 time is 7 34 p.m. And today is Tuesday, March 16 2021. Good evening, everyone. My name is Christian Klein. I'm the chair of the Arlington zoning board of appeals. I'm calling this meeting of the board to order. I'd like to confirm that members and anticipated officials are present. Members of the zoning board when I call your name in case you're here, Roger Dupont, here, Patrick Handlin, Kevin Mills, John O'Rourke. I thought I saw your number. Star six. Here, sorry here. Thank you. Aaron Ford. Here. And Stephen Revillac. Here. Wonderful. The town officials, Rick Fallorelli. Here. And Vincent Lee. Here. Thank you. And Kelly Landema just logging in right this moment. Hello, I'm here. Welcome. First is appearing for 1165 R Massav, our MHP consultant, Paul Haverty. Good evening, Mr. Chairman. Good evening, Mr. Haverty. From Beta Group, Greg Lucas. Here. Is Marty joining us, Greg? I'm not sure. Okay. I would have expected so, but we never actually talked to confirm that. I vaguely remember something about her not being available, but I just can't recall. That may be the case. Okay. And representative applicant, Mary O'Connor. Here. And Brian Zambolka. Here. Wonderful. Mr. O'Connor, is there anyone else from your team? Julia Myrak. We'll maybe speaking and other members of the team are on the call as well. Daniel St. Clair from Spalding and Slide. Hello. Hello. Bob Myrak is also on the call. So this open meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of, I can't believe I'm saying this, March 12, 2020. That order suspended the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. Public bodies may meet remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. An opportunity for public participation will be provided during the public comment period during each public hearing. For this meeting, the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals has convened a video conference via the Zoom app with online and telephone access as listed on the agenda posted to the town's website identifying how the public may join. This meeting is being recorded and it is being broadcast by ACMI. Please be aware that attendees are participating by a variety of means. Some attendees are participating by video conference. Other participants are participating by computer audio or telephone. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you, your screen name or another identifier. Please take care to not share personal information. Anything you broadcast may be captured by the recording. We ask you to please maintain decorum during the meeting, including displaying an appropriate background. All supporting materials that have been provided members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda. As chair, I observe the right to take items out of order in the interest of promoting an orderly meeting. We have one item on our agenda this evening as the comprehensive permit hearing. We're now turning hearing for 1165 Bar Massachusetts Avenue continued from February 23rd, 2021. Want to review some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of tonight's business. This evening's discussion will focus on transportation aspects of the proposed project. The submitted documents are available as an attachment to the posted agenda and on the board's website for the 1165 Bar Mass Ave project. I'll ask the applicants to introduce themselves and make a presentation to the board outlining the traffic and transportation aspects of the project. I'll then ask the board's consultant, Fata Group, to provide additional comments on those same aspects. Members of the board will then have an opportunity to ask what questions they have on the information that has been presented, and after the board's questions have been answered, I will open the meeting for public comment. So with that, Ms. O'Connor. Thank you, Chairman Klein. I'd like to initially thank the zoning board members in the town departments in Beta for their work on this comprehensive permit, and I want to thank Beta and the departments in the abutters for their comments in advance of tonight's meeting because we were able to integrate responses. Tonight, Brian Zamolka of NITCH Engineering will review the extensive traffic impact report, which was previously made available in connection with this comprehensive permit application. It has been amended based on input from Beta and responses that have been formulated to Beta's concerns as well as some comments from the Transportation Advisory Committee and Rider Street residents. Mr. Zamolka is a professional engineer and focuses his practice on transportation permitting and traffic engineering design services. To give you just some background, he was the chair of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers section in the Institute of Transportation Engineers. He is going to review the results of the traffic study, the parking to be provided, access points, and the proposed transportation demand management plan that the applicant is offering. I do want to update the zoning board to advise that the applicant has with Mr. Zamolka and I met with Attorney Robert Inessie, who spoke at the initial hearing, Attorney Inessie will not be appearing in opposition tonight. He has represented that to me. I want to address several matters that Mr. Zamolka will not be addressing. I have provided information to the zoning board that the Myrack family actually owns by deed that section of Rider Street that exits from the site to the opposite side of Rider Street going to Forest Street. The applicant surveyors have advised that the town of Arlington actually owns that portion of Rider Street, abutting the sidewalk in front of 9 Rider Street, which is the condominium building. I raised this for two reasons. It establishes ownership of the right of way and because some of the neighbors have expressed concern that Rider Street is narrow, but as if the zoning board members looked at what was provided, and I'm sure you did, you will see that the survey reveals that 23 Rider Street, the yards actually encroach into the right of way. Further, the neighbors have raised concerns about trucks coming down the street likely from the DPW yard and coming at excessive rates of speed. I think that that's something that should be referred to the town manager. Given the fact that the town has taken the other side of Rider Street where the condominium is, the zoning board could in fact provide that automobiles not park within a certain distance of the Rider exit from the project site. With respect to the MBTA temporary service cuts due to the pandemic that the Transportation Advisory Committee references in their memorandum, we're not going to address them because they are temporary in nature. They're related to the pandemic. This project, if approved, will not be up and running for a year and a half to two years. I would suggest to you that based on the information that Mr. Zamolka will be presenting this evening, that the trips to and from the site are modest, that there are several access points, and to the extent that the Rider Street residents have concerns about town-operated trucks and equipment, this can be addressed with the town. So I would like to turn this over to Mr. Zamolka if I could. Thank you, Mary. I provided or I put together a presentation that I've given to Rick and I'm hoping he could bring it up right now. Maybe I can chime in. We were having trouble loading that on to Novus Agenda just because it was such a large file. I think Rick was hoping that maybe you could share your screen. Yep, I did have a contingency plan. You're all set to go. I actually set that up a little while ago. To share my screen? Yep, you're good to go. Okay, perfect. All right. Can everybody see this? To be honest with you, I was not prepared to share my screen so I don't know how to do full screen, but let's go with this. All right, so good evening everybody. As I mentioned, my name is Brian Zamolka. I'm the traffic engineer on the job. Tonight, I'm going to be going through this project, a quick overview of the project, where we're at with the traffic impact report. There have been some recent updates since we've been providing comments. And then we're going to start to address all the comments, the beta comments from the town, the transportation advisor committee comments, and then the neighborhood feedback comments. So just to get started, a quick summary of the project. This project involves the renovation of the existing mill building onsite, and we're going to be constructing two new buildings and renovating two existing buildings to include 130 units, which would include 187 bedrooms. As part of the development, two parking garages are constructed, and onsite a total of 135 parking spaces will be provided, 124 of those in the garage, 11 surface. There's currently a shared parking plan agreement with the work bar, and that will be to provide 40 spaces for the work bar during the weekday, midday in the parking garage, and 10 spaces and nights and weekends. And as Mary mentioned, we are proposing to use three access points that I'll go through later. So this is where we're at right now. This is the existing site and existing site access. So currently the site is being accessed via the three points shown here. So the Massachusetts Avenue West driveway, the Quinn Road, and the Ryder Street driveway. You can see that all three of these driveways have two-way access. And I'm going to go into what we're proposing in the future, but you will note that a butters all have two-way access, and access for them will be maintained even when we have the build out of the project. So what you can also see is there's significant bike accommodations along Massachusetts Avenue. There are painted bike markings, formerly known as shallows, so they're shared with the lanes. There is bike access along Forest and Ryder Street, and then there's direct bicycle access from Ryder Street to the Minuteman Bikeway. There's also publicly accessible sidewalk all around the site. You can see to the site there's accessible sidewalk along Forest Street and Ryder Street, and then directly into the driveway. Currently there is no sidewalk along the Mass Ave driveway, and we'll go into that a little later. You'll also see that there's two transit stops at the Alpton Street Mass Ave intersection. That, I think that's all I wanted to mention here. Let's move on. So the existing traffic study. So if you've reviewed the existing traffic study, you've seen this diagram. This represents all the intersections studied. So we studied Mass Ave at Appleton Street, Mass Ave at Forest, and the West driveway at Pine Court, Queen Road, Forest at Ryder Street, and the Ryder Street driveway. And also we studied the West driveway as it approaches the bridge over the Millbrook on site. Later I'll compare the existing for the proposed traffic volumes, and I'll show you what the existing site generates in itself. So where we're going in the proposed condition. So this represents the site access and mobility in the future. So what we're doing, we are restricting access at two driveways. So we're going to, at the West driveway, it's for the tenants and residents only. We're going to have ingress only at the West driveway, egress only so out at the Ryder Street driveway and provide two-way access at the Queen Road driveway. Please keep in mind that this access change is only for the tenants and residents. Butters will not be have restricted access. They will have two-way access at all these driveways. You will also notice that the publicly accessible route for the sidewalk, where there's a sidewalk along Forest Street and Ryder Street, that would be, it's a publicly accessible route that leads to an on-site sidewalk that is designed to be ADA compliant. The bicycle access, like I said, is not going to change, and it will still be direct access from Ryder Street to the Minuteman Bikeway. So the proposed traffic volumes, this is kind of, I want to touch on this a little bit, because there's this understanding that a development with 130 units is going to generate a lot of traffic, and there's been concern about that. But when you, you have to also think that we are replacing an existing building. So there are a net amount of trips, and I'll go through this, but the result is the net amount of trips is minor when you think about the development. So I want to draw your attention to the table on the bottom left side of the slide. You will see that this development, net trips, is only adding 15 total trips to the site in the morning and 29 trips in the evening. I would say, and I think it can be agreed that that is very marginal for this development, going driveway by driveway. Here, the Ryder Street driveway in the morning and evening is only anticipated to add an additional one trip. The Mass Ave West driveway will actually see a reduction in two trips in the morning, and an additional, only additional 16 trips in the evening. And Quinn Road will see an additional 16 trips in the morning and additional 12 trips in the evening. As I mentioned before, we wanted to use these access points, and we're going to convey the access to the tenants and the residents to provide that equitable distribution of traffic. I want to also note that it's not shown on this diagram, but in the study you will see that we did a capacity analysis, a traffic capacity analysis that measures queuing and delay along the roadways. This development is anticipated to have a very minimal increase in queuing and delay, which is deemed very, very good by traffic engineering standards. So I'm going to move on to the next one. So we also, so when laying out the site and designing the site, we had to determine what the parking demand was going to be. And the best way to do that is to study developments of similar types, similar size, and in similar locations. So the three sites we studied are the Brigham Square Apartments, the Legacy at Arlington Center Apartments, and the Arlington 360 Apartment Complex, all highlighted on this slide. Julia Myrack is going to give a quick couple of bullets about the legacy. So Julia. Good evening. At the time that we built the legacy, which was back in 2000, we anticipated needing quite a bit of parking. We anticipated needing all the spaces that we built. Over the 20 years that we've owned and operated the legacy, we've seen a steady decline in the number of parking spaces needed and the number of parking spaces rented by our tenants. I think that we can contribute that to the fact that we have direct access to the bike path, that there's a bus stop directly in front of the legacy right in the center. And over the years, we've seen that in general, families just seem to have fewer cars. A lot of two-car families became one-car families, and we're seeing a lot of families moving in with just one car. So Brian and his team took this information into account when they were working on this traffic study, and I think it supports the idea that cars are being used less frequently in Arlington than we had anticipated 20 years ago. Thank you, Julia. So I want to take the time to note that at the time we conducted the traffic study, we gathered parking occupancy information through our own counts at the legacy Brigham and Arlington 360, in addition to the information provided by the management offices. And to confirm our data, we followed up with the management and they confirmed that the accounts we collected were representative of their own information. So that was good to note. The results from that parking study says that or generated that .55 spaces will be required per bedroom, which equates to 107 parking spaces needed for the residents. During the midday, because we want to determine there's that shared parking agreement where 40 parking spots are going to be allocated to work park, we want to see what the parking occupancy would be for the residents during that same time. So what we found was there is an 18% reduction from the peak utilization to the midday during the weekday midday and a 9% reduction on Saturday, Saturday midday. So when you combine the necessary parking with the shared parking plan, 124 parking spaces will be required during the weekday midday, that's including that 40, and 113 spaces will be required on the weekend, which includes that 10. So it could be concluded based on our study that 135 spaces would be sufficient to meet the anticipated demand. So this diagram really shows, I want to point to the parking accommodations here. There is, when laying out the site, there was a couple of, there's a couple of butter concerns. Robert Nessie, the Mr. Nessie at the law office, said a couple of concerns that he wanted to maintain two-way traffic flow for himself, the Hyundai and all of the butters. So that's when we, you know, listening to him and the residents, we decided to maintain that two-way access and find the best means to accommodate that. There was also some concerns about excessive speeding coming through the parking lot and around that West driveway. So what we're proposing is to provide a speed bump right at the tip, if you will, of the West driveway, as it meets the Quinn out of connector. As right now, it's kind of the preliminary means, thoughts of traffic management. We also want to clearly mark the parking restrictions at the Nessie law office. So we're going to, we're working with Mr. Nessie to come up with the best signage to be used to really restrict parking there. And we want to provide clear demarcation of where residents and work for our parking are. Now, I'll show later in the presentation, we are providing a diagram for all tenants and residents, but the signage is kind of further indicates where the resident parking is and to that they will not be able to use any of butter parking. So the other concern was the Rider Street. And this came from the neighborhood. They wanted to be a limited amount of traffic from the work or generated by the work bar on Rider Street, which is why we have allocated to exit only and we're restricting turns to left only out there. And that's so residents and tenants do not use the Beck road neighborhood as a means to leave the neighborhood. And there are additional provisions that we are making that to manage traffic that we'll go through later in the presentation. So the transportation demand management. This is a long list, but in the report, we've we listed quite a few things. We listed the orientation packets, bicycle accommodations, electrical vehicle charging, shared car services, transportation, onsite transportation coordinator, a project website and a transportation monitoring program. Those all will be in place to provide additional transportation measures. But we all I wanted to highlight here. So after we received comments and received the feedback, we went back to the not back to the drawing board all the way, but wanted to expand on the measures and provide more. So just a quick run through of this and you could read it yourself if you if you want. But each new resident will be provided the information to the transit alternatives, as mentioned before, to be $100 gift certificate for the apartment on lease execution, 5% of the parking space will provide it for electrical vehicles. All resident parking will be charged at market rates for reserved and unreserved spaces. We're going to provide a continuous accessible sidewalk to the project along Millbrook, as I mentioned before. As the there'll be an onsite coordinator, our site transportation director, sorry, with active piking, parking, biking and transportation management, there'll be short term site parking for ride share deliveries, there's your parking, there'll be interior and exterior bike parking. There'll be bike repair and maintenance stations within the building. And all parking for resident work bar tenants will be controlled by either sticker or placard or some kind of indication that they have, they're allowed to park there. And as I mentioned before, there's going to be a shared parking with the work bar to accommodate the 40 spaces during the weekday midday and the 10 on the evenings and weekends. So back to this tenant diagram that I said. So this is, will be part of the orientation packets. This will be given to all the, the abutters, or I'm sorry, not the butters, the tenants and residents showing the access that has to be, that's allowable. So you have the one way in West, the West Drive way off Mass Ave. You have two way off Quinn Road and you have left only out out of Rider Street. And this will also indicate the abutter parking only and that no tenants or residents will be allowed to park there. And that's noted on here by the red highlighted areas. So I have more to the presentation, but I kind of wanted to take this opportunity to open it up for the comments if everybody's okay with that. For the beta and the transition advisory committee comments, but Greg, that'll be fine. Greg, did you want to jump in at this point? Sure. So I don't, I don't, I don't have slides to review, but we have had some back and forth. We have, and, and fortunately, Brian's got it right here in his presentation. We, we prepared a letter with our initial review dated February 16th and we received responses back from, from Brian, from niche last week dated March 9th. And so we've had a couple conversations with Brian since then to go over some of these comments. And I don't know if the board members have had a chance to read through our letter, but you know, the focus, there were some, there were some minor details of the report and the responses have already provided clarification on those, just to make sure we understand the conclusions that are being made, the numbers that are being presented and that was, you know, clarified pretty directly and clearly. There are primary focus of our comments were access and parking. And so I think Brian has effectively presented the intent of the site layout, the intent of the access, the connectivity for pedestrians for bicycles, the control for vehicles of the various site access points, and the program that they undertook with regards to parking. We're still, we're still not quite on the same page in agreement with how they've justified that parking demand, but I think we might just need a little more information clarification on that to make sure that we have, that the site provides adequate parking. We also had some comments related to the site layout, which we would expect when we see, when we see, although the site layout plan was included, some of the garage layout was shown with the vehicle, passenger turning movements to show maneuverability into the spaces. We had some comments there that we'll clarify once we see that full revised site plan package just to make sure because, because the parking will be shared between the work bar tenants and the residents, we want to make sure that the garage is maneuverable. The work bar tenants will be, you know, more frequent in-outs. It won't, you know, not residents that, maybe not residents that use it every day. And so we want to make sure that those combinations of uses can be accommodated and can share that space within the garage. So that's just a quick overview and I'd be happy to answer any of the board's questions on the specifics of our review. Thank you. I don't believe anyone is here from the transportation advisory committee. We do have their comments here. I mean, if you want me to just go through them, I mean, I'm not going to go through them. I wouldn't go through them all because a lot of them do echo beta's comments. A lot of them are in agreement, provide this more information. So it's, they do echo a lot of each other, but the transportation advisory board in their comment letter, I do want to point this out, had some recommendations for the TDM program Now, I want to note that beta in their comment letter had agreed with the TDM program that we have provided. And that's prior to us outlining all the additional measures that we were going to take in. But to highlight what the TAC said is they recommended having MBTA subsidized passes. Now, we looked at that and we thought, well, we're only expecting about 20% of the residents in tenants to be using transportation as a mode of, or transit as a primary mode of transportation. So we feel that offering the bike room with the special amenities and the transportation coordinator and everything else we have will entice the use of the Minuteman bike trail and shift traffic away from single occupancy vehicles. One of the other comments they had is requesting a sidewalk along Massachusetts, the Mass Ave driveway. And we are limited by right-of-way and pure infrastructure limitations. So the Mass Ave driveway is only right now 20 feet wide. Being that we want to maintain a two-way abutter access for Mr. Nessie, the Hyundai, and all the abutters, we cannot narrow that to provide a sidewalk. The second reason is the grading on that driveway is not the best. It does not meet ADA accessibility to build a new sidewalk. For a new sidewalk, the longitudinal slope is 5%. And as you can see on the right drawing, you have slopes at 6%, 12%, 10%. So there's that physical barrier that will not allow us to provide that sidewalk. But as we showed before, there's the publicly accessible route to the Rider Street driveway via Forest and Rider that leads right to that ADA sidewalk that's going to be built on site. Can I just add one thing? As a matter of law, we could not alter the in and out access of the two abutters who have the right to use that easement, even if we wanted to. The property, the MyRACs have the dominant easement, but they cannot alter access by either returning a Nessie or the MyRAC dealership next door as a matter of law. Thank you, Mary. So now I want to dive into the neighborhood feedback, which is great feedback. I really appreciate these comments up front. So I'm just going to address these one by one. So the first one is the volume. Comment is we don't understand why Beck Road wasn't included in the measurement as it was the primary entry and exit points for vehicles on our block. So I mentioned that before. And Beck Road was not within the primary study location because it was not expected to be impacted, greatly impacted by the development. The fact that we have traffic restricted to left only out forces no site generated traffic to go right and use Beck Road as a means of egress and go through the neighborhood. The second comment, the patterns. So a Tuesday and Wednesday in February isn't representative of the volume on our street as most of the neighboring businesses are dormant in the winter and more active other seasons. So as traffic engineering standard, Tuesday and Wednesday are considered average days of the week. And February represents volumes at a 3% lower than your peak month, which is why in our traffic studies, we increase the volumes that were counted by that 3% to represent the peak month. So with and then with regards to the DCR on Rider Street, these trucks represent a very small percentage of the overall network volume. So it's not anticipated that they will significantly or at that all affect the traffic analysis. However, the DCR was taken into consideration when restricting access to minimize the interactions. So the mix, the mix of pet volumes. So this is our biggest concern as we have a high volume of pedestrian traffic either on their way to the bike path or middle school, as well as atypical heavy equipment, which this study may not account for. So volumes were obtained on Rider Street and what we gathered was there was 32 pedestrians during the morning peak. Interactions between the existing pedestrian traffic and vehicles are not anticipated to change because as I showed before, there's only going to be an increase of one trip in the morning and one trip in the evening. So as I mentioned, we don't expect a change in interactions there. Parking. So Rider Street has a parking deficit which gets overwhelmed on a regular basis as is displacing access for residents. Is this being taken into account in the current study? So as we mentioned before through our parking study and the parking accommodations on site, we are not anticipating residents or tenants to park on Rider Street. Significant parking will be provided even with visitors, guests, and short-term parking. So we don't anticipate any site-related cars parking on Rider Street. So to the qualitative assessment, the existing signage markings and no sidewalk. So I wanted to bring this slide back up again. As we mentioned before, to control the site traffic and improve Rider Street, the proponent is proposing to add the no right turn sign at the Rider Street driveway. Going to repave Rider from Forest to the driveway and I'll show you the diagram of that in a second. And install wheelchair ramps at the Kondo Complex driveway at 9 Rider Street. And in a later slide I'll show you that too. So the blind turn. The turn from the 1165 property onto Rider is blind due to the line of park cars and elevation change, which is even more challenging when you consider the unpredictable nature of the vehicle movement on our street. So this section of Rider is a private way that we cannot change parking regulations to. What we can offer at this point and what we recommend is to have a conversation with the town about these changes in hopes that they can assist in this issue. Variable geometry. Our street is a glorified parking lot which varies in width and condition leading to unpredictable behavior. We understand the neighborhood's concerns about this, but as mentioned we do not anticipate the development affecting parking on Rider Street. So onto the viable alternatives. Access points. Are two access points necessary for a development of size? Developers said they have built complexes larger than this with one curb cut. So why are two being proposed? Well, they're actually three being proposed. The access, the points aren't changing themselves. They're still access points to the site. However, we are limiting mobility through them. And we're doing this to provide, as I mentioned, an equitable distribution of traffic so as to not concentrate all the impacts onto one location. And when I say impacts, they are minor, but we want to make sure it's distributed anyway. Mass av access. The intersection of 4th Street and Mass av is one of the most dangerous in Arlington and the state. How much safer would this be if entry exit point was moved from 1165 Mass av, which is 80 feet from that intersection to 1125 Mass av, which is 450 feet from the same intersection. So 1125 Mass av is adjacent to Quinn road. So we actually are providing that access point there. I apologize if that was not conveyed properly in the report, but I hope that everybody now through this presentation can understand what we are providing for access. Suggested improvements. What infrastructure improvements would you deem necessary to accommodate the current design in a way that meets existing standards for what is essentially a shared street? So as I mentioned, some of the improvements that we're considering, reconstructing the wheelchair ramps at 9 Ryder Street driveway. I pointed those out on the diagram or the area on the left. And you can see the picture on the right of the two non-existent ramps at that driveway. So we'll be proposing new wheelchair ramps with detectable warning paddles to meet ADA compliance. Repave Ryder Street from forced to the driveway that's denoted by the blue highlights on the left. And also install pavement markings for crosswalks on Ryder Street to improve pedestrian mobility. Anticipating change. Anticipating change. There is a high likelihood that two additional adjacent properties would be developed in the next five years as well. How would this change the estimated usage and design recommendations? So all project aspects, and this is with every project that we do, all project aspects anticipate future projects coming online. The town is when we're doing the study, the town is contacted to identify any information or any projects that are in the site or in the proximity. Future projects, the future projects were built into the future traffic estimation. And also they were built into our design for site access and parking accommodations. So then there was this next slide about the disproportionate burden. We reviewed the graph and it is very informative, but it does not accurately represent the site's Ryder Street utilization. I just want to focus your attention back to the Ryder Street volumes. And as I've shown before, Ryder Street, as it's going to be utilized by the development, is only expected to increase the traffic one trip in the morning and evening peak hours. So as this shows 135 cars with the 100 utilization factor of 2426, we see this as not as impactful as that graph represents because the volume, the net volumes is very low. So that concludes my presentation and I will pass the torch on. Thank you very much. Mr. Lucas, did you have anything for if you wanted to add? Yeah, I just had some points, some summary points based on the community feedback. You know, a confirmation of some of the things that Mr. Zamolka said. The back road wasn't included in the study because the site isn't anticipating sending traffic onto back roads, specifically their proposing signage that would restrict turns towards back road onto Ryder Street towards back road. So there would be no increased traffic on back road. With regards to data collection, yes, February we have adjustment factors where that could be adjusted to an average month and so that was done as part of the study. Tuesday and Wednesday are appropriate days to do traffic counts. Typically we do those during the midweek, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are considered typical days. Just looking quickly, the Mass Ave access, it was stated that the intersection of Far Street and Mass Ave is one of the most dangerous in Arlington and the state. The data that was collected and it doesn't necessarily back that up. The data was, they revisited the crash data from the initial study in the response, and all the study intersections had crash routes that were below the statewide and district average, Mass Ave district average. So also there are maps publicly available online that show high crash locations based on crash data and this is not flagged as a high crash location. So that may be overstated. There may be a perceived feeling of safety. I'm sure that that exists. But the actual crash data doesn't suggest that. As far as additional adjacent properties that will be developed, known developments were factored into the study. Future developments, we don't know what those are. And those developers, it will be their burden to determine what the trip generation is for their sites and how that impacts the abutting roadways and how it relates to what's being proposed at this time. Obviously you handle these applications as they come in and this same process will exist for those anticipated future developments. Yes, and the disproportionate burden graphic is an interesting study in comparing a number of cars by frontage, but I'm not sure exactly how the data was determined and the number of cars that they attribute to this site doesn't match what we're talking about for peak hourly additional trips. So I think while it is informative, it may be somewhat misleading. So that was our take when we looked at this document and I think a lot of those points align with what Mr. Zmolka just clarified. Thank you, Mr. Lucas. Questions from the board? I have a question, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Dupont. So I'm just trying to get a better sense for the flow on Ryder Street. So first off, can people turn from does Mass Ave, does Ryder Street intersect with Mass Ave? No. No, it does not. So I'm sorry, then from Forest Street. So can you go, if you're turning, if you're on Forest Street, can you turn at the end of Ryder Street and go up toward Beck? As existing, you can turn from Forest onto Ryder Street up to Beck. However, as mentioned, we're restricting turns out of our site. Right. And that was my next question, which is, how is that enforceable? Because you're going to have a sign and get that. That's no right turn. But, you know, you do have traffic going in both directions past the entrance there, or I guess it's the exit. So I'm just curious, I mean, you would hope that people would follow along with the sign. But is there any way that that really can be enforced? Maybe I can jump in here, Brian, real quick. I mean, we're going to be orient the new tenants, the new residents before they come to the traffic patterns. We're going to be giving them, you know, kind of a tutorial, if you will, on the mobility options and encouraging the bike use and basically training them on where to park and where not to park and how the cars can come in and out. And that's going to be actively managed by the on-site management company, which is their on-site in person and available 24-7. And lastly, you know, the kind of the legal hook here is that is something that we will be building in as a responsibility within their lease. So, you know, if there is a reoccurring problem, there's somebody to call, and there's recourse that we can take through their lease. So just to clarify, you're saying if people were to repeatedly take a run-over turn, that that would actually be covered in the lease? Yes. It would be a lease violation. Yes. Okay, thank you. Absolutely. Questions for the board? Mr. Chair, I have one question, clarification really. You say that the traffic study was performed in the morning and the evening, but what times of the day were these at? I didn't quite catch the time of the day, the traffic studies were pegged. Was it a specific time or a general time? Yes. So for traffic engineering standards, for a residential development, we study the weekday morning peak hour, peak period, which is 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., which is peak commuting traffic for morning, and then the evening or afternoon, however you perceive it, is 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. So when we take, when we study the peak hour, it's the highest volume, the highest hourly volume within those two hour time frames. Okay. And then you mentioned the net effect was, didn't change much, which I assume was from the commercial to the residential, but is there a way to color it or maybe put it in some late terms, just to give us some general sense of what maybe, I assume the residents may imagine what commercial activity was like in those businesses, which my experience was that they weren't terribly heavy and a big apartment may feel like that, maybe more, but my question really is, can you quantify it for us in a way that we can understand what the basis of a commercial activity for that space was versus residential activity is? I can't, you know what, I can share my screen again and I could bring up that slide that shows the driveway difference. Here we go. Here we go. So let's look at the, I mean, I'm trying, I, if I can, I want to try to, you know, respond to your question appropriately. So I guess you're asking what the existing trip generation is and what the future is and that's how we got the net, am I understanding that? Correct. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Okay. So that's, that's a fair point. So when we are doing these, these, you know, large sites, there, you get the trip generation of the overall site. So you can see that existing the site in the morning was 100 trips in the evening, 86. We use standard traffic engineering methodology, which is to estimate the number of trips for use. It's done with the, by the Institute of Transportation Engineers trip generation. It's a compilation of, it's a rate, the trip generation rate based on national studies and that's used as a baseline for the trip generation. And then what we do to obtain the mode share, so the number of vehicles versus number of pedestrians versus transit versus bicycles is we, we look at various documents. So we looked at the master plan, the 2015 Arlington master plan. And then we also looked at the census, the US census track data and what when we worked with beta and we looked into this more, you know, more looked into this more, we found that the census track data more accurately represents the trip generation. And given the proximity to the Minuteman commuter bikeway and the transit, we assumed that there's about, I want to say about a 65 to 70% use of vehicles. So after all that, so we obtained the trip generation of the building, distributed it based on the volumes that were obtained. So the existing traffic volumes for each driveway. And then we took those volumes and took it away from the site. And then when we tried to, when we calculated the trip generation for the proposed development, we distributed the traffic based on the access that we're proposing and the the natural distribution of traffic throughout the corridor. So a lot of traffic on MassAb and not as much on forest and very little on Ryder. So that's how we got those net volumes total for the site and for each driveway. I hope that answered your question. If not, it could provide more information. I'm sure you technically answered it very well. And I apologize if that went over my head. But maybe the comment maybe the comment is you've got an office building that has, I don't know how many tenants, you know, 10 tenants. And there may be a perception or at least I can imagine there being a perception that this current existing office complex has, it feels like less usage than the size of the residential complex coming in. But what I hear is that the difference in usage from a vehicle standard is about the same. And it just didn't make sense to me. And that's what that's what I was just trying to understand the differences. That's all. And maybe what you've said is is the answer and and you can't really dumb it down anymore than that. But it was just to try to to under physically understand the differences that that's all. Yes, I mean, if you have any further question beyond this, and I can definitely sit down with you and explain more. Yeah, maybe that's a good way to address. No, that's fine. Thanks. That's all, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chairman, if I may. Yes. Yes. So in response, in response to that comment, and just in attempt to summarize a little bit more of what Brian just said. So we calculate the existing trips for the office building based on rates that are captured in the Institute of Transportation, transportation engineers, trip generation manual. We reduce that based on what we expect from Mo chair to say how many of those trips, which are people are actually cars, which are, you know, vehicle volume, and then do the same thing for the residential development to determine. So now we know how many trips we expect the existing office to be generating, how many trips, vehicle trips we expect the residential development to be generating. And that's that net difference that was shown in the presentation. Brian, was it 15 in the morning and 15 morning to 29 yet 30 30. So, you know, so it's not based off an actual count. It's based off of an average of all offices. It's big. Yes. It's based off an average of all offices. I see. Okay. And so, you know, and so those those 15 in the morning and 30 in the afternoon are actually really good numbers to understand because 15 means one every four minutes, 15 over 60 minute period, one every four minutes, 30, one or one every two minutes over 60 minute period. So that's the expected new trips to be generated in addition to what already may be generated by the office. That's how many new trips you'd see one every four minutes in the morning, one every two minutes in the afternoon. Okay. And we concur with that methodology. We concur with that methodology that's appropriate from an industry standard, the methodology that that Brian is that Mitch has used in their in their study. Mr. Chairman. Yes. On page eight of the, I think it's the beta comments. There's a table there that involves mode different mode split arrays. One of them comes from the master plan. One of them is labeled TIR and for cars at least it's 5% less than the master plan. And then the census tract is 74% as opposed to the master plan 72%. So I'm assuming that from this point of view, the using a larger mode split to for cars tends to be conservative, right? That that that that would maximize the number of entrances and exits by cars at these locations. And I just wanted to clarify, I thought that Mr. Zamolka said that they determined that the census tract mode split was the one that was the most important, the most appropriate. And that one is also the highest one at 74% for cars, which is a little higher than the master plan and a bit higher than the TIR. And I just wanted to verify that that's the case. And that if that's true, then presumably the, you know, the actual predicted generation of traffic is influenced quite a bit by the mode split. And what I gather was used here was a relatively conservative one that used a relatively high allocation of trips to cars. Is that the right way to read this or am I missing something? So you did, you have read that correctly. What that table represents is kind of the comparison between what we use in the initial study and the revised study. So what you're you're seeing in the master plan and the census tract data is 5% higher. But what, when these mode shares are calculated, especially the master plan, it takes into account all of Arlington and the census tract data takes into account a very large catchment area. This site is very specific in terms of it, we can put more emphasis on transit and biking because of the proximity to the transit, the bus stops, the commuter bikeway, and the mass av accommodation. So that's why we are able to modify the mode share slightly, but we are still very conservative in keeping with with the general study that the town and the U.S. census has concluded. So for the calculations, Mr. Chairman, if I could follow up, if the calculation, the calculation you actually used in the projection of the trips in and out, just to be clear, was that used, did that assume a 74% by car mode share? And if not, what number was used? It was the 69% because it was the so you are reading it correctly. You are reading that graph or table correctly, except the incorrect column, because what we're using the the revised TR is the adjusted mode share because of the proximity to the bikeway in the transit. Okay, got it. Thank you. So you are reading it correctly. Thank you. So, are there any other questions from the board? I have a couple that nobody's chose. Okay. So, coming out so that the the Rider Street, you had spoken specifically that with the no right turn on to Rider Street, then there'll be no traffic turning then left on the back to go out to forest. And just confirming obviously the the opposite direction doesn't make any sense, because there will not be an ability to access the site from Rider Street, is that correct? That's correct. And the tenants and residents will be aware on day one that they cannot access that way. And then is the so the reconfigured bridge over the brook is will that be a two-way bridge? That will be a two-way bridge. But for the there we have I don't I don't want to bring the slide again but we have the way finding signs that do not enter and the all traffic turn left that will be immediately once you coming south exiting from the site, you will be hitting the face with that signage and also be pavement marking saying you cannot residents and tenants cannot use the Mass Ave driveway they must turn left onto Quinn Road. If you're if you choose to go out to Mass Ave anyway the alternative is to go out to Rider Street. So there so that it is possible for residents and tenants to get to that point but then they would have to turn left to go down to Quinn Road they would not be allowed to go forward and again this it would be a lease restriction that should you choose to violate it then you're in the violation of your lease. Correct. And then coming in off of Mass Ave so that as you say it's a 20 foot right of way which is pretty much 20 feet right now curve to curve so there's not room for a sidewalk. There is a telephone pole in the middle of the street. Is that being relocated as a part of this project? Want me to address that Brian? Sure go ahead please. The the we've looked into the logistics of relocating that telephone pole and not not to say that we closed the book on this but it does not look like there's a a viable and achievable path to move that pole. And and our project is powered off of a different entry point to the site so you know we'd certainly be open to considering if that pole can be removed but what we're doing Mr. Chairman is leaving the condition the same as it is today. Today it is a privately owned property by the proponent with access by the neighbors. The telephone pole or the utility pole is there it does not meet current standards but it is what's in place as a lot of things in this world that we build on and around and we are not actively pursuing changing that because it doesn't seem to be feasible with the limitations that we have to ourselves. I mean that pole would have to be placed within this 20 foot right of way presumably unless we could work with the neighbor to put it on another on on their property and we're happy to have those conversations we've certainly initiated those conversations but you know we have to have a path forward to move the project and we're leaving this condition in the way that it's operating today and not making it worse. Is the clarifying something you had said is the does the pole serve this development and others or does it who does this pole serving do we know? This pole serves a number of the abutters okay yeah so so it would seem like it's easy to just kind of scooch it over but the utility company says well you can't really put it like that at all and by the way all the services that it serves are kind of antiquated we don't do it that way and so it becomes this kind of impossible Rubik's cube and so we're not throwing in the towel on the ability to solve it but I think this project alone can't solve it and so if there's the will to solve it with the abutters then we're happy to you know do our part but we're not relying upon that pole for our power okay thank you thank you and then so it's been a some time there to on site today uh so walking around um the the sidewalk coming down Ryder Street where it crosses over the brook um there's about a foot drop off at that end of the sidewalk between the sidewalk height and the grade so I just want to bring that to your attention if you're not already aware of it that making that an accessible pathway is going to require some effort at the intersection of Ryder and the property exit drive and the other thing I would like to encourage the applicant to consider is having a pedestrian path to the bikeway the bikeway receives you know as you have noted you know it's a it's a bikeway there's a lot of bike traffic that goes that way there's also I would think a fair amount of pedestrian traffic from the project that would utilize that also with the athletic fields and the playground and their their town rink on the opposite side from there it is something that the tenants can reasonably be expected to try to utilize depending on I'm not exactly sure about the which school districts they fall into I don't know if they if the residents would be headed in that direction I think they are in the Pierce District so they may head that way I don't quite know but that's another consideration for pedestrian access and currently the sidewalk ends at the driveway at the where the migrant property meets Ryder so I would I know that the the property it is a private way and the properties are under multiple ownerships and I have tried to sort of instigate a look into seeing if it's possible to determine who actually has ownership over these parcels and whether this is something that could be considered but I think if if that sidewalk could be made continuous from the corner with Mass Ave onto Ryder and then from Ryder all the way to the bike path I think that would be be a worthwhile amenity not only for for the the residents of this new development but I think it also addresses some of the issues that have been raised by some of the local residents that you know that the use of Ryder Street is often considered dangerous especially because everyone's out in the street I think that would be a useful thing the other thing that would be highly useful and at least in my walk today is some of the abutting businesses tend to use Ryder Street the full width of Ryder Street as a parking lot as opposed to parking on the side of the street and that is obviously that is an enforcement issue with abutting businesses violating the terms of the right of way through that area and that's you know not anything on the applicant but I just wanted to to raise as a concern that you know this is a that the whole Ryder Street corridor is has a lot of issues about it that need to get addressed and many of these are beyond the area that are involved in this project site but but they're sort of tangential and there are things that that ought to be considered if not as a part of this project should be considered it's sort of a more holistic approach to to Ryder Street so that I don't know if there are any other comments from the board um none um board now mr. Klein may I just respond very quickly yes I'm sorry just to not leave your comment under unaddressed um the pedestrian path that we are going to be constructing along the mill brook taking a left onto Ryder Street we've studied the existing grades very closely and with paying full respect to all the existing historic structures there and the you know the concrete and stone wall that the brook runs through without touching any of those and compromising them in any way we are going to correct the grades and build a handicap accessible path an ADA accessible path from our sidewalk along mill brook on to the walkway that is on Ryder Street going over the brook and we the condition you point out very stutley is something that we focused on and so when we come before this group on the 23rd of march and we focus on site design related issues we'll show you our approach to that so thank you for pointing that out I'm glad I'm glad we we're already on that one um and uh secondly uh you know the the pedestrian pathway to the uh to the bike way down Ryder Street you know I I think this is kind of a legal issue that goes beyond our control uh we we own half of the right of way coming out the Ryder Street connector taking a left under Ryder we own half of that Ryder up the forest and we're offering to repay the entire width of that not just our half um and uh in respecting where the neighbor's yards already kind of encroach into that right of way and we're offering and we believe it city or town owned property rather to uh repay the um the existing sidewalk and do the wheelchair ramps uh that Brian explained um and but we all that's obviously someone else's property so we have to get their consent and permission to do that um but we think that would be a big improvement for the neighborhood including our project um going the other way down Ryder uh you know we we don't really have a a mechanism to do that we don't own it we don't uh um there isn't a sidewalk uh to my knowledge that is continuous that runs along there so uh our hands are a bit tied with regard to that so um I just wanted to give you the feedback that we we've looked really hard at these things to try to understand them from a practical and an ownership perspective and uh we're trying to address the ones that we um that are in our control that we can try to stretch to have in our control and and do the right thing and do what we think is our proportionate share of that right thing thank you thank you um so now we'll open the meeting to public comment uh so public questions and comments will be taken as they relate to the matters at hand and should be directed to the board for the purpose of informing our decision to provide an orderly flow for the meeting the chair will limit individual speakers excuse me to three minutes each and use encourage them to use their time to provide comments related to the topics discussed this hearing uh the chair will grant additional time to allow any questions to be answered please note there are multiple hearings scheduled for this project and each hearing will have the opportunity for public comment chair also encourages the public to provide written comment to be reviewed by the board included in the record so the procedure for requesting to speak will be the same as for the previous hearing please select the raise hand button from the participants tab and or dial star nine if you're joining us by phone to indicate you would like to speak when called upon please identify yourself with name and address will be given time for your questions and comments all questions to be addressed through the chair please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps us generate accurate minutes once all public comments and questions have been addressed or the a lot of time has been expanded the public comment period for this evening's hearing will be closed as noted previously there are multiple hearings scheduled for this project and each hearing will have an opportunity for public comment and the board and staff will do our best to show documents being discussed if you'd like a specific document to be pulled up during your comments please ask us to do so quick note Peter Marianoz you go ahead unmute yourself uh name and address of the record and hope you're still you're still muted sir sorry is that better that is perfect thank you hi i'm Peter Marianoz i live at 17 back road and uh i'm definitely of concerns like a lot of my neighbors do um has anybody actually physically measured the width of rider street we've done a very detailed survey of the land that we own in rider street and that continuous piece from the rider street driveway connector up to forest but has anyone actually measured the width of it like where rider street meets forest because every time i go up it i have to wait for the other guy coming the other way so it's just not wide enough to support two-way traffic right rider street is uh it's a 40 foot right of way it's constricted on the nine rider street side by the cars that are most of the time parked there and on the other side by the encroachment of the neighbor's uh landscaped area into that roadway so that's why it's near okay because um i like i say i mean do you guys anticipate removing those parking spaces because as it is two cars can't go down it at the same time um as you say claire has there been any discussion about the the owners um stance on parking on rider street in what it is well it it's it's privately owned land with public accessibility and we don't own it so we can't uh we can't say you can't park there we believe that's town on land where the cars are parked in front of nine rider on the opposite side that is your property correct it it it is where and where the yards encroach on it you know it it it would not put us in a popular place to say we're going to come and tear up people's you know front yards that encroach on the road and pave it as roadway so christian i think your question is are we prepared to say that parking along the side of a rider street that the myrax actually owned by deed um they'll agree to that i i think they probably would that was my question thank you i mean i is that a fair statement daniel nobody on that side i think as it is anyway well we're talking about the north side yeah i'm talking about where forest meets rider like that little small intersection that needs repaving that just seems like a very small area to support the amount of traffic that you want to that you want to i guess have come down come down that way um and i was also kind of concerned about the the amount of trips in the morning and this goes back to mr. zamalk about the 15 and then the 30 15 in the morning and 30 in the evening i mean if you've got all those people coming down that one way and then you got let's say one of the butters or me or somebody wants to come down rider there's already going to be a swarm of vehicles trying to take a left on to you know on the rider when we're just trying to cut through so i mean it just yeah and that's that's a that's a fair point but you have to um we you have to look at it net wise where we're not changing the existing condition much as it is we're only increasing if i one trip and we're also own we're restricting it to egress only to limit the amount of traffic on rider we we understand that the neighbors have concerned about the use of rider street and we want to um you know take that into consideration so we did with the access restriction any further oh sorry um yeah and uh i like the idea of the sidewalk going down rider street um and i've heard a lot of talk about you know about you know good access to the bike path but um i would like for some of the board members or you know some of the other people that are watching this to actually come down rider street in the afternoon slash evening because there is a huge um block there is a trying to think of a nice word of saying this there's a lot of traffic down rider street especially down by the end by the landscaping company because they have a lot of vehicles there that frankly block the entrance to the bike path a lot of the day and i've got a lot of pictures and such uh you know relating to that and even a video of a child on a bicycle i just happened to be going down right at the right time he was going down rider street and i'm like well maybe that was a good time to record this because there's two big trucks blocking the entrance and then of course you had to stop get off his bike and maneuver around the vehicle so there's just not a really good clear entrance there to that bike path when it really should be it's just really overrun by commercial vehicles at this point mr chairman sir hanlon could i could i just ask a quick question i go up i go i go walking it through on rider street and up to the path quite often but probably not as time of day that you would think is the most revealing uh and i wondered if you could just tell me if i can pick times to go up and walk around there and and see the way this looks in a in a in a in a in the way that you'd like to show me what would be the right time of day anytime after three o'clock would be great okay so some three to six is that basically absolutely okay thank you that'd be wonderful thank you sir on the list um nicole weber sure thank you um 14 rider street um first of all christian thank you for coming and visiting our neighborhood and seeing all its inequities as far as what's happening um in the in the street really um brian can i i'm i'm a scientist so i would really like to see your calculations along with erin and patrick i think i need to see how you got to the number you got because the 15 does not make sense to me um living here it just does not make sense and so if you could share that how you got to that calculation it would be wonderful um how are we going to monitor parking on rider street i know you think that residents or friends of residents aren't going to park on rider street but i don't think so so how are we going to monitor that are we going to have like a rider street neighborhood you know sticker that the police actually go and look at whose parking where and what's allowed um the speed bump location is not going to help the middle schoolers going to school um if you repave that area in the beginning of rider street um that's going to speed up everybody coming into rider street and i have a middle schooler and that's going to be a big deal um so we have so the amount of pedestrians that you have in the study as well is kind of concerning um this is a huge throughway for middle schoolers um adding three percent to your calculation doesn't seem enough for me um from your engineering um calculations uh the sidewalk i love and daniel as far as you said beyond our control um for this area i really feel and i think my neighbors agree that if we have the access point on rider be pedestrian and bike only that would be a huge relief for us huge relief and i think that is within your control you already have two other points of entry and i think that would be a really big changer for us as a community we're dealing with all these other things the town of arlington has the recycling right next door to us right now we're trying to survive and have kids walk safely on these streets so we need to come together and see the systems at play and actually support us as a community thank you thank you so much thank you miss weber um i'm going to address the first uh do you want me to go walk you through the calculations now or i can provide you i mean we the provided tir uh has the calculations um i can be offscreen let's find okay two individuals who are both mariah contraris so i will go with the i'll let just the two of you figure out which one wants to go first he's pointing at you ma'am going to go ahead yeah it's happened last time as all can you hear me i can hear you fine thank you mariah contraris i'm a homeowner at two rider street just like last time um so i i was putting my toddler to sleep at the beginning but i'm aware i've become aware of mention of a deed of apparently our house is encroaching on and i'm just hoping to obtain the book and page number of the deed we can we can provide that it's on the altar survey the documents that were filed it shows the survey or shows that um the yard substantially encroaches into the right of way and part of the port do you have a front porch as well uh my my residence is not but the um attached condo does okay then the that part of the porch is on there as well and that's a historic building just i don't know sorry yeah so on the altar survey is the actual book and page number of the deeds as read in part of the register if not i can provide it should be on there thank you um and then i have another clarifying question um in terms of so that just historically from whenever june on we've as as residents as the butters we've received varying information about two access points versus three access points we've been told that at one point quin road was not an option because that was the other mirac family that they would have to turn to cover bed uh and so it's it is confusing to us to constantly have to consider and reconsider two versus three and quite honestly versus what we think should probably be one access point um for this project um but given the current information that we provided tonight i'm curious if the um if it is supposed to be out at an egress point onto rider left only is that also true for um cyclists who should be following car auto rules in our no not for cyclists yeah and yeah we want to we want to maintain that um access for cyclists because they we don't want to restrict them to go to the Minuteman back way and so is there to be a separate cycle cyclist lane on that egress and i guess and they can go in that way too cyclists can go in that way yes and would is there going to be any sort of um safety consideration for the cyclists of the building or they expected to use the roadway driveway uh they are as standard they will be using the the driveway there's no separated demarcation and there's no intended for this for the safety of the residents there's no intended um separate cyclist path on that part of the road all bike accommodations on rider street and around and all the abutting roadways are going to stay as existing no i'm sorry i'm talking about uh the tent your tenants so when they egress if a cyclist wants to go from the building to rider street do they have to use the the driveway or do they get their own safe um cyclist lane i see what you're saying okay um so right now the they will be using the um the rider street access because i believe that is the only access point in the area and diane will correct me if i'm wrong but i don't not believe there's going to be direct access to the minivan bikeway no but i think the i think the question is is there will there be a bike lane on the on your property site that is parallel to mill street just you know on its way out to i'm broke on its way to rider street there will not be a separate um divided bike lane there is a separate divided pedestrian walkway and then the driveway is for both cars and bikes but it's anticipated that it would be one direction for cars and two directions or bicycles correct and and bicycles can make a turn that drivers cannot yes correct okay i think just as as a concerned neighbor um that that leads to a lot of unpredictability for the automobile drivers and that is amidst all the unpredictability in the street so in term as someone who commutes via foot cycle and automobile um to it may be of good consideration to include a bike path especially given the differing rules um for and for the um safety of what automobile what autos can predict i also have a question uh regarding repaving rider street so um as nicole alluded to um i sit on that small our property sits on that small part of rider street that's right at the the t intersection there and quite frankly the potholes are the only thing that's slow traffic down and i would not i would i would stand in the potholes before they get paved over um so i i'm i'm noting that there are other measures being taken on other egresses and ingresses for this project and i would hope that there uh is well to think um um appropriately as as such in our eyes about safety measures that could be um completed on on rider street if there's a will of all the butters or whatever sufficient minimum of butters needs to be had for that but there's no i'm i'm hoping to clarify whether there's there's no innate permission like you'd have to only pave quote-unquote what you what you own or have deeded and not the whole street without permission we would have to we would have to work that out with them there are provisions um under town bylaws about paving of private ways so the better but the betterment issue with the town would require a certain percentage of a butters to agree to that right no the applicant would pay for it but the applicant would pay for but it would be the abutting neighbors so it would not involve it would only involve those properties that directly abut the portion to be paid so my understanding of like betterment funds is that at least two-thirds of the residents have to agree to betterment of the private way I do not know that offhand do you know that rule if the if the town is going to assess a betterment two-thirds of the neighbors on the private right of way but the the applicant is going to pay the betterment so there's um no need for um agreement I mean the the agreement would be between if the town indeed took the side of rider street by the condominium association it would be an agreement with the town for the my rec family to pave that portion of the private way from the exit of rider from the exit of the property up to forestry and so then what responsibility for different considerate what different considerations have not taken place for rider street that our parent next to the anisees property like why haven't those been considered for rider street there's plenty of creative modern solutions for slowing down traffic and I'm glad to hear that the car counts won't be that much more this is all assuming that the status quo is safe it is not so I just again the status quo the number of cards that we have now is not safe no neighbor no abutter thinks that and so I don't understand why there hasn't been creative aesthetically pleasing anything like no consideration for rider other than an egress only so you and the egress only being a left two left turns a left turn on to rider a left turn on to force my grandpa would have a field day with this safety wise why would you have the left turns take place onto a pedestrian and cyclist heavy road so the logic is really is really skewed to me and then the current like level of neglect to potential you know safety additions to rider is it's really really concerning to me well let me just say this I don't think honor hold on what's it um we do just need to move along so I will ask that the that the applicant considers consider traffic calming for that end of rider street I was just going to say chairman Klein that we have given a consideration I was going to reiterate what they were but we'll we'll consider some traffic calming as well thank you appreciate that and lastly we have not heard any so we've had an issue already with the the equipment and I say equipment it's like a it's a huge piece of equipment someone else can correct me whatever it is that's already been used to drill in the parking of the existing parking lot of the tenant and already whatever vehicle is needed to take that uh loader off has parked on Forest Street twice um Arlington police have had to intervene because that can't fit down the road so I am very curious we've heard nothing about the the schedule of of construction and how vehicles will be accessing the site there when it's already obvious that such vehicles are are going to be extremely disruptive to rider street the the process for construction it will become will be a part of a forthcoming discussion um but it's because it's it's more construction related rather than traffic in general related so it's it'll be coming in at a future year okay thank you so that will be a topic absolutely thank you um so the second Murad Contreras hey can everyone hear me we can oh yeah this is Alex T also living at two Ryder Street um again I think a lot of the anxiety um and nervousness that you're feeling uh from the abutters is because our neighborhood is just be typical right we don't we're not going to trust these engineering standards that apply to a general population when we experience you know strollers having to avoid excavators every day when we see kids riding down on tricycles right and then we see contractors you know pulling through this which should probably be a three-way stop checking their phones speeding off to their next job site uh in an uncontrolled intersection and so I think for me what gives me hope is that you were able to come to the table with Robert and essay and figure out how to resolve those issues the thoughts around kind of the the forest rider street intersection like painting a sidewalk and putting an ADA accessible that's great like that starts to really address things um and I think for me the intersection that has worried me most is where where the the egress point is going to meet Ryder I 100% believe these are quite easily addressable right uh again speed there are so many ways to control speed I would love to see uh you know uh Brian and and you know uh Greg come to the table like hey here are the seven ways we can do it right there are raised sidewalks there are stop signs we can do um you know uh wide and sidewalks it again the opportunity is there and so again I think building off of what you were saying uh Mr Klein at the beginning there there's a lot of will here in the neighborhood you know the Lollicott has owned that neighboring property I think there's a way to get the right constituents to the table and I know there's this uh this meeting on the 23rd we want to be a part of that you know I think part of the challenge for us is that we've just felt really blocked out and frankly steamrolled it's a feeling I'm not saying that's actually what happened but that's how it feels um and again I think we there are just so many qualitative uncontrollable non-standard things about our neighborhood that that's what we want to address we want to sit down and try to work through those with you um so we can kind of have a better a better place for every for for all you know the things that I would want us to consider is what is going to be the impact on the property if we make that an ingress point versus an egress point I don't know that's what I would love to understand from from uh you know Brian what are the opportunities to have a raised sidewalk right there right so it could be a both a speed bump we've seen some beautiful executions of that in Somerville and other places to really slow down traffic uh again I'm sure there are some creative ways we could uh at least paint some lines on the pavement to kind of make a a bike way or a pathway um but again you know just last week we saw like a car didn't know where to turn because trying to avoid another car and it was pointed right at a stroller those are the things that we see every day and again it's really hard to capture that in a number in a table um and so again that's what you're hearing us to respond to and we want to just make sure that the kind of qualitative observations that we have sensed and lived and just clenched uh you know day after day that that gets addressed and again we want to be part of the process and as helpful as possible um we just we just don't know the right avenues and again this is all new to us so again if you can give us a forum uh to really come to the table and be collaborative um we're more than willing yeah these are these are great uh comments about traffic coming um definitely going to go back to the table and see what we can do to um help come traffic in your name thank you uh Tom Taylor oh sorry one sorry one more thing yes please quickly I would say 10 30 a.m. is a really really great time that's when contractors are speeding off and and you know uh trying to get to their next job uh noon is another great time and then of course when everyone's rushing home trying to get home 4 p.m. is another great time so again just because of the nature of our traffic is so commercial right now that is kind of the uh the harrowing hours okay thank you and the middle schoolers yeah um Nicole you might know this better but from my knowledge can you move on to that to the next speaker please yeah middle schoolers at 3 15 starting anywhere from 3 o'clock to 3 40 and it's really important to see the middle schoolers walk through thank you mr. Taylor Tom Taylor hi um uh mr. Chairman Klein and board members and presenters uh thank you for making time for this um I live at 23 forest streets which is at the end of Rider and we've been here since 94 and I just want to echo a number of comments that folks have made um for a February time study to be considered as representative of the traffic especially during the construction season and now with DPW it doesn't the 3 percent adjustment just as uh it doesn't do it and so one request I would have is that the board consider doing a time study and a traffic study in June or July if you have all this lead time to uh before construction evidently starts I would just ask that be a consideration because it's not only the business vehicles that come out um and part daily it's it's all the workers um many of them are low low low paid uh construction workers and so they drive in um and I can't tell you the number of years we've had to put signs out on the street to say please don't park here and that's both at the condo building at our property um I'd also like to make a comment about the encroachment at the end um that was done uh I would say around 2000 maybe a little bit before uh my wife and I um made every effort to put up signs to slow the traffic down um and it wasn't out there in the beginning but the construction vehicles just roared out of there they were trying to you know get to their construction site bring materials etc but they destroyed um uh the number of bushes uh the big rocks are out there to slow the construction trucks down on the way out and on the way in because we just have really rapidly moving vehicles uh in the neighborhood so um the encroachment uh on a general road my wife and I have already talked about adjusting that uh however uh we do want the traffic to go slow as opposed to fast and that's one way that we in our private road uh can do that we can get it slowed down uh because typically uh it is very speedy traffic um so I would ask the the the board consider scheduling or mending or doing an additional uh traffic study during the the summer hours um the other thing that I would mention is we have the ice rink in the park uh on the other side of uh the end of rider street and while it may not be in the direct purview meaning the space of the development um during the summer there's hockey there's uh uh there's soccer there's lacrosse and the other the big uh parking lot uh tied to that facility um is often full and what happens to rider street is the overflow of parents and families come out on those nights and the road is jammed there is no way that a large truck when everything is parked for those public meetings could get through so I too am uh encouraged by some of the efforts that the presenters have made in developing the process and taking it into account some of the the safety issues but um I really hope that the board will take the time to do another spring uh traffic study I'm sorry summer traffic study and I think that's about it for me um so I want I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak and uh we really are interested in creating and working with the developers to make a project that's safe and uh meets the needs of of everybody so thank you I appreciate the opportunity thank you mr. Taylor um cool weather for a second time thank you um so I wanted to mention that a lot of residents feel like construction's already happening we've been having a shaking um household experience in the neighborhood that I want to put on record and to um the middle school time is they're supposed to be at school at eight uh what is it 8 30 and they get out at 256 so time around that would be important to monitor and the exit way that you're proposing with this building would coincide with their entry to school um that is directly um an issue so if you reverse that it might be another option but um just something to note thank you just briefly um the house shaking you were describing is there a particular time of day or date or I will give my residents uh my fellow my fellow neighbors space to share mr. t I think the uh the the biggest moment was just when the excavator I think was doing some soil sampling and so it's one of the bigger excavators I've ever come seen come down the street I think it vaguely cleared the power lines and uh yeah no it felt like world war two and just you know these big tanks were running running right through the street so again we understand that's going to be part of the process I think um we we just I mean I'm concerned about my ancient foundation falling apart through this process that's a meeting for another day um again I think a coordinated disruption or are there alternative temporary measures where we could access the site from the other side whole host of options out there but it is a uh active concern and so at the very least some heads up into when this was happening would be fantastic as we are all conducting work from home well taken thank you any further public comments miss lawyer hi I'm sorry I couldn't find the uh raised hand it was not on my screen I'm at 12 pier street just across far street from rider street so at that kind of crux of an intersection I want to reinforce a lot of the comments that have been made already about concerns about increased traffic and speed in this general area um I think that none of I mean very little attention was given to pedestrians in the various reports I thought and um obviously the odyssey school students are a big important part of it I I see kids going up and down I walk up and down rider street myself a lot to go to the bike path um it there's a lot of people that walk up and down that street all the time and the sidewalk that's there now is really not useful to people that are going down to the bike path hopefully I mean it sounds like you're going to be improving it and fixing the grade at the end of the by the brook there and that's great um any other dish other traffic comment has been discussed I think will be great to um control people coming in and out of rider street at forest not very little has been mentioned about forest and mass av intersection which is also a problem especially in the morning um there's a lot of traffic that comes down from turkey hill that come that comes down forest to mass av that's a that intersection backs up all the time people then use um my street pierce street to get away from forest to cut through to hit mass av you know further west um that may increase traffic um but that's a bad intersection in and of itself forest and mass av and and this whole complex of forest pierce mass av that whole tiny block there plus there's going to be new commercial activity at five forest street anyway it's it is uh I think mr t said it's a it's a messy strange neighborhood with lots of different uses and a lot of historic problems that have never been resolved but and I know that you the the virex can't solve all of these but just to be aware of the the complexity of this neighborhood small small neighborhood I mean it's a really yes just a small number of streets but it's it's very complex um so anyway thank you for they're thinking about all these things I did I did send a letter in for the record so thank you um just on that on that topic of forest and mass av reminded me um the timing is unfortunate but the so the town has a a study group that is looking at the intersection of massachusetts avenue and appleton street and appleton place okay and so their first meeting is um next week march 23rd at 7 p.m. um which coincides beautifully with our next meeting um so I just want to make sure that people are aware of that um and I believe that there's a there is some I I received it through some mailing lists from town so um but if you reach out to the the senior transportation planner um through the department of planning community of development uh that's Daniel hamsteads he can help you um get hooked up with that group if you're if you're interested in looking at some of the mass av issues um which I think that this appleton project will probably look a little more holistically hopefully uh within those streets um mr tea for a second uh you're you're on mute though thank you uh my my guess my main question here my only question is where should we direct ideas or observations to um I feel like so far it's been a little bit of a game of telephone where it's been hard for us to get on the same page and I may have created a lot of unnecessary work for you all as well is there an opportunity to connect directly with brian uh and or greg in this process I'm not sure about that mrs o'connor I think it should be uh filtered through me okay um do you want me to so I can I can send you um mrs o'connor's email address if you want to get in touch with her uh because she's the the attorney for the applicant she can put you in touch with um with her team um but certainly in talking through um this evening I'm wondering if there's possibly an opportunity for sort of a a little bit of like an offline conversation that could happen you know a meeting that wouldn't necessarily need to be a meeting of the the zba but would be an opportunity for some members from the community to speak directly with some members of the design team and uh possibly some of the the consultants for the applicant if that's something that we might be able to to try that would be that would be highly desirable if it's a possibility all right I will talk to my people and we'll set something up okay um I mean I just want to remind the board that um my client reached out in June to the neighborhood and um made a presentation and made the traffic study so um they've been prepared to communicate with the neighbors all along okay I think that'll be that'll be helpful um I'm looking around see if there's anyone else who's anybody with there anybody waving see nobody waving typically we allow people to speak twice and Ms. Webber will give you a third um and that'll be the the last public speaker for today sorry um I just wanted to respond to Mary's comments like we were so excited about being part of the conversation we gave a lot of ideas we just want some follow through on some of the issues we're having that's it and we're and and we're seeing that but we just want to take another another step right so with that I'm going to close the public comment hearing period for tonight's meeting um are there further questions or comments from the board it's on public input Mr. Hanlon um I just wanted to uh say just to so the point doesn't get lost the discussion that we had a little while ago about I believe it was Ms. Webber who brought this up but I mean you might be misremembering that about the structuring of the bicycle access and its relationship to the automobile egress on from the side onto right of street struck me as a problem really in some ways it's largely a problem of the people who will live in this in this community but as a problem that that required a little bit more thinking through it did seem to me that the what was being described to us by Mr. St. Clair was a little bit disorderly and the idea of having people take their bicycles and turn left into an egress that for the bicycle is two ways but for the car is only one is potentially dangerous it seems to me and I wonder if there's if there if when you think of it as a problem and just think about trying to solve it with Mark Lane's or or I mean there must be a large number of solutions which are not necessarily big ticket items I just like to encourage you to give some more thought to it and see if that's a problem that if it really is a problem and you could persuade me that it's not if there's evidence about that but uh that if it is a problem it ought to be soluble and it'd be nice if you would take a look at it thank you chair may I interject yep so Mr. Hanlon thank you for your comments I agree that uh Ms. Contreras comments about how we can maybe better manage that traffic flow is something that we can't address and they're in like likewise I think you know I want to just point out to people we came to this meeting today offering to do some things that we had not offered to do before we were deliberate about studying what the what the problems were and gathering comments and this has been a useful dialogue you know and what what we offered was to do an upgrade to the sidewalks and repaving the whole right of way in the section from forest to the Rider Street connector and if that's not the right response or the desired response you know we can redirect our efforts in other ways and I do think there are a number of things with signing and pavement marking and other things that would maybe be a better solution for all parties involved and we are committed to getting there so we'd like to have that conversation sooner rather than later you know there are limits to what we can do but we'd rather channel those resources in a way that we think people are going to see the greatest benefit so you'll have our commitment as a proponent to do that we look forward to having that conversation with this group sooner rather than later and addressing the neighborhood's concern and Mr. Hanlon's underscoring of those comments in a constructive way. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions from the board? Seeing none. So the so I've arranged with the next hearing on this project 1165 RMS app will be held on Tuesday March 23rd at 7 30 p.m. over Zoom. The topic for that hearing will be stormwater wetland and riverfront aspects of the project. So Mr. Hanlon can I have a motion to continue? Mr. Chairman, I move that the hearing in this case be continued to a date certain of February 23rd at 7 30 p.m. Just correct me to March 23rd. Excuse me March 23rd. February would be a step backwards I guess. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you Mr. Mills. If we run down the list. Mr. Dupont. Hi. Mr. Hanlon. Hi. Mills. Hi. Mr. Rourke. Hi. Mr. Ford. Hi. Mr. Gerevlak. Hi. We are continued. Thank you very much. Thank you all for your participation in tonight's meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. Appreciate everyone's patience throughout the meeting. I wish to thank Rick Valorelli, Vincent Lee, and Kelly Lanema for all their assistance in preparing for and hosting this online meeting. Please note the purpose of the board's recording of the meeting is to ensure the creation of an accurate record of its proceedings. It's our understanding that recording made by ACMI will be available on demand at acmi.tv within the coming days. If anyone has questions or comments or recommendations, please send them via email to zbaatown.arlington.ma.us. That email address is also listed on the ZBA's website. So to conclude tonight's meeting, may I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Second. Second. Thank you, Mr. Mills. All board members in favor of adjournment, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? The board is adjourned. Thank you all so much for coming this evening. Thanks. Thanks, everybody. Good night. Thank you. Thank you. Bye, Don. Thank you.