ORDER-2019-32 : An Order to Review Potential Policies regarding Lime Bike and other cyber rental bicycles

Transcript (~1 h @ 8:32)

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

▶ 8:28 Francis X. Wright Jr.: items on our agenda this evening item one is order 2019-32 in order to review potential policies regarding line bike and other cyber rental bicycles sponsored by non-voting member peter

▶ 8:51 Francis X. Wright Jr.: mortimer motion to uh suspend the rules the motion to suspend the rules by alderman Zwirko second seconded by alderman medeiros all in favor of suspending the rules

▶ 9:06 Michael P. Zwirko: the rules are suspended thank you mr chairman i was wondering if this time given the order i see an attachment about a bike share presentation i was hoping that maybe we could bring forth members of the community and planning uh development uh department to speak to uh the attachment on this order as well um if um uh through the chair if alderman mortimer had anything as a non-voting member he'd like to introduce on this order himself thank you mr chair thank you all of

▶ 9:30 Peter D. Mortimer: this work alderman mortimer um thank you mr chairman uh yes before we proceed i brought I'm not a member of this committee, so I appreciate the latitude in letting me speak. And thank you Alderman Zwirko for that consideration as well. I brought forth this order and I didn't have any ordinance attached to it. I just wanted to get a presentation because what had happened was people began to approach me in the street and said what's the story? It was on the mayor's blog, and there were websites, but a lot of times people don't always go that route to garner information about events that are occurring in the city. So I brought forth this ordinance so that we might have a presentation from the city planner. I am a fan of the cyber bikes. I'm an avid bicyclist myself. Sometimes I wish they wouldn't make the streets as narrow as they do from DPW, that's supposed to be a traffic calming measure but if you're a bicyclist you sometimes you get really wedged in and you have to jump up on the curb which might be too high. But I noticed there were a lot of bicycles around and people were asking me and sometimes I did see with my own eyes and based on information that other people would supply to me that they were knocked over. see it as I rolled around and maybe it was just an auspicious coincidence but after I filed this order suddenly I noticed the bikes got a lot neater so I don't know whether that got back to the company that does this or not and that's one thing that you know I'm in favor of the bikes but they need to be kept orderly and I'm sure we're gonna hear a lot about how they are kept orderly but Like many programs that we have that are forward thinking in nature, the regulation begins to slip after a year or two. So I just want to make sure that, you know, we're all very concerned about safety on our sidewalks. And we had more than enough conversation on that a few months ago in another area. But a lot of people were saying that people were having a little trouble walking around them. Sometimes we're on the sidewalk. But I would defer and I appreciate All of Mr. Kretschmer's comments are very appropriate, and I am a favor of doing what we can do to eliminate vehicular transportation in Melrose. It's getting worse, and that's something that people notice. So that's the reason I filed the order, and I defer to the expertise. And thank you for allowing me to speak.

▶ 12:11 Francis X. Wright Jr.: Thank you, Alderman Mortimer.

▶ 12:15 Francis X. Wright Jr.: will defer to Ms. Gaffey and the city officials who have put together a program for dockless bike share in Melrose great thank you very much

▶ 12:24 Denise Gaffey: my name is Denise Gaffey I'm the director of planning and community development and on my right is Emma Schnur she's the senior planner in the planning office and Emma has put together a slide presentation that kind of walks through the program so I'm gonna defer turn there over to her in just a moment I just wanted to thank you Alderman Mortimer for this opportunity to be here tonight to talk about the program I wanted to just emphasize the fact that it is a pilot program it was crafted as a pilot program through our participation with MAPC we're one of 12 communities in the region that's participating in this program and it became apparent to us after Malden had their pilot their own pilot program in the fall of 2017 and many of the many of bicycles were migrating into Melrose that it made sense to participate in this pilot program and give this give the residents an opportunity to try it out and see if it was going to have any traction so we're really excited about the ridership data that we have seen and which will will demonstrate in a few moments and what we've done we have a we actually do have a statement of work with which outlines all the policies and the regulatory framework for this pilot program with line bike so we will also walk through those those sort of that regulatory framework through these slides and then we're happy to answer any questions that you have there is a representative here tonight from line bike in in the audience who was really nice to join us tonight so if you have questions that are geared directly to the company I'm sure he'd be happy to answer them as well so for now I will turn it over to Emma and she's gonna

▶ 14:10 Speaker 3: walk through the slides thank you as Denise mentioned my name is Emma Schner we are here to talk about dockless bike share in Melrose so just to back up a little bit this all started in 2017 because a number of communities in our region were actually being approached by dockless bike share systems looking to operate in their communities for example Malden launched their own pilot with Lyme back in October 2017 and around that time bikes began appearing in Melrose because obviously city lines don't really have fiscal borders so the bikes were traveling all over and so in order to ensure a coordinated regional effort and to make sure that different communities weren't all using different vendors that wouldn't be compatible across community lines MAPC the Metropolitan Area Planning Council which is the regional planning authority for Greater Boston issued an RFP back in November 27 for one or more vendors to provide a regionalized system through a pilot program and these vendors were selected back in February 2018 so a year ago at the time another vendor was also selected along with lime spin but they soon sort of went under I think they moved solely to scooters and so we're just working with Lyme but that's actually been very advantageous because it's been a much more coordinated effort just being able to work directly with them and they have been a very accessible partner so as Denise mentioned there's 12 communities that are currently operating in the system 15 communities sort of signed on in the beginning but a couple have had trouble getting off the ground Medford I think for example hasn't signed their agreement I'm not sure if Milton has either but there's still there's still quite a region-wide network and users take these bikes all over the communities that they're operating in

▶ 16:17 Speaker 3: okay um so the memorandum of understanding that was with MAPC and all the partner communities was signed back in 2018 the mayor signed it in May which already kick-started the one-year pilot and at that time bike started coming into Melrose because lime was now sort of making sure that bikes were in the whole system over the next six months the city worked with lime and MAPC to craft specific policies for the city of Melrose and that's all contained in our statement of work that's the piece of regulation that controls pretty much everything in the system it's what we follow it's what line follows and the agreement has worked well so far so the SOW was officially signed in October 2018 and that's when we say the program sort of launched that's when we did a bunch of outreach and you probably also started hearing both good and bad things from your constituents at that time but the bikes you know have have have been around for quite a number of months now and so the this year of the pilot comes to a close on May 3rd 2019 and now we're sort of all discussing contract extensions and how the next years can look so the statement of work as I mentioned it's specific for each individual community it sets our regulations the project plan is the real meat of the document and that has all the rules about bike parking by count so how many bikes are allowed where they should be rebalanced in the hotspot locations customer service winter operations etc it indemnifies the city from all liability and basically our SOW allows lime to launch a fleet of up to a hundred bikes at any one time right now there's between 20 and 30 bikes on the ground because as you've heard it's a supply and demand system and our sow gives the city flexibility to decrease the bike count both based on ridership demand but also the vendor performance I'll just summarize some of the bike parking rules they are supposed to be parked on the sidewalk right next to the curb in the furniture zone so they're not allowed to block a sidewalk loading zone a parking spot fire hydrants curb ramps driveways anything they can't inhibit pedestrian movement on the street they if they've been parked in one location for more than seven days we can request that lime removes them if a bike is parked illegally then you can notify the vendor and they'll remove the bike within three hours if it's between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. week and then 12 hours after receiving notice at all other times and if a bike is not safe to operate they'll move it from the public way and lastly if there's a snow emergency or more than three inches of snow then the vendor will remove all the bikes from the road and not put them back until all the snow has been removed and in the last snow that worked out really well I think they cleared all the bikes maybe one or two might have drifted back into Melrose after they got them all off the road but we were really impressed with how they handled the snow. So just some ridership statistics for the manual bikes there have been 2,825 total rides and that's since May. Over 1,000 riders, 1,123 traveling over 2,000 miles and the median trip time is about 11 minutes. For the e-bikes there's been 657 rides. They came online a little bit at the end of August and for a while there were very few e-bikes on the ground in Melrose so now we're seeing that number increase there's been 230 riders about 400 miles traveled total and those trips are a little bit shorter because they have the pedal assist so median time is more like seven minutes this shows the monthly number of rides for both manual bikes and e-bikes you could see that the number of rides was obviously much higher during the warm months so during May and June and July the you know you had 500 something rides a month and then the number has steadily decreased as it's gotten colder and but as you could see as the number of manual bike rides has gone down a bit the number of e-bike rides has increased quite a bit because there are more e-bikes on the road now so this just shows some ridership statistics for rider frequency and as we would expect most trips are completed or most people basically ride once or twice but there are a fair number of people who ride more often than that so over the lifetime of the system for manual bikes you know 315 people take less than three trips but a hundred and six people take five took five to 15 trips which is pretty significant and 26 people took 15 to 30 trips and eight people are very very regular users taking 30 or more trips and you see the similar ratio for the e-bikes and that other column just shows over a month time period back in November what that ridership looked like and it was pretty pretty comparable to the lifetime this just this map just shows some of the routes that are being taken and this shows for both manual bikes and e-bikes and not surprisingly the roads that are utilized the most are Main Street and Pleasant Street and Washington and Tremont and West Emerson and also Porter a lot Porter I think maybe there might be a very frequent around that street or that might be just a common a common route so we're actually going to be getting some data exported from Lyme that shows all these routes and we'll be able to do some work to analyze that and see how that lines up with some of the bike planning work that the pet and bike committee has done so that should be interesting to look into that data a bit more as I mentioned If a bike is parked illegally, if you see it parked on the sidewalk, if you're able-bodied and you can just move it to the side, that's what we would encourage. But if for whatever reason you can't or there are a number of bikes, we definitely encourage you to either contact Lime or you could file a complaint through C-Click Fix. We've only gotten one complaint through that. I'm not sure if Lime has really gotten many complaints, but so far the system's been working pretty well, we think. definitely the number of complaints have died down since the first uh bit of news came out about it um and so far yeah we're just we're looking forward to see what happens in the spring once we have more bikes on the ground and you know we can really see how the system is working thank you

▶ 24:05 Manisha Bewtra: if you have any questions thank you um thanks for all your work to flesh out um first the mou and statement of work and the work that's gone out on the mayor's blog i mean the communications on the mayor's blog and city website but i also want to thank my colleagues alderman mortimer and alderman medeiros because i think having this presentation before us is additionally very helpful because i know folks have had lots of questions um i um was wondering what kinds of

▶ 24:36 Manisha Bewtra: data does lime bike share with the city do you have like a lot of maybe this is a question for lime bike in terms of the data that is made available both in terms of rider statistics but also in terms of complaints and i guess as part of that question is also if complaints are going to be um always coming directly to the city or if if folks will be able to contact the vendor directly and if so do you have access to that information so the slide that you that emma had

▶ 25:11 Denise Gaffey: just shown you shows you how people how how users can contact line bike and i think that's the most efficient way of of of getting response to a complaint and when we have checked in with line bike about whether they've received complaints i think we've mostly heard that they have not i think you were able were you able to check the chief yeah yeah we could check that system to see and found the one complaint that was registered since the program started in terms of other data

▶ 25:41 Speaker 3: like the ridership data we basically have access to lime's dashboard they have a dashboard system that each municipality can log into and see all the ridership details for our specific municipality and they've also given mapc more data that's kind of on the back end of that uh dashboard so we're working on getting that data now so we could you know play with it more um i don't think lime gets like demographic data or anything like that off of users though that would be interesting to um to see but did you do a year-end survey or was that happening excuse me sir

▶ 26:32 Francis X. Wright Jr.: could you come up to the table introduce yourself thank you

▶ 26:41 Speaker 4: Hesha Malawi I'm the Northeast general manager for lime thank you for having me so we for for the MAPC specifically we haven't done a survey yet that we have to come to an agreement to what that would look like and what questions we would want to cover more broadly across the rest of our markets we've done we've done some surveys and have a sense of the demographic breakdown income breakdown types of uses for the bikes and scooters and so on so I

▶ 27:12 Manisha Bewtra: admittedly haven't used one yet how how do people rent them and do you have an option for folks who might not have access to a credit card yes so the the

▶ 27:22 Speaker 4: way you would rent them is you have to download the Lime app onto your onto your phone and there is a QR code on the bicycle be it a pedal pedal cycle or an electric assist bike and so with the your your camera you will scan the QR code it unlocks the bike and then you can ride it from point to point and then you lock the bicycle after that and you get charged on your credit card for lower income communities we have a program called lime access and so you can have a flip phone and with cash basically pay for for your rides the way would work is you would sign up online so you need to prove that you're under some sort of local state or federal aid program and we've partnered with with a

▶ 28:20 Speaker 4: pain near me provider so you could go to CVS or Walgreens or 7-eleven and basically refill your balance there and by doing so you can then use your phone to unlock the the bike each each bike has a number associated with the QR code so you text the number and say unlock and then it would unlock and same with you text the bike again the QR code and say lock and then it would lock after that for pedal bikes there is a 95% discount on on the standard pricing if you are a lime access participant for the electric

▶ 29:06 Manisha Bewtra: assist bikes it's 50% discount thank you um and do you operate in other parts of the country that have been using like line bikes for longer than here in

▶ 29:15 Speaker 4: Greater Boston I'd say Seattle must be our our longest operating market we have

▶ 29:22 Speaker 4: a significant number of bikes there and and and then there's a few other few other markets that have bikes as well some have evolved from pedal bikes to e-bikes some have just started with e-bikes and then others others of our

▶ 29:40 Manisha Bewtra: markets have scooters only great um so are all the bikes and all systems sort of the same size do you ever have you have questions about you like having child carriers or children's bikes ever come up and is that something maybe

▶ 29:56 Speaker 4: planned for the future we have gotten questions about like child seats at this point that's not in the immediate plan from a liability standpoint where we want to limit ridership to 16 and over and the bikes aren't designed to have a

▶ 30:18 Manisha Bewtra: child or accuracy that makes sense I just was curious I have a little one at home who really wants to check it out but I I for one am excited about this program but I'm also excited about the the statement of work and all the sort of work that's gone into it and our continued exploration of how to make this really work for Melrose I think in the beginning people were seeing the bikes come into town sort of parked on the grass just like concerns that I heard here and there but even just during this pilot I've seen that seem to improve significantly and I'm a commuter on the orange line so having an option that's just a one-way type of option or an occasional option is very exciting so thank you for working with the city of Melrose on this and thank you for all your work on putting together this presentation tonight those are all my

▶ 31:14 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: questions for now thank you thank you thank you for this information just a couple of questions e-bikes as you sir mentioned electric assist a bike like can you explain what the practical differences between those two the manual

▶ 31:28 Speaker 4: on the e-bike that's that's a that's a good question so the pedal bikes are no normal manual bikes you have to you have the pedal and if you don't use the bike stops for electric assist the the only difference is that you get a little bit of a boost when you pedal it you'll notice it most when you first start the bike or when you first pedal and when you're going uphill now the speed limit so beyond 15 miles an hour or 14.8 miles an hour the electric assist component ceases and so this isn't a motorized bicycle that is going 30 40 miles an hour beyond 50 miles an hour it's all you right and so for all intents and purposes unless you're an avid cyclist it's roughly the same speed as everyone

▶ 32:18 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: else around you okay thank you so they're not any I don't know what the statistics show but they're not any more dangerous no no they're not they're not

▶ 32:24 Speaker 4: any more dangerous we've actually from a ridership standpoint we found in in the MAPC regions as well as our other markets like Seattle they're roughly twice as popular as just the standard bikes and the reason being it provides a little bit of that assistance but also in the morning if you're commuting to work you don't necessarily want to get sweaty on your way to work right and so

▶ 32:55 Speaker 5: you know that's one of the reasons and the the model and the way that users use these bikes if I understand correctly is that a user would have to carry their own helmet right this does not provide a helmet or not have a helmet right is that true there's no access through this model through your participation in the

▶ 33:14 Speaker 4: program to a helmet so we don't physically put a helmet with with the bike it think of a way that would work but you know one person would get the helmet and then no one else after we have implemented a we had a very large campaign called respect the ride and that was really trying to promote the the use of helmets for bikes and scooters and we donated 250,000 helmets as a result of that that campaign if anyone would like a helmet they can reach out the lime and we are happy to provide them great that's good to know

▶ 33:50 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: thank you um and i'm not a biker and so i don't i'm not up to the rules um but obviously helmets are a smart thing to do but are they required do we know is there a law requiring riders to have yeah right yeah under 16. okay and your model is not for people under 16. right okay um and then finally my last question i i think this is for miss gaffey or even perhaps i know we have have mr. van cam in here I would assume but I just want to confirm in in this forum that our contract with lime bike protects the city from any liability should a person be injured while using a bike that was under a city contract is

▶ 34:33 Speaker 5: that true that is correct okay thank you very much thank you thank you any other

▶ 34:39 Robert A. Boisselle: questions all them in Boisel you give some impressive statistics on ridership and routes and so forth but some of these people I see zipping down Main Street on these online bikes have no helmets do you have any accident statistics that can go along with these graphs and so forth is there any records of accidents a number of accidents with these bikes and so forth as Denise and

▶ 35:05 Speaker 4: Emma mentioned we haven't received we've had received a handful of complaints through either c-click fix or our own our own system and of the ones I've seen there haven't been any complaints around injuries it's usually some violation of parking or you aren't able to end the ride and so your credit card is still getting charged it's that sort of complaint that we get but it's in the

▶ 35:35 Robert A. Boisselle: single low digits so what you're saying the reports that you get doesn't come from the police department or public health department and so forth we haven't gotten reports from the police departments or do you ask for them we haven't explicitly asked for them

▶ 35:50 Speaker 4: so you don't ask for any accidents to be reported by with your bikes and so forth we do ask for accidents to be reported okay we we haven't explicitly reached out to the police or to a hospital to ask if any accident has been caused by a lime bike and you know a lime bike is the same

▶ 36:14 Robert A. Boisselle: as any other bike if you write it responsibly the risks are exactly the same as any other manual bicycle or electric now on your app do you recommend that a potential client have a helmet when they're using these bikes yes so when you first done download the app you have to go through a set of of screens that show you how to operate the bicycle and you go through through a set of instructions some of them are how to park appropriately where to ride them and that you should wear a helmet that we highly recommend them we can't require it by law okay now you say through your helmets to call your company for a helmet is there a charge for the helmets that you're charging for these people so for folks who signed up as part of the petition the 250,000 there there wasn't a charge and for folks who are seeking to get a helmet at this point though okay good now you mentioned the e-bikes it's becoming very popular now that was the question concerning charging is there a charge electrical charge to keep these units operational there is a battery in the back of the bicycle and we monitor in fact even as a writer you can check the battery level so we monitor it on a regular basis anything below 30% we have a team of operations specialists that go out in the field and just replace the batteries so take them out and put a new one in so when you say you're monitoring them you're basically similar to the transponder to route their roots and so for it you're tracking in both the rider and the battery life at that point that is correct for every bicycle we have a view of the battery life yeah now your company is also involved with the e-scooters is this uh is this being considered down the line after the contract has ended to if If the e-bike is so popular, I've read in other areas that you have the e-bike, you move to e-scooters because there's a demand for it at that point. Is that being considered down the line after this year's contract?

▶ 38:33 Denise Gaffey: We're not considering it currently.

▶ 38:37 Speaker 4: Would the Lime Company offer forward to the city to use e-scooters in the city? So explicitly as part of the MAPC contract, e-scooters are out of scope. For e-scooters themselves, yes, it is even more popular than e-bikes, so another twice, the ridership is even higher with scooters than it is for bikes. The first step is to legalize it at the state level, and I'm sure you've seen, or you may have seen a number of bills being discussed at the state level. Once it's allowed, once it's legal at the state level, we would most likely start with a pilot somewhere in Boston, Cambridge, Brookline, or Somerville. and what we've heard from surrounding communities is they wanna see the scooters be tested there first, the three, four month pilot, and if it's successful, we can expand to, or other communities are willing to try that out. Now, was the line bike,

▶ 39:35 Robert A. Boisselle: you mentioned Boston, Somerville, were you asked to, and Cambridge,

▶ 39:43 Speaker 4: were you asked to leave the cities, the bikes? So we were never in those four cities, slash towns, because of the Blue Bike system there. So they have exclusivity when it comes to bikes, and so we worked on the outer perimeters. That's what it looks like on your map. You're sort of almost in the 128. So some bicycles will go into the Blue Bike zone, as we call it. But you were in Boston and in Somerville and Cambridge. no we were not we did not deploy in any of those four towns as what happened with Melrose bikes do migrate there and we have a team that within two or three hours will pull them back but we did not deploy specifically in any of those things okay you weren't deployed in those three cities okay I understand I

▶ 40:36 Robert A. Boisselle: understand that but even you brought up Somerville and Cambridge and Boston yes and I just want to confirm that these are three major cities about Boston's a major city and they asked them to leave that's what I was trying to find out you

▶ 40:50 Speaker 3: might you might be thinking of the bird scooters that sort of touched down in Cambridge and Somerville over the summer and they hadn't gotten permission and then they sort of impounded them and got them to leave and Boston said no so yeah those and that was specific so the scooters were in these particular towns

▶ 41:08 Speaker 4: so and they were asked to leave another major player called bird deployed in I believe it was Cambridge and then were asked to leave we decided to wait and work with with the cities in question before deploying okay thank you Thank

▶ 41:26 Francis X. Wright Jr.: You mr. chair thank you all boys well the Madero's thank you thank you very

▶ 41:28 Monica C. Medeiros: much I was glad I especially to see representative from line bike here in In particular, I want to thank Ms. Gaffey and you as well, Emma, for your work on this, and I did get to see this presentation, or pretty close to it, at the Bike and Pedestrian Committee, so not my first time seeing it. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the process to enter into this agreement, And was there any interaction with the Board of Aldermen or with the public before deciding to sign on to the MOU or the Statement of Work?

▶ 42:12 Denise Gaffey: So we were approached initially by MAPC as part of our usual, you know, we interact a lot with MAPC on a regular basis on many different programs. so we were approached they approached they approached many communities about interest in this pilot program in doing it on a regional basis and so you know that sounded like an intriguing idea it was actually started under the previous administration back when Rob Dolan was here so he he was interested in pursuing it so we attended a lot of meetings and participated in sort of the RFP process and and and then we were involved sort of on a regular basis in terms of helping to kind of shape the statement of work that came out of that I don't believe there were any formal meetings with the Board of Aldermen as part of that process I think it was yeah I think it was mostly done at the administrative level and I think I think one of the reasons for that is because it was we were viewing it as a pilot program and thought it made sense to kind of just pilot it first and before you know and see and really we had no I we had no idea what the interest would be either so so it's I think it sort of made sense

▶ 43:40 Monica C. Medeiros: just to do it that way so is the one complaint on see click fix me yeah yeah

▶ 43:49 Monica C. Medeiros: So can you explain a little bit how that process works and whether or not if somebody enters something on C-Click Fix if they should expect to hear from LimeBike or kind of how that works?

▶ 44:05 Speaker 6: So I know— Then I'll tell you my experience from the other side.

▶ 44:07 Denise Gaffey: Oh, great. Okay. I know when we were getting this—when we were putting the statement of work together, we contacted the Public Works Department because they kind of oversee that program and we put them in touch with line bike because we wanted that to be an automatic process we didn't want to burden the DPW workers at all with this program that was really very important to us and I think important to to line bike as well so we we worked with them to set up a process where those types of complaints would go

▶ 44:44 Speaker 4: directly to line bike and the the complaints we get some are through via email, via phone as well. We have customer service reps that interact with folks and there are a set of different actions that are taken based on is it an issue with the credit card? We'll reimburse you if you were charged and you couldn't figure out how to lock the bike. Was it, you know, you saw a bike that was falling over, We dispatched someone from our ops specialist team. Was there an issue with the bike? Same thing, we dispatch someone and bring it back into the warehouse and address those. So that would be how we take action.

▶ 45:29 Monica C. Medeiros: So generally, in terms of C-Click Fix, I really like that service because it allows us to show a picture of what's going on, which, as they say, is worth a thousand words, and gives you time and date. And it also, you know, really allows for a little bit of back and forth to let the user know that it's been, you know, received and kind of what's happened, where, you know, sometimes, you know, things might go into a one-way, you know, abyss and not come back. So I had reported, I had been driving home the night of one of the storms. It was, you know, supposed to be, you know, quite a lot. It wasn't quite as much, but it wasn't a great storm. And I saw a bike downtown. I know it's, you know, not supposed to be there at this point. I had driven past it and then said, you know, if I don't report this, who's going to report it? And I went back around and reported it. So that was Saturday night. It was after 7 o'clock, so it was certainly outside of the, you know, the time frame of a window. I eventually, that was Saturday night. The following Friday, I got an acknowledgment from Melrose DPW that they had received the complaint. But I, it's, you know, as far as I know, I think it's still open. I'm sure the, you know, the bike is off the street. i never heard anything back from lime bike so i you know i'm not sure how that process is actually you know working that's that's my experience so far um what i did and you know this is somewhat in relation to uh my ordinance but i'm gonna maybe pass i have a few of these photos i can pass around

▶ 47:36 Monica C. Medeiros: these were sent to me by constituents the days after this this uh the mayor had announced that the statement of work was um put in place and and it was you know i assume that that was

▶ 47:54 Monica C. Medeiros: most probably lime bike distributing the bicycles but you can see there's a number places where the bicycles were actually across the sidewalk not on the side handle but actually you know across the sidewalk and one of them particular is right by Norwoodville Hospital you know which which which troubles me because we

▶ 48:16 Monica C. Medeiros: do spend a lot of time and effort to to keep our sidewalks clear and to make sure that we're you know we're spending a lot of money to make sure that we're repairing our sidewalk so this seemed like it was starting off on you know maybe not the not the best foot and I know in the agreement that you have in

▶ 48:43 Monica C. Medeiros: place you know putting bicycles leaning against a hydrant like there are in some in one of those photos and blocking the sidewalk are not allowed that's that's correct right so was it do you know who put out the bicycles is it is it line

▶ 49:06 Speaker 4: bike it would have been the operations team at line that put out bikes they get you know they're trained the guidance on where and how to deploy I can I can see that some of the deployments here are certainly less than ideal hopefully you've seen improvement in in the way the teams is deployed and as they learn where the hotspots are how to not block you know the sidewalks every differs from city city hopefully you've seen some improvement if there are any issues

▶ 49:41 Speaker 4: and complaints that's what the secret speaks and and the system that we have in place is supposed to do within two or three hours we are supposed to address this and if it's not you know I think there you can impound the bike essentially right so it is our team that deploys the other comment I'll make is

▶ 50:06 Speaker 4: that bikes falling over can that's not necessarily in our control and so if there's a complete within two or three hours we want to address that what what we see is people getting used to a new mode of transportation getting used to a new offer and just the same way you're gonna see some illegal parking with vehicles you see some illegal parking with with bikes but it gets better over

▶ 50:31 Monica C. Medeiros: time you know and I have seen you know definitely improvement and I think honestly a lot of that are you know I think the users I think this is something that a lot of people want to use I think it's a good use for our city I think, you know, overall, this is definitely a benefit for our community, for sure. And I think, you know, a lot of the users themselves are the ones who are very responsible. I think we have, you know, great citizens here who care about that. But, you know, this obviously did concern me that it seemed that that was the company putting these out in ways that were, you know, really hazardous and impeding. you know the next order of course we will talk a little bit about licensing but I just since

▶ 51:18 Monica C. Medeiros: we have you here and you're operating in many different communities could you talk a little bit about whether in some communities you do you do you sometimes put need to put the bicycles in

▶ 51:38 Speaker 4: the specific location rather than it you know it varies there are some areas where there's a designated parking spot for bicycles or scooters and if that exists in a city we actually prefer that because it makes it a lot easier for everyone but most cities don't have that level of infrastructure yet some are working closely with with some to create that and improve the lanes but for the most part it's we deploy with the street furniture is and you know we meet the

▶ 52:14 Speaker 4: terms of the statement of work and we we also make sure that it's that if it's in

▶ 52:22 Speaker 4: front of that it's not impeding pedestrians from being able to walk on

▶ 52:26 Monica C. Medeiros: the sidewalk and and that's that's good to hear actually my proposed ordinance creates these designated station areas so hopefully we'll talk about that again

▶ 52:39 Monica C. Medeiros: shortly are you the cities that you operate in do you have a license in specific communities that you know

▶ 52:49 Speaker 4: I know that there are some cities where there is a permit there's a permit Absolutely, but a license, off the top of my head, not that I know of, certainly not by individual vehicle. A permit to operate in the city and an agreement to either a cap or something that is demand-based. So if you see more than two or three trips per vehicle per day, you are allowed to increase the number of vehicles. If you see fewer than two, then you reduce,

▶ 53:31 Monica C. Medeiros: and two is just a number and in general could you speak a little bit about how long you're seeing bicycles like unattended do they are they really

▶ 53:43 Monica C. Medeiros: rotated all the time or do you find there's a certain number of days that

▶ 53:49 Speaker 4: they stay it it depends we we aim for so it's been it's been difficult in the winter because just the ridership unfortunately hasn't been there be it in Melrose or any of the other municipalities are like our city our incentives and the city's incentive is is very much aligned because if vehicles aren't moving it's just not sustainable from a financial standpoint so if if we

▶ 54:21 Speaker 4: don't see at least one trip per vehicle per day and said that's a metric we use tbd you know try to reduce the number of bikes so that we can see we want every single bike to be used at least once per day in the winter it's been lower than that and it's hard to avoid some bikes will be will be used more often than others thank you thank you thank you alderman

▶ 54:50 Michael P. Zwirko: thank you mr chairman i'd also like to thank alderman mortimer for bringing this order before us this evening and for the the attendance of city officials as well as the representative from line bike for being here i just have a couple of questions kind of comments because i'm going to save the bulk of those for the the next order but i wanted to build off something that alderman butcher had raised and i think i might have misheard you so i just wanted to confirm is you have a program for low-income individuals or is that program in low-income communities meaning can is anybody able to take advantage of that program or is it contingent on

▶ 55:24 Speaker 4: the community okay I didn't know if it had to do with where the contractor the

▶ 55:40 Michael P. Zwirko: understanding was in the community but it's for any user okay and then about complaints so if I and by the way I'm a user of line bike I've actually taken a line bike here to City Hall for meetings at night so I use it quite frequently so enjoy the product so if I made a complaint to lime would that complaint in some way shape or form be forwarded to the city I just want to make sure that there's a two-way street here because I could ultimately complain I have it up here the slide for customer service so I just want to make sure that the city's aware of the complaints that you're receiving so that there's a full kind of free flow of information that comes in I'll have to check into that I

▶ 56:21 Speaker 4: don't know if we forward every complaint to you guys essentially or we on a regular basis we will share the statistics and say we've had five complaints over the last three months here's what they were but I don't know that we forward the specific complaints back to the city because that just

▶ 56:38 Michael P. Zwirko: creates extra yeah I think the the natural the natural reaction would be to contact the city with a complaint so I understand why you know maybe the health department or the police department or community the planning department would be fielding these but I'm just I just want to make sure that if they come to the company they're coming back to the city because I think it behooves us to understand what some of the pitfalls or experiences are by folks and customers

▶ 57:03 Speaker 4: that are contacting you I don't think it needs to be you know kind of per

▶ 57:07 Michael P. Zwirko: complaint basis but certainly some amount of information so we can react to

▶ 57:16 Denise Gaffey: it if need be okay yeah we've made inquiries too I think that's a great point and we do want to know what kind of complaints right hearing it's a we don't know where these people when we don't hear the complaints but to know that they're getting well we know they're being addressed but just to know

▶ 57:31 Michael P. Zwirko: the nature of them yeah and like I said I would assume that most complaints would come to the city but in the event that they don't they start with you it's nice for us to get that information back so the program can enhance itself and if it needs to so I'm appreciative that at least in the aggregate it does it does flow back the the other question I had was also raised so how do you enforce the 16 year old rule I mean a 14 year old could have a smartphone and certainly could unlock a line bike without a helmet and use the bike right I mean that's that's seems to be something that would be very difficult

▶ 58:05 Speaker 4: to police it would be so so there are a few ways one would be so you you upload

▶ 58:12 Speaker 4: your a form of ID and through the app can recognize the date of birth that

▶ 58:25 Speaker 4: she said so it's going to be that the fact that you have a credit card linked to your smartphone that's how we would pay unless you're you're using the lime access program is it going to stop every single instance no and the I think this

▶ 58:44 Michael P. Zwirko: question is actually for Miss Gaffey so I think one of the things for a lot of folks in Melrose was that the feeling was that one day all of a sudden we woke up and there was bikes not the trickle of bikes that we saw in the fall of 2017 or in early 2018 when malden initiated their own pilot program but the concerted effort of the bikes being strategically placed just seemed to on like november 1st or 2nd boom they they hit and it says that the memorandum of understanding was you know signed in may and the first blog post that i think came from the mayor was on november 1st and then there was another post that came from your department's website on August, excuse me, October 30th or October 31st. And I'm just wondering why the lag in information to be, to come out from not only the signing of the agreement, but also to when bikes showed up. And the reason I say that is because I feel that if information was passed on a little bit better, this might have not, we might not have had to have seen the the uptick in kind of surprise about this program and I just didn't know if there was a reason the six-month period as to why there was not that much information that was spread or maybe I maybe I'm missing something from the

▶ 1:00:07 Denise Gaffey: date that the memorandum was no I mean it took a long it did take some time to work out the details of our particular statement of work yeah I will agree to that I mean there each statement of work is is luminous is tailored to our own particular needs and so um so we had that just took it took some time it didn't happen overnight and and also just to get the mayor who's a new administration and um this you know all the things that she was juggling so it just um we didn't want it we didn't want to rush it out because we wanted it to be well thought through and um so it did take a fair amount of time and you know i definitely i see your point I think this information is really very very helpful and I think you know we did try to you know with the blog post get the information as the program was getting you know launched I think that the nice thing about doing this presentation now is because we actually have real data and I think that does give us you know it does give I know a deeper element to the whole you know to the to the presentation but I certainly see your point that I'm for many people it may have been you know something they were not anticipating and

▶ 1:01:23 Michael P. Zwirko: thank you for that because I think that the I'm not sure the exact launch date but I know that the blog post came out on November 1st sure so um the blog post

▶ 1:01:31 Speaker 3: came out as soon as our statement of work was signed so the MOU was signed over the summer that kind of like launched the regional project and some communities had their sow signed right away and they were launched and lime was bringing bikes into those communities and rebalancing them lime wasn't doing any of that in melrose until that happened until we signed the sow that outreach went out and that's when they started bringing the bikes in to melrose so that's why at that date in like november all of a sudden there were a lot of bikes because that was around the time that we signed that contract regulation thanks

▶ 1:02:07 Michael P. Zwirko: thanks for that clarification I'll add to the folks that may be watching at home or anything else that comes out of this there is actually a link on the your department's website about the bike share program and a version not this actual presentation but a December presentation which is very similar so

▶ 1:02:27 Denise Gaffey: it's it's it's great material so we had the website created from the very beginning yeah we didn't have all that information as part of the blog post we had a link that people could go right to the website to read all the rules and and understand the program a little bit better see the visuals about parking and and whatnot but the presentation was done back in December as part of our participation in a bike ped bike ped committee yeah yeah it's very

▶ 1:02:49 Michael P. Zwirko: comprehensive website so I encourage folks to check it out but those are for this particular order those are all the questions I had I appreciate your time Thank You mr. chairman any other questions

▶ 1:03:04 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: thank you thank you mr. chair and alderman Mortimer and Madeira springing this to us and for the three of you being here tonight the MOU and the statement of work are those publicly available they're public documents we

▶ 1:03:18 Denise Gaffey: we don't we didn't post them okay website or anything I'd be interested in

▶ 1:03:23 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: just taking a look at them especially maybe the statement of work because I assume it sort of outlines all of the range the particular arrangement you got

▶ 1:03:31 Denise Gaffey: the snapshot you know the readers digest version right so that would be great and

▶ 1:03:35 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: sort of building off of alderman Bewtra and aldermen's work goes point about enforcement which was on slide 10 I think you all have confirmed that really enforcement currently and perhaps I guess under the statement of work is incumbent on the user to sort of you know someone walking by to report an issue the city is not proactively doing that although perhaps you know folks who are out on the streets during the day are noticing things and letting you all know is that fair to say okay I do think that you know in any any phase of work that goes beyond the pilot if we were to do licensing or permitting it would be good to require vendors to provide you know if it's not already explicit in the statement of work which I haven't seen to explicitly say you do need to roll up complaints that you are receiving on a monthly basis or whatever you think is appropriate so that we can keep track of that and then I think the only other question on this order is just to get a sense from you about so the number of employees or contractors you have hired in this area to support the pilot and

▶ 1:04:50 Speaker 4: what you know are they folks from our local communities so we the size of the team has has changed over time we have two so we have a couple operations managers and then at peak we had 25 operations specialists that were across the MAPC region I will have to check whether we had anyone from hard locally from Melrose we are now down to eight to ten people and we will plan on scaling back up in the spring and the responsibility of these individuals is to deploy bicycles to rebalance on a regular basis bikes move away from the hotspots so bringing them back and while that happens that's that's our our enforcement mechanism is as as these ops specialists are in the cities if they see any bicycle that's fallen over you know making sure that it's upright that if it's not parked appropriately that they're all gathered together and so that happens multiple times throughout the day after the morning rush at noon

▶ 1:05:54 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: after the evening rush thank you sorry one last question for the planning group so on slide 11 and 12 you have ridership statistics for manual bikes I'm assuming those any bikes and e-bikes or the the manual bikes are the lime manual bikes not just locally owned okay all right thank you very much thank you thank you

▶ 1:06:16 Speaker 1: Alderman Alderman Mortimer thank you very much mr. chairman I brought this

▶ 1:06:23 Peter D. Mortimer: order forward and it was referred to the Committee on Legal and Legislative and I'm not a member of this committee but I would respectfully request or suggest to the members of this committee that this particular order be given a recommendation to place on file for the full board I think we've gotten the information I think we've seen what we need to see with this the next order in queue which I'm not sure if we'll get to before we have to recess for the full board at 815 is a little more nuts and bolts and seems like it'll be more involved but I would recommend to the committee or request respectfully request from the committee on legal and legislative matters that the first order the order I submitted be given a recommendation to place on file to the to the full board and as the rest of the night goes with alderman Medeiros order that that's that will probably be something for later minutes in the evening thank you very much thank you I have one question then I would like to

▶ 1:07:34 Monica C. Medeiros: move to to recommend this be placed on file and move to recess until our full

▶ 1:07:43 Monica C. Medeiros: board meeting gets so my first question or my last question I guess should be is I is the city of Melrose receiving any compensation under the statement of work from line bike no no thank you I'd like to move that we place this on file

▶ 1:07:59 Francis X. Wright Jr.: recommend we place it in file motion to place this item on file by Alderman Medeiros do I have a second second second by Alderman Bewtra all in favor aye no it's placed on file right now we are at 810 the full board meeting of the