 All right, well, why don't we get started and a few folks will probably be joining us as we move through the agenda. Good evening, everybody. My name is Adam Chapterlane. I work as the town manager here at Arlington and I have what hopefully will probably be the easiest job tonight in welcoming everybody and setting the stage for what we're trying to accomplish tonight with this virtual forum. We usually do this when we're in person to make sure we're in the right room, but we're all here tonight to talk about Connect Arlington, Arlington's sustainable transportation plan. This is our virtual forum to share with you the work that we've been doing, but also more importantly to hear from you. As some of you may know, Arlington embarked on this plan as really an offshoot for us to build off of Arlington's master plan. And we're looking forward to having an actionable plan that can achieve some of the following things. We wanna build off our past efforts, including our bus priority lanes along Mass Ave and continue our efforts to create multimodal streets or complete streets as they become known in recent years. We wanna balance thinking bold about the future of transportation and the options that would be required for bold thinking and making them work in Arlington while addressing localized transportation issues and challenges in our business districts and neighborhoods and at key intersections throughout the town. We wanna consider Arlington in relation to the regional transportation network and try to figure out if there are ways we can ease transportation connections. And we wanna have a plan that creates an equitable strategy that can keep many modes of transportation in mind for a range of populations and ages that are represented in Arlington. So we look forward to your participation tonight. We certainly look forward to coming up with this plan and beginning to implement it and to dive into more detail. I'm gonna turn it over to the director of planning and communication. Go over to the director of planning and community development, Jenny Rae. Thank you, Adam. I'm Jenny Rae. I'm the director of planning and community development. Welcome everybody to tonight's forum. We're very excited to be hosting this forum. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about where we're heading tonight and what to expect and also just sort of settle on some ground rules in terms of this Zoom format for the meeting. Most of us are familiar with it, of course, but I need to just let you know the details. But first and foremost, I wanna thank both the town manager as well as the Sustainable Transportation Plan Advisory Committee. All of those individuals are participating on this in the forum tonight. Some of them will also be helping to facilitate breakout groups a little bit later. Those individuals include a number of my staff, including Dan Amstutz, who's the senior transportation planner, Heather Barber, Darcy Devney, Len Diggins, Phil Goff, Doug Mayo Wells, Mike Rademacher, Corey Roteau, Christine Shaw, Rachel Stark, and Ezekiel Wheeler. And they don't all work on the Department of Planning and Community Development staff. Didn't mean to make it sound that way. Everybody is representing different facets of the community. But I also wanna thank other staff who are participating, including Kelly Lanema, Julie Wayman from the town manager's office. Allie Carter is also participating as well. So this evening, Dan, if you could forward the slide, please. I'm just gonna run through the Zoom meeting guidelines and format. Then I'm gonna give you an overview of Connect Darlington, which is what we're calling the Sustainable Transportation Plan. We're gonna have a pause for Q&A, and then we're gonna break out into little groups and report back and have some learnings from all of those small groups, as well as continued discussion and then we'll adjourn for the evening. Next slide, please. So by default, everybody is going to be muted for this conversation. Mostly until we get to the Q&A, there will be some opportunities for people to share their questions with us. But participants are not able to share their screen. So you might've seen that option in other meetings. We're not doing that tonight. The only individual sharing their screen will be Dan during the presentation. And then when you go into the breakout room, your facilitator will share their screen. The chat function is enabled for those questions and chats are gonna come to the hosts, which is basically everybody on the committee. The meeting is being recorded as you may have seen and will be also posted to the town's website by early the following week, so sometime next week, for additional participation after the meeting and of course for those who were unable to attend. Participants are able to raise their hand via Zoom to ask a question. And that would happen specifically during our two times that we have open Q&A and they'll be called upon in order that we see the hands raised. Town staff are gonna help to unmute you and then we'll call on you to speak. If you're not familiar with how Zoom works, I'm gonna just quickly orient folks. So mute and unmute buttons are in the lower left-hand corner of the Zoom screen. If you're wondering where that raise hand feature is, if you go to the list of participants, there's a little two little icons with people, click on that and the raise hand feature is on the lower right under the list of participants. For people who are calling in by phone, if there are any now or in the future, you use star nine to control the mute and unmute and star six to raise your hand. And of course it's preferred if everybody turns off their video during the Q&A and also during the breakout groups. So it's more like a conversation. But of course it's not required. It's also not required if you don't wish to participate in those small groups, do hope that you can participate this evening. Please, to the next slide. So connect Arlington started with, as Adam had already said, but just to give you a sense of where we're heading, we're looking to jump off of what we have in our existing master plan, which is a section called traffic and circulation. And of course the number of existing town policies which speak to complete streets, traffic rules and regulations and many other orders that relate to how we control traffic and circulation in town. There are many other entities that participate in that process, including committees like transportation advisory committee and the Arlington bicycle advisory committee. And we rely upon all of that, but we wanna build upon that excellent work and develop a 20 year vision which looks forward into the future, builds off of that existing system, incorporates new technologies and other innovations and is incredibly focused on an equitable system. It will lead us to have better and improved priorities and recommendations for everything from projects, programs and of course new policies that can help us to change things in the future, hopefully. It will cover all aspects of transportation. So while you might individually want to speak to your interest in walking or biking, public transit, we're gonna be talking about all different modes, including micro mobility. Next slide, please. So we've hired Nelson Nygaard as the lead consultant on the project after a process of conducting a request for proposals and interviewing four different firms who were able to submit proposals. This was pre-pandemic interviews and with participation of members of the sustainable transportation plan advisory committee as well as Dan Amstutz. We selected Nelson Nygaard as the lead because of their expertise and background in transportation planning, particularly long range planning but also their capacity to handle innovative planning and looking at carefully at existing conditions to really drive us into the future. And for engagement and outreach, of course that has shifted a bit due to the pandemic but the first of those tasks has been really a lot of research which we're gonna share with you this evening including the development of what we're calling a transportation fact book and also the survey which some of you may have already participated in we're gonna share some of those results this evening. And of course developing an engagement strategy which we've redeveloped a couple of times and now we're having a virtual meeting but we've also done a couple of other things including I mentioned the survey we also have had some individual engagement working with the council on aging and other groups as well as focus groups focused on some key transportation so you're gonna hear a lot about a little bit later as well as an online input map which a lot of people have participated in and we're planning to likely have another forum as well. And so with that I'm actually gonna turn it over to Dan who's gonna give us a presentation about the transportation facts and existing conditions and also the survey, thank you. Thank you, Jenny. Hi, my name is Daniel Amstutz I'm the senior transportation planner with the town of Arlington and in this part of the presentation I'm gonna talk as Jenny mentioned about what we've learned so far working on the existing conditions and working towards the transportation fact book which is essentially going to be a document that's going to have lots of maps and charts and graphs and cover things like demographics and the transportation system, walking and biking and transportation and transit and different things such as that. And this is going to be highlights from that there's actually a much larger presentation that's posted to the calendar item on the town's website for this forum and that has much more information about it. I'm just going to go a few slides into some of the more interesting findings from that fact book. So one of the findings or one of the very interesting pieces as you look at things like in this case zoning compared to a transit and your transportation system we see how geography really influences the land use which influences transportation choice. So you can see here that the multifamily is centered around Mass Ave and also around the east part of town in East Darlington. And so in the flatter areas tend to have this higher density and commercial activity but as you move further away from Mass Ave to the north and south and into the west part of town and the heights the hillier areas tend to be more single family and character. The transit corridors and transportation corridors are centered also more in the middle and the valley part of the town where you've got not only Mass Ave but you also have the Midman Bikeway which is on a former rail right of way. And this is very interesting to see how some of these denser areas have clustered around the valley area where the more of the transportation the public transportation is centered. And sort of going along with that one thing that the Nelson Niagara has looked at is also the topography and how it shapes our own transportation. And as you can see again the dark red lines that are on this map show streets that have very high slopes that are very steep. And you can see that in the east part of town there isn't very much but as you get further to the west you have many streets that have very, very steep slopes. And so you can see how the higher density housing and commercial areas is closer into those flatter areas. And you can see how difficult it can be even if somebody is close to an amenity that maybe they could walk or bike to it doesn't seem quite as close when they have to go down a very steep road or hill and due to a mobility issue or health issue they simply can't do that. So that influences how they decide how to get around. We've also been looking at the traffic volumes that are historic traffic volume so that we understand sort of the flow of traffic around the town. This is something that hasn't really been updated for a little while. And this covers a sort of usual street topology that we have in transportation planning where in the white lines you have the local streets that channel drivers to the collectors like Summer Street and Park Street which bring people to the major arterials like Mass Ave, Medford Pleasant and Mystic Street and they just lead you to the large controlled access highways like Route 2 which if you go west you can go I-85, Route 1-1-28 if you go east you can go towards Cambridge and to Aylwythburg Parkway. And so this is important, very common transportation item that we look at is these volumes. These are estimated volumes. We have a bit more specifics within the fact book. Oops, excuse me. And we also look at safety. We look at traffic collisions that have happened around town. In this case, we're looking between January, 2016 and April, 2020. Almost 2,000 crashes were recorded this time from Massachusetts Department of Transportation data. I will also point out that this includes the only two fatalities within the last few years that we've looked at so far are the pedestrian fatality on Chestnut Street at Chestnut Terrace and the bicycle fatality at Mass Ave and Appleton. The bicycle fatality is actually a little bit outside of this. It happened in May, but we've included it as part of the analysis too. And we also hope to look further back in the timeline to actually look at some of the earlier fatalities to see if we can understand a trend. One of the unusual things about this map, you can see that most of the crashes are along the main corridors like Mass Ave and Mystic Street and Broadway. But there's also a lot of crashes that are dispersed throughout the neighborhoods. And so Beta Group, which is a sub-consolidant to Nelson Nygaard is looking much further deeper into this to understand what types of crashes these are and why they happened. Commuting patterns is another piece of this to understand how people are getting around and how this affects transportation in town. As you can see, there is a high density of people that are working in East Cambridge or Harvard Square, downtown Boston, the back bay in the darker red areas and also within Arlington, but actually almost 50% of commuters that live in Arlington and commute somewhere else, they will work in Burlington or Waltham or Watertown and other places that are a little bit more difficult to access by transit or other means other than driving. And then along those lines, again, where do the commuters live? This goes back to the first couple of maps that we showed, many of the non-driving commuters, again, living a lot in the higher density areas and closer to Mass Ave, and closer to those high-frequency public transportation networks along Mass Ave, Route 77 in particular. And so you can see, again, how the geography really affects and the street network really affects how people get around. So in this part of the presentation, I'm going to go through briefly just some highlights from the Transpiration Survey and input they received from the Transpiration Feedback Map. This was a piece of the survey. If you went to the very end of it, you could get to this map and you could drop a point at a location anywhere on this map and point out a safety issue or a concern. And more than 200 points were dropped on here. And so we're going to analyze this and see where all of the points were dropped and what kind of issues were brought up. We'll talk about this a little bit more in the breakout groups, but as you can see, we had a question on the survey about the goals for Arlington Transportation System. And the highest priority that came out of this was considering the needs of diverse populations and people of all ages, prioritizing a walk-friendly environment, focusing on transit in sort of two different goals, and then prioritizing safety for all no matter how they travel. And so we want to have a conversation during the breakout groups to understand if you feel these are really the most important goals that we should be focusing on as we develop the rest of the plan. Although we asked questions about transportation commuting within the how you commute within the survey, we also looked at census data. This is from 2018 about how people travel in Arlington but compared to several other communities. And Arlington actually stacks up very well in terms of having a very diverse range of different ways that people get to work. As you can see, 60% drive alone, but 20% use public transportation despite the fact that we don't have a MBTA station or a commuter rail station within the town's borders. So the importance, you can see the importance of having the T station nearby but also the bus system that we have throughout town. The other interesting point is that we have the highest mode share of bicycle commuting out of all of the communities that are on this list, 4%, which doesn't seem like a lot but it's again, higher than the other community. So we already have a very robust, diverse modal share in our system. A few other results from the questions that we had respondents, they mostly drive or walk for non-commute trips. Most currently drive or walk to get to school, run errands or to do socialization, socializing trips. They also have the largest share of ride share trips, the socializing trips and transit is not used as much of the non-commute travel but for those it is used mostly for social extracurriculars. You can see this is a responses from the survey. Another one was another question we had was if you were to change or travel habits, how would you most prefer to get around Arlington and the region? And interestingly, bicycling to work was the most preferred mode or preferred what people would like to change to and overall people would like to bike or walk more but would still maintain driving trips for errands and socializing. And there's more information about the survey and the larger stack of slides that's on the town's website, as I mentioned earlier. So in the last couple of slides, I'm just gonna talk about what's coming up here and the next steps for this project. So when it comes to developing the plan, we wanna understand what kind of strategies that we're gonna need to utilize in order to get to the goals of the plan. What is it that the town can do independently? When and which partners would be needed for larger projects? And what may be sort of seem out of the town's control such as regional roadway congestion? How can we help with that? But understanding that it would be more of a regional approach and not just the town can do it. So where we're seeing where we are today in the existing conditions, looking at the short-term improvements we can make, developing partnerships where we need to, for example, with the MBTA when it comes to transit service and understand for those major and networked investments that are much larger pieces where we need to work with many more partners. How we get that into the plan so that we can continue to move it forward, I keep it sustainable in the sense that we want to be able to keep this plan going and not leave it on a shelf somewhere where we will forget about it. Part of this includes a roadmap for tracking progress. This picture is from the city of Newton's transportation plan. And this gives you an idea of how we want to have measures and showing what the baseline is today and then what target we want to reach so that we can look at this every year and say, are we starting to reach that target? If a modal, we want a greater modal share, for example. So you can see there's a proposal for, diversifying the mode share in Newton so that it's only about 50% driving and 23% transit. So it's that kind of idea of getting a setting that target and working on reaching that target. And then finally, this is the timeline about where we are. So you can see we're here. The public meeting you see on there is this virtual forum. We had planned to have a couple more before this and some mobile workshops, but due to the coronavirus and the restrictions on in-person meetings, we unfortunately could not hold those. The ones that we are showing for later on, those are to be determined right now. But you can see our existing conditions analysis and the fact book should be, we should be able to reset in the next couple of weeks. We've had several committee meetings. So continuing the public engagement with our committee, having this survey that I talked about, the online focus groups that we had a couple of months ago and then we're having a few more next week. And again, trying to continue the public engagement and hoping to finish up this plan by the end of the year, by the end of December is what our goal is. And that's why all I have. So at this point, we're at the Q&A period. So if you would like to ask a question that staff can answer, you can raise your hand. And I think Kelly is actually going to identify people and call on them to speak. Joanne Kleis has your hand raised. Joanne, I'm going to unmute you. Oh, it looks like you're already on mute. I am. I have a question. I don't have a car and I walk and take the 77 bus. But during the school year, the bus, the MBTA also seems to become the school bus. So like, meaning that so many students are taking the bus. So there's a whole period in the afternoon where it's actually very hard to get on the bus because it's just picking up and dropping off students. There could be an hour and a half interval where it's hard for other people to use the bus. Are people aware of this in transportation planning and how can that be fixed? Of course, now in that time of COVID, I'm not sure how many students will be on the buses. But this is really like an hour and a half. You almost have to plan to try to get on the bus before after this period when all the students descend on it. Sure, thank you very much for that question. I believe that the T does do some extra runs of buses in order to accommodate some of the students and actually make some extra, or stops that they wouldn't normally make. But I think that this, I think some of it runs down to sort of a frequency issue of the T being able to run enough buses for all of the demand for the service. So this is a frequent question that comes up about, well, can we get the 77 to have more frequency or the 79? And it is sort of a complicated issue. And this is something that we need to work with the MBTA on to figure out what's the best solution. But yeah, I think that isn't something that I've specifically heard about. I've certainly seen the kids getting off the bus. For example, at Otteson in the morning. And it seems like they probably run an extra bus to do that, but that's a very good point that may make it difficult for other people that are trying to use the bus for everyday trips in order to use the bus at that time. Thank you. It looks like David Watson was next. Hi, I was looking at your data on both the priorities that people set and found that it was somewhat interesting that bike infrastructure didn't really make the cut for the top level of priority interests, but bike commuting is of the highest interest for people who want a mode shift. So can you talk about that a little bit more? Why is it that people are not as interested in bike infrastructure when they're very interested in biking? Hi David, thanks for that question. I think that, I mean, if you look at some of the goals, they, things like safety for all, no matter how they travel, I think that is very relevant to people bicycling as opposed to sort of a very specific goal of putting in more protected bicycle facilities, for example. So I feel like the goals that people voted to be hire can actually cover things like bicycling because they're a little bit more broad based as opposed to being very specific to one particular mode. So I think that that may be just the way that the sort of the questions were set up with the different types of goals, but it seems that people gravitated more towards those more broad based goals that can more sort of change the way that we look at how we design the transportation system as opposed to focusing in on one particular. But I do, but I also see that the pedestrian side of it was very high too. And I think certainly through talking with the public a number of times, the walking and pedestrianism is also extremely important to people. Looks like you got, oh, sorry. I mean, was it, I appreciate it. I don't remember the survey, but I can see bike infrastructure being subsumed under safety for all road users. So I'll let it go. I will say also that that was actually, I think there were 10 up there and that was sixth out of the list. So it came in towards the middle, but I think that just because it's not like on the very top of the list doesn't mean that we wouldn't bicycling would still be an important piece of the system and clearly through the mode shares and how people wanting to be able to bike that comes out. But I can understand that biking infrastructure can also be controversial. So for a larger set survey like this, I can understand that it may not necessarily rise to the top, but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be part of our strategy. I just wanna quickly, sorry, Kelly. One more minute, I see the hand raised. Just for, if you feel as though, this is actually the conversation in the breakout groups, but if you feel as though there needs to be greater emphasis on, for example, bike infrastructure or capacity on MBTA buses or something else that you think wasn't well-reflected in the survey results, that's the sort of thing we wanna hear more from you about and we'll be talking about that a little bit more in the breakout group. So feel free to raise this issue again, David and also Joanne. And we have Julie Sussman and then we have two writing questions after that. Okay, this is actually nothing new. I just wanted to second the first speaker who mentioned the kids on the bus. My bus stop where I get on, whenever I say what I do, I mean pre-COVID, I haven't been on a bus since March, but I tend to go down to the bus stop near my house, which is directly opposite the high school and I don't usually remember the plan. I'm just going into Boston or Cambridge and I go down and I say, oh no, I forgot it's 2.30. I'm in trouble, I'm gonna be so late because at 2.30, the bus is fill off bus after bus and you pretty much can't expect to get anywhere. That's all, just to second what she said. Thank you very much for that. One other thing that I will say is that, I mean, it is good that we do have the bus system and the kids were able to use it. Arguably, if they were being sort of driven everywhere, then that would increase the traffic congestion around the schools at those times as well. So there's a balancing act to be made that it does provide this very good service for the kids, but yes, that is certainly a concern when it happens all at once. Certainly wonderful to transport the kids that way. There isn't a better way of just saying they really need a more extra service if they're gonna transport anybody else. Thank you. So in the chat, Keith Jensen, Jensen asks, he says, I support alternatives to cars including biking, walking, et cetera. I have a question about why some roads have spots without painted lines, specifically on Massath near the main fire station. I've noticed that lines will be painted east and west at various times, but are we skipping this area? Many other roads also need line painting frequently due to high traffic. I think the lines really help keep people in their lanes improving safety and traffic flow. So I guess just a question about why there's intermittent painting on the roads. So let me speak first to the one about Massath and by the fire station. So part of that roadway was going to be part of Massath phase two for rehabilitating the roadway, putting in bicycle lanes, also doing some work around Broadway Plaza. And unfortunately, some of the grant programs because it would be a very expensive project. We were looking for federal or state grants for that, but unfortunately those, we weren't able to do those. And so we started doing some sort of pieces of that project, which include there's sidewalk work that's happening in Arlington Center right now around specifically between Pleasant Street and Mystic Street over to Franklin Street, which was originally part of phase two. And replacing other things like the lightning and so on. And the roadway is definitely a concern. It's in really bad shape. And I think that there is, that would be more a question for public works to when that would be repaved, but that is something that we would to work on for putting in bike facilities. It's challenging with the number of vehicles that go through that area and also the median as well as the on three parking. So I would say that some, it's sort of not as straightforward as just painting lines often. And it's often we need to, in order to get the proper width and the spacing from a travel lane, if we want to put in a bike lane, for example, that may affect on street parking. And so that is something that we need to address in order to provide the space for drivers or for MPT buses along with cyclists if we were going to make like a separated facility. And generally that you need to kind of look at that on a case by case basis. Okay, see Jennifer Soss has her hand raised. Hi, yeah. I wanted to actually sort of talk again about the students on the bus. And that's something I've been talking about for many years and getting nowhere with if you are a family that lives towards the center in East Darlington and you want to put your kid on the bus, there's maybe a 50% chance that your kid will get on the bus. And so many, many, many parents drive their kids to school who do not want to drive their kids to school. They would much, much, much prefer that their kids are on the bus. And of course the problem is that we are, we don't have control over the MTVA. I mean, so we could say, let's put some more buses on it but we just don't have control over them. But it's a serious issue in town that's creating much more traffic in the mornings than needs to be because there are just tons and tons of parents who would be very, very happy with their kids on a bus but they know their kids are gonna be late half the time. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I don't have an answer for that. This is actually, I'm aware again that like the middle school and high school kids, children will ride the bus but I had actually heard that it was so challenging for people that are just trying to ride to work or ride to the grocery store or something. We're also having a problem getting on there. So this is definitely something we can raise with the MBTA. I mean, yes, right now the public transportation system is going to be very constricted due to the challenges of dealing with COVID-19. This has been sort of a theme over the last several months with public transportation as to how to have people ride safely. So they're already going to have some limitations on the number of people that can put it that can ride on the bus but that's certainly something we need to raise with them to see if they can either do something about the scheduling or again increasing frequency is challenging to the sort of limitations on the number of buses and the number of drivers that they have but this is definitely something we'll wanna raise with them. Thank you. And then we just have, we have one more comment in the chat and I think we can probably go to our breakout groups but just a question about how the plan is going to address any increases in population throughout town. So if there are zoning changes or if there are new developments in town given that the plan is for many years into the future how are we working in thinking ahead? So, Jenny, do you mind taking this? No, not at all. Well, first I wanna say that's a great that's an excellent question because we just shared with you a lot of existing conditions. The whole part of actually the next part of the process is really the look ahead and who do we wanna be and what kind of transportation system do we need to build which also relates to some of the development patterns that we might be seeing or things that might change. I don't think however things will change dramatically per se over the time period that we're looking at such that we would need to make significant transportation changes. I think what we're trying to look at is a sustainable transportation system that provides a lot of options for people even more options than they have now and makes it easier for people to use those options to get around town, to move around. So that's not necessarily to accommodate growth but it could be because it's adding to instead of increasing roadway volume only for cars it's also looking at other options and other modes which is what we think is the best way for us to plan for the future with the limited capacity that we have to we don't have the capacity to expand roadways or build new roads in Arlington. So we have to work with what we have in the best way that we can but also be planful of the new technologies that are already happening and incorporate those and even use our roadways even better to accommodate different types of growth as well as different types of modes and the mode shift of the future. So I know that's not a specific answer maybe as much as you would want but I think as we get into the next phase we're gonna continue to get more feedback about where we're going as a town and the community in general in relation to transportation and then when we probably have our next forum we'll have a preview of what those types of policies and projects and programs might look like which I think will drill down a little bit more and answer some of this kind of question. So I think actually we're right at time and if you would go to the next slide what we're gonna do unless sorry Kelly was there weren't any other questions. So what we're gonna do now is move into breakout groups. So if you could move to the next slide I'm just gonna give you a quick preview you're gonna answer some questions in your groups. Each group is assigned both a facilitator and a note taker and we have five groups. Yes, five groups I believe it's about seven to eight people per group and one person as I said will be facilitating so that they can focus on the conversation and hopefully everybody can help to answer some of these discussion prompts and this is really again to get you talking and thinking about what you heard and also some of your dreams and visions for the future that's the magic wand question and then also a little bit of input on what you think might be getting in the way of making some changes for the future what would be in the way of making things happen. The note takers are actually going to be writing everything up you might even see what they're writing that'll be reported out as we come back and rejoin this bigger group so that you have an opportunity to hear the types of conversations that were happening in those other groups and also so that we can then wrap up and conclude with some next steps. I think there's also a brief period where we might have some opportunity for additional Q&A before we part ways. So with that you're actually going to have 30 minutes in your breakout groups and there will be a five minute warning so with that I'm gonna have Kelly start to assign the groups. Okay, so we're gonna start sending you into breakout groups you'll see a pop up on your screen just go ahead and click okay you don't have to join the breakout group if you wanna hang out in the main room but we do encourage you to participate in this discussion so I'm gonna send everyone out. Hey Darcy. Thanks for taking the notes. Anytime. It's so much rather do that than facilitate. Hey Jennifer. Hi, Allie. And Sean. Sean do you wanna turn on your video? It's totally up to you, you don't have to. But during this kind of quick intro phase if you want. And I think it's fine, it's a small enough group we'll probably get one or two more I'm guessing but we could all probably just be unmuted. It's I think that probably works out. And Jennifer one of the things I wanted to respond but wasn't my job necessarily to respond to the whole group about your question and I know you know this but I think I'll say it and it's too bad not everyone heard it is clearly the improvements that connect the new AHS with the Minuteman path will make it just a bit easier for the students who are closer to the center who aren't so far east in East Arlington to probably encourage a handful more to bike or to walk the school as well. So let's hope that that's one partial solution to the bus crowd and problem for the students in East Arlington for sure. Right, but some of that stuff has been taken out in the project right off saving. So yeah. And that's why it's important to hear from people in meetings like this that the how important that connection is. I have to say I do think that kids often like taking the bus because we give them options after school. They don't have a bike to deal with, right? So biking is great but then you have to deal with the bike later on. So, yeah, agree. So I guess this is our group and I'll introduce myself on Phil Goff. I am on the advisory committee that the town set up for the Sustainable Transportation Plan. I live on Grafton Street in East Arlington. I'm the co-chair of East Arlington Louisville Streets Coalition as well. So I'm kind of a neighborhood transportation advocate and I'm a professional transportation planner as well. So I'll announce the names. We'll go around the horn here. Do a quick intro, 30 seconds to 45 seconds is probably fine. And then we'll move into the question. So first, Darcy, our note taker. Hi, I'm Darcy Devney. I'm on the Arlington Disability Commission, which is why I'm on the Transportation Advisory Plan. I also live in East Arlington, a long time East Arlington but I can't bicycle. So I don't know very much about that part. I'm learning some of it because of the stuff I'm meeting in this committee. Great, Jennifer. Hi, I'm Jennifer Cease. So I'm used to be a school committee member. I'm not anymore. I'm interested in transportation and housing and the interaction between the two of them. And East Arlington, we're good. Okay, great. Well, thanks for joining, Allie. Hi, I'm Allie Carter. I'm the Economic Development Coordinator for the town. I do not live in Arlington. I commute to Arlington. Well, again, someday I will, then I have in the past. So I guess for my participation today, I'll actually try and focus on things I hear from business owners if that helps contribute to the sharing and conversation. Yeah, that's great. And Sean, I hope you can hear me. I haven't heard your voice yet but I'm hoping that your mic works and you're able to introduce yourself. Let's see if I can maybe... Oh, if I can unmute him. Oh, you're unmuted now, Sean. Oh, now he's muted. Sean is from ACMI, so he might just be here to record. Oh, okay. But he also works in Arlington and maybe even lives here. Okay, all right. Don't do it anytime you want, Sean. Okay, well, we have a very small group. I don't know if I assume that they were distributing those who wanted to join a breakout group somewhat equally. So what this says to me is probably a handful of people decided they just wanted to see the presentation maybe and then that's it. Or perhaps a handful of people didn't want to be in a small group and just are waiting to hear back from the larger group. So we've got, I guess, 20 minutes, then we're gonna get a five minute warning. When we get that five minute warning, we can decide to finish up or continue on a little bit or we could just join back in with the larger group. And Darcy, as the note taker, is going to take wonderful notes and then provide a little bit of a summary of our discussion here in the report back to the larger group. So I will share a screen now so you can see. Excuse me. So you can see the breakout group questions. Is everyone seeing the slide with the questions? Yes, okay. Thank you, Allie. So I guess initially what we wanna do is kind of start a little bit more broad, high level and hear from some folks about just generally what some of the key goals for the Sustainable Transportation Plan are. And if you are supportive of the five that really scored the highest, at least in the survey. And the survey is really only to inform ultimately decisions about which are the final goals for the plan. But this is where we're at right now and we wanna hear from people to see if maybe something was missed or if something should be tweaked or we've already heard a comment that maybe bikes should be included in the five more explicitly. Does anyone have any thoughts about the goals? Does that mean? Jennifer, yeah, go ahead. Just jump in and we're such a small group. So I think there are some really tiny things that could make things a lot easier in bike infrastructure. And I've always been struck that there isn't adequate bike racks, especially in key places like in front of a post office, in front of a bank, right? That's the kind of things that you need. There's a quick and easy right there in front of it to have a bike rack, a small bike rack. And so I know that the town did you put some in at some point but it seems like they sort of then stopped and didn't sort of take it to the next step and do a reanalysis of where it was needed. So I'd love to see that happen. Yeah, that's great. There was a few years ago, there was a regional, excuse my coffee or everybody, there was a regional program that MAPC, which is regional planning agency sponsored where they actually funded, I think 100% of bike racks for towns and cities up to a certain number of racks. And Arlington of course took advantage of that, installed, I don't know, I'm guessing maybe 50 or 60 racks four or five years ago. And I know Darcy and I worked on locating them in East Arlington at the time. And I think that the town, it's a great comment for us to record to show that that's important to people cause I think the town, town meeting, finance committee, et cetera. I don't think there's been money to build more bike racks, install more bike racks in different parts of town. I think we relied just on what we got in essence for free from MAPC. So that's a great- I have to say that the major places I would want a bike rack there isn't anyone. So my local bank in East Arlington, my local post office in East Arlington and my gym in the center. And obviously I'm not going to the gym or anything, but those are the three places that I would use a bike rack all the time. Right. And so they just aren't any and I have to find a free and stuff like that. It's just harder. And to me, an example, a good example of if, if you build it, you know, they will come, people will use it is the increasing number of bike racks in front of kickstand cafe, which, you know, five years ago, there was just, you know, there was a small rack on their property and a couple of bike racks at the Minuteman. Now they've taken over, you know, one of the parking spaces of bike racks, they've put more in the front and those things on nice days really, really fill up. So I think that's great. Jennifer, you'd mentioned sort of small infrastructure improvements and bike racks obviously are a key one there. Are there some little like missing links? Oh, gee, if we only had a bike lane on this block or two that you've also noticed or is more about the parking? Well, I mean, I'm sure everyone knows that the center is a mess. I mean, there's, we have to, you know, I know that we're waiting, we want to keep going for the first aid and federal money for that. But that feels like a very, as you know, very dangerous section. It's very unfund a bike on because there's just so many potholes. So that is definitely a missing link in Arlington for right now. Yep. And Ali, have you heard much about either a bike parking or maybe, you know, continuity of bike infrastructure in the center? Have you ever heard from any businesses about that being important to them? Clearly the kickstand cafe, it's a big, big thing, but I'm not sure if you've heard from others. Yeah, I do hear occasionally and what actually frustrates me is that it would be nice if we had some sort of like inventory of bike racks or some not inventory of what's there but actual like a physical inventory that was available. You know, there's not a lot of storage space at DPW but having said that, some occasionally someone will request a bike rack in front of their business and then it's like, oh, it's gonna take like, you know, three months to order one and it just seems like something that we should be able to be a little bit more responsive for and even just have like some of those lollipop style ones just around or even, I know they're not perfect, but like some movable ones, you know, temporary ones that can be put in place just as there's demand. Yep, yeah, terrific. And I think that, you know, some of you perhaps have heard that there will be the expansion of the bike share system to the town sometime in the next couple of months and let's hope that with correctly play stations that businesses will start really appreciating people coming from Alewife and Cambridge and Somerville and biking, being able to bike into the center, park their blue bikes and partake in the businesses after all of them fully open, of course. So, okay, any other comments from anyone related to the goals? And Jennifer, were you implying that one of the five should be about bike infrastructure or you were just making that comment about sort of general bike infrastructure? My comment is that it's a relatively cheap thing to do, right? So it's just not that, you know, it would make a difference and it's relatively cheap. And actually, I do think there's, there is potentially issues around putting bike racks near where there's a handicap parking, right? And some of those places that I would love to see a bike rack, there's also handicap parking. You obviously can't, you know, you can't interfere with those things. And so you have to be, you have to think carefully about where to put it and not be right in front. Maybe it's a little bit down or something. That's actually one of those like hidden things that's always more complicated than it seems to be about placing a bike rack is that you have to make sure it's in an accessible location. And so people are like, it's a bike rack. What's the big deal? And it's like, it's actually nothing on any public right of way is ever just a thing. It's always a big deal. You can interfere with anybody with the access that somebody is using to a parking lot. Exactly. But I agree that we could have sort of perhaps a set of best practices of like just general kind of like areas where they should, can and cannot go. Pretty. Yeah, post office feels so obvious to me. You know, you're going there with like a few letters, you know, like you can just, yeah, post office really feels, yeah, yeah. Phil and I did work on placing bike racks and handicap parking spaces and working that all out when we were putting in a bunch of handicap parking spaces at once. So it is something, but Ally's really right. There are so many little things you have to think about and so much street furniture, you know, in East Arlington, the sidewalks are so cluttered that it's very hard to get the space for a bike rack without running into accessibility problems with the width. And nowadays we want an even bigger sidewalk for the, you know, dine in, dine outside stuff. So it is an issue, but she's right. Maybe we could try temporary ones. And then if you could move them around where people wanted them, because the new blue bikes are going to have docks, right, they're ones where they are putting a station, but I don't know how movable a station is once they put it down. It can be moved, you need a crane, but they can be moved. It's a big deal, yeah. The good news is we won't have line bikes which on some occasions were kind of parked in the middle of sidewalks and in other funny places and line bike for, you know, for good and for bad is gone, so there's nothing to even say about it anymore. And the blue bikes, certainly those stations take up more space. They'll be on the smaller side versus the typical stations you might see, say at Davis Square or in Alewife, at Alewife Station where you have real big stations. Ours will be, you know, a little, you know, little mini me sizes with seven or eight bikes and I think maybe 10 racks rather than the, you know, 19s and maybe 50 racks that you see on the bigger stations. So they take up some space for sure, but of course, obviously ADA issues will always be looked at. Some may be in the street to replace on-street parking and others will be on sidewalks. That'll be fine. Yeah, in some cases that may work out fine where you just don't have space like in Capitol Square. Not sure with bus stops and street furniture and handicap spaces, you know, and the one in Capitol Square, my guess is it's gonna need to replace one parking spot, but I'm not sure town isn't there yet, I think in terms of the specific. I think it could go and replace some of the Grafton Street parking spaces, you know, we have right at Mass Ave in Grafton Street. Yeah. I always talk about that. Like, what are those parking spaces? They're so underutilized. Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad you said that. I hope you saw my little celebration dance. I wondered. So can I wave a magic wand? Oh yes, I was gonna say, Jennifer, you're kind of like the- I'm the only person. One person who is gonna give us all the ideas. So yes, wave your magic wand, tell us. I'd wave the magic wand and I'd fix all the sidewalks in the center so that there's no mobility issues with those damn bricks. Yes, I was gonna mention that. It's underway. I know. Yeah, it's a pain in the neck right now, but it is underway, but only up to Pleasant Street. And then we'll see where we can get with the next segment, but I am happy that it's happening now. Right. Is the town hall area being fixed? Cause that's a mess and it's just such a, I mean, how people need to act, everybody in the entire town needs access town hall in theory, right? And as well. There is a proposal out to fix it. And I believe, I might be wrong about this, but I believe there's CPA funds available for that right now where they were planning to apply for CPA funds. But I actually saw like the bid meeting advertised today. So there's a lot of pieces to town hall. There's the garden. There's the sidewalks on Mass Ave. There's the, you know, back area, which is connected to the garden. And that's a historical, you know, Olmsted brothers design thing. So everything takes a long time, but yes, there is a plan for that because too many people hurt themselves on those bricks. Yeah. I would probably say that I don't know that I would raise a magic wand and who knows what's going to happen at this point with Uber and Lyft, but there are just not enough spaces that are drop off pickup spaces for people or, you know, we're kind of temporarily putting in delivery pickup spaces for the restaurants at the moment because of COVID. But in general, Uber and Lyft just like stop in the middle of traffic, which annoys everybody and is unsafe. And the person who gets out of it or gets into it is unsafe. So I kind of feel like I don't really want to give up parking spaces, but maybe we should be giving up parking spaces to be specifically, you know, where someone pulls into the curb out of the line of traffic, out of the bikes, out of the everything and drops someone off or picks them up. If we're expecting that to grow as a way of getting around, which we were until COVID. So now I don't know how to predict that, but I do think we're missing that. We only have like one loading zone in town. And that was a big, it took so long for Allie to do all of the negotiating with all of the involved parties with that. One loading zone in the center. Where is it? The center, presumably. It's on Alton Street in the center that first block of Alton adjacent to Broadway. Yeah. But that's it, which I have plenty of places have deliveries happening, you know. Oh yeah. It's just, it's very, I don't know if the business has complained about it, but I would if I were them. Yeah. Well, the people who probably are getting the brunt are cyclists because deliveries are double parked. Well, if it's on Mass Ave in New Starlington, deliveries are the trucks and vans double parked in the bike lane. Yep. And the same for people Uber and Lyft, I know have done a problem. Yeah, for sure. And Uber and Lyft. That's right. Everywhere, so. So, Jennifer, you've mentioned sidewalks. Anything else? I'm sure actually we could transition to the next one. I have a feeling. Sure, I have another idea. What's standing in the way? So one thing I've always wondered about is that we added all this striping for the parking spaces. And at the same time, we bought a mini Cooper and we put it in these like separate areas and it's like there's so much extra space. So people complain about parking being lost from these various things. You know, were we to not stripe those things? We'd have more parking potentially. Of course, that would mean if we were to add meters, we'd have to add those boxes, which are a little bit more annoying. I get that, you know, in Eastern Arlington, for example, if we were to add meters there, we'd have to add a box. But it would just- They're also an accessibility issue, honestly, to walk to the end of the block and back and the curb cut and so forth. But uh- That makes sense. I'm writing it down. And then during the mass of corridor planning 10 years ago, there were some complaints a little bit from businesses who made the case that, you know, right now with it with unmarked parking, we can squeeze like seven or eight spaces in our block. Right. We have to be marked out 22 feet. There's no meter but 20 feet and there's a handicapped spot or whatever. So the seven or eight spaces are now five or six. And I know- We lost a lot in East Arlington as a result of making it, you know, up to code with enough space from the corners and the minimum space and yeah. That's from the crosswalks are really important too. Yeah. Right. Okay, well, I know that Daniel's going to be shutting us down in a few minutes. Jennifer, it's nice to get a second tour of your new place. Sorry, my family is downstairs about to eat dinner and I realize I can't be down there. I like that. That sounds good. So Darcy, are you kind of ready with some notes to give a little 30 to 60 second? I'm kind of looking at them and I'm just thinking, do we need to, standing in the way of making changes sounded to me like people were basically saying it was budget is a huge one. Like we change all the brick sidewalks tomorrow if we could, you know, that's already sort of been agreed about. It's just getting it done. More bright cracks sounded like it was a budget thing. So I think budget is huge. I think it's cheap. The bike racks feel cheap to me. I don't, I think that's a logistical, like people just haven't done it. Three or $400 each. Yeah. They're not much. It's a little bit of a storage issue but I think we could do better. We could do better than that. And I'll throw some words in Jennifer's mouth perhaps and standing in the way, I think probably MBTA is kind of a critical roadblock for us to sort of solve some of our transit related issues. Yeah. What people were saying about the buses and the kids, they're absolutely right. Yeah. You know, the 77 is so overused by just everybody. And it doesn't make up kids if it's full. It just goes on. Yeah. Lots of frustrating kids. All right. Well, I'm getting a message. I don't know if others that we're going to close down in 25 seconds. So I'm just going to leave right now and go back and see you in the larger group. Okay. Okay. So thank you everyone. I'm glad so many people were participating. I think, so I'm going to go to the note takers to, or this is the, let me just go to the segment where you do a report out in discussion. So I'm just going to go from the top of the list that I have here. Darcy, do you mind taking a couple of minutes to report out from the group that you are in? We can't hear her. She's, yeah. Oh, sorry. Oh, you're muted again. Okay. How's that? Better. Sorry. I got automatically muted when I got back in, I guess. We had two bike people. So we spent a lot of time talking about bike infrastructure and things like the bike rack program that was done a couple of years ago, where 50 odd bike racks were put in, but then there isn't one in front of the post offices or some easy to do places. So that was huge for bikes. And we talked about the Minuteman path and how the AHS, the new high school building is supposed to have that access to the Minuteman, which would take some of the pressure off the, more people would be able to bike and walk to school, except then that got cut as a matter of budget. So if that's really important to people, that needs to get added back in. So that was one of the budget things. The other budget thing that was huge is fixing the brick sidewalks everywhere. Everybody agrees that we should do it basically. I think even the historical people have given in on that one, but we don't have enough money to do it. And in the meantime, it's hard for the pedestrians, really hard for disabled people. It's, it would be a magic wand, would be great. I think for bike racks, we could try movable or temporary ones and put them in spaces like right in front of a post and see how that goes and ask people. And then maybe we could move it to somewhere else instead of trying to pick spaces and put them down in advance. And the MBTA and the buses, absolutely, we all agree. We need better service. Our 77 is completely oversubscribed. And there's the timing issues that people mention in pretty much every conversation. And then there was a little note about, oh, that the parking spaces get striped, which is great, except then you can fit fewer cars. And like a Mini Cooper, you could be getting a lot more stuff in there, but now you can't because they're striped. But I'm not sure there's anything we can do about that. They're striped according to code sort of. So, but it was just a thing. And oh, drop off pickup spots and loading zones. Art don't seem to be in the plan at all at the moment. And they really should be because there's the Uber and Lyft. There's the whole issue of delivery trucks, double parking, which is really hard for the bicyclists on Mass Ave to kind of get around that. So maybe we could have more loading zones or more drop off pickup people zones. And I think that was it. It wasn't very organized, but that was it. Thank you, Darcy. Thank you very much. I'm going to go to Jenny. Sure, no problem. All right, so I was with Len and a nice group who had a... We mostly talked about questions one and two. So just quickly, I think most people for question one felt that the priorities were very reflective of Arlington, that, you know, and also of the people participating, that, for example, folks suggested that they... They might have biked in the past a little bit more, but now they walk. And a lot of the people participating in the conversation were very focused on being walk-friendly. And also, though, questioning what exactly that might mean in Arlington, which seems to mean a number of different things depending upon where you're walking, of course. Like, for example, it could mean in front of town hall that we need to think about more, you know, level surfaces and removing some barriers. It could also mean for street crossings, improving those crossings, and then, you know, also a focus on transit, that that is also something that people in that group felt was also something to think about and reflect upon. Another person brought up, or actually one person said that they were glad to see that people were thinking more broadly beyond the automobile. And people are thinking in the sort of a holistic manner at the whole system and not just focused on one thing, which was positive. Another person brought up the issue of thinking about how climate change and mitigation and sort of the bad winter storm that we had five years ago, what lessons we may learn from those types of things and also plan for in the future in relationship to this issue of walk-friendly, as well as, of course, many other things. And then also just the issue of equity and diversity, what might be missing. So we talked a little bit about that as well, including thinking about children a little bit more, especially since we heard some of that raised in the earlier Q&A. And then for the second waving of the wand, we spent some time talking just about changing behavior and how challenging that is for people in various modes, whether it's drivers, people on bikes, and even walkers. Pedestrians not always paying attention to the rules and also just sharing sometimes limited spaces. So that was one. The other thing we talked about was just sort of, the pre-COVID, although hopefully a post-COVID dream of a 21st century transportation transit system, rather, that that would be the real true alternative to driving and that we should still continue to think about that, that it might look a little bit different. And then also about some quicker fixes that could ease and sort of disincentivize some of the bad behavior. Chicanes were mentioned. There might be other things as well to think about. And also beyond Arlington, sort of thinking about regional transportation or regional transit, like faster rail for easy on, easy off, maybe even autonomous vehicles. So looking at that big picture that also will help Arlington. And then standing in the way, we just had a couple of things. One is just learning about information to resources. A lot of people have great ideas to share, but they don't know where to, where to, how to raise them up the flagpole and also just comments about the MBTA. I won't go, I won't, I won't, nobody's from the MBTA in this group, but I think we have, I think we'll be talking to the MBTA because there are many things that of course people in Arlington feel very strongly about the efficiency of what we get and why some things don't always work as well as they could. And that will become more important in the future as well. Thanks, Dan. And thanks to the group and Len. Thank you, Jenny. Moving on to Julie. Okay, so the group generally felt like the, they agreed with the goals, though there was definitely an interest in more emphasis on biking. We did talk about the fact that there was quite an overlap between a lot of the goals, however. And people did also want to re-emphasize being concerned about safety for, especially for our pedestrian environment. Carol pointed out that if people didn't feel safe, then we wouldn't get them out of their cars. I thought that was a great point. So the second question, we talked a lot about how to get people out of their cars, get people walking. And so people talked about trying to address our sidewalks that was brought up a couple of times, wanting to again, make them safer. And then also Matt was feeling like there is some disorganization around the setup of our streets in town. I'm feeling like sometimes there are driveways coming into pretty main roadways, and that can be a challenge for the actual transportation. And then we talked about what was standing in the way of making change. So there was a little bit of talk about wanting to try and remind people about all of the positive health outcomes that you can get out of getting out of your car, a couple of people talked about that and trying to sort of change behavior through that positive thinking. But then really things like what would stand, what may be standing in the way of making this change, money and space being issues, obviously these being hurdles to making our sidewalks better or increasing bus lanes. And let's see. We talked about make driving less convenient and mass transit more convenient and really thinking about some more of those priority bus lanes rather than letting people just park and sit their car there all day long, really trying to use some of our parking lanes as bus lanes. And then finally the magic wand conversation we talked about putting in priority signals and lanes for buses would be a good start, upgrading mass transit and same theme, pressuring the MBTA, really getting on schedule and actually caring if you're doing it or not doing it. And again, that bus rapid transit. So I definitely saw some mass transit and safety sidewalks and bicycling themes. Thank you, Julie. I'll go to Kelly. Hi, I was with Heather Barber's group. We had a nice smaller group of people who actually use a lot of different modes to get around. And so in looking at the goals, I think everyone really agreed with the goals. They didn't really have a problem with that, although they did see that there was a lot of overlap and some similarity between some of them. And they would like to see the number six and seven ranked goals, the number six expanding, dealing with expanded bicycle facilities and number seven about getting a little bit more into like the sustainability and environmental focus of the plan as elevating those so that they don't get lost behind the top five goals. And then around the magic wave, the magic wand discussion, we waving a magic wand trying to find a balance between wishing we had sidewalks everywhere that were in really good conditions, thinking about how people using more environmentally friendly automobiles, not necessarily eliminating all cars, but thinking about how can we encourage people to use more sustainable forms of getting around. And then better connections for commuters to the 128 corridor and finding more zip car locations, thinking about ride hailing services where you have a fixed route but people can sort of hail a ride along that route. In general, thinking about how can we encourage people to go car light or going from two cars down to one car. We didn't have a lot of time to focus on the third question but in general, we started by talking about the hills and you can't flatten them. And our topography is a challenge and then money. We have no lack of ambition for great projects but things go very slowly because of the cost. Thank you, Kelly. And I think the last person, Steve. Hello, yes, I was with Rachel's group and I'd like to say that Rachel did a very nice job of getting to everyone and getting through all of the questions. So I will make my report. So in the first question, so there was a desire to see cycling given a more prominent position in the survey. And this would include cyclists who travel through Arlington but don't necessarily begin and end trips here. Safety, there was agreement that safety was important, that all of the top priorities were important. There was discussion about the trade-offs between the space trade-offs that you have to make for a multimodal street, allowing room for cyclists, room for drivers and that sort of thing. But I think there was general agreement about the importance of safety. For the magic wand, we totally went all out. So magic wand number one was a red line running down one side of Arlington and a green line running down side the other. Getting rid of cars as much as possible, especially on secondary neighborhood roads. ADA compliant flyovers on the bike path so that someone on the bike path, whether they were walking or cycling would not have to navigate traffic, basically eliminate street crossings when you're on the bikeway. A tunnel so that one instead of having to ride up and down Park Avenue, you could ride through it. And see, and just having a consistent cross section of Mass Ave that allowed for cycling lanes, maybe a little narrower amount of space for cars, wider sidewalks and more room for outdoor activity and of course better service on the MBTA buses. So in things that stand in the way of these goals, money was one. Our car centric culture was also seen as a challenge. And basically that boils down to getting people to drive even when there were other modes of transportation they can use. So, you know, let's see, we have a diverse set of needs for transportation. Some of these are at odds with each other. And sometimes that's an impediment to moving forward, having transit innovations that could serve different groups without inconveniencing to where more groups would be useful. And also we noted that, you know, different areas of our transit system are funded by different authorities and under different, the jurisdiction of different groups. And sometimes those groups don't always talk to each other and coordinate well. And perhaps that is something that could be improved. Yeah, and finally, maybe one, maybe after the health emergency is over more people will work from home and there will be less traffic on the roads. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. I had never heard a tunnel through Park Avenue before. That's a new one for me. That's an amazing magic wand. I want some of that magic wand. That was just great. I love it. Well, we have about four minutes, four or five minutes if anyone wants to have further discussion about the questions from the breakout groups or any thoughts or reactions from what was shared from the breakout groups. I'll just leave it open for a moment. If anyone wants to raise their hand, if not, I can go to the end. So I just want to thank everyone for attending and for coming, all the participants that came and stayed for the breakout groups. This was really great feedback that we received. I do wanna thank all of the committee members, especially that were facilitators or note takers, staff that helped to make this happen. And we're note takers and helped with all of the coordination around the Zoom meetings and forum. Doing everything by technology doesn't seem to make things easier all the time, in my opinion. The fact book, as I mentioned, I hope we will be able to release that in the next couple of weeks, waiting for some more edits to come back to have that ready for public release. The next phase of the project, getting to the vision for the transition system, which is this is all extremely helpful for that. And over the next couple of weeks, there'll be a forum that we'll put on to the website where we'll have the recording of this up, I think early next week. And people will be able to watch this or also look at the additional slides that have additional information and respond to, you know, a Google form about the goals that we talked about in this discussion here and also some of the other questions that we had during the breakout groups. So the next big engagement opportunities we expect to be more in the fall, I think towards the September-October timeframe. All right. Is there Jenny, anything else you wanna say at the end here? No, just to thank you, Dan, for all your work organizing this evening. So I think with that, I'll give you a nice hand. We don't get to do that in the auditorium, but if we could, this is what we would do. Excellent work. And I'll mute everyone so I can hear them. And ACMI is recording tonight. So thanks to ACMI, as always. We appreciate your, we appreciate you and thank you for sharing this video after it's over. And we look forward to more participation to come. All right. I think that's all. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. Good night, everyone.