Public Utilities and Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

Hello, everyone. My name is Naima Saeed. She, her pronouns, Ward 5, counselor, and your traffic and parking chair. I would like to call to order today's traffic and 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 and local cable access government channels. Clerk, could you please call the roll to establish a quorum?

Present. Council Saeed. Here. Madam chair, all members of the president we had before.

Let's begin with approval of the minutes from the previous meeting. Minutes. Okay. We're good then. Okay.

First item that I'm going to read. Okay. Central discussion by councilor Syed, councilor Wilson, and councilor Strezzo that the director of mobility discussed with this council strategies for improving the safety of users of the community path as detailed within. We have tonight with us director Rossin, director Bosoway, and staff from the mobility department, miss Worth. Yes.

So we we kept this item in committee last time. My intention is that we keep you in committee and have regular updates when we have updates. And, yeah, it's very exciting to work with all of you on this. You we'll probably be sharing this tonight, but the community is really excited that we're looking into this. We're looking at ways to make the community path safer for all users. So very exciting to start this process and can't wait to hear the updates you have for us. Director Rawson and Ms. Worth?

Yes. Thank you, chair. Good evening. My name is Brad Rawson. I serve the city as director of mobility in OSPCD.

We appreciate your work as ward five counselor as well as all the other counselors at large and ward counselors who have been working to to make sure that the city is communicating with the constituents and the council on various short, medium, and long term solutions to improve safety on a community path. We have discussed this in committee previously, chair, as you know, mobility staff described a community engagement process that we were intending to run-in the 2025, and we communicated to you all that we would then use the input of community members' feedback to help mobility staff develop a series of short and long term treatments to improve safety for all users of the PATH. We intended to cast a wide net with this scoping exercise, and we asked community members to talk to us not only about the obvious pain points of things like street crossings, not only about the obvious things about crowding and different user group sharing, but also about user education, common courtesy. And the last thing that we communicated is that Somerville is not unique in dealing with growing pains associated with our shared use path network. Somerville staff are in constant conversation and coordination with peer cities around North America, and everybody who has shared these paths is dealing with some of these challenges about overuse, about new mobility and micromobility modes, sharing these limited spaces.

So just wanted to offer that kind of level setting to catch us up from our last committee discussion. Mobility has a three person staff team chair, that is working on these issues. One of those staff is able to join us tonight. Lily Worth serves as transportation planner. If it's okay with you and the committee, like, for Lily to take a little lead on catching you all up on our outreach work and some of the path forward. So if it's okay, I'll introduce Lily. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you, director. Lily, thank you for joining us tonight, and, yeah, please take it away.

Thank you so much, chair. Thank you, committee, and thanks, Brad, for a great introduction. So as Brad mentioned, I'm a transportation planner with the mobility division, and I'm working with a team of three on the community path safety improvements project. So the sort of to set the stage, we spent the sort of spring and 2025 doing some research and kind of setting the stage to do an outreach campaign, in September and October. We wanted to really hear from people about including their safety concerns, but we also had some potential design options, that we wanted to sort of preview for folks to get some reactions and kind of get people thinking about, you know, what can we do in the short term and the in the long term.

We're looking at making improvements along the path itself. We also looked at the roadway crossings and the station entrances for the green line stations along the path. So I'll give a little bit of an overview of our public engagement campaign, and we really wanted to focus a lot on this. We did similar to our other projects such as our Streetscapes projects, we launched a project website, and we did a safety concerns survey. And we also, put up flyers along the path in key locations and in multiple languages.

We publicized the project in our newsletter, a press release, citywide email, and really any opportunity to get the word out. We also did a series of in person outreach pop up events at different locations along the path and at different times of day to really meet people in person, kind of cap catch people kind of as they were using the path no matter what mode they were using, to hear from them about their experiences and kind of identifying some safety concerns. We also had a public input map online where people could note down concerns and observations. We presented people with some of the design options that we had kind of researched and and thought of initially, which really ranged from, you know, things like signage and pavement markings to other things such as bollards, going as far as maybe even barriers, tactile pavements. So we really wanted to cast a wide net in the things that we were considering to improve safety along the path and give people examples of things to react to.

While we were doing this outreach work, we also informed people about, the engineering division's design and permitting work for the School Street Crossing and Lowell Street Crossing. So even though doesn't have its own project page, it's known that that work is being done, and we heard a lot about particularly the School Street Crossing. One of the highlights, really, of our outreach is the response to our safety survey. So we had over a thousand unique respondents, which is really much higher than what we would expect for some of our streetscapes projects. And we were pretty thorough in asking people about, you know, their safety concerns, the particular locations that they were feeling unsafe or that they noticed issues, but also their opinions on some of the design options.

So we do have, we're undergoing the review period right now where we're really trying to thoroughly analyze all of that input so that we can produce a community engagement report. So that community engagement report will, be published later in the fall. Even though we haven't fully published this, I can kind of touch on some of the themes that we heard in our outreach. So there were a lot of concerns around street crossings, yielding, stopping in terms of, you know, who has the right of way with vehicles. A lot of people described a difficulty sharing the narrow space with all the different users.

A lot of people really were hoping we could widen the path, which is not really something that's in the purview of this project. People commented on the school street crossing, as I mentioned, as well as the difficulties with connectivity through Davis Square. There were also, you know, in our in person pop ups in particular, we got a lot of really nice feedback from folks that were just really happy that we have a path and really grateful that, you know, we were looking at these issues. So in terms of our next steps, we will be preparing a strategy document to outline the treatments that we recommend, both for the short and long term. So that will be something we are delivering in early twenty twenty six.

We're gonna focus on things that will address the issues that the community raised to us through our outreach prog process and things that we think are achievable and can help us kind of meet some of our goals with helping people feel safe, helping people, you know, share the path with each other, slow speeds, and improve sort of the intersection compliance. We also I think we can sort of comfortably say at this point, some of these things will include signage and pavement markings, and we're still kind of evaluating what other type of quick build things that we might consider. And we anticipate implementation in 2026. And that's kind of I think I'll stop there, and I'm happy to answer any questions about the project and what we've learned so far.

Thank you. Thank you, Lillian. Thank you for this update and for all the work you've done to gather input from the community and all the different ways you've done that. Yeah. I forgot to say when after we started recording, welcome to counselor Hart. I was joining the committee for the first time tonight. We just joined the council. I said it before the recording started, but I wanna make sure you say it. So any questions from colleagues? I see councilor Brundley's hands up. Councilor Brundley.

Okay. Sorry. Technical difficulties. Through the chair to that's a pose. Both the director and miss Worth, how has the the shared kind of jurisdiction of the community path impacted our ability to actually implement some of these solutions?

As this is a topic that is of great interest to all of Somerville, folks who can be on Somerville. I'm not that surprised that this survey has received such wide attention and interest and engagements as a result of that. Something that I've certainly had people asking me about for years, whether that's around safety concerns with mopeds and speeding vehicles. And, I'll just say for the record and for context, the council has put in a number of items, to that point over the years. And we've asked about things such as whether speed bumps could be installed.

I've also heard the concerns about potentially widening. And just briefly on that as well, there are issues related to flood mitigation, in my opinion regarding if we were to add more impermeable space to some parts of the path. All that said, I'm curious how the fact that that the state is involved and a good chunk of this, impacts our ability to actually implement and how your team is thinking about working around that.

Chair, through you, I'm happy to answer that question. Counselor, I appreciate it, and it's a really good question. And there's a few different things I would choose to highlight in response. So as you noted, counselor, the path is owned by MBTA. There's MBTA right of way.

MBTA owns the title to the land in a fee interest. The city operates the community path from end to end, not just the path extension under a long term lease that this council has been really great working with us on to support. And, Chair, you all may remember that at the time of that lease, we talked about using the first couple years of the past operation to try to explore different use cases that might require the city to secure formal approval from MBTA for various types of upgrades and activities. This could be as routine as certain snow clearance activities or as robust as rebuilding the school street crossing that we'll speak about in more detail tonight. So that work is still underway right now, but I think it's important to communicate to counselors and to constituents that MBTA has been very pragmatic with us.

And examples of enhancements like minor signage changes will not need to go through months and months of red tape. However, bollard installation would probably start to rise to a different level. Obviously, excavation anywhere along the path starts to bring other issues to the table, like soil contamination and assessment. We know that these old rail corridors tend to have challenging soil conditions, so we definitely caution anybody who gets excited about planting trees in the rail right of way to know that that is a higher level of red tape, and it's to protect the city and MBTA liability. One example that I'll call attention to, which is a recent success story, not just a hypothetical, that many of you are probably aware that the city just completed a lighting enhancement project to address one of the important safety and equity deficiencies of the original community path extension construction by MBTA.

So Citi was able to, commission design and engineering process, competitively procure a lighting and electrical contractor to fill in a series of the unlit sections of the path primarily in the East Summerville neighborhood. We did have to go through extensive permitting with the MBTA. There was trenching involved, for example. There were even times where we had to secure flaggers because our contractors had to use cherry pickers to get up to electrical poles along the railway. But to to conclude the answer, Chair, I would say that we've been able to stress test many of those use cases, and now we know in individual individual human beings, actual divisions within MBTA to ask these questions of, if it's something like modifying the pavement for safety enhancements, for traffic calming, etcetera.

So I I hope that's a somewhat helpful description of the process we've been going through, and we'll be happy to provide more specific examples in the future if that's okay. I don't have them at my fingertips, but happy to respond in writing with more information.

No. Through the chair. No. I think that's a a pretty comprehensive response. I understand why it has to be so broad just given the variety of asks related to the community path.

I mean, I've heard from community members who would like to see us some similar to your point, not necessarily plant trees along, parts of the bath, but have, gardens or even if those gardens were in soil containers of their own, rather than in what is likely ground that it would not be that great. So I guess what in how are you guys thinking, though, about, like, where where those obstacles do become clear? For example, using a speed bump type example, to address v I don't wanna say vehicles legally. Objects of high speed, with two wheels, or more, going down the path. The given your answer, I I'm I'm understanding that that would take a much longer conversation with MBTA.

Are you is your team already thinking about what are lower level tactics we can use to accomplish the same goals?

Chair, through you, yes. Thank you, counselor. And perhaps I could ask Lily to chime in with any specificity Lily described a moment ago. As we finish publishing our community engagement report, the next deliverable that we work towards is is essentially a strategy document. And, Lily, please chime in here if it's okay with the chair about specific elements of that legal and jurisdictional due diligence that could be addressed in a strategy report.

It's very easy for me to imagine, a little matrix that says, is this design treatment triggering a three week review process? And that's kinda notification based to the MBTA as opposed to a three month process, which is a relatively low bar to clear to get a license versus a one year process, which is a much more substantial, like, construction access permit. But perhaps Lily can provide a little bit more detail.

Thanks, Brad. Yes. Through the chair, I think at this stage, we can say that we are prioritizing, design options that are more quick build, that wouldn't require the kind of intensive review or, due diligence with the state. But we certainly will outline in our strategy document the different kind of levels of overview that would be required for things that are a little bit more intensive. I think early indications of our community outreach have sort of seemed to indicate that our community is is more interested in in things that are less intensive.

Like, we do have there was some interest for things like speed bumps. We also have, you know, a lot of opposition to that. So we'll want to, you know, really if we want to pursue that, that would require, like, a little more thinking. But I think we will be starting with more quick build strategies.

That's all for me.

Thank you, counselor Burleigh. Thank you for those questions. Those are those are some of the things they brought up to director Rossin as we were discussing safety improvements is just first trying to understand what we can actually do, especially in terms of speed limit, which is one that I hear about a lot. Obviously, there's the motorized vehicles are not supposed to be on the community path, but we also have the electric vehicles or the electric bikes, I mean, that are and they had, the council's, policy analyst look at this, and there's a memo attached to this meeting on that just so we can start educating ourselves on this. And director Ross, and if you don't mind just giving, like, like, discussing that, we can also do it a later time.

Just basically what the memo is saying. And, yeah, if, yeah, if you can give us a brief

Sure. Perspective. Yeah. Please please caveat any comments that I offer. Not an attorney.

Many of these questions quickly swerve into legal realms, But the council's legislative and policy analyst, Brendan Salisbury, gave a very, very helpful kind of background memo that, as you noted, has been attached to this agenda. And the policy analyst was able to describe just some of the cautionary tales that you really want to think through in terms of, posted versus regulatory speed limits, what is advisory, what is enforceable, is the path considered a public way like streets in our city are? Therefore, is the actual mass general law legal framework applicable to shared use paths? It's incredible that here we are in 2025, and communities are still having to ask ourselves these questions. And that, I think, in part illustrates the complexity and and, you know, of some of the the laws that we operate under at the state level.

There are questions that Brendan describes about, how subjective and objective speed studies can be, how rigorous is data collection method, to actually capture the speeds in excess of a given milestone, and how context matters a lot. Remember that classic pedal powered bicycles can easily achieve 20 miles per hour, which can be considered a safe speed in some context and an unsafe speed in other contexts. So I think we all acknowledge that in this new era of electric micromobility, it is very easy to other and to categorize individual users. We just really need to be cautious and thoughtful, about having clear rules that are understandable to all, applicable to all. But I think one thing that it is also worth concluding with, Cher, is Brandon has noted that, vehicle types can also be a little bit of a blurry line, and the difference between a, quote, unquote, legal electric assist pedal bike versus an illegal, electric or even gas powered moped.

Sometimes it's not as obvious to a casual observer. So Brendan's memo really just kinda diagnoses many of these these thoughts that he recommends the council and our staff keep in mind as we work to to implement, safety improvements for the PATH. I hope that's a reasonable summary.

Yeah. Thank you, director Ross, and this is, very helpful. And I will note that Brandon Salisbury, did say at the end of his memo that an ordinance is is not the way to go, at least in his opinion, and instead work with city staff, community partners to establish a culture, like, a new way of, like, using the path and figure out ways to make it safe for all users. And and during those conversation with constituents, one thing that came up is how about exploring the idea of having a working group that is composed of city staff, constituents. So that's also something that we discussed with you, director Rossen, if and yeah.

So when we're there, for now, we're, like, waiting for the report. And but so we're starting to think about design and, yeah, all these different components. Think this would be if we can do this, that would certainly be very helpful. So, yeah, the that's for that's, like, regarding the memo. And, again, this memo, you will find they're not under the item, but under the meeting agenda.

So if you go to meeting, go to meeting details, and that's where it's attached. My question yeah. We're talking about the community path, safety on the community path. We have you know, a lot of people are on bikes, and we know that the community path is extremely busy right now, especially during rush hours because Highland Ave reconstruction hasn't happened yet. And I'm just my question is more, are we making sure we're working as we're working on making the community path safer, we're also thinking about Highland Ave project that's you know, I'm not going to get there in this meeting.

This I don't if it's not about Highland Ave, but we know it's we have not received updates on that. We haven't started the work on the yeah. So just making sure all these different projects are you know, with this coordination between all the different projects. If you can speak to that, director Rawson.

Yes, chair. I I really appreciate you bringing this up. And it's funny. You you do hear occasionally constituent feedback that involves a little bit of hypothesis, and the hypothesis could say, because the we now have the community path, doesn't that reduce the need to provide safe and separated bike facilities on other streets? And we at the staff level recommend that folks maybe take that question and turn it upside down and and say, part of the reason that the path is used so much by people biking because there are relatively few safe and separated places to bike on arterial streets, not limited to Highland Avenue Chair.

I I wanna be much broader than that. And this illustrates the value of the work that the staff, our community members, and our city council partners have done on our long term citywide bicycle network plan and on the implementing ordinance that council Burnley and many of you worked on. So I think we are committed to an all of the above strategy, but it is clear that many people feel unsafe walking and particularly biking in places like Highland Avenue or Bedford Street and will choose the path accordingly. That is a totally legitimate observation that you've made, chair. And so the city is committed to building out a safe separated network of streets and separated bike facilities all over the city, really prioritizing our twenty thirty, 29 mile target that that was voted into ordinance by this council last year.

Happy to answer any other questions on that topic, and I appreciate you bringing it up.

Yeah. Thank you, director. Yeah. Really glad to hear that. It's not and it's not just about Highland Ave, but all the other street reconstruction and safety street improvement projects in the city.

Great. And my other question is about funding for this is not this is more like a mini year project, making the community path safer. Is just trying to think about how can the council help with these efforts. So we'll do we before budget season, should we start to think about allocating money for this project, or how how does the funding piece here yeah. If you can speak to the funding piece, that would be great.

Thank you, chair. Again, I really appreciate this question and getting six months ahead of any, you know, funding questions. We are fortunate to have great support from the council and the community that provides us with a variety of funding sources for affordable quick build solutions, Tape and markings, flex posts, signs are typically not budget busters. They're typically very, very affordable, and we can be nimble in terms of purchasing and installing. More substantial construction oriented activities, obviously, it becomes a different question altogether.

Right now, we do not have a scope of treatments. But as we get towards January, as Lily was discussing, thinking about those short and long term safety upgrades, our strategy document will include order of magnitude cost estimating, and then our staff will be reviewing with the city's finance department what funding sources are available. Council has gone through some important housekeeping and housecleaning on various cash reserves, stabilization accounts, and those are the types of places that we would recommend using first. And then if we still have funding gaps, then we would come back towards this council and give you plenty of time, to understand the requests that we would make, for any, you know, bigger numbers that are needed. So I think it's a little premature for me to estimate with any accuracy about budgetary needs.

But, again, I I just appreciate you thinking two steps ahead.

Okay. Great. Yeah. I like to yeah. I learned now that it's my second year on the council is if there's no if there's no funding, then things don't happen. So just trying to get ahead with that. And, yeah, lastly, I know, Lily, you've mentioned it before, but once the public engagement report is out, where can the public find that?

Thank you, chair. We will be publishing that on our project website. We also have we typically collect emails of everybody who's interacted with the project, so we will push out an update to anybody who has sort of been in touch with it with us about the path safety project to let them know about that critical update.

Okay. Great. And if they can request to have you also added to the newsletter, many to the city's newsletter. You know, the mobility department also has newsletter. As you saw, there is a very high engagement. So, yeah, it would be a lot of people are asking about it. So let's put it in as many channels as possible. Again, thanks, everyone, for your collaboration on this. If there are no further questions from the committee, we can keep this item in committee. Any quest other questions from colleagues?

Okay. I see no questions. We will keep this item in committee. And we move to the second item, item 25 dash one one seven one sent for discussion by councilor Owen Kempen, Wilson, Strezzo, Klingen, and Ba, that the director of engineering update this council and community advocates on current efforts to fix the in safe crossing of the community path at School Street. This is another item that I kept we kept in committee that we've discussed a few times, so always great to get an update on this. I'll turn it to you, director. Supposed to wait.

Chair Sai, thank you so much for that introduction, and thank you for keeping this in committee. This has been a project that we've been working on for a few years now, but we've been able to get a consult an engineering consultant to really, you know, hone in on what are the real possibilities that we have at this location. And as I mentioned a couple months ago, they've also, on their team, they have bridge designers, so as well as complete streets designers that we've used before in our city on other projects. So they understand where we're coming from and understand the the the the scope and the considerations that we need to have on our streets. So over the past few months, they've developed a handful of different options for us to consider.

I've whittled it down to the key ones that illustrate the the the magnitude of ideas that we're considering. I'll I'll share a couple of some editorials on what what are the concerns that we might be up against. No. These are all very conceptual designs that we'll share with you this evening. We have not discussed these with Masstad yet.

We're in the process of of scheduling meetings with them. So so it's not we believe each of these are possible, that there's nothing technically impossible about it. But whenever you're working with somebody else's property, in this case, bridges that are owned by the state, there's a certain amount of deference and opinions that they can have with their own facilities even if even if an option is technically possible, that doesn't mean that's an option that they're willing to consider on their infrastructure. And and I think it's fair to say we have the same thing. There are there are things that are technically possible on our streets that we wouldn't do because that doesn't fit with how we maintain and operate our structure.

So I just wanted to preface it that that this is a negotiation, and these are just some initial concepts that help us start that negotiation with our partners at the state. So I will share my screen. I believe that should be all. I gotta request it. Hopefully, the clerk can give me that.

Clerk, can you please allow direct to to share the screen to I

can share now. K. Okay. So I will start off with School Street. As we discussed a couple months ago, we also oh, can you all see my screen?

Yeah. We're not seeing Okay. Window.

Are you seeing a a plan?

We're seeing under pressure.

Oh, that's not what you wanna see. You're My music.

Okay. Now we're seeing okay.

Hold on. I gotta start over. I picked the wrong screen.

No worries.

Oh, it's because screen one and two are different at home than they are at work. Alright. Now you should be seeing a plan.

Yes.

Okay. Fantastic. So as we discussed a couple months ago, the bulk of the the focus of this order was to discuss the School Street crossing at your request. And because the project also includes reviewing, the Lowell Street crossing at the Magoon Station, I have a couple of figures at the end for that if we have time. So three key solutions that that our consultants, Bowman, came up with.

First is to construct a fully raised crossing at this location. So right here is the path going towards Davis, and right here is the path going towards Boston. Currently and you can see grayed out here the existing alignment of the crosswalk. And so but in dark or black is what we're envisioning a future crosswalk. This would be a crosswalk that where the roadway is raised up to the level of the sidewalk, and the sidewalk is all one level at sidewalk level.

And that provides probably the most clear and barrier free crossing for both pedestrians, but also cyclists, people in wheelchairs, families, etcetera. It provides a very wide crosswalk that allows people to run from the two paths that are not in line with each other. So they're gonna be running at a diagonal path across this. And and the other benefit is, because it's so wide, it provides a much brighter and, more obvious visual key to motorists coming up the hill. But in additional, we have a raised crossing that further helps slow motorists down and has them provide due caution to to pedestrians, cyclists, etcetera on the path.

One thing that you'll notice on all of these figures is that through other planning processes, we've been working on the best side to have a long term two way protected bike lane. At present, based on the existing conditions, it's on the the the East Side or the Boston side of School Street, but we envision, with a with a fully planned out and extended two way bike lane, it improves connections in this neighborhood and with Highland and and Medford Street on either side to have the two way bike lane on the Davis or West Side of School Street. So for these figures, it's shown on that side. When we get to the point of constructing this, if that change has not already been made, we would work to execute it in tandem with this project. A couple of concerns that we have with this design that that MassDOT may raise and may be uncomfortable with, and the key is making a rays crossing is a few tons of asphalt.

And, actually, in this case, probably a few tons of concrete to actually build up the roadway, the six inches needed. We believe that the bridge construction should be able to handle that. We still we will need to do design calculations to make sure, but that may become a nonstarter for Masstadt. But we believe this provides most likely the best alignment and most flexible alignment for PATH users. And so that's the concept that we wanna start with mass dot on and see if we can get to a point where that concern with the weight of the material is acceptable.

The I'll go through the three concepts for School Street, and then we can stop for questions if that's good with you all. Concept the second concept provides is is assuming that Masstad is not willing to accept a raised crossing. And so here, we're looking at the the both the bike lane and the roadway are at roadway grade, and we have extended bump outs with wheelchair accessible ramps on either side, providing bumps out bump outs on either side, which provides ramping down to the roadway elevation. A couple of, so first off is it does require a bit of deflection in both the roadway and the bike lane. We believe this is consistent and probably actually helpful for traffic calming considering we don't have a vertical deflection in a in a raised crossing.

A few concerns that that we anticipate MassDOT might have is that it would require reconstructing the sidewalk on the bridge itself to a substantial degree because we'd actually have to lower the sidewalk a little bit to allow for this curb ramp to go in. And there would be a little warping at the back of it to match up with the existing community path, which is also on a structure, and we don't want to build into or reconstruct part of that structure, trying to limit to just one structure we're working with. So this would require adjusting the sidewalk, the cast in place concrete sidewalk, and then extending out into the roadway on both sides a bump out that holds the elevation transition as part of the, accessible curb ramp. It does provide a similar route between the two. It's a little sharper because the bump out kinda takes up some of that angle, so the angle is a little bit tighter.

And it's and it kind of constrains people to the 10 feet of the of the actual wheelchair ramp. In the Rays Crossing, there's the full width of the crosswalk that can be used for that. So it's not as good, but it's it it it ticks all the boxes of accomplishing the goals we're looking for. The third option is well, I'm I'm gonna go back to this one for a little bit to say, one of the potential concerns on this is plowing and roadway maintenance because we have a bump out on both sides. There's a concern with how Masstadt, for better and worse, is much more motor vehicle centric than the city of Summerville is.

And so that's a conversation that we have to have with on them with them on a regular basis. And so there could be a point where they don't like the idea of this bump out in the roadway travel lane. So we also explored an option where we have an extra large bump out on the west side. This does a couple things for us. One is that it allows for a common curb line here.

We don't have to change the curb line. So where all of construction's going on one side of the bridge. So it minimizes the amount of work we're doing. It provides a clean curb line, so plowing may be easier to manage. It might be seen as less obstructive to motor vehicle traffic, but it still provides that narrowing effect that should help ameliorate some of the traffic speed along this corridor.

The other thing that it does for us is it reduces the amount of construction on the sidewalk, the construction the concrete sidewalk here where all of the grade change happens in the bump out. So there's very little construction that has to go into the existing sidewalk. It's build off of that existing sidewalk. So this probably has the least amount of impact to the bridge structure itself, yet it still provides what we think is is a similar and acceptable alignment for cyclists and pedestrians crossing the street. So I'll pause there because these are the three concepts that we're considering at present for the school street crossing.

Thank you, director. I obviously, I'm not an engineer. I'm just really excited that we have designs that we're gonna submit soon. But my question is, are these three concepts the way you presented them in the order of your your department's preference? Or, like, is there, like, a preferred one that would work best? Or I would say, generally, these are

in yeah. Sure. I'd say, generally, these are in the order of our Brad, if you have an opinion on that, I I I think that's pretty much consistent with what Viola and I have discussed. But there are trade offs between each of them. There may be some trade offs that we will want to discuss with DPW about, especially the plowing component of it. You know, we're still very early in the design process, and we know this is important. So we so we're happy to discuss this with the council, but we haven't had full conversations with DPW.

Cher, if I may build on Brian's point again, this is really early hot off the press information, and I think it's really important that we as staff, you as counselors, constituents, don't get their heart too set on any specific concept or design element here. These are illustrative. They're intended to be presented with respect for you all and for the folks who have been advocating. But as Brian noted, our operations teams in DPW have not needed to and have not had had the opportunity to review these for operational consistency yet nor has Somerville fire department. Those are standard parts of our project development processes, and so we just wanna make sure that folks understand that engineering and mobility staff work with those operations partners on every project.

We iterate designs based on their feedback. And there are times where we even construct elements, and something doesn't exactly work the way we want it to. And so we work with those teams at DPW and Fire to modify designs again. So, again, I'm just trying to keep expectations in check for anybody who's getting super excited about looking at these two dimensional drawings. Thanks.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Question two, direct to post away. When these will be presented to MassDOT, will they be presented? Like, first one, accepted or rejected, then present the second one, and then the third, or is it all at once? Give all the three options and discuss them all. Just curious.

Honestly, I don't have a we haven't thought that far ahead. We don't know. We're still in the process of setting up that meeting and trying to determine who's gonna be in the room. My gut feel is we're going to discuss them pretty openly on the three options ahead of us. Our our goal is to make sure that the people from MassDOT that are on that call and helping us make this decision span the scope of professional goals that MassDOT has both from a operations, a bridge construction, but also a complete street side.

And and I feel like it's important to have an open and honest conversation with our professional partners at the state. So that's that's my expectation.

Okay. Thank you. Councilor Hart, I see your hand raised.

Thank you. Chair through you to director Apostolbyte. I was wondering about the safety, and this may be premature. But in the designs without the raised crossing, you know, I'm thinking just I I know that intersection, and there's not a lot of visibility for folks coming towards the Boston side for especially, like cyclists going opposite the road traffic down. I'm just wondering, like, what kind of things would slow down, like, two cyclists coming and meeting right there.

So I think there's a handful of things that we use to mitigate safety and interactions between motorists, cyclists, but also motorists and runners, any user of the path that is going faster than a walking pace. The the ability to see in enough time each other before the physical interaction is what we're looking for. I believe that there are some pros and cons of each of these to that respect. And just looking at the at this concept that we have on the screen here, the the fact that there's a rather large bump out here for for pedestrians and cyclists going in a easterly direction, that provides much more time before they're actually into the motor vehicle traffic. Of course, we have the opposite consideration when we have westbound traffic going from the bottom of the sheet to the top.

The the visibility corridor here is a little bit better, but that's also one of the reasons why we do have stop signs on each of these approaches. And we don't ever want to rely a 100% on them, but but these areas have limited visibility because of the structure of the bridges. Those aren't things that we'll ever be able to get rid of. And so we have to use all the tools to get both motorists and cyclists to be paying attention to each other. A few of the things that that further help this conversation, One is and director Austin, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure we have looked at safety at these crossings before and have installed speed humps on the approach on School Street for this purpose.

Unfortunately, we can't install them on the bridge itself. It creates too much of a dynamic loading for the bridge, which is another concern of a raised crossing. But those are pieces that we're looking at as as slowing down vehicle traffic as they're approaching the crossing with speed humps where we can put them. The the design of this and the previous one has a narrowing of the travel lane right at the crossing, which also provides a certain amount of traffic calming. People don't like to drive fast through very narrow annuluses.

The and then the other component was as shown on the first one, having the raised component. If we can convince MassDOT that that would work at this on this bridge, that would further improve crossing speeds. Brad, do you have anything to add to that?

No. No. Well said. Thank you, chair. Again, I appreciate the question.

And as director noted, traffic calming tends to work best at the corridor scale, not in isolation. So regardless of the design concept that is advanced, ultimately is permitted and constructed, we do expect to continue to maintain that, speed hump treatment that is on the downhill side, the Medford Street side of the path. And counselors likely know that we were just able to install one on the path approach just a block away on Walnut Street, because we know that, every 300 feet or so is the best way to get slow, consistent, safe travel speeds. Any individual isolated raised crosswalk is only gonna be effective within one or 200 feet of that treatment. So, again, thank you.

I see, counselor Brundlitz, hand raised.

Through the chair, to director Postal Wade, please forgive me for my lack of, engineering degree. I'm gonna ask some questions that may be quite obvious, to you, but I think it's important that the public have some sense about why, the materials we're talking about are so narrow. Because on the the face of it, I can understand why, Mastod might be concerned about adding thousands of pounds of weight, to a bridge. It's certainly something that I think the average resident could have some sort of safety concerns around even if they don't have the details around the how much the bridge can bear or, you know, what were the long term implications of, adding to the bridge in a way that wasn't originally conceived. Having said all that, to that point, I I imagine that one of my neighbors or constituents would say, hey.

Well, why aren't we talking about materials other than asphalt and concrete here? There's, you know, other ways in which we do traffic calming or, change the nature of streets with material that is lighter than those. Is that due to the the type of vehicles that are likely to gonna go up and down school streets such as large trucks? Is it just is it more about cost feasibility? Can you give some context to that?

Sure. Especially through the chair. Especially when it comes to concrete, there are some lighter weight aggregate concretes. There are ways to reduce the density of the concrete. That's something that we will be looking into further, especially if this option is is chosen for further investigation.

Some of the challenges with that is those lighter weight aggregates, those lighter weight concrete mixes tend not to be as durable, and they definitely don't tend to be as strong. I don't believe vehicle loading is a huge factor on this street. It's not a major trucking route, but it does have it it is a a response route for our fire engines. It does have the full scope of vehicles on it. But I think the bigger concern with the lighter weight material is likely to be durability.

These bridges are intended to last fifty to a hundred years or more. They're the designs anticipate the concrete structure to be able to withstand the majority of that lifespan. So the idea of putting a less durable material on there that may not last as long as the remainder of the bridge could be a problem for long term maintenance that Masstot will be responsible for. Because Masstot is responsible for the long term maintenance of these bridges, I wouldn't ever wanna get to a place where we propose a change to it that then would con that we might get encouraged to become the maintainer of the bridge. That's not something that the city wants to take over.

So we do need to play with Masstad on the expectations that they have for the long term viability of the bridge. So that would be my biggest concern on a lightweight concrete.

Thank you for that. You you touched on a couple points that I want to actually come back to. But, actually, to that point, just to make sure we are all on the same page, if one of these designs were to be approved and implemented, the maintenance of the sidewalk and the the bump outs would go to Masstad?

Technically, yes, they would. But that would get a little messy since part of it is on the bridge and part of it is on we would have to come up with an agreement with Masstad on how to manage that. I think that is I think that is going to be the easier component of it. I just wanna avoid doing something or reconstructing this part of the bridge in such a way that would limit or reduce the bridge's lifespan or increase either the city's or the state's maintenance costs in keeping the bridge viable for the expected lifespan.

Thank you. That I think that's important for folks to hear for at least two reasons. One of which is we should know who's actually who actually controls what parts of our city. I mean, the previous item we spoke about has been I don't wanna say difficult, has been elongated implementation process because it is a mixed jurisdiction area such as this is, and that affects pretty significantly, in my opinion, how we're able to actually make changes to what most people are just gonna think is just the city and owned by the city. Secondly, I think it's important your point is important to kind of show a little bit more of how the sausage gets made because the city does have a relationship with Masstad through its staff, through, the work that we do.

And when we propose things and they're are implemented and then they do not work out well in our favor, that also has impacts on that relationship. So I not to say Masstad is holding grudges or anything, but it is it's always, I think, in our benefit to move with not reckless abandon, let's say, when it comes to these kind of projects that are safety projects in particular. I did wanna ask because your your previous response actually surprised me a bit based on what you had described each of these proposals. Why is proposal two better than proposal three? Because I I feel like the trade offs I heard from you in terms of the the ease of construction as comparatively and the fact that it would be I mean, maybe the fact that it's lighter is actually one of the reasons it's not as good based on what you were saying.

But, yeah, I'm curious because three actually sounded like it had a a number of benefits.

Councilor Burnley, I I think there are two components on that. First, your preface to the question, I thought was spot on. Like, this is this is a big world that we have to work in even if it is just the city of Somerville. And we have to work with our partners, and we have to negotiate with them fairly and recognize that everybody is bringing different priorities and goals to the conversation, and we can't ignore any of When it comes to the differences between the second concept I shared and the third concept I shared, I think I don't think the city the city may not have a strong opinion between the two of them at this stage. We may find that there are greater preferences as we come up, as we talk to Masstadt.

Hopefully, coming out of Masstadt, we have multiple concepts that Masstadt is willing to negotiate with us on, and we can we can have a larger public conversation. I don't wanna start a big public conversation if we don't have choice in the matter. But if we end up having choice in the matter, then I think we may find that the public has some really good insight on these. But as one piece that I didn't share on this one that I probably should have given your question now is because this area is this bump out is so much shorter, we are anticipating having to do some changing to the roadway elevation at this location. And and any change in the roadway elevation, even under the bike lane, might be something that MassDOT is uncomfortable with.

So we know that that's that there's a give and take there. We also know that the that this whole alignment evolves less deflection in the roadway. And for cyclists and motorists, less deflection can be more comfortable, especially when you're going uphill. So there may be some some give and take even on a user's perspective of whether this one is preferred or the third option I shared is preferred. I think but these really start coming to the point of value judgments.

And but first, I want to have a conversation with the state to to see what areas they're willing to negotiate and discuss around before we have larger conversations on those value judgments.

Yeah. And one other element here that was mentioned previously through the chair that I think is important and certainly tempers my expectations around timeline is that this is interdepartmental. I there has not been a a single project I've seen that, you know, fire hasn't been brought in on other departments who necessarily work on our streets aren't brought in on. And sometimes they're to the point that was made earlier, that their input changes the the conversation, the the the design, etcetera. And I I I don't know how what their timelines are.

They're not here to I don't I don't wanna ask you to say how long you think those parts will take. But I do think it's really important that we keep that in mind because that that could take some amount of time. But I'm I'm curious also in terms of your sequencing, would you be going to the state first to see which of these is viable, from their standpoint or before going to the fire department, for example, or vice versa?

We would definitely be discussing with DPW and fire department and before we go fully to the state. We wanna make sure that the city is talking in one voice, and we're not talking in multiple voices. I I have to commend the council for being for finding this a very important topic and and, frankly, pushing the conversation. But we have pushed the conversation a little bit faster than our internal collaboration has been able to be executed. So I I I just want to acknowledge that, yes, we would be in the normal course of work, we would be coordinating with DPW and and fire department and other interested parties in the city government before we would go to the outside.

But I also wanted to keep with your schedule.

Do the chair as it should be, in my opinion. Wasn't trying to be a gotcha question, but there was a an answer I was hoping for, and that was it. So thank you.

Thank you, counselor Brundley. Thank you, director, for sharing with this sharing this with us. We're the first ones to see it. And, yeah, we look forward to hearing from you after you discuss it with DPW and fire and, obviously, the meeting the big meeting with the state. If there are no further questions K. We will go is this councilor Birlitz's hand Yes. Again? Yes. Councilor Birlitz, go ahead.

Through the chair, I just want to double back with director around Lowell Street.

Yeah. So we will go to the second presentation on on Lowell Street. Yes. We are not done.

Sure. I I can roll right into that. That's just two concepts. They're not mutually exclusive, so I think they'll be pretty quick. First is just as a as a prelude, the station is right here, the Magoon Station.

The closest crosswalk is this direction at Princeton, and in the which is only, like, about 400 feet. But in the other direction, the closest crosswalk is Medford Street in Magoon Square, which is, I don't know, maybe 2,000 feet or more. It's it's a long way. And so for especially for people coming from the neighborhood that filters on Duvernon Street and onto Medford Street, there's no good way to cross, to the to the station. And, also, if you're coming off of the community path up the existing ramp that comes out onto Lowell Street roughly about here, there's really no good way to cross between there and the station.

So we were looking at options that help solve crossings from both directions, both kind of from the community path, the VNA side, but also from the Vernon Street side. So the first option is right at the top of the bridge. So just a little bit of explanation. This is the community path and the bridge that goes over the community path. This is the railroad corridor and the bridge that goes over the railroad corridor.

The state controls both the bridges and the land of the roadway in between the two bridges. So anything that's done at the intersection to Maxwell's Green will require state, support and approval even if it's not actually on the bridge. And in this case, we did look at some options with a crossing on the bridge and didn't feel like any of them were particularly viable. So we looked at the next best options. First was to provide a crossing right at Maxwell's Green.

And to make that crossing work and to improve the safety for all users, we looked into narrowing the crossing, because the crossing at Maxwell's Green's already pretty large. There's a lot of pedestrian traffic coming through there. So tightening up the entire intersection a little bit and providing improved crosswalks for both legs of it. So this was this was concept number one. These aren't necessarily options because we could do both options.

The second is looking at Vernon Street itself. This is entirely on city right of way, entirely outside of the state layout. So this is something that we could do on our own with essentially no state approval. So that is a benefit to it. It is also a very constrained location.

So to make it ADA compliant, to get crosswalks that cross Lowell Street, we felt like a raised crossing is most likely to provide a safe and equitable crossing of the roadway. It is probably one of the tightest raised crossings we've ever designed as far as constrained location, but we do believe it will work. It's it's a raised crossing at the location where Vernon meets Lowell Street. It has, approach ramps in all three directions. And one of the nice things about this is it tightens the crosswalks really close together.

One of the challenges of this intersection is that the existing crosswalk is so far back, and the existing stop bar is behind that. You no motor vehicle can turn in or out of this area without sitting and stopping and waiting on top of the existing crosswalk. So this could improve pedestrian travel for even those not crossing Lowell Street. It would improve pedestrian crossing on Vernon Street, and removing that dog leg that, pedestrians now have to do to get around. The it will require a certain amount of drainage, because we're putting a raised crossing, on the middle of a slope.

So we're kinda creating a dam, and so we have to put in some drainage to make that work. But this does provide a better corridor for pedestrians coming down Vernon Street, primarily from the side streets that feed into Vernon, such as Troll, Bartlett, etcetera, and and affords them the ability to cross Lowell Street and then up the West Side of Lowell Street to the station, which is right here. So those are the two options or or two concepts that we're looking at to provide a crossing across Lowell Street. And this was it, so I can answer question.

Okay. I see hand raised. Where is that from before? Oh, yes. Master Burnley, are you on mute?

Yes. I am. Very glad that we have some idea about how we can move forward on this. I think I may have brought this up during the last discussion on this matter, but, I remember the first question I ever remember director Pulsa Wade asking me, on a in a one zero one situation was where that this crosswalk should be, when the green line was too open. As someone who lives off of Vernon Street and uses it quite often, you know, I I'm confronted almost every day with seeing vehicles stuttering along, near accidents more than I would like, and pedestrians kind of being caught in the middle as well as cyclists who are coming off of Vernon Street or onto Vernon Street.

So I I'm a big fan of, race crosswalks. I I think that they're, as much as feasible. We should be and, recommended, we should be moving forward with those. So I'm glad to see that. But I am curious about what if this will shorten at all the, area in which vehicles are making these these turns.

Just to clarify your question of whether it tightens up the corner, making it more difficult for a motor vehicleist to make the the hardest turn is the right hand turn, Lola, on to Vernon. So I I'm assuming you're referring to that one. Yes. Yeah. The the goal on this is to not actually change the curb line at either of the two corners.

So it doesn't change the it doesn't change the ability to make those turns. To a certain degree, it may improve motor vehicles making those turns and probably even more so fire engines making the turns because it will because these will be closer to flush being a raised crossing. It'll be easier to cross over it. There's a negative component to that also because it makes it a little more uncomfortable for pedestrians who are standing there waiting to cross. So we'll have to look into, safety improvements and to make it clear what is the vehicular space and what is the motor or and the versus the pedestrian space.

We have a lot of good examples of that elsewhere in the city where we've used bollards at selective locations and often kind of in advance of the intersection to help minimize motorists cutting into the pedestrian space while still allowing emergency vehicles to traverse the area comfortably. So it's not perfect. Like I said at the beginning, this is a pretty constrained intersection, but it's not going to constrain motorists even further.

That is good to hear, through the chair. I don't believe anyone, would generally accuse me of being, super on the side of vehicles and the and the mishmash between them and cyclists or pedestrians. But it it is given what I've seen at this corner in particular, I I do wanna just name that as concern, and also name that, frankly, already that that one particular corner, does see vehicles get quite close to, the sidewalk just by the nature of, what people are doing to try to make it through, particularly when other vehicles are present. Usually, when there's one, it's relatively fine, but as soon as, there's an interaction at the intersection, often becomes a bit more complicated. I would just note, to your point about making sure that that sidewalk is prepared for pedestrians to potentially have to take a step back when there's a turn happening.

ADA already requires this, but let's just make sure that this also includes folks who are visually impaired or who are blind because we don't want a situation where someone can't see something that's there and steps a little bit too close as a vehicle is maybe coming trying to come pretty fast, which, thankfully, the race crosswalk will also help with.

Thank you, counselor Burley. Thank you for your perspective. This is, I'm sure, very helpful for, the director, as someone who uses regularly this intersection. So similar to my colleagues, I'm excited that we are looking into this, coming up with designs. I'm also just glad, like, you know, there's a solution.

You know, this one was another crossing that the community has been looking forward to having for a while now. I said thank you all for your work. Just looking to see if there are any other questions from colleagues. Okay. Well, thanks again for this for this, yeah, opportunity to give feedback on this.

And similarly to the previous crossing, we look forward to receiving updates on this. Alright. If there are no further comments or questions, we can mark we can keep this item in committee. So those are two items that and, actually, we're nearing the end of the year, so all these all these items will need to be resubmitted. But in the event, we have updates from before the end of the year.

Otherwise, they will be resubmitted at the end of the year. Okay. We keep both items in committee, clerk. And if you could call the rule on adjournment.

On adjournment, councilor Burnley.

Aye.

Consular Hatt. Here. And councilor Saeed.

Yes.

Madam chair, all members have voted to adjourn.

Alright. Have a nice evening, everyone. Goodbye.