoming to Potomac is not huge. Um, but. But we were starting the paving at Mount Vernon, so we were basically starting the project at Mount Vernon. That's how we did the pilot. Then we decided the impacts to the apartment buildings were just a little more serious in terms of. Mainly, in my mind, it's deliveries, they just get so many more people pulling over because of those large buildings that if you eliminate the parking alongside all 3 large buildings, starting at Mount Vernon. You end up with a lot of there's going to be a lot of violation of people parking even temporarily in the bike lanes. And that creates its own safety issue, and this is supposed to be a safety project. So we wanted to eliminate that safety concern. Could we start the bike lane down a little bit further? We could, you know, if there's a case to be made for that, but. Honestly, the parking utilization is just so minimal beyond those apartment buildings. It's just hard to argue that. You know, losing if 2 cars are parked there at any given time that those 2 cars can't park on the side street or park across the street. You know, it becomes a, obviously it's weighing. The negative impacts on each side and and the benefits, and we just felt that there is enough of a benefit. With the cycling infrastructure to offset the, um. The reduction in parking when there's plenty of space across the street and on the side streets.

▶ 57:36 Shawn M. MacMaster: And for the, the 3 crosswalk locations, is there the possibility, um, at some point in the future to consider. Uh, potentially installing, um, traffic islands for considering the, the length of the road and some of the concerns that were brought up earlier. We heard Mr. Gordon talk about people crossing. are home health aides and physical therapists and and others um you know older adults who might be visiting friends or family who can't get across the road as quickly may not be as nimble um is that something we could look at is is the the road itself prohibitive of considering that in terms of

▶ 58:18 Speaker 5: its size so if we were to put in like a median refuge island in the middle the recommended length for those i believe is eight feet and so we would have to drastically change the layout that we're proposing in order to fit an eight foot median in the middle um one thing we can do though that's common for reducing crossing distances is to create bump outs and we can do that either with curbing or with paint the problem with bump outs with curving is that unless you do a cutout for the cyclist to go through then you end up with the cyclists like on franklin street where the street bottlenecks down at the bump outs the cyclists do have to go out into the travel lane to get around the bump outs and we've heard some mixed feelings about that um but we can also do bump outs with paint which would in essence make the make a pedestrian able to safely walk to the edge of the bike lane and then wait for um for traffic so they're a little more visible to um To the folks driving and then the other thing is that she files recommended that we put in as many rapid flashing beacon push button signals at the crosswalks as we can. And so we indicated in last night's presentation that. You know, funding if funding allows, we will put it in 1 or more as many as we can afford. There are a few 1000 dollars. See, 5,000 dollars, 6,000, I remember correctly for the, the, um. Ones that we've been purchasing recently, so, um. We would like to do those at any crossings where we can.

▶ 1:00:00 Cory Thomas: I'm sorry we have counselor echoes in the queue as well. We can come back to you. I'd like to get the console echoes though, but we can come back to you. All right.

▶ 1:00:14 Jack Eccles: Councilor Eccles? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a few questions for Ms. Paragosalas. Thanks for being here tonight. Can you kind of talk about a little bit more about what a road diet means, why we decided we needed that at Main Street? If you've done it anywhere else, I think that'd be helpful

▶ 1:00:33 Speaker 5: information. So a road diet just means taking the width that you have available and reallocating it to try to meet our Complete Streets principles, which are accommodate road users of all ages and abilities and all modes of transportation. So that would be pedestrians, cyclists, freight and commercial vehicles, regular motorists, accessibility, so ADA compliance. And so those are our goals in our Complete Street Policy. Our policy dictates that we're supposed to apply those principles to every project that we do, whether it's a paving project a line striping project a you know large scale capital project or a developer project review um we're supposed to apply those principles and where we've done it in the past um tremont street is a good example where we have the bike lanes on one side and the sharrows on the other side and parking um that is i would say an example where we we took a recommendation actually from a mass dot employee who's a melrose resident who said you know we should do this because you're repaving and and we can fit this configuration um because of the parking utilization on that stretch because it is so intensively used largely because of the businesses adjacent to it um i find that to be a little tight i see a lot of people driving over the wlo on tremont street and you know it that is a road diet that i think it's successful i think it slows people down for sure and it does provide some dedicated bike infrastructure but i think that's an example of where you know we kind of try to squeeze in something that is a little on the tight side. But Main Street north of Highland is a perfect example where we took what was there and we just re-striped it to accommodate more users of the roadway.

▶ 1:02:38 Jack Eccles: So those are some examples. And was speeding a problem that was being reported on that section of Main Street before the pilot and would that necessitate a road diet? I would say speeding,

▶ 1:02:49 Speaker 5: especially with our 25 mile an hour um speed limit city-wide speeding is sort of a known entity

▶ 1:02:59 Speaker 5: you know especially on any of our major roads because 25 is a pretty slow speed and and on main street on the way to wakefield i mean i can only speak anecdotally as someone who drives that um you know pretty much every day and it is very rare that i'm in a line of cars going 25 miles an hour um so when you have a wide swath like that with zero pavement markings besides a double yellow visually you feel like you can go a lot faster and i have noticed again just anecdotally i've noticed people do drive slower through the section of melrose from highland to really from franklin to the city limit and people speed up in wakefield when they no longer have the bike lanes

▶ 1:03:51 Jack Eccles: thanks um and everyone i i thought it was interesting what you said the last night and i think it might be interested or worth repeating everyone has off street parking along that's that stretch of main street can you kind of talk there were like the seven the seven and seven that's

▶ 1:04:07 Speaker 5: That's a helpful data point I think. Yeah, so there are 22 houses along the stretch that would have parking prohibited in front of them. Seven of those houses front a side street, so all those small side streets. So there are seven houses that if they want to park along their frontage, there are some restrictions in the morning up to 10 a.m. on those streets because of Oak Grove, but those folks can park on the side streets and still be alongside their own house. seven more of those 22 are only one house away from a side street so 14 out of the 22 can park within a house of their house on a side street and walk over their house if they don't want to pull into their tandem driveway or you block in their spouse or whatnot um and then i believe it was 15 of the 22 have single car garages in addition to their driveways um and the vast majority of them have long driveways i would say driveways that fit three plus cars on that side of the street on the northbound side of the street the driveways are much more shallow and that's another reason why we thought that the southbound side was if we had to eliminate parking on one or the other that was the preferred side to prohibit parking and then there are 45 spaces or more across the street from all of these homes and while we recognize that people would prefer to not have to cross main street um when there are only at any given time four cars parked along the entire corridor and if you figure half of those might be going to the northbound side so you're talking about maybe two cars at any given time where someone has to cross the street to get to their house um and when you consider streets like lebanon howard upham where none of these folks park in front of their houses um you know i recognize that it's a change and i recognize that it can be a hardship but it's not like it's something that that's never been seen or never been done especially where everybody has off street parking gotcha thanks

▶ 1:06:09 Jack Eccles: and then one one last question just uh throughout the whole process can you kind of talk about each instance the public has had to participate um and if that's over just yet yes um so uh

▶ 1:06:23 Speaker 5: going way back to the Complete Streets Prioritization Plan, as I mentioned, there were a lot of opportunities for public input on the priorities, and that's where Main Street was identified as a priority for this type of work. Since we decided to do the pilot, we had the community forum in July. We hand-delivered notices to Main Street of that forum. We had the survey that we put out starting in September. We didn't want people's…well, we put the striping down in August. We didn't want people to weigh in with their opinions a week after the striping went down because we didn't want to be reactionary. We wanted them to really give it some thought. So in September, we put out the survey on SurveyMonkey. We received 362 responses by October 13th. When I did the analysis, we received, I think, four more by the time I closed the survey. We had an abutters meeting. Again, we did a hand-delivered notice to the abutters we did a roadside meeting so that it was convenient for folks and um we talked just to abutters about the specific impacts to them and tried to address their concerns uh with the recommended plan we had last night's meeting there's tonight's public meeting and then there is um the traffic commission meeting on thursday so there and and we've had the shared streets at citymailrose.org email address that we've repeatedly conveyed you can submit your comments there we've got quite a few comments there um and then people know where to find me at the city yard and some have so there's that as well

▶ 1:08:01 Jack Eccles: awesome yeah thank you so much i think that um you know as far from public participation perspective and with a project this big i think that this is really kind of a model for how to involve people there's been a lot of instances for people to participate and i think that you know with the final configuration it's it's it's probably true that not everyone got everything they wanted but but i am very happy with the way that this went forward and and thank you for i know it's been a lot of work over the past few months so thank you very much thank you thank

▶ 1:08:32 Cory Thomas: you councilor eccles uh counselor stewart thank you mr chair and thank you mr fracas alice for

▶ 1:08:39 Robb Stewart: being here this evening uh i appreciate your patience and full explanation of a lot of this is quite helpful um so i just have two fairly tactical questions actually um the first is um the the the road painting that you did on west highland ave which is a one-way street creating basically a bike it's a two-way but it's just a bike lane did you consider that uh for waverly place and the reason why i ask this is as you're um as you're going down basically following the train tracks and you go down what is it you go down on berwick street uh going up to west wyoming avenue uh that intersection between west wyoming and main street can be really dicey being on a bicycle uh whereas waverly place it's it's a secondary street it's uh it's one way did you

▶ 1:09:44 Speaker 5: consider that at all in the configuration so waverly place is a great consideration for a neighborhood route derby and waverly is certainly something that we've considered and we've talked about um we my concern with having bikes in both directions on derby and waverly is that we know from past traffic commission meetings that parking on waverly is fairly heavily utilized and is can be very controversial we have a lot of people we've had multiple requests for no parking opposite driveway on waverly where it gets so narrow down at the end there you only have parking um leave on one side once you reach a certain point in the street and then you have the folks with driveways on the opposite side of the street who feel that they can never get out of their driveways there are a lot of multi-family houses down at that end and there's just a lot of utilization of that parking so i don't think we could fit necessarily a dedicated bike lane and still maintain the travel lane and the parking um on derby i think we could and we could maybe even fit um two two-way bike lanes on derby but we would certainly have to eliminate parking on one side or the other of derby because i think on derby you can park on both sides um so definitely definitely a viable conversation to have and the reason why i asked this for

▶ 1:11:12 Robb Stewart: themselves is when i when i look at the the path to and from basically you're trying to create halfway down to malden um the southbound way and we've heard a lot of concerns about taking with parking and um there are some emails that came in talking about the perceived safety of cyclists uh that are in that now that the trees are in the way and all that um it seems as though the waverly place route if you could make that just a southbound not necessarily two-way but just a southbound route and then you continue forward with the northbound route as you have it planned on the striping for the bicycles that way you have the the two ways and when waverly comes out down by um the whole armory and everything that that's where everything i think works so to me it seems fairly natural i don't know it's something if uh if it's too late to consider that or if you if it's something you can look at in the future and the reason being is it does lead into my second question and that is uh on the northbound side when you plan on striping outside the cars on the outer stripe that's going to be the so you have two white line stripes one is going to be right next to the car one is going to be next to where the traffic flows on the on the white line that's next to the traffic flow are you considering to have that a double white line because and the reason why i ask this as you know i'm an avid cyclist and i've seen that to be extremely effective in uh giving a safer passageway on a more busy street where cars tend to drive a little quicker um i'd be interested in your thoughts on if you consider

▶ 1:13:04 Speaker 5: that so we we would love to put a buffer on the bike lanes on both sides of the street um but the and you know to keep the cyclists outside of the door zone um which i know on the north side On main street on the north side of the city, we don't have that luxury at all because of the total width of the road. In this case, we do have the luxury of having 1 or 2 feet of buffer that we can use somewhere. But we've opted to use that on the southbound side, because of the concern of the residents that we thought was a very, very valid concern as to how best to pull in and out of their driveways. and with the current configuration with the road being so wide and just having the double yellow down the middle the residents on the southbound side can back out of their driveways and then pull straight into the traffic it gives them kind of a little refuge before they pull into traffic or they can pull over to the side of the road and back into their driveways and so by using that extra buffer on that salt bond side it pushes the center line closer to where it is now and will allow about seven feet about the width of a parking lane for people to make that maneuver understanding that that maneuver will be within the bike lane but they're going to be pulling through the bike lane to pull in and out of their driveways one way or another so they have to be cognizant of cyclists either way but we thought that was a good um a good compromise for trying to help out those folks with the safety of pulling in and out of their driveways and you know both are safety issues and both are completely valid safety issues but i think in terms of total utilization there might be more people pulling in and out of driveways you know more cars for the day than there are cyclists driving in the door riding the door zone on the northbound side um you know we don't we don't have those numbers but um i thought it was an equally concerning safety issue and we had to pick one or the other and I think because we were eliminating the parking on the southbound side, we thought that we should give them the.

▶ 1:15:12 Robb Stewart: The additional buffer space, right? Well, I think you see where I'm going on this, right? Because. If wave, if you go with, um, then you buy yourself a little a couple of feet. That then you can create buffer and play around a little bit. That gives you that footage that you intentionally just a thought. Um, but I just, I want to get you. But those are the only questions I have, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Perwick-Casales, I appreciate it.

▶ 1:15:48 Mark Garipay: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Perwick-Casales for being here. Just have one quick question as I was looking at the aerials, just regarding crosswalks on the design. And maybe it's because I'm looking at the aerials, it seems like there's a big distance between one crosswalk, looks like it's north of Potomac, then it goes south to Kingsley, and then there's one north of Lodge and it goes south to Ledgewood. And that, if there's parking only on one side, it just seems like there's a big distance between, you know, if someone was gonna use the crosswalk, they gotta walk south and walk north. And I'm wondering if there's any thought to adding some in between to lessen that walking travel space by foot. And it just, and it may be, because the way I'm looking at it on the map, I haven't driven it. Just noticed it, so I just wanted to get your opinion on that.

▶ 1:16:46 Speaker 5: Shed a little light on that. Thank you. So, on the traffic commission agenda, I ended up including proposed crosswalks at every. Side street, so Mount Vernon, Potomac, Kingsley. Well, I didn't include the ones that are already there because we don't have to vote on those, but. The 4 smaller streets, and then Mount Vernon and Potomac, even though we didn't show them all in the recommended plan, because originally we weren't talking about doing all of them. Um, I was having a conversation with Gail and Ferna yesterday about maybe the day before about the, um. The intersection in Malvern and she was saying, there's a charter school bus stop there and just in thinking about it as I was putting the traffic commission agenda together. I thought. Let's include all of them, because in the past, the traffic commission is very hesitant to vote on anything. That's not listed on the agenda. And so, if somebody. Were to say, well, how about we don't put 1 here and we put them there instead? Or how about we put 1 at all across streets? I wanted that to be an option. Um, so that is now we'll vote individually on all of those crosswalks. Um, if you are you suggesting that also that there would potentially need to be 1 between side streets.

▶ 1:17:56 Mark Garipay: Or does that cover? No, no, I think that covers it. I mean, the way I just heard you, it's going to be more than what's on the diagram originally that they have up here, which is fine. It just seemed like there was a lot of space. So that answers my question. Thank you.

▶ 1:18:08 Speaker 5: Okay. All right. Thanks. And actually, I can answer your parklet question from earlier if you'd like. um the parklets have been considered temporary in nature because they're not set in stone in their present in their existing locations the idea is each year we can put them anywhere um but we have i have spoken to the mayor about the fact that the parklet in front of starbucks and tanakh is just so popular in that location that i think the reality is that one of the parklets is always going to go back in that location if the community has anything to say about it um and so at the point where we're putting the same parklet in the same spot every year we absolutely need to go before traffic commission to vote on on prohibiting those parking spaces because it's you know it becomes very much not temporary anymore if every spring we come out and block the same two spaces and leave it there until november thank you yeah the

▶ 1:19:05 Mark Garipay: only reason why i brought it up was when um miss phillips had mentioned uh you know when we changed

▶ 1:19:13 Speaker 5: parking it just it just rang a bell on that so thank you yeah no we we have had that conversation i mean they were always intended to be temporary um but i think they're so popular and they came out so nice people like them and they're really a nice community amenity and if we're gonna put them in the same places we need to do something about not taking a vote thank you

▶ 1:19:34 Cory Thomas: council again any other council for the first time before we go back to council mcmaster Seeing none, Councillor McMaster, thank you for your patience.

▶ 1:19:46 Shawn M. MacMaster: Hello again, Ms. Paracas-Alice. Thank you again for indulging me. I just have a few more questions. I guess one of the things you mentioned earlier was that you're aware that there's obviously a desire to improve Lower Main Street for everyone, especially the abutters. The condition of the street hasn't been in great shape for for quite some time and i've heard that from a butters as

▶ 1:20:19 Shawn M. MacMaster: well so the i guess the question is we focused a little bit on urgency and the need to get it done and you talked about the bond and that you know the treasurer um is going to want to see that that money spent the the paving money is there if we held off on this until the spring and i know that's not what you want to do um because from even speaking with abutters who want to see the road paved many of them have said that if it comes down to having to go through another winter considering two years of what uh the abutters are used to with the poor condition of the road the plates that were on the road all of the the you know issues uh the defects to the road post infrastructure would work um do you think we'd be in a better position at all and i realize you talked about that you explore other options and there are certainly financial constraints there are some other things that in an ideal world you would have been able to do but do you think we held off to the spring that we would you know there would be a third design that might um be a better fit for all stakeholders um i just think that's important to ask so the the city staff has

▶ 1:21:29 Speaker 5: spent a lot of time on on this project and i think that the current recommended plan wouldn't change if we were to wait until the spring i think we would still be advocating for the same plan i think the butter's opinions are unlikely to change over the winter i think the cycling community's opinions are unlikely to change over the winter um so i i don't really see what would happen any differently i think if we were to look at you know waiting until the spring and trying to come up with another half a million dollars and putting in a raised cycle track on one side of the road that would be amazing but that would involve the same elimination of parking along the southbound side and so i don't think the abutters are going to like it anymore i think the cycling community would like it more but i don't think well i guess that's not true I was going to say, I don't think they really have that many outstanding concerns, but some do. Some certainly do from last night's conversation, given that this is really a compromise of a plan. I just don't see a whole lot changing and I also think that if we pave now and we stripe now, and then we come up with the money to move the curb in the spring and put in a cycle track on one side, that can still happen. I don't, I don't think it's likely, um, I don't think it's likely a big enough priority for the city to want to put half a 1Million dollars to that. Given all the other competing interests that we have needs for. You know, starting to design on public safety buildings and all sorts of other things, um, school needs other infrastructure. I'd be surprised if that was the direction that everybody wanted to go. But I really don't see the delay doing much other than keeping that road in terrible condition through the winter. We would also have to come back and black out all the pilot striping and stripe something else for the winter. Which, you know, we prefer not to do that again as well.

▶ 1:23:40 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you, and I'll just wrap up with 2 corridor related questions. People have reached out to me with concerns also about certain areas of the sidewalk on lower main street, both in the north in self direction, as well as problem trees, trees that are either in poor condition, or that have caused problems for for a butters at any stage in this process was a sidewalk or tree assessment done.

▶ 1:24:10 Speaker 5: So, a tree assessment has not been done. We don't typically do a tree assessment of the existing trees as part of our capital projects, because that tends to happen as just as time goes on, people request them sometimes like on Ashmont Street somebody had a tree they were concerned about and they reached out to us when we were doing our capital project. We did an assessment. We concluded it was dead. We came and did a removal. And we can certainly do that for any trees that are of concern. We can assess. Any trees that people want assessed, but the timing is not really. Bound to the capital project, because the sidewalks aren't, we're not realigning any of the sidewalks with grass strip will remain where it is. So. um so i would suggest on trees if anyone would like a tree assessment on a specific tree that it's as simple as calling that into the dpw main number at 781-665-0142 and requesting a tree assessment and then with sidewalks we are uh in the spring going to replace any remaining sidewalk blocks and if there are curb ramps that we don't get to this this winter um didn't need to wait till the weather improves those will be done in the spring so we'll definitely have a concrete crew from dnr out on site in the spring and our plan is to replace any sidewalk blocks that have tripping hazards or other major concerns um that we didn't get to with that year mark where we did the first 50 000 of sidewalks so if you have any sidewalk locations um you can send them in a list to me and vonnie and we'll just make sure that those are assessed as part of the project that's great i appreciate that

▶ 1:25:56 Shawn M. MacMaster: and i'd welcome the opportunity to walk the the corridor with you too and just take a look at some of those locations and uh and some of the trees that folks have reached out to me about um i do appreciate on the on the uh the self um lane that there was an effort after i reached out to you to cut back uh some of the trees that were overhanging there were buses and with the reconfiguration trucks that were hitting some of those those branches can we expect that to be done on the north side of the street too where there are a lot of older trees as well um that you know are

▶ 1:26:37 Speaker 5: they have limbs that are creating some issues yeah if we if we have um tree limbs i'm gonna make a note to myself right now but um if uh if there are limbs that need to be limbed up we can

▶ 1:26:51 Speaker 5: absolutely do that thank you there by the end of the day tomorrow okay uh hopefully that doesn't

▶ 1:27:01 Shawn M. MacMaster: happen but we're in for quite a storm and only hope last uh question relates to um trash barrels we've had conversations about concerns about the uh the trash contractor um their employees leaving barrels in the bike lanes understanding now with the redesign on the north side that if that were to happen bikers would be swerving out into the travel lane you know what can be done I know you've I know you've reached out to the the contractor you've spoken with the contractor directly but what more can we do because it hasn't it hasn't worked yet and what can we do to hold them accountable uh once we i mean even now but once we finalize the plan

▶ 1:27:50 Speaker 5: so we haven't had that issue in the other areas where we have bike lanes so i think some of it is a matter of the um the employees the jrm employees getting used to new configurations and making sure that they're respectful of them um some of it is just you know we this is something we reiterate to jrm all the time to put the trash barrels back where they took them from that's that's our new mantra i've had many conversations with the mayor and with actually some other trash hauling companies who we've been talking to about future contracts and you know every street is different some have a bike lane some have a grass strip some have a sidewalk some don't have a sidewalk um so the the going theory is that they should just always put them back where they found them and that's usually the most appropriate spot on any given street um so we've been trying to to reiterate that to jrm i know counselor stewart and i have had that conversation many times in his neighborhood um you know we say it over and over again we've said it to the owner of the company we've said it to the managers we've said it to the employees our employees have followed them around and monitored and um you know the best we can do but i do think that it hasn't been a problem in other neighborhoods with bike lanes so some of it is just um uh getting used to the configuration thank you mr chairman i don't have

▶ 1:29:19 Shawn M. MacMaster: any further questions for uh director paratus alice i think we can move on to the chiefs unless you or any of uh my colleagues have questions thank you miss paracas any counselors for the

▶ 1:29:36 Cory Thomas: second time for Director Paroi-Casellas seeing none Director Paroi-Casellas thank you so much Chief Lyle does anyone have any questions for Chief Lyle thank you for being here Chief

▶ 1:29:54 Shawn M. MacMaster: you hear me thank you Council McMaster for Chief Lyle thank you Mr. Chairman Chief when I had reached out to you in July to raise some concerns about the pilot project you indicated at that time that you hadn't been consulted on the the plan have you since had an opportunity to weigh in

▶ 1:30:10 Speaker 7: about the redesign i have i have had uh a couple of meetings uh not with the public was internal and i did i did send an email to the uh the chair of the traffic commission president elena procosellos with some concerns i had between the pilot design and the redesign do you have a

▶ 1:30:32 Speaker 7: preference well obviously the second plan is far superior to the first plan and i will say that

▶ 1:30:38 Shawn M. MacMaster: what what are the concerns that you have about the uh the redesign both as police chief and as

▶ 1:30:45 Speaker 7: a member of the traffic commission well as a resident traffic commission and uh as the police chief safety is always the number one thing in my mind when i'm looking at anything and the pilot program i had real concerns especially late at night people would see the vehicles heading northbound like it looks like a broken down vehicle late at night and i went by there a couple different times and i had concerns about that and i give a lot of credit to the committee and anybody involved in that and said hey wait a minute and they took a different approach and and obviously there's a design change as far as southbound and i certainly spoke up about it that um with the elimination of the parking there the road will appear to be

▶ 1:31:32 Speaker 7: wider than it really is for a motorist and with cars parked there the the allusion to the operator ending southbound the road is smaller i got a feeling a pretty confident feeling once the road is repaved and it's striped speeds will be going up and more complaints will be coming into

▶ 1:31:54 Shawn M. MacMaster: the police department about speeding particularly southbound chief you heard um concerns both at the um the uh public comments section uh tonight and you know over time i know residents have reached out to you directly about the loss of parking uh heading in the southbound direction from your perspective do you think it's it's possible at all to have two dedicated bike line bike lanes one in each direction and not uh reduce parking

▶ 1:32:23 Speaker 7: You know, it depends. I don't know what the ideal bike lane width is. I do not know. I know that Upper Main Trail went up there. That varies from four feet to approximately

▶ 1:32:40 Speaker 7: four and a half feet. It varies a little bit up there in Upper Main. But what's surprising is the the most difficult intersection correct me if i'm wrong uh uh elena procosellis that the lindfels pocket lincoln street um is a problematic intersection i know the state the dcr mass d.o.t and everybody has been involved up there trying to make that a safer intersection um that's only 40 feet wide which i was kind of surprised the lindfels parkway at 45. what they do is they have two dedicated bike lanes with a buffer which i'm all in favor of i really like that appreciate that the buffer lane is approximately three feet car door opens i get it the bike lane six feet the road's a little now with 10.6 so 10 and a half is a non-commercial roadway obviously we do see trucks from time to time on the parkway i i really appreciated that design and layout and that's an ideal situation what we have on main street miles is different there's a lot of residents a lot of commercial businesses throughout Main Street it's a commercial truck route for a lot of folks that don't know that that that is our biggest route for truck travel it may work it certainly would have to you know be dialed in and looked at upper Main Street I took various areas where intersection crosswalks were that varied from 41 feet 6 inches and when you get that was at Boardman Ave when you get to West Highland Ave East Highland Ave it It jumps to 436 and then there's some other small variations. I got the Morgan street. There's no striking up there that the width of the roadway at Morgan. Just just north of that is 42 feet. You got a lower mainstream. It varies from 41 feet at Rockview and large Kingsley, Potomac. It's anywhere from 46 to 40.8 inches. That's 40.6 inches. Forty feet, six inches. Mount Vernon, surprising. Forty feet, three inches there. In Mayworth, that's with a four-foot, but I believe that in the project it's set up for five feet, so that may be tight. I know from history every paved road that we do in the city speeds go up as soon as the roads are paved they're actually smooth and with the type of vehicles that folks drive nowadays they're very comfortable you really can't hear road noise you know all of a sudden you look at your speedometer and

▶ 1:35:21 Speaker 2: the speeds are up sorry my apologies you can continue no I'm available for any

▶ 1:35:24 Speaker 7: other questions and those are the numbers that I ran today and I had a great conversation one of your constituents today who lives on Main Street and he was real concerned about packing out of his driveway so I went in a driveway I looked and I said yes you have a problem there's two trees that create a blind spot when he's pulling out of his driveway whether he's heading northbound or southbound so that's something really should be looked at and I mentioned to him I said you know one concern for me is there's a lot of folks that live in the stretch here I don't know if there's home health aides He says, I have one, my mom, she lives with us and there is home health care and she will not park on our side. She has to walk across the street. I said, well, maybe that can be worked out for you.

▶ 1:36:08 Shawn M. MacMaster: So based on what you mentioned and what we heard earlier from a resident, you know, presumably that that risk exists already, that the trees were there before the, you know, the, the traffic excuse me the uh the the configuration the pilot configuration and you know the trees aren't aren't going anywhere they're healthy trees um as paracas ellis has mentioned in the past that uh it's the policy of the city not to remove healthy trees um but the concern of course now is uh accelerated in the sense that people are worried about backing out and striking a cyclist is that is there anything from your perspective that you think can be done in concert with this

▶ 1:36:55 Speaker 7: project uh to minimize that risk the only thing you could do actually is put signage there for notifying the bicycles be care of you know blind spots passing driveways and so there's a number of driveways there just to put the alert to them that the driver can't always see you when they're

▶ 1:37:11 Shawn M. MacMaster: backing out of the driveway yeah maybe when we walk this the strip miss paracas ellis that's you that's something we can look at if there are any particular driveways that um you know i think of two um but they're you know there may be more so that might just be a uh something we can add to to our agenda when when we do that um chief naturally if people are crossing the road more due to parking being eliminated on one side uh of the of the street um you know there are natural safety risks to that uh other than the crosswalks can you think of any other pedestrian safety measures that that you would recommend um uh in connection with this this project something you might like

▶ 1:37:55 Speaker 7: we might look to do moving forward well clearly uh line of sight for the pedestrian and the motor motorist and elena uh excuse me poker seller she chairs the traffic commission she knows as well as i do that any time a crosswalk is installed the first thing you look at is line of sight for the pedestrian as well as the motorist approaching that crosswalk so that's a big thing and i know she'll certainly look into that before those lines of strike and if there's branches or limbs that have to be trimmed so be it what about traffic coming measures anything

▶ 1:38:26 Speaker 7: additional that you might recommend obviously speed signs they they have an effect on motorists notifying some people don't realize how fast they're going and the average driver will see that and alert them i mean there's a number of things and it isn't always on the police department for speed enforcement i remember when we had complaints galore on upland street we went out there for several days citations stopping cars warnings verbal warnings as soon as we pulled back the speed shot right up so we know that speed enforcement by law enforcement

▶ 1:39:00 Shawn M. MacMaster: isn't the only answer you and i have i'm sorry well yeah you and i have been out there and you've done uh you've done radar uh with me standing present when i ran yes and i can show

▶ 1:39:09 Shawn M. MacMaster: you flat out yep and you know i appreciate uh director paracas ellis because she's been you know sensitive to the concerns uh about speed did some replating at the time when you know speeding was um causing issues with the plates uh making you know noise for for butters and um she's aware that i put in a request for two of the solar speed signs i know we've heard from some residents who uh don't think that they're effective but the data really suggests otherwise that um you know they it may not be a panacea but they they do help so i know uh you know i did want to give a shout out to uh director paracas ellis because she has um made sure uh that those are a part of uh you know this project um chief i'll just wrap up with um A couple opportunities, I think, for the police department moving forward, if the traffic commission does approve the plan for the dedicated bike lanes. I do think a refresher on mass general law chapter 89 section D would be helpful just for officers all officers to be aware who may not necessarily be as informed or well versed on prohibitions of cars stopping or standing in bike lanes. So, I would suggest that that be, you know, go out as a roll call announcement or, you know, some sort of an education effort. And then the final thing is that, you know, we do have, I believe, 2, maybe 3 bicycle officers, and I'm wondering if we might be able to utilize the officers. Um, if the project is approved on lower main street and in other parts of the city, but especially where we do have a new, uh, you know, um, potential, uh, design where we'll see more bikers, uh, on the, uh. Um, on the, the, the corridor, uh, there, um, to, uh. To educate both motorists and bicyclists on rules of the road and, you know, if necessary, and I know, you know, we want certainly want to tell people to comply with with traffic rules and regulations. But, you know, if it gets to the point where there are habitual offenders or egregious actions enforcement. Um, something to consider, maybe having the, the bicycle office offices there. I also think that, you know, their presence in the community is good as well received and it's certainly a softer approach to interacting with law enforcement. That that might be worthwhile.

▶ 1:41:50 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you. Chief. Mr. Chairman. That's all I have for.

▶ 1:41:54 Cory Thomas: Thank you. Council. Council of McMaster. Are there any other. Consolers in the committee that have any questions for chief.

▶ 1:42:05 Jack Eccles: Council records. Thanks for being here. Chief. I just a quick question kind of with the addition. Of the northern end bike lanes on the way to Wakefield. Is there been any kind of like. Key things we've learned is from a policing or traffic enforcement perspective there.

▶ 1:42:25 Speaker 7: Anything new happen as far as bicycle traffic? No, as far as. Some other motorist illegal activity. Yes.

▶ 1:42:34 Jack Eccles: Gotcha. That was the only question I had.

▶ 1:42:39 Cory Thomas: Thanks. Thank you. Councilor Eccles. Any other City Council for Chief Lyle?

▶ 1:42:45 Cory Thomas: Chief, thank you for being here. Chief Kalina, thank you for your patience. Any Councilors have any questions for Chief Kalina?

▶ 1:42:56 Shawn M. MacMaster: Council McMaster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chief, thank you for being here. Thank you for your patience. I know you've had a long day as well. You may recall conversations that we had during the pilot project about questions and concerns that I had about ladder trucks ability to reach homes in the event on lower main street in the event of a fire. Does that does that concern exist now with the redesign? Or was that exclusive to the pilot?

▶ 1:43:25 Speaker 3: I was exclusive to the pilot now with the redesign alleviated my concern what

▶ 1:43:35 Speaker 3: you're talking about with the length of the ladder we need to get as close to the curb as possible it's not always practical with park cars but with the the first plan and the protected bike lane that that would push out the ladder truck probably into the opposing lane to set up and the farther we get away from our target we lose uh working length of the ladder any ladder for that matter okay now with respect

▶ 1:44:04 Shawn M. MacMaster: to the new configuration does that raise any concerns about fire apparatuses accessing uh accessing properties or hydrants on a lower main street is there anything that we should be

▶ 1:44:20 Speaker 3: be aware of. I don't have any concerns now that if the bike lane is on the

▶ 1:44:26 Shawn M. MacMaster: outside of the park has. Now what about firefighters who will need to disembark a truck whether it's because of a fire any other type of emergency or a crash that would bring them into the roadway. Any concerns in terms of considering that the roadway itself will be narrowed.

▶ 1:44:48 Speaker 3: There's always concerns and like Chief Lotto stated, my number one concern is the safety of our members on the fire department.

▶ 1:44:58 Speaker 3: And, you know, when you're getting off the truck with the two lanes, north and south close, you know, there's no middle of the road of the northbound or the southbound lane that's really right on the edge of the yellow line. And so, when the members are getting off the truck, usually they just have to worry about what's coming up from the rear. But now, if you're on the yellow line, let's say, and you open the door. You'll have to worry about oncoming traffic. Let alone getting off the truck opening compartment doors. Pulling equipment off, you know, um, firefighters, uh. Get hit all the time. We've never had the issues down there. We were always able to pull over far enough. But I don't see the problem now with the painted bike lane on the outside of the park cars. And I believe on the southbound land is only going to be limited parking in front of the apartment buildings at Mount Vernon Street. So, I'm much, much more comfortable with the second plan. As it is for the safety of my members.

▶ 1:46:09 Shawn M. MacMaster: Okay, and chief, you heard the questions that I asked chief Lyle. With respect to safety concerns, any other general safety concerns from your perspective that you want to make known tonight for the council to consider.

▶ 1:46:28 Speaker 3: I don't have any as it is with the bike lane.

▶ 1:46:33 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you, Chief. That's all I have, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for the latitude and I want to thank my colleagues. I think as everyone knows, this has really been the number one issue facing Ward 5, biggest issue in quite some time. so i appreciate that uh it was latitude with the uh with the rules allowing me to ask more questions to give me more time uh than normal i know that's something that we do try to extend to one another when these important issues come up uh in an award so i want to thank everybody for indulging me i want to thank miss paraka salas uh chief lyle uh chief kalina and uh city solicitor uh phillips uh for their time tonight thank you thank you so much um anyone have

▶ 1:47:15 Cory Thomas: anything else for chief kalina or any of our other guests tonight seeing no further questions what is

▶ 1:47:31 Speaker 1: the will of the committee council stewart i'd like to make a motion put this uh order on file second

▶ 1:47:41 Cory Thomas: a motion to put order 2022-35 on file by councillor stewart seconded by councillor eccles Mr. Clerk of Committees, could you please call the roll?

▶ 1:47:53 Speaker 2: Chair Thomas? Yes.

▶ 1:47:57 Speaker 2: Vice Chair Garipay?

▶ 1:47:59 Speaker 8: Yes.

▶ 1:48:00 Speaker 2: Councillor McMaster? Yes. Councillor Eccles?

▶ 1:48:07 Speaker 3: Yes.

▶ 1:48:07 Speaker 2: Councillor Stewart?