 It was still in practice mode. So I think now we can elevate. I see I'm going to elevate her. Yeah, you. Yeah, yeah, I changed you to the host, so. OK, that's fine. And I just elevated Eve, so we're good. Yeah, it's not, it's fine. Yeah, it's all right. Yeah, it's showing the start webinar button for me, but it's not registering it on my end. OK, I did the start. I did it. OK, OK. And I guess Eve, hi, Eve. Oh, thanks, everybody. Thanks so much, Amber. Thank you. Problem. All right. Well, if you guys are. I think if you guys are recording in your all step, I am going to get out because my connection is horrible. OK, yeah. Sorry about that. Thank you so much for setting it up. Yeah, no problem. I will actually I'll see you guys tomorrow night. Party. OK, oh boy. All right. Bye. Bye bye. Good day. Thanks so much, Amber. Hi, how are you, Eve? Hi, I'm in the meeting, but my monitor is off. I don't know where it went. OK, I'm still working on a PowerPoint. I'm going to share with you guys. Are you seeing us, Tracy? No, I mean, my monitor. Oh, there you are. I don't know. Sometimes I monitor goes to sleep. I can't get it back on. Oh, OK. But I'm good. I'm glad when Amber left that are we were still in the meeting. Yes. Sometimes I've hosted these webinars and I'm and when I'm the host and I leave like that, it shuts it closes the meeting. So I only did that once. So Bruce, did you have you biked that new section with University Drive? I did. And I saw the signs. I'm so glad you tell me about that. Oh, yeah. Yes. The other thing that happened was my husband, he was biking the other day after the rain. And a bunch of mud had washed down into one of the entry exit points with the bike path. And he like slipped out and he rode her and so. Have you heard about the signs? So she said she's going to remove those no bikes allowed signs. Oh, good. She's pretty. I mean, I haven't contacted her. I talked on the phone and I haven't contacted her since. But she's pretty responsive. Like she emails and she seems to not be trying to avoid feedback and things and say. I mean, she's very like, thank you for giving me feedback. And we want the project to be better. Because I was really amazed when you said those signs were up. And when I saw them, I thought, well, this seems really strange. Well, and I mean, just write the legacy of the Arthur Swift like extension, which was the whole point was to be a bike connector from the rail trail. So yeah. And also, I've never seen that path so busy that it's a problem to be biking. And rarely are there pedestrians. Yeah, I mean, I guess my other comment, well, I live in that area and there are quite a few pedestrians, particularly when students are there, like students will walk to Big Y or whatever. It's not that it's very dense, but there is a lot of traffic. The thing I'm still surprised at is that with, I mean, I sort of expect like some cyclists with the bike lane, some cyclists will just be on the bike lane and stay in the bike lane. And I would just recommend that people just choose one or the other. Like I don't think most cyclists who are in the bike lane, they would want to stay in the lane through the roundabout. I mean, there's no reason for you to exit and then come back. But if you feel more comfortable on the path, you stay on the path. So that's what I feel. So it's not really marked that way. And also, if you're going in the other direction and you're on road, it tells you to stay in the roundabout too. So that's curious. Yeah, it's a little curious. Because presumably the same people are biking in both directions, right? Like they bike to UMass, they bike. So yeah. Well, thank you for looking into that. No, thank you guys. OK. So Bruce, Tracy and I checked in yesterday and just kind of to remind ourselves of everything that we've done and what's been going on. And we, at this point, I have a proposal and Tracy thinks she can support this that we ask for some technical help to finish this task. And so what we really wanted to review with you today, and maybe we don't even need to meet that long, that sort of go over sort of a little presentation that I put together that we could run by the tack. And actually, I just updated one that we did a year ago and thought we could just use that. Sure, that sounds good. So Eve, just before you start, I just want to mention I did email Aaron about the agenda and how the subcommittee isn't on the agenda. And I said, well, we had intentionally met, we were intentionally meeting as a subcommittee to move this along. So I was disappointed it wasn't on the agenda. But just to see if we could get some time and we might not. And the prioritization plan is not on the agenda either. Right, yeah. But that's correct. So we may not be able to present anything tomorrow, in other words. Well, that's a little bit of a bummer. So hold on just a sec. I realize I need one more slide. I want to get into this presentation. I'm going to go over with you guys. There it goes. So hold on just a sec. Give me one minute. Sorry. So Bruce, while we're talking, so I did notice the main item on the agenda for tomorrow is the bike and pedestrian network plan. And you were on the tack right when that was created. Right? I think so. With the PVPC, I guess. So it seems like when I looked at the agenda item, the item says to finalize all the maps. But one, the plan is now a few years old. And some of the people, such as myself, on the tack, we've never looked at the plan in detail or the maps or anything. I'm not sure it's realistic to get through the whole task. And it also seems like because it's been a few years, it would be also helpful to have some opportunity for public feedback, I think. But before it's all finalized. Maybe review them and have a hearing in the future. Yeah, of course. Yeah. All right, so am I able to share my screen? I think I am. You should be able to share. I'm going to share my screen and sort of just go through this presentation. And it should look familiar to you, Bruce. All right. Can you guys all see my little PowerPoint here? Yes. All right, I could even maybe make it bigger by going like this. Yeah, there we go. That's good. Looks great. OK, good. Sorry. OK, so the idea is that, so this is the same slide that I did last year. I just updated the names down here and the date. But just a reminder that we're really focused for this not only on, we're focused on non-car transportation, not because it's more important than car transportation, but because that's what we're focused on for this particular project. And so what were the documents and perspectives that informed our thinking? This is just all a reminder to the attack and the new people in the attack. It'll help them. I guess it's just Bernie, because I think I'm pretty sure Marcus was there for this. And then this is some of the key reasons to improve these modes of transportation and then what's the objective of the prioritization system. So this would be a good thing to just check with you guys about. So one is fair objective, replicable evaluation of different projects and proposals. One is that it uses accessible, relatively easy to use data. One is that it results in individual facilities and a network that support overall goals. And one is that it provides a system and a list that can be used for a complete streets grant. But those seem like reasonable things to you guys. I'm not quite sure of the meaning of the word replicable. You mean, what does that mean exactly? So that we were creating a system that is going to have scoring that if you put the same project through that scoring system and I put it through that scoring system, we'd get a pretty similar score. So it's not just based subjective impressions on what's important. OK. All right. We can come back if you want to revise this or word Smith this. Then this is what we did a year ago. Remember all that work we did? Oh, yes. I have one of the charts right here. Yeah, there you go. OK, it's coming. So then what we gave you the you in this slide was the TAC. We developed a well-developed outline of a scoring system and metrics for projects. With the TAC, we reviewed the key concepts, the overall scoring, the LTS, LOS concept. That needs word smithing. I think I meant as well as, I don't know, got feedback is what this is supposed to say. Remind me again, I'm sorry, remind me again what LTS and LOS stand for. Sorry, so that's level of service and level of traffic stress. OK, OK. And so we've worked to refine the matrix in the scoring system, but we're still not done. And what we've really realized is we don't have the skills and experience to refine some of the details. OK. So just to remind people of what the main things we did is we came up this is LTS, LOS. This was the scoring system on Kim's recommendation. I did start to separate it out between bicyclists and pedestrians. But just to remind the TAC of what we were doing of creating the system of six levels. Do you remember this, Bruce? Oh, yes. That's what I have right here. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So this is just to remind people what it looked like. And then we had the scoring system of how we use those numbers and put it in. And so this is the basic framework, but the details actually really matter in terms of what projects are going to come out higher than other projects and exactly how they'll be constructed. So the details of the corridor design standards, intersection and crossing design standards, and these numbers and how these numbers are calculated in the tabs, those all actually really matter tremendously. And there are a lot of details that we still sort of haven't worked through because we kind of just don't have the technical expertise or experience to do it. Do you think one of the planners on the staff could help with this? Well, that's what we're wondering. So this is our ask. So this is what we came up with. So see what you think. That we want to really help us go through the bicycle and pedestrian LLS and LTS matrix. That's number one. And then number two is the scoring system to really help us think through it. And then the third is, if possible, run several scenarios for scoring options and see what projects would come out on top and think about what that might turn into in terms of a network five or 10 or 20 years from now. Well, I think this all looks very good. Well, Eve, you incorporated my comments. That's funny. I just made just one slight edit, which is that I decided your A and B, one was really about the person and not the task. So I pulled that out and put it at the bottom. That's fine. That's great. Yeah. But otherwise I had what you did. So Bruce, we've been tracing. I've been talking about who this person might be. And we're not sure, honestly. Can I unshare at this time? Sure. We're not sure, but the people that I'm sure could help us with this are like the specialists from like Alta or Nelson Nygaard who have done this in other cities before. You know, like several of the plans that we all looked at were written by Alta for like that city in South Carolina that you looked at, Bruce, that was actually an Alta plan. Right, yeah. Yeah. But they may be really expensive. We may not be able to hire them. So Chris Brestrup was saying that sometimes there's money to hire PVPC. So that might, you know, if there's someone on their staff who could do this, that we were sort of thinking that might be our first bet as an idea. I don't think anyone in Amherst could do this at the level we wanted. Well, I mean, or I guess we'd have to, we'd have to find out what a budget was. And then like it's possible that we could, it could be a task like giving to somebody at UMass, you know, but like what would be, what would we need as a minimum budget to make that happen, right? Or we might be able to have someone at UMass who has like the technical skills to do it, but not the experience and someone at Alta who could sort of tell them what they need to do, but they could do it, you know, there might be some ways to have some things. I mean, there are some people at UMass, you've done a lot of work with like bike and ped planning. So, and this type of stuff, but I don't know. For sure. Also, I'm wondering if there is a Eastern Mass corollary to the Pioneer Valley transit, you know, that they would be familiar with this because they've worked in Cambridge and other cities if we had to do that. Yeah, there is one. I don't think we could hire them because like it is regionalized, but the PVPC might be able to go to them and get help, you know what I mean? They might be able to call upon them. Are you talking about the regional planning agencies or? Yes, yeah. Right, yeah, so, right, I mean, so there's, where there's like the, yeah, I mean, the whole state is split up into those regions for the regional planning agencies. Yeah, so Bruce was asking Tracy if we could hire the Boston area. Oh, sure. I was saying probably not, but PVPC might be able to get technical help from them. Yes. Yeah, I mean, so Boston, they have the central transportation planning staff, CTPS, they serve as the MPO for the Boston region. They do a lot of like, they have a large staff. MPO means the regional planning agency, that's what she's talking about. Yeah, well MPO means metropolitan planning organization and that's the body that's used, the level that's used for distributing transportation funds that are federal funds that come from the feds, like from federal highway to the states to the regions and the metropolitan planning organizations, they distribute those funds and they prioritize how the funds will be spent in each region. So a lot of times they are with the regional planning agency, but they can also be separate too. Some regional planning agencies don't do a lot of transportation stuff as much. Tracy, do you know, do either of you know anybody at UMass who could tackle this? Well, I mean, I work with a lot of the civil engineering people. I mean, there are some people who have, quite a bit of bike experience, like bike, ped type experience and sustainable systems and things. I think it would be more of like a budget type issue, like in terms of, if we wanted to hire a faculty member, for example, you know, what's kind of the lowest, you know, the smallest budget that would be worth like a faculty member's time and so on. I mean, sometimes there are some small projects, but some faculty might not feel like they have the bandwidth for that. You know, if you could have like a postdoc or PhD student who had more of those skills, you know, like for example, like, you know, Francis, I mean, who has some of those skills, but you know, he's graduating right now or something. Yeah, he said he's moving to the East part of the state. Yeah, well, I mean, he had some family things too. He hasn't graduated yet, so he's still around, but yeah. So Tracy, yeah, just following up on what Bruce is saying, like is our intent with this to say that probably whether we go to PVPC or UMass or someone else, it's gonna require a bit of money. And so we're asking whether the tech might be willing to recommend that we could get some money. But that's the other reason that PVPC might be like an approach because it wouldn't be town money. Well, and also, I guess my understanding is that the towns that are in the PVPC region, right, that they are members and that sometimes, I mean, maybe I'm misremembering, but sometimes they contract for like a certain amount of services like a year with the PVPC. Like they pay into the system and then they get a certain amount of services. So I don't know that's done on the fiscal year, not the calendar year. So that would be until June of 2021. You know, I don't know where that stands and I don't know how many requests the town has already made to PVPC or plans to make to them. Like, I don't know whether that could fall under an existing agreement or whether there'd also have to be some additional funding. I just had a thought too that before we would request this, do you think it would be wise to distribute everything that we have to the other members of the committee and give them two weeks to look it over and then at the next meeting talk about it because if anybody feels strongly about going in a different direction or changing something, it might be wise to talk about that before paying somebody to work on it. It would be unfortunate to pay somebody and then have the other members say, well, we would like to do something very different and then we've spent that money. Well, I think that, so what we would do, Bruce, I think is what we would do is we would take this proposal. I mean, yeah, I think we could review it. We did review the matrices and the prioritization scoring approach earlier and we got some good feedback from the other members of the TAC. The only person who wasn't there then was our new member, right? So, Bernie, so everybody else weighed in. It seemed like it was progressing along. I mean, I think it's fine now that it's been so many months that we could check in with them again. And I mean, it seemed like at the last TAC meeting, both Guilford and Chris Bressup were talking about like some funding to like get it done or something, so. Okay, I just wanted to run that idea by you. Yeah, no. I mean, we could always, I guess one of my concerns about waiting two weeks is at this point it would be waiting a month just because we're running into the holidays and it'd be nice to get this thing moving if we could. But certainly people could say, you know what, we don't know, let's make a decision next time. Okay. Well, maybe ask them, you know, say, are you comfortable for us to proceed or do you want to review it one more time? Yeah. Yeah. Because you're right. The only person would be Bernie. I mean, and I think the other thing too, right, is like when we were working on it last year before we got shut down, right? I think some of it was anticipating looking at like upcoming projects for like the upcoming construction season. And so we'd want the work to be completed, you know, as decisions are being made in the early spring about what work will be prioritized. Well, it would be, it would be really, Realistically with the funding, right? We're only going to get maybe one, it's hard to even imagine like two projects a year, you know, unless they're very small projects. So. Yeah, it would be nice to get this moving as quickly as we can. That's true. Right. I mean, and what Guilford had said at the last TAC meeting, right, is that we take our prioritization scoring approach and then what the state would want us to do is to apply it to the list of current proposed projects and just like see how they all score and then like kind of rank the list or something. Yeah. And then Guilford's got a application for a grant to hire someone to turn it into the document in the way the state wants it, you know? So once we give them the list, the case is personal, they'll be able to turn it into the back and what the state wants. I mean, the question, Bruce, that I keep bringing up and trying to think about the meeting is like, I still don't feel like there's a good, I mean, we know what some of the top projects are because they've been the top projects for a long time, but just even in terms of how projects get on the list and how they get prioritized. And I also just feel like when Guilford told us, well, one that, you know, the TAC had been shut down, but like the list hadn't been added to from any citizen request or anything, like in the last like six to nine months. I mean, the reality is that Paul Bachlemann gets emails and I know sometimes like people, you know, have heard back from him and she seeded me or whatever before reading me the messages. So there's all these other processes going on. I just feel like there's a bunch of different ways that the requests are coming in and it can be really confusing. Tracy, what we had talked about several years ago because as soon as the TAC got created, the thing we were told to do was to create a prioritization system, right? And we'd sort of been bouncing around that for a long time, but what we had said was that we were gonna try to create a system and then each year we would review all the projects that had come in and all the projects that were already on the list and that that would happen around August because that way by September, we could hand it to the council and then they would be able to review it for the fall in order to give it to Paul by December, January. Makes sense. And so that was the time, you know, so it's not at all times of the year that we'd have to have the full lists organized, but like in July to August, we'd need to get that really complete list for mental sources. Right. I mean, it still seems like an area. And I know too, like for a while, I'm not sure if it's still active, but there was like a PDF form that people could fill out on the town website, but then it actually wasn't a fillable PDF form. It was actually like the kind of PDF form that you have to like print out and then send in. And I asked about, could we make it a fillable form or you just want it to be as like easy as possible, but we also, and the other thing too is that just because like a citizen request doesn't mean it's ever gonna like move up on the list in terms of like overall town priorities. I mean, I think it's good to chronicle that and know like what the concerns are. Yeah, I think this is a separate issue. Yeah, no, of course, no, of course, yeah. But when I was just thinking about taking the scoring system and then we need to apply it to some list and like rank things, just that would be like the next step. So I think if we can clarify some of that, that would be helpful. Well, it could be that once the prioritization plan is ready and approved, maybe then some of these requests that we're not seeing right now will suddenly appear because they'll say, well, okay, now you can put this through your system. Right. So now we'll give you the list. Right. So like, yeah, I mean, so to Eve's like slide about, you know, what are the things we wanted to do if you go back to like your like Eve's three main bullets was like one of the key things is just to test the system. And we did that preliminarily, you know, where we tried to score a couple of different projects to see how they would score, right? But there's like number three is you wanna test it out. Like how is it prioritizing the projects that we think should be prioritized? And over a longer period of time, are we gonna end up with what we want as a town? Yeah, you're framing it as a test. I think it's, I'm thinking of it more as a decision. So by showing how different scoring would end up with different projects and different networks, that's gonna help us decide how we wanna balance the prioritization system. Yeah, so I'm thinking of it as a decision tool more than a test. Yeah, right. Okay, decision tool. Tracy, you're making me think, I actually had another slide I didn't show you guys, which is what happens after we get these things done. Then we'd review the prioritization system with the TAC and the TSO. Then we'd have a public review in consultation with the council. Then we'd have a decision on the prioritization system. Well, and the list, I guess, right? So I'm kind of buy-in of the list. Yeah, you're right, okay. And then the priority list, I was thinking the priority list we'd update once a year, like with that August time frame. Sure. But the prioritization system, we also should have like a regular review about every five years to make sure that we're comfortable with the whole system. Yeah, no, definitely. Something like that. Yeah. And then I like what you're bringing up, which is that we need organized system, organized and user-friendly. You gather requests and ideas and store them in one place. Yeah, I mean, I think the key thing is that it's like the lines of, not command, but the lines of like how things come in or like where they go or something that it's all clear, that there's clarity, right? Yeah, I think transparent, exactly. I mean, I feel right now, right? It's not on any kind of server or anything that anybody has access to except for Guilford. Is that right? Like it's on like, it's a Guilford's computer, like they're the town's network and it would be nice if it could even be like a public Google doc or something that anybody could see it then or... Yeah, so... I mean, not for editing purposes, but just for viewing purposes to see where people's projects are. Yeah, I agree. I agree. So, Bruce, I'm pretty sure you didn't have Gmail, so I wasn't able to make this directly accessible to you, but Tracy, this is shared with you, this document. Thank you. So you could edit it directly. So it sounds like one of the things is so, our meeting is tomorrow and we'll have to, I do want to bring up right at the beginning just that, and I had already emailed Aaron, as I said, that the subcommittee did want an item on the agenda, but so I guess just to clarify, like if we don't really get to present much tomorrow, we'll present it at the next meeting and just move this along. What's the agenda? Is there anything that we can get justified within? Well, it is, it includes the list of projects, let me say. So the TAC committee agenda, do you guys have this? I'll just send you the link again. I haven't, but I haven't had a chance to look at it yet. No, hold on. Well, in the Zoom, I'm just gonna put it in the chat. Oh, you know, can we chat? You know, it's weird the way the town runs these things. I don't think I can chat with you guys. That's right, that's right. The town sets all of their settings. All right, well, if you just, I'll just share my screen briefly. I don't think I have the agenda, Tracy. I don't think I got it. Well, I just went on the website. I'm just gonna share my screen for you. Oh, okay. Okay. All right, so do you guys see that? It's small, but yeah. All right. Well, it's like full size online. I can try to, oops, sorry, okay. Where'd it go? Sorry, oops. I had too many windows open. All right, I'm gonna have to share. Oh dear, there's a UFO drone overhead. I know, hold on. All right, let me get back. I learned some bad habits from one of my bosses about having too many things open, all right. So, huh, that's weird. I think I just closed the agenda. Maybe we could ask that drone if an alien could do our prioritization plan check for us. That's a good strategy. All right, let me try to, I'm just gonna share that again. Can you guys see it now? Is it still small? Oh, I can read it. Small, but I just get really close. I'm gonna make it like here. That's better. All right. So call to order, you know, hearings and we don't have hearings. I don't even know if that should really be on our agendas. And then, so review upcoming projects. I mean, that could be a place to just mention the prioritization plan and the work we're doing. And then the whole, like it seemed like the focus of the meeting was the pet and bike plan and looking at the maps, which is what we talked about last time is trying to do some Zoom version of reviewing the maps, marking them up or somebody had some idea about how to do that, right? And then reviewing the tax charge. I'm not sure if we have any updates on that. I thought that there was a, I got the sense from Erin that we were gonna wait to hear back from the town manager on site seven. That's the impression I had too. Which I think is a really good choice. So, yeah. Well, I think we're number five could be where we could talk about this because it might be the only discussion is if Chris is there about the funding. Right. Get some thoughts about it. Well, and then we can get ourselves, we can get it to have a more thorough discussion at the next attack meeting, which would be in December. Yes, yeah. And I mean, in terms of, I mean, it would be great to hire somebody. Is there another December meeting? Yeah, I think we're trying to have them at least like twice a month, right? Yeah, but in December, I thought. Oh. December 17, does that be right? If we have one then, sure. Maybe so. I think so. Okay. I wanted to have them at a different time than the TSO meetings. Yeah, I think you... Can't mention that. But, no, so TSO is meeting on December 20th, so that wouldn't be a con... Oh, no, no, just TSO. I'm not sure. I don't know whether this is January calendar. Yeah, the 20th would be Sunday. No, yeah, this must be for the 2021 calendar. Yeah. For TSO, so, okay. So, great. Well, Eve, it's really great that you put together that PowerPoint. Yes, thank you, Eve. You're welcome. Thank you for your encouragement and support. That's what... All right, so the idea then is that we want to present this more thoroughly on the 17th, but we want to give people a heads up that we're going to do that and that we're looking for... I mean, it seems like if nothing else, I could have that list of tasks ready to share. Well, and even going over the PowerPoint presentation. I don't know if we can do that tomorrow, but... No, no, no, not tomorrow, but yeah. But I might be able to just show the list of tasks that I'm not for a full discussion, but just to show it so that Chris at least sees it and has an idea of what we're thinking of. I mean, I think practically speaking with the calendar that I think it would be hard to quote like hire somebody in December, right? So just like with people with the holidays and stuff anyway, that is more realistic like... I still think it could be helpful just for Chris to look at it and think about it. No, of course, yeah. I think so too. Just to get her started about it, she has any thoughts at the next meeting about who might be interested in helping us or who is available to help us. Well, and we can also reach out to Chris outside of the meeting, but I guess it would be good just to run it by the tack first to just make sure that that's... And with Guilford as well, because it would be Guilford and Chris who would help us find a person. Okay, all right, you guys. So we'll be there tomorrow. So, all right, great. Thanks you guys. Thank you. Have a nice day. Bye bye. Bye bye.