Speaker 1: I had like to call the session to order at 6:34 PM At this time will those in the room who are able please stand so we can say the Pledge of Allegiance and observe a moment of silence, Speaker 2: Pledge allegiance, all to the lack of United, the United States Republic One Nation under God Individual Justice, justice spr. Speaker 1: Thank you. Just have a, a few announcements before we begin. The first announcement is that the Historic District Commission is looking for volunteers to serve. If you're interested in serving on that committee,
we've extended the deadline till for another two weeks as there are inadequate numbers of persons. And I encourage you to go onto the website Under boards and committees, go to the historic district commission page and there's a little button where you can apply. At this point we will go into public speak. Any individual may raise an issue that is not included on tonight's agenda and it'll be taken under advisement by the board. There will be no opportunity for debate during this portion of the meeting due the requirements of open meeting law, this section of the agenda is limited to 10 minutes and any individual addressing the board during this section
of the agenda shall be limited to three minutes. Is there anyone in the room who would like to address the board during public speak? Seeing none, I'll ask if there is anyone in on Zoom who would like to address the board. Seeing none, we'll move into discussion and decision. Discussion of the main Street improvement project. Mr. Griffiths, would you like to begin? Yes, Speaker 3: Thank you. We're just going to share a presentation with you all. Hopefully should get that up in just a minute. Speaker 4: While that's getting prepared, if I can just do just a brief, brief, high level. I wanna give thanks to Morgan for tackling this project.
It's a project that actually it's been ongoing for many, many years. The town actually initially appropriated funding over 10 years ago to try to do some work along Main Street. We've only recently gotten traction with some of the, sorry, just making sure. We've recently gotten traction in the last couple years with, with some funding that came through us from the state. And I want to thank our, our state delegation for securing those funds during the pandemic to help advance some of the design work. And it started with the consultants they have here under Mark COO's tutelage, which if people can recall, mark Coviello is our former town engineer.
Then he retired and came back in a part-time capacity working in community and economic development when I was the director of that department helping us manage the North Main Street project and the Constitu Rail Trail project. And then I tossed this project to him and he did a great job with it, but he officially sort of further retired, I guess is what we could say. And it sort of tossed to Morgan and it's been, we all knew that this project was going to get a, a lot of attention. It warrants a lot of attention. It's it's main street, it's our core corridor in town with the, with you know, a lot of character, a lot of history, a lot of, a lot of, a lot
of just people that utilize it. A lot of competing interests. A lot of competing priorities. And really what's been happening today is just gathering all that information and throwing a lot of ideas out there with our consultants, McFarland Johnson and seeing where, where the community sees things, where we see things, where some of the data sees things going with the, the future design of this stretch. And tonight is just that next step. We're not going to have a final decision tonight. We're not asking for the board for a final decision tonight. Ultimately it's the board's decision because you're the roadway commissioners. But we are trying to just get some further direction
in the process as we move forward 'cause, 'cause we just need that at this time for the project. So without further ado, Morgan who's our great and talented transportation slash economic development planner and to, to take it away to give us a little bit more of the history and a little bit more of how we got to where we're today. So thanks Morgan. Speaker 3: Thank you Jamie. So hello everyone and thank you for your time this evening. As Jamie said, we're here to talk with you about the main street corridor improvement study, which is a project examining potential improvements to bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure as well
as lighting, wayfinding and street scape design on Main Street in Natick Center from Cottage Street to South Avenue. And apart from me, so my name is Morgan Griffiths, I work as the Transportation and Economic Development Planner for the town. Apart from me, the project team also includes Bill McDowell and John Giacomo from DPW as well as Wing Wong and Bo Conley from the firm McFarland Johnson. I'm joined here tonight by Bill and John as well as Wing and Bo. So this evening's presentation we'll touch on the project background, summarize the public engagement we have
conducted so far and present two main design concepts for the corridor that we have created. Both concepts propose similar improvements to pedestrian safety but differ in their proposed accommodation. For bicycles. It is important to emphasize that these concepts are not final designs, we'll not necessarily be proposing or constructing exactly what you see on the slides. Rather each concept represents more of a guiding philosophy for how the corridor could look depending on how the town would like to accommodate different modes of travel. The concepts sit more or less at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms
of bike accommodation and what we will eventually be pursuing for full design may well lie somewhere in between the two depending on the feedback that we get. So we've even started to explore the idea of mixing the two concepts as you'll see later. So this evening we hope to get direction from the board on the general concept that it would like us to pursue during future phases of the project as well as support for a grant to fund this work. So we will then wrap up the presentation by discussing our next steps. So the main street improvement study is a three phase project.
We are currently nearing the end of the first phase during which we are analyzing existing conditions and gathering community feedback to create a preferred design concept for the corridor. We hope to turn this concept into a fleshed out design in phase two and construct it in phase three pending funding and community support. While timelines are flexible and not yet exact, we estimate that we will be working on phase two over the next two years with construction not starting until at least the late 2020s or early 2030s. So it's important to note that several other multimodal design
and construction projects have recently been undertaken along Route 27 in Natick. These include the reconstruction of South Main Street from the Sherburne Townline to Cottage Street, which included new sidewalks, four foot shoulders, enhanced crosswalks and bike markings. There's also the ongoing work that the MBTA is doing to improve accessibility at the Natick center station and bring the Constitu rail trail into Natick center. Then there's MAs dots reconstruction of North Main Street and the 9 27 project which will bring new sidewalks and bike lanes from North Avenue to the Wayland town line. And you'll notice that even
with all of these projects there's still a small gap in multimodal accommodation along Main Street that's number six outlined in orange here. And so this is where our project focuses. So the roadway in this area is in relatively poor shape with pavement condition index ratings below 50 on a hundred scale, meaning that pavement and sidewalk, the pavement and sidewalk in the area will require upgrades fairly soon. Meanwhile, new density regulations and an anticipated influx of residents to the area are also driving the need for both traffic and bicycle and pedestrian improvements. Knowing this as well as the fact that protected
and well-connected multimodal networks can increase both safety and people's interest in walking and biking, the main street improvement study hopes to close this gap to provide full multimodal access along the entirety of Main Street and to improve access to the Natick Center MBTA station and the constituent rail trail. We hope to do this in a way that is sensitive and responsive to the needs of all of our corridor stakeholders. And with that I'll hand it over to wing for the remainder of the presentation. Speaker 5: Thank you Morgan. Good evening everyone. You all hear me? Okay and can you all see my cursor on the screen? Yes.
Okay, great. So for this project, we actually just divided the corridor into five different segments and that is because each of the segments is slightly different in terms of characteristics. So when it comes to design, they all have to be sort of treated and looked at a little bit differently. So, so starting at the southern end, near Cottage Street all the way up to the gas station, we call that segment one from the gas station up to Common Street, we call that segment two. And then between common and pond, we called it segment three from pond to West Central, the the signal lines intersection,
we call that segment four. And finally we have the downtown core, which we call segment five. And so the project design itself, the concepts we really try to follow the Natick 2030 master plan goals that are outlining here in these three in particular, improve safety for all travel modes, reduce traffic congestion as well as a safe and active street life in Natick. So those three keys really was what guided our concept development throughout this project. And so not surprisingly, our project goals, safety, pedestrian space, mitigate traffic congestions became the
three goals that are in line with the master plan. And so before we get into a little bit that some of the research that we've done in terms of safety issues, the one that I want to draw your attention to is in the state has this data, they do a lot of formulas and look at holistically all the crashes. And what they have identified is there is a, a crash cluster in the downtown area, but they do look at this on a higher level. But they do identify this as a top five area for pedestrian crashes between 2012 and I believe 2022 in that range. And so complete streets, you know, you don't have
to take my word for it, there's a lot of organizations nationally that have done a lot of studies, you know, fac for example the US DOT for is another that talks about how great, you know, providing complete streets in the downtown area like this to improve quality of life. So there's a lot of quotes here and, and you can easily search that on the web to sort of back this up is why multimodal is important and and is the future. Even FXWA has done extensive studies and have data about crash reductions that bicycle accommodation is provided. Here's just one clip of that 30% reduction
for a corridor like we have here in the downtown area. Again, I'm not gonna read it, but it's from the same FHWA study again talks about how it can reduce congestions and, and again improving safety in general. Lemme get into parking a little bit and this, this topic is probably gonna come back later on when we get into the concepts. The town itself is produced three different studies at three separate times in terms of parking in the downtown quarry area, 20 13 20 18 and 2023, the 13 and the 18 ones were of relatively comprehensive.
The 2023 were more of a space count. That was actually done by the police department that's here. Now the interesting thing is with all those three studies, the parking demand level varied by each. So depends on which one you go to. 2013, the inventory, there was still some inventory left, it didn't hit hit the maximum 2018 showed I was close to the maximum. And in 2023 was again kind of back down to the 2013 level. So really depends on which one you pick. There's a little bit of different results on that. But you know, what we can take away from that is that parking supply is generally available outside
of downtown core and more way finding sounds, signs are recommended. So those are something that we would definitely wanna incorporate into this project when that does become reality those way finding signs. So we have done a lot of stakeholder engagement since the project started in 2023 on this particular slide is, is a quick recap of that. Starting in 20 23, 20 24, we, we held meetings with property owners, business owners. We had an online survey. Actually just curious, how many of you have actually taken the online survey that was released last summer? Great, thank you. So you're gonna see some of
that data reflect in the, in the slides if you haven't set through this presentation yet. So then fast forward to this year, we met with quite a few of the towns committees starting with the transportation committee and then we met with safety economic development and then today we're presenting to you the, so just a quick summary on that. We want to get feedback from the community abutters and then the town committees itself. And so I'm gonna just do a quick recap of the survey results from last summer. There was over 400 responses, so thank you all who participated. That's a, that's a great number.
So initially what we saw was that, you know, a lot of the residents live within half mile. They're about, you know, middle age 30 to 50 years old. And these are the folks who's using this role are using the downtown area all the time. The survey results are shown, you know, either daily or weekly, but most of 'em do drive alone, which is something that caught our eyes and in terms of what they're using it for, shopping, restaurants, the library. So a lot of this probably isn't surprising to you and the numbers don't add up to 100 as the rest of the survey goes because there are multiple choices that you can pick. So you can select more than just one answer
and that's why they don't add up to a hundred. It, so the survey, in addition to those multiple choices, there was also an area for open-ended responses. And so this, there's, there's a lot of them so we couldn't show them all on screen, but I think if you look at this, we try to summarize this best we can and you're gonna see that in the numbers later as well. There's a lot of comments about pedestrians, some about bikes, certainly some about safety. And those again will show up here in the numbers themselves and especially the critical issues here to the left of the sly. Certainly one of the higher ranking ones is dangerous vehicles, absence of bike lanes and walkability.
Those three things sort of jumped out at us. And then in terms of project types ranked by importance, the bike ling one also jumped out at us. If you see the blue strip that's down here, that's the folks out of the 127 who voted for this particular topic over half, almost half of that voted that has their top priority into that category. So that's, that's something that jumped out. Now as we continue on with the survey, most folks responded in terms of segment four and five has the areas needed the most in attention. And that's not surprising man, that's the downtown core from
Pond Street all the way up to Sal af. So it's not, it is really not surprising in that. And then if we go over to what's on the left here, the top issues, you know, certainly in in intersection improvements jumps out, traffic calming jumps out. But again the penant bikes also jump out as well in terms of one of the higher ones. And so again, some more open-ended questions. It looks like there's a lot of opportunities in this downtown area for the community and how you see, you know, it will become in the future. So really this is, this project is about you and there's some really great responses in there about
what you could see as a future. Sure. So before we jump into a little bit more, I want to point out that mass DOT, the state transportation department in 2022 rated this area has a medium potential for everyday biking. So that's a few years old Now we do anticipate that this year this area becomes a high potential for everyday biking because of all the other improvements that haven't done that. Morgan mentioned starting with south main to the south you have north main up top with the bike lanes coming in, you have the trail coming into the area and you have the, the train station there's there as well.
So there's a lot of pedestrian bike traffic potentially that are coming into the center area here. So the state does use a formula to figure out what is high potential, what is medium potential. So we do anticipate that eventually that's gonna take it back up given everything that's happened around the area. Speaker 6: Alright, Speaker 5: So now I'm gonna jump into the two main concepts. Concept one, we called it the limited bike accommodation concept and in concept two we called it enhanced bicycle accommodation concept. So with these two concepts there are still some similarities
and similar improvements throughout. So this couple of slides gonna kind of go through that and I'm gonna walk your way through, but I want to sort of explain the big difference between the two concept is limited by accommodation, bikes will ride with traffic in the travelings, whereas the enhanced bike option bikes will either be have their own bike lanes or be separated from traffic completely. So that's really the two main concepts of the two. Now as we get into it, you know each of these two improvements still include some improvements
at the Cottage Street intersection. We've heard a lot of feedback about that. There's some confusions about turning movements, who has the rights, who doesn't? So we are gonna look at that and try to see if we can make some improvements at that location. So that concept is consistent between the two. We do want to move crosswalks where possible to improve visibility of those mid-block crossings. We do wanna shorten crosswalks, whatever we, whatever we can. So Pond Street is a great example, you know, certainly if we can shorten that, that helps improve pedestrian safeties and you know these bump outs down here that are shown
with this arrow here. So those bump outs, I think you already have some in the downtown already, but if we do a little bit more of that, not only does it serve as a traffic calming measure, but it also really does show and know those crossings really make it safer and more comfortable for, for crossing around here. And all of them should again reduce the crossing distance at the 1 35 intersection. The two concepts do vary a little bit over there and I'm gonna get into a little more detail there. But that is a focus that we had. Court street we talked about maybe converting that into a one-way. There have been many past studies the town has conducted that recommended looking into some recirculation
around the downtown area to reduce conflicts, a little bit of congestion. So Court Street was one that we identify as potential option to change it into a one way. And not only that, it actually provides an opportunity to add a little bit more street parking because it will then become one way. So parking again is something I will talk as we move along into the presentation. So in this particular concept what we are showing is a little bit controversial but it's called a reverse angle parking. As you all know in the downtown area currently it is a angle parking, you just pull right in and you park
and you have to back up to when you leave the space with this particular concept as I mentioned before because bikes are gonna be in the row riding along with traffic as you are backing up, the bikes are really gonna be in that vulnerable spot because as a driver is, it's hard enough for you to see vehicles right as you backing up and now you gotta look for bikes as well. So that's why under this particular concept we're offering, we're proposing that reverse back in parking. And I know there could be a lot of questions that come up later, I'll be more than happy to answer those.
As Morgan said, nothing is set in stone. It is a recommendation as a concept. It doesn't mean that's ultimately what's gonna be installed, but it is an idea that because of the bikes and where they are gonna be located. And then at we talked about, you know, adding some more, again reducing the crossing space, having some more bump outs, reducing those crosswalks as you head south there it's, it's a little bit wide area so there's a lot of space to cross site distances in the greater. So the more we can shorten that up, add some additional warning signs for pedestrians which certainly will improve safety in that area. So now as we go to the enhanced bike option,
you're gonna see that there's a little bit more of these green lines that we're gonna zoom this in a lot more as we move along. But really the idea here I wanna show you is just a lot of these improvements are exactly what you just saw. So they're all consistent with the only difference that this concept proposes parallel parking as opposed to angle parking. The reason for that is in terms of spacing, having parallel parking and a separated bicycle accommodation actually provide a much wider pedestrian area through the downtown core while still accommodating bikes.
So I'm gonna again walk through that in detail but that's really the biggest difference between the two options at the downtown in terms of parking and I'm also gonna get into more of that. So now what I'm gonna do with these next few slides, I'm gonna walk through every single segment. I'm gonna show a section view of the existing conditions and sort of compare the difference between each of the concepts and then zoom in on the plan view of where that segment is located. So for example, segment one Carter Street to the gas station, existing conditions, you know, two foot shoulders, 11 foot lanes roughly the sidewalk's
about seven feet wide, pretty comfortable. So, but you do have right away right at the back of sidewalks pretty tight. That's what segment one looks like. Now if we go into the limited bike option, what we're trying to propose is more or less keeping that traffic travel lane more or less the same but we are taking a little bit of space from it and adding it back to the sidewalk. So your sidewalk's gonna get a little bit wider in segment one Under the limited bike option, as mentioned before, the bikes can be riding together with traffic in the tra travelings. So here's a blow up version of that. These are cost share markings.
You might've seen that throughout the state in your travels. That basically informs the drivers and the bikers that you're allowed to travel in the same lanes. In terms of colors, I just wanna go to 'em real quick. The darker gray is the roadway footprint. The lighter gray would be the proposed sidewalk and then the aerial map is just your existing condition. So as you can see the back of that black line there, we're trying to match the existing back of sidewalk there as much as we can, but you notice that the lighter gray there gets a little bit thicker and actually into the existing a little bit more and that's 'cause again we're winding the sidewalk there.
So segment one, you do have that benefit there. So now we're gonna get into the enhanced bike concept within this segment. So now we are proposing to add dedicated bike links on either side of the row. So now bikes are no longer riding in the traveling if you're driven through south main, this is very similar to that situation. In fact we're we're gonna be one foot wider in the shoulder than we are in south main North main street. This would be very similar to that. Again, bikes will have their own links but we gotta take space from somewhere. So we are reducing the traveling slightly.
Again, that also has a traffic calming benefits and also a safety benefits. The sidewalks we are taking away a little bit but they're still above five feet, which is your, you know, minimum for 80 DA compliance. So we've still got seven feet sidewalk there through this area. And so here's a planned view of that. Again, the same colors from previous but what you will see is that the bike ling symbol with the arrows are now provided and there's a solid shoulder line if you will, on on on the side of the row and that's really where the bikes are gonna go. And then you see these green dashes here,
I believe they are in South main as well. And that's for to provide additional enhancements, visibility for bikes that hey for your car driving on those side roads coming up, watch out for them. And so that color contrast kind of try to help bring that that there is a bike lane there. So now we're at segment two, this is from the gas station to Common Street. And so the difference between segment one and two is there is now a parallel parking on the west side of the row. The sidewalks are still relatively wide, seven and a half feet versus 11 and a half feet but very narrow shoulder. So that's existing conditions.
If we go back to concept one with the limited bike accommodations, we are again keeping the same travelings, keeping the same parallel parking and we're gonna be extending or reducing sidewalks, depends on where you are but it's generally gonna be staying roughly the same with the sidewalk width overall. And again, bikes will be riding with the cars in this particular situation area. Here's a planned view of that same colors again, you see the shadows again, the lighter color is the sidewalk, a proposed sidewalk and you see the parallel parking that's along the road, those are not being taken away at Common Street itself.
We are adding that additional curb bump out. So the effort is there to try to reduce the crossing from anyone who wants to cross Main street from the west side or vice versa from the common that distance is shorter. Additionally, we are proposing to add do not block intersection marking and you know we've heard a lot of feedback from the community that cars tend to queue up heading north in this area and sort of block anyone who might want to hit south and take a left to common. So having that mechanism there to indicate
that don't block the intersection hopefully will help traffic flow a little bit better as you've taken south and taking a left on common itself. So now as we go to the enhanced bike concept, same two travelings, we're again maintaining the parallel parking but now we are have dedicated bike lanes on either side of the row. Space does have to come some from somewhere and the sidewalks does lose a little bit of width there. But again we're still providing that five and a half feet including curb which still meets your A DA requirements through this area. And so here's a plan view of that.
You now get to see again the dedicated bike lane all the way through along with the parallel parking that's here. We have the green markings, again the gas station's a busy driveway so that's a, that's a gray area to kind of enhance that visibility there. The improvements that I just mentioned about at common, those are consistent on this concept as well with the do not block intersection marking as well as the bump outs for shorter pedestrian crossings. So now we're moving on to segment three. It's a shorter segment, it's common street to Pond Street. And so under existing conditions there is now parallel parking on both sides of the road.
Two travelings and again y sidewalks on either side with the limited by accommodation option we concept. So say the parallel parking again is gonna be kept. We are reducing traveling to be consistent with segments one and two for traffic calming measures. And so because of that the sidewalk will get a little bit wider by a couple of feet or so. And so here is a plan view of that. So Pond Street is here, common Street is to your left and we are adding these bump outs again to help shorter make pedestrian crossing shorter but that also serves as another function. We also heard a lot of feedback about cars that are parked
near Common Street, kind of blocking the view if you're coming out upon. So by having this bump out there that really forces those vehicles to kind of be a little bit further south and that should open up the sight lines a little bit more, make it a little bit safer to exit out of Pond Street. Additionally, we've also had feedback as well as our own observations. There are times when the cues from 1 35 ends up blocking past pawn so then cars on pawn don't have that opportunity to join the traffic. So again we are proposing another do not block intersection marking in hopes to really help traffic flow in that regard.
And so with the enhanced bike accommodation option, we have the same two travelings. The bike lanes are gonna be on either side of the row, we're still keeping the parallel parking on either side and again space will have to come from somewhere from the sidewalk but in this case is a little bit wider than segment two but not as wide as what it was existing conditions. And so here's that view of it here, which same type of improvements both at Pond and Common. Now one thing we are starting to transition into this option because we're now getting into the downtown quarry area under the enhanced bike concept is we're starting
to take the bikes completely off the road so they're totally separated from traffic. And so that's just what you see on my cursor here. So if you're riding on the bike lane, you are now taking off the row and this darker gray area that represents the bike, which I, you'll actually be able to see it on the next slide there and you do have a little bit of buffer space but this is where that transition we're proposing for it to happen. So segment four existing conditions, now you're at the common area between pond, pond street and 1 35. So you do have four travel lanes, a couple of turn lanes
as well as parallel parking on the west side there and fairly wide sidewalks 'cause you are at the common area and with the limited bike accommodation option, we are maintaining those four travelings but we are making them a bit tighter. Now again, to be consistent with the other three segments, bikes are riding with the, with the cars in those travelings. So your sidewalk gets significantly wider under this particular concept. And here's a plan view of that. So bikes, if you want to turn go through, you will have to ride with the bikes under this particular concept but we are trying to narrow this area quite a bit.
So that's why you see the sidewalks are the light gray is sort of hanging over the existing roadway footprint on both sides. So that's where we got that width from. So this is a good time to probably talk a little bit more about the 1 35 intersection. So as part of this project we are proposing to fully reconstruct a traffic signal at this area, at this intersection as well as really retime it to optimize operations as best as we can. Some of the feedback and observation that we we have heard and have seen is that when there is a pedestrian pressing a signal for themselves to cross all
of the travel lake, all of the lakes tend to stop and get the red so that the pedestrian have time to walk through with that though it does lead to some inefficiency with traffic operations. So we're trying to balance that out a little bit. And so the NTOR, what that means is no turn on red blank out signs. Now these signs, what they can do is when there is a pedestrian call, when that button is pressed, these signs will then light up to restrict right turn on red, but if there are no pedestrians right turn on red would be allowed. So it's sort of a balance between safety and operations
and you don't have to look too far for an example of the blank sign if you travel on North Main, a couple of those have been installed, I believe it's General Green and Lake Street. I believe both of those do have them and I believe they are functioning now at this point. MAs data I think just installed them and, and this should be good. So now if we really want to improve traffic operations, the only way to really do it is to add additional turn links. And as you all know, space is really limited at this location. So this sort of guess where I'm getting at is there's no magic bullet for traffic
unless you're adding more links. So the best that we can do with the signal timing and some link configure adjustments is keep the operation the same as they are today, 10 years from now. So we are essentially making, we are making some improvements but it's not gonna be the drastic one unless we really do something drastic. So as we go to the enhanced bike accommodation concept in this area, again four travelings the same. Now you will notice that the bikes are now on the same elevation has the sidewalk itself. So that whole area is basically one, they're flushed
with each other, the bike's no longer in the row itself. There is a buffer between the bikes and the cars. So it's not like they're riding right on the curb itself. There is gonna be a little bit of space so it'll be a little bit more comfortable for that. Now space does again have to be taken from somewhere on the west side. The width is relatively consistent, still gonna be pretty wide. But on the common side that space will have to be shared between bikes and pedestrians. But we are keeping the five foot minimum for pedestrians at all locations. And here's a planned view of that. Again, if we follow the docker strip, that is something
that kind of sort of goes around the intersection that those space, that space is dedicated for bikes, again, still plenty of room for pedestrians overall. And I should say that five feet is really just that one pinch point as you go around the intersection that with four pedestrians does open up a bit more and you're gonna see a little bit more of those green markings over here. And that's, you know, for intersections like this where bikes are are separated in terms of accommodations, they do have their own path, their own crosswalks if you will, so that they don't conflict with pedestrians.
And this type of design has been used nationally, locally, Cambridge has done a lot of that. The state has now standards that actually reflects what's here on the screen. So we follow a lot of those guidance that are out there to sort of produce a concept like this right here. In terms of the signal improvements, this is the same as previous concept for reconstruction, have the no turn on red blank out signs and the same type of operations again we're 10 years from now, it operates the same as today. All right, so now we get the fun part. Now this is the downtown core area. So existing conditions,
as you all know we have angle parking and really wide travelings through this area. As you can see actually we measure about 20 feet and then angle parking takes up almost 15 sidewalks over 13 feet wide. Pretty comfortable in downtown area as you should. This is where I'm gonna talk a little bit about the parking 93 parking spaces and that is total within our project area. So that's something I'm gonna get back to a couple times with the limited by accommodations. Again for consistency we're gonna try to narrow the traveling as much as we could again for traffic calming. And the reverse angle parking. So you're gonna notice this is 17
and a half, the previous slide show 14 and a half. So really depends on the angle of the stalls. The length of the parking needs to be certain width. So this does meet standards with a 17 and a half and it can be both reverse or your typical angle parking. And with that we're able to extend the sidewalk by quite a bit because the bikes are again riding with traffic. So as you can see in this case we're winding the sidewalk by quite a bit and while we're 15 feet or so and actually for parking we increase it from 93 for the whole corridor to 1 0 1. And this accounts for the court street parking spaces
that were created because of conversion to one way. And here's a plan view of that area. So again, the light grays all the sidewalks, you can see all the extra space that's being created. Now with some of those, we'll call 'em bump out areas here for the shorter crossing, all the reverse angle parking and bikes riding within travelings itself. And so now we go to an enhanced bike concept. In this case we are still having the the, the traveling with the, with the narrower width and now we're providing the parallel parking on either side. So you can see it's a eight foot area instead
of the 17 feet I was on the previously bikes still on the same elevation as sidewalks and we'll still have that buffer for comfort. And in this particular case, our concept, because we're converting from angle parking to parallel parking, we're really able to gain that extra space. So you can see the sidewalk with here, it's over 20 feet under this concept. So you have that really wide pedestrian space and it does not count the bicycle links and their buffer. So that's what this concept entails. Now there is a bit of trade off in the con parking spaces
overall goes from 93 to 77 and that is a challenge we do recognize and it is a challenge we do have to overcome as the project moves forward. We heard a lot of feedback from the businesses absolutely valid. We also recognize there's a lot of parking supply elsewhere as well. So there are solutions to this challenge. This is not easy, but it is something we do have to work through if this concept is ultimately selected and preferred by the community as a whole. And here's a plan view of that concept. So, oops, back to my cursor here. Okay, so parallel parking is
provided along the downtown Quar area and again the black strip there representing the separated bike and that extra width of light gray is all that sidewalk, all that extra room to begin here and again as we get close to South Ave at the train station, same improvements which is consistent with both options is the, the shorter crosswalks and the bump outs. And so throughout the year talking to the different communities we have heard or or requests, well what happens if you sort of combine the two options together a little bit? What kind of concept will we get? So this particular one is a new one.
We haven't presented that to the, I believe maybe, so it's sort of a hybrid between the two where we still provide separated bicycle accommodation to the downtown court. But with this case we are showing the angle parking. What's shown here is the reverse angle parking. But as I mentioned we can always have the the normal angle parking. But again that's a, that's something we'll work through, you know, with you folks as a community and and what you prefer. But under this concept we are continue to separate the bikes from the row so they are in the same elevation as sidewalk, but we do need the width from somewhere.
So in order to accommodate the angle parking. So the sidewalks are shorter narrower compared to the previous options under this particular concept. And so here's a plan view of that. So you can see the angle parking that's all here and the lighter green strip has narrower are are much narrower compared to the previous line. Again, just a tray off, right? So except for this one area here where we really couldn't provide the angle parking because space just doesn't work out between where the building is located. So we'll continue to propose parallel parking here,
which is actually consistent as you the further you get to the intersection itself there, there's already a couple of parallel parking spaces there, but something that we work through once we have a top, a survey, a base map, so we have exec dimensions and that's something that we can certainly study a little bit more when we do have those ex exact dimensions. But from our preliminary findings so far I think that space there is a little bit limited. And in terms of parking, in case you have a question with the hybrid option, we do actually gain two spaces. So it goes from 93 to 95. So that challenge there is sort of you get to solve that one
with this particular concept. So that's it in a nutshell. So at this point I'm gonna turn it back to Morgan. Speaker 3: Thanks Wing. So over the past six months the project team has presented our design concepts to three town committees, the transportation advisory committee, the safety committee, the economic development committee in addition to the wider community at a public meeting. And at this point in the process we had not yet begun exploring the hybrid approach. So we only presented the limited and enhanced bite concepts to each group. So while I included detailed feedback from each group in
your packet, here's a quick summary. So the transportation advisory Committee preferred the enhanced bike alternative citing its wide sidewalks, protected bike lanes and safe pedestrian crossing crossings as benefits that will make the corridor safer and more vibrant for all users. The safety committee and the Economic Development Committee had more mixed opinions with members from each siting positive and negatives in both designs. So members of the safety committee advocated for a design that balances safety with traffic flow and winter maintenance challenges.
While the economic development committee stressed the need to balance improved safety with traffic flow, economic or long-term economic strategy and also expressed a concern about losing parking along the main street corridor. So this has more or less been mirrored by the feedback that we've received from the public during our meeting last November. And in other engage engagement events we've had in which folks have expressed concern over potential losses in parking construction impacts on Natick center's business
community and the difficulty of transitioning from current parking to reverse angled while others have expressed support for adding bicycle infrastructure to the street. So this feedback has led us to start to explore the hybrid concept that we presented to you just now in order to see if we could maximize both parking and bicycle accommodations as best we could. So before we get your feedback, I want to briefly outline our planned next steps. As I mentioned this evening, we hope to get your feedback
and direction on which concept you would like to see guide us as we embark on our pre preliminary design in phase two. During this phase we will take all the feedback we've received to date to flesh out a our preferred concept into a more detailed design via surveying and much more technical engineering work with community engagement opportunities built into this process. So this process will cost us approximately $500,000 and to help us cover design costs, the project team is applying
for a MathWorks pre-construction grant as part of the state's one stop for growth program. So this grant is due tomorrow June 4th. So in addition to direction we also seek your support on the application, which we will ensure is consistent with the feedback and guidance that we receive from you all from you all tonight. And we will find out if so if we do end up applying to this grant, we will find out if we got funding in fall of 2025. We would then spend close to the next two years working on preliminary design after which time we would seek funding and community support for final design
and construction, which again wouldn't likely begin much before the late 2020s, early 2030s. So with that we'd be happy to take your questions and feedback. Speaker 1: Thank you very much Mr. Growth and, and Mr. Wong that was very helpful given that we will not be actually voting on elements or a particular plan tonight and instead trying to provide the design team with feedback for this grant proposal. What I'd like to do is ask, I'll start with members of the public, for those of you in the room, I'll alternate
between the room and Zoom and then we'll move to the board questions and discussion. What I'd like to do is ask for members of the public who wish to give us input or ask questions to keep it very high level and you just need to give us your name and whether you're a resident or a business owner of Natick. Mr. Griffiths, can I ask you to turn the, we have a, A member. Thank you Mr. Evans, a member of the board who's remote and I just wanna be able to see him and the people on Zoom. Speaker 2: You speak, we gotta go this camera.
Oh, Speaker 1: See if I can find Mr. Speaker 2: Turn or this way. Cut you speed. Okay. Speaker 1: Not really. I'm Speaker 2: Alright. We're Speaker 1: I I do too, but I do have it on my computer so maybe that's, that's fine. That's fine. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 1: So could I ask for members of the public who wish to speak to the board about the design elements and these two three layouts, if you could raise your hand. Yes sir. Yes. You need to come to the podium. Could you give us your name and whether you're a resident or a businessman? Speaker 7: Alan Rotberg, EY Street in Natick who owns the sidewalk
on the sidewalk where orange stair is in a Lola does the town own that sidewalk, Speaker 1: Mr. Erickson? Speaker 4: Sure. Excellent. So a good chunk of the sidewalk and even a portions of the parking spaces are actually on the property of the well for the part where you mentioned Orange theory, the Clark block. Yeah that's owned by the the the property on the Clark block and same further up for portions in front of the, what we commonly refer to as the Deb send building. The town does have an easement over that though for the purposes of sidewalk, Speaker 7: You can can change that right away. You can change that sidewalk then.
Speaker 4: I mean there there's opportunities Speaker 7: If the landlord owns it, you can just change it. Speaker 4: There's opportunities to, to discuss that with the property owner in private easement. Speaker 7: Okay, thank Speaker 1: You. Thank you sir. Is there someone online who would like to ask a question or share comments with the board? If you could just raise your hand. Okay, I'll take someone else in the room. Yes ma'am. Speaker 8: Sarah Lynn Keller 30 Fern Street Natick. My question is about the safety of having a bike at the same level as the sidewalk and how that will be demarked so that pedestrians understand that they have a limited amount of that pavement
for their use and that they should leave a part for the bike. Speaker 1: It's a great question. Thank you. Turn it over to you Mr. Wong. Speaker 5: Thank you. I can answer that question. And one thing I haven't actually touched upon is that as part of this project there are street scape elements that will be included as the project goes forward. So that gives an opportunity to provide some street furniture to sort of delineate where you want to go and where you shouldn't go. So there will be those elements. And again, we're so early in the design concepts. I do have something here in the slides. We can certainly show that later on of what it could include in the future.
But that is an element that we haven't talked about yet. But it is there. Speaker 1: Thank you sir. Speaker 3: I will add as well as wig mentioned, we are fairly early in in the, the design process and the reason right now that they're level with the street is some feedback, that feedback that we got from the highway and sanitation department, basically just saying that that would be easier for them to plow. But there is still definitely opportunity if we wanted to go with separated bike lanes. There is opportunity for those having those be level
with the street instead of the sidewalk. So that's still a possibility. Speaker 1: Thank you. Mr. Gates, Speaker 9: Can you hear me? Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 9: Two questions. The first one is, how will this affect handicap parking? And the second one is if we actually receive the $500,000 grant, are we required to actually go through with the project? Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Gates. Mr. Wong. Speaker 5: Sure. Handicap spaces will certainly be a consideration with part of design to make sure that we are providing the, the required number of them along the corridor.
The second question, the funds are allocated for specific use, what Morgan has been working on over the last couple of months. So it is for specific reason that that's what it's gonna be for. So Speaker 1: To be clear, the grant is for the design aspect. So if at the end of the design process we decide not to improve the corridor, we will not be required to pay back that $500,000. Is that correct? Speaker 5: I believe that's Speaker 1: Correct. Thank you. Speaker 4: And, and in my experience with the grant program and just funding these types of projects, in all likelihood any project moving forward will,
depending on, on the final costs and we're talking about pretty significant costs here, regardless of the, of the concept, we're gonna be seeking a lot of different funding sources potentially including potentially Mass Works, but also other tip or federal dollars tip is a transportation improvement program for the region and they bring in federal and state dollars. So we we're likely to look at all different types of funding sources. That's several years down the road before we start getting to that point. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Erickson. To someone in the room? Yes ma'am. Speaker 10: Diane Young, Elliot Hill Road. I have a, a couple of questions concerning the narrowing of streets.
How is that going to, is that going to affect first responders? I've read some things that in some of the towns that have had this, that the police that fire trucks, ambulances have had trouble pulling over. So the narrowing of the streets, I'm concerned about that. Can you help me with that? Speaker 1: Sure. Thank you Ms. Young. Mr. Wong, you have Speaker 10: Question? Oh and I have Speaker 1: Continue. Oh yes. Can you go through all of your questions and then we'll Speaker 10: Respond to them? Okay, great. Is there a speed limit for Bicyclers? I know that some go 20 to 25 miles an hour. How do we control the traffic, the speed
of BI in our bicycles insured? Should they hit a pedestrian? What happens with that? And has anyone done a count of how many bikes actually come through downtown during summer, winter, spring and fall? So we know how many bikes are actually traveling, maybe like noon. Let's, has anyone done a study like that? Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Young. Okay, Speaker 10: Thank you. Speaker 5: Okay, I'll start with the, the last question there. So we did our traffic counts back in, back last year in the spring. So at that point there was still a lot of ongoing projects at the same,
all kind of happening at the same time. So it may not give the best data, but I believe Morgan you may actually, I think you mentioned you have access to some of the trail volume of how many people are using those. So can a study be done down the line and, and and see how many bikes or pedestrians are using in the area? Absolutely. But certainly after constructions are all done. Back to your first question, there's certainly some we can, we will continue to have that open discussion with them, with the emergency responders to make sure that this cons, both of these concepts gonna be acceptable to them and making sure we're not creating an adverse conditions.
Speaker 11: How wide is a fire truck or a truck that comes down? 27. Oh 'cause I saw some of those lanes are down to what, 11 feet? How far? How wide Speaker 1: Is I, I want to make sure that we are, for the people who are at home listening, they can't hear you in the middle of the room. So if you have something I need you to come to the microphone but you, I can repeat your question. Your question is, how big is a fire truck? Some of those roads look like they were 11 and a half feet. So I would, I would say that any construction design process would include the fire department and the police department
and they would be weighing in as well as our town engineer. Speaker 5: Absolutely. And thereabout seven feet. Six, six and a half to seven feet or so roughly. So 11 foot travel wings can, can definitely accommodate a fire truck. So that's a pretty cool, pretty typical traveling width. Speaker 11: And what about the speed of the, Speaker 3: So bicycles will have to follow the speed limit so that I believe along the corridor it's 30 miles per hour, so bicycles will have to abide by the speed limit. And then I have started doing, because of this project, I have started doing bicycle
counts on Main Street. I don't have a lot of data yet, so I think that it's gonna need to mature a few months. I'm definitely looking forward to doing this over the summer. As you say, the fall, the winter, the spring. So I only have two days of data collection thus far, which is admittedly not a lot, but I did find that. So I looked on, so I've been selecting on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Wednesdays as well as Saturdays in the morning from eight to nine. I do a quick count of bikes parked in NAIC center at noon
and then I do a count of bicycles passing through the main and central intersection from four 30 to five 30. So on May 14th, 2025 in the morning, there were 12 bikes that passed through the corridor. In the evening there were 17 and in on May 20th, 2025, there were seven bikes that passed by in the morning and 16 that passed by in the evening. Speaker 1: A point I'd like to make with regard to bicycle counts is that we're looking at a project taking place over 10 years
and we wanna build a corridor that's for Natick in 2050, not Natick 2024 or 2025. So with the current 145 residential units that are gonna be coming on, coming online shortly, 30,000 square feet of commercial real estate and the potential to add another 2000 units of residential units downtown in the MBTA district, we want to be thinking long term. Speaker 3: And I will say that, that we know, you know, I, I've read studies that show that connected and protected multimodal networks
in are safer and also encourage a wider variety of folks to walk and bike. So the hope with this project is that, you know, if we build safer and more connected pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, that might encourage more people who may have been hesitant to walk or bike in the past. Do so now, Speaker 4: If I can briefly add to a couple points there regarding the narrowing of streets. A lot of districts that I've worked with, when they get to like a downtown core, like Natick, by and large the travel lanes are typically 10 and a half feet wide.
That's very common. I think the ones in downtown Wellesley, for example, are 10 and a half feet. And the ones in in many downtown corridors tend to get down to 10, 10 and a half feet. And, and that has the added benefit of traffic coming. It can also, because it just slows traffic down naturally. But it has not, in, in the experiences that I've had, had a significant negative impact on a context like downtown Natick with travel times or response times for public safety. With that said, the safety committee that has already reviewed this actually is made up of some public safety officials, the police chief and the fire chief, and are both on that committee.
So they have already reviewed this and they will continue to review this design and they review all of our street scape designs to ensure that, that if there's any concerns there, they can, they, that, that would be addressed. They were fully included, for example, on the North Main Street and the South Main Street projects, both of which I think have 10 and a half and 11 foot travel lanes, depending on where you are in that corridor. And with regards to bike lanes in a, in a district like this, it's a little bit of a field of dreams. It's like if a, if you build it, they will come. So same with pedestrian connectivity, you know, but pre this retro being in place, we had no cyclists on that corridor. Now on a, on a nice warm day,
you have well over a thousand cyclists on the Conig rail trail. Obviously that's a very unique case where it went from having no trail to now having a trail, but it's, it's a little bit of a build it. If you build it, they will come type scenario. So it's really, it is quite hard to speculate or predict how many cyclists may or may not be in an area if you had certain types of accommodations. So while it's important, I think, to get the data for existing conditions, it's not a perfect science. And I would just caution the, the sort of using that
as a basis for a determination or not. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Erickson Warren's iPhone. If you could unmute yourself and tell us your first and last name and whether you're a Natick resident or a business owner. Did he step on? Can Speaker 12: You hear me now? Yes. Great. So, Warren Cross, I live in South Natick and I'm a building owner at 10 dash 20 Main Street in Natick Center. You know, I guess I just don't really understand the whole reason for all of this. I, I mean, has there been significant issues in terms
of dangerous situations? I mean, I, you know, I think about we're trying to enhance the bikers and their ability to ride there if you just drive anywhere. So many people now are on their phones, texting in their cars. I just think it's gonna become more of a safety issue than a better situation. And for, for business owners downtown, not many people pull up on their bike to go shopping in one of the stores and then leave with their goods on their bike. I, I just don't really understand how that's gonna enhance the business community downtown.
I mean, maybe some of the eateries, possibly, but I, you know, I just, I'm, I guess I don't really, I'm not following for the disruption. I realize it's numerous years off in the future. I just don't see how the benefits are gonna outweigh the disruption. And I, I, I don't, I don't see it personally. Speaker 13: Mr. Erickson, do Speaker 4: You? Sure. Well, I appreciate the, the, the question and the sentiment and, and what's being said there. I think one thing that histor looking in the past that is important to note is that as noted in some
of the opening slides, what hasn't been there in the past are all the things that are happening right now in Natick Center. $200 million worth of private investment, bringing in hundreds of new housing units, a Newent rail trail that will soon be connected to a newly reconstructed Natick center commuter rail station that is already one of the most heavily traveled stations for pedestrian and bike connectivity in the network. It's only gonna be enhanced once it's opened and fully accessible along with a digital rail trail that was not there five years ago, 10 years ago. And so when you add all of those added, I would argue,
benefits to this corridor, you have a lot of, it's, it's really at the confluence of all these improvements. And it's, it's at this crossroads. It's at where, where all these places and all these people and all these accommodations meet. In my experience as a pedestrian in IC center, I do have concerns with how I just cross the street. So at the very least, making pedestrian improvements in Natick Center would make, I know it would enhance my ability to want to frequent those businesses more. And I'm sure everybody has an experience like that. Not everybody, but many people have an experience like that when they try to cross the street in Natick Center.
So it's not just about accommodating cyclists or accommodating pedestrians or accommodating car traffic or roadway traffic. It's about the entire experience. And all of that has to be taken into, into account. It's, it's, it's not an all or nothing scenario. That's why we have these conversations to understand and suss out the different components of, of a design for the future. Because there are business and property owners, there's also people coming to and from the commuter rail station. There's also people who's living here who, who want to be able to walk or bike safely in or out of the corridor.
They want to get out of the neighborhood just as much as people want to come into the neighborhood or through the corridor. Same with bikes, but also with cars and with pedestrians. So it's really just a matter of how can we, how can the community best accommodate, in my opinion, all of these users for the enhancement of the entire district. Which, if you can make an enhanced entire district, it's going to, in my, you know, experience tends to drive even more people to the district because it creates a sense of safety, creates a sense of place, creates a sense of, oh wow, we're actually here.
When you can accommodate many different types of users. I'm not sure if Morgan or the team have any more to add to that. I just don't want to misstate anything that may have come from the design process or anything that you've heard Morgan from the public during the survey work. But that's just sort of in my experience as a planner for 20 years or so, when it comes to making such enhancements, making such improvements, there tends to be a net increase overall because people want to be in a place that, that has that feel, has that sense of place. Speaker 1: Has a sense of vibrancy. Vibrancy, yeah. So one of the things that I've heard most consistently from
downtown business owners, it, there are two things. One is, you know, parking, parking, parking. And the second thing is in ensuring that we recreate something that was lost during the pandemic, which is strolling and going in and out of stores. The way we do that is with Attractive street Scaping. We do that with benches, we do that with stores that are full. We've got two empty storefronts on Main Street, which is the first time in a long time that I can remember. So these types of improvements, not just the bicyclists, but it's also creating an environment where you have the streetscape, which isn't something we're even
considering at this point because we're still talking about design. But the idea of having benches, wides, wider sidewalks, things to encourage people to stroll and go in and out of businesses or just to be aware that the businesses are there in the first place as opposed to a transactional drive in, go into the one store that you want to get something out of. Get in your car and drive out, which is what we have now. That was just my PS going onto someone in the room. Yes sir. If you could come to the podium, give us your name and whether you're a resident or a business owner or neither.
Speaker 14: Thank you. Andrew Driscoll, co-owner of a business here in Natick. I may have missed this, but could someone speak to the availability of bike storage permanently installed racks who has ownership of this? How can it be, how could there be? And if it was already in the proposal and I missed it, then I apologize. But Speaker 1: That's a great question. Thank you. Speaker 14: Let, Speaker 1: Let's, that's a great question. Let's talk about that Morgan. Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's an excellent question. One of the things that I have done since coming into this role is I've, I've made a map
of all the bike parking locations in Natick that's available on our website. I don't have the exact count memorized, but there are bicycle racks scattered throughout Natick Center at the library. There's one town hall, there's a few different locations on the Common, there's some on Main Street and then the MBTA commuter rail station. And I just opened up a brand new bike storage facility with I think over 20 spaces. But I think that bike storage is an incredibly important part of, you know, encouraging people to bike, right?
Because you know, it's important you getting to the location, but it's also important you being able to safely like park your bike there. So that is certainly something that, and Wing can maybe attest to this as well. That's something that we're considering adding to the streets scape elements as we go on. And in fact, separate of this project, it's my goal to try to increase the amount of bike parking in Neek Center if we can. Speaker 4: There have also been examples in other communities that have successful bike campaigns that we would potentially even look at accommodating additional
bike parking or bike accommodations through our parking lots, for example. Maybe we can even take a space that might be otherwise underutilized and have a more permanent bike rack location there that can accommodate many bikes in one location. That has been successfully applied in other districts. I've seen that happen in Lexington, for example. Other, other areas like Natick that I've seen that happen in, I think Holliston just actually opened up quite a few, not necessarily taking over bike, well actually right by their rail trail. They opened up quite a few barking bike parking areas to accommodate better bike accommodations. So there's examples, and I'm not, I'm, I'm trying
to use examples that aren't just the urban districts that people gravitate towards. 'cause you know, Natick has not Cambridge, it's not going to be Cambridge, it's, it's, or Somerville or Boston or what have you. Natick is gonna be Natick. So we have to make sure that we get the right things that work for Natick. But I think it's important that we, that we keep all those things in mind. It's a great question and I think it's one that is extremely important for us as we move forward with this project, as part of this street scape design work and even as, even after this project we look at to ensure that we can accommodate all users, including cyclists. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Erickson. Is there someone in the room who
would like to ask a question? Yes, sir. Speaker 15: I, my name is Jeremy Carroll, I'm a resident here in Natick. I have a question and concern about the parking right in the main center in terms of traffic flow and also safety. Right now I feel like traffic can get slowed down every time someone pulls into a parking spot. If everyone has to do a reverse parking spot, I'm concerned about that flow slowing down the congestion and flow. I'm also concerned about all that reverse parking. If the spots are tight, that could lead to more someone hits the gas too much or, or something.
But also compared to is it safer and better traffic flow with the parallel street parking? That's just my question. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 5: Thank you for that question. So yes, your point about traffic congestion and, and very similar operation to parallel parking lot, you have to stop, you have to back up. So that operation, that maneuver has to happen in both cases. Reverse angle parking or parallel parking, right? But with the angle, reverse angle parking, you back up once. That's it. Where has parallel parking? You could take multiple turns.
I'm not that good anymore myself. And so especially myself, I'm embarrassed to to do it myself if I had to these days. But as you're pulling out, this is really the benefit with a reverse angle parking as you're pulling out, you have very good view of what's coming at you with both cars or bikes, depends you know, which option you wanna go with or has today. Yes, pulling in is extremely easy. You don't really have to stop, you just kind of go right in. But then that backing up maneuver can still create congestion with traffic, but also very difficult for the driver, you know, yourself to, to make that maneuver. So that's really, so for that answer your question. Thank
Speaker 1: You Mr. Wong. Following up on that point, I'm not, I'm not totally convinced about the reverse angle parking, but with regard to safety, if you're facing out to the roadway and you're shopping, when you come back to your car, you're not loading the back of your car in the middle of the street. You're loading it from the sidewalk. If you're opening your side door to allow children to go in and out, they're coming from the sidewalk into where the door is protecting them as opposed to around the door where they're facing. So there, there are a number of safety aspects to it. There's a, you know, I'm sure there's going to be, if this were adopted a huge learning curve,
so I'm not necessarily convinced of that. But with regard to safety, they've, there's significant literature on it being a much safer than pull in parking or parallel parking. Is there anyone else online who has any questions or comments? How about in the room? Mr. Ostroff, please identify yourself and whether you're a native resident or business owner. Speaker 16: Hi, Josh Ostroff still an native resident, not currently a business owner. And I'm just speaking on my own behalf, I want to pick up on the discussion of angle parking for a little over a year. I was the transportation planner for the city of Newton when we implemented a significant change from head end
to back end angle parking on a very busy stretch of road called Alor Road that was used for pools and playing fields and multiple schools and parks and so forth. And I made it my mission to make sure that there was abundant public awareness, education and, you know, good signage. And today, about a year and a half in, it's been an unqualified success. I just had some discussion recently with the head of a neighborhood association who is a big champion for the project and, and she's really enthusiastic.
I mean, you just have full compliance and a lot of, and a lot of turnover. That said, I have two concerns about it. First, I believe that it works best on one way streets so that you don't have the potential for people. I mean, we are in Massachusetts and some people don't drive as well as we would like. I mean everyone in this room is an excellent driver. But, but, but there is the concern that people would just, you know, pull in head in going the wrong way because I, I don't know how common that is, but I, I would like to encourage folks to see guidance.
The, the second though is that I, I do have concerns that whereas, you know, I'm, I'm just extrapolating from my own experience, people would, would tend to stay for a ball game, you know, stay for like an hour or two on Main Street. We want a lot of turnover. So whatever issues we're gonna have with turnover will exacerbate any challenges we have. I believe that people can learn new things and that we can figure this out. I'm not gonna say it's easy, there are people who hate parking, parallel parking, you know, for that matter. But I, I think it's a, a reasonable solution. And actually for historical context, something
that was discussed like 15 years ago, Jamie's predecessor, you know, had, had considered that and so forth. So I, I should also say that having, when I was on the board negotiated the easements that I'm glad someone brought up because I believe that they do allow for this, but there needs to obviously be consultation with, with the landowner. The other thing is that I, I think that the most important consideration here is safety. That as, as Jamie said earlier, they, the long crossing distances are hazardous. There have been injuries and I believe at least one fatality
in the most dangerous movement is when someone's crossing the street, a car stops, someone else, you know, goes and passes them on the left and doesn't even see the person that then, then, then, and you need to eliminate that by having, you know, 25 foot or less, you know, pedestrian distances where there's only one car to be seen. So last thing is, I am really impressed both with the public engagement that's been done, that was a concern of mine for the beginning of this project.
And I feel like there's been good outreach that people, you know, and I, I commend the town, the consultant for that. And then a great summary of materials. I'm not here to butter up Morgan, but that was a great memo to summarize anything and I think the board is well served by that. So appreciate all the work that's been done on this. It's a longstanding issue and I'm glad to see we make progress and hope for more things to come in my lifetime and yours. So thanks. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Ostroff. Is there anyone else in the room who would like to address the board? Ms. Vickers. Speaker 17: Thank you. B Brinley Vickers a resident
to touch a little bit with the same thing of the previous speaker. I am wondering if there are videos or things to see about the reverse parking because that one does concern me quite a bit. I'm concerned with the limited mobility of people turning around and looking. I'm concerned with the people driving up the road and as was mentioned, crossing traffic to pull head in on the other side, which I see a lot already. And then the difference that I notice with pulling in headfirst versus backing up, understanding all of the safety things with the children and loading when you're, when you pull
and stop in front of people to back in, it's seems harder to get people to stop and leave room for you to do so. Whereas when you are pulling out backwards, people do actually eventually stop for you when you're doing it. So I'm just curious about those things. Can I just give all my questions? Thanks. Noticing when we were, when they were going through the pictures, I was curious if we would be losing the ability to turn left on Pond Street coming from the south with the traffic calming and sidewalk curb extensions that looked like what is, what I was seeing there and if I noticed this correctly,
there would be an added crosswalk there now, which there isn't one right at that intersection right there between, from the coffee on the common there, over to the common. I noticed that a lot of times there are vehicles that come up around and turn left there when it's a red light. And I'm wondering if, if with the, the traffic calming closure of that space, if that means we're not gonna be able to do that anymore, if that's gonna cause more backup and if anything has looked for that in terms of the coming from the south, because that can get really backed up coming from
the south up to the north. Are we losing potentially the ability to diagonal cross pedestrian at 1 35 with the conversations? Because I think that's a concern. I, I actually visit that area a lot and I regularly diagonal cross from the common over to the other side and I would hate to lose that potential and have to go the long way. So even though I'm hearing and understanding the potential for going one sided, I, I would hate to lose that diagonal cross option.
Was there a conversation or discussion or possibility of a speed limit change with all of this? Or is the speed limit going to, it hasn't been Speaker 1: Discussed Speaker 17: Going to stay the same. Were there ever conversations about the the extra large wide speed bumps anywhere for traffic calming and are there grant options if we don't submit tomorrow? What happens if we, if we don't actually do that and then does that mean all of a sudden it's all on us? Thank you. Speaker 1: So there's, if we don't submit a grant proposal, then we will not be eligible for the half a million dollars and we'll have to come up with money for the next stages of design.
The grant proposal will be, we'll not require, I'm trying to think of a different way to put this. The select board isn't going to choose a menu of things and say, Morgan, between tonight and tomorrow night at midnight when that grant proposal is due, please write a grant proposal where we promise to do the following things. We're going to give guidance, guidance on what we wanna see in the next stage of design. So it's my fervent hope that we're able to make that deadline because free money is always good when it comes to things like design. Could we
Speaker 17: Change it? Could we, Speaker 1: You might once, yes, right, we could change it. We could absolutely change it. We could get to the end of that three year period or two year period of design and have more public engagement and we have different business owners and we have different needs and we say, you know what, this isn't gonna work. Let's go back to the drawing board and look for other design grants. So nothing is going to be in stone from tonight with regard to crossing diagonally. It's a possibility that that's something that'll be lost. With regard to videos on reverse angle parking, YouTube has a half a dozen of them. So from different states, from traffic engineers,
from politicians who've adopted it. So if you just go on to YouTube and type in reverse angle parking, Bruce was kind enough to send to the select board, you know, a half a dozen. Speaker 17: Just a follow up on that, since I have been working so much towards, as we all have public communication, I have noticed that when we're doing this kind of thing, if we include the link so that they don't search, it seems like it gets more attention than if we just expect people to search it on their own. Speaker 1: Mr. Evans, could you send the links to
Speaker 3: Happy to share those Speaker 1: Links. Could you send them to Mr. Walsh and ask him to upload it to the Thank you very much. Is there anybody else? Oh I'm sorry Mr. Speaker 3: Rips. I will, I will say I think, so we do have a project webpage. It's, I have the url, it's natick ma.gov/main-st-study. I can get right here. And I think we can probably try to get some videos of reverse angle parking on the project Speaker 1: Page. Yes, please.
Speaker 18: I'll, I'll copy you on those. I was perusing YouTube and got a couple. Speaker 1: Okay, sounds great. Thank you. Yes, Ms. Young, could I just go around the room and make sure somebody else, if there's anybody else who would like to speak, is there anyone else who would like to address the board that hasn't spoken or written a letter? Ms. Young. Thank you. Speaker 10: Diane Young Elliot Hill Road. I have two safety issues that I'd like to bring up. I tutor a kids connect and kids jump outta cars all the time and run to the door to go upstairs. Parallel parking, I've, I've also read
that there was a terrible accident with a child recently in Cambridge and Boston that opened the door and ran and got hit by a bike. So I'm concerned about that whole issue where, how does a kid know that a bike could be coming or a bike knows, a kid could be running. And my other issue is with the bump outs when we have snow, like we had, you know, past winters, how is that gonna manage turning and managing the plows and the snow drifts. And even without snow, I, they're bumped out
so much it makes me wonder how you're gonna make those turns around them. So those are my questions, my concerns. Speaker 4: If I can quickly please comment on the bump outs. So one thing that's interesting is the bump outs have actually been studied quite a bit through the years by town staff to, to understand how they can be accommodated for, for what you're talking about turning movements. We actually did a study pre pandemic where we put a bunch of rain barrels out there to sort of recreate what those bump outs would be in the na in the core area, including around the train station and all along Main Street
and, and even now during the summertime with the pavement art that we have out there, we do sometimes also add, they're white, they're not really posts but they're white sort of traffic coming measures. And we found actually great success with the ability to still accommodate turning movements and make those types of pedestrian improvements work. The big thing that actually we need to be mindful of is you did mention snowplowing, we have great operations for Natick Center during snowplowing. Usually it happens after the storm, you know, they plow
and then they come back at night and they remove all the snow from the areas. This will be an added component of that. And we do have DPW team, team members that are part of the review to ensure that we can understand what, if any added needs there would be on the team. Although they, they do an excellent job with snow, snow, snow, sidewalk plows. And so I think it's just a matter of just training. And the other big thing is really drainage that we would be looking at here. That's one thing that's prevented us from doing some of the work already with some of the bump outs is just understanding
how the drainage systems have worked. That's actually more of a concern than in our experience, what we've seen with regards to like turning movements and even some of the snow removal efforts. It's been more the drainage that we would need to accommodate. But any re-engineered project would include that analysis into it. So we're confident that if we get the, the, the, the right context of the road, the right really direction that we can accommodate those, those concerns that were raised previously when we've done this type of, of actual field study work when it came to some of these pedestrian bump out outs that we've actually studied in the field before.
Speaker 1: If there are no more comments from member questions? Yes sir. Speaker 19: My name is Jim Cody. I live in Bradford Road. So my issue is the lack of parking in downtown Natick. And as we all know we, we used to have a parking garage as long as it's gone. You mentioned we lost a couple businesses in downtown Natick. We have a lot more retail spaces opening up with all the new construction, all the new residents that I, I don't feel there's enough appropriate parking now even with the Pond Street lot, the various lots around and I know I think we're using, maybe you can correct me, we
accessing some of the St. Patrick's parking in the rear. Is the town accessing some of that? Yes, Speaker 4: We have had for a long time now a lease agreement with the same paths to do use that as a commuter parking space. What it's actually used now for is just overflow. It's actually not used nearly to the capacity that it once was pre pandemic. We actually have done some, and it was noted previously, Morgan worked on some field study with the police department and just about a year and a half ago, two years ago. And we actually found that there's ample parking. It's more a matter of ensuring that people know where the parking is.
I always say Natick. Well two things. I always say two things. One, I would argue Natick has a walking problem, not necessarily a parking problem. We need to make sure that people can know where to park and then they can walk. I personally actually avoid the 1 35 27 interchange to walk more because I don't like the diagonal. I feel unsafe there because yes, the short distance is a straight line, but I actually try to go out of my way to, to go a different distance. And then the other thing I typically say is, if if, if people are complaining about parking, that means you're doing something right in my opinion because it means people want to be there. You don't usually hear people complain about parking
unless they want to be in a location. That doesn't mean we, we shouldn't address it. It just means we need to understand what are the root challenges that people are having with accommodating parking or with getting to a location and how can we better accommodate those. But when people want to be at a location, you usually hear about parking complaints. So I think it's a good thing that we have some parking challenges. Speaker 19: So I, I can appreciate your comments, but what I can't appreciate is the fact that I don't see the town working on any effort to reconstruct that parking garage. Especially with the influx of all the new residents coming in more retail space.
If you want people to come into downtown, sure you need the, the, the signage, let 'em know where, you know, let's get some better signage up saying big blue and white P signs for parking. But I really think we need to look long and hard and reconstruct that parking garage and alleviate some of the issues. That's my comments. Sure. Speaker 4: I can also talk to that if you'd like. Please. So back in 2018, the town actually commissioned a study that was referenced in this study as well, actually worked on that study. And we found that to reconstruct that parking garage, it was the tune at that time about 12 to $15 million
and it would basically double the size of the lot. Right now there's about 130 parking spaces at that location on Middlesex Avenue. Even previous to that we did an RFI or request for information to seek private developers to see if they would actually rebuild the parking structure for us and what it would take. And, and just very briefly we found that it would take about two to 300 units of housing as part of a project to then build an a parking structure as on behalf of the town. At the time of the parking garage study in 2018, 2019, when we were finalizing that work, a parking garage would successfully accommodate
or pay for the annual maintenance through some of the revenues, but it would not pay for the capital. And that's really where the town got stuck in in 2019. How do we pay for the structure at a $15 million cost the capital? 'cause once you build it, yes it can pay for itself. And so the cost at that time of $15 million was something that the select board said, look, we, we have to think about some other costs. We were just about to do an an override or actually we just did an override vote for the Kennedy Middle School as well as the West Native fire station. So that was deliberately put on pause.
But we have absolutely studied that we have a concept with 300 and I think 50 spaces or 320 spaces that was studied at that time. And actually since then, since post pandemic we've actually found that that lot is still not back up to full capacity. Post pandemic, pre pandemic. We actually had a waiting list for businesses who wanted parking passes at that location. Now that lot is still not at capacity. So you know, we're still trying to figure out post pandemic what our parking needs are. We're still seeing some of that commuter parking coming back, not nearly
to pre pandemic levers that commute a lot that you noted on Best St. Pat's had that has about 90 plus spaces in it. Pre pandemic we had a waiting list of well over 70 people who wanted spaces. Now we have maybe 10, 10 permanent spaces a year. So we haven't seen post, pre post pandemic those, those items coming back. But I think I, I would argue that the town has looked extensively at rebuilding a parking structure at from many different angles and worked really hard to try to understand what the parking demands are and, and has been deliberate in saying, okay,
maybe a structure could work, maybe it's not the best solution. Maybe we need to maximize our current resources first before we, we invest. Now it's probably a closer to 25 to $30 million into a parking structure for Natick Center given how construction costs have gone up and what we would need to include in such a structure. So I just want to provide that context for the public that we absolutely have been looking at this. I've been here for 10 years and it's been constantly on my mind throughout the 10 years looking at this from multiple different angles through different studies. The town spent, I think it was $200,000 in that parking study in 2018, which is still available.
And I think it's still relevant. There's still some great resource and information in that parking study. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Erickson. At this time it's a little bit after eight. I'd like to turn the discussion over to the board members of the board if we could start with questions first and then comments and thoughts and I'll just open it up. Mr. Evans, Speaker 18: I think I've got, I've had a couple that have already been answered through the presentation. One, one comment I'd have is, is their consideration of doing a no left turn out of Pond Street as a,
Speaker 20: Hey Bruce, could you speak into your mic a little better please? Speaker 18: Sorry, is that better? Speaker 20: That is, Speaker 18: Thank you. Okay, sorry about that. And I'll repeat the question. Has a no left turn out of Pond Street been considered? Speaker 5: So during the design process we absolutely had that discussion with town staff and you know, traffic patterns, what can be done, how can we alleviate congestions? So certainly a lot of it's still up for con consideration and additional data would really be needed to really provide full recommendation. So I think I'll leave it at that right now, but definitely has been considered on our minds. Okay,
Speaker 18: Thank you. Just a a bit of feedback on that and empirically, I live a few blocks away from that and I generally avoid that intersection 'cause I would have to make a left there. I make a left sooner and go onto 1 35 so I don't have to make that left turn. I don't have to cut across traffic to get into a narrow window of a lane that's a right turn lane. So I think if you had a right turn lane, you could then go left around the common and then up common street.
That's common street to go right towards a library. I think that would be an enhancement. One of the things that hasn't come up, I'll just please, which is E-bikes. One of the things that now is more prevalent than, than before is the advent of e e-bikes and you know, we were talking about bike pedestrian collisions, bicyclists going high speed are bad enough, but e-bikes are quite hazardous. And I guess it's a twofold question is,
is there any licensing for somebody to get an E-bike? And the second thing is do they, are they subject? And I think the answer is yes. Are they subject to the same traffic laws that a bicyclist slash motorist is, is subjected to? Speaker 3: So it's a good question and to be fully honest, I'm not sure if I have the full answer. My guess is that e-bikes would be subject to the same traffic laws as regular bikes. I think e-bikes are definitely becoming more and more of a presence on the road
and I think that's something that our study can look at more as we progress. 'cause I think it is an important point you make. Speaker 18: Okay, thank you. And the rest of mine I think are comments. Thank you. Thank you. Questions. Yeah, Speaker 21: Thank you Morgan. And forgive me your name Sir Speaker 5: Wayne. Speaker 21: Thank you both for the presentation. My first question is about the businesses. And I know there's pros and cons for a number of the segment options, but what are the pros and cons and and
and impact either way for the businesses? Speaker 5: So certainly we can start with the cons. This is an opportunity to really revision what the downtown would look like. Again, there's a lot of street scape elements that we haven't gotten into at this stage of the design. So how that ultimately comes about, how it becomes more of an inviting area, certainly that helps businesses grow and draw people in. That's a vision that, you know, I think the community will have to develop together for, for that. So that's certainly one way a pro to to for this project. And at the same time with our safety improvements,
certainly hopefully that will draw more people in who otherwise wouldn't to bike or walk to the area. And again, that will help businesses as well. Speaker 3: And I, I will add as far as cons, I think that, you know, loss of parking is, could be an issue. I think it will require a lot of thought about, you know, what the right mix is there. You know, we want people to be biking and walking to businesses, but we also want people to be driving to businesses. We want people in our businesses, period. So that parking question is really key.
I think something that was brought up that is very important at our public meeting in November is the impact of construction, the construction process itself on the business community. There's a business owner who spoke and said, you know, this could be, frankly this could be hard for us. And so I think that is something that I have been taking very seriously. That's something that I would want to continue to work with our business community, the select board, Natick Center Associates on working to figure out, you know, depending on what alternative we choose, how are we going
to do everything that we possibly can to assist our businesses during the construction process itself. That's something that we're thinking of. Speaker 21: Thank you. My next question is about the reversed angle parking. And thank you again Mr. Evans for those videos that you sent. I am, we have angled parking downtown as right now and I am trying to better envision what reversed angled parking looks like. I'm a, I'm a driver who reverses into angled parking. Now I'm, I'm also wondering if people who,
who would do this, who would need to do this? Do they have to have cameras in their car? We know it's gonna be a learning curve, so I just, I'm, I'm curious to hear more about that. Okay. Speaker 5: I do have a slide that I bought with me at the end. It's a simple slide. It's not a video. The video are certainly out there online, but the, the basic operation is has if you're going into parallel parking, you would have your turn signals on, you would stop ahead of your spot and then basically back up. I think most cars these days do have a backup camera, but if you don't, it's essentially like parallel parking. You would still look back behind your shoulder
and try to back into a spot. Except this is one movement versus parallel parking. You do have to make a couple of movements in order to get into the space. So on this diagram here, it's a very simple illustration of how that operation would work and again, I the video probably do a better justice than what I have here on screen. Thank you Speaker 21: Ms. Speaker 22: Ocker. Thank you and thank you Morgan and Wing, this is, I appreciate all the time that that you've taken on putting these various scenarios together, including the hybrid scenario,
which I do appreciate you scoping out at the, at the last minute here. But I was wondering if you had explored a further hybrid scenario where let's say you had enhanced bike lanes until you got into that downtown area and then maybe a limited option. Is there a possibility of potentially combining these or is it an all or nothing? Speaker 5: It's not an all or nothing In fact, segment one through three you're really down to one or the other options because of right away constraints.
The buildings are basically the back of sidewalk. There's really limited what you can do. So what you do with segments one through three, you almost could be independent of what you do in four and five. So no, you can absolutely mix and match. The one thing I would say about that is that the town be mindful of funding because if this project wants to go after the transportation infrastructure funds, the tips we do have to adhere to the state standards, which for corridor like this, the standard is to provide separate IT bicycle school accommo. So even for segments one through three, we would have to ask
for an exemption for them to accept it. Whereas segments four and five, I think it's gonna be a tougher battle for that. So Speaker 22: Thank you. And, and can you expound on that a little bit about what would be required for tip or potential financing? You know, what are some of the restrictions so that if we would potentially not be eligible if we went with the limited bike lane, is that what you're saying? Speaker 5: Yes. So be, so this where, we'll, we'll stop from the beginning here. I guess this is a town jurisdiction roadway. So if the project does ask us for the tip,
the town is responsible for all of the design funds, the state will not pay for that. But because we're going after the tip, the project essentially is like a mass DOT project. You go through every step of their process and so you have to follow every one of their standards, including complete streets, bicycle accommodations, sidewalks, the whole works. If, if the project does not want to propose what we have on the plans for the separated bike, it will be a very, very tough challenge to have the state agree to it and pay for it because it is gonna be going against your standards. Speaker 22: Alright, thank you. I just wanna point out a couple
of things that people might not have noticed in these plans is that in both of the options discussed, we do lose some parking in front of Sweetwaters in that area because of the bump out. So there's, there's some changes that will be happening there. The the other part, and, and you've heard this from me before, before the economic development committee is I, I really wanna look at that whole Pond Street area and that intersection. I'm concerned about putting a crosswalk there,
particularly on the weekends where traffic coming down 1 35, making a left turn south on onto 27th, it already backs up and backs up the intersection. So putting a crosswalk further up I think is gonna be a recipe for disaster. And I also agree with Mr. Evans, I I, I like the idea of restricting a left turn lane off of, of Pond Street. I stopped doing that years ago, I don't do it, I go make the right turn and I go around the common because it's just too hard and I don't feel like you're being a good citizen
by parking your car right in the middle of traffic and making everyone else have to stop for you. So I would, I would very much be in in favor of that. Let's see, there was something else I was gonna bring up. Don't remember right now, but thank you Mr. Sidney. Speaker 20: Thank you. Most of my questions have been asked. I do appreciate the presentation Morgan and, and Wayne. I wanted to, I didn't wanna ask I'm back. We're back to Pond Street and South Main. I also take the right turn and go around the common.
That's just what I do. I don't try to turn left there except maybe at 10 o'clock at night and I live pretty close so I kind of have to go through that area. I wondered if there was any consideration of coordinated traffic lights at either pond or Common that might help with some of the traffic flow and some of the turns. Speaker 5: So your first question, I'll answer your first question first and again, the traffic patterns we definitely have talked about it. Definitely consider restricting it and what it would be like. In fact, I believe the town has actually looked at
that in the past as well if, you know, certain turn restrictions were to happen. So ultimately, you know, traffic isn't just gonna disappear if we do a restriction, it's just gonna go somewhere else. So to really understand that big picture and you know, where are the traffics gonna go if we do restrict that, is that impact acceptable? So I think that's where the additional data collection is really gonna tell us whether or not which way is the best way. And so that you folks here at the town can make an informed decision. So I'll leave it at that for the time being that I think we'll it, it's still open for consideration regarding a second question about having another traffic
light at that location. We did look that as well certainly Pond Street because the traffic volume doesn't meet the, the warrants to have a signal. So in the state as well as the Indus, the engineering industry, we typically have to study certain warrants to justify having a traffic signal. Not that that's the end game even if you don't meet warrants, but because of how close these two intersections are, operations would actually probably be worse if we were to try to synchronize, synchronize the lights together and provide certain movements because in order to have Pond to have a safe green light
to go through West Central, pretty much everybody else will have to stop. So there's gonna create quite a bit of delay for it to happen. So it's a really tricky area to kind of coordinate that and that's why we didn't end up proposing a signal here. Speaker 20: Yeah, and just a couple of comments. I've been an advocate for years of maintaining angle parking in downtown because I think even as it is now, it's a good traffic calming measure, although it is admittedly very difficult to back out and unsafe if there happens to be a bicyclist, it does happen, you know, it does help that
my cars have backup cameras and, and warning signals. Not all cars too. So, you know, I'm really pleased to see some of these options. I don't know which one or what hybrid version I prefer at this point. But yeah, you know, it's interesting to see what you guys have put together and I, I really appreciate it. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Sidney. Yes, Ms. Slager, Speaker 22: I remembered what I was gonna say regarding the downtown 27 1 35 intersection where a lot of people do cross diagonally, I think one of the trade-offs
that they're putting in here, which is a good one. If you remember years ago you used to be able to make a right turn on red. You can't do that when you have everyone crossing the full intersection very easily without the delay. If you remember how it used to be, one side would go, the other side would go and then you would have the pedestrian cross. So there would be a delay for the pedestrians. You wouldn't be able to go every cycle when you press the button, but now you'd be able to have the right turn on red. So that will help with traffic I think a lot. And yes, you wouldn't be able to go across the intersection
but you'll be able to do it on a, on a better cycle. You won't have to wait like you do right now. So I think with the improvements that they're going to be doing to looking at the signaling and the right turn on red, it's actually probably gonna be better and safer for everyone that doesn't like going across on that angle and watching the time go down Speaker 4: And extra steps, promote better public health. If I can, if I can briefly comment just from hearing the different dialogue and also looking at sort of what the dialogue was tonight, it sounds like there's definitely an ample opportunity to,
as noted by by wing, you know, segments 1, 2, 3 and even to a certain portion four could all be sort of like an enhanced bike approach. 'cause it seems like that's all within the right of way. It doesn't really get to impacting what's there today other than maybe shortened or, or less narrow sidewalks. Whereas segment five is really where, where the bulk of the conversation needs to be and where we're gonna look forward to the additional dialogue at the select board level. Seeing the hybrid approach I think is, is really intriguing from my perspective because I think from what we've heard tonight, there's,
there's competing interests on all sides from the extremes. You know, I kind of see the benefits and the enhanced bike ops to see the benefits of the not enhanced bike. In all cases though there's pedestrian improvements, there's other improvements that I would argue need to be there no matter what. And that's obviously the decision of the board, but I'm just sort of dialoguing it seems like we, there's enough direction hopefully for Morgan from the application perspective for the grant to think through segments. 1, 2, 3, likely four with some tweaks, having that more enhanced bike approach with the idea that the segment five needs additional dialogue.
Maybe a hybrid approach is, is is where maybe likely where we might be headed so that there can be, for lack of a better term, best of both worlds. Although that still requires quite a bit of, of dialogue and and continued design work as well as community engagement. I'm just trying to wrap up a little bit of what I've heard from tonight. Speaker 1: Yes, I have a few questions and comments mind really brief Speaker 20: Madam chair? Yes. I just didn't want you to miss me whenever you're ready. Speaker 1: I won't miss you. Sorry, are you finished with your questions? Speaker 20: I had one more question. Go ahead. I forgot. So, okay, I was wondering,
I was wondering if the study had considered the study. The study team had considered split walk signals at 27 and 1 35 where the walk signals, you know, go north south for a period and then go on a separate timer, go east west to allow some traffic to flow when pedestrians are actually crossing. Speaker 5: So thank you for that. And yes, that is absolutely a consideration that we had. In fact, we actually looked at several options there on, on what would be best and what may work. So that's probably
what we're gonna end up is when you push the button you would get to cross one lake. I'm not one lake, but due to crossing 1 35 you're crossing Main Street versus the other. So you're not stopping everybody at once. So that it does still allow for, have some kind of right turn on where it depends on where you are or where the do not no turn on right blank I'll sign will kind of come on. So I, I think that's what if my understanding of your question, yes, that is something we are trying to propose. Speaker 20: Thank you. Thanks. Thanks Madam Chair. Speaker 1: Sure. Has there been any discussion
or consideration of AI traffic lights? Speaker 5: So adaptive signal systems is quite popular these days certainly can be used here. But some of the drawback is that if the peak hours are saturated, which is full and that's sort of getting there right now, the benefits of having the adaptive signals you, you ba it's basically gone. So it will be great the other 22, 23 hours of the day, but during the peak hours it's not gonna solve the problem. Speaker 1: Okay. I noticed that neither plan of the first two plans, the enhanced or limited bike accommodations meet the Massachusetts guidelines for streets
with high potential for everyday biking. How does that impact the, the potential for getting a tip grant and why would an enhanced enhanced bike layout not meet the Massachusetts guidelines for high potential for everyday biking? Speaker 5: So Mass DTS guidelines is actually looks at speed as well as volume. So if you cross a certain threshold, the standard is to provide separated accommodation. So for this corridor, the volume exceeds that threshold. So separated is recommended or, or is the standard.
So for segments one through three, because of space limitations, we're not able to separate the bike. So what they actually want is to either have a buffer between the bike lane and the traveling or have it completely separated like we're shown in the downtown core. I see. Under the enhance option. But I would, I would also say that at least having that at least that can have the conversation with the state that, hey, the town is trying, there's nothing we can do, as you can see here, and that's why I mentioned about the exception for segments one through three, where it has the downtown courts a little bit more difficult conversation. Speaker 1: Thank you. All of my other questions have been answered.
What I'd like to do is take 15 minutes and ask board members to talk about what elements are really important for you to see going forward for, to give Mr. Griffiths some guidance with regard to the grant proposal. So Mr. Evans, you wanna start? Speaker 18: Certainly. Thank you Madam Chair. First of all, I didn't thank you guys for putting this together. This is a great presentation and it was very clearly articulated both in the presentation materials and tonight here. So thank you. My impression is
very favorable. I really appreciate the effort you made to look into a hybrid model of this because I think one of the, the, the challenges that we have with our downtown area is the number of spaces and you mentioned that the hybrid would, would actually increase the existing spaces from 93 to 95. So I really liked that. I really liked the idea of court street becoming one way. I think that's an excellent idea. I really, I don't know if this is now standard
practice, but the idea of segmenting the various levels or paths towards downtown, I think is an exceptionally great idea. It really, you know, the, the, there's not, it's not a one size fits all there, it's not uniform through those areas. So I appreciate all that information. But going back to something Mr. Erickson said earlier, which is the overriding thing, there are probably two overriding things which are, safety
is number one, safety for pedestrians, bikes, vehicles, strollers, whatever it is, right? E-bikes, whatever it is. We gotta make it easier for people to go from these areas that we've made. I'll just use bikes as an example. We've made it more bikeable, if that's even a word, for people to, to go from wherever they are in town to the downtown area, from the, from the mall to the downtown area. I thought the, the, the question about bike parking was an excellent question because if you can't secure your bike somewhere,
you're not gonna come down and go into shops and whatever you might do downtown. I think it's an excellent question and I, I think that's probably all I've got. Oh, one of the things I did wanna mention is right now the existing conditions is, is para not parallel parking. Angled parking inward, which I think is probably the worst of all worlds, at least in the section, I think it's section five is the downtown section five. That's a nightmare if traffic is coming the other way, I will wait for that.
It's, it's on the northbound northbound, yeah. Northbound area. If there's traffic coming, I will wait till the light is stopped because I, I think that increase increases my survival odds by at least 50%. But if I've got SUVs next to Mount, I have a small minis UV, if I have large trucks or anything like that, you literally cannot see so you back out very slowly and hope that somebody's not gonna come along and hit you.
So I think initially when I saw reverse angled parking, I thought, what? You know, and it was, it's such an alien concept. But then as I looked into it more, it made more sense to me that you're, you're backing in once and people will get used to that. And if you're doing parallel parking, you're essentially doing the same operation that the days you said you're going in and then up and then maybe with luck, that's just the two operations. So I think I like the idea of, of having both
parallel parking and reverse angled parking. So I think that's, that's probably the sum total of my feedback. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mr. Evans. Ms. Slager, Speaker 22: Thank you. I gave you some of my feedback before, but I do have some additional comments. And I agree with my colleague that safety is, is the utmost importance. We wanna make sure that anything we do doesn't make this area less safe. I'm not so sold on the reverse angle parking yet. I did look at it, I see that Somerville implemented it,
implemented it by bow Market about 10 years ago. They don't even mention it now on their website as something for someone to look out for. But I think it's a little different situation there. I think they have more room than, than we do where they've implemented it. But one concern that I have in, in segment four for Pond Street to 1 35, and I, and I don't know if there's any way to design this. I would like the sidewalks by the common area to be maximized to the greatest extent possible. And in the enhanced bicycle scenario, the,
the sidewalk on the other side, on the west side is extended by 10 feet, but the one by the common is reduced. And I don't know if there's a way to play around with the lanes in some way, because as it is, when we have events, when we have things, that's where people walk, they walk along the common. And anything that we can do to trade off those, to add more sidewalk on the common side, I think would, would be good. As far as reducing the sidewalks in other areas, I don't think it's as nearly as, I don't find any of these objectionable except that,
that one I would like to see. Because especially if you're, if you're having a group, if you're having an event, that's where they're gonna be, they're gonna be on that side. And I'd love to see that wider, if at all possible. Don't know if it is, but it seems like if you have one side going up by 10 feet, that there might be some way to increase the other side. The other part I wanna mention is the, the concept of having bike lanes at the same level of the sidewalk. That was something that when I first heard about this at, at the EDC, I thought, oh, we don't want that. But then I saw how it was, I happened
to be driving in Brookline and they have something like that there. And I thought, this works really well. How they do it, it, it protects the bikes from traffic and they have enough separation there visually and also with, you know, signage and, and other things that, that I was much more accepting of that. So I think that's something worth still considering, you know, 'cause then we don't have to worry about interaction with the cars. So overall, I think this is a great start and I want everyone to know, this is just a start.
Nothing that we're gonna be doing tonight is casting concrete. And I hope everybody in the audience has had a chance to take a look at the drawings somehow when they're big, it has more impact. And, and once again, just thank you guys so much for, for all the work that you've put into this. Speaker 1: Thank you, Ms. Wilger. Ms. Pope. Speaker 21: Yes. Thank you. I agree with both of my colleagues about, you know, specifically about the safety and the sidewalks. And you know, one of the things that I appreciate about Natick is that we plan forward. We not only plan forward, but we are willing to be, I would say,
like forerunners in certain areas. And so, you know, safety is, is paramount here. But I would also say that with some of the other ex examples we have, I, I would like to see Natick, you know, be able to, to launch into this, you know, with, with caution and care and, and, and continue to expand some of the, the ideas we have for downtown. The, you know, be in line with the 2030 be, be in line with the complete streets. I really am enjoying, like reviewing and looking over the multimodal opportunities.
I think that's fantastic. And I, I don't necessarily see it as favoring bikes over parking. I think we need it all. So I'm very, I'm very interested in seeing the hybrid options. I, I would say going forward, and I, and I know I mentioned this earlier, but I think the impacts on the business is currently is critical because there's, there's definitely conversations about what ha what, where we were pre pandemic, where we are now, and then where, where we need to go or where we want to go. I think that is critical that we have an understanding
and, and do our very, very best to keep the businesses in mind for the, the absolute best outcomes and, and, and hopefully the least amount of negative impact. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Pope. Speaker 1: Mr. Sidney. Speaker 20: Yeah. So first of all, you know, Mr. Erickson highlighted segment five, but I think segment four is just as important. It's a really congested part of this roadway. And I think it's just as important as segment five just because of the way things feed together.
I want to, I think one of the things that concerns me is I don't, I like Ms. Slager, I don't wanna see any loss of space on the common side. If we could offset the roadway or something that, you know, as she suggested, that would, might be, might work. I'm okay with the angle parking and I'm okay with the bump outs. The, the other thing that I really don't want to see here in any way, shape or form is any reduction in parking. I realize that yes, it would be good if people were able to walk, but we need to have parking spaces
for people who can't walk. And so it's important that we keep enough parking spaces in, in the center so that people going to our center businesses can find a parking space most of the time. And I have to say, I find a parking space most of the time when I need one. So, but I don't wanna see any reduction. So those are my primary comments here. All in all, I'm really impressed by the, by the options. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Sydney. With regard to design elements, I would agree with my peers about, I mean, I know this is on the microscopic level
and we're not talking about broad design elements, but not turning left from Pond Street onto heading north on Main Street, seems to me to be a no-brainer Court street as a one-way, assuming that doesn't impact parking. But more than the, the minor tweaks, what I would say is safety's really important. What's re the business community is really important. Transportation and providing multimodal is really important. So trying to balance all three of these and at the risk of, you know,
it, it's going to be very, very difficult. I, I think, I think you, you both know that this board knows that all things being equal safety, supporting our business community and ensuring multimodal transportation throughout the corridor, all things being equal, I'd like to tailor a, our design such that we can maximize the ability to get outside funding. Because $15 million isn't something we have lying around. So to the extent that, you know, all things being equal, I'm not saying design something that Mass DOT wants us to have.
We want something for Natick that serves Natick serves natick's safety needs, it's business needs, it's parking needs and it's multimodality, you know, throughout the corridor. So we need that for Natick. But all things being equal, I'd like to see us come up with something that will maximize our ability to get a tip or other funding. When it comes time for us to look for funding for construction, we are gonna be at the end of this current administration. And it's my hope that maybe there will be federal funding available. But in any event, if we could look towards maximizing our ability to get outside funding,
that would be my wish. Speaker 5: Great. No, thank you. Agree and excited for those opportunities to continue that conversation. So fingers crossed we get this first grant and that way we can actually do a little bit more and come up with that preliminary design and continue to have that conversation about funding direction. And back to your initial point about Pond Street A again, we considered it definitely talk about it. It's, it is just how much impacts is it gonna be outside? So it's more of like a holistic look so that again, an informed decision can be made. And so I look forward to having that opportunity as well
to study a little bit more on Speaker 1: That. Thank you so much Mr. Wong. And what I'd like to do is just take a quick five minute recess. I'd like to confer with Mr. Griffiths and allow us to go to the bathroom. We have one more agenda item and I'm, I'm planning on, on us being out of here in about 15 minutes. Just to Speaker 20: Sentence, Madam, I'm chair, did they need a, some kind of a motion to Oh, Speaker 1: To, well, just, there's just one motion. The motion would be to allow the chair to sign a letter of support for, so moved for the grant proposal. Second moved by Mr. Sydney, seconded by Mr. Evans.
Roll call vote. Mr. Sidney? Yes. Mr. Evans? Yes. Ms. Slager? Yes. Ms. Pope? Yes. And I'm a yes. 5 0 0. So we're not voting on any specific design elements, we're just giving feedback to the design team to be able to write the grant proposal. So there won't be a vote on that. We'll be back in five minutes and we are back. The second item on our agenda is request by Natick Center Cultural District to allow businesses to use portable sandwich board signs, sidewalk sail displays, and semi fixed enchantments on sidewalks and commercial zone districts. So what I would like to do is put some of this in context
and explain what it is that we'd like to accomplish tonight. The select board, the, the sign bylaw is enforced by the building commissioner under the auspices of the planning board. So that's not something we're gonna address tonight. That's something that's gonna be addressed in town meeting in the fall. So that there will be, you know, an amended signed by law that will allow, will, will be a little bit more liberal. Unfortunately, we can't wait for businesses until fall. Annual town meeting. The select board are the road commissioners, which includes under Mass General law,
which includes sidewalks. So we have care, custody, and control over the sidewalks. What I've done is discuss the, the ask by the Natick Center Cultural District. We've read the letters. I believe they're online. They've been uploaded for the public as mentioned in the letter from NCCD. The problem is not the enforcement or the enforcer, it's the rule itself. And so I'm very, very thankful to our building commissioner for not issuing fines for businesses that are outta compliance, but rather bringing this to our attention so we can figure out a way to patch together a solution.
The solution that I have proposed is to allow not more than one sandwich, board sign or flag to be placed in the, in front of a business on the first or ground floor to occupy the public way to accommodate either one or the other from June one until November one, which will be after Fall town meeting, at which time we'll be able to reconsider this contingent upon inspection and approval by the business commissioner and the Natick Police Department to ensure
that placement does not interfere with pedestrian traffic impact, roadway safety, violate a DA regulations or impede access to other businesses. So to that end, I'm going to ask the board if the board has any comments or questions. Ms. Slager, Speaker 22: My only comment would be to extend November to December because typically town meeting is not over by November 1st. Oh. And then it takes, that was involuntary then it takes a couple Yes. Of weeks afterwards. So I would just propose changing that to December instead Speaker 1: Of November. I I think that makes sense. I I had looked at a
for night town meeting with seven days afterwards. 'cause it's, the appeal period is seven days afterwards at which time the bylaw would take effect. But better safe than sorry, December one. Makes sense. You're Speaker 22: Familiar with Speaker 20: Madame Speaker 1: Yes, Mr. Of Sidney. Speaker 20: So a bylaw change doesn't take effect until after it returns from the ag, which can take up to 90 days. Speaker 1: Right? Speaker 20: I agree with previous speaker about December, mostly because of Christmas and Hanukkah. So Speaker 1: Let's make it December 31st then. Yeah,
Speaker 20: I was just gonna suggest, so, you know, hopefully if we pass something in the fall, it would have returned by, you know, the end of April, which would set us up for the next summer. We might want to just put a placeholder in case it doesn't come back from the ags office in time for next summer. Speaker 1: That, that makes sense. So let's plan on till December 31st, 2025 with a placeholder for the first meeting in January to revisit the, this reg regulation. So the request from NCCD was to
place a moratorium, so we're not gonna place a moratorium. In other words, the signs and the flags will be subject to the Building Commissioner's inspection to ensure that they're compliant with a DA, not impeding traffic, et cetera. So it's not a moratorium, but it's an ability to use the right of way, which the select board has care custody control over. Ms. Pope, do you have a motion? Speaker 21: I do. And I will make it with those adjustments. So I move to allow property
and business owners in the Natick Center Cultural District located on the first ground floor of buildings to occupy the public way to accommodate either one A-frame sidewalk side of appropriate size, or sorry about that one flag in front of the first floor businesses in the downtown mixed use district from June 1st, 2025 until December 31st, 2025. Contingent upon inspection and approval by the building Commissioner
and the Natick Police Department to ensure that placement does not interfere with pedestrian traffic impact. Roadway safety, violate a DA regulations or impede access to other businesses. Is there a second? Second. Speaker 1: Moved by Ms. Ger. Motion by Ms. Pope. Is there any Speaker 20: Madam Chair? Speaker 1: Yes, sir. Speaker 20: I have a question. One of the things we, that came up in the letter was sale displays, which would be things like, you know, I would imagine, you know, a shelf with some stuff
for display or, or coat hangers or whatever. The motion as presented doesn't include those. Can we get a friendly amendment to allow those? Speaker 1: What what we're going to do is pass this as, as or, or not. I mean, it's up for discussion as moved. And then this subject matter will be on next week's agenda after we've had an opportunity to speak to the building commissioner to get his input on that subject. So rather than waiting, the, the suggestion had been made by administration to open this discussion tonight and continue it next week. That means businesses lose a week.
I'm not inclined to do that. Allowing for a sign and a flag. And then let's talk to the building commissioner over the next week and get his feedback on sales displays. Speaker 20: Okay. That as long as we are approaching that, that would be fine by me. Speaker 1: Yes, Mr. Sidney? I'm, I'm a fierce defender of our businesses. So yes, we that is on the, on the radar. Any other discussion, comments? So we have a motion and a second. Mr. Sidney? Yes. Mr. Evans? Yes. Ms. Wilger? Yes. I'm a yes. And Ms. Pope? Yes. 5 0 0 That passes. Mr. Walsh.
I I will send you the, the motion for you to incorporate into the minutes. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Speaker 20: Second. Second. Speaker 1: Moved by Ms. Wiler, seconded by Mr. Evans. Mr. Sydney? Speaker 20: Yes. Speaker 1: Mr. Evans? Yes. Ms. Wilger? Yes. Ms. Pope? Yes. And I'm a yes. We're adjourned.