Public Utilities and Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

Hello, everyone. My name is Naima Syed. She, her pronouns, ward five counselor, and your traffic and parking chair. I would like to call to order, today's meeting, a traffic on parking committee meeting of the Somerville City Council. First, they will read the legal notice that allows us to have this meeting on Zoom. Pursuant to chapter two of the acts of 2023, this meeting of the city council committee will be conducted via remote participation. We will post an audio video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City Of Somerville website, a local cable access government channels. Clerk, could you please call the roll to establish a quorum?

Yep. This is roll call. Councilor Wilson. Present. Councilor Penida Neufeld. Councilor Saeed.

Present. Just clerk, I think you have the old, last year's committee assignment. This the third, member would be councilor, Burnley.

Got it. Okay. Councilor Burnley. Alright. We have two people present, so we have quorum.

And I see counselor Burnley here in the panelist. He just it looks like, still trying to connect to audio maybe or video, but I do see councilor Burnley listed.

Okay.

Yeah. Alright. We will be able to, hear councilor Burnley, once the sound system, on his end is working. So, yeah, counselor, if you can hear me, feel free to interrupt me and say that you're here. We will begin, with approval of the minutes from the previous meeting, approval of the minutes of the traffic and parking committee meeting of 03/24/2025. On the minutes, any discussion? Seeing none clerk, could you call the roll for approval of the minutes?

Yep. This is a roll call for approval of minutes. ID25DashO596. Approval in the minutes of the traffic and parking committee meeting of 03/24/2025. Councilor Wilson?

Yes.

Councilor Burnley? I might give him a moment. Counselor Saeed? Yes. And counselor Burnley? Perfect. Thank

you. Okay. Great. Mhmm. And now we'll follow the order of the items as listed on the agenda. We'll take item number two on the agenda, 25Dash0927, Sent for discussion by councilor McLaughlin and councilor Strezzo by the director of parking. Consider adding additional handicap parking spots on Washington Street by the Cobble Hill Senior Center. Director Renfrew.

Hi. Thanks for having me. So parking, accessible spots are typically handled through on a basis of of of need for a constituent. So since Washington Street is not an essential business district, it's not an area that we would typically just put a accessible spot. But if anyone in that complex wishes to have a spot, they simply just need to fill out an application.

I could also talk to the ADA director if you wanted me to pursue this further, but it wouldn't be really not to decide that the spots are assigned to a particular person, but typically, if we put them in these areas for for somebody to ask for them through the direction of the ADA director, and then it has to go to the traffic, commission.

Okay. Thank you, director. Councilor Wilson?

Yeah. Thanks, chair. Three to director. I totally get that policy for a neighborhood residential street. This one this street feels a little bit different, from those. Right? You know, the area we're talking about, there there's some commercial there. I understand it's not a, you know, central business district. I I guess, you know, if we're if we're gonna do this, we could just make sure that the seniors of Cobble Hill know that this is an option. I'll do my part to make sure that they know. And the easiest way then is just connect them, with your with your office?

Yes. They could come in and get an application, or we have applications online. Or if they just wanna call me or shoot me an email, I'd be happy to mail one out to them.

I will commit to coming by and getting some of those applications from you and dropping them off when I'm there on Wednesday. So thanks.

Okay.

Thank you. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you, councilor Wilson. Any other questions regarding this item?

Just quickly for the record, Suzanne, could you just state your name and title, please?

I'm sorry. Suzanne Renfred, director of parking.

Thank you.

Alright. Great. We will mark this item as complete. The next item, three on the agenda, order number 25Dash0839 sent for discussion by councilor Syed by the director of mobility update the traffic signal equipment at the intersection of Rogers Ave and Boston Ave. Director Rawson.

Good evening, chair. Good evening, committee. Thanks for having us. Brad Rawson. I serve as director of mobility in OSPCD. Chair, it might be helpful for our staff in engineering and mobility to just make sure that we understand the intent of your order. We many of us, including me, experience this signal on our regular routines, so I have some ideas based on my observations and our conversation. But I think it would be helpful if you'd kinda oriented as to to what questions would be most helpful for you this evening.

Yeah. So, we have discussed this briefly offline and because there were a couple accidents there. So, clearly, something is not, you know, it's just, like, not working the way it is right now. And I do actually have a neighbor who spent a lot of time thinking about this and who has more knowledge than I do about this. And I will connect you with that neighbor.

But I think the big concern is, yeah, just the, yeah, the cars. Like, the side the the yeah. Like, the street and, like, the sidewalk on the same level. And we yeah. I'm thinking less than a year, we had two cars crashing to post there.

So that's very concerning. And, yeah, I actually, my question would be, what is the current traffic light? How can this traffic signal equipment be upgraded? Like, what would the new one have that the current one doesn't have? I think that's a good, place to start there.

Excellent. Thank you, Tara. That is that is helpful. So kind of the quick summary, and I'll ask director Postal Wade to chime in here as well since his team plays, you know, an even more active role than ours does in mobility, managing traffic signal assets. But the quick version is that every traffic signal in the city has something called a controller in it.

A controller is like a computer motherboard, right, with, enough circuits to take inputs from all of the different signals to establish timing and phasing. And one of the things that we commonly encounter with our thirty and forty year old traffic signals in Somerville is that the controllers, again, that that kind of motherboard of hardware, is undersized and is unable to do things that we would want it to do based on our modern multimodal goals, things like leading pedestrian intervals, transit signal prioritization, emergency vehicle preemption using GPS technology, even something as simple chair as providing dedicated time for left hand turns. One of the things that I experience in Ball Square constantly is motorists leaving Boston Ave from Medford headed towards Somerville and motorists leaving the kind of Highland Road, Rogers Ave, part of Boston Ave, and Summerville often want to take lefts across the the intersection at the exact same time. Our traffic controller at Ball Square is unable to allow for a splitting of those phases. There's just not enough circuits.

So, you know, that's just a quick summary of some of the technical limitations that we encounter. We have an asset management system that Brian's team is leading up to identify high priority locations and to start developing designs and budgets to modernize that infrastructure. So, Brian, do you wanna take it from here with the chair's permission?

Yeah. Here, you'll have to excuse me. I'm I was not entirely aware of this, and, I I should have gotten our senior traffic engineer, Jessica Bello, to look at this, this specific request. But I I agree with director Austin that this is some of our older equipment in the city. It is it does not handle the diversity of traffic control that we may want at a location like this.

And and that is something that we will have to look into, prioritizing with the remainder of the intersections and signals in the city. For the past couple of years, Jessica Bello, the senior traffic engineer, has been going through a very comprehensive, analysis and and accounting of all of the different intersections and signals in the city, the equipment that they have, and understanding what the opportunities are for improvement and what are the items that need to be fixed for use, and improve traffic flow. That is an extraordinarily large undertaking, predominantly because our signals are from so many different time periods, and traffic signal equipment changes so rapidly. And the focus the first focus has been on upgrading our signals to meet ADA code requirements. And our next focus will be to upgrade our signals to improve emergency vehicle throughput and and to manage that.

The going the step of taking existing, if you will, legacy equipment and upgrading them to manage split phases, multiple phases, overlapping phases, leading pedestrian, leading bicycle intervals, etcetera. That is substantially more complicated and, like, is easily a 50 to $100,000 construction project that we have to look into. So it's really important that we understand what signals that would would that would be upgradeable and how we would prioritize those. But those efforts have have not yet begun to that detail. And for the clerk, because I know the question will come, I'm Brian Polstowait, director of engineering.

Yeah. Thank you, director. This is, helpful. First, councilor Wilson, I see your hand raised.

Oh, thanks, Cher. Through you to staff. Yeah. I I appreciate that that background, the context there. Tough to argue with prioritizing, ADA and emergency response. Definitely understand that. You know, I do just wanna name the fact that this is this is a really important intersection here right at a a t station. Right? And it's a really it's it's kind of a a quirky one, right, because you have the Rogers Ave crossing that has no, pedestrian, crossing signal at it. But I think a lot of drivers I've experienced this both as a driver and as a pedestrian crossing there.

Sometimes that gets lost on people. Right? So I think it you know, this one might be worth bumping up in the priority queue just because of those two factors, the quirkiness of the intersection and the fact that there is the Ball Square T Station, right there. Yeah. More a comment than a question, but, just just wanted to name that. Thanks.

Yeah. Thank you, councilor Wilson. Yeah. Agreed. There's a lot more foot traffic in the area. Councilor Burnley.

Thank you through the chair. Please forgive me if my, audio starts to get garbily. You know? Video and sound is just too much for my old lassie to handle some days. And so if it comes down to it, I will sacrifice you all seeing my beautiful face so that you can hear my beautiful voice.

But through you, just wanted to ask some clarifying questions from about what we've heard. I guess this will be best directed to director Postaway just to clarify, you know, because I I think I am aware, but just wanna be sure I'm clear on this. When we're talking about the prioritization of ADA compliance of these signals, are we talking about getting equipment that is audible, that is making the best use for inclusion for all of our residents, or are we talking about something different there in terms of the compliance element? Right.

If I may, chair, the both of those functions are important. Of course, when I say accessible, I'm specifically referring to people with disabilities and making sure that our signals are accessible for them. It is not just for people with vision impairments, but that is part of it to make sure that it has the audible components to it, that the audible components turn on when you when you when you call the signals, but also making sure that the, the buttons for the signal calls are accessible to people in wheelchairs and accessible to people who have other limited mobility. So it it is it is all of those.

Okay. Thank you. That's what I thought. I just wanna make that clear for folks who might be listening. Wouldn't another question to you to share. When you that 5200 number, 520-0000 wait. Was it 52000 or 5200?

No. A signal I was referring to signal reconstruction costs can range anywhere from 50 to $100,000, sometimes more, sometimes less depending on the complication of it. I'm not giving an estimate or a guess of what this one would be because I haven't looked into it specifically, but I just wanted to give you a sense of an order of magnitude that that these are very large investments, and we need to be very confident that we're executing this investment wisely. And to do that, we do a very thorough prioritization process and for our signals in the city. And we we haven't quite gotten to that point yet.

So No. Thank you for that. I I heard it's 5,200, not 52 a 100. So that is great to to get a little bit more clarity on that number. And to that point, I guess, this sounds like an excellent project that that some member of staff is working on, but, you know, no. They're not here to talk about it, and I imagine that it is a bit far away in terms of highlighting which signals we should be prioritizing in terms of switching out old equipment. But do you have any sense of when we can expect some information about that coming before the council.

Yeah. I I honestly, I'm not prepared to to answer that. We haven't we haven't had enough time to to consider a correct answer.

Alright. Sounds like, you know, I'll maybe I'll either follow-up offline or maybe in the several months, we'll we'll have, an order appear to just check-in on something like that. I think it's important that our residents have a sense of, you know, the work the city is doing, especially when it comes to our streets and safety. That's something that we hear from residents a lot about, obviously, as you both as both directors know, and wanna make sure that we're obviously, having the best equipment possible within our means, to create the kind of environment that we wanna see. You know, I was just walking Boston the today and was kinda shocked at one of the intersections in Austin to not hear the the signal change and to not hear that people were allowed to walk because I've I've been a little, I guess, blessed to see so much of that here locally that it's kind of a shock when we don't have that throughout our communities.

I guess if I were to ask a single more question, It would be I'm I'm curious about in terms of the the formula for your departments, because I imagine there is some kind of formula around prioritization. How much has that shifted, or has it shifted at all since the creation of the new green line stops throughout the community? Has that been factored in in terms of what streets should be and what signals should be held as higher prioritization for changes given that they will be subject to more traffic, foot traffic specifically.

Yeah. Cherry, would you like me to continue?

Yeah. I see Okay. Also director Ross and and raised I just wanna say one thing, councilor Burnley, before we get to, like, the bigger, you know, conversation, like, about that because, yes, it is, true that this can be applied to a lot of, I'm actually just curious to know, like, how many of these old traffic signal equipment we still have that and what process are we following to make sure they they they get upgraded. I was just gonna ask since director passed away, started by saying that, you haven't had the chance to, like, have a traffic engineer really look at this location. Would it be helpful to just keep this in committee so we can so we can one, I would like to ask some neighbors what issues.

Like, there's, like, what I see, like, as a counselor. But I know this has been an issue for a while, so reaching out to, like, few neighbors to get some feedback and on your end working with the traffic engineers, and we can maybe discuss this again in the fall. I don't expect that we'll have another meeting before recess before council recess. So I just wanted to put this out there because I do wanna provide more information on this before we mark it as complete. And yeah. Thank you, councilor Burnley. It's question.

Jared, if that's your pleasure to to keep this in committee for the fall, I I think we'd be fine with that. Think it's a fine conversation to continue. As far as prioritization and discussing prioritization, I recommend that that conversation is going pretty far field from what the order is here, and I would recommend providing another order so that we have an opportunity to prepare for that line of conversation.

Okay. I think that's fair. And would you be able to tell us at least, like, how many of these traffic signal equipment do we still have in Somerville, like, roughly? If, obviously, you have something Honestly, I don't

I don't even have that spreadsheet available to me.

Okay. No worries. Maybe it will be an order that we can put all in one. Councilor Brundley, any comment?

Yes. Through the chair, I did to your point earlier, I did see director Ross and perhaps throw his hand up. Was curious if he had any insights or thoughts on that matter.

Chair Furio, I just appreciate this conversation. I think it illustrates how when we identify a problem at one location, it's always helpful for staff and for council and committee members to kinda think about the big picture. So I think more of a comprehensive 30,000 foot view can be prepared in parallel for you all. And I think a couple of months, you or the fall of your next meeting will be perfectly fine in terms of assembling whatever information we have. I do wanna caveat that by saying it may not result in every question being answered, but we can certainly provide a high level of an asset management framework for how we kinda rank and manage system and signals around the city.

So, again, this is nerdy stuff, but it's really impactful for many of our residents, for many of our workers and visitors, and would actually be really helpful for us to have that conversation in a more intentional way with you all.

Alright. Great.

Through the chair, if I could just, like, give a a wrap up's comments. I just want I'm gonna take your water break as a as a yes. I think that's fine. Yeah. I I wasn't expecting a policy statement on the what the prioritization hierarchy was per se.

Just was curious to to know whether the existence of these new stations shifted that around at all to get a sense of whether we had made any shifts to which roads and which signals would be higher on that list to councilor Wilson's earlier question. And perhaps that is our biases as at larges. You know, we see specific issues that have relevance throughout the city and say, what what are the the larger patterns and issues that we can gain glean from this? But in terms of a deeper dive, happy to wait, until the fall or well, I suppose the fall, to, to follow-up on that.

Alright. Great. We will keep this item in committee. Next item, number four on the agenda, ID number 24Dash0743. Sent for discussion by councilor McLaughlin that the director of mobility install a rapid flashing beacon with push button stop sign in front of the East Somerville Community School on the cross street side to assist in street crossing crossings.

Chair, thank you. May I respectfully suggest that staff follow-up with the work on counselor and that we keep this item in committee? There are are many complexities with this question. I don't want to go too far afield on it. As you all know, the city has invested in physical traffic calming at this crossing with raised crosswalk treatments right at the border of Cross and Everett, opposite the front door of the school.

We also have built speed traffic calming speed humps up and down across the street as well as a raised interception across in Pearl. Those treatments can be compatible with push button, yellow flashing, or even red flashing signs, but there's a substantial mobility engineering parking department review before we would recommend that this location meets the best criteria for that kind of tool. And I don't wanna speculate again too much here. We can look into this. We can communicate with the ward one counselor have a more thoughtful response for you all in future meeting if that is acceptable.

Yep. We can keep this, item in committee and pick it up at the next meeting. And last item on the agenda, item number five, order number 25Dash0647, sent for discussion by councilor Burnley, that the director of mobility speak with this council regarding the safe street ordinance 2025 annual report. First, let me just say that, yeah, I'm really glad we're going to have this conversation. We'll have an opportunity to ask questions.

First, I would like to thank my colleagues who have, worked on this, in and have been following this, conversation, for a few years now. We have some of those colleagues here. And, also grateful for the administration for working jointly with the the council to on the safe streets ordinance. So very excited to see the twenty twenty five annual report, and let's let's let's get to it. Let's let's hear the questions from colleagues.

Sure. If I may, just for housekeeping purposes. So senior planner Justin Schreiber from Mobility Division is here with us this evening. As you all know, he has been project managing and leading several efforts for our division, this one, but also highlight the importance of Brian, director Postoway, for his work, working with councilor Burnley with legislative analyst, Brennan Salisbury, and many others in the advocacy community and on the city council, our safe streets ordinance. So, chair, we can structure our time as you see fit.

We're happy to answer questions and see where the conversation takes us. It is our expectation to do a kind of a longer form conversation here to make sure that you and constituents are aware of the work that's been done, why this tool is so critical to our efforts, where we see things going into the future. But, again, we just really applaud and appreciate everybody on the council and the mayor for working in a collaborative manner. I truly feel this is the way that our work is supposed to occur. I'm really proud of what we've done. So thank you all.

Alright. Great. Thank you, director, for thanking all the people that I missed. It was before my time. But, so, just a question. How would we like to approach this? Do we wanna give a very quick overview or just get to the questions? Like, very quick summary, I mean, of of of the report, or are we ready to ask questions? Let's see. Consul Bernie's hand up.

Thank you to the chair given that this is my item, and I take some pride in the ordinance itself. I just wanna get some, like, high level overview of the where this item is coming from. I had the the pleasure of working with director Austin and director Polsawade quite extensively, if it looked like to me, over the course of at least over a year, pretty regularly on this ordinance. And the reason I'm bringing this item forward is because one of the key elements that I I want to see enacted through this ordinance was transparency around the progress that we have made around creating safer streets, particularly around protected bike lanes, and also giving residents a preview of where we are headed into the future so that no one is caught off guard by changes to our roads and so that people have an opportunity to follow on with the process and engage with their counselors as a means to provide feedback and give us all a chance to help shape our own city. In my mind, and I I think this was pretty clear amongst the folks who were working on it, Part of that process was always to have conversations within the council to just review these reports so that counselors could ask questions, so residents can follow along and have a record of the thought process around, certain changes.

And this now that we have the governance, now that we have, the first report, I want to make sure that we got into the practice of actually following up and having these conversations to go through what the report says, where we have questions around, particularly, speed of progress and placement of protected lanes and bike miles. And so, again, I you know, it is the chair's prerogative to structure this conversation however she likes. It was my thinking that we would kind of just go over big picture what the report says, and then as counselors have questions or concerns that they would be able to ask to so that we can get a sense of how we're gonna actually meet the overall goal of this ordinance, which is the ambitious expansion of our protected bike lanes and increases to accessibility of our sidewalks and crosswalks throughout the city. So very excited to have, like, a a broad conversation here and to try to see if what progress we've made and what progress we're looking forward to this next fiscal year since this fiscal year is very much done. But, yeah, that was my thinking on this matter.

I'm happy to entertain other thoughts and yeah.

Thank you, councilor Burnley. This is very helpful. It's also very helpful for me as we're having this conversation. And yep. The director Rawson.

So thanks, Jared. So if it's okay, let me just reorient us. So with the March, the administration published our first ever annual report. Clerk, if it's okay, Justin Schreiber will do a screen share. We can bring that up. Folks can find it online by doing just a basic search of Summersville Vision Zero, which is the homepage for the city's safe streets work. We structured this report to be digestible, and it's sized about 15 pages or so and really tries to track progress to date and consistent with the requirements of the ordinance forecast work that residents, counselors, and constituents can expect to see in the future. So, chair, may I recommend that Justin take us through the basics?

Good evening, chair. Good evening, counselors. My name is Justin Schreiber. I'm a senior transportation planner in OSBCD. Happy to to run through the report quickly.

I think what I have on the screen, which I hope you can see, is the the requirements. This is a summary of the requirements from the ordinance. Number one, report on all separated bike facilities installed in the previous year's construction season. Number two, report on separated bike facilities planned for installation in the current year's construction season, and that is intended to include no less than three miles from the priority network and a forecasted expenditure for installing those facilities. Number three is providing a multiyear plan for the full priority network for completing its construction by the 2030.

The ordinance, has a one year extension to that deadline available. The city is instructed to exercise that option by 03/01/2029. And then the fourth element is reporting on progress on pedestrian and transit infrastructure detailed in the vision zero action plan, eight eighty eight transition plan. This next image on the screen is the priority network from the SunRail Bicycle Network Plan, Just over 29 miles, the light green here are two way facilities. The dark green are separated in at least one direction.

So when we're talking about 29 miles, it's, you know, bicycle lane, centerline miles. If it's if it's light green in two directions for a mile, that's that's two miles worth of bike facility. So this the report just sort of follows that framework. So this is this is more of a background slide on what have we done that's on the priority network before 2024. We'll go through through each treatment here, but it just lists each street and its extent and what kind of facility was built and how many miles.

So approximately three miles were, constructed previously. This is during the year when the ordinance was passed, 2024 progress, separated by facilities. And because the ordinance says report on everything, so this is the priority miles, but also other facilities that were not on the priority network. Moving on, I know there's a lot of info here. Happy to happy to go back to any page, but the 2025, this is the planned installation for this year's construction season.

It includes facilities that are a part of the Spring Hill sewer separation. It includes some developer mitigation. It includes projects by, MassDOT, the, separated by Glen on the McGrath Highway, for example. It includes a couple a couple projects that Mobility is planning to use, quick build materials to construct. And then, it also includes a couple construction projects like this this small section of Somerville Ave that's a part of an intersection improvement around Central Street, along Somerville Ave.

That'll add sidewalk level bike facilities there, and it totals just over three miles. And then also for 2026, plan installation, you'll see here the the Elm Beacon Connector project. That's the first three lines there. It's a quick little project. There is the annual street reconstruction project known as the West Broadway reconstruction from LA for Parkway to Holland Street.

And then we're also anticipating completion of a state project around the intersection of Mystic Ave in McGrath that'll add separated bike facilities. Getting a little further out, we have the twenty twenty seven planned installations. This references section sections of Broadway, Somerville Ave, and Pearl Street. The only on this list that Pearl Street is the only currently active project, the Western Pearl Street reconstruction project. And then this is a much larger list for the twenty eight to twenty thirty period, that is intentionally grouped together because there's a little too much uncertainty to separate that year by year at this time.

It includes essentially the rest of the priority network. Some projects we know are on the the five year paving plan. Some projects we know are not and will need to be quick flow projects by mobility, and then some a couple major capital projects that there's there's a couple notes that I'm happy to dive into more detail about some uncertainty surrounding those projects. But that is the the rest of the network. And then this is just a summary mileage by year, what we've previously done, what was done in 2024, and then, you know, remaining as we we march on to 2030.

Happy to pause or just keep going to the the cost estimate? Yeah. I can I can pause here?

Thank you. Thank you for this presentation. I think that's yeah. It will be good to pause here and take questions. I just have a question because it was asked, by many constituents, when we were looking when we did the, the open house for Elm Beacon. The difference between a quick build and permanent. I think many people will be watching this, so I think it's good to clarify that for everyone.

Cherry. Yes. So quick build, we're we're essentially talking about products like flexible delineators, flex posts. The ordinance defines those things as as under a quick build separated bike lane in order to qualify as permanent. It needs to be something a little more heavy duty.

So so full construction like a curb, we also included, something like a recast concrete block, something that we can sort of add to an existing quick build as a permanent improvement because it you know, it's really a fix to the pavement. The ordinance doesn't require that the full network be full construction, but it says if if we're doing full construction, it must be the permanent style if we're doing an annual streets package or if we're doing, a big capital project. And, you know, we we ask for the flexibility of the precast concrete because there are some cases where we we're just not able to put a curb down, but a precast concrete block could be, you know, for example, utility conflict or something like that. So the building the network is there's there's both categories. And I'd say the majority of it is probably quick build.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. And another question from that that that many neighbors asked at that meeting, they thought also was important is for the streets that are going to that are you know, that there will be, like, a quick build. Are we expected, to go back to the street and do something more permanent in the future, or that's just what the plan is for those streets?

I see. Director Rawson's hand up.

Sure. It's okay. I'll just quickly answer and say, I think the plan and the ordinance really just contemplate that first step on transforming the street, improving safety provide by providing physical separation consistent with the plan, consistent with design standards used by, you various, you know, local, regional, state, and national entities. So I do not believe that the plan or the ordinance would really compel us to take a quick little project and turn it permanent. We're really focused on identifying hotspots and safety challenges, network gaps, and bringing them into the basics of safety and comfort for old users.

And that means that that we're gonna focus on building out that network with quick build materials before we go back to a quick build to location and transform it into the apartment version.

Alright. Thank you, director. I think these are my questions for now. I believe, constable Brundley, you had your hands up first. Was it councilor Wilson?

It's

councilor Councilor Wilson. Yeah.

Thank you both. Thanks, Cherry.

Through you

to our mobility folks, when the bicycle network plan was before the council a couple years ago, we'd heard from our director of mobility how each segment of this would go through its own public process. We've seen that public process recently, as as mentioned here, play out with with Western Pearl, where it it seems like we're headed toward a deviation from the bicycle network plan, in this report in the, on the safe streets ordinance. The bike network plan had called for two way protected bike lanes on the stretch of Pearl, and the annual report, as we just saw, has a point five nine miles of of protected bike lanes in that 2027 planned installation, which tells me, that that includes two way protected bike lanes since that's a point three mile long stretch of Pearl. If we do end up ultimately doing, just the one way protected bike lane on Pearl on on that stretch of Pearl. How does that change things?

Do we need to update the bicycle network plan? Do we have other options that make up for that extra 0.3 miles of protected bike lane? Granted, it's two years off, but, you know, just curious how this all interacts and how we roll with changes like that.

Chair, for you. Thank you for the question, counselor. If it's okay, I wanna answer one very small but important intro part and then ask Justin to talk about the specifics of the Pearl Street case because he's serving as our project manager. And in fact, just an hour ago, was engaging residents in a pop up event to complement the much larger outdoor open house we did last week so Justin can talk about that work. But, Sharon, through you, counselor's question started with an important theme, which is, is the city as committed to engagement processes as we are to end product?

And the answer is yes. I really wanna put an exclamation point on that. Our bike network plan described a typical engagement process even for quick build projects of twelve to fourteen months because we feel that it's of critical importance to spend time on the street, getting to know residents, business community, the nonprofit community, and other institutions, develop ideas, circulate them through a feedback loop to get feedback from our residents and community members, and then move into design and implementation. There can be a tension in this kind of work between the imperative to change as many streets as fast as possible to improve safety outcomes and building durable coalitions that bring our residents and our community members along with us and really heal some of those wounds and culture war items that we know can characterize transportation policy. So I just wanted to identify very quickly the answer is yes.

We are committed to meaningful, culturally competent community engagement process to develop design, and that's an example. As an example, Justin is leading a great team that's working on that right now. Thank you.

Chair, through you, to to answer the question about Pearl Street, that that's correct. This is assuming two directions of bike travel. You know, this was published before the decision had been made on that project. And, yes, we've presented two concepts that that have two directions on certain parts of the street, but not on others. And my understanding is that the city would need to update what what is the priority network in order to remain consistent with the ordinance.

And and we also need to maintain the overall mileage goal of at least 29 miles and the the three miles per year. You know, as another example, the the bike network plan call for one direction of bike travel on West Broadway from from Teal out to the city line, where we'll be constructing two directions in that section. So I think we there's a few opportunities for making up the mileage, and we will need to make an update. And I anticipate the the next report will take into account all the changes that have happened since then.

Alright. For you, that's a it's a good update. It's it's just been something I've been thinking about, you know, following the the process there that y'all are doing. You know? And, yes, for the record, never question whether you were committed to to doing the work there with the the public process. It's clear that that has been happening. I guess this will just be something we have to watch. You know? I appreciate the director's comments about that that that tension. You know? Agree. It often resembles a culture war that we see playing out. So, yeah, I'll just say appreciate you all doing the work on that and and going through, making sure that there is a public process for these things.

Thank you, counselor. Counselor Brundley.

Thank you. Through the chair, few comments and then a question. But I can't help myself. But every time this conversation comes up, I get really excited. I think this is an incredible piece of work that the city is committing itself to both on the broad scale and in just in terms of the transparency that we're trying to provide here as both consistent with our values and consistent with the ordinance itself.

I mean, preview in my last moment, I I mentioned just how ambitious this overall goal is. I just wanted to double down on that with the with the statistics that we just heard. Pre 2024, protected bike lanes just over three bike miles worth. We're we're trying to add almost 10 times that in the next few years. And that was the speed at which we were trying to do that was a a long point of conversation amongst the the people on this call to try to both balance what is in our values and ambitious and what is feasible.

And I I think and I hope that we we found a real balance there, But I'm just really impressed by these numbers, and I I wanna just highlight them because I think when you talk about everything that the city's done prior being at three, even in one year, almost one and a half. And then this year, trying to go for above what we've done all prior to 2024. It's just an amazing amount of steps toward the overall goal. I did and and I also wanna thank my colleague at large for asking that question because I know it's it's probably on a lot of people's mind. Okay.

What if we something happens and we change it? This ordinance itself contemplates that reality by recognizing that there will be all sorts of challenges, not the least of which it will be financial. And the overall commitment to this project requires us to say, if we're going to take from here, we gotta make sure that we're adding more accessibility and connectivity elsewhere. We're not just saying two years from now, somebody decides they don't like this, that we they can put in lower standards for our community. That is not something that I believe in as a a policy matter or a legislative matter.

That's why I like laws because, I mean, it doesn't really matter who's in charge as long as the the law is strong. We should be moving in towards that direction. The question I had, I guess, and it's kind of along similar lines as councilor Wilson's, are there any other pieces of the 2026 prioritization that we have additional uncertainty about moving forward? Because, you know, that's, I think, really important to highlight. And as my colleagues are probably seeing through what has already been discussed, a big part of this ordinance in terms of this process of importance of reporting and transparency is giving people a heads up.

This is the street that we're trying to build out on. This is how many miles of protected bike lane we can expect. And giving people forecast not just this year or next year, but years in advance so that we don't ever find ourselves flat footed when people say, hey. Why didn't I hear about this before? Why why is there the street changing?

We wanna make sure that everyone has an opportunity to see the changes coming to the our their part of the community and engage while moving in this direction. But to that point, any uncertainty on the city's behalf for particular projects should, as such, be flagged early and often. I guess I or my colleagues become forgetful. So just wanna ask, is there any other spots where we're saying we think, especially because of all the uncertainty at the federal level, there might be some hesitance around?

Jared, for you, I appreciate that question. And I think it's definitely worth just the honest conversation that federal financing and moving goalposts with our federal agency partners is creating some stress for us as a community in many parts of public policy, including our safe streets work. The council has supported the administration's work to pursue and secure grant funding with prior administration's US DOT. It is not yet clear, how that grant award is going to land. However, I think we have a responsibility to plan conservatively and assume the worst.

As a result, long ago, many months ago, our staff started preparing plan a, plan b, and plan c, anticipating changes in federal grant awards that were going to be used to finance both the consulting design work as well as implementation work for many of the projects in this report. This is not a code red. Please don't misinterpret me. But you asked for chair of the question was asked about risks, and clearly federal funding is a risk. So that's one of them.

Second one that we will point out in this moment is, as we always caveat things, director did earlier this evening, construction can be unpredictable. Some of our flagship twenty twenty six projects that are listed in the report do involve construction, moving curbs around, moving drainage structures around. One of them is within our control. It's the West Broadway project that Justin described a moment ago. Those contracts tend to have two year performance periods.

This calendar year right now will be the first year of that construction cycle, so we will keep our fingers crossed for good weather and good production by our contractor to complete on schedule for this report for you all. The second one that I'll call your attention to is controlled by state DOT. They are also anticipating a two year construction cycle. So, again, that's another example of risks to some of these projects that we are assuming. I hope that's, responsive to the question.

It is. And just, just to make plain what, you're saying, director, through the chair, am I hearing the words McGrath as being brought up in your, response?

Sure. It's okay. So, Justin, do you if it's okay, could Justin share the screen again just to make sure that, we are clear about which sections of state control in the graph we are referring to? Thank you, Justin. So, chair, the fourth line in this chart, is a project that Mass DOT is currently constructing.

It's about a 10 or $11,000,000 construction project that is just getting underway. It is called the Route 38, Route 28 safety improvements project focused on the big crazy intersections at Fox Park. So that will be implementing safety measures at that location. The project limit chair is Broadway, so no work on McGrath would occur South Of Broadway under that particular project. So just wanted to clarify that we are talking about the northern leg centered around Floss Park and the overhead ramps and structures of I 93.

Thank you. No further questions at

Thank you, councilor Burnley. Councilor Wilson?

Yeah. Thanks, Sherry. I I had a second question, and I just wanted to take a breath to allow us to chime in before I did that. Neighborways is a big fan of Neighborways. I wonder if there's more we can do to promote these and make sure people understand what Neighborways are are all about.

I understand it's not necessarily something that's that's legislated here in the in the safe streets ordinance, but I I I'm thinking of that that's, changes the changes to that stretch of Glen Street between Broadway and Pearl Street, sort of behind the East Somerville Community School, where it's made really clear that cyclists are likely gonna be riding ContraFlo there. I think that's helpful for drivers. It's helpful, honestly, for for people who live on that street. You know, I live on a neighbor way. Jake Street is a neighbor way.

So I know firsthand how, you know, when when you're pulling out of a driveway on a one way, you don't think about looking the wrong way down that one way street to check for traffic. But I ride my bike contraflow on Jake Street, when I'm going down to Temple, and and I've had to change my behavior as a driver accordingly just knowing that others are likely to be doing the same. So I think it's it's important that we educate folks on that point in particular to to look the wrong way down a one way down a one way if you're on a neighbor way. You know, I'll point out SPD leadership wasn't aware of ContraFlow biking on NeighborWay's being allowed when I brought this up with them. So I think we all should also should make sure our police are are familiar with this quirk of of well, it's not a quirk, but this awesome feature of Neighborways as well.

So, yeah, I guess, just I'm asking what what we think we can do to promote Neighborways since a fair number of us in the city actually prefer those over biking on bike lanes just to get around the city and encourage our children to use Neighborways as well.

Sure. If it's okay, perhaps Justin can describe the basics of the Neighborhood Way street type, which was first, you know, really celebrated and planned in our bike network plan and the relationship with the rest of the goals here in the ordinance.

Sure. Chair, three of you. So Neighborway is a traffic comm street for biking that does not have a bunch of specific bicycle infrastructure. Generally Apologies. Generally, we like to see less than 2,000 cars per day and less than 50 during peak hour.

So, for example, being passed less than once per minute, basically, that that's kinda where that that comes from. So if you're driving down it during the rush hour, you know, most people will not encounter a car sort of behind them or even in the opposite way. They're not legislated in the ordinance, but the the bike network plan has a connected network of streets of neighbor ways that we we do have a priority network for Neighborways as well, and it is our our intent to to try to build that out as well. We we do need to go through, you know, regulatory process like the traffic commission to make sure we're fully legalizing the the two way direction. And as a also as a neighborly resident, I think they're they're fantastic, and and and it is entirely true that some folks would prefer a traffic calm quiet street to a busy street with a protected bike lane.

There's definitely preferences in both directions.

Yeah. Chair. I agree with everything said there. Sorry. Director?

Chair, I apologize. I just wanted to point out that although the ordinance does not legislate production towards neighbor based mileage targets, Our community process can sometimes lead us towards conclusions that a neighborhood treatment is the right treatment. And I wanna call the community's attention to our Tufts Street project that Brian's team is now managing in construction, which will be the first example in Somerville of using permanent materials rather than quick build materials to achieve that traffic calmed kind of back streets ride, walk, walk your dog, cross the street anywhere on Montauk Street. And that project, Chair, is scheduled to con start construction this spring, I believe.

And and, Chair, through you, just the to get back to how do we raise awareness, I think the the most recent project in East Somerville is sort of our I guess, using some of our next generation version of of Neighborways. Right? We have bright purple signs. We have big, you know, bidirectional sheriffs on the street. I think going forward, those are they they really do a lot more to alert people that they're on a neighbor way. We we had a previous signage campaign. Love those signs. They're they're a little bit small. They're a little bit hard to see. And I think going forward, we're we're just trying to get the the signings and pay the signs and paving markings right to make sure people are aware.

Cherry, I don't wanna take us too far off course here. I'm I'm just curious. Do we have a rough, ballpark of what it cost us to do the the markings and and infrastructure there on that stretch of of, Glen Street? Because I personally love that. I think it's, it's it's probably the best advertising that we've done, for Neighborways. And shout out to Summerville resident, Mark Chase, for being the the person who came up with this entire concept.

Sure. I think we would have to get back to you. I apologize. I don't

have that number

at our fingertips. It is more expensive than you might expect. Bike network plan, yeah, anticipated something like 2 or $300,000 per mile. So signs, pavement markings, movable planters also have upfront costs as well as operating and life cycle costs that we always want to call attention to. You know how valuable our partnership is with our DPW partners and many others. It's really important that we're honest with constituents and counsel about, life cycle costs, not just upfront costs. And our right now plan identifies those.

Jira, I'm happy to follow-up offline about the cost. Sorry. Finance Jira, gonna finance Jira.

Alright. Any other questions from colleagues? Director Rossen.

Sure. I wanna make sure that staff creates space for you all to continue to ask questions. However, I do wanna point out that we have spent, several rounds of questions on one, but not the only commitment on this ordinance. So I just wanted to make sure that that you and our constituents know that one key difference between the Summerville ordinance and the Cambridge ordinance is that we were very intentional on talking about non bike related production targets and transparency. So we would be happy to discuss those.

That's Brian's forte even more so than Justin and mine, but we wanna make sure that folks know that our intent working with counsel, counsel Burnley, and others was a creative intent and recognizing a big broad coalition for accessibility and safety measures exists in Somerville. This is not just a single issue, for for one group of our residents. Okay?

Yeah. Thank you, for adding that, director, councilor Roosan.

Yeah. Chair, on that, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask. You know, we we I remember when we approved and financed that, that the package, the funding, for the, street and sidewalk reconstruction. Asked about my favorite thing, which is that absolutely wild, root tree root issue on Walnut Street. It comes up all the time.

Do we have any plans to address that, with I it's got an at this point, I don't wanna be prescriptive, but I I just have to think it has to involve a a sidewalk bump out, onto Walnut. I understand the, you know, engineering challenges around that given the slope that we're dealing with there. But since we're talking about, plans to to address the pedestrian safety here. Just curious if we expect to see that anytime soon or in one of these reports.

Yeah. Sure. I can I can feel this question if you like? So, yeah, the our annual streets contract does do a large amount of work. So it's not just the complete streets component, which many of the separated bike lanes come in, but also a substantial part of sidewalk reconstruction.

And that sidewalk reconstruction is prioritized throughout the city based on the based on both how well it can be improved from an accessibility standpoint, and and the condition of the sidewalk itself. So we have been reconstructing sidewalks throughout the community based on those priorities that we've worked through with the disability commission. And what's key, and I think, counselor, to your point, is that we are actively looking at the locations where trees are too large for the sidewalks effectively, and an accessible route cannot be provided at the back of sidewalk because of the size of the tree. And over the past few years, we have been fine tuning our, our procedures and and techniques for, either going over the tree root when we can or going around the tree root with a bump out. And I think we finally settled on a really good design that we've used on Liberty, and I think we've, we're also planning to use it on I think I think there's one plan for Gorham.

But, basically, it's a bump out system that uses existing curbing, existing straight curbing, and existing d stones because one of our biggest challenges was acquiring the radii special radii curbing to make a bump out work. So we've we've settled on a good design scheme for that and have been implementing it. Walnut, which is the street you're referring to, is not on our immediate priority list because it doesn't tick a lot of the boxes that we need it to tick, or rather, there are other streets that tick more boxes. That said, that was a a concern that both engineering and DPW, this particular tree on on Walnut, has come to both the ADA coordinator, engineering division, as well as DPW. And DPW is looking into determining whether they can execute a reconstruction there.

They've asked for our technical details on sidewalk bump outs, so I know that they are considering it. I can't tell you if they've made a final decision or not, but I'm sure that DPW could feel that question if you gave them a ring.

Chair, at at this point, I would just point I heard this at the the Ward 3 slice of the city. I'm sure that, folks have heard this as well. That stretch of Walnut, between basically, between the the park there over by 19 Walnut and then all the way up to Highland. There are no crosswalks across that entire stretch. It's almost a third of a mile. And I guess I just can't help but wonder if it might be some opportunity to two birds, one stone. I'll avoid violent imagery, I guess. But, take care of two things at the same time, figure out how to offer a crossing there, you know, maybe a raised crossing and something involving a curb bump out. Just just throwing that out there. Thanks.

Yeah. Thank you, counselor. Yeah. I believe this this there was an item. It was specifically about that at the last meeting or the one before. But, yeah, always good reminder. Councilor Bronelli or oh, did they see your hand?

Through the chair, I was just gonna offer that senior planner, Schreiber, did have another chunk of the the report to go through

Yes.

To direct her office. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's do

that. Thank you.

Okay. Share through you. The next slide so we we just finished the sort of overview of of bike lane miles. This next slide covers our cost estimate. This is a sort of a generic per mile cost for a quick build bike facility. We've done our best. The the the sort of the initial questions for staff and investigation happened when the bike network plan was completed in 2022. So we've done our best to update this for 2024 pricing. And, indeed, it it has gone up quite a bit. But this is supposed to take into account, the design and planning.

So staff time, consultant time, materials, and then an allocation for the operations and and maintenance piece. And the total is 431,900 per quick build mile. And then we've taken those those calculations and then applied it just on a mileage basis to the to what we were planning for each set of years here, splitting off the the staff and material costs. So it's order of magnitude. This is this is definitely an estimate.

This does not include capital projects and street construction projects. We at this time, you know, pulling out the cost of a of a bike lane from a big capital project is is a little more circumspect for us. So these are quick build costs and 2024, you know, approximate 2024 pricing. And then, the last slide here addresses that that other piece of the ordinance about pedestrian improvements, about ADA improvements, transit improvements. So the left column here, we've just copied in the vision zero plan goals, and the different targets.

And then on the right, we tried to give an indication of our progress last year. You will see that we've sort of combined cells on the left with cells on the right. That's because some of the the language and the way we we sort of sliced up these different improvements to the different categories five years ago doesn't entirely make as much sense with how we we do our projects today. For example, there's there's a number of quick build items here on the left in this this larger cell, like, two gateway improvements, sort of traffic coming or permanent locations, more quick improvements. And on the right, I think we've just tried to demonstrate how, you know, we are constructing with permanent construction vastly more traffic calming features than were ever envisioned by the Vision Zero plan, which is fantastic.

So it the the, you know, the the pieces don't exactly fit together with the Vision Zero plan goal, but we've tried to you know, for clarity, we've have them here, and then we have our best estimate of what was done in 2024. And this is just a a map representation of the same improvements of the the traffic calming progress in 2024. You'll notice a a great deal of these are Spring Hill sewer separate separation related or Western Washington Street construction related, number of quick build improvements, a lot of speed humps as well. And the Vision Zero homepage has an interactive version of this map. Also, every year, you can you can look at, you know, every year and what's planned for this year as well.

And that is it for this report. Happy to answer any questions.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Justin. And, yeah, I just wanna say about the map. It's something I send to my constituents all the time, and it's like it's such a great tool and just, like, so satisfying to see the progress on that map every time.

So thank you for providing that. Yeah. Again, to council Bernie's point, I know it takes a lot to it's, like, a lot of work to put all these materials out there. But, yeah, I just wanna tell you that constituents are using them and very really appreciate the work you're doing. Counselor, director Rawson.

Sure. Thanks for those kind words, and I just wanted to give credit where credit's due. Many of you will remember some conversations in committee we had where your colleague counselor, Ewen Campan, was really holding us to account and saying, folks, come on. We've got to be able to have an interactive multiyear map to show production. It took us a couple of years to marshal the resources to get there, but we also take great pride in that chair. So thank you for spotlighting that, and credit to councilor Yuncanvin for holding us accountable to to produce that product.

Yeah. Any questions from colleagues about this second section? Councilor Brumley.

Thank you for the chair. Last time, I promised folks, try to be brief. It was my praise. Just incredible work. I mean, what I just wanna highlight some things from that last slide because there's a lot on there.

It's if you're if you're like me, you have to try to, like, zoom in on your screen to be able to see it all. But one of the highlights there was that there were a 100 traffic calming features added into an e 24 throughout the city. And I I think to planners drivers senior planners driver, it seems like a weird how say to say it right seems a little weird to me. But if if there's a better way to say it, please let me know. But to his point, this ordinance really does try to prioritize, like, the best quality features and infrastructure that we can get based on national standards, which is, I think, partially why.

Although, I I have full faith that this group of folks would be pushing forward regardless, but I think partially why we see things like the amount of race crosswalks that were added that year or these features that we know there are other options to to get to a similar goal, but that really kind of raise the standard of what we're trying to build here in our community to shorten the length of process, to create more safety, to slow vehicle traffic where it is necessary. And I'm sure in the years to come, there there will be some difficult conversations to be had about how we get to our overall goal here, but I think that this is an incredible start. I'm really excited for this to become an annual tradition on the council to to have an item like this brought by someone so that we can continue to have this conversation annually as the ordinance foresees. And I will just note as well, that map being continually updated on the website is also part of the web the ordinance itself. So, you know, as much as we can, trying to be transparent with our community about where we're heading and emphasizing time and time again that this is this is about safety for our residents, whether they're walkers, whether they're drivers, whether they ride bikes.

We absolutely need to be ensuring that no one is critically harmed or worse when they go out of their door and try to get a move around our community. So,

you

know, these are the superstars who actually do that work. I don't actually get my hands dirty. I just get to, pontificate, but I'm really excited about where we're headed.

Thank you, counselor. Any other questions? I do wanna say something about this slide about the 2024 progress on pedestrian and transit infrastructure. I think I just, like, have a request when we're having open house public all these public meetings so that public process. I think it's will be great if we can start with the accomplishments and the bigger picture.

I know those open house. Like, just thinking about the one in my world that we had in my world recently. I think sometimes it's very easy to when you focus on, like, what's happening on your street and you forget the bigger picture of what of the goal the bigger goals that we have for our city. So I think these are really it's a really good way to celebrate all this work, but also a reminder for our neighbors that this is not just about, you know, bicyclist or it is about everyone safety. So, yeah, looking at that list, it is very, very impressive.

And looking at the work that we have yeah. The work ahead, I think, yeah, it is it is quite a lot, but it's just I think it would be a great way to, yeah, just keep the community updated. So that that will be my request. Director Rawson?

Sure. I'm glad you say that I've captured that note. That's a terrific piece of feedback for us. You know, we are constantly doing community engagement, Mobility division administered and supported, more than 100 community outreach events last year and more than 100 the year before. But I think it's very easy for us to get narrowly focused on a project or a program, and to your point's a good one, reorient folks.

And there are times where even discussions like this can be characterized as saying, well, what what about the pop holes? But we have the information. You all know from our annual reports on the Vision Zero page that Brian's team has scaled up our paving program, and we're hitting three miles of paving per year, whereas a few years ago, we weren't doing that. So our own storytelling and and kind of orienting at the beginning of community engagement events is something that's made into my notes, and I'll look forward to following with our staff on.

Alright. Great. Any questions? Yeah. It is, yeah, it is a lot. I'm sure we'll have more questions in the future. We will certainly reach out. K. I see none. So our colleagues okay with marking this as complete or complete and just reach out when needed to, our directors again. Thank you for this presentation, and thank you for all the work you do.

Thank you, chair. Thank you for your partnership and your colleagues. We can't do this work without you all. We are truly grateful.

Alright. Great. We will mark this this item as complete, and this brings us to the end of our agenda. Clerk, could you please call the roll to adjourn?

Yes. This is a roll call for adjournment. Councilor Saeed?

Yes.

Councilor Burnley? Hi. Councilor Wilson?

Yes, please.

Perfect. That is three votes for adjournment.

Right. Have a good night, everyone.